This Social Media roundup is the first episode of a weekly roundup that I am planning to publish every Sundays.
I have always been a fan of roundup. Problogger is one of my favorite blogs and I ensured that I read every article that was published at Problogger, the day it was published. Something that I would always keep looking out for was a notification on the link roundups that they published.
Why?
Because, I knew I could find everything related to a specific topic at one place and that I did not have to spend a lot of time browsing the web, scraping through the tons of noise to find that informative post that I wanted to read.
Weekly link roundups are a nice way to give your readers a different perspective to a topic. It adds variation to what you have already been publishing and at the same helps you connect with other bloggers.
A lot of content is written these days and quite a lot of times you will find some blogger posting the exact same thought that you had. It doesn’t really make sense to rewrite the exact same thing. Instead conserve your energy for something new and curate the post that is already providing value. This way, your readers get to read about the exact same thought, you get content and the fellow blogger gets access to an all new audience. It’s a win-win for the blogging world.
It is hence that I felt the urge to do a weekly roundup. After procrastinating for a while, here I am with the first episode of my weekly roundup. I plan to continue it unless my readers feel that it is not required. I will hence wait for your feedback and suggestions on these weekly roundup posts.
Ana Hoffman at “The Traffic Generation Cafe” has written a nice post that talks about building links and generating traffic by writing weekly link roundups. This and a few other similar posts that I had read in the past, including this one from Neil Patel, in my inspiration to start these weekly roundups.
So what to expect from these Roundups?
Each week in a month will be targeting a different topic and I am planning to cover these 4 topics every month –
- Week 1 – Content Marketing
- Week 2 – Blogging
- Week 3 – Social Media
- Week 4 – Email Marketing and List Building
This week’s Social Media Roundup has some of the top posts on Social Media Marketing from around the web.
How to Use Social Media Automation to Grow Your Business
Successful Social Media Marketing is all about automation. With so many channels and diverse kind of users, it becomes extremely difficult to manage all the channels unless you automate things and it is nicely explained in this post from postplanner. I felt this was a nice post to kickstart our Social Media Roundup.
In some circles, automation has become a dirty word.
But when applied correctly, automation can be the difference between effortlessly growing your business and letting your business stagnate.
In this post, I’m going to show you how a simple social media automation process can save you time while helping you grow your business’s visibility, audience, leads and sales.
Once you set this process in motion — you’ll instantly notice extra time open up in your day. Use that time to interact with your social media audience and build important relationships.
Read the rest at postplanner.com
The 1 Thing Nobody Understands About Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing is often misunderstood and people think posting their personal content will help build relationships with people. Selfies, personal milestones, occasions etc. cannot build the kind of engagement that you are looking for from your audience. It is hence important that you keep your business and personal accounts distinct and at the same don’t cross post a lot.
This post at Inc.com gives another interesting perspective to this discussion..
Let’s get down in the weeds for a second about social-media marketing.
Nobody cares about your culture–unless you have the best, most unique, knowledgeable, entertaining, or something culture.
Nobody cares about the “5 Ways to Create an Effective Marketing Strategy” blog that you posted, for the first time in six months–unless those “5 Ways” are in some way different and very unique compared to everyone else’s “5 Ways.”
Nobody cares where you and your team went to eat for lunch–unless where you went to eat was somewhere super cool, and everyone on your team created food art, and each food art recipe can be found on your website, along with a step-by-step guide on how to create said incredible food art at home.
10 Books Every Social Media Manager Should Read
I am a fan of books. Though this has a negative impact in me collecting all kind of books and wasting my disk space, it also has the positive that I almost always get hold of the latest books just as it is released.
Social Media management books have lately gained my fascination and I have read some real good books and one of my all time favorites is “Purple Cow” from Seth Godin. The guys at Hootsuite put together a nice collection of books that every social media manager should read..
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I only read marketing books. I’m not a dirty liar. But there are a select few resources that every social media manager needs to read.
While I could provide a list of the top 10 marketing books as recommended by Amazon, there is much more that goes into being a successful social media manager than simply “social media managing.” Don’t get me wrong, these books are there for a reason (and you’ll find some of them below), but a great social media manager needs a wide variety of skills.
Read the rest at blog.hootsuite.com
4 Metrics for Proving the Value of Your Social Media
The biggest mistake that most people do in Social Media Marketing is not analyzing their efforts. There are a lot of metrics that are available and each of them will give you a different perspective to the outcome of your social media marketing efforts. Deciding of which metric to look for and identifying the metrics that align with your social media marketing goals is the most critical part in social media analytics.
This post at the Marketo blog, has 4 critical and valuable metrics that will help you with analyzing your social media marketing.
Most social marketers I know have been hard at work trying to build a robust presence on various social channels, be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. But when they go to their executive team to tell them about all the success they have been having, they get a resounding, “So what?” Any marketer that cannot show the economic value of their activities will fail to earn the attention of their executives. Period. Further, they will fail to get those same executives to focus on the right social strategy because they are not demonstrating the impact of their efforts. The good news is that proving the value of your social media marketing strategy is not as hard as it seems.
Here are 4 simple metrics you can use to prove the economic value of your social media marketing strategy to your executive team:
Read the rest at blog.marketo.com
50% Traffic Growth in Just 30 Days Using Twitter
I still remember the first time I got an invite to join Twitter. It was way back in 2008 and I signed up and left it alone. I used to wonder as to 140 characters could do. Fast forward to 2009-2010 and everybody and his dog were flocking to Twitter to make money. There were thousands of guides and everyday one new guide would be launched, that would promise you how to make money with Twitter.
A lot of changed since then. Today the noise has gone down, but the microblogging platform still continues to be a good source of traffic, if done correctly.
This post at the Buffer blog has some nice tips of driving traffic using Twitter.
I first joined Twitter over seven years ago, back in 2009, and I’ve been grateful to learn so many best practices, strategies, and tactics from the community. The only problem was I didn’t apply any of this Twitter strategy to my own Twitter activity. All this changed a few months back when I decided it was time to give Twitter a real, honest-to-goodness shot. If I saw results, great. If not, I could ditch the platform once and for all and never deal with tweet anxiety again.
I’m happy to share with you the exact process I tried and the wonderful results I saw, applying a Twitter strategy to my personal profile. Hopefully you’ll see similar gains by putting this simple strategy into practice for yourself and your clients!
Read the rest at blog.bufferapp.com
9 Marketing Tips to Increase Your Instagram Followers
In the last 5-6 months I have been attracted to Instagram like no other social media channels. Instagram has a lot of potential for us marketers and some of the statistics about the social media site shows their engagement rates to be much better than a lot of the others. So if you are not on Instagram, then it is time you get onto it.
This post at Hootsuite caught my attention because of some of the nice ways mentioned in the post to get Instagram Followers.
If you ask any social media marketer what their number one Instagram question or concern is, the majority will say it’s how to get more followers. While many users will say that they don’t care about how many Instagram followers they have, it’s a simple fact that the bigger audience you have, the more people and potential customers you are able to reach. Rather than an empty number, think of your follower count as the size of your community.
While you definitely shouldn’t forget about all of your other Instagram goals and objectives, your number of followers can reflect the success of your other efforts. It’s always nice to know that your message is being well-received and resonating with your audience, and a follower count is one way of measuring this. Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps an adventure photographer used to grow from 0 to 110,000 followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Read the rest at blog.hootsuite.com
The Philosophy of a Hashtag Strategy
Hashtags have become an integral part of Social media. Be it Twitter or, Instagram, your content gets found and read because of the hashtags that you use. But most social media users are still unaware of the right way of using it. Hashtags can be very effective if used right and your social media strategy can get the wings it need is you know how to use it.
This is a nice post written by Peg on how to build and use a hashtag strategy.
Do you have a hashtag strategy? While there’s nothing wrong with casually using a hashtag, having a solid strategy behind your hashtag can bring real results for you and your brand. Let’s look at the how’s and why’s behind using hashtags in your social media and how you can start benefitting from them with your social marketing!
Consider hashtags the glue that holds social conversations and ideas together.
Clicking on a hashtag can provide a wealth of information and a sea of potential connections. Here’s a few ways that hashtags can be used:
Read the rest at pegfitzpatrick.com
Marketing Instagram Style: What Marketers Need to Know
I am learning Instagram and so far I can say that the results that I have seen from Instagram is much better than ones that I have seen from a lot of the other social media sites.
If you are interested in knowing how to market on Instagram, then this post at the Social Media Examiner will be of interest to you.
Do you use Instagram for marketing?
Are you wondering how you can grow an Instagram following that will build your business?
Are you wondering how you can grow an Instagram following that will build your business?
In this episode, I interview Jenn Herman, who blogs at Jenn’s Trends and is one of our top 10 social media blog winners for 2014. Her blog focuses on social media management. She’s author of the ebook, The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Instagram.
Jenn shares why marketers should consider Instagram for their business.
You’ll discover the types of images that will engage your audience, how to drive traffic to your website and examples of marketers who are successful on the platform.
Read the rest at socialmediaexaminer.com
How to Write Better Headlines for Your Facebook Ads
Facebook ads is a beast. More people are using Facebook ads in their marketing plans, than Google Adwords. And the single biggest reason for it is the fact that Facebook ads can be a lot cheaper than Adwords and provide better options of targetting.
But in order to make the most of Facebook ads, it is important to know how to write effective ads. This post at Hubspot is a nice guide to writing effective headlines for Facebook ads.
With 1.13 billion daily active users engaging on the platform, Facebook has become an obvious option for marketers looking to explore the benefits of targeted ad creation.
And while Facebook’s targeting options make it easier for you to get your ads in front of the people you really care about, it’s ultimately up to you to do the convincing. To do that, you’ll need to pay close attention to the details.
If you look at AdEspresso’s anatomy of a Facebook Ad diagram, the headline may seem like a tiny piece of the puzzle, but that couldn’t be further from the truth: A users’ decision to take action on your Facebook Ad will undoubtedly be influenced by the strength of your headline. After all, it sets the tone and expectation for everything to come.
That said, you want it to be memorable, eye-catching, and above all, clear. To help you put together a Facebook Ad headline that accomplishes all of the above, we compiled some criteria and tips to guide your efforts. (For more on the science of successful Facebook Ads, check out this free guide.)
Read the rest at blog.hubspot.com
4 Ways to Use Video in Twitter Ads
Twitter has come a long way since it started. The addition of the option of posting pictures and videos have been welcomed by most marketers. Since visual media has always been more effective than text based media, the use of photos and videos can provide much more effectiveness to your Twitter campaigns.
But the microblogging platform is much different from Youtube and Facebook, when it comes to videos and it is important that you understand this before you start posting videos to your Twitter account.
Social media examiner talks about some nice tips on how to use videos in Twitter in this post.
Twitter video ads usually don’t require starting from scratch. You might already have access to content that lends itself to video advertising or can easily be modified and promoted on social media. Here are a few ways to begin.
Twitter video ads are a great way to show off products and services. To enhance the impact of product-focused videos, style them with a specific atmosphere and attitude. This helps you create a visually engaging experience and communicate what your brand is all about.
Read the rest at socialmediaexaminer.com
25 Words to Drive More Engagement with Your Social Media
Social Media is all about engagement and if you are not able to generate enough engagement with your content on social media, then your strategy is flawed.
Most marketers have flawed social media strategy and hence generate poor engagement from their audience. Consequently their social media campaigns almost always fail.
This post by Jeff Bullas details a nice guide that primarily focuses on using the right words in your content in order to generate engagement.
Poor engagement is a problem marketers have been wrestling with long before we started reaching out to audiences on social media. The way we try to engage people now on social media, sales and content marketing isn’t much different from the way common people attempted to capture the attention of a passersby in open air markets.
It was a mix of visual stimulation and the use of compelling, stimulating, attention-grabbing words and phrases.
Words strike us for various reasons, and they play on our most primitive instincts and hard-wired responses seated around emotion. To that end, words that are the most direct, simple and arresting can have the most profound impact.
Read the rest at jeffbullas.com
How to Use Social Media and Analytics for Better Customer Loyalty
If you are not analyzing, then you are not improving. Analytics is an integral part of any marketing strategy. It is important that you analyze your results to see if your strategy is working.
Same is the case with social media as well. You need to read your stats and analyze the performance of your social media campaigns in order to understand things like, which social media channel is the right one for you, what campaign is the most cost effective, what type of content is being accepted by your audience, what time gives you the best engagement rates etc.
But ironically not a lot of people know how to read the data. This post at simply measured drew my attention because of the simple way it explains about using social media analytics for customer experience and I couldn’t stop from including it in this week’s Social Media Roundup.
Brooke talked about setting goals as an important framework prior to any campaign, so success can be truly measured.
Usually, she said, social customer loyalty programs attempt to build close knit communities and increase sales.
“Surprise and delight” is a key tactic for successful customer loyalty programs like Sephora’s.
This tactic allows brands to reward customers for the simplest of actions, like a positive comment or great review. Gifting customers with a surprise in return, from a free item in the mail to an exclusive discount code, goes a long way towards ensuring your customers shop with you again, and not your competitors. This tactic also serves as a method of amplifying brand content, since your customers are likely to turn to social to share their good fortune.
Read the rest at simplymeasured.com
I hope you liked these posts in this weeks Social Media Roundup and enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed curating it for you. Do let me know your thoughts, suggestions and feedback by commenting below or, by writing to me.
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Great Article Dk one upvote from me as share
–Ajay
Hi Ajay, thanks for visiting and thanks for the share..