How to Use Your Blog to Drive Social Sales

social media how toNo matter how great your company is at playing the social media game, let’s not kid ourselves… The ultimate goal for many businesses is profit, not engagements, retweets or Facebook likes.

The real question is how many people are buying what you’re selling?

Unfortunately, getting your blog readers to buy what you’re selling, especially if you run an online business, can be difficult.  This article will reveal a proven technique to turn your blog into a sales engine.

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Are You Looking to Track Social Media Metrics?

social media book reviewsWhen Intuit wanted to analyze market sentiment about TurboTax, they used Radian6 to collect approximately 40,000 blog posts about Intuit and its competitors between January 1st and April 15th of 2008.

“None of [the team working on this project] felt artificial intelligence was going to come to their aid any day soon,” says Jim Sterne in his book, Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment.

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How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes

social media how toHave you ever wished you could write a great blog post in less than 15 minutes? Keep reading, because your wish is about to become reality.

This article will show you five practical tactics you can employ when writing any blog post. The great part is that you’re going to get it done in less than 15 minutes.

Before I begin, let’s address a horrible content-based epidemic swarming the Internet:  quantity does not equal quality. Most great writers know the importance of being brief.   This does not necessarily mean that you should craft a one-line post, but it does mean you should be value-focused and not length-focused.

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How to Succeed With Social Media: A Brian Solis Interview

social media interviewsI recently interviewed Brian Solis, author of the new book, Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. He is also coauthor of the book, Putting the Public Back in Public Relations.

During this interview, you’ll gain some great social media insight, discover some key mistakes businesses make, and learn which corporations are excelling with social media.

Mike: In your book, you made the following statement: “We are forever students of new media. We should never strive to master something that evolves much faster than our ability to grasp its lessons.”

Can you elaborate on what you meant?

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How to Grow Your Business With Live Video Broadcasts

social media book reviewsThree 30-something guys are surfing The Long Tail and demolishing the boundaries of traditional television broadcasting along the way.

Adam Quirk, Erik Nelson, and Aaron Valdez are the sole employees of Wreck & Salvage LLC. In addition to making customized videos for clients, they create a monthly, hour-long online video show called Tricorn.

But you won’t find them out on the town, shooting original videos of breaking news stories. They do that occasionally, but they are primarily “remixers” who take snips of existing videos and splice them together to create a mashup. And they broadcast many of these mashups on their show, streamed live on Livestream.

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3 Simple Ways to Repurpose Your Blog Posts for More Exposure

social media how toHow many ways are you leveraging your blog posts?

Most people write a post and that’s the end of it. You’re probably syndicating your blog feed to the usual places: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, at the very least. And that’s a good thing.

Yet there are many other ways to get more mileage out of your content.

As discussed in one of my prior articles, content syndication is just one part of the equation.  But to really get the most leverage from your blog, think about how many ways you can repurpose the content (and then syndicate the new formats to all the usual sites).

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Six Ways Blogs Are Changing the Web

social media toolsCall me biased, but blogs are changing everything and WordPress is leading the charge.  Millions of blogs have sprung up over the last few years and transformed the publishing world.

This represents a big opportunity for your business.

A Little Context

In the early days of the Internet, websites were static creatures. Once a site was published, that’s pretty much how it stayed. Websites were built by programmers and even minor changes required contacting the designer or a specialized web manager.

Then came the blog.

Blogging turned the once-boring website into an ever-changing, dynamic creature. With the advent of the blog came blogging software and the ability to quickly publish content.

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5 Easy Steps to a Winning Social Media Plan

social media how toSo you’ve set up your social media empire using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and you’re blogging too.

But how do you make it all work together? You want to reach potential clients and establish your authority online, but what’s your plan?

This article delivers five foolproof steps to get you on your way to finding, formulating and distributing content that will get you noticed. Content could include your own blog posts or links to others people’s work posted on your social networks.

#1: Find Your Target Audience.

The first step in social media planning is largely the first step in identifying your brand—determine who you are and who your customers are.

What unique aspect of your product or service attracts your target population?

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6 Ways to Constantly Produce Quality Blog Content

social media how toAre you suffering from blogger’s block? Is it hard to find time to create content for your blog?  If so, look no further.  This article lists some easy-to-implement tips to help you get over the hump.

But first, there’s a big myth (and it may be your roadblock) that needs attention.

The Myth:  I Have No Time to Blog

Every now and then I poll my blog readers and ask about their challenges with blogging. Without fail, most people say that their number-one challenge is that they don’t have time to write on their blog.  Frankly, I think that is a false problem because you make time for what’s important.

I suggest reframing the challenge from “I don’t have time to write on my blog” to “I make time to market my business.”  In the context of your business, blogging is a marketing tool.

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Socialnomics: It’s a People-Driven Economy

social media book reviewsAn Illinois senator who was virtually unknown in 2004 defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008 to win the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination.

And he used social media to do it.

His YouTube videos got 110 million views, estimated to be 14.5 million hours of viewing. Mass media advertising to reach that many viewers would have cost $47 million.

A famous rapper made a promotional video that gave him even more free publicity.

At the time of the election, he had five million fans on Facebook — over four million more than his opponent. On MySpace, the numbers were approximately 800,000 and 200,000, respectively. On Twitter, he had over 100,000 followers and his opponent had about 5,000.

And he rode that social media train all the way to the White House.

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