Having a hard time figuring out how to make the major social networks work for you? Trust me, I understand! That is the reason why I invited some social media pros to share little-known tips on the blog.
Warning: Those tips are golden, so using them could propel your business to the next level…
Contents
Jan Gordon – “@CEO of Curatti – Publisher, #B2Bcontent, people and image curator, social media savvy – Content Writing Services”
Twitter handle: @janlgordon
Website: http://www.curatti.com/
“The potential of social media for your business is as unlimited as your imagination. Harnessing, the power of Facebook can help your business reach countless customers. However, few leverage all of Facebook’s tools as effectively as they should. Here is one are little-known tip for more-fully tapping the power of Facebook.
Customized Audiences: We’re all aware of how businesses use cookies to track customers. Now, Facebook has a newly developed feature, which allows you to create a customized audience based on visitor/user data from your blog, website, or mailing list. This tool can help you target your Facebook ads to audiences with an affinity for your products and services. Creating a customized audience is based on a simple but powerful idea. Businesses that connect with the right audiences see more traffic, higher conversion rates and much more bang for their advertisement dollars.”
Google+
Mandy Edwards – “Social Media Enthusiast & Marketer – ME Marketing Services. Wife. Mom of 2 girls. Author for steamfeed.com. #UGA alum & #SEC football fanatic.”
Twitter handle: @memktgservices
Website: http://www.memarketingservices.com/
“Google Plus is the diamond in the rough. Most cast it off as a failed platform, however, those of us who use it regularly know that’s not the case. Any person or business can leverage Google Plus for their business. It all starts with actually being active on it. Not a few-times-a-week active, I’m talking daily active. Posting regularly is a great place to start.
Not only should you post your own content, but +1, share and comment on other content. Google Plus is a great place to find great content – and most of it is through people sharing other people’s content.
Every time you post your content or share someone else’s you need to make sure the posts are formatted. Unlike the other platforms, Google Plus gives you the ability to bold your title or italicize your points. With the long-format post, which is very common among regular users, use the space to summarize your article and take advantage of formatting. Bullet point and bold your points. Italicize your title. Posts with formatting see more activity than those with just a title and a link – it just stands out more than other posts that do not use it. Trust me on this – or you can try for yourself and see.”
Jenn Herman – “Social Media & Instagram consultant & trainer. #8 Social Media Blog by Social Media Examiner. The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Instagram”
Twitter handle: @jenns_trends
Website: http://www.jennstrends.com
“Many businesses struggle with getting traffic from Instagram. But the traffic that comes from Instagram is typically higher quality than traffic from any other social media site! To make sure you’re getting the best results from Instagram, you need to make good use of traffic referrals.
Most importantly, the only clickable link on Instagram is in the profile bio. So make sure you have your website link listed there! It can be any link to your site – a lead page, a sales page, your blog page, or your home page. Just make it the most relevant page for traffic leads and where you want people to go. Also, because of a how traffic is directed from Instagram, traffic is considered direct, not referral so Google Analytics can’t track it. Therefore, I recommend you use a bit.ly or goo.gl link that allows you to track clicks so you can see what traffic you’re actually getting. Use this link ONLY on Instagram so that the click data is accurate to Instagram traffic. Finally, make sure you use clear calls-to-action in your post captions to direct people to click on the link in your bio!”
Mark Traphagen – “Social Media | Google+ | Content Marketing | Online Brand Building | Personal Brand Building | Sr. Director of Online Marketing”
Twitter handle: @marktraphagen
Website: http://www.stonetemple.com
“Since the LinkedIn Publisher platform puts the follow button above your posts, add a call to action at the end of each post that asks readers to scroll to the top and follow you so they will get your future content in their LinkedIn Pulse streams.
I found since I started doing that that my follower per post went up significantly. Of course, each follow gained increases the potential audience for your next post.”
Cormac Reynolds – “SEO, Content Marketer, iBeacon believer and Tiddlywinks Prodigy”
Twitter handle: @Brightoncormac
Website: http://myonlinemarketer.co.uk/
“As you may know, recently Pinterest began offering the option to directly message pins to people outside of the network. Hover over the image and the ‘Send’ button appears – here you can send a personal message. It allows you to send to people you follow, friends on other networks, and also to email.
We have used it for outreach, sending direct pin messages via email to influencers who may want to know about, try out or review our clients’ products. As sending Pinterest messages like this is relatively new and is so visually attractive, we’ve found that being able to do this has been of notable benefit and attracted influencers’ attention.”
Frithjof Petscheleit – “Business Consultant for digital media marketing integration. We are in the process of rebranding from @Tweet4ok – to BlueBird Business Consulting”
Twitter handle: @BlueBirdBC
Website: http://www.businessbluebird.com/
“Twitter makes up 80% of my social traffic followed by YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Despite the fact that I started using Twitter in 2009, @BlueBirdBC has only about 6000 followers. This is mainly due to the fact that I focus on a quality over quantity approach to growing my network. This network has come to appreciate that I share quality content and engage in conversation. Since I regularly share my own content along with others’, my content gets exposed and shared.
The Twitterverse is a different place today than years ago – you have to use different strategies to reach people. We have to share more quality content on all social media platforms especially Twitter and Facebook to reach the same effect.
After I posted an interview with Robert Caruso of @Bundlepost last year, I started using the Bundlepost tool to curate and post high quality content. Then use the time saved for person to person conversations on Twitter. I credit the continuous traffic from Twitter mainly to the fact that I share more, high quality content (including some of mine) every day.”
YouTube
Ileane Smith – “Blogger, Podcaster, YouTuber, Social Media Diva! aka @ileane Want traffic from Social Media? http://basicblogtips.com/social-media-traffic”
Twitter handle: @BasicBlogTips
Website: http://www.basicblogtips.com/
YouTube analytics is probably one of the most overlooked audience building tools by the vast majority of YouTubers today. There’s a ton of actionable data hiding in those reports. You can find everything from your traffic sources and the age of your viewers all the way to what keywords people are typing in search to find your YouTube videos. YouTube just released a brand new feature that shows real-time traffic reports in your desktop dashboard for your last 5 published videos. Those stats are great to have and it’s wonderful to see how your current promotions are going. But what if you have an older video or 2 that you want to track in real time?
“Here’s the tip – from your Analytics dashboard at the top right, you’ll see an option to create video Groups. Now just to be clear, your Groups are different from your playlists. They’re only visible to you and they are only used for tracking purposes. Create a Group with any combination of up to 5 of your older videos to see the real-time stats for those older more popular videos that have a lot of activity and watch the traffic roll in. Here’s a screenshot showing real-time stats from videos I published in 2013 and 2010.”
What are your best little-known tips to get traction on the major social networks? Share them in the comment section below.
