Is it Halftime for You in Social Media

Are you needing to regroup with your Social Media Strategy?

Do you need to play more offense?

In the field of battle in sports, defensive usually wins. However, in Social Media Marketing…Offense Wins.

Like most sports teams, they adjust at halftime whether they are winning or losing. Always striving to perform better, execute better. Businesses really are no different. Flexibility is key in today’s fast paced business environment. Do business conditions change? Are they changing slower or faster? So change your strategy, change your approach, change your tactics. Monitor and find out what works and keep doing it. Find out what doesn’t work and stop doing it.

COMMITMENT & CONSISTENCY

Social Media Marketing takes stamina and consistent effort just like in sports.

Are you fit enough to produce compelling and engaging content on a daily basis?
Are you willing to pay the price to do so? No excuses?
Are you motivated by a mission, purpose or cause that drives you in your life and business?

You are the one that has to find the motivation to win, day in and day out.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO DAILY

“Habit my friend, is practice long pursued, that at last becomes the man himself.”
(Evenus)

“Why are some people more successful in Social Media Marketing than others?”

Everything you are today, or ever will be in the future, is up to you. Your life and business today is the sum total result of your choices, decisions and actions up to this point.

You can create your own future by changing your business behaviors.
You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person and business you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.

THE POWER OF HABIT

Perhaps the most important discovery in the fields of psychology and success is that fully 95% of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit. Beginning in childhood, you have developed a series of conditioned responses that lead you to react automatically and unthinkingly in almost every situation.

To put it simply, successful people have “success habits” and unsuccessful people do not. Successful, happy, healthy, prosperous men and women easily, automatically and consistently do and say the right things in the right way at the right time. As a result, they accomplish ten and twenty times as much as average people who have not yet learned these habits and practiced these behaviors.

YOU ARE IN CONTROL

Horace Mann said, “Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken.”

The fact is that good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with.

Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to form, but hard to live with. In either case, you develop either good or bad habits in life and business as the result of your choices, decisions and behaviors.

Most business owner’s I coach and consult with feel their business is controlling them. That’s understandable because all of us from time to time in business will feel that way. However, you control how it operates and functions at the end of the day.

If you don’t like the results or direction it’s heading, have the courage to admit you’re wrong and change it.

LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT

Here is one of the most important of all success principles: “If you do what other successful people do in business with social media, you will eventually get the same results that they do. And if you don’t, you won’t.” Seek out those that are successful, make the commitment to start today.

For every cause, there is an effect. Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by accident. This law says that, even if you do not know the reason why something happens, there is still a reason that explains it.

WINNING HABITS OF SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA BRANDS

1. GOALS

What are you business goals? Sales, Revenue, gaining new customers, retaining loyal customers, increasing brand awareness, raising more funds? Be very clear and specific about your goals. Successful social media brands do not fly by the seat of their pants, but set clear goals and are flexible enough in a fluid social media environment to adapt and change.

2. STRATEGY

A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem.

76% of businesses will fail in social media according to current research. Why? No strategy…businesses are out there to just post. Most business owners look to their younger counterparts or relatives to handle their social media. Nothing wrong with that strategy except for one important point. They lack business experience to tie it to goals and objectives, thereby jeopardizing all the efforts of social media. You must marry the two together in order to achieve successful results.

3. TACTICS

A tactic (from the Ancient Greek τακτική taktike meaning “art of arrangement”) is a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks.

Specific topics posted on specific days
Handle customer service on social media
The 70/20/10 rule. (70%) of content that a page puts up should be brand- and business-building, meaning it’s information that is valuable to your followers. Content shared from other sources makes up 20% and the remaining 10% is self-promotional.
Capitalize on major events and holidays
Capitalize on major news events (Newsjacking)
Story tell with video

4. CONTENT

Be able to find and create great content. Take regular steps to grow your own influence and known subject matter expertise. You can do this by developing a content schedule involving creation, curation and engagement in alignment with how you want to be known.

These are daily activities, seek out tools that allow for maximizing your time in finding content. Tools such as Feedly.

Be clear and consistent about your Brand and mission wherever you publish and interact online or offline.

5. ENGAGE

Create Value: Give to Get – Share, ask, answer & recognize – daily.

Creating value is one of the most important things a company can do on the social web to attract and engage new business.

Social Media network participation that involves…

Answering
Asking
Sharing useful information (not selling or self promoting)

You are investing in the community and creating value.

In a crowded social web, look for ways to be entertaining to separate you from the competition of just sharing facts and tips.

Be sure to check out our upcoming seminars.

SOCIAL MEDIA SEMINAR SERIES
1. Google My Business – Better Search Results in Google! [Sept. 17]
2. Tools & Apps for Business – Gain more hours. [Sept. 24]
3. YouTube & Video – Business Branding [Oct. 15]
4. Blogging – Generate leads & get new customers [Oct 29]
5. Twitter for Business – The fastest way to spread content [Nov. 11]
6. Facebook Ads – How to create, implement & gain sales [Nov. 19]

About Blair

Blair Evan Ball is a Social Media Coach and founder of Prepare1, a company that works with businesses, individuals and non-profits. He is a former executive with a Fortune 50 company, and his national division did $1.3 Billion in sales annually.

Blair has written three e-books: Facebook for Business Made Easy, Facebook Pages for Business Made Easy, and WordPress Blog Setup Made Easy.

Blair also educates, trains entrepreneurs and business professionals how to amplify their brand, increase revenues, and raise more funds.

The Race is ON! – Get into the Game and WIN!