Tag Archives: social media

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How to Write the Perfect Twitter Tweet that will Standout?

Creating the perfect twitter tweet Source: http://www.padi-islands.com/2012/08/20/using-twitter-for-business/After you have spent time to build your Twitter Followers, you need to tweet and retweet consistently in order to keep your followers following you.  However, each tweet or retweet you send is something your Twitter followers and target audience want to receive, or it is something that benefits them. You also need to create tweets and retweets that will standout.

Today, we will talk about how you can write a tweet and retweet that your followers and target audience would like to see from you.

If you haven’t built your followers yet, no worries, but before continuing on, you might want to refer to my tips on building your Twitter followers.

After spending time on Twitter and reading other tweets, I noticed the different elements of a Twitter tweets.

Elements to a Twitter Tweet in 140 characters

Anatomy of anatomy of the perfect tweet Source: http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/The_anatomy_of_the_perfect_tweet_11926.aspx#

  • Message – Needs to be relevant and timely for your followers and target audience. Write like a headline.
  • Call to Action – Tell your followers what you want them to do. In some cases, your may want your followers to retweet your tweet, and you can ask them to do so.
  • Hashtag – Limit the #Hashtags in your tweets to one or two per post.
  • Retweet (RT) – If you retweet a message, use RT to indicate the message is retweeted.
  • URL – (Around 20 characters) Destination your Twitter followers end up. Make sure to shorten your URL’s by going to tinyurl.com or bitly.com.
  • Blank – (Around 20 characters) If your messages are retweeted, this is space for retweeters to add something.

After familiarizing yourself with the general format of a Twitter Tweet, let’s concentrate on the Message/Call-to-Action part of a tweet or retweet.  According to Gerry Moran’s How to Write the Perfect Tweet, it is possible to write the perfect tweet, but it does take practice. Moran’s article identifies that each tweet has 3 goals and must pass some questions.

3 goals for each Twitter Tweet or Rewtweet

  1. Amplify – You need to amplify your story with tweets.
  2. Engage – You need people to read, comment or pass the message on to others by encouraging Retweets.
  3. Convert – You need readers to complete some conversion-related activity, such as a click to visit a registration page or destination page.

Does your Twitter Tweet or Retweet answer Yes to these Questions

  1. Is it interesting and readable?
  2. Is it interesting enough to click?
  3. Is it compelling and built to be retweeted?
  4. Is “You” used instead of “I”?
  5. Is it timely?
  6. Most importantly, will your tweet benefit your Twitter followers and target audience?

If you answer no to any of these questions, make the necessary tweaks until your tweet can answer yes to these question. In some cases, you may consider not sending the tweet at all.

Conclusion

Spend some time on Twitter following your target audiences influencers and get a feel for the content your target audience is being exposed to on Twitter.  Especially, take a look at your competitors and see what they are tweeting about. Think about how can you do a better job at amplifying, engaging, and converting your followers with your tweets and retweets.

Next, develop the content you want to tweet about and practice writing tweets that contain all the elements, amplify, engage, and convert. Most importantly, make sure your tweet talks about something that will meet your Twitter followers/target audiences needs.

Take some time to digest the information contained in today’s blog.  Then, spend some time writing some tweets for your Twitter followers.

Side Note

Over the next couple of days, I will be attending the eMarketing Association Conference in San Francisco, CA, so you wont hear from me until later in the week.

Sources

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12 Twitter Tips that Increased My Twitter Followers by 328%

Increasing Twitter Followers - Follow Me Source - www.websiteandtechnology.comBy following the advice of influencers for digital marketing and social media marketing, I have been practicing a variety of Twitter activities to grow my Twitter following. Through my experiments, I increased my Twitter followers by 328% in 2 weeks.

Since my last post instead of blogging, I have been busy testing different Twitter activities to identify what works to increase my Twitter followers, and today, I am sharing share my findings with you.

Before dedicating the time to building a Twitter following, I honestly didn’t understand the value of Twitter. Now, after spending some time on Twitter, I am a Twitter believer, and I see the value of including Twitter in your social media marketing mix.

Twitter is a casual forum for buyers and sellers to connect. By following industry influencers, I gained access to news and resources that I hadn’t seen before. Also, I connected with fellow digital marketing managers and social media managers and discovered what they needed to help reach their goals.

With Twitter, You can Connect with Your Target Audience by

  • Providing information they need to make purchasing decisions
  • Giving them information to satisfy their needs
  • Giving them tips to better use your products or services
  • Starting two-way conversations
  • Building relationships

Before diving into Twitter, I identified the following items

  • My target audience
  • My goal to increase my number of followers that meet my target audience criteria
  • Find and Follow my market influencers – find experts using wefollow.com or twibes.com

Twitter Hashtags Source - http://www.waftr.com/2013/04/how-to-increase-twitter-followers.html

  • Popular Hashtags used by market influencers
  • Additional Hashtags for my market to use in my tweets – Some of these Hashtags are my keywords. Test by using the URL https://twitter.com/hashtag/(yourkeyword)

12 Twitter Tips that Increased my Twitter Followers by 328%

Follow Twitter Followers, Tweet, Favorite, Retweet Source - http://blogginggeeks.blogspot.com/2012/12/Increase-twitter-followers.html

  1. Follow relevant followers.
  2. Follow the Influencers – They include journalists, analysts, and bloggers for your market.
  3. Thank people who follow you.
  4. Retweet and Favorite Tweeted Content – Content you think might benefit your target audience.
  5. Tweet or Retweet Events – Inform your target marketing of upcoming webinars or events that are relevant.
  6. Especially, Retweet Relevant Content from Influencers
  7. When Retweeting, include a Quote when Appropriate – Quotes should add value, include a call to action, or link to similar content created by you or someone else.

Effect of quotes on retweets Source - http://heidicohen.com/twitter-16-ways-to-increase-retweets-research/

  1. Hashtags – Tweets with hashtags are posted on twitter streams seen by people outside of your followers.
  2. When Retweeting, include a Quote when Appropriate – Quotes should add value, include a call to action, or link to similar content created by you or someone else.

Effect of hashtags on retweets Source - http://heidicohen.com/twitter-16-ways-to-increase-retweets-research/

  1. Include Hashtags in your Tweets and Retweets – When applicable include hashtags to increase the exposure of your Tweets and potential people to follow you.
  2. For Followers or People that Favorite or Retweet your Tweets – Always thank them, and if they don’t already follow you, encourage them to follow you.
  3. Ask for the Retweet – When appropriate, in your tweets, you can ask your followers to retweet your content to gain exposure of your tweet.
  4. Most importantly, Tweet Consistently – If you don’t tweet consistently, your followers will stop following you and all your hard work to build your followers will be for nothing. I experienced this one the hard way. My followers decreased when I didn’t send and tweets for a couple of days.

Conclusion

To build your Twitter followers, you need to spend time on Twitter and consistently tweet, favorite, and retweet.

Start spending 30 minutes to an hour each day on Twitter applying the tips discussed today, and you can build your followers that meet your target audience criteria.

Once you reach your ideal number of followers, you need to keep tweeting to keep your followers. Consistently tweeting will keep the followers you have and help continue to increase your overall number of followers.
Maintain your Twitter Followers by tweeting consistently Source - girlsleadblog.com

Call-To-Action to Increase your Twitter Followers

  • Identify your Market Influencers
  • Follow your Influencers
  • Follow me on Twitter @cplough
  • Follow your relevant Twitter Followers
  • Identify your Market Hashtags
  • Start Tweeting, Favoriting, and Retweeting
  • Come back tomorrow to learn about How to Write the Perfect Tweet

Major Sources Where I found Twitter Tips to Increase my Twitter Followers by 328%

In other Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook News and Tips

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Social Media Marketing: Listen to Your Target Audience to Help Build Relationships Part 2

Listen to help build relationships with your target audience Source - http://brandlegendary.com/5-signs-you-arent-using-social-media-effectively/
On Monday, we discussed the advantages of listening to your target audience. Now, let’s discuss how you can go about listening to your target audience via Google Alerts and the different social media networks.

By listening, your brand will be able to build relationships with your target audience, create superior content, and deliver exceptional experiences.  If you missed part 1, you can still review the advantages to listening to your target audience.

By paying attention to the ongoing social conversations in your industry, you can pick up on emerging trends, new customer pains, and other valuable information. Here are some ways that will help you follow your brand and industry easily.

Gathering information from a multiple of sources will give you well rounded view of your brand, industry, and target audience.

Different Methods to Listen to Your Target Audience

  1. Google Alerts and RSS Feeds
  2. Facebook
  3. Twitter Hashtags
  4. Twitter
  5. LinkedIn
  6. Google+
  7. Blogs

#1 Set up Google Alerts and RSS feeds

When you create a Google Alert, you will receive email summaries on the subject matter you specify. Google Alerts will pick up anything included in Blogs, and you should follow any blogs that appear on your Google Alerts consistently. You should also identify any RSS feeds that consistently talk about your brand, competitors, and industry.

Different Google Alerts and RSS feeds you should follow

  • Your Brand
  • Keywords specific to your industry
  • Your Industry
  • Your Competitors

#2 Facebook

First, follow your competitor and listen for keywords or emerging trends.

Second, identify and participate in any Facebook groups that impact your brand. The more people in these groups, the more it gets promoted to their friends and social networks.

Next, organize different lists for different topics and influencers that you want to follow. These lists allow you to view and post to different groups or companies.

#3 Listening via Twitter Hashtags

Hashtags have become one of the best ways to monitor the discussion around a particular topic, trend or idea in your space.

Hashtags to Follow

  • Your Brand
  • Specific Keywords
  • Your Industry
  • Your Competitors
  • Your Competitors

#4 Listening on Twitter

First, conduct a couple of searches on your brand, keywords, industry, and your competitors. Identify the influencers, analysts, journalists, and other knowledgeable people in your arena who appear in your searches and follow them. Monitor what your influencers say and discover who is retweeting your influencers tweets.

Twitter Lists

  • Organize all of the people you identified into different Twitter lists.
  • Each list should be segmented/grouped together by similarities.
  • Twitter lists can be public or private.
  • Consider making your influencers group public to show that you are actively collecting information from knowledgeable sources.
  • Monitor what each group is saying.
  • If there are any complaints, develop a customer service method on how to handle the complaints.
  • Discover if you need to make tweaks to your services to satisfy your target audience.

#5 Listening on LinkedIn

Search for any groups based on your brand, industry, competitors, or keywords. Next, follow your competitors to monitor the conversations happening on their company pages. Finally, pay attention to any comments that are said on your company pages.

#6 Listening on G+

First, conduct a search on your brand, keywords, industry, and competitor and see what comes up.

Google+ Circles
Similar to Twitter lists, you can create different Google+ Circles of people. Each circle can have their own personas allowing you to tailor your communication based on the personas. When you notice people talking about your brand or industry, include them in one of your circles.

Google+ Hangouts
You can also use Google Hangouts makes to connect people in different circles. Google Hangouts gives you face time with your target audience on their terms.

#7 Listening on Blogs

Back in #1, you should have started following any blogs that appeared in your Google Alerts consistently. Listen for any news about your brand. Every once in a while you may choose to make a comment to show your target audience that you are listening, and this will indicate that you care.

Once you set your methods of listening, you may feel a little overwhelmed. However, you have access to an abundance of intelligence about your target audience to help you build relationships with your target audience.

My suggestions is to set aside some time once a week or take 30 minutes everyday just to listen(read). Don’t comment on anything or post anything. This is time for you to just learn about what people are saying. Take notes and make a list of action items.

When listening, look for consistencies and patterns. This will help you prioritize any action items you need to take. Look for potential marketing messages, or opportunities to connect with your target audience.

As you listen, remember to your purpose is to build stronger relationships with your target audience, so your brand can deliver exceptional experiences.

After reading today’s post, please comment on any ways you like to listen to your target audience via social media.

Take Care and Happy Listening.

Sources

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Social Media Marketing: Build Relationships with Your Target Audience through Listening Part 1

Listen to help build relationships with your target audience Source - http://brandlegendary.com/5-signs-you-arent-using-social-media-effectively/One benefit by participating in social media is building relationships with your target audience. To build effective relationships, listening is extremely important.

Just like effective relationships in our personal lives, listening is essential.

I too want to build relationships with my target audience, which includes you. So I encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this blog post about building relationships or digital marketing topics you want to learn more about.

Additional Benefits to Listening to Your Target Audience

  1. Customer Opinion – Via social media, you can get unbiased opinions and learn about your target audience’s likes, wants, needs, hates, and desires. This information will help you form marketing messages and deliver your target audience’s wants.
  2. Potential Leads – Identify members of your target audience and develop methods to establish a relationship and start a two-way conversation with them.
  3. Understand your Market – You can stay up to date with your industry and learn about the factors that influence your market. Eventually, you will be able to discover emerging trends.
  4. Identify Your Influencers – On average, approximately 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of all its traffic. By listening, you can learn about the 1%, and you can start building relationships with these influencers.
  5. Where does your Target Audience Hangout Online? – What social media networks do your target audience participate in? If you find out where they hangout online, you can start creating content for those specific social media networks.
  6. Possible Content Ideas and Formats – What kind of content does your target audience respond to?  By knowing what type of content sparks action with your target audience, you know what kind of content to produce.
  7. Keywords Used by Target Audience – What are the words and phrases that your target audience uses when talking about your brand? You can also learn what keywords or phrase are use in their search queries, and this can help you form your keyword strategy saving you lots of time and analysis normally involved in keyword strategy.
  8. Target Audience Needs – How can you fulfill your target audience needs with your marketing messages and products.
  9. Brand and Products They Use – What brands do they use? what are the similarities and difference to your brand? What experiences do these brands deliver? How can you improve these experiences better?
  10. Competitors – Are your Competitors a part of your target audiences conversations?

These are really good reasons to listen to your target audience. Listening can make our digital marketing jobs a little bit easier, so let’s take a look at some tips to make us superior listeners.

How to become and Effective Listener?

  1. Don’t Pretend to Listen – If you want your target audience to know that you a really listening, discover what are the best methods to find your target audience and hear what they are saying.
  2. Reduce Distractions and Background Noise – Identify the barriers that prevent you from truly listening to your target audience, and remove them.
  3. Take the Time to Comprehend What Your Target Audience is Saying – Take advantage of this intel to improve your relationships with your target audience and deliver superior experiences.
  4. Respond with Superior Content – Make your target audience indicate that you understand them by delivering superior content and experiences.

Over time, you will refine your listening skills, and you will learn how to take advantage of the information you gain when you listen to your target audience.

In conclusion, it is worth your time to develop methods to listen to your target audience via social media.

In the next social media marketing discussion, I will explore methods on how to listen to your target audience via multiple social media networks.

Until then, I welcome your comments about listening or anything else about digital marketing.

Sources

In Other Social Media Marketing News
social media news source - http://www.socialmediadelivered.com/2014/02/26/top-20-social-media-news-sites/

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3 Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers in this Week’s Social Media Discussion

Nurture customers with social media strategies source - http://blog.proresource.com/how-to-nurture-leads-online-using-social-media/Social Media can be used a variety of ways, but today we will discuss social media strategies to nurture your current customers, to build relationships, and to generate repeat purchases.

As Digital Marketing Managers and Social Media Marketers, delivering on revenue goals is crucial. Nurturing current customers via social media for repeat purchases will help you accomplish this task.

The idea here is to keep your brand and expertise in the forefront of your customers’ minds, so when they need you, they remember to come back to you.

When communicating with your customers, you need to be genuine. If you are not genuine, your customers will see through you, and you will not be successful in building relationships to help meet your revenue goals.

Now, that you realize the importance of being genuine when nurturing your customers, let’s move on.

3 Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers

  1. Reaffirm your customer purchases after the decision is made – There is time between when the decision is made to make the purchase and the action taken to make the actual purchase. During this time, use social media to reaffirm their choice to purchase your product by featuring customers who discussed their satisfaction after purchasing from your brand.
  2. Create lead nurturing campaigns for your new customers – Just like you have created social media tactics for potential customers, you want to deploy social media tactics for your newer customers to think of you for future purchases. Invite your new customers to follow you on social media networks, welcome them to your social media communities, post helpful information on how they can reap the benefits from their purchases, and create opportunities for cross sell and up sell products.
  3. Listen to your customers social media conversations for new needs, and requirements, or potential jumps to your competitors – By following your customers in social media, you can keep tabs on your customers satisfaction with their purchases. You want to listen for cues on the timing for repeat purchases, cross sell, or up sell opportunities. You can also listen to your customers to discover ideas for more relevant content for your social media and content marketing efforts.

Call to Action to Deploy Social Media Strategies to Nurture Customers

  • Be active on the same social media networks where your customers are active.
  • Look at your current lead nurturing efforts for new business and see if anything can be used to nurture new customers.
  • Create social media posts to welcome new customers to your social media community.
  • Without giving your customers a sales pitch, prepare social media content giving your customers an idea about repeat purchases, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities.
  • Listen to your customers on social media to identify cues for potential repeat purchases.
  • Where it is genuine and makes sense, like, favorite, or retweet your customers social media posts
  • Listen for potential content ideas.
  • Come back for next week’s social media discussion about social media content ideas.
  • The next Digital Marketer’s blog post will explore the different types of content for your content marketing efforts.

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SEO Weekly Topic: How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking

Use Social Media to Increase Your SEO Source: http://www.smartonlinepros.com/using-social-media-seo-campaign/
As Google tightens it’s reins on search and link building efforts, Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Manager are looking for alternative SEO tactics to increase it’s search ranking, you can let your Social Media do the SEO work for you.

Earlier today, Social Media Examiner published 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking by Patricia Redsicker.  This article has a lot of great tips on how to use Social Media to assist your SEO efforts that I cancelled my original idea for the Digital Marker’s SEO Weekly Discussion to share this article with you.

As you gear up your social media efforts to help your SEO strategies, just remember to participate in social media networks where your target audience is located. Don’t waste your time with social media networks where your target audience does not participate.

Having a hard time convincing your boss to try social media?

Discuss Stephanie Frasco‘s 6 Reasons Social Media Is Critical To Your SEO at Social Media Today

  • Link building was always about social proofing
  • Social media allows you to crowd source your link building
  • Being social is the fastest way to multiply your presence online
  • Social signals is a real think
  • Social links bring real traffic to your website
  • Google hates link building

Now, that you have convinced your boss to pursue social media to promote your brand, you can focus executing your social media efforts to boost your SEO with some best practices.

Patricia Redsicker Shares 5 Social Media Best Practices to Increase Your Search Ranking

  1. Publish High-Quality Content – As always content is key to drive your SEO and Social Media success. After producing content that meets your target audiences needs, you can post your content in a multiple areas of the web including your website, your social media networks, your newsletters, and your blog.
  2. Make Social Sharing Easy – Produce content that your target audience wants to share.  For example, I saw the 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking article, and I immediately wanted to share it with you.  As you produce content, you will have alter the content based on platform where the content is posted. Quick example, if you write a blog post, you can’t post the entire blog post on Twitter, but you can type the title of your blog post with a link to your blog.  With this example, you have basically the same content shared on two different platforms with the additional benefits of SEO finding the content.
  3. Boost Your Images and Profiles – We are a visual society, and visuals help us comprehend the written word.  Therefore, we need to use images.  First, save image files using your keywords. Next, when using images for your content, write an Alt Text tag that describes the image using your keywords for search engines.
  4. Don’t Forget Authorship Metadata (Google+) – Post your content to Google+ and indicate you are the author of your content.
  5. Measure Social Media Performance – As with SEO, it is critical to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts. Develop KPI’s and dashboards to demonstrate how your social media not only increased traffic to your site, but you should create reports showing how your social media helped increase your SEO search rank. Then, you need to develop reports how your social media and SEO efforts increased revenue.

While this blog post shows the importance of using social media to increase your search rank, take your time to read 18 Social Media SEO Resources to Improve Your Search Ranking and devise a plan on how to effectively use your social media to increase your search ranking.

Additional Resources on How to Use Social Media to Increase Your Search Ranking:

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Getting your Social Media Audience to Share in this Weeks Social Media Discussion

Getting your Social Media Audience to Share Source:http://semomarketingsolutions.com/small-business-social-media-marketing/Participating effectively in social media accomplishes two goals for Digital Marketing Managers and Social Media Marketers:

  1. Connect with your target audience in the form of social media audience.
  2. Ability to extend your reach when your social media audience shares about your brand for their social media connections to see.

When you accomplish goal number 2, this is similar to creating word-of-mouth marketing.

Importance of Getting your Social Media Audience to Share

According to a Nielsen Survey, 33% of buyers believe what brands say about themselves. On the other hand, 92% of buyers believe what their peers have to say about a brand. Therefore, when your social media audience shares about your brand, their connections believe what is said.

Keeping this in mind, you want to create an environment on social media where your audience like, retweet, comment, and recommend your brand.

To do this

You need to provide your social media audience with compelling reasons to share your messages that is seamless. Tell your social media audience what is in it for them to like, retweet, comment on, or share their thoughts about your social media content.

5 Motivators for your Social Media Audience to Share

  1. Reputation
  2. Access to something exclusive
  3. Co-creation
  4. Competition and Winning
  5. Altruism

Source: Marketo’s The Definitive Guide to Social Sharing

Given these Statistics from a New York Times Study on Social Sharing Do this to spark a response in your social media audience?
75% say sharing helps them better comprehend the news they’re interested in Provide compelling content where a comment will help them understand your content
Before posting a link, 94% consider how helpful a link would be to others Make them feel like they are helping their connections if your brand’s link is in comments
68% share as an advertisement for themselves to teaches others about them Make your audience feel like they are teaching their connections about them when they like, retweet, or comment about your brand
73% say it helps find people with similar interests Give them an opportunity to connect with your followers because they have a common interest in your brand

Source of New York Times Study was included in Marketo’s Definitive Guide on Social Marketing

7 Tactics to Motivate Your Social Media Audience to Share

Sharing Content on social media networks Source:http://www.designzzz.com/free-wordpress-facebook-plugins/

  1. Social Sharing links/buttons before or after your content – ask for people to click the social sharing buttons because they may not see the buttons
  2. When someone downloads your content – provide a pop-up or some message where they can share what they just downloaded
  3. Listen and Respond – Listen to what your social media audience is saying. Respond with content that meets your audience needs.  This action, you will show your audience and their connection that you care.
  4. Refer-a-Friend – provide a compelling offer for your audience if they refer someone. These offers can also be extended to the friends.
  5. Social Sweepstakes – Create a content where entrants spread the word for you.
  6. Polls and Voting – Engage your audience to share their opinions through polls. Your audience votes will be seen by their connections.
  7. Flash Deals – Create a time-sensitive deals that are fun and have the potential to go viral and increase brand awareness.

Conclusion

Since peer recommendations influence how people view a brand, you want to get your social media audience to like and to share about your brand for their social media connections to see your content.  When those connections see your audience sharing about your brand, you are extending your reach.

To get your social media audience to like and share about your brand, you need to post content that will motivate your social media audience to share your content with their social media connections.

2 Great Articles from Social Media Examiner that Show you How to Get your Social Media Audience to Share your Content:

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Building a Social Media Army to Extend Your Reach Plus Updates and Tools for Social Media Networks

Building a Social Media Army Source:http://fingercandymedia.com/7359-building-a-social-media-army-3

Finding target audience members to follow your brands on social media networks can take time, but there are people within your grasp who can help. As another tool in your digital marketing toolbox for your social marketing efforts, you can recruit these people to become members of your social media army to help your brand extend it’s reach on social media networks.

Last fall, I attended a presentation by Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Content Marketing & Social, LinkedIn. During the presentation, Jason made a reference to using a social media army to promote your brand on social media networks.

With the help of Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing,  I’ve taken Jason’s idea and put together a rough outline how you can recruit members and build your own a social media army to extend your brand’s reach.

Purpose of a Social Media Army:

Share your posts and retweet your messages in social media networks to reach army members’ connections and attract additional potential customers to experience your brand.

Think about what you want your army members to share and engage their social media connections to seek you out.

NEXT, start recruiting your own social media army.

Potential Social Media Army Members:

  • Internal Stakeholders
  • Employee Advocates of Social Media
  • Internal Thought Leaders
  • Top Industry Influencers
  • Brand Evangelists
  • Long-Time Customers

What’s in it for them to become a Social Media Army Members?

  • Personal Branding
  • Building personal social media marketing skills
  • Building relationships with your target audience
  • For Internal Members, building customer relationships
  • Increasing your company’s reputation as a thought leader

Train your Social Media Army Members:

Teach social media army members to create army strong stories Source:http://mashable.com/category/u.s.-army/

  • Provide background/history on the different social media networks
  • Explain the types of content that gets posted to each social media network
  • Outline the social media participation rules
  • Provide content tips
  • Instruct them how to post images, video
  • Provide formatting parameters for posts
  • Tell them how to optimize messages for SEO
  • Teach them how to create army strong stories to entice their connections to find your website
  • Tell them how their connections can give you their email addresses
  • Create a series of blog posts for your social media army members for communication and training

Think about the following quote from Pete Cashmore, CEO & Founder of mashable.com, “We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.”

A social media army can get your messages inserted into as many channels and increase your value.

Facebook Like in Fatigues Source:http://www.army.mil/article/84850/You can’t do it all. HOWEVER, with a social media army, you can participate in more social media networks and your messages can reach more potential customers than if you tried to build a target audience on social media networks all on your own.

SO, recruit some help and start building your social media army today.

Sources: Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

To learn more about Building a Social Media Army, look at Jeff Bullas’s How to Get Others to Do Your Social Media Marketing for Free article.

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Next Weeks Social Media Update Topic: Getting your Social Media Followers to Share your Brand’s Messages

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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SEO Monday: Earning Links with High Quality Content to Increase Search Rankings instead of Relying on Link Building Strategies

Don't Build Links Earn Them! Source:http://www.seo.com/blog/earning-links-vs-building-links/In reaction to Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s Webspam Team, announcement about guest blogging not being a good link building strategy, I felt there was a need to discuss link building, and how to deploy positive SEO tactics.  Also, recently, Google has made several announcements about poor link building strategies that will begin to affect your rankings, and Digital Marketing Managers and SEO Managers are struggling to find replacement SEO tactics to assist them in ranking high on search engine result pages.

Before we continue, the heart of the matter is that you need awesome content with an authoritative voice in order for any SEO tactic to generate results.

You need to become a thought leader as well as create awesome content that does one of the following:

Content is King Source:http://techtwisted.com/good-quality-content-can-beat-google-updates/

  • Offers a solution to your target audience’s problem
  • Answers a question
  • Teaches the audience
  • Consistently provides valuable information when needed
  • Content is shared and liked on social media networks
  • Consumed by your audience

Once you become a thought leader with your target audience and create content that meets one or more of the above criteria, you can start deploying SEO tactics to increase your rank on search engine result pages.

One of those SEO tactics will be Earning Links. Per Marcela De Vivo, we need to change the terminology. Instead to referring to Link Building Strategies, we should start using the term Earning Link Strategies.

Now, let’s take a look at different ways to Earn Links and get working on your SEO tactics for 2014:

  • Build an Engaged Target Audience on Relevant Social Media Networks – Create a community that possess the characteristics of your target audience, and then, amplify your posts to expand your reach to increase your followers.
  • Share your Content on Social Media Networks – Post your content on the Social Media Networks where your brand and target audience are located.  Any of your social media followers that Like, Retweet, +1, or shares your content on their pages, will signal Google to give you credit, and these signals will be taken into account in your site’s ranking in search.
  • Guest Blogging in Places with your Target Audience – If you find relevant and useful websites whose audience match your target audience, guest blogging/posting is appropriate, and Google will not reprimand you. Google’s new guidelines just restricts guest blogging on websites that aren’t relevant. Therefore, find websites with the same target audience as you, and do some guest blogging/posting with links back to your brand to help increase your exposure, branding, and reach. This will help your audience see you as a thought leader.
  • Create Offline Relationships with Industry Influencers, Journalists, and Bloggers – you can host an event or mail a four color post card to introduce them to your brand and content. The event and post card will start conversations about them linking to you and creating partnerships.  Also, you can urge industry journalists and bloggers to quote you in their articles to demonstrate your authoritative voice.
  • Lastly, if you have awesome content, you will earn links naturally, so it pays to produce great content.

Sources:

Additional Resource: I came a across a really great Infographic to help you and your organizations SEO strategies for 2014.  Given all of Google’s changes last year, SEO has changed, and this Infographic will help you reorganize your SEO strategies. For each old SEO tactic, the Infographic tells you the new SEO tactic.  I highly encourage you to look at this Infographic to help put your SEO worries aside and start deploying on tactics to increase your search ranking. SEO Evolution 2014: Quick Tips on How to Optimize Website in 2014

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough

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Follow 8 Golden Rules of Social Media to Avoid the Pitfalls of Social Media in This Week’s Social Media Update

To implement your social marketing strategy seamlessly, Digital Marketing Managers need to follow the golden rules of social media to make your social marketing successful and help you reach your overall digital marketing goals.

Golden Rules of Social Media

Golden Rules of Social Media Source: http://rebekahradice.com/golden-rules-successful-social-media-marketing/

  1. Create specific social media objectives – Give your organization a clear understanding of where you are going with your social marketing.
  2. Inbound is not enough – Social Media will not fulfill your overall digital marketing objectives on their own. Digital Marketing Managers need a well-rounded mix of inbound and outbound strategies to fulfill your overall digital marketing goals.
  3. Good content – make sure you create engaging relevant content.
  4. Strong call to action – your social media content needs to clearly express what you want your followers to do after they consume your content; otherwise, you are wasting your time and your followers time.
  5. Always add value – make sure your content adds value to your brand.
  6. Never forget that social is a two-way street – Once you make a post, followers will make comments, and you should take comments seriously and respond to them timely and sincerely.
  7. Peer-to-peer sharing is the best way to get your message heard – Social media creates an open dialogue with your followers, and it gives brands and Digital Marketing Managers the capability to create engaging experiences and relationships with followers.
  8. Most important! Don’t take yourself too seriously – participating in social media gives Digital Marketing Managers the chance to give their brands a personality and be likable. However, don’t go off the deep end, you need to have some decorum.

If you follow the above golden rules of social media, you can avoid the following pitfalls of social media:

Pitfalls of Social Media Source: http://www.socialsamosa.com/2012/04/social-media-pitfalls-to-avoid/

  • Don’t brag – yes, you want your content to add value to your brand, but you don’t want to sound conceited.
  • Don’t be afraid to try social marketing – just because social marketing is different doesn’t mean you should avoid it. By creating objectives and a plan, social media can appear less daunting.
  • Don’t be afraid of social media because measurement is difficult – there are ways to measure the impact of your social media. Plus, social marketing extends your brands reach that will impact your bottom line indirectly.
  • Don’t use social media sites as advertising opportunities – Social media is a chance for you to give your brand a personality and truly connect with current, past, and future customers. Traditional advertising methods will not allow you to connect with your followers.
  • Don’t assume every social media site is good for your brand – Not ALL social media channels will work for ALL brands. For example, if you are a B2C company, Facebook may be a better fit. On the flip side, if you are a B2B company, LinkedIn might make more sense. (Remember this is just an example and not proven to be true)
  • Don’t create social pages and think you are done – If you can’t create a relationship with a new person in one day, what makes you think you can create engaging ongoing relationships with your target audience in social media if you don’t update your pages or posts regularly? However, keep in mind, this doesn’t mean you should be on social media all day every day.

General Rule of Thumb: Use social media sites as one digital marketing tactic in your digital marketing toolbox to extend your reach with your target audience, and use it where it makes sense for your brands to build relationships and create engaging experience with your current, past and future customers.

Source: Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

Additional Articles for Social Media Networks:

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Google+

Next Week’s Social Media Update: Creating a Social Media Army to Help Reach your Target Audience

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough