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© 2013 Professional Social Promotion
This is a list of the top ten mistakes I see my clients making with their social media pages and campaigns.
I see these mistakes a lot, and it’s good to write these things down so I can just give someone a link to read.
Here they are in no particular order, the top ten things that I believe are the biggest mistakes that you can make in social media marketing.
Top Ten Social Media Marketing Mistakes
- Not thinking about keywords. You seriously have to think about SEO with every single thing you do in social media or on an article, blog post, or anything. You need to give your Facebook page a title that has exact match search volume on the Google keyword tool, your You Tube videos, Google Plus page, Linked In company page.. How is anyone going to find you if they don’t find you in a search? Ads are expensive. Some people use their company name, that’s great if you’re Coca-cola, but not if nobody’s searching for you by your name.
- Giving all your pages the same keyword titles. Seriously, you’d think I was making this up if you know a fair bit about SEO, but some people continue to give every single page they make the same title, or they have a website where all the pages have the same title at the top. The goal is to rank for as many different searches as possible, on Google, and on the social media sites.
- Not updating your status enough. If you go to the trouble of getting twenty thousand likes on your Facebook page from real, targeted people, or you get tens of thousands of random Twitter followers and then you just let them sit there, that’s not going to do anything. Sometimes your Facebook page or Twitter profile can pick up click-through traffic to your website from being found in a search, or through and ad campaign as I mentioned before, but the idea is that people click on your tweets and posts on an ongoing basis. Every hour if possible
- Create quality content. Often a company will hire an SEO company or writers to make pages to boost up the rankings of their site. Some would say that this is necessary to get decent rankings, and that it helps your rankings to publish these spam pages on your Facebook page. Forget that, that makes you look like your business is rubbish. Fire the SEO company that produces rubbish, the way Google is heading spam pages that have a high bounce rate and that are manually reviewed by Google staff will be de-indexed, or punished as time goes on. The goal of Google leading into the future is to rid the internet of spam, and punish those who make bad content for the sole purpose of making cheap back links
- Seek out friends who share your interests. When I first started out on Facebook, I started looking for people to send friend requests to that shared my interest in article writing. I found a few, and then I just blindly followed the friend requests that came up on my dashboard. I ended up in a group of friends who write romance novels. That obviously isn’t at all what I’m interested in, and there’s not much I can do with a bunch of friends like that. Twitter is different, you can have as many followers as you want, but you want to be selective with your friends on Facebook. Joining groups is also a great way to meet people who share your interests, on Linked In, Google Plus, and Yahoo Groups as well.
- Trying to do too much at once. I’m guilty of this myself. I find that I try to maintain a presence on every single social media site, while also trying to write blog posts on four different sites of my own, make You Tube videos, chat to people in forums, write guest posts, write articles for clients, fill orders, etc, etc. Don’t spread yourself too thin, and seek help if you need it
- Be very careful about the help you get. The internet is basically made up of everyone in the world who has a computer. People will make amazing claims that they can do this or that for you, but the truth is often that it’s nothing more than a lie, and you’re lucky if you get half of what is being promised. Often you can get your money back, but it turns into a big argument at times, so try to talk to a person for a while first to get a sense of who they are, where they come from, and ask to see samples of their work or start small before you jump into a big deal.
- Make a strong call to action. It’s not enough to post Twitter pics of cats with funny expressions on their faces. I see people completely wasting their time by talking about their lives or the weather, or quotes from famous people through history. This is how you use Twitter if you’re an average joe, but not how you use it for business. There may need to be some sort of cross over between a pure business tweet and a personal style tweet, but the idea is to get them to click on the link and visit your site. Anything that doesn’t make this happen is a waste of time in business terms. It may be worth offering value so that people keep an eye out for your tweets, but you should be offering value on the pages you tweet anyway.
- Don’t try to be fun if you’re not fun. If you’re an insurance company, selling life insurance, or health insurance, there’s nothing fun about that. There’s almost no reason why anybody would want to look at anything you have to say at all on Facebook. Why would somebody follow the Twitter account of a life insurance company? The only way they would is if there was incentive for them to, like on a social swapping site, where they earned points to do it. My thoughts are, pay for a funny professional TV ad to be made and then hope the You Tube video goes viral.
- Don’t give up. There may be a point when you think that it’s all too much, and that the amount of time you have to put into social media marketing is not worth the return. This may be true in some cases, but don’t forget that social media sites are continually growing in members every day, people are using them more and more as search engines, opening up endless possibilities for new keyword phrase searches, and it takes time and effort for you to be a part of this worldwide phenomenon. You can’t expect to get results without putting in hard work on a consistent basis. Try to think of things from the perspective of the potential customer. What do they want to see?
Conclusion
To avoid making these mistakes and many others, it’s best to hire someone with a lot of experience in internet marketing, (like me), who can help you do things in the right way.
Get in contact with me via the contact form in the sidebar, or by sending me a message at [email protected] and tell me about your site, and include links so I can take a look at it, and work out a plan that might work for you.
Guest post by Simon Campbell
Many start-ups on the web are under the impression that their sites will be out there in the proverbial ether as soon as they construct them.
They believe that branding is all about construction. This leaves no mystery to why so many new start-ups end up failing quickly.
The fact of the matter is that it’s hard work to increase your online presence. And failing to spread your brand around will equate to business failure. There’s really no other way to say it.
By marketing on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, you can build a larger online presence and reap the benefits of a popular brand.
Tips for Boosting Your Online Presence
1: Engagement
Engaging on social sites like Facebook means more than having people shoot you a thumbs-up. That’s part of it, and you’ll always want people to Like your material.
But, you also want people to comment on your posts, to share them, and to spread the word about your page to their friends. This requires material that’s engaging.
Pertinent material designed for your udience that’s fun, intriguing, and that plays to the context of social media – this is what you’re after.
Think about polls, questions and quizzes; memes, photos and infographics; video clips and other multimedia.
Take your material to the next level while ensuring quality.
2: Be Personal
A lot of brands decide on being very one-sided, expecting people to engage with them but then not returning the favor.
Avoid this by being personal with people. As you grow in size, this is going to be harder to do.
When just starting out, though, you should have no problem responding directly to people as they respond to you.
You could also create Facebook posts to specifically thank people for their engagement, to answer questions, to inform them of new updates, etc.
3: Create Good Visuals
Did you recently hold some type of event with your business? Take a lot of photos and/or videos and post them.
Give people a view through the window; let them look at what’s going on. Think about being visual with a lot of your content. Create engaging posts that illustrate what you’re about.
You can go the Dollar Shave Club route and create a web commercial in the hopes it goes viral and even ends up on TV in heavy rotation. There’s a lot you can do here with a little imagination.
4: Construct a Network
So, you have your main business website. That’s a given. And you branch out to Facebook to brand.
Things are starting to move forward. Now what do you do? Any smart marketer hoping to increase their brand presence is going to tie these networks together.
Their main site, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, etc. You want to interlink these networks and make sure you’re driving traffic back and forth, to and from. Each different site has the potential to help you build a stronger network.
5: Advertise
While it is true that you can organically build a good-sized audience, paid advertisements simply reach more people.
Especially on a site like Facebook where you want to be in as many News Feeds as possible, various ad formats help you achieve this goal.
Using third-party ad-management software, you can efficiently create material, target an audience, and launch while monitoring your results.
If the idea is to boost your presence, then spending the time and money necessary is one of the best ways to achieve this, bar none.
Having a larger presence is essential to your success as a brand. Regardless of the niche you’re in, you will undoubtedly come across ample competition. Use the presence-boosting tips listed above to help you expand in cyberspace.
About The Author
Simon Campbell is a writer from a new Facebook Ad campaign management tool: Qwaya. He writes about many different topics to do with social media and internet marketing.
Guest post by Rianne Hunter
Since the advent of the Internet, a growing number of entrepreneurs have come out of the woodwork to claim their piece of the virtual pie.
However, most fail, because they do not take the steps necessary to achieve sufficient search engine optimization.
By following a few simple steps, anyone with the drive can achieve success in getting more attention on the web, through being found on the first page of Google.
1. Hire a Local Celebrity
So, this idea is a little out of the box, and probably not what you were expecting. Large companies have the capacity and capital to hire celebrities to endorse their products and services.
Unfortunately, new start-ups likely don’t have that capability. However, a great way to gain SEO success is to contact a local celebrity such as a news anchor to endorse you.
They bring with them a large local fan-base that can provide you with numerous hits to your site that will alert the search engines.
2. Keyword Identification
When writing content for your website, you cannot just write whatever comes to mind, especially in the title, which is the first thing Google looks at.
Most of your hits will come from people searching for your product or service on search engines, and they will type in specific words or phrases.
It takes time, but you must research the key words and phrases being used. You can do this on your own using free tools from sites like Google or hire a professional.
It is important that you pick higher traffic keywords that also aren’t too competitive. Keyword analysis is an art that takes time, but you need to do it.
3. Keywords in Titles
Once you have identified your keywords, it is important to place them naturally within your text.
If you are able to do so in context, place them as headers for new paragraphs using html headline formatting. These phrases are important, but be sure not to stuff too many keywords in, you don’t want more than 2-3% keyword density.
4. Teamwork
There are probably sites already offering your product or service. Rather than viewing them as competition, contact them and get them to link to your site.
They already have traffic, and their viewers may look to you for more information. Offering incentives such as a free sample to the website owner is a great way to make this happen.
5. Keep it Fresh
Search engines look for sites that frequently update their material. It is crucial to add fresh material using keywords frequently.
Adding a blog to your page is an easy and efficient way to keep on top of having a steady flow of new content.
Conclusion
Online success is very possible, but the entrepreneur must be prepared to dedicate time and patience toward the project.
With regular updates, lots of research, and networking, you will be on your way toward acquiring the traffic you need.
About The Author
Rianne Hunter is a mother of three from Southern California. She is an aspiring author, part time marketer interested in local search engine optimization and loves spending time being active with her family.
Guest post by Timothy Torrents
If you have been searching for information on how to make money online than you have undoubtedly stumbled on several articles where the author recommends submitting articles to article directories for back links and traffic.
However, due to recent search engine algorithm changes, and other factors, submitting articles to directories for back links and traffic is no longer a viable technique.
Outdated Information Continues to Circulate on The Internet
Several years ago submitting articles to article directories such as Ezine Articles and HubPages was indeed a great way to build strong back links and attract additional traffic.
However, if you submit articles to most article directories today the back link that you will create will be low quality and click-through rate will be practically non-existent.
So why do people continue to advertise this technique? Because articles and other products that recommend this technique are simply outdated.
But, people keep buying these products, and trying this technique, only to find out that it does not work, or not as well as it used to.
It is important that you remember that not all the information that you read online is relevant today. Some website admins do their best to update their products and articles when the information is no longer relevant but most website admins forget.
Editing hundreds of old articles can be incredibly time consuming. But if you own a website that is dedicated to helping people earn money online, I highly recommend that you at least try to keep the information as up-to-date as possible. Don’t keep spreading outdated techniques.
Are Article Directories Totally Useless?
No. Submitting articles to article directories can be quite beneficial to your online campaign. In order to understand how you can benefit from article directories you should first know how article directories are designed to work.
Article directories are designed to provide people with free articles on a wide variety of topics. Once you submit the article to the directory it becomes public property and people can copy it and share it as they please.
Most people, thanks to the outdated information floating around, believe that the articles found in the directory belong to the website and cannot be copied.
The truth is that a lot of people use article directories to find articles that they can publish on their website. Everyone needs website content. It is not entirely necessary to publish original content on your website.
The act of copying the content of an article from one website and publishing it elsewhere is called content syndication.
If you learn how to advertise your articles for content syndication your content could spread like wild-fire. That is how you can benefit from submitting articles to article directories.
Content Syndication Tips
Forget about building back links and increasing your traffic with article directories. Focus on submitting articles that people will want to publish on their websites.
In order to do this you will need to custom write articles specifically for people who have websites in certain niches. Conduct some research to find out what niches are popular and then write some articles for each niche.
If you publish a lot of well-written and informative articles for a certain niche people in that niche will want to syndicate your articles and future articles.
When someone syndicated your content the link that you included in your article will be published which will create a back link and more traffic.
I know, I stated that article directories are not useful for building back links and traffic. That is still true. You won’t be receiving traffic from article directories.
You will be receiving traffic from your content syndication partners who found your articles THROUGH article directories.
Closing Thoughts
I highly recommend establishing yourself as an authority in one niche. The niche should also be related to the niche of your website.
Don’t forget to build a list of article syndication partners that are in similar niches. Remember, it is perfectly acceptable to publish your article on your website before you submit to an article directory.
I hope this article helped clear up some confusion on how to use article directories. They can still be of some benefit to rankings, but it is better to seek links from relevant sites in your niche with good authority.
About The Author
Timothy Torrents is a Canadian internet marketer and freelance writer who can be found in coffee shops in Taiwan. He has written articles on topics ranging from fashion advice to internet marketing tutorials. For more information check out his website.
