To start building your network on Twitter, you follow people who are in your industry or have similar interests. You can find them through keyword searches, or by following suggestions from Twitter.
Many people won’t automatically follow you when you start following them on Twitter. In that case, your only option is to engage those people in conversations, and give them a reason to follow you. (more…)
Working with small businesses that are trying to figure out how to use social media to their advantage, I am repeatedly asked about ROI. Everyone wants to know how using social media is going to help them do business and generate sales. To this I say, “It’s not about making money, but about creating value.”
Of course, I’m not so naïve that I don’t understand that we’re all in business to make money. However, there seems to be a misconception that social media was created and designed to give marketers an easy answer to generating sales. This is when I want to scream, “Hey, it’s called SOCIAL media, not MARKETING media.”
But businesses and marketers still want to criticize social media channels, saying that there seems to be an awful lot of talking but not very many people listening.
I often talk about the “6 Ws” and how they are the basis for almost every strategy I design. This approach is easy and takes about 20 minutes. I usually use it at the beginning of a project, like when I’m writing a blog. But you can use it anytime you need to get the creative juices flowing. The six Ws are: who, what, where, when, why, and how (“how” ends with w, so we’ll include it).
I discovered this process while reading The Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam. I learned that the solution to every problem can be found in a well-phrased question. The best way to come up with that well-phrased question is to put all the questions in front of you and see which ones jump off the page. One of them will hold the key. (more…)
What does listening have to do with being heard? Everything! In today’s communication environment where social media channels are teeming with conversations, it’s hard to get a word in edge-wise. It’s hard to get noticed even when you have something important to say.
Contributing valuable content is only part of the answer. Generally, you know what you want to say and who wants to hear it. But according to my favorite 6W’s method, your strategy could be strengthened by also asking how, when, where and why. You can get some very good answers by listening. Here are five tips for listening well: (more…)
At a recent WordPress Meetup in Denver, Tim Spencer talked about what he does to customize WordPress websites. He develops custom themes to meet specific requirements of individual organizations. He talked about altering CSS code and .php files – stuff that is way over my head.
Fortunately for most of us, the kind of customization that Tim does is really only necessary for complex organizations with hundreds of moving parts. We smaller entities have all we need at our disposal with affordable options readily available in WordPress for customizing our websites. But it’s good to know that advanced customization is an option, and that there are pros who can help us at this level.
Tim offers a few pieces of advice: (more…)
Using social media to promote your business does not mean using social media to do business – not, at least, if it’s done right. It means using social media to “un-market.” I like the term “in-bound marketing,” describing an environment you create where qualified customers seek you. Social media is a great tool for creating such environments.
Social media, though, should be reserved for conversations and relationships. Through these relationships, businesses can attract interest. If they become involved in a conversation about their business, they send prospects to their website. THAT’s where marketing and business are done. (more…)
Matt Weeden, who presented at the Denver WordPress Meetup on September 25, warmed up the crowd by giving us an overview of WordPress’s free themes: how to find, install and activate them. If you don’t have WordPress.org yet, you can see the selection on their theme page. With more than 1200 themes to choose from, the hard part is narrowing it down. This can done by searching by keyword, author or tag. By selecting any of 38 variables in five categories, you can further narrow the search.
Matt demonstrated some of the features on the WordPress dashboard, using two free themes as examples: Twenty Ten (default) and Atahualpa. Free themes can be customized to varying degrees, using options that are built into them. The consensus among this group was that Twenty Ten is one of the most adaptable of the free themes. (more…)
Yesterday I gave a presentation entitled, “Marketing in a New World.” Here is a recap.
The topic: social media. The main point: defining “un-marketing,” a term often used to describe the acceptable use of social media for the purpose of promoting a business. (more…)
As a social media manager, I am always keeping my eyes open for good advice about tools and techniques to streamline the process of managing social media for my clients. The trick, of course, is to get the most out of social media, but to do it efficiently and without missing anything important.
The social media landscape is shifting constantly, so staying on top of the situation means never taking your eye off the ball. Even if you’re managing social media for only yourself or your company, you need a way to stay up on what’s current. The way I do that: I developed an incredible network of other social media managers and early adopters who are always generous with their insights. Here’s a “for instance:”
By Andrew Machado
1. Be Fast
2. Know Your Product
3. Always Be Closing
4. Be Yourself
5. Connect on Twitter and Facebook with your customers
Photo by aytekintanrisever
This blog post is a result of being asked to explain the purpose of Delicious – a social bookmarking program – and how it compares to Digg. Prompted by this request, I realized that although I rely on Delicious every day to organize and access information, I don’t fully appreciate it for its social capabilities. (more…)
