Live Q&As

You're certainly not wrong. Most entrepreneurs mess up social media (in fact Guy Kawasaki has a good article about this today, search for it). 

Most important to realize is that just because a company is on social media doesn't mean they have a campaign or a strategy. Most skip this step and dive right in, which is toxic. Strategy is important. Ask yourself...

1) What are your main goals?

2) Where is my audience interacting online?

3) What do they want to talk about?

4) How will I measure success?

There are plenty of tool available to measure your success with social media. I use a combination of Hootsuite and Google analytics to measure how well our social media team does for YEC campaigns.

Boutique social networks, websites and blogs are sometimes the best places to engage with your target audience. The big ones (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) are oversaturated with marketers and salesmen.

Consider strategic partnerships with content producers, bloggers and niche social networks. To find them, do good research up front to find them or pay a strategist to find them for you.

Social media marketing is just like any marketing. You get what you put into it.

The same could be said for re-posting/sharing content anywhere on the web. I just don't buy that Pinterest is any different. 

The great thing about Pinterest (and one of the reasons they grew so fast) is  because their leadership understands the community. If there are copyright issues they will be dealt with. 

Focus on whether or not Pinterest is a good tool for your organization. Right now I feel like 90% of businesses should still just be watching what other brands are doing, learning from them and then deciding if it's worth the time investment.

For events, campaigns and newsworthy content hashtags are extremely useful for expanding reach. For example, we just launched our #FixYoungAmerica campaign and went as far to include a hashtag in the actual branding. The hashtag allows Twitter power users to browse all posts that mention our campaign.

You'll see hashtags used a lot at events and conferences to help attendees stay updated on all of the cool happenings that are occurring. SXSW is next week and is one of the largest music, film and interactive festivals in the world. Follow #SXSW to see how people are using hashtags for events.

Find other bloggers that you like and are in your same niche. Read their content and leave comments. Even go as far as to send them Twitter messages and emails to show your support.

Blogging is a very community-oriented sport and you get more when you give more. Spend more time promoting other people's stuff than you do promoting your own.

The blogosphere is all about the love :)

I'm certainly going to miss the old version of pages. What they were really good for is email lead gen as you could create a custom page where visitors would always land, present a unique offering and hopefully collect some new data on a potential customer. With timeline content is truly king.

You're just going to have to get creative and evolve with the platform. I actually disagree that it handles images poorly. Check out what the New York Times has done with their page. They basically turned it into a historical look at the company from its beginnings up until today.

Link here: http://www.facebook.com/nytimes

I think timeline is going to be all about telling a better story about your organization and less about promotional opportunities and lead gen... we'll see.

To find out what "older" people are talking about online check out Eons.com which is a social networking platform for Baby Boomers. Through networks like these you'll be able to see what your father's customers are talking about and doing online.

Think beyond the big guys (Facebook, Twitter) and look for niche communities where the social networking is less intense and daunting.

Yeah, this is a stupid decision that a lot of businesses make. Your online presence is only as good as the strategy you put behind it. If you have dead channels or channels with content that's irrelevant to your audience it's going to make your brand look worse than if you had no social media presence at all.

So, yes. There is a risk in doing social media the wrong may. It's like putting out a commercial for a product that doesn't do a good job at connecting with the target audience. There has to be strategy or it's not worth it.

For #FixYoungAmerica we put together a way for our supporters to create photos that share their ideas to fix youth unemployment and share them on Pinterest. You can check it out at fixyoungamerica.com/share.

Brands can leverage Pinterest for photo sharing competitions, or to just share beautiful imagery with your audience. If you're a very visually-focused brand - like a fashion boutique - Pinterest can be used to share pictures of your product that encourage customers to buy.

First and foremost, ask yourself: Are my customers using Pinterest. If the answer is "No" don't waste your time.

I am a big fan of Facebook private groups for building small, loyal communities. There's too much transparency in the online world so customers appreciate whent they're getting something special that only a small group of people can get.

For Young Entrepreneur Council, we have a private group for all of our most important members to interact, share trade secrets, special discounts and more. This keeps our community highly engaged and loyal.

It sounds to me like the brands you are "chasing" are not doing it right because otherwise they would have gotten you to buy, yes? Not all brands are doing it wrong on social media. In fact, I've made many sales through Facebook ads and know of many entrepreneurs who have as well. 

Again, I think this is a case of many brands diving into something before they take a moment to strategize on the goals, messaging, etc. It's too bad too because social networks provide you with the most targetted advertising available online.

Email (yes, email), Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Maybe Pinterest... we'll see.

You probably need to invest in some training if you don't know where to started. Check out BrazenU.com, which is part of the Brazen Careerist network (one of my companies). There is a great Executive Social Media Bootcamp that you should register for. They will teach you all of the basics so you can do this effectively the first time.

The government is all over the social media landscape. They're hiring like crazy and using sites like Brazen Careerist to get the word out to online influencers.

Of course, the real decision makers are probably not the ones who are executing on their social strategies. When trying to reach a higher up, consider something like LinkedIn, which operates more like a Rolodex on steroids to find the people that you're looking for.

Penelope is one my greatest friends. She created the Brazen Careerist brand through her book, blog and syndicated columns then teamed up with me and Ryan Healy to launch the Brazen Careerist network.

How about starting some actual conversations instead? I get more followers on my pages when I focus less on videos/articles and more on talking to people. Ask students questions that matter to them, build relationships and trust.

Yep, I'm sure that I'm a Founder of Brazen Careerist. Thanks for checking.