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You wouldn't bring a snow plow to the hot Sahara desert and, likewise, you shouldn't bring shorts and a beach towel to the icy Arctic tundra. Thus, you shouldn’t use one set of all-encompassing tools for every social media network. They each have their own climates and require different tips and strategies.
Via Plus91
5 Ways To Design A Social Website For E-commerce Stories5 Ways To Design A Social Website For E-commerce Stories
5 Storytelling Web Design Tips Earlier today we shared a Scoop and Curagmai post about how to tell simple e-commerce stories (http://www.curagami.com/simple-ecommerce-stories-how-to/ ). The about page is the easiest and most expected place to tell an important e-com story, but here are 5 tips to design your website for stories: * Comments - Ask for and use COMMENTS
* Conversations - Turn COMMENTS into conversations by writing blog posts about them, sharing your collaboration on social nets and throughout your marketing * Gamify - Design for gamification (badges, user profiles, Wikis and Q&A knowledge base)
* ASK - Create an ASK where you ask visitors to join your movement with an Ambassador page (explaining how to join and what is in it for your visitors to join)
* THEM Not YOU - Make sure your web design has AT LEAST as much about THEM (your customers) as you.
Follow those 5 simple web design steps to create community.
In terms of granular targeting of your messaging, few platforms are more effective than Twitter. Using its various advertising tools, you can boost your posts to place them in front of your targeted demographics, create a trending hashtag, or even target users who are watching a particular piece of live television programming.
Content, when used right, is an incredible sales tool. It can also dramatically shorten the sales cycle. Here’s how…
In Part 2 of his social media marketing safety tips, Marty Smith shares how organisations can act to help prevent themselves being hit by a crisis on the internet.
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Tackling a social media marketing plan is a bit like eating an elephant - you gotta do it just one bite at a time.
Marty Note Great starter advice here such as:
Steer clear of divisive topics. Sharing strong opinions on sensitive topics – from politics to parenting – can alienate potential customers. Especially if they have nothing to do with your business, keep opinions away from your social media. Share and share alike. If you want to grow your network, take the time to provide feedback to people you network with. Share comments on posts in Google+ circles, “like” things on Facebook, take the time to retweet. Oftentimes people in your community will respond in kind. Add insight. Providing tips or insight to your network gives your business credibility. Take the time to share information that your customers may value. Master the #hashtag.
If you haven't come to the realization social media IS your business never too late to get with the program. Get started with social media.
You may catch Marty combing through Vogue, Elle and Vanity Fair at B&N. Why? Fashion mags are great visual marketers - 8 Visual Marketing Tips From Vogue:
- Be specific & BIG NUMBERS are great ways to be specific.
- Be branded – take advantage of existing brands such as Shades of Grey.
- Be topical – March is “fashion week” in NYC and both magazines have extensive features.
- Be welcoming – note how both models look directly out at the viewers (my favorite online engagement pose).
- Use SOUND – “Sexy, Shiny, Bouncy Hair sounds fun. “Full on Fashion Force” sounds forceful. Words create rhythm and sounds that adds to or detracts from compelling images.
- Juxtapose – “street chic” and “fashion force” are examples of creative juxtapositions.
- Use Action Verbs – which of these action verbs AREN’T on either cover? grab, be bold, upgrade, must have, takes on, and rock? Yep, all of those “action verbs” are in sub-headlines.
- Simple Colors – ONLY colors used for headlines and sub-heads are black, white and red.
I’m seeing more Scoopit links in my Twitter stream and I’m not crazy about it. Sure it’s quick and easy to share with Scoopit. But it not quick and easy to consume. For me it's all about the econ...
Marty Note If you missed I don't Like Scoop.it Links I, here's a link: http://sco.lt/5ZrOcb
First post prompted a great note from my curator mentor coach Robin Good:
« Marty, I can't agree more. I hate it myself when I see Scoop.it links in my Twitter stream because I know that most of the time it's a lame post with next to no content leading me somewhere else.
I think this is part of the culture of Scoop.it, and the only ones that can change it significantly are those who direct and promote its editorial and marketing policy.
Until you promote a tool like Scoop.it as a tool to save time and produce more content, target it to novice content marketers, and don't moderate actively what you showcase (like Flipboard or Medium do), you can't expect a different kind of outcome. I may be wrong but this is the impression I get. What's your take Marty? »
Yes, but I agree with Robin much more than I disagree. Points of agreement include:
Agree 80%
* Difficulty of Creating Branded Curators on Scoop.it due to little or no "SHOWCASE". * Spam control on backs of curators. * Difficulty of building community on Scoop.it due to the first bullet.
Disagree 20%
* Adding Google authorship signals a desire by Scoop.it to share back value of the commons making Scoop.it UNIQUE in social nets / tools. * No commons is constructed as much as guided, influenced and moved like weather or a wave at a football game.
The disagreement 20% speaks to the highly distributed nature of any commons. When content is coming in from pirates and the navy then content cherished, featured and held up as examples creates powerful social signals.
This very TINY balancing beam is where cutators and editors of any commons must excel. Too heavy a hand and free discourse is squashed. Too light a hand and the commons (substitute community if it makes it easier to understand lol) can't find or share its spirit.
Robin is successful because he is creative, intelligent and generous. Robin's skills mean he can be successful anywhere, so finding ways to partner with Robin, giving Robin (and Michele, Jan, Karen and Brian) "jobs" or defined roles would help shore up the GOOD and so decrease chances for the BAD to run amok.
This "Showcasing" is a fine art since it too walks a fine and tiny beam between elitist and populist. When Robin hit 1M views on Scoop.it I would have been tempted to have a much bigger party (lol). The key push and pull between curators and any commons is how much value will be shared with the sharecropping contributors.
When Robin and then Ana-Christina right behind him passed a million views I would have stopped time a little to interview them, qualify their tactics and strategies and in so doing call attention to a tool capable of helping a sharecropper reach a lot of people.
For me, the third act of any commons is always "Review the Reviewer" or Brand the Curator (in Scoop.it's case). Who gets that? Red Bull gets it. I think FlipBoard does too though Robin has more experience there than me (recent innovations make me want to go back and check it out).
Tools, like life itself, aren't permanent fixtures. As Scoop.it crosses this next chasm it walks a tight rope across the Grand Canyon and competitors such as FlipBoard are generating lots of wind. The Scoopit team is smart and they must sense a pivot is upon them. Personally I want to help. In for a penny...:). Marty
7 Tips To Increase Engagement On Your Social Media Profiles [INFOGRAPHIC]
Via Bill Cosgrove
Getting started with pinterest marketing, that has grown to over 70 million users, can be tough. Here's the beginners guide to pinterest marketing:
The Ever Changing Content Carousel It’s no question that content is important on social media, and has been a large driver of social media’s meteoric rise as a preferred choice for marketers.
No matter who you are and how good you look, it’s pretty easy to look terrible on a webcam. We teamed up with our friends at Mixergy to showcase jus
Marty Helpful tips here that will become increasingly important for everyone as we create Hangouts and develp more real time video.
[Infographic] Ideas For Marketing Your Product or Business on Pinterest by Bill Ross of LinchpinSEO in Chicago
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SMM Tips From A Pro Nathan Pirtle, social media/digital marketing specialist and founder of Work With The Coach, is one person who snatched his success from the hands of fate. Pirtle became a hardcore marketer because he wasn’t looking for someone else’s answers, he was looking for his own. These five important tips from his personal strategy can help your brand on social media. Nathan's 9 SMM Tips - Stop Being A Robot
- Provide Real Content
- Follow to Lead
- Engagement = Success
- Build Relationships
And discover four more Nathan Pirtle tips in this Entrepreneur.com post: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/292414
Adding Feeds To your Blog / Site I wrote a Curagami post recently about how the future of ecommerce is a symphony of feeds. (http://www.curagami.com/ecommerce-future-a-symphony-of-feeds/?v=7516fd43adaa ). One tool, our beloved @Scoop.it, is leading the way in making it easy to curate with your left hand and add valuable content with your right.
This post shares the 5 easy steps to add Scoop.it feeds to your blog or website.
Marty Note Solid post by Ted that explains the subterranean traps many marketers fall into when using social media. Rubin points out that some OLD marketing truths still hold water such as:
- You are NOT Your Customer—Do Your Research
- Frequency Isn’t a Bad Thing
- Story is Important
Great tips here about lessons every marketer learned but seem to forget when "social media" is in front of "marketing".
How Do You Create 'Heroic Content'? You create heroic content by knowing that is what you are trying to do. You create heroic content by RISKING things (reputation, your brand, your ideas). You create heroic content by rejecting the lemmings rush toward the next Internet marketing tactic and embracing them all IN SERVICE to some greater idea.
What's your company, brand or website's movement, manifesto and who is in your tribe? Immediately after you create heroic content that gets you in the game (your About page for example), then begin asking for help. Don't wait or hesitate.
It will be slow going at first, but hang in there and keep asking. One thing we've learned the hard way is people want to help especially those willing to risk all, to share the "inside baseball" content only they know and people who want to help first and are worried about returns a distant third.
One way you create heroic content is to be a hero and beginning is easier than you think AND much easier than mastering one more soon to be diminishing return tactic. Helping create Heroic Content is our Startup Factory funded startup's mission (http://www.curagami.com). Hope you will join us, help us, criticize us and care.
We are all in. The boats have been burned and we want to make Curagami HELPFUL and WISE beyond its years. Hope you will help. http://www.curagami.com/featured/social-media-marketing-dead-yes/
& we built on that post on LinkedIn https://plus.google.com/102639884404823294558/posts/ffq4jhbRZbv
When you master copywriting fundamentals you can take those skills anywhere. Take the Problem-Agitate-Solve formula for example ...
Social Media GOLD Lessons via The Pit & The Bank (via @ThePitBBQ & @FoodBankCENC )
SMM Lessons From The Pit & The Food Bank Poking fun at my @CrowdFunde cofounder Phil Buckley today I wrote a new caption for The Pit's Cuegrass photo. I noted that either Phil was holding court or Cuegrass was coming soon.
My "inside" joke with my partner Phil, former "Mayor" of The Pit BBQ in Raleigh, NC, IS THE MOST DISCUSSED CONTENT on my social nets today. Let that statement sink in for a minute.
What do you call it when someone blows up your Tweet? Answer: Social Media GOLD.
My "inner circle" social nets have about 12,000 followers. I share content from Scoop.it (daily shares with 2,300 followers @Martin (Marty) Smith ), G+ (2,896 followers share daily https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MartinWSmith/posts ),Twitter (@Scenttrail 4,200 followers share daily http://www.twitter.com/scenttrail ) and Pinterest (4,929 followers post daily http://www.pinterest.com/scenttrail/ ) and the most shared post today is an "inside" joke with a handful of friends.
A handful of friends and some SMART social media marketers shared some great social media marketing lessons today!
The Pit, our favorite BBQ joint in downtown Raleigh immediately RTed my new caption of their photo with a supportive tag ("now that's a caption"). The Pit's RT prompted several Cuegrass, the event I wrote the new caption for, vendors to RT too.
This is the POWER of the recognized conversation.
The Pit could have been MAD I wrote a new caption for their Cuegrass event pic. Nope, too smart for that they provided encouragement and RTed demonstrating what Phil and I are working so hard to create at CrowdFunde - conversations RULE.
AND the more responsive, lean, funny and fun your social content is the more shares you achieve. The more shares you achieve the more awareness you gain. When I opened a new chapter on Cuegrass the Pit jumped on it. Now I see Phil got home and joined the conversation. Phil's nets are the size of mine so the Pit just picked up 20,000 potential followers or attendees at this year's Cuegrass (I still don't even know what it is lol).
So, not only is the Pit the home of our favorite BBQ and Cuegrass, but today they've put their secret rub down long enough to share two important social marketing lessons:
* When someone is talking about YOU ENCOURAGE THEM. * Encourage them IN Social Media so the "lesson' is immediately shared and "social kudos" points transfer.
Duh, who knew. Actually LISTENING and being SOCIAL are important to social media marketing success. The Pit knew, several of their vendors know and the Food Bank knows (https://twitter.com/FoodBankCENC ). In Fact my "cool follow of the day" award goes to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina since they FOLLOWED ME!
Not giving them the award for following me as much as seeing a great conversation and jumping in with both feet. Every Twitter following that is only a tiny % of those following them could take a lesson from the Food Bank. You can't create relationships with people you don't follow.
And, as the Food Bank demonstrated, when you see a great conversation happening jump in, SHARE and FOLLOW. What do you call it when someone writes a new caption for your photo? Answer: User Generated Content GOLD and I hope you are as smart about what to do with SMM gold as the tribe that formed around my "inside joke" on The Pit's Cuegrass photo today.
And whatever Cuegrass is and whenever it is happening I hope it is as fun as the picture :). Marty
Marty Note This is a great post from Alley Greer Scoop.it's Community Manager on the eve of her 2 year anniversary. Since are are all "Community Managers" now whether we know it or not Alley's post is a #mustread.
Alley's Tips:
1. When In doubt, ASK & Check In. 2. We're All Humans (translated Alley is saying breakdown the barriers between YOU and THEM). 3. Be Transparent.
Alley shared a great stat. Once she adopted transparency via asking instead of assuming and checking in she was able to double the size of the community she manages (Scoopiteers).
Asking and checking in creates community. When you begin to remove barriers between you and your customers good things happen just ask Alley :). M
By now most businesses have realized the growth potential that an active Facebook account can bring, but not everyone is seeing the results.
Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
Phil Stone Knows Pinterest Phil has almost 18,000 followers on Pinterest. This post shares three great and easy to use Pinterest marketing tips:
* Repin. * Make Comments. * Follow Others.
Those are great tips for any social net including Twitter and G+. Phil's post shares how to develop community with Pinterest. BTW, recently I had a "horse race" to 4K followers between Twitter and Pinterest.
Both Twitter and Pinterest were approach 4,000 followers. Here is where we are today for ScentTrail:
@Scenttrail 3,973 Scenttrail on Pinterest 4,082
so Pinterest grew Scenttrail's community 3% faster adding 109 more followers and I spend MUCH less time curating and creating on Pinterest than Twitter. This is NOT to say Twitter should or can be eliminated from your social media marketing.
Everything works together tapestry style, but Pinterest builds community faster and with less effort than Twitter based on my numbers.
If who you follow is a key to deriving value from your social networking activities (and it is!), the better you do it for your own purposes, the more you’ll benefit.
Content Marketing For Lawyers, Real Estate Agents & SMBs Let's put aside the amazingly cool thing the +Indy Week Give Guide is doing for local nonprofits…
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