Tag Archives: Social Media

Passive Social Media growth is exciting

June 29, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Many of us are very active on social media. It has been my obsession because my SEO power depends on it. Maybe one day if I get a little smarter, people will hire me to be a consultant. I have read many blogs where the “experts” tell us to focus on one social media account and really grow it big. This makes sense. If you have ten little social media accounts, you will publish your article ten times and get hardly any clicks for your labor. But, with one big account, you can publish one post, and get a landslide of activity. This is the reality of my Facebook account. Our best post got us 1000+ clicks, and we get tons of new customers from this network! Lucky me.

I work hard on my Twitter campaign, but it has little to show. However, I just started a Google+ group for my notary directory. We are getting people coming out of the woodwork who already know us, who want to join my network. I don’t have to do much other than to just have a presence with a few posts and I get hundreds of followers.

I’m using the wisdom of Aikido which is a Japanese martial art where you use the force of your opponent against him. It is sort of a Zen principle of sorts. The same can be applied to social media. If you are unique in your industry, just be being present on a particular social channel, people will come looking for you. Let them do the work instead of you.

We started a Linked In campaign a few years ago. We didn’t promote it at all. We just added a link from our home page and we got almost 2000 followers (many are very active too) in a few years. But, we did almost nothing. Now, we are publishing really interesting articles and discussion topics and growing even more.

I’m not encouraging anyone to be lazy, but there are ways to benefit from social media while doing the minimum. These ways should not be overlooked!

Pinterest is really cool with the various boards & amazing pictures

May 13, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

I am always the last one to try a new social network. But, now I feel that my future depends on it. I want to be a social media expert, so I am trying new things. I am stumbling, pinning, posting, tweeting, and might do some snapping soon too.

Pinterest is cool
The thing I like about Pinterest is that you can create different boards. Other social media platforms don’t have this characteristic to my knowledge. Google lets you have circles for your followees, and Twitter lets you have lists. Facebook is complicated and someone else handles that for me. But, Pinterest lets you have interest specific boards in your account to post on. I fill these boards with great looking pictures that other people posted and then post a few of my own articles too.

Followers?
So far, after several very quick sessions on Pinterest, I have accumulated 14 followers! Wow. And 12 were in the last 24 hours. I think I’m on to something. I can’t say for sure, but it might be easier to attract followers on Pinterest than on any other network. I’ll have to do some real research and takes notes to be sure about that. It will be interesting to see if I get any clicks out of Pinterest as well.

More clicks please…
I would love a new source of clicks. The other thing I like about Pinterest is that it is not huge yet like Facebook and Twitter. The big accounts in my industry on other mediums have between 4000 and 50,000 followers. On Pinterest, they only have about 1000, so it will be easy to play catch up ball and overtake them! I love outdoing others!

I’ll keep my readers informed as to how my future in Pinterest goes. As a general rule, if you want your business to do well these days, try to do well on social media. It can really get you a lot of customers and some great exposure!

18 ways to boost your social media marketing in 10 minutes / day!

May 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Popular on Twitter, Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

We all love social media, but how many of us are good at it? It is a full time devotion to really be good at social media, and that is only if you are smart and keep your eyes open. But, not all of us have full time to work on our Twitter or Facebook accounts. So, what are the quick ways to get ahead? How can I take my magic social media pill and go viral tonight? Here’s how!

Here are some effective things you can do in 10 minutes per day or less!

(1) Follow people who share a lot in 10 minutes per day!
You can find sharers on Twitter, Google Plus and other mediums. If you click on articles that got shared a lot, you can see who the sharers are on Twitter. It is easy. Just be prepared to have your inbox filled with other irrelevant junk they shared. If you get shared a lot on Twitter or other mediums, you can grow fast. Following sharers will give them a chance to follow you back and share the hell out of your content. Many big accounts on Twitter only get a few shares per post. You can have a small account and get up to 15 shares per post using my simple technique. The people you follow who share must be semi-relevant or my strategy will backfire! 10 minutes a day of following sharers will change your life!

(2) The mute function on Twitter contains the chatter
Tired of people who tweet too much Twitter litter? Try the mute function. That way you are still officially following them, but you don’t have to hear any of the chatter. Oh what a relief it is. Just spend two or three minutes muting annoying people and you’ll be all the happier.

(3) Lists on Twitter isolate winning content in minutes!
You can favorite a tweet, but Google circles and Lists on Twitter allow you to arrange your favorite followers into lists. I get lots of great content to retweet by putting my best several dozen in my various segmented lists. I mostly ignore the others, but don’t tell them that. It’s nothing personal, but their tweets are not all that! Segmenting your top followers into lists takes only minutes!

(4) Boost your follow-backs by 50% overnight
We all follow people on Twitter, and we all retweet. However, we mostly do this the wrong way. Let’s say I am going to target politically interested people. I might get my followers from Obama’s Twitter. If you want the maximum percent of them to follow you back, retweet Obama’s best tweet from the last two or three days, and retweet some other hot political content. Your follow-back rate will go up by about 50% just from this simple yet logical technique.

(5) Google+ communities are a gold mine, but…
Google+ is a hard medium to grow on. The actual process of following people takes time, and they limit how many you can follow. Follow back percentage rates are low even with the most relevant of followers. So, what is the secret to Google+? The secret is to grow a community. Although it takes work to grow Google+ communities to a critical mass where you’ll be seen on big keywords, it pays. You’ll get a waterfall of new followers if you include a big keyword in your community name and get critical mass. You can grow a Google+ community in 10 minutes per day, but you would be better off outsourcing this task to India and have them spend four hours a day inviting people from 20 different accounts to your single community.

(6) Facebook: test and isolate your winning content
Facebook gets me more traffic than anywhere else. But, you cannot use it ramdomly. Use it strategically. Test out any of your content that you feel is promising. Then, track your stats, isolate the top 5% of your content, and use Facebook PPC to promote those posts. I did this and went from 300 clicks a month to 5700 three months later on Facebook. I am still in a state of shock. It takes only minutes to identify your best content, but the reward will make you happy for hours!

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You might also like:
Facebook knows you better than your mama, but how well do you know your customers?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/10/03/facebook-knows-you-better-than-your-mama-but-how-well-do-you-know-your-customers/

How to use the right keywords in your blog titles that lead to instant popularity
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/09/17/how-to-use-the-right-keywords-in-your-blog-titles-that-lead-to-instant-popularity/

Pimp my Tweet — a BPO company specializing in Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/09/16/pimp-my-tweet-a-bpo-company-specializing-in-twitter/

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(7) Experiment with different post titles
If you post the same old thing the same old way, you’ll get mediocre results. But, what if you find hot new ways to promote your content? I will often write up to ten tweets for a single post just to see which one does the best? The way you write your post titles can affect your traffic. A winning title can get you 10x the clicks! A few extra minutes experimenting with post titles will change your entire profile’s performance overnight!

(8) Post other people’s winning content as well.
Yes, post your own content, and yes, post the best of your content over and over again. But, to gain popularity, diversity of articles sells. I run an outsourcing blog, but I post tons of general business articles from Entrepreneur, Inc., Forbes and other popular magazines. They write really interesting stuff, and I use it to my benefit. I sometimes retweet them, and other times rewrite a title and post it under my own account on various social media channels. This gets me tons of shares, tons of growth, and takes only minutes per day. If you prefer, you can spend four hours at a time, and prefer all of your tweets for the next month all in one shot. But, remember, if you post other people’s content, make sure it is winning content that your followers will enjoy reading.

(9) Post more often on Twitter
Many people post one or two tweets a day on Twitter. There is nothing wrong with this. But, if your account is big enough, you might consider posting 24 hours a day using a system that you can input the posts ahead of time. If you are posting 24 hours a day once or twice per hour, you will reach a lot of people who would never notice you otherwise.

(10) Posting 2x per day on Facebook got me 4x the clicks
2×1 = 4. In math it doesn’t, but on Facebook it does. I posted double the content and got quadruple the clicks. The secret here is that by posting more, your audience becomes more engaged and visits your page more often. If they visit more, then you will get more clicks and shares. So, 2×1 = 4 Do the math… or in this case, don’t do the math. Finding out what frequency to post is critical in social media, so experiment.

(11) Post at the right time on your mediums.
I tested out what times my Twitter audience for my notary twitter was at it’s best. 10:30 am to 3pm was the peak. I got 50% more shares then than at other times of the day. Late at night did particularly poorly. Unfortunately I’m up all night, so I do better when my social media manager can pre-publish my tweets to go off at the ideal time. Put in the same effort tweeting, but tweet at the right time, and get up to double the benefit!

(12) Try a dozen social media platforms, but focus on one
Many of us try to do too much. But, you need a pecking order for which social media platforms you use. The one that gets you the best performance needs to be first on your list. Sure it is good to be found everywhere, but certain accounts only merit a few minutes twice a week while your bread and butter deserve at least 10 minutes per day, perhaps up to an hour. If you allocate your time strategically, you’ll get a lot more out of each hour you spend on social media. I did exactly this. I used to spend an hour per month creating my Facebook post list. Now, I spend four hours, and my results went from 300 clicks per month to 5700 clicks per month. That was the account that panned out, and it became a gold mine after I allocated my time strategically.

(13) Grow it fast & milk it
Social media campaigns generally do not give you much fruit until they are huge. They have the same growth pattern as trees. Some trees will never grow that well no matter what you do while others will grow fast if given the ideal soil, fertilizer and love. Rather than spending an hour per week evenly distributed between five social media platforms, it makes sense to find the one that grows fast and delivers results and crank it. Find a way to grow it huge, and then you’ll get a Niagara Falls of traffic and perhaps SEO popularity from it. If you grow your Twitter to 100,000, you only spend 40 seconds pasting in your tweet, but it will reach 1/10th of a million people and probably get shared a lot too. If you have five accounts with 20,000, you spend five times the effort to reach the same quantity of people!

(14) Blog writing strategies in a nutshell
Write about whatever you want to. But, remember that the blog content you share can tell you a lot about what you should be writing about. If you share an article about Zen and the art of political sabotage and your crowd likes it, then you should try to write your own blog entry with a similar title, but with content designed by you. Your version of the article is likely to be a lot more popular than your average idea simply because you based it on a winner.

(15) Use what I call keyword anchors.
I’m not sure how other people use these terms in an internet context, but to me a keyword anchor is a term that is hot in the industry. It is sort of like having a Macy’s in a mall at the end of a long hallway. You know that Macy’s will attract traffic because they are famous, and they are hot. I write blogs and share content all the time, and I study what is hot. In the context of tech business, posts about Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Google, Starbucks, Cloud Technology, Apps, or other popular topics generate a lot of clicks. There are also more general anchors like pets, cats, wine, food, and other topics that please the masses. People are familiar with these people or concepts and will relate and like your articles more easily because you integrated these into your blogs. So, if you want to write about an office party you are planning. You might consider writing about how Google throws an office party and then integrate your personal office party into the blog entry somehow. Tying themes together is the secret to popular blogging — try it! It’s not hard.

(16) How to get over “idea block” which is similar to writers’ block.
Can’t think of ideas for what to write about? Just read what others are writing about. The more you create, the more creative juices you’ll have and the more you read, the most collective knowledge will be in your head which will help you think of ideas and write better.

(17) Optimize the sources you get your followers from
Are you spending an hour a day following people on social media? Are they the right people? Think of people in terms of the groups they are associated with first. After all, you are sourcing your leads from particular sources. If you get your business followers from Forbes, track how many of them follow you back in a 48 hour period. Then, follow people from Wall Street Journal. See if the percentage goes up or down. Keep in mind that the follow back rate can vary based on what you tweeted more recently, so keep that relatively constant so you don’t ruin your experiment. You can increase your follow back rate up to 30% by following a more optimized relevant source!

(18) Crank them out
Like to write blog articles? Not all of them need to be perfectly written. The important thing is to churn them out. As a blog manager, you need quantity on your blog. If you find out that a particular article was popular, you can spend two hours with your professional writer friend touching it up or rewriting it. In the mean time, see which themes are working for you. I can write an average of four articles per hour. But, if I do refined work it could easily take four hours for one piece. Four hours makes sense for something that got 1000 views so far, but for something that will only get 20 views? I don’t think so!

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You might also like:

How to choose which posts to share on social media and how often
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/04/08/how-to-choose-which-posts-to-share-on-social-media-how-often/

99 ways to die in social media — choose one!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2016/01/05/99-ways-to-die-in-social-media-choose-one/

How to get half a million followers on Twitter
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/12/01/how-to-be-as-successful-as-scott-eddy-on-twitter-get-500000-followers/

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A tale of 4 social media managers

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

Here is a short tale of 4 Italian brothers. All of whom were social media managers in the United States. Each brother had a different idea of how to manage their business and we’ll soon see how well each of them did.

Brother #1 Luigi.
Luigi knew that his customers didn’t know the difference. So, he hired people right out of school to work on critical social media projects for large businesses, restaurants, hotels, etc. None of the accounts got any significant growth. Posts were published with no type of efficiency in terms of # of posts per hour of labor. There was no insights about how to go viral on any of the posts, and nobody cared either. The employees were not invested in being a social media success. The boss didn’t care. And the customers didn’t know any better. These employees were the least expensive employees you could get in the United States. But, after you added in the office space they took up, medical, dental, unemployment tax, and other mandatory deductions, these inexpensive employees who produced minimal results weren’t that cheap in the long run.

Additionally, they quit their job on average after twelve months of labor which presented more challenges. Long after the fact, Luigi started to notice that the employees slacked off and didn’t do more than 60% of their responsibilities in the two or three months before they quit. They were not cheap to train either, and every time someone quit, they had to go through a long interview process to hire someone new, and then train them only to have the same thing happen again. After a few years of this, Luigi wanted to grow his business. But, his business just wouldn’t grow. He began to think about a change of pace while he sipped on his afternoon espresso.

Brother #2 Guido
Guido was a perfectionist. When he went out to eat, he would only go to the classiest of Italian restaurants that managed each detail of the entire food creation process. He would sniff the desserts from four feet away to verify the acumen of the cook and his perfectionist tendencies too. The blackberry tart filled the air with freshness that Guido treasured, and he showered the entire staff with compliments about the superior quality of their food.

Guido only hired the best. He wouldn’t even talk to you if you had less than six years of experience. Additionally, he had a very complicated social media test that even the best couldn’t pass. So, he settled for creating a pecking order with new hires based on how successful their previous campaigns had been, and how many points they got on his test. He was disappointed that the best only got 40-55% on his test, but he figured that he could teach them the rest.

To justify the costs of his expensive employees, he had to charge a lot more for his services than others. On a brighter note, his customers loved him just as he loved the Italian pastry chef down the street who made the blackberry tart. He had no problem growing, because he offered the highest quality of service which was hard… well, in actuality impossible to find apart from him. He regularly got viral posts for his clients, and their accounts grew from fledgling to goliaths in only a year or two due to how capable his dedicated staff was. His attrition rate was very low as his office was a fun place to be and he got them all an endless supply of pastries to thank them for their amazing contributions.

Brother #3 Antonio
Antonio was the international brother of the four. He loved to travel to different countries. Not just European countries, but Africa and India as well. He loved coffee, and loved the way the Indians made chai, coffee, and fresh juices. He loved to meditate in the Himalayas, and had developed some contacts in India as well. He didn’t want to pay big bucks to have some mediocre Americans working for him. He hired talented people in India and set up an office there. He got a decent quality of labor for pennies on the dollar and offered a very low cost social media service. He was popular and his business grew because he offered more service for less, and with good customer service as he was practically a native speaker of English, Italian, French, and knew five other languages as well. He hired a few others who spoke English perfectly who could do sales and customer service. Antonio’s business model was high quality, popular, and inexpensive relative to the American equivalents. He competed well with the less expensive Indian alternatives beautifully as his employees delivered reliable results with excellent communication while the competition fell on their incompetent faces.

Brother #4 Giovanni
Giovanni was the smart one of the four. He had some of the same characteristics of all of the other brothers fused together. He knew this and he used it to his advantage. He was not in love with India, but made a few visits from time to time to see Antonio and get a sense of what the country had to offer. He liked how Luigi got affordable labor, but didn’t like the quality issues. He respected Guido for being a perfectionist as well. Giovanni had all of these characteristics in one human body. But Giovanni was going to find a better way to do business.

Giovanni decided that he would create a tri-national team. He would have Americans, Filipinos, and Indians all working together. He would find the best communicators, the best analysts, the finest writers, and the least expensive source of labor to do repetitive tasks like posting content on Twitter, etc. Giovanni knew that in general, Americans were better at communicating complicated ideas while Filipinos were better at customer service. He also knew that India was a good source of inexpensive technical labor and SEO specialists. However, he knew that he might find talent in unexpected places too, so he kept himself open.

He set up his sales and analysis office in the United States which is where he started. Later on he set up a customer service and general tasks office in Manila and another office for SEO and general tasks in India. Giovanni was getting his labor for US$3.00 per hour while his brother Luigi (who took pride in his ability to save money) was paying $35,000 per year plus medical, dental, unemployment insurance and other expenses. Giovanni was able to grow a Twitter account from scratch and get 100,000 followers in just a year. He hired the best analysts from America and India to compete with each other to find the best posts. Once he found who could get better posts for each dollar he spent, he hired that person to be the main analyst. He was able to hire people in Manila to post 48 times a day for each Twitter account which got them even more followers. And they also followed 1000 people three times a week on their accounts to get them even more followers. These Twitter accounts changed the SEO ranking of the sites for the businesses they represented, and they also were experts at Facebook, and a dozen other social media platforms.

Giovanni tapped into the world market to find the best analysts at the best price, the cheapest reliable labor, SEO, article writers for every niche and more. His business was so successful that he grew out of control. He offered the best quality:price ratio of any business of its type in the world and he became a multi-millionaire after a few years as a result.

Giovanni is not a real person, but he took advantage of what I call the bi-national hybrid outsourcing business model. You can too!

The #1 social media mistake people make & how to resolve it!

April 9, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

I fall into the same trap here that others do. I look most at my topline — my total number of followers. Unfortunately on social media, number of followers doesn’t do you any good. It is your ROI that counts, and that is not so easy to measure. There are many things that a marketing professional could measure when evaluating their social media presence.

(1) Total number of interactions.
(2) Number of “involved” interactions where there is a continuing dialogue (good for SEO)
(3) Number of shares, or favorites
(4) Number of clicks (my favorite metric as that gives me my bottom line social media goal of traffic)
(5) Number of form submissions

Measuring ROI
Most marketers do not measure the ROI of their social media investment which is a huge problem. If you don’t know which of your social media accounts is delivering the best results, how will you know where to put your efforts in the future? For me, I know that I get most of my traffic from my Facebook profile. I still invest in my other profiles, but the biggest investment goes to my account with the best ROI which is Facebook. Additionally, I would like to mention that my other accounts are still in the experimental stage and it is too early to judge them.

Setting Goals
Many marketers have wishy-washy social media goals. Perhaps they want to boost brand awareness or get more interactions. It makes most sense to put a dollar value on what each metric means to you, and how much of each metric you want to get. You can also measure what the dollar value is of what you are putting in and what you are getting out. Remember, that social media is like a snowball, and after you have mature large accounts, it is easy to get a lot more out while putting a lot less in.

Certain social media platforms such as Linked In or Google Plus allow for the creation of communities. You can set goals for how large your communities should be by a particular date. If you know the growth rate and how much time investment is necessary to reach that rate, then you can plan effectively. My current goal for my Linked In group is to get 200 new followers per month. If I hire offshore labor to help me with outreach, I could expand that to 2000 new followers per month since overseas labor is a lot less expensive (but, hopefully as good — we’ll find out.)

Allocating Hours
You know how you take a 45 minute walk once a day, and allow 1 hour for lunch? Social media needs to be timed the same way, otherwise it can get out of control. You need to decide how much time per day or week you will allow for social media. Then, break it down into accounts. You will spend thirty minutes per day on Facebook, but only ten minutes twice a week on Twitter. You will write one blog article per week as well. You might need to reevaluate your plan once or twice a year. But, see what works for your business and your life and adjust from there.

ROI vs. Estimated ROI
If you can calculate what your Facebook profile is worth to you with 4000 followers in terms of monthly revenue from additional exposure, then you might be able to guess the future value. The value of social media marketing is not constant over time. Empires rise, and empires fall making the future of your campaigns hard to predict. If you invest five hours a week into your Facebook profile and it produces $2000 of value to you through traffic, sales, or other more obscure metrics, then if your profile continues to grow, it might be worth a lot more than that once it has grown. On the other hand if you invest nothing but time in a particular profile, but get negligible results, it might be time to stop using that profile or just put it on the back burner devoting only a few minutes per week to post a few of your most critical links.

If you aren’t using social media right…
If you don’t use social media “the right way” then you won’t get any ROI to analyze. You need captivating articles, interesting discussions, and links to your important pages for SEO. If you only self-promote and bore everyone, you’ll lose followers. If you only post interesting articles, but don’t do anything for your SEO benefit, then you will not get the full benefit from social media. Learn how to get the most of all of your accounts. They all help, but in different ways. Using what I know now, I might be able to use Twitter for 20 minutes a week and get more benefit than you get using social media an hour a day!

Top Viral Images, and how they spread.

April 5, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Mastering the art of knowing what is viral and why is a fascinating undertaking. Knowing exactly the twists and turns it takes to spread is even more interesting. But, what spreads more — images, great articles, or videos? The answer is that images tend to be more popular, but the spread of various types of content depends heavily on the particular medium. Text tweets can do very well on Twitter, while a good vertical photo can do miracles on Google Plus.

Appeal to the general public
One thing to understand about viral content is that is needs to appeal to the general public. If you have a post about widgets, only people who like widgets will share that post. The people they share it with will not likely enjoy widgets which means the sharing will end right there and the post will not go viral.

Where does content spread?
Viral content can be spread on blogs, forums, social networks, web sites, and company intranets.

What types of posts go viral?
Popular images might make a point, tell a quick story, or appeal to people on an emotional level. Being funny or entertaining generally helps. But, your image or post needs to appeal to the masses. It could be a breath taking photo, or something that makes you start laughing at first glance. Or it could be something really interesting.

Integrating industry specific with viral themes
One technique that sophisticated marketers use these days is to integrate popular themes into industry specific blog entries. If you are writing about widgets, you could write about how your puppies are happy the minute they see a widget, or how you love enjoying a widget with your morning mocha. You would be surprised at how powerful pets and coffee are in social media.

Tracking the viral flow
Once an image goes viral, it is difficult to track how it spread. It might be easier to follow the expansion of a particular post on a particular network like Twitter for example. For an image to go viral, it needs to be published by a particular account. Then, at least one of the accounts following that account need to share the content again. The reason why even the best content out there rarely goes viral is:

What can go wrong
(1) The account posting doesn’t have many followers, or doesn’t have many active followers

(2) At any particular moment in time, less than 1% of your Twitter followers are on Twitter and will have the chance to perhaps see your post.

(3) If you do get shared, the follower who shared your post may not have that many followers. If you have 10,000 followers, and only one shares your post and that one has only 10 followers, your post will not get seen.

(4) If you do get shared, but the people following the people who follow you don’t find your post interesting because they are in a different industry or have different interests, there goes your virality!

(5) You posted your post at the wrong time of the day

(6) Group consciousness would have liked your post in 2011, but not in 2015 for some unknown reason.

Summary
To really go viral, you need to attract the attention of what Vegas casinos call “Whales.” You need a few really huge accounts to retweet you, or at least a lot of somewhat large accounts. That way the message has a chance to spread, and keep spreading. You need a really hot post, and a lot of luck too. Sometimes a hot post will spread like crazy. Then, it will die down. Post the same thing a month later, and nobody is interested. My suggestion — pray to the viral gods — put your destiny in their hands.

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/

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!

A call center that helps you with getting more followers on Facebook

January 6, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Call Center | Tagged , | Leave a comment

There are call centers that remind you that your medical bills are due. Then, there are technical support and appointment setting call centers. The Philippines seems to dominate the industry, but many other countries like India are in on the game too. But, what about a call centre that helps you with the most pressing frustrations in your life? Let’s think about it. What types of things bother you the most? How to get a date with the guy or girl you like but are afraid to approach and how to get more followers on Facebook.

CLIENT: Hi, this is John — from Albany, NY. There is this girl I have been wanting to ask out for a long time. I am just not sure of the approach.

SUJATA: Well, according to my manual here, you should ideally start with an opener

CLIENT: An opener? You mean like a can opener?

SUJATA: No, I mean an opener line.

CLIENT: Oh, an opening line. Like what?

SUJATA: I have a whole online dictionary of all sorts of picking up phrases. Let me pick up a phrase right now. Let me see… here we go na? So, do you come here a lot?

CLIENT: Well, you see the girl goes to my school. So, I know that she goes there a lot.

SUJATA: Okay okay okay. So, we’ll use this one. Is there a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me.

CLIENT: I think that is a line for women to say hi to men in a riskee way, not for men to use on girls.

SUJATA: Oh, I see I see I see I see I see. Okay, I have another one na!

CLIENT: Na? What is na?

SUJATA: Oh, it is just something we say. Perhaps you should use that in your pick up line na?

CLIENT: This is not working. I have one other problem. I need to get more followers on Facebook. I have been on it for three years and only have 126 followers including my mom, sister, and cat.

SUJATA: Oh, that is not bad. Does your cat interact with you a lot on Facebook and share things?

CLIENT: Well, she shared a photo of a dead mouse, and shared my picture of her.

SUJATA: Oh, so sweet. Yes, according to our stats, photos of animals do quite well in Facebook as do photos of food, outerspace, and beautiful natural settings. It is the photos that make you go “awe” that will get shared the most. Perhaps you could have your cat do a selfie with a background of a Nebula or something like this na?

CLIENT: Let me try this. Okay, I’m going to do it with you on the phone. I have photo shop. Fluffie, and now… adding the Orion Nebula… When Santa’s helpers did a selfie, it was more of an “elfie…”

SUJATA: Oh, so you are a comedian too? Okay, I see the photo. I am going to share your photo with my followers. All 200,426 which includes most of my village in Karnataka, half of the computer literate folks in my part of Juhu Beach in Mumbai, and my clients in the United States.

CLIENT: This is amazing. My followers went up from 126 to 2126 in just ten minutes. You are amazing! You are the best Facebook helper I have ever met. As far as the dating tips — uh, maybe not. So, how do you do dating in your country just out of curiousity?

SUJATA: Oh, it is much easier. There are no pick up lines at all. Aunty or mom just meet other aunties, discuss if they have a son. We make sure they are from our subcaste first of course.

CLIENT: Of course! You gotta be from the same subcaste. That goes without saying. And then what?

SUJATA: Then, we learn what the boy’s father’s job is, and how old he is, and what the boy is doing for work etc. We make sure he has a suitable job. Whether we like each other is not part of the equation at all.

CLIENT: Oh, that makes it much easier. Because if you start out liking each other, that usually ends up with hate. Love turns to hate, at least in my dating relationships. If you start not liking each other, at least in the long run, there is a possibility that things could get better — so there would be hope.

SUJATA: Exactly. That is how we look at it too. We figure, that over the course of the marriage, we will eventually learn to love each other. It only took my parents fifteen years to learn to love each other.

CLIENT: Only fifteen years? Not bad.

SUJATA: Then, we invite the boy over and have chai. We decide within a time span of 20 minutes — the time it took me to get you 2000 additional followers on Facebook whether the marriage will work on not. Last, but not least then they ask me if I have an opinion.

CLIENT: So, what is the correct etiquette for you to say yes or no?

SUJATA: If I like the boy and feel he is a suitable match, I simply say yes.

CLIENT: And if you don’t like the boy?

SUJATA: Oh, that is quite straightforward as well. If I don’t like the boy I simply threaten to commit suicide by slitting my wrists with a dull and rusty razor blade if I am forced to marry the boy. That generally works with most Indian families.

CLIENT: Cool. I love it. I’m moving to India. Maybe I’ll have an easier time getting married over there. By the way, what caste would be considered over in your country?

SUJATA: Ummm. Let’s change the subject. Let’s talk about Facebook again. You see, you need to understand the algorithmic relationship between the photo and the line of text in any Facebook post. After a lengthy analysis of your posts, I have concluded that your main area of strength is that….

It’s those little quirky things you say on social media.

January 4, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Many of us social media, and we all use it our own way. Twitter wants us to interact in meaningful ways. They would like Twitter to replace the telephone one day. Of course that will never happen because Facebook has already replaced the telephone, email, and mental telepathy. But, if you want to get more followers on Twitter, you have to please the Twitter gods. They like it when you interact.

Most people write incomplete opinions or one word replies to photos or articles. The key to using Twitter effectively is gaining people’s attention and getting them to like, retweet or comment on your comment. So, what are the secrets.

1. Provide a context in your comment. Sometimes those reading your feed will have no idea what you are talking about unless they click on the original post. That is why it sometimes pay to write a:

RE: Thais in #space
Do they have #Thai massage up there? Make sure the massage #oil doesn’t float around!
#ttot #travel

2. The RE: helps people understand the context, so they will understand the meaning behind your comment or joke. But, it helps to be quirky or funny. You will gain more on Twitter by being selective about what you comment on. Wait for some post that you really have something meaningful to say. And work at your response. You might go through a few versions of a possible response until you find one that fits and is catchy.

3. Tags help your comment get seen on feeds. If you use some popular and contextually relevant tags, you could double or triple the quantity of people who will see your comment.

If your comments get good interactions, Twitter will introduce more followers to you. So, it pays to be thoughtful, interesting and quirky. Sometimes dumb questions that are so dumb that they are funny do the trick.

RE: Mushrooms known to cure cancer
I had a mushroom w/a friend yesterday. Does that mean I won’t get cancer?

Comments that are so dumb, that they are funny can be very popular with Americans. After all, the movie Dumb and Dumber(er) did well here. So, will your lame jokes, especially if you use the tag #lamejoke. So, good luck on Twitter, and may the Twitter gods be with you!