1. You’re an authority on a topic their interested in.
2. You’re an interesting conversationalist.
3. You’re funny.

While it would be nice to be all three, it just isn’t likely. When it comes to Social Media the only one on the list above that matters is number 1! You must be an authority on the topic or topics you make your living at. Even then getting people to follow you on a consistent basis can be a difficult task. Follow these simple guidelines and you’ll have more followers (and more customer) than you’ll know what to do with.

Be Clear and Concise

You may be an authority on your topic but if you’re not clear and tend to ramble, you’ll lose your audience fast. Before publishing, ask a friend or relative to read your content and then have them relay your main ideas back to you as they understand it. You may be surprised at what you here.

Know Your Facts

You may be an authority but even the pro can get it wrong. So be sure to check your facts.  Nothing will lose your followers faster than when they find out your wrong! They will then post that fact in as many places as possible to make them look smarter to those around them.

Be Objective

Keep emotion out of it. Emotion can tend to cloud your judgment and in will come through in your writing. If your followers feel you can’t be objective they’ll stop listening.

Above all, Provide VALUE!

You can be all of the things above, but without adding value in some form, it’s all for nothing. Weather it be information value, discount value or entertainment value doesn’t matter. Without VALUE nobody will stick around

Remember these few simple to follow tips on posting to your social media accounts and your followers will be around for a long time.

To your social media success!

Steve & Beneta Nelson

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• Memorial Day Tidings

The last time I checked, the more clients a business had, the more money they made. And money (correct me if I’m wrong) is a good thing. We all need it in order to keep doing our jobs… and we all need it in order to survive.

So, if you understand that more money can come as the result of having more clients in your business, the question then becomes, “How do you attract more clients?”

Based on my experiences, the best way to do this is through the creation of social proof.

Social proof is something one creates in order to prove to others that what he or she says or does is worth paying attention to. In short, it’s a way of building yourself up so that you can sway the actions of a large group of people.

The principle behind social proof is that since most people make the assumption that the people surrounding them possess more knowledge about a particular situation than they do, they will deem the behavior of others as more appropriate or better informed… and therefore, follow in the footsteps of those around them.

Social proof gets people talking about brands. Social proof convinces people to buy a particular product. And social proof sways clients to buy from one business and not another.

The more social proof your business has, the greater your chances of attracting new clients.

In order to attract more clients and make more money, however, you need to create an ever-increasing amount of social proof around your business.

Need more money? Get more clients.

Need more clients? Create social proof.

If you can create enough social proof, you’ll have clients begging to buy from your business. With enough social proof you’ll have clients clamoring to your business.

Social proof is powerful.

If you understand this, you’re on the right track! But the question then becomes, “How do you create social proof within your community?”

One way to do it is through the use of SOCIAL MEDIA.

What you may not realize about social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is that not only are these tools an excellent way of communicating with the citizens in your community… but sites such as these are also one of the best (and fastest) ways of building social proof.

To build social proof with social media, you need to do three things.

1) Increase your follower counts. The more people you have following you on Twitter, subscribing to your RSS feeds, or becoming a fan of yours on Facebook, the more important your business will seem.

2) Get your business’s message to spread online. The more your business’s content is Re-Tweeted, emailed back and forth, voted on, Digged, or StumbledUpon, the more “popular” your organization becomes.

3) Have people talking about your business in the real world. When the story you spread about your business is so great that it has people talking about your institution outside of the World Wide Web, then you know you’ve succeeded in generating positive social proof.

The formula looks like this:

• Need more money? Get more clients.
• Need more clients? Create social proof.
• Need social proof? Harness the power of social media.

Social proof is created by continually proving that your business is an amazing place; that you’re constantly pushing the boundaries; and that your business is doing something special – something others will want to be a part of.

If you are not yet using social media in your business as a tool for communication, marketing, promotion, and social proof creation, now is the time to begin!

Social proof doesn’t just pop up over night. It takes time to build and grow. The longer you wait to get started, the longer it’s going to take before your community starts talking about you and your incredible institution.

What are you waiting for? There couldn’t be a better time to harness the power of social proof through the use of social media! Join the Social Media Schools Master Course Today! Start creating your Socia Proof before your competition does!

Photo by Malkav

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The video at the end of this article shows Internet marketing guru, Perry Belcher, explaining how he uses social media to attract new clients and make more money.

While the video is targeted at small business owners looking to use social media as a means of increasing sales, there is a lot in the video that schools can use as well.

The main point Perry is making in the video is that you need to treat social media as though it were a party. Each of the various social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, etc) are a different online party. And when you go to a party, you don’t want to show up and immediately start talking about yourself.

Just like in your normal life, if you were to show up at a party and only talk about yourself, people would think you were a real jerk! The same is true when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But when you go to a party in your normal life, you don’t just talk about yourself, do you? I hope not!

Instead, you show up, you ask people what they’re doing, you compliment what others are wearing, you try and find people who are interested in the same things you are, and you strike up conversation. The same needs to be true when using social networking sites in your school.

When you use Facebook or Twitter to communicate with your parents, teachers, students and community members, you don’t want to ALWAYS be talking about you and your school. Instead, you’ve got to treat your social media use more like a party.

• Use social media to compliment and congratulate people in your community.
• Use social media to profile the accomplishments of your teachers and students.
• Use social media to build up your staff and community members.
• Use social media to ask questions and gather feedback.
• Use social media to find out what your students, parents, teachers and community members really want.

Because social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are free, easy to use, and have millions of current users, many schools see this as an opportunity to pump their community with selfish and meaningless content. But when you start to treat your social media use more like a party, you start to realize just how wrong this approach really is.

Watch the video below to learn more… and after you’ve finished watching it, leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Photo by Art Comments

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