Social Media – A great add on to an existing marketing strategy

Social media may be fun and exciting – but it is no substitute for traditional marketing. No company will build a business by social alone; it has to be done in conjunction with other marketing tools such as SEO, email marketing and PR. That does not, however, mean that companies should ignore social either; indeed in markets such as IT and media, social activity is essential to prove business credibility. Helen Armour, Marketing Manager, Really Simple Systems, outlines the role social marketing can play in long-term brand building.

Know Your Market

Social marketing is not going to generate leads – it is all about brand building. And that means the most critical factor in any social activity is understanding the customer base. In a B2B model dependent on the sign-off of a middle aged Financial Director, spending a lot of time on Facebook or Twitter is not going to deliver much value – although it will work well for a B2C business aimed at the 20 to 35 age group. For a market younger than that, Facebook is also out of date – with this generation spending time on Snapchat and Instagram.

The only exception to this brand building only approach is LinkedIn: if a company can identify prospects’ job titles and business types, LinkedIn does offer an opportunity to generate leads. Everything else is just broadcast.

Wider Audience

The great thing about social is that it provides a company with a platform to reach potential customers that have not yet been captured in the email marketing database. While, to be frank, a prospect is unlikely to follow a company on Facebook or Twitter unless already aware of the brand via another route; if a business is not already in direct communication via an effective email marketing campaign, social media provides an opportunity to pique the interest with links to innovative content and provide updates on product news.

The challenge is to determine just how much resource – both time and money – should be invested in social. Measuring the value of brand building activity is an inexact science. Should companies be looking to add followers; or are retweets more important? Should the business be tweeting once a day or more often?

In terms of followers it is always worth remembering that upwards of 50% of those following your company will be other companies looking to raise their own profile in order to sell a product or service to your business – so don’t get carried away by a quick spike in interest.
Some of the most popular sites tweet or update content no more than once or twice a day – the emphasis is on relevance and interest, not volume. Getting other people to retweet or share great content in a bid to build their own followers is a great way of gaining wider recognition.

Conclusion

Social marketing is a long term investment focused almost exclusively on raising brand awareness. No company should ever rely on social to build a business – but it is an important aspect of the marketing mix. The key is to identify the audience and determine which media will appeal most. With the right social platform, the right content and the right frequency of activity, a company can slowly but surely use social to significantly extend brand awareness.

20 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

This post gained more visibility when it was picked up by editors.

Would you like to improve your social media marketing?

Are you up to date with the best social media tips and tools?

We asked 20 social media experts to share how they’re getting results with social media marketing today.

Here’s what they had to say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#1: Mine Twitter to Grow Your Audience

Mark Schaefer

While “if you build it they will come” is a great line from a movie, it’s a terrible marketing plan. To succeed on the Internet today, you have to create content that ignites and engages an audience. However, if you are a new blogger, you should probably spend more time developing an audience than creating your content.

Here are three easy but overlooked tactics you can use to build an audience on Twitter, which is arguably the best platform for this.

Once you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you’ll notice people will place you on public Twitter lists. Lists are generally categorized by a special interest or geographic location. For example, I might be on lists for “marketing experts,” “bloggers” or “business educators.” Find a relevant person to follow, and then dig into his or her lists. You’ll likely find a goldmine of interesting people to follow who will hopefully follow you back.

Use Twellow to find and follow targeted users in any category.

There are many apps to help you find new followers, but one of my favorite places to find targeted followers is Twellow. This useful and free site is like the yellow pages for Twitter, and you can find and follow targeted users for every category, industry and interest imaginable.

Use specialized Twitter search prompts. Unlock the basic search functionality right on the Twitter screen by learning a few of the specialized prompts. This is one of the most powerful market research tools available. Follow this link if you want a complete tutorial on Twitter search.

With these tactics, you can expand your audience to reach people who are seeking your products and services.

Mark Schaefer is a college educator, blogger, speaker and consultant who specializes in corporate social media marketing workshops.

#2: Analyze Past Content to Improve Posts

Neal Schaffer

Most businesses analyze the effectiveness of their social media after they publish. Now, there are tools available to analyze data for content curation before you post.

Here’s how to use BuzzSumo to leverage the data of what has already been successful in terms of social sharing.

First, enter a keyword that is part of your social media content strategy. BuzzSumo will provide you with a list of the top-performing content in terms of social shares according to your keyword.

BuzzSumo shows you the top-performing content in terms of social shares.

Next, because some content performs better on some networks than others, you can curate content by social network. Armed with this data, you can increase the effectiveness of your content curation by publishing content that has a greater chance of success on a specific network.

You can also filter content by type (which is ideal if you’re looking for videos or infographics to curate) or filter by time period. The latter lets you find content that’s been most popular in the last 24 hours or evergreen content that’s been popular over the last year. The choice is yours!

Neal Schaffer is president of Maximize Your Social, author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn.

#3: Optimize Visual Content with Links

Donna Moritz

Visual content can act as a “gateway” to more valuable content. When planning visual content to post on social platforms, think in terms of how it can drive traffic back to your website, products and services.

For example, in this SlideShare deck Constant Contact included a link back to a resource page listing multiple blog posts with related content.

When fans click through, they arrive at a page of value-added blog posts relevant to the SlideShare topic.

Link a short video back to your website from your YouTube Account or from your Instagram profile link and make sure you provide expanded content around the video. For example, Final Cut King drives his fans on Instagram back to longer content on his YouTube channel by asking them to click the link in the description of his Instagram account.

Final Cut King uses a call to action asking people to click on the link in his descriptions.

What are you waiting for? Think in terms of creating gateways to more valuable content when you plan your visuals!

Donna Moritz, founder of Socially Sorted. 

#4: Maximize Twitter Real Estate With Images

Guy Kawasaki

“Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter (visualize them here on Internet Stats live), which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year.”

Creating the best possible tweet has never been more important. Adding visual appeal to your tweet is a very smart way to get your most important content noticed.

You can add up to four images per tweet or one fantastic image if you want. The choice is yours! To add multiple images, use regular Twitter. This isn’t available on any of the third-party sites. Here’s an example of a tweet with multiple images on Twitter.

Guy Kawasaki, chief evangelist of Canva and author of 13 books including The Art of Social Media, Enchantment, and The Art of the Start.

#5: Switch Up Content Formats

Syed Balkhi

Over the past two years, I’ve moved to adapt written content for multiple platforms, like YouTube, to increase my reach and visibility.

For example, by turning one of my List25 articles into video every week, I’ve grown the YouTube channel to 1.3 million subscribers and amassed over 200 million video views. A similar tactic with WPBeginner articles has grown subscribers to over 8,000, and the channel has increased sales for my WordPress plugins.

We turned List25 articles into videos.

Changing content formats doesn’t have to involve just videos. You can also convert snippets from your existing articles into images—which tend to have better reach on Facebook. These images allow you to leverage the power of social networks such as Pinterest and Instagram.

Here’s how I shared a Tip of the Week image on the WPBeginner Facebook page.

Convert blog posts into images for your Facebook page.

Have you written a lot about one specific topic on your blog? Why not combine those articles into an ebook and use it to build your email list?

If you’re not changing content format to improve your overall reach, then you aren’t maximizing the full potential of your content.

Syed Balkhi, founder of WPBeginner, List25 and OptinMonster.

#6: Create a Social Media Channel Plan

Joe Pulizzi

So many organizations feel overwhelmed by the need to create content for every social media channel on the planet. Or worse yet, many brands create one type of content and then blast that content onto every social platform. If that’s you, you need a social media channel plan.

Most likely, your goals are different on each social platform. Since that’s the case, the content you develop for that platform needs to be different as well. Here are the components for your channel plan.

• The Channel (For example, Facebook.)
• The Persona (Who are you specifically targeting? Please choose one.)
• The Goal (Is it a sales goal, cost-savings goal or are you trying to create a better customer experience?)
• Primary Content Type (Textual, video, infographics?)
• Structure (What does a general post look like?)
• Tone (Playful, sarcastic?)
• Channel Integration (How will this channel work with your other channels for maximum impact?)
• Desired Action (What user behavior do you want to achieve?)
• Editorial Plan (Every channel needs its own editorial calendar.)

And this is exactly why content marketing isn’t easy. But if you leverage a social media channel plan correctly, you’ll be able to double down on the channels that work for you and be realistic with your resources on the other channels.

Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute.

#7: Deliver Content Consistently

John Lee Dumas

One of the best ways to grow your following and increase engagement on social media is to be there consistently. The first step is to put the right systems in place to keep your posts relevant, interesting and valuable for your audience.

Enter Edgar. I found out about Edgar a couple of months ago and love the platform.

Edgar allows you to create your own content categories so you can keep track of the specific types of posts you’re releasing; this ensures you don’t overwhelm your followers with the same types of posts over and over.

Manage content categories and avoid repeat posts with social media scheduling tool Edgar.

You can also schedule repeat posts indefinitely, so your content schedule never runs dry. Plus Edgar allows you to upload custom images for your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts.

As you build your content library, update your schedule with the categories you want to release and when. Then let Edgar take care of the rest.

Build a content library, update categories and schedule posts in Edgar.

Leveraging a social media scheduler like Edgar has saved me time, helped me grasp the big picture when it comes to my social media marketing strategy and allowed me to stay on top of my game when it comes to delivering valuable content to Fire Nation.

John Lee Dumas, founder and host of EntrepreneurOnFire. 

#8: Host Private Hangout On Air Events

Martin Shervington

Social media success is so often about having a conversation with the right people. If you already think in terms of building segmented lists, then you may appreciate knowing that you can effectively list-build on Google+ in many ways.

Use a private community alongside regular Google+ Hangouts On Air (HOA) events, so you can host a dedicated, private experience while having conversations with the right people.

In doing this for our Academy, we’ve noticed two trends:

• Around a third of community members watch the event within a day.
• About 8 to 10 community members also join the event as participants.

Unlike with public communities, when you initiate your event within a private one, the members receive an event invite/notification. This is a perfect way to break through the noise and reach the right audience.

Find the right audience by combining private Google+ communities with HOA events.

In both scenarios, the event will be listed under the Event tab, as well as on the right-hand side of the community.

Selling is increasingly personal, so face-to-face time with your community makes a huge difference. Also, the ability to quickly give them access to links/resources results in a great customer service experience.

Martin Shervington is a Google+ marketing expert, consultant and executive coach.

#9: Use Hashtags Strategically

Peg Fitzpatrick

If you want to be successful with your social media plan, stop random acts of hashtagging and use a good hashtag to tie all of the pieces of your campaign together.

Use a hashtag that is easy to spell and easy to remember. To make sure your hashtag isn’t already being used for something else, check for it on all channels prior to using it for your campaign. Once you create your hashtag, follow and join the conversation!

To follow your hashtag, use sites like Social Mention and Sprout Social. Use TwiPho for searching images on a hashtag.

TwiPho allows you to search Twitter for photos and images on a hashtag.

Peg Fitzpatrick, co-author of the upcoming book The Art of Social Media and a social media strategist.

#10: Test Pinterest for Your Brand

Gini Dietrich

I’d always believed Pinterest is best for organizations that have something visual to show: fashion, food, sports. But a client recently proved me wrong.

An organization that provides software as a service to a very narrow audience tested pinning their blog posts to Pinterest. In some cases, the images from the blog posts were original—infographics, their product in use or PowerPoint decks—and in others, they used a paid Shutterstock account. They built boards based on their brand personas, representing five different segments, and got to work.

After just one month, Pinterest became their number-one social network referral source.

Pinterest was number one in referral traffic for this non-visual brand.

And has remained there since the test began in June.

Pinterest is still their number-one referral source.

The company’s real goal was to drive people to take their free trial. In the past 4 months, 35 people have come directly from Pinterest and taken the free trial.

Pinterest has sent 35 people to the site to take the free trial.

And, of those 35 people, 10 have become customers. So a four-month test of pinning blog posts to Pinterest has driven approximately $50,000 in new revenue. Not too shabby!

Gini Dietrich, CEO of Arment Dietrich, Inc.

#11: Use Social Updates to Write Blog Posts

Ted Rubin

Take your most popular tweets and Facebook posts, or the ones you feel most passionately about, and use them to develop blog posts. You don’t have to write three pages; you don’t even have to write four paragraphs.

Seth Godin is one of the most successful bloggers in the marketing world, and he writes in two- to three-sentence paragraphs. He’s a master at expressing ideas that are thought-provoking and easy to read. People are pressed for time these days and content can be overwhelming, so make it valuable and easy to read.

Another way to get ideas is to comment on the things you read, such as other people’s blogs and newsletters, media publications and anything else relevant to your business. You’re already absorbing the content and you probably have opinions when you’re reading it, so go ahead and comment on those blogs.

One benefit of commenting is that people will start recognizing your name; another is it gives you material for a blog post.

For example, I save the comments I write in my email drafts folder and I use the subject line as a label for the topic. After I’ve saved the drafts, I can come back and turn these comments into blog posts. I can even make the comment itself the blog post. After all, it’s still my writing. (Check out Meddle, which makes this whole process easy and allows you to share/syndicate your comments to your social platforms with a few easy clicks.)

Use Meddle to help with your blog posts.

Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, keynote speaker, acting CMO of Brand Innovators, and co-author of Return on Relationship.

#12: Give Context to Pinnable Images

Kim Garst

We live in an age of information overload and short attention spans. When it comes to capturing your audience’s attention, take full advantage of every chance to communicate your message in a way that they’ll engage with!

The best way to gain and keep your audience’s interest is by using effective visual content. Visual social media platforms like Pinterest can be a fabulous traffic source, if used correctly.

When designing Pinterest graphics, make sure your readers know “what’s in it for them.” Take a look at the images below. They’re two separate styles of blog graphics for the SAME article. The top photo makes sense when it’s seen on the blog itself. However, when you take the photo away from the post, there’s no frame of reference for it.

Add a title that tells viewers exactly what they’ll get if they click on the pinned graphic.

The bottom graphic, on the other hand, uses text to tell viewers exactly what they’ll get if they click on the pinned graphic.

Always include the title of your blog post on your graphic. That way, when you pin it to Pinterest, users will have a frame of reference and want to read it.

Kim Garst, CEO and co-founder of Boom Social. 

#13: Become a Resource on Facebook

Holly Homer

Over the last year, Facebook has been slowly making algorithm changes that have limited the number of people who see a page’s Facebook post. Pages can use these algorithm changes to their advantage by thinking of their page as a user resource, rather than a promotional tool.

Build a page your customers would enjoy and then use that platform to delight them. Deliver posts that educate, entertain, inspire and inform to reach a wide Facebook audience.

Holly Homer, co-founder of Kids Activities Blog.

#14: Manage Time Effectively

Lynette Young

How much time do you spend crafting blog posts? Sending emails? Sitting in meetings?

Even if you have a good idea of where you’re spending the bulk of your time, you may often feel there simply aren’t enough hours in your day. Getting a handle on time management is a huge challenge for business owners.

Try a time-tracking tool like RescueTime to improve your daily productivity and devote more time to the areas that need it most.

RescueTime is a great time-tracking tool.

For example, let’s say you spend a great deal of time interacting on Facebook and Twitter, but you’re not seeing a lot of results. Meanwhile, your email marketing campaigns are intermittent at best, although you know the results are there for the taking.

Adjust your daily schedule so you spend more time on email marketing and see if it drives more sales. Remember, digital marketing depends on the trifecta of social, blog and email. If you neglect any one of them, your entire strategy could suffer. However, give them each a little love, and you might just see explosive growth.

It’s all about finding a balance that works for you and your business.

Lynette Young, AWeber content marketing manager.

#15: Expand Reach With LinkedIn Publisher

Melonie Dodaro

If you haven’t already done so, take advantage of the free content publishing feature on LinkedIn called Publisher. It can increase your exposure to your target audience and help build your credibility as an expert in your industry. In fact, LinkedIn Publisher can greatly expand the reach of your business on LinkedIn, regardless of your network’s size.

For example, after Wendy McClelland added her third post, Why I Say NO to Coffee Meetings, she received more views, likes and comments than she ever could have expected.

Wendy McClelland’s post, Why I Say NO to Coffee Meetings.

Wendy’s following is just over 1,500, but this published post got more than 61,500 views, 350 likes and 500 comments! 60,000 people outside of Wendy’s network were exposed to her and her work.

While most posts will not achieve such extreme reach, all posts have the potential to reach new people.

Each time you publish, all of your connections and followers will receive a notification. The post also has a chance to be included in the email LinkedIn Pulse sends out to its members with suggestions for posts that might interest them.

LinkedIn Pulse sends out an email of noteworthy and recommended posts.

To increase your chances of success with Publisher, create professional-looking posts that address the needs and pain points of your audience. Make sure you avoid adding spammy or promotional information.

Post valuable content that your network will share with their connections, and your reach will grow even more.

Melonie Dodaro, founder of Top Dog Social Media and the author of the #1 international bestseller, The LinkedIn Code.

#16: Focus on One Social Media Channel

Jeff Korhan

Unless your company is a big brand, it’s unlikely your customers are scattered across multiple social media channels.

Therefore, to make the most of your limited resources, find the one channel that is densely populated with your ideal customers and inhabit it like no other.

Jeff Korhan, MBA, is the author of Built-In Social and host of This Old New Business podcast.

#17: Automate Curated Content

Rich Brooks

If you run a small business, creating or curating content can be relegated to the back burner. The problem is that an erratic publishing schedule can alienate your audience and break trust. There’s a way around this.

Schedule a baseline of curated content. While there are a number of tools out there that can help, lately I’ve been choosing to use Hootsuite’s new Suggested Topics under its Publisher tab.

Use Hootsuite’s Suggested Topics tool to find curated content.

Select up to three topics of interest, then let Hootsuite find content that’s relevant to your audience.

Let Hootsuite find content that’s relevant to your audience.

As I mentioned, this is baseline content. If you want to rock your social media marketing, you still need to create and curate your own posts, as well as engage with your audience. However, this tool lets you stay in front of your audience even when you’re making sales calls, writing proposals and brewing that second pot of coffee.

Rich Brooks, president of flyte new media.

#18: Create a Social Update Library

Leslie Samuel

One thing that holds many businesses back from actively posting on social media is having to come up with ideas for what to post. When you batch content and social media update creation, it’s much easier to come up with interesting ideas for status updates relating to that content.

Whenever you create a piece of content (article, podcast or video) for your blog or website, come up with a list of 10 to 20 social media posts at the same time that can be used to promote that piece of content.

This same concept will work for your product pages, sales pages or any other piece of content you want to promote.

Batch social updates as you create content.

Once you have a list of social media updates, add the updates to a spreadsheet to keep track of them all in one location. This can be a simple spreadsheet that includes just the update and a link to the content, or it can be a more elaborate one that tracks all of your content and social media updates for multiple networks.

This will save you a lot of time over the long run. Also, you build a library of tweets and status updates that you can use for years to come. Whenever you need to schedule some updates, just come back to the spreadsheet, create a .csv file, import it into a program like Hootsuite and you’re good to go.

Leslie Samuel, creator of Become A Blogger.

#19: Publish Long-Form Content on LinkedIn

Jason Miller

By publishing new and previously published content on LinkedIn, you can grow your audience and network while increasing your status as an expert.

Through this open publishing platform, your original content becomes part of your company’s profile, is shared with your trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled.

Jason Miller, senior content marketing manager at LinkedIn, leading the content and social strategy for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

#20: Target Website Visitors with Social Ads

Ian Cleary

It takes a lot of time and effort to attract visitors to your website. When you do attract relevant visitors, it’s important to maximize the potential of that visit even after they leave your website.

There are now great retargeting options where you can follow your website visitors to other sites like Twitter and Facebook, and encourage them to take further action.

For example, to target your website visitors on Facebook, display “page like” ads and encourage them to become fans. This currently costs us 15 cents per fan. In return, we get a relevant fan and another place to reach our audience.

Website owners can target past website visitors with ads like this on Facebook.

Your potential customers don’t see all of your communication, but with good marketing tactics you can improve your chances of showing up in their social streams!

Ian Cleary, founder of Razor Social.

Who are these social media pros?

The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2015.

You’ll hear from 100+ of the world’s top social media marketing pros as they reveal their newest social media marketing tips and practical, real-world, proven examples.

Join Guy Kawasaki (author, The Art of Social Media), Mari Smith (co-author, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day), Chris Brogan (co-author, The Impact Equation), Jay Baer (author, Youtility), Ann Handley (author, Everybody Writes), Michael Stelzner (author, Launch), Michael Hyatt (author, Platform), Laura Fitton (co-author, Twitter for Dummies), Joe Pulizzi (author, Epic Content Marketing), Mark Schaefer (author, Social Media Explained), Cliff Ravenscraft, Nichole Kelly, Ted Rubin, Chalene Johnson, Darren Rowse, Joel Comm, Kim Garst, Martin Shervington, Marcus Sheridan, Gini Dietrich, Pat Flynn, John Jantsch, Andrea Vahl and Brian Clark—just to name a few.

Experts reveal proven social media marketing tactics at Social Media Marketing World 2015—Social Media Examiner’s mega-conference in beautiful San Diego, California. You’ll be able to take your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, blogging, podcasting and video marketing to an entirely new level.

Plus, you’ll join 2500 fellow marketers at the live mega-conference designed to empower and inspire you with social media marketing tactics—brought to you by Social Media Examiner.

15 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic

The blogosphere is a big and busy world with over 100 million blogs and growing. How do you attract visitors to your blog? Follow these simple tips to drive traffic to your blog.

1.  Write Well and Write Often

Frequently updating your blog with useful content is the first step to building your blog's audience. The content you write is what will keep readers coming back for more. Make sure you have something meaningful to say to them and say it often to maintain their interest and keep them loyal.
Furthermore, post frequently to increase the number of chances you have for your blog's content to be noticed by search engines such as Google or Technorati.

2.  Submit Your Blog to Search Engines

Get on the radar screen for the popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo! by submitting your blog's URL to them. Most search engines provide a 'Submit' link (or something similar) to notify the search engine of your new blog, so those search engines will crawl it and include your pages in their results.
It's important to understand that simply submitting your blog to search engines doesn't mean your pages will appear at the top of a Google search results screen, but at least your blog will be included and will have the chance of being picked up by a search engine.

3.  Use and Update Your Blogroll

By adding links to sites you like in your blogroll, the owners of those blogs will find your blog and will be likely to add a reciprocal link in their blogrolls. It's an easy way to get the link to your blog in front of many readers on other blogs. The hope is that some of those readers will click on the link to your blog on the other blogs' blogrolls and find your content interesting and enjoyable turning them into loyal readers.

4.  Harness the Power of Comments

Commenting is a simple and essential tool to increase your blog's traffic. First, respond to comments left on your blog to show your readers that you value their opinions and draw them into a two-way conversation. This will increase reader loyalty.
Second, leave comments on other blogs to drive new traffic. Make sure you leave your blog's URL in your comment, so you create a link back to your own blog. Many people will read the comments left on a blog post. If they read a particularly interesting comment, they are highly likely to click on the link to visit the commentor's website. It's important to make sure you leave meaningful comments that are likely to invite people to click on your link to read more.

5.  Syndicate Your Blog's Content with an RSS Feed

Setting up an RSS feed button on your blog makes it easy for your loyal readers to not just read your blog but also know when you publish new content.

6.  Use Links and Trackbacks

Links are one of the most powerful parts of your blog. Not only are links noticed by search engines, but they also act as a tap on the shoulder to other bloggers who can easily identify who is linking to their sites. Linking helps to get you noticed by other bloggers who are likely to investigate the sites that are linking to them. This may lead them to become new readers of your blog or to add links to your blog from theirs.
You can take links to other blogs a step further by leaving a trackback on the other blog to let them know you've linked to them. Blogs that allow trackbacks will include a link back to your blog in the comments section of the post that you originally linked to. People do click on trackback links!

7.  Tag Your Posts

It takes a few extra seconds to add tags to each of your blog posts, but it's worth the time in terms of the additional traffic tags can drive to your blog. Tags (like links) are easily noticed by search engines. They're also key to helping readers find your blog when they perform searches on popular blog search engines such as Technorati.

8.  Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Taking the time to submit your best posts to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more can be a simple way to quickly boost traffic to your blog.

9.  Remember Search Engine Optimization

When you write your blog posts and pages, remember to optimize your pages for search engines to find them. Include relevant keywords and links but don't overload your posts with too many relevant keywords or completely irrelevant keywords. Doing so can be considered spamming and could have negative results such as your blog being removed from Google's search entirely.

10.  Don't Forget Images

Images don't just make your blog look pretty, they also help people find you in search engine listings. People often use the image search options offered by Google, Yahoo! and other search engines, and naming your images with search engine optimization in mind can easily boost your traffic.

11.  Consider Guest Blogging

Guest blogging can be done when you write a guest post on another blogger's blog or when another blogger writes a guest post on your blog. Both methods are likely to increase traffic as your blog will be exposed to the other blogger's audience. Many of the other blogger's readers will visit your blog to see what you have to say.

12.  Join Forums, Web Rings or Online Groups

Find online forums, web rings, groups or social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn where you can share ideas and ask questions of like-minded individuals. Add a link to your blog in your signature line or profile, so each time you post on a forum or participate in another online network, you're indirectly promoting your blog. Chances are many people will click on that link to learn more about you.

13.  Promote Outside Your Blog

Promoting your blog shouldn't stop when you step outside the blogosphere. Add your blog's URL to your email signature and business cards. Talk about it in offline conversations. It's important to get your name and your blog's URL noticed offline, too.

14.  Nominate Yourself and Other Blogs for Blog Awards

There are a number of blog awards given out throughout the year. Nominating yourself and other blogs and bloggers can draw attention to your blog and drive traffic to it.

15.  Don't Be Shy

The most important part of the blogosphere is its community and much of your success as a blogger will be tied to your willingness to network with that community. Don't be afraid to ask questions, join conversations or just say hi and introduce yourself. Don't sit back and hope the online world will find you. Speak out and get yourself noticed. Let the blogosphere know you've arrived and have something to say!

10 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networking sites, particularly for business people and career-oriented people. It's also a great place to build relationships, share your content and expertise, and drive traffic to your blog. Following are 10 tips to increase the traffic to your blog using LinkedIn.

1.  Create a Relevant Profile to Meet Your Goals

Your LinkedIn profile does not have to read like a chronological resume.  On the contrary, your LinkedIn profile should be a place where you can lead with your strengths and present the most relevant information to help you reach your online goals first.  If your goal for using LinkedIn is to increase traffic to your blog and establish yourself as an authoritative source for the type of information you publish on your blog, then make sure those are the kinds of credentials and experience that are presented first on your LinkedIn profile. 

2.  Find People to Connect With

Search for people you know and send them a connection request via LinkedIn.  The more connections you have in your LinkedIn profile, the more people can see your LinkedIn status updates, make additional connection introductions for you, and so on.  You can connect to people if you work (or have worked) at the same company, attended the same school, or if you know their email addresses.  Even if you don't know someone, you can connect with them through LnkedIn by requesting an introduction from one of your existing connections who is directly connected to that person.  It can get a bit confusing, but the important thing is to simply continue working on making new, relevant connections.

3.  Give and Request Recommendations

One of the best parts about LinkedIn is the recommendations feature where you can write recommendations for the people you're connected to, and you can send requests asking them to write recommendations about you.  Recommendations are published with your LinkedIn profile and act as endorsements of your work, abilities, and so on.  They're a great way to establish your authority in your field or area of expertise.  If those recommendations are related to your blog content or topic, then they can help build your reputation and drive traffic to your blog.

4.  Ask and Answer Questions

The LinkedIn Answers feature is a gold mine for business people who are trying to learn new things or establish themselves as experts in their fields.  Simply, log into your LinkedIn account, and visit the LinkedIn Answers page where you can answer questions that other people have already asked or ask your own. 

5.  Join Groups or Start Your Own

LinkedIn Groups are very active.  Search existing groups and join those that are related to your blog and have audiences who would be likely to be interested in your blog content.  Then join the conversation going on in that group and build relationships with other members.  If there is not a group that fits your niche already on LinkedIn, start one!

6.  Be Active

Once you create your LinkedIn profile, don't forget about it.  In order for LinkedIn to be an effective tool to increase traffic to your blog, you need to actively participate by joining group discussions, answering questions, making recommendations, and so on.  You also need to make sure your status is frequently updated.  Be sure to take the time to link your blog feed to your LinkedIn status, which is easy to do from your LinkedIn account.

7.  Share Your Best Blog Content Links

Make sure you spend time sharing links to your best, most helpful and useful blog content.  This is particularly important to do in the groups related to your blog's topic.  Don't inundate groups with your content links, but do demonstrate that you can truly add value to the conversation by sharing your amazing blog content.

8.  Share Your LinkedIn Profile Link

Make sure you promote your LinkedIn profile in an effort to boost your connections.  Include the link in your blog's sidebar, your email signature, and anywhere else you can.

9.  Acknowledge Other LinkedIn Members

Join the conversation, send LinkedIn direct messages, respond, post comments, and so on. In other words, don't just spend time updating your own status and sharing your own content. Instead, spend a significant amount of your time talking with other members and helping to promote their content, too.

10.  Use the Automated LinkedIn Features

Feed your blog updates into both your own LinkedIn profile as mentioned above and into the groups that you belong to (any group member can add an RSS feed to a group they belong to), so an update (with a link to your blog post) is posted to the group whenever you publish new blog content, leading to direct blog traffic. Also, sign up for automated email status updates to see what your connections are doing on LinkedIn each day. This can make it quick and easy to join relevant conversations and continually build relationships, which can indirectly lead to increased blog traffic.

Getting Started with LinkedIn Publishing : LinkedIn Marketing

LinkedIn Publishing is the name the business networking service gives to its internal blogging platform. It's a tool members can use to publish articles that get distributed to the author's connections on LinkedIn and, if they choose this option, also are viewable to everyone on LinkedIn and the public as well.

The platform is designed to let users publish content that's longer than the typical status update, which is limited to 700 characters or under 140 words or so. LinkedIn Publishing, by contrast, allows articles to be several thousand words, though it recommends keeping blog posts shorter, to 400 to 600 words. 

Originally, the LinkedIn Publishing tool was only available to several hundred prominent individuals it called "Influencers" when the program launched in 2012. But in February 2014, LinkedIn announced it was going to roll the blogging tool out to all of its members on a gradual, phased-in basis.

"When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled," LinkedIn's Ryan Roslansky said in the announcement.

Who Should Use LinkedIn Publishing?

It's probably best to think of LinkedIn's blogging platform as a marketing tool for building a personal, professional or corporate brand. That's because the professional networking service has several hundred million users, many of whom regularly spend time on the network and browse their news feeds much as they do on Facebook, though perhaps not as frequently.

When someone publishes a blog post on the platform, it goes into the news feeds of all their connections on LinkedIn, and potentially gets distributed to other members, too, since LinkedIn allows members to follow one another without being "connected," much as Twitter does. An algorithm determines the frequency of display for each post, much like Facebook's new feed ranking system is also controlled by a formula. 

This makes it a useful way to potentially reach a large number of people. So for those who want to enhance their professional image and communicate their knowledge and expertise more widely, LinkedIn Publishing is extremely valuable.

It's important to note, however, that the blogging tool is not designed for direct self-promotion or marketing goods or services, so people who plan to use it for blatant marketing and sales purposes may want to rethink their blogging goals on LinkedIn. Commercial marketing is not the mission of LinkedIn. Members join to network with other professionals, learn more about their fields and develop their careers, not to buy goods and services. So heavy-handed marketing is frowned upon and can boomerang and have a negative impact on the reputation of anyone who does it.

How to Format Blog Posts

The LinkedIn platform has a simple formatting tool that allows members to add bullets or put text in bold without knowing any coding, much like WordPress allows. It's as simple as formatting text in Microsoft Word and other text editors. The tool allows for adding hyperlinks, bullets, italics, bold fonts and subheads. It also allows users to insert images and embed slides from SlideShare, which is another publishing tool owned by LinkedIn.

(More about the platform from LinkedIn's own help files.)

Where LinkedIn Blog Posts Appear

LinkedIn, of course, controls where and how often each blog post appears and can change the rules governing their display at any time. It's common for social networking platforms to constantly tweak the display algorithm for content, so the rules for display are not hard and fast. That said, the early display system for LinkedIn posts has them appearing in a variety of places.

First of all, each blog post has a standalone URL or web address, just like a blog post's typical permalink. It starts with https://linkedin.com/today/post/ and then is followed by a numerical identifier and keyword descriptor.

In the sidebar of the article, there will typically be a little widget box showing the author's other most recent posts. And on top of the article, the author's photo, name, and tag line phrase (sometimes called a "Headline" on LinkedIn) will appear, too, along with the total number of posts that person has published.

Also, on the profile page of each author, that person's three most recent blog posts appear in a horizontal strip as small tiles, above their profile summary and just below the large box at the very top containing the person's photo, personal tag line or "headline" and three-line summary of job titles and education.

And finally, when a post is new, LinkedIn displays it in the news feeds of the author's connections. And if the author chose to mak it public, the post also will be displayed elsewhere on the network, based on various content rules applied by the company. For example, if the topic is about crowdsourcing scientific discovery, it might appear in content channels pertaining to science and be shown to people who subscribe to those channels.

LinkedIn Pulse News Channels

What's important to know is that LinkedIn bought a news aggregation app called Pulse and incorporated it into the LinkedIn personalized news channels on the professional networking service. The news area of the network formerly called LinkedIn Today is powered by the Pulse app.

The company has been integrating its "influencer" blogging content into its Pulse news channels, meaning good blog content might be viewed by potentially large numbers of people who use the app.

How To Use Social Media To Boost Your SEO Campaign

Search engine optimization (SEO) has almost become synonymous with content marketing. Because you need a steady stream of quality, optimized content in order to fuel your SEO campaign, many business owners focus a disproportionate amount of attention to cultivating the best possible content. However, there are many other outlets for ongoing SEO you’ll need to consider if you want to maximize results.

Social media is sometimes seen as a separate entity, deserving of a separate strategy. While it can be used independently, it’s better if you use it in alignment with your SEO strategy so you can get the best of both worlds. With certain social media strategies, you’ll be able to improve your brand awareness through social channels and simultaneously increase your domain authority, which will get you to rank higher for user searches of all varieties.

Build Your Following

One factor Google GOOGL -1.48% takes into consideration for domain authority is the following you have on your social platforms. As a simple example, if your brand has 10,000 likes on Facebook and 10,000 followers on Twitter TWTR -0.87%, you’ll have a higher authority and higher search rankings than a similar brand with 100 likes and 100 followers. Build your following by regularly posting interesting material, and engaging your audience directly by responding to their comments or opening up public discussions. Check for updates multiple times throughout the day, and be personable to attract even more people.

A word of caution: Google is able to tell when your following is real and when it is comprised of spam accounts. Don’t resort to paying for new likes or followers directly; doing so typically fills your audience with bot accounts or fake profiles, which will do more harm than good for your online reputation. Stick to building your audience naturally, even if it takes longer.

Share Your Content

Social media is also a perfect opportunity to extend the reach of your content. For example, if you write a new extended blog post about a news item related to your industry, you can get it in front of thousands of new eyes just by sharing it with your followers.

The first benefit to this is obvious; you’ll get more attention and earn more traffic to your site. This is a good thing, but it only peripherally benefits SEO (by making your site look more popular). The more direct SEO benefit is that it will encourage more people to become aware of your content, and link to it on their own sites. That diverse link pool will pass authority to your domain, giving you the power of dozens of links without the time it takes to build them manually.

Optimize Your Posts for Search
As illustrated by the recent rejoining of Twitter and Google as partners, it’s possible that your tweets and posts will show up in Google search results. Therefore, you’ll want to optimize those posts so they have the greatest chance of showing up. You can do this by including keywords that are likely to be searched for; for example, taking advantage of new trends and current events is a solid approach. You can also post content such as infographics or videos, and frame them with a question you would imagine your target demographics searching for, such as “how to wire an electrical outlet” if you’re an electrician.
Even if they don’t show up in Google’s results directly, optimizing your posts with keywords relevant to your brand can help cement your reputation for being an expert in those subjects. After all, Google does crawl social media platforms just as much as it crawls websites.
Use Viral Content to Earn Shares
The number of shares and retweets you earn on social media is another factor that can contribute to your overall domain authority. If you have a piece of content that earns 1,000 shares, your reputation will increase and you’ll inch up in the rankings as a result.
Creating content that earns such a rave response is tricky, but can be done if you invest the right time and resources. First, you’ll need to use a visual medium like an infographic, a video, or a strong visual component to a written blog. It will need to be informative, relevant, practical, entertaining, and in some way surprising, but most of all, it will need to be unique—something your audience has never seen before. Post it at the right time, promote it however you can, and hopefully your audience will take care of the rest.

Engage With Similar Businesses

Finally, if you’re looking to optimize your site for local searches, try engaging with similar businesses on social media. Look for businesses in your neighborhood, or companies in your industry near where you operate. Engage with them by sharing some of their content, and commenting on their profiles. They should return the favor and help you grow your audience in turn. When Google sees you engaging with other brands, it will learn to associate you with them, and your relevance will increase as a result.

These strategies aren’t temporary. You can’t implement them once and hope to gain the benefits from them. If you want to be successful, you’ll need to execute them on a recurring basis as part of your ongoing strategy, and nurture your audience to see corresponding growth in search. When executed and developed properly, the alignment of social media and SEO proves to show exponential returns, greatly increasing your traffic month after month for the first few years.

5 Reasons You Need To Increase Your Email Marketing Budget

Email marketing has undergone many shifts in the past two decades. It exploded onto the scene when email started becoming a more popular medium, and businesses everywhere scrambled to send, seemingly, as many emails as possible to their audience. Then, spam filters and legal email regulations started throttling back the “quantity over quality” mentality, and email marketers were forced to use more creative, appealing tactics in their campaigns.

The arrival of social media marketing and mobile smart devices changed the landscape of email marketing once again. People started using social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to do the majority of their communicating, leaving email as a backup or as a reserve for only business communications. They also started relying on their mobile devices more and more, working on the go with a small screen size instead of using the more convenient desktop setup. Many marketers projected this to be the end of email marketing altogether; since people were using email less often and email marketing tactics were beginning to wear thin on an uninterested audience, it seemed reasonable to think that the medium was a dry well.

However, the numbers are indicating that email marketing is alive and well, and companies are seeing substantial returns on their investment in the marketing medium. Almost any business in any industry can reap the benefits of a strong email marketing campaign, so consider implementing or increasing your email marketing budget in 2015:

1. Email Marketing Is Alive and Growing. The statistics don’t lie. At the end of 2014, 73 percent of marketers claimed that email marketing was a core strategy for their business. Additionally, 59 percent of marketers are planning to increase their email budgets in 2015 and beyond. Of course, it’s not always a good idea to go with the crowd and make decisions based on popularity, but these marketers have had experience with email marketing, and it looks like it’s been a positive one. It’s not entirely clear why email marketing is seeing a bit of a renaissance; it could be because people are more used to checking emails on their mobile devices and open rates are increasing, or it could be that the options available to email marketers are more diverse now than ever. Either way, email marketing is on its way up again, and it’s a trend you should get behind.

2. Email Marketing Feeds Your Other Campaigns. Email marketing isn’t just about email marketing, at least not anymore. Email marketing is simultaneously your gateway drug—which leads new customers to your other, more substantial marketing efforts—and your mortar—which ties all your other campaigns together. Through an email marketing initiative, you can draw people to your blog by offering snippets of content, or you can drive up your following numbers by inviting people to share deals on social media. You can also use your other marketing channels to invite people to sign up for your email blasts, resulting in a closed, cohesive system that nurtures your overall customer base as one unit.

3. Small Increases Lead to Big Returns. Email marketing doesn’t take much to get going. You can get a MailChimp account for free, and if you already have a list of customers, you can use that as the basis for your initial email blasts. After that, even small, low-budget upgrades can give you a massive return. Spending a few hundred dollars on a list of emails can net you hundreds of potential new customers. Spending some extra money on your email designs can present your brand in radically new ways to unfamiliar customers and increase both brand loyalty and engagement.

4. You Can Objectively Measure Your Results. There’s not much to lose by increasing your email marketing budget. If things go bad, you can always reduce your budget back to where it was or eliminate the campaign entirely. One of the greatest benefits of email marketing is that you’ll be able to objectively measure your results. With every email blast you send out, you’ll be able to monitor your delivery rates, your open rates, and the total number of click-throughs you receive. As long as you know your conversion rates, from there, you’ll be able to objectively determine whether your email marketing budget is enabling a profitable return. If not, you can make a change, but if it is, you can throw more fuel on the fire with an even greater budget.

5. People Are Demanding More. It isn’t enough to send a simple promotional email or a short list of new content on your site. People need more from email campaigns, and in order to give the people what they want, you’ll have to step up your overall budget. Serve them well with better designs, more appealing copy, and better offers—free giveaways, discounts, and special deals are all winners, but they take an upfront investment to be successful.

Remember that email marketing is about more than just sending as many emails as you can. You need to find an audience and get to know that audience first. Only then will you be able to anticipate your audience’s needs and create emails that actually have value to them. Modern email marketing isn’t about making a sales pitch or attracting as many clicks as possible; it’s about providing value to your users, and you’ll have to work hard to hold up your end of the bargain.

Posted By:  Jayson DeMers