social media guide - Express Writers

Engage! How to Get Customers and Boost Your Business on Social Media

January 1, 2021August 8, 2017 by Adam Oakley

Social media is the popular kid on today’s marketing block. For your business, it’s one of the most integral tools at your disposal. Social media helps get you noticed – and stand out, if you’re creative enough to do your own thing, and mix in a little bit of social media platform knowledge on top of it. It’s useful for promotion, engagement, and building a following. The one key benefit social media does better than any other tool, for a business? It humanizes your brand. It puts a face and a voice to a name. It makes you approachable, relatable, and trustworthy. However, this is only possible if you’re using social media the right way. Let’s talk social media & a nutshell guide on boosting your business for more ROI, customers, and action from your time there. A Nutshell Guide to Boosting Your Social Media Presence for More Business & Return If you want your business to have a voice and a presence, you’ve got to jump into social media and get going. Here’s how. 1. Engage and Be Human My number one tip for mastering social media is this: engage. You’re a human being, and your audience wants to see evidence of that. If you don’t personally engage, you’re not providing that evidence. Of course, you can’t engage without being approachable and friendly. Don’t keep yourself at a distance from your followers. Be real and be human! This ties in nicely with my next tip… 2. Get Your Hands Dirty To engage and be human, you have to get in there. In short: do some work to build that relationship. Get your hands dirty. Start conversations yourself. Ask your followers questions, comment on others’ posts, and follow up personally. A great example of this in action is the Twitter chat we host weekly, Tuesdays at 10 a.m. CST. It’s called #ContentWritingChat and it’s a fantastic way to talk to people about a topic we’re passionate about. Rachel, our Content Specialist/Social Media Manager, even writes weekly recaps on our site about the live chat hour. It’s a favorite method of mine to nurture a lively, active community around a single social media event. Anybody can join in and give their opinions, advice, or insight. To get conversations going, start your own Twitter chats surrounding a relevant topic. Engage industry voices as well as customers. The interaction that comes out of it will surprise and delight you. Search #ContentWritingChat on Twitter, and you’ll see some highlights of our conversations. From the 7/25 #ContentWritingChat, here’s a top tweet (I love the point Nicole makes – social media CAN get you out of your shell, in a great way!) — Totally introvert here too and social media has made me a hell more social than I am prone to be in IRL. #ContentWritingChat pic.twitter.com/MFGHTZCnRD — Nicole Michelle (@relishwell) July 25, 2017 Other ways to engage on social media: Tag people in your posts – Tagging people in your posts is a good way to respond to their content and keep the conversation going. On Twitter, this is how you stay engaged. Don’t forget to log in, yourself – Don’t let a “tool” be YOU. Don’t fall back on your scheduled posts via software, and let that be it. Remember to manually log in to your accounts, check your notifications, and respond to people. Comment – Respond to people through comments, and start conversations through engaging with comments. [clickToTweet tweet=”Get more customers + boost your business on social media with these tips from @ExpWriters!” quote=”Get more customers + boost your business on social media with these tips from @ExpWriters!”] 3. Set Goals for Interactions If you find yourself forgetting to log-in or neglecting your business accounts for social media, start setting goals. For instance, you might create a simple objective to have at least five interactions on social media each day of the work week. This forces you to pay attention to how you’re engaging and how much. You’ll understand where you need to improve and what you need to do it. As you get better and more consistent about engaging, you can up your ante. Make your goals harder and keep track of your progress. Pretty soon, you won’t need goals to stay active and interactive on social. 4. Start Talking It can feel intimidating to jump into social media and put yourself out there. This is especially true if you’re introverted or haven’t done much interacting online. Don’t worry, though – you just need a place to begin. To start engaging, you have to start talking. Here are some ideas: Jump in on Trending Topics If you want to get in on a larger conversation, post about trends and use hashtags. More importantly, tie together the trends with topics in your industry. Take a look at how Denny’s used the Kentucky Derby to post and poke a little fun at the trending event at the same time. Plus, they reinforced their main draw: They have really good breakfast and really good pancakes. Within the seated sections of Churchill Downs, the upper-crust don hats of elegance & style, a millinery of all shapes, tastes, and sizes. pic.twitter.com/pfkTV0MEJU — Denny’s (@DennysDiner) May 6, 2017 Celebrate and Create Events Along with casual events like Twitter chats, you can also host and celebrate any other event or holiday you like. For instance, celebrate your business anniversary with a themed post and a coupon code for your online store. Or, honor a noted figure relevant to your industry with a post. Out of Print did something like this in celebration of Cormac McCarthy’s birthday. They didn’t use the opportunity to self-promote. Instead, they created a graphic quote that appeals to their book-loving audience. It’s an interesting one that invites conversation. Plus, it’s totally shareable: For the Best Social Media Conversations, Don’t Overthink It – Just Genuinely Be Yourself, & Be Present All these social media tactics have one thing in common… They’re fun. If you’re not having fun chatting, sharing, … Read more

How to Get Your Best Social Media Traction Using Private Groups

June 19, 2024February 18, 2016 by Adam Oakley

Are you a member of and active in social media groups, to further your online marketing and social media traction? If not, it’s likely that you’re missing out on huge amounts of social media results in both potential traffic and leads. There are literally millions of social media groups on sites like Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook and if you’re not using them to your advantage, now is the perfect time to get started. I’ve experienced big benefits by joining and participating in a wide variety of social media groups the past several months—with a lot more eyeballs and engagement on my content than if I’d just shared a post on my social account. How to Get Killer Social Media Traction By Joining Social Media Groups Here’s what you need to know. How Do Private Social Media Groups Work, Exactly? A private social media group is exactly what it sounds like, a private, members-only group on a social media platform. The group is created and controlled by a moderator. These moderators control what types of content are shared as well as how people comment and interact with one another. Well-run groups are focused on sharing valuable information rather than promotional content and are generally aimed at enhancing the goals of the group members. For example, I’ve joined the Digital Marketing Questions group on Facebook, and B2B Content Marketing on Linkedin. These are just two out of maybe 40 now that I’m a member of. Just by searching writing, marketing, or content marketing in LinkedIn’s search bar, and Facebook’s search bar, sorting by the Groups category, there are literally hundreds that are good matches for me. And every time I participate inside these groups, by sharing a useful piece of content or infographic I created (for example), I get direct eyeballs on my content from the actual, real people users in that private group. It’s a good thing. 4 Key Benefits of Joining Private Social Media Groups Private social media groups are a very different platform from many other types of social media interaction. Notably, they’re on a niche-focused platform, and are private groups of like-minded individuals into one concentrated place. Because of this, when you interact in a private social media groups, you gain instant access to almost instantaneous benefits that will start rolling in: 1. Traffic to your website One of the best advantages of interacting in private social media groups is that you can use the group to direct traffic back to your website. This allows you to earn more customers and make more sales. 2. Higher conversions When you build relationships on private social media groups, you can easily produce higher conversion rates for your company. By building personal relationships, you build overall brand awareness and encourage more conversions for your site. 3. Increased brand awareness One of the main benefits of interacting in private social media groups (Especially when you start your own) is that you can easily build brand awareness for your company. This helps you reach new customers and make more sales. 4. Ease of communication Social media groups are a great place for easy communication with other like-minded individuals. When you become a member of a group, you can easily share content, offer input, ask for input from other members, and share your own personal content. The Rise of Social Media Groups As it stands now, there is a social media group for virtually every niche. From motherhood to marketing and beyond, private groups are an effective way for like-minded individuals to come together to discuss industry business and happenings. Because of this, they’ve become a popular platform for marketing. When marketers engage in social media groups correctly, it’s easy to do everything from building relationships to earning highly qualified leads, which creates a great environment for making sales, launching new products, and getting high-quality industry feedback. To Build or to Join? When it comes to social media groups you can either build one or join one. These approaches both have their strengths and their weaknesses. If you’re a new marketer who is just getting started with private social groups, you may choose to join a pre-established group until you get the hang of things enough that you feel confident starting your own group. (I started one a few weeks ago, Learn Online Writing.) This allows you to see how a private social media group is moderated, what types of content are shared, and how often other group members post: and get the most social media traction. If you’re an experienced marketer or have used private social media groups before, feel free to start your own! Starting your own group has the distinct benefit of providing you with a tailor-made community that you control, which is ideal for people who want to increase brand recognition or poll their audience for ideas on things like products, marketing, and distribution. Choosing a Social Media Platform When it comes to social media platforms for private groups, the three most popular are Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Facebook Facebook is great for people who want to build and maintain an active social media marketing strategy. The fact that it is the largest social media platform in the world makes it ideal for people who want to reach large audiences. Additionally, its laid-back, casual tone makes it great for testing new ideas, polling users, and sharing content on a broad-scale level. Google+ Google+ allows users to share photos, videos, links, and content in the same laid-back, carefree way as Facebook. Google+ also allows for “circles,” which allow people to divide their followers into smaller group-like segments. This is perfect for targeting content, sharing information with select groups, and offering special discounts and information to certain users. LinkedIn LinkedIn is a fantastic platform for users who want to interact with other industry professionals. As a general rule, it’s a more formal platform than both Google+ and Facebook, which makes it a fantastic choice for marketers who want to distribute content to other like-minded … Read more