Monday 30 November 2015

Effective Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Content

ou’ve spent hours researching, analyzing, and finally creating compelling content to help you reach whatever content marketing objective you have. social media marketing strategy template Just like authors who write a book, you’ll probably need to spend as much if not more time promoting the content than the actual writing of it. Where better to promote your content than where we spend more than 25% of our online time: Social media. 80% of marketers are already promoting their content in social media – but are they doing it effectively?Before we get deep into the social media tactics, ensure you are planning out your content — and your social media updates — on an editorial content calendar. This will ensure every piece of content gets properly promoted in an organized manner. Download this free editorial calendar template to start planning today.Now it’s time to take your social media promotion to the next level.tweet-thisHere are 11 effective ways to use social media to promote your content that you might not already be doing enough of. We all know that tweets with images get more engagement. We’ve known for awhile that photos on Facebook get more engagement. Even images on LinkedIn get more engagement. Three of the “newest” social networks, Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat, are based entirely on the visual. So why aren’t you leveraging the visual when promoting your content? Create not only a branded “featured image” to share with your post, but also create separate images for each of the main points in your content so that they can be shared when you repeatedly post them to social media (see below for more on that point). Check out my post on top social media for business quotes for an example that clearly illustrates how to leverage the visual.
Create a new title that you will use to share your content in social media. Don’t just settle for one title: Because you should be posting your content multiple times, social media marketing resume you should be creating multiple titles and even doing A/B testing to see what types of headlines are more effective to promote your content on what social networks. You might also want to use a tool like BuzzSumo to help you research effective titles for the same type of content per social network. When sharing content, take advantage of the customizable posting features allowed on the social media platform being used. This includes the headline, image and a description of the content you are sharing. Every marketer and social media user is competing to catch the user’s eye, so the more optimized your post is for that particular platform the more effective your social media promotion will be.For example, if you shared a link via Facebook, you have the opportunity to create a post that truly will stand out amongst the rest; all you need is an attention-grabbing headline, a clean, relevant image that piques interest which might be different from the featured image used in your content, and a short, compelling description.With this formula, you can entice readers to click on your content. In the same manner, appending your content with hashtags can help make your content more discoverable for those social networks that support them.Though this tip may seem like common sense, most content marketers get too caught up in other aspects and overlook this simple concept. Because you want the content you are sharing to reach as many people as possible for maximum engagement, you have to go where the crowd is and when they are most likely online and active.

Social Media by the Numbers

The answer is an astounding yes. Social media allows smaller sized companies to compete against some of the larger companies and reach more customers. social media marketing campaigns There are plenty of stats that showcase just how powerful social media is for businesses of all sizes. Here are some powerful numbers that make it more than evident that social media is the way to go in 2015.Despite the growing popularity of social media, and our dependency on sites like Facebook and Twitter for information, some businesses have still been hesitant to jump aboard. There’s skepticism around its effectiveness for local small businesses. We see huge brands like Coca-Cola, Nike and Starbucks using social media with great success, but what about the average coffee shop around the corner or a non-celebrity dentist? Can they use social media to grow their businesses in 2015?Social media has crossed over from being a tool that only forward-thinking companies should use. These stats show that social media marketing has become a necessity just like paid ads, flyers and other “traditional” marketing efforts. In order to compete today, businesses can’t afford not to be active on social media.Despite all of these stats, some businesses still aren’t sold on social media as a marketing tool. In fact, one in three small businesses don’t think social media is important for their business. One of the primary reasons for this is simply because they don’t realize all of the benefits it has to offer yet. And this is partially understandable due to the nature of social media. It’s used as a way to build brand awareness, fuel content marketing and other important aspects that aren’t as measurable as what small businesses are used to.It’s time to do away with the old mindset and outdated views of marketing. The Internet has completely changed the way your business has to look at marketing. And social media is the perfect example of this shift.
When is the last time you filled out a customer survey? If you’re like most people, it’s probably been months or even years. social media marketing service The old ways of finding out information about consumers aren’t as effective today. People have grown to hate unsolicited messages from marketers and will only fill out a survey if there’s some type of gift at the end which can taint the data. Social media gives you the opportunity to find out about your customers in a completely non-intrusive way.On top of that, you have the ability to see what your ideal customers are Tweeting about, what they put up on Instagram and other social media activity. All of this information lets you get a deeper look into who your customers are and what they like/dislike. Before social media you’d have to pay thousands of dollars to put together focus groups. But now it’s all at your finger tips.People aren’t afraid to voice their opinions on social media. That makes it a great place to get honest and raw feedback of what people think about your products or services. You can monitor what’s being said about your business and resolve issues right away. This is a huge advantage.In the past, if a customer was unhappy with the service at your business they would just go home and tell their friends. So not only do you lose them as a customer, but you’re also losing potential customers as well without ever knowing about it. But in the social media age, when people don’t like the service they receive they Tweet about it publicly. So if you’re monitoring mentions of your company name you’ll be able to see it and fix the issue which could save you from losing customers.People don’t only Tweet negative things about companies. Social media has done an amazing job of breaking down the wall that used to exist between businesses and customers.

Let your fans and followers vote

Voting allows fans to have a say in the brand’s direction, whether it’s helping choose something as light-hearted as a t-shirt design, or as important as a magazine cover photo. With engagement apps, social media marketing conference fans can vote for their favorite destination, product, design — or marketing theme — and share their vote. Those voting results, enriched by commentary and insights, can provide content that fuels other branded channels and provides wider audience insights into how the crowd thinks and feels about your brand. Vitamin Water successfully deployed this idea with its social ‘favor creator’ campaign back in 2009. More recently, Outside Magazine tapped social fans to pick the ‘Best Town of the Year’ in 2011, 2012 and again in 2013 — campaigns that also fed valuable content for both the print and online magazine.A brand experience tailored to a user’s profile provides fans with something unique that keeps them exploring. Engagement apps can deliver a personalized experience, such as a set of product and service choices, white papers and case studies, or even fashion outfits, and reflect the identity revealed in their profile data. The clothing brand Jones NY is currently leveraging followers’ LinkedIn profiles this fall with their Style Creator campaign, allowing executive women to have outfits suggested based on their professional LinkedIn profile.Contributions from fans don’t just make the community feel like a more essential part of a brand, they also help brand marketers delegate content creation. Social engagement apps can ask fans to submit photos, videos, or other stories on a brand-related theme. That fan-submitted content can then enrich a brand’s own marketing channels. For example, Dressy.
Challenge your fans, to get their attention and their engagement. Challenges can take the form of quizzes or polls that test a fan’s knowledge. effective social media marketing They can pose questions for which the answers are informative and useful, and themselves become shareable results. Earlier this year, Air New Zealand launched a “Kiwi IQ” quiz that challenged fans’ knowledge of New Zealand sights by asking them to decide whether a photo or fact was about Auckland or about San Francisco. On a similar travel-related note, Visit Norway USA challenged their fans earlier this year to answer questions about Norway facts — a question a day for a month.Fans will be more likely to come back to a brand if they learn something about themselves by interacting with your brand or branded content. With engagement apps, access to a user’s profile can yield valuable personal insights that the user may not have noticed. By logging in with social credentials, a fan or follower might be able to see patterns or relationships in their profile they hadn't seen before, or might see how they become ‘matched’ to some brand-related identity or product. For example, Microsoft launched a “Nametag Analyzer” powered by LinkedIn’s professional graph that gave followers a new look at their job title, while at the same time was introducing them to Microsoft products.Success on social means finding a brand voice that resonates with fans and followers. Having audiences contribute content, discuss content, and talk about wider themes that relate to a brand is a way to cultivate a more prominent voice.Marketing on social shouldn't involve just talking about a brand’s products and services endlessly. Delivering informative and entertaining content is essential.

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