• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

  • Home
  • About
  • Advertising Services
  • Podcast
  • What I’m Doing Now
  • Writing Portfolio

social media tips

How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Products

July 8, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social Media Marketing Tips

Time and time again, I see people making the same mistakes when they promote their products or affiliate links on their social networks. Many people simply type the name of the product, put a link right next to the name of the product, and then send out the social media post. They look like this:
“[Name of product]. www.linktoproduct.com”

However, just because something is common practice does not make it correct. Generating sales from social media is a process that requires thinking outside of the norm. You can’t promote a product on social media in the same way you would promote a blog post. However, it is possible to promote a product on social media and generate sales. Here’s how:

 

Surround Your Product With A Story

Products with good stories are made to spread, and that’s because we all love listening and telling good stories. When we tell good stories, we wow our friends, and seeing our friends’ reactions makes us feel good. When we listen to good stories, we get wowed by them and want to tell our friends about those stories so they get the wow feeling, and we feel better about ourselves. Good stories spread in an infinite loop, and some stories will spread so far that you may hear the same story from two different people on two separate occasions.

Since stories spread far and wide, it has become a requirement for marketers to wrap a good story around the product. Once you come up with the story, promote that story on social media and use that story as the marketing message. Now, here’s how you come up with a good story:

  1. Start with why: Why do you do what you do?
  2. How do you do what you do: Give a brief summary.
  3. What do you do: Yes, you are explaining what you do at the very end.

Conveying the entire story in one tweet may be difficult. You should send a series of tweets throughout the day that help surround your product in the entire story, or you can use the next method below.

 

Use Pictures In Your Social Media Posts

Social media posts with pictures have been known to get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. Without implementation, this is just a nice fact that won’t do anything for your brand. When you promote your products, include pictures that create a deeper meaning for your product. Don’t simply use a picture of the product. Show the product’s use, provide insight, or do something else in addition to showing the actual product. Kim Garst uses Twitter to promote her latest book, Will The Real You Please Stand Up, and she uses pictures filled with insights quoted directly from the book to promote that book.

A #brand story must be authentic from the very first moment. #BeYou http://t.co/YhsKAmD3As pic.twitter.com/87xn82a6bv

— Kim Garst (@kimgarst) June 6, 2015

If you like the insights you get from the pictures of Kim Garst’s book, then you will love the book, and within all of those tweets is a link to the book’s sales page.

 

Make Your Product Cool

Cool products are made to spread. In an information product, being cool can mean having a great personality. In fact, the personality behind the product can be the making or breaking point of determining how cool a product actually is. With hundreds of products like ours, the personalities behind each product are the only difference makers. There are several ways to make a product cool, but you will know how cool a product is based on how people react with the product and tell their friends about it. Creating a cool social media marketing campaign that spreads and attracts attention will be the equivalent of a good story. People will tell their friends about it, and word of mouth will expand your product’s reach. The definition of a cool social media marketing campaign depends on the niche you are in.

 

Promote A Landing Page That Leads To A Product

One of the best ways to generate sales from social media is to generate them indirectly with a landing page. On a landing page, you promote a free prize that people receive when they enter their email address into the form. Then, if you use a service like iContact to create an autoresponder, you can interact with your new subscribers and promote your product at the end of the autoresponder. Autoresponders work well at getting sales because they allow you to build the relationship between you and the people in your audience. You can utilize the autoresponder to let people know more about your story so they feel a deeper connection with you.

 

Free Coupons

If you create a new product and are trying to gain an audience, offering free coupons to your products is a strategy you can use to jumpstart your customer base. This growing customer base can result in the first couple of testimonials for your product. Testimonials are important for a product’s success because potential customers want to make sure they are getting the best deal and the best possible value from a product. You don’t want to become dependent on offering free coupons for your products, but you will generate momentum for that product, and if you do a good job at providing value, your customers will have good things to say. All of the positive feedback associated with your product will lead to more sales, but only if you make it easy for potential customers to see the positive feedback. In the description of your product, include quotes from what actual customers said about your product so more people who visit your sales page will be enticed to make a purchase.

 

In Conclusion

The way you promote your products on social media determines how many sales you will generate from your efforts. Some people put in half the amount of work but get twice as many sales as the average individual. By generating the initial buzz with free coupons, creating a good story for your product that resonates with your audience, optimizing your social media posts for more engagement, and going after indirect sales via landing page sign-ups, your social media marketing results can skyrocket and lead to a reliable social media ROI.

What are your thoughts about promoting products on social media? Have you promoted one of your products on social media before? What advice do you have for people who are about to promote their products on social media for the first time? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media marketing, social media tips

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

June 15, 2015 by Marc Guberti 19 Comments

Social Media Marketing Guidelines

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.

 

Want The Summary

This blog post is over 5,000 words. Based on my past experiences, I know it’s very difficult to remember everything from an article this long. That is why I condensed it into a summary which is less than 350 words together. The summary will help you remember all of the key points from this article so you can leverage them in your business.

Get The Summary Of This Article

All of the key points from this article in less than 350 words…instead of a little over 5,000 words.

privacy We value your privacy and would never spam you

 

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media marketing, social media tips

The Five Forgotten Factors Of Social Media Success

April 13, 2015 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Social Media Success

Social media constantly grows. More people join the action every day. More people stick around for a few hours every day to see what tweets get posted on Twitter and what gets posted on their Facebook feeds.

With social media’s ever-growing popularity, some of the key components of success on social media have been forgotten. When people think of success on social media, they think of having a big audience, but success on social media is more than that. Success on social media is the combination of factors that most of us have forgotten. These are five of those forgotten factors of social media success:

 

#1: Be Social

The entire purpose of social media was to provide people with a way to communicate with one another from anywhere in the world. Social media was not originally created to give businesses an additional edge. When most entrepreneurs use social media, they focus on the business side. They focus on promoting their own content and their own products without bothering to interact with their audiences.

Interacting with your audience will allow you to develop stronger relationships with the members of your audience. Interacting will make people feel respected and make them feel as if they belong in your social media community. You want the people in your audience to feel as if they belong in your audience because this sense of feeling belonged results in strong relationships, returning visitors, word of mouth promotion, and sales.

When you interact to make your followers feel as if they belong, you must do so for the right reason. Don’t interact with someone just in hopes of making a sale. Only interact with your followers if that is what you want to do. There should never be an ulterior motive for social media interaction.

 

#2: It’s About Providing Value, Not Talking About Yourself

Many social media users make it a point to constantly talk about themselves or their own businesses. Some people tell their followers about their breakfast while other people talk about more meaningful things in your life such as relationship statuses and vacations. Mentioning those types of details once in a blue moon will allow your audiences to know about you, but if these details are common on your social networks, people will unfollow you because your social media posts will bore them.

You may wonder why celebrities who post pictures of themselves eating their breakfast, going on vacation, or getting married get more positive attention than the person who constantly tweets about the sandwich he had for breakfast. The reason celebrities get good exposure when they send out these types of posts is because the celebrities already have a large amount of attention, and most of the content on various celebrities’ feeds is about their professions. Singers primarily post content on their social networks related to their songs and audiences.

They don’t post pictures of their breakfast or vacations as much. That is why when those pictures are posted, they are more appreciated than the pictures from someone who exclusively posts those types of pictures.

Do less talking about yourself and focus on providing more value. You can do this by writing valuable blog posts and promoting them. Many bloggers including myself use social media to promote our own blog posts very often. We do this because we trust in the value our content provides and want to empower our followers with that value. Followers who feel empowered with value will stick around.

Followers who feel empowered with value will stick around.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1wZnBPB”]#SocialMedia Followers who feel empowered with value will stick around.[/tweetthis]

 

#3: Push Out More Content

Many social media users do their best to publish one new piece of content on at least one social network every day. However, that is not enough to get noticed. Social media is a noisy place with countless posts being sent every second. Billions of social media posts get created and published every day. It is challenging to stand out in the middle of that noise.

Instead of posting one new tweet on Twitter every day, I post 100 new tweets every day. Instead of doing one new YouTube video every month, I do one new YouTube video every week. Always look for ways to increase the frequency that you can push out content. By increasing the frequency in which you push out content, you will be seen by a larger percentage of your audience. As you get seen more, some people in your social media audience may decide to subscribe to your blog and buy your products. When you push out more content, never sacrifice value. It is better to publish one high value YouTube video every month than four poorly done YouTube videos every month.

 

#4: Social Media Success Does Not Mean Success

Many people want to believe that having a certain number of followers guarantees success and money. However, social media success is different from success based on a revenue making standpoint. Social media is a tool you can use to make more revenue, but social media is not the place where you can promote a product and expect it to pick up a life changing amount of sales.

Social media is a place to get more indirect sales. You simply use social media to promote your blog and landing pages. Then, your blog and landing pages will lead to more subscribers and visitors. Getting more subscribers and visitors will lead to more long-term sales for your products. Social media gets used to amplify the power of those indirect methods of making more revenue.

 

#5: One At A Time

Many people have a strong desire to master multiple social networks. This desire is critical towards mastering multiple social network and achieving social media domination. It is this same desire that can spell doom for your entire social media strategy.

You read those last two sentences right. Something so important for social media success is also a big downfall that many people face. You need to master one social network at a time just like you would master one new language at a time. Each time you master one social network, it will become easier for you to master other social networks (you will have a larger audience and more knowledge).

You need to learn one social network at a time instead of trying to master them at once. Would you only focus on learning Spanish or try to learn Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Greek, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese at the same time? Do you only focus on Twitter (or your preferred choice), or do you try to focus on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Google Plus, Tumblr, and Flickr at the same time?

 

In Conclusion

Sometimes, the best information we need is the information that was previously forgotten. People wouldn’t work at nine different 9-to-5 jobs at once, but now people are willing to learn and focus on that many social networks at once before mastering them. Social media success has confused the real meaning of financial success. We already know to push out content, but we need to push out more of it. We must provide value instead of posting about anything we can think of because people like to follow people who provide value. Interaction with your friends in real life is important, but so is interaction with your social media audience.

What were your thoughts on these forgotten tips? Do you have any other tip that you believe gets forgotten too often? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media success, social media tips

7 Warning Signs That Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Working

March 25, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Bad Social Media Strategy

Social media has made it easier than ever before for someone to grow an authority around a passion. Millions of the people who have embraced social media use it to promote their businesses, spread the word about their blog posts, and lead people to product pages. These people create social media strategies in the attempt to grow their authorities on the web.

Out of all of the social media strategies that get implemented, only a few of them work. Most social media strategies do a few things wrong. In a social media strategy, if a few things get done incorrectly, the entire strategy could get sabotaged. Let’s say you are gaining 100 Twitter followers every day. If you only send one tweet every day and never promote your content, then you are not getting traffic to your blog which could lead to more revenue and authority on the web.

One of the best ways to do something right is by knowing the warning signs. If you see these warning signs in your social media strategy, then you need to adjust your strategy. If these seven warning signs are within your social media strategy, then you need to adjust that strategy:

 

#1: You Are Practically Chasing Potential Followers And Likers

This mistake is commonly referred to as begging other people to follow you or like your page and stalking them until the action gets performed. You also get very excited when you get one new follower or one new like. If your social media strategy has this warning sign, it takes too much effort to get a single follower. If you want to build an authority on any social network, it must be easy for you to get followers by the dozens, and eventually, by the hundreds every day.

On Twitter, I would be disappointed if I gained less than 200 followers on any given day. Gaining over 500 Twitter followers in one day would be a really good day for me. Don’t rejoice over gaining a single follower because that indicates slow growth. Instead, rejoice over the big milestones. Rejoice over getting dozens of daily followers, then hundreds of daily followers, and if you absolutely crush it on social media, thousands of daily followers.

 

#2: You Don’t Have An End Goal

What is the point of growing your social media audience? If you can’t answer this question, then this warning sign applies to your social media strategy. You need to identify the benefit of growing your social media presence. Sure, social proof is good, but you need a better reason to grow your social media audience.

I grow my social media audience so I can get more blog traffic, meet new people, and get more subscribers when I promote my landing pages (if you have a landing page, you should promote yours on social media too). There needs to be a purpose behind your actions other than the fact that social media is the big thing.

 

#3: You Are Not Interacting With Your Followers

Some of the best social media tips are tips for real life. One of those tips is to have a two-sided conversation with your followers. Think of how annoying it would be to listen to a one-sided conversation in real life. One person does all of the talking, and you just listen. You want to say something to the person talking, but it’s a one-sided conversation (oh well).

When people went over to social media, they forgot to properly carry over this important concept. Most social media posts are one-sided conversations in which people post what is on their minds without thinking about interacting with their followers. If someone posts a relevant response to one of your social media posts, you need to respond to that person. The strongest relationships that develop via social media start with interaction.

The [tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1wATJc9″]The strongest relationships that develop via #socialmedia start with interaction.[/tweetthis]

#4: Your Posts Are Not Getting A Lot Of Engagement

One of the reasons people go after large audiences on social media is to spread the word about what they do. In order to use social media to spread the word about what you do, your followers need to engage with your content. If your followers are not engaging with your content, then your audience size is just a number that doesn’t mean anything. 1 real follower is better than 100,000 fake ones.

If your posts are not getting a lot of engagement, then you are probably not reaching your goals for your social media strategy. You need people to share your content to have an impact on social media.

 

#5: Your Strategy Is Taking Up Too Much Time

Social media is a way to promote the pages that build relationships and bring more revenue for you. Social media is not a giant cash machine. Although you should focus part of your time on your social media strategy, you also need to focus your time on revenue generating activities. If your strategy takes up hours of your time every day, then you need to shorten it. You can eliminate certain processes and buy upgraded tools with more features (i.e. HootSuite Pro) to save time. Time is money.

 

#6: You Are Often Using Social Media To Promote Your Products

Red flag! Social media is not the place to promote your products and make the extra buck. Social media is the place to build relationships with like-minded people. You get the revenue from social media when you promote your blog, and the blog visitor either decides to buy a product he sees right away or subscribes to your blog and buys a product down the road. You can occasionally promote your products on social media, but you should only promote a product in a meaningful way. Kim Garst did that well with these tweets about her latest book.

 

#7: You Aren’t Making Yourself Different

Why would someone follow you instead of the other person in your niche? I don’t know for you exactly, but you must know why you would get people to follow you instead of someone else in your niche. You need to make yourself different from other people and present yourself in a way that encourages more people to follow you. Your bio needs to let people know why you are different in a concise manner. You can be different for the value you produce, having circumstances that most people don’t have, being something that most people are not, having a high level of credibility, or something else that makes you stand out. Standing out will help you build an authority on the web.

Not only is it important to make yourself different so you grow your audience, but if you make yourself different, your followers will remember you. Social media is a very noisy place where it is easy to be forgotten. If the people who view your social media account see you as a unique individual, then these people will remember who you are, visit your blog, and eventually buy your products.

 

In Conclusion

Chances are you know which warning signs apply to your social media strategy. At this stage of the game, there are only two choices. The first choice is to accept your social media strategy as it is, not address any of the warning signs, and not see dramatic growth. The second (better) choice is to address any of the warning signs that affect your social media strategy and stop them before those warning signs turn into your strategy’s danger. By addressing and fixing the flaws, you will move forward with your social media strategy and authority development.

Which warning signs apply to you? Do you have any additional warning signs that you would like to warn people about? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media mistakes, social media strategy, social media tips

10 Ways To Continue A Conversation With Someone On Social Media

March 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Continue Social Media Conversation

Social media is commonly used as a platform for marketers to promote their content and products. Millions of businesses use social media to communicate with their customers every day. These conversations are typically one-sided. Business accounts send out tweets but don’t bother responding to their customers.

Businesses and individuals need to have more conversations with their audiences. It is conversations that allow the strongest relationships to occur. You don’t get long-lasting friends that matter by having one-sided conversations with them. You need to have a conversation with someone if you want to build a strong relationship with that person.

However, the conversations that create friendships are more than the wave, the greeting, and then the departure. Conversations that build strong relationships need to last for a long period of time. In order to continue a conversation with someone on social media that turns into a strong relationship, follow these 10 tips.

 

#1: Wish Your Followers A Wonderful Week/Weekend

At the end of many of my conversations, I wish people a wonderful week or weekend depending on the day of the week. I do this for two reasons. The first reason is that I do want these people to enjoy their weeks and weekends. We have the right to enjoy our lives. The second reason is that this ending encourages the conversation to develop. Many of my followers also wish me a wonderful week/weekend depending on the day of the week.

 

#2: Ask A Question  

Questions are great ways to continue a conversation. After one of my followers wishes me a wonderful week/weekend, I ask that followers what he/she has planned for the week/weekend. Many people respond telling me all of the things they have to do for the week/weekend. I follow up with a list of things I have to do as well. Asking this question allows me to learn what my followers do. If I find a pattern, I may create a product around that pattern.

On a simpler scale, you can start a conversation by asking what your followers’ favorite books are. Asking these types of questions to all of your followers will start up multiple conversations.

 

#3: Have Multiple Conversations With The Same Person

Just because a conversation ends does not mean you and the person you were talking to will never have another conversation together. You can talk to the same person again and again, just like a real-life friendship.

 

#4: Thank Your Followers For Sharing Your Content

One of the best ways to start a conversation is with an act of gratitude. I constantly thank the people who share my content with their audiences. I have thanked the same people multiple times. Many of the people who I thank either say something like, “You’re welcome,” or “Thank you for putting up the content so I could share it.” If you get one of these two responses, you should continue the conversation with that person.

Most marketers are so focused on sharing and creating content that they forget to thank the people who appreciate them. Some of the people who share your articles will feel so grateful that you thanked them that these people will continue sharing your content. When you do this, it is important to avoid abusing this power (don’t use this to manipulate your followers), and in the end, your followers will only share your content if it is valuable.

 

#5: Include Pictures In Your Posts

Social media posts with pictures have been proven to get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. If you include pictures in more of your posts, you will start more conversations with your followers. Some of the people who engage with your pictures will be people who have had conversations with you in the past. You can continue interacting with these people to strengthen the relationships and interact with other people for the first time to start new relationships.

 

#6: Only Talk To The Right People

Not every social media user is created equal. Ideally, you want to talk to the people who are interested in the content you share on your social networks. These are the people who would be more likely to share your content and be grateful for your insights. You want to build an audience of like-minded people so that, when the conversations do take place, you are talking to the right people. In addition, when you hop onto a conversation, make sure the people in that conversation are the right people to talk with (like-minded people who share an interest in your niche).

 

#7: Respond Quicker

You can’t have much of a conversation with someone else unless you respond. The longest conversations that take place are the ones where people quickly respond to each other. Most of these conversations are real human interaction without any technology involved. On social media, you need technology to communicate with your followers. However, you can make those conversations last longer by responding quicker as if you were in a real conversation.

I make it a policy to get back to my followers within a day. Depending on when the conversation starts and when I log in, I may get back to some people within a few seconds or close to 24 hours. By responding quicker, your followers will be more likely to remember the conversation when they see your response.

 

#8: Quiz Your Followers

Quizzing your followers is a great way to start more conversations. You can quiz your followers by giving them a clue to identify someone, something, or an event such as, “Who was the 33rd President of the United States?” The answer to that question is Harry S. Truman. Of course, some followers may choose to look that up, but you get more interaction.

The best quiz questions are the ones that require a guess. Think “How many pieces of candy are in the box” type of questions. You can offer a free prize to the first person who guesses the right answer or is the closest to the right answer.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1Kgb4xg”]Quizzing your followers is a great way to educate them and have more conversations with them at the same time.[/tweetthis]

#9: Poll

Polls are another way to start conversations. Facebook has an especially great feature that makes poll creation easier. For any social network though, you can simply list poll choices like this:

What should my next product be about?

A. Pinterest

B. Twitter

C. Facebook

D. Blogging

E. Productivity

In less than a minute, I just created a poll that could be put on any social network, including Twitter with its 140 character limit. This type of poll would allow me to know what products my followers want. Having this knowledge would allow me to make better decisions when I create my future products. You can ask any poll question such as, “Which social network do you like the most…” Not all of them have to be related to your products or expertise.

 

#10: Thoughtfully Contribute To The Conversation 

When you contribute to a conversation, you need to thoughtfully contribute to that conversation. In human interaction, we don’t have as much time to think about what we say. We say what we think of. Sometimes, we say thoughtful things while at other times, we say things that we should have thought about before saying. On social media, you have time to think about what you say. Utilize the extra time to think before you post something on social media. Then, you will have a better reply to a conversation that makes the conversation build.

 

In Conclusion

Conversations are important on social media because they allow relationships to build. Some of these relationships may turn into sales, subscribers, and people who promote you for a long time. However, most conversations on social media are either one-sided or do not last for a long period of time. Everything you post is the start of a conversation. It is up to you to post the type of content your followers would be encouraged to engage with. Then it is up to you to keep those conversations going so you can build stronger relationships with your followers.

What are your thoughts on having conversations on social media? Do you have any other tips for making a conversation continue for a longer period of time? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media tips

5 Ways To Tap Into The Power Of Social Media

February 20, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social Media Power

Social media presents a powerful way to do the following:

  1. Grow an audience like never before
  2. Spread your message like never before
  3. Procrastinate like never before
  4. Insult people like never before

I think that out of all of the opportunities we have been presented with to take charge, never has there been an opportunity with such beneficial and disastrous consequences wrapped into one. The key way to tap into the power of social media and get the first two results is by knowing what to do, and then implementing that knowledge. There is really no other way to around it. These are the five ways you can tap into the power of social media:

 

#1: Identify The Best Social Network For You

Not all social networks are created equal. Each social network has a different set of functions and rules for success. On YouTube, you need to create high-value YouTube videos while on Twitter, you need to provide valuable content and follow targeted users who are likely to follow back. For those two social networks, that’s success in a nutshell.

Many people create multiple social media accounts and split their time amongst those accounts. This is one of the most common but also one of the biggest mistakes people make. If you split up your time amongst different social media accounts and try to master them all at the same time, you would have to read countless articles and turn yourself into a workhorse (never mind the fact that at the end of the day, your social media accounts need to promote people to revenue generating websites such as an optimized blog and landing page). The solution is to choose one (yes, just one) social network and master it. Once you master one social network, you can move on to mastering another social network. If you have multiple social media accounts (I’m sure you do), then there is no reason to delete any of them. Just be inactive on them for a while and focus most of your time on one of them.

 

#2: Do Research

No matter how much you know about one social network, you can still learn more about that social network. To this day, I continue to learn more about Twitter, and my quest for learning more about Twitter won’t stop for a very long time (if it ever stops at all). In order to learn more about a social network, you need to do research on that social network. You need to learn what it takes to be successful on that social network (which alone has dozens of smaller components), how you can use social media to boost your productivity, and more. When I do research, I type in a phrase into Google such as, “How To Get More StumbleUpon Followers” (I am intrigued by StumbleUpon and want to learn more about it), and then I read a bunch of the articles that come up. I took this approach to obtain my knowledge about Twitter, and I continue with that approach to this day.

 

#3: Implement 

The only research that adds up to any value is the research that you implement. Chances are ideas that rival Facebook and Google have already been thought of, but those ideas don’t get implemented, so the research and time put into those ideas do not matter. You may know what you do, but knowing and doing are two different things. Once you have the knowledge, you need to apply it. Find time in your day to experiment with new ideas, tinker with old ones, and track the results. Knowing which methods have the biggest impact on your social media audience will present you with the knowledge you need to move forward.

 

#4: Interact

One of the few rules that applies to every social network is that interacting with your audience is a great way to build connections and get more blog traffic in the process (assuming that you promote your blog on social media). The word social is in “social media” for a reason.

Not only does interacting with your followers make it possible for you to build more connections, but you can share valuable insights with each other. Some of the insights your followers share may inspire your future blog posts. Other followers may ask questions that you use in your information products. Social media allows you to interact with these followers so you can build connections, provide insights, and answer their questions. It’s a win-win for both of you (you get more ideas and your followers get their questions answered).

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/17Eb6mk”]Interacting with your social media followers is a win-win![/tweetthis]

#5: Keep At It 

The best way to grow your social media audience is to keep at it and learn new techniques along the way (don’t forget to implement). It takes a long time for you to grow a large social media audience. It is important to note that when I reached 100,000 Twitter followers in 993 days, I was not consistently gaining 101 followers every day.

On the day I got my 100,000th Twitter, I mathematically gained an average of 101 followers every day, but on most of those days, I was getting anywhere from 0-5 Twitter followers. Then, I went on to gain 10-20 followers every day until I made my way to gaining over 500 Twitter followers every day. You get to reach the colossal milestones by sticking with the social network you choose (but only stick with a social network if you have a passion for it. Don’t choose to grow on a social network that you despise).

 

In Conclusion

It would be impossible to cover all of the knowledge you need to know in one blog post. These five methods provide the basic surface needed to take your social media achievement to the next level. Always strive to learn more about what you are trying to master as well as what you have already mastered. Knowledge is power.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have another method for tapping into the power of social media? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social media success, social media tips

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

I am a business freelance writer who writes for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several companies, including…

  • Upwork
  • MoneyLion
  • Freight Waves
  • Westchester Business Journal
  • Property Onion

Listen to the Podcast

Click here to grab your FREE copy of "27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter"

Copyright © 2025 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in