{"id":44,"date":"2013-01-26T11:59:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T11:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2013-04-13T21:06:26","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T21:06:26","slug":"social-media-5-tips-for-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/social-media-5-tips-for-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media – 5 Tips For Success"},"content":{"rendered":"
What Businesses Are Doing Wrong on Social Media (And 5 Tips For Success)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over 1 billion people in the world are on Facebook, including over 175 million Americans, or 1 in 2 adults. Twitter recently surpassed 400 million accounts. LinkedIn boasts over 200 million users. Small business owners are trying to take advantage of these trends, but few are fully reaping the rewards.<\/p>\n

For many business owners, the temptation is to use social networks to promote themselves and broadcast their messages. But if you stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a customer, you\u2019ll understand that the secret to social media is in the “social” more than in the “media” – it’s in being human \u2013 being the sort of person at a cocktail party who listens attentively, tells great stories, shows interest in others, and is authentic and honest. The secret is to simply be likeable.<\/p>\n

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Here are 5 tips for small business owners (and business people at all levels, really) to be more likeable and ensure greater success using social media:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.Listen first and never stop listening. <\/strong>Before your first tweet, search Twitter for people talking about your business and your competitors. Search using words that your prospective customers would say as well. For example, if you\u2019re an accountant, use Twitter to search for people tweeting the words \u201cneed an accountant\u201d in your town. You\u2019ll be surprised how many people are already looking for you.<\/p>\n

2.Don\u2019t tell your customers to like you and follow you, tell them why and how they should.<\/strong> Everywhere you turn, you see \u201cLike us on Facebook\u201d and \u201cFollow us on Twitter.\u201d Huh? Why? How? Give your customers a reason to connect with you on social networks, answering the question, \u201cWhat\u2019s in it for me?\u201d and then make it incredibly easy to do so. Note the difference between these two calls to action: \u201cLike my company’s page on Facebook\u201d vs \u201cGet answers to your social media questions at http:\/\/FB.com\/LikeableMedia.\u201d<\/p>\n

3.Why ask questions?<\/strong> Wondering why nobody\u2019s responding to your posts on Facebook? It\u2019s probably because you\u2019re not asking questions. Social media is about engagement and having a conversation, not about self-promotion. If a pizza place posts on Facebook, \u201cCome on by, 2 pizzas for just $12,\u201d nobody will comment, and nobody will show up. If that same pizza place posts, \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite topping?\u201d people will comment online\u2013 and then be more likely to show up. Make sure you understand Edgerank – Facebook’s formula for determining what shows up in people’s ever-crowded Newsfeeds.<\/p>\n

4.Share pictures and videos. <\/strong>People love photos. The biggest reason Facebook went from 0 to 1 billion users in 7 years is photos. Photos and videos tell stories about you in ways that text alone cannot. You don\u2019t need a big production budget, either. Use your smartphone to take pictures and short videos of customers, staff, and cool things at your business, and then upload them directly to Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn. A picture really is worth a thousand words \u2013 and a video is worth a thousand pictures.<\/p>\n

5.Spend at least 30 minutes a day on social media.<\/strong> If you bought a newspaper ad or radio ad, you wouldn\u2019t spend 5 minutes on it or relegate it to interns. Plus, there\u2019s a lot to learn, and every week, new tools and opportunities across social networks emerge. Spend real time each day reading and learning, listening and responding, and truly joining the conversation. The more time and effort you put in to social media, the more benefits your business will receive.<\/p>\n

Above all else, follow the golden rule: Would you yourself click the \u201cLike\u201d button, the Follow button, or Retweet button if you saw your business or your content here? Would you want to be friends with your business at a cocktail party? Just how likeable is your business?\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Businesses Are Doing Wrong on Social Media (And 5 Tips For Success) Over 1 billion people in the world are on Facebook, including over 175 million Americans, or 1 in 2 adults. Twitter recently…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.imadscotland.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}