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Social Media Explorer

How To Use Links And Linking EffectivelyYesterday

Lots of great ideas and discussion ensued in the comments section of last week’s post, “The Beginners Guide To Promoting Your Blog.” As with most of my lists or ideas, there are always different perspectives or ideas that can add to my suggestions. In that way, Social Media Explorer becomes sort of an instigator to crowdsource good advice. Thank you all for your additions and input.

One of the comments on that post, however, found here and from Michael Bertoldi, a social media evangelist and copywriter at The Barco Firm, actually asked for some more thinking on linking. Since linking certainly is an instrumental strategy in promoting your blog and building an audience, I thought it might be good to visit t

How To Win Buy In For Social MediaNovember 26

You know that skeptical marketing manager, brand manager or even CEO you’re kind of intimidated by? The one who rolls his or her eyes when the word, “blog,” is used in a sentence. The one that is constantly asking for the ROI of his or her social media spend in a tone that makes you certain you won’t be included in next year’s budget? I think I’ve figured out how to win him or her over.

Last week I had a meeting scheduled with that guy. It was supposed to last an hour. Two hours into it, he had to leave for another meeting but wanted to stay and talk more. He was getting it. And here’s why:

While at first it seems like you need to talk philosophy and theory on what and why social media is and how social media works, that’s not always the right approach. Sure, the 30,000-foot, strategic thinker needs to have that perspective and it makes sense that going there first will help them understand  social media is a communications channel they can use strategically for their brand. But much of social media is mired in tools those high-level thinkers don’t understand. So, with this individual, admittedly after some false starts with different approaches, I started with the t

The Beginners Guide To Promoting Your BlogNovember 24

A friend of mine is a very well-read, successful blogger. His personal narratives, short stories and semi-autobiographical fiction normally collect dozens of comments, sometimes well over 100, and spark lots of interesting exchanges between his readers. He’s built his audience steadily, over the course of a couple of years, and by all measures of blogging success, sans monetization, he probably holds the status of “legendary.”

But his blog is on MySpace.

Before I go on, allow me to say that the social media world normally makes fun of MySpace. They look down their noses at those commoners not sophisticated enough or too tolerant of busy graphic design to think Facebook is better. Boy, are they missing an opportunity, though. I’ve said it before, but there is a vibrant community of bloggers on MySpace, many of whom write fantastic stuff, most of whom comment and share and interact just like

The Practical Guide To Managing Social Media OverloadNovember 21

So John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing fame posted a pithy little list of tools you can use to automate your social media activity the other day. He was trying to offer some options for the time-swamped small business owner who can’t sit on Twitter all day or spend hours online because, well, they have better things to do. Jantsch is a smart guy. He knows the social media space. I haven’t read his book, but it seems to have sold a lot of copies and he’s a well-received speaker at conferences around the world.

But damn, if I wasn’t irritated by his post.

I tweeted the link and asked my friends on Twitter to read the post, then promise never to use any of his tips. Of course, I use two of them — one, TweetDeck, has nothing to do with blasting spammy, pseudo-personal greetings; the other, Twitter application in Facebook, does post your non-reply Tweets as your Facebook statuses. Like John, however, I monitor responses in Facebook and converse with those people, too. That dissolves the impersonality of the act in my mind. (Feel free to tell me I’m wrong.)

That said, the other suggestions John made were essentially contradictory to th

How To Be The Social Media Champion At Your OfficeNovember 17

Your boss thinks you “play on Facebook,” all day. Your co-worker who is jonesing for the same promotion is monitoring the time of day you post to Twitter. The guy from across the hall sips black coffee through his brown teeth and laughs, “Met the man of your dreams on Ebay, yet?”

What a nimrod.

Take it from someone who knows. It’s not easy being the social media champion in the building. If very few people in the business world understand social media, it’s only logical very few at your place of work would, too. So how do you help make them understand social media isn’t just about posting personal journals on MySpace or blowing 30 minute chunks of your day watching the skateboarding dog on YouTube? Some thoughts:

Six Steps To Becoming The Social Media Champion At Work

1. Illustrate The Benefits

The first time you discovered RSS feeds it changed your life, right? Or at least it saved you scads of time you used to spend surfing the web looking for the news of the day. You could try to get more done with that extra time each day and allude to the fact you’re getting more done because you surf