Carol Stephen, Author at

You Need to Know Which Social Media Platform Fits Your Cat Best

May 14, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

You might notice that I skipped over the idea of whether your cats belongs on social media at all. Because of course they do. Cats have opinions about pretty much everything. And they love to share. Even if you don’t want to hear–they want to share. So I’m assuming that your cats needs to be somewhere on social media. And since so many introverts love cats, you might also like this article: Six Facts about Introverts and Social Media that Will Impress Your Friends.

Only the most professional cats can make it on LinkedIn. Some of them might be professional, but the professional air only lasts for a few minutes at a time. For most, LinkedIn is unsustainable. They will seem professional, but when the catnip appears, all bets are off.

Twitter

This has always been my favorite platform, for cats and non-cats alike. Your cat may want to express its opinion, be snarky, and bask in its own beauty. Twitter is great for the pithy comment, too. My late, great kitty Purrsilla had a great run on Twitter as @BigDataKitty. She mostly insulted people and also she got listed with some big data professionals. Just her and 49 guys in suits. Does that sound like your cat?

Facebook

But of course your cat belongs on Facebook. Why not? Perhaps a private group for your kitty would give him or her the best audience. Yes–you can have an audience with a cat (since cats are similar to the Pope and a cat might grant you an audience–if you’re lucky). People want to see cute pictures, such as your cat basking in the sun, stealing food off your plate, and of course sleeping.

Cats and TikTok

TikTok

Yes, videos belong on Tiktok, and cats love videos. Ergo your cat belongs on TikTok. All three of mine have a video together on TikTok. The video was too big to put here, but you can go look at it on TikTok. And it looks like…

YouTube

There were 2 million cat videos on YouTube as of 2015–so you can just imagine how many there are now, five years later. Here’s a wiki about cats on the Internet. And there’s this: “In 2015, there were more than 2 million cat videos on YouTube, with an average of 12,000 views each – a higher average than any other category of YouTube content.”

Need Help Getting Your Cat on Social Media?

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Filed Under: Blog

#Digiblogchat Questions for May 12, 2020

May 11, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

The topic for May 12, 2020 is fitness routines for the remote worker!

Today’s questions are by @LazBlazter. Join us on Twitter at 1:00 pm Pacific Time every Tuesday.

Q1. What exercise tips can you share for anyone working away from the office or remotely?

Q2. How often do you take a stretch break and what prompts you?

Q3. Let’s get some competition here: set yourself daily targets, e.g. a sale is 10 Squats. What‘s your target?

Q4. Who do you work out with over @youtube or @zoom?

Q5. Can you share either a HIT routine or a relaxation tip?

Q6. What are the benefits of being active and doing basic fitness to your work?

Q7. Would you consider a client workout acceptable now, as in a round of golf?

Q8. What about those snacks and coffees, howdo you control the munchies?

Q9. Would you support a colleague with their exercise programme and how?

Q10. What clothes do you wear for remote working when exercising too?

Filed Under: Digiblogchat questions

Twitter: Three Business-Friendly Tools

May 8, 2020 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

In doing social media professionally for over 10 years, I kick the tires of any tools that I use so that you don’t have. That said, here are some favorites that you can use for Twitter.

Have you ever wondered who your competitors are friends with? Would you like to see whether they’re listed anywhere? How about where in the world an account’s followers are from? All of the following tools have specific uses for businesses, listed after the descriptions.

FollowerWonk

FollowerWonk

With FollowerWonk, you can compare your social graph to competitors, friends, or industry leaders. Statistics include the number of years on Twitter, social authority, engagement rate, and average tweets/week. There is a free version that you can use for one account.

Retweet Rank

Retweet Rank

Retweet Rank

RetweetRank shows you your recent retweets and who has been retweeting you, along with where you’re ranked as a percentile. You can also see whose tweets are getting the most retweets (similar to trending topics). This is a good way of seeing what people are talking about on Twitter at a glance. From this dashboard (above), you can also check how many people have listed an account. And if an account is not listed, that’s a good sign that the account bought fake followers. If you sign in using Twitter, you can see even more. However, to get the best times to tweet or rank history, among other features, you have to get a paid account.

Business Use: A good use of Retweet Rank for business would be to see how effective your competitors are at getting retweets, and if there’s room for improvement in your own social media strategy through the adoption or avoidance of your competitors’ practices. There are many ways to make your tweets more retweetable, which will help your retweet rank in the long run. You might also want to check when your competitors tweet to see if you could adjust your own schedule to be more successful.

Tweepsmap

Tweepsmap shows you where in the world your followers are, with markers showing the percentages of who is where. The local view is particularly interesting. The zoom is just like a Google map–using the scroll bar on the left side.

Business Use: A good use of Tweepsmap for business would be to ensure that the account is following enough local businesses. Those in the service industry (plumbers, electricians) could benefit. For example, if I was really dependent upon local business, I might decide to focus on following more locals, since I’m in the South Bay and have more local followers in San Francisco.

Need Help with Your Twitter?

If you need to get some traction on Twitter, I’d love to hear from you! Contact me today.

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: Business, Friendly, Tools, Twitter

Focus on Your Deepest Interests for More Energy

May 7, 2020 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Scrolling through Gary Vayner’s wonderful post How to Make 64 Pieces of Content in a Day, hidden on page 66, I saw a little snippet. The snippet was about using the Notes App to capture content, but I saw something else. It was about focusing on your deepest interests: “Keep challenging yourself on what you do when you’re not at work and find ways to allocate time to putting in a business or media (social media) platform around your deepest interests.”

Your Deepest Interests

What are those things you do when you’re at home? Especially at home right now, since we’re all at home a lot now (except for essential businesses). Many of us are baking banana bread, deep-cleaning appliances, and reexaming our life choices. By the way, my new favorite banana bread recipe is on Epicurious. But there are also people enjoying deeper interests that they might have felt they had no time for before. Personally, I’m reading different books, with more fiction taking precedence.

Your Forgotten Hobbies

If you suddenly have more time to think and restart some old hobbies, you could be surprised and delighted. You might like this article about your hobbies: A Good Hobby Will Make You Feel Delighted. Active leisure doesn’t seem like something people engage in as much as they used to. Isn’t it time to bring back those active hobbies? The people in my family always had a million hobbies. My brother raised Siamese Fighting Fish and rebuilt motorcycles, for instance, while I mostly read and played sports.

Your Childhood Dreams

Was there something you wanted to do that you forgot about? Maybe now you have more time and could pick it up. Stranger things have happened. And if it’s possible to combine a childhood dream with something else you might like to do, why not now? Maybe you could illustrate your own blog posts with pictures you painted. Or created videos of your efforts at engine repairs.

If Writing Is Your Passion

You could easily create many pieces of content if you enjoy writing. While others may be struggling to come up with content, you could use that one article 50 different ways. If you are someone who’s struggling, you might like this: Content Creation: What Are the Best Habits for Writing?

Filed Under: Blog

#Digiblogchat questions May 5, 2020

May 5, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

Here are the questions for May 5, 2020 #Digiblogchat. Topic: sensitivity in email marketing with @brandonpolson of @aweber, with partner @LazBlazter! Join us on Twitter at 1:00 pm Pacific Time every Tuesday.

Q1. How do you know when it’s the right time to email your subscribers in a crisis?

Q2. How often should you email your audience in a crisis?

Q3. What are some tips when emailing your subscribers in a crisis?

Q4. What are some things to avoid when emailing your audience in a crisis?

Q5. Examples of appropriate emails sent during COVID-19?

Q6. Examples of NOT so appropriate emails sent during COVID-19?

Q7. When shouldn’t you email your audience in a crisis?

Q8. Should you continue selling your products or services in a crisis?

Q9. How can you show empathy in your emails to your subscribers during a crisis?

Q10. What should you say in your emails during a crisis?

Filed Under: Digiblogchat questions

When You Simplify Your Social Media Posts We All Win

April 30, 2020 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Photo by Ignite New Zealand

Today I was scrolling through the New York Times and an article caught my eye. The article, No the Best Doesn’t Win, is about the Simple Secret to Success, and had to do with simplification (no big surprise there!). In the article, Shira Ovide explains that “It just works” are magic words. In a discussion about Zoom, Ms. Ovide explains that video meetings don’t seem like rocket science, but it’s hard to make something seem easy.

Remember Google Hangouts?

Despite doing about a year of Google Hangouts, it was never easy. First, you needed to log into Google Plus (remember Google Plus?). Then there were the minutes of searching for the Google Hangout. Once you got a hangout going, it was fun. But you’d have to close down everything else because it was such a memory hog. And very often it just didn’t work. Maybe Google heard our pleas, because recently they released Google Meet.

Social Media is the Same Way

You want your social media posts to be easy for your audience. Easy to read, easy to follow, and easy on the eyes. Give them a simple choice as a Call to Action. Do you agree? Yes or no? are both simple examples of calls to action. Don’t make them read ten thousand words before they get to the point, because you will lose them. Social media posts should be easy. Give them a short quote to entice them to read further. And maybe tell them why they’d want to read more. By the way, you might like Ho w to Create a Wonderful Blog Post in an Hour. Yes, it’s possible to make a simple post in an hour.

Our Attention Spans Are Shorter

Back in the day, you could post nearly anything and people would read it. But now? The interwebs are crowded with blog posts, Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and articles all over. Videos can’t be too long unless they’re very compelling. And articles can’t be too long, either. Unless you have an interesting story, or a humorous point of view, most people won’t read all the way to the end. They scan.

We’re Visual, Too

Any graphics that accompany an article, blog post, or social media post need to be simple and enhance your article. They don’t need to be too literal, but they do need to have something that compels your reader to want to know more. Here’s an article you might like: What Happens When You Hire a Professional Blogger.

Are Your Social Media Posts Simple–Yes or No?

Let me know in the comments! (And did you see what I did there?)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: simplicity in social media, simplification

#Digiblogchat questions April 28, 2020

April 24, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

Here are the questions for April 28th, 2020 #Digiblogchat. Topic: How work will be different when lockdown ends with questions by Tripp Braden. Join us on Twitter at 1:00 pm Pacific Time every Tuesday.

How has your life changed most since the COVID19 Lockdown?
What are you going to change when you return back to work because of the lockdown?
What are the best things that came out of the past several months in lockdown?
How did you capture the events of the past several months?
What did you learn about yourself during the lockdown experience?
What new capabilities did you or your business add that will stay with you after the lockdown?
How will your work change as people return to their normal routines?
How long will it take to return to normal in your current role?
What will you do more of at work now that you see it works in your personal life?
Will you get more involved in nonprofits and community activities over the coming weeks and months?
How will your life or career change as a result of what you learned about yourself and others?

Filed Under: Digiblogchat questions Tagged With: Business, Covid19, Twitterchat, Work

Organizing Your Social Media So You Can Have a Better Life

April 23, 2020 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Everyone says you need to know your why before you feel motivated. The reason you want to organize your social media is so you’ll have more time. Hence, you can use that time to have a better life. There are lots of different ways to organize your social media. Here are some suggestions.

Block out Your Time

I like to check Twitter first thing in the morning. So I group all my Twitter accounts together and do it that way. If you have some task that you can group together, you could do the same thing. Using a block of time, whether it’s 15 minutes or three hours, will make you more efficient. For instance, you could schedule a week’s worth of Facebook posts all at once. See how long that takes and put it right on your calendar. You might like Time Management for the Tired and Frazzled.

Have Daily Topics

If you struggle with what to post, you could always have a daily topic prepared. Think of five things you would like to post and then attach that to a day of the week. There are already people who post certain things on particular days, and you can use already-existing daily topics, such as #MotivationalMonday or #ThrowbackThursday. I’ve always liked #ThankfulThursday myself. You may be able to create on particular to your business.

Outline Several Ideas for Your Blog Posts

While you’re writing an article for your blog, try to think of future topics for yourself. It’s good to always have five at least five. That way, you won’t have an excuse when you’re writing and run out of steam. Just jump to the next topic and continue there for the alloted time. You might also like How to Come up With a Year’s Worth of Blog Content.

Connect the Dots

You don’t have to share the same things across all your social media platforms. If you do, you might want to reshare that content using a different image, a different quote, and at a different time. For example, create something on Twitter with a hashtag that you then share on Facebook without a hashtag and using a different image. Put that same content on LinkedIn, but write a bit more. Experiment and have fun with it!

What Will You Do with Your Extra Time?

Why, focus on your hobby, of course!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogging, organizing, Social Media, time blocking, time management, writing

#Digiblogchat questions April 21, 2020

April 20, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

The topic for April 21, 2020 is the “Great DigiBlogChat Quiz! #digiblogchat

Q1. Who are your hosts for #digiblogchat ?

Q2. When did #digiblogchat first occur?

Q3. What are the main topics of focus for #digiblogchat ?

Q4. How do you get to be a guest host on #digiblogchat ?

Q5. What is the record reach for a #digiblogchat ?

Q6. What is your favourite discussion theme on #digiblogchat ?

Q7. Which regulars on #digiblogchat have written books and what are they?

Q8. What has been the best piece of learning you have found through #digiblogchat ?

Q9. Where would you rank the #digiblogchat against other chats?

Q10. What could we do differently on #digiblogchat and why?

Filed Under: Digiblogchat questions

How to MacGyver Your Social Media

April 16, 2020 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

During the past few weeks I’ve heard the word MacGyver used several times. Before Covid19, I’d rarely heard the term used, and never as a verb. If you look up MacGyver on Wikipedia, you find this: “With skills that are only limited by his creativity, Mac saves the day using paper clips instead of pistols, birthday candles instead of bombs, and gum instead of guns. And those sound exactly like the types of skills we need right now, as we’re all making do with whatever we have around the house. As far as social media, clients don’t want to appear tone-deaf, so they’re asking to limit salesy posts. For social media managers, it’s more work, and it’s also a creative challenge. We’re using the virtual version of paper clips, birthday candles, and chewing gum for content creation.

Pivot to Sensitivity and Away from the Hard Sell

Right now, nobody wants to hear about diamond rings and cruises (especially not cruises!). They’re in a kind of survival space, where they want to hear about things that will help them survive in the long term. And as the crisis wears on, we’re moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The first week, everyone was dazed and bought all the toilet paper and bleach. The second week, all the frozen vegetables and eggs were gone. By the third week, the stores had replenished some of their supplies. By now, in the fourth week, we’re seeing more products on the store shelves. By the way, you might like Maslow’s Unbelievably Strange Hierarchy of Social Media Needs.

Using Virtual Duct Tape

For those of us scrambling to create good content or social media posts, we feel like we’re stapling and taping stuff together in the hopes that the content will be good. None of us was prepared for Covid19. What do we do now? For me, going back into the archive of content and reusing those posts that are soothing and calming works well. Now that we’ve been in lockdown for a month, this is starting to feel more normal. And while we’d like to go back to the way it was before, that will never happen. Perhaps it’s a good thing that it won’t, since we’re more focused than ever on helping each other. Wouldn’t that be a good thing to continue?

Photo by Lenny K Photography

Improvization and Inspiration

Since it seems that MacGuyver’s main strength is to improvize, many of us probably feel in alignment with him right now. Whether we’re looking in the frig trying to figure out what to make with three eggs and some pickles or avoiding a trip to the store, we need to be inventive. I’ve seen some wonderful examples of creativity lately. For example, people in my neighborhood have stocked our Little Free Library with canned food, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer. Kids have been making inspirational drawings in chalk. Adult makers have been sharing patterns for masks, personal protective equipment, and 3D-printed widget to help doctors. People have been cooperating, for the most part, and helping each other. If that’s part of the “new normal,” then I’m all in.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: MacGyver, Social Media

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Need Help Getting Your Cat on Social Media?

The topic for May 12, 2020 is fitness routines for the remote worker!

FollowerWonk

Retweet Rank

Retweet Rank

Tweepsmap

Need Help with Your Twitter?

Your Deepest Interests

Your Forgotten Hobbies

Your Childhood Dreams

If Writing Is Your Passion

Remember Google Hangouts?

Social Media is the Same Way

Our Attention Spans Are Shorter

We’re Visual, Too

Are Your Social Media Posts Simple–Yes or No?

Block out Your Time

Have Daily Topics

Outline Several Ideas for Your Blog Posts

Connect the Dots

What Will You Do with Your Extra Time?

Pivot to Sensitivity and Away from the Hard Sell

Using Virtual Duct Tape

Improvization and Inspiration

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