Is Social Media Losing its Usefulness to Business or has It Just Evolved

Courtesy of Air Force Medical Service - AF.mil

By Hector Cisneros

Organic Social Media effectiveness for producing leads seems to have peaked just before the last presidential election. During the run-up to that election, we saw skewed search results, increases in filtered newsfeed posts and many changes to the timeline algorithm. Then after the election, we discovered the massive sale of private account profile data, the sales of advertising to Russian groups looking to influence the election and a what seems to be a runaway Frankenstein algorithm that affects ad placement and the news timelines. If you add to this all the filtering that Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn have added to their user controls, you can begin to see why business social posts are not showing up anymore. In this episode, of Working the Web to Win, we will delve into these and other changes that have taken place and explore what effect this is having on a business’s ability to use social media as a means for marketing products and services.  So, whether you're using social media or not, this is a discussion you don’t want to miss because the long-term implications will have lasting effects right now and far into the future. So, put aside your posting schedule and get ready to decipher these changes as we explore the continuous evolution of social media for business.

To Follow or Not to Follow – That is the Social Media Question?

Here’s How to Determine “If and When” you should Follow Someone Back in Social Media

By Hector Cisneros

Courtesy of Pixabay

Several years ago, a friend asked me, ‘how do you know who to follow,” after I told him that I was engaged in social media development and marketing. The question he asked was a good one because, at that time, most of what I was doing in the social media arena was new to everyone. In fact, we were in an era of discovery, testing untried techniques and methods. I quickly realized how similar social media development was to word of mouth networking, so it dawned on me to apply word of mouth marketing principles to the new social media phenomena. This application proved to be fruitful, but it did not address the need for rules for who to connect with and who to avoid. If you're engaged in social media development, you have to connect with people. Social media means following and unfollowing people, groups and businesses. This happens on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google+, LinkedIn, and when you blog (whether it’s on WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr or another platform). In this episode of Working the Web to Win, we will explore why we need to use social media to connect with others, who we need to be following, (making connections) and who we need to avoid (undesirables). Take out your highlighter and get ready to lay down some yellow lines as we take a deep dive into who to follow and why, along with how to avoid following those pesky undesirables.

The Twelve Secrets of Social Media Success

By Hector Cisneros

Courtesy of Flickr

Several years ago, a friend told me about this great new network that was going to eliminate my need for going to network meetings. He said he could go online and connect with people. I decided to join that network to see what all the hoopla was all about. At the time my friend was talking about LinkedIn. A year later I also joined Facebook and then followed that up by joining Twitter. Later, I also joined FourSquare, Stumbleupon, YouTube, Ecademy, MerchantCircle and Google+ (just to name a few). I soon learned that using social networks was very different than most forms of online marketing. I quickly realized that social networking was very much like face to face networking. Both were a form of word of mouth marketing. Both had fairly ridged rules of how you could build credibility, specific rules that would endear you to followers and rules that would get you un-followed or un-friended very quickly.