BiggerPockets Founder · HI · Member since 2008 · 16k+ posts · 5k+ votes
I'm always looking for ways to help convince our users that the way to be successful in social media is to provide great content and to engage. Here's a great article from one of the top social media guys around - Jeff Bullas - that everyone should read:
I read Jeff's blog all the time - great mind for marketing. Another is a Heidi Cohen, her blog is at www.heidicohen.com.
I tested this theory with three accounts. Two were used to publish info about blog posts and some marketing info. The third was for engaging with a few people in a similar community and sharing other people's links. All three groups were started within a few weeks of each other and I spend nearly the same amount of time on each one.
In the first two profiles I have less than 500 followers and in the third I have more than 4,000. My first two profiles grow by 2-5 people per day, and my third profile grows by more than 30 people per day. On some days when i share an interesting post, pic, or article, I've gotten as many as 200 new followers. That one profile alone drives more than 5,000 visitors to my blog every month.
Nice article...I probably need to engage a little more in some of those areas. Social Media will continue to grow as far as I can see, as the "online" world and real worlds continue to merge in all aspects of life.
That's a great article. I think people need to remember that not only does social media require a little bit of time, it's well worth the time invested. People connect with people, not brands.
Thanks for the post. This will really help beginners like me.
One thing I like about the blog is
6. Give Information Away For Free - I am a beginner and I hate it when people don't want to share what they learn for free. It doesn't mean that they will give away everything for free but just to give us an overview on what to do. :D
I read Jeff's blog all the time - great mind for marketing. Another is a Heidi Cohen, her blog is at www.heidicohen.com.
I tested this theory with three accounts. Two were used to publish info about blog posts and some marketing info. The third was for engaging with a few people in a similar community and sharing other people's links. All three groups were started within a few weeks of each other and I spend nearly the same amount of time on each one.
In the first two profiles I have less than 500 followers and in the third I have more than 4,000. My first two profiles grow by 2-5 people per day, and my third profile grows by more than 30 people per day. On some days when i share an interesting post, pic, or article, I've gotten as many as 200 new followers. That one profile alone drives more than 5,000 visitors to my blog every month.
My last 3 clients this month came from my blog and Bigger Pockets. Social media is here to stay. Those who are not on it are analog in a digital world. Good post Josh.
Great article. #3, 6 and 7 really hits home with me. I think the days of selling is over and by educating people you gain their trust. Which is why 6 (give information away for free) is really important. Besides free information being more likely to get shared, it gains your audience trust and increases your authority on the subject. And of course #7 (multimedia) is a huge aspect of my business, that is all we do. We use video to market real estate listings and it is a lot easier and more effective than most people think. Good read.
For many of my web design clients, who are small-business owners, they are far to busy working in their business to do social media. A lot of times it is a lot of work to manage all the different social media profiles, blog twice a week, etc. and very little gain comes from it.
The one tidbit of useful info I can add is to make sure your blog is the central hub of your social media campaign... for example don't send them to youtube or someone else's news site, put the youtube video in your blog post and create a blog post to summarize the juicy bits of someone else's article (with attribution of course). The goal is to draw them in to your site. So make sure the blog is part of it, rather than on a totally different domain.
Great article that simplifies it quickly and it is very pertinent for today. A question for the future is , will there ever be a tipping point of too many different social media platforms? Perhaps we are in the early days of the laws of tech jungle. How many operating systems make up 90% of the PC market? [probably two] How many browsers make up 90% of the PC market? [probably 4] how many smart phone operating systems make up 90% of the market [probably three] Will the social marketing market continue to add more social media sites, or will the market declare 2 or 3 winners.
John Bodrozic - The market has already determined the winners . . . G+, Facebook, Twitter are the 3 majors -- Pinterest for women/pictures -- LinkedIn for business networking . . . and so on.
Niche networks like ours will continue to thrive as long as the level of service and quality are there.