Kick-ass social media advice for the real entrepreneur
This is a guest post by Dave Gallant.
With over 70% of web users curating content instead of creating it, digital curation can be a powerful way to increase your overall influence across the web.
In this post, I’m going to share a few unique techniques I’ve discovered to increase your influence using digital curation. But before we jump into the “how”, you need to be certain the content you’re curating is exceptional.
The folks from HootSuite just rolled out their latest update: HootSuite Publisher.
Publisher is basically taking the old “Pending Tweets” feature that used to work as a “stream” on your dashboard into a whole new section of its own.
The main aspect of this update is that this section is allowing you to view and manage your Twitter scheduling on a calendar. Yes, a calendar like the one you use to schedule your appointments and meetings.
This is a guest post by Leo Widrich from BufferApp.
When I joined Twitter as a super late adopter, just under a year from now I had some strange views.
For some reason I thought that whatever I posted will be seen by everyone, every link will be clicked by all followers and at least half of them will Retweet my tweets, because they are so awesome.
Turns out, that’s not how it works. Gladly those naïve views above where I thought everything is about me and what I post have faded, more about that later.
This is a guest post by Gregory Shumchenia of Modern Pigeon.
I’ve heard things like “we use automation to help build relationships” or “we’re extending our personality on Twitter by using automated postings”. Really? Does that sound fundamentally wrong to anyone else or is it just me?
Let’s be clear first and define what Twitter automation really is. It’s scheduling tweets to be posted automatically, and it’s typically done in bulk and when the user is not physically at his or her computer. A number of platforms allow you to upload tons of pre-written messages and schedule the exact minute they will publish to your Twitter account, thus reducing the amount of time you have to spend on Twitter. Automation can also take the form of the auto-follow or the auto-direct-message. This way when someone follows you on Twitter you automatically follow them back or send a generic DM thanking them for following you.
This is a guest post by Antonia Harler from Social Glitz
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that Web 2.0 and social media have changed the way we use the Internet. Neither am I telling you anything new when I say that that’s the reason why marketers and PR professionals are finding themselves in an increasingly difficult situation. We, as consumers, are no longer as easily identifiable as we used to be. These days, us consumers can be any number of things. Producers, users, active participants, members of niche communities, and if worse comes to worst, even critics.
So how can the companies of today ensure that they don’t only find new customers and retain existing ones but also avoid all hell breaking lose when they are confronted with a critic that happens to be quite influential in the online space?
Yep, it’s that time of the year when we publish and consume an unusual amount of best of and top 10 list. And who am I to change the tradition?
So today I’m delivering a compilation of the Top 10 posts of 2010 right here at SocialMouths. In case you missed something…
Also, there are a couple of things I want you to read at the end of this post =)
But before I start with that I have a quick…
I want to do this now because I know the last week of December is very slow as many of us disconnect to be with our families.
I can’t deny that this has been a great year for SocialMouths in terms of the things you can measure. I’m at about 50k monthly pageviews, bounce rate is insanely low, the subscriptions are at a growth rate that I didn’t expect and I could keep going… I’m thankful for that because it means some of you like what I’m putting out there.
But I’m mostly thankful for the great connections I have been able to establish as clients, fellow bloggers, readers or just friends. The focus for 2010 was to try to deliver as much as possible without asking for anything in exchange but I was definitely able to also receive so much awesome sauce from you guys that I feel I need to come back in 2011 with much more. So that is the intention!
Followers, Likes, Retweets, Subscribers… Is any of this stuff important? I’m sure you’ve listened to both sides, “get more followers” and “numbers are not important”.
There is a lot of noise on both sides, people telling you that numbers are important are usually trying to sell you some kind of software and people telling you they’re not, have 50k followers and get retweeted like crazy. So which one is it?
I’m going to tell you when and why numbers are important, or not.
Let’s take it step by step…
First of all, the most important thing is that you understand what your business objectives are and how they translate into online goals. That will make the difference and you will be able to determine if numbers, either high or low, are important for your business AND, if it’s relevant to display them on your site/blog.
How do these numbers affect your bottom line? most likely not directly, having higher Retweets than your direct competitor means nothing on the front-end. Having a bigger influence over that same competitor could mean everything and Retweets, Likes and RSS subscribers could be part of that.
Hey, my name is Francisco Rosales and I'm the author of SocialMouths. I help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla online presence into a profit powerhouse. Read more...
How To Promote Your Blog Before Its Launch
The problem with doing your initial promotion post-launch is that at that point you have already develop a new series of activities such as content management or front-end interaction. These tasks will considerably reduce your time and resources.
What if you could instead create buzz around your blog even before its launch and before you drop a line of content in it? In this post I’ll share with you a few ways you can build hype about your launch and go live with traffic already coming in your door.
When it comes to planning, this is no different than doing so for your actual blogging in which we’ll assume you have a strategy for content generation, scheduling and stuff like that. In this case, you should also write a little pre-launch strategy.
Read more…