The following is a guest post full of great tips by Hank Coleman, publisher of the popular personal finance blog, Money Q&A.
Many brand new bloggers often look like amateurs on social media because they make simple mistakes. Don’t fall into that trap. Want to look like a professional blogger or brand? You can’t make the simple mistakes then.
There are a few of what I would call “no brainers” tips and techniques for social media that all aspiring pro bloggers and web professionals should follow. Not a pro blogger? You should fake it until you make it! Strive to be like the big guys.
After meeting up with other bloggers, following them on social media, and looking through profiles, I guess there are a few social media basics that may not be so basic after all.
But, these simple mistakes are costing you not only in credibility but also traffic and revenue. You have worked hard to develop a plan with your social media marking. Make sure you capitalize on that plan. Stop leaving money and potential followers on the table.
Here are a few easy mistakes on social media that you can quickly fix to increase your blog’s traffic and revenue and look like a pro.
Your Instagram Profile Is Set to Private
If you are trying to drive traffic and awareness to your blog or business through Instagram, why are you making it harder for your readers to see your work? No one should have his or her Instagram account set to private. If you want to protect your privacy, you should have a second Instagram account that is strictly personal and private.
In fact, you should only focus on business, marketing, and your niche on your professional Instagram account. Save all of your family pictures, dog photos, and vacation shots for your personal Instagram account. Don’t mix the two.
Also, when people with private profiles tag posts, they won’t appear publicly on hashtag pages. If you want new followers to find you, you have tag your photos and get on the hashtag pages.
Unprofessional Logo or Image on Twitter and Instagram
Branding is important. It’s also important that you are consistent across all of your social media accounts. Do you have a logo for your business or blog? Is it on all of your social media accounts? It should be.
Far too many bloggers, both professional and hobbyist looking to earn a side income, still have the plain Twitter egg showing instead of a logo. Or, they don’t have a bio or a cover picture on Twitter or Facebook.
You can easily create these simple fixes that add to your professional look on social media platforms. It doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. You can find many great sources for logos and cover pictures on the internet for under $100. Or, you can create your own through pre-made templates on sites like Canva.
Posting Irrelevant Things on Social Media
I don’t care about what you had for breakfast this morning….unless you’re food blogger of course. And, if you’re in my niche, personal finance, I really don’t care about your personal life, family pictures, food preferences, vacation pictures, and the like. I care about learning about investing, retirement, and money matters.
I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. You should have two accounts on your social media, Twitter and Instagram, one for personal and one for your website. You also need to have a page dedicated to your business or blog on Facebook. Don’t use your personal page. The same goes for Pinterest too!
You shouldn’t post personal pictures and articles on your business account. The same can be said for liking pictures and following accounts as well. The social media platforms’ algorithms are watching what you like, retweet, follow, and share.
Do you want to see more irrelevant posts and pictures in your feed? Then, continue liking and retweeting off topic pictures and articles. Big brother and the algorithms are watching.
The best thing that you can do from your blog account on social media is to stay on topic and on message. What’s your website about? Make sure that you are posting, liking, and commenting on other accounts, articles, and pictures in your niche.
Posting Too Often
The number one reason for people to unfollow someone is that they post too much. Find the sweet spot for your audience and stick to it. Do you only need to post once a day to Instagram? Twice a day? Maybe! Find what works for you and what your audience wants.
But, if you want to loose followers fast, post back to back to back pictures. More is not always better on social media. I have seen new personal finance bloggers recently posting multiple pictures of their vacation in the Mojave Desert right in a row. What does that have to do with investing and finance? Stay on topic with your niche and only post once a day – or twice at most until you have a huge following.
You also have to be mindful of automatic posting, retweeting, and the like based on your RSS feed. When bloggers post a new article on their site, it goes out on their RSS feed automatically.
I once had multiple automation tools tweeting based on my RSS feed. I started to get friends complaining that my email newsletter service, Facebook, and a Twitter automation plugins tweeted the same article headline and link three times in a row in rapid succession. The same can also be said for multiple pictures of the same image posting in your Pinterest feed.
Keep the automated posting to a minimum and monitor your social media feeds to ensure that you’re not posting back-to-back tweets, pictures, or comments in rapid succession.
404 Errors and Broken Links
Most professional and hobbyist bloggers are on social media in order to drive traffic back to their website or blogs. One of the fastest ways to thwart that effort is to have a broken link that doesn’t point back to your website.
When you’ve only got one link in your bio on Instagram to make an impression on your followers, you must ensure that it points back to your site and doesn’t give them a 404 Error. Double and triple check your links to make sure that they are working correctly and landing back on the page of your site that you intended.
Social media is fun. But, it’s also big business. Most bloggers, professional or not, depend on social media to drive traffic to their sites, which ultimately translates into income.
But, far too often new bloggers are making simple mistakes on social media. That doesn’t have to be you though. With a little work and attention to detail, you can stand out amongst your peers and look like a professional blogger on social media.
Did I miss any other simple errors that you’ve seen on social media or that you’ve made early on in your blogging career? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.
Hank Coleman is the publisher of the popular personal finance blog, Money Q&A, where he writes about retirement, investing, and other personal finance topics. Be sure to follow him on Twitter and Instagram as well.
I just read a feature piece on Maurice Ashley, a Chess Grandmaster. He made a TEDed talk about how sometimes working backwards is the best way to solve a problem.
This process is known as retrograde analysis and I’m surprised how little I use it.
Part of the reason I want to write a post about this is to hopefully remind myself to include it explicitly when I am problem solving.
It basically works by starting with an outcome and working backwards from there to the current state of the problem.
I see so much use for this in my own business from project planning to client management.
In some ways it’s similar to setting goals and milestones, but with those I typically set them and then try to build out the steps (forward) to get there.
What I like about the process of retrograde analysis is that I set the goal or outcome and then ask, what has to happen just before we reach this outcome… and just before this, and so on all the way back.
I suspect new insights occur similar to the examples Mr. Ashley gives in his presentation.
Instead of outlining all the skills or steps necessary to cover a topic, how much more valuable is it to identify how the successful student is different from the complete beginner.
What does a successful student/practitioner know? How do they approach problems and what new capabilities do they now have?
This approach makes the planning process less about covering material and more about developing capabilities… getting the right mix of mindset and technical skill (which is where most training falls short).
This is equally valid for client work. What should a successful end game look like?
How about something like this: A predictable content and creative schedule communicated to a known audience producing reliable sales and leads.
Then work backwards!
If you’re like me, then you need paradigm shifts from time to time in order to make progress and overcome the feeling of being stuck in a rut.
This was just the shift I needed, so I thought I’d share it.
If you’re interested in learning more about retrograde analysis and Maurice Ashley’s story, read the full article by Justin Bariso here: http://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/a-chess-grandmaster-shares-an-effective-trick-for-solving-any-problembr-.html
“Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made.” – Orison Swett Marden
I’ll entertain you with two cautionary tales. One serious and one not so much.
I have distant cousin on my mom’s side who was fortunate enough to inherit a rather large fortune. Enough that she never had to work to provide for herself. She was bright, artistic, and generous. She aspired to be an artist. She looked like an artist, talked like an artist, and had many friends who were artists. But she mostly dabbled.
I don’t know if she had the requisite talent to “make it.” What I do know, is that the vast majority of artists who I see “make it” are makers. They make… and they make… and they keep making. In all that making, someone likes something, and then someone else, and so on.
Dabblers make a little, then hold it up for the world to behold… and if no one takes much notice… well… they’re ahead of their time… their vision is too sophisticated. Time to retire!… How nice!
Second story. My son’s elementary school is having it’s annual talent contest. My son is seven. He doesn’t have any particular talents (beyond being the apple in his parents eyes), but loves being on stage and being the center of attention.
So we go down a long list of things he could do. Sing a song… no… play a song on his recorder… no… or harmonica… no… juggle… no… tell jokes… no. At last he says he knows what he wants to do. He takes his index finger, shoves it in his mouth and makes popping sound with cheek.
I shake my head. Now I’m forced to crush his dreams and explain that this is not a show worthy talent… if a talent at all.
Ok… He’s not detered… He’s got it… He sits on the ground, puts himself into some kind of contortion. More difficult than sitting cross-legged, but no way near as complicated as a Yoga pose or contortionists trick (he’s not really that flexible). But this one gives me hope. I suggest he learn some Yoga poses from his mom. Does he like this idea?… no.
The thing is he doesn’t want to practice. So I sit him down and we have a long (mostly one-sided) talk about how you have practice to get good at anything. You have to put in the time and effort to do something exceptionally well.
I’m not sure he completely bought it. But luckily I’ve still got time with him.
I’m not going to lie though, a good 50%+ of the adults in the “entrepreneurial space” still think you can make money and build a successful business with as much effort as my son wanted to expend on his talent show endeavor.
“Find your purpose and fling your life out to it. Find a way or make one. Try with all your might. Self-made or never made.”
If you create content for social media, then you know it’s a challenge to finding good, affordable stock photos. And as with most things in life and business, you get what you pay for.
The trade off between free and paid is about high quality vs. low quality AND it’s also about the time spent searching – you spend a lot of time looking through dogs to find a winner.
In this post I’ll show you my three favorite sources that have very high quality photos and excellent search functionality.
I’ve used a variety of stock photo sources over the years.
I started with iStockPhoto (2006-2010), before they got too expensive.
I used FeaturePics after that as a cheap alternative, but the quality was fair.
In the past there were few places to find good quality photos with Creative Commons licencing.
Creative Commons is basically a license that allows others to use a piece of copyrighted material subject to certain limitations. This could be a simple attribution or a restriction not to modify or use the work commercially. To learn more about Creative Commons licensingvisit their website, which will explain all the different licensing levels.
As time went on the quantity of high quality photos available with Creative Commons licensing grew. I started using CC photos from either Pixabay or Flickr.
However, these are not my favorite in terms of quality and search functionality.
Here my three favorite sources for free, stock photos with Creative Commons Licenses.
Search.CreativeCommons.org
Go straight to the source and use the Creative Commons Search engine (which is not really a search engine, but rather a meta search engine – a search engine that searches other search engines).
By using this you can choose which sources you’d like to search and the appropriate licensing. Then this search will go out to the different sources and do your search with the appropriate licensing.
This great for music and video, in addition to photos.
500px
I believe 500px started out as a photo sharing community for photographers that was an alternative to Flickr.
However, they have since added a marketplace where you can purchase rights to photos, a variety of curated collections, and a huge collection of Creative Commons photos with different licensing levels.
Typically the photos here are professionally enhanced. This gives them a “professional” look… surprise, surprise! Sometimes this is what you’re looking for and sometimes it’s not.
If you’re looking for a more natural, retro look, check out Unsplash.
These are the kind of photos I like to use for my own branding and social media. They are similar in style to the photos from DeathtotheStockPhoto.com.
They have curated collections that are awesome!
And all the photos are made available with the Creative Commons Zero license, which makes available for any use (including commercial) with no attribution. This makes them infinitely useful.
Gone are the days when you could bemoan the lack of good Creative Commons photos. Use wisely and generously attribute to show appreciation to the photographers.
Most of all keep making great content!
P.S. I’m just going to keep adding good sources to the end of this post!
Here is one that is great for svg files, https://openclipart.org/
Better diet, better exercise, more discipline, better organization, take on more responsibility, contribute more to charity, etc.
There are even things not at the forefront of your mind that well meaning friends, family and acquaintances remind you of… Are you drinking too much coffee… diet soda… alcohol?… Are you contributing the maximum to your IRA or 401k?…
There is an endless list of positive things you should be doing.
If you’re lucky you’ve changed some of your behaviors and adopted good, new habits.
But how many good habits lay unused in your big brain?
It’s normal. Everybody has some limit on their capacity to change behavior. The best of us, do our best.
Now, think about how fast you’ve changed when there were bad things heading right for you… or when you had already been hit by them.
I bet you hustled!
You made things happen. You have moved mountains to solve those painful problems. In fact, I bet you were willing to pay cash money to help alleviate some of those problems.
This is why marketers should “Sell Painkillers not Vitamins!”
This saying is very popular in sales and marketing circles, and for good reason.
It’s a fundamental principle of marketing and one of my favorites.
It has nothing to do with pills or products and everything to do with positioning or framing our messages.
It’s far easier to motivate someone to take an action to alleviate their present pain than to prevent a future one.
You have to position your offer as the cure to the prospect’s current pain. The bigger the pain the better.
It doesn’t matter the source of the pain. Physical, psychological and emotional pain are all equally valid.
Even complete luxuries can be positioned as painkillers. They alleviate real psychological pains. It’s the pain in not keeping up with one’s peers or losing social status.
They showed that losing social connections activates the same parts of the brain as actual physical pain. Hence most folks will do almost anything to prevent it.
Another example of psychological pain is found in people who are collectors. Some people feel discomfort when they have an incomplete collection. They need to complete the collection to alleviate their discomfort… to scratch that itch.
Once you’ve identified the pain your offer cures, you agitate the problem. Maybe they are only mildly aware of their problem.As marketers we’re going describe the problem and it’s consequences with such vivid detail they can’t ignore it.
This video does a great job of describing the pain:
Next you’ll educate the prospect on how they came to have this pain… you’ll describe the mechanism that caused their pain.
Then in the terms of this new mechanism, show them how your offer disrupts or short circuits the mechanism, thereby alleviating the pain.
This video does a great job of describing the mechanism of addiction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao8L-0nSYzg
Imagine if you are marketing a recovery center with these types of solutions.
Now describe the promised land… This is what life will be like after the pain has ended. The description of this state should be equally vivid as the description of the pain.
This is a powerful tool that can be used for good or evil, so don’t let me catch any of you twisting your mustache (proverbial or otherwise) at the possibilities.
Did you like this? Did you learn something? If so, please show some love by sharing it on your favorite social media channel… Look down there! There are those conveniently places buttons again. 🙂
