Tricia Meyer

Affiliate Marketer, Blogger, and Consultant

Sharing Content on 10 Sites Without Going Crazy (Shareist Review)

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When people ask how many blogs I have, I never remember. It really doesn’t matter to me. Some sites sit untouched 90% of the time and generate a tiny bit of passive income. Some sites gets touched every day, sometimes every other hour. The more important question people ask is how I manage to generate and share so much content across so many different sites. I’m going to show you a little glimpse of how I use Shareist to keep some of it under control.

Curating Content for Posts

When I first learned about Shareist, I basically saw it as a way to curate posts for my Hunger Games fan site. Given how much is written on OTHER sites about Hunger Games, I knew I couldn’t compete and I might as well let that other content work to my advantage. So I only used Shareist to help me keep track of what other sites were writing and periodically pop them all into a “weekly news” compilation post like this.

That was great. I used Google Alerts to tell me what stories to include and the Shareist bookmarklet to compile them. Exported to HMTL and created a quick blog post including links and images. I did that for probably a year.

Using Shareist for Actual Sharing

After attending a webinar with Ashley Coombe, Head of Marketing for Shareist, I decided that I needed to do more with it. First I added some RSS feeds and search terms for Shareist to watch for me to find Hunger Games news. On August 27, I started using Shareist to schedule Tweets and Facebook posts of that content. I set it up so that I would have 2 Tweets a day and 2 Facebook messages.

I combined the content from the RSS feeds with my own blog post links as well as some Hunger Games images and memes that I found using the built-in Bing image search.

You can see from the chart below what my Facebook Post Reach was before and after I started using Shareist on August 27. It’s not even a comparison. Yes, I am putting in more time than I was before, but not more than an hour or so per week. I dropped down from 2 Facebook posts a day to 1 but sometimes throw in an extra if it is a big news day.

So more people are seeing my posts, but are they actually interacting with them? The next chart shows Likes, Comments, and Shares. Before I started using Shareist when I was only posting my own blog posts and not supplementing with other curated content, I had virtually no social activity. Now I can usually count on hundreds per day.

Great…so I have more people reading and interacting with my posts. But am I actually getting anything out of it?

According to Google Analytics, here is what my traffic from social looks like. Although the extent to which I was sharing my own posts in addition to the curated content varied from week to week, you can see that the potential for getting traffic to my own site greatly increased.

Using Shareist In Other Ways

Now that I have gotten the hang of Shareist, I am finding that I am using it in so many more ways. The Performance Marketing Association uses it collaboratively so that everyone on the Board can add content to our social channels and newsletters. I’ve started using it on my Wine Club Group and new Beer Club Reviews sites to add relevant news and memes to our social media.

I’ve also used it to help me create memes for my other sites. Using a simple image search and their text functionality, I made this image that became popular fast on my Helping Moms Connect Facebook page:

I think one of the ways that I am benefiting most is that Shareist encourages consistency. By setting up my calendar with daily “spots” to share things in, I find myself queuing things up in advance so that I have consistent posting on my social media accounts. When I run out of queue, Shareist notifies me that I need to get back in there and add more. And we have all heard that consistency is one of the biggest keys to keeping an engaged audience.

What’s Next with Shareist?

I have a feeling that even though I am using so much of the Shareist functionality already, there is still more that I could be using. I’m not currently using it to generate whole blog posts or newsletters but probably should be. I don’t use any of the built-in product capabilities from Prosperent or Amazon. And Scott is adding more and more to it with every passing week!

Are you using Shareist? Show me some examples of how you are using it. If you aren’t, you should definitely check it out for free and then decide how it might fit into your business.

What To Do if You Accidentally Tweet Porn

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(Editor Note: When you are friends with people who work in social media, you can’t help but have a lot of chatter when companies do something outrageous. The following is a collaborative guest post that came out of a conversation between such people today. Credits go to Ashley Coombe, Kim Rowley, and Daniel Feinberg for pulling it all together using Shareist.)

It’s not often that use hear anyone use the words “accidental” and “porn” in the same sentence, but today at US Airways, those two words are echoing through the halls.

Don’t worry US Airways, we’ve got your back.

We know it was just an accident. You’ve already got some of these steps taken care of, but we’re providing a guide for businesses that may accidentally follow in your footsteps:

Just in case you live in a cave, here is a recap of exactly what happened with US Airways:

(NSFW!)

US Airways Just Tweeted Out One Of The Most Graphic Things You’ve Ever Seen A Brand Tweet
YIKES. This is very NSFW and US Airways is looking into what happened exactly.

Our Suggestions:

1. Immediately post an apology with the word “Deeply” included. US Airways took care of this immediately. They deeply regretted the issue. Other options: You are deeply sorry. The staffer is deeply embarrassed. The airplane was deeply embedded….

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2. Declare that someone was FIRED! Even if you don’t fire anyone, everyone expects someone to get fired.

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3. Claim you were hacked. It probably had something to do with that Heartbleed thing. [Read more…]

Affiliates Take Note: New FTC Disclosure Guidelines

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(Updated 6/29/23) In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) first updated its guidance for advertising disclosures in a guide called .com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising. The original guidance from 2000 left open many holes including advertising on mobile devices and places like Twitter and Facebook. Since then, the FTC has clarified much of what it originally wrote. The most recent update was June 29, 2023.

This is a short summary of the Guidelines but for a full understanding, keep reading for the various updates listed below over time. As affiliates, we have already been advised that disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous.” The new documents go even further. In fact, it specifically states that disclosure at the end of blogs posts is not acceptable. Here are some of the highlights from the guidelines:

  • Affiliates and Influencers (“endorsers”) must disclose any “material connections with an advertiser.” This includes commissions, free products, placement fees, etc.
  • Disclosures must be “clear and “conspicuous” and “unavoidable.” This includes being placed at the top of any blog posts and not hidden on a privacy or disclosure page. The customer must not have to click to read the disclosure. Pop-up disclosures should not be used.
  • Using hashtags for disclosure is okay but MANY are not adequate including “affiliate link.”
  • Disclosures on social media follow the same rules and cannot be buried.
  • Disclosure effectiveness will be evaluated based on the target audience of the endorsements (e.g. children or elderly).
  • Affiliates, influencers, agencies, and advertisers can all be found liable when disclosures are not done properly.
  • Advertisers and agencies are responsible for instructing endorsers as well as monitoring and correcting compliance.
    [Read more…]

5 Ways Twitter Helps My Business

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I’ve read many posts about whether social media can really help your business. The obvious advantage is networking. However, I’ve seen 5 ways that Twitter has specifically helped my business when it comes to “Right Place, Right Time” beyond just the general socializing most people do on it.

1. Getting instant help. A great example of this was when I was working on a new site recently and couldn’t figure out how to customize my navigation. I Tweeted what I was looking for and Amanda (@phillian) immediately responded that I needed to upgrade my Thesis. Problem solved in 10 minutes.

2. Quick feedback. When you are working on a project, sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes to take a look. Or even someone with a different browser than you are using. Two weeks ago I Tweeted about my new Percy Jackson site and within 10 minutes had feedback from 5 friends who happened to be online on a Saturday night. I was able to tweak some things on the site before officially rolling it out.

3. Unexpected mutually beneficial relationships. The other day I Tweeted about a guest post someone had done for me about Mystery Shopping. James from JustFreeStuff.com asked if he could use it in a newsletter. I said “sure” and didn’t expect anything back. The next morning I woke up and found over 1000 hits to my site from his site and newsletter! It worked out great for both of us because he got some content and I got some traffic. We weren’t looking to do business with each, it just worked out that way.

4. News you can market. I follow a number of people for very different reasons, but sometimes I end up with a marketing nugget I wasn’t expecting. For example, I follow @GameHouse because I promote their old “Real Arcade” products on my moms site. They other day they Tweeted about a Twilight New Moon game on sale that day only for $1 on iTunes. It made a perfect post for my Twilight merchandise website using my iTunes affiliate account. I would not have even known about the game (or the sale that day) if I had not been following them on Twitter.

5. Sales opportunities. At least once a week I see a Tweet where someone is looking to buy something that I sell on one of my sites. They usually say something like “If you have an affiliate link for X merchant, let me know so I can make a purchase” or “I’m looking to buy X, anyone know where I can find it?” If you’re the first to respond to them, you’ve got yourself an easy sale.

The one thing to note about everything above is that none of it is “in your face” marketing. It’s not me pushing my links or websites to anyone. Rather, they are just some of the benefits that you can receive to your business by being an active Twitter user and building your Twitter community. What other ways are you using Twitter to help your business?

Sponsored Tweets? The Pros and Cons

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Lately the issue of sponsored tweeting has been getting a lot of attention. Last year it was all about the sponsored posts. People weighed in very enthusiastically/critically on either side. Add to that some recent grumblings from the FTC about sponsorship of blogs and you have a very interesting situation.

I didn’t think much about Sponsored Tweets until I met Ted Murphy at Affiliate Summit. I had heard so many negatives from my Twitter friends about ads in tweets that I had no intention of signing up. But then I met him and thought “People immediately think the worst about my rewards site until they meet me and learn what I am doing. Maybe I should give his business a chance.”

Armed with a $100 coupon in my swag bag, I came home and set up a Sponsored Tweet as a sponsor. I told them that they could write whatever they wanted. I didn’t want to influence their writing. They could mark that it was an ad however they wanted as well. I specifically targeted tweeters who posted to moms and who wrote about savings or coupons. I figured that these were people who really could benefit from my business if they clicked on the sponsored tweet.

We did get a number of clicks off of the Tweets, but it remains to be seen how many of those people will become members of our site. I probably should have done a better job of tracking it. Will I continue to use the service as a merchant? Maybe. I genuinely believe that my business fit in with their Tweets and they were all honest with their followers. It’s my hope that they looked critically at my site before they accepted the Tweet offers.

Now this morning I see that Sponsored Tweets has a referral program. I would be silly not to sign up for it because I think it would genuinely interest a lot of my blogger friends. I signed up this time as a sponsored tweeter myself. Honestly, I don’t have a ton of followers so I am not sure that I will even get offers. When I do get my first offer, I will look at it and decide if it is something that I would promote even if I weren’t getting paid. If I would, I might just accept it.

I know some of you are rolling your eyes and already ready to “unfollow” me before we even see if I take an offer. But I think that the medium is too new to draw lines in the sand like that so quickly. Sure, if all I ever do is Twitter junk, you should unfollow me. But what if you are actually interested in the offer that I am Tweeting about? Are you going to unfollow me just on principal.

For the record, this is my Sponsored Tweets referral link. If you are interested, I would love it if you would sign up using the link. If you are totally against Sponsored Tweets, I’d love to hear your comments. We may not change each other’s minds, but it is good to understand where we stand and why.