Professional Social Media Accounts: The Essential Secret

When I started out as a writer/contributor for Comic Booked.com, I was briefed on the importance of social media networks for online businesses. We needed to publicize ourselves, our articles, and the site as a whole--and the more sharing, the better. We had to build our follower bases as much as possible and then tweet/share/+1 everything we wrote on as many platforms as possible. That makes sense, of course... but then people lost interest in everything I had to say. I started losing friends and followers that were people I knew and cared about, because as far as they were concerned I was just spamming them with the latest comic book news. Ouch.

I've mentioned this before on this blog, and I have to say that it's one of the trickier dilemmas I've had to face as an online professional. I found a solution to the social media problem soon after I started writing this blog by opening up a separate Twitter account for E.O.I.P. (@onlineincome19), where I focus exclusively on tips relevant to my business and this blog. My followers here are not my personal friends, and neither are those I follow. Instead, I use this account as a way to connect solely with professionals and information sources who can help me and/or hopefully benefit from what I have to say. I have only experienced growth from this account, and only positive reactions from others who have found it. Why? It's targeted. I'm sharing information with people who actually want to hear it, while at the same time preserving my other social accounts for my personal life.

Three questions that come up regarding professional social media accounts are when, why and how. I've already tackled a lot of the why. The timing depends on your business. You should open new social media accounts as soon as you're ready to start seriously promoting whatever you have to offer. "How" is a bit trickier. I want to stay as far from spamming others as I can, and I also want my updates to be regular and consistent. There's a super easy way to manage a professional Twitter account: find good sources of information and subscribe to them. Every blog has an RSS feed that you can find if you look around a bit, and if you go to your new Twitter account information, you'll find a place where you can input the RSS feed. That way, whenever the blog updates, the new article will show up on your Twitter account without your having to do anything. This has helped build my following and establish my reputation even though it took only a few minutes to set up.

If you run or are heavily involved with an online business, a professional social media account is essential to your success. It's also something that takes only moments to start on and no time at all to monitor, and will bring you traffic and popularity in a way that nothing else can.

Day 11.3: Social Media: Acceptable for Business?

My most recent entrepreneurial endeavor was joining an interesting service I just learned about that uses Facebook and Twitter to advertise. You don't advertise your own link--you go with someone else's instead, and then someone else will advertise yours. I'm curious to see how it works out in a while. I'm using my personal Twitter account, which has a bit over 300 followers, almost all of whom are total strangers. I feel kind of bad about it, though. When I first got Twitter about a year ago, I posted tiny short stories on it or cheerful thoughts. After I joined Comic Booked, I used Twitter almost exclusively to advertise for it, and then now I'm using it to advertise some links. I still post something more personal once in a while, but there's no question that my personal Twitter feed is nothing fun to read. Just a list of ads. Is that ok?

One of my big fears about running an online business is that I'll start abusing social media. I've said before that I hate spam and I don't want any association with it. I've also said that I'm a horrible advertiser, and so anything I post promoting anything winds up just like an annoying ad. How far is too far?

One of the most common advice given to those who want to promote anything, online or offline, is to tell friends and family! Get the word out! Post about it on Facebook or Twitter! My big question is... will anyone still want to be friends with me if I do?

I don't know the answer. My current views are that if you're going to use social media for business, then get a separate business account for it, just as I've done with Twitter. But I don't want to have a dozen Twitter accounts and five Facebook accounts just to get my point across to the right audience. I want to advertise, but not spam. How can I do that? How can I get my notices to people who actually want to sign up instead of just shouting out to everyone? I guess I still have a lot to learn.

Day 4.3: Using Social Media for Business

When I first started my work as an editor for ComicBooked.com, I was told of the vital importance of social media. In today's world, that's one of the best ways to get across to people. Use Facebook, use Twitter, use StumbleUpon and Reddit--in fact, most of you reading this probably discovered this blog from one of those sites. It's vital to have accounts and share your work as much as possible. But like everything else, there are ways to abuse it as well as use it.

There are two ways to go about social media if you want it to benefit your business--either use your own personal account or open a new one. If you use your personal account, you already have many contacts who are personally interested in what you invest in. Your family and friends are interested in you, and it's easy to share with them to help get the word out. But there's also a problem: people tune out if they get bored. If you're too enthusiastic, if you post about your business or site constantly, people will ignore you or (even worse) get annoyed with you. This can be avoided easily if most of your posts remain fun and personal, but it's easy to forget that. When I was starting out at my editing job, I started focusing largely on Twitter I posted every article I wrote, and almost every article I edited, onto Twitter. I tried to put on some regular posts as well, but I didn't have enough interesting things to say to keep up. Before long, almost every post I made was just advertising articles. I began to lose followers. When I went to look up which ones had left, I found the names of some of my own friends among them. I was heartbroken. Why were my friends abandoning me? Why didn't they like me any more? I was horrified as I realized what had happened. I was spamming them. I was sending unwanted notes to people over and over again, and my personal life had all but disappeared. They had no reason to follow me, and now I was harming my own work.

I was thinking earlier about new ways to publicize this blog. Twitter came to mind easily, but I didn't want to make the same mistake. I decided to take a different path. I got a new account for this blog, under the name of @onlineincome19. I have to start building a following from scratch, but this time I'm going to look for people who are interested in saving and earning online. I'm not going to post only links to articles, but also share bite-sized tips and links to sites I find helpful. I don't know how hard it will be for me to find a good balance for Tweet content, but I think that at any rate it should be better than my last attempt. I'm also considering starting up a Facebook page, but one thing at a time.

Day 1.2: Publicity, Publicity, Publicity!

If you're going to make money by writing online, you're going to have to do more than just write. I know that. Every time I've tried "just writing" in the past, my blogs have flopped to the point where I might as well have kept them in private journals. So... how do you get the word out?

1.Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one important way to let people find you online. I first learned about it when I worked as a writer and editor at Comicbooked.com--the best entertainment news site ever. The biggest thing to remember is to take advantage of keywords and tags. The more of those you have, the better chances there are of people stumbling onto your site. How do you choose a keyword? Examples for this post would include "search engine optimization," "keywords," and "comicbooked.com."

2. Another way is to take advantage of social media. Don't overdo this one--I've lost friends by advertising my writing too much. Use Twitter, Facebook, and Google + to get the word out about what you're doing, and your own personal friends and family will be much more interested and likely to tell others. Not interested in social media? Open accounts anyway. All you have to do is send out the link every so often with a friendly note about how awesome it is. Now, as I said, it's easy to overdo this one, and people don't like when you spam them, even if it's something really amazing. Keep your tweets and statuses personal and witty, if possible, and try to balance your business notes with your personal notes. But do stay active, and do promote your own work.

I have a confession to make here. So far for this blog I haven't done anything more than a simple Facebook post. No social publicity, no nothing. That might be part laziness on my part, but largely it's out of my personal desire to keep something as experimental as this blog to myself until I have an idea how it will work out.

3. And now for the hard part, the real labor: put your posts in directories. Ok, so what's so hard about that? Aren't there ways to submit to a bunch of search engines and directories at the same time? Of course there are... if you have money. If not, tough luck. Digging around, I have found some good search engine submitters, but directories? Not a one. At least not so far. I'll keep you posted if I find anything worthwhile.

Publicity is vital to monetized blogging, and it's work. For me, more work even than the blogging itself. But with eight views to this blog so far today since my last check, I know I must be doing something right.