Joel Comm: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistakes People Make With Social Media

Joel Comm

Joel Comm

Joel Comm is one of the world’s leading experts on web-based, money-making strategies. This is an excerpt from Joel’s chapter titled: Social Media Marketing Success Qualities in Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars:

Social media, in particular, creates a unique context and mode of interaction. Just about everyone wants in on the benefits. Unfortunately, it’s also a particularly competitive environment; having the right characteristics, being determined and ready to act, is often not enough.

To succeed with social media, you also need the right information, and you need to be aware of what not to do, as well as knowing what to do. With that in mind, let’s review the top mistakes of social media marketing.


Mistake #1: Leading With Marketing Conversations

Many new social media marketers head into it as though it’s simply a place where they advertise themselves and their business. You see it happen all the time. People approach Twitter and Facebook, and they immediately friend people just to post links to their products and services. This makes it all about them, and they subsequently come off as being very selfish, and having an all-about-me attitude.

These people are missing the point, which is that all healthy businesses are built on relationships.

Using social media to advance your business goals does not change this fundamental rule. You must provide value for the prospect first. They will then, hopefully, become your customer.
[Read more...]

11 Rules of Compelling Content

Ann Handley

Ann Handley

Ann Handley is the Chief Content Officer at MarketingProf.com. Who better to ask about writing compelling content?

In this extract from Ann’s comprehensive chapter in the Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars, she shares her eleven rules for publishing compelling content inspired by E. B. White’s principles of clarity, brevity and boldness.

“Produce great stuff, and your customers will come to you. Produce great stuff, and your customers will share your story for you. More than ever before: Content is king! Content rules!” Ann Handley

Rule #1: Compelling content has an objective

In the context of business, the juiciest kind of content is created for a purpose, with a business objective in mind.

Who does this well: Hubspot. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Hubspot is a B2B company that sells lead generation systems for small and medium-sized companies. Hubspot is the poster child for content marketing done well, because the best of what it publishes isn’t about Hubspot, it’s about the needs of its [Read more...]