nick usborne's blog

What? Another program on social media marketing?

There seem to be a zillion self-appointed social media gurus out there, half of whom have written a book, ebook, guide or special report of some kind or another.

I thought about this a lot before making the decision to sit down and write a social media program of my own.

The last thing I wanted to do was invest months of writing time, only to serve up something that might repeat what is already out there.

As I was researching the project, here is what I did find:

- Books, courses and programs on how to use Facebook and/or Twitter and/or YouTube.

- Books, courses and programs on marketing with Facebook and/or Twitter and/or YouTube.

- Business books providing a 30,000 feet view of social media marketing.

- And books packed with case studies of successful social media campaigns.

As I worked my way through what had already been published, I began to create a clearer picture of what I could do with my own program, and how to fill the gaps I found in what has already been published.

Here is what I decided.

1. Write a program on social media specifically for freelancers.

I have been a freelancer myself for over 30 years, and have worked with other freelancers for almost as long. This is the audience I know best, and can help the most.

2. Write a program that isn’t focused just on the tools (individual social media sites), but on the practice of social media marketing itself.

Knowing how to use Facebook, for example, is like knowing how to use a hammer. It’s a tool – albeit an amazing one. But whether you are creating a social media strategy, or building a house, choosing the right tools for the job comes last, not first.

This is why my program first looks at how to apply social media strategies and campaigns to achieve specific marketing needs. Only then do I look at which tools are best for each task.

3. Write a program that teaches freelancers how to use social media to help client companies achieve their most pressing goals.

Good luck to you if you approach a prospective client and say, “Social media is the big thing. I can help your company do social media.”

You would be better off saying, “If you have pressing marketing goals you need to achieve, I can show you how to use social media to help achieve those goals.”

Clients say yes when you give them a solution to their most urgent marketing needs.

This is why a whole section of my program focuses on 8 separate business goals that are well suited to social media solutions.

4. Write a program that clearly describes a number of different ways in which freelancers can generate new streams of income with their social media expertise.

It’s all very well reading a book, course or program that tells you all about social media, but it won’t do you much good if it doesn’t also show you how to apply that expertise in ways that will make you money.

That’s why 4 whole sections in my program cover separate ways in which your media expertise can put money in your pocket.

Summing up.

It took about four months to write the program, working five days a week. But I’m pleased with the result.

This program fills the gaps left by all the other books, courses and programs I have come across.

It gives freelancers the social media skills they need to generate multiple streams of income for themselves and their clients.

The course is called How to Make Money as a Social Media Expert.

You can learn more about it here...

 

 

Quality web content is becoming more and more important. And you don’t have to take my word for it.

Interesting article at eMarketer.com this morning – 2011 Trends: Content Marketing Is Critical.

As I have been saying for a while, the rise of social media is creating pressure for companies to create more and more quality content.

Here is the eMarketer chart.




As you can see, companies which are engaged in social media are using a variety of content types as fuel for their social media campaigns.

Take note of the fact that the #1 position is “branded” content. Not scraped content, not content-mill content.

And the #2 position is Expert Content.

In other words, companies realize that the social media environment demands quality. Without quality, nothing is shared, and your company’s reputation is damaged.

Garbage content may do the trick, for now at least, when attracting traffic from the search engines. But it won’t cut it with social media.

I also really like the questions they asked later in the under the chart:

Marketers should ask themselves five questions about the magnetic content they are seeking to create to determine whether it will be truly attractive to their audience:

1. Is the content unique?
2. Is the content useful?
3. Is the content well executed?
4. Is the content fun?
5. Does the content make good use of the channel in which it appears (e.g., social, mobile, video)?

I agree, absolutely.

If you want to create magnetic content to feed your own social media campaigns, and are sometimes stumped for ideas, learn more about my site, Web Content Café.

Web Content Café’s core purpose is to deliver ideas to help you create quality content in a variety of forms, with particular emphasis on content that gets shared through social media.

How social media engagement makes you improve your website, fast.

I wrote a guest post for the SiteSell Blog last week (Thanks for the invitation to contribute!). Here is a short excerpt from what I wrote:

“When I created the Facebook page, I realized I would have to start working on the page, and on my site, every day. If you want to do well with social media, you have to remain engaged daily.

The result? Traffic to my site has significantly increased over the last few months. A small part of that can be attributed to traffic coming in directly from my Facebook page. I imagine there have been some SEO benefits too.

But I believe most of that new traffic is arriving because I am doing a lot more with the site itself. I am adding a lot of new pages, updating old pages, and generally being more active with the site.

In other words, social media is working well for my site primarily because it is forcing me to work harder on the site itself.

There are plenty of good reasons to get involved with social media, but for me, this has been the most beneficial of them all.”

(Read the full post, and the comments it attracted.)

I find it interesting that it took a commitment to engage through social media to force me to pay closer attention to my main website.

And I don’t think I’m alone.

I think thousands of companies are getting into social media, and at the same time realising that they need to start adding a lot more new content to their sites as a result.

Which, of course, brings us to Web Content Cafe – your source for new web content ideas, with a fresh content idea being posted daily, five days a week.

Learn more about Web Content Cafe membership here...

 

 

What the Bing plus Facebook relationship means to you and your sites...

As you may have heard, Bing is starting to feature Facebook “Likes” in its search results.

This means that a search results page on Bing will start showing which of the pages your Facebook friends like, and how many of your friends like them.

What Bing is doing is just the beginning. It’s the first step in using social media to give popular site pages more prominence in search results listings.

This is huge, because until now, the position of pages featured on any given search results page has been determined by the relevance of the page, and the authority of the page, as determined by inbound links.

Google in particular relies heavily on inbound links to help it figure out how good a site page is, and where it deserves to be placed on its search results pages.

So here is the question...

Which is the more reliable indicator of page quality – inbound links, or social media “likes”?

Only time would tell. But my guess is that the use of social media, as a means to help determine which pages get listed on page one of the major search engines, is going to grow very quickly.

So what does this mean for you and your own site or sites?

It means you have to become seriously engaged with your readers through social media. It means having a Facebook page. It means having a Facebook Like button on your content pages.

But it also means creating plenty of new, fresh, social media friendly content. The days of occasionally adding a new evergreen content page are over.

You need to add more pages to your sites, more often...and you need to make them shareable.

OK...now we come to the part where all roads seem to arrive at me recommending Web Content Cafe.

Well, there is a reason for that. I created the site earlier this year because I could see how social media was becoming more and more important, across the web. And I knew that social media needs feeding, with fresh content, regularly.

That’s why the promise of Web Content Cafe has always been to provide you with a new content idea daily, five days a week.

Bing is just the first to integrate social media likes in its search results, but it won’t be the last.

You can no longer hope for high listings just with strong SEO and inbound links.

Now you need to appeal to social media sites too.

And that means adding fresh, shareable content to you sites daily.

If you want some help with that, sign up for Web Content Cafe membership...