Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween
Posted on 31. Oct, 2011 by SueMisukanis in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media content, social media marketing
This Halloween do you think social media will bring you tricks or treats? For some marketers, every day is Halloween when it comes to social media marketing. These marketers expect the bogeyman to be hiding behind every piece of consumer-generated content and assume their customers and the public only use Facebook and Twitter witchcraft to create bloodcurdling tricks. Yet the reality is that most of the social media conversation about your firm isn’t scary.
For your Halloween treat from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, here are the top five tricks in my social media goodie bag you can easily integrate into your marketing efforts.
1. Shock Them with Killer Headlines
Grab the attention of your business’ witches and wizards to lure them into your social media content. Otherwise they’ll take off on their broomstick. A magic headline casts a spell over your visitors and entices them to read on. According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark only one out of five visitors will read your content. It’s a pretty scary statistic considering most of your time is spent creating the body of your content, not the headline. Since quality counts, a strong headline can tempt more readers in. Additionally it’ll come as no shock that the more powerful your title, the more it encourages social sharing.
2. Thrill Them with Spine-Chilling Content
Your content doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance if it doesn’t deliver value to your readers. Even worse, it won’t support your sales process because people don’t like to troll through shadowy content. This means content that’s a rehash of other information or recycled marketing promotions. Don’t be frightened but 60% of consumers research online before they buy. So show some wizardry and create quality information your prospects desire and need. Want to enhance your content marketing’s magical powers? Make it mobile friendly since 55% of smartphone owners use their device while shopping according to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey. If nothing else it’ll give your competitors a fright since the shoppers may be checking your information in their store!
3. Scare up Some Treats
Bewitch your customers and social media followers with a special deal. Forget the over-hyped Groupon and similar group coupon offers. These promotions can be very scary for small business since Rice University found that one-third of these offers were unprofitable. Instead create a targeted offer to entice social media followers to engage with your firm. Exact Target research found that roughly one out of four respondents followed a company (pdf) on Facebook to take advantage of a one-time offer. Beware– you need to keep these prospects engaged once you’ve lured them in or they’ll just disappear with their discount never to be heard from again.
4. Spook Them Into Doing What You Want
Incorporate a call-to-action into your social media. This old direct marketing trick is easy to overlook in social media yet it can reap significant returns. The secret is to make it contextually relevant to what you want your social media followers to do next and the specific environment or platform in which it appears. Remember persuading prospects to purchase isn’t magic. Think baby steps that help move prospects towards your ultimate goal. Use appropriate colors and graphics to make your call-to-action stand out. While you’re creating your call-to-action, don’t forget to develop a targeted promotion code so you can track your results.
5. Offer Halloween Visitors Candy
Decorate your content with social media icons to encourage social sharing. It’s Halloween—who doesn’t want to share their haul so they don’t get sick? But don’t scare your visitors by making them think, or work too much or they’re off. You want to cast a spell over your visitors so they’ll spread the word about you to their social media friends.
Even though it’s Halloween, don’t creep your customers and the public out with a lot of me, me, me marketing-speak. Instead, pay-it-forward by offering some social media treats that yield real marketing benefits for your organization.
Do you have any special social media tricks to share?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween | http://www.toprankblog.com
Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween
Posted on 31. Oct, 2011 by Susan Misukanis in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media content, social media marketing
This Halloween do you think social media will bring you tricks or treats? For some marketers, every day is Halloween when it comes to social media marketing. These marketers expect the bogeyman to be hiding behind every piece of consumer-generated content and assume their customers and the public only use Facebook and Twitter witchcraft to create bloodcurdling tricks. Yet the reality is that most of the social media conversation about your firm isn’t scary.
For your Halloween treat from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, here are the top five tricks in my social media goodie bag you can easily integrate into your marketing efforts.
1. Shock Them with Killer Headlines
Grab the attention of your business’ witches and wizards to lure them into your social media content. Otherwise they’ll take off on their broomstick. A magic headline casts a spell over your visitors and entices them to read on. According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark only one out of five visitors will read your content. It’s a pretty scary statistic considering most of your time is spent creating the body of your content, not the headline. Since quality counts, a strong headline can tempt more readers in. Additionally it’ll come as no shock that the more powerful your title, the more it encourages social sharing.
2. Thrill Them with Spine-Chilling Content
Your content doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance if it doesn’t deliver value to your readers. Even worse, it won’t support your sales process because people don’t like to troll through shadowy content. This means content that’s a rehash of other information or recycled marketing promotions. Don’t be frightened but 60% of consumers research online before they buy. So show some wizardry and create quality information your prospects desire and need. Want to enhance your content marketing’s magical powers? Make it mobile friendly since 55% of smartphone owners use their device while shopping according to research by Chadwick Martin Bailey. If nothing else it’ll give your competitors a fright since the shoppers may be checking your information in their store!
3. Scare up Some Treats
Bewitch your customers and social media followers with a special deal. Forget the over-hyped Groupon and similar group coupon offers. These promotions can be very scary for small business since Rice University found that one-third of these offers were unprofitable. Instead create a targeted offer to entice social media followers to engage with your firm. Exact Target research found that roughly one out of four respondents followed a company (pdf) on Facebook to take advantage of a one-time offer. Beware– you need to keep these prospects engaged once you’ve lured them in or they’ll just disappear with their discount never to be heard from again.
4. Spook Them Into Doing What You Want
Incorporate a call-to-action into your social media. This old direct marketing trick is easy to overlook in social media yet it can reap significant returns. The secret is to make it contextually relevant to what you want your social media followers to do next and the specific environment or platform in which it appears. Remember persuading prospects to purchase isn’t magic. Think baby steps that help move prospects towards your ultimate goal. Use appropriate colors and graphics to make your call-to-action stand out. While you’re creating your call-to-action, don’t forget to develop a targeted promotion code so you can track your results.
5. Offer Halloween Visitors Candy
Decorate your content with social media icons to encourage social sharing. It’s Halloween—who doesn’t want to share their haul so they don’t get sick? But don’t scare your visitors by making them think, or work too much or they’re off. You want to cast a spell over your visitors so they’ll spread the word about you to their social media friends.
Even though it’s Halloween, don’t creep your customers and the public out with a lot of me, me, me marketing-speak. Instead, pay-it-forward by offering some social media treats that yield real marketing benefits for your organization.
Do you have any special social media tricks to share?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween | http://www.toprankblog.com
How to Get More Out of Content Marketing
Posted on 04. Oct, 2011 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media, social media content
Companies are jumping on the content marketing bandwagon in increasing numbers, investing in new content for articles, newsletters, whitepapers, blogs, and video to better attract and engage customers. Social media and networking offer an ideal channel for promotion but many marketers chase such tactics as a crap shoot vs. developing a body of content that grows and builds momentum over time.
In a B2B Content Marketing study by Junta42, 79 percent of companies that employ content marketing have adopted social media tactics. Social networks and media sites are often centered on content so the relationship makes sense.
Marketers involved with content and social promotion often conclude that creative promotions are essential to jumpstart attention and traffic. In some ways they’re right but many efforts at social promotion of content fall far short of their potential.
Whether it’s to drive traffic to a new microsite or an attempt to revitalize attention to an existing blog, social promotion ideas pop like pick-up lines at a night club: “Let’s do an infographic” or “We should run a contest.” Better yet, “Let’s create a viral video.”
What’s wrong with those tactics? When they work and work together, nothing.
Individual social content and promotion tactics can achieve a certain level of success on their own, but in many cases it’s a bit of a crapshoot.
Approaching social content promotion purely from a tactical perspective often results in a mixed bag of results. Some succeed and some fail, giving businesses an unrealistic sense of how well social media can work or not for them as part of their marketing mix.
Another approach is to think about social content promotions as part of a continuum, not a single event. Instead of whipping out an infographic or online comic just because it’s a cool and trendy thing to do, I’d challenge online marketers to think a bit more strategically about their social content promotions.
The ideal situation involves objectives, audience, and strategy where specific tactics are identified. Understanding customer triggers, keywords and buzzing social topics can be instrumental for mapping out a social content plan.
Within that plan certain tactics can be identified as best suited to advance business goals by providing value to prospects, customers, and influentials.
For example:
Video
Rather than shooting individual videos designed to “go viral” consider planning out a series of videos along a theme. Explore topics that support your customers’ content needs according to their position in the buying funnel but that also trigger social sharing.
Individual provocative, creative and inspiring videos have their place. But also consider the value of building your audience and community from an ongoing series of videos tied together by your unique selling proposition and addressing key questions in your industry where the answers could involve your product or service.
One of the most successful is the “Will It Blend” series of videos from Blendtec that have had millions of views. Imagine if they had created only one or two videos and moved on to something else?
Contests and Ranked Lists
If you run a contest or ranked list, think first whether it’s something you could do at regular intervals like monthly, quarterly, or annually. Each contest builds credibility and your list for promotion of the next contest. Consider developing a contest where participation requires creation of content. Repurpose that content for promotions and build community around recognizing participants and winners.
A single contest or ranked list lights up like a firecracker and then dies out. A well thought out and executed contest that occurs at regular intervals is something people look forward to and can grow larger organically each time it happens.
A good example of a successful list is TopRank’s 25 Women Who Rock Social Media. This list is produced with great effort once a year and is held in high regard by many of the recipients who include the badge or designation on their websites, in their resumes, press releases and author credentials.
Infographics
There’s an art and science to effective infographics as a marketingtool. Many companies publish individual infographics as linkbait but never consider how a series of themed infographics can build a growing audience and contribute to community development.
The theme can be as simple as a common label that reflects a target keyword phrase or topic relevant to the business. For example, “Social Media Smarts: Content Marketing Best Practices” or “Social Media Smarts: Top Social SEO Tactics.”
A great example of a company that has used a series of infographics is Flowtown. Initially promoting social media topics, when they were a social media profile/appending company, to their new focus on “gift marketing”, Flowtown has used infographics as way to draw attention to topics related to their offering.
Hopefully this gives you some perspective on the pros and cons of doing individual social content promotions versus finding an approach that involves ongoing use of tactics that work together sequentially and cumulatively.Not only does it make sense to tie a sequence of individual social content promotion tactics together, but to coordinate content types as part of an overall content marketing strategy.
Create content customers will love, share, and look forward to and you’ll find a lot more satisfaction and business results than from a series of disconnected, social content marketing experiments.
A version of this post originally ran in my Social Media Smarts column on ClickZ.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
How to Get More Out of Content Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com
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