Social Media Marketing Made Easy
Do you remember the spoon-bending scene from the 1999 movie The Matrix?
It occurs the first time Neo goes to see the Oracle after he was rescued from the Matrix. In the Oracle’s waiting room, he sees two girls floating blocks above their heads and a young boy bending a spoon.
Young boy: “Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead … only try to realize the truth.”
Neo: “What truth?”
Young boy: “It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” 
How Facebook Friday Expert Sessions Increase Fan Engagement
Do your Facebook fans have questions they want answered? Would they like to have access to industry experts who can answer their questions?
Are you aware of the Facebook Friday expert sessions Social Media Examiner has been doing?
Here’s how they work. We bring an expert to our Facebook wall for an hour to answer questions. The expert gets great exposure and the fans get their questions answered.
These sessions are a great way for fans to quickly get the information they need. And you can model this for your business. These open Q&A sessions with industry experts are a great way to encourage engagement with your fans and get your updates to show up more in your fans’ news feeds.
Facebook Marketing in Only An Hour a Day?
When fifth-grader Kane Swift had to do a science project, he decided to help raise funds for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure campaign.
So he set up a Facebook fan page with the help of his parents. In just one week, he got more than 1,200 fans and raised $400!
“I can understand using Facebook for a fifth-grade science project,” I hear you saying. “But how do I use Facebook to market my business? I keep hearing that I should include social media in my marketing campaigns, but I don’t have a clue how to do that.”
7 Steps For a Successful Social Media Strategy
According to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Report , 67% of marketers plan to increase their use of social media channels including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
As more companies integrate social media into their marketing and communications plans, emphasis needs to be on creating a social media strategy. Without a strategy, you’ll undoubtedly be sucked into a social media time sink.
So how exactly do you develop this strategy?
It’s easy. Here’s a practical approach to developing a social media strategy for your business.
How to Cash In On Your Passion With Social Media
Have you heard of Joseph Campbell?
He was the famous mythologist—author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and many other books—who told us all to “follow your bliss” in his Power of Myth PBS specials with Bill Moyers in the late 1980s.
“That’s all well and good,” you may have thought at the time. “But I have to make a living. How do I make money by following my bliss?”
If you’ve been asking that question for the past 20 years, you’ll be happy to know that someone has finally answered it. Gary Vaynerchuk has written a book to teach us how to make money by following our bliss.
Many of you may know Vaynerchuk as the host of the video blog WineLibraryTV.com. Now he has written a book titled Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.
Building Your Business One Tweet at a Time: Twitter Marketing 101
“You want me to use Twitter to market my business?” I hear you asking. “How do I generate leads and promote my business by telling my friends what I had for lunch?”
Yes, many people just use Twitter to share their day with their friends. Friends who may live 2,000 miles away.
And some people use it to broadcast a breaking news story as it happens. Like the time a plane crash-landed in the Hudson River. A man in a nearby boat with an iPhone got the “scoop” on that story before the news media reported it.
Social Media Integration Big Theme for 2010
Social media integration is becoming a big buzzword this year. As social media marketing matures and starts playing a bigger role within marketing campaigns, businesses are beginning to see that social media can be integrated into many channels.
Here are two current studies that show how the integration of social media marketing is changing the way marketers connect and engage with their audiences—online and offline.
#1: Marketers Ditch Silo Campaigns and Report Social Media as “Critical for Success” (Alterian)
As digital and social media marketing mature, the demand for greater integration is evident. Marketers are quickly realizing that operating in a one-way marketing tunnel makes success impossible in this social media–saturated world.
