Utilize Twitter to Grow Your Audience
We have all heard the famous line “if you build it they will come”. Although it's a great movie line, it’s a terrible marketing plan. To succeed online in today's tech crazed society, you have to create content that ignites and engages an audience. However, if you don't have any audience to engage with, then you should probably spend more time developing an audience than creating your content.
If you are on Twitter a lot, you’ll notice people will place you on public Twitter lists. Lists are generally categorized by a special interest or geographic location. For example, I might be on lists for “marketing experts,” “bloggers” or “Handsome models” (just kidding.) The key is to find a relevant person to follow, and then dig into his or her lists. You’ll likely find a goldmine of interesting people to follow who will hopefully follow you back.
There are many apps to help you find new followers, but one of my favorite places to find targeted followers is Twellow. This useful and free site is like the yellow pages for Twitter, and you can find and follow targeted users for every category, industry and interest imaginable. Be sure to use specialized Twitter search prompts. Unlock the basic search functionality right on the Twitter screen by learning a few of the specialized prompts. This is one of the most powerful market research tools available. Follow this link if you want a complete tutorial on Twitter search.
With these tactics, you can expand your audience to reach people who are seeking your products and services.
Optimize Visual Content with Links
Visual content can act as a “gateway” to more valuable content. When planning visual content to post on social platforms, think in terms of how it can drive traffic back to your website, products, and services. Link a short video back to your website from your YouTube Account or from your Instagram profile link and make sure you provide expanded content around the video.
Maximize Twitter Real Estate With Images
Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter (visualize them here on Internet Stats live), which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year. Creating the best possible tweet has never been more important. Adding visual appeal to your tweet is a very smart way to get your most important content noticed. You can add up to four images per tweet or one fantastic image if you want. The choice is yours! To add multiple images, use regular Twitter. This isn’t available on any of the third-party sites.
Create a Social Media Channel Plan
So many organizations feel overwhelmed by the need to create content for every social media channel on the planet. Or worse yet, many brands create one type of content and then blast that content onto every social platform. If that sounds like you, you need a social media channel plan.
Most likely, your goals are different on each social platform. Since that’s the case, the content you create for that platform needs to be different as well. Here are the components for your channel plan.
- The Channel (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
- The Persona (Who are you specifically targeting?)
- The Goal (Is it a sales goal, cost-savings goal or are you trying to create a better customer experience?)
- Primary Content Type (Textual, video, infographics?)
- Structure (What does a general post look like?)
- Tone (Playful, sarcastic?)
- Channel Integration (How will this channel work with your other channels for maximum impact?)
- Desired Action (What user behavior do you want to achieve?)
- Editorial Plan (Every channel needs its own editorial calendar.)
All this seems a little overwhelming and this is exactly why content marketing isn’t easy. However, if you leverage a social media channel plan correctly, you’ll be able to double down on the channels that work for you and be realistic with your resources on the other channels.
Deliver Content Consistently
One of the best ways to grow your following and increase engagement on social media is to be there consistently. The first step is to put the right systems in place to keep your posts relevant, interesting and valuable for your audience. Enter Hootsuite. I found out about Hootsuite a couple of months ago and love the platform. Hootsuite allows you to create your own content categories so you can keep track of the specific types of posts you’re releasing; this ensures you don’t overwhelm your followers with the same types of posts over and over. You can also schedule repeat posts indefinitely, so your content schedule never runs dry. Plus Hootsuite allows you to upload custom images for your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts. As you build your content library, update your schedule with the categories you want to release and when. Then let Hootsuite take care of the rest. Leveraging a social media scheduler like Hootsuite has saved me time, helped me grasp the big picture when it comes to my social media marketing strategy and allowed me to stay on top of my game when it comes to delivering valuable content.
Use Hashtags Strategically
If you want to be successful with your social media plan, stop random acts of hash-tagging and use a good hashtag to tie all of the pieces of your campaign together. To follow your hashtag, use sites like Social Mention and Sprout Social. Use TwiPho for searching images on a hashtag.
Use Social Updates to Write Blog Posts
Take your most popular tweets and Facebook posts, or the ones you feel most passionately about, and use them to develop blog posts. You don’t have to write three pages; you don’t even have to write four paragraphs. Another way to get ideas is to comment on the things you read, such as other people’s blogs and newsletters, media publications and anything else relevant to your business. You’re already absorbing the content and you probably have opinions when you’re reading it, so go ahead and comment on those blogs. One benefit of commenting is that people will start recognizing your name; another is it gives you material for a blog post.
Local Blitz Marketing is an Internet Marketing Company focused on bringing value by building digital sales funnels for the companies that need it most….small and medium. We are here as a resource for companies that are not large enough to have an internal digital marketing but understand the importance of digital marketing. We have testimonials from satisfied clients in a variety of different niches (Real Estate, Automotive, E-commerce and countless more) and truly stand behind the work we do. There are no short term goals, only long term strategies that actually work. Get in touch with us now to discuss your Instagram and/or Facebook social strategy and ads management!