Cutting Edge Social Media Marketing Tools and Strategies
What is it and its worth - Social media marketing is still up in the air for many people as they don't know if it really provides any value to them. These days, we don't have a lot of time to pay attention to new products and services and we are trying to connect and be more social. So social media marketing is useful because that is where the customers are going to be. The old strategy of badgering people until they pay attention has past us for the most part. It is now the age where we provide value as anyone would when trying to make a new friend. Social media marketing is about connecting with people and creating an inbound marketing campaigns. You can look at how powerful social media marketing is checking out the information that Shopify has gathered over time. Which Social Media Marketing Platforms Drive the Most Sales
Social media marketing is liking new friends - When you meet someone new, you don't want them badgering you about how good they are at things. You are interested in what value you can gain from them. Anyone that is sought after is sought after because of the value they exude and can give them. You are here to find out information, not to hear a sales pitch. We get that and we feel the same way. That is why we enjoy helping people out, because we know that feeling. Everyone is trying to suck the life out of you so it is great when you can just sit back and learn free things and if you really want to know more, you can pay them or do something to be around them more.
Making friends with the customers - It is time to make friends and connections with your customers. It takes a bit of work to produce free content but when it is there, it pretty much stays there. Of course Google and other search engines don't feel that way but for the most part, if you create something notable, people will take note and share it.
How we interpret conversations - The things we enjoy talking about are either train wrecks of situations so that we can get a good laugh, vent, and warn others of the danger that lies ahead. When you learn something amazing or hear something funny, you want to tell others because it injects value into the conversation and then you are seen as a great source of value that people will clamor to. People love to feel wanted and plus it helps when you are trying to get value from them as well. Someone has to start the value sharing and it all starts with you.
Be noteworthy in a good way - Be notable, be shareable, be a wonderful breathe of fresh air that isn't a torture to be around. That is the point of inbound marketing and social media marketing.
Where social media marketing is done - Social media marketing is mostly talked about in terms of using Facebook. There are many other platforms that are quickly catching on for being useful in the social media marketing arenas. Many of us however just do not have the time or man power to do that. You can always hire someone to do it for you, but most of us want to do everything ourselves. I know that feeling and most of the time that is what you have to do. Sometimes it is better to outsource the work. It is a good idea to take stock of your skills and try it yourself and if you can't do it yourself, hire someone that is capable. There are many capable social media marketing companies out there, even in Peoria IL. One noteworthy social media marketing service you can use in Peoria is Web Services Inc.
Some places that you can do social media marketing are:
- YouTube
- Google+
- LinkedIn (depending on type of business, product, or service being marketed)
SOME GOLDEN RULES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON FACEBOOK
- DO NOT spam your products and services constantly
- Promote worth by giving away value
- Bridge mental gaps with content related to your products or services
- Make the posts easy and fun to consume and share such as with pictures and videos
- Laser focus your marketing to demographics of people who will be super users who will talk about your product and services
- Identify, remove, ban, and prevent junk likes
- Be aware that not all tactics work for all Facebook page sizes. Engagement requires users.
- Make sure you put your website and phone number where people can see it on your page without having to click the about section to find it.
Effectiveness of Facebook Marketing - Many people will complain about the effectiveness of social media marketing on Facebook, but they are the folks who do not truly understand how to work Facebook marketing. There are indeed many junk likes you will obtain if you do marketing the wrong way. It is true that marketing your website on Facebook is more difficult but that is the nature of people not wanting to go places they are not already trusting. People like Facebook pages because they trust Facebook not to give them viruses and to hassle them like many other websites can with auto playing videos, popups, and other annoying website tactics that are used these days.
Junk Likes - Junk likes are likes from click farms who are trying to not be identified by Facebook's algorithms and thus make your posts go to a bunch of people that will not engage and lowers the effectiveness of your Facebook marketing campaign. Junk likes are a hassle and it does affect your marketing performance and many folks are claiming you are unable to remove these junk likes. That is simply not true. Junk likes are easy enough to remove. It is also easy enough to identify which ones are junk likes if you know what to look for. We are going to help you with that.
REMOVING JUNK LIKES
1. Go to your business Facebook page and select "Show".
2. In your Admin Panel you will select "See Likes" from the "Get More Likes" section.
3. It will list the people who have liked your page. Click the gear with the drop down next to the junk like you want to remove and ban.
4. Click on the "Remove" option from the gear icon drop down menu.
5. Select "Ban Permanently" so that they get listed as a banned user to Facebook and so that they won't show back up. Select the "Okay" button. You have now removed the junk like permanently.
HOW TO TELL WHAT IS A REAL AND FAKE PROFILE BY PATTERN RECOGNITION
The only way to fake being real, is by being real. Real people engage past the "like" a page stage. They comment, they view the pages more than once, they like posts made by the pages, etc. If a person is not engaging at least a little and only liking pages, that is when they are fake.
Also a high probability if they are foreign and liking an English speaking page and not engaging in it. At that point, I would most certainly think they are fake. If the posts they do make are just garbage text, that is also a good sign they are fake. Engagement with realistic text is the key to spam detection.
HOW TO REDUCE JUNK LIKES FROM SHOWING UP
Method 1
Restrict page access - You can set your page to the countries you are OK with accessing your page OR you can tell it what places you want to ignore. Make sure to select the correct radio button.
1. Go to your business Facebook page and select "Edit Page" and then "Edit Settings" from that drop down.
2. From the settings page you will want to select "Edit" from the "Country Restrictions" settings on that page.
3. It may have selected "Hide this Page from viewers in these countries" but there are likely more countries to block vs the amount you want to be reading your page. If you are a company in the USA, you will most likely want to only be accessible from countries that speak English as their primary language such as United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. You may have other ideas about this and that is perfectly OK, but this is the method to use when wanting to block out countries that are going to hassle you. If you are a local business, you will want to laser focus your marketing campaign to just your area to get the most effectiveness out of your marketing campaign.
Method 2
Using Facebook groups for marketing - Focus on marketing to specific demographics and regions. It is OK to have a low volume reach as long as they are quality people that are your exact demographic. I like the concept of targeting Facebook groups using the Facebook power editor along with a program such as FB group snatcher (low cost but very basic) or a better one such as audiencemaker. They grab the ids of Facebook users so you can advertise to that list of people. Group people are far more interested in their interests than people who are forced by Facebook to add some interests to their interest list.
Method 3
Promoting posts effectively - When posting new posts, hook up the ad platform to "promote" each new post you make and to a specific demographic set.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEORxvMeOxc
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YEORxvMeOxc?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YEORxvMeOxc?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YEORxvMeOxc
Method 4
Look-alike ad campaigns - You can create look-alike ad campaigns that will allow you to find the perfect people to market to almost on autopilot. This article has a tutorial on how to do this: https://www.driftrock.com/blog/facebook-advertising-guide-lookalike-audiences
MAKING SHAREABLE POSTS
There is a lot of research done on what types of posts convert to more likes and more shares and comments. You can find this information all over the internet so we will not be covering it all here. Images and videos convert well because they are easy to look at and you don't have to do a lot of thinking to enjoy them. Most of those items are also very notable as they have a lot of useful information or are inspirational or are funny. You want to share value, inspire, and make people laugh, and connect with people.
Most subjects are not super friendly to being shared but if you can come up with a funny story that relates or some good information that bridges a mental gap you will be good to go. A great example of this is connecting therapists with car people. The jokes goes something like this... Someone has broken down and is on the side of the road trying to get their car back into operation. Someone stops and asks what is wrong. The driver says their tire needs fixed. The person asking what is wrong says, "Well first, we need to know if the tire wants to be fixed".
The joke bridges the gap between therapy and car people and you can do this in many other ways that don't involve telling bad jokes. Someone asked how they can market their solar backpacks more effectively and the answer was to promote anything neat that is related to solar technology and not just constantly keep pushing their product. Their product was something you only would buy one of and then not come back. There really isn't much to talk about with it so going up the mental food chain works to promote their product. You can share all sorts of neat solar things and because people will share and like the page because of those posts, people now are connected and will see the cool products they have to sell.
You need to bridge the gap and make the posts things people can consume easily and with joy that is related to the products or services you are trying to promote. It is much like dating. You don't want to ask someone to marry you right away. You have to woo them before they will even come back to your place and before they will ever be willing to meet your family. You have to give them a reason to be around you. Promote your worth by giving away value. They will thank you for this and you will reap the wonderful sales rewards.
FACEBOOK STRATEGIES AND LIKE VOLUME
Different strategies work at different stages of your Facebook Pages growth. You won't usually get a very good response from an opinion question post if you only have 3 people on your page. There are an enormous amount of templated methods you can use for marketing on Facebook however you must be aware of what methods are good for the size of the page you have currently. I cannot tell you all of them here but look at the strategies and think about how many people are needed for that type of campaign.
Some starter information though is to use pictures, and videos and unique information that is notable and extremely useful to your audience. You can find a lot of useful posts that are proven to be shareable by using Post Planners post idea generator. You can even use a demo version that is free on their page here: Facebook Status Ideas Generator Engine
FACEBOOK TOOLS
Common Tools
There are a lot of common Facebook tools that will publish to your Facebook wall as well as Twitter, Google +, and more. Not all of the tools will publish to all of these places but those are some very common platforms they publish to. You can schedule posts and do a lot of analytics and such as well. Many people feel that these tools lower your reach but others will say it doesn't do that. It is up to you to do this research and come to the conclusions of how you feel about this. Many say that Facebook knows what you are using and will not show the posts to as many people because you are using 3rd party tools. There is evidence that this happens and there is evidence that shows it doesn't matter all that much. These tools however are used by many professionals that obtain a massive reach using them so that is something to take into consideration. It is a lot like taking advice about what movies are good or not. Sometimes the advice is good and sometimes it is not. Another consideration to make is that the tools and social platforms continue to change how they operate and by the time you are informed about one thing, that thing has already changed and no longer matters. Here are some of the most popular tools people talk about...
1. Hootsuite (website | product overview video) - This is a common tool for people to start using when trying to automate their social media marketing campaigns. It is very useful and there are a lot of pros but many people also feel there are a lot of cons. Cons such as expensive reports for things and how it operates. You will have to take a look around at the multitude of reviews and videos that talk about it to figure out if you like it or not. We cannot make that decision for you.
2. Buffer App (website | product overview video) -
3. Sprout Social (website | product overview video) -
4. Hub Spot (website | product overview video) -If you don't use their tools, at least check out their MASSIVE library of FREE eBooks that are very useful to learning about social media marketing and they are very comprehensive. It is a great solution but it is also an expensive solution for many.
Advanced Tools
1. 22 Social (website) -This is one of the most low costing solutions I have seen online for doing Facebook posting, contests, and more. It even has a tool that allows you to download all of the emails people have listed in their accounts. Be aware of spam rules with email addresses though. It can be extremely useful however it you want to use it to market to those people later on through Facebook ads or something else. There is also a way to do "like" gating with it and even after the like gate people can enter their email which then gives you more rights to use their email for marketing. Just watch the video as there is too much to say about it in this little space. One thing is though, at the time of writing this, it only costs $12 per month which is insanely affordable for how polished and powerful it is to use. Most interfaces you see around are sorta bad but this one was polished up a lot.
2. Post Planner (website) -Post Planner is one of my favorite tools to talk about as it has a neat feature that allows you to generate ideas for Facebook Posts that are shown to be engaged in. All sorts of different types. Fill in questions, seasonal posts, and much more. For the $30 a month, it is pretty amazing. The status idea generator is only one feature out of many. There are a bunch of contest tools available too. Check out the videos to see more.
3. Tab Site (website) -This tool is like Post Planner in that it has an intense amount of features. One feature that sets it apart for me though is the ability to resize and embed your website right into your Facebook page as a tab. People don't have to leave your page to use your website. It is all within a trustworthy environment. Drop in any URL to see it work. The resizing part is great so that it doesn't mess up your pages proportions. It keeps everything nice and tidy for you. Watch the video to see this. They also have some great contest tools available. See the video for more.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqln9jU5T4Y
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Fqln9jU5T4Y?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Fqln9jU5T4Y?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Fqln9jU5T4Y
4. FB Post Bot (website) -What can you say about a tool that gives you all kinds of great things to share. Not only does it share great Facebook posts you can use that other people have posted up that you can legitimately share to your wall for amazing results, but you can share content from Google +, YouTube, and such. That is pretty intense. Watch the video for more. The only bad thing is that it requires you having a WordPress website to run it with.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-CMgDkallc
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9-CMgDkallc?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9-CMgDkallc?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/9-CMgDkallc
5. Audience Makr (website) -This tool is pretty new and to be honest, you might not be able to get into it. I recommend watching the video below. I will link you to their buy page here to get behind the gates. This tool allows you to gather Facebook user ids for marketing uses on Facebook. You are able to search for groups, events, and pages. Anyone that is apart of groups or have attended events for the keyword you are searching are most likely going to be very engaged people. You can also search for pages and what this is useful for is that you can find pages that you want to market to that audience using Facebook's marketing tool. If you watch the entire video, you will see how that works out. You can target pages that are both full of people and full of people that are talking about that page so you know they are an engaged group of people. The tool doesn't include a function to sort for a percentage but you can do this easily for the pages by downloading the CSV file and opening it in Excel. Then insert a new column after the likes and talking about columns. Divide the talking about by the likes column. Now change the cell format to a percentage format. Then drag that cell format down through all of the entries. Now you can sort all of it by that column so you can find the top most engaged pages. You will most likely see that there is some foreign country pages that will not be right for you, so when you target the group lists, you can make Facebook only target people from that custom audience to the age group, language, and country that you want to target. This way you get a vast amount of people and sort out the people that are not your target demographics. Engaged and demographically perfect. Then you can work out what ads will run best with those groups and then point the best performing ads at the people who are apart of the top performing pages that you had figured out with the percentages. Do groups and event groups first, then pages. The video can explain most of that. At the time of this writing, it costs $10.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_N8bWdzkVI
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/H_N8bWdzkVI?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/H_N8bWdzkVI?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/H_N8bWdzkVI
6. FB Group Snatcher (website) -This is similar to Audience Makr but is only for groups and only is a Chrome browser plugin. It will allow you to grab user ids from any group you find and want to utilize. This tool is nice in that it is in browser and will filter out duplicate ids for you. It also allows you to figure out what groups you want to work with inside of Facebook vs a non-Facebook interface. At the time of this writing, it costs $10.
ARVE Error: src mismatch
provider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYiw66NwZLQ
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YYiw66NwZLQ?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YYiw66NwZLQ?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/YYiw66NwZLQ
ECOMMERCE TOOLS
There are many eCommerce tools that you can use within Facebook to make sales right inside Facebook. Some are shopping carts that are apps that sit right inside your Facebook page while others enable you to just let people say "buy" and it will buy the item for them and you get paid. There are just so many items that we are only going to list a couple here for you. Here are just a few ways you can sell easily through Facebook, Twitter, and even email.
1. Gumroad (website) - This eCommerce solution has no upfront costs, is easy to setup, and gives you a simple shortlink that you can share with your customers. They click the link and are brought to a buy page with your product on it. They can easily pay and be on their way. It is just that simple. Check out the video to see how that works out.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dVhAyL8-w8
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3dVhAyL8-w8?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3dVhAyL8-w8?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/3dVhAyL8-w8
2. Ribbon (website) - This eCommerce solution allows your audience to buy right where they are. In Facebook even. Yea, it is that simple. You just buy it there and go on with your business. It seems so foreign of a concept, that I would like you just to watch the video to see it in action.
ARVE Error: src mismatchprovider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWEm98es1RY
src in org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sWEm98es1RY?feature=oembed&wmode=transparent
src in mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sWEm98es1RY?wmode=transparent
src gen org: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sWEm98es1RY
3. ShopLocket (website) - This eCommerce solution allows you to create a product sales page super easy. It is by far one of the easiest eCommerce solution you will ever encounter. It even allows pre-orders, maximum amount of sales, and more. It is also an extremely startup friendly company and you can tell that by how much they talk about startups and how much they push helping out startups. They are very cool people. Check out the videos to see how they can help you sell your items on Facebook and off Facebook alike. They are just great people. They have videos to show you how to embed the product sales widget in almost any environment you can think of. WordPress, Facebook, Tumblr, and more.
If you wish to find out more eCommerce solutions and more information overall, please contact us and ask for a consultation and we can help you out and give you those solutions. We are eager to help you make more money, faster and easier. Isn't that what you want out of your business?