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To celebrate the fact that one of our clients, the Worthing & Adur Chamber, has a page on Facebook which is now reaching over 1000 people, I’ve decided to create my own “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Media Marketers”.
If you prefer to read than listen, check out the original post by scrolling further down this page.
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photo credit: ChrisL_AK
7 Habits Of Highly Effective Social Media Marketers | RIP Stephen R. Covey
“7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” author Stephen R. Covey sadly died early today at 79 years old.
I’d always been a big fan of “how to” books, but “7 Habits” was only the second really powerful personal development book I read and it made a profound difference to my life.
I was drawn to it by the down-to-earth title (I was a real cynic in those days!) and one thing was for sure, back then in 1998 I certainly needed to become more effective! I can honestly tell you that just grasping and implementing Habit #1 changed my life for ever.
I’m NOT going to tell you about the book here but I do urge you to go and devour it – by reading or listening – not forgetting to actually do the exercises as that will make a huge difference, I promise.
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What I AM going to do as a mark of respect to Stephen, and to celebrate the fact that one of our clients, the Worthing & Adur Chamber, has a page on Facebook which is now reaching over 1000 people, is to create my own “7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Media Marketers”
7 Habits Of Highly Effective Social Media Marketers
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Use The Cool Tools
Use plugins like Share This, Shareaholic and Easy Social on your blog – make it really easy for people to share your content on their preferred social network. This can be a valuable source of traffic to your site and it adds to your search engine optimisation as Google is starting to take notice of the engagement of your visitors via social media as an indication of how important your site is, compared to those of your competitors.
Consider using one of the cool management tools like Hootsuite, which is free for limited numbers of profiles / accounts, runs in a tab in your browser but which is also available for your smartphone. You can run most of your social media profiles from one Tab, for each client, thus enabling you to post comments and shares in the most appropriate place for each one. Another of the many benefits it that you can edit Tweets before retweeting so can add your own comments, shorten the Tweet (for easier retweeting).
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Set Goals & Track Your Progress
When I look at my Google Analytics I can see that Social Media, after Pay Per Click and Google Organic Search, brings the biggest amount of free traffic to our websites. When I say free, I have my tongue very firmly in my cheek because we all know time is money and social media takes a dedicated amount of time, spent regularly, to achieve tangible results.
With the Pro version of Hootsuite you get a nice little round up each week of where each account is, making reporting much easier although we have just started using TwentyFeet.com too. Here’s a great article on Mashable about Social Media Analytics.
Unless you decide what your key metrics are and track them weekly, how will you know if what you are doing is working? Some key performance indicators (KPI’s) include number of Facebook Page Likes & Reach, Twitter Followers, ReTweets & Mentions, number of circles you are in on Google+, number of profile views on LinkedIn. However, for me, it’s traffic that counts – I want to see traffic coming to my website and specifically my “money pages” where customers can take a key action.
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Be Human
Follow genuinely interesting people as well as local business, bodies like the local Chamber etc., This will not only make your social media activities more enjoyable, and make you appear like a real human being, but give you cool things to retweet which will attract more followers. It’s important to have fun on social media and nobody likes a swot who just follows and tweets about business!
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Think Creatively & Follow Strategically
You should have created a written avatar of your ideal customer or clients by now (you haven’t? why not?) so try and put yourself in their heads and think about who they would follow / friend and find interesting. Veronica’s Twitter course (see below) actually shows you what to put in the Twitter search box to find people looking for recommendations to your product or service. For example, my sister Heather is a jazz singer with a new laid back classics album out and we have had some success with Facebook ads targeting people who like Ella Fitzgerald and Adele for example.
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Follow Your Ideal Client?
See if any of your ideal clients have Twitter accounts or Facebook pages. On Twitter you can actually follow the people your ideal client follows – there’s a good chance those people will be just like them. Then don’t be creepy about it – just add value by sharing cool stuff and you never know who you will attract. Similarly, if there is a local journalist, tv or other celeb, look at who they are following and consider following those people too. You are creating networks of people that may be able to help your business if you interest them and engage. Avoid following people who follow more people than they are followed by and also avoid people who follow many thousands of people – those accounts are not managed by real people, but by automation, most of the time. Exceptions include Stephen Fry who is using some kind of automation but does also manage his own account!
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Learn How
Invest in the top tuition programmes, to discover how to use Social Media better. It’s always changing and the top tuition programmes like Brian Moran’s “10,000 Fans” (Facebook), Veronica Pullen’s “Social Media Prospector” (Twitter), Lewis Howes’ “LinkedInfluence” have to keep up to date and a reasonable investment usually includes a lifetime’s upgrades/updates.
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Keep Up To Date
Everything changes but some things stay the same. To cut down overwhelm and keep up to date, follow the movers and shakers in the field. Names like Mari Smith, Social Media Examiner and Lilach Bullock spring to mind – not forgetting those in Habit #6.
Social media can be a massive time suck for business owners but if you creat and follow a strategic plan, your social media activities can be the secret sauce that boosts your business right over your competitors.
Or, if you would like us to intelligently and strategically manage your social media for you, just get in touch and tell us what your goals are.