May 12

Social Media Success: Are You Too Obsessed with Numbers?

Social Media 8 Comments »

For some people, social media is all about the numbers. How many followers you have on Twitter, how many friends you made on Facebook, etc. When you first get into this method of promotion, that’s what seems to be the best way to measure your success, but is it?

While having plenty of followers is definitely a good thing, it doesn’t mean you aren’t successful if you have just 900 people following you on Twitter. The real test is whether or not these are active friends, people who will either buy from you or promote you. If you have 100,000 followers and only 50 of them are really interested in your product, then you don’t really need the remaining 95,000 . . . it’s just more noise.

Does this mean you should get rid of everyone who isn’t actively retweeting or sharing your links? Not necessarily. But it does mean that you should reevaluate what you equate with success.

What is Social Media Success?

Each company will need to determine exactly what they consider to be success. Numbers of followers are rarely a good place to start. You can easily gain hundreds of “friends” simply by befriending everyone you come across on a social media site. So what should you be looking at? There are several ways to distinguish the your success:

  • Traffic. Aim to bring in a certain amount of traffic with social media and then work on that. While this is still a numbers game, it is far more specific.
  • Sales. An increase in sales as a direct result of your social networking efforts is a good way to judge how successful you are.
  • Publicity. When other people start talking about you, on blogs, Twitter, and newsletters without you asking them to, you can use this as a measurement of success, as well.

Of course, each business will have their own methods of measuring success and you can come up with your own. What you hope to accomplish with social media is a goal that you and only you can set for yourself.

Once you know what you want and how you are going to know when you reach it, a plan is in order. Write down how you will reach your goal, step by step. This might be something simple, such as tweeting 3 times a day, or adding 3 new, related friends on LinkedIn each day, or holding a contest or giveaway each month. Multiple methods are often best for really getting your name out there. You’ll find that most popular social media users are active in a variety of ways across their chosen networks, often gaining plenty of publicity in the process.

While number can be significant, don’t get too hung up on them. Instead, look for more tangible methods of measuring your success with social media.

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Apr 28

6 Alternatives to Twitter

Social Media, Twitter 8 Comments »

Yesterday I wrote about Twitter and the best guides out there.  While Twitter is most certainly the biggest microblogging system out there, you’ll find that a lot of people are predicting its imminent downfall. There are a number of people who detest the platform and want to see it fall. Will it? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, however, you might want to check out these alternatives to Twitter. All designed to offer fast communication, these sites allow you to get your point across and network with other business owners in short snippets, just like Twitter.

Seesmic: This site lets you organize your online networking by integrating Twitter and Facebook right into the new format. You can add multiple Twitter accounts and keep track of everything through Seesmic’s interface. Create groups and searches that will organize it all for you.

Flokio: With Flokio, you set up your very own social media network. It has some interesting possibilities. Create your own microblogging setup and invite people to join. This could be ideal for specific niches like bloggers, IM experts, etc. but can also be used to create a network for smaller groups such as your church or workforce.

FriendFeed: Another compilation site that allows you to integrate a number of social networks, FriendFeed also lets you post your own updates and links when you want to. You can network with others on FriendFeed and see all of their social media postings at once, as well.

12seconds: This interesting site offers the same concept as Twitter, but in video. With 12 seconds of video, you can update friends, family and other networking partners on anything . . . anything, that is, which will fit in 12 seconds of video. The site lets you record video from your mobile phone and email it to post.

Plurk: One of the longer standing Twitter competition sites, Plurk lets you do microblogging in a very similar way to the micro-giant. In fact, many people prefer Plurk for its community of business networkers. It’s certainly worth a try and probably the closest thing to Twitter you’ll find on the internet.

identi.ca: This site allows you to send out small status updates to your followers. It is very similar to Plurk and Twitter, but with a smaller number of users. It’s also international, so there are multiple languages being used on the site.

Whether you dislike Twitter, want an alternative or just need more social networks to keep you busy, these six alternatives should do the trick. While only two are pretty much identical to the microblogging site, you may find the others very useful in your pursuit of network contacts.

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Feb 11

6 Ways to Boost Your Expert Status

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 5 Comments »

A big reason to use social media is to show people that you are an expert in your area of interest. The majority of us trust someone who has proven themselves and given good advice in a niche and that can work to your advantage. Social media is an excellent place to boost your expert status rapidly. To help you make it happen, here are a few ways to start:

1. Make niche connections. Twellow and other search sites that allow you to find like minded people in social media are invaluable for networking. You can make those vital niche connections that will inevitably lead to meeting more people interested in what you have to say.

2. Talk to people. Social media is just that, social. Interacting with people will bring you far more connections than if you just send messages to everyone, but never respond. I’ve talked about this quite a bit on the blog before, because it’s so important.

3. Linkbuild for others. It’s very tempting to only promote yourself and your business, but remember that you want to establish expert status and that means knowing where to go for information. Sharing other links with people will help build trust since they know you aren’t just in it to boost your own business and ego.

4. Write what you know. To really become an expert in the public eye, in your niche, you’ll have to actually talk about it. Yes, social media is about interacting, but you can send out tweets or notes with tips on your niche, be it baking or SEO. People will gradually learn to expect your expertise and will start to ask questions and check out your site.

5. Be visible everywhere. You don’t need to join a dozen different social networks, but you should consider being available in the most important ones, like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Also, don’t overlook offline gatherings. Tweetups can be very good places to network, for example.

6. Provide resources. Just because you can tweet about your niche doesn’t mean you’re an expert. However, if you have an ebook or audio recording, you’ll definitely gain expert points! Even a simple resource, such as a blog, can help you be seen as someone who knows what they are talking about.

You can’t expect to be viewed as an expert overnight. However, you’ll find that by following these tips and by being patient, people will eventually see you as an expert in your field. Social media speeds things up.

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Nov 28

StumbleUpon and Your Business

Social Media Classroom, Social Media for Business 6 Comments »
StimbleUpon

StumbleUpon for your business

At first glance, StumbleUpon doesn’t seem like it’s much use for the average business owner. However, it can be insanely useful if you now how to leverage it and can drive a lot of traffic.  I personally get a lot of quality readers and I’ve heard many other friends who get most of their traffic from this site.  You will need to make sure that you aren’t just spamming, though, since StumbleUpon users are very aware of this and tend to give a thumbs down to anyone who has repeatedly submitted their own website or who stumbles content of obviously poor quality.

What else can you do to make sure that your business is getting noticed on StumbleUpon?

Set up a blog. This allows you to have fresh content on a continual basis for new stumbles. After all, each person can only give your webpage one thumbs up, but if you are constantly turning out great content, then you will be able to get the same people, fans, stumbling your content over and over.

Create quality content. Of course, if you have nothing of importance to blog about, no one will be giving you any thumbs up. That means your blog has to be full of interesting and useful information  . . . but truth be told, it should be that even if you aren’t looking for traffic from SU. Make sure that each post is crafted to give something to the reader, NOT just to get your keywords out there.  This is a very common mistake that people tend to make when starting a business blog. Rather than turn it into something useful, they try to make it search engine friendly and forget to write for human beings.

With StumbleUpon, what you write is very important since it makes all the difference as to whether people will like it or not. If they don’t, you won’t get any stumbles.

Finally, you need to network. Like other social media sites, StumbleUpon is designed for connecting with others. You should befriend people who are interested in specific niches that also interest you, as well as people who might be interested in your products.

Just having friends isn’t enough though. You’ll need to go stumble some of their pages, leave comments for them and make sure that you share websites of interest with them when you find something they might be interested in. This is the social part of the network. Without the connections, you can only bookmark your own stuff and no one else will care or give it a thumbs up. However, having friends means that your blog can easily be stumbled over and over, driving traffic and views up. It has to be worth seeing, though.

All of these pieces tie in together. You have to have friends, but you also need great content if you want those friends to stick around and stumble you. Without the blog it is much more difficult to build up the levels of traffic that you want for your business website. Once you have all the pieces of the puzzle, you will begin to see success.

What else works for you to bring good traffic and quality readers?

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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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