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Twiter and the 2012 Election – Lessons Learned

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Facebook, Marketing

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Behavior, Best Practices, Community, Community Management, ebooks

The following is an excerpt from the new ebook, “How to Use the Internet to Win in winningin2016-cover2014: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Politics for Campaigns & Advocates”, available in the Amazon store for the Kindle e-reader and as a PDFn Epolitics.com.

The explosion of Twitter marks one of the biggest changes in the digital political landscape in the last few years — in 2008, Barack Obama had all of 100,000 followers by Election Day, a number that was well above 20 million on Election Day 2012. Though the Twitter and Faceook are often lumped together in the popular mind, Twitter isn’t quite a mass medium in the same way Facebook has become — it’s more of a channel to reach those“influentials” like bloggers, journalists and activists. Also different: you can pretty much post as often as you want on Twitter, while you’ll probably want to limit yourself on Facebook to keep from burning out your audience.

An example of Twitter’s ability to influence the political discussion? In 2012, Obama and Romney campaign staff regularly engaged in “Twitter duels” online, with reporters and activists the intended audience. Though these back-and-forth exchanges probably didn’t change any votes, they got plenty of media attention — mission accomplished.

Functionally, Twitter is the very short equivalent of blogging, with a dash of social networking thrown in: individual Twitter messages (“tweets”) are limited to 140 characters in length, and people generally have to choose to “follow” someone’s Twitter feed in order to see their updates. As with Facebook, essentially anyone or any organization can create a Twitter feed, but in some sense Twitter lacks the reciprocal nature of a true social network — plenty of feeds have thousands of followers but follow far fewer people in return themselves (do you think that Lady Gaga really pays attention to what you say?).

One important consideration — Twitter’s a useful tool for campaigns, but its real political power may lie in what campaigns CAN’T do on it, which is to dominate the conversation. Twitter is truly a democratic medium (with a small “d”), and content and opinions spread on Twitter often find their way onto blogs and cable news and into newspapers. Twitter helps create the sea of information in which modern campaigns swim, and whether or not they’re active on Twitter themselves, it’s likely to shape the political communications environment in which they operate.

What to Tweet?

A common perception of Twitter is that it’s an inherently trivial medium — it’s often spoken of as a way to tell the world what you had for breakfast. But in practice, normal people who fill Twitter’s “airwaves” with self-indulgent drivel generally don’t pick up much of a following (for celebrities, that’s unfortunately NOT so true). In fact, perhaps the most common single use of Twitter is to spread links to blog posts, videos, news articles and other pieces of in-depth content, making the 140-character limit less of an issue.

In general, as in so many other parts of the online advocacy space, readers aren’t likely to pay much attention to you unless you have something of value to offer them. People who tweet too much trivia too often can find their followers dropping off in droves, so be sure to pay attention to the KIND of information you distribute. Not every tweet needs to be a haiku-like gem of wisdom, but it rarely hurts to think for at least a minute or two about your ultimate communications goals before messaging the world. How often people Tweet varies immensely — I have friends who’ve sent out 10 or 20 times more messages over time than I have, for instance. It really depends on what you have to say.

Building a Following

Once you’ve established an initial base of content on Twitter, next start building your following. Unfortunately, short of being mentioned in the Twitter feed of someone famous, finding an audience typically takes time. Start by following the people you want to follow you — your staff, political activists in your state, district or area, local bloggers, journalists, etc., since at least some of them will follow you back right away. Once they do so, you have the opportunity to reach them — and potentially, their own audiences through them.

Supporters = Amabassadors

Of course, you’ll want as many of your supporters to follow you as well, particularly if their own following is large and/or active. So ask them! A “follow us on social media” email is a nice break from a string of fundraising asks, and your supporters may appreciate a chance to help the campaign without having to open their wallets.

@Replies and Hashtages: Engaging the Community and Connecting with Prominent Voices

The most effective way to build your following over time is to actively engage the Twitter community, a process that can take several forms. The most straightforward is to use an “@reply,” in which you reference another Twitterer in your own post (i.e., “@epolitics why don’t you just shut up about this crap”). You can use @replies to hold a back-and-forth conversation with someone, plus they’re a good way to get the attention of someone with whom you’d like to connect (Twitter.com and other Twitter-management tools — like Hootsuite — typically make it very easy to see who’s @replied you).

@replies also play a role in “retweeting,” which is the forwarding of someone else’s posts to your own followers. Retweets are one of the signature characteristics of the ongoing Twitter conversation, since they let people provide value to their readers without having to write new content themselves. Plus, retweeting someone more prominent than you can be a good way to come to his or her attention, particularly if you use the old-school “RT @reply” method rather than Twitter’s newer built-in retweet function (RT’ing a tweet as an @reply also lets you add a comment, another valuable feature).

Besides RT’s, the other common bit of Twitter shorthand you’ll commonly encounter is a “hashtag,” a word or abbreviation preceded by the “#” sign. Twitterers use hashtags to refer to a topic that’s being discussed by several people at once, for instance an issue, event or public figure, and people often use Twitter’s search function to follow the extended discussion around a particular tag. This tendency makes hashtags a valuable way to gain exposure to new followers and to find yourself retweeted, assuming of course that you have something interesting to say. Some websites attempt to keep track of common hashtags, but the easiest way to find the hashtags in general use is to use a Twitter search around a topic and look for the tags terms people are using when they talk about it.

Engaging the Twitter community is obviously time-consuming, since you have to pay attention to what many different people are saying — you can’t participate in the conversation unless you’re actually listening. Besides hashtags, dedicated Twitter-management tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck let you break the feeds you’re following down into various groups, for instance based on topics they cover or the kind of author they are (hint: track relevant journalists), and they also tend to speed up the process of posting content vs. going through Twitter.com itself. A good tool will typically allow you to pre-schedule Tweets for publishing, something that’s particularly handy if you have content that needs to go out over the weekend or while you’re traveling.

Besides public conversations, you can also “Direct Message” someone behind the scenes if you are following each other reciprocally, and I’ve known people who’ve been able to connect with a blogger or reporter via DM whom they’d never been able to reach via email.

Advanced Tactics

Twitter has given rise to an impressive array of different tactics and practices in its short time on Earth. “Live-Tweeting” an event involves covering it comprehensively as it happens, and social media-friendly conferences and seminars typically promote the use of certain hashtags to facilitate the process. Activists or groups can also pre-arrange TweetChats, which are public discussions at a particular time and around a particular hashtag. Many people pay attention to the hashtags that are “trending” on Twitter, i.e., becoming widely discussed, and the goal of a TweetChat or live-tweeting is often to either encourage a topic to trend or to ride the wave of a subject that’s moving up the popularity ladder. Finally, a Twitter interview can be an interesting way to run a one-on-one public conversation, though it practice it can feel like competitive poetry or a freestyle rap showdown — i.e., a public balancing act on a very narrow wire.

Twitter and Cell Phones

A common question about Twitter: why the 140-character limit? The answer is cell phones — Twitter is designed to be used like SMS text messages, making it one of the few online tools commonly and easily works on handheld devices. Some organizers have taken advantage of this fact to use Twitter to help rally communities in which cell phones are more common than access to the traditional internet. Others have used the Twitter/phone connection for on-the-spot coverage of rallies and other events, particularly as a means to distribute photos and videos shot with their phones. Finally, some campaigns in 2012 employed “protected” Twitter feeds — ones that can only be followed by people “approved” by the feed owner — to organize field staff and volunteers on the fly.

Advertising on Twitter

Update: this section has changed in the version 2.0 of this ebook, published in April of 2014! Please go toTwitter Advertising for Politics & Advocacy for the latest information.

Warning: Ways to Stumble

The most important Twitter rule to remember? Don’t be an idiot, since something you post on Twitter will live forever, even if you try to delete it (just ask Anthony Weiner). Even if you’re smart enough not to send topless photos over the internet, a big mouth can still get you into trouble. As a friend of mine once said of a Democrat challenging Sen. Chuck Grassley, “as long as he has a Twitter feed, she has a chance.”

Another note of caution: electoral campaigns in particular need to be careful to distinguish between a candidate or officeholder’s Twitter feed and one updated by staff, since Twitter as a community tends to value authenticity. If Twitterers find out that a “candidate’s voice” is not actually his own, the campaign’s credibility can take a hit. Campaigns can use both approaches in a single feed if it’s clear whose voice is speaking at any given time, and can even turn a relatively rare candidate appearance on his or her own feed into an event to promote. Finally, don’t forget that once a campaign has a Twitter feed, people will expect to be able to follow it and interact with the author(s). Don’t start a feed and let it die of neglect.

For more from this chapter, please download your copy of “How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014″ today.

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Political Social Media Campaigns – How and Why they can win or lose elections.

26 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Marketing

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Behavior, Best Practices, Community, Community Management, Engagement

vote-for-me-buttonStarting out, knowing the ins and outs of online networking can be a bit daunting for candidates. Here are a few tips for political campaigns are unfamiliar or starting out with the whole social media thing.

First a note to the candidates:

Much of how campaigns have been using social media amounts, at best, to a waste of people’s time and attention, and, at worst, to relentlessly spamming your friends. Not only is this ineffective, you’ll likely be irritating some of your friends and supporters – and I know you don’t want to do that.

For the candidates (and those who love them), I offer a few tips for using social media to get you started:

  1. Define your objectives: It’s amazing how often this step is bypassed. Do you want to use social media to communicate with your existing supporter base or grow your base? Do you want to raise funds, awareness or both? Knowing the answer to these question will have a lot to do with your strategy. I’ve seen campaigns hoping to grow (don’t they all?), but using the tools as if they only wanted to be in touch with an existing audience. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the online community didn’t grown much.
  2. Engage (a.k.a. It’s not all about you): Don’t just publish. If you primarily use these new channels to push out your “Come learn about me” events and links to your “Donate here” page, people will tune out pretty quickly. Don’t miss the important opportunities to talk with, not at, your audience. Doing this well will build your reputation and visibility.
  3. Public vs. Private: Know what content (information, photos, etc.) about you can be seen online by the many (everyone) or by the few (close friends and family). Then, assume that it all can be seen by the many and plan with that in mind.
  4. Connect the online and offline worlds: Most of your activities and content should have both online and offline components woven seamlessly together. This can range from posting photos on Facebook from an offline event to holding live events online allowing a large group the opportunity to interact in real-time, and everything in between.
  5. Fish where the fish are: People want to hear from you where they hang out, not where you want them to be found. The fish are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube; not on your website. If you wait for the fish to come to you, you may be sitting alone with your pole in the water for a very long time.
  6. Get a running start: It takes time to build real momentum, so start early. Sure, you can easily get a certain number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers in a short period of time, but will they be the right ones? Would you prefer to be connected to more people who don’t care about you or your message or fewer who are engaged and interested?
  7. Damage control: Most people aren’t thinking about this as a top priority when they begin engaging through social media. We don’t really expect damage, so why would we be thinking about damage control? The fact is that, should something go awry or someone have something negative to say, it’ll be online in a heartbeat. If you’ve done a good job establishing your community online and have shown yourself to be authentic and responsive, you’re in a much stronger position to be able to respond to the situation in a faster and more credible way than had you not built your online presence so thoughtfully.
  8. It takes work: Social media is not a set-it-and-forget-it proposition. For some reason, many have the misconception that all that is required is the up-front work to set up a “presence.” In order for your online presence to work for you, it takes work – attentive, responsive, ongoing work. I’ve seen many people set up Facebook pages, encourage people to join and then allow it to go dormant, even when community members post messages or questions. This is akin to publishing your phone number, yet not answering when someone calls.
  9. On a list of 8 tips, this important one comes at no extra charge: This may not be the best job for the intern or your neighbor’s son: I’m sure the intern and the neighbor’s son are delightful people. They might even be heavy Facebook users. Just because someone does something often doesn’t mean they do it well. At speaking engagements, I often use driving as an example. I know people who have been driving for years, but when I’m in the car with them, my foot instinctively searches for the brake pedal on the passenger side. They drive a lot; they don’t drive well. Understanding best practices, the nuances of various tools, social media analytics and the pace and etiquette of the different social platforms are not simple tasks. There is too much at stake. Find (or hire) the right person to help you leverage the potential of social media and taking your campaign online – where the fish are.

Running a campaign isn’t easy. It takes a dedicated team to develop and execute the campaign’s strategy. You don’t need a separate social media strategy. What you need is a good understanding of how to use social channels in a way which supports your campaign strategy. Understanding why this is important and how to execute this will go a long way toward having the candidate be every bit as compelling online as they are in person.

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Facebook Has Made New Algorithm Updates: Spammy Social Marketers Beware!

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook, SPAM, Uncategorized

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Behavior, Best Practices, Branding, Community, Community Management, Content, Engagement, Facebook, Marketing, Research, Social Customer, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networks, Strategy

Facebook has made an update to the News Feed algorithm that has been a long time coming. If you are like me, you are very tired of being asked to Like a photo to save a baby seal or seeing the same content over and over. This kind of content is NOT social media marketing. Thanks to the most recent Facebook News Feed algorithm update, spammy marketers will have their page content devalued. These people will undoubtedly be the most vocal when it comes to the reduced Reach conversation, but that is another blog post entirely. Before we dive into the changes, let’s revisit what makes the newsfeed algorithm tick. In short, the more engagement you get, the more people you will reach.  If you want a more lengthy explanation, take a peek at this great graphic from TechCrunch

facebook-news-feed-edgerank-algorithm

You might notice that this equation doesn’t include Negative Feedback which is another important aspect of the algorithm. The recent updates were actually developed by monitoring what triggers a Negative Feedback action and appear to be a step in the right direction when it comes to user experience. Here are the updates Facebook has made to stick it to spammy social marketers.

Frequently Circulated Content

If you are in the habit of just reposting what you have seen work for other pages on Facebook, stop what you are doing. The News Feed has been optimized to de-emphasize pages that publish content that has already been uploaded to Facebook over and over again. Early testing of this update has shown that people hide 10% fewer stories overall.  Many marketers switched from content creating to content curating last year, however it looks like it’s time to think about switching back.

Spammy Links

With the explosion of publishing on Facebook came the rise of super spammy links. You know exactly which ones I am talking about. Spammy links feature misleading titles that prompt users to visit websites that promise awesome things like cute baby animals but then serve a website riddled with ads. By measuring how frequently users engage with the original post containing that link, Facebook is now able to better detect these spammy links. Early testing of this update has shown a 5% increase in people clicking on links that take them off of Facebook. This demonstrates that people are seeing more relevant and valuable content in their News Feeds.  Be sure that your messaging about a link is accurate and engaging enough to get people to leave feedback.

Like-baiting

Like-baiting is pretty straight forward and we have all seen these posts. Any post that explicitly asks users to Like, Comment or Share the post in order to get further distribution is considered like-bait. It used to be social media best practice to include a call to action in each post. Well, it might be time to take a different approach. Facebook has made a change to better detect these posts and make sure that they aren’t shown more prominently over content from users’ friends or highly relevant pages. Facebook says that this update won’t impact pages that are genuinely trying to encourage discussion, only those pages that repeatedly ask for engagement. I would suggest that you don’t need to abandon this approach altogether, however few and far between might be the best bet.

So what have we learned? People don’t like spam in their News Feeds and neither does Facebook. These slight updates to the algorithm should hopefully make big impacts when it comes to user experience. How can you ensure that your Facebook content strategy isn’t considered spammy?

  • Do your best to start creating fresh content. Even if you see something that is working for another brand, try to recreate it with your own spin. As marketers we have to begin creating new stories and not just retelling old ones. I would recommend starting with a blog.
  • Make sure that the text and titles that accompany the links you publish are accurate. Bait and switch will no longer be effective.
  • Continue to encourage people to engage with your content, however do so with restraint. Great content doesn’t always need a call to action. People know what to do at this point.

Cross posted with permission from Social Media Today

Authored by: Nathan Mendenhall

 

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30 Social Media & Blogging Influencers you should follow

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Bloging, community manager, Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Blogging, Community, Community Management, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing

I do realize that the title is a moving target since social media, influencers and online marketing in general is a moving target. Perhaps I should change the title to the 30 SM & Blogging influencers (for now) you should follow…hum let me ponder that, in the mean time this what I think now.

John Paul Aguiar

Twitter: @johnaguiar Website: http://www.johnpaulaguiar.com/ John is all about helping us make money on our blogs. He learned the hard way by getting himself of disability benefits in 11 months. His advice is gold.

Mike Allton

Twitter: @mike_allton Website: http://www.thesocialmediahat.com Mike knows his stuff when it comes to social media. He is also expert in many other areas: in his own words “Social Media, SEO, Blogging, Writing, Internet Marketing and Business Technology”. You should check out his blog.

Sarah Arrow

Twitter: @SarahArrow Website: http://www.sarkemedia.com/ Sarah is a Social Media and blogging expert, with a few books and blogs to her name too.http://birdsontheblog.co.uk is her group blog featured in the Forbes top 100 websites for women, and it also funds two girls at school in Uganda. If you are looking to get started on a Kindle book, she is your girl!

Meghan M Biro

Twitter: @MeghanMBiro Website:http://www.talentculture.com/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/ A knowledgeable lass and a contributor to Forbes, her areas of expertise are: HR, Social Media and Leadership. She is also a host of twitter chats: #TChat.

Chris Brogan

Twitter: @chrisbrogan Website: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ Chris is another influencer with a lot of klout. Has is co-author of a NYT best seller (The Impact Equation) as well as other books. He is on the board of advisors at Hubspot. and CEO/President of a publishing company (Human Business Works). Chris’ stuff is fantastic, especially in the area of writing and content development.

Danny Brown

Twitter: @DannyBrown Website: http://dannybrown.me/ What more can you say about someone who has the following awards for his blog:-

  • #1 marketing blog in the world by HubSpot
  • Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blog in 2011 and 2013.
Jeff Bullas

Twitter: @jeffbullas Website: http://www.jeffbullas.com/ Jeff is another influential blogger who’s blog receives over 4 million hits a year. His blog covers a broad range of topics from social media tips to online marketing advice from.

Lilach Bullock

Twitter: @lilachbullock Website: http://www.socialable.co.uk/ Lilach calls herself three things: business owner, social media consultant and internet mentor. She has published various books and is often quoted by top newspapers as well as the BBC.

Heidi Cohen

Twitter: @heidicohen Website: http://heidicohen.com/ Heidi is all about marketing. She has published over 1000 posts and was named in the Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs, two years in a row.

Jim Dougherty

Twitter: @leaderswest Website: http://leaderswest.com/ Jim shares great Social Media content and loads of amazing infographics. Not your standard SM blog, you should also add this to your “must read list”.

   Enjoying this amazing list? Why not Tweet it?

Steve Farnsworth

Twitter: @steveology Website: http://stevefarnsworth.wordpress.com/ He is your man for Social media, To start with, Steve is Chief Digital Strategist at Jolt.  He has also been:-

  • One of the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers.
  • One of the top influencers on Twitter with over 100k followers
  • Included in The Top 35 “Connectors” on Twitter.
Kim Garst

Twitter: @kimgarst Website: http://kimgarst.com/blog/ A great resource for all things social media, Kim has a strong presence on Twitter and on Google+ with her community Boom! Social Media with Kim Garst.

Kristi Hines

Twitter: @kikolani Website: http://kristihines.com‎ AND http://kikolani.com/‎ Kristi Hines is guest blogger extraordinaire!! You see her everywhere and she knows and researches everything. If you are not reading her posts on SEO, social media, blogging, guest blogging and…..get to it.

Ana Hoffman

Twitter: @AnaTrafficCafe Website: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/ Ana is all about getting you traffic. I have used loads of her tips and man do they work. She is also on the pulse of social media, SEO and what Google is up to. I think she has Matt Cutts phone number too, if you ask nicely :>

Michael Hyatt

Twitter: @MichaelHyatt Website: http://michaelhyatt.com/ Another of Forbes top 50 social media influencers, Michael’s focus is leadership. That is not to say it’s all he writes about; he also offers advice on social media, personal development and productivity too.

Sté Kewer

Twitter: @dukeo‎ Website: http://dukeo.com/ Sté is all about blogging and online success. His blog will help guide you along the way to making money online. Check it out.

Aaron Lee

Twitter: @askaaronlee Website: http://askaaronlee.com/ Aaron is a strong presence on Twitter, with nearly 500k followers and No. 4 in the Top 100 Small Business Experts to Follow on Twitter.. He is all about using social media to help you grow.

Scott Monty

Twitter: @scottmonty Website: http://www.scottmonty.com/ Scott is global head of social media at Ford. So he has a little experience on the matter. His personal blog shares all his wisdom and is certainly worth a look.

Neil Patel

Twitter: @neilpatel Website: http://quicksprout.com Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics amongst other achievements. He was in the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 30 listed by President Obama. If you want to learn about SEO and how to get backlinks – you have to read his posts and guides.

   Enjoying this amazing list? Why not Tweet it?

Amy Porterfield

Twitter: @amyporterfield Website: http://www.amyporterfield.com/ Amy Porterfield is a Facebook guru – proof? She is author of Facebook for Dummies. She says on her blog

…after working with Mike Stelzner of SocialMediaExaminer.com, I discovered Facebook. It was a total love affair.

Annetta Powell

Twitter: @AnnettaPowell Website: http://www.annettapowellonline.com/ Annetta Powell is an accomplished blogger. Also known as “the success coach”, she will show you the way to blogging success, no doubt about that. And she will use a variety of media to help you along the way too!

Rebekah Radice

Twitter: @RebekahRadice Website: http://rebekahradice.com/ Rebekah says she is a: social media strategist, content developer, brand manager and social media trainer. I love her posts on social media. She has lots of knowledge to share!

Darren Rowse

Twitter: @problogger Website: http://www.problogger.com/ Darren is Problogger, one of the best sources on how to blog for profit. He is also a fellow Aussie (gotta count for something right!)

Mark Schaefer

Twitter: @markwschaefer Website: http://www.businessesgrow.com Mark has a lot of Twitter and Blogging awards and rightfully so. Like all great influencers, he has also been busy publishing great books! His blog is a little more business oriented, but has lots of gems on Blogging and Social Media as you would expect.

Ann Smarty

Twitter: @seosmarty Website: http://www.seosmarty.com/  Ann Smarty has an industry leading SEO blog. She was previously the editor in chief of SearchEngineJournal.com,and a contributor to SEOMoz. She is founder ofMyGuestBlog.com, a place to find and share guest posts and more recently, she has started ViralContentBuzz.com where you can get your quality content shared on social media.

Adrienne Smith

Twitter: @adriennesmith40 Website: http://www.adriennesmith.net/ Known as the “ Engagement Superstar” and for good reason. Adrienne will not only email you when you subscribe to her blog…..she will drive to your house with flowers! Almost. If you want to learn how to engage with your readers – seriously, there is no better place to go.

Ileane Smith

Twitter: @Ileane Website: http://basicblogtips.com/ Ileane is the girl to help you get started with blogging and social media. Heavily involved in the community, she is always there for her readers.

Brian Solis

Twitter: @briansolis Website: http://www.briansolis.com‎ Mashable named Solis one of the “25 Twitter Accounts That Will Make You Smarter”. He blogs about social media and disruptive technology amongst other things. He is a prolific speaker and writer, and has his hand in just about everything.

Mark Traphagen

Twitter: @marktraphagen‎ Website: https://plus.google.com/+MarkTraphagenGoogle+ guru since day 3 and in over 60 thousand circles. If you want G+ info, he is your man. He is also Director of Digital Outreach at Virante.

Gary Vaynerchuck

Twitter: @garyvee Website: http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com Social media guru, entrepreneur, author, speaker and wine afficiondo Gary has been there and done it all. You can certainly learn a thing from him and his blog.

Feel free to add your thoughts to this list.

 

 

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Social Media Best Practices

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community, Community Management, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, social media tools

I have been preaching about the proper use of social media, especially Twitter, lately.

And I thought this infographic was a different point of view and way to get across some ideas of social media best practices you should all be aware of.

Effective Social Media Best Practices and Marketing

Last week I did a guest post on Dear Blogger on this topic. It was about using social media correctly.

But there were a lot of points I did not go over, many of which are covered in this great infographic below. Basically, it covers a whole range of the current social media best practices.

I will let you read it first, then summarize what i think are the most worthwhile points at the end.

twitter social media pinterest google+ google plus facebook

Everyone has a different opinion, and there are no real rules when it comes to social media best practices.

After reading this infographic,  I found the following to be the most important points:

  • There are no shortcuts, be patient (it takes time and patience to get going on social media)
  • Contribute something of value – or don’t contribute at all
  • Have clear goals of what you want to achieve on social media
  • Provide quality posts not just a massive quantity
  • Don’t just promote yourself (use the 70/30 rule – max 30% your stuff)
  • Connect with people and respond to connections (don’t ignore, always thank, be polite etc)
  • Adapt to the ever changing social media landscape (keep up to date)

I know many of you social media bunnies out there will be well aware of all these things, but it is worth highlighting them all again.

Social media seems like an easy thing when you start out, but there are so many hidden rules, it makes it hard for the newcomer to make a go of it.

I know I wish I had found such great infographics with all the social media best practices listed for me!

It has quickly become quite a popular blog on the web, covering Social Media, Blogging, WordPress, SEO and all that is related to these topics. My aim: to pass on my knowledge – and what I learn, have learned and am sometimes still learning along the way – to you, my dear reader!

Again, I guess you could say I am lucky. If I had not broken my leg, I would not be here today, loving the blogging and social media life, connecting with great people such asLorraine, who offers editing tips for bloggers, and writing to you on Greg’s blog.

Where did the name Mad Lemmings came from?

Greg recently asked me where the name Mad Lemmings came from. After all, most blogs have quite serious names, somehow related to their content.

While I was starting my blog, I was kinda sick of seeing all these sites and their boring names (no offense to the other bloggers) so I thought something catchy would be best. Create a brand, and stand out is good advice!

In a flash of inspiration, Mad Lemmings just came to me! Maybe because I had played that video game with the crazy lemmings falling off the cliff as a kid? Who knows.

So that is my blogging story, about how I came to be a blogger. I’ve got many interests and and have worked as a web developer for years. I didn’t find the time to blog until my accident. I also didn’t have the time to become so heavily involved in social media until then.

Which brings me to the reason why I am here today.

Today I thought I would take this awesome opportunity to teach you all a little social media savvy, from what I have learned over the recent months.

Pick a card, any card

Sorry about that heading. I am a little into magic. But what this actually means is: in the beginning of your social media life, pick a platform, any platform.

And stick with it for a while.

Don’t spread yourself too thin, or you won’t succeed at anything. This is never truer when it comes to social media.

There are so many platforms, and I know you want to be on them all. You can be, but just take your time with each each one.

Focus on one at a time. Build your following. Then expand to the next.

It will pay off in the end. You will get decent traffic from your chosen platform, rather than just a trickle or less from all of them when you first start.

Speak the lingo

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when using social media is not using the right format, words, links or language.

Speaking the “local language” can actually make a huge difference, and it is something you should be aware of for the social media platform you are focusing on.

For example, on Twitter you only have 140 characters to get your message across. So there are a lot of things you need to consider in order to construct the perfect tweet.

Google Plus is another very fickle platform. Most people just write a quick sentence, add a link and think you’re done. There is actually a better way of doing this, and the Google Plus gurus can tell you how to really create the perfect Google Plus post.

Likewise, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest also have very specific techniques and methods you can use to optimize your posts, so make sure you know what they are.

Just take a quick look on Google search. You will find a lot of information on how to perfect your posts on whatever social media platform it is you are focusing on.

Share the love

One of the fundamental tenets of social media is sharing. You will hear many a blogger and social media guru talk about it. But what do they really mean?

Well, I will continue with Twitter as my example, as that is my main social media home.

If you were skimming about, make sure to read this next part!

On Twitter you have the opportunity to share a boatload of content throughout the day. Each tweet only has a limited life (minutes? seconds, sometimes!) so you can certainly tweet a lot.

But what your followers on Twitter are expecting is that you tweet more than stuff about yourself and your products or posts.

Sure, they want to get to know you. So tweeting a little about yourself is okay. However, when you are tweeting for your blog or business, it should be mostly professional.

You should share other peoples’ stuff. This is super-important!!! More specifically, share posts from the people in your niche.

Trust me on this one. You will get noticed more if you share a lot of other relevant and interesting information. Just sprinkle your self-promotion in among them. People expect you to.

They just don’t like having your products shoved at them all the time. By mixing it up, you’ll get noticed faster.

Use an amplifier

There are a lot of ways that you can increase your reach and amplify your voice on social media.

One of the first ways is getting to know influential people in your niche.

Don’t go for the most influential people at first, because getting noticed takes time. But if you aim for mid-level people, you will get attention far more easily.

Sharing their content is important, as is interaction. Comment on their tweets. Always give thanks for retweets. And sometimes just a little bit of chit-chat goes a long way.

Another way to extend your reach on social media is to make use of the many sharing platforms out there.

I know what you are thinking, what kinds of platforms? Well there are a lot, but some examples off the top of my head include: Triberr, JustRetweet, ViralContentBuzz, andEmpire Avenue.

If you want some more detailed information on how to use these sites, I have done another guest post on this very topic.

The beauty of these platforms is that many of the mid- to high-level influencers use them. So you will get social media love from many people, and sometimes, from the big guns too.

You will see your stats spike when that happens. It has happened to me before, and the rush is awesome!

Increase your following

All of the above tips will get you far. Believe me, I have improved a lot in social media over the last few months, and it is these strategies that have helped.

But what you also need to be doing, just a little each day, is increasing your following.

If this is something you want to do on Twitter, I can help you out for sure. My current stats include nearly 4300 followers and this is what my growth looked like over the last 3 months.

madlemmingz twitter growth

In fact I am in the process of publishing an eBook on this very subject. So stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, here are a few tips you can use to increase your following.

  • Follow influencers in your niche
  • Follow their followers
  • Follow people who retweet your posts
  • Follow people using hashtags in your niche.
  • Follow people you know from other social media platforms

Of course this all applies to Twitter, but the ideas are the same across all social media.

Quick Interjection from Greg…As I mentioned in Lorraine’s check-list, I always planned to blog solo here. I felt this would make it easier to connect 1-1 with you – and keep those connections going.

This worked for about 5 months until I basically fell off a blogging cliff; I didn’t anticipate our scale of growth or readership.

In blogging it can be dangerous to think you can control everything or that things will always stay the same – they won’t. It’s adapt or graveyard, and as the blog grew it became clear I needed a team to keep our quality levels high, and to keep me grounded.

When I found two other bloggers with the excitement and vision for fluffless blogging answers I outlined in our first post ever, I knew it was time.

Blogs I worship – CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, FirePoleMarketing – all started as one person then expanded. I’m not saying my goal is to be them or anything; it’s quite different. But this helps.

That said, I introduce you to Lorraine, the excitably writer/editor/teacher who turns simple WordPress pages to gold, and now Ashley, the quiet Swiss webmaster who always has the right plugin or fix for your site.

Taking them on here was 5% about my own agenda and 95% about delivering new answers to you.

Trust that I’ll write more on this – a formal welcome – soon, but for now I needed to bring you, especially you long-term readers, up to speed.

Now, back to Ashley…

Summary

Social media can seem very difficult when you are first starting out, so take it easy, and just focus on one platform at a time.

Research what the perfect formats are for your chosen social media platform, and use those.

Share other peoples’ stuff and watch the benefits roll in.

Last but not least, connect with relevant people in your niche however you can.

If you have any questions or ideas you want to share, I would love to hear from you in the comments below! And feel free to drop in to Mad Lemmings and say hi!

Infographic brought to you via  Ashley Faulkes On December 11, 2013

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The Forgotten Social Media Metric: You =

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in community manager, Google+, LInkedIn, Marketing, Multi Channel Marketing, Online Marketing, Pinterest, PR, Twitter, YouTube

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Behavior, Community, Community Management, Engagement, Infographics, Research, Social Media, social media manager, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Managers are a weird species. If you take a look at the LinkedIn profile of any real Digital Marketer or Social Media Marketer, you’ll notice that their skills vary from Analytics, to Marketing and Promotions, to Client Relationships to severe alcoholism. And what’s even weirder – they’re actually endorsed for all of those things (especially the alcoholism).

It’s no secret that there are a vast array of skills you need to succeed in social media – and that every social media marketer and community manager is constantly working at enhacing those skills and picking up some more in the process. Makes you think we should really be getting paid more!

Looking at it from a broad perspective, the following skills are what are probably the most important “buckets” as such that community managers need to focus on:

  • Interaction & People Skills
  • Content Skills
  • Project Management Skills
  • Analytical Skills
  • Crisis Management Skills
  • Technical Skills
  • Marketing & Promotional Skills
  • Ethics

That probably covers all the aspects of community and social media management. An interesting infographic from GetSatisfaction I came across also talks about the various duties a community manager undertakes – pretty nifty I thought. Many Hats of a Community Manager

But do you as a community manager know how good you are in each of these skills? Can you honestly say that yes, you’re good at Analytics, or no you’re not good at Project Management?

Circus Social has put together a fairly in-depth quiz, a 40 question multiple choice one that asseses you on these very categories. The quiz has a massive question bank out of which you get 40 questions at random that give you real life social media situations with three options that you can choose from. On completing the quiz, you get a breakdown of your score by each category – how well you did in Analytics, how well you did in Project Management, how well you did in Ethics etc. It gives you an interesting insight into your strengths and weaknesses as a social media manager and gives you the major pain points where you need to focus to become a better and well rounded social media and community manager.

Results Breakdown of the Social Media Manager's QuizOn being graded against other social media managers – you can actually see whether you’re really lacking in a field where everyone is excelleing, or whether you’re lacking in a field in which the general expertise level of social media managers is pretty low.

Sure, you can always measure how well your community is doing or how well your Facebook page and Twitter account are doing when you track engagement and re-tweets – but could it be possible that the reason you’re not getting enough retweets or not getting enough engagement be because you’re lacking something in Project Management and need to rethink the way you execute a campaign?

Could it be that you’re lacking in Analytics – and therefore need to get better at tracking results and engagement to amplify certain parts of your content? Or could it just be that you’re lacking in Marketing and Promotions as a social media manager and need to rethink how the marketing works around your brand.

There are plenty of tools out there that let you evaluate your page performance and track mentions for your brand, but maybe it’s time that we take a look inside ourselves as social media managers and tried to find what part of our personality isn’t making our social media campaigns work.

 

Cross posted by permission Social Media Today

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The Hootlet: Social Sharing for Lazy Professionals

07 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Facebook, Google+, Hootsuite, LInkedIn, Multi Channel Marketing, Pinterest, Twitter, Uncategorized

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Best Practices, Community, Engagement, hootlet, links, Marketing, Social Media, Social Networks, social sharing, Tools & Apps

I have to say I love Hootlet. For me personally it is a blessing of time saving.
If you’re like most business owners, you probably spend a lot of time each day searching for valuable content that you’d want to share with your audience on your social networks. Even though you can copy and paste each link into the status update window, it’s a slow manual process, especially when you’d like to share multiple pieces at a time.

On a different note, social media research is a major part of any serious marketing strategy, but it’s often ignored and businesses are missing on valuable information about their brands. The Canadian social media management company, HootSuite, has been developing a really cool feature that addresses both challenges – social sharing and research – with one tool: the Hootlet.

hootsuite mascot main

Featured image credit: Ssango

The Hootlet

You’ve probably heard of the Hootlet add-on extension for Chrome and Firefox when it was first launched in 2009. The new updated Hootlet version takes social sharing and research to a whole new level. Its primary function is to simplify content sharing via HootSuite and distribute the content to multiple social networks and even schedule your posts.

In essence, Hootsuite’s Hootlet is an effective tool to:

–          Search social media content next to your Google search

–          Share content while you surf, without leaving the web page you’re on

–          Highlight text in a page and share it directly to your social media accounts

–          Discover relevant geo-located social media content

–          Cross promote images and videos

–          Schedule posts on your social networks from any web page

Whenever you find a page that’s worthy of a share, click the owl Hootlet button on the top right corner of your browser window and the Hootlet compose box will appear. It will automatically add the title and a shrinked URL into the share box.

Next, you can select the social account to share the article to, schedule or use the AutoSchedule feature to automatically pick the optimal time to distribute your content.

The Hootlet interface has been revamped with a modern streamlined design:

hootsuite hootlet image 1

A New And Improved AutoScheduling Feature

With the previous Hootlet version, if you had the AutoScheduling feature activated in the HootSuite Dashboard, it would automatically assume that it would apply to all “on the go” shares. Now, if you want to share a post right away, you must deactivate the “AutoSchedule” option in the share box and then hit “Send Now”.

While “AutoSchedule” allows you to space out your posts when you don’t care about time intervals, there are still posts you’d like to share immediately. The new version of the Hootlet allows you to “Schedule” or “Send Now” without needing to deactivate the “AutoSchedule”.

Extended Sharing Capabilities

Before, when you clicked on a post’s sharing buttons, the Share box included a custom HootSuite button that allowed you to share that post via HootSuite. Posting visual media to social networks has always been difficult. Now, the sharing capabilities have been extended to Instagram and Flickr images, Pinterest pins and even YouTube videos.

hootsuite_hootlet_youtube

What makes the Hootlet so effective is that it’s more than just a sharing tool. Each time you share a web page, the new version will also allow you to select text on that page, click the “Share” button and have the highlighted text appear as the text you’re sharing, instead of just the title.

Anyone can share links, but it’s the unique spin that you give to your posts that makes your content special. Quoting from a web page and commenting on it will make all the difference between your posts and other people’s. Similarly, quoting some text from your own article and sharing it is another way to get even more tweets for your post, after you’ve tweeted it once using the article title.

You can also choose which features you want to turn on. First click on the top right Chrome settings button:

chrome hootlet extension

Next, click on “Extensions” and then select “Options”, under the Hootlet extension:

hootlet chrome extension

Now you can customize your settings:

customise hootlet settings

Related and Geo-Located Tweets

When conducting a Google search, you’ll see an option box that shows tweets related to your search. The tweets are displayed to the right of your search and can provide valuable insights. Let’s say you’re searching for trends in your niche by typing your keywords in Google and the Hootlet will provide relevant tweets based on keywords, location or business listing.

local_tweet_hootsuite

For instance, when searching Yelp for local information, you will see what others are tweeting about near to the location that you’re viewing.

yelp hootsuite

These geographically related tweets can help you discover new customers, influencers and new business opportunities. You can reply or retweet messages directly from your current window.

Google Maps Integration

With the new Google Maps integration, you can type in an address and pull out tweets near your location that people have shared recently. This feature is especially useful for local businesses that might want to see what’s new in their area or track Twitter promotions focused on in-store campaigns. This feature is also useful for live events promoters or even media journalists covering a local news event.

Easy Cross Posting

There are a few other Chrome extensions (or services like Buffer) that do these different tasks, but the Hootlet is the only one that enables cross posting. Whether you’re on Pinterest or Flickr and want to share images to Facebook or Twitter, you can use the Hootlet to easily share that information.

hootsuite pinterest

The HootSuite dashboard is especially useful for small businesses who can spare no more than an hour or two each week to set up their weekly social media calendar. The Hootlet offers a great way to get everything done.

Final Thoughts on Hootsuite’s Hootlet

The functionality offered by Hootlet  provides a unique social sharing experience to your daily browsing efforts. Now you have one tool to perform all your social searching, sharing and scheduling directly from the web browser.

The Hootlet extension lets you search social media content as easily as you browse Google, post content directly from web pages, select text and automatically create ready-to-share messages, search location relevant tweets and share visual media effortlessly.

I’ll give you four reasons why I’m  sure you’ll love the new Hootlet:

–          You’ll never have to leave your browser window to share content

–          It literally consumes 5 seconds to schedule a post.

–          You can auto-schedule your posts

–          You get the automatic ow.ly URL shortener and analytics

No more copying and pasting content that you want to share with your fans and followers! Thanks to the new Hootlet , social sharing is as easy as one click and all your links are trackable via your Owly Stats.

The updated Hootlet extension can be located on the Chrome Web Store and you can watch this video to see how it functions in practice.

Shared by permission, this post The Hootlet: Social Sharing for Lazy Professionals appeared first on LatestCrunchs.

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