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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

Social Media Managers: 10 Secrets to Care for Yours

January 28, 2016 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Social Media Managers: 10 Secrets to Care for Yours

My friend Amy Donohue recently said it sucks that companies don’t see the value of professional social media. That definitely rings true! Although there is no ideal world, here are some real-world examples of positives and negatives.

For the purposes of this post, there are two different clients: Client A is grateful, sweet, and full of compliments. Client Z is, well, the exact opposite. By the way, you might like this other post, Why It’s Easier to Be Darth Vader Than a Social Media Manager.

Cheerfulness

If you need to send an email to your SMM, a cheerful message goes much farther than a grumpy one.

Client A: Hello, how are you today?
Client Z: Did you get that work done yet?

You Can Catch More Social Media Managers with Honey Than Vinegar!

Sweetness

You can catch more social media managers with honey than with vinegar! Does this even require examples? Sigh. Here’s the wiki on how to be sweet, by the way.

Apologize

If you screw up, say so. And I will do the same. See “Be honest.”

Give Us the Benefit of the Doubt

The Benefit of the Doubt

We really do want the best for you and your business. So please give us the benefit of the doubt. After all, if you win, we win. We would not try to hurt your business because that would be like cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Gratitude

Are you complimenting your SMM? Even a small pat on the back, such as “Great job!” “loved the image you chose for that post!” can spark your SMM to do more and better work! You’d like that, right?

Client A: I’m so grateful to you for setting us up with a righteous look across all SM platforms; thank you-thank you for making us hot!
Client Z: Nothing.

Honesty Goes a Long Way

Honesty

Recently, two clients did not pay on time. Most SMMs won’t be happy about this. Here’s how to handle it if this ever happens to you as a business owner. Be honest and tell us when to expect payment. And then follow through.

Client A: “I’m soo sorry for the delay!” Checks will go out on the 15th. (They did.)
Client Z: “It’s been so hectic around here…Court costs for $xxx are going to be a waste of money so just hang in there a few more days…”

Honor the Relationship

If the relationship is the most important thing, then treat your SMM like a human being. Tell the truth. Focus on the positive. Rinse and repeat.

Respect

This goes along with relationship. The Golden Rule applies! Not just treat others as you’d want to be treated, but treat others the way you want to be treated. Calum Curry wrote a great post: Always Respect Your Social Media Manager.

You Are One of Our Clients

We’d love to work on your account all day long and not sleep, but we do need sleep. We can’t always get back to you within 10 minutes as we are in meetings, doing research, and writing blog posts.

It’s Just Us

Often, we are solopreneurs (sole entrepreneurs), without a huge agency behind us. Though we know how to look big online, we don’t have an army standing behind us. That’s how we can customize your images, your posts, your tweets, etc. Not to be dramatic, but a stinging comment or late payments can really hurt.

Family

This one is a bonus, and goes along with relationship building. telling the truth and giving compliments. Although we don’t expect you to invite us over for Thanksgiving dinner, a little warmth and consideration is greatly appreciated.

What’s Your Gripe?

Are you a social media manager or consultant? How do you like to be treated? Or, if you’re on the other side and work with a consultant, what’s that like? Leave me a comment! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: SMM, Social Media, social media manager, value

Twitter Spotlight on locals: How to Connect Ten Ways

January 21, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

Twitter Spotlight on locals: How to Connect Ten Ways

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, such as a shop or a restaurant, what’s the best way to get people to your place? Although I’ve written a previous post, Social Media: 7 Ways Your Business Can Connect with Locals, there are other ways to get people in the door.

Follow Locals through Search

Now following locals might seem obvious–locals will be your best source of traffic–but how, you might ask? Search on a city, neighborhood, or county (or a hashtag). Find something you have in common with people, whether that’s tweeting about the weather, puppies, or beach photography. Follow locals, retweet their content, and talk to them.

Be Curious

I’ve said it a million times–talk to people. No matter which platform you’re on, that is the key. Ask questions, give compliments, and be generous. Say hello, say thank you, and be curious. Curiosity is your best friend on Twitter.

Tweet Specials

Give people a reason to come into your shop. Tell them what your specials are. What gives your place the edge? Tweet about that. Why did you start your business? Tweet about that. You can also “pin” a tweet to the top of your feed so it’s the first thing visitors see when visiting your Twitter stream. You can even “pin” that tweet on mobile.

Add High Quality Content

Look at the analytics on your Twitter. Who’s following you, and what do they like? If you want more of the same kind of followers, give your audience what they want. Do they like technical content? Art? Give them that.

Use Beautiful Images

There are so many images to choose from. If you’re a restaurant, tweet images of your food. If you’re a shop, tweet what you have for sale. And make the images beautiful! I see so many accounts with ugly images. Don’t be that business!

Use Maps

Tell people how to get to your shop! Go to Google Maps, and map a nearby location. Now take a screenshot of the route, add a caption, and pin it to the top of your feed.

Use the Heck out of Lists

Make lists, use them daily, and share them with others. They’re free and make you look pro. Also, if you don’t use lists, you will surely go insane. You Too Can Be A Guru’s Bridget Willard has some terrific examples of good lists here: Organize Your Twitter Stream–Use Lists. You can create lists by city, neighborhood, or county.

Join Chats Your Audience Would Like

Check your analytics and join chats that will draw in people who are your best audience. Are the people techies? Join a techie chat! Are they boomers? Join a Boomer Chat! A couple of my favorites are: #BufferChat (Wednesday mornings at 9 am Pacific) and #DigiBlogChat (my chat about all things digital/blogging Tuesdays at 1 pm Pacific). Twubs has a list of chats that may interest you.

Make Followers Feel Like Friends

Share what excites you. Share non-business content, too. Tips on things you have learned. Maybe a secret place nearby, a good venue in the area, or an app you really like. Put up posts from museums, or a little trick you learned.

Meet in Person

Of course, this is ultimately what you want. Make sure their visit is positive by giving the same great customer service and friendliness that they experience on your social media.

How Do You Get People in the Door?

Did I miss anything? I really do want to know! Leave me a comment! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: audience, Engagement, images, Lists, local, Twitter

How to Resist Change: Confessions from a Curmudgeon

January 14, 2016 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

How to Resist Change: Confessions of a Curmudgeon

When I was a kid, I looked up to celebrities. There was something magical about their hair, their makeup, and their clothes. I remember being alone, dancing in my room to David Bowie. Sometimes, I would grab a hairbrush (for a mic) and sing along with the Rolling Stones. Sam, our cat, was a willing audience to these outbursts of song and dance. Imagine my dismay when the Beatles broke up. I still can’t believe it’s over!

Breaking Up is Hard to Watch

Miss Piggy and Kermit split up this past year, which was difficult to watch even though they are muppets. What happened to their love? And their ridiculously cute squabbling? Maybe it was never an act at all. And what about Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner? Is nothing sacred? Well, Batman is sacred, but that’s another story, Ben Affleck!

Change is Intolerable!

When change happens, we should pull the blankets over our heads and go back to sleep. Like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand, we can ignore changes and pretend they didn’t happen. It’s easy, right? Sure! So long as you don’t read your friends’ Facebook posts, or see anything trending on Twitter!

Get Off My Lawn!

Even though I don’t have a lawn, I’d like to get one just so I could yell that at kids. They don’t belong on my non-existent lawn! Not that there are tons of kids running around where the lawn would be, still it’s troubling to think that they could be. What were they thinking, those imaginary kids?

Ads, Throttling, and Spam

Facebook is doing more targeted ads and throttling who sees posts. Is that right? No! They should’ve kept it the way it was, where people could see everything. Not only that, but Facebook is terrible for you, says Salon. Twitter has become less about engagement and more about spewing ads. Again, it was way better before. Pinterest now has ads, too, whereas in the beginning it was only about pinning interesting pictures of kittens and flowers.

Deny Everything

One thing you can do to avoid change is to deny it exists. The earth is still flat, Elvis lives, and you don’t have to update that software. Then again, if you procrastinate long enough, you might not have to think about it at all.

Coping with Change

Of course, you could learn to cope with change, as this excellent article by Adam Dachis explains. But if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to gripe about it, would you?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: change, Facebook, Pinterest, Social Media, Twitter