Sharing the latest tutorials and tips to improve social media marketing, increase social media traffic and building authority in social media platforms.
I wished that one day, Hootsuite will integrate personal Google+ profiles into its social media automation platform.
The above was three years back when I first started using Hootsuite. If you are one of those social media marketers like me who loves Hootsuite and waiting for integration with personal Google+ profile, the wait is over.
If you missed it, Hootsuite supports personal Google+ profile!
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Erik Qualman once said, “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it”.
Can you believe that, folks? Social media is a key generator for your business; let it be either an online or a brick and mortar business, you need social media to literally survive in this world.
The challenges small businesses face is inevitable. Yes you — small business owners will face tons of obstacles which will either demotivate you or burn a hole in your pocket. As a social media consultant, I dare to say that there will be challenges in social media especially in two phrases; entry level and sustaining a marketing strategy to compete with the rest.
As Erik said above, social media is no longer a luxury; it is a needs that will determine success in business.
So, what are the challenges small businesses will face in social media? How do you overcome them?
Let’s break them down in this article, shall we? (more…)
Mike Bird is a co-founder of digital marketing agency, Social Garden. Social Garden specializes in data-driven lead generation & marketing automation to grow companies revenue in the finance, property and education verticals in Australia. Mike is an influencer in the social media marketing & Facebook advertising space and contributes to Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, Yahoo! Business Advisor and most importantly, the Social Garden blog.
You have your social media accounts all set up and ready to go, but do you know how to use them to generate leads?
Read on and learn how to use each social media platform to generate solid leads and make your social media marketing an overall success.
Facebook is like the hub of social media. Everyone can post content from other sites to it, and nearly everyone has a Facebook account. This makes the social media platform instrumental in your lead generation plan.
Above all other social media platforms, Facebook’s advertising services target exactly who you want and can put your content right into the hands of those most likely to use it. After all, you spend so much time creating great, quality content on your blogs so you might as well share it with new potential clients.
The Promoted Post feature puts your best content on the Facebook feeds of those most likely to be intrigued and click. You might promote a link to a free ebook or upcoming webinar you are hosting, or you might promote your most popular blog article. The only think you cannot post is a direct link to any sort of landing or product page. This is not the time to sell.
Whatever promotional angle you decide to use, make sure you have a sign-up form or some way of getting visitors to give you their email addresses. This is the best way to collect the leads that click on your posts.
Sending out well-crafted tweets with defining hashtags is a great start, but you might have more success generating leads if you are participating in or hosting Twitter chats. Any Twitter account can host a discussion and anyone interested is allowed to participate. The host will decide on a relevant hashtag so everyone participating can find the most recent posts by searching for the hashtag.
If you are unsure about hosting one, try participating in a few chats to see how it is done. You will meet both other industry leaders as well as consumers, and you will be free to voice your own opinions on certain subjects. This is a great way to gain exposure for your brand and introduce it to a new group of consumers.
Whether you are participating or hosting, there are a few things to keep in mind when posting. These will help you make better use of your time and hopefully generate more leads:
Be active in Twitter chats and your brand will reach new consumers.
Cendrine Marrouat of Social Media Slant hosts a monthly Twitter chat using #smslantchat where users discuss various aspects of digital marketing.
Want to give your audience a behind-the-scenes look at your company? Instagram, the photograph platform, is perhaps best used for showing off the personal side of your business. It gives you the chance to showcase your staff’s antics and offer a glimpse at what it is really like to be a part of your company.
By introducing your staff members to the world, you’re giving a face to your brand and humanising it. Your brand inspires these people at work every day so show your consumers why it is so great to work for you and be a part of your company.
You can also send live updates from promotional events you attend and show readers what you are up to. This is a great way to attract people to a local event or trade show that you are participating in, and you can offer small discounts to followers who attend the event or trade show and stop by your booth.
Want to show off your company’s creativity and style? With Pinterest, you can create a board that represents your brand, and you can create multiple boards to meet the needs and wants of certain sectors of your audience.
To generate the best leads from Pinterest, optimise your pins for maximum pin-ability:
Promote your boards on multiple sites and encourage your followers to pin their favourite posts.
One of the best lead generation features about LinkedIn is LinkedIn Groups. The site hosts hundreds of individual niche groups that participate in monthly, weekly and some even daily discussions together. The groups bring all sorts of industry professionals with similar interests together in one place where they can talk about the issue that matter most to their business.
There is no limit to the amount of groups that you can belong to, and you can always start your own group. You might start a small business support group for your area and invite other local small businesses in your area to participate. You can share marketing ideas and connect with other businesses who might be interested in doing some cross promotion with you.
Regardless of whether you start a LinkedIn group or participate in existing ones, you should be regularly posting questions, commenting on other’s opinions (politely) and answering any questions that people post. Like Twitter chat, active participation is key, and you should avoid doing any sales pitching. Doing so will only make people think that you are there to sell it them.
Research the participants in the group and take note of anyone who continually asks questions. You may answer them directly on the group chat and then follow up with a more in-depth direct message. This will help you build a good relationship with your fellow group members and portray your expert knowledge.
Social network marketing is a gold mine when it comes to building traffic, revenue and sales.
It is not undeniable that if you are not doing social media, you are losing out; big time. And like it or not, we are already halfway through 2014.
Some says that 2015 will be a huge year for digital marketing trend which is wonderfully compiled by Lee Odden of Top Rank Blog (read more about it here).
The social media pace is getting fast and the ‘slow and steady’ don’t win the race anymore.
If you have yet to start any social media campaign, you need to start right now. Yes, drop whatever you are doing and start creating a social media account on Facebook, Twitter or a zillion other accounts.
But wait! You have already done that.
Good job, you have just started your first step in any social media campaign.
The moral of the story is not many of us realized we had already started some sort of social media marketing, regardless we are aware or not.
While creating an account is easy, you need more than that.
For starters, you need followers. Tons of them.
There are several fundamentals when it comes to building more followers such as:
Luck is rather challenging as we have no control over them. Lucky for you, it is much opposite when it comes to ‘timing’ and ‘funnel’.
Timing is everything. According to the Fast Company, you only need:
Take a moment to think about this. What’s your first thought?
Mine is simple; “Are you freaking joking me?! I post around 15 times on Twitter and Facebook plus 5 times on LinkedIn daily!”
Let’s talk about ROI myth and it is broken down into two parts:
This can be concluded that while there is absolutely no wrong-doing choosing either one of them, the method of reaching out to the prospective readers is important.
What’s work for me is around 10 tweets, 5 Facebook shares and 3 LinkedIn updates close to a daily basis. How about yours?
There is no ‘absolute timing’ when it comes to social media scheduling. Yes, there are guides to help you with it but at the end of the day, it is totally dependable to your visitors (time of action).
Are you using social media for marketing? If you are, you need good funnels to drive traffic and sales.
Social network marketing basically means reaching thousands and thousands of readers with just a few clicks of the button.
In social media, the easiest way to create funnel is by creating quality posts with the proper Call To Action (CTA).
And when it comes to social media marketing techniques, there is no one else better than Rebekah Radice. Check out her latest article on 5 Ways To Create A Social Media Call To Action That Converts.
In short, a funnel can be done using:
My social network marketing method is rather simple. I would share the same post using various CTA’s in a period of one week (or a couple of days). Judging from the response, it would provide us with a huge understanding on what readers love and what is driving those clicks.
I’m a huge fan of social media automation. Running a hectic life with various projects from my start-up agency and as well as my lucrative day job is a no joke.
After all, it’s our job to ensure that we put food on the plate right?
Social media is business for me. Believe it or not, most of my business traffic comes from social media.
If you want to rank well on Google, you need search engine optimization. In social media, you need social media optimization.
To kick start social media, all you need is the right technique. Allow me to share mine (you can share yours using the comment form below):
There are more than a dozen social media platforms out there and you need to choose the most lucrative one for your social media campaign.
Using Google Analytics, determine which platform provides you the best traffic and clicks.
If you are starting up a social media marketing and time is a huge factor for you, you can simply choose the top 3 most productive platform to work with.
Social media is always a two way traffic. This means that you need to be active and as well as utilizing the power of automation.
And my go-to tool would be HootSuite Pro. Honestly speaking, having the ability to sync 50 social accounts at the same time is godly.
HootSuite Pro offers up to 50 social accounts (free one offer 5 accounts) and this means that you need tons of planning.
There are two things you have to decide:
The below is an example my timeline. I separate them into platform based and even client’s tab (not visible for obvious purpose).
Each tab can holds up to 10 timelines and this includes mentions, private messages, scheduling etc.
Segmenting the timeline is important to ensure that you have enough visibility and contribution to avoid being labelled as spam or self promotion. This is where the segmentation in the image come into play.
HootSuite offers scheduled posts and you can schedule up to 5 accounts at one time.
The trick here is simple. Schedule posts which are highly attractive and relevant to the group or audience. Do that and you’ll get a winner!
HootSuite starts from $8.99 per month and you can it for 30-days free using this link: Free 30-days HootSuite Pro
Tell me your thought on social network marketing and if you are feeling generous, let’s discuss on social media strategies to increase traffic and sales revenue.
Over 1 million users are using Buffer for their daily social media campaigns and the numbers are growing rapidly by the day.
The biggest question is probably “What makes Buffer so damn famous?”
Buffer is designed to offer you a more efficient way to handle all your social media accounts and campaigns. Basically, it makes scheduling social media updates as easy as A, B and C.
For those who don’t know me, I am pretty much a social media freak. I am constantly on mobile and social media. Yes, welcome to the 21st century!
With over 11 social media accounts to handle, it is really time consuming to handle all. Also with my hectic schedule, it is a no brainer that I need the right social media management tool to turn my social media woes into something … really pleasant.
As for the record, I had used HootSuite, Socialoomph and a dozen more social media management tool until date. Honestly speaking, nothing really come close to Buffer.
For starters, Buffer is a free tool which makes life much easier and I was pretty skeptical about its ability before this. Yup, I thought that it was hard to use and I didn’t really bother learning.
So for those who are wondering how you can REALLY use Buffer for your social media campaigns, keep reading on as I will share with you how to use Buffer … the right way.
I uses it because it has a very detailed social media analytics tool.
Let’s be real honest here. Buffer and any other social media management tools are closely equivalent when it comes to the scheduling features etc.
However, what distinguished Buffer from the rest are the reports it generates and of course, the lovely support team who never complains about all my rants.
Okay, I admit it. I am a tough customer to handle 🙂
It doesn’t matter if you are a blogger or thinking of using it for your business; Buffer app could be the right choice for you.
And here’s the link to the 9 Buffer’s Values.
Buffer is free for all and you can create your account simply by clicking here. On a free account, you can easily manage one Twitter, Facebook (page or profile), and LinkedIn account with up to 10 updates in your buffer, aka scheduler. This means that you can schedule up to 10 updates on free account.
If you are a heavy scheduler like me, you can easily signup for Buffer Awesome plan at $10 per month to manage 12 social profiles, have unlimited posts in your buffer, and even add two team members to help manage it all.
For any bigger business plans, you would need to contact the support team and discuss on the rates.
It is a very powerful social media management tool if you know how to use it correctly. There are two very important factors which you need to consider which are:
If you are keen of reading on this (which I highly recommend), check out my latest write up on 3 steps to kick start social media automation.
Remember that with proper planning, you are going to skyrocket your social media campaigns and ROI. Don’t forget that if done correctly, you can also increase your referral traffic too.
It only takes you two steps to start buffering your updates. Yes, only two for Christ’s sake!
1. You need to setup a schedule time for Buffer to work
Here, you need to set up the specific time to share the update for every social media accounts you have. And scheduling a time on Buffer is easy.
For those who are managing more than one social media accounts, it is best NOT to schedule the same updates at a specific time.
Also, it is always great to select Shuffle for every completed social media scheduled updates to avoid duplication between accounts.
This is a great way to avoid having labelled as spam.
2. Scheduling a social media update on Buffer
Scheduling a social media update using Buffer is really easy. All you need to do are these three simple steps:
Yes! That’s all. pretty simple right?
Refer the below image for easier understanding:
Personally, I am in love with the analytics and it is simply because it makes social networking so darn easy!
Buffer analytics will provide you details such as the number of clicks, comments, likes and reach to name a few. What makes this social media tool better is that for each time the update is reshared by others, your number of reach will be updated instantly.
This is very useful since you would have an idea on how far your social media had reached out to others and what others do with it in terms of resharing and clicking on the link provided.
At this point, I am sure you are pretty tempted to use Buffer but there’s more.
Do you remember the Buffer’s philosophy to makes sharing easier?
You can easily integrate Buffer with over a dozen apps and extensions. Imagine using Buffer on Chrome, Firefox, smartphones and various social media platforms.
And my favorite are:
I was using Buffer so much until a few of my close blogging buddies asked if I am online 24 hours a day, 7 times a week!
Thank you Buffer!
For me, it is more than just a tool when it comes to social media automation and campaigns. It has proven its worth even though I had used it less than a month now. With the rate Buffer is expanding, I am having high hopes that Buffer is going to the leading social media management tool for all.
This social media automation tool had shown its capabilities to compete with some of the finest social media management tools out there.
It is no doubt that it offers tons of benefits and is absolutely no surprise that many bloggers and businesses are already looking into the ‘Buffer solution’.
Here are a few question for you (and feel free to hit the Reply button below):
Don’t be shy and tell me what you think! Or, sign up right now for a free Buffer account today!
We are living in the Internet age and by now, the advantages of social media are just too obvious when it comes to the blogging community. And with so many social media platforms nowadays, we are always short of time and I am sure you can’t deny that either.
I don’t know about you, but creating the right social media automation is not always a piece of cake. Let’s face it guys … you are here because you want to know:
The most important part for me isn’t any of these 3 above. Instead, my biggest concern is to ensure that social media automation is returning the biggest return of investment (ROI).
For me, social media automation is all about using technology with lots of planning.
The main goal is to create quality social shares and most importantly, sharing them at the right time!
Social media automation is never about quantity but what matters most is the audience and quality. However, don’t ever put aside the fact, ‘The larger your reach is, the better chance your articles will be receive better responses’.
Basically, you need a healthy dose of quality content to be shared, a large number of reach and of course, timing.
Sounds confusing right? I will explain them in a moment.
Do you find yourself always short of time thanks to the countless social media platforms?
I certainly do and it is rather annoying when you are trying all your best to ‘go out’ and the only thing that holds you back is time.
Here is where social media automation comes into play. To ensure that it works, you definitely need to have a proper social media plan and the right marketing automation softwares to work for you.
The goal is to ensure that you are maximizing your ROI with the minimum time spend on each social media. In other words, making your 24 hours works like a 36 hours or so.
Still don’t get it? Don’t worry as what you need now is to watch this video:
The goal is NOT to create just any type of sharing but to create highly optimized, specific and high value social media shares.
To start up, you need to use the right social media analytics tools to help you with no other than … social media research.
I am pretty sure you are wondering what should you be finding when it comes to social media research right?
Here are a few information you should know (hint: social media research) when it comes to social media:
This is where you understand the type of audience you have and what they are looking for. It is absolutely pointless to share information with a group who are not even closely related or interested with the said topic.
You need to analysis:
This is one of those three parts which is very tedious and time consuming.
However, if you are able to work out a social media plan according to the analytic you had gathered, chances are extremely high where you will be able to perform not one but numerous and successful social media automation.
Planning your tweets or Facebook shares are very important too. The above technique would be able to provide you information on who to share and this in particular, will give you a hint on when to share.
At this point, I know the who, what, where and which are really making you nuts but hang in there with me! We are already halfway there.
When you are thinking of doing ‘social media’, it is always important to know when your readers are active.
Yup. What’s the point of sharing a shout if majority of your readers are asleep right?
That’s the whole point!
You want to make sure that every social media campaigns that you do are giving you the best results. Period.
You may have:
And … you ain’t getting any clicks. Not even one damn click.
Okay, what the hell is wrong?!
Personally, I’ve been there and I experienced it daily to be very honest. I had a few thousands followers on various social media platforms and I am always wondering; “why 95% of my tweets aren’t getting any clicks at all?”
Yup, no resharing, no favorites, no comments … nothing!
I read through some of the tweets (like a few hundreds of them) and I was like , “Hey, these aren’t good social shares at all” and the biggest issue was the title itself.
Check this title out:
Guys! I wrote a damn good article on Google Hummingbird and you should definitely check it out! (link) #SEO
What do you see from the above? Go on … I will wait.
…
…
…
The problem was … I wasn’t engaging enough at all. I was just merely telling others that I wrote a great blog post (which no one is able to clarify) on a specific topic.
For the readers, they wouldn’t know what to expect or … the shout wasn’t specific enough.
Here are two simple examples for better call-to-action social media shouts:
In short, my shouts and shares are not social media optimized.
I could easily get more clicks simply if I have added sentences such as “How to beat Google Hummingbird …”, “How did I hack Google Hummingbird …” and many more.
Of course, don’t use these as they are purely examples and you can’t beat or hack Google Hummingbird either 🙂
The above images are great examples. Simple call-to-actions or CTA would make readers think and wonder … which eventually some of them will click and read.
Recommended read: 500 Social Media Marketing Tips by Andrew Macarthy
Using the right social media analytics tools will actually help you to build a better marketing plan and believe it or not, they play more than just huge roles when it comes to social media automation.
There are probably a dozen more social media analytics tools you can use but here are a couple of them which are in my favorite list.
Honestly speaking, I don’t really know how many of you are actually using Followerwonk and for me, I used to think that this is rather a ‘less useful’ analytic tool. And yes, I was wrong.
Followerwonk offers free membership (plus premium plans as well) and is highly focused on Twitter only. Well, since I am heavy user on Twitter, I think this rather self-explanatory right?
Features on free Followerwonk account:
I am sure the above features are already very clear cut and I do not need to go any further with those. However, what really makes me to use Followerwonk is the third feature above; Analyze followers/followers.
By allowing Followerwonk to analyze my Twitter account, I could easily determine the best time most of my followers are active on Twitter. This means that, sharing any information during that period would have the biggest impact and reach.
Remember that when it comes to social media, it is never about the quantity but the quality.
And if you think that it is all, you are absolutely wrong!
You can also use Followerwonk to ‘export’ those hot time periods to your Buffer schedule. Now, that’s what I really call as social media automation!
If you are thinking of social media strategy, Google Analytics is definitely one of those analytics tools you need to use. Furthermore, it is runned by Google and thus, it should be trusted right?
So, how do you actually uses Google Analytics for your social media analysis?
You don’t use Google Analytics to learn about your followers (even though you could) … but instead, you should use it to focus on your social media campaigns.
For example, Google Analytics would be able to tell you which social media platform is the best and biggest contributor for your social media campaigns and blog traffic.
With this information, you would be able to perform the right social media optimization by focusing more energy and time on the right social media platforms that gives you the best results.
Personally, I would call this the “lesser work, more impact” social media strategy.
Does this make sense to you?
When it comes to social media automation, it is important that you uses the right tools for the job. In today’s world, there are probably a dozen or more social media marketing automation softwares out there but for me, I only stick to these three which are definitely proven to be working for my social media.
BufferApp or Buffer is one of those tools that puts your social media marketing into 5th gear. For starters, Buffer has a free and paid version which is called Awesome plan.
Personally, Buffer is one of the best social media tools I ever used and their customer service team are top notch.
Buffer allows you to have a free account to manage one Twitter, Facebook (page or profile), and LinkedIn account with up to 10 updates in your buffer, aka scheduler.
If you are a heavy scheduler like me, you can easily signup for Buffer Awesome plan at $10 per month to manage 12 social profiles, have unlimited posts in your buffer, and even add two team members to help manage it all.
Buffer is really easy to use and what you need to do are:
For your info, scheduled social shares will only take place once in an account. This means that if you would want to reschedule the same post more than once, you need to redo it again.
This is great as it ensures that each of your social shares does not sound ‘robotic’.
Sound complicated? Of course not. Sign up for a free account on Buffer now!
Related article: How do you schedule social media updates using Buffer?
Personally, I had used HootSuite for over a year now and am totally loving it since it worked well with scheduling and socializing. This means that you are able to schedule social media shouts using HootSuite and even use it on a daily basis.
HootSuite is all about having a balance of work and play. Imagine ‘working’ and ‘playing’ all under one roof!
Alike Buffer, HootSuite has both free and premium plans depending on your requirements. Using a free account, you are able to connect to 5 social media profiles and 2 RSS subscriptions (plus basic analytics reports).
If you would require additional features, you can subscribe to its Pro plan at $8.99 per month which offers 50 social media profiles, team members (up to 9) and most importantly, advanced analytics reports.
Scheduling a post on HootSuite is great and these are the steps needed to get the scheduling up in place:
Through my experience, HootSuite is a good social media automation tool and it works extremely well with some of the best social media platforms such as Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
Don’t just sign up for a free account. Take full advantage of the free 30-days trials of HootSuite Pro and revert back to normal if you don’t like it.
If you are looking for a ‘set once and forget’ feature, this is one social automation tool you must definitely consider. What makes Socialoomph so popular is the scheduling process.
Basically, Socialoomph brings social media automation to the next level.
For example, both Buffer and HootSuite only offers one posting per schedule. On the other hand, Socialoomph offers you the ability to control the number of social shares per scheduled post.
Still puzzled? Allow me to explain further.
Imagine setting Post A to go live every Tuesday at 10pm. Socialoomph will be sharing the same post every week at the same time … FOREVER!
Yup, I bet now you get the total meaning of the ‘set once and forget’ feature. Well, this could easily be spamming right? This is where Socialoomph had integrated article spinner in it!
Article Spinner is a tool used to spin the same article or sentences into several different versions. To read more, here’s an example of The Best Spinner which I am currently using. Basically, it spins a string of sentences into a newly formed sentences that totally make sense upon reading.
What makes Socialoomph different from the rest is the feature where it has the unlimited shares and scheduling feature. Socialoomph is a paid service which could cost you around $25 per month for unlimited social media accounts.
It is in fact one of the most expensive social media tool but I totally love the service they are providing. Personally, if you are running a small blog and doesn’t want to pay any extra for it, you can try out Socialoomph for 14 days just by clicking here.
Your account will revert back to the free account upon the end of trial and therefore, you have nothing to lose. For your information, free account do not have the auto scheduling feature.
Over to you …
Are you putting your social media campaigns into automation? If yes, what are your tricks and tips for it? Otherwise, what do you think of this topic?
I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I do. Feel free to tell me what you think using the comment form below plus, please hit the red button below to share it too!