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Though I’ve written about working as the social media manager for brands like Nissan, Land Rover and Hewlett Packard, I’ve never talked about many of my achievements in this space. For example, you might not know that I helped one newspaper go from a limited social media presence to helping them hit the Digg homepage over 40 times.
Or, how when I worked with Bacardi we drove so much traffic to their site that we took down their servers. Twice. I have plans to cover these stories in more detail in the next few months, but to start the coverage of Social Media here at ViperChill I wanted to bring in 9 other experts in the field to share their thoughts on leveraging social media as a whole.
The 9 awesome people that have helped me here are: Tamar Weinberg, Neil Patel, Lee Odden, Neal Rodriguez, Brent Csutoras, Jason Falls, Skellie, Lisa Barone and Michael Martine.
Together, these people have been involved in social media as long as anyone else and discovered tactics to help you get the most out of the services. Not only that, but they’ve helped shape the way that marketers utilise these services and they teach how to do it in an honest, ethical manner.
After recently surpassing Google as the most popular site in America and closing in on 500,000,000 monthly unique visitors, Facebook has huge amounts of traffic that you can ethically leverage to grow your business online.
Leverage Facebook advertising to gauge the audience opportunity. Research other fan pages to see what those Facebook users are not getting elsewhere and give it to them. Encourage interaction as you grow
the network and give them a reason to share your updates on and off Facebook.
If you create a fan page, look at how to set-up a ‘welcome’ section like I did for ViperChill. It lets people know what they can expect from following your brand and massively helps to increase signups compared to a normal landing page. The more likes and diverse comments you get on an update, the more homepages it is shown on, so try to ask engaging questions that get people involved.
I would treat Facebook almost as a stand-alone website. Use it to engage your audience (on a Fan Page) with questions, contests, photo and video sharing and sharing relevant content that makes people want to keep coming back to your page. It’s a great place to drive interactions with your company if your corporate website is rather boring and hard to content manage.
Special thanks to Neal for putting these videos together. He is quite possibly the smartest guy I know in this space and is responsible for sending millions of visitors to his clients’ websites.
Consider creating a Facebook fan page as well as placing a facebook share this button on your website. If you build up your fan page by participating and inviting your friends, you should be able to drive traffic to your website.
Facebook can be a great opportunity for social media marketing, especially if you engage fans on a Fan Page. A recent case study of Dessert Gallery illustrates just how powerful it can be. Offer discounts exclusive to Facebook fans and engage them in discussions and chats. These are indirect ways to make your fans feel that they are appreciated.
Master the news feed algorithm. Just because people Fan (or now, like) your page on Facebook, doesn’t mean they’re seeing everything you do. If you want people to see what you’re posting than you need to get that piece of content touched by as many people as possible. Post content that asks questions, that’s eye-catching and that people will want to pass on. Because Facebook filters what appears in a user’s news feed based on comments, shared friends, recent interactions – the more hands you get on something, the more likely it is users are seeing your brand and content.
Facebook for me is a lot of work, for a small audience of people who are not in the learn, buy or convert mode. So although I have a profile on Facebook, I do not use Facebook for marketing to people. Maybe that is why I still have so many friends.
Twitter founders recently revealed that their site has over 110,000,000 accounts and the site is growing by hundreds of thousands of users per day. Twitter is a great way to bring a personality and voice from your company out in the open.
Use Twitter as your company office hours. That means setting aside time to answer community questions, point people to resources, and find ways to be useful to your audience – whether that’s educating or simply entertaining them. Twitter is the one social network where you can really be someone’s “friend”, as cheesy and rainbow-filled as that sounds. You’d be smart to create that relationship by balancing out the informative tweets with the i-love-Glee tweets. The best way to get more out of Twitter is to treat it like your office break room. Same rules typically apply.
The great thing about Twitter is that anyone can sign up and easily find his “community.” It shouldn’t take too long to monitor the streams via a search tool to find the people who talk about things that are interesting to you. Build relationships first, then promote your content.
Somewhere in its evolution Twitter turned into a link-sharing service, with most of the tweets I see now just links to elsewhere. This kind of tweet can work well, but you won’t build a following based on the links you share. You need to balance this with some personality, so you followers can get to know you.
Share good content around your niche or industry and engage in conversations with smart people on the subjects most meaningful to you. Do that and you’ll gain the right followers at the right pace.
For both Twitter and Facebook, do the homework on the end consumers and influentials you’re trying to reach. Create profiles or personas of their characteristics, behaviours and preferences. Then target those personas in your friend and follower tasks to grow a high impact network. Search.twitter.com can be very handy to find who you’re looking for or you could use tools like tweetminer.net. Grow a network, execute on a plan to provide value and opportunities for the network to do what you want them to do whether it’s to upgrade to a more commercial relationship, spread the good word about our brand or recruit others to join the club.
Twitter is one of those sites where having 10 really good followers is better than 10,000 bad followers. In order to retain the audience of meaningful followers, you need to provide value in your updates. Find one thing, preferably not from your own site, that your audience would find helpful and share it each day. Maybe it is a comment about something you learned, a question that engages them in a meaningful way, or a link to a news story they would find interesting, but providing quality updates will keep you on people’s follow list.
Twitter is like a party. It’s all about fun while providing value at the same time. Spread links that help your audience (and that you know they would like to spread on to their own network). Include your own blog post links but make sure it’s mostly other people’s stuff. By promoting others over yourself, you grow your Twitter following with engaged people and drive traffic back to your blog. Use the @ feature to reply to folks when you can. Links should not always have to be about your business topic: have fun and watch massive traffic roll in.
Digg
Though you hear Digg talked about less and less by marketers, it’s still a site which can get you a huge flood of traffic and hundreds of links if you manage to make the homepage of the site. With the recent announcement that all previously banned domains are now unbanned, it’s an open playing field.
More than any other social site on the web, with Digg you have to participate in all aspects of the site. You need to have a good profile, vote, comment, network, follow trends, and submit a wide variety of content. AND you have to do all this with moderation. If you really want to succeed in Digg, then treat it like a real life social community. Pretend you are actually in a room with the people on Digg and you will go very far.
Digg is a great source of traffic to your site but it’s also incredibly difficult to get your story on the front page. The best performing content is content that jives with the Digg audience, so you really need to study out what has performed well on the front page for weeks, if not months. Digg, however, is really hard to “game.” Your best chances come from knowing a power user who can submit on your behalf.
Pay a submission marketer to get your stuff on the front page. Otherwise, let the gamers have it.
To understand what works on Digg and how content goes ‘popular’, you really must be an active user of the service. You’ll learn the formulas that work, the topics that are hot, and you’ll make connections who can help you out with submitting and promoting your articles. If you don’t understand Digg, it’s very tough to have success with it.
To make Digg work for you, you really have to study the top headlines in your category. And if your category isn’t on Digg, don’t bother, or you’ll just be beating your head against a brick wall for nothing. It helps to have an army of friends to vote you up and it can take time to build it. Leverage your friends from other networks on Digg if you can.
StumbleUpon
One of my favourite time wasters and ways to find new websites, StumbleUpon, has over 10 million people who have installed their toolbar and are actively using the service. While it doesn’t send the best traffic in the world to your site, it can send floods of which some will convert.
StumbleUpon can send you huge amounts of traffic. The name of the game is curating. Find the BEST links for the topics your CUSTOMERS are interested in (not just your peers). Use the messaging system in SU to actively promote your links. Never post links to your own blog posts or articles in SU. Have your friends do it for you (and you do it for them, of course).
StumbleUpon is one of the most forgiving social sites. Since it utilizes a tagging system and a toolbar, the majority of people who see your content should have an interest in it. So if you really want to do well on StumbleUpon, try to pick the most popular tags for your content, but make sure they are related. If your content is in the most popular, but wrong category, you will get nothing from it.
When you channel surf, you’re looking for something to immediately grab your attention on the screen. StumbleUpon is a way to channel surf the internet, so the same principle applies – your post needs to hook readers in immediately to be successful on StumbleUpon. For a post to do well on StumbleUpon you’ll need a great title, a very good intro, and ideally an eye-catching visual element (a photo, video or infographic) to draw the eye.
StumbleUpon drives a fair amount of traffic to websites, especially among the more active users of the service. If you genuinely show that you want to participate in the community and give of yourself rather than take, you’ll get traffic. Whether it’s targeted or not is another thing, but you can always look at the types of people who consistently stumble certain websites to find out if they’re the types of people you want to be friends with.
Like any submission website (even Digg.com), you have to spend time on it, commenting, voting, submitting and what-not to get any traction out of it for your own site. But I’ve seen more traffic influx from StumbleUpon when I do submit my own material there than from any other site because I’ve build up some level of trust that I’m sharing good content.
Blogs
Many marketers today forget that social media isn’t just about sites like Twitter and Facebook, it also includes blogs like the one you’re reading right now. Though the social aspect of blogs has veered off onto other communities, you can still get some great results by understanding them properly.
Develop a blog alliance. Problogger had a great post on blog alliances not so long ago. The idea is that bloggers are stronger in numbers and when they can leverage each other’s communities. Create a network where you can share ideas, brainstorm content strategies and develop a comment strategy. Once you have your alliance, find your blog enemies. Your blog is nobody until somebody hates it.
For many, blogs are a home base — it’s where you can establish your identity but also use it as an opportunity to show your readers other sides of you by pointing out other social network outposts and other subjects of interest. Blogs are a way to communicate directly with people who are interested in your offerings. They are a way for you to get to know the people around you as they converse about what you have to say. Of course, blogs also drive traffic to your website, especially when you optimize for the long tail.
It’s no longer enough just to write content on a consistent basis. There are so many content producers in every niche online now that you really have to become the signal that cuts through the noise. To do this you need to write compelling content, be an authentic representation of your niche and interact with your community as much as possible. Make everything you do about the reader, and you can’t go far wrong.
To get the attention of another blogs audience leave comments on them and connect with the authors on other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Only after you’ve given back to that person’s community should you ask for something in return.
Not only should you be posting comments on blogs that talk about things related to your industry, but you should build relationships with bloggers. This way if you want them to blog about you, you can email them and ask them for a favor.
You can respond to your blog or company’s audience by comment functionality or email. So when members of your audience say they don’t believe that a crack pipe will burn off the hairs on the chicken, you could link them to the viral video of the crack head turning the crack pipe into a blowtorch and burning needles off a porcupine.
You can add a wide variety of media to your blog: video, audio, written word. You can use your blog to respond to topics covered on other websites. The other site may post a link to your site and direct some of its audience to your website. You could increase the chance of acquiring those links by guest posting or notifying the other site’s webmaster or stakeholder of a response to their topic.
Blogging wins when it’s full of passion and helpful information at the same time. Blogging about topics your customers care about and find helpful is key. Making personal stories into lessons wins big. Resources your customers find helpful, like reviews and links all win big. Tutorials are helpful. Although it may feel scary, getting personal while making it into a lesson is potent content.
Figure out which search terms you want to win or rank well for and build content around those. 80 percent of a corporate blog’s visitors are first-time visitors. You aren’t writing for a community of fans.You’re writing to win search results and drive referral links from other sites. Identify keywords and go after them with your content. Just also be sure to give those first-time visitors something to do once they arrive!
Take the time to create a plan for the audience, keywords and business goals you’re trying to reach with a blog. Develop a content marketing strategy that allocates resources for SEO, network development,
content promotion off the blog, commenting on other blogs, quickly responding to comments made on the blog, automatic distribution and syndication, repurposing of content and encouraging social popularity. One
of the most important tips for a new blog is to have patience and to watch web and social media analytics closely for both progress and opportunities.
Be consistent, stick with it for the long-haul, write for a specific audience, always try to improve the quality of your content and have a plan – know what your goals are and constantly evaluate your progress towards them. Do all these things and blogging will be really rewarding for you.
Forums
Message boards are really the first internet form of social media, after IRC. No matter what niche your business is in, there’s a great chance there are a number of active forums on the topic which you can participate in.
An earnest desire to help others and be with like-minded people is the key to driving traffic from forums. A simple signature link is all that’s needed. Don’t be sales-y. Forums are also a great place to lurk and listen to what your customers are saying. This helps you improve your marketing and your offer, which will in turn get you more highly qualified traffic instead of “tire kickers.”
With forums the goal is to not just interact with the community on a regular basis, but you want to add a forum signature so you can get links back to your website. You also want to do this for relevant forums because it will drive more traffic than irrelevant forums.
The greatest thing about forums is that there are SO many of them. We think we’re being overwhelmed by social networking sites. Forums predate social networks and still thrive. If you find the right forums, you can really make a difference. As always, though, build real relationships — don’t just go there to spam or self-promote. Most forums let you add a signature to the bottom of the post where you can identify who you are and why you’re there.
Be part of the community first and foremost to be part of the community. Leveraging forums ethically tends to take a long time although what you get in return often makes the time investment worth it. Try to build up a strong reputation as a helpful user before trying to promote anything for your own benefits.
Be helpful, promote others more than you promote yourself, and behave like a leader. If you’ve got a link to your site in your signature, you’ll naturally get traffic through that link if your forum contributions are really good.
Forums may be used to respond to your target market’s inquiries and comments about your industry. If a former dope head in Siberia needs some bitter as a lemon rind chocolate, which only your company sells, you could instruct him on how to sign over his mortgage for a box of cacao.
You can create responses on your site to direct traffic to it, if the forum allows it. So when forum members ask where can they get the best bungee jumping instruction, you could link them to your video of pygmy tribemen jumping off of 200 ft wooden ladders with vines tied to their ankles.
You could respond to questions to position your brand as an expert resource in the industry the forum covers. You could have your company’s Einstein break down the theory of relativity to 16 yr old 11th graders who want to cheat on their regent state exams.
You could ask questions, the answers to which can be used to compose a blog post, article, or application that have a greater chance of having webmasters point links to your site and the traffic which comes with it. Such a web page can also be used to influence your existing audience to complete an action, which helps your website meet an objective.
Find the ones that offer the most value (read: Other smart people are there) to you, but that you can also contribute to. And carve out 30 minute or so each week to pay attention to them. Remembering to go check in is the hardest thing about forums.
If you liked the insights provided here then I encourage you to go and check out the websites of each expert. I want to thank them all again for taking part and I hope you all learned something from the post.
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Great post, as usual. That’s a lot of information to digest, I especially enjoyed the insights on Facebook and Digg. Looks like there are a couple new blogs I might have to start following, too.
Thanks Casual,
It took a bit of work to get everyone involved and put it all together, but I’m happy with the end result.
thank you for putting it together, Glen! the insight from everybody on here made my brain grow another inch
it was an honor to take part.
So many colors in this post. Reddit > Digg
I’ve been playing around with some of the different social media sites and have found that I get decent traffic from them, but the traffic I get from forums is the “stickiest” in terms of how long they stay on the page, whether they subscribe, etc.
Hey Jean,
Great to see you here!
That’s interesting. I’ve personally found that mentions on other blogs is the best type of traffic for me. I can see why engaging on forums and getting traffic from those would work well though.
Thanks for sharing
Nice stuff Glen (as usual) and the presentation has a new and unique quality yet does not depart from the norm making it interesting and just that bit better, thanks. It always a pleasure to visit VC.
Thanks Frank,
I did mix up the style a little from what I’ve seen before but I think it makes it much easier to digest all of the information. Great to see you here as well
I am from Poland and one thing your reader might want to keep in mind is there are a lot of niche social media sites out there. For example in my language there is a different set then on the English Internet. But the good thing is they have an option for English users. Therefore, my point is there are many untapped social media sites besides the one mentioned above to be used in ethical and responsible ways.
Hey Kasia,
That’s true. Focusing on niche sites (like Sphinn, which is Digg for the internet marketing community) can bring much great traffic. For this one I just wanted to focus on the big guys who can really take down servers and bring floods of traffic. Which, in turn, can get you mainstream press and the like.
Thanks for the comment!
Hi Glen,
This is really a great post on social media, and The advice all these people gave are very important. Digg is the most difficult to game but gamable anyways.
PS: I don’t have a facebook fan page yet, do you think it matters?
Thanks,
Onibalusi
thnx for checking it out, Onibalusi! in terms of how easy it is manipulate a social media platform, well i’ll just write this: even American airspace can be gamed. nonetheless, for a platform like digg, for instance, gaming it may not be the best option. you can create an account, which garners support for each of its submissions without gaming the system. it may take a few weeks to build; but if you comment on and digg on other active digg accounts, yours will be the first submissions active users will choose when deciding on what to support.
Yeah! exactly! I started being active on digg sometimes ago, i added some people as friends and I also dugg and commented on most of their posts. In a few days, my submissions are already having 5-6 diggs (from 0). The problem is that digg needs dedication (as said in the post) and I am a busy blogger (guest posting e.t.c.) so I find it very difficult to be spending my time on digg (not even on any social media site).
Thanks a lot for your reply, I really appreciate it.
Onibalusi
well, Onibalusi, i agree; you definitely have to pick your battles; if guest posting on blogs, which engage your target community, drives targeted traffic to your site, that is your custom social engagement campaign.
i am not sure if other people would agree, but, in my eyes, the internet is one big social media platform. for instance, the search engines give you exposure based on how many links you get – or with how many other webmasters you engage who can give u links; websites are designed to communicate with people and have all types of functionality to comment, email, or phone the stakeholders of the website;
social media is ‘social’ because of their interactive features which allow you to communicate with the rest of its users; the internet provides such interactivity through DNS lookups, email, comments, diggs, stumbles, facebook messages, check ins, upvotes, mass shares, youtube bulletins… let me stop my fingers hurt; these features all allow you to ‘interact’ with the rest of the internet’s users in whichever way you find fit.
Yeah! That is absolutely right. Except you are already an authority in your niche, social media traffic is very tempting but not the best type. You can get tens of thousands of visitors without you getting up to 10 percent to stay. But if a site like problogger hits first page on digg, there is still a probability of retaining a large percentage of the visitors (unlike mine).Thanks a lot for your replies,
I really appreciate it.
Onibalusi
Wow Glen, very cool post.
I’m going to have to re-read it a few times to absorb everything.
Neil’s video’s made me laugh,OMG! That guy is hilarious and ridiculous at the same time:)
Bookmarking those!
hey Diggy; thnx for the compliment, baby! much appreciated.
Hey Neal,
We actually had you up on my 50″ plasma full screen yesterday haha. Great stuff
my man! hope i didn’t scare anybody; i’ll let you know when i could get you and Diggy on the panasonic jumbotron on times square
Glen I appreciate being asked to be a part of this. Really fascinating, the different takes on the topics by the others. And thank you for not publishing anything I said about Facebook.
Great article Glen, there’s some nice insights here. I’m sure lots of your readers will get excellent value from this post. I found most use in the blog and forum tips – thanks, mate.
Hi Glen!
. Chapeau! 
Didn’t read the whole article, but wanted to share something: you still have “Become A Fan” on the landing page, instead of “Like”. Btw, it’s the first time I ever see such a cool and straight to the point “Fan Page”
Thanks Arthur,
Yeah, they changed it a few days ago so I have to fix that
A very original and fun way to put together a blog post. Neal is some guy. I ‘see’ him about quite a lot and he’s always so entertaining. He should definitely be a stand up comedian. He’s always got the most amusing anecdotes and analogies.
Great stuff. I’ve been on SU for a long time, but still can’t work it out completely.
hi Anne; thnx for the kind compliments; much appreciated
stumbleupon is the one platform where sincere organic activity can really pay off; although hitting on it sometimes feels like trying to make the dart split the dart already in the bullseye; but try to promote work of people with whom you want to work – the more the merrier; and they’ll be more likely to work with you if you send them some traffic from your SU account.
you should aim to create an account solely defining your interests; that way the su engine will load content submitted by people who share those interests; if you subscribe to such people, who share your interests, and thumb up their content early, they will see your profile’s avatar on the stumbleupon review page and possibly subscribe to you; if they subscribe to you they will see the content you discover when they visit their stumbleupon homepage. stumbles from people, whose interests align closely with yours, will be sent to other people who share those interests.
i have worked photo sites to receive recurring traffic well into the 10s of thousands on a monthly basis. stumbleupon is a great source for repeat visits from other users. just remember, the type of you people to whom you subscribe is more important than the amount.
Thanks for that, Neal. I will certainly take that on board. Thanks for taking the time off to explain.
Hey Glen !!
as usual and the advice all bloggers gave are really superb!! 
. (not able to watch the video, in a cyber cafe) 
Another awesome cool post
And Thanks for the interview bud !!
Cheers,
Dev
Thanks Glen for putting this all together.
On the first read, I wrote down 13 new ideas, mostly ways to use SU and blogging, that I can implement into my overall marketing strategy. Probably get a few more when I read it again.
That’s great to hear RJ. While reading Glen’s post, I’ve just done the same thing, wrote down some ideas, although not as many as you. Let us know if you get any more ideas from it
.
Great post, Glen – thanks for rounding up those expert opinions.
I feel like StumbleUpon is underrated by a lot of social media marketers/communicators, and that’s because it isn’t well understood.
Similarly, I feel that a lot of people new to the space don’t realize the impact that forums can have.
you’re right, Parker;
the internet, having all forms of interactive features, which allow you to engage your target communities anywhere on the planet, not limited to those found on major social platforms such as those cited here, allows you to be anywhere and maybe everywhere the people with whom you want to communicate congregate.
Thank you Glen, Neal and others for an excellent article on Social Networking tips.
You know, I tried everything, from Digg to SU, Twitter to Facebook… But the traffic I get from Google is 20x more than all the traffic from social media combined.
You guys are the experts, and have the techniques and patience to create a good network. It was great to learn from y’all.
Thanks and Cheers!
thnx for the kind compliments, Jackbid;
just wanted to note that successful use of these major social media tools also help your search engine rankings. search engine exposure is most heavily hinged on the quantity and quality of links, which point to your site. social media platforms such as Digg have a big webmaster and blogger community. once a story is promoted to popularity, there is a greater chance hundreds of these bloggers will link to you.
Thanks for the post Glen. I just have to ask this. I’m new to all this social media stuff and I can’t really spend time doing it during the day. I try to digg but I guess no one want to read about the end of the tax credit or what you need to know about a VA loan. The facebook thing I just started so I’m working on that if someone comments I get an email on my blackberry if I’m away from my desk. Just how do I really improve my digg. Neal if you got some technical advice please let me know.
hi Mike; thnx for viewing;
on digg you really want to work on building your profile into a digital asset – almost like another blog from which you could drive traffic to content to which the community will be attracted. use the friendstatistics tool to find who is digging content of the most active diggers; befriend them and digg their content – they will eventually start to digg your content when you submit;
in terms of the content – content always does best when it is given an offbeat spin – i.e. something funny, outrageous, or extraordinary on your industry. however, a lot of technical data that can be covered on tax credits, VA loans, and finances in general, has been successfully promoted through the use of infographics; an infographic is basically a 500px wide or wider image with smaller images embedded inside it, associated with factoids about your topic. as a guideline, take a look at which infographics have been successfully promoted on digg: http://digg.com/search?s=infographic
feel free to reach out anytime.
Thanks for the tip on friendstatistics neal, I’ll deffo be looking into that myself
.
– bexter.
Mike, feel free to add me to your digg and I’ll digg your articles
Hi Glen, Great article.
I liked your facebook welcome page very much. How did you do that? Which application did you use to prepare that custom opening page?
Thanks !
Hey Faith,
I learned how to do it thanks to Pat > http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/the-bloggers-guide-to-facebook/
Ok Glen,
! But I sure hope that you’re not tired of hearing me tell you LOL.
I’m getting tired of telling you how awesome your posts are
What a great round up of social media experts you got there. Such great feedback to have from all these different sources.
I’ve recently become much more active on Twitter and I can see the effect it’s had on my blog traffic. And I completely agree with Michael’s point (about Twitter). One thing I like to do however, is to try and read any article I RT and @reply to people who RT my Tweets.
Glen and the rest of the SM Gurus – thanks for sharing your very valuable pointers. You all rock!
Hahah.
No, I still love it
Thanks for your thoughts Ingrid. It’s always great to see you here.
Hey Glen.
Another great post!
I am a bit adverse to going to hard into social media just due to the time it takes… At some point I will have to outsource this to get full efficiency. Currently I have a Facebook page that is linked to a twitter account, which is linked to a LinkedIn account. I don’t monitor the Twitter or LinkedIn just focusing on the Facebook at the moment because that seems to be touching my (non-techy) audience the best.
My best takeaway was ur Facebook page stuff. I changed the url of my facebook page from http://www.facebook.com/pages/Metallic-Nails/242469608561 to http://www.facebook.com/metallicnails and am working on a landing page so Thanks!
@ Faith – here are the links I found:
Personalized Facebook URL – http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=91106469821
How to Build a Facebook Welcome / Landing Page – http://mashable.com/2010/02/22/build-facebook-landing-page/
Thanks for the links Vinay. One thing to add though, on the Personalized Facebook URL note, it says you you need a minimum of 1000 fans. This isn’t the case now though and you can change the username for your page once you have 25 fans
.
Great tips from everyone. Love how you format your posts BTW Glen, always creative, clever and unique.
Thanks Adam,
I had to think about this one for a while (I was going to use pictures) but I think the little name tags worked better.
This was extremely insightful. I’m still young but this is my passion. I know social media marketing is my calling, and I’m trying to absorb as much as possible.
Right now, my strong point is that I can detach myself from the marketer and become to the consumer and ask myself “what would I want from a company?” So I’m able to answer my own questions.
I’m glad a lot of you told me what I thought I knew but my previous supervisor told me was wrong: promote other companies/blogs/content. She said “that doesn’t make any sense because it doesn’t drive traffic to our site” but I was trying to explain to her we’re building trust & loyalty.
Thanks everyone!
Hey Briana,
I’m young too. I took my first job in this space when I was 18, so don’t think that age can hold you back. That’s a great question I think a lot of companies could benefit from asking themselves.
Hi Glen and thanks. Great post and writing. It’s fantastic to have an overview of the main social media platforms in one nice and clear post with various perspectives and tips from experienced folks. Yay! I could never really get into Facebook and saw it as a place for friends and family, but I’ll go back and check out the other bells and whistles and see if I can apply my online work there better. I’ve forwarded this post on to a network of bloggers I’ve begun working with to read too. Thank you!
Hey Gayle,
You seem so excited, I love it.
Thanks for helping to get the word out there, I appreciate it.
Three thumbs up for this! Who wouldn’t want advices from all famous, trustworthy persons. It’s not just a great article, it’s the greatest!
Wow, high praise.
Thanks Andrew!
Thanks for taking the time to gather this information from the experts. Of all the articles about social media I’ve seen, this has been the easiest to read and understand. No jargon, no bullsh*t. Brilliant!
Don’t worry Annabella, you can write bullshit here
Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Glen..as usual great post and thanks for taking the time to put it all together..I’m sure it was less than easy! lol You provided some great insights to Digg and SU that I’m going to examine further as well as what may be lacking in my Facebook department! Appreciate all the valuable info you always give.
Warm regards,
C
Hey Cori,
Thanks. it took a while but I think it was worth it.
I appreciate your comments! — Glen
Hi Glen,
A really nicely put together & informative post – thanks! My comment is a ‘nod in agreement’ with yourself & Tamen re. Forums. I think they are underrated in the world of Social Media but totally agree with the advice to ‘build real relationships’.
I actually sold a little web store I had via a forum! BUT I had been a contributor and participant in that forum for quite some time, so I like to think I’d built rapport – thus making the sale easier! The trust was there….
Keep ‘em coming……..
Dude, I thought that Nathan’s post on Copyblogger today was the best post I’ve read this month, but this is serious competition. Neal really stole the show with this one.
I really like your direction to connect and bring people together Glen. You’re great at that.
Thanks Jonathan,
High praise coming from you
thnx for the shot out, Jonathan; much appreciated.
These thing with using all these social site is they can take up a lot of time and it can be easy to get distracted. It may be best to out source some of the promotion on these sites?
this is an issue with which i am dealing now IMA. you definitely have to watch how much time you spend on these sites because they do get addictive. when i am really pressed for time, i actually time myself and do exactly what i have to do on a social media site to maintain my profile. for instance, i can participate on Digg for about 30 minutes in a day and still maintain my profile’s strength; WITHOUT manipulating the algorithm. you have to zero in solely on the activities that will help you maintain your profile which helps you build your own site – i.e. blog, website, network, etc.
Haha, Jesus Glen…I’ve been completely overhauling my strategy in terms of my blog over the last week and one of the things I was thinking about was Interviews on a topic, thinking I could get an expert here or there to speak on certain issues. Then I log into my email this morning and see you have 9 experts, as well as yourself talking about something.
I suppose there’s a valuable “exceeding value” lesson in there – take any idea I have and multiple it by ten to get the proper scale
Thanks for that.
Wow, Facebook and Twitter are really that powerful? My question is, what types of businesses does social media really work? I understand big corporations using the technology for inexpensive marketing and customer service. I also see it working well for hobbies or passions, but what about simple local businesses like carpet cleaners, restaurants, retail shops etc. Is it even worth pursuing?
hi Joe,
firstly, success on social platforms typically expands your search engine exposure; for instance, if you make the front page of Digg, dozens of bloggers and webmaster will link to your site and help you rank for keywords you have your web pages; you could use that type of link equity to rank for all types of local keywords – e.g. “new york widgets, los angeles whatchimacallits.”
secondly, now geolocation is a huge play on social networks; on twitter you could find people based on their location. so your queries could be “widget near:11414 within:15mi” and you will find in your area who are tweeting about your product; then you communicate with those people using the features on the social platform.
Not even half way through and all I can say is “wow!!” great post and I love the guest contributor’s take on things – to think I interviewed Neil a few days ago and didn’t ask him anything about SM strategies! Kicking myself now!
This is interesting. From a Blogging perspective, these social media sites can provide a good supporting strucutre to your site…..that much is obvious. It’s when you move away from the “Blog’ concept that it gets challenging. Setting up a Facebook page to promote your white teethening affiliate site (no, I don’t promote it) might not be wisest way to spend your time. But leveraging these sites for traffic is still do-able……you just need a twist and different angle.
Thanks for thorough explanation of this social media power Glen!
As Taryn, I’m glad to see that forums are a part of this list… These are often forgotten in the social media world, but I think it’s a big mistake to underestimate them.
P.S. Thanks for wrapping up Cloud Living! I’m one of your satisfied customer. I’ll try to dispense your knowledge to frenchies like me…
Definitely a big mistake to underestimate them. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard “forums are dying”. Well, some are yes and if you’re starting new forums it can be hard to get started but, the popular forums are still very popular and active and a great place to build relationships up with others.
I never cease to be amazed by the depth and reach of the information and resources you provide here, Glen. Thanks again for an awesome post.
Hey Glen,
Great post. The tip about making a welcome page on your facebook fanpage is great. I checked out yours and it looks great!
Just one thing. Facebook changed the button: Become a Fan to Like. So your text is not correct anymore there.
Thanks for a great article!
Very insightful post, thanks. It’s good to collate a range of experts views and tips all in one post. Social media, for me, has been a late start & has been a fairly slow learning curve but this post really helps point out important aspects of social media that I can take to my own strategy.
This is such a great article thanks Glen.
Hey Glen and contributors,
I’m like Andrew a few replies back, “not just a great article but the greatest!.” I feel like I came in and stole something that I should have paid for. A lot of informative stuff here. Having so many great contributors’ various input not only gives me a perspective on which area’s I need to be leveraging more instead of jumping around, but ways to make it work for me. Of course I liked the FB and StumbleUpon info and feel like I absorbed some blog strategies as well as twitter. Thanks for helping.
[...] Tips on social media strategy from 10 experts [...]
Hey Glen, this is a great post with some great strategies. I think that it is definitely more difficult for defining a clear strategy when it comes to participating in social media. However, there are great sites like SalesFuel that integrates with LinkedIn, so that B2B marketers and sales reps can use social selling to make warmer sales calls. You should check it out. http://tinyurl.com/399oss3 . See if you agree
Hey Glen, great post. One thing i would enjoy hearing more people discuss is how you can take a hard to make exciting industry and really work on Social. Also it is very cool to bring a panel on. This is whats missing on many blogs. I enjoy the conferences solely because of the differing opinions. Great job, like the Blog Alliance, we need to do a lot more of that, as we have a great writer. Thanks again.. Stu
This is a very great article thank you for the incite. It gave me great advice to incorporate into increasing my ability through my blog which i use for empowerment and deliberate practice initiative i try to express through social media. http://Coreybiggs.wordpress.com
I’ve been on this page for the past four hours, and I’m still not done reading it.
Thanks. This is very useful. Social Media strategies can’t be slept on. Every one of these experts dropped a jewel, and in some way, I have to implement every strategy. I think I’m going to put a spin on some of this stuff and try some new techniques as well. I’m also taking heed to Gary Vaynerchuk’s helpful suggestions.
Loved the tips. I especially enjoyed the videos by Neal. Entertaining! I’m probably going to use Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon to attract buzz.
By the way, I was surprised that Reddit wasn’t on here. After all, Reddit is now even more popular than Digg.
Christina
thanks for the kind compliments, Christina. you are absolutely right; Reddit should have probably also been included as they provide a great source of traffic. they have been among the top referrers among websites on which I have worked for years; especially to one on which I just vlogged on my site where I drive 240K pageviews to a brand new site in 4 weeks.
without writing an essay on it and turning this comment thread into the lost scrolls of St. Thomas
Reddit in a certain respect probably allows for a more organic distribution of the links you submit than Digg; however, with sufficient study of the Digg algo, you can be more consistent in driving traffic from its popular sections. without straying away focus from Reddit, read the sidebar of the category to which you will be submitting your content. categories are called ‘reddits.’ you have to ensure that what you submit is solidly appropriate for that reddit. reddits are moderated by active users of the Reddit platform; and if they see that what you submitted is not related to their category, your submission will not be admitted. then you should check whether what you submitted made the ‘new’ queue.
i will be dropping more best practices on Reddit and other communities on my vlog shortly. i’d love to have you stop by
happy holidays, Christina.
thanks again.
Neal
The problem I have using social media is TIME. Promoting your site using all of these methods is great if you have nothing else to do. And trying to outsource it can be more of a headache than its worth.
Agreed but Q: “how do you eat an elephant?”. A: One bite at a time. I am new to all this social media / networking and feel the same way but the solution is baby steps, small bites and perserverance. It’s a journey. Agreed but Q: “how do you eat an elephant?”. A: One bite at a time. I am new to all this social media / networking and feel the same way but the solution is baby steps, small bites and perserverance. It’s a journey.
Im really starting to feel a bit overwhelmed with all this social media stuff. Seriously. Ive just spent most of today updating all my sites with the Google +1 button! Aaargh! What’s next??
Thanks for the great article. You’ve shared many valid and useful points for getting involved with social media. I especially liked the mix of having several different perspectives all in one place.
You guys didn’t include linkdin. What is the best way business leaders could use this site for networking?