Tips On How To Engage Better With Social Media

Tips On How To Engage Better With Social Media

Have you defined what you want from social media? Most folks post something on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn and they want tons of people to click and read it. Is that your goal? Social media is a way to promote the work you have spent hours perfecting and attract people to it.

 

The hidden challenge is that you can’t just link your social media up to your content and have thousands of likes, shares and tweets flooding the screen. All social media are different just like people and they have different audiences. That is the number one rule that must always be remembered.

Another rule is: Content is King and Relevance is Queen. It may sound a bit confusing but consider a search for "nuts and bolts," if the user lands on a page about "peanuts," they are gone in a flash. Knowing the audience you are going to share your content with  allows you to optimize your writings for each social network.

Consider the typical audience of each social network. Stop and think of it for a few moments. The fact is, not all of them are equal. Let’s take a look at today’s most popular social media:

Twitter is like a busy street with everyone talking at once. A very impersonal setting with only a vestige of personal contact.

LinkedIn is like a business arena where everyone comes to share their resume with like-minded people and develop groups for their interest areas.

Facebook is like a big party where you find your high school and college associates, re-connect with old friends, make new friends and keep up with family members who live far far away.

With this in mind define the social media group you are connecting with. You will see that your perfect post will look different for each social network.

Let’s look at some ideas you can use in each network.

Twitter:Twitter is easy right? Only 140 characters, but a very important social media network and one you don’t want to mess up with. Since there is very little personal content, people on Twitter can be fickle. 

• In Twitter your best friend is the #Hashtag: The hashtag helps lead readers to your content. The key is to not over use them and/or turn them into spam. Two thoughts on hashtags.
•  Hashtag only those things that relate to your content directly. Remember the Queen mentioned above?
• Try to use only one hashtags per post. Multiple hastags confuse the audience about content.

Images can be a friend as well:  Images tell a story. Use an image with your tweets and it will attract the eyes and the body will flow naturally in that direction. Just make sure the image is related to the content. (Sigh; its the Queen again.)

Linked In:  What makes LinkedIn so special is the business nature of it. In it’s evolution the platform has become similar to Facebook but much more reserved. Your primary process in LinkedIn is to find a group for an interest area.

Find a group that you like and join the group. Be Active in the group more than once or twice. Do not be afraid to engage others in a conversation. Networking in social media is all about building relationships and the group is how you do that in LinkedIn.

If there is no group that appeals to you, define one and ask selected associates to join in to share their ideas. It may take some time to develop, but the feedback will be solid, and your content will reach a target audience. Your partners in the group would be People who would compliment your goals or who would want to see that content.

Don’t ignore seeking out and giving recommendations, both inside and outside of your groups. Always reply to comments, people need acknowledgement. Ask for feedback on your comments so people can engage with you. Make sure your postings to a group are not duplicate content. That makes them spam.

Facebook: Here you can post with text, images and video or a combination of all three. Links can be inserted into the text or image to lead people to other areas of interest.

Link Posts in Facebook capture the image and short description of the URL you are sending folks to. That way they can judge in advance if they want to go there. You can edit out the text or the image. Your social fans might respond better to something different.

Try to make sure your posts stir some emotions and catch attention by using a strong headline designed to attract this type of audience.

Think about doing image and video Posts. A picture is worth a thousand words. Need more be said? People are naturally visual and this can be used to attract attention. The rule is again the Queen, make it relevant to the content you are sending them to.

Keep your image size within the limits. The Facebook Image displayed on user newsfeed dimensions are 472px394px. Other images will never be cropped, instead they will be scaled down. So actual ratio is 236x197px.

Sometimes videos work much better than images. Try the video upload feature provided by Facebook instead of a link to YouTube. This lets your audience watch the video inside Facebook without being sent to another website.

Google Analytics - Your Friend

Why Use Google Analytics

A one of my blog readers recently asked me to give him some good reasons to get involved with Google Analytics. So I have put together a topical piece for your review. You can probably think of others and if so, please let me know. I’ll add and give you credit. The first reason is near to my heart and my business sense.

Google Analytics is Free

Monthly Cost: $0. Training: Free. From a financial perspective there is no reason a small business should not run Google Analytics. You can  spend upwards from $100 - $20k a month on other solutions, but for the small business, install Google Analytics, it’s free. There are so many other ways to spend that money. If you have issues with the installation, I will do it professionally for FREE, just give me a call.

Analytics Reports!

Google Analytics provides you with reports that include some awesome graphs of how your natural campaigns are doing. You can download these reports and set up a monthly review of events that happen, where visitors are landing on your website and where they go once they get there, plus much, much more!

Custom Reports

One challenge with some commercial analytics packages, is that you don’t have access to get to the data you want whenever you want. You must call the consultant, who then modifies the report (usually for a fee) and then you wait for the results With analytics, custom reports allow you to see your data the way you need to see it, whenever you need it. Most commercial analytics packages cannot do this on the fly.

Testing

Anyone who talks to me more than once knows that I like testing. Testing is one of the best things in the world and testing tracking methods is even better. The great thing about Analytics is that you can set different profiles to focus on specific aspects of your business. If you want to isolate blog traffic, you can do that. Would you like to review only traffic from Canada or readers from your newsletter?  Just set up a profile. Testing allows you to change what needs to be changed and accentuate that which needs leveraged.

No one can argue that Google sends the majority of traffic to websites. For some, Google makes up 90% of their organic traffic. For marketing, AdWords can be set up to send tracking codes to your current analytics. It just makes good sense to use it. Remember, it is all about trends and Google Analytics is evolving. My first rule in online marketing is to have Analytics of some kind. If you can measure it, you can change it. Have something running so you can plan, see trends, etc. I know some readers have a thing about Google anything but let’s face it, he is the big gorilla and he can be on your team.

8 new words for your business.

The New Language of Plastic

You don’t hear “Cash, check or charge.”  much anymore. The way we pay for things has evolved and as a business, there's a new selection words you might want to prepare for so you're not caught off guard when someone asks to pay in Bitcoin or a chip card. 

Chip cards: These are a security enhancement. Chip cards are not only more secure, they are also simple to use. Chip cards and terminals work together to protect in-store payments. A unique one-time code is generated behind-the-scenes that is needed for the transaction approval - a feature that is virtually impossible to replicate in a counterfeit card.

 CNP. A Card Not Present transaction are transactions made where the cardholder can not physically present the card for visual examination such as on line or mail-order transactions.CNP transactions are a major avenue for fraud because verification is difficult if not impossible.

Digital Currency. Digital currency can be defined as an internet based form of currency. It is digitally traded between users and can be purchased for, or exchanged into, U.S. dollars or other real or virtual currencies. There is no central point of control over the money supply so they are known as decentralized digital currencies.

EFTPS. The Electronic Federal Tax Payment System is a tax payment service provided by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. You must enroll first, then you can pay any tax due to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) using this system. There is no fee for using this service.

EMV.  The letters stand for  Europay, MasterCard and Visa, and is a global standard for integrated circuit cards or chip cards on point of sale (POS) terminals and automated teller machines (ATMs). It is used for authenticating credit and debit card transactions. The process is based on chip-and-pin, rather than magnetic strip, technology.

ePayment. This is one you are probably using, it refers to electronic payments, such as credit and debit card transactions processed electronically such as PayPal. You will need to be sure this form of payment is PCI Compliant. Standards will vary from business to business based on size and transactions.

Form 1099-K. The 1099-K is an IRS information return for reporting certain payment transactions to improve voluntary tax compliance. You should get a 1099-K  if, in the year you received payments from payment card transactions in settlement of third party payment networks above the minimum of  $20,000 total and more than 200 transactions.

PCI-DSS. The world's largest corporations and the smallest Internet store, must comply with the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). It is vital for all merchants who accept credit cards, online or offline. The size of your business will determine the specific compliance requirements that must be met. Note that enforcement of merchant compliance is managed by the individual payment brands and not by the Council – the same is true for non-compliance penalties.