When you want advice about social media marketing, much of what’s on the Internet is the same:
Don’t follow everyone! Only choose the social sites where your audience hangs out! Share other people’s content!
I’m guilty of writing some of those posts myself. But I started thinking about the tactics I use that go beyond the basics. I’m a professional marketer, so I inherently know about a few strategies that perhaps the average
#1. Republish Your Posts on LinkedIn Pulse
Did you realize that in addition to being a social networking platform, LinkedIn is actually a huge blog platform too? If you haven’t checked out Pulse, now’s the time. Pulse is a sort of content aggregate. Any member who wants to publish content there can. And the really cool thing? Sometimes your article is picked up and promoted in Pulse’s newsletter and on Twitter! So publish really fantastic content there and cross your fingers.
Super Special Tip: It’s perfectly acceptable to republish existing content on Pulse. Here’s a neat trick: include 80% of the article, then put a link: “continue reading” that goes back to your website. Great traffic creator. Oh, and paste your bio at the end of the post. Don’t make people click to your LinkedIn profile to learn about you.
#2. Use Revive Old Post to Get Traffic to Older Content
There’s nothing sweeter than a free and uber-functional tool, is there? The WordPress plugin Revive Old Post automatically shares older content from your blog on your social profiles. You don’t have to lift a finger once you’ve set it up, and you’ll continually see a steady trickle of traffic to posts that you are no longer promoting. I constantly see people retweeting my older content, and it’s thanks to this tool.
Super Special Tip: I learned this one the hard way this week. Make sure you exclude posts that are time-sensitive (14 Christmas Ideas! What to Do in 2012!) otherwise they get shared and people will poke fun at them. (Trust me). You can search for posts with certain keywords and exclude them, or even exclude whole categories from your blog. I’m also going to stop putting the year in my post titles so they’ll stay evergreen.3. Use Crowdfire to Manage Your Followers
#3. Use Crowdfire to Manage Your Followers
I’m a queue cleaner. I hate having more than one video in my Netflix queue (yes, I have more than one, but it makes me itchy). I delete things I’m not using. So when I am following people who don’t follow me back, it seems like a waste. Enter Crowdfire. This nifty tool lets you see who’s not following you back, or even who hasn’t been active on Twitter for months, and you can unfollow them.
It just makes my stream feel cleaner. I don’t know why. But also, you can see who’s recently followed you and follow them back if they’re a good fit. You can search keywords to find new people to follow. You can even copy the followers of another user. It makes growing your social connections (and culling it, for that matter) a lot easier.
Super Special Tip: You’re limited to 25 followers a day with the free account. If you have time and energy to do more than that, I recommend upgrading to the $9.99 a month account, which offers unlimited followers. Just make sure you’re actually going to use it. I’d get into a rhythm of doing it every day, then I forgot, so I was paying for nothing.4. Leverage Hashtags on Instagram
I’ve been using Instagram for my travel writing business, and I’m always amazed how using hashtags will get me a ton of new followers. At my son’s Rubik’s Cube competition (yes, they still have those. He’s amazing.), I used #Rubik as a hashtag for my photo, and lo and behold: I gathered a gaggle of preteen followers. (Note to self: pay attention to what hashtag you use. Know your audience.) Don’t go crazy with the hashtags. It’s super annoying to see a post with 20 hashtags meant to just attract views. Be selective and deliberate. If you’re not sure if a hashtag is a good fit, go see what else is tagged.
Super Special Tip: I still haven’t cracked the code on getting ‘Grammers to click to my site, so for me, Instagram is a numbers game. I need to impress PR folks with my vast number of followers, so for me, it’s quantity over quality here. Though I’m still picky about who I follow. I want to see beautiful scenes of Thailand in my stream, not gym selfies.
If you’re already sharing content through social media, why wouldn’t you give kudos to the author? I go out of my way to scroll to the bottom of a post to see if I can locate the author’s Twitter ID. Sometimes I even Google their name + Twitter to find it. I’m committed. But the result is that the author knows I dig the article, and heck, maybe she’ll reciprocate down the road. It also tells the people who view my tweet who to check out.
Super Special Tip: Really want to get the author’s attention? Make a point or ask a question about the article to start a conversation about it.
#6. Learn to Scan Your Stream
This becomes more relevant the more followers you have. I have over 10,000 Twitter followers (woo hoo! Just 10 years of work. No big.), and let me tell you, my stream is loud. Even my mentions stream: because I write a lot, I have a lot of people sharing my content (good job! they read #5!). So I have to quickly scroll through to see if anyone is actually trying to engage in conversation with me. If I didn’t know how to do this quickly, it would eat my day up. So I’ve mastered the ability to quickly scan to see what’s not spam or a share.
Super Special Tip: If people are sharing your content, be sure to thank them for it. It’s just good manners.
I hope that some of these tips were new for you, and that you’ll use them to your benefit. The world of social media is constantly changing, so you’ve got to stay on top of strategies that work.
Images: ” Social media,social network concept. /Shutterstock.com“
____________________________________________________________________________
Tweak Your Biz is a thought leader global publication and online business community. Today, it is part of the Small Biz Trends stable of websites and receives over 300,000 unique views per month. Would you like to write for us?
An outstanding title can increase tweets, Facebook Likes, and visitor traffic by 50% or more. Generate great titles for your articles and blog posts with the Tweak Your Biz Title Generator.
