Social Media: Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You

Are you struggling with social media engagement? Struggling with building your audience? You have thousands of Twitter followers, maybe even 50 or 100 people who have clicked “like” on your Facebook page.

However, even with this early success you’ve seen in social media, people just simply aren’t engaging with your brand? You are not feeling the social media love that others talk about.

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Audience Doesn’t Like You

1. You are not engaging. You spend all day listening or retweeting. You are not genuinely engaging with your existing network. You are on the sidelines watching the game go on.
Tip: Engage. Have a conversation. Get in the game.

2. You are not providing value. Your website may lack content that resonates with your audience. Your tweets are well let’s say, tweets. They look, smell and act like everyone else.  There are more than 10 Billion Tweets sent  in a year.  Tweeting a simple tweet that looks and smells like every other tweeter will get you no where.
Tip: Provide value. Inspire and connect with your audience. Get in their head and learn who they are and what they need.  Provide content that helps them solve real business problems. Provide tips that help them move their business forward with new skills.

3. You are not following people back. If you have people following you and you are sitting on your arrogant Twitter mountain thinking you don’t have to follow them you might want to think again. This thinking drives me nuts. Show the love. Be a good friend.
Tip: Develop a follow-back strategy. There are different schools of thought on this. My personal recommendation is at minimum make an effort to follow people back. Don’t sit high on your Twitter mountain with the expectation everyone owes you something. They don’t.

4. You are not a good social media friend. You don’t retweet. You don’t thank people who show you love. You never follow back. You don’t comment on other blogs in a genuine way. You don’t thank people who comment on your blog.
Tip: Show the social love. Genuinely engage and make your audience and network know that you care about them. At minimum let them know you know they are there! Often times if I don’t have time to thank all of my retweeters or send a series of #FF follow friday recommendations on Twitter I will send a couple tweets during the day thanking my network.  I let them know I appreciate them and all the social love they gave me!

5. You are boring. Sorry folks but it could be you are just boring. I am seeing many people who have a boring profile picture, boring content. They are the same ones who sit all day and retweet news feeds of mortgage rates or market news. They are providing no value and not engaging.
Tip: Brand yourself.  Understand your audience. Who are they and what do they need. Who are you and what can you offer them. Give your business and brand a personality. Dare to stand above the norm.  If you shoot for status quo that is exactly what you will receive, if you’re lucky. It may be less.

6. Your website stinks. If you are boring, your content  is boring and your website stinks you have three strikes and you’re probably already out of the social media game.
Tip: Social media is about conversation. Engage in conversation with interesting content, design and brand.   Hire a web developer and freshen up your website.  If you don’t have the funds to do such then find a self-help site or teach yourself WordPress blog at minimum.

7. Your social profiles stink. If your Twitter background is the default and your Facebook Fan Page has no customization you once again are shooting for status quo.
Tip: Hire a consultant or an agency to spice up your profiles. If you don’t have the funds the leverage an off the shelf service. There are several Facebook Fan Page engines you can use yourself that are affordable.

8. Your Facebook Fan Page is all about you. What are you doing to engage your audience?
Tip: Engage your Facebook audience.  Have fun.  Ask them questions? Do some research. Ask them what they need, what they want.  Leverage the discussion tab to invite people to introduce themselves.

9. People don’t know the real you. You are hiding behind an avatar (social media profile photo). You are not sharing the real you. You are using corporate speak. You aren’t using video, no interesting blogs.
Tip: Let yourself shine. Try out video.  Come out behind the avatar and let people get to know you.  Don’t be afraid of video.  If you use video you will attract people who like you, people who want to business with you.

10. You are afraid. Because of what I said above you are afraid to come out and play in social media.  You have been intimidated by the mean blog posts that are surfacing the net on social media gurus, wannabe gurus etc.
Tip: Don’t let the bullies scare you! Be confident. Have fun. If you don’t you are never going to make it in social media, business or life.

This article is published by socialmediatoday.com, click here to read the original article.

Facebook Adds “Social Context” Metric For Advertisers

Yesterday, Facebook began displaying a new metric for advertisers called “Social Context”, which “tells you the percentage of your ad’s impressions where the viewer saw at least one friend who liked your Page, event, application, or ad.” It’s a valuable metric, however based on our tests, the correlation between a high “social context” and high click through rates are strong, yet not perfect. For example, we were able to find ad campaigns which had very low social context, but extremely high click through rates due to effective targeting.

Facebook has let Page administrators (as well as event admins and application developers) target the friends of those people who are already “connected” to their Page, event, or application when creating ads for a while now. You can do so by using the connection targeting when creating ads, as pictured in the image below.

For example, at AllFacebook, we could develop a set of ads which targets the friends of all those people who are connected to AllFacebook.com. If we promote something that’s on Facebook, there will be a “Like” link and a list of the user’s names included since we decided to take advantage of Facebook’s connections feature. We can then develop ad copy which takes advantage of this feature and looks to improve the performance of those advertisements since we know their friends are listed below.

While “social context” has mixed results, leveraging copy that takes advantage of the social aspect of the ads will most likely increase performance. This could be effectively determined through some basic split testing, however we’ll wait to post the results until after we perform a more exhaustive study of this new metric. Nielsen has already performed their own analysis and have concluded that “social context” (having a user’s friends’ names included) boosts ad recall by 10 percent, awareness by 4 percent, and purchase intent by 2 percent.

While we personally don’t measure our own ads based on “awareness” and “ad recall”, we’ll now be able to more effectively determine how social context impacts overall ad performance.

This article is published by AllFacebook, click here to read the original article.

Mobile Twitter Use Explodes

Mobile usage of the Twitter social network has increased more than 60% in the past five months, according to data from Twitter.

Mobile Twitter Usage Grows
The total number of mobile Twitter users grew 62% between April and September 2010, according to statistics compiled by Twitter. In addition, since that time, the number of Twitter users who start out using Twitter via mobile device has risen from 5% to 16%. Furthermore, close to half (46%) of all Twitter users at least occasionally access the network via mobile device.

Twitter cites its April 2010 purchase of the Tweetie iPhone application, which it turned into the Twitter for iPhone app, as the catalyst for this explosive growth. In addition, Twitter has partnered with mobile OEM RIM on a BlackBerry app and also developed an Android app since that time.

Twitter.com Remains Top App
Tracking log-ins by unique Twitter visitors in the past 30 days, Twitter finds that the main Twitter.com site is still by far the most popular Twitter application, used by 78% of visitors (percentages add up to more than 100% because a single visitor may use multiple log-in methods).

The mobile m.twitter.com site followed with 14% usage. Other popular mobile means of accessing Twitter included SMS and Twitter for iPhone (8% each) and Twitter for BlackBerry (7%).

Mobile Website, SMS Beat Smartphones
As this data shows, while smartphone clients are important, there are even more people who use the mobile Twitter web site and/or SMS for mobile Twitter access. In addition, third-party clients continue to play an important role for many people, with what Twitter terms a “disproportionate” amount of the traffic from Twitter running through such tools.

Smartphones Drive Twitter Adoption in US and Europe
An analysis of Twitter usage via mobile for the six mobile markets currently reported by comScore (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain and Italy) revealed that Twitter is gaining adoption among smartphone users.

In the US, 8.3% of smartphone users (4.2 million people) accessed Twitter.com in a month via the browser on their mobile devices, outpacing each of the European markets. In Europe, 2.8% of smartphone users overall accessed Twitter.com (1.7 million users), with the UK experiencing the strongest penetration in the region at 5.8%, followed by Germany with 3.1% and France with 2.1%.

This article is published by marketingcharts.com, click here to read the original article.

Small Business Leaders Prefer ‘Passive’ Social Media – For Now

[tweetmeme source=”itimarketing”]

While the concept of “social media” brings to mind images of active online discussions, a new study of small business social media use by Business.com finds that small business leaders currently show a strong preference for “passive” social media sources of business-relevant information — such as viewing webinars or reading online ratings, reviews and company blog posts — over those that require more active interaction with others. However, the use of social media resources requiring more active participation, such as asking business-related questions through Twitter or online question-and-answer forums, is set to rise among small business leaders as they gain access to effective online business networks.

These are the top five social media resources among study participants:

1. Webinars / Podcasts

Small business leaders find webinars and podcasts to be highly useful for learning new skills, ongoing professional training and/or researching industries, products and services without the expense and time commitment required to attend seminars in person.

2. Ratings & Reviews

Whether looking for the most useful software, best business book on a particular topic or qualifying potential products to stock in retail stores, small business leaders find that online ratings and reviews provide valuable input into the business buying process.

3. Company / Brand Pages on Social Networking Sites

With online social networking becoming mainstream, and as companies rush to establish a corporate and/or brand presence on these sites, many small business leaders turn to social networking sites for the latest information from important vendors.

4. Company Blogs

An oldstand by in the world of social media, small business leaders praise company blogs — at least, those that are “well written, current and with good thought leadership articles” — as great sources of information about business-relevant products, services and the underlying character of a company. Increasingly, small business leaders are connecting to company blog content through social networking sites.

5. Social Media Search

While some of the business-relevant information on social media sites can be found through general search engines, a great deal cannot. Realizing this, over half of small business leaders using social media search for business-relevant information directly on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Business.com Answers, SlideShare and many more.

A more detailed look at hundreds of write-in comments from the study suggests that business social media is definitely not about “socializing.” Instead, small business leaders judge the value of different social media resources based on how efficiently they can find what they need. More passive social media, like webinars, product/service ratings, company “fan” pages and blog posts, can be relatively quick ways to find basic, business-relevant information.

Read the original article here.