So it’s really been some time since my last post, which surprisingly was my most successful one yet. I think I got pretty discouraged that I was spending all this time writing and nobody was really reading what I had put so much effort into.
Between that and a crazy and hectic May and June season, I just fell off the wagon when it came to blogging for the social nooby. I happen to have been working with some other companies now, so that’s a valid excuse. But frankly, I just wasn’t motivated to work and wrote for this site in the last two months.
Sometimes you’re just not into it. Sometimes all I want to do is chill out and relax, especially now that it’s summer. I’m not motivated to write just for writing (especially if there is no monetary compensation). But what I’ve discovered is that in order to hone the skills of being successful at something – especially blogging, you need to just do it. Motivated or not, you got to make the push. Because you’ll only get better. And when you get better, you get noticed and then from there opportunities arise.
So write away. Motivated or not.
As an aspiring blogger, the biggest question I face is ” Why doesn’t anyone read my blog?” Now granted, The Social nooby is barely two weeks old and I haven’t produced a ton of content, but still, the question plagues me.
Oddly enough, through following and interacting, I have gained over a hundred, yes I said hundred, followers on twitter. However, I’m learning hard and fast that having followers on twitter does not mean that they are going to check out my blog every time I post new content. As a matter of fact, I have barely seen any activity at all from twitter with the exception of getting posted on a few small social media newsletters.
So why don’t I have people checking out my blog? Well to start, I’ve only just learned that by commenting and interactions on other peoples blogs, I’ll get some people to check out my own. Well that sounds very intriguing, but I think I am like the average person, and I have yet to check out another blog post from other peoples comments on the various blogs I frequent. And retweeting and quoting tweets has not really gotten anything going either. So the few times people have checked out my blog, I consider it a real success.
Look, to me it’s all about content that catches. The guys with successful blogs have produced real quality content that a few people checked out and BAM! It grew from there. Then it’s all about consistency and quality. All it takes is that one post that goes viral. But the rest of link back, commenting, retweeting stuff is all crap. Yet I will keep on doing it, because hell, if the pros say it’s the way to go then who am I not to listen.
When I started getting into social media marketing, it was all about Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I never though blogging to be a part of it. Now blogging is all what I’m about and researching. I want to do it right. I want to create quality content that can go viral. Until that point no one is going to read this blog except you.
So what do you to get people to read your blog? And why do you think no one is reading mine?
I’ve been getting engrossed in reading social media books and posts that I’ve totally forgotten to actually write on my blog! Well my friends, that is a problem. Blogging needs to be consistent. Yes,having good, quality content is a major must for every blog, it is worthless without writing all the time.
I know I always quote him, but Marcus Sheridan at The Sales Lion says it best in his eBook, which you MUST download right now. Setting up blogging schedule that works could be the most important thing you’ll do with inbound marketing. He likes to post every three days, just to let the pot simmer a bit and get some discussion going. I realized after reading this that I don’t have a schedule. I kind of just write when I have some time and I’m done watching Game of Thrones on my iPad 
While being a musician, and constantly playing weddings, I often get home very late at night. Usually the next morning is slow, and being that my days are relatively free, there is no real schedule to my daily doings. I don’t like that and trust me, it’s gonna change. I tired getting up 5:30am and working out and still did my gigs, but that ended with me getting mono, so I’ll have to come up with something less extreme.
Anyways, the point is that blogging needs to be a constant delivery. Setting up a schedule, be it in the morning or late at night is must for a real blogger. So I’m still learning the ropes, as a nobby…
How do you schedule your blog posts?
When I had my first real opportunity to use social media for business, I sat down and came up with ideas for witty tweets and interesting articles relating to the company I was working for. Then I began to post… and post… and post again. And believe it or not – I had nothing to show for my so called “creativity.” It quickly dawned on me that we had not even discussed what our goal was in utilizing social media for our business!
A social media strategy is crucial for a marketing campaign utilizing Facebook, twitter, and the blogosphere. I say crucial because otherwise you’ll do what I did: spend hours on coming up with content that was not irrelevant, but was not geared towards a specific accomplishment. Goals, in life or business, are extremely important because the give us something to work towards and accomplish. So what do we try and accomplish through social media? Well the the answer to that is in developing a social media strategy.
After a week or so of my “catchy” tweets and posts, I called my bosses and co-workers together and asked them “what do you want to get out of having our social media presence?” Well the answer came quickly: Sales. They weren’t looking for customer engagement or service – they had that on the site already. They wanted sales, sales, and more sales. If that meant constantly giving out discounts to people, then I was given free reign to distribute as such. They just wanted to pick up the cash flow.
With a clear objective in mind, you start to work differently. I worked on a plan to get people to our site and actually buy something. My goal was to get products moving off our shelves, and I was determined to do so. And I succeeded. Had the goal been to been to interact with our customers, I would have taken up a totally different frame of mind to accomplish my goal. I would’ve had to find our customers, get them talking with content and other means, and I’m sure I would have succeeded at that as well.
I may be a noob to social media, but one thing I am dead set on. Developing a strategy can be the most important part of this whole social experience. If you have a clear cut strategy in your head, you will reach your end goal… depending on how hard you work. As a matter of fact, my strategy with this blog is simply to get used to blogging about a subject, and that is being a total social nooby. And I believe I am following through in my strategy and that I will reach my goal of exiting noob-ville and becoming a social media pro through the help of all of you.
Back to NY! I was thinking throughout my trip here to California that my biggest setback as social media wannabe is simply getting started. It is daunting and sometimes scary to take on a client who is entrusting you with their social media presence and marketing. A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to be the “director of social media” at an older health and beauty e-commerce site. Essentially it was an internship, but it was my first time actually using social media for a business as opposed to my own music marketing. I found some social media marketing plans to model after and I got to it. Well after just a week, I realized how little I knew about what i was doing. So in this post, I’ll go through some of the problems I faced and realized as social nooby.
1) Being on Facebook/Twitter does not make you a social media pro!
I had used Facebook and Twitter as a marketing tool for my own music, but what I was really doing was simply being a user of the two sites. I interacted with fans, friends, and family, but what I quickly came to realize is that when it comes to a business, the people you know and that know you are not going to like that page. Developing a strategy to draw leads and get existing customers to like and follow is a whole different ballpark then posting links to iTunes and the like.
2) Don’t forget the MARKETING!
I graduated college with a degree in marketing, so I had a little bit of education in the matter. But choosing the path of a musician did not allow me to really hone my skills as marketer. I never did an internship or have been involved in a business until I realized that maybe, just maybe I could do something in social media. What I soon discovered in actually working for a company in social media, was that you need to focus on how to use social media to market. Social media is simply an outlet and a tool to market, and you need to focus on marketing through them. You need to develop a marketing strategy before a social strategy is even talked about.
3) How to I get followers!?!?!
I was really at a loss for the first week of running the social media presence for this site. I kept to my planned tweeting and Facebook schedule, retweeted, responded to tweets, and yet no one followed, liked, or even interacted with me. It only hit me after a week that I needed to let our existing customers know about our social media presence. So we sent out a “Going Social” email to our customer list, offering a discount for everyone who liked or followed. Now that got things going.
On that note, something I am struggling with, and maybe someone can help me out here, is how do I go about getting like and follows for a brand new business?
These are just 3 things I struggled with and am still struggling with. I would love to hear your advice and thoughts on the matter.
I am currently mid flight on the way to semi-sunny San Diego, CA for a concert this coming Sunday pretty much twiddling my thumbs as daytime TV isn’t so entertaining to me. It suddenly hit me that I should take this time to actually write about something I have thinking about as a social nooby.
Content is king. That is the bottom line for a great blog. If you’re giving to the community then the community will end up giving to you. The problem I have struggled with is how to write quality content. Now for this blog, I pretty much just ramble about my findings and discoveries as I try to really acquired a strong understanding of marketing socially. But in the future, when I am writing for an actual business, how will i consistently come up with quality content, and then find a way to repeat the previous quotes while being creative, informative, and engaging?
I play weddings almost every night, and often it’s a long drive home from the gig and I need something really interesting to keep me up. Lately I’ve discovered podcasts, and I often find myself sitting in my car outside my house at 3am just to finish a podcast I had started on the way home. From these podcasts, I have really gained a tremendous wealth of knowledge about Internet marketing, and I want to share two of the best content creating tips I heard.
In my last post I mentioned Jay Baer (@jaybaer). He is starting to become my idol in this field and when I found a podcast called Internet Marketing for Smart People interviewing Jay, I immediately downloaded it and threw myself in. I’ll bring up one main point that Jay spoke about, and that is giving to the community. He brought up the case of The Geek Squad, who posts tons of DIY and helpful YouTube videos on their channel. Now The Geek Squad makes money from helping people with their computers and the like, so why would they offer free help? Simply because the consumers who go to these videos will end up using them at a later point. Giving to the social community will back in the long run, and often marketers focus on the now result, when patience is needed to really see the fruits of their labors. So create quality that is helpful to you customers, and keep on helping.
My other favorite Internet marketing authority is Marcus Sheridan aka The Sales Lion(@thesaleslion). My one tip to quote from him is to listen to the daily questions asked about your business. Those are your blog titles! Answer the questions that people would ask, in a personal way, and you’ll see results. The quality content is there for the taking, it’s right in front of you to take and write about. Now back to my in flight entertainment… speak to us soon from Cali.
One of the biggest questions I had in learning social media was “How do I encourage conversation?” I can post about about products all day long but unless there’s a general interest in it, nobody is going to comment or tweet back and start a conversation. So I began to experiment with my own music pages, trying out new ideas to generate some sort of conversation to see what works.
My first attempt was asking my fans what sort of songs they would like me to write as I work on my new album. Unfortunately, no one responded. I’d like to think that they like what I’m doing already, but I knew it had nothing to do with that. There was no real reason for them to post. I needed to create some sort of incentive for people to get in on the conversation. Luckily I had a show coming up with a new band that at the time was struggling to come up with a cool name. We were opening up for a popular band that was coming in from LA and it was a great opportunity for me to get my fans involved. So I asked my friends, family, and fans on Facebook for band name suggestions and offered two free tickets to the show to the individual who gave the name we would choose. Within the first half hour, there were over 100 responses. Everyone wanted to name the band. It wasn’t even about the tickets (they were only $15 at the door) but once there was an incentive, the conversation exploded. People just wanted to be creative and win. Ironically enough the winner lived in England and he didn’t even care about the tickets.
What I learned from this experiment was that people want to leave there mark, but you need to bait them to some degree. Offer a discount, a prize, anything that catches the interest of your audience and give them that reason to discuss you and your product.
