BECOME A SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER
INTRODUCTION: WHAT IN THE WORLD IS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Any business that does not use social media marketing strategies these days is missing out on all the benefits that such strategies can bring your business. Just think of how far they’ve come from being considered as novelty about five years ago. Now, businesses and organizations simply cannot do without social media. In fact, it is already considered a critical part of their marketing mix.
In 2013, more marketers looked to social media marketing with more value. About 86% of them cited that social media is a significant part of their business, while 89% of them said that it benefits them by increasing their exposure to the market.
Social media marketing can give several benefits, such as increased exposure, improved traffic, more loyal fans, increased leads, new business relationships, improved search engine ranking, increased sales, reduced marketing costs, and better marketplace insight.
The fact that Facebook already has more than 1.26 billion users, with 1.23 billion of them being active on the social networking site every month, is more than enough proof of how big social media has become. And this is expected to continue in the years to come. Now, why would you choose to 7
GROWING YOUR BUSINESS VIA SOCIAL MEDIA
You can develop your business using social media. But it all starts with being active on the social networks that matter and never let the customers forget about you. One way to continue reminding them that you’re still around is to make some noise on your social pages.
As a business owner, you should at least have a basic working knowledge of what social media marketing is all about.
You should know how to connect with people, especially your target market, through social media, to create excellent content that moves people to act, and to create relationships.
Social media marketing is about communicating with your target audience, informing them about your business, and eventually getting them involved.
It could produce customer feedback, leads, and the opportunity to give them excellent customer service.
But you will not get the response that you are hoping for unless you share your information the right way. There are a few steps that you need to follow if you want to use social media to help your business grow.
DEVELOP A STRATEGIC PLAN
Social media marketing must be executed with a strategy that encompasses your goal and the measures of success. The best plan is to develop social media engagement. It should include how frequently you are going to produce content, what the voice of the business will be, and what response you expect to get from the people. It is not about hard selling, but about forging relationships. Do not overdo your sales pitch. Instead, try to gain your audience’s trust.
STIR THE INTEREST OF YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS
Monitor and update your social media accounts regularly so as not to neglect the queries, comments and even complaints of your potential customers or existing ones. Timely responses are necessary to lower the chances of ruining customer relationships. It would be even better to attract your customers’ attention using visuals, such as beautiful or funny photos, which are often easy to share. Hone your timing in joining conversations. You can also look for the latest object of your customers’ affection by searching for #hashtags, Facebook posts, or tweets.
BUILD A SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY FOR GREAT PROJECTS
Social media marketing can be used for the long haul. You can maximize its potentials if you get help from a social media community, such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, who shares the same interests as you do. You can convince friends and their friends and colleagues to join that community, but as it grows, rules must be established.
BLOG, BLOG, BLOG
Blogging is a proven effective tool in social media marketing. Your blog serves as your home base with your Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites serving as feeders that bring traffic to your blog. Every new blog brings new sales and traffic opportunities. The typical consumer behavior is to read about 10 blogs before making a buying decision.
ENGAGE THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA
If you’re on social media, be prepared to interact with followers. This means starting conversations, responding to questions, and being friends with your customers online. Use it to forge relationships
AVOID HARD SELLING
Do not abuse the social media sites as your avenue for selling. Instead, focus more on engaging your followers instead of bombarding them with calls to action do something for you, if you don’t want them to stop following you. Whatever social media outlet becomes popular over the years, one thing is for sure – social media marketing will always be useful to businesses and marketers.
SOCIAL MEDIA STATISTICS YOU SHOULD KNOW
If you want to make the most out of your social media account, it is important that you know how to use it and knowing the latest social media statistics would help.
Here are the latest statistics that you need to know before creating your social media strategies:
• The most passionate advocates have the smallest following.
When social monitoring site Mention studied more than 1 billion social mentions for two years, they learned that 91% of mentions are made by people with less than 500 followers.
While you should interact with power users, don’t forget about engaging social media users with a few followers because most of them will be the ones talking about you.
• Written content is more valuable than visuals, according to marketers.
A 3,000-respondent survey by Social Media Examiners among marketers showed that about 58% of them believe that original written content is the most important form of content in social media, while only 19% valued visuals.
Use written content to establish yourself as an expert in your niche and improve brand awareness. Post a good story about your brand.
Retweets are best done late at night.
They are most effective when done between 10pm and 11pm ET and on Sundays, according to Track Maven. They should also come with the world “Retweet” in all caps or with exclamation points to increase retweets. You can test this theory out and see how it impacts your engagement.
• Twitter responses have to be done in less than an hour. According to a Lithium Technologies research, 53% of the users who tweet you expect your reply within the hour. Use tools to monitor your customer support tweets and check your Twitter email alerts to respond to your tweets fast.
• Fridays are the best day of the week for Facebook users. According to Adobe, Fridays receive more likes, shares, and comments than any other day of the week, after analyzing more than 225 billion Facebook posts Make sure to include Friday for your Facebook posting schedule.
• Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are the most effective traffic drivers. Social sharing website Shareaholic showed that that these Three social media sites that refer more traffic. On the other hand, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube are the top three sites when it comes to pages per visit, time on site, and bounce rate. If you want to increase brand awareness, choose Twitter and Facebook, and maybe Pinterest, too. If you’re aiming for qualified traffic, focus more on YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Pinterest has a different category pulling in the most engagement each day
. Monday is for fitness; Tuesday is for technology; Wednesday is for inspirational quotes; Thursday is for fashion; Friday is for humor; Saturday is for travel; and Sunday is for food and crafts. Make a Pinterest board that covers all these topics and create a schedule based on the findings above.
• Target 28, 118, or 385 interactions for each Facebook post.
According to Social Bakers, social media pages with up to 9,999 fans need 28 interactions per post; those with 10,000 to 99,999 fans need 118; and those with 100,000 to 499,999 fans need 385. Interactions refer to shares, comments, and likes in total. The more interactions your post gets, the wider its reach. Monitor your Facebook page using these benchmarks
• There are 6 unique conversation networks on Twitter.
These are the following: a. Polarized crowds, which discuss polarizing topics, such as politics, and do not interact with groups they are in disagreement with;
b. Tight crowds, which usually consist of professionals, conferences, or hobby groups that interact about ideas, opinions, and information;
c. Brand clusters, which discuss celebrities and products that are of mass interest but with minimal connectivity;
d. Community clusters, which discuss popular topics and global news events and are often disconnected from each other;
e. Broadcast network, which usually consists of the loyal followers of pundits and media outlets who have little interaction with each other;
f. Support network, which are created as government agencies, organizations, and companies respond to customer queries, requests, and complaints, with the company or organization replying to disconnected users.
If you want brand engagement, target the community clusters and tight crowds, and possibly the support networks. Find the Twitter network that suits you best.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS THAT REALLY MATTER
Social media is here to stay, that is, if you want to maintain your online existence. Marketers hold onto it for their business’ dear life. But if you use it for the sole purpose of marketing, this is when things might get confusing.
HOW TO CHOOSE A PLATFORM
That’s because there are a lot of social media sites, various methods to engage your audience, and the different styles used in each platform. So how you should you choose the best platform for you? You will find out after answering these questions.
What does your target audience use?
Determine which social media site your audience use. Not all your followers are actual people.
• Which site has the most active audience? Having many users does not automatically mean lots of activity. Google has 1 billion users, but only 35% were actively using their account in the past month.
• Which site does your audience use for searching?
Every minute, millions of searches are done on Google, Facebook and Twitter. If you stay active on
these platforms, your audience may find you. •
Which is the most suitable social media site for your niche?
If one site works for others, it might not necessarily work for you because of your niche. Find one that is frequented by businesses with the same offering as you have. Use these questions to guide you to which platform you should use.
THE TOP FOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
The top four sites that really matter include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Facebook Facebook is the biggest social network with its more than 1.3 billion users. It has been around for 10 years, with more than half of its users actively using it daily. Each visit lasts for 18 minutes on average. 18 Aside from browsing for updates or looking at photos, a Facebook is also connected to about 80 pages, events or groups. This is how you can reach them.
Each Twitter user, who has an average of 208 followers and 307 Tweets and spends an average of 170 minutes on their profile, presents a marketing opportunity. Half of its signups remain active daily, with 29% of them visiting their Twitter several times each day. Twitter is more about engaging customers for their brand loyalty. About 85% of Twitter users feel a connection to a business that they are following on Twitter.
There are two new LinkedIn sign ups every second. Now, it has over 270 million users, creating another social media giant. Marketers love Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ and often ignore LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn is actually the ideal platform for B2B marketing. The site is proud of its mostly professional users, who are linked to companies. If you don’t want to miss out on a lot of social media love, make sure to stay active on LinkedIn, too.
Google+
Marketers consider 2014 as Google+’s year. They even predicted its growing impact on social media, which did come true. Given how Google+ is backed up by the biggest search engine in the world and the effect of Google Authorship, it’s no surprise that it has become as big as it is today. It is now an engagement mine due to its collaboration with Hangouts. Whatever it is that you are trying to sell, say or do for the sake of marketing, make sure to stay active on these social media platforms.
HOW SOCIAL MEDIA TRAFFIC CAN BOOST YOUR WEBSITE RANKING
There are claims that search engines are out and social media is in when it comes to searching for information online. However, this is not the case now, but there might be merit to such claims. Social media has truly changed the way people find and share content, although it has not totally removed the significance of Google, Bing and Yahoo to searchers. But one thing that is certain is that social media has become an important factor that search engines consider when indexing content. It affects your website ranking in various ways.
SOCIAL SHARES ARE CONSIDERED LINK BUILDING
For years, businesses have used both legitimate and illegitimate ways to get links to their website and improve their rankings. However, things have changed. Now, links are obtained by creating original content and sharing it online, especially across social media. Links from your Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks to your content will
show the search engines that your website is credible with useful content and that it should be ranked for the keyword phrases that you used. Look at how a link that is retweeted a number of times compared to a link that did not receive a single tweet will be more visible in Google and other search engines since it is assumed to have more valuable content for being shared several times on social media.
Produce great content on social media to attract audiences and search engines alike. But the most important thing is still to engage your followers and establish real relationships with them to gain their trust and hopefully, their social shares.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT SPEEDS UP INDEXATION PROCESS
Search engines consider content shared across social networks. The more links your website gets, the quicker it gets indexed.
Since social media can drive links to your web content faster, it can usually hasten the indexation process. For instance, content that has received more retweets may cut indexation time by 50, while cutting the time it takes for the search engine bots to locate your content from two hours to two seconds.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING INCREASES BRAND AWARENESS
When you talk to people on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network, you seem more “real” to them.
Your image is now more than just a corporation that is disconnected from your customers. Instead, you talk to them while tackling real issues related to your products and services. It is like having an actual relationship with them, which will likely give you customer loyalty and long-term business.
VALUABLE CONTENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS SHAREABLE
If people find useful or informative content on social media, they would share it with friends and followers to spread the information or make their profile more interesting. But regardless of the reason why they share it, the most important thing is that they are helping spread the word about your business. The wider the reach of the information, the better it will be for your website rankings.
KEYWORDS FROM YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILE AND CONTENT BOOST YOUR KEYWORD RANKING
They keywords found on your social media account and the content posted in it will have an impact on your content ranking in search engines. Usually, search engines look at your URL, name, and bio. That’s why you need to
fill your profile with relevant information while naturally inserting the name of your company and your keywords. These are only some of the ways social media affect your website rankings. But the bottom line will always be that it has become an even bigger factor for search engines to consider while determining website rankings.
: INCREASING YOUR BLOG TRAFFIC WITH SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Seeing as how influential social media marketing can be to the promotion of your business, you need to find ways to maximize its benefits, especially in driving traffic to your website.
You may even focus on increasing your blog traffic using several techniques that involve the social networks. Here are some ways to drive traffic to your blog using social media marketing:
• Publish blog content on your social media.
There are tools that will automatically post links to your blog content on your Facebook or Twitter profiles. Link it to your Google+, LinkedIn, and other social media accounts as well. Familiarize yourself with the different social media profile settings so you’ll know how to take care of issues such as this.
• Link your social media profile to your blog.
Include the URL of your blog in your social media profiles. It should be found in your Facebook profile, Twitter bio, LinkedIn profile, and YouTube channel description, among others.
• Put ‘follow me’ on your blogs.
Add the ‘follow me’ icon to your blog’s sidebar to encourage people to connect with you via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networks. Even if people did not initially visit your blog, they would have a way to easily find it through your social media profile.
• Simplify social media sharing for your visitors.
Your blog should be easy to share on your readers’ social media profiles. Put visually noticeable social sharing icons on your blog’s sidebar or home page, or at the bottom of each post.
• Take advantage of social tools and widgets.
Social media sites usually have free tools and widgets to help promote your blog content and increase its exposure on your profile. Add them to your blog or websites.
• Promote blog contests on your social media profiles.
These should help drive short-term traffic to your blog, while increasing awareness about the contest. • Use cross-profile publishing tools. There are scheduling tools like TweetDeck, SproutSocial, or HootSuite that can automatically publish the links to your blog content on several social media profiles simultaneously. This should be less hassle on your part.
• Join social media groups and share your relevant content. You can find many of these groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Search for active groups on these social media platforms that discuss topics relevant to yours. Join them and interact with the other members by posting comments and starting conversations. Eventually, you might get to share the links to your most relevant blog content without being too promotional about it.
• Stay active on social media.
Aside from publishing your blog posts on your social media profiles, be active and interact with other users. Retweet their tweets and share their content too.
• Gather people on social media.
You could try a TweetChat and talk about your topic or any other relevant topic. Make your relationships real by meeting your local followers and fellow tweeters.
• Change your existing content to suit various social media destinations.
You could convert YouTube videos into tweets, SlideShare presentations, blog posts, podcasts or any other form of social media content. This should increase exposure for that specific content on social media.
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