17 Quick Tips for Successful Social Media

For some, social media is a black hole of possibilities and they don't know where to start. Having an organized strategy and social media plan is vital, but just keeping the following tips in mind can start you on the road to success.

#1 Engage with the local business community. Reciprocity can go a long way in building relationships and connections.


#2 Monitor your brand image and your competitors by subscribing to them via RSS feed. You'll be able to see their posts and tweets without ever having to "like" or "follow".


#3 Re-purpose content. By changing the positioning statement, you'll find that you content can be used on multiple platforms.

#4 Most tweeters are in the Eastern time zone. Align your tweets with this time zone for maximum effectiveness (for national accounts). If local, stay with your home time zone but still plan for the morning.

#5 For ideas on how to add value to your Facebook brand page, visit others for ideas and inspiration.

#6 Comment on popular topics on Facebook. Your post will be grouped with the others on the subject and appear at the top of people's walls gaining you more exposure and increased reach.

#7 Facebook helpful hint: Customize your tabs. There are many free applications that can enhance and add value to your Facebook page such as a Contact tab and Custom Welcome Tab. Once you add your tabs, you can change the order in which the tabs are displayed by clicking "EDIT" under the list. Missing a tab? Click on "edit page", go to apps, and "edit setting" to enable the tab.

#8 Have you ever participated in a tweetchat on Twitter? It's a great way to extend your network, learn new things and gain klout.

#9 Convert to Facebook Timeline and keep up with any future changes. It shows you are actively managing the page and staying current on trends. 

#10 Create a custom cover photo for your new Timeline Brand Page and implement sooner rather than later. 

#11 Add a monitoring policy on your Facebook business page. Protect your right to remove non-approved conduct.

#12 Use hashtags (#) sparingly yet purposefully to get noticed.

#13 Always let a true personality shine through. Accounts should be managed by real people not just bots. Consumers know the difference.

#14 Remember to be personal and respond to your fans and don't be afraid to upload a quick video of you and your team hard at work or hard at play!

#15 Don’t “post to all”. Not every message works on all platforms.

#16 Make your fans look good. Share their content, like it and encourage their participation.

#17 Let your fans talk to one another without too much interference.

Two Social Media Tools I'm Using Right Now

SocialBro:  SocialBro is a tool to help analyze your Twitter Community. Its has multiple features but my favorite is the Best Time to Tweet data.  The program analyzes your followers and provides a day-by-day hour-by-hour graph of the percentage of your followers who are actively online.  The tool also gives you a breakdown of people you follow, who's active, who's a influential and who's inactive and then allows you to bulk remove tweeters from your friends list. If you're looking to make the most of your tweets, this is worth checking out.  This is currently a free application but I suspect this will change.

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a social planning tool that allows you to schedule Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other outlets in advance.  The program comes with a link shortening tool that ads a built in trackability function adding value to the service.  There are free and paid versions of this tool (I use the paid version) and it is a great way to control when and where your message posts without having to be live for a time-sensitive message.  When used with info from SocialBro, this can really add power to your message. The program can generate all-inclusive reports, although only the click report is free with a paid service.

I highly recommend implementing these tools especially if you're managing more than one social media profile.

INFOGRAPHIC: Multi-Network View of One Person's Social Presence

Ever since Google Ad Preferences came to my attention, I've been thinking about what my overall social media presence says about me and what I've concluded is that it is very misleading.

Google is perhaps the most misleading, after all it had determined by my search history that I must be a middle-aged man who enjoys fishing and investing, neither of which I spend any time doing.  They get some things right, I do like online gaming, advertising and travelling.  My Google profile consists of Google+, Reader, Gmail and YouTube so I'm quite surprised that the computer analysis wasn't closer to the real me. A human looking at my Google+ would easily determine that I am a woman and that I am involved in marketing.  I'm not a heavy user of Google+ yet, so it really isn't the best look at who I am and what I enjoy.

Foursquare is a bit more telling but it amuses me none the less.  I am the mayor of 16 places, a third or which are fast food or quick service eateries and I check into these types of places often. This may lead some to believe that I would be a bit overweight.  While I don't consider myself thin, I also don't consider myself fat or overweight.  I just happen to have a lifestyle where I seem to be eating on the run more than I am able to eat at home or at healthier options.  But I do love fast food.

I have 81 Foursquare badges.  I have driven out of my way to try to earn a new badge. I secretly hope to be first in points everyday even though they mean nothing.  I am competitive and all of this supports that.

I am new to Pinterest but by all accounts my account is pretty sad which either means I am not the least bit creative or am not easily inspired. I hope this isn't true. But what little I have pinned reveals that I love to travel, read and watch science fiction/fantasy, cook sweets and want to remodel my home.

LinkedIn, the professional networking site, is, by nature, going to be quite accurate.  After all, it is an online resume.  Reading between the lines, I have 177 connections.  LinkedIn has not disclosed the average number of connections but most people speculate it is around 50 when considering all users and closer to 500 for the active user.  Being an active user below 500 connections, I either don't make business contacts easily or I don't connect with people I don't know very well.  The truth is the latter.

Twitter is one of the least personal social networks in my opinion.  Sure you can show your personality off in your tweets, but there isn't a lengthy profile to complete, 160 characters doesn't say much.  But if someone were following me closely they would know that I am deeply interested in advertising, marketing and social media, that I check in via Foursquare and that I love to read and share articles.

Finally, there's Facebook.  I have both personal and a professional business page.  This is probably the closest to the "real" me.  I've switched over to Timeline showing that I'm an early adapter, I have populated this timeline with photos and events from my childhood, I share videos, I talk with friends and I play some of the games.  I also enact as many privacy controls as I can find ans stay aware of.  But I've used this network longer than the others and share the most on it.

I hope you enjoy the below infographic contrasting the real me with the social me.  You can also find this on my official website www.adgrlsu.com.