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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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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The Importance Of Posting Content Over Just RT’ing Content

Content is the starting point of everything within the social graph. Your social media marketing program should be centered around a strategy of content posting, sharing and creation as an integral component. As I have stated previously, “content leads to conversations”. Social media content is the match that lights the conversations that help you become effective, but just any content doesn’t work. In fact you must understand the different types and be effective with them all.

There are three basic types of posts within social media:

1) Your Content – Something you/your company wrote or created

2) Posted Content – Something you found online and post to your feeds

3) Shared Content – Retweeting and/or Sharing other people’s posts

Too often I find smaller brands and individual social media marketers that are incredible at sharing Facebook content posts or Retweeting on Twitter, but what they share is often targeted to their peers, or isn’t relevant and interesting to their intended audience. What’s worse is that upon reviewing their streams, it is difficult to find something they have posted and not just shared from someone else. This is less than effective for a few reasons:

1) What are you known for?

2) What are you doing to provide value?

We have found that having a consistent daily flow of relevant, valuable content for your intended audience is the single best thing you can do to get conversations started. Doing this on a consistent basis helps you be known for something or better yet, a few things. Your audience will get accustomed to the relevant content they can find in your streams at any given time and will not just see it when it passes through their stream, but will actually seek you out to get it.

“It’s hard to get conversations started without relevant content” #quote @fondalo

Like any relationship, on or offline, value must be at the core. Simply sharing or retweeting content to your community is lazy and ineffective. A strategy, proper resources and time must be put into sourcing relevant content for your audience, as well as creating content they will find valuable.

Before anyone thinks I am proposing to not share or retweet, think again. That too is important, but needs to be at measured levels that allow YOUR content posting and creation strategy to have its own voice.

Here are some tips for being effective with your posts:

1) Know your audience – What are they interested in?

2) Consistency is key – Everyday, all day, have relevant content in your feeds.

3) Be known for something – When your community thinks of you, your posts should have created a description of you or your brand in their mind.

Go forth and post relevant, valuable content!

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