In this post, Wade Harman of Bloggers Make Money shares his tips on Social Marketing on Twitter. Take note of the solutions he uses to encourage sharing and tweets.
SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGIES
Everyone has heard people say that you should only focus on one or two social platforms when thinking about your social marketing strategy. To me, that is just plain ridiculous, if not unbelievable.
In my experience, when I see people posting this, I immediately check to see if they’re “practicing what they preach” to the masses. I usually find that these people have social accounts on all the major networks. They know the importance of using these sites, but are bound to popular opinion, and forced to write things like this.
You must understand that social media marketing does not see you as equal to everyone else. Whether you are a blogger who has just started out, or a professional, then you must realize that in order to produce results on these platforms, you’re going to need certain social marketing skills to obtain the traffic, and finally the sale.
I will be doing a series of guest posts on this blog that will cover major social update strategies for different platforms. Today I want to focus on driving traffic from Twitter, posting tweets, and using your blog as a mixture of success in social media.
#1-Psychology In Social Marketing Updates
If you’ve never heard of this, then don’t be embarrassed. It’s a pretty new idea, and one that I have been testing for about 5 months now. I have proven results that it does work. I want to include this one first because it is true for pretty much all of the social media platforms today.
Whether you know it or not, you are producing some sort of emotion every time you publish an update to a social media platform. Anger, sadness, guilt, excitement, and yes, even boredom. These are all things that happen when people see your updates. I have even scrolled across some updates only to snort in disgust at the way they approached it…see? Emotion.
Now emotion is not a bad thing at all. It’s something that you can’t stop when people are reading your stuff; however, it’s something that you can bridle and control if you know what you’re doing.
Psychologically, we are emotional people. Even to the guy who brags about never being “emotional”, that’s still an emotion. It’s just not an outward appearance of one. We are used to thinking of emotion as people crying or jumping for joy with excitement…and outward appearance. Something we can see. However emotion goes deeper than just tangible feelings.
For example, in the sales world, there is something called Hope For Gain syndrome and it is used widely across the internet to drive traffic, build a list, or just sell something in general. I know you have read those squeeze pages that get you so pumped that you want to give your credit card to them right away right? I know I have, and have wasted a lot of money doing that, too!
These people understand the unbalanced state that the human mind goes into when it perceives the Hope For Gain syndrome. Going a little bit further into that there is also an emotion called Fear of Loss…and these are just sales words to describe the emotional state that a person is in at that time. Think “excited and hopeful that they are going to make a lot of money with something online”. (Not the only definition, but you get my point.)
On the other side of that coin, the only differences between these two emotions is that the Hope for Gain feeling never changes, but the Fear of Loss emotion does. A fear of loss could be translated into two different emotions.
- Loss of Opportunity – This is normally the emotion that you would want to go for when you write an update. For example: “Only 10 e-books left to learn how to make money in your pajamas!” You create an emotional state that if the reader doesn’t comply right then, they will be left out, and still be in the same shape tomorrow.
- Loss of Trust – This is the second way that you can describe this emotion. Perhaps you oversell the update or squeeze page, and then the person gets wise that this isn’t what they want. This causes a loss of trust with you and a loss of sale.
Usually Fear of Loss emotions are a hard update to write because you have that chance of losing them. However, the Hope for Gain emotion actually trumps the Fear of Loss, or Loss of Trust emotion…and I know it’s getting a bit hairy right about now, but here I explain the real truth about social media marketing updates.
One other thing I want to mention is the fact that we have something at the base of our brain that is considered a reticular formation. This helps us to weed through different things that would otherwise distract us or somehow be irrelevant in our lives.
For example: the reason a person can live by the railroad tracks and sleep through the night with a train rumbling and not wake up, and somehow that same person can hear an unfamiliar “bump” in the next room. That’s reticular formation.
Unconsciously knowing what to ignore in our day-to-day lives and
in social media updates are both examples of reticular formation.
Understanding what makes people tick and how to get them to notice you is a powerful thing when you really start to think about it.
#2-Integrating Your Blog & Social Media
In my Twitter account, you will see plenty of updates that relate to social marketing and how it can help you. That’s good, and that’s what you want to do no matter what niche you’re in. But if you will notice, sometimes you will see things that people have tweeted that have came directly from the blog post.
It’s a different way to get people to share your posts through Twitter. I have found that it’s a solid way to drive traffic as well, because it looks more like a conversation that people would be interested in.
For instance, you can prompt people to say whatever you want them to say through your blog posts. Getting them to do it is another matter which I will cover in a second, but for right now let me explain how to do this.
I use something called ClickToTweet.com and it’s as simple as writing down what you feel is a good way to get people conversing about, or clicking, on Twitter. Simply set it up, create your link and it will share the link for you to display on your blog.
Here’s what it would look like set up, and this one works, so go ahead and hit the Tweet This! button:
Thanks Gail, for allowing Wade to guest post on your site! People need to see this one! Tweet This!
That’s basically the gist of the whole idea. Pretty simple, yet effective at getting more tweets than you may be used to on your blog posts these days.
How to encourage use of the Tweet This! option:
As you grow your blog, you will learn that when you build up a faithful reader base, then they will share just about everything without being told. On that note, there will be plenty of times when someone new shows up that has never heard of you. And don’t get me wrong, you should always be encouraging people to share your content, but sometimes we tend to get lazy when we know that a faithful few are holding down the fort for us.
Never give up getting shares!
The number one most important option to get people to share goes back to the cornerstone of blogging which is content. When you share things that are great, people will share! When you publish posts that have some kind of emotional affect, people will share!
The reader should be your most important part of your blog. Not the affiliate link, not the AdSense, but that one person who is there right then and now that has the potential of sharing your blog post across all sorts of platforms.
This idea goes hand-in-hand with writing great content. When you care about your reader, and really want to help them, then awesome content will come naturally to you. Remember that, and the share is almost guaranteed.
#2(a)-Integrating Your Blog & Social Media Marketing Content
Yet another great way to integrate your blog and your Twitter account is to provide an easy way for people to follow you. Twitter developers provide nice and easy way to do this with the choices in their resource buttons.
You can decide what you actually want to choose for your site. From creating tweet buttons to following and hashtagging pins, you can really build a nice button for people to easily follow your account like this:
But why would I use that?
That’s actually a question that I was asking myself when I started using it. Why use something like this when we have plugins that are put in the sidebar of our site for obvious reasons.
As you will see, most people have a Follow Me location in their blog somewhere and that’s great! I definitely approve of that; however, if you will notice, most of these applications actually take the reader outside of your blog, therefore causing a bounce rate and losing a potentially faithful reader.
I like to include the “Follow Me” button periodically throughout different posts just to change it up and because it looks more appealing. People will be more apt to click and follow because the button doesn’t take them anywhere and they can keep right on reading, too!
#3-Social Media Marketing on Twitter
If you are starting out like I did, then you basically have no following. No one knows who you are, and no one cares. At least until you can show them anyway.
One of the most powerful things I ever did was to start getting the feel for Twitter Tools that I could really use that would get my blog in front of as many people as possible AND keep me organized and on schedule.
It’s really easy when you first start out to get lost in the mix for a while, and these tools can really be of good service to you if you use them in the right way. Gail recommends using Twitterfeed to build blogging communities that support content through auto-tweeting.
Ways to drive traffic from Twitter
Keeping in mind that you’re always producing some sort of psychological affect on someone. Your Twitter update is no different than any other update, save it’s only 140 characters. Not to worry. Unless you’re writing War and Peace you shouldn’t need much more space than that anyway.
One thing that I cover on my blog about psychological updating is the fact that short, yet hot, words are needed to produce the right results from Twitter. Let’s start from square one. This whole thing starts with your post title – so make it as compelling as possible.
Also keep in mind that when you’re done sharing it, if you have written an exceptionally good and “psychological” post title, then when everyone else shares it, it’s already performing its duties to the next set of people in their circle.
Using hashtags
Using hashtags has always been a great way to involve the masses when updating to Twitter in your social marketing strategy. Finding out what hashtag to use is especially important.
I recently wrote a post called NewsJacking in Social Media and it refers to an idea of “trend chasing”. The simple fact that when something gets hot on Twitter, or any other social site for that matter, you catch it on the rise and ride that trend on the upward curve. Trend chasing is not something that is recommended, but a good idea to know about anyway.
So what’s a good update anyway?
You may be scratching your head after reading the above paragraphs about psychology, but once you get the hang of it, it really is pretty simple to learn. I want to close with one example of updates that I have seen (and you too probably) that are not so good, and then show you how to fix them.
Update #1- Literally Amazing Product That Can & Will Drive Traffic To Your Site! [LINK]
Psychologically, if you have ever written this update (I know I have), then you are basically taking a lot of things away from the reader.
- Opinion- Because you have called it “Amazing”, “Awesome”, “Great”, etc, then you have ripped their choice to make a decision for themselves. People like clear and concise. They like honesty. Since they don’t know you yet, and you’re calling it awesome, then you have made them turn into a Loss of Trust reader.
- Took Away Results- The next thing this update has done has taken away from the experience that the user has with the product. This also causes dis-trust because it’s not telling them HOW it has helped this site, it’s merely telling them that it can without proof.
- The False Guarantee- Can & Will are words that are used to describe upbeat and positivism. Although that’s not a bad thing, it’s not only telling you that it CAN drive traffic, but it WILL drive traffic. People like to see the negatives as well. What you didn’t like about it. In doing this, even though you have produced an affiliate link or whatever in the update, you have provided personal experience with the product, telling what you liked or didn’t like.
Here’s the way that update should have been written:
Revised Update #1- Do You Need Traffic? I Used This Product With Success. Read My Review To See If It Will Work For You! [LINK]
That’s one way that this can be rewritten to get a positive response and good interaction. You will find that an honest update usually sends buyers and faithful readers to your blog.
What’s Your Opinion?
Have some great social marketing strategies that you would like to share for Twitter? Can you remember seeing updates that you just thought were horrible? Give me a comment and tell me some stories about it, or to just ask more questions, I await your reply!