New Media, New Rules: Making Social Media Work for You
Cara Pring from Social Skinny pointed out statistics on Social Media, which go like this: At least 65% of world’s top companies have an account on Twitter. Thousands of smaller businesses join everyday. 90% of marketers use social media for business while 62% of adults all over the world are on Social Media channels.
Newspapers, television, brochures, flyers, and everything else businesses used to do earlier (and still do now) for marketing and promotions now stand at the brink of inevitable extinction, according to an article on Harvard Business Review. Social Media, publishing, and content marketing is the new way of marketing.
How do you make social media work for you? Here are some tips:
Learn the tricks
It just helps to do social media the smart way. If you had to maintain a blog along with social media channels such as a Facebook Fan page, a Twitter account, a Google Plus account, Tumbler, and a LinkedIn profile, can you imagine the work it takes to publish each new post on your blog individually on each of these channels?
There are smart ways to do this. I personally use the following:
- Bottlenose – for general Twitter use.
- Socialoomph – For scheduling Twitter updates.
- Dlvr.it – scheduling posts across multiple social media channels such as Facebook Fan Page, Linked In, Twitter, etc.
There are countless tools for you to consider. Just pick what works for you and use these tools to make you more productive. Further, learn how to do what it takes to get your updates found.
For instance, Twitter users find Tweets based on “trending topics” with hash tags. They also tend to search for topics of Interest using the Twitter search option with hash tags.
If you see that a trending topic is like #ThingsThatKeepMeAwakeAtNight how do you use that for your business? If I was doing content marketing, SEO or freelance blogging, I could use: “9 Clients with 12 Blogs in Total, to be published. 5 Guest Posts. 3 Reports. You know why these are #ThingsThatKeepMeAwakeAtNight”
Yet another thing to know, if you mention other Twitter on your Tweets ( make it a habit to do so), take the effort to find out their exact Twitter handle and use it in the Tweet. Everyone checks out their “mentions” on Twitter and they would know when you talk about them. Do the same with Facebook Fan Page updates and Google+ updates.
Give, even if you don’t get
I am a big proponent of giving on social media. The unfettered, altruistic, warmly generous act of giving works like magic on new platforms such as the big social media networks.
Most people have this question on their minds when the topic of “giving” comes up: Why give? What if nothing comes back?
I’d say, “Let it be”. Don’t even expect anything to come back. Forget about getting heard, getting seen, and getting noticed. I won’t say you shouldn’t aspire for these, I am just advocating the need to desensitize yourself from your expectations. If it happens, it’s a bonus. If it doesn’t, it gives you more reasons to work harder.
You Scratch My Back, I Scratch Yours
Everyone makes offers, all the time. Some of these offers are blatant and straight white others are veiled. Everyone makes offers all the time. Everything happening around you is doing it in exchange for something. That’s the core of all economic exchange; it’s the bedrock of capitalism.
The Irrestible Offer: How to Sell your Products or Services in 3 Seconds or Less By Mark Joyner of the Simpleolgy fame has plenty of tips for making offers. On social media, it’s best to scratch others’ back until they begin to scratch yours. In fact, it’s all right if no one ever scratches your back at all. You just keep doing it. How do you make offers? Start with a free one. Offer to do something for no cost. That’s an irresistible offer for starters.
You can reach anyone, but are you?
Say, who do you want to reach out to: Felix Dennis? Sir Richard Branson? NASA? Or perhaps you’d like to reach out to a sports or movie celebrity? The Internet has made it easy to at least initiate conversation with anyone you like. Some of them are very approachable. Some folks who shot back an email to talk to me are:
- Johnny Smoes, the CEO of Zanity
- Rand Fishkin, Owner of SeoMoz
- Gery Carson, President of SFI
Did you know that I’ve had Adobe, Lynda, Search Engine Watch, and plenty of other big names talk to me casually on Twitter? What would you do if you had the power to reach to anyone?
Grow your network. Grab everyone’s attention. It’s not easy to run your business or practice your profession and still be able to spend time on Social Media all the time. That’s why, aim to get the most of the few hours that you choose to spend online.
How is your social media working for you? I would like to know what are your experiences with Social Media. Feel free to post your inputs in the comments section below.