How many hours have you spent adding buttons, gadgets and widgets to your new blog or website? You research the right tools, share buttons, share bars, analytic tracking tools and more. You install them with a hope and a prayer that someone somewhere is going to use them. However, unfortunately many business leaders find they don’t get used. The share buttons sit on their site with the lonely zero or default +1. Chances are your pocket book or wallet might be feeling a little lonely too.
Tonight I had great plans for a productive Sunday evening. We spent the first part of the evening at Crossing Church for a rockin’ worship and message, sweet treat at Baskin Robins and then headed home and put kids to bed. It was just me, the laptop and hubby with the remote.
As I settled in for a few minutes on #BlogChat, the big plans of a productive night on social media inclusive of a new blog post slipped away into never never, never tweet land.
It is not news that Facebook just launched a big round of changes, yet again. One change is getting a lot of attention, which is the death of the Facebook default landing tab.
I have heard tons of complaints on the removal of the tab. I’ve heard online marketers say the death of the Facebook tab is the death of their online marketing strategy? What? Seriously folks?
You snooze you lose are what some are thinking after the grand finale of the 2012 Daytona 500.
As if rain delays, crashes and jet fuel fires wasn’t enough, we also got to witness a fluke accident with a service truck as well as a driver gain 140,000 twitter followers in just a couple hours.
The 2012 Daytona 500 happenings are an amazing case study and testament to the power of interactive, social TV.
What is it about some blogs that you visit and you naturally have a tendancy to want to sit back in your easy chair, read and relax? It may make you feel inspired, relaxed, motivated, smart or even challenge your thinking. Then as soon as you are done reading it you feel empowered, ready to get out there and rock your blog and business?
What makes a good blog? How can you rock yours? Here are 12 easy tips to rock any blog in any industry starting now. You don’t need a developer to do most of these. With a little focus on your audience, your online brand presence and relevant content you can take your blog from zero to zoom speed in no time.
Think back five, four, three, two and even one year ago. How different was your business? How different did you communicate with your clients, partners, service providers, and employees? A year ago were you still saying social media was just a fad? Five years ago were you one of the folks stating the internet was [...]
Tweet this, retweet this, check out this blog post, click here, act now, subscribe for free updates, watch this, share this, like me, follow me, act now. Whoa! There sure isn’t a shortage of folks telling us what to do in the social world.
From bloggers, internet marketing experts, social media gurus, social rockstars, twitterati, to a-listers someone has something that is going to rock your world with a click, like, follow and tweet.
Anybody who blogs can remember your first post, second post and the empowerment you experienced. The empowerment I felt after leaving behind a career of fifteen years in the corporate world to pursue my dreams as an entrepreneur and being free to write about what I wanted to write about was beyond words. I remember getting those little butterflies as I hit send and would wait to see if anyone read those early posts. I still remember the first nice man who commented on my blog.
As we spend time with businesses large and small, there is one common theme. They all know they want the the social spaghetti. The advanced businesses know they need to use a fork versus the spoon. However, when it comes to the art of what to do when and how much they struggle.
What is a social business really? Can we point to even one business, any business and state “yes, that organization is the perfect example of a social business!”?
When was the last time a big national brand made you feel special via the social waves? Are we starting to lose the hope we once had in social media of humanizing brands? The hope of the brand coming out from behind the logo and showing they care and want to connect with real people? The possibility of them actually demonstrating their brand promise via social media versus just plaster the words on their Facebook page?
Are some brands falling prey to traditional mass marketing methods that are simply masked with a coat of new paint in red and marked with a K+ and called social media? Are some fooling themselves into thinking they are engaging by leveraging only automated tweets, retweets, and direct messages?
People are moving by the masses to social communities and platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. There is much pressure to have a page as cool as your competitors, clients, partners and colleagues. There are many experts who tell you how to talk, how to tweet, what to say, when to say it, [...]
Dear new social network getting ready to launch,
This message is to the new social network who has made, is making or will make plans to take over Facebook and the rest of the social media world as we know it.
Every week there seems to be a new social network popping up. I am not saying new networks are bad. I love innovation. However, I will boldly state that their marketing and social network takeover strategies and messages are not working.
A new social networking platform, UNTHINK was unveiled yesterday. It is yet another platform where the founders are claiming to be the Facebook killer, the best thing since sliced bread and Myspace.
Random acts of marketing (RAMs) will melt the positive in your business checking account, return on investment and brand equity like an ice cube on a hot day on hot cement. RAMS are a leading cause for failure in business, marketing and of course social media.
Integration may seem like a lot of work up front. When I talk about integration with clients I often get that raised eyebrow look and know they want to say “what is she talking about, we don’t have time to think further than tomorrow… we’ll never get integrated… she just wants to complicate the project so she can charge us more!” This couldn’t be further from the truth!
Influence is in the eye & heart of the beholder.
Can influence truly be 100% measured via any tool? My belief and answer to this question is no. Some of the peeps who influence me the most are the ones who make me think.
Yes we can measure what action is taken on the web that may or may not be a result of being influenced by an individual. We can measure if someone inspired us to click, like, opt-in. However, we can’t measure if we truly read, understand, relate or think.
A word that has been on my mind the past few weeks is relevancy. It is a word we all talk about yet many don’t understand.
I have also received several comments asking me “relevant to who?” on posts that include discussions of relevancy.
Why are they asking me “who” their brand should be relevant to? I think often times people get to the bottom of a blog post and become frustrated they weren’t provided all of the answers to complete their business and integrated social marketing plan.
In the first post on this series I provided 10 reasons why social media is about he people. I talked about how important relationships are to success.
For the second post in this series I am going to focus on the planning and prioritization stages of social media.
What would you do if for free 600 million people would share their life with you? Everything? And you could capture it in a data base to monetize?
What if you could learn what they like and don’t like. What they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and who they ate it with.
What if they told you who all their friends are and what they ate as well?
Can you imagine the data and what can be learned about people, their preferences and behavior if you could pull off a free life time survey with 600 million people!?
The time has finally come. You have your plans, objectives, budget and even a social media manager to help you. Social media is your name and your game with a goal of integration and pastures of happy Twitter followers and Facebook fans. If you are lucky you might even end up with a happy boss and delighted shareholders.
However, there is one thing keeping you up at night. You can’t quit thinking “how the heck is anyone going to know I exist? How will I stand above the crowd, the millions of other Twitter followers and Facebookers?”
First of all, you don’t need to stand above the millions. What’s more important is that you are relevant and able to connect with the right people who will help you zoom your business and your life.
Many social savvy business leaders and marketers have integrated social media into their DNA. We know how to tweet with one hand, check into Foursquare in a split second & post a photo to Facebook without missing an run on the rugrats baseball field.
Regardless of where you are with social media, there is one fact you need to understand.
There is a conversation happening in your honor right now. The question is are you part of it?
So you work hard to connect with your audience. You know what they like. You know what they need. You blog and your fans love your content. They want to share it with their friends, family and pets. Bottom line your content rocks and you know it.
However, this scenario has one issue. Although your content is getting read and your metrics are out the roof, it’s not getting shared. The shares to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are dismal at best.
You just can’t figure it out. You wonder for a brief second if maybe your audience isn’t on social media. However, you quickly come to your wits as you know they are.
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