Why Facebook restrict your post reach

Monday 19 November 2012

Finding Time to be Social

Finding Time to be Social


We’ve covered a lot ground in the last 9 articles, and the most common question I get asked is “how do you find time for all these platforms, followers, blogs, updates “ etc etc.  This month we look at 4 tools for Managing your Social Media.   LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+…  logging in to so many accounts can be daunting and time consuming.  Let me introduce Social Media aggregation and dashboards, apps to help you manage your Social Media, BufferApp and Hootsuite.



BUFFERAPP.COM – If you are relatively new to social media, bufferapp is a nice, easy to understand, easy to use introduction to managing your social media.  Buffer users a straightforward, intuitive interface to schedule tweets, and gives some simple analytical data.

SOCIALOOMPH.COM  - A cloud based twitter (and facebook / blog if you subscribe) management tool.  Social oomph will also help you schedule tweets, but it has some clever extra functions like helping you vet new followers, spot keywords people use to find you, analaytics and you can set up ‘auto responders’ to automate thank you’s / replies  when someone follows you etc.

TWEETDECK.COM – is a social media dashboard for twitter and facebook, very useful for quick overview and monitoring of multiple accounts, or running continual searches.  Easier to use than Social Oomph, but with fewer features, and FREE.

HOOTSUITE.COM  - If you are more experienced with Social Media, you should look at Hootsuite.  A social media dashboard that helps you monitor, post and explore ALL of your social media activity and only needing to login to one place.  Comprehensive connectivity with just about every social media resource you could wish for, and custom analytics that can tell you how things are going.  A basic hootsuite account is FREE.

Friday 9 November 2012

Introduction to Blogging


In this, my 9th blog introducing Social Networking, we move on from looking at ‘operational’ matters, such as what tools and websites we should be using for our Social Networking, and we start looking at content.  In a nutshell, Social Networking is about getting your digital messages out there, ‘findable’ and easily sharable – to get yourself noticed and spread your message further.


So, what messages and how do we start telling people about ourselves?  One way is to start blogging.

What is a blog?  The word stands for ’web log’ and can be considered as online diary entries.  While there are no rules over a blog’s length, I aim for 300 – 500 words. 

Why blog? As a marketing tool, blogs have many benefits.  They are short ‘snippets’ and can be easier to produce than say a newsletter.  Once published they can be updated and commented upon.  They have an extended shelf life as they remain published, and findable, on the internet until you remove them.  And … they can easily be shared.

When you start writing a business blog as well as the above benefits, there are a number of ‘side affects’ – 
1.  You tend to keep up to date on your industry/sector news.
2.  Your writing skills improve as you get better at communicating messages accurately and
     succinctly in 300-500 words.
3.  As you build a your library of blogs, you work your way through many aspect of your business,
     and therefore develop your idea’s, answers and opinions on ALL these aspects of your
     business.
4.  Blog’s bring many SEO benefits - Google likes changing content.

One thing to consider is how often you publish your blog.  Set a publishing frequency you can keep up with as your audience will expect you to be consistent.  When considering how many blogs per week or month allow 1-2 hours work per blog.

Remember - People buy from People they trust - Good blog content develops trust