Social Media Strategy Blog
Social media strategies, tips, tricks and tutorials to help smart, successful small businesses manage their own social media marketing.
Social media is an effective, low-cost and low barrier marketing tactic. Perhaps because the barrier to entry is so low, the risk is quite high. As a social media consultant I firmly believe the benefits of social media marketing outweigh the risks. Here are a few of my best tips for managing the risks a small business owner might encounter in social media marketing.
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There is a way to use social media for every business. Yes, EVERY BUSINESS. You just need to work at it and be a little more creative in some cases. I’ve witnessed more than a few amazing social media accounts in the last few years, and more than a few unbelievably boring ones. What do you think might be the most boring industries you could possibly run a social media account for? Dry cleaners? A paper mill? How about the dictionary?
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Did you know there is more than one way to talk to customers on Instagram? Believe it or not, it’s not all about the one photo and amazing description with 30 hashtags. That used to be the only thing Instagram had…then Facebook bought it and started adding features. Instagram has come a long way and gives us multiple ways to engage with our audiences now.
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Two years ago when I attended Social Media Marketing World Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion, was top of my list of must-see sessions. I first learned about Marcus in the foreward of Jay Baer’s book YouTility, which became, and still is, a foundational book for my marketing philosophy. Everything both Jay and Marcus were saying resonated with me and I still espouse the Youtility philosophy on this blog: make it useful.
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Facebook contests are fun. They’re engaging. And they can garner a lot of attention for your growing small business. It’s not even difficult to host a Facebook contest on your Business Page, since Facebook changed the rules a few years ago. The question is, “Do you know what you’re allowed to do for a Facebook Contest?” Or are you simply following the crowd and doing what everyone else is doing?
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Sometimes the hardest part of getting started is just getting started! Here are a few tips to alleviate any fears you might have over getting started in social media and choosing where to begin!
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Facebook recently announced changes to the platform that mean you need to be paying better attention to the back end of your website if you want people to share your content. From here on out if you don’t specify the Facebook Open Graph metadata on each page of your website, you won’t be able to get Facebook to show the right image for your post and it will pull whatever info it can find. If it doesn’t look good, people may choose not to share it. Open Graph is simply a system set up by Facebook to enable communications with a website. In the absence of Open Graph tags, Facebook looks at other data.
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Facebook has implemented a major change to its API that many small businesses are just discovering this week. If you came here because you can’t change the photo on a link post you’re trying to share on Facebook, it’s not a glitch…it’s permanent. Facebook announced you will no longer be able to change the metadata attached to a link post on Facebook. If you’re posting links to other people’s articles on Facebook, there’s not a whole lot you can do about this. However, if you want and expect people to be posting links from YOUR website, there are a few things you need to do.
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In most marketing models, your website is the heart of your business and social media are the arteries bringing lifeblood to it. Social media spreads the word about your website and encourages people to come and read what you’ve written, or check out your products. We often think of social media as standing alone in this but really, if you want want to be efficient, you need to set up your website for social media success, too. They work in tandem, not alone.
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If Hootsuite is your main social media management dashboard, you’re going to want to know how to manage Twitter lists in Hootsuite. It’s not difficult, but all of the Twitter list functions are a bit hidden. I’ve written a tutorial for creating Twitter Lists in Hootsuite and adding and removing members from the Twitter lists. No more logging into Twitter to do this!
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