LinkedIn - Express Writers

#ContentWritingChat Recap: The Best Strategies on How to Use LinkedIn for Your Brand with Warwick Brown

June 19, 2024March 30, 2018 by Rachel Moffett

What are your thoughts on LinkedIn? Are you actively using this platform as a tool to build your brand online? If not, you might want to reconsider! It can be a fantastic way to generate brand awareness, as well as bring in leads for your business. However, the key to success with any social media platform is to know how to use it effectively. And that’s exactly what we talked about in this week’s #ContentWritingChat! #ContentWritingChat Recap: The Best Strategies on How to Use LinkedIn for Your Brand with Warwick Brown Welcome to #ContentWritingChat! Today, we’re going to be sharing strategies on how you can best used LinkedIn for your brand. Our guest host for the chat is @warwickabrown, so be sure to give him a warm welcome! ?? pic.twitter.com/7fES0NJEWI — Express Writers (@ExpWriters) March 27, 2018 Our guest host this week was Warwick Brown. He helps account managers find success by sharing tons of skills and tips with them. Warwick has also been a member of the #ContentWritingChat community for some time now, so it was great having him step into the guest hosting role. He’s very knowledgeable on LinkedIn and he shared a lot of great tips during the chat. So, let’s go ahead and dive into the recap! Q1: How does LinkedIn feature in your content marketing or social media strategy? Is it a priority? To kick off the chat, we had to see just how many people were already taking LinkedIn seriously. Responses were all across the board, with some who love LinkedIn and are active on the platform, and others who aren’t fully invested. Here are a few of the answers we received: A1: #LinkedIn is now my biggest priority for social media and outside of my blog, my biggest priority for content. There’s no other place that will get you noticed by the right people as quickly #contentwritingchat — Warwick Brown (@warwickabrown) March 27, 2018 For Warwick, LinkedIn is his biggest priority when it comes to social media. And that should really come as no surprise, otherwise we couldn’t have invited him to speak on the topic for our chat! Because of his passion for the platform, he’s learned a lot about using it effectively. A1a: It’s also just a great place to hang out and find like minded people in your profession or industry. I’m learning a lot and there’s much less noise than on other platforms #contentwritingchat — Warwick Brown (@warwickabrown) March 27, 2018 Warwick went on to say it’s a great place to hang out and find like-minded people within your industry. It can be fantastic for anyone looking to make new connections. A1 It is my main focus when it comes to promoting my business. I am very active and get tons of engagement. The others are great too, but @LinkedIn ROCKS #contentwritingchat — Jade Alberts Consulting (@Jade_A_Consult) March 27, 2018 Jade said LinkedIn is a top priority for him as well. He’s very active there and see a lot of engagement as a result. A1: LinkedIn is a huge priority for me! I know that it can help me reach potential clients and other freelancers so I spend time there every day! #ContentWritingChat — Amanda Cross (@amandacrossco) March 27, 2018 For Amanda, LinkedIn has been helpful in reaching potential clients and connecting with other freelancers. A1: It is a priority for me. There is a lot of opportunity to connect with like-minded professionals, but also to genuinely connect with people you admire and want to learn from or do business with #contentwritingchat — Corina Manea (@corinamanea) March 27, 2018 Corina said LinkedIn is a must for her as well, primarily for making new connections. A1. I’m trying to familiarize myself more with the platform this year. I think its a great natural extension of my work here on twitter. Lots of connections from both platforms/ #ContentWritingChat — Gene Petrov // Leadership & Marketing Consulting (@GenePetrovLMC) March 27, 2018 Gene said he’s trying to learn more about the platform in the year ahead. A1: I am still learning about #LinkedIn but can see it’s potential within a strategy. I have already connected with like minded people and have some face to face meetings planned as a result. So far I have learnt that it’s a great networking tool. #ContentWritingChat — Suze Cooper ✨ (@minicoopersmum) March 27, 2018 Suze is also wanting to learn more about LinkedIn to use it more seriously, as she sees the potential it has to offer. A1: For now, it’s not something I can’t live without. But it sure is a priority to learn and use more of. I’ve been ignoring it because I never quite understood the LinkedIn side of social. It’s seriously interesting. #ContentWritingChat — Narmadhaa (@s_narmadhaa) March 27, 2018 For Narmadhaa, LinkedIn isn’t exactly a necessity. A1: It’s a goal, but we’re kind of unsure about how to break into using it effectively to reach new people. Any tips or suggested reading would be much appreciated! #ContentWritingChat — Rachel Voorhees (@rachvoo) March 27, 2018 The main reason many people hold themselves back from using LinkedIn is because they aren’t sure how to use it effectively for their brands. Rachel feels the same way. Q2: Do you publish content on LinkedIn articles? What do you like (or dislike) about the publishing platform? Next, we moved into talking about publishing content on LinkedIn’s platform. It’s something that many people have experimented with, but is it worth investing your time into? Here’s what some of our chat participants had to say about it: A2: Yes. It’s one of the easiest content publishing platforms. Really easy to format, shows up nicely in your feed and easy to share on other platforms #contentwritingchat — Warwick Brown (@warwickabrown) March 27, 2018 Warwick feels LinkedIn has one of the easiest content publishing platforms. He finds it to be very user-friendly, which could make it worth trying out. A2: I do! I love their publishing area. I like it because … Read more

A Data-Driven Answer on Where to Publish Your Content, & the Downside of Being Everywhere

June 19, 2024March 15, 2017 by Adam Oakley

From the moment we wake up, we consume a crazy high amount of content. It’s nuts. In just one minute: 7 million Snapchat videos are posted. Over 2 million Instagram posts get “hearted.” Facebook gets over 4 million likes. Nearly 350,000 tweets happen. Google translates 69 million words. (Contently) In one day: almost three million blogs are posted. So it only makes sense that you should share your awesome content on all of those platforms in order to have the greatest reach. In a world of endless options for publishing content, we should publish anywhere and everywhere, right? (FOMO!) Not necessarily. Let’s keep talking. Where to Publish Content: Why The Answer Starts With Where NOT to Publish One of the challenges we face as content marketers is the rise of social media platforms and the fact that readers don’t just start there – they never have to leave. We use social media for news, to keep up with trends, to connect with other people, and to follow our favorite brands, which means we’re more engaged than ever before. But we also run the risk of getting stuck in a rut with the billions of others who are plugged in worldwide. From Statista Your content may be magnificent, praiseworthy, and top-notch. But that doesn’t mean you should utilize every blogging and social media outlet known to the internet in order to share it. The more content you publish, the better, but where should you sink all your valuable content marketing efforts into? Here’s Where to Publish: 3 Areas of Focus We Recommend When you are ready to share amazing content, here are three of the best places to create and publish on. 1. Your own blog and site Honestly: this is your real best content publishing real estate. Upkeeping a blog is key. Look at these stats: 1) B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not. 2) Marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI. 5) Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website. 6) Blogs have been rated as the 5th most trusted source for accurate online information. Hubspot Treat it like your #1 content hub. Grow and expand it, weekly if not daily. Here at Express Writers, we publish the majority of the content on our site. The combined abilities of our experienced writers allow us to create quality content that brings in revenue while also helping our audience. We post once a week minimum, with posts between 1,500 and 4,000 words. Once a month, a Twitter chat recap in our dedicated chat section is also created and shared. Our content is consistent, well-researched, and published following a specific timeframe. Topics are planned and thought out with care. Our branded content has ended up being a major, major source of our entire company revenue (to the tune of 99%). More on that in my case study. Your blog content can be an amazing resource for your audience. Here’s why: Blogging can increase your search engine optimization (SEO), especially when you use keywords in the right way and create content in long form. Blogging gives you content to promote across social media channels. Blogging allows you a space to put valuable calls-to-action, which have the potential to generate leads and grow conversions. A. How to write a strong blog post? Hubspot offers some simple tips on how to write a blog post that begins with understanding your audience and ends with choosing a catchy title. You can read more about that here and grab some free blogging templates while you’re at it. The best blog posts always have a clear topic and engaging title; the audience is drawn in and stays engaged because they have been captivated by the introduction. The content is well-organized and relevant to the issue being addressed. Experts across the industry craft quality blog content for their sites, including: Neil Patel – co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmeterics Barry Feldman – speaker, author, and creative copywriter Seth Godin – author and founder of Squidoo B. How often to post? You may be wondering how often to publish on your company’s blog. While every company is different in size, strategy, and industry, there is some research that can help us answer that question. In one study from HubSpot, the results showed that B2B companies that published over 16 blog posts per month received more than 3 times the amount of traffic as compared to companies that only published 4 times per month. For B2C companies, those 16-times-per-month rate saw over 4 times the amount of traffic. In another study, over 90% of Hubspot’s blog leads and more than 75% of post views came from old posts. Posting quality content multiple times per week may be just what your readers are looking for, and if it’s awesome content, they will keep coming back for more. Read more about how to write content for a blog over here. The time, effort, and work put into your own content makes your blog site YOUR real estate. [bctt tweet=”Why publish your best on someone else’s real estate? – @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”] 2. Guest blogging in your niche Before you decide where to guest blog, you should set a goal for your blogging. These goals could include anything from setting yourself up as an authority in your industry to driving readers to your own site. Check out how we achieve results from guest blogging: my content, for example a column I keep with 2 posts/week on SiteProNews, has netted us a lead worth $5,000. When you begin with this sort of focus, it can help narrow your scope as you write. Guest blogging in your niche is a great opportunity to share your authoritative view on a number of topics, but you must find platforms where your audience is already located. You may find opportunities by searching for blogs that invite guests to post – just do a keyword search using words from your industry combined with “guest … Read more

How to Write Content for LinkedIn

December 31, 2020November 28, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Today, LinkedIn has 467 million users. If that weren’t impressive enough, there are 2 new LinkedIn members added each second. As such, LinkedIn has quickly become one of the best platforms out there for content writing, and it’s a great place to gain leads and build recognition for your company, cause, or topic. Like all things, though, learning to write content for LinkedIn is a skill, and you’ve got to develop it in order to excel at it. With that in mind, here’s a simple, one-stop shop to help you get started crafting content for LinkedIn, in my next #howtowrite blog post in our series. 10 Tips for Writing Content on LinkedIn To write great content on LinkedIn, follow these ten simple tips: 1. Tailor your voice to LinkedIn’s demographic. The audience that uses LinkedIn is geared toward the world of professionalism and business, so it’s wise to treat them accordingly. Instead of writing your LinkedIn posts like you would for Facebook or a similar platform, be sure that you’re gearing them toward the unique community LinkedIn offers. This means keeping your content on-topic, professional, and authoritative. It also means ensuring that you’re adjusting your voice wherever and whenever needed to continue meeting your reader’s requests and demands. Want more on the subject of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it! 2. Post frequently enough to be noticed. On LinkedIn, just like any other social media platform, it’s critical to learn to post often enough to get noticed, but not often enough that you bother your colleagues or drive leads away. Keep in mind that LinkedIn uses an algorithm that determines what shows up on network updates, and that posting too frequently can damage your impression numbers. To determine how often you should post, consider LinkedIn’s top influencers. While they post several times a week, they’re not posting each day, and they have a deep understanding for their natural publishing maximums. To put this another way, you never want to post so often that you fatigue and bore your readers! 3. Add visuals to all of your LinkedIn content. The more visuals you can add to your LinkedIn content, the better. While you don’t want to turn the material you publish on the platform into a storybook, it’s smart to accent each post with a relevant visual, since this will help ensure that your post is featuring nicely in LinkedIn’s publishing algorithm, and that it’s as attention-grabbing as possible with your audience. 4. Pay attention to your headlines. Headlines, in the world of LinkedIn, are essential. To perform as well as possible, they should be attention-grabbing, short, and to-the-point, but they should also give the high-level professionals that populate the LinkedIn platform reason enough to click. If you’re confused about what makes a great LinkedIn headline and what doesn’t, take some time to consider the headlines of top LinkedIn influencers for an example. Take, for instance, this HubSpot headline, which features numbers to grab attention, a valuable promise, and an image to complete the post: 5. Keep your posts to the right length. Post length makes a big impact on LinkedIn. While it’s a platform that’s more geared toward longer content than Twitter or a similar social platform, it’s also smart to remember that the right length content makes all of the difference. With this in mind, keep your LinkedIn posts to the right length. In addition to ensuring that people will read them, this will also go a long way toward keeping you on-topic and deeply involved with the material you write about. 6. Use quality links to improve your content. Links make a massive difference in the success or failure of your LinkedIn posts. To make them as good as possible, use links to demonstrate your points, showcase key sources, and reach out to relevant sites. Keep in mind that you don’t want to “link stuff” your content, just to showcase your ability to do it, but you DO want to be liberal about your use of links, and ensure that you’re doing what you need to do to show your readers and Google that you’re capable of linking well. 7. Complete your LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile is one of the first places people will land when they’re looking for information about you and your company. With this in mind, be sure that you’ve completed and optimized your profile accordingly. This means that your profiles should feature a relevant profile picture, all your relevant contact information, and a complete list of recent accomplishments and skills. Don’t forget to update your profiles as needed to ensure that it stays current. 8. Publicize your posts. LinkedIn posts can make a splash both inside and outside of LinkedIn. To get as much traction as possible from each post you write, be sure to publicize it both on LinkedIn and outside of the platform. This will help gain as much traction as possible for your post, while also ensuring that it gets the audience it deserves. 9. Embed relevant video information. If you have a relevant video or SlideShare presentation that you can add to your LinkedIn profile, do it. In addition to helping you earn a broader audience, a step like this can go a long way toward building your authority on LinkedIn, and helping you stand out as a leader in any given field. 10. Adjust as needed. The final tip for how to write content for LinkedIn is to adjust your strategy as needed. LinkedIn, like all social platforms, changes on a regular basis and your strategy will be best off if you can adjust it whenever it isn’t working, or isn’t working properly. Keep in mind that the LinkedIn audience is unique and discerning, and the more willing you are to optimize your content for them, the better. How to Write Content for LinkedIn, The Easy Way! While writing content for LinkedIn may seem hard, these simple tips make it easy and effortless. As … Read more

How Using The LinkedIn Publishing Platform Can Impact Your Business (With Pros & Cons)

December 31, 2020August 12, 2015 by Josh McCoy

Alecs is the Client Accounts Manager at Express Writers and has years of copywriting and journalism under her belt. LinkedIn is among the most popular social media outlets available today because of the unique premise it presents to its users, including the ever-growing LinkedIn publishing platform. On LinkedIn, you are judged not on what you look like, but on what your accomplishments are. It’s one of the most useful social networking sites for large companies and HR departments looking for the next big star. It’s even better as a tool for getting content out to the masses while ensuring that it’s still accredited to you. LinkedIn lends itself to the publication of long form content because it’s a site made up of readers, thinkers and doers. People who plan before they act. The more information they have the easier it is for them to make a decision. However, as LinkedIn grows, publishing on this godsend of a platform might not have the same sort of impact it once did. Examining the Positive Side of Placing Content on The LinkedIn Publishing Platform LinkedIn serves as the single best way to get in touch with professionals in a particular field. Because of the interactive style of long form posts that the social media network allows on its publication platform, you can engage in discussion very easily with other members of the same industry or field. From a professional’s perspective, this can only lead to good things. Differing opinions can stimulate debate and can lead to getting new insight on something that they thought they knew inside out. The wide reach of the platform combined with the type of users you are getting access to makes it ideal for a young professional trying to get noticed in his or her field of choice. 3 Key Benefits of Being On The LinkedIn Publishing Platform Publishing long form content on LinkedIn benefits the user by: 1. Relevant Outreach Recently, LinkedIn announced that it crossed a million members publishing on their platform. When compared with other social media networking sites, one million sounds like a small number. However, if you consider that the people on this social networking site is made up of decision makers (about 45% of LinkedIn is in upper management) that number starts looking a lot larger. Since LinkedIn opened its long form publishing platform to users in February 2014, over 130,000 posts per week are made utilizing the site’s publishing platform. That’s quite an accomplishment for a little over a year of service. This is a testament to the volume of experience that the LinkedIn community has to share with the wider world, and make no mistake, the users really love sharing their insights. 2. Equal Reach Regardless of Station What makes LinkedIn’s platform such a roaring success? Unlike other blogging sites where you would need to find people to read your work, usually in response to you reading theirs and leaving feedback, LinkedIn’s community usually starts the ball rolling for you. It’s the kind of publishing platform where even the smallest voice has the same potential outreach as the largest. With a user base of over 364 million total movers and shakers of industry plugged into the social network, it makes it much more likely that people who count will see what you post. For an ambitious person, publication on LinkedIn gives them far more potential for their work than any other type of social network. 3. Ideal for Starting Discussion Because of the blog-type nature of LinkedIn posts, industry professionals can chime in with things that are presented in a publication that they agree with and point out the items that strike them as odd. The rapport that it can generate is what LinkedIn was aiming for when they developed the platform to be like this. The Executive Editor of LinkedIn Daniel Roth is noted as saying that LinkedIn’s publishing platform was meant to be a tool to turn insight into conversation. Based on how many relevant conversations it has started over a number of fields, it is safe to assume that they accomplished their goal. The Downside of Publishing on LinkedIn: 2 Main Points It’s not all roses in this part of the social media world, however. It may seem as though LinkedIn’s publication platform makes it ever so easy to get a ready audience for your posts. At the start of its availability for all users, long form posts usually guaranteed a pretty large reach. However, as time went on the amount of people it reached started dropping drastically until December 2014 when outreach seemed to come to a screeching halt. What could have caused this is anyone’s guess, but there are a few good estimations as to what may have affected the number of people being able to view individual posts, such as: 1. Rise in Competition More and more users started publishing long form posts that grabbed the attention of readers and because of this the total audience would be split among the writers with the best posts. This would have been a factor if the quality of all posts were kept the same. As content producers, we should know that being able to maintain the quality of your own posts over the space of a month can be difficult, not to mention the posts of hundreds of individuals. While this might be an easy method of explaining away the massive drop in interaction for some users, it seems as though it’s too simple a solution for such a complex problem. 2. LinkedIn Pulse LinkedIn likes taking care of its users. That’s why it developed LinkedIn Pulse, as a method of showcasing the best in long form publications from the user base. Before Pulse came along you were just as likely to get your content seen as a user that has a higher quality post. However, because of Pulse, those users would generally be highlighted more and far more users would read their posts as opposed to yours, provided theirs is of … Read more

LinkedIn Posts: Today’s Newest & Greatest In Content Marketing

December 31, 2020June 30, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Did you know that LinkedIn allows actual blogging ON their platform? In February 2014, numerous sources, including Search Engine Journal, announced that LinkedIn’s blog platform was now open to users, not just influencers. According to SEJ, “250,000 members [would now] have the ability to publish content on [the platform].” If you missed the news or haven’t had time to look into it, you’re not alone. We didn’t until just recently. And our conclusion is that this platform is an untapped breakthrough asset in content marketing, and too many people aren’t aware of it! What have we discovered, and what do you need to know? Let’s take a look: Our LinkedIn Posts Case Study Once we learned that blogging was allowed on this powerful business platform, we jumped right in. We had to first “apply” to be contributors and were successfully approved. We immediately started publishing a handful of posts, including this one about copywriting; and we kept a close eye on the provided analytics, curious to see just how large of a reach we would see. Here are the results, just 3 days after posting! Over 1,000 views, 60+ likes, and comments on our very first LinkedIn post: We also discovered that LinkedIn will FEATURE your posts publicly on your profile, like so: LinkedIn sent us some insider emails after we published some content, with these helpful tips: Tapping Into LinkedIn as a Content Marketing Asset Our case study indicates some solid potential. LinkedIn posts get a lot of views and shares for content, much more than a single blog would get, especially if your network is extensive. And if you’ve been a marketer for over a year with a LinkedIn presence, you probably have a decent network. Let’s face it; those of us already using LinkedIn likely have an extensive network, and growing that network is super easy using their platform and our own connections. Strengthening your profile will contribute to this, and all of this adds up to one epic revelation: you have an untapped audience at your fingertips! A few Dos, Don’ts and common sense tips are important to review before using this platform. LinkedIn has been built on a very simple concept: career growth and advancement. Therefore, it only makes sense that, according to InformationWeek, the “blogging tool [is for posting] career advice and insights to share with your connections.” How can you best use this tool? Let’s take a look at the top tips: Write about what you know. According to InformationWeek, your LinkedIn posts should reflect your profile. In other words, write about what you know. Consider choosing topics that range from the career challenges you’ve faced, the opportunities you’ve successfully seized, and important trends in your industry or field of expertise. Be professional. Obviously, you don’t want to knowingly (or unknowingly) break your company’s privacy policies. The rule of thumb when blogging on LinkedIn is to stay professional at all times. Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t bring up in normal conversation with an individual you just met at a professional event or conference. Keep to the point. InformationWeek reports that, according to LinkedIn data, an ideal post will be approximately 700 words in length. The idea is to compose a blog long enough to cover your topic and position without running the risk of losing the reader’s interest. You can add a combination of images, videos, SlideShare presentations and external links as appropriate. Be a sport and comment. If you have any blogging or social media experience, you already know that audience engagement is important. Unlike some other networks, LinkedIn is closed and requires an account for complete profile viewing AND commenting. Therefore, the comments you receive on this platform are likely to be high-quality. Not only are they absolutely worth your time to respond to, but commenting will boost post engagement, thus promoting it beyond your network. Pay attention to your analytics. As you saw from our case study, LinkedIn isn’t shy about disclosing how many people clicked on, liked and commented on your post. Take these analytics into consideration as you prepare future blogs. What topics triggered great engagement through comments or brought in more likes? Use popularity trends to guide future content choices. Share your content. InformationWeek noted that people don’t have to set-up a LinkedIn account to read your posts. And once you publish, anyone—from your connections to your followers—can see it. You should share the links to your posts outside of the LinkedIn network. Before posting, you should have the option to automatically post to Twitter. Once a blog post is live, you can share it with audiences on your other social networks by using the available media buttons. This type of out-of-network sharing can assist in increasing your LinkedIn network. Seize the Opportunity With the rise of today’s self-publication mediums, everyone wants to be a publisher. It’s no secret that content drives marketing and sales because people flock wherever it is. It’s also no secret that building an audience is hard work. While LinkedIn’s platform offers an opportunity to seize a new, untapped audience, you should plan content with care. The last thing you want to do is alienate your audience or damage your Google ranking. What are we talking about? The dangers of duplicate content! Remember the tip to share your LinkedIn posts with your other social networks? While this is a great piece of advice, we have to stress the need for continually focusing on the creation and production of FRESH copy. In other words, don’t jump onto this platform by reposting a piece of content you’ve posted on another network. Yes, you can repost your work, but you run into two huge risks: Audience estrangement: “Did I see this before?” It’s the question you NEVER want a reader to ask. It’s recommended to post unique content to each of your social networks. Otherwise, readers who follow you on three different networks will see the same content three times over. Decreased Google ranking: Duplicate content annoys users, therefore … Read more

The World’s Largest Webinar: #WLW14 with Hubspot, LinkedIN, Facebook & Twitter Leaders

January 1, 2021April 24, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Were you in the loop on the webinar that happened this Wednesday? Over 34,000 people signed up and listened in, breaking the world record for 10,899 participants, set by Hubspot just a few years ago in 2011. The Best Social Media Webinar of All Time We were there, and the event was worth the hype. No less than three of today’s top social media platforms had a senior director or marketing head present during the webinar, with Hubspot hosting: Russ Laraway, Twitter’s Senior SMB Director; Jed Clevenger, Facebook’s Global Head of SMB Channel Marketing; and Scott Engelman, Head of Online Marketing at LinkedIN. The host was @Dan Zarrella, Hubspot’s own Social Media Scientist. Check out the event page on Hubspot. Since the webinar was not recorded, we took direct notes while listening in. Here are our favorite tidbits from the experts who spoke. Enjoy! Twitter Company Page tips shared from @Russ Laraway: “Your first impression on Twitter counts. Use your bio to be descriptive and reflective of your business. Give people a compelling reason to follow your account. Include URL to an important landing page, your store hours, and anything that makes it easy to find you. Feature your logo and visual elements to describe your company. @Bonobos is an excellent example that does all of this for their Twitter profile. Be relevant on mobile. Twitter was born on mobile; 75% of users are mobile; think of your Twitter profile as your mobile website.” Business Facebook Page tips by @Jed Clevenger: “We have over 1 million active advertisers. Setting up your Facebook page is huge for your business. Three things to get started: Fill out complete and accurate information about your business: type, location, hours, URL, contact information. This establishes your business on Facebook, makes it indexed to search. Have great cover pictures and cover photo. Customers want to see that you’re legitimate. Use our free Facebook tools: contact importer, where you can upload all your contacts, and friend invites, where you can invite all your friends. Test new types of content and spend time in your Page Insights to get information on your posts, audience, and traffic. SweetHaus used no advertising dollars to grow their account to over 3,000 likes: promoting to existing customers and finding new customers.” LinkedIN Company Page tips from @Scott Engelman: “Write a company page that is informative and engaging. Use keywords that are relevant to your business to get your company in search results. Think of what image to use—an eye-catching image that invites visitors to learn more. Once it’s set up, invite your company network to follow. Engage with your followers by posting updates.” Of course, we loved this question: So much of marketing in social media is copywriting. Should my Twitter campaign copy be different from other copy? Russ, Twitter guru, answered: “The short answer is no, but it’s safe to acknowledge that Twitter offers constraints – 140 characters. Generally speaking, consider email marketing. I bet everybody here does this. With email marketing, you’re creating and constantly refining a list of interested parties; create content; send it out regularly, with minor adjustments, you can use this for your Twitter audience. Your followers are your lists. Work on shorter-form for Twitter. Most of you will create bigger content pieces like blogs, newsletters, e-books, think of these as base documents that you can carve into bite size pieces and use Twitter to drive those bits. For example, take a newsletter. Instead of tweeting the link with “check out the newsletter,” tweet a tip about the newsletter, a series of tips all day, and link to it or that excerpt in it. You can get a lot of mileage out of what you’re already producing this way, just modify it to make it work on Twitter.” How do you get engagement with your tweets? A great question, and it got a great answer from Russ Laraway: “Forgive me for being obvious, but you can get more engagement with your tweets by giving your audience what they want. Really think about the 80/20 rule. 80% of your content should NOT be focused on what you are selling. Non-direct selling, direct offering of value that is informative and helpful. What can your followers benefit from? Best practices, industry trends, are examples of great kind of content. Tweets that include rich media are more than likely to be shared. If you upload an image that tweet will do twice as well. 20% of your content SHOULD be focused on what you are selling.” I can’t seem to grow, how do I get a relevant following? Russ answered: “It is true that it is really important to build a great follower base on Twitter. Remember, followers are optional. The users on Twitter regularly refine who they follow. There is no friction to stop following an account. So, users are very careful about the accounts they follow. Your followers will be interested to hear from you with regularity. Use the profile tips from earlier for a compelling profile, and jump in on industry conversations with hashtags—like the smart marketers hash-tagging #WLW14! For example, if your target audience is educators, reach out to Alexander Russo and build a relationship with them. If you just tweet out valuable content in order to get a retweet, you’ll get more relevant followers over time.” How do I target content for Facebook industry audience? Jed says: “A lot of the same principles from Russ for Twitter can be applied here for Facebook. We encourage you to start testing your way into great content. We have tools similar to A/B testing. From your page, any post you publish can be available to the public, but not all the public. Target your post by location, country, state, city, language, gender, relationship status, educational status, age—there is a ton of targeting option. Speak with an authentic voice to reach core audiences.” How do I use hashtags successfully? Russ said: “Hashtags are best used for tweets driven for … Read more

10 of the Best Social Media Writing Tips

December 31, 2020April 20, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Social media is all around us. What started out as a way for college students to stay connected with one another has now consumed the business world. Most businesses that have an online presence typically have at least one social media profile, and an expert to help them with their social media writing. Social media has opened the door for many businesses to connect to a wider audience. So naturally web writing, when it comes to social media, needs to be specific. Social media encompasses a wide variety of networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more. Social media is an extension of your overall communication strategy. Social Media Writing 101: 10 Tips for Best Results In order to effectively write for social media you need to keep in mind the following ten tips: 1. Know and Understand Your Target Audience In order to do social media writing effectively, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. It does you no good to write about hair care products in your posts if your audience is members of the construction field. 2. Know Your Objective What do you want to achieve with your social media posts? What is the main point you want your audience to know? When your objective is clear; your writing can be more focused 3. Write Using Plain Language Sometimes, in writing, it is easy to go off on a tangent and write what is clearly playing in your head. The problem is that when you write in that manner, your audience may not have a clue what you’re talking about. You want to write in plain language that gets your point across but is also easily understandable. Never use jargon or slang 4. Talk In An Active Voice. Writing in an active voice means you’re taking control of the conversation. The verbs you use are the action. Example: This supplement took our client to the next level in her quest for health. The word “took” is the active word. It shows the action 5. Keep Your Messages Short Social media is about getting the facts in a short and simple way. Remember, with social media you don’t want to write a novel. Keeping it short is also going to cause you to be more specific about what you say. Because the posts, tweets, etc. are short, you have to get to the main point and fast 6. Go Sparingly When It Comes to Acronyms Remember, people may not know an acronym right away. It is recommended that you use them sparingly. If you have to use an acronym, be sure to spell out what it stands for “before” the acronym itself. Even if an acronym may seem obvious to you, it may not be so obvious to someone else. 7. Numbers Can Help Make Your Point Clear Numbers can often get to the point for you. However, you need to use them in the right way. So instead of saying “25% of the people” say something like “1 in 4 people”. People tend to relate more to number when they make content easy to understand. 8. Focus On The Positives It’s easy to point out why someone shouldn’t do something. You get more from your message and your readers, however, by focusing on the positives of anything. 9. Encourage Your Readers With A Call To Action A call to action gets your readers to do something. Whether it’s clicking on a link or making a change in their life; get them to act. 10. Make the Content Relevant and Relatable People read and respond to what they feel relates to them and their life. If they can relate to it; make a connection with your post, than you are ahead of the game. By utilizing these ten tips, your social media writing will be more effective, grab your reader’s attention and get them to act upon it. Social media is about being sociable. So make sure your writing reaches your audience the way you intended it to. Use these tips and you’ll be on your way to social media success. Got great social media? If you need help, we offer managed social media packages. Check it out in the Content Shop.