Beware the Dark Side of Social Media

I have written many articles about using social media as a marketing tool. I think it is an awesome way to connect with customers and people you otherwise would have access to in day to day life. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have the power to shoot your marketing message around the world within a day or two.

But in the excitement of engaging social media marketing tactics to increase online visibility for our businesses, we have forgotten that like all things there is a dark side to social media. Instead of skyrocketing your business to prosperity, you could end up shooting yourself in the foot if you are not careful.

Social Media and Online Privacy

Online privacy is becoming more and more of an issue these days as businesses wake up to the reality that their customers are online. They are also figuring out that they can get a lot of information about a person simply by doing a quick search using Google or Bing. An excerpt from an article on the Huffington Post spells this out fairly clearly:

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Andy Beal, the owner of Trackur, told the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that many companies–among them, credit lenders and debt collectors–are now using social media monitoring services to “match online profiles with real world identities.”

The online Lending Club, for instance, scans loan applicants’ social networking profiles in addition to performing the usual credit and income checks. What this means, the Post-Gazette reports, is that creditors are realizing how social media profiles can provide unique insights that a traditional credit history cannot. (Continue Reading Lenders Mine Facebook, Twitter for Info on Borrowers)

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There have been numerous reports of people losing their jobs because of statements made on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. In addition to that, college students are finding that future employers don’t really like seeing pictures of them drunk and mooning the camera.

As a business owner, it is important that you remain fully aware of the fact that what you put online can be seen by everyone including your prospects. If you don’t want it seen on the 6 o’clock news then you probably should put it on a Facebook status update.

Social Media and Reputation Management

I’ve written about reputation management before but I can’t emphasize enough the importance of always keeping an eye on what people are saying about you and your brand. While social media can help you spread your sales message far and wide, your enemies can also use it to damage your reputation beyond repair. But oftentimes it isn’t your competitors who are kicking your brand to the curb, it’s your customers.

In 2010, Southwest Airline took a direct hit to their already troubled reputation when they threw actor and director Kevin Smith off their plane for supposedly being too fat to fly. Unlike the average person, Smith has over 1 million people following him on Twitter and he wasted no time in telling everyone “he knew” about how the airline treated him.

The lesson to take away here is that the internet provides customers with a forum to voice their grievances and they know it. You should always be offering good customer service but it is equally important to correct mistakes quickly. And for heaven sakes, use services that allow you to monitor your reputation online so that you are not sideswiped by a poor review.

Hackers, Spammers, and Crazy People

As much as we would love to say it isn’t so, there are people in the world who would throw you under the bus in a heartbeat if it meant they could get ahead in life. There are also a lot of mentally disturbed individuals in the world who are just functional enough to avoid the padded white room. Both of these types of people have access to the internet.

Hackers and spammers are perhaps the easiest to avoid or deal with. It is the manipulators and the unhinged that you have to be careful of. Unfortunately, these people can appear normal when you first meet them. It isn’t until you let your guard down or insult them in some way that their true personality comes to the fore.

The New Year is barely two months old and already the New York Post has an article about a young woman who hit her cousin with a car because a gentleman she liked accepted the cousin’s friend request but not hers. But you don’t have to look very hard to find other examples of this type of behavior.

To keep yourself safe, you must be aware of those you are allowing in your network. Before collaborating with other business owners or working with customers, do a search online and see what comes up. This doesn’t mean you should automatically distrust anyone who doesn’t have a profile or automatically trust everyone who does. It means that you must stay on your toes and pay attention to what is happening around you online.

For the most part, social media marketing is safe and can help you build the profitable business that you want. However, you must also be aware that there are disadvantages to putting yourself online. For more tips on making effective use of social media, please visit my archives.

Criticism is Normal for Every MLM Business Opportunity

Dealing with criticism is a necessary skill to have for anybody who joins an mlm business opportunity. Due to the proliferation of scams that use the mlm business model to perpetuate their illegal activities, it is an unfortunate fact of life that you will have to deal with criticism of your business because many people believe that all mlm business opportunities are the same.

While we know that is far from the truth, it does not lessen the possibility that you will run into someone who says unkind things about your network marketing business. And in a time where one uninformed Tweet can be heard around the world in minutes, it is important that you protect your reputation by learning to handle criticism about your business when it strikes.

Dealing with MLM Business Opportunity Criticism

Stay Calm in the Face of Criticism of Your MLM Business Opportunity

Your first reaction when you read something negative about your mlm business opportunity will probably be the same as if someone jumped from behind the bushes screaming, “Booga, booga, booga”. You’ll either run away from the threat or attack it with all the strength in your bones. Neither is a good response when dealing with criticism leveled at you on a social networking site.

Dealing with criticism requires a clear head so before you do anything take a break. Step away from the computer and do something to calm your nerves. You need to put some space between the criticism leveled at your mlm business opportunity and your response to ensure that you will not say something in the heat of the moment that you will regret later.

Respond with Respect

It can be tough to take the high road when dealing with criticism, especially if the criticism is unfair or untrue. However, if you care about saving the reputation of yourself and your network marketing opportunity, then it is important to remember that the whole world is watching. It is unfortunate but people love scandal. If you succumb to the temptation to give as good as you got, then all you are doing is setting yourself up to be micro-blogged into oblivion.

Instead, respond to the concerns raised in a respectful way. If there was a problem with your product, fix it. If people take exception to your stance on an issue, acknowledge their viewpoint but reiterate your position and why you feel the way you do. Whatever you do, don’t get pulled into an online argument. If you feel things are getting heated or the issue simply cannot be resolved, try to end on a positive note and walk away. You’ll save yourself and you mlm business a lot of grief.

Let It Go

After you have corrected erroneous information about your mlm home business opportunity or have resolved the problem, there is no need to continuously revisit the issue. Don’t go from blog to blog defending your position. Don’t @ everyone on Twitter who makes a mention of it. A scandal can only live as long as someone feeds it. If you go about your business as normal, eventually the scandal will pass and be replaced by something else.

Dealing with criticism of your mlm business opportunity is no fun. However, if you handle it right you can come out smelling like roses and looking like a hero. I have been using social media marketing techniques to successfully promote my home based business. Contact me to learn about other tactics for surviving the social media arena and taking your mlm business opportunity to the next level.

A Community Breeds MLM Leads

Your business depends on generating a consistent flow of mlm leads that you can convert into business associates or customers. But sometimes it can be challenge to find people to share your business plan with. One effective method of getting a steady supply of mlm leads is by getting referrals from your current customer base.

Social media marketing tools such as Twitter Twibes and Ning are great for gathering together like minded people who are excited about your business and are happy to send referrals your way. Here are a few suggestions for creating a community that you can tap into for an almost limitless supply of qualified mlm leads.

Tips for Building a Community for MLM Leads

Have a Gathering Place for Your MLM Leads

To maximize the effectiveness of your online group, you’ll need a place where everyone can hang out and network with each other as well as speak to you about things that concern them. You can also use the space as a place to post news, promotions and other content, such as useful articles, that benefit the community and attract more members.

Twitter Twibes, Facebook fan pages, and Ning are all great social networking tools that give you the space you need for your internet peeps. Once you have your group set up, some ground rules in place, and a clearly defined purpose, begin inviting people in your target market to join. However, give your community a little bit of time to grow before culling mlm network marketing leads from it.

Give to Receive

Like most living things, you must give your community what it needs to thrive so it can produce the mlm leads you want. This means providing value to the community which can come in the form of posting useful articles and video, opportunities for members to promote themselves or space to network with each other and share information on overcoming common challenges.

The kind of attractive features you provide will vary depending on your target market which is why it is important that you understand the type of people you want in your community. Stay at home moms are going to be attracted to a different group of benefits than career changers. Take a little bit of time to scout out other networks similar to yours to get ideas for things you can do to make your community a hit with your members.

Foster Interaction

People choose to be a part of a community for a number of reasons. The distinguishing factor for many, however, is the relationships they create with other members there. Let’s face it, the World Wide Web is a big, big place and groups just like yours are popping up everywhere every day with the goal of generating mlm leads just like you. The only truly distinguishing feature will the people involved in your community.

Treat your community like a never ending cocktail party of which you are the host. Start discussions, run contests, have a member of the week. Find ways to get your members involved. You will be rewarded with a rich community that will provide you with all the mlm leads you could ask for.

Building a social community around your business is a great way to generate a steady supply of mlm leads. This is just one of many smart marketing techniques I learned while running my home based business. Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help on attracting MLM leads, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

Since we have entered into the digital world, the electronic advertising has gained a magnificent attention of the businesses. Now people don’t want to waste their precious time in wandering into the market streets and shops to get the required product or services rather they sit in front of the computer screen and with few clicks, they get their requirement done within no time.

A single word in a search-engine, explores a variety of websites where we can select over a core interest and can reach easily to our requirements. It is highly observed that, only sites on the first or the second search-engine page can get the luck to be viewed by the searchers and in a result can make some revenue by the end.

Now, the problem is raised that, “how to get on the first page of the search-engines”?

Here comes the roll of Social-Media marketing. Yes, they have come up with certain strategies and techniques to over-come the problem of business owners. They use techniques like text link building, banner advertising, contextual linking and many others used in SEO to optimize the site for the search engines.

Google.com is a search engine that crawls the websites with a peculiar algorithm and rank them according to their contents, back links, layout and some other factors. Alexa, can be reduced in a similar way that is also counted as a major factor involved in website’s values. So, the social media has played a significant roll in promoting websites and providing businesses with a better ROI.

Here is a training video that shows you how to use the popular Twitter application Tweetdeck. This application can boost your effectiveness on Twitter ten fold. It’s only ten minutes. Give it a watch.

Social Media Marketing is Not Easy

I’ll be the first to admit that social media marketing is not as easy as other forms of business promotion. There are so many rules, spoken and unspoken, that it is all too easy to make a mistake. However, there is a big difference between making a mistake and making a social media pest out of yourself. The guiltiest of the bunch in this latter group are multilevel marketers using Twitter, and other social networking sites, to do what I like to call Nuisance Marketing.

Nuisance Marketing is when you, either purposefully or inadvertently, use spammy social media marketing tactics which push away prospects and make the whole industry look bad. I’m not sure what is being taught at some of these company’s training seminars about how to use Twitter as a social media marketing tool but there are a number network marketers who are nuking their brands by becoming “That Guy”.

You may be “That Guy” who uses social media marketing wrong if:

Your idea of social media marketing is every tweet you post is a link to your program.

I get that you want people to look at your business and sign up. However, what you are doing is spamming your own Twitter feed and no one wants to read spam. Twitter marketing is about conversing with your followers. When all you do is post spam, there is nothing to talk about and your prospects find other people to engage with.

The only conversations you start are ones about your business.

So no one is paying attention to your Twitter stream because it is filled with links to your network marketing opportunity. Therefore, you decide to “start conversations” by sending your links directly to people in your target market using the @ reply button. This is like going up to someone at a party and yelling at them to go to your website.

You use the direct message function on Twitter to spam your link.

Even though people yelled at you for spamming your link at them or still completely ignored you, you decide to double down on the nuisance marketing tactic and start direct messaging people the link to your website. Then you wonder why people start mass unfollowing your or why your account is shut down by Twitter for spamming.

You don’t talk to anyone.

This is my favorite by far. Even though you are spamming like a mad man, there are a few people who actually want to talk to you. However, you don’t reply to their @ messages or direct messages. Why is this? Most likely because you are using a Twitter application, like Pluggio, to put your account on automatic pilot. Your brand of social media marketing is working and you have people interested in your business but you don’t have a clue because you are not there paying attention.

You pester people to promote you.

Okay, so you read advice by a social media guru who tells you that you can increase your popularity by getting other people to retweet your tweets and links. You then shift your nuisance marketing tactics into full gear and begin spamming people asking them to retweet your stuff. The problem is that you are not providing anything of value to retweet. So even if they did want to take pity on you and promote your stuff, you have nothing worth promoting.

You demand people follow you.

It’s crazy to believe that some people would be so bold but I’ve seen this happen and have had it happen to me. You realize that the bigger your follower count the more impressive you look to your prospects. But you don’t want just anyone. You want someone with clout who can really push your Twitter profile to the next level. So you begin tweeting to them to follow you over and over and over again.

Or, as a way of trying to avoid being called a spammer you follow and unfollow them repeatedly. You know that they are sent an email each time they get a new follower and you are hoping to get their attention by constantly showing up in the email.

If you recognize any of these social media marketing tactics as something that you have done or are doing, then you need to stop right now. You are actually doing more damage to your business than you are helping it. If you are interested in learning how to build a brand and get attention to your business the right way, then contact me. I can take you through, step by step, on the best way to attract prospects without having to resort to nuisance marketing.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using social media marketing and other internet business tools.

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Search Engine Marketing Connects to Social Media

Some months ago, Google added Twitter to its real time search engine. With search becoming more social, social media marketers have been presented with yet another avenue through which potential customers can find them. Here are a few search engine marketing tips that will help you take advantage of Google’s real time Twitter search engine and send web surfers to your website.

Search Engine Marketing Tips for Twitter

Optimize Your Twitter Page Title – Search engines use the title of web pages to both categorize the page and to display in the search results. The focus of search engine marketing is to rank well for a particular keyword; in this case, your name. To rank for your name, you need to make sure it is included in the title tag of your Twitter profile page. This is very easy to do. Log into your account and click on settings. Update the Name option (not the Username). Your name should now display in the title bar of your browser.

Optimize Your Description – Along those same lines, search engines use the bio block on your Twitter profile to describe your Twitter page. Therefore, your bio should be a real one that describes you. Additionally, you should try to include your target keywords in your description. For example, if you are targeting “search engine marketing” then your description could say something like, “I am an affiliate marketer interested in search engine marketing…”

Optimize Your Tweets – Just like your description, your tweets should include the keywords you are targeting and preferably within the first 20-30 characters of your tweet to make the most of their search engine marketing value. This is because the search engines include the first 30-40 characters of your tweet in the title tag. As we just discussed the title tag influences how web pages are index in the search engine catalog.

Tweet Often – Since it is a real time search engine, the most current results for the search query will be shown. This means if you want to stay on top, you’ll need to tweet often and probably during times when most people in your target market is using the search engine. This search engine marketing tip can quickly become an unwieldy task so you’ll want to use a tool like Tweetminer (now Pluggio) to schedule tweets to be posted throughout the day.

Link, Link, Link – Don’t forget to include links back to your content so readers can get the full story. The same Twitter etiquette rules apply so spamming is a no-no. However, don’t be too modest and avoid linking to yourself at all cost. As a search engine marketing bonus, the links do show up in the search result. When people click on it, they will be sent directly to your web page.

Build a High Quality Following – You and your Twitter followers are linked internally. There are rumblings that having Twitter followers whose Twitter profile has a high Pagerank linking to you will give your own profile a boost. Even if this is not true, you want people who are engaged and willing to spread your content around which will give your search engine marketing a boost.

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

(photo credit: yufujamar)

Check out the articles in my archives for more search engine marketing tips for ranking well in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Two Twitter Tools

Tweetbeep and Tweetburner will help you identify people with like interest on Twitter & tracking for your business

Two great tools to help identify people with like interests & tracking for your business.

TweetBeep

TweetBurner

Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.

Pointless Twitter Tweets?

According to an August 2009 study conducted by Pear Analytics, 40% of the tweets on Twitter are nothing but pointless babble. Meaning a lot of people are posting tweets that do nothing to add to the conversations taking place on Twitter. This would include tweets about going to the bathroom or sharing the fact that you are eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I don’t know about you but that is information I could have lived a lifetime not knowing.

While pointless tweets do have their place (they help people get to know you better), if you are seeking to build a Twitter following then the bulk of your tweets should be of better quality than that. But what is considered quality Twitter content?

Quality content is subjective but a good definition to go by is that it is content which interests your target audience and adds value to the community. Some examples of quality Twitter content would be links to relevant news articles or tips that help increase productivity.

Twitter Tweet Categories:

Informational – These are tweets that tell the reader an interesting fact or relay a piece of information. These are generally accompanied by links to articles found on blogs and online newspapers that expand on the subject.

Tips – Twitter users like to share nuggets of advice that has helped them navigate life a little better. Tips range from dating advice to productivity to what store is having a sale on shoes.

Quotes and Observations – Oftentimes these tweet are quotes from well known thought leaders but can also include original observations about life which are condensed to 140 characters.

Conversation – This is the normal back and forth talking that happens when people gather together. Tweets either start a conversation or respond to an ongoing one.

Retweets – This is the sharing of content posted by other Twitter users which the poster feels would interest his/her followers.
Self-Promotional – This category includes the selling of products and services as well as links to personal websites or things the user is involved in.

What Makes a Good Mix of Twitter Tweets?

The honest answer to this question is that it depends on your target audience. If you are using Twitter for your online political magazine, then the bulk of you content will be informational with some Conversational and Retweets thrown in to round things out. On the other hand, if you are tweeting for personal networking, then you’ll probably be posting a lot of Conversational tweets, Retweets and probably even Quotes and Observations.

It is best to monitor the feeds of people you want to network with on Twitter to see what they are posting. This will give you an idea of the type of content they are attracted to which will help you fine tune what you are offering in your Twitter stream.

Posting quality content on Twitter is the best way to stand out from noise and attract followers looking for substance. Using Twitter effectively is just one way I generate traffic to my business and increase sales. Download my free social media checklist (sign up in sidebar) for a daily to do list of all the things you need to do to increase your following. For personalized help, contact me for a free consultation on the best way to market your business online including using Twitter and other internet business tools.