I have been developing my Social Media activities (and advising my clients to do so) for a couple of years now. I’m an active Twitterer and a member of LinkedIn, I blog regularly on a number of different sites, and do my fair share of commenting on other blogs when the blog is enjoyable and where I see an opportunity to add value.
But, like everyone else, I know I should be doing more, and I should have a proper Social Media Strategy to understand why I’m doing it, what I expect from it, and how I’m going to achieve it.
I attended an excellent Social Media workshop given by Nigel Morgan at the Newbury Expo event yesterday and there were several really useful pointers that I’m going to use to improve my use of Social Media which I thought might be useful to share. I confess to already knowing most of this (or at least being aware of it sometime in the past), but I am going to do something about it now!
Facebook Tips
Keep your personal stuff separate from your business stuff by using Facebook Pages for your business information and your profile for personal things. This way, your business image is less likely to be damaged by embarrassing images or personal comments
LinkedIn Tips
Connect with who you know
Get a 100% complete profile
Get recommended by others, but avoid ‘obvious’ recommendation exchanges
Routinely check new members and connect with those you know
Avoid LIONS (LinkedIn Open Networkers) – these are members who value quantity of connections over quality of connections, and who will happily accept invitations to connect from whoever asks them
Answer questions – helping others out is good, of course, but if, in doing so, you also happen to give the best answer you can get acknowledged as an expert and others may ask you directly next time
Twitter Tips
Register your business name before somebody else does
Use Hootsuite to manage your Twitter experience and schedule your Tweets
Tweet a lot and don’t let your account become inactive (as the Twitter team may remove it without warning)
Use the 80/20 rule – make sure only 20% of your tweets are directly business-related
Use hashtags (prefix key searchable terms with the # character)
Blogging Tips
Do it
Don’t worry if people don’t comment on your blog straight away it takes time, but there are things you can do to help…
Comment on other blogs where (and only where) you can add value
If somebody comments on your blog then take a look at theirs and add a comment there too
Use Twitter to point people at your blog
Please comment if you agree or disagree with any of these points, or if you have any other tips…
Why thank you Martin! Very kind of you to heap such praise and thank you for the link! Obviously I just had to comment!
It was a fun seminar and clearly you were not alone. I’ve had plenty of feedback from those who already knew and understood social media, but just needed that extra push!
Keep up the good work!
Nigel as ever… seeming to deliver another stirling performance… and with Mini Morgan too!
Nigel is one of those guys that inspires me too Martin, that’s why we hooked up for the social media guys tour.
Maybe it would be good to catch up at some point as we are in Swindon