Social Media | Mason Media Today

Make Your LinkedIn Profile Stand Out

May 19, 2011 By Mason Leave a Comment

Remember that LinkedIn profile you created and never went back to??? Well, last week I showed you a simple way to get connected to new targeted LinkedIn members. Today I want to show you how to spruce up your profile. You can make your profile stand out from the crowd by adding a YouTube video to your profile. Most LinkedIn profiles do not have videos (most LinkedIn users don’t even know you can have videos on your profile). Even if you do not have your own self-produced video on YouTube, you can find a video that relates to your industry to give people more information regarding what you’re all about.If you do have your own video on YouTube, LinkedIn will become one more avenue to bring exposure to your video, get your information out there, and grow your number of views.

Step 1: If you do not have your own YouTube account or gmail account sign-up for a new gmail account (it’s free, you can have all mail forwarded to your main email address, plus google is always coming out with interesting apps that you’ll be able to take advantage of). To sign up go here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Step 2: Once you’re signed in to your YouTube or gmail address go to: https://docs.google.com/

Step 3: From there go to “create a new presentation”:

Step 4: Under the “Insert” menu click on the “Video” option:

Step 5: Search for the the YouTube video you want and select it. Do a little re-sizing and save your document:

Step 6: Stay signed-in to your google account, open a new window, and sign-in to your LinkedIn account. Under the “More” drop-down menu go to “Get More Applications.” In the Applications menu select “Google Presentation” and add it to your profile. Now go back to the “More” drop-down menu and select “Google Presentation.”

Step 7: Your presentation should appear in the presentation list for you to select. Select your presentation and your done!

Your video will only appear to LinkedIn members who are sign-in to LinkedIn. I hope you found this post helpful. If you run into any snags or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below…

Filed Under: LinkedIn, Social Media, Video Content, Video Tips, Tricks, & Info Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media, Video content, Video on LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube on LinkedIn

Which Social Media Perform the Best?

February 2, 2011 By Mason 2 Comments

As an internet marketer, people ask me all the time which forms of internet marketing/social media get the best results? I always answer the question with a disclaimer. The disclaimer is: what works best for one business may not work the best for you depending on what type of business you have and what type of results you’re looking to achieve.

As far as internet marketing is concerned, if you have very little time to put in and very little money, I would always recommend to start out with a bi-weekly or monthly electronic newsletter (aka email marketing). This yields an acceptable ROI when considering the small amount of time and money it takes to make it happen. If you have more than a little bit of time and money, you still want to make sure that you have an electronic newsletter.

If you want to do more than that, you begin to get into different forms of social media. There are now an endless amount of options when it comes to social media. If you would have asked me 2-3 weeks ago to prioritize the most effective forms of internet marketing/social media I would have shared the following:

1.Electronic Newsletter

2. Internet Forums

3. YouTube/Video Podcasting

4. LinkedIn

5. Twitter

6. Facebook

That usually surprises people because Facebook isn’t near the top of my list. Now, this list may change depending on what your business is and what kind of goals you have, but as a general answer, that is what I would share. Now, my answer is based purely on experience with my customers and where their customers tell them they’re coming from.

Well, a study was recently released where social media marketers revealed what platforms were giving them the best return. The image below is from the article, “Where Are Social Media Marketers Seeing the Most Success?“, on eMarketer.com.

Message/bulletin boards are also known as “Forums.” I can confirm that Forums can be a highly effective way of marketing. I have one customer on eight different forums and he gets most of his business from those communities. Not all industries have popular forums relevant to a specific context, but if there is one out there related to your niche, see what it takes to be a sponsor and start posting content and answering questions.

Podcasting can be audio content (for audio podcasts) or a close cousin to YouTube (video podcasts). If you’re already posting video content on YouTube, you might want to consider duplicating your content in the form of a video podcast on iTunes.

Blogging comes in third, which isn’t a surprise. I don’t really see blogging as a form of social media. Blogging, to me, should be your website that is an anchor for all of your social media. If you don’t have a website or are considering what kind of website to build for your business, build it with a blogging component.

Notice that “online video” (aka YouTube), comes ahead of Twitter and Facebook. I completely agree with this feedback. If you only have the capacity to post up one video a month, that’s more than enough reason to get started. There’s something about consistent video content that entices people to talk to the real person and/or experience the real product. After watching a number of your videos on a consistent basis, people will be compelled to take the next action step in your sales funnel.

If you’re looking for more web traffic for your site, than Twitter would probably be higher on this list. A growing Twitter page is a blog’s best friend in my opinion.

In regards to Facebook’s place on this list, I am not surprised. Facebook is good place to reinforce your message/brand and remind people you exist. The bottom line is, people still go on Facebook to socialize more than they do to spend money. This dynamic could change down the road though.

An interesting surprise on this list is the absence of LinkedIn and the presence of Foursquare. Was LinkedIn even a part of the survey? Is Foursquare the next Facebook? Who knows. What I do know is that LinkedIn has been very effective for my business as well as my customers.

Filed Under: Blogging, Featured Articles, Social Media, Video Content, Video Tips, Tricks, & Info Tagged With: Email, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube

Twitter Hashtags

January 31, 2011 By Mason Leave a Comment

You can use hashtags(#) to associate a tweet or topic along with similar tweets posted by Twitter users. This is usually a hard a concept for new Twitter users to understand when they see tweets using the hashtag(#) before keywords or phrases.

For example, let’s say you tweet regarding the Super Bowl in the near future. Instead of using “Super Bowl” in your tweet, you would use “#superbowl.” This would turn your hashtag into a click-able link that a browser could use to search all tweets containing the same hashtag. Hashtags are useful when tweeting about events, like the Super Bowl, that are commonly popular and talked about it. Hashtags are also useful for a particular brand or event. Let me share a couple items to keep in mind when using a hashtag in a tweet:

1. No Spaces

If your hashtag is more than one word, make sure to leave no spaces. For example, you wouldn’t use “#Happy New Year.” This would make your hashtag refer only to the word “Happy.” Instead, you would use “#HappyNewYear.”

2. Identify Hashtags

There are many tools you can use to test out and see what hashtags people using before you decide what hashtag to tweet with. One site you can reference is twitterfall.com. Here you can search for hashtags to see if others are using the same hashtag for your particular topic/keyword.

3. Search Tool

Since a hashtag becomes click-able link to similar tweets, it is a valuable search tool to surf the Twitter-sphere. You can find more info on a certain topic as well as like-minded people tweeting about you’re particular interest.

4. Exposure

If you’re tweeting about a popular topic, a hashtag can be an effective way for people to find your content. Hashtags become one more weapon in your arsenal to grow your Twitter influence and following.

Hope you found this article helpful! Thanks for stopping by!

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

Customer Evangelists

January 10, 2011 By Mason Leave a Comment

Through retweets on Twitter, you have the opportunity to cultivate and inspire customer evangelists for your particular niche. Customer Evangelists share your information and their opinions about it with their circle of influence, thus multiplying your broadcasting ability.

Retweeting is where a Twitter user takes ones of your Twitter posts and shares it on their own Twitter page while also giving you the credit. When your mouse pointer is held over a single Twitter update, an option appears beneath it to “Retweet” it. Your followers are simply one small click away from being your brand evangelist now. Retweets demonstrate your influence. Retweets distribute your content beyond your own following. Retweets indirectly advertise your Twitter page and grow your following. Retweets can drive more traffic to a page if they have a URL link in them.

You need to have an intentional strategy to encourage and affirm retweeting. So what are some ways to inspire customer evangelists? I’m glad you asked…

1. Say Thank You

In the “Home” section of your Twitter profile it’s real easy to spot your retweets. Just go to the “Retweets” drop-down menu and click on “Your Tweets, retweeted.” You’ll see a list of your tweets that have been retweeted and when you click on each you’ll see who it was that retweed it.

Click on their icon to bring up their account and send a quick @mention saying thank you. On Twitter, “RT” is short-hand for ‘Retweet.” How long does it take to type in: Thanks for the RT? Not very long, especially if you consider the free advertising.

2. Retweet List

“Lists” are a great and often under-used tool on Twitter. With “Lists,” I can follow a few even though I’m following thousands on my overall account. Each person that retweets one of my tweets gets added to my “Retweeters List.” This way I can pay closer attention to these loyal supporters and give them more interaction which leads me into my next point…

3. Give Back

If someone has retweeted your tweet, go to their page and see if you can retweet one of their tweets. One of the reasons I use the list feature is that I can click on the list and see my “Retweeters” latest tweets. If I find a tweet that seems relevant for my audience, I Retweet it! This is Participation and The Law of Reciprocity at work.

Another way to retweet is using the @mention. Let’s say JohnDoe tweeted: “Have a great weekend!” You could simply retweet it, or you could copy the text and paste it into an @mention like this: “RT @JohnDoe Have a great weekend!” If you wanted to share a reply with the retweet you could do this: “RT @JohnDoe Have a great weekend! | You too John!” The vertical line acts a separator between the retweet and your reply.

These are just a few simple strategies to inspire customer evangelists on Twitter. If you have any more feel free to share them with us below in the comments section.

Filed Under: Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: Customer Evangelists, Retweets, Social Media, Twitter

Content Is King – Part 2

January 7, 2011 By Mason 2 Comments

Here are the last 4 Keys to Valuable Content for your social media and /or blog. All together there are 7 Keys which I began discussing in the previous post, “Content Is King.”

4. Diverse

Make sure to change-up the context of your content from time-to-time. Obviously, the majority of the time you want to add value to your readers regarding your specific niche, but it’s okay to sporadically mix-in content about your personal life, what’s happening with your business, or a customer testimony. These types of posts help to build the relational connection with your audience. You can also post links to other articles or invite another blogger to write an article for your site.

5. English

I’m not going to present this principle like I’m a professional writer, because I is not : ) I have definitely posted content with misspellings and incorrect grammar. I do take the time to proofread my posts before I publish them. A couple hours after I publish them, I return to read it once more just to make sure (and “yes,” I still miss things). All I am encouraging you to do here is to commit yourself to do your best to make your content easy to understand. Use spell check tools available to you and be disciplined to proofread.

6. Oldy But Goody

It’s okay, from time to time, to pull out a popular article or quote from the past and re-post it. Don’t do this too much, or your audience will feel like you’re wasting their time, especially if you’re just starting out. As long as it is still relevant and beneficial, emphasize it’s importance with a second edition.

7. Your Passion

You must be interested in what your sharing. If you’re not interested, it will show between the lines. You’re level of interest and passion will create a tractor beam of energy (Stars Wars reference) that will pull in and grab your audience’s attention.

If you’re only blogging for money, you will eventually run out of passion. If you’re blogging because you enjoy talking about your topic and/or you enjoy helping people with your knowledge and experience, you’ll have a fire that is easily fanned. Interested readers follow interested authors.

In review, valuable content will be Relevant, Consistent, Opinionated, Diverse, English, an Oldy But Goody, and last but not least, it will be Your Passion.

Click Here For Part 1 of CONTENT IS KING

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media Tagged With: Blogging, Content, Content Is King, Social Media

The Perfect Twitter Page

January 5, 2011 By Mason Leave a Comment

Today I would like to give you 7 Tips on Setting Up the Perfect Twitter Page. It is possible to miss out on potential followers because your profile isn’t setup right. Some people will dismiss your Twitter account as a viable page to follow if it doesn’t have the right feel and look to it. So let’s dig in:

1. Your Twitter URL – Be strategic with your Twitter URL and remember that simplicity is ideal. I always recommend to customers that are designing a brand new site to not only check the URL against the world wide web, but check it against Twitter as well. For example, if you wanted your site to be coolshirts.com and it was available, also check and see if there is a twitter.com/coolshirts. If you really want to be strategic, see is there’s a facebook.com/coolshirts too. This just makes it easy to not only find you but also remember for future return visits.

2. Profile Pic – Remember that social media is supposed to be a place for people to connect. This is why it’s ideal to use a pic of your face for your Twitter image rather than a logo. People are much more likely to follow a person compared to a cold entity.

3. Bio – When you fill out your bio, make sure to use keywords that would be common for people search with when researching your niche and/or industry context. As of Fall of 2010, Google began indexing Twitter as it does with other websites. If you currently do not have a website, just use your Twitter page for the URL field (if you have a professional Facebook page you can use that instead).

4. Background – Make sure to create a custom background image for your Twitter page. This is relatively easy with a couple options to consider. If you are a graphics type of person, have at it! If not, you can upload an image of your logo and make your background a “Tile” format. If you want more customization and information to be displayed you can go to twitbacks.com to create a more specialized theme for free.

5. Follow Others – When creating a page, Twitter leads you to a page where they share other Twitter users of similar interest/context. It’s good to start out and pick a good 10-15 influential people within your context so you look to be somewhat active. Unless you’re a celebrity, following 0-5 people makes you look very disengaged and most won’t follow you. Also take advantage of contacting people in your email database and invite them to follow you on Twitter too.

6. Content – The next thing you want to do is fill-up your page with tweets aka content. Do not leave one tweet on your page saying, “Trying to figure out Twitter.” Fill-up your page with 8-10 tweets consisting of quotes, links to beneficial articles, and interesting retweets from other relevant Twitter pages. It doesn’t matter that the tweets are minutes apart or even seconds, the important thing is, your page doesn’t look empty.

7. Schedule Tweets – The last thing you want to do is register with cotweet.com. Co-tweet is a very efficient platform to manage Twitter and it’s free (they do offer a paid version). One of the things you can do with co-tweet is schedule-out tweets in advance. It’s very important when starting out, to have a steady flow of consistent tweets on a daily and weekly basis. This shows you are active and engaged with Twitter and worth following.

Doing these seven items when setting up your Twitter page will lay the foundation for social media success. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to also read my article entitled, “Social Oomph.” You’ll also want to take advantage of the features mentioned in that article when launching your Twitter page.

Hope you found this helpful, and thanks for stopping by!

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

The Law of Reciprocity

January 3, 2011 By Mason 3 Comments

This is actually a continuation from the article Participation, posted a few days ago. In the first article I discussed the importance of trying to build an online community instead of trying to coerce everybody to engage with your content. I also layed out three different levels of community involvement: Absent, Lurking, Participation. Obviously, participation is what is required to build an active and engaged community but the next question that arises is, “How much time does that take?”

This all depends on what kind of results your looking for and how much time you have to put into it. There are three levels of “Participation Frequency” and only two of them will yield positive results. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to participate, one of the two are practical for anyone. So let’s dig in:

3 Participation Frequency Levels

1. Hit And Miss

This level of participation has no intention driving it. This is where you are not absent or lurking, but you are leaving comments on articles, using retweets or @ replies on Twitter, and “liking” updates on Facebook. The problem here is that you don’t do it consistently. You read a higher percentage of social media content than you interact with. Unless you know the person, or the content really makes you laugh, you probably will just read it and move on. This is where the majority of people in social media and blogging are at. There is nothing wrong with this amount of participation… unless you have a blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account that you are looking to build an online community with.

2. Looking To Participate

This level of participation is different from the “Hit and Miss” person. This person is looking for a way to participate with each bit of content they come across. 9 out of 10 times they read something, they leave a comment, “like” it, etc. This person may not read the same amount of content as the “Hit and Miss” participant or “Lurker” because they are losing a small amount of their reading time in order to participate. Why would someone do this?

Everytime you leave a comment or interact within today’s social media environments, you are indirectly advertising your own social media/blog. In fact, the most practical way for a blogger to advertise his/her blog is to leave comments on other blog articles (especially the ones that allow you to link your name back to your blog). Not only do readers see your comment and click on your link, but there is a good chance that the author of the blog article will reciprocate your participation back to your blog. This is “The Law of Reciprocity.” You “like” my Facebook content, I’ll probably be more inclined to “like” yours. You “retweet” my tweets, I will “retweet yours too. A lot of people do this on a subconscious level without realizing it. You just naturally end up interacting with people online that started interacting with you more than others did.

If this concept is true, why would you waste an opportunity to interact with content if you’ve already invested the time to read it??? Think about it, you’ve already read the status update or article; how much more time does it take to “like” or leave a comment? 5, 10, 15 seconds at the most, right? Why not take the extra seconds to participate and build up the community you would like be a part of? It is a much more efficient use of time, business-wise, than “lurking” or being “hit and miss.”

For the person or business owner that doesn’t have a lot of time to participate in the online community, this level is the most practical to implement. You can simply set aside 10-15 minutes a day to not only browse content, but interact with it. I promise you, if you consistently interact with online content 3-5 days a week consistently, you will start seeing more interaction with your own content in six short months. Over time, you will begin to identify pages and sites that actually participate in the online community themselves. Those are the people you’ll want to prioritize your participation with because they will reciprocate it back.

3. Exploring To Participate

This is the person that is really looking to “crush it” online. This is where a person not only participates with the majority of content they come across, they are diligent to explore new frontiers of cyberspace to participate with. They scientifically evaluate which sites and/or users are the most influential to participate with along with the amount of reciprocation that is experienced. They are disciplined at browsing for extended periods of time or they browse each morning and night to stay up on everything. This type of user is probably looking for click-through traffic and is selling products/services that are not limited to a geographical location.

Again, the 2^nd level is probably going to be the most practical for most people. I encourage you to coach yourself up on, not just reading online content, but interacting with it as well. You’d be surprised at the relationships you’ll develop, the amount you’ll learn from others that respond to your questions, and the partnerships that form when people reach out to you as a result of your participation.

Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: Blogging, participation, reciprocity, Social Media

Participation

December 31, 2010 By Mason Leave a Comment

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”

Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: Advertising, Blogging, reciprocity, Social Media, Traffic

Search this website…

PREMIUM SPONSOR OF THIS BLOG

@MasonMediaToday Latest Tweets

CATEGORIES

Archives

Recent Comments

Blogroll

More Networks