Top 10 Tips For Using Social Media Well from 10 Top Business Authors

If you’re at all concerned with marketing yourself or your products, by now you’ve probably heard a million times how important Social Media has become for marketing yourself and connecting with/building an audience of customers. The challenge can be knowing exactly how to go about it without coming across as pushy or self-centered and alienating more people than you draw. Here’s ten tips from successful people who use social media on how you can approach it with greater success:

1) Be The Best You-- “But you can still be you. Uhh, unless “you” just so happen to be some kind of Nazi-sympathizing donkey-molester. In which case, please back slowly away from the social media.” – Chuck Wendig, Author He has a great sense of humor but mixed in is great advice. His point is that you should present yourself well but not whitewashed. Readers want to know YOU not the person you project yourself to be. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t be a salesman. Just be you, but a good, likable version. Warts are okay within reason, after all, the human you is the you people want to connect with, but put a little makeup over the warts so they appear their best. The human but attractive you is still the goal.

2) Have The Right Conversations– “Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.” – Seth Godin It’s not just whom you talk to but how you talk to them. People are talking about your product already. Being a part of the conversation means learning how to talk to them. Don’t be pushy. Don’t sell. Just talk and listen. And listening may be the most important part. Whether you’re a writer or in another profession, finding the conversations you need to hear and engage in, listening first, then joining is the best way to discover the audience for what you sell.

 3) You’re Not In Control– “If you think you are in control, you’re fooling yourself. As soon as you start listening, you realize you’re not in control. And letting go will yield more and better results.” – Charlene Li, Author Whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, Type A or not, the tendency is to want to control everything about your marketing, sales, etc. You want to control how people respond. But in truth, you can’t. Of course we all want to sell books and build our audience as authors. We all want to build product awareness and desirability as sales people. Social Media is a great tool. But it’s also a tool you don’t produce. Instead, you use it by participating. And that means, you can’t be in control of anything but yourself. How you act, what you say, how active you are–you can control. But everything else is out of your hands.

4) It’s About Passion–  “Don’t worry; skills are cheap, passion is priceless. If you’re passionate about your content and you know it and do it better than anyone else, even with few formal business skills you have the potential to create a million-dollar business.” – Gary Vee, Author of Crush It It’s less about how skilled you are than how passionate you are. You can build skills, but you can’t build passion. So don’t worry about developing skills, worry about getting across your passion. That, in the end, is what will hook people’s interest in you and your words. There’s nothing more compelling than someone passionate about what they’re selling or discussing.

5) Learn About Them First– “On Twitter, Search is your friend. Are you writing a book about archaeology? See who’s talking about it. Looking for Buddhists? Oh, they’re there. Look for them. Start following them. Start seeing what they’re talking about.”  – Chris Brogan, Author/Speaker on Marketing This goes hand in hand with what I said above about how listening may be the most important part. How can you engage with people if you don’t understand what their interests are? Social Media is about conversation and networking and that involves give and take. It’s not about you. It’s about the community. Take the time to get to know the community. Who’s out there? What are they interested in? Why?

6) All Users Are Equal– “There aren’t very many things you can do as a marketer to attract a huge number of highly followed influencers to your content beyond the same tactics that you would use to attract a huge number of ‘normal’ users.”  – Dan Zarrella, Social Media Expert Don’t focus on attracting celebrities or people with big lists of followers, focus on attracting people period. All followers will be attracted the same way. There is no short cut to get the big users. All users become followers for the same reasons, in the same ways.

7) It’s About The Long Term– “’Build it, and they will come’ only works in the movies.  Social Media is a ‘build it, nurture it, engage them, and they may come and stay.’” – Seth Godin If you’re not in it for the long term, why should your followers be? It’s not about today, it’s about tomorrow. Like building a good marriage, a house, or a career, Social Media is a long term effort and strategy to be worked on daily. Don’t make it about today. Make it about the long term.

8 ) It’s Called Social NETWORKING– “The most successful marketer becomes part of the lives of their followers. They follow back.” – Marsha Collier, Author Do you remember me mentioning community? It’s called Social NETWORKING for a reason. It’s about interaction, two way. Hand in hand with listening, people will invest in you as much as you invest in them. Yes, celebrities don’t have time to engage with everyone. I get that. Neither do those with thousands of followers. But when you have something to say in response then respond. When you see a cool link someone passed around, share it and credit them. Find ways to encourage and thank your followers for their interest in you by taking an interest in them.

9) It’s Not About Numbers– “Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.” – Amber Naslund, brasstackthinking.com It’s not about how may, it’s about what you say, how you say it and how they connect with it. People who feel that you care about them will care about you. So don’t worry about stats as much as content and interaction. And make every word count. Be real with people above all. They’ll respond to that more than anything.

10) Keep It Informal– “Informal conversation is probably the oldest mechanism by which opinions on products and brands are developed, expressed, and spread.” – Johan Arndt It’s not a website or marketing brochure. It’s not a commercial. It’s not a news feed. It’s your social media feed. Relax and be a real person. Of course you need to watch what you say. The internet, after all, is public. Things can come back to haunt you. But that doesn’t mean you have to be stiff and formal. Relax and enjoy yourself. If you don’t, you won’t fit in, because that, above all else, is what Social Media are about–relaxed conversation.

A few inspirational quotes which have inspired me from various sources. How do you use Social Media? What lessons have you learned? What great quotes do you have? Feel free to share below. I’d love to hear them.

For what it’s worth…

via bryanthomasschmidt.net

Good words!

Small Business: 7 Essential Elements of Effective Social Media Marketing

How are savvy businesses using social media effectively to find more customers, boost their reputations, and make more sales?

Here are the seven essentials that will turn your social media marketing from an annoying time-waster to an effective bottom-line booster.

1. Get your home base together

Your home base is your blog or web site. It’s on a domain you own. You control the user experience — from the content to the site design to the user interface.

This is where you show that you know your stuff. That means building a nice cornerstone of high quality content that demonstrates your expertise in a likable, accessible way.

First impressions matter, so make sure the design is clean, professional, and smart. It can still be stylish or funky, if that’s your thing, but it shouldn’t look amateurish or confusing.

Your home base is where you post content to answer your readers’ questions, give them interesting tips, and help solve their annoying problems. When someone wants to know more about you, this is where you send them.

Your home base is a marketing tool, which means you need to be communicating primarily with customers, not with other experts in your topic. Don’t just pontificate to show what you know — tie your news and opinions back to how those things affect your customers.

2. Who’s the face of your business?

If you want to use social networking platforms like Twitter, Google+, or Facebook, you need a human face to make your social media marketing work.

So does that mean potential customers want to know about your personal struggles finding high-quality organic dog food? No. (Unless your company sells organic dog food, that is.)

Just like people have always done in public settings (work, church, volunteer activities), you’re going to adopt a persona — a selected range of your thoughts, emotions, and observations.

You’re going to be social and informal, but in a way that’s relevant, appropriate, and interesting to who you’re talking with.

Just like you don’t (I hope) wear your “I spent the night in Paris, Hilton” t-shirt to your grandma’s house, you’re also not going to share absolutely everything about the “real” you with your social media connections.

That doesn’t mean I want you to be a fraud. I want you to be friendly and genuine. Sound like a human being, not a corporate robot. And you certainly don’t have to stick to business all the time. It’s fine and good to show that you have a life. It’s not so good to show the world you’re careless, rude, or boring.

The truth is, the definition of “appropriate” depends on your audience. Lisa Barone has a very different persona from Ann Handley’s. If it works for your customers, it’s appropriate.

Authenticity for a business doesn’t come from oversharing or boring your audience to death — it lies in doing what you say you’ll do.

3. Who else has your customers?

Social networking platforms were designed to make it easy and fun for people to hang out together. That means you’re going to use them to build relationships that will help your business.

Look for people who have healthy-sized audiences who are a good fit for your product or service. They may be bloggers, they may be authors, they may have a popular podcast or column in mainstream media. They may simply be social media mavens who have lots of friends and like to share good stuff.

These are the people you want to share and promote your excellent content.

Cultivating professional relationships isn’t rocket science. Stick to the basics — link to them from your content, comment intelligently on their blogs and on social platforms, and be a nice person.

Don’t think that picking fights or manufacturing controversy makes you stand out. It doesn’t, it just makes you look like a troll. If you’re going to take a controversial position, make sure it’s one that really matters, and express it with respect.

4. Pick a primary platform

Again, think about where your customers are.

If you love Twitter but your customers spend hours every day on Facebook, you need to recognize that Facebook is probably a better venue for your business. It may not be as fun for you — but that’s why they call it work.

Only move beyond your primary platform when you’re sure you’re handling it well. A lot depends on the industry you’re in. If you’re a copywriter, social media consultant, or online marketer, your customers spend a lot of time in these venues, which means you probably will, too.

5. Manage your time

If you don’t decide how much time and focus you’ll put into social media, the default will be “all of it.”

Sites like Twitter and Facebook are seductive places to drop in and just check what’s new. When your five-minute check turns into 25 minutes, and you’re doing that 4 or 5 times a day per site, you’re going to find your productivity taking a dive.

Remember your home base. That (and actually delivering whatever it is you do) are where the bulk of your time and energy need to go.

The best tool I’ve found for managing social media time is a $3 kitchen timer. Decide in advance how much time you’ll spend checking in and being social, and stick to that.

6. Content first, conversation second

You’ve been told again and again by social media “experts” that your entire business should revolve around something called “The Conversation.”

Too often, this form of Conversation leads to business owners spending hours every day chattering with potential customers and hoping someone will buy something. (Or, more often, chattering with peers and friends and hoping this counts as work.)

Yes, be personable. Yes, keep an ear out for customer complaints so you can respond appropriately. And yes, network with peers in your industry to keep your links healthy.

But if it feels like goofing around all day instead of working, it probably is.

Instead, spend the bulk of your time on content, whether it’s on your own base or used as a guest post to find a wider audience. Use content to educate your customers about what they need to know to make an intelligent purchase. Focus on customer objections, questions, and problems.

When you find someone else’s content that your customers will find valuable, share that too — and add a few insights of your own, if you like.

Even a 100-character tweet can have content value. Think about what you can say that makes readers’ lives better, rather than just filling up time before you run to Starbuck’s. Make sure your reader has a good experience every time she hears from you. Keep it both useful and entertaining.

Social media conversation is a seasoning that makes your content more appetizing. It’s not the main dish.

7. Don’t forget SEO

Too many people think that social media sharing means they don’t need SEO any more. The fact is, social media marketing is a superb complement to SEO.

Play the long game. The same elements that make social media work (content that’s both useful and user-friendly, doing what you say you’ll do, healthy relationships with others in your industry) are the elements search engines would prefer to serve up. Search engines want to find the content that’s a widely-valued resource, and one of the signals they use for that is social media sharing.

Twitter and Facebook are already search engine signals, and there’s no doubt that Google+ is, too.

For too many businesses, social media is a time-wasting ego game. But use the tools strategically, with a focus on content and on getting a useful message in front of a wider audience, and it can be brilliantly effective.

via copyblogger.com

Never take your eye off of the prize: A happy, loyal customer!

Customer Service Through Social Media: My, How The Game Has Changed !

The rise of social media has changed customer service beyond recognition.

In today’s competitive landscape, customer service is more important than ever. A company’s reputation for satisfying their customers has never been so valuable.

It’s worth pointing out that it takes three times as much internal resources to acquire a new customer as it does to retain one. In these lean times it puts an awful lot of pressure on companies to ensure retention rates are as high as possible. And good customer service is a great tool to do this.

But are companies getting it? Does it look like big corporates are responding to this change in the landscape?

The short answer is no:

• Over 58% of tweeters who have tweeted about a bad experience have never received a response from the offending company
• 55% of consumers expect a response the same day to an online complaint – yet only 29% receive one
• 43% of consumers say that companies should use social media to solve customers’ problems

These statistics lay out clearly how the game has changed. Customers will no longer be happy with ‘old style’ customer service. To satisfy your customers, it’s essential to have a responsive social media presence.

To be fair, things are changing. By the end of the year, 75% of US-based companies expect to use social media for customer service. It’s a reaction to the changing game. Gone are the days when social media was all about marketing through Twitter and Facebook. It’s now an integral tool to ensure you are responsive not reactive, contactable not aloof and authentic not robotic. And increasingly, it’s about solving customer’s issues in real time through social channels, showing your dedication and transparency to your customers.

via thesocialcustomer.com

 

Time for Customers to Connect: "Social Business And Your Brand"

What is the power of social business to your brand? There are multiple answers to this question and your forerunner answer varies, according to where the focus of your brand is. Let’s run down some of the answers.

• Brand awareness – the use of social platforms to message the key qualities and attributes of your brand.

• Market research – the use of social tools to identify demographics, including geolocation data, contact information, brand sentiment and expansion/contraction opportunities.

• Brand marketing – using social and digital content to market your brand’s products and services directly (and indirectly) to existing and potential customers, with “sharing” abilities.

• Customer service – identifying and resolving issues at or near point of source, often converting an issue into a positive that is public.

• Public relations – timely crisis response, broad distribution of news and message and shaping brand sentiment.

• Brand loyalty – identification of Centers of Influence and thought leaders, relationship building and grooming brand ambassadors.

• New opportunities – related to market research, the use of social tools to identify new markets and discovery of new opportunities.

Which of these are most important to your brand at this time? The power of social business directly influences each of these and more. The tools available in social business become increasingly robust with each passing day. For example, Digital Coco has indexed the social profiles of more than 23 million consumers, monitoring what restaurants they frequent, what they “like” and their sentiments on particular brands.

Another example: in YouTube, brands can search for people that are viewing videos with similar lifestyle qualities, and then send a suggested video to them.

Creative teams that effectively use robust social web tools, produce compelling content, distribute effectively to the right targets and warmly engage/build relationships for brands provide brands greater ability to influence future business than any traditional marketing or public relations firm.

What I’d really like to focus on here though, is return. What is the ROI of social business? We can easily count both hard and soft metrics that determine a brands return on investment in social and digital media. Hard data such as attributable sales, conversions, guest experience and customer retention are easily quantifiable. But there’s a longer tail return to consider - ROR, or, Return on Relationships.

I suggest that Return on Relationships is the key factor to consider in social business. By using the tools available in social business, brands are able to identify geolocated (and vetted) centers of influence, introduce themselves to these community leaders and build strong relationships with them, that influences other decision makers.

Return on Relationships is what I consider a “soft metric” return. It’s harder to measure. But I posit that it is measurable and that its value is immense.

I’ve been building a personal brand online for years. Through using social media, publishing as much compelling content as I can, being transparent and promoting others who I admire, I have built a significant community of individuals I respect and admire. Often, these folks challenge my thinking and expose me to new ideas and new learnings. Often, these folks lead or spark great conversations that introduce or build upon concepts and ideas that inform me.

The most important facet – the most important return – of these relationships is that I meet and get to know other highly interesting folks; people I would likely never have met in real life. The return on relationships for my personal brand is immense.

For a businesses, this process is the same. One relationship in development introduces other new relationships to develop. I hesitate to say it’s like gold-mining, but in a way, it is.

by Jeffrey J Kingman

 

via digitalcoco.com

 

Twitter Stats That Will Get You (and convince your Boss) to Tweet Your Brand

Are you unsure about setting up an account on Twitter? Maybe you feel like it’s not right for your brand or your line of work, maybe you think that anything you would have to say would fall on deaf ears because your target audience don’t use twitter. Maybe you’re wrong…

The following statistics will prove that Twitter is fast and furiously becoming the social media platform used by everyone. The stats should show that it doesn’t matter if you are female, male, have kids …if you are wealthy, broke, employed or looking for work – you still have an audience on Twitter. Take a look and see for yourself – the stats also show that even if you haven’t got a presence on Twitter, people could still be talking about you….so maybe you should be listening?

Over the last 5 years -

• There are 200,000,000 registered Twitter users  
• Almost 88% of people have awareness of Twitter and its existence
• There are 450,000 new Twitter accounts created everyday
• Meaning there are 5.2 accounts created every second of everyday

So we can longer claim that’s it unknown – there is a huge audience out there, right at your fingertips. That is a lot of people in a short space of time that have been convinced by its power.

• There are one billion tweets posted every week
• 180,000,000 everyday
• 138,888 every minute
• Over 1,650 every second

• Just 5% of Twitter users create 75% of the content tweeted  
• There are 1.6 billion search queries everyday
• Meaning that there are 18,000 search queries every second

Still worried that you’re too old to be using it or that your brand or company is the wrong sort to be using twitter? Take a look at the numbers then…

• 46% of Twitter users are female
• 54% are male – very equal demographics
• 53% don’t have children
• 47% do have children – time doesn’t seem to be an issue
• The majorty of twitter users are aged between 30 and 49  - perfect age group

• 43% of people follow a brand on Twitter for special deals/offers
• 75% of users are more likely to purchase from a brand they follow – good headstart
• 67% of users are likely to recommend a brand they follow to other users

Ok….but maybe you’re still worried about the freedom of speech that users have. The fact that anyone can write anything about you, your brand, your services or your skills…

• 1,000,000 people view tweets about customer service each week
• 80% of those tweets are negative and critical
• As much as 75% of traffic comes from sources outside Twitter

We’ll let you in on a secret – whether you have a twitter account or not people can write whatever they want, whenever they want – they will get heard and it will get commented on and it will get passed on. Surely it’s better to be listening in on those criticisms, dealing with them and changing things for the better. Let people know you’re listening.

Maybe you don’t have a brand or a company or even a job – we’ve got a stat that should get you tweeting nonetheless

• Up to 85% of companies are using social media as part of their recruitment

Or maybe you don’t have the time to be on twitter in the middle of the day and therefore think you would miss out on most activity anyway….

• 5pm is the best time to be retweeted

So no excuses then? Looks like Twitter has an answer for everything….

If you have anything you’d like to add to this blog post – please feel free to send comments our way.

via socialmediatoday.com