Social Media Question

[Draya]

So lets say you build your site and its up and running and you also have a blog that goes with it and such. How would you implement social media into your work? Like twitter and such, i know you wouldn't just use your personal twitter account or facebook account but what ways would you say to go as far as implementing social media into your business?

 

[Snide]

I have used the plugin retweet old posts but thats also because i have over 2k posts
otherwise there is plugins that will tweet your post as soon you publish them.

As for facebook, create a fanpage so people could get your updates in their timeline

 

[Laura61]

I have a fan page for each (well, most) of my affiliate sites. Usually I have a "like" button on my blog to help get more people engaging with my content. Then blog posts get posted to the fan page as well.

Twitter I don't use as heavily, but depending on the site I tweet relevant info about the niche. You can manage several Twitter profiles in a similar way to managing several FB pages.

 

[jcorkern]

Three must have social accounts that you absolutely must have.
1.Facebook fan page
2.Twitter account
3.Pinterest account

After each new post or page and even an update, you need to post to your facebook page, tweet it and pin an image or video.

You also need social buttons on your site, each page for Facebook, twitter, Pinterest and StumbleUpon. This is so the visitors can share, pin, like and so forth.

Use each account to support the other accounts, you have to learn to use them together. You can try contest, like a caption contest. Simply post an image and ask them to come up with a caption, the best one gets a prize. Giveaways are good also as a reward. If you are an affiliate, email the merchant and ask them for one of their whatever and tell them you want to give it away on your site or blog and social accounts. It's cheap public relations for them so they are likely to jump at the offer. No cost to you.

Host the giveaway on your blog, caption contest on facebook, and so forth. just think about it and you will be fine.

If you do something like this on your blog, make them like your facebook page or follow you on twitter to enter the giveaway.

You can get a coupon code from a merchant and make them like or follow to enter, same with pinterest. Make them pin an image and the one who gets the most repins wins. Just have some fun.

If you have an ecommerce site it's even easier. Have fun with it, your making friends and it will pay off huge.

 

[djbaxter]

3.Pinterest account

Really? I have an account because I saw one of my nephews using it. But honestly to me Pinterest just seems like a jumble of images from people I don't know - an overload of information presented in a clumsy way. I've yet to figure how to even use it personally let alone to exploit it for business or professional purposes.

I see lots of people apparently using it but I freely admit I do not understand why.

 

[jcorkern]

For some reason Google is putting a lot of weight into pinterest from my testing. It gives you URL links and uses LSI to rank on pinterest. They seem to use the image description and re-pins are stronger (much stronger) than just pins from my testing. When an image goes viral, it gives you a boatload of url links and helps keep your link profile at optimum.

I am like you, I really don't like the social, but I am seeing some strong evidence that social signals from these 3 places are becoming more and more important in Google's algo.

Shares on facebook, re-tweets on twitter and re-pins on pinterest.

 

[djbaxter]

Thanks. I guess I need to give Pinterest a second look.

It's also targeted advertising, I guess... much like Facebook.

 

[sillyme]

The premise of social media is "sharing", in fact it's the foundation all of it stands on. It is not Selling! Therefore, you have to see it the way it is, and call a spade a spade. It is not a place for you to put affiliate links, or spam the feeds with links to your website. Instead, it's a place to share value, and give your fans a chance to share it too.

There is two reasons you'd want to integrate social media components into your business strategy.

1) You want to get traffic

2) You want to share & build a fan base

Either way, you can NOT sell on facebook. It's not even about facebook's terms & conditions, but simply doesn't work. GM removed all of facebook ads because it just didn't bring about any conversions. It's pretty much the rule of thumb.

Instead, follow the steps below:

1) Create a facebook fan page - design a cover image (fiverr.com is a great place to find designers for $5) and fill out all the info.

2) Create a twitter account - (again you can customize the twitter background for $5 on fiverr

3) Open a pinterest account

4) Open a google plus business page(account)

These four are the most relevant, and it gets hard when you need to manage multiple account. There are tools of course who can automate all kinds of work.

5) Add the above icons to your blog + website

6) If your blog supports plugins, have it set with a plug in that auto posts your blog entries to your facebook, google, page, and also tweets it out.

Add to all posts that you invite people to share, and comment on facebook, google, etc.

Some other Ideas: Contests, specials, promotions, etc. (Just always make sure to check with the networks terms & conditions or you can get shut down and removed from their websites.

Hope this helps,

Marc -

BTW- I'm new here, and not sure what all the rules are, i'm still picking up the whole forum situation.

 

[jcorkern]

"Either way, you can NOT sell on facebook"

Most don't convert on facebook because it is mass marketing. Facebook is for relationship marketing and I convert with a host of different facebook fan pages that i own for my sites.

If you are running ads and hoping to convert, you will not because that is not the nature of social. Get them to become a fan, make friends, keep them engaged and when they are far enough into their buying cycle or in the correct situation and need your product or service, it will convert.

It is not like Google where someone is actively searching by keyword, but more like a news paper ad that happens to be there when the need arises or they have seen you each day or week in the paper and your branding effect kicks in.

Each marketing tool has their place, as facebook does. It is a great conversion tool if you know and understand the nature of it.

Your no 1 reason is traffic, so why would you want traffic if you stand no chance of converting?

Your no 2 is sharing, so why would you as a business want to share if there was no chance of gained business from it? Why would you waste your time trying to get them to share if there was nothing in it for the business? Why would someone take the time and the expense to build a social following if there is nothing in it for the business?

Social plays a major role in sales, customer service, branding, customer loyalty and much more from my experience, so to say you will not sell with social media in general is a very weak statement, and G.M. is not really a good example because they can't manage their business through regular advertising channels. Seems they are just too big to sell.

Writing a good page of content that you share on facebook is selling, or pre-selling, but still selling to say the least. So yes, you can sell on facebook...if you really want to.

 

[djbaxter]

Absolutely spot on. The real power of Facebook is that if you get one person to Like your page - product, service, or anything else - all of that person's Facebook friends will see that Like. It's like having word of mouth automated.

 

[FitGal]

I use Facebook. Pinterest and Twitter to interact with my readers. I let them know about specials, new posts etc. I do use a plug in on my websites that automatically updates Facebook - RSS Grafitti and I connect sites to make it easier.

I also have joined groups and interact with others to get the word out on what I am doing.

At the same time the amount of sites and things you can do, can be totally overwhelming - so I would say to pick just a couple and do them well. I have found I get better results focusing on a few select methods over being all over the place.

 

[pinnedurl]

I've found one of the keys to promoting your posts through your social network properties is to make sure all of your social network properties are "connected". For example, I like to post from my Wordpress blog and have it propagate through to twitter and Facebook. I've even posted all the way down through my networks from Pinterest->Facebook->Twitter->Google+->Blog for maximum visibility among my social networks. Since Google+ does not have an API... yet, one of the tricks I've found is to utilize a service called IFTTT ("IF This Then That") to connect to your Gmail and ultimately post to Google+. I guess the point I'm making is to gain maximum visibility with as little effort as possible to reach as many folks as possible.