How lucky I’m feeling living in Austin, where all the Top influencers and money makers in internet marketing live or visit every month!

This month, I got even luckier because my friend and uber successful internet marketer Hollis Carter has been staying at the W hotel right next door to my place. I was able to catch him for 17 minutes today to record this special video invitation where he shares tips on publishing your next book on Kindle.

I’ve decided to let his company publish my next Social Media book for Business Owners because of the perfect publishing system they’ve perfected. (And so they can do the marketing FOR me.  )

Now, his partner (and mastermind behind this system) Jonny is going to meet up with me via a Webinar meeting, and you’re invited to look over my shoulder as he Coaches me on publishing the next best seller! This guarantees to be a highly informative event online that you will NOT want to miss.

Join me and listen in on my coaching session with Jonny and feel free to ask as many questions on publishing as you’ve got! The more great question on Kindle Publishing, the better — for me AND you and every friend of mine listening in who realizes how you can make a ton of money by publishing a book on Kindle this year.

Register now and get all the details on when this private Web event will take place and hear how Kindle Publishing is THE Best thing you can do your business, brand or personal self — for the book author in you!

Click here to eavesdrop on me while I get Coached on Kindle Publishing!

Here’s to a Killer Kindle Publishing Year!

Tip #16 – Quickie Tip – Throw Myths on Traditional PR Out the Window

This is the one tip that you cannot ignore if you want success in social media.

Throw privacy, control, and PR rules out the window, because corporate PR strategies and rules are all about giving the public a certain canned message, whereas blogging and social media is all about being transparent and authentic. And you can still have control over what message gets across, but if you’re focusing on privacy and closure and all that, it’s the antithesis of social media. And it’s exactly what will not work in getting you tons of fans, and results.

Social Media Loves Transparency

So the Quickie tip is “Throw Myths  on Traditional PR Out the Window” and go back to Tip # 1 which is  engagement, engagement, engagement with your audience.

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Tip #15, is make sure you have Your Own Blog with Your Own Opt-in Form that You Own.

You can also put 5 asterisks on this because this is such a core guiding principle in everything you do in all of the above 14 tips that I just shared with you on social media success.

And that is, to have an opt in form on all of your social network channels. So every channel that you create, you always get a place where you can put a link for your website or a page on the web.  And that page should be your home page on your blog that has an opt in. Or a specific page that just has your video that says, and you know it could be specific to each channel.

You can have that. You can be collaborative with it. Or it can be very simple way to just drive them all to one page where it says, “Hey, if you like my posts or strategies or videos or whatever it is you offer, you can stay in touch with me by just signing up below (or wherever you decide to put on your opt in box).  And then tell them to opt in to stay in touch with you. And then tell them what they’re going to get. Make it something special and also tell them the things they’re going to get when you communicate on your blog.

So the key to everything you do in social media is never…because these social media channels are not owned by you. Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Pinterest…All of these things that I mentioned..YouTube…They’re not owned by you. You have no control over them.

And I’ve been doing this business in social media for 10 years, and when I went to revise my first book that I wrote on Twitter, there were companies and links that were in existence then that people signed up for. They were very popular that were then bought out, and then the person that bought them out changed some of the rules.  Some of them did away with them and eliminated the channel.

You know, a lot of people joke around about MySpace, and MySpace is so extremely relevant for two tribes: 1) musicians.  Justin Timberlake, or otherwise known as JT, just recently bought MySpace. So we’re going to see a surge in interest and a lot of publicity for MySpace.  And it was specifically created for musicians.  It gave them a channel to share their music without having to go through the professional publishing world and be approved to share their music with the world.

Instead, they let people vote them up or vote them down.  Tila Tequila wound up becoming one of the most famous MySpace musicians, got a million followers, got her own TV show, and obviously had an album, and she got her music out. And a number of other musicians have the same kind of success story.

Others use it just as a way to gather their tribe.  So that’s the number one place for musicians.  All musicians must have a MySpace channel.

MySpace Usage in Social Media Success Secrets

You might not need a MySpace channel if you’re a doctor or someone who’s not really tapping into that target market.  But maybe it is.

Because the second tribe of people that love MySpace is the Spanish market.  Not just people in Spain, but people in America who are Spanish.  For whatever reason, the market research tells us that this is a tribe that loves MySpace.  They like the format of it. A lot of creatives really like MySpace over Facebook.  There are people who hate Facebook – hate it, hate it, hate it.  And you may just absolutely love it.  It may be your preference. But the bottom line here is, a lot of people joke around about MySpace because it isn’t as popular in the general community as it once was.

So, again, if you built your tribe solely on MySpace and now all of a sudden everyone’s using Facebook, and then all of a sudden everyone doesn’t want to use Facebook, but wants to use LinkedIn – probably not the case.  I think Facebook is being led by someone who is very competitive and will always be competing with the other services that pop up, but at any rate, it could be anything, like Pinterest.  Instagram was just recently bought by Twitter.  So now that’s different.  So you are always at the mercy of these other social media companies that own all of your data.

Notice.  There’s no privacy when it comes to social media. So, you must have, number one, an opt in form on all your social media channels  and pages.  And if you can embed it right there on the page, fantastic.  Otherwise, have a link over to your blog.  You must have your own blog and it must be social media friendly, SEO compatible, and Google friendly in order for you to beat your competition on Google when they’re searching for you.

You do these things, if you link the popular, the top seven channels, and I discuss that in a different audio program.  But if you link the top 7 social media channels that you must be on no matter who you are, if you link them all to your blog, guess what?  You have higher relevancy on your blog than you would if you didn’t have those channels.

And it’s because they are considered authority sites and very, very highly ranked sites. Like FB, and Twitter and all those things, highly ranked sites.  So when Google sees that it’s linking to your blog, your blog also gets a boost in the Google search engine.

So make sure you link them all there, and then in this tip, Tip #15, is make sure you have your own blog with your own opt in form that you will own.  You want to own your contact list.

Thanks and Tune in Again

And then, we’ll talk about this in future tips in another series, in another audio program about having your own blog and what you need to do on your blog beyond what you’re doing in the social media channels.  That is probably the number one thing you need to do and remember in social media is that these social media channels are fantastic.  They’re absolutely essential these days, in this century, but they’re only tools and advertising venues and channels to drive them to your storefront.  Your storefront is your blog, your own domain that you own.

That’s going to be critical. We’ll talk about that in the next audio program about your own blog and your opt in form, and then what you want to do with that op-tin form.  You want to have an auto-responder set up. You want to have a series. You want to be communicating with your list, giving them a one time offer, giving them special treatment, giving them information they would never find in any of your social media channels.  Behind the scenes footage, information, reports, specials, deals.

All these things you do only on your blog and your home page that you own and that you have the op-tin form to collect  your visitors and grow your list.
We’ll talk about how important that is in the next audio program.

So thank you so much for tuning in to this Secrets to Social Media Success series.

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Tip #14 – Share Behind the Scenes Footage

This is one of the funnest social media success tips that I’ve given advice for celebrity clients – the clients that have TV shows and it’s a huge thing where people see the show, they see the series on TV, but they never get beyond that.

This is a really fun tip for them, but it also really works for the average Joe or the business owner that is out there in the public eye, especially if you’re a musician, if you’re a doctor, if you’re doing anything where you’re in the public eye, they kind of want to know a little bit more about you. You know, who are you and what are you really about?

And if you do have any video presence, like if you have a popular YouTube video, and you provide some really cool tips or videos. Or if you’re a musician or an artist and they see your music video.  So when you tie into this tip, number 14, and offer additional video footage, this is the stuff they love.   They feel special and feel like they’re ‘in the know,’ and they’ve got that VIP access.  They really feel like they get to know you on a personal level.

And the secret to social media success tip that we’re talking about here is: Share Behind the Scenes Footage.

So, it can be in the form of a post, sharing from the heart like, “Hey, you know when I wrote this song, this is what I was thinking.”  And you just share and you talk about it.

If you do a recording in audio, they get to hear you. They get to hear your tone of voice.  They really feel like they get to know you and, in fact, they do!  It’s like having a personal conversation with one person except it’s reaching thousands of people at the same time with the same amount of effort.

So, video is a great way to do this as well, especially if you have…like if I put out videos that are out there on the net or on TV, if you’re a celebrity, a great way to do behind the scenes video footage, bloopers are one of the best things that people love. And they’ll watch again and again.

Because it’s like, “Ooh, this is the stuff I would not normally see because it’s not polished. It’s stuff you try to hide. It’s like a secret, right? And you just have this intrigue in our  society about, like, what are people hiding? What are the things you don’t see?  What are the things that people do to prep to show that awesome image?

Oprah Did It

Oprah did that in her magazine a couple of years ago and she had this whole, several page footage of her behind the scenes literally in the back studio prepping for the show, like how she looked in the morning with the rollers on and no makeup on and what they did to make her look presentable on TV.

And she wanted to show, like, “Hey, this is, you know what? I don’t wake up looking this good.  It takes a little bit of effort and it takes a whole team. And so here you see everything that we do.”

So let’s say you’re not in the public eye as a celebrity, but let’s say you’re a doctor.  You have a professional image.  Well, obviously, you don’t want to have a blooper of you trying something out. But you can have the behind the scenes footage of how you prep for clients coming in.  Maybe there’s research that you do. Anything where they see that you’re in your office, moves that they don’t necessarily see because they just walked into the patient office.

Maybe you’re a chiropractor or a cosmetic surgeon or you’re a dermatologist and they just go into specific rooms. Right? But if they see you in your office or maybe they just had one consult with you and then they never really go back there, put footage there of you sharing something or how you prep for clients or how you learn, how you educate yourself. What resources do you have? Anything that you can share. The things you do for your clients that they normally never see and don’t know about but you to communicate that. That’s a great way for you to boost your credibility and for them to go, “Oh, that’s how this all works.”

So think of things that you can share with them that you normally don’t have the time for or maybe you feel it’s not appropriate to have that conversation with your client, but you can share that from your office, from your heart, in some behind the scenes footage.
It may even be as simple as you going out in t he public, maybe it’s your favorite restaurant, just really getting to know you on a personal level.  So, share from the heart. Share behind the scenes, in other words, when you’re not in the office. When you’re not there, what they normally see, show them what they don’t see, what they couldn’t see.  That’s the secret voyeur in all of us. We want to know you’re doing when you’re not working. We also want to know the process you go through when you are.

So that is Tip #14 -  Share Behind the Scenes Footage

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