Newsjacking Post #2 - Using Google Alerts

I posted a previously on the basic concept of newjacking, inserting you or your company into a story breaking on the internet.

I got my highest number of hits in a day on my blog, over 500, the day I posted the second comment on a major story that was relevant to what I do; writing popular fiction and assisting people with social media.

I was reviewing this process in the last few days, as I spend time every morning checking major newspaper/media sites looking for stories I can comment or post about. And then I had an idea, why don't I set up a Google Alert for the major subject areas that I would be competent to insert comments on or post about in my own blog?

So I did that. I now have ten Google Alerts set up and I don't have to spend a lot of time searching through news sites. And I'm finding stories all over the world I can comment on. And best of all it's free! Thank you, Google.

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

 

A Proven Social Media Engagement Strategy

Engagement is about building relationships. It’s also about the quality of relationships you have.

The basics of engagement are responding to people, being real, being human, and not taking it all too seriously. If you think about engagement in any social situation, listening as well as talking, telling anecdotes, little secrets, having fun, those are the same things you can also do in social media to drive engagement there too. Social media is still a part of our world.

Social media is as complex as the world we inhabit. Whatever you like to do, whatever your business is, wherever you live, with almost no exceptions, there will be a specialist social media site catering for your interests.

If you don’t believe me look up your interests combined with your city or nearest town in Google or another big search engine. You will find a lot of sites.

Birds of a feather flock together, is a well known phrase. It leads all diamond merchants to a certain street in a certain city, all world class wrestlers to the Olympics and all followers of Game of Thrones to its fan sites.

It would seem obvious then, that if you are selling books, wrestlers outfits or Game of Thrones merchandise that you will stay in regular touch with and participate in the communities that are growing up around each niche interest.

We are all more likely to follow people who have the same interests as us. I like to follow other writers on LinkedIn and Goodreads.

You will find that others who are like you in their interest or beliefs will be more likely to follow you or be part of your community. And I’m not saying that you must stick exclusively to your own group. I do think we should all be open to mixing with people of widely different interest. All I am saying is that when you are looking for engagement it is a good idea to look among people who have similar interests.

Some people wonder how to increase their numbers on Twitter. Twitter is designed as a social network where you follow people and people follow you back. A percentage of the people you follow will always follow you back. If they don’t follow you back within a few days you are within your rights to unfollow them. If they don’t want to see your Tweets then it is reasonable that you stop seeing theirs.

If you are a celebrity or have a relationship with masses of people or you’re a big brand, you should get follows by simply letting people know what your Twitter name (handle) is. For the rest of us, following people and posting interesting Tweets are the main ways to increase your followers.

The number of people you follow each day depends on how much time you want to spend on Twitter and how many followers you have now. I recommend following small numbers each day (20-50), and unfollowing regularly people who don’t follow you back. You will be able to follow more people later on, as the number of people who follow you increases over the number you are following. I can follow 50 people in 30 seconds, so this is not time consuming stuff.

On Facebook it’s all about knowing people first, for personal profiles. People consider is bad form to try and friend them on Facebook if they don’t know you. This is the opposite to Twitter, where people who don’t know you are almost always happy for you to follow them. You can Like “pages” on Facebook however, as these are the public messages of the people or organisations who create them. Pages are not personal profiles. You can create your own “page” for any project, work, role or cause you want and detail the progress of the project through posts about that subject.

Great successes have been achieved on Facebook by people who create useful pages or groups where people can post their experiences with challenging life situations, diseases, and provide practical support services.

With Facebook and Twitter it’s all about what you give back to your community too. If you want to improve engagement you can, for instance, think about the classic social support services around what you do. Is there a way to build a community page or group on some aspect of this?

On LinkedIn and Google+ there are groups and hangouts you can participate in too. The more time you spend on all these sites the more you will get back from them.

The majority of my engagement is still on Twitter, where I get immediate worldwide feedback on a minute by minute basis to my posts.

Your social media engagement strategy will depend on your specific situation.

If you want to learn about the 5 Free Social Media services that work for writers and a lot of other people, click here.

If you want someone to manage your social media for you email me now: lpobryan@gmail.com 

Thanks for coming by. Your comments are truly appreciated. But anonymous ones won't get posted.

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

5 lessons from Social Media success stories- Updated

Social media is the automobile industry and the telephone business of the 21^st century combined. The people and organisations who learn how to use the power of social media will benefit and the people who want to stay shackled to yesterday's technology will slowly fade.

Over 50% of the top firms on Wall Street are investing to make social media an integral part of their business. Firms as divergent as Dell ($3 million in revenue attributable directly to Twitter posts), Jet Blue (over a million followers mainly for customer service issues), and IBM (50k in Alumni network on Facebook - just one example of success), are using social media as a core part of what they do.

These are only some of the many examples of effective use of social media. In reviewing these case studies some common themes emerged:

1. The grassroots and the top of these organisations are involved.

2. They have clear guidelines, then they let people get on with it.

3. They learn from mistakes & successes.

4. They empowered widespread participation. They trust employees.

5. They experimented creatively, with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Wiki's, libraries and more.

If your organisation doesn't get it all yet, maybe you will be the one to inspire them.

To support this site - almost 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Newsjacking & Social Media Updated

What is newsjacking?



Newsjacking is inserting yourself or your organisation into a story that is being covered in the media. You do this by commenting prominently on the story online or by providing a link to a relevant post on your blog or web site.

Examples of this include a marketing expert suggesting a marketing plan for Occupy Wall Street, a software company president talking about a major industry takeover and inserting his own company into subsequent media stories because of the relevance of his comments and the London Fire Brigade offering Kate Winslett training after she was involved in a fire on Richard Branson's private retreat in the British Virgin Islands.

The purpose of newsjacking is to get people to click on your link, to get traffic to your site and gain visibility.

And it works.

The rules of newsjacking are that you have to insert yourself quickly into the story, coming late means the story had played out, that you have to have something relevant to say, and that you post or web site supports what you say.

The PR industry is changing. No longer is it good enough to simply push out press releases to friendly journalists and hope they will cover your story. Now you have to find a real link between something happening in the media or in the world and whatever you are promoting.

Social media is the glue that binds all this together. It's where you contact journalists covering the story and refer them to your blog post and where you inform people that you have a post and a real connection to the media article.

My highest spike in blog viewers came when I made a relevant post on the UK Guardian book page and on the New York Times in one day. That day I got over 500 views. My comment was one of the first on that page, I had something relevant to say and the comment had a link in it to my blog.

Old fashioned PR isn't entirely dead, but it's changing fast.

To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Supercharging social media with storytelling techniques: #1 Conflict

Since time immemorial we have gathered by the camp fire to listen to tales of monsters, fair maidens and battles long ago.

An interest in such stories seems hard wired into our genes.

The challenge for social media strategists is how to use such genetic hard wiring to increase the audience for any given post and build its emotional resonance. I will use post to describe anything from a short Tweet to a longer blog post.

One of the first things to consider is conflict. Conflict doesn't simply mean having a bad guy and a good guy, an antagonist and a protagonist, it's also about taking on the "machine".

If you can frame your brand, your organisation or your output as a struggle between good and evil, then you can build the emotional involvement that will inspire people to retweet, mention or pass on your post.

You will have reframed your post using one of the oldest story-telling techniques.

To support this site - over 100 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or The Manhattan Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

The Five Free Tools of Social Media Success - Updated

Social media helped me get that global publishing contract and it helps me every day to promote my services. Here are the main five tools I use to build, manage and continuously develop my social media presence:

1. A blog. Wordpress and Blogger are both good. This blog uses blogger, a free blog creation service, and my main site uses Wordpress, another free blog creation site. Wordpress has more design themes and Blogger has a simple interface with links to Google. You decide which one you want, but get blogging.

2. Twitter. My main account @LPOBryan has over 50,000 followers. I also have a second account which has 30,000 followers and my daughter Tweets for me from @IsabelleOBryan where she has 20,000 followers. I firmly believe that each Tweet you send should have valuable content, a link to an interesting post, news for writers or a great new picture you have posted on Pinterest. Make each Tweet valuable and you will not lose followers,

3. Bufferapp.com a service which allows you to schedule Tweets, Facebook posts and LinkedIn posts. This is a real time saver. It allows me to surf the news sites, find an article I think will interest people (adventure, interesting history, writing themes are what I like to read & post about) and press a button at the top right of my browser, Chrome, and the item link is auto-posted at whatever time I have set up in buffer. This is an amazing tool. I still use the free version daily.

4. Tweetdeck. is another great free tool. Instead of us having to open Twitter for each account and check messages, follows and @Connects, each account is on screen all the time. Using Tweetdeck I can respond to everyone who mentions my Twitter name in a post, wants to ask me a question or say anything to me. Tweetdeck has transformed the way I manage multiple Twitter accounts. My goal is to reply to everyone within a few hours of them sending me a message. It also allows me to schedule Tweets & retweets for later in the day. I believe Tweets should be spread out through the day.

5. Tweepi, for adding followers every day. I can add 50 followers who might be interested in my books or social media support services in about four minutes with Tweepi. I can also unfollow people who won't follow me back and people who have stopped using Twitter. Tweepi is great for building your follower base. I see it as tapping people on the shoulder and saying "follow me back if you are interested" and then leaving them alone if they are not. I see no reason to read people's Tweets if they won't read mine, so that's why I unfollow most people who don't follow me back. There are some exceptions though. I follow some media people and amazing Tweeters and never unfollow them. And I put them in a Twitter list to make sure I can see their Tweets easily. I love Twitter lists.

These are the main tools I use for building my presence on social media daily. I have no commercial connection with any of them. I love technology, so that makes it easier for me to do all this. Please add the tools you find useful below, so we can all share what works with each other.

Thanks for coming by. To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Social media payback bullshit!

Someone said to me over the weekend, "In business we need proof that there will be a payoff before we invest in anything. We're pragmatic. We don't put money up without having a proven pay back."

What a crock of bullshit!

Most large businesses invest in PR and advertising. They pay to have press releases put out, to get stories in the media and to do BIG TV advertising where even the professionals say 50% of the budget is wasted, but they don't know which 50%! I wonder what the ROI argument is there? Let's do it 'cause it makes us look important?

Why is it that traditional PR, advertising and marketing are all allowed to get away with campaigns that spend money like water, sponsoring at the Olympics is just one area, but if you ask the same marketing managers to spend 10% of their budget on social media, a trackable & growing area, then they look at you as if you had two heads, at least?

Personally, I believe the reason for such shortsightedness is fear. They don't want to be told about the change that is looming. They want to keep doing what they've always done. They're scared. Well you know what that Darwin guy said, it ain't the clever or the strong that survive, it's the individuals who embrace change, dude!

Will we have to wait for a new generation of marketing heads and smart CEO's before social media takes off the way it should? What do you think? Are you scared too? Does this picture resonate? 

 

1200 hits a day - 800 visitors - Do you want to reach this audience for free?

This is a screen grab of the stats page of my site, grabbed today. As you can see I am getting about 1200 hits a day, which given the likely % of visitors taken from long running evidence from my other two blogs, is equal to 800 approx visitors a day.

This is the most popular of the three blogs I run.

If you would like to have 5,000 or more people see your post on social media then submit it to me and I will feature you as a guest poster and you can put links back to your site.

The guidelines are that it has to be a post on social media and it has to be something new or different too, something of your own as well.

About 400 words and you must include a pic, which you must have the right to use!

And your links too! So if you are thinking about social media and have something to say and want to reach 5,000 or so people this week email me lpobryan@gmail.com

This is a free service!

5 reasons to outsource your daily social media chores

Social media is time consuming. I know. I get up at five am most mornings!

Here's why outsourcing your social media chores is a good idea:

1. You'll get more from your social media presence or you can fire us. There are real benefits to be squeezed out of social media. Demand that they happen.

2. The social media world is changing fast. Social media consultants stay up to date with what's happening to make sure you do too.

3. We give you the facts through a monthly report, who's following, what they're engaging you about, what we will do the following month to build your presence. 

4. It's a way to control the cost. If you have valuable people creating blogs and posts are they doing their day job? Don't let social media slow you down.

5. Get results. The objective of a social media chores service should be to help you achieve yours.

Email me: lob@yourasms.com with any questions on the social media "daily chores" service we provide.

The Social Media Puzzle: Piece #6 Can social media bring about social change or not?

There are a number of commentators who belittle social media as an agent of change. I disagree with that view.

For me social media is as much an instrument of change as radio was in the 2nd world war. It is simply a means of mass communication - a some-to-many communication system where about 10% of users create about 90% of the volume.

As for creating social change, the facts are that during the week President Mubarak resigned the number of tweets about political change increased ten fold in Egypt. That fact was taken from a study by a Professor Howard at the University of Washington reported here.

In addition videos featuring protest and politics were watched over 5 million times and the amount of online content about the political situation increased dramatically.

And at the time of the Tunisian revolution 20% of blogs were discussing the president, Ben Ali.

This wave of communication about social change spread throughout the region creating movements in a wide variety of Arab countries. Governments tried to crack down on social media in the region, but that seems only to have created a greater urge for information.

Now, it is true that we do not know how the new governments of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt will perform in the long run for their citizens, but to deny that social media acted as a communication tool, which aided change seems willfully blind.

Before this period the despotic governments in Arab countries seemed immovable. Now everyone in the region knows that social change is possible. Social media helped to make that a reality.

To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

Socmephobia - The Fear of Social Media

Socmephobia! What's that?

It's social media phobia. Socmephobes are people who don't want anything to do with social media, Twitter, Facebook or all the other blogs and picture sites and online networks that hundreds of millions of us are now using, and which are likely to become the driving force in the cultural and corporate spheres in the coming decades.

You can identify socmephobes by their instant dismissal of all things social media. They will deride blogs, dismiss Twitter and deny that Facebook has any relevance. Canute-like they sit by the shore and order the oncoming waves of social media back. Then, when their screens fall dark, they will deny the sea of social media has any importance at all, because they can't see it.


The history of this cultural/psychological disorder can be traced back to when the inventors of the wheel were laughed at, the inventors of the spinning loom were attacked, and the wearers of mini skirts dismissed as agents of the devil.

If you identify a socmephobe in your office or home there are a number of treatments you can use to help those afflicted:

1. You can create a Facebook page for them and connect them to members of their extended family so that  they can see pictures of family events and read news from family and friends.

2. You can ask them about their interests, and let them see people in those areas' Twitter feeds, blogs or YouTube Channels.

3. You can get them to talk about their fear, and take notes, for if you find out anything that will make you want to run, you may need evidence for any subsequent investigation.

In the event that you are confronted by a group of socmephobes I advise checking where the nearest exit is first, then using the opportunity to observe a cultural phenomena as if you were an anthropologist studying a dying tribe on a remote island.

The self reinforcing rituals of the group should be documented and recorded and, of course, posted on your blog/Facebook page, with a link on Twitter, so we can all enjoy your observations.  

This post has been submitted as a public service announcement.

To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

On images taking over the interweb

Images work!

• On Facebook, videos are shared twelve times more than text posts and links combined
• Photos are Liked twice as much as text only updates
• 42% of all Tumblr posts are pictures
• Pinterest, the photo-driven social media phenomenon, is now referring more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and Google Plus

We may see a visual split soon, where ebook readers allow easy reading of text and many other sites go mostly visual. Is your site visual or are you ignoring the elephant in the room?

To support this site - over 60 free posts so far on social media for you to explore - please buy one of my novels, The Istanbul Puzzle or The Jerusalem Puzzle or my guide to social media. And enjoy!

AS/MS is growing! New projects and clients:

In the past month Advanced Social/Media Services, your global social media consultancy, has picked up a number of new clients and projects.

First off, we ran a one day course at the Irish Writers Centre July 14th, which was so oversubscribed a second one day course was organised on August 11th to deal with the overflow. Both courses were very well received with many compliments from participants and the centre. They were a wonderful experience for all and had a wide mix of people taking part in a very practical workshop.

Second, we have been invited to run an 8 week one-evening-a-week course at the Centre for Creative Practice in Dublin on How to Get your Work noticed from September 19. Details here. I look forward to working with people from all backgrounds to help them get the most from social media in the most creative ways possible.

Third, we have new clients for our consultancy including a leading Irish diamond jeweler, Turkey's most prominent event management company and one of Ireland's leading publishing companies. In addition our contract to manage a blog for a London property agency has been extended.

Fourth, our guide Social Media is Dynamite is nearing completion and will be available in September from Amazon. If you want to read a pre-publication copy for free email: lpob at outlook.com All we ask in return is that you reply with some comments on what you thought. This offer will close at the end of August 2012.

Below is an image of the 5 star hotel in Istanbul where our events management client in Turkey holds many events. 

Social Media in practice #1: A London premium property site & Twitter feed

There are lots of great posts about social media theory. This post is the 1st in a series about putting the theory into practice.

A small property agency in London has been looking to update their web site. They have been getting few hits on their traditional site, and have to advertise offline and online to drive telephone calls to their offices and increase sales of their rental properties and for sale properties.

Over a 2 day period I created the following blog:

http://allyttaproperty.wordpress.com/

It features a listing of properties prominently and is almost a crossover between a property listing site and a blog.

I then created a Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/AllyttaProperty

The parts that took up most of the two days were deciding on the Wordpress template, I tried four before picking that one, getting the most out of the template options, and putting all the images into the right format.

The Twitter account will slowly follow people interested in property in London. Already, within 6 days, it has 106 followers. A few of these will be likely clients.

The Twitter account tweets a 50% mix of links to the Allytta blog and 50% London property industry news.

Some say this should be a 25% ads to 75% news mix, but with the people the Twitter account is following being interested in property and there being no question that this is a celebrity site suddenly pushing cola - a bait & switch technique. I think such a percentage is reasonable. The Allytta Twitter account is 100% up front about what  you should expect if you follow it.

It will be some time, 3 months I have suggested to the property agency owner, before we know what impact such a linked social media to blog/site will have on sales. Come back here each month and I will update you on progress on this real life example of the use of social media for an SME business in the UK.

Now, the fact that it only took me two days to set up a reasonable looking site and social media strategy for a small business made me think about a few things:

1. Why do some web design agencies charge so much for sites?

2. Why are there still so many static web sites, which are not using Twitter to reach out to potential clients?

3. What else should I be doing for Allytta to show them the practical benefits of social media?

I have considered Facebook & LinkedIn options, and they will probably come in a few months, so it is really other ideas I am hoping you might contribute for us all.

Pinterest, if we have some great pics of some of the apartments with flowers and lovely meals on the table would be nice, I think, but would it generate sales?

What do you think? What have I missed? What social media strategy do you think works?