Value is a term that is often tossed around, mostly from people trying to sell you things. For me, value is about what I learn, grow or get enjoyment from – and that is a pretty broad set of standards. In the fast-paced, often vapid-seeming world of social media though, the question we should ALL be asking is “What VALUE does my social media bring to my customers lives?”
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A blog post is not like a firework, one spark and it’s done. Blog posts can (and should!) attract customers for months after you write them. All it takes is a little planning and motivation to keep them working for you all year round. 1. Comments. You can and should be commenting on other people’s posts all over the Internet. On Facebook, Instagram, other blogs, LinkedIn, whatever platforms your brand operates on, create the conversation that social is supposed to be about. Be more subtle than “hey read my post”, but use it as an opportunity to contribute your own story, your own learnings or perspective. 2. Backlinks within your own posts This is one of my most effective tools as a social media manager. They say it costs 10x as much to attract a new customer as it takes to retain one – so why doesn’t the same rule apply for your blog? If you have an interested reader there, bounce them between posts and keep them on your site. This can be done in a few ways, including widgets that preview content you might be interested based on the tags attached to the post you are currently reading; or literal links in your post when that topic is mentioned. Both work well. 3. Emailing them out to clients when the question arises This is a great one for more corporate companies. How often us your customer service writing the same stupid response to a common question? Write a blog post, and cut your work in half and ensure that consistent quality information is given every time. 4. Flashback Friday, Throwback Thursday etc. This is a very visible Internet trend but is also just good advice. No-one else is going to talk about your older content if you don’t – and you didn’t write it for it to be a one and done deal did you? The idea of social media is also that your follower base is continually growing – so an older post will always have a new audience, and that might be the perfect piece of advice for that audience, who in turn will share and move the content, encouraging new followers who haven’t seen your content… See the cycle yet? So establish a flashback system – whether it’s #flashbackfriday #throwbackthursday or posting content that is exactly one year old; remember to push and hustle your…
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Safety (or at least perceptions of it) has often been a hot button topic around Parramatta. When I first moved here in 2012 there was a real stigma attached to the area with lots of people I knew at the time asking the question – did I really know what I was doing? Didn’t I know it was unsafe to live there? Don’t you hear all that stuff in the news?
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In the lead up to the election, campaigning is on everyone’s mind, from Malcolm Turnbull to Tony Abbott and even Bill Shorten has decided to get on the band wagon. And at a national level, its easy to assume that politicians are always campaigning, because they are so visible thanks to those media followers, photographers and their squillions of dollars. At a local member level, we see a stark difference. I have lived in a lot of different electorates in my life, and as such I have noticed that most local members want you to elect them based on the 2 or 3 weeks every couple of year they spend being visible in your community, showing off what they could do for you, in the hope to pull the wool over your eyes regarding their commitment. I’ve never bought into it, because it is exactly that – a bit of a sham, a con, a façade if you will of community engagement.
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Commenting on blogs is both my most utilised tool as a social media manager, and the most underrated tool I see in other’s social media activities. If the end goal of being involved in social media is to create conversation and dialogue, then a comment is the response YOU make to the question or statement being posed by the writer – without it, you aren’t fulfilling your end of the conversation. As a content creator of any kind, your aim is to develop a community of like-minded people, who are essentially picking up what you are putting down – whether that’s knowledge, reviews, experiences or warnings. So it’s absolutely natural for comments to happen, as people respond to your content. Think about the blogs that YOU read. How many times have you sat at your computer during your lunch break and verbally gone “Ugh YES” when the content is great, or “Pfft” when it’s a bit off. THIS is when, how and why you should comment. Be part of their conversation.
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Once you have decided to brig a social media manager(or consultant or contractor, whatever you want to call it) into your business, it can be a bit nerve wracking. This is someone who has access to all your customer facing information and who is going to go out there and represent your brand, without knowing the business inside and out like you do. How is that possibly going to work? In order for you to work together well with your new manager, it’s important to sit down together and discuss exactly what it is you are looking for out of that role.
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As you might have seen from my interview with the ABC, in the past year my partner and I bought out first home and we lucky enough to be lumped with our first mortgage. Anyone who is looking at taking this leap themselves will know that everyone is full of advice about your first year with a mortgage, and generally these people fall into two categories: either those who got a mortgage in the 80s when the economic and political climate was very different; or people who don’t have a mortgage yet.
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As someone who loves content, blogging and generally reading about what’s going on online, I was unfortunate enough to find some very disturbing content through my social network. I was reading an article, apparently written by this person, and while reading it, I had a thought – I had read this before.
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