To increase your blog’s readership, you need to share your blog posts to a number of feeds every day.
While there are some writers that own a blog simply for the joy or writing, those of us with a business blog are looking for one thing above all else: readers. In order to increase your blog’s audience, you need to share your blog posts on a regular basis, and these five channels need to be on your daily list.
1. Your Business Pages
If you own a social business, then you undoubtedly have business pages on networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and others.
Your audiences on these pages are inherently your most loyal. They have decided to follow your brand and be notified of the content you are sharing, so why not give them what they are asking for?
Share your content to these pages for your highest CTRs as soon as it is published. Your audience is waiting for it.
2. Your Personal Accounts
It might seem obvious, but people often forget to share their content to their personal accounts. The mentality is that if it is for business, it should be shared to a business page. Yes, but also no.
First, you never know who might be interested in what you have to say. If you write an article and post it to your personal Twitter account, one of your followers might click on it because of the captivating title, read the article and subscribe to your blog. Right there, you might have found a new lead that you would have otherwise missed.
Second, as an employee or owner of a social business, you are your brand. People follow your company as they would follow you. The article was not written by ‘Brand X’, it was written by John Doe of ‘Brand X’. Employees are the best brand advocates out there. Take advantage of that.
3. Social Bookmarking Sites
This is good for both the short- and long-terms. Sharing your articles to bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon mean that they will be archived for a long time to come. You never know when someone might find it, bookmark it or even share it themselves.
Keep in mind that while your content might be most popular shortly after it is shared, it can still be discovered down the road. You’ll want it to be discoverable in places where longevity exists in much greater fashion than on some of the larger social networks (i.e. Facebook and Twitter).
4. Groups and Communities
If you are a member in industry-specific LinkedIn Groups, or Google+ Communities, then you are sharing and reading content that everyone in that group might potentially find interesting. When t2 employees first started sharing articles to LinkedIn Groups (particularly those in the social media realm) we saw our traffic more than double in the first month.
People join social groups and communities to find content relevant to the work they do. If you share it with them, they will be all the more likely to read it.
5. CommentLuv-Enabled Blogs
For those of you that are not familiar with CommentLuv, it is a WordPress plugin that welcomes all comments and links to be shared. Now be careful, this is not encouraging you to post spam. Spam is spam no matter what fashion it appears in.
Familiarize yourself with your industry’s blogs that have enabled CommentLuv and, when you find an article that is relevant to your most recent post, share a comment and provide a link to your relevant material. This is not going to come up as often as the other means of sharing your content. You are really going to have to do some work in order to find these blogs. However, when you do, be sure to leave a relevant comment (do not simply post a link – that’s spam) and share a backlink to your article. This is good for increasing readership and SEO.
Try out some of these tips and watch your readership and subscription rate increase. It is all a question of finding your most engaged audiences!
Where do you share your blog posts every day? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Landing Page Best Practices for a Google AdWords Campaign
/by Corey PadveenYour landing page is the first impression people get of your business when they click on an AdWords ad, so stick to the best practices.
Your Homepage is Not a Landing Page
Technically, your homepage is a page on which visitors can land, but that does not make it a suitable landing page.
You should not be directing people to your homepage. Generally, people click on an AdWords ad because it relates to their search. You are advertising a product, service or bit of information about something relevant to the person searching on Google. Send them to the page that is most relevant to that search’s keywords.
If you expect people to start searching through your website after you have directed them to your homepage, you’re wrong. You’ll see a much higher bounce rate and lower time on site and pages viewed if you place the burden of finding relevant information on the visitor.
Include a Clear Call-to-Action
It might seem sales-y, but if you do not provide people with a clear means of getting in touch with you or letting you know that they want to take the next step, they won’t.
The process needs to be made as simple as possible. Show them a clear space designated for their email address, name, phone number or any other bit of information you want to collect. Again, make it as easy as possible for visitors to take the next step will result in a much greater likelihood that they do.
Give Plenty of Information
People hate being confused. There is a reason why Google best practices for ads does not let advertisers create ambiguous ads with lots of flash. (For example, an ad that reads, “Do you want to make money NOW?!?!” will certainly be rejected.) The same concept applies to your landing page.
Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor. You see an ad that looks enticing. You click on it. You arrive at a page with lots of big text and flashy images, but everything is cryptic in nature. Sentences like, “Looking for the next big thing?” and “You could retire when YOU want!” will scare people off. They scream scam.
Focus on providing people with as much information in the simplest format possible. They clicked on your ad because it appealed to what they were looking for. When they get to your landing page, it should tell them what you are offering and give them a chance to find out more. (See the CTA best practice above.)
Test Your Landing Pages
You should always test different landing pages to see what strategies work best. Little things like the placement of your call-to-action can make a big difference in your conversion rates.
Let each page remain active for enough time in order to determine what is working and what is not, then take what you have learned into account when creating a new campaign or landing page.
Allow for Social Sharing
When you include social sharing buttons on your landing page, you give your audience the opportunity to do some of your work for you.
If you are running a cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition campaign, your costs can start to pile up. If you give your audience a chance to share your content to social networks, or invite their friends to sign up for your service, you are both cutting your AdWords costs down and creating brand advocates to create awareness for your new product or service.
Follow these landing page best practices in order to get the most out of your AdWords campaigns. The ad is just the first part of the process!
What other best practices can you think of when it comes to running a Google AdWords campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
What You Need to Know About Instagram Direct and Snapchat
/by Corey PadveenLate last week, Instagram launched Instagram Direct and now the world wants to know how it compares to Snapchat.
Instagram, as we all know, is a mobile photo-sharing app. Originally, users could tag friends in captions and make their profiles private. This was the only way to privatize the public network. Now, with Instagram Direct, users have the ability to send pictures to a select group of friends that only they can see. Sound familiar?
Well, if it does, that’s because the premise is very similar to Snapchat’s model. The difference rests in the fact that Snapchat’s appeal is the disappearing nature of images sent. They will only stick around for at most ten seconds (or thirty, if you are using the Story function). However, Instagram offers a few things that Snapchat does not and vice versa.
The Similarities
When one looks at Instagram Direct, it is clear that the feature was designed to compete directly with Snapchat. Users can take pictures, select a group of friends with whom to share the images, reply to images shared and filter their friends lists with both services.
The popularity of visual content is no secret. (There is a reason why Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion and offered Snapchat $3 billion.) Offering users a way to communicate with pictures? Priceless. It makes sense that apps like Instagram and Snapchat are so popular. But it is the differences that will determine a winner in this battle for photo-conversing supremacy.
The Differences
Snapchat images disappear. That is perhaps the biggest appeal of the app. You can feel safe knowing that any picture you take will disappear from viewers’ sight in at most ten seconds. With Instagram Direct, images will remain archived in a conversation. The benefit here is that Instagram Direct is designed for an actual, ongoing conversation to take place between a select group of friends either through comments of shared images. On Snapchat, images might be fun to share, but there is no way to like them, comment on them or maintain an ongoing conversation without simply sending a disappearing image back to the original sender.
As for editing, Snapchat allows users to post comments directly on an image and draw with their fingers. Instagram Direct allows for filters to be applied (as with traditional Instagram photos) and captions to be written. Once again, in terms of a conversation, Instagram opens up the possibility of conversing either through images or written responses. Snapchat, on the other hand, relies on a user responding with an image.
Snapchat is still ad-free and that makes people happy. Instagram has started sharing ads, and that makes people sad. (Or mad, if you have had a chance to read some of the comments.) But the reality of the situation is that these apps are businesses. Billion-dollar businesses need revenues. Ads generate revenues. Apps need ads. Snapchat had the option of remaining ad-free (for now) and integrating with Facebook as a free feature of the network. They chose to decline the acquisition request and are now left to figure out how revenues will be generated. Instagram will presumably make its money from ads on the public feeds, and Instagram Direct will remain ad-free so that friends can have uninterrupted conversations while staying on the network.
The Winner?
Time will tell.
Snapchat might see this move as an attempt by Facebook to quash the photo-sharing app after they rejected their offer. At least, that is how they will see it for now. Hundreds of millions of snaps might be sent every day on Snapchat, but you have to wonder if the investors that just fed Snapchat with another $50 million are a little nervous now that they see this new feature on Instagram. There is no revenue being generated by Snapchat and now there is what appears to be a very serious competitor emerging.
Do you use Snapchat? Do you plan on using Instagram Direct? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Google’s Latest Patent: Taking the Social Out of Social Media
/by Corey PadveenOne of Google’s latest social media patents promises to make the automated features of social media so realistic, you would never know the difference.
The program is designed to adapt to your voice and activity trends in order to react to posts, share content and essentially run your social profiles without you ever having to do a thing (once it has gathered enough information about your activity, of course).
No matter how you look at it, there are going to be two basic, extreme schools of thought: those that love the idea and feel as though it is going to make running a social business easier, and those that hate it. (NOTE: Those that hate it are probably the ones with an actual social business.)
The Secret to a Successful Social Business
It might not sound like a secret, but it seems so many people are still in the dark when it comes to understanding what it takes to run a successful social business: work. Hard work, investment and dedication are the most important tools you will need in order to succeed with your social business.
So many people know that social media is crucial to the longevity of their brands, but they keep looking for shortcuts. Shortcuts will not get you anywhere. Using a tool that automates your brand’s presence on social channels might work for Google rankings, but it won’t work for customers.
Bringing automation into the mix is exactly why so many people have moved away from conventional customer service avenues (like the phone and even email) and towards social. And how often are we shown examples of an “Epic Fail” when a brand sends out an automated response on Twitter? People want to interact with people. Even when it is a big brand, the human component that social media offers is why people continue to choose it over other means of communication.
Creating Your Voice
There are some forms of automation that work. Some brands choose to automate tweets in order to ensure that important messages are seen by the broadest audience possible. For those that use Hootsuite, some brands might choose to upload a content schedule for a number of networks. This is all fine once you have established your voice in a market. But it is the real-time responses and comments that people react to most.
Recycling your articles might be a great way of getting fresh eyes on old content, but if social has taught us anything, it is that real-time marketing is where you find your greatest success. People want to see that your brand is active on social channels. They do not want you to simply be present.
Running a social business is a serious commitment. No matter how many shortcuts are created, people are still going to want to talk to you. It is hard for any brand to call itself a social business when they are actively trying to avoid the social part of the term.
Would you use a product like this? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Email Marketing Myths [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenEmail marketing is still alive and well, and there are plenty of email marketing myths that still scare marketers.
There is no shortage of email marketing myths out there that tend to scare some people away from the very successful platform. Email was the first form of social marketing, and it is still a viable option that should be considered in any strategy.
You want to reach your audience. That’s a goal for any social business. While billions have taken to the socialsphere, not everyone has adopted the platform yet. Despite seeing a mention of social media at every turn, it is still a new platform. Even marketers that have embraced social as the next big step in communications are still trying to figure out exactly how to sell on social platforms. With email, that trial and error period has been going on for much longer, and there are several ways to get your message across and sell your product or service via email.
In the infographic below, seven email marketing myths are laid out and dispelled. Take a look at them and ease your concerns about email. It should definitely be a consideration with any strategy!
How do you integrate email in your social business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Legal Implications of Social Media: Where is the Line?
/by Corey PadveenThe legal implications of social media might not be written in stone (just yet) but they do exist and you, as a business or individual, need to know about them.
It is no secret that employers are using social media when researching prospective employees, or business partners. In fact, 1 in 5 recent graduates has reportedly been denied a job because of something a prospective employer found on social media. That relates to the social implications of these new media. But what about the legal implications of social media? Surely, with something as clearly defined (for the most part) as the law, they cannot be nearly as severe, right?
Wrong.
There are plenty of legal implications of social media, and your social business needs to be aware of them.
Your Workplace is Now Online
In 2009, a Philadelphia police station was sued by a group of individuals who felt that a discussion online between coworkers was creating a hostile work environment.
As noted above, your personal online activity can cost you a job, but you need to realize that if you are not paying attention to your employees’ habits online, you are as at fault as they are. It might sound like an extra workload, but ignoring social media is not an option – neither internally nor externally.
As a social business, you need to inform your employees of your expected best practices. The reputation and credibility of your firm might rest on it.
Know Your Limits
It is no secret that your best brand advocates can be your employees. You know they are loyal to your brand, and there is nothing legally or ethically wrong with asking them to share your company’s content in an effort to increase your reach. But you need to know just how far you can take that.
You are not allowed to require your employees to provide you with access to their social channels. The law might not have caught up to technology entirely, but the right to privacy is still alive and well. It might seem obvious for most business owners and managers, but for some, that is not the case. Understand your limitations when it comes to your internal process.
Words Matter
For a social business, anything written online is representative of your brand’s culture. For better or worse, people formulate opinions based on what they see. Now, objective comments and status updates are (usually) harmless, but it is in your best interest to stay away from touchy or potentially harmful subjects.
From an internal perspective, you do not want to create that hostile work environment mentioned above. You also do not want to use employees’ social channels as a means of blackmailing them. This can lead to a discrimination suit.
From an external perspective, the laws of libel and slander are still in effect. Not only is it bad form to criticize competitors on open forums – your best way to get past them is by providing a better product or service – but if you are not careful, you could wind up saying something that is not true. When that is in writing, you open yourself up to a world of unpleasantness.
The law is still catching up to social business. There is quite a ways to go, and each industry is going to have different standards when it comes to the medium. There exist, however, certain elements that we already know about, and these should be considered when you are putting together your social business strategy.
What stories can you think of that relate to the legal implications of social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
How to Create a Twitter Ad Campaign [VIDEO]
/by Corey PadveenIt is easy to create a Twitter ad campaign, and you can do it for your brand by following these simple steps!
Why You Need to Focus on Facebook Mobile
/by Corey PadveenFacebook mobile is now more important than ever, and your strategy needs to incorporate Facebook mobile in a number of ways.
In order to capture the attention of this large and continually growing audience, you need to incorporate Facebook mobile into your strategy in a big way.
Some Interesting Facts About Facebook Mobile
A recent study by Shareaholic has revealed some very impressive data with regards to the importance of Facebook mobile.
In the last year, the referrals generated from Facebook (for businesses) have grown by 58.81% (year-over-year). How did they do this? Mobile.
As the chart below shows, referrals from mobile devices have increase a whopping 253.25% in the past year! What’s more the study finds that more than half of Facebook’s referral traffic growth has been the direct result of mobile activity.
As more and more people rely on their smartphones for everything from phone calls to everyday business and social use, the importance of a mobile component to your social strategy increases.
Below are a few ways you can take advantage of this growing trend and capitalize on the value of Facebook mobile referral power.
Create Mobile-Specific Ads
There exist some incredible features on the Facebook advertising platform that so few businesses are taking advantage of.
When you create a Facebook ad, you have the ability to target your ads to mobile devices. What’s more, you can specify the type of mobile device being used. Now, if you pay attention to your Google Analytics, and see that a large proportion of your mobile audience is coming from iOS, you know that you can create an ad on Facebook that targets only users with an iPhone! (Yes, this is actually something you can do.)
All it takes is a little tweaking and you will be able to really boost your success with Facebook ads click-through rates.
Create Mobile-Friendly Content
This is really more about creating content that is Facebook-friendly. Writing a long-winded story as a post is going to be annoying enough as it is for your fans on their desktop. Imagine how much more frustrated they would be if they had to scroll past in on their mobile devices as well. And do you expect anyone to click on images and see the full thing if it does not simply show up on their mobile News Feed? Probably not.
People want something fast and easy – that goes double for mobile users. Your content should have a clear message delivered fast and in an easy-to-view way. This way, you can encourage your mobile fans to click on links and read more if they are interested.
Share From Your Device
If you are using Facebook as a business – or even as a professional – then you should be using it to share content from your device. Post to your page from your mobile phone and check in at different locations. Generally, this increases engagement with your mobile audience, and should certainly be tried. This tactic also helps humanize your brand, and helps users relate to your company on a more personal level.
Try out some of these pointers and see if you can start capitalizing on the huge surge in mobile referral traffic from Facebook!
Do you access Facebook on your mobile device? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
5 Places to Share Your Blog Posts Every Day
/by Corey PadveenTo increase your blog’s readership, you need to share your blog posts to a number of feeds every day.
1. Your Business Pages
If you own a social business, then you undoubtedly have business pages on networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and others.
Your audiences on these pages are inherently your most loyal. They have decided to follow your brand and be notified of the content you are sharing, so why not give them what they are asking for?
Share your content to these pages for your highest CTRs as soon as it is published. Your audience is waiting for it.
2. Your Personal Accounts
It might seem obvious, but people often forget to share their content to their personal accounts. The mentality is that if it is for business, it should be shared to a business page. Yes, but also no.
First, you never know who might be interested in what you have to say. If you write an article and post it to your personal Twitter account, one of your followers might click on it because of the captivating title, read the article and subscribe to your blog. Right there, you might have found a new lead that you would have otherwise missed.
Second, as an employee or owner of a social business, you are your brand. People follow your company as they would follow you. The article was not written by ‘Brand X’, it was written by John Doe of ‘Brand X’. Employees are the best brand advocates out there. Take advantage of that.
3. Social Bookmarking Sites
This is good for both the short- and long-terms. Sharing your articles to bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon mean that they will be archived for a long time to come. You never know when someone might find it, bookmark it or even share it themselves.
Keep in mind that while your content might be most popular shortly after it is shared, it can still be discovered down the road. You’ll want it to be discoverable in places where longevity exists in much greater fashion than on some of the larger social networks (i.e. Facebook and Twitter).
4. Groups and Communities
If you are a member in industry-specific LinkedIn Groups, or Google+ Communities, then you are sharing and reading content that everyone in that group might potentially find interesting. When t2 employees first started sharing articles to LinkedIn Groups (particularly those in the social media realm) we saw our traffic more than double in the first month.
People join social groups and communities to find content relevant to the work they do. If you share it with them, they will be all the more likely to read it.
5. CommentLuv-Enabled Blogs
For those of you that are not familiar with CommentLuv, it is a WordPress plugin that welcomes all comments and links to be shared. Now be careful, this is not encouraging you to post spam. Spam is spam no matter what fashion it appears in.
Familiarize yourself with your industry’s blogs that have enabled CommentLuv and, when you find an article that is relevant to your most recent post, share a comment and provide a link to your relevant material. This is not going to come up as often as the other means of sharing your content. You are really going to have to do some work in order to find these blogs. However, when you do, be sure to leave a relevant comment (do not simply post a link – that’s spam) and share a backlink to your article. This is good for increasing readership and SEO.
Try out some of these tips and watch your readership and subscription rate increase. It is all a question of finding your most engaged audiences!
Where do you share your blog posts every day? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
How to Create LinkedIn Ads that Generate Results
/by Corey PadveenLinkedIn Ads are a great way to reach large audiences of professionals and generate new exposure for your brand.
Consider your Facebook profile, then compare it to your LinkedIn profile. On Facebook, you might leave out your work details, education, and keep your interests private. That can make it pretty hard for an advertiser to include you in their targeted campaign. However, on LinkedIn, we go out of our way to tell people where we went to school, what our work history looks like, every detail about what we do now, and by showcasing groups in which we are members, we tell everyone what we are interested in professionally. When it comes to LinkedIn Ads, that’s a gold mine of information.
Next time your decide to run a LinkedIn Ads campaign to promote your Company Page, take some of these tips into account to generate great results.
Study Your Audience
In the ‘Analytics’ tab on your LinkedIn Company Page, you can learn a lot about the people that have looked at your brand.
If you scroll down, you can see exactly what the ratios are for your brand’s fans in terms of the industries in which they work, their level of seniority, their company size, industry and more. Figure out what your most active audience looks like and create ads targeted to those demographics. Clearly, your message resonates with people who fit that criteria.
Leverage Competitor Insights
In the ‘Insights’ tab on your company page, you can see what other Company Pages your fans have followed or visited. Do a little research and see what your competitors are doing. Not only can this give you some idea of what the competitive landscape looks like, it can also provide useful reminders to include information you might have forgotten.
If you are sharing an audience with someone, you want to ensure that you are sharing as much information as possible and then some.
Use Your Targeting
As noted above, targeting your LinkedIn Ads is far more extensive than most networks out there. Take advantage of every section that exists. Even if you do not have your Company Page insights at your disposal, use the targeting options for A-B testing.
Target different industries, skills, locations, ages and more in order to ensure that the most specific audience is seeing your ads. When it comes to testing, this is a great way to determine what types of ads resonate with different demographics, and which audiences are most engaged with your content.
Sponsor Your Most Popular Content
As with Facebook and Twitter ads, you can promote different posts to broad audiences on LinkedIn.
When looking at your Company Page stats, find the articles that reached the largest audience and had the highest engagement rates. Then, promote that content to your targeted audience and grow your follower base. This is a great way to not only increase your audience size, but showcase your excellent content.
Follow these simple steps next time you are running a LinkedIn Ads campaign and you will be sure to see some great results!
Have you created a LinkedIn Ads campaign? How did it go? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Ideation and the Secrets of Content Marketing
/by Corey PadveenContent marketing is all the buzz in social business, and the secrets of content marketing start with ideation.
The strategies below are a few ways to go about finding inspiration for your next great content marketing campaign.
Use Tools at Your Disposal
There are plenty of tools out there that can give your ideation process a major boost. Trendsmap tells you what is trending on Twitter in different areas. Creating content around a popular event is always a great way to generate buzz, and Trendsmap is a good start.
There is also Ubersuggest, which describes itself as ‘suggest on steroids’. Type in a keyword, location and medium and watch the results populate with suggestions for other keywords and phrases with every letter of the alphabet!
Soovle is an incredible tool that provides you with the most searched terms based on your typed keyword – as it is being typed! See what popular searches look like and begin working with those terms to create highly sought after content.
Monitor Industry Chatter
Something as simple as watching your Twitter feed can give you the inspiration you need to create a great content marketing strategy. There is no greater inspiration than your industry’s conversation. Social channels offer us an opportunity to see what people are thinking, and what interests them at this moment.
Opening your eyes and ears to trends in conversations – either by simply monitoring your social feeds or with the use of a higher end listening tool – will help you better understand what people want to see. You can then use this insight to create a multi-channel campaign that generates significant engagement.
Incorporate Every Channel
The 2013 content marketing study by Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs shows that the most successful content marketing campaigns are using upwards of 14 social channels to share their content. You can’t ignore any channels when it comes to creating a successful content marketing campaign.
When searching for an idea, consider one that can expand onto every one of your social channels (and then some). Your story should be capable of being told on any platform, with a variety of media types (e.g. text, video, photo, etc.).
These are just a few of the ways in which you can create a successful content marketing strategy starting with ideation. The secrets of content marketing are pretty simple; success is going to start with an idea.
What does your ideation process entail? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!