Catching the Social Media Wave

For many years I have had what I consider a strong and successful presence on Social Media:

• I have more than 50,000 Followers

• All my Social Media Accounts are Verified

• Most of my sales happen through Social Media in different forms and way

• I am Ambassador for quite a few brands

• I have several Paid Posts/Adverts per month

• My yearly turnover is above 100,000 per year

I am often asked what is the best way to succeed in Social Media so I decided to prepare a few posts .

Getting yourself set up online with social media is now becoming an absolute necessity for any business, whether based in a physical location or explicitly online. This article will show you how to effectively market your company using this new marketing outlet. It's not as hard as you might think it is.

This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission but come at no extra cost to you.

To use social media marketing successfully you must be creative. The same material, sales, offers, and content will ultimately annoy your customer base to the point that they remove you from their page. Keeping things fresh and interesting makes sure they keep coming back for more, which means more sales.

To get a leg up on the social media marketing of competitors, embrace all forms of social media. Many companies assume that social media has matured and think they only need presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to cover their bases. Savvy social media marketers remember that MySpace is still out there. Use it plus rising newcomers like LinkedIn, SlideShare and Google+ to expose yourself where other players are not.

Respond with care to tweets that contain rude or hateful messages. Everything you tweet is a reflection of your business. It may be tempting to shoot back a sarcastic tweet but, that will harm you in the long run. Remain professional and calm when you respond. Remember, the whole world has access to what you tweet.

When deciding how to implement your social media marketing strategies, it is important to take into consideration the nature of your products and services. For example, if purchasing your products is something that most of your customers would prefer to keep private, then do not put Facebook-like buttons right next to the buy buttons! Eventually, someone will click it accidentally and then get angry at your business.

Make sure that your business social media content is fun, interactive, and interesting to read. People who engage in social media sites want to feel compelled to share information that they find. If they share your information, it is to your company's advantage. This is a great way to find new customers and keep the old ones coming back for more.

Keep your Facebook posts regular and consistent. People will look for new content from you when they check in on their Facebook page. If they don't see it regularly, they're likely to forget about you quickly. There are many businesses out there who do post regularly and those businesses are getting the attention of consumers. Make your business one of them.

Run fun and interesting polls on your Facebook page. This is a great way to engage your audience and involve potential consumers. Facebook has an easy to use a feature that can help you with creating polls, so take advantage of it. Polls don't have to be about information directly related to your business. They can be fun, interesting, and involve current events. The point of the poll is to keep consumers interested.

As you can see from this article, while social media can seem intimidating for someone who hasn't spent much time on it, it is really quite simple. As far as marketing goes, social media is actually something that is free and simple enough to do yourself without having to hire a professional.

There are several apps I use on Social Media but two that I use all the time and I would not be able to work without them:

• Social Pilot : It is a social media management tool that helps you manage all of your social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many more. It is the software I use several times a day for my Social Media.

  Social Pilot helps you schedule posts to your social networks with a quick setup. You can even create recurring posts for certain days or times so that you never have to worry about it again. You can check it out here

• IQHastags: Skyrocket your Instagram profile! The most frequently used tool for Instagram hashtags and analytics. IQhashtags is the latest, complete tool for creating the most effective hashtags on Instagram. Avoid shadowban on Instagram - find banned hashtags that you use, You can check it out here

Social Pilot: n1 software to succeed in Social Media!

Social Pilot is a social media management tool that helps you manage all of your social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many more. It is the software I use several times a day for my Social Media.

Social Pilot helps you schedule posts to your social networks with quick set-up. You can even create recurring posts for certain days or times so that you never have to worry about it again.

As a beginner, you should not be worried about the technicalities of your social media platform. It's better to concentrate on the campaigns and promotions you want to run.

There are a lot of tools available to help you do this, but few are as effective as Social Pilot. Social Pilot is a social media management platform that helps you automate your social media marketing campaign in a way that lets you monitor and manage them from one centralized dashboard.

Social Pilot offers a variety of features to help beginners start their social media marketing efforts. It has built-in analytics tools, which provide real-time data for monitoring the performance of your posts using Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics.

You can also create custom reports from these data. You can also schedule your posts in advance to maximize their reach and impact among your target audience.

With Social Pilot's bulk posting feature, you can schedule up to 500 posts at a time. Social Pilot also offers an RSS feed importer that imports content from various websites into your newsfeeds for posting purposes. The RSS feed importer also saves you time by allowing you to import multiple RSS feeds at once .

Social Pilot's integration with Buffer allows you to add new content quickly from within Social Pilot or post automatically from RSS feeds using Buffer .

This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission but come at no extra cost to you.

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Can I Get Verified?!?!

All my main Social Media Accounts Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have the “Verified” badge and I am often asked if is important and how to get it. So I decided to compile a brief post!

In a world of fake news and widespread media distrust, social media verification will be more important in 2020 than ever so getting verified on social media is one of the ways brands build trust with their customers.

Whether it’s your personal account, your business account getting that little “checkmark” next to the profile name is massively important. In fact, it provides instant social proof and credibility when anyone looks up you or your company online.

Verification can also help with networking or to push your company toward the forefront of your industry as a trusted option.

Getting verified can be pretty difficult to do, and it might take some time, but it is definitely possible. And it’s worth it.

But maybe you’ve already tried to become verified and you were rejected. Or perhaps you just don’t know where to start.

Unless you’ve got a huge following like Beyonce, becoming a verified account takes some commitment and trial and error.

It began as a way for the platform to identify which Twitter accounts belonged to celebrities.

But now, it’s evolved into a way to verify which accounts belong to brands, companies, and influencers as well.

Basically, it serves as an instant way to tell other users, “Hey, this account isn’t just your average Joe — pay attention to it!”

GENERAL SUGGESTION

To verify your personal account to become an influencer in your industry, begin by making sure that your  Social Media is updated

Add a recent profile picture and make sure your profile information is all filled out.

If you haven’t been posting regularly you’ll need to wait until you’ve regularly posted for a consistent amount of time before trying to verify it.

Post original and interesting contents on a regular basis

Build your following and post engaging images.

Add as much identity-supporting information as possible to your profile to make it appear, official, even though there’s no checkmark.

Bes sure you have a verified phone number and a confirmed email address

Do not forget is also important to have a bio, a profile photo a header photo and website

Your Posts must be set to Public

Have your ID ready you will need to send a copy to them

TWITTER

Twitter was the first social network to start issuing verifications. Verified accounts show a small blue checkmark next to their name, and the process for becoming verified is pretty easy: just make sure your account is completely filled out and send over examples of your web properties.

But I have some disappointing news for you. 

Twitter has paused all new account verifications 😢

Yeah, you read that right, the micro-blogging network decided to pause verifications for new accounts while it worked on a new verification program.

Since then, no further details have been released, so we'll have to sit tight and hope that 2020 brings the advent of a new Twitter verification program.

I'll keep you updated.

INSTAGRAM

It is extremely difficult to get verified on Instagram because the company focuses on verifying accounts that have a high probability of being impersonated and does not take requests. However, it is not impossible.

Because Instagram’s focus is on preventing impersonation, amassing a huge number of followers is not guaranteed to earn an account a blue checkmark.

Instagram suggests that those after verification prove their account is real in other ways, such as linking to an official website or a verified account on Facebook or Twitter. This is not a foolproof method but can help you position your brand as one that could be at risk of impersonation.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is the largest (and arguably most important) social networks for business. So naturally, it has a relatively straightforward verification process.

There are two types of Facebook verification: blue badges and grey badges.

Blue badges are only for the following categories of people:

• Journalists

• Popular Brand or Businesses

• Government Officials

• Celebrities

• Media

• Entertainment

• Sports Companies

If you have a compelling reason to be verified, high-quality content, and a large amount of press surrounding your brand, you can submit for verification. 

Once you're verified, your brand will have a small blue checkbox next to its name. Unfortunately, however, this doesn't carry over to its sister social network, Instagram.

To get verified, just do this:

1. Make sure your cover photo, logo, and profile info are completely up-to-date

2. Fill out this form and wait for a response from Facebook

Gray badges are only for business pages and were introduced in 2015 as a way for businesses to confirm they’re authentic. The approval process is much shorter (about 48 hours) and the requirements are a lot less stringent.

Note: Facebook is phasing out grey badges “based on user feedback,” so you can no longer apply for it. Instead, Facebook encourages businesses to authenticate their profiles by linking to them on official websites, updating profile imagery, and making sure contact information is accurate.

GOOGLE MY BUSINESS

Getting verified on Google My Business is super important.

Once verified, your users will see a blue shield with a checkmark in it on your listing in Search and Maps. This is important because users will have no doubts that your hours, address, and other important info is up-to-date.

This will make them more likely to swing by and check out your establishment.

To verify your account, do the following:

1. Sign in to Google My Business and choose the business you'd like to verify

2. Click Verify now and follow the on-screen prompts to request your verification postcard

3. Once the card arrives, log back in and punch in the verification code on the postcard, and you're verified!

Vero the new app, why and how to use it

Vero, a photo-sharing app that launched in 2015, is the latest app to benefit from ongoing frustration with Facebook and Instagram's hated algorithm not to mention recent uselessness of Twitter .

A week ago, Vero was ranked so low it didn't even appear in the App Store's top 1,00 apps; today it's the most popular app both on the App Store and Google Play Store. It's gotten so popular that the app's servers have been overloaded, with many users unable to post or even sign up for an account. 

The creators and owner of the app are very clear and upfront it will be a pay as you go app. I like the idea and I never believed in freebies and if is free is too good to be true.

I like as well the concept no algorithms no advertising. In exchange of a fee?? Why not!

Here is a summary of the manifesto: Vero is unhappy with the way social media has become about algorithms and ads, and they’re trying to create a more “natural” way of sharing things. In practice, that means no ads, ever (the service will be funded in part by an annual subscription model they’ll introduce soon, and in part by Vero receiving a commission on sales made through the platform).

It also means users have more control over who sees their posts: the news feed is chronological rather than thrown together by an algorithm, and users decide whether each post they make will be broadcast to close friends only, friends only, friends and acquaintances, or anyone who chooses to follow them.

In its manifesto, Vero said it does not incorporate advertising into its revenue model, but will instead begin charging users for a subscription after 1 million free users have joined the service.

“As a subscription-based service, our users are our customers, not the product we sell to advertisers.”

Vero’s been variously described as “the new Facebook” and “the new Instagram”, but in reality, it’s actually more like a combination of both

It’s similar to Facebook in that you can have friends as well as followers, divided into acquaintances, friends and close friends.  You can use it to chat with people, and you can post a range of content like links, text posts, photos, film recommendations etc.  It’s similar to Instagram in that you can post nice looking photos. There are no stories, it is good for me...I never used them anyway.

Arguably, its biggest selling point is that it has a chronological feed, allowing users to see everything. Companies can’t pay to boost posts because there is no algorithm that highlights certain posts over others, meaning – provided you scroll far enough down – you won’t miss any of your friends’ images.

Another interesting feature is the fact that, unlike Instagram, users aren’t required to crop their images: full-sized photos can be uploaded and displayed in their original ratio.

This business model stands in stark contrast to other apps like Facebook, which has become very advertising heavy. Without money from advertising, Vero has admitted it will eventually charge users to sign up for the app, however, the first million users will receive free access for life.

I like very much the modern design the easiness in creating an account and in how to use it.

Of course, at the moment it is a bit of an empty place...but was exactly the same on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram! I do not mind to try a new medium in the hope it will work

I am on vero as marco secchi

How to use Vero:

Like most social media apps, you first have to sign up with your phone number and email address after you get Vero. By entering your phone number, you can let Vero access your contacts to see which friends are also on the app. You can also invite your contacts to make a Vero account. This step is also skippable, and you can connect with friends later.

Once you’re all signed up, you officially have a Vero account. Now you can add a bio and avatar to your profile page.

Vero will then show you its “Featured Content” page. Similar to Instagram’s Explore page, it’s where you can check out posts from verified Vero users.

When you tap “Done” in the upper right-hand corner, you’re brought to the main page — your Vero feed. The app will then direct you to share your first post.

Here is where the world opens up. You can post a myriad of different things to your Vero feed. Search for music (they literally have it all), movies (seriously, they have every movie ever), books (yeah, all the books), places, links, and finally photos and videos.

Still kind of afraid of the great beyond, we decided to keep things simple with a photo post.

The Vero photo editing process is almost identical to Instagram’s. Your filters and simple editing tools are cleanly displayed below your photo. You’ll still be able to pre-edit in another app and then upload from your library, too, if you like to have a bit more variety in your editing options.

Tap “Done,” add a caption, tag a location if you like, and then choose who’s able to see your post. When adding friends and followers in Vero, you’re able to categorize them into “close friends,” “friends,” and “acquaintances,” thus letting you control how far you want each post to reach.