Friday, January 10, 2014

Social Media Marketing

The primary reason for Social Media Marketing is to engage with Social Media users and build your brand. The days of using automated posting are over.  Social Media is not just a place to spread your content but it is a place to build your presence and your brand.

Building Your Brand

image source: The Sales Lion


Is your profile picture and your logo brand specific?  If you are a large corporation or small business, using a logo that represents your company as a profile picture is a good idea.  Make sure that you use your companies real name and not a keyword stuffed name.  Are you sharing content from your brand page that you would share from your personal profile?  If you wouldn't share it on your personal profile, there is a good chance that others will not share it either.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that you only have to share articles posted on your blog.  If you share content that others will find useful, even if it is not related to your industry, it is more likely to be shared. So how does this help you? The below screen shot is of an article that I reshared from a brand page.  Every reshare has the brand page listed as the original source.

As you can see, my page generated 41 reshares and 132 plus ones.  If this would have been a link to an article to some blog post, I would not have shared it.  I am in no way affiliated with Programming Geeks (the original source) but I found their post humorous and I shared it. The original share received over 500 reshares.

Social Media Marketing on Purpose

(Google+)
People in general are less likely to share a post with an embedded link. Embedded pictures get more engagement than an embedded link.  You can still leave a link in the post description.  The first line of your post becomes your post title.  If you surround the first few words with an *.  It will make the lettering bold. *So the format would look like this.*

Social Media Etiquette

Ok, so this is not required but if people share your post, you can visit the shared post and tell the person thanks for sharing your post.  You can also give the post a plus one while your there.  Once your brand grows people will "mention" you.  It is wise to respond to those mentions.  If they use the feature properly, it will send you a notification.  If people mention your brand without properly using the ping feature, you can still find it by searching for your brand name in the Google+ search bar.

Should You Hire a Social Media Management Service?


If you are looking to hire a service, here are a few tips:

  • Do not hire a company that uses automated tools
  • Do not hire a company that post links only
  • Do not hire a company that does not get engagement
  • Do not go by follower count only
Posted by at