Social Networking Tips & Strategies for the Entrepreneur

When I recently surveyed my subscribers I was flooded with questions regarding social media, everything from how to make it effective, how much time to spend on it, and tips to automate. Here are a few tips and strategies that will help you your social media marketing efforts become more effective.

Can I link my Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In account? Yes, you can! You can link all of these accounts together, there are a few ways to do this. One of the easiest (and it’s also free too!) is www.hootsuite.com – it’s very easy to add all of your networks and then post in one place. This allows you to schedule and automate your status updates. The second free option is www.tweetdeck.com another tool I use daily. This doesn’t allow you to schedule your posts but you can see what’s happening in Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In all at the same time.

How often should you promote your upcoming events on social media and where? Personally, I post my events to all of the sites that I use: Facebook, Linked In, and Meetup. I also put them on my website. I generally start promoting them (lowers cost events) about a month in advance and remind people weekly at first, and then as we get closer to the event every couple of days, and finally every day for the last few days leading up to it.

What is a post of value on social networking sites? I encourage clients to use the 80/20 rule. 80% sharing information, resources, and inspirational messages or personal content and 20% marketing your services and your offers. What’s of value? Well, that’s for you to decide. The #1 rule is to keep your content related to your target market. Don’t try to talk to everyone, instead focus on the key people and share what they’d be most interested in. Me for example, I wouldn’t post information on being an employee, getting a job, or interviews because it’s not my target (soul) market.

How do I put together an effective social media strategy?  First, you need to know who you are marketing to – who is your target market? Too general of a target market makes for tough social media marketing. Second, create a plan and stick to it. Consistency is key here. Commit to 20 or 30 minutes a day and instead of just window shopping join in the conversation and engage your contacts.

How do I offer products and services in social media without sounding like an ad?  Well, if you follow the 80/20 rule above and you aren’t selling all the time, it’s okay to offer your services. A few tips though, in Facebook don’t sell to someone in your friend invite and don’t immediately sell to someone who you just friended.  In twitter, don’t use an auto DM to sell to new followers.

Evaluating social media – is it working? Here’s the thing, social media works – however, I don’t believe it’s an overnight cure to your marketing problems. It won’t bring you a flood of new customers overnight and it won’t fill your pipeline in 30 days. The key is consistency, it took me about 7-8 months of consistent social media marketing to start seeing a return on my investment. You have to build trust, and sometimes it takes a little longer in social media. Now that people know, like and trust me I have an easier time being successful in my social media marketing, but I caution – this isn’t an overnight fix. Give it time, it’ll work if done effectively!

I’d love to know what other questions you or what comments you want to share about these tips. And if you like this post, don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Why Social Media Isn’t Everything

Social Media

Remember that old saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” There’s a reason this cliché has been around so long, it still holds true for many things like (dare I say) social media for example.

 

Wait, before you start thinking I am the black sheep over here, hear me out. I love social media, heck, I even do workshops on how to optimize your efforts with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube BUT like the title of this post “Social Media Isn’t Everything.”

 

Here’s what I mean by this, social media has received so much attention lately that people are literally jumping on the bandwagon in droves, and that’s great it’s more people for us to network with, but here’s the trick. Some people are starting to think that social media is the end all, and that’s just not true.

 

Social media is an incredibly easy, fun, and effective way to use the internet to market your services and I highly encourage the people I work with to use it. BUT, I don’t encourage them to reduce or stop their regular offline marketing strategies.

 

The key is using both AND not putting all of your eggs in one basket – that goes for any marketing strategies. Let’s just say, hypothetically speaking, a year from now a hacker got into Facebook or Twitter, wiped out the entire system and they couldn’t figure out how to get their data back. That means you could potentially lose all of your connections to the thousands of people you worked so hard at adding to your network. Yikes, pretty scary thought.

 

Now, I realize that this is a very unlikely situation and it does appear that social media is going to be around for quite some time; especially since even local TV stations are now tweeting updates.

 

So here’s what you can do. Be sure to take your social media networking to the next level meaning lead people back to you so that YOU own their contact information. Offer them your free report or other useful information so you can capture their email address and officially make them one of your tribe. Or at the very least, lead them to your blog and encourage them to subscribe to your RSS feed – that way they won’t forget about you and even social media vanishes in midair one cold winter’s night your marketing efforts won’t be lost in the black abyss.

 

If you like this blog, subscribe to my RSS feed so we can stay in touch.

 

Social Media 101

Lately there is so much buzz going on with twitter and other social networking sites. I have to admit, I didn’t “get” twitter until a few months ago, but I am definitely a fan now. Micro-blogging is a fun, quick, and unique way to share more of your talents and expertise. Unfortunately, many people just don’t have a clue as to where to start, what to do, or how to use all of those sites.

While I can’t give you all the details here, I am running a social networking “how-to” class on Tuesday, April 21^st. And don’t worry all you need to know how to do is use a tele-phone then I will walk you through the rest. I’ll be covering the basics of twitter, facebook, meet-up, linked in, and blog talk radio. These are the sites that I use the most and have found helpful in building an online presence that ROCKS!

I am still finalizing all the details of the content for the call, so if you have a question that you want answered please post a comment or send me an email.