Social media etiquette from a Baltimore housewife!

 Over the years I have shared my thoughts and frustrations in regards to social media…and I appreciate you listening. 

       I have shared ideas, tips and secrets to help you get more how out of your social media experience. You’ve thanked me. 

       But today, I’m going to do something different… 

       I’m going to introduce you to a friend of mine… who as it happens is not a marketer, or an entrepreneur or even a social media guru. Nope! 

       She’s just a mom! A mom who cares about her family to write her response to what she sees concerning Facebook and social media in general. 

        Her name is Jaimie Jacobs and her article is entitled, “Facebook Status Updates: What Not To Write!        

        http://www.helium.com/items/2180749-facebook-status-updates-what-not-to-write    

        Read it!

        Comment on it!

        Tell her Rob sent you!  

        Until Next Time,                       

  “Live with Passion!” 

   Rob Anspach    

   P.S. The internet is full of mom’s just like Jaimie who are very expressive with their thoughts and we marketers could take a lesson from their handbook every now and then. 

The truth about fanpages!

It’s about 6:30pm EST and I’m still sitting at my computer.

I made the mistake of taking yesterday off to spend at the beach. And, today I’m paying for it.

I had several emails and a few phone calls while I was away.

It seems what’s on everybody’s mind right now is how to make their fanpage more effective. To some just having a fanpage would do wonders.

But, a word of caution…

A fanpage won’t do diddly if you don’t work it!

“You got to work it, work it!” – as my kids would sing, from the movie Madagascar.

Yep, you have to actively engage readers (followers, friends, stalkers) or whatever you wish to call them, to respond to what it is you are conveying.

It’s not easy.

If they have hundred of friends (or in my case thousands), your message may not get much “play-time” and may just fall on deaf ears.

So, truth be told…why waste time creating a fanpage if you aren’t going to continously make it interesting and fun.

The best fanpages incorporate a “thank you” for liking us feature. Or, some type of incentive to get people to share the page with their friends.

Yeah, I know it’s crazy!

Just a few years ago, there was no Facebook. Now, if your business doesn’t have a fanpage you are labled a leaper or maybe something worse.

The times they are a changing…are you keeping up?

I know!

Almost 3 years ago, I screwed up!

In the early days of fanpage development I made a few mistakes…even had my very first fanpage shut down for two weeks due to violating Facebook’s terms of service agreement. Which, ironically wasn’t my fault, but it did cost me time and money.

It was a hard lesson to learn.

Now, with Facebook surpassing 600 million active members, having a fanpage for your business is definately the way to build sales. And, you need to do it right!

Gimmicks work for a bit! They are like that tangling carrot in front of the mule to get him to move forward. Eventually, the donkey will get tired and want to eat the carrot. So substance is just as important.

The key is to keep your followers engaged…is to actively educate and entertain them.

 

Until Next Time, 

      “Live with Passion!” 

      Rob Anspach    

P.S.  If you need help with your fanpage (setting up, increasing traffic, conversion), give me shout out! I offer consulting, content creation and yes, even management of your fanpage.  

Contact Information

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Email: rob@robanspach.com                                   Phone: (717)330-7947

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 Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube & WordPress!

                    

Rob Anspach is a “brilliantly savvy” entrepreneur who helps frustrated business owners regain the passion they once had by showing them how to be more effective in the marketplace, how to dramatically improve their business so they enjoy coming to work again and how to win over customers regardless of price. Discover how easy it is to make money in your online or offline marketing, to attract and retain clientele and profit from your passions… visit http://www.robanspach.com  today!

Rob is also the creator & dynamic force behind Success Secrets TV, the new online show dedicated to helping entrepreneurs stay successful… check it out by going to… http://www.SuccessSecrets.TV

Time to Mature?

When you’re young people are always saying things like, “oh, there’s plenty of time to mature”, right? I’m sure you’ve heard it. Then you do something (possibly screw up somewhere) and then the phrase changes dramatically to… “I can’t wait until you mature!” Well, the same can be said about your social media posts. They need time to mature. Not necessary written better. They just need a longer shelf life. Have you ever noticed when looking at social sites like Twitter and Facebook there are always a few posters who fire their messages in rapid succession. You start reading one, then another hits you, then another! It’s kind of like putting one jelly bean in your mouth and before you are done chewing it, you put another in there and repeat the process until you’re mouth is stuffed. Too much is ridiculous! You need breathing room! I’m sure you have plenty to say…but rapid fire postings do nothing but overwhelm a reader and get them sick and tired of being overstuffed. Time to mature! Social media is all about the 3 E’s! Educate, Entertain and Engage! You can’t do any of those things if your posts don’t have time to be read. Yep, your posts need time to mature! Like a fine wine…they need time to be savored, sipped and enjoyed! Not gulped down hillbilly style! I can’t tell you the exact time your posts will be read…but I can make some recommendations on how to give your posts some hang time and more “umph”! Instead of posting several times in an hour, cut your posts down to every couple of hours. Sometimes the less you say is more powerful then what you say. It’s not the quantity…it’s the quality! Ideally, four to six posts a day is usually plenty. This gives you plenty of opportunity to share with your fans and followers the newest widget, what your dog did, the latest pics of your kids, your vacation, recommended links or blog posts, and the list goes on. Too many posts all at once and you become the little kid who jumps around screaming “look at me, see what I’m doing”! When people stop watching, you up the ante and increase the frequency, hoping that you will garner some attention. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way! Facebook has done a wonderful job at filtering out the “look at me” type posts and replacing them with a “SEE MORE POSTS FROM” headline. If you want to read more just click the link, if not then do nothing. Decrease frequency, increase response! By decreasing the frequency of your posts and giving them more time to mature you’ll discover more people will respond to your message increasing the chances of developing more fans and followers. Until Next Time,     “Live with Passion!”      Rob Anspach         P.S. Some other posts you might wish to read (related to social media)…    Seriously, Do You Do This? http://robanspach.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/seriously-do-you-do-this/    Disruptive Technology http://robanspach.wordpress.com/2010/09/23/disruptive-technology/    Poor Matt! http://robanspach.wordpress.com/2010/09/22/poor-matt-im-gonna-pick-on-him/    P.P.S. Tired of not booking enough jobs? Frustrated at the quality of customers that are calling you? Maybe it’s time to kick your marketing up a notch. Learn proven techniques that really work. This workshop is open to any service industry (not just carpet cleaning), but seats are filling fast. Hurry! The event takes place this Thursday 4/28 from 6-9pm in Langhorne PA. I’ll be co-teaching along with Jeff Cross. The cost is $139, you can bring a guest foan additional $79  Here’s the link to sign up http://cleaningprofessor.com/philadelphia-cleaning-marketing.html

Contact Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Email: rob@robanspach.com                                   Phone: (717)330-7947 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Rob Anspach is a “brilliantly savvy” entrepreneur who helps frustrated business owners regain the passion they once had by showing them how to be more effective in the marketplace, how to dramatically improve their business so they enjoy coming to work again and how to win over customers regardless of price. Discover how easy it is to make money in your online or offline marketing, to attract and retain clientele and profit from your passions… visit http://www.robanspach.com  today! Rob is also the creator & dynamic force behind Success Secrets TV, the new online show dedicated to helping entrepreneurs stay successful… check it out by going to… http://www.SuccessSecrets.TV

Seriously, do you do this?

The other day, a client called and asked me how he could get more followers on his social media sites! You know what I told him?

It’s not the size, it’s the content!

Sure, a big list of happy followers is nice to have, but they wont be happy if you don’t do these three things first!

Educate, Entertain & Engage!

Sounds simple, right?

Well, I’ve been using various social media platforms now for several years and I’ve noticed a good majority of people screw it up…royally!

Educate, Entertain & Engage!

Let’s take educate first! These are posts meant to teach your followers about you, your product, your services, what you stand for, how you operate, what makes you different and why they should use you.

Now the entertain part! Here’s where you bring your personality into the mix. These posts will showcase your interests. What makes you laugh? What makes you cry? What’s your favorite music, or TV show? You can share videos and articles! Even pictures of your family, pets or places you visit. These posts bring out your human side and allow your followers to get to know you as a person.

And, finally engage! If you can’t get people to respond to your posts then you might as well not even be on social media sites. The main reason to educate and entertain is to get your followers to engage. They need to respond back to you. Think of your posts as conversation starters…you say something and someone responds back. Without engagement, your messages fall on deaf ears.

Educate, Entertain & Engage!

Remember those three words!

By educating, entertaining and engaging you will find people will want to read what it is you are posting, they will tell their friends about you and your followers lists will grow.

Until Next Time,

“Live with Passion!”

Rob Anspach

P.S. If you’re still having trouble figuring out the whole “social media” stuff, maybe I can help. Click here for more info… http://robanspach.com/socialmediamarketing.html

Why every business needs to take a lesson from Charlie Sheen!

Over the last few weeks I’m sure you’ve heard about what’s going on in Charlie Sheen land.

Controversy at it’s finest…or not so finest! You pick!

But, I have to give it to Charlie…he is creating publicity and getting people involved in what he’s doing.

It was announced that he broke the Guinness Book of World Records for achieving 1 million Twitter followers in just a few days. Then he shattered that record again with 2 million followers a few days later.

Two Million!

But unlike most celebrities who tweet about what they are doing, Charlie is using Twitter as a means to make money and keep his controversy in the limelight.

He launched an internet show called Charlie’s Korner (which I haven’t seen yet) and is in talks with advertisers to mention their products on his Twitter account.

The phrases “Tiger Blood”, ”Adonis DNA” and “Winning” have been added to the lexicon of our pop culture…yep, thanks to Charlie Sheen.

Okay, yes I realize that you are not Charlie Sheen and that creating controversy can be somewhat daunting. And, you are not a celebrity with deep pockets and hopefully you don’t have a “bad boy” reputation either…

…but you can be a magnet for the media.

Keep those press releases flowing! Let the media in on what you are doing.

Hire a rainmaker! A publicist! A Public Relations person!

Utilize social media! Create an online presence!

Make some noise! Get noticed!

You might not get 2 Million followers, but you will create a following.

Everytime the media picks up on what you’re doing, people will read, hear or talk about you.

Good or bad…controversy sells!

Learn to use a little controversy in your publicity campaigns and watch people take notice!

Until Next Time,

“Live with Passion!”

Rob Anspach

P.S. Everything your business does can be put into a press release! A new website, a new employee, a new company vehicle, a special event, heck, you name it…it could help drive traffic to you with some publicity. Need help? Click on my name and go to my website.

Backgrounds and widgets!

I’ve been asked many times, to share the how’s and why’s of customizing your social media sites.

 

   After careful consideration…I’ve decided to reveal my secrets.

 

   Actually, not too much of a secret…just sort of my way of keeping secret the sites I recommend only to my top paying clients.

 

   So, now I’m going to reveal 2 of these sites to you and it didn’t cost you a dime.

 

   The first site I would highly recommend you take a gander at is… Tweetpages.

 

   Tweetpages allows you to create custom backgrounds for your Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. This enables you to have a matching theme across multiple platforms.

 

   You should also check out Widgetbox. The cool thing about Widgetbox is that it allows you to create a way to showcase your social media posts on your website

 

   Both sites offer step by step instructions and videos you can follow.

 

   Check ‘em out!

 

   Discover solutions that will help enable you to maximize the experience followers get when they visit your social sites. Boring doesn’t cut it.

 

   Make your social media sites visually inviting, then keep them coming back with your awesome posts.

 

   

    Until next time,

 

  “Live with passion”

   Rob Anspach

  http://www.robanspach.com/

 P.S.  Why keep your social media boring…make it stand out, give it an outrageous background or plug it into your website.

Getting Followers…My Twitter Experiment!

Several months ago, I wrote that I wasn’t a big fan of Twitter.

To me Twitter is too chaotic… it’s great for signing in and quickly posting my message on, then exiting fast… but to stay on all day and follow the conversation… well frankly, I’d rather do laundry.

Even some celebrities are finding Twitter more than they bargained for.

But for everyone that is dissatisfied with Twitter, there is those that are completely mesmerized by the service. They are loyal and some say they act like a “collective conscious” tapping each others thoughts. They bounce ideas off of complete strangers (people they wouldn’t communicate with or even give the time of day in the real world).

Unlike other social media outlets, Twitter opens up your posts to everyone… yes, even people you dont want seeing your posts can respond.

And being limited to 140 character posting is not without problems… you’ll see shorten words, abbreviations and weblinks to some unknown region of the internet. Nope, not a BIG fan!

Then I did an experiment!

I wanted to see how many new fans I could attract in a two week period without using any automated fan generating programs.

But based on my current posting schedule of 1-4 tweets a day wasn’t going to win me over a big fan base. Heck, it at taken almost a year to get 943 fans.

Then I hit on something!

If I were to increase my postings to 1-4 tweets per hour…would it increase my fan base? I was hoping!

Could I physically keep up the strenous task of posting up to 75 posts per day.

A-ha! (Yep, my a-ha moment arrived!)

As I mentioned in a prior post, I used a combination of social media simplifiers to make & schedule postings much easier. Okay if you didn’t read that post, I mentioned a few websites that make short-cutting social media a snap. (bit.ly, ping.fm and hootsuite.com).

Back to the experiment… by increasing the frequency of my posts I was able to add a total of 358 new followers in a 2 week time period. (3/14/2010 to 3/28/2010)

Okay, I know it’s not BIG numbers. Like I stated, I wasn’t using a program to farm new followers… this was real results.

The really fascinating thing was that people were engaging my Tweets, retweeting to others and interacting more with me.

My experiment in Twitter marketing had turned me into a believer.

Imagine the difference you can make with the right system.

Until next time,

Live with passion

Rob Anspach

www.robanspach.com
rob@robanspach.com

P.S. In the amount of time it took me to write this post… I just gained an additional 10 new followers…it’s creepy and cool at the same time!

P.P.S. Would love to hear your Twitter success story!

Three Easy Short-Cuts!

Over the last two years I have found myself signing up for one social networking website after the next.

Maybe you have too!

It’s crazy, I tell ya!

Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace… just to name a few.

And holy smokes…the time involved to post to all these sites…UGH!

I thought there has got to be an easier way to do this.

I mean really, millions of people on these sites and someone has to have the answer. What I needed, was a way to free up time, an easy to us product that would make networking and marketing on these sites easier.

I downloaded program after program in hopes of finding something that would work to my liking. Not only was I getting frustrated but my computer was having a seizure from all the mismatched and overlapping programs running in the background fighting for usage. Then the crash! My computer had had enough! I removed all the programs and started over.

Then it happened!

In my quest to find the answers… I found 3 great short-cuts that I believe make social media marketing a bit easier. No downloads required!

The first one… www.ping.fm – a brilliant way to post your message once and have it delivered to all of your social networking sites. No longer do I have to sign in to all my individual social sites to post the same message. Nope! Ping.fm saves me so much time…that I actually get more writing done.

The next one… www.bit.ly – a fantastic way of shortening all of your long url’s into a easy to use short link. Most social sites limit your postings to 140 characters, with a shorten url you can be more creative with your posting. There are other url shortening sites, but I find bit.ly easy to use and your results are trackable, which is very cool!

And finally… www.hootsuite.com – an awesome way to schedule your postings. Say you’re going on vacation and you really don’t want to post while gone… not a problem… schedule ahead! Yep, you can schedule your posts in advance. It’s like Ron Popeil says for his Ronco products… “Set it and forget it!”

And it just gets better…

Hootsuite can integrate your Ping account! Now you can put all your posts on cruise control while you work, sleep or read. Post once, schedule later and “blam”…delivered!

Hootsuite even has it’s on url shortener called ow.ly – but I still prefer bit.ly. Ow.ly’s tracking results are sometimes delayed or don’t always give a true performance of the click-thru’s…but that’s my take… you can experiment and discover for yourself.

So there ya go… 3 simple solutions to maximize your social media marketing experience.

Until next time,

Live with passion

Rob Anspach

www.robanspach.com

P.S. It’s not rocket science! Even the Geico cavemen can use social media now!

drip,drip,drip

Early this morning I was awoken to the sound of water dripping.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip… drip, drip, drip… drip!

I thought with all the snow we’ve gotten here on the East Coast, it’s about time it starts to melt.

I fell back to sleep.

I awoke 10 minutes later…with the realization that the drips weren’t on the outside of the house but, sounded like they were inside.

I was right.

Water was coming into my bedroom window and dripping down the sill.

Faster than MacGyver could make a weapon with a peanut shell and a rubber band I was able to divert the drips (using a plastic sheet and duct tape) into a bucket.

Wow, I thought…how ironic!

We as entrepreneurs do this same thing when trying to get our customers to do something…

We drip on them!

Our marketing messages, our emails, and our social media posts they are like the water dripping. Every time we send a message, an email, or a post we are like drips of water on the windowsill.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip… drip, drip, drip… drip!

Some people take longer than others to hear the drips, some respond right away.

The more frequent the drips the better chance people will take action and respond.

And just like my bucket collecting the drips of water, you need to have a system in place to catch and funnel all the new customers who respond to your drips.

Imagine, what you would do with more customers?

Until next time,

Live with passion

Rob Anspach
www.robanspach.com
rob@robanspach.com

P.S. If you want customers to take faster action, maybe you need to increase your drips. If you don’t know how, email me and I’d be glad to set up a consultation.