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Why Small Businesses Need To Start Pinning On Pinterest

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pinterest pin

In order for a small business to become successful, that small business must have a big audience. There are no questions about this one. Almost every successful business and individual has a big audience behind them. While there are many ways to build an audience, Pinterest provides a powerful way to build a larger audience that engages with your pins.

Pinterest users engage on the social network more often than on other social networks. While 1% of tweets are retweets, 80% of pins are repins. That means a small business is more likely to go viral on Pinterest than on other social networks. If you need your message to spread quickly, Pinterest is the way to go. Some of my pins have received thousands of likes and repins because users love to repin other people’s pins.

Another big reason why small businesses should start pinning on Pinterest is because Pinterest allows its users to categorize information based on boards. If you provide social media tips, you can create multiple boards that deal with specific social networks. You can have one board with Twitter tips, another board with Pinterest tips, and so on. Pinterest’s boards will allow you to expand your knowledge and give your followers specific content. Specific content will make it easier for your followers to find what they are looking for. Making it easy for your followers to find what they want to see will result in those followers coming back for more information.

On Pinterest, it is easy for small businesses to find targeted users who are on Pinterest for multiple hours every day. Pinterest is a very addictive social network, and that is something small businesses need to use to their advantage. What are your thoughts on the list? Is your small business on Pinterest? Please share your thoughts below.

 

Why You Need To Get Local On Twitter

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twitter local

On a social network filled with hundreds of millions of people, it can sometimes be hard to imagine that millions of those users live nearby. The only reason those people are not following you yet is because they do not know about you. The solution to the problem is to go local. There are some retail stores that are only located in New Jersey. That retail store does not want more followers from California. That retail store wants more followers from New Jersey. Getting local followers will results in more sales for those retail stores.

There is still a powerful reason to go local on Twitter. If you have a remarkable story and let people know about that remarkable story, local people will cheer you on. In the Boston Marathon, spectators always know (and cheer the hardest) when a Bostonian approaches the finish line.

If you are from California, then the people in California are going to cheer you on the most. That’s because we get that cool feeling when we realize an influential person lives in the same state as we do. When you become an influential person, the people in your state, provence, or country are going to cheer for you the most.

Getting local on Twitter allows you to interact with the fans who will extremely love what you do. In addition, getting local can help boost sales. Do not be afraid to put your location on Twitter because people who live (or used to live) in the same location as you live in now are going to talk with you. Getting local is another way to have more conversations with your followers while gaining more followers.

 

How To Successfully Make A Connection With A Journalist On Twitter

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Journalism

Do you want to be on Forbes, The Huffington Post, or one of those other popular media outlets? The main way to get on big media outlets is by connecting with journalists on Twitter and having a remarkable story. There are some tips to help you out with your remarkable story, but in order to get noticed by the big media outlets, connecting with those journalists on Twitter is just as important as having the remarkable story.

There is a blueprint to use that will get a journalist’s attention. Once you have that journalist’s attention, then you can tell them about your story. Here’s what you need to do to get their attention:

  1. Look for a journalist who is not overwhelmingly popular. The less followers a journalist has, the more likely that journalist is to interact with you. You should contact the journalist with 10,000 followers before you contact the journalist with 1 million followers. Even if the journalist who has 10,000 followers is not from your favorite media outlet, it is important to remember that news spreads. When my dog got in The Associated Press, she also went in newspapers like this one, that one, and a bunch of others as well.
  2. Favorite and retweet the journalist’s articles. Only favorite and retweet articles that you actually like. If you like what the journalist writes, and the story relates to your niche or story, then that is the journalist who is likely to write about you (and the person who you want to have write about you). In addition, you can mention the journalist and tell the journalist that they wrote a good article.
  3. Wait for the journalist to respond. Not all journalists respond, but when they do, you need to strengthen the connection. Once the journalist responds to you, then you have their attention.

After you have the journalist’s attention, you need to build on that attention and build it into a strong connection. Here are the steps you need to take in order to build the attention into a strong connection.

  1. Thank the journalist for responding to your tweet the right way. Instead of saying, “Thank you for responding,” you should say something that tells the journalist that he/she is doing a good job on the web. A good response to start with would be, “I enjoy reading and sharing content like yours on the web.”
  2. Continue the conversation by asking an ego boosting question. All you have to do at the end of the tweet is say, “How did you get started as a professional writer?” or something along those lines. When people talk about themselves, the same parts of the brain are triggered as when people talk about food or sex. If that journalist likes food and/or sex (who doesn’t like one, the other, or both), then that journalist will respond to your tweet. Many journalists do not hesitate to promote themselves when the opportunity comes. Asking the question gives them that opportunity.
  3. Respond to that tweet and continue the conversation. There is no rubric for this step. Your response depends on how the journalist responds. The key to the connection working is that you have a lengthy conversation before you ask the journalist to write about you.
  4. When to ask the question. After you get the conversation with the journalist, continue favoriting and retweeting that person’s tweets. That way, the journalist will not forget about you. If the journalist cannot forget about you, then you have won the hardest part of the battle. All you have to do is continue favoriting and retweeting the journalist’s tweets. After 2-4 weeks have gone by, ask the journalist the question. Say something like, “I do BLANK and was wondering if you would like to learn more.” In order to increase your likelihood of appearing in the newspaper, what you do needs to be related to what the journalist writes about.

You should repeat this process for multiple journalists. One of those journalists will say yes, and then it will only be a matter of time before other newspapers hear about you and write about your story. Once you make it in a newspaper for the first time, it progressively becomes easier to make it in others newspapers out there.

 

5 Ways To Build A Strong Reputation In Your Niche

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Business Reputation

The people who stand out in their niches are the ones with strong reputations. When we decide between two products, we look at the reputations of those products and the people who made them. The bestselling author gets more sales than the author who just started because the bestselling author has a stronger reputation. In order to build your reputation in your niche and stand out from the crowd, these are 5 things that you need to do.

  1. Get on social networks, but that also means YouTube! Get on social networks has been shoved down our throats. We need the Twitter, the Facebook, the Google+, the Pinterest, and all of the other social networks as well. However, many people forget about YouTube. YouTube gives you a chance to shine because there is no skimming in a video. In a blog post, you can skim through the content. You can decide which content is important and which content can be skipped over. In a video, skimming is no longer an option which makes the viewer listen to and absorb more of your information. There are also some easy ways to look more professional on YouTube such as a buttoned shirt, better background, better lighting, and a bonus, having a white board behind you.
  2. Appear on multiple places on the web. Whether you are a guest blogger or get interviewed, you need to appear on as many websites as possible. Tell people on your blog that you are available for interviews. Including that on your blog alone will encourage more people to interview you. Being a guest blogger will allow your content to reach a new audience that is similar to the audience that you already have. Being a guest blogger will emphasize that your content is good enough to be featured on other people’s blogs.
  3. Write a paperback book and publish it to the world. Writing a paperback book means you were able to put enough ideas and concepts about your niche together to create a lengthy book. A lengthy book will tell your customers that you know a lot about your niche. As a result, your reputation in your niche will grow.
  4. Be consistent and frequent. Posting on your social networks several times every day, publishing 1 YouTube video every week, and publishing 1 blog post every day will all build your reputation. Consistency and frequency put together will show people that you are putting in a lot of work and effort in your niche. People will have a greater appreciation for all of the things that you do. The more times people see you, the more likely they are to trust your products and services.
  5. Boost your number of followers the right way. It’s easy to catch someone who bought fake followers. However, people will respect what you do if most of your followers are real. The people with strong reputations in their niches are the ones with thousands of real followers, and some of these people have over 100,000 real followers. By boosting your numbers the right way, you will be able to grow your audience of people who respect and admire you for what you do.

Those are the 5 ways to build your reputation in your niche. Although none of these methods can be applied successfully overnight, implementing these methods will have a long-term big impact on your reputation. What are your thoughts on the list? What advice do you have about building a reputation in your niche? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

10 Ways To Find Cool People To Follow On Twitter

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Twitter Logo

In a social network with hundreds of millions of active users, some people find it very challenging to find the right people to follow in the big crowd. Many new users often get lost in Twitter’s search option as they look for people in their niche to follow. However, there are ways to find cool people to follow in the crowd of over 200 million active users. Here are 10 of those ways:

  1. Search your niche’s keywords in Twitter’s search box. If you search for your niche’s keywords, you will be able to find the people who frequently tweet about your niche. After searching the keywords, Twitter will show you a list of people’s tweets about that niche with the top three accounts. On the top left corner is an option where you can display all of the accounts that tweet about your niche. By using this option, you will be able to see the best of the best in your niche. Those are the people who you should follow.
  2. Use Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section. After following a few people in your niche, Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section will be filled with people who tweet about things related to your niche. By following the people on that list, Twitter will continue adding people to that list who tweet about things related to your niche.
  3. Go outside of the niche. Outside of your niche is yourself. Who are the people that you admire? These people do not have to be in your niche. I have my favorite athletes, authors, and singers. Although these people do not necessarily tweet about things related to my niche, I follow these people on Twitter anyway because I like them.
  4. Follow media outlets. The Huffington Post, Mashable, Tech Crunch and ABC News are four great media outlets worth following. There are several other media outlets that are worth following as well. Following these media outlets will allow you to keep up with the news and possibly learn about people who tweet about things related to your niche.
  5. Follow the followers of someone in your niche with over 100,000 followers. Most of the social media experts will tell you to do this when you want to build a targeted following. However, implementing this strategy will also allow you to follow cool people. The people who you are following are people who are interested in your niche. You can have conversations with these people about your niche.
  6. Follow guest bloggers who write blog posts about your niche. At either the beginning or end of every guest post is the name of the author. In many cases, clicking the author’s name will lead to a bio page where you will be able to see a link to that person’s Twitter account. After you get the link, follow that guest blogger. Then, tell him/her that you enjoyed reading their blog post. That’s how the conversation starts (and builds).
  7. Look for social media icons on a blogger’s blog. All of my icons are located on the right sidebar of my blog. Many bloggers add their social media icons to their blogs so they can get more followers. If you like a blogger’s blog posts, you should click on the Twitter icon and follow that blogger. Then, start a conversation.
  8. Follow motivational accounts. No matter what profession you are in, we can all use motivation. Out of all of the motivational accounts out there, in my opinion, @Sports_Greats sends out the most motivational tweets. The account has over 1 million to show for it.
  9. Follow people who have a conversation with you. If someone has a conversation with you on any social network, chances are that the first conversation will not be the last one. In order to stay in touch with the person you are having a conversation with, you should follow that person. In addition, that person will be very likely to follow you back.
  10. Look through tweets about trending topics. For certain trending topics, there are several tweets that will make you laugh. If someone’s tweet made you laugh, you should follow that person for more comedy. In fact, you should also follow your favorite comedian.

Although Twitter is a big place, it is not hard to find people worth following. There are over 200 million active users on Twitter, but somewhere in those 200 million active users are the active users who you need to follow as soon as possible. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you find people to follow through any other method? Please share your thoughts and tips below.