I’ve made my case for the importance of social media in
numerous posts on this blog. In short, it’s safe to say that having a strong
social media presence is of the utmost importance to bloggers, SEOs, internet
marketers and search engine marketers.
In light of that, here is your guide to social media success
for 2013. The following set of tips will allow you to enhance and maximize your
social media effectiveness and ROI, enabling you to become more successful on
these social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest,
and LinkedIn, to name a few.
Tip # 1. In order to engage your human customers, you need to bring out the human side of your
brand. This will allow you to truly connect with your audience, and bring in
more customers, maximizing your ROI in the process.
Try being more appealing to your customers; engage and
interact with them, respond to their messages or tweets or wall-posts, figure
out what your customers like and post your updates accordingly. Figure out what
time most of your fans and followers are online, and use this time to post
important updates and the most valuable information.
Try connecting with your fans on a more personal level. Use
terms and words that they can relate to. Post updates, images, videos that they
will be able to relate with, stuff that they will find ‘cool’ – it could be
anything, from funny videos, to stats, to memes, or infographics, for instance.
Share other people’s status updates, hold contests and
reward your super-customers from time to time, and interact and engage with
other communities (similar Facebook pages) as well (more on engagement below).
Tip # 2. An important aspect of humanizing and personalizing your
social media presence is engagement.
Communication, in any form whatsoever, is a two-way street,
and social media is certainly no exception. If you want to be successful and
effective on social media, you need to engage with your audience, it is as
simple as that.
The great thing about social networking websites such as
Facebook is that they allow you to engage with your audience through various
different ways.
Do not use social media to just share your blog’s links.
Instead, try finding different ways of engaging your audience, such as through
posting and sharing other valuable information. Facebook, for instance, allows
page owners to post pictures, embed Youtube videos, put on intriguing cover
photos, put up ‘special offers’ and post polls as well.
In addition, as mentioned in the first point above, you
could also maximize your engagement through contests as well. A page that I’m
part of does this ‘Fan of the Week’ contest, which is essentially a giveaway of
sorts, where they give a free license key to their products to one lucky
winner. Another page on Facebook asks current members to ‘like’ and share their
posts, and then pick a random winner for the giveaway from a group of people
who’ve done that. This maximizes their reach and visibility in the process as
well.
Google+ also allows you to do ‘Hangouts’, which are essentially
virtual video meetings with just about anyone in the world. The Lifehacker team recently did a G+ Hangout,
where their whole editorial team sat down to do a video conference of sorts,
taking questions from the audience through their website, or through the
comments system on G+.
Tip # 3. Optimize your social media presence for mobile and
cellular devices. With a massive increase in the number of smartphones and
tablets – iPhone, the iPad, and other Android-based devices by Samsung and HTC
in particular, not to mention the recent increase in use of Windows Phone
devices .
The fact is that more and more people are using social
networks such as Facebook and Twitter in particular through cellular devices. It
is therefore essential for your brand to be mobile-friendly as well. For this
purpose, start off with making your landing page mobile-friendly, so whenever
someone goes to your website from Facebook for iPhone, for instance, your
website is optimized for it.
Optimize all your social profiles for mobile devices – if
you have presence on Facebook, G+, Twitter or LinkedIn, make sure that your
profiles look good on these platforms.
Look into ads, and sponsored/promoted posts on Facebook, as
these usually have a pretty high success rate on cellphones (a high CTR).
Also do a bit of marketing into how you can maximize your
engagement and ROI on the cellular format by doing a bit of research on user
patterns.
Tip # 4. Be honest, and straightforward with your fans and followers.
It is very easy to hide the facts online, especially since you might have
limited (or no) direct interaction with your customers and followers. However
being transparent and honest will allow you to build trust very quickly.
Avoid spreading misinformation, and follow social media
etiquette best-practices in order to come across as trustworthy and reliable:
avoid spamming your fans, avoid sales pitches at all costs, don’t make fake
profiles, do not invade the privacy of your fans, keep things civil, refrain
from using crass, abusive or insensitive
language (or posting something that is these things), never indulge in quarrels
or fights with your fans or followers and deal with a bit of criticism,
disapproval and/or flaming in an appropriate manner.
Remember that anything you put up on any social networking
profile comes with consequences. It is essential to think about the
repercussions or the implications of whatever you post online.
If you make a mistake, own up to it and apologize to your
fans, they will remember you in a much more positive manner because of it.
Your turn: Feel free to add something to this article, and I
look forward to your suggestion on how brands and individuals can maximize
their social media effectiveness as well!
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