Get the best out of Google+ Circles!

by Nicole Munoz

Circles is one of the things that really sets Google+ apart from other social networks. In Facebook for example, your friends are your friends – It doesn’t matter if that person’s the janitor you sometimes talk to or your best friend from childhood.

In Google+, you can create circles and put different people in different circles. You can then choose to share things only to certain people and not to others. For example, you might share only professional updates with your work contacts, while sharing photos of a night out with your friend circle.

The people in your circles won’t know what circles you put them in. It gives you a whole lot of control over your data, without any potentially embarrassing situations.

Here’s how to use Google+’s circles feature.

Step 1: Click Circles

To access your circles settings, hover your mouse over “Home” in the left navigation.

Then click on “People”.

You’ll see a screen of the people who are already in your circles.

Step 2: See Potential Friends

Click on “Have you in circles” to see who added you to their circles. You can think of these as your “friend requests.”

Step 3: Drag and Drop Into Circles

To add someone to a circle, just drag and drop them into the circles along the bottom.

Step 4: Create a New Circle

To create a new circle, click or drag and drop into the “+” circle. If you hover your mouse over it, you will see this:

The create circle box will pop up. Choose a name for your new circle, then either add people to the circle or create an empty circle.

Step 5: Adding by Search

If you want to add someone who hasn’t already added you, do a search for them along the left bar, right under “People”.

Click on the name to go to their profile page. Then click “Add to circles” to add them to a circle.

Step 6: Circle Specific Stream

Want to only see photos and updates from your friends? Or want to see what your family is up to? Google+ makes it easy to see only updates from the people you want to see updates from.

On the top bar navigation of your home screen, just click one of the circles whose streams you want to see. Google+ will update and only display updates from people in those circles.

Step 7: Circle-Specific Posts

To post an update to only certain circles, click on the “Share what’s new” box and start writing a post. A box with who can view your post will pop up.

To remove a circle, click the small “x” in the top right corner. To add a circle that can see your post, click “Add more people.”

You now learned how to see who’s in your circle, who’s added you to their circles, how to add people to your own circles, how to create a new circle, how to add people who didn’t add you to a circle using search, how to sort your stream by circles and how to post to only specific circles.

Google+’s circles features really makes it easy to use social networking without “leaking” updates you don’t leaked to the wrong people. It allows you to connect with the different people in your life in different ways.

Get Started With Google+

by Nicole Munoz

How to Set Up Your Account

Once you’re signed up on Google+, how do you actually setup your account? In this guide, you’ll learn how to add information to your profile, how to choose who can see what, how to set your notification preferences and how to link up other social networks to your Google+ account.

Step 1: Accessing Your Settings

To get to your settings page, click on the “Settings” dropdown button in the top right.

Click on “Account”

Click on “Google+”

Step 2: Add a Phone Number

Adding a phone number allows Google to send you a text whenever you get a notification. To add a phone number, type in your mobile number, then click “Send Verification Code.”

You’ll need to get the code from your phone and enter it into Google+ before you can receive notifications.

Step 3: Choosing Your Notifications

When do you want to receive an email or text from Google+? Use the checkboxes to select when you do and don’t want to get notifications.

Step 4: Set Your Image Preferences

Choose whether or not you want geographical location information to be tagged onto your photos. Most modern cameras, including the iPhone and Android cameras now tag geographical information onto photos.

If you check the “Show photo geo location information” box, Google+ will automatically add the geo location tag to your photos.

Your other choice is who gets to automatically have their photos approved. Approved photos show up on your profile. Use the blue drop-down box and the “Add more people” button to choose who can post photos of you and have them approved automatically. You can also choose to upload photos at full size from your mobile or desktop, autoenhance and autoawesome.

Step 5: Access the Profile Edit Page

To edit your profile, click on “Profile and privacy.”

Then click on your profile.

Click on “About.”

Step 6: Editing Your Personal Information

Fill out your story, things you’re proud of, occupation, employment, education and places lived information.

Then fill out your contact information, relationship status, gender and alternate names.

Step 7: Safeguarding Your Personal Information

Google+ makes it very easy to choose who can see what personal information. When you click on a field to enter your information, below it is a privacy setting button.

Just click on the button to choose exactly who can see the information you type in.

Step 8: Add Other Social Networks

If you want to add other social networks to your Google+ profile, go to the “Links” box in your “About” page, and add your social networks URLs to your Google+ profile.

You’ll immediately see a list of accounts that Google+ thinks belongs to you, based on Google+ searching the various social networks.

If you see any accounts that do indeed belong to you, just click the “+” button to link the account.

Click “Save” and the account will be linked to Google+.

Now click on “Manage connected accounts”.

And there, you can add your social networks, simply by typing your username, or by entering your profile URL.

Congratulations! You’ve just setup your Google+ account. You’ve learned how to add a phone number, how to set notifications, how to setup your profile, how to adjust your privacy settings and how to link other social networks.

Top 10 Social Media Information Sources

by Nicole Munoz

It’s a social world, no doubt, and most businesses know that they have to embrace social media in some way to grow and flourish. If you’re looking for social media information, this top 10 list provides with some great resources that are just a click away.

Site #1: Social Media Examiner

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com

Love or hate the cutesie mascot, Social Media Examiner offers valuable social media advice to business owners. The blog is updated frequently by a team of writers who provide social media updates, case studies and tips for success through social media.

Site #2: Mashable

http://mashable.com

Often regarded as the tabloid of the social media world, Mashable produces a tremendous amount of social media and tech information. They boast a huge readership (over 20 million unique monthly visitors) that keeps coming back to the site over and over again.

Site #3: Mari Smith

http://www.marismith.com

Well-regarded and extremely likeable, Mari Smith is known as a Facebook expert, but is a well-rounded social media expert. Users can keep up with Mari on her blog and should definitely follow her on their favorite social network, where she certainly has an active presence. You can also find dates for her speaking engagements and her books.

Site #4: Social Media Today

http://socialmediatoday.com

Social Media Today is an active blog they describe as “an independent, online community for professionals in PR, marketing, advertising, or any other discipline where a thorough understanding of social media is mission-critical.” The site includes original content written by contributors and curated content selected by their editorial staff.

Site #5: Jeff Bullas

http://www.jeffbullas.com

Jeff Bullas is highly regarded in the world of social media for marketing. He works as a consultant, coach and speaker to help businesses and individuals get the most out of social media approaches. While Jeff writes most of the content for the site, he does occasionally have guest writers too.

Site #6: Brian Solis

http://www.briansolis.com

Brian Solis is frequently mentioned when people talk about social media experts. His blog includes plenty of real life case studies of businesses using social media. In addition to the blog, visitors to the website can find his speaking schedule.

Site #7: UnMarketing – Scott Stratten

http://www.unmarketing.com

While on the surface, Scott Stratten may appear like a guy who just likes to rant about the way people use social media, there is something much deeper. His blog posts are always interesting and whether you agree with them all or not, there is always something to be learned.

Site #8: Social Media Explorer

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com

Social Media Explorer is headed by Jason Falls and Aaron Marshall. The site focuses on social media and public relations. Their organization also offers social media business summits throughout the United States.

Site #9: Social Mouths

http://socialmouths.com/blog

Written by Francisco Rosales, this blog offers well thought out with the nuts and bolts instructions today’s entrepreneur needs to make it in social media. Named as the #1 social media blog in 2012 by Social Media Examiner, you know it’s worth checking out.

Site #10: Viral Blog

http://www.viralblog.com

Viral Blog presents useful case studies in social media and attempts to identify upcoming trends. They are currently ranked as #70 in AdAge Power 150. Post are written by their regular bloggers and guest contributors.

Top 10 Social Media Mistakes

by Nicole Munoz

Social media is like a conversation, but instead of talking to one person, you’re talking to thousands. In real life, when a conversation goes well, the other person walks away feeling like they like you more, like they trust you more, and if it’s a business context, they might walk away feeling like they’ll do business with you in the future.

Unfortunately, the opposite can also happen. People can walk away feeling like you didn’t understand them, that you weren’t looking out for them or that they don’t want to do business with you after all.

That’s exactly how social media works. If you do it right, you can make a fantastic impression on thousands of people. They can end up turning into buyers as well as referring their friends. They can end up hosting lively discussions about your products and becoming your brand’s ambassadors.

On the other hand, if you do it wrong, the opposite can happen. People can leave and never come back. People can bad mouth you. People can influence their friends not to buy or link to you.

So how do you create the former impression and not the latter? By avoiding common social media mistakes. Here are ten of the top social media mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not Proofreading

When you post on your own Facebook feed, typically you just come up with an idea and post it. The same goes for all your other social networks. You don’t have another person look over it to double check your posts.

That’s fine for personal social networking, but not for building a brand or a business. Let’s face it: When you write this spontaneously, there’s going to be mistakes. Maybe not in every tweet or update, but even one in ten is enough to do harm.

It might be misspellings. It might be something off brand that you didn’t realize was off brand. It might be a message that could alienate a part of your audience. It could just be bad grammar.

As the writer, it’s very hard to catch these things yourself. Have someone else look over your posts before they go live. It could just be a co-worker or a friend. You don’t need a professional proofreader, just get a second set of eyes.

Mistake #2: Not Claiming Your Profiles

Did you know that on many services, profiles can be created for your business by someone other than you? This can happen on Google Places, Yelp and Facebook just to name a few. Other people create your page for you so they can comment on your business.

If you haven’t claimed your business pages, you’re essentially letting the conversation run rampant. Wrong information, like wrong hours of business for example, can be put on the page. The page will also likely be incomplete. It might not have your website, your phone number or other important details.

Claiming your page is easy. Generally all you need to do is take a phone call at your registered number to verify that you are who you say you are. The whole process takes just minutes.

Mistake #3: Not Using Monitoring Tools

Being able to monitor everything that people say about your brand manually can prove quite difficult and time consuming. There will be times when you’re extremely busy and just won’t have the time to check your social media for days. Twitter especially is incredibly difficult to monitor because of the high volume of tweets.

If you just let people talk about your brand without carefully monitoring what they say, a lot of damage can be done. If one of your employees trips up and makes a mistake, people could start talking negatively about your brand instantly – And it can spread quickly.

What’s the solution? Use social media monitoring tools like http://www.twilert.com, for example. These tools will watch for specific keywords, like your brand name or your product names and alert you whenever someone says something about you.

You can then take a look at what they’re saying. If it’s something negative, you’ll be able to respond immediately to quench the fire. If not, you can still jump in and participate in the discussion.

Mistake #4: Over Promotion

Constantly selling, selling and selling is not the path to success on social media. Social media is all about connections. It’s all about creating content that people love so much that they want their friends to see it too.

People who focus on making direct sales instead of joining in the conversation are looked at with disdain. They’re treated as if they’re from outside the community, trying to leech value from those inside. People stop sharing your content, stop reading your content and will generally stop following your content.

It’s okay to sell every once in a while. But the overall tone of your feed or page should not be salesy. The overall tone should be a conversation. You should generally be providing value. Don’t over sell.

Mistake #5: No Calls to Action

On the flip side, you have businesses that don’t have any calls to action at all. Though this mistake isn’t as bad as over promoting, it’s still a serious mistake.

If you have no calls to action, you aren’t going to get people involved with your site or your business. Your Twitter followers will forever just be your Twitter followers, your Facebook fans your Facebook fans. They’ll never turn into subscribers, contest participants, customers or seminar attendees.

Yes, you absolutely want to avoid over promoting. But not promoting at all is also going to kill your business. If you want a positive ROI from you social media efforts, you need to occasionally leverage the goodwill you’ve built.

When you do so, make sure even your commercial offerings come from a place of value. You’re offering solutions to problems, though these solutions do cost money.

Mistake #6: The “I Don’t Have 1,000,000 Fans” Syndrome

People who’re starting new fan pages or new Twitter accounts often get discouraged when their rate of growth isn’t astronomical. You hear stories of people “going viral” on the web all the time. Because of these stories, people often have unrealistic expectations of what their Twitter or Facebook campaigns can realistically do.

Going viral is a one in a million occurrence. It’s rare and neigh impossible to plan for. Most people who go viral never expected it to happen, and most people who plan to go viral never actually make it.

The real success stories in social media tend to be the stories you never hear. You never hear about the page with 500,000 followers that took 3 years to build. You never hear about the Twitter account that brings in $25,000 a month but took 3 hours a day every day for the last 18 months to build.

The reality is, building a social media following takes work and dedication. If you get discouraged because you don’t have a million followers right out of the gate, you’ll never reach that tipping point.

Starting small is to be expected. Everyone starts small. Building a social media following doesn’t happen from an explosion of traffic – It happens through consistency.

Mistake #7: Checking Every Media, All the Time

Did you know that social media can actually change your brain chemistry? In Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows,” a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist book, he examines the intricacies of how the internet and social media affects the brain.

What he found was that social media is actually addictive. Not as an analogy or as a metaphor, but biologically, physically addictive. Social media users exhibited the same brain chemistry changes in their brain as actual addicts. The brain of a social media addict craves the same dopamine bursts that a cocaine addict’s would crave.

This inherent addictiveness of social media is the reason so many people get sucked in. To run a good social media campaign, you really only need to spend 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the evening and maybe 30 minutes in the middle of the day.

Yet people regularly spend all day checking Facebook, Twitter and email. Some people check it every 10 minutes. Some people check it every hour. Some people just keep it on all the time.

Not only is this unnecessary, but it actively damages your productivity. Spending hours and hours on social media will suck up your time, distract you from the rest of your business and hurt you in the long run.

Be deliberate about when you check social media and when you post to it. Avoid it when you’re not deliberately using it to move your business forward.

Mistake #8: Not Asking for Interaction

One common mistake social media marketers make is communicating one-way. If you’re only communicating one-way, your social media efforts are only going to go so far. Even if you’re sharing fantastic content, people just won’t be as engaged as if you solicited participation.

When you solicit participation, you get people to actively become a part of your social media experience. Here are a few different ways you can solicit participation:

Ask a thought provoking question.
Ask for feedback on an article, product or service.
Start a controversial discussion.
Host a contest.
Ask them a trivia question.
Ask for stories.

There are many different ways you can do it. The key is to ask people to actively participate.

Mistake #9: Not Responding to Messages

Social media marketers sometimes perceive personal messages as a nuisance. They might perceive it as people asking for free advice. They might also feel like their time is being infringed upon. Or they might simply not value building relationships in a one on one fashion. They’re focused on marketing to thousands, not on answering one person’s question.

That mindset is a mistake.

Strong social media fan pages or Twitter accounts are actually built on just a handful of strong connections. If you look at a Twitter account with 50,000 followers, you might find that the majority of those followers actually came from the retweets of just 20 people.

Those 20 people loved the content being put out so much that they became champions for that Twitter feed. They actively helped build it up to what it is today.

The people who ask you questions today will often become your biggest fans tomorrow. When you reach out and help someone one on one, they don’t forget. You can come back six months or a year later and ask for a favor in return and they’ll almost always say yes.

Social media isn’t built by the thousands. It’s built by one real connection at a time. When you respond to private messages, people know you really care. When you ignore them, they’ll generally leave and never come back.

Mistake #10: Lacking Focus

Your social media feeds should have a purpose. People aren’t following you personally, they’re following your business feeds. They want to improve their lives in some way.

For some, that might be discount codes. For others, it might be entertaining videos. For others, it might be useful content and innovative solutions to problems.

Know what your readers are looking for and give it to them. Your feed should have an overall purpose. Of course, it’s okay to stray a bit from your purpose from time to time. You can share great videos, off the cuff thoughts and tweets from others that you think they’ll like.

But at the core, your social media efforts should have a focus and a purpose. What should people get by following you? What experience do you want people who follow you for 3 months to walk away with?

Figure this out from day one to help you guide your marketing efforts.

Klout Guide – How to Increase Your Online Influence

by Nicole Munoz

Klout is an online social influence measurement tool. Using Klout, you can get a rough sense for how powerful someone’s social media influence is, as well as to some extent their real world influence. Klout supports all major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

Klout crawls your popularity whether you want it to or not. However, by signing up for Klout, you can make sure it links all your social media accounts and knows what your interests are so it can more accurately measure and publish your influence.

Why Your Klout Score Matters

Why does Klout score even matter? Does it actually affect you in any material way?

The answer is yes.

Klout is often used as a discovery tool. If someone is looking for an expert in a certain field, they might hop online and look for someone with a high Klout score in that arena. That could mean speaking gigs, business deals, invitation to events and so on.

Here’s an example of where Klout has intermingled with real life, as reported by The Next Web.

More importantly, people often use Klout to research people they’re considering working with. For example, if you reach out to a potential joint venture partner, they might look you up on Klout to see if you’re a credible person.

Klout isn’t just an online popularity contest. It’s a versatile research tool that other people use to make real decisions about working with you.

How Are Klout Scores Measured?

Klout scores are based on a 90 day running average. The algorithm is highly complex and proprietary, though you can read a reverse engineered version of the algorithm here.

Primarily, Klout looks at:

Facebook likes
Number of comments your Facebook posts get
Mentions of you on Facebook
Shares of your posts on Facebook
Twitter retweets
Twitter followers
Twitter @mentions
Google+ +1s
Google+ reshares
LinkedIn Connections
LinkedIn recommenders

In short, they take into account a number of different social media signals and combine them all into one Klout score.

Klout not only measures these factors in absolutes, but also assigned different weight to different likes and retweets. For instance, a retweet from a well known celebrity is going to weigh more than a random person. Likewise, a retweet from someone who doesn’t retweet often is going to be worth more than a retweet from someone who retweets something a couple dozen times a day.

Adding in Real World Influence

Klout also has a mechanism for tracking your real world influence. This came about after Klout came under fire for ranking numerous bloggers as more influential than Barack Obama. Since bloggers were highly active on the social sphere, many of them did receive more tweets and likes than the President of the United States. However, by most anyone’s standards, the President has more influence than just about any blogger.

Because of this controversy, Klout implemented a Wikipedia scanning mechanism that allows Klout to gauge the importance of a person’s Wikipedia article. The more important their Wikipedia article, the more important that person is in real life.

With this added change, the President now ranks as the most influential person on Klout.

Sorting by Topics

One of the most important features in Klout is its ability to sort influencers by topics. After all, you rarely need to know who the most influential people in the world are. But it can make a big difference to figure out who the most influential people in your space are.

You can use this section to find potential business partners, potential speakers and people who you want to aspire to built connections with.

Are you on Klout yet? If not, now might be the time to take a look at your Klout profile, check out your Klout score and look for ways to give your profile a boost.

Getting Started with Klout

Signing up for Klout is a very streamlined process. It’s clear that Klout’s creators put a lot of attention into making sure there are no unnecessary steps in the Klout signup process. Because Klout is a social network based service, you sign up (and sign in) with Klout through an existing social network profile. There is no option to sign up via email.

Then you just give Klout a little bit of information to help them rank you and make you more discoverable. Here’s a step by step walkthrough of the Klout setup process.

Step 1: Choose Twitter or Facebook

Start by choosing whether you want to connect your Klout account with your Twitter profile or your Facebook profile.

Step 2: Authorize

Authorize whichever account you chose to access your personal data.

Step 3: Invite Friends

Invite your friends if you want, or leave this step for later!

Step 4: Choose Topics You’re Influential About

Klout with give you a list of topics they think you might be influential about. If you hover your mouse over any of those topics, the “Add” button will appear. Click the “Add” button to add the topic.

Step 5: Connect More Accounts

If you have more social media accounts, you can connect them in this step. Just click “Connect” next to each account you want to connect, then click “Continue” once you’re finished.

You’ll have to grant access to each network that you want to use.

Step 6: Changing Your Description

Your description appears directly under your name, picture and Klout score in your profile. If you’re connected to a Twitter account, the description will be pulled from your Twitter description. If you’re connected to a Facebook account, this will be blank by default.

To change your description, go to “Settings” in the upper right corner.

Then fill out the “About” field.

That’s all there is to it! Your Klout profile is setup and ready to go. You’ve got your accounts, your topics and your profile all setup.

Understanding Your Klout Score and Profile

At first glance, Klout can be a little overwhelming. There’s data everywhere, different kinds of feeds, different people and different categories. How do you make sense of all the data available to you?

Here’s everything you need to know about making sense of your Klout profile.

Step 1: Your Klout Dashboard

The first screen you see when you log in is your Klout dashboard. This dashboard has your Klout score, links to your social media profiles and your latest social media interactions all in a feed. Your dashboard is visible only to you and not the public.

Step 2: Your Score History

To learn more about your Klout score, just take a look at the right side of the screen.
The first choice is the “90-Day Score History” where you’ll see your score changes. This is a great indicator of whether your influence is increasing or decreasing.

The second choice is “Network Breakdown” where you can see what percentage of your influence comes from your different social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc).

Under that you have a more specific breakdown of your stats, your “Score Activity”.

Step 3: Add Topics

Adding topics you’re influential about allows Klout to rank you in those topics. If you don’t add yourself, even if you’re an expert in that topic, you’re not going to get the benefit of being ranked in Klout’s top influencer lists for that topic.
You can manually choose which topics you want to add by going to “See More” in your profile, then clicking “Manage your Topics” and then If you want, “Add a Topic.”

Step 4: Understanding Klout Profiles

A Klout profile consists of a few main parts. First, you have their name and “About” section. This gives you their Klout score, links to other social media profiles and a short blurb about them.

Then, you have the person’s “moments.” These are the social media updates posted by that person that got the most activity over the last 90 days.

To check out who your (or anyone else’s) top influencers are, just look to the left sidebar. Your top influencers will be sorted by Klout score.

Step 5: Perks

Perks are special benefits given to people with certain Klout scores. For example, a mobile phone company might give free phones to people with Klout scores above 85 in hopes that they might blog or tweet about the phone.

To access the perks that you qualify for, click “Perks” on the top right menu.

Browse the various perks that you qualify for. If you find a perk you’d like to claim, just click “Claim This Perk!”

Step 6: Friends and Lists

To see your friends’ Klout score, click “Friends” from the upper left menu.

You can sort your friends by alphabetical order or by Klout score by clicking the respective sorting options along the top. You can choose to view your Facebook OR Twitter friends!

Step 7: Lists

Lists make it easy for you to divide your friends into different categories. For example, you can sort your business friends from your hiking friends from your favorite bloggers. This makes it easy for you to track Klout scores and Klout profiles for all the different kinds of people in your life.

To create a new list, click “Create a New List” on the left hand side of your “Friends” page.

On the left, add the people you want on the list to your list. On the right, give your list a name and a description.

Once you’ve saved your lists, you can come back anytime and just click on one of your lists on the left to see everyone who’s in that list.

These are the most important features Klout has to offer. You now know how to see all your posts, your most influential posts, to see how your Klout score was broken down as well as your growth over time, how to use perks and how to sort your friends.

Top 10 Tips for Improving Your Klout Score

There’s a lot you can do to deliberately improve your Klout score. After all, Klout is an influence measuring tool – But it is based primarily on online factors. If you can change those online factors, your Klout score will rise accordingly.

It’s important to keep in mind that your Klout score is a 90 day running average. That means that even if you execute all these tips perfectly, it’s going to take some time before your score reflects your new level of online activity. Treat it more like a marathon and less like a sprint.

Tip #1 – Create Content People Want to Share

There are a lot of tactics you can use to boost your influence. But at the end of the day, your influence depends on whether or not people want to share your content. The best way to make people want to share your content is to create content that’s worthy of sharing in the first place.

Spend more time on your content than on your marketing. Great content gets shared naturally, while poor content is hard to get shares even with great marketing.

Tip #2 – Start a Controversial Discussion

Klout doesn’t actually measure how much people like you or how much they measure your content. They measure activity. The more people commenting, sharing, liking, retweeting or @mentioning you, the higher your Klout score is going to be.

One great way to boost your Klout score then is to have very controversial discussions. This will get a lot of people talking to you and about you, which in Klout’s book is the same thing as credibility.

Tip #3 – Use Social Media as Your Community Hub

A lot of people try to create their own community hub by starting a new forum on their website. This can be incredibly difficult, as forums are notoriously difficult to populate.

On the other hand, making a Facebook group or a specific Twitter hashtag for your audience is a fantastic way to build a community. You don’t need a ton of posters to make it seem active. In fact, just a couple posts a day is enough to make it seem like an active community.

Best of all, all that activity on your social media profile is going to help give your Klout profile a strong boost.

Tip #4 – Use Social Media to Launch Big News

Launching a contest? Announce it by social media instead of email. Launching a new video? Tell people about it on social media first. New product launch? Again, use social media to get people excited and to tell them about the news.

People love talking about things that are new. There’s going to be more energy around your product when you launch it than at any other point in its lifecycle. There’s going to be more energy around a video launch than it’ll ever have at a later time.

Leverage this energy by getting people to talk about it on social media. That’ll help give your Klout score a nice big boost.

Tip #5: Jump In On Popular Hashtags

When you’re participating in popular hashtag conversions, people are much more likely to @reply you and retweet you. These are two things that Klout looks at a lot to determine Klout score.

Use various hashtracking websites to find these trending hashtags and comment on them. Popular sites include “What The Trend” and hashtags.org.

Tip #6: Link All Your Social Networks

By default, Klout can only track your main social network. If you don’t link your social network, Klout won’t be able to see how much influence you actually have. Naturally, the more networks you link, the higher your perceived influence.

Link all your social networks, even if you don’t ever really use those networks. That’s right – Link up accounts even if you have few friends and never update them. After all, you can just remove your accounts again if it lowers your score. More often than not however, it’ll give your score a nice boost.

Tip #7: Ask Your Audience Questions

Again, the goal is to deliberately facilitate as much activity on your social media feeds as possible. One easy and natural way to facilitate that discussion is to ask your audience questions.

Ask questions that people would want to share their opinions about. Give your audience a chance to brag about their ideas. Ask provocative questions, or questions that people would have strong opinions about.

Tip #8: Do @Mentions Often

When you @mention someone, they’re more likely to see your message and respond back with an @mention. Furthermore, when you @mention someone, they see your name and remember you. They’re more likely to follow you, as well as more likely to recognize you in their Twitter feed.

Using @mentions helps you stand out from all the chatter. It’s not going to immediately boost your Klout score; instead it’ll help you garner more and more attention on the social web. In time, this could make a big difference.

Tip #9: Connect With Influencers

Connecting with influencers can help boost your Klout score in several ways. First, if an influencer @mentions you in public, that means more people are going to find your feed. More people will follow you, retweet you and get in conversations with you. That means a higher Klout score.

Second, Klout treats different people’s retweets and @mentions with different weight. A highly influential person bears a lot more weight than a person with low influence. If you engage in the social sphere with an influential person, you’re going to get a higher Klout score just from that.

Tip #10: Build a Name for Yourself Through Multiple Media

The internet isn’t the only place to build your Klout score. In fact, many of the highest Klout score rankers don’t even pay much attention to their social media. Instead, they’re focused on building real world influence.

Focus on expanding your reach not just online, but through every other kind of medium possible. Try to get on radio. Launch your own podcast. Do videos and build a YouTube channel. Speak in public.

Anything you do that raises your public profile will also raise your Klout score.

These are ten ways to increase your Klout score. Some of these tactics focus on deliberately increasing social engagement, while others focus on actually expanding your reach. Both methods will help give your Klout score the boost you’re looking for.

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Mistake #1: Not Using a First Class Photo

Your photo shouldn’t just be good. It shouldn’t just be a great shot that someone took of you at a dinner party. It can’t even be just a good shot of you wearing a professional outfit.

The photo you use on LinkedIn should be taken by a professional photographer, in a professional context. There’s a lot that goes into taking the perfect professional photo that you just don’t see from an amateur photo, even a good one.

For starters, a professional will get the lighting just right. No part of your body will be dark and nowhere will look too light. They’ll use multiple light points to get it perfect.

They’ll instruct you on how to position your body. They might take several different shots to get the most credible looking photo. The shot itself will be taken with a high quality camera that retains good color and light data.

Finally, they’ll professionally color correct and touch up the photo until it really pops.

All of this you just don’t get with an amateur photo, even if it’s a good one. And it makes a difference. Browsers might not look at your photo and consciously think about whether it looks professional or not, but unconsciously people do make snap judgements. Having a great professional photo makes a difference.

Mistake #2: Half-Hearted Use of Groups

When people join LinkedIn, they’ll often take a peek in the groups section. They’ll also frequently join a handful of groups. But most of the time, after poking around a bit, people simply leave the groups section and never return.

That’s a pretty big mistake.

Groups are one of the most powerful features that LinkedIn has to offer. It’s not instantaneous – You’re not going to instantly get clients or jobs from groups. But in time, you can build incredibly powerful connections as well as build a lot of credibility in your personal brand.

Start by finding targeted, relevant groups for you. For example, if you’re in San Francisco and you’re looking for investors for your startup, join the “Bay Area Startup Network (BASN)” group. If you’re a lawyer looking for a job, join the “San Francisco Legal Network.” So on and so forth.

Get on the group and help other people. Answer questions. Demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. Become an expert on that board. It could take as long as a couple months before people start coming to you with questions. The offers won’t be far behind.

Mistake #3: Selling and Marketing in Groups

Selling in groups has to be done in a subtle, relationship based manner. Any kind of overt selling is going to tarnish your reputation or get you removed from the group entirely.

Selling too directly in groups can take many forms. These include:

Posting promotional threads.
Linking to commercial events you’re hosting.
Replying to other people’s threads with commercial messages.
Sending private messages to group members with promotions.

All of these are mistakes. The best way to sell to a group is to build your reputation in the group. People will naturally come to you. It’s okay to subtly promote every once in a while, but never do anything that overtly looks like sales.

Mistake #4: Not Enough Recommendations

One of the most important things on your LinkedIn profile is your recommendations. People value reading recommendations because it’s a vote of confidence for you from someone else. If those other people are credible individuals, the vote of confidence would carry even more weight.

When someone lands on a LinkedIn profile and sees recommendation after recommendation, they immediately feel like you’re a trustworthy person. A lot of people will actually take the time to read over all your recommendations before deciding to contact you.

The flip side is also true. If someone lands on your LinkedIn profile and sees zero or only a handful of recommendations, their immediate reaction will be to distrust you. That’s just how the internet works: Because there are so many people vying for attention, everyone isn’t trusted until proven trustworthy.

If you want to make valuable contacts on LinkedIn and build your network, you need to have a large, robust base of recommendations. Reach out to all your co-workers, friends, clients and former employers and ask them to write a LinkedIn recommendation for you.

Mistake #5: Writing Over-Zealous Recommendations

This mistake is very easy to make. When people ask for recommendations, a lot of the time they’ll actually write the recommendation themselves and just ask the other person to post the recommendation. Unfortunately, these kinds of recommendations often lack juice.

More specifically, a lot of recommendations (especially the self-written ones) are full of excess praise but don’t touch on any specific points.

They might say that you were “great to work with,” “trustworthy” or a “fantastic person to have on your team.” All that is great, but a truly solid recommendation should go a step further.

It should give specifics. If you improved web traffic by 17% during your tenure, it should say so. If you were the go-to conflict resolution person for your company, it should say so. If you took the company from #5 in sales in the industry to #2, it should say so.

The more specific the better and the more results oriented the better. Praise is fantastic, but in order for the recommendation to hit home it has to be specific and grounded in the real world, not just in opinions.

Mistake #6: Not Proofreading Your Profile

If anyone sees any spelling or grammar mistakes anywhere on your profile, they’re going to be instantly turned off. LinkedIn is about putting your best foot forward professionally. In their minds, if you can’t even get your LinkedIn profile right, how can they trust you with their money, their work or their contacts?

Have a professional proofreader look over your LinkedIn profile. It’s extremely affordable, costing just a penny or two per word to have it reviewed. The whole thing would cost you less than $20. They’ll look for any spelling or grammar mistakes and fix anything that you might have missed.

Mistake #7: No Links or Bad Links

As versatile as a LinkedIn profile is, it still doesn’t give you everything you need to truly showcase everything you’re up to. To do that, you have to link to an outside website. Linking to an outside website allows you to actually demonstrate your skills, rather than just describe your past.

If you don’t have a link pointing to a professional website, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to sell yourself. You’re missing out on the opportunity to show your portfolio, to brag about past successes, to host client testimonials, etc.

An even worse mistake is having bad links from your LinkedIn profile. In other words, links that make you look worse rather than better. The most common and worst offender is linking to your personal Facebook profile that still has unprofessional photos from your past. If you’re going to link to Facebook, make sure it’s a Facebook account dedicated to professional networking.

Mistake #8: Having a Weak Summary

Your summary is generally the first thing people will read on your profile. It’s also often the only thing people will read on your profile. Your summary should hit hard and get people instantly hooked on the idea of contacting, hiring, buying from or investing in you.

Having a weak or mediocre summary is a big mistake. It does take quite a bit of time to craft a summary that really does the job. Every minute you spend on writing your summary is time well spent.

What goes into writing a great summary?

First, you should use up all 2,000 allotted words. The more you tell, the more you sell. Focus on your past achievements, especially concrete and measurable achievements. Share any stats on how you improved a company. Talk about specific problems that you helped resolve.

Put the highlights of your experience section in your summary. Of course, if they want your full background they’ll still scroll down, but you still want to be able to use the best of your past experiences in your summary.

Share anything that makes you unique or sets you apart from everyone else. Are there special skills you have that nobody else does? Have you done things nobody else has? Why should someone hire you rather than the other guy?

Wrap up your summary with your contact information.

Mistake #9: Not Using LinkedIn Answers

One of the best ways to leverage LinkedIn is to use it to build your reputation and establish yourself as an expert in a field. LinkedIn answer is a great way to do this – Yet so many LinkedIn users simply ignore this feature.

People come to LinkedIn answers to ask professional questions. People from all over the world post several thousand questions every single day. Answering these questions regularly can be a great way to network, build connections and build your reputation.

For example, let’s say your specialty is social media management. You can use LinkedIn answers to find people who’re struggling with social media. Look for their questions and answer them.

Do this every day. Some of the people whose questions you answer might hire you. You’ll also get a lot of attention from other people who see your question and liked your answer.

Mistake #10: Not Using a Custom URL

Using a custom URL on LinkedIn is free and makes you look a lot more professional. If you aren’t using a custom URL, it looks lazy and unprofessional.

How do you setup a custom URL?

Click your name in the upper right corner, then click “Settings.” Click “Edit Public Profile,” then “Customize Your Public Profile URL.”

These are ten of the most common LinkedIn mistakes that people make. Remember: Your LinkedIn profile is how everyone in your professional network will see you. In many ways, it’s much more important than Facebook or Twitter. Avoid these mistakes and take the time to make your LinkedIn profile really shine.

Top 10 Google+ Mistakes

by Nicole Munoz

Google+ is one of the world’s largest social networks. At 170 million active users, Google+ is behind Facebook but still ahead of LinkedIn’s 150 million users. Don’t be fooled by its lower user count however: Google+ is still a power house.

Unlike Facebook, which just about everyone is on, Google+ tends to be populated by first adopters, influencers, networkers and serious professionals. While Google+ might not be the best place to get a hundred likes for the latest funny photo, it’s an absolutely fantastic place to build your brand and market your business.

Google+ also has one big advantage over other social networks: Google +1s have a big impact on search results. Google +1s don’t affect rankings globally, but do affect rankings powerfully on a user-specific basis.

That means that if you write an article about blogging and a user +1s that article, they’re much more likely to see your content ranked in the future. All your content about PPC, about social networking, about video marketing and everything else will get a huge boost because they +1ed a piece of content by you. This alone makes Google+ worth investing in.

All that said, Google+ is often misunderstood. People often don’t know understand how to use this powerful platform and as a result make mistakes. Here are ten of the most common mistakes people make and how you can avoid them.

Mistake #1: A Corporate Sounding Tagline

On a Google Plus page, your tagline is really the only space you have to sell curious browsers on taking a closer look. The tagline is short, but it gives you a chance to “hook” people.

Don’t squander your tagline on a corporate sounding sound bite. Don’t use it on a cute sounding slogan. Your tagline should be something that directly hints at a benefit. It should promise a benefit and get people hooked in.

Spend some time perfecting your tagline. It’s a vital part of your page’s first impression.

Mistake #2: Not Fully Utilizing Links

One of the truly great things about Google+ is that it allows you a ton of leeway on your links. You can put almost as many links as you want. You can link from both your own “about” page as well as your brand pages.

Link to all the different resources you can. Link to all the credibility boosters you have on the web. Link to your personal site, your company website, your LinkedIn, your Facebook page and any other resources that can help boost your credibility and allow people to get to know you.

Mistake #3: Not Regularly Posting Content

Google+ revolves around content more than just about any other social network. On Facebook, it’s common for people to share all kinds of things, from photos to quotes to personal updates. On Twitter, even more so.

Google+ however revolves almost solely around content. People on Google+ expect to receive high quality content from the people in their circles, especially if it’s from someone they know in a business context.

Google+ allows you to post entire articles in an update. This makes it easy for people following you to digest your content all within the social network, without having to leave and go to an outside site.

Publish content regularly on Google+ – It’s the best way to build a relationship with your audience.

Mistake #4: Not Encouraging +1s

Getting more +1s works wonders for your business. It can make your content rank higher in Google+. It builds social proof when others see that people like your content. It helps your future content rank for that specific user.

Getting +1s isn’t something that happens on its own. A lot of people who like content will never +1 it. People are often more used to “liking” Facebook content than +1ing Google+ content.

How do you remedy this? By asking people to +1 your content. By incentivizing people to +1 your content. Make it an active mission of yours to get people to +1 your content.

Mistake #5: Poor Use of Photos

Google+ is the most powerful social network in terms of photos in the main stream. On Facebook, only thumbnails of photos can be shared. To view a larger photo, people have to click on the photo to go to the photo album.

On Twitter, it’s even worse. All photos are shrunk down into a short URL and only the URL is posted. There is no preview for the photo.

On Google+ however, you can view the whole photo right in the stream. Large photos are shrunk down to fit the stream; but even the preview is quite large.

Make sure you utilize photos in your Google+ stream. A picture can tell a thousand words.

Mistake #6: Not Enabling Direct Connect

Direct Connect is a feature that makes it easy for people to find your brand page. All they need to do is type in the “+” sign followed by your brand name in Google. For example, to find McDonalds, you’d just type in “+McDonalds.”

You won’t see any search results. Instead, you’ll be taken directly to the McDonalds brand page. This is true of both searching on Google.com, as well as through Google search bars in Chrome, Firefox and other browsers.

If you’re not enabling Direct Connect, you’re going to miss out on traffic from your highest quality users. It’s hardcore social media users (influencers) who’re most likely to use the Direct Connect feature. Make sure it’s enabled to make sure you don’t lose your most powerful followers.

Mistake #7: Not Verifying Your Page

Verifying your page with Google+ prevents anyone else from taking your brand’s name. Nobody else will be able to get a “verified” page under the same name.

Also, if you’re using Direct Connect, verifying your page will ensure that your page is the one that pops up when people type in “+” and your brand name.

Verifying your page does take a bit of effort. First, you have to post a bit of HTML code from Google+ on your website. You may also be asked to provide proof in the form of a credit card statement or utility bill.

Mistake #8: Not Segmenting Using Circles

One of Google+’s most powerful features is circles. Circles allows you to separate the different groups of people in your life, as well as the different people who follow you professionally, into different groups.

For example, you might separate your newcomers from your buyers from your “super elite” crowd. You might also have a separate circle for contributors to your business and your inner circle.

You’ll be able to post tailored content just to each of those groups. You’ll be able to make sure that everything you post is on-message for the people who’ll see them.

Mistake #9: Reposting Too Much

Google+ is all about building your personal brand. It’s about posting original content. It’s about impressing people with your content. It’s not about constantly reposting what other people are saying.

On Facebook and Twitter, sharing and retweeting is very common. On Google+, it’s less so, especially for businesses and brands. That’s not to say never to share, but the ratio should be much lower.

On Facebook, a good 20% to 30% of your content might be shares from other people. On Google+, less than 10% of your content should be shares. Focus on high quality original content, not resharing what other people posted.

Mistake #10: Overlooking Hangouts

People often underestimate just how powerful hangouts are. Hangouts allows you to connect with your friends using audio and video conferencing, completely for free. What’s incredible is how seamless the video and audio is. It’s easy to use, it’s fast and it just plain works.

Most other kinds of software on the market that can do this kind of video conferencing cost a boatload of money. Even Skype video conferencing isn’t as smooth and easy to use as Google hangouts.

You can use hangouts for classes, for impromptu gatherings for presentations or group meetings. Don’t overlook hangouts just because it’s free – It’s a robust and powerful piece of conferencing software.

These are some of the most common Google+ mistakes people make. Google+ isn’t Facebook, but it’s still one of the most influential social networks around. Develop a strong Google+ strategy and it’ll pay off in customers, in brand, in credibility and influence.

Top 10 Twitter Mistakes

by Nicole Munoz

Twitter is often the most difficult of all social networks for marketers and businesses to navigate. Twitter has a very unique and specific culture, with unique etiquette and expectations. Marketing on Twitter isn’t like posting an ad or even posting a Facebook update. It’s more like constantly being a part of a never ending stream of high speed communications.

In many ways, Twitter marketing is all about systems and habits. It’s all about how you consistently do the things you need to do to expand your follower base, build trust and increase revenues. Unfortunately, a lot of people have bad systems and habits that either don’t work or make them look like spammers.

Here are ten of the most common mistakes people make on Twitter. Making these mistakes can reduce your profits, make you look like a spammer or alienate your audience.

Mistake #1: Focusing on Quantity Over Quality

On Twitter, it’s common for people to measure their success by the number of followers they have or the number of retweets they get. It can be a lot more exciting to see 100,000 people following you than 1,000 – Even if that 1,000 are the 1,000 people who really matter.

When it comes to building a business, the number of followers you have is not the best indicator of how you’re doing on Twitter. After all, if all you wanted were followers, you could simply buy several thousand of them for $5.

What really matters with Twitter is engagement. The more engagement you have, the more likely people are to …

Retweet your content to their network.
Come to your site and buy a product.
Partner with you on joint projects.
Promote your affiliate programs.
Invite you to speak at events.
Introduce you to investors, big clients and other key contacts.

Twitter is so much more than just a marketing platform. Focus on the quality of your connections as well as the quantity of followers to get the best results.

Mistake #2: Auto-Follow Back

When Twitter first came out, it was considered a pretty good marketing tactic to follow back anyone who followed you. It showed that you cared about them, that you were listening to them and that the relationship was a two-way street.

That’s why when auto-follow back programs came along, they took off so quickly. Instead of having to do the following manually, people could just setup their software to do it for them. Pretty soon, this became a common occurrence.

Today, using auto-follow back software to follow anyone who follows you is quite a bad idea. It used to work, but now it’s frowned upon by many Twitter users.

Why?

First, it makes it difficult to use Twitter properly and connect with the people you really care about. If your whole Twitter feed is flooded with people you don’t know and don’t really care about, how can you possibly build real relationships?

Second, you open yourself to spam. Your Direct Message box is going to get flooded with promotional messages. Your Twitter feed will as well. Again, it makes it very difficult to build real relationships.

Third, it makes you look spammy. Anyone who understands how Twitter works can take one look at your follow to follower ratio and know you’re using automated software. To these people, this often looks like spam.

Finally, it reduces your perceived authority. Real authority figures are followed by a lot of people but aren’t necessarily following a lot of people. If you have a 1:1 ratio, you look less like an authority.

The bottom line is, don’t use auto-follow back software.

Mistake #3: Auto Direct Messaging

An even worse mistake is to use software that automatically messages anyone who follows. Common practices include mailing people a free report or mailing a link to a squeeze page.

People can see right through that kind of thing. There isn’t anyone who’ll receive that message who wouldn’t instantly know that it was generated automatically. For the vast majority of users, that’s enough for them to instantly lose trust in you.

The amount of benefit you’d get from bulk messaging like this isn’t even close to the benefit you’d get if you actually built a relationship with them. So what can you do instead?

Instead of automatically messaging everyone, take the time to actually look through your followers. When someone follows you, go check out your feed.

Whenever you see someone who you think you’d genuinely want to connect with, go ahead and send them a message. Make it personalized and tailor it to them directly. They’ll love you for reaching out and you’ll build a real connection.

Mistake #4: Not Customizing Your Background and Picture

If you leave your background picture on the default settings, or if you don’t have a great looking picture, you’re going to lose a lot of your audience.

When you’re first starting out on Twitter, it’s perfectly fine to just use Twitter’s default background. You can also opt to use one of Twitter’s many template backgrounds.

As your brand grows however, you should absolutely hire a designer to have a custom made background designed for you. If you have a great looking custom background, it really sends the message that you’re a professional who cares about his or her followers.

The same goes for profile pictures. You need to have a professional looking profile photo. Ideally, the profile photo you choose will also have the brand color or brand “vibe” that matches your background.

Mistake #5: Taking Extended Breaks

If you disappear all of a sudden for a month, or even a week or two, people are going to start to forget who you are. It’s okay if it’s a planned break that you announce – For example, a honeymoon – But if you just drop off the map all of a sudden, you’ll very quickly lose all the work you put into your social media efforts.

This seems self-explanatory, but it happens all too often. It might be because of a family emergency, it might be because of burnout, it could be business troubles. The thing is, your audience won’t know what’s going on unless you tell them. If you just disappear, many of them will just move on. There’s far too many things pulling for their attention on the social web.

If you must take an extended break from Twitter, you have a couple options.

First, you can announce that you’re taking a break. You can explain why and make sure your audience knows you’re coming back.

The better option is to use a tool like Hootsuite or TweetDeck to continue to post tweets even in your absence. You can greatly tone down the volume as well. For example, you can automatically post just one or two tweets a day, instead of your normal 10 to 20. This allows you to keep your connections alive, even when you can’t fully be there.

Mistake #6: Always Tweeting at the Same Time of Day

Do you tend to always send your tweet at one time of day? For example, many people like to send their tweets when they get off work, between 5 pm and 8 pm. While it’s great to segment your work time, it’s not great to always tweet at the same time.

The reason? Time zones. Twitter is an international platform. If you’re always tweeting only when it makes sense in your time zone, you’re not going to be able to reach the rest of the country, let alone the rest of the world.

Vary up your tweet times so you appear active to everyone, no matter where they’re geographically located. Use scheduling tools to spread out your tweets so you don’t have to actually be online to tweet out your timezone-friendly updates.

Mistake #7: Not Responding to @Mentions

If someone @mentions you and you don’t respond, you lose a valuable opportunity to connect with them. You lose the opportunity to connect with their audience. You lose the opportunity to have a vibrant public discussion. You lose the opportunity to win a fan.

People often don’t give @mentions the respect they deserve. Yes, @mentions are visible publicly. But they’re still messages direct at you specifically. They should be treated as if they were one on one communications, like email.

The difference between Twitter users who respond to every @mention and those who ignore @mentions is astronomical. The Twitter user who responds regularly will get more retweets, more mentions, more followers and more traction in general.

Mistake #8: No Personality Tweets

This is a mistake often made by big brands, as well as by small marketers who’re trying to look big, official or corporate like. They think that in order to appear trustworthy or “brand like” they have to write tweets that are standoffish, stiff and lack personality.

That doesn’t generate trust – All it does is bore your audience into leaving.

Just because you have a big brand doesn’t mean you have to be stiff. Take Taco Bell for instance. Though Taco Bell is a multi-million dollar company (owned by a public multi-billion dollar company,) they still use their Twitter accounts humorously to build connection with their followers.

For instance, when deodorant company Old Spice jabbed at Taco Bell, this is how they jabbed back:

And when Men’s Health jabbed at Taco Bell on “420 day,” this is how they responded:

The social web found these tweets hilarious. It generated a lot of buzz. What was the result of these kinds of tweets? Taco bell got a ton more followers. People loved Taco Bell’s sassy approach and wanted more.

Don’t make the mistake of taking your personality out of your tweets just because you want to appear respectable. If anything, the best way to appear respectable is to let your personality out.

Mistake #9: Being Stingy With Retweets

Giving someone a retweet is one of the most valuable gifts you could give them in the Twitter community. It shows someone you appreciate them, that you value your relationship with them and most importantly that you like their content enough to put your stamp of approval on it and send it to your followers.

Yet people are often quite stingy with giving out retweets. For some, it stems from being protective of their followers’ attention. For others, it’s a sense of “giving something away” without getting anything in return.

But in order to succeed on Twitter, you have to get over that sense of not wanting to retweet other people’s content. Not only do retweets help you build relationships with other Twitter users, it helps you build your relationship with your followers.

If you only retweet content that your followers would love, while providing valuable original content of your own, people will come to value you more not less. It helps you, it helps the original tweet author and it helps your followers. Everyone wins. Don’t be stingy with your tweets.

Mistake #10: Taking Mentality vs. Giving Mentality

A lot of marketers from the traditional marketing worlds tend to come on Twitter with a taking mindset. They come on asking: If I invest XY and Z (hours, money, energy, etc) what can I get in return? How many followers can I get? How many leads? How much revenue?

Unfortunately, that’s not how Twitter works. Marketers who come on Twitter with a taking mentality are often sorely disappointed.

The marketers that tend to succeed on Twitter are those that come with a giving mindset. They come asking: What kind of content can I give to my followers? How can I help other Twitter users succeed? What kind of content is missing in my industry that I can provide?

When you take on the giving mentality, people will naturally want to follow you. People will naturally want to retweet your content. People will naturally click on your links and eventually they’ll naturally buy your product.

It’s a paradox: In order to get from Twitter, you have to come with a focus on giving. Drop the taking mentality and take on the giver’s mentality.

These are ten of the most common Twitter mistakes, along with their solutions. Knowing what to do on Twitter is important – But so is knowing what not to do.

Top 10 Facebook Mistakes

by Nicole Munoz

As the largest social media website in the world, Facebook is an important tool for marketers and businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re looking to build a multi-million dollar brand or generate more sales for your startup company, Facebook can help.

Marketing on Facebook is very different than marketing on TV, on radio or through PPC advertising. In fact, it’s very different than just about any other marketing medium on the planet.

Many marketers who come into Facebook with mindsets that work in other industries end up shooting themselves in the foot. Working with Facebook users is not like working with other audiences!

Here are the top 10 Facebook marketing mistakes that people tend to make, along with how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Posting Too Often

Facebook is not Twitter. People often lump “social media” into one big bucket, but these networks are really quite different from one another. One important distinction is post frequency.

On Twitter, it’s normal for people to post 10, 20 or even 30 or more tweets a day. That’s how the community works. That’s the pace of the action. That’s what’s accepted and expected by the community.

That’s not how it works on Facebook. If you post that often, you’ll be perceived as spamming. Very few of your messages will end up on people’s feeds anyway, which means you’ll have wasted a lot of time.

The ideal post frequency for most people is about 1 or 2 updates a day. If you have a very active audience, you can go up to 4 or 5 updates a day as a general rule of thumb.

Mistake #2: Deleting Negative Comments

This is a huge nono. Facebook users value their freedom to speak. If you squelch that freedom by deleting negative comments, you’ll have an uproar.

Companies who’ve done this in the past have often been surprised by the backlash. In many cases, those who were silenced ended up creating their own Facebook pages dedicated to bashing the company. They posted negative remarks to their whole social network, which got a lot of shares.

If you delete negative comments, they will simply resurface elsewhere. It might be on another page, it might be on their status update, it might even be on a consumer watch website like RipOffReport.

It’s far, far better to contain the damage by just limiting the exposure to the people on your page. Mitigate the damage by responding intelligently to comments. Don’t delete things, but face them head on. You’ll gain respect instead of losing it.

Mistake #3: Not Actively Participating

Most big brands make this mistake. Just take a look at a big brand’s fan page feed: How often are they responding? Are they actively participating? Probably not. However, big brands don’t need to create community. McDonalds is not looking to create a McDonald’s community online. That’s why they can get away with it.

As a small business however, your goal should be to connect with as many of your followers as possible. You want to nurture goodwill, nurture the relationship and spur more discussion. The only way to do this is through active participation.

When someone posts a comment, respond to it. When someone asks a question, answer it. If someone makes a complaint publically, respond publically with an explanation or an apology. If someone posts something valuable, say thank you.

Participate. The more you participate, the more likely others are to get involved as well.

Mistake #4: Not Reading Facebook’s Contest Rules

If you’re going to run a contest on Facebook, you should read the rules. Then read them again. Then read them again. Facebook has many rules about how you can and can’t run contests on their sites. Violating even just one of these rules is enough to get your contest and possibly even your whole page shut down.

Many of the contest rules are counter intuitive. For example, you can’t actually announce a winner on your Facebook page. Another rule is that you can’t use Facebook to contact them. The list of rules goes on and on.

Facebook is a fantastic platform to run a contest on. However, if you want to use the platform, you must be willing to play by their rules. Read the rules at: http://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php#promotionsguidelines

Mistake #5: Vanilla-Only Facebook Updates

If you’re only posting one type of content all the time, you’re going to bore your audience. Vanilla all the time is no fun, so add a little excitement. Fan pages that only post text status updates or only link to written articles often have a hard time keeping their audience engaged.

Instead, post a variety of content. Here are just some of the many different types of content you can post:

Text status updates
Links to audio interviews.
Links to articles and blog content.
Infographics and other graphical content.
Flash product demonstrations.
Videos and slide show presentations.
Software, web software and other tools.

The idea is to mix things up so people are constantly exposed to something new through you feed.

Mistake #6: Sending Promotions via Private Message

This is a huge mistake that Facebook users make. Marketers might do this because they actually genuinely think their product is so good that it warrants private messaging, or they might just be desperate for the sale. Whatever the reason, no matter how good it seems to you, don’t do it.

Private messaging on Facebook should be reserved for real friends only. Sending commercial messages on Facebook messages is viewed as even lower than email spam.

If you post high quality content that your followers click on, Facebook will prioritize your status updates so it shows up more often in your followers’ feeds. This is the best way to reach your followers. Don’t overstep the bounds between commercial and personal, or you’ll jeopardize your relationships and even your fan page.

Mistake #7: Never Sharing Other People’s Content

It’s a pretty natural inclination to want your content to be the only content you share on your feed. Unfortunately, that’s often not what creates the best customer experience. You aren’t always going to be the first one to create content on a topic. You won’t always be able to create the best resource on a topic.

When someone else beats you to the punch, you have the choice of either ignoring it or sharing it with your fan base. By sharing it with your fan base, you give them something valuable. You help them solve a problem. You build goodwill.

It may not feel as good to the ego to share someone else’s content, but if you’re truly looking out for your followers, often times sharing someone else’s content is what you have to do.

Aim to put out as much high quality content as you can, but always share any outside pieces of content that you think would help.

Mistake #8: Not Having a Complete and Well Designed Page & Profile

Facebook’s timeline and covers allow you to create a highly customized look on both your Facebook profile and your Facebook pages. If you’re still using the standard Facebook look, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to build your credibility and your brand.

You should have a highly professional and great looking Facebook cover for both your Facebook fan page as well as for your personal profile.

What if you aren’t a great designer? No problem – You can have someone do a design for you for under $100.

Likewise, make sure you have a professional looking photo. If you want to go the extra mile, look for some way to add some interaction between your profile photo and your timeline cover photo.

In addition to having a great profile picture and cover photo, make sure your fan page is filled out completely. For example, if you run a restaurant, make sure your opening times, your website, your address and your online menu are all linked to from the page.

Mistake #9: Not Using Facebook Insights

Metrics are an important part of any marketing campaign. You need to keep track of exactly how much resources you’re putting into your campaign and what kind of results you’re getting out of it. Facebook marketing is no different.

Facebook’s insights give you a lot of valuable data that you can use to determine how well your campaign is doing. Your raw fan count is not the only important number to look at.

Through Facebook insights, you can also figure out how many friends of your fans saw your content. You can see how many people are talking about your posts. You can see how many people interacted with your post in any way – Whether it’s a share, a comment or a like.

You can use Facebook insights in real time. This allows you to do things like promote a post or pin a post and watch as your Facebook influence rises or falls to see exactly how much impact various efforts have.

Get to know Facebook insights. When it comes to Facebook marketing, it can be your best friend.

Mistake #10: Obsession with Likes

Facebook marketers tend to focus too much on the number of likes they get. The more likes you have the better you appear to be. This really isn’t the case at all.

It’s entirely possible for a Facebook fan page with 5,000 followers to bring in more revenue than a Facebook fan page with 50,000 or even 500,000 followers. It’s not just follower count that matters.

Other factors you should pay attention to include:

How often do your fans share your content?
How often do fans come back to your fan page?
How many of your fans do you know in person?
How many would buy a product if you recommended it?
What’s your virality %?
How many of your fans are also on your email list?

So on and so forth. The quality of your fan base is every bit as important, and often more important, than the number of fans you have.

Paying attention to getting more fans is a good thing, but don’t neglect investing in the quality of your fan base.

These are ten of the most common mistakes people make on Facebook. When done right, Facebook marketing can help you spread your message, bring more people in the loop, build your brand and drive revenues. Avoid these mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to a successful Facebook campaign.

How to Add Videos for Your Facebook Followers

by Nicole Munoz

Facebook makes it incredibly easy for both individuals and business to share videos. You can share videos recorded on your webcam, videos recorded from your iPhone or videos recorded from just about anywhere else.

Here’s how to add video to Facebook.

Step 1: Select “Video” in the Status Update

Choose “Video,” right above the status update bar.

Step 2: Select Video Source

Select whether you want to upload a video or shoot a new one from your webcam.

Step 3: Recording from Webcam

If you choose the “Record a Video” option, you’ll be taken to a webcam capture screen.

First, click “Allow” to give Facebook access to your webcam.

Then click the big red button to record your video. Once you’re finished recording, enter a comment and click “Share.”

Step 4: Uploading an Existing Video

If you clicked the “Upload a Video” option, you’ll be shown a page that’ll allow you to upload your video.

Click “Choose File” to find your video file.

Your file browser will open. Select the file to upload. Once you’ve chosen your file, enter a status update and click “Share” to upload your video.

Step 5: Upload from iPhone

It’s easy to upload a video taken on your iPhone to Facebook. Unfortunately, this can’t be done in the Facebook app itself on the iPhone. You’ll first have to connect your iPhone to your computer via USB cable.

When you make the connection, first make sure that your phone is not locked. If it has a password on it, Windows won’t be able to read the files. If you have a password lock on your phone, just type the password into your iPhone and leave the screen on while you make the connection.

Once your iPhone is connected to your computer, you’ll be able to browse the files on your iPhone just like any other external hard drive. Your video files will be labeled numerically and chronologically by when the videos were taken.

Once you have a proper connection, uploading a video from your iPhone is exactly the same as uploading it from any other file on your computer. Just follow the steps outlined above.

Congratulations! You’ve now learned how to upload a file to Facebook from your computer, how to upload a file from your iPhone and how to record a brand new video from your webcam. As you can tell, the process isn’t overly difficult and can get you a lot of exposure in the long run.