Blog

May

8 Ways to Improve Your Twitter Marketing

Categories: Social Media

Tags: buffer, social media, socialbro, twitter marketing, twitter tips, ways to improve business

If you feel that your Twitter marketing is going nowhere and you want to improve it then you should continue reading.

Recently, Michael Brenner wrote an article on Forbes giving away nine Twitter tips. As an example, he mentioned me. It was quite simply an honor I never thought I would have gotten the day I began using Twitter.

I’ve been using Twitter for personal and business purposes for a couple of years now and I’ve learned many lessons on what worked and what didn’t. I even had my twitter account suspended once.

There are many strategies, tips and tactics that can help you improve your Twitter marketing. Some more popular than others, and some holds no weight in my opinion. But today is not the day I judge what is out there, today I simply want to share some tips that have helped me previously in the hope that it would help you in your business.

1. Share useful contents on twitter

The idea behind Twitter marketing or any social networking site is to share USEFUL content. Why? You want to be the person that people would go to if they have any questions. Sure, it might be hard if you are a social media manager of a large corporate brand, but think of it as being the thought leader in your industry – surely that is something that resonates with your employers. Be that thought leader by sharing content that can help your community instead of constantly promoting about your business or product.

Putting it plainly: People love to buy, however they don’t like to be sold! You have to build TRUST within your audience by sharing useful contents and being the go-to guy.

2. Connect with the right people

If you want to grow your community, the best way is to connect with the right people. Your first 1000 to 2000 followers are extremely important because you need a strong base or foundation of relationships.

To do so, Twitter Chats is one of the best ways to find people that are relevant in your industry. Try Googling “twitter chats” in your niche.

Eg: music twitter chats

A tool that can help you keep track of communications around Twitter is Socialbro. Socialbro will list people who have participated in Twitter Chats and track the relevant people in your industry. Reading thousands of chats to find influential people may sound time-consuming, but I can’t stress how important it is for you to start building a relationship with them as it helps add credibility to your network.

3. Retweet

Want more people to notice you? Then share other people’s content.

Stop PROMOTING and start RETWEETING. That is the best way to get people to notice you and follow you back. Don’t just connect with the ‘big shots’ but connect with the little people too. Treat everyone as equal. You’ll never know if they have influential people following them.

One of my most retweeted quotes to this day is

“Retweet someone once they will notice you, retweet someone a few times they will remember you”

If you’ve tried it and they don’t appreciate it, move on to others.

4. Use hashtags

According to a research, hashtags increase awareness. If you’re not using hashtags today then you’re probably missing out. According to the research, 24% of brands’ tweets constains hashtags. Brands that uses hashtags received two times more engagement than those without them.

However, the engagement levels drop if brands use more than three hashtags. Remember: Less is MORE! Think of a hashtag as a highway through the traffic congestion on your urban roads. Using a hashtag helps people to find what they need to find without having to scan EVERYTHING.

If you’re representing a brand or a business, be sure to check what the hashtag is about first before using them. Some brands make the mistake of using a hashtag without reading what it was first and have offended many people instead. (insert link to askaaronlee)

5. Mention people to be notice

If you wrote an article and had mentioned or quoted other people, be sure to get them to notice it by mentioning them on Twitter. It helps increase the possibilities of them sharing your article around their network and increase the buzz.

If you’re retweeting someone’s article, make sure that you mention them in the tweet. It will get them to notice you and is a great way to start a relationship.

6. Launch a contest

If you’re looking for a way to spice up your Twitter marketing, one of the best ways is to launch a Twitter contest. A Twitter contest is beneficial to not only increase followers but to reward those who already follow you. It will also further motivate people to follow your brand if they already love your brand but isn’t following you on Twitter yet.

If you’re looking for a tool, Binkd has a free Twitter contest app to help you launch a successful contest. Contests may seem simple but third-party applications are crucial in overall planning, implementing and monitoring your contest.

7. Measure measure measure!

To know if your twitter markerting is working or not, you have to measure it. To find out moe on what to use, I recommended six twitter analytics tools on an article i wrote for social media examiner recently. Before you start measuring, be sure to have a goal so that you know what you should measure.

8. Use Twitter tools

Here is where it gets complicated; there are MANY Twitter tools out there. Different twitter tools are useful for different occasions. Pick YOUR Twitter tool and stick with it.

Don’t be too fascinated with all the twitter tools out there, because at the end of the day, its your strategy that matters. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side and it is very easy to get lost in the many different tools out there. Trust me, I’ve been there.

What are my favorite tools? Social Engage, Socialbro and Buffer because these three gives me the complete Twitter experience I need to manage my accounts. Moreover, these three complement each other in a way that enhances your overall management and strategic approaches.

Those are some tips and strategies that have worked for me in the past. Do you have anything that you would like to add to it? Share with us below.

A version of this post was also posted on iStrategyConference Blog

photo credit: Rosaura Ochoa

Mar

How to find out the best time to post on Instagram

Categories: Social Media

Tags: analytic tools, analytics, best time to post instagram, best time to share instagram, instagram tools, simply measured, statigram

Comments: No

There are many social media analytical tools out there that can do basically anything. They tell you where your fans are from, what time they are online, what gender there are and more. Facebook has a great, built-in analytics tool that tells you all of that while Twitter open API means great third-party analytics tool are always available on the market.

A bit like Twitter, Instagram relies on third-party analytics tool to provide these important insights. While you can drown yourself with all kinds of statistics, in social media there are always three very important features that I look for in every analytical tool. Ultimately, these features must be able to tell me:

What is the best time to post
What is the best day to post
What kind of posts gets the most engagement

The Pareto principle highlights that 80% of your outcome derives from 20% of your efforts and when I spend effort into social media, I always want to make sure that I am maximizing it with the least amount time spent. Therefore I’m always finding out when is the best time to post online to reach the most amount of people.

Some of you may already be familiar with Twitter and Facebook’s tools to analyze the best time for posting content, but how do you know when is the best time to post on Instagram? After going through many tools, I found two that was able to help me do just that – and do them quite well.

1. Statigr.am

Overall, I believe Statigram is one of the most complete Instagram analytical tool out there that is free. It gives you basically almost everything that you need to help improve your marketing on that platform.

It also answers to the three types of analytics that I look for in every analytical tool I mentioned above.

Here is what it would look like:

a. best time and day to post on Instagram

b. top performing content

2. Simply Measured

Simply Measured is a good tool. To use the free version, all you have to do is simply tweet about it. However the free version won’t give you statistics that are as detailed as the ones you find in Statigram.

The free version also gives you insights on your top performing posts BUT it only gives you analytics on a specific date and not throughout the lifetime of your Instagram account.

Here is what it looks like.

a. Best time and day to post on instagram

b. top performing content

Now that you have the time and dates, it’s all about experimenting what works for you business. I can quite easily tell you that my most popular posts have always been about food and I usually get the best engagement when I post on Mondays, but these results will not help you because it really depends on your demographic and your audience.

Since these two tools are free and very easy to use, I recommend you hop right onto it and start finding out the best time for your marketing efforts to go on Instagram. If you have used any other tools, feel free to recommend them below.

Feb

8 Ways to Grow an Instagram Community

Categories: Social Media

Tags: grow community instagra, grow followers instagram, instagram blog, sabo skirt

Comments: No

This post was originally published on iStrategy Conference blog.

A couple of months ago, there was on an official blog post on Instagram’s blog letting us know that they have over 80 million users on Instagram and a total of over 4 billion photos shared. The numbers have definitely increased since then and my guess is that it is definitely a social network to watch in 2013.

This year we can expect more brands and businesses adapting instagram to connect with their audience and customers. If you have customers there, maybe it’s about time to jump into it and connect with them

As an avid user who had shared over 450 photos to date, Instagram is addictive!

I spend quite a lot of time on it and I find Instagram a different social network when talking about how personal it is – for such a simple network, it is surprisingly in-depth and refreshingly informative especially when users share behind-the-scene photos.

More businesses are adapting to this social network as well. I previously wrote an article sharing how small businesses are using instagram o their advantage, and one of the small business I highlighted in the article was Sabo Skirt. Despite being a small business, this ladies fashion clothing line have built themselves an amazing community with over 680,000 followers on Instagram.

If you’re looking for a way to grow your community with Instagram, here are a couple of tips:

1. Tag your instagram photos

The best way to be found if you’re new is to use hashtags. You can call me a hashtag whore but that was how I got people to notice me there.

Hashtags not only works on Twitter, but it also works on Instagram as well and it works using the same concept. If you’re posting a photo in New York then use the hashtag #NewYork, #NY or other relevant hashtags to be found.

Here are some hashtags that I recommend you use too. Pick what’s relevant for your business.

#jj #photooftheday #instagramhub #gangfamily #iphoneasia #iphoneographer #food #iphoneography #instagrammers #foodporn #iphoneonly #instagood #bestoftheday #tweegram #igers #instamood #picoftheday #igdaily #instadaily #statigram

2. Geo tag your photos

Did you know you can geo-tag the location of your photos on Instagram? This means your photos would be tagged on a specific location and people can easily see your photos when they click on that location.

Tagging allows other users or even business owners to find you and see your photos. This helps you to gain extra exposure as well as followers and at the same time help you build a more relevant network.Hint to get followers: Click on a geo location and like other people’s photos. It gets them to notice you and follow you.

3. Like other peoples photos

As I mentioned above, liking other people’s photo gets you noticed. There are a couple of ways to find photos to like besides clicking on a location. Exploring hashtags like #fashion, #food, #Singapore, etc to find photos will also give you a nice platform to browse and like more photos.

Just like how a little love-shaped icon pops up every time you like a photo, keep sharing some love on Instagram and you will soon find more followers subscribing to your updates

4. Follow other people

You can either wait to be followed or start following people. I roll go with the second option. If you’re new on Instagram, you probably want to follow some people. Pick relevant people from relevant hashtags to follow.

Eg: If you’re a restaurant owner, you could search for either your location or nearby locations to your restaurant or even the type of food you have on your menu.

5. Organize a contest on instagram

If you already have a strong community on other social networks like Twitter or Facebook be sure to leverage on them to grow your followers on Instagram by organizing a contest that links them together. Get your fans and followers to either connect with you on Instagram or get them to sign up and follow you.

Social media contests have always been a great way to grow a community on social networks. It gives people a reason to follow and participate.

You can simple get them to use YOUR hashtag and post a photo of a theme to stand a chance to win. A theme could simple be a photo of a scenery to a photo of a cup of coffee – it could really be anything.

Here is an example of a photo contest by DineinCa

6. Comment on other peoples photos

If you’re a business owner and you have people geo-tagging or using your brand’s name as a hashtag, thank them for coming or posting a photo. Some people might not know that your business is on Instagram and this will get them to follow you there.

If your business is not local, you can use relevant hashtags to find images that you can leave a comment on.

7. Post great photos!

Well, you can’t exactly get people to like, comment or follow you if you don’t have nice photos. A good photo is extremely important. I would actually recommend you post only your best photos on your Instagram when you’re new and starting out. The reason is people will look at all your images if you only have a couple and decide if they would like to follow you or not.

8. Use catchy tag-lines

Once your photo is nice and filtered, be sure to add a catchy tag-line to describe your photo and give them more reason to like it.

What do you think?

Those are eight tips that can definitely help you grow your community on instagram. If you have other tips, feel free to include them in the comments below.

Jan

The Do’s and Don’t of running a Facebook Contest

Categories: Social Media

Tags: facebook contest, facebook contest examples, running facebook contest, success facebook contest

Comments: No

A Facebook contest can be a great way to acquire new fans and re-energize existing fans, but did you know that there are strict guidelines to follow when running a contest on Facebook?

And if you don’t follow these guidelines, you’re putting your page and the audience you’ve built at risk because Facebook has the right to suspend your accounts and even ultimately delete them.

What Are Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines?

Promotional guidelines are the set of rules that dictates how page owners can or cannot promote their products on Facebook. For the complete set of guidelines, I recommend that you read their promotional guidelines here .

Here are some of what page owners MUST NOT do when running a Facebook contest.

Don’t organize a Facebook contest without an app. According to their guidelines, a Facebook promotion must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.

Don’t use Facebook features or functions as part of an entry mechanism. That means:

No “like” this to win
No comment on this post to win
No share this post to win
No most photo likes wins contest
No tag yourself in this photo to enter
No asking users to “like” page to count as an entry
No post a message on our wall to win

How To Organize A Facebook Contest The Right Way

Now that you know some of the things to not do while running a contest on Facebook, here are some ways to organize your contest the right way.

Have a goal in place. What are you trying to achieve with your Facebook contest? Are you trying to increase engagement? Are you trying to increase likes? Different types of contests offer different types of results.

Use an app. Don’t build your own app unless you’re a great developer or you have an app developing team somewhere in your company. Use a ready-made, 3rd party application that is available on the market. They come with different types of Facebook contests to choose from and can be run without any hassle. Furthermore, most of them come built to abide with Facebook’s promotional guidelines – for example, by having a written disclaimer which states that Facebook has no associations with your contest whatsoever.

Promote, promote, promote. Unless you have a loyal or large fan base, you’ll need to promote your contest to gain momentum. Here are a few ideas to promote your Facebook contest:

Facebook ads
Inform your mailing lists
Use promoted posts
Write a blog post about it

Do have a fan gate. With the use of a fan page / like-gate / reveal tab, users won’t be able to join the contest until they have ‘Liked’ the page. This gains you new fans as more and more people hear about your contest and are interested in joining them.

Here’s an example of an attractive fan-gating welcome page from Good Food & Wine Show using Binkd

Do give away the right prizes. How many times have we seen business owners, brands or marketers giving away prizes such as iPads or iPhones? Although these prizes will get you a lot of fans, chances are these new fans are only interested in winning your prize, and are not invested in your brand at all. As a result, this will lower engagement rate on your page as those fans might not be interested in commenting or engaging with the page as soon as the contest runs out.

There are many types of appropriate prizes to give away. You can give away your own product, add some sponsored prizes, vouchers for your products, or even create a contest where the winner will get to choose the name of your upcoming product. Make sure it’s relevant to your business and don’t worry if it doesn’t attract as many fans as compared to when you offered that iPhone. In the long run, what you want is quality fans–not quantity.

The truth is, although Facebook has strict guidelines for their promotions, they’re just a small price to pay for the big rewards that you can receive from properly organizing and maximizing the potential of a Facebook contest.

This post was originally featured on V3im

Jan

5 Tools to Identify Your Social Media Influencers

Categories: Marketing, Social Media

Comments: 4

This post was originally published on iStrategy Conference blog.

How times have changed. Influencers or brand advocates play a large role in every business today. Not only can they help build a business through social media, but they can also break one with a tweet.

Today’s businesses are approaching influencers to get reviews on a product they offer, promote an event or even promote a social media contest. Businesses know that they can’t just depend on one form of media such as PPC or media ads; they have to approach influencers to help spread the word. But keep this in mind: influencers are not part of the ‘media’ and their services are not easily accessible to every business out there.

According to Neilson Global trust survey back in 2009, only 14% of people trust ads while 78% of people trust consumers’ recommendations.

While the number may change today, the concept of consumers trusting their friends’ recommendations remains the same.

Recently, I wanted to watch a movie and I couldn’t decide if I should watch Wreck it Ralph or Rise of the Guardians, so I asked my editor Henry for his opinion, and he recommended me to watch Wrect it Ralph. I went with his suggestion and I didn’t regret it. But guess who just lost one customer here because somebody I trust pointed me the other way?

The big question is how do you find these influencers or brand advocates? There are a couple of tools out there that can help you with that.

TWITTER

1. COMMUN.IT

Commun.it is regarded as one of the best relationship marketing tool by marketers out there. Ian Cleary listed it as one the eighth most indispensable tools for marketers.

They offer many features, one of which will give you a list of influential users who have previously engaged with your Twitter account. This gives you a list of highly relevant people that you could re-engage or ask if they would like to participate in your social media efforts.

As they already know you and have engaged with you previously, the chances of them to promote your requests are HIGHER compared to asking someone who doesn’t know about your business or have not engaged with you before.

2. Socialbro

Socialbro is a twitter management tool that comes with filters that you can use to find followers who are following you that are influential. All you need to do is simply adjust the influence filter and socialbro will show you your followers based on the influence range that you’ve selected.

FACEBOOK

3. AGORA PULSE

Agora Pulse is a great tool for small business owners who are looking for a good CRM tool for Facebook. They offer great statistics that tells you the best day to publish, best type of content to publish, best hours to publish and more.

They come with a feature to find out who are the most engaged users on your Facebook page too. You can arrange them based on likes, comments and the number of posts. This helps you to find some of the most engaged fans on your site. They may or may not be influencers, but they are definitely one of your brand advocates and it’s a great place to start finding you some influencers.

4. BOOSHAKA

Despite the funny name Booshaka, the company has a great Facebook app. What the Facebook app does is rank your Facebook fans based on the number of activities such as comments, likes, shares, etc.

There you are able to find out who your top fans are and even publish it on your wall for all to see. There’s extra motivation here for fans who are competitive to race for the first spot. Who knows, you could even make a contest out of this!

BLOG

5. TWEETREACH

If you have a blog and is looking for influential users on Twitter, tweetreach the tool that you need to use. All you have to do is simply insert the URL of a particular post and it will show you a list of 50 influential users who have shared your post. Need I say more?

Even if you don’t have a contest to promote, this is a MUST HAVE tool for you to use.

Influencers or brand advocates are important and are a great asset for every business. They can help you reach out to customers and demographics that you were not able to reach properly. It’s important to find who these people are and continuously engage with them to build and maintain a relationship.

Those are a couple of tools to help you find out influencers that matters in your business.

What tools have you used previously?

Dec

6 creative uses of Twitter for business

Categories: Social Media

Tags: creative twitter, twitter, twitter for business

Comments: 2

Every Tuesday, I spend quite a lot of time on the road traveling on the highway to meet some business associates.

While on the highway, there would always be announcements on neon boards that constantly promote a Twitter account that one could follow to follow the latest news on traffic in the area. It got me thinking about how businesses could use Twitter differently rather than to just using it to promote their brand, engage with their audience or for customer services.

Having used Twitter for a couple of years now, I remembered some amazing uses of Twitter that I’ve stumbled before. Here are some interesting accounts that I would like to share.

1. Reward customers

Tasti d lite is a New York-based frozen dessert company. They have a loyalty program called TreatCards which rewards customers with points for spending on their products. When a customer accumulates 50 points, they are eligible to receive a free medium tasti cup or cone.

To take the point system up to the next level, customers would earn extra points when they connect their cards to their Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare accounts. Whenever they use the card, a message would automatically share their tasti experience with their friend and followers while earning them extra points.

2. Check ticket price

KLM is definitely one of the most innovative companies when it comes to social media. They have launched some of the most amazing social media campaigns to date.

They also have a Twitter account called @KLMFares which allows users to tweet their where they would like to go and the month or date of their preference. This account would then respond with a tweet automatically telling them the fare price and a link to book the ticket immediately. Here is an example.

The funny thing now is that despite people still tweeting to find out the latest fare price, their Twitter account doesn’t seem to show any updates recent at all – but I still find this an interesting example of how you can use Twitter differently.

3. Recommend Food

Do you have customers checking in and tweeting about it? Rochor Beancurd, a Chinese dessert and snack store in Singapore not only serves delicious food, but they also take their customer services to the next level by responding to customers on Twitter.

Whenever someone checks in and tweets, the owner would thank them for coming and even recommends them some food to try. Oh, and they also allow you to….

4. Order take outs

What’s more interesting about @RochorBeancurd and its owner is that they frequently get orders from some of his customers on Twitter. As he spends quite a bit of time engaging with his customers, some of his customers would tweet him or send him a DM to order take outs from his store!

5. Retweet reviews

While most businesses tend to just listen or simply thank people for leaving a good comment or checking in, this business retweets them and shares comments with their followers. That is what @myersandchang does on twitter

This exercise is pretty simple and it really means a lot to people.

6. Tweet Space

This is interesting! While the account @Laundryroom has been inactive since 2010, they definitely have used Twitter in a very interesting way before their disappearance. What the account does is tweet the number of washing machines available in the campus for people to use.

I could see this similar concept used on other types of businesses. For example tweeting the number of parking spaces available in a shopping mall and tweeting the number of seats left in a cinema. I also find that this is a great way to update your followers in a non-invasive and polite way. Perhaps this is what email marketers need to switch to!

These six examples show that Twitter’s simplicity should not stop the number of creative uses that people can innovate, but in fact its simplicity is what makes it easy to adapt and is a flexible space for business owners. I believe because of this reason, businesses are often confused as to what to do on Twitter or not knowing how to use it.

What do you think?

Have you seen other creative examples out there?

Nov

The Simple Science to Increase Engagement on Facebook

Categories: Social Media

Tags: facebook engagement, science of facebook engagement

Comments: 4

I’m sure by now you’d know that there are over one BILLION users…Yup, one BILLION users on Facebook. Although I don’t focus much on the huge number of users there, I do focus on the quality of engagement that I receive from the network.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get from businesses is how can they increase engagement on Facebook. I’m always testing and finding out what works for my pages and one thing for certain is that what may work for one page may not work for the other. Trial and error is the key here, but just like how business strategies are, make sure you follow the basics before trying out more complex approaches.

If you’re still figuring out how you can increase engagement for your Facebook page, try to follow these tips from the infographic.

1. Use Images!

According to the infographic, posts with images receive 39% higher interaction rates compared to your average posts. I can’t stress how important images are.

I’m always asking people to use images to increase engagement rather than posting normal posts. That’s why we here at Binkd focus on using images for most of our posts.

2. Use emoticons

This is new, but according to the infographic posts that consist of emoticons receive higher share, comment and like rate. I’ve not tested this personally but I believe that it is related to the concept of making your emotions more apparent and setting the mood on a given post. In other words: making your posts more ‘human’. What do you think?

3. Facebook Contest rules!

Another gold nugget from the infographic is that Facebook contests are a great way to increase engagement. This is definitely not a secret because a Facebook contest is a great way to fuel engagement – but the trick lies in structuring your contests to drive your audience to engage with you. For example, focus more on contests that requires your audience to comment – such as captions-based contests.

4. Timing

I’m not a huge fan of the whole ‘science of Facebook timing’. I believe in the importance of timing, but different industries have different timing when it comes to the perfect time to post and it is definitely a field where more studies and research is necessary before it can be concluded.

The best way to know what time works for your business is to see your Facebook page’s analytics. Know what’s best for your fans because when it comes to timing, you don’t have a choice but to follow theirs. Ever heard of the saying: ‘my deadlines are not your deadlines’? Throw that in the bin. Their deadlines are definitely yours now.

Here is the infographic:

Have you gone through the infographic? Love to hear your thoughts on it.

Nov

3 ways to use Facebook Fan-Gate to increase page likes

Categories: Social Media

Tags: binkd, fan gate, fan gating, like gate, like gating, social media app

Comments: 4

Ever since Facebook had a redesign, many marketers have voiced their opinions about how ineffective ‘fan-gating’ or ‘like-gating’ will be as they aren’t able to set them as the default landing page anymore. That is true; however the thought of it not being effective is far from being true.

What is a fan gate?

A fan gate or a ‘like gate’ allows your page to display different contents to those who are not fans and to those who are fans. Imagine a house with a gate that stops someone from getting into your house. If you are not a part of the household, all you see is the gate. If you are a part of the household, then you’d get to be in the house.

A fan gate offers exclusive content to those who have ‘liked’ your Facebook page, those who have not will see a tab asking users to like the page in order to see what’s behind it.

How to use fan gate?

Although Facebook stops you from setting it as a default landing page, page owners can still direct traffic from Facebook ads to their fan gates.

While fan gates may never be as effective as it used to be, it could still prove to be a powerful (and underused) tool when paired with:

1. Facebook Contest

We all know that a Facebook competition is an effective way to grow fans. Facebook contests attract audience for several reasons and page owners need to learn to take advantage of this by installing a fan gate. This will push fans to “Like” your page before they can participate in a contest.

Let’s take a look at an example of a Facebook contest with a fan gate created by Good Food & Wine Show using Binkd.

If you’re not a fan of the page, you’d see the fan gate:

After the page is liked:

Uploading a fan gate is easy with Binkd. While you’re in the process of creating a contest, TICK “Require Facebook Like To Enter” and upload an image to use as your fan gate.

DONE! Now users will need to ‘Like’ your page before they can participate in your contest.

The trick here is to maximize the potential of people’s attraction and curiosity from your contest and turning it into Likes.

2. Exclusive Offers

Another great way to use your like gate is by pairing it with exclusive offers and promotions. This can be used to boost your engagement with non-fans as it attracts users who want to claim the offer. Because all they need to do to qualify for the offer is to click the like button, most users would not even think twice before liking your page.

Here is an example by Paint the Moon:

Before page is liked:

After page is liked:

3. Exclusive Content

When it comes to social media management, content is still king. What better way to tempt your audience than to giveaway exclusive content? It can be any content such as:

Ebooks / Kindle
Video
Mp3
or any other items that can easily downloaded

Here is an example by Paint the moon again who is giving away a handy cheat sheet to crop images:

Before page is liked

After page is liked

A Facebook like-gate is a great to incentivized non-fans to like your page, mainly because it still is a useful platform to broadcast your offers and promotions. With ‘retail’ space being ever so limited in Facebook, page managers should utilize every available space possible and a fan gate is one that cannot be overlooked. Just because you can’t set your default landing page doesn’t mean you shouldn’t utilize this feature to support your marketing strategies.

What do you think?

Oct

8 Tips on how to Increase Retweets on Twitter

Categories: Social Media

Tags: get more retweets, increase retweets

Comments: 1

Originally published at iStrategy Conference

I remember years ago, my parents read about twitter in the newspaper and asked me what it was. I had a hard time explaining what it was to them as they had not seen it before. All they heard were people using it to share what they had for lunch.

It’s amazing in such a short period of time, twitter is literally everywhere today.

Today, twitter is playing a more important role for businesses as well. I can’t go on a day without seeing the word twitter plastered in tv ads, newspapers, business signs, etc.

Getting exposure or retweets from twitter is one of the key elements businesses are seeking. Here are eight easy to follow tips to increase retweets or exposure.

THE BASICS:

Tip #1: Start right

One of the most important steps to get more retweets on twitter is to have a strong foundation on twitter. You’ll need to grow your twitter presence first to get more people sharing your tweets. Start off by following and engaging with new followers. For more tips I recommend you to read this post I wrote on iStrategy previously.

Tip #2: Retweet others

There is an old phrase worth remembering, “the more you give the more you get”. There is no exception when it comes to sharing on any social networking sites. By constantly sharing tweets other than yours, you’re increasing your twitter presence as the person who you’re retweeting from will notice you.

THE SCIENCE OF RETWEETING

Tip #3: Tweets at the right time

There is no point tweeting when no one is reading, I found out that there are “hot hours” to tweet. Although I can’t recommend the best time for you to tweet, I can recommend you some tools to help you find out. Read tip #4

Tip #4: Utilize tools

As I mentioned before, it is important to tweet at the right time. Here are some tools to help you find out the best time to tweet:

After you find out your best time to tweet, don’t forget to set it in your buffer account, you’ll be able to connect tools like socialbro and tweriod to your buffer account straight away.

Other tools that can help you to increase retweets:

Clicktotweet: This simple tool allows you to customize pre-loaded tweets that you want your readers to share on your blog. (must use)
Pay with a tweet: I’ve not used this tool yet, but what is does is users need to “pay” via a tweet in order to download your ebook/gift.

Here is an example:

THE ART OF RETWEETING

Tip #5: Ask for it.

Sounds simple enough, if you want to get something retweeted then ask for it. If someone has shared your tweets previously and you’ve spent some time getting to know them, ask them (in a nice manner) to share if they found it useful.

Tip #6: Share a few times a day

Guy Kawasaki talked about retweeting a blog post around 3-4 times a day, 8 hours apart. In his argument he used CNN as examples about how they were repeating the news a few times as people wasn’t sitting there to watch them. For me personally, I prefer to share at least twice a day 12 hours apart.

Tip #7: Add a call to action

According to their (the or their?) Buddy Media, tweets that contains the word “RT” or “Retweet” receive 12x higher retweet shares compared to those that don’t include a call to action.

Tip #8: Spell out the word “Retweet”

Another data from Buddy Media, by spelling the word “RETWEET” the average retweet rate is 23 times higher. Few of my followers have mentioned to me that they have seen an increase of retweets using this method.

CONCLUSION

I believe getting more retweets is not only about getting the “science and art” of retweeting right, it is about getting the most basic elements right, the human element, something most of us tend to forget while we’re using twitter. Once you get the human element right, the rest comes easy.

What do you think? Do you know of any other ways to get more retweets?

Photo Credit: by stevegarfield (creative commons)

Oct

5 Tips To Grow Twitter Followers The Right Way

Categories: Social Media

Comments: 9

Originally published at iStrategy Conference:

On a daily basis, I spend countless hours on twitter engaging and communicating with some of the most amazing people there. Having said that, you probably know now that I am a huge twitter fan.

Yes I am! I am a huge advocate as I believe in its potential and I’ve seen how it has helped businesses.

I also know how frustrating twitter can get when you’re not seeing the results you want. So here are some tips that have been working for me personally as well as my business…. oh and be aware you don’t need to devote your entire life to it this strategy.

Two years ago, I wrote about a post about how businesses can build a presence onlineby following the C.B.S method.

CBS means:

C = Connect with people by following the right people

B = Build relationships with people by engaging, replying and responding to tweets.

S = Share other people’s content. Follow the 10:1 ratio. For every 1 content you share about your business, share 10 of others.

Now that you know what that means, here is what you can do to fully utilize the theory and build your online presence on twitter.

1. PARTICIPATE IN TWITTER CHATS

One of my favourite. If you don’t know what a twitter chat is, a twitter chat is a like an open forum on twitter. It is a great way to meet, network and engage with new peoplethat share a similar interest.

Different twitter chats have different discussions topics. Some hosts will invite experts and do a twitter interview with them. Experts will share their knowledge and answer questions and respond to other twitter users.

Some twitter chats involve a certain topic and series of questions and participaters will collaborate, answer and share their knowledge.

There are many twitter chats you can follow: Here is a list of them thanks to Lauren Dugan.

2. GUEST POSTING

Guest posting is like a huge conference that you’ve been invited to speak. You go on stage, share your knowledge, experience and expertise, and the audience who were in the audience will know about you, talk to you after the conference, and follow you on social networking sites.

If you want the right followers, focus on contributing on other blogs. Recently, I did a series of guest posts and have seen my audiences grow on twitter. Guest posting on other blogs has allowed me to reach a different audience on their blog.

3. UTILIZE TOOLS

Tools are great because it helps you to build a twitter presence by increasing your productivity. But don’t abuse it and don’t focus too much on them. I notice marketers and businesses are focusing too much on tools and not on creating a community.

Here are some of my recommendations:

Buffer: Use this tool to spread your tweets. Buffer helps you to schedule tweets with a click of a button.
Socialbro: Socialbro is a fantastic tool. It has tons of features you can use from finding out the best time to tweet, scheduling, and finding the right followers.
Triberr: Triberr is a platform for bloggers to help each other by sharing each other’s content on Twitter. It is a great tool to grow a strong blog presence and indirectly grow your twitter presence.

Tools like buffer and socialbro can help you to maintain a presence on twitter without spending too much time on it, helping you to focus your time on more important task such as connecting with people.

4. FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW

Sounds easy right? It is. Following new people is a great way to reach a new audience. Following manually can take a lot of time, so I would recommend a tool that has been used by many marketers and business owners. There are two simple methods to follow the right people.

Method 1:

Use a tool… it’s called Tweepi. One blogger who has been using this tool for a while to grow a following of over 100,000 followers is Jeff Bullas. Read more about this tool on his blog here.

Method 2:

Another way to follow a targeted audience is to follow followers in a twitter list that you have been listed in.

1. Go to your twitter profile

2. Click Lists

3. Click members of

4. Click a twitter list related to your industry

5. Follow members in that list

5. TWITTER ADS

A few of my friends have seen great results from using twitter ads to grow a presence. Since I’ve had no opportunity to give twitter ads a try yet, I decided to approach a personal friend of mine, Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable Media who has used twitter ads. I asked Dave his opinion on twitter ads and this is what he had to say:

Twitter ads can be expensive compared to Facebook but can also be very powerful to grow an audience.

I also asked Dave his opinion about twitter ads compared to other social ads.

What I like about Twitter ads compared to Facebook ads is the ability to drive users off of the platform. People are on Facebook because they want to remain on Facebook, whereas they’re on Twitter to find cool links and to leave Twitter. This helps advertisers who want to drive ecommerce, leads, and conversation on their own website.

I must add that, cultivating and growing a strong online presence on Twitter takes time (a lot of time), but trust me, you get back what you put in. Be patient.

There are definitely more ways that I can think of right now that have helped me to grow my presence on twitter. Instead of doing that, I would like to turn it over to you and hear your thoughts.

YOUR TURN

What have you done previously till today to grow your Twitter audience? What has worked best for you?

Photo credit: by Let Ideas Compete

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