Blake Mallen

Everywhere I travel these days, its seems people really gravitate to my tips on using Social Media to promote themselves, their products, or their business ideas. 

I find myself teaching the same basic principles over and over again on how to first establish your brand online, then strategically build a LARGE relevant list. To me everything else is a giant waste of time until you get these first two things right.  Once you have done that, you can then move onto the more fun aspects of posting, socializing, and engaging your list.

I will be recording some webinars at some point to cover all of this (so I can save my voice! haha), but here are some quick tips that you may find useful.

Engaging people online is done through your messaging.  In today’s “Attention Age” where multi tasking and ADD seem to be the status quo, good messaging must be two things: 

1. Simple

2. Intriguing

I used to spend a lot of time teaching people what kinds of posts generate the most interest and results, however to help those just getting started, I now recommend a much simpler approach involving extensive R&D… and by that I mean the more entrepreneurial definition of R&D - “Rip Off & Duplicate!”  LOL 

It’s kind of like Social Media Training Wheels!

Or just like learning how to play a new musical instrument, first you learn by playing the music of others, and after a while you start composing your own!  The simplest way to do this on Facebook & Twitter is to become friends/follow those you  look up to, or have a similar messages or brands that you want to create for yourself.  Then simply create a Facebook Friend/ Twitter List of these people so that you can easily monitor what they are posting.   Feel free to share, or retweet anything you like, and it won’t be long before you get the hang of what works online and start posting your own unique ideas & media.  In general, the more personal and social the post,  the better.  Content that offers real value is good, and humor is always appreciated. And above all, frequency and consistency are critical!

I am compiled the list below of popular Authors/Speakers from the business/marketing/leadership world.

I recommend selecting a few that your desired brand can personally identify with and adding them as FB friends, and following them on Twitter.  Note that not all of them are up to speed on Social Media yet, but most shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Have of course, if you are promoting the Body by Vi Challenge, or building a Home Based Business, I highly recommend adding/following:

Ryan Blair   (@ryan_blair)

Nick Sarnicola (@nick_sarnicola

oh, and of course,  Blake Mallen (@blakemallen)

Hope this list helps, and please comment if you have some other recommendations of people who post create stuff!

Happy Posting,

Blake