12 Quick Tips for Building Your Online Following

The hardest part about social media marketing is finding people to market to. Since the medium requires you to get people to follow and interact with your page, you have to go out and convince the population that there is value in connecting with you. Here are some quick tips that will encourage people to follow you.

1. Follow others – Pretty simple, follow people and some of them will follow you back.
2. Send people messages – There are occasions where someone that SHOULD connect with you just needs to be made aware that you exist. Send people a message and let them know you’re there.
3. Share other people’s content - You’d be surprised how far a retweet will go in building a relationship online.
4. Tell people offline to follow you online – If you are in a business that has a physical location, or if you utilize “traditional” advertising, you should be including some sort of notice that lets your customers know that you have an online presence.
5. Tell people online to follow you online – Put it on your website that you have Facebook. Put it on your Facebook that you have Twitter. Tweet that you have a Blog. You see where this is going.
6. Share shareable content – The best way to get people to follow you is to get your followers to recruit new people for you. Let them do the work. Share things that your target audience will like (Pictures and Videos work best) and let your followers share it.
7. Ask Questions – One of the most underrated aspects of Facebook is the “Poll” feature. This allows you to ask questions of your followers and they can vote on the answer. What makes it special is that when people answer your questions it posts on their wall. Ask the right questions and you will find some new followers.
8. Make your content searchable – Utilize hashtags for Twitter, and make sure your YouTube video descriptions have keywords in them.
9. Become an expert on something – Showing people that your page is a go-to page for a certain topic will give it life of its own. If you truly become an expert at a topic people will find you, share you, and your following will grow.
10. Give stuff away – People flock to free stuff. Give away something, anything, and people will find you.
11. Advertise online – If you have the budget, pay-per-click ads for Facebook and Google can draw people to your page. You will essentially be “paying for followers” but sometimes you got to do what you’ve got to do.
12. Be Different – This is pretty straight forward, do something that isn’t being done online and people will notice.

These are just some tried and proven ways to “get” followers, but they aren’t the only options. Try something bold, and try something new. You might find that a handful of your ideas will fail miserably, but it only takes one to make a name for yourself. Change the way you think and you will become memorable.

How To Fill Your Blog When You've Hit the Creative Wall

One of the issues many people have with blogging is they don’t know how they’ll be able to find things to write about on a regular basis. This gets even harder when you choose a specific theme or direction for your blog. The first thing to realize is that there is always something to write about. If you REALLY think about it, unless you focus your blog on something unnecessarily specific like “Eastern European World Leaders from 1834-1836”, you should be able to find something to write about. There are always different angles or perspectives with which to approach your subject.

Having said all that, there are those times where your mind just can’t work out a subject to blog about. That’s fine, it happens to the best of us. When this happens there are several ways that you continue to get content up on your site until your juices start flowing again.

1. Have a backup stash
   This is a great tip for those that find they have times of creative feast or famine. When you are in a mindset where your ideas are overflowing, it would be a good idea to write down EVERY idea that comes to your mind. Put down on paper anything and everything that comes to your mind, even if it is just a word that you’d like to explore.  Then, hide that paper and save it for when you run dry of ideas. It is important that you don’t pull that out until you’ve exhausted all of your other options.
2. Find a guest blogger
   If you just can’t think of something to write about then try to find someone that can. Most of the time there are other people out there that are interested in the things you are, and a lot of the time you can find one that has something to say. My guess is, if you are passionate about something enough to blog about it regularly, you are probably aware of others in the same circle that could help you out.
3. Write about not knowing what to write about
   Sometimes what works best is to just get the block out of your system by addressing it head on. Write a post about how you are struggling with finding new and exciting things to write about. Write about how you know there is more, but your mind is totally blocking you from thinking of the ideas you need. You’ll tend to find that addressing the problem will help you move past it. Also, if you have some supportive followers, they might suggest new topics.
4. Look at other blogs for inspiration
   It’s not doubt that if you are a blogger you probably read other blogs to stay current on the latest news and info. If you find yourself getting stuck, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend extra time reading through other blogs and see if an idea hits you. Often spending time reading other people’s views on your subject will spark an idea, or opinion from you.
5. Review blog-related items
   This is perhaps the easiest thing to do if all of these ideas fail to generate content. The idea is centered on writing a review of a book, or website, or iPad app, or anything you can find that is focused on your subject of choice. For example, if you write a photography blog, you could write a brief review of any one of the photography books, photo editing software, or photo tutorial websites you come across. Depending on how specific your blog is, you should have little to no trouble finding something to review.

Fighting through these times can be difficult, but having some contingency plans can make the lulls easier.

Social Media Marketing Should Be a Group Effort

Social media marketing for a small business, or any business really, should not be a one person job. If you think about it, there is a reason that larger corporations have a team that handles their social media. It’s not just because there is more volume, although that is a reason, it is because the more people contributing to a social media strategy the better, and more successful, it will be. There are several reasons why it is best to have many people involved in a social media campaign.

The first reason is pretty obvious: The more hands involved, the more work you can get done. If a big part of your strategy is to create content, or go out and curate content, it is easier to get greater amounts of good “stuff” if you have more people involved. If you tell your employees to keep their eyes out for any interesting articles they might find, or write down any ideas they have for a post, you significantly increase the likelihood of finding great content to share with others.

Another great reason, for having your staff involved in the content creation process, is that it encourages them to share and promote your pages. If they are active in the process, and they feel a sense of responsibility over the content on the pages, they’ll be encouraged to further the cause by sharing with their friends.

The final reason, that is equally beneficial, although maybe less obvious, is the idea that every person looks at every situation with a different perspective. There are those that view things has “cups half full”, or the less popular group of people that view everything as “cup half empty”.  There are people of different races, or religions, or financial standings, and all of this contributes to a perspective that is totally unique from your own. By allowing these people to contribute to your content stream you’ll find that there are great articles, and ideas, out there that you’ve never thought of. You’ll see that there are many different sides to different problems and you’ll not only be able to learn something yourself, but you’ll be able to share that insight with your followers.

Now, none of these things are especially profound or unheard of, but they tend to be things that marketing managers, CEO’s, or even the social media marketers themselves don’t recognize. Everyone seems to think that having one guy off in the corner “doing social media” will take full advantage of the marketing medium. That’s not the case. You need to collaborate, share, gain a new perspective, and have some fun with it.