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Most business owners have some kind of social media marketing in place. This is true for big business, small business, and home businesses. But, if you haven’t really gotten your foot in the door, below are five steps to get an audience going. 1. Open an account in social networks you think will work well with your business. There are lots of networks to choose from. A couple of the biggies

Images really do work. Studies prove that they boost social engagement. I’ve been reluctant in this area. There’s Facebook and Pinterest, and even Google+ that have lots of images. I hoped Twitter would remain image free. That wish was short-lived as more and more images appeared in Twitter posts. But, it’s more than a trend. Tweets with images get more retweets, the golden marketing

Have you seen those tweets soliciting Twitter followers and retweets? I sure have. Buying Twitter followers is a No-No. It’s like buying a list of subscribers for your email list. It’s just unethical. But, what about buying retweets? I hadn’t even thought about this until I read an article at Devumi. (1) It listed the Pros and Cons of taking advantage of this strategy. And, they sell the

There’s a commercial on TV that shows someone doing one sit up; someone eating one blueberry; and someone eating one piece of broccoli The gist of the ad is that you can’t simply do just one of something to expect good health. Interestingly, I don’t remember what brand it was or what the marketer was trying to sell. But, that’s beside the point. What I took away is it takes ‘more than one.’

I’ll admit I hadn’t thought about Twitter backgrounds. I did have a Twitter header created, but again hadn’t given the background a second thought. Then I read an article at Devumi Blog. Devumi explains that having a customized background does a number of things, including giving you another place to put your logo. Other benefits include: 1. Brand uniformity, including your color scheme 2.

Social media is one of the top marketing strategies. Just about everyone is taking the time to work Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and so on. But, how do you know if your social media efforts are generating results? It’s true that working social media will boost website traffic and will create connections and engagement, but is that enough? Will these benefits translate

We’ve kind of been trained to think that all marketing numbers matter, especially when it comes to social media. How many Twitter followers do you have? How many Facebook followers or fans do you have? What about Google+ or Pinterest? While these numbers used to be important and in some instances still are (even if just for show), quantity isn’t all it used to be. I’ve seen Twitter users

Yep. There’s another marketing term and strategy, crowdsourcing. It’s important not to confuse crowdsourcing with crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding your project through donations from people – a large number of people. Crowdsourcing does use lots of people, but to generate ideas, not funds. An article at CBSNews.com, explains, Despite the jargony name, crowdsourcing

Some social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and GooglePlus, have optimization features for shared blog posts. It’s kind of how you’d optimize your blog posts on your website. Below is a list of 3 social network features to be aware of (and take advantage of): 1. The post title. Along with creating a keyword effective and powerful blog post title, you need to keep the characters to 40.

Last week I talked about creating your own social network posting schedule template. In that article I mentioned having an Excel column for Titles in the template. I added a ‘Title’ column in my template, so I can tweak the title of a particular post for each time I tweet it within a week, a month, or other. Why do you want to tweak your titles? The hard truth is that only a minute fraction

An article I wrote a while ago, Website Ranking - Basic Metrics (1), got a lot of engagement. Interestingly, the engagement came from both sides of the coin – those who like knowing their ranking numbers and those who don’t. Down with Rankings On the ‘con’ side of dealing with website rankings, some appreciated the information the article provided, but don’t hold much weight in the ranking

If you’re like me, you have a social media posting schedule in place. It might be through an automatic service or done manually. It’s a schedule to help you be consistent . . . and stay visible. But, do you actually keep track of which bits of content you’re sending where and how often? Twitter is my primary social media network. I schedule tweets for about every hour and 15 minutes. I space

I’ve decided to make Wednesdays TIPS days. The posts may not be too long, but they will be packed with actionable tidbits of content writing and content marketing tips. Today is about the power of GooglePlus. I do marketing research every day and a littler earlier today, I was looking for GetResponse’s blog page. Instead of going to the site, I thought it’d be quicker to do a Google search

No matter what business you’re in, words are at the crux of everything. Whether it’s an in-house note, instructions, guides, web copy, content writing, fiction writing, book marketing, entertainment . . . You get the idea. Words instruct, alert, command, teach, enlighten, encourage, amuse . . . and they motivate. There are powerful words. There are magically motivating words. There are words

At this point in time, most everyone knows the importance of ‘working’ social media marketing. It’s a powerful marketing strategy that has the ability to bring traffic, boost authority, boost search rankings, and increase conversions. Again, it’s powerful. But, when using social networks, there are certain practices you should avoid to prevent harming your brand’s image, credibility, and

I read lots of posts from high-quality marketing sites. Doing so, I get lots and lots of information and ideas. When I’m in a rush, I save the link to an article I want to read and go to it when I have time. Well, I just went to an article at Social Media Examiner (SME) titled, “7 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Social Media Shares” (1) and I have to say it was one of those “Oh Wow” moments.

Business is no longer 9 to 5 or even 7 to 7. It at times feels like it’s round the clock. The reason? The 24/7 of social media. Keeping your brand in constant visibility, trying to fight through all the other internet noise, and keeping up with communications and networking, can be time consuming and draining. To take a breather, you can put your social media postings and communications

Guest post by Matthew Yeoman We’ve all had that experience of being on a social media profile for a brand we like, looking at their content, and then having the urge to get up and head to their store. I usually get this thought when I’m looking at food or sneakers. My example, and the examples that you can think of in your head, are the first pieces of proof that social media marketing can

In a recent post at The Social Ms, it explained that the heavy-hitter social influencers use a particular strategy to get the right followers and lots and lots of followers. The Strategy It’s the “follow-unfollow” strategy and it’s in two parts. 1. What this simply means is you follow heavy-hitters in the hope they’ll follow back. But, there’s another strategy to this, you become visible to

Before social media networking, social proof came in the form of reviews, testimonials, recommendations, referrals, word-of-mouth, and so on. This form of ‘proof’ came through word-of-mouth or written. Now, it’s all about social proof. But what exactly is this new strategy? According to TechCrunch, “Put simply, it’s the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are

The Social Media World 2015 event is taking place March 25th to March 27th. And, it is the event of the year. For most of us, it’s really not feasible to drop everything and go to San Diego (although, it’d be great if you could). I know I'd love to. So, to make sure you don’t miss out on anything. To make sure you have an opportunity to partake of this important marketing event, Social Media

We all know that social media marketing is a must for at least five reasons: 1. Increased visibility 2. Increased traffic and rankings 3. Building authority 4. Making connections 5. Finding potential clients / customers (leads) The biggies in the social network channels are Facebook and Twitter, with Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn following behind. But, should this be the case? LinkedIn in

One of my email subscribers asked me about Staged. It’s a social media engagement service that gets you Followers. But, unless you have the budget, it can get expensive since there’s a monthly fee.I’ll call the subscriber John Doe for this article.The other part of John’s question was that although the service did get him a lot of Followers on Twitter, how could he monetize them.The first thing

An article at Social Media Examiner discusses the habits of social media marketers that help boost productivity. The post is interesting and covers six tips - I’ll cover four of them here. 1. Number one is a give-in: you need to know your audience and cater to them. This goes for any form of marketing – you need to know who your audience is and what they need or want. It’s pointless to send

According to Bloomberg Business, Twitter has reached a deal with Google to have its Tweets appear in Google’s search results. This is huge news for businesses that use Twitter as part of their social media marketing. As of February 4th, the deal wasn’t made public. Some of the technicalities were being worked out. But, the author, Sarah Frier, said, “In the first half of this year, tweets