Social Media
Facilitated by Ryan Bennion
How do you separate personal from professional on social media?
- If you can blend your brands, do it. Use the 5 to 1 ratio: 5 informational, engaging content, to 1 promotional (look at me) post
How do I know which platform is right for me?
- Find your audience
- What’s your target age range? 40 & up = Facebook.
- Millennials = Twitter, Snapchat, Video, Instagram
- Breaking news = Twitter
Buyer personas. Who is your buyer type? Base your campaigns on your buyer type.
- Competitive buyer: wants the newest and best; risk taker
- Spontaneous or impulse buyer: create an impulse buy display on your website or in your store. Things that make them have to buy now
- Methodical buyer: analytical. What’s the guarantee? What do others think?
- Humanistic buyer: How does the product connect to people? Buy because they have an emotional connection with it. Example—woman buys from a female owner because she’s female
Don’t stand still
- Promote posts in your industry; build a community with others like yourself
- Interact with others in your business, Twitter chat, etc.
- Do it properly. Don’t try to do too much. Find your audience and then market it well. the more you can integrate video’s and photos the more attention and shares you’ll get
- Buyer personas and age ranges interconnect
- Remember 5 to 1. 5 engaging content to 1 promotional
How can I maximize exposure while not using tons of time?
- Guerilla tactics
- Blab for small businesses, webinars, etc.
- Twitter chat
- Visually interact with your audience
- Periscope (not for video conferencing—more like a time machine):
For example, authors can use Periscope to show how they brainstorm
Marketing strategies
- Create content using trending tools like adwords.google.com for keywords and buzzsumo.com to see the most-shared content
- Write 3-4 articles a month as a good start; focus on quality before quantity
- Then post high-quality content once or twice a week using trending keywords when can
- Find your audience and media platform and focus on quality first, then worry about quantity
- Authors can put tips for other aspiring authors
- What are you trying to get out of your platform? What are you trying to create? Then decide which platforms work best for your audience
Predicted social media trends for 2016 and how to utilize them:
- Rise of video and pictures—the bread and butter of social media
- Companies will be hiring videographers. Showing what the product does and how customers interact with it. Predict that companies will lose 25% of their customers if they don’t utilize video and pictures
- Blab for video conferencing
- Slide Share app integrated with LinkedIn
- Posting short 30 testimonials from customers
- Find ways to incorporate your business in images
- Age appropriate to your audience
- Quizzes and other sharable material
- Infographics (use PowerPoint)
- Most shared in 2015 were quizzes and infographics.
- Search content marketing or infographics templates for how to create infographics for free
- Quizzer is a free site where you can create your own quizzes
- Do quizzes related to what’s trending, holidays, New Year’s resolutions, etc. Keep it simple and sharable
- Word of mouth always trumps advertising
- Rewards programs are great for businesses. Subway for example. If you want a sandwich you’re more likely to go there to get the points toward a free sandwich
- User reviews are very important. Make sure you are being responsive to reviews. Even negative ones
- Search optimization for your company if it is not showing up in search results. You can hire out for this if needed.
- Look for maximum social impact for the least amount of money.
- Don’t waste money on expensive software—you can find free alternatives
As an author, would you recommend using the short testimonials?
- Yes, but get consent to use
- User generated content
- Don’t promote self too much
- Use people you know for first testimonials
- Utilize bloggers. Let them get your name out for you
- Fans appreciate knowing what’s coming. Sneak peeks
- Encourage back and forth discussions
- Make sure you’re saying what users want to hear
- You want engagement not just “look at me”