Why is it that social media marketing seems to take up so much of our time? It’s so easy to pop on to Twitter or Facebook for “just a few minutes” only to find hours later that it has sucked you in and kept you away from that other work you should have been doing.

I don’t by any stretch of the imagination claim to have mastered the art of social media time management, but I thought I’d share some tips with you to help minimise the amount of wasted time spent on social media sites without giving up on social media marketing altogether!

• Stick to a schedule – decide in advance exactly what you want to accomplish on each social media platform each day and how long it should take you then schedule that exact time into your calendar. Avoid checking your accounts on an ad hoc basis as this inevitably leads to time wastage.
• Plan cleverly – schedule your social media time before meetings or appointments so you can’t get carried away.
• Minimise the distractions – figure out what distracts you the most and take steps to control it. For instance create a shortcut to take you straight to your Facebook business page without going via your personal account if it’s too tempting to click on those personal notifications.
• Use timesaving tools – using a tool such as Hootsuite or Social Oomph to schedule some of your tweets and updates in advance can help you to go into your accounts less often and thereby minimise distraction. A simple alarm set on a timer can also help remind you when you’ve spent enough time on a task.
• Create content in bulk – sometimes it can be more efficient to create your content in batches, e.g. cranking out a number of blog posts at once or researching several interesting news links to share on Twitter or Facebook, then use a tool like those mentioned above to post them out at regular intervals.

Do you have any other tips to share with us on how to save time on social media marketing?

Following on from my previous posts An Introduction to Google+ and Creating a Google+ Page for your business, this time we’ll take a look at some ways to leverage the + power of social media.

Those with their own website or online business can explore a whole new world of social media marketing with an efficient social profile Page using Google+. It’s fun and easy and can be profitable too.

• Google+ posts that are sent to “Public” rank quite well in Google search results By merging Google properties into Google+ and integrating it with the serach engines you can have a significant impact on where your company appears in the results pages.
• Something else you can do is manage circles by distributing clients into specific categories and then share different posts, news or offers with the various circles. This allows you to connect with fans and share information with clients easily.
• Use Hangouts to engage your customers and colleagues. This is high quality video chat that gives you the opportunity to interact with followers face to face, making it much easier to get to know them, answer questions and also get immediate feedback on products and services.
• Another use of Hangouts is for video conferencing and to push live events and seminars to customers.
• Make use of the Google+ badge to promote your site and your Google+ Page. It links your website and page and makes others aware you’re there. If a visitor likes your site and clicks the icon they are taken directly to your Google+ Page and can share and follow your posts.
• Google+ Direct enables people to just enter a “+” in front of your business name when searching on Google in order to get directly to your Google+ Page.
• The +1 button on Google+ is an excellent way for customers to spread the word about your business and let others know about your Google+ presence. You are also able to connect your website +1’s to your Google+ Page +1’s, which is great as people are more inclined to trust recommendations from people they already know.
• Another useful Google+ tool, Ripples, allows you to keep an eye on your posts and information as they move across social networks, so it’s easy to figure out who is sharing and who is paying attention to your content.
• Analytics provide information about your page’s followers and visitors as well as general traffic and social activity around your business.

What makes Google+ for business unique is that it has blurred the lines between personal social networks, e.g. Facebook, and business networks, e.g. LinkedIn. It really is a social media game changer.

As I mentioned in my last post, An introduction to Google +, businesses are starting to see the value of Google+ with its new Pages feature. This post will look at how to go about creating a Google+ Page for your business.

Google Plus Pages have a small square icon next to the business name to differentiate them from Profiles. Users can add your Page to their circles (which helps increas your follower count), take a look at your business information and check out your business’s photos.

Here’s how to create a Page for your business and take advantage of Google+:

• In order to create a Page for your business, you need a Google+ Profile. Clicking on the “+You” link at the top left of your Gmail dashboard or iGoogle page will take you to the Profile creation page.
• Click Create a Google+ page on the right of your stream and choose a category to begin. For a smaller, less well known business, Local businesses is a good choice. For companies and larger known businesses, Product or brand would work. Company, institution or organization is mostly for those businesses that don’t directly sell something, e.g. not-for-profits.
• Personalise your page by adding a photo or logo and a tagline, and continue with an introduction, information and contact information, then finish with a photo strip of 5 photos.

You’re now ready to start engaging with the Google+ community. A business Page can create Circles (networks) and post information and news on its feed. Don’t forget to add your Google+ Page details to your website or blog and to share it across your other networks.

In my next post I’ll discuss some of the ways you can leverage the + power of social media.

Google+ seems to be one of social media’s hottest new networks, with its popularity growing tremendously since it started in June 2011 as a test version. Its slogan is “real-life sharing—rethought for the web” and it features integration across a number of Google products, including Google Buzz and Google Profiles.

As Google+ notices are posted inside your Gmail inbox, you get 100% real-time Gmail deliverability. If your Circle friends Google a subject that you’ve written about on Google+, your comments and links are displayed automatically on page one of Google, giving you free traffic without any back-linking or on-site optimization. These are just some of the things that make us think it is a social media platform that will probably stick around and grow in popularity.

What makes Google+ special?

• It is focused on targeted sharing within social subgroups you’ve set up (your Circles)
• There is also a section within Google+ that is specifically for viewing, editing and managing multimedia, and which includes an image editor as well as privacy options and sharing features.
• It has introduced a new group chat feature called Hangouts. You can click ‘Start a hangout’ to immediately enter a video chat-room and a message will go out to your social circles to let them know that you are ‘hanging out’ and invite them to join you.

Many businesses are already beginning to see the value of building a Google Plus presence, especially with the new Pages feature. A Google+ Page looks similar to a Google+ Profile except that it has a small square icon next to the brand name to indicate that it is a page. Other users can add your brand to their circles, check out your information and browse your photos. Each time someone adds your brand to their circles, it helps to increase your follower count.

Your business needs to get ready to integrate Google+ into its social media marketing strategy, so in my next blog post I’ll look at how to build your Google Plus presence and build a Page for your brand.

I found the recent news about how a writer is being sued by his former employer for his 17,000 Twitter followers really interesting. What struck me most was how they’d put a value of $2.50 on each follower, which seems quite bizarre, and it got me thinking about the value of my own Twitter followers in the various accounts I have.

The thing is though, that not all followers are equal. Some follow you because they want to hear what you have to say, others because you share content that their followers would be interested in, but there are still a large majority that randomly follow shedloads of people in the hope that they’ll be followed back. Others follow you then lose interest in Twitter and stop visiting, so never see anything you tweet anyway.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that the quality of your followers is much more important than the quantity if you are using Twitter as a marketing tool. Particularly if you have a niche business, a few followers who are truly interested in your tweets are much more valuable than a lot who aren’t.

Obviously you don’t have an awful lot of control over who follows you, only who you follow, but being discerning about whom you follow will play a part in the type of followers you attract, as will the type of tweets you send out and whether you’re engaging with others.

A couple of tools I’ve found useful in cleaning out my Twitter account are:

• Twitcleaner works by showing you who you’re following that isn’t worth bothering with, e.g. because they never converse, they haven’t been active for a while, etc. You will lose a few followers as a result (those who only follow people to get followed back) but this isn’t a bad thing as they weren’t interested in what you have to say anyway.
• who.unfollowed.me is a useful little tool for tracking who has unfollowed you, who isn’t following you back and who you aren’t following back and there is a free version which is perfectly adequate. Initially I thought it was only useful for those who won’t follow anyone who doesn’t follow them back but I’ve found it makes checking through your followers and those you follow much more efficient.

So go on, don’t be afraid to have a bit of a clearout, as any followers you lose as a result weren’t worth having in the first place. You’ll enjoy Twitter more if you’re only following interesting people and you’ll gradually build a higher quality list of followers too.

I blogged recently about creating quality content. Once you’ve gone to the trouble of creating great content, that people actually want to read, it makes sense to get the most out of it, so here are some suggestions for how to do that.

Syndicate your content

It seems obvious, but it’s surprising how often it gets forgotten in the rush to move onto the next item on your to do list. Whether it’s a blog post or a new page on your website make sure you share it with as many different people as possible. Tools like NetworkedBlogs make this easier by automatically sending your blog posts out to your Twitter and Facebook feeds and save you having to remember.

Social bookmarking is another good way to get your content out there. Sites like Delicious, Digg and StumbleUpon are all useful, as well as niche bookmarking sites that relate to your industry. Just make sure you follow the guidelines and don’t only bookmark your own content.

If you write an email newsletter then you can also use this to point subscribers towards content that they might find useful too.

Make it easy for others to share

Getting others to share your content is even more effective than doing it yourself as it will then be read by people out of your network too. Hopefully you’ve already got social media buttons added to each of your web pages and blog posts to make it easy for others to share them on their favourite social networking sites. An occasional little nudge or reminder asking people to share a particular article if they find it useful won’t do any harm either.

Internal linking

If you’re referring to a topic already covered in a previous blog post or on another website page then link directly to it to make it easy for people to find other relevant content. Internal linking is important within your website and blog and helps both search engines and readers to find more of your content.

Recycle content

If you’ve written a good article or blog post it won’t take you long to rewrite it (to avoid duplicate content which the search engines frown on) so that it’s suitable for use on another website or blog. Writing guest posts on another blog or articles for another website is a great way to get more exposure for your own website as well as a link back. Using existing content and rewriting it saves you from having to come up with another idea or having do any additional research for a brand new article.

Do you know of any other great ways to get the most out of your content? Please add a comment to share your suggestions.

Most of the bigger brands and many smaller ones now have their own customised Facebook welcome page and you may be wondering whether your business should too.

What is a Facebook welcome page?

For those of you who are not sure what a Facebook welcome page is, it’s a specially designed page that visitors land on when they first find your page in Facebook. It’s almost like a mini website within Facebook that they initially land on instead of the usual wall or feed.

First time visitors are welcomed to your Facebook page with this attractive branded page, and can also see any deals or new products that you want to promote on there.

Why should you have one?

There are several good reasons for having a custom Facebook welcome page:

• It welcomes first time visitors with an attractive branded page, letting them know a little bit more about your business and what you do.
• You can add a call to action encouraging them to ‘Like’ your Facebook page and explain the benefits of doing so, which makes it far more likely that they’ll click that button.
• Some businesses use their welcome page to promote deals, events or competitions or to call attention to new products.
• Having a custom page reassures people that you know what you’re doing on Facebook and makes you look more professional, hopefully encouraging them to engage with you.

What should you include?

Your Facebook welcome page should reflect your current social media marketing objectives, so think about what action you want visitors to take when they land on it. This could be to ‘Like’ your page, to engage with you on other social media platforms such as Twitter or your blog or whatever else is important to your business marketing goals. Make sure that your page contains an appropriate call to action that stands out clearly and leads them to this next step as quickly and easily as possible.

Let visitors know what sort of information you share on your wall and how they can join in. Lay out the benefits of engaging with your business on Facebook to increase the chances that they’ll ‘Like’ your page and come back again. If appropriate you can also include links to your other social media accounts and your blog’s RSS feed and encourage them to connect with you there too.

As you can see, a custom Facebook welcome page can improve your ‘Like’ conversions and act as an additional promotional tool. Without one you could be missing out on a lot of opportunities and failing to make the most of your Facebook marketing.

Twitter has become such an accepted tool as part of an online marketing strategy that more and more businesses are getting involved. However getting your business on Twitter just for the sake of it, because everyone says you need to, is not enough of a reason.If you’re going to market your business on Twitter you need to first figure out why and what for?

These are just some of the things businesses can use Twitter for:

• To offer existing contacts another way of engaging with the business
• To provide customer service
• To find new customers or prospects
• For research purposes
• For brand awareness
• To drive traffic to the business website

There are many other valid uses for Twitter as a marketing tool, but these are probably the main ones. Do any of these fit in with your goals for using Twitter? If so, are you monitoring the results you are getting to find out whether you are meeting your goals?

I see so many businesses on Twitter that have no idea about how to use Twitter to engage with people and end up alienating others rather than drawing them in. They post only self promotional tweets and offer nothing of value to their followers, then can’t figure out why they’re not getting any benefit from their efforts.

The shame of it is that it is ruining Twitter for a lot of people and businesses who are using it as intended. There is so much rubbish and spam on Twitter that genuine users constantly have to find new ways of filtering all this noise out. If you decide to use Twitter for your business remember that whatever your goals you need to be having conversations and engaging with people. It is not just a broadcast channel and those that treat it as one are never going to get the full benefit out of it that they could.

Before you jump on the Twitter bandwagon (or before you go any further if you’ve already climbed aboard), first figure out what your business is trying to use Twitter for. You’ll then be in a much better position to educate yourself and your staff on how to use Twitter effectively to meet those goals.

This is a question that seems to crop up a lot. It can be overwhelming to manage too many different social media accounts when you’re just getting started with social media marketing, so naturally you want to choose the most effective one.

Unfortunately there is no one right answer for every business. Facebook works wonderfully for some businesses and dismally for others, ditto with Twitter, LinkedIn and all the rest.

Business to business social media marketing tends to work well in LinkedIn, while business to consumer seems to work better in Facebook. This is a generalisation though and there will naturally be exceptions.

Different social media platforms tend to be more important for different industries too. For instance, in the education industry YouTube can be extremely effective, but in the Print and Newspaper industry it is not nearly as useful.

Here are a few examples of the most important social media for various industries*:

• The industries that seem to benefit most from Facebook are Fitness & Wellness, Retail, Travel & Tourism, Real Estate and Non Profit.
• Twitter is the most important social media for Telecoms.
• Businesses in the Development & Construction industry will usually find LinkedIn to be the most effective for them.
• Blogging is most important for those in the Professional Services, Medical Health, Manufacturing, Technology, Marketing Agency, Financial & Mortgage, Government & Politics and Print & Newspaper industries, though it can still be very effective for others.
• YouTube and Flickr can work very well alongside other social media marketing for some industries but are not usually recommended on their own.

*Source: WSI Social Media Experts Think Tank, July 2009

If you’re still not sure where to start, think about your target market and then decide which social media they are most likely to frequent. Of course your own personality and social media knowledge will also affect how effective you are on various platforms, so perhaps the best place to start is where you feel most comfortable.

Whichever social media platform you choose to start with, it’s important to make sure you understand how to use it properly to engage with people. Building relationships is one of the key benefits of social media, so focus on that and you won’t go far wrong.

This has been one of those weeks where it seems that spam is taking over my life. It’s in my email inbox, on my Twitter account and on our Facebook page, not to mention on our blog and on those of our clients.

I seem to spend an unreasonable portion of my day deleting spam mail and moderating spam comments and I am truly sick of it.

I’m assuming that the spammers do get some results, otherwise they wouldn’t bother, but the majority of people hate spam just as much as I do. It’s important therefore to avoid coming across “spammy” in any of your business’s online marketing efforts in order not to alienate potential customers.

So what are some of the things that ordinary businesses do that are or can verge on being spammy?

• Sending out too many emails to subscribers – they want to be updated, not inundated
• Only including self promotional material in online content, nothing of value
• Making inane comments on blogs or social media portals purely for links, etc instead of having actual conversations
• Paying dodgy companies to get you more friends/Likes on Facebook or followers on Twitter instead of creating content that is actually worth liking or following
• Promoting your own business on other people’s walls or blogs

Basically if you spend the majority of your time talking at people instead of conversing with them on social media, you’re probably guilty. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think how you would feel getting that message – would you be grateful or irritated? Be honest!

The internet is a fantastic place so let’s not ruin it by polluting it with yet more spam. There are more than enough true spammers out there already, without the rest of us getting involved.