Category Archives: Social Media

What is the growth rate of your social media profile?

April 3, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Social media is here to stay and is expanding its reach daily. In a few years, marketers may devote double the resources to professional social media accounts. But, what does the future look like for you?

We all spend time working on our social media accounts. Some of us have more followers than others. But, my question is, how fast do your accounts grow?

Google+
My Google Plus account only grows when I follow others. I publish popular industry specific content mixed with beautiful pictures and content of more general interest. We get at least fifty interactions per day, but no growth from the content no matter how popular it is. It seems that there are only two ways to grow a Google+ account. You have to have a fan base already that finds you because you have a G+ icon on your main site. Or, you follow lots of people and they follow you back. Even Guy Kawasaki who has over six million followers on G+ has a growth rate of less than 1% per month and he gets his content shared hundreds of times per day!

Twitter
A Twitter follower is only about 10% as potent for getting clicks as a G+ follower. However, Twitter is an easy medium for growth. Personally, I follow about 2000 new people per week on my main Twitter account and get a few hundred to follow me back. I can get 300 new followers per week without even trying. Additionally, if I publish twenty hot articles about my industry that I found on the web and get shared, I can get a lot more followers on top of that. I don’t have an exact number for that though. My estimate is that I might get 100 new Twitter followers if I get about 45 shares or favorites. Additionally, if I have ongoing discussions with other Twitterers, then Twitter introduces me to more people in their, “you might also like” section. If I used Twitter to the maximum, I could probably get around 800 new followers per week. On other mediums, this would be nearly impossible

Facebook
Facebook makes it easy to grow your presence with PPC for attracting new followers as well as PPC for sharing your articles. Both types of PPC have worked miracles for me. My facebook is currently growing at about 8% per month posting twice a day and using PPC. In three years, I might go from 9000 followers to 60,000.

Predicting Growth Rates
It is hard to predict growth rates on social media. The speed you are growing at now is not the same as the speed you will be growing at in a few years. You might reach a saturation point in attracting your relevant audience at a particular point, and then experience a slow down in growth. Or, your medium could stop growing which will affect your growth. Additionally, social media mediums could change their algorithm for how helpful they are in promoting your profile, or change their advertising rates or offerings.

How I see my future using G+
However, in my long run, I see getting a lot of clicks from Google+ since I am gaining a lot of followers through a very labor intensive practice of following and unfollowing. However, I don’t see much growth happening after I stop doing my manual promotion. Exponential growth doesn’t seem likely. I hope I’m wrong and that I am given the opportunity to grow into the millions.

Twitter – my future
Twitter makes it hard to get any serious amount of clicks unless you have 50,000+ followers. But, the good news is that in a few years, I see myself having that many followers. Additionally, I follow other large accounts that have grown a lot. One of the social media accounts I follow grew from around 60,000 to 100,000 in the last two years. Additionally, an account of general interest that I follow went from 400,000 to 550,000 in the last several years. These two accounts post regularly and have experienced growth rates of about 25-30% per year which is excellent and gives me hope. At the rate they are going they will be in the millions in a few years.

Facebook in the future
Right now I have 9000 Facebook followers on my Notary Facebook. I have different accounts for the different sites I manage, but the Notary Facebook is the most dynamic since we have such good followers. We’re growing at 8% per month. Since most of our followers are Realtors, and Mortgage Bankers, we might run out of potential followers after we hit 50,000, but it is looking like we’ll get to 50,000 in three years. We’re already getting 3000 or more clicks per month from Facebook, so it will be a waterfall of clicks in three years!

What about your future?
It is hard to predict which social media medium will do best in your future. So compare a few, and then really focus on the one that gives you some serious results. You need to track your analytics yourself because your individual situation si unique and not like mine or anyone elses.

Getting Social Media advice from a cat

January 30, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

We all know how intelligent cats are. They would show us their intelligence more often if they weren’t so busy with their busy napping schedule. But, did you know that cats are good at marketing? It makes sense. Marketing is like a tiger chasing gazelles in the plains of Africa. All of the same skills apply. You have to be good at watching, timing, strategy, and pouncing. You can learn a lot from watching a cat.

Identifying your target audience
Cats identify their target audience by using their powers of observation. They sit and study the market behind a camouphlage of tall grass. This is exactly what you should do as a marketer. Just go to a place with some tall grass, and bring it into your office next to the computer to get you in the mood. For social media marketing, some people choose followers, and others choose sources of followers. If you choose your followers one by one, you will spend all day on a few. As a marketer, you need to follow tens of thousands of people on social media. So, find particular sources of followers that will give you the highest quality of follower. In cat terms, find the best large field(s) or expanse(s) where your lunch likes to graze. If one large field is not good on a particular day, you have researched other ones, so you have a constant supply of social media gazelles to prey upon.

Licking Your Paws
It is important to take a nap after some hunting. Reflect on the activities of the day, and give your other cat friends a kiss. Down time is very important when you are a cat!

Sitting & Watching
Identifying your target audience requires a lot of sitting and watching. My rule is that if you retweet from a particular account and those tweets are popular on your account, their followers will be compatible with your account too. You might have to experiment with a few dozen accounts to find the right accounts to feed off of. But, knowing which accounts to feed off of at a particular time is another skill you need to learn from your cat friends. Basically, you want to find the account with the slowest running gazelles if that makes sense. Easy pickings. You want to start finding members that comment on your favorite account or share posts. They will be the most active if you bring them over to your account. Active accounts have the juiciest meat too as you will soon find out. Once you have eaten all of the accounts that are active and the most relevant to you, go to some semi-relevant accounts and get some active people there. Even an active member from a completely general category might be more valuable to you than a dead-beat in your exact industry.

Sharing Your Catch
Remember, cats are very sharing, especially with their baby kitties. Sharing also takes lots of watching as well which is a skill that cats excel at. Some people just browse around and share stuff. This is not a good approach. You need to first decide what category of post you want to share . If you want to post ten shares or posts per day, you should decide how many of each category you should post. I like to post one or two industry specific posts per day. Then, I like to do semi-relevant posts. Finally, I do many posts of common interest to try to expand my fan base. If I decide to post a photo of a cat (which works very well) I’ll look at 40 cat photos, and pick the best one. I don’t like to be too choosy, otherwise there won’t be any choices for next time. But, I don’t like to pick the first cat I see either. I pick the best of 40, and I generally get 20-100 likes if I post it on a large group. The other guys who just pick the second or third cat they see average only a pawfull of clicks.

Napping
After a busy day doing cat-style marketing, it’s time for a nap. Nighty night!

What makes viral content spread?

January 25, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

There are many factors that can make viral content spread. Unique, catchy posts published at the right time to the right audience in the right way seem to do well on the net. You cannot predict if a post will go viral just by looking at it even if you are an expert. But, there are some factors to learn about.

(1) Keywords
Please understand that each audience on social media is a different animal. There are different ages, genders, socioeconomical types, interests, and other differences that could categorize audiences. Your audience also reflects you in certain ways as you are the one who built your audience. There are several types of keywords taht might do well on social media.

Positive: Keywords like success, love, win, adapt, grow or millionaire do well on my network.

Interesting: Then, there are interesting keywords such as personalities, comedian, comparative keywords such as good vs. evil, women’s issues, and more.

Relatable: Next, there are relatable themes such as dealing with insane coworkers, demanding bosses, diaries, training, school, stress, etc.

Shockers: But, what always fascinated me on Twitter was the use of what I call “shockers.” Being negative or giving nagging advice for how not to get in small trouble in the world seems to not be popular with my audience. But, if you give advice for how to not end up in jail, the entire feeling is different. You just crossed the line from being annoying to catching their attention! I’m reading someone else’s blog on the science of viral posts and he wrote a title: “30 things to start doing for yourself.” They wrote a sequel entitled: “30 things to stop doing yourself.” The author of this blog thought the post did well because of the negativity in the title. I politely disagree. I feel that it is more of a shocker. People feel that they need to do more and more and more. While the management experts are telling people they need to do less so they can focus on what is critical. Telling people what to stop doing that they think they should do more of is throwing a curve ball and grabs their emotional interest which is what makes the concept so attractive and potentially viral.

(2) Is your content easy to read?
Having pretty photos or graphics that draw your attention makes so much difference. People who are online for too many hours in a row get mentally frazzled. They cannot concentrate well unless they take a long walk. Pictures are easy to mentally absorb, but the photos that make your jaw drop are the ones that will get you real traffic. The text of your article should be easy to skim too with easy to navigate sections, headers, subheaders, etc. Many authors make the grammatical structures and verbiage from the subheaders consistent to make it easier to read.

(3) Articles that are too short typically get a lot less attention
As an amateur blogger, I realize that experimenting is key. I write all types of pieces with very different subject matter and topics. What I realized is that the short pieces I write tend to not get clicked on much while the detailed articles that are about a page and a half seem to do best. There is no magic formula for content creation, but people are not likely to share your content if it doesn’t seem “share-worthy.” There should be lots of information people perceive as being valuable for them to share. But, once you get shared bya few people, it could go out of control.

(4) Is it useful, interesting or a shocker?
When I analyze stats, I always notice that the “how to” topics seem to do the best. Personally, I find the articles with surprises and shocks more interesting. Then there are articles that could be perceived as interesting. But, interesting to whom? When I write about topics that I find interesting, my readers don’t spend long on the page. Finding concepts that are more broad in who they might interest while matching your audience’s general theme and preferences seems to make the most sense.

(5) Famous people & companies
Many people who create content try to get a little more traffic by including names of famous people in the title. Since many people know about Donald Trump, President Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and other famous people, they might be more likely to click on your article if you include these names in the title. Names of large companies, people or other big keywords relevant to your industry will on average get you more traffic. However, merely inserting what I call an “anchor” keyword in your Title doesn’t guarantee traffic. You still need a catchy topic and theme.

(6) Simple grammar wins the game
The type of grammatical structure you use in the title makes a huge difference. Something with very simple grammar and then a punch and a twist seems to work the best. A call to action is recommended by the pros as well. My most popular blog article was not that well written, and wasn’t even that interesting. But, the title conformed to “the rules” for what makes a post popular. “Steve Jobs watched his programmers carefully, so should you” was the title. The first word was my anchor keyword — the name of someone famous who is relevant to programming, outsourcing and business which are the general audiences I am writing to. Notice how the structure of the text is: Subject – Verb – Object – Adverb, Call to Action. It is very easy to mentally digest when you are frazzled after using the internet for six hours in a row like many of my readers. Additionally, it touches on a sensitive point. Programmers hate to be watched. They want to be left alone while they “bang out” code. In reality, the minute you leave 99% of programmers alone, they will either work on someone else’s project, slack off, go off on a time wasting tangent, or stop following directions. You cannot leave programmers unsupervised, and Steve Jobs understood this concept well.

(7) Delayed reactions
Sometimes a popular piece might be posted on a blog. A few people might tweet links to the content right away. But, the shares that get the real traffic might not be posted until after the fact. It might be a few days after the content was posted, or in some cases, a social media manager might decide to repost a particular piece a few months after it was created. Sometimes, if the crowd has had enough chance to refresh itself after seeing the content the first time around, the content might be popular a second time around. It is commonplace for large Twitter accounts to post the same content over and over again. However, they won’t just promote any piece again and again. They only post content that did well in the long run. Some posts are popular the first time you post them as many will retweet your content. However, if you post the same piece a second or third time, many of the sharers lose interest. However, there are still a percentage of content pieces that will get regular shares even after you have posted them ten times (not during the same day please.)

(8) 1st generation vs. multiple generation shares
If you have a large social media account with some close followers who visit your page regularly, a good post might get you a lot of shares. These could be defined as first generation shares. If you get 100 shares, your post could be defined as viral, however, if the shares are not multi-generational, it is not “really” viral. On the other hand, you might get something shared seven times that could be defined as viral simply because Joe retweeted your post, and then Sharon retweeted your post from Joe’s account and then Jen retweeted your post from Sharon’s account, etc. The flow of traffic is very hard to define. One of the issues is that people who follow you have the same interests. However, people who folllow your followers are less likely to share your interests. So, unless your post appeals to a more general audience, going viral in a full-blown way seems unlikely.

(9) See what the big guys are doing
If your dream is to one day go viral, the chances of you achieving this goal are slim. However, a more reasonable goal is to have systematically good content that gets noticed by a large audience. See what the professionals are doing with their blogs. See what types of grammar they use in headers. See what types of photos and diagrams they use. See what networks they use to promote their content. What works for them might not work for you, but at least you’ll get some clues.

(10) Grabbing people’s emotions
If your content is funny, heart-warming, political, easy to share, or shocking. The main point of creating popular content is to appeal to the reader’s emotions. Even if you write about dry business topics, the emotionally charged articles will do better than those that read like a textbook. Integrating pupplies, Halloween, dating, desserts, vacation, or kitties into your content is likely to have a positive result.

You might also like:

Top viral images and how they spread
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/04/05/top-viral-images-and-how-they-spread/

I didn’t get retweeted, but that’s okay
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/09/i-didnt-get-retweeted-but-thats-okay/

A tale of 4 social media managers
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/05/03/a-tale-of-4-social-media-managers/

Outsource: Is someone’s 1st click more valuable as an analytic?

January 24, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

I run websites and have for years. For the last nine years I have been glued to my Google analytics. I have seen my various strategies work or not work and have seen my stats go up and up over the years. My main site www.123notary.com has gone from around 40,000 visitors per month in 2008 to about 180,000 per month in 2015 due to increased quality and several huge successes in social media marketing which by the way did not come over-night!

But, after staring at my stats, and thinking about my recent work on Twitter, I came to the conclusion that there’s more. When I follow 1000 people on Twitter, I normally get an average of three clicks on my site that is linked to my Twitter account. We get tons of traffic to my site daily. However, the click from Twitter is a new click from a new person. I have done ROI analysis reports for my site and established how much a social media click is worth. However, a new click could lead to subsequent clicks and is therefor worth more.

It is virtually impossible to know if these anonymous clicks lead to subsequent clicks. However, my site traffic went up after my new Twitter clicks went up. When clicks to my blog went up, that too helped my site traffic. But, which helped my site traffic more — New clicks or old clicks?

Unfortunately, in analytics, sometimes you just have to guess how much certain metrics are worth. If a new person sees my site, what is the chance they will visit again? I would tend to guess perhaps 5-10% realistically. They must have been somewhat targeted to visit my site in the first place, so if they liked what they saw, they might come back. But, if they did come back, how many subsequent visits might there be? I would guess that someone who likes my site might come back a few times, or if they get hooked then over a hundred times. The average subsequent number of visits for a repeat visitor might be twenty visits. If 10% of my initial new visitors do twenty subsequent visits, then for each 10 new visitors, there would be a total of 30 visits which is why I guestimate that each new visit is worth triple in the ROI value of a regular social media click that is likely to be a recurring click.

My parting words are — if only we could know more detailed facts about each click — or perhaps see a face and a story behind the clicks.

Comparing business blogs to profiling criminals & high school students

January 22, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

Which business blog is the best for you? You’d better hope the answer isn’t, “none of your business.”

I read many business blogs partly out of interest and partly to help generate ideas for my own business oriented blogging endeavors. I have found that each business blog out there seems to have its own style and identity. After a few years of reading, I learned that these blogs are so different in character that you could in a sense profile them the same way that law enforcement officers profile human beings. It’s a bit like high school too — there are the nerds, the jocks, the popular kids, the average kids, the fashion crowd, and the delinquents. With business blogs there are very intellectual blogs, popular blogs, and some quirky blogs too. Let’s take a closer look.

(Academic) Harvard Business Review
Its academic stature speaks for itself. This blog’s followers tend to include many serious thinkers, and high level business people. A scholarly yet surprisingly narrow focus, not to mention that they limit the quantity of blog articles you can read without having a membership. But, then again, Harvard always was an exclusive club. Although they incorporate a lot of valuable information and statistics, its practical application in the real world is sometimes sorely lacking.

(Popular) Entrepreneur
Their choice of topics is broad, always interesting, and performs very well on social media. Unfortunately, their articles often lack depth and are often just too short. Their article about five ways to reduce stress was all too predictable and could have included many stress reduction techniques that none of us had ever heard before. Maybe coming up with such content would have caused them too much stress.

(Well-Rounded) Inc.
Inc. thrives on a seemingly endless inventory of amazing article titles, and just the right amount of thoroughness and just intellectual enough without over doing it. Their blog titles do well on social media and I find them a pleasure to indulge in.

(Fun & Potent) Marketing Profs
Ann Handley delivers amazingly useful marketing & content creation tips which work for my business in real life. I actually discovered many of her tips on my own months or years (and derived tremendous success from them) before reading her articles which is why I realize how potent her secrets are. Her articles confirm a lot of the information I discovered by accident, and teach much much more. Additionally, she makes her articles fun, personable and digestible by including many references to puppies, snacks, vacation, childhood, and other feel-good and relatable themes which incidentally is a proven marketing technique to get more reader engagement.

(Delinquent & Philosophical) 123outsource.net’s Blog
This blog is written by yours truly. It is delinquent because I lack any formal writing training and make many technical writing mistakes including using the word “writing” one to many times earlier in this sentence. Like fellow delinquents, I’m not living up to my full potential. However, my blog has many very unusual looks at international cultural issues, marketing, health, stress management, lifestyle, politics, and business in general that you won’t find anywhere else.

(News Media) Forbes, Wall Street Journal & Bloomberg
These blogs are all typical of News Media. They are all very professional, and interesting. As far as being useful to a startup Entrepreneur, I cannot say. Additionally, the quantity of titles that these news blogs innovate is much more limited than some of the other business blog choices.

So, when people ask me which business blog I like best, I reply, “Mind your own business!”

No animals were harmed in the making of this blog

Does being “social” boost your social media?

January 20, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

For those of you who read my blog regularly, you’ll be acutely aware that I am a student of the mysteries of feng-shui. I think that hidden energies in the environment can boost your business or social media. But, recently, I’ve unveiled some of the secrets of social media.

Some people think that by spending lots of time on Facebook that they’ll have a good social media campaign. Not so. You need to be a student of what people like, what photos do well, and when to share what you share. But, there’s more. Being social can help your social media simply by your consciousness absorbing or creating social energies. This might sound a bit odd at first, but try it.

I spent several hours a week at special spots in Los Angeles where it is more social. There is a coffee house where there is comedy night, and people socialize. My Twitter always does better after an evening there. I recently went to the symphony a few times. That didn’t help my Facebook, but my blog traffic did well as a result. Hanging out next to Warner Brothers helped my Facebook campaign tremendously. So, how does just being at these places help?

You are absorbing energies from people who engage in broadcasting. Facebook is essentially broadcasting information about your company or your personal life. If you want people to read what you published, you need an audience. Who is better at attracting large audiences than Warner Brothers? Nobody — that is why I like to pick up on their energies.

Being social and making friends with new people can also help your social media as the energy of connecting with new people is what Facebook, Twitter and the other platforms are all about. But, if you don’t like social media, try anti-social media!

Stumbleupon re-examined. What makes it tick (or stumble)

January 18, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

I have been baffled by stumbleupon for months now. Each time I try something new, I fall on my face which doesn’t surprise me considering their name. I tried posting my best notary articles, comedy articles, business articles, but nothing got noticed unless I used their PPC campaign which ate up my budget without giving me much in return. But, then I opened my eyes and began to watch where I was going.

Getting followers
I have done well on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and am even beginning to get the knack of Google+. All of these social media engines let you post content, get followers and interact. On Twitter, I mastered the art of getting mass amounts of followers in record breaking time using the most effective techniques. It is routine to me now, and I can do it in my sleep from my nest. Facebook, we use a PPC system which gets us low-cost high-value followers quickly too. For Linked In we do manual outreach, and get a healthy amount of followers every week. But, for Stumbleupon it is a slightly different ballgame.

Commenting is key
I was frustrated. I was looking at the profiles for stumblers who had varying amounts of followers. Some posted, others didn’t. Some liked stuff, others didn’t. So, what gives? How do these guys get followers when I have only 1? How annoying! Then, I saw it — or should I say that I stumbled upon a reality. They were commenting. I saw that for each two or three comments they made, they got a follower. Hmmm. I love commenting. Maybe Stumbleupon is for me after all.

Getting reach
My first Stumbleupon article to get 33 views manually was a travel article. What I learned was that Stumbleupon is good for travel, but horrible for business topics while LinkedIn is the best for business. You live and you stumble. I picked a fun article from Lonely Planet, published it and got 33 views. I don’t know why nobody liked it. I think they should since it was a fun article about the friendliest city in the world. But, if I had more followers, I bet that I would get more views. If I had 1000 followers, it is my guess that those followers would mostly see what I posted and a few would like it, which would allow for even more people to see it, and the possibility of the article going viral.

I’ll let you know
Social media is an adventure filled with excitement, joy, learning, and mishaps. I’ll let you know if I learn anything in the next few months. You never know. I think I have stumbled upon something as this is the first time in human recorded history that I got close to three dozen organic views!

Is social media about engagement or nurturing the buzz?

January 18, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

I do a lot of social media, and I will assure you that engagement is the key to social media. But, how you achieve engagement is multi-faceted. If you cater to a niche market and know what they want to read about, that really helps. However, getting to know your audience personally is even more critical. Since I own a few websites and our customers interact with us, in a sense we are very engaged. The catch is that our personal engagement does not normally initiate on social media. Customers often initially find us on social media, but the personal engagement starts when they email us with questions about advertising or industry specific questions.

Stage 1
They initiate the engagement in our case, but the beginning of the chain of events happens when they first see our blog or Facebook.

Stage 2
Then it develops to the next stage when they become regular readers.

Stage 3
It is not until stage three after they have been reading our materials for a while that they actually contact us. This article is more about enhancing good results for stage two which is getting a regular reader to your blog.

Maintaining the buzz
Maintaining the buzz is critical for any social media platform or blog. If you publish interesting contents in January, and then bore everyone in February, you might lose your regular browsers. Other blogs publish a ton in one month and then have a period of silence for a few months. You lose your engagement right away with irregularity. You need to publish regularly on social media. I suggest blogging every 12 to 36 hours as a matter of practice. That way your followers will never be bored. Using Twitter and Facebook should be daily or nearly daily as well if possible. It is possible to waste too much time on social media. My suggestion is to use analytics to find out what is popular and post the popular content regularly and skip the rest altogether! That way the time you invest will work for you.

Reshare, but only reshare the right stuff!
If you publish other people’s content, that can really help your social media. I regularly post up to two dozen interesting posts that are relevant to the interests of my followers on Twitter each day. I delete the ones that didn’t get reshared from my account. I keep a list of posts that regularly get shared at least twice when I post them again and again. Twitter rewards accounts that publish popular content — so, I research how to do it effectively.

Mastering online interaction
Twitter rewards people for successful online interaction. Unfortunately this is hard, and a separate art to master. If you want to develop buzz on your Twitter account, interact with others who also enjoy interacting. That way you can develop conversations. Twitter will reward you by introducing more followers to you if you have multiple-post conversations, and those you converse with are more likely to regularly share your content!

Should your blog include quizzes?

January 18, 2015 by admin
Categories: Social Media | Leave a comment

Want to really capture people’s attention? Most people write boring blogs and have third rate photos infused into their blog. But, having an interesting quiz takes the cake! I just was visiting Bill Gate’s site and he had a quiz about superpowers which was really more about gender equality. I think he tricked me.

But, after the gender questions, I learned about some energy related questions. 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity in the world. That was the one question I got right. I also learned that only 5% of energy production is from solar and wind. But, I digress…

Quizzes are a great way to boost engagement which is the most important analytic in social media. What good is followers if they aren’t involved with your account or visit much, click on anything or care? Just a quick note, it is not always possible to measure the total impact of engagement. An engaged follower who is always thinking about you, reading your materials, and clicking on things might not be so easy to completely measure. You can see when someone retweeted you, but do you know when someone is visiting your page every other day?

Perhaps new analytics will create lists of your followers in order of engagement with histories of each one — when they became more engaged with you, when they became more regular visiting your Twitter account, and how often they interact or share your tweets. Analytics are getting more sophisticated by the day, so these analytics might be available before you know it.

Find winning ideas for blogging by using good analytical methods

January 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Leave a comment

I have written thousands of blog articles in my career. I am by no means a professional or even close. But, if you write for a small blog, you need to be interesting, not professional. The other skill you need is analytics. If you can figure out which blog topics are popular, you are far ahead of the game. The next level of sophistication is figuring out which blog articles are popular on particular social networks and what tweet or post titles made them popular. Finally, you need to keep track of when a particular post’s popularity fades. There are many layers of sophistication in blogalytics, but they are not that hard to master. You just need to understand what is important to understand.

The rule of 1000 impressions
Some people feel that if you get retweeted on Twitter, then you are in good shape. Getting your content shared is helpful. However, the bottom line for me is if someone reads my article. A click is worth more than a retweet to me. Getting retweeted can help you grow your following on Twitter. But, a click helps to grow your blog following. Both analytics are important, but one seems more like a final result to me. The problem is that clicks on Twitter are not so easy to get. A click could be worth its weight in gold if it is from someone new who will become a regular follower. But, getting that click and figuring out where your best clicks come from involves some technique. If you post a blog entry on your Twitter account and nobody clicks on it, what did you learn? My best blog entries get clicked roughly once per 25,000 impressions. That means if your account has 6000 followers, and you post your blog entry four times during the day, and you get one click, you achieved something similar to my 1:25,000 impressions stat. I have another Twitter account with fewer followers which has a much better click ratio just because the followers are more engaged and much more connected to the industry I write about.

How do you establish a stat?
For each blog entry you write, you should have a “Twitter click stat.” You might need to publish each tweet multiple times to get an average. If you have 10,000 followers and publish each tweet ten times at intervals of twenty or more minutes apart, you will get a rate per 100,000. You might see that particular entries get five clicks per 100K while others don’t get clicked at all. If you waste every day of the week tweeting content that nobody wants to read, you are wasting your time. But, what if you spend your time identifying what they want to read and then post more of that, and write more of that. Then you are using your Twitter and blogging time more efficiently. You are finding winning ideas and you will win the game.

The ideal structure for a social media company

January 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Most social media marketing companies out there have very limited know-how, but charge an arm and a leg. I believe that if some smarter companies would get out there and grow like crazy, most of the mediocre companies would be quickly put out of business. It is all about having the right structure.

Do you have replacements?
It is common for a social media company to have a boss, and a bunch of workers doing their thing. Each person has different specialties. If your LinkedIn guy drops out, the next person in line might not be very good at it. It is tricky, because there are so many channels, so much to know, and so many things changing in the industry. The way you used LinkedIn five years ago might not be as effective today!

Brew masters and social sauces
In my mind you need a good boss. The boss should have a solid understanding of all of the channels. That way he can teach others when the need arises. If the boss spends all of his time wheeling and dealing he won’t have time to specialize in the “sauce” which is social media knowledge. The only way around this is if the boss has a partner who is the “brew master.” In breweries, the brew master is often more powerful than the owner. But, such a person has to be on equal footing with the boss otherwise they will quit for sure.

Fluidity is key
If you have only a handful of workers, when one quits, replacing them will be hard. If you have some outsourced people overseas who do mundane tasks for pennies on the dollar, if you need more labor, you will have a flexible pool. Additionally, you need multiple people for each specialty in case someone drops out. As you test new people out, they become part of your labor pool. It is hard to grow a company if you don’t have a handle on your labor, so you need to have more labor than you can handle. As part time new people impress you with their good work and loyalty, you could promote them by giving them more hours and higher pay.

Analysts and checkers
You need staff members who check on the other members. You need to see how they are doing on projects and take notes. You also need to see how effective their work is and if they need to be taught something new. In some cases, checking people regularly is how you get accurate data on when to fire someone. If their work is bad for long enough — fire them. And conversely, if your new people aren’t proving themselves well, then fire them as well.

Customer Support
Should the people interacting with your clients be the same as the ones doing the work? It might be easier to have everything separate. Have customer support managers who interact with the analysts, salespeople, and workers. A team of people working seamlessly together with multiple specialties might be the best way to structure a social media company for the future.

Growth Contracts
It is easy for social media workers to not feel a sense of ownership. But, if they don’t get paid until they reach certain goals, their mentality will change quickly. It might make more sense to have goal milestones, because personally, I don’t want to waste my time with anyone who can’t accomplish anything of value!