My 15 Minute Roadmap For Social Media Success

The following is my 15-minute road map for social media success.

Morning

Each morning, the first thing you should do when you sit down at your computer is:

1. Check to make sure your website is up and running (1 minute)
2. Check your email for important tasks/comments that need to be handled right away (2 minutes deligate if necessary)
3. Go to Twitter.com and check to see if you have any incoming Tweets or direct messages. Reply if necessary (2 minutes)
4. Go to http://search.twitter.com and see what people are saying about you and your school. Reply if necessary (2 minutes)
5. Let your community know what you are doing today on Twitter (1 minute)
6. Go to Facebook.com and check your Facebook Page. Respond to any comments or questions if necessary. (1 minute)
7. Post any important news or info on your Facebook Page (1 minute)

Evening

Before you go home for the day, you might want to repeat this process. When you first start using social media, posting twice per day may not be necessary. But as your social media use increases and the number of friends, fans and followers increases as well, the time and frequency that you check in on your various profiles will also increase.

The trick to keeping your social media use to less than 15 minutes per day is to 1) schedule it on your daily calendar and 2) don’t become obsessed with checking for incoming messages.

If you can schedule 15 minutes in your daily calendar so that each morning when you come into the office you can run through the following tasks, complete them, and then move on with your day, you won’t be temped or feel the need to check your Twitter and/or Facebook profiles every 30 minutes.

So that’s my big advice here…SCHEDULE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA TIME IN ADVANCE… and if you want to keep your social media use to less than 15 minutes, never schedule any more time for it than that.

Click here to open the Facebook Module Task Sheet.

Click here to Continue to Module 5. Decreasing Your Workload By Putting Facebook On Autopilot

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

How Much Content Should You Post Per Day?

One of the big fears many people have about social media use is that it is going to become a totally encompassing activity that steals time and energy away from other activities that should be getting done. This module is intended to show you that this is not the case.

I know that you are extremely busy and have more important things to do than be constantly updating your social media profiles, so the goal this week is to cut down your social media use to less than 15 minutes per day.

To answer the question, “How much content should you post per day?”… here are my thoughts:

I think you should be posting 1 to 4 messages per day to Twitter and at least 1 post per week to your school’s Facebook page.

Here’s my reasoning behind this:

Twitter is considered a “micro-blogging” service. The messages are short and sweet and they can be as frequent as you please. However, if you post too few messages, you’ll get lost amongst the others that your community members are following. And if you post too many messages, your community will unfollow you because they won’t like seeing your messages taking up their entire Twitter feed.

Based on my experiences… I think 1 to 4 tweets per day is a good number to aim for. If you can’t think of even a single thing to Tweet about on a daily basis, then you aren’t doing enough to make your school or business an amazing place. Use these tips to help you decide what to Tweet about.

As far as Facebook goes, you don’t need to post there quite as often as you do to Twitter. 1-4 posts per week on Facebook is ideal. Again, you don’t want to post too often… and you don’t want to post too occasionally. Let your Facebook fans know that your Facebook page is up to date by posting regularly, but don’t overwhelm them with insignificant nothings they won’t care about. Your Facebook postings should be important school events, information, and news that your community will REALLY care about.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

Word Of Mouth: The Fastest Way To Get A Horde Of New Followers, Fans, and Friends

Word of mouth marketing is a form of promotion which operates through an individual’s personal recommendations of specific brands, products or services.

Like its literal meaning, word-of-mouth marketing spreads from one person to another outside of a formalized setting, without heavy intervention by advertisers.

In the business world, a recommendation from someone familiar and trustworthy is the easiest path to a product sale, link or new subscriber. In our case, good word of mouth might mean a new Facebook Fan, a new Twitter follower, or even… a new customer or student! Why? Because recommendations are generally perceived as incentive-free, unlike the obvious motivation behind advertisements, which are often times over the top in order to get people to perform a certain function.

If you want to get more online followers, attract new clients/students or just gain more supporters of your organization, word of mouth marketing is one the most powerful ways to do so. What better way to spread your message than to have an army of supporters constantly talking about or referencing it online or offline, through conversations or links?

How To Get People Talking

There are two main ways to leverage word of mouth marketing for your new social media use.

1. The first and easiest way of getting your community to talk is to simply inform them of your social media use. This alone will be enough (in most cases) to get people talking. The trick here is to make them see that you have good intentions for your social media use. Your customers, parents and students especially will want to know that you plan to use social media as a means of increasing your communication with the community… and not that you plan to use it as a tool for hunting down and punishing your students. If your in business, let them know that your social media use is not just a marketing machine but a source of valuable information. Keep on your community’s good side and they’ll spread the word for you.
2. Secondly, deliver good content. The more you can do to provide your followers with good content, the more they are going to work for you, passing your information along to their friends, family members and co-workers. The better your content, the more people will talk about it. Consistently create great content and your community will not only love you for it, but they’ll go out and tell their friends.

What other ways might you use word-of-mouth marketing to your advantage? If you have any ideas, strike up a conversation in the member’s forum.

Click here to open the Facebook Module Task Sheet.

Click here to Continue to Module 4. The Daily Task Of Managing Your Facebook Account(s)

Do Press Releases Still Work?

Sending a press release to your city’s local media outlet(s) is a great way to get the word out about your business/school’s social media use.

In many towns and cities, this is just the kind of story they are looking for. The media will be interested in hearing what kind of content you plan on producing, what sort of information your followers can expect to receive, and how heavily you intend to use these new online tools. In some cities, however, where social media use has quickly become the norm, this may not be a story the media feels worth sharing, so don’t be surprised if they pass it over.

It’s unfortunate, but traditional press releases are becoming less and less effective. It’s an old medium that is no longer working in today’s modern world. Press releases do still work, but they don’t work nearly as well as they once did.

That said, press releases to your local media is still a good idea. At the very least, it’s worth a try. Social media use (especially in the schools) is still new enough that it might be something the local media feels worth devoting some time and energy to. So give it a try and let me know how it works out!

Here’s my tip: While I encourage you to send a press release to your local newspaper, TV and radio stations, I think you stand a much better chance of enticing the local media to cover your social media story if you simply send them an email or give them a call. Hopefully you’ve built a relationship with the local media already, so you should know who to contact.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

Traditional Marketing And Social Media

Because people in your community may be new to social media, one of the best ways to let them know you are using these new social networking technologies is to approach them offline.

Using traditional marketing techniques is a great way to get new people to follow you on the Internet. The following is a list of ways you might wish to spread the word in regards to your organization’s social media use.

In each of these places, simply adding a line that says something like this:

Follow Social Media Schools on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/smschools

Traditional Marketing Techniques You Can Use To Let People Know About Your School’s Social Media Use

• Business cards
• Posters
• Brochures
• Giveaways
• TV
• Pamphlets
• Holiday Cards
• Calendars
• Newspaper Advertisements
• Magazine Advertisements
• School Marquees
• Birthday Cards
• Email Newsletters
• You Email Signature
• T-Shirts
• Chamber Of Commerce Meetings
• School District Meetings
• Billboards
• Door Hangers
• Newspaper Articles
• Newsletters
• Direct Mail

If the person reading your message is on Twitter or Facebook, they will know what to do. If the person isn’t on Twitter or Facebook, they’ll either ignore the message or they will visit the website, find out what Twitter/Facebook is, and then decide for themselves if it is something they want to sign up for.

Again, it’s simply your job just to let your community know that you are using these new communication tools. These traditional marketing techniques, while some of them will cost money, can be a great way to increase your online follower counts.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

Let Your Community Connect With You On Your Website

If you do nothing else, you must do this:

You must add links to all of your social media accounts on your main website.

Make the links easy to find and put them all in one place, but don’t push them down your community’s throats in any way. Just let them know that if they’d like to connect with you and get more information about your business or school, they can do so by connecting with you through one (or all) of the various social networks.

Take a look at the following school websites and see how they linked to their social networking sites from their school’s main website.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

Linking Your Social Media Accounts Together

One of the quickest and easiest ways of increasing the number of people who follow you online is to interlink your various social media accounts.

In this course we are mainly concentrating on Facebook and Twitter, so we will start there.

Twitter

If you have your Twitter account all set up, there are four main ways to link your Twitter account with your organization’s Facebook Page.

1) The first thing you could do is change the link in your Twitter profile so that instead of pointing back to your official website, you instead link to your Facebook page. I generally don’t recommend this, because I think it’s better to have people go back to your official website, but this might be something worth playing with… at least for a short amount of time.

2) You could also add a brief line or two to your Twitter Bio where you let your followers know that you are also on Facebook. You won’t be able to link to the Facebook Page here, but at least you’d be letting people know that they can indeed find you on Facebook if they perform a quick search.

3) You might also want to create a custom background design that lets your Twitter followers know that you are on Facebook. You can include your Facebook URL here, but it won’t be a clickable hyperlink.

4) Finally, use your Tweets to occasionally remind your Twitter followers that they can also follow your business/school on Facebook. Every couple weeks (at the most), send out a short message that says something like,

Did you know that Social Media Schools is also on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Media-Schools/76772812225

Make the message short and sweet… and don’t push your other social media sites too often. Moderation is the key.

Facebook

Just as you did in Twitter, let your fans on Facebook know that you are also using Twitter.

1) You can enter this information in the short little bio section underneath your school’s Page photo.

2) You can add the URL to your Twitter account to your Facebook Page underneath the “Info” tab.

3) Or you can, like you did in Twitter, send out an occasional message on your Page’s wall in which you simply let your Facebook fans know that your also on Twitter. Be sure to include the link to your Twitter profile and don’t be too pushy.

Other Sites And The Obvious Overlap

Once you’ve finished syncing your Facebook and Twitter profiles, do the same thing for any other social media accounts you might be using. If you are using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Flickr… do what you can to make sure they all point to one another.

You should know that even after interlinking your various social media accounts, many people will still choose not to follow you. However, many people will!

What typically happens is that most people will follow you in a single location. Some will follow you on Twitter. Others will follow you on Facebook. But a few people will choose to follow you in every single location. Whatever they choose to do, that’s up to them. Like I’ve said before, your goal here is to simply get the information out to the people who want it. Then let them decide what information they want to consume and where they want to receive it.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

The Way News Spreads On Social Media Sites… And How Peope Find You

In this module we will be looking at the various ways you can inform your community of your business or school’s social media use.

Using social media to promote your organization is great, but using the tools by themselves is not enough. You have to get out there and market yourself… and that’s what this module is all about.

Inside this course, we will be dissecting a number of quick and easy things you can do to let your community know that you are using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Some of these things can be done in just a matter of minutes. Others might take a bit longer. And a few techniques mentioned here might require an investment of some kind. So take the information presented here and decide for yourself which, if any, of these ideas you can implement in your organization.

The quicker you can act on these tasks, the sooner your follower counts will increase. So if you see something that sounds like a good match for you and your business/school… do it right away!

Ready? Click here to find out one of the easiest ways you can increase your social media follower count.

Creating A Private Facebook Group

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Download .mov Video – Download .mp3 Audio

Click here to open the Facebook Module Task Sheet.

You have reached the end of the Facebook Module! Click here to Continue on to the Twitter Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

The Importance Of Having An Email Newsletter!

Any organization that wants to succeed online need to do everything they can to increase traffic to their website, build a community, and encourage new customers/students to enroll. If you are part of a school/business that wants to succeed on the World Wide Web, that means you not only have to have great employees, teachers, an excellent curriculum/product, and something that makes you and your school/business different. It also means that you have to have a solid web presence, positive press and media mentions, and glowing testimonials from past and present customers/students.

But when it comes to e-mail, many people just shrug their shoulders.

“What does e-mail have to do with us?” they often say.

A lot!

Organizations like yours generally take a lot of time, energy and money to produce content for your website and other marketing materials. The problem afterward is usually, “How to we get people to actually read it?”

Many believe that “pull” marketing is all they need. Pull marketing is the idea that if you build it, they will come. An example of pull marketing would be posting a new article on your website, but not telling anyone about it. That’s fine, but it’s only half the equation.

The other half is “push” marketing. And one of the best ways to push is with e-mail.

Email marketing allows you to build a list of addresses you can use to push messages out to your audience in order to drive traffic to your website, promote events, provide services, enroll new clients/students, or whatever else your organization might require.

So what does it take to start using e-mail in your organization? Here are a few pointers:

Offer your RSS feed as e-mail.

Some people prefer to use a newsreader (RSS), but you’d be surprised how many people will subscribe to your website by e-mail if you make this an option. If you use FeedBurner, for example, you just cut and paste a different snippet of code to provide a link to the e-mail signup.

Start a simple opt-in e-mail newsletter.

This is a far more powerful way to build an e-mail list. While it’s a bit more work, it provides a means of connecting with people outside of your website and expanding your reach. Of course, your newsletter must offer valuable content and can’t be purely self-serving. Your newsletter can be short or long, but to get and keep subscribers, you have to offer real value.

If you don’t have an e-mail management company yet, I strongly recommend AWeber! They are by far the best e-mail management company out there and I use them for Social Media Schools as well. Click Here to set up your account today!

Post a subscription box on your site.

Whether you’re offering your RSS feed by e-mail or a dedicated newsletter, a sign up box where you can enter an e-mail address usually works better than a link to a sign up form on another page. You may want to reemphasize the orange RSS button and highlight the e-mail feed option. If you’re offering a dedicated newsletter, you’ll certainly want to feature a sign up box in a prominent location. The best place is either in the upper left or upper right-hand corner of your website, depending on the design of your site.

Encourage subscriptions everywhere.

Don’t make the common mistake of putting an email sign up box only on your website’s home page. You never know where a visitor will enter your site, so your box should be featured everywhere. If you have a standard website design, this shouldn’t be a problem, since your masthead and sidebars will probably be the same on every page and post. But if you use a more elaborate content management system or have a standard HTML site, be sure your subscription offer is on every page, ideally in the same location.

Manage your e-mail list efficiently.

Feedburner will show you those who subscribe by e-mail, but it doesn’t give you any tools for using those addresses, so you’ll need to export them in order to do mailings (not the best choice). If you offer a newsletter, you’ll also need a means of managing your list. There are several options out there, including Constant Contact, Aweber, and iContact. (I highly recommend AWeber. It is by far the best service available in my opinion. It is the service I use at Social Media Schools and a number of other online businesses I manage.) The fees are reasonable and each provides simple e-mail tools to track and manage your list and the e-mails you send.

Use your list to drive people to your site.

If your goal is to build website traffic and get your community to actually read the content you are producing, use your e-mail to link back to recent content on your website. When you look at your website statistics, you will be able to see a traffic spike when people receive the newsletter and click to the site to read articles.

Send “alerts” or special offers.

You can also use your email list to notify people in your community about business/school events, offer additional services, drive traffic to other community websites, or whatever you want. Remember, when people subscribe, they’re telling you they want to hear from you about a particular topic. So as long as what you’re sending is relevant, people will usually welcome additional contact from you. A few will opt out with every mailing you send, but if you’re doing everything else right, your subscriptions will always be on the rise.

Avoid spamming.

This is a big no no. Don’t add people to your list if they don’t request it. Give people an easy way to opt out. Make sure your feed or newsletter is designed so people know what it is and who it’s from to keep them from reporting your e-mail as spam. Don’t abuse your list by mailing multiple times a day. It’s e-mail, not Twitter. Spam is a hot button for most people, so go out of your way to avoid doing anything spammy.

There’s a lot more to making e-mail work, but this should get you started. Just remember that while there’s a lot of buzz about how e-mail is a dinosaur and that social networking is the way of the future, take it all with a grain of salt.

E-mail is a powerful tool. It’s not as sophisticated as some of us would like, but it works, virtually everyone uses it, and it will be around for a long time.

If you don’t already have a email management provider for your organization, go to www.aweber.com right now to sign up for an account and learn more about the power of email marketing.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!