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?

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Feb 03

Corporate Social Media: What to Keep in Mind

Advance Track, Social Media Classroom, Social Media for Business 8 Comments »

photo credit to remg.com

Social media is an excellent way for corporations and businesses to stay in touch with their target market, but often this is poorly done. If you want to be successful in social media as a business, then there are a few things you need to keep in mind. I’ve compiled some tips here to help you out.

Write down specific goals. The first thing you need to do is decide where you’re going with your networking campaign. What are your goals? To find out what your market wants? To build up a following on a social media network? Boost traffic and sales to your site? Write these down and make sure everyone knows exactly where you are going with this promotion.

Decide who will post. You’ll get the best results if you have just a couple of people working on social media, or even just one, using a corporate account. It can be very difficult to coordinate more than this if they are all working on the same account. Choose someone who is naturally social, since they will likely do best with networking.

Stay on top of things. It’s very important that you know exactly what is going on in your social media department. This is an area that should require weekly and monthly reports to make sure that you are going in the direction you want to be going. If you aren’t sure what your social media people are doing, it’s pretty hard to gauge success. Often, campaigns need to be adjusted, so keep that in mind when going over reports.

Have guidelines in place. Some things are obvious, such as no trashing the company on Twitter, but you need to have this type of thing written down. Even if it seems obvious, having paper to refer back to is always useful when facing problems. Also, it gives anyone working on social networking a good place to start from and they can refer back if they aren’t sure what’s allowed. However, don’t let the fear of not having a “social media policy” in place stop you from getting started.  In the meantime, just grab your PR policy and use the same rules for social media.  You don’t say on Twitter what you wouldn’t say on TV. Simple right!

Respond to complaints. When someone says something about your company on Twitter or another popular social network, you’ll benefit from contacting that person and offering to fix the issue. This can be a great form of positive publicity because people often report back to their followers when things have been set right.

Social media can be a bit tricky when you’re a big company. However, it is also very beneficial since you’ll be establishing a presence online in a more personal manner. This is what people respond to.

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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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Dec 18

RedGage: An Emerging Social Media Site

Social Media 2 Comments »

ReGageThere are so many different social media sites out there, with new ones springing up constantly and a number disappearing, that it can be difficult to find out where you should be hanging out.

Of course, we all know the giants in the world of social media, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. But what about the slightly smaller sites, like RedGage? This social networking site is one that is still growing and has yet to be noticed by many, but it has the potential to drive some serious traffic to your sites. Their big carrot is that they pay you for popular items, but the amount is minimal and not really that valuable unless you’re desperate for a few dollars.

What IS valuable about RedGage is the fact that you can get some good feedback and traffic. You can post photos, documents, video or links on the site, much like Facebook. These are available to anyone and members of RedGage can sign in and leave a comment, rank or favorite your content. Like most social media sites, RedGage works on a friendship level. You need to make plenty of friends and connect with others for it to work well, but once you have a base of friends on the site, you can easily build up your traffic and people will begin to befriend you even if you aren’t that active.

Another feature that I really liked about RedGage was the ability to set up RSS feeds and automatic grabs from your various accounts, like Flickr. You can literally set this site up and it will continue to post your content over time, keeping everything fresh. All you need to do is go in once and a while to handle messages and friend requests. It’s a good idea to check out what other people are posting and be somewhat active, of course, but even if you end up too busy to check things out for a while, you can still maintain a presence on this social media site.

What are your experiences with RedGage or any other smaller social media site?

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Dec 02

The Real Cost of Social Media

Small Business 23 Comments »
The cost of social media

The cost of social media

Everyone says that social media is free and if you just take a quick look, it certainly seems to be. After all, you don’t need to pay anything to sign up for most social network sites and you can enjoy unlimited hours of interconnection for nothing. That doesn’t mean it’s actually free, though. In fact, social media does cost something, your time.

As they say, time is money and when it comes to promoting your business, that really is true! The time you put into social media is a cost and for every minute you spend working on networking, you aren’t working on something else in your business. While the benefits of networking online can be huge, it does take time to see those result and in the meantime, you aren’t being paid for those hours of working on connecting with worthwhile people.

There are, of course, monetary costs, as well, particularly if you have hired someone to take on some of the networking duties for you. Keep in mind that even big companies set aside thousands of dollars for their social networking budgets. You might not need that much, but it is something to keep in mind when planning your marketing budget.

It’s important to understand this ahead of time even before you start your social media strategy, because you’ll need to be consistent with social media, even when it seems that there aren’t many results. It can take months to see the benefits and during that time, you will need to stay on top of things, spending time each day to respond to messages and communicate with other business owners, potential clients, and gurus in the niche you’re interested in. Once you’re prepared to do this, you should be good to go.

Social media isn’t free. You will be paying with your time, even if you do everything yourself. When you’re on Twitter or LinkedIn, you aren’t working on client assignments, so that means you aren’t pulling in money, usually. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be interested in social media or that you should consider dropping it. It merely means that you should be aware of the cost when planning your networking campaign. Make sure you take into consideration how much time will be lost from other areas of your business while you are working on social media.

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Nov 02

Strategies for Making Online Friends

Social Media 3 Comments »

Befriending others is what social networking is all about. However, there are a few schools of thought on how you should go about this. Today we’re going to take a look at the three most used friending strategies.

Follow Me and I’ll Follow You

People who use this strategy usually set things up to run automatically. If you follow them, they will automatically follow you back. This technique can apply to any social media site, from StumbleUpon to Twitter.

Why Do It: This allows you to build a huge network very quickly. If you are befriending people to have them follow you back, you can rapidly build up your numbers. The same goes for if you are following people back as soon as they join you . . . it’s a good way to gain more followers, as well.

The Downside: Unfortunately, this technique opens you right up for spam attacks. If you follow everyone back, regardless, you’ll find that your network will be flooded with spam. You can block these users, of course, but it can still result in an annoying stream of notificiations that you have no interest in.

Screened Following

This is the social networking strategy that actually makes the most sense. Rather than just automatically befriending anyone showing interest, you take the time to check the person out. For example, on Twitter, you would take a look at their profile and read back through a few tweets to see if they are a good match for you or not.

Why Do It: This strategy allows you to screen out all the people who spam or who are rude and offensive. If you don’t like what they’ve been talking about on their profile or last few tweets, status updates, etc. then don’t befriend them. This keeps your network clear of riff raff and ensures quality contacts.

The Downside: You will lose some followers. Often, people will befriend someone new and if they haven’t been friended back within a week, they delete you again.

No Follow

This is a rather extreme tactic that usually only the most popular people can pull off. If you are an actor or a famous internet marketing guru, then you might be able to get away with this. Essentially, the person doesn’t follow anyone back. In some cases, they may follow a very few real life friends, but no strangers.

Why Do It: Again, you probably won’t get away with this unless you are famous, but the main reason is to eliminate noise. If you don’t want to deal with hundreds of tweets or Facebook app invitations, then you can skip all that by just not having any friends and save yourself quite a bit of networking time.

The Downside: The most obvious downside is that you won’t have any followers unless you are already popular. For those who attract huge crowds no matter what, this eliminates much of the ability to interact with followers, which can be a valuable networking skill.

Which method do you use? Are you one of the extremes or in the middle?

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Sep 15

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform

Beginner's Track 3 Comments »
Photo Credit: Liz Danzico

Photo Credit: Liz Danzico

There are hundreds of social media sites available. Some of them are here only for a short time, while others have been around for a while. Even if you narrow things down to the most popular social media sites online right now, you still have a pretty long list, so how are you supposed to know which one to use? Where would your marketing efforts be best used? No one can be active on every site, so you’ll want to select just a handful, even as few as 2 or 3, to be active on.

What should you look for in a social media platform? Here are a few tips to get you started.

Is it well-used? While getting in on the ground floor can be good, the less traffic a site receives, the less the benefit to you, the user. This creates a bit of a problem for new social media sites . . . they need the traffic to become successful, but need to be successful in order to get the traffic. Keep in mind that you want as many eyes as possible on your links, so finding social media networks that offer a large number of users is going to benefit your business more.

How relevant is it? Some social networking sites are aimed at very different groups. For example, Digg is mostly used by college age males. While it may be a great source of traffic, that traffic might not be as targeted as you like, if you are promoting, say baby products. Check out the target audience of each social networking site that you are considering before making a decision. Niche traffic is often more valuable than waves of completely unrelated traffic.

Is current content of good value? It’s no use promoting your products or site on a social media network that is best known for lousy content. Everyone will simply assume that your site is the same and it will be ignored. Stick to sites that are lauded for their high quality content, be sure to live up to those standards and you will see interest in your business. A well-designed and moderated social media network will offer the best possible option for marketing your business.

Are you comfortable with it? This is the most important question in the end. If you find a social media site awkward or confusing to use, chances are you won’t be doing enough networking there. Instead, stick to sites that you enjoy and see more benefits from consistent networking.

Choosing just a few out of the many, many social media sites out there is not an easy task. You’ll need to do a little research, check out the target audience and find out just how effective each site is before considering it. If you’re strapped for time, then opt for one of the handful of very popular sites, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon.

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Sep 13

Social Media: What Not to Do

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom 2 Comments »

I usually don’t write posts on Sundays but after reading the New York Times about Sean Conway, I decided to throw some small tips about big Don’ts in Social Media.  Sean, is a lawyer who got in trouble for calling a Fort Lauderdale judge “Evil, Unfair Witch” in a blog post, Facebook and Twitter.  Even though he was just venting, the mere fact that he is a lawyer triggered the legal alarm since it was an act against his codes of conduct. 

 One of the reasons people tend to avoid social media is because they worry too much about making a mistake and destroying their online reputation. While reality usually isn’t so dramatic, what you say and do on social networking sites can certainly affect how the world sees you. Remember that you can be easily searched for on Google or other search engines and you want to make sure that what others see is what you want them to.

With this in mind, I’ve composed a list of what you shouldn’t do in social media. Feel free to add your own “don’ts” in the comments.

What Not to Do in Social Media

  1. Make friends merely for the numbers. While this might seem like the way to go if you want to be popular, it will reduce the value of your messages. If you follow everyone who follows or befriends you, you will spend a lot of time dealing with spam, as well. Instead, stick to those who add real value to the social media network.
  2. Get angry in public. Entirely too many people have made this mistake, posting their anger at a boss or client for all to see. Even when this is done on Facebook, which is often thought of as private, you can’t guarantee that no one will see it and pass it on. Plenty of people have been fired for this mistake.
  3. Outsource without a plan. A number of companies and even individuals, outsource their social media marketing. If you choose to do this, it’s very important that you have a plan that can be passed on to the person who will be handling everything. Make sure you have set out rules and guidelines for them to follow, as well, so you don’t need to worry about innappropriate remarks on your behalf.
  4. Skip the stats and measurements. If you are using social media as part of your marketing campaign, you need to have specific goals in mind and a way to measure them. Randomly posting on Facebook and Twitter while bookmarking on Digg might be good, but how do you know which one is best for your business? Take the time to track your results so you can fine tune your campaigns and maximize your results.
  5. Advertising. When a third party company approaches you about advertising via your social media networks, think very carefully about accepting. This is something that will definitely affect how you are seen among other networkers. If there is anything that can spoil your online reputation, spamming and advertising other people’s products is definitely high on the list.

What are your social media don’ts? While we all make mistakes, there’s no reason why we can’t learn from them and share them with others to help them avoid the same issues.

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Sep 09

Use Wonder Wheel to Check Your Niche Focus

Social Media 4 Comments »

Chances are, if you are using social media sites, you focus on specific niches. Some people have more than one, but just about everyone in business will be specializing in their given topic. Google has a tool that you can use to check out just how effectively you are getting your message out there.

For example, if you run a resource website for work at home moms, you would want to focus mainly on work at home moms or home business as a topic. Of course, you can get much more specific than this, but as a general example, we’ll take work at home moms. That would usually mean that you post on mainly things that have to do with wahms, so logically, your niches would appear as such. However, many people get distracted and may end up posting on a number of niches.

To see just what Google thinks are your specialties, you can use their Wonder Wheel tool. First, do a search for your social media username in Google. Then go to the top of the search results where you will see a link that says “More options” and click on that. It will take you to a list of options which include “Wonder Wheel”. This is a great way to check just what you have been posting about and can also be used to check in on other people in the industry.

Wonder Wheel will break down what you talk about most under the user name entered and display it as a wheel. You can see at a glance just what you’ve been posting lately as the most important topics will appear as niches. In our example, we would want to see a lot of wahm related niches, such as “home business”, “work at home” and “work at home mom”.

What does this mean for you? Well,  you can take this information and use it to tweak your actions on any social media sites. If you see that the main niches appearing on the Wonder Wheel have nothing to do with your business, then you might want to rethink how you are going about your social marketing and try to tighten it up to create a more focused niche. Many people are surprised by how many areas appear on the wheel, often some that aren’t useful at all in a networking sense.

How clear is your networking goal? Are you sticking to your niches? Wonder Wheel can help you determine just where you need to tweak your social media campaigns. It can also be used to spy on the competition and see where they are focusing.

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Aug 20

5 Ways to Maximize Your Use of LinkedIn

Intermediate Track, Social Media Classroom No Comments »

When it comes to social networking, LinkedIn is still one of the greats, but a number of people still aren’t familiar enough with it to really maximize their results. For many business owners, it is an extremely useful resource that allows users to connect with other like minded professionals, find employees or jobs and network in general.

So how can you make sure that LinkedIn isn’t just another one of those social media networks that you sign up for and never actually use again? Here are some tips for making good use of the site.

1. Add real life contacts. Most business people meet potentially useful contacts out and about in the real world. Whether you met someone over dinner at a mutual friend’s house or at a trade show, get their business card, look them up on LinkedIn and invite them to be a contact. You already have a real life connection, so this makes for a very valuable method of keeping track of people you meet.

2. Include some personal info in the bio. While your company information is certainly important, you are better off adding in a combination of both personal and corporate information. People tend not to be interested in getting to know a business, but they will be interested in the person behind the corporation.

3. Use all promotion options. You can add your own website or blog URLs to your profile on the site, but many people don’t take advantage of this feature. Make sure you promote your business everywhere you can.

4. Actually interact with others. LinkedIn is a social media network, after all, so you need to treat it like one. You’ll get the best results from being a real person and actually communicating with others online. Take the time to participate in the community and people will learn to trust you. Once they trust you, you can bet they will be more interested in finding out just what you do and possibly even recommending you to their friends.

5. Join or create your own group. Groups are a great way to separate your business interests within LinkIn. For example, you might want to set up or join a group on Marketing and another on Customer Service. Look for groups that suit your needs and be selective. There’s no need to join every single group that you are invited to.

Like any other social media network, LinkedIn requires an investment of time. You’ll find that you have far better results if you take the time to actually participate instead of just popping in to add people to your network without actually interacting with them. Do things right and you will find yourself with a very useful list of contacts.

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