TwitterToolsReviews

35 Ways to Get More Retweets
6 Creative Ways to Use Embedded Facebook Posts
18 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros
How to Use Social Media to Promote an Event

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 10:11 PM PST

There are many great reasons for marketing your business on twitter. First of all, it's free. Secondly, you are able to use twitter to connect with people who are directly relevant to you.

Connections on twitter can be made by searching for relevant conversations, by using twitter marketing software like TweetAdder to build relevant connections, and by building connections and relationships organically.

Below are fifteen of my favorite tips for marketing yourself and your business on twitter. I also recorded a podcast of myself discussing these twitter marketing tactics. Enjoy, and please retweet!

1. Schedule your Tweets

Scheduling your tweets helps your best content gain the maximum amount of traction of Twitter.

I use Hootsuite to schedule tweets ahead of time so I always have fresh content in my feed.

Seek to schedule your best stuff for Thursday and Friday between 3pm to 5pm.

Everyone has a different audience and it follows that everyone has different best times to tweet.

Check out this Twitter timing tips post to find out the best time for you to tweet.

2. Shorten your Links with Style

There are a few different link shorteners that I recommend using. They are: bit.ly, j.mp, goo.gl, and su.pr.

bit.ly has built in analytics, allowing you to see exactly how many people have clicked any bit.ly link by adding a + to the end of the link.

3. Tweet Often

By tweeting daily you show the twitter world that you are serious about Twitter, and you will increase your chance of gaining new followers significantly.

Manage Twitter makes it easy to unfollow "Inactive" twitterers. If you remain active on Twitter then you will never run the risk of people unfollowing you on Manage Twitter for inactivity.

4. Facilitate Conversations

There are several ways that you can get conversations going.

Post content and create coversations about that. Talk to people about content you have on your blog, and talk about any products or services you have to offer.

I always try to post cool and useful stuff to my community. I post content that people actually want to retweet.

5. Be Creative

Engage the banter around trending topics through clever promotional copy. Brevity is the art of wit. Be brief, and brilliant.

6. Pace Yourself

Piggy-back on Twitter trends strategically. Don't abandon straight-forward promotional tweets as part of your marketing mix.

7. Don't spam

One or two tweets an hour is plenty. Conversational posts are an exception to this rule. The more conversation, the better, and all of your followers won't see these anyways, unless they are following both people who are talking.

8. Be a Master Asker

Don't be afraid to ask for a specific action on your Twitter feed, for example a retweet. Ask and you shall receive. If you don't ask for retweets, people may not give them to you.

9. Make sure to Tweet on Friday

Friday is the busiest day on twitter, especially in the afternoon, so make sure you are tweeting your best stuff out then, even if you have to schedule it.

10. Brand Your Tweets

Using a program like Market Me Suite you can brand your Tweets so that every tweet you send is sent with a link that has the custom anchor text you choose.

If you have a website that you are trying to optimize for specific keywords in Google you can boost your rankings by automatically building a backlink to your website with every tweet you send.

The tool that allows you to custom brand your tweets is called Market Me Suite and I currently have a video in production showing exactly how to set up branded tweets with Market Me Suite.

11. Install a twitter counter into your website or blog

Once you build your following with a tool like TweetAdder or by building connections manually, this is a great widget to install. Showing how many twitter followers you have is a great way to establish social proof and expertise.

12. Choose a Memorable Username

Ashton Kutcher uses @aplusk.

My username @Garin is only 5 letters long so it gives me plenty of room to write long tweets and still be retweeted.

Shorter is better for twitter usernames.

13. Build a Powerful Following

TweetAdder has helped me build my twitter presence more than anything else.

Having a strong following is not all about just having followers. You can have millions of followers but it means nothing if none of them click or retweet your links. The more targeted your network is and the more value you share with your audience the greater your influence will be.

Check out my TweetAdder video review for learn why TweetAdder is powerful for creating a targeted and highly engaged Twitter following.

14. Don't Be All Business

Be social. If all you do is tweet links you could be a robot.

Engage. Interact. Get to know people.

Build lists of similar people. The more you list others, the more you will be listed.

15. Participate in #FollowFriday

Follow Friday is a great way to promote people you connect with throughout the week.

Many people you suggest for follow Friday will return the favor, especially if they have engaged with you before.

Some people have built tens of thousands of followers simply by recommending many others on #FollowFriday, and then gaining new followers those people reciprocate the #Follow recommendation.

Aim to recommend people with sizeable followings for #FollowFriday so you can gain the most from a reciprocal recommendation.

#FollowFriday is also a cool way to say thanks to the people who RT you throughout the week.

How do you market on Twitter? Do you currently have a Twitter campaign in progress?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post 35 Ways to Get More Retweets appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

6 Creative Ways to Use Embedded Facebook Posts

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 03:31 PM PST

Kristi Hines

By Kristi Hines
Published September 23, 2013

Would you like more people to see your Facebook posts?

Have you used Facebook's new feature to embed posts on your website or blog?

Embedding Facebook updates on your website can help you increase visibility and engagement.

How can you creatively use embedded posts as a part of your Facebook marketing strategy?

Let's find out!

Here's How It Works

Twitter isn't the only embeddable social media. In July, Facebook announced the ability to embed public posts onto your website with a few lines of code.

You can embed most public posts from a personal profile or a page. To do so, go to your news feed, profile or page and click on the drop-down arrow at the top right of the post. You'll see the option to embed the post.

Locating the Facebook embed post option.

When you click on this, you'll get a popup showing how the post will look and the code to use. Copy this code and paste it where desired on your website or blog.

Example of embed code.

The result?

Post by Social Media Examiner..

As of now, you can only embed public posts from profiles and pages.

Unfortunately, you can't embed public posts from within groups or comments on a Facebook post. Hopefully that will be added in the future.

And your ability to embed posts depends on the privacy settings used by the person who created the post. You'll only be able to embed a post if the privacy settings were set to public.

Here are six easy ways marketers can use Facebook's embedded posts.

#1: Demonstrate Social Proof

Since Graph Search hit the scene, the ability to search people's public posts has been disabled, so it's not easy to find posts to use as elements of social proof on Facebook.

But you can simply keep an eye out for positive posts made on your page and embed them on your website to create social proof.

Look for positive posts in your Recent Posts by Others box.

Finding social proof on your Facebook page wall.

To see if you can embed them (based on the user's privacy settings), click on the timestamp beneath the message, then look for the drop-down with the embed code.

Finding the embed code for posts by others on your wall.

Embed these positive posts as social proof or testimonials on your website.

#2: Support Content with Examples

If you blog about social media (specifically Facebook), you'll want to give examples by embedding a live Facebook update directly on your website. For example, instead of relying on screenshots of the types of updates brands do on their Facebook pages, you can embed a live post instead.

Post by Kia Motors Worldwide.

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Best of all, if you're trying to compare different types of updates (text, links, photos and video), you can include examples of all three to show the amount of engagement each gets, as the number of comments, likes and shares will be in the embedded posts.

#3: Quote References Sources

See an interesting statistic or quote you'd like to share? Share it as an embedded post to add interactive material to your content.

Post by Amy Porterfield.

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If you're quoting others, you can even use this as an opportunity to share your post with the person quoted. Once your post goes live, just share the link with the person in the post you embedded, letting him or her know you shared the post.

#4: Extend the Reach of Your Media

Do you want to share media such as a video within your posts?

Consider sharing the video on your Facebook page first. You can then share the embedded post with the video, as opposed to just the video.

This way, if people like it, they can either like it from the embedded post widget or click through to your post on Facebook to like it.

Post by My Kids' Adventures.

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Your readers can still view the image or watch the video from your website, and in most cases, like the Facebook post itself. Or they can click through to Facebook to comment and share using the links provided in the embedded post itself.

#5: Boost Engagement of Discussion Posts

Want to start a discussion on your Facebook page?

Why not embed your discussion post within your blog content to get more exposure for it?

Post by Social Media Examiner.

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With the added exposure, you'll likely get more discussion on your Facebook post. And this can be a great way to boost your EdgeRank and turn your website visitors and blog readers into engaged members of your page.

#6: Show Off Your Best Facebook Content

One thing blogs like to do is show off their best content by adding it to a list post such as "Best Posts of 2013."

You can do the same and highlight your most popular Facebook wall posts.

First, go into your Facebook Insights under the Posts section to see which posts had the most engagement.

See your most popular Facebook wall posts using Facebook Insights.

Next, click on your most popular posts. In the detailed statistics screen, you'll see the drop-down to embed the post on your blog.

get embed post code from facebook insights

Get the Embed Post code from inside Facebook Insights.

Create a roundup-style post of your best Facebook content to show your website visitors and blog readers how engaging your Facebook page is. Hopefully this will lead to more likes and engaged Facebook fans.

The Best Part

So what's the best part of using the Facebook embedded posts feature?

As you can see in the above embedded post examples, any embedded post from a Facebook page includes a Like button for the page. While you can't always like or comment on the embedded post itself without being taken to Facebook, you can click on the button at the top right of the embedded post to like the page.

This means any embedded posts you use from your page could help boost your number of fans!

On the flip side, you should be aware that if you use embedded posts from other profiles and pages, your website visitors and blog readers could click through to them. So keep that in mind as you embed.

What do you think? Do you use embedded Facebook posts on your website or blog? How do you use them? Please share in the comments section below!

Tags: embedded content, embedded facebook post, facebook, facebook engagement, facebook marketing, facebook marketing strategy, facebook page, facebook post, kristi hines, social proof

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The post 6 Creative Ways to Use Embedded Facebook Posts appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

18 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 08:58 AM PST

Cindy King

By Cindy King
Published November 12, 2013

Would you like to improve your social media marketing?

Are you wondering what social media marketing tactics the pros like to use?

We asked top social media pros to share their hottest social media marketing tactics.

In this article, you'll discover strategies the pros use to boost their social media marketing.

#1: Stay Top of Mind Using LinkedIn Tags

Viveka Von Rosen

On LinkedIn, you shouldn't send an email blast to every one of your connections. However, you can create lists of "tagged" groupings so you can send relevant and helpful information to your contacts at strategic times.

When you tag your connections on LinkedIn, you can sort/filter them by Tags and—wait for it—send a message to up to 25 people at a time.

You can filter by tag and then send a message to up to 25 people.

For example, if one of your niche markets on LinkedIn is marketers who target medical professionals, all you have to do is:

Create a tag called 'Medical Marketing Consultant' (they can't see it)
Do an advanced search on the keywords "marketing OR marketer OR consultant AND medical" (or some such)
Sort by first-level connections
Open and tag each connection with 'medical marketing consultant'
Open Contacts
Filter by the tag 'medical marketing consultant'
Click on Select All
Write your message to the first 25 folks
Then the next 25
Then the next 25

Tag your contacts for easier messaging.

The message subject line might be something like: "As a medical marketing consultant, are you frustrated with LinkedIn's new visibility limitations?" Use the body of the message to resolve their particular pain point. You don't have to be the creator of the content, you just need to share it.

While you can use a different subject line to share the same tip with any number of tagged groups, I recommend creating an editorial calendar to keep track of what you sent to whom.

Use these targeted messages to create a feeling of trust and top-of-mind awareness, so that when your connections need you (or hear of someone who does) they will think of you!

Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day and known internationally as the "LinkedIn Expert."

#2: Post in 'Micro-Opportunity' Windows

Jay Baer

Here's my social marketing tip, ideal for B2B. For me, the people I want to reach with my social media marketing are other businesspeople, and which activity are businesspeople engaged in all day? Meetings. And when are meetings scheduled? Almost entirely on the hour or half-hour.

Based on the way meetings are scheduled and conducted, I believe many businesspeople are checking their social media accounts just before and after the top of the hour or the bottom of the hour. It works like this:

Meeting is scheduled from 1-2 pm. Meeting lets out slightly early at 1:57 pm, and attendees check Twitter on the way back to their desk. Meeting goes a little long, and that dip into social media occurs at 2:03 pm. You get the idea.

Schedule your social media marketing at opportune moments; for example, at times before meetings are due to start and end. Image source: iStockphoto

Because of this sequencing, I use Buffer to set my social media marketing to deploy most frequently in these micro-opportunity windows. I also try to pay attention to when people might be at lunch/dinner; although of course that's a bit of a toss-up due to time zone differences. I haven't been able to prove that this works (yet), but it makes so much sense to me intuitively that I'm going to keep doing it.

Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert.

#3: Research Popular Content From Your Competitors

Ian Cleary

If a type of content is popular with the audience of your competitors and colleagues, it stands to reason that a similar post will be popular with your audience.

This isn't about copying content, it's about crafting content around a similar topic, but with a different slant.

For example, Jeff Bullas wrote a blog post on 7 Marketing Trends You Shouldn't Ignore, which was very popular. I used his post as inspiration to write a post titled 7 Social Media Tool Trends You Shouldn't Ignore that was also very popular.

There are a few tools that will help with research:

Social Crawlytics does an analysis of your competitor's content and shows you how often each post is shared across each of the social networks.

SEMRush shows you what keywords bring your competitor the most traffic so you can target the same keywords in your own content.

Use SEMRush to gain insights into what keywords your competitors get the most traffic from.

Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial.

#4: Increase Views on YouTube Using These Thumbnail Creation Tips

Gideon Shalwick

It's no secret that getting more views on YouTube can greatly help grow your business online.

But with the vast majority of videos on YouTube getting mediocre results, everyone wants to know how to get more legitimate views!

One of the easiest ways to get more views is to create compelling, attention-grabbing thumbnails for your videos.

The Secret to Creating Powerful YouTube Thumbnails

You need to get three things right for creating powerful YouTube thumbnails.

Graphics: Start with a good headshot or closeup of your face to create a personal touch with your thumbnail, then add a colorful background—like a starburst—to grab viewers' attention.

Use attention-grabbing backgrounds.

Text: Use compelling text inside your thumbnail design to tell your viewers instantly what your video is about and why they should watch it—maybe use your video title. Make sure your text is easy to read, even at the smallest display size of your thumbnail on YouTube, and that the image is on the left and text is on the right.

Make sure the image is on the left and the text on the right of the thumbnail.

X-Factor: Think about how you can inject emotion into your thumbnails. For example, the expression on the face of the person you're using can be that of shock, amazement, disgust, enjoyment… choose an emotion that will create intrigue and get people to click on the image.

The expression on a person’s face can be enough for someone to click through.

To learn more about thumbnails and how to use them correctly on YouTube, check out the YouTube Playbook.

Gideon Shalwick, founder of Splasheo and author of Rapid Video Blogging.

#5: Limit Your Social Media Platforms

John Lee Dumas

My social media marketing tip for businesses today is to find three or four social media platforms where you can build the strongest presence that will be most beneficial for your business.

With countless social media platforms available today, it's impossible to grow a strong presence on every one. Having a mediocre presence on six or seven social media platforms is far inferior to a strong presence on three or four when it comes to your social media marketing goals.

Build a strong presence on three or four platforms. Image source: iStockPhoto.

Why spend time on social media platforms where your audience might be hanging out when you could be spending that time on social media platforms where you know your audience will be hanging out?

To find out if your target audience spends most of their time on one platform over another, join online groups within those platforms that focus on your industry or niche. If you find that the members are really active and engage on the topics you're focused on in your business, there's a good chance that a presence on that platform will benefit your business.

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of EntrepreneurOnFire.

#6: Find Work With Twitter's Advanced Search

Kim Garst

One of the great challenges for business owners is being "top of mind" exactly when prospects either want the product or service you offer, or have a problem that your product or service can solve for them.

Think about the billions of dollars spent on billboards, television and radio commercials, print advertising, etc., just to be in the right place with the right solution at the right time. There has to be a better way, right?

What if I told you there was a tool that could put you personally in touch with a new prospect at the exact time they desperately needed you for FREE! Interested?

I'm talking about the Advanced Search function on Twitter.

Let's say you are a handyman in New York City and you need paying customers today. Simply log into your Twitter account, go to Advanced Search and type in the word or phrase that somebody might use when looking for what you have to offer in the geographic area where you work.

In the example below, we are going to see who is "looking for a handyman" in "New York City."

Use Twitter’s Advanced Search to see who is looking for a service you offer.

Ready? Here comes the magic……

It can help you find your next customer.

There's your next customer. Imagine how shocked Regan is going to be when you send her a tweet telling her that you're a great handyman and you just happen to be working in her area today.

So all the people who say you can't do anything meaningful in 140 characters—certainly not anything business-related—need to rethink that position.

Twitter search is the mother lode for live leads that can create sales for you and your business!

Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social.

#7: Grow By Giving Away Your Best Stuff

Melonie Dodaro

Forrester Research found that over 90% of purchasing decisions begin online. Having quality and relevant content allows your prospects to learn about you and the products/services you offer.

Many people are worried about giving away their best content for free. They are concerned it may prevent people from taking the next step and investing in their products/services. I understand this fear, but it is truly unfounded.

When your prospects see the high quality of your free content, they will be much more confident in paying for your services because they already know the great value you deliver.

Give away your best content for free. Image source: iStockphoto

When you create content, you want to think about the problems your ideal clients have and solve them with blog posts, articles, infographics, free reports, webinars, teleseminars, podcasts, etc.

Additional benefits you'll receive include:

Evangelists who will recommend you to others
People will share your content, which puts you in front of a much larger audience
A strong reputation as a trusted authority and expert on your topic/niche
Additional opportunities such as speaking engagements and interview requests from the media
Improved SEO rankings of your website with quality content

Giving away great content opens up an opportunity for you to really educate your potential prospects and build trust, positioning you as the solution to their problem. Content marketing allows you to begin a relationship before ever speaking with a prospective client.

Melonie Dodaro, founder of Top Dog Social Media.

#8: Connect With Twitter's Mobile Users

Jamie Turner

There are two easy things you can do to improve the impact of your efforts on Twitter. The first is to do a promoted post that targets people only on smartphones. A lot of people don't realize that you can target promoted posts just for smartphones (or just for iPhones, or Android devices, etc.).

By targeting people while they're on their mobile devices, you catch them while they're out and about and, hopefully, near your business. It's a great tactic that takes context (where people are located) into consideration when you connect with them via Twitter.

If you're not ready to spend money on a promoted post, that's okay, because you can try another technique. My estimates are that about 30% of the people using Twitter are self-promoters, which is a no-no. About 60% are simply retweeters, which is not the most efficient way to use Twitter. And about 10% are conversationalists, which is the best way to use Twitter.

Shift to a conversationalist strategy and have a dialogue with your followers to keep prospects and customers engaged with your brand. This deepens your relationship with them, which, over time, turns into customer loyalty. Customer loyalty = more revenue for your business.

Have conversations with your followers to keep them engaged with your brand.

Long story short, if you're not going to do promoted posts targeting smartphones, then try being more conversational and watch your results change overnight.

Jamie Turner, founder of 60 Second Marketer.

#9: Find Prospects Online With Twitter

Tom Martin

To truly prospect with social media, you need to understand where you're most likely to find prospects online—what I call your Propinquity Points. Twitter is an excellent resource for this.

First, create a private Twitter list called Prospects. Then search for relevant keywords for your company or competitors. Find tweets where folks are obviously talking about your company, product category or competitor in a way that convinces you they are true prospects. Next, add each person to the Prospect Twitter list. Do this every day.

Create a Prospect Twitter list.

Now, create a column in HootSuite or whatever Twitter client you use and populate that column with the Prospect list tweets. Lastly, filter the column so that you see only tweets with links. Create a spreadsheet to track all of the links you find, and note when multiple folks share content from the same site.

Over the course of a few months, you'll have a pretty solid list of online destinations frequented by your target prospects. This shows you where to make comments on existing content—or better, where to contribute your own content.

Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale.

#10: Easily Connect With Your Email Subscribers on LinkedIn and Facebook

Stan Smith

Email is critical for notifying subscribers of new posts and generating repeat visits to your blog. However, the latest Gmail Promotional tab addition by Google means that most of your notification emails are routed to the promotional folder where they can be overlooked by your readers.

Tackle this problem by connecting with your blog update subscribers on LinkedIn and Facebook. Simply download and install Rapportive, a social CRM tool that displays social network connections in your Gmail sidebar.

Add Rapportive to Gmail.

Next, export a list of your blog update email subscribers. Compose a new email in Gmail, and paste 10 addresses from your list of subscribers into the To: Box.

Mouse over one of the addresses and you will see Rapportive offer a Connect button for LinkedIn or Facebook (if the subscriber has an account). Click on the Connect button and customize the invitation to connect with you on the selected platform. Repeat the process for all of your contacts.

Rapportive offers a Connect button for LinkedIn or Facebook.

When you publish a new post, update your LinkedIn or Facebook to increase the chance that your Gmail subscribers will see your updates on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Stan Smith, founder of Pushing Social.

#11: Find Content to Share Using Platform Searches

Cynthia Sanchez

When business owners or marketers begin to use social media as a part of their marketing strategy, they often focus on getting the right profile image, when the best time of day is to post or what scheduling tool is best. While it's important to consider these things, there is something very valuable within each platform that is often overlooked.

Networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest each offer a search feature.

The search feature available on each of these networks can help businesses better serve their customers or clients by providing insight into what the users of each platform are interested in. Search can reveal if there is even a place for their business there.

For example, at a recent conference where I was speaking, I was asked to provide an example of an investment banking business using Pinterest.

After a quick search, we discovered that there were only two investment banking accounts on Pinterest. However, when we switched from searching for pinners (accounts) to searching for boards about investment banking, we found several.

search for boards in your niche on pinterest

Search for boards as well as pins on Pinterest.

This discovery shows that there is an interest in investment banking among the Pinterest audience and the two accounts currently on Pinterest with investment banking in their name were not active. This presents a big opportunity for an investment banking business to become the go-to source for information on Pinterest.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced Graph Search. In Graph Search, you can refine your results down to pages, groups and events. Inspiration for future blog posts or even new products or services could emerge from the search.

Graph Search can be very useful for a business.

Twitter offers an Advanced Search feature where you can perform a very specific search, but the option to search for tweets with questions is most helpful. How better to serve potential clients or customers than by answering their questions?

The option to search for tweets with questions is extremely valuable.

Cynthia Sanchez, writes and podcasts about all things Pinterest at Oh So Pinteresting.

#12: Make Your Podcast Easily Consumable on Mobile

Paul Colligan

Smartphones have changed social media in some amazing ways. Perhaps most exciting (for me, at least) is how they've helped podcast consumption explode. More and more people are listening to podcasts on their smartphones—and they (and the podcasters) are better for it.

When someone clicks on a podcast from a blog, most smartphones open a new window and start playing the content. It just works. A simple link to an MP3 will "work" on most blogs for a media player and a number of podcasters are fine with that.

Install a simple HTML5 audio player on your blog that doesn't open a new window, but does, in fact, give a similar (in-screen) experience to what listeners see on the desktop. This lets the listener read your content while listening to your podcast.

Which experience below do you want your audience to have when they're listening to your podcast, the first or the second?

Provide listeners with a convenient player.

Let the listener read your content while listening to your podcast on mobile.

Paul Colligan, director of content marketing at Instant Customer.

#13: Think of Social Media as a Publicity Engine and Distribution Channel

Brian Clark

The best social media marketing strategy I've found (and have used for years) is to think of social media as a publicity engine and distribution channel for content. Even back before Facebook and Twitter, content was the fuel for traffic back to our web properties from social media news sites like Delicious and Digg.

Now there's content, and then there's content that functions as marketing. After all, no amount of traffic from social networks means anything unless a portion of that traffic converts into customers and clients.

The content you create must attract your ideal prospect, not random traffic. To do that, you discover the problems and desires your ideal prospect has, and then create content that addresses those problems and desires at an introductory level. Once these prospects visit your site, you must entice them to follow your content over time by email, which is still the highest-converting online sales channel (by far).

The reason content works as a social media marketing strategy is that people not only want valuable information, they like to share it as well. This results in an amazing word-of-mouth effect where new people are exposed to you and your brand each and every day via those in their own networks.

Attract your ideal prospects, then encourage them to share with their own networks. Image source: iStockphoto

People don't want to be pitched directly via social media. They do seek out and share content though, and if that content is fine-tuned to appeal to your perfect prospect, you'll develop a social media marketing strategy that works for you night and day.

Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger.

#14: Include an Original Photo in Your New Piece of Content

Gini Dietrich

The best social media marketing network most businesses still ignore is Pinterest. Too often, we hear, "Oh I don't have anything visual to show" so they ignore the fastest-growing network. But here's the deal: Sixty-five percent of human beings are visual learners. That means they'd rather look at pictures or watch videos than read text, yet most of us still use text as our main method of communication.

Let's say you run a professional services firm or a manufacturing company or a software-as-a-service business. If you are creating content for your business, include an original photo and you have something to pin to Pinterest.

First, create a board for your content. For instance, I have one on my personal page called Spin Sucks.

Spin Sucks on Pinterest.

A best practice for a new piece of content is to include an original photo. When you publish the content, you'll want to pin it to the board you've created specifically for the business. Click the "pin it" button and get it saved.

Include an original photo in a new piece of content.

Do this every time you publish content for a month. Then go into your Google Analytics and see what kind of traffic it's driving.

Even if you don't have anything to sell online, it's a quick and easy (incredibly easy) way to bring new visitors to your site. And now you have a huge opportunity to capitalize on that new traffic!

Gini Dietrich, founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich.

#15: Allow Employees to Advocate for Your Business

Neal Schaffer

One of my best social media marketing tips, and probably the one that is most underutilized by businesses, is employee advocacy.

You're a business engaging in social media and creating content, but you're only sharing that content from your company's account. Wouldn't it be great if all of your sales and marketing people also shared your content? It would help your company reach more people and help your sales and marketing folks better brand your company in social media.

The recent Edelman Trust Barometer reported that 41% of people believe company employees rank higher in public trust than a firm's PR department or CEO. With the advent of social business, every employee can and should play a role in your social media efforts, and there are now a handful of platforms like GaggleAMP (you can join my own Gaggle here to see what an employee would see), Addvocate, PeopleLinx, Dynamic Signal, Expion and SocialChorus that make it easy for you to both facilitate and measure your employee advocacy program.

My Gaggle makes it easy for me to facilitate and measure my employee advocacy program.

Your social selling can also be helped by employee advocacy. Prudential Financial embarked on an employee advocacy program, which encouraged their employees to get connected. Now each of their 15,000 employees has an average of 160 connections, meaning that as a company, their message—through their employees—can potentially reach 2.4 million LinkedIn users! It's time for companies to wake up and unleash the power of some of your most passionate, but often forgotten, brand advocates: Your employees!

Neal Schaffer, president of Windmills Marketing, author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn.

#16: Attend Live Events

Jeff Korhan

Live events are where you experience firsthand the energy and enthusiasm of other like-minded people who share your interests and business objectives.

In addition to building meaningful relationships, you walk away with abundant ideas for invigorating your social media marketing. I'm still mining ideas from my experience at Content Marketing World a couple months ago, not to mention being better connected with industry colleagues.

Jeff Korhan and Joe Pulizzi reconnecting at the Green Industry Conference shortly after Content Marketing World.

One of the challenges of social media is translating our weak connections into stronger relationships that can potentially lead to mutually beneficial outcomes. The solution is to literally get out of the office to meet the people with whom you're connected online, and make new connections that you can bring to your social networks. When you integrate the two, you enhance the effectiveness of both.

A few years ago, it was predicted that webinars and other digital events would eventually replace live events, thereby putting professional speakers and trainers like me out of business as we know it. It turns out we are now experiencing a resurgence of live events, and the reason is somewhat surprising.

Now we are more connected than ever as a result of social media and people want to meet their connections in person to further develop their relationships. The community and energy of live events adds richness and depth to your social media relationships, and makes a positive impact on that illusive metric—your social media ROI.

Jeff Korhan is a small business marketing expert and the author of Built-In Social: Essential Social Marketing Practices for Every Small Business.

#17: Build Authority Relationships With Google+ Reverse Image Lookup

John Jantsch

Networking for link relationships has taken on a bit of a popularity feel due to Google's emphasis on authority when it comes to content.

Links from sites that Google ranks highly have always been important, but now individuals inside of Google+ carry a great deal of weight as well.

It's important to build relationships in your industry with those authors whom Google already thinks highly of. I'm not talking about stalking, I'm talking about discovering the most valuable relationships and finding ways to build value within them.

Find those authors in your industry who appear with an author box in common searches with your industry and do a Google reverse image search to find where they contribute content currently.

Find an author whose image shows next to highly indexed content
Navigate to their Google+ profile, right-click their profile image and copy the image URL
Paste the image URL into a Google Search by Image box
Scan the results to find a great deal about their contributed content landscape
Create a plan to build relationships based on value

Reverse Google image lookup reveals a list of places where this author contributes.

You'll turn up some great guest post opportunity possibilities for yourself, as well as gain some insight into ways you can connect with authors of authority.

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker and author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine and The Referral Engine and the founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network.

#18: Actively Use SlideShare Pro to Acquire Subscribers

Joe Pulizzi

A subscription strategy is critical to any social media and content marketing professional. I'm astounded that more marketers aren't actively using SlideShare to acquire subscribers. If you're not familiar, SlideShare was purchased by LinkedIn and sees about 100 million visitors per month. Simply put, SlideShare is the YouTube for PowerPoint presentations (and so much more).

A SlideShare Pro account starts at $16 per month and lets you collect leads and/or subscribers. Also, SlideShare can be integrated with most marketing automation systems.

At Content Marketing Institute, we've been using SlideShare Pro for two years now, and it's our number-two overall source for new subscribers. We've done nothing different with deploying content on SlideShare, but now we actively drive new leads.

The images below show one of our presentations on SlideShare.

Use SlideShare to acquire subscribers to your content.

The second screenshot shows the SlideShare Pro subscription popover that appears near slide 10 of a presentation. The popover can easily be skipped so viewers can access the full content, but on this presentation alone, we've collected over 500 subscribers with no additional work.

The SlideShare Pro popover can collect more subscribers.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute.

Who are these social media pros?

The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2014.

The conference features 60+ pros who will help you master social media marketing!

Join Chris Brogan (co-author of The Impact Equation), Mari Smith (co-author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Michael Hyatt (author of Platform), Jay Baer (author of Youtility), John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), Amy Porterfield (co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies), Mark Schaefer (author of Tao of Twitter), Michael Stelzner (author of Launch) and experts from more than a dozen brands as they reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2014—Social Media Examiner's mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California.

Join nearly 2000 fellow marketers at the live mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.

Why should you attend Social Media Marketing World 2014?

You'll hear from 60+ of the world's top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

You'll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

Click here to learn more.

What do you think? Have you used any of these tactics? What's working in your social media marketing today? Please share your comments below.

Images from iStockPhoto.

Tags: cindy king, content marketing, pinterest strategy, podcast strategy, slideshare strategy, social media marketing, social media marketing goal, social media marketing world 2014, social media tactic, twitter advanced search, twitter monitoring, youtube thumbnails

Massacres That Matter – Part 1 – ‘Responsibility To Protect’ In Egypt, Libya And Syria
Massacres That Matter – Part 2 – The Media Response On Egypt, Libya And Syria
National demonstration: No attack on Syria – Saturday 31 August, 12 noon, Temple Place, London, UK

The post 18 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

How to Use Social Media to Promote an Event

Posted: 11 Feb 2014 03:00 AM PST

Michael Stelzner

By Michael Stelzner
Published February 11, 2014

Are you wondering how to promote an event with social media?

Whether you're planning a small local gathering or a large conference, social media can be used to get the word out in a powerful way.

In this article I'll reveal seven creative ways to use social media to increase your chances for a gangbuster event.

Start With a Marketing Plan

The first thing you need to do is develop a high-level marketing plan. This will include answering the "who, what, where, when, why and how long" questions for your event.

Check out this video on how to create a marketing plan.

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Here are a few tips to help you create a marketing plan:

Identify your target audience.
Use all of your communication channels. These can include your email list, website, podcast, social communities, affiliates, webinars and sponsors.
Consider the creative assets you already have available. Are there videos, audio, photographs, blog posts by other people and graphics you can use?

#1: Use Video on Your Sales Pages

Video is one of the most powerful ways to sell what you have to offer, and where you place it on your event sales page can be very important. You can use YouTube or Vimeo to easily add video to your sales page.

When you visit the sales page for Social Media Marketing World, one of the first things you notice is our sales video.

Place your sales video in a prominent position on your home page.

The key is to start with a catchy headline, an opening sentence and your video. Share the remainder of what you have to offer below your video. Remember that you can put the video in multiple places on your event sales pages, including the sidebar.

Here are a few tips on how to produce a quality video that'll get people to hit the Play button:

Grab a screenshot from a testimonial of someone who looks excited, or a visually stunning image of the location, etc.
Use this screenshot as your thumbnail.
In the intro, choreograph images and words so there's always something to entertain the eye.
Play music in the background.
Tell viewers about the things they'll discover, so they stick around to watch the rest of the video.
Express excitement in your voice.
Include video clips and still photography.
Make sure your words and story are choreographed.

Video can be an extremely powerful way to convey your message.

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#2: Empower Affiliates to Promote What You Have to Sell

The key to affiliate marketing is to empower your affiliate marketers to share your event. For them to make a decision on promoting your product, event or activity, you need to make the process effortless.

This is the affiliate page for Social Media Marketing World 2014.

Here are some tips on resources to include in your affiliate promo page:

Write a script for an audio ad to give out to podcasters.
Create an embed code for videos, which can be copied and pasted into an article.
Provide a variety of videos. They can include an overview of the event, testimonials and information about the location.
Create banner advertisements. Make sure you put a call to action on each one. Including the speakers' faces can help generate a high click-through rate.
Offer larger images that can be used on Facebook. The key to images is having lots of different sizes.
Use support photos. These can be from a previous event that you hosted.
Precraft tweets. This is the secret sauce.
Use your assets to create a cool blog post. It's a great way to help convert sales.
Provide a blurb/short description for people who curate event listings.

A lot of work goes into creating an affiliate resource page, but once you have it, it's so simple for someone to use.

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#3: Use Testimonials in Your Marketing

Using testimonials in your marketing can be super-powerful.

You can gather testimonials in two ways.

The first is to ask people who attended your event to fill out a survey. You can use a system like SurveyMonkey. The two most important questions you need to ask are:

Would you recommend this conference to a friend or colleague?
If you were recommending this conference to a friend or colleague, what would you say?

The second way is to record someone recommending what you have to offer. First, ask the person what he or she thought about the event, then lead into the second question about what they thought of the networking. Usually, what comes out of the second question is spectacular.

Use video testimonials as a powerful form of marketing for your event.

Once you've gathered all of the testimonials, go through them and identify the best ones.

Finally, you can pull everything together by using small clips from each testimonial to make one powerful video. For example, check out the completed testimonial video for Social Media Marketing World.

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#4: Empower Prospects to Sell You to the Boss

If you sell expensive or complex products, the last thing you want to do is have an unprepared prospect spring the event on his or her boss. You need to make it effortless for prospects to pitch the idea successfully.

One of your best options is to provide easily accessible information for prospects in a "Need to convince the boss?" box on your website.

Make it as easy as possible for prospects to convince their boss of the value your event delivers.

Once someone clicks this box on our event page, it takes him or her through to the Convincing the Boss page. It not only provides a downloadable PDF flyer, but also an email that they can easily customize so it's more personal.

In the email template you provide, you should include:

An opening sentence that sounds like it's from the person sending it
An explanation that says they want to look out for the best interests of the company
A description of what's in it for them and the company if they attend
A few factoids about the product, service or event
A call to action

When you make it effortless for prospects to pitch your event, it enables them to present it to decision-makers.

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#5: Create and Promote Quality Link Bait Posts

The idea of a link bait post is to include lots of high-profile individuals who provide an insight or a tip of some sort. A link bait post is a great way to let the presenters of your event share some of their expertise with your blog readers and give them visibility to your audience prior to your event.

Once you have all of the contributions gathered, you compile them into a post. These types of posts often go crazy viral.

One of the benefits of a link bait post is that it attracts some of the contributors to participate in the comment area. It creates a dialogue and a communal effort where everybody can be a part of something exciting.

The presenters for Social Media Marketing World 2014 contributed to this post.

A huge advantage of this type of post is the amount of traffic that it can drive to your website. Within the first 24 hours, this link bait post was viewed 11,180 times.

You'll be amazed at how many participants share this type of article. Once peers see it, they begin to promote it too. The visibility you get through these shares can be very powerful.

Jay Baer promoted the link bait article that he contributed to in a prominent position in his newsletter.

To build your own link bait article, you first need to identify who or what types of groups of people you want to reach out to. In this case, you'll likely want to reach out to the presenters at your event. Next, you need to put together a strategic email to invite people to contribute.

Here are some tips on how to communicate with the participants:

Ask if they're willing to participate. Don't ask for the tip just yet.
Once they commit to participating, you can give them the details. Make sure you clarify what you're looking for, ask for screenshots and remind them of the deadline.
Let them know you'll include their bio and a link back to their site so they can include that in their response.
Remind them that you'll contact them when the article is published.

Once the article is published, the next step is to get the participants to help you share and promote the post. When you email them to let them know the article has been published, include a bit.ly URL to the article and thank them for their participation without asking them to do anything further.

You'll discover that the result is a win for everyone.

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#6: Create Custom Social Share Buttons for Your Site

Social share buttons on your promotional page make it easy for people to share your event on social channels.

The idea is that when people click on the Share button, it populates information about what you have to offer in their status update. It gives you the ability to control a consistent message across multiple social channels. Once people share your message, you know it will drive traffic back to your main promotional page.

Social share buttons are a great way to drive traffic back to your promotional page.

With the Twitter Share button, you type in the URL that you want Twitter to point to. You can then customize the title of the page, show the share count and/or include a hashtag. Once you have the piece of code for the button, it can be added to your website HTML or to a widget on a WordPress website.

The Facebook Share button doesn't have as many customization options. Instead, Facebook draws the customization from whatever URL you paste in. If you use a WordPress-driven website, you can use the WP Open Graph plugin to help you control and customize messaging.

The WP Open Graph plugin lets you customize what people will see when they share your URL on Facebook.

Watch this video to learn more about how to use the LinkedIn Share button and the Google+ Share button:

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With these customized social share buttons, you make it effortless for people to share your content.

#7: Use Twitter to Sell

Twitter is a super-powerful tool that enables you to promote what you have to sell.

On the Social Media Marketing World event page, we have a sidebar widget that shows all of the tweets from people who are talking about our event.

To create this for your own event, log into Twitter and visit the Widget settings. You'll see a Create New Button option. When you create the widget and click on the Search tab, you're asked to put in a search query to tell Twitter which tweets to display. This could be your hashtag or your company name.

When you configure the widget, I recommend that you only show the top tweets—otherwise you'll get every single retweet. You also want to opt out of tailoring Twitter.

The widget on our event page is in real time.

The result is a piece of script that you can paste into your WordPress sidebar or website. The box below our live widget allows people to promote Social Media Marketing World using a common hashtag.

When visitors arrive at your sales page, this widget lets them see all of the other people who've already made a purchase.

Additionally, you need to make it easy for anyone who comes to your sales page to share a customized tweet. All you have to do is embed a custom Tweet button. Make sure the URL you include is the same for every single page you have linked to your sales page.

Provide a custom Tweet button.

To build your own custom tweet, all you have to do is visit ClicktoTweet and log in with your Twitter ID and create an account.

Next, just type in your tweet and hit the Generate New Link button. Once you have the link, you can embed it into your HTML. The result is something really cool—it allows you to track statistics and links to this particular tweet.

To discover all of the activity around the hashtag you include, you can also use Tweet Binder to see interesting statistics. It's a useful service that I strongly recommend.

Include a custom Tweet button on your Thank-you page to empower the people who've already made a purchase to share it with their fans on Twitter. When they do, the hashtag pulls their tweet into the widget on your site!

Remember, when you make it easy for people to promote, they will.

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Attend Social Media Marketing World 2014 for more social media tactics.

Social Media Marketing World 2014 is our physical mega-conference, which is set to return to San Diego, California on March 26, 27 and 28.

The conference features 60+ pros who will help you master social media marketing!

Join nearly 2000 fellow marketers at the live mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.

You'll hear from 60+ of the world's top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

You'll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

Click here to learn more.

What do you think? Have you tried any of these strategies? Please share your comments below.

Tags: conference, event marketing, event promotion, live event, michael stelzner, smmw14, social media conference, social media event, social media expert, social media marketing, social media marketing conference, social media marketing world, social media networking

The post How to Use Social Media to Promote an Event appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

mercredi 12 février 2014