Tag Archive for: Social Platforms

How To Simplify Your Social Media Marketing Strategies

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Social media marketing strategies can get incredibly complicated. There always seems to be so much to do and so little time. However, there are ways to keep it simple once you know how. Here are 7 tips for simplifying, honing, and creating more effective social marketing.

1. Know your niche.

The niche research you did when you first started your business should have revealed your people’s interests, pain points, problems, and spending limits. If you’re not sure, do some research. Above all, find out where they spend their leisure time on the Internet and target those sites. There’s no point in banging away on any and every social network if the ideal customer in your niche isn’t hanging out there.

By the way, I talk about creating customer personas and lots of other cool Marketing Tips in my free eReport. To get it, simply enter your info below and it’ll be headed your way!

2. Brainstorm hot content.

Hot content is the kind of content that will appeal to those in your niche. As you do your niche research, you will probably see the same questions coming up repeatedly. Make a list of them and create content that answers these questions. Be sure to create paid products that do as well. Free products lead to paid products.

3. Leverage the content you create.

Make every piece of content you create work hard for you. One of the best ways to do it is to put it into more than one format. For example, your content could be an article, top-10 list, or a PowerPoint deck. Your deck could become a video on YouTube which you would then embed on your site. You could also share the deck at popular sharing sites like SlideShare, owned by LinkedIn, which has very convenient sharing buttons for all of the major social networks.

4. Create a publishing schedule.

Once you leverage your content, schedule it. You obviously can’t publish leveraged content on the same topic back to back, but you can use your blog scheduler to set the date and time in advance and, for example, publish one each month for several months.

Make video your priority, though, to build up a robust YouTube channel full of interesting content that will gain followers.

If you are working alone, create your own calendar and follow it. The plugin “Editorial Calendar for WordPress” is incredibly useful. If you are working in a team, set up a shared calendar to make sure something of value is being published regularly.

5. Use automated tools.

WordPress has a range of plugins that will create share buttons so people can just click to share on the social networks. In addition, they have plugins that will announce your new content on your social sites automatically, such as WordTwit for creating a link to your content on Twitter.

Then there are specific tools that will allow you to schedule posts in advance, such as Buffer, which will link with a number of different networks, and ViralWoot, which allows you to schedule Pinterest pins in advance. These tools have both free and paid levels, so you have nothing to lose by trying them out and seeing how useful they are. If they make your publishing on the social networks easier, the cost will more than pay for itself in terms of the amount of time you will save.

6. Make an appointment with social for 1 hour each day.

Social media can devour your time if you’re not careful (ask me how I know), so block out 2 appointments of 30 minutes each, morning and evening, so you minimize the danger of getting distracted and wasting hours wandering around in an unfocused manner.

7. Outsource

Once you get things organized, outsource the work to a reliable virtual assistant. Idea: Draft in your teen or neighbor and free up your time to build your business in other ways.

Don’t have time to do your own marketing? Are you a service business that would rather focus on your business and your existing customers and have someone else handle bringing in new customers? Then we’d love to talk with you about partnering to reach your goals.

Why Endorsements, Skills, and Recommendations Matter on LinkedIn

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Many LinkedIn users that I’ve seen have great profiles. The exceptions? Profiles that are weak in endorsements, recommendations, or skills. Often all three.

It’s like these three are the stepchildren of the various fields that make up a complete LinkedIn profile. Here’s why you don’t want to ignore these all-important parts of your LinkedIn profile.

Look at it this way. When’s the last time you bought something that cost more than a few dollars? Being an Internet-savvy person, what did you do? If you’re like most folks, you Googled whatever you bought first and read about what other people thought, right? Well, people do essentially the same thing on LinkedIn. We call this “social proof” in the marketing business. People are highly influenced by what other people think. Being endorsed is one of the ways of providing this social proof to people who visit your profile on LinkedIn.

Recommendations work much the same way. Have you ever asked a colleague about the car they just bought, the new restaurant they tried, or their dentist or doctor? For important purchases, finding the right product or the right service provider is often done through recommendations. Recommendations carry a huge amount of influence, and you should be asking the people you’re connected with, at least the ones you know well, to recommend you.

Finally, listing your skills matters a lot! Seeing a large list of skills along with the number of people who’ve endorsed you for them is a great way to position yourself as a professional. Not only that, but the selection of skills helps viewers get to know you. Both recruiters and people who are potential clients are going to scan these skills to help them understand who you are and what you bring to the party!

So don’t ignore these three important areas of your profile. Get the ball rolling by making sure you have your skills up there, then contact just one LinkedIn connection today about giving an endorsement or referral. Get your profile shining!

 

Three Mistakes You’re Making With Your LinkedIn Profile

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When it comes to marketing on LinkedIn, the #1 most important part of the process is getting your profile right. What I mean by that is:

1. You want your profile to be complete and
2. You especially want your profile to pre-sell you!

I see a lot of people’s profiles on LinkedIn that fail on one, or often both, of these points. So, let’s see what we can do about the three most common problems I often see and make your profile stand out.

Problem #1: Poor Profile Photo

LinkedIn is a business site! Unless you run a beach-side concession renting out umbrellas and surfboards, you don’t want your LinkedIn profile picture to be from your last vacation.

You know the one I’m talking about, right? Yep. The one where you’re wearing your multi-colored swimsuit, and you’re carrying around that boogie board you love so much.

Would you dress like that for a job interview? I don’t think so. (or I certainly hope not!)

You don’t need to spring for a professional headshot. Go dress up as you would for that job interview and get your significant other to take a well-lighted picture with your phone. That should do the job!

Problem #2: No Summary or Poor Summary

I see this all the time. People with otherwise great looking profiles, but their summary is either not there or it’s only one sentence long. That summary space has a 2,000-character limit. Use it all, or as close as you can!

Problem #3: No Recommendations

This one’s a little more problematic than the first two because you actually have to get someone else to do the recommending. But, here’s the deal. People are actually scrolling down and looking for those recommendations! You don’t need many. Two or three will do nicely. So do this if you don’t already have some: Ethically get some of your closer business associates to fill out a LinkedIn recommendation for you. You can either write it for them and they can copy and paste, or they can do it all themselves!

The bottom line is this: to be a success on LinkedIn, you need a full and complete profile. LinkedIn even prompts you for this, so if you haven’t filled out everything, you should know better! Stop what you’re doing right now and get that LinkedIn profile in tip-top shape. You’ll be glad you did!