Get control of your social media self with blogs

Marketing 2.0, what do you mean?

There are no social media experts. There are people who adopt and practice social media.  These people know that constant change surrounds what and how they engage.

Social media is not about technology.  The technology to hyperlink and to subscribe to content enabled a mirror for social interactions as old as our cave bear clans.

In social media you get back what you give out.  Getting control of your social media self with blogs starts with watching, listening, and practicing.

Control Your Shift

I go back to 2008 training I did, How to launch and manage your social media identity, the same issues remain, very much, the same.  Seems there is a frozen mental model, for these people and a voice track that plays in their mind, something like this:

Marketing 2.0 blew up Marketing 1.0, how do 2.0 concepts support the marketing [that is the Marketing 1.0, 20th century, way of doing things] that I use and abuse?

Marketing 2.0 simply does not compute.  I do not want to learn.  It seems so hard.  I will continue to do the same thing.

Mental models of marketing 1.0, or outbound marketing, continue to present a tough nut to crack:

“My hang ups are too important to me to let go.”

Translation:

“Clearly you don’t know who I am?”

Ah, the psychology of sociology presents a never-ending psychosis.

Blog to Learn, Learn to Blog

The most effective, adult, learning is doing.  Professional learning lasts when relevant, as 70% of retained learning from doing, on-the-job, with others.

Without a safe place to learn new skills in context of your work, there is little full return your social media investment.  Communities are critical to this.

Social media has been very much worth my investment as I stumble along learning.

Some people are comfortable to dive right in to learn along the way.  These folks are open, generous, and humble to their mistakes and their adoption.

People tend to have a preferred mode of learning:

• Kinesthetic, learn best when doing,
• Auditory, learn best when listening, and
• Observing, learn best when watching

Those who learn by seeing or watching further separate into two preference:

• Preference for information displayed as words or read/write mode and
• Preference for information depicted in graphics or visual mode

In prior post, Get control of your social media self with infographics, provides a great set of sources for visual learners.  Where this highlights resources for those who prefer word-based learning as a list of blogs and sources:

1. 7 Readability Tips for Designing Engaging Content
2. 17 Essential Content Marketing Templates and Checklists
3.  A checklist of 10 best practices for creating infographics for marketing
4. Tips to create an effective email template… from header to footer
5. In-depth Guide To Content Creation
6. Creating Valuable Content: An Essential Checklist
7. 5-Step Content Marketing Checklist
8. Should I Gate This Content? [Flowchart]
9. HubSpot marketing-specific blogs
10. HubSpot sale-specific blogs

Takeaway blog tips:

1. Read all blogs once, for content, then again for construction.
2. Analyze the blog for the title, the writing, the story flow, the links, and the conversion path
3. Think of how bloggers support their topics with images, infographics, and checklists
4. Read comments to see how people resonate or offer alternatives for further explanation
5. Look at blog rolls and find who influences that blogger, see my blogroll here

Again, I recommend you assemble a custom, learning kit, with items that work for you.

Bookmark items you like.

Subscribe to the people who inspire you.

And most important:  Be curious.

If you have any other recommendations that the above, please provide them in the comments for me and others.  There is a lot of great stuff out there and this is, by no means, a complete list.

Next:  blogs that support the infographics and checklists, for those who like to read their recommendations to create content, now.