The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

by Guy Kawasaki, Peg Fitzpatrick

The Art of Social Media will teach you the fundamentals of the world’s most powerful social media platforms, allowing you to optimize them for your business. You’ll learn all the greatest tips and secrets to becoming a social media master with a wide reach of followers, increased engagement, and valuable content across all forms. You’ll have everything it takes to dominate the competition and thrive in the ever-evolving digital world. 

Summary Notes

Boost Your Account

"Your face provides the most data about what kind of person you are."

A profile page on social media explains who you are to the whole world. From your profile picture and cover photo to biographical text, it represents you and shares your interests with your audience. 

People usually don’t stay on somebody’s page for long, and it’s up to you to stand out by providing interesting and informative content. It is also important to know the difference between profiles (individual use, up to 5,000 ‘’friends’’) and pages (commercial use, unlimited number of ‘’likes’’). If you plan to use social media for business, it’s best to go pro, as it will give you more options to promote your content, and you’ll be able to run more ads.

Actions to take

Content Creation and Curation

The biggest daily challenge of social media is finding enough content to share. We call this “feeding the Content Monster.”

Producing great content is not easy. You need to be consistent, organized, and effectively know where to search for valuable content to become visible, gain an audience, and increase engagement. This process of searching for the right content, summarizing it, and sharing it on various social media platforms is called content curation. 

Receiving likes and comments from your audience are a good start but making them re-share your content is the best. When people reshare your posts, that means you’ve provided viable and informative content, making them risk their credibility because of you.

Actions to take

Make Your Posts Flawless

"Sharing is caring."

By sharing your posts, people find out about you and your ideas. If they think it’s good, they will reshare it, leading to a wider reach and more followers. 

When you borrow something, always mention it. What happens is that you connect readers with the source, plus you increase your visibility and popularity. Some tools to help you distribute your posts are Buffer, Do Share, Friends + Me, Hootsuite, Post Planner, Sprout Social, Tailwind, etc.

If you want people to reshare your posts, you must share quality and relevant content for your specific audience. On the other hand, you can analyze someone else’s content and communicate your unique perspective. 

Tools like Tweriod and SocialBro for Twitter reveal who follows you and help you find new people to follow. LikeAlyzer and Post Planner for Facebook are used to check your Facebook pages and tweak the content, while Tailwind is used for scheduling and monitoring Pinterest.

Actions to take

Enjoy Responding to Comments

"When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering."

You will be faced with many comments. Some will be flattering and inspiring, while others may be irritating and mean. There is nothing to do except learning how to deal with negative ones. 

Try to use them to your advantage and gain publicity and more followers by being sly. Always know what questions to ask (if there’s a negative opinion – first ask a person if he/she had a firsthand experience with the issue). Be a psychologist and serve them wise answers and questions. You need to know how to address irrelevant comments, and don’t hesitate to ignore trolls and spammers.

Actions to take

Combine Social Media and Blogging

’’Social media, like blogs, are truth-seeking technologies.’’

People predicted that social media would replace blogs because of its short content and spontaneous form, as opposed to serious and long-form blogging, but they were wrong. 

The best approach is to incorporate both into your campaign because blogging enriches your posts, while social media boosts and promotes blogging. The two are tightly connected, and the sooner you realize it, the easier it will be for you to manage your future content.

LinkedIn is one good platform you can use to share content. The number of people commenting and posting various great content might inspire and help you achieve your career goals.

Actions to take

Promoting Events

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."- Nelson Mandela

Organizing an event is never easy. Using social media to increase visibility is even harder. People usually focus on pre-promotion, and very little is said on social media after the event. If used correctly, social media tools can help you promote the event and gain larger visibility and a lot of reshared posts. To do it properly, you need a team and persistence.

Actions to take

Use Google+ HOAs to Broadcast Your Own ’’TV Channel’’

"We get to live in a time that we get to use social media as a tool" - Gigi Hadid

Using Google+ Hangouts on Air is like having your own television channel. An HOA is publicly broadcast through your Google+ page and YouTube channel. Later, it is automatically archived on your YouTube channel. You can start it in any country where Google+ is available. It’s a perfect way to get more viewers (embed a code or the YouTube URL in your blog/website so those not signed to Google+ can also see it) and expand your network. With the right structure (spontaneous or organized-preferable), there are no boundaries.

Actions to take

Master a Twitter Chat

"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."- Napoleon Hill

A Twitter chat is about the audience and what they want to discuss. It is a challenging live event where you must be a quick typist, compared to Google+ HOAs, where you must think rapidly. 

In the Twitter chat, you include a hashtag in your tweets to discuss a topic. A guest and a host tweet questions and provide feedback, including the hashtag, and it all goes in a circle. Using the right tools (Tchat and Twubs) makes it easier for you because there’s no need to remember to include the chat’s hashtag in every tweet and deal with the enormous amount of tweets and retweets. And if somebody calls you like a guest, be there. Spread the word. It might help you get more followers.

Actions to take

Avoid Being Clueless

"Cluelessness is not an attractive quality in a man."- Michael Ian Black

If you haven’t got anything smart to say, it’s better not to speak. There are too many posts on the internet, and people spend a little time viewing a certain post. If you are ignorant, repellent, and aggressive, chances are you won’t get far away with your reach and number of followers. Use sarcasm and emancipation, but don’t be rude. If you don’t like a post, move on. Telling people what to share is ignorant. People hate that. Mind your own business.

Actions to take

Increase Visibility of Your Social Media Accounts

"Don’t use social media to impress people, use it to impact people."

There are many social media platforms available. The impact a person can produce on it is huge. On the other hand, the competition is tough, and your content has to stand out from the rest if you want to reach a larger number of followers. 

It’s all about passion and people, so it’s up to you to share posts with purpose and use every possible tool that can help you on your way.

Actions to take

Connect the Dots

"Everything you post on social media impacts your personal brand. How do you want to be known?"

It’s not easy to put everything together. Many elements of social media are included, and it is up to the creator to combine them to promote their content, gain more followers and increase visibility. Build the groundwork and create accounts on platforms you haven't utilized before (if applicable). Presentations and short, introductory videos are always welcome to promote your content. Because social media are excellent marketing tools, the better you master them, the better your content will be.

Actions to take

Don’t just read. Act.
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