If someone asked me for a single piece of advice about blogging, it wouldn’t be a standard answer like “post regularly” or “know your audience”. It wouldn’t be to “find a niche” or “add keywords to your title”. These are all good pieces of advice and are almost always in the mix in “X Top Tips for Blogging” posts that pop up every couple of weeks across the internet.

My one piece of advice: write something that will get responses. Be controversial. Make content that some people will love and some people will hate. Be willing to ruffle some feathers, to piss some people off, and to make others cheer loudly.

It’s not done enough by the majority of bloggers. We try to be too mainstream sometimes. We attempt to be universally liked for our writing. This is simply the wrong approach, at least for those who want to find big time success. If you’re looking to keep a small audience happy, keep your posts safe. If you want to get your blog posts seen by the masses, you have to be willing to make people upset.

That’s not to say that getting people upset is the goal. The goal is to make people love what you’re saying, but to do that it’s almost impossible to avoid making other people hate what you’re saying. It’s the nature of the medium. If you’re not getting people fired up and complaining about how wrong you are, you’re also not getting many people saying how right you are.

The last post I put up was mildly controversial. It wasn’t so far off that a lot of people complained, but some did. Some objected. Some emailed me and told me that they thought I was wrong.

Others loved it. They agreed. The commented. They shared it. The story was discussed and the traffic that came to it was strong.

People will like your posts if they’re universally acceptable. Few will dislike them. However, if your posts are not universally acceptable, people won’t just like it. They’ll love it. Others won’t just dislike it. They’ll hate it. That’s the nature of the beast. You have to be willing to polarize the audience, to take criticism and adoration as they come.

There’s a caveat – don’t try to make people upset. Speak your mind. Make your case. Accept the critics. Don’t push it too far. Whenever I see a blog that posts non-stop controversial topics, it reminds me of balloon boy. There was a dysfunctional team of parents that got addicted to the spotlight so they took it even further.

Blogging can be beneficial to your business, fun to do, and has the potential to have a positive impact on the blogger’s life. To reach the top echelon, you can’t be mild. You can’t shy away from criticism. You can’t try to make everyone happy. Being liked is the safe approach. Being loved takes ruffling a few feathers.

Facebook has a promise that it has made to businesses. It’s not an official promise in writing anywhere on the site. It’s an implied promise. “We have the attention of the masses. If you want to get in front of them, we’re the biggest game in town.”

The unfortunate reality is that the majority of businesses, particular small and medium localized ones, are completely missing out on the potential benefits of their Facebook page. It’s not all about the page, but that’s a good place to start and the best venue through which to have control over your own destiny.

Here are some signs that your social media strategy has your page operating at a low level. Don’t be discouraged – the vast majority of pages out there are feeling the same types of pains you are. The good news is that with a little help, businesses can make a swift turnaround and find success. It just takes understanding the realities of Facebook marketing.

1. Your Engagement Ratio and/or Total Engagers Are Low

As we’ve said in the past, the total number of fans is such an unimportant number that it’s not even funny. It’s all about reach, but that’s another story altogether. You can tell a lot about the effectiveness of any page by looking at two numbers up at the top.

The number of people “talking about this” compared to the number of total likes is your engagement ratio. This is the most important of the two parts when it comes to reaching more people through Facebook. In the instance above, there are 84 out of 5,737 people actively engaged with the posts coming out of this Facebook page, yielding a 1.5% engagement ratio. This is bad, but in many ways it’s because the engagement ratio in the automotive industry in general is bad, average around 1.75%.

The second part of the equation is the total number of people talking about the page. If 10 people are talking about a page that has a mere 50 fans, then the 20% engagement ratio isn’t going to help very much.

It’s important to understand the dynamic here, though. Some would think that having a ton of fans and a lot of people talking about it at a low ratio is fine, but it’s not. It hurts the page’s overall ability to allow the posts to be seen by locals. In other words, if a page has 100,000 fans and 2,000 people talking about it, then it has a low 2% ratio but a good total number. However, and this is often the hardest aspect of all this to understand, that low engagement ratio is still hurting the page and minimizing the potential. It’s possible to reach more local people on a page like this:

This page has fewer than the 2,000 people talking about the hypothetical 100,000 fan Facebook page, but it has a much higher potential to reach people, particularly the locals, because of the 15.1% engagement ratio. Facebook can see statistically that people are much more likely to like and engage with the content when it’s presented to them and it makes advertising and promoting the page much easier as a result.

More importantly, it allows for localization of the promotions at a massive scale. 157 people have engaged with this page recently, but a ton more locals were able to see the posts and be exposed to the messages as a result. Take a look:

As a result of getting the right type of local fans and operating a properly-structured advertising and promotions campaign, we are able to target a lot more than just those 1,040 fans who have liked the page.

Anyone can see what the engagement ratio is on a page simply by looking at the public numbers. In the automotive industry, the average is 1.75%. Anything over 4% is considered adequate. We strive to hit and stay above 10%, though we’ve seen some that sustain 30%+. It won’t last forever, but keeping it that high for a month or two means epic levels of exposure for the business messages.

2. There are Irrelevant Images on Your Wall

You shouldn’t have pictures of cats on your wall unless you’re a veterinarian. You shouldn’t have pictures of childhood memories on your wall unless you’re an individual.

That’s the point, right? Businesses post irrelevant things to their walls because they were likely told by some social media guru to try to fit in, to post viral images and ask questions that have nothing to do with business in order to get people to engage with your business page.

Here’s a quick tip: people don’t want to engage with you over irrelevant posts. They already have plenty of friends and family filling their news feeds with such things.

Here’s a more important tip: you can get much more engagement by actually being transparent, relevant, and posting the type of content that has to do with your business. It’s a hard concept to understand for some reason, but when a car dealer posts images of cool cars, they’re staying relevant. When they post images from the local area, they’re staying relevant. When they post Facebook-only oil change specials or intriguing trade ins that just hit the floor, they’re staying relevant.

When they stay relevant, they have an opportunity to fulfill the purpose of the page’s existence. When they stay relevant, they’re able to fulfill the promise that was implied when people liked the page in the first place.

People like business pages for one of two reasons:

1. They were interested in the industry and wanted to have a source on Facebook for things pertaining to that industry, from localized specials to interesting bits of information that can help them.
2. They were coaxed to like the page for bizarre reasons (we covered this recently).

Not a single person woke up and said, “I want to see funny cat pictures and reminisce about my childhood today. I think I’ll find a local business on Facebook and follow them to satisfy this need.”

Stop trying to fit in. Your Facebook page should be designed to stand out. Don’t chum up to your fans. Inform them. Educate them. Amaze them. Give them information about things that relate to your business.

3. You’re Trying to Coax People to Like Your Page with Games or Giveaways

I just posted about this yesterday so I’m not going to rehash it now.

Read: Why Irrelevant Giveaways and Games Are Killing Your Facebook Page

4. You’re Not Getting Engagement on Individual Posts

Sorry for all the purple – trying to block out identifying content to focus on the point of this. It’s a stereotypical business Facebook page – 1300 likes but very few people liking, commenting, or sharing the posts themselves. In this example, there was a post that had 13 likes and another with 11 in the last month, but he majority had 0, 1, or 2.

There are going to be duds. It’s not possible for every post to be successful, but most of them should be. You should be averaging around 1% engagement on each post. In the example below, the page has around 900 likes, which means that on average 9 interactions should be happening with each post (likes, comments, and shares).

It got 37 likes. This is good because some posts on the page are under the 1% mark with only a handful of likes. Some will do well, particularly those that resonate with the local community the way this one did. Some will not do as well. Keeping as consistent as possible is the key. Unfortunately, most pages are performing consistently poorly.

5. You’re Not Finding the Right Mix of Conversation and Conversion

This is the only component of Facebook marketing that takes real skill and analysis. Everything else takes a little, but playing with the algorithm, monitoring the results, and tweaking the strategy are all part of finding the right mix between conversation and conversion.

Conversation is the fun stuff. Again, no cat pictures, but for a car dealer to get conversations going, they’ll want to post content that isn’t directly businesses related but that is still relevant to the industry. A Chevy dealer might post pictures of the new Corvette, for example. A Seattle dealer might post images (or better yet, ask their fans to post images) of the Space Needle. These fun posts get the community involved and allow your overall Facebook footprint to be as big as possible.

The conversion posts are all business. They’re talking about the big sale this weekend. They’re talking about the brake special from the website. They’re highlighting and individual used car that is just too amazing to miss. These get less engagement (normally but not always) but are the real reason you’re on Facebook in the first place. It’s not all about branding. You can increase business as a result of using social media and these are the posts that do it for you.

The two types of posts go hand in hand and finding the right mix is the tough part. You need to “earn” the right to post conversion content by posting enough high quality conversational content. It’s an algorithm play as well as an audience play, which means that you have to play with it. Too much conversation and you’re not getting a relevant message out to increase business. Too much conversion and people will shut you out, making your posts virtually invisible.

The example above was all about sales. Everything they were posting was about conversion which meant that very few people were actually seeing the posts. The opposite is no more useful; getting all kinds of conversations going without affecting business does nothing to help grow.

* * *

There are other bad things as well as good things that are going on with pages, but these are the easiest way to tell in a glance whether or not you’re being effective. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or to find out what we can do to help you.

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So, you have a Facebook page for your business. You’re ready to tap into the most powerful social site in the world. You want to get fans, to get people to like your page and hear your messages, to communicate with them in a meaningful way and to help drive more business.

You figure that, “Hey, I’m a business. The only way people are going to like my page is if I have a drawing for a free iPad or give them a game that they can only play if they like my page!”

Nope. It’s the wrong thinking. It’s not just the fact that you’re going to get people liking your page from everywhere around the world rather than the coveted local area Facebook users. What’s worse is that you’re actually going to do damage to your page and prevent locals from seeing your post or engaging with your page.

Here’s why…

Their Intentions are Not Good

Convenience stores don’t make a ton off of lottery tickets, but they get people into the store which is an opportunity for you to buy something else. There’s also a chance that the store can win something if they happen to be the place where the winning tickets were purchased. People don’t go to a convenience store to buy lottery tickets in order to chat with the clerk.

Why do people like your page if you’re offering a chance to win a million dollars? Because they want a chance to win a million dollars. They aren’t interested in what you have to say. They aren’t wanting to engage with you, to use social media as a method to communicate with you in hopes of learning more about what you do and how you can help them. They want a chance at winning. In many ways, it’s a lot like selling lottery tickets, except they aren’t going to buy anything while they’re there and you’re not going to share in their winnings if yours is the Facebook like that ended up winning the money.

Whether through games or giveaways, those who like your page for that reason isn’t going to interact with you. In fact, they’re probably not going to ever see any of your posts in their news feed. If they do, it’s a bad thing because…

“Coaxed” Likes Hurt You in the Algorithm

I’m not going to bore anyone with the EdgeRank algorithm. Instead, I’m going to focus on the basic concepts of affinity and weight which are the main reasons you’re not seeing a ton of activity on your pages today.

Every interaction is recorded by Facebook. Just about everyone knows this, that when people click through to, like, comment on, or share your posts, that’s a good thing that helps your posts appear higher in their news feed as well as their friends’ news feeds. The reverse is true in that negative sentiment such as hiding or reporting posts will hurt your chances of having your posts seen by people in their news feeds. What many people don’t realize is that no action at all is also a negative.

In other words, when someone sees your posts in their news feeds and scroll right passed it without doing anything, that this hurts the chances of them being presented future posts. This is exactly what’s happening with the majority of your “coaxed” fans. They didn’t care about what you had to say. They liked you page so they could get something. Now that you’re showing up in their news feed, they have no intention of interacting with it in any way.

Reach is (Almost) Everything

Here are a couple of examples. The top example is a dealership that is coaxing people to like them by giving them a chance to win something as well as to play games. The bottom example is a dealership that is completely transparent with their intentions, that allows us to use localized Facebook ads to build their fan base, and that started off with 26 total fans in February.

In the top example, you see that they have a lot more likes. Over 3k people have liked the page. The games/giveaways are working, right? Wrong. Yes, they’re getting more people to like them, but when you look at the more important number than likes, the “135 talking about this” statistic under their name, you can see that they are not doing well compared to the example on the bottom. The gaming/giveaway dealership has a 3.9% engagement ratio, meaning that under 4% of their fans are actually doing anything with their page such as liking, commenting, or sharing posts.

Keep in mind, this is actually pretty darn high of a ratio for a page that is artificially inflated through games and giveaways.

The way you’re able to reach more people is by getting more of them to interact with your posts. Every interaction increases your chance of getting exposure by moving it up higher in news feeds and increasing the chances that it will appear in additional news feeds. This is how Facebook works best, by reaching people. However, there’s a caveat and it’s the most important reason that you’ll want to avoid giveaways and games…

Local Reach is TRULY Everything

It’s definitely possible through a combination of games, giveaways, amazing content, and properly managed Facebook ads to have a strong reach. It’s not possible, however, to keep your reach hyper-localized with this combination.

Because games and giveaways have a tendency to pull people from across the country or around the world, they taint your following with irrelevant likes and interactions. If you’re a local business, you want to reach the local people only. When your posts are being presented to those outside of the market area, you’re increasing the chances that they will find your posts irrelevant and therefore hurting your chances of the local people actually seeing your posts.

Look at the reach statistics above for Cutter. You’ll see that the vast majority is in the United States and of those, nearly all of the reach is focused on Hawaii itself. There’s a blip – an aggressive internet marketing consultant on my team that lives in Cincinnati started following and liking the posts. As you can see, even a single person engaging can cause more of his own friends and family to see the posts, which can then be liked or not. While some of the content is standard automotive content that can be universally liked, a good portion is localized content. Will someone in Cincinnati like a post about a sales event at a Chevrolet dealership in Honolulu? No.

Reach is important. Local reach is the entirety of the targeting strategy. Your goal with your page should be drive locals to your store or your website. People too distant from the store to actually buy something will not help. They’ll hurt. Just as a Phoenix dealer wouldn’t buy television ads in Indiana, neither should a Phoenix dealer put effort and money into engaging with someone in Indiana.

If you keep it local, keep it transparent, and focus on delivering business-relevant messages to fans who like you because they wanted to receive business-relevant messages, you’ll be able to get exponentially more benefit from Facebook than you ever will if your focus is on helping people win iPads or playing games.

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On June 5th, I will be presenting a webinar called “Beyond the Basics: 5 Myths and 10 Rules for Advanced Social Media Mastery“. It might as well be called, “Stop the madness because the social media world is going down a dark path.”

After delivering a good portion of it at the Automotive Boot Camp last week, the feedback was so tremendous that I decided it was time to do something that I’ve never done before – give a presentation for a second time. The world of digital marketing moves so quickly that I’ve never given a presentation more than once without major changes, but things are different. This only took some minor tweaks (mostly because it will only be 3 weeks between presentations) and some additions to make it worthy.

Here’s the thing. Social media marketing in general, particularly in my arena of automotive, is heading in the wrong direction. Unlike other variations of marketing, the wrong paths and poor strategies seem to persist in social media for longer, much longer, than they would in other arenas. It took me a little while to understand why this is the case, but after talking to dozens of clients and potential clients over the past couple of weeks, I’ve finally figured it out.

The challenges are two-fold. The first is nothing sinister. It’s just that there’s a cloud around what to expect from social media. Facebook in particular is one of those mythical beasts that is simply hard to pin down. It’s not that the statistics aren’t there easily available for anyone to use to track their effectiveness. It’s that Facebook and the digital marketing world make it challenging to understand the numbers properly. Heck, most businesses are still focused on how many fans they have. This is just one example of a misconception that has persisted because the truth is counter-intuitive. I can see why people still hold to this, but I’ve also demonstrated very clearly that a proper strategy applied to a page with 500 fans can be exponentially more effective and reach more potential customers than a standard strategy on a page with 5000 fans.

The second reason for the continued focus in the wrong directions is much more sinister. Without naming names, the social media vendors and service providers that I’ve examined seem to have at least a basic understanding of what needs to be done but they have chosen not to go down the right path because it’s simply too hard.

• It’s too hard to sell to clients. I’ve had the experience of being looked at like I was casting black magic spells when showing potential clients the difference between their 5000-fan page and one of our clients’ 500-fan pages that is getting 10X the engagement, reach, foot traffic visitors, and website clicks.
• It’s too hard to make the change. Once you’re down the path of posting “caption this” pictures of cats, it’s hard to switch to relevant content promoted properly through authentic channels and with transparent motives.
• It’s too hard to do the manual work. There’s a reason why my team averages single-digit clients per employee. The thought of giving an individual 10, 20, or even 50 (yes, some vendors have 50 clients per account manager) never crosses my mind because I understand the amount of work that has to go into finding the highest levels of success on social media.
• It’s too hard to demonstrate real results. This is arguably the most important reason that most social media vendors do not attempt to go down the path of saying that social media increases business. They aren’t able to prove it. The reality is this – there’s true ROI in social media with the exact right strategy, particularly for localized businesses. You can drive people to the store. You can drive people to the website. Branding is a tertiary goal with the right strategies in place, but it seems to be the primary goal for so many services out there. Branding should be the consolation prize, not the end result.

I strongly encourage everyone, potential clients and even competitors, to watch this webinar on June 5th. I’ll be going over the myths and rules that can and should change the way the industry perceives social media. I’ll be giving real-world examples, not just speaking hypothetically or discussing bogus theories. If you listen to one webinar this year, make it this one. Your competitors may be listening. Don’t let them get the upper hand.

When I first got into the infographic business back in 2008, it often took a long explanation to prospective clients in order to get them to understand what they were and what they did. Today, that’s not a problem as dozens of new infographics are unleashed into the world every day.

For those who have just recently been introduced to them, here’s a quick infographic that goes over the history of infographics. It’s like a movie about the movie industry, only it won’t take 2 hours to finish. Enjoy!

Via: AudienceBloom.com

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Facebook has brought out a brilliant new addition to status updates that was desperately needed. Prepare for your news feed to be flooded with emoticons and more than likely irrelevant adjectives.

Without being too cynical, I’d like to bring to the forefront that MySpace had this feature back in the day, and if I remember correctly, there were a lot more emotions too choose from. In fairness, I think there are too many choices as there is. Please someone explain the definition of feeling “meh”.

For a business, this feature is almost useless, however there are some parts of the update which can greatly benefit a Facebook page. If you are tuning in to the latest episode of, for arguments sake, the walking dead. You feel like telling all of your friends about what your doing. You can update your status to say your doing this, but what Facebook will do is link the page for the walking dead into your post

The poster may not have realized that the walking dead had a Facebook page and then decides to go and like the page because they are already a die hard fan (That’s another fan to your page just for doing what you’re doing). All of the users friends have now been told about what there watching and they have also been provided a link to the page. Now whether the viewer of this post is already a fan or has nether heard of it before, they have all the information they need to decide whether they like it or not.

Granted this feature is only useful to those who offer a product that they can: watch, read, listen to, eat or drink. For the average service based business and also a lot of ecommerce businesses, this feature is not going to make a difference to them whatsoever, but for those who it is applicable to, I believe a lot more social media attention is headed their way.

As I mentioned earlier, a lot of businesses aren’t going to find this useful, but I think a time could come in which the list of verbs increases and thus, more opportunities to increase exposure for a brands social media campaign.

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The KBG. Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti. The Committee for State Security for the former Soviet Union was one of the most feared agencies in history. Thankfully, this post isn’t about them.

Here, we’re going to talk about a different type of KGB, the type that is plaguing social media on pages across the internet, hurting businesses and striking fear into the hearts of knowledgeable internet marketing professionals around the world. It’s the type of bad posts that were once thought to be effective but that have been debunked time and time again, yet so many businesses (and even vendors) continue to post them.

Today’s social media KBG is this:

• Kitties
• Games/Giveaways
• Bogus Questions

If you or your vendor are still using these things, stop immediately. They aren’t helping. In fact, they are hurting the cause of using social media as a proper advertising venue through which to increase business. Here’s why:

Kitties

Don’t misunderstand. I have nothing against felines. By “kitties” I’m referring to the type of posts that have absolutely nothing to do with business but that are designed to become popular on social media for their general appeal. They are often funny, sometimes cute, and almost always fluffy (not in the feline way).

Do they work? If the goal is strictly to get more likes in an effort to improve Facebook EdgeRank, then technically they can be effective. The problem is two-fold. First, they turn many people off. They get enough kitty posts from their friends and family. Many people don’t like it when they see business pages post irrelevant kitty pictures because it is insincere. “You’re a business, not a buddy.”

The second and arguably more important reason is that your business has plenty of relevant content to post. Stay focused. A car dealer should be posting cars. There are plenty of awesome cars that work just fine to get engagement. Local businesses have a world of potential content surrounding them in their community and within proximity to the store. Kitty images are simply not necessary for driving engagement and the risk of turning people off as a result is simply too high to dismiss.

Games and Giveaways

Just as with kitties, games and giveaways intended to inflate the fan counts on the various social networks (Facebook in particular) can be effective in achieving its goal. Just as with kitties, it’s not necessary and can have dramatic negative consequences.

Who wants fans to like their page so they have a chance to win something? What are the chances of getting any engagement from that person? How many people do not win the great prize and get a negative sentiment about a business right from the start?

Most importantly, it’s just too easy to acquire high quality fans through transparent advertising to give games or giveaways any consideration. Through transparency, pages are able to grow at a much better pace. Is it faster? Sometimes, but not always. That doesn’t matter. I’ll take 100 fans who came in for the right reasons and with the right expectations over 1000 fans hoping to get something for free any day.

Bogus Questions

Of the three components of KGB-style fan acquisition techniques, this is arguably the most annoying. You don’t care and we know it. There, I said it.

No business outside of a movie theater cares what their fans’ favorite movies are. It’s so apparent to anyone who’s been on Facebook for more than a month that companies who ask irrelevant questions are doing so to get you to talk to them. It’s a desperate move that is apparently so to the people who see the questions.

If you’re going to ask questions (which is a good thing when done right), keep it relevant. Keep it in line with what your business does. Ask questions that you might ask a customer if you were sitting with them in the waiting room or met them at a party. Don’t ask questions that are simply there to drive engagement. People know what you’re doing and they don’t like it.

Will some people respond to any question? Of course? Is this a good thing? No.

* * *

There are too many transparent and effective methods to get fans and increase engagement. Using these types of techniques is so antiquated that I can’t believe there are still companies that use them.

I’m not a broken record, at least I’m not trying to be. It seems that I’ve covered this topic from different angles a lot lately, but it’s simply that important to understand. In business in general and in automotive marketing in particular, getting more Facebook fans is a very low priority compared to reaching more people.

This seems to be counter-intuitive. One might argue that getting more fans on Facebook is the way to reach more people, but they dynamics of the social network make it to where this isn’t the case. A page can be extremely successful and reach the masses with very few fans. Conversely, a page with hundreds of thousands of fans can reach next to nobody. It’s a challenging concept to understand until you get down into the way the Facebook algorithm works.

In essence, it’s not size but quality that counts the most on Facebook. Just because someone likes your page doesn’t mean that they’re going to see any of your posts. Just because someone doesn’t like your page doesn’t mean that they won’t see your posts. It’s for this reason that getting more likes is such a small component of the overall Facebook marketing picture.

Here’s a quick video I did for the automotive industry that highlights a couple of examples of this principle. In it, a decent Facebook page with 4K fans is getting 1/10th of the reach of a great Facebook page with 700 fans. If that isn’t convincing enough, I’m not sure what else to say.

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Blogging is an easy way to express your views and reach out to the world. People usually connect with blogs and their content as they do not preach. The language of blogs is mostly in simple English and easy going which further helps people to connect with the blog content easily. Another form of social media is social networking websites. These websites help you to build social network, connect with new friends, keep in touch with old friends, build social relations among people, etc.

Nowadays social networking sites not only help you connect with other people but they also help in various other business and non-business related matters. These sites also have a role to play in blogging. So let’s learn how can social networking sites help you in blogging and what is the role of social networking sites in blogging.

1) Make your blog visible

As a new (or even experienced) blogger you would need to make people aware of your blog. You would need some way, route, or source to make people notice your blog. Social networking sites help you do just that. These sites make your blog visible to the web world.

2) Promote your blog content

Visibility or awareness of a blog’s existence is not sufficient always. It might not always get you the desired result and make your blog successful. You need to promote your blog to people. Social networking sites allow you to promote your blog. Some sites allow you to post blog entries by which your blog gets more exposure. You can also choose and promote to the desired public only.

3) Drive traffic to your blog

Your blog may not be very SEO friendly and you may not see much traffic directed to your blog through search engines. This is when social networking sites can help you drive traffic to your blog. You can build links in your networking profile which will direct traffic to your blog thus helping to increase traffic in your blog.

4) Increase your page rank in Search Engines

Social networking sites allow you to build quality links to your blog in their own site. These links can make your blog more SEO friendly and can help increase your page rank in search engines. This in turn increases traffic in your blog as traffic is directed through the search engines to your blog.

5) Reach out to your existing and potential followers

Social networking sites can help you reach out to people who have been following your blogs and have been interested and appreciative of your blogging. You can also get in touch with a big number of people who can turn into followers of your blog through these networking sites.

Social networking sites have become an important part of our lives as they help us to remain connected with people and events as well as many other things. Hence, these sites can have a major role to play in making your blog a success and turning you into a successful and popular blogger.

On Wednesday June 12, Chris Webber will be hosting the 2^nd Annual NBA Social Media Awards, which will be televised live on NBA TV at 8 P.M. Players and celebrities will be making appearances at the awards show as well.  The awards will recognize players, teams, and fans for their engagement on social media during the 2012-2013 regular season.

The awards take into account activity on platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram among others. Four new awards are being added on to those that were given out last year. There is the #TrendSetter Award for the most stylish players on social media. The 140 Award goes to the player who made the best tweet of the year. The OMG Award is given to the team that shared the best video via social media. Lastly, The Social Rook of the Year Award is handed to the first year player who gained the biggest increase in his following on social media.

Fans can vote through the end of May at nba.com/SMA. The only exception is the Social Slam Award, which goes to the player who made the most acclaimed dunk. Voting for that award still be open on Twitter during the awards show, up until right before the winner is announced. Votes can also be cast on the NBA’s mobile website, or on Twitter, using the hashtag #NBASMA.

The NBA official accounts and those of the players and coaches are all over social media these days, and they’re using it well to their advantage. They have soared passed 400 million followers across all of their pages. They have nearly 17 million fans on Facebook itself. The NBA was the first professional sports league to accumulate over a billions views on their YouTube channel. In fact, they are so engaged that the NBA had to institute rules a few years ago to ban any social media activity during games and any criticism of officials or face a fine.

Naturally, the league wants to televise the awards show on its own network, NBA TV. Maybe in the future they will consider live streaming it on YouTube or other social media sites. It would only be appropriate for a social media awards show – and not everybody has access to NBA TV.

Coming from someone who works at a social media agency, I can really appreciate the clever outreach strategy behind the Social Media Awards – it’s a bit like crowdsourced branding. It’s a great way to keep fans engaged with the sport and show them that the league appreciates and values their opinion and loyalty.

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