Entries Tagged 'social media' ↓

Social media is all about conversation and sharing.

The premise is simple:

1. Generate great content
2. People pick it up and share it with others
3. You get more followers, fans and comments

That’s all well and good, but what happens when you’ve been using social media for a while and yet no one is sharing your stuff?

Well, you’ve obviously hit a few barriers because before the above can happen, people have to be able to find your content, they have to read it and then they have to want to share it.

Why is your content being ignored?

First of all, don’t panic. If no one is sharing, all you have to do is rethink how you’re using social media.

Below are 5 scenarios that could hold the answer to why your content isn’t being shared.

1. Trust

If you want people to share your stuff, they have to trust you.

Trust is developed through engaging with people, being open and chatting. If you’re merrily throwing stuff ‘out there’ without taking the time to get to know your followers and fans, it’s hardly surprising they don’t trust you.

2. Caring about your brand

People will only share your stuff if they care about your brand.

How do you get them to care about you? Well, for starters, you can’t make them care. Again, this one comes down to building relationships.

If you are generous with your information, tell them about offers, give away tips or even freebies, you will begin to develop a deeper relationship. They will follow you more closely and tell their friends to do the same.

3. Don’t be boring

No one wants to read something that’s boring, so they certainly won’t share it.

If you churn out blog posts, Facebook posts and tweets that are dull, you won’t be engaging with anyone.

Don’t be afraid to inject a bit of humour into your activities. People like to laugh; it makes them feel good. And if you can make someone feel good, guess what? They’ll share your stuff to make their friends feel good too.

4. Passion

Don’t panic, I’m not suggesting you have to get passionate with all your followers and fans.

If you want people to share your information, they have to feel passionate about what you do. This can be done by showing your human side.

Yes, I know that sounds scary, but if they can see you are human, they’ll warm to you. By writing about things you care about, you’ll be sharing your loves with others. And when we write about something we love, our emotion shines through and touches the reader.

5. Building relationships

There’s no getting away from it, if you want to engage people you have to build relationships.

Setting up your social media portfolio one day, and expecting great results the next, isn’t going to work.

Social media is something you have to work at.

You must listen, engage, chat and debate with your fans and followers to find out what they really want. If you put out information they’re not interested in, they’re not going to share it.

Create a strategy

If you’re in business and want to leverage the power of social media, you must have a strategy in place.

‘Doing’ social media properly is going to take time and effort, so you must make sure it pays off.

Your social media strategy should encourage engagement and prevent PR nightmares.

The most important thing to remember is that social media isn’t a form of advertising. Consumers are far cannier these days and won’t easily be fooled by expensive adverts. As a company, you have to use social media to engage with them and provide them with useful information.

The time has come to move on from yesterday’s market methods. Today, you must listen to your customers, find out what they want and provide it for them. In fact, you have to exceed their expectations.

Marketing is tough as there are more companies chasing a diminishing amount of cash. Today you have stand apart from you competitors and social media will help you do that.

Over to you

Are you successfully using social media?

Leave a comment below and share your experiences.

As a freelance copywriter I spend a lot of time educating potential clients of the value of what I do.

Granted, some may already understand the added value I will bring to their company, but others have just been told they should use a copywriter without really understanding why.

A copywriter can obviously write great marketing copy, but they bring more than that to the table. Because they are not part of your company, they can see your products and services from your customers’ point of view.

That might not sound much, but what it means is that they can write benefits led copy that will resonate with your reader.

Where’s this going?

Well, the other day I came across a job advert. It was advertising a fairly junior position, looking for someone with the following skills:

• Copywriting
• PR
• Events
• Social media

That is an awful lot of skills. My question is can someone really be an expert in all of these fields to make sure the company achieves the results it wants?

As a copywriter, I can certainly create eye-catching copy that sells. But as for being a PR guru, events expert or a social media expert..?

Granted, I use social media in my business – but I wouldn’t profess to be an expert at it. I dabble in PR for my own purposes – but I don’t have the connections or expertise required to call myself a PR guru. As for events, to be honest I’d be hopeless at that.

Devaluing skills

I can understand why businesses today want to find people who are able to perform multiple tasks. For a start, they only have one salary to pay rather than four.

But lumping together these very different skill sets into one role, in my opinion, devalues the professional copywriters, PR people, events and social media experts out there.

To master all of these disciplines takes time and experience.

They may think they are being rather canny creating such a complex and multidiscipline role, but in reality they are heading for a fall.

By not bringing in experts in each field (either on permanent contracts or on a freelance basis), the company is running the very real risk of not being represented well in any of the fields.

• Its copy won’t resonate with the reader or sell
• Its PR efforts are unlikely to generate the coverage they want or need
• Its events won’t shine
• Its social media activities won’t generate the buzz they’re looking for

Much of the problem stems from the company not understanding the value and importance of each of these fields.

Yes, we can all write, but writing copy that resonates with the reader, sells to them and with SEO in mind is a tall order.

As with PR, most people can put together a press release, but how many understand how to place it? How many people understand the nuances of getting a company in front of the people it wants to impress and attract?

Most of us dabble in Facebook and Twitter, but how many people understand how to engage with people, how to combine the power of the social media sphere (blogs, Facebook, Twitter and forums) to get the most out of it.

How many people could organise a truly stunning event?

When you look at it that way, you begin to understand the true value of each skill set.

Have your say

If you are a copywriter, PR, event organiser or social media person, what is your take on this?

Do you think it’s possible to find all these skills within one person?

Leave a comment below and let’s get a debate started.

A (not so) quiet revolution in marketing has been taking place over the last few years.

Customers are showing they enjoy doing business with companies that have a strong social media presence. They enjoy buying from people they like, know and trust.

What’s the fastest way to generate relationships like those?

Through your Facebook presence.

With over 750 million active users, Facebook has become the place to be in business. In fact, customers are beginning to expect you to have a presence on this phenomenal social media platform.

Because of this, many business have set up pages but without the in depth knowledge they need to leverage them fully.

The Facebook Success Summit 2011

If you’re a regular here on Freelance Copywriter’s Blog, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Facebook is evolving into a one-stop resource for people’s communication needs with new features such as:

• Cleaner pages
• Users being given more control over their news feed
• Emails when someone comments on your page
• iFrame instead of static FBML
• The ability to offer deals to people checking in on mobile devices
• The ability to make Skype calls

It is becoming more and more important to master it if you want to fully utilise it for your business.

Therefore, SocialMediaExaminer have announced their forthcoming Facebook Success Summit 2011.

Due to start on 5^th October (running for the entire month) it will help you discover how to attract and engage quality customers with Facebook.  With help and advice from 19 Facebook pros, it is an essential summit for anyone serious about leveraging the power of Facebook for business.

For more information, check out this post on SocialMediaExaminer – Is Your Business Maximising Facebook?

There is a short video there to tell you a bit more about it.

Most businesses today have embraced social media.

It makes sense because that’s where their customers hang out, so if they want to engage with them, they’ve got to join the club.

One aspect of social media, Facebook, has become phenomenon.

• It has over 750 million active users worldwide
• There are 900 million pages, groups, events and community pages that people can interact with
• Over 30 billion pieces of content are shared every month

(Statistics from Facebook.)

So it’s little wonder that so many businesses now have a page on Facebook. But the question remains, how do you direct your fans back to your website?

Your Facebook page is great for SEO and to interact with your customers/fans, but you will also want these people to use your main brand website too.

How to drive Facebook fans to your website

Many businesses are too concerned with building their number of Facebook fans and don’t give any thought as to how they are going to get those fans to interact with them through their website.

After all, it’s through your main website that you will sell to them, so you have to devise some tactics to encourage them to visit your site.

Ben Pickering wrote a great post recently on socialmediaexaminer.com that looks at this issue. In 5 Tips for Driving Facebook Fans Back to Your Website, Ben looks at the following methods:

1. Use of tabs
2. Sharing blog posts and articles
3. Using teaser content
4. Running contests on your brand website
5. Special offers on your brand website

As you read about these in more detail, you will see that each not only adds to the value of your Facebook page, they also actively encourage your fans to visit your main website through various calls to action.

This ‘two way street’ of information adds to the users’ experience and so continues to add value to your relationship with them.

Integrating this approach into your social media activities will also strengthen your SEO strategy so everyone wins.

Over to you

Are you already using some of Ben’s techniques? Do you have your own method of driving fans back to your main site?

Leave a comment below and share the techniques you use to link your Facebook fans to your website.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter, Tweeter, blogger and Facebook fan

For years you’ve benefited from Google’s analytics to track the activity on your website.

It’s been a God send for internet marketers giving an invaluable insight into where your traffic comes from, which keyword brings in the most, what pages they visit, how long they stay etc.

This handy little tool has helped thousands of people improve the SEO and user experience of their websites.

From your dashboard you can discover all sorts of handy statistics which can be used to continually enhance your website’s performance and so boost your ROI.

That’s great for measuring and assessing web traffic, but what about your social activities?

Getting more social

As more and more businesses are utilising social media to market their business and communicate with their customers, wouldn’t it be great if there was a way of tracking this activity like you can the traffic to your website?

Well those clever people at Google have found a way.

Recently Google has become more social. It has introduced Google + and the Google +1 button and now offers Google Analytics Social Interaction Tracking.

With this new addition to the Google family you can track the social interactions on your website, blog or your Facebook fan page.

To learn more about how to set this up, take a look at this SocialMediaExaminer post – How to Track Tweets, Facebook Likes and More with Google Analytics. It provides a step by step guide on how to set up your analytics.

This process does involve playing with HTML in your web pages files so if you’re not overly comfortable with code tweaking you may want to seek some help.

Over to you

Do you already use social media tracking? If so how useful do you find it?

Perhaps, after reading this, you’re going to give it a go. If you do, bookmark this post and come back, leave a comment and let us know how you got on.