What social media marketing strategy templates would you recommend?

I started on Clarity just by answering questions last summer. I used to love Quora but really disagreed with a number of changes they made and so when Clarity launched answers, I started answering questions. I'm incredibly busy but let's face it: we all have extra time. We spend it looking at our phones, on Facebook, socializing with friends, whatever way each person does it, we all spend time on non mission critical stuff. Because I genuinely enjoy helping others, I treated Quora as a way of relaxing the same way others would read news sites or blogs. And so I switched all that time to Clarity by answering questions. I don't recall the exact specifics but by providing real answers (not just, "call me, I can help you), I had my first call request within about a month of my first answer. And I got a nice review. And some more questions answered, and a couple more calls, and a couple more reviews. And from that point, the call volume increased. Simultaneously, I started referring all "can I pick your brain" requests on LinkedIn and email to my Clarity account. And so some calls initiated that way. More reviews. Now, a year later, I have done over 200 calls, with the majority of it inbound from Clarity. Take it from me, if you make the time, and provide genuine help to people, you will get rewarded for it. But like anything in life, if you're not willing to invest the time and resources, you're unlikely to see any return.

I've been in the picture messaging space for a while now with my apps Lutebox (voted one of London's top ten most loved apps) and now Click Messenger. I've written a few articles about the space including a recent post about the Future of Mobile Messaging. Snapchat started out as an app called Picaboo, which pretty much did what it does now (prior to the latest update with chat and video calling). They quickly rebranded but saw a little uptake in user numbers and had quite low downloads for several months. Then around Christmas 2011 one of the founders' mom had told her friend about the app, who told her kid and her kid basically then spread the word throughout their high school in L.A. That was what really blew up their download numbers as it spread across teenagers at local high schools. As far as I know they didn't advertise in the early days, relied solely on word of mouth. Also it is assumed that they have a solid user base. Comparatively speaking, their user base may be in the low tens of millions, which may a great base of users, but nowhere even close to being as big as Facebook or Twitter. I'd be happy to speak about this in more detail or about the picture messaging landscape and what I believe to be the future of mobile messaging.

Hi! I am owner of an ice crean chain with 45 stores in Chile. We have stores in shopping centers, streets and also karts that you can put in events and parks. The average cost margin of ice cream (depends on the amount of materials you use in producing the ice cream) is around 40%. This is italian gelatto where you serve the ice cream without a specific measurement so your costs can vary due to the size of each portion you serve. About the brand you should focus on your unique value proposition and what kind of ice cream you are selling. We import the pastry from Italy and the fruits and milk from our country. Your ROI depends on your sales price and costs. If you focus on high market ice cream you can charge high and keep costs down.

It can certainly be tough to build up a substantial follower base, starting from nothing or very little, especially if you haven't launched your product yet. But here are a few tactics to help you get in front of more people pre-launch: 1) Start sharing tons of useful content. Before you bother sending people to your Twitter feed or Facebook page, you want to make sure they'll find something valuable once they get there. If you have the time, create original content that ties into your industry, your product, or your company in some way (without directly promoting yourself, though). If you don't have the bandwidth to create your own content, find other articles from bloggers you admire or experts in your industry, and share their content. Just make sure you're putting out information that's highly relevant and valuable to the audience you're trying to attract so you can engage them once they find you. 2) Create conversation. The people who aren't following you yet aren't seeing your tweets, so how do you show them value and get them to discover you? Start a conversation! At Change Collective, we're rolling out our first course on Becoming an Early Riser. So I'll do a Twitter search for "need to wake up earlier" and find a bunch of people who are tweeting about the exact problem we're setting out to solve. By favoriting their tweets or replying with -- "That's great! We think we can help - check out our newest course & let us know what you think!" -- I'm getting our product on their radar and simultaneously providing value to them. 3) Ask for help. Start with your fellow team members, and ask them to share the company's Facebook posts or retweet some of your tweets. You can even create lazy tweets for them to share. What about your board members? Advisors? VCs? They all have a stake in helping your company grow awareness and adoption, so find an easy and appropriate way for them to help by leveraging their networks. And if you have friends and family who are excited about your business and supportive of what you're doing, they probably won't mind a friendly request to help spread the news every once in a while. Hope this helps! I just joined an early-stage startup and I'm currently building up our marketing from scratch. Happy to jump on a call and offer some tips from the trenches if you'd like. Best of luck!

Back when I started LinkedIn wasn't as huge as it is now. I wish it was. I didn't have a large network and those networking sessions NEVER brought me any clients. I used to go to all sorts of them hoping to get clients. There were a couple of nibbles here and there, but never anything serious. The only thing that helped was reaching out DIRECTLY to people in my target market. That meant cold calls and cold emails. I'd sell myself while thinking about their needs. Once I got a few bites I'd build good rapport by keeping in touch, asking questions, repeating back what they were saying so that they knew I was on the same page and kept my promises. If I said I'd call them back next Tuesday at 2:15 I'd do so. Eventually I built trust with them without having a network, or an insane amount of experience. Oh and the most important thing about consulting is to LISTEN. When those first clients notice that you're truly listening and you're not selling the cookie cutter solutions everyone else is trying to sell them that's when you got them hooked. You start to understand their problems, fears, and see through their eyes and not just yours. A network will help, but in the beginning just good 'ol salesmanship will get the ball rolling.