Maximize Social Media Expertise

Ten Things You Can Do Now to Maximize Your Social Media Expertise presented by Chris Lam of What I Run Into, Nora DePalma of Life Lessons Halfway Through, and Stacie Tamaki of The Flirty Blog

1)    Brand yourself –

be appealing and recognizable across all social media platforms. Your user name is your brand so consider future potential when you pick it.  Make it easy to remember and unique. Do the “land grab” – grab up the similar names and potentially negative names that play on yours so you can help to control some of the negative publicity. (From the PDF and not covered in the session:  It’s also very important to brand yourself visually, being consistent with your colours and symbols etc.)

2)    Choose your platforms –

you might want to try everything and see which perform the best in analytics. Learn what works best for you because obviously you need to be where your audience is!

3)    Manage your time –

when is your audience online? When are they clicking and when are they conversing? Use your time efficiently.  Timely.is helps you see what times are best for you.  Use a balance of larger and smaller posts to appeal to more people.  If pressed for time, it’s better to have a couple short posts than nothing that week.

4)    Measure your efforts. 

Use Google analytics so you can get some idea of how you are doing. What is the percentage of new vs. returning readers.  How did they come in? Which platform is working best for you.  You need to review your traffic at least once a month but weekly is even better.

5)    Tag your target. 

Identify brands you want to work with.  Then talk about them.  People pay attention when you talk about them.  Tag them, @ reply them – make sure it’s visible to that brand.  Contact the company and ask to be added to their media list if they have one.

6)    Your personal vs. professional voice – which is correct? 

Sometimes being more transparent is what companies are looking for – other times it’s more professional.  You need to figure out what works for you and what the brands you’re interested in are looking for.  Whatever you do, you need to be authentic.

7)    Know your influencers. 

What and who are they?   Who do you learn from and how do you find them?  Put in keywords and interests and look for those handles.  Look at the core bloggers you follow and then look at who influences them.  Look everywhere – not just the huge sites.  Ask your friends.  Step outside the box.

8)    Listen to your audience. 

Engagement is key.  Don’t be just pushing content.  Take a poll. Do a hashtag. Comment on their blog posts and their tweets too.  Look for what they ask for.  Look for demographics: you can take this to the brands.

9)    Understand the fine print. 

Know the terms of service. Protect your blogging rights and respect those of others. Guidelines keep changing so keep up to date on them.  The moment a picture is taken it is copyrighted to that person – no symbol is needed to establish that copyright.  Also remember, that nothing really ever disappears from the internet.  With a site like Archive.org, you can  see screenshots from years earlier – People can see how long  you were using their pictures for and then can sue you and charge you for the length of time you used them.   It’s not that you always receive a cease and desist first – they may go straight to suing you.  Give credit where it’s due.  Look for media links for press stuff – they want you to use that and won’t be upset about you doing so.

10)   Teach and keep learning. 

No faster way to establish yourself as an expert than by teaching others.  Do your research and continue to learn and grow.