See A Need, Fill A Need – The Simplicity Of Social Media Marketing

This weekend I was watching the movie Robots, with my four year old. If you have kids, you have no doubt seen this comedy filled movie with a great story about overcoming social status, wanting to do something great and believing in yourself. Beside the film being quite entertaining and a lot of fun, there is a great thread of business and social media wisdom throughout the movie, in the form of a quote.

“See A Need Fill A Need” is something Bigweld says that inspires the main character “Rodney” to invent new technology as well as help fellow robots that can no longer obtain spare parts.

Here is a quick trailer for the movie.

If you don’t have kids or have never seen this classic animated film, you’re probably asking yourself , so how does all this kids stuff connect to social media? What’s worse you’re may even be ready to close the post and move on, but I challenge you to stay with me on this one.

Social media marketing must have a strategy for delivering value to your audience to be effective. The strategy should be designed around the topics and interests of that audience that may have nothing to do with what your company actually does. So it is your job in social media to determine the needs of your target audience (their interests) and fill that need with content.

For example: If your target audience is stay at home mom’s and you are sharing posts about your cleaning products without also sharing content about parenting, kid friendly events and funny kid stuff, you aren’t effectively seeing the needs of your audience, nor are you filling the needs they have.

Here are some tips for identifying your target audiences social media content needs:

1) Clearly define your social media audience. 

Be very specific here. Knowing what your target audience really looks like demographically and even geographically is important. Everyone is NOT your target market.

2) Investigate the websites and social media accounts they frequent.

Knowing the brands and social media accounts that likely have communities of your target audience will provide you details about your audience very easily.

3) Observe what content topics they tend to share, comment and like the most. (usually it’s 3-5 topics)

Put yourself in your target audiences shoes. If you were them, what would drive your interests when you logged into social media everyday? Watch your customers and prospects on other social media sites and with other brands to determine the topical drivers.

4) Stay clear of the larger brands for social media marketing and content topics.

Most major brands don’t do social media correctly, and they don’t really care to. They simply leverage the billions in branding and marketing they have already done over the years into the social space as an additional channel to pitch themselves. Everyone else has to do social media properly if they intend on getting any real results.

So, properly seeing and then filling the interest needs of your social media audience is the best and proven way to increase conversations and build relationships with them. The value derived from doing this effectively is that the relationships that result will be your best opportunities to realize increased revenue and ROI through social media marketing.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Reality Check: Daily Required Social Media Marketing Activity

I am frequently seeing articles explaining how to do social media marketing in 30 minutes or an hour each day and decided it was time to deliver a reality check. Unless you are a social media “guru”, “author”, “celebrity” or #fauxpert that has never done social media marketing outside of self promotion and has a huge social following, it’s time for a reality check. Any expectation that real results, revenue and return on investment for any SMB or marketer will be achieved by following such advice is foolish thinking.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but effective social media marketing is a detailed combination of technology integration, creativity and a whole lot of activity 24/7. It’s not working when you want, getting weekends off and forgetting to check your feeds, mentions and conversations for days at a time. We call that kind of activity and dedication social networking, not social media.

That’s great if you are an enthusiast that is not using social media channels for marketing, but then again I don’t write for enthusiasts. My articles are always focused on the average brand, SMB, individual marketer and social media agencies. It’s what I know and do, not a hobby or a subject matter I have become known for and use to generate book sales, speaking gigs or ad revenue from blog traffic.

Our goal is to change the message of the industry that is dominated by the folks outlined in the above paragraph into that of real effective use of social media by people who have and actually do it. It’s one thing to consult Starbucks or most other major brands on social media because you sold a ton of books about the subject. It’s another thing to actually create and execute a strategy for the majority that make up social media marketers like small and medium brands or individual marketers and get results. Heck, my 14-year-old daughter could consult Starbucks or most other major brands on their social media marketing. They do it wrong and don’t have to do it right. They have billions in media and marketing dollars that drive their brand on and offline.

While articles that tell you that you can get results with minimal time and effort in social media are incredibly appealing to the masses, I am hear to tell you that it takes work.

*Note – Social media agencies, consultants and coaches – keep reading. There are some reality checks for you as well. :-)

In an effort to both deliver a reality check as well as a real guide of activity, following is a list of SOME daily activities that are required to get results with any social media marketing program.

1) Content Posting: Every day you need to have relevant valuable content for your audience in your stream. Content that gets them to engage, like, comment and share. Not just posts about you or what you do, but information, news and articles your audience will find relevant.

How much content? Here is a basic list of posts per day on a few of the networks you are likely working with:

Twitter – 15-20
Facebook Personal – 4-8
Facebook Page – 3-6
LinkedIn Personal – 5-10
Groups – 1-4
G+ Personal – 10-15
G+ Brand Page – 2-5

Every industry, audience and brand is different, but this will give you a sense of some minimum levels that are required.

2) Content Creation: Like it or not, you have to not only share content relevant to your audience, you also have to create your own content. Blog posts, videos, images, infographics, etc. You can’t lead in an industry where you are not contributing to its message in new ways. This is not an occasional required activity, it’s every single week.

3) YOUR Content Posting: Once you have created content, you need to post it. The good news is that the more content you have created the more content you have available to post daily. I believe content you have created and posts that are about you and what you do should make up about 20% of what you post every day.

4) Content Sharing: Part of social media marketing is sharing other people’s social posts that you and your audience may find interesting and valuable. This serves two purposes;

1. It delivers additional value to your audience beyond what you found and posted.
2. It lets others know that you appreciate what they post and wanted to pass it along.

5) Real and Real-Time Posting: These posts are above posting and sharing content and are just about being real, human and approachable. These are often just text and consist of what you are thinking, the weather, where you are and what you are doing. Don’t forget that people connect with people in social media. Don’t be a logo or a robot. Nobody can like or build a relationship with either of those.

6) Community Growth: Every day you need to be growing your community of fans, followers and friends that are your target audience. If you build it they will come doesn’t work in social media. Though doing the above 5 activities every day will help you consistently grow your community, if you are using social media for marketing, that community size needs to increase. Therefore every day you need to be searching and finding your target audience on all of the social networks and connecting with them. Don’t wait for them to find you.

7) Community Outreach: Within your community you need to continually reach out and engage. That is no different from being at a live networking event. You start conversations and get to know them. You share their content and information with others and build a relationship. This must be done daily to be effective with social media marketing.

8) Response/Engage: The opposite of outreach is responding. When someone likes, shares, comments on your posts, acknowledge them, thank them and star a conversation. If someone mentions you in social media, respond.

I have a lot to say about this section, but in order to keep it a blog post and not an article I will say that timing matters. When someone mentions you or comments, they are there, online, right now. Waiting hours or days is missed opportunity and will never see any real results.

9) Follow Backs: When someone follows you on Twitter, Circles you on Google Plus or Friends you on Facebook or Linkedin, you need determine whether you want to reciprocate or accept. I recommend that this is done every single day. We do it twice per day ourselves.

*Tip – if you’re using social media for marketing, follow, friend and connect with those that are your target audience. If you are a restaurant in Tennessee, friending or following someone in the UK doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

10) Data/Statistics: You need to know what is working and what isn’t. Paying attention to your statistics, results, analytics and data on a daily basis is required. Knowing this information enables you to adjust the what’s and when’s of what you are doing and set realistic goals and targets. Not knowing means you are not getting anywhere.

11) Planning/Strategy: Every day you need to be planning and adjusting your strategy. Using what you learn to improve results in social media marketing is no different from anything else in business. Test, measure and adjust… DAILY.

More Reality Checks for Marketers:

So if you think that real, effective social media marketing can actually be accomplished in 30 minutes or an hour per day, I invite you to think again. This is why there are so many social media agencies out there and more popping up every single day. Not too many people have the time, knowledge and ability to execute all of these thins on a daily basis. If you can’t either or are not getting results, I suggest you speak with a qualified social media professional agency as well.

*If you are paying $99/mo for “social media” from some online company, you’re being robbed. It takes far too much time, tools and activities to really do social media marketing right that results in real business.

More Reality Checks for Social Media Agencies:

If your agency is teaching social media marketing instead of doing it, before taking some unsuspecting persons money, be sure they understand what it really takes. Stop taking money from people to teach them things they will never have the time, skill or experience to execute well. Anyway you slice it, it’s stealing…

*As a consultant or agency that teaches social media, the person you teach is rarely the CEO that paid for you. Be aware that the admin, intern or junior employee you train, will soon be in love with social media marketing just like you and will be starting their own agency when their employer pulls the plug. Stop creating competitors for yourself every six months, while making pennies for doing it. Do the hard work for clients and get them real results by delivering effective social media management that has value and recurring revenue.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more required in social media marketing like strategy, targeting, social selling, conversations and more. But true to form, I am not here to condemn or be hurtful. My only goal here is to increase the effectiveness of social media marketing in general and change the message to real results, not scores, followers, likes or speakers. Go do this!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Focus On A User View Analysis Of Your Social Media Presence

Many social media marketers and even social media agencies spend a tremendous amount of time on tracking, analytics and reporting. Much of these activities give some insight into the reach and effectiveness of a social media program. However, some of that activity often ends up as “make-work” time-wasting that does not lead to actionable information of value.

One of the evaluation activities that is often overlooked is user-view analysis. User-view analysis is the viewing and evaluation of your total social media presence from the perspective of your target audience. You know what you do, the services you provide and the products you make, but does your social presence, profiles, graphics and messaging reflect that accurately to your community?

Now is where you get completely honest with yourself. Step back and pretend you are your prospective customer, then view your social media marketing from their perspective:

1) Review your feeds – What are you posting? If you were a follower or fan, would you find it interesting, fun, something you would share or comment on? Are you pitching too much? Is what you are sharing, posting and including in your various feeds relevant to the interests of your target audience?

2) Review your bio’s and profile content – If you didn’t know you or your brand at all and you looked at your twitter, facebook, fanpage or Linkedin accounts. would you understand what you do? Would it be interesting or enticing? Is the bio part human, part business or simply a cold, drab incoherent rant? If you were your target audience would YOU follow the account, like the page or accept the friend request?

*I highly suggest that unless you are a larger established brand, include YOUR or at least A name in the name field of your Twitter account.

3) Review your graphics - If you’re a solepreneur, a startup or new in social media marketing, I highly recommend that your twitter account contains YOUR picture, not just a logo. People build relationships with people, not brands and logo’s they’ve never heard of!

4) Continuity – Does the message on all of your profiles, website and blog contain the same branding, message and continuity? Once you are sure you have the proper messaging, take the time to ensure that all connection points across the social graph reflect the similar value propositions and voice.

Here are the hard facts about neglecting to walk through these steps and look at your social media presence as your target market does. What you don’t know will hurt you. Most won’t tell you how bad your profiles are or that they are not following you because of this issue or that. Nobody is going to tell you they won’t do business with you because you are poorly handling your social profiles, content and strategy…

THEY’LL JUST LEAVE!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Google Reader Shutting Down Leaving Huge Curation Gap For Marketers

Yesterday Google announced on the official Google Reader Blog that on July 1, 2013, they will retire Google Reader. Originally announced on the official Google Blog that same day, the excuse given was that usage over the years had declined and that the company is focusing its efforts on other products. As I read and researched the effects that this decision by Google has on social media content curation, I was compelled to pull a late night and write a post about it, in place of my originally scheduled blog post.

What does this mean for social media marketers that rely on Google Reader and other readers for social media content aggregation,  discovery and sharing in the social graph? It may be more of an initial inconvenience for some, as there are many other RSS readers on the market. Many other readers do use Google Reader for their syncing though and that will cause even more wide spread RSS reader issues. This change is also signaling that for social content aggregation and curation, scrolling through readers, scheduling content one by one manually or with browser plugins like Hootlet and Bufferapp, is definitely going away and frankly it must.

Efficient, reliable and effective means of content discovery, scheduling and management has to be done differently if social media marketing time spent is going to be able to realize profitable returns. Done properly, social media agencies,  marketers and brands must have enough interesting, relevant content in their streams every day and they know that. Content is where everything starts. It’s what creates conversations, develops thought leadership and influence, all of which are required for real results.

With old school content discovery and management methods going the way of the dumb cell phone, one must consider where social media content management is going. Where it has to go and what that looks like. Let me show you…

Though we rarely write about our own technology, this market changing event by Google compels us to do so this week.

Originally as an agency, we had the same issues you do. Searching, finding, editing, scheduling, hashtagging and posting enough relevant, valuable content for our clients target audience across all of the social network accounts they had. And doing that 7 days a week. Efficient? Not so much. Consistent? Near impossible. Effective? Let’s not go there. Profitable? We all know the answer to that. We knew that if we did not spend the hours every day on content management, all other social media management functions, results and metrics would fail. Something had to be done differently…

Bundle Post is the first Social Content Management system designed to solve the enormous time challenge of content management within social media. We designed it for us and had no intent on making a product. That changed quickly as the results increased on every client program, we saw huge efficiency gains and profitability climbed massively. We knew we were soon to become a social media software company.

So what is Bundle Post? The system efficiently handles 5 of the time-consuming back office functions related to social media content.

1) Aggregation and Curation – Attach Google Alert and RSS feeds where all content is ingested four times per day and saved as social media posts. You can view, edit and delete content you wish to use from every feed channel.

2) Legacy Content Management – My Social Content serves as repository folders of you and/or your clients legacy social content posts. Their website, videos, fanpage, interviews, photo’s etc. Legacy content can be merged with curated feed channel content and together be scheduled as individual posts for your newsfeeds.

3) Hashtags and Content Change – Hashtag folders for all campaigns can be created and house the keywords/phrases you want flagged for content changing in the text of all posts within Bundle Post. You designate the replacement hashtag or other text you want the system to replace. It automatically hashtags and/or changes the text of 100 social media posts in a single second.

4) Scheduling – Posting time schedules for all social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google Plus, Groups, etc can be saved in Bundle Post and merged with content from 1 and 2 above. Easily scheduling 100 posts in less than 30 minutes.

5) Follow Friday Mentions – All Follow Friday posts can be managed in Bundle Post. Each post can be customized, twitter account names added or removed as you wish. With Bundle Post Follow Friday mentions on Twitter take 45 seconds on Thursday night instead of all morning on Friday.

What Bundle Post Isn’t? We are not a social media dashboard like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or the many others. We do not do anything current dashboards do and they can’t do what we do, due to our 19 claims in a Pending Patent filed over 24 months ago.

Bundle Post is a back-office social media content management system that currently integrates with Hootsuite. Your scheduled social media content comes out of Bundle Post and uploads directly into Hootsuite.

You use Bufferapp or Hootlet to schedule content? That’s great when you come across a single article you want to share and schedule. But why would you spend hours finding, scheduling, editing and hashtagging enough content everyday for all your social profiles?

In 30 minutes our users manage 5 days of currated content, your legacy blog posts and your own marketing content. Yes, that’s right, 30 minutes. Not auto-posted content. Content YOU select and control. Nothing leaves Bundle Post to your social media accounts without you allowing it to be sent. Now you have the time to build relationships, get ROI and even handle more clients, all more effectively with better net results.

One more thing… You can share Bundle Post export files with others in your brands community and they can upload them into their Hootsuite, making your scheduled content reach even bigger. Have we got you thinking yet?

Welcome to Bundle Post. Want a live demo? Hit the website and click to contact us or just message me @fondalo or us @BundlePost on Twitter and let’s change the effectiveness and efficiency of your social media marketing NOW!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Social Media Is NOT About Engagement

The definition of Engagement in social media marketing is sometimes a bit cloudy. I would describe social media engagement as listening, responding and communicating with your social community. It is being real, ever present and responsive to conversations taking place within your social presence. Engaging involves responding to activities that happen to you, like:

1) comments

2) mentions

3) shares

4) likes

Engagement also involves the proactive activities that solicit responses from others, like:

1) Posting relevant, interesting content

2) Liking other peoples content

3) Sharing or Retweeting other peoples content

I hear so frequently that social media is about Engaging, or Engagement. I also hear the phrase, content is king. Is it really? Is that what social media marketing is about? I disagree that social media is about content, engagement or even relationships. Effective social media marketing is not ABOUT those things, it simply USES those things to accomplish something. They are merely the methods to achieve a result.

“Content isn’t king, results are! #quote @fondalo” Social Media is about Results! Whether you are a big brand, entrepreneur or social media agency, using social media for marketing, you should be here for a specific reason or reasons. One of those reasons, and hopefully the main one, is to acheive some kind of return on the significant investment of time, money and resources that you are spending in the space.

Someone recently posted a comment in response to an article I shared. They said, “Remember… it’s not the amount of likes, but the engagement that makes a page worthwhile.”

My response was, I disagree. It’s BOTH. You can have all the awesome engagement in the world, but without a large enough, targeted community, you will never get an ROI. After all it is about results, not engagement that is important.

I challenge you to look at content, engagement and other components of your social media management in the proper perspective. I challenge you to spend less time on the methods of social media and focus more on achieving real revenue and results. I challenge you to shift your daily activity from doing social media to being effective, which is measured by real results.

Yes, you need to engage and you must always respond and build relationships. Just be sure you are engaging and building the relationships that have a chance to achieve results. These things combined is what I call social selling.

“When you EARN the relationship, you can ask for the sale. #socialselling #quote @fondalo”

For more on this topic, check out an interview   
I did recently with @Tweet4ok - Click Here

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Pro Users Now Double Social Media Content Schedule Ability

Today Bundle Post would like to announce a new upgrade to Pro user accounts. Previous to this upgrade, Free, Expanded and Pro users of Bundle Post had an export maximum of 50 posts out of the system for bulk uploading into Hootsuite. Today marks the second of several upgrades to the system that expands the functionality and capability for our users.

Today’s upgrade is already functional. Existing and new Pro users are now able to export up to 100 scheduled and hashtagged social media posts and bring them into Hootsuite using the “Bulk Message Upload” function available to upgraded Hootsuite users. This expanded functionality for Pro users gives them more control over posting frequency and longevity of relevant content in their streams and even more time to focus on engagement, relationship building and ROI. In addition to today’s upgrade, it’s important to note that Pro users also get free one-on-one set up and training, as well as unlimited lifetime support.

Bundle Post is the first social content management system for social media marketers.  The powerful system automates the time-consuming process of searching, finding, organizing, managing and scheduling your social media content in a powerful social content management system.  Content aggregation, repository, editing and scheduling functions reduce the back office social media content management time required for effective social media marketing, freeing up time to focus on ROI.

Agencies: Our social media agency Pro users will see incredible effectiveness and efficiency value add to what they are already doing with the tool. The ability to increase content volumes at appropriate levels without spending any additional time is a no brainer.

Marketers: Anyone using social media marketing that is struggling to ensure they have enough relevant, valuable content in their streams, should really take a look at Bundle Post.

Integrated with Hootsuite’s Bulk Message Upload function, Bundle Post supports all major social network platforms. The system has built-in hashtagging, Follow Friday and scheduling functions that make managing content posts extremely efficient, effective and profitable.

What Bundle Post is NOT:  Bundle Post is not a replacement for engagement, single posting or day to day management of social media accounts.  It does not replace services like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.  It simply makes all the other required back office functions of social media content more efficient and effective.

We are excited about this additional system upgrade and the many more that are soon to follow. If you have questions about Bundle Post, feel free to connect with us. We are happy to get you a demo and answer any questions you may have.

For a full-length recorded webinar, click here.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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How Social Media Actions Within Relationships Build Trust

There seems to be a new round of social scoring and now “trust” based sites that purport to either determine a persons social influence or business trustworthiness. As if we did not have enough of these sites already, it seems every geek that can code is trying to jump into social media software to try to get a piece of the pie in this ever-growing industry.

Seeming to coincide with this new rush of social media influence and trust score platforms are some bloggers telling people to shut up about them. Not to stop talking about them because they are tired of it, but telling people like me that are highly skeptical of such services ability to accurately measure social and e-commerce influence and trust into a score to shut up. Really?

“Actions Within Relationships Build Trust, not easily manipulated false scores.” #quote @fondalo

• Actions that result in trust with your online community are what is important.
• Real results, actions and revenue are the measurement of trust and value you deliver to your community.
• Relationships that go beyond conversations with your peers is what truly measures your successful social media marketing.
• The right social relationships that are earned through proper actions will result in something well beyond an inaccurate score, something that imparts monetary value to both you AND your community.

I was approached a couple of times recently regarding a newer social scoring site. One conversation went something like “I think u would want to because #TrustCloud is like your online credit score. They evaluate profiles & give u a score.” To which I replied, ”No algorithm can do that. A credit score is based on your payment history. These social scores can easily be manipulated.”

So let me be very clear. I will not shut up about easily manipulated social media influence scoring sites like Klout, Kred and the like. I will continue to preach real results and help guide my audience to things that will help them achieve those results in their social media marketing efforts. I will continue to battle against all efforts by those people in this industry that have high scores, but no real results to show for it.

Dare I say that ROI matters? You need a return on your investment of time and resources from your social media management that goes beyond your ego and the perception others have of you because of your score!

If your social media marketing success story is about your book, seminars and speaking revenue covering the social media industry, that does not qualify you to preach the validity of scores to a restaurant, entrepreneur or brand. Having done social media marketing successfully for one does. I can and have “gamed” these scoring platforms to get my score to increase. Doing so has always resulted in a reduction in “real” effectiveness and results.

Focus on your actions within your social relationships, so your social media marketing achieves a clearly defined goal, not a high Klout score that doesn’t buy groceries!

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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That’s Not YOUR Content Strategy, It’s Someone Else’s

Before I dig fairly deep into this subject, I want to be very clear about a couple of things:

1) There are no steadfast rules about social media marketing, with the exception of: DO NOT spam.

2) My intent is to guide my readers toward improved effectiveness and real net results based on my results, not a theory that generates blog traffic to sell my book about something I have never really done.

3) I largely write for a specific audience that consists of the social media marketer, the small to medium brand or the social media agency, not particularly for the enthusiast. Please recognize that this post is directly focusing on those using social media for marketing.

Literally hundreds of times per day, I view the feeds, walls and pages of people I am connected with. I am looking to RT (Retweet), share and otherwise promote them. The unfortunate truth is that a large percentage of the time even with several scrolls of the page, I am unable to find anything they have posted themselves. I don’t mean blog posts they have written, but content that THEY find and post. No blog post of their own, no news, articles or relevant information that is valuable and deserving of a share. Just an incredible amount of RT’s of other people’s social media content posts.

Let me say something very clearly here; If you largely RT and Share other people’s social media posts and/or Triberr content from others to fill your feeds with content, you are deploying THOSE people’s content strategy, not your own.

A few things I suggest:

1) Carefully select the posts you Share/RT from others.

Ensure there is a reason for the share that further’s YOUR content strategy.

2) Make RT’s and Shares around 10-20% max of the posts in your feed. 

If you are going to be effective with the social media content you post, you need to have a strategy and that strategy needs to be yours. Limit the RT’s and Shares in your feed and ramp up the content you find yourself that is inline with the topics that drive your audience.

3) You must have a content strategy.

If you don’t know what a social media strategy is, are struggling with it or need to make changes to your existing strategy, here is a simple Infographic that may help. Coupled with a social content strategy, you need to have an effective way to aggregate social content and manage, schedule and post that content.

Related Example:

I used to be in several “tribes” on Triberr with many big name social media people who had huge audiences. After sometime, I left those 10+ tribes with a 20+ million reach down to only 6 with around a 3.9 million reach. The interesting thing I have found is that our blog traffic has maintained the same traffic levels, our software user acquisition rates have steadily increased, and I spend WAY less time in Triberr, even though we are in smaller tribes with a smaller reach.

The right content is very important and where you spend your time obtaining content for your feeds is also. Many of the people who have large followings are not as influencial as you might think. In fact, my experience tells me that many of those described above that share your posts have followers that don’t even consider stuff they share as important or relevant, hence the same results with a much smaller tribe reach.

Don’t misunderstand, I am not a Triberr hater. I think it is excellent when used in conjunction with a clearly defined strategy.

The moral of the story here is that you must have your OWN content strategy that includes posting content YOU find, content YOU create, as well as shares and RT’s. These things work together to deliver value to your community and establish credibility and thought leadership in your space. Doing so will result in increased, meaningful conversations, deeper relationships and ultimately a return on investment for your social media marketing efforts.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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How To Determine Topics For Your Social Media Content Strategy

Content is not the king of social media marketing, but it certainly is the starting point that drives conversations, action and results. Having and executing an effective social media content strategy is the difference between your brand being in social media and getting results in social media.

I have discovered that there are typically three to five main topics of interest that social network users are most attracted to. Those topics are typically different for everyone, so knowing what they are for your specific market is tremendously important.

I have also found that there are three basic steps that can help you determine the topics your social audience is most interested in.  Follow these steps and combine it with an appropriate volume of posted, curated, shared and your created content to get the best results.

Three steps to determine topics for your social media content strategy:

1) Know Your Audience – Knowing your audience is the most important step in the content strategy process. You need to clearly define who you are trying to reach, very specifically. Define them demographically (statistical characteristics), geographically (location or locations) and psychograhically (personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles).

*Don’t forget things like gender, age, income levels, etc.

2) Research - Once you have defined your clear target audience and know a few specifics about who they are, do your research. Here are some things to consider:

• Current Customers – Ask your current customers this question… When you are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc., what content topics interest you the most?
• Competition – Investigate your competitors pages and social accounts. What topics that they post about get the most comments, likes, shares and conversations. Be sure the followers of those accounts are your target prospects also, or the information you obtain will lead you on a wild goose chase with your own strategy. Many brands social media marketing and content strategies are often focused on their peers, not their prospects. Don’t make the same mistake!
• Search Engines – Use your favorite search engine to find statistics and information about your target audience. The internet has a ton of information, government and private studies, as well as news reports that will easily point you to topics your audience favors.

3) Test/Measure – After you have narrowed potential topics down to 5-10, start sharing news, blog posts and other content surrounding these topics to your streams. Aggregate content around then topics and post them in your newsfeeds consistently everyday. Measure the engagement, clicks, likes and comment rates around the topics. This will narrow you down to the top three to five that your audience most responds to.

Once you have determined your target markets three to five driving topics, you will want to slowly and steadily increase the volume of posts you are doing across the social networks you are focusing on. If you have properly identified the right topics of content to share, this will rapidly increase the amount of conversations, clicks and relationships you have in your community and more importantly get you on a path to improved results.

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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Social Media Content And The Social Selling Process [INFOGRAPHIC]

Content is so incredibly important in social media marketing. Many marketers and sad to say social media agencies don’t realize the true impact it has on getting to the all important return on investment results that are often missed. Social media content is a crucial part of the “social selling” process as well, so I decided to put together a little infographic on a process we use to show how content starts everything!

Of course every business and industry is different and some of the steps and details will need to be adjusted for your specific brand. The important thing to note is that content drives the social selling process. Content is what starts conversations with your target audience.

There are few important steps I want to point out:

1) Content – Where it all starts. You need to know the topics your audience are interested in, then find and post articles, news and information that is valuable to them. You need to have enough of that content posted throughout the entire day, so that whenever your audience is online, one of your posts is seen.

*the quantity of posts per day varies from social network to social network. For example you would post much more frequently on Twitter than your personal Facebook page. You would post much less frequently to your company Facebook page than your personal Facebook page. Then of course there is LinkedIn, Google Plus etc…

2) Conversations – These are what build relationships. No matter whether you are a BtoB (Business to Business) service company, or a local restaurant, people tend to do business with people they feel they know and like. Since conversations build relationships, this is key to the social selling process. The content you are sharing should be so relevant, interesting and valuable to your audience that they like, comment and/or share it. That opens the door to a thank you and a personal or business question or conversation.

*be sure to focus the bulk of your conversations with those that are prospects for your product and service. Spending time in conversations with a dad in Ohio, when you are a local beauty shop in Texas doesn’t further your sales efforts. That doesn’t mean ignore those that are not prospects, just use common sense and your time wisely.

3) Explain – When a follower asks about you or what you do, you are now in selling mode. This looks very different from one business type to another. Give a short answer and always include a link to your brief video, marketing piece or webpage that you have previously designed for this specific purpose.

Be sure to only do this with someone you know is a prospect for your product/service.

*be prepared with posts that are already written to cover the various questions you might get and edit them specifically for the person you are speaking to at that moment.

4) Next Step – Do you know ahead of time what the next step is or should be in the social selling process? If you are a restaurant, do you have a special to hand off to someone to get them to come in? Does your BtoB service company have a demo procedure you can immediately plug into with the person? Do you schedule time on your calendar for soft invites for “Let’s talk” or “we should talk” options right at that moment?

Know exactly what your options are and what works, then drive down the appropriate path with each relationship as the conversation lends itself.

5) Ongoing – Whether or not the person/company becomes a customer after going through the social selling process, you will always want to go back to monitor and engage. If you have established a relationship and know they are a prospect for you, monitor their activity for opportunities to share their content and/or engage in additional conversation. This goes for those that become customers and those that do not. I can’t stress this enough.

As you review the social selling process inforgraphic and the details I have outlined here, you should be asking yourself a few questions.

• Is the content we are sharing interesting to our audience?
• Are we getting frequent comments, likes and shares from our community every day, all day?
• Is the engagement we are getting from prospects for our product or service?
• Do we know which followers/fans in our community are our prospective customers?

If the answer is no to any of these four questions, your content strategy, topics, frequency and targeting is most likely off and needs considerable adjustment. Additionally, appropriate social CRM solutions should be immediately employed to enable you to better focus time and efforts on the right conversations with the right people.

P.S. – Don’t SPAM!  That is all… :-)

By Robert Caruso
@fondalo
http://fondalo.com
Founder/CEO – Bundle Post

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