Rather than being a social network, HootSuite allows you to connect to multiple social networks from one website. You can schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.

Scheduling status update is a way to make sure that status updates go out at the perfect time, whether or not you are there to post them. But be careful not to over do it! Try to mix it with your activity because people don’t like it if everything that you post is automated.

The FREE version in Hootsuite gives you:

• 5 Social Profiles
• Free Quick Reports
• Message Scheduling
• 2 RSS/Atom Feeds 

 But you can also upgrade to a Pro-version which gives you:

• Unlimited Social Profiles
• Message Scheduling
• 2 Free Users
• 1 Free Enhanced Analytics Report
• Google Analytics Integration
• Facebook Insights Integration
• Unlimited RSS Feeds

Click the image below and get 30 Day Free Trial of HootSuite Pro

 It’s a great tool to add to your toolbox of marketing

Do you know the difference between a personal profile and a business page?

Do you ask people to be a friend to your business or to like your business?

Many small business owners are still setting up their business on a second Profile rather than a Facebook Page so here is a post to clarify!

What is a profile?

When you sign up to Facebook you create a personal profile and you invite “friends” to join you and become a friend with people. So far, so good right? But the problem comes when people set up a second profile for their small businesses. We still see this, so some people are not setting up their business right on Facebook.

According to Facebook, personal profiles represent individuals and must be held under an individual name. You are only allowed to hold one personal profile. If you set up your business as a second personal profile, you are contravening Facebook’s terms of service and they can shut your second profile (business) down at any time. If that happens you will lose all your “friends” and all the content on your second profile without any notice. If you think about it, when you are asking people to “friend” your business you are also asking them to allow you to access their holiday snapshots, check out their marital status and pry into their personal lives. It is not professional.

What are pages?

According to Facebook, pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook. Pages have number of advantages over profiles;

• They can be found by search engines. Your status on your Page is searchable too
• They can be seen by people not logged into Facebook
• They track user analytics so you can see how many people have seen your post and your response rate as well as tracking the activities of your page (page insights)
• You are unlimited by how many people can “like” your Page
• You can create widgets and like buttons that are easy to embed into your website and blog,  Facebook creates the code for you that you copy and paste into a widget on your website/blog
• You can set up additional Page admins to have access to managing your page without sharing passwords
• People who like your page can’t see the Page admins and they don’t have access to your personal account
• You can have as many pages as you want

We hope this post gave you some clarification on the difference. If you want to create a page on Facebook click here 

I wish I started my blog a long time back when there was a lot less competition.

I wish I was able to write great content from the start.

I wish I had the money to purchase hosting and set up a self-hosted WordPress blog.

I wish, I wish, I wish…

How many of us have wished for something like this in the past? Or, worse yet, is still wishing for things to happen just like that?

I know I have. And I bet a lot of you have wished for something similar as well.

The problem with the “I wish” mentality

Do you know what’s stopping you from becoming the most sought after blogger in your niche?

You!

Yeah, you heard me right. The biggest obstacle to your blogging success is none other than you.

I know this for a fact, because I have been in the same position. I started many blogs, built many successful ones … and then let them die. Yeah, just like that.

There wasn’t enough motivation for me to keep going. So in effect, I was my own bottleneck.

Right now I am determined to change all that. Today, I want to share what I have learned from the past five years of blogging with you so that you realize:

• there’s no reason why you can’t be a success today, even if you feel you should have started a blog long time back
• consuming more information may be counterproductive for you
• there is no reason why you should have a self-hosted WordPress blog either (I do believe that having one is best for business, though).

3 Rules for overcoming the “I wish” mentality

Rule #1: Stop wishing

First of all, you need to realize that wishing is not going to make things any better.

Sure, you could wish you started blogging five years back. But five years down the line, you’d be surprised to find that you’d still be thinking the same. You’ll think then, “I wish five years back I wasn’t dumb enough to not start a blog because I thought I was too late.”

If you keep on wishing, the only thing that’s going to happen is that you’ll never realize your dreams, and others will get ahead of you.

So rule #1 for overcoming the “I wish” mentality is to stop wishing. If you want to wish, wish for world peace. If at all your wish comes true, you’d be satisfied that you contributed to a greater good.

Rule #2: Stop consuming too much information

When I started out, I believed that reading all the information I could get my hands on was the best way to learn and grow. How wrong I was!

Information is always good. But once it becomes too much, it’s going to negatively affect your growth.

At one point I was on a buying spree, and spent more than $2000 on information products and courses. Guess what I did with all that information? Nothing! Really, those courses and ebooks are sitting in my computer collecting digital dust. I haven’t even consumed 5% of everything I bought. Talk about a waste of money.

“I wish” I could go back in time and stop myself from buying so many info products and save some cash. But there’s no use wishing. The damage is already done.

I want you to stop investing your time and money into learning as much as you can. You’ll end up wishing for more information. So stop buying things you don’t actually need. Instead, act on what you already know.

Rule #3: Stop thinking about being a pro all the time

We all want to be pros, right? You can either be a “somebody” in blogging or be a “nobody” in blogging. Which would you chose? I’d rather choose the “somebody” over “nobody” any day.

And what’s the first pro tip we all read about blogging? That you need to have a self-hosted blog. If you run a business, there is no doubt that it’s true. But if you are starting out, there is no reason for having a self-hosted blog.

People think that they need to appear professional in order to get acceptance, and they wait for the perfect time to start so they have enough money for hosting and a domain name, getting a unique theme coded for their blog, and even learning coding to customize the blog themselves.

Do you see a problem here? You are just adding complexity to what is, at heart, a rather simple thing.

Most people never get around to getting everything done, so they don’t start a blog at all. So just start a free blog on WordPress or Blogger if you don’t have the money right now to go the self-hosted route. Having a blog is better than not having a blog.

Over to you

Are you still stuck with the “I wish” mentality, or have you experienced it? How did you overcome it? Let us know in the comments.

Adarsh Thampy is a blogger and advices small and medium business on effective content marketing strategies. You can read more on the topic of content marketing by following Adarsh @conversionchamp.