Social Media Marketing

Apr 02 2017

How to Generate a Better Response Rate on LinkedIN with Publishing Guidelines

LinkedIN is the leading Professional Social Network with over 400 million users. If you haven’t joined up yet with LinkedIN now would be a good time to do you if you are interested in generating new leads and relationships with social network marketing.

Joining LinkedIn is a free, although depending upon your needs, there are a series of valuable and affordable add ons and advertising options that might be useful. You can sign up here using your email or signup with your Facebook credentials.

Images

Rich media has proven to increase reader engagement by at least 2x. Images are much more likely to make readers click on your post; choose a strong image that represents the message of your post and put it at the top of your post. It’s best to avoid using images that contain a lot of text, i.e. Memes. A slogan or your corporate watermark is fine, but you really want the reader to actually read your post and get to your clickable Call to Action versus walking away thinking they got the “whole story” simply from the image. Here’s an article about places to find free images for your posts, social media and websites.

Headlines

Make sure headlines are clear and compelling. Choose clarity over cleverness.

Value of authenticity

Make sure that your posts are authentic, not simply sales copy or advertisements. This helps to creates human appeal and yields trust among readers overtime by positioning you as someone other than just a shameless self promoter.

Keys to authenticity

Have an opinion – whether you are writing a product review, an editorial about the economy or simply commenting about an industry trend, your opinion matters and your readers will continue to “tune in” to read your perspective, assuming that you aren’t wildly obscene or become known for factless blathering!
Use personal anecdotes – How to Win Friends and Influence People or Chicken Soup for the Soul – these are perfect examples of using personal anecdotes to add perspective and readability to your posts. Personal anecdotes add a human side to sometimes seemingly boring post topics. Customer success stories are another great example you can use, think “mini case studies”.
Create insights and share knowledge, tips, tricks and easily implementable strategies are a great way to build trust and continuity with your posts that keep your readers selecting your content to consume versus your competitors.
Set your post up with a clear intro, and explain your terms – don’t try to cover everything in one post, but also try to avoid drawn out “series” – example: if you have 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (sorry Paul Simon) put them all in one song, not across 10 songs on the album!
Steer clear of jargon and acronyms – especially in the technology and marketing worlds we love to shorten things to KPI, KEI, ROI, ANSI, LAMP, SSL, etc. Just because you know what the acronym stands for doesn’t mean your reader is always up to speed. Make sure to spell out and explain the acronym BEFORE you use it in your postings.
Write in a way that starts a conversation. Ask for comments and feedback to engage your audience, but make sure that you respond to these comments at least with a “thank you”.

These are just a few strategies you can deploy to improve the response rate and engagement of your LinkedIN posts. There are many more available, but these are the basics. Please comment and let us know of your strategies or tips on using LinkedIN.

Jan 11 2017

How to Use QUUU to Increase Your Social Media Followers and Engagements

Quuu is a relatively leading Hand Curated content suggestion system for social media. Essentially Quuu enhances what you’re currently doing in terms of posting valuable and engaging posts across your Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn through your Buffer Account (if you don’t have one you can set one up for free here).

Quuu works in two different ways.

Hand curated content for posting to your social media accounts to diversify the content for your audience. Part of your social media strategy should be to post relative and engaging content that ISN’T always about YOU or your company or your products/services. QUUU can help you save time and effort by providing these engaging and relative pieces of content for you. Not only does this help diversify your social content, but it helps to increase likes, retweets, followers, etc.

Here are the steps:

First you select the relevant categories that matter to you and your audience.
Quuu sends hand curated content from those interest categories to your Buffer.com account.
You can manually edit Quuu suggestions if you have time in Buffer or set them to automatically post throughout the day.

Quuu has two pricing levels:

FREE — Quuu will deliver up to 2 posts per day of hand curated content in up to 5 interest categories (you can earn more posts by referring friends).

$10 per month — Quuu will deliver up to 10 posts per day in unlimited interest categories and provide you with a Quuu Daily Email.

Promote Your Content – Quuu also offers you’re the opportunity to promote your content through their network. Keep in mind that since you expect high quality, engaging and relevant information from Quuu for your followers, there are standards and human editing/suggestions for the content that you submit for approval.

Quuu curated content currently has 48,000 daily shares, 1,400,000 shares per month, and 17,280,000 shares annually. Promoting your content through Quuu can be extremely effective, especially if you have great content. Pricing for Quuu Promote is straightforward and simple.

Reach 10,000 people $10

Reach 30,000 people $20

Reach 100,000 people $30

Quuu is an excellent enhancer for your social content marketing strategy, and with their FREE package you can’t go wrong for giving them a try. Again, it takes about 2-3 minutes to get set up. Have your social media logins handy to setup Buffer (or you can click to login with social media logins).

For more information visit http://quuu.com – they have excellent support and online chat to answer any of your questions.

Let us know what you think of Quuu or other content marketing strategies that are working for you using the comment box below.

Jun 04 2016

Instagram’s New Business Profiles and Your Radio Show

A few days ago Instagram announced their new BUSINESS TOOLS suite. #instagrambusiness

Soon businesses (and Radio Show Hosts!) will be able to upgrade their accounts to business profiles.. These profiles are different from the regular “bio” page in that they will offer features not available to regular Instagram users.

Posts will look essentially the same as traditional ones, but the BUSINESS profile page can include a contact button that lets potential customers or LISTENERS call, email, or text the business or your show, or pull up a map and directions to your location if you’re in the retail biz.

They’re also introducing a new tool called Insights which provides the user with analytis on how each one of your posts is performing (think Facebook Insights since it’s essentially the same thing).

All you need to get started is a Facebook page for your business. All you addresses and contact info can be transferred from Facebook–which owns Instagram–to the photo sharing app which is a nice time saver.

Instagram’s new Business Tools are great news for cash-strapped radio shows and startups looking to capitalize on their social-media followings. Up until now, the only way to guide followers away from Instagram to your site or show was by way of the single link allowed in your user bio. The new tools are going to being that “audience” one click closer to you!

Here’s the official blog post from Instagram, you should definitely check it out.

Instagram is a place where people can turn their passions into livelihoods. For instance, handmade accessory business JACKSON AND HYDE started an account a year and a half ago to raise awareness of its wares. “Instagram has been critical for brand exposure, dialogue with new and potential customers and being discovered by partners and retailers,” Genevieve Monroe, the CEO and co-Founder tells us. And other companies, like eCommerce business Caeden, are taking advantage of Instagram advertising to expand beyond their current following and find new customers.

With so many companies using Instagram, and many people on the platform interacting with them, there was a desire from our business community to do more. So we listened. And, after hundreds of interviews with businesses, three key needs became clear—stand out, get insights and find new customers.

First, businesses want the ability to stand out on Instagram. Many companies, including a furniture store in San Francisco, shared that it would be easier for customers to email questions because comments are hard to track and take time to sift through. Second, businesses want a simple way to get insights. A retailer in Austin explained that many analytics are overwhelming and hard to apply to its marketing. And third, businesses want to reach even more customers. A do-it-yourself craft shop in New York City mentioned it’s always looking for quick ways to fill seats in class.

With these insights in mind, we set out to make Instagram work even better for businesses. So today, we’re excited to unveil our new Instagram Business Tools.

Business profiles

Business profiles are a free feature for accounts wanting to be recognized as a business on Instagram. With a business profile, businesses can choose how they want their customers to get in touch with them: call, text or email with a tap of the contact button as well as get directions. Business profiles also unlock access to insights and the ability to promote.

Insights

Insights on Instagram give businesses actionable information about who their followers are and which posts resonate better than others—all from within the mobile app. By learning more about the behavior and demographics of your audience, you can create more relevant and timely content.

Promote

The ability to promote lets you turn well-performing posts into ads right within the app—helping you connect with even more customers. Simply pick a post you’ve already shared on Instagram and add a button encouraging people to take action. You can select a target audience or allow Instagram to suggest targeting for you. After that, your post will be promoted as an ad for any length of time you choose.

With these new business tools on Instagram, the furniture store in San Francisco can receive emails from customers saving valuable time responding. The retailer in Austin can better understand its audience, tailor its content and refine its marketing strategy—even beyond digital. And the do-it-yourself craft shop in New York City can quickly fill a seat, move a product or get people into its store with ads on mobile.

These business tools are just some of the ways we hope to make growing a business on Instagram that much easier. Business profiles, insights and the ability to promote will be rolling out in the US, Australia and New Zealand in the coming months, and will be available in all regions globally by the end of the year.

If you are currently using Instagram to promote your show or business you should jump all over these new tools, if you’re not leveraging Instagram yet, now would be a great time to start!