I'm giving away the farm on social marketing. Literally. I'm telling you 5 of my top secrets that's made me successful as an online social marketing professional. These 5 things will help every business - they always have, they always will. No need to stay with your small minded marketing plan - you need to upgrade to a marketing plan that helps you create and find Open Doors and Opportunity - and that's what I'm going to help you do.
It's important to note that each of these 5 things are literally, in no importance of order, the last 5 things most businesses (or marketing agencies/firms) do.
If you're a business and you read this, understand, that marketing has many skill sets and encompassed in these 5 tips is the ability to actually carry them out.
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Place Your Logo on every original picture (logo watermark).
Content is king when it comes to spreading a message online.
Businesses spend millions of dollars each year creating that content. Small businesses spend hundreds on photo shoots and other things - and then, large business or small, they don't place their logo on, or in, the picture.
If you see pictures of the most delicious wings, pizza, or a mouth watering mug of beer, and they have no logo, where did they come from?
If you see a picture of a truck in the middle of a mud field and the picture doesn't identify the field with a logo, in what mud field was it taken?
If you see a picture of an engine being worked on in a shop, and there is no logo for the business, which shop is the engine in?
Picture theft on the internet is at an all time high. Anyone can right click, save as, and post as their own.
If you've taken the picture or own the rights to the picture because you've paid for those rights, make sure you place your logo on those pictures.
This will drive awareness of where the picture came from. If the picture starts to spread around, more people will know about you.
If the picture never spreads, it's still online and people will still have access to it.
You want people coming back to you online properties? This is step #1.
Find ways to always lead back to the business.
Step #1 leads right to step #2 - always, always, always be like a hammer and lead back to the business.
I know there are a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people who would say, "find interesting content that interest others and post that to keep your audience engaged."
Okay.
But that's only part of the deal. A Small part.
Matt Drudge finds great content and his entire model is based on "I find it, you click away, but if you want to find more great content like that, you have to return - a lot and often - and thus, you will create another click and my numbers will continue to climb".
That's a great model - for Drudge.
For a mom and pop Ice cream shop, articles about ice cream won't suffice to keep your audience coming back for more articles about ice cream.
And once they click away, chances are they won't be coming back.
So how do you stay a hammer?
Let's say the article is "Local Mayor To Invest In Schools" - how do you become the story by posting that article?
Did you know that when you post an article, say from the Washington Times on Facebook, that FB allows you to change the headline and what the article is about?
You can make the headline of the article anything you want it to be.
"Sally's Ice Cream Shop Supports This (Local Mayor To Invest In Schools)" <-headline
"Before reading this article click this link to get your free scoop of ice cream on your next visit xxx . sallysicecream . com" <-- article content
You've just taken an article, about something that is irrelevant to you and your business, but still something that others would likely like to read, and turned it into a great hammer for your business.
Give them an idea what the article is about in the status update box. Then give them the headline you want to give them, then give them a reason to get distracted with your coupon or offer, and direct them to your website instead.
When they return to your Facebook page, if they then want to read the article, they can, but chances are all they'll want to do is use the coupon you just gave them, or whatever it may be (and tell their friends about your coupon).
Always be leading back to your business.
MARKETING IS NOT A 9-5 JOB <-yes, I'm yelling.
My most favorite of favorites.
It drives me crazy that there are marketing agencies - PR firms and the like, that work 9-5. That's great work if you can get it, but I've found for customers it's not too effective - and it's a killer for your business if you're planning to stay in business.
What happens to the customer your business is trying to reach after 5 pm? Do they disappear? Go to sleep forever? What happens?
Marketing is often at 2 am. 11pm. 4 in the morning.
You want to reach your audience when your audience is available to be reached. Period.
Get rid of the Trolls
I have no problem what so ever doing this for the business I consult or work for.
There is no good reason a business has to let a customer be right all of the time - and especially online.
If someone is trolling your business, make it your business to block them.
Now, I know, a lot of people will disagree - marketing types in particular, "no, no, no, you must come around to their way of thinking. You must get in their mind and learn from what they are saying". Kumbaya.
Look, it's one thing to have a bad experience somewhere and complain about it online in an effort to help a business learn, grow, and be more successful - it's another to troll a business into the ground.
It's your job to discern the difference and act appropriately.
Disgruntled employees will ruin your online reputation. They will troll without regard to or concern who it harms - even themselves.
Cheap trolls who always want the free lunch or the free gift or the free anything, will troll you to death.
You can lose a lot of time and waste a lot of energy on a troll and you know what you're really doing?
Disproportionately ignoring your loyal, good customers who you rely on day after day to make your business what it is.
The troll customer is not always right.
If they're trolling, for the sake of not only your business but your other customers (who also, I assure you, hate a troll) block them
Do everything you can to stay off and away from services like YELP (and other "review" sites).
(NOTE: This is more for physical businesses but can apply to online business as well.)
Talk about a troll business. This is marketing wrapped in the idea that online reputation is part of your online marketing efforts - and reputation is everything.
YELP is one of those services that make you pay for their service so that they can "give voice" to your regular ole customer. And boy do you ever pay.
This is great if it were likely that the consumer knew what made a good review. But most don't.
First of all, everyone knows, you like Beethoven, I like Motley Crue - no two people share the same taste.
Second, your experience will always - and I mean always, be different from my own.
A person who's had a hard day at work and been yelled at by his boss may not be so forgiving of your business when writing a review. There are frustrations to get out that no one else in the entire world even know about.
A person who just fell in love with the final love of their life may give your business a glowing review because they are in love and love blinds people to whatever flaws others might see.
That's a review site. There's a lot of backstory, but we just get whatever anyone wants to say.
But you say, "we're already on there and paying and now what do we do?"
Buy your business a review domain name. ie. sallysicecreamshopreviews dot com
A. Create the website.
B. Do NOT allow for space on the new website for people to leave or send reviews. They should still contact you on your main website and it's okay to leave a link back to your main site leading to the contact us page.
C. Make sure your new website clicks over to your business website.
D. Leave only a couple of reviews on your main website and make sure that those click to the review website you own and NOT YELP or some other outside website.
E. Instantly poll your customers while they are at your business give them something to fill out and bring back for a coupon or something.
F. Post those reviews on your new review website.
G. Don't leave out a bad review**
H. Go to YELP (or whatever service you're using or are on) and change the domain pointing to your business to the new website.
I. Update your "About Me" section with the first sentence being "FOR REAL REVIEWS OF XXXXX PLEASE VISIT"
J. Stay on top of your game - which means, never let the YELP get out of your sight and respond to everyone there in the most appropriate way if you can - if you're on it, you've got to work it.
Why do this? Because you need to.
1. It will help with your SEO efforts (search engine optimization on places like google, bing).
2. It will provide an outlet to get your message out and reinforce that message.
3. It will help you have personal interactions with your actual customers and those customers will not then go home and talk trash about you on an anonymous website.
4. Whatever issue the customer may be having can be dealt with at that particular time. Over with, done. (ie. no bad reviews - and in fact, you can start any actual review with the circumstances, "I was looking for a certain screw that no one had, and I was told by harry's hardware that they didn't either ... however, ...")**
5. It gives you a new outlet to promote your business.
6. It will take a lot of power away from them and place that power back in your hands.
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I wish I had the space to get more detailed because within each of these steps is a hundred small steps that also need to be taken.
Though marketing is very much about trial and error, it's not necessarily a roll of the dice. It's a prescribed process.
It takes a lot more than anyone knows to actually market effectively but hopefully these 5 processes will get you started and on solid ground.
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