Tag social media

Make Your Social Media Take Off

NasaYou work on keeping Twitter feed relevant and regularly update your business Facebook page. Your website has fresh content, so what is the problem?  The good news is that everything is possible with persistence.  On the other hand, not every product or service is meant to take off. It may be hard to hear, but some products cannot find a large or niche audience.  There is the joke about the solar panel flashlight  or metal detecting sandals once being the net great thing. All products or services simply have to find the right customers. The singers on YouTube desperately want to be discovered. They are putting themselves out there and that at least moves them forward. The same should be true for any business out there that wants to gain traction in the marketplace. You must put yourself out there no matter the results for a sustainable length of time.

Ask yourself the following questions as truthfully as possible:

  1. Who is coming first, your clients or your ego?
  2. Are the pain points of your clients carefully considered and targeted?
  3. How much time are you really putting into your social media?

 

Who is coming first, your clients or your ego?

No one likes to be sold to. Consider how TiVo has made it easier to forward through commercials. If you are so in love with the idea of your product or service that everyone is a potential customer, then your ego has come first. If you understand that your audience has other competitors in their ear and you should stand out by best serving their needs, then your clients come first. Address their needs first and you can make all forms of social media relevant. One caveat, however, do not start your tweets or updates by asking a question.  This will come across as twee or trying too hard.

Are the pain points of your clients carefully considered and targeted?

Analyze what makes your clients tick. In my business, my clients want their content to be relevant and easily searchable. When I was doing restaurant financing SEO articles, I understood that the pain points of my clients included secure funding that would not use their houses as collateral. They want a loan that was easy to get and would not ruin their personal finances if their establishments did not work out as expected. All articles focused upon that need. Established restauranteurs would not be searching for this information, but the new ones would. The agency I worked for carefully targeted that audience to be one of the most successful campaigns in their history.  You can do the same with yours. Understand pain points and focus on a reasonable solution.

How much time are you really putting into your social media?

There is investing time in the online reputation of your business and then there is not taking it seriously. To properly invest in social media, you can put in time every day or have a social media day as some of my clients do.  This means composing tweets or having a writer do it, upload it to services such as hootsuit.com or any of several other services. Does this mean you are done? Not at all. You have to interact with your followers, send DMs,  and let others know you appreciate their acknowledgment.  You can buy some followers and have them slip away months later. In the process, this seems unsavory to your other followers.  Invest in getting to know who your visitors are and listen to what they have to say. Not everyone in the social media world is friendly.  Some are plain awful while others can be supportive. Don’t post and walk away. Interact.

Explaining Internet Marketing to Digital Immigrants
Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives

Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives

Digital Immigrants- those that did not grow up with the internet

Digital Natives-those that not only grew up with technology, but embrace all forms of it

 

Realizing the value of the web is an important step for many business owners especially ones that did not grow up with the internet better known as‘Digital Immigrants’. Conversely, ‘Digital Natives’ typically embrace any form of technology, mostly because they are not hindered by the idea that it just hasn’t been done before so it should not be done now. Walk outside any schoolyard and most students are more engrossed in their devices than each other. This is their new way of communicating. Instead of passing notes, they like each other’s Facebook statuses. Relationship are cemented through social media rather than in real life. In fact, so many now report a sense of isolation from too much time in the digital realm. Still, they have grown up around computer screens and the like. Nothing digital is frightening to them. As for Digital Immigrants, even those that grew up with chat rooms and the like may have a harder time processing information. They can still recall a time before cellphones and had more face-to-face interactions with their friends than today’s youth.

Digital immigrants need special consideration when being pitched to. They are not likely to announce their satisfaction with a product on Twitter or like a page on Facebook.  They would prefer calling a customer care number to vent rather than turn to a screen. Technology may not be foreign to them, but it can still take a varying period to adjust to any changes. For the majority of their lives, advertising was done on television or radio. Internet marketing can be newfangled to them. They may not understand that search engines are a library of information provided by the business owner and used by search websites to create a market place for business, social networking and many other facets of digital life.

If you or your business are challenged by explaining a search engine simplify it as a market place similar to a mall.  They are in a grand sense electronic billboards and store signs. The more time a sign is up, the greater chance the business will be seen as reputable. They can be at the entrance of the mall where the signage encourages potential clients to visit. On the internet, many will not know you exist unless a search engine brings them to your digital storefront. The longer an ad is up on the internet, the higher the ranking can be. Google works hard to prevent shady businesses from gaining traction on their site. Many fly by night businesses will buy websites and try to make them appear legitimate with bought ads. Google is aware and wary of this practice. In order to ensure a solid marketing mind frame, the ads/business with endurance will rise to the top. Keep in mind that is very difficult to get to the top of the search engine list, especially if your business arena is a packed one. For example, if you own a tanning salon in Miami, there could be hundreds of ads for a tanning salon. Be patient and willing to spend to reach the top of the list or even the first page.

Activity: Open up your laptop or phone. Type in Google and search for high gloss creme nail polish. On the left side of the screen will be different sites of information. On the right side of the screen are paid advertisements.  You can pay to have your business on the right side of the screen. This is internet marketing at work.

Twitter Simplified

 

Twitter can be intimidating. Its mascot, the silly blue bird, reminded me of a china doll in a horror movie. I didn’t know what it was going to do to me or my business, but I knew I had to keep my eye on it. My anxiety centered on my cluelessness on what to say and have it read as witty.
After reading a few books and articles, I began to understand Twitter in a new way. It is a microblogging site and as an experienced blogger, this seemed doable. I usually post to my personal blog  about once a week and to be noticed on Twitter you need at least three tweets a day. Even to an experienced writer this is intimidating.

When I wrote my first business book I surrounded myself with Forbes magazine and all things commerce. I researched for days, so, for Twitter, I did the same. Feeds were analyzed and read for clarity. Some were funny and others were lame. The ones I liked best were marketing themselves in a subtle way. In contrast, the ones that announced themselves like used carsalesmen turned me off.

Twitter feeds reminded me of the Emily Dickinson poem I read in high school.

“I’m Nobody! Who are you?”
Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

 
I decided right away to make my feed as useful as possible. Out of my four tweets a day, one would be a pitch while the others had to be useful, even in the most mundane way. Simple things like the difference between You and Your. It may help someone or at least not sound like random croaking to the admiring bog.

My hard sells would be simple and to the point. I wanted to advertise my wares, but also be aware that I had to do this with dignity. One line of pitch should be enough once a day. If it still seems intimidating, just remember these three points:

Advice for Twitter Newcomers

1. Divide your expertise into seven topics.
I do schools, editing and several others.

2. Pick times to consistently tweet.
I dedicate my ten o’clock  tweet to #newteachers for my guide on the first year of teaching.

3. Get familiar with Hootesuite.
This is a lifesaver and it is free!

Feel free to follow me @sirenpub where I dole out more advice three times a day. Good luck!

liz-lemon-emily-dickinson