What is your target audience? Cater your posts to your niche.

Why do you use Twitter, Facebook or a blog? Are you trying to reach a specific niche, like business people, moms, teenagers or social media experts? Who do you want reading what you post? These are questions I recommend you ask yourself often to keep the correct perspective before posting different social messages.

Sometimes, as a social media professional, I find myself tweeting less of the things I find interesting (articles, videos, etc) because they’ve already been shared online by millions of people. For example, just look at the Mashable home page and you’ll see that hundreds and sometimes thousands of people tweet Mashable’s content regularly. I find myself less motivated to tweet this popular content because it seems like everyone has seen it already. But this is false! Just because I’ve read or seen a piece of content doesn’t mean the people who follow me have encountered it too.

In reality, it doesn’t matter if you post a piece of content someone may have already seen. The point is to post content that is interesting to you, and what you believe your audience will appreciate. I don’t care if some social media person sees my profile and thinks, “I’ve already read that.” Why? Because they’re not my target audience. My target audience includes the people who don’t read all of the social media blogs. They don’t have time to read the hundreds of interesting posts out there, so they come to me to read the ones I feel are the best. Why do they care? Because I consistently post things they like.

The moral of the story: no matter what industry you’re in, don’t forget that your target audience comes to you for updates. They’re not visiting all of the sites you’re visiting. They rely on you to sift through what’s good and what’s not.

This post is more for personal rather than for business use. You can modify most of the ideas to apply to a business if you want. You can also modify most of the ideas in this post to apply to other religious beliefs or nonreligious holiday practices.

Christmas has always been a wonderful time for me. I love family, the traditions, the music, the movies, the decorations, the spirit of giving and love, and all the other elements associated with the Christmas season.

So how should you be using social media this Christmas? Here a few suggestions:

1. Share some of your favorite traditions with your Facebook friends or Twitter readers. As you hear of great traditions, make a list and post it on your blog or as a note on your Facebook profile.
2. I used this idea for Thanksgiving, but it fits well for Christmas too: Share your favorite recipes! We all love the delicious foods that accompany Christmas. Stop hoarding your favorite dish and share it with the world! (My favorite Christmas treat is my mother’s delicious cinnamon rolls.) After you’ve posted your recipe, ask for other people’s favorite recipes and try one of them this year.
3. Make and share a list of your top ten favorite Christmas movies, songs or T.V. specials. Here’s a link from one of my favorite holiday T.V. specials…I still can’t believe that ever aired.
4. Ask people to post pictures of their decorations on your Facebook wall. You could even get people to post pictures of the craziest decorations they’ve seen this year.
5. Share heartwarming Christmas stories you’ve heard. Here’s a link to a story I like.
6. If you have the courage, in this ever-politically correct world, share your gratitude for the birth of Jesus Christ. After all, that’s what Christmas is all about. Linus explains it well.

These are just a few of my ideas. What are some ways you’re using social media this Christmas season?

So what’s the best way to use social media this upcoming Thanksgiving week? Here are a few ideas:

1. Tell your family and friends (employees and clients if you’re a business) why you’re thankful for them. Write on their Facebook wall or tweet something nice about them. Expressing your gratitude for them will not only brighten this person’s day, it will make you feel great too.
2. Share your favorite recipes. We all love the delicious foods that accompany Thanksgiving dinner. Stop hoarding your favorite dish and share it with the world! Maybe someone else will love your stuffing, cranberry sauce or homemade apple pie. When you’ve posted the recipe, ask for other people’s favorite recipes and try one of them this year. If you’re a business, start a conversation about great recipes on your Facebook page, blog or on Twitter.
3. Make a list of things you’re thankful for and share it with everyone. It could be a list of the weirdest things you’re thankful for or even the top YouTube videos you’re thankful for. Just be thankful. That’s the idea of this holiday, right?
4. Share the best Black Friday deals! Not only is Thanksgiving Day awesome, but the day after is awesome too. Let people know where the best deals are. If you’re a business, let your followers know you’re having a killer deal. But don’t just share your own deals. Share deals for products from other businesses that will complement the items you sell. Karma pays dividends.

These are just a few of my ideas. How are you using social media to brighten your Thanksgiving?

“Celebrity is currency, so I [want] to use mine effectively.”

Social media can be a powerful marketing tool for any business, but only if it’s used effectively. Do you have a Facebook page or Twitter account? They must be sources of good content. Do you have a blog? It must be genuine. Are you incorporating social media into your traditional PR or marketing strategies? You must engage, converse and monitor. Do you measure social media ROI? You must set intelligent goals beforehand. Effectiveness, effectiveness, effectiveness!

“I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s***. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace.”

But Bono won’t find grace in social media, and neither will you. Karma is everything here! If you aren’t retweeting, commenting on other blog posts, answering LinkedIn questions or engaging with your fans/followers, you will hardly attract new converts to your business through social media. Reach out to others online and they will reach out to you.

“We’ve got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are….The culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other ‘isms’ of indifference.”

I often see this with other bloggers and tweeters, and I hope I’m not too guilty of it myself. When we use social media, it’s so easy to think about our own needs and wants and forget about the necessities or even the reality of others. When you post a tweet, for instance, are you doing it for you? Or do you really believe it contains beneficial information for your customers and followers? The same goes for a blog post, a YouTube video or a bookmark. Don’t use social media as a display case for your personal brand or business. It’s meant to be a conversation, not just a money-making monologue.

“There are many side roads and back streets to rock ‘n’ roll, and most of us get lost down them at times.”

I believe Bono is referring to MySpace here, but I could be wrong.

In conclusion, U2 is awesome. Maybe one day there will be social media theory classes in college. But for now, we have to rely on the wisdom and acumen of The Great Bono.

Being the manly man that I am, I don’t really understand the whole wedding thing. I have four sisters and still don’t get why women like the things they do. My idea of a perfect wedding includes the following: family, friends, water balloons, fighting robots, football, American Gladiator events and medium-rare steaks. Alas, what I want at a wedding doesn’t really matter. In an effort to understand what a woman thinks about in planning her wedding, I turned to my Facebook friends. I asked what was important to a woman in planning a wedding. The responses I got were all fairly similar. It seems the number one thing that is important in planning a wedding is keeping the event as inexpensive as possible without sacrificing quality or elegance. After cost, important elements in planning a wedding are location, food, flowers, music and a myriad of other things.

Keeping these insights from my Facebook friends in mind, here are nine social media content ideas for a wedding planner:

1. Promote your vendors – Write a blog post explaining who your favorite vendors are and why. Tweet or post Facebook links to their sites. Not only will these links strengthen relationships with your vendors, but they will be very helpful for your customers.
2. Guest posts – Have an expert from another related industry write a guest post. For example, you could invite a jeweler to write a post about different diamond cuts or what the most popular metals are. This will help strengthen relationships with local shops that can refer business to you, plus it provides useful information for people who may need your services soon.
3. Cost reduction advice – Give tips on how to reduce the cost of a wedding without sacrificing too much elegance. These can be short Twitter-like tips or complete blog posts.
4. General tips – Give advice on what colors are best during which seasons. What types of food do most wedding guests like? Are photos always better than videos, or are they both important? Give tips that your readers will value.
5. Finding a sponsor – According to my sister (who is planning her own wedding right now) there exist people or businesses that will sponsor weddings. Give advice on how to procure a sponsor. How-to posts are great; they provide helpful information to people who are searching for answers.
6. Share pictures – Some wedding blogs I looked over do a great job of this. It helps to show genuine examples of successful and beautiful weddings. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are other great ways to share pictures. Ask your Twitter followers to send you their favorite wedding pictures and have your Facebook fans post pictures on your page. Remember, getting people to interact is key.
7. The Honeymoon – Share links to great honeymoon spots.
8. Weddings gone wrong – Ask fans or followers to share stories of weddings they’ve attended where something funny, embarrassing or unusual happened. Share your own experiences.
9. Tell a story – Tell a story from start to finish of a customer who planned a wedding. Get quotes from your customers and put what they say in the story. Make your pages, posts and tweets as human as possible. The more your readers identify with what you post, the more they will return.

Writer's block just destroyed this person's soul.

I tried yesterday to update Blue Helm’s blog but I struggled to come up with something decent or interesting to write about. What’s a poor soul to do when the slippery demon known as Writer’s Block veers his ugly head? You need to update your blog, but you have no idea what to say. If such an unpleasant dilemma occurs, try the following to come with blog ideas:

1. What are leaders in your industry talking about? Read through your RSS feed and the Twitter updates of opinion leaders in your field. Find out what topics are relevant to your business right now.
2. Search for topics in Google News. It’s one of my favorite tools on the web. Just use key words that relate to your business to find out what’s newsworthy in your field of work. Whenever I type ‘social media’ into the Google News search box, thousands of articles appear that I can use and cite for a blog post.
3. What are your customers saying? Do you often hear the same comments, complaints, questions and observations from your clients or customers? Then write about it! My BFF Dave Navarro further explains how you must connect with your audience to forever end the writer’s block disease. 
4. Ask someone for ideas. I just asked Chad for some ideas about what I could write about for this blog, and he recommended #5:
5. Stop thinking about it. If your writer’s block is acting particularly stubborn, leave the office and clear your mind. Go for a drive, take a walk around the block or treat yourself to a boat ride. Your creative juices will be flowing before no time.

What did I miss? Tell me how you cure your writer’s block.

Maybe you think of an impersonal company that doesn’t care about developing relationships with its customers. If you live in the New England area and know of Day’s Jewelers, you’d be wrong. “Jewelers are a misunderstood commodity,” says Jeff Corey, owner and president of Day’s Jewelers. “We’re real people.”

So how does a business that’s been around for nearly a century dispel misconceptions about itself and increase its business in hard economic times?

The answer: social media. Social media has opened new doors for companies like Day’s Jewelers. Jeff maintains that social media “presents us as real people” and gives jewelers an opportunity to “build a community.”

For this Brain Storm post I want to focus on content ideas for a jeweler. If you want additional ideas look at Day’s Jewelers blog, Facebook page, Twitter page and MySpace page. Remember, the main purpose of this series is to get your creative juices flowing by recognizing the many ways social media can positively impact your business.

So if I were the owner of a jewelry store, I might implement the following content ideas:

1. Run a contest: Ask customers to share their wedding proposal stories or the worst story involving a lost engagement ring. You can choose the best stories and give the winners a discount on their next purchase at your store.
2. Ask customers to post pictures: They can post pictures of their favorite ring, of their wedding or a photo of the beautiful piece of jewelry they recently purchased for their significant other.
3. Ask “real people” questions: This is something Day’s Jewelers does really well. They ask questions like What are you doing for the long 4-day weekend? or What fun things did you do this summer? These questions encourage communication with customers. As they respond to your questions, be sure to respond back. They’ll appreciate knowing that you care.
4. Share employee stories: Get your employees to share great experiences they’ve had working with customers. Did one of your employees recently help a young couple pick out the perfect wedding ring? Or perhaps someone has a funny story about helping a repentant guy find the perfect necklace for his offended wife. These stories will help customers see that your employees really do care about their jobs and the people they work with.
5. Write ‘how-to’ articles or posts: How do you properly polish a ring? What do you do when your ring accidentally goes down the drain? ‘How-to’ articles can be really useful for your customers. People love (and share) content that is valuable!
6. Educate with history: Post content that explains the unique history or geology of a certain metal, gem or rock. Maybe you could post a feature about a famous piece of jewelry like the Hope Diamond.
7. Create a video: Post a how-to video. Or make a video tour of your store. Create a ‘getting to know you and your employees’ video. Videos are a good way to show your personality on camera. Customers will be more comfortable coming into your store when they see an interesting video of you and your employees.

So what are your content ideas for a jeweler? Any requests for the next Brain Strom?

Related Posts: The Brain Storm: Ten social media content ideas for an Auto Repair Shop

Photo by: Elisabeth Feldman

Recently social media super stars Chris Brogan and Julien Smith released a new book called Trust Agents. In a relatively short time, the book skyrocketed in sales and became a New York Times Bestseller. But how did a book written by two first-time authors become such a success in such a short period of time?

I’m sure many of you read that question, rolled your eyes, and said to yourselves: “Well, it’s because they have 100,000 people following them on Twitter, tens of thousands of people who read their blogs, over 2500 fans of their Trust Agents Facebook page and they’re connected to people with huge online followings.”

Yes, that all contributed to the book’s success. But we’re leaving out the most important factor: psychology.

The Psychology

The two psychological principles I want to focus on are the Foot-in-the-Door technique and the Law of Consistency. The Foot-in-the-Door technique states that if you initially get someone to commit to something small, they will later commit to something bigger. The Law of Consistency states that people have a strong desire to be consistent in their thoughts and actions, and will go to great lengths to attain or maintain the feeling of consistency. A person’s desire to remain consistent may drive her to commit to something very large, even if she was previously only committed to something very small.

Visit the links below to better understand these laws:

The Foot-in-the-Door technique

The Law of Consistency

How Chris and Julien used the psychology

The first Foot-in-the-Door commitment Chris and Julien used was to get fans connected with them through social media. It’s a very simple commitment to ask someone to follow you on Twitter, to be friends with you on Facebook, to connect with you on LinkedIn or to read your blog.

Chris and Julian then leveraged their social platforms to prepare their connections to commit to buying and promoting their book at some point in the future. In October 2008, Chris wrote a blog post that outlined some strategies they were going to use to promote Trust Agents. One of his points was to “warm people up with blog posts”.

The second Foot-in-the-Door commitment they used was to get their fans to join the Facebook page for their book. These Facebook fans had now committed to at least two requests. As a result, their internal desire to remain consistent (and buy the book) increased.

The third commitment was to buy the book, followed closely by the fourth commitment–to promote the book. As people committed to buying the book, they felt the need to be consistent and respond to Chris and Julien’s requests to promote the book. Chris admits where the success of the book came from: “You pushed. You tweeted. You blogged. You showed people twitpics. You took part in the Trust Agents community. It was all you.”

How you can use the psychology

These simple psychological principles are key to the success of any social media campaign. You have to get people to commit to something smaller in order to get them to commit to something bigger. Here are a few simple steps to help you employ these principles:

1. Network – Connect with people! It will take time to build a large network, but don’t forget that you are preparing a place to commit people to bigger and better things. Start building your network now!
2. Provide great content – People have committed to connecting with you, now reward them for making that commitment. Provide content that your connections want to read. This will prepare your connections for greater commitments in the future.
3. A larger commitment – Commit your connections to something a little bigger. You could get them to join a product page like Chris and Julien did, or you could just get them to make regular comments on your blog, maybe retweet a message or bookmark your post.
4. Ask for the big commitment – Don’t forget to ask. One the main reasons Trust Agents is so successful is because Chris and Julien asked people to buy and promote it. If you don’t ask people for their business or their help, they are much less likely to give it to you.

But what if you’re guilty of being hidden? You’ll never really know, but if you spew out the following types of status updates, you’re probably not being seen by as many of your Facebook friends as you think:

“I’m so tired! I wish I could go back to bed.” Ugh. Status updates like these are pointless and repetitive. This is perhaps the biggest problem with Facebook updates—they’re boring! Before you post a useless statement like this on Facebook, think to yourself: “Would I care about this if I saw it on my news feed?”

“It’s Monday.” Yes, well of course it is. Most of us have access to calendars or brains, so we really don’t need updates like these.

“I miss my smoochy koochy boo so much! Come home baby boo!” Avoid the mushy romance talk on Facebook. No one likes it. Except your boo.

“I’m so hung over from last night. I haven’t been that drunk in a long time.” Now your boss, coworkers, grandparents and former elementary school teachers know you’re a boozer. Congrats.

“I’m having a really bad day. I wish I weren’t so lonely.” It’s fine to use Facebook as a forum to fume about a product, company or difficult situation, but don’t use it as a way to vent about how sad or friendless you are. It makes you look pitiful.

“Why the h*** do those d*** cops give out so many f***** tickets!?!” Profanity turns most people off. It’s best not to use it on Facebook.

Other topics to avoid on Facebook include potentially offensive religious or political rants, information about your sex life, disparaging comments about other friends (or your boss!) and shameless self-promotion (that last one is especially applicable to businesses and fan pages). Oh, and please lay off the quizzes! I don’t care what Muppet Baby you most resemble or what African mammal you would be in another life.

Bottom line: people want variety. They want interesting, genuine, unique and funny status updates. They want motivating or attention-grabbing comments. They want links to hilarious videos or relevant news articles. They want to see what you’re up to, but only if it’s intriguing or inspiring or amusing.

We’re all guilty of posting dumb updates sometimes. But the repeat offenders should beware. I’ve hidden over 50 of my friends over the past few months. Are you one of them? You may never know. Pwahahahaha!

Photo By:Graeme Weatherston

If you follow social media blogs, you read time and time again that content is king. You’ll continually see statements like, “You must provide interesting content your customers will value!” This is all well and good, but how do you come up with content that’s worth publishing? I see so many individuals and businesses that open a Twitter account, start a Facebook Page or publish a blog, but post content that is really dumb, boring or, worst of all, disingenuous.

So what do you do? You own a business or you’re in charge of marketing and you keep hearing that you need to be a part of this huge social media craze, but you just can’t think of anything great to post.

Never fear! Blue Helm is here to help. We decided to create The Brain Storm, a blog series that illustrates ideas and suggestions we hope will enhance the quality of the content on your social media sites. The ideas will be wide-ranging and can be applied to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, Friend Feed, Flicker, YouTube or any other social media account. Each week we’ll come up with a number of content ideas for a new type of business. We’re open to requests and hope you will comment and add your own ideas.

This week I decided to focus on how to enhance social media content for a small auto repair shop. From what I can see, there aren’t very many repair shops in the social media sphere. I found a few, but most were not using their tools very well (I thought Favour Auto Repair in Greensboro, NC ran a pretty good Twitter page @FavourAuto). But for most auto repair shops with a social media presence, it boils down to really bad or limited content.  So without further ado, here are ten social media content ideas for an auto repair shop:

1. Give repair and car care tips. You can tweet or post updates about what to do when your car overheats or when your clutch feels too tight or too loose. What benefits are there to using a higher octane gas? How often should I get my fluids checked? You get the idea.
2. Post special deals on Twitter or Facebook. You could offer a discount for an oil change or tire rotation. Running specials will increase your followers and get more people in your store.
3. Refer your followers to businesses that do things you don’t. Maybe your repair shop doesn’t do body work, but you know of a really good shop down the street that does. Sharing information like this shows your customers that you care. Not only are you developing a better relationship with your customers, but the other shop will appreciate the business you’re sending them and they may even reciprocate.
4. Provide testimonials from customers. There’s no better way to prove your company is the best than through a satisfied customer.
5. Post pictures. Update photos of your employees, the work space, the newly-decorated waiting area, customers using your WiFi, etc. These pictures will not only show the human element in your shop, but what is available at your shop.
6. Run contests to invoke more participation from fans. Some ideas for contests include:
   1. Who has the best before-and-after pictures of a car they fixed up?
   2. Who has the craziest ‘my car broke down’ story?
   3. Who owns the prettiest/ugliest car out there?
7. Try a giveaway. You could give something free to the first person who comes into your shop with the answer to a trivia question you asked on one of your networks.
8. Comment on current events. Post your perspective on things happening to car companies in the bad economy (just make sure to keep your posts politically neutral and without controversy).
9. Generate discussion, particularly on your Facebook Page. You could have employees write about their favorite type of car or why they got into the car repair industry. Ask your customers and fans to include their opinions.
10. Run a “Hottest Car” tournament. Every week you could compare two cars and have your fans vote for which one they think is cooler. Put the winner against a new car the next week.

Do you have any additional content ideas for an auto repair shop? How about requests for future posts? Let me know!