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Automate your social media marketing

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One of the biggest time wasters for small business is social media marketing. Not that social media marketing is a time waster. But constantly feeding the beast can consume an awful lot of your time without ever showing much benefit.

Many small businesses attend seminars or read articles on the power of social media. You have to be on Linkedin. You have to be on Twitter. You have to be on Facebook. You have to make videos. You have to have a blog.

Yes, you do have to have most of these things to market yourself effectively online.

But what happens is that folks walk out of individual seminars or click away from a marketing article and create accounts for each social media site. They then start a blog and post a few articles.

Awesome.

Two weeks later, they discover that they are spending all their time writing content and posting it separately to all these accounts.

And nothing is happening.

The missing element is that you need to get all these different worlds working together. And the best way to do that is to automate a lot of the process, so the only real effort is creating your compelling content.

So how do you automate the process? Well creative use of RSS feeds is one way.

A few weeks back I wrote about the “Not-so-secret Google tool you should use” in regards to Feedburner.

Well each of the social media big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) can use your feeds to automatically update your status.

How much time would that save you?

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

For the purpose of this article, I’ll assume you already have an Facebook Business page – similar to this one from one Linkedin sales trainer, Kurt Shaver.

What we used to connect Kurt’s blog, Twitter and YouTube accounts to auto-update his Facebook page was an app called RSS Graffiti.

So now Kurt only has to concern himself with creating videos, writing new blog posts and keeping up with his tweeting – things he would be doing anyway.

And what happens is anyone who has “Liked” his page, will then see these updates on their Facebook newsfeed the next time they log in.

We also set Feedburner to auto update Twitter, which also auto updates his  Linkedin status.

RSS Updates and LinkedIn

To update your personal LinkedIn profile with your latest blog posting you can install one of these two apps Wordress or Blog Link. Both do the same job. They take the RSS feed from your posts and connect them to your LinkedIn profile.

From your Linkedin company page you can also add your Feedburner feed to display and distribute your blog posts to folks who are following you.

So, if there is a lesson to be learned for everyone when it comes to setting up your social media, it’s that using the free tools all around you will save you time and move your business into the social media arena, without causing you to burn through hours of your day updating everything manually.

Using online videos as search engine marketing promos

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Videos. Videos. Videos. If the internet was a town, videos would be the talk of it.

I’ll confess, I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube – except for when I need to get a quick walk through on some gadget I can’t figure out *cough* *cough* BlackBerry Playbook.

But I am always telling my clients that they need more videos.

Of course the question I get back is “why?”

The simple reason – and the reason for most of the things I recommend – is search engine success.

Increasingly if you type a search phrase into Google, you’ll get videos on the results page.

If you’re a professional speaker, actor, pilates instructor etc., it’s a great way to get yourself onto the first page.

Of course just making a video won’t automatically bring you to the top of the results page. You also need to optimize the title, description and tags to fight your way to the top.

Do do this, Google gives you a neat little keyword tool.

Use this to find keywords that have low competition and high search rates.

Let’s say you’re a professional speaker.

That’s a very specific phrase with some very high competition. But Google gives you suggestions around that term, along with how often they are searched and how competitive they are. By doing a simple search by competiviness, you’ll quickly find some words and phrases for your video titles, descriptions and tags.

 

From that list I pulled:

  • an inspirational speech
  • motivational speeches
  • national speakers
  • find a speaker
  • motivational leaders

Title: An inspirational Speech for America

Description: https://www.shortcircuitmedia.com Aidan Crawford is one of the most sought after national speakers. His speeches are both motivational and inspirational . If you are looking to find a speaker, Aidan Crawford is one of the most sought after leaders in the business.

Tags: motivational speeches, inspirational speech, nationals speakers, find a speaker, motivational leaders

You can use this same formula for any business video.

Bonus tip: While you’re logged into your YouTube account, go to Settings>>Sharing and connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This will then send out your YouTube videos automatically to these social media outlets as they are posted.

Extra bonus tip: Connect your Youtube feed to Linkedin.

To create an RSS feed from your YouTube channel, it’s pretty straight forward.  just take the following URL:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/yourchannelname/uploads

and replace the ”yourchannelname” with your YouTube channel name.

Very simple stuff. Good luck!

Linkedin Marketing for Small Business

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Every site – including this one – has multiple share buttons that allow visitors to share content with friends and colleagues.

With over 700 million users, Facebook gets a lot of attention.

But what do you share on Facebook? I know for me, I’m likely to share newspaper articles, pictures and videos from YouTube that amuse or entertain me.

What I’m not likely to share is a link to help you market your business website.

Don’t get offended. My friends and family just don’t care about professional speakers, consultants, or widget factories. So why would I pass your site along to them?

Now I might be inclined to share your site on Twitter, if there is something interesting, that my followers might also find worth looking at.

So that leaves Google+ and Linkedin. Now I don’t use Google+ very much at all. But I can see how it could become very valuable if it ever hits critical mass. Especially since it actually does effect your ranking on the big engine.

Linkedin marketing is a much more practical way to promote your business in the social media world.

Simply by placing a Linkedin button on each page of your site, you are inviting visitors to share your site with professional associates and groups.

If you are a small business having your blog post or product end up on a group, or shared to a number of professional contacts by a visitor, has the potential to be a very profitable endorsement.

You can even set up your social media machine to automatically post your content to Linkedin by tying your RSS feed to your professional profile and Twitter account.

So what are you waiting for? Here is the link to add the Linkedin Share Button to your site.

https://developer.linkedin.com/plugins/share-button

If you need help implementing this, you can always send me a note.

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Social media and internet marketing services

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With over 12 years experience in social media and internet marketing, Short Circuit Media will help you grow your business with integrated marketing strategies to bring more qualified leads to your site, and help you move those visitors into the sales funnel.

We have options to fit into virtually any budget. Here are the big six. And if there is something else you’re looking for…just ask.

Marketing and Coaching Services for Consultants, Speakers and Trainers

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BOOK A 30 MINUTE EXPLORATORY CALL

Why wouldn’t you work with a marketing firm with over 10 years experience helping Consultants, Speakers and Trainers succeed?

Prospecting clients is hard enough without having to take care of your own marketing.

If you are a professional speaker, trainer or consultant struggling to master marketing, you are probably wasting time that could be better used prospecting and qualifying clients.

Short Circuit Media works with speakers, trainers and consultants who are too busy to do their own marketing, need more strategy than a VA brings to the table, and don’t want to add a full time marketing person to the team.


There are a million different companies swimming in the same pool offering virtually identical services.  So the key is not look for the best – most are pretty good – but rather the agency that works best for you. If you are a speaker, trainer or consultant we may just be the agency you’re looking for!

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Here‘s how we’ll work to grow your business

UNDERSTAND


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STRATEGIZE


marketing-strategy

EXECUTE


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SUPPORT


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We take the time to fully understand  your business model. What is it you do? Who are your clients? Why are they going to give you a big fat check for speaking at their event or training their people?

These are important questions that you need to know. And if you don’t know them, that’s where we’re going to start. By helping you define your message and align it to an audience, we will make you successful.

From there we’ll present you with a number of strategies that will help get you in front of the decision-makers. This may include a:

  • Website makeover
  • Social Media Integration
  • blog writing, newsletters, podcasting
  • Targeted advertising on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook
  • Content development

You get the point…

Here’s where the fun begins. After we tell you what needs to be done, we’ll do the hard work for you!

We implement the strategies we’ve come up for you; taking care of the technology and arranging the resources to make what we’ve discussed happen.

Simple as that.

For many clients, this is when the relationship takes off.

Once we have a marketing plan implemented, you can choose to take on the challenge of keeping it going yourself, use your existing staff or you can retain us as your very own marketing department; composing and deploying eblasts, writing blogs, sending out newsletters, producing podcasts and assisting in product development, while helping you create and implement new strategies to make your speaking, consulting or training business grow.

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