Social Media Consolidation for Maximum Exposure and Efficient Workflow

Social Media Consolidation for Maximum Exposure and Efficient Workflow

 

The proliferation of social media opportunities does not need to overwhelm you. There are now many solutions for consolidating your social media efforts in order to maximize your exposure, while streamlining the time you put into updating your network.

I will focus on several of the most widespread social media networks around today: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Twitter is by far the most pervasive system for connecting and interacting, giving you exposure and expanding your connections in directions that you didn't plan. A Twitter stream is easy to get going and the opportunities for growth are unstoppable. For some, getting there hands around Twitter takes some time and mental juggling. The success path in Twitter is somewhat counter-intuitive, where growth depends on promoting others. Some give the formula of for every 1 self promoted post on Twitter, you should be posting referenced (or retweeting) 7 times as much information from others. This principle helps to 'spread the wealth', and works on the basis of one good turn produces another.

Facebook has strong traction and is an easier model to grasp especially for marketing. Instead of being a location for featuring the latest shots of the kiddies, you should maintain a Facebook Fan page to highlight the latest with your business or organization.

YouTube has become the ubiquitous source of video the world over. This should also serve as a main new media communication tool. Creating video can be professional and expensive or simple and 'on the fly' with online screen recorder tools like Screen Toaster.

LinkedIn is by far the leading mechanism for maintaining your professional network, and keeping them updated on your latest projects, initiatives, and status.

Bringing the Social Media networks together
Just looking at these 4 options and trying to keep them all relevant with information about your activities seems daunting and exhausting. In addition, you will want to maintain a blog for more in-depth accounts of what you are doing. How can you do this without running yourself ragged? How can you still have time for your real work?

You need to consolidate your social media networks. Here are some useful tools for pulling them together.

1. Blog to Twitter: Push all your blog updates directly to Twitter, without even touching Twitter. Use easy online services like TwitterFeed. You can quickly have your blog directly publishing to Twitter, expanding your blog article exposure to the Twitterverse.

2. YouTube to Twitter: In YouTube account, go to 'Active Sharing'. You can setup that your YouTube activity will automatically publish to Twitter, including new uploads, favorites and comments

3. Facebook to Twitter: Out of your main Facebook account, create a Fan page for people outside your circle to follow your business or organization. You can keep your Twitter stream automatically updated about new posts to your fan page by using the Facebook to Twitter synch app.

4. Twitter to LinkedIn: You are making a strong effort to share relevant and important information over Twitter, but many of your connections may still not have joined the Twitter bandwagon. However they are still in touch with you over LinkedIn. You can set up a connection between LinkedIn and Twitter through your LinkedIn account, see more on the LinkedIn blog.

5. Twitter, YouTube to Facebook: As the Facebook format lends intself more to being a blog format, than the massive Twitter stream, many find it easier and preferable to keep up with via Facebook. Bring your other social media updates on Twitter and YouTube over to your Facebook page. Visit Involver.com’s Application Gallery, look for the Twitter app and follow through for adding both Twitter and YouTube as tabs to your Facebook Page.

Now you have all your networks covered, so no matter where you are making updates, and no matter where your touchpoints are with your connections, you will be maintaining maximum exposure, in an efficient workflow.

From Black Star: 6 Ways to Focus Your Twitter Strategy and Grow Your Photography Business

From Black Star: 6 Ways to Focus Your Twitter Strategy and Grow Your Photography Business

 

Frustrated at the slow progress on Twitter?
Wondering why everyone was getting so excited?
Are you feeling like Twitter is a waster of time.

Read 6 Ways to Focus Your Twitter Strategy and Grow Your Photography Business.

This is an article that I recently had published on the Black Star Agency photographer resources site.

Click here.

Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

Letting a 16 year old do your online marketing

 

As companies feel more pressure to enhance their online presence, marketing teams feel stretched thinner and thinner. The 'new media' paradigms of Web 2.0 and social media, demand more attention and of course - more time. Where can this come from? What needs to give in the marketing priorities? Who needs new focus?

Welcome your boss's nephew - a precocious, grinning 16 year old. To the maturing business world, the challenges of Web 2.0 seem insurmountable on the one hand and are perceived as a waste of valuable manpower on the hand. So why not leave your online marketing strategy to a 16 year old.

There is no doubt that today's generation of adolescents can slip behind a computer like a glove. They can surf faster than their parents, look up information in clever ways, and get onto sites you wouldn't expect. Yet should this precociousness dictate your online marketing strategy.

Just past the year 2000, the corporate attitude to websites began to change. Whereas the new website phenomena seemed like a cute fad whose businss value was unrecognized, company directors demanded of their manager to 'have a website'. This directive in turn was dumped on the secretary, to 'put something together'. Little strategy was put into motion.

- No consideration of measuring site traffic was considered
- No mechanism for gaining subscribers or sign-ins was enabled.
- Contact information was buried
- Product information was non-descript

Yet the directive was fulfilled and a website existed.

Today's WikiPedia, Facebook, YouTube and most of all Twitter are gaining the same fascination by a corporate directors. The old ring of that simple directive can be heard.

They demand of their managers
- to 'have a place on Wikipedia'
- to 'get on Facebook'
- to 'put something on YouTube'
- to 'use that Twitter thing'

Who can the experienced marketing managers turn to?
- Excel spreadsheet specialists?
- Experienced trade show organizers?
- Brilliant marketing writers?

How about a 16 year old.
Teenagers today know how to take video clips of their friends and have it on YouTube the same day. They know how to build friend following on Facebook of hundreds, updating other kids hundreds of miles away about what they did over the weekend. Kids know how to follow Miley Cyrus on Twitter and retweet links to new videos.

It can be said that the new marketer has 'Learned Everything you need to Know in High School.'

Despite this proven skill set, and access to online Internet tools, this adroitness does not equal marketing.

The same rules and approaches of Marketing 101 apply in the world of Web 2.0. Concepts like the lead funnel, measuring indexes, planning next steps, and analyzing data for making clear marketing decisions are still the rule and not the exception.

Sure today's 16 year olds are good at getting something on YouTube faster, but what value is this piece of media. What kind of traffic will it drive? Does it include an action item? Will it be attracting the 'right' traffic?

Yes the boss's nephew can Tweet and Retweet on Twitter, showing the latest Brittny Spears video, but can he put together a Twitter strategy? How will he build a solid set of followers? Has he vetted the followers for your business area? How does he interact with customers on Twitter or has he just been pushed into the Twitter arena to tweet up like a robot, saying a bunch of canned statements that have been created.

A 16 year old's competence in the Web 2.0 world can be very useful, but should not be solely relied upon. If you have 15 videos to add to YouTube, give them to a 16 year old, write the copy to go along with them, set the keywords that you need to 'tag' the videos with, and then let the 16 year old upload these and fill in the information in record time.

For Twitter, once you have built up a strong following of at least a 1000 followers, you can have the 16 year old set up pre-written scheduled Tweets in HootSuite. These Tweets should be carefully crafted to have keywords, hashtags, and most importantly links to your site. Your 16 year old go through the grind of scheduling this list of Tweets like a radio station schedules music for the day, carefully giving exposure to the same Tweets in the morning and the evening so that your followers in both Europe and North America can see them.

Don't under estimate the abilities of our 16 year olds. But don't throw all your online marketing strategy onto their shoulders.

Getting Serious about Twitter

Getting Serious about Twitter

 

So your CEO told you that he wants to 'see the company on Twitter.' What's the next step? What to do? How can this fit into the overwhelming marketing schedule?

To the uninitiated, Twitter sounds like a black hole of marketing bandwidth, sucking up every last drop of time, and forcing you into doing tons of overtime on a global salary. The next steps might look like
- signing up for Twitter and getting the closest username to your company name
- Tweeting a bit for a couple of days, until it feels useless

Then the effort is abandoned, until the CEO comes back with folded arms, asking 'Well, are we on Twitter?'

At this point, this can mean trying to connive a fellow marketer to step into the saddle and start moving your Twitter. An effort equally lost after just a few days.

Twitter does not have to be as much of a time drain as feared if executed properly.

The main elements that are required for moving forward with Twitter are 1) focus and 2) commitment.

Focus
Taking strides to 'get onto Twitter' and make progress means being focused. This means being focused about the goals (acquiring a targetted follower base), staying on course for tweeting about your niche, and maintaining regular exposure in the Twitter stream.

One of the hardest concepts in 'staying focused' is idea of getting started in Twitter mainly by retweeting other people's information - primarily not even about your company or product. How does that work?

When you start in Twitter everything is set to zero, so the main focus initially is building the follower base. By simply tweeting continuously, you are 'Tweeting to an empty house.' No followers. No one hears your tweets.

They say you need to be marketing other people nine times more then you're marketing yourself. Still by being focused on the subjects that are Retweeted, that these topics remain 'in the same ecosystem' as your company, then you are attracting the right kind of people that will also be interested in Tweets about company and product. This is the path of building trust and credibility, and ultimately - a following.

Commitment
If I had a dollar for everyone that started Twitter and quit within a week, well....
The partner to focus is commitment. This doesn't mean abandoning all other marketing projects and sitting at Twitter all day. You can limit your main Twitter time to one morning a week. At this time, when using a Twitter client like HootSuite, you can schedule a set of repeating Tweets for mornings and evenings. YOu can collect relevant Tweets about your subject using tools like SocialOOmph that will pipe you emails about Tweets using designated keywords.

Results
Success and results on Twitter don't come overnight and not even in a week. However, if you persevere and stay on target your Twitter reputation will grow, and within a few months you will start to see the results that the CEO asked about.

Twitter is no diary

Twitter is no diary

 

Micro blogging. Life spanning. Twitter has been called a lot of things, but as a marketing tool it is no diary. Twitter is a new communications platform, bringing the immediacy of web pages and the ease of email into a new paradigm.

Tweeting for your company, product or service?
You don't need to tell your followers what you had for breakfast, or that you didn't have a towel when you got out of the shower. You need to keep yourself relevant via Twitter. The most important and lucrative path to relevance is via information. Turn your Twitter stream into a 'channel', like another channel in your cable retinue. You have 'The Cooking Channel', the 'Sports Channel', and even the History Channel.

You Twitter channel should be focused on your niche, that's what makes you relevant. Don't let it be
- an online chat to your friends
- a place to share email jokes
- a tweeting spot for various marketing promotions you are running

Focus. Focus. Focus.
These three words are the essential building blocks for a successful brand, and they will also guide you to creating a relevant Twitter stream (channel). We look at CNN for news, we look at ESPN for sports, so your Twitter Channel should be the stream for your market or target audience.

How to pick a Twitter username

How to pick a Twitter username

 

Setting a 'username' in Twitter requires taking into consideration a number of issues.

First how are you recognized?
In Twitter, most of the time your followers will see you flying by in the Twitter stream they are following. That means they will see:
- your Avatar image
- your name
- your Tweet post

So bearing this in mind, in considering your username, you can be creative and select something that will COMPLEMENT your Avatar image, rather than repeat it.

For instance your company logo can be in your branded colors and serve as your Avatar, and a descriptive word can be your username.

Second, what impression do you make
The next line of engagement on Twitter is followers visiting your full Twitter page.
There your page is very identifiable and fully branded
- use a custom background image featuring product imagery, useful link information, and at a glance product info
- Fill in the bio section of your profile, using prime keywords
- show your URL

So rather than just picking your company name as your Twitter 'handle', pick a popular keyword for your market to conquer that area. For instance, if a computer manufacturer chose a Twitter name like fastcomputer, rather than Compaq, it could further their brand perception.

Branding on Twitter

Branding on Twitter

 

Recently I saw an article about Branding on Twitter. I was very excited about the headline, seeing a lot of potential for Branding and Twitter. I went in and read the article, but was disappointed.

The article focused on one of Go Daddy's new initiatives for when you set up a new URL you have a quick link to sign up for Twitter and register your Twitter name. The article tied this into branding for the importance of having a branded Twitter name.

I was not just a little in a huff at that ending, because this advice didn't begin to explore what twitter means to branding.

Starting Points
True! Your Twitter name should extend your brand, and you should also create a background that extends your brand identity. Yet these actions alone still leave nearly entirely off the 'Twitter radar', in other words, nobody knows who you are.

Extending your brand
Once you have your Twitter account set up to reflect your brand, the most important step is adding followers. Your followers can serve as the 'mouthpieces' of your brand, commenting, praising, and sharing your brand throughout the Twittersphere. For the ultimate statement on branding is "Its not what you say about you that makes your brand, its what THEY say."

Getting more followers
The lure to pumping up the 'Followers' number on your Twitter profile can be seductive. There are many program out there trying to pull you in with "Add 400 followers a day" or "how I got 10K followers in 90 days". Don't be pulled in by these tactics. As much as Twitter is being hailed and discussed, like any other web marketing tool, it still requires time, patience, hard work, and your analysis.

Stay Focused
You know your brand, your audience, and brand associations. So stay focused. Look for people on Twitter that can be interested in your brand, and even 'tweet' about it. Do a keyword search in Twitter for some of your brands focused keywords. Join groups that focus on niches related to your brand like Twibes.

Your Followers reflect
Your followers reflect who you are. If you are just going for the numbers, you can leave your account on autopilot while spammers and porn follow your account and Tweet your name. To keep your brand healthy and legitimate, you will need to vet your followers frequently to keep followers that are close to your brand. This is important for several reasons. Firstly, spammers don't care about anything you are tweeting about, and won't comment or retweet. You need quality and credible followers. Secondly, by keeping spammers in your follower list you are polluting your account. Legitimate followers will hold back from commenting on your Tweets out of concern of being exposed to your spam followers. This exposure will have a domino effect onto their account and Twitter experience.

The bottom line
Its less about how you look on Twitter, but about what they are saying about you on Twitter. The more influence you can have on what they are saying about you, and pushing that out, the greater impact that Twitter will have on your brand.