How To Use Social Media for Holidays

November 15, 2018 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

How To Use Social Media For Holidays

It’s November and already the Christmas decorations have been up in Costco since before Halloween. If you’re a small business, how far ahead should you plan for the holidays? And by the way, there are other holidays than the big ones (that is, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years). There are a number of questions to ask yourself about what you’ll post and when.

Which Holidays Affect Your Business?

If you’re in the retail business, you might sell most of your gifts during November and December. For nonprofits, people may be donating at the end of the year, too. So for those businesses, giving people an easy way to make donations could certainly boost the amount people donate at the end of the year.

Will Your Business Close for Certain Holidays?

If so, which ones? And are there other holidays when the post office or government institutions are closed that could affect your business? Let people know when your business is open and closed. This is really important if you have a brick-and-mortar store.

Should You Post Even if Your Business Is Closed?

If you decide to post on social media on Christmas day, for instance, will anyone be available to engage with people who comment on your posts? Should you acknowledge that you’re closed and tell people you’ll get back to them later? I tend to think letting people know your holiday schedule is a good idea. If you’re going to be closed for a week, let people know!

Do You Acknowledge Other Holidays?

The U.S. has become more diverse. Where I live, for instance, near Silicon Valley, there are now many Indian and Chinese immigrants. So it’s good to be aware of other holidays. Not only are some of those other holidays wonderful, but some of those people may be your customers! So why not acknowledge them?

Which Holidays Are Important to Your Business?

Do you know which holidays your customers celebrate? Those holidays should be important to you, too! And you may also want a list of holidays that your business doesn’t celebrate so that you can share those with your social media manager.

How Do Holidays Affect Your Business?

Leave me a comment and Happy Holidays! No matter which one you’re celebrating at the moment! :D

Ten Reasons to Get More Sleep So You Can Conquer the World

November 8, 2018 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

Ten Reasons to Get More Sleep So You Can Conquer the World

Recently, I finished reading the wonderful Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, Ph.D. First off, I have to say that reading it put me to sleep instantly, but not in a bad way. Most everything I read puts me to sleep and that may be why reading takes me so long! Because by page two or three, I’m nodding off. Turns out, falling asleep that quickly may be a positive trait. No matter who you are, sleep is critical.

Lose Weight

If you have difficulty losing weight, turns out that if you sleep more, you’ll lose more weight. Somehow, I always believed that if you were awake you’d burn more calories and hence lose more weight. But lack of sleep can cause that stubborn weight to stick around. In studies outlined in Matthew Walker’s book, those who slept 4-5 hours per night were far more ravenous than those who slept longer. Not only that, but the “short sleepers” actually ate more.

Solve Problems

You might not believe that REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep would help with problem-solving abilities, but it does. And isn’t it important for everyone to sharpen their problem-solving abilities? Say, for instance, CEOs and those in startups? Not to mention those coming up with new apps, those who are involved with technology, or anyone who has to use their brain to solve problems? Finding more balance between work and life always seems to be an issue for those in the working world, and now more than ever finding the time to sleep is critical. You might like: See Why Work-Life Balance is the Unicorn of the Working Life.

Remember All the Things

If you’re someone who relies upon their memory for anything, getting enough sleep is critical. Is it any wonder that there are so many startups out there who are tackling the problems we all have of not getting enough shut-eye? Here’s an excellent article outlining some of the top startups looking at sleep apps and devices: 10 Promising Startups That Are Tackling Sleep Disorders.

Be Smarter

If there was something out there that could make you smarter, and it was free and without side effects, wouldn’t you run to get it? Sleep is just that, and yet somehow the idea that sleep is something you can “catch up on” pervades our collective psyches. People say they’ll “sleep when they’re dead”–not actually true, but there is a certain machismo in that idea, and it was funny for about ten minutes. Perhaps you might like to hear it from Entrepreneur magazine, in their article, The Science Behind How Sleep Makes You Smarter.

Lowers Risk of Heart Attacks

Who wants fewer heart attacks? Who wants no heart attacks? Again, sleep lowers your risk of heart attacks. People who sleep less have more heart attacks. If you’re working for a startup, wouldn’t you like the person leading your team to be around for a while longer? According to Matthew Walker, Ph.D., “Adults forty-five years or older who sleep fewer than six hours a night are 200 percent more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime, as compared with those sleeping seven to eight hours a night.”

Photo by Lars Plougmann

Makes You Happier

Who doesn’t want to be happier? Isn’t that the reason we have hobbies, friends, and buy things we don’t really need? I’m joking–a little bit here. Natalie Kogan in her article The Magic of a Good Night’s Sleep says that a recent Gallup poll shows that people who got adequate sleep are more likely to rate their lives as happier.

Protects from Alzheimer’s Disease

If anyone in your family suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, you understand how devastating that diagnosis can be. But wait–what if there were something that you could do to help protect yourself from dementia? Well, there is! Sleep! Like cancer, Alzheimer’s is influenced by sleep or the lack of it. And in fact, sleep disturbance may be an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s. Matthew Walker, Ph.D. discusses how over 60 percent of patients with Alzheimer’s disease have at least one clinical sleep disorder.

Lowers Food Cravings

When you don’t get enough sleep you crave “comfort foods” more often. And it turns out that comfort foods don’t typically include foods such as broccoli and carrot sticks. Is that any big surprise? There are many studies linking sleep deprivation and junk food, like this study from Berkeley: Sleep Deprivation Linked to Junk Food Cravings. And in case you were wondering whether the reverse was true–it is. Junk food may also lead to sleep deficits. Unfortunately.

Fewer Car Crashes

When we’re sleepy, our driving suffers, too. There are more car crashes when we move the clocks ahead here in California. And when we “fall back” with the clocks that extra hour of sleep causes car accidents and deaths from driving incidents to plummet. Recently, there was a proposition here in California to end the time changes. I know because I was one of the sleepy people who voted for it. It’s still not a law yet, though. There are still some hurdles before the proposition becomes law.

Live Longer

By now you’re thinking, “I guess now you’re going to say that sleeping longer makes you live longer, too!” Why yes, I am! There are numerous studies saying that more sleep is better. But don’t fear. Some studies say that you can increase your longevity with seven hours of sleep, and maybe six hours is ok, too.

Do You Sleep Enough?

There are at least ten more reasons to get enough sleep. For instance, athletes have begun tracking their sleep. Do you get enough? If not, do you have a goal that you’re trying to reach? Leave me a comment! Unless you’d rather take a nap, that is. And thank you for staying awake long enough to read this.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: REM sleep, sleep, sleep and startups, Startups

How To Improve A Tweet: Five Best Ways

November 1, 2018 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

Whenever you want to do something right, it takes a little extra effort. Twitter is no different than anything else. Sure, you can tweet a photo of your breakfast with no explanation. That’s not the worst thing in the world, right? But you can make your tweet even better with just a few tweaks!

How To Improve A Tweet: Five Best Ways

You can certainly improve your own tweets, but if you want extra EXTRA credit, you could take your friend’s tweet and apply these same tricks!

If There’s a Link, Read the Article, and Provide a Quote

Lots of people use the formula of an article title plus the link. But now you have 280 characters on Twitter, so you can add a bit more without using up all your real estate. Remember to leave some space (say, 20 characters) if someone wants to retweet it, though. Your Twitter handle also takes up some of that real estate! Go into the article and find the main topic and put that into a quote.

So now you have Quote + Article TItle + Link.

Shorten the URL

Go to Bit.ly or whatever your favorite link shortener is, and shorten that link. I usually use Bitly, and it seems to be the preferred link shortener on Twitter. It’s easier to have a shortened link, and looks a little better, too.

Make an Even Better Shortened URL

Using Bitly, you can create a shortened URL that includes a descriptive name and/or a date. For instance, last week I wrote about crowdsourcing for content creation. I could use the whole big, long link, or I could shorten it. Here’s a better, shortened link: http://bit.ly/CrowdsourceContentOct252018. Bitly explains that customized links get 34% more clicks, too. That seems worth the extra time.

Add a Hashtag…or Two

A hashtag or two helps people find your post. And if your friend’s post doesn’t have any hashtags, you could add one or two. Save the crazy hashtagging frenzy for Instagram, though. People on Twitter usually only use one or two. Read more about catapulting your tweet farther using hashtags.

Add an Image

Sometimes people tweet without an image. Of course, these days everyone likes images. If there’s no image, you could go to Pixabay and get a free one. And for extra credit (and to be courteous), you could credit the person who created that image, too.

So There You Go!

Did I leave anything out? Let me know in the comments! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: how to improve a tweet, improving tweets, Twitter success

How to Use Crowdsourcing for Content Creation: Best Ways

October 25, 2018 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

How to Use Crowdsourcing for Content Creation: Best Ways

Simply put, when you use a crowd to answer a question, that is crowdsourcing. There are many places you could find a crowd for crowdsourcing, but I’m going to focus on the online type of crowdsourcing for now. You could also use crowdsourcing at a conference or meeting.

Use a Poll

Did you know that you can now create a poll on Facebook? Tech Advisor explains How to Make a Facebook Poll. Not only that, but you can decorate your poll with .gifs and photos. They must’ve polled people to discover that was what they wanted.

It’s fairly easy to create a poll on Twitter. You may choose up to four answers, so it won’t be a very complex poll. But you could also do a part one and part two if you wanted a poll with eight choices. Unfortunately, you can no longer create a poll on LinkedIn.

Ask an Open-Ended Question

We use open-ended questions all the time on #DigiBlogChat, our Twitter chat. Open-ended questions facilitate conversations, so we avoid yes or no questions, which tend to stop conversations. If you want to know more about Twitter chats, you might like to read: Twitter Chats: 101 Tips for Success.

Discuss on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter

If you’re a person who likes to engage others in discussion and actually be social on social media, you can simply ask a question and start a discussion on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. The important thing is to really engage with people. Don’t just throw a question out there and then forget to answer when they try to talk to you. That’s a recipe or disaster. It’s like that one friend you have who texts you, and after you answer seems to turn off their phone. Don’t be that guy!

Send DMs or PMs to People

If you don’t want your question to be influenced by others, you could send private messages to people. Texts or Facebook Messenger would work, too. Most people are glad to give advice if you frame your question that way.

Do You Crowdsource?

Have you ever used your associates or friends to answer questions in order to create content for yourself? Let me know in the comments! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: crowdsourcing, open-ended questions, polling on social media, social media crowdsourcing

This is What Happens When You Write a Book

October 18, 2018 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement: That Will Make You Look Like a Pro

This is What Happens When You Write a Book

Something shifts when you write a book. Even a smallish book, like mine. Here are some of the things that have changed for me.

Wait a Minute. There’s a Book?

Yes, there’s a book. It’s called 21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement That Will Make You Look Like a Pro. And it’s available on Amazon as a printed book and an e-book. I’m considering an audible version, too. Mostly because I’d like to learn how to create an audible book, but also because it seems like a neat thing to do.

What Changed?

Now, when I hear the word author, I no longer feel a pang of jealousy. Instead of jealousy, I feel pride. And also recognition: “Hey, I wrote a thing, and it’s out there in the world!” So that is a pretty cool feeling. If you’ve never written a thing, I highly recommend doing so.

Also, Inspiration

I also feel inspired to write another book and have already started that process. It’s already longer this book and will cover how to reuse your own content. We spend a lot of time and energy creating content, so if it can be recycled, repackaged, and reused, why not?

Creates Credibility

People look at you differently once you’ve written a book. I’d heard this before but had never experienced it personally. I recently heard the statistic that only 1% of the population has ever published a book. So if you take that step and publish and become an author that sets you apart immediately.

Writing and Publishing Are Commitments

Deciding what to write and what to leave out of any published work can be a difficult decision. Once you’ve sent your book out there, it’s done. Now you might have problems letting go of something you’ve written as I did. But at a certain point, you have to let go and let the book speak for itself.

New Friendships

Along the way, I’ve met others who write, and although this book is a baby step, it’s still a step. Writing more will create more friendships, I’m sure.

Thank You

By the way, thank you to my good friend Dyane Harwood for inspiring me to write this post! She has been such a good friend to me along the way. You can get a copy of her fabulous memoir, Birth of a New Brain, on Amazon.

Have You Written a Thing?

How did writing that thing change you? Leave me a comment! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: authoring a book, this is what happens when you write a book, writing

Who Are You Writing for? Target Audience and Social Media

October 11, 2018 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Who Are You Writing for? Target Audience and Social Media

Depending upon who your target audience is, your content and voice will change. This holds true whether you’re writing a brochure, a Craigslist ad, or a blog post. Without some idea of the person you want to reach, you’re not going to get very far with your social media posts.

Pain Points

What problems cause your target audience pain, and how can you address those pain points? For instance, my target audience often does not have time to do their own social media or blogging. That’s where I come in.

Track your most engaged customers’ ages, locations, interests, and behaviors using a tool such as Google Analytics. Tony Delmercado, co-founder and COO of Hawke Media suggests in How to Use Your Audience’s Pain Points to Grow Your Business.

Language

How will you solve your potential client’s problems? And what kind of language does your client use? Using your client’s language will go a long way towards having them choose to work with you. If you want to know more about your audience and their language, you might like this article: Audience: Use Their Language.

Demographics

What hobbies or interests does your target audience have? What is their age, income level, and gender? What else do you need to know about your ideal client? Creating a profile of your ideal client–the person in the center of that bullseye–can really help. Hubspot has a good article on How to Create an Ideal Client Profile.

Where Does Your Audience Hang Out?

Not everyone is on every social media platform. If your client is interested in business-to-business, for instance, they might do well on LinkedIn, but probably not so much on Pinterest. If your client sells jewelry or carved wooden artwork, then Pinterest might be their best bet. For more about audience, you might like Using Surveys to Define Your Audience.

How Do You Ensure Your Audience Will Hear You?

Do you change what you say so that your audience will really listen? How so? Leave me a comment! And thank you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: target audience, target audience and social media

What’s the Best Social Media Site for Connecting with People?

October 4, 2018 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

What’s the Best Social Media Site for Connecting with People?

Twitter Is Terrific for Connecting with People

Twitter is a wonderful place for connecting with people, but it isn’t the only site that’s good for connecting. LinkedIn and Facebook also allow you to connect and engage with people. You can also use Twitter to build relationships, check the weather, do research, search for content, as well as engage in chats! For more about Twitter chats, check out Twitter Chats: 101 Tips for Success. And if you haven’t checked out #DigiBlogChat, do come visit us on Twitter. Tuesdays at 1:00 p.m. PDT.

Whatever You Really Use Tends to Work

Recently, I wrote about my brother and how he used Yelp! for his business, and how successful he was. You don’t have to do whatever the latest guru is saying to do. Like my brother, you can find your own way, and rocket to success. Of course, you’re also going to have to do the hard work to get there. You can choose to go deep on one platform and really learn it inside and out, or you can go light. Or, of course, you could hire someone to take over for you.

Romantic Connections

Instagram is certainly filled with lots of romantic destination, as well as adorable babies, but what about romance? Recently I was a guest on a Zoom webinar, and we discussed Instagram as a way to meet people romantically. And a recent New York Times article seems to indicate that Instagram, played correctly, can be a good place to find love: Instagram is Now a Dating Platform, Too: Here’s How it Works. So if you’re looking for romance, Instagram might be the place to go.

Backyard Barbeque

To quote the incredibly talented, yet humble Carol Stephen (a personal friend), in her soon-to-be translated into 5200 languages including Klingon and Esperanto “Twitter is the friendliest place to engage. To me it’s like a backyard barbeque, or an informal party, where you’re likely to meet all sorts of people, at every hour of the day, from all over the world.” By the way, her book 21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement That Will Make You Look Like a Pro is for sale on Amazon.

Do You Have a Favorite Site?

Where have you met the most people? Leave me a comment! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: backyard barbecue, DigiBlogChat, friendliest social media platform, Twitter chats, Yelp

What Happens When You Use Just One Social Media Site?

September 27, 2018 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

What Happens When You Use Just One Social Media Site?

Most social media folks will tell you that you need to use more than one social media site. And I’d agree with that advice, for the most part. But there are people who successfully use just one social media platform with great success. What about those people? Last week, I wrote about How to Use Yelp That Will Help Your Business Gain Social Proof.

More About Yelp

As I mentioned last week, my brother used Yelp exclusively for his plumbing business. And he really rocked that plumbing business, with 55 five-star reviews. How did he do it? By offering outstanding service, and by paying attention to Yelp all the time. He checked it every day, he returned calls promptly, and he really went above and beyond. And if you’re in the restaurant or contracting business, Yelp can be quite valuable there, too.

Using Facebook Exclusively for Business

If you’ve been using Facebook exclusively for your business marketing, you know that things have changed. Back in the day, when Facebook wasn’t pay to play, you could definitely get away with just using Facebook. But now you really need to have a budget for Facebook ads or your posts won’t be seen. So that’s one danger of using any social media platform exclusively. By the way, here’s a good Guide to Using Facebook for Business. It includes such things as the difference between Facebook pages and Facebook profiles.

The Down Side

Putting all your eggs in one basket is great except when it isn’t. For instance, in the case of Facebook, they may decide to make you pay. Can your budget handle that or will you have to jump ship? Or a social media platform might lose users way too fast for your taste. There’s no way to guarantee that what you’re doing right now will still be a viable option in six months or a year.

What To Do?

For one thing, back up your posts, in case you lose everything. Maybe you can salvage some of your posts and reuse them someplace new.

How Many Platforms Do You Use?

Leave me a comment! And thanks for stopping by.

SaveSave

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: using just one social media site, Yelp

How to Use Yelp that Will Help Your Business Gain Social Proof

September 20, 2018 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Now I realize that a lot of people really really despise Yelp. I know because some days I am one of them. And in the past, I was one of those people every single day. But then I watched my brother use Yelp, and realized that for some businesses, Yelp is just what the doctor ordered. For instance, automotive shops, restaurants, and plumbers all do really well on Yelp. For a snazzy chart about the businesses that do the best on Yelp, see 5 Things You Absolutely Need to Know as a Business Owner on Yelp. Here are a few things to help you get started if you’re considering Yelp.

Register Your Business

Yelp makes it pretty easy to register your business. You can do it right here and it’s free. Also on the same page, you can see why you should register your business. If you’ve spent any length of time on Yelp, you’ve seen the reviews where no one ever checks in to see them. Why not, at the very least, thank people for their positive reviews?

Respond to Bad Reviews

Most people can read between the lines of bad reviews, esp. when business owners or managers take the time to respond reasonably to bad reviews. Usually, fake reviews look fake. For instance, the people who leave them have spammy names such as WhyMe123456 and no picture or their avatar looks really bad. So when a business owner says, “thank you for leaving this review after that time you used our service in 2012,” most people know the person leaving the review has a personal vendetta against the business. But if you don’t say anything, no one’s going to know.

Use the Reviews in Other Places

Take the reviews and post them in other places, like Beth Staub of AdventureAutoGlass does. By the way, if you need a windshield replaced and you’re near Prescott, Arizona, you can find them on Yelp! And if you do use your review in other places, you may want to put a link back to Yelp (or wherever those reviews appeared), so they don’t look as though you wrote them yourself!

Stay Engaged

You may also want to engage with the bad reviewer privately offline, so you can resolve the issue. Staying engaged is the important thing here. If the complainer stops responding when you offer a to resolve the issue, then it’s out in public for everyone to see. And if you have issues with being engaged on social media, then you may be interested in my book (co-written with Eric Lofholm) available on Amazon: 21 Ways to Total Social Media Engagement That Will Make You Look Like a Pro!

SaveSave

Filed Under: Blog

This is why I am sick and tired of social media

September 6, 2018 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Accusations on Facebook

Recently in a closed Facebook group, someone posted a video of someone at a local restaurant hacking something on the ground, which the poster claimed looked like meat. Now, from my angle, and the size of the video, it was pretty difficult to see anything. But that is beside the point. You can imagine what happened once this video hit Facebook. People volunteered to be judge, jury, and executioners.

Racism

Someone made the comment that a lot of local cats were disappearing, and insinuated that this restaurant could be the reason why. Once the Pandora’s box of racism was opened, there was no way to get that box closed again. It devolved from there into name-calling, with people making sweeping generalizations about Asians, about Chinese restaurants, about the health department, and so on. A few people tried to defend the restaurant owners, but the majority had already found them guilty without the business owners even realizing they’d been accused of health code violations, disappearing cats, etc.

Snowballing Rants

The person who shot the video was very proud of the number of views, and even thought they might set it to music to make it more popular. More people were pitching in with thoughts about the owners, why they shouldn’t be in business, and more racist remarks about Asians in general.

No Moderators

I kept watching this train wreck of a post, astonished that the moderators let the post remain despite the racism. No one stepped up. In fact, as far as I know, the post is still up.

Lack of Faith in Humanity

Now being on social media is my job. Most days, I’m enthusiastic about the positive changes that can come about because of social media (see my previous post about how social media is changing us for the better). For instance, animal welfare organizations can have petitions go viral quickly. People can find organ donors online. We can meet other people quite easily, extending our networks for collaboration and friendship. But posts like the one I saw really make me wonder why I’m on Facebook, what I’m doing in that particular group, and whether I moved to the right place, since it was in a local neighborhood group

Does This Ever Happen to You?

As an Asian-American and local business owner, there was something so heartbreaking and disturbing about the lack of compassion, jumping to conclusions, and ignorance, that I can’t even put it completely into words. Have you had an experience that made you wonder, too? I’m sure I can’t be the only one! And thank you for reading.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: racism on social media, social media trolls

How To Use Social Media For Holidays

Which Holidays Affect Your Business?

Will Your Business Close for Certain Holidays?

Should You Post Even if Your Business Is Closed?

Do You Acknowledge Other Holidays?

Which Holidays Are Important to Your Business?

How Do Holidays Affect Your Business?

Ten Reasons to Get More Sleep So You Can Conquer the World

Lose Weight

Solve Problems

Remember All the Things

Be Smarter

Lowers Risk of Heart Attacks

Makes You Happier

Protects from Alzheimer’s Disease

Lowers Food Cravings

Fewer Car Crashes

Live Longer

Do You Sleep Enough?

How To Improve A Tweet: Five Best Ways

If There’s a Link, Read the Article, and Provide a Quote

Shorten the URL

Make an Even Better Shortened URL

Add a Hashtag…or Two

Add an Image

So There You Go!

How to Use Crowdsourcing for Content Creation: Best Ways

Use a Poll

Ask an Open-Ended Question

Discuss on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter

Send DMs or PMs to People

Do You Crowdsource?

This is What Happens When You Write a Book

Wait a Minute. There’s a Book?

What Changed?

Also, Inspiration

Creates Credibility

Writing and Publishing Are Commitments

New Friendships

Thank You

Have You Written a Thing?

Who Are You Writing for? Target Audience and Social Media

Pain Points

Language

Demographics

Where Does Your Audience Hang Out?

How Do You Ensure Your Audience Will Hear You?

What’s the Best Social Media Site for Connecting with People?

Twitter Is Terrific for Connecting with People

Whatever You Really Use Tends to Work

Romantic Connections

Backyard Barbeque

Do You Have a Favorite Site?

What Happens When You Use Just One Social Media Site?

More About Yelp

Using Facebook Exclusively for Business

The Down Side

What To Do?

How Many Platforms Do You Use?

Register Your Business

Respond to Bad Reviews

Use the Reviews in Other Places

Stay Engaged

Accusations on Facebook

Racism

Snowballing Rants

No Moderators

Lack of Faith in Humanity

Does This Ever Happen to You?

Follow Carol!

Subscribe by Email!