Freelance Copywriting, marketing and social media tips

What’s going wrong?

You’re regularly adding new updates to your Facebook page, but they seem to be falling flat on their face.

No one is commenting, liking or sharing.

Perhaps all your fans are out and their mobiles have run out of charge so they’re not seeing what you’re writing.

Or perhaps you’re just not engaging with them.

Check out some of these common mistakes and see if any of them ring bells for you.

1. Too broad and personal

What exactly are you writing about?

How broad are the questions you’re asking? It’s always best to ask something specific if you want to get a lot of responses. Also, make sure your questions aren’t too personal in nature.

2. Mixture

There’s nothing wrong with text updates, but they do get pretty boring after a while.

Mix them up with photos, links and videos to keep the interest of your audience. You can even add polls to find out what your fans are thinking.

3. Fun

Even if you’re writing for a big company, inject a bit of fun into your updates. No one will engage with you if you keep posting boring corporate stuff. Facebook is all about having fun, so don’t be a stick in the mud.

4. The wider world

There’s nothing worse than a business harping on about themselves all the time. There is a whole world out there to write about and comment on, so open your eyes and write about other stuff too.

5. Relevancy

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you like something everyone else will too.

Think about your audience and what’s important to them – you must put their needs before yours.

6. Hello?

When you do get comments don’t ignore them. Facebook is about 2-way communication, so when a fan reaches out to you respond to them and strike up a conversation.

7. Offers

Every now and then make them an offer they can’t refuse. Make it a Facebook only offer and you’ll encourage a whole new raft of people to like your page.

8. Patience

It’s not going to happen overnight.

You’ve got to give it time to start to work and you’ll be learning about your fans as you go along, honing your posting until you find something that works. But it is worth the effort, so hang in there.

There’s a lot more to Facebook than just writing random status updates. You must constantly think about your audience and what they’ll want to see – it’s just like marketing!

Author:

Sally Ormond, copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd.

That always seems to be a headache for people.

They spend hours and hours typing away on social media, but struggle to get people to share their ramblings.

This post has been picked from the archives to give you some handy tips on how you can get your content shared.

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.

You’ve probably heard by now that Facebook is introducing the clickable hashtag (#).

Many see it as getting in on Twitter’s act, but will it really add value to Facebook users?

One thing’s for sure it will definitely help advertisers. With an already highly targeted marketing facility, Facebook advertisers will be able to use the hashtags the find hotspots of user activity around specific events and topics.

As for normal users of the social media platform, well they will be able to find out what their friends think about a trending topic and can group comments together on the same topic simply by typing a hashtag alongside a keyword.

This is what Facebook’s Greg Lindley had to say:

“Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Facebook to share their thoughts on big moments happening all around them. Whether it’s talking about a favorite television show, cheering on a hometown sports team or engaging with friends during a breaking news event—people on Facebook connect with their friends about what’s taking place all over the world. To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about. To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.” (Facebook newsroom)

You can search for hashtags using the search bar at the top of the Facebook home page. They will also tie into those from other sites such as Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter.

So what do you think?

Have Facebook just copied Twitter, or do you think the hashtag will be a valuable addition to its functionality?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

Have you noticed a recent change to your search results?

OK, daft question considering the onslaught of small birds and animals that have been trundling through Google’s algorithms lately – namely Panda and Penguin.

But joking aside, you may have spotted that your search results are focused on your local area rather than nationally.

If you’re looking for a local company then this has to be a good thing, but if you want to widen your choice of potential service providers because their location isn’t an issue (especially for larger companies looking for quality and value over proximity) it does narrow your options somewhat.

Widening the net

To make sure you’re getting the best choice of service provider possible all you have to do is amend your search location.

Simply go to the Google home page, click ‘settings’ (at the bottom of the screen), go to ‘location’ and enter UK (or whichever country or region you want). Now your search results will return a far more comprehensive list of possibilities.

Businesses and rankings

These changes are really annoying when you’re an online business, especially when you’ve always played by Google’s rules.

All those hours you have spent link building and generating great content can go down the tubes in a flash with changes like these.

For many businesses online, a national presence is need, so with a change to local search results as opposed to countrywide ones can have a real impact on your bottom line.

What can be done about?

Not a lot really other than creating location-specific landing pages. But you can and should be hitting the social world hard. Being active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ will help your visibility and get your name out into the wider world.

The face of search is changing and becoming far more social than ever before.

So our advice is, if you want to continue to be seen in the search results, generate great content and be socially active.

Author:

Sally Ormond is MD and copywriter at Briar Copywriting Ltd. A keen cyclist, she took on and tamed the Welsh Dragon Ride.

You may recall our last post was about Proofreading Like a Professional.

Well, I had to giggle when I saw a recent post on Hubspot’s blog showing 14 of the worst typos ever seen.

The first thing to remember is that typos do happen. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how often you read and re-read a document, one of the slippery little suckers will still slip through. And it can happen to anyone.

When I read something and I spot a typo, I don’t dance around the room with glee and instantly rattle of an email pointing out their error, but I do smile to myself. We are all human and we all make mistakes, so don’t rub people’s noses in their errors (especially the little ones) because at least it shows the article was written by a real person.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings, you’re probably itching to see the blunders.

Grab a coffee and take a read – here are the 14 worst typos ever seen.