Writing Articles

Culling Your Social Media Groups

2/21/2016

These are cows

I went ahead and cullled quite a few groups recently.

Culling is to “reduce the population by selective slaughter.”

So I slaughtered my social media groups.

Mainly, I went to all the spam pit groups, weeks-between-posts groups, and the ones that I just don’t really visit anymore.

I went ahead and left those groups.

For the most part, this took place on Facebook and Google+.

On Facebook I was a member of many useless writing groups.

You know a useless Facebook writing group because of these things:

Authors posting about their book over and over;
No likes or comments on posts;
Terrible images on the posts.

Those are just a few dead-giveaways, but it’s that lack of engagement (no likes, no comments) that really tells you – hey, this group sucks.

So I left those.

I did the same on Google+, though here it was mainly marketing groups about SEO and social media and things like that.

For the most part, the problem was spam followed closely by lack of interest/engagement.

Overall, people just don’t care!

For me, that’s alright – I’ve seen that for years.

At this point, however, I have to ask myself a simple question: how much time do I want to waste?

These groups are just a waste of my time.

I really see no way I’m helping anyone with my posts (or posts of others that I share) and I see no way those groups are helping me.

How could they help me?

Probably by informing me of trends, writing advice, marketing tips, or just a place to talk with other people.

Alas, I get none of those things anymore…and I’m not sure I ever did.

That’s the problem with social media – it often sucks away your time and leaves you with little in return.

So I’ve decided to do the following:

Focus more on writing my books and blog posts.

That’s about it!

I figure, every time I feel like wasting time on social media in groups, scrolling through a never-ending feed, why not just work on my own stuff?

Hell, that’s where most of my money is coming from – my books.

(I know that’s hard for some of you to believe, by I’m making more money from my books then ever).

I need to write more of ‘em and spend less time on social media time-sucks.

So I just wanted to say that.

I hope it’ll give you some ideas on how to spend your time as well.

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My Best Social Media Posts This Year

12/29/2015

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I do a lot of social media posting.

I stick to Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

I do a little bit with Pinterest and answer some questions on Quora.

I have to say though, I like sharing on Twitter the most.

I really like their analytics feature as well, which I didn’t stumble across until December 27.

On that day they had a sidebar link that I hadn’t seen before. It took me to this:

So that shows I’ve had 107,000 impressions over December.

That means my tweets appeared in the scroll, or someone scrolled past them, 107,000 times.

Is that good?

Probably not.

First, if you were to measure yourself next to the social media experts and influencers, that number’d probably be puny.

Next, impressions don’t really count for much. On Twitter especially, it’s like someone seeing a tree outside their car window at 65 mph.

Finally, what does it matter how many impressions you have if no one is engaging with your tweets, or social media posts in general?

By “engaging” I mean liking, sharing, or commenting.

Thankfully, I have some engagement, as Twitter’s analytics feature shows me:

Alright, alright…a 2.4% engagement rate.

We know that the average Twitter engagement rate for top brands is a terrible .07%, according to this April Dasheroo post.

So I’m doing a little better. We know that the click-through rate on Twitter is 1.64% on average, so I’m beating that.

Actually, with 32 link clicks a day I'm doing pretty well. Still, many of those are to other sites as I like sharing good content...no matter where it comes from.

When you get to numbers as small as 1.6%, however, does it really matter?

Maybe if you’re an influencer or expert with 800,000 followers or something, then yes, 1.6% would be good.

But for someone like me, with 800 followers (many of which don’t give a damn), I’m afraid 1.6% is shit.

Despite this, some of my social posts throughout the year actually do better than 1.6%.

Sometimes they do 25%.

How the hell does that happen?

In this post I’d like to explain that. I’ll explain it by showing some of my popular social posts throughout 2015.

I wish I would have started collecting them sooner, but I didn’t. That’s a good tip for you next year – if a post takes off, screenshot the sucker.

So, here are my screenshots.

My Most Popular Social Posts of 2015

I’m going to show you the post and then give some commentary.

For the Twitter posts, I just do a screenshot of the analytics for that tweet.

Here we go.

This was a tweet I sent out on December 18, one dealing with the Bernie Sanders/Hillary Clinton scuffle about voter databases.

I took this screenshot after 12 hours of the post being up. It has lots of engagements.

If we take 41 total engagements divided by 434 we get 9.4%.

There is no click-through rate on this tweet as it’s nothing more than an infographic-style image.

Lots of retweets, though.

I found the image on Facebook and brought it to Twitter. It was damn effective.

Something else that was effective was this post I put up around September on Google+.

It’s a poll asking writers in a writer group, “where are you on your writing journey?”

It’s a poll and it got 48 votes.

I do a lot of ESL (English as a Second Language) stuff because I used to be an ESL teacher.

On November 20 I put up this worksheet-style image in an ESL teachers group on Facebook.

After just 12 hours or so it got 79 likes and 73 shares. It also got 3 comments.

Wow, those reshares though – shit!

Nearly everyone that liked it shared it. That’s an effective post, especially considering I’d found the image through a simple Google image search.

Brock Lowrance is someone that worked in the George W. Bush White House. He’s also involved in Montana politics.

I sent out the tweet about the post on him once. It got a 20% click-through rate in one day.

That’s effective Twitter marketing. I knew what my target audience wanted and I gave it to ‘em.

One post from November 12 did really well in a Google+ group.

It’s a psychology marketing post from Marketing Land.

I usually share about 4 to 5 “other sites’ posts” each day on Google+. This one took 5 days to get 31 likes and 5 reshares.

Not too shabby.

One of my best posts of the year was a simple poll in a sci-fi group on Google+.

The group has about 120,000 members but you know that a fraction of that are active.

In this case my question was, “what should Ridley Scott direct next: the new Blade Runner or Prometheus 2?”

It got 479 votes in 1 day, as well as 35 comments.

Wow, I could not believe that level of engagement!

Despite those votes, it was a nearly dead-even split on the films. Clearly, I should not have allowed that “other” choice.

One great thing about Year-End Top 10 posts is that they are useful all year.

On September 19 I shared my 2014 Top 10 SEO post, which had originally gone up December 30, 2014.

It got 22 likes and 37 reshares over the course of about 5 days.

I’ll take that any day of the week.

On October 29 I went and saw the Shining at the Roxy Theatre here in Missoula.

That night I put up a post on Facebook talking about the mom smoking at the table with the kid.

It was in a Stephen King group on Facebook and got 49 likes in 11 hours.

Not a whole lot, but since I’m not very active in that group I was rather impressed.

Besides that, it got a lot of fun comments. Comments are often considered the gold standard of social media engagement.

Here’s a post from early-December about UM administrator salaries. It got a 3.4% click-through rate in 5 hours.

Not the most impressive, but it’s effective. Also, it’s twice the average.

One post that got a 10.8% click-through rate was one in early-December (the same day as that UM post, actually) on the Montana Lt. Gov speculation.

I got that level of engagement after 5 hours.

On December 7 I put up another Montana Lt. Gov speculation post.

It got a 15% click-through rate in 12 hours.

What I did here was build on the same topic. My target audience liked that and my social media engagement went up.

Conclusion

Those are my numbers.

Like I said, I wish I would have taken screenshots earlier.

Maybe a quarterly post would be a good idea. Anyways, that’s something you might want to think about as you head into 2016.

I hope my experiences have given you some insight.

Good luck going ahead!

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Why Did My Comment Bother Social Media Examiner Users So Much?

12/27/2015

1 Comment

Perhaps you know that I go around to a dozen or more websites each morning.

I do this over breakfast, reading advice, leaving comments on that advice.

Many times this pisses people off.

Monday, December 21, was no different.

The post was called Nominate Your Favorite Social Media Blog: 7th Annual Top 10 Social Media Blog Contest

So it’s a promo post for people to come and talk-up their blog. They can leave a link to their blog and if it’s seconded then that blog might get chosen as one of the best of the year.

Why does that matter?

Because Social Media Examiner will announce the winners on their site and in their newsletter.

That newsletter goes out to 430,000 subscribers.

That’s where things went downhill.

You see, I had the audacity to question that newsletter, and its effectiveness.

Boy, did people jump on me.

Here, take a look at the comments:

So you can see my comment, which I went out of my way to preface as my opinion/belief.

I did this because I’ve taken flak on this site for being too direct.

Imagine that – speaking your mind! I know, it’s something we’ve forgotten in this country.

Anyways, Michael Stelzner came and commented on my comment. He owns that site and mentions it gets 1 million visitors a day.

Much like the mailing list, I have no proof of this.

I went ahead and mentioned that Michael should share his email list numbers, specifically how effective that list is.

He said that’s proprietary information.

Now, that’s a standard response and he’s more than allowed to give it.

But we all know he’s hiding.

I’m not hiding – I’m happy for people to know where I’m at. I’m also not scared, embarrassed, or red-in-the-face about my email list.

After all, why would I have left this comment if I was?

So I laid out my numbers, which let’s face it, are not that impressive.

But I’m not afraid to talk about them, unlike Michael.

You’d think people would want to know numbers, both for comparison sake and to see how well they’re doing.

That is not the case.

Because I opened up and gave my numbers, I got browbeat not only by the Social Media Examiner users but by an actual writer of that site.

From Michael I got nothing – he ignored me.

As to those comments, here are some highlights:

I am not sure what your point is, but I gather by your comments that you are clueless about the powerhouse that Mike Stelzner and Social Media Examiner are. Together with his exceptional staff, Mike shares the latest and greatest of apps and different social media platforms.

Greg - are you seriously the expert with 43 subscribers?

That's the thing with this social media circle jerk, people always trying to use numbers as a level of so-called "expertise".

Please don't hijack posts like this one, where we have an opportunity (in my case) to thank people we don't know but who have had a positive impact in our lives. It is very noble of SME to take the time to ask us for our opinions - we're in control and it's great.

I and a lot of people I know personally, thru social sites, blogs, business sites and in person click and read their emails then go to the website! Jealous much Greg! Trying to find a way to free publicity? Or just a sad pathetic human being who is trying to find free info on how you can duplicate their success

As you can see, I really got a some blowback on that.

Peg Fitzpatrick is a writer on the site and she gave the comment about me being an expert with 43 subscribers.

Thankfully, I never claimed to be an expert.

I especially liked the comment talking about using social numbers as expertise.

Isn't that what Social Media Examiner is doing by pointing out their mailing list?

I guess we should just ignore that.

Most of the rest complain how I’m hijacking the post or not appreciating all the site does for us.

Folks, this all came about from a single comment that questioned the effectiveness of Social Media Examiner’s mailing list.

I have to say, after all that blowback, I feel Social Media Examiner’s email list is even less effective than I originally thought.

I think that because of the defensiveness.

Boy, those people got defensive, didn’t they?

The idea that Social Media Examiner might not be as effective as it claims? My God, that fills them with fear and dread!

Because of that they lash out. Some, such as Cynthia, even call me a “pathetic human being.”

When I hear comments like that I know I hit a nerve.

Clearly, something is going on here.

First, I feel that Social Media Examiner is not as effective as it could be, its advice not as good as it should be.

Next, many long-time users know this, are bothered by it, and are afraid. What will happen if my favorite site goes anymore downhill?

Finally, people are not confident. I’m the only one that felt confident enough to share my email numbers, and that includes the site that purports to have a million visitors a day and 430,000 subscribers.

Like I said – there’s no proof of that, absolutely none.

We’re supposed to trust Social Media Examiner.

That’s fine – trust ‘em.

Just don't ask for verification.

I won’t trust 'em. I won’t because I haven’t found their advice that effective, myself. In fact, I find it basic and about the same as the advice everywhere else.

God, it bothers them when I say this. It bothers their users.

Well, I doubt I’m going to stop saying it until we see some improvement on the content they're putting up.

Considering they rely on guest posters all week except Saturday, I doubt we’ll be seeing the changes that are required to get this site back where it ‘needs’ to be.

One post that would sure catapult it back toward the top would be a post explaining their email numbers.

How many opens do you get?
How many click-throughs?

Remember, though – that’s proprietary information.

If Michael was to share that sites like Copyblogger or Content Marketing Institute might get the beat on him.

Can’t have that.

And we certainly can’t have the extra trust, confidence, and appreciation for Social Media Examiner that such a disclosure would bring about.

Remember, they're a big site – they don’t need to show what they got.

Just trust ‘em.

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10 Social Media, Content Marketing & SEO Predictions for 2016

12/20/2015

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The year 2015 is about done and 2016 is just around the corner.

All the top sites are doing their prediction posts. Why not get in on that game?

I decided to do that beginning in early-December. It was a busy month for me and I didn’t get this post finished for a couple of weeks.

I decided to go back in and add in more stats and links that might help you. Perhaps they’ll also bolster my arguments.

So without further ado, here are my 2016 social media, content marketing, and SEO predictions:

#1 Rand will do 52 posts this year

I’m willing to bet that Rand Fishkin of Moz will slack off again in 2016.

I bet between Whiteboard Friday and his blog he’ll manage 52 posts.

I say this because I don’t know what the guy does or how it helps me. I also don’t know why so many people think this guy knows everything.

I guess he did at some point, which allowed him to make a multi-million dollar company. Since then he’s been coasting on his accomplishments, easing back on his laurels.

Nothing shows this more than the sorry excuse for a blog that, for some reason, is still linked up to Moz’s homepage.

Personally, I wouldn’t want a daily reminder of my inability to post embarrassing me like that.

Rand and Moz do, however.

Looking at Rand’s Blog I see that the last post was November 25, just about a month ago.

Prior to that we had:

August 15;
June 17;
June 9;
June 3;
June 2;
February 8;
January 26;
January 12;
January 8.

So that’s 10 posts this year, not even one a month. What’s particularly bad is that stretch from February to June. Well, it’s not as bad as that lame attempt at catch-up.

Maybe it's not as lame as that January-gym approach. Got busy there at the New Year, didn't he?

Honestly – why do we take advice from this guy?

Something else I’d like to mention is Rand’s love affair with still images, like this one:

My oh my…where to begin?

How much time do you think it takes for the Moz team to come up with that?
Do you think it’s a good use of your time?
Do you benefit from those still images?

Well, Rand and his team feel producing those images is a better use of their time than analyzing their industry and telling us what they think.

Personally, I’d rather read more of the latter than see those still-images. I feel I’m not alone in that.

So…why do I feel we’ll be seeing even more of those still-images this year and a whole lot fewer blog posts?

Because this is a “top” site and Rand is an “expert.”

#2 Hashtags in Titles will Fade #Away

Aren’t you getting tired of seeing haghtags in blog titles? I know I am.

I fully expect this silly tactic to go away this year. It smacks of desperation and the last thing you want to look like is desperate.

Is your site really doing so badly that you need that extra hashtag boost that the title-hashtag gives you? Gosh, I’m sorry.

Here’s a post from Search Engine Journal that does it:

Here’s another one from an article a week later, again on SEJ:

Here’s another one from Brand Watch:

Here’s a post from last December that thought the idea so good it did it twice:

So really, here we have a site trying to get a bit more lovin’ from Twitter. It’s mainly Twitter, though I suppose this might work on other networks as well.

Does it work?

What is the goal?

Are we actually getting more traffic to our sites because of this?

I’m not convinced. What would be great would be seeing these sites actually study this.

Will they? I highly, highly doubt it.

I mean, why point out what you’ve been doing all year has been a silly waste of time?

That’s not what expert sites do.

Instead they say, “oh...,” look over their shoulder to make sure no one saw, and continue right on as if nothing has changed.

Terrible.

#3 Barry Schwartz’s Content will Get Shorter

Barry Schwartz has good ideas. He also has a terrible work ethic.

How do 250 word posts help me?

I’m not sure, but that’s about all you can expect from Barry each year – short posts that don’t tell you much.

That’s the problem with these sites – they break news but never tell you anything else.

I mean, honestly – is it really fucking hard to put some analysis in there, tell us a bit more of the history of this thing, how it came about, why it came about, and what you think will happen?

That’s the thing – Barry doesn’t think. He just writes. He sees something and he writes about it.

I’d rather he spend more time thinking about what he’s writing about. It’s called analysis, and Barry needs to learn how to give us some.

Will he?

No.

#4 We’ll Stop Using [INFOGRAPHIC] in Our Titles

Alright, I can see why you might put the word “infographic” in your title – it tells people what the post is.

I can even understand why you might put a hashtag in front of it, hoping to get a little extra social media lovin’.

But why, pray tell, does the damn thing have to be in all caps?

INFOGRAPHIC vs. Infographic.

Hell, why not mix it up and say INFOGraphic?

It’s not any stupider than using all caps, and I doubt it’ll lose you anymore respect than the all caps version.

Mainly, using INFOGRAPHIC in your titles just makes you look stupid. I’m sure we’ll see it a lot in 2016, but not from the big sites.

Well…we’ll see.

For now let’s see some posts.

Here’s one from a Social Media Today post:

Social Media Today is actually the worst with this. I see far more of their posts doing this than other sites. Here’s another one:

Still, they’re not the only ones.

Here’s one that combines my duel loves of “infographic” in the title while using a hashtag as well:

Digital bad habits…let’s think about that.

#5 Google+ Will Lose More Users as People Flee the New Mobile Design and Current Users Die Off

Google+ has two things going against it right now:

First, the users are incredibly old, the oldest demographic on social media, coming in at 45 to 55 for the age of the average user

Then, their new mobile design really pissed off long-time users, and it’s likely many of these users will do what they’ve been saying for years, and migrate more fully to other networks.

We know from a September 15 post called What is Snapchat and How Can I Use It for Business? that 70% of Snapchat users are 18-34 years of age. Taking it further, Snapchat had “around 100 million daily active users” in late-2014.

On top of this we saw in October 19’s Young Consumers Read Reviews & Are More likely to Write Reviews that just 69% of those 55-years of age and above write reviews.

What’s more, we know from December 3’s Social Media Statistics 2015 that just 9% of Google+ users actually post content.

This doesn’t mesh with local SEO goals. One more reason to kick the old fogeys to the curb.

Old people can’t compete with that and since we know millennials have tons of money to spend, marketers will just start to ignore the old people.

Considering that the vast majority of Baby Boomers are too much in debt to retire and have no savings, this won’t be a bad thing.

Yes, marketing trends will be changing in this coming election year.

#6 Melissa Mayer will Finally be Fired from Yahoo

I remember writing some content for a guy in Germany back in the spring of 2013.

It was all about this woman Melissa Mayer at Yahoo.

I remember this because I was hurriedly writing it between classes when I was still teaching English in China.

My God, has that woman been around this long?

I think it’s because she’s a woman and was pregnant and…didn’t she write a book? Yeah, that too. We cut her too much slack.

I feel that she’ll do poorly this year as Yahoo continues to do poorly. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Yahoo Gemini will save the company.

I don’t think so, however. Perhaps Yahoo will ditch Melissa Mayer the same week America ditches Carley Fioriana.

Both are terrible businesspeople.

#7 More Sites will Close Comments

I think Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, and Search Engine Journal are the main candidates for closing their commenting sections this year.

Why?

They have no comments.

Well, when you look at the ridiculously large share numbers they have it’s clear they have no comments.

It’s a terrible ratio!

So…why are people sharing, but not commenting? Please don’t tell me the world’s full of shy ninny’s.

I guess it must be.

Or are these what I call robo-shares, nothing more that people sharing an article they got notified about on social or email, for no other reason than to look smart to their followers?

I think a lot of it is that.

#8 We’ll See A Pull Back from Email Marketing

Aren’t you getting sick of email marketing articles all the time?

God, I am.

It’s because we know that most email campaigns have an open rate of about 22%.

Worse, most email marketing campaigns have an abysmally small click-through rate of about 3%.

We know on AdWords the average click-through rate is 2%.

Sadly, most companies are expecting 10% to 15% for click-through rate.

Wow, talk about failure.

Yet we continue to see the big sites harp on how important it is to grow your email list.

Sadly, they nearly always suggest giving something away or engaging in some other gimmick.

Great, now I have a bunch of sign-ups that will never open, never click. No wonder our click-through rates are so low!

Folks, this strategy is not working.

Oh, maybe it’s working for some big sites that bombard you with pop-ups until you finally relent and give them your email list.

But you know what…it’s not. Even those sites have the same problems of low engagement, low opens, non-existent clicks.

Our email marketing strategies are not working.

Will that stop the Big Boys from shoving the same tired advice down our throats?

No – they’ll never stop. As long as you keep that sucker face on and lap up their bullshit, they’ll keep shoveling it at you.

So I expect more people will become vocal, saying what they think.

“Damn, it – I follow your advice and my click-through rates are shit! What gives, you dumb bastards!?!”

I’d like to hear more talk like that. Perhaps, just perhaps, we might be able to get somewhere.

For I know deep down that if we continue on, I’ll be sitting here next December writing how our email click-through rates are still an abysmal 3% or so.

#9 Twitter Goes Back on Share Counter Takeaway

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the removal of share counter’s from Twitter buttons will not go over well.

I’ll go further and say that Twitter has to backpedal and put those numbers back.

Maybe I’m being hopeful, or projecting my wants onto the situation. I dunno – are people going to pay…whatever a month to have that number, that ego booster?

We’ll see.

#10 SEO Sites Focus More on Content Marketing and Social Media

I think we’ll see top SEO sites like Moz and Search Engine Land go more with content marketing for topics on their blogs.

This is clear to me from both the July Online Marketing Industry Survey and the August SEO Ranking Factors post. Both show that content is perceived as more valuable than SEO…to users and now more and more to Google.

Big sites will focus more on content because guest posting, linkbuilding, keyword optimization and all the rest of it is falling flat.

I mean, guest posting really went out the window this year!

I say that because we always have Google algorithm updates that take everything those SEO folks said from years ago and penalize it.

We see this again and again.

Far from it embarrassing the SEO sites, however, they continue to push outdated and downright harmful ideas.

Worse, we know this stuff just doesn’t work. We know that you have to focus on what your user wants.

With mobile overtaking desktop and more semantic search and long-tail phrases doing away with traditional methods, SEO just isn’t going to get as much play in 2016, or future years.

Again, people will jump on that, saying we’ve heard it all before.

I already see big sites like those mentioned steer more toward the social media marketing and the content approach for building traffic, however.

We’ll see. For now I suspect it’s a wait-and-see approach. As the year progresses, however, and as we tally the various articles appearing on SEO sites, I think we’ll find this one comes true.

Conclusion

Wow, lots to think about! Let’s recap what those predictions were:

#1 Rand will do 52 posts this year
#2 Hashtags in Titles will Fade #Away
#3 Barry Schwartz’s Content will Get Shorter
#4 We’ll Stop Using [INFOGRAPHIC] in Our Titles
#5 Google+ Will Lose More Users as People Flee The New Mobile Design and Current Users Die Off
#6 Melissa Mayer will Finally be Fired from Yahoo
#7 More Sites will Close Comments
#8 A Pull Back from Email Marketing
#9 Twitter Goes Back on Share Counter Takeaway
#10 SEO Sites Focus More on Content Marketing and Social Media

So those are my predictions. I hope they made you think or gave you a new perspective.

Good luck in 2016 – if you do 'well' enough maybe you’ll be on a list next year.

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15 from '15: The Best Social Media Marketing Posts of this Year

12/14/2015

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There were lots of social media marketing posts this year.

Which were the best?

Lots of big sites will put up their wrap-up posts in the coming weeks.

This is one of those posts.

It’s also an excerpt from my book Get Noticed: Your 2016 SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing Guidebook.

Check it out on Amazon or iTunes.

If you like these 15 posts, please buy a copy when it hits shelves this Wednesday.

Thanks!

#1 Social Media Poll
Martin Beck had a post on January 13 on Marketing Land called Survey: 70% Of Marketers Plan To Boost Social Spending In 2015. In it he says that 84% of marketers “plan to increase or maintain overall digital spending,” with 70% of those saying mobile is “critical.” Another surprising number is that 71% of marketers now believe that social media marketing “is core to their business.”

When you get into the various social networks, it’s clear Twitter is in the lead with 70% of people saying it’s effective, compared to the 56% that Google+ gets. Considering we’re asking 5,035 “global marketing professionals,” that’s important information to know.

#2 Rubbish Likes
Matt Southern had a good post on Search Engine Journal on March 27 called The Biggest Losers in Facebook’s Recent Purge of Page Likes. In it he talked about the March 11 decision to get rid of inactive likes on people’s business pages.

A big part of this was the lack of engagement for pages with huge numbers of likes, something that was reducing them in the rankings. Often this was no fault of theirs, just the exuberance of their customers. And Facebook caused exuberant customers to hurt businesses. Wow, what a mess.

Southern says that 10% of likes for some businesses were rubbish. The biggest rubbish artist is singer Rihanna. She has 7.9 million likes…or does she? There’s 9 more “artists” to check out, and 10 brands as well (YouTube is the worst on the latter). I like this post, and there’s a lot of potential to run your competition through the ringer. Sally forth!

#3 Social Scheduling
A really good post on March 28 was called How 16 of the Most Successful Social Sellers Schedule Their Days [Infographic]. It was put together on Hubspot by Emma Snider and the layout is pretty cool, if a little difficult to read. Take a look at this sample:

I left that social bar there so you can get some scale. As you can see, experts tell about their day. I always look at email times, myself. Is the person constantly checking or do they have a more refined approach, on that allows them to focus on tasks at hand as opposed to being ripped away every 2 seconds?

What are you looking for? Might want to take a look and see if you can find it in this infographic post.

#4 Epic Fails
Wow, who doesn’t want to drive by a car crash and stare? That’s what Albert Costill gives you in this May 12 post called What We Learned From These 15 Epic Social Media Fails. Highlights include:

– New England Patriots Twitter Fail;
– Bill Cosby’s Meme Fail;
– There are No Giraffes in Ghana;
– Is JC Penny Drunk?

I got a few extra laughs after going back and reading this post. For JC Penny, we’re talking about a Super Bowl Twitter campaign, one with typos that were planned. It may have worked, had not “the quick-witted responses from other brands” stolen some of the show. This is a fun read, so click over there.

#5 More Productive, Socially
Neil Patel had a useful infographic post on Quick Sprout on May 15 called How to Be More Productive on Social Media.

In it he lays out tips and strategies to make your 3.6 hours of daily social more productive. Yeah, that’s the average amount someone under the age of 50 usually spends on social each day. Get more fun facts by checking out this post.

#6 Companies on Facebook are Off-Putting
Report: 87% of Facebook Customer Messages Are Ignored was a June 24 Marketing Land post by Greg Finn. It pretty much tells me what I already know – I skip adds and say “don’t show me this again.”

This post might be a bit more scientific than that. They looked at 900 different Facebook pages and besides the earlier stat, found just 37% of companies answered all posts.

Wow, talk about clueless, huh? Just goes to show how far ahead you and your site are. So why don’t you get the traffic lovin’ like the Big Boys? Good question…and not for this post.

#7 Social Media Users & Addictions
Social Media Addiction Statistics [INFOGRAPHIC] was a June 26 post on Social Media Today by Carianne King. There are lots of good stats in the post, like:

– 2.03 billion people are using social media, or 28% of the world’s population;

– Facebook has 1.3 billion users;

– Google+ has 343 million users;

– LinkedIn has 300 million users;

– Twitter has 271 million users;

– Tumbler has 230 million users;

If you’re a teenager you spend about 3 hours a day on social media, and collectively, around the world, we spend 39,757 years of time on Facebook in just one day.

Wow, and I’m only halfway down the infographic! I think you’ll want to check this one out.

#8 Insights from Competitor Research
10 Helpful Insights From Your Competitor’s Social Media Strategy was a June 30 post by Kristi Hines on Sales Force Canada Blog. Those insights are:

– Which networks do competitors use?
– How do competitors position themselves?
– What types of visuals do competitors use?
– How often do competitors post?
– What do competitors post?
– What trends do competitors talk about?
– What do people say about competitors?
– What social plugins do competitors use?
– What groups do competitors join?
– Where do competitors publish content?

Wow, lots of stuff to think on. The post gives you about a paragraph on each of those and I encourage you to give it a look.

#9 How Much Money is Facebook Making?
Facebook Beats Estimates With $4.04 Billion, Mobile Nearing 80 Percent was a post by Greg Sterling on Marketing Land on July 29. In it he talks about Facebook revenue, which looks like this:

Can I tell you something I hate? Its graphs that say “in thousands” or “in millions.” Just put the damn number, will ya – this ain’t math class!

So what we have is Facebook going from $1.8 billion in revenue in early 2013 to over $4 billion in early 2015. Virtually all of that growth is due to advertising revenue. Now you know why your posts aren’t as effective as they once were – Facebook is charging you for what you used to get for free.

Another graph I like is the one that shows mobile users on Facebook. The site has gone from 469 million in 2013 to 844 million in 2015. According to Mark Zuckerberg, users spend about 46 minutes a day on the site. Good info, and you’ll find a lot more in this helpful post.

#10 Increasing Google+ Engagement
Eric Enge had a August 12 Stone Temple Consulting post called Maximizing Engagement on Google Plus. He points out that Google is changing some features, making it so you don’t need a Google+ account for various Google programs.

He then tells how he analyzed more than 33,000 posts to figure out the “nature of their content.” What he’s trying to figure out is how Google+ will do thing as it becomes “more tightly focused on connecting people around common interests.”

What I really like about the post, however, are these cool graphs:

Enge looks at how photos affect shares and reshares and all the rest of it. You get info on how hashtags affect posts and also how mentions and videos do. I’m pretty impressed with this post, both because of the amount of data analyzed and how it’s presented. Good job!

#11 People to Avoid on Facebook
10 Types of Friendships that You Should Avoid on Facebook was a September 7 Hub Spider post by Luca D’Angelo.

I really enjoyed this post because it’s fun and funny. Some of those you should avoid include:

– The tagger;
– The social depressed;
– Hashtags and emoticons addicted;
– Farmville player;
– Your mom.

You’ll get a paragraph on each of those and I encourage you to look. Honestly, though – you’ve probably come across most of these folks before and know the warning signs. Be careful out there.

#12 Increasing Your Social Reach
On October 13 Ash Read told us that as little as 2% of our Facebook and Twitter posts may actually be seen.

The post was called How to Understand and Maximize Your Reach on Any Social Network and appeared on Buffer Social.

He talks about potential reach (the number of followers you have) and actual reach (the amount that give a damn). So how do you increase that reach? After all, if you have 1,000 followers but only reach 20 of them on any given day, why go on?

It’s hard, but Read gives you tips on many of the hottest networks. On Facebook, for instance, you could narrow your audience or embed your posts. For that first one you get a cool video-gif showing you how to do that.

All in all, this post is good for giving you ideas on increasing reach. You might think a lot of people are listening, but chances are they’re not. Change that by implementing these ideas.

#13 Stats for All the Social Networks
25 Social Media Facts for the End of 2015 was a great stats post by Brian Harnish on Search Engine Journal on November 3. Here are some highlights:

– Twitter has 316 million monthly users and 88% of them are active on mobile devices;

– Facebook has 39 billion active monthly users (how is that possible?) and 510 comments are posted every minute across the network;

– More than 69% of Pinterest users are women and food gets 57% of the network’s discussion.

Wow, quite the numbers! I encourage you to give this post a look. It’s a good one for getting stats all year for your own posts. Check it out!

#14 The Monetary Value of Social Traffic
A fun post I really liked was November 8’s Search Engine Journal post by Kelsey Jones. It’s called Who Has the Most Valuable Traffic? [Infographic]. Here’s what it looks like:

Pretty cool, huh? I’m not sure if you can benefit from this but it does give you a good idea of what you’re up against for tons of industries.

For instance, Wikipedia is pulling in $1.5 billion a month while Target only gets $25 million a month. Give it a look.

#15 Social Stats for Customer Service
24 Statistics That Show Social Media Is the Future of Customer Service was a November 11 Social Media Today post by Mike Schneider. Some of those stats are:

– 67% of customers now use Twitter and/or Facebook to reach a company;

– 60% of B2C companies respond to customer tweets;

– $41 billion is lost each year by companies through shoddy customer service.

There’s a lot more in this post and I hope you look at it. I can’t believe companies would piss so much money away each year. Just hire some fucking interns and have them answer tweets.

Again, this is not rocket science. When you’re a bloated bureaucracy or head-in-the-sand company, however, it might as well be. When you get to be that size even the smallest and easiest decisions take teams to decide and weeks or months to implement.

You’re not like that.

You can get ahead, move with agility, and run circles around those clowns. Please keep doing that.

Conclusion

That’s some pretty good content, huh?

Those guys and gals did a really good job, and those sites did a good job getting those writers.

Maybe you could be one of those writers next year…if you’re not already.

Most of it comes down to being knowledgeable about social media marketing.

You can get that knowledge with posts like this. It’s a curation post and I’m sure you’ll see a lot more like it in the coming weeks.

You can see a lot more on Wednesday, too. That’s when I put up my Midweek Content Roundup posts.

I just gathered all of them together for the year and put them in a book. It’s called Get Noticed and you can get it on Amazon or iTunes.

Check it out, and use the ideas to get ahead in 2016.

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Using Facebook Ad Metrics to Determine Your Ideal Audience

10/5/2015

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Is Facebook advertising worth it?

I wonder that a lot, mainly because mine doesn’t seem to work.

Yep, I do a bit of marketing for my novels. Not much, just $20 here and there. Lots of others do the same.

An article in September tells us that “CPC prices rose by approximately 40%” from 2012 to 2014. A big reason for that is the increased demand in online advertising to sell products and services.

One of the suggestions for dealing with this is to focus on long-tail keywords with advertising.

Another strategy is to go through a “non-Google company” for your advertising.

The article recommends Bing, Yahoo, or Ask and those are all great ideas. The way social is taking off these days, however, maybe your advertising dollar is better spent there.

Lots of people think that, and Facebook is making a ton of money because of it. Some of it is mine, as I said.

I spent about $60 last month to advertise some of my books.

I figure it's given me about $5 to $10 in return.

I suppose you can't measure visibility, but that's more of a selling point that Facebook can use. I feel that it's been a waste of money for the most part.

There are so many advertisers on Facebook competing for the same narrow audiences. Those with more money to spend will drown out people like me that have little.

Maybe businesses can do well with Facebook ads, but I'm not so sure individuals can.

We’ll talk about that in this post, as well as what you can do about it. Besides that we’ll look at some of the metric, analytics, and audience base from my recent Facebook advertising campaigns.

I want you to get a good idea of what the outcome can be if you choose to try Facebook Ads.

I think if you’ve done Facebook marketing you’ve found that you have to run a few ads to really get a feel for the editor and how you can narrow your audience.

That’s why I want to go backwards today. Let’s start off with some analytics and then move back to selecting our audience.

Confused? It’s alright – most people are when they try Facebook Ads for the first time.

Hang on and let’s dive into new ways of looking at your Facebook ad campaigns.

The Main Facebook Ad Screen

First of all, you want to get to Facebook’s Ad Manager, which will look like this:

I have quite a few old advertising campaigns there. You can see when I took this screenshot that 3 of them were still active.

There’s really not much here – just a rundown on the clicks you got, the money they cost, and how long the ads ran.

Let’s move on.

Examining a Facebook Ad Campaign’s Demographics

Let’s go ahead and look at one of those campaigns, and older one for my book The Hirelings.

For this one I managed to reach 1,448 people but of those just 14 clicked the link to the book on Amazon.

I was only targeting men on this campaign as I feel the book appeals to them more.

For the male demographic, this ad was most popular for the 18-24 age range as well as the 25-34.

Actually, that’s what I chose to target it at, and I know that next time I might just want to stick with the 18-24 group, as that gave me a little better result.

Overall, it cost me $0.92 a click on this campaign as I spent $10 for the one day that the book was priced at $0.99.

That’s the thing with eBook marketing – I’m only getting a $0.35 royalty when I sell a book at that price.

What I’m trying to buy is visibility. That might get me some new fans, people that buy this book and like it and then buy the next one, or one of my many backlist titles.

Examining a Facebook Ad Campaign’s Ad Placement

You know how to target your ad’s age range a bit more. How can you go about targeting which area of the screen is ideal for your ad?

Now that we’ve determined who the ad was reaching, let’s determine exactly where on the Facebook screen they saw that ad. This is referred to as Ad Placement.

Facebook measures all that for you on a separate tab of your ad campaign performance window. This is what that looks like:

Clearly, desktop is not effective at all. The reach was slight and there were no clicks.

What is getting action is mobile, and you can see those long bars are showing both reach (teal) and clicks (blue).

Mobile News Feed and Audience Network placements are the best for my books. I see this here and I’ve seen it on other campaigns. Here’s one for my book Dulce Base:

So what does that mean, Mobile News Feed and Audience Network?

Clearly the Mobile News Feed is the best place for my ad on Facebook. Also, the third-party mobile apps that the Audience Network bar represents is also good to me.

Those are giving me the largest reach so the next time I do this ad, or others, I’ll want to just focus on that placement.

When it comes to Facebook Ads, Desktop Feeds do not help me at all. I’ll do best by cutting those out entirely…if I can.

The good news is that you can change the placement of your ads, and you can do this when you edit an ad. Even if the campaign is ongoing, this can be done.

Determining Your Book’s Audience

One thing that’s extremely helpful with Facebook Ads for authors is determining your audience.

Yeah, maybe you’re writing the book you want, but you’re not sure exactly who will want to read it.

Take my book Tarot Card Killer. I figure this would appeal more to men, but I really have no way of knowing when I can’t see the analytics.

The nice thing about Facebook Ads is that they give you the analytics, unlike other eBook marketing sites. That’s why I know a lot more women are interested in this serial killer thriller than men. Take a look:

I didn’t get a lot of action on this $0.99 ad promotion, just 9 clicks on a reach of 420 people, or $0.66 per click.

I spent $6 a day on this ad and it didn’t do too much…except tell me that I need to focus more on women in the 35-44 age demographic. I bet if I narrow interests down more as well I could get better results.

That’s what analytics are all about – studying results so you can see what works, what doesn’t, and what direction you should proceed because of it.

Determining the Best Age Range for Facebook Ads

The ad I ran for Dulce Base got 19 clicks on a reach of 937, or $1.05 per click.

The ad only targeted men as I figured this book would not appeal to women. For men, the 25-34 and the 35-44 age groups do really well.

Therefore, I might as well cut out the 18-24 and the 45-54 age groups so I can have more precise targeting.

Conclusion

Remember, you want to get your overall reach down to the smallest number as possible. A projected audience of 500,000 is too large to be effective, but 5,000 can get you some results.

Even better is getting it around 1,000 to 2,500 – when you can do that you’ll be targeting those that are most interested in your book.

Wow, we went backwards today, huh?

Instead of targeting age and other demographic characteristics, we went ahead and ran an ad and then analyzed the results.

From this we were able to determine that some age rages work better and some ad placements are great.

We also realized that I have no idea who my audience is.

Ouch, that sucks.

But the good news is that now I can target my serial killer thriller novel to women and my alien shoot-em-up at younger men. I know on both campaigns that mobile is the way to go and desktop can be cut out.

Hey, maybe if I do that next time I’ll get better results.

Yep, as for the books – I don’t think I sold a single one during these campaigns.

Oh well…back to the drawing board.

Using Facebook Groups to Get a Traffic and Sales Boost

Likes, +1s, and Favorites: A Lot Better than a “Fuck You”

Marketing Experiment with One Facebook Writer’s Group

Website Conversion Goals: Using Social Media Metrics

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Website Conversion Goals: Using Social Media Metrics to Increase Your Website’s Impact

9/18/2015

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Are you tired of your awesome content not giving you the results you want?

Hey, I know how that goes.

Half the time I write an awesome post or throw up something really cool on social media, and guess what? Nothing happens.

Do you know what I think the problem is?

I had no conversion goal in mind.

Conversion goals really come down to what you’re expecting from your webpage, blog post, or social media post/campaign.

Are you expecting more clicks to your website?

Is your goal to increase followers by as much as possible?

Are you trying to drive up ad revenue?

Is increasing brand awareness and loyalty what you’re going for?

Could there be a third-party website that you’re trying to direct people to?

These are all conversion goals that you want to think about when you’re crafting your content.

I could go into SEO aspects, such as the code for your page or http markup or something. The thing is – I don’t know that stuff.

No, what I do is write, so I need to make sure my written content is so good that I’m getting exactly what I want out of it.

So what do I want?

Honestly, I’m not always sure. Many times I fire off a post so quickly that not a whole lot of thought went into it.

I sure might have the passion, but perhaps I don’t have the direction.

That’s what conversion goals are for – to give your posts that direction. And oftentimes, just like keywords, you can take those quickly-written passion posts and change a few things around to meet your conversion goals.

Even better, you can use a wide-range of social media tools to measure the effectiveness of those posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other networks.

Are you tired of your awesome content not giving you the results you want?

Don’t worry – that’s about to change.

3 Stages of Your Website’s Conversion Process

Consider the varying aspects along the conversion process:

Event: The smallest unit of measurement is an event. Maybe the person got to your page or clicked over to your sign-up form. Lots of times you can’t measure these, although analytics at its barest often reflects these events.

Soft Conversion: This is kind of like getting to third base. You’ve enticed your potential customer, and they’re ready to buy. Often they don’t, and sometimes you can’t track this activity. I like to call these head nods – they liked your post or services page but aren’t ready yet.

Hard Conversion: The final sell is the hard conversion. This is your ultimate goal. Perhaps the customer came back to your site. The post you had up was floating around their head and they decided to give that services page a try. Now you’ve got a new buy, a new email sign-up, or whatever it is that you were setting out to do.

I got most of those ideas from a February post on Social Media Explorer. It was written by Morgan Lucas and has lots of good ideas for creating conversion goals and measuring them.

For me, the three steps in that sales funnel revolve around my website.

Well, I like to think they do.

If I’m selling services then yes, I want to impress someone enough that they’ll contact me for writing work.

When it comes to fiction or history, I want to impress them enough that they head over to Amazon to buy one of my books (or 30 of them).

When it comes to politics, I want to slowly build up trust and respect so that thoughts, opinions and beliefs begin to change.

I use my website as the main funnel for all that activity, with the primary drivers being the two blogs and the now closed 2014 political blog (it still gets a bit of traffic).

On my ESL website it’s just the blog that does the selling. For both sites, however, I have strong social media presences that allow me to get my word out far and wide.

Or at least…I think I do.

Do I really? I don’t know unless I can measure that. Let’s explore.

Measuring Metrics with Google

Alright, so a potential customer went through the various stages of the conversion process on your site and either bought something or didn’t.

How do you know?

Well, if you have a sale, you know they went through. What’s trickier is determining those that went through the initial stages – the micro conversion process, or events if you will – but didn’t get to the full conversion.

What happened?

This is where measuring your site’s metrics comes into play. When you can look at your metrics and analytics you can figure out why people are buying…or not.

Google Analytics is probably the best way to get started with conversion goals.

I know, I know…it’s analytics and numbers and graphs and spreadsheets and…shit – who wants to do that?

Well, successful people, that’s who.

Search Engine Journal has a great guide on getting started with Google Analytics conversions. It came out in 2012 but it’s still relevant. If you’re not using Google Analytics, check it out.

When it comes to measuring conversions via social media, you have lots of options:

Facebook: Ads manager is your default analytics source for this social network. It’s not as good as it could be, however. Page Insights is another measure, again, one that’s lacking.

Twitter: When it comes to this social network, groups and hashtags are really the way to expand your reach. But how do you measure it? Twitter unveiled their analytics measuring feature earlier this year, and it’s helpful. For more thorough insight use tools like Twitalyzer and Hashtagify.

Google+: This network is a little trickier to measure. Google Analytics makes the most sense when you’re starting out, as it’s already keyed to the network. For more insight check out Google+ Dashboard – Social Media Examiner will fill you in.

Is that all?

Nope. Simply Measured is a good tool that will allow you to track metrics and conversions on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more.

Micro and Macro Conversions

Even the best social measurement tools aren’t going to help you if you’re site’s sales pitch is off.

Many times this comes about because of outdated content or a tired selling proposition.

Is your site telling visitors the exact opposite of what your marketing or social campaign is?

This happens a lot, and the reason is because we don’t change our web pages enough.

Crazy Egg had a great post in February that talked about websites’ missions not matching their conversion goals. It discusses About Us pages and landing pages and home pages most of all.

Yes, there’s a lot of info in that long post, but what stood out for me were the micro and macro conversions.

Micro conversions are the small steps that users have to go through in order to get to that final conversion, the macro conversion.

The article uses Amazon as an example.

Say you’re buying a book – you’re going to look at the cover, the reviews, and maybe you’ll even read the first few pages.

At that point you’ll have a pretty good idea if you want to buy or not.

So all those steps are the micro conversions – things your potential buyer needs to do so they’ll feel comfortable with your product.

Many times the buyer will stop after all the micro conversions have been done. In the case of the Amazon book, they might close out the browser and not buy. That doesn’t mean they won’t buy, however.

Thinking is a vital stage in the conversion process, and one we as marketers don’t consider enough.

People love to think about potential purchases, tossing them around in their mind for a bit. No problem!

If you’re doing everything in your micro conversion process right, that person will likely come back and buy that product. I’m sure you’ve gone back to Amazon to buy a book you were looking at before – we all have!

The trick is getting your page – whether it’s on Amazon or your site – the best it can possibly be.

It’s your ultimate selling machine, one that never sleeps. Oil it often.

Conclusion

Your social media presence is key for getting those conversions up, in my mind.

I’ve looked at my analytics and it’s clear that Facebook groups really give me a lot of action.

I like to think this is what causes the sales of my writing advice books, but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s people wandering in from Google. Having good content marketing SEO for all the blog posts going back 2 years really helps with this.

The point is, your website is a selling machine, and when you pair it with effective social media marketing, you can go up against the Big Boys in your niche or industry.

Conversion goals help with that, and measuring them is key. Don’t get frustrated if it takes awhile – keep at it, adjust your approach, and always measure results.

If you do that enough you’ll see your conversion rate go up. Isn’t it time to get started?

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Marketing Experiment with One Facebook Writer's Group

7/26/2015

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On Saturday, July 25, I decided to do a quick Facebook marketing experiment.

I did this with one group, The Writer’s Group, and on three posts – two of my own, and another on a woman who wrote about writing a NaNoWriMo novel.

These were the links I put in those posts, links back to my own site:

NaNoWriMo Strategies for Finishing a Novel in Less Than a Month

Are Your Novels Puzzles or Blocks?

Using Facebook Groups to Get a Traffic and Sales Boost

Here’s what the traffic for those articles was before I put the links:

NaNo: 69 hits;
Facebook: 68 hits;
Puzzles: 28 hits.

I was curious to see how the traffic would increase for those three posts over a busy Saturday when a lot of writers are messing around on social media instead of writing.

So how did the day turn out? I’d put those links up around 10:30 AM. When I checked my stats again at 10 AM the next day, this is what they looked like:

NaNo: 74 hits;
Facebook: 103 hits;
Puzzles: 54 hits.

So that’s quite the increase there on the last posts, but nothing much on the other one.

Besides that, I also got the following on those posts:

NaNo: Nothing
Facebook: 3 likes, 7 comments
Puzzles: 4 likes

This is just an idea of what you can do with various groups on Facebook. Here’s what my traffic looks like this month for referrals, based on Weebly analytics:

My referral traffic according to my site editor, Weebly

Here’s what my social media referral traffic looks like from Google Analytics:

My referral traffic according to Google Analytics

As you can see, social media is very important for a successful website. You generate sales, ad revenue, and increased Google rankings. You also gain fans. I bet a few of those writers today will add my site to their bookmark bar, like my Facebook author page, or maybe even buy one of my books. Hey, maybe not, but oh well – how hard was it for me to put those three links, all to content I’d produced months or years ago? It was super easy, and you never know what may come from that.

Still, compared to my organic traffic, social media doesn’t make a dent. Yeah, organic is that blue slice of the pie graph up there, yellow is social media.

Alas, I doubt you’ll be getting that kind of organic traffic unless your site has been up for awhile. You’ll also need some evergreen content. Chances are good that you’re a self-published author, probably just starting out. You’re not going to be able to get that organic traffic for some time, but you can get this social media traffic. Give it a try.

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Social Media Politics is Now Available

6/26/2015

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Are you thinking of running for office?

Maybe you think 2016 is your year. The country is pissed off, Congress is broken, and there’s more money in politics than ever before. Yeah, maybe it is your year.

So what are you going to do? First you’ll probably talk it over with your family, then kick it around with some friends. Eventually you’ll sign those papers and file ‘em and then it’s off to the races.

Now what?

If you’re like most people, you’ll announce your candidacy, send out some letters asking for money, and then…nothing. You’ll sit there, waiting, waiting until it’s closer to election day and you can campaign.

Wrong!

You need to be on social media, you need to have your candidate website attracting attention, you need to make people know who you are!

That’s what social media is for, and that’s what my latest book talks about. Social Media Politics: Using the Internet to Get Elected is a 194-page book with 11 chapters on everything from:

A Basic History of Social Media;
Setting up Your Social Accounts;
Making Posts that Draw Attention;
Figuring out How to Make People Care;
Creating a Following;
Identifying Your Opponent’s Strengths;
Exploiting Your Opponent’s Weaknesses;
Integrating Social with Regular Election Efforts;
Making Mistakes and Moving Past Them;
Using Google Analytics for Your Campaign Website;
Manipulating the Media for Free Advertising.

You’ll get a lot more than that, but that’s the gist of it. Each chapter has several subheadings and you get real examples from the 2014 campaigns.

If you’re going to run for office, this book will give you ideas. It’s $4.99 and available on Amazon, being published to iTunes, and will be available in print format in a few days.

Stop wondering how to get elected and start making it happen today. Buy this book and make your election dreams come true.

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Using Social Media to Get Elected

6/9/2015

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Note: The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book on Social Media and Politics.

Assessing Your Opponent

When you’ve ascertained the situation and position that your opponent – and yourself – has to work with, then you can begin to assess these features of your opponent’s campaign:

Strengths;
Weaknesses;
Opportunities;
Threats.

Strengths: What is your opponent good at, what do they highlight, and what is the first thing they talk about with a new voter? Those are their strengths, and they’ll lean on them heavily. Can you figure out a way to turn those to weaknesses, or somehow make them seem not all they’re cracked up to be?

Weaknesses: What is your opponent bad at, what do they try to hide, and what is the last thing they want to talk about, and dread hearing brought up? Those are their weaknesses, and you need to be exploiting them as much as possible. Now, that doesn’t mean your strengths should become their weaknesses, but it does mean your strategy has to rely heavily on pointing out those weaknesses and convincing voters that those weaknesses will hurt their families.

Opportunities: What opportunities does your opponent have that you don’t? I mentioned the name-recognition and support my opponent had, two things I didn’t. They gave him more opportunities, or at least made me think I had fewer. Don’t forget that opportunities lie on the horizon, and that your opponent might be looking forward to one. Can you take that away from them, or turn it into a threat?

Threats: There are many things out there on the political landscape that could hurt your opponent. These could be past issues they supported or groups that have it in for them. Often these aren’t known, and that means it’s your job to find them. You have to go digging up some dirt, and when you do, you need to make sure your opponent knows those threats are now out there and at the ready. The ultimate goal is that these threats will keep some of their forces at bay, perhaps money they would have spent or issues they would have discussed. And remember, a threat that hurts your opponent but doesn’t help you is one that hasn’t fully been taken advantage of yet.

If you’re interested in more of this train of thought, check out this 2014 post on Forbes called Sun Tzu’s 33 Best Pieces of Leadership Advice. Another helpful post is called The Five Elements of Strategic Planning. Both have tips and tricks that your opponent probably won’t be following, and indeed, thinks are rubbish.

Making Your Opponent’s Website Useless

Your opponent is going to have a website, and chances are good that it’ll be rubbish.

It might have a cheesy homepage, something that looks straight out of 1997;

It might have weird colors and strange text sizes, the better to show voters that they have no idea what the 21st-century looks like;

It might even have a little SEO on it, meaning that search engines like Google and Yahoo could pick it up.

It’s that last point that you want to pay attention to. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s a big industry today. I’ve written several books on the subject, but the gist of it is that with good SEO, you can get your page on the top of Google.

What does that mean? It means every time someone goes to this bar to type in something even remotely about you or your election, your name will come up #1 or damn close to it.

What happens when you type your name into Google? Is it good or bad, does it help you or hurt you?

If you’re coming up on the top, then voters are going to see your story and not the other guy’s. And that other guy doesn’t have to be your opponent – it could be the newspapers, the Party, or even some state election information. Most likely it’ll be the newspapers…at least if you’re in a race that’s worth anything. If it’s school board, well…good luck with that – few races are as invisible as those.

So you want to get your site to the top of Google, but you also want to get your opponent’s site off of Google…or at least buried on the second or third page of the search results. How do you do that? You do that by writing about your opponent.

Now, this might throw you for a loop. After all, wouldn’t writing about your opponent be a terrible strategy?

Yes, it is…if you’re doing the writing. But what if it’s another website that’s not yours and has no ‘connection’ to you? What if it was supporters throwing up a website that did nothing but highlight the skeletons in the closet and the illegal household help of your opponent? Now we’re getting somewhere – the dark back alleys that you said your campaign would never enter. So…do you enter them?

Most of you will never have to. Those dark alleys are for the large campaigns, the statewide and congressional campaigns that have big money, a lot of people, and too much time on their hands. These are things that PACs do, driving opponents into the ground.

And why not? If your opponent had a disastrous series of votes on something, did something really dumb in their private life, or just says the darndest things, why not decimate them? That’s what websites and social media are for in politics – to marshal your forces against the forces of your opponent. It’s a head game, and you want to get into the head of your opponent so they’re weakened, you want to get in the head of their supporters, sowing doubt. That shows your forces that you’re winning, and nothing draws more supporters to a campaign than a win.

How I would make my opponent’s site useless is by analyzing the main talking points they have. They’ll be generating traffic with the keywords in those points, and if I can write them up in a way that twists their words to my benefit, that’s what I’ll do. That way their strength – voting for tax cuts to help families – becomes instead a weakness – voting for tax cuts to help the top 1% of families.

A lot of it is in how you use words and how you lay out the presentation. Remember, you’re filling the cracks, and if your opponent leaves out his desire to help the rich at the expense of the poor, just go ahead and fill that fact in for their supporters…and your own. It’s good politics.

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​#1 Rand will do 52 posts this year

​#2 Hashtags in Titles will Fade #Away

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​#4 We’ll Stop Using [INFOGRAPHIC] in Our Titles

​#5 Google+ Will Lose More Users as People Flee the New Mobile Design and Current Users Die Off

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Writing Blogby Greg Strandberg

Top Ten

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My Books(By Publication Date, New to Old)

Archives

My Most Popular Social Posts of 2015

Conclusion

#1 Rand will do 52 posts this year

#2 Hashtags in Titles will Fade #Away

#3 Barry Schwartz’s Content will Get Shorter

#4 We’ll Stop Using [INFOGRAPHIC] in Our Titles

#5 Google+ Will Lose More Users as People Flee the New Mobile Design and Current Users Die Off

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