Bob Scott, of The Progressive Accountant, asked me a month ago if I could summarize some tips on social media marketing.

Quite frankly I think the social media term is way overdone.

I consider it with the same eye-roll as I used to greet talk about those who proclaimed themselves “webmasters”.

In other words – if you can fog a mirror you can call yourself either of these.

The million dollar question many people have is – how do you make money online? What works. What doesn’t. And what’s just a waste of time and money.

Do people buy software on Facebook (No, but a Facebook friend messaged me last week to ask about taking over their support, another messaged me two months ago and we provided an assessment).

I’d never met either of these people previously.

Can online social media work? I think so.

Bob summarized my top tips in a post on his site – I think it’s worth a read. Especially the last two paragraphs.

Regularly participate in new social activities – always with an eye toward whether these activities will produce qualified traffic to your web site. It takes some time to see results so be patient.

If an activity is not working, move on. However, be sure you are measuring site traffic as this is the only way to know if your activities are working. There are two services that you might utilize:

1. Google Analytics = Free, but not real time.
2. StatCounter = Not free, but real time.

When it comes to using social media, here’s what I find works:
1. Be consistent. Set goals to post content regularly (this is key).
2. Measure your website traffic.
3. Watch what others do before you jump right in.
4. Watch what tech bloggers adopt and talk about (techmeme.com is a great site for this).
5. You don’t need to do everything tech bloggers do, but they are excellent early indicators of new technology.

Here’s what never worked for me:
1. Overtly selling.
2. Spamming discussion groups with “please call me I can help” type posts.
3. Sending email newsletters with lots of advertising (or any ads). I found that people tuned out.

 

http://www.theprogressiveaccountant.com/running-a-firm/practical-tips-for-using-social-media.html