New Year… New Social You
30 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube Tags: advertising, Blog, business strategies, creative juices, denise hood, facebook, foursquare, Increase your facebook value, linked in, marketing, social buzz, social media, social media strategy, twitter, www.creativejuicesmarketing.com
More Zumba? Less ice cream? More reading? Less drinking? More tweeting? Less napping? What are your resolutions for 2012?
The following New Year’s Resolutions should be on your list if you consider yourself social-media active. Commit to making these changes in 2012. To be a social media strategist means setting small goals that will lead to big changes for your business and yourself.
1. I Will Limit My Retweeting & Sharing and Try To Think For MyselfTell yourself that you will make it personal this year and actually make comments of your own. Don’t get me wrong – retweeting and favoriting, sharing and liking… these are all essential to a good Social Media Strategy (and it’s a great way to encourage others to return the favor), but you HAVE to have your own thoughts and ideas as well.
You want your social media audience to realize that you are making a genuine effort to communicate with them. Don’t just spend 5 seconds saying the same thing or using someone else’s effort as your own. There are time-savers you SHOULD use. There is nothing wrong with connecting your social network accounts so that one post goes to all. There is only so much time in the day. But keep in mind that each social media account has a different type of community. You might want to say things differently to your Twitter followers than your LinkedIn peeps. Invest time in managing your social media presence.
2. I Will Use More Video
As social media professionals, we understand the power of YouTube, now is the time to finally start leveraging this tool. Reach the world with video, YouTube offers the following:
- Over 3 billion videos are viewed a day.
- YouTube’s average age of viewers ranging from 18 to 54 years old.
- YouTube averaged 700 billion playbacks in 2010 which means users are watching videos over again.
It is easy to set up your own YouTube channel and add your own professional content. Businesses should leverage this tool to communicate visually with their audiences. I have a few clients who utilize YouTube. Craig Builders utilizes YouTube for home and community tours. The Iris Inn uses their YouTube channel to give possible visitors to their bed and breakfast an in depth view of the inn and the activities they might participate in while visiting.
3. I Will Use My Mobile Devices More
The hottest holiday gifts for 2011 were smartphones, tablets and e-readers. If Santa got you one, you should take advantage of the conveniences your mobile devices offer. If you’re going to an interesting seminar, meeting with a new client, discussing tactics with your co-workers… make a little comment about it. If you’re having lunch at a new restaurant and the burger is tasty and juicy… tweet, facebook or foursquare that. A big sale on canned green beans at the grocery store?? Tell the world! These are things that people will appreciate knowing and they are things that will make people remember you and consider you a resource of information.
BY THE WAY… while we’re discussing the popularity of mobile devices, remeber that it is VERY IMPORTANT to have a mobile version of your company’s website. If you don’t, you may want to look into fixing that.
4. I Will Monitor my Social Footprint
If you haven’t developed this yet, start out with baby steps. Build your Google Alerts with Google Analytics, it is a very user friendly tool that helps build your ROI (return on investment) through social media.
Consider using bit.ly to shorten the links you post because it also shows clickability rates for each link you create allowing you to monitor if your updates or posts are bringing that link clicks.
Use PostRank, a free social engagement aggregator that brings you data in real time. The tool was recently acquired by Google; a move that I am hoping will only strengthen PostRank as an analytics resource for the Social Web.
I will be a Human Being!
We’ve already discussed being “real” as a social media strategy. Being “human” is a very important strategy. Let people into your head a little. If your social media audience can make a personal connection with you, chances are they’ll be a lot more likely to make a BUSINESS connection with you.
I can’t tell you how often I run into people and they tell me they’ve been keeping up with my TV commercial antics or that they love my latest website development or simply that everytime they see me comment on Facebook, they’re reminded that they’ve been wanting to contact me… (and many times they do so… right there on facebook because it’s easy). It doesn’t have to be difficult – but it DOES have to be consistent. Try to make 2012 the start of a New Social You.
Have a safe and happy New Year!
Christmas Facebook-style
19 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Facebook, HOME, YouTube Tags: Blog, business strategies, christmas, creative juices, denise hood, facebook, jesus, joseph, marketing, mary, social buzz, social media strategy, video, www.creativejuicesmarketing.com
Everyone knows that Christmas has a meaning… a story to explain how it came to be. Some believe and some do not, but the gist of it is that Jesus was born of his virgin mother Mary and was pronounced the savior.
The following video is really interesting! Imagine if Mary and Joseph had Facebook accounts back then. Would they tell us their deepest thoughts? Would we know exactly how they felt about each other and their new baby? Would we find out the specifics on what they had for breakfast????? Let’s find out:
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How’s your blogging personality?
11 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in HOME Tags: Blog, blog tips, business strategies, creative juices, denise hood, facebook, social buzz, social media strategy, www.creativejuicesmarketing.com
I just read this fantastic blog from Laura Click (Blue Kite Marketing) and I wanted to share it with you all.
The 7 Annoying Blogging Personality Disorders and how to avoid letting them take you over. Take a read and enjoy. It’s very informative and entertaining.
http://pushingsocial.com/7-annoying-blogging-personality-disorders
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Weaving The Fabrics Of A Great Blog
08 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in HOME Tags: advertising, Blog, blog tips, business strategies, creative juices, denise hood, social media strategy, socialbuzz.biz, thought leaders, writing, www.creativejuicesmarketing.com
I tend to do a great deal of ghost-blogging for my clients. Not because I really WANT to, but because writing is so absolutely daunting to them, they simply can’t do it themselves. Granted, it is not easy to write a compelling and informative blog that relates to a particular topic, keeps the reader interested AND is current in it’s timing. But if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing, right??
Here are some tips that will help you weave the fabrics of a great blog. If you try to follow these ideas when writing, perhaps it will get easier. If not, do what Broadway performers do and PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!
1) Separate the writing and the editing processes. When a good writer writes, they write. They don’t overthink and nitpick every word. Even the most beautiful flowers have been fertilized by crap. Remember this and give yourself permission to write a crummy first draft. Editing is a job for later. That’s when you’ll have plenty of time to rearrange big chunks of text, monkey around with sentence structure, obsess over word choice and fix the punctuation.
2) Focus on the interesting and the current. Effective writers (and speakers) always tell lots of stories. Give personal examples to make your blogs more interesting. My husband has literally thousands of stories that he will randomly launch on total strangers just to make his ramblings more interesting. Good writers do that too. They know that human beings don’t just crave food—they are also starved for stories.
3) Tap into the power of metaphor. Metaphors lead to instant understanding because they are formed in the same way that most people communicate. ”The sky looked like a sea filled with cotton candy fresh from the fair”… “I was so disgusted by what I saw that I wanted to stick a fork in my eye” ….
4) Do adequate research. There is nothing more painful than trying to write when you have nothing to say. Effective writers understand that good research is all about asking interesting questions—of themselves, of news, of books, websites and other blogs that they’ve read. This needs to be completed before any writing can begin.
5) Learn from the writing of others. Effective writers understand that they are lifelong apprentices. They learn by reading—constantly. Note: this is not just passive, flip- through-a-thriller-while-sitting-on-the-pool- deck kind of reading. This is active sit-up-and-pay-attention-to-technique dissection—similar to what a scientist would do in a lab. You won’t want to read this closely all the time, of course (it’s work—although fun work, to my mind). But effective writers do some of this every week.
6) Write in small bursts. Creative work doesn’t require oodles of time. That first draft you need to write? It’s best done in dribs and drabs, a little bit at a time. Instead of procrastinating, effective writers persuade themselves to write a little each day, no matter how frazzled and frantic they feel. (Editing, on the other hand, usually needs space, time and quiet.)
7) Read their work out loud. Language isn’t just meaning—it’s also music. The most effective writers can often be found sitting by the computer keyboards, madly whispering to the screen, repeating their words back to themselves. Yes, it looks a little odd and co-workers may become alarmed. Effective writers don’t care. They do it because it works.
