Creating Content About Creating Content
The Huffington Post | Bianca Bosker First Posted: 12-30-10 09:04 AM
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has yet another milestone to celebrate.
In addition to being named TIME’s Person of the Year and seeing the social network he founded swell to over 550 million members, he can also toast a major triumph over Google: for the first time ever, Facebook topped the list as the most-visited website of the year, ahead of giants like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, and Msn.com…
For the Full Article CLICK HERE
When it comes to blogging and social media for business, people are always asking, “How can I get more fans/followers?” or “How I can get more people to visit my blog?” The perspective of this question is all wrong. The perspective of this question needs to be framed, not from the website owner, but from the website visitor. A better question would be, “What can I do to build an engaged online community?”
The former question has a one-way result in mind. The latter has an interactive result in mind. Trying to build an “engaged online community” assumes a level of participation in what others are doing. We’ll talk more about that in little bit…
There are many services that you can pay for to bring more exposure to your social media and blogging. There are many strategies I could share with you that would bring more exposure to your pages. Today though, I want to focus on a core principle of getting your pages out there to be seen: Community Involvement. At first this may sound like a big commitment, but I promise you it’s not. Let’s look at three levels of Community Involvement:
1. Absent
This is a rather humorous level. This is the user who builds their website and their social media with much anticipation. They do a bunch of planning and finally hit the “publish” button and/or the “status update” function. Then they sit back and wait for the visitors, traffic, comments, replies, likes, followers, and connections to roll in. Then, after several weeks of very little interaction (sometimes after days), they begin to lose faith in their online endeavors and get discouraged. They stop posting content and updates less and less until they finally stop all-together.
This sad story is more common than you may realize. The problem here is rooted in a famous movie called “Field of Dreams.” In that movie there is a memorable line: If you build it, they will come. This is how people approach blogging and social media: “If I create my website and all of my pages, they will come.” Nothing could be farther from the truth.
What’s missing from the story is this user’s involvement in the online community. Their commitment is very self-involved which is also known as “absent.”
2. Lurking
This is a user that is part of the online community. They visit different sites and check on different social media pages of their friends and acquaintances. Despite their active surfing though, they’re kind of shy when it comes to posting comments and such.
There wouldn’t be anything wrong with this if this lurker didn’t have his/her own site/pages that desperately needed some interaction.
3. Participation
This is a person who is interested in other people’s lives, projects, businesses, sites, and so-on. They’re not just interested, but they show they’re interest with their comments, replies, and different forms of interaction.
Coincidentally, this person’s site and social media pages are buzzing with traffic, fans, followers, comments, and private messages. Why? In a very naïve fashion (or possibly not-so naïve), this person has been indirectly advertising themselves and their sites/pages to other members of the online community. Since they have shown interest in other people’s content, others have shown interest in their content. It’s a very profound concept right?
Now this did not cost any amount of money (other than the cost for their computer and internet). I am aware though, that some people that are reading this are thinking, “Yes Mason, but how much TIME does that take?” I am so glad you asked because I will be addressing that in my next article : )
Until then, ask yourself, “Am I a member of the online community?”
Click Here To Read Part 2: “The Law of Reciprocity”
Yesterday I wrote about The 3 Time Killers. Today I want to tell you about the “3 Time Savers” in social media. With so many different social media sites and options it can all begin to look like “clutter” and more inboxes to manage. The good news is, social media doesn’t have to be like that, especially if you apply the “3 Time Savers:”
1.Integration
I recommend to my customers to use WordPress (for blogging), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr. Again, to a social media outsider this may sound like a lot to manage, but it actually isn’t. Why? All of these sites can be integrated or synchronized with each other so that you don’t have to duplicate content on each individual site. Every time I tweet, it goes to my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts too. Every time I upload a YouTube video or Flickr photo it goes my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn also. I can even publish blog posts from Flickr with automated image wrapping. Every time I publish a blog post, it also posts to my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
All of this doesn’t happen automatically. I’ve taken the time to integrate my sites. It takes a little bit more time on the front-end, but saves a lot of time on the back-end.
2. Mobile Apps
If I can’t use a mobile app for a site or social media service, I probably don’t want to use it. The ability to interface with all of my sites (including my blog) is one of the biggest time savers I can think of. Whenever I have small segments of down-time throughout the day, I can respond to questions/comments or update my status. If I’m traveling I can still manage all of my content and dialogue with ease.
With the right smart-phone (I recommend the iPhone hands down) I can take pics or even film video and upload it right away. It amazes me that a lot of people spend hundreds of dollars for smart-phones so they can check their email. Know what your phone can do and learn how to leverage it’s technology within the context of your social media strategy. This point leads into my 3rd time saver…
3. Social Media Lifestyle
The last way you can save time with social media is to see it as a lifestyle. I’m not talking about doing it all day long, I’m talking about doing it as the opportunity arises. If there is something happening that is interesting or relevant to your niche, grab your smart-phone and share right then and now. Don’t wait until the end of the day or the next morning. Share it as it happens.
Does that sound like too much pressure? Fine. Take a pic or film some video and post it when you have the time to. The point is, you’re doing it as it happens so it doesn’t really impact your schedule. If you’re social media is setup correctly, it shouldn’t take more than 60 seconds to use it when the opportunity is there, not to mention you can do it while mutli-tasking (this does not include driving!).
Think about the ease of using social media with all of your sites integrated, mobile phone access, and updating it 1-2 times a day in real-time… There are a lot more time saving techniques I use and implement with customers that I won’t dive into right now, but these are 3 big ones! Hope you found it helpful and thanks for stopping by!
One of the attractive features of using social media for your business is that it’s free, right? Well, for the most part it is. If you do plan on getting serious with social media, there are usually some small costs involved, but even then, it’s very affordable.
Even though Social Media is, for the most part free, doing it yourself will cost you another precious resource: time. Time is very important to businesses and especially business owners. I do not believe it requires a ton of time to effectively manage social media once everything is up and going, but there are some “time killers” you’ll want to be aware of if you’re looking to dive-in:
3 Time Killers:
1. Setting Up Your Pages/Networks
If you’re looking at using multiple sites (I recommend Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr), it does take a good amount of time to setup up all of your pages, customize the features, upload photos, fill-out bios, and add content. Give yourself 1-3 hours to efffectively create a professional page on one site (the time varies depending on each user).
2. Building Your Following
This is probably the biggest time killer. Unless your trained and knowledgeable on all of the latest tools (or unless your name is Britney Spears or Tiger Woods), it’s going to take a very long time to build a significant following. I am familiar with all the tools and very knowledgable but it still takes me a good amount of time to setup a customer’s following.
3. The Learning Curve
Unless you’re familiar with each site (and if you haven’t setup a profile on a particular site, this means you’re probably not), there’s going to be a “learning curve” in learning how to use each site. How do you setup “this?” How do you send “that?” What is “this” for? There will be many questions that can be answered eventually with a little bit of clicking around and “time.”
As you can see, most of these “time killers” are on the front end of working on social media. If you have the time to invest in it, I recommend doing it yourself. I also recommend buying some books on each site before you just “start.” I am constantly reading myself just to stay up on all the latest strategies and opinions. As a social media service provider, a lot of what I do can be done by anybody (in my opinion). The value I look to provide with each customer is to save them T-I-M-E!
I am familiar with all the sites, so I can not only setup the pages strategically, I can set them up faster and I can integrate them so that the process of using them will be streamlined. I promise I can build your following faster, bigger, and more targeted than you can (I also believe your networks can hit tipping points where they begin to grow on their own). Last but not least, I offer training and support to my customers to reduce the amount of learning curve.
Is social media free? Kinda…
Social Media is not a one-stop shop for marketing your business. Social media is a fantastic medium to complement and enhance a business’s current marketing strategy. Any social media services that are claiming you “only need social media” are probably also charging exorbitant rates.
In light of this perspective, I want to share with you “ 4 Benefits of Social Media For Business.” These are not the only benefits and some may argue not the most important. I believe they are important to know because businesses can experience these benefits quickly when implementing a clear and concise social media campaign. Here they are:
Benefit #1: Enlarge Your Pool of Potential Clients
Social media comes with the capacity to grab the attention of thousands of people. You may not have all of their attention, all of the time, but you will have it consistently over a sustained period of time. You may grab some users attention once-a-month, others once-a-week, and some (if your lucky) once-a-day.
Combine these possibilities with a growing social network and you now have an ever-increasing pool of potential customers. In telemarketing, it has been said that you can convert 1 person into a customer for every 10 calls. The game then becomes, “how many calls can you make?” In social media, the question is, “How many people can you touch?” The answer: thousands upon thousands. Can they be converted into customers? Read on…
Benefit #2: Disseminate Your Information Effectively
Once you have a growing social media audience you now have the capability to communicate with them. If you integrate your networks strategically, you can get your important information out in a very efficient manner. Some businesses have shied away from these new tools because they feel it will clutter up their current processes and be one more thing to “manage.” This type of thinking couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are multiple strategies I employ with my customers ensuring that their experience will be streamlined and simple to manage.
The beauty of this is that it is not a one-way conversation. People can respond and interact with what your business is doing and talking about. If your company truly believes that “customer feedback is a gift,” then social media is your new and improved evaluation survey that is running 24-7-365.
Benefit #3: Accelerate The Familiarization Process
Many people don’t take action the first time they hear about a product or service. Many also want to feel they can do some research and learn about a company without having to commit as a customer. With social media, you can create a public digital journal of your business. People can see what you’ve been doing, how your customers interact with you along with the overall tone and personality of your business.
Business is about people and relationships as much as it is a product and/or service. What happens when people can see recent photos, testimonies, and analysis in regards to your industry context? By simply sharing a little here, a little there, a potential customer has an electronic bread trail to follow online and get familiar (aka comfortable) with your company.
If you combine your social media strategies with a simple blogging component, you can also establish yourself as a credible authority in your field. This is just one more way to add momentum to the intro process that researching consumers will initiate when they consider doing business with you.
Benefit #4: Automated Follow-Up
A key concept of any marketing strategy is simply reminding your past and potential customers that you still exist and do what you do. Every time people cross paths with your business on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc, they are reminded of your products and/or services. What if every satisfied customer could follow you via social media? Don’t you think it could increase the potential for repeat business? Absolutely! This built-in follow-up mechanism within the social media graph will keep your business at the top of a person’s memory when a situation or need arises that your product/service could solve or assist with.
In closing, I feel it’s important to remind you that any social media strategy should be diligently implemented for a minimum of six months before a user should expect to see some traction begin to take place.
Again, I take the time to emphasize these four benefits because with social media, these are not pie-in-the-sky possibilities. After that initial six-month push, you will find these results are very attainable and will grow the positive perception of your organization.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you found this article informative and helpful!
In the 2006, a San Francisco-based start-up company named “Obvious” created a microblog as the result of an R and D (research and development) project. It was initially used by the company’s own employees to communicate internally, and launched to the public seven months later in October 2006. In 2007, Jack Dorsey – Obvious CEO and the man behind the concept of Twitter – gave a humorous acceptance speech as he received the Southwest Web Award in the blog category: “We’d like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!”*
The result is what we now know as Twitter: a social networking and microblogging service. It was immediately received as a simpler and more streamlined version of blogging and social networking. Twitter was partly inspired by SMS, the most popular mobile-messaging technology. SMS “text messages” are limited to 160 characters, which leads to some creative abbreviations or as others might put it, “the end of the english language as we know it.” With Twitter, Dorsey shortened the length by twenty characters, limiting messages to 140 characters but also allowing messages to be identified by the author’s name. I’m reminded of Mark Twain paraphrasing of French mathematician Blaise Pascal’s famous comment by saying: “If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Truly, it can be more difficult or more thoughtlful to summarize a message to someone else in a short and succinct fashion compared to loosely communicating in an endless stream of “and’s” and “then’s.”
Twitter was also unique, in contrast to Facebook and Myspace, in that there was no single mutual friend request action. You can folow someone without them needing to follow you back. This allowed us “normal people” to follow famous celebrities, if we wanted to, because apparently their lives are super-interesting (yeah right). Thus the “Follower” stat on one’s Twitter page became an instant reflection of one’s digital influence.
But why is it called Twitter? Well, a status updated is referred to as a “tweet.” When birds “tweet” to each other they do it in a very loud and public way for all to hear. In the same way, unless you set your “tweets” to private, everyone can see what you’re saying to all of your friends and followers. In fact, a lot of people don’t realize that all tweets are indexed and can be searched in the exact same manner that google allows you to search for websites. Hence, the strong caution not to tweet once intoxicated.
Even though it was designed as a message system, it also became a type of blog in that a person’s tweets were displayed on their page under one common theme or topic. “What theme or topic would that be?”, you ask? With Twitter, the person or account IS the theme or topic.
There are many other unique features to Twiter which I will cover in future posts but these are some of the core functions of it. Many copy-cats have surfaced since Twitter but none seem to have been able to copy their success. I hope you enjoyed this look at the some of the origins of Twitter. Come back this week for more origins of other social media networks.
*The Social Media Bible, Safko and Brake, 2009, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
How fast can you see a return on investment (ROI) with video sharing?
It depends on three factors: How often are you going to produce your videos? How relevant is your video content towards your target audience? What are you going to do to drive traffic to your videos?
Video sharing has been one of the most effective forms of social media for my customers. My customers have gotten more sales that can be traced back to YouTube or an iTunes video podcast than any other social media platform. If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video is worth a thousand pictures.
Frequency: A good goal would be two short videos (anywhere from 90 sec. to 5 min) a month. The least you want to do is once a month. The ideal would be once a week. Remember, online video is not about the quality of production. Just look up some popular YouTube videos and see for yourself. It’s about volume (number of videos, not length of videos) and content.
Content: Listen to the most common questions/comments you get and watch other videos in your niche for ideas. Some of the most popular videos are “How To” instructional videos and brand new products to the market (first one in, wins).
Driving Traffic: Social media, email lists, and your website are mandatory if your videos are going to be seen at all. Place the link to your videos on your Facebook page, Twitter, LinkedIn, an electronic newsletter, and of course your website. Did you know that every time you or somebody else embeds your video into another website you still get credit from YouTube for all of the views? If you can find some popular forums (aka message boards) that allow you to post links or embed the videos it is also another great way to get exposure. If you can afford to set up an iTunes podcast (in addition to a YouTube channel) it can be very effective.
If you’re consistent you can start to get some traction in 6 months to a year. By traction, I mean that more people are following and watching your videos, your video views climb faster and faster, and viewers slowly start to turn into customers.
Facebook has released a new way to filter your News Feed. Before, you only had two filtering options. You could choose from “Top News,” which is Facebook’s most popular updates determined by “Edge Rankings” (you can learn more about “Edge Rankings” from my recent article Winning The Facebook News Feed) or you could choose from “Most Recent.”
Now, Facebook has added a drop-down menu under “Most Recent” for you to customize. The filtering options to choose from are: Most Recent, Status Updates, Photos, Links, Pages, Games and it can also list any special group of friends you may have created. In the “Edit Options” you can recommend friends that you want to see more updates from or hide friends that you want to see “less” of. Ouch! Wouldn’t it be interesting to know who’s hiding your updates???
The functions of the filters are more or less self-explanatory. For those who don’t have hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook, this new feature will probably be irrelevant. For those with a lot friends on Facebook, this may be more beneficial.
The features is not “live” on everyone’s profile yet so it seems like Facebook may still be testing it. It’s not the first time Facebook has experimented with the news feed and probably won’t be the last time either.
I was reminded of the origins of video sharing when I got an email from Yahoo! last week stating that they are removing all user-uploaded video from Yahoo! Video. This is a pretty amazing announcement.
Yahoo! video was created way back in May of 2005. At first, it was actually more popular than YouTube for a time. Eventually YouTube overtook them in popularity and hasn’t looked back. This move by Yahoo! appears to be a temporary waving of the white flag.
Interestingly enough, the email does encourage users to upload video to Flickr instead. To Yahoo!’s credit, Flickr is one of the most popular photo sharing sites and, in my opinion, one of the best photo sharing sites. Maybe they’re hoping the popularity of their photo sharing site will overflow into video sharing by users and one day compete with YouTube again.
YouTube’s success can be traced back to early employees of PayPal Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. They activated the domain name YouTube.com on February 15, 2005 and developed their website over the next several months. When YouTube hit it’s official public release in December 2005, people were watching YouTube videos more than three million times daily. That month, someone posted to YouTube a skit from NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” dubbed “Lazy Sunday,” featuring two grown men rapping about cupcakes, red licorice candy and the movie “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Consumers viewed “Lazy Sunday” six million times before NBC on Feb. 3 contacted YouTube to request that it be removed, along with hundreds of other clips. By October of 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion and began operating as a subsidiary of Google.*
Since then, numerous video sharing sites have been created with different contexts or as simple alternatives to YouTube. Video sharing is one of the easiest and fastest ways to start building your social media portfolio.
*The Social Media Bible, Safko and Brake, 2009, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
Social media is now a viable marketing tool. This begs the question, “How much overlap should there be between my business content and my personal content or should there be no overlap at all?”
Before we answer this, let’s talk about social media as a marketing tool. Originally, it wasn’t designed as a marketing tool. It was designed as a way to stay connected to friends and family. The moment social media becomes a “marketing tool only” it will cease to be an effective marketing tool. Think about it, the only reason it’s a marketing tool is because everyone is hanging out there for the purpose of connecting with friends and family. The masses of people aren’t hanging out on social media to get a bunch of advertising.
I point this distinction out because it should be a visible distinction when looking at your own social media.
Let me share my experience. When I first started getting into social media, I created a Twitter and Facebook page. I mainly used them for personal use, but spliced in some business related content from time-to-time. When I increased the amount of business related content I was producing I created a Facebook page and put it there instead of my personal profile. I didn’t want my personal FB profile to look like a spam spot for my business thus deterring my friends and family from interacting with me there.
I also decided to create a personal Twitter page and use my original Twitter account as my business Twitter page. After a couple of weeks, I deleted my personal Twitter page. I made a decision: My FB profile would be a spot to post all of my personal info. My FB page, Twitter page, and LinkedIn would be strictly for my business.
Basically, I made a distinction based on the fact that I was going to generate a lot of business content. Does this mean I can’t sprinkle in business content on my FB profile from time-to-time? Not at all. My business is still a part of my life. Does this mean I can’t sprinkle personal content on my business pages from time-to-time? Absolutely not. Business is all about people and relationships too; I don’t want to be a complete stranger to my customers.
What about you? How often do you interact with friends and family on a particular site? How often do you post business content on a personal social media account? Which social media accounts are business only (generally speaking) and which accounts are for your perosnal life only (generally speaking)? These are very important questions to ask yourself and answer.
Finally, I think it’s important to emphasize that the majority of people are still using social media to cultivate their relationships. Some people are now approaching social media with a “business only” mindset. This type of thinking doesn’t “fit in” with the social media culture and most end users will sniff it out pretty fast. If you’re not connecting with people in a personal way, they are less likely to care about your business content. Unless you’re a major corporation like Nike or Coca-cola, people are curious about the face behind the entity. Have a mixture in you’re content. Make some distinctions between your business and personal info, and don’t neglect the value of connecting with people.
If you apply these concepts along with others that I’ll post in the future, your social media will be a natural (and accelerated) relationship building process that will be enjoyable and productive for your life and business.
Recent Comments