Careful, You May Have More Social Media Influence Than You Think

If you’ve just started out on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or another social media site as part of your internet marketing, you’re probably comparing yourself to your more established connections. You have 4 connections – but they have 681!! Wow – will you ever get to 681?!

It’s natural to compare yourself to others. Don’t fret; you can achieve as well as anyone else on social media has achieved. They did it, why can’t you?

But don’t assume that, because you have only a relatively small number of followers right now, no one’s listening. Unless you choose the privacy settings for your social media site, anyone can see everything you say or do.

Still, with so few “followers”, who would be interested?

Maybe a customer. Or supplier; or your Uncle Rex. Without getting into the consequences of anyone viewing your social media content unknown to you, a good practice is to never do or say anything on a social media site that you wouldn’t mind a customer, or Uncle Rex, seeing.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Should You Tweet, Link or Connect?

Short Answer: It doesn’t really matter. If you’re getting into social media, it isn’ t too important whether you choose Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or any one of the hundreds of other social media channels. It’s better to pick one, any one, and start participating, than to be overwhelmed by trying to take in the whole daunting social media scene at once.

Perhaps the biggest secret to getting successfully engaged in social media is time management. Take an hour one evening and poke around some sites. If one looks appealing, take an hour in the next day or two to get more in-depth, open an account, maybe even contribute. There’s no hurry.

If you still can’t manage to find focus, talk to friends, family or, even better, your customers and suppliers. Don’t be discouraged if you hear stories similar to yours. But look for something in common. Check the Google Alerts we mentioned in our last post. Find a reason to pick a channel.

Why is it not important which channel you pick? They are increasingly connected to each other. For example, your tweets can automatically appear on LinkedIn. In other words, if you open an account on LinkedIn and Twitter, one tweet gives you content on both channels.

As you become more familiar with your chosen channel, the others don’t seem as daunting and joining them is easier. But don’t forget the (perhaps) biggest secret about engaging in social media. You will find more and less value from channel to channel – choose the ones from which you get the most value.

By Stephen Da Cambra

Content is King on the Internet

There is little else to say - on the web, content is king. In the interests of not leaving you with a blog entry of 10 words, let’s look at why.

Before we begin, for the purposes of this article, content means well researched, well-written and identifiable web copy and images.

Web content is a commodity. It is the main ingredient of the product offered by a growing number of companies. Search engines, social media sites and web directories that is, all of which need content to survive.

Pretend you started a search engine. As with any other business, the first task is to determine your product. That’s easy: search results. Step one done. Your products are the search results that your engine produces when a surfer enters a keyword.

Step two is to identify your market, or potential customers. Easy again: web surfers. Step two done. (This is so easy. I wonder why everyone doesn’t start a search engine or social media site – or did I speak too soon?) Your customers are internet searchers and you want as many of them as possible to use your search engine.

If your engine produces pertinent, high quality results for your customers, they will be happy and more likely to use your engine again; and maybe they will tweet about it.

If your engine produces poor search results, your customers may be confused or frustrated. When that happens, not only will they tweet about it, they will devote entire entries about it in their blogs and start a “Hate Your Search Engine” community on Facebook. The bad vibe will go viral and you will be out of business by teatime.

That’s why content is king on the web.

(Well, it's one reason anyway.)

By Stephen Da Cambra