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Putting Together a Social Media Schedule

This is updated from a post on Oct 26, 2010.

One of the most important parts of being active in the social media world is taking responsibility for your Facebook, Twitter, and any other internet marketing outlets you have. When we put our posts out and we like other peoples posts that is a good start to taking responsibility. When we send out Newsletters or email marketing campaigns we want other people to read them right?

Well it is a two sided road; I mean we all have to put in our efforts to read other peoples stuff as well. My tip for that is picking your inner circle of people and people you have made a power partner and start by reading their newsletters and/or emails. The same thing goes with our social media posts. We want people reading our post, tweets, events, questions etc. also emailing us wanting to work with us or learn more about what we do. We have to do that with others. The one thing I always say about social media is it brings people, communities, and companies together all over the world.

So how do we do that? It is easy . . . we put together a weekly schedule and then we implement it into our routine just like checking emails, and making calls.

Monday- Using www.Hootsuite.com schedule your posts to go out onto your Facebook personal page, Facebook business page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Ping.fm. Using my post before this one to help first create your strategy so you know what you need to post on your social media profiles and when. (Schedule an hour and a half to start)

Tuesday- Login to Facebook and add 10 people into your business list, research these people. Find people that have common interest or maybe looking for your services and put them into the business list you created. Then get onto Twitter or Twellow and search for your Keywords or location. You can search for people using keywords or type in keywords people would use to find YOU and add 50 people. (Schedule about 45 min to start, once you get the hang of it you can probably get it done in 30 min)

Wednesday– Spend some time on LinkedIn checking emails and finding people you may know and ask them to connect with you. (Schedule 45 min)

Thursday- Login to Facebook and add 10 people into your business list, research these people. Find people that have common interest or maybe looking for your services and put them into the business list you created. Then get onto Twitter or Twellow and search for your Keywords or location. You can search for people using keywords or type in keywords people would use to find YOU and add 50 people. (Schedule about 45 min to start, once you get the hang of it you can probably get it done in 30 min)

Friday – Repeat what you have done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We are going to add another step into today, Once you are done adding people on Facebook and Twitter you want to go back to Facebook and go to your page, under your logo you will find a tab that says “Suggest to Friends” Click on that and then click the drop down tab to your list you made once that list pulls up on the top right hand side it will say “Select All” hit that and then send invitations. What this is doing is asking all the people you have been adding as friends to become a fan of your page!

Now this is what I do and share with people you are more than welcome to move it around however it works for you. Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions of things that have helped you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Putting together a weekly social media schedule: ne of the most important parts of being active in the social media world is taking responsibility for your Facebook, Twitter, and any other internet marketing outlets you have. When we put our posts out and we like other peoples posts that is a good start to taking responsibility. When we send out Newsletters or email marketing campaigns we want other people to read them right?

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Mistakes That Will Kill Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Nearly every brand use social media to engage with their audience and build brand awareness. It has become an important and necessary tactic in online marketing. While social media plays a huge role in a business’ success, committing some mistakes may produce the opposite effect.

Here are 4 mistakes that will kill your social media marketing campaign.

Talking too much about your brand

Most business owners use social media to increase brand awareness. After all, it’s a great place to promote your products and let people know about what’s happening about your business. While it’s fine to do this from time to time, please refrain from bombarding your fans and followers with too much information about your business.

Use social media to engage with your fans and followers. It should be a two-way communication. Share some tips, ask questions, encourage them to share their experience with your business etc. Your audience will also appreciate it if you share content that are informative, funny or interesting.

Creating accounts on too many platforms

We all know that social media platforms allow you to reach new people. But given the number of social channels available today, you may find it hard to manage all of these accounts at the same time. To maximize your social media efforts, we recommend that you focus on platforms where your target audience are. It is better to have a good presence on 2 social channels than a lacklustre presence on 5.

If your target audience are teens to young adults, consider focusing your efforts on Instagram and Snapchat. If you are looking to engage with business professionals, LinkedIn is the best option for you.

Ignoring reviews

Most people like to share their feedbacks on social media. If it’s a good feedback, then it would be really helpful for your business. If it’s a negative feedback, it may or it may not hurt your business. It actually depends on how you handle it.

When faced with a negative feedback, it is best to respond to it and ask the person to discuss matters privately. This will give people the impression that you care about your customers. When done right, you can rectify the issue at hand and turn the situation into a positive one. Never ignore negative reviews. Rather, use it as a way to improve your services.

Very little interaction

As a small business owner, we understand that you have a lot on your plate. But in order to see positive results from you social media marketing campaign, make sure you stay active. While we’re not suggesting that you should stay online 24/7, try to allot at least 2 to 3 hours of your day responding to comments, answering messages and interacting with people. If you don’t engage with them, then they’ll forget about you eventually.

Mistakes That Will Kill Your Social Media Marketing Campaign. Nearly every brand use social media to engage with their audience and build brand awareness. It has become an important and necessary tactic in online marketing. While social media plays a huge role in a business’ success, committing some mistakes may produce the opposite effect. Here are 4 mistakes that will kill your social media marketing campaign.

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Your Social Media Framework

Without a structure, it can be difficult to come up with topics for social media posts. We often see business floundering as they try to come up with posts each day or don’t realize there are tools to schedule out their posts so one day a month they post 5-10 items.

Being consistent on social media is one of the most important things that you need to be on social media. This includes both posting at consistent intervals and being consistent in your tone, messaging, and imagery. Your tribe will begin to understand what your business is like through this consistent message. Even if you post only one time per week or one time per month, at least you have that steady flow of information going out online.

To help you create your posting schedule, here are some sample topics you can include, as well as a weekly overview of how your posts can be organized.

Sample Social Media Topics:

  • Quotes
  • Product/Services Overview
  • Testimonials
  • Blog Posts
  • Industry Articles
  • Local Events/Activities
  • Related Topics
  • Day in the Life of Images/Stories
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • How tos
  • User generated
  • Podcasts
  • Livestreams
  • Ebooks
  • Guides
  • Share a Post
  • Questions
  • Surveys

The next step is organizing these so you again have consistency and can optimize your time and resources. For example, your blog posts will get the most traction if you always update them on the same day. This means they should consistently be shared on the same day.

Example Social Media Calendar

 

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Internet Marketing: Power of the “Wall”

The other day I was speaking with a new client and she brought up an interesting point . . . have you ever thought of this? Years and years ago we used a “wall” to communicate with the world.

People would write on walls and rocks telling their stories, telling about their journey, what to expect and educating each other. Now millions of years later we have started to use a “wall” on Facebook and Twitter to communicate; sharing our stories now, what we have learned, how we can educate and help people across the world. Obviously our way now is a lot faster and e bit easier. Interesting how things come around.

What’s that saying, “don’t reinvent the wheel”?  Thinking of how a “Wall” has always been a way to communicate across the world to others, back then it took a lot longer and was much more artistic in a way.   Now we have the world at our finger tips and we are only a “wall” post away from communicating with people all over the world.

When I entered the Internet Marketing world it seemed so surreal to me, being able to send emails, instant messaging, pictures, documents, etc so fast and being able to do business with people all over the world.  They did not even have to be in the same city as me as the internet it allows us to do business everywhere! That is the beauty of Internet Marketing, we are able to now grow our businesses nationwide and build those relationships in order to do that.

Internet Marketing can work wonders for your business if you provide a service that you can do from anywhere or have an online store that people can order from anywhere. Have you ever read the book “The 4 hour work week” or “Beach Money”? These books talk about being able to have an online business where you can work from wherever you are and all you need is a computer and internet access.  They talk about setting your business up in such a way where you are earning residual income so you do not have to be sitting in front of the computer 24/7 working. If you set up your Internet Marketing plan correctly,  you can do this with your business as well!

I challenge you this week to take a look at your Internet Marketing strategy and see if it includes the following things:

  • Social Media Plan (Facebook, Facebook Page, Twitter, and LinkedIn)
  • Have a real blog (wordpress or blogger)
  • YouTube Channel
  • Posting Blogs and video blogs at least once a week
  • Using other online tools like; Google Maps, Yelp, Four Square, Plaxo etc.
  • Making sure you have your backlinks set up to your blog ( You can use Squidoo for this)
  • Educating people via your blog posts and social media posts

If you need help figuring out an Internet Marketing plan I would love to assist you. I look forward to seeing more of you online.

Power of the wall

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Reasons Why Social Media Should Be Your Secret Weapon

Technology has transformed how entrepreneurs connect with their clients, customers and stay on top of the industry. Generally speaking, most businesses use social media to promote their business and boost their sales. Some even use it to make a difference and allow their business to grow.

Now, entrepreneurs have to understand that this social media craze is not just a fad. As a matter of fact, it can be considered as a secret weapon if you know how to implement it correctly. Here are a few reasons why you should get on board.

Keep your customers up to date

You may be able to send out promotional emails, display ads on newspapers or even nab radio and television spots in order to let your customers know about timely announcements, but if you wish to do it quickly, you can always turn on social media.

If you are to think, your social media followers are the same people who have indicated a willingness to be kept informed on all the events and promotions that your business will hold.

Customer service

Living in the digital age, we have reached the point where the use of social media for customer service is not only suggested, it is required.

Social media serves as a helpful and interactive platform that allows businesses to connect with their customers and respond to their concerns and questions in a timely manner. According to a survey, which was conducted by the Social Habit, 42% of the respondents who attempt to contact a company through social media expect a response within an hour; while 32% of which expects a response within 30 minutes.

Humanize your brand

Of course, people are only interested to do business with people. The goal of social media is to allow your personality to shine beyond your company’s logo.

By maintaining an active presence on social media, you are giving your consumers a chance to get to know you and your brand better. This type of behavior invites loyalty, garner authentic relationships and increase trust.

Reasons why Social Media should be your secret weapon: Technology has transformed how entrepreneurs connect with their clients, customers and stay on top of the industry. Generally speaking, most businesses use social media to promote their business and boost their sales. Some even use it to make a difference and allow their business to grow. Now, entrepreneurs have to understand that this social media craze is not just a fad. As a matter of fact, it can be considered as a secret weapon if you know how to implement it correctly. Here are a few reasons why you should get on board.

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Surefire Ways to Skyrocket Your Facebook Engagement

Most business owners use social media to connect with current and potential customers. After all, it’s free, and people are already using it. So why not take advantage of it, right? But with so many businesses vying for people’s attention, posting updates every now and then is no longer enough to maintain an active Facebook page.

Making small changes on what and how you post can help boost your page engagement.

Here are 4 ways to skyrocket your Facebook engagement.

Share something funny

People use social media for entertainment. Many of them would log in to their social media accounts during their lunch break or after office to de-stress. Sharing something funny with your Facebook fans will help lighten up their mood. Go ahead and give people a good giggle.

Boost your best posts

So you have just recently published a new blog post. You share it on Facebook to spark some engagement and drive traffic to your website. Sure, it will work. But if you’re looking to reach a wide range of audience, then we suggest that you boost that post.  You don’t need to spend a huge sum of money in order to get that post in front of your target audience. Just give it a modest boost of $25, target your audience and you’ll see a tremendous increase in likes, comments and shares. Plus, traffic to your blog or website will also increase.

Timing is essential

More than half of the American adult population are active on Facebook. Given the number of people that post every minute, your posts would be buried in a very short span of time. As such, you want to make sure you that you post when your fans are online. There are several online tools that allow you to schedule your post, so you don’t have to wait for a specific time before posting something on your page.

Ask a question

One of the easiest ways to start a conversation with your fans is to ask them a question. If you own a restaurant, you can ask them what food they usually order when they visit your place. Another option would be to ask what they want you to add on your menu. Find a way to leverage in people’s needs or interest.

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How to Use LinkedIn for Your Business

LinkedIn is one of my favorite places to share content. Of Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation with a conversion rate of 2.74%.* It also tends to direct the most traffic to B2B (and B2C) websites even though there is fewer interactions with specific posts.

I recommend using LinkedIn a few different ways for your business.

Add:

Add connections who are prospects AND referral partners. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your dream connections, just be sure to write a personal note about why you would like to connect with them.

Join:

Join groups that include your prospects AND those made of folks within your industry.

Share:

Share your blog posts to your personal profile, your business profile, groups you are a part of, and as an Article.

Ask:

Ask questions of folks within your industry. Many people are afraid this will make them look inexperienced, but why not learn from someone who has already been through the same or a similar experience!

Export:

Export your connections and invite them to join your email list. You can also add these emails to a custom audience in Facebook ads as a way to broaden your reach.

While you are using LinkedIn, think of it like a networking group or coworking space. You want to put your best foot forward and still be authentic. Sharing, commenting, and asking questions can help you to stand out as an influencer in your industry.

LinkedIn is also a space where you can connect with the “untouchables”.

Brainstorm a list of the top 5 to 10 individuals that you admire or have changed your industry and put together a personal note for each of them.

For these messages, start by explaining how you found them and what you have in common. It is okay if you are straightforward and say you were doing research and came across their profile. Then lead into why you would like to connect. By being transparent you can overcome many initial apprehensions an individual may have. Lastly, ask for the connection or the next step.

As long as you get to the point quickly for why you are writing and don’t expect someone to give, give, give, without knowing you or getting anything in return, we’ve had great success building networks on LinkedIn with the big game changers in industries.

How to stand out on LinkedIn: Of Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn is the best social network for lead generation with a conversion rate of 2.74%.* It also tends to direct the most traffic to B2B (and B2C) websites even though there is fewer interactions with specific posts.

*Hubspot

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Can you use that image?

As a small business owner, the last thing you want to be caught up in is a legal battle and additional expense for an image you, at the time, didn’t think twice about using. Even though it is alright to share posts others have made on social media in most circumstances (typically because sharing a post gives credit to the source and links directly back to the original post), you should not assume that every image you find online is okay to use for marketing or on your website.

Watch out, you could be sued.

How to Find Appropriate Images (For Free)

Luckily, there are a handful of sites with tremendous databases of high-quality, “royalty free” images. Additionally, Google has a search feature to sift through search results to find images that have been marked for commercial use. As long as you are grabbing the images from one of the below sites and giving credit where asked for, you should be in the clear!

Can you use that image? The top sources to find free images that are labeled for commercial reuse, free tools to edit images, and what to do if you get sued for using a copyright image online.

Pixabay

pixabay for free images

With over 920,00 free stock photos, illustrations, vectors, and VIDEOS, Pixabay comes in at the top of our list. Even for commercial applications, attribution isn’t required.

FoodiesFeed

FoodiesFeed top database for free images of food and beverages.

Food Blogger? Nutritionist? Just like food? This is the free image directory for you. With new images added frequently, FoodiesFeed offers a great selection of, you guessed it, food and beverage oriented photography.

Iso Republic

Iso Republic - Another great database of images offers images of architecture, food/drink, nature, people, urban, technology, textures, and other images. The wide variety is easy to sort and updated frequently.

Another great database of images offers images of architecture, food/drink, nature, people, urban, technology, textures, and other images. The wide variety is easy to sort and updated frequently.

Stokpic

Stokpic uploads new pictures every 2 weeks with a focus on lifestyle photography. These images are perfect for blogs and social media and the site is easy to navigate.

Stokpic uploads new pictures every 2 weeks with a focus on lifestyle photography. These images are perfect for blogs and social media and the site is easy to navigate.

Superfamous

The Superfamous database of images offers a vast variety of nature, landscape, and abstract images. These images are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes.

The Superfamous database of images offers a vast variety of nature, landscape, and abstract images. These images are free to use for both personal and commercial purposes.

Pin now and read later!

What Tools Can You Use to Add Text?

Adding text to images can also help make them pop. I used to tend to make templates in Adobe Photoshop, however, this was a little overkill for most situations. Now I use free tools that are available to anyone online. My go-t0 tools include:

Canva

Canva - empowering the world to design

Canva allows you to make streams for different image templates allowing you to easy copy a previous image to then adjust the background and text. Additionally, with Canva you have the ability to upload new fonts if your brand font isn’t a present and select your brand colors so you are sure to stay on point. Additionally, beyond social media sized images, you can create banners for blogs, ebooks, infographics, and more. Canva comes with free images, text layouts, and icons, but does offer the option to purchase some premium ones for $1.

Pablo by Buffer

Pablo by Buffer - An easy to use interface for creating image with text overlay and publishing directly through Buffer.

Buffer created Pablo as a way to make it easier to create images with text overlay. They offer a variety of different options you can control, such as filters and sizes, though much fewer than Canva. Pablo has free images you can use as backgrounds and various fonts preloaded. We use Buffer to schedule social media posts, so Pablo is a go-to choice for images with quotes that we wish to load directly to the client’s account.

What Happens When You Get an Email or Letter from Getty Images?

The goal should be to always use images that are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons, but at times everyone makes a mistake and overlooks using one image vs another. You may wake up one day to an email from Getty Images, for example, stating you owe $800+ for the use of a single image. My best advice here is Do Not ignore this notice.

Reach out to the sender and explain that you thought the image was royalty free and are incredibly sorry for utilizing it. Inform them that you have already removed it from the site (delete it from your image directory not just from the page it appears) and ask as politely as possible for them to work with you on the price of the violation.

Often they will come down in price depending on the number of copyright violations you have had. Just make sure you pay quickly and are more careful in the future!

The top sources to find free images that are labeled for commercial reuse, free tools to edit images, and what to do if you get sued for using a copyright image online.

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