4 Proven Social Media Tactics

[Zekecamusio]

Give Your Audience What They Want

Two months ago I was talking to a prospective client and I asked him if he blogged. He said he did at least once a week. When we checked out his blog, I was a little surprised. He is a nail manufacturer and he was blogging about nails: how to get the best nails at your hardware store, the different kinds of nails and what hammers you should use for every nail.

This is not a true story but I like using this example because I think that's what a lot of companies do: they blog about themselves. They post announcements, promotions, specials and then some more company news. That's great if your audience is your employees. But if you blog to attract new business you need a different approach.

The nail guy should ask himself, "who is my audience?" The answer will probably be, "carpenters." The second question is, "what kind of content do carpenters want?" These are some ideas:

    How to build a deck for cheaper
    How to fix a doorknob without having to buy a new one
    How carpenters can get more clients
    How carpenters can increase their rates without losing clients

Make sense? Give your audience what they want; don't blog about your company and your products. American Express has its OpenForum, a community of business owners where they post a lot of great content. Their goal is to attract business owners, not talk about credit cards. Mint has a blog about personal finances. My blog is about entrepreneurship because that's my audience.

Create a Calendar
I highly encourage you to create a calendar for the next three months with all your webinars, seminars, blog posts, interviews and any kind of content you create. When you do this, you can cross-promote your content. For example, in a blog post you can say, "don't miss the webinar next Friday." And at that webinar you can say, "don't miss the blog post about Facebook marketing next Tuesday." This is very powerful.

Measure Engagement
I've always said that it's very difficult (impossible, in my opinion) to track how much social media had to do with every sale your company gets. Someone can find you on Google, subscribe to your blog, share a content with their friend through Twitter, then this other person can tell another friend about you, who shares your content on Facebook, so other people find you... and so on.

That's why I don't obsess with tracking too much when it comes to social media. But there's one thing I track like crazy: engagement. That is, how many people comment on my Facebook post, how many people re-tweet my stuff, how many people share my content on LinkedIn and Facebook, how many likes my YouTube videos have, etc. The only way you can give your audience what they want is by tracking what they like.

Tie Your Message to Current Events
People care about what's happening right now. Use your creativity to find ways to tie your content to current events. Some examples:

    Before the 4th of July I could write a blog post on how to run 4th of July marketing campaigns for your business.
    Thailand just elected their first female president. I could tie that into why I think women are better than men at social media marketing. It would be a fun and controversial article that would get a lot of attention and sharing.
    My friend Julie Fast is the world's top expert in bipolar disorder. When Charlie Sheen had his last breakdown, she wrote a piece on how bipolar disorder affected him. She did the same thing a month later when Catherine Zeta-Jones got diagnosed with the same condition. Her traffic skyrocketed.

What did you think about these tactics? Which ones are you going to use?

[takeshiro]

yup, i do agree that those four are already proven.. nice job pointing it out..