Now that you’ve got your content down, it’s time to identify how you will leverage it. Goals for content can be shares, which spread your name and message, favorites which build credibility or email addresses which provide lead information. While shares can also result in more business, it has to come to you while you wait passively. With email addresses, you can directly follow up with viewers of your content to convert them to paying customers. To get email address, you can gate some of your content. This means requiring an email address, name and OK to receive messages from you in a contact form to gain access to your content. WordPress has some great contact form plugins with this functionality. See one HERE. Now someone has provided you with their lead information, and you’ve provided them with great content.
As a word of caution, don’t lock up all you content. Provide some great content on your website, but keep longer, more unique content locked behind the contact form. This way you provide information to interest people and ensure you’re only getting emails from the most engaged people.
If you’ve been on Facebook for more than a couple months, you know the most popular social media site is always changing. From layouts to how you interact with friends, Facebook is constantly adjusting some setting. This means that the way to market on Facebook needs to change often too. Here are two features you need to be aware of to make the most of your Facebook marketing efforts.
Hash tags (#)
Love them or hate them, hashtags aren’t just for Twitter anymore. You can now add a hashtag to your Facebook posts, which will change the phrase or word you hashtag into a clickable link. When someone clicks on the hashtagged word they will see a custom newsfeed with posts from others using the same hashtag (see right). You can do this yourself by simple adding the hastag symbol (#) in front of the word you would like to make to clickable. This is a great feature to have your posts and Facebook page found by non-friends or connect with others.
Images
You’ve probably noticed that images have gotten larger in your news feed. Facebook gives special attention to images these days and posts without them are easy to miss. Images are great because they capture attention and are very shareable. Friends are much more likely to share a post with an image than just text. Try to add a relevant image to each link or post that you share on Facebook and watch engagement grow.
Twitter has been in the news lately with changes to its app and service. While features seem to continually change with Twitter, what you need to do to succeed with the network has not. Here’s how to build your influence on Twitter.
Start Conversations with People Who Are Talking
You know to start conversations to build relationships online, but it matters who you’re talking to. Tweeting at someone who never responds or trying to start a conversation with someone who hasn’t been on there account in weeks is waste of time. Look at the people you follow in your feed and see who’s really talking. Those people always tweeting with @ signs are those mostly likely to engage back. Conversations with these chatty people will help you build your network.
Talk About Trends Relevant to Your Business
What should you be talking about? Anything that’s relevant to your business. With GDI this can be site design, marketing ideas or networking events. Users search on sites like Twitter for people talking about what they are interested in and then follow them. Use keywords related to your business in each tweet and include hashtags (#) to make sure you can be found.
Follow Up and Organize
Just because you had a Twitter conversation with someone doesn’t mean they are a reliable part of your network. Go farther to ask them to connect on LinkedIn and share some ideas that can help you both. Create lists on Twitter to sort people you follow so you know who you’ve interacted with and why they could be helpful.
