Successful Blog

Here is a good place for a call to action.

Search Results for: using social media

Nonprofits and Social Media: Which Sites Work Best for NPOs (and Why the Answer Isn’t All of Them)

by

Social media is a must for nonprofit organizations (NPOs).

NPOs have to get in the social media game if they want to stay relevant and grow their donor base with the up and coming (of age) donors. What I haven’t addressed is why NPOs shouldn’t use ALL social media networks unless they have a very large staff to manage them. So today we take a look at which social media networks are best for NPOs and why the answer isn’t all of them.

The needs and target audience of a NPO will determine which social media network is best for them. The answer will be different for everyone. Sometimes a presence on just one site will work, while others may need to reach out via multiple networks. The important things to consider when making these decisions are 

  • Do you have a staff person that has enough time to manage multiple sites?
  • Which social network site offers you the services/features you need most
  • Where is your target audience flocking?

First things first, do you have a staff person who can manage multiple sites? The quick answer is typically no, but managing multiple sites doesn’t have to be a full-time job. Most social networking sites offer ways to link to each other so that when you update a status on one, it automatically posts to another. 

While I truly believe that any NPO can handle two or three social media outlets, I also believe there is such a thing as too many. Trying to be everywhere will dilute the time and energy you spend everywhere. So make sure you look at the time available for site management and choose wisely.

Once you’ve decided how much time you have to manage your social networking, how do you decide which sites fit your needs the best? The first place to start is with you and your organization. Determine what it is you really want to do online and then find all the sites that meet those criteria. Is starting a blog on your growth plan for the year? Do you want to post short, to-the-point updates throughout the day? Will you use social media to host chats or conferences for your donors or followers? Figure out what you need and want and go from there.

With your needs determined, the next step is hands-on experience. Get on the sites and see how easy they are to use and if their features are what you thought they were. Many sites offer similar features and it may be a tough choice.

With all of that homework and choices to make, the third thing to consider is the most important – know where your audience is and go there. If your target audience is into brief updates on Twitter then writing even the best blog won’t help you. There’s a good chance that some of your high-profile donor prospects are using LinkedIn and don’t have the slightest idea what Pinterest is. Know your audience.

Next, make sure you have a strategy. In other words, you know how to organize and consolidate everything you are doing on social media. Tools like Hootsuite and Linktree can help. Here’s a great guide on how to make a Linktree.

Having a presence on social media sites is a definite must for NPOs. Spreading yourself too thin with a presence on sites that don’t meet your needs is not. Do your homework and figure out what works best for you and then go for it!

Image source

10 Social Media Reporting Apps You Can’t Live Another Day Without

by

Do you have a dedicated social media reporting app? If the answer is no, I have only one question for you: how are you getting through the day?!

Social media campaigns are no longer just a matter of posting links and offering news of specials. You need to really stand out, and that takes time, energy, and a ton of data. Not only for businesses, but just for blogs and personal brands as well. Without the proper information at your disposal, you don’t have a chance.

Social media platforms offer native analytics, which can be consolidated if you have a good link in bio tool but if you need to go deeper, these are the ten social media tracking and reporting apps you can’t afford to go another day without using.

SumAll

This isn’t just a social media dashboard, it is also an ecommerce monitoring tool. So if you want something more well rounded than analytics, it can be a great option for your business. it is all based around leads and conversions, unlike many other platforms that are purely about social growth.

The two pronged approach makes it an effective tool for using social media in the way it is best utilized: as a way to build a customer base, not just your clout online.

Agorapulse

Just need a simple (but good) social media manager? Agorapulse is compatible with three platforms: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Which are going to be the three primary social networks for most businesses anyway, given their ever growing list of features aimed at companies.

You can get detailed reports, manage all messages from a single dashboard, and launch both contests and promotions customized to fit your needs. After the free trial pricing starts at $24 a month, with plans up to $199. But they also have three free tools: Facebook barometer, contest manager, and a Facebook Marketing University course.

Sprout Social

One of the bigger names in social media analytics, Sprout Social is a complete management software that can be compared to other giants like Hootsuite. Used by many major brands, such as Dove and UPS, it covers all your social bases from planning, to scheduling, to posting, to analyzing.

They have a smart inbox, live monitoring, tracking,  social CRM, analytics, team collaboration, and other features you would expect from such a large scale dashboard. Pricing can be a bit steep, starting at $59 a month. But if you are running a branding campaign, it is worth it.

Cyfe

This is probably the most impressive tool to come out in a long time. Cyfe is a full business monitoring platform that aims to handle literally every possible avenue of your online engagement and tasks from a single service.

Cyfe can help you with social media, analytics, email marketing, sales, customer support, and infrastructure.

But what is more incredible is the price. The basic features are free, but you will want Premium. For $19 per month (or $14 if you pay annually), you get unlimited everything, and access to all of the monitoring software for what was listed above.

Social Report

Just want social tracking? Social Report is a great metrics tool that shows all of your social accounts in cross-platform reports that show you progress on all of your projects.

They also have team collaboration and backup tools, so you and your social team can track progress over time and make decisions accordingly. All of their plans also have wider web analytics, which can be helpful in giving you a fuller picture.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a mixed bag. On one hand, there is no denying it has become a powerhouse in analytics and social management. But it is also one of the more expensive, and the credit system it uses is annoying.

For example, you get some very basic reports as part of Pro, but others have to be purchased with credits that can only be bought in bulk, and so cost hundreds to replenish. Not really an option for small operations. The good thing about it is the many features it provides. Their tools are very in depth, so much so that they have dozens of webinars exploring what can be done on their platform.

Simply Measured

Simply Measured is usually mentioned on lists less for their premium features, and more for their free tools. They have a long list of them, and are also one of the few platforms that offers monitoring capabilities for Google Plus and Vine.

In fact, you can incorporate quite a lot of services in with their free tools, and end up with a great system without spending a penny. Which is good, because their premium tools start at $500 per month. They are a full social analytics and solutions company and tend to work with larger businesses as a result. If you can afford them, they are worth it. If not, their free tools are excellent.

Raven

Raven is the marketer’s ultimate tool. While it has plenty of analytics features, scheduling and more, it is much more focused on creating extensive and beautiful reports that show clients and bosses how things are progressing.

It is a social analytics tool made to make you, the marketer, look good. So while it is practice, it is also a bit of a job-justifier.

Tailwind

Pinterest has been pretty stingy on sharing their API. They don’t want a lot of competition for their analytics and marketing tools, which are frankly not good enough to stand on their own, yet.

Tailwind is the last standing Pinterest monitoring and marketing tool, and luckily it is a good one. It can also be integrated with Hootsuite using the third party app selection, so you can monitor it from there.

Keyhole

Most people who use Keyhole know it for its real time hashtag tracking. But it also has historical data, influencer identification, and a few other features that make it a great platform for Twitter campaigns.

They have short term campaigns available, which make it a unique monitoring tool, and attractive for special events like conventions that don’t need year round campaign management.

Have a tool that belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments!

Image source

Effective Social Media Promotion for Fiction Writers

by

fiction-book-marketOnce you’ve taken the time to sketch characters and a plot, weave a story around it all, and come out the other side with a completed masterpiece in hand, you may feel like your job is done, leaving you to take a well-deserved break from the pressures of writing fiction in favor of a vacation.

Unfortunately, if you plan to self-publish your work, you’ve got one major task ahead of you before you do: marketing your work to the world at large.

Luckily for you, the sheer power of social media makes it possible for even those writers entirely new to the idea of marketing to reach millions of people – you just need to know what you’re doing. To that end, check out these five tips for effective social media promotion for fiction writers:

1. Make Full, Informative, and Interesting Profiles

When you make the leap from fantasy writer to social media marketer, you’ll need to bring the same thoroughness that makes you an effective creative writer with you, allowing you to create the kind of social profiles that people are intrigued by and encouraging them to stay and explore you and your work further.

To achieve the desired result, make a point to weave hard facts with the same imagination that allows you to write fiction, ending up with an exciting profile that gives visitors the information that they need to understand you and your craft, even while you entice them with the potential enjoyment of your stories.

Use link in bio tools to create an effective digital business card and turn your followers into buyers and subscribers.

2. Let Your Story Do the Talking

Painting yourself as a real human being with worthwhile art to share is one thing, but, as a fiction writer, you know what readers really want, and that’s a story that encourages them to enjoy late page-turning nights. With that in mind, don’t underestimate the power of your stories, including settings, characters, and plots, to win over visitors and turn them into new fans and followers.

No matter what platforms you tackle, utilize the soapbox you’ve been given to give visitors a strong taste of what your work has to offer them, outlining highlights of your work, discussing your creative process, and dropping just enough tantalizing hints to keep them coming back for more.

Forbes lists some benefits of using story telling for marketing.

3. Use Your Imagination

If you’re lucky enough to have the kind of mind that can come up with intricately detailed lands, mythical beasts, and intriguing storylines, then you’re lucky enough to have the kind of imagination that can take you outside of the realm of the obvious when it comes to social media marketing. Besides making you instantly savvy where advertising is concerned, that imagination will also lead you to the types of social media tools that you may not otherwise think to utilize.

For example, Viral Content Buzz, a tool that brings social media users together in order to provide an extra push to their content, is a very useful tool that you may not come across if you’re not creative with your web searching.

In order to take advantage of each and every aspect of the social web so that you can effectively promote your work, be sure to let your imagination play a role in even the most mindless of tasks; the results are sure to surprise you! Mind these social media marketing rules by @PakWired

4. Engage Your Fans and Followers

With useful, intriguing profiles and pages setup, and tools at the ready that promise to help you to be the most efficient social marketer possible, it’s now time to get down to the nitty gritty of social media: engaging your new fans and followers.

Make a point to treat each and every one of them as well as you would a beloved character.

Make sure to create a separate site for your book. It’s much easier to market a book that has a dedicated online presence. Unitedseo.ae (a company providing SEO services) has a cool guide on how to use content marketing to reinforce your digital marketing efforts.

5. Keep the Story Flowing

Even with all of that work done and in place, your job doesn’t end here – in fact, the fun is just beginning. With strong profiles established and new fans and followers beginning to find their way to you, the true social aspect of social media is just beginning to show itself, giving you the opportunity to connect with your readers, both existing and future, on a meaningful level.

Besides helping you to sell more copies of your work today, staying on the ball and continuing to spend time engaging your social fans every day will help you to build a platform to carry you into the future, keeping you covered when it comes to sequels, new projects, and everything else that you put your hand to in the days to come.

Image source: Pixabay

6 Tips for Preventing Social Media Burnout

by

Without sounding terribly over-dramatic, social media burnout is a real thing – and something we should be watching out for.

Whether you’re using social media for work or for pleasure: it’s likely that it takes up a hefty chunk of your day. There is a limit to how much information we can process – and by flooding our brains with photos of our friends’ dinners, lists of celebrities that look like cats, advice to get us thinner doing ‘this one thing’…

It can get exhausting.

Literally. We can get cognitively overloaded from too much information, resulting in decision fatigue – which in turn, can have dramatic impact on our willpower.

So is Facebook driving you to eat that pack of cookies? May be… either way, many of us could benefit from taking a step back from our social media routine before burnout sets in.

Here are six tips for preventing social media burnout:

1) Niche down

If you can niche down with your target market, you can do the same with your social media followers. If there is one platform that is more popular with your ideal audience – go there, and take a breather from the others.

This ‘pick one’ strategy can be tough at first (good old FOMO) but it’s amazing what happens if you switch your focus to only one platform.

It doesn’t mean you have to stick to that one platform forever either – it might be a week or a month – and if things aren’t working, you can always switch your focus.

2) Consider your likes

No – not thumbs up likes. What do you – for real – like? If you’re a highly visual type, stick with Pinterest and Instagram.

If you enjoy writing, get behind Facebook and Linkedin. If you prefer quick, snackable bites of content – Twitter’s your platform. If you like being in front of the camera – get on Periscope.

3) Set SMART goals

You likely have come across the ‘SMART’ goal acronym before – a checklist to make sure your goals are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely.

When applied to social media, you can set a goal (such as X number of followers by X date) and have something to work towards. When this is your only focus, you can stop stressing about all the other distractions. A solid social media marketing service can help you set up your goals and monitoring.

4) Schedule on/off time

It’s easy to say ‘I’ll take a break’ but how many times do we end up foregoing that break for just another 10 minutes of scrolling through our feed?

By having scheduled time to be online, you are more likely to make the most out of your session. If you’re working towards your SMART goal, this will be a huge benefit.

There are lots of apps that can help you stick to your schedule. I love Self Control (Mac OS X) for it’s simplicity, and Rescue Time is another great way to monitor your time spent online. There are a few great WordPress plugins for your business to get more effecient.

5) Automate

If you aren’t already using a scheduling app to automate your posts – get on it! Whether it’s Buffer, Hootsuite, Edgar – it’s a great way to get the bulk of the content you want to share sorted in one go.

It prevents the infamous rabbit-hole effect. You know: we go on social media to share one thing and then… 45 minutes have passed and our eyes have glazed over.

Taking an hour or two out to schedule a week’s worth of content also allows you to specify the best time to reach your audience are online.

6) Outsource

Finally, if you’re ready to take a break altogether from your social accounts, consider hiring someone to help you out. I wouldn’t recommend that for all of your posts – your audience are still going to want to hear your voice – and that isn’t easy for a freelancer to replicate!

But for scheduling shared posts and researching content, a freelancer from Upwork or Fiverr is a great investment.

Conclusion

If social media is feeling like a chore, or you’re not convinced your time is being spent well perusing your feeds; it could be worth taking a break. If you put into practice these tips, it should be an easy transition. Happy social media holiday!

Image source: Pixabay

How Businesses Use Social Media Marketing

by

Many businesses hear about the advantages of social media in terms of marketing their products or services, but some forget to look at other major benefits of social media beyond finding leads or making a sale.

Here are eight ways that businesses can use social media to learn more about themselves and their industry as well as get more involved with their clients and communities interested in what they have to offer.

1. Monitor Conversation About Themselves

There are many free ways to monitor what people are saying about your company through social media, including the following:

Google Alerts

Google Alerts will send you a daily digest email anytime your search terms come up in blogs, news, or other websites.

Social Mention

Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc. You can have your mentions emailed to you daily.

Twitter Search

If you want to know real time what people are saying, you can setup a Twitter search in HootSuite, Tweetdeck, or just keep a RSS feed in your feed reader using Twitter search results. Include searches for your company, business owner, or unique product name.

Further reading: Set Up an Online Reputation Management Strategy That Wins You More Sales

A solid social media service could help you get the most of reputation management efforts.

2. Keep Up to Date on Their Industry

Along with keeping up with what is being said about your brand, as anyone with a business administration degree would tell you, you should also keep up to date on current events and news that affects your industry as a whole.

While there have been good company reactions to industry issues, such as pet food brands that assured their customers that their food was tested and 100% safe during the recalls and Toyota continuing to address their recalls assuring customers they are working to resolve the problems, I have seen some other fails where there was obviously no attention by the companies given to current events such as:

  • Auto warranty companies continuing their usual advertising while stories of auto warranty scams were on the rise.
  • A hotel chain in Hawaii sending out “last minute deals” about an hour before the tsunami was supposed to hit the islands.

If you’re keeping up with how the public feels about your industry, you can reformulate your next announcements and advertising to boost the confidence in your company even in the midst of a negative wave. Facebook advertising is particularly effective for that.

In the above examples:

  • The auto warranty companies could add facts to their advertisements which would prove their authenticity above the scammers so people could trust them.
  • The hotel chain could have simply sent out updates on the conditions and reassure the public once the threat was over that it was safe enough to take advantage of their special rates.

3. Give Great Customer Service

One great way to use social media is for customer service. For example, if you have a Facebook Page setup, your customers might ask specific product questions.

Answering them right on the page not only gives them the info they want right away, but shows other fans / potential clients that you are a readily available to help, as well as provide an answer to a question that other clients might want to ask.

You can also encourage phone calls from your social media channels and set up your small business phone service to turn all those calls into the leads!

4. Provide Emergency Updates

Lately, the way to find out if something is not working is to make a quick search on Twitter. The last time I couldn’t get into my Gmail, I went straight over to Twitter to see if others were having the same problem or if it was just me – it was the former, so I knew there wasn’t an account issue.

Customer service is never more important than during times of crisis.

Since many people now turn to Twitter to voice their complaints and concerns, those that respond through the same media show both their followers and others who are watching the events unfold that they are interested in helping their followers quickly. It helps add a positive light to a bad situation.

5. Gain Customer Feedback and Opinion

Social media can be a great research tool. If your company has unveiled a new product or service, maybe your customers will be talking about what they think about it in real time.

I’m sure that Coca-Cola monitors any comments on their latest drinks to see if people are enjoying it or hating it, which affects whether they will continue to produce a specific flavor or try out a new one. You can also query your followers to ask them their opinion on a future product to get their insight before it even goes into development so you can create something that you know others will be interested in.

It is also a good idea to create polls on Facebook regularly to gain insight into your audience.

6. Move Positive Information to the Top

Reputation management via social media can be a great way to boost positive information about your business to the top of search results in an attempt to get negative results off of the list.

So if your company had a negative review placed on sites such as Rip Off Report or individual blogs, the best way to counter it is to have your company website, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social profiles ranking higher than that bad entry. It only takes ten strong, positive items to bump that bad one off of the first page.

7. Drive Traffic to Their Website

Social media can certainly help boost the traffic going to your website in a variety of ways. If you have a regularly updated corporate blog, you can post your blog articles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmarking sites, which should help drive visitors to your post and then onward to your main site for products and services.

Also, you can monitor people talking about the products and services you offer and respond to them with your link if it helps answer their questions. Just recently, I mentioned migraines, and someone sent me an @mention with a link to learn more about natural homeopathic migraine remedies.

Social media is perfect for launching a new site as well as promoting an established one.

You just have to make sure that what you are sending will be absolutely helpful to the person you are replying to, and not look too much like a blatant advertisement (ie. maybe send a blog post link instead of a link to a product page unless some specifically says “I want to buy ___, where can I find it.”)

8. Create a Reference Library

Social bookmarking makes it easy to create a reference library of any news / press releases / mentions of your company.

Simply use your hashtag alerts to find the places online that talk about you, and use sites like Flipboard to bookmark them. This helps you keep track of all the talk about your company, as well as boost the article by giving it the bookmark.

More Tips on Social Media for Business

Looking for more ideas on how to use social networking for business? Check out this post on business social networking by a blogger whose focus is on helping small businesses use online marketing more efficiently and effectively.

Do you have a business that you use social media as an avenue to connect with clients? Or do you know of a business that does a great job using social media? Let us know in the comments!

What to Do When Your (Personal) Social Media Content Has Been Stolen

by

Social media has become the top way for brands to increase awareness of what they’re doing, from promoting new products to interacting with customers. Experts encourage entrepreneurs to regularly post high-quality content in the hopes followers will share it across their own networks.

This means spending hours developing insightful updates, linking to your own great blog posts, and sourcing images from stock photo sites.

After putting all of this work into your content creation efforts, it can be even more disturbing to find your information posted on another site. It may even be a competing business’s blog or an industry magazine. Even if the site credits you as the author of the work, using your content without compensating you for it is a violation.

“There are several situations where social media content can be stolen,” says Robert May, founding attorney at The May Firm. “Increasingly publications are using social media posts as part of their news stories, as seen here. When they get permission first, it isn’t a problem.

Unfortunately, less professional sites fail to get that permission. Sometimes a site uses an original photo or copies a blog post that has been linked on social media. In more extreme instances, a business owner may find a fake account has been set up using his own name and likeness.”

Whatever the type of content or identity theft, it’s important to act quickly to make sure the content is removed. Here are a few steps you should take if you find your social media content has been stolen.

Step One: Make Contact

Before doing anything, send a friendly email politely asking that the content be removed. Don’t use forceful language in this initial contact. Simply state the action you would like to have taken as a result of the letter. If you want the content removed, ask politely that they do so within a certain number of business days.

If you are agreeable to being compensated for your content, state the price and offer removing the content as an alternative. Hopefully the offender will remove the content and send a letter of apology for the inconvenience. If not, wait the stated number of days before taking further action. If the content was posted on a site by an employee of an organization, take your complaint further up the chain before checking into outside options.

Step Two: Check the Terms of Service

While you’re waiting, carefully review the terms of service on the social media site where your content was originally posted. Facebook allows you to report copyright infringements using this tool, while Twitter’s tool is here.

Both are products of the Digital Millennial Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in 1996 to protect copyright holders from online theft. You may also want to check into the policies of the website where the content is posted, since they’ll have their own copyright infringement notification procedures.

DMCA Takedown Notice

In addition to the tools offered on various social media sites, copyright holders can also have content taken down using a DMCA Takedown Notice. You’ll need to determine the Internet Service Provider hosting the site where the content is posted and direct your letter there.

After an investigation, you’ll often find that the content is removed without having to wait for the person who posted it to respond. DMCA charges for the service through its site, but you can craft a letter for free using the instructions provided on the National Press Photographers Association site.

Contact an Attorney

When other recourse has failed to bring action, it’s time to contact a lawyer. Although attorneys will charge an hourly fee to help with copyright infringement, often content can be removed through a cease and desist letter. Such a letter packs a heavy punch when it comes from a law office.

If for some reason that letter doesn’t achieve results, however, an attorney can go through the courts to have a cease and desist order placed on the content, which requires that it be removed.

Having your content stolen can feel like a violation. Fortunately, there are actions you can take to let offenders know that you won’t allow your photos and text to be used for free. By having tools in place to use in the event your content is stolen, you’ll be prepared to take action if it ever happens.

Image by Pavlofox from Pixabay