How to Get Your Content Seen on Social Media

Creating content for social media is an important part of every business's marketing strategy. It might be a blurb that goes with a link to a video or blog post, or it might be an infographic or meme to help you get a point or two across.

Plan Ahead

Most people seem to totally forget to plan ahead regarding social media content. This is a mistake. If you create a blog post, for example, then you should create a tweet, a Facebook post, and other blurbs for whatever social network that you plan to share the information on.

Add the Content to Your Calendar

Include social media content on your editorial calendar. If you know that in August you're going to promote a great new product or service, then you should also be planning for social content to use in that promotion - both leading up to the launch and during the launch.

Create Images for Social Media

Remember that images are a form of content, and that you need to create images for social media sharing. Images are more likely to be shared than text and are an important part of your marketing actions on social media. Using a variety of images as content, like infographics and memes, will increase shares and engagement.

Share More Than Once

It's important that you promote the content that you create and that you do it more than once. People do not check their entire social streams, so sharing the same content with new blurbs and a new spin on the information several times will increase the view rate exponentially.

Conduct A/B Testing

Also called split testing, you want to see what times, headlines, and topics get more attention than others. As you collect this data, you'll soon know exactly what time is best to share any updates with your social media followers.

Target Each Audience

Each social network has its own personality, and the portion of your audience that follows you and engages with you on each network is usually slightly different. Therefore, it's important to ensure that the content you create for each network is exclusive to that network.

Create Content Often

With social media you need to have content for every day of the week, and share it more than once per day. This can seem like a lot of content to create, but it all stems from the basic message you want to get across to your audience based on your promotions.

When you write and manage your content correctly, it will make your life easier and your business grow.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10288555 

How To Get Your Content Seen On Social Media

Creating content for social media is an important part of every business's marketing strategy. It might be a blurb that goes with a link to a video or blog post, or it might be an infographic or meme to help you get a point or two across.

Plan Ahead

Most people seem to totally forget to plan ahead regarding social media content. This is a mistake. If you create a blog post, for example, then you should create a tweet, a Facebook post, and other blurbs for whatever social network that you plan to share the information on.

Add the Content to Your Calendar

Include social media content on your editorial calendar. If you know that in August you're going to promote a great new product or service, then you should also be planning for social content to use in that promotion - both leading up to the launch and during the launch.

Create Images for Social Media

Remember that images are a form of content, and that you need to create images for social media sharing. Images are more likely to be shared than text and are an important part of your marketing actions on social media. Using a variety of images as content, like infographics and memes, will increase shares and engagement.

Share More Than Once

It's important that you promote the content that you create and that you do it more than once. People do not check their entire social streams, so sharing the same content with new blurbs and a new spin on the information several times will increase the view rate exponentially.

Conduct A/B Testing

Also called split testing, you want to see what times, headlines, and topics get more attention than others. As you collect this data, you'll soon know exactly what time is best to share any updates with your social media followers.

Target Each Audience

Each social network has its own personality, and the portion of your audience that follows you and engages with you on each network is usually slightly different. Therefore, it's important to ensure that the content you create for each network is exclusive to that network.

Create Content Often

With social media you need to have content for every day of the week, and share it more than once per day. This can seem like a lot of content to create, but it all stems from the basic message you want to get across to your audience based on your promotions.

When you write and manage your content correctly, it will make your life easier and your business grow.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10288555 

How to Sell Anything on Facebook and Instagram | 4Ds Consultation with Gary Vaynerchuk

Today we're taking a look at some great advice by Gary Vaynerchuk. In this one you'll see Gary getting tactical about selling products through Facebook and Instagram using ads, specifically looking at why we shouldn't idealize organic reach.

How to Engage & Inspire With Interactive Content Marketing

Easy Ways to Stand Out from the Competition Using Interactive Content Marketing.

I'm sure you've heard the old adage "Content is king." While that's certainly true, it's not enough anymore to simply write a text-rich blog post and expect engagement to happen.

According to a study by Microsoft, the average human has an attention span of eight seconds. Eight seconds! You need to attract your readers' or followers' attention and require their active engagement quickly.

That can easily be done with something called interactive content marketing.

While pieces like blog articles and eBooks are considered passive content, interactive content requires the person to actively engage with the content, whether that's by swiping, tapping, answering a question...

In this article, I'm providing 3 ideas you can use to attract your audience's attention and stand out from your competitors.

Some of you may remember those "choose your own adventure" books from childhood. The TV show Black Mirror did an incredibly unique episode called "Bandersnatch" that let you choose game designer Stefan's moves and his ultimate fate.

While you're probably not going to go that far with your marketing videos, one easy interactive marketing tool is having a Facebook Live where you answer questions and take comments virtually.

Here's an example. During episodes of my Tea Time Tips on Facebook, I ask questions and encourage my viewers to comment. They can also ask questions that I answer live in the video.

It's a fun and simple two-way conversation that gets everyone involved with the episode versus me just talking "at" my followers.

Polls and Questions
These are great interactive social media marketing tools. Let's start with polls. I'm going to go with a Facebook example again, because it's so easy to create a poll while you're making up your post. 

Here's how:

In addition to polls, another way to easily encourage engagement is by asking a question in your news feed on Facebook.

While it's a good idea to keep your question relevant to your business, go ahead and have some fun with it! You want your audience to be motivated and excited to answer your question, whatever that might be.

Here's an example from one of our clients who owns Malarys Fashion Network, a clothing boutique in Cloverdale, BC. Yvonne framed a fashion-related post in a lighthearted way on her Facebook page and got a high number of engagements, including 20 comments.

To do this well, think about some interesting topics that relate to your business. Here are a couple of generic prompts that could help:

· Can you recommend some good [your product or service category] books this summer?

· What business advice would you give yourself when you were just starting out?

· If you could run your business in any period in history, when would it be and why?

Infographics
Infographics engaging visuals to communicate stats or other information quickly and clearly. Neil Patel did a great article back in 2014 on the power of infographics. It's still relevant today.

However, it's time to step up your infographics game with interactive elements. It's true that it takes more time and effort to create a two-way infographic instead of a static one. But if it's relevant to your business and captivates your audience, the traffic, engagement and social shares you get (which will link back to your site) will be well worth it.

There are numerous sites out there that allow you to create infographics from a template, or you can hire a professional graphic design company to create them for you.

Here's an infographic Google did to explain the complex topic "How search works." You can interact with various elements to move you through the content, which is much more interesting than a long page of text.

Now that we've gone over some ways that you can create these unique content marketing pieces, let's look at some of the benefits.

I talked a bit about it increasing engagement: you share an interesting and fun piece of content and users are more likely to interact with it and share it themselves.

In addition to increased user engagement, here are 3 other ways that interactive marketing tools can be beneficial:

They can collect data for you.

As marketers we rely on data to make decisions that will benefit our business. It can be a challenge to collect behavioural data by asking questions outright for a few reasons: Customers are extremely wary of these tactics and it's not fun!

(When's the last time you filled out one of those surveys a website randomly asked you, just because?)

By using a poll or engaging question, you can learn more about your audience's likes and dislikes. If you're inviting your audience to interact with an infographic, you can gain valuable insights by looking at where they navigate and click.

They increase clicks and conversions.
As a small business owner, you should always be looking for ways to engage with potential clients. It can be a real challenge to get someone to download your eBook or to convert on a landing page on your website.

That's where interactive content comes in. It can boost your click-throughs and conversion rates big-time. TheContent Marketing Institute did some case studies of brands that each saw upwards of 50% click through rates when they used it.

Put yourself in your potential customers' shoes: what would you rather click on at the top of the marketing funnel?

A 'Submit' button on a website asking you to provide your email so the business can send you a white paper? Or, a quiz or poll that asks for your opinion on a relevant topic, then asks for your email to send you the answer?

You'll find that many people are much more willing to provide their info if it's presented in an engaging way and it doesn't seem like you're asking.

They build brand loyalty.
When a viewer just reads an article or watches a video, their participation is minimal, and so is their engagement. But content people can interact with is different; it can create deeper relationships.

Research has shown that the more of a relationship a consumer has with a brand, the more likely they are to be loyal long-term customers. You start to be seen as an expert in your area, and people trust you.

And the more people trust you, the more likely they are to buy from you.

The content marketing landscape is always evolving, and you need to be willing to change with the times if you want to be successful.

Expect to see more interactive videos, quizzes, polls, questions, infographics and more; it's time to seriously consider adding these to your marketing tools if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

We know it can be nearly impossible to keep up with your marketing when you've got a business to run!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10160181