Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

How to Build an Online Following

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Speaker

I was honored this year to be asked to come present at the Florida REALTORS® Conference as a social media speaker on how to build an online following. I shared with the group 9 tips to building an online following properly.  You can view the entire presentation at the end, but first here are the main points:

Social Media Speaker1.  Don’t buy fans– The only place you should ever consider buying any type of fan online is at amazon and it should only be the type needed to cool you down on a hot summer day.

2.  Build a good mousetrap- Being on all these social networks & connected with thousands of people is pointless if you do not have a good home base blog/website to direct that traffic to.  In real estate, consumers are mainly looking for three things when visiting your site.  You need to have clear call to action buttons in place to allow the viewer to search homes, find out what’s my home worth, and learn easily how’s the market.

3.  Be yourself-  It’s ok to be genuine & open with your audience online.  When you share the real you it makes it easier for them to connect with you as a person.  Share some humor and have fun.  The consumer will like you more for it.

4.  STOP selling-  Social networks were not created as selling platforms.  If all you are doing is broadcasting that over & over you are not using the platforms properly.  Remember, the first part of the phrase is “social.”

5.  Talk about others rather than yourself-  If you spend more time communicating with others and talking to them your business will be much more successful online and you will build a much larger online following.

6.  Ask questions-  Instead of just making statements, try asking questions.  By doing so you are encouraging those connected to you to get more involved and want to interact.

7.  Ask people to join-  Add call to action buttons to your site, to your email signature and other various tools to give people the ability to connect with you.  What you do NOT want to do is start begging them to join constantly as that becomes annoying and will push people away.

8.  Stop automation- I’ve written on the concerns with automating everything, so I don’t really need to get into it that deep.  Just realize that each & every network runs and acts differently.

9.  Learn how the tools work before using-   Before you begin using a new techy tool you just found, it is really important that you take the time to learn how it works and also some best practices so that you do not make yourself look bad in the eyes of those who are using the platform already.

You can view the full presentation below on building an online following:

Building an online following

If you would like to book me as a social media speaker at your next event, simply contact me.

Klout Perks From The Weather Channel

Social Media Advisors

This past week I received my first Klout Perks via the mail. I’ve received a few online perks in the past including one for Spotify which I absolutely love.  For those unfamiliar with what Klout is, let me give you a quick summary:

Klout is a site that connects to the various social networks you use on a regular basis to determine what type of social influence you have.  I am not really sure though how it can accurately measure influence as I know many people with a small following on social networks but are very influential to that small group.  Then you have others that have a large following of people who do nothing but automate broadcasting out.  What I have noticed is that one of the factors they use to determine how influential you are is how often you are updating things and the size of your following.

For example Beyonce who has over 1.6 million followers on Twitter has never once tweeted but still has a very high Klout score.  Is she truly influential on the social network herself?  Or is it just that others talk about her? (a lot) Either way, Klout perks are there to reward those they feel are influential in social networks with various gifts and rewards.

Nevertheless, here is an unboxing of my recent perk which came courtesy of The Weather Channel.  Thanks!

Twylah

Twitter Applications

Ok, so you tweet a lot.  You have thousands of peeps following you.  You share valuable information on a regular basis.  Your tweets get retweeted to millions.  You think you are really a BIG deal on the twittersphere.  That is until you meet Tom.

<insert overly dramatic music>

Tom TOM: I haven’t seen you online lately – are you out of the business?

YOU: No way!  I’m mainly on Twitter these days. I tweet every 36.8 seconds on average.  Mostly really good stuff too!  I’m sending pictures, links, and even videos out to all my followers.  Now that I think about it, I also tweet what I’m having for breakfast.  Oh, and then occasionally a cool quote I just saw from someone else. Ok, I do that a lot. And yes I do ReTweet almost everything so and so says.  But in between all that are some really good stuff.

TOM: Yeah thanks. I tried Twitter once, I didn’t get it. What do I care what people are having for breakfast?  Sorry, I don’t have time for Twitter.  It’s going to be Facebook or websites only for me.  It’s been nice knowing you…

Have you ever run into someone who just doesn’t ‘get’ Twitter?  Try hard as you might, they’re never going to either?

Mike's TwylahWhat if you could put all the meaningful tweets in a single webpage?  That would be something Tom might read, right?  What if you could organize them by topics?  That would make it easy for people not on twitter to still get the valuable info your tweets contained.  Now, what if you could do all this all automatically?

That’s Twylah!  Twylah takes all my tweets and sorts them.  It sorts the content into categories that it creates.  If I start tweeting about a certain topic, Twylah will know and create a category for it.  Example: Tweets with a #REBCORL hashtag?  Tom doesn’t need to know anything about a hashtag – he can just go to that category on the menu bar.  Here’s my Page: http://www.twylah.com/MikeMueller

This will make Tom really happy.  It doesn’t include the mind numbing crap about what I had for breakfast.  It takes the mess of my Twitter stream, filters it and arranges it beautifully into a single page.

topics

Better yet, I have control.  I can hide certain topics and push others.  That means my love for tweeting Bieberism’s doesn’t have to stop!

Twylah also has a Power Tweet feature.  Essentially, it sends a message out to twitter as you with a link back to Twylah.  There the message can contain much more than 140 characters.  I’m just starting to experiment with the Power Tweet button.  Matter of fact – I’ll use it to promote this post!

Kelly Kim Want to get your own?  Start here: http://www.twylah.com/ to request an invite.
HINT: It also might help to follow Kelly Kim on Twitter, she’s @Twylah (naturally).

Photo credit: WordRidden

My First Unboxing Video- iomega 2TB MiniMax External Hard Drive

Video

Unboxing videos, do you find them interesting?  Personally, I enjoy watching them sometimes before making an online purchase.  Since I cannot always hold the actual item I’m buying in my hands ahead of time, this is a great way for me to learn quickly what is inside the package when it arrives.  It also helps me to get the opinions of others out there and their thoughts on a specific item before I hit the purchase button.

However, on the other hand, there are some out there that find unboxing videos to be stupid.  One of my good friends is one of these people.  I sent him a link to the video below and his comment to me was, “That’s 5+ minutes I want back!”  He finds no value in them and doesn’t really like them.   Nevertheless, I just shot my first unboxing video of the iomega MiniMax 2TB External Hard Drive*.  I purchased this external hard drive to be the storage device for all of my video & photos that I am shooting.

So, take a minute to watch the video & tell me what you think.  Would like me to do more unboxing videos?

Lastly, the final reason I shot this video is because I wanted to get more practice in using my new Canon t3i DSLR Camera with 18MM-135MM*.  I haven’t yet mastered using this device and figure the only way I am going to get better at shooting video with it is to continue to practice & try different settings.  So, I hope you enjoyed the unboxing and found at least a little bit of value in it.  Tell me your thoughts in the comments below!

*Links marked above are affiliate links with Amazon.  I will receive a small sum of money on purchases made through these links.