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Social Media Marketing – Connect and Get Discovered

Marketing is a somewhat broad term. There are subsets and even subsets of the subsets.

Social Media Marketing is a form of internet marketing. Its approach is to obtain branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube as well as anywhere else content can be shared.

The goal of each social media marketing campaign can vary from business to business. But usually it includes brand awareness, increasing visibility and subsequently selling products.

Social Media Marketing As A Tool

Social Media Marketing has become a foundational tool for connecting with customers and optimizing an online presence for most businesses. Social media meaning is often contextual but it generally refers to the tools, websites, and platforms, folks use to publish, converse and share content online.

In order to use social media effectively, you first need to understand your target market. This knowledge is the basis of your overall marketing strategy. For example, if your target customers are professionals who commute, then a podcast that can be downloaded may be the type of content you choose to deliver.

Connect

Videos, podcasts, blogs, discussion boards and social networking sites are all tools that solopreneurs can use to build relationships with their customers and keep them on websites longer.

One of the most important things you can do with social media is to use it to help you build relationships with your target customers and existing customers. This is important and something you’ll want to do on an ongoing basis.

Social media help you to add personality to your brand. This can especially be done by your blog since you generally have the most control there out of all the sites and platforms. Your blog posts give insight into who you are as a person and not just information about the products and services you offer. This helps folks to connect to you.

Social media encourages visits to your site. So keep adding content to encourage customers to come back to see what is new and ideally comment and share with others.

Get Discovered

Social media provides a variety of opportunities for folks to present optimized content. And better yet, this content is indexed by search engines which can ultimately improve your site rating.

Video is increasingly becoming more and more popular. If you choose to use video, there are few things to know about video. Some advantages that might even make those who haven’t tried it yet to possibly reconsider.

– Posting video content on YouTube is a great way to improve your position in Google’s universal search results.

– YouTube viewers can view your video and easily share to their own websites and social networking profiles.

– YouTube is a great way to reach more folks and if done properly you can generate buzz around your new products. This is especially true if your product is visual.

Social media platforms are often the first thing that comes to mind when folks think of social media marketing. But it’s more than than. Your blog posts are also shareable and you decide if you want to allow commenting.

Using social media can help you build interest and loyalty among customers and, at the same time, if you decide, can also improve your search engine optimization rankings. There are various mini goals social media can help you with…it’s a great tool.

So how do you use social media?

Feel like you’re wasting valuable time? Write with purpose

Content is quite often considered an online entrepreneur’s primary asset. And content writing on of her key tasks.

It drives traffic and therefore helps make your sales. When done right, provides authority, credibility and gets your target audience to like you and your brand. All of which are buying triggers.

And don’t forget, it also helps you to market your business.

But unfortunately, many new solopreneurs write their content without a purpose.

They may write some great and useful content. But if it doesn’t have a clear objective, it’s missing out on an opportunity.

So ask yourself: what do you want your content to accomplish for you and your business?

It doesn’t matter if your content is short like a blog post or an article. Or a larger content piece like a report or e-book. It really needs a specific purpose.

Possible Content Purposes

drive traffic to your website
increase SEO ranking
drive traffic to a sales page for your offering
generate affiliate income
boost your authority and credibility
encourage reader response and comments
capture leads

Occasionally, you may find that your content has more than one purpose.

For example, a report may be designed to collect opt-ins and generate affiliate revenue. Or you may add a link to your sales page on your website.

But if you don’t have an objective for your content, then you’re missing out on a valuable opportunity.

Decision-Making

I have found the best time to decide on the content’s purpose is when you create your content plan. But folks take different approaches so experiment to find what works best for you.

You may plan your content for the coming week, month, quarter, or year. If you aren’t planning your content yet, please start. Content planning will help make the best use of your time.

When you plan your content you’ll choose the keywords and the topic. You’ll also decide when you’ll publish it and where.

It makes sense to integrate your content into your overall marketing strategy. This includes traffic generation, SEO, and other marketing components. This also means that you will give your content a purpose.

Here’s an example:

You plan on launching a new product in three months. Your content during that month leading up to your product launch will ideally support the launch.

You’ll want it to generate interest and excitement about your new product. The purpose of the content is to drive traffic to your opt-in page.

Folks can sign up and receive notification when you launch. They may also receive early bird pricing.

Your content can also raise awareness for the need of your new product. And it can send traffic to your sales page once you launch.

Including your purpose in your content

All of your content needs to have a call to action. If you want to get comments and feedback at the end of a blog post, ask for it. That’s your call to action.

If you want folks to click to your sales page, you need some sort of “I want to learn more” link. Your purpose will be part of your call to action.

Take a look at the content you have planned. Does each piece have a specific purpose?

Do you give a call to action? Is your content part of your overall marketing strategy? If not, make the updates so you can start seeing the benefits.

Which call to action do you find yourself using the most?

Want to be more successful with content?

If you’re an online business owner, you know that content is one of the best tools you have. It can drive a tremendous amount of traffic to your website.

When done correctly, it provides your audience with the value and information they are looking for. It also helps you market your business, products or services.

Nowadays, content is essential for online marketing success. And you can achieve even greater success if you take the time to plan your content.

Content Planning

We all do some sort of planning in our lives. Content planning is the process of deciding what to write and where to publish it.

Questions you ask yourself while planning include:

When & where will you publish the content?
What topics will you write about?
What’s the main objective of the content?
What are the keywords you’ll be using?
How can you repurpose the content in the future?

You’ll also want to decide how far ahead you want to plan your content. Many online business owners take a tiered approach.

They plan large content projects for the entire year. For example, they may publish an ebook every couple of months for a series. They also take a look at their content on a quarterly or monthly level.

If you haven’t started to plan your content yet or are struggling to plan it effectively, try:

Using a calendar that gives you a view of the big picture and you can also write on. A paper desk calendar is a great planning tool. You can write your content ideas in pencil for easy modifications later. Then, if you prefer electronic organization, you can transfer the paper plan to Outlook or e-calendar.

Setting aside time to map out how you’ll integrate your content into your overall marketing strategy. For example, you could decide that in a particular month you’re going to publish five blog posts. You may want to make sure this content ties into any launches or promotions you’re doing in the same time period.

Leaving room for change. The best content plans leave room for inspiration. The greatest ideas often come out of the blue…when you’re brushing your teeth for example.

If you don’t allow room to update your content based on newly found inspiration, you risk missing out on a potentially great idea.

Don’t forget to take a look at how you can repurpose your content strategically. It’s not only a great way to get the most return on your time and energy investment, it can help fill content gaps.

When you take the time to plan your content, make sure you’re looking at the big picture and the more detailed picture.

Look ahead and take the entire year into consideration. At the same time, plan your content down to the keywords and topics.

I know you may be thinking about the time commitment. It may take a day or two to plan the year but it’ll save you tons of time later.

Instead of wondering what you’re going to write on each week, you’ll have the answers all worked out and hopefully documented in your content plan.

Best of all, your content will fit with your overall marketing strategy and be an integral part of your business growth plan.

Which do you use: a paper or electronic calendar for content planning?

Feeling overwhelmed? Spending too much valuable time writing?

Content writing for your business is investing in your business. I know you spend a lot of time writing it. You probably also spend a lot of time planning and researching before you even start to write it.

And just like any other investment, it makes sense to make the most of your investment. Repurposing and reusing your content is a great way to maximize your return.

Build

Gather articles and blog posts that go together nicely and create a report. Adding an introduction and a conclusion will help tie the ideas together.

You may also find adding some transitions and editing the content will help with a cohesive message.

And to monetize the content, consider adding affiliate and promotional links where appropriate.

Break

Try the opposite of building: if you have existing reports, break them into articles and blog posts. You have a few options here.

Pull apart segments of the report to create articles. Add an introduction and conclusion paragraph and you’re just about ready to publish. Or you can even create lists and other information-packed articles.

Here’s an example of breaking content down: if you have a “how to” report with ten steps and ten pages of content, you could:

create an article that’s a much shorter version of the report
list the ten steps with a one or two sentence explanation
write a “three things you need to do to…” article (you would actually have enough to write 3 of these articles)

Republish

Sometimes evergreen content isn’t as evergreen as you hope. Things change so quickly and most industries grow and change on a regular basis.

Go back and take a look at your “evergreen” articles and blog posts. How can you refresh them with updated content?

Partition

This is similar to breaking down reports to create articles and blog posts. You can break down e-books into:

– reports

– articles

– blog posts

You’ll see you can get quite a lot of content from an e-book. And for content ideas, take a look at the e-books you’ve purchased or written.

Group

If you’re thinking about creating a new information product, consider grouping reports to create an e-book.

You’ll need to organize the reports in a logical manner so that it flows. You’ll also likely need to add an introduction and a conclusion. Transitions will be necessary and you can add some graphics to really pull it all together.

Add checklists and worksheets to add even more value to your e-books and reports.

Repurposing and reusing your content is smart and strategic. As you create new content, consider how you might be able to use it in the future.

Content is now often key for online business success so make the most of your efforts and maximize your content to the fullest.

Which technique will you use right away to repurpose and reuse your content?

Feeling lost because you’re not sure how to write content?

I know you may just be starting out. But have you decided that content marketing is right for your business?

If so, you want to write great content but you’re not sure how? There are a few things that differentiate great content from not so great content. Learn them and improve your content.

Conversationally

Conversational content is written in a friendly tone. It’s almost as if you were writing your blog post or report specifically for the person reading it.

It’s written using informal language. Instead of saying, “Business people write content” you would say, “You write content.”

And because of this, conversational content often breaks a few grammar rules. For example, you might write an incomplete sentence. For impact. I often use ellipses…

…to create effect and to draw the eye through my post.

When you break grammar rules make sure there’s a reason for it. Breaking them just to break them, may be fun and a bit rebellious, but it’s not usually productive.

Personality and voice

A lot of new entrepreneurs don’t necessarily believe it, but your personality and voice are one of your biggest assets. Both help you stand out from others.

They help you create and strengthen your brand.

Let’s say you’re sarcastic naturally. Then your content can and should be sarcastic too. It has to be relevant and appropriate but if that’s who you are, be it.

And if you’re sentimental then your content will reflect that also. It’s so much easier to embrace your personality than to fight it. And it also helps make interesting content.

Study the content and writers you like and read often. Look for how they share their voice and personality.

Easy to read and understand

Formatting is supposed to help make your content easy to read and understand. Folks tend to get a bit carried away with formatting though.

Sometimes there are so many underlined, bulleted, and bold words that you’re not sure where your eye is supposed to go. And instead of enhancing the reading process, it often makes it more difficult because it’s distracting.

Simple formatting is best. This may include bold or underlined subheadings. You might have either bullets or numbers but probably not both.

Again, look at various pieces of content.

What do you notice about the ones that you find easy to read? And what about the ones you find distracting?

When the post isn’t easy to read, what would you do to fix it? What would make it easier to read?

Learning a few simple content strategies can help you get the results you’re looking for. You’ll receive more readers and traffic. And you’ll likely receive more customers. The better your content, the faster you’ll be able to grow your business.

What personality trait will we see in your content writing?