Tweets, Facebooking, Insta-you-know, Linking-In, Googling, YouTubing and Blogging can be both fun and profitable—if you know what you’re doing. Fortunately, I do!
Is there money to be made writing content on social media outlets/channels/networks?
Well…that depends.
If you’re a company looking to market your products and services on say Facebook, then you have to do two things:
- Consider your audience
- Write effectively for them
It’s not as easy as you think.
Another term for Social Media Marketing is Inbound Marketing.
Wikipedia states Inbound Marketing as:
Inbound marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and branding.
Companies like HubSpot try to capitalize on this form of marketing as part of their service offering.
Marketing Automation Software (MAS) such as Marketo and Pardot have huge Inbound Marketing features and optimized components built in to them.
There are a lot of limitations when using social media networks to promote your wares.
Typically, I’ll write up short posts that always include the following: SEO-driven copy, meta-data, social media profiles, external live links, hashtags, images/embedded media, and tagging (such as: people, locations, and events).
All of the following samples are also examples of Inbound Marketing in one form or another.
Social Media Posts
Social media posts are limited by whatever platform you are working on. For example Twitter only allows 140 characters, called micro-blogging. Out of that 140 you have to put in most or all of the above elements for a successful posts. And that can be a real challenge.
Facebook on the other hand allows you an unlimited amount of characters to work with but who wants to read pages of content in one post!
And, Facebook has lots of restrictions on what you can post. For example (and rightly so): no hate-speech, no doxing, no nudity, and over-the-top inappropriate content such as graphic violence.
Now you wouldn’t use any of that in your marketing collateral on Facebook but still you have to be careful because someone out there may get offended by something you post and will report you, causing you to either get blocked or have to take down the post. Costing you time and money.
That’s where I come in. Through my experience, I can navigate such social waters and keep the marketing messaging moving forward.
Twitter & Facebook
While working at Dedham Television and Media Engagement Center, one of my roles was Director of Social Media. In fact, that was the first role there that I was hired on for before becoming their Senior Marketing and Communications Manager.
The first thing I had my Executive Director, Donna Greer, do for me was get me a new iPhone 5S (the best at the time). This was so that I could use it exclusively for social media posting. And boy did I post and post and post.
In fact, at one event when we were at a restaurant on a special program during dinner one of my colleagues told me to, “…stop Tweeting and start eating!”
I’ll link that very blog post below.
Anyway, here is a page from a 54-page proposal I wrote for the DTV Board of Directors to campaign to become their new Director of New Media Productions. It would have been Program Manager but that role was removed from the organization due to legal issues.
Though I didn’t get that role, I did become the aforementioned Senior Marketing and Communications Manager and was just fine.
The page here features a slew of Tweets and FB posts I did for DTV during various programs and events—note the use of hashtags and other embedded media in the posts.
Below is another example of a Twitter post from my time with Dedham TV. This one contains embedded media.
Click here to view the actual Tweet (and embedded video) on Twitter.
There’s a ton of Tweets by me during this time up to about December 2016 (when I left Dedham Television). Since then, most of the Tweets have been auto-posts from Vimeo as new program and show videos were uploaded to the video streaming platform.
I have a ton of Facebook posts from this era as well but I’m going to simply showcase my Nick Iandolo business page here.
Follow these links to take you to:
Also, you can click on the appropriate social media icons in the website’s footer to take you my network channels anytime while visiting my portfolio.
But I have to admit that the latter two (Google+ and Instagram) have fallen by the wayside for me. I don’t feel there’s too much value in maintaining those profiles too closely. Of course, if your business requires that, then I’m on it religiously!
Blogging
Now as far as blogs are concerned, I’ve been on a lot of those!
I have been blogging before the term was even coined.
Back in the early days of The Internet, we used to call them Discussion Forums. And I’ve posted tons of content, everything from Classical Guitar practice tips, Babylon 5 rants, political debates, movie reviews, writing seminars, and health & fitness talks.
Over the years, these discussions forums turned in to blogging, which turned into some paying gigs.
Recently, there was Make Tech Easier. I was a staff writer for their consumer electronic and Internet technologies articles (in the form of highly sophisticated blog posts).
Before that there was Beantown Socialite, where I wrote travelogues to places such as Quebec City and Siena Italy.
And in-between the two there was Motif Magazine, whose webzine was all blog! I wrote a number of lengthy articles that appeared there, everything from Rhode Island Comic Con coverage to documentary reviews and more!
All paying gigs!
I am no stranger to blogging. And you can see lots of samples from each of those blogs on my Journalism page, my Technical Writing page, and my Websites page (particularly the post about the Old Havana Restaurant excursion with Dedham Television where the above social media examples come from).
The following examples however are not published pieces per se but serve as examples of blogging on spec to prove to prospective employers that I have the chops to blog for them regardless of their industry. These cover a different aspect of the “Blog-o-sphere.”
Informational/Content-Driven Blogging
The first example (to the left) was a writing assignment on Ransomware that I was charged with by Kaspersky Lab. This was in regards to a copywriting job at the company. This is an example of the Informational/Content-Driven type of blogging that companies use to both promote their products (through Informational or topic-centric writing) and drive traffic to their sites by constantly uploading newer and newer content.
In order get an interview with their marketing director, I needed to do two things: 1. copyedit and revise a press release (please see my Copywriting page for this sample), 2. write a blog post on Ransomware.
To make a long story short, after I did both those tasks and submitted them, I immediately got the job interview!
As you can see from the PDF reproduction, not only does this blog post cover the topic or Ransomware but it also contains images, links, sources cited, SEO/keywords, and RSS meta-data.
You will find that all of the fully completed pages in this entire portfolio will feature the same.
Content Marketing
The next blog post example was written for NutriSavings while I was working on case studies for them—see my Marketing Communications page for the NutriSavings case study on Weight Management.
In this blog post example, I wrote it in the form of Content Marketing. For those who don’t know what Content Marketing is, here is the definition from the Content Marketing Institute:
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
And that is exactly what I did when I wrote this piece to the left. Though it was not published (the writing job was a quick turnaround), I still believe it is a great example of Content Marketing blog writing, with all the SEO and meta-data components as well. The only thing missing here are images—that I was expecting NutriSavings’ Marketing Department to provide.
Journalistic Coverage
The final blog-type example is Journalistic Coverage. This is simply blogging about an event, a person (such as an interview), or a place (such as a travelogue). I have examples of these in other parts of the portfolio but I wanted to show the PTC Journey’s of Transformation from the LiveWorx 2016 Conference blog post example here once again.
You can read the entire story behind this piece on my Technical Writing page.
The only other thing I additionally want to make note of here, is that this draft version was written in Microsoft Word but made to look like an actual blog post written in HTML on a CMS like WordPress. When working for a client that’s exactly how I create my blog posts for them. I either write in HTML (adding all the styling, links, images, SEO, and meta-data) so they can drop it directly into their CMS, or if they give me access to their WordPress (or other CMS), then I create it right in there (proving all of the aforementioned attributes).
I never got that far with PTC but the VP of Corporate Communications, Jack McAvoy, thought it was good enough to warrant a phone screen with him!
Community Service
I always love it when I can use technology for the betterment of my fellow humans. So when I was asked to do social media coverage for the 2014 Holiday Harvest Telethon on Dedham Television to benefit the Dedham Food Pantry, I was honored!
For three amazing hours, I did triple duty as the Director of Social Media (Tweeting and Facebooking coverage of the telethon), stage manager (helping to get the talent on and off the stage and preparing for the next segment, and as one of the camera operators.
It was an exciting holiday event that not only pleasantly exhausted me but also made me feel great that we ultimately raised over $12,000 (after all the final corporate donations came in a couple of weeks after) to help feed the hungry in Dedham!
My social media coverage reached viewers as far away as Maine and California!
Below are screenshots of a couple of the Tweets that I posted that evening:
Here is a link to the actual live post on Twitter.
Here is a link to the actual live post on Twitter.
And, as an unexpected bonus, I was given a Media Community Service Award from the local New Media Arts Council for my social media coverage of the event!
To the left is a digital copy of the award itself.
Note: The New Media Arts Council disbanded in 2016.