Monday, October 17, 2011

Making Time for Social Media

Greetings my fellow social media gods and goddess…. Are you ready for another adventure into the world of social media???  So grab your bags and hop on board the social media express as we explore the land of time and social media. 

The one thing I hear most often is “I do not have time” in reference to using social media to market ones business. I use to think the same thing until I understood the power of using social media. So lets’ explore a different approach to this topic.

Many blogs have posts on the subject that share with you short cuts and resources that will help you post and monitor your social media resources. However, that is not the issue when one thinks they do not have the time to use social media. The real issue is not seeing the value, the power, the effectiveness of social media marketing and therefore not wanting to take the time to use these resources.

We all know we make time for what we perceive as important to us. We make time to network, to follow up on leads and referrals, to follow up with current clients/customers and all the other things we do to gain and keep clients/customers. Why, because we feel these things are effective. They are business practices that gain results. The same can be said for social media marketing when it is added into your normal routine of doing business.
Social Media is about building relationships and inviting conversations. If you have a facebook business page you now notice the insights now track your”reach” and people “talking about” your page. This is to show you the impact your posts are having. Why, because it is all about relationships and conversations. When approaching using social media this is the mindset needed. 

How important is it to you to keep your current clients engaged? How important is it to you to inform and educate your current and potential clients? It is not possible to personally do this through phone calls and emails. It is possible to have a greater reach, a greater impact through social media. 

Here is an example of how this can work for you. Say you are networking, you meet a potential client and you schedule a meeting. In that meeting you both talk about what you both offer and how you can help each other. So after the meeting what do you do? How do you keep in contact with them? How do you foster that relationship? This is where social media can help you. You can friend them, follow them, link with them and they can do likewise. You can comment on their posts and they can do likewise. You can further the relationship through staying connected through social media. 

Another way social media can work for you is, say that you have a great promotion that you know your customers would love? How do you let them know about it? Do you personally call each and every one of them? Do you place a coupon in the local paper? Social media will allow you to have a greater reach in getting known so that your promotion has a greater impact. Why? Because you current customers have the opportunity to share your promotion with their friends easily and quickly by one click a button.   
  
Are you beginning to see how Social Media can work for you and how easily it is to make time for using this powerful resource? 

If you have a success story you would like to share please feel free to leave a comment about how social media marketing has improved your business.

So my fellow gods and goddess until our next adventure….Happy Posting!
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Saturday, October 1, 2011

Facebook Changes Have You Confused?

Greetings fellow social media gods and goddesses. Have you recovered from the shock of the new changes facebook did at the end of September 2011????  Has it left you scratching your head as to what these changes are all about?  Well do not get too comfortable as more changes are on the way. 


So lets peek at these new changes and how they can work for you......


The first one is the newsfeeds. They have combined what was once top stories and most recent all into 1 feed.  What is confusing is if you look want to see things in a time line order. They idea with the change is so that you see what interests you most first and then the posts in a time line format. All the same information should be there but to be honest I too struggle at times with missing somethings that were posted. So after playing around with this I just read everything but now it just takes a wee bit more time....I never used the previous top story option very often. 

Now the smart lists was a "smart idea". Here you can create lists of your friends and read only those posts. This is a great way to be sure you do not miss anything and you only read those who posts you want to be sure you get to see. You have the control here. This gives you great flexibility so that if you want to read only what your business friends are posting you can do just that. You can even restrict what some friends see. Your close friends likes and such will also now show up in your notifications. It does make it easier to follow those you want to the most and not miss anything. These lists is one of my favorite changes they have done in this go around.

Another new feature is the Subscribe option. If you are friends with somebody you already subscribed by default. What this option does is allow those who have reached the 5,000 friend limit have people subscribe to their "public" posts. The keyword here is PUBLIC. As you now have the flexibility to alter posts on an individual basis as to what friends see, friends of friends and public. If privacy is a concern then set all our setting to friends only and you will have no issues with people seeing posts you do not want them to see. 


So what is the deal with the ticker as they call it???? Now that is a very good question. It does allow you to see posts without having to leave your home page and leave comments. I suppose for a time factor this is a useful feature. It is in real time and is much like Twitter in that respect so if you are use to twitter you will love this feature.  

If you have a business page, they made some changes there too. You no longer have to have 25 followers to get a custom name. I have heard that some were having trouble with this working but I suspect the bugs gave been worked out.  They also now have a feature that will show you when your friends comment or like a post. The idea is so that you know when a friend has interacted with your page. Usefulness??? That is up to you to decide. 


Facebook leaders seem to feel that facebook gets stale if they do not make changes. They also seem to feel that people are not emotionally attached to their experience and use it cause well what else is there. So to get their users loving their experience once again, they are rolling out changes. It is up to you to decide their success but before you do give yourself time to adjust. There are more changes coming and I suspect these current ones will make more sense once they roll everything out. 


If you use facebook for business you will have to adjust and find new ways to be effective with your marketing. This is not necessarily a bad thing. So be open to the changes and see how you can do things better.  


Until our next adventure together....happy posting.