The Second Excuse for Not Using the Power of Social Media

Now we are at the second excuse of the top eight excuses I wrote about for a FastGush.com guest post. This post is the second of a blog series here at Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing looking at each excuse in more depth.

2. I have nothing to say on social media


It's important to understand what content you should be sharing in order to create connections for your products or services. But you yourself don't have to say things. You only have to find worthwhile things that others say and share this.

This is where effectively using Twitter can come in very handy.

But let's start further back in the equation:

Having your own blog is an excellent search engine optimization strategy for your company website because search engines love fresh content. And if you are using your blog effectively, which means a minimum of two new posts each week, you will be supplying the search engines' appetite for new content.

Now you don't have to write all the posts yourself. You can have guest bloggers for some or all of the time. (One place to list guest blog post requests is at BloggerLinkUp.com)

If you do have a blog, you can share the link to each new post on your social media sites. For example, you can tweet the link on Twitter and then, using the application of selective tweets, you can send the link through to your company Facebook Page and your LinkedIn account.

But obviously this isn't enough material for sharing each week.

Now you use the search function on Twitter to find people sharing and writing content that is what Yael and I call "on the spine" of your brand. In other words, information related to the products and services that your company offers.

You can even create a Twitter list (public or private) of these people so that you can quickly check to see what they are tweeting.

Then you can retweet what these people share, providing information to your Twitter followers while potentially creating relationships with the people whom you retweet.

In addition, if you read any news articles or blog posts online that you think your followers might appreciate, you can tweet the link to those articles or posts.

You can even tweet links to YouTube videos or websites that you want to share with your followers.

Think of yourself as a curator for information that your followers are likely to appreciate. And while your curator role may at first feel somewhat awkward, once you have done this consistently for several days you should be quite comfortable in this new role.

(You can read all 8 excuses now on FastGush.com.)

Plus read the Miller Mosaic blog post about the first excuse: "I don't have time to do social media"

© 2011 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC. Get the free information "8 Social Media Marketing Mistakes" and "Social Media Marketing Does Not Magically Work; You Have to Work It" at www.facebook.com/millermosaicsocialmedia