Income for Social Media Management/consultant

There’s even more than that available but I just thought I would tell you about 7 possible income streams you can benefit from as a Social Media Manager & Consultant. Jobs in Social Media have never been so abundant. Right now with the world economy the way it is businesses are increasingly turning their backs on high cost traditional marketing techniques like print which are down by almost 15% from 2 years ago.

Companies in 2011 and 2012 are actively looking toward cost effective ways of increasing awareness and driving custom into their businesses i.e.Social Media. Social Media Managers and Consultants are in such high demand that 69% of UK businesses ALONE intend to take on a Social Media Community Manager in the next 12 months.

Though Its the freelance Social Media Manager & Consultants that financially benefit the most from the awakening of the business world to the necessity of Social Media. Here are 8 that I personally can enjoy now but are easily available to any Social Media professional.

1. Social Media Management

In 2010 65% of companies kept Social Media management in house. in 2011that figure dropped to 54%. Its due to drop again in 2012 indicating  that the OUTSOURCING of social media management to 3rd party Social Media Managers is increasing significantly. I myself charge between $500- $2000per month/ per client for Social Media Management dependant on which”Service Package” they choose.

2. Social Media Consulting

Again Social Media Consulting is in incredibly high demand. Social Media Consultants can typically charge $150 – $300 per hour for SM Consulting Services. With developments in Social Media moving so quickly companies need to stay on the cutting edge in order to stay competitive.  To give you an example I recently delivered my consultancy services to Crowne Plaza Hotels and advised them on what they SHOULD be doing – I didn’t even have to actually do the work myself! you can see the what I advised here.

3. Delivering Social Media Training

Literally my favourite income stream from Social Media. This is a way for you to earn a months salary in one day. Put on a Social Media seminar for local businesses and charge each delegate for attendance. What works well is to put on a short seminar and make it free then use that seminar to sell the spaces on your paid seminar.

4. LinkedIn Training

Again, in the same way as with Social Media Training you can make 1 months income in 1 day by delivering LinkedIn training. This service is in high demand for this is from companies who want their entire sales team/marketing team/ fee earners or work force to be fully trained in how to use LinkedIn. For example I recently trained the lawyers and fee earners from a large legal firm on how to build reputations as “experts” in sectors like family law, criminal law and personal injury and then how to market their services using the LinkedIn platform. use can charge per delegate or charge for your time. Either way LinkedIn training is a great income stream.

5. Social Media “Get The Ball Rolling” Packages

Some clients want to take ownership of their Social Media but simply don’t know where to start. A good package to offer in this situation is a “Get The Ball Rolling” package in which you would simply set up the clients social media platforms i.e. Facebook Fan Page with relevant apps already uploaded, Twitter profile set up with a custom back round and integrated into the Fb page plus the first 3 months of management finishing with training seminar for the client so they may take over.

6. Facebook Store Setup

For retail businesses it still baffles me why they do not have Facebook stores. Regardless of what business you are in or who your customers are,they’re on Facebook! So why businesses dont give their customers the option to “buy now” while they are still interacting with the company Fbpage? By approaching retail businesses and offering to get them fully setup with a Facebook store is one of the easiest ways of getting new clients and opening the doors to more opportunity to do business.

7. Facebook Page Design

OK, I have a confession to make. I am not a very good Fb Page Designer. I’m OK with HTML and installing Iframes but to be honest I outsource the design work. Purely because I want my clients to have the best possible result but we still charge a fee as out page design is always part of a wider campaign.

The Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks”. Social Media is a shorter top level term that describes the space overall, and covers the activities around social interaction, content, videos, images and audio exposure.

Where to start ?

Many of us are so excited about the technology and web (hence my somewhat trite opening), that we forget key pieces to success: definition of business goals, objectives and overall process for execution. The old “fail to plan, plan to fail” comes to mind. While you need to create the roadmap for your online business – you must certainly decide on what goals and resulting metrics you want to attain.

Social media marketing can help you increase the activity around these top goals:

• Website traffic and user behavior (external and internal tracking)
• Conversion and sales tracking
• Page views, ad exposure
• Growing brand awareness (a softer value, takes longer to build)
• Creating a positive brand association and keeping it there (see also reputation management)
• Business development and a broader customer reach

How can you create and convert all this activity with social media ?

Since the social web allows you to interact with others, create and promote content that can get links and viral attraction, you can – with the right strategy – reach key influencers using this medium. We all know what blogs alone can do, and they are pretty search engine friendly out of the box.

Social media expansion is important because this provides foundations for broader / faster mindshare, along with supporting your search engine marketing objectives. You *can* convert traffic if you target appropriately (research needed), and do not spam. Read each point below to get a deeper understanding.

Tip #1 – Assistance:
Limit talking about yourself, at least initially – provide ways to help others instead. This is probably the most important tip in the social media workplace. Say you are building your new del.icio.us profile, make sure to bookmark other useful resources and sprinkle yourself lightly. It’s about “them”, not “you”. Don’t forget this important rule!

Tip #2 – Process:
Don’t become a “me too” – establish a process and goals for how to get there. I recommend reading 5 pillars for one, and much like SEO programs that have a process (keyword research, competitive review, content analysis, etc), build out a similar map. Too many companies dive in too fast, with no real plan and they are simply peeing in the pool, and no good results come from that.

Tip #3 – Contribute:
Be the one to create (quality) content. While community is Queen in Social Media, quality content is still King, and always will be. Studies show that people are reading much online, but a much smaller group is contributing content. This can mean good opportunities for you.

Tip #4 – Connect:
Reach out to the influencers in your niche, be polite, honest, sincere, and you’d be amazed what brand advocates can do for you.

Tip #5 – Position:
Position yourself in front of consumers’ passions. It can and will create a powerful outcome for your brand.

Tip #6 – Blog:
Make sure you have setup a blog. These numbers are not to be overlooked. I think Technorati is tracking over 110 million blogs now, and growing at a furious pace, even excluding splogs (spam blogs).

Tip #7 – Links:
Don’t be afraid to link out to other blogs and websites in general. Links are what search engines and users make good use of – and search engines would not survive without them. Give others the love too.

Tip #8 – Videos:
Video consumption is growing fast. Create a “how to…” or “top tips…” videos and submit to YouTube. It has wide reach, and you could have millions of people see it. For even wider distribution, you should try tubemogul.com or vidmetrix.com, tools to help automate. In generating all content, make sure to keep #1 rule in check. It’s fine to brand with a URL at the end of the video, but no direct selling. Humor, controversy and weird stuff works very well, keep that in mind – don’t be afraid to test.

Tip #9 – Technorati:
You said you have a blog, right? Claim your blog at Technorati. This will ensure you are indexed in their search engines for blogs and updates are broadcast across the network, along with your own blog network updates. This happens behind the scenes from automatic “pings”.

Tip #10 – Analytics:
Open an account from list below, use your brand name as identifier. This will establish your brand or company name, and not let anybody else assume or steal your personality so easily. Then, work with one or two from the list below to start, and don’t go too fast. Look at your web analytics and track referring domains and review traffic movements daily, weekly.

Tip #11 – Feeds/Research:
Subscribe to feeds, and use iGoogle, My Yahoo Web or other favorite RSS readers. Watch for changes (use Google.com/alerts also), and be the first to comment and engage in your topic. First commenters often get more visibility and traction.

Tip #12 – MicroCommunities:
Locate and join microcommunities – they are social communities that are relevant to your business. Some examples are education.com, nowpublic.com, travbuddy.com, gardenweb.com, shoetube.com, yelp.com and care2.com (non profits). It is much easier to have your voice heard in these and similar markets, than trying a post to Digg that may go nowhere. Those are the perfect places for the “big fish in a small pond” rule. Create highly relevant and linkworthy content, research what others are writing about, and connect with the top players and influencers.

Tip #13 – Submit:
Review the resources below, and consider building out profiles over time. If you submit content, make sure it’s useful, unique and that the title of your post stands out. Pick one or two resources to start, and don’t overextend yourself. Some of the top social marketers in the industry spend 10-12 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. This is a lot of manual (social) labor, but you don’t have to go at it that hard. Make sure to ask friends to vote or comment on your postings, befriend others, but no spam. Make intelligent posts and do not have your company employees post from the same location (IP Address). The submission(s) will most likely be rejected, and worst case, your account blocked or suspended.

Tip #14 – Hosting:
Have a good hosting provider. If traffic spikes come, and your server instrastructure cannot handle it, you are toast. You don’t want a Digg server melt-down (fun pic). Here’s a first hand story and how to .

Tip #15 – Monitoring:
If you want to save time monitoring across many resources within the social networks, try the new , it’s a social monitoring desktop in a browser.

Tip #16 – Advertising:
If you are an advertiser, you might want to check out socialspark.com and socialmedia.com – they both are from what I can see.

The future of SEO

Social search is a serious topic of discussion. The SEO world, and search in general, has moved away from link building as a stand-alone practice, and many online marketers see the future in Page Likes, Retweets, +1s, pins and Channel subscriptions. At SES New York, Bing’s Duane Forrester talked about search engine’s continued efforts to reward sites for creating great user experiences – through content marketing and intuitive user designs. In the same session, Dan Cristo, director of SEO innovation at Catalyst, spoke about how social cues and interactions influence online behavior directly and indirectly. He highlighted some notes on the impact Google+ members searching the web for content – a subject Bing steered clear of.

How Google+ can impact SEO

He reported that SEO boils down to two things: Relevancy and trust. Why do social cues and recommendations matter so much to search engines? Cristo hypothesized it’s because certain queries just cannot be answered by the web – no matter how intelligent crawlers and developers get. But these questions CAN be solved by friends and family. For example, consider the query, “Who should I vote for?” The web can offer a bevy of results suggesting who Cristo can vote for (no matter the election), but his social connections likely have similar views on politics, and can point him toward the right direction. If these people have made their own leanings clear online, that’s where search engines come into play – technology allows the categorization of data based around these interactions.

How Social is Important ?

Bing’s Senior Program Manager Duane Forrester expanded on the value of social listening and how it plays into search. He compared today’s social SEO market to that of traditional SEO ten years ago. Metadata, title tags, etc. were once the gold standard of SEO, but now they’re the base line. The reality: If there is a big collection of people talking about a person, search engines are drawn to the person or site to try and understand what all the fuss is about. Unfortunately, the technology to truly hone in on these conversations and chatter remains in infancy.

Forrester covered some statistics that showed how imperfect search is today:

• Imprecise results – one in four searches delivers successful results.
• Refinements – forty-two percent of sessions require refinements.
• Lengthy tasks – forty-four percent of page sessions last a day or more.

Social is all about Psychology of Human Beings

Every online marketer understands quality content is essential, but Forrester challenges this notion just a bit. “If there’s not a good user experience or social campaign to amplify reach and compel people to share, the media won’t float to the top of SERPs.”

How does Forrester advise listeners on creating a better search experience? “Take money out of SEO, paid search, and put it toward usability testing.” He continued, “If you really want to attract search engines, amaze your customers with quality content.” This content must inspire social chatter, and to better understand what drives more conversation, a company’s social team must be connected to various departments, so insights can fuel results.

He advised marketers that personas are a great way to personalize content. “People are actual human beings – not just ‘users.’”

What is the deal with Social and Search

Social listening can be a shallow practice. Companies may hear what their customers say online, but they rarely respond effectively. More, brands often overlook how to leverage what they pick up on Twitter and Facebook. Cristo and Forrester both presented cases of why social will become an even greater asset for companies, and it all relates back to the user experience.

The Fastest Instagram Followers

Through the popularity together with this application, really enjoy purchasing followers as for facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and similar social media networking sites, people also showing attraction to buy more instagram followers and to help you to out these people, many organizations end up being offering this satisfaction. However, people scouting around to purchase of a followers will are blessed with to carefully locate a firm it is specialized all over offering such separate of services. They supply site visitors and some of the companies are probably also ensuring 30-day money back guarantee and support as well in these a way who if the potential buyers are not satisfied with followers will certainly get their money back for the same. A person great thing about business blogs is how they can be readily that are available in search engines, allowing customers on to find it easily; additionally, they target specific community and audiences which always allows readers time for interact and articles or blog posts queries and advice.

You might also collaborate as well as other company blogs by having ones content linked that would your blog; this valuable technique doubles an effectiveness of your trusty business blog. If are going in order to really be at the latest trade show in addition to convention, take image samples and tag your location to allow your followers know what is set on for your business. If most people are holding a trustworthy big sale, break a shot of your sales flyer for your lovers to see. This is besides a good manner for you to make your followers feel other special because somebody can offer any of them a VIP cheap that only Instagram users can access. Get creative who has them! Through a wink of the eye, you would have received enough and way more popularity. Around todayâEUR(TM)s social media sites, the wide range of fans, picture / video likes and site visitors you have, discussions indirectly of your popularity among a new masses. A great deal more the number all the more will generally be the popularity. Therefore, many people desperately try regarding gain more connected with these in pay for to become a favourite among the people. Instagram has more over 80 million prospects as of well and if photograph is replaced and countless patients like it you may get instagram followers’s well known story where more to be able to eighty million clients can see, with regards to instance, remark on top of that provided that some people such as what they see they will truly accompany you.

The leading investment to get Instagram supporters is at the time of transferring value composite. Transfer no less than of your finest photographs every single day and space them: Don’t transfer everyone of them in the actual meantime. Most professions are turning to Instagram as the new promoting stage along the grounds that it has potential for viral publicizing at grade requires. Having Real Followers Selected websites that possible clients to buy likes and people on Instagram should not actually have huge people to choose and follow you actually on Instagram. Most of those time, the admirers you will are are mostly composed up with merely a few sincere people. A is why the program is important whom you choose the website you want to buy admirers from carefully. Imaginary followers cannot get your market anywhere. But nevertheless , real followers can sometimes help you businesses flourish immensely. Except if now, tips when considering locations consisted of: “try this dish,” “order this drink,” “ask for that special item,” when checking into businesses. Now, brands are offering location based tips surrounding parties they are recruiting and even, in the case of The History Station for example, reputation facts from around the country as tips on how to promote an nearing television series. Get to create a functional perfect strategy why can make easy all desired desire and making priceless for generating revenues and further rest our service would certainly do for your business.

Instagram in recent efforts done also quite a few changes into their personal web application. With this action many users veteran a glitch and / or gave their feed back . which means that with progressing a period of time always there chance to see uncontrolled changes very continually but still this right implemented software can make variation. And with just a handful of months all shall go in give preference to of you . you must be thinking over this topic and try towards understand importance than me

Google: The king of Buying Twitter Followers

There are a couple of ways to get—or at least seem—famous on Twitter. Option number one: You can actually be famous on Twitter. This seems like a lot of work. You have to be good at tweeting and probably do something fame-worthy in real life like or . Or you could try option number two: just buy them. There are plenty of places that’ll hook you up with a few thousand followers for less than a hundred bucks, and it only takes a coule of days.

You could also do what Google recently did with Frommer’s Travel. Some nine months ago, the search giant bought the whole company, only to take over all of its social media accounts and then sell it back to its founder. Warning: this option is very expensive.

Regardless of the method, buying Twitter followers seems sleazy. It’s the social media equivalent of paying people to come hang out your house, and nobody really likes the guy who has to give people money to hang out with him. (That’s why he has to pay them, duh.) Nevertheless, people do it kind of a lot. At least according to The New York Times, they do. The paper recently on how the buying and selling of Twitter followers has the potential to become a $360 million business. Some services offer solutions to attract real people to your follower pool. Some just recruit a bunch of bots to follow you.

The funny thing about this burgeoning social media subindustry is how dang cheap it is. Italian security researchers Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli told the Times that the average price for a thousand followers is about $18 but can be had for as cheap as a buck, especially if you buy in bulk. That means that $1,000 will buy you as many as a million followers. A site called Fiverr offers the best deal: 1,000 followers for $5 (hence the name Fiverr). Stroppa and De Micheli came up with that $360 million figure based on these prices, though they admit that a more conservative estimate would value the business at around $40 million.

The big problem with buying followers, as you may have already guessed, is that . Sure, some are fake in the sense that the people behind the accounts didn’t necessarily find you by seeing a funny tweet or coming across your name on the Internet. But most of them are straight up fake with no human whatsoever behind them. These bots will not retweet you. They will not reply to your clever tweet about the outcome of the Final Four. They definitely won’t meet you for drinks after work.

This is where Google’s strategy makes sense. By buying an entire company like Frommer’s, it not only got all of the accounts and their followers. It also , so it not only has access to the followers but also all of their interactions with the account. Google can know which travel-related tweets did well and what kinds of feedback people were sending to the various Frommer’s franchises.

It’s tough to know how many of those accounts’ followers are real and how many are fake, since they’ve been pulled down for now. ( to check your own account for fake followers.) Nevertheless, Google at least knows that the real people following all the former Frommer’s accounts are interested in travel, and again, it can figure out which ones are engaged. And it only cost $22 million! Minus whatever Frommer paid to get his brand back, of course.

All of this talk about buying Twitter followers inevitably circles back to the question of earning Twitter followers. How do you do it the honest way? You know, the way that won’t screw up your Klout score? Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University and longtime sage of all things social media, has a simple solution.

How Does Twitter Work and what is Twitter Followers?

buy twitter followers

I think most of you know what Twitter is, after all I’ve been writing posts about various Twitter tools and tricks. But still I get emails and some questions in comments: “What is Twitter and how does it work?” Here’s quick beginners guide to Twitter so from now on, everyone knows what I am talking about. (Because there will be more posts about Twitter and Twitter tools in future).

Don’t be overwhelmed by Twitter. It’s easy, it’s fun and it’s free. But… What is it?
People all over are Twittering ( Twitter Followers ). WTF is Twitter anyway? Most heavy duty techies and electronic device users know this, but still, new to many people, is this quickly rising phenomenon called “twittering”, the verb that describes the use of the application called Twitter.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that has changed the way many people communicate. Twitter allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”: text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to Twitter website via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, from their computer at home or work, or through a third-party application.

OK, So Why Is Twitter So Popular? Why Do Millions of People ( Twitter Followers ) Follow Other Tweeters?
In addition to its relative novelty, Twitter’s big appeal is how rapid and scan-friendly it is: you can track hundreds of interesting tweeters, and read their content with a glance. This is is ideal for our modern attention-deficit world.

Twitter employs a purposeful message size restriction to keep things scan-friendly: every microblog ‘tweet’ entry is limited to 140 characters or less. This size cap promotes focused and clever use of language, which makes tweets very easy to scan, and also very challenging to write well. This size restriction has really made Twitter a popular social tool  ( Twitter Followers ).

Twitter is very simple to use as broadcaster  ( Twitter Followers ) or receiver. You join with a free account and Twitter name. Then you send broadcasts daily, or even hourly. Go to the ‘What’s Happening’ box, type 140 characters or less, and click ‘Tweet’. You will most likely include some kind of hyperlink. To receive Twitter feeds, you simply find someone interesting (celebrities included), and ‘follow’ them to subscribe to their tweet microblogs. Once a person becomes uninteresting to you, you simply ‘unfollow’ them. You then choose to read your daily Twitter feeds through any of various Twitter readers.

Why Do People Send Burst Messages  ( Twitter Followers ) Through Twitter?
People send Twitter ‘tweets’ for all sorts of reasons: vanity, attention, shameless self-promotion of their web pages, boredom. The great majority of tweeters do this microblogging as a recreational thing, a chance to shout out to the world and revel in how many people choose to read your stuff.

But there is a growing minority of tweeters who send out some really useful content. And that’s the real value of Twitter: it provides a stream of quick updates from friends, family, scholars, news journalists, and experts. It empowers people to become amateur journalists of life, describing and sharing something that they found interesting about their day.  Yes, that means there is a lot of drivel on Twitter. But at the same time, there is a growing base of really useful news and knowledge content on Twitter. You’ll need to decide for yourself which content is worth following there.

So Twitter Is a Form of Amateur News Reporting?
Yes, that is one aspect of Twitter. Among other things, Twitter is a way to learn about the world through another person’s eyes. Tweets from people in Thailand as their cities become flooded, tweets from your soldier cousin in Afghanistan who describes his war experiences, tweets from your traveling sister in Europe who shares her daily discoveries online, tweets from a rugby friend at the Rugby World Cup… these microbloggers are all mini-journalists in their own way. And Twitter lets them send you a constant stream of updates right from their laptops and smartphones.

People Use Twitter as a Marketing Tool?
Yes, absolutely. Thousands of people advertise their recruiting services, their consulting businesses, their retail stores by using Twitter. And it does work. The modern internet-savvy user is tired of television advertisement. People today prefer advertising that is faster, less intrusive, and can be turned on or off at will… and Twitter is exactly that. If you learn how the nuances of tweeting work, you can get good advertising results by using Twitter.

But Isn’t Twitter a Social Messaging Tool?
Yes, Twitter is social media, absolutely. But it’s more than just instant messaging. Twitter is about discovering interesting people  ( Twitter Followers ) around the world. It can also be about building a following of people who are interested in you and your work/hobbies, and then providing those followers with some kind of knowledge value every day. Whether you are a hardcore scuba diver who wants to share your Caribbean adventures with other divers, or whether you are Ashton Kutcher entertaining your personal fans: Twitter is a way to maintain a low-maintenance social connection with others, and maybe influence other people in a small way.

Why Do Celebrities Like Using Twitter ( Twitter Followers )?
Because Twitter is both personal and rapid, celebrities use Twitter to build a more-personal connection  ( Twitter Followers ) with their fans. Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres, even President Obama are some famous tweeters. Their daily updates foster a sense of connectedness with their followers, which is powerful for advertising purposes, and also quite compelling and motivating for the people following the celebs.

So Twitter Is Many Different Things, Then?
Yes, Twitter is a blend of instant messaging, blogging, and texting, but with brief content and a very very broad audience. If you fancy yourself a bit of a writer with something to say, then Twitter  ( Twitter Followers ) is definitely a channel worth exploring as a writer. If you don’t like to write, but are curious about a celebrity, a particular hobby topic, or even a long-lost cousin, then Twitter is one way to connect with that person or topic. Try Twitter for a couple weeks, and decide for yourself if you like it.

What is a Twitter Followers ?

twitter followers

On the Twitter Web site “following” someone means you will see their tweets (Twitter updates) in your personal timeline. Twitter lets you see who you follow and also who is following you. Followers are people who receive other people’s Twitter updates. Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to keep people updated about the things that matter to you. The site allows you to set up a profile, and it allows other people to express an interest in receiving these updates. Every user of Twitter is a “follower” of at least one other person.

Social Networking and Twitter Followers

Twitter is a type of social networking site known as a “micro-blogging” service. It allows users to type very short updates about themselves into their profile. This is in contrast with other types of social networking sites that allow users to write long and detailed updates as well as upload personal photographs. While sites such as Facebook and MySpace tend to focus on providing a more rounded social networking experience, Twitter specializes in one aspect of it.
Twitter Basics

The Twitter interface contains a box within which you can post updates and a section to the right of this where you can see the statistics relevant to your account. Below the box is a list of messages known as “tweets.” This list is known as a “feed,” and it allows you to see all of the tweets that people you are following have made. To the right of this is an “@Mentions” entry. Clicking this will show you who has mentioned your Twitter username specifically in one of their tweets.
What “Following” is

The act of “following” someone on Twitter means that you are opting in to receiving their updates. If someone is following you that means that they have opted in to receive your own updates. You follow someone simply by clicking their username and then clicking the “Follow” button. Twitter places the limit of how many people you can follow at 2000, but may allow you to follow more than that if you yourself are followed by many people.
Your Twitter Statistics

The statistics that Twitter shows you when you log in are simply the number of people that you are following on the left-hand side, and the number of people following you on the right-hand side. Both the “Following” and “Followers” entries are clickable links and will show you whose updates you are receiving and who is receiving your updates respectively. Above these statistics is an entry entitled “Your Tweets.” Clicking this link will show you the tweets that you have made in the past, in chronological order.

Why Using Social Media For Business

Twitter Followers

So why you should you blog, create valuable content and build networks on social media? Is social media just about being superficial or is it much deeper than that? Social media has touched something in human consciousness that goes beyond just online conversations. It has provided a global connectedness that is culture and nation changing. It has given us as individuals control over our lives and how we express ourselves.

That is what is exciting. The power of media now resides in your hands and everyone can express themselves to the world and carve out and create their own corner of influence. The democratization of media that is social media, allows everyone to express themselves globally in full color and rich multimedia. No longer do you need to beg a book publisher for access. You can now self-publish and place your book in the Amazon or Apple book store. Here are a few reasons why you should tap into the power of social media that may resonate with you. This may motivate you to take control of your life and business with the new world of online publishing and marketing via blogs and social media networks.

1. Turn your passion into a business
2. Take control of your life
3. Take control of your publishing
4. Take control of your marketing
5. Become a thought leader
6. Travel
7. Be paid to speak
8. Become influential
9. Make a difference
10. Leave a legacy
11. Build trust
12. Earn respect
13. Build an online asset that will show up in Google search results for years
14. Build a business online
15. Create independence
16. Meet cool and influential people both virtual and face to face
17. Grow your own network of influence
18. Open up business opportunities
19. Accelerate the rate of growth both personal and business
20. Become well known or even famous
21. Be wanted and even demanded
22. Be valued
23. Develop self respect
24. Turn your life form ordinary to extraordinary
25. Become an author
26. Change people’s lives
27. Change your own life
28. Grow
29. Be able to leap out out of bed instead of crawl
30. Learn more about passion instead of just showing up
31. Gain energy
32. Learn more about yourself through self expression
33. Leave your day job behind
34. Fire your boss
35. Make your mum proud
36. Make your friends jealous
37. Put a smile on your face
38. Put a spring in your step
39. Discover skills you didn’t know you had
40. Sing in the car or shower
41. Find purpose in your life
42. Overcome the fear of public speaking
43. No longer have to worry about the fear of rejection
44. Connect to global markets

Why would you want to waste your time blogging and building a following on social media networks? Why would you bother? It all seems like a lot of hard work really. For hundreds of years expressing yourself and displaying your passion and talents was confined to writing, drawing or painting on a piece of paper and then begging a publisher or someone of influence to tell the world or publish your work or display it. It took time, money and often access to powerful social and business networks. Being rich or royal was often a prerequisite to being noticed. It also took a lot of time with death often happening before fame kicked in. Many musicians and artists didn’t achieve fame until centuries later. Artists and creatives often needed access to kings and queens and their benevolent attention to break through the barrier of anonymity.

Seems social media (read Facebook) and SEO (read Google, hence Search plus Your World) are on the minds of most social media industry watchers these days.

Out of sheer curiosity I typed the term ‘Social Search’ into Google and interestingly enough, a Wikipedia entry was the first result. Here’s a quick snippet of the entry: “Social search … is a type of web search that takes into account the Social Graph of the person initiating the search query. When applied to web search this Social-Graph approach to relevance is in contrast to established algorithmic or machine-based approaches where relevance is determined by analyzing the text of each document or the link structure of the documents.Search results produced by social search engine give more visibility to content created or touched by users in the Social Graph.”

Would it be fair to say that Google and Facebook are careening towards a head-on collision? No. Rather the goal from a social media perspective should not be to pit one against the other in terms of a death-match style showdown based upon which site has greater social appeal. Instead, the way to look at this interesting development of Facebook’s prowess and loyalty of its fans vs. Google’s might and depth of it’s undeniable search stranglehold on the masses is to ultimately look at the concept of the social customer and how social business practices within an organization can capitalize on these two seemingly opposing unstoppable forces.

Social Media Team Building

Yes, I am willing to say this till I’m blue in the face, for effect, say it with me – pretend you’re on the phone with me and just like that classic Jerry Maguire movie moment where Cuba Gooding Jr. wants Tom Cruise to yell “Show Me The Money” I want you to instead say “Show Me The Team!” Why? Far too many times social media is a singular exercise, an army of one – that student, or person within marketing that may have some familiarity with Twitter or has a Facebook account whom has been given the corporate responsibility of representing the company’s social media efforts and in effect be that social media face or behind the scenes voice to the world.

Social Media needs to have a full complement of differing points of view representing different facets of the organization, go over to the engineering dept and ask them to join the Social Media team. The same goes for product managers, HR, customer service and heck even legal – why? Each dept represents a unique understanding of your customer, that is your social customer who is buying based not on impulse but cold hard facts in the form of social signals from within search results (Google’s Search plus Your World) as trusted sources of information plus the feedback from your Facebook social graph via the Open Graph.

SEO, yes, that perhaps pesky thing to keep your organization’s website visible and top-of-mind for Google and the social customer means having now to ensure your organization caters to Google’s way of indexing content: Google has taken a “content marketing” type approach to it’s SERPs – haven’t you noticed that social recommendations, YouTube video, maps, instant answers, authors and bloggers are all above the fold in many instances preceding the start of a single highlight of your standard homepage abstract?

Content – the same content that is fueling engagement on Facebook and Google+ is now being factored into SEO – how’s that for a kick in the pants – so why not ensure that your organization’s SEO person or team is part of the Social Media team. I can see it now: deck the office with posters of that iconic Uncle Sam “We Want You” poster and recruit from within for your Social Media team – this is how you realize the potential of rising to the occasion to re-write the social customer handbook. Look to your employees to help you understand the customer and engage with them on their terms whether they use Google, Google+, Facebook individually or a combination of all three, the social customer just wants the facts on their path to purchase.

Social media isn’t solely about direct social results. There are many places on your website where social media may improve your search engine optimization (SEO) while helping your business grow its online presence. No SEO strategy can guarantee results, but these tips can help ensure that you have all the bases covered to take full advantage of the available opportunities.

Alt tags for images are sometimes overlooked by website marketing managers, who are so focused on meta tags or the content of the site, that they forget the benefit other meta tags can bring.

Adding alt tags to all images on a website can increase the chances that the image gets indexed in Google Images, thus possibly leading to more traffic to your website where the image is hosted.

Social media icons are no different. Having an alt tag of “Follow [Company Name] on Twitter” can help include two important social media keywords: the social network name and the company name.

Add Social Media Accounts

Be sure to share your social media links wherever it’s appropriate. If your business is listed in local directories or even national sites like Google+, Facebook or Yelp, make sure you completely fill out any fields where social media account links are allowed.

Creating a Word document or Google Drive spreadsheet of all the public account URLs can help get this done quickly without much hassle. This also includes adding URLs of social media accounts on other social media profiles you may have. For instance, Pinterest has an available field for the user or company’s Twitter URL.

When it comes to your own website, list employees’ social media accounts on their bio pages, as well as on any sidebars or headers that have built-in social media integration. Be sure to include your company-wide accounts as appropriate, as well.

While this isn’t directly giving links to your own website, it is helping expand your company’s presence online, which may eventually help with search ranking, if it hasn’t already.

Successfull Social Media SEO Strategey

Part of having a successfully combined social media and SEO online marketing strategy includes staying up to date with changes and keeping profiles and website content current. The relevancy of content and social media updates to current events or applicable searches from users will also help your company’s online presence continue to grow.

There is a lot of talk around the web these days about the convergence of social media and SEO, but I fee l like what has happened with social and search is more like a marriage, and they skipped the engagement period altogether. It is merely a convergence of technology and methodology.

Change is the only constant in the online marketing industry, and change comes quickly.

Not too long ago most businesses were  and social media as two completely separate initiatives, with completely separate budgets and separate teams dedicated to managing the success of the campaigns. Nowadays, most businesses (at least I hope) realize that SEO and social media are a couple and go hand-in-hand with one another’s success.

While 97% of marketers agree that social media provides benefits and value to their business, from a discovery, brand awareness, and customer engagement prospective, many marketers still miss the link between SEO and social, and don’t leverage its power to the fullest extent.

While engaging in social media alone can provide impressive results, properly planned tactics can also have a positive impact on your search results. While social signals are something merely on the radar for some businesses, the bottom line is that marketers who have recognized that the future of search is already here can gain a significant competitive advantage.

Focus on the future

First and foremost, marketers need to focus on where SEO is going, not where it has been. However, this can be quite tricky considering that no one, not even the search engines, really knows where social media is heading. It is all speculation at this point, but one thing is for sure; social media is here to stay and its importance in society and search alike will only increase as time goes on.

US online spending is expected to grow 23.3% throughout 2012, reaching $39.5 billion by the end of the year. The number is expected to rise to $46.5 billion in 2013.  The question on every marketers mind is, “How do I get a larger share of that revenue?” The answer is to always think about your potential customers with every marketing decision you make. You can do this by making your business as visible and as easy to engage with as possible on as many online channels as possible. Have a presence where your customers are searching, wherever that may be.

There have been many investments into social media and SEO technologies as well as substantial innovations that make social search a long term relationship.  The beauty of social search is that social media puts the human element back into search to achieve a perfect mesh with the spiders, algorithms and technology. 

Social search has the searcher ultimately relying on people (and not algorithms) to deliver the most meaningful results. Because of its potential to drive traffic, increase awareness, and build links, it is no wonder that social media has become somewhat of a golden child for SEO. The 2012 SEOMoz industry survey also showed the breakdown of marketers main objectives for utilizing certain social media channels, and it’s not surprising to see that content marketing and SEO are among the top reasons that online marketers use select social media channels.

In order to fully understand the depths of the social search marriage we need to better understand the cause and correlation between social shares, links, and rankings. Combining SEO and social media produces far better returns than investing in any of them individually or exclusively.

One thing is for sure, social interactions beget more social interactions and create a larger social presence on the web, thus increasing links, all while helping people find the information that they are looking for. Google crawls 20 billion web pages every day, and if social signals are able to assist Google with determining the relevancy of a website to a search query then the searcher will have a more personalized search.

According to Google, social media and social networking are about relationships and relationships prove relevance and relevance is at the core of organic search. As social media continues to play a larger role in our day to day lives and in business, the importance of social signals will only increase. Social signals such as +1s, likes, re-tweets, shares, subscriptions, and pins are all endorsements of your website. Even Googles own Matt Cutts believes that social will continue to become a larger piece of search in the future.

Instagram for Business

Have you noticed how more marketers are using images in their social media marketing? Would you like to know how your business can use the popular sharing site Instagram? Use Instagram to enhance your marketing.

#1: Use Instagram Profiles to Reach a Wider Audience
#2: Create Engagement With Contests
#3: Reward Followers With Promo Codes
#4: Feature Your Customers
#5: Get More Interest in Your Events

Everyone loves to browse products, so let your followers do some mobile window-shopping! Show off a collection of the products you offer, share a photo of a new or lesser-known product or zoom in on a product and engage your Instagram followers by asking them to guess what it is.

Got a service-oriented business?

Show off some of the equipment and supplies that play a role in the services you provide. For example, fitness trainers could show off their favorite workout equipment, photographers could reveal their most prized camera lens and mechanics might give us a look at their most sophisticated diagnostic equipment.

Let followers in on the origins of their favorite products with snapshots taken at various points in the manufacturing process. If that process is a long one, you might consider making it a multi-part post that follows the process from planning to production to delivery.

Sometimes our imagination only takes us so far. Use Instagram to create demand by helping consumers imagine new or novel uses for what you offer.

This is also a perfect opportunity to invite user-generated content. Have fans submit their own photos demonstrating creative use of your products and pick the best ones to post on Instagram.

If your business provides a service like makeup or hair design, landscaping, decorating, auto body repair or interior design, show your Instagram followers the impact of your work with a shot of your subject before and after you work your magic. The side-by-side comparison will add the wow factor to your Instagram content and maybe even get you a few new customers.

Cosmetics retailer Sephora used Instagram to spotlight an unusual product that most of us do not have in our makeup bags, giving followers a better idea of how it might look out of the package and on someone’s lashes.

Facebook vs Twitter vs Pinterest – 2013 Statistics

Written by Josh Dunlop | Posted in Social Media

If you’ve been trying to market your website with the use of social media, it’s likely that you’ve used both Facebook and Twitter at some point, but the question is, which one is best? This post tackles what they do, how they differ, and how you can use them together to create some awesome social marketing.

What’s the Difference?

First of all, Twitter is famous for only allowing you 140 characters to write with, which can be a little bit limiting when you’re trying to drive traffic to a post. Facebook, on the other hand, allows you 420 and I usually write a few sentences about my post so that it stands out a little bit more in someone’s news feed and adds a personal touch to my readers. Facebook also posts a small except from your link and a photo to match it, which helps it to stand out more.

You also need to take into consideration the way people use Twitter and Facebook differently. On Facebook, it’s not socially acceptable to tell everyone what you’re having for breakfast or that you don’t like your hair today, whereas you can get away with that on Twitter. The problem with this is that when people are following a lot of people, 20 mindless posts, per person, per day, wash away all the good content like the links that you’re trying to share. By all means, carry on posting on Twitter, but don’t rely on it to help your traffic too much.

Well Then Why Use Twitter?

If you’re using Twitter, then you have to assume that most of what you’re going to be saying is going to be lost in a sea of updates, so if you want to contact someone, then you need to get their attention. I’ve been tweeting for about 2 months now and I’ve found the best way of doing this is to follow people who are in your niche. For example, I’m in the photography niche so I may find other tutorial sites, look at their twitter followers and then follow some of them.

Even if I follow people who don’t follow back, i’m still likely to have gotten their attention and there’s a chance that they would have looked at my website. The real success in following Twitter users is the automated direct message for every new follower, provided by services such as , where I automate a welcome message to them that currently says “Come interact with me and other readers at the Facebook fan page for advice, tutorials and photos. http://ow.ly/5wcyd Enjoy the site, Josh”. That link has sent 92 people to the fan page in the last 10 days, and is a great way of turning someone who will barely see my tweets and turning them into someone who will actually interact with me and others on Facebook.

That auto DM has been sent to 404 people in the last 10 days, and has been clicked on a total of 92 times, meaning that 22.77% of people who receive it, click on it, which is much higher than the conversion rates for my Facebook or Twitter feed links. In the past 10 days, 158 people have liked us on Facebook and I believe that sending a direct and personal message to each person has helped to create a boost in likes that we hadn’t seen in the past. Overall, the whole page is growing very quickly and the bigger it gets, the faster it grows.

So What Do I Do Now?

Well, if you don’t already have a Facebook page of Twitter account, then you need to get one. Once you’ve got more than 25 fans on Facebook, you can claim the page name URL as well, so get to 25 as soon as you can. It’s worth noting that Facebook will recognise capital letters, so even if someone spells the URL in lowercase, it will still use the capital letters, for example mine is /ExpertPhotography. I’ve recently started interacting with my users more and I immediately noticed a big change in the amount of comments and ‘likes’ that I’m receiving. Try and do this early on as people are more likely to join in on an active Facebook fan page.

Here’s some more tips on growing a social following:

1. Post photos on your fan page so that people spend more time on there and interact more.
2. Post questions for your fans, asking them what they’d like you to write about.
3. Write a few sentences when posting to Facebook so that it stands out from the other posts in a persons news feed.
4. Take time to properly write a Twitter update that encourages retweeting.
5. Retweet other people’s posts so that they recognize you and other people see that you’re a human being and not just an automated account.

Why twitter followers are more important for business?

Twitter followers help you to gather important information regarding your brand and also the industry in general.

buy twitter followers

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of talk from social media expert-types and novices alike, arguing that the number of Twitter followers you have or Facebook fans you have doesn’t matter. It’s all about the quality of the followers and how engaged you are with them, they say. While I’d be the 1st person to agree with the importance of building a highly engaged, well-targeted community across social networks, quantity matters too.

Twitter has gained status as among the leading social media marketing tools available today. This is because it is very easy for you to control the nature and number of your followers as well as measure your twitter ROI. However, people debate over whether you should give prominence to quality of Twitter followers over the quantity of followers.

In addition, you can always use the Twitter search facility to gain access to relevant topics within your industry. This, however, calls for thorough knowledge on the basics of twitter marketing. You need to search for the relevant authorities within your industry and then add them in your follow list so as to access their tweets. You also need to learn how to use keywords to search for relevant information.

Twitter followers keep you connected and updated.

Tweets from the people or brands you follow will keep you posted on any recent developments, opportunities or even threats in the industry or towards your brand. This helps you take the necessary action and hence stay ahead of competition. Direct messages from your customers or potential customers and comments on your posts can also be used to obtain feedback or share information.

Twitter followers facilitate rapid information sharing and lead generation.

You can post and they can read your tweets as soon as possible. A larger following ensures that you reach to as wider market as possible. However, your efforts will be futile if all your twitter followers just read and never do anything thereafter.

You need to have a quality following in order to facilitate lead generation through twitter. Search for people who are relevant to your brand because they will always retweet, reply to your tweets as well as visit your site for more advanced actions such as reading your content, sending inquiries, subscribing to your newsletter, placing an order or referring friends.

Twitter followers contribute towards your brand popularity.

It is possible for your followers to share your twitter posts through the retweet button. Retweeted posts will be made available to all their followers, who may in turn follow you especially if they feel that your tweets add value to their lives or that your brand is relevant to them. This not only makes you more visible, but also boosts your brand popularity and credibility.

Sometimes, people will rate your brand in terms of twitter followers and so a large following will give you advantage over your competitors. Your following can be boosted by buying Twitter followers but you also need to ensure your active followers are engaged and encouraged to keep following you.