TwitterToolsReviews

Timing Your Tweets
15 Tips to Get and KEEP More #Twitter Followers
HOOTSUITE VS SOCIALOOMPH
New Facebook Contest and Promotion Rules: What You Need to Know
Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos and Social Media to Market Your Business

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 01:27 AM PST

By: @Garin Kilpatrick

Leveraging timing on Twitter is a great way to increase your reach and get more traffic from Twitter to your website.

By strategically timing your tweets you will be able to get more retweets and more Twitter followers.

To schedule your tweets I recommend using Hootsuite (free for up to 5 social media accounts) for complete control over when your content goes out.

Another Twitter tool called buffer is a great way to space your tweets out automatically, without having to specify a specific time every time you tweet.

Buffer co-founder Leo recently published the findings of some very interesting data they derived from their users:

"People that start to Buffer their Tweets increased clicks on links they posted by 200% within 2 weeks of using. The amount of retweets doubles on average. Finally Buffer users increase their follower count by 104 followers within 3 weeks on average." – the study concluded.

The Twitter management and analysis tool SocialBro can examine the activity of your 5,000 top followers to determine the best time for you to tweet. To access this feature click the "Best time to tweet" button from your dashboard.

Below is an example of the type of heat map report SocialBro can generate. A neat feature of this report is that it can be exported as a .PDF as well.

The only downside to this report is that it can take several minutes to create, but this might just be due to the fact that it had to analyze over 400,000 followers for my account.

Once your report is ready you will get an email notification which will bring you to the following heat map:

The SocialBro report also has four other graphs visualizing the best times for you to tweet in different ways.

More Strategies for Timing Your Tweets

For those who have networks larger than 5,000 followers it is also helpful to consider some more general Twitter timing trends as well.

Social Media scientist Dan Zarrella analyzed a large sample of accounts and drew some conclusions about timing and Twitter. Kiss Metrics visualized data from his study about twitter timing into the infographic below:

Another important thing to take into consideration is the time zone of your followers. If you are in North America and following mostly other North Americans you should consider the density of people in different time zones when timing your tweets.

population-by-timezone

Clearly the Eastern Time zone has the most people living in it so lining up a few tweets near the 5PM EST peak time is a good call.

Twitter is based in San Francisco and many people use Twitter in the PST so if you are in the EST like I am right now it's a good idea to line up some tweets until 8PM EST so that you hit the 5PM peak time for those living in the Pacific time zone.

Sysomos analyzed 20 million tweets and published some interesting Twitter stats, including the graph below showing that tweeting activity is busier during the week than it is on weekends:

Based on my own experience I have noticed that I get many more retweets during the week, and it seems to me that many people take a break from their regular tweeting routines on the weekends.

The data visualization company lemon.ly came recently designed an infographic with some cool twitter timing stats that might give you some more insight into the art and science of Twitter timing.

The main takeaway from this post is that you can have more influence and achieve more clicks if you space your tweets out so that more people see them and less people unfollow you.

Flooding your followers with a bunch of tweets at once will piss some people off, but tweeting is a good thing so don't feel like you absolutely must schedule every single tweet you send.

Twitter is based on the question what are you doing? after all, so send live tweets and make your tweets feel real.

Want more cool content like this? Sign up for my free Twitter eCourse and get a Twitter PDF when you do!

The post Timing Your Tweets appeared first on GrowYourTwitterNetwork.

The post Timing Your Tweets appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

15 Tips to Get and KEEP More #Twitter Followers

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 06:35 PM PST

Quinn Robbins

When it comes to Twitter, I don't think I have met anyone who does not want to get more quality followers. There are some who claim that quality matters over quantity, but honestly – that's just not true. (And the people who make that claim tend to have a smaller number of followers…just sayin'!)

It's not that quality doesn't matter. Far from it!

It's that quality and quantity aren't mutually exclusive.

Now – the folks who argue against quantity at all costs do have some valid points. Let me bring a few of them up.

If you are just adding people without a reason, that isn't going to help. In other words, if they aren't your ideal prospect, why have them as a follower? Similarly, if you are buying followers, that is putting you at a huge disadvantage! For starters – that's against the Twitter terms of service, and the same holds true, if they are not your ideal target market, they aren't going to care what you share on Twitter.

But honestly – adding lots of Twitter followers who aren't interested in your product or service is just wasting your time and theirs. If you are new to Twitter, you might even end up skewing your ratio of following to followers in such a way that you are limited from following the people who might be most interested in your products or services.

How to Get – And Keep – More Valuable Twitter Followers

1. Complete your bio

Any time I make a list about how to get more Twitter followers (or more friends on any social media platform), I always start with the bio. I feel like I must sound like a broken record, and that anyone who's followed me for any length of time thinks I'm repeating old ideas.

Except – there's still a LOT of people on Twitter with incomplete bios!

Not only does it make it harder for people looking for your product or service to find you, but it just plain looks bad because it looks like you do not care!

Complete your profile with keywords related to your niche and you will quickly notice an uptick in your follower count simply because people can find you.

2. Include a professional profile picture

Very few people I know follow people without a profile picture of themselves. (I would say no one, but there are probably that random one who still will ) But seriously – the vast majority of people you want to follow you on Twitter are not going to follow you if your picture looks like that default "egghead" that Twitter gives you when you first sign up.

Ideally you should use a professional quality photo, and make it the same one you use on all of your profiles. Make it easy for people to know it's you online.

3. Use your real name as your username if it is available

This is getting harder with the many people on Twitter, but it is worth a try. If your real name isn't available, try a combination with your middle initial, or add _The_ or TheReal or something similar in front. If you absolutely cannot find a version of your name that still is understandable, try something related to your industry. (@SocialMediaKen or @FitMamaJill are just a couple of examples.)

4. Create a Twitter landing page on your website and link to it from your bio

When you send people to your website from your Twitter profile, a nice touch is to create a landing page just for them. Something along the lines of "Hello, thanks for coming over here from Twitter…" etc. Include this link in your profile so it's visible in your bio – many people will not click through to your full profile. This is a great way to build your mailing list – include your amazing opt in offer to make it easy for people to subscribe. Remember – make the next step you want people to take crystal clear!

5. Make it easy for people to follow and tweet you

Again – it sounds obvious, right? But you would be surprised how many people don't make the "Tweet This" and "Follow Me on Twitter" buttons on their websites easy to find! Make sure you have social sharing buttons on every post and page that people might find valuable and want to share. Make sure it's obvious how to follow and retweet you right from your website.

6. Create content people want to share

Make sure your content is valuable to people and worthy of being shared! This is the number one way to make sure that you actually keep the Twitter followers you have worked hard to attract. If your content is interesting, people will naturally want to share it with their friends, many of whom will follow you as a result.

7. Make your Tweets stand out – be funny, poignant, or otherwise unique

If your Tweets are like everyone else's, they are just not going to stand out from the rest. There are some inspirational quotes that everyone uses, some articles that everyone shares, etc. Do not be just like everyone else – otherwise your Tweets will be ignored.

8. Keep your Tweets short to make them retweetable

Make it easy to share your Tweets by making them short enough to retweet without having to be heavily edited. You especially do not want the "via @yourusername" to be cut off the retweet – that takes away the value for you!

9. Do not overuse hashtags or @usernames

This is one of the things that causes the biggest loss of followers (this and over promoting, which I will get to in a moment). Actually, this is usually a subtle form of over promoting, and it makes your Tweets much less enjoyable to read. Use no more than 2 hashtags per Tweet, and don't append a long list of usernames to a single Tweet (especially on the memes like Follow Friday). Most do not follows someone just because they came through on a #FF Tweet. Okay, maybe the bots do.

10. Use good manners – respond to @mentions

By responding to people who have tweeted to or about you, you are showing basic manners of conversation. You would not ignore someone who is talking to you in person so make sure you are not doing this on social media. Twitter really is just a great big ol' conversation! So make sure you are treating it that way.

11. Do not use too many abbreviations or make it too hard to understand

Do you greet someone by saying "Hi, how R U 2day?" Well, maybe it sounds the same, but you get the point, I hope. Twitter abbreviations make you look less professional. Find a way to be concise and use complete words when at all possible in your Tweets.

12. Share others' content

It is like the golden rule – treat others the way you want to be treated. If you want others to RT you, take the time to share their content too. Make sure it's valuable to your own followers, but be as generous in promoting others' content as you would like them to be with yours.

13. Make your content easy to share

But – make sure you are also producing lots of great quality content of your own. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to share someone's content and discovered only retweets of others' content. Make it easy for people to share your original content.

14. When you share others' links – include a brief comment why

Do not just RT someone without including a brief comment. This will help your followers know why you think it is worth sharing with them.

15. Do not over promote yourself – use the 80-20 (or 90-10) rule

This might be the best tip of all – make your content valuable and don't over promote yourself. Some people go by an 80/20 guideline, others by a 90/10 rule. Either way – promote yourself no more than 20% of the time, and make sure you are providing content that is valuable to your audience at least 80% of the time (and maybe more).

Whew! There's a lot of great info here, and I am sure you will find several tips to help you gain and keep more quality Twitter followers who are interested in what you have to offer.

What is your favorite way to build your following of quality people on Twitter? Leave a comment below!

The post 15 Tips to Get and KEEP More #Twitter Followers appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

HOOTSUITE VS SOCIALOOMPH

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 12:06 PM PST

GrowYourTwitterNetwork

admin

Hootsuite Vs SocialOomph

Posted by Kristoff Doneit on Apr 25, 2013 in General | 0 comments

HootSuite and SocialOomph offer social network integrations that allow you to stay connected with the people that matter. But which site can offer you the interconnections with the ease and accessibility that you deserve?

Here is a comparison of 7 aspects of the sites to allow you to choose the correct network integration solution.

Base Features
A rundown of the base features of Hootsuite and SocialOomph shows that both sites have integration with Twitter and Facebook, and with access to LinkedIn. But in this category Hootsuite has a slight advantage due to the range of social media feeds that are accessible.

Post Scheduling
The main function of these tools is to schedule posts to appear at a time of your choosing. With SocialOomph the use a regular Word document to schedule posts means SocialOomph comes out better in this category.

Analytics
The importance of analytics cannot be underestimated, and the detail levels in SocialOomph are superior to HootSuite. Again SocialOomph wins in this category.

Live Feeds
The ability to see a live feed of posts to your accounts is a facility which is necessary to the functionality of both sites, with both HootSuite and SocialOomph providing adequately in this category, being difficult to separate.

Auto-Responders and Auto-Followers
With SocialOomph allowing the option to set up Auto-Responses and Auto-Follows – albeit at a premium price – and an aspect of social media neglected by HootSuite, SocialOomph again wins in this category.

Replies Digest
SocialOomph has another exclusive feature, the facility to receive notifications of Retweets and @Mentions, which are great utility to those conducting business through social media. Once more, SocialOomph has the edge.

Apps
With provision of specifically-tailored apps for Smartphone users, in contrast to cumbersome use of the SocialOomph website through a Smartphone, consequently here HootSuite does have the advantage over SocialOomph.

Verdict
With SocialOomph coming out on top in 4 of the 7 categories, SocialOomph appears to offer the superior service.

The post HOOTSUITE VS SOCIALOOMPH appeared first on GrowYourTwitterNetwork.

The post HOOTSUITE VS SOCIALOOMPH appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

New Facebook Contest and Promotion Rules: What You Need to Know

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 05:22 AM PST

Andrea Vahl

By Andrea Vahl
Published September 9, 2013

Have Facebook rules stopped you from running contests on your Facebook wall in the past?

Are you wondering how the new Facebook promotion changes might benefit your business?

Facebook has made a huge shift in how they allow contests to be run.

Keep reading to discover what your options are and how other businesses are responding to these new changes.

What's New

For years, Facebook has been saying that promotions and contests needed to be run through an application and not on your timeline (or wall, as we used to call it).

You were not allowed to ask people to like or comment on a picture or a post to be entered to win.

But now that has all changed.

Facebook announced on August 27 that they've changed their Pages Terms to make it "easier for businesses of all sizes to create and administer promotions on Facebook." They're allowing pages to run contests and promotions on their own timelines (you cannot run contests on a personal timeline). Per Facebook, businesses can now:

Collect entries by having users post on the page or comment/like a page post
Collect entries by having users message the page
Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

Now businesses with a Facebook page have a lot more options and can run a contest very quickly and easily by posting text or a photo and asking people to comment and/or like it.

Get more engagement on your page by running a contest.

Here's the complete list of rules for promotions and contests directly from their Page Guidelines under section E (as of August 28, 2013):

1. If you use Facebook to communicate or administer a promotion (ex: a contest or sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, including:

The official rules;
Offer terms and eligibility requirements (ex: age and residency restrictions); and
Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered (ex: registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals).

2. Promotions on Facebook must include the following:

A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

3. Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines must not be used to administer promotions (ex: "share on your Timeline to enter" or "share on your friend's Timeline to get additional entries" is not permitted).

4. We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion, and you agree that if you use our service to administer your promotion, you do so at your own risk.

So now businesses have the choice of running the contest through an app or through their timeline.

[embedded content]
Facebook even released a video explaining their new promotional terms.

Make sure you also check out Facebook's Promotion Guidelines download as well—very helpful!

Facebook Contests: What You Can and Can't Do

Let's break this down into a handy chart of what you can and can't do to run your contest.

What You Can Do:

Require people to like a post and/or comment on a post to be entered
Require that someone post something directly on your timeline to enter (could be a text post or a photo)
Use likes as a voting method (either liking a post or photo on your timeline)
Require that someone message your page to enter
Announce the winner of the contest on your page
Require that to win the prize, entrants come back to your page to see who has won the contest
Use a Like button plugin on a website as a voting mechanism
Use an app plugin to post an entry to your contest directly on your page
Run your contest through a Facebook app

What You Can't Do:

Require that people share a post or photo to be entered
Require someone to post something on their own personal timeline or a friend's timeline to enter
Require people to tag themselves in a photo to either vote or enter
Have anyone who likes your page be entered to win (contest does not take place on the timeline)

How the New Rules Can Work for You

If you're wondering if your contest will work within the new rules, think about where the engagement on Facebook happens. If it's directly on your timeline or through your Message button, then you're probably ok. And you still can use third-party apps to run a contest.

Also note that you can "encourage" people to share your post or contest, but you can't require it for entry. Many third-party apps have in the past given "extra" entries for sharing the contest and it looks like that practice will have to stop, according to the Promotion Guidelines.

With all of these new options, how do you choose what type of contest to run on Facebook? Let's dive into that conundrum.

How to Choose What Type of Contest to Run on Facebook

Decisions, decisions! With more options always comes hand-wringing over which will be the best for you and your marketing goals.

You can break it down fairly simply into this:

A Facebook timeline contest will give you more engagement fast.
A Facebook app contest will give you a list of email addresses that you can connect with again.

But there are more considerations than those basic needs. You need to take into account the advantages and disadvantages of each type of contest.

Running a Timeline Contest

Advantages

Quick and easy to set up
Fun and easy to engage people to enter
Free to run
Works on mobile devices (many Facebook apps are not mobile-friendly)
Increased PTAT score

Disadvantages

Do not receive an email address with the entry
Can't reshare the post easily to tell people about the contest multiple times
Need to post the rules of the contest and the required release of Facebook's responsibility for the contest somewhere within the post (or a link to the terms and rules of your contest)
Contests may not increase fans as much as a like-gated app would
Could be harder to notify the winner if the winner is not paying attention
If you require both a like and a comment, it could be a pain to validate

Running a Facebook App Contest

Advantages

Gather email addresses to connect with those people again
More control over the look and feel of the contest
Can like-gate the entry so that you grow your fans
Easy resharing to promote the contest multiple times
Easy to have rules posted within the app
Many contest apps have metrics that show data about when people are entering and where they are coming from

Disadvantages

Barrier to entry is a little higher
Some contest apps do not work on mobile devices
Cost

Make sure you understand some of the limitations of running a timeline contest.

New Options for Timeline Contests

Several new offerings for timeline contests have already sprung up (these coders are fast!) to help make running a timeline contest a little easier.

One of the things marketers will be concerned about with the new timeline contests is how to pick a random winner from all of the people who like or comment on a post to enter.

Note that there are already a few solutions available.

One free tool is from the makers of EdgeRank Checker called Contest Capture. You can export your likes and comments on a particular post into a .csv file. From there you can use a random number generator to give you a line number on that .csv file of the winner.

Use Contest Capture to download a file of the likes and comments on a post.

Another free tool that will help you pick a winner is Woobox. Woobox will load all of your recent posts (click on the Posts link at the top of the page after logging into Woobox), and then allow you to pick a winner right from the Woobox site by just clicking on the Pick link under the Winners heading.

Use the Woobox app to pick a winner.

Woobox has many free apps including this tool, but their Contest/Sweepstakes app itself is a paid product.

ShortStack has a Comment and Like Importer that allows you to sort through the comments and likes so you can select a winner. This works through their platform but requires a paid plan.

And it looks like Heyo is coming out with a Timeline Contest Creator shortly to help you deploy your timeline contest.

In the coming weeks, we're sure to see even more tools available to help you launch and administer your timeline contest.

Timeline Contest Best Practices

Right now, timeline contests are a work in progress. Time will tell how well they actually work to engage. One thing I noticed with a timeline contest I ran was that I had a lot of engagement early, but that it did fade after a day. Also I didn't get a lot of new likes for my page, despite having a lot of activity on the post itself.

Here are some initial best practices for your Facebook timeline contest:

Have a good picture describing the basics of your contest. A picture is more engaging and shareable than a text post and the text will travel with the picture as it's shared.
Require a comment. If you require a comment, you can tag the person who wins in a comment (usually—sometimes tagging isn't working) when you select the winner.
Make the rules clear in the post. Give people the basics of the rules. If you need more space, you may want to host the rules on a website and refer people there with a link.
Pin your post to the top of your page for more visibility.
Make the length of a timeline contest fairly short. Since it's hard to re-post the link, make the length of the contest a week at most.
Use an app for bigger prizes or for when you want to collect emails and leads. Apps are easier to promote and you can even connect some apps directly to your email provider for easy synchronization.

Pin your post to the top of your page and require a comment.

More Options for Facebook Promotions

Timeline contests are ultimately good news for marketers. They offer more choices and flexibility in what you can do to engage your audience. Try running at least one to see what it does for your business.

And remember there are good reasons to use a third-party Facebook app for your contest.

It's nice to have new tools for your Facebook marketing toolbox.

What about you? Are you going to try a timeline contest? What possibilities do you see for this new marketing avenue? Let us know in the comments below!

Tags: andrea vahl, facebook, facebook contest, facebook contest app, facebook marketing, facebook page, facebook promotion, facebook promotion guideline

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Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos and Social Media to Market Your Business

Posted: 07 Mar 2014 03:00 AM PST

Michael Stelzner

By Michael Stelzner
Published March 7, 2014

Do you use visuals to market your business?

Are you wondering how you can tell a story with visuals?

To learn how your business can benefit from visual storytelling, I interview Ekaterina Walter for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

More About This Show

Social Media Marketing Podcast w/ Michael Stelzner

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 Ekaterina Walter, chief marketing officer at Branderati and author of Think Like Zuck. Her newest book is called The Power of Visual Storytelling.

Ekaterina shares why storytelling is important for your business.

You'll discover how to get started, the type of visuals that work and brands that do it well.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Listen Now

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher, SoundCloud or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:

Visual Storytelling

How did you fall into visual storytelling?

Ekaterina explains how her job at Intel for the last 5 years was building social business, and it was during her final 3 years there that she started to notice the perfect shift to visual storytelling. So for her, visual storytelling was a natural progression.

Several years ago, she started to look at the data and usage of visuals versus the usage of just text and links. This led to her first blog post on Fast Company, called The Rise of Visual Social Media.

Ekaterina's article for Fast Company was received extremely well.

You'll hear why this particular article led Ekaterina to write more on this subject.

Ekaterina believes that the reason why visuals are so well-received is that we are moving into a world that is inundated with information. There are filters that allow us to stand out from the noise. One of them, in Ekaterina's view, is visual marketing and visual storytelling.

Listen to the show to find out what term Ekaterina uses for the world we are moving into.

What is visual storytelling and why should marketers consider it for their business?

Ekaterina's new book, The Power of Visual Storytelling.

The way that visual storytelling is defined in Ekaterina's new book, The Power of Visual Storytelling, is the use of images, video, infographics and potentially presentations and other visuals in social media.

The use of visuals on social media platforms can help you craft a graphic story around your brand's key values and offerings. It helps show who you are as a brand and makes consumers want to connect with you.

With the rise of millennials (digital natives and the younger generation), it's essential that they not only know what you offer or how useful a product is, but also how they can be part of the movement and fit within that tribe. It's what visual storytelling allows you to do. It's how you reach that emotional connection with your customers.

Recently, Jason Miller of LinkedIn created a widely shared infographic titled, A Well-Balanced Blog.

Jason Miller's infographic created a lot of buzz.

The reason why this type of content works is that it's simple thinking. Our brains process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. About 93% of all communication is nonverbal.

You'll hear an example of how you can gather a story from an image, rather than a word on its own. The emotional connection is critical.

Studies show that blog posts with visuals drive up to 180% more engagement than those without. This means that a visual image can allow people to digest your content, then decide if they want to continue to read the article.

The amount of information that is produced every 48 hours is the same amount that was produced from the beginning of time up until 2003. Every year, our attention span becomes shorter. Now it's about 3-8 seconds. Therefore you need to grab people's attention immediately.

Sephora is a great example of a brand that uses images very well. They released data stating that their Pinterest followers spend 15 times more on Sephora merchandise than their Facebook fans.

Sephora has a higher rate of sales on Pinterest.

Listen to the show to find out what impacts sales in a positive way.

Examples of businesses that do visual storytelling well

Ekaterina explains that there are some really interesting case studies in her new book.

For example, Red Bull's success is not just due to being highly visual, it's also the way they use visuals. Red Bull always creates content that's very much in line with the brand. The use of images before, during and after an event is fascinating. They are storytelling masters.

Red Bull does an amazing job with visual storytelling.

Another example is Dunkin' Donuts. Although they don't have a huge budget, they are masters of behind-the-scenes content. You'll hear how Dunkin' Donuts works with their Facebook fans, which helps to tell the brand's story.

Dunkin' Donuts uses Instagram and Pinterest masterfully. Even employees participate in fun ways.

Dunkin' Donuts uses Instagram very well.

You have to remember that sometimes it's about real time and real sharing. It proves that sometimes photos from a mobile device are good enough in the moment.

A great way that Dunkin' Donuts used Vine videos was during advertisement breaks on ESPN Monday Night Countdown. The series was called #DunkinReplay. You'll hear the reasons why these videos worked so well and how they involved storytelling.

Listen to the show to find out how many impressions each Vine replay delivered.

Some of the core elements that go into visual storytelling

In Ekaterina's book there are seven elements, one of which is design. As you build your visual strategy, you need to think about design and the relevance to your brand.

When Ekaterina worked at Intel, they had to think about how they could use more of their brand's images in a recognizable way.

You have to figure out how to tell a fun and interesting story with your visuals, and at the same time make sure that people will recognize it as your brand. The design helps to continue to tell your story. You also need to ensure that it has some sort of real-time amplification.

Intel makes sure its brand is recognizable in its images.

In the past it would take weeks or even months for a brand to work out a strategy; today, however, brands need to become more responsive and agile.

For you to be able to catch the conversation in the right context, you need to be relevant and stand out from the crowd. Sometimes it can just be for pure entertainment.

Listen to the show to hear how smart car turned an opportunity from someone's tweet into an entertaining infographic.

Tips to help visuals gain maximum visibility

Although Facebook in the past has said that it won't show as many memes in the news feed, Ekaterina says that she still sees them a lot.

She doesn't think they will go away because of the continued popularity of sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter. On Twitter, one-third of links shared are images and 50% of posts on Tumblr are photos. People are always looking for things to share and pin.

If you write a blog post with a generic image, you need to have an image that is valuable. There will be an overlay of the continued use of imagery that has useful information or is entertaining or funny because of other usage.

ekaterina walter image with text overlay

Make sure you have images that are valuable on your blog.

Every time you produce content, you need to understand how it will be used. You'll hear Ekaterina explain one of the bigger things you need to look at as a marketer, and why so many marketers have missed the boat.

When it comes to distribution, you need to think about who your audience is, how you respect them and the context in which they get your information. You'll hear different examples for various platforms.

Listen to the show to find out why it's important to be mindful of what you do and how you do it to avoid damaging your brand.

Where to start with your visual story

Ekaterina states that you need to start with your brand. It's about telling the story of who you are, and not just about your latest product.

You can start with how your company was created, the key messaging and what initiatives you push. For example, the environment, local kids, communities, etc.

As a marketer, don't just focus on a specific product you have, think how you can market your brand, the why and the people behind the brand.

Share behind the scenes at your brand.

You'll hear an amazing story of what happened at Intel about 3 years ago when they used a behind-the-scenes photo on their Facebook page, and how it has remained one of the highest commented on and shared posts.

Check out the full podcast episode with Ekaterina Walter.

Listen to the show to discover how behind the scenes images can help with your story.

Discovery of the Week

I've recently come across a really cool tool called GPlusData that allows you to track Google+ data.

The site allows you to run a bunch of interesting reports, pretty much in real time. For example, you can look at:

People who are most active
Pages that are most active
What parts of the country or the world that are most active
The top posts on Google+
What time of day people are most active
The growth of your followers and a daily breakdown
How many updates and shares you have

Social Media Examiner ranks 278th in News Pages (by followers).

It's publicly available for just about any page. So not only can you look at your page, you can also look at your competitor's page to see what they are doing.

With the click of a button, it allows you to identify the largest communities on Google+. The largest at present is Amazing Places to See.

Although there is a limit to the amount of data provided for free, you can sign up for a paid version to get more detailed analysis.

I think it's a really cool tool. Make sure you 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 Mentions

This week's podcast is sponsored by Social Media Marketing World.

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

The conference features more than 80 sessions in four major tracks: social tactics, social strategy, community management and content marketing.

As part of the networking, we have recently added a free evening cruise of San Diego Bay on March 27! This is an experience you'll never forget.

We are so excited about this conference. If you look at our hashtag #smmw14, you'll see all of the people who are excited about attending this conference.

This event is coming up soon. Be sure to 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 visual storytelling for your business? Please leave your comments below.

Tags: dunkin donuts, ekaterina walter, ethical social media marketing, intel, michael stelzner, podcast, red bull, sephora, social media case study, social media marketing podcast, storytelling, storytelling techniques, visual brand, visual storytelling

The post Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos and Social Media to Market Your Business appeared first on Make Money Online With Twitter Marketing.

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samedi 8 mars 2014