TwitterToolsReviews |
- 6 Ways Twitter Chats Can Help You Connect With Your Audience
- #Howto Find Great Content to #Share on #Twitter
- find a job with twitter
- Google+ Custom URLs: This Week in Social Media
- How an Auto Repair Shop is Winning Female Customers With Social Media
- Guide to Facebook Reach: What Marketers Need to Know
- How to Use Reddit to Generate Leads
| 6 Ways Twitter Chats Can Help You Connect With Your Audience Posted: 04 Mar 2014 02:00 AM PST By Maggie Hibma
Are you trying to reach a wider audience and generate leads? Twitter chats are a great way to boost your marketing results. In this article you'll discover six ways Twitter chats can help you connect with a larger audience and enhance brand awareness. Why Twitter Chats?Most marketers use Twitter to promote content, build brand awareness and interact with followers. Overall, it works pretty well. But what if you could turbo-charge those efforts? Twitter chats are open, moderated conversations that use a relevant hashtag for a certain topic (e.g., #blogchat or #MMchat for Marketer Monday). Many chat participants use services like Twubs or Hashtags.org to filter conversations based on the chat hashtag so they can easily follow the conversation.  Tools like Twubs filter conversations based on hashtags. Including a regular Twitter chat in your marketing tactics helps you reach your current followers and their followers. A successful chat can introduce you to hundreds of potential leads. Below I show you six ways Twitter chats can bring value to your followers and position you as a thought leader. #1: Crowdsource Content IdeasAre you looking for content ideas? Or deciding what type of ebook to offer list subscribers? Or maybe wondering what topic your next webinar should tackle? A Twitter chat can help you answer those questions. Whether you're looking for input on a project or wondering what your customers are looking for, chats are an easy way to gather information and opinions from a lot of people at one time. The New England Music Association has an interesting way of using chats to keep their members in the loop. They choose their annual conference themes by crowdsourcing via a Twitter chat. They even host a public Google document to keep track of ideas.  You can apply crowdsourcing to any aspect of your marketing needs. Crowdsourcing can also help you define what problems your customers need to solve. Ask chat attendees what they need or want, and while you have their attention, delve deeper and ask them to clarify their answers or give you examples. Take notes, integrate their ideas and needs into your efforts, and then give them what they asked for. #2: Connect With New LeadsWant to find new leads? Make yourself useful. Answer questions, provide good information and engage with your followers. Chances are, you're already doing this across platforms, right? Use a Twitter chat to amplify that value. With a little promotion and buzz around your upcoming Twitter chat, you'll have the chance to reach an even bigger audience interested in your product, service or information. To attract those new leads, you can host a fun Twitter chat with a general theme, include a giveaway or choose a topic that tackles a common problem and showcases your expertise. Not sure which topic is best? Crowdsource!  Make sure people know about your upcoming Twitter chat! Follow up with chat attendees after the event and ask them how you can be of service. Engaging with those folks can cultivate great business relationships. #3: Build Your Social ReachSocial proof is one of the highest compliments you can receive from your followers. When a fan shares your information or product with a friend, they're giving it their seal of approval. It's very likely those friends will consider that recommendation when they're ready to buy. A successful Twitter chat attracts a large group of people whose followers are watching them engage with you. Maybe they'll take the hint and join in too. It's a great way to leverage your existing followers.  Twitter chats can reach far beyond your existing followers. #4: Create Community With Live TweetsYou can't attend every in-person event you want to, and neither can your fans. Twitter chats are a way to bring everyone together as if they're there. If you're hosting or attending the in-person event, try live tweeting (or having someone do it for you). Invite your fans to follow the hashtag and share their ideas and opinions about the topic at hand. Many conferences project real-time tweets onto a screen so all attendees can see the Twitter conversation and join in if they like.  Live tweeting shares the conference vibe with everyone, even if they can't attend. #5: Track Your SuccessesAs a marketer, you already know the importance of analytics. Plan to track your Twitter chat successes from day one. When you know how popular your guests, topics, questions, interactions and hashtag are, you can determine what resonates with your followers. A service like TweetReach helps you keep track of reach, impressions, tweets and contributors. You'll know who saw your tweets and who shared or retweeted your information. Evaluating the data over time gives you a good idea of which chat topics are most successful and what ideas are most important to participants. You can use that information to create relevant follow-up content.  TweetReach reports on several aspects of your chats so you can track what's popular with your audience. #6: Learn More About Your IndustryBecause marketers are so busy, it's easy to get caught up in day-to-day work and miss opportunities to chat with your peers about the industry you work in and any relevant news. An industry Twitter chat serves as a kind of online professional meeting. Participating in these specialized chats is another way to network, both locally and even internationally, and expand your circle of contacts. Industry chats are also a place where you can discover and discuss any debates or "holes" in the industry. These kinds of chats keep marketers on their toes and up to date with the latest trends.  Meet up (virtually) with colleagues around the world to discuss what's happening in your field. Conclusion If you're already using Twitter as a marketing channel, adding in a regularly scheduled Twitter chat can help you build brand awareness. Just as you would with your regular content, create an editorial calendar for your Twitter chats, then promote the topics, dates and times to ensure a great turnout. The more value you offer, the more the community seeks you out. Use your Twitter chat feedback to create the content your audience wants, find qualified leads and stay up to date on industry trends. What do you think? Does your company host a regular Twitter chat? Share your experience and thoughts in the comments! 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 6 Ways Twitter Chats Can Help You Connect With Your Audience appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| #Howto Find Great Content to #Share on #Twitter Posted: 03 Mar 2014 10:49 PM PST What content are you sharing on Twitter? Do you struggle to find interesting, relevant things to tweet about every day? In this post, I'll show you how to curate content your followers will love so you can build a loyal community on Twitter. Why Curate?Today most marketers understand the need to create informative and relevant content. But it's equally important to curate informative and relevant content. In addition to creating great content for your site, the links to the other people's content that you share on Twitter also matter. When you share good content on Twitter, the kind your audience loves, it's easier to build a strong community. And sharing great content will also increase your credibility in your industry.  When you create and curate relevant content, people are more likely to retweet and share your stuff. Image: iStockPhoto
#1: Know Your AudienceSo what content should you share on Twitter? Before you can determine what is the best content to share in your social updates, you need to dig deep and go inside your followers' heads. You'll want to know your social media audience. What keeps your ideal follower up at night? What are his favorite blogs? What's the first thing that pops into his head when he thinks of you? If you've ever created a buyer persona for a marketing campaign, this is the same exercise.  You want to find the intersection of what interests you and what interests your audience. You can also ask your followers to find out what they want. You may find general open-ended questions—such as "What would you like me to tweet about?"—too broad to give you the information you need. Instead, ask your followers a multiple-choice question such as, "Would you like me to tweet about a) social media marketing, b) mobile, c) productivity hacks, d) all of the above?" You can use their answers as a starting point to plan the content you share and identify what your followers want from you. Once you identify the content your audience is interested in, commit to this topic. Don't dilute it. For example, Social Media Examiner focuses on social media. So you'll find articles about generating email leads using social media. But you won't find content devoted to increasing email open rates or the perfect auto-responder series or other topics with no connection to social media. Find out what topics interest your audience most and share content related to these topics on your social profiles. #2: Tools to Help You Curate ContentOnce you know your audience well, you'll want to set up a good aggregation tool to find content worth tweeting about. Here some of the popular news aggregators in the market today. Use the ones you like for your business to find the content you need to provide a valuable stream of daily tweets for your followers. Feedly – Your News Delivered Feedly is a tool to help you curate content. Feedly makes it easy for you to look for the articles most relevant for you to share. One of the best aspects of Feedly is the variety of viewing interfaces available. You can format it to show articles in an email-type layout with headlines or arrange them as image cards or also choose a more traditional magazine layout.  Feedly is a great alternative to Google Reader and offers a variety of layouts to make RSS more enjoyable. Regardless of the layout you choose, Feedly shows you new content from the blogs and news sources you subscribe to. And it offers a consistent presentation across devices, so you can tweet from your laptop, your tablet or your smartphone. One of my favorite features is Feedly's integration with multiple online tools such as Google+, Evernote, Buffer, Instapaper and more. This makes your content curation easier.  You can share and save your favorite articles to multiple social networks and web tools. Fever – Find Out What's Hot Do you want to know how hot the story is that you shared? Fever is a content feed reader that ranks the stories in your feed with a temperature gauge. This allows you to measure how many links and shares a story has within your network.  Fever is a paid service that reads your feeds and picks out the most frequently talked about articles from a customizable time period. This is a visual way to see how the content you share on Twitter resonates with your audience. It's an easy way to be sure the content you share matters to your followers. It is important to note that Fever comes with a one-time price of $30 and you need to host the files on your own server. The setup is a bit technical, so you may want to ask your IT department to help you get started. Prismatic – Discover New Content to Share While RSS readers are great for keeping up with your favorite blogs, Prismatic helps you find new and interesting blogs.  Prismatic delivers socially curated content based on your interests to help you discover new blogs and content sources. If you like to keep your content curation fresh and interesting, Prismatic does a great job of introducing new blogs and content sources you may never have come across otherwise . Here's how to get the most out of Prismatic. Step 1: Sign up Sign up for Prismatic using your Facebook, Google+ or Twitter login, or create a stand-alone account on Prismatic.  Sign up at GetPrismatic.com. Step 2: Choose Your Interests After you sign up, you can pick the different topics that you and your audience relate to. As you use the service, Prismatic will suggest new topics based on what you share and click.  Find new content by choosing topics your community is interested in. Step 3: Pick Your Favorite Publishers You can also use Prismatic as an RSS reader. Under the Favorite Authors section, add your favorite blogs and publishers to Prismatic.  Add your favorite blogs so you won't miss a thing. Step 4: Share Your Curated Content After you're all set up, share the articles your audience is interested in reading.  It's easy to share the content you like from Prismatic. When you share content, remember to include the author's Twitter handle, so you can introduce your followers to new and interesting people. And be sure to include relevant hashtags, but don't overdo it. Buddy Media reports that tweets with one or two hashtags receive higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags. Prismatic has good sharing features and can help you share great content with your audience. #3: Analyze and RepeatOne of the most important steps to curating amazing content is to measure the results. Are there certain articles that get more clicks, retweets and favorites than others? Is a certain topic or interest driving more engagement with your followers? You can use Buffer to analyze shares, but management tools like HootSuite,SproutSocial and TweetDeck can all provide good analytics on your tweets. These tools help you analyze metrics such as the number of clicks, retweets, favorites and potential reach each individual tweet receives.  Track who retweets your content and the reach they have. Use this data to see what really resonates with your audience and A/B testdifferent headlines for your content. Here's an example of results from two different tweets promoting the same content.  The first tweet received zero clicks.  The second tweet had 80 clicks. The example above shows how a simple product mention can help spread your content to a greater audience. Be sure to measure the response to different headlines to see which one interests your audience most and learn from your results. Share the Content Your Audience Loves With the wealth of information that exists on the web, marketers have a harder time finding great content to share. Use these tools and tips and you'll not only discover content that you enjoy consuming, you'll also find content that drives greater engagement with your Twitter following. What do you think? Did I miss any great tools? What are your favorite tips to curate content? Share your thoughts in the comments below. The post #Howto Find Great Content to #Share on #Twitter appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| Posted: 03 Mar 2014 04:08 PM PST
Opportunities to find a job are everywhere on Twitter. Getting these jobs takes some different tactics than traditionally. Resume’s are becoming less important as the importance of a solid social media community continues to increase. In this article I cover 10 tips that will help you find a job with Twitter by identifying more job opportunities and positioning yourself as the best person for the job. 1. Start a #HireMe CampaignLet your followers know you are on the hunt for a new job. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is up to date and send a tweet sharing your profile link. Tweet valuable resources and do your best to help your audience out. You can help people in your Twitter network by sharing their content, recommending them, and helping them build buzz about content they are sharing. If you have helped others they will feel inclined to reciprocate the helpfulness, so when they see that you are on a #jobhunt they will be more likely to help you out if they can. 2. Use Job Hunting #Hashtags |
| Google+ Custom URLs: This Week in Social Media Posted: 03 Mar 2014 09:59 AM PST By Cindy King
What's New This Week?Google+ Expands Availability of Custom URLs: "If your profile meets the following criteria, you'll now be able to claim a custom URL: has a profile photo, has at least 10 followers and has an account that's at least 30 days old."  “Once you meet the eligibility criteria, just visit your profile or page to begin the claiming process.”
 “To help control what kinds of pins you see, click the ‘i’ info icon on any related pin in your feed.” Twitter Makes Timelines More Visual: "Timelines on Twitter will be more visual and more engaging: previews of Twitter photos and videos from Vine will be front and center in tweets."  “To see more of the photo or play the video, just tap.” Google+ Improves Hangouts and Photos: The "improvements to Google+ Hangouts and Photos aim to take a lot of the work out of messaging, video calling and photo editing."  “Broadcasters can now schedule Hangouts On Air, then promote them with a dedicated watch page.” Tumblr Introduces New Search Feature: "The new Tumblr Search has been rebuilt, front to back, to help explore all of your 65 billion(!) posts."  There are a lot of big new additions to check out. Here's some upcoming news to follow: Facebook Tests New Messenger Experience: Facebook is "testing an update to Messenger on Android that makes it a faster and more reliable mobile-to-mobile messaging experience."  “You’ll know which friends are using the app if you see the Messenger icon Testing a New Messenger Experience on Android next to their name.” Instagram Reveals Sample Ad: "If you're in the United States, you'll see the sample ad below sometime in the coming week. This is a one-time ad from the Instagram team that's meant to give you a sense for the look and feel of the ads you will see."  “You’ll know a photo or video is an advertisement when you see the ‘Sponsored’ label where the time stamp normally would be. Tap this label to learn more about how advertising works on Instagram.” Here's an interesting tool worth noting: OptinMonster: a lead-generation plugin for WordPress that allows you to create attention-grabbing opt-in forms that convert.
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| How an Auto Repair Shop is Winning Female Customers With Social Media Posted: 03 Mar 2014 03:24 AM PST By Louise Julig
Owner Jeff Matt started Victory Auto Service and Glass in 1997 with one shop in the suburbs of Minneapolis. He always made an effort to develop personal relationships with his customers who trusted him with their cars. The business grew to three locations by 2010, and Matt found it harder to maintain the small-shop feel. "When you have multiple stores and multiple managers, you can't be everything to everybody," he said. Three years ago, he approached Stephanie Gutierrez, a long-time customer, about helping the business get started in social media. By experimenting with different approaches, they hit upon a winning formula that promotes the personal connections Matt has always valued.  Victory Auto and Glass uses Facebook to post photos from their shops. Since then, Victory has opened two new locations. Gutierrez spends between three and five hours a week managing their social media. She focuses mostly on Facebook and YouTube, but maintains other platforms as well. Victory Auto's social media strategy is to think like a customer, tag photos and promote their community. Organization: Victory Auto Service & Glass Social Media Handles & Stats: Highlights:
#1: Think Like a CustomerWhen Gutierrez told her friends she was working for an auto repair shop, they laughed. "I only think about car stuff when I HAVE to," she said. She compares taking her car in to going to the dentist. "I think I represent the average person that way," she added. When she began managing Victory's Facebook page, she asked, "If I didn't work here, would I interact with this page?" The answer was no, because she's not really that into cars. To change that, she looked for ways to make the page interesting to all car owners. Gutierrez now posts about things all drivers can relate to, such as traffic, commuting, safety and traveling.  Victory Auto posts about topics drivers are interested in. "We started out with more learning articles and links, but found that those were not highly interesting to people," said Gutierrez. They now post shorter fun tidbits, lots of photos and are very personable and interactive.  Victory Auto likes to post short, interactive, yet informative tidbits. Victory also thinks like a customer in YouTube videos. They post how-to videos, as well as customer testimonials and shop tours. For the how-to videos, "We are going for really simple stuff," said Gutierrez. Her boss laughed when she suggested the topic of their most popular video: how to top off your windshield wiper fluid. "He said, 'This is so easy!'" Gutierrez said. She reasoned it was exactly the type of thing people would watch on YouTube so they wouldn't have to ask someone. She brainstormed ideas for videos by "being embarrassingly honest about the things I do not know," she said.
#2: Be Friendly and Tag PhotosAuto repair is an industry based on trust. Trust is built on knowing the people doing the work. "People buy from people," said Matt. "Business is a lot easier when they know the people they are dealing with. The more transparent we can be—and social media gives us that opportunity—can only help build trust." Gutierrez often posts photos and fun personal information about the employees to help customers get to know them as people. "We celebrate birthdays, accomplishments and fun goings-on in the shop," she said.  Victory Auto helps their customers get to know their employees with posts that share personal accomplishments.  Victory Auto routinely posts photos and information about employees. She also makes an effort to tag photos as much as possible, although it can be complicated to tag a customer. She has to log into the business page as herself, be friends with the person she is tagging and they have to like the page. Gutierrez has over 1,500 Facebook friends, many of whom are customers, which helps.  Victory Auto tags customers and employees who are at the community events they sponsor.  Gutierrez logs into the Victory page as herself to tag customers she’s friends with. She admits that for some businesspeople, this is out of their comfort zone. "I encourage the managers to become friends with customers not just in person but on Facebook as well," she said. "Whenever we have those personal connections, we like to take advantage of them." The response from tagging customers has been positive, but the exposure "absolutely depends on how many friends that person has," she said. Tagging customers can be hit or miss, so Victory tags employees as often as possible. Six or seven of the 30 employees are active on Facebook, which they take advantage of for tagging. #3: Promote the CommunityBeing involved with local groups is important to Victory Auto owner Matt. "You should have some roots that grow into the community," he said. Victory has long supported MADD, Alexandra House and Toys for Tots. Matt also received a community award, Eleven Who Care, for his support of Free2B. Among other things, Victory donates space for Free2B volunteers to work in their bays fixing up donated cars or providing free or discounted repairs to needy families. "Some of those stories we would tell over Facebook," said Matt. "It is really promoting Free2B, but people come to realize that those things are happening at our shop. Without social media, some of those stories aren't told."  Victory uses its Facebook page to promote activity with local charities. Victory Auto has also become an AskPatty Certified Female-Friendly shop, and promotes the certification on their website and on the review site, AutoVitals, where they have a five-star review average.  Victory Auto uses social media to promote their Female-Friendly certification through AskPatty. "We had a great reputation with women and wanted to get that out," Gutierrez said. The shop is ASE certified, which is important to people who know a lot about cars. But for average drivers, "Certified Female-Friendly" is clear and straightforward. Their focus on promoting their female-friendly business is reaping results online and in person. Over 60% of their Facebook fans are women, and managers report that 50% to 60% of customers are women as well.  Victory Auto consistently reaches a local female audience through Facebook. What's the payoff? Other business owners often ask Matt how he justifies social media expense. He said he considers social media the same as any other business expense, one that pays off in the long-term. "We have to connect with our customers if we're going to be a viable long-term business. When we do that successfully, there's a lot more loyalty that we get back from our customers." What do you think? Are you using social media to connect with your customers? Do you have a story you would like to share? 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. Five Filters recommends:
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| Guide to Facebook Reach: What Marketers Need to Know Posted: 03 Mar 2014 03:00 AM PST By Emeric Ernoult
Do you want more fans to see your Facebook updates? If so, you need to understand Facebook reach. In this article, you'll find out what Facebook reach is, why some pages have more visibility than others and how to improve your own Facebook page reach. What Is Facebook Reach?Facebook is always rolling out new features in an effort to give users a more seamless and useful experience. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work in your favor when it comes to reaching as many people as possible with your page content. Facebook reach is the number of unique people who saw your content. It affects every other metric you can track: engagement, likes, comments, clicks and negative feedback. And that's not all. There are different kinds of reach: post, page, organic, viral and paid. Everything on Facebook boils down to reach.  Total Reach on Facebook. Post reach and page reach, for example, are different and have different weight. Post reach is the number of people who saw a specific post in their news feed. Page reach is the number of people who saw any of your post content during a given period of time (daily, weekly or monthly). These two reach metrics can be deceiving or confusing. If you don't post very often, you may have a very high post reach, but a low page reach. If you post often (e.g., five times a day or more) you may have a low post reach, but a pretty high page reach. Which one should you focus on? Ask yourself whether you want to have individual posts seen by the most fans or make sure your brand gets in front of your fans on a regular basis. Your answer determines which form of reach—post or page—is more important to you. Post and page reach both have three main subcategories: organic, viral and paid reach. Organic reach is the reach Facebook gives you for free. It happens in the news feed when your fans see your updates. There are other possibilities, such as random users visiting your page, but these are insignificant compared to news feed views by fans. Viral reach consists of the people who see your content because someone else created a story about it. For example, if a fan likes, comments or shares your post, their friends will see your post even if they aren't fans of your page. The same is true if you've paid to reach larger audiences who may or may not already be your fans. If one of those targeted people creates a story, their friends will see it as well. Both are viral reach. A quick note about viral reach: When you export your Insights data to an Excel spreadsheet, viral reach data is still included when you select the old Insights format. However, viral reach is a subsection of organic reach in the new version of Insights, which was rolled out in 2013. Expect to see viral reach metrics totally disappear from your Insights and the Facebook API soon. Facebook has decided to go for simplicity rather than detail. Paid reach is a subset of post reach and is pretty easy to track and report. You paid for it, so you know where it came from. If you pay to promote your posts, your post reach is going to be much bigger than your standard organic reach (because you've paid to reach more of your fans).  You can find paid reach metrics under the Post Reach area in Facebook Insights. What's the Best Way to Measure Facebook Reach?Until recently, it's been common to benchmark your overall Facebook reach against your total fans (even I was doing this). Many social media marketers checked the number of people reached for a given post, and then compared it to their total number fans and calculated a percentage of how many fans they reached. That's no longer the best way to look at it. Facebook's new Insights gives you access to the number of fans who are online at any given point in time. A Facebook page post lifespan rarely exceeds 2 to 3 hours. Given that, we should benchmark against the total number of fans who were on Facebook at that time. For example, in the graph below I can see that most of my fans are logged into Facebook around 3:00pm. If I post at that time, about 3,500 of my 9,500 fans should be logged in.  Use the When Your Fans Are Online option to find out when most of your fans are logged into Facebook, then post at that time and use that reach as your benchmark. If the post reaches 600 people, I shouldn't look at it as 6.3% of my page's fans (600 people out of 9,500), but rather 17% of the fans (600 out of 3,500) who were online and reachable when I posted it. This is important when you're explaining page performance to a boss or client. These are the results your hard work is producing! How Hard Is It to Get Good Reach?In December 2013, people started reporting a big drop in organic reach for the pages they were managing. The drop in organic reach varied—some saw a large drop, some saw a small drop and others saw no change. A post from AdAge revealed a "leaked" deck from Facebook stating that pages should expect their reach to continue decreasing and be ready to pay for visibility in the news feed. The social media ecosystem and blogosphere were outraged. Not a single day in December passed without a new blog post on the subject. Some were condemning Facebook for contriving sneaky new ways to steal their money. Others were defending Facebook's efforts to improve the quality of content distributed in the news feed. On December 20, I looked at the average data of more than 6,000 pages of various sizes and industries. The data shows a constant decline over the previous six months, but no noticeable drop in December (when people started reporting the issue). However, I did discover an interesting trend. Pages with high post engagement were the least affected (if at all). Pages with a high engagement rate along with a high negative feedback score (i.e., users hide your posts or report them as spam) were more affected. Finally, pages with a very low engagement rate were affected most. The average monthly organic reach declined from 73% to 55% of fan base (orange graph). Notice there's no significant drop in December for the average. However, that average decline has not affected every page. The black graph represents the evolution of a nonprofit page I manage and its monthly organic reach has increased during the same period. That page has very high post engagement and very low negative feedback.  Working to increase post engagement may help you reach more fans in the news feed. The type of content a page published also had an impact. Photo posts had the most negative effect, so if you post a lot of photos and have a low engagement rate, you're probably suffering more than the average page. Do Other Social Networks Offer Better Reach?When the Facebook reach issue was ignited in December, many social marketers branded Facebook as a fraud and advised that it was time to move on to other social networks, Google+ being the lead contender. That emotional reaction was inherently wrong on all levels. The most important flaw in that plan is that other social networks don't provide any kind of reach metric. Only Facebook provides that data. When the other networks do provide analytics, they're nothing close to the breadth of information Facebook gives page owners. Most social marketers were upset about the pay-to-play aspect of Facebook's new reach algorithm. They blamed it on Facebook being a publicly traded company and accused it of only being out for money. Consider this: Do you think Google is acting as a nonprofit with no interest in monetizing you and your data? Google's changes to its search algorithm (e.g., Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird) have been far more damaging to online businesses than Facebook's reach tweaks. When a business's free SEO ranking goes dark, in many cases they pay for AdWords to stay in front of their audience. Facebook has one of the best targeting options for businesses. For some of us, leaving Facebook to rely solely upon Google AdWord's targeting capabilities would be business suicide.  Don't automatically discount Facebook from your social media mix. Image source: iStockPhoto.com. Overall, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Twitter are different and complementary, not opposing alternatives to each other. Look at Facebook as a component of your strategy, not the whole thing. If most of your audience is on Pinterest or Google+, focus more energy there, but why leave the place where the people you need to reach are spending all of their time? Does Paying for Facebook Reach Give a Good Return on Investment?For some, paying Facebook for exposure will become a necessity. Is this such a bad thing? Should you be concerned about the need to pay to increase your content visibility? Not necessarily. Of course, some content doesn't deserve to be paid for and some does. Paying to promote the right content in order to reach more people in your target audience (fans or not), can lead to a lot of conversions. First, make a distinction between casual content and business-worthy content. Photos from your latest speaking gig, videos of fun things you do at the office and quick news updates about your niche are all relevant and good, but should you pay to get more exposure for them? Nah. Those posts don't impact your bottom line.  When you post about fun stuff you do at the office, it's not about reaching a big number of your fans. But if you're announcing a new product, new features, an ebook or webinar or other content you've spent hours on, isn't it worth it to pay $30 or $50 to make sure your hard work is seen by 9,000 people instead of 1,000? Yes! Your time and specialized content are worth it. Why waste those efforts to save $30 or $50? That's nonsense. If you're sharing the type of content you can track for short-term ROI (e.g., leads or revenue), isn't it worth it to pay $100 or $150 to generate 300 or 400 hot qualified leads or 10 new subscribers with a lifetime value of $400? You bet! Actually, for this kind of content, I haven't found a more affordable way to generate ROI with PPC, and I've tried a LOT of options.  When posting about a new product or feature that can generate new customers, it's worth it to pay for more reach. In the example below, the cost to acquire a new customer via sponsored posts was between $20 and $30, which is around 10% of our average revenue per customer. Pretty good return on investment as far as I'm concerned.  Paying for extended reach can result in higher ROI. What Are the Best Tactics to Sustain Facebook Reach?If you want to make the most of Facebook reach this year, I have a few ideas on how to do that. Posting relevant curated content or reposting your own evergreen content are great ways to encourage engagement (which translates to reach), especially when you post when your fans are on Facebook. Posting more often and at different times of day are your best tactics to increase your overall reach and brand awareness. Pages that post at least three times a day get very high page reach metrics and much more brand awareness than pages that only post once a day or fewer. In the example below, the page on the left has a pretty high post reach (24% of fans are reached for each post!). The page on the right has a much lower post reach. However, the page on the right posts several times a day while the one on the left only posts once a day. The overall page reach is much higher for the one on the right (93% of fans reached on a monthly basis versus 53%). Neither of these pages are using paid reach; it's all organic.  Posting frequency affects your post and page reach. Creating consistently great content is hard. If you're relying on great content produced in-house to nurture your Facebook page, you need to change your approach. Curation is the cheapest and most effective way to produce more high-quality, shareable content. There are plenty of experts in your industry, and they all invest a ton of time crafting great content. Have the right curation tools in place to help you spot content quickly and share the best of it on your page. Remember, the goal here is brand awareness. You'll get that by sharing high-quality content for your audience to see. Other types of content you can share are events like attending or speaking at a conference or even appearing on a TV or radio show. This kind of post takes less than five minutes to do—you just need to add them into your daily routine.  Sharing your special events gets your brand in front of fans and keeps them in the loop. Sharing content doesn't have to be a "go big or go home" scenario. Sharing quick nuggets of content along with your in-depth blog articles mixes things up and keeps it interesting. Post a fun fact or an expert opinion or question about the latest news in your industry. When you find an interesting article that's relevant to your niche, just hit Share and add a small introduction. This kind of content is super-easy to create and sustains brand awareness.  Share interesting content relevant to your fans for more engagement and reach. Don't forget your evergreen content! Once a week, plan to reshare your best and most costly pieces of content to get them in front of new fans. Jon Loomer does this a lot and it's one of his tricks that allows him to post 2 or 3 times daily. Here's a post on Jon Loomer's Facebook page published on February 9 about a blog post originally published on November 18. It's still getting likes, shares and clicks!  Don't waste your evergreen content; it deserves to be shared again and again. While it can be frustrating when Facebook changes the rules of the game, you can still use the network to your advantage. Understanding how reach affects all reported data, choosing content wisely and paying to promote posts that can result in conversions can put you ahead in the end. Compare your reach performance against the average and use the tips here to help you get better results. What do you think? Have you noticed a dip in your Facebook reach? Do you have any tips to keep your posts front and center in the news feed? Let us know in the comments. 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 Guide to Facebook Reach: What Marketers Need to Know appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
| How to Use Reddit to Generate Leads Posted: 03 Mar 2014 02:00 AM PST By Jesse Aaron
Do you know how to engage the reddit community? In this article I'll show you how brands can engage on reddit and create a successful lead generation campaign using Reddit sponsored headlines. What's reddit?Reddit is a website that showcases popular links and information. Reddit's unique culture can make it hard for brands to navigate. Redditors expect extreme transparency and authenticity from advertisers. Spam and hard selling aren't tolerated and using either tactic will damage your brand's reputation. It doesn't matter how awesome your content is. You can't approach reddit the same way that you do Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. If you jump in and submit content blindly, you could find yourself banned or your websites blacklisted. How Does Engagement on Reddit Work?Engagement on reddit takes place in subreddits. Subreddits are niche communities filled with people who are passionate about a specific topic. Examples of subreddits include: As a business, you need to learn the ropes and focus on supporting the subreddits you join, instead of marketing to them. Think more about offering solutions, sharing resources or asking questions, and less about selling. Subreddits are most often created and moderated by reddit community members, but in rare cases a brand creates a subreddit. For example, last year, Ford Motor Company created the /r/FordPiDayChallenge and worked hand in hand with the reddit team to run a campaign for Pi Day on March 14. Every 3 minutes and 14 seconds, Ford posted a math question to their subreddit. Each question included a reference to a Ford vehicle.  Ford found a creative way to get involved on reddit and boost their brand's reputation with community engagement. Now that you understand the basics of reddit, let's develop a lead generation campaign. #1: Find Relevant Subreddits to JoinFirst, your brand needs to join reddit. When you create your account, be sure to use your brand name as your username. Now that you're officially part of reddit, use keywords to search for subreddits that relate to your brand, product or service. The results of each search will show you a list of subreddits like the one below related to a search on "frugal."  Your search will give you a number of subreddits from which to choose. Click on each subreddit to find out if your brand is a good fit. As you look around the subreddit, check out the right sidebar. This is where you'll find community stats, a description and rules that are specific to that subreddit.  The sidebar of the /r/Frugal subreddit gives you a quick overview of the community. Once you find a subreddit that looks promising, sort its posts by Top and All Time. This lets you easily read through the most active posts, so you can better understand the community's conversations and what content performs best.  Sorting the posts in a subreddit gives you an idea of what types of content will interest its readers/subscribers. As you identify subreddits that fit your niche, it helps to rank them by relevance to your marketing needs so you know which ones to join. Create a spreadsheet with the following columns and information:
A completed row will look like this:  Use the information about each subreddit to rank its relevance to your marketing. When you've rated each subreddit, subscribe to the ones that are the best fit with your strategy. #2: Create a MultiredditTo easily monitor and search the conversations in your subreddits, you'll want to create a multireddit. A multireddit is basically a custom list of subreddits or subjects you want to have quick access to. Creating a multireddit is very simple. Step 1: Find and open the left-hand sidebar on the reddit home page (reddit.com). If you can't find the sidebar, it might be minimized (which is very subtle). This is what it looks like minimized:  The minimized left-hand sidebar can be tricky to find. Click on the bar to expand it and it should look like this:  Expand your left-hand sidebar to create a multireddit. Step 2: Click the Create button and enter a name for your multireddit.  Enter a name and click Create to start a multireddit. Click the Create button again and you'll be able to set the privacy level of your multireddit and populate it with the subreddits. In this example, I named the multireddit "socialmonitoring." To add a subreddit, simply click into the Add Subreddit text field at the bottom and enter the name of the subreddit (ex; for /r/frugal just enter "frugal"). Now it's added to your multireddit! Add all of the related subreddits you want to monitor. For the socialmonitoring multireddit, I populated it with frugal-related subreddits:  Multireddits let you keep track of the subreddits that are most relevant to you. Once you're done, the newly created multireddit shows in the left-hand sidebar on your reddit home page.  Remember, if you can't see this sidebar, it might just be minimized. #3: Identify Engagement OpportunitiesNow you can find conversations to join by using your multireddit to run a keyword search on multiple subreddits at one time. Click on your multireddit to see its feed. This is where all of the subreddit feeds you added mesh together. Locate the search bar in the top right corner.  Find your search box. When you click on the search box, the following yellow box appears. Check this box to limit your search to your multireddit.  Multireddits let you search multiple subreddits with one keyword. Tip: Reddit's search query operators are similar to Google's search query operators. For example, you can search "savings AND tips AND electricity" for posts that include these three keywords. Just like with any other platform, set aside 5-10 minutes a day to run searches in your multireddit for keywords that relate to your business. As you search, you'll find opportunities for marketing and discussion. Spend another 20-25 minutes redditing—or acting on—these opportunities. Submit appropriate content, provide insightful answers, ask questions related to your industry and respond to people who engage with you. Remember, engage as a redditor instead of a marketer. Your goal is to align with the community values, social norms and content preferences of each subreddit you participate in. When you receive comments or respond to users, there's a little in-box notification, known as an orangered, that appears in the top right corner of your page.  When your mail icon is orangered, it means you have comments and you should respond. While it's not vital to constantly monitor your orangered, you should definitely check it every so often so you can respond to incoming comments in a reasonable amount of time. The entire monitoring process takes a relatively short amount of time (about 30 minutes per day). The exception is if you're following up with a post or participating in a discussion section. Involved conversations obviously need more of your time. Tip: Limiting your focus to smaller subreddits lets you reach people with a targeted interest in your niche. Base your content on proper research and the chances of acceptance and engagement increase. #4: Create a Reddit Sponsored Headline Campaign to Generate LeadsYou've done your research and vetted your best options for engagement. Now that you're engaging on reddit, your ads won't seem out of place when they show up in your subreddits. Let's say your business offers something related to frugalness, such as a cheap energy alternative. After some quick keyword research, you find a recent and relevant post on the subject. In the comment section of the post, you notice there's a need for an evergreen guide on how to get energy bills as low as possible. Instead of linking to an existing guide by someone else, create your own. House the guide on your website and use reddit's self-serve advertising platform to submit it as a targeted sponsored headline to drive traffic to your site and generate leads. Create Your Sponsored Headline To create your sponsored headline, head on over to reddit's advertising page and click on Create an Ad.  Go to reddit's advertising page to start creating your ad. The following screen appears, where you can customize your ad.  Start by naming your ad and giving it a custom URL. The promotion is broken into three simple sections:
After filling out this information, click the Next button to reach the campaign dashboard. Manage the Campaign for Your Sponsored Headline From the campaign dashboard, you set the following options for how and when your sponsored headline runs:
 The campaign dashboard allows you to customize your ads. After you set your campaign options, click the Create button and the campaign dashboard condenses into a table that makes it easy to review your campaign.  This is your campaign table. The table also shows two additional fields that let you further customize your sponsored headline.
If you're happy with how you've set your options, click the Save Options button and the following screen appears:  This is your campaign dashboard. You'll notice the image is now included in the preview. To finalize your sponsored headline, just locate the Pay button under Total Budget and follow the basic payment instructions. After payment, your sponsored headline goes through a brief approval process. Once approved, it'll run for the specified campaign duration. As the ad runs, you can easily go back and extend or shorten the length of your campaign and increase or decrease your budget. You can also use the Add New button to strategically target multiple subreddits with the same ad. Tip: You can also use a sponsored headline to run a contest. For example, for a contest to name your new product, make the sponsored headline a text ad, which opens up a thread on reddit where redditors enter by submitting their entry as a comment. You choose the winning name based on the most upvoted comment/entry. This allows the community to publicly engage with your brand, and lets you easily follow up with an acknowledgment to the subreddit for helping you. Campaign Follow-up During the campaign, respond to every comment. Demonstrate your expertise by sharing tips and tools and foster a discussion in which you're seen as a source of reliable information. The result is win-win: You help fellow redditors in a niche community, while driving traffic and leads to your website. Add "reddit" to your UTM campaigns and you can use your analytics software to monitor exactly how many redditors became leads or completed goals after visiting your website—an easy way to determine your ROI. Conclusion Reddit isn't a social network where brands can post generic ads and churn out propaganda-rich content. It is a place where brands can learn from a targeted community and come away with actionable ideas to generate leads and revenue. If you take the time to research and monitor subreddits, you'll find relevant marketing opportunities. Your engagement with redditors drives traffic, generates leads and conversions and increases brand awareness. What do you think? Have you integrated reddit into your marketing mix? What advice can you offer? Please share below and I'll see you in the comments! 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 to Use Reddit to Generate Leads appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing. |
Below you will find some Twitter accounts and lists related to different people on Twitter who are involved in the #JobSearch niche.
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