When I first got into social media marketing, I admit that I really had no idea what I was doing. I had never used sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ before. Now, I’m no Luddite, but I just never had a reason to use these sites. I don’t need to know what everyone is doing at all hours of the day, and they don’t need to know it about me. However, I found I was in desperate need of social media marketing etiquette when I began publishing my novels and had no idea how to market them outside of ads and blog spots. (Which I also had to educate myself on.)
Everyone told me to get into social media. Now, once I made all these accounts, I had no idea what to do. I barely knew what a tweet was. Sure I dabbled a bit, and eventually got the hang of hashtags, but I was at my wits end making it work for me as a marketing tool. I ended up buying a book on ebook marketing that basically told me to shout into the ether.
I’m not proud of this, but I turned into a spammer without realizing it. I scheduled tweets for every hour on the hour. I packed my tweets with terrible hashtags. Not only that, but I would friend people for the sole purpose of having them friend me back. Sure, I had about 10,000 friends by the end of the first month, but they weren’t “friends.” Or followers, I guess. Either way, they had no interest in my tweets. Or my status updates. Or my whatevers. In fact, they got sick of them pretty quickly. Instead of boosting my sales or seeing my tweets retweeted until the end of time, I steadily began to lose followers. In some cases, users completely blocked me from communicating with them.
What had happened? My friend soon told me she was this close to defriending me because she couldn’t take it anymore. She said, “If I didn’t know you so well, I would be inspired to never buy a book from you. Because if this is the way you do business, then I can only imagine the quality of your writing.” That took me aback and made me rethink a few things. If even my own friends didn’t want to be friends with me online because I was so annoying, then what was I telling total strangers? I was mortified. I promptly stopped for a while and reassessed what I was doing.
I studied popular authors. I noticed that they rarely promoted their own works, and instead engaged their followers in conversation. By George, they were people! You may laugh, but this was an interesting concept to me. I tried it out. Soon I had real friends on social media, and they actually bought my books. Then we would talk about my books.
I cringe when I think about how I started of marketing online. But now that I know what I know, I want to make sure that other authors don’t make the same mistakes I did.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE >> Measurement And Planning In Social Media Marketing
Overcoming Your Fear of Social Media Marketing
What stops you from becoming a giant in your industry using social media marketing? The answer is fear. Think about all the places that you could use to increase your business if you just put aside your fears and tried. Here are a few of our favorites:
• YouTube
What type of content produces the biggest results on most of these social media sites? Video beats any other type of content. This is where the fear factor hits for most people. They cannot imagine sitting in front of a camera and talking for five to thirty minutes to share a story. The idea of doing a video makes their hands sweat and their heart pound. You need to get over it. If you want to become a big success, using social media marketing you must use video. Let us talk about some ways for you to overcome your fear and hesitation.
The first suggestion is just start. Turn on your webcam and start recording some horrible videos. Do it as simple video blog and upload them to YouTube. You can even joke in your videos about how terrible you look today and how your message is rambling. The important thing is to do it. One of the top leaders in the network-marketing world recently issued a challenge to his entire organization to create videos for 90 days straight. Imagine how much improvement you would make in 90 days of doing a video blog on YouTube.
A video blog allows you to relax and just talk about anything. You do not have to stay focused on your business. You can share about a video you watched, the book you are reading, or something that happened in your life. This is your playground to improve your skills and at the same time to start creating a bigger presence in social media. We recommend sharing your videos on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites to increase your viewers.
Along with doing a video blog, you should start doing a tutorial or sales video several times each week. Create content people will enjoy watching. These videos can be done using screen recording software like Camtasia. We recommend using your own voice to narrate your videos since it adds a personal touch and helps expand your authority and impact in your market.
Yes, we claimed we were going to help you overcome your fear. The only way you are going to overcome your fear is to start making the videos, sharing them, and enjoy the embarrassment. You are going to make some bad videos the first few weeks. How do we know that? We made terrible videos for weeks. We felt the sweat. Our voice shook as we talked. Our hands trembled as we tried to focus on what we wanted to say. After we recorded videos for 21 days, things started to change. We started feeling relaxed. Our confidence grew. The only way you will overcome your fear of video in your social media marketing is to dive head first into recording videos. It may be uncomfortable for a few weeks. Once your confidence grows, your marketing impact will skyrocket.
