Social Media #TipsWithTyra

An award-winning professor, Tyra Burton has been working with social media for more than 10 years — before it was the hip new thing everyone wanted to be on and before Facebook, Twitter and every other social platform, it seems, started offering ads to cater to an increasing number of businesses.

With a solid background in marketing and her ear to the ground when it comes to social media, Tyra is able to not only explain the ins and outs of each social channel; she also has a few tricks up her sleeve. And she’ll share them with you during her next Social Media Marketing class.

Meanwhile, here is some insider’s advice from Tyra on what to know when it comes to social media:

Keep it visual.
Photos are good. Photos featuring your fans are even better. And infographics, videos, slideshows and collages? They’re social media gold. But where do you find the tools you can use to make your content more visual?

Tyra recommends ReciteThis.com to transform quotes into “pinnable” or Instagram-worthy graphics and Morguefile.com to find the perfect stock image. She has a dozen or so other apps and sites she’ll share with you in class, most of them free or very low cost.

Know it’s not about you.
Wait, but your social media page is about you. It’s about your brand or maybe it’s about your home business or your personal project, right? Well, not exactly, says Tyra. Social media gives power to the people — literally. They can leave reviews, talk about your brand, or worse, ignore your page entirely. If you want positive feedback and lots of interaction on your social media sites, you need to make it about them.

Tweet practical information that helps your followers work smarter. Share a Facebook photo that makes them laugh. Post a YouTube video that shows them how to do something they’ve always wondered about. To be successful, you need to deliver content that makes their lives better and, in some way, is connected to your brand, product category or your target market’s needs. That builds trust: the first step in online brand loyalty.

Don’t ignore the details.
There’s a lot more that goes into managing a social media page than posting cute cat videos.

If you work with other people at your company, it’s important to make sure everyone’s on the same page by developing some social media guidelines. When you create content, you need to make sure there’s no copyright keeping you from sharing it. (No, those great photos on Google aren’t free for the taking.) After you have been posting content for a while, you’ll want to know if it’s working, and that’s where analytics come in.

If all this sounds like a lot, don’t worry. Tyra goes through everything thoroughly, pacing the class based on the needs of the students. For more about what the class will cover, check out her Prezi presentation.

You can also follow the conversation on Twitter. Use #TipsWithTyra to ask questions, share social media news and more.