July 2013

4 Ways to Increase Your Influence on Twitter

July 17, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Twitter can be a great tool for expanding your reach to a targeted audience, but how you can measure your influence on Twitter?

There is no shortage of tools and marketing suites that offer solutions when it comes to measuring of your Twitter marketing. Great tools like Simply Measured and SocialBro offer fantastic resources when it comes to looking at your influence on Twitter.

There are, however, a few key metrics to consider when determining and improving your influence on Twitter, and these can be done simply, and with little more than an investment of some time.

Create Lists

Look through your followers. Who is retweeting your content? Who is responding more regularly than others? These are important metrics to pay attention to for a number of reasons. Among those reasons is the use of these data when building Twitter lists.

Lists are a great way to segment your followers based on demographics, engagement, influence, etc. Creating lists and carefully watching how users interact will help you know what types of people you are influencing, where your tweets are going and how effective your Twitter audience is when it comes to building business.

Track Your Mentions

When someone mentions your brand, do a little bit of research.

Do they have a lot of followers? Are their tweets retweeted? Do they have original content or simply retweets of others? Find out where your brand is being mentioned on Twitter in order to modify your strategy to appeal to the audiences that are seeing your name most.

It won’t be long before you see this simple activity turn into increased influence on Twitter.

Track Your Links

Using a link shortening service like Bitly goes a long way when it comes to measuring influence. The data provided will help you understand what links are being clicked, by whom and from where.

Your Google Analytics might suggest that a given page or post on your site is very popular, but you might see, using your trackable link, that few clicks are coming from Twitter. Again, this data helps you understand where your influence is and give you insight into how you can improve it.

Identify and Engage Other Influencers

You might find yourself unintentionally hanging on the words of every tweet of a given user. Congratulations – you have found an influencer.

Take a look at different influencers in your industry and reach out to them. You never know when you may be able to collaborate with an industry influencer and find your own influence skyrocketing.

Influence is a key to success on social media. Try some of these tips and watch your influence begin to climb on Twitter.

How do you increase your influence on Twitter? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Ways to Boost SEO with Social Media

July 16, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to boost SEO with social media?

There is a lot of debate over whether or not social media factors into your search rankings. There are those who firmly believe that social media is the ‘next big thing’ in SEO, and those who feel as though the power of social media has been taken out of context as it pertains to SEO, and that is has not real benefits at all.

The fact of the matter is that social signals do have an impact on SEO, and that you can, through the use of a few key practices, boost SEO with social media.

Focus on Google Authorship

Whether it is through blogging, Google+ or YouTube, you should try, whenever possible, to increase the authority of your name on Google.

Google Authorship is an important social signal when Google ranks its results. Ever see a blog article pop up in Google with a little picture on the left? That’s a ranking factor that should be considered when writing. The more authority your name has on Google’s social layer, the more likely those articles are to pop up when someone searches for a specified keyword.

Share Links with Your Content

When it comes to social signals, link-sharing on social networks is very similar to link-building through anchor text. While keywords do not necessarily hold as much weight on social media, your links do. When someone shares a Facebook post linking back to your site, or retweets a link you shared, search engines tend to pick that up.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to get noticed – share some links (when they are appropriate).

Consistency

Your presence needs to be felt on social media and your content needs to be ongoing. You should be partaking in conversations on a regular basis if you want to see your search rankings improve. This results from two things. First, your content will be shared more regularly on social networks. Second, the effect of your presence on social media means a greater potential for people to search for you outside of these networks.

Social media networks are a great way to get your name out there, so be there as often as you can.

Go To the Source

Google is the world’s largest search engine. Google+ is a social network owned by Google. Ergo, one can easily conclude that Google+ is important to search rankings in Google.

It’s a fact. In a recent infographic created by Searchmetrics that measures 2013 ranking factors on Google, Google +1s topped the charts. Sharing interesting and engaging content on Google+ is going to lead to +1s on your content. +1s mean more love from Google. Join Google+ Communities, join conversations and share relevant material and you can be sure to see your rankings improve.

Integrate Social Media and SEO

These are not two standalone factors that increase your business. Social media and SEO needs to be approached together. Granted, one strategy might have been in place before the other, but that does not mean that they cannot be integrated into one another.

Look at your keywords, where your traffic is coming from and where you are finding success on both social media and SEO, and create a single strategy where the two act as complements, not competitors.

These are just a few ways you can boost SEO with social media. How have you found social media has an impact on SEO? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How To Promote Events on Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 15, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What are a few great ways to promote events on social media?

We have all seen it before: emails with invites to webinars, lightboxes inviting you to a hangout, or Facebook tabs promoting a physical event. There is no shortage of ways to promote events on social media. There are, however, certain best practices that should always be exercised when doing so.

The folks at digital event planning company Eventility put together an excellent infographic that lays out the Dos and Don’ts of event planning on social media, and they are right on the money.

While many of us have probably been on busy webinars wondering, “How did they get all of these people to show up?”, there are plenty more out there with few attendees. So why are some more successful than others? Yes – the reputation of the host has something to do with it. But the real success lies in planning and effectively promoting your event!

Take a look at the infographic to see what steps need to be followed in order to properly promote events on social media.

Have you ever planned an event with the help of social media? Did you implement these steps and tips? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Guest Blogging

July 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How can guest blogging add value to your business?

Guest blogging is becoming more common practice in the world of online content development, and for good reason. Guest blogging offers certain benefits to your business that few other practices do, and those benefits translate into significant value added in terms of Social Equity. But before we dive into the great value that guest blogging brings to your business, we should probably understand what guest blogging is.

As a site or blog owner, you have the burden of constantly populating your site with new, engaging content that readers (and search engines) want to see. This may sound easy enough, but managing both your blog and your business can sometimes become overwhelming, and while a blog is a tremendous business tool, it sometimes unintentionally falls by the wayside.

Guest blogging offers business and blog owners an opportunity to invite outside writers from within their industry to post relevant content to their website. There is a reciprocal benefit in that guest bloggers can build up their portfolio and increase links back to their own sites while blog owners can have fresh, insightful content loaded to their blog while having third parties promote their website (and, essentially, their business).

So where is the value added from guest blogging to your business?

Link-Building

Traditional link-building is time consuming and can be quite tedious. There are companies that have been built entirely on offering this service to other businesses that simply do not have the time to do it themselves.

Guest blogging is a great way to go about link-building as your guest bloggers are happy to link to your content on social networks as well as their own websites. This saves time and money while providing you with a great service to promote your company.

Authority Building

It takes a very good blog to attract high quality guest bloggers. And while not every blog is willing to accept outside bloggers, those that are want only the best.

If your business blog has the clout to attract industry and thought leaders to share their insights, it bodes well for your blog and your business. Essentially, a guest post, though in a way self-serving, is an endorsement by that blogger for your company. That builds your business’s authority and, subsequently, your Social Equity.

New Brand Advocates

When a blogger shares content to your website, he or she is not going to keep it a secret. They, in all likelihood, will be going out there and promoting it as if the site was their own!

Garnering brand advocates is among the most difficult things to do in marketing, but when you do, you have struck gold. Guest blogging creates pseudo brand advocates as the aftermath of their post being published is, usually, heavy promotion of your site by third parties.

Guest blogging is an excellent tool and can add significant value to your business. To inquire about guest blogging for t2Social, click here.

Does your blog offer guest blogging? Have you every been a guest blogger? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: Intel

July 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How did Intel subtly promote their new processor to Facebook users?

Creating interactive campaigns has long been an excellent way of engaging your audience and driving users to a landing page, your website or a store. It also makes for a great, open and shut social media case study. However, launching a campaign targeted at Facebook users to build brand awareness is a little more difficult, but Intel managed to do it right.

In 2011, Intel was preparing to roll out their all-new i5 processor. Naturally, this was intended to be the next generation in computer hardware, and they wanted people to know about it. Knowing that showing was much better than telling, the marketing team at Intel decided to put together the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘.

If social media has taught us anything, it is that we are all, to a certain degree, self-obsessed. In order to keep their brand at the forefront of your mind, Intel leveraged that fact and gave you your own museum, something that, quite frankly, is hard to look through only once.

Now, not every marketing budget will allow for such a vastly intricate and impressive campaign to be put together. However, there are surely a few things that marketers can learn from the great work done by Intel to promote their brand to the Facebook audience.

Sometimes the Soft Sell Works Best

The Intel i5 logo pops up at the very end of your museum tour. It is hard to understand where Intel fits into all of this, but it all comes together right at the end. And it leaves you with enough chills to keep the brand in mind for a lot longer than the 3-minute video.

The soft sell can often be the most powerful. Relate your brand to your audience on a personal level and they will remember your name.

Connect with Your Audience

This does not mean connect with them on Facebook or Twitter (well, do that too) but rather really connect with your audience. Give your campaign that personal touch and make each member of your audience feel like it was designed exclusively for them. This small gesture will go a long way when it comes to keeping your brand on the forefront of their minds.

Go Beyond the Brand

Much like the first tip above, your campaign should sell the brand by adding value to your audience’s experience. While touting your expertise, the benefits of your product over another or some other value added from your product or service might work well when it comes to one-time sales, brand loyalty is invaluable and benefits your business in the long-run.

Explain how your brand adds value to your customers and showcase that value with your campaign. This will go a very, very long way.

If you have no yet experienced the ‘Intel Museum of Me‘ we really encourage you to have a look.

What other lessons do you think marketers can learn from this social media case study? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

5 Questions Social Media Managers Should Have An Answer For

July 10, 2013/by Corey Padveen

There are certain questions social media managers should always be able to answer – no matter what.

While every project might be different and unique in its own right, there are certain questions that social media managers will constantly be faced with, and should always have an answer for.

Below are five questions that will almost certainly come up for social media managers in everything from a friendly roundtable discussion with other industry peers to make or break decision-making meeting with prospective clients. In each of these situations and everything in between, qualified social media managers should have an answer locked and loaded. Or, at the very least, know in which direction they would like to take the question.

1. How do you measure the success of social media?

This answer is going to differ depending on the type of client you are talking to, but no matter who the client is, or what the goals of the program might be, you should always be able to provide a detailed response outlining what constitutes success based on numbers.

There are still plenty of skeptics out there when it comes to social media. If you expect to change their minds, you need to be able to answer them with something a little more substantial than ‘Likes’ and ‘Followers’.

2. Can’t I do this for free?

There it is – that evil word: free. This is still among the most common misconceptions when it comes to social media; and it is a very easily understandable one.

I can sign up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and any other social network for free. Why would I pay someone to do it for me? And therein lies the misconception. You need to be able to explain why social media is about so much more than simply having the account. There is an expertise involved and a significant investment of time.

Know how to answer this question and convey your point, and selling social media will be much easier.

3. What tools do you use?

Be careful – this is not as black and white as it looks. There is a lot behind this question and a very careful answer needs to be given.

Tools are great complements to a thoughtful social media strategy, and you need to be able to explain that while tools are incorporated into your program, they are not the only part of the solution.

It is also very important that you are familiar with every possible tool you can find. This question can be a loaded one aimed to test your knowledge of the marketplace. Who is going to trust a social media manager that knows less than the client?

4. What’s wrong with our current social media?

Again, there is a lot more to this question than meets the eye. For starters, if you can answer it, you have done your research and that looks great. Second, you don’t want to insult the current program, but you don’t want to make it seem like you wouldn’t change anything either.

Wow your audience by explaining how you would enhance their current social media efforts to help generate more business and provide them with some details as to how you would do that.

5. I already have an SEO program in place so why would I spend money on social media?

Finally, it is very important that you understand both the differences between social media and SEO, and how they relate to one another.

Keeping up-to-date on both the updates to search engine ranking criteria and social networks will allow you to intelligently answer this question and showcase how the two differ and help one another.

If you can answer these five questions, you stand a great chance of closing more deals. Knowledge is at the root of success when it comes to social media. In an ever-evolving field, it is important that you stay on top of your game in order to wow both your customers, your competitors and your industry.

Can you think of any other questions that social media managers should be able to answer? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

4 Tips to Increase Engagement on Google+

July 9, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What are a few ways you can increase engagement on Google+?

Google+ can be a great resource when it comes to increasing your search engine rankings, finding new clients and driving traffic to your website or blog, but the key to achieving any of this starts with engagement. It is therefore important to know how to increase engagement on Google+.

The tips below are just a few ways to increase engagement on Google+. They are simple and effective, and you can start implementing them right away!

Create Niche Circles

Circles are a great way of divvying up your network. Say you are a tech blogger with a side passion for fishing. You might have hundreds of people in your Google+ network for blogging and another set of network members for fishing. You probably won’t want to share the same content with both of those groups.

By creating niche circles filled with users that fit specific criteria, you can share content targeted to those users and expect considerably higher engagement than if you are simply sharing content to the public.

(Hint: When you share to circles, users receive a popup notification. On the contrary, when you simply share to Public, your network will not receive a popup.)

Give and Take

We all want to see our engagement levels rise, but in order to get other users familiar with our brand and build up our Google+ network, there needs to be a little give and take.

Take time to go through your feed and communities and comment on, +1 or share content you find intriguing or relevant. People appreciate the gesture as much as you do, and rarely does it go unnoticed. So take the time to engage with others and it will not be long before you see the same.

Join Relevant Communities

Google+ Communities are among the greatest features on any social network; this is particularly true when it comes to business and engagement.

By joining Google+ Communities relevant to your industry, you are joining groups of people that have an already expressed interest in what you have to say. Half the engagement battle is fought as soon as you step in the door! By sharing relevant content to the groups, you can expect significantly higher engagement rates than simply sharing to a broad, unspecific audience.

Join Hangouts

Hangouts are a great way to involve yourself and your brand in the conversation organically. Google+ hangouts are designed to share stimulating ideas and conversations, and by actively parrticipating in them you both give more of a personality to your brand and have the opportunity to showcase your expertise with a group of interested peers.

These are just a few of the ways you can go about increasing your engagement on Google+

How do you increase engagement on Google+? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

7 Tips to Get More Followers on Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC]

July 8, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What can you do to get more followers on Twitter?

Twitter is an excellent medium in that it is somewhat more of a broadcast medium than nearly every other social channel. But what tips can you employ in order to get more followers on Twitter?

Building an engaged audience on the social network and sharing relevant, exciting content that drives then to landing pages is a great way to generate more business. Twitter is also an excellent channel in which your brand can establish itself as the authority in a given industry.

The infographic below from Wishpond outlines 7 tips to help you get more Twitter followers. Some of these tips may seem fairly simple, but you might be surprised at how easy it is to forget about one or two when you are building your Twitter audience!

In our opinion, the #1 is perhaps the most important our of all: engage your customer. If you are sharing content with which your audience wants to engage, it is that much easier to convert them into a client.

Take a look at these tips to get more followers on Twitter and let us know which one you think is most important! Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Equity: Social Bookmarking Your Business

July 5, 2013/by Corey Padveen

How does social bookmarking your business on sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon generate Social Equity for your brand?

There is virtually no shortage of benefits when it comes to social bookmarking your business. In addition to building links, increasing your readership and targeting niche audiences, it is a relatively simple process that adds significant value to your business.

There are two areas in which social bookmarking generates Social Equity: SEO and visibility.

Social Bookmarking and SEO

It wasn’t long after social bookmarking sites like Reddit came about that SEO experts began to notice that links shared to them were treated as backlinks by search engines. While there is much that new techniques on social media have to offer with regards to SEO, backlinks are still an excellent means of increasing your SERPs.

The ability to create links to each piece of content on your website is a valuable tool, and these links remain in search engines and on social bookmarking sites indefinitely. Staying power and the ability for users to find your business through search on both engines like Google and bookmarking networks like StumbleUpon mean real value added in terms of findability and reach.

Social Bookmarking and Visibility

In keeping with the theme of findability, one can also look at the value added from social bookmarking sites as increasing your brand’s visibility inexpensively, quickly and to a very targeted market.

Similar results might require significant SEO efforts. The ability to categorize your content, share it to engaged audiences and provide pseudo titles and meta descriptions on these networks is a tremendous asset. Furthermore, results arise much quicker and, once again, generate a certain staying power for your brand online.

By showcasing your content to niche audiences, you gain a certain attribute that most other social networks do not afford: longevity. On networks like Facebook, where a post has a shelf life of roughly a few hours, or Twitter, where a tweet’s shelf life can be as short as a few minutes, the ability to maintain one’s presence for an extended period of time is virtually invaluable.

Over time, with ongoing attention paid to such a practice, a ripple effect will take place and your content will make its way across the internet, all leading back to your landing page, blog or website. It is hard to imagine too many other techniques as simple as social bookmarking that add that kind of value to a brand.

Do you share your content on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg or StumbleUpon? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Case Study: SmartPak Equine

July 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Equestrian products is not the first category to come to mind when one thinks of social media case study, but SmartPak Equine proved that a proper strategy can work anywhere.

SmartPak Equine – an equestrian products company – uses triggered emails to drive sales, and though it may not be the most conventional use of the platform, they have seen some tremendous success.

Before getting into the campaigns that make up this social media case study, it is important to understand what triggered emails are. Unlike conventional automated “Welcome” or “Thank You” emails, event-triggered emails are sent out when an action or event prompts the email. For example, if I have an account, am loading products into my cart for an order and get distracted by a phone call causing me to abandon the order, an email will be sent to me that allows me to return top my cart and complete the order.

This is not always a preferred method by consumers – some find it a little too aggressive. However, SmartPak Equine noticed that their audience was responding well to these emails. Specifically, they were seeing a high level of engagement and conversion with three types of event-triggered emails: shipping reminders, product review reminders and abandoned cart reminders. (For full details on each of these three campaigns, read a breakdown here.)

These three types of triggered emails prompt further engagement with the brand’s website, encourage additional purchases and maintain brand awareness with customers to increase loyalty.

The results of this potentially risky approach has been a 28% open rate, a 5-6% clickthrough rate, a surprisingly high 11% conversion rate and a revenue per email nearly three times higher than conventional, manual email marketing.

So what can marketers learn from these event-triggered campaigns and the successes SmartPak Equine has garnered?

Understand Your Audience

This is not an email strategy that will work with every type of industry. SmartPak took the time to understand their audience, realize how niche they were and create a strategy that would appeal specifically to them.

It is crucial that you understand what your audience wants and how they interact with your brand before putting together a campaign – particularly one as aggressive as this.

Keep Your Audience Coming Back

Of the three most popular campaigns described above, two focus heavily on maintaining brand awareness with existing customers. Retaining clients and maintaining a relationship with them in order to keep them coming back is important to the long-term success of your brand. In order to ensure that this happens, you cannot rely entirely on the customer; you need to take some initiative.

Talk to your audience and customers (however and wherever possible) in order to keep your brand in mind next time they are looking to buy.

Don’t Pretend You Are Not a Business

The goal of every event-triggered email sent by SmartPak is sales. The results? 175% more revenue and 83% higher conversion rates. Social media is about being social and talking to your audience, that’s true. But a conversation will not keep you in business unless it leads to sales.

Make yourself human, talk to your audience and engage wherever you can, but use these conversations as a means of driving business.

SmartPak implemented all of these strategies and their efforts paid off handsomely.

Which of these tips do you think is most important to generating success with social media or email marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter and have a happy 4th of July!

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