Top Social Media Tips – Part 2

Introduction

Top Social Media Tips is a weekly post of useful Social Media Tips from Social Media users around the world.

These tips are meant to help you improve your Social Media presence by picking up news tips every week.

We hope you find the tips useful. Please let each contributor know what you think about their tips.

Top Social Media Tips by Rachel Thomson

Tip 1: Your Twitter Bio: Twitter allows room for not one but two URLs now? Make the most of it! I recommend my clients add their website or blog of course, but also a customized buy link (I prefer bit.ly, the publishing industry standard), usually Amazon.

Benefit: Useful to know exactly how many clicks you receive from Twitter to Amazon, since they don’t provide that info. Click to see my author account, @RachelintheOC, for an example.

Tip 2: A Book Tip: If you’re an author with a book on Amazon U.S., first off, you must create an Amazon Author Central page which contains your bio, blog, social media, book trailer, etc. Secondly, you must create a separate Author Central account for each country where Amazon exists that sells your books! So UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, even Japan.

To clarify, your book automatically populate to all these sites. Your Author Central account does not.

Use the Google Translate button to help you figure out what you’re doing.

Benefit: Increased book sales.

Tip 3: Read first. Then respond: Is this really a secret tip? Perhaps, not. Yet flame wars break out every day over hurt feelings and jumped conclusions.

I love Twitter (as previously discussed on my guest posts TWEET SMARTER, NOT HARDER Parts One and Two), if used in a way that engages. One of the best ways I’ve found to interact is to wait to comment on a tweet that accompanies a post until I’ve read the post. Crazy talk, I know.

Benefit: You don’t look the fool.

Learn more about Rachel Thomson:

In addition to writing, Rachel is also a social media consultant. She’s written two Amazon bestsellers: A Walk In The Snark and The Mancode: Exposed. She’s currently writing her third nonfiction book, Broken Pieces.

Contact Rachel to help you figure out the maze of social media, branding, marketing, and Amazon.

Top Social Media Tips by Christopher Hutton

Tip 1: Share industry-relevant Quotes with your audience

Benefit: Quotes are often intelligent and effective quips that present an idea. These are great for any audience, for this kind of post presents you and your label as a smart, intelligent brand that has a lot to say, and is an expert in their Niche.

Tip 2: Be something that is unique to your Niche

Benefit: People love it when others have a voice that both educates and entertains them. So, provide that edge that you know they want. My own voice always involved a mixture of unique articles, quotes, questions, and then discussing life with my followers. However, that voice might change in a few months. It all matters to the audience.

Tip 3: Engage your audience

Benefit: As Star Trek: TNG’s own Jean-Luc Picard once said, “Engage”. All websites and social media accounts need to engage and be in contact with it’s audience, in order to serve them and make them better. Thus, you should figure out what needs to be done to make them think.

Learn more about Christopher Hutton:

Chris is a blogger/freelance writer for the Liter8 Ideas blog. He writes on the Truths of the Human condition, and how they matter to us on a daily basis.

Top Social Media Tips by Mott Marvin Kornicki

Tip 1: Be an early adopter; Many formats and portals seem to crop up everyday. Naturally all are not good and some are redundant or just not necessary.

Benefit: See what’s new before it becomes old shoe. As an early adopter our peers will look to us as a valuable resource of information.

Tip 2: Use the mainstream tried and true sites like Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and KLOUT. Become a specialist in just a few topics or subjects; Nobody can successfully be everything to everybody.

Benefit: After some time your online identity will solidify and we will be known as the “go-to” source for something.

Tip 3: Maintain an open mind and focus on interaction not just spewing out information. The conversation should be flowing with opinions and ideas that sometimes conflict. Controversy and conflict or better said- differences of opinion are what makes life interesting.

Benefit: We will all learn from each other and see the world in a new light.

Learn more about Mott Marvin Kornicki:

Social-Bios: http://www.realtor.com/bio/Mott

StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/stumbler/WaterwayRealty/

Klout: http://klout.com/#/WaterwayRealty

Your turn!! Did you learn something new?

If you want to contribute your Top Social Media Tips then please send an email to jorgen.poulsen@catalystpartnership.com with ‘TSMT’ in the subject field and you will receive further instructions about format etc.

Ps. remember to subscribe to make sure you receive notification of future Top Social Media Tips.

Top Social Media Tips – Part 1

Introduction

Top Social Media Tips is a weekly post of useful Social Media Tips from Social Media users around the world.

These tips are meant to help you improve your Social Media presence by picking up news tips every week.

We hope you find the tips useful. Please let each contributor know what you think about their tips.

Top Social Media Tips by Kirbi Fagan

Tip 1: Be authentic! Understand what each platform offers and write original posts or updates for each social website. Linking multiple accounts or automating can become repetitive and uninteresting.

Benefit: An original post strengthens the interest of your audience. This will also extend the amount of time your audience spends on your website and profiles.

Tip 2: It’s about them, not you! Know whom you are speaking to and always offer your audience consistent, rich content. It’s better to post less than post poor content.

Benefit: When you create interesting posts, people share those posts.

Tip 3: Get on the bandwagon. Don’t like twitter? Your audience does! Get connected!

Benefit: Joining multiple platforms is a way to expand your reach. Don’t miss out on another audience because of your resistance to the next best thing.

Learn more about Kirbi Fagan:

Kirbi Fagan is an illustrator living in the lively downtown area of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Kirbi’s artwork has themes of Americana and nostalgia in a vibrant color pallet. For more on Kirbi and her artwork visit www.kirbifagan.com or follow her on twitter @kirbifagan

Top Social Media Tips by Nadine B. Hack

Tip 1: Follow and/or connect to people and subjects you have a genuine interest in rather than indiscriminately following or friending everyone.

Benefit: You’ll be exposed to broader sources and more information on topics you care about.  Even if you believe you are an expert, you will be amazed by how much you can learn from a much larger network.

Tip 2: Share with your networks – using multiple platforms – what you find valuable in what others write about.

Benefit: By posting comments on blogs, re-tweeting and/or “liking” others’ content that you find on various social platforms, you broaden your own audience and find even more people who you can learn from and who will begin to engage with you.

Tip 3: Go for quality, not quantity so you will not be deluged with useless information and find it hard to locate what’s really meaningful for you.

Benefit: Instead of having to sift through endless self-promotional junk out there, you will begin to create your own aggregation of helpful “teachers”, “mentors” and “colleagues”.  You will be delighted by the true community you can create.

Learn more about Nadine Hack:

www.xeeme.com/nadinehack
Nadine’s Blog

Top Social Media Tips by Peg Fitzpatrick

Tip 1: Start a Twylah page for Twitter

Benefit: Twylah creates a beautiful website of your tweets. It extends the life of your tweets, helps get new followers, build better SEO for Google and it’s great branding. Who doesn’t want to send a Power Tweet? All you need to do is sign up and Twylah does the rest.

Tip 2: Give people a hat tip when you are inspired by their ideas. I use a #TiaraTip™ when I do it and give them a link back.

Benefit: It is the right thing to do and helps build a bond with the person who inspired you. Otherwise you are just stealing their intellectual property which is not cool.

Tip 3: 80/20 Rule for content

Benefit: 80% of your content should be other people’s and 20% can be your own. If you broadcast your own content no one will be interested in following you. Be generous sharing others content and you won’t have to share your own, they will reciprocate.

Learn more about Peg Fitzpatrick:

Peg’s Blog
Peg’s Twylah Page
Check out 12 Most – her other baby

Your turn!! Did you learn something new?

If you want to contribute your Top Social Media Tips then please send an email to jorgen.poulsen@catalystpartnership.com with ‘TSMT’ in the subject field and you will receive further instructions about format etc.

Ps. remember to subscribe to make sure you receive notification of future Top Social Media Tips.

Tweet Smarter not Harder – Part Two

Introduction

If you read Part One of this series, you recall I discussed targeting and third-party applications to save you time and help you market you business and product or service more effectively.

Goals For This Post (Part Two)

• The beauty of Lists and how they can help you use Twitter more effectively
• Discuss branding, content tweets, and promo tweets and why you need to understand the difference
• A note on targeted following

LISTS

I mentioned lists briefly in Part One for the purpose of finding targets but they do so much more. Here are my top ten reasons you should be using lists:

1) The number one reason to use lists: each list allows you to add up to 500 people aka tweeps. You can have up to 20 lists (public or private though I recommend public). I suck at math but even I can figure out that’s 10K people!

It can take up to a year to garner a following of 10K people (or to even follow that many), but guess what? Lists allow you to jump over that hurdle. Lists are Twitter’s worst-kept secret. Why secret? Because the List button is right there out in the open yet very few people utilize or know what to do with them.

2) Lists are a perfect way to attract followers to your stream. People are flattered you’ve added them to a list. It means you care enough to take that extra step (which takes seconds). It’s like you invited them to an exclusive party.

3) Think of lists as labels, or folders, which allow you to break down your tweeps by specific interests or categories. You curate your lists; be as general or as specific as you’d like.

Tip: customize your lists ideally by keywords, interests, client base, etc.

4) Creating Lists is really easy. Here’s an easy link that tells you how to create a list though to be honest, Twitter makes it uber easy. The Create List tab is self-evident.

The best part about Lists is that you can list someone as you follow them. If you purge or unfollow, you can easily unlist them.

Lists are very fluid. They grow and change as your Twitter grows and changes. You may start with lists of people you connect with and six months from now you may have grown in different directions, it’s easy to change and edit your lists to reflect that.

5) Lists helps you organize only those of interest to you. As your account grows, it becomes harder to keep up with your followers’ content. Use lists to read only the tweets of those followers who are of most interest to you.

6) As you peruse new followers, check out their lists. You can simply follow the list, which doesn’t mean you’re following all the people on the list (Twitter requires you follow people individually), but this is useful if you find the people on the list interesting and value their content for RTs. It’s almost like giving people a test run.

I do this a lot. Crib from other people’s lists – they’ve already done the work! Why not? If you have similar interests, follow the list and pick five to ten people from the list who interest you to follow individually.

Note: I don’t recommend following every person on someone’s list, or you’re just duplicating their work – in that case, just click ‘follow the entire list.’

7) Lists are editable. If your job or interests change, you can simply edit, retitle, or even delete a list. Twenty lists sounds like a lot but as your account grows into the thousands, you’ll find yourself editing and changing your lists.

8) Lists can help increase your Klout score. Klout now encourages you to list people and give +K for listing people. You can import your lists into Klout as well.

9) Be creative with your list titles but not stupid. I see so many ‘People who RT me’ lists. Snore. I have lists on my @RachelintheOC account such as Awesome Redheads (you can figure that out for yourself), Charming Men (Guys: What do I have to do to get on that list? Me: Not ask), and Fab Writers 1 and 2.

10) The more you list others, the more you are listed. Twitter is all about karma. Give and you shall receive. I find that the more I pay attention to lists, the more people follow me. And it takes only minutes every day.

Tip: A good way for people to find you on lists is to add yourself to Listorious, the Twitter List Directory. It’s free and easy to join.

BRANDING, CONTENT TWEETS & PROMO TWEETS

Big topic, really a whole other blog post. Suffice it to say, you need to identify six to nine keywords that encompass your brand. Broad enough that people will look for those words in SEARCH (authors, social media, SEO) but specific enough to convey your specialty (humor, editing, food services).

You will use those words when crafting your tweets.

There are two types of tweets: content and promo.

Content: no links, provide info, resources, data, expertise, discussion, even other Twitter handles. Anything where there is no call to action on the reader’s part to go somewhere other than Twitter. No click required. No http://. (Speaking of which, don’t use www. The Twitter API doesn’t recognize it.)

Promo: links. A call to action. A click that takes them somewhere else. And yes, RTs (retweets) count as promo if they have a link. It doesn’t matter if you’re promoting someone else, anything with a link counts as promotion.

The ideal ratio of content to promo is still up for discussion depending on whom you talk to, but for a personal stream, anywhere from 3 to 5 content (no links) for every 1 promo (links), is fairly standard. For a professional account, 1:1 is acceptable. Others disagree and say 8:1 content to promo no matter what type of account you have.

Everyone agrees on this: if all you do is put a link in every tweet, you are spamming. This breaks Twitter’s TOS (Terms of Service) guidelines (which state ‘you cannot use Twitter for the purposes of spamming anyone and if your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates, you can be shut down.’) Besides which, it’s annoying and you are fatiguing your stream.

Your mom wants good content. Not spam. Don’t disappoint your mom. ~ Copyblogger

Note: If you are a member of @Triberr the ‘reach multiplier’(as I am), you need to add in more content tweets to balance the additional promotional RTs (links). You can also separate your Triberr tribemates tweets at whatever interval you choose – I chose ninety minutes.

At a loss for tweets? I advise my clients to always go back to their keywords. This helps with a consistent message to your followers but also gets you in the habit of knowing your branding well. Using a #hashtag with these keywords increases followers as well – people will find you and follow based on this common interest.

Need market research but tight on cash? Ask your followers – they will tell you what you need to know. Where else can you tap thousands of people in your given market about a specific product or service of interest to them? Plus, people love to give their opinion.

TARGETED FOLLOWING

A final note on following. It’s important to curate an interactive following that shares common interests. Resist the urge to join in mass following trains or automate your following (which is technically against Twitter’s TOS anyway).

Following 25-50 common tweeps each day using SEARCH and LISTS will create the kind of relevant following you want, that grows with you. Twellow is a free, cool little ‘yellow pages’ kind of directory to list yourself and follow others by category.

Tip: If you’re not sure what to tweet about, ask your tweeps! We are, all of us, sometimes brain-dead. None of us is always on, 100% of the time. Just as you ask your readers at the end of a blog post to comment, do the same with your Twitter followers (though, as I mentioned in Part One, if you schedule your tweets using your keywords, hopefully you’ll have put some thought into it!).

And instead of participating in the weekly mind numbing #FF (Follow Friday) meme, ask them instead who they found most fascinating to follow that week? Who are their five favorite follows and why?

Their answers may surprise you.

Conclusion

By using Twitter more effectively with the tips I’ve provided today, you should be able to:

• Further your niche targeting using Lists with less effort and time on your part;
• Follow more people quickly and have more people find you;
• Use your keywords to focus your branding in content and promo tweets, understanding better the ratio for less annoying spam;
• Market research your product or service completely free
• Curate an interactive, targeted following.

What are your thoughts about lists now that you’ve learned more? Do you understand more the types of tweets and how to balance content versus promo?

Please share you thoughts below.

Rachel Thompson aka @RachelintheOC is the #1 bestselling Kindle author of two nonfiction humor books, A Walk In The Snark and The Mancode: Exposed. She also cowrote Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-Publishing Success. Rachel is also the founder of BadRedhead Media aka @BadRedheadMedia, where she provides social media consulting and management for clients ranging from authors, chefs, toys, and even a rock star.

She loves Nutella, hates walks in the rain, and questions coconut’s place in the universe.

She welcomes your questions and comments. Email her anytime atRachelintheOC@gmail.com.

Tweet Smarter not Harder – Part One

Introduction

I adore Twitter. I discovered Twitter in 2009 and found it to be much more efficacious when it came to interacting socially with my blog followers than Facebook.

I’d started my humor blog in ’08 and kept reading about how I should develop my ‘author platform,’ not really understanding what that meant. Now I’m a published author and social media consultant and I’ve learned how critical Twitter is as part of both my writing and business marketing platforms.

If you’re on Twitter, you understand. If not, you’re missing out on one of the best free market research tools out there.

Goals For This Post

• Help you understand how to use Twitter to interact with targeted people important for your business
• Show you time-saving secrets behind the Twitter Curtain

Tarketing

Twitter isn’t rocket science, but can be confusing at first. Many people ask me why more people don’t follow them right away. It’s quite simple: you need to follow them first! But don’t just follow anyone. If your interests lie in social media, follow social media folks. If you’re an author, follow other authors.

But is our focus that narrow in real life? No. You want customers. As an author, I want to find people who are book buyers. It would be great if they could just find me with a SNAP! but the world doesn’t work like that. So I use the SEARCH function to look up related terms (think Google search): book bloggers, book reviewers, book clubs…you get the point. And I follow all those people. See whom they follow. Follow them. Check their LISTS. (By the way, I LOVE lists. What a goldmine!)

A word of caution regarding following: if you follow more than about 50-75 tweeps/day, the Twitter gods get a little jittery, thinking you’re a spammer or bot. This is why I don’t recommend automated follow programs.

Note: I also use ManageFlitter on a weekly business. What does it do? It shows you who isn’t following you. Why does this matter?

It’s free and like a fun video game if you use the ‘Quick Expand’ tab. It unfollows eggs, nonfollowers, and never tweeteds — important as you hit the 2K mark, where Twitter invokes 20% followers vs. following cap. You can virtually abolish that cap by using this site.

I tsk tsk when I see someone say, “Sorry, can’t follow you back. I need more followers. Stuck at 2K.” They are so not. They just don’t know they can drop the dead weight. Ask yourself this question: Does Mike “The Situation” retweet you? Is he helping your business in any way? Then why are you following him? (I mean, seriously.)

Lists: Many people don’t know about or understand lists. I’ve had clients actually afraid of them. What the heck are they? Here’s a nice explanation from Mashable: curated Twitter streams of the latest tweets from a specified set of users.

You’ve probably been listed and don’t even know it. Look on your profile page, scroll down to the left and click on LISTS. See what comes up. (Hint: See how well-branded you are by which lists you’re on. If you’re a social media consultant and you’re on a list titled “Ice Cream Experts,” that’s a pretty clear indication that you’re not communicating your brand well.)

I’ll cover lists in much greater detail in Part Two of this article.

Time savers- Third-part Applications

Besides using lists and search as we just discussed, I can’t say enough about using Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Pluggio, Sprout Social (I prefer Hootsuite but also use Pluggio), or SocialBro to schedule your tweets and messages throughout the day. This is a critical part of your time management.

Some people are against this and consider it ‘automation’ but I strongly disagree and here’s why: I may be scheduling in my tweets, but I’m still live interacting throughout the day with mentions or DMs (direct messages).

The Twitter application itself does not allow for scheduling so you must use one of these third-party apps.

• Tweetdeck: now owned by Twitter and is free. It’s also available on mobile.
• Hootsuite: free also (for up to five accounts) meaning you can connect your Twitter, Facebook, blog, LinkedIn, etc. and is also mobile.

I personally use Hootsuite for my accounts and my clients’ – I find the interface simple to learn and use, the analytics are terrific, and the graphics are easy on the eyes.

The beauty is you can compose, and schedule tweets days, weeks, even months in advance (say you’re planning a vacation) it counts characters for you, allows you to see past scheduled (helps for repeat tweets) etc. (don’t go over 120 to get a RT. 140 is a myth). Brilliant!

(I don’t suggest repeating exact content but we will discuss that in Part Two.)

Either app also ties into your Google Analytics so you can measure views, keywords, etc. Helpful if you’re using it for clients.

• Pluggio: while it has many features I haven’t even begun to utilize (it goes quite deep), I like that it generates followers based on keywords you ‘plug’ in, 24 hours a day/seven days a week. So you can save TONS of time if you’re willing to pay $19/month. It also suggests purges (unfollows). Finally, their functionality with responding to those who have RT’d you is the best I’ve seen.

Note: They still require you go through each follower and approve or discard. Again, I like this because I don’t want to be following porn bots.

• SocialBro: A very cool free app (though they offer a paid version) that offers lots of unique analytical tools, best time to tweet being the standout for me. It also analyzes lists (see, there it is again!), followers, suggests unfollows, will even tell you who of your Facebook friends are on Twitter.

What I love about each of these apps is they all do something different and offer unique perspectives on analyzing your followers.

Bottom line: you want to build a base of followers that’s tight and interactive, who are either potential customers, or can be your supportive tribe to bring you potential customers and sales.

Conclusion

By using Twitter more effectively with the tips I’ve provided today, you should be able to:

• Increase awareness of you, your product or service, your business, freeing you up to have more interaction with potential clients;
• Spend less time on Twitter (and social media in general) and more time on current client business and prospecting in other ways;
• Understand basic differences between the third-party Twitter applications designed to save you time on social media and
• Create a thriving social media platform.

I look forward to seeing you back here for Part Two! Don’t forget to follow or subscribe to avoid missing out on Part Two.

Do you currently use any of these Twitter techniques or third-party applications and if so, have they helped you in your marketing efforts? Did you learn anything new today?

Please share in comments below.

Rachel Thompson aka @RachelintheOC is the #1 bestselling Kindle author of two nonfiction humor books, A Walk In The Snark and The Mancode: Exposed. She also cowrote Dollars & Sense: The Definitive Guide to Self-Publishing Success. Rachel is also the founder of BadRedhead Media aka @BadRedheadMedia, where she provides social media consulting and management for clients ranging from authors, chefs, toys, and even a rock star.

She loves Nutella, hates walks in the rain, and questions coconut’s place in the universe.

She welcomes your questions and comments. Email her anytime at RachelintheOC@gmail.com.

Who’s Scared of the Big Bad Google?

Introduction

I believe in Google. They made the internet worth using with their hard work. They seem so human—not like Microsoft or Apple, so sincere and firm. They put out April Fool’s jokes; and try Googling askew. However, they have been toeing the line with their new policies.

Google announced their new privacy policy a few weeks ago, and it was implemented 2 days ago on March 1st. Everyone reacted. Twitter, Facebook, blogs all in a turmoil screaming at Google for being so evil-corporationish.

Goals For This Post

• Make sure YOU know the most important parts of Google’s new privacy policy.
• How to avoid the new scary parts.
• Help you realize that it isn’t as bad as it sounds.
• And, show you that it isn’t all that bad and you should still use & love Google.

Well, first of all, let me just say this: Google is reacting to SOPA and PIPA. They are trying to make it so that (if something like that passes) they won’t be harmed as much as they would be. YouTube users will find that you suddenly need to own necessary rights on every video to advertise on it. Many YouTube accounts that post illegal content are being ‘terminated’ a big scary sounding word that makes everybody want to cooperate.

But, the big misunderstanding here is this: Google has been collecting this information for years, they are just now using it differently. You have been receiving personalized search results, ads based on what you Google, and much much more for a very long time.

But, just because Google is scared of the Government  and SOPA doesn’t mean you can just ignore this change and pretend it isn’t there. So, here are some of the big things that will affect you

• YouTube, GPlus, Gmail, and Blogger accounts will start becoming one account. You will be John Doe everywhere, not The iKnow It All on Blogger & GPlus, Calvin on Gmail, and iTutorialMan on YouTube.
• Google’s Privacy Policy will be one, and nothing else. Google has long since made you agree to Adsense, Blogger, and other products’ Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. But now, only Google Chrome, Wallet, and Books will maintain their own policies in addition to Google’s unified one.
• YOU WILL BE TRACKED. There will be no turning off Web History, and even if you delete it chances are Google will still have it anyway. Chrome OS will track everything you do.

But here is the thing. Google is trying to force us into doing this because we have no choice; we need Google. Maybe we should thank them; they are giving us a preview of what the world will be like in 20-40 years. Web dependent civilization. We can’t just pack up and leave; Google owns too much of the web. Think about it. GMail, Blogger, YouTube, they almost got Facebook.

If you don’t want to be tracked, then here is what you can do. Sign out & don’t save passwords in Chrome. If you don’t use Chrome or don’t mind Firefox or Safari, then just save your passwords in those browsers and sign out when using YouTube or surfing.

Conclusion

Google may be losing customers to this decision. However, I love Chrome. I love Google. I use Gmail, GPlus, YouTube, Blogger, Adsense, Adwords, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google This, Google That — is it really worth it to abandon them? I know I will continue to use and love Google in spite of what they have imposed upon us with Google’s Privacy Policy.

But, I know I won’t roll over and let Google charge past me. Google needs to here from everybody — they already see that we are unhappy, but they don’t think we will or can do anything about it.

That’s where they’re wrong. Call, email, or blog about this. Tell the world and tell Google how you feel about this. Please, don’t let this turn into Matrix.

So here is my question to you: What will you do? Will you blog? Tweet? Or something else? What action will YOU take?

Calvin is a tech blogger living in Northern Colorado with his two cats. He enjoys piano, messing around on his iPhone, and, of course, blogging. More of a kid than adult, having fun is the best part of life. See more about Calvin at www.theiknowitall.com.

Social Media Marketing without the Spam

Introduction

I have been working on the Internet for more than a decade both under my own byline and as a corporate writer/copywriter. I help small and large businesses achieve their goals via writing, editing and advertising services.

I have seen the evolution of online marketing firsthand. As quickly as the Internet has grown, many tactics and techniques become outdated. In trying to keep the upper hand in this industry, you must remain one step ahead of your competition and on the cutting edge of the latest technology.

If you are not already using social media to market your business online, you are behind the curve. However, a targeted social media marketing plan can launch you into the scene successfully. 

Goals For This Post

• To help you identify social media spam
• To help avoid spam when conducting your own social media marketing plan

Marketing with Social Media Today

Social media is a simple and affordable way to market your business. It involves using social networking sites such as FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and more to advertise your business and build brand awareness. It’s an excellent way to boost a new business or create a social media presence for an existing business. The biggest problem with building successful social media marketing strategies is to avoid looking like spam to the people you are trying to target.

Spamming is a serious problem with many phony accounts established solely for the purpose of scamming or spamming others. Then there are those who have good intentions but just don’t know how to perform the tasks properly and they think blasting out their links and info anywhere and everywhere will help them build business.  The large amount of spam found in social media means that many of the people you are trying to target will already be turned off by anything that even resembles advertising or spam. To properly avoiding spamming, you need to understand what it is.

Definition of Spam

Spam is prevalent all over the Internet but spotting social media spam is not very hard at all. Usually it comes in the form of a social media account that does nothing but automate posts all day and night that link to a website, product or service. There is no interaction, no response and little to no indication of an actual human being behind the account. Sometimes the human behind the account will post “see my site”, “visit my page” or “Like my stuff” with these messages or on the walls and accounts of other members of the site, again spamming others for personal gain without giving anything in return.

“Spam” is loosely defined as any message that’s disruptive to the receiver but this covers a wide field. If you send out too many messages or updates to your followers or if you send them too often, it can be considered spam. So, how much is too much? How do you know when you’re providing followers with information they want and when you’re sending out spam?

Spam threatens the existence of this type of marketing by making it hard to trust businesses, especially new ones. This will make it difficult to encourage followers or to get anyone to sign up to receive information from you. So there is a delicate balance between advertising and interaction that you need to meet in order to succeed in your social media marketing.

So how do you find that balance?

Tips on Social Media Marketing Without the Spam

The first step to social media marketing without spam is to know that social media is a two-way street. It’s about interaction. For every link you send or promotional post you make, you need to balance this out with useful information, communicative posts and other interaction with your followers.

Learning how to be a part of the social media marketing without spamming your followers and friends is vital to your business and the future of social media marketing. It will sometimes seem like a fine line between keeping your business in the forefront of their minds and spam. Effective social media marketing is that which puts the target reader first. Selfish campaigns will have little gain. Instead, think about what your reader wants to hear, see or talk about. Engage the reader, ask questions and encourage reposting/shares.

Here are some tips:

Interact with Others

One of the first things that you have to realize is that you can’t just promote and sell your own services or products. It’s vital that you interact with others. After all, that is the main reason for joining a social networking site to begin with. Your goal is to reach others so you can get your business noticed and build up a client base.

You need to be willing to talk, take part in discussions and listen to others. You have to follow others and provide your comments if you want to have followers. You need to interact on a regular basis so others will want to follow you. This also helps build your reputation as a trustworthy site. The key to success is to socialize.

You might offer a help desk or customer service through social media. You might post surveys, questionnaires or feedback forms. These are all great ways to interact with your clients/ customers and also to gain valuable feedback about what you’re doing right with your company and what needs some extra work.

Be consistent

A consistent brand is essential to your social media marketing campaign and to the reputation of your business. You want to post fresh, relevant content often. Don’t post something just for the sake of posting it or to gain attention. Try to make sure every post is related to your target market and contains something they will enjoy seeing, reading or sharing. You also need to be consistent in your posting and not allow a long time to go by without posting or interacting with your fans/followers.

Log in daily and comment, like, share and answer posts and questions on your social media platforms. This activity and interaction is what shows you are a real person/company that responds to their social media accounts rather than a service set up to automate links.

Social Media Marketing Does Work

Social media marketing is perfect for the small, independent businesses looking to boost their brand awareness and interaction with clients/customers but without a huge marketing budget. It’s also very useful because it targets the people where they are already- in a social media community that they enjoy. With the right techniques executed properly, social media marketing does generate results. Just don’t expect that you can sign up for accounts in your business name, spam a bunch of links and then see miracles happen. Social media marketing is a process and the more you put into it, the more you can gain from it.

Your turn: You get what you give. How much are you giving your network today? What do you consider social media spam and what do you do to avoid it?

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer and social media marketer who uses her writing skills to help clients advertise, build brand awareness and make sales/find new clients via copy, content and marketing online as well as offline. She also provides other business solutions such as social media management, consulting and ghostwriting or editing services.

Add Pinterest to Facebook – 2 Easy Steps

How to add Pinterest to you Facebook Page.

This is most likely going to be my shortest blog ever.

But it is Friday and everybody loves Pinterest and Facebook so why not marry them up so all your Facebook users can view you Pinterest account. You will notice that if you have added LinkedIn, Twitter and your blog for example then those links show up as part of your profile.

If you want to add Pinterest as a tab on your Facebook Page this is how you do it.

Step One: Install the Static iFrame Tab

1. Go to https://apps.facebook.com/iframehost/.

2. Click Install Page Tab

3.  Choose the page you want to add the iframe app too.

4. Click Add Static iFrame Tab

Step Two: Edit the Static iFrame

1. Click Welcome

2. Click Authorize the Tab application

3. Click Allow

4. Select URL and enter the mobile URL for your Pinterest account (“http://m.pinterest.com/xxxx”). I used http://m.pinterest.com/jorgenpoulsen.

Make sure you add ‘m.‘ in front of ‘pinterest’ and after ‘//’ and remove ‘www‘ or it won’t work.

Note: If you only want to link to a specific board, locate the board on your Pinterest account and grab the link for it.

5. You can also adjust the height to for example 1,000 pixels instead of the preset 800 pixels to avoid having the scroll bar on the right. It all depends on how many boards you have.

6. Change the name in the Tab Name field.

7.  Go to developers.facebook.com/apps and click Create New App at the top right. This and the rest of the steps are not necessary if you don’t want the Pinterest button.

8. Type a name in the App Name box. I named mine Pinterest button.

9. Save this Pinterest button to your desktop.

10. Click Edit icon.

11. Scroll down and click on the Page Tab section.

You have to fill in 3 boxes in this section:

• Page Tab Name
• Page Tab URL
• Secure Page Tab URL

a. Type the name you gave your tab in the Page Tab Name.

b. Look for your App ID number at the top of the page.

c. Type http://XXXXXX.iframehost.com/tab and change XXXXXX with the numbers you next to the App ID section at the top of the page. See mine below but don’t use mine. You must use your own numbers.

d. Type the name URL in the Secure Page Tab URL and add s after http

12. Click on the Apps on Facebook section.

You have to fill in 2 boxes in this section:

• Canvas URL
• Secure Canvas URL

Type the same URLs you used above but make sure you remove the word tab from the end and replace it with a / for each of the URLs.

13. Copy and paste this URL into your browser’s address bar making sure to change yourappid with your App numbers you used above.

http://www.facebook.com/add.php?api_key=YOURAPPID&pages

14. Select the page you want to add the Pinterest button to and click Add Pinterest Button.

Voila – you’re all set to go. Enjoy

1,000 More Followers by Smart Commenting

Introduction

Today’s guest blogger is Justian Madensen. He lives in Denmark and graduated from Celf (Vocational education) where he was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year 2010/2011.

When it comes to work I tend to have a lot on my plate. I work as an Affiliate manager for an Online Sports investor and on my spare time I spend lots of hours writing for my personal blog and gossip blog. Justian, thank you for this blog.

It seems like everybody is talking about making great content, and getting lots of inbound links and doing lots of commenting on other blogs, which are real good things to do, but are you getting the most out of it?.

I will share a few thoughts with you that will make your task easier to achieve.

If you are reading this, I know that you are already putting in a lot of hours in what you are doing. It takes a lot of hours making great content, getting inbound links and getting a huge network. What I am about to show you is no different. This is not a guide that will make you shine overnight, this blog post is more about thinking before posting and about giving you a heads-up about things you might be doing wrong or not as effective as you could.

Goals For This Post

• To show you how some creative thinking will add value to your comments
• To show you how you could stand out amongst the other posters

Before I get ahead of myself, I should mention that I am new to building my online network. I’ve been working with Search Engine Optimization for a few years now, and I am a strong believer of finding your niche and having your own (and better) approach then the rest of the guys out there.

Let’s pretend that your “base” (website, great content, Facebook, Twitter and Google+) are ready for you to increase your network. What additional options do you have besides what you’re already doing?

Stop and think (before posting)

One of the most powerful things you can do is posting a comment on someone else’s work. People love to read comments on the content that they have put hours into publishing. But don’t let you comment fall into the “Nice post” or “wow.. You got a point” category, those kinds of comments won’t get a second look by the author nor other readers.

Try to make your comment the center of attention. Make it special and make it worth reading. Are you able to contribute anything on this topic? Do you feel like the author has left something out? Thinking like that gets you into a debate with other readers as well as the author and that’s how you get the attention that you want. It also increases your chances of getting new followers and people looking you and your website up.

Be the first to comment

Being the first to comment ensures that your comment doesn’t get lost between all the other comments and since it’s right beneath the end of the article it is most likely that most of the readers will see it and perhaps make a comment to it.

Get notification

Make sure that you get notified if anybody makes a comment to an article you have commented on so that you can return and interact with somebody who might even have made a comment to your original comment.

Consider how your content affects the reader

I know I said – Think out of the box and get creative with your response to a blog post, but before you push submit, make sure that your comment have the right effect on people. You’re not aiming to alienate people  or trying to berate other members on a topic. So whatever you do keep in mind that people don’t like being patronized  and they don’t like being put down, so make sure you don’t offend people in any possible way.

Does your answer/post seem offensive or objective?

When people are attacking your comment or content in any way, it can be hard to calm yourself and be objective – but keep in mind, how you response on this matter might make you look like the hero or the zero. Do not answer right away! Give yourself a little time to reflect on the situation, and come up with the perfect answer. Don’t forget that your comment will stay there forever so don’t let a knee-jerk reaction make you look bad.

I know you won’t get 1.000 followers over night from incorporating this into your strategy, but you have increased the chances that the author and his readers will follow you. Getting yourself noticed is the first step to success.

Now it’s your turn. What other ways have you found that gets you more followers or people commenting on your comments?

I’ll be looking forward to reading your comments and you can find more information about me and my posts on my website  My website is www.newstyle.dk. You are welcome to follow me on twitter or google+ where I will be sharing more on my strategy on how to build a huge network . Thanks to Jorgen for the chance to be guest blogging here, and to pass my ideas and strategy on.

5 Important Resources Needed to Promote an eBook

Introduction

I’m excited to introduce my first guest blogger: Leonard White. Leonard is a computer programmer and father who has finally gotten motivated to start writing. He published his first eBook late last year and is working on his second one.

Name: Leonard White

Location:Indiana, US

Occupation: Computer programmer

Favourite quote: “Good, Bad, I’ve got the gun.” ~ Ash, Army of Darkness.

Goals For This Post

• Show you how to publicize your self-published eBook
• Give you information about valuable resources to get started

Quick intro; I am a novice blogger and social networker. Talking to people isn’t really my strong suit. I am a writer and an IT guy, not a social butterfly. I had a Facebook page and a few friends that I actually knew or went to school with and that was it. I had no other significant on-line presence.

I started writing fiction in September and published my first Novella on Smashwords at the beginning of October last year. That was when I started looking into what I had to do to publicize my work myself. Simply dropping a book into the internet would have done absolutely nothing in terms of sales so I began working on how I would advertise.

That was a daunting and eye-opening experience. I started Googling and found Twitter. I knew what it was but hadn’t considered using it to build a network of contacts. I always thought of it as something where semi-stalkers could find out what their favorite celebrities were up to. I had no reason to do something like that and I had no interest until this point. I quietly watched for a week or so while I remained overwhelmed with no idea how to approach this. That was when I discovered Kristen Lamb.

Her work has been the single biggest source of information I have used for how to make any of this work. I wouldn’t be here writing a guest post if it weren’t for her. Funny enough, I found her because she was writing about plot, not networking.

As I kept following Twitter links and the posts that she was providing I began gathering the information that is slowly helping me to build my platform. I don’t have the time to devote to building a large platform quickly while continuing to write but I do have a collection of links that might help you with building your platform. I wanted to provide, what is in my opinion, the best of these links to you. With any luck, this will save you some searching and lead you along the way to the building your network into a profitable business foundation.

MacGregor Literary: This is the first article in a group that discusses how to market your book. He starts with branding.

Jim Chines discusses his opinions on the benefits of blogging for a writer. Basic information but I felt it was important to add since the idea of what you are trying to accomplish is very important when considering the tone of your blog.

EPublish A Book is specifically a writer oriented site but they did have a handy article discussing how to organize a blog tour. These are fun and do drive a lot of readers around.

Chuck Wendig: This blog has a lot of profanity but he also makes some wonderful points. The biggest thing I get from reading this is that I can and will create more traffic by having fun with what I write.

Problogger.net: Title sort of says it all doesn’t it. The specific link that I followed there was http://www.problogger.net/archives/2012/01/16/3-traffic-generation-tactics-from-an-ordinary-human-being/

The Catalyst Partnership discusses how to get invited to speak on something in three weeks. This article is full of other social media points as well. This is easily one of the best posts on this that I have ever read.

Now, like I said, I am a fiction writer. I always include an original piece at the end of my posts. I figure that if you are reading my blog you might be interested in my work. My fiction is my brand so I add something new to every post. I hope you enjoy it and I would like to invite you to read the rest of it.

Thanks for letting me sit in with you today.

L. E. White

My book: The First Door

My Blog: An Opener’s Closing

Ghost Writer

She sat on her bed in silence; awake even though she didn’t want to be. The frost kissed window promised another cold morning once she finished crawling out from under the covers. This time of the morning was normally reserved for the sharing of body heat and the protective feeling of his arms around her but now that he was gone there was no heat, no sleep, and in her mind, no hope.

The car crash had been the other guy’s fault; there was nothing that she could have done from the passenger’s seat but that didn’t change her feelings of guilt. They had been on the road because she had been craving Chinese food and he always spoiled her. The snow hadn’t been bad but the other car had slid. The fact that everyone was going slow didn’t really matter once the truck had left the road. The tree limb that had speared through the windshield had been a one in a million shot. In her mind, he was even rarer.

She turned her head to look at the cold spot beside of her. Another tear found its way past her thin emotional defenses as she noticed that the pillow was still fluffed, proof that his head had not touched it and that she hadn’t drug it to her and squeezed it in the night. That had stopped when she had no longer been able to smell him on it a few weeks ago.

She jumped when she heard a squeaking sound come from the window. She turned to look and found that the frost no longer covered the panes in a thin veil of chilly opalescence. Instead, she was reminded of her childhood when she would breathe on the station wagon’s window and draw pictures in the fog as her family drove from place to place.

She put her glasses on and leaned towards the glass before grabbing his pillow and clutching it to her chest. Great shuddering sobs were muffled into the pillow and she crushed it to her with shaking arms. The message was simple and written so that she could read it from inside the room.

“I’m still here babe. I love you.”

How to get Your First Speaking Engagement in Just 3 Weeks

Introduction

This is how I got my first speaking engagement in just 3 weeks. I am a very small fish in a very big pond. Today I was invited to give my first speech at a large networking group. I will be the only one speaking at this event. I am not telling you this to brag but to prove to you that if you follow just a few golden rules of Social Media Marketing then you can get speaking engagement yourself.

Just like everybody else wants to get people’s attention in Social Media so do I. Once you have attention people will start to engage with you which will lead to interaction and eventually lead to sales if you know how to convert opportunities.

Goals For This Post

• To show you how I got my first speaking engagement
• To show you how it can be done without spending a dime

Social Media Marketing is not about the tools. I have said it before and I will say it again and again until you’re sick of it. Having all the tools in place just allows you to publicise your content and to be more efficient but it doesn’t differentiate you from anybody else. It doesn’t differentiate you from anybody else.

Anybody can put all the tools in place. I did it for free. I have a Facebook Page, a LinkedIn profile and Company Page, a WordPress blog, Twitter account, StumbleUpon account and Reddit account.

Only a little customisation has been done to my Facebook Page, Twitter account and blog. I basically have the minimum required set up. I use two other tools namely Hootsuite and Buffer. Both of them are the free version.

When I started my Social Media Marketing strategy 3 weeks ago I had 4 likes (friends) on my Facebook Page, 14 followers (friends) on Twitter and I had made two blog posts. Yes, 4 likes, 14 followers and 2 blog posts.

Blog

My blog is the core of my Social Media Marketing strategy. Without it I would be nowhere. From day one I recognised that providing quality content is the only way to get people’s attention in Social Media. I spend an inordinate amount of time writing each blog post.

I spend so much time partly because my English is crap and partly because I want to make sure each blog post is well structured and easy to read. My blog is very focused on Social Media and Social Media Marketing for the simple reason that I want to be known as an authority on Social Media and Social Media Marketing. I’m no authority by far but that’s my goal. I also try to make my content newsworthy and interesting. I probably spent 1 – 2 hours writing each blog post. This blog post has taken me almost 2 hours to write. I have published 16 blog posts so far.

I get my ideas about what to write about from listening to influencers. I have a RSS feed and I constantly monitor it for interesting news. I do watch my Twitter feed and the Facebook Pages I have liked but my RSS feed is the most valuable source for me. It is probably the simplest way to get latest news from influencers. I currently have feeds from 21 sources.

All my blog posts are automatically published to LinkedIn and via Twitter. I have just started to upload to StumbleUpon and Reddit two days ago. I post manually to my Facebook Page because I want to write something in the Status Update to give it a more personal touch. It’s part of my strategy to humanise my brand and my Fans deserve more.

I pick my picture very carefully and think about the headline as both are directly correlated with how many people wants to read more. Writing something you really want people to read and get no readers because you have picked a bad picture or your headline is not getting any attention must really suck.

I also, try to provide factual information to support my statements in order to increase the trust level of my reader.

I also use the same template for every blog post – Introduction, Goals For This Post, Conclusion and Call To Action.

Twitter

In the beginning I had nothing to contribute so I just listened, commented and shared. I started to follow influencers and retweeted their most interesting and relevant tweets to my followers. Slowly people started to follow me. Yesterday I got 43 new followers and it’s going up every day. People don’t follow you because you retweet other people’s stuff. They follow you when they see that your content can add value. Quality content is again proving its value.

I then began to include the influencers’ Twitter handle in some of my tweets and some have started to follow me.

Why did they decide to follow a very small fish? Because they read my quality content and decided that I might be interesting. What other reason could there possibly be? It comes back to quality content again.

Why is it so important to have influencers following you? The two main reasons are that people listen to them and that they have a huge number of followers.

Their retweets are much more likely to be read and many people probably have them in one of their Twitter lists. Through the influencers I can potentially reach millions of people. Some of these influencers have more than 250,000 followers so if they retweet one of my blog posts my blog stats are going to sky rocket. I have 246 followers and each follower has on average 50,000 followers. I never asked any of them to follow me. They decided to follow me.

Two days ago I was invited to join an invitation only network where everybody retweets each others blog posts. The total numbers of followers of the members in my two groups is 1.8 million.

Every single blog post I make now goes out to up to 1.8 million people. I basically just increased my followers from a measly 246 to 1.8 million.

How did I get invited? Somebody on Twitter retweeted one of my tweets and somebody in the network read some of my blog posts, liked it and invited me. If I start to post junk then I will get kicked out – deservedly so. This has again happened because I provide quality content.

Facebook Page

My strategy for my Facebook Page is slightly different.

As I mentioned before I post my blog posts manually to give them a personal touch. I believe you have to prove to your Fans that you are a great lover. Once they love you they will be your brand ambassador forever if you stay consistent and continue to provide quality content. If you want somebody to love you then you have to give them special attention. I probably post 4 to 8 times a day.

I have never tried to sell my services on my Facebook Page and I believe it is fatal if you constantly try to promote your products and services on your Facebook Page. Try at your own peril.

In addition to posting my own blog posts I also post interesting and current information with links to the sources. I always include a picture because Status Updates with pictures get more attention.

I have recently made a few posts about Google+ and Google+ Company Pages because I know that people and companies want to be on Google+. I also made a post recently about a really cool Facebook app I am using myself. Around New Year I also posted some year in review links from YouTube and Google. I try to mix it up to avoid coming across as being too serious and to humanise my brand.

My RSS feed is my most valuable source. As soon as interesting tools, tutorials or other relevant information is published by influencers it will go into my RSS feed.

If I share it instantly I will be the first to tell my Fans and they will share it and pay more attention to my next posts. In 3 weeks my ‘likes’ have gone up by 1,650% excluding Facebook Pages which have liked my Facebook Page because Facebook Page likes from other Facebook Pages doesn’t count in the likes stat shown on your Facebook Page.

LinkedIn

I am a member of relevant Social Media discussion groups and blogging groups. I’m an active participant but I never promote myself for reasons stated above.

I believe that people on LinkedIn discussion groups are more advanced in Social Media and they will check you out and link up with you via Facebook, Twitter, my blog, my RSS feed or by connecting with me on LinkedIn if they find me interesting. I also provide links to valuable information as a way of showing my willingness to share.

Influencers

Connecting with influencers has probably been the second most successful strategy besides providing quality content. I offer to help, share their content, comment on their blogs, Facebook Pages and share interesting content with them.

Just recently I became one of 500 beta testers for a new forum run by one of the biggest Social Media influencers.

How did I become a beta tester? Again my RSS feedback proved its value and I hope my quality content played a part too.

As soon as I saw they were looking for beta testers in my RSS feed I signed up. I am sure that thousands of people signed up. I don’t know if I was chosen because I was one of the first and/or because they checked out my social profile. Yes, I spent Christmas Eve testing their new forum.

I can now communicate with these influencers and normally get a response within an hour.

Monetary results

So how much money have I made so far? NOTHING.

But I have had people from all over the world asking me if do a webinars, lots of local businesses have asked me to come and help them, I have been approached by two local newspapers and somehow I think that my upcoming speaking engagement is going to result in more work.

In fact, my calendar is fully booked with meetings with potential clients. Some of them have even told me that they want to engage me but just want to meet me first.

This has all happened in just 3 weeks.

I have NEVER sent out any solicitation emails, made any sales calls or promoted my services on any of my Social Media platforms.

If I can do it so can you.

I am fully aware that some of my readers think that my blog posts are of little quality and that the content is crap. I respect their opinion. However, this is how I do it and so far I’m happy with the results.

Conclusion

I realise that this blog post could easily be interpreted as one big self-promotion. I assure you it is not. Shameless self-promotion will get you nowhere in Social Media. People don’t want to hear about you all the time.

I simply wanted to share with you how I got started in Social Media, what my Social Media marketing strategy has been so far and what I have achieved at no cost and in no time. Yes, Social Media have taken up 95% of my time the last 3 weeks and you might call me a nutcase. It’s my choice and the next couple of weeks will prove if I spent my time wisely.

Social Media Marketing is for everybody and it works if you simply follow a few simple rules, always provide quality content and share quality content.

Take whatever you can from this post that you think is valuable and which is going to help you achieve your goals. If you implement just one thing from this blog post then I have achieved what I want.

I am not going to ask you to follow me because I don’t deserve to be followed if I don’t provide quality content. You will vote with your mouse.

Your turn. We all want to be heard in Social Media so please share your success stories with me and other readers. I’m on a very steep learning curve and I want to learn from you too so please share.

Godspeed for 2012 and beyond.