The Art of Becoming a Social Media Superstar

Have you ever wondered what it takes to create a significant social media presence?A presence so powerful that it commands attention?If so, then you'll love my recent interview with Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick. Guy and Peg are the authors of the book, "The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users" and two of my favorite social media power users.I was fortunate to be the first person to get a sneak peek at their new book a few months ago and thrilled to take part in the kickoff celebration.

In this interview, you'll learn:

• Why you need to build a powerful social media foundation
• How to gain marketshare, no matter the size of your business
• Steps to quickly (and effectively) optimize your social media profiles
• How to build a following and attract a loyal following
• Why you must create an integrated social media and blogging strategy

If you've struggled to grow your online presence, then you won't want to miss this conversation! Guy and Peg are real, unplugged and totally candid in how they've amassed over 10 million followers combined. That's quite the feat!Read an excerpt below and then watch the replay to learn how you can master the art of social media!

Become a Social Media Superstar

Rebekah: What is your best piece of advice for a small business owner struggling to find the time for social media?

Guy: The first thing I would like to tell this small business owner is, I don't think you should look at social media as something else you're doing because, I assume that every small business has to do marketing rather than saying you're going to do marketing plus social media, just combine the two that social media is marketing. Would you say if you're a small business, you're too busy to do marketing? Never.I like to use this example: the street food vendor in LA who has 75,000 followers on Twitter and he tweets out that his street food truck is going to be at this corner of two streets and he appears there and there are 100 people waiting to buy tacos. That's a small business using social media. It doesn't take hours and hours and days and days and digital agencies helping you. It’s that simple.Rebekah: What I hear you saying is truly a mindset shift, it's really how you look at social media.Guy: I would say that social media is democratizing marketing because marketing used to be reserved for people who have creative expertise and had the money to buy space, time whatever. This street food vendor in Los Angeles he's not going to advertise in the LA Times, he's not going to advertise on the LA TV stations, LA radio stations.To a large degree, if it was prior to social media, he had a truck and the best case is he blows his horn when he gets to a place and hopes people come out of a building, so he had no marketing. Social media has empowered him to do marketing that he could have never done before because social media is fast, free and ubiquitous. It's the holy grail of marketing.

Rebekah: How can a business eager to expand their presence through social media gain market share?

Guy: My theory for most people is that you should establish a reputation and position yourself as an expert in your field, Let's take a hypothetical case of a real estate broker. Ultimately, real estate brokers want listings and they want to sell houses. The question is: how are you perceived?

To become valuable, you need to create and re-create content that your target market needs.

I would offer high-value articles and establish a reputation for being an expert, so that when the time comes, you will be top of mind.Rebekah: Just to go a little bit deeper, what if this person were to say to you -- that's great in theory. However, they’re currently creating valuable content, but nobody is finding or interacting with them. This can be especially true on a local level. So, what’s the answer? How do you “get found?”Guy: I think the first thing I would do is search for other people in the business in the geographic area and start commenting on their posts and interacting with their posts to get into the flow of things.Peg: I would definitely say hashtags. You could come up with a hashtag strategy that is going to connect you with people that want to connect locally. You want to geo-tag things, you want to use hashtags for your local area, so people can find you.

Rebekah: We talk a lot about businesses trying to be everything to everybody or everywhere at all times. Do businesses need to have a presence everywhere and on every social network?

Peg: Pick your favorite two and if you haven't done any at all pick one and really excel at that before you go on to anything else. Once you master one, add another one.Pick a social network that is relevant to what your product or service is and then find another one that works with it. It really has to do with your type of business and where your market is spending their time.

There is no one-size-fits-all for any social media, so it's really what you can fit in your schedule and what works best with what your goals are.

Rebekah: You’re both big proponents of getting as much mileage as you can out of one piece of content. How should businesses maximize how they’re sharing content?

Guy: People have a misconception about sharing content. For example, if you write a post, the misconception is that you only post it to your social networks once. The hardest thing is writing the post, once you have written the post, send it out multiple times and to multiple places.Peg: Find ways to cross introduce your content across various social networks. This will allow people to follow you where they are most comfortable while opening you up to a whoe new audience.LinkedIn and Slideshare are a perfect example of great integration where everything you do on Slideshare can integrate on LinkedIn. They are making it very easy for you to share your content across both platforms, so why not take advantage of that?

Watch the Full Replay

No matter if you’re promoting a business, a product, or yourself, knowing how to successfully leverage social media is key to your success.If you've struggled to truly harness the power of social media, this interview will give you a roadmap to an integrated strategy that gets you noticed.And don't forget to grab a copy of the book!