When Friendster and MySpace first came out, many entrepreneurs and professionals considered networking a mere fad for teens. But they changed their notion on creating connections online when other sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, emerged and became popular.
Nowadays, they see these channels as great means of conversing with a global audience and promoting their businesses.
So, whether you are a retailer or marketer looking for innovative and creative ways of advertising to your customer base and sending out your sales pitch, you can use social media. Have a look at the ones I have personally tried and found effective, so you will an idea on what to do.
1. Optimise your Fan page
Fill out all the necessary fields with correct and complete details. These usually include your company name, your services or products (brief description), and your trade location. You can even insert localised keywords.
2. Create interesting albums
One way to attract fans is to entice them with entertaining and fascinating photos. Of course, these should stay relevant to your niche. Also Read: Some Interesting Facts about Facebook Photos
3. Advertise subtly
Social networking sites generally start conversations. Therefore, you must not see these as your major marketing mediums. This means that you need to steer clear from giving in-your-face promotions through call to actions on your posts.
4. Use Keywords
Put your targeted terms in strategic places such as the “About†section or business description in your profile. You can also integrate these in your Wall updates, short messages (whenever you embed a video), or image captions.
5. Be consistent
Avoid changing your profile picture and display name constantly; otherwise, your fans will have a hard time recognising your brand.
6. Aim for fans
Invite people to Like your Fan page or become a Fan so you will have an extensive audience for your campaigns.
7. Come up with posts about current events and issues
Tackle the hottest and trendiest topics in your niche. However, avoid those issues that may be damaging to your company or to your competitors. Remember, your main goal in doing this trick is to create a buzz and not controversy.
8. Ask questions
Obtain feedback or comments from your fans using the feature “Ask a Questionâ€. This way, you can get useful suggestions regarding the improvement of your products and services.
9. Balance your number of tweets
Tweeting is not as easy as writing messages every time you feel like telling your followers what you are doing. It actually requires careful planning and strategizing especially if you have a business profile.
With that said, you have to avoid being overly noisy or stagnant. As a rule of thumb, three compelling tweets (excluding replies or retweets) per day will suffice.
10. Follow back
As long as the person is not suspicious, why not add him or her to your network.
11. Post links to your site
Add your tweets with a link that directs your followers to an important webpage or blog article. And since Twitter only allows 140-character messages and some links are lengthy, you can shorten the latter using URL shorteners (e.g. goo.gl tinyurl.com).
12. Upload interesting images
If you want your followers to take a second look at your tweets, include photos that are relevant to your enterprise.
13. Converse with “famous†people in your industry
Follow “reputable†individuals in your particular field and interact with them. By doing so, you can widen your connections and, hopefully, become a credible figure on the Web too.
14. Retweet
If you find some tweets interesting, entertaining, or useful, do not hesitate to Retweet them. It does not cost anything. On the contrary, it helps you gain more followers.
15. Interact
Reply to your followers if they send you messages. You should communicate with your potential customers and be accessible to them at the same time.
16. Post photos from your online pinboard to your blog
This social media platform is mostly about creative images. So if you want to add your website a personal touch, never go without this strategy.
17. Follow notable Pinners in your niche
Much like the other networking sites, take time to interact with reputable members in your field.
18. Pin videos
Other than pictures, you can also post videos on your pinboard.
19. Stir interest via competition
Follow the steps of other marketers by holding a contest for your followers. This is a great way to encourage engagement among your target users as well as promote your brand.
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YouTube
20. Optimise your channel
Doing this increases the likelihood of ranking in SERPs. Additionally, it makes your page informative for your viewers.
21. Aim for the “Most Viewed†list
You will know that your promotions are successful when your videos go viral. Put your creations on the top using these insights.
22. Subscribe to other channels
Gain subscribers by becoming one. Once you have a wider network, the chances of your videos going viral are high.
23. Embed videos into your website
This strategy helps boost the number of viewers for your video. It also drives quality traffic to your site.
24. Encourage feedback
Invite viewers to post their comments, suggestions, and reactions. Their feedback allows you to enhance your YouTube techniques.
25. Plan your next action through essential statistics
The number of views, likes, dislikes, and remarks measure your videos’ popularity with the users. You can use these aspects to come up with better ideas.
Blogs
26. Stick to one topic
Although it is tempting to focus on several themes, what with the plethora of hot topics these days, it is best to specialise on a subject matter related to your business niche.
27. Embed photos and videos from your other accounts
Make your articles visually appearing by getting content from your YouTube channel and Pinterest page. This way, you can drive traffic and generate backlinks.
28. Follow other blogs
Subscribe to the posts of your fellow writers, especially those who tackle similar topics as you, to stay updated on the latest issues or trends in the blogosphere. Doing this also helps you gain insights from them.
29. Interact
Perhaps the best way of doing this, as a blogger, is responding to comments. Even just a simple “thanks for reading my posts†will go a long way towards building your reputation.
30. Prioritise compelling posts
Do not just publish blogs for the sake of having fresh posts. Take time to come up with engaging, insightful, and witty content. Of course, do not forget to keep it relevant to your niche.
31. Include social media wedges in your pages
Never fail to integrate your pages with buttons to make it easier for the readers to share or suggest your entries.
32. Market on various channels
Promote your posts on all your social media accounts to widen your readership.
Google+
33. Expand your circles
Create a bigger network and then, group them appropriately. Separate your professional connections (e.g. affiliates, marketers, suppliers, etc.) from your clients, and personal contacts. This way, your campaigns or posts reach the people you intended to inform.
34. Insert keywords to your Profile page
Use targeted terms like locations, modifiers, and tags in the bio and description fields.
35. Claim authorship
Take advantage of Google’s position top position on the World Wide Web by linking your content to your Google Plus profile. You can learn further about this technique by going over this page.
36. Join your social page, official website, and blog
Incorporate a Google+ badge or icon on your webpages to boost your ranking in SERPs, manage your online reputation, and help the users share your entries on their accounts.
Also Read: How to Create and Setup a Brand Page in Google+
Social Bookmarking
37. Stay active
Read other people’s posts (especially the content related to your niche), give comments, and rate their work. Doing these things allow you to boost your credibility.
38. Use witty and catchy headlines
Go ahead and capture the interest of your target audience by writing fascinating or captivating titles and descriptions.
39. Create tags
Use your targeted keywords to maintain relevancy.
40. Keep track of your posts
Monitor the content you have uploaded. Moreover, interact with the users who give you comments. This way, you will have an idea on the effectiveness of your articles. You can also come up with ways to improve.
41. Place social bookmarking buttons
Add your blog or website pages with icons or widgets to encourage sharing.
Don’t Miss: Top Ten Social Networking Sites For Writers And Bloggers
For All Social Media
42. Avoid hard selling
Many online consumers hate persuasive adverts. So if you use social media to market your goods or services, engage in conversation rather than direct promotion.
43. Stick to your business niche
Never digress from your main field. If you are going to post updates about your company’s merchandise, avoid talking about other matters.
44. Set a goal
What do you want to achieve? Do you wish to boost your sales, generate more traffic, or get more backlinks? Figure out your objectives and your methods of accomplishing these before executing your plans through social media channels.
45. Do not be annoying
Keep from bombarding your followers or fans with senseless posts, questions, or messages. If you want to update your pages several times in a day, there has to be an interval of at least 2-3 hours.
46. Provide useful information
Always make sure that the insights you share over the Web are relevant, informative, and valuable. On top of all these, do not forget humour to retain the readers’ interest.
47. Use a single voice or perspective
Just like brand consistency, it is important to maintain the same viewpoint throughout your social profiles as well as your website and/or blog. Doing this makes it easier for the users to familiarise with your brand and interact with you on a more personal level.
48. Present a consistent image
Use the same photo, logo, font style, and colour scheme for all your online platforms.
49. Maintain constant communication
Interact with your fans or followers and avoid talking incessantly about yourself (through your posts). Instead, engage them to a conversation through questions or polls. This way, you will find out what makes them tick, what they are interested in, and what issues they want to know more about.
50. Be updated
Log in to all your social media accounts daily or several times in a day (if possible). Check your NewsFeed, look into the other users’ comments, and respond to enquiries or feedback.
Final Words
These are just some of the strategies I have practised, which may be useful to you. Of course, there are more ideas other than these. So if you have your own techniques, feel free to share them with the other readers.
About the Author:
This is a guest post by Emma Tomlinson.
Among all of these, branded social profiles can be a real game changer. Also actively publishing to bookmarking sites can help gain a lot of back-links attention from the active community in social media.
We started by promoting on social media for our sites, and after proving it to be a great success, we started offering this as a service for my friends. They are all pretty happy about the time they save by outsourcing to us.
Creating great content is key for any blog, and social media marketing is like very important in bringing the story to the audience, but you know marketing is a very time consuming and confusion thing to do. The time for marketing would be wise if invested on creating great content and let someone else do the marketing.
Thanks for sharing these worthy tips, Sam…
Yeah those are just great content..and those quick ways will help everyone..but when you will do social media marketing you will have to develop your own way which works for you more..:)
awesome … Great tips to try on social media. Thanks
Thanks for great article.!
I have to add that in social media, just like in offline business relationships, you have to earn the right to promote your product or services. Share valuable content you curate that is of interest to your target audience.
Talking about Pinterest, any comments on the growing spam problem? Or how to fight with spam followers that offer no value to your brand?
Best,
Lisa
Thanks for having such a informative article with us. it is more useful article.
keep sharing.