Category Archives: Social Media

There are lots of blog articles out there, and most don’t get much attention. This is for various reasons. Some are on blogs that are virtually unknown. Others are just too boring, while many are too serious. Most people who read blogs are not scholars and are not reading blogs to learn. Consequently, most blogs out there are not that intellectual (except for Harvard Business Review and the New York Times.) The main thing to understand as a blogger is that you need to really learn your audience and become an expert at what they like to read about. Since you will write thousands of blog articles in your career and each one is different, it is hard to know which theme and variations they will like — but, studying your audience will help you refine this ability.

The main thing I learned on Twitter is not to give advice, especially not nagging dentist type advice. People don’t want to know what they should be doing. They want interesting facts that are presented in a fun way. People don’t want to know what they are doing wrong in their business. They want fun things that can help them do better.

I always have advice for Indian outsourcing companies. To date, I have not seen more than a few outsourcers in India who answer the phone professionally. If I were a client, I wouldn’t hire someone who has a receptionist who doesn’t communicate properly. I tell them they are losing business, but they don’t want to listen. People don’t want to know about what bad habits that they have that lose them business. They want quick and fun tips to get more business. Of course in real life, they will lose all of their leads once the leads talk to their receptionist — but, I can’t control that especially if nobody listens to my best advice.

So, my best advice goes completely to waste, but my jokes and fun tips are appreciated. The main thing is to stimulate, entertain, interact and have fun on social media. Don’t take social too seriously as it is not normally used that way. If you want a formal education buy a text book and if you want a serious consultation hire a consultant.

Sure, the big guys in blogging such as the Huffington Post, Harvard Business Review and other huge agencies do well at blogging. They can hire the best writers, editors, and have a huge following already. Many organizations that did well on social media already had millions of fans long before blogging was even popular. It was easy for them because the had resources. But, the rest of us do not have resources. We start from scratch.

Some people are good writers. Others are good at hiring the best people. I am not good at either unfortunately and also do not have the largest marketing channels built up either. However, I realized that the more I write, the better I get at it. The more I blog, the more I figure out what is popular and what is not with my crowd. I also find co-bloggers from time to time who can help me. My blog continues to grow and my social media channels continue to grow as well. They work together. My growth is based on me using the resources that I do have rather than complaining that I don’t have the best resources. I use myself, my time, and my ability to see what others are writing about. I often take someone else’s theme and create my own pieces based on my own take of their themes. Perhaps it is like Mozart’s theme and variations a little bit except that I don’t write 23 variations on a single theme!

I had a vision a few months back. I saw that my business blog would become huge and would develop a gigantic following. We get about 3500 visitors per month now. But, I saw millions in the long run. As time goes on, I will improve my personal writing skills and have the money to hire professionals to help me. I’ll know exactly what to publish, when and in what quantity. I’m not sure how long it will take to obtain this type of growth. But, with my social media skills improving daily, I might get there in four or five yeras. It is hard to predict where I will be or where the world will be in a few years.

The moral of this entry is to use what you have. Continue developing your skills. Keep figuring out what works, what doesn’t and why — and eventually you have a chance at being a popular blogger. It doesn’t happen overnight, but in time you can build your empire!

Do you run a Twitter profile? Do you like it? Me too! But, getting new followers is not always as straight forward as the how to articles on blogs might lead you to presume. There are various ways to attract new visitors to your Twitter profile. Converting visitors to followers is a separate issue!

Attracting new visitors
If you get favorited, commented on or retweeted, you will attract visitors to your posts and to your profile. People will see your posts on other people’s profiles which is what you want! You can also attract visitors by following hundreds of people very day. The next thing that happens is that those appreciators of your posts might visit your profile page. That is where things can really go wrong.

When they visit your page pop up
The first thing people might see when they click on your profile name is your last four tweets — not your retweets. They will see content that you published including comments on other people’s profiles, your “thanks for following xoxo” notes, etc. If your last comment was something meaningless such as, “nice photo” or “huh?” then you can be assured you will not get any new followers. However, if your last comment was a classy joke, or a meaningful posts that got favorited by a few people, then you might attract people to view your whole page on a full screen which will show the retweets and your bio, etc.

hen they visit your full page
Once your visitor is on your full page, they will see your pinned post, your retweets, as well as your tweets all in one feed. Now, let’s assume that your last two posts were retweets of breathtaking photos, or meaningful industry specific posts with great graphics. If so, you will have a higher visitor : follower ratio. However, if you have boring photos, or no photos, posts that nobody liked, and a lot of off topic posts, plus meaningless dialogue with others such as, “you betcha” or “I liked that too.” then your visitor : follower rate will be bad — very very bad.

How do you master the art of choosing photos?
You need to study what your crowd likes. When you post retweets, which ones get interactions and which are ignored. If you can master the art of choosing content that people like, and get rid of the content they don’t, you will have a winning Twitter profile. I often will post the same popular retweets every several days assuming they continue to be systematically popular! Why not recycle a good idea?

Good luck
I hope you too master the art of Twitter. Twitter is fun, meaningful and can do SEO miracles for your blog and web site!

As with any other social media site, it is not considered a best practice to publish tons of content all at the same time. But, if you are like me and devote a particular amount of time each day to social media, you tend to want to do more during that special time because you might flake during the rest of the day. I understand! But…

If you post two articles in a row on Google+
You will suffer in the search results, particularly if those articles use the same tags. If you publish articles with different tags, you won’t be penalized so much, but if you have two articles with the same tags, you should wait two hours or more before publishing the second article.

Publishing too much in general
If you want your posts to get seen, you can’t publish too much. On the other hand, to get any results out of Google+, you need to publish a lot, and publish on a lot of groups. I have been banned from groups for publishing content from my blogs which was purely informational and not self-promotion. They don’t care, and they often just enjoy banning people who they don’t like. I also got into trouble by having too much of my material removed from communities on Google+. If you publish too much, the material that you publish will also get buried by your newly published content. So, what is the solution? I publish from three separate groups. My main group gets my really juicy material. My #2 group gets extra content that might get me some clicks, but that I don’t want showing up on my main feed. My #3 group is for blog posts from a different blog and overflow that I don’t have room for on my main feed. Basically, I have a main feed, and two backups.

Risky Communities?
If you have had content removed from a particular community on Google+, you might think about publishing on that group from a different account. That way if your #2 account gets banned from Google+ for two weeks, or forever, you won’t lose much. Taking risks is not a bad thing so long as you don’t risk something that is expensive to replace! In general, I would not publish on more than two groups per day, and only safe groups as well. The minute you get a post removed from a community, remove that community from your main account and add it to your supplementary accounts.

Retweeting your own content
If you have multiple Google+ accounts, it is easy to republish your content on all sorts of groups without the content showing up multiple times on your main feed. On your supplementary accounts, it doesn’t matter if a post shows up three times in a row, but on your main feed that gets traffic it will look really unprofessional even to have a post show up twice! By retweeting your own content, your original Google+ profile ID still shows up on the post, and you can still attract followers to your main page. Tandem or tag-team social media techniques are a good idea. I have six Twitter accounts. If something does well on one account, I often retweet it on my other accounts (depending on how relevant it is to those accounts.)

Google+ is fun to use and can get you a lot of traffic if you use it right. But, they are tricky too, and you can get into a lot of trouble if you take liberties. So, be careful, and think outside the plus!