I posted about the forthcoming Facebook movie earlier this week and included the trailer via YouTube. I’ve just come across a parody trailer about Twitter, which is very well done and very funny especially if you watch it after you’ve just watched the ‘the real thing’ the Facebook: The Social Network Movie

Related posts:

1. Facebook movie ‘The Social Network’ Trailer This is the trailer for the film coming out...
2. Social Media Experts – are they everything they say they are? As someone who specialises in social media and online...
3. Introducing Social Media Examiner TV: Flipboard, Foursquare & Facebook The Social Media Examiner website is an absolute treasure...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is the trailer for the film coming out in October about how Facebook came about. It’s a bit slow to get going but once it kicks in it looks really compelling. I was wondering whether it would seem more (boring?) documentary than Hollywood blockbuster, but I was pleasantly surprised and I will be looking forward to seeing it when it’s released in the UK.

What do you think? Boring documentary or worth a look?

Related posts:

1. Introducing Social Media Examiner TV: Flipboard, Foursquare & Facebook The Social Media Examiner website is an absolute treasure...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

As someone who specialises in social media and online marketing it’s interesting to me to see how many people are coming into the market offering their services in this arena as a Social Media Expert (can I say at this point that I consider myself to be a specialist, not an expert!). Eighteen months ago I was talking to other small business owners about social media being something that was coming but not that important to them then, and then barely a year later the social media explosion started and people are popping up all over offering social media seminars, training, coaching, consultancy etc.

Social Media for Small Business – Variable Results

Social media like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube – to name the top four for small businesses to use in my opinion – is being used more and more by small business owners. I hear people talking about how successful it has been for their business with some great case studies, like the energy consultant in our networking group (who I met via Twitter) gaining a 400 house consultancy contract solely through Twitter and a few emails! But more often I hear small business owners who have not yet embraced this new (ish) form of online marketing either by not yet getting involved or by starting to use Twitter and Facebook but seemingly not getting anything from it.

Are you doing it properly?

As with websites I suggest that the main reason for social media not working for a business is due to how it is being used – with a website it is usually the quality of the website development and the subsequent marketing of it that determines its success but often business owners put their lack of online success down to the internet itself and give up. I think the same happens with social media. I have seen countless small business owners set up poor social media profiles, not even including a link back to their website, then they tweet and update with lots of sales messages and then give up as it doesn’t work for them, i.e. they don’t get anyone buying from them as a result of those sales messages.

3 Key Parts to Social Networking

Not surprising really. I did a talk about Twitter recently at a local 4Networking meeting and I used three words to describe what I think you should do when networking online:

• Connection

• Conversation

• Commitment

Without these three things you will not have a successful online presence. Online networking using social media isn’t really any different to offline networking. It’s about connecting with people, ‘talking’ to them, getting to know them, sharing useful information, offering help; and about commiting to building relationships.

How Can You Check Their Expertise?

As I said at the beginning, there are people popping up every day offering to help you with your social media. How do you know who is genuinely going to be able to help you? There are a few checks that you can make to get an idea of how accomplished that person is within the social media sphere.

Twitter

Check their Twitter profile. It’s not necessarily about how many followers they have although I would suggest that the person I saw recently about to offer a class in using social media who only had 25 followers on Twitter and 5 people who ‘like’ his business page maybe should have waited a bit longer before promoting himself as a social media expert! Look at how many lists the person is on, that can indicate that people hold them in high esteem and are tracking their tweets. Have a look at their Twitter stream: are they communicating and connecting with people on a regular basis. Are they providing useful information? Go to Twitter Grader and see how influential they are deemed to be on Twitter (mine is showing as 99.7/100 as I write this, but it is dynamic and does change depending on activity).

Their Website / Blog

Have a look at their website on Alexa to see what sort of traffic they are getting. This website is currently ranked as 408,238 in the world. The lower the ranking the better (today Google is No 1) and so 408,238 might not sound that good to you but I challenge you to check out a few other websites, including yours, and compare them. I’m really pleased with that ranking (it’s just 16,851 in the UK) and it’s going down every week.

Use Website Grader to see how their website scores out of 100 on that. It’s a measure of how good the website is for ‘inbound marketing’, i.e. attracting visitors to the site through various means rather than bombarding people with outbound marketing. This site is currently at 95, but again it changes occasionally (hopefully upwards!) as it is a dynamic rating.

Facebook

Finally, look on their Facebook business page and see how many people ‘like’ the page and what sort of information is being shared on there. How much interaction there is on the page. My Facebook page www.facebook.com/jododdspage has only been up for a couple of months but the likes are steadily growing – please go there and like it now if you haven’t already!

There are obviously other considerations when looking for someone to help you with social media but hopefully this will give you some pointers of the sorts of things to look out for when evaluating whether to go to that seminar or to buy that coaching or consultancy.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this please use the comments section below.

Related posts:

1. Social Media: Are you using it to drive free traffic to your website? Are you using social media to drive traffic to...
2. Introducing Social Media Examiner TV: Flipboard, Foursquare & Facebook The Social Media Examiner website is an absolute treasure...
3. Social Media Programme Have you got a Twitter account? What about Facebook...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Social Media Examiner website is an absolute treasure trove of all things social media and they have just launched a new TV show with the pilot programme being presented by the lovely Mari Smith.

Mari talks about an ipad application that looks really cool (shame I don’t have an ipad!), Foursquare and Facebook.

I haven’t done very much with Foursquare up to now as it’s still quite new in the UK and, as Mari mentions, I’m still quite concerned about privacy and not telling everyone where I am at any given moment, but I can see how Foursquare could work really well for local bricks and mortar businesses if they get behind it.

Check out the TV show and let me know what you think. I will be tuning in again for sure!

Related posts:

1. Social Media: Are you using it to drive free traffic to your website? Are you using social media to drive traffic to...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I read an interesting blog post over at Social Media Examiner last week. It’s a great resource for all things Social Media, well worth checking out.

75% of US households use Social Media

The post was entitled ‘22% of online time spent with Social Media‘, which is an interesting statistic in itself but the one that sounds really impressive (if you’re into Social Media!) is that 75% of US households use Social Media. And globally this figure was 74% so pretty consistent. Although one statistic I found particularly interesting is that in Brazil that figure is 86%!

Social Networking

Social Networking use will reach an all time high in 2014. So for those of you who still aren’t convinced that your customers are on Social Media already – if they’re not (and they probably are) then they will surely be sometime over the next four years!

What do you think? Are these statistics a surprise to you? Please comment below.

Related posts:

1. The Rights and Wrongs of Twitter Having recently written a post about the difference between...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Here is a quick video I’ve done for my subscribers to show you what you get in the Social Media Fast Start Action Pack modules. The special launch offer for subscribers ends Sunday 11 July. www.jododds.com/launch

Related posts:

1. Social Media Fast Start Action Pack – you’re in! Thank you for purchasing my Social Media Fast Start...
2. Social Media Fast Start Action Pack If you know that Social Media ought to be...
3. Fast Start Action Pack – Module 2 Welcome to Module 2; as you can see each...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Do you like being pitched to all the time? How do you feel about people coming to your door asking you to buy stuff or give money to charity? What do you think of your neighbor who talks about how great he is all the time? If you are like most people, you are turned off by these behaviours. The same is true for social media!

1. Friends, Connections and Followers are People Too!

Value their time just as you value yours. Just because they are on Twitter does not mean they are right for your target market or that you are for them. You will have much greater success connecting with like minded people.

If someone adds you to their network, check them out. Is there a relevant reason they may be interested in you and your business? Check out their profile. Many people have a rule that they do not follow anyone who doesn’t include a photo in their profile. Over time, you’ll have to set some boundaries about who you follow and who you let follow you. These boundaries will allow you to form greater, more meaningful connections with those you want to do business with.

Another way of doing this is to set up lists so that you can categorise your followers and connections to enable you to engage with them more appropriately. I tend to auto follow people who follow me (apart from the more dodgy profiles!) but then I add people who I want to engage with on a very regular basis to lists so that I can keep track of, and interact, with them. And every so often I review my connections and do some unfollowing.

On Twitter, I also use topify.com as it sends me an email every time someone follows me with their profile details so I can decide whether to unfollow or add them to a list without having to go into Twitter to evaluate each one. It’s a great way to spot new followers who you know so you can send a welcome message (a proper live one, not an automated one!).

2. Don’t equate quantity of connections with success

Don’t judge your social media success with how many followers / connections you have. Whilst connecting with a large group of people can be beneficial to you and your business, the main determinant of this is in relation to the quality of the interaction that you’re having with them.

People, in the main, buy from people who they know, like and trust. Make sure you have enough interaction with your connections so that they get do that with you. If you can’t build those types of relationships with the people who you are connected with because there are too many and it’s too overwhelming, then you need to work out ways to do it better, otherwise you will be wasting your time.

3. Social Media is about connections NOT sales.

One of the surest ways to lose all credibility, short of posting completely inappropriate content, is to try and use your social media presence to exclusively sell yourself and your services. No one wants to be chased at a store by a sales person any more than they want to follow someone who is constantly selling something. It is okay to tell people about your products and services but this has to be a part of your interaction, not your only interaction.

4. Having unrealistic expectations.

Please don’t expect that you are going to create a new account, start posting great content and immediately see your sales and traffic increase, as if by magic. It will happen, but it takes some time and effort. One of the amazing things about social media, is that your efforts are multiplied over and over when people who you are connecting with share your content. Social media is very powerful and can and will benefit your business, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will be a list of thousands of followers all ready to purchase from you.

5. Letting your social media involvement become a time drain.

You’ve probably heard that Facebook and Twitter can become time sucking endeavours. That it takes too long to check all of the sites and contribute to each one. You may even know some folks who have got involved, spent a huge amount of time and then decided that it took too much time and wasn’t worth it.

Don’t let this happen to you. True, adding friends or writing status updates each site can be time consuming unless you set up a system and give yourself time limits. But there are tools and strategies to manage your presence so it doesn’t take up all your time – after all you presumably have a job to do too!

If you’re still concerned about wasting too much time, then start with just one social media platform. Set up your Facebook profile and learn how to manoeuvre around that site first, finding and connecting with friends and colleagues and updating your status. Once you have a system set for this that doesn’t take up too much time then move on and learn more about LinkedIn, Twitter or something else.

I would highly recommend Hootsuite as a way to manage more than one profile from one place. It certainly can help you to manage your presence without getting sucked in to spending your whole time doing it. If you have a mobile that allows you to access the platforms that can be good too. It’s something to do whilst waiting for your next meeting to start etc. Look at applications like TwitterBerry and Tweetie for iphones.

I’ve found one of the best ways to make sure you’re getting seen and making connections without losing hours is to set a timer. And using the scheduled tweets option in Hootsuite allows me to prepare updates in the morning that go our during the day, which then leaves me to hop in occasionally and respond to people who have responded to me, or who are having interesting conversations or who need help that I can offer.

Photo Credit

What ways do you use to manage your social media time so you don’t get sucked in? Please use the commenct to share your ideas. Thanks

Related posts:

1. Twitter: The Difference Between Marketing and Spamming When we begin speaking in terms of marketing on...
2. Social Media: Are you using it to drive free traffic to your website? Are you using social media to drive traffic to...
3. The Rights and Wrongs of Twitter Having recently written a post about the difference between...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. Video Marketing to Promote Your Business – 7 Benefits You’ve heard that using video to market your business...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I was at a 4th July party yesterday with our daughter’s best friend from school whose father is in the army. Co-incidently their army ‘patch’ (where they live) is also where the daughter of Bill Shaw MBE lives with her family. It was an emotion filled party as Bill Shaw was acquitted yesterday morning by an Afghan court after being held in prison for four months.

Mr Shaw was imprisoned for two years and fined £16,700 in April for bribing officials for the release of two armoured cars belonging to the British-based security firm G4S. He had, in fact, paid the money over on behalf of his employer as what he thought was a genuine release fee on behalf of the National Directorate of Security. It turned out that he had paid the money to a conman and when he brought it to attention of the authorities he was arrested and imprisoned in Afghanistan’s most notorious prison.

The reason that I’m posting this, as well as to offer my congratulations to the family, is to draw your attention to how Lisa Luckyne-Malone and her family have used Social Media to raise the profile of her Dad’s case. There are two Facebook Groups with 5,355 and 3,665 members respectively, a Twitter account, YouTube videos, an online petition, plus numerous other mentions around the internet space about the case.

I spoke to Lisa and her husband at the party and she confirmed that Social Media had really helped them. They had offers of support (real, tangible help) from all around the world, which simply wouldn’t have happened without Social Media. Think back a few years and imagine how much harder this campaign would have been, before sites like Facebook and Twitter, for the family and friends who have helped to raise the profile of the case and ensure that Bill Shaw is freed.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You’ve heard that using video to market your business can bring incredible results. But do the benefits outweigh the effort it takes to put your video online? In a word, Yes! Shooting a video, editing and formatting it, uploading it to the internet with the right title and description takes a bit of time. But the payoff for video marketing can be tremendous. Here are seven real benefits of marketing with video:

1.Personal Connection

Especially for internet based businesses, the personal connection with your potential market is a huge selling factor. With video, your audience can truly get to know you, eye-to-eye. They get to see that you are indeed a real, live person. They start building a deeper relationship with you and feel as if they actually have met you.

2.Social proof

There’s an old proverb: “Believe nothing of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” On the internet it’s so easy to be a fake and a fraud. People are skeptical about claims they read online, and rightfully so. But video puts a face to your words and helps you to be more believable and trustworthy.

3.Traffic

People are watching 2 BILLION videos per day on YouTube alone! That’s a whole lot of traffic you’re missing if you’re not marketing yourself with video. It’s free and easy to add your video to a large number of the video sites available online.

4.Emotional Influence

The classic horror movie is a great example of how the audio has an emotional effect on us. The creepy music comes in, you know straight away that something bad is about to happen. Now, imagine combining that audio with powerful video cues to influence the emotions of the listener and you can create a much more compelling message than with just text alone.

5.Portability

Maybe even more so than articles and ebooks, video is portable. iPhones, Smartphones, iPads and all kinds of other devices allow video to be seen on the go. You can also allow people to download video easily so they can view it over and over again.

6.Demonstrations

Reviews, case studies and examples are great ways to sell products and services. It’s the reason why infomercials make millions of dollars. You need to create videos that show and tell your potential customers why your product will be helpful for them, focusing on the benefits.

7.Engagement

There are many reports available online to show that video boosts response and conversion rates. When someone is watching a video, you have their full attention – eyes and ears. Unlike with the written word, they’re not likely skip ahead or gloss over important information. Most people will watch a video from beginning to end, allowing you to clearly create a message and call to action that engages your audience.

Overall, video is an effective marketing strategy that is growing massively in popularity. Since video is here to stay, it’s time to check out the options and see how quick and easy video marketing can be.

Photo Credit

Is video working for you?

Related posts:

1. Twitter: The Difference Between Marketing and Spamming When we begin speaking in terms of marketing on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.