Michael Wilding

Tag: social media

  • You are not alone…

    You are not alone…

    For some reason unbeknownst (if that’s a word!) to me, the lyrics from Michael Jackson’s Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’came unbidden into my head this morning.

    So… I thought I’d use them as the subject line on today’s email.

    It happens to tie in nicely with what I was thinking about social media.

    If you’ve been reading my newsletter for any length of time, you’ll know that social media is not my primary focus. I do bits and pieces on it, I know how to grow followings on most of them, but…

    …I’ve never been able to decide which to focus on for my own personal blog (i.e. the one you’re reading).

    And that all comes down to time and effort.

    Running a social media account properly takes a serious amount of time and thought.

    Which, if I’m honest, I just don’t have at the moment.

    You may have noticed (or not if you never go on Facebook) that my FB page has been lacking in updates recently.

    Why?

    Because it requires a lot more time and thought than other channels.

    For the last 18 months or so I’ve been concentrating on Twitter, and recently I started putting a bit more time into Instagram.

    But the truth is… I simply can’t decide which I want to use the most.

    What I should do, and what I would advise others to do, is to choose one and delete the rest, so there’s simply one focus.

    For me, that’s almost certainly (yes, I know that doesn’t make sense) going to be Twitter or Instagram.

    Truth be told, I’d probably prefer to go with Instagram, but since I have over 12000 Twitter followers, and it’s taken me 18 months to get them, it would be silly to close that account.

    So… you are not alone… I also struggle to decide on the best social media channel to use.

    Ah well, it’s Christmas soon so it’s not worth worrying about.

    Over and out,

    Michael

    P.S. Which social media channel do you focus on?

  • BrainFart (what a friggin mess!)

    BrainFart (what a friggin mess!)

    I wrote recently about social media, and the number of social media channels that are now out there.

    Of course, there’s a chance that you didn’t get that email since I cocked up the reputation of michaelwilding.com with Gmail a few weeks back, and the majority of my mailing list is Gmail!

    How did I cock up my reputation?

    We’re working with a new delivery server, and when testing I sent emails out to fake email addresses without first adding them to a kill list (which means the emails go to the server but never actually get sent).

    So instead of the thousands of test emails not being sent, they got sent, failed because they were fake, and the domain got a reputation for sending bad email addresses.

    Which has meant for the last few weeks none of my emails have been going to Gmail inboxes (doh).

    Lesson learnt! Don’t do this again.

    However, yesterday I started to see light at the end of the tunnel as my emails began going in to Gmail again, so hopefully by the end of the month we’ll be back to normal.

    Anyhoo… back to the main event today… social media channels.

    If you look at all the social media channels, and if you try to keep up to date with them, they literally make your brain fart with exhaustion.

    It’s impossible.

    Traditionally I’ve never been much of a social media man, but with one of my companies we’ve started using it a lot.

    The biggest decision to make is which channels to focus on. Something I’ve traditionally found very difficult for my personal blog because internet marketers are on all channels, and I’ve never been sure which I’ve personally preferred.

    If truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of social media and would rather it went away, but since that’s not going to happen I’ve gotta join them.

    Eventually I decided on Twitter as being my personal focus, and that now links to my Facebook page.

    However, recently I’ve been getting into Instagram. Why? Because I generally find it easier than Twitter as it’s just photos.

    While using it heavily for one company I’ve discovered a neat, and FREE, tool that’s enabled me to grow my Intsagram accounts at a steady pace.

    If you want to know what it is, then head over to the blog post of this email here and share it.

    When I get 100 hundred shares on the post I will make my next email the one where I reveal the software and how to use it 😉

    Michael

  • Smocial Smedia

    Smocial Smedia

    Social media’s becoming nuts. Just take a look at this list of some of the popular ones…

    Facebook
    Twitter
    LinkedIn
    Google+
    YouTube
    Pinterest
    Instagram
    Tumblr
    Flickr
    Reddit
    Vine
    Periscope
    BizSugar
    SnapChat

    And there’s a bunch more out there!

    As internet marketers, or folk who want to make some extra cash online ;), we’re told that we should be engaging on as many social media platforms as possible.

    If you actually tried to do this, you’d dig yourself an early grave.

    To be serious on a social media platform, you need to be publishing multiple times a day. Some need more, some need less, but they all need more than one a day.

    Then you need to interact with everybody on the channel to build some momentum. Not to forget, when you begin, you’re going to have to spend extra time building a following!

    Oh yeah… and you should, ideally, have different content on each channel.

    I mean WTF?!

    Honestly, it’s not possible. Just the fourteen social media channels above would require a full time team of three or four to keep active.

    So let’s go against that curve, which is how I like to generally do things, and say that you shouldn’t be trying to be on all platforms.

    Instead do this…

    1) Look at your market and their demographic. Discover which social media channel they prefer, and where the majority hang out and interact.

    2) Focus on that ONE channel!

    Seriously, this is going to make your life so much easier.

    By doing this you’re going to focus on building a following on one single social media channel, and focus is the key to being successful in this game.

    By focusing on one social media channel, you’ll be able to build great content for it, spend time building your following and getting to know your followers.

    This in turn will breed loyalty in your followers.

    Which is exactly what you want.

    Once you’ve got a big fanbase who are interacting with you, then’s the time to start working on another channel, if you want to.

    Of course, you may decide that you don’t actually need another channel, you’re fine just growing one.

    This approach is simple, and works. It’s how my Twitter account got to 11,600 followers and growing.

    You can see it here: https://twitter.com/mikeywilding

    Michael

    P.S. In next month’s Business Ignition I’m going to be sharing the new tool I’m using to get hundreds of likes on Instagram for every post.

  • He’s Out (in both ways!)

    He’s Out (in both ways!)

    It’s just been announced that Kevin Spacey is having his scenes cut from Ridley Scott’s latest movie due to the continuing sexual allegations that are coming out.

    Is this right or wrong?

    There’s definitelty a divide in opinion.

    Something that I certainly feel is that we’re not far away from it not mattering what the courts say, because people will be condemned via social media whether they’re guilty or not.

    What’s becoming more and more evident is that the power of the internet and social media is expanding rapidly.

    It’s made people vulnerable who thought, probably rightly, they were untouchable.

    And that’s no bad thing.

    The question is… how do YOU harness it to work for you.

    You start by focusing.

    That’s what most folks don’t do!

    Don’t try to blog, post on eight social media accounts, create videos, products, send emails, record a podcast, build a membership site and run paid advertising all at the beginning.

    At best it won’t work.

    At worst you’ll end up having a break-down. And nobody wants that!

    You need to focus on one particular channel of communication. That could be email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram.

    Then you need to spend all your energy getting the number of people you’re speaking to on that channel as high as possible.

    If you choose email, you should email at least once a day, possibly more if you have time.

    If you choose social media, you should be posting at least four or five times a day. Your account needs to be very active.

    Then… and this is the tough bit… don’t get distracted for the next year.

    Yup, you heard that right.

    I don’t care what anybody else says. You’re not going to be rich overnight. But if you focus and work hard, you could be well on the way there this time next year.

    Just to confirm, your focus should be to make sure that:

    You build the amount of followers in one communication channel, communicate with them regularly and make fans.

    Once you’ve begun that, there are two things which will help you.

    1) Don’t expect anything to happen quickly, just enjoy what you’re writing or posting.

    2) Don’t try and make money.

    Number one is self-explanatory, but I’m often told that number two doesn’t make any sense.

    But it’s the best way to make money.

    Why?

    Because as you build your fanbase over the next twelve months, it will be obvious to everyone involved that you aren’t out to simply make money from them.

    You actually want to start a conversation.

    It’s suprisingly difficult to have a conversation, provide entertainment and sell.

    So don’t bother. To begin with.

    Instead, spend your first year enjoying what you’re doing. During that year you’ll learn what your readers like, don’t like and what makes them stand up and shout.

    This is crucial information to be able to start selling to them in a way they’ll be happy with.

    My first website didn’t sell anything for the first two years.

    My first product launch did $196,839.

    Why?

    Because I knew exactly what my readers wanted.

    They knew I wouldn’t sell them something which wasn’t excellent.

    I had the trust of everyone in the industry, so they were all willing to support me.

    So while I didn’t sell anything for two years, the third year (and every year since) more than made up for it.

    Ciao,

    Michael

  • The Sahara Comes To The UK

    The Sahara Comes To The UK

    Yesterday was quite something.

    The Sahara desert flew into the UK, creating a sandy haze and brilliant red sun.

    To be honest, the sun was absolutely incredible, I’ve never seen anything quite like it here before.

    Then last night we were meant to have a hurricane.

    I’m not sure if that happened, but today it could be mid-summer, beautiful sunshine and a light breeze.

    Of course, it’s only just 9am, so everything could change.

    Something that’s definitely changing is technology.

    I was reading this morning, on a schoolfriend’s LinkedIn page, that Alibaba have just released a facial recognition payment system in China.

    WTF?!

    That means you don’t need to carry anything with you to be able to pay.

    On the one hand that’s kinda cool, but on the other…

    …it’s kinda freaky that companies will be able to get all the data they need just with a camera on your face.

    Some folk think it’s creepy how internet advertising follows you around, but doesn’t that open up all sorts of creepyness?

    For example, a billboard could change it’s advertising when it recognises your face, as could shop windows.

    TV sets could have cameras built into them so they know who’s watching them and target the advertising towards the viewers interests.

    If you logged into your TV with Facebook (or another social media app), they’d then know who was watching them and be able to determine huge amounts of information about you to target products towards you.

    And let’s be honest… it’s all gonna be about making money!

    What do you think?

    Michael

    P.S. It’s nearly time for next months edition of the Business Ignition magazine to be released.

    Here’s your link to join:

    https://michaelwilding.com/business-ignition