50 Quick, Dirty, and Cheap Ways to Improve Your Social Media Presence
A quick and dirty hit list of helpful social media tips (for little or no cash outlay) – mark this page, return often, and just do these. Please share your stories, adventures, and resulting successes in the comment section.
- Add a real, fun, smiling head shot picture to all your social media profiles (no stodgy folded arms business suit shots with more gravitas than pizazz)
- Use SEO focused words in your bios
- Show your personality with lots of humor, feeling, and verve
- Break a “best practices” rule with an innovative alternative
- Write a recommendation on someone else’s LinkedIn profile
- Use Comment Kahuna, find an industry relevant blog, and make an insightful comment (rinse/repeat daily)
- Give away some free advice that people would normally pay you good money to provide
- Share 3rd party resource links from your custom Alltop.com page
- Provide only original material, no exceptions, for a month – pictures, words, videos, quotes (OKAY, this one is hard)
- Write a guest blog on someone else’s website
- Become an Amazon.com reviewer/rater
- Always answer every @ reply you receive on Twitter
- Become a BlogTalk Radio host
- Make and publish a video to Youtube (1-3 minutes max, casual conversation, relaxed location)
- Publicly thank a client for their business in your social media stream
- Put an actual geographical address on your profile (not something cute or pitchy)
- Remove all 3rd party hyperbolic language from your bios
- Write a blog post
- Talk about your real life outside of work – your dog’s name, your favorite ice cream, your hobbies
- Become a metaphor master – stories are perfect communication vehicles
- Post daily on all channels – and each post needs to be different than the others that day
- Write another blog post
- Use material from only people you personally know (and tag them) – this includes pictures, music, and quotes
- Become an active reviewer on Yelp
- Join an online niche community (and don’t go in selling)
- Attend a live tweet chat and participate with abandon
- Spend a week only engaging, without broadcasting anything else
- Say thank you 20 times today
- Answer a question in a discussion on LinkedIn (without pitching your business)
- Post a picture of your employees on your business Facebook fan page (and tag them all)
- Get social media connected to all of your clients, suppliers, employees, and friends
- Blip.fm a song that is your personal ballad/anthem
- Check in at your favorite businesses while you are there
- Be interesting and do interesting things and talk about them on social
- Create a QR code for your business (and incorporate into your collateral)
- Be sure that your business is a registered location for Gowala, Four Square, etc.
- Create a Facebook fan page (if you don’t already have one)
- Post (and tag) all of your Powerpoint presentations to SlideShare.net
- Create a Youtube channel and favorite a dozen videos that you love
- Video or audio interview an industry hero and post it to your website
- Add your social media icons above the fold on your website (and your company’s website)
- Write another blog post
- Use Twitter.com/search and connect to 10 people (every day) who are in your industry
- Admit a mistake publicly
- Add the names of your staff that are managing your accounts to your company bio verbiage (tweets by George H)
- Add a relevant hashtag to your tweets
- Ask questions and respond to the answers
- Add your social media profile links to your email signature
- Add your social media profile IDs to your business card
- Need I say it again? Write another blog post!
I don’t want to hear any whining about how these are basic tips. I have seen hundreds of PR and Advertising companies’ and professionals’ social media outreach and most are not doing this stuff. Pull back the curtain, let people get to know you, focus on outreach and engagement instead of “blast-n-brag” and your social media presence (and the ROI you enjoy from it) will improve. I could probably write 1001 or these (and that might be my next book…) but for now, if you committed to all of these for the next 90 days, your social media presence would skyrocket. Now, go get to work!
Til next time!
Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher
p.s. Blatant self promotion – you could buy my book and improve your social media presence by doing all the cool stuff in that too….FamousInYourNiche.com…just saying…
[graphic by ikrichter]
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This is so totally useful! Thanks for the post, I’ve favorited it and tweeted it so others can share in the fabulousness.
Thanks
THANK YOU, @Amy – I like how that sounds “fabulousness”. *blushing*
Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher
LOVE IT! I like that this is in a list form and it’s very specific and straight forward. Many great action items!
Thanks, @Tashia – LUV your company URL – what a deep and rich image/metaphor. I appreciate the compliment and sincerely hope you will go and implement as many of those 50 suggestions as you can over the next 90 days. It’s a challenge (and maybe you are already doing them) but it’s fun to see the results when they start coming in. Please be sure to come back again and share your successes.
Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher
I’ll assume these are all good ideas … socially backward dude that I am, I only understand about a third of them … but I’m desperate enough to try anything, so I’ll start ticking off the list.
@Christopher, it can be daunting, but yes, pick a few – mainly, pick one of the social media forums to focus on and start playing with it (you’re already doing video, so Youtube could work, if you like speaking/video – my gut w/o further research, is either Twitter or Facebook, pref Facebook). As an author, you have a huge advantage over many in social, because you have the useful skill of being a great writer. Your website copy has personality, humor, and verve and I would lead with that personality in your social media. Will fly for food? Classic! Your explanation about the Essence of Performance and the search results you’d get – totally amusing! You are already rocking an interesting narrative so keep going with it. Add your social media icons to your website. Start posting consistently. Share your brain with the world – chronicling your journey to social as an author would be very interesting for many. You might have to switch from IWeb to a self-hosted site on a web host provider like godaddy, but that wouldn’t be the first thing I’d tackle. Email me directly and we can arrange a phone conversation to discuss (gratis). Go for it – you are going to do just fine!
Vicki @Smartwoman Flaugher