The Beginner s Guide to Getting Your Business on Social Media. Simple tips for building an online social presence worthy of your webinars

Transcription

1 The Beginner s Guide to Getting Your Business on Social Media Simple tips for building an online social presence worthy of your webinars

2 Social media has transformed the way we get and give information. Want to publish something to the public? No longer do you need to visit the editor in the corner office. No longer do you need to run your tape by the radio station. No longer do you need to pitch your film to the studio executive. Everything can be shared online with few barriers but many potential benefits for your business. Watch the full webinar on How Social Media Has Changed Everything with Silverback Social CEO Chris Dessi. Webinars make it easy to reach people around the world. And with social media, attracting that large, world-wide audience is a simple matter. Share a registration link on your channels and you ve got the ball rolling already. If people like the content, they ll share it with others. Your market can grow by itself, and leads will come to you. But first you need a strong social media presence. All it takes is involvement, passion and a little bit of know-how. And that s what this guide is here to help you with. Some all-around advice to start Be authentic. If you want to have a strong social media presence, you first need to be authentic. Take off the corporate veil. Don t put up a PR or marketing front, because that will be easily seen for what it is: fake. It s OK to take yourself less seriously on social media, since it s the most human way you can reach out to a remote customer. There will be people who complain and insult you on your pages, and you should let them. Part of being authentic is owning up to your errors. Extend the olive branch and make amends if you can. You may convert them to a customer, and you might even learn something about your business that you could improve upon. Interact with your fans and followers. Most businesses only post status updates and then fly the coop. Don t be like them. Stick around and interact. Social media lets you talk directly with your community, so take advantage by engaging people in conversations whenever you can. Share knowledge on your expertise and answer questions. It goes a long way towards making your brand come to life. Respect the community. Would you curse in a corporate meeting? Wear jeans and a T-shirt to a professional interview? Just as there is social etiquette in real life, so are there rules to follow online. It s simple, but many people miss the cues. Know what s appropriate for each online community you are a part of. Yes, that means learning about the different ecosystems. Find blog posts about Pinterest what do you pin, why do you pin. For some people, these communities are where they spend all their time. They will quickly spot social missteps that result from simple ignorance. Finish your profiles. A partially filled out profile hurts you more than you think. By adding information to each account, you re giving the search engines more fodder to find. They will reference these accounts, so take the process seriously and keep your details up to date. This includes photos of your business. You should also 2

3 interlink your social pages. If you have Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ profiles, post a link back to each on every site. This connectivity will also help boost your search engine rankings. Blogs Just get talking. You and your business have a lot of expertise in at least one thing. (Otherwise people wouldn t pay you, right?) Don t be afraid to share this wealth of knowledge online. Blogging can be one of the best avenues for building a following and bubbling up in search rankings. So if you don t already have a web domain to blog from, grab one today off WordPress or any other free content platform. Then just start talking about your industry and what you re doing. People will naturally come to consider you a resource on the subject. Comment across the blogosphere. Don t forget blogs have their own communities that you should participate in as well. Create a profile on Disqus that contains links and information about you and your business. Then visit blogs related to your field and start commenting as yourself with your image. Simple messages like This is wonderful thanks so much! are sometimes all it takes to get a curious eye back to your own content. By joining discussions where you can, you re giving people many new entry points to your business. LinkedIn Put a picture to the face. Profile pages with images are looked at seven times more often than those without. That should be reason enough to add your photo. People are going to look for your image, so don t hide behind the online curtain. We all want to see your smiling face. Write yourself a summary. LinkedIn is more than just an online resume it s an opportunity to humanize yourself. So make yourself human by talking about who you are. Just be sure not to write in the third person. (Relax, we understand that you re writing your own summary.) Think about what you do and why you re good at it. Talk about what you re passionate about, what gets you going in the morning, why you are in the business that you re in. Give recommendations. Would you buy anything online without looking at the reviews first? In the same way, recommendations are important for your LinkedIn profile, but they re not the easiest favor to ask for. So why not take the first step by giving recommendations out to colleagues unasked? Think of the five most influential people in your career and write one for them. It will make you feel good, and it will make them happy. Plus, they may do something nice for you in return. Facebook Post at the right time. When do you check Facebook most often? If you re like everyone else, it s in the morning before work and in the evening after you re home. So schedule your posts to publish then once early, once later. Why? Because when there are more people online to see your fresh content, you re more likely to get shares, likes and comments all of which tells Facebook s algorithm to show your posts in more news feeds. Pose more questions. Posts that end in a question have 15 percent higher engagement. Remember, you re in social media to converse with your customers, so don t be one sided. Questions get answers it s that human element. But stay away from complicated questions, because you 3

4 Words that work well on Facebook: warns, inspires, unites, advises, amazes, gives, amuses Words that work well on Twitter: smart, surprising, science, hacks, history, huge/big, critical don t want to make people work too hard to take part. Ask for what you want. Every post should have a call to action. If you want people to post comments, then don t be afraid to ask folks to tell us about this or that. Want people to share your funny content? Same thing. Share this with someone you think needs a smile today. Take the survey, sign up for the event, like our page the list goes on. As long as what you re asking is appropriate, there will be people who join in. Twitter Post at the right pace. Interestingly, Twitter works the opposite way in terms of timing. Tweets tend to work best between 8 AM and 7 PM, so stick to that window. You should also start off with 1-5 tweets per day as a brand. This will help you gain traction, especially if you provide quality content (either yours or a third party s). But here s a caveat: reply to others on Twitter as often as you can. People won t see these conversations as spam, and it s a great way to engage your followers. Follow those within your field. Find all of the experts that write about your industry and follow them. There s an unspoken law of reciprocity on Twitter chances are you ll get many followers back. So have your profile filled out and ready for them to see. You ll build your network (and brand recognition) quickly this way. editing your tweets down, and you ll give them room to breathe. This allows people to easily retweet and comment This is great check it out! without going over the limit. Google+ Don t ignore it. The one tip we have for Google+ is simply to use it. Search engine optimization is an everchanging field, but one thing remains constant: Google dominates. As far as page rankings for your business go, Google+ may even be more important than Facebook someday, so get your business page up and running. Then repurpose all of your content for the fledgling platform. Your organic search results will thank you. Ready? Go! Once you ve set up shop in social media, you re ready to start promoting your webinars. In addition to simply posting the registration link, be sure to engage your attendees in conversation before the event. Use custom hashtags to easily track these discussions. You can even tailor your content to the topics and questions that naturally come up. Have a guest speaker? It s a great idea to get him or her involved as well. Following the event, share the recording on your channels and address any lingering questions or comments. The more interactions you have surrounding your event, the more interactive it will be for attendees. Social media is an indispensable tool in your webinar toolkit, so put it to good use! Keep your tweets shorter. Think it s already hard enough to keep your content under 140 characters? Well, welcome to the next level. Your new target should be fewer than 100. Why? Because these short tweets receive 17 percent higher engagement than longer tweets do. So spend that extra time For more help on how to magnify your social presence, watch the webinar How Social Media Has Changed Everything and Why You and Your Organization Needs to Change with It featuring Silverback Social CEO Chris Dessi. 4

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