Marc's Blog

How To Start A Successful Pinterest Board

June 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Are you leveraging Pinterest for your brand’s growth? Pinterest is increasingly growing in significance and user base, and some brands rely on Pinterest for their overall social media strategy. While the results for each of these brands differ, some brands have gone viral on Pinterest and tapped into new audiences. Many brands go on Pinterest with an aspiration to achieve the same success.

Becoming successful on Pinterest requires a plethora of successful boards. It takes time to create successful boards that generate massive audiences, so instead of focusing on creating multiple successful boards, focus right now on creating one successful board. If you can create just one successful board, then you know what it takes to create multiple successful boards that generate massive audiences.

All you have to do at this point is know how to create a successful board and then create it. Content factors into the value of a board, but there are other factors that impact the experience the people in your audience have when they visit your board.

#1: Keep Your Board Fresh With New Content

When people visit your board, they want fresh content. If the last thing you pinned on your board was from a year ago, then that board won’t be attractive enough to keep someone’s attention for a long period of time. All successful boards do an excellent job at keeping people’s attention over a long period of time over a series of encounters. That means a first-time visitor who enjoyed your board then must still enjoy it a week later (because the content is fresh, relevant, and valuable).

How do you keep a board fresh with new content? One way is to schedule your pins in advance with ViralWoot. You can schedule up to 100 pins per month free of charge, but then ViralWoot has rates that apply if you wish to schedule over 100 pins per month. At this rate, you could schedule three pins per month free of charge. Three pins per day is sufficient for making one of your boards successful, but that same number is insufficient if you want to make multiple boards become successful.

Remember that you want multiple/all boards on your profile to become successful which also requires more work on your part. If you want to have 10 successful Pinterest boards, then you would have to schedule 30 pins per day for all of those boards (or send some of them directly from Pinterest, but if you publish too many pins at one time, you will annoy your followers). That adds up to 900 pins per month which takes a significant amount of time and requires a paid ViralWoot account.

When I came to this realization, I quickly got overwhelmed. I send over 100 tweets per day, write 5,000 words on a bad week, do videos for upcoming training courses, write books, and go to school. Scheduling hundreds of pins per month would be nearly impossible for me to do on my own. I couldn’t possibly do it all by myself.

Then came the contributors.

I knew I couldn’t do it all by myself and didn’t want to pay people to put pins on my boards. The logical solution was to invite people to contribute to my boards. I recently started to implement this strategy, and now some of my Pinterest boards have hundreds of contributors which completely systematizes my Pinterest strategy. New pins get added to some of my boards every day without my involvement. For some of my boards, I simply moderate everything that gets pinned to make sure none of the content is inappropriate or irrelevant (so far, that has never happened. My contributors are the best). At one point, I gained over 1,000 Pinterest followers without pinning anything new on my account. All of the contributors helped update my boards and keep the content fresh.

Why would contributors be so eager to pin on my boards without getting paid? The answer is the exposure. I have over 10,000 followers on all of my boards, and when someone accepts my invitation to become a contributor, that person gets over 10,000 followers to interact with overnight. I give people to power to share their thoughts and ideas on a larger platform. Many of the people I invite take me up on the offer and pin valuable content on my boards. I aspire to have several boards on my account with over 1,000 contributors, so if you want in, let me know.

#2: Optimize Your Pins

When you allow contributors to pin on your boards, you must recognize that not all of the pins that appear on the group boards will be created by you. While this is a great way to systematize Pinterest, you must occasionally publish your own pins. When you do publish your own pins, your pins must optimized to do well on the platform.

The first thing that comes to mind in a pin is the picture. It does not take much time to discover that not all pictures on the web are created equal. While some of the pictures look nice, others are duds, but just because a picture looks nice does not mean it is properly optimized for Pinterest.

The first thing to note is the height of the picture. If the picture you choose is a square, then it will show up on Pinterest as a square. If the picture is 800 pixels by 800 pixels, then it will get reduced to 600 pixels to 600 pixels when it goes on Pinterest. The problem is that although the picture may look nice, it isn’t tall enough. Pictures optimized to do well on Pinterest must be tall enough to take up the entire screen and have little to no background. This explains why pins of lengthy infographics perform much better than the average pin.

The pixel dimensions are just a nice, random fact if you get pictures from Google Images (you can’t change the pixel dimensions unless you use some type of photo editor), but if you create your own pictures, then you have the power to choose the dimensions of that image. Creating a picture may sound difficult at first glance, but creating your own pictures is surprisingly easy with Canva. Canva lets you choose from their pictures, text, and backgrounds to create a picture that you would be proud of. You can also upload pictures from the web that you have permission to use or your own pictures to Canva. The best part from a Pinterest standpoint is that you can customize the size of the image so it is optimized for Pinterest. An optimized picture has a width of 600 pixels and a height of thousands of pixels. Remember that the taller your image is, the more you must add to the image so the background does not take up too much space. You also have the power to specific the color of your background and the colors of various parts of the image. Make these colors bright colors because bright colors perform better on Pinterest than dull colors.

After the picture is another part of the pin that not as many pinners consider when optimizing their pins. The other part of a pin is the pin’s description. Here is how you would optimize a pin’s description:

200-300 characters is the sweet spot with 250 characters being the ultimate sweet spot. Don’t focus on the 250. If your pin is 233 characters or something along those lines, then your description is fine. Remember, people on Pinterest want details.
Include 1-2 hashtags. Hashtags help you get found on Pinterest because they generate traffic from Pinterest’s search engine. They also lead to more engagement, but if you overuse hashtags in your descriptions, your followers will have a tough time reading your pins’ descriptions. If a description is tough to read, your followers will get confused, and confused followers never stick around.

#3: Make Your Profile More Attractive

If people really enjoy one of your boards, they will wonder who created the board, but they won’t be wondering for very long. It is easy to discover who created a group board.

With that said, the way you present yourself affects how people think of your board and brand. That’s why colleges are increasingly asking for students’ social media accounts in the college application process. That’s why there are job interviews. That’s why event organizers ask a potential public speaker some questions before hiring the public speaker to speak at the event. That’s why the first impression is so important.

On Pinterest, your first impression is your profile. You need to have a good picture of yourself that looks professional. In your bio, list your top credentials and hobbies with nothing but commas (no conjunctions, period at the end of the sentence, or anything like that. Your bio should be a sentence fragment with no subject or verb). The hobbies are just as important as the credentials because people get to know you on a more personal level (this connection helps strengthen the relationship between you and your followers). Making your profile attractive gives you a good first impression which will entice your followers to become returning visitors who frequently like and repin your pins.

In Conclusion

Pinterest continues to grow as the days go by which makes now the perfect time to take it seriously. The key to thriving on Pinterest is to know how to create a successful Pinterest board and then make one of your boards become successful. You would do this by having contributors, optimizing your pins to perform well, and bolstering your profile.

Do you think more people should take Pinterest seriously? Which tip about creating a successful Pinterest board did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating a successful Pinterest board? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Ways That Anyone Can Use Social Media To Drive Leads

June 24, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media is the most effective tool to make connections, grow an audience, and give a greater meaning to what you do. Experts have used social media over the years to completely transform their businesses and spread their messages. Despite so many people using social media to level up their businesses, other people find themselves stuck. They don’t know how to leverage social media as a lead generation tool.

If you fit into the category, then the first step towards generating leads is to know how to generate leads. If you want to know how to generate leads, then you are at the right place. This article will discuss four of the methods that you can use to generate more social media leads right now.

#1: Create And Promote A Landing Page

One of the most effective ways to generate leads is to have your own landing page. Upon creating your own landing page (I use Optimize Press for mine), you will quickly discover that creating a landing page does not guarantee more leads. The only way to get more leads from a landing page is to get people to see the landing page. I get people to see my landing pages by promoting them across my social networks.

Most of the subscribers I get from my blog come directly from landing page traffic that I get from my social networks. Before I created a landing page, I only had 300 subscribers. 150,000 visitors only led to 300 subscribers. In short, my blog was poorly optimized for getting subscribers. Then, I created multiple landing pages and started to promote them across my social networks. The result was a massive increase in subscribers. I quickly went from only having 300 subscribers to gaining well over 300 subscribers every month.

After you create your landing page, the next step is to promote that landing page. As mentioned before, promoting the landing page on Twitter alone led to a massive increase in subscribers. However, the way I promoted the landing page is another story. Twitter is the type of social network that people go on for a short period of time to see what’s new, and since so many people tweet on Twitter, it is easy for the timeline to get filled up. As a result, most of your followers will miss your tweets and not engage with them.

One way to solve the problem is by pinning a social media post to the top of your feed. That way, that post promoting your landing page will automatically show up on the top, even if you post something new. Facebook and Twitter have this option enabled on their platforms. Here is an example of a pinned tweet:

The tweet was sent before 2015, and yet it still appears before the tweet I sent a few minutes ago. This tweet has significantly more engagement that most of my other tweets because of the added exposure of being a pinned tweet. Most tweets and Facebook posts have short half-lives (when that half-life is over, the tweet or Facebook post basically gets little to no impressions for the rest of its existence), but when you pin a tweet or Facebook post to the top of your feed, that tweet or Facebook post has an infinite half-life which means people will always see it.

The tweet also has more engagement than most of my tweets. While most of my tweets get a few thousand impressions, this tweet has over 20,000 impressions. That means over 20,000 people saw that one tweet. Of course, the engagement isn’t where I want it (only 3% of those people engaged and only 1% clicked on the link), but those are the percentages that many tweets on Twitter generate.

How could I possibly get 300 subscribers every month on Twitter when the pinned tweet only has 275 clicks? The answer is that I constantly tweet about my landing pages. I send one tweet every hour about one of my landing pages. This is how I get numerous people to visit my landing page every day, and this is how I get my subscribers from Twitter. While the pinned tweet gets the most engagement for my landing page, the other tweets I send on a daily basis are just as important.

#2: Interact With Your Individual Followers

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Ask and you shall receive”? It seems as if the more we ask for, the more we get (don’t abuse this power). When I interact with my followers, I will occasionally ask if the follower got a chance to download my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. I may also ask about the Productivity Rubric or another free eBook I offer called 27 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Subscribers (I like the number 27).

I started implementing this tactic in March 2015 and saw great results from it. Some people said they received the book and went on to say how much they enjoyed it. I asked these people what they liked about the book the most and if the conversation allowed, I asked if a particular follower had the chance to grab another one of my free eBooks. I would become a part of dozens of these types of interactions every day, and the numbers show for it. I got over 110% more subscribers in March than I got in January.

How many interactions does it take? Well, take a look at how many interactions I had in January compared to the number of interactions I had in March:

Here are the statistics from January:

Now you will see the significant increase in interactions in March:

The trend is an increase in interactions that gained momentum as I asked more people whether they got a chance to download my free eBook or not. When people said they never heard about it and expressed interest in the eBook, I included the link to the landing page in the next tweet I sent to those people. Many of them ended up subscribing.

Interacting with your followers is not just important for generating leads, but interacting with your followers is also important for your overall success as a brand. Your audience buys your products, reads your blog posts, and spreads the word about you. Taking the minute or two to interact with several people in your audience will strengthen the relationship between you and the people in your audience. This relationship is important for your success.

#3: Promote Your Landing Pages On Social Media Group Pages and Forums

Social media group pages and forums about your niche are great places to promote your landing pages because both of these platforms consist of numerous people in your targeted audience. Not only do you get to promote your landing pages to your targeted audience, but the platform is already built for you. If you become a member of a Facebook group page with over 10,000 members, then that’s over 10,000 people who can potentially become leads. If you post on a forum with 100,000 members, then that’s 100,000 potential leads.

Social media group pages and forums work well because members constantly come back to interact with other members. Just as an audience keeps your brand alive, the members of a social media group page or forum keep that social media group page or forum alive by building a community on the platform. This means many people will see what you post in the social media group page or forum, and that can lead to massive traffic.

Before you take the plunge and post a link to your landing page, see how the community interacts and responds to certain posts. You want to make sure describing your landing page and then posting a link to that landing page would go well amongst the people in the community, but you also want to make sure you are not violating any rules. Some social media group pages and forums will suspend users who over-promote themselves or promote themselves in any possible manner. The rules and consequences vary by social media group pages and forums.

#4: Use Reddit

Reddit is a hit-or-miss tool in which promoting yourself can work wonders, but you don’t want to over-promote yourself. A typically Reddit post can get anywhere from no engagement to thousands of upvotes. One of the posts I put on Reddit resulted in no leads. Another post I put on Reddit got me over 500 leads in just 24 hours. The leads I gained that day did not carry over far. Within a week, I was back at my normal lead generation rate. You can think of Reddit as the spike in traffic that doesn’t last very long but allows more people to know about you. I wouldn’t rely on Reddit for lead generation, but it is an underrated tool that can either lead to zero results or wonders.

In Conclusion

If you want to generate more leads, then you must create a landing page and promote that landing page as often as you can on your social networks. Tell one follower about the landing page. Then tell another follower. Post a link to your landing page multiple times per day on your social networks.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any stories with using social media to generate leads? What tips would you recommend? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

What Makes Spreadable Content

June 22, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Getting More Blog Post Traffic

Spreadable content is the type of content that people are eager to share. To some people, sharing spreadable content is a calling unable to be ignored. We enjoy sharing content that we like because we get to empower our audiences and get some of the praise for taking the time to share the content.

We will all continue sharing spreadable content, but what if your content was spreadable? What if people visited your blog, read one of your blog posts, and felt an obligation to share that blog post. Not just a maybe; an obligation. You want people to feel that sense of obligation to share your content each time they read any of your blog posts. If you can generate that sense of obligation amongst a large group of people, then you have spreadable content. People will share it across their social networks, and as more people come in contact with your content for the first time, they will share it with their followers, and the cycle will continue. A few thousand people who enjoy your posts may eventually lead to hundreds of thousands of people actively engaging with your content.

Cool success story, but you may be wondering how you can create spreadable content of your own. How do you get your visitors to feel that sense of obligation to share your blog posts? That’s what the rest of this blog post will cover.

Write Valuable Content

The only type of content that spreads is valuable content. You can promote your content all you want, but if the content is not written well, people won’t share it. Valuable content empowers, entertains, and/or inspires your readers.

If you write how-to blog posts, don’t be shy to write a lengthy, high-value blog post. Your free blog posts give your readers a general idea of the amount of value in your paid products. Not only does providing free value entice people to buy your products, but when you write valuable content, people stick around. If you want a reader to share your content, then that reader must be reading a particular blog post for a long period of time.

Optimize Your Blog For Social Shares

If people read your blog post and appreciate the value they got from it, then they may want to share that blog post. However, these people live busy lives in which going on a social network, copying the link, pasting the link (and probably shortening it first), and writing the social media post takes too much time. Although this activity takes under 10 minutes, it is an activity that people don’t want to do.

The route around the problem is to optimize your blog for social shares. At the bottom of all of my blog posts are social share buttons for multiple social networks. When readers click on those buttons, they will get a prewritten tweet, Facebook post, pin, and more that could get published in a matter of seconds. I also make it easy for people to tweet custom-made tweets in the middle of my blog posts. Writing valuable content helps in creating spreadable content, but spreadable content must have a method of being spread. Optimizing your blog for social shares is that method.

Write Engaging Content

The content that gets the reader’s attention is the content that engages the reader. To make your content more engaging, turn your content into a conversation. Ask questions at different point in blog posts and use personal, relevant anecdotes so you and the reader can relate to one another. The relationship that builds from engaging content may lead to a reader sharing your blog post, and if enough people read the engaging blog post, that blog post will spread rapidly.

Writing engaging content isn’t just a method of creating spreadable content. Writing engaging content also allows you to build long-term relationships with your audience. This type of relationship is the relationship that grows a solid fan base for your blog and leads to product sales. Having an audience filled with loyal, returning visitors will be very helpful for your blog’s exposure.

Email The Top Bloggers About Your Blog Post

When you write a spectacular blog post that stands out, send a quick email to the top bloggers in your niche about your blog posts. Some bloggers will refer to this method as the “Skyscraper Method,” and it is a great way to get extra exposure for that blog post. If you get dozens of top bloggers to promote your blog post to their audiences, your one blog post alone could see thousands of visitors and dozens of backlinks within a few days. Although this seems too good to be true, it has happened.

When you email a top blogger, it is important to email them a blog post that stands out. Blog posts either stand out by providing an extraordinary amount of value, discussing something rarely discussed (new trend), or going into great detail about something (typically, big numbers help here. Think along the lines of “200 tips/tools or some massive number). The best part is that if you choose the top bloggers in your niche, you’ll get people from their audiences to read your content. These people are a part of your targeted audience since they read similar content on other people’s blogs.

Your Story

Remember when it didn’t matter whether you had a good reputation or not? I don’t, and I don’t think there has ever been a time where the importance of a good reputation has been undermined. Your reputation is important for getting loyal readers who will actively share and engage with your content. However, your reputation is also a part of your story. As bestselling author Seth Godin says, “Everything that you do becomes a part of your story.” How you tweet, write, talk to others, and live life all become a part of your story and how people see your brand—what you stand for.

The people with magnificent stories are the ones who have loyal audiences eager to share their content. Seth Godin doesn’t even have to write 100 words for his next blog post, and thousands of people will share it.

Not only do magnificent stories lead to loyal audiences, but they also spread like wildfire. If you have a spreadable story on the loose (that positively impacts your reputation and other people), then your content will spread as well.

In Conclusion

Spreadable content comes down to two things: the content itself and behind-the-scenes actions that must occur. Although the behind-the-scenes actions are not plentiful, they are all important, and they can lead to massive exposure for your content. Regardless of how much effort you put into creating spreadable content, patience is a must.

Do you think taking all of this time to create spreadable content is worth it? Which of these tips did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating spreadable content? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Does Temporarily Offering Paid Books and Training Courses For Free Really Generate A Profit?

June 19, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Free Giveaways For Business

To offer a product for free or not to offer a product for free. With all of the articles on the web, people experimenting with free offers, and skeptics, it seems as if this debate could continue until the end of time. I heard both sides of the argument ever since I created my first product, and I continue hearing both sides of the argument to this day.

The argument against temporarily offering paid books and training courses free of charge is that you don’t make money for any of those sales. 2,000 people could get your free book or training course that you normally charge for, but you won’t make as much money compared to if one person bought the paid book or training course.

The supporting argument for temporarily offering paid books and training courses free of charge is that you generate social proof and make your product look more enticing when the free offer expires. Many Udemy instructors offer their courses for free in the beginning to get thousands of students because having thousands of students looks better than only having five students, even if they initially don’t make as much money that way. Some of the people who get your book or training course free of charge may decide to leave reviews that positively impact the way your product looks in the marketplace.

I heard both sides of the argument for so long that I didn’t fully know which side to believe. There are articles on the web from both sides of the argument that present valid case studies and earning reports. Putting my first product on the web meant putting a price tag on it, but as I created more products, I needed to discover whether I would make some of them temporarily free or not even think about doing so. The only way to know whether something works or not is by giving it a try, so for some of my products, I decided to temporarily remove the price tag for one of my products.

Removing the price tag would remove the uncertainty in a matter of days, but making one of my products temporarily free for the first time scared me. People told me not to do it, but the feeling of uncertainty was too overwhelming. I just had to give it a try so I could finally decide once and for all of it even works.

What initially started as a “Let’s try it just for the sake of trying it” plan has now become essential. Offering my product for free allowed it to get more customers than ever before. Making the product free meant no profit, but I didn’t lose anything either. Offering an online product free of charge eliminates the need of shipping and production costs.

When you temporarily offer a product free of charge, you aren’t looking to make money from this promotion. That sounds obvious, but many people forget that for the particular promotion, revenue isn’t the primary objective. The primary objective in your promotional efforts for a temporarily free product is to generate social proof. You want people to leave reviews for your product so that when the price tags return and your product is no longer free, it will look better in the marketplace. The Udemy course with 2,000 students and over 10 reviews looks better than the Udemy course with 10 students and no reviews. Social proof was always important, but now it is more important than ever before.

The idea of getting social proof by temporarily making a product free of charge makes free promotions seem like investments. If you invest money in the stock market, you hope to make a profit in return. Temporarily offering a product for free works in a slightly different manner. For online products, you don’t invest money to make a product free of charge because the act of providing someone with the product does not cost you a penny. You neither lose nor gain a profit by temporarily making a product free of charge.

What you invest in this case is your time. It takes time to promote a product. Some people see finishing a product as completing the entire battle, but that is only half of the battle. Marketing a product to get numerous sales in the marketplace is just as challenging as actually creating the product. Just because you offer a sweet deal and temporarily make one of your products free does not mean people will flock over to your free product. People have to know about the free product first. Once people know about your offer and get your free product, a relationship starts to build.

The relationship you build between you and the customer is essential towards getting good reviews. At the end of my Udemy lectures, I make it a point to encourage interaction. I encourage interaction so people’s questions can get answered and so I can know my audience better. Knowing my audience better allows me to build stronger relationships which lead to reviews, and I get a better idea of what type of products my targeted audiences wants. Knowing what products your targeted audience wants and then creating those products is a great way to generate more sales.

In Conclusion

When I temporarily offered my product free of charge, I didn’t make any money for that product for the entire free promotion. For all of my products, once the free promotion ended, I always got a significant increase in sales. Now, when one of my products does not generate as many sales as it did in the past, I sometimes make the product free to get more buzz which helps the product succeed as a whole.

You must avoid making your products free too often because people will then avoid buying your products and simply wait for the free promotions. The phrase “too often” depends on the niche you are in and how many free promotions your competitors do.

If you are eager to temporarily offer your product free of charge, here are some outlets that will help you spread the word about your free product:

Facebook Groups specialized for free product promotion (many of these exist; join multiple groups)
Your email list
Your social networks (constantly tweet, post, and pin about your temporarily free product)

Utilizing these three outlets allowed me to successfully promote my product while it was free. All of the promotion led to thousands of new customers and dozens of reviews in less than a month. What are your thoughts about free product promotions? Did you promote one of your paid products and temporarily make it free? What are your tips for promoting a temporarily free product? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

9 Ways To Strengthen The Bond Between You And Your Readers

June 17, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Better Blogging Experience For Visitors

A blog is more than just a bunch of blog posts put together. A blog provides you with a method to build a bond between yourself and the people who visit your blog…your readers. Building these bonds with numerous readers results in returning visitors who may share your blog posts on their social networks and tell others about you.

Many bloggers who go viral end up going viral because of their own work and the help from others. Going at it alone won’t help your chances of standing out, going viral, and making a full-time income on the web. The readers you know well are the ones who will help make your content go viral. Building the bond between you and your readers requires the usage of multiple platforms and interaction methods. Here are nine of the ways you can strengthen the bond between you and your readers.

#1: Start Conversations On Their Social Media Posts

Some of the people you know well on Twitter (when I say well, I am referring to a reader who may be in a different continent but you have interacted before in a meaningful way) may tweet links to valuable articles on the web. Since the average Twitter user has a little under 500 followers, most Twitter users, and social media users in general, are not a part of many conversations. These people often use social media as a broadcasting platform without taking the time to respond to or start conversations.

What I have noticed is that if you start a conversation with these people in a meaningful way, they will most likely respond to you. Just repeat the process and have numerous conversations with the same people, and that bond between you and those followers will grow. Some of them may decide to interact on your social media posts and share your content. This strategy is not exclusive to Twitter because social networks were primarily created to make socializing much easier. Use social media as a broadcasting tool, but also use it for its main purpose.

#2: Thank Your Followers For Sharing Your Content

Each time someone shares one of my blog posts on a social network, I make it a point to thank that person for sharing my blog post. This is something that few people do, and it is a great way to stand out and build the bond between you and the person who shared your content. Thanking your followers works because your followers will realize that you care when they share your content and that you are deeply appreciative of them sharing your content.

Regardless of whether someone has 10 followers or 10,000 followers, I thank the person all the same. With billions of articles on the web to choose from, someone choosing to share your article on their social platform is a big honor. When I see someone sharing my content, I understand that plenty of options exist, but the person choose my content. When this thought enters my mind, even if it’s midnight and I want to go to bed, I ask myself how I could possibly sit back and not thank someone for sharing my blog post. These people will most likely reply, a conversation will ensue, and the bond will be strengthened.

#3: Reply To Their Comments

On this blog, I make it a point to reply to every comment I get. Of course, if a comment appropriately ends up in the spam folder, I won’t respond, but for the comments that relate to my blog post, I’ll respond to them. This requires more time on my part because I can’t click “Approve Comment” and go on my way. I have to take the time to formulate a response. While most of these responses take less than a minute to write, others can take 5-10 minutes.

Replying to your readers’ comments will encourage them to ask questions and interact with you more. Once they interact with you often, they will trust you more, and almost to the level of a very reliable friend.

Not only does replying to comments allow you to build the bond between you and your readers, but replying to comments also allows new bonds to begin. Some of your new readers will scroll down to the comments section and see that you reply to every comment. These readers may leave a comment to test whether you respond or not, or they may comment with a question and come back waiting for the answer.

#4: Email Your Readers

When a reader comments on your blog, once piece of information you get is the reader’s email address. An email address is very valuable because conversations that take place through email are the most meaningful conversations you can have other than the oldie but goodie face-to-face conversation.

The conversations you have with your readers are only meaningful if you email your reader in the proper manner. The best way to have the first conversation through email is to send an email with a brief introduction of yourself and thanking the person for going on your blog. You want the first interaction to be short, sweet, and to the point because people don’t have much time on their hands. We are constantly going from one thing to the next, and a five sentence email is much quicker to read than a five paragraph email.

Sending a short, sweet, and to the point email is a great way to start the conversation, but when you have someone’s email address, you also have a huge responsibility. That simple responsibility is to avoid being irresponsible with what you have. Some marketers in an attempt to grow their email lists may look at past blog comments and copy and paste the email addresses into the list. You never want to put an email address onto a list that your reader never subscribed to because that will effectively hurt the relationship between you and the reader. Some of your readers may appreciate getting the emails, but it is always good to ask the reader first before you use their email address in any way. My recommendation is to guide and hint your readers to the process (“get this free product by entering your email address on the landing page” instead of “can I put your email address on my email list so you get more emails from me”).

#5: Make Them A Part Of Your Next Blog Post Or Product Decision

Giving your readers influence in your own decisions is a powerful strategy to build the bond and get more exposure at the same time. When you make your readers a part of a big decision, and you reach a conclusion based on data from a poll or survey, you will have to entice the majority of your readers when you create your next product or write your next blog post.

Enticing the majority is important because that majority will feel as if it had a direct impact on your product or blog post. These people that form the majority of your readers will be more likely to buy your product, so you have more sales right then and there. They will also promote your product or blog post that you published to their friends because they influenced the decision. If they didn’t vote, maybe a different product or blog post would have been published instead. Get your readers involved in what you do.

#6: Shout Out Some Of Your Readers

Shouting out readers is a great way to build the bond between you and individual readers. I don’t always shout out readers, but I will retweet some of their tweets that I believe my followers could get value from. In other words, my shout outs look nothing like this:

“Shout out to my boy @username for being awesome. #ff”

My shout outs are random, and I rarely do them. Many people ask me for shout outs, but I’ll only shout out the people I believe match my audience’s interests. Just don’t get into the habit of doing too many shout outs because then people will beg you for them, and there is a big problem with asking for shout outs.

#7: Continue Showing Up

You can have a strong bond between you and your readers, but the moment you stop showing up, that bond gets weaker. If you are like most people, you look at your inbox every day expecting an email from the same person every day, and you enjoy reading this person’s emails. Then, imagine if that person suddenly stopped sending emails for an entire week. An entire month. An entire YEAR!

Most people would forget who that person was within a year. Since so many options exist on the web, it will be easy for people to find a substitute. Once the bond between you and your readers gets disconnected, your readers will look for another blogger to bond with.

Not only is it important to continue showing up in your readers’ inboxes, but it is also important to continue showing up on their social networks. I send over 100 tweets every day which makes me hard to miss. By showing up often on social media, your followers will share your content which exposes your content to more people who may be seeing it for the first time. Once you commit to a niche, never stop showing up, but when you show up, provide value. It is possible to run and take shortcuts. It is also possible to run and complete the entire workout from start to finish. There is a distinct difference between showing up and providing value each time you show up.

#8: Assess The Current Bond

Regardless of whether you get dozens of daily visitors or thousands of daily visitors to your blog, there is a bond building between you and your readers. One way to strengthen the bond is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the bond. Where are you lacking? Can those areas be improved in an efficient manner? Where are your strengths? How can you easily but effectively make those strengths stronger?

How is it possible to improve at anything if you don’t know where you currently are?

#9: Play Nice

If you wanted to make some friends at the playground, then you had to play nice. Many people gravitate towards the nice people, and that makes sense. Would you rather live with an angry person or a nice person every day?

When you build the bond between you and your readers, some of these readers will pay more attention to the way you interact with others. As you continue growing your audience, you will face criticism. Criticism is an inevitable part of life, and how you react to criticism will impact the bond between you and your readers. If you respond to criticism in a controlled manner, then your readers will respect you all the more for it. However, if you lose control when responding to critics, then the bond between you and your readers gets hurt.

Your reputation is the most important part of the bond that develops between you and your readers.

In Conclusion

Building the bond between you and your readers is essential for success as a blogger. Strong bonds entice readers to come back to your blog, promote your content, and buy your products along the way. With a bad reputation, the entire bond will fall apart, so you must preserve your good reputation and always look for ways to strengthen it.

What are your thoughts on building a bond between you and your readers? Do you have any additional tips for building that bond? Which of these methods was your favorite? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

25 DOs and DON’Ts To Succeed In Social Media Marketing

June 15, 2015 by Marc Guberti 19 Comments

Social media marketing is an enigma for some and a clear path for others, but for everyone, social media marketing starts out as an enigma. It is a maze of pathways that seem to lead into each other in a confusing manner. To some, success on social media seems mysterious and unknown.

I once saw social media marketing as an enigma, but now social media plays a vital role in my brand. The key to becoming successful on social media is to know what to do and what not to do. This statement may sound like common sense, but common sense is not necessarily common practice. Not only is common sense not common practice, but not everyone knows what to do (and not do) on social media. I am going to dispel all doubts on what to do and what not do do on social media with a comprehensive list of 25 DO’s and DONT’s of social media marketing.

DOs For Content

#1: Post Your Content Often: When you build a social media audience, that is your audience. Don’t be afraid to share your own blog posts most of the time. I share my blog posts with my Twitter followers often, and this results in a massive amount of traffic for my blog. Instead of losing followers for promoting myself too often, I actually gained followers. People appreciate valuable content regardless of whether all of the content comes from your blog or not.

#2: Spice It Up: Don’t tweet the same things over and over again. I use CSV files that contain prewritten tweets and HootSuite’s bulk scheduler to schedule over 100 tweets in just six clicks. It is a massive time saver. By following this approach, I tweet in an eight day cycle which means I will send the identical tweet eight days from now. Taking this approach will lead to my most loyal followers seeing the same tweet multiple times, so every month, I revise my CSV files. I will add, remove, and change certain tweets so the tweets are new.

#3: Read Before You Share: Many people have a tendency to look at the title of an article and share that article based on the title. Don’t let that be you. After a closer examination of the article, you may decide this article is not good enough for your audience, or you may completely love it. Remember, each article you share reflects what your brand stands for. If you share an article that looks good on the surface but is a low-value article upon closer examination, then that reflects the way people see your brand.

#4: Write Your Own Content More Often: The classic problem new bloggers face is the inability to share their blog posts without quickly going through all of the blog posts. If you send out 10 posts per day on one of your social networks, and each post was a link to one of your blog posts, how long would it take for you to go through all of your blog posts? When I came across this problem, I decided to write two blog posts per day for an extended period of time. These blog posts were in the 250-1,000 word range which isn’t the best word range for SEO, but I quickly had enough content to easily share my blog posts across my social networks. Now that I have over 1,000 blog posts on my blog, it is easier for me to share over 100 of my blog posts on Twitter every day.

#5: Find Reliable Sources: When you share other people’s blog posts, the rule of thumb is to look for reliable sources. In this case, reliable sources are sources that contain accurate information, but they are also blogs within your niche with numerous pieces of good content that you can share. If you are in the social media niche, some reliable sources are Social Media Today, Social Media Examiner, and Business2Community just to name a few. All three of those blogs have a strong focus on social media, and it’s easy to find a good piece of content on any of those three blogs. You may even find some of my guest posts on Business2Community.

DON’Ts For Content

#1: Be Too Broad: The more you specialize on social media, the easier it is for people to understand your brand, and when people understand your brand, they have a deeper understanding of what to expect from your products and services. If you are too broad with your content (i.e. you tweet about music on one day and tweet about pet training advice the next day), then your followers will not understand your brand. My advice is to go off topic less than 10% of the time, and if you can avoid going off topic, then that’s even better.

#2: Share Too Often: On Twitter, I can get away with tweeting once every 15 minutes because people know me, respect my tweets, and the average Twitter user does not spend much time on the social network. If I sent one Facebook post every 15 minutes, I would annoy people because they would notice more since Facebook users stay on the social network for an extended period of time.

#3: Not Sharing Enough: If you only share content once in a blue moon, then you won’t build the relationship between your audience and your brand that is necessary for survival and growth. You should be posting on any social network at least five times per day. The ideal number of times to post per day for each social network varies, but five posts per day is the minimum.

#4: Inconsistent Posting: If you find yourself in this trap, get out of it now. If you inconsistently post content on your social networks, your audience will see you less often. Posts from other social media users will take up their home feeds, and if they don’t see you at all, then your audience will completely forget who you are. HootSuite is a reliable tool for scheduling tweets, Facebook posts, and other social media posts.

#5: Excessive Retweeting/Sharing/Repinning: When you excessively share other people’s content, it becomes more difficult for your followers to see your content in the mix. Your social media profile will be filled with different messages that will make your brand’s identity difficult for your audience to discover.

DOs For Audience

#1: Focus On Growing A Targeted Following: The difference between a follower and a targeted follower is so dramatic because one won’t have any interest in your brand while the other will have a strong interest in your brand before even knowing about it. Targeted followers are people interested in your niche, and when these people discover your brand, your brand perfectly fits in since these people are interested in your niche.

#2: Interact With Your Audience: Interacting with your audience allows you to develop stronger relationships between you and your audience. Few people take the time to interact with their audiences which will make your interactions stand out all the more. Some of the interactions I had on social media opened doors to new opportunities that I would have never discovered on my own.

#3: Follow Back: When I first created my Twitter account, I always wanted to be the person with 1 million followers who only followed family members and a few friends. I also envisioned the blue checkmark next to my name. It hurt to see myself stuck at 1,667 followers even though I only followed 12 people. I knew my strategy needed to change quickly to surpass 1 million followers. I decided to follow people back so they would stick around, and I also followed targeted individuals who were likely to follow back. I have not surpassed 1 million followers yet, but I aspire to reach that milestone before I get out of college.

#4: Set Goals: Setting goals for your audience growth is a great way to actually reach those goals. Many people simply go with the persona of, “I want a larger audience,” but the word “larger” can have many meanings. If you only gain one follower today, then your audience got larger. If you gain 100 followers today, then your audience got larger. Although the audience gets larger in both scenarios, the end results are dramatically different. Ask yourself how many followers you want to gain per day and then move towards that goal. When you set goals, choose the low hanging fruit (i.e. if you gain 10 followers per day, go for 15-20 followers per day) so you can get a series of small wins that make progress natural.

#5: Provide Your Audience With Free Value: When first confronted with the decision of providing free value or not, brands often stop short of providing free value. They provide something for free, but the free stuff is rarely valuable. While some brands view this approach as a way to ensure tactics from an informational product are not free and on the web (and hopefully, this will increase sales), not providing valuable content hurts sales. Potential customers have more ways than ever before to conduct research on a brand, and with more free content on the web, potential customers like to look at the free stuff before buying the products. If potential customers don’t appreciate your blog posts, then they won’t buy your products, regardless of how good those products are.

DON’Ts For Audience

#1: Focus On The Number: If you do not meaningfully engage with your audience, then it does not matter whether you have 100 followers or 100,000 followers. The number is not verification that your social media marketing efforts are working. The results you get because of your followers indicates that your social media efforts are working.

#2: Only Think About Getting More Sales: All of your real followers are people with needs and desires just like you. Targeted followers will want to learn more about your niche, and although an information product can fill in that desire, free value does the job more effectively. Not only does free value serve others, but the people you serve will be more enticed to buy your products later on. You must be in it to help others, and the revenue will come as a by-product.

#3: Buy Fake Followers: Some people, confused with the process of gaining followers, will consider buying fake followers. Buying fake followers is the worst thing you can do for your brand because your real followers will feel uncomfortable, your engagement will stay the same, and your brand’s reputation will get damaged. Buying fake followers is viewed as a slimy way to get ahead and boast a superficial audience. You don’t want your brand to be viewed in that manner.

#4: Develop An Ego Based On Audience Size: Regardless of how large your audience becomes, never grow an ego. Growing an ego will hurt the way you view the very people who helped you reach your current status in life. Some people get “drunk in the power,” but when you get drunk on power, that power is destined to evaporate or negatively impact your deepest relationships with the people who mean the most to you.

#5: Keep Them On Social Media: Your primary goal should be to send people from social media to your blog, landing pages, and occasionally, your sales pages. If people stay on social media, then they won’t reach your blog. Create more compelling social media posts with links and pictures of your blog posts so your followers click on your links more often.

DOs For Interaction

#1: Ask Questions: Asking a question is one of the most basic ways to start a conversation because a question demands an answer. Regardless of whether you get a comprehensive answer or an “I don’t know,” you can take the conversation further.

#2: Answer Questions: Twitter Advanced Search makes it easy for you to search for tweets within your niche in which users ask questions. You can answer these users’ questions, and by answering their questions, you will start a conversation that can develop into a meaningful relationship. Regardless of which social network you use and what searching tools are available, people ask questions related to your niche. Once you find these questions, respond with detailed answers.

#3: Ask For An Opinion: Have you seen any of the tweets that ask users to retweet if they believe in one statement and to favorite the tweet if they believe in another statement? You can ask your followers what their opinion is about something and get more social engagement in the process. On Pinterest, you can ask people to repin if they believe in one statement and to like the pin if they believe in another statement. On Facebook, you can ask your audience to like the post if they believe on one statement and to share the post if they believe in the other statement. MLB Memes does this often on their Twitter handle, and because of this strategy, the account gets thousands of retweets and favorites for some of its tweets. Take a look at this tweet that got thousands of retweets and favorites by asking for readers’ opinions.

#4: Thank People For Sharing Your Content: Each time someone shares one of my blog posts on social media, I thank that person. Few people thank the people in their audiences for sharing their content, and the people in your audience will feel special when you give them that recognition. The recognition will make it difficult for the people in your audience to forget who you are, and many of the people who I thank the first time end up sharing my content numerous times. That’s just a by-product of being a nice, genuine individual who gives his/her audience the recognition that they deserve.

#5: Free Product Promotions: When I do a free product promotion or create a new landing page, I contact individual followers and ask them if they are interested in the free promotion. When using this strategy, I only interact with people who have interacted with me before. The people who have interacted with me before will feel more comfortable since they know who I am. If I only contacted strangers, my free product promotions would not work as well.

DON’Ts For Interaction

#1: Ask For Shout Outs: The last thing you should ever do on social media is ask highly successful individuals to give you a shout out. I get tweets of people asking me for shout outs, and I don’t give them. I believe that instead of asking for shout outs, people should grow their audiences so people ask them for shout outs. Even if you manage to get a shout out from a highly successful individual, shout outs won’t transform your brand. Most shout outs generate temporary recognition that is insufficient for building a successful business around.

#2: Get Into Verbal Fights: If you get into verbal fights with other people, many of your followers will unfollow you. People don’t like hanging out with pessimists that they don’t know, and they certainly won’t want to follow someone who clogs up the timeline with inappropriate content. Play nice on social media and elsewhere.

#3: Exclusively Interact By Thanking People For The Follow: I almost never thank someone for following me. If your simply thank someone for the follow, then you’ll probably get a response like, “My pleasure.” This type of response is a nice gesture, but also a conversation ender. Most of the conversations that start as “Thanks for the follow” don’t result in long, meaningful relationships.

#4: Post Before Thinking: The advantage of having a conversation on social media is that you can think of your responses before you send them. However, talking with someone face to face makes the same process very difficult. Use the extra time to write a more compelling, meaningful response to one of your follower’s social media posts. If you get caught up in a verbal fight and find yourself about to post something without thinking, remove your hands from the keyboard, take a few deep breaths, look at what you typed, and ask yourself if putting that post on social media is really worth your brand’s reputation. Remember that anything that goes up on your brand’s account and your personal account reflects your brand’s reputation.

#5: Ignore Direct Messages: Direct messages nowadays are highly associated by spam. We have to verify TrueTwit Validation and click the link in the direct message to confirm we are real people. About 80% of the direct messages I get are spam, and they can be downright annoying. However, 20% of the direct messages I get are relevant. Some people ask me questions via direct messages while other people contact me about speaking opportunities. That is quite the curveball from traditionally spammy messages. Don’t ignore your direct messages because you never know what will show up in the DM inbox.

DOs For Growth

#1: Read Social Media Articles: Since you are reading this article, then you are heading in the right direction. When I was stuck at 1,667 Twitter followers and had no social media audience anywhere else, I started to research how social media works so I could grow my Twitter audience and the audiences on my other social networks. I came across several great methods for growing my social media audience by reading articles and implementing the tactics.

#2: Create A Simple Plan: Simple plans are easier to understand than complex plans. You must understand your own plan if you wish to become successful on social media. Many people believe that complex plans are more difficult and that creating a simple plan is a downgrade. However, a simple plan can be more difficult to implement than a complex plan. One task can be more difficult than 10 tasks. Ask yourself how you can make your plan simpler to implement. A plan that is simpler to implement is not always easier to implement, but you’ll have a better idea of where you are heading and where you want to go.

#3: Go On Social Media Every Day: Earlier in the article, I mentioned how important it is to follow others and focus on growing a targeted following. However, if you only implement the tactics for one day, you will see growth on that day, but that growth will not carry over into the other days. I consistently gain 300 Twitter followers every day, but I don’t gain 300 Twitter followers every day by doing nothing. I gain those followers by consistently following targeted people who are highly likely to follow back. The moment I stop, my growth will slowly start to stop, and I may even experience a decline. Since I don’t want to see my growth stop, I continue putting in the work for Twitter and my other social networks every day. The moment consistency falls apart, your entire social media strategy can fall apart.

#4: Cross Promotion Across Your Social Networks: Not enough people cross promote their social networks. In fact, cross promotion is one of the secret weapons for dominating social media as a whole. Nothing is stopping you from tweeting about your YouTube channel, promoting your Facebook Page in every YouTube video’s description, and promoting your pins on your Facebook Page.You want people to travel across your social media accounts so they see more of your content and appreciate the value that you provide. Some of these people may decide to follow you on all of your social networks, and at that point, if you consistently post content on all of your social networks, these people are bound to see at least one of your social media posts every day.

#5: Build An Email List: One of the goals for all of your social networks should be to promote your landing pages so you can build an email list. The email list is where the money is because more people use email than social media, and most of the sales full-time bloggers make come from the email list. If you do not have your own email list yet, then start one with iContact, MailChimp, Aweber, or Constant Contact. I use iContact for my email lists, and ever since I started to focus on building my email lists, my revenue has skyrocketed.

DON’Ts For Growth

#1: Spend Money Prematurely: When businesses don’t get what they want from social media, they immediately look towards advertisements as a way to get initial exposure that would hopefully lead into constant exposure, traffic, and sales. Social media advertising will lead to more attention and traffic, but if you don’t use your social media accounts to engage with your audience, then the advertisement won’t lead to long-lasting results. Before you spend any money for social media advertising, you should get comfortable with sending more than five social media posts per day. Don’t rush the decision of spending money on social media advertising because you may not be ready for it yet (you must have a landing page with an autoresponder before you start paying for social media advertising).

#2: Use All Of The Social Networks: One of the most common mistakes people make is creating numerous social media accounts across all of the platforms and then trying to grow audiences on all of them. You may find yourself with accounts for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and a few other social networks. The problem with creating numerous social media accounts is that the more accounts you create, the more difficult it is for you to grow audiences on them. Each social network has its learning curve, and each social network requires that you put in a certain amount of work. Instead of building audiences on all of the social networks, only build an audience on one social network to start, and as you get better at that one social network, start experimenting with a second social network and advantage from one social network to the other social network in a one-at-a-time basis.

#3: Churn: Churning is the act of following numerous people and then unfollowing numerous people in a matter of minutes. The problem with churning is that social networks frown at this behavior and view it as a way of cheating the system. Your followers who notice the churning won’t appreciate it, but you will anger the social networks. Social networks have policies in place that, if violated, will result in a suspension (some suspensions are permanent), and all of the social networks have rules against churning. One time, someone with over 10,000 Twitter followers got suspended due to churning, and the account stayed suspended permanently. If you want to grow a social media audience and keep that social media audience, then you must play by the rules.

#4: Become Impatient: Social media growth takes a long period of time. It takes time to learn the methods that allow you to achieve rapid growth, and then it takes consistent, rapid growth to achieve big goals such as surpassing 100,000 followers. Success requires patience, and your efforts will pay off when patience combines with technique.

#5: Beg For The Follow: In an attempt to grow faster, some people will ask others to follow them. Asking people to follow you is not a time effective way to get more followers, and few of these people will agree to follow you. Some of these people will only follow you because they expect a follow back which means if you do not follow these people back, there is a likelihood that these people will unfollow you a few days later. There are better ways to get a follower than begging for one.

DOs For Time Management

#1: Use A Few Social Media Tools: When I first started to take social media seriously, I found myself using numerous social media tools. That is a big mistake because each social media tool takes up time, and most of them are more appreciated for statistics than for their actual use. One tool I used often was Tweriod which allows you to see when most of your followers are on Twitter. Ever since I started tweeting once every 30 minutes, this statistic became irrelevant since I started to tweet consistently, so I no longer use Tweriod. This one decision allowed me to save 15 minutes of my time per day.

#2: Use Social Media Tools Instead Of The Social Networks: I find myself on HootSuite more than I find myself on Twitter. That is because I use HootSuite to send tweets, Facebook posts, and other posts across my social networks. Instead of interacting with people on Twitter, I interact with these same people through HootSuite’s dashboard. HootSuite’s dashboard has fewer distractions which allows me to get to my other work (i.e. writing blog posts like this one) quicker.

#3: Have Something Important To Do Other Than Social Media: If you have something important to do other than social media, you will have a better incentive to get your work done on social media quicker. By getting your work done on social media quicker, you can create products and write content that you promote on your social networks. If you have nothing to promote on social media, then there is no point to building a social media audience.

#4: Use The Three Step Process: Each time I want to save more time on social media, I use the three step process that allows you to save time in any situation. The three steps are to identify a social media activity that takes up time, reduce the amount of time it takes you to perform that action (this can be done with tools, research, etc), and then repeat the process with other social media activities. The three step process does not exactly lay out the solution, but it gives you an easy-to-follow path for finding the solution that you are looking for.

#5: Set A Timer: When you set a timer for yourself, you will feel the pressure of working under the clock. You will have less time to procrastinate on the social networks because once the timer is up, you must log out of your social networks and disable your internet if you don’t need it for your work (browser blockers make this easy. For my Mac Book Pro, I use the Mindful Browsing web app. When I am writing a blog post, I don’t need the internet so I use Mindful Browsing when I write my blog posts). As you set the timer for yourself more often, you will become more comfortable with working under pressure and getting your social media work done in a shorter amount of time.

DON’Ts For Time Management

#1: Look At Trending Topics: On Twitter and Facebook, it is very tempting to look at the trending topics and see what is trending so we can know what is going on. Since trending topics are based on the news around us, we are bound to hear about the important trending topics from our friends regardless of whether we look at them on social media or not. One way I avoid looking at the trending topics is by carrying out all of my social media activity from HootSuite. On HootSuite, I don’t get to see the list of trending topics. Remember that trending topics are only big news for a few days or a few weeks at most, but your brand’s work (or lack of) will impact your confidence and brand’s reputation for a long period of time.

#2: Surf Through YouTube Videos: When people go on YouTube to grow their brands, it becomes tempting to search for some YouTube videos and then kick back and relax. We have a strong desire to surf for YouTube videos because we know we are destined to find something good on YouTube. When you feel like surfing through YouTube videos, and you know that you have more important work to do (you always have more important to do), remind yourself that the enjoyment you get from a YouTube video is temporary, and you may not even find the YouTube video you were looking for. You can reward yourself at the end of the day when you have completed all of your work, but until you complete all of your work, there is no reason to surf through YouTube videos.

#3: Manually Do The Things You Can Do Automatically: For a very long time, I manually scheduled my tweets with HootSuite. However, as I started to schedule more tweets, it became more difficult for me to manage my tweets, my school work, and my business. I looked for a permanent solution that would allow me to schedule more tweets and save time. The answer was HootSuite Pro which allows me to upload a CSV file of over 100 prewritten tweets. In six clicks, I can schedule 100 tweets, and if I did that manually, it would take more than two hours of my time every day. I don’t know how I would have manually scheduled tweets during my junior year.

#4: Make Excuses: Excuses quickly emerged as one of the most reliable methods to escape responsibility, but you can’t escape the results. You can blame the weather, your internet connection, your overwhelming amount of work, the curveball the day threw at you, and other things. It is easy to make excuses, but no matter how good our excuses are, they don’t improve the results for our brands and what they stand for. If anything, making excuses will hurt your brand’s reputation and stagnate its progress.

#5: Let Social Media Consume Your Life: The mission of social media marketing is to get as many positive results for your brand in as short of an amount of time as possible. You must have other things to do for your brand and your life besides social media. Letting social media consume your life is the equivalent of making the excuse that you don’t have to leave social media since it consumes your life. Even if you use social media from a business standpoint and get great results, spending too much time on social media will hurt your business. Social media is a double-edged sword that promises success to some and is primarily a top method of procrastination for others. How you use social media determines what you get out of it.

In Conclusion

By knowing what to do and what not to do on social media, you will know how to make your social media marketing efforts pay off. We will all spend countless hours of our lives on social media, so it only makes sense that we get the best out of social media. Getting the best out of social media requires some basic knowledge combined with techniques that get acquired along the way.

How did you list the DOs and DON’Ts list? Do you have any other tips on what to do and what to avoid on social media? Which DO or DON’T was your favorite? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

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