How To Make Your Facebook News Feed More Relevant

About every four to five months I notice that my personal Facebooknews feed is rather noisy. There are posts from people I don’t really know, few from those I really do and a handful of posts that are connected to my friends, but aren’t really posts they wrote or have anything to do with other than liking them. When that more-noise-than-signal problem arises, I typically cull my friend list.

Now, this is quite hypocritical of me in many ways. I’ve always been rather open with my social connections, even on Facebook. I mean, I have more than one friend on Facebook named after a weather condition, which is technically against my religion. Heh. I reserve Path for close friends and private conversations — we all need a place to bitch about family and co-workers — so I’m far more liberal with connections on the largest social network than others.

But there is great wisdom to be gleaned from weeding the friend garden, too. You can infer how Facebook decides what appears in  your stream. You can check with connections you haven’t heard from before to see if they’re now seeing you more or less — I suspect my friend count affects how they might see my content — and more.

As I sifted through Facebook friends this morning, I decided I would share my approach to culling your friends list. My hope is that you can use it to make  your Facebook news feed more relevant and that you’ll spot the fakes in the list:

Here’s my thought process reviewing my friends:

• If I cannot immediately remember who they are, where we met or how we’re connected, they’re gone.
• If I am unsure, I will see how many mutual friends we share. If it’s more than 75 or so, they can probably stay.
• If it is less than 75 or so, I will click through to their bio page and make sure they’re not a friend from school who has changed their name (marriage or witness protection) and that they do not appear to be a serial killer. If they are then familiar to me, or have killed two or fewer people in their lifetime, they can stay.
• Anyone whose profile picture contains more cleavage than shirt has to go. Nothing good will come of this connection.
• Anyone whose name is “Michael” but is spelled with Ks, Ys or extra Es … gone.
• Anyone whose profile picture is them holding their crotch or pointing directly at the camera — gone. If they’re doing both, that’s talent. They can stay.
• Anyone who has a picture of bourbon, is sipping a cocktail or mentions either in their short bio paragraph stays, but is immediately routed to my AA lead-gen list.
• If the person is from a foreign country and has not interacted with me or my content in the last six months, they can go.
• If I cannot pronounce their name, they probably fall under the first round of omissions, but they’re not likely to stay. Keep in mind this isn’t a racial or national origin thing. I have high school friends whose names I can’t pronounce. Example: Clintanya, who, fortunately for all of us, went by “Skeeter.”
• If they have a blue checkmark icon — meaning they have a “verified” account — they automatically go unless I decide I can tolerate their gratuitous ego. (That one is for Peter Shankman, Brian Carter, Robert Scoble and Jeremiah Owyang, whom I have on a special filtered list called “Douchebaggery Suspects.” And yes, they’ll see this. They have vanity search alerts set for their names. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have verified accounts. Heh.)

Keep in mind that about 1-2 percent of the people you unfriend are also ego-sensitive and have alerts and tools set up to tell them when someone unfriends them. You’ll get a note from them asking what they did to offend you. These people don’t realize your social feeds are for you, not them, and you are allowed to filter them however you like. They can follow your content without friending you. And Facebook friendship status has nothing to do with whether or not you like or value them as a person.

Do not re-friend these people. They are needy and will only constantly look to you for validation of their own lives or work, which you don’t have time to notice. If you do notice it, they won’t be that needy. Politely explain you’re conducting a timeline experiment and it’s only temporary. They’ll likely forget.

Try those filter parameters on for size and see if you don’t get a more satisfying Facebook experience. If you don’t, then go back and add all the ones with gratuitous cleavage or holding their crotches. That should fix it.

 Article Source http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/how-to-make-your-facebook-news-feed-more-relevant/

13 Trick Or Treat Rules For Social Marketers

First of all, I agree with Jason Falls that list posts are not the gold standard. However, sometimes the stars line up, and a list just pours out. So this list is the candy that I’m handing out this year, and I appreciate you stopping by the homestead! Since I’m a zombie this year, I’ll be needing your brains for the next few minutes, so hand them over, grab the closest wad of candy, and slow-walk with me through these 13 (insert spooky sound effect) rules of trick-or-treating/social marketing.

It’s okay to pretend, but be true to yourself

Yes, you are dressed up like a WWE superstar; no, you may not DDT your friends. Halloween is an excellent time to play and push some boundaries, but at the end of the day (night), authenticity is still the champion. In social, we often must – or just want to – pretend to be something we’re not. Be true to yourself, your brand, and what you stand for. Because the costume will come off, one way or another. And you really want to have something on underneath.

Have a plan

There are always more houses; there are always many, many more houses. Set the plan, stick to the plan, and execute the plan. There is a law of diminishing returns at play here, and those lights just over the hill might not be worth going for. As social marketers, we love-love-love shiny new lights (and they always seem to be just over the hill, don’t they?). If you decide to climb that just-one-more hill, you’ll absolutely see another one. And another. And another. Remember: your goal is traction, not distraction. Stick to the plan.

Pace yourself

It’s going to be a rough November 1^st if you eat every piece of your candy on October 31^st. Since you’ve been sneaking candy for the past week, you can feel the storm coming. There is a constant temptation for binging in social when the idea, campaign, or creativity hits: create all the stuff, curate all the stuff, post all the stuff. Just remember that whatever engine you start must be maintained, and it’s awful hard to nurture once you’ve run out of juice (Yes, my costume is mixed metaphors this year). Feel your excitement, embrace the adrenaline, but pace yourself. It’s a very, very long way to a finish line. And that candy has to last you 364 more days.

Hit the easy houses first

Every neighborhood has those houses that are must-visits, whether it’s because of the amount of giving or the quality of treats. Every kid knows to hit those homes early. Consider these marks the low-hanging fruit; too often, brands completely overlook them. Hitting up the hard or obscure houses might be a nice mini-hipster challenge, but, at the end of the night, your haul isn’t defined by cool, but by effectiveness. Shoot for the challenge later, but focus on your loyal core first; oftentimes, they are the ones most excited about what’s going on. Don’t sleep on quick wins, and they won’t sleep on you.

Skip the dark houses

It’s an unwritten courtesy rule on Halloween: if the lights are on, the house is fair game; if the lights are off, move along. Consider the lights-policy an opt-in trigger. In social, we are very familiar with opt-ins; we live and die by them. However, many in our audience (those who at one point opted in) are now living in dark houses. Skip them. Have the maximum impact with those who are lit up, and you will see the lights come back on around them. Ultimately, that’s more candy for you, and I know you want more candy.

Don’t talk to strangers

Sure, technically knocking at the door of an unknown house already breaks this rule, but what I teach my kids is a quick “trick-or-treat”, a thank you, and on to the next house. No lingering. October 31st is a bit of an exception, but in life, and in social, it’s a good idea to ignore the strangers. Back in 2010, Josh Galt put this into my head (based off of a Seth Godin post), and it’s been a tactic that I have discussed with most of my clients. Trying to find and converse with strangers is a bad idea if it comes at the expense of your loyal core base. Know your audience, converse with your audience, nurture your audience, and the strangers won’t be strangers for long.

Check your candy

I’m not overly concerned about razorblades in the neighborhood candy, but there is still a wisdom to giving the loot a solid once-over. And as content-curators, we need to do the same. The web is awash with fake news sites, parody pages, and rumor networks, and their viability is directly tied to duping you. Before you click to tweet some sweet link, check that candy out. It just might be sour.

Don’t go rogue

In my neighborhood, we trick-or-treat in groups. But every year, there are runners. These rogue kids (yes, mine have been among them) are cause for much hollering, flashlight sweeping, and stern reminders throughout the night. I usually don’t mind delivering the sternness, but it just feels wrong to reprimand a princess, pirate, or Peppa Pig. Similarly, it is always awkward to watch a brand, which is not a real person, have to apologize like a real person. Remind yourself that, though social can feel very much like an out-of-control party, you still must live with the consequences. Stick with the group, don’t run off on your own, and always have a contingency plan. Going rogue is only one small step from getting lost. And you don’t want to be lost on Halloween (insert another spooky sound effect).

Play by the rules

If the bowl on the front porch says to please only take one candy bar, then just take one candy bar. Why? Because you don’t really need two (or five) (or seven). There are etiquette rules on Halloween; there is trust out there in the streets. Sure, the temptation is present to cross the boundaries, but, in the end, social is not a zero-sum game. The candy bowl is big enough for us all. Treat your network with respect and dignity, and don’t violate trust just for a blip on your analytics report. Honest candy is the most valuable candy, and penny candy is cheap. Don’t be penny candy.

Measure your results

If you really want to master the trick-or-treating game, measurement is key. That might sound a bit hardcore, but knowing optimal start times, routes, preferred costumes, ideal group size, etc. can create efficiencies and increase your ROI exponentially. Now, I’m not suggesting that you ditch the slow walkers or tailor your makeup per house…but I guess that depends on your ultimate objective. In social, segmenting your audience, setting baselines, and establishing measurement around performance is the only way to truly show the impact social has in the customer journey (watch this blog for much more detailed information on this in the near future; it’s really good stuff). Sure, Halloween is a night just for fun and games, but social marketing is not. If you don’t want ghost stories told about your brand, fix your data problems and start measuring social marketing effectively. (Incidentally, SME Digital can totally help you with this; investigate more here.)

Be thankful

Be genuinely thankful to those giving to you. There is no better time than Halloween to practice appreciation, and there is no better channel than social to do the same. Be supremely thankful to anyone who answers the door, opts in, and extends their hand.

Be generous

Be generous. Always. Enough said.

Be safe

It’s a crazy world out there. My hope for you is safety, offline and online, always. Social is a year-round trick-or-treat bonanza. Embrace the fun, the spirit, and the playfulness. Don’t play it safe, but always be safe.

Turns out, I’m a nice zombie this year. So I’m giving your brains back. Use them to add to this list, ask any questions, or share a scary story. The comments section is yours for the taking, tricking, or treating.

 Article Source      http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/13-trick-or-treat-rules-for-social-marketers/

How To Make The Perfect Social Media Quiz

Quizzes are the fastest growing form of content. On Interact alone, more than 3000 quizzes have been created in the last few are the fastest growing form of content. On Interact alone, more than 3000 quizzes have been created in the last few months. Perhaps not surprisingly, the top 10% of those quizzes receive 90% of the traffic.

In an attempt to figure out what distinguishes a good quiz from a “bad” quiz (that gets very few views), we put together a huge excel file of quizzes made using Interact and ran some statistics to discover what sets the high traffic quizzes apart from the rest.

Here’s what we found:

There are five attributes of a “perfect” quiz

1. A title that sticks out on social media
2. A cover image “hook”
3. Conversational quiz questions
4. Uplifting and actionable results
5. A plan for sharing

Now let’s dive in and look at how to accomplish each element.

STEP 1: HOW TO WRITE A TITLE THAT STANDS OUT IN A SEA OF SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

Every single day we produce more content on Facebook than is contained in every single book published since the beginning of time. How in the world does one get noticed in that mess? Here are three ways.

1. The Celebrity Comparison title: Like it or not, we all live in a world that is infatuated with celebrities. We like celebrities in part because we see a reflection of ourselves in these famous people who live lavish lives.

That’s why the celebrity comparison quiz is a natural fit, and it turns out that quizzes with the word “celebrity” in their title average a much higher view count than those without.

The graph above is compiled from a cross-section of 1400 quizzes published on a variety of sites. We didn’t discriminate on which quizzes were included, meaning that there is only a correlation between the celebrity title and more views. I can’t guarantee you that adding that one word will get you 5000 views, but it sure does help.

2. The “Which (blank) are you?” title: This is the one that rekindled our most recent flare-up of internet quizzes. “Which City Should You Actually Live in?” has received over 40 million views on Buzzfeed and has been successfully replicated to the tune of millions of visits many times over.

The beauty of this title template is that it works for virtually any subject or industry, all the way from cake to baby sitters.

3. The “Actually” title: “Do you actually know how to swim?” this quiz type begins life as a simple knowledge assessment, but then morphs into a challenge when you add the word actually.

The Red Cross recently ran a quiz titled “Do you actually know how to swim?” that was provocative and eye-opening. It ended up seeing thousands of views and sparked long debates on Facebook, raising awareness for the important issue of water safety.

STEP 2: ADD AN IMAGE COVER THAT HOOKS PEOPLE’S ATTENTION.

If the blog post has a one sentence hook designed to keep a readers’ attention, the quiz has the cover photo. The way quizzes are displayed, the cover photo takes up 80% of the space. This is primarily because visual assets perform much better on social media, and it means your cover photo is prime real estate.

To discover what kind of cover image works best, we started with the hunch that pictures of people would get more hits than those without people. This is based on that fact that our brains are wired to look for faces.

We ran a test on 32 Buzzfeed quizzes to see what kind of an impact faces in cover photos would have.

The winner was one face, or one person, but having more people doesn’t seem to hurt too much. This makes intuitive sense, if you think about the types of posts that show up on your Facebook feed and are popular; pictures of your friends probably come to mind more than sceneries or nature photos.

One last note on the cover photo, make sure the image is relevant to the quiz. Your ultimate goal is to get people to finish your quiz and continue engaging with your content, it does no good to have a catchy photo but then let your visitors down with a quiz that has nothing to do with the picture.

STEP 3: WRITE QUIZ QUESTIONS THAT STRIKE UP A CONVERSATION

The biggest thing that sets quizzes apart from most other forms of content is the ability for content creator to speak directly with content consumer. Instead of writing an article designed to be read by hundreds or thousands of people, quizzes are written to speak directly to one person at a time. This presents an opportunity to create a connection with quiz takers so it’s easier to present offers later on.

To find out how to make the most of this opportunity, we analyzed over 10,000 quiz questions from 1,400 unique quizzes, here’s what we found.

First, speaking like a normal human makes a huge difference. It might sound stupid to say this, of course we speak like humans when we write content – we are human after all. However, what I mean is that you should speak like you would to a friend. In our normal conversations with people we know, a full 60% of what we say is about ourselves (we are all a bit narcissistic). That means we use words like “I, we and you” a lot.

To see what kind of an effect speaking like we normally do can have on quiz views, we compared quiz views to the number of instances of personal pronouns like I, we, and you.

Turns out it really does matter how “normal” our conversations are. Now this is again a correlation, I’m not saying that using personal pronouns in abundance will automatically get you a ton of views.

Second, on a less quantitative note, we discovered that the very best quizzes all take on their own voice or personality. Almost like a goofy friend or an acquaintance that has a unique form of dry humor, these quizzes really draw you in with their wit.

STEP 4: CREATE RESULTS THAT ARE POSITIVE AND LEAD TO SOMETHING MORE

We share things on social media that make us look good. You don’t post pictures of your failed attempt to make spaghetti; you post pictures of latte art from your favorite coffee shop. The same applies to quiz results. If you tell people they are awful, no one will share, but if you tell them they rock, you will get shared.

To test this hypothesis, we analyzed 2000 tweets that came from Interact quiz results to see how many of those tweets contained one of our list of positive trigger words.

Turns out nearly all of the tweets contain some sort of positive word. Now the risk here is lying. You never want to tell people they are great just for the sake of buttering them up. Focus on the actual positive elements of each quiz result and stay honest.

The second part of a great quiz result is to have a follow-up item. When you show people their quiz results, you have their full captive attention. You’ve just made an assessment about their life based on the answers to personal questions, and the quiz taker is all ears.

This is the perfect time to include a personalized follow up link or opportunity to get in contact. A great example of this comes from Forbes, who made a college quiz that helps prospective find the best category of college based on their personality.

In each result there is a link to check out the Forbes College Adviser that is personalized based on each quiz result. Personalization can have a huge effect on visit duration and even purchases (one study showed a 300% increase in sales), so it’s very important to offer up personalized content at the end of your quiz, be it another article, tool, or a product.

STEP 5: HAVE A PLAN FOR SHARING

If you write a good quiz, it will get shared. That means you need to be ready for sharing so that when your quiz results do show up on social feeds they look good.

There is a formula for how quiz results get shared, it goes like this. “I got (my result)(title of the quiz)” so for example “I got Chocolate – what type of cake are you?”

Make sure every quiz result title aligns well with the title of your quiz to maximize the amplification potential of social shares.

Conclusion

With any growing market there’s opportunity for savvy businesses to grow their company. Quizzes are that growing market right now – and you can get involved. Just be sure to follow some basic principles and be yourself and your quiz will be just fine. Get started by making one of your own and feel free to discuss successes or failure in the comments below.

Article Source http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/how-to-make-the-perfect-social-media-quiz/

Planning your Online Marketing Strategies through Social Media listening tools

Social Media Tips #3 | How To Use Google Plus For Business SEO| Social Networking Marketing Tricks

What can marketers learn from Facebook’s Audience Insights?

The value of social has always been reaching consumers in a unique environment where they are deeply engaged and generating a meaningful conversation between those engagers and a brand. To do this well, we have to deeply understand the passions, preferences and interests of the brand’s audience and how these affinities relate to the brand itself.

Major opportunity lies in making sense of the social data created by the billions of consumers who willingly broadcast their affinities and brand connections daily across social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.  These social channels account for the planet’s largest and least biased focus group ever created. Affinity data holds the secret to how consumers want to be engaged, leading not only to better social media marketing, but a more engaged consumer across all channels.

A Giant Affirms Affinity

It is in this vein of thinking that Facebook recently launched its Audience Insights tool for advertisers, which was “designed to help marketers learn more about their target audiences.” To see the largest player in social bring forward a product aimed at better harnessing social media audience data is exciting and reaffirms what my company has already found to be true: social data, when harnessed correctly, is the most valuable source for consumer insight across any channel.

So, what can Audience Insights help marketers learn? Some highlights include:

• Understanding what demographic traits index highest for your page audience vs. the entire Facebook population
• Identifying the other pages liked most often by the audience that has liked your page
• Viewing the Personicx lifestyle categories that index highest for your brand page audience

General feedback on Audience Insights seems positive, and shows the hunger for a better understanding of what social data tells brands about their customers.

Next Steps

Facebook Audience Insights is a great first step for brands who want to understand their customers better through social data.  Social intelligence tools exist today that allow brands to take an even greater step forward in their social data strategy by adding value in five key areas:

1. Data Scope: Facebook is a large slice of the social media pie, but it isn’t the whole thing.  In order to have the most accurate picture of your customers, you need to look at the data they are generating across multiple social networks while being able to differentiate the affinity connections to your brand within each social network separately.  This latter part becomes increasingly important when using the data to better target marketing within each social network.
2. Data Depth:  It’s becoming more important that you look for and work with platforms that are founded in data science. “Page likes” are a weak signal for predicting future engagement and action.  People who have actively engaged with a brand socially via sharing, commenting, retweeting etc. are the best predictor for future social action and lead to the highest ROI. If a platform provider is offering you page likes in their affinity lift scores, ask for more specifics around what other metrics they employ to prove that lift.
3. Action: Data without action is like a light bulb with no switch –completely useless.  Search out a platform that identifies a brand’s top affinities and easily applies those targets to social ads across Facebook and Twitter in minutes, leading to more effective social media targeting and campaign results.
4. Competition: It’s great to understand how your brand’s affinities compare to the general population, but it is even more powerful to know how they compare to your competitors.  By better understanding the motivations of your competitors’ most engaged customers, you can more effectively grow your own audience and increase category market share.
5. Offline application: Social media has become an always-on companion that mirrors offline media consumption, especially in TV.  A huge opportunity exists in utilizing social affinity data to better understand the strongest connections between your brand’s audience and specific TV elements (shows, networks, genres, actors). Using this data allows advertisers to make smarter offline media buying choices while strengthening their social buys via alignment based on brand affinity.

The market is just scratching the surface of using social data for more effective brand advertising within social media and across offline channels.  Facebook’s new Audience Insights tool offers a great first step toward this opportunity, but more work needs to be done and platform providers are available today that can help. Look for partners that canshowcase the additional scope, depth, action, competition, and offline application and you’ll be prepared to take advantage of the power social data can bring to your marketing activities.

Grant Parker is the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at 4C. 4C is powered by over 27 years of university research in big data science and predictive algorithms to help companies understand and use social data and connections. Grant’s previous experience includes positions with Ziff Davis, inPowered, NetShelter Technology Media and Resolution Media. Learn more at http://4cinsights.com/. 

Article Source http://www.insidefacebook.com/2014/09/11/what-can-marketers-learn-from-facebooks-audience-insights/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InsideFacebook+%28Inside+Facebook%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Social Media Marketing Plan 2014-2015

Digital and Social Media Marketing Trends - 2014 and beyond

Using Social Media as a Marketing Tool

Social Media Marketing Facebook Tutorial Part 2

Social Media Marketing - WordPress Tutorial

Social Media Marketing in 3 minutes

Building Your Action Plan for Social Media Marketing

6 Backstage Social Media Platforms Every Marketer Should Be Using

By now, most marketers understand the importance of social media marketing; not only is it an inexpensive way to build a following and promote your brand’s content, but participation in social media could also become a major factor in the ranking algorithm for search engines like Google. If you’re like most marketers, you’ve focused on the “big three”: Facebook for the biggest audience, Twitter for the fastest updates and public profiles, and LinkedIn for the B2B business professionals.

In addition to the big three, there are a number of other social platforms that have gotten attention: YouTube is the biggest and most popular platform for any video-based marketing, and Google+ is used often because—let’s face it—it’s a Google product, and they reward its users with better rankings according to correlation studies by Moz and SearchMetrics. But there are countless platforms beyond the most popular options, with hundreds of millions of users between them, that most marketers aren’t taking advantage of yet.

Let’s take a look at some of the powerful social media platforms you can use for your brand beyond the major players:

 1.Pinterest. As I wrote in The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014, the popularity of image-based platforms is on the rise, and Pinterest is one of the best and most popular image-based platforms around. Pinterest’s format allows viral content to spread quickly, since its share feature “re-pinning” encourages fast travel from user to user, and there are no signs of the social powerhouse’s momentum slowing down anytime soon.

If your business has products that can be shown off with well-taken photos, Pinterest is perfect for you. Create boards revolving around your main product categories and promote your material in new, creative, or artistic ways. You can also create infographics or share pictures of your company if you don’t have tangible products in your business model. No matter what you do, keep your brand voice consistent andwork Pinterest into a rhythm with your other social media profiles by cross-posting your images. The more consistent you are and the more visually appealing your images are, the better you’ll fare.

2. Instagram. Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms around, with 200 million active users and an average of 60 million photos shared every day. Since Instagram is mostly populated with individual users sharing photos with their close friends and family, marketers have overlooked it as a viable social media option. However, the sheer number of users alone makes it worth exploring.

Create an Instagram account for your business and connect it to your company’s Facebook and/or Twitter account. Instead of using the Pinterest strategy of showcasing highlights of your products and services, use Instagram to demonstrate the personal side of your brand. Take pictures of your office and coworkers, and of any events you are attending. Use hashtags wherever it’s appropriate (just don’t overdo it) and engage with other users on a regular basis by commenting on their photos and responding to their comments on yours.

3. Tumblr. With over 130 million blogs, Tumblr is a blogging powerhouse, yet it’s still overlooked by most marketers. Tumblr used to be a semi-underground refuge for teens and young adults looking for a new way to express themselves, but since Yahoo purchased the platform for $1.1 billion in 2003, its “hotness” factor has started to wane.

That doesn’t mean it’s no longer useful. Think of Tumblr as a social version of a traditional blog. It’s a new outlet for you to publish and distribute your content, and since other users can connect to your blog with ease, it’s easier to build long-term connections. The best way to use Tumblr is as a niche division of your brand—for example, Target uses Tumblr to advertise and promote different fashions associated with the brand. Tumblr users do tend to prefer images and videos over written content, but it’s a good idea to use both if you want to attract the largest possible audience.

4. Sulia. Sulia is a relatively new platform that’s attempting to segment and filter the endless stream of content that social media users tolerate. Twitter feeds and Facebook feeds in particular tend to be filled with unnecessary updates and pooled results, forcing users to embark on a hunt to find the content that’s relevant to them. Twitter lists attempt to control this by allowing users to segment who they follow, but Sulia is an entire platform dedicated to a more refined experience.

Sulia is a content platform like a communal blog, but it allows users to categorize their content and search based on user-tailored “suggested posts” and posts that are trending within the community. With Sulia, you can write to a focused section of your audience and build a more relevant readership. You might get fewer readers with Sulia compared to a mainstream publisher, but the types of readers you get will be more relevant for your brand and therefore, will be more likely to convert.

5. Bubblews. If nothing else, Bubblews is a great business idea. Instead of posting all its own content or relying on its users to generate free content it can leverage, Bubblews shares all its ad revenue with its contributors. Right now, there aren’t that many people using Bubblews, so the revenue being shared is miniscule and the readership is limited. However, as it grows, there is a key opportunity for brand promotion.

Think of Bubblews as a guest blogging platform that can generate a separate stream of revenue. Write, post, and syndicate your content regularly on Bubblews and you’ll get the benefits of greater visibility and more possibilities for links and external brand mentions. Plus, if your content is catchy and starts to become popular, you’ll receive a share of all the ad revenue it helps to generate. Again, right now you can’t count on much revenue to come in, but over time, Bubblews could evolve to become a formidable platform in the social media world.

6. Snapchat. Snapchat started back in 2011, but because it’s been used mostly for personal exchanges, it’s slipped by the eyes of most marketers. However, as I mentioned in my article Your Guide to Using Snapchat for Marketing, about 400 million snaps are sent each day by about 26 million users in the United States. Pictures and videos sent via this app are self-destructing as a privacy measure. That means your target audience will only have a few seconds to read and remember your message. In a way, that’s advantageous considering the painfully low attention span of your average user—it’s a way of almost guaranteeing their attention for those few seconds. But at the same time, you need to compress your messaging to ensure it is memorable.

Compared to other image-based apps, Snapchat is somewhat less efficient. It takes more time to follow and get to know your potential users, and it takes significant effort to create an image or message that will only last for a few seconds. Still, it’s worth considering as part of your broader strategy.

You certainly don’t need a presence on every one of these platforms in order to run a successful social media campaign, but if you want the most relevant audience and the best potential results, it’s important to think outside the “Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn” box.

ArticleSource  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/26/6-backstage-social-media-platforms-every-marketer-should-be-using/

10 Social Media Marketing Tips for beginners

What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is the process of building awareness about you, your products or services through the various social media channels. The ultimate goal of any social media marketing campaign is to drive traffic to a website, increase the visibility of a product, gain more social media followers or find more customers.

The most popular social media networks today are: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr and Linkedin.

Why is social media marketing important?

Social Media marketing is important because:

• It’s the fastest way to spread the word about a new product, service or news item – A tweet can go rival in minutes and spread a message around the Word faster than TV or other traditional media
• It’s a trend – Millions of people spend a good amount of their time on social media networks so if you ‘need them’ you know where to find them
• It’s the new marketing – Back in the old days marketers found out that many people spend time in their cars driving so they thought of the billboards on the roads. Today people are spending time on social media so as a marketer you have to start thinking this way too.
• It’s the new influencer – more and more studies indicate that social media is turning into business as well with more companies stating that they have found customers from Facebook or Twitter.

Social Media Marketing tips for beginners

How can you take advantage of social media? How can beginners build a proper social media presence fast? Read and follow our 10 tips below and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest!

1. Decide which social media platform(s) to use

As a beginner to social media you have to choose one or two social media platforms and concentrate on those rather than trying to work on all platforms at the same time. This is a mistake that many beginners do and at the end they quit without having any benefit.

A nice way to find out which platform is best suited to your niche is to find the influencers and analyse where they have success. For example find out the leaders in your niche and check out the number of Facebook fans, twitter followers, Google+ followers, Pinterest followers etc.

If they have 100,000 Facebook fans but only 10,000 twitter followers then this is a good indication that FB is more suitable for your niche than twitter. It is also a sign that you are more likely to have success with FB than twitter so you can use your time more efficiently and engage more on FB rather than any other platform.

2. Optimize your social media profiles

Once you decide which social media tools you will use (at least for the beginning), the next step is to optimise your profiles on those sites. By optimizing your profiles you increase your chances of getting more followers and it is also a good way to boost your SEO efforts.

Some general rules that apply to all sites are:

• Use a real photo, showing your face – avoid using animals, places or anything that is not real. Social media is about connecting people and if you want to have a trusted profile you need to get out of your cage and put your face on the web!
• Write a good description about yourself or your company – What is your background or expertise? What are you proud off? Mention this is your profile.
• Give an indication to users what type of info you will share – Although this is not necessary, I like to read in profiles what kind of info to expect from the particular person.  For example in my twitter profile I wrote: “..tweeting SEO, social media, internet marketing tips and advice”.
• Include a link to your website (where applicable) – On Facebook include a link in the ‘About section’, on Twitter and Pinterest in the ‘Web site Section’, on Google+ in the ‘Contributor to’ section. In other words, do use your social media profiles for SEO purposes as well.

I suggest you read SEO boost your social media profiles article which includes more examples and instructions on what you have to do to each social media site for more exposure.

3. Connect your website or blog with your social media pages

After you have your social media profiles ready the next step is to connect your website with your social media pages. There is a certain procedure to follow for each platform and it is very important that you do it correctly.

A correct binding between the two means that search engines and social media websites know which website corresponds to which social media page. For example when I created the Google+ page for reliablesoft.net, Google+ did not know that this was the official page of the site until I have added the publisher verification code on my site.

• For Facebook you can follow these instructions
• For Google+ you can read this
• For Pinterest you can verify your website using this procedure
• For twitter you follow this

4. Add social media buttons on your website

Besides connecting your website with the respective business pages on social media, you also need to add social media buttons on your website so that readers can easily share your content.

Depending on the platform there are many ways and plugins to do that, I suggest you search Google using “how to add social media buttons to xxxxxx” – replace xxxxx with the platform your website is based. For example if you are using wordpress search google for “how to add social media buttons to wordpress”.

As a general rule of thumb, keep the buttons above the fold to increase exposure and have in mind that larger buttons get more clicks than smaller buttons.

5. Find and follow the influencers in your niche

So far we have selected the most appropriate social media tools for our niche, optimized our social media profiles, connected our website with the social media pages and added the buttons on our pages for more interaction. The next obvious step is to find people to follow but most importantly to gradually build our tribe of followers.

I would say that there are 5 basic steps to follow to get more followers and these are described in points 6-10 below. Before getting into that, you should first find and follow the influencers in your niche.

It is almost certain that they will not follow you back because you have a new account with no followers but doing so is important for 3 reasons:

1. Social media platforms will use this information to make suggestions on who to follow so by following popular people in your niche is like telling them that you are also in that niche.
2.  When you follow popular people who are likely to get followed by others as well. A trick many people use is to follow the followers of a popular person because they know that some will follow them back as well.
3. They will most probably share important and useful information about the niche so you have a chance to learn something new and re-share that with your followers.

6. Keep a balance between following and followers

Once you start following people you should always have in mind that it’s better to keep a balance between the number of people you follow and the number of people they follow you back. This is important especially in Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest and the reasons are a lot:

• Software applications are using this ratio (followers/following) to make suggestions on ‘who to follow’ so if you have a very high ratio you minimize your chances of getting new quality followers.
• It is a matter of trust – Who do you think has a trusted profile: someone with 1000 followers but following 2500 or someone with 550 followers that follows 510?
• A balanced profile is better for SEO – SEO’s have been talking the last couple of months about the importance of social media for SEO and how things are changing and although it is not yet confirmed, it is more likely that people with strong social media profiles are in better position that those with weak profiles.

A strong profile in this case is someone that has more followers than following and someone that is followed by people who are considered influencers in the niche.

7.  Share interesting content (text, images, videos)

This is the foundation for having a successful social media marketing campaign. When we talk about publishing content we always say that ‘content is king’ and this true in social media as well. If you share interesting and useful content you can get more re-shares, more visitors to your website and under some conditions more customers as well.

What is interesting content? From my experience (and certain studies) this is a combination off:

• Articles/Stories/Pages related to your niche but not only from your own website.
• Interesting statistics about your niche
• Motivational Quotes related to your niche or otherwise
• Research studies
• Images and Videos
• Funny stuff- whatever your niche, you can share once in a while a joke, a funny image or video to make your followers smile.
• Don’t forget about hashtags – hashtags (#) can make your content more searchable so don’t forget to use hashtags in the networks that support it (Twitter, Google+).

8. Post many times per day but don’t overdo it

A common question by people who are just beginning on social media is “how many times should I post per day?” The answer depends on the network. There are many studies analysing the effect of posting frequency and some best practices are:

• Facebook personal page – As many times as you want
• Facebook business page – No more than 1-2 times per day and no more than 7 times per week. There are studies that support this guideline.
• Twitter – The more you tweet the more exposure you get.
• Google+ Business page and Google+ profile page – as many times as you want but don’t overdo it because this may create the opposite results.
• Pinterest – a few times per day is enough

9. Don’t forget to follow back

Most people concentrate on how to get new followers but they forget to follow back those who have already followed them. Every day you should create the habit of viewing the people who are already following you and decide who to follow back. If you don’t do this on a regular basis then most likely some will un-follow you and this is why you may sometimes notice a decrease in the number of followers.

10. Follow the rules and be patient

Social media networks have rules to keep spammers away. For example there is a limit on twitter on the number of people you can follow per day; there is also a limit on Google+ on the number of people you can add/delete from your circles, Facebook has its own rules etc.

This means that it may take some time to build thousands of followers so you need to be patient and not try to rush into results either by breaking the rules (your account will be suspended) or by spending your money in ‘buying followers or tweets’ or anything similar.

Try to spend your time in creating a great social media profile that will stand over time and why not become one of the authoritative profiles in your niche.

Conclusion

When it comes to social media there are 2 important pillars. The first one has to do with the setup of your social media profiles and the second one is about usage i.e. how you use your social media account.

For the first pillar it is important to engage in the networks more suited to your niche and to have a proper connection between your social media pages and website. For the second pillar it is important to follow the right people, be followed by the right people and share relevant and interesting content always by adhering to the rules of the different social media networks.

https://www.reliablesoft.net/10-social-media-marketing-tips-for-beginners/

10 Social Media Marketing Tips for beginners by Alex Chris