A lot of businesses think that simply Tweeting about a sale, event or promotion will bring people in their doors, to their websites and money in their bank accounts. This, although true for many larger well known businesses, is not true for smaller businesses. We are not easily known nor is our logo quickly recognized by thousands, but this isn’t quite a bad thing. Tweeting may be the first step, but never make it the last step.

Let’s say you’re planning a local event or sale.

Twitter may be your first stop/ thought to promote, but do you have a landing page with details or a way for people to contact you with questions? Are you reaching out to other networks?

Here is exactly what I would do and the sites I would use, including Twitter, to promote my event.

Event name: Fake Event/ Sale 2012

Sites to use:

Your own website/ blog – List all details (directions, attire, date/ time and contact information)

Tumblr

This Social Blogging site is one of my favorites and has a ton of possibility for sharing and indexing. Make sure to build a following on the backside and add all proper keywords as well as a link to an event posting or listing, preferably the LinkedIn or Facebook event and your website.

Facebook

Fanpage if applicable as well as the creation of a Facebook event

Tip: Unless completely unable to, create your event under your personal account. Creating it under a page takes away the ability to contact and message those that have RSVP’d yes and maybe as well as those that have yet to RSVP. 

LinkedIn

You can create an event here just like on Facebook. Share the event on your LinkedIn profile. You can also send individual messages to connections you know would be interested in attending.

Google+

If you’ve begun using this platform then I suggest promoting here as well. Be sure to use your location as a hashtag (mine would be #Tampa) for others to find it as well as predetermined hashtag for said event.

Local media blogs

Here in Tampa the TBO.com is a great place to list your event as are many of the local radio stations and other media sites. Do a search in your town for local media sites and see if they have an event submission section or an email address to send news/ events to.

Local bloggers

See if any would be willing to blog about your upcoming event. Make sure you give them all of the details as well as how they can stay up to date with the event details. Include your Twitter, Facebook, website, Tumblr, Foursquare and contact email as well as all details for the event.

Foursquare

If you have a physical location the possibilities are endless. List on the locations Foursquare page about the upcoming event, if it’s your own listing and the event or promo costs money, make a Foursquare special with a percentage off of the event or promo OR create a special that gives people an incentive to attend.

Pinterest

I personally haven’t had a chance to test out how well event promotion is on here, but I soon will and what can it hurt if you’re already pinning away?

EXAMPLE: Join us Sat for out Fake Event/ Sale – Check in and receive a free cupcake (or something like that)

Don’t Forget The Press Release!!! 

Eventful.com

Great place to post local events and sales

Video and Image for promotion

Use sites like YouTube and FlickR if you want to take your promotions one step further with a more visual aspect.

Twitter

Yes now we can come back to Twitter. Now we have a place to send people to. We have listings on other networks.

Do you have a #hashtag picked out? For our event we’ll use #FakeEvent2012 and every time we Tweet about the event we’ll add that at the end of the Tweet. Why use a hashtag? Easy tracking to see who else is talking about your event or sale

In conclusion, if you Tweet it they might come, but your chances are much higher when you take advantage of all that is in front of you.

More often than not people feel like their Social Media efforts are getting them nowhere. This is extremely common especially for the smaller, lesser known businesses, products and brands. When things don’t go the way we planned we immediately think that Social Media itself is to blame and that it really will never work for what your goals are.

This is in fact incorrect and here are 10 reasons why things may not be working in your favor Online.

1. Your goals are unrealistic

2. You skimp on the engagement

3. You follow everyone

4. You dedicate all of your personal accounts to advertising

5. Your strategy is to “wing it”

6. You’re too afraid to be different

7. The message is never different

8. You choose automation over real time engagement

9. You wait

10. You gauge your success by how many followers you have and what your Klout score might be

11. You gave up to soon

When all else fails try consulting a Social Media Strategist to assist in figuring out why things aren’t working and help creatively come up with new campaign; try keeping track of your Social Analytics as well as this will show you what creates the engagement and what is being ignored.

Did you know LinkedIn has a limit as to how many groups a person can join? They do and that number is 50. Many people will eventually hit their limit and have to re-evaluate the groups they are connected to, but how do you actually leave a group?

Here are simple steps to help you trim the fat and allow you to connect with new groups.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Tip for group owners: Keep your page moderated and interesting so yours isn’t one users choose to purge.

Join the Tampa Bay area Twitter users Thursday January 12, 2012 at O’Briens Irish Pub (701 West Lumsden Road
Brandon, FL 33511) from 6-9pm for the #obstweetup.

::Warning:: 

This blog post is simply my opinion on this subject and nothing more. 

Today as I was beginning my day of checking my clients social accounts, followers/ responses etc… I noticed that once again a business that provides a service similar to my company, KiMedia Strategies, had become awfully follow happy. Things like this usually don’t bother me, but when thinking and looking back over the past year, I’m beginning to see a pattern. The pattern goes like this: Follow my company, add me to lists that I personally and professionally wish I wasn’t  part of, visit my website multiple times, begin following my clients, add them to lists, find them on Facebook, like their page etc… etc…

Stop Being That Person!

You see,  we all have competitors whether it’s other businesses because we’re business owners, co-workers, siblings, classmates etc… We as humans are also naturally competitive which is why many of us work as hard as we do. We want to be the best, better than everyone else that’s trying to be better than us. It’s become a vicious cycle and yes, I can be guilty at times of paying attention to what my competition might be doing at times.

Here’s where we need to ask ourselves if knowing exactly what our competitors are doing at any given moment is damaging to our own goals. With me, if I’m paying attention to other Social Media companies, knowing what they are doing, who their clients are, tracking and following their clients, and following the personal lives of the owners and employees; is my business getting the attention it deserves? Are MY clients getting the attention they deserve? Probably not. 

Is it normal to be curious? Yes

Is it normal to devote your days to tracking your competition? No

You will not gain anything in your own personal business by doing so. Seriously, unless your business is in Private Investigation, you’re wasting too much time focusing on something you can’t control and while you’re doing this you’re allowing your competition to pave your path and this is not something I would want at all.

Focus on your goals whether it’s your business, school work, project for work or something else.

Trust me, your competition isn’t worth your time and effort, but your clients are.

Google+

These four tips are not just suggestions, but tasks I am or have done in preparation for the new year in hopes of simplifying the start to a new year Online.

1. Respond to and clean out any outstanding Facebook messages, Twitter DMs, LinkedIn messages etc… Archive orcopy/ paste any of importance into a Google document titled something like “Important FB messages From 2011″. If you need to save screen shots you can post them right into the doc as well.
2. Update all of your social networking profiles if necessary.
3. Does your profile image REALLY look like you? If not and you meet Tweeps or Facebook peeps offline often then perhaps it’s time for a pic that does look like you.
4. Clean out any accumulated spam comments on your website or blog – this is a time consuming task for me, but will be worth it once completed for all sites.

How are you preparing for 2012 Online?

2011 has flown by. It was one of the best years I’ve had in quite a while and honestly have nothing to complain about. Now anyone that knows me knows I complain, but really… I have had an amazing year, and even the stress and struggles as well as another battle with pneumonia, this year has been a blessing. Everything negative can be taken as a lesson learned which then turns it to a positive, right?

Soooo… 2012 is literally a couple of days away and I want to share with you some of my goals…. Not resolutions, but goals for the coming year.

• Blog more tutorials and tips around Social Media, being a woman entrepreneur and business owner.
• Help more people. That’s right, I want to help more people become successful with their Social Media. This doesn’t mean I want to work for them for free, but I do think I want to start a chat or designate a specific email or platform where people can easily send me questions.
• This is personal, but does involve business as eating healthier means I am healthier, more alert, and happy.
• Take more breaks away from technology – I’m only talking hours, not days…. I don’t think I could do that yet.
• Visit new places locally – I’ve lived in the Tampa area for going on 4 years and still have no clue where I’m going nor have I been to many places so if you know of any specific place I should visit, let me know!
• This goes along with the above goal as I would also like to do new things – You know I’ve never been deep sea fishing or even been out on a boat in the Gulf…
• I am determined to help make two other business endeavors absolutely amazingly successful – shameless plug —> Geek Is Single and Seek.ly
• Make new friends – who couldn’t use a few more awesome people in their lives anyways?
• Tell the people in my life more often how much they inspire, motivate, and/ or simply make my days a little brighter as often as I can.
• Travel more
• Stress less
• Laugh and smile more
• Say no more often – I know many people can relate to why this is important.
• Complain less
• Say please and thank you more often

What goals do you have?

We’ve all been there; liked a page hoping for some great content that sadly never seems to happen. You end up getting tired of seeing the junk spewing from said fanpage and simply just want to unlike the page.

Does this sound like a familiar story to any of you?

Unliking the page is as simple as visiting said fanpage, scrolling down and looking for “unlike” to the left of the page. Click and say goodbye to unwanted posts in your Facebook stream.

… another year like 2011.

I want nothing more than continued success for not only myself and my company, but for friends, family and business partners. I want to continue to learn and grow. I want to continue to be a part of  the lives of my dear old friends as well as make new ones. I want to

give back when and where I can and most importantly… All I really want for Christmas is for everyone in my life to know that in one way or another they have made an impact in my life and where I am today is a result of that impact. From business partnerships to the people that have motivated me throughout the year, events that I’ve been a part of organizing, campaigns I’ve worked on and clientsI’ve secured…..

I have truly been blessed and am grateful.

So yeah, to have another year like this one would be on the top of my list this holiday season – unless you know where I can get a yet to be announced or released iPhone 5.

Facebook is always changing up their TOS and this, my friends…. THIS is absolutely aggravating at times. Having to read up on the rules each time I launch a new contest is rather tedious, but very much worth the extra time as you never know if someone will report your contest or if Facebook will notice that you are not running the contest within their TOS.

Here are a few tips to make sure you are running a legit contest through Facebook

Facebook TOS

Bookmark and read up on their terms of service as they could change at any given moment.

3rd Party Apps

It seems SO simple to simply have fans upload their picture or whatever it might be to your fanpage wall and have them accumulate likes in order to win, but this is completely against their TOS. Always use an approved third party app. If you have less than 500 fans at contest launch I would suggest using OfferPOP as it’s free until you reach that 500 threshold.

Ad Campaigns

Attract new eyeballs to your contest (and fanpage) by running an ad through Facebook. Be sure to have the ad link to the contest landing tab.

Using Events To Promote Contests/ Sweepstakes

Create a Facebook event and invite friends that you think would be interested in the contest. Be sure to encourage, but not demand sharing with their following and connections.

Blog About It

Use your blog and website to promote the contest – social sharing of your blog is also encouraged.

Using Other Platforms

Twitter, LinkedIn, DailyBooth, YouTube, Plurk etc…. These are all great ways to also promote your contest.

Email

Do an email blast. Make the email is specifically about what they can win and how to enter. Don’t use the blast to promote your services. Get them to like your page where all of your business promotions and content happen.

Bonus Tip

It may seem like second nature to give away some of your company’s services or products, but unless these are in high demand and well known you might want to take a different approach. Try giving away Amazon gift cards or if it’s local something to or from a well known local restaurant or store or give away a product that you know anyone would die to have (ipads, iphones and/ or anything tech related). When you send the winner their gift you can also send that complimentary service or product as a bonus so they’re pleasantly surprised when they get their package.

Do you run contests often? What tips or advice would you give?