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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Social Media Purpose and Tactics – The Truth About Content and Engagement

Recently eMarketer released a new report that purported to cover Social Media Tactics and which work best. Though the report has a lot of valuable information, most is based on a highly misguided view of social media to begin with. In this post I am going to outline two of the points in the report and attempt to give you some straight talk about them that is intended to help you adjust strategy and be more effective.

Engagement:

Early in the report there was a statement that stood out to me as a huge red flag:

“the greatest percentage of respondents from both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies considered customer engagement to be the primary purpose of their social media marketing.”

With so many marketers seeing engagement as the primary purpose for their social media marketing, it is no wonder why the respondents answered the way they did on other segments in the report. Engagement should simply be a part of the process within social media marketing, not the goal or purpose for it. The goal or purpose should be a clearly defined objective that is different for every business, but that should include things like increased sales, revenue, customers, traffic, etc. Real results and measurable metrics that make the time-consuming activities in social media worth while.

Content Creation:

A huge misnomer in the report is the repeated theme of the content creation requirement. Yes creating content is required. Photo’s, graphics, articles, blog posts, etc are optimum drivers when focused on the interests of your audience and delivers real value to them. However, there are two issues that need need to be dissected about this segment:

1) Average Small/Medium Businesses – Content creation can be an effective tool for driving social media marketing results, but the hard facts are that most SMB’s do not have the staff, resources or budget required to constantly create fresh creative content. In fact in most cases establishing a budget for this purpose for most SMB’s would not result in anything close to a return on investment. Larger companies and bigger brands are able to leverage their previous branding, resources and huge budgets without the need for real measured results and this is highly skewed in this report.

Most Difficult Social Media Marketing Tactics

2) Content Sharing – Since the overwhelming majority of marketing professionals that responded, reported that the top tactics of “content creation” were also the most difficult to execute, this leaves many scratching their head for what to do in their social media marketing. Not once in this report was a reference to content curation, aggregation or sharing, let alone a strategy around sharing. The average business must have a content strategy that involves posting content that others have written; content that is interesting and relevant to their target audience, provides value to that audience and starts conversations.

Reports like these can be incredibly insightful for the largest brands out there, or those that work with large brands, the fact is that small and medium businesses just don’t have the resources to execute social media this way. Furthermore, many of the larger brands do social media marketing in direct contrast to how it should be done, therefore spending most of their efforts pitching their products, not responding to their audience and producing content that are more liken to commercials than content that adds value to their audience.

If you are not a large brand, don’t let this report discourage you. Use the information to establish an effective strategy of content sharing and do what level of content creation you are able to, focusing on delivering value to your audience and building real relationships. THESE are the tactics that actually get real results.

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

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Social Media Requires Some Comedy

Do yourself a favor. Take a look at your social media marketing and ask yourself a few questions…

1) Am I funny/fun?

2) Am I able to laugh and make fun of myself/your brand?

3) Do I actually do it?

4) Do I occasionally share funny/fun content?

5) Do others get a laugh from my content strategy from time to time?

Some of the most effective content in the social graph is funny. Think about the content that is most shared on Facebook. It’s funny videos and graphics that connects with the audience. It makes the day better and becomes memorable and is shared.

This blog post (and video) is a result of a back injury Sunday and over exhausted from working 24/7 for 2 straight years.  This forced me to realize that I am not invincible and put me on my back for nearly the entire day. The good news is that the following video is the ultimate result. I hope you laugh as hard as we did… ;-)  

If your social media marketing isn’t incorporating fun, funny and tasteful hilarity every week, you are missing opportunity to connect in a great way with your audience and extend your reach through the shares that result. Be a bit silly, laugh a bit and invite your target audience to laugh with, or even at you too!

Remember to keep the content audience appropriate and refrain from obscenities and other content that may be considered offensive to anyone in your target audience.

Have some fun with it!

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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Social Media – Your Time Percentage Should Equate To Result Percentage

Ask yourself a few questions:

Where are you spending your time in the social graph?

What social networks get what percentage of your time and effort?

What network do your target audience spend most of their time on?

Which social network has the highest quantity and concentration of your target audience?

If you can’t answer these questions, you’re probably not being as effective with your social media marketing as you could or should be.

When a marketer or agency that is newer to social media asks me questions like, should we be on Pinterest, or should we have a brand page on Google Plus, I know right away they have a problem. You need to know where your audience spends most of their time when on social media and more importantly which social network gets the best results for your effort and time spent.

Once you know these answers, be sure your time and effort reflects the numbers. In other words, spend time on the social networks that get you the best and most results. Spend less time on the social networks that get the least or slowest results.

You’d think this would be common sense, right? Unfortunately it isn’t. I can’t tell you how many times a social media professional or marketer tells me about one of the newer or really niche social networks they love and that they spend most of their time on. My only question to them is this. How much revenue have you driven on that social network, rather than the main networks that have the highest concentration of your target market?  Sadly, one of two things usually happens:

1) They disappear and end the conversation. (BTW – this happened yesterday with someone I know personally when discussing their blog and the traffic they drive because they write about the newest shiny things and how traffic is so important. Once I asked them about revenue, poof!) Is it really that hard to understand? If you’re spending a ton of time doing something for your business it needs to get returns. Ignorance is only bliss if you won the lottery. In business you can’t ignore the obvious.

2) They justify and make excuses. Ya, but I really like it. Well, I am here to have fun too. It’s not about making money for me. These are the other responses I hear. Really?  You’re a social media marketing consultant, agency, marketer or ninja and it’s not about making money? Please stop consulting or teaching social media to anyone else!!!

Example?

Our revenues and new Bundle Post users come as a result of the following:

50% Twitter – 40% Facebook – 10% Linkedin/G+/Etc.

We spend our time and efforts in exactly these percentages, on these platforms.

For those of you that have read my stuff for a while, you know that my only goal is to help you get real results from your social media marketing. I write only about what I do that gets results, not theory or hype about the industry, new shiny distractions, etc. Don’t take any of this personally, just use it to be better.

I leave you with a mission:

Know the numbers, where your audience is and start getting real about what you are doing and where. Putting your head in the sand isn’t going to help get you results and ROI.

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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Blogging For Social Media Marketing – My Top 12 Tips

I am frequently asked about blogging and how to use it effectively for marketing within social media. I decided to put together a list of my top ten tips that is specifically designed for the individual marketer or small to medium business.

This list is not at all for the large brand, affiliate marketer, the social media author or speaker. Those specific groups are typically about numbers, driving less than targeted traffic, ego inflation and/or putting out volume over substance. Exactly what you should NOT be doing if you are serious about being effective with your blog within social media. If you want to measure REAL results that is –  You know things like sales, revenue and new customers. But I digress…

In no particular order, here are my top ten tips for using your blog effectively within your social media marketing strategy. I have broken them up into two sections – Strategy and Execution.

Blog Strategy:

1) Write for your audience – Too often brands and marketers forget who their target audience is. Write for your target audience, not for traffic. Deliver value and relevance in your content, just like a proper content strategy within your social marketing strategy. Write content that solves their biggest problems, answers their questions and/or helps them improve.

2) Stay away from time sensitive writing – New is great and often shiny, but does it attract your target audience? Writing content about something new in your industry or an event that is happening can destroy the long-term validity of the content. It’s ok to include some time/event based posts, but try to write content that has value for your audience, that can be found via search and/or shared via your social media efforts over a long period of time – i.e. relevant, Legacy content.

3) Be concise – Remember that a blog post is NOT a magazine article. People have very short attention spans and keeping your blog posts short, to the point and without all the fluff is important. Give your readers clear points to absorb along with a title that states exactly what they can expect from your piece.

4) Have personality – Be real and approachable with your posts. Don’t be afraid to put your personality into your articles or even be a little controversial at times.

5) Write yourself – For MOST marketers or SMB’s doing your own writing is going to get the best results. Having the benefit of your voice consistently across your content is extremely helpful for your readers.

For some that lack writing skills or the time and resources necessary to blog, outsourcing the function to a professional may be required. Be sure that the professional you select to write for your blog can follow your strategy  and capture your voice (tone and personality) accurately.

Blog Execution:

6) Consistency – Just as with your regular social media marketing content posting, consistency with blog posts matters. You must have a consistent flow of relevant, valuable blog posts on your blog to build and retain an audience. Occasional posts will not be effective, so be consistent every week. I try to write two new blog posts per week.

7) Comments – Also like your social media marketing, responding to comments on your blog is important. Respond always and do it quickly after a comment is posted.

8) Use drafts – Whenever I think of a new blog post idea, I start a new posts in WordPress and save it as a draft. I add notes and bullet points for what I want to do with the post and save it. This way I always have some 30 blog posts started and only need to select one to finish whenever I need to write.

9) Stay ahead – Keep ahead with completed posts in the queue

10 SEO – When writing a blog post, you want to not only follow the strategy items we have listed above, but you also want to consider the long-term search engine optimization of your posts. Including images, tags and keywords in your posts is highly important for being found on search engines.

For the average brand and marketer, there are three main points to consider here:

a) Always include a graphic that depicts the content. This is important when readers share the content on social networks, but also for SEO. Be sure the name the image file with words contained in the title and body of your post and also complete a description that does the same.

b) Always include tags of the keywords and phrases appropriate for the post.

c) Be sure the main keywords of your post are included in the title, the body of the post as well as in tags.

11) Be realistic – Be realistic about what you can really do. Don’t set editorial calendar expectations too high for yourself so that you can’t complete them. Don’t expect that you will get 20,000 hits a day when you are just starting out. Be consistent, even if that is only one or two blog posts per week. Commit to the realistic expectation and stick to it.

12) Be Social – Without integrating your blog into an effective social media marketing strategy, it is highly unlikely you will ever get much traction with your blog. You need to have a targeted social community established that is highly engaged in order to best take advantage of a blog. Here are two things to consider:

a) When you post a new blog, share it multiple times that day in the social graph.

b) Keep a list of your blog posts and share them at lest once a week/month.

A blog is an extension of your brand, your website, your overall web presence and more importantly your social media marketing. Understanding the best way to leverage and integrate it properly across all of them will help you begin see increased results.

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

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How To Use Your Legacy Social Media Content To Get Results

Assuming that you have a content strategy that delivers a consistent stream of relevant, valuable and interesting content to your target audience that is NOT about you or what you do through curation, you may need to take a closer look at YOUR content. Your legacy social content is an important additional component to your content posting mix. I find that marketers failing to effectively use their own content is one of the biggest overlooked opportunities within social media marketing. You need to know what you have available and mix it into your streams along with your other content, past as well as new.

Simply defined, “Your Social Content” is anything found on the web about your company that you can link to and/or share in the social graph.

A Few Examples Of Your Social Content Include:

1) Your website home page.

2) All of your other pages on your website.

3) Your Facebook page.

4) Each of the specific photo’s on your Facebook fanpage.

5) Your YouTube channel.

6) Specific videos on your YouTube channel.

7) Past articles you or your brand were mentioned in.

8) Your past blog posts that are timeless and still relevant to your audience.

The Role Of “Your Social Content”:

Your community is constantly growing, with new followers and likes happening all the time. Many long-time connections may have never even seen the original content when it was new or are not aware of what you do to begin with. Therefore, making use of past, timeless content in your streams is extremely important for your overall social selling effectiveness.

Utilizing enough of your social content will help with branding, click-throughs, and more. Be careful not to over do it though. Somewhere around 20-30% should be the maximum percentage of your content in your streams. That should be made up of new and archived content about you.

Know What You Have Available To Use:

Tracking the social content you have available to you to share about your brand can be a huge challenge. We experienced this quite frequently when we were a social media agency. Couple that challenge with the time to ensure you are including it as well as simply remembering to do post legacy content and the challenge gets even bigger. Those recurring struggles are a few of the reasons that led to the development of our Bundle Post software.

A repository of your social content in a central location that can easily and quickly be inserted in with the rest of your content posts is highly important. Spreadsheets and Word documents are great, but very cumbersome to manage, especially with multiple team members as with agencies. Relying on memories to include content and tracking what you have available needs to be efficient and effective for best results.

Make content aggregation, as well as repository posting of your legacy social content a priority to see new gains in your social media marketing efforts.

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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