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Is Your Authentic Hustle Evident on Social Media?

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By Lindsey Tolino

We have to see it to believe it, don’t we? Maybe we want even more proof than just seeing it, but we at least need to see it.

This is so evident on social media. If people don’t see it, they don’t believe it’s happening. We may be doing a ton of work, but if we’re not sharing what is happening, people may not think we’re doing anything.

The people that you think are successful are the ones whose work you see. Subconsciously, we may know that there are plenty of other people out there doing great work, but because we don’t see it, how can we be sure?

Sure, you share your perfectly-manicured blog post or your colleague’s article, but do you share sneak peeks of what you’re working on?

Basically, you have to answer this question – can people easily tell you’re hustling through your social media alone?

If it’s not obvious that you are, you’re missing out. People won’t believe it’s happening unless they see it. They won’t have any inkling unless you’re sharing it.

In January I interviewed former Pittsburgh Steeler and current artist Baron Batch. His experience really hit me:

“It was kind of like this light bulb went off – at the time I was doing a ton of art projects and different collaborations but I just wasn’t getting credit for the amount and quality of work that it deserved. And it hit me – no one knows. No one knows. I’m not showing anything. That opened my eyes – you have to promote yourself while you work. To show your progression.”

And this isn’t about self-promotion. This is about sharing value. It’s about allowing people to see you and your business in an honest and authentic way.

If we filter our social media presence to simply the perfected pieces, people will only see the outcome, not the process. When you showcase only the outcome, people may value it, but they will not easily identify with you. The reality is that we all struggle, working hard on challenges every day. If you don’t show the struggle, if you show only the perfect, it’s harder to identify with you.

The tweets and posts that I have greatly valued are the authentic ones.

The irony of me writing this is that I’m totally hypocritical in this area. I fix myself on the work to be done and neglect to share the process with others. I struggle with it because I want to be fully present in my work instead of thinking about how I’ll share it on social media. But I’m missing out on serving others by being authentic. I need to integrate sharing into my process, instead of treating it as an afterthought.

Can we do this together? Can we be more authentic? Can we share the process?

What tips do you have for integrating sharing into your process instead of treating it as an afterthought?

Author’s Bio: Lindsey Tolino comes alongside artisans, craftsman and people monetizing their passions to help them create healthy, structured businesses. She writes business musings and tips at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.

Time to Automate Your Social Media?

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social-media-100183509Social media has been proven to be an effective tool for performing a wide range of business tasks, from marketing to recruiting. As such, businesses around the world are adopting social media at a rapid rate.

If you have already joined the social media fray, you should know that you need to invest a substantial amount of time and effort in order to be successful on social media. One thing you can do to make your social media activities easier and less time-consuming is to use social media automation tools.

Here is a look at three great tools that you can use to automate your social media efforts.

Post Planner

If you want to promote your business and engage with consumers effectively on social media, you have to make a point to share interesting and helpful content regularly.

Post Planner can help you save time and effort by automating the publishing of content on your Facebook page.

This tool enables you to publish content based on a predetermined time schedule; target your content based on details such as age group, gender and education level; look for trending content and add it to your queue; crowd-source content from other people who use Post Planner; access a database with thousands of updates to find new ideas for updating your status; and upload bulk posts.

Additionally, it can perform simple analytics to show you the percentage of users who “liked”, clicked or commented on a certain post.

According to the article, “3 Great Tools to Automate Your Social Media“, Post Planner comes in four different versions, including the free Pro Planner and the paid Guru, Master and Agency plans.

Dlvr.it

When you have new content to share, you want to post it on all your social media channels. However, it can be time-consuming to do this if you have many posts to share on a regular basis.

Dlvr.it is a tool that you can use to deliver content to multiple social media networks.

All you need to do is specify the source and destination of the content. Whenever you create a new post, Dlvr.it will send out your updates automatically.

Currently, this social media automation tool supports Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Delicious and App.net.

Social Oomph

Evergreen content is content that will not be outdated.

As your social media following grows, you will have fans or followers who have never seen some of your previously posted content. So, when you post content that is evergreen, you should continue to share it in the future.

Social Oomph features a queue reservoir that allows you to add content that you want to re-share to a queue, and you can specify how often the content should be shared.

Also, you can create variations of a post, so that you will not send out identical posts when you re-share content. Social Oomph can also help you find the right people to follow and monitor your social media activities.

Social media automation tools are becoming more advanced and useful.

If you do not have enough time to manage your social media activities, you should try using one of these tools.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author: John McMalcolm is a freelance writer who writes on a wide range of subjects, from social media marketing to Cloud computing.

5 Social Customer Service Tools You Should Know About

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By Diana Gomez

Gone are the days of customer service phones ringing off the hook.

While some people may still want to use traditional means to connect with companies, modern consumers rarely want to pick up the phone if they experience a customer-service issue.

Instead, they’re turning to social media to voice concerns and ask questions, knowing that a simple tweet is often the best way to address an issue quickly and easily.

Social customer service tools

Did you know that 42 percent of consumers who complain on social media expect a response no more than 60 minutes later?

This may seem unreasonable, but compare that with the time it should take for a resolution via phone. And these days, the advent of social media has not only opened up more communication channels, but it has lowered patience. A recent study showed that people who complain on social media on nights and weekends expect the same service and response time as they would during normal Monday through Friday business hours. How can companies keep up with that? What a beast.

Smart companies are catching on that social media is their strongest customer service tool. KLM, for example, the leading airline in customer service, realized the importance of social media in 2010 when Icelandic ash left tens of thousands of customers stranded in airports everywhere. It was the biggest interruption to European air traffic since World War II.

Those customers turned to social media for solutions to their travel woes, and KLM responded. Soon after, the airline made social media the focus of its customer service efforts. Resolution time was cut to one day, and one social media post is responded to within one hour — and it all happens via social media.

There are several tools out there ready to help companies get their customer service needs under control as efficiently as possible using social media. Here are a few I’ve found to be worthwhile.

Salesforce

Salesforce is the tool that drives the customer-service machine of KLM. How does it work? Its system extracts customer-service requests from over 150 million social media networks, blogs, forums and more using customized keyword identifiers. The tool’s technology works its magic by searching comments and phrases combining, for example, #KLM, @KLM, and any KLM mentions with customer-service trigger words like “help” or “my flight is late.”

The cool part is that the software can then prioritize the results automatically using the purchase history of the customer and their activity level on social media. So if you have a big Twitter following and you’re a frequent flier, you’ll probably be placed at the front of the customer-service queue. Pretty nifty.

LiveOps Social

Another social customer service tool, LiveOps Social, is a cloud-based contact center/virtual call center software. But instead of tickets submitted through voice, online contact forms, or email, it searches requests on Twitter and Facebook and then submits a ticket that way. The concern is then placed in a service queue alongside all the other requests, but it is prioritized according to the customer’s social and service history.

Social Dynamx

This social customer service tool lets companies manage one-on-one, real-time social conversation. The system automatically routes customers to an agent based on his or her expertise, work group, current caseload, average time to respond and service satisfaction rate. Work groups represent different issues, so say a product has a very specific issue — a work group is created to address that particular concern, and they’ll receive all the tweets relating to that issue. If a customer prefers a different agent, or expert, that change can be easily made.

SparkCentral

Companies that handle a high volume of customer service requests are turning to social media helpdesk platform SparkCentral. Formerly known as TwitSpark, the key to its success lies in the response time. This tool provides super fast and efficient follow-up customer service over Facebook and Twitter. From seemingly petty problems to crisis management, it’s all automatically prioritized and attended to promptly.

ConverSocial

Used by big companies like Google, Barclaycard, and Hertz, ConverSocial is a cloud-based social service solution for large-scale monitoring. Using sophisticated technology, the service decides for itself whether or not a social media complaint warrants a response.

Any Tweeter out there can understand that not every tweet deserves an agent to spend his or her time responding to it. ConverSocial totally gets that. Like other tools, it prioritizes a response according to social and customer history. More serious issues of course would go to the front of the queue. If a response is delayed, the system automatically reroutes the issue to a new agent.

Has your company used social media to resolve customer service issues? Please share your experiences in the comments!

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she integrates social customer service and business marketing strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase.

3 tips on using Facebook to curate content fast



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By Dorien Morin-van Dam

Entrepreneurs are always busy!

Sometimes time just gets away from you; the phone rings all morning and you can’t get anything done. A client calls with an important question and you can’t put off answering it. Your car breaks down and needs a tow, delaying you and your long list of tasks. A family member needs you, now and off you go.

As a busy entrepreneur, even the best laid plans and to-do lists get sidetracked by unexpected events. There’s no one else but you to address the problems and nothing you can do about it but go with the flow and regroup when you can.

speeding through a tunnel

On any given Monday morning, I get back to my desk after a weekend away from my computer and find social media emergencies and tasks that need my undivided attention. Lucky for me, I have a social media plan and a content calendar for myself as well as for all of my clients, so I don’t often have to post ‘fast’ and unexpectedly.

Do you have a social media plan? Do you have a content calendar? If you don’t have either, find a social media consultant to help you create a social media plan and a content calendar to put in place ASAP!

Of course, there are times I am on the go, busy, forget to get my content calendar updated and I need something to post…now. What to do? Don’t panic! This is what I do…

I go to Facebook to find content quickly!

Here are three ways I use Facebook to find content to curate, fast!

1. Interest Lists

I have many interest lists I curate content from. Are you familiar with interest lists? If not, start here: Everything you need to know about Facebook Interest Lists

I follow a lot of people and I have liked a lot of pages. To be able to find what I am looking for, I have created lists of pages, people and news outlets all of who are relevant to my business and my clients’ industries. To find content fast, all I have to do is go to those lists on my profile and look at what everyone is talking about! From there, it’s an easy share to my profile, or a few (extra) clicks to share it to one of my pages. I recommend you subscribe to pages as well as create your own.

2. Trending Topics

This is a great way to get content out, quickly! Simply go to your personal profile and look on the top right side of your newsfeed. You’ll see ‘trending topics’. Click on the topic that would best fit your industry (there is a blue, clickable link for each topic) which will generate a feed of articles related to that trending topic. Pick whichever one you like and share!

3. Hashtag Search

If you are looking for a specific topic, try searching Facebook for related articles by using a hashtag. I admin several pages for which I use this approach and using hashtags is a great way to find news content on Facebook. For example, for a plumbers page, try #plumbing or #plumbingtip, for a golf community, you could try searching #golf and find out the latest news. Make sure to try several hashtags, sometimes it takes a while to find the right one. Don’t forget to also use hashtags on your own posts when sharing your own content, so others who use this approach can find and share your content, too!

I know there are many other ways to find, share and curate content form Facebook. What is your favorite content curation tip?

Author’s Bio: Dorien Morin-van Dam is owner and social media marketer at More In Media, a social media consultancy in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Dorien provides social media consulting, management, training and education; she is passionate about teaching social media to small business owners. She services clients all over the USA and has worked in many different industries as well as with several NPO’s. In her spare time, Dorien manages four kids, three dogs and a husband. She runs marathons and loves to bake, travel and read.

Photo Credit: Loïc Lagarde via Compfight cc

Effective social media sales gets personal

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By Diana Gomez

Figuring out how to use social media effectively for your business is a lot like trying to hit a moving target…about the size of a pea, three hundred yards away, from the bow of a skiff in fifteen-foot-high seas. Did I mention that you’re also trying to use an unwieldy, twenty-pound harpoon? (You get the picture.)

speedboat going fast

Getting the attention of your target market, let alone followers and regular activity on your social media sites, is one of the biggest challenges in today’s marketplace. However, it’s not impossible. As with our seafaring harpoon-ist, the best way to hit that target is with practice, patience and a little bit of luck. And with social media marketing, your odds also go up in proportion to your creativity: the more you use, the better chance you have of hitting home.

Remember: It’s Social Media, not Sales Media

Before launching any type of social media sales campaign, be sure that you have the following in place: a strong following and a good relationship with your followers and friends.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but a lot of businesses come into the social media world expecting people to start following them simply because they’re posting regularly, or that they can launch a campaign the same day they open their social media page and get instant results.

The fact is that social media is just that: social. If you were to walk into a room and hand out business cards, talking only about your business, people would get tired of you pretty quickly. But if you were to engage others, answer their questions, talk a little about yourself and comment on their personal accomplishments, you’d not only be welcome in that social circle, you might also be invited to other, bigger parties.

Social Campaigning

Once you’ve built up that all-too-important following, it’s time to break out the campaign strategies. From Instagram picture challenges to pop quiz prize questions on Facebook, there are potentially thousands of ways you can start actively engaging your customer base. And don’t let anyone try to pigeonhole your business by saying a particular social media type isn’t “right” for your company. An accounting firm can have just as much fun with a photo challenge as a nail salon. In fact, it might shine an even brighter spotlight on your business when you take a more unconventional campaign route.

Following are several social media campaign ideas, but keep in mind that creativity is the key to standing out in an overcrowded social media market.

Ideally, these suggestions should only be a basis for creating your own innovative spin-off.

  • Say it like you meme it: Random pictures transformed into funny, witty memes is a great way to build connections through shares and likes. And for small businesses, using local references or images can help engage area residents.
  • Caption captivation: Don’t have the time to make a meme? Get your friends and followers to do it for you by posting a picture and inviting them to caption it for you. The cuter, funnier or more surprising you can make the image, the better.
  • Local resource: If your small business is located in or near an active community/business hub, take the opportunity to become a go-to resource for local events. No matter your business, if you post regularly about upcoming events in your neighborhood, people will begin to seek you out as a reliable resource. And as an added bonus, your business would likely become known as a strong supporter of the local community.
  • What we’re up to: Show off some of your company’s personality by sharing family album-type images. Pictures of some regulars who dropped by, renovations, even a picture of you fixing a leaky sink in the break room will make your business feel more relatable and consequently, more engaging.
  • Pop quiz: Everyone knows at least a few random facts for no apparent reason, so why not give them a chance to show off their odd knowledge by posting a pop quiz question? From movie trivia to microbiology, you can pick a question that pertains to your industry or go with something totally random. Either way, it’s a great way to build on your following.
  • Image open invite: This is another one that can work for virtually any business. Invite your followers to post images following a theme – any theme. It doesn’t necessarily have to relate to your business, but there are plenty of ways to tie photos in with your line of work. An accounting firm, for example, could welcome pictures of frugal DIY projects (ex: turning old VHS cases into mod picture frames), or a lawn care service could post images of bizarre yard art and invite others to share their own.

Whatever your approach, just remember to keep it creative and relatable. People spend time on social media sites to escape from the business world and to engage with friends and family. By gearing your campaigns more toward the light-hearted and entertaining, you’ll eventually be able to expand your social outreach exponentially.

Author’s Bio: Diana Gomez is the Marketing Coordinator at Lyoness America, where she is instrumental in the implementation of marketing and social media strategies for USA and Canada. Lyoness is an international shopping community and loyalty rewards program, where businesses and consumers benefit with free membership and money back with every purchase.

Photo Credit: Keith Marshall via Compfight cc

How to tame social media’s sound and fury

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“Out, out, brief candle! Social media’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (almost) Macbeth Quote (Act V, Scene V).

You’re building a business, right?

That means you should be spending most of your time making your product or services as amazing as they can be. You need to focus.

single black dot on red field

Social media is one little piece of your marketing puzzle, so it shouldn’t be absorbing large chunks of your day, even if you’re a solo entrepreneur who’s running everything.

“But I’m getting alerts across my screen all day long,” you say.

In the immortal words of Chef Gordon Ramsey: Shut. It. Down.

If you truly are building a business, you must create space for innovation, planning, face-to-face contact with customers, and other things that take you away from a computer screen.

Tips for Putting Social Media Back in its Place

  • Don’t let social status updates absorb time throughout the day. If you’re going to curate content, use scheduling tools like Buffer or Hootsuite, so that you can stay focused.
  • Start your marketing planning with your actual business goals, not with a new tool you just heard about.
  • Don’t get caught in the social media echo chamber. Be sure you read widely, on a variety of topics that support your business.
  • For each social network you use, have a reason why you’re using it. And be sure that reason is related to your business plan.
  • Stop saying social media is “free.” It’s not. Your time is worth money.
  • Dedicate blocks of time to your social media strategy, and the rest of the time shut off the alerts, close the Facebook tab, and set your phone to vibrate. You really don’t need to see the notification that Joe and Stacy are talking about Zac Efron on Twitter.
  • Remember that nothing is set in stone, particularly when it comes to social media tactics. Trust your own gut more than some “guru” who doesn’t know your business.
  • If you have a choice between Tweeting a customer and talking on the phone, choose the phone. Better yet, meet for coffee.

Above all, keep it in perspective. It can seem as though everything revolves around social media, but your customers just want your fantastic product/service, delivered with a smile. Everything else is just “sound and fury.”

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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