A few years ago when I Tweeted my first tweet and updated my Facebook status for the first time I was overwhelmed by the whole social media craze! There was just so much to learn and do and I thought I’d never get to it all. As a business person, I’d heard that social media is a great way to market my products and services but I could hardly keep up with all the different platforms, friends lists, followers, and whatnot. I was spending literally hours a day trying to interact and getting no where fast. I simply could not keep up with all those tweets and status updates that the guru’s said were required to get myself noticed on the web.
Then I found SocialOomph. Actually back then it was called Tweetlater and it did exactly what the name said. It allowed me to schedule tweets for a later time so I didn’t have to sit in front of the computer all day long. For me this was nothing short of AMAZING! I immediately opened a free account with them, then every Sunday I’d set up a list of “scheduled tweets” that would go out throughout the week.
If you don’t see the power of this, imagine being able to send out a tip every Monday morning? Or schedule a time sensitive update for 2pm on Tuesday (when you’re right in the middle of a meeting). See how it can be a great time saver?
I still logged in every day to keep up with the conversations but my hours of daily “tweet time” were reduced to less than an hour (with an extra hour or so on Sunday for setting up the week). That alone is soooo worth it!
As if this wasn’t good enough, soon I found out that Tweetlater had a service that AUTOMOTICALLY follows everyone on Twitter that follows me. How cool is that! If you’re using Twitter for business you know that it’s important to grow your number of followers. And you also know that it’s good social networking etiquette to follow back people who follow you. But the Twitter interface is a bit cumbersome to use, and again I found myself spending hours a week trying to make sure I was following everyone who followed me (didn’t want anyone to feel left out). So SocialOomph’s auto follow feature really made things easy for me, and freed up another chunk of time to do other things.
So far it sounds like a pretty cool service huh? And seriously…. If you’re doing any type of marketing on the internet you need to use SocialOomph.
GOING PRO
So I was using this service for a while and then Tweetlater changed their name to SocialOomph and added a bunch of additional services to their arsenal. One catch though…. You had to sign for a Pro account to use those services and that cost money. At the time I was on a tight budget and I didn’t see the value of the extra services so I passed. Then one of my mentors (who is a way better internet marketer than me) said “Maria, what are you doing? You have GOT to go pro with this SocialOomph thing!” So I decided to try it and signed up for the free trial.
Omg! The difference is amazing! Now I can post not only to Twitter but also Facebook, and many other places I couldn’t post to before. In fact I am now posting to about 50 different social networks…. All from the SocialOomph interface.
And there’s another really cool feature that SocialOomph Pro has that makes it invaluable. You can schedule RECURRING updates. Which means I can schedule a list of updates to be sent out at specified intervals over time. Now I can automatically remember your birthday, remind you to check for updates at a certain time each month, and send out an occasional link to my website to remind you I'm here, and share tips, quotes and cool stuff on a recurring schedule.
The implications of this are amazing and far reaching! Just a couple days after I started using the Pro account I noticed an increase in my traffic, and just a few weeks into it my sales began to skyrocket! So to me it’s definitely worth the few bucks I spend on it.
Sound interesting? Set up your own SocialOomph account today, then read my article “Setting Up Your SocialOomph Account” to get you started. You can take the free route at first if you’re not sure, but at some point you’re going to want to at least try the Pro (they have a 7 day free trial period).
Weather you have a brick and mortar business or are totally online, social marketing CAN help your business grow. But to do it right you have to play smart, and use tools that make the best use of your time and resources. SocialOomph is one such tool which is why I highly recommend it.
