Why Is Twitter A Success?

“When you give people easier ways to share information more good things happen”

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/08/12/why-is-twitter-such-a-success/#mYeCQuMqJZyMOxQi.99

Awesome Potential

The potential of social media for IM is awesome.

What's Your Online Strategy?

"WE GET PAID FOR BRINGING VALUE TO THE MARKETPLACE" JIM ROHN

Social Media Sales

Social Media ROI

A great infographic explaining social media ROI.
Infographic by MDG Advertising

It's All About Sharing

Effective Social Media Marketers should:

1. Promote products, services, and deals less often and instead share advice, tips, and tools that enrich their followers’ lives, inspiring them to share those same tips with their followers and friends. Thus begins the viral marketing campaign via social media.

2. Never ignore messages, comments, and posts from followers and fans. Social media gurus are responsible for reaching out to followers as friends and equals, emphasizing the “social” in social media.

3. Repost and share helpful information and tips from followers, fans and customers. For example, if a business focuses on the sale of baking products, featuring recipes and photos from fans via social media will excite followers and promote more sharing, growing the brand online.

(Read the full article by clicking on the keywords, "Social Media Marketers")

  Social media marketing is not about selling. Social media marketing is all about sharing. Good social media marketers share tips and tools, both their own and others (providing links to the original content of others). In the simple process of sharing good content "follower", fans" customers and referrals will follow because that's the "nature of the social media marketing beast". It's all about sharing.

Image courtesy of [Stuart Miles] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The SMM Holy Trinity

Mixing Business With Pleasure

Social media is, of course, big news in the business world. If you’re a business owner or business leader, it’s not surprising if you’re feeling overwhelmed by everything you see, hear and read about how to get ahead with social media. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it seems, especially if you ignore some of the buzz and hype, and focus on the few things that really make a difference.

Here are some common social media myths that can make your life seem far more difficult, but which you can safely ignore…

MYTH #1. It’s All About the Numbers

MYTH #2. It’s All About Engaging Customers

MYTH #3. It’s All About Facebook and Twitter

MYTH #4. You Have to Do It All Yourself

MYTH #5. It Needs a Lot of Time and Effort

(Read the full article click here)

   Social media marketing is indeed a challenge but it is not that daunting. Social media marketing is just a creative way to share your online brand. Have a simple plan to do SMM and work your simple plan. Throw some fun into the SMM mix as well. In social media marketing we can mix business with pleasure.

Time Is Money

Using the power of social media is just plain smart if you’re starting an online business on a budget.

You can reach thousands of potential customers from social media without spending huge sums on advertising.

The internet and especially using social media can introduce you to people from all over the World. Some of these people may be people you already know whom were unsure what you did, while others will be people you don’t know and may never speak to or meet.

This new way of marketing can at times be overwhelming, frustrating, and downright confusing but the fact it is so popular means it cannot be ignored.

Which social media site should I spend the most time on?

In the beginning you will need to experiment with different sites. Use the ones that you are already on and then expand from there.
The great thing about social media is that you can track exactly where your enquiries (clicks) are coming from so you can easily measure which site is sending you the highest number of leads and more importantly leads that convert to sales.
This information takes the guesswork out of seeing which site is most effective for you.

How often do I need to be on social media to make my marketing succeed?

You have to be realistic about the time you have.
Social media is fast-moving and therefore it is much better to visit frequently in very quick bursts rather than putting in an hour just once a week.
If done properly, social media will be a very important part of your business and may be the major way that you attract new customers and promote your products. Many people who are involved in sales and marketing, network marketing, multi level marketing or affiliate marketing expect to spend of half their time finding new customers, so having a successful social media strategy is hugely important to having a successful business.

Is social media marketing expensive?

The major cost of using social media is your investment in time.
As a small business owner, time is a valuable resource and therefore you need to have a structured approach to the use of time within the areas of social media, but you also need to consider what alternatives there are and the time that can be used up in those other methods.

(Please click on the keywords "social media" to read the full article) 

   The good thing about social media marketing is the fact that SMM is low cost marketing. The bad thing about social media marketing is that it can be time consuming if you let it. Just remember that "time is money" and use your time wisely when using social media to advertise and promote your businesses and income opportunities.

"Social Media Karma"

I’ve distilled what I’ve learned into five key techniques ANYONE can use to become a leader in social media. Some of these would rightly be called “secrets” because so few people seem to have ever heard of these concepts. So if you’re ready to have thousands of new users interested in what you have to say, let me start with the biggest secret of all:

1. Find And Champion Key Users

2. Don’t Talk To An Empty Room

3. To Become A Leader In Your Own Community, Start By Helping Existing Communities

4. Create Community Interactions, Not Just Individual Interactions

5. Focus On High-Value Or Efficient Interactions And Connections Only

(Please click on the keywords "social media" to read the full article)

   Success in social media marketing is essentially following the "Golden Rule" of doing unto others what you want done to you. If you want followers then be a follower. If you want Twitter ReTweets then ReTweet others. If you want blog or article comments then comment on others blogs and articles. If you want your posts shared by others then share their posts. Doing this will create good "social media karma".

 

 

 

 

 

Be True To Your Self

Are you being consistent with your social media?  This may seem like a simple question, but when we break it down, there are many different pieces to look at.

Consistency does not just mean your are posting a certain number of times a day, every day.  That is definitely a part of it.  However, being consistent also refers to your voice or brand.

One of the worst things that you can do with your content creation and social media is change your strategy too often.  If you are working on engaging a certain audience, come up with a plan to do so and stick with it for a while.  



Bottom line, if you aren’t posting regularly, you have zero chance to reach your target audience. 

(Please click on the keywords "social media" to read the full article)

   Being consistent in your social media posting is more than posting regularly, as important as that is. Being consistent in your social media  posting is also being consistent in your "brand" or social media "voice". That means sticking to the niche, audience, subject and demeanor of your social media posting. For example if you post about marketing tips to online marketers in a serious vein, in essence your "voice", you shouldn't change from that social media "voice". Being true to your social media "self" is what being consistent in your social media posting is all about.

Email Works

Social media is great, and you should use it in your marketing if that makes sense for your business.

But you should not put it ahead of email marketing.

Because all other things being equal, email marketing still crushes social media marketing. Here are 5 reasons why:

Did you know that email has nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined? That’s a whopping 2.9 billion.

You might start a private message on Facebook, and then you’re like, “Okay, email me.” Email is the first, best social media channel. And that is the power you want to tap.

When it comes to building business relationships and communicating with partners and clients, the most “serious”, “grown-up” medium is email.


Email allows you to make repeated contact, and that contact is “invasive”. It’s in their mailbox—their inner electronic sanctum.

Customers already expect to get offers by email, and to buy things through email. 


(Please click on the keywords "email marketing" to read the full article)

   As effective as social media marketing can be, nothing can take the place of an email address or a telephone number when it comes to closing a sale or getting a referral. We do social media marketing to get email addresses and phone numbers. The fact of the matter is, email marketing is social media marketing. E-mail works.

Sales Follow Sharing

In 1936 Dale Carnegie wrote the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People," analyzing and giving advice about how to manage human communications in an effective, impactful way.  Many books and reports have been written since, and all reinforce that we love to connect, engage, belong to a community and follow what everybody else is doing.

It’s the basics of human psychology that we all want to be “liked."

The tools and techniques have changed, but the need to connect and create conversations and a sense of community was always there. In the past, we used to gather around local stores in our community (physical one, not virtual), and talk to our neighbors about our likes and preferences. Today it can be done online, in the digital space. If we could only travel back in time to those store front conversations, maybe our rules of engagement online would be more impactful, authentic and real? 

For now, we can go back to Dale’s book and apply some of his lessons to today’s social media landscape:


“When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion…”


The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want. What do you want?


“The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals. This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children”.  


Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment." William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." He didn't speak, mind you, of the "wish" or the "desire" or the "longing" to be appreciated. He said the "craving" to be appreciated. 


“There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything…And that is by making the other person want to do it”. 


(Please click on the keywords "social media" to read the full article)

    Human nature has not changed at all since Dale Carnegie wrote his self help and inspirational books back in the Thirties. People still are emotional beings that crave to be liked and feel important, two things we need to remember in social media marketing. Think more of what others want than what you want. Give "Likes" and follow others if you want to be "Liked" and followed. That's just the nature of the social media marketing beast. Sales always follow sharing.



   

Social Media Marketing ROI

Is there really a good ROI for social media marketing?

Where Do You Share?

This is a great infographic showing where people share the most. Surprisingly regular e-mail ranks second! Where do you share the most?

When And How To Post

A great social media posting guide.

Social Media Third Heaven

Marketers are rushing to ramp up their social media marketing efforts. Despite the excitement, the bottom-line results from social media marketing are elusive. A recent SIIA study looked at marketers of software, a group on the leading edge of tech and social media adoption. Sixty percent of these very advanced marketers reported that less than 5 percent of their deals originated from social media marketing.

So how can the excitement and potential around social media marketing transfer into real business results for marketers? We must remember that social media marketing is new and still evolving. Marketers are charging into this brave new world, learning and iterating the model. Three stages of social media marketing have emerged: amateur, messenger, and publisher. It is only as marketers evolve to this third and most advanced stage, publisher, that the potential of social is realized and enormous bottom-line benefits are generated.

Amateur Stage

In this stage it is chaotic. Social is the directive, but nobody knows the plan or the specific objectives. There is poor coordination: often different departments and groups are all tweeting independently without the benefits of focus and scale. Little is accomplished, but it is a first and necessary stage for an organization to get exposed to the world of social media. 

Messenger Stage

The messenger stage focuses on the revolutionary ability that the Internet and social media have given to marketers: to communicate directly with prospects and develop relationships with them. Thus the objective at the messenger stage has become to establish these relationships.

Publisher Stage

These "publisher stage" marketers still use social networks. But the networks serve as a way to distribute links to their content, which is centered on their own website. As prospects navigate to the marketer's site and consume the content addressing their interests and concerns, they build trust in the brand and an appreciation for the brand's understanding of their own interests.   

(Please click on the keywords "social media marketing" to read the full article)

   We all want to grow as social media marketers and growth is always a process. What stage are we in our social media marketing process? If we are developing relationships we are in the messenger stage. If we are providing the content needed and desired by our followers and fans then we are in the publisher stage. Publishing is the "Third Heaven" of social media marketing. Get there!

 

Social Media Marketing Karma

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the practice of increasing the probability that people will pass along your message, website, or product through online social networks, and content sharing Websites.

Similar to Search Engine Optimization, a practice which seeks to increase the likelihood that people will find your site through search engines, SMO seeks to increase the probability that people will pass along your message, product or website through online social networks. SMO is often used synonymously with the larger practice of Social Media Marketing, which refers to the overall strategy of marketing through social media. "Optimization" refers to making your site more linkable and your content easy to pass along, and "Marketing" includes not just optimization, but actively participating in social media to spread the word.

(Please click on the keywords "Social Media Optimization" to read the full article)

   An important element in social media marketing is SMO or social media optimization. We all want our content to be shared through others social media outlets but the trick is how to get persons who read our content to share that content themselves. Obviously having quality content goes a long way in getting others to share that content. Providing social site buttons helps as well. But a forgotten element of SMO is us actually sharing other content ourselves perhaps letting that person know we shared their content. That creates good social media marketing karma, the essence of social media optimization, as I see it.

Change Is Good

I’ve always maintained that the true power of social media lies in its dynamism. Year after year, social media has reinvented itself and it will continue to do in the years to come. While social media started off in the form of blogs and wikis, the onus is now on using the optimal mix of various social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others coupled with email and instant messaging tools.

In this post, I emphasize upon seven things that you need to know about the evolution of social media.

1. It’s not anti-email

2. Blogging isn’t dead

3. Number of Fans and Followers

4. Interactivity

5. Democracy

6. Globalization

7. Social Change      

(Please click on the keywords "social media" to read the full article)

  Social media has indeed evolved from blogs to social sites, video and image platforms that have global reach. The content of social media has also evolved from from diary type blogs that shared what we had for breakfast to worldwide breaking news and company product updates. There was a time that online marketers only promoted on traffic exchanges and e-mail safe lists but now online marketing has evolved into using Twitter, Facebook and You Tube to successfully market and brand their products and services. Now there is a real synergy between our blogs, social sites and businesses that never existed before the evolution of social media. Change is good.

 

Content Is Still King

Social media marketing is impossible without good content. Social media is a like a beast with an insatiable appetite for content. Good content. Yet many organizations yield to the pressure to add social media to their marketing mix without figuring out what content they will share and where it will come from.

The phrase “content marketing” is growing in popularity and refers to “…the technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

What are you trying to do in adding social media to your marketing?

Who are you trying to talk to?

What kind of content resonates for your audience?

Where will this content come from?   

(Please click on the keywords "Social media marketing" to read the full article)

   Good content is essential in social media marketing. However good content  "is in the eye of the beholder" so who your target audience is makes all the difference in the world.  A young audience will probably like a lot of video content or a more mature audience will probably like more article content. The originality of the content isn't really relevant as long as you link to the content source. Good content is good content whether it is yours or the content belonging to another. Being informed and/or inspired by the content is all that matters. Content is still King in social media marketing.