26 Tips for Social Media and Content Marketing
By Robert Holmes
Before we begin, let me preface this by asking you to do 3 things:
- Go watch the Marketing 101 video which walks you through the four P's of marketing: really, go take a look at it.
- Get a benchmark for your web site - find out how it ranks in terms of visibility on the internet, because there is no point creating content if nobody sees it. Use gives a breakdown of how they arrived at the score. You’re aiming to get more than 2 out of 9. We’ll take a look later at how to make the score higher, but we first need a benchmark.
- Sign up to an outfit like and get your personal influence score. The benchmark here is 40 out of 100 (which is the average). Nowadays we are brandividuals. According to a recent survey of company directors, 50% of the companies reputationcomes from the CEO. Make sure you sign up all of your social media channels to maximize your score.
Why are we trying to increase the number of unique visitors to your site, the subscribers to your newsletter or the likes on your facebook page?Becausea bigger footprint = bigger reach = more qualified leads = more sales. If you think about the sales process as a funnel, content marketing and social media are the front end – the big part of the funnel. Once they’re in, you can relate to them and warm them up or cool them down. So let’s get cracking, here are 26 tips for social media and content marketing:
GETTING STARTED
1. What’s your secret sauce?What are you good at, why should people use you, how are you different? Do the secret sauce exercise going to use this in your biography on all outlets.
2. What are you an expert at? When you start doing radio, podcast, interviews and so forth you are going to need to finish the statement “I am an expert in…” – this will be your new bi-line. Decide what are you an expert at - this will be the realm of your thought leadership. My version is: “I am an expert in the science of human behaviour and performance.”
3. Get a great profile picture. Go spend the money having a range of professional shots taken. I have casual, business, executive, director, public speaker and musician shots.
4. Utilise keywords everywhere. Having decided your secret sauce and expertise, lace all your biographies, career history, tags and titles with these phrases. I use "performance enhancement" and "human behaviour" all the way through.
5. Decide what sort of content you can provide. Vertical Response proposeeight kinds:
- Shortest form: Twitter & SMS (140-160 characters). Make it friendly, personable and include hashtags, links, @replies, retweets and questions.
- Short form: Facebook status & Google+ status updates (150-200 words). Make it shareable, action oriented, conversational, include images and videos.
- Photo journalism: Instagram &Flickr photos. Make it contextual, use hashtags and locations, ensure it is shareable (consider your audience’s audience).
- Memes and images: Pintrest infographics. Include headline, call to action and make it contextual, friendly and descriptive (funny or shocking is even better).
- Medium form: blogs articles (250-750 word blogs, 2-3 page articles). Make it story based, with your voice, engaging and opinionated. Include sources and references.
- Long form: white paper research (more than 3 pages, well referenced and researched). Make it impactful, include executive summary, embed compelling imagery.
- Website content: static offers landing pages. Keep important information above the fold line, include keywords, links and a call to action.
- Multimedia: podcasts, webinars video weblogs. Pre-script your content, stick to the narrative, make it engaging and short as possible.
6. Use a content calendar. You don't have to do this alone, we have five thought leaders in our company and each of them contribute to our content calendar.Whether you’re working alone or with a team of thought leaders, you’re going to need a content calendar. Make sure something is being done every day.
7. Promote your content. There are three levels of promotion:
- Free, (just put it out there to your contacts).
- Paid, (Google ad words, FB promote, LinkedIn campaign).
- Partnership (via journalist, guest posting, organisations who promote you).
Now for the content...What social media channels are you going to choose? Let’s start with the biggest ones:
- Facebook has 1.2 billion active (human) members,
- Itunes have 1 billion podcast listeners,
- Twitter has 510 million feeds,
- Google + has 500 million accounts,
- LinkedIn has 238 million users,
- Instagram have 130 million posters,
- Pintrest has 70 million posters.
We’re only going to cover four of these: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Use Facebook if you know what your target customer likes, who they follow and why.The benchmark for Facebook is 500 followers or friends, then 1,000.I’m going to say this again and again, but make sure your bio is updated regularly to reflect your life changes, and it is complete. Facebook is part of your brand – it is inseparable from your business life. It reflects on your company. Take care about what you post.
8. Map the digital influencers.Facebook, Klout and LinkedIn all have mapping features. Find out who the influencers are.Bridge your way into an influencer’s community. Follow them across multiple channels (Twitter, LinkedIn etc.). You can slip stream their community. Aim to become one of them.
9. Cocktail party etiquette prevails.When you’ve made friends, please follow cocktail party etiquette. Wait for an appropriate time to join a conversation, contribute something valuable. Don’t be self promoting or narcissistic, (constantly talking about yourself). Have an opinion and express it graciously.
10. Use EdgeRank to your advantage.Facebook promote certain contacts, personalities and content and demotes others. Learn how this works.
It is made up of three elements:
1)Affinity – how much interaction there is between two people.The more you interact with a particular author, page or person the more likely you will see posts from that person. More likes more comments are good.
2)Weight – photos get the most, links come second, plain text last: new features get more weighting too. The more of one kind or type of post you view the more likely you will be fed that.
3)Decay – how old is the post.The FB newsfeed function likes new news. Content that gets negative feedback decays faster.
more in depth information.
11. Use Hashtag and tag other FB members. You can now use the #hashtag on Facebook to start a topic stream. When you do, leave no spaces, but #CapitaliseTheFirstLetterInEachWord to make it more readable. Typing a person’s name now tags them in the post.
Use twitter for sharing real time news events and responding to other real time issues, making offers or interactions (like SMS). Twitter is looking for a 100 follower baseline
Fill out your profile information completely and have a nice photo. It is helpful to let your followers know where (in the world) you are.
12. Post regularly.Use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to manage your posts. Schedule at peak periods for your industry/social network. 25% of twitter users check several times a day, 12% check it once a day.
13. Use hashtags and @.Hashtags turn topics and phrases into clickable links. #Hashtags must be all one word, and used sparingly. Posts that use hashtags are engaged with 2x as much as others. If you use the @ symbol the tweet only goes to that individual (say @coachkimon), and anyone who follows both you and him. If you want the world to see it, use .@coachkimon.
14. Ask for a retweet. According to research group Sysomos.com 71% of tweets get no reaction, so don’t be disappointed by the silence. 23% get an @reply (and most of those only get one). 6% of posts get retweeted (and most of those are in the first hour). Ask followers to retweet and you will get 12X as many retweets.
15. Join a trending conversation.Your twitter account (the deck) will show you trending conversations on the left hand sidebar. Contribute meaningful content to that community (cocktail party rules again).
16. Add inline images.Twitter recently added inline image previewing. Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets. You can also add images to DMs.
Remember, the idea here is to get followers and interaction with them – not for your own ego, fame or influence but to serve them well and turn them into customers.
GOOGLE+
Use Google if you know your target’s problems are and what they search for. The benchmark for Google circles is 500 contacts. The gold standard for Google search is being on the first three pages. If you’re not there, you’re not anywhere.
17. Create Epic Content!Good content, relevant to people's search is still king. With Penguin 2.0 SEO relies very heavily on well crafted content.
18. Choose your keywords carefully. Use Google KeywordPlanner to meta-tag properly, and use keywords that are more searched for. Use Google Trends to discover what’s hot For example the term “life coaching” is searched for twice as often as “life coach” which is also trending downward over five years. “Business coach” and “executive coach” are both one tenth as popular.
19. Work SEO the old fashioned way.Take the time to create beautiful, relevant, keyword rich article titles.If they have numbers in them (like this article) all the better.Intersperse great subheadings and keywords throughout the content. Meta tag them properly.
20. Be consistent!If you are going to write, podcast or do a thought of the week video, then start and keep it going. 85% of corporate sites have five or less blog posts. Google will penalize you for old or unrefreshed content.
21. Place advertisements carefully.Too many ads above “the fold” are penalised. The fold is basically the place on your front page you would fold it in thirds – like a DL letter on an A4 page. It’s the part that loads first. Make sure, if you use banners, that they have correct image labels that are meta tagged correctly.
22. Link out and back link in. Always make sure your content acknowledges your authorship (who wrote it) – in the “By Robert Holmes” fashion and also in your CMS. Offer a great customer experience that is media and link rich. Be sure to link out to other resources and reference everything correctly – especially when you borrow someone else’s infographic.
Use LinkedInif you know what their job description is, or what business community they belong to. Make sure you fill out your profile completely. 75% of LinkedIn profiles are started and never finished. Pick the kind of image you’d put on your CV – because that is essentially what LinkedIn is. 500 connections is the baseline for a healthy LinkedIn network.
23. Use first person. Write your summary in first person, it gets viewed and responded to 2X more than third person versions.
24. See where you rank. Check your visibility by searching for your "secret sauce" and expert keywords. See where you rank. Adjust your profile and details, see what difference it makes.
25. Get recommendations. Ensure you get recommendations from other people by giving recommendations to others.
26. Join relevant groups.Watch for the right time to contribute something meaningful and helpful to the conversation. Cocktail rules apply again. People who comment on articles and posts get viewed 4X more. Endorse other people's skills - but only those you actually know!
SUMMARY
OK so where are we? Benchmark everything – your page ranking, your place on Google, your Klout score, your status in Twitter and FB and LinkedIn. Your secret sauce, your expertise is really important.
Making sure your bio, picture and keywords are all complete and looking great
Picking which avenues of content production you are prepared to commit to doing regularly.
Use Facebook if you know what your customer likes, who they follow and why.
Use Twitter for sharing real time news events and responding to issues.
Use Google+ if you know your target problems and what they are searching for.
Use LinkedIn if you know your target job description, or what business community they belong to.
Generate content in an interlinked way that points ultimately to your web site. Join conversations and find a natural, unforced way to contribute meaningfully – cocktail party rules. Multiply using free, paid and partnership avenues