As a business owner or marketing strategist, social media is an important tool to increase brand awareness, we can see social media like a cocktail party, where you can have networking and fun. I will explain 10 Must-Haves in your campaign to rock your social media strategy.

1. BE INTERESTING.

According to BBC News the average attention span is less than 12 seconds, thanks to multiple devices and a lot of distractions is really hard to stay focused and maintain the audience entertained. The only way is generating interesting content in relation to your service or product, there are a lot of formats according to each channel like videos, interactive images, and useful information applicable to their needs.

The best example is TED Talks, their content is about generating content through guest speakers of the most trendy and interesting topics in different industries.

2. BE AN EXPERT ON YOUR AUDIENCE INTERESTS.

Rule number 1. The more you know about your target, your strategy perform will better. Who are you talking to? What do they do? Why they buy your product/service? What are they doing? Where are they from? Which type of content are they interested in?

Netflix knows us well, if you are watching comedy movies, they will recommend other ones of the same type, the recommendations are driven by machine learning algorithms analyzing your interests and behaviors.

3. BE PART OF THE INFLUENCER TREND.

The storytelling of influencer marketing is more realistic, and the followers can feel connected and identified with their daily life. Marketers are increasing their budget on influencers thanks to the impact on their audience.

Fiji water did a partnership with the influencer Danielle Bernstein who is a fashion blogger offering workout videos with her personal trainer. The goal was to highlight the importance of hydrating if you want to feel and look good, the campaign name is #weworewhat with #bodyworewhat.

4. BE EMOTIONAL.

We are human beings and even we live in a connected world, we want to feel different emotions on ads and campaigns to take the experience to the next level. The campaigns that get a connection with their audience are the ones who will last for a long time in their minds.

Dove is the brand taking the beauty perception as its core strategy, they don’t sell soaps, they sell beauty to women empower them to gain esteem.

5. BE FUN.

To engage your audience, you need to be unique and enjoy this job. Choose a game, a funny quote, a meme, depending on your service or product to get your audience attention.

Test, measure and repeat, you never know how your campaign is going in comparison with other campaigns, just make experiments and make them run to see what happens.

6. BE AWARE OF YOUR DATA.

Imagine if you just do campaigns and don’t measure their performance, you maybe will get the results you want but, you don’t know what exactly is causing a conversion or working with your audience. With your data, you can optimize your campaign and bidding.

A great example is Amazon, do you imagine this revolutionary business without data? Data gives the information and the information gives the power.

7. BE INBOUND.

Inbound marketing is a whole strategy to increase the traffic to your website and create conversions to get new customers. Content marketing is one part of that strategy, the first step is identifying the pain points of the brand and competitor’s analysis. Then, create a persona (with the information you have on point 2), create content offering value to your audience and make it with a CTA (Call to Action) where you can redirect them into a landing page and you can proceed with a sales strategy.

Chipotle captured gaming fans, chipotle fans with a successful inbound strategy about “Chipotle Taste Invaders” with a laser tag shooting burrito, fighting against additives and educating the customer about the burrito ingredients.

8. BE CREATIVE.

Remember you need to captivate your audience with your campaign and it’s not necessary just explaining the products and services. One of the best campaigns is Metro Trains with “Dumb ways to die” with catchy music and cartoon characters getting in the top 10 on iTunes in 24 hours.

9. BE HONEST.

And this is a little related of why influencer marketing is so successful now, the truth is that you will obtain your customer’s loyalty and retain them with honesty and transparency; if they trust you, you are a winner. Put yourself in a scenario where you are really hungry and there is a new restaurant that someone told you about it, but you’re not 100% sure of how healthy it is, then, you realized they cook your meal in front of you; that will make you feel confident about how they prepare the food, what type of ingredients and if it’s fresh. The same happens with your company, the more transparent your product or service is, the better your audience will accept it.

One company with a lot of negative comments about their quality food is McDonald’s. To attack this, the company creates a transparent marketing campaign called “Our Food. Your Questions” Where McDonald’s answer all your concerns about their food.

10. BE A FRIEND.

This is my favorite part, to see the importance of these channels. Back in the days, we wouldn’t think about Facebook to a way of communication of resolving inquiries or issues with a brand. Today you can take Customer Service to a whole experience making it so personal like you’re in the store, providing that, you are saving time, energy and effort to the customer having a satisfied customer or just changing their perception if they had an inconvenience.

The best example is a lovely response from Lego, who could just reply with a “standard message” but it was so personalized and unexpected that went viral to all channels.

Check out your current campaign strategy and think about the above information and try to implement it to your own business.

When you see the title of this article, some of you may be saying, ‘what do you mean, how do I get started with social media, like it’s some big secret?’ To some, it might sound like a silly question as most people just dive into a platform and begin making posts.

Now imagine if you will, that you’re a 50 or 60-something new entrepreneur. Most of your posts have been on Facebook or and you might have contributed to the company LinkedIn page, but you never had to bother with setting these social media accounts for your business.

With dozens of multi-million networks and big companies pouring millions of dollars into it, social media may seem daunting for any small business entrepreneur, even more so for fifty-somethings who haven’t grown up with the Internet. But the amount of exposure social media can bring your business, and the opportunity it offers you to connect with your target audience and spread the word about your products or services cannot be ignored.

Your competitors are already on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social networks. In a world full of mobile devices and apps, having only a website and blog is no longer enough.

Here are some tips to get you started for the #FiftySomethingEntrepreneur.

The Right Approach to Social Media

Before getting started, you have to remember that social media is first and foremost social. While brands do use it to market themselves, sometimes using paid ads, the main benefit of being social is interacting with your audience. What’s more, Google takes into account the buzz you generate on social networks when determining your search engine ranking, or how high you show up in the Google search results.

Start Small

There are many social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, WhatsApp, YouTube, and Tumblr. As a startup or small business, you may not have the time or the resources to be active on all of them, nor should you.

An effective strategy is to start small. Most businesses start with #Facebook, #Twitter, #LinkedIn, and optionally, #YouTube. Depending on your target customers, some of networks will offer you better returns on your time spent on them than others.

Create a SM Marketing Strategy

It’s important to have a social media marketing strategy in place. Without one, social media can become a time-sink. Considering your audience, their needs, and what you can offer them. Decide what content would work best for them, whether it’s articles, images, videos, short updates, how-to guides, and so on. Social media is very flexible, so you mix it up to keep things interesting.

Creating an Engaging Social Business Page

After creating your accounts, you have to personalize them. Keep personal and professional accounts separate. For your business, make sure to create a business page, rather than a standard profile. This will enable you to customize your page with a logo, business address and other details, as well as access a wealth of data about your fans and followers. Add a custom header and background to your business page, and try to keep all pages consistent in terms of design.

Content: Creation, Curation, and Timing

You also have to determine how often you will post fresh content on social media – at least two or three times a week is a must, and ideally you want to post something new every day. Fortunately, you don’t have to create all the content yourself. You can always curate or share content from experts in your industry, news sites, and other relevant sources, so long as you give credit to the creator and don’t infringe any usage rights.

The Key to Success – Being Active and Involved

The hard work begins after you’ve set up your accounts. Posting is not enough. You have to interact with your audience by answering their questions, starting discussions, organizing contests, and rewarding loyal followers with mentions, and possibly for ecommerce businesses with coupons, or freebies. You have to follow others, share their content, and join groups and discussions. On social media, if you are not active, you are invisible.

Social media can also open up the door to new professional connections. Actively connect with your existing connections and also seek influencers, experts, and other notable people in your industry. Share their content and you may catch their eye.

Be Social

Last but not least, it’s important to keep in mind that being on social media is no longer optional for a small business. If you are not “social,” people won’t be able to find your business as easily, and many will go to your competitors instead. That’s why if you don’t have the time to manage your social media marketing efforts yourself, it’s better to delegate someone within your company to do it for you, or hire someone to help you with this.

The key is to get started and not to shy away from engaging in social media. Trust me when I say it gets easier the more time you spend in doing some type of post. Now go and have some fun.

Have you ever dwelled upon the title question? What are your thoughts about this? In this article, I shed light on the topic from my point of view. See if your thoughts match with mine. Read on to find out.

As it seems to me, teachers should not always be available to their students to help out with their problems academically or otherwise. Students should learn to help themselves majority of the time.

Teachers can have fixed timeslots for social networking with their students for example, on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3pm to 5pm. They can just announce in class and those students who are interested can network in those timeslots. There is no need for the teachers to put these timeslots on their websites other than their physical counseling hours.

They should maintain their gravity and strictness while still being friendly with their students. They should uphold their respect and air of importance so that students keep their distance without getting too intimate.

Students should be given the impression that teachers are not their friends, colleagues or professional counterparts. So their teachers have the liberty to choose whether or not they want to become part of their social media or professional networks. Even if they do, teachers should carry their authentic images or identities all along so that their students fear them to some extent.

On the other hand, this is the era of modern age and social networking is a modern age facility. So if shy and modest students feel freer to interact online rather than confront directly, teachers should welcome them and be part of their social networks.

But at any rate, I stick to my previous statements that teachers, under no circumstances, should lose their gravity and respect, while taking the pleasure of networking with their students in order to help them out academically or otherwise.

In conclusion, those are my thoughts on whether teachers should have limits on social networking with their students. As having been in the profession of teaching myself, I do regard teachers to be dignified and important, which students should come to respect and show manners and courtesies accordingly even while in the process of social networking.

Now that I have presented my points of views on the issue, what is your opinion about it? Do they resonate with mine? How would you put it? Most likely, your thoughts on the issue are close enough to mine.

Companies are continuously launching marketing campaigns in an effort to promote their brand and boost their sales. Some of these are highly successful – Carlsberg’s slogan and advertising of ‘probably the best lager in the world’ generates excellent brand awareness and reputation. This then contributes to increased sales and ultimately increased profits. However, many of these companies have large marketing and advertising budgets. What if your company can not afford these marketing initiatives? This is where Social media marketing comes in. Most social media marketing ‘tools’ are free to use and can provide the same amount of marketing exposure whether you are just starting out or are a giant conglomerate. This article explains how you can use social media marketing to increase sales at a relatively low cost.

Firstly, let’s just dispel the myth that social media marketing does not lead to a direct increase in sales. Here are some examples to prove this: Sony announced in February that through Twitter they had earned an extra £1million in sales, Dell announced in June last year that their presence on Twitter accounted for $3 million dollars increase in sales. You might argue that these are two big companies and they already have a brand reputation. However, other smaller companies have also experienced increased sales through this form of marketing. John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd, a small shoe making company in Canada, reported a 40% increase in sales in 2009, the same year it started social media marketing, this was not by chance.

So how can social media marketing contribute to increased sales for your company? Social media tools allow you access to millions of people. A television advert will reach the people watching at that time and allows for no interaction with the consumer. One tweet can reach millions of people. Sainsbury’s for example regularly tweet their latest offers. Anyone wanting to keep up with these can simply follow Sainsbury’s on Twitter. This gives a much bigger potential customer base and allows for sales to increase, whilst also creating brand awareness. Furthermore, people can respond to these tweets, which provides a forum for customer interaction and thus customer insight. Your business can emulate this, tweeting your promotions provides free advertising. If this is done creatively, it really can boost sales and get your company noticed.

Social media marketing works in a similar way to other forms of marketing; it is viral. A small company initially works on a word of mouth basis, people tell their friends. This type of marketing, especially Twitter and Facebook, work with the ‘friend’ concept. People can give you positive reviews, recommend your product and tweet about your company. This whole social community allows your company’s name and brand to be viewed by a significant amount of people. Continuous use of social media over time creates brand awareness and thus helps to increase sales. One of our clients, PeachorLemon, a car review website, gained over one hundred followers on Twitter within a week. This is a hundred more people who know about promotions and offers, may tell their friends, visit the website or use other social media outlets to mention PeachorLemon. All this creates brand awareness and over time increased use of the website, thus increasing its value.

The effect social media can have on brand awareness is critical in the future of small businesses marketing strategy. Brand awareness is only one way in which sales are increased, there are many other important contributing factors. However, as this article has demonstrated, creating brand awareness through this new exiting variation of marketing can have a huge impact on your business and revenues.

Anthony O’Flynn

Everywhere you turn, someone is advising you to make the most of your plans to increase your business activity via social media. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as most proponents would have you believe.

Do you have a bunch of Facebook fans? Is your LinkedIn account loaded with followers? If you were fortunate enough to get into Twitter at the beginning, you rode the crest of a tidal wave of followers.

Let’s look at another issue…

How many of these followers you managed to get are now registered in your mailing list?

If you’ve accumulated thousands upon thousand of followers in your social networks, what good are they doing you? Chances are that very few really engage with you.

The worst thing is that when you make a post to connect with your followers, a new post to the social site will push your post down in what seems just minutes after you posted.

People Who Subscribed to Your List

By contrast, people who subscribe to your list from social media are always available for easy contact via a personalized email, so you should do your best to use social media as a vehicle to get subscribers to your list.

Even though you work hard to stay engaged on social media, your competitors are trying just as hard.

The post you worked so hard to make just right, and linked it to every social network you could will be shoved down to the bottom of the page by other users and their posts.

Social Networks Can Build Your List

Sending an email to your list is a personalized contact, away from the millions of people on Facebook or Twitter. You had the opportunity to offer a valuable piece of content, whether eBook or video which people on your list can download.

All they had to do was to provide their email which went right to your list. You also obtained permission to follow-up with other emails.

Emails are Intimate

When you send an email to someone on your list, you should write it as if you were speaking directly with one person.

You will have greeted them by first name, and they will forget that thousands of others on your list got the same message.

It’s not like going on social media where they are searching for what countless other members may be discussing.

Your Target Audience is Relaxed

These people followed you by choice, and they have gotten to know you, trust you and feel relaxed around you.

Even though they may be exposed to an avalanche of posts, they are more likely to notice and act on an offer of a free download you may be displaying.

List Building Goldmine

Social networking can be a goldmine for the list builder if used properly. You should offer your landing page link discretely so it’s easily available, but without being annoying.

Social media is for interaction, and enjoyment of social contacts. So the business aspect must be kept subtle.

Be Active

Be active on social media, be seen often so people start to recognize you, and you will be able to invite people to join your list in a natural way.

And your list will grow!

Once we come into a fresh chapter on a new year, it is time to begin planning regarding successful SMM techniques for your little business. So as or perhaps you to remain in front of the rival it is important so that you can set your online marketing strategy to make the most of prevailing trends and also the ever developing marketplace for different company industries. The little business platform has altered a whole lot in the last couple of years and remaining as much as date with those modifications could be a obstacle.

Here are some SMM tips to help keep you in front of the competition in 2018.

1. Raise your presence – The main reason SMM is really big is because more and more people spend some time there. You cannot enhance presence for your needs and on the internet personality with a personal page. Throughout the year 2017, I saw lots of this created me scratch my head a little. I am not sure why nevertheless the drawbacks for this can harm your brand. If the largest issue is undesirable spam comments, this is managed and removed with the block button and also by modernizing your settings. The target is to accommodate your audience and create leads. Make certain every bit of your social networking approach serves the objectives you set and also those who might find it. Improve your social networking existence. It is important to success of one’s brand. Upping your presence drives visitors and invites involvement.
2. Concentrate on Mobile – Most searches and site visits are done via mobile phones. Unfortunately, most companies are yet to seriously accept mobile inside their marketing techniques. Take the time to optimize your internet site content and internet assets for mobile phone users this season. The attempts will enhance your Return on Investment from all internet channels and can drive leads to your site improving traffic from the search engines within the proceeds. I am not just dealing with design and loading speed, but really optimizing an individual experience for website search, form entry, commerce, navigation and basic mobile phone usability.
3. Create Involvement a Priority – You want to become popular on social media. It isn’t a soap box so that you can stop by to face on to done an announcement every now and then. It had been created in order that individuals around the globe might connect to each other. How big your “followers” on social networking does not matter if no body is attending to. Big followings cause you to feel effective however if there isn’t any message to allow them to abide by it’s unlikely your brand is likely to make a lot impact. What actually matters is involvement. Engagement is exactly what earns you shares which produce leads that can become sales and achieving loyal clients. Additionally you should allow it to be a place this season to regularly revisit your buyer personas to make sure your message remains unique and highly relevant to your viewers. This amount of interaction is exactly what solidifies your brand.
4. Content – Making plans for your calendar and content approach with this year ought to be towards the top of your to-do list. For those who haven’t got began yet, yesterday will be a great time. Paid advertisements on social networking are excellent. They produce effective leads. But, it is incredibly important to master how exactly to make a trusted, expected and scallable flow of traffic that changes into clients in order that company remains afloat with or without one. This may simply be carried out by creating awesome content. All it requires is a few efforts, testing out a couple of various tactics and consistency. If you are ready to invest enough time, you could have all of the benefits of a well-trafficked company and site with no spending an astronomical sum on paid advertisements. As a company holder and content maker, it is element of your work to provide powerful info to your visitors regarding the services and products. Good content, powerful headlines, back-links, SEO, sales campaigns and e-mail marketing produced good, reliable traffic, and sales well before the social networking paid advertisement game was invented. It even performs.
5. Video Streaming – Video in real-time has become ever more popular with consumers. Numerous social networking platform giants are all investing more income into increasing their video streaming capabilities. It provide chances for content marketing along with client involvement. It really is a format which has achieved serious momentum within the last one year and it is the continuing future of branding. It is a good idea to include it to your online business marketing strategy this season.

As a whole, the greater particular and strategic you will get together with your SMM plan, the greater effective you will be with its implementation. Be it Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram, there’s a great deal you are able to do when it comes to marketing and producing latest chances on your own while including tremendous value to your customers, clients and readers. Do not create your SMM strategy so high and broad that it is difficult. Balance is key. Continue to keep your visitors and audience in your mind. A great company goal will guide your actions, however it may also be a measure through which you see whether you are profiting or failing.

Whether you have a small business or a startup, you cannot disagree with the fact that social media is an essential part of marketing strategy. Anything going wrong on social media can have a negative impact on your business. Here, we’re presenting the five best ways through which you can make your social media marketing strategy work:-

Proper Planning

Many small business owners think social media marketing is simply creating an account and sharing regular updates. However, when they don’t get any positive response, they give up straight away thinking that social media doesn’t work. Conversely, the reality is that they did not make a real plan.

Social Time Scheduling

In social media marketing, the time and the frequency chosen for posting are important. You will have to keep a close eye on the latest ongoing trends that are pertinent to your business. Regular interaction and having conversations with your clients is essential.

Clients’ Engagement

You are required to focus on regular engagement with your clients. A small business owner can engage with clients by promoting their updates, and sharing their views. You are required to reply to their queries, asking them questions, and asking them for their opinions.

Content is Real King

Writing and sharing interesting content with your audience and potential customers should be your main concern. It can play an important role in getting your message across. A great content will attract visitors organically, and they will regain in touch with your business.

Have Some Excitement

Your social channels should be practical as well as they also need to be appropriate. Everyone loves to express amusement, so make time to keep your audience by posting jokes or fun images. Focus on your target, post relevant updates, and keep up pace with the newest trends going in the market.

Some of the social media marketing strategies involve:-

Facebook Marketing: Facebook had whopping billions of monthly active users. You need to be taking full benefit of this most popular social network. We’re here to help with forward-thinking social media strategies including content creation and promotional contests related to your business.

Twitter Marketing: Twitter has become a great place for businesses to connect with customers. Most of the users are more likely to procure a brand followed by them on Twitter, there’s no better place to get started now!

LinkedIn Marketing: LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world. In the event you’re looking to establish your brand, don’t forget LinkedIn out of your marketing strategy.

YouTube Marketing: YouTube has maintained its position as the top video sharing website in the world, and with over billion hours of video watched every month. In the event, you have commercials, ‘about us’ videos, etc., YouTube is the main property for getting your videos found.

Most probably, you understand the growing importance of social media in driving customers and prospects to your website, as well as in announcing a special event or product promotion. And while there are many different forms of social media (Twitter vs. Instagram vs. Facebook etc.) most users don’t know how to use them effectively to help improve marketing communications ROI. Just “having” social media accounts is not enough these days; you must understand the best practices for using each and nurture your accounts on an on-going basis.

For example, if your social media accounts haven’t been updated in the last thirty days, your customers and prospects may question your reliability, scope, quality and professionalism. Your social media is a direct reflection of your brand and what follows are a few simple guidelines for improving it.

Relevant Social Media Content Improves ROI

Content that is relevant to your customers and prospects is critical to the development of meaningful trust in your brand, in the short term as well as over time. In today’s world, trust is all important and a clear cut and basic method for improving customer purchase. Conversely, posting just anything can be more harmful than just not posting at all. What seems clever today, may be detrimental tomorrow. Your content, both imagery and text, must be well thought out to meet the needs of your customers and prospects, and therefore improve ROI. And it must be creatively presented in order to be received by an often skeptical audience.

With the recent news about fake messages and accounts, Facebook and Instagram are attempting to improve their algorithms in order to eliminate accounts that are posting irrelevant content or using popular hashtags just to gain visibility. These tactics will now get accounts ghost blacklisted. This means that your account is visible to only those who directly search for it, but your content will not be shown in anyone’s timeline.

How To Deploy Hashtags For Maximum Engagement

Hashtags and social media are as important to one another as oil is to your engine. To perform better than just getting “likes” here and there, you should research relevant hashtags. General hashtags can be used as long as they’re relevant and they’re not abused.

For example when I create a post on an Instagram (this same post will be shared on Facebook too) I always start it off with #GoodMorning #GoodNight depending on time. There are in excess of 91,500,000 posts on Instagram using the same hashtag.In turn, the audience looking, searching, and filtering the above hashtags has to be considerably larger. Hashtags are the equivalent to Meta Keywords in your website – they must be relevant to your post, and you must not abuse them.

Posting Consistency Also Improves ROI

Solid growth doesn’t come in fits and starts, and the regularity in which you post is key. Work with your team and based on your knowledge of your audience, set minimum numbers of posts and perhaps also ideal times.

And in today’s increasingly untrusting environment, “writing longer posts, spending more time crafting them, and publishing less frequently can go a long way toward building confidence in your brand. Posts went from 808 words in 2014 to 1,142 words in 2017” – Orbit Media. And, of organizations using social media today, only 3 percent are posting daily, 22 percent are posting weekly, and the majority are posting only several times or less in the past six months. Therefore, your posting consistency becomes even more meaningful to your customers and prospects, so that profitable growth is more attainable.

Remember, It’s All About Branding

Traditional media, digital media and social media, in particular, should all work together to improve brand and marketing ROI. When your audience shares your post, you’re extending your brand to reach new audiences and your existing audience is demonstrating their loyalty to your brand.

And don’t forget about your website. It’s the focal point of your brand and, while it can go much longer without updates, search engines do specifically look for updated content and professionally developed new content can significantly increase your brand’s ranking.

Marketing Communications Consultants Can Help

In a recent CMO Digital Benchmark Study, 97 percent of marketing leaders said social media spending made only an “average” or “below average” contribution to their company’s performance. So, if you have concerns about what you’re doing, you’re not alone.

Social media is growing rapidly, and as with any new process there is a great need for professional help. Without understanding best practices and/or not having the time, energy or skill to improve your social media efforts, it’s like putting your head in the sand. As Will Rogers said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Social media is a faceless community. In most cases, you do not see the person who likes your photos, resents your posts or even shares your ideas. It is where people tweet and sent threatening messages to strangers without a care in the world. It’s just fun – they say. Let me say that it is never fun if the recipient is scared to the core or if the post involves character assassination. This post is about how social media is being used to assassinate a person’s character.

The dangers and benefits of social media.

No doubt, social media has countless blessings attached to it. It offers you worldwide connectivity, hooks you up with people of shared interests, keeps you informed, and is a great marketing tool. However, It can be both brutal and destructive. It can be used to malign your name. It can be used to gossip and tear apart your character. Needless to say- all of us are just a single step away from character murder. A single careless tweet, an innocent exposing post or a naive “like” can lead to untold agony.

The dangers of rumors and gossip.

Rumors and gossip are words and words can never be taken back. Even if you get an apology, the rumor-monger will not go undoing their mess. Sorry does not heal the mutilated reputation of the victim. It is like putting a nail through a piece of wood – even if the nail is removed, the hole still remains. Gossip hurts. Sometimes it hurts more than a slap or a punch. Negative words spoken about you may dog you for the rest of your life. Worse still, if they are all over the social media – so be careful what you share.

Be careful what you repost on social media.

Although It can be a good opportunity for business growth and networking, it can also be vicious and treacherous. You should never be the bearer of gossip or slander. You should never repost any maligning, hurtful or character assassinating information. Never repost any racist or blackmailing post. This is my take when it comes to what to send and what to avoid; do to others what you would love them to do to you. Always keep this in mind – what goes around, comes around.

Things you should never post on social media.

Yes, you want to hook up with old friends and get to know new ones. Is that the reason you want to share all your details? Be warned! Social media is a live wire that burns and leaves physical, emotional and psychological scars to show for it. No matter your intentions, never share your current location, photos of your family members tagged with their full names, phone numbers and home address. Avoid sharing intimate things because they may come back to haunt you. Don’t give your enemy a gun (information) to bring you down. It has a way of getting what you share, twist it and use it against you. By the way, that is how social media is being used to assassinate a person’s character.

Be careful and wise and you will be safe. It takes years to build a character. However, social media can assassinate it in a twinkling of an eye. This is my advice to you; when sharing information on social media do not do it with your heart only – carry your head along.

Social networking has become a huge part of people’s lives in the last 5 years with Facebook and Twitter in the forefront. People now use social networking sites to communicate, discover and get their news. If your business isn’t using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook then you are losing hundreds if not thousands of potential customers.

One of the best forms of advertising is word of mouth, Twitter and Facebook utilize this. How do you choose where to take your business, by price, location or maybe by recommendations? Many of us will take recommendations from our friends and family, the people we trust. If you friend or family member has had a good customer experience with a business then he/she is likely to mention it to their friends and family, and considering many people communicate online and through social media you can’t afford not to be involved with Twitter or Facebook.

So through word of mouth over social networking sites you can quickly build up a happy client list. Let me give you an example of what I mean, If I want to eat at a new restaurant I will check for reviews online, like many people would by typing the restaurant into Google, if the reviews are mainly positive that’s great, but what I’m really looking for is a Twitter or Facebook page, it means that customers enjoyed the restaurant so much they took the time to go to Twitter or Facebook and follow or “Like” them.

Having a Facebook or Twitter account also means that you can stay in constant communication with all your clients, both current and potential, you can send out messages and emails with all your latest deals and promotions completely free. This form of advertising is fantastic because you are penetrating a specific demographic, if you send out flyers or put an ad in your local paper all you are doing is “scattergun advertising” (randomly advertising) meaning you are advertising to all demographics, but through social media you can advertise to people who you know are interested in your business because they have visited before.

People have hundreds of friends online so when they “Like” or follow your business some of their friends will be notified, so from that one person you can grab several of their online friends, and all this for doing absolutely nothing, that is the power of the internet, it never sleeps so your business will be advertising 24/7.