Are you participating with your friends, followers and likes on social media?
Okay, I hear the mumbling…”What do I share? Who cares if I am at the car-wash?”
Right. I get that a lot.
Try using these 10 talk worthy topics on social media (1-2 posts per day for 30 days) and I promise your perspective will be different…So will your business.
What to say on social media- 10 talk worthy topics
1. Things you treasure- Think about things that light your fire! It doesn’t matter how big or small , it seems people love these insider warm-fuzzies. So what is it for you? Mine are spiritual and personal growth, yummy foods, and funny things my kids say.
2. Things that inspire you- Where do you go to affirm your greatness? Art? Songs? Favorite author? Mine include the ocean, women who are living their passion and chocolate.
3. Tools you often use- Stop and consider what items are you using throughout your day. Ergonomic chair? Astronaut pen? Vitamixer? Tell people how they bring value into your life/business/family. My top tools- headset for calls, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap, ipod touch and pandora.com.
4. Bragging Rights- Share your accomplishments in your business. Did you help a client face her fear of asking for a raise? Tell people! Is your schedule booked with clients for the next 2 months? Brag about it! You get the idea, right?
5. Other peoples’ stuff- What e-newsletter do you always read? What blogs are you subscribed to? What events/products are your peers producing? What website offers great content for your community?
6. You couldn’t stop laughing because… Funny things (not at the expense of others of course!) are wonderful to share. Search on Youtube.com for a funny video or find a photo that cracks you up. Here is a great example:
7. Ask questions- Get curious about your community. What are their thoughts about current affairs? What are they doing this weekend? How do they manage family and work life? What books are on their nightstands or Kindles? What cures a bad day? It doesn’t have to be about your work. Focus on getting to know who you are connected with on your social media profiles.
8. Witty musings- You know those strange and lovely things that happen to us in life? One morning I found a worm in my coffee and shared about it. These moments show your human side and give others a chance to connect on a common trait…being human.
9. Places or products- Where did you get your haircut? What is your favorite “I’m not cooking tonight” restaurant? Did your insurance agent go above and beyond? Did your cell phone company correct an error they made (what that could happen!)? Sharing your interactions with other businesses is a simple and lovely way to build community.
10. Promote your stuff!- Important to note this is #10 of 10 but it is still on the list. Earning a profit from your business is important, so share your goods too! Pull up those old blog posts from last year. Take quotes from your book. Tell people about your next event or you’re open for one more coaching client or your speaking on the local radio station as an expert in your field. Share about the services you offer in a balance with the other 9 items on this list.
The point is to nurture a connection with like-hearted people who will love being with you & your business just because of you! Remember to key into the emotions (human factor) of what you are sharing.
Adeah Wetzel brings her finely tuned sense of human behaviors, thoughts, and motivations into her true love affair with relationship marketing- the ultimate way to bring like-minded people from across the globe into your business.
Does marketing feel like flossing? You know it would be a good habit for your business but you keep forgetting to do it! That’s why Adeah created The Reach Kit – a set-up and go system with hands-on support to habituate your marketing. Learn more at www.wholeheartedsocialmedia.com/ReachKit
Hi! I’m Laura Roeder and I want to tell you who can see your Twitter messages. Are they totally public? Can just the people that you follow see them? Can just the people that followed you see them?
The answer is that unless you have your account set to a private account, which means you have that little lock icon on your account, which I don’t recommend that you do, unless you have that set up, all your tweets are totally public and they are searched and indexed by Google. So when somebody searches for a topic or something that you said, your tweet could come up. So I don’t want to scare you off from tweeting, but it is important to know that everything you’re writing is totally public and searchable by Google.
The only exception is direct messages or D-messages in Twitter. A direct message is Twitter’s version of an email and it is private. So when you send a direct message, it won’t show up on Google, it won’t show up publicly and will only be sent to the person that you are sending that message to, and the same goes for the direct messages that you receive that others sent to you.
If you liked that video and you would like to get 20 more, just like it for free. All you have to do is go to TwitterWebinar.com/video. Again, that’s TwitterWebinar.com/video for instant access to 20 more free videos just like this one. I’ll see you there.
How do you manage your Twitter tweets? Share your comments below!
A marketing schedule is crucial for long-term success and consistent results. Put your optimal schedule down on paper then stick to it. A schedule makes you accountable and ensures you are getting enough content and exposure out there. I’m currently leveraging this exact schedule to promote my company BusinessPirate.com
Here are the core activities needed in the weekly marketing schedule:
1-2 emails per week
Email is the #1 medium for ALL online marketers. Use MailChimp or Aweber. The key here is to deliver real value to your email subscribers. Give them free stuff like ebooks or actionable videos. Then give your subscribers a discount off your app or service. Only after you have given your subscribers free and discounted stuff can you ask them to pay full price for your solution.
2 YouTube videos per week
Keep these videos less than 3 minutes. Use Google Keyword Tool to find topics that have potential to rank you on the first page of Goolge. Laura Roeder and others have indicated that traffic coming from YouTube converts 10 times better than random cold traffic. Make sure to create these videos on your YouTube Channel. The more likes, views, and video responses you can get the higher this video will rank on Google. For more info on YouTube videos scope out this video from Laura Roeder here.
One Guest Post or Interview per week
Guests blog posts help with exposure, credibility, and SEO. Write a great piece of content (like this) and pitch it to sites that utilize guest posters. You need to sell yourself and the content in order to get published. Including a short action video along with your guest post will increase the chances that you get published. A video interview is just as good as a guest blog post. Sites like Mixergy.com, TheRiseToTheTop , or IdeaMensch are money video interview candidates.
One give-away per week
Reach out to relevant blogs in your space and see if they would like to do a give-away contest with your app. If you are doing a SaaS product offer to give the blogger 5 One Year subscriptions. Make sure the contest includes both comments and tweets. An example of a contest I did from AppSumo can be seen here. Just copy this format.
2 Blog Posts on your site per week
Use the Google Keyword Tool research to determine blog topics to go after and attempt to rank for. Think about re-purposing content. Write about one of the topics you spoke about in your YouTube videos then include that video in your post. This way you enhance your blog post and don’t have to re-create the wheel. Use basic SEO principles in every blog post.
Tweet and Facebook everyday
Tweet and Facebook early and often. Use Hootsuite and Timely.is to automate your social network marketing. Mention and reach out to customers, friends, and experts on Twitter/Facebook. Twitter is awesome for customer service. Tweets shot out earlier in the day will have better performance and reach. At least 3 tweets and one Facebook update per day.
This schedule will help you in every aspect of your online marketing strategy but it is not perfect. Unbounce did an EPIC Free ebook focused on a 6-month Online Marketing schedule. You get it in exchange for a tweet here.
What did I miss? Please comment below and let me know!
Matt Smith is the co-founder of BusinesPirate.com. He was previously one of the BizDev guys at AppSumo and is currently getting his MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. His current venture, Business Pirate, helps educate sales and marketing pros through online video courses. When he is not playing on the computer, he likes to exercise and eat raw fish in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona.
Hi! I’m Laura Roeder and I want to talk today about whether or not you have to follow everyone back on Twitter, and by following everyone back, what I mean is when you see that somebody new follows you, do you have to follow them as well or is it okay to not follow them?
So this is something that’s unique about Twitter compared to all the other social networks on LinkedIn and on your Facebook profile. There has to be a mutual agreement. You ask someone if they want to be a friend or a connection and then you both agree.
But Twitter is actually really different. On Twitter you can follow anyone and anyone can follow you and you don’t have to mutually agree to follow each other. So I can be following 100 people on Twitter and reading their updates and none of them can follow me and that’s fine. I can still read their updates. I can still interact with them.
And same goes for you. A lot of people can follow you and it really doesn’t matter because if you don’t choose to follow them back, they won’t show up in your tweet stream or your Twitter world.
So I think that you do not have to follow everyone back on Twitter. I think you should be following the people that you’re interested in following, and here is why. A lot of times when people are first starting off, they follow everyone back and that’s fine especially when you’re first starting out. You’re just looking for more people to have conversations with.
But the problem is the nature of Twitter is that it grows and grows and grows and you start following everyone back. So there are a few problems. One is that when you sign on to Twitter and you’re reading through your tweet stream, you’re going to have a lot of people that you have no interest in, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know why you follow them, and it’s a bunch of junk that quite frankly you don’t want to read. So it sort of makes Twitter not fun and not a place you want to go.
The other reason is that unfortunately, there’s a lot of spammers on Twitter, and when you follow a spammer back, one, you have to read their spam in your messages, and two, when you follow them back, they now have the ability to send you direct messages which can have viruses and all kinds of icky, icky stuff. So you definitely do not have to follow everyone back. It’s not considered rude or bad or anything like that. And especially as you grow and you get more people, you’re not going to want to follow everyone back.
Also, it’s normal on Twitter to follow and unfollow. So don’t stress. If you’re not sure if you want to follow somebody, go ahead and follow them. If they’re not floating your boat for whatever reason, you can always unfollow them. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like Facebook where when someone unfriends you, you think they don’t want to be friends anymore. It’s not like that on Twitter. You can follow anyone. Anyone can follow you. You do not have to follow everyone back who follows you.
If you liked that video and you would like to get 20 more, just like it for free. All you have to do is go to TwitterWebinar.com/video. Again, that’s TwitterWebinar.com/video for instant access to 20 more free videos just like this one. I’ll see you there.
I avoided Twitter for 2 years. I wasn’t gonna do it. You couldn’t make me. I don’t care how cool people said it was. I was afraid to get sucked into a vortex of wasted time.
Then one day in April this year, I bit the bullet. I knew it was time. For whatever reason, my fears disappeared. I’d be okay, I surmised.
And within a few short months, I fell in love.
Not because it helps introverts like me easily network without having to go to a networking event.
Not because it forces other people to keep their message concise, 140 characters or less, so I’m not reading dozens of 1000 word blog posts or listening to endless rambling.
And not because it made me feel cool. (It doesn’t.)
I fell in love with Twitter because it simplifies selling. It completely removes the ick factor from selling. It saves me time. And it keeps me focused on building relationships.
How to save time, remove the ick, and stay focused on relationships
Here’s what I’ve done to fall in love with Twitter and simplify selling with social media and how you can do it, too.
1. Set your intention
Ask yourself why you use social media. I don’t mean to go all life-coachey on you, but it’s important to know why you engage in social media. It will help you effectively use your social media time.
2. Set the stage
With your intentions in mind, think about your social media presence in approximate percentages. How often do you want to sell? Mention your free stuff? Share information? Talk about life in general? Those percentages should reflect your overall intention.
3. Do some prep work, just this one time
With your percentages in mind, write a set of standard tweets for your products, services, and free stuff. These would be things that you would repeat regularly. Keep things interesting by using a variety of tweets for the same offer. For example, I tweet 6 times each month about my free idea flight kit, the opt-in for my newsletter, but each tweet is different.
4. Schedule the pitches
Block out one hour each month to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts using a service like HootSuite or Timely.
During your hour, schedule your prewritten tweets to publish throughout the month. Be sure that the number of tweets you schedule for your free and paid offers is within the percentage guidelines you intended.
5. Fill in the gaps
Schedule other tweets and Facebook posts to fill in the gaps of how else you want to use social media, such as inspirational quotes or anything that resonates with your followers. Pepper them in between the sales posts so you’re covered every day of the month, in case you forget to post something one day. This will generate effortless relationship building as people reply to what you have to say–even though you may have posted it a month ago–making it easy for you to complete the relationship connection with a simple reply.
6. Engage daily and repeat monthly
Use your daily Twitter and Facebook checks to talk about what you’re up to, share relevant, recent resources, and continue to build relationships. The selling, however, is done.
Next month, repeat steps 4, 5 and 6.
That’s it. In 1 hour you set yourself up for a month of social media activity that included spreading the word about what you offer and initiating connections with your followers.
Simplifying selling to focus on relationships
When I created this simple process to sell without feeling like I’m selling, I was able to use Twitter in a way that my previously fearful brain never thought possible. I am able to focus on people and avoid a time-sucking vortex. I share my free offers on Twitter without worrying if I’m doing it too much or too little, because it’s all planned out in advance.
When you simplify social media selling, you can focus on building relationships. It doesn’t mean you aren’t in business to make money; we all are. It merely means you are focusing on the relationships, not the selling. Hence, no ick. Like Howard Behar says of his company Starbucks, “It’s not about the coffee. It’s about people.”
Jenny Shih of jennyshih.com is a coach and consultant for solo entrepreneurs. Her clients are “idea factories” with growing businesses who need help planning, streamlining, systemizing, and strategizing. Jenny combines her life coaching expertise, background as a corporate manager, fascination with technology, and love of plan-making to help passionate people change the world.
Jenny is the author of the idea flight kit, a free guide to help you get your ideas up and flying. You can grab your free copy here.
Should your twitter handle be your name or your company’s name? Logo or your face for the picture? Should you speak as your company or yourself? And how exactly does one get clients from twitter anyway?
These questions are especially challenging for the one-man-show who is toeing the line between “business” and “personal”. That’s why I created this free webinar specifically for solopreneurs – one-person businesses without a marketing team on-call to enact a complicated twitter strategy!
In this free hour-long webinar you’ll learn the smartest twitter marketing strategies that work for the very small business with less than 20 minutes a day to spend on twitter.
After all, you’ve got a business to run (by yourself!)
If you’ve got an idea for a rockin’ guest post about running a small business, entrepreneurship, personal branding or online marketing, we want to hear from you! Just enter your details along with a short description of your proposed post and we’ll get back to you on whether it’s a fit.
Products and services that I mention or link to on this blog may be products that I have a financial interest in promoting or have received some other non-financial compensation for.
Adeah Wetzel brings her finely tuned sense of human behaviors, thoughts, and motivations into her true love affair with relationship marketing- the ultimate way to bring like-minded people from across the globe into your business.
Matt Smith is the co-founder of 
Jenny Shih of 
