Creative Ideas to Improve Social Media Marketing

Social media has been around for a decade now, so it should be easy to figure out how to leverage it, right? Not so fast. New ideas? Definitely not that new, but they are very creative. There are recommendations on how to improve creative ideas everywhere you turn.

Social media works the way the grass grows. You rarely see it working, but every week you must mow the grass.

Before we start, let me ask you a question. What is your most creative idea to change social media marketing? We would love to hear it. Please share it in the comments at the end.

How many times have you seen companies requesting people to friend them on Facebook? Like farming followers was the name of the game. Sad but true. The truth is that social media marketing tactics are really about cultivating relationships with potential customers. Fan ‘skins’, by themselves, are of very little value.

What is the importance of social media to your business? Dialog with customers for sure. What about reading your content and remembering? Appreciating your help? Marketing? Building relationships? We believe it is all of these things, but the bottom line goal is relationship building.

In the ever changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media marketing tactics? Here we define social media community engagement as the process of gaining website customer traffic, attention, interaction, and ultimately relationships through social media sites.

In part it is true, but things get complicated by all the misinformation circulating about social media marketing. From leveraging tactics to tracking issues, you are bombarded with conflicting messages, including whether social media marketing is worth using at all.

Here are 10 ideas we use most often with our clients. We believe they are the ones most critical to the success of your social media marketing:

Define target customers

It all starts with knowing who your customers are and knowing as much about what makes them tick as you can. Without this step, most of the other steps become just a shot in the dark. So spent a lot of your time on this action. Keep in mind that you can’t be everything to everybody … not all customers are alike.

Choose best channels

Once you understand who your target customers are, you’ll need to study which social media sites they use most frequently and to what end. Social media takes a lot of time and energy, so you need to know where your time will be best spent’

Share unique content

Your content goal is simple … be as helpful as you can and/or be entertaining, or else be ignored. If you are going to put in the time and energy, you don’t want to be ignored.

Listen and engage

Listening comes first and foremost to understand what customers are saying about their needs and perhaps about you. Once you have heard, then engage in as near real time as you can.

Your personality and voice

This one is pretty simple, but takes lots of practice in the beginning. Be YOU and be consistent. Remember customers deal with people and not businesses.

Don’t be a robot

As we said previously, social media marketing takes a lot of time and energy. There many goog tools in existence that will help in the workload. But keep this in mind … customers take note when it seems they are dealing with a robot. Don’t be that robot.

Be part of the community

Remember you are dealing with consumers that are part of a community not part of the audience. Pay special attention to adding value in that vein.

Commit to a plan

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there, as the saying goes. Know your objectives and establish the best plan to get them accomplished. Remember this plan needs constant iteration.

Emphasize social

One of your key business objectives is to build relationships with customers. That end game results in customer advocates and trust. This process takes constant attention to being social on a very consistent basis.

Measure results

This entire social media marketing process is a constant iteration. Establish a few key measurements and pay attention to how well you are doing.

Analyze, correct, iterate and learn

Analyze your measurement results, and continuously make corrections, iterate, and most importantly, learn.

The bottom line

There are a lot of misconceptions about social media marketing. Just because you read something in a blog post or hear something from a credible source doesn’t mean it is true or true for you and your business.

Always do your research, and continually try to improve. Social media marketing is here to stay, and it can drive a lot of business for you, assuming you are leveraging it correctly.

There is more opportunity to fail in social media than to succeed if we treat it like any other marketing vehicle. Social media requires us to get away from being promotional and sensational and instead treat our customers with special attention. Special attention to being social, building relationships, and creating trust.

How a Proactive Social Media Strategy Helps Business

Consumers are now spending more time on social media networks than any other form of the web. It is amazing how fast social media sites and new ideas are spreading on line. What is your business doing to take advantage of a proactive social media strategy?

Facebook has a monthly audience of nearly a billion visitors. That’s a B as in billion. Other top sites, like Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn, attract hundreds of millions. By now, nobody doubts the power of social platforms, although few marketers have been able to exploit them as fully as they desire.

As Harvard’s Mikołaj Piskorski makes clear in his new book, A Social Strategy, businesses have a long way to go before they truly begin to unlock the potential of the social web. Most marketers, in fact, use social media much as they would ordinary media—to broadcast messages. We are still not working as hard as we can on engagement and building relationships.

And the real potential lies in building relationships and utilizing social platforms to create solutions for customers’ social problems. While consumers are understandably skittish about corporations interjecting themselves their personal conversations, they appreciate the opportunity to meet and build relationships with others. And that, it turns out, this is an enormous opportunity.

That’s why it’s important to make the distinction between a digital strategy that involves social platforms and a true social strategy. For a social strategy to succeed, simply joining the conversation is not enough. You must lead it.

Here are some good ways you can capitalize on social media and improve your customer engagement and relationship building. Put these seven social elements to use in your business’s social media strategy:

Market Research

Nothing new here, as this was always important to a business. What is new is the access to millions of consumer communications, which represents a gold mine of data, available at the low cost of your ability to mine it.

Public Relations

Social networks represent a direct channel into consumers. You need to craft new, compelling messages for them, without selling.

Brand Marketing

Increase the value of your brand through this communications channel. Reinforce old relationships, build new ones, and stretch the real lifetime of both with the value utilities you can provide.

Customer Support

Many ways to add value to the products and services you provide, while increasing your image.

New Product / Service / Business Model Development

Leverage the public pool of ‘collective brain’ to define and test new market opportunities.

Consumer Education

Create valuable discussion boards and other means to respond to ‘asks the expert’ type of information. Ask your customers for information / education they would like to see.

Promotions

Reach more customers with added communications channels. Integrate all of your channels to improve on the information and messages you provide.

Social media gives us a great opportunity to listen in on what people are saying (with lots of emphasis on listening). It has been long known that word of mouth is incredibly powerful, and I’d say it is the best marketing technique in one’s arsenal.

Social listening tools are still somewhat primitive, but they are improving quickly and are already being deployed to help monitor conventional marketing efforts in real time.

Rishad Tobaccowala, on his blog, gives a nice overview of social listening. Among his insights is that you shouldn’t keep your efforts sequestered in an isolated social unit any more than you would wall off other types of research. Rather, you need to make sure to integrate social listening into your overall marketing and customer service efforts.

He also makes the apt observation that heavy influencers are not necessarily heavy users (in fact, they don’t need to consume your product at all). So social media may be the only real shot you have to interact with some of those who can affect how your brand is perceived.

Another nice thing about social listening is how easy it is to integrate it into the rest of your marketing intelligence. It can help shape and augment focus groups, monitor mass media campaigns and combine with other real time resources such as Google Insights.

The bottom line

Social media is a ‘pull’ and not a ‘push’ medium. It is two way conversations … where response time is very important.

By creating a social media mindset and culture within your business, you will be amazed at how your customer base and relationships can grow.

Being social with a great positive engagement isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business. Follow these simple tips and you will be leading the way.

How many of these strategies have you tried in your business? Please share a story or two about some of your social media campaigns.

Social Media Commerce Using Social Games

Why Social Games Are Marketing’s Next Frontier. I read an interesting book recently, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World written by Jane McGonagall. Here are a few of the useful takeaways on using social games.

Growth in gaming

“[Al]though a typical gamer plays for just an hour or two a day, there are now more than five million ‘extreme’ gamers in the U.S. who play an average of 45 hours a week. To put this in perspective, the number of hours that gamers world-wide have spent playing “World of Warcraft” alone adds up to 5.93 million years.”

Impacts of gaming

“In a good game, we feel blissfully productive. We have clear goals and a sense of heroic purpose. More important, we’re constantly able to see and feel the impact of our efforts on the virtual world around us. . . . One recent study found, for example, that players of ‘Guitar Hero’ are more likely to pick up a real guitar and learn how to play it.”

Learning persistence

“Research shows that gamers spend on average 80% of their time failing in game worlds, but instead of giving up, they stick with the difficult challenge and use the feedback of the game to get better.”

Building relationships

“Studies show that we like and trust someone better after we play a game with them—even if they beat us. And we’re more likely to help someone in real life after we’ve helped them in an online game. It’s no wonder that 40% of all user time on Facebook is spent playing social games.”

These takeaways support our position on the importance of games and gaming as the next important customer engagement technique. Consider these points in evaluating why games are so valuable:

Games can be combined … with rewards which permits fueling loyalty

Advertising, like other marketing elements … is moving from eyeballs to engagement

Social games … fit all platforms

Games have shown ability … to draw large communities

Brands can become … a component of game experience

Games aren’t limited … to just the virtual world

Lots of reasons to add games to your social media commerce and marketing campaigns, don’t you think?

Please share a social media commerce gaming experience with us.

Read more:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

12 Ways to Build Social Commerce Business through Great Customer Service

Finding our own stories

There are two ways we remember our experiences: attached to emotions or attached to imagery from our own stories. Therefore we need to use both to recount what we know.

Start by drawing a timeline of your career. Plot the significant events (work and personal) and jot down next to the events how you remember feeling: excited, angry, pumped, disappointed.

When an event springs to mind recount it out loud to yourself, or even better, tell it to someone. Avoid writing these recollections down verbatim. Just right some rough notes. Otherwise the temptation is to recount the experience they way you’ve written it which will sound unnatural.

You should have 4 or 5 stories now. Let’s switch to visual queues to remember some more. Head over to flickr or iStockphoto and select 30 images at random. Look at each one and see if any experiences spring to mind. Again recount them and jot down some rough notes.

One of the best ways to remember your own stories is to hear others. Find a couple of colleagues, friends and just get reminiscing about the good old days. Make notes about any anecdote that springs to mind about your own experiences at work focusing on the ones that set you apart. In fact you should always carry a story notebook to jot them down because they often creep up on you by surprise and I will guarantee you will forget it instantly if you don’t either write it down of have the opportunity to tell the story a couple of times.

Practising and improving your stories

Your first retellings will tend to be rambling and, quite frankly, boring. The rambling nature of the story, however, is often reduced by telling the story to people and watching their response. Getting feedback in the form of their response to your story (facial expressions, comments – nothing formal) will tell you what to keep and what to jettison. But you can do more.

You can increase the impact of any story in three ways:

be specific and avoid generalisations. Instead of saying, “I once worked for company that sold database software.” Say, “While the pre-sales manager at Oracle Systems …”
the story has to about a specific individual trying to achieve something, ideally with some obstacle that they eventually overcame. Avoid stories about companies, departments and even teams. Tell stories about people who have names. Instead of saying, “In 2004 the risk assessment team was facing a problem …,” say “Charles Kleiner in risk assessment was facing a problem.” And of course you were instrumental in helping Charles overcome this obstacle.
help people visualise what’s happening. The best stories are ones that the listener can picture vividly in their mind’s eye. Instead of of saying, “We drove up to the vineyard …,” say “We drove up to an adobe-style vineyard with acres of vines all around us …”

Every story we tell gives people an insight into who we are. They are quite revealing. So before you tell them to an interviewer it’s a good idea to tell your stories to a friend and ask them about the qualities they inferred about you based on the story. Is it resilience, courage, persistence, creativity etc.? You will surprised to find that a story which you thought, for example, was about persistence, comes across to the listener as arrogance. You will want to avoid those ones.

Speaking of things to avoid, no one want to hear your life story. They can read that in your resume. They want to hear about the specific moments in your life where you made a difference. Use your stories.

Now you should have a dozen good stories to tell at the interview. Practise them whenever you can. In casual conversations, when the time is right, say something like, “Yes, that reminds me of …” By practising your stories in natural, conversational settings you will be in a better position to repeat your story in this natural way at the interview which will convey tremendous confidence.

Good luck with the job hunt and let me know whether your storytelling efforts made a difference.

The Many Paths to a Creative SEO Strategy

I suggest that you focus on these 3 fields for a creative SEO strategy:

Influence marketing – there is nothing more valuable then contact with people who already have popular website. Do not try to ask them to promote you, better option is to to some ego-bait stuff (like interview) with them ) then ask them for guest blog. See this also: Ivan Muljevski’s answer to How do you find and get guest blogging opportunities?

In depth 10X content

Forget about writing average blog posts. Instead of this write some 10X stuff – 10X Content is the Future.

source: How to Create 10x Content – Whiteboard Friday

Combine techniques

It is a mix of skills you already know, but from your perspective. For example I used to check volume of keywords trough Google PPC and Bing PPC program then make new content map strategy.

Monitor competitors

Tools designed for spying on your competitors cover just 50% of this job. Check every post, comment and article your competitors push. This way you can measure what strategy could be fruitful for your business.

Content promotion

No matter how good your content is, you won’t get any benefit from it unless you promote it. Hard. Remember: 99% of perspiration and 1% of inspiration.

Content comes first

A website with brilliant content can do great with or without SEO, a website with bad content will not survive with or without SEO, a website with good content can become even better with SEO!

So, what is considered good content?

Content that includes text as well

Try to have text to accompany your non-text content. For example if you post videos on your website try to add a text description as well. If you add images try to describe in words what the image is all about.

Well researched content

Readers don’t want to read quickly prepared posts and neither does search engines. If you are writing about a certain topic or answering a question make sure that what you write is justified and covers both sites of a story. Long articles are proven to rank better than short articles.

Posting frequency

2 things are important when it comes to posting frequency.

First is to have fresh content on your website and second to establish a publishing strategy and stick to it.

Keyword research

Keyword researchis the main driver of successful SEO. In order to improve your search engine ranking, you’ll need to first analyze keywords that are relevant to your industry.

Sound link building

Link building is simple: High-quality link building produces greater results. Having an influencer and content marketing strategy will help you develop backlinks to your website, but it is also important to actively be seeking ways to get people to link to you. Some of the best ways to do this are to write for a large publication, do industry interviews and recommend your powerful content to people who matter. In addition, you can also use tools like Majestic SEO to see who is linking to your competitors. Once you identify the links to your competitor’s sites, you can analyze these links, learn how they got them and implement a similar strategy for your website. For example, did they donate to a charity causing the charity to link to their site? You can do the same thing.

Creating quality content

Don’t let poor content affect your site’s search engine rank. It’s vital that you offer engaging and useful information to keep your visitors coming back.

Content-marketing strategy

Every website should have a content strategy focused around your top keywords. When you create content such as blog posts, videos, whitepapers, research reports and webinars, it gives people something to link to. In addition, the content you create can rank by itself in the search engines.

For example, if you write a blog post on “How to Pick an SEO Company,” there is a possibility it will rank for some of the keywords you use in the title and in the body post, especially if the post gets linked to from other websites or shared a lot on social media. It also helps if your website as a whole already has significant high-quality links.

This results in high domain authority, which translates into better rankings for all of your content. In addition, regular content creation shows Google that your website is alive and active. By sending this fresh content signal to Google on a continual basis, it will result in better rankings for your website as a whole.

Make your website mobile-friendly.

In 2015, there was a major Google update known as Mobilegeddon. This meant that if you did not have a mobile version of your website by April 21, 2015, you lost a significant amount of your rankings in the mobile version of the Google search listings.

Moving into 2016, your website needs to be mobile-ready. There are three types of accepted options for a mobile site in Google’s eyes: responsive design, being set up on a mobile subdomain or use dynamic serving. Google also now ranks websites higher that apply SEO for their apps. So if you have an app, make sure you are taking the time to implement application SEO.

What Makes a Master Blogger?

There are many very good bloggers on the internet, aren’t there. The term “master blogger” seems to pop up now and then, and it is something that many bloggers aspire to be. In my eight years as a blogger, I would say that the definition of “master blogger” has definitely changed.

When I think of a master blogger, here are the qualities that I would suggest they have:

Connects with audience

For an audience to read and return, bloggers must learn about people in the audience and engage/connect with as many as possible. This is not just about finding out their interests, but it is finding out who they are. It is essential that we get to know our audience, learn their passions, and help them find out how we can engage them in their own interests. If you are not able to do this as a blogger, the following characteristics will be moot.

Educate and entertain

Bloggers must ensure that they differentiate learning and work to meet the needs of each reader and understand how they each like to engage and be entertained. I believe that people have different engagement styles and if we can best figure out how to help them meet their needs, the audience will be easily captured.

Ensures that they draw relevance to curriculum – The question, “What does this have to do with real life?”, is something that I would prefer never be said in a classroom. Not because it is not a legitimate question, but because teachers should show the relevance before there is an opportunity for it to be asked. As we are obligated to teach curriculum objectives outlined by our government officials, this is something that must be done. It is not always an easy part of the job but it is something we much continuously strive to do.

Not only is it essential that we draw relevance to the subject matter of what we teach, but it is also essential that we use mediums that are relevant to how students learn. Disconnecting from devices that WE use as adults and kids use all the time the minute students walk into school is wrong. A master teachers knows that it is essential to use technology in the classroom to enhance learning in a way that is relevant to students.

Works with students to develop a love of learning – We are obligated to teach curriculum objectives but we are also obligated in our profession to help students find their own spark in learning. Why do I write this blog? It is my way of connecting with others and reflecting on my own learning. It is a way that I choose to share and learn with others. There is no pay or compensation that I receive from this. A master teacher will try to tap into those ways that students love to learn and build upon that. Creating that spark in each student will lead them to continued success and growth.

Embodies lifelong learning

A master teacher knows that they will never become the “perfect” blogger since that is unattainable. They will look at ways that they can grow along with the members of the audience and develop their skills. Writing and learning will always change and a master blogger knows that they need to change with it. I have seen bloggers that have proclaimed that they are master bloggers but have not changed their practice in years. Growth is essential as a blogger. Society changes continuously and so do its needs. We need thinkers on the internet and bloggers must show that they are on the leading edge of this.

Learning versus performance

“Drive” by Dan Pink, he talks about the difference between performance and learning goals. A performance goal would be similar to having a reader wanting to be be completely entertained, where a learning goal would be a reader wanting to become fluent in the subject at hand. A master blogger sets his goals based on both learning and performance, depending on his audience.

Ensures that “character education” is an essential part of learning – Character education is just as relevant, if not more so, than any learning objectives set out in a curriculum. We live in a world where collaboration is vital to success and working with others is an important skill. Working with students to teach the fundamentals of respecting others and being able to listen and learn from others is vital. Students can have the smartest understanding of objectives but not have the ability to share these ideas with others in a respectful way or take the time to listen to other ideas. A master teacher ensures that students not only grow mentally in class, but also emotionally.

Passionate about their content they teach

If a blogger works in the area of math and LOVES the subject area, that passion will spill over to the students he/she works with. As an administrator, I work hard to help teachers work in subject areas that they are passionate about because I believe that enthusiasm is infectious. A master teacher shares their passion and enthusiasm with those they work with. However, if you are a teacher in an area that you do not “love”, it is important that you find ways to spark that passion for yourself.

A master teacher is a “school teacher” – I often talk with people about the difference between a classroom teacher versus a “school teacher”. It is essential that a master teacher does not only impact the learning environments of the class that they work with, but that they also have an impact on the school culture. This can happen in sharing their passion through extracurricular activities or their knowledge on strong teaching strategies with school colleagues. It is important that teachers do not just build connections with students that they teach now, but with students they had in the past or may have in the future. It is great to see teachers that connect with kids that they do not teach at the time leading to enthusiasm for that student to one day be in that very same teacher’s class.

Strong communication skills – Obviously it is important that teachers are able to communicate with the students they teach, but what about their colleagues and parents? Sharing knowledge, back and forth with colleagues is essential to the growth of the individual as well as the collective. It is important that these skills are continuously developed. It is also imperative that you are able to effectively communicate with parents as they have great insights on how their child learns best. I have learned more and more as an educator the valuable learning that can come from communicating with parents and how important they are to the development of the school and class culture. A master teacher will effectively draw upon this knowledge.

These are the characteristics that I believe make a master teacher. I definitely know that as an administrator these are ideals as a teacher leader that I work towards everyday and want to embody. The one thing that I do know is that my learning is nowhere near complete and I can still grow. Learning from you, what areas do you think I missed on this list? I would love to hear your thoughts as I continue to grow.

How to Find our Own Stories

There are two ways to find our own stories, We can remember our experiences: attached to emotions or attached to imagery. Therefore we need to use both to recount what we know.

Start by drawing a timeline of your career. Plot the significant events (work and personal) and jot down next to the events how you remember feeling: excited, angry, pumped, disappointed.

Practising and improving your stories

You can increase the impact of any story in three ways:

be specific and avoid generalisations. Instead of saying, “I once worked for company that sold database software.” Say, “While the pre-sales manager at Oracle Systems …”
the story has to about a specific individual trying to achieve something, ideally with some obstacle that they eventually overcame. Avoid stories about companies, departments and even teams. Tell stories about people who have names. Instead of saying, “In 2004 the risk assessment team was facing a problem …,” say “Charles Kleiner in risk assessment was facing a problem.” And of course you were instrumental in helping Charles overcome this obstacle.
help people visualise what’s happening. The best stories are ones that the listener can picture vividly in their mind’s eye. Instead of of saying, “We drove up to the vineyard …,” say “We drove up to an adobe-style vineyard with acres of vines all around us …”

Good luck with the job hunt and let me know whether your storytelling efforts made a difference.

Whole Foods Customer Engagement Using Social Media

Does your business have a strategy for building customer relationships and customer engagement? Is it based on natural customer engagement? Whole Foods’ customer engagement is the basis for its strategy of growing customer relationships. Check them out to learn from them.

When choosing to learn from others’ social media strategies, it is always helpful to choose the best of the best. Whole Foods’ marketing strategy is one of those. They have been successfully executing their customer engagement using social media for over 7 years, and their strategies have played a significant role in their growth.

If you’re not familiar with Whole Foods, it’s a leading natural and organic food store with nearly 300 locations in North America and the United Kingdom. A large enterprise.

Their social media strategy is built around their company website and 6 additional social platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, their blog, and recent additions of Foursquare and Pinterest.

Related: Social Media Marketing Lessons to Learn From the New Pros in Town.

Yes, Whole Foods has developed an incredible brand presence wherever it has chosen to set up shop–across the country, on the web, and in just about every social media venue on the internet, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even via internally “owned” properties such as local websites. Their ability to engage the community and foster customer loyalty is nearly unmatched.

Here are some philosophical precepts that drive the company’s customer engagement efforts from its social media platforms:

Customer conversation

Whole Foods’ social media centers on letting customer engagement and conversation occur as naturally as possible. They listen, observe, and apply new ideas from what they learn.

It’s about building customer relationships, not marketing

Building meaningful relationships is key. Whole Foods’ marketing efforts focus less on traditional marketing and more on giving texture to the brand in fun, engaging formats.

Social media fits within a larger digital strategy

At Whole Foods, social media is not a separate and distinct entity. Various stores collaborate online and offline to develop and implement plans designed to fully engage the community.

One such effort was a special film series … ‘The Do Something Reel Film Festival’. This extensive 6-month series was a celebration of people who understand that small ideas can create big change. The festival’s objectives were to connect the brand with food and environmental issues and to inspire people to make a difference.

Local social media elements

Whole Foods, while a large, international company, puts priority on the local component of its strategy. There is a community manager assigned at every store, who manages their customer engagement through multiple platform accounts. They focus on being where the customers are.

They maintain very loose control from corporate headquarters. They assist and collaborate, but the local stores maintain lots of freedom of initiative. Local. An important component of their strategy.

Make it clear where to start

Whole Foods believes you need to focus on where customers start so people know where to find you on various social media venues. For each vertical (jobs, deals, and so on), Whole Foods launches a separate account, such as Twitter.com/wholefoodsrecipes, which focuses exclusively on generating ideas for new and different recipes at Whole Foods.

Platform integration

All of the efforts are continually focused on improving the relevancy of customer engagement. They are not afraid to experiment to see what works and what doesn’t.

Each social media platform has its primary objectives … with some flexibility and adaptability maintained.

The strategy sets a goal of linking and losing integration of all the platform efforts.

Look around the corners

Whole Foods may be full of surprises, but the company does not like to be surprised. They like to look around the corner to attend to all the little details and address any issues that may arise. The company looks ahead to see how customers will reach the page, how they will navigate the site, and how a customer’s experience may change five months from now. It also tries to anticipate and plan for incidents in which someone doesn’t like a particular product or project and takes them to task for it. In other words, the company plans for all scenarios.

Be authentic

Rule No. 1 in social media is to be genuine and transparent, so this precept is not breaking any new ground. What is crucial here specifically for Whole Foods is that they remain true to the brand–they started with their food culture, so each social media team is expected to be centered around food when engaging through social media.

Build coalitions

Internal, collaboration is key in inventing, planning, and executing any projects or campaigns. Every department–including legal, the call center, communications, PR, managers, and executives–must be on board. The magic of social media is that you can recognize the opportunity quickly. The challenge is in responding just as quickly. Without a coordinated effort and buy-in, you quickly lose momentum.

Make Twitter a key platform

To see what’s going on with your brand in real-time, plug into Twitter, where things tend to go viral fastest. Real-time monitoring increases your response time to what people are saying about your brand, negative or positive. In addition, it provides early notice of any opportunities that arise–any given second, any given day.

Their Twitter accounts are used primarily as a customer service tool … responding to individual customer questions and requests. They have several niche Twitter accounts for such special topics as wine and cheese, as well as accounts for most of the local stores.

Focus on the four response message strategies

Whenever Whole Foods identifies a problem or opportunity, it responds in one or more of the following four ways:

Amplify: As trends are identified, or something its customers seem to like, Whole Foods amplifies whatever it is to help bring it to the surface and increase visibility and enthusiasm.

Context-of: By context-ifying its messages, Whole Foods makes sure customers fully understand.

Change: If it’s broken, fix it. Whole Foods likes to actively solicit constructive criticism and ideas to improve its business and gather suggestions for products, services, and projects. They are not afraid of adaptation or change.

Ignore: You gotta respond? No, sometimes it’s best to ignore, especially when it appears you’re being provoked into a response or fight. It’s easier to ignore things when you can put them into their proper context. For example, if your primary critics are a Facebook Group with 150 members out of the 400 million-plus Facebook accounts, you have little to worry about.

Take chances, but “be mostly right”

All of Whole Foods’ social media teams were scrappy, savvy, and confident from the very beginning. They succeeded by asking for forgiveness, not permission, and by “being mostly right.” If you’re transparent and do mostly right, the social media space is very forgiving.

Ways to Increase Your Social Media Engagement

Create Shareable Content

If you want people to share your posts, you need to create highly shareable content. It’s that simple.

“Highly shareable” means the content is relevant to your audience and compels people to share it. Your content should make people stop in their tracks. Facebook calls this “thumb-stopping,” since the majority of users view the platform on mobile devices. When your audience stops scrolling and pauses to read your content, they should feel an instant urge to share it with their audience.

The content could be breaking news, educational, hilarious, entertaining, or something that’s not typically seen elsewhere. This is the type of content that will make your audience look good to others when they share it.

For example, this video from The Kitchn is a simple recipe that plays off their audience’s love for avocados and desire to learn something new. This post has received more than 6,800 shares.

Create thumb-stopping, shareable content.

Makeup Lessons is another page that posts a variety of engaging, shareable visuals, such as stand-alone, multiple, and instructional graphics. The beauty pics really pop in the news feed. Plus, they use carousel posts to showcase multiple links and images.

Publish link posts with multiple images to create a carousel.

Takeaway: Create videos, graphics, and posts that are relevant, stand out in the news feed, and make people want to share. The content doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should look good and be of value to your loyal following.

Include a Call to Action

Just as you want to create shareable content, it’s important to ask people to engage. Include something as simple as an invitation to share the post. For instance, write, “If you found value, please share with your fans.” Or “If this speaks to you, share it with your audience as well!” You may also want to invite people to comment.

For Rainbow Bridge Remembrance Day, Positively Woof invited fans to share a picture of a pet that had passed. The eye-catching video post has over 7 million views, 19,000 comments, and 208,000 shares. (I’m one of the 19,000 commenters. My own beloved cat, Baby the Bengal, went to kitty heaven in September of last year. So sad.) You can see the incredible bond that animal lovers have in the epic thread on this post.

Takeaway: Create shareable content that includes a call to action. Also, post content that aligns with a trend or holiday related to your business so your audience will want to chime in.

Mix Up Content Types

There’s a window of opportunity right now with the Facebook news feed algorithm since not nearly enough businesses are doing video.

If you put a higher ratio of video in your content mix (three times a week), it will increase the visibility and engagement of your page substantially. Mix in other content types and you have a recipe for success.

Betty Rocker is a nutrition and fitness expert who has a wonderful mix of content types. From recipes and checklists to inspirational pics.

She also adds a human element to connect with people viewing her page so they’ll engage. The Betty Rocker mixes up fitness videos and recipe posts with more personal updates.

Takeaway: Provide fun and interesting content for your fans so there’s always something to see, learn, and do on your Facebook page.

Design Video for Viewing With the Sound Off

To encourage engagement, make your videos understandable with or without audio. Although Facebook is testing autoplay video with sound on, you should still design your video to be viewed with the sound off whenever possible, since users will have control over the mute button.

Remember, autoplay video (with or without sound) is here to stay. Use a tool that easily allows you to add text such as lower thirds and captions to your videos.

This Tony Robbins video offers the same info to viewers, whether or not they’re listening to him speak. Design video to be understandable when muted.

Takeaway: When your audience can consume your content with the sound off, they’ll be more likely to engage with it.

Try Instant Articles

Instant articles load 10 times faster inside the Facebook mobile app than links on the regular mobile web. Companies using instant articles include Business Insider, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post, and others. For example, Mashable publishes some content via instant articles, like this one about upcoming LinkedIn changes.

Instant articles are identifiable in the mobile feed by the lightning bolt icon. One click and the article appears.

Instant articles show up immediately when a reader clicks.

Yes, it does require time and effort to set up instant articles. However, since people get instant gratification when they click an instant article link in the feed, they’re more likely to read it. Then they’ll share and otherwise engage with your post.

Takeaway: Perhaps you won’t use instant articles for every article you publish, but test it with some of your flagship content.

Change Your Posting Time

Not getting the engagement you want on your posts? Try publishing content outside business hours, such as in the evenings and on weekends. Publish when more of your audience is online.

Also, it’s totally okay to repurpose content. Post content that’s already been shared on other networks and periodically republish your most popular Facebook posts. Don’t share a previously published post, though; republish it as a fresh post. Post at off-times when your competitors are not online.

Be conscious of the evergreen content you share. If you’re republishing older content, remember to read it first to make sure it’s still relevant. Plus, while you can auto-publish links and blog posts using third-party tools, don’t set and forget it.

Every now and then something may happen in the world or in your business and industry. Just be aware of what you’re posting and when to make sure it’s still relevant and not disruptive during a crisis.

Takeaway: If you’re not already doing so, post once a day to your page, which is what most brands do. News organizations post more frequently because they tend to have noteworthy and time-sensitive stories.

Drive Traffic From Other Sources

Another way to increase engagement for your posts is to send traffic to your page from other social networks and your newsletter.

Click the timestamp of your post to get the permalink. Then use a URL shortener (like Bitly) to create a shareable link. Grab the permalink of your Facebook post to share it in other places.

Share the post link on Twitter (or another social network) with an invitation to join the conversation. This will bring some of your Twitter followers over to Facebook to engage.

Alternatively, or additionally, include information about the discussion (along with the link) in your newsletter.

Takeaway: The more traffic you drive, the more fans you’ll get and the more likely they’ll engage with your content. Remember, newsletter subscribers, are loyal members of your audience. Lead them to your page so they can engage with you and your community.

Embed Posts and Videos on Your Blog

You can increase visibility and engagement for your Facebook content by embedding posts on your blog. To get the embed code for a post, click the timestamp, click the arrow in the upper right, and select Embed. Get the code for your Facebook post.

Copy your code and paste it into the HTML of your blog post.

You can include the full narrative with the media posted on Facebook (image or video) or just the media. The example below is a Facebook video I embedded on my blog to create more visibility for branded content, an important topic.

The Ultimate Guide to Header Tags and Search Engine Optimization

The ultimate guide for Header (H) tags are elements that divide content on a webpage and are part of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), making it easy to read. They’re highlighted as H and range from H1 to H6; the lower the number, the more important it is. For instance, H1 is the more important, while H6 comes last and is least important. H tags structure content to make it easy to read for human readers and search engines, and the process is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Use of Different Header Tags

The topic of an article can be a Title or H1 tag. If the subject is a title, the first subtopic automatically becomes H1. Any content with the topic as H1 means the first subtopic becomes an H2. Regarding search engines like Google, heading tags and SEO are better recognized o a webpage meaning such a page will rank better than others. As part of SEO, search engines better understand a page with one title and one H1. Here’s how to use header tags.

H1 – It can be the title of your post
H2 – They’re subtopics that follow H1 and can be more than one.
H3 – Use them as subtopics of H2. In short, they explain the content under H2 in further detail.
H4, H5, H6 – Although these aren’t commonly used, they’re available if you need to use them.

The Importance of Header Tags

Header tags are like the chapters in a book. From the table of contents, you’ll find that some chapters are more descriptive compared to others, and they describe the book’s flow from the beginning to the conclusion. Here’s why H tags are important.

Provide Structure to Content

Headers provide structure for a post, and each should give the reader an idea of what’s coming next. Like a table of contents, titles will systematically lead the reader to the next content or page.

Break Up Content Chunks

An article with headers breaks down content into smaller easy-to-read texts for readers and search engines. Properly used headers make the content user-friendly, and search engines like to reward such by ranking them among the top. Easy-to-read content appeals to readers, who are likely to share it with others.

Use Keywords Header Tags

Search engines scan content on a page using header tags to understand what it’s all about. Therefore, including keywords in headers helps Google understand a page, but it shouldn’t be spammy or excessive. For SEO purposes, it’s recommended to include keywords in H2s and H3s.

Optimize Snippets

Unfortunately, some people don’t use headers properly, yet they can greatly impact content. You can use headers to drive the reader to a specific paragraph or list snippets on a page.

Best SEO Practices

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial if you need your content to count on search engine results pages (SERPs). Ranking well on SERPs makes a page more findable and generates more traffic. Here are some of the best SEO practices that will make your content stand out without overdoing the content.

Identify and use the right keywords
Create and publish relevant content
Optimize page titles and descriptions
Optimize your images
Use internal links
Make your website user-friendly

Conclusions

A page with proper use of H tags makes it easy for a reader to read and navigate through content. Likewise, search engines can scan a page with headers like a reader for a better user experience. Breaking content using headers makes content easy to digest, and even though headers don’t impact SEO directly, misusing them can affect a page negatively.

Social Listening