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How to Use LinkedIn That Will Help You Build Your Business

April 19, 2018 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

How to Use LinkedIn That Will Help You Build Your Business

Lately, there’s been a resurgence of interest in LinkedIn. Maybe because that other social media platform (that one based in Menlo Park) has been scaring off a lot of people.

Vanity Metrics and Buying Followers

Although the number of followers should not be the end-all, it’s nice to have a few followers. Whatever you do, though, don’t buy followers on LinkedIn or any other social media platform. You might want to read Why Not to Buy Followers on Instagram, from Hootsuite. And by the way, you’ll get the same lack of engagement on other platforms, including LinkedIn, if you decide to buy followers.

Photo by Michael Vadon

Start Conversations

You might not want to talk to every follower you have, but if you have conversations with those who are in your target audience, that could be a start. And if your target market is everyone, then we need to have a talk. Your target market is not everyone unless you’re selling water or air. In most places, those things are free. You might like this guide to engagement if you need help starting conversations on social media.

Photo by MoneyConf

Have a Brand Identity

Who are you and what is your brand about? What are your strengths and weaknesses? Where are your best opportunities? If you want to know about creating your brand identity, I highly recommend Clement Lim’s Creating a Kick-Ass Brand Identity in Six Easy Steps. It’s one of the best articles on brand identity I’ve ever read. Every time I read it, I get something more from it.

Photo by theps.net

Drive Conversations Offline

Some of the best conversations online end up being friendships. Once you meet people in real life, you don’t know what could happen. Often those friendships end up as business partnerships. And you can have an awful lot of fun meeting people, in any case. You might like Why Friendships Are Absolutely the Best ROI of Social Media.

Photo by eekim

Find Collaborators

Collaboration makes work easier and less tedious. When you run out of steam, others on a team can pitch in and help you, either by doing work for you or with encouragement. Many entrepreneurs suffer from loneliness without some human contact. LinkedIn is a great place to find collaborators.

Photo by Stig Nygaard

Publish

Are you publishing on LinkedIn? It’s one of the best reasons to be on LinkedIn. I’ve found that people connect with you more easily if you publish your own work and also share others’ posts. Here’s an article that you might like, too: Here are 10 Surprising Stats You Didn’t Know About Marketing on LinkedIn.

Photo by Fort Wainwright Public Affairs Office

Why Are You on LinkedIn?

Leave me a comment! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: buying followers, collaboration, LinkedIn, ROI of social media

Surprise! Your Dog Is Actually a Cat. Guaranteed.

January 12, 2017 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

Surprise! Your Dog Is Actually a Cat. Guaranteed.

You know that saying “if it looks like a cat, meows like a cat, and walks like a cat–it’s a cat!” (Something like that!) So, if you’re using your personal social media (your “cat”) like a business page (your “dog”), you’re not going to get the benefits. If you have a personal account (d0g), but you’re using it for your business (cat), then you may think you have a dog, but what you have is a cat.

Can I Convert My Dog?

It depends. On Twitter, it’s easy to change your account by renaming it, putting up a businessy avatar, and getting the analytics. You can even keep the old tweets. On Facebook, you don’t convert–you add a different account, which kind of hangs off your personal account. On Pinterest, you need to add a piece of code to your website, but it’s fairly easy. And on LinkedIn, you can add a LinkedIn business account easily.

You Want the Analytics

You might not think you do, but you do. Because otherwise, without the numbers, how will you know that what you’re doing is working? You won’t! It’ll be all guesswork. So get the analytics, please!

Social Media and Business

Here are some good articles for using social media for your business:

Twitter for Business
How to Set up Facebook for Business
Pinterest for Business (why you want a business account)
LinkedIn for Business

Shoe-in.

Know anyone who’s using their personal account as a business account? Or are you using your personal account as a business account? Why? Leave me a comment! Thank you.

Photo by mikelemmon

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Cats, dogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Social Media, Twitter, using personal account as business

How to Engage on Social Media: LinkedIn

January 5, 2017 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Engage on Social Media: LinkedIn

This is part five of How to Engage on Social Media: The Complete Guide. The other parts are here:

Photo by poolski

Why LinkedIn?

A quarter of online adults use LinkedIn, a proportion that is unchanged from the 28% of online adults who did so in September 2014, according to the Pew Research Center. With over 3 million using company pages, having a solid presence there makes sense. With its focus on business, is it any wonder that LinkedIn has the most mature users, with the highest net worth?

Photo by hyku

LinkedIn Basics

If you need some basics for how to use LinkedIn, you might want to read:

Photo by Castles, Capes & Clones

Business to Business

For B2B companies, LinkedIn is a giant. Take a look at this infographic from Social Media Today on Why LinkedIn Matters. If you want a more active presence on LinkedIn, it’s a great article. I particularly like the part about what platforms LinkedIn users don’t use. 83% don’t use Pinterest. So if you’re doing B2B, you want to be on LinkedIn, and probably not so much on Pinterest. After all, 94% of B2B marketers distribute content on LinkedIn, with many of them making purchasing decisions on LinkedIn.

Photo by Lucy Maude Ellis

Not Just for Job Seekers

LinkedIn has had to overcome its reputation as merely a place for job seekers, and those looking for gigs. To do that, it has begun to offer users the ability to publish. Bloggers who share on LinkedIn receive over four times as many leads to their home page than publishing on Facebook or Twitter! If you use stats to make decisions, that should be pretty convincing.

The Sleeping Giant

LinkedIn is like the shy guest at the party whom you later discover is the CEO of a major corporation. She may not want to talk to anyone, so if you decide to engage with her, you’ll be doing both of you a great favor.

How to Engage

There are many ways to engage on LinkedIn. Here are four:

Give recommendations. Be generous and reach out to people first! Don’t wait to receive and then react. Like other forms of social media, your generosity will be rewarded.
Write testimonials (to those you’ve done business with). Say what you liked about the business.
Comment on others’ posts. Start a discussion on an article or post and see where it leads, like you would on Facebook or Twitter.
Share others’ posts. Once you comment on an article, share it. Don’t forget to tag that person so they’ll realize you’ve shared!
Offer introductions. This is my favorite part of social media. Connecting people you know to others you know. Like you’d do in person, you can say something like “Sharon, do you know Ellie? I think you two have a lot in common!” or words to that effect.

Photo by faulancr

Groups

Groups can be a great way to start a conversation since by being in a group you already have something in common with everyone else in that group. So you might be in U.C. Berkeley’s alumni group, where you can ask people where they’re working now, or what project they’re excited about. Or a group for marketers where you can post or answer questions for those in your area.

Company Pages

Company pages are a way to brand your company, share the pain points of your audience, and offer unique ways to fix your potential clients’ problems. Speak directly to your ideal client when you’re on LinkedIn and offer solutions. Social Media Examiner has an excellent article on ways to improve your company page, by the way. I couldn’t say it any better.

Are You Linked In?

How do you use LinkedIn? Or would you like to start using LinkedIn? Leave me a comment! And thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Engagement, LinkedIn, Social Media

How to Lose All Your Followers on Social Media

May 12, 2016 By Carol Stephen 12 Comments

How to Lose All Your Followers on Social Media

I almost called this “The Wonderful Art of Subtraction on Social Media,” because sometimes the best thing to do is to subtract. That is: unfollow, unfriend, and mute. After all, everyone wants more, more, more followers on social media. Isn’t that the whole point? Not always! Sometimes less is more.

Photo by cliff1066™

Same Old, Same Old

Lately I’ve grown tired of seeing the same stuff day after day, month after month. On Twitter, the accounts that spew quotes are the worst. My friends Mitch Mitchell and Terri Nakamura have been tweeting about it. How do those accounts get so many followers when all they do is broadcast quotes all day long?

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Spew quotes all day long.

https://twitter.com/Mitch_M/status/728464131049693187

Unfriending on Facebook

On Facebook, if I don’t remember where the heck we met, or if we haven’t had a conversation for a couple of years, off you go! I’ll bet they don’t remember me, either (even if to me, I’m the queen of the universe!). Wiki has a great list of reasons you might have been unfriended on Facebook and how to get over it.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Being offensive and way too personal is a good way to be unfriended. Right now, the political rant is also a great way to lose friends.

Photo by abodftyh

Unfollowing on Twitter

On Twitter, if there’s too much salesy stuff, and too many boring tweets, same thing: they get muted or unfollowed. Muted if the volume is too high and unfollowed if the tweets are tasteless. Partly the fault is mine. I may not have taken a good, hard look at the account when I first followed or followed back. But sometimes accounts change, too. Here are some Twitter Best Practices, by the way.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Drunk tweeting off topic is a fast way to lose followers. Also, sending direct messages asking for money is a fast path to being unfollowed.

Photo by davebloggs007

Disconnecting on Pinterest

Sometimes people post about too much of one thing, and it gets boring. Or, as in the case of someone I unfollowed this week–too many “sexy ladies dressed as animals.” Yeah, I know. Weird. I kept unfollowing one board after another, until finally–no boards at all! What a great day that was. If you want a primer on Pinterest, you might like this one: Pinterest: Top Ten Tasks and Power Tips.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Pin only photos of sunglasses. Or stuffed animals. And you’ll lose followers. Try it!

Photo by janoma.cl

Getting Unlinked on LinkedIn

Like Direct Messages on Twitter, sending salesy messages before getting to know someone is a no-no on LinkedIn, and a great way to lose followers. Today I got an email from someone I’d never had contact with asking me to buy their IT services. See ya! If you want to know how to prune the rose buds on LinkedIn, here you go.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Send a lot of salesy stuff, before getting to know someone.

Photo by eelke dekker

Insta-Unfollowed on Instagram

On Instagram, a really great way to be blocked is to leave a comment on someone else’s post saying “follow me.” Don’t you hate that?

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Say you sell followers in a message on someone else’s post.

Who Have You Unfollowed Today?

If you’ve unfriended, unfollowed, or blocked someone today, why? I’d love to hear from you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: failure, Followers, Instagram, less is more, LinkedIn, Pinterest, subtraction, Twitter, unfollowing, unfriending

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

How Nostradamus Predicted Massive Twitter Failure

July 30, 2015 By Carol Stephen 15 Comments

How Nostradamus Predicted Massive Twitter Failure

Most of Nostradamus’ predictions covered disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and droughts. Often he retroactively predicted catastrophes with specific locations or dates. Or so people thought! When reread in 2015, Nostradamus was obviously talking about Twitter the entire time. This is his true gift to mankind.

Let’s take a look at some of those predictions and see what they really mean.

People Will Live To Be 200

Obviously, Nostradamus meant that tweets will live for 200 years. In the future, your great-great-great grandkids will see your tweets and wonder just what you were thinking. Why so many videos of cats? And why always the headline and the link? What the heck?

The Dead Will Walk And Your Tweets Will Live Forever

The Dead Will Resurrect

That tweet you thought was gone when you deleted it? Not so much. Look at all the politicians deleting tweets before elections (Donald Trump comes to mind). Someone took a screenshot and saved that tweet, though. So be careful what you say, Donald! You can’t fool us!

California Will Have an Enormous Earthquake

Yes, we will. And Twitter is in California. Coincidence? No.

Fear the Sugar

The Third AntiChrist Will Appear at the Beginning of the 21st Century

Now, that’s no way to talk about Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey. Come on now. He’s been trying to get the stock price up, to make Twitter easier to use, and to explain the benefits of only 140 characters, blah, blah, blah, as CNN Money explains in their article.

Is Twitter Facing Extinction?

The Mayan Armageddon

Nostradamus was trying to say that Twitter was going down. But Twitter is not going anywhere in the down direction in 2015 (or 2012 as some predicted from Nostradamus’ texts). If you’re wondering whether Nostradamus was something of a Debbie Downer, the answer is yes.

The Differences Between Languages Will Disappear

Now people using hashtags all over the place makes me angry as much as the next Social Media Manager. And tweeting from Facebook is plain wrong. We’ve also seen the rise of pins on Twitter and links that go to LinkedIn, as well as Google translate. So maybe Nostradamus was right about this one.

Got a Prophecy About Twitter?

Want to be your own Nostradamus? Leave me a comment! Yes, I’d really like to know what you think!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: apocalypse, Facebook, Google translate, LinkedIn, Nostradamus, Twitter, Twitter Chat

Promote Your Book on Social Media: Extend Your Reach

April 16, 2015 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Promote Your Book on Social Media: 6 Ways to Extend Your Reach

Every author uses social media to extend their reach. If you get on Twitter, you’ll see all kinds of authors tweeting nonstop, begging you to buy their new book. On Facebook, you’ll see authors posting continuously about their fantasy novels. And on Pinterest there are boards and accounts stuffed to the gills with pins about books. So what’s an author to do? With some planning, you can go beyond the usual social media posts. In this series of blog posts, you’ll get ideas for how to use the social media platforms effectively. Look for more posts soon.

The Website is the Torso

Picture your website as the torso of your online efforts, with the arms and legs as different platforms. Your website should be the first thing you work on. If you don’t have a website, where will you drive traffic? Yes, it’s great that you’re on Amazon selling, but it’s best to have a website because you own the content. You can discuss all kinds of things in blog posts, and you can take snippets of it to tweet or post in different places. You can also go back into the archives and recycle some of that lovely content. There are no gray areas, as there are on social media sites, about who owns your content.

Search Engine Optimization

If those aren’t enough reasons, the biggest one is search engine optimization. When someone looks for you on Google, your name should appear. In this excellent article in Huffington Post, Annik Lafarge discusses many more reasons to have your own website.

Hire Help if You’re Not Technical

Do not let the lack of a website stop you. You can find a developer to help you with a simple website. Attend a WordCamp in your area (San Francisco Word Camp is the mother ship, by the way) to meet developers and others with WordPress sites. I recommend WordPress because there is such generosity in the community. You can watch video (recorded or live streaming) if you can’t make it in person. But getting there in person is well worth the effort.

Branding Across Social Media Platforms

Make sure you have high-quality images of you and your book and that your branding is consistent. Your readers should not be confused about where they are–and they should know that you’re an author. Caterina Rando, my business coach, recommends having a picture of yourself holding a book right up against your face. Ensure that colors are consistent. For instance, Caterina uses rich reds, oranges and yellows in all her marketing materials. Your readers should know exactly what you do. For instance, Jack Canfield’s site is very clear. If you have a tagline, use the same one everywhere from your website through all your social media platforms.

Cross Promote

Once your website is dialed in (and I won’t go into details here, but there should be a few blog posts, at the least), you can use social media more effectively. Your tweets can send people back to your website. You can point to Twitter from Facebook, to Pinterest from Twitter, and from Google Plus to your website.

For instance, if you want people to come to a Tweetchat (a subject I’ll cover in an upcoming post), tell people on your Google Plus account, on Twitter, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, in your email marketing, etc. Promotion takes more work than you might think, so allow lots of time.

Add Badges to Your Website

Can’t Wait to Get Started?

If you can’t wait to start on your social media, here are some posts to read and videos to watch:

The excellent Keys to Being Social from You Too Can Be a Guru (highly recommended!)
Pinterest (how to pin)
Facebook (sharing content for more reach)
Twitter (best practices)
LinkedIn (top ten tasks and power tips)

Questions?

If you have questions that you’d like me to cover in upcoming posts, please leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to address it.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book, Facebook, Google Plus, LinkedIn, marketing, Pinterest, promotion, Social Media, Twitter

How to Promote Your Blog Like a Pro!

March 26, 2015 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Promote Your Blog Like a Pro

If you’ve just started blogging, or even if you’ve been blogging for a while, you might not realize how many ways there are to promote your own post. These ideas are divided into beginning and advanced ideas. If you’re more advanced in the ways of social media promotion, you can skip to the more “Pro” ideas.

Pinning your blog post (you did create a board for your own blog posts, right?) is something everyone can do, and is a fairly simple way to get more traffic to a post. You could have your own blog board, where you pin all your posts. If you need a beginner’s guide, you might read my Top Ten Tasks for Pinterest.

Invite Others to Your Group Blog Board on Pinterest

Pro

Repin that post, especially if the first time you pinned it, it didn’t get any repins. Delete the old post and pin it again.
Create a group board for your blog posts, like the example below, and invite lots of people to pin. You can invite anyone who follows your board. You could invite other bloggers who aren’t on Pinterest, too, and they might be motivated to be on Pinterest more often.
Repin the blog post using a different picture and onto a different board. For instance, my post about Introverts and Social Media could be repinned on a Social Media board, my blog board, my Pinterest board, etc. But I’d space them out, time wise.

Facebook

Post your wonderful writing on Facebook, with a good call to action and a big picture or two.

Schedule Your Facebook Post When Your Fans Are Online

To find your Facebook analytics, go to your business page==>Insights (at the top of the page). Examine when your fans are online and use the native Facebook scheduler. For instance, my analytics show that most of my fans are online at 8:30 am pst. Another good time would be around 2:00 pm.

Note: my top three posts above were all boosted.

Pro

Promote your post for as little as $5 per post. You can choose who sees it and get more eyes on your post that way. Most people can afford $20/month for promotion.
Tag people who might be interested in seeing your words of wisdom (but do this carefully–nobody likes to be tagged too many times).
To see what your post will look like, schedule it 10 minutes or more in the future, so you can edit it if you need to.
Check your business page’s analytics to see when the best time is to post.

Can You Schedule Like a Pro?

Twitter

Of course you’ll want to tweet about your newest creation. And you can schedule it one or more times. Guy Kawasaki retweets his posts about four times a day, but you may want to wait days between posts! Of course, use a scheduler like HootSuite to get the word out.

Pro

Pin your tweet to the top of your Twitter feed. Upload a picture (tweets with images are much more likely to be retweeted), as in the image below.
Repeat your tweet, but use a different picture and headline.
Ask for a retweet (again, don’t ask very often unless you’ve been giving to others as well). Tag others who might be interested.
If you mention others in your blog post, call them out in your tweet.

Pin Your Tweet to the Top of Your Twitter Feed

Post your wonderful writing after you’ve created it on your blog. You can upload a picture, too.

Pro

Don’t just post your writing, but republish it. LinkedIn’s new publisher is called Pulse, and anyone can now be a publisher on LinkedIn.
Focus on entertaining, motivating, or educating people. As Jeff Haden suggests, write your piece as though you’re writing to one person.

Get Syndicated!

If you’re a regular blogger, you might consider getting syndicated. My blog posts are syndicated at Business 2 Community. There are lots of reasons to be syndicated; here are a few.

Are You a Blogger?

Try a few of these ideas and let me know how they work for you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: analytics, Blog, blogging, Facebook, Google, Google Plus, group boards, LinkedIn, Pinterest, promoting, promotion, repin, repinning, Social Media, syndicate, syndication, Twitter

Ten Ways to Fail on the Biggest Social Media Platforms: LinkedIn

October 23, 2014 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

Ten Ways to Fail on the Biggest Social Media Platforms: LinkedIn

This is the fourth and final way to fail on the biggest social media platforms. If you missed the others, here they are:

LinkedIn has survived in Social Media Land almost longer than any other platform. It’s there quietly behind the scenes, ready for when you want to make new connections. There are roughly 300 million people on LinkedIn. If you’d like to read more statistics, you might want to read this interesting compendium of 100 Amazing LinkedIn Statistics.

No picture

Do you connect with people who have no photo? Neither do most people. Also, with a photo, people are much more likely to view your profile. As on other platforms, people think that you’re not “all in” if you don’t have a photo. If you really still think you don’t need a photo, read this article on Huffington Post, 5 Reasons You Must Have a Photo on LinkedIn.

Saying you did something you didn’t

Why would someone do this if they could get caught so easily? Were you really an astronaut AND a brain surgeon during college? Ok. I believe you.

No original content

It’s hard to imagine, but some people have stolen other people’s words. If you’re not good with words, there are many people who are good with words who can help you. Ask your friends. Or do a search for editors! You’re sure to find someone.

Ten Ways to Fail on the Biggest Social Media Platforms: LinkedIn

Don’t finish your profile

What about those people who stop writing right in the middle of a sente…?

Asking for testimonials from strangers

Have you ever had this happen? You just got connected with someone and they ask for a testimonial! You’ve never worked with them before, and only met them at an event a couple of times. Don’t be that guy.

Don’t have connections

You can still make connections with people even if you’re not looking for a job.

Only connect to people you know personally

You don’t have to have lunch with someone five times before you connect with them on LinkedIn. Really.

Spelling errors

See, “No original content,” above. An editor can help. Use a spell checker if you don’t have the time or money to hire an editor.

Sending spam

If you immediately ask people to buy from you, that’s spammy. Whether it’s an auto-DM on Twitter, or a private message on Facebook, most people won’t engage with you if you do that.

Never posting

People want to know what you think, so posting an article, even occasionally, helps them see what your interests are.

What LinkedIn mistakes have you seen?

Leave me a message in the comments! Thank you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: errors, Facebook, fail, failure, LinkedIn, lying, Mistakes, original content, photograph, picture, Pinterest, Social Media, Twitter

When Posts Go Viral: Four Lessons

September 25, 2014 By Carol Stephen 2 Comments

When Posts Go Viral: Four Lessons

You’ve been writing your fingers to the bone for years now, writing about everything you could think of for your business blog. You’ve covered all the major topics and included photos of cats, hedgehogs, fancy race cars, and pictures from other viral posts. So maybe by now you’ve given up on anything going viral. By the way, I wrote about pins on Pinterest going viral, which you might like, too.

Recently, a post of mine went viral, and I can now tell you how random it seemed at the time. And my thoughts on it now.

First of All, Transparency

A client of mine could not post a photo on LinkedIn, and asked me to see if I could post a photo. So I took an old blog post from April, “Is it Time to Quit Facebook?, and republished it on LinkedIn, around 11 pm, along with the image and went to sleep, with the thought that maybe one or two people might see it.

The Next Morning

Before I got on LinkedIn, a friend of mine texted me that there were quite a few comments and shares on the post. I went to check, and there were already 45 comments. Since I was at a workshop, I didn’t have much time to reply.

The Next 24 Hours

The next day I tried to keep up with the comments, angry replies, thumbs up, thumbs down, replies to angry replies from other angry people, etc. It was a whole big thing. It really was. Also, LinkedIn picked it up and promoted it under “LinkedIn Pulse.”

Gold-Plated Problem

My business mentor, Caterina Rando, would say this was a “gold-plated problem.” You never expect anything to go viral, but when it does, you think about what you could’ve done differently.

Lesson One

My post could’ve been written better. Well, I always think that. It could’ve been longer, more thorough, and could’ve had better images. Doesn’t every blogger think this about every single post? And yet, there are deadlines, so posts get published. You don’t know what’s going viral.

Lesson Two

You can’t complain about a post going viral. Seriously. You might as well complain that your house is too big for one maid to clean. Or it takes you ALL DAY to shine your gold watches. Nobody wants to hear that. Or, at least, if that’s your biggest complaint, then your life is pretty cushy. It would be all the way at the top of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Social Media Needs.

Lesson Three

You can’t really prepare any more than you’re already prepared. Well, I guess I wouldn’t post right before going on vacation or a long weekend. You always leave a little time to comment back to people, but probably not 48 hours worth of free time for a single post.

Lesson Four

Forgive yourself for not answering all the comments and move on. You can post something along the lines of “thank you for commenting and sorry I can’t reply to all of you.”

When Your Social Media Post Goes Viral

OutComes

Here’s a screenshot from that one post on LinkedIn. In addition, I got about 45 new people wanting to connect, a couple of hundred shares of the article on Twitter, new connections on Pinterest (not too many), and around 25 new followers on Facebook. And of course, the usual spam. Oh, and a job offer. So that was nice.

And Another Thing

I’m not sure why this post went viral. It could be that LinkedIn likes posts about Facebook not having good reach, since Facebook and LinkedIn do compete for some of our time, in a way. Maybe it was late at night and there was a quota (self-deprecating humor for the win!). Most probably, the article was selected by the secret magic LinkedIn algorithm.

Has One of Your Posts Gone Viral?

Were you prepared for it? How did you handle it? I really do want to know!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Caterina Rando, Facebook, going viral, LinkedIn, Pinterest, posting, Social Media, Twitter, viral