It’s easy to create a private Facebook Group and invite individuals to participate in the group — even if they’re not your friend on Facebook. Learn the basics in this two-minute video.
This video features Heather Maves (@heatherm17), blogger & social media content writer for Sentry Insurance — and a mighty fine archer.
When you work in social media regularly, one of the best things to have on hand is a book that you can hand to business owners that don’t recognize the benefits of social media. One of my favorites Eric Harr’s recent book entitled The Real Truth About Social Media.
Despite it’s modest size (about 100 pages), Real Truth is filled with actionable insights that are easily understood by traditional marketing executives and business leaders, without time-wasting jabber or hollow social media evangelism. Real Truth answers the most common question that business leaders have about social media: Why bother?It’s not about social media. It’s about customer service.
“If you deliver old-school customer service to your customers — if you care, listen, and have humility, and if you put people first — you will reap rich rewards from social media. You will build a volunteer army of passion-driven, newly-empowered marketers,” Harr said. “The brands that are winning in social media do it old-school.”
Want to succeed with your 2012 resolution? Consider using social media as a way to keep yourself accountable — in front of witnesses.
‘Accountability’ can be the key to eliminating bad habits — or achieving personal goals — especially when it’s combined with the power of social media. stickK.com helps people use negative incentives (loss aversion) to positively influence behavior. It allows you to pledge money that will be forfeited to friends, charities, or anti-charities (organizations you HATE) if you fail to meet weekly goals. Stickk boasts nearly 150,000 stickK users and over 120,000 Commitment Contracts.
I’ve been using the site since September to track my goal of losing 30lbs in 30 weeks. So far, I’ve lost more than 20lbs with mixed success. I’ve reached 75 percent of my weekly goals.
When it comes attracting followers, fans, and friends to social media channels, too many marketers focus on the ‘laws of attraction’ instead on the ‘laws of reciprocity.’
The laws of attraction, popularized by 2006 film The Secret (and the subsequent book) suggest that the the path to being liked is mastering ‘likeability’. If you act like a ‘likeable person’ — or offer a ‘likeable brand’ — fans, followers and friends will flock to your door. Using the laws of attraction, marketers seek success by creating a strong, likeable brand and promoting it with a large marketing budget (AKA mass marketing).
That doesn’t work in today’s world… where ‘likeable’ is akin to ‘forgettable.’ Actions speak louder than words– and that’s what the laws of reciprocity are all about. Two concepts drive the laws of reciprocity: 1) Treat people well (the golden rule); and 2) perform likeable acts without specifically requiring an in-kind response.
We’d like to think that the links we share on social networks have a life of their own. However, the links we share on social networks have a half-life shorter than the North American mayfly.
While a mayfly can live for up to 24 hours, most of the energy behind the links you share on social networks is spent in a few hours. According to bitly.com, the leading site for shortening and sharing links, links shared from Twitter have a half life of 2.8 hours. This means that in less than three hours the link has gotten half of the click-thrus it will EVER get. The average link shared from Facebook has a half life of 3.2 hours. The longest-lived links are those shared from YouTube, which average a 7 hours half life. Bitly’s results were based on examining the half life of 1,000 popular links shared from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
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