Beginner’s Track

Mar 18

How to Build Expert Status in 6 Weeks

Everyone knows that if you are considered an expert in your niche, you will be able to sell your products and services better. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize how they can feature themselves as experts without spamming everyone on the sites they frequent. Let’s take a look at a quick plan to gain you expert status in just six short weeks.

Week One: Build It and They Will Come

This is actually false, since most people won’t show up at your blog until you start advertising it, but it’s a good idea to have a place to redirect your followers to. A blog is your best bet, since it will also rank faster in the search engines, but a regular website will also do. Make sure to post regular updates if you decide to blog. In fact, this first week, you can easily write 12 blog posts and set them to publish twice a week . . . thus eliminating the need to write every week.

This week, you should also be looking at blogs in your niche and making comments on them.

Week Two: Establishing a Twitter Presence

Whether or not you have a Twitter account already is irrelevant. This second week, you need to build up your presence on Twitter, which means you will be online every single day. Set yourself twenty minutes in the morning and twenty at night to work on Twitter, more if you have the chance. And avoid fooling around. Stay focused on cultivating your community. Remember the 12 to 1 rule (promote your fellow experts 12 times before you promote yourself).

Step 1: Befriend people. You can search for those who are in your niche and start following their followers, or do searches for people who are interested in your area of expertise.

Step 2: Start posting quality information. Again, these can be written ahead of time if you like and posted.

Step 3: Respond to other people. Now that you are following all these Twitter colleagues, you need to start interacting with them. Talk to them, answer their questions, make comments on their updates . . . basically, get yourself noticed.

Step 4: Find the relevant #Hashtags. This is the best way to know the threads and conversations around your area of expertise. It’s also a great way to find who is already engaged, who needs to be followed, promoted, learned from. Ideally, become friends with those leaders by trying to offer your own experience and get on the phone with them.

Week 3: Get Going on Facebook

Now that you’ve established yourself on Twitter, it’s time to get noticed elsewhere! Don’t forget to keep up on Twitter, though.

Step 1: Set up a fan page for your business and load at least a couple of photos and an article or two. Make sure you fill out all the relevant information.

Step 2: Let people know! Tweet about the Facebook page, post about it on your blog and add a button to your sidebar to make sure people know that you can be found on Facebook.

Week 4: Hit the Forums

Forums are excellent places to spread the word about yourself. Look for 2-3 forums that focus on your niche or cater to potential clients and start looking for questions you can answer. Make sure you follow the rules of the forum and attach a signature with your link in it.

Week 5: Open the LinkedIn Treasure -

Step 1: Answer questions related to your topic: I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the LinkedIn questions/answers are getting hot! I have a few friends who have gotten pretty good contracts through this platform.

Step 2: Join relevant groups: Of course, not only join but participate actively in the groups. Volunteer your opinion and if you can, back it up with research results. You can also finish your answer with “I elaborate further on this issue on my blog http://the super expert on this topic . com but please don’t make that your only answer as it will seem opportunistic.

Week 6: Rinse and Repeat

For the final week, continue to post on Twitter, Facebook, forums and LinkedIn on a regular basis. Also, continue to post on your blog and comment on other blogs and you’ll find that you have gained expert status by the time a month and a half has gone by. If you do that again and again, your path to success is guaranteed.

Remember that if you can’t keep up with it, it’s much better to skip a platform all together than trying to pretend to “be in”. You can always come back to the platform on the second or third round. What’s key here is that a particular community recognizes your “expert” status.

Oh last thing: Please, please, please try not to call yourself “the expert” – “the best” – “the guru” or whatever! You can only do that on a sale pitch where nobody else but your client is listening. Everyone hates the new kid on the block auto proclaiming himself as “the best”. Even if you’ve been in the industry for many years and you are just new to the social media platform. It is so much better and classier to wait patiently for someone to give you the title. I promise you 200% that if you are consistent and really know your stuff, the title will come sooner than later.

Mar 17

How to Focus Your Niche and Increase Influence

Beginner's Track, Social Media Classroom 11 Comments »

picture credit to haywoodemc

Real State = Location, Location, Location

But……

Social Media = Community, Community, Community!

The area that you specialize in is called your niche and the vast majority of people aren’t very good at really focusing on it. If you use social media, you need to be very careful about how you are presenting yourself. You can certainly be the jack or jill of all trades, with knowledge in ten different areas, but you will do best if you stick to one particular area.

Before you jump online, you need to distinguish your niche. It needs to be fairly specific. Just saying that your niche is cars, for example, won’t cut it . . . what makes you special in that area? Maybe you specialize in car decals, or even a specific type of car decal. The idea here is to narrow it down so you can find an audience easily. It’s very difficult to reach everyone in the general car niche, so by being more specific, you’ll be found easier.

Once you have your niche, make a plan. I’ve talked before on this blog about making a social media plan. It’s vital that you have one! You need to have goals and know what to do each day in order to reach them.

Your social media needs to be focused. That means posting mostly on things that pertain to your niche and that are interesting to your audience. If you are posting 50% on your niche and 50% on random things that interest you, you’ll find that you don’t get as much traffic as you really could.

How do you stick to your niche? Here are some tips:

Have a theme and stick to it. All your tweets, status updates, etc. should revolve around this.
Find others like you. It’s a lot easier to stay on topic if you are following people who are talking about the same thing.
Have a list of keywords related to your niche and use them regularly, this forces you to stay on topic.
Write your goals down. This will help you out when you get stuck, you can keep looking at them and reminding yourself of what you need to be doing.

By focusing on your niche, you will find that people will tend to flock to you. Anyone who wants to know about your topic will be interested in following you, which is why it works so well. Stick to your niche and you’ll find that the traffic generated by social media goes up drastically. People want experts and you can gain that status by sticking to what you know best.

Tagged with: guru • niche • Social Media

Feb 24

Why Being Yourself is the Best Strategy

Beginner's Track, Social Media, Social Media Classroom 16 Comments »

Online, it’s easy to adopt any personality you like. You can even pretend to be of the opposite gender if you so choose. The point is that no one knows you online, so you can literally be anyone. And many people choose to change themselves and present a more scholarly persona.

While there are occasionally reasons to change your online persona (such as when you’re on a company account), it really is best to just be yourself. There are a few reasons for this:

Better Off-Line Experience. When people meet you in real life, they’ll already know what you’re like. You might not think you’ll ever actually meet anyone that you interact with online, but these days, more and more people are meeting in real life, after knowing each other online. Meetups, tweetups and such are all times when you could be meeting others from your Twitter network and they’ll probably notice how different you are!

Relax and Focus. It’s also a lot easier to keep up your real personality. If you’re trying to be someone you aren’t, it can be very difficult to keep it up and you’re likely to slip up. If someone realizes that you are essentially lying about who you are, you will lose credibility. There’s no point in losing trust for no good reason. You can relax and focus on your social media goal without having to guard a fake personality.

Only you are the You. The final and best argument for just being yourself online is that you are the only you. Everyone is unique and you are the only person who can really be yourself on social media! By portraying your real personality, you’re bound to stand out because you ARE unique! There’s no need to try hard to be someone more exciting or interesting. You might not be as wild or hilarious as some people out there and that’s ok. By being who you really are, you’ll find that people respond to you and you’ll have loyal followers who are interested in you for you. Why do you think we love @GaryVee talking about m&m flavor in his wine?

Are you being yourself online? Why or why not? Share your reasons in the comments, I’d love to hear what you think.

Tagged with: be yourself • Social Media • unique

Feb 23

10 Ways to Find Time for Social Media

Beginner's Track, Social Media Classroom 12 Comments »

picture credit to nofatclips

“I just don’t have time to do more in my day!”

Does this sound familiar? If you find yourself struggling to find time for online networking, it might be time to take a second look at your schedule. I’ve compiled some ways you can find the time in your day for 15 minutes of social media, if you have more ideas, please share in the comments.

1. Get up 15 minutes earlier. It’s not a lot and you can use those early morning minutes to tweet, check your Facebook fan page and update your LinkedIn profile.

2. Cut into your lunch. Eat a little faster and spend the extra time on social media. I often have lunch with my cyber friends. Nothing wrong to send some tweets in between bites.

3. Make the most of your commute. Stuck in traffic? Hanging out on the subway? Use those moments to network with others . . . they all add up!

4. Use your bathroom breaks. Before heading back to the couch, office or wherever you’re going, take a moment to update your status. If you spend one minute each time you head to the washroom, you’ll rapidly add up to the allotted amount of time.

5. Network during commercials. Did you know that the average television show has at least 8-10 minutes of commercials? If you jump on social media during the commercials, you’ll easily gain around 20 minutes every hour.

6. Update while you walk the dog. Mobile devices mean we can network anywhere and what could be a better way to multi-task than to tweet or update your Facebook while getting some exercise?

7. Skip television. Why not turn the TV off and get promoting your business, instead? While you can tweet and such during commercials, actually leaving the television off is even better for productivity.

8. Stay up 15 minutes later. Those extra minutes won’t really affect your sleep, but they could have a major impact on your online social status.

9. Carpool. By letting someone else drive sometimes, you can easily use up your travel time on a social media site or two. Just don’t forget to talk, too, or no one will want to share rides with you!

10. Workout body and social media. My best posts have been written when I’m working out on the treadmill. So, turn off the TV or the radio and workout your social media presence too.

11. Treat it as email. If you’re the formal type that needs to set aside a proper time for everything. Then you want to treat your social media presence like email. So before you check your emails, open Twitter and reply to all important direct messages and replies, do the same with Facebook, Linkedin, Blog comments and whatever else you got yourself into.

If finding time for social media has been your excuse, you now know how to find that extra time in your day. You don’t need to spend hours and hours on Twitter to be effective. In fact, if you only have a 15 minute chunk of time during the day, you can set your posts to publish throughout the day, giving the impression of being online far more often than your situation actually allows for.

Don’t let excuses hold you back!

Feb 05

Using StumbleUpon: Top 5 User Guides

Beginner's Track, Social Media, Social Media Classroom 11 Comments »

picture credit to Xarj.net

StumbleUpon is one of those quiet, behind the scenes social networking sites that can drive an amazing amount of traffic to your site and help you build up some great relationships. I’ve known people who actually ended up getting jobs simply by connecting with the right people on the site.

If you’re new to StumbleUpon, it can be rather confusing. It isn’t nearly as straightforward as, say, Twitter, so you’ll need to make sure you understand what you’re doing if you want to really succeed there. Recent changes in some of the policies on the network have caused problems with many users, but overall, it’s still a very useful networking option.

I’ve scanned the internet for recent guides on how to use StumbleUpon successfully and these are the five best ones that I found. Whether you are new to the stumbling scene or have some experience under your belt but could use a little more help, these articles will be very useful. If you have any other great resources, I would love to hear about them!

1. StumbleUpon Etiquette Guide and Best Practices

From Techipedia, this is a very comprehensive article on how to behave yourself on StumbleUpon. Tamar shares her insights on how to be a good stumbler and not annoy everyone who befriends you. All of her points are excellent and everyone using StumbleUpon needs to read this article.

2. How to Get Traffic from StumbleUpon

Short and to the point, this article tells you precisely how to boost your traffic coming in from StumbleUpon. Some of the ideas are what you’ll hear anywhere, but there are a number that are quite useful. Unlike some articles, this one is quite succint, making it easy to read even when you’re short on time.

3. A Travel Blogger’s Guide to Using StumbleUpon

If you’re sick of reading about social networks on SEO blogs, this is a refreshing change! Adam is a young man interested in traveling, who wrote this post on not only how to start up with SU, but how to use it to promote your website, whatever that may be. There are some good, straightforward tips here that beginners and not-so-beginners can use.

4. 3 Essential Tricks to Do with StumbleUpon Toolbar

If you’re getting frustrated with StumbleUpon, this post offers some interesting insights into what you can do to make the entire process easier. There are just three tips, but these are good ones!

5. How to Get Started with StumbleUpon

This is a very long blog post, but well worth the read. Dave Saunders takes you through everything you need to know to get started and then some with this popular social media network. From signing in to changing your password and making friends, it’s all here! Be aware that this is a slightly older post, but I still feel it is a good one for beginners.

What are your tips for using StumbleUpon?

Tagged with: blog • guides • social networking • StumbleUpon • tips

Jan 20

Twitter or Facebook?

Beginner's Track, Social Media, Social Media Classroom, Twitter 10 Comments »

If you’re just starting out with social media, you might be wondering which of the more popular sites you need to be on. While you’re learning the ropes, it’s often best to start with just one social media network and get used to it, make lots of quality connections and then go from there.

At this point in time, the two biggest sites to get started on are Twitter and Facebook. You may already be using Facebook, as a friend finder and such, but if you are planning to move into the world of internet marketing and social networking, then you will need to look at this carefully before making any decisions.

Facebook

This site was originally intended as a site to help college grads find and connect with those that they studied with. However, over time it has changed drastically and is now quite popular among older people and business people.

Pros

Set up business “fan” pages to reach non-friends
Set up groups for any topic you like
Adjustable privacy settings

Cons

Can be perceived as unprofessional
Your friends and family can see business posts and become offended
Too many distractions in the form of games and such

Twitter

Twitter is also a social medium and could be used to report your toothbrush foam quantity on a daily basis, but it is generally more respected as a business setting. It can take a bit to get the hang of Twitter, but it is something you will need at some point if you plan on making social media a part of your life.

Pros

Well used and possibly the most popular real time social network available
Relatively simple to start off with, post, @messages and private messages
Extremely simple to connect with others
Many big companies use Twitter
A number of apps are available

Cons

Big target for spam
Information overload is VERY possible

It is really up to you as to which option you select as your first social media network. Both Twitter and Facebook are very good but you may be drawn to one or another once you’ve looked at the lists of pros and cons above. My recommendation is to use what you already have (Facebook) but also jump on Twitter as soon as you can. JJZDYX5TUMAZ

Which social media would you recommend to a beginner?

Tagged with: beginner • Facebook • Social Media Classroom • twitter

Jan 07

101 Reasons to Blog

Beginner's Track, Community 32 Comments »

I’ve been preaching like crazy lately about the importance of owning your space, of managing your content and becoming your LandLORD. In other words, to focus on your own Blog. That’s all.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and all others are great. But they’re not yours. In the quest of convincing my fellow consultants, business owners and entrepreneurs to create and invest on a blog, I would like to provide 101 reasons why. If you have blogged at all and feel it has helped you in any shape or form, please add your reasons in the comments here. Today is my birthday! so may your reason(s) become my birthday gift At the end, I’ll compile all the reasons in a Whrrl story. I’ll start the list:

1) To show my areas of expertise
2) To express my opinion
3) To share knowledge
4) To improve my writing skills
5) To acquire new clients
6) To build communities of practice
7) To help others
To publish my ideas
9) To earn revenue
10) To own my space

Tagged with: blog • Blogging • socialmedia

Dec 16

The Twitter Culture

Beginner's Track, Community, Social Media, Social Media Classroom 25 Comments »

I’ve become aware of the scrutiny and judgments around Shellie’s tragic incident (a mom whose 2 year old son drowned 2 days ago). I would like to shed some light to the tool but even more to the culture and practical application that Twitter has for its users (often called Twitters or Tweeps).

I am writing this post to the attention of the investigators, police officers, extended family and community members who have been personally touched by Bryson’s short life. The intention of my post is not to defend nor to accused. Instead, it is meant to give you a solid and objective idea of Twitter and what goes on inside its walls.

Twitter

An application with now billions of users. Currently the house of every business that care about its future and the house of organizations that care about their customers. Twitter is also the house of many people who constantly communicate, help, fight, sheer up, spam, sale, support and much more.

Communities

Believer or not, Twitter is really formed by communities. A group of people with a common denominator. Like most of us Shellie (Military_Mom) belongs in various communities: moms, military, marketers, bloggers and so forth.

Now the three big questions:

1) Why did Shellie spend so much time on Twitter?

There are many reasons people join this big community. By interacting with Shellie and reading her Tweets (messages on Twitter), I can share the following:

Work: Think about Twitter as a home business. Here are some examples how Shellie persuaded me to go to Wal-Mart and other clients for my Christmas shopping back in November:

@AnaRC walmart is free site to store shipping with excellent clearance too 8:47 AM Nov 19th from Echofon in reply to AnaRC

@AnaRC jcp.com has free shipping and 10 or 15 off purchases this weekend (now through Sat) toysRus has great clearance, and 8:46 AM Nov 19th from Echofon in reply to AnaRC

Before she sent me those tweets, we engaged in a conversation about how I leave everything to the last minute (including my shopping).

Attract Traffic to blog: As most of us in the online world, our blog is the main source of clients. Twitter is a great tool to bring traffic back to her blog from which Shellie writes product reviews, runs give-ways and has fun. The higher the traffic, the higher the sales and the more opportunities will come her way.

Source of knowledge: Like most of us, Shellie uses Twitter to find best practice, to read the latest trends in her business and also to share her two cents as the expert that she is.

Connector: Twitter is one of the best connectors out there. So to connect with brands, marketing officers and other moms (her target audience), Shellie engages on Twitter.

2) Was Shellie Twittering instead of watching Bryson?

If you look at the tweets around the time of the accident, the first one was at 4:30, then 4:31, another set of tweets at 5:17, 5:18, 5:19 and 5:21. To the final tweet after 6 when she cries for prayers to the Twitter community.

I can assure you that when a person is exclusively “twittering” he/she would normally tweet 1 tweet a minute. Therefore Shellie was obviously doing something else other than Twitter.

3) How can she tweet after her son is dead?

Apart from the fact that people have different reactions to tragedy and one never knows until the moment arrives (hoping for a never). I can only share my personal story here.

Last Friday, I was on my way to Washington D.C. heading to a Latism conference. I had also combined the trip with a consultancy job with the World Bank and another meeting with the U.S. Hispanic Youth Entrepreneur Education (USHYEE). However it was the first snow in Rochester, NY and my car went off the road. All of the sudden, I was buried in snow and since it was 7:07 AM, there weren’t many people on the highway.

5 years ago I would have called 911 but last Friday, I sent a Tweet and the usual magic happened:

911: I did end up calling them at 7:10 (3 minutes after my tweet) only to hear “yes madam, we’ve received 36 calls already. We’re on our way” by the time I hanged up they were already there.

Meeting 1: my secretary text me “I’m rescheduling the meeting on Skype and sending you the presentation electronically”

Meeting 2: they sent me a DM (direct message that’s private between two people) just saying “we’re aware, will reschedule”

The car: 2 friends from my ROC community not only called the towing company but they even provided a credit card number in case I didn’t have cash on me. The towing service was there within minutes with a big “I’ve been paid smile”

Prayers: other cars were having the same problem as I had on the curve and I worried about a bad accident. My prayer community was on, sending me all the angels, messages of encouragement and hope.

Flight: Even though I wasn’t very lucky with my travel agent, my airline waved the change fee and booked me into the next flight.

Extras: I received over 70 messages, direct messages, texts, phone calls and more. All offering help, prayers & support.

Now, do you get the power of that tweet? Not only did I save myself over 14 calls (to 911, my secretary, World Bank, USHY, D.C. friends, people in my prayer network & family) but I certainly felt surrounded by a support system. This wasn’t chance. This was the result of a presence and a community building that takes place every day. One tweet at a time. When I sent that tweet, I knew what was going to happen. My communities would jump to help, the same way I’ve helped others in need. The same reason why I’m writing such a long post for Shellie.

I hope that my story helps you understand why Shellie twitted during her tragedy. She cried for help: “Please pray …..

And if you are still in doubt, please have the courage to link to Shellie’s support system on Twitter. You’ll see that messages of encouragement, sympathy and blessings have been nonstop. If still in doubt, please join the conversation tomorrow at 9:00 pm EST on Twitter. I can assure you that you’ll be moved.

I’ve been consulting for public and private organizations to help them understand how their customers are using social media. Also how they can use it to engage and reach certain goals. This job has given me enough exposure to every level of perception of Twitter by “the big guys”. There are also false myths and stereotypes about “mommy bloggers”.

Often when I ask provocatively to my clients if they think I’m a mommy blogger, their answer is NO! as a mother of four young children who blogs for her business, I must break the news: I am a “mommy blogger” and it is an honor for me to be the voice to a fellow colleague during such difficult time. I am happy to talk to any of the agents involved in this case free of charge. As long as it serves to shed more objective light to the situation.

I have seen a common denominator among Shellie’s tougher judges. They’re Twitter newbies. This will also be the case of the majority of the investigators, family members, educators and so forth. The first reaction is to blame the unknown (in this case “Shellie’s presence on Twitter” and to jump to easy conclusions as a result of anger and fear. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, 300 children drown every year and over 3,000 end up with serious injuries. I’m pretty sure these stats have not been altered by Twitter.

One last thing. Think twice before you judge and count to 5,000 before you write or say anything that could hurt a grieving mom.

Tagged with: Military_Mom • Social Media • twitter

Nov 27

How to Alienate People on Twitter

Beginner's Track 25 Comments »

How to allianate on twitter

If you’re a numbers watcher, you’ve probably noticed that your number of followers fluctuates constantly on Twitter. While this is normal, you do want to keep the vast majority watching your updates. It’s pretty easy to do something wrong, though. If you aren’t sure why people are unfollowing you in droves, it might be time to check out my list on how to alienate people on Twitter.

Never follow back. While you don’t necessarily have to follow everyone back, never following anyone isn’t going to win you too many friends. It’s an excellent method for getting rid of . . . well, just about everyone!
Ignore direct and @ messages. When someone tries to initiate contact with you, ignoring them is a great way to ensure that they never attempt to talk to you again. Sensitive people might not try after one ignore, others will try a few times and then give up. If you hang in there, pretty soon only robots will be talking to you.
Disappear for long periods of time. This is one of the best ways to lose followers. If you’re inactive, they will assume you’re gone and remove you from their lists. Many use automatic unfollows for this, so you don’t even have to personally offend anyone.
Post only complaints. If all your updates are complaining about your back pain, the fact that your spouse doesn’t help out enough around the house, etc. you can bet most people will never even start following you! It’s a great way to get rid of most of your existing followers, too.
Badmouth other businesses. While Twitter can be an excellent forum for exchanging experiences with companies, it shouldn’t become a place to air your dislike of every business you come across. As soon as people see this, they will tend to avoid you . . . no one wants their own business to be put down!
Talk about mundane things. Mentioning what you’re having for lunch isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but a blow by blow of your trip to work, every person you see along the way, your bathroom stops, etc. is definitely too much for most people. You can expect to see a drastic drop in followers if you decide to go this route.

Obviously you don’t want to alienate people on Twitter, so make sure you do the opposite of everything I’ve listed here. You’ll end up with happier followers and over time, you’ll be able to really network with them.

Tagged with: Community • followers • Social Media • twitter