Guest Blog by Lynne Cockrum-Murphy: Loving Animals Hurts

Amazon No. 1 Bestselling Author Lynne Cockrum-Murphy joined the first group of social entrepreneurs who learned how to play the Game of Social Media at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com. She learned about blogging as a way to establish her brand identity. Find out more about her books and her healing work through her blog.

Loving animals hurts. The other day when I saw a clip on the computer of a guy walking up to a kangaroo and slugging it in the face –I had no idea the context. I actually hurt inside and made me sad too. I wanted to contact who was behind it and let them know my thoughts… When I saw some stupid animal trick on the news, I jumped up and called them right away and told them that cruelty to animals for the sake of a laugh is pathetic and not newsworthy. The most recent atrocity was seeing a hunter with a dead giraffe and learning people hunt polar bears. What is wrong with these people? Why the need for domination and false bravado? Why would anyone be proud of shooting an animal from a helicopter?

I love to think people are like me and rescue dogs and cats, pray for horses, and don’t eat animals. There are people who care deeply about animals. You find them everywhere, the internet, animal planet, the neighborhood, in veterinarian’s offices and amongst my friends.

Let me clarify, so this doesn’t remain just a rant about animal abuse I have felt this way about animals since I was a child. I had cats and dogs as pets of course. But when my step dad asked if I wanted to go rabbit hunting (target practice was something everyone in my family did in the Nevada desert). I said sure, I wanted to go and then checked to see if we’d take the rabbits to the vet afterwards. I was in elementary school and not too clear on what rabbit hunting was and what guns did. My parents said never mind, we’ll skip the rabbit hunting. I knew something had just transpired between them – you know when your parents whisper and smile that it’s about you. It was one of the moments that stayed with me.

Today we have more cats than usual. We’re always happy to have one or two. But in this holiday season we ended up with six which is a lot to take care of. One of the strays we feed had 4 kittens in the neighbor’s yard. She apparently is afraid of cats so as soon as they were big enough we brought them into our house and have been gradually introducing them to our two little buddies: Lucky who has lived with us for at least 4 years and Coco who joined us 6 months ago.

Just an aside, it has always been odd to me that people say they have a rescue dog because all the pets I ever had were from the “pound” or the street or from someone looking for a home for the animal. All were “rescued”. To me that is normal. I’ve never used the term these are my “rescue cats”. Aren’t they all being rescued from the streets or death when we invite them into our homes?

On top of all that anguish, how can people buy animals not to mention that people raise animals for money! Who purchases life? Each animal belongs to itself. We cannot own them. We are caretakers.

So now we have 6 house cats and 2 strays that visit regularly for meals. We just got the 4 kittens fixed. Fortunately these 4 are so ridiculously cute that we will most likely keep them all. There’s a 10 to 20 year commitment. What else can we do? That’s a rhetorical question. There are too many unwanted animals sitting in shelters already. We won’t contribute to the problem.

People who make capture, spay/neuter, release programs possible are #inspiring. They helped us once before by loaning us a specialized cage. We captured the stray we called Chocolate who after that lived a fabulous 5 years with us until his death from FHIV. We were able to feed, love, and nurture him for years as we domesticated him. He grew big and healthy and dominated the household a bit as he ran, jumped on the bed and flopped down next to us expecting to be petted and scratched. We indulged him.

Isn’t that was having pets is all about? Reciprocity. They get so much from us and we get so much from them too. Animals in the wild may not be cute and cuddly yet they deserve respect because they are life. All life is worthy of respect. All life is worthy of respect. Black lives, blue lives, animal lives!

A few resources:

www.alleycat.org

www.azhumane.org/stray-pet-resources/trap–neuter–return/

www.fixadoptsave.org/trap–neuter–return/

“Trap-Neuter-Return Ordinances and Policies in the United States: The Future of Animal Control” – Alley Cat Allies January 2013 legal brief

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2 Great Ways to Build Your Brand Identity on LinkedIn

Your Social Media Tribe Awaits from Catherine Carrigan

Unless you are an Arctic explorer, rattlesnake handler or some other exotic professional, more than likely you face a lot of competition in your business.

You can build your brand identity through LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 467 million members in 200 countries.

Your brand identity helps separate you from your competition and gives people good reasons to hire you or buy your products, books or services.

Building your brand is one of the key benefits of social media today.

Here are 2 great ways to build your brand identity through LinkedIn:

1. Publish your blog on LinkedIn. Even if you have managed to build a rather large readership for your website, LinkedIn will provide an even bigger audience for your articles. On your LinkedIn profile, you will find a place to post your articles. When you publish on your website – and here at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com we recommend you blog at least once a week to build your brand identity – copy and paste your article over onto your LinkedIn profile. Experts believe that publishing on LinkedIn is one of the most effective ways to generate more traffic from social media. Keep your LinkedIn articles to no more than 1,000 words. Use a photo that helps tell your story. Include a call to action at the end of your article that attracts new customers to your business, products books and services.
2. Create a side presentation to share useful information, establish yourself as an expert and publish on Slideshare.net, the slide sharing feature of LinkedIn. Use applications such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Keynote for Apple products to create a slide show. Be sure to use visual images to tell your story. Include your website address and a call to action. Why bother? Because 70 million professionals use  Slideshare.net to educate themselves on all kinds of topics. Once again, you establish yourself as an expert by sharing your knowledge and teaching what you know. Here’s a simple example of a slide show I created. Not only did I share succinct and useful information, I also shared butterfly and orchid photos that have become a recognizable and integral aspect of my personal brand.

Many entrepreneurs who are not looking for a job overlook the social media benefits of LinkedIn.

Even if you don’t need to use LinkedIn as an online resume to find yourself a new position, you can use this platform to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

There are 128 million LinkedIn members in the U.S. and 70 percent of its members are outside the U.S.

By sharing your articles and slide shows on LinkedIn, you can establish yourself as a worldwide expert in your field.

When you establish your profile, be sure to add a good headshot as a good professional photo makes you 14 times more likely to be found.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

 

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11 Ways To Get People To Read Your Blog

If a blog falls in the forest and nobody hears it, what good does it do in terms of marketing?
None at all, of course!

“Before you create any more ‘great content,’ figure out how you are going to market it first.” – Joe Pulizzi and New Barrett authors of Get Content Get Customers

You think, you write, you agonize over your keywords and finally one day you publish a blog.

You may think you have accomplished something in terms of content marketing and attracting new customers to your business, books, products or services but not necessarily.

Trouble is, if you then do not market your blog the likelihood of anybody reading your blog – unless you are Justin Bieber or Donald Trump – is slim to none.

Writing your blog is just the first step to creating a worldwide audience.

Here are 11 simple steps you can take to get people to read your blog:

1. Spread your blog to your social media channels through a dashboard like Hootsuite. “Content is fire, social media is gasoline,” says Jay Baer. For about $10 a month, you can get a basic subscription to Hootsuite. This social media dashboard allows you to schedule your social media content. Write 8 to 10 different 140-character headlines with the same link to the blog you just wrote. Attach a photo or series of photos to these social media messages. Send the messages out on an ongoing basis to let people know you have just published.
2. Set up a Jetpack plugin on your WordPress site so that when you hit the Publish button, your blog gets immediately spread to all your social media channels. This saves you time so that you do not have to post your blog manually on all your social media sites.
3. Share your blog throughout all your relevant Facebook groups. Do a search on Facebook of all your relevant keywords and join groups. Once you have published, go through the list of all your Facebook groups and share the link to your blog on all the Facebook groups where you think your fellow group members would benefit from your message.
4. Post your blog on your Google+ communities. Go through your list of Google+ communities and share the link. Remember that Google is the largest search engine in the world and the more buzz you can create in Google+ the more likely your blog will show up higher in the search engines.
5. Post the full blog on your LinkedIn site. Many people are not aware that you can add blog posts to your LinkedIn profile. In addition to being able to publish your blog on LinkedIn through your Jetpack plugin on your WordPress site, you can also copy and paste your blog in full onto LinkedIn. Because LinkedIn has 467 million members  – probably way more than read your blog on your website every month – you are more likely to have your blog read on LinkedIn and even to show up later on the search engines there at a later date than your actual website.
6. If you are a published author, set up a Goodreads author profile and publish your blog there in full. One of the many benefits of being a published author is that you can set up a Goodreads author account. Not only can you then market your books for free, you can also market your blog. While you can set up an RSS feed that publishes your blog automatically from your website, I generally publish directly because that way I can add photographs that increase reader attention. Goodreads has 55 million members – once again probably more people than those who go directly to your website.
7. Create a one to three minute video on Youtube relevant to the subject matter you’re writing about and embed the Youtube video in your blog. Because Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google, you will want to harness the power of video to attract readers. Either before or after you write your message, use your smart phone or a video recording service such as Zoom.us to create a short video that will further illustrate what you’re talking about in your blog. Once you publish your video to Youtube, embed the video in your blog.
8. Include social media share buttons on your website so that your raving fans can share your content to their social media channels. Make it easy for people to share your great blogs by including these buttons in easy-to-see locations on your website.
9. Use the Pinterest button on your website to pin your blog to your Pinterest account. Because Pinterest has 100 million active users, you can attract readers to your blog by pinning your content to relevant boards on your Pinterest site.
10. Create an email newsletter with links to your blogs. On your website create a place for people to sign up for your newsletter. This allows you to collect the email addresses of your raving fans. Send out a newsletter to your fans on a monthly basis that includes links to your blogs. Don’t give your fans the whole blog – include great art and the first few lines with a link so that they have to go to your actual website to read the full article. That way you draw people in to read not just the blog itself but to your home website where they can find out more about your products, books and services.
11. Cross blog with people in your field. Create win-win relationships with people in your field by cross blogging. I publish one article for every article of mine that gets published on a friend’s website. Be sure to change your article – don’t just copy and paste it. Include a different headline, a new first paragraph or make other small changes so that the search engines count the article on your friend’s website as new content. Be sure to ask your friend to include links back to your website so that people who read your content and like it get drawn back to your website. Return the favor when you publish your friend’s article.

Remember that writing your blog is just the first step.

Marketing your blog will make all the difference in the world to draw readers to your website and paying customers to your business, products, books and services.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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Top 10 Blog Tips From A Social Media Specialist

As a social media specialist, you must create quality content that will build a tribe of raving fans that will keep your business profitable both now and for years to come.

Here are the top 10 tips you as a social media specialist can take to insure the success of your blog:

1. Begin with your keywords. If you’ve been following Ramajon Cogan and Catherine Carrigan of www.whatissocialmediatoday.com, you’ve learned that the entire success of your social media strategy rests on how successful you are at researching and employing your keywords. These are the words and phrases people use to find you on the vast world wide web. Once you do the research, memorize your keywords. Use a mind map to brain storm articles based on your keyword. Then slowly but surely begin to drip out content based on these keywords.
2. Put your keyword in your headline. 
3. Analyze your headline. Once you know the keyword you’re planning on using in your article, the importance of writing a killer headline can not be overstated. You can analyze your headline on this website. Realize you have 15 seconds to grab a person’s attention once they go to your website. In fact, 55 percent of readers spent less than 15 seconds. The most important part of your blog is in fact your headline, so spend time making it work.
4. Include your keyword in your first paragraph.
5. Include art. Colored visuals increase your chance of a person reading your content by 80 percent. Because you may have to pay to use images captured from the web, you may be better off using your smart phone to take photographs or videos telling the story of your business, products and services.
6. Evoke emotion. The more your writing evokes positive emotion in your reader, the more likely your readers will be to share your content. The top four emotions to generate include 1. Awe 2. Laughter 3. Amusement 4. Joy.
7. Write at least 500 words for a basic blog, 2,300 if you want Google to consider you an expert on that topic or 3,000 to 10,000 words if you want your article to be shared most often. Even though the average attention span of 9 seconds is now shorter than that of a goldfish, you need to write at least 500 words because Google considers 200 word blog posts to be thin content. According to our search engine optimization guru Scott D. Smith, Google will consider you an expert when you write articles 2,300 to 2,500 words long. Research shows that blogs that take about 7 minutes to read capture the most total reading time on average.
8. Consider writing your blogs as a list. Because people don’t so much read on the internet as scan, lists become a highly effective way of writing your content. In fact, when researchers look at what causes blogs to go viral in the social media, list posts come in second after infographics. Other ways for you as a social media specialist to blog successfully include writing what blogs, why blogs, how to blogs as well as videos.
9. Use Google Analytics to determine the topics readers really want to hear from you about. You already have a built-in generator of prime research information about your website – Google Analytics. Connect your website to Google Analytics. Then go to Behavior. Then click on Overview. You will find a list of your most-read articles. Use this list to discover what people really want from you. Create more content based on these topics.
10. Blog at least once a week. Our search engine optimization guru Scott D. Smith says you can get 80 percent of the benefit from blogging by posting once a week. However, realize that companies that post 16+ times per month get 350 percent more traffic than those that only post 0 to 4 times per month. To avoid burnout, create a blogging schedule you can live with. Once your website has been around for awhile, you will benefit from the body of work you created. Some experts find that 90 percent of their leads come from old blog posts. Realize that as a social media specialist that when you create content, your blog posts will have an average lifespan of 2 to 3 years.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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Top 10 Tips for Building Your Tribe in Social Media

Whether you are a solopreneur or run a multi-million dollar corporation, one of the most important assets your business can build today is your social media tribe.

Your tribe drives your business, tells more people why they need to join the fun with you and let’s you know what you’re doing well and what you need to improve.

In short, your tribe becomes the reason you remain in business, your raison d’être.

Your tribe pays your mortgage, puts shoes on your kids feet and helping them do better and be better is part of what gives your life meaning.

Here are my top 10 tips for building your tribe through social media:

1. Don’t just do something, research. Many people make the mistake of thinking that all they have to do is set up a Facebook account or other social media network site and start talking. Begin at the beginning. Research the keywords that your fans will use when they go to the search engines to find your business, products, books and services. This is a major mistake that many people make. They never really build an audience because they don’t know what their audience is actually looking for.
2. Once you know your keywords, create hashtags. Your hashtags become searchable terms that people will use in social media to find you.
3. Use a dashboard. Having used both Social Ally and Hootsuite I recommend Hootsuite. A social media dashboard is a single location where you can connect all your social media accounts. From this place, you can schedule your social media posts to be sent out multiple times throughout the day, set up systems to monitor your top hashtags, follow back people who follow you, research your followers and much more. In short, for $10 a month, you can automate, simplify and educate yourself.
4. Find future tribe members by researching your hashtags. You can use your dashboard to find other people who are obsessed with the same topics that you are. Many people focus on Influencers, who are simply people who have a lot of followers who can sway many other folks to make decisions. But recognize that literally anybody in social media can have influence – either in your favor or against you. Make friends with your influencers. Follow them. Retweet them, share their information, engage them in conversations, offer to cross blog with them.
5. Blog once a week using your keywords. You can definitely blog more than once a week, but our Search Engine Optimization guru Scott D. Smith argues that once a week gives you 80 percent of the impact you need. Put the keyword in the title and first paragraph. Realize that the most important part of your blog is the title, so learn how to create killer headlines that grab people’s attention. The second most important part of your blog is the first paragraph. If you don’t grab their attention with your headline and first paragraph, you’ve lost them. Realize that people today scan more than they read, which is why blogs based on lists (such as this one) are the most successful these days.
6. Use a Jetpack on your WordPress website to automate publishing your articles all over the social media. When you set up your Jetpack plugin, every time you hit “Publish” on your blog, your article gets automatically sent out to all the social media networks connected to your website. This saves you a tremendous amount of time.
7. Be a friend to have a friend. Share more than you sell. Retweet, share, engage with content that your raving fans create. Don’t just be a boring monologue ranting on “buy my stuff.”  You create good karma in social media every time you share the meaningful content that other people create. They will be more likely to share your information once you have shared first. Give first receive later.
8. Tell your story in a visual way. Recognize that Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google. You can create one to three minute videos using your smart phone or video conference services like Zoom.us. Use your smart phone to photograph your customers engaging with your products and services. Use services like Canva to create graphics that grab people’s attention. Realize that if your social media post does not have an image, a video or a GIF, it’s less likely to be noticed or shared. Colored visuals increase people’s willingness to read a piece of content by 80 percent.
9. Ultimately, your goal through the social media is to drive people to your home website where they will buy your products, sign up for your services and become paying customers. Create giveaways to lure people to sign up for your email newsletter. A good way to do this is create autoresponders through services like Constant Contact and market the material you are giving away for free through your social media.
10. Use the Google analytics information on your website to identify what kinds of content your fans are responding to. This analytic information is free and available to anyone who has a website. You can see which articles people have been reading the most. Then give your fans more information about the most popular topics. Often you think you know what people are coming to you for but you won’t really know until you see the analytical information Google provides for you. Focus on these topics and share freely to your social media tribe.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Putting all this together takes time and is part of creating a successful social media strategy.

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

 

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Coming Soon: Our New Book, Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media

Ramajon Cogan and Catherine Carrigan, partners in www.whatisocialmediatoday.com, are pleased to announce we will soon be publishing Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media. 

Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media will be the first in a series of books we plan to publish over the next year.

Whether you are a solopreneur, authorpreneur, mompreneur, ompreneur or run a multi-million dollar company, you need this book if you want to succeed in today’s competitive marketplace where everybody’s marketing message tries to speak louder than the next person’s.

Written by Catherine Carrigan, Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media empowers you to develop the mindset to succeed in social media.

Our second book, Keywords, Hashtags and You, Oh My! will follow shortly afterwards.

“As humans, we go through a distinct psychological process whenever we are making changes,” says Amazon No. 1 bestselling author Catherine Carrigan.

“Social media is no different.

“Many people feel overwhelmed by the thought of adding one more task to their daily responsibilities and come up with many excuses about why they either can’t or won’t be able to win the Game of Social Media.

“Learning how to develop your unique digital social signature is essential to succeeding today no matter what your business is.

“Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media teaches you how to overcome your blocks to social media so that you can not only manage to fit this responsibility into your daily life but also enjoy developing an online brand identity that propels you to the next level.”

We want to take this time to express our gratitude to Denise Cassino, Amazon marketing expert of www.bestsellerservices.com, who designed the logo for www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and the cover for our series of books.

Ramajon Cogan is in the process of formatting the new book, which we hope to publish as soon as possible.

What you will learn in Get Ready to Win the Game of Social Media:

• How to overcome your overwhelm if you happen to be an ordinary mortal
• Why you don’t need to become a geek to succeed
• Why you need a social network even if you don’t know what that is
• How blogging can build your brand identity
• How to set up enjoyable rituals of human connection
• What happens if you keep sticking your head in the sand and do nothing
• How to decipher what people are actually saying online
• The mindset required to succeed in social media
• How to have fun
• How to overcome your fears
• How building your tribe may be the most valuable thing you ever create in business

At the end of the book, you’ll discover a coupon for $500 off the next program we’ll be offering here at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com.

We’ve been taking a group of hardworking folks through our program and empowering them to become social media superstars.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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12 Ways to Promote Your Books on Goodreads

You Don’t Have to Get Off the Couch to Promote Your Books for FREE on Goodreads

You can promote your work as an author from the comfort of your couch by taking advantage of Goodreads, the world’s largest social network for readers and book recommendations.

Before you spend money on a book publicist, you really want to utilize Goodreads because you can reach a potential audience of 55 million members for FREE by following these 12 easy steps:

1. Even before you publish your book, set up a basic Goodreads account to build friends and set up your own book reviews. Then convert to an author account once your book is published.
2. Add in all your published books to make it easy for people to post reviews.
3. List all your social media sites so your fans can follow you everywhere.
4. Post short videos about your books.
5. Publish your blog on Goodreads to increase your readership.
6. Add photos by using Photobucket to jazz up the look of your site and establish your brand identity.
7. Set up “Ask the Author” and “Popular Answered Questions.”
8. Add quotes by you as an author.
9. Participate in groups.
10. Set up events.
11. Offer giveaways.
12. Offer excerpts from your writing under the tag “Creative Writing.”

When You Add Your Blog to Goodreads It Shows Up Under A Feed For All Your Friends and Followers

Let’s discuss this in further detail.

1. To set up a basic account on Goodreads, follow the instructions at this link. Start listing the books you are reading and build your list of friends. Once you have published your book, convert your basic account to an author account by following the instructions at this link.
2. Add your published book to Goodreads by following the instructions here.
3. On your author account, be sure to set up active links to all your social media accounts so all your friends and fans have to do is click on the links to follow you. You can see what I did by looking at my Goodreads profile at this link.
4. Create one to three minute videos about your books to add to your author page. You can add a book trailer by clicking “Add Video” on your author page. I had a friend use my iPhone to record me standing in my garden discussing one of my books but I also create videos by pressing record on Zoom.us, a FREE videoconference program.
5. You will want to publish your blog on Goodreads because with 55 million members, more than likely you will increase the number of people reading your articles. Once I publish on any of my websites, I always cut and paste over into my blog on Goodreads. If you search for any of your previous posts you will notice that often the search engines will show you the versions published to Goodreads and LinkedIn before they show you the original article published on your website. Now here’s another cool thing: Goodreads maintains a constant feed of blog articles. When you publish your blog on Goodreads, your article will show up in the feed of all your fans and followers. People can also subscribe to your Goodreads blog by clicking on the RSS feed. Although you can synchronize your website to your Goodreads blog, I always cut and paste my articles into Goodreads because I want to add photos.
6. You can improve your brand identity on Goodreads by adding photos. I use Photobucket to do this. Simply join Photobucket and once you upload your photographs, copy and paste the embed code for each photo into the copy of your article before you publish it on Goodreads. Adding art is the main reason I copy and paste my articles into Goodreads instead of merely allowing my website to publish them for me.
7. Set up “Ask the Author” and “Popular Answered Questions.” This way your fans and followers can ask you questions and read about your writing process.
8. Add quotes from your books by filling out the blanks at this link. This is important so that when people search for quotes on specific topics, your words show up. This helps to establish you as an authority and improves your brand identity. Once you have added in your quotes they will show up on your Goodreads author page. You can read some of my quotes here. Once you have added your quotes, you and your fans can share your words or wisdom by clicking the share buttons for Facebook and Twitter.
9. There are countless groups you can participate in on Goodreads. This is a good way to interact with potential readers and find out more about book promotion.
10. If you are hosting a book signing or author appearance – either locally or online – be sure to let everybody know about it by creating a Goodreads event and then sharing the news to all your Facebook friends who are also on Goodreads. Just click on Upcoming Events and fill out the information.
11. Run a giveaway. I typically donate 10 books for each giveaway. I estimate the cost at around $100 including the wholesale price of the books and postage to readers in the U.S. You can list a giveaway by following instructions at this link. Goodreads recommending running your giveaway for at least a month to give more people a chance to participate. I usually run my giveaways for the maximum allowable time to give my book as much exposure as possible. An average of 825 people enter a giveaway so you’ll get lots of exposure. Once people win your book, they are supposed to write a review in exchange for the free book. I always include a handwritten note to each winner congratulating them on their win and asking them kindly to write a review. Every time I run a giveaway, I gain new fans and followers in addition to more book reviews.
12. Finally, even if you are not yet a published author, you can publish excerpts of your writing on Goodreads to start building your brand identity. Just go to the link entitled “Creative Writing” at this link. Even if you are a nonfiction author you can publish here. Be sure to add tags so people can find your work. Here’s an example where I added a chapter from one of my books.

You Can Join Any Number of Goodreads Groups

So why get off the couch or spend money when you can promote your books for FREE through Goodreads? To me, it’s a no brainer.

Want to learn more about how you can Win the Game of Social Media?

Join Catherine Carrigan and Ramajon Cogan at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com and we will show you how! Call Catherine Carrigan today at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or contact Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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6 Ways to Create Viral Marketing Success with Pinterest

You can create viral marketing success with Pinterest by following these six easy steps:

1. Create boards around your keywords
2. Search for or create group boards around your keywords
3. Use viraltag.com to schedule your posts
4. Put a Pinterest button your blog or website to make it easier for you and your fans to share your posts.
5. Create original, user-friendly content to share through Pinterest
6. Consider converting your Pinterest account to a business account so you can read the analytics

Pinterest has 100 million active users, 85 percent of whom are female.

One way to explain Pinterest’s popularity among women is that it’s like a giant digital scrapbook that’s constantly evolving and becoming more and more important for those of us working to promote our businesses through social media..

According to Wikipedia, before 2013, Pinterest only accounted for about 2 percent of global social-mediated sales, however it has recently substantially increased to about 23 percent. Sales inspired by Pinterest average about $80 – higher than any other site, including Amazon, Google and Facebook. 

Convinced you need to win the Game of Pinterest?

Now let’s go in depth and understand how:

Create boards around your keywords. By now, if you have been following our social media strategy here at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com, you know that you must start by figuring out the keywords for your business. Once you are clear on what those keywords are, create Pinterest boards for your top 10 keywords. Maybe you can think of even more boards to create based on the words and phrases that people who need your products, business and services are looking for. Once you have created your 10 boards based on your keywords, constantly be on the lookout for content that explains your keywords. This could be content you yourself create or Pins from other Pinterest users. Remember, you don’t have to create all the content yourself – you can share the ideas of like-minded people.

Search for or create group boards around your keywords. Once you have created your own boards around your keywords, search for group boards from other people who are collecting content around the same subject. If you can’t quite find what you are looking for, create your own group boards by inviting other Pinterest users to become members of a group board you create. This is a great way to get your content quickly in front of potentially thousands of people. For example, I’m a member of this Pinterest board about Fitness that has 9.8 thousand members. If I post to this board, my content automatically gets shared with 9.8 thousand members.

Use viraltag.com to schedule your posts. Viraltag.com is a dashboard you can use to share visual content throughout the social media. It’s especially helpful for Pinterest and Instagram, but you can also share to Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Twitter. One of the great features about this particular dashboard is that once you upload your images, you can clone them. In this manner, you can send out multiple images through your social media channels over time. This would be especially helpful, for example, during a book launch or other product kickoff when you want to let your fans and followers to take action.

Put a Pinterest Pin It button your blog or website to make it easier for you and your fans to share your posts. You want to make it as easy as possible for your fans and followers to share your content through their social media channels. One of the great ways to do this is to ask your website developer to add a Pin It button to your website. You can also download a Pin It button to your web browser by following the instructions at this link. In that way, whenever you run across content throughout the internet that’s relevant to your keywords all you have to do is Pin It to one of your Pinterest boards.

Create original, user-friendly content to share through Pinterest. One of the unique features of Pinterest compared to other social media sites with their quick timelines is that once you create content and pin it to your boards, it will be around forever. Create great content and all of a sudden you have a viral marketing phenomenon on your hands! Here’s a great example of how I did this. Back on Jan. 28, 2016, I published a blog entitled “The Easiest Way to Stretch Tight Hamstrings.” The blog included a very clear photograph demonstrating how to do what I was talking about. I then pinned the photo with a link to my website on multiple Pinterest boards. You can see the Pin at this link. As of Oct. 28, it has now been pinned on a total of 970 different boards throughout Pinterest, making it evergreen content that sends new readers to my website on literally a daily basis according to my Google analytics reports. Best times to post on Pinterest are between 8 and 11 p.m. and 2 to 4 p.m. 

Consider converting your Pinterest account to a business account so you can read the analytics. When I started www.healingjewelrystore.com, I knew I wanted to include a Pinterest account as part of my social media strategy. I set up the Pinterest account for my online jewelry store as a business account at this link so that over time I will be able to read the analytics reports to see what customers are responding to, when and for how long. Just as you can read the analytics report on your business Facebook page and Twitter account, you can get similar analytics when you set up a Pinterest business account.

Want to learn more about how to win the Game of Social Media?

Join our program today by calling Catherine Carrigan at 678-612-8816 or email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or calling Ramajon Cogan at (928) 821-4553 or email wheresramajon@gmail.com.

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How To Knock It Out of the Park With Youtube

If you plan on winning the Game of Social Media, you want to be sure to include Youtube as part of your strategy.

Why is it so important for you to include Youtube as part of your social media strategy?

• Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world after Google.
• There are 3 billion searches a month through Youtube, which means when people are looking for information about the products or services you sell in your business, more than likely one of the places they are likely to look is Youtube
• Youtube gets more searches every month than Bing, Yahoo, ASK and AOL combined
• 1.3 billion people use Youtube
• If Youtube were a country it would be the largest in the world after China and India
• Almost one-third of people on the internet use Youtube
• Youtube reaches more 18 to 49 years olds than any cable network
• 80 percent of Youtube’s viewers are from outside the US, which means that if you upload a video to Youtube you are likely to reach a worldwide audience

Convinced?

Now let’s talk about how to knock it out of the park with Youtube.

Step 1. Start with a keyword. By now, if you’ve been working with us here at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com, you know that if you don’t work with a keyword, you simply won’t get found. Pick one keyword.

Step 2. Create a two to three minute video elaborating on this keyword. Here at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com, we film videos using the video conferencing service Zoom.us. You can pay to join this service if you like, but Zoom also allows you FREE access for meetings up to 40 minutes with up to 50 participants. Zoom.us is great if you want to record yourself explaining your product or service, but you may also want to use your smart phone to record live action videos. For example, I have created multiple videos of exercises, pranayama breath work and even a book trailer using my iPhone 6S. Use your creativity. What do your fans and followers want to know about? Just keep your videos short and to the point.

Step 3. Edit the file properties. Just as you would tag all your photographs before uploading them to social media, edit the video file and include your keyword in the file before you upload it to Youtube.

Step 4. Write a 500-word description of your video using your keyword in the first paragraph. Be sure that this is 100 percent original content. To see a good example of this, visit this link on the Youtube channel for my business www.healingjewelrystore.com. The reason you want to make sure that your 500-word description is original content is so that the search engines will identify it as original information.

Step 5. Once you have published your video to Youtube, be sure to embed it on your website. You have just gone through the hard work of creating great social media marketing material, so you will want to save it so your fans and followers can watch it. You may even want to write a second 500-word article – this one also completely original and not repeating the 500-word description you wrote to go with your Youtube video – to post on your website to go with the video. You could think of this almost like an oreo cookie – 500 word description for your video, the video itself and another 500-word blog article for your website.

Step 6. Once you have created your video, share it all through your social network. Just as you include buttons for all your social media sites on the front page of your website, be sure to put a Youtube button on your website to encourage your fans and followers to subscribe.

Hard work? Yes.

Incredibly effective? Absolutely.

 

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2 Great Reasons to Use Google+

You may wonder why it’s worth your while to include Google+ in your social media marketing strategy, so let me give you two great reasons:

1. SEO, or search engine optimization
2. Google Hangouts, where you can host online meetings for FRE

Google is the No. 1 search engine in the world, having captured about 70 percent of the search engine market.

When you post to your social media site on Google+, you are immediately feeding the No. 1 search engine and helping yourself stand out in the results. As of December 2014, Google+ was still listed the third most popular social network in the world. According to Alexa, Google is the most visited website in the world.

There are three ways you can post your content on Google+:

1. If you have a Jetpack plugin on your WordPress website, set up an automatic link so that every time you hit your Publish button, your article goes immediately onto your Google+ site. Having the Jetpack plugin saves you time because you don’t have to visit Google+ directly.
2. Post the link to your article in the Google+ communities who you think will most appreciate what you have to say. Just like Facebook has groups, Google+ has communities. You can search for like-minded people by searching for communities to join around your personal and professional interests. Communities may have tens of thousands or over a million members, so your blog can reach a much larger audience just by sharing to your Google+ communities.
3. You can post your contend directly on the Home feed of your Google+ site.

I personally have gotten countless articles to the front page of Google just by publishing to Google+.

Once you have set up your basic Google+ profile, you can lead Google Hangouts.

You will find a square with little squares in it to the left of your avatar photograph at the top right corner of your Google+ account.

As you click on this icon, you will find an option for Google Hangouts.

In Google Hangouts, you can have a video call for up to 10 people.

This can be very useful if you would like to host a webinar for your business or social group and your members are around the world or unable to meet with you in person.

You can share messages and group conversations for up to 150 people through Google Hangouts.

How you may be able to use Google H angouts:

• For training customers and clients around the world
• For webinars
• For working one on one when you don’t want to pay for Skype or Zoom.us video conferences
• For product launches
• For voice calls with friends around the world

By giving you the option to offer messages only, voice only or video, Google Hangouts make it easy for you to communicate with people all over the world for FREE.

You can connect to Google Hangouts through your desktop or laptop computer OR on your cellphone through the Google Hangouts App.

Whether you want to market your products, business or services or you are wanting to connect with clients and friends worldwide, Google+ needs to be part of your social media strategy in order to win the Game of Social Media.

 

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8 Great Ways to Rock Twitter

So you think you want to do this social media thing, you convince yourself to buck up and create a Twitter account, only you end up mesmerized by the fast-moving scroll of information, so much so that you never send your first tweet.

If this sounds like you, recognize that you are not alone – some 44 percent of Twitter members are so overwhelmed that for some reason they never send out their first tweet.

Twitter is a great way to utilize inbound marketing to reach 313 million people. By creating great content and sharing it on Twitter, you attract a worldwide audience to your products, books, services and business as 29 percent of Twitter users check their account multiple times per day. About 40 percent of online adults consider themselves regular Twitter users, so this is an important audience to address.

Here are eight great ways to rock Twitter:

1. Use your keywords and your hashtags in your profile. This way you become searchable by anyone looking for your hashtags.
2. Very soon Twitter will allow you to write tweets longer than 140 characters. Twitter will no longer count your media attachments, including photos and videos, towards the 140 character limit, and the usernames will also be excluded. Until then, you can use talltweets.com to create longer messages.
3. Check your Twitter analytics regularly. Go to your profile and scroll down until you see “Analytics.” Click here for a wealth of information. You can find your top tweet for the past month, your top follower who has the most followers, your top mention and your top media tweets. Use this information to direct your future tweets – in other words give your audience more of what works. Click on Audiences to discover a wealth of information about your followers, including their gender, their income, their interests, their occupation and their consumer buying styles.
4. Always use a photo, video, graphic or GIF when you post on Twitter so that you stand out in the fast-paced environment. Tweets with images get 18 percent more clicks, 89 percent more favorites and 150 percent more retweets. Be sure to tag your photos with your keywords, hashtags and name so that your images become searchable.
5. Engage with the folks who retweet you. Go to Notifications and you will see a rolling list of people who have liked and retweeted your information. Send them a thank you with an image and/or go in and retweet them. The more you return the favor, the more they will remember you and continue sharing your content.
6. Use ManageFlitter, a free service. Periodically go in and unfollow people who are not following you back. You can unfollow as many as 100 people a day. You can also find a list of your top influencers. Influencers on Twitter are people with a large following who have relevance, reach and resonance. Make a point to cultivate your relationship with them by sharing their information, thanking them for sharing your tweets and creating a win-win relationship.
7. Once you have identified your influencers, make a list so that you can refer to your list regularly.When you want to make a list:A. Visit your Lists page via the gear icon drop-down menu or by clicking Lists on your profile page.B. Click Create List.C. Name the List & provide a description.D. Designate the List as Public or Private.E. Save the List.
8. Finally, use trending hashtags for the days of the week. As you do this, your content will show up under these hashtags. Here’s a list compiled by Elissa Wyrick: 

#Monday

#MondayFunday

#MotivationMonday

#MondayMotivation

#MotivationalMonday

#MantraMonday

#ManCrushMonday or #MCM

#MusicMonday

#EqualityMonday

#FitnessMonday

#MagicMonday

#MagicMondays

#MeatFreeMonday

#MeatLessMonday

#MeatLessMondayRecipe

#MondayBlues

#MondayCouple

#MondayMorning

#MondayAfternoon

#MondayNight

#MondayNights

#MondaySelfie

#MoralMonday

#MoralMondays

 

 

#Tuesday

#TransformationTuesday or #TT

#TuesdayTransformation or #TT

#TipTuesday

#TravelTuesday

#TrainingTuesday

#TestimonialTuesday

#CharityTuesday

#FairTradeTuesday

#FeelGoodTuesday

#GivingTuesday

#GoodNewsTues

#MyTownTuesday

#PortraitTuesday

#TreeTuesday

#TuesdayAfternoon

#TuesdayFunday

#TuesdayMorning

#TuesdayMotivation

#TuesdayNight

#TuesdayNights

#TuesdaySelfie

#TuesdayShoesday

#TuesdayTunesday

#TuneTuesday

 

 

#Wednesdays

#WayBackWednesday or #WBW

#WisdomWednesday

#WednesdayWisdom

#WellnessWednesday

#WomanCrushWednesday or #WCM

#WomenToFollow

#WomenWednesday

#HumpDay

#WaterfallWednesday

#WednesdayFunday

#WednesdayMorning

#WednesdayAfternoon

#WednesdayNight

#WednesdayNights

#WednesdaySelfie

#WednesdayWorkout

#WildlifeWednesday

 

#Thursday

#ThrowBackThursday or #TBT

#ThirstyThursday

#Thursdate

#ThursdayFunDay

#ThankfulThursday

#ArtThursday

#CoffeeThursday

#ConnectThursday

#HistoryThursday

#ThursdayFun

#ThursdayThoughts

#ThursdayFunday

#ThursdayMorning

#ThursdayAfternoon

#ThursdayEvening

#ThursdayNight

#ThursdayNights

#ThursdaySelfie

#TravelThursday

 

 

#Friday

#Friday or #FridayNight

#FridayFunday

#FridayFun

#FollowFriday or #FF

#FlashBackFriday or #FBF

#CitizensFriday

#ConnectFriday

#FeelGoodFriday

#FilmFriday

#FloralFriday

#FlowerFriday

#FollowForFriday

#FollowFriday

#FoodFriday

#FridayImInLove

#FridayMorning

#FridayAfternoon

#FridayEvening

#FridayNight

#FridayNights

#FridaySelfie

#FappyFriday

#InterviewFriday

#TGIF

 

#Saturday

#SocialSaturday

#SaturdaySwag

#SuperStarSaturday

#Caturday

#SaturdayFun

#SaturdayFunday

#SaturdayMorning

#SaturdayMornings

#SaturdayAfternoon

#SaturdayEvening

#SaturdayNight

#SaturdayNights

#SaturdaySelfie

#StreetSaturday

 

#Sunday

#SelfieSunday or #SS

#SundaySelfie

#SundayFunday

#SundayFun

#ScienceSunday

#SelflessSunday

#SundayBlogShare

#SundayBrunch

#SundayDinner

#SundayLunch

#SundayMorning

#SundayAfternoon

#SundayNight

#SundayNights

#SundaySchool

To find out more about how you can rock social media, please visit us at www.whatissocialmediatoday.com. We’ll teach you how to build your platform by creating a unique digital social signature.

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