Secrets of Sizzle: 2 Smoking Hot Ways to Go Live With Your Social

Posted on Jan 25, 2012 in Corporate Social Media Zone | 0 comments

If you’ve been on social awhile, your routine might be getting a bit stale. The thrill and excitement is waning. You have a decent content strategy and you’re using your personality, but something is missing. You yearn for something more.

I have two simple suggestions that can add sizzle and pizazz to your social media outreach and participation. They will get you in touch with your fans, colleagues, and niche passionate communities, live and in the flesh full color. You will have to be present and aware and show up ready to perform, but if you do, you will experience exciting and wonderful results.

Sizzle Secret #1 – Live Tweet Chats

Live tweet chats are live hash tag conversations on Twitter. Participants include the specific hash tag in their tweet, which allows everyone to follow the conversation live using a dashboard such as TweetChat.com. It’s like the old school bulletin board chats, only modernized.

Typically, there is a moderator or organizer who seeds the conversation, makes sure questions are answered, and ensures that the crowd feels welcome. On the more popular, established tweet chats, you can potentially be interacting with dozens and dozens of people, maybe hundreds. The people involved tend to be social media savvy, so it makes the whole experience very satisfying for professionals needing a refresh on their social participation.

There are hundreds of these chats and they are generally topical, scheduled at regular times, and very entertaining. They put you face to face in real time with engaged and passionate niche enthusiasts, be that #horsechat, #blogchat, #brandchat, #GetRealChat, and more.

Each chat is different, so just find the ones that suit your goals and personality and go for it. And, you can start your own hash tag conversation if you’d like. Simply do it. Better still, go to where the action is already happening and get yourself some of it.

Sizzle Secret #2 – Google+ Hangouts

If you’re not on Google+ yet, you might want to be. One of the coolest features they have is hangouts, live video mini conferences. You (+ up to 10 total people) can video live with each other. You can schedule them or you can do them spontaneously – whatever turns you on.

Faces do much toward humanizing your brand plus the people who have adopted Google+ are a passionate group of dedicated, relationship focused socialites.You will find people worth connecting with there.

Who is using hangouts? People like Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Air empire, are using them. Even the US President, Barack Obama, is getting into the scene – he will be hanging out on January 30th to answer questions submitted to him from citizens. Knights and Presidents – cool, right?

How to use this to mix it up? Musicians are using it to let their audience sample their tunes, brands are using it to service customers, and smart marketers (like you) are using it to build their digital reputation. You can schedule hang outs (like open office hours, posting the times to your profile) or you can use it spontaneously, like you might a phone. Just ping a person and see if they can hang out.

Google+ Hangouts provide personal connection, real time feedback, additional reach, interaction, and spice. Add them to your social media calendar to find new ways to have fun on social.

Small Talk, Big Actions

How can you use these live social media options as a way to turn up the heat on your social? REAL connections, that’s how. You can interact live with your customer base, ask and answer questions, and even joke around a bit. It’s like a virtual cocktail party mixed with a networking how-to session.

Getting to know new people in intimate and meaningful ways is crucial to converting followers and fans to actual customers. People still have to know, like, and trust you to want to buy from you. Hopefully, these two up and coming techniques should help you with that.