I'm Just Sharing

I was reading an article by my friend Josh Shear titled Why Social Media Isn’t Working For Your Business and it made me start to think a bit more about social media and how it is or isn’t working for my business. I mean, I’ve written about using social media for promotion after all.

I have to say that it’s worked great for my social life, which is why it came about to begin with. Because of Twitter, I’ve met some people at local tweetups that I’d have never met on my own, and there’s a lot of both nice and smart people around here that I’m happy to have gotten to know. Through LinkedIn, I’ve met one or two people over the years in person, but I can’t say it’s done a lot for me socially. The same goes for Facebook as far as meeting people locally, but I’ve gotten the opportunity to talk to people around the world that I’d have never met any other way. Same goes for Ryze, though I’ve actually met some of those folks in person, and talked on the phone with some as well.

But what about business? I have to admit that I haven’t had a consistent social media marketing strategy, although I’ve had fits and starts. I did create my LinkedIn page a very long time ago, and I wasn’t all that far behind the Twitter revolution. I even now have that Facebook marketing page for my businesses, which I was just able to double in “likes”, which they now use instead of “fans”.

So, the question is how would one go about creating a social media marketing strategy. I have an idea of how I’m going to create mine, or at least enhance mine. If you think this is something you’d like to think about as well, look at my points here; I always work well with outlines. This outline is going to mention the top three specific social media options I presently use.

1. On LinkedIn, I need to take more advantage of the area that allows you to let people know what I’m up to on a real time basis. The reason that’s a big deal is because LinkedIn sends an email once a week to everyone telling them what’s going on with the people they’re connected to. It always highlights the newest stuff first, then goes backwards, and once it reaches so many highlights it gives a link to go online to see more if you wish. However, I’m betting most people don’t wish, so making sure I take advantage of staying current will help to make sure my name shows up in this email on a more regular basis.

2. On Twitter, I already have my current blog posts show up. However, I have lots of old posts on topics that are still relevant, and I have articles in many places as well. If I want to increase my brand and show those following me on Twitter what I’m all about, I need to make sure that I’m posting at least one extraneous link either every day or every couple of days to stuff I’ve done in the past.

3. On Facebook, I did something a few days ago that I’d said I wasn’t going to do, or didn’t want to do. I decided to specifically invite some people, and I did, going through the people I’m connected to and inviting some very specific people. These were friends who I believed would get a kick out of seeing what I’m doing these days. Lo and behold, my subscriber base doubled. This proves that sometimes in marketing all you have to do is ask. I might eventually invite other people who I’m connected with there; we’ll see. Oh yeah, if you’d like to check it out, click on that little box there to the right.

I think this is a pretty good start. But what is it I’m trying to do? That’s the next post.

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