1. Optimize Your Social Presence: First
and foremost, you must make sure your presence is optimized. Make sure
the bios/profiles for your social media accounts are complete and that
they include clear and concise descriptions of your business, your
company logo, and your website URL. And now that social media updates
are included in search results, be sure you're also optimizing your
tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn company status updates with keywords appropriate for your business, which could help you get found in search.
2. Promote Your Social Presence Everywhere: And
by everywhere, we mean everywhere -- on various pages of your website,
on your blog, on signage in your storefront if you're a local business,
in print advertising, on your business cards, in your email marketing
messages. Many social media sites now have official 'follow' buttons you
can include on your website and blog. If not, you can create your own
button and link it to your social media account. Twitter, for example,
offers an official follow button that enables your site visitors to become a Twitter follower with just one click!
3. Share Useful, Valuable Content: It's not just enough to promote your presence. You need to make your presence is something that's worth following in the first place. Make sure your tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn updates consist of valuable, useful, and engaging content.
Avoid product-focused content, and instead, make your social updates
consist of educational content that has the potential to attract more
fans and followers. People follow brands in social media because they're
looking for something useful, not because they want to know about how
great your products and services are.
4. Add Social Sharing Buttons to All Your Content: Just
as you should be promoting your social presence in as many places as
possible, you should also be enabling your site visitors and email
subscribers to share your content with their personal networks as easily
as possible. Add social sharing buttons (e.g. "Share on Facebook"
"Tweet This," etc.) to all of your content -- on individual blog
articles, in email messages, on landing pages for ebook and webinar
downloads, within the pages of your ebooks, etc. By
evangelizing your audience to share your content, you'll have better
potential to reach a broader audience that extends beyong your direct
network of fans and followers. And if those people like the content that
their friends are sharing with them, they may be inclined to become
direct followers of you, too!
5. Find, Follow, and Build Relationships With People In Your Industry: Use tools like Tweet Grader,
Twitter Search, and Twellow to identify other Twitter users in your
industry. Start following them, participating in discussions, and
engaging in conversations. Find and follow other influential bloggers
and retweet their content. Follow back anyone who follows you.
Participate in Twitter chats and
hashtag conversations like #FollowFriday (#FF). Start following some of
the people your followers (and the people you're following) are
following, too!
6. Interact With Fans and Followers: Just
as you should be regularly sharing educational, insightful content, you
should also be monitoring your presence and interacting with your fans
and followers. Ask questions, be engaging, and participate in
discussions to create a presence worth following.
7. Create a Custom Facebook Welcome Page: Follow this quick tutorial to create a custom Facebook landing page tab
to welcome first-time visitors of your Facebook page. Set the page as
your 'Default landing Tab' (you can do this when you're editing your
page under 'Manage Permissions'), and use the tab to encourage new
visitors to 'like' you right off the bat! (Note: With HubSpot, you can take this one step further by installing HubSpot's Welcome App, which also presents visitors with a form that can convert them into leads directly within Facebook.)
8. Offer Incentives for New Fans/Followers: Make it so your social media presence is a must-follow. Research shows that 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive offers from business pages,
so consider offering exclusive promotions and offers available only to
your social media followers. Create a Facebook contest and make it a
requirement for users to 'like' you in order to be eligible. Create an
offer available only to Twitter followers that can't be obtained
elsewhere. Make it so that users need to follow you in order to receive specific perks.
Building your social media reach will take some time, but if you are
committed to the steps above, we guarantee you'll start seeing results.
How else would you recommend increasing your social media reach?
Learn more of my techniques by coming to Work With Me
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