The Reasons I Love Twitter

October 12, 2015 / Toni Williams / Leave a comment

I love Twitter. It’s like the New York City of social media. It’s fast-paced. there’s always something happening, and it never sleeps. For any business, Twitter can be vital to your marketing and social media plan. On the flipside, for personal use Twitter can be entertaining and a way for regular people to engage with celebrities and other notable figures. I must admit that it did take some time for Twitter to grow on me, but like New York City, it is home to millions.

Here are the reasons I love Twitter, in no particularly order.

It makes me a better writer. The 140-character minimum in Twitter posts require tweets to be succinct and clearly stated. When I was taking journalism classes in college, we would do assignments that focused on writing clearly and concisely. Today, I get to practice those skills everyday when I write copy and interact with others on Twitter.
When I’m asleep, it continues to drive people to my blog. Until recently. I was only interacting on Twitter from about 8 am until 6 pm. It wasn’t until my blog analytics showed that someone from New Zealand visited my blog one night when I was asleep when I decided that my Twitter feed could do a better job of relating to my blog audience overseas. When I wake up each day, I do a quick preliminary glance at my blog stats and I am still amazed that people are so active on the internet when I’m asleep. I think I secretly wish I was up with them.
It delivers the most recent up-to-date information from a variety of sources. Twitter is my go-source for the latest and greatest news events, and it gives me all sides of a story. I love it for it’s unbiased nature in transmitting important information.
It is friendly to third-party apps. If you use a third-party app (like a post scheduler) with Facebook, your audience may or may not see the posts. With Twitter, everything is visible to your followers.
It is the parent company of Periscope. Periscope has taken the social media world by storm in the past six months. If you haven’t heard of it, it is a live video streaming platform for anyone who wants to have a show with a mobile device. Scopes can be as long or as short as you’d like them to be, and it is very interactive for the participants.

Those are the biggest reasons I love Twitter. What are your reasons for loving it?

An Intentional Approach to Instagram

October 9, 2015 / Toni Williams / Leave a comment

Instagram is awesome. When I first discovered it about five years ago, I was amazed at the filters. At that time, I thought that the filters were professional quality and I never needed to to anything else. Believe it or not, I kind of held to that thinking until recently when I took an Instagram class, and learned a few things about being intentional with Instagram.

Here are the tips I want to share:

Your Instagram page should look cohesive. When you lookout your profile page, pay attention to your first nine photos. Ask yourself this question, can anyone looking at these nine photos have an accurate representation of what’s important in my life? Hint: that answer should be yes.
If it is not, delete the photos that don’t fit.
Use hashtags, but do not use more than two. Okay, maximum three. A comment full of hashtags just looks tacky. Sorry, I could think of a better way to put it.
Use natural light as much as possible. All photos — mobile and otherwise look better in natural light.
Find a filter you like and use it all the time. This will give your photos continuity.
The same thing goes from framing. Frame or nah, but be consistent either way.
Look at your profile and make sure you describe yourself and include your personal website (if applicable) in the profile. Remember what you say about yourself should be reflected in your top 9 photos.
Remember this, just because you take a photo, you do not have to post it on Instagram. Sometimes, Facebook is enough. It’s up to you and your online presence as to what goes where. That’s the part about being intentional. Give yourself permission to post when it’s right, not because you think that everything needs to go on Facebook.

I hope these help you in creating a more intentional approach to Instagram. Feel free to read additional posts from my 31 Days of Social Media series.

Click here to read my series on simple social media

An Intentional Approach to Facebook

If Mark Zuckerberg is Intentional, You Should Be Too

Beyond the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram

An Intentional Approach to Facebook

October 7, 2015 / Toni Williams / 1 Comment

Don’t spam your friends on Facebook.

Yes it is a social network. Yes, it is a marketing tool. But I repeat.

Don’t spam your friends on Facebook.

Facebook is a great platform. It allows us to connect with old friends, family members who are far away, and share photos of what we’re doing and where we’re going.

It is not a place to spam your friends and associates about what you’re doing. Intentional posting on Facebook mean you are posting things for the benefit of your friends, not for the benefit of you.

So again, let’s review. Don’t spam your friends on Facebook.

When my kids were younger, I would post pictures of them on Facebook because we live 300-1,000 miles away from our family. I do love my kids, but the reality is I see them everyday. Their cuteness is really for the sake of my family members who don’t get to see them often. And it works in reverse as well. Here’s the deal, if I post one photo, I don’t need to post more. More than one photo (maybe two or three max) is going to feel like spam. And when people feel like they are spammed, they will unfollow and unfriend. Then they will tell friends you have in common to unfriend and unfollow.

And yes, 50 photos of your fancy dinner last night at a lot of different angles is spam. It just is. One photo is enough, and if it is really fancy, one photo of each course. But no more.

In this case, I’m talking about personal pages. But if you are a small business owner, here’s one for you.

Don’t spam your customers on Facebook either.

If you are a small business owner and you do not have a marketing background, you need to invest in social media training or hire a social media manager. Posting a flyer and tagging everyone you know is spam. And as a matter of fact, in order to protect the integrity of their own brand, Facebook will freeze any account that continuously tags people over and over.

Yep. Facebook has punishment and will not hesitate to punish.

Intentional Facebook posts are for the benefit of others. You are posting something of value for your friends, family, and customers. So please look at the information you’d like to post and make sure it is going to be an asset to someone.

I understand that as a small business owner, Facebook can be difficult to manage. Again, invest in training or hire someone who has. But in the meantime, make sure your posts are relevant.

Here’s some extra tips that may help.

Using a scheduling app to manage your posts on social media is extremely helpful. However, it is not necessary to repost the same sentence, words, or flyer once an hour every hour. This is where a good copy writer or marketing person can help. The same posts over and over and over again are spam.
Facebook HATES third-party anything. The only third-party app that Facebook kind of likes is Instagram; and it’s owned by Facebook. So its not exactly third-party. Your people may or may not see the post. If you have a business page on Facebook, you can now schedule your posts right on Facebook. Yes, it takes more time to schedule in Facebook and then use the scheduling program for the other platforms, however until we figure out another plan, that’s what you do.
Buying Facebook Ads to promote your business is perfectly okay. Any business, no matter the size, should have a marketing budget. No matter how small your $$, you can create and run an effective Facebook ad campaign that will increase your traffic and put your message in front of your audience. In this realm, you can’t beat Facebook, so you just need to join them.

So tell me, do you have any tips for posting intentional posts on Facebook?

Thank you for joining my October writing challenge 31 Days of Social Media. To read other posts, click on the images below.

If Mark Zuckerberg is Intentional, You Should Be Too