Social Media Shares
Social media has become a major source of traffic and a great tool to build your credibility and extend your reach at the same time.
Below, we are going to look at the more important players and how to best approach your social media presence.
Apart from tools and techniques, we are going to examine some important products that would speed up or at least simplify your efforts to create a strong presence in major social media sites.
I would like to ask you a question; are your social media campaigns working for you?
Don’t feel bad if they aren’t, because you’re not alone.
The social marketing bandwagon is overloaded with business owners who understand the power of social media, but just can’t get a handle on how to use it effectively to expand their reach and more importantly increase revenue.
Which brings us to the first step you can take to increase your social media profits.
In my humble opinion, it is actually one of the most important steps to a successful campaign, yet it is often overlooked or left out intentionally because the author doesn’t want to seem pushy, desperate or intrusive.
– This step is incorporating a clear call to action in your updates.
A well-crafted call to action will help expand the reach of your social media updates as well as increase the opportunity to close more sales than those with no call to action.
Keep in mind that consumers find and visit your social media pages for many different reasons, but all of them have a similar goal in mind and that is, they are seeking information that is of value to them.
For instance, some people may be seeking information about your business; some may be looking for information, tips and how-to tricks about the products and services you offer. While others are searching for special discounts, deals, coupons and contests.
If you don’t give them what they want, they won’t stick around long.
By carefully crafting status updates, you can give them what they want and get what you want at the same time, whether it is a like, follow or ultimately a sale.
When you are creating content to use in social media campaigns, you should always incorporate calls to action like “Click here for an exclusive Facebook fan coupon,” or “Retweet this and win”.
Here are a few quick tips that can help:
– Give them direction
Decide what you want your visitors to do and then tell them how exactly how to do it.
Provide them with simple easy to follow steps that they can follow.
This will encourage readers to engage and take action.
– Use a great hook
Your readers want to know what’s in it for them.
Be sure you clearly communicate the benefits they will enjoy once they take action.
– Motivate them to take action
Make your readers an offer they can’t refuse in your call to action.
For example make the offer only available for a limited time so they have to take action immediately.
You can also limit the quantity of your offer so that will be afraid they’ll miss it if they don’t grab it now.
– Track your results
Always track the results of your social media posts, including various types of calls to action.
This way you can see exactly what type of information engages your audience.
Once you know what type of content your audience interacts with you on social media, you can laser target the type of information you are providing them as well as carefully craft specific calls to action to increase results and sales.
Due to the fast-paced environment of most social media platforms, as marketers we have a very small window of opportunity to attract the attention of our consumers, fans and followers.
Therefore, it is vital to create content in a way that grabs them and compels them to take some form of action.
That is why words like:
– Act now
– Limited time only
– Limited quantity
– Enter soon
– On sale
– This week only
– Don’ miss out
– Etc.
work so well, because they catch the eye of your consumers.
To increase the results of your social media campaigns you can and should offer incentives to your visitors for taking action right away instead of waiting until later.
For instance, if you sell physical goods, you could offer free shipping if they order today.
A few more examples for incorporating special incentives into your social media content would be:
– One day discounts
– 24 hour flash sales
– Retweet this for a discount
– Share this and save
– Fan only coupons
– More info QR codes
– Free prize for the best comment
– Etc.
To increase the reach of your social media campaigns even more you should post different time-sensitive offers on different networks at alternate times.
This way you’ll keep consumers interested and engaged in multiple activities on different networks simultaneously.
As you are constructing your next social update, keep in mind that including a clear call to action along with time-sensitive offers, you will have a much better chance of converting your visitors into fans, followers, subscribers and most of all paying customers.
When it comes to encouraging social sharing, sometimes people need a little extra motivation.
That’s why it’s so important to structure your social media campaign in a way that encourages them to share your content.
Let’s go over a few simple ways you can do that.
– Worthwhile
For most people it all boils down to; what is in it for me?
It’s important to craft your social media content in a way that provides your fans and followers something beneficial to them.
One example would be to create a campaign that gives them access to a coupon or discount if they share your post with a certain amount of people.
There are all kinds of apps specifically designed for this purpose just do a search online for “deal apps” and you’ll find network specific applications that you can use to create an irresistible offer.
– Ask
When it comes to getting your fans and followers to retweet, repin or share your social media content one of the simplest thing you can do is ask.
Of course, you have to be sure to provide them with such great content and offers that they will naturally want to share it with all of their friends, but a little nudge in the right direction is also a good idea.
Most of the time when you ask your audience to interact and share with your content, they’re happy to do it.
So always, be sure to include a call to action that encourages them to share and share alike.
– Reward
Everybody likes to be recognized and rewarded for their participation.
You can use that to your advantage especially on social networking sites.
Pay close attention to the interaction and comments of your social content.
When you see someone in particular that is consistently sharing and leaving positive comments be sure to recognize them publicly for their efforts.
Not only will it make them feel good it will also encourage your other fans and followers to do the same in hopes of being rewarded for their actions.
All of these methods are extremely easy to do, but just because they’re simple you shouldn’t underestimate their power.
By providing worthwhile content, asking people to share it and rewarding them when they do, you’ll soon find that your social campaigns will reach farther, last longer and most of all yield more profits for your business.
It’s important to make sure that your fans and followers know they are important to you and that you value their participation.
You can do this by having a reward system in place.
You can also accomplish this by offering them exclusive content and special offers that are only available to them.
– Exclusivity is the key
For this to work you have to make sure that they know the content or offer deals is only available to them if they follow you on a particular network.
By making your offers network specific you can grow your following on a multiple networks as well as inspire more consumer interaction and loyalty.
For instance, if you want to grow your Facebook following then offer fan only discounts to your products and services.
Something that’s not available to your Twitter or Pinterest followers.
If you want to grow your following on Twitter, offer them something exclusive to that network and completely different from the offer you posted on Facebook.
This way you will keep your fan base engaged on both networks.
Here are a few quick ideas:
Post exclusive content, like tutorials, instructional videos, reports and articles with valuable information.
Just make sure that you keep it exclusive to one network and don’t post it anywhere else or your followers won’t have a reason to stick around.
Choose a fan or follower of the week and make sure that you share their story on your page.
The more you praise them, the more your followers will want to be them and this will help create more interaction on your posts.
Offer milestone gifts for people who like and share your content.
For instance, every 100th follower gets and honorable mention pinned to your page for a day or a free (preferably downloadable) gift.
This will keep down costs and helps satisfy their need for instant gratification.
Set up groups and host fan only events like webinar, Q & A sessions, live chats or scheduled ‘meet-ups’ that are just for them.
Invite special guests and speakers to co-hosts to help create excitement.
Ask for feedback to encourage interaction.
Offer fan only incentives, like coupons that are only sent out via the network messaging system, so they have to stay subscribed to your updates.
Hold a weekly contest only for fans, the winner gets a free product, consultation or a special discount off their next purchase.
As long as you keep in mind that your fans and followers like to be rewarded for following you, you will have no problem increasing the profits you receive from you social media campaigns.
It seems as though new social networking sites are springing up all the time and with each one comes a new opportunity for online marketers to increase the reach of their business brand.
However, before you can take full advantage these massive networks for your own profit you it’s important that you learn how to convert your fans and followers into paying customers.
While having a large number of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social site is great it’s not the same as having cash in hand customers.
You need to set up a system (a sales funnel) to convert those followers on to your mailing list so you can contact them with your offers of products and services.
The first thing you should do is send them from your social media site to a squeeze or opt-in page.
You’ll also want to keep track of where they come from.
You can do this a few ways, like setting up a different list for each campaign or taking them with a special code.
Most autoresponder programs like Aweber, Getresponse or MailChimp, will do this for you automatically.
A good content management system like WordPress will also work or you can simply keep a record of names, email address and the social networks they came from on an excel spreadsheet.
Which will work fine in the beginning, but once your list grows you should definitely invest in a good program to do the job for you.
Tracking is crucial when it comes to measuring your success from social media.
Once a person is tracked coming from Facebook, Twitter, or any other campaign you’re running, you can carefully measure the results from individual campaigns to determine how they are performing.
With this information, you can test and tweak your campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
There are also a variety of tracking tools available that you can use to monitor the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Some are free, like Google Alerts and Google Analytics.
While others do charge a fee like Sprout Social and Viralheat.
The one you choose will depend on several factors including how many campaigns you need to monitor to how big your budget is.
Just make sure that you do plenty of research before investing your money.
No matter which social networks you choose to market your products and services on knowing how to track and measure the traffic that comes from them will provide valuable insight on what types of campaigns are working best for your business.
