Have you got aim?

I regularly hear from people that they haven't got time to be on social media, or that it doesn't apply to them. 

I've written before about choosing the right platform for your business, it's true that each platform suits different business models better, but it's important to be on all platforms to maximise your visibility. I truly believe that all businesses can use social media as part of their marketing strategy, it's just about finding the right method.

When it comes to spending time on social media, if you are targeted and specific/relevant to your business you will have success. Don't get me wrong. Don't brag about how great you are and shout buy my stuff, let other people do that. Inform people about your area of business. Ie share some relevant blogs or articles from your industry. Demonstrate your knowledge. 

If you use automation, make it chatty as well as informative about you and your services and your industry. Make sure your content is relative to your business. Make sure the right people are hearing what you've got to say. 

Instead of ignoring businesses similar to yours, build relationships with them. Retweet them occasionally, you never know there may be an opportunity to work together or to refer each other. 

Before you start posting, decide what you want to achieve from social media. If you have a goal to work towards, your posts will be much more targeted, and you are more likely to get a positive relevant response. 

Having an effective social media strategy is vital in maximising your time on social media. For my clients I not only write thstrategies, but I also include an action sheet for them to follow, so they know what to do daily, weekly, bi- weekly and monthly. 

The biggest thing to remember about social media, which I say time and time again, is it's a marathon not a sprint, and you need to put the time in to build the relationships and it will take time to get the sales, but once they start happening you will see a dramatic increase in them, so keep going!

Having an effective social media strategy is vital in maximising your time on social media. For my clients I not only write their strategies, but I also include an action sheet for them to follow, so they know what to do daily, weekly, bi- weekly and monthly. 

My Guide To Writing A Social Media Strategy is nearly finished, I'll let you know when it's ready for sale! In the meantime, you can now do social media workshops for just £20pp, check out my website for more information!

Is the time right?

You know what they say about sales/comedy/business/life and just about anything else you can think of, it's all about timing.

The same is for Social Media. It's ALL about timing, well, okay not all, but it's pretty high on the list of things to get right!

I keep seeing people posting tweets/facebook updates at midnight and later. I might be seeing them, but there's not many other people who are as  insomniac as me, and unless you're targeting the American Market, there's very little point having tweets etc going out that late. I would also think that it would be really obvious that they're auto tweets, which people naturally filter out when they're reading through any of the social media platforms.

So, what's the best time for you to be posting? Well, you need to think about a couple of things.

1. Who is your target Market?

2. Which is their most populated platform?

3. Where are your competition posting?

4. Are they getting successful engagement?

And the most important thing:

5. What time are they likely to be on social media?

Let's take an example target group. Stay at home mothers of school age children. Age bracket 30-40 years old.

Ok, so, they're more likely to be on facebook than twitter or google plus, and highly unlikely to be on LinkedIn.

If you're a parent, you know how manic mornings can be, you know that you hardly have a  minute to breathe, let alone look at a computer/phone/ipad to check who's up to what before you've got them delivered to school.

Therefore, there's  little point in posting a lot of content before 8.30am. If you were using twitter, I would suggest you post a couple of tweets between 6.30 and 8, but for Facebook, you need to be very careful how often you update your page, so I would wait until the time is right.

You could wait until about 11am when most people sit down for a coffee and if they're like me, a biscuit, or just before school kick out time, when they might be waiting in the car for the bell to ring. If you're using twitter, I would aim for a tweet to go out at all those times.

Then, in the evening, there's no point posting until around 7, when Mum is (hopefully for them) sat down with a glass of wine having a catch up on facebook.

My point is this. You have to put yourself in your target market's shoes. Think about their lifestyle, and when they are most likely to be having a look at their computer or phone. Have a look at what works, and what doesn't work for your competitors and you can capitalise on that.

**edit** Thanks to Kevin for sending me the link to www.tweriod.com, which is a fab tool that tells you what time your users are twitter!

What you actually post is a whole mother kettle of fish, and one we can talk about another time.


****If you have found this blog helpful, please leave a comment, and you may be interested to know that I will soon be selling a social media template to help you construct your own campaigns. please email info@adoresocialmedia.co.uk****

Catching Big Fish

I've gone back on my word. It's not something I often do, but sometimes you have to listen to what a collective are saying, when they are saying similar things.

I want my Social Media Consultancy Business to move forward, and to make that happen, I want to start working with bigger companies. I am not ashamed of the fact that I am, at the moment, a one woman band, and as an SME, I have always believed that I should be visible as the person behind my social media. I still think that to a certain degree, but as more and more of my friends become twitter addicts, the level of chat (on twitter primarily) has got to a point where it outweighs my social media input/discussions.

So I've done what I never said I would do, I've set up a personal twitter account. I kind of hate myself for it, but taking advice from the excellent Simon Deacy who is a business consultant with Simway Business Solutions, I have come to understand that big companies I approach will most likely look at my social media streams, and if it's full of chat with my friends rather than social media tips tricks and advice, it misrepresents my level of professionalism.

That's not to say I'm not going to chat with people and get involved in silly discussions, my twitter stream isn't about to become a mass of hashtags with articles from Mashable, or other relevant websites. There might be a few that I think people will find helpful, but I'm not going to bombard you with them!

It is after all, still social media, and I still believe in my roots, that people buy from people, I just don't need potential clients seeing photos of my son necessarily (unless they're taken by other people and are super cute!) or seeing me check into the Lime Tree for a friday lunch etc.

I've always taken the attitude that I don't care what people think, but I want to present myself well, I am good at what I do, and I love it, and I don't want a silly tweet here and there to ruin that impression! Basically, if you want to catch the big fish, you can't behave like small fry.

What do you think? Does the way you behave on your business account reflect well on you professionally?

If you still want to hear my waffle you can follow me on @iSilverLining xx

RIP Facebook?

It's been my belief for about 6 months that facebook is on it's way to the Social Media graveyard to hang out with My Space. I hear people saying that they don't think Google + has legs, but I disagree on a monumental scale. 

For me, Google+ combines all the best bits about the different social media platforms. For example, the ability to add people into your circles, or be added, as you would follow or be followed on twitter; or the business page capability on facebook/linkedin. I think it's taken a happy medium between the 3 biggies (facebook, twitter and LinkedIn) and as a result is luring me away from facebook more and more.

So. I have 2 different accounts on facebook, one for friends and family, and one for business associates. I know I could implement the list functionality, but to be honest, I forget half the time, and I don't want business associates seeing photos of me on a night out or my 4 year old son (beautiful as he may be!).

But quite honestly, everyone has got into a habit of posting arbitrary rubbish on facebook, or linking their twitter account to their facebook account, or twitter to linkedin. These actions break my golden rules! I hate seeing one side of a conversation, it feels like I'm eavesdropping! 

The beauty of google plus, so far, and as far as I'm aware, you can't feed any other platform into it automatically. (feel free to correct me) However, you can integrate your twitter timeline into your google plus dashboard using something such as Google+Tweet, although it seems fairly unreliable. 

What do you think? When I go into G+, I instantly feel more chilled out and zen, and given this image, it's no coincidence! 

So what do you think? This wasn't meant to be a G+ broadcast, but it's kind of turned out that way, sorry! 

Which buttons do you press?

People ask me all the time whether I've used this or that website, this or that piece of software.

Generally, and sometimes a bit embarrassingly, I haven't. Sometimes I haven't even heard of them. Should I confess that though, I'm met with the most horrified of faces.

But that's ok, because whilst they're so caught up in the technology, and what buttons to press, I'm busy pushing people's buttons, not websites.

You see, to get social media right, in my opinion, you have to focus on behaviour. Technology is the smallest part of it. It's tiny weeny. Don't get me wrong, it's useful, but it shouldn't be your biggest concern, you'll learn as you go along, or by asking questions.

I teach my 121 clients about the technology side of it, but really, they come to me because they want to build relationships, and learn how to make money from it. Telling the what buttons to push on a website isn't going to get them very far.

Next time you're tweeting for your business, imagine you were reading it. How would you react to it? Remember that sadly, nobody is as interested in your business as you.

Are you being too pushy? Are you trying to sell too much? Put yourself in your readers shoes, and then you will easily see what buttons to push.

Facebook pages!

Goodness me! I've woken up to some serious social media stuff this morning!

So Facebook have had a pages app available in New Zealand for a little while now, and I've been SO jealous!

In my job, I run a lot of facebook pages, and recently I've been struggling to keep up with things, because you don't get the full functionality by using the Facebook app.

So imagine my delight when I open up my Facebook app this morning, and I've got the option to download the Pages App. YES PLEASE!

I've already had a look, and so far so good! Facebook are known for their app being a bit rubbish, so it will be interesting to see how it behaves over the next few days!

Happy playing everyone, feel free to let us know how you get on with it too!

I ❤ twitter!

Oh twitter! You're so brilliant! Nevermind that you randomly unfollow my best friends now and again!

Why am I loving twitter? Well, they want to help us! Twitter have released a guide for small businesses. This is very exciting, especially as the US have had one for a while!

I haven't read it yet, but I wanted to share it with you immediately, so here it is:

https://business.twitter.com/en/smallbiz_guide/?ref=tw-btc-bp

(you will have to copy and paste, I'm blogging from my phone which won't let me attach a link. Weird)

I'll be back to discuss it with you soon! Happy reading! X