Bob “Sully” Sullivan and Russ T Nails from The BIG Biz Show interviewed Coach Deb Cole on how to use Social Media for business.

In true Radio entertaining fashion, these two TV hosts drew out social media tips for business owners from Coach Deb and had fun doing it. Get ready to take notes and laugh as you learn the secrets behind what’s hot in social media today!

You’ll discover how you can get your brand free advertising.

When you set up your social media profiles on Twitter and Facebook, etc. there are several key things you must do if you want to quickly get followers who engage with you and increase your EdgeRank in social media.

Here are a few tips shared by Coach Deb in this TV interview:

1) Be Entertaining
2) Follow others in your industry
3) Engage with influencers
4) Retweet influencers and twits you learn from
5) Provide Value in your twitter stream
6) Be where your customers are at (this means MySpace for specific brands)
7) Hire a Social Media Manager with Caution

Enjoy this short 14:53 minute video with Coach Deb and leave a comment on this post with a few tips of your own so others can learn from YOU!

PS: Coach Deb was asked to be a regular guest on The BIG BIz Show since Sully & Russ liked the tips she shared for their listeners, so tune in to The BIG Biz Show every Thurs morning @ 9:00am PST / 12noon EST to hear Coach Deb share how to use social media to get traffic, leads and sales for your business! Their show is syndicated around the country on both Radio and TV networks. You can even TiVo Coach Deb and watch her when you finish your work day. Or catch the Replay online using Ustream.

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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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Tip # 10 – Use Pictures in Every Post

When you use this Social Media Marketing Tip, you could go viral!

And, when you do these top 10 tips and exercise  them daily, you will get results. And tip number 11 kind of ties in with tip #10, so make sure you tune in to tip #11 as well.

Tip #10 is probably one of my favorites. Probably one of the best ways you get clicks, you get paid attention to, and you get ‘likes’ is because it’s what appeals to the human eye.  And the tip is: Use Pictures in Every Post.

Yes, pictures in EVERY post. I said every post. And that could just mean, when you share a link to a site,  make sure there’s a picture that is relevant to  that content, and if it doesn’t have a picture, what I like to do with my updates is snap some kind of picture or get one from the net and then upload it.  I do a lot of social media directly from my iPhone.

So, I get the post, then I get a picture. And instead of…so, for instance, I know a lot of people will use status updates.  I don’t use status updates as much as I use photo updates and then put a status update along with the photo.  And then when I do a status update, I try as many times as possible to add a picture.  Every once in awhile I don’t, and I have to say after testing this, it never pulls as many comments unless it’s such a controversial question and it’s got the engagement already.

But, especially now with the new timeline and how Facebook has changed, you have people scanning your wall, and the things that are grabbing their attention are pictures, especially if they are intriguing…if they’re captivating, if they, perhaps, have quotes attached to them in the picture.

People’s Eyes are Drawn to Pictures

You know…people, their eyes are drawn to pictures.  I’ve been teaching blogging and social media for over 10 years now, and a few years ago, I made a prediction that over 80% of people (and this again ties in with tip #11) would be looking at video and images in the posts more than any other type of content.

And we were teaching our clients several years back to start using video. Start using pictures in their blogging.  And let me tell you, it was the fastest way they got results, especially when Google started changing the algorithms to put higher priority and attention on people who used YouTube video, because they bought YouTube.  Right?  So, naturally, they’re going to have a preference and favorite YouTube videos. They own it. Right? So tap into that tip of the knowledge behind the scenes and the fact that Google owns YouTube. If you shared on YouTube, if you share a YouTube video, and I realize I’m also tapping into tip #11.

I’ve already revealed number 11, which is Share Videos in Your Posts.  Let’s just stick right now to using pictures and images.  Use images as often as possible and throughout your post so people have a selection especially when people go to your blog and they want to share your blog post.

When you’ve got a picture already embedded in your post, what’s cool about that is when they share your post on their wall, or as a Tweet, it gets them to Tweet out and there is a link to the picture. And they’re going, “Oh, what’s that?”  And people are intrigued.

An influence secret is curiosity. Tap into people’s curiosity and what you’re doing is having this open loop here, and their brain is not satisfied until they close the loop.  The only way they can close the loop is click on the link to the picture and check it out.  So create an open loop by creating a picture attached to your tweet and pictures on your blog so when they share it on Facebook they automatically have the picture that’s going to get more clicks and more interest on their wall which, again, helps you to go viral.

So, tip #10 use pictures in every post to make your social media marketing much more effective.

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Tip #9 – Share Educational Content

You can educate your way to social media marketing success.  What do I mean by that?

Share things that are worthwhile to contribute to peoples’ minds, intelligence, intellect, and knowledge base.  People like learning.  People want to be informed, and people want to share things that they learn about. So they wind up spreading what they learn from you.  So you be the teacher. You provide the content, and they wind up sharing that same piece of content.

They literally share it on Facebook, they re-tweet it on Twitter, they forward it on LinkedIn. This is just a way that they spread your message and once again, you get exposure.

It’s also great for your clients to see the value and the intellect that you offer.  And it provides more social proof or more proof or evidence that you’re a valuable contributor and someone that they want to know.  Like, especially if you’ve got a good group following.  And I say that in very friendly terms, I’m considered a geek in my world.  My friends want to learn stuff.  It’s their highest value.  Stimulate their mind and intellect, and that’s how you stimulate them sharing things. Right?

So stimulate their intellect.  Feed their minds. Feed their brains with good, newsworthy content, relevant tips.  This could be you teaching them things within your industry, your business that are relevant. Or it could just be in general. You could be sharing something that’s really useful.

Make Your Followers the Hero in Social Media

When you do things like this, your followers wind up, number 1, feeling cool that they went to your wall and have been educated.  And they’re like, “Yeah, this is awesome information.  I’m going to come back here more often.”  It reinforces them visiting your page because you provide true value in an educational sense.

It also helps them get accelerated results to watch you spread intelligent news and information and learning to their followers. Because you help them be the hero to their followers.  And you make them the hero, they consider you their hero.   So make them the hero and you’ll be their hero.

Another variation about sharing newsworthy or educational content is going to be revealed in Tip #14, kind of the next level of sharing news as it relates to you, personally.

So check out Tip #14 in this “Secrets to Social Media Success” series, and you will get a next level of educational sharing that your clients will absolutely love and be bonded to you in a very, very personal way.

So that is Tip #9 – Share Educational Content

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Tip #5  – Comment on Other Peoples’ Posts

Social media marketing success depends on building relationships. Here’s how to do it….

Call it OPP – Other People’s Posts

Go into influencers’ profiles, friends’ profiles, clients’ profiles, go to their walls.  Check their news feeds. Make sure you’re not being someone who goes in and it’s always outbound messaging.  Go in and then engage with other people on their wall.

• Number 1, this establishes good will.
• Number 2, it’s a way to keep a friendship going, keep your relationship going.
• Number 3, it gives you exposure to all of their friends and fans, followers, clients.

This ties in to Tip # 4, Tagging Other Relevant Influencers, except this time you’re actually commenting on the other influencers wall. Or the other friends’ or clients’ wall.

The other thing is when you have your clients, and they see you are on their wall, they think, “Wow. This person is really paying attention to me. They’re actually checking out my news feed.”

And it’s a really cool feeling to know that people really care about your posts and your updates.  I think the worst feeling in social media is when you start and you think, “Nobody’s even paying attention.  I’m just talking to no one.”

And, like when I got on a conference call with my assistant, Nancy, and I just started introducing the call and webinar and giving her some instructions, but she wasn’t there.  And it was funny cuz here I was, talking to myself, and sometimes that’s how it feels in social media.  You just talk to yourself, and you feel like, “What’s the point of it if no one comes by and visits?”

So the most exciting thing in social media as you start growing and people start engaging and going, “Hey, I like what you have to contribute,” it’s really cool when you start seeing people engage and pay attention and like your posts.

Being Liked and Respected is a Basic Human Need Especially in Social Media

You say, “Yea! Someone’s paying attention to me!”  Right? And it’s a basic, core, human need. People want to be liked. People want to be relevant. Right?  People want attention. They need it. They crave it.

And when you give it to them, this is a huge ego boost, it’s a huge rapport builder, and it’s a real good relationship and friendship builder for people who really are your true friends.

And a lot of your clients, you’re going to become friends. Especially if you love working with them and they’re pleasant clients.  I have a number of clients and just love working with them.

Clients in Orange County, Tuesday nights and we’d go out to dinner and it’s so much fun that those are the clients that you want more and more and more of because they’re your friends.  You really care about them and their success.

So prove that by engaging with them and going to their wall and liking what they post. And you’ll also find that there’s some times that there are some really concerning things that happen in their lives and you get this news on their wall. You know, a death of their parents, deaths of people that they care about.

And that’s when it gets real.  It gets really personal and you realize that social media and the whole social aspect of it is really all about keeping in touch with your friends and family.  And your clients and what they’re up to.

And sometimes it’s not always happy go lucky. Maybe they’re having a bad day. But when you can reach them at their point of heartbreak and need, that is the best time and you will be remembered as a real, genuine friend. And then you truly become a friend.

That’s what they call them on Facebook.  It doesn’t always start out that way. There’s a follower or someone like you, and you become a friend when you act as a friend.

So when you go and engage and comment on their wall and show them that you are paying attention, it goes a long, long, long way in long term relationship building with your clients.

That’s true PR  and social media marketing at its best and at the heart of it.

And that is Tip #5 – Comment on Other Peoples’ Posts for Success in Social Media Marketing

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