‘vSocial Media – Friend or Foe?
Are you getting the results you want from social media?
As an entrepreneur, I know that it’s important to be on social media to build my personal brand, but I am not getting the results I want. I hear small business owners talking about how many leads and business they are getting from their social media efforts, and frankly, I am envious. Hence, the title of the blog post, Social Media – Friend or Foe? Yes, it’s tongue in cheek, but there is an element of truth in it.
The Art of Social Media
Likeable Social MediaThe Culture of ConnectivityThe Zen of Social Media Marketing
Although I have been on Twitter for a long time, people who started using the social media network years after me, have left me in the dust. And there is so much dust, that I cannot see my way. There is a great lesson here. Because you have been doing something for a long time, doesn’t necessarily make you at expert. My follower count has stalled for close to two years now.
I know that I am not as social as I should be, but I am really trying. There is so much noise with social media experts giving advice. They give advice that doesn’t work for me, that the effect is simply dizzying. Based on an article I read a while ago, I took the time to create a schedule of the best times to post, and nothing happened.
Most of the articles that I share are not mine. I use Feedly and Flipboard to find content to share. I've spent a lot of time setting up Feedly, so I have good content to share. To get new content, I went to a few magazine stores, spent about 45 minutes browsing magazines and taking photos of the covers of magazines that I thought were interesting. When I got home, I checked if they had blog feeds, then added them to Feedly. I also bought several magazines from the stores as my way of saying thanks.
Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I decided that I would try to turn things around with social media. Last week, I participated in a webinar that AJ Amyx led. And it was one of the best 60 minutes I spent on a webinar. The information was practical and not overwhelming. And something that I can manage. To be effective on Twitter you need a three-tiered plan – Power, Plan and Promote, and it takes only 30 minutes a day.
Power
- Have a profile picture that’s a three-quarters shot, and 400 x 400 pixels. If your photo looks pixelated like mine did, use a higher resolution photo. My pixelated photo always bothered me, but I didn’t know how to change it – now I do.
- Have a cover photo that’s 3000 x 1000 pixels, which is way larger than what Twitter recommends, but it really works because it looks sharp. AJ recommends that you use lifestyle images. Your cover photo should quickly convey what you do – who you are.
- Have a rocking bio, three to four words that describe you – your life and business. Use a power statement such as, “I help X to get Y.” This lets people quickly know if you can make their pain go away.
- Make sure you have a link to your website.
You have to package yourself as an authority in your field, and following these tips help you to start doing that.
Plan
You’ve heard it before that it’s all about the relationship. I do not do this very well on social media. I am very concerned about spending all day on social media, but AJ provides a simple formula that I will share later. Here is his advice:
- Focus on relationship building. Relationships are everything. If you want results, you have to engage.
- Share content that’s valuable and relevant to your followers. Help them to solve problems – to make whatever work-related problems that’s keeping them up at night go away.
- Engage with people. Have epic conversations.
- Often when you connect with others on Twitter, they thank you, which is the perfect time to start a conversation. Instead of simply responding, “You're Welcome!” respond, “You're welcome! What is the coolest thing you’re working on?” or something similar. Your job is to be helpful, to help them get rid of what’s keeping them up at nights. Assume the role of a problem solver. Ask a great question, because it creates opportunities for you to act on.
- If the follower responds to your question with a problem that you have already solved, let her know that, then offer to have a short conversation with her. See how that works?
AJ Amyx recommends that you have a content calendar, tweet about nine times a day, all seven days a week, because the life of a tweet is 18 minutes. Use a spreadsheet to map out your tweeting plan. Content calendars will get you organized on social media. So for instance:
Monday
- Quotation
- Question
- Promotion
- Quick Tip
- Retweet
- Inspiration
- Third Party Share
- Statistics
- Love (Promote someone whose work you love)
For the rest of the week, you will reorganize the sequence and let the service you use to tweet, decide what times to send each update. He recommends using Hootsuite's Auto-schedule, scheduling the nine tweets between 8:00 am and 6:00 PM. Use no more than two hashtags in each tweet. Buffer also has an Auto-schedule option as well.
Engagement Drives Revenue
Promotion
- Learn to play the follow game. Follow the followers of people who have a similar target audience.
- Follow quality people, and only follow people with complete profiles (photo, cover image, bio and regular tweets). If they do not follow you back in a few days, unfollow them. Use a service such as Manage Flitter to keep track of the people who do not follow you back.
- Make a list of the five top speakers, five authors, five podcasters, five associations, and five thought leaders in your industry, follow them and follow some of their followers.
- Spend four days – Mondays through Thursdays – following people. Take Friday, Saturday and Sunday off.
- Spend 15 minutes following people and another 15 minutes engaging, such as responding to people who tweet your content, ask you questions, and so on.
What I’m Doing Wrong
Looking at the kinds of tweet that AJ Amyx shares, my tweets are mostly third party shares, share the love tweets and retweets. I do share my blog posts. But I haven’t been as consistent as I once was. I am working on that. Surprisingly enough, I create a lot of images with quotes, but I share them on my Facebook Business Page. It’s time to create some to tweet. In terms of promotion, I am the President of the Toronto Chapter of Ellevate Network. So when we have events, I promote them on Twitter, but I do not promote myself on Twitter.
In the last year, I have started to pay attention to my Facebook Fan Page. I use Buffer to schedule my updates. Three during the week and two on the weekends. I have more engagement, but that’s because I am a part of a closed Facebook group where the members support each other. And that’s one of the best ways I am finding to build a fan base.
I get weekly updates from PostPlanner, which tells me to increase the number of updates I share each day. I used to schedule more updates. But it takes a long time to find appropriate content that serves my target audience. PostPlanner presents content, such as quotes and engaging photos, that’s viral, for you to share. But what I have found is that although the content is already viral, my fans do not share them.
The reason could be that I do not have enough fans yet, so there is no traction. But you cannot grow your fan base unless you share great and valuable content. The other thing is that I read the content that PostPlanner recommends before I schedule it, so that takes a long time.
Facebook is moving toward a paid model, so they hide your feed, unless your content is viral. There are some posts that have done well for me, not millions of shares, or even thousands, or hundreds, but much more than I was getting. I’ll then get a message from Facebook to promote the content because it’s doing well. The problem is that it’s third party content, and I am not going to spend money to promote someone’s content.
The quote, by Isaac Newton had more engagement and reach than usual.
“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
And so did the article, “When This Homeless Man Started Offering Book Reviews for Change, Something Amazing Happened. ” But I am not going to pay to promote third party content. I have to increase the number of updates I share each day. But I have to create my own content that’s valuable and relevant to share on Facebook. This means that I have to look at the analytics to see what type of content people are interested in. It’s trial and error.
Kim Garst mentioned a quote she created, which had over 1 million shares. That’s fantastic! On a recent Blab that Kim hosted, I learned that to increase your chances of having a viral post on Facebook, you have to post something that enhances the user experience. People also like posts, that inspire and motivate them.
Sprout Social There are some great tips in this post, but none of them will gain you customers, unless you are crystal clear about your target market, and what you have to offer. I started reading Buyer Personas
over a month ago, and haven’t gotten very far because I am distracted. I will finish reading it this week because I need to be clear about my target market and the services that I am promoting. I will share tips from the book with you as soon as I finish reading it.
You can like my Facebook Page, and Follow me on Twitter if you so choose!
Is social media a friend or foe? It can be a friend if you understand how to use it effectively!
If someone clicks on a link and buys something from Amazon, the company will pay me a very small commission.
