Jan 30

3 Social Media Mistakes You May Be Making

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom, Social Media for Business 10 Comments »

Social media is an excellent way to make valuable connections in your industry. Just about everyone who does any kind of business online is aware of the usefulness of social media sites, but that doesn’t mean they know how to use them. There are plenty of articles on how to make social media work for you, but today I’m going to look at some of the big mistakes that you could be making. These aren’t just little glitches that can be overlooked, they are mistakes that could destroy your online reputation or ruin your carefully built network.

Social Media Mistake 1

Going on a rant. When you’re using Twitter, Facebook, etc. on a daily basis, it’s easy to fall into a false sense of security. You feel that you’re among friends. And when that happens, it’s not difficult to move into other territory . . . where you start sharing personal information. This in itself isn’t bad, until something happens that makes you angry and you splash it all over the web.

Being upset about something is fine. Tweeting about how horrible your client is . . . not fine. In fact, it could lose you business. Even if your client or boss never realizes what you said, others will see it and realize that they don’t want to work with someone who blasts their personal vendettas across the social networks.

Social Media Mistake 2

Dropping off the face of the planet. Unfortunately, this happens quite often in social media because people start out with great intentions and then lose focus. When they come back a couple of months later, no one cares anymore.

You can easily avoid this problem by not overdoing things. There’s no need to post 50 times a day. A handful of posts will keep your presence up without taking too much time or energy and you won’t be overwhelmed and drop out. Social media is a very valuable method of promotion, so don’t waste it by burning out and disappearing for too long.

Social Media Mistake 3

Spamming. Most of us are aware that spamming is a bad idea . . . yet a lot of people are still flooding others with unwanted offers and ads. However, that isn’t the only way you can spam and you MIGHT be spamming without even realizing how offensive it is!

Are you signed up for one of those Twitter ad networks? If you’ve allowed them or any other site to publish auto-tweets then your followers are probably quite annoyed with the spam they get when you aren’t even online. Another way that many people spam is through auto responses to followers. When someone follows you, sending them a direct message with an ad is not a good way to make a nice first impression.

Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, you might want to reconsider how you handle your social networking before it’s too late.

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Jan 08

Social Media Hunting Spree

Intermediate Track, Social Media for Business 7 Comments »

Social media has two main purposes for business owners and consultants: To acquire new clients and To retain happy customers.  Everything else must serve these two goals.  Often we start building a social media presence and wonder around without a clear direction, goal or strategy.  A real easy way of getting right to the point is to compare social media to a Hunting Spree. The main difference is obviously the end result.  Hunting leads to a dead prey that you might eat once.  Instead social media should lead to a healthy prey that will freely come back to you again and again.   Here’s how:

The basics: I still can’t believe that business owners and consultants jump to social media just for the fun of it.  Yes, we can make it fun but it can’t stop there.  A hunter knows What he’s hunting, Where he’s hunting, When he’s hunting and How he’s hunting.

Scouting: Determining the exact place (platform) and timing of your prey allows the hunter to have a successful or stressful experience.  The scouting is done prior to the hunt.  If you’re hunting executives for your B2B service, it might be a good idea to get active on LinkedIn during the day.  Instead if you’re hunting entrepreneurs or start-ups for your coaching products, you’ll be better off on Twitter during the evenings.

Understanding your prey: A hunter studies the prey, the eating and sleeping patterns, social activities, nap times and so forth.  Understanding their habits, tendencies and activities helps a lot.  In social media, you can do this best by joining groups where your prey interacts.  Join the conversation (without your sales hat please) or simply observe.  It’s really interesting to watch what turns a specific group on. What gets them going in a discussion or a blog by just watching the comments.  It will take you about a month of binocular observation to understand patterns and trends of a group.  This can be the CEOs, social entrepreneurs, moms, realtors, you name it.  The intrinsic behavior of human interaction within a group is pretty standard and tends to respect the subculture of their common denominators.

Guns and Loads: When selecting a shotgun, hunters go simple and within their budget. They also know the appropriate size, speed and weight of the bullet.  Furthermore, they understand all the prey-specific hunting regulations to avoid unintentional violations. In social media, you want to know the right instrument to use when you finally decide to conquer a client.  A real heavy/invasive pitch can destroy the relationship for ever.  You might need more than one shot, from different angles until you can make the final one.  On Twitter for example, I interact, retweet, reply at least 10 times before I send a direct message with my initial sale.  The same on a LinkedIn group, I join discussions, provide answers and Bam! I send the message.  One thing is to receive the same typical boring sales pitch from a perfect stranger.  A totally different thing is to receive an invitation to “continue our discussion off line” – by this time, my prospect knows who I am, that I know my stuff and that I have a genuine interest in helping him.  See the difference?

Shooting: A hunter picks a good stand, allows the prey to come up to a certain distance, waits for the right timing and shoots.  I’ve seen so many consultants chat and mingle with their dream client and nothing happens because they don’t shoot.  What was the point?

Keeping in mind the purpose of why we’re investing our time (therefore money) in social media will really help us stay focused on the prey, waste less time and avoid distractions.  Yes, build all the authority in your field, be a pioneer, build your communities and everything else.  But at the end of the day, we do all this To acquire new clients & To retain happy customers.

How are you hunting? Can you share your experience?

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Dec 21

3 Reasons for Link Love on Social Media

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 3 Comments »
picture credit to Freshfocus.info

picture credit to Freshfocus.info

If you’ve spent any time at all on social media sites, you’ve seen people linking to others. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks who just don’t feel this is necessary. The main reason they think they don’t need to share with others is because they feel that all their social networking needs to be about them. I’m here to tell you that talking others up is a great way to promote yourself.

Still not certain? Here are three reasons you need to start linking out to others that you like in the field.

1. You’ll make more friends.

When people see that you are nice enough to share the best blog posts and websites with others, they are going to know that you value others. That’s pretty rare, particularly online, so you’ll rapidly gain friends this way.

Just being nice isn’t the only reason people will start knocking down your door to be friends with you. They will also see you as a valuable resource and someone who has information on what they´re interested in. That’s always a good thing and it means that you will tend to get friends of a higher quality, too.

2. Catch someone’s attention.

Let’s say there is a blogger in your field that you particularly admire and want to emulate. You might not want to actually speak to him or her, or send them an email, but linking to them on Facebook or Twitter is a great way to show your appreciation. Chances are, they’ll notice when you do this, too.

Not all bloggers will link back or even pay attention to you, but many will notice you and if they have the time, check your site out, as well. This is a great way to get people to notice you without sticking your head out too far. And you never know, they might decide you are worthy of link love, too!

3. Offer value to your followers and boost your reputation.

There are a number of people on any social media network who just babble about nothing. If you’re one of the ones who provides great information, you’ll get a far better reputation and that means people will trust you more. When there is trust, you’ll be able to do business much easier and they will refer you to their friends.

Sending out links to valuable information is a part of building trust. Just because you don’t have all the answers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to give them to your followers . . . look for someone who knows what you don’t!

It’s always a good idea to link to useful resources. You can really benefit a lot. Having said all this, I will increase my blogroll by 50% since I’m finding so many useful resources and colleagues in the Social Media arena.  However, I’m not sure how to approach this.  What is your advice? Who would you recommend? Do you just link back indiscriminately or do you use a selection criteria?

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Dec 11

Facebook: Not Just for Fun

Intermediate Track 4 Comments »

Facebook is one of those social media networks that doesn’t really seem too beneficial right from the start. At first glance, it’s really about connecting with friends and family that you haven’t seen in a long time. So, what’s the appeal for internet marketers?

What you may not realize is that Facebook may be even more powerful than many other social networks because of the fact that it is all about family and friends. Who hasn’t heard about the huge benefits of word of mouth advertising? Well, consider Facebook to be a huge source of that type of marketing.

Who would you listen to more? A marketer that you follow on Twitter who recommends a product, or your sister who calls you up to tell you about a product she just tried? Chances are you’re going to opt for family. Well, on Facebook, you’re connecting with a number of people who are going to connect with their family and friends . . . and if they recommend something you post, you can bet that it’s going to be well received!

How to Start Generating Word of Mouth Reviews

If you’re on Facebook, you know you can share links, videos and photos. These are all excellent ways to get people sharing your information and it’s pretty simple to get started.

However, if you have a business, then you need to look at setting up a fan page. This is slightly more complicated, but well worth doing. If you have a hot topic, you will be surprised at how many people you’ve never even heard of who become fans of the page. When you first set up the page, you can invite people to become fans. Send out invites to everyone and they can invite others to become fans, as well.

Another good way to go is to set up a widget on your blog or website so your visitors there can also become fans. This will expand your numbers and before you know it you’ll have steadily increasing fans.

Maintaining Your Fans

In order to keep these people interested in what you do and make sure that as much of your content gets shared as possible, you can set up automatic RSS feeds. Look for one that offers just a taste of the post, a short description, so people can click through to your actual website.

You can also post photos and videos to your fan page, either as informative pieces or to promote specific programs and ideas. The choice is yours. You should try to keep active, though, posting at least one thing each day.

Facebook is a much overlooked social media network thanks to the fact that it is promoted as a friendship site. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it for business, in fact, it’s an excellent way to expand your circle of influence, so go ahead and try it today.

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Dec 09

Quick Ways to Pump Up Your Online Presence

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 3 Comments »
Photo credit to National Geographics

Photo credit to National Geographics

Sometimes we need to get noticed quickly. Maybe you have a product launch coming up or a charity function and you need to get a lot of people to pay attention quickly. Usually, social media is a fairly slow burner method . . . you work steadily to gain followers and interest and it can take a while. So what do you do when you need a quick burst? Well, here are a few ways to pump up your online presence rapidly, without stressing.

Note: these are not meant to be used long term, they are merely techniques to give you a quick boost.

1. Hold a contest.

It doesn’t have to be a big contest, you can easily just do a small giveaway. If you don’t have anything to give away, contact someone who does. Then choose your venue, be it Twitter, Facebook, etc. and ask people you know to spread the word about the contest. Perhaps the contestants have to follow you in order to enter, or sign up for your newsletter, etc. There are a lot of options here and contests tend to go viral on sites like Twitter, so you can expect to gain a rapid following.

2. Go on a friending spree.

If you want lots of people to follow you or befriend you, the best way to go about this is to simply befriend a lot of other people. You can search Twellow and other similar sites to get good contacts that are interested in what you have to offer.

Often, when you follow someone on Twitter or befriend them on another site, you will get followers back within 24 hours. Depending on how many you befriend, you could end up with a large number of followers. Do be careful, however, and read the rules, since some sites, such as Facebook, will put a limit on your account if you try to befriend too many people all at once.

3. Tell people you’re close to a milestone.

You’ve probably seen those tweets where someone says that their friend is just 14 followers away from reaching 5,000 . . . well, you can use that same method to gain yourself. Look at your next milestone, be it 10,000 followers or 500 and let people know that you need a certain number to hit it. Then watch your numbers start rising as others help you reach your goal. Obviously, this one only works if you really are close to a milestone.

From time to time, we just need to increase our followers. It doesn’t really matter if you’re just trying to get a boost before you add a counter to your blog, or if you’re trying to gain some publicity before you launch a new ebook or product.

Remember that people still won’t follow you if you aren’t posting good comments and interacting with the community, so stay on top of that. It will be somewhat time intensive in the beginning, but you will reap the benefits.

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Nov 28

I Dare you to Make a Social Media Strategy

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom, Social Media for Business 7 Comments »

Every business and even individual needs a social media strategy. Without one, you’re really just floundering and you’ll never get anywhere. It’s important to have a focus, a goal, but more than that, you need a plan to reach that goal. This is the difficult part. Once you have a plan, it’s merely a matter of implementing it!

I dare you to start creating your strategy right now. It doesn’t need to be super complicated.  In just three steps, you can set up your social media strategy and get started meeting those goals. After all, it’s nearly the new year and the perfect time to be planning out some serious strategies.

Step One: What Are Your Goals?

Of course, knowing what your goals are is a big help in meeting them. So take the time to sit down and figure out just what you want to accomplish with your social media exploits. Are you looking to boost traffic and sales? Improve your blog score to get more gigs? Want more people to sign up for your email newsletter? Or are you just looking to make contacts that could lead to jobs in the future? Get specific, just how many sales do you want a month as a result of social media?

Whatever your goals are, make sure you write them down. This will help you later when you are trying to recall what you need to do and need a little extra motivation. It will also let you know when you have actually been successful.

Step Two: Plan How to Reach Your Goals

Step by step, you’ll meet your goals, but it really helps to write down a plan. Decide how you will get new followers/friends, which social media network to use (stick to just one or two in the beginning so you can really focus) and how much time to put into these activities.

You should also decide what message you want to promote. Write it down and keep it where you will see it all the time so you can continuously promote that message. All your social media activity should be based around the goal you are trying to meet. No to say that you shouldn’t socialize at all.  But having your goal in front of you will help you stay focused on what really matters.

Step Three: Putting it Into Action

The final step is to actually put everything into action. You should set aside some time each day to network with others and work on making friends and promoting your business. Don’t forget that you shouldn’t be promoting 100% of the time, the golden rule here is 12 to 1 (promote others 12 times before you say something about your business).  But even that should be based on your end goals.

Everyone needs a social media strategy and chances are you know that. But until you actually sit down and figure one out, you’re not going to make your goals. I’d like to challenge my readers to start working on a social media strategy now.  My next posts will evolve around that. I will share some of the tools I use to make my strategy and monitor every milestone.

Do you have a strategy? if yes, ca you share your tools? if not, can you share your goals to help me understand the best tools to share?

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Nov 06

How to Gain Trust Online

Intermediate Track 5 Comments »

A certain level of trust is required in order for someone to buy from you or pay you for services. Social media has gone a long way toward helping establish trust online, but just how can you make sure people feel they can trust you? It can be a slow process at times, but if you are consistent, you’ll get results.

Be consistent across the internet

If you act like two (or more!) different people on different sites, you can bet that it can get confusing for others. Whatever your personality or even persona, be careful to stay consistent everywhere you appear online. You should also refrain from being too formal, since most people prefer to buy from human beings.

Being consistent also refers to frequency. If you run a blog, make sure you don’t vanish for weeks at a time. The same goes for social media. Post on a regular basis and don’t disappear unexpectedly . . . people will wonder if you are really serious about business, too.

Offer advice and information

It’s one thing to say you’re an expert, quite another to prove it. Unfortunately, there are many more self-proclaimed experts than real ones and people are starting to realize this. That’s why it doesn’t usually work to simply say that you know what you’re doing. You have to show it. This is possible through social media, offering tidbits of information and helping people out on social media, forums and blogs with advice they can actually use. Once they get curious enough, they will come to you directly.

Maintain your reputation

Make sure you keep your rep clean by avoiding things like making a rude comment or lashing out at someone. Anything you do online can be immortalized forever. Remember that when people Google you, just about anything that has happened online could turn up, so it’s a good idea to make sure you keep your hands clean.

It’s also worth it, if you run a business, to keep an eye out for possible complaints. While you may not be able to get rid of the complaint published, you can certainly address it in a tasteful manner and possibly gain more trust this way.

Interact with your followers

As your reputation grows, more and more people will start to follow you. Some gurus are notorious for their lack of interest in the crowds of fans, but you’ll have much better results if you pay attention to them. Answer some questions, interact with your followers on Twitter and Facebook and they will respect you even more.

It takes time and effort to build trust. Online, people are even more suspicious than usual because of the overabundance of scams. Prove you aren’t a con artist, provide consistent, regular content and interact with people to boost your business.

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Oct 27

Are You Familiar with Social Media Etiquette?

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 2 Comments »

etiquetteMany people forget that just because you can’t see the person you’re talking to on social media networks doesn’t mean you can say what you want. Social media does have it’s rules of comportment, it’s just that many opt to ignore them.

Need a brush up on your online manners? Here are a few things to keep in mind next time you’re hanging out in a forum or networking on Twitter.

Don’t try to cheat

No one likes a cheater, but so many businesses and marketers use automated responses, or other means of rapidly sending out blog comments, posting forum messages and tweets all at once. It’s pretty rare that you can fool someone these days with an automatic message and it will only bring you down in their eyes. For many social media users, someone who can’t be bothered to send their own messages, but lets an ad network do it for them, is unacceptable and you will lose your following pretty quickly.

Social media and networking take time. You can’t jump in with a robot to zap out status updates every 30 minutes and expect people to take you seriously. You’ll need to invest in your online reputation and make it work for you.

Don’t get angry in public

It’s very tempting to get angry at someone online, but it’s also not a good idea. In the heat of the moment, you could type something you’ll regret once you’ve cooled down . . . but those words are out there forever. It can damage your reputation for a long time if you really lose your temper.

Instead of blasting your feelings out in social media, try typing them up in a Word document and tell yourself you’ll email it tomorrow. You won’t, of course, but it still feels better to get it all out.

Become a listener

People appreciate someone who listens, so it is worthwhile to pay attention to what is going on around you, instead of just talking about your business all the time. Comment on what others are saying and you will be able to make a better connection with them than if you simply approach with a pitch.

Bring something to the table

There’s no point in trying to make social media about you. It simply won’t work. People are interested in genuine networking, not in your ad blasting out over 100 social media networks. A personal touch will take you only so far, though . . . you also need to add some value for people. Give them a reason to listen to you by offering some useful information and juicy tips that they can put to use now.

Social networking can be very valuable for promoting your business, but don’t forget your manners in the process.

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Oct 26

12 Great Social Media WordPress Plugins

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom, Today's Best 5 Comments »

Many people are using WordPress as their blogging platform these days, simply because it works so well. On top of that, the number of plugins that are available for the platform is impressive. While I would like to point out all my favorite plugins, it might be better if I just point out some of the best lists out there.

You have: the 20 Best WordPress Plugins with real innovative ideas.  Then the 18 most downloaded plugins will give you an idea on what people consider to be most useful. If you have time and interest in this subject, then go to Top WordPress Plugins 2009 and the absolute best and comprehensive guide: Top 160 WordPress Plugin.

Incorporating social media into your WordPress blog is just one way to make use of these plugins. I’ve assembled my favorite social media plugins right here.

Antisocial: This plugin displays a number of small icons to make it easy for readers to share and bookmark your content on social media. The benefit of this plugin is that everything is no-follow, so all the link juice stays right on your blog.

Add to Any Bookmark Button: This creates a bookmarking button on your site that lets the user choose which bookmarking site they want to use.

Digg This: If you are a Digg user, you know how quickly something can go viral on this site. That’s why this plugin is so popular, as it lets visitors share your content directly with Digg.

Gregarious: With this plugin, you can easily promote your content on a number of social media sites, including Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. It’s also customizable so you can set it up how you want it.

I Love Social Bookmarking: With this handy WordPress plugin, your visitors can vote for your content. There is a drop down menu that keeps everything nice and neat and uncluttered on your blog and allows visitors to choose which social media site they want to vote on.

Notable: This is much like Antisocial in that it places a number of social media icons on your blog for visitors to vote on. It doesn’t use no-follow links, however.

Share This: When you want to target specific social media sites, this is the plugin to use. It will let you decide which sites to let your users bookmark your content on. This is particularly useful if you are looking to do a campaign directed at a specific site.

SphinnIt Button: For those who use Sphinn to promote their internet marketing blogs, this plugin works well to encourage visitors to use Sphinn.

Sociable: This is actually another version of AntiSocial . . . just without the no-follow links.

WP Super Cache: Once you start to get a lot of traffic, you can end up crashing your server. No one wants that, so this plugin is a good idea before you start getting too much traffic. It will cache your pages and load them as static pages if you get too many hits, preventing a crash.

While writing this post, I just installed:

Comment Luv: Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

BackType Connect: Show related conversations (from other blogs, Twitter, Digg, FriendFeed and more) inline with your own comments.

You might not need more than one or two of these plugins at a time, but depending on what your intention is and which social media sites you are aiming to get higher rankings on, you can choose which plugin works best. Which ones are you using?

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Oct 20

How to Stay Focused On Twitter

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 3 Comments »

Twitter is arguably one of the most popular social networking sites around and has enjoyed increasing popularity over the past year, as more and more celebrities get into the spirit. Despite only having 144 characters to work with, many Twitter users are adept at getting their message out. However, there can be a lot of distractions there, as well.

From people tweeting their favorite links, photos and even playing online games through their tweets, there is more than enough to keep you busy doing everything but what you should be working on. Not to mention the chat factor. With the ability to talk to hundreds or even thousands of people at a time, it’s extremely easy to find yourself spending entirely too much time on Twitter.

So, how do you manage to stay focused while still using one of the most powerful social media sites around?

  • Set a time limit. If you have a limited time to use Twitter each day, chances are you’ll avoid being sucked into inane conversations or looking at pictures of someone’s new television. Use a timer to make sure you keep accurate track.
  • Tweet regularly throughout the day. In conjunction with the time limit, you can try to tweet 3-6 times a day for 5 min. each time. This lets you stay in regular communication with others, but doesn’t give you enough time to get too distracted.
  • Get rid of useless tweets. Are you getting a ton of automated tweets from someone you follow? Dump them. You don’t need to bother with following people who aren’t even going to contribute to the conversation, so get them off your Twitter timeline and stay focused.
  • Use a program to stay organized. There are many applications that can help you manage Twitter better, but one of the best for managing multiple interests and conversation streams is TweetDeck or even the one I use Seesmic.  By setting up various columns for your different Twitter searches, you’ll find that you can stay much better organized.
  • Make a social media plan. By writing down what your goals are and keeping them nearby, you’ll be able to stick to getting results on Twitter. You should know exactly how you’re going to reach those social media goals and then execute the plan.

Twitter can be a huge distraction and for this reason many people don’t use it. There’s no reason to miss out on an excellent way to gain more publicity, however. You’ll find that you get far better results if you start with a plan, put it into action and limit the amount of time that you use Twitter, to keep things moving.

What are your tips for not wasting time on Twitter?

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