Mar 19

7 Things That Make You Look Dumb

Social Media 3 Comments »

picture credit to pinklea

Yesterday I wrote about building expert status on social media.  Instead today, I would like to share how to avoid the total opposite.  No one wants to look stupid, particularly on social media where your mistake lives on for eternity! Taking the time to check what you’re posting and avoiding common issues that really can take a bite out of your reputation.

While you get ready to become an expert, here are seven things you should avoid at all costs.

1. Spelling errors. We all make them from time to time, but if your tweets are rife with “loose” in place of “lose” and worse, then people are going to notice and your reputation is going to suffer. It doesn’t take long to spellcheck a post before you release it to the world and it’s a necessary thing, particularly if you know you can’t spell. Remember that for many people, this is the only contact they have with you!

2. CopyCat. So many people literally copy and paste entire phrases from a blog post. I often can’t believe my eyes.  I’m talking about professionals with a certain level of reputation.  Obviously they don’t see anything wrong with it since they promote the post with the highest pride.  Experts know and find the source in a google second these days. Big no no.

3. Text speak. Yes, it’s effective when you want your sister to know you’ve arrived at the airport and don’t want to take much time, but on Twitter and other social media sites, posting something like “C u b4 i go to club” is not cool. It makes you look like someone who can’t be bothered and that’s probably not the impression you want to give.

4. Ranting. You’re justified in ranting once in a while, though it’s usually better done offline, but still, you should try to avoid being the person that no one wants to befriend because they are always complaining. It really doesn’t make a good impression and you’ll have limited followers.

5. Only advertising. It’s fine to mention your products and do some self promotion, but no one likes it when someone starts spouting ads every single time they post. You’ll lose your followers rapidly with this one, except those who only exist to advertise, as well.

6. Using robots. The whole idea of social media is that you are interacting with other people, so robotic tweets or postings just don’t cut it. You can certainly use tools that allow you to post information ahead of time, but don’t go with an auto-bot . . . it only annoys people and makes everyone realize that you just don’t get the whole point of social media after all.

7. Individualistic. You know what I mean. Those who never reply/follow/friend/connect back unless they need something.  The world does not evolve around you and your business.  If you have the “me, myself and I” approach in social media, the dunkey ears will stick out no matter how many fancy hats you’ll try to wear.

Are you making any of these mistakes? The good news is that it’s fairly easy to fix all of them. You need to remember to be social while using Twitter, Facebook and other sites. As long as you keep in mind that you are doing this to interact with your target audience, then you should be able to stay on track.

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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.

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Mar 10

Why You Should Share Videos, Audio and Photos

Social Media 17 Comments »

picture credit to wareseeker

Social media is often looked at as a text based networking solution. While many social networking sites are indeed text based, most also have the option for sharing photos, audio and videos, something that is sorely underused. Just look at Facebook, for example. While photos are rampant, when was the last time you shared a video on there? Or Twitter, for that matter?

Why should you use multi-media in social marketing? There are a number of good reasons, but the big one is that it makes you real and trustworthy.

The Real You. See, anyone can write anything online. You could be a 16 year old boy writing as a 50 year old woman . . . who would know the difference? Because of this anonymity that is so easy online, people have an automatic distrust of anyone they see just writing information on the web. A photo can drastically up the trust factor, one of the biggest reasons bloggers put a photo of themselves in their profile.

Photos, audio and videos give people a glimpse of who you are and that makes it easier for them to trust you. If you say you’re a 30 year old banker and then appear in a video, people realize that you aren’t faking it, you really are who you say you are. While there are many people who hide their true identity for assorted reasons, if you really want to burst through the barrier of not being trusted, then a quick video uploaded to YouTube can be just the ticket.

You don’t need to share anything terribly produced, even a quick 1 minute video where you explain something about your niche can be a great way to start out.

The Simple You. Another reason that people like to see photos and video of you is that it makes you more approachable. It’s easy to think that a guru is untouchable, someone almost godlike . . . but when you see them chatting away on video, you instantly realize that they are just another person like you. This means people will be more interested in interacting with you, something that is pretty important in social marketing.

Text will always be the base of interaction online, but by adding video, audio and photos, you can really change the way people look at you and react to you. They will be far more likely to trust someone they have “met” than an anonymous persona who tweets at them. Share yourself and the rewards will come.

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Mar 09

Twitter TMI Syndrome and How to Avoid It

Social Media, Twitter 6 Comments »

Picture credit to 4.bp.blogspot

“Just changed the most nuclear diaper this year!”

“My ex is the worst pig on the planet and here’s a photo as proof.”

Don’t deny it, you’ve seen tweets just like this before. You may have even tweeted something similar yourself! These types of tweets tend to stem from Twitter TMI Syndrome, a self-destructive spiral that is very easy to fall into.

There’s a fine line between personal sharing and networking on Twitter. You can’t expect to talk about business 24/7 and never discuss anything else. It makes you seem like a robot. So most people encourage realism in tweeting and sharing a little personal information. It makes you seem real and encourages people to connect with you.

That being said, there is a line that is being crossed by even some important internet marketers who have fallen prey to the TMI Syndrome. TMI, or “too much information”, is something that happens on a regular basis and it’s not just bored housewives or adventurous college kids posting this stuff.

What exactly constitutes TMI? It can be hard to tell sometimes, but basically, if you are tweeting something that will make people go, “Whoa, why am I following this person?” then you need to stop. For example:

It’s fine to tweet about your new puppy. TMI is tweeting every time that puppy has an accident on your carpet.

People won’t mind if you let them know the cute way your 4 year old pronounces a word. They will mind if you tweet how he pronounces every single word throughout the day.

It’s not bad to share what you’re having for dinner at the Olive Garden. It’s not cool to share what you eat, snack and see in the kitchen every 10 minutes.

Tweeting that you don’t feel well is ok. Tweeting the details of bodily functions, not so much.

Let’s not forget the safety TMI.  I pull my hair every time I see “hubby left for a month, alone with 3 kids” or “going on vacation for a week, hope the plants won’t die” – How about re-phrasing that with “please come and rape me, I can’t wait” or “be my guess while you steal in comfort for an entire week”.  I don’t want to be sarcastic, but please, please you must stop.  This is specially the case if you live outside the US, but even here it’s still considered TMI. 


How to Stop It

You might not even realize that you’re posting TMI tweets. Go to your archives and take a good look at what is there. At least 80% of your tweets should be with your networking goals in mind. If you have a few that are just random fun, that’s ok, but you need to be careful.

Once you are aware of what you’re tweeting, it’s time to implement a wait period. When the urge to share hits you, write down the tweet in a text document or even on a sticky note and wait at least five minutes before you actually tweet it. Many people find that they just type and hit send without thinking too much about it. You’ll have far better results if you take the time to consider what you’re about to send out into cyberspace.

Think about what your goals are. Does this tweet help you reach them? Is it going to offend people? If so, is it worth losing followers over?

Do you suffer from Twitter TMI Syndrome? Do you know someone who does?

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Mar 03

5 Tips for Stagnating Social Media Strategies

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 7 Comments »

image credit to rostock.de

You started out with an awesome social media strategy, one that you just knew was going to bring in all sorts of traffic. And it did. But then it all stopped . . . you haven’t changed anything, but the traffic isn’t increasing and your followers have stopped growing. Now what?

A stagnating social media strategy is one that needs some tweaking. The very nature of social marketing demands constant changes in the way we do things. In fact, if you continue to do the exact same thing all the time, you’ll find that you hit a plateau after a while, where nothing really goes forward.

To help you prevent this common problem, here are a few tips:

1. Re-evaluate your target market. Maybe you’ve saturated the existing market and need to branch out. It can be worth taking a second look at your target market and see whether or not you need to adjust your aim. You might need to reach some other people, as well, in order to continue growing.

2. Try something new. If you’ve only used text until now, why not try making a relevant video and sharing it? Sometimes just the excitement of doing something new can draw in more followers and interested potential clients. It’s certainly worth a try. Contests, video, audio and free reports are all excellent methods of giving your readers a bit of a boost.

3. Add a social media account. Once you’ve become familiar with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, it might be time to add another network to the mix. Reaching out to a new area will help increase the number of people you come in contact with, as well as increase the visitors to your site.

4. Be more active. Sometimes you just need to be a bit more approachable and that often happens by upping the amount of time you spend on social media. Even increasing by ten minutes a day can have some great effects and get you out of that rut.

5. Make a plan. Do you have a plan as to what you’re going to do each day on social media? If not, take a look at your goals and then decide what you need to be doing every single day. Don’t be vague, make notes on specific topics to cover, etc.

There’s so much you can do with social media to promote your business, but if you’re finding that you’re stuck, then it’s time to change things up a little. Re-evaluate where you are and what you’re doing with your marketing and come up with a better plan that will allow you to get out of the rut and start growing again.

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Mar 01

Social Media Metrics You Need to Pay Attention To

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 3 Comments »

image credit to hair website

Ok, it’s Monday and some of us question why we even exists at the beginning of the week.  Imagine then what some of our clients ask us on Mondays.  Here are some answers!  If you’re using social media as a promotional tool, it makes sense that you’ll need to monitor a few specifics in order to know if it’s working or not. Most businesses just look at the amount of traffic that is coming in from those sites that they are using for promotion, but they fail to check other very important areas.

So, what should you be paying attention to? Here are a few tips:

How long the visitors stay. If someone comes through a link on Twitter, but clicks away before your page has a chance to load, it’s not going to do you a lot of good. You want people to stick around. A common reason that visitors leave quickly is because your website wasn’t waht they were looking for, so make sure you are nice and clear about what you do on social media sites.

Whether they bother to share your content. In an ideal world, you’d be able to enjoy viral reposting on every single blog post you write. In the real world, you might not get that very often. However, by writing viral content and promoting it the right way, you’ll have a far better chance of getting others to spread the word about your business.

How many people answer the call to action. Your site should have a call to action, be that to sign up for your newsletter or make a purchase. You need to track the number of visitors from social media to see what the conversion rates are like. This is an area that can always use improvement, so keep tweaking your social media strategy and see where you can go with it.

Who’s talking about you and what they’re saying. Keep a running search for your business name and check it frequently. Google Alerts is a great way to do this and keep track of who has been talking about your company. You should find out what people are saying. If it’s good, you’re fine, but if they are badmouthing you, it’s time to look for a solution and a way to deal with those who are having a hard time with your business.

Staying on top of your social media presence is vital if you want to make sure that you are doing things right. If you see a decline in conversion rates, for example, you can adjust your networking strategy to make sure that you get the publicity necessary to boost the number of visitors and to increase conversion rates, as well.

Happy Monday

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Feb 26

Social Bookmarking: How Social is It Really?

Social Media 2 Comments »

picture credit to earningguys.com

When it comes to social media, most of us think first of social networking. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, these are all places that come to mind. Next, you might think of video sites like YouTube and Hulu. Social bookmarking is usually at the very bottom of the list. Why is that?

The main reason is that for all the talk of sharing, most people only use social bookmarking for their own personal gain and never actually check out what others are doing.

This doesn’t mean that social bookmarking can’t be social. StumbleUpon is an excellent example of very social bookmarking. It allows you to find great sites quickly and easily and it can really be quite addictive. Even there, you’ll find many people who bookmark things that are really not worthy of bookmarking, just to get the added exposure.

If you look at places like Reddit, Propeller, etc. you will rapidly see that there is very little actual sharing going on. Most people bookmark and leave it at that, doing it only for the actual backlink to their website. However, if you look, you will find others like you who are actually interested in engaging with others. Start by befriending these people and checking out their links. Make comments on what they are doing and what they bookmark.

Certain bookmarking sites are better for this than others, Digg and Propeller, for example, get a lot more comments than Reddit or Fark. You need to divide your time between a handful of sites that are best suited to your business niche. Some sites are very specific in the type of niche they accept. If yours isn’t on the list, then chances are they aren’t looking for the content that you like to share.

It’s also vital that you bookmark something other than your own posts and content all the time. It’s tempting, but don’t do it. A good rule of thumb is to bookmark 10 other sites for every one of yours. Keep in mind that you want to give people value, so don’t just bookmark everything you put up, stick to the really important stuff.

There are so many different areas of social media to explore, bookmarking being just one of them. Do you use social bookmarking? Do you think it’s social enough?

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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.

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Feb 21

Google Buzz – Privacy #Fails

Google, Social Media, What's New in Social Media 7 Comments »

I just want to throw out there some food for thought with the scope of engaging in a constructive conversation that’s currently going on about Google Buzz.  Social Media aficionados tend to jump on the “new thing” the minute it launches.  There is almost a need to be the first to try, the first to post, the first to claim “expert” status.  I must admit that I often fall into this trap and can waste a significant amount of time trying the last kid on the block.

Google Buzz - I was an early adopter of Google Wave.   To the point that I had a pre-launch account and even played with the API a little. I was convinced and still am that Google Wave in an innovative way of changing the communication and collaboration game.  When it came to Google Buzz, I didn’t have the same reaction. There was something smelly about it and I couldn’t figure it out.  However, for the first time, I decided to sit back and observe.

A closer look – It wasn’t until one of my clients called to ask me if his widget shouldn’t also connect to Google Buzz that I decided to take a closer look.  My first reaction: I don’t want my over 10,000 contacts to suddenly get an update from me with my status (often funny & sarcastic or informative and friendly).  I couldn’t remember who all those contacts were, but I knew for a fact that it included all types of exxxxxx (exboyfriends, exbosses, excolleagues, exfriends, exenemies, exexexex) so NO WAY!

Privacy Fails – Those instead who jumped on Google Buzz and rushed through the OK button without even reading the terms of service found an amazing surprise.  Suddenly it broadcasted their “buzz” to all their email contacts without even asking permission.  No wonder the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission charging Google with failing to protect the personal data of Google Buzz users.  Even worse, a woman from Florida filed a local class action against Google over Google Buzz.  What triggered her was the fact that Google added Google Buzz to most of their Gmail user’s accounts.   Thank God I wasn’t one of them, otherwise I would have been pretty upset too.

Google reaction – Having said all this, we must give Google some credit.  They started making privacy changes and improvements almost imediately after people started complaining.  They’re also doing a pretty good job with keeping everyone informed on their blog and even made some appology posts.

Lesson Learned - What ever happened to the pre-launch, pilot testing, phased implementation and all those concepts? I think we should all learn from this and never make an arrogant full blown launch.  I hope my clients read this and understand my conservative implementation approach with any project.  

What do you think? has it ever happened to you (even with a small scale project)? what do you think about Google Buzz privacy?

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Feb 16

Do You Add Value?

Social Media 6 Comments »

picture credit to top-10-list.org

When it comes to networking online, you’ve probably seen more than your fair share useless posts. Unfortunately, it’s rampant on social media . . . people posting the same thing that everyone else is saying, or worse, posting about absolutely nothing interesting. While they might be right, it gets boring pretty quickly! If you really want to make an impact in the world of social networking, you need to actually add value to the conversation.

What exactly does this mean? Well, you don’t have to be an amazing genius who posts completely new and innovative ideas 100% of the time, though that would probably help. What you do need is to add your own voice to what you say. If you read about a new method of training staff, there’s nothing wrong with linking to it, but make sure you give your own spin.

It’s also important to avoid being dull. Does everyone really need to know that your dog tripped over your shoe? Once in a while, you can post stuff like this, but there are entire Twitter streams that read like a list of the mundane and unless you’re a good friend in real life, chances are you wouldn’t consider following that person.

Look at your social media networks and what you’ve posted. Now consider what someone would think if they just stumbled across your updates. Are you offering anything useful? Making people laugh? If not, it might be time to reconsider what you’re doing online.

You need to know who your audience is. While others will follow you, having a target market in mind will help you to stay focused. You’ll be able to judge just how relevant the information is for your audience and share accordingly.

You’ll notice that those who are consistently in tune with their target audience and who give great information all the time (think ProBlogger) are the ones who get all the followers. People are attracted to what can help them, so fill that need and you’ll be able to reach more.

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