Tables of Contents
The Youzus Report • Social Media Advice • • Interviews with Social Media Rockstars • • Creative Articles • Your one stop shop for all things social media.
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Creative Driver Is Facebook the new Hook Up Spot?
#DoingItRight:
How to Insta-POP! Feature of The Month Featured Blog by Addicted2Success Viral Story of The Month 40 Things You Are Doing WRONG on Social Media Thank You!
Sonya Gill
Creative Driver
First and foremost I would like to welcome you to our first edition of The Youzus Report. It is our mission to educate the masses when it comes to social media and to encourage people to understand the science that goes behind connecting with your online community. In other words, whether you are a small business owner or the CE of a corporation, we want you to be able to come to The Youzus Report and walk away with a thousand ideas on how you can improve your online existence. We truly want you to succeed. Secondly, I would like to thank each and every single one of my members on my team for keeping up with the growth of Youzus. In this past year we have grown exponentially and it’s truly the result of hard work and time that has gone in at the main headquarters. And finally a special thank you to all our clients who took a leap of faith into the world of social media and trusted us to take the leap with them. Thank you for Youz’ing Us. I hope you enjoy our first issue, and if we can ever be of any assistance in any way, please don’t ever hesitate to contact me or the team at sonya@youzus.com.
Founder of Youzus
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Is Facebook The New Hook-Up Spot?
If you’re new to the dating scene, I suggest you check out MTV’s Catfish and burn out some of the naivety before you start.
But there are some perks when it comes to Facebook creeping… I mean stalking… or dating if you will.
one are the days of traditional stalking that would require planning, gas money and strategy. Also in that hole is the tradition of finding a date. It’s becoming more apparent that Facebook is a multi-use platform and it has all the ingredients of a great matchmaking website.
Not to say fake Facebook profiles don’t exist, according to Mashable.com, a total of 8.7% or 83 million Facebook accounts are fake (4.8% are duplicate, 2.4% are user-misclassified and 1.5% are spam). However, real Facebook users are infamous for posting their life online. It’s easy to see whether or not you would fit in with their group of friends and their life (kind of creepy when you think about it).
From a dating perspective, many people are reluctant to talk to a total stranger or approach someone they’re attracted to. Not everyone has the swag to do so.
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Let’s see, you have the multiple pictures of yourself and of friends, doing the things you love; and you have an endless supply of personal statuses, which in most cases is about how you feel, plus the networks you are a part of. This includes friends, tagged photos (for those who aren’t set to private) wall comments and the comments you post.
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It's Free! And hopefully will stay that way forever. Generally speaking, those who pay for match making services such as match.com, eharmony.ca or Lavalife.com tend to be looking for serious life partners. Facebook offers that “one off” if you will, and gives you access to millions of potential dates that are not guaranteed relationships. Which is what some people are looking for, if you know what I mean (wink wink).
Fakes A lot of subscription based dating sites, are a breeding ground for fakes. Those who have tried it can testify, the few pictures people have up are either a far ways away from their current appearance (good or bad) or it’s not them all together. If you’re new to the dating scene, I suggest you check out MTV’s Catfish and burn out some of the naivety before you start.
And Facebook being a social hub, it’s a lot easier to grow a pair from behind a computer screen and talk to that someone. Plus, if the person you’re peeping has a mutual friend, you can always start off with the line “hey, you look so familiar” and then It's easy! go from there. Very cliché, but it breaks In order to be a maximum socialite as many the ice, well sort of. But without that mutual of the young folk aspire to be, it’s difficult friend it might leave you to hearing crickets when most of the profile private, so it’s the when try and reach out to that one you’re norm for user to have a larger portion of crushing on. Facebook is diverse in its uses, their page visible to non-friends. and you can’t help but be fascinated with Very easy for creepers to creep and It’s the creative ways it’s being used. Sadly also enticing. I’m sure we’ve all done it, there isn’t much you can do to avoid the “checked-up” on an old friend or “skimmed” random messages from people you don’t through page of your friend’s hot cousin. know asking “hey, how are you, don’t I However, some people just take it too far. know you?” other than staying away from social media all together, which is about as difficult as not having an email address.
DOING
ITRIGHT BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed INC is taking the social media world by storm with its innovative tech platform providing real time updates on trending content. Their ballsy switch to native marketing, diversified content and clutch on new media is why they’re #DoingItRight.
Heres why! Native marketing is the new “Buzz” word in the world of online marketing, literally. BuzzFeed were among the first recognize the power of having people want to interact with advertising and, to offer strictly native advertising. Goodbye to ineffective banner ads, with their clickability becoming as obsolete as people without an email address, and hello to interactive, sharable advertising. This change in advertising culture propelled BuzzFeed into new territory with tons of new marketing potential.
MATH! Yes that’s right math, well algorithms. BuzzFeed’s founder designed a calculus to determine how viral a post will be.
According to Philip Bump from the Alanticwire.com, “R refers to how much traffic the post does, z to the number of people that see the post, and to how likely it is to spread”. In other words “a post will go viral depending on how many places it is linked” which is pretty common knowledge. These guys have it down to a science, and it worked!
Technical Savvy-ness BuzzFeed should be a model for anyone looking to capture the interest of people for more than 10 seconds! Their platform is specifically designed to seek out the viral videos of the day, snap shot them and post them. This type of real time marketing does the most to reach the most people.
From Popular To Viral BuzzFeed diversified. Plain and simple. They also redesigned their approach by providing single dose stories on multiple things rather than long stories on fewer topics. Again, reaching the greatest amount of people, from varying demographics. Smart! Therefore it appeals to those of us who want the who, what, where, when and why with a little giggle at the end of it. And those who want longer more in-depth content, and maybe some chuckles as well.  If you go on BuzzFeed today you will be entertained, educated, social and having picked up some random tidbits of useless information. Their approach to marketing has propelled them into new demographic pockets, from young to old, tech savvy to average, from business man to stay at home mom. BuzzFeed is now the universal social media hub. And that friends is how BuzzFeed is #DoingItRight.
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How to Insta-POP! Instagram is forgiving, well somewhat. How is it that some instagram’mers’ have only a couple pictures, but all the followers you can dream of!?! You can go the “purchase your love” sort of way, or you can organically get followers and “likes” with a few simple steps. These tips should lend you a couple more digits in followers. Well, you have to POP you know! Here are some of the obvious ways to entice people into liking your photo’s, check out my insta-gredients for success:
Obvious Insta-Tip #1: Visuals - DUH! This one is a no-brainer. You must have interesting photos for people to find “interesting” enough to like them, and even more important, to comment and click “follow”. According to quicksprout.com, photos that are either personal or flashy (showing off what you have) get the most user engagement. Pictures that are not personal and not flashy, generally have 11.4% less likes and comments. Would you rather see content from someone traveling the world or someone drinking out of a coca-cola bottle at a bar?
When you comment on a photo, they are 401% more likely to follow you compared to if you just “like” a photo. For every 100 likes on random photos, you can generate up to 6.1 more followers and up to 21.4 likes on photos from nonfollowers When you like 100s of random photo’s a day, you are likely to generate up to 43.26% more likes from people who are not part of your network and up to 31% more comments from non-followers Rule of thumb, don’t become spammy, but genuinely engage.
Not-So -Obvious Tip #1: Timing is Everything When you post, you should be conscious of the time you’re doing it. Believe it or not, you can anticipate roughly the number of likes you will get depending on the time of day you choose to post. According to Statigr.am, Monday at 9 pm EST and Wednesday or Thursday 7pm EST is when Instagram is most active and therefore is when you’re likely to get the most likes and comments on your photos.
Not-So-Obvious Tip #2: Have A Call To Action Smart photos that caption “double-tap if you agree” or “like if you giggled” are fun witty ways to engage the Instagram community. More engagement = more exposure and more exposure = new potential followers.
Obvious Insta-Tip #2: Hashtags
Not-So-Obvious Tip #3: Geo-Tag Your Photos
This might just be the most over used symbol of the year thus far, but hey, it’s trending, so it works. Hashtag savviness is a must for you to gain Instagram credit. Adding popular tags to your photos will show them alongside thousands of other photos with the same hashtag. So if you hashtag #foodie on the bottom of an epic meal photo, your photo will be searchable to all those who want to see #foodie pictures. HINT: For old photos, you can add hashtags in the comments to reappear in those categories as new.
Geotagging is a way to categorize your photos by location. When someone uploads a photo of the same area, users can see your photos as well. It’s a great tool because users who are familiar, or interested in the area can easily search all the photos taken of that area. That is maximum exposure, darling.
Obvious Insta-Tip #3: Be Geniune We all know that feeling when we gain a new follower or have someone outside of our network like or comment on our photo, so return the favor! By engaging on instagram, you’re likely to increase your followers by A LOT. Here are some numbers according to socialmediawitch.org:
Not-So-Obvious Tip #4: Frame 'em! People love frames with multiple photos, they literally “like“ them more than a single. With free apps like Instapicframe, Frameswagg, Vintagram you have no excuse! So take a couple extra seconds, snap a couple extra pictures and snag a couple extra likes. Don’t forget to link your other social media pages with your Instagram. Over 20% of Instagram users also have an active Facebook account.
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joel brown How Did You Get Started? It’s a lot bigger than I thought it would actually be. It’s funny because initially I started Addicted2Success so that I would have a place that I could visit to read my favorite inspirational articles, videos and quotes. I found that there was not really any “Great” inspirational websites out at the time so I decided to make my own little site on the web that I could visit for Inspiration. I also planned to use it to reach out to aspiring entrepreneurs and network with people around the community. It got a little bit bigger than I expected. I implemented a social media share bar after a while and found that people who would come across my site through Google searches would share my articles with their friends, the articles and content on my site spread like wildfire and I started to receive a lot more traffic than I expected and therefore I committed to posting more regularly on my site and started to take things a lot more seriously. I started treating my website more like a business or online portal for premium content.
How did you make the switch from regurgitating articles to finally writing your own content? I never really saw myself as a writer “per say”, it was almost like I cornered into no option but to write. I needed to get my knowledge up and a way that I did this was to go to a number of seminars to learn and meet some of the most accomplished people in the self-development industry.
I learned the skills and techniques from the likes of Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street), Donald Trump, T. Harv Eker, Richard Bandler (The Co-Creator of NLP) and would start to put the teachings and techniques into my own words. It was harder to start because I wasn’t use to writing, I never really saw myself as an actual writer. But it’s funny, when you force yourself into that zone where you close everything off on your computer or you just have a note pad out and block everything else out and you just start to write, everything comes together and your words fine their own way to come out. That’s the thing, a lot of people don’t understand that you just need to start, even if its crazy, stupid, really wacky, you just have to start writing something. You can always go back and edit later and that’s what I really started doing. I would sit in an area, block everything else out and just start to write.
"I never really saw myself as a writer 'per say', it was almost like I cornered into no option but to write."
How did you get motivated? I like to listen to Tony Robbins, I grew up off his advice, every time I listen to him, he motivates me to take things to the next level. He is all about action, and not sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, his advice actually makes you want to pull your finger out and make things. Exercising is very important, you need to exercise every day, eat right and hydrate. You have to be conscious of all these things, because they all come into play when it comes to being able to function mentally and physically. I have my moments of low motivation also, believe it or not, and nothing is wrong with that, sometimes our body is trying to tell us to slow down and balance out a little, but when it is time to perform you have to really have a strong reason behind WHY you must succeed in what you are doing, that will be the key to finding your motivation. Write it down and create an eye pleasing visual of the reason why you must succeed, and make it a MUST, not a should or a maybe. Design a Vision Board. I have created one in Photoshop that I saved as a jpg and set it as my desktop. It is a collage of pictures of all these things that I want to achieve and I am working towards each one. It is a reminder of all the great things I must strive for and has proven to be the most effective way to motivate me to achieve my dreams and vision.
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How did you take your focus from the music industry and move to this genre of business?
What are some of the major obstacles you faced when setting up Addicted2Success?
The experience that I was lucky enough to have in the music industry was incredible, I learned a lot, how to communicate with executives, how to manage a busy schedule, how to approach reputable people with offers and also the legal side of the industry, dealing with contracts and financials.
I experienced a few growing pains with my website when I first experienced an overwhelm of traffic increase, I had a lot of prob- What is some advice you can lems with my server, and it kept crashing. There was too much load on my server and give to young people wanting to too much traffic coming in at once. I believe start out? that the first impression counts and when 1. There’s a lot of YouTube videos out that someone is going to your site for the first cover pretty much everything that you need time and they can’t get on, a lot of people to know, you can read books, watch videos are not going to give you a second chance. online, and immerse yourself in whatever subject matter you wish to be an expert in. It’s very important to invest a little more money, to have a powerful server that’s go2. Read more books. Books reveal years and ing to be able to handle the traffic. At the years of study, by reading books, you are moment I have a server that will handle 10x basically compacting decades of information more traffic than I actually have. At least into days. So why wouldn’t you read a book now I can go to bed at night and not have to or watch an instructional video. You could worry about it going down. be sitting around trying to learn everything yourself by pushing all the buttons or you can model yourself after someone who has Which social media platform successfully done it. brought you the most success? Read, learn, act like a sponge, and squeeze the juice out of everything that you’re doing. Twitter was really the first platform that Find something that your passionate about drove the most traffic to my website and for and really go deep with it. a very long time. But I can foresee Facebook bringing the most in the future. Twitter is 3. You should never rush to put a post out, if great because it’s instantaneous, your able there’s a feeling in your gut that your article to reach a lot of people at once. Also, people is not quite there, or if you’re not sure if it’s are more inclined to share your content on going to be received very well by your audithere, the word gets out a lot quicker. You ence, don’t put it out. Your reputation oncan go to other twitter accounts, like busiline and also how you rank in Google is also nesses or other related websites and those highly influenced by the amount of shares similar to yours, follow 20-50 “followers” of your content is getting in the social media the people who are following them and inworld. You need to put material out there troduce yourself to people who are in your that people are going to like and support. niche or the subject you are targetting. But The key is to build a community, not just a once you have a presence on Facebook and website. Communities share, they are comyou’re consistent with updating and putting mitted and they are there to grow with you, quality content out there, the “likes” then reand one another. ally start to pick up. Facebook has been one of the hardest platforms to grow, but it’s most effective when you have a big enough following.
I did lose my passion for the music industry after a while, and that was probably more so from searching deeper within myself and being real with where I see myself later on in life. I had to really be honest with myself and say, this isn’t something I feel is really truly my calling. I might have been talented at it and had great experiences, but you need to be able to wake-up every day and be so excited that you can jump out of bed and get straight into work. And also hate the fact that you have to go to bed at the end of the night and put your work to rest for the next day. That is how passionate you must be if you want to be about something if you want to be truly successful at it. This is how I feel about my website and I’m persistent about it and it doesn’t actually feel like a job. You need
to be passionate about what you’re doing and you also need to be consistent. I learned that a long time ago. If you’re passionate enough and persistent enough it’s going to happen.
How has Addicted2Success measured up to your other accomplishments? It’s definitely a major accomplishment that I have been able to actually achieve by myself. There are a lot of things that I’ve achieved that have involved other people. But it’s good to be able to do something independently that you can be proud of as well.
What are your top websites right now? mashable.com hotnewhiphop.com businessinsider.com
Thank you Joel Brown!
Featured Blog by Addicted2Success
of the products for sale on their site. eBay also have a pretty good affiliate setup, with their top affiliates earning $1.3 Million a month, WOW!
10 Creative Ways To Make Money Online If you’d claimed it was possible for the average guy on the street to make millions of dollars online just a decade ago, the chances are good you’d have heard nothing but laughter in response. Today, though, there are countlessInternet millionaires who turned a great idea into obscene profit, used the power of the web to promote their offline business or simply worked their butt off to sell their skills online. While it’s unlikely that you’ll ever earn enough to buy your own private island, there’s nothing to stop you from using your skills to make a comfortable living online. In fact, while the media would have you believe that online success stories are limited to just a few lucky, hard working people who stumbled on a great idea that went on to make millions, the reality is that there are tens of thousands of people who make a living exclusively online. Here are just ten ways you can join them.
How to Make Money Online
1. Sell Stock Photography
Yuri Arcurs is the man everyone turns to for their stock photo needs. As the world’s top selling stock photographer he sells an image every 8 seconds, 24 hours a day (that works out to over 4 million images each year). Arcurs makes millions of dollars each year simply by being the best at what he does. There are lots of great photographers in the world and the barrier to entry is as low as ownership of a camera, but Arcurs has managed to build a reputation online for consistent, high quality and imaginative images.
3. Blog for Avenues If, however, you already have a blog with a devoted following it should be easy for you to leverage your readers into hard cash. Ad networks such as Google AdSense pay big money to place their ads on your site, and you’ll receive a payment every time a reader clicks one. While it’s easy to go overboard and fill every spare pixel, if you place your ads well it’s possible to make a comfortable income from your site. One of the most successful bloggers around today is John Chow, a Canadian blogger who makes more than $40,000 a month through ad sales and other revenue streams. Ironically, his blog is about ways to make money online.
2. Tweet For Sponsors SponsoredTweets.com is an online platform that allows you to make money on Twitter by charging sponsors for communicating their advertising messages to your followers. You set the amount you want to get paid for every tweet you make, choose a category and select keywords you want to work with. You then wait for advertisers to contact you and take you up on your offer, paying you the amount you specified for each tweet that you make.
All throughout the process, the tweeter has The Internet has caused an explosion in full control over his or her account, and may the demand for stock photography. As the choose the wordings of the tweets, or may number of media and commercial outlets choose to reject the tweet altogether. has increased dramatically with the growth of online media there’s an enormous need for high quality stock photos.
4. Sell Affliate Programs If you have a flair for sales copy you could try your hand at selling products for affiliates. While many people take the seedy route of selling diet pills and penis enlargement products, if you want to keep your conscience clear you’ll find that Amazon runs a very successful affiliate program that allows you to make money advertising any
5.Write an e-book! In recent years the self-publishing world has exploded online to the point at which you don’t even have to run your own site in order to promote a book. Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo are just a few of the sites on which you could self-publish today, with commission rates of around 70% available on every sale. The number of eBooks on Amazon reached 8 million last year, and Amazon stated that eBooks are outselling hard backs 2 to 1, 62% of ebook sales fell into the Thriller and Mystery genre, so if you feel that you could pull this style of genre off then you will be in for a good chance of sales. 26 year old self published author, Amanda Hocking from Minnesota makes more than $2 Million a year from her ebook sales. Amanda Hocking’s stories about, trolls, vampires and zombies and ‘supernatural teen romances’ sell for $2.99 or for as little as $.99.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE >
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Top Twitter Influentials Technology & Gadgets @Mgeist @rayMuzyka @techcrunch
Social Media @Jenna_Marbles @Addicted2success @Steveology
Fashion & Beauty @Jeanne_Beker @staceyMckenzie1 @Dsquared2
News @BreakingNews @CBCNews @mashable
Use links in your tweets
Most Viral Story Of The Month Inspire people by using quotes
Drive people to your blog on your website for every 3rd Tweet Promote your Tweets with the Twitter business platform
In this month’s viral story, the Youzus Report Askhighlight influencers ifthe they triumphant would spread the is proud to effort word in exchange for a free product! of #FitchTheHomeless. It’s not everyday an average Joe challenges a mega corporation and at the very least stirs up as much controversary that prompted a public apology from the CEO. We tip our glasses to you, Greg Karber.
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40 Things You Are Doing WRONG on Social Media 1. You are not consistent
21. #You #Are #Hashtagging #Everything
2.You are not responding to your clients/ customers/friends
22. You are not using Google + 23. You are not using TweetDeck
3. You assume social media doesn’t work 4. You are posting irrelevant content 5. You are a pessimist and it comes across in your posts
6. You are annoying (sorry)
24. You are not using analytical tools. 25. You are not using Google analytics to track where your traffic is coming from 26. You are not using SlideShare 27. You are not using pictures
7. All you talk about is your company 8. You are not engaging others in the conversation 9. You are not tagging people in your posts 10. You are not effectively using online PR and cross promotion
28. You are not using graphics or a graphic designer. 29. You have not embedded apps on your Facebook page 30. You are not subscribed to popular blogs 31. You are inconsistent with your cover photos
11. You are not utilitizing Google Alerts 32. You do not have a mailing list 12. You are not using Facebook PPC ads 33. You do not have a website 13. You are not using YouTube Ads 34. You have a poorly functioning website 14. You are not using Twitter Ads 35. You do not have a mobile app 15. You are not using LinkedIn Ads 16. You are not blogging
36. You do not have a LinkedIn business page
17. You are not posting consistent videos
37. You do not use CPM ads
18. Your social media specialist works for free.
38. You are not using a sales CRM platform
19. You have hired an amateur social media specialist. 20. You are not using Twitter advanced search
39. Your social media specialist is your cousin/friend/chef/trainer/mechanic/boyfriend/ girlfriend
40. You are spamming people
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Extra Extra! Youzus Inc. is excited to have finally published our first e-magazine! With years of helping customers, it was time to extend our expertise to an easily accessible emagazine. Look-out for our monthly publication, bringing you the best tips on social media, trending material and hot topics. The founder of Youzus, Sonya Gill is proud to present the recent release of her new book, ‘Keep It Super Simple For Social Media - Learn how to build your brand online.’ you can grab your copy on Amazon. ca! Our team is growing! We have recently added Kristen Rubisch to our team as head of Global Accounts, Courtny Vaz as our Content Curator and earlier this year Lisa Tyldesley as our Senior Account Manager - We’ve spoken at 14 different seminars this year and recently a convocation for the graduating class of 2013 at Lambton College!
BUY THE BOOK ON AMAZON >
Thank You! Special thank you to Joel Brown for being our feature this month. Content Curator Courtny Vaz Creative Director Lisa Tyldesley Publishers Sonya Gill Kristen Rubisch Next episode will be out on August 15th!
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