7 Principles for Social Media Success.

1. Thou shalt obey the 80/20 rule. Make 80% of your posts about your audience, promote them, educate them, entertain them, poll them etc. When you have done so effectively, they will embrace the shameless self-promotion you’re doing the other 20% of the time.

2. Thou shalt be strategic: Using the info below, or one similar, find out which social media network your target market is present and engaged in.

a. Twitter is used by urban youth
b. Google + is used by college kids and software developers (and smart business owners like you that want to be found online)
c. Facebook is used by everyone – except elitists
d. LinkedIn is like Facebook, but for business. Essential for Business 2 Business companies.
e. Pinterest is where 30 something women spend an obscene amount of time

3. Thou shalt plan thy content.

a. Use a healthy mixture of styles, mediums and sources.
b. Keep in mind your target`s concerns, hobbies, lifestyle
c. Curate a community of like-minded businesses and people to share content from.
d. Share your social media network`s content, status updates etc.
e. Measure your results and tweak accordingly

4. Thou shall be authentic: Let your freak flag fly – Drew Barrymore said it. It’s your wild hair, or love of horses or biting sarcasm. Something about you and your business is distinctive, and believe it or not, is your competitive advantage. What is authentic is audacious and memorable and therefore captures social media market share.

5. Thou shalt encourage dialogue: Ask questions, solicit advice, conduct polls, and offer prizes for best feedback. Cater to the masses and benefit from ad hoc focus groups and market research. Everyone likes being asked as long as they feel heard.

6. Thou shalt reward engagement: Say thank you, offer prizes, feature a fan or follower, feature their business, offer fan or friend only pricing. Make your social media audience feel loved and they will return the favor.

7. Thou shalt be timely: Respond within 24 hours, post semi regularly. Don’t abandon your accounts and return months later. Once a week is minimum, 24 hours is preferable. 3 times a day is optimal. Social media is a 24 hour worldwide conference and every ones is invited. Don’t show up a week late talking about last year’s news.

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3 Tweaks Needed For Social Media Success

There’s no shortage of information on how to be successful with Social Media. You’ll find two excellent ways to do this, four awesome reasons to do that, and many more how-to posts. Most of these offer valuable information on how to use social media to achieve the results you’re looking for. The question becomes: do you really want to be successful with Social Media? I mean, really??

1. Change starts with advice from the experts.

Social Media has been around long enough now for people to be known as professionals, or experts. (yes, I know all the elitists are now leaving and discrediting this post). Social Media experts would be considered people who have experienced success and failure, learned what it takes to be successful, and are able to clearly share those lessons with others. Here at Shift Digital, we try to educate our readers based on our own experience, with tons of advice and lots of how-to’s. But with every post we wonder: will this information make a difference? I mean really make a difference? If it is read only by people who are bloated with knowledge, with no resulting action, the answer is no.

It’s time fo a social media metanoia, a change of mind that leads to a change of behavior. It’s time that we stop reading all the blogs, books and watching all the videos. Stop saying we agree with everyone…and start putting to use all the info and advice and we’ve been given. It’s time to hustle.

2. Change doesn’t happen by acknowledging the word of experts; it happens in the response to their advice.

This is a simple message, but it means the difference between success and failure. You have to put to action the things you hear that are true, wise and good for your end goals. If you have no response, you will not move forward. In other words, you will fail.

I read lots of blogs, some of my favorites are Spin Sucks, Danny Brown, Ameena Falchetto, and The Content Cocktail. In each community, we spend a lot of time commenting back and forth on the content. While I think there is great value in being a part of those communities, I often wonder what we are doing with that knowledge other than wielding it to our peers. Are you doing anything with the knowledge you gain from the experts? More than always commenting, it is time to make a change and to act on the knowledge you’ve been given.

What’s important here is the response to what you learn. You will be truly successful, and have a true digital community, when you act on what you’ve heard and been shown.

3. Change happens when you take action.

You will be successful with Social Media when you hear wisdom and put it to practice, instead of just stockpiling it. Yes, you might fail. But that’s where learning happens, and your response to that failure will determine whether you will ultimately be successful or not. When failure happens, be transparent. Clean up the mess, adjust, and try again.

On the flip side, there is danger in just being a “do-er”, and trying to follow all the ever-changing rules of Social Media. Just being a do-er makes you robotic and unhuman. But acting smart, discerning what is right for you, and being relational will lead you to Social Media Success. And if you are not up for the relational part, you are missing the point and will undoubtedly fail.

At this point you’ve gained enough knowledge to know the value of Social Media. At the end of the day it is up to you to either keep getting fat with knowledge, or put what you know in to action and be successful.

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Social Media Success and 6 Myths that Won't Help You Get There

Everyone who is into social media for more than a couple of months knows that paying money to get likes on your Facebook page doesn't work. Buying a bunch of Twitter followers doesn't cut it either.

Beginners in the social media field however, need to go through a lot of trial and error. I've been asked a lot of questions and have come across a lot of false concepts revolving around it.

Today I'm going to share with you 7 common misunderstandings about social media success. If you are just starting out or your efforts aren't paying off, the following article is for you. If you want to make your campaigns worth the time, take a look at the below paragraphs:

Sharing What Happens in Your Life is a Must

Authenticity is super important nowadays. Sharing with the world that you are getting up from bed and preparing your coffee is not a sure way to create it though. That is just boring. You won't get anyone interested.

Personal things should only be shared when they concern your audience in one way or another. Here's an example of a tweet I sent a week ago:

"Hey guys, wanted to let you know that I won't be as active this week due to some non-blogging issues. Full steam ahead starting from Monday!"

I don't even mention any reasoning. People don't need that. The ones who might want to know more about the problem will just ask.

You Need to be Online All the Time

Facebook can be quite addictive. It's the same with Twitter. If you want results though, you need to find the balance.

If your whole day goes into chatting and sharing stuff, you won't be able to prepare content that gets shared. And after all if social media is the saucepan content is what gets cooked in there.

If social media is holding you back from producing articles, then you are going one step forward and two steps backwards. Staying focused on what matters is the key.

You Must be Able to Satisfy Every One of Your Followers

Many Twitter users are far too overprotective about what they send out to their followers. Your main stream of articles must generally be relevant and to the point - there's no denying. That does not however mean that you can't sometimes drift aside and share something that's different from your normal tweets.

Even with the best articles, you can never satisfy everyone. Some will like one post, others a different one. If you believe that what you just read is good for your audience, don't look at the few who might not like it and think about the ones who will!

You Must Choose Between Quality and Quantity

Many seem to believe that you can either go for quality while neglecting quality or the other way around. That ladies and gentlemen is wrong. 

The problem with social media sites is the lifespan of what you share. With a message that is trending for not more than 20 minutes, you can't post three times a day and expect to reach many people. Quality doesn't matter if people don't see your updates.

And still even if you post multiple times a day, that doesn't mean you can't keep the bar high. With a bit of a good research to sift out the good from the bad, you can easily go for both!

You Don't Have to Invest into Social media

The first thing that comes to mind when we talk about social media is the fact that it's all free. And yeah, basically it is. You don't have to pay for a Twitter or a Facebook account, that's for sure.

Building the audience is where things get tricky. You will have to invest - either time to find the right people yourself or money to put the whole process on autopilot.

So all in all social media is not free. The options are two. To spend money on services that save you time or to waste time and hence opportunities to make money. I'd go for the first option.

Social Media Success is the Same as Business Success

You might have 3,000 Facebook friends, you might have 30,000 followers on Twitter. Does that alone mean anything? No!

Without doubt social proof is great and it works. If people see that you are articles are getting tons of shares, they are more likely to retweet you than another blog with no interaction. The question is how all of this is helping you?

If all of that buzz doesn't result in subscribers and buyers, numbers don't matter. Being successful at getting people to listen to you is just the beginning. Being able to make their minds and turn them into customers is what your end goal should be.

Automation is Your Worst Enemy

Automation. Bots. Spamming. I really can't seem to grasp why so many folks believe that the three always go together. By far not all automation is a bad thing. The truth is that without any additional tools to help you on your way, you will have to spend way too much time to get closer to your social media success.

I am firm believer that if you are able to create a discussion, to say thank you or to simply reply back when someone asks you a question, you shouldn't worry about automating some aspects of your work. Talking about automation, take a look at my post on the best Twitter tools!

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