My 6 Steps to Social Media Success

February 28, 2010 By 2 Comments

These six steps were born out of common frustrations I hear from people about understanding how to market online.

Does this sound familiar? “I know I need to figure out all of this social media stuff, but it’s all piecemeal now and I just don’t know where to start!”

You may have noticed how some small business owners seem to attract clients and customers online almost effortlessly—while others struggle to keep their business afloat. The reason is that they are following a proven business model to market their business.

The six steps outlined here not only incorporate that proven model, but show you how you can supercharge it by adding social media tools and techniques—leading to more clients, customers and sales.

Without further ado…

Step 1: Understand what social media is and the benefits of using it.

It was important to me to make this first step the foundation of the entire system. Social media marketing is not “hard selling.” It’s businesses having conversations in the online communities where their prospective clients and customers hang out. Why is this so beneficial? In a nutshell, it’s a no-cost way to connect with your customer or client base, establish expertise, drive traffic to your website, and communicate your value.

Step 2: Get a blog.

Think of your blog as your social home base. You can be out utilizing all of the social media platforms in the world, but if you don’t have anywhere to send your friends and followers to outside of those platforms, your efforts will be in vain. Blogs are ideal because they tend to rank higher in the search engines and help foster a sense of community around your business.

Step 3: Build your social media profiles.

You don’t need to have a presence on every social site under the sun! There are only a few sites that I encourage most business owners to have a presence on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You may find that some of these are not a good fit for you while others are. That’s ok! Know that if it is working for you, then you should continue using it. These sites are simply the ones that my clients and I have had the most success with and the ones I feel are a good representation of the social media landscape.

Step 4: Make your blog social-media friendly.

Having a blog is a great step in the right direction if you are looking for ways to dive into social media. However, there is a lot more that you can do once you’ve got your blog up and running. You can think of your blog as a hub connecting all of your social media activities—and you’ll want to encourage visitors to interact with you socially in as many ways as possible. Some of the ways you can do that include badges, buttons, widgets, an RSS icon, commenting tools such as Disqus, and of course—good, share-friendly content.

Step 5: Build relationships with your target market.

Ok, you have at least one or two social media profiles set up and you’re ready to rock—but what now? The next step is to start using social media as a way to facilitate relationships with people who might potentially become your clients or customers or your strategic alliances. It’s easy to get caught up in all of the technical details involved in social media, but you want to remember that at its heart, it’s really all about people.

Step 6: Show me the money: turning friends and followers into clients and customers.

Twitter and Facebook are not the only game in town. To achieve the best results, you will want to have a varied mix of marketing tools in play all at once. Online, much of your job centers on driving traffic to your site so that prospective clients or customers can find out more. One of the best ways to increase the chances that someone will eventually buy from you is to build an email list. Essentially, you want to have a way to capture a person’s email address and name so that you may keep in touch with them, build trust, and make offers in the future.

Social media is only one way to drive traffic and build your list. The idea is to be a “well-rounded” marketer. Using sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube along with the other online marketing strategies will maximize your results—and more traffic, more subscribers, more clients, more sales and more money will certainly follow.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

10 Ways to Publicize Your Event Using Social Media

February 25, 2010 By 5 Comments

Social Media is a terrific channel to use for spreading the word about an upcoming event.  However, I find that small business owners are often hesitant to do so for fear of appearing too promotional or “spammy.”

There is definitely a bit of an art to it, and as a general rule you want to keep about 90% of what you share in social media non-promotional.  But that leaves a full 10% where you can let your friends, followers and contacts know about that chock-full-of-benefits product, teleseminar, workshop or sale you’ve got cookin’. :)

Here are some of the specific ways you can do that.

1. Update your personal Facebook status. If you prefer not to use your personal Facebook profile for anything business-related then this might not apply to you, but it’s worth thinking about all the people your friends and family might know and could refer to you. The real power of status updates is the fact that they go out into the News Feed, which means all of your friends can see it there as well.

2. Send a message to Facebook friends you think would be interested. Proceed with caution with this one.  Blanketing all of your friends with an invite or message isn’t always appropriate.  Stick to those you think might have a genuine interest in what you are offering.

3. Blog about it. Once in a while it’s a good idea to let your blog readers know about your upcoming events.  You could also then link to the blog post and share it with your social media contacts so they can visit and find out more.

4. Update your LinkedIn status. Just like Facebook, LinkedIn lets you add status updates to your profile.  They have also recently introduced the ability to send your status updates to Twitter simultaneously.

5. Create an Event on your Facebook personal profile or Page. The Events application comes in handy because you can use it to fill in all the details about your event, post it to your profile and even send the event invitation to your friends or those who Like your Page.

6. Update your Facebook Page status. Don’t be shy about letting the people who Like your Page know about what you have going on—after all, they are there to support your business and they want to know all the ways you can help them.  This includes your offerings.

7. Tweet. Don’t forget to use Twitter to let your followers know about your latest offerings.  If some of them re-tweet the message about it for you, all the better.

8. Send an update to your Facebook “Likers.” One of the benefits of having a Page is the ability for you to update all of your supporters at once.  Take advantage of this and use it to keep them in the loop.

9. Create a LinkedIn Event and send an invite to your contacts. LinkedIn has Events just like Facebook, and you can send the information about them directly to multiple LinkedIn contacts at once with the click of a button.

10. Upload a short video to YouTube about it. You can make your video as short as 30 seconds, and include a call to action regarding what you are publicizing.  Tell viewers where they can get more info and be sure to include keywords about the event in the video’s description.

Don’t leave your event a best-kept secret!  Start using a few of these methods today to get the word out on the social web.

Any methods you use and would like to add?

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Leverage Your Time by “Linking” Your Social Media Sites Together

February 11, 2010 By 18 Comments

I find that one of the biggest sources of stress for my clients and students when we first begin working together is the belief that you need to be omnipresent.

Fortunately, this is not true—in fact, you could really sabotage your efforts if you started focusing on building a presence on every social site and platform!  Talk about exhausting!

Let me let you in on a little secret: the most successful people in social media, the ones that appear to be everywhere—and connecting all of these “everywheres” seamlessly, to boot—are doing so by way of a few specific, focused strategies.  You could call it “social leverage,” and I am going to share with you exactly how you can do this too (and no, it won’t take up all of your time either!)

Here are a few specific methods from my own 6 Simple Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System™ to “cross-link” like a pro:

To send your blog posts to Twitter:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools
Import your blog’s RSS feed into Hootsuite at http://hootsuite.com

To display your latest tweets on your blog:
Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress
Twitter’s own widget at http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets

To send your blog posts to Facebook (personal and/or Fan Page):
Facebook’s Notes application
Facebook’s NetworkedBlogs application at http://www.facebook.com/networkedblogs

To send your blog posts to LinkedIn:
LinkedIn’s own BlogLink application or WordPress application

To send your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter:
LinkedIn’s own Tweets application

To send your tweets to Facebook selectively:
Facebook’s Selective Tweets application at http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter

To send your Facebook Fan Page status updates to Twitter:
Facebook’s own Facebook to Twitter application at http://facebook.com/Twitter

To share YouTube videos to Facebook:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video
Options–>Settings on your Facebook personal profile’s wall

To share YouTube videos to Twitter:
YouTube’s own Share button beneath each video

To share YouTube videos on your blog:
YouTube’s URL or embed code shown to the right of each video

To update Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and more at the same time:
http://Hootsuite.com, http://ping.fm, or http://hellotxt.com

Finally, to see all of your or others’ activity from around the social web in one place: http://friendfeed.com

Now, you don’t have to set up every one of these tools all at once, but try out a few and see how much your own productivity soars.  As always, be careful not to automate or delegate too much—social media is still primarily about “live” interaction with others.  But by implementing a couple of these strategies you can look forward to making a bigger impact in much less time.

Do you have any tips or tools to add to this list?

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

How to Easily Get Started on YouTube

January 27, 2010 By 2 Comments

YouTube is still the most well known video site and the one with the widest reach. It’s actually the number #3 most-trafficked website on the Internet behind Google and Facebook!

Incorporating video into your marketing is a smart idea because it can be done rather inexpensively and it’s an effective way to get yourself found in the search engines. However, many people are still not sure how they can actually use YouTube and video to help boost their online presence.

The first step is to actually have a video to upload of course. :)

Not Ready For Your Close-Up?

If you are new to uploading videos of yourself online (or even to being on camera) it’s natural to have a bit of anxiety around the process of creating a video in the beginning.  To help alleviate some of this, you might want to do some preparation ahead of time. One thing that helps is to have the concept of your video clearly thought out, as well as how you will present it.  Coming up with a short script of the main points to rehearse a bit beforehand can be helpful. (You don’t need expensive equipment either, I use the Flip camera to film videos—it’s simple to use, inexpensive and plugs right into your computer’s USB port.)

Your videos don’t have to be long—in fact, short ones are your best bet. To start out, aim for about one to two minutes in length—maybe where you offer a couple of tips or teach people how to do something.  For example, a professional organizer might demonstrate how she could quickly organize a drawer or get a messy shelf under control.

However, you don’t necessarily need to be actively doing something—a virtual assistant might simply give the top three items her clients delegate to her which make running their business a whole lot less stressful. Create your videos with the intention of helping someone out with the tips or info you have to share.

Creating a YouTube Channel

If you don’t already have a YouTube account, you can create one for free at http://www.youtube.com. The first thing you will need to do is choose a username, and this in itself is important.  Your YouTube username is the same thing as your “channel” name.  You might want to use keywords in your channel’s name reflecting the main topic your channel is going to be devoted to.

Once you have created your account, you will be able to set your account preferences as well as customize your channel on the Account Settings page.  Take some time to explore these settings so you can create a channel that reflects both you and your business.  Specifically, you’ll want to focus on the following:

1) Upload your picture
2) Use keywords about your business/niche in the “Describe
Yourself” section
3) List your website
4) Fill out the Jobs/Career section and include keywords related to
your business
5) Fill out the Interests section with interests that complement
what it is you do in your business

Adding Video to Your Channel

To upload a video, just click on the upload button in the top right-hand corner of your account.  From this page, click “Upload Video” and you will be able to select a file from your computer.

Once you have uploaded a video, you’ll need to fill in the title, description, tags and category for it.  You want to be pretty detailed here, with a focus again on keywords. Why? Because of something called “Google Universal Search.”  What this means is that when someone goes to Google to search for a particular topic, not only will results for web pages come up, but videos will as well.

After you have filled in the title, description and tags, choose your category and set your privacy setting to “Share your video” then click “Save Changes.”  Pat yourself on the back—you’ve just successfully uploaded your first video. :)

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: ,