Mindful Ways to Use Social Media

For the last two years, I have provided a daily wisdom quote through a Twitter account called Tiny Buddha. Since the follower count has grown by leaps and bounds, people have suggested I tweet more often throughout the day. I’ve realized, however, that the greatest lesson we can all learn is that less is enough. In a time when connections can seem like commodities and online interactions can become casually inauthentic, mindfulness is not just a matter of fostering increased awareness. It’s about relating meaningfully to other people and ourselves. With this goal in mind, I’ve compiled a list of 10 tips for using social media mindfully. 

1. Know your intentions.

Doug Firebaugh of SocialMediaBlogster.com has identified seven psychological needs we may be looking to meet when we log on: acknowledgment, attention, approval, appreciation, acclaim, assurance, and inclusion. Before you post, ask yourself: Am I looking to be seen or validated? Is there something more constructive I could do to meet that need?

2. Be your authentic self.

In the age of personal branding, most of us have a persona we’d like to develop or maintain. Ego-driven tweets focus on an agenda; authenticity communicates from the heart. Talk about the things that really matter to you. If you need advice or support, ask for it. It’s easier to be present when you’re being true to yourself.

3. If you propose to tweet, always ask yourself: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?

Sometimes we post thoughts without considering how they might impact our entire audience. It’s easy to forget how many friends are reading. Two hundred people make a crowd in person, but online that number can seem insignificant. Before you share, ask yourself: is there anyone this might harm?

4. Offer random tweets of kindness.

Every now and then I ask on Twitter, “Is there anything I can do to help or support you today?” It’s a simple way to use social media to give without expectations of anything in return. By reaching out to help a stranger, you create the possibility of connecting personally with followers you may have otherwise known only peripherally.

5. Experience now, share later.

It’s common to snap a picture with your phone and upload it to Facebook or email it to a friend. This overlaps the experience of being in a moment and sharing it. It also minimizes intimacy, since your entire audience joins your date or gathering in real time. Just as we aim to reduce our internal monologues to be present, we can do the same with our digital narration.

6. Be active, not reactive.

You may receive email updates whenever there is activity on one of your social media accounts, or you might have your cell phone set to give you these types of alerts. This forces you to decide many times throughout the day whether you want or need to respond. Another approach is to choose when to join the conversation, and to use your offline time to decide what value you have to offer.

7. Respond with your full attention.

People often share links without actually reading them, or comment on posts after only scanning them. If the greatest gift we can give someone is our attention, then social media allows us to be endlessly generous. We may not be able to reply to everyone, but responding thoughtfully when we can makes a difference.

8. Use mobile social media sparingly.

In 2009, Pew Research found that 43 percent of cell phone users access the Web on their devices several times a day. It’s what former Microsoft employee Linda Stone refers to as continuous partial attention—when you frequently sign on to be sure you don’t miss out anything. If you choose to limit your cell phone access, you may miss out online, but you won’t miss what’s in front of you.

9. Practice letting go.
It may feel unkind to disregard certain updates or tweets, but we need downtime to be kind to ourselves. Give yourself permission to let yesterday’s stream go. This way you won’t need to “catch up” on updates that have passed but instead can be part of today’s conversation.

10. Enjoy social media!

These are merely suggestions to feel present and purposeful when utilizing social media, but they aren’t hard-and-fast rules. Follow your own instincts and have fun with it. If you’re mindful when you’re disconnected from technology, you have all the tools you need to be mindful when you go online.

Article written by Lori Deschene is the founder of @TinyBuddha on Twitter and tinybuddha.com, a multi-author blog that features wisdom and stories from people all over the world.

25 Highly Effective Social Media Campaigns

 

There is so much rock and roll going on involving businesses running social media campaigns. However, there are not many social media rockstars. Their guitars vary. Some rock hard and some… not so hard. Some even have broken guitar strings. We don’t notice the size of their guitars though. What we notice is the kind of music they produce.

There are certain characteristics that differentiate the effective social media campaigns from the boring ones. You need to learn these characteristics if you also want to be effective with your campaigns.
Don’t worry if your ’strings’ are broken. You can fix it.

Here are 25 characteristics of highly effective social media campaigns (from the rockstars) and some tips to help you rock like them.

1) They spread like wildfire. Effective social media campaigns spread very fast. If your campaign is not spreading, it is not effective. Test the waters with micro campaigns. Learn to swim before attempting to ride the big waves.

2) They are not spammy. Don’t just promote your site links; share something insightful about your company or product. Don’t send out the same message to your community. It is spam…and it is very annoying to them. Even to you. Admit it.

3) They provide value. Value can come in the both physical and mental forms. Effective campaigns provide value in any or both of these regards.

4) They are well branded. Clothe your campaign from head to toe with your company’s identity. Use your logo, your USP or slogans, your colors, and any other thing that defines your business’s identity. Add your brand to every video you produce; don’t add just your website address.

5) They are measured. You need to track your social media marketing efforts. Whether you install Google Analytics on your Facebook fan page or you use Post rank to measure your effectiveness, make sure you work with the data.

6) They have excellent copy. Leave a positive impression in just a few words. Using big vocabulary is not the way to go; making sense is what matters.

7) They don’t ‘sell’. Instead of selling, you should work at generating leads with your social media campaign. Sell to those leads later on.

8 ) They build relationships. Don’t just broadcast. Interact. Building relationships  helps build even more relationships. It also increases the perception of value and builds loyalty.

9) They build trust. Be as honest in your campaign as possible. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. Your campaign should build and maintain trust in your build.

10) They are innovative. Regular campaigns mostly go unnoticed. Innovation adds ‘flavor’ to your campaign. It is the aroma of your campaign and the one thing that will convince most people to take action.

11) They have ears. Your campaign will not be successful unless you listen for feedback. People may have something to say so listen and show appreciation or let them know you are working on it. Never delete a negative feedback.

12) They are well organized. Your campaign needs to be well planned. It should have a first step and an nth step (where n is the number of the last step). Follow through from step 1 through to step n. Don’t go from step one to step 3 to step 2. Plan your steps well so it is easy to follow through step 1 to the last step.

13) They are maintained by humans. Don’t rely on automation when it comes to marketing on the social web. It just won’t work. Besides, it destroys trust. Put a human being in front of, in-between and behind all your social media campaigns. I want to talk to a human being not a robot.
14) They are consistent. You need to be consistent with your update (or broadcast) schedules and interact with people who leave replies and comments. If you broadcast once a week and change to 5 times a day, people will begin to question your actions. Unless you give them good reason why you have changed your schedule.
15) They have bait. You need to have some sort of bait to convert visitors into leads. Try eBooks, free products, white papers, discount codes, samples, free vouchers, et cetera. Bait them to get them.

16) They use leverage. They leverage the subscriber bases of their communities and other people’s communities. They also leverage their company strengths.

17) They include a blog. I suggest you have a business blog before you start your campaign. Your blog should be the hub of your social media campaign efforts. Make you install social media sharing buttons to make it easier for others to share your blog’s content.

18) They engage other blogs. You can do this too. Apply as a guest writer for blogs in your target market. Read blogs in your niche and leave thoughtful comments (not just a “thank you”).

19) They are not everywhere. If you want your campaigns to be successful, don’t register for an account on every social media site. That will only burn you out and your campaigns will be fruitless.

20) They have humor. Adding humor to marketing is a cool way of saying “we are a friendly business”. It makes your marketing memorable. A priceless result.

21) They share company events. If your company is being bad mouthed, tell your customers about it. Tell them the truth in it and the lies. Don’t give them the chance to second guess your company. If your company is nominated for an award, tell your community about it. If your company wins the award, tell them. If you lose the award, tell them.

22) They integrate offline marketing. Print some T-Shirts, with your logo, Twitter handle, Facebook fan page URL and your slogan on it and give them out to your customers. Send out paper printed catalogs to your online leads. Add your Twitter and Facebook URLs to your contact address. Integrate offline with online.

23) They use the right networks. Even though Facebook supports videos, video campaigns will do better on Youtube than on Facebook.

24) They use photos and videos. Photos and videos leave a lasting impression on peoples’ minds. The best photo you can use is your logo. When you make a video, put your logo on it.

25) They have a call to action. What is the essence of a marketing campaign without having a call to action of some sort? I suggest you use your social marketing campaigns to generate leads before trying to sell anything. By the way, “signup below” and “call us now” are not the only call to action examples. “Click to view our portfolio” is an example of call to action. Your call to actions must follow a sequence; from your homepage to the last page.

By kwame boame, Social Media Today  

Update Your Facebook Page via Email

By The Social Media Guide

Did you know you can update your Facebook fan page via email?

This can be particularly handy if ...

• you are browsing through Twitter on your mobile phone, and see a great tweet (linking to a post) that you would like to share with your fans
• you are at work and something pops into your mind that you want to share on your Facebook page
• you come across an awesome article while surfing the net
• you receive an email from someone that you want to post to your Facebook page's wall
• you don’t have time to log in to your Facebook page
• you don’t have access to Facebook

It is super easy to update your Facebook page's wall via email, and keep all your fans updated and informed.
Posterous is the service that allows you to do this.

If you are unfamiliar with Posterous, it is basically a hosted micro-blogging platform that allows you to make updates to your own Posterous blog, simply by emailing in content.

Posterous allows you to update your blog by emailing content such as,

• links to videos - and have the video automatically displayed
• photos (as attachments) - and have the photos automatically displayed
• music files (as attachments) - and have the music automatically embedded
• links to Google Maps - and have the maps automatically embedded

Posterous also has an autoposting feature that allows you to post (via email) to your other social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Picasa, WordPress.com, etc.

You can post to one, several or all of your social networks.

One post to Posterous goes everywhere else on the web.

For example, you can email your pics to your Posterous blog, and if you have added your Flickr account, they will appear there as well.

The good thing is Posterous now supports posting to Facebook pages.

Setup

First up you need to create an account with Posterous..  please refer to my post Posterous Guide to Dead Simple Blogging for more information.

Once you have logged in, click on Autopost.. then click on Add a Service;

Then click on Facebook Page,

You now need to connect your Facebook account with Posterous.
Click on the  Facebook Connect; button,

Now click on Connect; to allow authorization,

Select your Facebook page from the drop-down menu then click on  Add Facebook Page,

Click on  Allow; to allow constant authorization,

Click on Allow Publishing;

Done!

You have just setup posting to your Facebook page using Posterous.

You can check that this has been added by clicking on Autopost.. your Facebook page will now be visible,

Autopost Email Address

Now scroll down the page a little and take note of the email address to autopost to Facebook; facebook@posterous.com

Highly recommend >> add this email address as a contact in:

• your preferred email client (Gmail, Hotmail, etc)
• your mobile phone's email client

Otherwise you are defeating the purpose of being able to post to your Facebook page via email.. as you might forget this email address!

Update Your Facebook Page via Email

Now to test this out.
Find some content you want to post to your Facebook page and then compose a new email message.. ensuring that you are sending to  the correct email address - facebook@posterous.com,

Now hit  Send ... You have now updated your Posterous blog, AND your Facebook Fan Page,

You will notice that your Facebook profile has NOT been updated.

The reason your Facebook profile was not updated is because it hasn’t been added as a service in Posterous.
If you want to be able to post to both your Facebook Page and Facebook Profile via email.. just add Facebook as a service (following the same instructions above).

Alternatively, you could post to just your profile and not your page.

So there you have it.. posting content via email to your Facebook Page!

The Social Media Guide is a great website with lots of good tips for today's evolving internet landscape. Sign up for their free newsletter and stay up to date and receive daily tips on Social Media tools and strategies.

Original Article Posted: By The Social Media Guide