Carol Stephen, Author at

How to Recycle Content the 10 Best Ways

April 7, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Recycle Content the 10 Best Ways

Since it’s almost Earth Day, it’s a good time to talk about recycling your content on social media. It’s also a very good time to prevent your brain from exploding. Recycling your content, as it turns out, is a very good way to prevent your brain from exploding. If you need other reasons to keep your brain from exploding, you might want to read: Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF.

Photo by Caden Crawford

Start with Your Blog

Your blog is like the torso of your efforts. Everything starts there. The “limbs” are the different social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. You may be a starfish, with five arms, or an octopus with eight limbs. Or maybe you’re a mollusk, with only one leg. But I digress. Create your content on your blog, with plenty of nice, fat keywords.

Recycling Tip: Go back to your older blog posts and see which can be rewritten. A slightly different slant can give new life to an old post!

Tweet Your Post

Not only should you tweet your blog post, but if you’ve done your homework and gotten some social capital, ask for people to retweet. “Please retweet!” you might say. And then pin that tweet to the top of your Twitter feed so anyone coming there can see it. If you don’t have social capital, this is an excellent post on Reciprocation from my bud Bridget Willard.

Recycling Tip: Retweet your own tweet later. That’s right. When the initial excitement of that tweet is over, retweet your own post again. You could use a different headline and a different image. Or not. Up to you. Guy Kawasaki repeats his posts, and here’s Guy’s strategy.

Photo by tian2992

Pin on Pinterest

You do have a blog board on Pinterest, don’t you? If you don’t, make one right away! And then pin your blog post there. You might also want to join a group board so that you can pin your wonderful writing there, too. Here’s how to join a group board.

Recycling Tip: If your pin doesn’t get repinned the first time, pin it at a different time and delete the first pin. Make sure you’ve added your key words to the description. You could also add it to a different board, at a different time.

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Facebook

Facebook is a little trickier, unless you post a lot every day.

Recycling Tip: Use #TBT (Throwback Thursday) or ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) to repeat old posts. And add some different text, for heaven’s sake!

Email Marketing

Remember that blog post? Take pieces of it and put it into your email newsletter. Maybe use a different image, from further down in the post, and add a sentence or two.

Instagram

Instagram has been taking off the last couple of years, with more people using it.

Recycling Tip: Regram your own posts, and change up the hashtags. Of course, recycle the hashtags, too!

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Google Plus

There’s some disagreement as to whether Google Plus is still relevant. Many Social Media Managers think that it isn’t. Most agree that it’s a ghost town, and that posting there helps with SEO.

Photo by jenny downing

YouTube

Videos are one of the best ways to get attention from your audience. Short videos, in particular work very well on social.

Recycling Tip: Chop up your video and reuse it in different ways. You could take a one-minute video and create three or four shorter videos.

Photo by CityscapeGUY

LinkedIn is often described as the “sleeping giant” of social media.

Recycling Tip: Share one of your favorite posts in a LinkedIn group at a different time.

Recycle Your Images

If you’ve created terrific images, you could recycle them. For instance, you could make a calendar from Instagram photos. Or Create magnets from Pinterest images.

Recycling Tip: Use this link, which friend Kittie Walker shared on Twitter (follow her on Twitter ~ @avidmode), to recycle your images from Instagram.

Photo by E. D’Ascoli Photographies

How Do You Recycle?

Do you recycle? How?

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: email marketing, Google Plus, Instagram, LinkedIn, newsletter, pin your tweet, Pinterest, reciprocation, recycling, social capital, Social Media, tweet, Twitter, YouTube

Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF

March 31, 2016 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF

“Find good stuff and share it” is the way content curation works. Whether you as a curator are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest, people want to see the best articles chosen for them. Very few people have hundreds of hours to scour the web looking for the gold nuggets. But why is content curation your BFF, you may wonder?

Fewer Brain Explosions!

Your brain can pay attention to maybe four things at once. A friend of mine recently said that if you’re driving you can pay attention to what’s in front of you, in back of you, and to either side. If one more item is added, say texting, then it’s overload. Information overload works the same way. Content curation helps your audience because you filter the good stuff for them, and then hand it to them on a pretty plate. Here’s how to handle information overload (TIP: Skip to the list!).

Builds Trust

People will come to rely on your content, so ensure that you stay on target and be true to what you’ll share. So if your social media profile says you are a restaurant, people would probably expect to see fabulous images of food. Probably. And maybe content from parallel industries as well, such as pubs and wineries. Of course, you can also create your own content. Here’s an article on Content Creation: Like Hosting Out-of-Town Guests, that you might like.

Photo by Grayskullduggery

Creates Community

Posting about a particular subject draws in like-minded people. How often have you yourself, as a content curator, been impressed or tickled by a content on someone else’s post? Content curation, done the right way, gives you that sense of community that we’re sometimes lacking.

Opens the Imagination

The best Facebook page or Pinterest board unlocks your imagination. Sometimes you get a lot more than you expected, when you go to a beautifully curated account. Sometimes you think “I could make that outdoor sofa set from old pallets” or “that Grand Marnier Soufflé looks entirely do-able!” Here’s a post about Pinterest Influencers: Curating Pins that you might like.

Positions You As a Thought Leader

If you have original ideas, then curating content can make you a leader. People will come to you first when they want an answer about your area of expertise. When you add context to a news article, for example, you reframe an already-existing viewpoint. And who doesn’t want to be a thought leader?

Secret Sixth Reason

Here’s the reason many of you curate content: It’s your passion. And you want engaged followers. Don’t you?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: building community, Content, curation, information overload, Social Media, thought leader

Why Friday is the Worst Time to Publish a Blog Post

March 24, 2016 By Carol Stephen 12 Comments

Why Friday is the Worst Time to Publish a Blog Post

You want the most eyes possible on your blog post, right? So you’d like to know when to post, the same as all of us. I’ve been posting on Thursday mornings at 7 a.m., Pacific Time. But others may like the beginning of the week, or the weekend. Why not Friday, you say? After all, that way you have the whole week to write your article.

The News Dump

Friday is known as a “news dump day.” that is, bad news or news that media outlets don’t want to be noticed goes out on Fridays. Yes, it’s a thing, and you can read about it in the Political Dictionary. If you must publish something, but don’t want anyone to notice, send it on Friday.

The Zombie Apocalypse That No One Knew About

If you want to keep the zombie apocalypse quiet, or want no one to know about that affair the President is having, you could quietly release it on Friday. By the way, here’s an article about how a zombie apocalypse would be better than having an old school social media manager that you might like.

So if Friday is a bad time, when is a good time?

Photo by NCinDC

Thursday and Saturday Mornings Rank High

Thursday and Saturday mornings, according to this article in Kissmetrics, The Science of Social Timing, are both good times to post, depending upon your audiences. Men are more likely to read an article at night, and women in the morning. Additionally, Coschedule has a nifty long article, When is the Best Time to Publish a Blog Post that again emphasizes that mornings are the best.

Photo by nerissa’s ring

Fridays Are Pre-Weekend Days

Think about it. Mondays everyone keeps their head down, is trying to get over the weekend, and is focused on themselves and getting the work done. And on Fridays, people are looking forward to the weekend. Isn’t that how you are? Then why would your audience be any different? Some people don’t even work a full day on Friday, instead keeping their eye on the clock and how much time they have left before they leave.

Photo by leemueller

It Depends on Your Audience

Of course if your audience is around on Fridays because your audience consists of pescatarians looking for fish recipes, then Friday would be the perfect time to publish. So keep in mind that you should take these recommendations with a huge grain of salt and test, test, test. Speaking of audiences, you might like this article, Audience: Use Their Language.

Photo by jurvetson

What’s Your Favorite Day to Publish?

If you’re a blogger, when do you like to publish your article? Have you done any testing? Let me know in the comments! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, blogging, good days to publish

The Surprising Importance of the Offline Meeting

March 17, 2016 By Carol Stephen 16 Comments

The Surprising Importance of the Offline Meeting

People crave connections. While those connections may begin with an online conversation on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, the best connections morph into face-to-face meetings. People sometimes then move back online, and stay in touch for years, meeting online and offline over months and years. But the offline meeting is what forges the connection.

Photo by vramak

Brainstorming, Laughing, and Whispering

Brainstorming often occurs best in offline meetings, where people are talking, interrupting, laughing, whispering, and in general having a good time. Social media can provide a strong introduction–and you can feel as though you know someone you’ve met online. But you won’t truly know them as well until you meet them offline. For instance, someone you thought was the biggest extrovert IN THE WORLD could suddenly turn into an introvert. Has that happened to you?

Photo by milesmilob

Technology Can Only Go So Far

Although we have wonderful technology to bridge the distances between colleagues, Google Hangouts, Skype, and Blab sessions can’t replace the face-to-face meeting, where we can see people roll their eyes, tap their fingers in frustration, or stifle a smile. And many entrepreneurs may dislike online meetings, especially Baby Boomers. By the way, here’s my post about Baby Boomers and Social Media.

Photo by kevin dooley

Real-Life Meetings Drive Business

In an article from Entrepreneur, 3 Benefits of Meeting Face to Face, Katherine Duncan mentions that Simone uses a personal approach because it’s about “how you make them feel.” You’d never know without meeting in person that a serious person could be the class clown. Or that the class clown online is deadly serious offline. For me, meeting in person has led to more solid connections, and more business.

Photo by jeanbaptisteparis

Body Language

How a person stands, sprawls on a chair, or crosses their arms say a lot about what they’re thinking. None of that comes through online. In this article about The Surprising Power of Body Language, Ronald Riggio writes about how power poses and eye gazes can cause a shift in power. We all know someone whose body language is intimidating. And we all know that person who shrinks when you meet them in person. That first meeting in person is always a surprise.

Photo by PeterTea

Get Off Your Phone

Instinctively, we know that meeting in person helps build trust, although being connected to a smart (or dumb!) phone doesn’t. It’s similar to receiving a handwritten card in the mail–something unexpected and unusual, and a good way to stand out. Not to mention when you’re in person you can show off your good manners.

Face to Face Still Matters

One story stands out to me, and that’s the day a year ago that I met some online friends at WordCamp San Diego. Bridget Willard (You Too Can Be a Guru), my bestie, was going to see Heather Steele of Blue Steele Solutions, since Heather was speaking, so we all decided to meet up. Then we also got to meet Frank and Adam (also of Blue Steele Solutions). We all still talk about that meeting and the long dinner we had with Tracy Phillips and Chef Ivan Flowers. Even though it was a year ago, we all remember that day. Could a tweet go that far? Or a Google Hangout? I don’t think so.

Photo by reggiepen

Your Turn

Who have you met and how did that meeting surprise you?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: face to face meeting, Facebook, marketing, offline meeting, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter Spotlight: Follow People with Different Interests

March 10, 2016 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Twitter Spotlight: Follow People with Different Interests

Here’s a question that people always ask me: why should I follow so-and-so? His business is completely different than mine! Why would he be interested in what I do?

We Each Know 600 People

Although the number is always changing, the average number of people each of us knows is around 600, according to this New York Times article, The Average American Knows How Many People? And each of those people knows 600 people, too. So the odds of someone seeing your tweets grows exponentially when more people follow you.

Photo by Wesley Fryer

We Are Social Creatures

Back in the day, people might find articles and cut them out to send to each other. Now, people share links, tweets, and videos. So if your tweet, link, or video is easy to access, guess what? It could get shared by the right person. If your Aunt Betty sees your tweet about something her nephew is interested in, there’s a good chance she could share it. By the way, although you’re social, you might still enjoy the analytics behind Twitter.

Photo by anoldent

3.435 Degrees of Separation

We all know about the Six Degrees of Separation and the Six Degrees game that came after it. But on Twitter, that six degrees number is smaller. It’s either 4 or 3.4, depending upon who you talk to. There are lots of studies quoted on the Six Degrees of Separation Wikipedia entry. In other words, it’s easier to connect with people on Twitter than elsewhere.

Who Should You Connect with?

When you first get on Twitter, you might only want to connect with a few people. But once you get comfortable, why not connect with more people? For instance, I retweet things about packaging and manufacturing because a couple of people with those accounts have become friends. By the way, you might have missed my article: Twitter Lists for the Power User.

Need to Get Started?

Here’s a good five-minute video by my buddy You Too Can Be A Guru: Twitter in Five Minutes! Yes, it’s from 2011. It’s a classic. And while you’re on Twitter, follow her, too! (@YouTooCanBeGuru)

Who Have You Met Accidentally?

Serendipity often plays a role in meeting people. Who have you met by happy accident? Leave me a comment. And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: connecting, Following, Social, strategy, Twitter

How to: Business Analytics Tricks You Need to Know For Twitter

March 3, 2016 By Carol Stephen 10 Comments

How to: Business Analytics Tricks You Need to Know For Twitter

Recently I’ve been using analytics for Twitter more and thought I’d share some of what I’ve been learning. Here’s a look behind the curtain at some of my favorite stats. These might strike you as a little nerdy, but they’re really quite fun! First, take a look at your overview in Twitter. To check your own analytics, choose home, then click the pull-down menu and choose Analytics.

Twitter Analytics Overview for 28 Days

Twitter Analytics Overview

From your overview, you can see at a glance whether the account is moving up, down, or flat. From my 28-day summary, you can see that Tweets, impressions, followers, and tweets linked to me are all up. Areas for improvement: Profile visits and mentions.

Monthly Summary

Another quick overview is the monthly summary. Above is mine from February of 2016. Tweet impressions are one item I like tracking. Don’t be fooled into thinking that vanity metrics, such as new followers, are important. As Eric Ries says, Vanity Metrics Are Dangerous (yes, it’s from 2009, but still holds true).

Top Ten Interests of a Twitter Audience

Audience Interests

You might be surprised to know what your audience is interested in. My top three are technology, entrepreneurship, and tech news. Of course, your audience is attracted to you by what you tweet. If you tweeted jokes and cartoons all day long, you’d see your followers’ top interest as comedy. The top interests (in particular the top three) can guide the content you provide.

Overall Impressions Show Heaviest Days

Overall Impressions

In the above bar graph, you can see day by day and week by week where my biggest impressions are. Because I have a Twitter chat on Tuesdays, those days get the most impressions. (More about measuring a Twitter chat, below, under Tweetreach.)

Impressions Can Tell You What to Share Again

Impressions

Here’s something that you can easily replicate. Take a look at the tweet with the highest impressions. Mine had 8 retweets and 8 favorites. There is something about your highest tweet that resonates with your audience. There are several ways to optimize this tweet (in this case a blog post).

Wait a few days, weeks, or even a month and share it again.
Change the headline and share it.
Use a different image and retweet it.
Share at different times of the day, still within business hours.
Pin it to the top of your Twitter feed.
Thank those who shared.
Ask for retweets!

Gender and Household Income

If you look at my analytics for gender and household income, you’d see that the majority make $175-250K+.

What does that tell me? Many of my followers could afford my services. I’ve taken over accounts before where the income has been much lower, although the product or service is an expensive one.

Country Analytics Can Help You Decide When to Tweet

Country

You can see from my analytics that most of my followers are in the United States. How does that help, though? It helps with when you time your tweets. I try to time mine between 9-5. If you’d like to know more about whether to schedule, how much to schedule, or how to balance, I talk about that in a previous post, Automation and Social Media: You Need to Know How to Balance.

Tweriod

For more detailed analytics, try out Tweriod. I know that my tweets early in the morning always get the most engagement. If you look at Tweriod, you can see when your followers are online.

TweepsMap World View

TweepsMap

Another way, besides Twitter’s own analytics, to see where your followers are is through an excellent and fun tool: Tweepsmap. Like the name suggests, you can get a map of your followers. So you can see which countries they’re in, or zero in on a state or city. Above is my worldmap.

State-by-State TweepsMap

Above is a screenshot of my state-by-state Tweepsmap. It’s interesting that Twitter analytics shows that 56% of my followers are U.S.-based and TweepsMap shows that 62% of my followers are in the U.S. At any rate, the majority are in the United States.

How does TweepsMap Help Me?

Suppose you are a purely local brick-and-mortar store. If you had above map, you might decide to focus more on gaining followers locally. Or, if you sell widgets overseas, maybe you don’t have enough followers in a particular country. So you can change your focus to attract more of the followers you’d like. Since the majority of my clients are in the U.S., this map is fine. That is, I wouldn’t change when I tweet.

Measure Your Hashtag or That of Your Twitter Chat with TweetReach

TweetReach

With Twitter, there are tools that can assist you in finding out how far a tweet or hashtag reached. For my chat, #DigiBlogChat, I use TweetReach, which gives you a snapshot report to show you potential reach, impressions and Tweet volumes. Login through Twitter.

Other Things to Measure

I like to measure influential followers, especially for local accounts. I track these over the course of a month in a spreadsheet or document. Also: a good one to track is conversations with people interested in your services. Sometimes those conversations take place in direct messages.

What One Thing Would You Measure?

If you could measure one thing, what would it be? Leave me a comment! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: analytics, Business, how to, metrics, Startup, Startups, TweepsMap, Tweetreach, Twitter, vanity metrics, Visible Tweets

Creating Ritual for Social Media Transitions: Confessions

February 25, 2016 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Creating Ritual for Social Media Transitions: Confessions

You might have read my last post: Ten Social Media Transitions and How to Use Them. That post brought up another issue, that of how to create rituals for surviving those transitions.

Everyone Processes Differently

It’s a cliche to say that everyone is different. But everyone processes their emotions differently. To some people, it’s like water off a duck’s back. They’re all: “Next!” Others may need to wear a sackcloth and mope around for quite a few days (that would be me).

It’s easy to say that you should just “get over it.” But, really, how do you?

Balinese Rituals

While thinking about this topic, my mind wandered back to a trip I took to Bali. The Balinese have numerous ways of celebrating, creating offerings, and making rituals out of every day events. They seem to have a ritual for nearly every event. If you wander around for awhile, and come back to your hotel room, you may find flowers in your shoes.

What if we had as many rituals for the transitions and events that face us in the digital world?

Photo by A.Cahlenstein Photography

New Job Responsibilities

For instance, if you suddenly had to take on a new platform, you’d know exactly what to do. There would be a ritual for it, that would involve Pinot Noir, chocolate, and a hike with your two best friends to a favorite bench in a park. Once there, you’d have a basket filled with the proper words that you’d speak, before you burnt and buried them. The words, that is.

Photo by Roshan Vyas

Ditching Trolls

Much like beating Bowser, ditching a troll takes a lot of effort and multiple tries. Eventually, fire will rain down and Princess Toadstool will be saved. In our digital lives, there are trolls, there is spam, and there are hurdles of every variety to overcome. By the way, here are instructions for beating Bowser.

Photo by ♫Ali

ISO: The Gamification Handbook

Not only do our online lives need to be gamified more, we need a way to quickly process our emotions. Creating a point system could definitely be the way to go. Maybe even a handbook for social media managers with all the tricks of getting through the tough times, as well as ways to celebrate the good times. Here’s my article on the gamification of social media, in case you missed it.

Photo by AwesomeSA

Handling Victory

If loss creates stress, success also creates stress. You’ve just gained 20,000 followers on your business account. What do you do? Do you announce it? Does anyone care except for you? Maybe not. But a small celebration couldn’t hurt, could it?

Photo by oztenphoto

What Rituals Do You Have?

I’m really curious about this. We spend more and more of our time online. The line between online and offline isn’t as distinct as it once was. Have you created any rituals? What are they? Please leave me a comment!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Bali, digital, rituals, Social Media, transitions

10 Social Media Transitions and How to Use Them

February 18, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

10 Social Media Transitions and How to Exploit Them

10 Social Media Transitions and How to Use Them

Transitions, those edges around your social media accounts and jobs, can get messy and weird. Many people don’t plan for transitions. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t think about them! Here are some thoughts on the transitions that I’ve witnessed within social media.

When Friends Shuffle Off This Mortal Coil

This has happened to me a couple of times. One friend used to send me links to country-western songs every morning. We had never met. And it was quite sad. I never had the usual closure you get when someone you’ve met goes to that great tweetchat in the sky. There was no memorial service to attend. Just a message posted by his family that he had moved on. Talking to a mutual friend or writing about it (see below) may help to ease the pain.

When Looking for Another Position

You probably don’t want to check in on Foursquare when you’re out looking for another job. Also: ixNay on the acebookFay. That is, don’t make friends with your soon-to-be coworkers all over the place and start chatting with them before you even get to that cool new position. Here’s where the word S.E.C.R.E.T comes in: it’s ok to write their names on a Cootie catcher, but don’t get their name tattooed anywhere just yet.

When You Leave Social Media Accounts Behind

Naturally, the company where you worked owns all the accounts you created. Even if it was a lot of work, they own all digital assets unless you’ve made other arrangement. You may be able to maintain friendships with some of those you’ve met, though, if you reconnect with people through your new accounts, once you’ve left the old ones behind.

How to Say Good-Bye to Online Friends

Even a simple plan can really help when getting ready to leave. Yes, it’s difficult. Even if you’ve never met most of your followers in person, you can get attached when you spend all day online and share each other’s ideas. I really like this post about updating your title across all your social media all at once, from The Muse. After you’ve expressed your gratitude about all you’ve learned from your soon-to-be previous team, and let that news sink in for a few days, it’s time to make that announcement that you’re leaving.

For Any Occasion: Writing as Ritual

For me, since I’m a writer (or pretend to be one on T.V.), writing helps a lot. Writing a letter to someone saying good-bye, and stating what their friendship meant, helps to move through the emotions since there is no formal ritual. If there’s anger involved in your decision, writing helps there, too. Writing an angry letter that’s never sent, then rewriting it, helps to displace the anger. Did you know there’s a journaling tool called the unsent letter? Yup!

When Alliances Change

For those of us who freelance, gigs can change suddenly. A client might decide to go in another direction or retire. In any case, you may want to let others know what’s going on with you and that company if your friends have followed you on that journey. People aren’t always in sync with what you do, though. Don’t expect your friends to drop that company like a hot potato if they’ve taken a liking to the place you work.

The Internal Transition: Passing a Milestone

Do you celebrate when you pass a milestone? However phony the idea of a milestone is (especially if it’s a “vanity metric”), many milestones mean more engagement on social media. For instance, when you pass that 1,000 follower mark on Twitter, you will have more engagement, at least if you’re doing social right. If you’re freelancing for someone, you may decide to raise your prices if the number of engagements goes up dramatically. Here’s a piece I wrote about my 100th blog post, and what I learned.

When You Move a Community

When I ran a chat and moved it to a new chat, #DigiBlogChat, that took a bit of doing. That is to say, some moved with me and stayed on, and others were left behind. We all need and want more community, and having one online can help to replace those in-person ones we’ve lost along the way. #DigiBlogChat is the highlight of my week, and one where many of my virtual friends reside. By the way, here’s my crazy long list of Twitter Chats: 101 Tips For Success.

When Do You Train a Replacement

Hopefully, the company or startup where you work already has a set of guidelines in place. That said, there may be some words of wisdom that you could impart to your replacement if the parting of ways was amicable. In a perfect world, we’d all leave on good terms, but that isn’t always the case.

Exit Strategies

As far as saying the final farewell, it could be a good idea to let a trusted friend know what you’d like to do with your social media accounts when you go to that Facebook group in the sky. Some people even go so far as to write their final tweet while they still can. Have you done anything about this? For me, letting my lawyer know my final wishes was a great relief.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: death, Facebook, goodbye, hello, leaving, new job, Social Media, transitions, Twitter

Automation and Social Media: You Need to Know How to Balance

February 11, 2016 By Carol Stephen 7 Comments

Automation and Social Media: You Need to Know How to Balance

Finding that sweet spot between live interaction and posts can be a tricky business. Some people like to automate everything, and others are purists about live posting. A hybrid approach can save you time and energy, but what is the best ratio of automated to live posts? And how often can you post before your audience starts to roll their eyes and unfollow you? Here’s a look behind the curtain, so you can choose what you want to do.

By the way, you may have missed this post about social media automation.

Being Informative vs Being Annoying

Hardly anyone sets out to be annoying, but sometimes there’s a fine line. Being top of mind is what we’re all aiming for. In an interesting article from Buffer about social media frequency, author Kevan Lee suggests posting 14 times a day on Twitter, or about once per hour. Of course, there’s another ratio to consider: how often to post about yourself. Could you post about your own brand once in five or once in ten times?

Scheduling Tweets

Twitter: Live Engagement & Automation

For Twitter, I started with scheduling nothing, then went to scheduling 10 tweets daily, then 5 scheduled tweets, and now 0. When an interesting topic comes up, it goes into my scheduler so it appears at an optimal time. Besides that and the Tweet Old Posts plugin (every 4 hours), the rest is live engagement. The result has been that my follower count has gone up. My ratio of automated to live tweeting is about 1:3 or 1:4. By the way, here’s an article about why not to buy followers and who has the most fake Twitter followers.

Facebook Analytics

Facebook: Optimizing Through Analytics

Do not believe those articles and infographics about the best times to post. Check your Facebook analytics to find your best times and frequency. Unless you bought followers, you should be able to see when your fans are online. I find the best engagement before 9 am and up to 3 pm. It’s important to use a big picture. Some people like to tag others, but I find those posts annoying. For Facebook, I post about once daily. Hubspot has an interesting article about how often you should post on Facebook. As far as automation goes, I’d recommend it and especially if your audience is up early, for instance, and you’re not. Again, check your analytics.

Pinterest Scheduling

For Pinterest, since about half of all users are in the United States, you might want to limit your pinning to those times when your audience is online. I’ve been pinning roughly 8 times a day: 4 times live pinning and four scheduled pins. The scheduled pins are from my own blog, and go out between 5:30 to about 8 pm. The others go out usually all at once.

What Works for You?

Do you schedule? How much? Leave me a comment! I’d really like to know!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: automation, balance, celebrities, Facebook, Pinterest, POTUS, Social Media, Steph Curry, Twitter

How to Avoid Writing Bad Pinterest Headlines and Get Found

February 4, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Avoid Writing Bad Pinterest Headlines and Get Found

This is one of those topics I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. Ok, here’s the deal. You need to think about what you write on your Pinterest pins as being searchable headlines. Because they are. Searchable, that is. After you read this post, you’ll have a clearer idea of how to write the text for your pins. I call it headline writing because it’s similar. For how to write other types of headlines, you might like this article, Headline Writing: 10 Reasons It’s a Pain in the Asterisk.

Pinterest is a Huge Search Engine

This is a thing that many marketers don’t get. Pinterest is a search engine. Pinterest does a lot of stuff that Google doesn’t. Here’s a fantastic article about Pinterest Search, by the way. So if you write “this is great,” or “hoo boy” on an otherwise great pin, nobody is going to find that pin. It could theoretically come across someone’s stream, but for the most part, it will be invisible.

How Do You Search?

Think about how you search. Get on Pinterest right now and do a search for “carnitas.” Now look at the guided search results. You can refine your search by adding the words “Mexican,” “Slow Cooker,” “Paleo,” etc. If your recipe includes all those terms already, why not include those words in your description?

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Here are some examples of bad, better, and best descriptions, using the carnitas example from the last paragraph:

Bad Headline: Yummy recipe!
Better Headline: Delicious Pork Carnitas Recipe!
Best: Mexican Slow Cooker Pork Carnitas – Super easy pulled pork recipe and an amazing way to get juicy, mouth-watering results!

You can see from your search on Carnitas that the top search results already have quite a few good search terms, plus a beautiful, vertical image.

Description Length

Don’t make the mistake a lot of people make and include only a character or a single word in your pin’s description. Add information that lets other pinners know what is behind the pin. Is there simply an image? Is there a full article about cruises to the Mediterranean? Some studies show that descriptions should be 200 characters long to be the most repinnable.

Best Words

Some words are better than other words for Pinterest. You may want to use your own keywords, if you know them, in your pinned blog posts. Take a look at Mashable’s article most popular searches, by country, for 2015. Can any of them be applied to what you pin? Your pin might not necessarily go viral, but you could get a few more repins by using better terms, even if those words aren’t about mason jars, cats, or DIY pallet projects!

Make Your Description Flow

Write in a concise, short sentence, if possible. If you must use a phrase, make sure it makes sense. For instance, if you’re pinning something from your own blog, describe what it’s about and why someone would want to click on the link.

Avoid Hashtags

When Pinterest first appeared on the scene, people used hashtags. Sometimes too many hashtags. Now Pinterest is moving away from hashtags, and if your post has too many hashtags, your pin could be labeled as spam.

Pinterest Image Sizes

No post about Pinterest would be complete without a discussion on pin size. You might have a fabulous description with keywords, but a lousy picture. Don’t do that! Here’s a good article on pin sizes. That said, the longer, skinnier pins do the best on Pinterest.

Study Your Own Pins! The pin above has been repinned nearly 7,000 times.

Study Your Own Pins

Which of your own pins has been popular? For instance, the pin above continues to be repinned one year after it was pinned! Can you tell why? Repeat what you did with that pin, if possible!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: descriptions, hashtags, headlines, pin length, pin size, Pinterest, search