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The Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing

10 commandments of social media marketing written on stone tablet

Over the years I have wanted to encapsulate a few fundamental rules for any organization to fall back on when developing their social media strategy. Social media and business have had somewhat a love/hate relationship as many struggle while others see success. Similar to having a mission statement or defined company goals, your business social media strategy should rely on a few general pillars of success to establish a powerful plan. I know it’s a bit bold to declare these pointers to be the “ten commandments of social media marketing” but they have been quintessential to my success, so I can only hope that they will do the same for you. Scroll down to see the full article 1. Be Consistent In Your Social Media Strategy Rule number one of social media marketing is to be consistent with your practices. That means posting on a daily basis and being committed to engaging regularly in the social stratosphere. Here are some rough guidelines for posting frequency: At least one blog per week (two times is great but focus on quality vs quantity) Post one-two times per day on Facebook, same for Google+ (I personally limit to one) For Twitter, I generally [...]

Mastering The Art of Selfless Social Media Posts

social media strategy

It’s a scary thought for most business owners to imagine that their efforts online are not only ineffective but also potentially working against them. You could be really business savvy and recognize the necessity for a social media strategy but that doesn’t change the fact you have little to no time, nor interest in adding another task on to your plate. That’s reasonable. The problem is everyone tells you that you have to get on this social media thing and you know it’s true, so you break down and decide to give it a try. You don’t like to read instruction manuals, you prefer to dive in and test the waters for yourself. Trial and error is the best approach, right? That might work at IKEA, but it likely won’t get you very far using social media marketing for your business. If you aren’t getting results using social media, there might be a deeper story that needs to be uncovered and it’s your job to get to the bottom of it before it gets to your bottom line. Related: 9 LinkedIn Mistakes That Are Making You Look Bad   What Are You Doing To Repel People? Social media has made [...]

Why Your IT Department Shouldn’t Do Your Social Media

The problem that I’m going to address today is one of the mistakes that many uninformed business owners and management teams make when deciding to implement a social media strategy. Before I get started, I should note that I believe that there are exceptions to almost every rule and I don’t intend to banish every person that’s ever helped someone with a computer problem to some covert social media marketer blacklist. Related: 5 Deadly Social Media Mistakes You Might Be Making   Social Media Marketing Is Not About Tech Of course there is a side to the social web that includes pages of developer code and fancy apps that could have come into existence from the tooth fairy, for all you know. What I’m talking about is the perception that social media is purely techy and just another job your web guy or IT department can take care of. When it comes to set up and design, a techy savvy person can spare you many headaches but social media is a marketing tool for business development and marketing, not IT.   You Don’t Need A Tech Expert, You Need A People Expert Whoever is in charge of your social media [...]

Blogging The Smart Way: An Interview With Jeff Bullas

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jeff Bullas, a Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer and author of Blogging The Smart Way: A Complete Guide To Creating & Marketing A Killer Blog With Social Media, to discuss the state of social media marketing and the techniques that are helping businesses turn a profit in 2012 and beyond. Jeff Bullas is a consultant, coach, mentor, and speaker that works with companies and executives to optimize their online presence through branding with digital marketing and social media. His extremely popular blog at www.jeffbullas.com has over 250,000 regular readers and is ranked #46 in the AdAge Power 150, a ranking of the Internet’s best marketing blogs. Like many, Jeff believes content is the core of social media marketing and it’s obvious by the articles he puts out on a regular basis. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you will notice me sharing Jeff’s articles consistently due to the high volume of quality content he puts out. The struggle for most business owners trying to get into social media is understanding what is important, what’s a waste of time and how much time and effort needs to be [...]

Don’t Make The Mistake I Almost Made On Google+

It was a normal morning for me at my home in beautiful Kelowna, BC. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I brushed my teeth quickly before going to the kitchen prior to my routine morning workout. When I walked into the kitchen, the site of my boyfriend cooking bacon fully naked rudely awakened me. Not only was this a dangerous idea (I mean, who cooks bacon without even a shirt on?) but it was absolutely hilarious and out of the norm. I reached for my iPhone to take an equally unwelcomed photo that I could save for future blackmailing. The next time a hockey game interrupted The Young & The Restless, I was sure to win the remote control. He was quicker than me and ran to put on some clothes, so I was out of luck with getting any good blackmail material. To my horror, the next day I realized that every one of my pictures taken on my iPhone auto-uploaded to Google+. Uh oh! I said a short prayer thanking my lucky stars that I didn’t get the chance to take that photo. Can you imagine the embarrassment [...]

5 Elements of a Successful Social Media Profile Picture

In any social media marketing campaign, you need to put your best face forward. Are you ready to wow them with a headshot that makes you look like professional in your industry? Establishing a professional, amicable presence starts with a great photo. Following are five elements of a successful social media profile picture to make sure you are making the right impression in your social marketing campaign:   1. The background should be clean and either monotone in color or blurred (that out-of-focus effect). The best wildlife photographers hone in on their subjects and make the details of a butterfly or a flower come to life by allowing the background to fade out of our visual perspective. A great profile picture should do the same. Make sure the background isn’t busy or complicated so that you can remain the focal point of the photo. Related: 6 Steps To The Perfect Social Media Strategy   2. You should always present yourself at your best and although it’s nice to have photos of yourself with friends and colleagues, your profile picture should exclusively feature you. Make sure that you don’t ‘cut’ someone out of the photo by cropping it or use that picture [...]

9 Things That Make You Look Bad On Twitter

Have you ever committed a social faux pas on Twitter or other social networks? You should be careful about how you present yourself so you don’t compromise your social media marketing strategy. Here are 9 things that make you look bad on Twitter: 1. Follow and then unfollow someone incessantly. It’s about as attractive as someone stalking you. Do not include this tactic in your social media marketing strategy!   2. Excessive use of the CAPS LOCK function on your keyboard. Don’t do it. It’s the equivalent of screaming at your followers. Related: The Hidden Power of Twitter #Hashtags   3. Posting deals and specials for products no one cares about and are geographically inappropriate to your follower base. For example, “Hawaiian Tropic has great swimsuits for ½ off.” No one cares in January unless they live in the tropics or are perpetually on vacation. Ah, vacation. That sounds wonderful!   4. Pretending like you are in tight with celebrities or A-listers and ignoring everyone else.  This is a quick way to get unfollowed by your friends, colleagues and business associates.  Don’t forget about the people that don’t have 10,000+ followers on Twitter, they just may be your perfect clients. Twitter [...]

Can Photo Sharing on Instagram Help Your Business?

If you are familiar with the photo-based social media site called Pinterest then you may want to have a look at photo sharing on Instagram. Is it possible you could be loading photos on this site to boost your sales, Facebook friends and Google+ results? No matter what type of social media marketing you are doing, it is a good idea to stay on top of the latest methods for branding your company. Great ideas for promoting products or services are more accessible than ever and Instagram, like Pinterest, uses the power of the pixel to get your ideas across. Related: The Power of Reciprocity and Social Media Over 50 million people use photo sharing on Instagram (and growing by millions very rapidly), including users of the recently revealed iPhone app used for sharing photos. Though many iPhone users are still learning about this app, it is steadily growing in popularity. Since our society is moving more and more towards a visual social context, businesses can easily use Instagram to post great pictures and get ‘followers’ just like on Facebook or Twitter. If you have a visually engaging profession or business, you’ll quickly see the obvious rewards from posting pictures to [...]

LinkedIn Strategies: LI & Business With Nate Kievman

Since I began writing for LI & Business, I have had the opportunity to connect with some incredible people and it’s interesting that one of the most impressive people I’ve encountered so far had been closer to me than I realized. He hasn’t been closer to just me but also to anyone who has ever read LI & Business magazine because I’m talking about it’s Executive Editor, Nate Kievman. FULL PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH NATE KIEVMAN I have no intention of succumbing to the usual hype-fest that follows a great interview but forgive me if it sounds that way because I feel that I really “got the goods” from Nate, probably to the point that he should have charged me. Just kidding, Nate! I’m sure that will get a laugh during editing… In addition to the massive undertaking of LinkedIn & Business Magazine and it’s 14.5 million subscribers, Kievman also runs the #1 LinkedIn Strategy Group on LinkedIn and has taught more than 35,000 people how to master the platform. He’s authored three books on the topic including LinkedIn Mastery: An All Inclusive Guide to Mastering LinkedIn. Kievman has also presented as the keynote speaker on social media strategy for the [...]

Founder of LinkedIn’s BIGGEST Social Media Group Shares His Secrets

In my pursuit of knowledge to help me master the art of LinkedIn Groups, I’ve managed to engage with some really high profile authorities on the subject. For this particular interview, I set my sights real high and contacted the founder of the largest and most active group on LinkedIn, Michael Crosson. FULL PODCAST INTERVIEW: Every marketer will drool at the thought of matching his social dominance with over 330,000 members in their social media marketing group while it continues to grow by thousands each day. There was clearly thousands of questions I wanted to ask but I needed to first ground myself and figure out if he had some sort of mystical edge or secret fame (how’s that for an oxymoron) that helped propel his member-base at such an incredible pace. It’s far too daunting for any person to think about getting 300,000 members to their group before they’ve gotten 10 so I wanted to know something a bit more simple. How do you master getting 1000 members to your LinkedIn groups and how quickly can that happen? The Key Is In The Keywords “I started the group four years ago and I was one of the very early [...]