No pause in pressure on housing authority chief Hill

This figures to be a busy week for John Hill. Not only is the Executive Director of the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority in contract renewal negotiations with the Service Employees International Union, but these days he's also being asked tough questions about his management style and professional practices.

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Estimates show Tesla eligible for $10 million in tax credits

Preliminary estimates indicate Tesla is eligible for nearly $10 million in transferrable tax credits based on its investments so far in a huge battery factory east of Reno, Nevada lawmakers were told Monday.

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Target ditches ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ sections

BRAVO Target. The US stores are about to remove all ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ signs in their toy sections. It’s about time the Australian stores followed suit, says Lisa Almond.

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Google’s Alphabet confusion explained

GOOGLE’S founders have created a new mega-company that could have no lesser ambition than to change the world. This is everything you need to know.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1DErL8C

McDonald’s is Giving Away 8 Million Sandwiches This Month

Free food alert! 

McDonald’s just announced that they are giving away 8,000,000 sandwiches this month at participating locations around the country. (I’m pretty sure our entire office just screamed. We don’t care if they are 1,000 calories; we just like free food)

If you want to score a free meal, you need to download the McDonald’s app onto your smartphone. The app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store or the Google Play marketplace. As a reward you will be given a digital coupon to be used on your next visit.

This is limited to the first 8 million participants, so make sure you get your coupon before you share with friends and family.

Head over to McDonald’s website for all of the details.

 

The post McDonald’s is Giving Away 8 Million Sandwiches This Month appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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How to take billions off the banks

IF YOU had to redesign finance from the ground up for the 21st century, you wouldn’t start with a bank. These companies are showing them how its done.

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Commission's action means Uber, Lyft could be operating within 30 days

Uber and Lyft could begin operating within 30 days following action Monday by the Legislative Commission.

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Movie theater plans to become Downtown Las Vegas' upscale neighbor

You can zipline, attend a concert and visit an art gallery in one night in downtown Las Vegas. But to catch a flick, you have to drive several miles to Henderson, North Las Vegas or Spring Valley. That will change next spring — if plans come through.

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Google announces massive restructure

GOOGLE has unveiled a fresh corporate structure plan, with a new umbrella company, Alphabet, to make the operation “cleaner and more accountable”.

Source NEWS.com.au | Business http://ift.tt/1L0Wk85

Twitter Takes On Google’s Alphabet: Today’s Best Tweets So Far

From funny to insightful to just plain interesting, the tech industry took to Twitter today to comment on the news that Google is now a part of Alphabet.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Verizon unveils new contract-free smartphone plans

Verizon's new no-contract smartphone plans are a good deal no matter how you slice them, but there are ways to maximize the bang for your buck.

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Google To Be Absorbed Into New “Alphabet” Conglomerate Run By Larry Page & Sergey Brin

Google’s being acquired. Its new owner will be Alphabet, a palace coup pulled off by Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Page is to become CEO of the new Alphabet; Brin his president and Sundar Pichai, formally senior vice president of products at Google, takes over as Google CEO....

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Marketing Day: The 2015 Holiday Retail Season, Ad-Blocking Report & YouTube’s Top 10 Ads

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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Twitter, NFL Sign Two-Year Extension To Serve More Football Video

Deal means there will be more NFL content on Twitter. Twitter will take the lead in ad sales in the revenue-sharing partnership.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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The Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort Hosting Job Fair

The Shawnee Inn and Golf Resort, located in Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania, is hosting a job fair on Wednesday, August 12, from 2 p.m. — 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. — 8 p.m. in the Waring Room.As summer workers, including many students, move on for the season, it is time to replenish its staff. Shawnee Inn is seeking to fill vacant positions in every department. Managers will be available to conduct on-the-spot interviews at the job fair. Immediate [...]

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An Easy Way to Feel $10,000, Even $20,000 Richer

Next time you’re moving, you might want to take a minute to count the trees on your potential new block.

Sound like a strange thing to do? Not according to recent research, reports Fast Company.

Stately oaks, leafy maples and swaying aspens not only provide a scenic backdrop to your life, but also offer distinct advantages over living in a concrete jungle, including significant health gains and wellness benefits equal to earning thousands more per year, according to a study recently published in Nature.

Researchers found living on a block with 10 more trees than the average number “improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000.” Adding just one more tree — so 11 more than average — was comparable to being $20,000 richer!

How Did They Figure It Out?

To analyze the benefits from living near trees, researchers scoured high-resolution satellite images and tree data in Toronto, Canada.

Why Toronto? Researchers believed Canada’s universal healthcare system would reduce the number of variables associated with access to healthcare.

Using data from the Ontario Health Study, the researchers compared residents’ self-reported “general health perception, cardio-metabolic conditions and mental illnesses” to find their results. They also controlled for other variables, including demographics and socioeconomic factors.

How else are trees good neighbors?

It’s well-known that trees have a number of health benefits, especially in an urban environment.

“One could guess that reduction of pollution, relieving stress, restoration of directed attention, and promoting more physical exercise could be among the possible ways trees benefit health, based on other research,” Omar Kardan, the study’s lead author, told Fast Company.

And if that’s not enough reason to plant a few trees, the shade trees provide can create huge energy savings. Having a few trees can help you save on cooling costs in the summer and help you enjoy your outdoor environment even more.

Want to learn more? Read the full story on Fast Company.

Your Turn: How many trees do you have on your block?

Kristen Pope is a freelance writer and editor in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The post An Easy Way to Feel $10,000, Even $20,000 Richer appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Target to remove gender-based signs

TARGET, in the US, has said it will be ‘moving away’ from gender-based signage after it received backlash on social media over labelling products for ‘boys’ and ‘girls’.

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Five Things People With Good Credit Have in Common

People with excellent credit stay on top of their bills — paying every single one on time, every month. Set a reminder on your phone or leave a note in your calendar so you don’t forget. 

Good credit can’t be bought or sold; it can only be cultivated over time. And with the right financial moves – and credit strategy – almost anyone can have good credit, plus all of the perks that come with it.

Using the FICO scoring model, your credit score can fall anywhere between 300 and 850. The higher your score, the lower the risk you present in the eyes of credit reporting agencies and lenders. Likewise, the lower your score, the bigger risk you present. But you can change your score — you’ll need to put in a little elbow grease to improve it over time.

Here’s What People With Good Credit Have in Common

But, what does “good credit” look like? According to myFICO.com, a good credit score is generally considered anything over 720. With the average FICO score coming in at around 689, according to the most recent stats, it’s easy to see how a score of 720 or better doesn’t happen by accident.

The fact is, most people with good credit have a similar set of behaviors that helped lift their scores over time. Here are five financial moves most people with good credit make consistently:

They pay their bills on time.

The FICO credit scoring scale considers your payment history to be the most important factor in determining your score. Since payment history makes up 35% of one’s FICO score, it’s safe to say that those with good credit must pay their bills on time — every single month.

Credit tip: To improve your credit over time, make sure to pay all of your bills well before their respective due dates. Set a reminder on your phone if you have to, or mark your due date on your calendar.

They don’t use all of their available credit.

Another important factor in determining your FICO score is how much money you owe in relation to your credit limits. This is also commonly referred to as your “credit utilization.” People with good credit don’t generally max their credit cards out, and in fact, often keep their utilization rather low.

Credit tip: Since lenders generally like to see utilization rate of less than 30% of your total open credit, it’s important to leave plenty of breathing room between your balances and your credit limit if you can. To find your current utilization rate, take your total open credit and divide it by your total balances. If you have a $10,000 line of credit across three credit cards and a total balance of $2,000, for example, your utilization rate would be 20%.

They have long and stable credit histories.

In order to have a good credit score, you have to have a long history of taking your debts seriously. People with good credit generally have several years of credit history behind them, with plenty of proof that they can pay their bills in full and on time. Since the FICO credit scoring scale uses credit history to make up 15% of one’s score, it’s important to take this factor seriously.

Credit tip: To build your credit over time, you have to be patient. It takes time to build a long and positive credit history with a wide range of lenders — and one mistake can set you back quickly. But with the right moves, you’ll get there eventually. 

They have a good mix of different types of credit.

According to myFICO.com, FICO considers your “mix of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts, and mortgage loans” when determining your credit score. Consequently, people with the best scores often have several different types of open credit, including mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards, and revolving lines of credit.

Credit tip: Make sure you’re diversifying the types of credit you’re using whenever possible. Having three open credit cards with a balance and no other open lines of credit, for example, could prove harmful to your score over time.

They don’t open or close accounts too frequently.

Since opening new lines of credit – and closing old ones, which can quickly increase your utilization rate – can have a negative, albeit temporary effect on credit scores, most people with good credit don’t churn through new accounts that often. While opening a few new accounts per year won’t do much damage, opening and closing too many can cause your score to drop.

• Related: Will Getting Multiple Credit Cards Hurt My Credit Score?

Credit tip: If you’re worried about the impact of closing and opening new accounts, take it easy. Be selective when you open new accounts and only open or close credit cards or lines of credit when you have something to gain.

Building Good Credit One Stone at a Time

A good credit score isn’t something that happens overnight. No matter who you are or what your financial situation is, it takes time to prove you are creditworthy and capable of repaying any amount of money you borrow.

But with the right moves, anyone can build a credit score they can be proud of. If you secure the right types of credit, pay your bills in full and on time, and use common sense when it comes to applying for new accounts, you should be on your way to an excellent score in no time.

Related Articles:

• How to Build Credit
• Five Ways to Improve Your Credit Without a Credit Card
• What Is a Good Credit Score?

The post Five Things People With Good Credit Have in Common appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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McCarran airport director to address prestigious aviation conference

The director of McCarran International Airport has been invited to speak at a prestigious international aviation conference in Amsterdam.

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Tax Deductions for Freelancers: How to Set Yourself Up for a Big Refund in April

When I started freelancing, taxes mystified me. I suddenly had to figure out quarterly deadlines, whether to use an EIN or my SSN, and what deductions I could claim.

Deductions can be especially confusing because there are so many — and so many rules for each one! Ignore them, though, and you can miss out on a big tax refund. In my first year, for example, I didn’t set aside a separate home office space, and missed a chance to claim back a chunk of my rent.

Starting to track your deductions now means you’ll have the records you need in April to make the most of your savings potential. This guide will help you claim useful tax deductions for your freelance business, while keeping the IRS happy.

What Counts as a Home Office?

You may be able to claim part of your home expenses (think mortgage, interest, utility bills and repairs) for your business.

The most important requirement is your home office has to be used exclusively and regularly for work. You can’t claim that your dining room is your office by day, or deduct an office you use once a month. A separate room you work in Monday to Friday, or even a section of a room reserved for your desk and laptop, is more likely to be a deductible home office.

What To Do Now

Mark out your office space. In rooms that share work and living space, try using an area rug or room divider to create boundaries.

In addition, learn about how to file your deduction. The IRS recently added a simplified set of rules for claiming a home office. You can choose to calculate your work space’s square-foot percentage, keep records of all your home-related expenses and calculate your house’s depreciation.

Or, you can claim up to 300 square feet of office space at $5 per square foot. If one method doesn’t work for you, you can switch next year.

Can I Deduct My Laptop?

Your work furniture, rug, printer and motivational poster are deductible parts of your office, too.

Again, you’ve got options. If you can prove you’ve used a new purchase for business more than 50% of the time, you may be able to deduct the full value immediately.

Fell short or haven’t kept usage records? No worries. You can deduct a percentage of the price of most tech equipment and furniture based on a five- or seven-year depreciation scale (click here and scroll to Table 4 for details).

What To Do Now

Ask an accountant how to track your usage percentages if you want to claim the full amount of new business equipment.

I use the RescueTime app on my computer, which sends me a weekly productivity report. This may or may not be enough on its own to convince the government, but records will at least make it easier for a CPA to determine what further action to take.

Am I Traveling for Business or Pleasure?

A vacation is a chance to land a great assignment, but writing a magazine article while abroad doesn’t necessarily mean you’re on a business trip.

The rule of thumb is you need to have a business reason to travel before you book your trip. Selling photographs or articles later won’t retroactively make the trip business-related.

Plan a valid business trip by scheduling travel-related work assignments or conferences. The business aspects will have to make up the primary reason for the trip. If you plan a two-week Paris vacation that includes a three-day conference, you probably won’t get to deduct airfare, although you can deduct the conference fees.

If your trip has a true business purpose, you can deduct your airfare, train tickets, lodging and meals, dry cleaning and any other normal expense. You can also deduct your mileage for travel to a temporary gig (one that you expect to run less than a year).

What To Do Now

Schedule your business trips for the rest of the year. If any take place in great locations, have fun!

Just be sure to keep firm boundaries on what’s business and what’s personal. Your visit to MOMA for an art magazine assignment counts as a business expense. The Broadway show you attended with your family that night, not so much.

If you’re unsure, keep clear records and ask your accountant.

If It’s a Business Dinner, Can I Get the Lobster?

You’re doing a face-to-face interview over lunch. If this meal is on Uncle Sam’s dime, can you treat yourself to the priciest dish on the menu? Well, maybe.

The IRS typically allows you to deduct only 50% of a meal or other business-related entertainment expense. If you’re on a tight budget, the $95 prix fixe menu may still hurt.

You also can’t claim “lavish or extravagant” entertainment deductions. That doesn’t mean you can never deduct a fancy outing, but that the entertainment has to fit the business occasion. You probably won’t interview a stay-at-home dad in the same place as a senator.

What To Do Now

Keep those receipts! Note who you were with and what purpose the meeting served.

What’s a “Necessary” Expense?

Many freelancers struggle with imposter syndrome. When they read the IRS only allows “ordinary and necessary” business deductions, they may second-guess their way out of money they deserve.

The IRS defines “necessary” as “helpful and appropriate,” and states explicitly that “an expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.” Your organization software, the monthly magazine subscription that inspires you, and your writer’s group membership dues can all be necessary parts of how you run your freelance business.

What To Do Now

Don’t sell yourself short! Find a records system that works for you and list everything that helps you get the work done.

If tax season rolls around and you’re still not sure whether a particular expense counts, ask a pro. Chances are, if you think something is a true business expense, the IRS will, too.

Your Turn: Freelancers, what do you do during the year to make it easier to claim your deductions during tax season?

Jessica Sillers is a freelance writer living in the Washington, DC area. She’s written about taxes, small business and careers for various companies and websites.

The post Tax Deductions for Freelancers: How to Set Yourself Up for a Big Refund in April appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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5 best websites to find a high-paying job in 2015

The single best move a talented, skilled professional can make is to leave a dead-end job in pursuit of a new title and, of course, a higher salary. If you're seeking a higher salary, job-search sites can be a powerful tool to find opportunities and make new connections that will help you command better pay.

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How to avoid roaming charges

Tom Wilson

Texting.jpg

It's easier than ever to use your phone abroad but it's also vital to check the costs in advance, as smartphone users could easily be charged £42 for watching just a few minutes' video - or much more if they opt out of usage caps.

It's easier than ever to use your phone abroad but it's also vital to check the costs in advance, as smartphone users could easily be charged £42 for watching just a few minutes' video - or much more if they opt out of usage caps.

Roaming charges - what you'll pay to use your phone overseas - vary hugely depending on your provider and your destination.

How to avoid roaming charges

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It's easier than ever to use your phone abroad but it's also vital to check the costs in advance, as smartphone users could easily be charged £42 for watching just a few minutes' video - or much more if they opt out of usage caps. Roaming charges - what you'll pay to use your phone overseas - vary hugely depending on your provider and your destination. EU rules cap the amount you can be charged while on holiday in Europe, fixed at 16.5p (€0.19) a minute for inbound calls, 4.3p (€0.05) a minute for outbound calls, 5.1p (€0.06) per text and 17p (€0.20) for each megabyte (MB) of data. Roaming charges within Europe will be eliminated from June 2017, following an agreement by European authorities to ensure users will pay the same price to use their mobiles abroad as they would at home. If you're travelling outside Europe there are no restrictions on the rates you can be charged to use your phone, but the EU rules do limit your data charges to around £42 (€50) plus VAT, unless you opt out of the data limits. In practice, this is hardly anything for a smartphone user due to the astronomical roaming charges set by mobile phone providers. Outside Europe, O2's data charges are £6 per megabyte - equivalent to just a few minutes on YouTube - before you hit the price cap. At this point, you'd have your data services cut off, but opting out of the limit is easily done via a short text - which could well end up being a financially crippling decision. Based on the data usage estimates on O2's website, at £6/MB, you could be charged £3,420 to watch a single film. O2's pricing is by no means the worst offender, and its standard tariff pricing is broadly in line with other providers. How to avoid the costs? The easiest way to avoid being stung by a huge bill is to switch off your phone's data usage when you're away. Wifi access is widely available in most hotels, shopping centres and so on, and by using it wherever available you can avoid a big data bill. Apps such as O2's TU Go let you make calls and receive texts through your wifi connection and sidestep roaming fees. Alternatively, most providers offer data packages at much more reasonable rates than the standard tariffs, though they're neither universally available nor cheap. If you're planning to use substantial amounts of data this can be much better value but if you're a heavy user be wary as these often automatically opt you out of the data caps, meaning there's no limit to the size of your bill if you go beyond your allowance. Within Europe, O2 offers its travel bundle that gives you a daily 50MB data allowance for £1.99 a day. Orange offers an unlimited calls and texts package for £2 daily, or 50MB data for £3, also on a daily basis. EE's Euro Pass bundle is £4 a day, and includes unlimited calls and texts, and a larger 500MB daily allowance. Vodafone will charge you £3 a day in Europe and £5 a day elsewhere to receive the rates you'd pay at home while roaming. This means you'll pay this on top of any of your usual charges to make calls, send texts or use data. The best deal If you're travelling to Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Macau, New Zealand, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland or the US then Three's Feel at Home feature is probably the best deal going. It allows contract and pay as you go customers to use their normal minutes, texts and data allowance on exactly the same terms as they'd receive in the UK. This is probably the best deal but you'll be restricted to 3G access, meaning if you're using the faster 4G network you'll find your download speeds are slightly slower. Ernst Doku, mobiles expert at uSwitch.com says: "These tariffs are a first step towards better rates for EE customers abroad, but we're still a way off from wallet (or purse) friendly mobile roaming for all - the abolition of EU charges set to happen in 2017 will do a lot to fix that." How much data will I need? Mobile comparison site Broadband Choices says that browsing the web or Facebook for an hour uses about 10-25MB data. Downloading a music track takes about 4MB, and half an hour of YouTube will eat 175MB. Watch a film at standard definition and you'll use 250MB an hour, or 2,000MB in high definition.

EU mobile roaming charges to end in June 2017

Roaming charges to be scrapped in Europe

read more

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KIND Snacks’ Back-To-School Instagram Campaign Asks Parents To Share Summer #MomentThatPopped

As parents' minds turn toward packing snacks and lunchboxes for schoolchildren, KIND snack bars encourages families to reflect upon the best moments of summer.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

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5 Things to Consider When Shopping for a Small Business Loan

Here's how to find the best loan for your business needs.

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Cars We Remember: About the 1961 Impala SS four-door

Q: Hi, Greg, first of all I would like to say that I look forward to reading your accurate and interesting articles in all of the newspapers and websites I see it in. However, there are two inaccuracies that I would like to point out in your recent article on the Impala SS history. In 1965, I purchased a brand new Super Sport hardtop from Z Frank Chevrolet in Chicago. It had the 283 engine that you say was dropped for that year. Secondly, you mentioned that 1996 [...]

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Don’t Waste Your Time: 6 Ways to Be More Efficient on Social Media

Most marketing strategies begin with a few things: content, products… and social media.

While using social media isn’t required to grow a business, it can certainly help in most cases. An overwhelming 92% of marketers in 2014 reported that they place high value on social media.

In the modern marketing landscape, social media allows you to reach almost anyone, no matter what niche your business is in.

But just because marketers recognize the importance of social media doesn’t mean they know how to use it effectively.

Many spend several hours a week on it to get just a little return on investment (ROI). 

Statista sent out a survey to find out how much time per week marketers spend on social media:

As you can see, more and more marketers are spending large amounts of time on social media (16+ hours per week) each year.

It’s not just marketers either—CEOs do it as well. Another survey found that 43% of CEOs spend more than 6 hours per week on social media.

CEOs and marketers wouldn’t spend this much time on social media, week after week, year after year, unless it produced results.

And it does.

But… don’t you think that a CEO might have better things to do than send out Tweets and “like” posts on Facebook? I do.

I can’t justify spending more than 6 hours a week on social media—the ROI just isn’t good enough.

And yet, I still utilize social media to drive traffic to my blog posts and guest posts. I just don’t spend more time than necessary.

In this post, I’m going to share with you 6 different ways you can save time on social media so that you can focus on more important parts of your business.

Here we go…

1. Batching always wins

The best marketers, SEOs, entrepreneurs, and writers that I know all work in batches.

Batching is a “productivity hack” that has been used for many years by businesses to improve efficiency in a variety of ways.

The premise is simple:

Instead of doing a task at frequent regular or sporadic intervals, do it all at once over a longer period of time (e.g., a week or a month). The longer the time period, the more of a boost in productivity you’ll get.

It helps because of these 3 main reasons:

1. It reduces transition time – Whenever you begin a task, it takes you a few seconds or minutes to figure out where you stand, what you need to do, and how you’ll start. When batching, you only focus on doing one task, so you eliminate all subsequent transition time wastage.
2. It simplifies things - Switching among many tasks throughout the day is exhausting. When you know you only have a few main tasks to do in a day (in larger batches, of course), it’s less intimidating.
3. You can work faster - Switching among many tasks means you have to change your focus multiple times. Every time you switch your focus, you lose any momentum you’ve built up. You can never get “in the zone.”

The one final benefit of batching is that it makes it more difficult to miss things. Batching allows you to schedule ahead so that you won’t forget to do something important. In this case, it’s a social media or blog post.

There are a few ways that you can use batching to save time when it comes to social media.

Way #1 – Come up with post ideas all at once: I recommend coming up with as many social media post ideas as you can (same goes for blog post ideas as well).

Your goal is to build a massive reservoir of social media post ideas that you can draw from as necessary.

How do you come up with ideas?

Well, it will depend on which social networks you want to focus your time on (more on that shortly).

Your blog posts are an obvious source of content—that’s how you’re going to drive traffic back to your blog.

Besides your own material, you want to share other things that your readers would be interested in.

Here are some detailed guides on how to come up with post ideas:

• Stop Guessing: Here’s a Social Media Strategy That Works
• 26 Creative Ways to Publish Social Media Updates
• 100 Killer Ideas For Your Social Media Content

Way #2 – Schedule posts on a regular basis: One of the biggest ways that marketers waste time on social media is logging into each network and posting an update one at a time.

You can save a ton of time by designating one time at the start of the week or month to schedule all your posts. Of course, if something special comes up, you can make small adjustments throughout the week or month.

You should plan to share each blog post you publish at least once:

When you’re scheduling shares for the upcoming week or month, prepare and incorporate posts for any new blog post you will be publishing.

I really like CoSchedule’s basic sharing template for blog posts:

Way #3 – Only work on social media at specified times: Another trap that marketers often fall into is constantly checking their social media accounts for updates. You can waste a ton of time doing this and produce very little in the way of tangible results.

Social media is a lot like email. It’s tempting to check it often to see if you got anything new. But you need to approach it in a disciplined way.

Dedicate one or two periods of the day, 10-15 minutes each, to checking and replying to important posts and messages on social media. You’d be surprised to see what you can accomplish when you put strict limits in place.

Some of you might counter by saying that 42% of people expect a response on social media within 60 minutes of them contacting customer support.

If you’re at the point where you’re constantly getting support requests on social media, you should be able to hire someone to take care of it for you. Don’t waste your valuable time on a simple activity that could be done by almost anyone. Have them alert you if there is something you need to respond to personally.

2. Understand what you’re trying to accomplish

Social media is a time killer for the general population, but when you’re using it for business, it shouldn’t be.

When you log into Twitter, Facebook, or whichever network(s) you use, you shouldn’t be scrolling through a feed of updates just to see what’s new. Your social media activity should be for one purpose.

What is the purpose of your social media presence?

Are you trying to gain followers? While it depends on the specific network, the general rule for gaining followers on social media is to follow people first (a portion will follow back) and post interesting content so that they don’t unfollow you later.

This is typically the main goal of any company that has brand new social media accounts.

While it sounds a bit cynical, you can accomplish this goal without paying any attention to your “feed” or followers for now.

Furthermore, if you batch your post ideas once per week or month and use tools to help you follow people quickly, you can accomplish your task in under 10 minutes a day.

Here are the guides I’ve shared before that will help you get more followers on different networks, starting with Facebook:

• How to Get Your First 1,000 Likes
• How I Got 10K Real Followers in <7 Months

Get more followers on LinkedIn:

• The Definitive Guide to a LinkedIn Content Marketing Strategy
• How to Use LinkedIn: The Ultimate List of LinkedIn Tips

Get more followers on Pinterest:

• How to Get Pinterest Followers: The Ultimate Guide
• 12 Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers

Get more followers on Google+:

• How I Got 10K Real Followers in <7 Months
• How to Get at Least 500 More Google+ Followers by Next Week

Get more followers on Instagram:

• How to Get More Followers on Instagram
• How We Acquired 10,000 Followers and Exploded Our Business

Are you trying to drive traffic and leads? Probably the most common reason to use social media for a business is to drive traffic to your website in hopes of converting that traffic into leads.

This is a perfectly acceptable goal.

Getting followers is a prerequisite to this. Once you have a few thousand, you can start driving decent traffic back to your website.

You will drive most of your traffic by posting occasional links to your blog posts (or other content).

Again, you can do this in 10 minutes or less per day.

In addition, you can also respond to individual posts by other users or share content within groups to drive more traffic.

Sharing content within groups can drive a good amount of traffic, but it can’t be scheduled. The upside is it can be done whenever you want, so just include it in the one or two periods per day dedicated to social media.

Commenting on individual posts to drive traffic is a whole different strategy. While it can produce some results, it’s largely a waste of time.

The tactic is basically this: search for keywords and questions in your niche, and then post an answer with a link to your site.

For example, if I wanted to promote my article on the 22 best Gmail plugins, I would search for “what is the best Gmail plugin” on different social networks:

I could then post a reply with a link to my article (and an answer).

While this seems like a good idea at first, the reality is that you’ll spend 5 minutes just to find 1-3 good (relevant) questions to answer. Each answer will only drive a visitor or two.

This might be okay when you’re just starting a website, but it’s a waste of time for most because of its poor ROI.

Are you trying to build relationships? Another very useful feature of social media is the ability to communicate with almost anyone.

Until social media became popular, it was hard to get in touch with influencers.

Now, you can send them public messages, share their content, and interact with them through social media.

Interaction can be good if it is done with a purpose. The problem is that most marketers just follow a bunch of influencers and randomly interact with them.

Your strategy should be much more defined.

Pick a small group of influencers with whom you would like to build a relationship. Create, as Brian Dean calls it, a “hit list” of influencers.

Then, purposely seek out their updates during your scheduled social media time and interact with them.

3. Narrow your focus and save time

Marketers and entrepreneurs see opportunity everywhere.

If you see the potential in everything, that’s a great trait to have.

The problem that most of these people face (possibly you) is that they bite off more than they can chew.

They try to tackle every problem and take advantage of every opportunity but soon find they are burnt out and making no real progress.

If you spread yourself too thin, you can’t fully take advantage of any single opportunity.

When it comes to something like social media, consistency is everything. If you’re trying to be active on 5 or 6 different networks, you won’t be effective on any.

Start with one network, maybe two, and then add another after a few months if all is well.

You’ll notice that on all my blogs, I focus on no more than three social networks:

If you’ve been following my nutrition case study site, I (and Mike) am only focusing on one single network—Facebook.

If you’ve been following along, you know that almost all our initial traffic came from Facebook. Clearly, social media can drive massive traffic if you apply the right strategy to leverage it.

So, how do you pick the right network(s) to focus on?

You can use a few different methods to figure that out.

Option 1 – Spy on your competition: In 99.9% of niches, you’ll have some sort of competition already established.

Pick one (or a few) of your competitors, and plug their domain into Buzzsumo’s top content tool:

Even with a free account, this will bring up five or so results of the most shared content on your competitor’s site.

It should be sorted by “total shares” by default (see the down arrow under the heading), but click that heading if it isn’t.

Now, look at the top results, and see which networks are responsible for most of the shares.

In the above case, over 90% of the shares came from Facebook. When a network is that dominant, you can focus on that single network.

As a general rule, if a network is contributing 25%+ of the shares, it’s probably worth focusing on.

Since there can be anomalies when you’re only looking at one site, you can enter other competitors to double-check.

Alternatively, type a relevant keyword into the tool. In this case, I typed in “healthy eating”:

As expected, I saw the same results. Facebook shares dwarfed other networks for all top results.

Option 2 – Pick a channel based on demographics: Another method to determine which social network you should utilize is to look at the demographics of your audience such as:

• age
• gender
• income
• education
• location

Here’s a guide to finding the demographics of your audience.

Since we know what the demographics of each social channel are, you can find a network that matches your audience:

Obviously, you can always play it safe by sticking with Facebook, but if you have a business that’s focused on highly educated high income individuals, you might want to consider LinkedIn as a better choice.

Option 3 – Pick a channel based on content type: Finally, you can pick the right social network to focus on depending on the content you plan to produce.

If you’re an artist or decorator working within a predominantly visual niche, you want to use a platform that is also mostly visual.

Different networks support different content types:

Depending on your niche, the network that’s best for you might be different from that of your competitors. That’s why, if you’re using method #1, you need to pick a close competitor.

For example, a nutrition site might focus on recipes—highly visual. Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook are all good choices.

Another nutrition site, such as the case study site, might use a combination of text and images. Networks such as Facebook and Google+ are best for it.

Finally, another nutrition site might focus on featuring step-by-step cooking videos. YouTube would be the obvious candidate for that.

4. Create a calendar or face the consequences

Social media is incredibly easy to ignore.

If you miss a few posts here and there, there won’t be any immediate consequence.

But as I said before, consistency is the most important factor when it comes to social media success.

A social media calendar (or schedule) is a necessity if you want to use social media to grow your business.

The calendar will allow you to be consistent, keep on track, and track your results. Tracking your results is needed if you want to determine your progress and ROI.

A social media calendar/schedule can be set up in any way you wish—it’s up to you. But I’ll show you a few different options to help you decide what you want yours to look like.

Option #1 – Use a spreadsheet: Spreadsheets are incredibly versatile, which is why they can work for just about any business.

I’ve seen some incredibly complicated social media calendar spreadsheets…

as well as some simple spreadsheets…

Either one can work well—it depends on how much you utilize social media and how much detail you want to put into it.

With a spreadsheet calendar, you plan everything all at once (batch it!), and then schedule it all at once when you’re done.

Option #2 – Use Buffer: Buffer is an extremely popular social media tool that allows you to schedule posts with minimal effort.

Once you’ve set up an account and are logged in, click on “Schedule.”

Then, click on the main “content” tab. This will allow you to pick a network (on the left). Then, you can type in your share.

Once you’re done, you can add it to your queue of posts.

You can view your queue at any time and rearrange or edit posts as you like.

The great thing about Buffer is that once you set those initial posting times, you never have to worry about inputting or missing a date again.

In addition, Buffer works with all the major networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Option #3 – Use Hootsuite: Another option is to use Hootsuite, which used to be the leader in social media tools until Buffer came along.

For the purposes of scheduling, you’ll want to use the bulk schedule option inside Hootsuite:

Once you click the “bulk message uploader,” it will ask you to upload a CSV file (a type of spreadsheet).

You will need to create this spreadsheet beforehand.

The spreadsheet must be done in this order: date, message, link. One for each column.

The first column is the trickiest since the date must be written in one of two formats:

dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm OR

mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm

Your default settings for dates will likely be different from the required ones, so you will need to change them.

If you’re using Google Docs, you need to highlight the first column and then navigate to:

“Format > Number > More Formats > More date and time formats”

That will bring up a pop-up.

Use the small dropdown arrow (in the picture below) to pick each date element (day, month, etc.) in the correct order:

You will need to add a single “/” between the day, month, and year, and a single space between the year and the hour. Finally, put a colon between the hour and the minute fields.

When you’re done, click apply, and the changes will be made.

From here, it gets much easier. Enter your message (complete with hashtags) into the next column.

Finally, enter the corresponding links in the last column. It could be a full URL or a shortened one:

The main downside of this tool is that you can’t add pictures to the posts in the bulk uploader. Posts with pictures on Facebook get 53% more likes than those without. It varies based on the network, but in genearal, images help boost engagement by a significant amount.

Option #4 – Use CoSchedule: A final tool you can use is CoSchedule, which integrates perfectly with WordPress and is simple to use.

Click on the “Calendar” menu option in your admin dashboard once you’ve installed it:

It shows you a typical calendar, but on top of that, it lets you see when you have social media shares scheduled (which will happen automatically).

You can click on a day to enter a status update and move it to a different day by clicking and dragging if needed:

5. Monitor mentions with tools

Instead of messing around with each individual network, you can use tools to find when a reader or customer mentions you.

Usually, these are important messages to reply to, so it’s a good idea to monitor them and then address them all in your scheduled sessions for social media.

Option #1 – Search your brand with Mention.com: This tool is similar to Google Alerts but focuses on social media.

Once you create an account, you enter a keyword (such as your brand name), and it will automatically monitor social media sites for any mentions.

You can set it to send you a daily email of the results:

Option #2 – Have mentions monitored automatically with Hootsuite: One thing that Hootsuite is still well known for is monitoring mentions.

You can add keywords to any individual network, and it will monitor your mentions:

You can then see a live stream of all your mentions for keywords or your username in your main Hootsuite dashboard:

Bonus – get email alerts of Reddit mentions: Reddit isn’t always considered a social media site, but more and more marketers are recognizing its potential. If you’re not familiar with Reddit, refer to my guide to marketing on Reddit.

Most social media tools don’t work with Reddit. But there is a way for you to get an email any time someone mentions a keyword on the site (your brand name or a keyword).

This requires the use of a free tool called IFTTT, which stands for “If This, Then That.”

On IFTTT, you get to specify the event that occurs (the “this) as well as the action (the “that). It can be used to automate processes.

In this case, we will have it send you an email (the “that”) whenever a certain word is mentioned (the “this”).

Luckily, you can use this pre-made recipe to set it up quickly.

Once logged into IFTTT, visit that link and click “connect”:

This will open a small window asking for your permission to use information from your Reddit account. Allow this request:

Back on the recipe page, type in your trigger word. In my example below, I want to be alerted any time someone mentions “quicksprout.com”. There’s a link right below that text field that will help you search for other things other than site names.

Finally, click “add” at the very bottom to activate the recipe.

And you’re done!

6. Templates are the cornerstone of efficiency

A lot of social media work is repetitive.

You’ll start to see that most top posts look the same and that most of your posts fall under only a few categories.

A lot of tedious work can be avoided by using templates.

Automate reports with a social media report template: If you have a boss to report to or regular meetings where you examine social media results, it’s a good idea to create a social media report template.

This template should summarize your activity on social media as well as the results for a certain time period. If you like the one above, Buffer has generously shared it free.

Use headline formulas to compose posts faster: I’ve written several times on the topic of creating powerful headlines.

While headlines are usually most important for blog posts, you also need to write enticing headlines so that your other social media posts get a good level of engagement.

Instead of trying to come up with magical headlines every time you work on your social media post ideas, you can reuse successful headline templates.

Here are a few examples of what I mean by headline formulas:

• The secret of _____
• What you need to know about ______
• How to do _____
• ___ ways to do _____

Once you have a good list of formulas, you can easily write 10-20 social media post headlines in a minute.

Here are a few good sources for headline formulas:

• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
• 10 Headline Formulas For Great Social Media Engagement
• 30+ Ultimate Headline Formulas for Tweets, Posts, Articles, and Emails

Create visual templates in Canva: You need to use images on almost every social network if you want to get a high level of engagement.

But instead of hiring a designer or creating a picture from scratch, you can use templates specifically made for social media already in Canva.

When you log in, you’ll see many different template options. While you can create a picture from scratch (“use custom dimensions”), it’s easier to pick a template for your social network of choice.

Once you click the type of picture you want to make, a new canvas will be made that’s the right size for your network:

The layouts window on the left will be selected by default.

Pick any template you want, and it will load on the canvas on the right.

From there, you can click on any of the picture elements (background, text, symbols, etc.) and edit them as you like:

Once you’re done, click “download” from the top menu bar.

Once you’re used to this, you can create great looking pictures in under 2 minutes. If you batch your image creation (highly recommended), you can finish all your pictures for the month in under a few hours.

Conclusion

A strong social media presence can be a valuable asset for almost any business.

However, just like with any other part of your business, you need to make sure that it delivers a reasonable ROI on your time and resources.

If you’re wasting many hours a week aimlessly wandering in the jungle of social media, you will not be able to achieve a sustainable ROI.

Use the different methods I’ve shown you in this article to streamline your social media activities, and you’ll find that you only need a few hours per week to manage your social media accounts.

On top of that, you’ll probably start seeing better results once you’re crystal clear on your goals and purpose.

Let me know how much time you typically spend on social media—and what kind of results you’ve achieved so far—by leaving me a comment below.

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