Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Monday, August 30, 2021
How To Manage Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Part 1
I know this is going to throw a
lot of people off, but people need to understand this. One of the major reasons
why a lot of otherwise intelligent and experienced social media marketers fail
to get the results that they're looking for is the fact that they're using the
wrong approach. Their approach to social media marketing and the websites
they're promoting is a one-size-fits-all approach.
Now, you don't need me to explain
to you why that is a bad idea. It doesn't work in most areas of your life and
it definitely doesn't work when it comes to social media marketing. You can't
look at this project with the mindset that as long as you pull traffic from
social media platforms, then you can use the exact same method and the exact
same communication tactics, regardless of the online entity or business you are
promoting.
Since
we're using content to develop relationships on social media platforms, this
one-size-fits-all approach is even more fatal. I mean, it's a bad enough idea
as it is, but if you were to use a content-based campaign, it gets even worse.
The reality is that different business types require different content and
publishing strategies. You have to customize, modify and tweak your particular
content and publishing strategies on social media to fit the type of website
you are trying to promote.
Now, there are a huge number of
website variations out there. In fact, there are too many. I would venture to
say that the only limit, really, is your imagination. But if you were to
categorize these different website types into four rough forms, they would more
or less fall into the following: publishing, e-commerce or drop shipping, email
lists, and traffic sales.
Again, there are many variations
of these, but if you were to look at the different types of businesses out
there, you can pretty much reduce them to these four types. When you study
these closely, they have different needs. They have different features that
must be addressed, otherwise, you're not going to get the results you're
looking for.
Sunday, August 29, 2021
Reasons For Social Media Marketing Part 3
Reason #6: Your brand gets natural repetition through multi-platform marketing
If there is enough graphical similarity between your brands, then they can see that you're all over the place and they can converse or engage with your brand regardless of where they are on the internet.
Make no mistake about it, content
generation is expensive. Even if you hire highly qualified, talented, skilled
and experienced people from countries with huge numbers of people who speak
English as a second language, you can still be out
You're not creating content constantly. In fact, the name of the game is to produce as little content as possible, but market these high quality pieces widely. This is how you maximize their value. The old idea of constantly publishing content just to get a few eyeballs here and there is dead. Seriously. That's a one way ticket to the poorhouse.
Your better approach would be to make that content work for you by converting it into many different formats.
You then share these different formats on platforms that specialize in those formats. I hope the reasons above are clear and that you are pumped up to do social media marketing right. In the next section, we're going to talk about picking a social media marketing campaign that is most likely to produce results for your type of online business. See you there.
Saturday, August 28, 2021
Reasons For Social Media Marketing Part 2
Reason #4: Sharing content on most platforms can be automated
Thanks to tools like Hootsuite and SocialOomph, you don't have to worry about manually going to Facebook or Twitter and copying and pasting materials from a document or spending hours setting up your scheduled posts. You can automate your posts to publish up to six months on Facebook. This means that you can set up your Facebook account to post six to ten or more times every day, but you don't have to babysit it because you have fed the content in.
The heart of a content-based audience relationship marketing campaign on social media is to build a highly targeted mailing list. Now, this is not what you think. A lot of people are thinking that once they build the list, they're on their way to becoming millionaires. Absolutely wrong. There's a missing step.
Reason #6: Your brand gets natural repetition through multi-platform marketing
Assuming that all your social media accounts on all four major platforms look similar to each other, you get many bites at the apple. You really do. When people run into your brand on Facebook, there's a chance they might run into your brand on Twitter.
If there is enough graphical similarity between your brands, then they can see that you're all over the place and they can converse or engage with your brand regardless of where they are on the internet.
Eventually, this builds a tremendous amount of familiarity and people might become so comfortable that they join your mailing list when you call them to action. The best part to this is that it happens naturally by you simply creating accounts on all the major platforms. Your brand speaks to people who are interested in your niche, regardless of where they go.
Friday, August 27, 2021
Reasons for Social Media Marketing Part 1
Reason #1: Social media is habitual
While different demographics have shown softening or weakening of social media usage on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, this still doesn't take away from the fact that a lot of people habitually use social media. In fact, a lot of people do this the first thing in the morning.
When they wake up, they go their mobile phone or tablet and check their updates. It can easily become a habit. This gives you a tremendous opportunity to get your content and brand in front of many interested eyeballs.
The great thing about social media marketing is that you're not restricted to just one content format. You're not restricted to video, pictures, links, blog posts, text, or audio files. Instead, different platforms specialize in different formats. And when you create content for one platform, you can easily make different versions of it in different formats to spread out to other platforms.
For example, I write a blog post and post it on Facebook. I create a very attention-grabbing graphic for that blog post. So, when I post it on my Facebook page, a preview of the image shows up and it grabs a lot of attention. People click on it, and they end up on my website.
I can take that graphic and share it on Pinterest. I can take the text of my blog post or article and create a slideshow video out of it and share it on YouTube. I can also take the video and embed it on my blog post. I can strip different parts of the article or post itself and feed it into Twitter along with the link to the full post or article.
Do you see how this works? You get access to the different audiences of those different platforms by simply re-purposing or recycling the same content that you made for one platform and sharing those other formats on other platforms. This increases your potential reach.
Reason #3: Most social media platforms can be segmented
If you've ever been to Instagram, you know that when you see a picture, it usually has many different tags. If you've been on Twitter, you'd see that a lot of the hot tweets also have hashtags. Those tags are very valuable. When you use a tag with your content, you are essentially categorizing your content. People use those tags to search for content. This is a very powerful segmentation tool.
People who are looking for cute Chihuahua puppies will use certain hashtags that are different from people looking for libertarian political posts. If you have a very tightly defined audience, social media platforms' built-in segmentation tools and features can definitely help you.
You probably already know that huge audiences that are not very targeted are essentially worthless. Thanks to social media marketing's segmentation features, you can get a smaller volume of people from many different platforms, but you can rest assured that these people are actually interested in whatever it is you are saying. These segmentation tools go a long way in helping you build a very refined and well qualified audience base. This, in turn, increases your likelihood of making a sale.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Introduction to Social Media Part 7
Just
to be sure, if you are in any way, shape or form unclear as to the value of
social media marketing, here are just 8 reasons why it needs to be part of your
comprehensive online marketing plan. Maybe your current plan puts more emphasis
on search engine marketing, maybe you're currently focused on outreach—those
are all well and good.
But to really round things out and add a lot more
value to your current online marketing campaign, social media marketing has to
be part of the equation. It doesn't have to take centre stage, it doesn't have
to be your overarching priority, but it has to be part of the total mix.
Here are just 8 of the thousands of reasons why
your company, regardless of its size, needs to do social media marketing.
Reason #1: Social Media's huge direct and viral reach
If you build a solid page on Facebook, you develop
a direct reach. This means that a certain percentage of people who like your
page will see your updates. While it is true that Facebook has been reducing
the organic reach of Facebook pages recently, there's a workaround to
that. When people go to your page, you can instruct them to like your page and
then click your page's setting to show your updates first.
You
might want to show a video that teaches people how to do this. You might even
post an animated gif. Whatever you do, clue people in that they can fix their
settings to see your updates first. Now, for people to take the time and bother
to do this, you have to offer content that is really valuable. This puts the
onus on you. There has to be real value on your page for them to want to do
this. But you can increase your direct reach by instructing people.
On top of that, when people like your content, they can share it on their wall. Since people on Facebook have friends and their friends have friends, this can easily have an exponential effect. In fact, even if your page only has a hundred likes, but these are real people with real friends, don't be surprised if one of your posts gets really viral and spreads all over the place.
Social media enables you to have a large direct reach. It also provides you with a tremendous opportunity to enjoy an exponential content coverage.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Introduction To Social Media Part 6
A content-based audience relationship approach to social media marketing sets different expectations compared to other ways of defining this type of marketing. When you read the typical social media marketing book, for example, "How to Dominate Twitter," the focus in on traffic
Unfortunately,
if that is your main goal, you end up with a "the more the better"
mindset and you feel really depressed at the end of the day because the traffic
doesn't come. Even if it does, there's not going to be enough of it. You have
set yourself up to fail.
When
you use a content-based audience relationship building approach to social media
marketing, your focus is on getting the right content in front of the right
eyeballs to build the right levels of trust.
This is
a long term game. It is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. Since that is
your expectation coming in, you position yourself for long term victory. You're not going to be the typical failed social media marketer
who jumps into the game with both feet only to find out that the traffic simply
isn't there. So what do they do? That's right, they quit.
Manage
your expectations by focusing on the right definition and you will be okay. The
worst thing that you can do right now is to sabotage any chance of future
success by defining the problem the wrong way and filling your mind with all
the wrong expectations.
Social Media Marketing can Build Brands If...
Now that we've defined social media marketing, the next step is to focus on the end result of this content-based audience relationship building approach. If you do everything right, you walk away with a brand. Let me tell you, that is the best asset you will ever have.
Now, in
terms of real world traffic, you may get a low to moderate level of traffic.
But if you build a solid brand, that traffic is all you need. That is qualified
traffic. These are not random people just blindly clicking on links out of
curiosity. These are people who are actually interested in whatever it is you
are trying to sell. They want to truly learn more.
They
want to build a relationship with you because they want to know what you're
about, like what you have to offer, and eventually trust whatever it is you are
pushing. These are real people. And this is only possible if you build a solid
brand. You have to deliver solid value.
I wish
I could tell you that content marketing is enough to do it. I really wish that
I can say that, but that is not true. That only explains part of the situation.
Sure, you have to deliver content that people truly are interested in, but at
the end of the day, when they join your list, they are expecting and deserve
value.
That's
how you build a solid brand. When people join your list, they will quickly find
out that they did not waste their time because you send high quality updates
that actually add value to their lives. Social media marketing can explode the
rate at which brands are formed. That's why a lot of people are ranting and
raving about social media marketing, but a lot of them are clueless as to how
to build a solid brand. Most of the time, they just stumbled into it.
I've
let you in on the secret. It's all about content-based audience relationship
building. There are many different parts to that equation, and I'm going to
walk you through them in a practical way in the following chapters. In this
section, I just want you to wrap your mind around the definition and the
expectations that flow from it. This is how we tightly define the project that
you are going to embark on.
Anything less, chances are, you're going to beat yourself up unnecessarily because you just had unrealistic expectations. This is not one of those get rich quick schemes. This is not one of those overnight success stories. This requires real work. This is the real deal. Are you ready for the journey? Great.
Monday, August 23, 2021
Introduction To Social Media Part 5
There's
a lot of misconceptions regarding what social media marketing actually is. In
fact, when you come across people who call themselves social media marketing
consultants or practitioners, chances are very high that they will give you
different definitions.
Part of
this is due to the fact that there are many different points of emphasis when
it comes to social media marketing.
Some
people focus on the content, others pay more attention to the network that the
content is going to be addressed to, others give more of their focus to social
engagement. Naturally, to the lay person, social media marketing is a big
question mark.
I
understand if you're confused at this point. In fact, you may be so confused
that you try to simplify things in your head and end up focusing on how to get
as much traffic for as little effort as possible.
That is precisely how a lot of
online entrepreneurs and marketers approach social media marketing. Sadly, that
is a one way ticket to failure or disappointment. It's not just going to work
out sooner or later. With any kind of project, you have to have the right
definition, otherwise, you are making things harder on yourself.
Depending
on the definition you go with, you might have all sorts of expectations, and if
these outcomes do not come to pass, your resolve and your motivation levels
start to suffer. You have to work with the right definition.
A
WINNING DEFINITION
With all the above said, what is social media marketing for our
present purposes? Well, since this training uses list marketing as its main
vehicle for converting social media reach into cold, hard cash, social media
marketing is all about content-based audience relationship building. Let me
repeat that, social media marketing is all about content-based audience
relationship building.
You need to use content in a strategic way. You need to speak to certain audiences and build a relationship with them. This relationship is not this broad word that makes people feel good, but ultimately doesn't mean much of anything. Instead, this relationship has a tangible form. And I am, of course, talking about your mailing list. Once you get people on your mailing list, that's when the fun begins.
Everything
else is just a work up or a preliminary prior to that point. You need to get
people on your list. Social media marketing is going to be your primary vehicle
to get people to your list. Everything has to revolve around that list. And
this must shape, inform and guide your social media actions.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
Introduction to Social Media Part 4
You probably haven't heard this before. I would not be surprised because the vast majority of social media marketing books out there try to trick you into thinking that you just need to harvest all this traffic from social media so people can click like monkeys on the ads on your website.
Maybe
that worked when Facebook 1st launched nationally. It definitely doesn't work
today. Sadly, this is where too many marketers fail. They screw this up.
Now
that you know the secret, here's some bad news. This is precisely the point
where too many marketers screw up. When they're sending social media content,
they promote their squeeze page directly. Although the squeeze page gives away
freebies and incentivizes people to sign up, this is too much too soon.
And,
not surprisingly, a lot of these marketers burn through a lot of exposure just
to get people to their list. Worse yet, when these people join their mailing
list, they're completely unprepared. They don't know what to expect, they're
not properly conditioned, a lot of them are not even fully qualified to become
list members.
So what do they do? They end up doing a whole lot of nothing. This is actually the worst kind of list member.
It's
much better to just have a very tiny list because if you have a huge list and
almost everybody doesn't do anything to put money in your pockets, you're going
to be paying for those list squatters month after month.
Alternatively,
you might attract list bouncers. These are people who join your list just to
get whatever premium you're offering, download it, and then promptly
unsubscribe. They have effectively bounced from your list.
email list is going to be the platform you will use to convert the relationships made
possible through all that social media traffic.
media marketing.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Introduction To Social Media Part 3
People have to be comfortable your content has to become familiar enough for them to click on it.
When
audience members click on the content you share through your social media
accounts, they get a chance to like your page, follow your Twitter feed, pin
your posts, or subscribe to your YouTube channel. They still stay on the
platform, but they get a chance to subscribe to your account or follow you.
This is
the second stage of the social media funnel or inverted pyramid. You have to
develop some sort of in-platform credibility. Your content is not just this
random material that came out of nowhere. Even if people don't click on it,
they see enough similarity in terms of branding, graphics, as well as other
content cues so that your brand stands apart from everybody else's.
Again,
they may not necessarily be motivated to click, but with enough repetition
through social media channels targeting certain topic categories and hashtags,
your brand doesn't remain an unknown quantity.
Once
you have people checking your content out through your social media accounts,
you can then send them "call to action" content (CTA). This content
recruits people to your mailing list. This social content that you're sharing
offers some sort of incentive.
Maybe you're giving away a free booklet, maybe you're giving away
software— whatever the case may be, there is some sort of giveaway to
incentivize people to click on that link, enter their email address, and join
your mailing list.
Whether
you use freebies, special content, special free tickets to an online webinar
that's pre-recorded, it doesn't really matter. Whatever the case may be, the
endgame is to get people to join your list.
funnel. At that end, you're not necessarily getting them to click on an ad to buy
something. You're doing something far more valuable.
Instead,
you're calling them to action so they join your list. You are converting your
social media reach, meaning, the top end of the funnel, to list membership,
which is at the very narrow point at the bottom of the inverted pyramid.
This is where the magic
happens. Once people join your list because you have successfully incentivized
them to enter their email on your squeeze page, you get a tremendous
opportunity to build a long term sales relationship.
That's
really the best way to describe it because when people give you their email
addresses, what they're really telling you is that they trust you enough to
want to have a business relationship with you.
This
means you should not abuse that relationship. You should not send them garbage.
You should not send them spam. And by spam, I'm talking about material that is
not related to the topic of your list.
Stay on
message. Because if you are able to do this, you would have a tremendous
opportunity to shape the conversation and continue to sell and convert your
list, not just once, not just twice, but over the long haul.
There
are many successful list marketers who make seven figures every single year,
and all they have is a mailing list. It all depends on how you build that list,
who is on that list, and what you are selling on that list.
Regardless
of how you cut it, you can turn what would otherwise be a huge amount of social
media reach into a loyal list. This is the secret to effective social media
marketing.
Friday, August 20, 2021
Introduction To Social Media Part 2
There is no shortcut. You have to work with this metaphor
I need
you to keep this idea of an inverted pyramid in your mind. It should have a
wide base at the top. The top of that pyramid is heavy visibility. It has to be
there. You need to be visible on the four major social media platforms. I'm
talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest.
Taken
together, the traffic volume you can get from these four platforms is mind
blowing. They can potentially pump a tremendous amount of traffic. But that's
just part of the equation. That's just the top of the funnel. Potentially, you
can push a lot of traffic from the top. That's how wide the top of the funnel
is.
This
training will focus on these four platforms, but you can pretty much use the
tips that I'm going to share with you and modify them to market on other
platforms since many of these principles easily apply.
You
might need to modify them a little bit. For example, if you are thinking of
marketing on Instagram, a lot of the things that I will teach you about
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest, can be tweaked to work well on the
Instagram platform.
Now
that you have a clear idea of the heavy visibility that you can achieve with social
media, keep in mind that visibility does not mean traffic or clicks to your site. This is a myth. The visibility that I'm talking about
means visibility on those platforms.
When
people share your content within those platforms, you can enjoy a tremendous
reach within such platforms.
But
this does not automatically mean that when you share content on Facebook,
people who see your link on the materials shared by their friends would
automatically click them.
Get the
idea out of your head that raw visibility, or as Facebook terms it,
"reach," automatically translates to traffic. It doesn't work that
way. Instead, you need to start with heavy content visibility on each platform.
People must see your stuff there. You must achieve a wide enough reach.
People
may not necessarily click on through to your site, but that's secondary. At
this point, you just want your brand to be visible. You just want people to
become familiar with your brand.
So
what's the big deal about visibility anyway? You may be thinking, since
visibility doesn't mean actual visitors to your website, what good is it?
Think
about it this way, when was the last time you saw an ad for the first time and
automatically clicked it? If you're like most other people, you probably would
want to see the ad show up a few times for you to become familiar with it. You
might glance at if from time to time, you might read the description from time
to time, but after enough showings, you might seriously think of clicking
through.
The
same applies to your content on social media platforms. Don't expect that just
because you come up with catchy titles and nice, attention-grabbing graphics
that this is enough for you to expect a tremendous amount of clicks to your
website. It doesn't work that way.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
Introduction To Social Media Part 1
Maybe
you're selling services, maybe you're selling an event, or maybe you are
selling products from an online store, it doesn't matter. According to this
idea, you just need to have a lot of traffic; courtesy of viral content on
social media, and you will get the conversions you're looking for.
There
is an assumption that social traffic, regardless of which platform it comes
from and regardless of how you qualify that traffic, converts to sales readily.
Sadly, none of these assumptions are true. In fact, all of them are tragically
mistaken.
If you
believe in any of these, don't be surprised if you spend a lot of time, effort
and money only to end up with a whole lot of nothing. Welcome to the club.
Effective
social media marketing can be reduced to one metaphor. Master this metaphor and
you probably will make money on autopilot with social media traffic. Screw up
this metaphor or remain clueless to it, and you'll continue to struggle; you'll
continue to believe that social media traffic can easily be generated through
viral content. You might keep running after that unicorn only to get tired and
frustrated.
It
doesn't have to be this way. You just have to have the right metaphor or the right
conceptual model to make social media marketing work for you. Best of all, you
can make it work on autopilot.
You
probably have heard of all sorts of "set it and forget it" systems.
You probably bought at least one of these products. Well, they're definitely on
the right track as far as their label. Social media marketing can be automated.
It can be mastered to the point where it can produce income after you've set
it. But getting there is another matter entirely. And that's the price people
have to pay.
And
unfortunately, most people are not willing to pay that. They're excited about
shortcuts, but they're not willing to take the stairs to get to the top. At the
back of their minds, they're thinking that there has to be some sort of
elevator.
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Monday, August 16, 2021
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Friday, August 13, 2021
Thursday, August 12, 2021
Wednesday, August 11, 2021
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Monday, August 9, 2021
Sunday, August 8, 2021
Friday, August 6, 2021
Thursday, August 5, 2021
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Monday, August 2, 2021
Your Secret Social Media Marketing Weapon: Content Curation
Your secret Social Media Marketing Weapon: Content Curation Now that you have picked the specific sub-niche that you're going to b...
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_BBa6iO0LjYxD7hlbEt47RXsbW1n66Zndt78ChtORgVoqj6dNYTRgL3BbtkWy7pn4Eyk80KAgXeJVKm00u2ZdLQN78EAnQaz0NI2BIKl-qny4H3sOA_mHqgSJjKOhK9eVmBcHKTFyfmM/w414-h310/68176723.jpg)
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Reason #1: Social media is habitual While different demographics have shown softening or weakening of social media usage on a daily, wee...
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Niche Research and Targeting it the Right Way Many social media marketers first concern is to automatically want to know about traffic...
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Reason #4: Sharing content on most platforms can be automated Thanks to tools like Hootsuite and SocialOomph, you don't have to worr...