TwitterToolsReviews |
- 14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros
- How to Analyze Your Facebook Metrics to Improve Your Marketing
- 100 Top Worldwide Twitter Lists
- How Brands Can Leverage Holidays for Their Social Campaigns
- Facebook Marketing Plan: How to Grow Your Business With Facebook
- 31 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Articles
- Content Marketing: How to Attract People With Content
- Hyper-targeting on Twitter: How businesses can leverage big data
- #Howto Use #ManageFlitter to #Increase Your Influence on #Twitter
- 5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With Social Media
| 14 Social Media Tools Used by Marketing Pros Posted: 10 Mar 2014 07:51 PM PDT By Cindy King
Are you wondering what tools marketing pros are using successfully? We asked fourteen well-known marketers to share the latest social media tools they've been using. Discover how you can use these tools to help you to get more out of your social media marketing. #1: Mention Todd Wheatland Mention was developed as a user-friendly replacement for Google Alerts. They're a textbook example of how to build a platform by doing one thing better than anyone else. As well as being an absolute joy to use, it captures so many more, ahem, 'mentions' online than any other platform I've used that it's become my #1 go-to social mention reference tool. There are many clever things behind the way Mention is set up. They've taken the Apple approach to clean and simple UI to give you great functionality as a default and the power to modify settings to really hone in on what's important to your circumstances.  Mention provides clean and simple functionality. Apart from doing a fantastic job of identifying online mentions, some of my favorite features are:
Of course, with success, they're quickly adding features—including an enterprise-level offering—that will make them seem increasingly like a lot of the more established players in the social tools space. So far though, they've done a great job of maintaining simplicity and delivering on their core offering. Todd Wheatland, head of thought leadership at Kelly Services. #2: Addvocate Jay Baer My favorite new social media tool is Addvocate. I like it so much, I invested in the company and joined their board. Addvocate solves a very common problem in social media, which is the need to decentralize your messengers. Almost always, the employees in your company have more social connections (combined) than the company does for its official social media outposts. Thus, smart companies need to find ways to ask employees to occasionally share relevant information on their personal accounts. Amber Naslund and I wrote about this in The NOW Revolution, and recommended a "message of the day" email that is sent to all social media–active employees. Addvocate takes that concept and makes it much, much better. Employees install a simple browser plugin that enables them to receive content recommendations from a centralized marketing team, while also enabling them to recommend content to the marketing team and to one another. The marketing team then gets detailed statistics showing which employees are sharing content on social, how many clicks and engagement actions each employee is generating, etc.  Addvocate enables you to share content with colleagues. It's an incredibly easy-to-use, remarkably inexpensive (just a few dollars per month) social media tool that removes the pain of teamwork and content sharing/distribution. I use it constantly to share potential topics for inclusion in our daily email newsletter. Jay Baer, founder of Convince & Convert. #3: Swayy Jamie Turner The best new tool I've seen in many months is called Swayy. It's a platform that drops interesting content into a dashboard where you can scan or read the most interesting articles. The best feature isn't the fact that the articles are dropped right in front of your nose. The best feature is the sharing.  Swayy finds you the best content to share with your target audience. At the bottom of each article, you can click the "share" button and it automatically opens up your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. With the click of a button, you're able to share articles across multiple platforms. Plus, you can schedule your sharing times well in advance. That way, you're able to share multiple articles across multiple platforms multiple times a day. Brilliant! Jamie Turner, founder of the 60 Second Marketer. #4: eGrabber's Account-Researcher Viveka Von Rosen One of the reasons LinkedIn works so well is that it tells us exactly how we're related to the people in our network and the best ways of communicating with them (messages, invitations, introductions and InMails, in that order). LinkedIn's limitation is with the folks who fall outside of our network; especially if we don't have $10 for each InMail we want to send. Another limitation is that LinkedIn is increasingly hiding our connections from us. First taking away last name, then whole name and picture altogether! Let me start by saying eGrabber Account-Researcher is NOT a free tool. You can get a free trial, but it's so incredibly powerful for researching prospects that it's absolutely worth the $80 a month fee. Can you eventually find the same info on Google with the right algorithms? Yes. Will it take you hours and hours to yield results that aren't as comprehensive? Yes. Is your time worth more than that? YES! Essentially, Account-Researcher gets through LinkedIn's restrictions to better research and find a prospect's contact and company information.  Account-Researcher helps you research a prospect. It cuts prospect research time down to a few minutes and will help you:
LinkedIn isn't about selling your stuff. It's about finding and engaging with people, developing that feeling of "knowing, liking and trusting." And once you've established a relationship with the person, you can move to the next stage in the game. The more you know about prospects, the better your chance of getting to that next stage. The power of LinkedIn is that it helps us connect with real people in real life. We need to go old school. Do searches, do research and then pick up the phone! Account-Researcher makes that MUCH easier. Viveka von Rosen, author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day, host of #LinkedInChat and co-moderator of LinkedStrategies. #5: Compfight Rich Brooks Photos are a great way to engage people on your blog and draw them into your post. They also grab attention when someone shares your blog post on Facebook or another social media channel. Unfortunately, good photography can cost a lot of money, and with regular blogging, the investment can add up fast. Enter Compfight. Compfight searches Flickr's photos that have the appropriate Creative Commons license for Commercial Use.  Compfight is a great tool when searching for an image for a blog post. Do a quick search for ideas, objects, emotions—whatever will best represent the idea in your blog post. Compfight will even provide you with the HTML code for proper attribution. (Yes, you need to give attribution to the photographer, but that's a small price to pay!) If you're blogging regularly but working on a shoestring budget, be sure to give Compfight a try! Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media, a web design and Internet marketing company that helps small businesses succeed online. #6: Tagboard Kim Garst Tagboard is my new cool social media tool. To describe it simply, Tagboard is a way to monitor keywords (a.k.a. hashtags) across multiple social media channels. To monitor conversations that revolve around specific hashtags on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+ and Vine, Tagboard pulls in content from all of these sites based on a specified hashtag and creates a custom board filled with content from all platforms. Why Is it Useful? 1. Brand monitoring. It's useful to anyone who monitors their own brand or other people's brands as a part of their business. It is especially useful for small business owners who do not want to invest in social media monitoring. 2. Content Curation. It's a great way to find content around a specific topic. For example, if you want to find out what others are saying about breaking industry news, search by keyword(s) and find articles, conversations, etc. Once you conduct the search, narrow the focus to a single social media platform. In other words, view just tweets with that specific hashtag. You can even reply to the conversations right from within Tagboard!  You can reply to the conversation. 3. Real-time Leads at Your Fingertips! Suppose you're a realtor in Miami and you're looking to connect with people who are moving to Miami. Search for real-time conversations that are taking place on multiple social media platforms using targeted keywords such as #MovingToMiami. Connect, share some valuable info and start working on building a relationship that will lead to a potential sale.  Search for real-time conversation around targeted keywords. Best of all, it's a free tool! Check it out! Kim Garst, CEO of Boom Social. #7: ManageFlitter Stephanie Sammons A cool social media tool that has helped me get a better handle on effectively managing my Twitter account is ManageFlitter. As you're probably aware, Twitter can be very noisy! A tool that can help you manage your account while growing your following with the right people is very valuable. The ManageFlitter motto is "Work Faster and Smarter with Twitter." ManageFlitter integrates with your Twitter account to help you effectively:
Although some of the above features are paid, you can sign up for a free account and get access to basic features for testing the service. The Pro Plan for more robust individual users is $12/month.  ManageFlitter has several price plans to choose from. One caveat with ManageFlitter or any Twitter-based tool that can help you manage your account is to understand Twitter's following rules and best practices. Ultimately you're responsible for adhering to these rules. ManageFlitter has been working with Twitter for over 3 years and they've helped almost 2 million users. I would recommend using ManageFlitter to build a more relevant following, keep your account cleaned up and prioritize quality over quantity! Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor. #8: Socialbakers Stephanie Shkolnik Socialbakers has an effective tool called Analytics Pro, which provides an understanding of how your brand stacks up against your competitors, specifically across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—for now. The simple interface allows you to input a social media channel and gain insights into engagement rates and channel growth, and understand which contributors from your social communities are most active, providing an opportunity to build relationships and enable continued advocacy.  Check out how your brand compares to others in your niche. An otherwise painfully manual process, this tool also allows you to see how you're performing against your competitors to learn which campaigns, content and influencers are driving the most effective conversations. While Socialbakers is a paid tool, a trial period will impress you and show decision-makers how much more effectively your time will be spent on reporting, gaining insights and informing social strategy. Stephanie Shkolnik, social media director at Digitaria. #9: Post Planner Ian Cleary Post Planner is a content management tool that runs as an application within Facebook. What's great about Post Planner is that in addition to providing the ability to schedule content, it also provides fantastic facilities for sourcing and adding content to your queue for later posting. You can search a database of thousands of status updates on a range of general topics, find content that's trending in your niche or add Facebook pages, Twitter accounts or blogs and easily add content to your queue from these sources.  You can easily add content to your queue. It also provides real-time analytics on posts, so you immediately see what's working and not working. Post Planner is a time saver, enabling you to plan and manage your Facebook content in advance, rather than doing it off the cuff. Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial. #10: Komfo Neal Schaffer There are a lot of Facebook page analytic tools and social media dashboards that include Facebook analysis. A problem with some of these tools is that they try to do so much that it's hard to gain simple-to-understand, meaningful insight about your Facebook content strategy from them. Others just provide a lot of data, some in better-looking forms than others, without offering any other handholding as to how that data can be utilized to improve your Facebook engagement. That's why it was refreshing to discover a new free Facebook page analytics tool from Komfo—a company claiming to be "the leading tool provider in the Nordics within the Social Media Marketing space." Komfo provides analysis with additional handholding to help you analyze your Facebook content based on the following types of analytics:
The tool also includes the "People Talking About This" number, which they call "Stories," as well as overall Reach. Another welcome feature is the ability to send an email and give others access to your report online without Facebook authorization. This is a nice touch that makes the tool even more useful for large and distributed teams. Neal Schaffer, founder of Maximize Social Business. #11: Rignite Andrea Vahl An interesting tool I recently discovered is Rignite, which helps monitor several social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—from one place. It was just launched in April and they will be adding features and other social networks. The best thing about the tool is the team aspect of this product. You can have forums and chats within the tool, and assign tasks to people on the team. So this works well for teams of 3-6 people who are managing the same accounts. They have tracking and insights incorporated into the dashboard.  You can monitor your fan base within the dashboard. This tool will become even more valuable as they add some of the features they have planned to help monitor your social media contacts more closely. While the tool works well right now for monitoring and posting to your accounts for a team of people, I think this will be one to watch as it evolves! Andrea Vahl, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, uses her improv comedy skills to blog as Grandma Mary, Social Media Edutainer. #12: SocialOomph Jeff Bullas One of the coolest social media marketing tools that I've discovered and used is SocialOomph. The challenge for most bloggers and social media marketers is not just creating the content, but also distributing it. Twitter is a great social media network to assist you with sharing your content to your followers, but having to tweet constantly is time-consuming. SocialOomph (professional edition, which costs about $25 a month) allows you to not only load and schedule tweets, you can also make them recurring, saving you the onerous and time-consuming task of ongoing scheduling. Load your tweets once, then set and forget.  SocialOomph is useful for scheduling evergreen content. SocialOomph lets you load up to 500 unique tweets and the major benefit is that it saves me about 25-30 hours a week, or 100-120 hours per month, of ongoing tweet scheduling! Jeff Bullas, blogger, author, strategist and speaker. #13: Zapier Paul Colligan Zapier has changed the social media marketing game for me in the most dramatic of ways. This service connects systems in ways once only possible with a massive programming budget. You can say things across the social networks like "text your email to (503) 405-4415 to get the free video (or just leave a message if you don't have texting)" and have that sync automatically with whatever email system you're using (from MailChimp to AWeber) and/or with any CRM you run (from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Salesforce).  You can automate tasks among online services. Zapier also automatically generates a Google spreadsheet for you that tracks every time a certain keyword is mentioned in Twitter and makes it possible for you to automatically send selected Facebook Posts to your blog. In addition, when you do a webcast (paid or otherwise) through Eventbrite, all of the information collected is integrated into everything else you're doing (I leverage everything they offer to make my event as social as possible). The possibilities are endless, and you should see the running list of integration ideas I have. At the time I write this, Zapier brags of 233 web services integrated. I'm sure they'll add more before this piece is published. With Zapier, social is now one big ecosystem, and I'm thrilled to play in it. Paul Colligan, director of content marketing at Instant Customer. #14: FixYourFunnel and Mobivity Beth Hayden Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to attend a live workshop given by the fabulous Pam Slim (author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, and a world-renowned business coach). At the end of Pam's talk, she told the audience that she had a handout for us. Pam surprised me by announcing a phone number and saying "Text your name and email address to that number, and I'll send you the handout." I could see people whipping out their phones so they could text her. There were no messy sign-up sheets and people could follow her instructions on the spot—and she got their email addresses right away, so she could follow up with possible leads. I had never seen anyone utilize text messages for that purpose, and thought it was a great idea, so I followed up with Pam later and asked her how she pulled off this cool process. She recommended two tools: FixYourFunnel (an Infusionsoft-specific tool) and Mobivity.  Utilize text messages for your business.  Avoid messy sign-up sheets and use a text messaging service instead. As a consultant and author who does regular public speaking and training, I can't wait to integrate these smart mobile marketing tools into my sales process and see the results I get! Beth Hayden, author of Pinfluence, a speaker and social media expert. Who are these social media pros?
Social Media Success Summit 2013 is a live online conference that will empower you to use social media to gain more exposure, increase traffic, cultivate loyal fans and grow your business. More than 45 of the world's leading social media pros will show you how. The event is spread over four weeks in October. Join nearly 3,000 fellow marketers at the online 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 Success Summit?You'll hear from 45+ 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. What do you think? Do you use any of these social media tactics? What's working well for you today? Please share your thoughts in the box below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends:
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| How to Analyze Your Facebook Metrics to Improve Your Marketing Posted: 14 Mar 2014 03:33 AM PDT By Jon Loomer
Are you wondering what works best on your Facebook page? In this article, you'll discover how to find and interpret five valuable Facebook metrics that help measure the results of your Facebook marketing. Why Facebook Metrics?The typical Facebook marketer keeps close tabs on two main stats: Post Reach and Page Likes. While you should be conscious of these stats, they should not be central to measuring your marketing goals on Facebook. It's more important to understand the number of fans your posts reach, how many of those fans you engage and what types of clicks your posts receive. While Facebook's new and improved web Insights does share some great new information with page admins, you need to dig within the export files to find these useful stats. Accessing the ExportsBefore we get to the five metrics you should be checking, let's cover some basics on how to find them. From your Admin Panel, click on Insights.  Click on Insights within your Admin Panel to view your web Insights. Now click the Export Data button at the top right.  Click the Export Data button to view documents of data that aren’t shown in web Insights. You'll be given a dialog to tell Facebook what you want to export. It's a tad more confusing right now because Facebook is rolling out the new exports associated with the new web Insights.  Export either your page- or post-level data, choosing either the new or old reports. Go ahead and select the New export. You can keep the date range as the default, or feel free to expand it as needed. Now, download both the page-level and post-level data—you'll need to do each one separately. #1: Fans ReachedI'm listing this metric first because so many marketers obsess over it, but they don't know what it actually is. By now, you undoubtedly understand that you won't reach 100% of your fans with a single post. In fact, you may not even reach 15%. The typical marketer looks at the total post reach or organic post reach numbers and thinks it represents total number of fans reached. Then they divide that number by total number of fans to get their percentage of fans reached. Totally wrong! You find the number of fans reached in your post-level export file in column T of the Key Metrics tab: Lifetime post reach by people who like your page.  The number of fans reached with a post is found within the post-level export. You determine the number of fans you reach organically by subtracting the total in column V for Lifetime paid reach of a post by people who like your page from column T. #2: Engaged FansOf course, reaching your fans is only half the battle. The true measure of whether your content resonates with your audience is measured in part by engagement. While it's impossible to know how many users actually see your post, which is what reach attempts to measure, Facebook does tell you how many users click on your post. This is the starting point for reach. You know that anyone who clicked on your post saw it. Beyond that, you can't be sure of the level of engagement. Find the number of people who have engaged with your post in column W within the Key Metrics tab: Lifetime people who have liked your page and engaged with your post.  View how many of your fans engaged with a post within the post-level export. Now understand this isn't the number of people who commented, liked or shared your post (although that is included in this number). An "engaged fan" is anyone who clicks anywhere within your post or generates a story about your post, even if it doesn't result from a click. The final five columns of the Key Metrics tab in the post-level export are all related to your fans:
#3: Post Consumers/ConsumptionsThis is one of my favorite Facebook metrics, but it goes virtually unnoticed. A "post consumer" is a user who clicks anywhere on your post, regardless of whether it results in a story. This would include things like:
It's any click at all. A "post consumption" is the click itself. These totals are found in columns O and P of the Key Metrics tab in the post-level export.  Consumers and consumptions tell you how often your content is clicked. Note that there is very little difference between a consumer and an engaged user. Both include any click. The only difference is that when a story is generated without a click, it's included under engaged user, not consumer. I prefer the consumer metric because Facebook breaks this stat down into types of consumptions. This isn't the case with the engaged users metric. #4: Link ClicksThis metric is one of the main reasons I like the consumers stat so much. Link clicks is a type of consumption. The second and third tabs of the post-level export break down types of consumers and consumptions as follows:
One of your goals as a publisher is to drive traffic to your website. Therefore, the link clicks stat is extremely important to you. If the goal of your post is to drive traffic and it receives 100 likes without a link click, was it successful? Probably not. If you ignore this stat, you don't know that. Consider the link click metric a starting point. You should always cross-reference traffic numbers by using URL parameters or link shorteners to track the traffic from your posts. #5: Positive FeedbackFacebook has rolled out a new stat that is buried within the page-level export. It's not really a new stat, but it has been renamed. The page-level export is an enormous file with dozens of tabs. Six of the final seven tabs are dedicated to positive feedback:
These tabs used to be called Talking About This and Stories. In other words, positive feedback is measured by the comments, likes or shares (described as "links" in the export) generated by users while interacting with your page.  View positive feedback within the page-level export. While you can no longer track which posts, for example, received the most comments, likes or shares, this is still a nice stat to track when you evaluate the overall impact you make with your Facebook page. And it's also nice to counter that dreaded "negative feedback" with a little positivity. Your Turn It goes without saying that these aren't the only metrics and stats you should be tracking from within Facebook. Depending on your unique goals, you may use one or all of the metrics I've shared and you might track one or two more. The important thing is that you bypass vanity stats and begin to track relevant metrics that produce meaningful data you can use to fine-tune your Facebook marketing. What do you think? Do you use the data export feature in Insights? What stats do you think go largely unnoticed but have significant value? Let us know in the comments below! This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends:
The post How to Analyze Your Facebook Metrics to Improve Your Marketing appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| 100 Top Worldwide Twitter Lists Posted: 14 Mar 2014 03:09 AM PDT
Recently the Twitter lists directory Listorious shut down to become the new service Muck Rack. This has left a void in the Twitter Tools ecosystem for finding quality lists of influential and connected people on Twitter. The twitter lists tool void is now filled by PeerReach and their Top 100 Worldwide Lists (PeerGroups.) PeerReach is a free Twitter Tool that you can use to powerfully analyze and extend your Twitter audience in meaningful way. How PeerReach WorksAfter logging into PeerReach with your Twitter account (30 second wait) you will immediately be shown the lists that your account is a member of. Scrolling down your PeerReach profile page reveals four other network analysis tools that deal with:
In addition to profile analysis PeerReach also features an awesome new Twitter Lists directory. Top 100 Worldwide Twitter ListsOn PeerReach users can browse through the Top 100 Worldwide Twitter lists or select one of the following nine regions:
Lists Topics Include:
The above listed are the featured PeerGroups, there are also 26 other PeerGroup topics at the bottom of the PeerGroups overview page. Twitter Lists Power Tool: PeerGroupsOne Click Twitter ListsPeerGroups is the name that PeerReach has given to their awesome new Twitter lists tool. These PeerGroups take advantage of the fact that Twitter recently expanded the number of lists that a user can follow from 20 to 2,000. The powerful feature of new PeerGroups lists are the fact that they can be duplicated as an official Twitter list on your Twitter account with just one click. In the PeerGroups list image below I have highlighted the button that will create the PeerGroups list as a Twitter list on your account.
Although the click takes only a second, creating the list may take several minutes depending on the availability of the Twitter API. I used this feature to give me the foundation for a new Marketing Top 250 Twitter list that I will be using to stay on top of the latest marketing news. I am following the marketing niche more closely these days as I recently launched the new marketing blog Marketing Strategy HQ. The Twitter audience comparison feature of PeerReach is another cool feature. Twitter Audience Comparison Tool from PeerReachThis Twitter Analytics tool can easily compare the areas of influence for several different Twitter accounts at once.
Another great feature of PeerReach is their new collection of Top 100 Worldwide Twitter Lists. PeerReach Google Chrome ExtensionPeerReach also has a Google Chrome extension that shows the top rank of the main topic associated with the profile you are viewing. Below is a snap shot of this feature from the Marketing Top 250 Twitter list I created with help from PeerReach.
ConclusionWith over 400 million active Twitter accounts the relevance of the people you follow is more important than ever. PeerReach does a great job helping to cut through the noise on Twitter so you can pay attention to the conversation and content that matters most to you. FeedbackLeave a comment below and let me know what you think of PeerReach and their new “One Click” Twitter lists creation tool.  The post 100 Top Worldwide Twitter Lists appeared first on GrowYourTwitterNetwork. The post 100 Top Worldwide Twitter Lists appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| How Brands Can Leverage Holidays for Their Social Campaigns Posted: 14 Mar 2014 02:41 AM PDT By Ekaterina Walter
Do you need ideas for your 2014 holiday social media marketing? From Valentines Day to Easter and beyond, holidays are an important time for brands to engage customers and promote products in new and exciting ways. And holiday-themed storytelling is an especially great way to build and cultivate a growing and engaged audience. Here are four ways brands use social media to create and promote holiday campaigns throughout the year. #1: Show the Fun Side of Your Brand With a Holiday VineBecause Vines show up in Twitter's main feed, they're eye-catching and easy for people to share across Twitter and Facebook. Marketers have been quick to adopt Twitter's 6-second video looping app to show a lighter and more creative side to the brands they promote. Home improvement store Lowe's used Vine to animate everyday household tools to look like bursting fireworks and wish their followers a happy 4th of July.  Lowe's has used Vine in a number of ways to reach their followers. Use stop-motion video to bring your products to life in a quirky animation and send your followers a holiday message. It's a simple and clever way to draw attention to your brand and celebrate a holiday. #2: Promote a Dedicated Microsite Campaign With TwitterMicrosites are a great idea if you want to set up a central hub for a competition or event, but keep it separate from your main site. Once the event is done, you can easily close it down or remove links and then reinstate it later with minimal hassle. But how do you let everyone know about your campaign if it's tucked away on its own? Integrate Twitter functionality! Cosmetics and beauty brand Sephora's Sephora Claus campaign proved hugely successful. On the microsite, fans were asked to wish for a Sephora beauty product and connect to their Twitter account to complete the wish. One wish was granted each day for 30 days. All the wishes are collected on the microsite in the form of clickable gift tags, which look really stylish and give a fun visual twist to the page. Requiring wishers to connect their Twitter accounts meant that the 'wishes' were visible across social media, which boosted engagement—a staggering 50,000 tweets were sent overall.  Sephora made user-generated tweets an integral part of their latest holiday campaign. Build social media functionality into the holiday campaign on your microsite to ensure visibility. #3: Add Facebook Games to Your Annual Product CampaignsIt can be challenging to encourage engagement that makes your campaign visible to people outside your fan base. Adding a gaming component to your campaign is a surefire way to bring it to people's attention who'll spread your message to wider networks as they play. Every year, Cadbury's Creme Eggs are sold for a limited time (January 1 until Easter Sunday) in the run-up to Easter, and every year Cadbury comes up with a fun campaign to boost sales in this limited timeframe. The Creme Eggs are so popular they even have their own Facebook page with an incredible 2.6 million likes, which shows how successful Cadbury has been at increasing online engagement. In 2012, Cadbury capitalized on their massive fan base and used their status as one of the London Olympic Games sponsors to introduce the Goo Games as part of their annual Creme Egg marketing. Based on real Olympic events, fans could choose from several games including 'Pole Yolk,' 'Goodles' and 'Triple Bump,' and were rewarded with virtual medals and real-world prizes. Participants in any of the Goo Games had to like the Facebook page before playing, which helped to widen the campaign's reach and generate huge levels of sustained engagement on the page.  Goo Games created sustained engagement for Cadbury's Facebook Easter campaign. Visitors to the Cadbury site and Facebook page could also participate by sending in a photo of themselves "getting the goo out" of their own eggs by splattering them in original and funny ways. Combine user-generated marketing with a high-engagement activity like an online game for maximum reach and visibility. #4: Get the Most Out of Image Sharing With Pinterest BoardsAlthough brands still produce traditional TV and print ads, some of the biggest brands are putting their most creative input into their digital content. Image-sharing sites like Pinterest are becoming the focus of some exciting new targeted campaigns that drive engagement, as well as website traffic and online sales. When Target partnered with Pinterest last spring to pilot Rich Pins—pins that work like a catalog with prices and other product information—it resulted in a 70% increase in visits to Target.com from Pinterest. This Thanksgiving, Target teamed up with one of the most sought-after event producers in the world, David Stark, to offer guests a first-of-its-kind party-planning resource on Pinterest with a board called Best.Party.Ever. The Best.Party.Ever. board features David Stark's "secrets to creating the perfect holiday party, from DIYs to recipes to unique decorating ideas," as well as rich pins that make shopping easy and videos that show tips and ideas.  Target's Best.Party.Ever. campaign used rich pins to drive holiday engagement on Pinterest. Build up your campaign's secret board through the year. Unveil it by making it public in the lead-up to a holiday and remember to move your current holiday-themed boards to the top of your Pinterest profile to increase engagement at key times of the year. Conclusion Forward-looking brands are putting social media at the center of their holiday marketing campaigns and taking advantage of themed campaigns to build up long-term loyalty. When you use the tips in this article to make the most of frequent, relevant campaigns, you'll benefit from increased engagement and a growing audience as well as enjoy a greater online presence, increased sales and website traffic. What do you think? Are you using any of these tactics to get noticed? Which will you try in the coming year? Please leave your questions and comments in the box below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. The post How Brands Can Leverage Holidays for Their Social Campaigns appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| Facebook Marketing Plan: How to Grow Your Business With Facebook Posted: 14 Mar 2014 02:03 AM PDT By Michael Stelzner
Are you wondering how to grow your business with Facebook? To learn about the important elements of a Facebook marketing plan, I interview Amy Porterfield for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast. More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting). In this episode, I interview Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies and host of the Online Marketing Made Easy podcast. She was also the very first Facebook community manager we ever had for Social Media Examiner. Amy shares what your Facebook marketing plan needs to succeed. You'll learn why you should create a Facebook business page and the best engagement techniques to grow your audience. Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below! Listen NowPodcast: Play in new window | Download You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Facebook Marketing PlanThe benefits of a Facebook business page Amy states that although a lot of people get good engagement on their personal Facebook profile, she strongly recommends that you set up a Facebook business page. It's only on rare occasions that she advises to stick with your personal profile. If you have a physical or online product, program or service, a Facebook business page can be extremely beneficial. This type of page gives you permission to talk about your business on a regular basis.  A Facebook page is extremely beneficial to your business. Once you have the foundation in place and become that go-to authority in your niche, you can talk about your business freely. It's the main reason why you need to have a business page, as well as a personal profile. You'll hear about another benefit when it comes to Facebook ads. Listen to the show to discover the reason why Amy has taken all communication over to her business page but still keeps her personal profile. Start with a Facebook marketing plan Amy teaches how to put a Facebook marketing plan together in three phases.
Listen to the show to learn more about these three phases. 1. Attraction First of all, you need to build a Facebook community. It's important to grow a solid fan base so you can generate some great engagement with people. You become the go-to source in your community. In the attraction phase, you need to find different ways to grow your fan base. You need to know your audience. You'll hear why Amy advises creating a persona of your typical Facebook fan. One of the easiest ways to get the word out about your page is to have a Facebook Like button on your website. Once someone clicks the Like button to become a fan, they will remain on your website.  If you are already logged into Facebook when you visit a website, you might see other people’s profile pictures whom you’re connected to. You'll get quality fans with the Like button, because these people are already visiting your site. You want them to become Facebook fans, so you can stay top of mind when they're on Facebook. Listen to the show to hear what happened when Amy advised Michael Hyatt to install the Like button on his website. How to use your website or blog to grow a following Amy explains that it doesn't matter if you have a massive email subscriber list, these are people who have taken the time to give you their name and email address. You'll learn about techniques you can use to encourage people to become fans. If you want to attract new people, then Graph Search is very valuable. Amy says it's a hidden treasure that not many people use. You'll hear some great examples of search terms that will help you gain valuable information about your audience.  When you use the search term “Interests liked by people who like ………” you will be amazed by the results. When it comes to promotion, you need to turn your fans into leads. You definitely want to check out this previous podcast with Amy that goes into detail about list-building with social media. Amy's philosophy is that your subscriber list can be the energy of your business. You need to start to look at Facebook as a place to attract quality leads to grow your email list. You'll discover why Amy believes it's crucial for anyone who is marketing on Facebook to have some kind of giveaway. Listen to the show to learn the difference among the costs per click for Facebook ads, depending on the destination URL. Engage with your community Amy explains how important it is to post great content consistently. The people who have the most impact on Facebook are the ones who post every single day with different types of content. As a marketer, you need to have a posting plan for your Facebook page for it to work for your community. When your Facebook page is a community hub, you become that trusted source. You should never come straight out of the gate and talk about your business, products and services. A great way to network online is to show love to others in your industry. This helps draw them to you.  Show love to others in your industry by sharing their content with your audience. If your fans begin to know that you are always there and are able to answer their questions, then you become a resource that they trust. It's how you begin to grow a community. Listen to the show to find out the conversations you need to have with your employees so you remain consistent with your posts. 2. Promotion Amy states that first you need to think about strategic posts and make sure your status updates are short and to-the-point. A study by Buddy Media showed that a post with 80 characters or fewer gets up to 27% more engagement. If your goal is to get someone to click a link on your status update, you need a clear call to action.  Make sure you include a call to action in your status update. The next decision to make is whether you should include an image. A lot of people who teach Facebook marketing believe it's better to post without images, and studies show that you don't need an image to get greater reach. Amy's philosophy on images is that you might get a bigger reach when you don't use an image, but are you getting greater engagement? The answer is usually no. You'll hear an example of how to use images to punctuate your status update, which in turn will get people to pay attention and click. Listen to the show to discover what happens at Social Media Examiner when we do a short post with just a URL on Facebook versus when we let them populate through the image. Contests on Facebook Facebook recently relaxed the rules on contests, so you don't have to use a third-party app anymore. Now you can ask people to like your page for a chance to win something and then pick a winner at random. Amy believes that contests are really valuable and if you put the time, energy and money into creating a well-designed contest, then you want to make sure you turn these fans into leads. You'll discover why the new guidelines work well for local businesses, but if you are or want to be an online business, it will serve your business better if you collect names and emails from a contest. Listen to the show to hear how a contest can help you grow a following on your Facebook page. 3. Sales The third component of your Facebook marketing plan is to sell. This goes hand in hand with engagement. You need to engage with your audience if you want them to take action and do business with you. The most powerful way to get audience feedback is to ask questions. It's a great way to find out what your audience needs when you're creating a program, product or service that you want to sell.  Ask your audience questions. Although Amy is not a huge fan of selling directly on Facebook, you'll discover the secret sauce to successful promotions on Facebook. Listen to the show to find out why now is the perfect time to plan your marketing calendar. Discovery of the WeekI recently came across a really cool website called BuzzSumo, which provides social insights for content marketers. In the search bar you can type in any kind of phrase and it will show you inquiries. It displays the most popular content; in particular, blog content across different social networks based on your search phrase.  These are a few search results for “social media marketing.” It adds up the shares for Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook likes. You can look at the past 24 hours, week, month or 6 months. You can filter by articles, infographics, videos and other kinds of content. This can help you find content that you might want to share in your network—content you know your audience will be interested in. I haven't tested it extensively, so I don't know if it covers things outside of social media and content marketing. Be sure to check it out. Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show. Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you. Other Show MentionsSocial Media Marketing World 2014 is our physical mega-conference, which is set to return to San Diego, California on March 26, 27 and 28.  Social Media Marketing World 2014. We have put together more than 60 sessions that include social media marketing, blogging, podcasting and video marketing. We've invited the top experts in the world. So when you attend this conference, you'll get a chance to meet them, rub shoulders with them and more importantly get the chance to absorb the knowledge that they have built up over many years, and in some cases, decades. This is a sample of the sessions on blogging.
I strongly recommend that you check it out and watch the testimonials from this year's conference. Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast: What do you think? What are your thoughts on creating a Facebook marketing plan? Please leave your comments below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends:
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| 31 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Articles Posted: 14 Mar 2014 01:46 AM PDT By Cindy King
We asked our writers to share their favorite social media blog posts. What follows is a gold mine of content you can apply to your marketing in 2014. #1: Enlarge Your Digital Footprint for More Effective Online Marketing Andy Crestodina I love this post by Barry Feldman because it emphasizes content promotion (which is all-important) and includes a comprehensive list of specific actions. It's a great overview for beginners. But the pros may also find a few tactics they aren't using.  Enlarge Your Digital Footprint for More Effective Online Marketing. It's a great piece of writing. As usual, Barry is approachable and direct. Not a word is wasted. It's one of the great posts of 2013 for both style and substance. Andy Crestodina, strategic director of Orbit Media. #2: A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization Rachel Sprung With of all last year's changes in the social media space, there are so many articles to choose from! But one article that resonated with me was Rand Fishkin's A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization. Every blogger knows that it's important to optimize their pages properly, but it's hard to keep track of everything you need to do with on-page optimization.  A Visual Guide to Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization. In this article, Rand clearly lays out the most important parts of on-page optimization. He uses an infographic and also gives details with visual examples to explain his points. Though some of the points are high-level and complex, he breaks them down so they're easy for beginners—as well as advanced SEO professionals—to understand. Rachel Sprung, product marketing associate at HubSpot. #3: Tell Your Business Story, One Blog at a Time Debbie Hemley Back in April, I came across Mike Alton's article, Tell Your Business Story, One Blog at a Time. As someone drawn to the idea of storytelling, I love the way Mike approaches the subject matter, practicing what he preaches by telling a compelling story about storytelling. Sure, the connection between storytelling and business blogging has been made before, but what differentiates this article from others for me is:
 Tell your business story, one blog at a time. Mike suggests that storytelling is one of the most effective purposes of a business blog. He outlines six different kinds of stories businesses can tell:
As storytellers, Mike reminds us to be genuine, paint a picture with words, bring the audience into the story and keep them in mind. All highly valuable points to take with us as we write our way into 2014! Debbie Hemley, freelance writer and social media coach. #4: Is Youtility the Future of Marketing? Ian Cleary My favorite post of 2013 is Jay Baer's Is Youtility the Future of Marketing? It's becoming increasingly difficult to get the attention of a prospective customer. At the top of the sales funnel (i.e., when the potential customer makes first contact with you), Jay outlines three ways of getting attention:
 Is Youtility the Future of Marketing? Top of mind awareness is an expensive marketing technique that uses constant marketing, so when the person is ready to buy they will think of you. Frame of mind awareness is also called inbound marketing. This is where you produce content that helps you get found through search or on social channels, so when a potential customer is looking for your product or service, they are attracted with content and converted over time. Jay also talks about a third option that he calls friend of mine awareness. This is where you provide something of real value to the customer. For example, you build an app that provides a useful service. It may be expensive to build the app, but it's so useful that prospects become attached to the brand. They view the brand differently because your app adds real value. Jay calls this Youtility. What I really like about the post is that it shows a new direction for marketing. We can all provide "Youtility" to our potential customers and stand out from the crowd. Jay's book, Youtility, provides all you need to know about this new form of marketing. Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial. #5: 6 Facebook Reporting Tools for In-Depth Analysis of Fan Pages Jim Belosic This is one of those posts where every single word is important and educational. In other words: I actually read the whole thing! What I love most is that it speaks to a more advanced Facebook marketing audience and digs deep into how to analyze a Facebook page.  6 Facebook Reporting Tools for In-Depth Analysis of Fan Pages. Many businesses are on Facebook just to be on Facebook, but there are plenty of tools that can show the impact of the social network. Kristi Hines explains them here, showing admins how they can demonstrate to bosses and colleagues the results they're getting. Plus it has a lot of pictures and I love articles with pictures! I'd heard of all six tools mentioned in this post, Simply Measured, Socialbakers, Sprout Social, Rival IQ, Cyfe and Google Analytics, but I didn't know just how valuable each tool could be. This post really breaks down the offers, options, features and benefits of each tool so you can choose which one(s) will work best for your business. Jim Belosic, CEO of ShortStack. #6: How to Grow a Billion-Dollar B2B Growth Engine  Eric Siu The most valuable blog post I read in 2013 was HubSpot—How to Grow a Billion-Dollar B2B Growth Engine. HubSpot is known for championing the push toward inbound marketing and has long been great at using content marketing to drive leads. However, there has never been a good case study on how they've done it and what led to their success.  HubSpot—How to Grow a Billion-Dollar B2B Growth Engine. I really enjoy blog posts that are backed by data and use specific examples because they allow me to start thinking about new ideas. These posts also serve as motivation for me as an entrepreneur. From early traction to taking risks on different tool sets to hosting webinars to creating a partnership program, there's enough in here to spark at least one actionable idea. Eric Siu, founder of Growth Everywhere and COO at Single Grain, a digital marketing agency. #7: 13 Characteristics of Human Brands Mike Gingerich If I narrow down to one social media article that really shaped and guided me in 2013, it was this blog post by Pam Moore the Marketing Nut: "13 Characteristics of Human Brands." It was like getting a bucket of cold water splashed in my face! It wasn't a strategy post. It was about the philosophy of life and business—not a "how-to" post, rather a "who are you?" post. It caused me to think long and hard about the core values, guiding principles and "human side" of our business.  13 Characteristics of Human Brands. I loved this post because it spoke to the heart of social media for business! Social media is SOCIAL—it's about people and relationships. It's person to person, not object to object or transaction to transaction. Pam wrote passionately about this, cutting through the fluff, getting past all the data-mining and formulas and making a simple, clear point: It's about being real, authentic and human. That's the core of social media for any business. Mike Gingerich, co-founder of TabSite. #8: 11 Content Marketing Lessons Learned From 20 of the Top 100 Blogs Thibaut Davoult Neil Patel's blog is a must-read for content marketers and SEO professionals because he goes straight to the point and values the power of data over gut feeling. These 11 tips are instrumental to growing a professional blog's audience. I had to learn them on my own when I started working on Nitrogram's content strategy, and now they all sit together on this list!  11 Content Marketing Lessons Learned From 20 of the Top 100 Blogs. Following these tips will not only help you become a better writer and improve the impact of your own efforts, but will also improve your productivity. You'll get more done by outsourcing efficiently. If you have to choose just one paragraph, make it "It's all about the headline." I read it often. Should you focus on your blog post's body? Sure you should; that's what brings value to your readers. But what's a strong article worth if no one clicks your headline? Thibaut Davoult, head of content marketing at Nitrogram. #9: The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014 Brian Honigman One of the most valuable posts I read this year about social media was The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014 by Jayson DeMers. I found this post valuable because it clearly identifies many of the social media marketing developments that are important for brands and small businesses in the coming year. Yearly roundup posts are often filled with fluff, but Jayson's post touches on actionable trends that business owners and marketers must take note of if they want to remain relevant in the ever-changing marketplace.  The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014. I learned about the continuing importance of Google+ and Google authorship, further stressing how companies need to focus on content to make an impact across their digital properties. Google is merely aligning with companies that are creating quality content, which Jayson helped outline nicely. Brian Honigman, freelance writer and content marketing consultant. #10: Social Media Stardom: 7 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Digitally Savvy Celebrities Ben Pickering One of my favorite posts of the past year comes from Ekaterina Walter, who shared Social Media Stardom: 7 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Digitally Savvy Celebrities. The overarching theme is to focus on your audience and not yourself. This is a powerful lesson for any organization engaging on social media.  Social Media Stardom: 7 Lessons Marketers Can Learn From Digitally Savvy Celebrities. I really like the concept of building a tribe of brand advocates as a classic quality-over-quantity strategy, with the upside being that in social circles, quality can actually beget larger quantity as the hardcore fans are likely to be your biggest influencers. Ben Pickering, digital marketing executive who has worked with many of the world's top brands. #11: 9 Persuasion Lessons From a 4-Year-Old Greg Hickman As marketers and adults, we typically overcomplicate things. Not because we want to sound smart (all of the time), but because we usually don't get into our customers' heads during the content-creation process. The article 9 Persuasion Lessons From a 4-Year-Old not only gives us 9 valuable tips we can use today, but also a perspective that brings us back to our own youth, when things were much more simple. Bringing out your inner child while writing can offer great results for your audience.  9 Persuasion Lessons from a 4-Year-Old. I learned that after I write or record anything, I need to review the content as if I were my own customer reading it AND make sure it's simple enough that a child would know what I'm asking them to do. Greg Hickman, founder of Mobile Mixed. #12: Twitter Files for IPO—What it Means for Users, Investors and Social Media Lior Degani Without a doubt, the biggest social media event of the year was Twitter going public, which had a big effect on social media marketers on both short- and long-term fronts. Brian Solis wrote a great piece for marketers about the IPO's impact on media, society and business, "Twitter Files for IPO—What it Means for Users, Investors, and Social Media."  Twitter Files for IPO—What it Means for Users, Investors and Social Media. The post helped me understand the business effects the IPO will have on the network. Advertising on Twitter will become more viable for the company, and therefore more valuable for marketers as well. As Twitter accumulates more data and the network grows, the platform becomes more approachable by both big brands and small businesses. As for what's next, Twitter is committed to improving mobile engagement and mobile ads, with relevant acquisitions such as MoPub. As a public company, Twitter's business decisions will strike a unique balance between monetization and user experience. Lior Degani, co-founder of Swayy. #13: What Everybody Missed About Hummingbird: Social Signals Stephanie Shkolnik One of the most valuable blog posts I've read this year is Eric Enge's What Everybody Missed About Hummingbird: Social Signals, as it pertains to the implications of search and social. This article expands on how in the past Google has had technical issues that impacted social signals as a ranking factor. Enge highlights a recent study that showcased how Google+ share links hadn't actually impacted ranking in the past, indicating that while historically links have been a driver in SEO, social signals will become more prominent.  What Everybody Missed About Hummingbird: Social Signals. This piece illustrates how experts who specialize in particular topics should and can be recognized based on their online credibility. While this post is relatively straightforward, it endorses the notion that social will inform search to a higher degree in the future and that to rank in Google, you must build social media credibility. Stephanie Shkolnik, director of social media at Digitaria. #14: How to Sell on Facebook: A Detailed, 9-Step Guide Krista Bunskoek For business value, I would recommend Jon Loomer's How to Sell on Facebook: A Detailed, 9-Step Guide. Jon's practical step-by-step guide compiles tactical details on how to create highly targeted Facebook ad campaigns that ultimately result in sales conversions.  How to Sell on Facebook: A Detailed, 9-Step Guide. I loved the article for Loomer's insightful strategies such as:
I loved it even more because it walks you through the process with clear language and easy-to-understand screenshots. Facebook ads have proven to be an effective way to reach our market, so knowing how to use the tools (with strategic tips) has been very valuable. Krista Bunskoek, content marketer at Wishpond. #15: This So-Called Digital Life: Re-Evaluating the Value of Time Spent in Social Networks Linda Coles This post by Brian Solis really captures the other side of social media—the side that isn't often talked about, but is still very important to keep a handle on. While this article really looks at how our teens are using social media and how it influences them, some of us older folks are feeling just the same way.  This So-Called Digital Life: Re-Evaluating the Value of Time Spent in Social Networks. It can affect us all like a shot of dopamine (a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centers). Each time we post something and get a reaction such as a like—or better still, a comment—it gives us pleasure. So we do it again and again and again. It's not that we feel like we need a digital detox; we're in control. But that doesn't stop us enjoying the feeling. Just like opening a box of chocolates. We don't intend to eat them all in one go, but to enjoy one or two straight off because they give us pleasure. We like them. Linda Coles of Blue Banana is a sought-after speaker and LinkedIn influencer.  John Lee Dumas #16: Social Media Strategy in 8 StepsI love Jay Baer's 8 steps post because it lays out a roadmap to easily follow to start building a platform for social media strategy. Taking away the idea that small businesses and companies "do" social, Jay instead focuses on how they can "be" social—an important distinction to make, given how powerful our social communications have become.  Social Media Strategy in 8 Steps. As Jay points out, I think it's obvious that too many businesses focus on the tactics and tools they can use to do social media, all the while forgetting to actually listen to their audience or utilize the metrics to help them measure and track their goals. What stood out to me the most in Jay's post, and a valuable takeaway for my own social media strategy, is the idea that we need to become more human. Putting yourself out there as a relatable human being versus an entity is a great way to break down any existing barriers there might be between you and your potential audience on social. John Lee Dumas, founder and host of EntrepreneurOnFire. #17: 10 Biz Owners Who Are Doing Rad Things With Images Cas McCullough The best blog post I read about social media was not from one of the famous social media blogs. It was this one on visual marketing by blogger Karen Gunton from Build a Little Biz. With the rise of Instagram and Pinterest, visual marketing has become a higher-profile social media strategy for small businesses. Karen takes a whole lot of overwhelm out of visual marketing for small businesses who do it all themselves. She doesn't feature big corporations or high-profile social media stars. Instead she features real people and real little businesses, and that makes the content easy to relate to.  10 Biz Owners Who Are Doing Rad Things With Images. I love this blog post because it shows you how to brand all of your visuals, tools, templates and worksheets in a particular style. While I do illustrate many of my own social media visuals, I hadn't thought about taking a mixed-media approach. Something to have fun with in 2014. I felt refreshed after reading this post and my brain is now full of new ideas on how to use visual marketing to better relate to my followers on social media. Cas McCullough, founder of Content Marketing Cardiology. #18: LinkedIn Etiquette Guide: 20 Do's and Don'ts Vincent Ng I feel that the single most helpful social media post for me was LinkedIn Etiquette Guide: 20 Do's and Don'ts. The blog post provides helpful tips on how to create real relationships with people on LinkedIn and practical tips on what you should never do. To top it off, it also has a beautiful infographic of all the tips.  LinkedIn Etiquette Guide: 20 Do's & Don'ts (Infographic). I love this article because I've put a lot of these tips into practice and have seen positive results. I've made some great contacts within the Pinterest marketing community through LinkedIn, and it's led to a lot of guest blogging opportunities and interesting discussions. The tip that I like the most is about sending a LinkedIn welcome message that delivers value to your contacts. This can be a message that provides a link to your latest ebook or a report that's helpful to your LinkedIn connections. Vincent Ng, president of MCNG Marketing and a Pinterest marketer. #19: Facebook Marketing: From 2,500 to 1 Million Fans in Just Two Years Adeel Vanthaliwala The most valuable social media blog post for me, published on the Crazy Egg blog, was called Facebook Marketing: From 2,500 to 1 Million Fans in Just Two Years. Generally, this article taught me that social media marketing is not a sprint, but a calculated marathon. It's important to remember this if you are using social media for your business.  Facebook Marketing: From 2,500 to 1 Million Fans in Just Two Years. Specifically, there are three things that I really liked about this post:
Adeel Vanthaliwala, co-founder of Incentivibe. #20: Breaking Down the Four Ms of Influence Marketing for Better ROI Kimberly Reynolds The post that truly made me reevaluate my perspective about online influence is Danny Brown's Breaking Down the Four Ms of Influence Marketing for Better ROI. After reading this post, I started to think about how I could shift from focusing on influencers as determined by Kred or Klout, which really just measures amplification. Instead, I started to focus on connecting with the real influencers: people who will motivate my customers along the sales funnel, ultimately to the purchase decision.  Breaking Down the Four Ms of Influence Marketing for Better ROI. Kimberly Reynolds, co-founder of SocialNotz. #21: A Scientific Guide to Writing Great Headlines on Twitter, Facebook and Your Blog Donna Moritz In 2013, this fabulous post from Leo Widrich at Buffer was the one that I referred back to the most. Leo's post is packed with hot tips for getting more mileage out of your social media marketing. I love that it includes some really clever ways to structure your Twitter and Facebook headlines, not just on your blog.  A scientific guide to writing great headlines on Twitter, Facebook and Your Blog. My key takeaways:
There are hundreds of blog posts that I read and love every year, but if you want to be successful on social media, do what I did: bookmark, refer to and apply some of the tips in this post in 2014. Donna Moritz, founder of Socially Sorted. #22: 32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips Stephanie Sammons One of my favorite social media blog posts in 2013 was 32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips from Kristi Hines at Kikolani. In this post, Kristi gathers 32 best practices from the experts on the most effective ways to promote your blog content through social media and beyond. You will undoubtedly recognize many of the experts whom she asked to contribute to the post.  32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips. I really enjoyed reading the insights of these successful contributors and also picked up some great tips for my own blog promotion strategies! Stephanie Sammons, founder of Build Online Influence. #23: 51 Irresistible Social Media Tool and Technology Tips Jamie Turner Ian Cleary has done a terrific job taking his RazorSocial blog from zero to 100 miles per hour in just under 18 months. He's done it by creating amazingly helpful blog posts like 51 Irresistible Social Media Tool and Technology Tips. The post is classic Ian Cleary, packed with helpful information that is not only relevant but also actionable.  Social Media Tips: 51 Irresistible Social Media Tool and Technology Tips. If you want to see how to take a blog from nothing to something in just a year and a half, and you want to learn valuable social media tips in the process, you can't go wrong with this blog post and Ian's blog. Jamie Turner, founder of the 60 Second Marketer. #24: 52 Unique Ways to Create Social Media Magic Katie Lance I loved this post because it reviews a lot of the basics that we all should be doing, but it also gives some great insights into the nuances of specific platforms. Too many blogs posts about social media don't dive into specific how-tos and I love Rebekah's easy-to-understand style for beginning or advanced social media marketers.  52 Unique Ways to Create Social Media Magic. I especially like the tips for Pinterest and Google+ (two emerging platforms with enormous SEO opportunities). These are tips I'll be implementing immediately! Katie Lance, CEO/owner of Katie Lance Consulting. #25: Empowerment Marketing: Advertising to Humans as More Than Just Selfish Machines Lisa Peyton I discovered Johan Sachs this year while studying storytelling for my degree in Media Psychology. This blog post on Fast Company is an excerpt from his book, Winning the Story Wars, and outlines what he calls empowerment marketing. It's a fresh take on how companies need to craft messages that empower consumers instead of making them feel inadequate. He reveals the tactics of the inadequacy approach and explains why they no longer work on social media–savvy consumers.  Empowerment Marketing: Advertising to Humans as More Than Just Selfish Machines. The article also lays out specific empowerment marketing tactics that social media strategists and community managers can use to connect with their audience. His tactics will help you inspire, motivate and reach the core values of your target audience. Each tactic outlined is supported with evidence from real campaigns from brands like Nike, Dove, Apple and Volkswagen. Lisa Peyton, a leader in the field of digital marketing who serves as editor at ThoroughlyModernMarketing.com. #26: Ten Visibility Tips for Google Plus Louise Julig I loved this guest post and infographic by Stephan Hovnanian, Ten Visibility Tips for Google Plus, that he created in October for Denise Wakeman's site. Stephan is one of the most helpful people I've found on G+, and this infographic succinctly sums up 10 tips for the platform.  Ten Visibility Tips for Google Plus. Since Google+ has some distinct features and cultural differences from the other social media outlets, I appreciated learning from a pro how to take advantage of them to get more engagement and boost visibility. I particularly appreciated the tip about posting to communities vs. posting only to your profile. It's a great way to get some traction on your posts, particularly when you're just starting out on G+ and don't have many followers. Louise Julig, Social Media Examiner's case study writer, freelance writer and former engineer. #27: Taking the Long View: Social Media's Real ROI Bryden McGrath When it comes to social media, many businesses simply want a clear ROI they can calculate. It's a topic that continues to occupy marketers who want to track every single dollar that their social media efforts have generated. In this blog post, Ian Lurie explains why social media's ROI is actually all about the long-term, from great customer service through a company's social media channels to improving the overall opinion of your brand. While these types of social media investments often lose money when measuring near-term ROI, Lurie's point is that these activities have big-time growth implications. Or as he puts it: "The long-term payoff is huge."  Taking the Long View: Social Media's Real ROI. Bryden McGrath, social media coordinator at Precor Incorporated. #28: How to Find More Content Ideas Than You'll Ever Be Able to Create Jason Miller I love this post because it addresses one of the biggest challenges for businesses in regards to social strategy: content ideas. Let's not forget that the blog is probably the most important and underutilized social media tool out there, and content is its fuel. Without a constant source of high-quality, original content, your overall social strategy will suffer.  How to Find More Content Ideas Than You'll Ever Be Able to Create. What I learned from this post is that many of us have far more to say than we probably ever realize and it's up to us to pull these ideas and topics out of the deep recesses of our unconscious minds. Peter Shallard takes a deep dive into the psychology of content success and poses three questions to help content creators and social marketers dig deep and never run out ideas to write about. Shallard also reminds us that the basics matter more than ever: "writing magnetic headlines, building irresistible narratives and focusing on good writing are still important." But by continuing to ask yourself the three simple questions he proposes in the post, you'll get great ideas flowing and have "an unlimited source that you can craft into brilliance." Timeless advice for social media and content marketers alike. Jason Miller, senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn. #29: The Story Behind the Numbers: Social Media Research Kerry Butters Having read extensively on the subject in 2013, I loved the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) research on proof of ROI for social. While those of us "in the biz" are of course aware that social is a powerful medium for businesses, it's not always simple to convince clients of this. For me, the study gives a solid insight into social media ROI from a reputable source that could be worked on to give insight to clients and my readers. The idea that social can produce a return of 3:1 is valuable to businesses and can really help agencies communicate extra value to clients. It's easy to claim proven results, but sometimes business owners are naturally skeptical about such claims.  The Story Behind the Numbers: Social Media Research. The study claimed that for every $1.64 spent on social, the return is $5.47 (converted from GBP to USD), which is a significant ROI. Of course, not everyone agreed with the study. Bryan Urbick of the Consumer Knowledge Center pointed to a Pepsi campaign that suggested otherwise. I really liked the research as it led to further research and allowed me to get a grip on understanding why the debate on the value of social remains. This also gave rise to a better understanding of how tools such as CRM can help. Kerry Butters, founder and director of markITwrite. #30: 46 Experts Share Their Top Social Media Management Tools Christian Karasiewicz The single most valuable blog post I read on social media in 2013 was an article titled, 46 Experts Share Their Top Social Media Management Tools. The reason I loved this article so much was because it emphasizes that while it's important to develop a social media strategy, you need to be able to execute on that strategy. Trying to squeeze 24 hours of work into an 8-hour day is nearly impossible unless you have the right tools to help do the job.  46 Experts Share Their Top Social Media Management Tools. This article teaches about a lot of the social media tools that are available to help manage the day-to-day time spent on social media. What I enjoyed most was learning about the different tools many of today's social media professionals are currently using and where those tools can be applied to help execute a successful social media strategy. Christian Karasiewicz, founder of FB Marketing University.  Heidi Cohen #31: Blog Optimization: How to Optimize Your BlogUnlike many social media marketers, Andy Crestodina can be geeky (in a good way). In this post, Andy lifts the hood on Google Analytics to show bloggers how to get their posts to rank better. If it works for top bloggers like Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks, it'll work for you.  Blog Optimization: How to Optimize Your Blog. Heidi Cohen, chief content officer at HeidiCohen.com. What do you think? Which one of these is your favorite? Please share your comments below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. The post 31 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Articles appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| Content Marketing: How to Attract People With Content Posted: 14 Mar 2014 01:18 AM PDT By Michael Stelzner
Are you wondering how to attract customers with your content? To learn about the power of content marketing, I interview Joe Pulizzi for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast. More About This Show
It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing. The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting). In this episode, I interview Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, the Content Marketing World conference and author of the new book, Epic Content Marketing. Joe shares why a content marketing strategy is important for your business. You'll learn how content marketing works and what you need to do to get started. Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below! Listen NowPodcast: Play in new window | Download You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry. Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show: Content MarketingThe latest video by Chipotle Mexican Grill and content marketing Chipotle's recent video called The Scarecrow has been viewed more than 5 million times. The essence of the video is a scarecrow who works for a big corporation that's in the business of processing food. He soon realizes that he doesn't like the world he's in and decides to make things using healthy alternatives. At the end of the video, Chipotle has included a video game for viewers. Their brand is only mentioned at the very end for a few seconds. It's received a lot of press.
Joe says that it pulls at the heartstrings a bit and if you can do that in marketing, it's great. This isn't the first time Chipotle has done this. They did Back to the Start in 2011, which was a similar movement. You'll discover why in 2011 Joe would have said this was creative marketing/advertising and why today it's an approach to storytelling. And now it's fully fledged content marketing. The story is bigger than Chipotle, as they don't talk about their products or services. Joe believes more of this type of content marketing will be seen in the future. One of the keys to content marketing is consistency. You need to take a 24/7 approach to telling stories to attract and retain your customers. This is exactly what Chipotle has done. They found their bigger story and began a movement around it. Although considered long for a YouTube video at 3 minutes 23 seconds, Joe believes that if you tell a story it doesn't matter how long it is. You'll hear why Chipotle agonized over whether to include the chili pepper in the video, which is part of their brand.  Chipotle didn’t know if it would be too promotional for their trademark chili pepper to appear in the video. If you think about what stories you can tell, they should not be about you but rather something you stand for, which will make a difference in your customers' lives. Listen to the show to find out why Chipotle's goal was to get their video out into social media. How content marketing works Over the last 50 years, advertisers interrupted people's attention with their advertisements. Today's content marketing is not about distracting the customer; it's to attract them with useful content. You need to provide valuable, relevant and compelling content and deliver it consistently. People then grow relationships with you because they see you as the trusted source for that particular content. This can then lead to sales. It can look like a daily blog, a podcast, a quarterly magazine, a weekly newsletter or even a TV show. You have to be the producer of the content and create an asset. Content marketing happens when businesses start to think like publishers and deliver compelling content to a defined readership. You should position yourself as the go-to resource in your industry. Listen to the show to find out why most people aren't set up as publishers. Where to start with a content strategy Joe says it starts and ends with the same thing: "Who is your buyer?" It's important to have a deep understanding of whom you want to try to communicate with. Then you'll need to answer:
For example, Inc.com magazine's goal is to help small business owners and entrepreneurs be more profitable.  Every piece of their content makes you feel that they want to help you be more profitable as a business. When this happens, you read more of that content, which can lead to sales for Inc. It drives their objectives. You'll hear the questions you need to ask yourself to help you figure out the "Why?" The next step is to know what you can be the leading expert in. Joe believes that it's where you tell your unique story that sets you apart from everyone else. Once you know your niche, you can start to build an editorial program around it and discover what tools work best to tell your story with. Joe says the number-one reason why content marketing programs fail is because they stop. The other is because businesses talk about themselves. IBM research states that 85% of corporate blogs have 5 or fewer posts. Content is a promise to your customers and you have to keep that promise. Joe states that content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. You'll hear how long it took Joe and his team to make it work. If you build a loyal audience, magic can happen in any business. Listen to the show to learn why Coca-Cola built an emotional connection with their audience. Content marketing to promote the Content Marketing World conference The huge profit-making machine for the Content Marketing Institute is their physical event, Content Marketing World.  Content Marketing World 2013. The first thing they do is develop a daily blog post, which is very "how-to" oriented and inspirational. It's a multi-author blog. They have three editors on staff. One is the managing editor who oversees the content and works with different authors. There are also a proofreader who reviews everything and a content director. The managing editor works with influencers and thought leaders who want to get content onto Joe's site. You'll hear how this can become a win-win for both parties. Joe's content marketing mission statement is "Advancing the Art and Science of Content Marketing." Sometimes they talk about things that they know will not get a lot of traffic, but they feel they should because it's bigger than them. Listen to the show to find out what has helped the Content Marketing Institute increase their subscriber base. Social media and content Joe says that 10% of his business is consulting and he mainly consults with Fortune 1000 companies. The majority of the time it involves helping them with their content marketing strategy because their social is a mess. Most of Joe's customers create a magazine where the pages are blank. There's no content strategy at all. In order for social to work, you must have interesting content that people want to share. Before you go into any of the social channels, you have to think about buyers' informational needs. Think about what their pain points are and how you'll create a conversation through social that will not only make an impact on their lives, but also tie into your business. You'll discover why Joe advises you to not get into social media until you have a content strategy. Listen to the show to find out how your business can move ahead in content marketing when it comes to social media. Track and measure content marketing There is a whole chapter in Joe's book, Epic Content Marketing, on what businesses and marketers need to track to find out if their content marketing is working.  Epic Content Marketing covers what you need to track. If you're a marketer in any size enterprise, whoever you report to only cares about three things when it comes to content.
Your objectives have to come from one of the above. It could be lead generation or customer retention. Whatever your goals are when it comes to content, it has to be one of these. You need to ask yourself, "What's different about the people who engage with our content versus those who don't." At the Content Marketing Institute, they know that people who subscribe to their database for an average of 6 months or more buy at more frequent levels than those who don't. You'll hear how it works for OpenView Venture Partners' content platform, OpenView Labs.  OpenView Labs has a great content platform. Listen to the show to find out the easiest way to discover whether you're having an impact with your content. Survival Tip: How Content Looks on FacebookI've recently discovered a brand-new plugin called WP Open Graph by Nick Yurov that can help you radically improve your WordPress website content and how it appears on Facebook. Facebook Open Graph is the technology behind the scenes that looks at content and tries to pull in the title, description and so forth. When you install the plugin into WordPress, on every single post and page, it will show you a little summary of what the data will look like once it's shared on Facebook. It's called a Facebook Snippet Preview. You can then edit it. Underneath the preview it shows you the title and the description. It's very powerful.  The Facebook Snippet Preview in WordPress. Another tool I want to share with you is the Facebook Debugger. You can paste in a URL and once you hit the Debug button, information will appear about that particular URL. You want to look for the object properties. This is the type of article, the title, the graphic it will pull in and the description. In particular you want to look at the description. This plugin helps you control the title and the description. You'll learn what else makes these two tools so valuable to Facebook marketing. Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show. Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you. Other Show MentionsSocial Media Marketing World 2014 is officially open. It's our physical mega-conference which is set to return to San Diego, California on March 26, 27 and 28. In April of this year, over 1100 marketers from 31 countries attended. We had an incredible time and everybody loved it. You definitely want to mark your calendar. If you want to find out more click here.  Social Media Marketing World 2014. The slogan for the conference is "Networking, Discovery, Fun." Networking is a key component of this conference. It's not like your typical conference. Networking is worked into every aspect. The opening night party on March 26 will take place on a navy aircraft carrier, the USS Midway. You'll have incredible opportunities to network with your peers and connect with people. Also the month before the conference starts, there will be an exclusive LinkedIn group just for the people attending. This allows people to connect long before the conference. After every keynote and lunch, there will be 45 minutes to 1 hour of dedicated networking time. There will also be networking exercises during the keynotes. People have said that some of the connections they made at this conference have been absolutely astounding. Some of the speakers we have already secured are Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, Michael Hyatt, Jay Baer, John Jantsch, Amy Porterfield, Mark Schaefer, Steve Farber, Laura Fitton, Lee Odden, Joe Pulizzi, Marcus Sheridan and many more. Check out the amazing video testimonials from some of the people you respect and follow online and see what they have to say about this conference. Discount tickets are available right now and they will go extremely fast. Check it out. Key takeaways mentioned in this episode:Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast: What do you think? What are your thoughts on content marketing? Please leave your comments below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends:
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| Hyper-targeting on Twitter: How businesses can leverage big data Posted: 14 Mar 2014 12:57 AM PDT
Twitter has launched a new way for businesses to leverage existing databases to better target potential customers on the fast-growing microblogging network. For the first time, businesses can target consumers based on existing email lists, either from their own or from an ad partner. This will allow businesses to specifically target consumers who have shown prior interest, purchased products before or have asked to be contacted. For example, a clothing retailer that wants to promote a spring sale to its existing customer base can now direct twitter ads specifically to current cardholders. Twitter takes the existing email lists and matches that information to Twitter accounts in order to show the matched users a Promoted Tweet with the sale information.
Twitter is not limiting its new tailored audiences to existing databases. Businesses can now use Twitter's user base to create new lists of potential customers. For example, the same retailer above may want to target every Twitter user who has the word shopping in their public bio, or someone who uses the word shopping often in tweets, or someone who follows certain verified clothing store accounts. Now, businesses can create a user list using those specifications to create a tailored audience and show that group promoted tweets.
Allowing targeting based on existing email lists is new to Twitter, but not new to paid social media ads. In 2012, Facebook released "Custom Audience ads", which allow ad targeting to lists of email addresses. Custom Audience ads let businesses give lists of names or Facebook ID numbers to Facebook and use those lists to target with specifically messaged ads. How Marketers Can Use TargetingThe question for businesses is how can these types of ads increase sales? The answer is, by being able to target customers more efficiently, businesses can tailor ads to be more effective based on who's seeing them. For example, a car company will be able to target previous customers based on what they purchased. Someone who purchased a truck 5 years ago will see an ad specifically made for people who might be looking to buy a new truck, while someone who purchased an electric vehicle will only be shown ads about fuel efficient options. Other applications include businesses targeting loyal clients for premium services while pushing discounted services to new clients. Businesses can also push specific products based on what customers have bought before; such as pants that match a shirt or the newest addition to a Lego collection a customer has already started. Of course, for businesses to target based on this type of data, businesses will have to already have it available. Without having a deep well of information, businesses are limited in targeting options. For marketers, these tools allow for more efficient paid social media and paid advertising campaigns. By targeting more efficiently, marketers can increase their CTR, and in turn, their conversion rate. These audience specific ads could also be combined with email advertising to be part of a re-targeting campaign. By being able to specifically target existing customer bases, marketers can go after an audience it knows has the ability and the desire to spend money on their product, thereby boosting sales. Images: Howard Lake The post Hyper-targeting on Twitter: How businesses can leverage big data appeared first on Muddywall. The post Hyper-targeting on Twitter: How businesses can leverage big data appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| #Howto Use #ManageFlitter to #Increase Your Influence on #Twitter Posted: 14 Mar 2014 12:34 AM PDT My favorite Twitter tool, hands down, is ManageFlitter. It is the best way to effectively manage following and unfollowing large numbers of people on Twitter. Not only can you follow and unfollow en masse, but you can also focus your search criteria to get the most out of those you choose follow. How I use ManageFlitterI use ManageFlitter every day to first follow 100 accounts and then unfollow 100 accounts that aren't following me back. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how to maximize your presence and influence on Twitter by following accounts that matter and unfollowing those that don't follow you back. First, I go to the Follow section and select either the Following or Follower tab. Today I decided to follow 99 people that Jim Dougherty from @leaderswest is following.
I choose the Fast Select option and select up to 99 people to follow. ManageFlitter sends out a warning that you might get banned from Twitter if you try to follow more than 100 people per day.
Next, I go to the Unfollow section. The Not Following back tab should automatically be selected. Now, I need to sort the list so that the people I followed awhile back, and not those I followed today, are listed on the top. Unfollowing recently followed accounts can also get you in trouble with the Twitter police. I select Order and then Follow Order to sort. I then select from 100 to 1,000 people to Unfollow with a single click.
Under default Display settings, I have chosen to exclude people that I have followed in the past 5 days. I also keep a list of whitelisted accounts, which consist of people that I would never want to unfollow – people like my husband and close friends – people that I know if I accidentally unfollowed would certainly end in an awkward conversation.
You might want to go ProI have a pro account on ManageFlitter, which I use to manage four to five accounts for consulting work that I do. Each one of my accounts receives special attention, as I grow the community according to its focus. For example, I use the search term soccer to search for accounts of interest to follow for the @GoalShouter Twitter account that I manage. The various filters, such as Relevence, Influence, Listed, permit me to refine these results even further. With the various settings on ManageFlitter, I can focus my efforts where they count.
Through growing my presence and influence on Twitter, I have been able to amplify and cultivate communities, which ultimately leads to a greater ROI for the time and money spent on my social media work. I manage all my accounts in about 30 minutes a day, which means I am saving my time and my clients' money. I hope these tips help you to do the same. The post #Howto Use #ManageFlitter to #Increase Your Influence on #Twitter appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| 5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With Social Media Posted: 13 Mar 2014 11:46 PM PDT By Brian Honigman
Are you looking for ways to move social media fans and followers to your email list? In this article, I'll show you 5 ways to use social media to build your email list. Why Email?At least 91% of consumers check their email every day. One of the most heavily used communication channels to date, email marketing is considered the third overall most effective channel for lead generation for marketers in 2013, producing 13% of all leads. To grow your email list, there are ways you can make use of the engagement you have with your social media audience to turn your followers into subscribers who'll become long-term customers. Here are five tips: #1: Use a Simple Sign-Up FormBusinesses of all sizes should set up a simple email sign-up form on their social channels to make it easy for your most invested fans to easily subscribe to your list. On Facebook, dedicate a tab at the top right-hand side of your page for an email form. Then, people simply have to click on the icon to visit the sign-up form. Make sure to use an image and call to action in this tab to incite people to click and subscribe.  This tab can live at the top right of your Facebook page to make it easy for fans and non-fans to subscribe to your list. There are many different app options to add and set up an email sign-up form to your Facebook page. Typically, email clients have a custom Facebook app that syncs with your list from Facebook. Some suggested email sign-up apps are: To add one of these apps to your Facebook page, visit the top right app banner and click on the drop-down menu indicated by a number with an arrow pointing downwards.  Click on this drop-down menu to view your other added apps and to install more. From here, select the plus sign to reveal a drop-down menu. Then click on Find More Apps to search for an email sign-up form app to add to your Facebook page.  Once you've expanded your app banner to reveal other apps by clicking on the + sign, choose Find More Apps to add more email apps. Follow the step-by-step instructions provided by most of the apps when you first install them on how to best integrate them on your Facebook page. It isn't possible to host a landing page with an email sign-up form on Twitter or Google+. To encourage your followers to subscribe, I recommend that you add a link in the bio and/or About section on Twitter or Google+ to the email sign-up form you host on your website.  Amy Porterfield is an entrepreneur and Facebook expert who links to her landing page and website from her Twitter bio to help drive more traffic. Your Twitter bio has limited space, but there's room to add a shortened link to your email sign-up form and a link to your website. Your Google+ page has an extensive About section where you can include a shortened link to your email sign-up form at the top of your description. #2: Preview Premium Content on Your Social ChannelsMany businesses create premium content they offer for free once a person signs up for their email list. If you have eBooks, white papers, infographics, long-form articles or other premium content you give away, gate each one with an email sign-up form landing page to generate subscribers from that content.  On their Facebook page, HubSpot posts engaging copy, a visually appealing image and a link to their eBook to help drive traffic to the resource. Tweet, post and share excerpts of content from your premium resources on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ to drive interest and traffic to the landing pages that gate them. Always include a visual component to these updates to ensure you're receiving the most clicks, engagement and traffic possible.  Marketo uses Twitter to drive traffic to their premium content using relevant topics and hashtags that match the interests of their audience to help drive email subscribers. Use concise, intriguing and informative copy in your social updates, as well as a link tagged properly with Google Analytics UTM parameters to track which social media networks drive traffic to your lead generation resources. #3: Share an Incentive for Newsletter Sign-UpsIncentives often help when it comes to driving more email sign-ups for your list. A little push is the only thing some people need to take action and subscribe. Social media will draw further attention to your incentive.  H&M incentivizes its customers to sign up for email with an exclusive discount on their next purchase, which is engaging content to share on Facebook or Twitter. Many ecommerce stores give shoppers 10-20% off a purchase when they sign up for their email list. A discount, exclusive content, a free sample, a special thank-you, a coupon, etc., are all things your business can share on social media to encourage people to subscribe to your email list. Be sure to include an image and a strong call to action when posting about one of these incentives. #4: Host Webinars to Gain SubscribersHosting a webinar about your business or industry is an engaging way to share the human side of your business by presenting a person from your organization to discuss a relevant topic with your audience. One of the goals of a webinar for your business is to capture leads in the form of email subscribers.  Wildfire is a B2B company that uses both Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to their landing page for their Google hangouts on air, as well as sign-ups for the hangout itself. Similar to the tactic in #2, if you host your webinar on a Google hangout on air, be sure to share links to resources that have a landing page sign-up form to collect emails from your efforts.  Glamour magazine hosted a Google+ hangout to chat with their fans, encouraging them during the discussion to stay connected for future tips by subscribing to their email list. If you host your webinar using a program like Any Meeting, GoToWebinar, PGI, Ready Talk or Join.me, many of them feature a sign-up form to collect emails from viewers before they enter the webinar. Use social media posts to drive traffic to these sign-up forms and your email list will grow. #5: Hold a Contest, Sweepstakes or GiveawayOne of the most effective ways to build your email list using social media is by using contests, sweepstakes and giveaways. Many marketers' host contests and similar promotions to grow their following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and elsewhere, but one of the main goals of these promotions should always be to increase your email subscribers. Facebook contests are the most predominantly used promotions in social media as compared to other channels, since the platform is the most customizable for promotions.  Sephora consistently uses Facebook contests with sign-up forms to build their email lists with quality subscribers. Your business can host a Facebook contest either on an application tab or on your Facebook timeline. However, if you're hosting the promotion on your Facebook timeline, it's next to impossible to collect emails. Hosting your promotion from a Facebook app is the best approach for the purpose of increasing email subscribers. Try one of the following Facebook apps to run your contest, sweepstakes or giveaway (some of these companies feature apps for other social channels as well): Be sure to choose one that offers a sign-up form as a type of entry for participants. This is how your business generates emails from a contest on the Facebook platform. Once you've chosen a Facebook contest app that's right for your business, decide whether you'll be hosting a contest, sweepstakes or giveaway and what messaging you'll use to drive visibility and interest in it. The prize you decide to give away to a select group of winners for your contest is important, and it helps incentive genuine fans, and therefore quality email subscribers.  Bon Jovi's Facebook page uses engaging contests that allow fans and non-fans to sign up for email from their desktop or mobile device. Similar contests can be run on Twitter with platforms like Offerpop, Binkd, Woobox, OneKontest and Wishpond that allow participants to submit their email as a form of entry. Pinterest contest platforms like Piqora or Curlate also allow you to host a variety of different contests that generate emails for your list. After you've published your contest, promote it on all of your social media accounts to drive new traffic to the contest and increase sign-ups to your email list. Conclusion Continued growth of your email subscriber list plays a vital part in the success of your business. The tips in this article will help you reach out to the people who already follow you on social media to increase the rate of new subscriptions. What do you think? How do you use social media to build your email list for the long-term? Share your comments and questions in the comments box below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. The post 5 Ways to Grow Your Email List With Social Media appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
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