Social Media Marketing Tips
By Ray La Foy
1 - The number one asset you need in your corner is a WordPress Blog – Why ,you might ask? There are several reasons, but the number one reason is that Search Engines love WordPress domain based blogs. The ease of use by nearly anyone, when it comes to posting and adding new content, is a close second. The third reason is, with the proper plugins, your WordPress blog can become a launching point for all different kinds of Social Media. With your blog, you need to post ideally every day – but, at least once per week – certainly there is something exciting each week with your business you can write about.
2 - Create a Professional AND Business profile on Linkedin – This multi-billion dollar company that went public in spring of 2011, and is one of the major players in social marketing. Certainly one of the biggest assets it can bring to your firm is in the power of Linkedin's groups. With it's group functionality you can find consumers as well as like minded businesses that you can reach out and touch with your messages.
3 - Develop a FaceBook presence – with Fanpages, Likes, Groups, and the multitude of tools available to you, FaceBook is truly a marketing toolbox. Businesses that choose to embrace this Social website will outpace those which try to ignore this elephant in the room. With over 750 million users, it is a hotbed of customers and clients for the businesses that are willing to take advantage of it.
4 - Start tweeting on Twitter – Start providing useful and helpful tips about your products and services. No need to sell – just provide users with a insight into what your company offers as well as educational information about the industry you cater to. A fishing store could tweet the latest fishing reports – a clothing store could tweet about the current lines – a heating and cooling business could tweet about energy saving ideas. Twitter is a perfect medium for short 125 to 140 character announcements.
5 - Become a regular YouTube producer - Video marketing provides an emotional impact that is unmatched when it comes to marketing. Anytime you can deliver your message and pull on those emotional heart strings of your target market – you message will have an impact. Start educating, entertaining, and teaching people about your business. The SEO impact with the search engines of video, is also very pronounced – use that to your advantage by selectively using keywords in your titles, descriptions, and tags. Produce a video at least once a month – whether it is just a screencast video or one with your own smiling face – a video presence can enhance your businesses ability to connect to the consumer.
6 - Google+ is the new kid on the block – While several of google's previous attempts at Social Media have not been stellar successes, google+ appears to have a lot of the right components the could prove to be a big winner this time. With it's circles,it is simpler and easier then FaceBook to keep you clients, customers, family in separate groups allowing you to individual tailor a different message to each of these circles. With search results, google+ allows you to recommend products and services to other members in your circle – they do a google search and your face will be there along with your recommendation. This could prove to be very powerful – keep your eyes, ears, and fingers open, as google rolls out this new Social Media platform.
7 - One of the core concepts behind Social Media is the sharing and viral nature of all of these platforms – the thing is, you never know what a visitors favorite tool is for sharing. You need to provide visitors with very easy methods of sharing with their favorite social website as well as via email. Share This provides widgets, plugins, javascript codes, that allows a person to put these share icons with auto linking to nearly any type of website, so be sure to place this on all of your web pages. The key to success with these types of share-this buttons, is to place them right where visitors will see them, after reviewing or reading your content – that way it is EASY to click and start the viral frenzy. Be sure to include the FaceBook “Like this” button with all of your content.
8 - Integrate your social website's urls with the rest of your your marketing materials and campaigns. Increase participation on your Social Media web pages by informing your target market of the online locations of these alternative social web pages. Encourage them to like, retweet, bookmark, and generally spread the word about your company's messages. At the same time, you will also want to monitor your online reputation by using services such as google Alerts, which will contact you every time your “business name”, as an example, is mentioned online.
9 - Establish Authority in your niche – By continuously providing great information and content on your niche, you can become known as the authority or go-to source of information. As is often said, content is king, and Social Media provides you a perfect opportunity to educate and show the world your mastery in your niche. This will help your business establish itself as the leader and gain respect amongst current and future customers.
10 - Combine and Syndicate your messages – Instead of logging into and posting the same or similar messages across multiple Social Media websites, use software that allows you to post once on your blog, and your message is then also automatically submitted on your FaceBook, Twitter, and other Social Media accounts.
While there are individual WordPress plugins that are designed to automatically re-post your blog to specific services such as FaceBook or Twitter – why not use a single plugin that delivers your blog post across over a dozen Social Media websites – all on auto-pilot.
The powerful side effect of this is, that you can increase the amount of people who will see your message – expanding your marketing reach, and at the same time you can increase the number of backlinks to your main website - which helps with your search engine rankings. This is a win-win marketing situation that allows you to jump ahead of your competition. Get your copy of this WordPress plugin Syndicator here.
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