PR WEDNESDAY: 5 Tips to Make Social Media Marketing Less Overwhelming

5 Promotion Platforms Marketers Should Be Using For Content Right Now

 

   

 

Good social media marketing requires experimentation with different platforms and features. Here are five underutilized sites to share your brand’s story. Most writers do the lion’s share of their personal marketing on Facebook and Twitter. Those platforms have the most users, so it makes sense to focus your efforts there, right? Not exactly. Facebook and Twitter shouldn’t be ignored, but there are a slew of other platforms that you can use effectively to reach more readers. Below we’ve collected five of our favorites:

1. LinkedIn

Unlike Facebook, relationships on LinkedIn are professional or industry-level contacts, like clients, coworkers. This ensures a smaller, but much more relevant audience for content marketing. For example, Scripted’s most currently trafficked posts receive significantly more LinkedIn shares than retweets or Google+ recommendations:

Relevant marketing communities to share content:

Related Resources from B2C
» Free Webcast: Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products

• B2B Content Marketers: 7,097 Members
• Search Engine Watch: 14,343 Members
• Content Marketing Group: 9,652 Members

2. Google+

The search giant continues to position Google+ as the spine to all of its other existing properties. That’s made the platform a critical tool for marketers. Google+ allows any writer or marketer to attach a profile their content with Google Authorship. This is immensely valuable for search engine optimization because it helps ensure your work ranks higher in search results. But out of all the tools that Google+ offers, communities might be the most important. Communities are collections of hundreds of thousands of users united by one single interest, such as weight loss, web development or travel. Anyone can join and post in a community and content writers get the benefit of exposing their work directly to a huge group of self-identified, like-minded readers. Relevant communities to share content:

• Social Media Marketing: 52,384 Members
• Internet Marketing: 24,196 Members
• SEO 101: 3,504 Members
• Technical SEO: 3241 Members

3. Pinterest Recommendations

Pinterest is far more than a picture-sharing website. Savvy companies have been using it to market their products for years. The power of Pinterest is found in its recommendation feature. If a user pins a picture, Pinterest will suggest that the user follow a board belonging to another who pinned the same thing. This leads potential readers to your work through association. To do: Create a board that features your area of expertise — e.g travel, politics or social media — and populate that board not only with your work, but with articles from other sources. This will expand the reach of your board and make it more likely that users will follow and re-pin your articles.

4. Instagram

Instagram doesn’t allow hyperlinked (clickable) URLs in photo descriptions, but there are still a lot of ways that writers can benefit from using this platform. Every marketer should have a link to a blog or website in his or her Instagram bio. The bio section does allow users to post clickable hyperlinks and provides you with the opportunity to write a brief description of your background and the topics you cover. Users will start to visit your profile page as you build your following. Instagram offers a great opportunity to direct them toward your work. You can use Instagram photos as an opportunity to share your expertise. Post a photo from your article and include one or two lines that summarize its point, along with relevant hashtags, and watch as like-minded people start to comment and re-gram your photo. Make sure to include a quick line noting that more photos can be found in the link in your profile.

5. Alltop

The creation of content guru and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, Alltop is a content aggregator designed to make it easier for readers to find the best websites and blogs. If you’re consistently putting out quality content on your own blog, you can submit it to be part of Alltop’s digital magazine rack. What makes Alltop so powerful is that its ranking system is not slavishly devoted to one algorithm or metric. In fact, Alltop’s , mission is to “help out underdogs and undiscovered gems.” That means that if you’re doing good work, Alltop may take notice and introduce it new readers. Relavent topics for marketing readers:

• Social Media Marketing
• Content Management
• Blogging
• SEO
• Goodtweet

Social media marketing is not as obvious as it looks. Rather than sticking to Facebook, Twitter or any of the above lesser-utilized platforms, experiment to see which matches your brand and audience best.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/5-promotion-platforms-marketers-using-content-right-now-01016538#bMqlvOY0WFm5klLs.99

How to Effectively Use Social Media for Blog Interaction?

 

Social media is something that every blog would require in order to grow their reader base.
With the ability to concentrate on a wide userbase and their problems, social media works like a magic wand. If this magical wand is used appropriately, it can make your blog readers stick with you for long.
Let’s see how you can effectively use social media such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter for blog interaction.

 Advantages of Using Social Media for Blog Interaction

There are three:

• Provides common interface to interact with various users through social media.
• Readers are actively using social media.
• It has the ability to bring in valuable readers.

How to Effectively Use Social Media for Blog Interaction?

Now, it’s time to talk about the strategies that you should follow in order to gain interaction from your followers.

Social Media to Increase Blog Traffic

1) Investment of Time in Social Media

Most of the readers are already active on social media and investing your time in the interaction with them would give beneficiary results.
Before investing your time, you must get some knowledge, do research and find out what are the techniques that are best suitable your blog. What are the ways that are making your blog interaction more productive? What is the time when you get most reactions/interaction from your readers?
These are the questions that you should ask yourself before investing your valuable time.
Once you’ve the answers to such questions, you yourself would be able to decide on number of hours that you should allot to your social media blog readers.

2) Presentation

There are quite a few techniques to present your or start your interaction. The best way to know which techniques are working out – TRY THEM ALL!
For example, when Facebook comes in picture, a simple status update might not get attention but a status update along with an eye catchy image might attract attention and trigger your interaction. In case of Twitter, there aren’t many choices left but what about having a catchy headline?
This task isn’t simple but requires thorough trials. Things that did work in the past for one social media may not work for another. You got to keep trying and at the same time, keep an eye on which style worked well.

3) Meaningful Reader Interaction

At the end of the day, what counts is that the blog readers are satisfied with the kind of content delivered by your blog. Focus on making the content reader-friendly and engaging.
Once the reader initiates interaction, you should ensure to make it lively.

Endnote

Social media is driven by PEOPLE who are eventually your blog readers. If they like your blog engagement then there is a possibility of spreading word about the same.
You must be aware how important a Facebook Like is? If gone viral, it can reach thousands of people in few minutes. In the same way, other social media platforms also have their own advantages. The only thing you need to dig in is how to use them perfectly.
The biggest mistake most of the bloggers make is sharing on social media without knowing what their readers love.
Finally, I would simply suggest to research thoroughly and put your time and money on the right strategy to build and manage blog reader relationship as it is the backbone for the blog’s success.
Use every social media network at your disposal

Read more at http://www.bloggingtips.com/2014/09/15/effectively-social-media-blog-interaction/#8tyTqMJmVIFgp9gJ.99

Social Media Marketing Explained