Adam Houlahan is rapidly making a name for himself in the world of social media, 3 years ago he did not have a Facebook account, had never seen Twitter or linkedIn. Roll forward to 2014 & his profile is rated by LinkedIn in the top 1% world wide, they use his profile in their own marketing campaigns. He has amassed a follower base in excess of 250,000 people globally across multiple networks, that still grows by thousands of new followers every week.
His first book Social Media Secret Sauce is available now, he is also a guest author for The 7 Pillars (an on line subscription based book) specialising in Social Media advice. Visit him here.
NAW- Tell us about your book, Social Media Secret Sauce. How did you get the idea for it?
The idea came after I developed my training course Social Media Mentor 2 Success, course participants felt it would help to have some idea of the concepts in the course before attending. I felt the easiest way to do that was to write a book.
NAW- Social media presence is a must for commercial organisations today. How did you develop such a large following of your own in such a short period of time?
It took thousands of hours of trial and error to perfect the process, but now I spend only 10 minutes a day. My follower numbers across all of my profiles grow by around 5,000 new people every week. The book essentially outlines a simple process anyone can use to achieve the same results.
NAW- What will be the key takeaways from your book for a reader who is a novice in the field of social media marketing?
It will give them the right things to focus on, most novices tend to get distracted by the “social” aspect of social media. It can really eat up your time. It will also show them where to find the tools to have your computer working for you 24 hours a day so you do not have to.
NAW- Do you believe in the age old adage, Content is King? Since link building methods can get a site in trouble or even banned by google, what are some of the key strategies a site must employ to come first in search results?
Yes one of the chapters in Social Media Secret Sauce is called “Content is King” it is more relevant in social media than most other media. Google constantly updates it’s algorithms, attempting to improve your ranking using these methods will bring you unstuck at some point.
Concentrating on high quality content and high engagement on your content is a great long term strategy.
NAW- Does it require a lot of time spending for building up a strong media presence? Typically, how much time do you spend on your social networks?
When you get started of course it takes longer, however the whole point of the book is to show you how to create a very strong presence in no more than 1 hour a day. I spend less than 30 minutes per day now.
NAW- Do you get a lot of spam? I think one of the reasons why people shy away from social media networks is the amount of spam one gets from it. I have no interest in many social media sites but they somehow get my email from my friends and keep pestering me with invites.
Yes spam can be an issue, I have a recent blog post on my website about this. There are some great tools available now that assists to control this.
NAW- Tell us about yourself. What do you do when you are not writing?
We have a large family, our 5 children keep us very busy. I am also busy working with clients all over the world helping them with their social media objectives.
NAW- What are you working on next?
For now I am developing some video training courses, early next year I will be starting the research phase of my next book. It is a little too early to be able to share what it is about, however it is of course about social media.
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