by Ryan Lum
Have you considered using social media as a key ingredient in your marketing strategy but don’t know even where to start? It’s all about content and delivery, and I’ll provide 6 easy tips to get you started.
1) Claim Your Facebook Vanity URL
There are a couple sites out there that will help get you Facebook likes or Twitter followers. One that I would recommend is Twiends. The way Twiends works is it encourages other users of this system to follow each other to get more credits. By using this system, it is very easy to get your 25 facebook likes so you can quickly claim your vanity URL. I would NOT recommend using this for clients or to gain interactions. Most of these users farm for likes and will not actually interact with your social media networks.
Once you have your vanity url claimed, get started and build that brand equity!
Unfortunately Twiends decided to close off this service for Facebook pages and it can only be used for Twitter and Youtube now.
2) Wordsmith your Twitter Account
There are a lot of spam bots out there and you don’t want your company to appear to be one of them. Be sure to utilize your 160 Twitter profile bio by keeping it relevant and to the point ;however, don’t hesitate to be fun. Did you know you can add #hashtags and @users to your bio?
Whether you use Twitter for business or personal, take a good look at your bio and ask yourself “Will someone reading my bio want to follow me?” and if yes, then ask “Will that follower be the kind of person I wish to attract?”
No one relevant will follow you if they don’t know who you are. And no one will know who you are if you don’t tell them succinctly. Enter your Twitter bio. Remember a couple things:
- Define your purpose.
- Adding your location can help make your brand more credible.
- Always include a link to your website if you have one.
Here are some engaging examples of Twitter bios:
Who Uses Twitter?
Now that you’ve got your Twitter biography optimized and ready to go, it’s time to learn how to manage your account! Be sure to mind some Twitter best practices:
- Be careful using automated Direct Messages upon follow. Often times individuals will see this as spam and might end up de-personalizing the brand experience.
- Connect with your followers. Be sure to respond to your followers and let them know you’re listening to them. It’s ok to be fun and engaging!
- Re-tweet (RT)! A good way to engage and gain new followers is to re-tweet good content. It’s a reciprocal feature that is sometimes forgotten. Good Social Media strategy is about promoting conversation, not one-way conversation.
3) Start Blogging
Although this form of marketing could be considered the most time consuming, it is important to utilize this medium because it allows your business to generate more link traffic to your site, create credibility for your brand and allow you to have a more personal voice. Still not convinced? Well, here are the top 3 Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog:
- Build relationships – A company blog offers opportunities to dialogue with your customers unique way through the comment area in each post. While marketing programs can generally only send one-way messages, a blog keeps the lines of communication open both ways.
- Build customer loyalty – The more customers know you, the more loyal they become. As you feature different solutions you offer, they are encouraged to do even more business with you. Most blogs will offer a subscription option through RSS and email, which means you will have opportunities to interact with subscribers every time a post is published.
- Build traffic – Blogs are perfect for search engine optimization. Search engine spiders like fresh content to feed on, and while a company website might be rather static with little need for content changes, a regularly updated blog provides fresh, keyword-rich content that search engines love. This will cause your site to rank higher when potential customers search for your products and services and drive more traffic to your entire site.
4) Get Personal
The most common blunder seen in social media today is the lack of personality. Ok, we can focus on maintaining a professional brand tone on the main website, but in social media it’s about personality and connecting with your audience! I’m not saying to go completely off the beat and path in terms of your tone, but have fun with it!
5) Be Creative and Visual!
We are visual creatures. The use of video can really help your brand become more personal and approachable. It’s no doubt the Internet is becoming more and more personalized. We can see this proof in the fact that google is using +1 to bring relevant information to the top. Facebook connect is being utilized on many major sites to make signing up a simple and quick process. Twitter feeds and real-time search is being incorporated into our search engines. It’s time to get personal with our brands.
By simply adding video, a small business can:
- Increases number of business profile views more than 100%
- Increases number of profile clicks more than 30%
- Increases number of calls generated by more than 18%
Video also drives a wide range of customer actions:
- Increases number of visits to advertiser web site by 55%
- Increases physical store visits by 30%
- Increases incidence of purchase by 24%
6) Just Experiment!
Social media is relatively a new game for marketers and brands. There are 2.5 billion photos uploaded to Facebook every month, YouTube serves 1 billion videos per day, The average person watched 182 online videos per month and there are 200 billion spam emails sent every day!
Although it has been around for awhile, we are only just scratching the surface of what we can do! Keep up to date with upcoming trends and find out how you can utilize upcoming social technology
