Archive for the ‘Social Networking’ Category

How to Energize your Social Media Marketing

Are you having trouble getting any activity going with your social media accounts? Not finding them to be particularly productive? Here are some pointers as to how to break through the noise and get some value out of your social media time.

Build Relationships

Your first priority should be building relationships. If you are posting and no one is responding, then you aren’t building relationships now are you? Just think about how you behave at a cocktail party. OK, well that might not work for everyone, but some of you will get that the conversation should be 2-way. You should be talking about 50% of the time and listening 50% of the time.

But how do you get that conversation started online?

Broaden your network

I found that social media really came alive for me when I became an open networker. That means that I will connect, friend or follow anyone who requests it. Okay so I did once decline someone whose entire stream was porn. But in general, if you aren’t a spammer, I’ll connect.

How has that helped? Well, I have thousands of people in my network rather than a few hundred. Now I have people that I haven’t personally met, but they understand the principles of networking which are “I help you and eventually you will help me”. Many of these open networkers are more active in social networks and more productive connections than the people I know in the offline world that aren’t active & open online networkers. Also, as an open networker, people can connect to me without fear of rejection. All are welcome.

It was a bit scary making the transition to open networker at first. I was afraid of spammers and yes, I do get unsolicited communications. Some are valuable, some are not. I sort through and trash the bad ones and act on the good ones.

I’ve had to refrain from sharing information about my family and children that I used to post and share more openly. Not knowing every person who connects to me requires me to be a little more protected of personal information. Other than that, I have found it to be a positive experience and have enjoyed the new friends, colleagues and partners I have made.

So how do I broaden my network?

Join groups and forums with people of similar interests or potential customers. If you are on LinkedIn, join the Open Networkers group and you will get a list weekly of open networkers you can connect with. On Facebook you can ask to connect with anyone you went to high school or college with, anyone in your address book, etc. You can connect to friends of friends. With Twitter there are lots of directories and tools to help you find connections that have similar interests as you or follow people you want to follow or who tweet from a location you want to target.

Be patient

Building relationships takes time. It takes more time online than it does in person. I believe that online is more leveraged and will help you scale your business, but it doesn’t replace the face-to-face contact. When you are first getting started in your business, face-to-face will get you more valuable feedback quickly so you can adjust your messages and style.

When you take your networking online remember it can take 6 months or more to develop a productive network, depending on how much time you attribute to it. Yes, you can get followers quickly, but you will not have a relationship with most of them so they will not immediately buy from you or refer you. They will trust someone a friend referred them to first, or someone they met in person, because it is easier to trust and communicate when you can also assess the non-verbal cues. But, you can only meet so many people in person. It’s easier to get your message spread more widely and to build a bigger list online. Online is where you build leverage and scale.

Provide Content

The best way to get people to connect with you is to provide great content. Content ideas include:

• Tips
• Information
• Blog posts
• Quotes and inspirations
• Promos
• Other people’s content, quotes and inspirations, blog posts, etc.

Engage your audience

The most important piece to energizing your social media networks is to engage them. What does that mean? It means you need to interact with them as you would in a face-to-face conversation. You need to:

• Respond to comments they make to you
• Comment on their posts
• Answer their questions
• Post your own Questions
• Compliment others when appropriate
• Be a person. Share who you are, your quirks and brilliance.

Notice that sending out promotions is only a small part of the content you are able to provide. The more you give the more you will get. Remember to give others a chance to shine and give them credit. People love to be complimented.

This all may sound overwhelming but there are ways to automate some of this and to systematize your processes so you can keep it in line with the time you have allotted. I spend about an hour and half on email and social media each day. I consider the two to be linked as many of my social media accounts shoot me an email when I need to respond to something.

Prioritize you networks

You can’t be super effective at managing 15 social media accounts unless it is your full time job. Feedback shows that most people can only effectively manage 3-5 accounts. The top 3 have become (not in any order):

1. Facebook which is great if you have a consumer audience,
2. LinkedIn which is super if you are b2b or looking for tips and support to build your b2c or b2b company, and
3. Twitter which is great for live streams of information and making connections with people with similar interests (then the relationship often moves to a different forum for more in-depth conversations). It’s great for live event recording, customer service, timely announcements and other time-sensitive information.

There are a myriad of other social media platforms and which ones you choose to focus on should be based on who your target customer is and where they like to hang out.

Remember to bring your own energy to your social media communications. Share your expertise. Share who you are. Be genuine.

I know it’s a bit weird at first when you start communicating with a big black void. But there are people out there and you will be heard. You can be shouting at them, selling them or engaging them into a two-way relationship with you. Which one do you think will be most effective, most productive and most energizing for all parties?

How do you handle an Social Media or Twitter post when you are an affiliate marketer?

Last night I was at an event where an attorney spoke about internet marketing laws. I asked her this very question and she responded about how there was no good legal guideline in tort law established yet. But, based on the new FTC Endorsement Rules, you should somehow disclose your relationship (if compensated for it) when endorsing something via a tweet or status update.

Then, this morning I received this email from a company with whom I am an affiliate. From a business owner perspective, I actually think it is a pretty good policy and guideline for people to follow when posting an affiliate link to Twitter or social media networks so I am posting it here for others to learn from.

Dear Debra Zimmer:

XXX.com will be updating their program terms to include guidelines for advertising in the social media space.  This update was due to recent FTC rules and regulations that XXX.com and its affiliates must comply by.  We encourage you to read through the information below and make the necessary changes to be compliant.

1.     All social media messages must adhere to XXX.com content standards. http://www.XXX.com/affiliate/contentstandards.asp

2.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must disclose their relationship as an affiliate. Reason: We require this so that all affiliates will be in compliance with FTC regulations. If you are recommending a company or product by sharing a link that can potentially earn you revenue, you must disclose this to your followers, readers, fans, etc.

Example of compliant message:
Need dental care savings? XXX.com has 30+ discount dental plans to choose from (affiliate link) http://bit.ly/GoodExample

Example of NON-compliant affiliate message:
Just saved lots of money using my plan from XXX.com. You should get a plan too. http://bit.ly/BadExample

3.    Affiliates linking to XXX.com on social media sites must state in their bio or in the link that they are an affiliate and not a XXX.com employee. Reason: While we welcome affiliates to use social media, we do not allow affiliates to act as official spokespeople for our company.

Contact Information
Have a comment or question about this update? Call or email your Affiliate Manager.

I haven’t seen anyone on twitter or other social media sites using a disclosure statement yet, have you? Have you been seeing tweets and status updates that say “affiliate link”? I would bet that it would make it a lot harder for affiliates to make money. Is it just me or does it seem that the affiliate industry is taking a beating recently?

Testimonial Advertisements & Celebrity Endorsements

The Federal Trade Commission has finally issued an update to their guidelines concerning the use of endorsements and testimonials as used on the internet and social media. The last update was in 1980, well before the influence of websites, blogs and social media.

If you are a blogger, affiliate marketer or internet marketer, you need to be aware of how these revisions affect you and your business. You may want discuss these changes with your attorney and make adjustments to your web site, blog or social media campaigns.

The full text of the press release is available here.

The full text of the Act is available here.

In summary, the clarifications to the FTC Act are:

1) Advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.

2) “Material connections” (sometimes payments or free products) between advertisers and endorsers – connections that consumers would not expect – must be disclosed. So, Bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

3) Celebrities have a duty to disclose their relationships with advertisers when making endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media.

It’s a good idea to ensure your web site, blog and social media strategy are following these new guidelines for the use of testimonial advertising and endorsements.

Business Networking

Business networking is used to create opportunities through like-minded people.

The goal of business networking is to build new relationships and thus generate business. It can be more cost effective than other forms of marketing. Social Networking is one form of networking, but offline business networking is often more effective.

People do business with people they like and trust. Like and Trust is easier to achieve in a face-to-face format. That is why professional networking is still so popular among small business owners.

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Tips:

• Get out and talk to people.
• Meet with everyone you know to share what you are doing and ask them for referrals.
• Always think about how you can help the person you are talking with.
• Ask for a business card. Give them one of yours.
• Connect with them online. Ask them to subscribe to your mailing list/newsletter.

Resources: Places to Network & People to Network with

• Chambers of commerce
• Alumni Groups
• Friends and family
• Twitter meet ups
• Career fairs
• Religious groups
• Parents of your children’s friends and classmates
• Neighborhood groups
• Professional organizations
• Networking organizations