The Meathead’s guide to social media

Here it is.  The broken down, easy to understand explanation of social media and how you can use it to drive traffic to your website.  I wrote this specifically for fitness websites and trainers who have no clue how to use social media.  Enjoy!

What is social media?

• At it’s most basic form, Social media is a way to interact and share content with people interested in your topic.  Sites like Youtube, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon allow users to upload their own content, recommend content and also connect with other people.

What websites work the best in social media?

• There are tons and tons of social media sites out there.  Instead of trying to use them all, you’re better off focusing on trying to dominate a few of them.  If you spread yourself too thin, you’ll end up not having a presence on any of these sites.  So what sites should we focus on?

• YouTube – I personally think Youtube fits the fitness industry very well.  Workouts and exercises translate much better when they’re on video.  It would take you 10 pages of text to explain a front squat (and they prolly still wouldnt understand it) or you could just make a video explaining a front squat and get everything explained in 2 minutes.  Video also adds a great deal of rapport and comfort between your readers and yourself.  Get on Youtube now if yo’re not!

• Twitter – I have to admit when I first heard of Twitter, I thought it was the stupidest thing ever.  But after watching it for a while and learning how it worked, I can really see the MASSIVE potential.  Twitter allows you to connect and interact with your readers, other bloggers and potential partners.  You can also pick up a lot of new readers from Twitter.  The best thing about Twitter is it helps develop TRUST.  And if you know anything about sales you know the biggest reason people don’t buy is that they don’t trust you.  People get to see the real you on Twitter.

• Digg -Digg is a pretty cool social news site.  What’s that mean?  Basically instead of a site publishing whatever news THEY want, on Digg the readers choose what news they want to see.   Digg is a combination of links and stories from all over the web voted on by the readers at Digg.  Anyone can vote, all you need is a Digg account.  Getting on the homepage of Digg usually nets about 15,000-20,000 visitiors to your site in one day…  There’s not a specific fitness category on Digg, but there is a health category, so submit your posts to that category.

• Facebook – Facebook is a social networking site which allows people and companies to make a page so they can connect with others.  For fitness sites, you can make a page for your site and try to get people within your site/profile/blog whatever to join the group.  You can also use your site’s facebook page to promote special offers exclusive for being a member of your page.

• Stumble Upon – This is one of my personal favorite social media sites.  StumbleUpon is a way to discover new sites in any industry.  You tell them the industry you’re interested in and they recommend websites to you based on what users form all over the world have voted as good sites.  There’s a stumbleupon tool bar that makes it much easier to use.  You can vote for sites on the spot, and also “stumble” through an industry and check out a bunch of good sites.

3 tips to using social media

• 1.  Social media is like networking, it’s not all about you – When submitting sites for social media don’t just submit your own sites.  For one its not what social media is about.  And secondly most of these sites will catch on and you’re votes wont be worth as much.  By submitting tons of relevant content you are adding to the value of the site, thus your vote will be worth more on some of these sites.

• 2.  Add friends on social media sites – Connecting is the fastest way to getting your content seen.  Each of these sites has a way for you to add friends, make sure you’re connecting and sharing valuable info. All of the 5 sites above allow you to add friends.

• 3. Connect outside of the fitness industry – Fitness people aren’t the only ones interested in your content.  Lots of people like to workout.  Make sure you’re connecting with people outside of the niche as well.  Twitter is especially good for this.

I’d like to know your thoughts…Feel free to share some things you’ve learned from using social media…

-Justin