Playing Your Tune in the Social Media Space
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How do you play your own tune in the social media space?
Here it is in a nutshell!
1. Have a blog
Establish your blog as the basis of information. You have no control over the rules of the game of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. But you do have full control over your site. Enrich your site with content using keywords in context. Upload your videos to YouTube and your own site. If you decide to blog once per month or once per week, stick with it.
2. Get on Twitter
78% or marketers are using twitter because it’s a great tool for branding, it’s short, sweet and to the point! Use tools such as TweetDeck, HootSuite and Twitterfeed to manage your twitteratti, increase your following and automate your blog post announcements. Did you know that there are approximately 50,000,000 (yes, that’s million) messages sent per day on Twitter?
3. Get on Facebook
Have your personal Facebook account and your Facebook Fan page. Your Fan page is for your business. Did you know that there are over 1.5 million businesses that have a fan page? Did you know that there are more than 5.3 billion fans that have been created on these business fan pages?
4. Get on LinkedIn
This is your online resumé! Take the time to complete it 100%, join groups, make and get recommendations, and use the LinkedIn Answers tools to run your own surveys! Think that your customers are not going to look at your LinkedIn profile? Guess again!
5. Get Educated
Take advantage of attending free social media seminars, get online, read articles on SM, a great resource is www.Mashable.com. In other works, stay up to date because the environment is moving quickly! And you don’t want to be left behind.
Remember, social media marketing is about an integrated approach between all these different tools with one thing in mind: to reach your target audience, listen to what they have to say and engage in the conversation. Use these different tools to leverage your marketing efforts.
Social Media Seminar at Mimi’s Restaurant
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I spoke at Fort Worth Star Telegram’s social media seminar for realtors, builders and developers today held at Mimi’s Restaurant on Bryant Irving in Fort Worth. Great people. Great service!
Social media is an excellent medium for small businesses and professionals to get the word out about their products/services and most importantly, connect with people. Your presence in the social media networking tools helps enhance your image and branding of your business.
Now more than ever it is much easier to play the game of online marketing because of so many great tools that are readily available, are free, and are very easy to manage.
Want to get on board? Now is the time!
I’m offering two 3-session webinars for the summer. Sign up today!
Learning the Social Media Lingo
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The social media networking and bookmarking universe has a world of its own when it comes to terminology. Facebook, Friends, Fans, Pages, Twitter, Tweets, Followers, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Blogging, CMS―and many other acronyms and lingo can be overwhelming and difficult to understand.
We have put together a Social Media Dictionary for you to familiarize yourself and master the language of social media networking.
Did we miss defining any other wacky terms? Let us know!
It is no longer business as usual in the home industry business. It is a totally different ballgame!
Today’s savvy homebuyers are using the internet first to search for their new home and builder, green builder that is!
The top 4 Social Media Marketing Strategies is your key to:
- Enhance your online presence
- Boost your company brand
- Attract your market niche more effectively
- Increase your bottom line
Strategy #1 – Yourcompany.com/Blog
You need a Blog to showcase your expertise to your market niche. Educating your past, present, and future customers builds trust. Updated and fresh information on your current and completed homes, customer testimonials, and upcoming projects is your magnet to attract your customer base. Don’t get fooled paying thousands of dollars for a website that makes you programmer-dependent. A User-Managed Blog site gives you total control to update your site, costs less, and eliminates the waiting time for a web programmer to do your updates.
In a nutshell, a Blog helps you to:
- Highlight your expertise to your market niche
- Build trust with your past, present, and future customers
- Update fresh information with customer testimonials and new projects
A User-Managed Blog site:
- Gives you total control
- Costs less to create and maintain
- Eliminates the need for a web programmer to do your updates
In today’s competitive business environment, you need a business Blog.
Strategy #2 – Facebook
Facebook has over 350 million active users, more than 700,000 local businesses have active pages, which has generated over 5.3 billion fans!* Local businesses from all industries are Facebooking. You want to Facebook.
*Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statisticsStrategy #3 – Twitter
According to Michelle McGiboney of Nielsen Online, “Twitter.com continues to grow in popularity and importance in both the consumer and corporate worlds. No longer just a platform for friends to stay connected in real time, it has evolved into an important component of brand marketing. Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month.”* You definitely want to Tweet!
*Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success/Strategy # 4 – LinkedIn
This is your place to connect with other industry pros, engage in discussions, learn from others’ expertise (for free!).
As a business owner in the 21st century, you need to be LinkedIn.
Social Media Marketing Training
Check out our Social Media Hands-On Training class.
8 important reasons why a blog is an effective customer connection tool:
- Provides a way to communicate with your customers and your prospects quickly and in an informal non-threatening way.
- Gives you the opportunity to write short articles and pieces of information that add value to your customers.
- Positions you as an expert in your field of business.
- Plants you in the minds of your customers and prospects as a resource for the solutions they want.
- Separates your website from being a big “blah” to a content-rich and informative site that offers fresh information that’s helpful to your market niche.
- Its what consumers are engaged in daily, so you can LISTEN to what they want, like or dislike, and observe how you can meet those demands.
- You want to have a presence where consumers are communicating regularly, so you can ENGAGE in conversations with them.
- You want to be a part of the party where the bees are, so you can PARTICIPATE in building relationships with with your customers and prospects.
Two Secrets of Successful Blogging
- Educate and inform your client base.
- Be authentic! Don’t copy and paste.
Why Should You Consider Having a Blog?
By · Comments4 huge reasons why you should consider having a blog for your business:
- We live in an internet-savvy society.
- Consumers today surf the internet for everything when making purchase decisions.
- Your customers are looking for information (helpful content).
- Your future customers are trying to find you!
Therefore, your website can no longer afford to be just a big “blah”, simply stating who you are, what you do, a few photos of your projects, and how to contact you. Those days are over!
With the popular spread of social media worldwide:
- You need to have an online conversational component as an extension of your business.
- You need a blog to facilitate the dialogue between you and your clients, and future customers.
Social Media and Your Business
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Social Media has redefined and extended the way we communicate with people, and in business, with our clients.
Social media fosters the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).
Businesses are using social media to nurture their relationship with their clients. Fresh information that adds value to your clients helps keep your customers connected.
See our Social Media Hands-On Training class for business professionals.
See our Social Media Dictionary to familiarize yourself with the social media lingo.
Do You Need to Incorporate Social Media Into Your Business Marketing Strategy?
To assess your needs, your answers to the following questions should help you make the determination for your business:
- Are your customers using social media?
- How will using social media technologies enhance your relationship and connection with your client base, and new customers?
- How will using social media reach a broader audience with your products and/or services?
What Is the Big Fuzz About Social Media?
3 huge reasons why you should care:
- Twitter has 6-10 million users and roughly 20 million unique visitors each month
- LinkedIn has 48 million members in over 200 countries
- Facebook has 400 million active users spending 6 billion minutes a day
Twitter is a fairly new micro-blog platform. It is expected to grow up to 18 million users by the end of 2009. With over 6-10 million users and roughly 20 million unique visitors each month, and your opportunity to be part (and beneficiary) of the party, why not get in the ballgame?
You should consider Twitter because:
- With only under 140 characters that Twitter allows you to enter, you can stay connected with your client base.
- You can engage in conversations with your clients where they also give you feedback (positive or negative) on your products.
- Feedback received allows you to measure your customer service and product effectiveness to make improvements to your products and services.
- Your customers can praise your products and services, serving as your word-of-mouth advertisers.
Inspiration
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I love to share inspirational quotes from time to time! Here’s just a few that I hope will help you keep life and priorities in perspective:
“More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.”
-Napoleon Hill
“Sometimes in our attempt to give children what we did not have, we forget to give our children what we did have.”
-Connie Podesta
“How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.”
-George Washington Carver
Re-Discover Your Passions
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How to Recharge Your Life with the Source for Continuous Motivation
Passion is an essential ingredient for success. In the midst of the busyness of life and the many activities that clutter our lives, we need to dig deep to re-discover those things that inspire us.
Life is too short to live all stressed out without doing the things you love the most.
Here are a few tips to help you re-discover your passions.
Thomas Anderson, in his book titled Becoming a Millionaire God’s Way, explains: “Passion is directly related to the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Faith Words, 2008, page 39). When it comes to business, Donald Trump suggests, “Don’t think about how you can make money. Instead think about what you can produce or what service you can offer that is valuable and useful to people and to your community.” (Donald Trump, Think Big, Collins Business, 2007, page 43).
To discover your passions, you may want to start by asking yourself these questions:
- What motivates me?
- What things make me smile?
- What do I enjoy reading and why?
- Who do I enjoy listening to and why?
- Who are my heroes in my life and why?
- What do I know about the great achievers?
- Have I written down my lifetime dreams and goals?
- What are three things that I want to accomplish before I die?
- What are three things that I want to accomplish this year?
- What am I doing this month, this week, today towards the achievement of my lifetime goals?
- Do I clearly know my gifts, natural talents and abilities?
- What am I doing to perfect my gifting and talents?
- What am I doing to develop my personal growth?
- Who are the people I currently admire and what is it about them that capture my attention?
- Who are my mentors and why?
- What books inspire me the most?
- What are three things I need to improve in the next three months?
- What do I want to accomplish in the next month? Three months? Six months? Twelve months?
- What do my friends and co-workers say about me?
- What attributes describe me?
- If I were to mentor a group of people, who would they be and why?
- If I were to go on vacation, where would I choose to go and why?
- If I were to go into a new venture, what would I do and why?
- If money was no limitation, what career or business would I like to be involved in and why?
Your answers to these questions could help clarify your passions. You may find it helpful to ask a few of your friends to give you a list of the attributes they see in you. You may find that some of the things they identify in you, you may have identified already in your personal analysis. This will serve as confirmation and encouragement to focus your attention in working on your strengths.
The things that you find similar in both your personal research coupled with your feedback you get from others will solidify your confidence and lead you to embrace your unique characteristics.
Passion gives you focus. When you concentrate all your efforts into on specific area, or a small group of related areas of expertise, the results are more effective and satisfying.
It is advisable for one to know a little about several things but to be an expert in one area. When you focus on developing and becoming an expert in one area, you position yourself as an expert to a group of people that will listen to you and be willing to buy from you the solution you offer them.
Passion is energy. The more you focus on growing in the areas that motivate and inspire you, the more effective, productive and vibrant your life will be!
