If you’ve already got all the social media sites that you think you need, you may not be quite interested in getting one more. Google +  currently has about 5M users in the short time it has been introduced. Is it just like the other social media sites though? There are a couple of features that make it quite unique.

Circles not Just Friends

With Facebook, we all know how it works- it’s either you’re friends or not. Though you can share specific things with specific people, the process of editing every one of these settings and customizing who gets to see them is really cumbersome.

Google + has come up with a really interesting and practical solution to this problem. You can create your own circles and share different things with each or your circles. With your High School friends, all those party pics would be something to share. For closer friends, you can share your updates, feelings or whatever. Only those in that circle get to see what you share with them!

This is a huge revolution when it comes to how you share stuff with. The good thing is they don’t get to know under what circle you’ve put them in so it really stays personal and is far more realistic.

Keeping Privacy up

With the way Google + works, you can really sift the groups of people you want to share stuff with. Down to  your updates! Instead of having a single status message, you can have several that can be seen by different circles. This will help you keep your ‘private’ information PRIVATE.

Updates with Spark

This is a feature that allows you to get information on whatever things interests you. It as good as brings the power of Google alerts into your site. This is definitely something other social media sites don’t have.

All in One

If you’re thinking Facebook still has an edge with the video thing it’s started-think again! You can both chat and video chat with friends using ‘Hangouts’. And so can you connect your Google+ account to your mobile phone just like all the other Social media sites.

You may have thought that Google+ is a super professional site that will be no fun at all but this isn’t at all the case! It’s everything all your social media sites have to offer and much more. It isn’t JUST another social media site.

Read more here.

With all the negative feedback about the dangers about social media, you may wonder if it’s really worth it. If you’ve already had an account on all the recent social networking sites for some time, without seeing anything happening. So is it really worth it? The time, the privacy issues and all. Just why should you bother with Social media anyway?

It’s with the way you can convert all those ‘followers’ into customers. This doesn’t come automatically though. You really have to work for it. In short, it will be waste of time and effort and all the other ‘negative’ things if you allow it to.

The key is coming up with strategies. Don’t expect that simply having a profile will be good enough for you to benefit from your social media. Know where to get an account, take care of your account, be interactive.

If you want to make sure that your followers don’t stay passive but really get engaged in your business is to make things fun. You can post for example some competition on your wall that will have some perk in store for them. Give them reason to want to get and keep connected to you.

It’s always about ‘what will this do for me’ so make it interesting.

Look at what your doing right now with your social media efforts and ask yourself this question – What could I do that would entice some percentage of my followers to willingly and joyfully give me their email address? – answer that and you’ll turn your social media efforts into a powerful lead generation machine.

Read more here.

Have you ever wondered just what makes people ‘like’ or ‘share’ stuff? It’s definitely not random so just why do people decide to ‘like’ one thing and not the other? The answer is really interesting.

In a nutshell, this is what was discovered in a recent research done on the matter:

If something results in higher physiological “arousal” because of action or emotional stimulus, then you’re much more likely to share it—it’s actually built into our nervous system, working unconsciously.

This takes social media marketing to a totally different level! The way you word whatever you are trying to sell or promote matters to the nth degree. So how exactly can you get people ‘aroused’ so that they ‘like’ or ‘tweet’ what you share?

You have to get them EMOTIONALLY involved somehow. It may be by making them laugh, getting them angry(in a good way), or some other ‘positive’ emotion. Do this and they’ll ‘retweet’ and ‘share’ automatically even without really liking your product.

The thing to avoid here is those ‘negative’ emotions. You get them sad, depressed or neutral and you won’t have such good results.  It really does make sense when you think about it:

What sites, links or pictures are you likely to tell your friends about? Yes, those that made you laugh out loud, or were somehow ‘contraversial’ in nature.

You don’t ‘feel’ anything, you don’t share it-it’s as simple as that. So start thinking how to get people engaged on an emotional level now!

Read more here.

Photo credit:meetmikeandmidge.com

There is no doubt that sticking to one site, one niche is probably the easiest way to get traffic up and ranks on the SERP’s up as well. It’s obviously easy to concentrate on a single site than to handle multiple sites with varying topics. Updating them may not pose a problem but the real problem lies in being able to use social media for all these sites.

A number of problems can readily be seen in this regard. For one, the only way that you will be successful on these social networking sites is if you build a reputation on them. You have to get people to believe that you are an expect and an authority on whatever topic you are focusing on. This will be hard if you’re promoting multiple sites.

Think about it: how can you post a tweet or post about cars this minute and then talk about health the next? Pretty confusing! So does this mean you should have a separate account for each of your sites? Now that would also be a hassle to update. Here are some tips on how to juggle multiple sites on social media sites.

For Facebook:

If you are an author of multiple sites, one thing that you can try doing is creating a Facebook page as a writer. This way, you’ll be able to promote all your sites and gain reputation as a writer instead of an expert on some particular subject.

How about creating separate pages for your sites? Well this will help you target specific audiences but you’ll be spending much more time managing them.

Working on separate pages will be great IF you can spare a lot of time or afford someone to do your social media marketing for you.

For Twitter:

Basically, the same principle can be followed for Twitter. Remember that people follow you because they like whatever topic you’re sticking to. Mixing this with all sorts of niches isn’t a good idea.

However, you can create a Twitter profile as a writer and post your blogs updates there.

The bottom line is you will probably have better success if you had seperate accounts for each of your sites.

For LinkedIn:

Since LinkedIn is considered a more business-oriented site to connect, it will be best that you have a single profile. You will be able to post all your links to your blogs after all. The site also gives you a chance to engage in conversations with others who may not be in your ‘group’.

The bottom line is deciding on whether to run separate accounts depend on your time, money and the characteristics of your sites (and their readers). Ultimately, building your social network is one aspect of your business plan and should fit with your resources and overall goal.

Read more  here.