Spam Less Socialize More

For a business or a public figure, social media is about increasing brand awareness and connecting with your audience. Those are your goals. Say them with me. Your tribe will follow you because of who you are and how you can add relevance to drowned out the endless string of ads on their news feed. Epic amounts of brand promotion translates to one thing. Spam. Don’t do that. Spam gets filtered, spam gets junk engagement, and spam gets put on mute. To avoid being spam-tacular lets look at why in the ever loving social strata we follow brands in the first place. 

1. Good Branding Benefits 

What does your tribe gain from adding your voice to their already jam packed newsfeed? Does connecting to your brand say something positive about them? Does it help them brand themselves? And hell, how are you spreading your message of overall awesomeness?

• Are you charming?
• Are you original?
• Are you up on all of the latest trends?
• Are you informative and quirky? 

If you’re not, each and every one of your followers should be receiving a baby unicorn in the mail the second they click like because otherwise it ain’t gonna happen. You have to give the social-verse a reason to follow you.

2. Killer Content

Before we follow an individual or a brand we want to know what to expect. We want to know what there is to look forward to and we’re going to dig for dirt. We’re going to dig through your content like a truffle pig in the forests of France. Give us a reason to keep up with you.

Ask yourself, “Self does the frequency of my posting suck? Am I posting 487,575,896,047,729 times a day, or have I gone more than a week without posting at all?” 

“Self, did the last post I made come off like a used car salesman. Was it smarmy, half-assed, or just really excruciatingly dull?”

 We, as users, want the full ass version of your social media page. We want photos and videos and unique perspectives. We want to follow pages that are active and publish unique content. So have a purpose and a perspective. Do that. 

Don’t just have a brand page ‘cause yo momma told you you needed one. Don’t even do it because I said so. Be on social media to be present in the lives of your tribe. Publish content that reflects your brand’s goals and then interact. Save the promotion for those rare occasions that you have a specific event or item that you’re promoting. If you’ve been interesting enough the rest of the time, we’ll be anxiously awaiting those nuggets and won’t just scroll on by. 

Reach Out And Touch Those Twitter Analytics

Recently, Twitter rolled out an updated analytic dashboard which lets us savvy social media users see how many impressions each tweet has received, the number of favorites each tweet has received, how many times others have clicked on our profiles, and the number of retweets and replies on a certain tweet. It even shows how many times a tweet got engagement and what kind of engagement it got.  

I know after such a spectacular intro paragraph you’re all dying to know how you can get these badass statistics into your hot little hands as soon as possible. Well, wait no more. If an analytic dashboard can, in fact, be badass you can find that sucker right here to analytics.twitter.com.

Just in case you might have a few questions, those kind folks at Twitter also put up a help page with definitions and guides. Now for the fine print people. Tweet metrics are updated in real time and your account must be at least fourteen days old to get your analytic dirt. It also can’t be deleted, restricted, protected or suspended. 

Back in the day, anyone who wasn’t an advertiser had to rely on third party apps for all Twitter metrics. Now all of that ewey gooey metric goodness is out there just waiting for us users. Now all we need are analytics integrated into the mobile apps.

Voila Video Import

 

Vine loves our faces. It does. Really. How do I know? Simple, the social media platform is now allowing users to import existing videos for our mobile devices.

In addition to video import, the Vine app (on iOS only for now) lets users edit imported videos. That means in addition to amping up the convenience we can duplicate portions of the video and mute the audio without having to preview the whole video before we edit. Preview recent additions on the capture screen and proceed.  Heck we can even delete selected sections of our cinematic glory from that same screen. 

They’ve even added deeper controls alongside old favorites like ghost and focus lock as a cuddly little bonus. Tell me more you say. Well Vine’s also added a grid to help properly compose your shot. Use it to level up and make sure the horizon isn’t off kilter. Use the slow-motion video feature on the iPhone 5s for all your awesome training montage videos because that’s supported, too.

I’ll admit a lot of these tools could be geared toward longer video’s, but on Vine creativity is key. Get creative and get some exposure with the videos you’ve got tucked away in your little mobile device vault.  Vine is encouraging its community to dig up the oldest videos on their phones and share them with the hashtag #VintageVine. Vintage fitness anyone?

Check-Up, Check-in, and Click Away: Three Reasons That You May Not Be Getting The Results You Want From Your Social Media Platforms

Get social, they said. Make all of the posts, they said. If your business has been on social media for a while and you aren’t getting the response that you are looking for, it’s frustrating. I’m talking hulksmash, damn intranets, computer boxing kind of frustrating. The good news, is that beyond edgerank and platform coding you may to be able to improve your interactions by giving your social media presence a lil check up. You know, just to make sure it’s healthy. You want the online version of your brand to be just as well oiled and awesome as the in person version. So without further ado, here I go with the lists:

1. Is your Content is Canned? We all love memes, but here’s the thing, we want to love your health and fitness brand. We want to love you. You content should be 80% original. In that other 20% of your social media content if you want to throw up some memes, promote some healthy local businesses, or link to a few articles that you find phenominal go for it. That 20% could actually help you to be more engaged and more connected with the content in your industry. Let’s go back to that 80% though. That’s your golden ticket. And you can’t be yourself hiding behind all of the other content out there. 
2. Do You Know What Platforms Your Tribe Is On? Posting to every social media network in existence is a time sink. It is a matrix style rabbit hole, and it may not be doing you any favors. On the flip side of that kettlebell, if you’re only posting to one social media platform, you need to make sure that’s where the bulk of your tribe resides. If you don’t you’re missing out on some huge opportunities. There are plenty of studies that show what demographics prefer which platforms. There are plenty of platforms that are better for public figures or gyms. All of those things are good to be aware of. The best way to go about finding out what platforms your membership is on (drumroll please), is to ask them in person. Conversational like. 
3. Are You Joining And Interacting With Social Media Groups? You don’t have to spend all of your time there, but a little bit of interaction goes a long way. Join the discussion on any social media platform. By establishing yourself as an industry expert and offering some helpful tips and topics for discussion you go a long way in the battle of brand promotion. Not all of the members will be in your area, but the ones that are will feel more personally connected to you and your brand after having discussed a topic or two in a group setting. 

So there you have it. Your online check-up. If you aced it and still have questions throw em in the comments and I’ll try to answer them blog style in the coming weeks. Social media can be a sassy beast and we all need moments where we check-in with what we’re doing and reevaluate the ways we can make it shine. Click Away, lift all of the things, and make that platform as awesome and as personable as you are.  

 

See Bot. See Bot Run…

 

Spam sucks. It makes it that much harder to really connect to your tribe on social media. There is, however, a great big bot free light at the end of the tunnel. Recently, Emilio Ferrara and pals at Indiana University in Bloomington, have developed a way to spot sophisticated social bots and distinguish them from all of the rest of us, oh so human, users. Woo!! How is this great news for you?

These researchers have created an algorithm called Bot or Not? to mine this data, looking for significant differences between the properties of human users and social bots. The algorithm looked at more than 1,000 features associated with outed bot accounts, such as the number of tweets and retweets each posted, the number of replies, mentions and retweets each received, the username length and even the age of the account.

The good news is that there are significant differences between human accounts and bot accounts. Bots tend to retweet far more often than humans and they also have longer usernames and younger accounts. By contrast, humans receive more replies, mentions and retweets. Your goal is to interact and get social. To build your brand in an authentic way, you focus your attention on the real live people on the other end of that.

I know you want to go and take a little look-see. Lucky for us, Ferrara and co have made their Bot or Not? algorithm available here. All you have to do is enter the screen name of the Twitter user and it will analyze its features and most recent posts to determine the likelihood of it being a social bot.

The Skinny On Social

 

Social Media is an amazing marketing tool! It’s an amazing tool for branding and interacting with your followers, but just having a  social media account as a health and fitness business isn’t enough to stand apart from the crowed. As trainers and gym owners you know all about tough love and giving it straight to your awesome clients. We’re all better for it. Here’s the skinny on social media that will do wonders for enhancing your platforms.

1. It Takes Time

Like earning those results in they gym building up a strong social media brand takes time. It takes time and consistency to create and curate the content you post. It will also take you time to build up your audience. Success does and can happen, it takes time and work. Don’t expect overnight success or you will find yourself being disappointed. Wow, that sounds familiar, huh?

2. Work With A Professional

Developing a social media marketing plan or strategy shouldn’t be just handed over to the intern. And, hey, plenty of companies have learned this the hard way. Just like your clients can’t ask you to do the heavy lifting for them, you need to have a strategy and a system in place that you have some control over. By consulting and working with a professional, you’ll be able to deliver a consistent message no matter who is doing the posting and there will be no hiccups in your brand’s message if there are staff changes along the way. Your social media accounts are your reputation on the internet. Don’t just hand that over to anyone!

3. The Obvious Shortcuts Don’t Work

Some sites offer thousands of followers for only $10. And on the surface it sounds like a pretty great deal, right? Before you go for it, stop a moment and think about it. Do you really want followers who are bots (aka. not real people) or followers who may be real people that aren’t close enough to your area to actually become members? Of course not. You want followers and fans who are real, who are authentic and who actually care what you have to say. You want to be able to interact and build your tribe in a meaningful way.

Social media marketing can be a valuable asset to any business. However, there’s plenty to learn and a lot of outdated or misinformation floating around. Keep in mind that in some ways, social media is a lot like training and the results will come. You’ll get there faster with consistency, hard work, and some expert advice.

Why You Need Vine To Build Your Health And Fitness Brand

 

Vine is shiny, it’s engaging, it’s fun and it has a lot more going for it than just novelty. If you haven’t tried using Vine to create charming and innovative videos for your brand, you’re missing out on roughly 40 million registered users on their platform alone.

Vine can be used to present your health and fitness brand with a clever way to take advantage of visual contents amazing ability to perform on social media. Why should you take a little look-see? I’m so glad you asked.

1. It’s convenient and free.

It comes in a wonderfully portable free mobile app form, for your filming and video editing pleasure. Vine goes wherever you go, well, as long as your smartphone gets to tag along with you. Technically it takes six seconds to film your clip. Not the agonizing end of HIIT kind of seconds, but the good kind. The easy-peasy lemon-squeezy kind. We like those. Then all you have to do is press share.

 

2. It’s easy to use.

There are six seconds of content that go into a Vine video. Six seconds, we’re not painting the Sistine Chapel. The nice thing is that you don’t need to have spent four years in film school to turn out a decent video on Vine. Here’s the easy to use part. Are you ready? Hold your finger on the screen to record and take it off to pause. It’s that simple. Really. You can record straight through uninterrupted, or if you’re feeling feisty, you can use the stop-motion feature to shoot your own animated shorts. See creative. High five.

 

5. It’s instructional.

In the land of health and fitness we love us some show and tell. Vine loves it some quick and creative tutorials. Share a few pro-tips, give your tribe a chance to see behind the curtain of a few of your staff member’s very own health and fitness habits. Do what you do best, it gives you another avenue to show off what a valuable resource your brand is, how much fun you are, and how trust worthy and relatable.

By utilizing Vine, you create stellar content quick. So. Much. Content. We love that, because the truth is, the more ways you have of rephrasing your message, the better you’re able to build your brand and connect with your online tribe. Think about it, have someone film you thinking about it, make your first video. Go on, try it out. You know you want to.

Google Author Rank: What Is It and Why Will You Love It?

Once upon a time, there was a search engine called Google and the search for content was good… As users, we found things. Scouring the digital world for online content felt efficient. We liked that. As more and more content began filling up the interwebs, Google decided that each user’s search needed to feel more individually relevant. The company has been on a constant hunt for high quality webpages to keep their searchers happy ever since.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Google’s new brainchild, Author Ranking. Because the internet is becoming more and more social, and interaction on social media is now a pretty standard part of our culture, Google is continually reinventing the way their search results will stack up.

What if Google credited you for great content no matter where you published it? They wanted a way to account for this “person to person connection” in search results. Sooooo, about that wildly popular blog update you just wrote? Now it’s possible to tell Google you’re the author and boost your Author Rank. I know you’re dying for me to tell you how to make it so. Check this out:

If you Do have an E-mail address at the same domain as your content do it this way:

1. Check that you have a email address on the same domain as your content. Boom.

1. Take a little credit. Make sure that each article or post you publish on that domain has a clear byline identifying you as the author.
2. Visit the Authorship page and submit your email address to Google. No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you only need to do this process once. Your email will appear in the Contributor to section of your Google+ profile. If you want to keep your email private, change the visibility of your link.
3. To see what author data Google can extract from your page, use the structured data testing tool.

 

If you Don’t have an E-mail address at the same domain as your content, use this somewhat more technical method instead:

 

1. Create a link to your Google+ profile from your webpage, like this:   <a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>
   Replace [profile_url] with the your Google+ profile URL, like this:
   <a href=”https://plus.google.com/109412257237874861202?
2.    rel=author”>Google</a>

 

Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter. If it’s missing, Google won’t be able to associate your content with your Google+ profile.

3.  Add a reciprocal link back from your profile to the site(s) you just updated.

• Edit the Contributor To section.
• In the dialog that appears, click Add custom link, and then enter the website URL.
• If you want, click the drop-down list to specify who can see the link.
• Click Save.

You’re putting out some awesome brand content on the regular, and now you can get credit for it, regardless of where you write it. This could lead to more visibility in search results. More visibility in search results could lead to more traffic, more income, more training equipment, more a lot of things. Who doesn’t love that?

 

 

Tipping Your Content Toward Trending Topics

Facebook announced on Monday that the World Cup has generated more than one billion interactions. One billion. Numbers like those have made it the largest event — sports or otherwise — in Facebook’s history.

All of that sweet and salty social media goodness includes the Likes, Comments and Posts on the platform that were generated by 220 million Facebook users. Trending topics like the World Cup are awesome because they provide a built in audience with centered around an athletic interest. For those of us in the health and fitness industry, that’s invaluable because it comes with it’s own built in excitement.

Creative content, like a great trainer, boosts the excitement and energy generated online and in the world around us. Don’t be afraid to share in the dialogue about trending topics and add your own unique spin. What kinds of World Cup worthy fitness tips could you offer to your followers? What kinds of cool contests could you generate to correspond with the World Cup rankings as they play out? The possibilities are endless.

The key is to connect and to add a little fun and excitement while sharing an already popular event with your tribe. Don’t be afraid to share and comment on the awesome content that out there either! Consistent content is key, but connecting with a trending topic can boost visibility.

Like-Gating: Is it the Precipice of Social Media Glory or A Great Big Speed Bump?

Let’s start with the basics here. Like-gating is when a company requires Facebook users to “like” its Facebook page before allowing them to access exclusive content. It is usually done by way of a welcome tab that a visitor sees when they first visit a Facebook page. Really, like-gate can happen with any tab on a page and isn’t limited to just the welcome tab. There’s some debate as to the actual merit of Like-gating so let’s take a look at a few of the pros and cons, shall we?

Pros of Like-gating:

• Like-Gating may encourage users to like your page, who may otherwise not have done so. New followers means increasing your brand awareness and branding to more people.
• It provides a call-to-action for people coming to your Facebook Page.
• It means that you can tailor content for new users, allowing you to highlight certain marketing messages that don’t need to be shown to your current fans. How does that work? Well, under a Welcome Tab you could like-gate a few extra details and exclusive content.

Cons of Like-gating:

• Here’s the thing, Like-gating may create a false sense of community. Big numbers, not as much engagement. Your fans have been “encouraged” to like you, rather than seeking you out or following you on Facebook for your awesome content.
• One like doesn’t ensure retention. People who like your page because of a Like-gate can just as easily unlike it once they have gotten the content they want. It’s up to us and creative content to keep them engaged.
• It may just be a big ole road block for some folks. Any amount of friction can cause certain users to bail on your page altogether, leaving a missed opportunity to reach them on any level. Plus, if you’re using a Like-gate on any of your lead generation forms, the friction may be enough to decrease your Facebook leads.
•  Last, but not least. Like-gating may leave you too focused on your total number of likes. A small group of engaged fans is way better for your overall visibility than a large group that doesn’t interact with your brand. Like-gating does nothing for engagement.

Overall I wouldn’t recommend Like-gating an entire page. You’re on social media to be social, to be seen. Don’t be shy about sharing your basic information and all of the cool things your brand has to offer.  If you’re working to raise brand awareness a Like-Gate is not the way to do it. Develop awesome relationships with your members and your online tribe and if you want to add a Like-Gate to a tab here or there to boost your numbers remember to keep it simple and stay visible.