Category Archives: Social Media

The End of The “Social Media For $99” Scam

As the doomsday posts from experts calling the newest Facebook algorithm changes the “end of Social Media” echo through our Social Media channels, I realized that this change might just bring a long-awaited and needed change to the marketing world:
The end of the “Social Media for $99/month” package.

Since I started offering outsourced Social Media management services I always have had to explain why I did not want to compete with low-cost providers or even those that offered Social Media services as a free add-on to their main service.

All Social Media networks are introducing algorithms that favour real person to person content over generic “drop and run” posts. Even before the recent announcement of Facebook’s change in direction (I wrote about this in my article Keep Calm And Facebook On!) pages that posted boring content that only talked about themselves and disregarded the needs and interests of their audience became ineffective. The reach of these posts can only be achieved by paying more and more to “boost.”

To Survive In The Business Of The Future We Have To Serve Better

I am in the process of putting together my offers and recommendations for holidays sales. I had three customer service experiences yesterday that made me reflect on the reasons why I recommend one tool or service over another. Very often there are many services to choose from that do the same thing. Sometimes but not […]

10 Obstacles to Your Social Media Success

My name is Frithjof Petscheleit, and I coach small business owners on how to be successful with their social media and content marketing. In this episode, I want to talk about some of the objections new clients often have that hold them back from building a working social media presence.

I realized that a lot of my clients are struggling because their blog, Facebook page, Instagram account….. wasn’t showing the amazing success they thought they should. So they wanted to give up.

What we learn from this is important. Many of us give up before even trying. I often hear objections like “I don’t have time” “I’m really a very private person,” “I’m not technical,” “I’m overwhelmed,” “My customers are not on social media”……

In this podcast, I want to talk to you about these objections.

I invite you to listen and let me know what you think.

A Fantastic New Video Tool To Easily Promote Your Content [BlueBird Podcast]

My special Guest today is Michael Cheng, co-founder of Lumen5

Lumen5 is a brand new tool that creates short videos from any link. It uses artificial intelligence to analyze the text content and matches it up with images and video clips from royalty free sites to provide a draft slideshow video with text overlays that you can edit or publish directly.
In the interview, Michael and I talk about what prompted the 5 people behind the tool to create it, what it does and what the next features might be. We talk about the fact that Lumen5 is free right now and Michael is very convincing when he says that there will always be a free version.

At the end, we discuss the very interesting principle that customer support is an important part of product development. Michael Cheng strongly believes that customer support should not be outsourced and sees it as a core responsibility of the development team. In my experience with Lumen5 this has proven to be true in the speed and efficiency of the support I received.

I invite you to listen to the podcast and tell me what you think in the comments or by email: [email protected] .

How To Avoid Spreading Fake News Like A Pro

“Fake News” will certainly be a hot contender for “Word of The Year 2017”. But don’t worry, despite the fact that the term “Fake News” is a favourite expression of the 45th president of the United States this is not a post about politics.
With this article I want to:
– Point out why this topic is important for all content creators and Social Media users
– Show a few tell-tale signs of unreliable information
– Report what does Facebook do to fight fake news?
– Introduce sites that help to quickly check the truthfulness of a post we see
– Share what I learned from a professional journalist about how to make sure you get the full story

Social Media Adoption, Challenges for Organizations

When English is your second language and you are writing a blog with an international audience based in Canada, do you spell it “Organization” or “Organisation”? I checked several resources and discovered that “partly as a result of our historical links with Britain and our proximity to the United States, Canadian spelling has tended to […]

How Fake Facebook Likes Damage Your Brand

Recently I was shopping around for legal services. This time I didn’t want to ask my friends for recommendations so I did a local google search and found some interesting providers close by. I found basic information on the website but wanted to learn more about the humans behind the brand so I clicked on the link to the Facebook page.

What I found was a boring page with a few motivational quotes, a couple of posts per week and almost no engagement. This is typical for a business that hire low cost social media management provider.

But then I saw how many likes this page has:

Shut up For 2 Minutes – A Pittance Of Time

I first published this post in November 2013 and I will republish it today because it is still close to me. Remembrance day 2014 will be special for Canadians because the news of Cpl Nathan Cirillo, who was shot while guarding the war memorial in Ottawa, is still fresh. A stark reminder that we can […]

Introducing Leaf – Social Media Analytics at Our Finger Tips

I had the pleasure to speak to Marko Pavlovic of Anctu who told me of the new social media analytics tool he and his co-founder Alexander Abulelas released into beta recently.  Leaf is a Chrome extension that places a little icon right into Twitter profiles. If you click on the leaf you get a surprising amount […]