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5 Social Media Lessons Pool Taught Me

December 2, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

social-media-lessons

As a college student, I play pool for several hours in any given week. As I continued playing the game and working on my business, I realized that some tips for pool mirror ideal tips for growing and maintaining a social media audience.

It’s funny how any activity can teach you about business if you look at it the right way. You don’t need to be a pool player to understand the concepts within this blog post, but if you are a pool player, I’m sure you will appreciate this one.

#1: Start Strong

In a game of pool, the break typically determines how the rest of the game will go. Ideally, you want to break the triangle of pool balls and scatter the pool balls in different directions while landing some in the pockets (or if you land the 8 ball on the break, you win).

A bad break means the game will last far too long while a good break allows for a more fun game.

Each day, when you start implementing your social media strategy, the way you start determines the rest of the journey. If you start off distracted by the trending topics section, you will remain distracted for most of the day.

The way you start impacts the rest of your journey.

#2: Stay Consistent

A pool player who has a great day on one day and a bad day on another is not reliable. The best pool players are the ones who are consistently good.

In the same way, social media growth requires consistent work to see the results. You can’t grow your Twitter audience on one day, take a day off on the other day, and repeat that pattern while expecting massive results.

Staying consistent is one of the most important parts of thriving on social media. The more consistent effort you put into your social media strategy, the better your results will become.

#3: Get Advice From Others

When I got into college, I had no pool experience. I was terrible. I only became good after I got some guidance from others.

Getting advice from others sounds like common sense, but common sense is rarely common practice. Some people are intimidated to come up to someone or send an email to someone asking for advice.

When I got started on my social media journey, I had tons of questions. I was not afraid to ask people how they grew massive social media audiences. They responded by offering me their advice.

This advice was critical for me growing my social media audience. Don’t be afraid to ask others for advice. You’ll accomplish more in a shorter amount of time just by asking the right people the right questions.

#4: Focus On One Social Network

When the 8 ball is all alone on the table, you must call your shot before sinking the 8 ball into a pocket. It’s impossible to call multiple pockets. You must choose one and focus on only sinking the 8 ball into the chosen pocket.

If you look at other options, you risk hitting the 8 ball wrong and landing it into the wrong pocket. You can do all of the work to get the other seven balls off the table, but if you don’t focus on the best pocket for the 8 ball, you risk landing it in the wrong pocket.

Many social media experts start their social media journeys by focusing on one social network. Once they master their first social network, they then expand into other social networks.

I started by mastering Twitter and then I expanded into the other social networks. Foundr Magazine grew a massive presence on Instagram and then expanded into the other social networks.

Choose one social network and master it. It’s easier to walk with one egg in your hand than walk while juggling 10 eggs. Most people approach social media like the person who juggles the 10 eggs (without being a professional juggler).

#5: Set Yourself Up For The Next Opportunity

When you have an easy shot in a game of pool, you need to do two things simultaneously. You must both make the easy shot in and set yourself up for a next shot. The next shot you want to set yourself on determines how you hit the cue ball and how hard you hit it.

Think about everything you do for your social media strategy. What type of work can you do now that can set you up for more success in another area within the near future? Growing a social media audience sets you up for several opportunities.

If you share your blog posts and landing pages on your social networks, then expanding your social media audience sets you up for more blog traffic and a bigger email list.

Don’t just invest your time (and for some, money) for the sake of building your numbers. Do so with an end goal in mind. What is the purpose of you using social media? Why do you bother to grow an audience?

Always think about how your actions in one area can set you up for the next opportunity. Still focus on the opportunity you are currently pursuing, but have that other opportunity in the back of your mind.

In Conclusion

Any activity presents itself as a learning experience you can use to take your business to the next level. In this case, playing pool taught me new things about social media.

I knew some of these lessons before, but with the new context, I am more conscious of how these lessons apply to a social media strategy.

For instance, I was promoting my blog posts and landing pages on social media long before I started to play pool. However, I never thought of the concept of setting up for the next opportunity.

If growing on social media sets you up for the opportunity of more blog traffic, what opportunity do you set yourself up for once you get visitors? Do you set up for leads? Product sales? Clients? Always anticipate the next opportunity and set yourself up for it.

If you are a business owner, you can make each phase of the customer cycle set up for the next phase of the customer cycle. That’s what the most effective autoresponders do. When a customer buys a low-priced product, they eventually get the pitch for the high-priced product.

Are you a pool player? Which of these lessons landed in the pocket for you? Have any other lessons you’d like to put on the table? Break in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: pool, social media, social media marketing, social networks

Five Social Networks That People Give Up On Too Quickly

September 30, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

five social networks that people give up on too quickly
You really don’t want give up on these social networks.

Facebook and Twitter dominate most conversations about social media. People are looking for ways to get more Twitter followers, more comments on Facebook posts, and turning all of that into a profit.

It’s great that we focus on these social networks. However, as we tunnel vision our focus on 1-2 social networks, we forget about the other social networks that surround us.

The key to my success on social media was focusing on Twitter. However, that wasn’t enough. Focusing on Twitter and thriving on the platform only gave me a strong base, not a skyscraper. I got the skyscraper by addressing other social networks that are often forgotten about.

The reason certain social networks get neglected from a business standpoint is because we want quick results. How do you spend $1 today so you make $2 tomorrow? How do we add some extra zeroes to those numbers? That’s how entrepreneurs think.

While it’s good to focus on the profit, not all profits come in the short-term. The profits people dream of come in the long-term. Growing your audience on multiple social networks (and outsourcing the work) is a great way to grow in the long-term.

The long-term growth on any social network can lead to better results. However, five social networks often find themselves pushed to the side. Either we ignore them or don’t focus enough time on them. Here’s the complete list:

 

#1: Pinterest

Pinterest boasts over 70 million users and over 50 billion pins. These users are very active, and some of these users spend hours of their time on the site every day. Pinterest makes it possible to organize your social media posts (pins) into different categories (boards). That makes it easier for your followers to find specific content they are looking for.

Other than effective organization, Pinterest has another factor that separates it from most social networks. 80% of pins are repins. That means it’s easier to go viral. One of the pins I sent to my 500 followers ended up getting over 1,000 repins. The pin reached beyond my audience. Just to give you a comparison of Pinterest’s viral power, only 1% of tweets are retweets.

I eventually grew my audience to 22,000 followers. Then I neglected my Pinterest account. It took too much time. The solution to the problem was outsourcing the work to someone from UpWork. Pinterest is a powerful but also time consuming social network. Consider delegating pins and your account’s growth to someone else.

 

#2: SlideShare

SlideShare has been praised by many marketers and some of the world’s most successful blogs, including Mashable.

So what’s all of the hype about? SlideShare is a social network that lets you upload KeyNote and PowerPoint presentations. The best part about SlideShare is that you don’t need a large audience for your presentation to go viral. Some viral SlideShare presentations were created by people with a few dozen followers. You don’t even need millions of followers on your other social networks.

Perhaps the most powerful use of SlideShare is growing your email list. My friend Steve Scott wrote a blog post discussing SlideShare’s dramatic impact on his email list.

The reason most people don’t invest their time into SlideShare is because it takes a long time to create a presentation. Let alone creating multiple presentations every week. The best way to utilize SlideShare is by outsourcing the work to someone else. Steve Scott outsources his SlideShare presentations to an assistant. It’s a time efficient way to take advantage of a big opportunity.

 

#3: Periscope

Periscope is the new social network in town. New social networks create two groups of people—the highly skeptical people and the people in search of the next opportunity. I joined Periscope early and ended up getting over 2,000 followers in my first week.

Mastering any social network takes time, but the reason people shy away from Periscope are a bit different:

  1. It’s new
  2. People are afraid of messing up live (no redoing a broadcast)
  3. Real-time engagement looks scary the first time

For some people, using Periscope challenges them to conquer the fear of live recording. And conquering that fear can be quite profitable. Periscope expert Kim Garst has made thousands of dollars promoting her products on Periscope. One of her Periscope broadcasts resulted in an extra 180 subscribers overnight.

And she got those results with a little over 10,000 Periscope followers. It’s not incredibly difficult or time consuming to reach 10,000 Periscope followers. You can even get significant results with your first 1,000 Periscope followers.

The social network presents new opportunities for business owners. However, since it’s still new, most people make the mistake of pushing it to the side. Don’t be one of those people.

 

#4: YouTube

Shocked to find one of the largest social networks on this list? YouTube has proven itself as a worthy social network again and again. We hear the stories about the people who make six figure incomes from their videos.

As awesome as those stories are, there is a disappointing reality. Most of the people who use YouTube aren’t taking it seriously. Maybe they upload a decent video every month (or worse, every other month). I know some people succeed by uploading one YouTube video every other month, but those people are the exceptions, not the rule.

For some marketers, YouTube is the sleeping giant. Wake up the giant by being active and growing your channel, and that giant will bring in the results.

 

#5: Instagram

Instagram is more than a social network for teens. It’s emerging as one of the top players. With just as many users as Twitter, Instagram needs to be taken seriously.

For a long time, it has been challenging for marketers to take Instagram seriously. Anyone like me with an active blog typically spends more time on the desktop than on mobile devices. While Instagram is mobile savvy, you can’t exactly call it desktop savvy.

Then the tools caught up. HootSuite now makes it possible for us to schedule Instagram pictures from our desktops. This makes it possible to do the following:

  1. Schedule pictures you create on your desktop (i.e. pictures created with Canva that are optimized for Instagram’s dimension size)
  2. Outsource the work (assign it to someone on your organization’s HootSuite team)

These two possibilities have changed the Instagram landscape. It’s now possible to schedule Instagram photos in a free and easy manner. Scheduling Instagram photos is now as easy as scheduling tweets.

Instagram is continuing to grow. Don’t miss the boat.

 

In Conclusion

Billions of people are on the web. Many of these people have social media accounts. With all of the social networks on the web, some fall under the cracks. Businesses forget to utilize certain social networks that can turbocharge their growth.

The best way to utilize a social network is by mastering it and then outsourcing the work. That way, you get to spend your time doing other things for your business.

Which social networks are you underutilizing? Have any tips for us so we don’t underutilize these social networks as much? Sound off in the comments section below!

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: social networks

5 Creative Ways To Generate And Keep Buzz On Instagram

September 13, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Unlike other social networks, Instagram relies on the fact that you are taking pictures primarily from your mobile device. Other social networks allow you to use a picture from the web or no picture at all.

Business owners and brands are now using Instagram, and the total number of users on Instagram has shot up like a rocket. However, few people are actually generating the buzz on Instagram so that people look at their products and services.

  1. Post 1-5 picture every day. If you have 10 pictures that you want to post today, it’s better to spread them out over a period of time so you have enough pictures to post for the entire week. Consistency is more important than getting a fast start.
  2. Host a giveaway. This method works well on any social network, but especially Instagram where you can take a picture of yourself holding the prize and sharing it with everyone. That picture will definitely get a lot of likes.
  3. Comment On Other People’s Pictures. The more times people see you on Instagram, the more they will remember your presence. When more people remember, this allows you to generate and keep the buzz. People who are remembered are the ones who become successful.
  4. Promote your Instagram account and pictures on your blog. The more you promote your Instagram account and pictures, the more traffic and followers you will get. Promoting all of that on your own blog is a great way to increase traffic and get more followers. This applies for any social network.
  5. Build a following. There are plenty of ways to do this. All four of the above ways will help you get a following while generating and keeping buzz. Another great way to build a following on Instagram is by following others back.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: business, business tip, instagram, instagram tips, social media, social networks

Origins Of All Social Media Network

March 24, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Simply put: People who had dreams and made them a reality.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: business, business tip, inspiration, reality, social networks, truth

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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

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