I disagree with Mr. Online Webster, Blab does not have to be incessant, indiscreet or lengthy. Using Blab is a smart marketing move because this is no other platform that allows you to interact directly with your followers, fans, and prospects in real time.
[Tweet “Find out why using Blab is a smart marketing move!”] The basics: Blab allows up to 4 “guests” to interview, chat, converse, solve the world’s problems (or maybe just a minor one) in real time as viewers watch. Those viewers can comment in the chat box as well as join in the main Blab if one of the guests “rotates out” of the main conversation window.
Directly from Blab: a few ways this new platform is being used:
Here are a few tips and tricks to get you started blabbing along with the rest of us!
First: Blab works with Twitter, so when you create an account Blab will pull in information from your Twitter account so make sure that is up and running and current. You can also edit this to be Blab specific (I do like using that word!).
Second: Your Blab title is important. But it can be tricky to get it right. Blab pre-populates the title with the usernames of your guests once the video is sent to Twitter so make sure you are concise yet choosey when picking words. Think SEO and think impact and think readability. Try for about 50- 60 characters to leave room for the rest so your entire important title shows up in the 140 character Twitter limit.
Third: Think about pre-scheduling your Blab. This gives you a chance to promote it and engage guests ahead of time.
Fourth: Before you jump in make sure to pop on to a few Blab’s as a visitor AND test out your own equipment and process. Some users like to use external mic’s for a better sound quality. There are a few technical pieces to Blab that make it fun but can be overwhelming if you are alone and new to the platform.
Always think about enlisting the help of a friend to be a moderator for you, where they can read comments, forward you questions from your viewers to answer so you don’t miss anything. The biggest part of Blab is the community behind it, so you definitely want to keep your viewers happy and most often we are happy when we are heard. So catch those questions and be sure to answer them as best you can!
One very smart tip I will pass on to you: Before you start your Blab if you have any calls to action or websites you are going to point your viewers to – have those links listed on a separate screen/document so you can just copy and paste them into the chat screen when you are ready. Especially if you go it alone this is great advice to help you keep things running smooth instead of having to hunt for or Google (and swear under your breath) as you look for those pesky yet very important URLs to give out.
Now on to marketing your Blab!
I think Blab is partially such a great invention because of all the social media mileage you get out of one Blab video. Think of it this way, if you pre-schedule you can schedule a ton of Tweets, posts, pictures to go out to your crowd, even email to your list.
You can:
talk about your upcoming Blab
ask questions about content and conversation ideas
invite more people to be guests
and generally engage your followers on all your other platforms at the same time. It’s a total win-win!
When you are done with your Blab video you will receive an email of the audio and video content so from there you can start all over again with engaging your followers on social media using the links from that email to point them to the replay.
You can:
thank your guests specifically
thank your viewers and invite comments
ask for critiques
invite people to pick the next Blab topic you do
create a blog post out of that one Blab
One really brilliant idea: Make sure to take screenshots as you go, so you have images of all the guests as they move in and out of your Blab. These images you can later use in social media where they add such nice color and visual appeal to your feeds. Remember people respond so much better to images than they do to text (for the most part) which is why so much of social media is swinging toward video now.
I really hope to see you jump into Blab and explore this new medium. Think of the great posts you will have ready to rock for LinkedIn – and videos you can use as media on your profile to make it shine!
Follow me on Blab and check out my next video to get you started: blab.im/karenyankovich
I’m on every Thursday at 2:30 pm Eastern talking about PR and Social Media with Christina Daves!
For more technical step-by-step instructions on the nitty gritty I found these two articles very helpful: go here and here.
Have questions, concerns or just need support of a like-minded entrepreneurial group? Join me in my LinkedIn group where we have some fun while conquering the world of entrepreneurial and small business online marketing together.
I know I often talk about the social media machine, posting up to 22 times a day (that’s for Twitter) and engaging, engaging, engaging.
But what happens when you need (Yep I said need) to go on vacation? As business owners and Entrepreneurs we all should make a point to step away from the craziness of building and running our own businesses. (Yes I am giving you permission!) Vacations are so important because these breaks keep your energy flowing, your creativity boosted, and ideas jumping so your business can expand, grow and thrive.
So my post today is about 5 important steps to take so you can feel happy and carefree heading out on a healthy vacation with your family or on to a solo relax-cation.
[Tweet “5 Important steps to take on social media for a carefree vacation.”]
5 Important Steps to Take For a Carefree Vacation
First: Schedule those posts ahead! I hope you are already using a scheduler to make your social media life easier. If not read my posts here and here that talk about my favorite apps to use and how to use them. Scheduling not only takes the bulk of social media posting off your plate, it allows you to focus on building engagement and the more organic posting that comes from finding trending information that crosses your radar each day. Make sure to schedule a lot of posts that are foundational in nature, meaning they are evergreen, they never “expire”. You can talk about this stuff for weeks and months because it is related to your business why, who you serve, how you serve them, and what they can expect when they hire you or buy from you.
Second: Be honest. I really preach the value of being super authentic with your crowd of prospects and followers. Here is an example of that. It’s really simple – just tell them you will be on vacay and you love them and you will miss them and you will try to check in on them a few times, but you really need the vacation and… ok no. Say “Hi all! I’m heading to the beautiful beach with my family for a week long vacation, so my responses will be delayed. Post all the funny stuff that happens while I’m gone! Have a lovely (week/weekend) I will “see” you soon.”
Or something like that.
The aim here is to just be truthful and direct. If you are a one man show advise what the turnaround time might be for an answer to a question if a customer posts on social media. Give yourself some extra time in case of snafu (kids sick, hotel wifi out, too many margaritas by the beach) Your fans will appreciate this knowledge especially if they need to reach you for a customer service reason. You wouldn’t want to inadvertently create a frustrating customer service scenario where there doesn’t need to be one.
Third: Check your social media a few times. Yes, yes I know. Terrible thing for me to say, and possibly pretty unpopular, but at the end of the day you are trying to grow a business and a sustainable one at that. So my advice? For the first couple years of this business growing phase take vacations where you know you can find wi-fi somewhere, somehow. After that when you are wildly successful and have a team to manage everything you can head off on that African Safari or to the middle of the ocean. But until then, make a plan to check up on your biz and social media at least a few times during your trip. Oh and make sure you pack your cell phone and computer chargers, pack them right now. You can hate me while you are doing it and then you can thank me later.
Fourth: Hire that VA you’ve been wanting to hire. Starting to build your team is the best way to ensure that you can step away for a vacation, or more importantly for a family emergency, and your business won’t suffer. A VA can create, plan, and post to all of your social media sites, can be trained to answer most customer service questions (or at least soothe the customer until a real answer can be found), and most importantly keep your business humming while you are away. Sure you might field the occasional phone call when he or she runs into a roadblock that only you can authorize a solution to, but for the most part a VA can handle a lot of the little details of social media and incoming emails for you. Start interviewing and test-driving a few of these assistants today so you are ready to pack a bag and head out without looking back!
Fifth: Share your photos later. Resist the urge to post vacation selfies of you looking amazing and perfect lounging on your amazing and perfect vacation. Be patient, take a lot of pictures, but don’t post them. Create a fantastic blog post that is peppered with the most beautiful photos of your trip, showcasing a product idea you had while lying on the beach (it’s happened to me!) or take the opportunity to create a personal behind the scenes post. Keep it professional and polished and this post (or posts) can have a nice effect on driving engagement your way.
So what’s the very next step you need to take? That’s right! Join me in my LinkedIn group, where we can all help each other get the courage to take a vacation from our businesses… we can, right group?? We definitely CAN.
There’s a ratio between the number of people that you’re following and the number of followers that you have. Up until you’re following 2,000 people, the ratios don’t matter. Twitter will allow you to follow up to 2,000 people no matter how many people are following you back. But once you hit 2,000 people, you cannot follow another single person until you have at least 1800, or 90% ratio, people following you.
It’s important that you understand that this limitation exists. If you’re looking to build your Twitter following, one of the great ways to do that is to follow other people. But if you follow back everyone that follows you, then that ratio is never going to go in your favor. There are always going to be people that you’re going to follow that are never going to follow you back. Like Oprah, maybe. You can’t follow every single person back that follows you even though I know that’s a strategy that a lot of people like to employ. If you do that, you’re going to bounce into that 2,000 limit and you’re not going to be able to get past it.
Once you get past that limit, it’s still a good idea to pay attention to the ratios. Many of us grow our Twitter following by following other people. If you always have the same number of followers as people you’re following, then there’s just no level of authority, it doesn’t show that you have anybody that’s actually following you just because they want to follow you. So you want to pay attention to that ratio even once you get past that 2,000.
At the very least, try to keep that 90%. If you can drop that to 80%, maybe even 70% at some point, it’s a great way to establish a level of authority.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
Today we are looking at your LinkedIn headline. This is one of the most important parts of your LinkedIn profile. It is what will show up if somebody Googles your name. If you put “Karen Yankovich” into a Google search, you will see my LinkedIn profile, and you’ll see my headline.
You want to make sure that your headline says more than just “I’m a CEO” or “I’m an accountant or a lawyer”. You want to tell people who you are, who you help, and how you help them, and you want to make it client-facing. You want to make sure people know what’s in it for them.
My headline is “Helping Entrepreneurs Profit w/Social Selling | LinkedIn Expert & Speaker | Successful Social Media Strategist”. This tells you who I help and how I help them. Also notice that I am very confident in this headline. I don’t say I’m pretty good at this stuff; I say I’m an expert. I say I’m successful. That’s important when people are looking to do business with you. They want to feel like they’re doing business with somebody who is successful, so you need to be the first one to establish that authority, to establish that expertise and let people know that you’re an expert.
Take a look at your headline. See if it tells people who you are, who you help, and how you help them. Make it client-facing. Of course, if I can help, come on over to my LinkedIn group Profitable Social Media Tips. I will see you there.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more videos!
I love when my time online translates to learning the little tricks that social media platforms have but don’t often advertise.
And I definitely love when I can share these new features with my clients and other busy business owners like you. These tricks make social media a little more FUN for everyone out there who has little time to really dive deep into online platforms.
[Tweet “9 tricks that make social media a little more fun for everyone out there.”]
9 tricks of social media that you might not know about (but will be happy to start using)!
1. Save Facebook Links. A friend of mine sends me direct messages on Facebook all the time with a link and: “I wanted to save this link but didn’t know how so I’m sending it to you so I can find it again!” Maybe it’s a recipe, or a video, or a great article you want to read, so I’m here to say: now you can! Just click that little drop down arrow to the right of each post, click on save link, and Voila! that link is saved in a saved list for you. You can find this list via your Home page in the left hand column under your news feed and favorites list. (pssst M. you can stop messaging me those links now!) 🙂
2. Create a playlist on Facebook of your YouTube videos, Periscope Videos, Family Videos and more. Head to your Facebook Main screen, click More (it’s on the right side of the tabs under your header) and then click on create playlist. Now people have instant access to your YouTube feed or Periscope Videos, it’s a great way to organize all of your content, drive traffic to other areas of the web that are all about you, as well as preserve those family memories you want to keep handy.
3. Use your Facebook Personal profile to lead people to your business – no matter how private you like to keep it. I totally understand the want to keep your personal profile on Facebook locked down and very private. In this day and age though people interested in your business and what you have to offer will very likely search you out. So feel free to keep your personal profile locked down except for one tiny section: your work/position information to the left hand side on your timeline screen.
Edit this section in this way:
Click the pencil icon to edit Work and Education
Where it says Position I edited mine to say: Click here to visit my page
Make sure you change the privacy settings to Public. Even if the rest of your page is private leave this one section as Public so everyone viewing can click through to your business page.
Make sure to save the changes.
4. Analyze a search term or hashtag on Twitter. A fun site called Topsy.com helps you do this. Enter a search term in the search bar and you get to see numbers of tweets mentioning this term from 1 hour to 30 days out, the most recent or most popular, and topsy even gives you a “sentiment score”. I searched the ever popular “cute dogs” to see what information I could glean. And as you can tell, cute dogs is still a popular subject.
But of course regardless of what keyword you search much can be gained by knowing who is talking about these terms in your niche, why they are talking about them, what they are saying exactly and how often.
5. Organize your social media via Twitter Lists. Create a private list for your clients, your current partnerships or future want-to-be business partnerships. I keep all my lists private because Twitter sends a notification when you are added to a list. From these lists on Twitter that you create you can easily share the word of your clients and others who are important in your business circles. I follow over 24,000 people, and to search through that to get to a Tweet I want to share from a client would take some time. Using my Twitter list I can quickly share, retweet, and favorite all sorts of great content that people in my niche are talking about. It’s good for me, and it’s good for them, a win-win!
To create a Twitter list just click on your profile Icon in the top right of your home page and then click list! From there you can create and add at will.
6. After you connect on LinkedIn create a custom TAG to organize your connections. With 500+ or even 50+ connections it’s easy to get the names, organizations, and reasons for connecting lost in the shuffle. LinkedIn allows you to create a little “cheat sheet” to help you with this. Once you connect with someone go to their profile page, click on the star icon just below the blue Connect button. From there you can add notes about who they are, how you met and when, what you want to follow up on with them, as well as create tags (sort of like how I create and use Twitter Lists) to place them in a group based on how and where you want to further this connection.
Tags you can use:
The name of the networking event you met at
The type of business niche they are in
Prospect client or prospect business partner
Anything that works for you!
7. Don’t just LIKE a Facebook Business Page, make sure you receive their notifications. Liking a business page these days does not guarantee you will get their updates so you have to go one step further. Head over to a business page on Facebook that you enjoy following and hover over the Like Button, click on the down arrow and then click on Get Notifications. This step is important because now you can share their posts, be more active and visible on social media, and serve those businesses that you feel deserve to be known. So go ahead and think about what businesses you want to engage with, head on over to their Facebook page and get their notifications!
8. Customize your LinkedIn Public URL. When you sign up for LinkedIn you are given a generic URL filled with letters and numbers. But you can change it to a custom link that looks very professional that you can use everywhere!
Go to your profile and click on the little pencil icon that is next to the URL under the blue View profile as button. From there you can change this URL to anything you want!
If your name is taken I recommend trying:
Your name with a middle initial
Your name with your location of business if locale is important to your niche
Your name with one of your top skills ie.) karenysocialmediaexpert
Do this now and then add the new link to at least one of your social media bios!
9. Finally do you ever want to add bold, italics, or underline emphasis to your posts? As someone who is an enthusiastic speaker and because I write how I speak, the inability of most social media platforms to do this easily sometimes drives me crazy! (And causes the use of excessive exclamation marks.) You currently can only use a Unicode Text Converter to do this at this time – similar to how we add symbols to our LinkedIn profiles. But here is a little known fact of Google+ platform: Surround any text with asterisks to turn the text bold, with underscores to make it italicized, or with an underscore followed by an asterisk to make it both bold and italicized. Do this to add a little punch to your posts!
So there you have it – 9 social media tricks that many people might not know about.
Try one today and share with all of us in my LinkedIn Group (please join if you haven’t) which one you tried!
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