9 ways to Share to Grow

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Firstly, an apology for all my avid daily readers, yesterday just completely ran away with me and I didn’t blog, so to make up for it, I will blog twice today 🙂

Today’s topic Share to Grow encompasses all that social media is about, the sharing of ideas, value, results, helping others without expecting a return and growing your business based on the fact that people trust you and love what you are doing.

How you can share to grow:

1. Write a blog post in your area of interest/expertise and post it on your Facebook page, on Twitter, on LinkedIn etc.  Add it to http://www.ezinearticles.com have it on your website, share what you know with others, believe me it works!
2. Write a whitepaper (whitepaper’s are basically pdf documents on a topic, usually a few pages long) on your area/passion and give it to people through social media, again it positions you as an expert and allows you to get your brand out there
3. Create a short video and share it on YouTube/Facebook/Twitter, this doesn’t have to be super high tech, you can see what we do on Social Rabbit TV.  If it’s amusing and/or useful it will go viral spreading the word about your business
4. If you have done a presentation recently, as I did today, then create yourself a free Slideshare account and upload it.  The presentation I did on using social media for B2B is now up on Slideshare.  If you look around Slideshare you will see that the presentations are sometimes a few slides and sometimes lots, so you just say what you want to and then put your branding on it, just try to make it topical
5. Use the answers section in LinkedIn (click on the more button on the top navigation to get to it), answer questions from people in your areas of expertise, you will find that you will quickly grow your network and opportunities will start to come your way
6. Read other people’s blogs and make comments – not just a cool thanks comment, but adding value, it could be an example of when you have seen that working, or asking for more clarification, if you add value feel free to put a link back to your site/blog at the bottom
7. Write up a case study of your successes with social media/or other topics, tell the world, don’t be modest.  There are lots of doubters on social media out there looking for ideas and suggestions, so tell them what results you can get.  Plus it helps others when they are writing presentations.  For the B2B preso I did today I struggled to find case studies that actually gave results – a lot of people do not share well.  The case studies can be used when responding to blogs, answering questions on LinkedIn, posted on your blog, tweeted out, posted on slideshare and will get you a lot of exposure
8. If you are using Twitter regularly search on hash-tags that are relevant to your business, and then respond to comments, eg I sent a tweet asking about venues in Brisbane for the events next week, I got a response from a conference centre asking if I needed any help – I liked that
9. If networking groups are looking for someone to talk on an area you are an expert in volunteer (it’s highly unlikely you will get paid), but it is good exposure for your business, and again positions you as an expert and you can share your knowledge with others.  Don’t forget you can approach them as well.

The moral to this story is put yourself out there, you are an expert (in something) so show people.  Opportunities do not very often just land in your lap, instead you have to put the work in for them to fall.

I’d love to hear of any successes you have had sharing with others, please tell me in the comments or on the Social Rabbit Facebook Page.

Why bother with a blog?

Good Afternoon, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of Social Media.

Blogging is a hot topic, and there are hundreds of millions of people with a blog, however according to Darren Rowse of Problogger most bloggers don’t make it past the three-month mark – You will be pleased to know that this Rabbit is a week over the 3 month line… phew 🙂

So if you have become inspired by this and other blogs and think, “I can do that”  I’ve gathered some intel on what being a blogger involves – apart from being able to surf the net.

Technorati have a lot of information on their site about blogging www.technorati.com/blogging and one article in particular found that 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours or more blogging!  The graph below shows the number of hours different types of people spend blogging, if you click on it you can go straight to the article.

Reading these stats I was amazed, I mean this Rabbit now blogs daily, and in my daily plan I allow 30 minutes for it, but often it will take longer, because posting often involves:

• Thinking of a topic
• Researching the topic (depending on what it is)
• Reading other articles for ideas on a topic
• Running a survey
• Finding pictures
• Making a video
• Writing it
• Spell checking
• Re-writing it when it didn’t save the first time!
• Finding other articles to refer to

So why do bloggers bother, are they really that keen to get their voice heard?  Here are the reasons:

• They want to educate people
• They want to position themselves as an expert
• They are on their soap-box about a topic
• They are trying to give people a reason to visit their site/page
• They love writing
• They want to get more customers for their business
• They have a huge ego and think that EVERYONE needs to hear what they have to say (note: this is probably a very small % but I couldn’t – surprizingly find stats on it!)

In a white paper from Hubspot.com I found this graph which amazed me!  According to their research if you blog multiple times a day you are guaranteed to acquire a customer – WOW!  However before we all get too excited it still has to be quality blogs, you can’t just send random bits of info otherwise you will soon lose your readers. 

So we now know that we need to be blogging quality material multiple times per day… But what is that going to get us?  Below are stats from the same Technorati article that show that most blogs (49%) are read by less than 1000 readers, so how is your blog going vs. these stats?  I have to admit that Social Rabbit is way below the 1000 mark, but that is the new goal, so if you love the blog please tell your friends.

This is a very quick look down the tunnel that is blogs, but it gives you a quick insight into what you need to do, and what you can achieve, don’t worry there will be more posts on this topic as this Rabbit is finding it very interesting.  What would you like to know about blogging?  Tell me in the comments or on the Social Rabbit Facebook Page.