Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

Content writing rules to convert your social media followers into customers

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Whether you run a small local business or a big international company – you need to grow your social media presence. You should use social media platforms to connect with your customers, raise brand awareness, and boost your leads and sales.

In this article, we will consider seven simple rules on how to convert your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter followers into loyal customers. Follow these rules, and you will achieve all the marketing goals you have set.

Know your audience

Let’s start with the basics. If you want to write a remarkable social media post, you should analyze your audience first. You should conduct a little research to understand who exactly will read your texts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

It is worth mentioning that there is a difference between the audiences on your blog, your website, and social media. Not all people who read your blog posts follow you on Facebook, and vice versa. So even if you have a clear understanding of who your general target audience is, you still need to analyze your social media audience.

Avoid sales clichés

Don’t use sales clichés when writing captions for social media posts. The phrases like “save your time and money” and “hurry up to place your order” do not work on Facebook and Instagram. If you want to turn your followers into customers, you should make sure that your social media posts do not sound like an ad copy.

Try to understand one important thing. If you want to achieve great results, you should focus on the process of content production, not on advertising. Create a good social media post – and it will bring you more customers than any paid ad can do.

Personalize your message

If you want to move leads down the sales funnel, you should personalize your social media posts. You should use the words “you” and “your” where possible and discuss the issues that worry or interest your audience the most. Make your followers feel like you have written the post personally for him – and you will win his loyalty.

Photo by Kerde Severin from Pexels

Provide a value

If you have a goal to convert social media followers into brand advocates, you should create content that adds value to your target audience. To achieve success in the long run, you should focus on the needs of your customers rather on your products. In other words, you should provide your target audience with unique, valuable content first, and advertise your products second.

Let’s imagine that your company sells bakery accessories.

If you want to boost sales, you shouldn’t write a post that explains why your baking pans are better than items offered by your competitors. You should share a quick, step-by-step recipe of the delicious sponge cake instead. If you get your followers interested in trying out the recipe, they will visit your website and buy the necessary accessories.

Proofread your texts

Some content creators believe that social media users do not care about the correctness of grammar and that proofreading is not important. But in fact, bad grammar has a negative effect on social media promotion. Mistakes and typos in Tweets and posts distract users from the core message and make people doubt the trustworthiness of content in general.

Fortunately, today, you can proofread your social media posts fast and easily without spending a fortune. You can use affordable online grammar checkers. Or, in case if money is no problem for your company, you can hire a freelance proofreader.

Keep it simple

When writing for social media platforms, you should strive for simplicity. You should avoid using sophisticated words and rarely-use idioms. And you should keep your sentences short and concise.

Why it’s so important to keep social media posts simple? Firstly, people use Facebook and Instagram to entertain themselves, and they are not interested in reading long, complex texts.

Secondly, you should understand that your social media content attracts not only English native speakers but also users who speak other languages. And if you want to make your content accessible for overseas customers, you should simplify your writing to facilitate the translation process.

Be honest with your followers

If you want to improve customer trust and loyalty, you should be honest and sincere with your followers. You should share your business insights, brand story, and information related to your products on social media.

You can be sure that your audience will appreciate your openness a lot. Your customers will reward you with increased loyalty and high sales.

Bottom line

Do you struggle to get more clients and increase sales? Follow the content writing rules that are given in this article. Craft social media posts that speak to your target audience, and you achieve results you expect.

Sentiment analysis: Happy customers, better content marketing, better SEO

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Sentiment analysis, content marketing and SEO

Content marketing and SEO are not just intertwined, they are also constantly evolving as companies like Google constantly try to figure out how to churn out the best possible results.

Algorithms today can analyze billions of messages in the form of text, images and videos on the Internet and tell you the exact sentiment people have about your business, about you, about your political party, and pretty much anything people feel sentimental about.

This is advanced technology and not everyone can have it. But, as a business, you can develop a content marketing strategy that can help you create content that depicts positive sentiment.

This blog post on Skyword explains in detail what sentiment analysis means and how it is changing SEO, and improving user experience. The post says that MIT has developed an algorithm that can even interpret sarcasm through the emojis people have used in their social media updates while talking about brands.

According to this Search Engine Journal report, Bing has already started using Sentiment Analysis to influence search results, and Google is contemplating it.

In fact, Google, to an extent, has already been using this technology, or something similar, to show you Featured Snippets.

Example of Google featured snippet

Here are two blog posts that I wrote about Google’s featured snippets:

To show Featured Snippets, the Google algorithm tries to find the intent of the search and then goes through the links it has crawled and finds out the portions that exactly answer the question being asked in the query. It interprets the sentiment.

The problem with the current version of such snippets is that they tend to provide just one perspective.

For example, in the above Search Engine Journal blog post, the author takes the example of “are reptiles good pets?”

Same intent but different Google query results

It was noted that Google showed a different snippet for “are reptiles bad pets?” whereas, search engine experts like Danny Sullivan feel that the answer should be the same because the question is more or less the same – you want to know whether reptiles are good pets or bad pets.

Microsoft Bing, instead of shuffling between different snippets, has started showing two perspectives side-by-side. Here is a screenshot from their blog post on the same topic:

Sentiment analysis used by Microsoft Bing

What exactly is sentiment analysis, especially in terms of content marketing and SEO?

It means using online tools to analyze various pieces of writing (not necessarily on your blog or website) to gauge what sort of sentiments people have about your business.

A special thing about sentiment analysis is that it is not just the black and white of “you are good” and “you are bad”. Though, “good” and “bad” are also very strong sentiments, there are many subtle emotional tones that people use to talk about your business and the subtle differences can make a big difference on whether people decide to do business with you or not. Take for example:

“Yes, a great piece of writing, indeed!”

“Do you really think it is a great piece of writing?”

“This piece of writing could have been better.”

“I have certainly seen better examples of writing.”

“Your writing is good, but anyway I’m going to go with another content writer.”

Now, as a human, if you go through these lines, you can interpret them as positive, negative, comparative and even cynical (the first one).

Suppose, I have been gathering all the feedback from my content writing clients and storing it somewhere over the years. A good sentiment analysis tool can tell me what the overall experience of my clients with my content writing service has been. Of course, more data there is, better are the results.

The above-mentioned data can be gathered from multiple sources, not necessarily from the emails that you get from your customers or clients. You can get the data from your comments section, from reviews section, and even the chat transcripts that you might have been saving.

If you want to widen the net, you can use hashtags, trends, keyword strings and your brand name to collect data from all over the Internet and then run it through your sentiment analysis software.

Sentiment analysis isn’t just done to know what people think about your business, it can also be done to know what people think about a particular aspect of life or doing work or having a vacation and then accordingly you can make changes to your business.

So, how does sentiment analysis have an impact on content marketing and SEO?

As a business you can use specialized sentiment analysis tools to monitor conversations on the Internet and social media and then tailor your content to serve your customers and clients better.

As mentioned above, Bing is already using sentiment analysis to decide what results to show for your search queries, and Google is in the process of doing so.

For big brands, the search engines may analyze the conversations people have about these brands on various platforms and then rank their content accordingly.

Suppose, there is a greater number of people criticizing the latest version of the iPhone. So, instead of showing a blog post from Apple that lists great things about the latest version, the search engines may decide to rank another blog post highlighting the negative things about the phone better than Apple’s blog post.

Similarly, if people share your blog post on various platforms with “positive sentiment” its search engine rankings may improve, compared to a greater number of people sharing another blog post on similar topic from another blog, but with “negative sentiment”.

So, as a small business, how can you improve your content and your content marketing by observing sentiment analysis, and consequently, improve your SEO?

Age-old wisdom comes into picture: create and publish relevant content. It all boils down to that.

Why?

What is positive sentiment anyway? You get positive sentiment in the form of endorsements from people who read your content, who watch it, use it to better their lives or the way they do their business or make purchasing decisions.

How do they endorse good content? They link to it and surround it with positive expressions (a great example, great insight, well said, what a piece of writing, nice tips, and so on).

When your content is posted on social networking websites people comment on it, like it, share it and carry out other activities that prove that they appreciate your content.

Sentiment analysis and SEO

Although Google hasn’t completely adopted sentiment analysis, the search engine has been using “search intent” to show featured snippets.

There is another technology that is called RankBrain that observes user behavior when people find your content on search results. If search engine users find your content on Google, go to your page or blog post, spend a few seconds over there, come back to Google and carry on the same search, it tells Google that the user didn’t find what he or she was looking for and hence, your content doesn’t solve the purpose of being ranked for the search term it is currently being ranked for. Your content loses its ranking.

How to write content for Google RankBrain

Alternatively, suppose currently a link doesn’t rank well but a user finds it on second or third page, goes there, spends some time and then no longer carries the same search back on Google, Google thinks that your content has solved the purpose of being ranked for the search term. Your content gains its ranking.

This is also a form of sentiment analysis because Google observes how people react to individual search results and then this has an impact on your search engine rankings.

Concluding remarks on sentiment analysis

The success of your content marketing depends a lot on your ability to understand what your audience needs and then providing it.

This very much takes care of positive sentiment about your content in general, and your brand in particular. If people like your content, there is a great chance that they are also going to like your brand, although, if they don’t like your product or service, it doesn’t really matter how great your content is. Ultimately, it is the business experience that matters, especially when you intend to promote a business through content marketing.

People generate and share content everywhere these days. You are not directly in control of the content generated by the others. You are only in control of the content generated and published by your business.

So, how do you control content generated by your prospective and current customers and clients?

By not giving them a reason to write content with negative sentiments. Provide them exceptional quality products and services then follow with great service.

It’s been observed that people leave negative feedback more easily than positive feedback. If someone has a lousy experience with your business there is a greater chance of him or her venting it out than someone having a good experience and going to the extra length of putting in some good words about your business.

Hence, publish high-quality content and then follow it up with a great business proposition. You will maintain a positive sentiment around your business.

More than 140 characters on Twitter; how is it going to impact content marketing?

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Content marketing on Twitter with more than 140 characters

Most people I have come across (especially on Twitter) flinch at the thought of people being able to write more than 140 characters on Twitter. In fact, many believe that a big reason why Twitter succeeds is because of its 140-character-limit. If people are allowed to type more than 140 characters, they declare, Twitter will become just another spam-filled platform where long streams of text will clog the timelines and most of this text will make no sense.

The inherent strength of Twitter is of course it’s short messages. The entire format has evolved around this state of brevity. Even in terms of usability, it is easier to quickly scroll through shorter spurts of text rather than long paragraphs. Yes, images and videos are there that often occupy lots of space, but you can disable them in almost every Twitter app that you use on your mobile phone or tablet.

Twitter would like more long form content published on its website just like Facebook and LinkedIn, according to this Re/Code update. The company is working on building a “product” that will allow people to use the social networking website to post more than 140 characters or long form text. It isn’t very clear whether it will be the users of the “product” who will be able to post long form content while the remaining Twitter users go on using 140 characters, or the facility will be available to everybody.

Longer content means people spending more time on the website and more time on the website means greater ad revenue, or at least this is how the conventional logic goes. Up till now, as you know, long form content is published elsewhere – your own website or your own blog, Medium, WordPress.com, Tumblr and even Facebook these days – and the URL with a small textual description is published on Twitter. So basically Twitter is constantly sending traffic away because the whole purpose of publishing your URL on Twitter is to send people to that URL and consequently, leave Twitter. People are not staying on Twitter longer unless they are engaging in some ongoing conversation. If they come across blog posts and articles on Twitter itself, they won’t have to leave the website.

What does an ability to post more than 140 characters on Twitter mean to content marketing?

In simple terms, there will be another platform at your disposal where you can publish content to promote your business. The true purpose of content marketing is to help people while letting people know from where the help is coming. Marketing messages don’t sell. Relevant, useful content does. So the same philosophy will apply on Twitter when you decide to use its ability to publish long form content for content marketing.

But isn’t it a big hassle to post content on different networks? You might already be publishing long form content on LinkedIn, Facebook and Medium? Of course, then there is also your own blog. After all how much content can you publish?

Personally, I wouldn’t suggest my clients to go for all platforms. For B2B marketing, yes, LinkedIn is important and it is worthwhile to invest in content marketing over there and publishing long form articles and blog posts specifically written for LinkedIn. But for Twitter? I’m not very sure. You may call me a power Twitter user but I mostly use it for political, social and cultural interactions, not for business purpose. For business purpose I use my own blog as well as LinkedIn and I believe the same applies to most of my clients.

Not much data is available regarding how much business Twitter exclusively generates for advertisers and marketers.

Also, I’m not saying that for content marketing you can totally disregard Twitter’s ability to publish long form content. It is hard to predict how everything will evolve. But as of now, even if you decide to post longer blog posts and articles exclusively on Twitter, keep in mind that the audience is used to quickly browsing through shorter updates. The sort of attention people pay to tweets might be totally different from the sort of attention they pay to posts on LinkedIn or even Facebook. So start experimenting with first, one paragraph, then a couple of paragraphs and then maybe a few more paragraphs.

I often suggest my clients to publish long form content on their own website and on LinkedIn and then use their other social media profiles to promote that content. You may do the same with Twitter.

It also depends on your audience. For example if you are an author promoting your books then Facebook would be a better platform and you can start building content over there along with on your own website. If you write business-related books then LinkedIn would be a better platform for you and you should focus on creating long form content on LinkedIn. If your experience of having interactions on Twitter tells you that you are going to get good response by publishing long form blog posts and articles on Twitter, then sure, go ahead.

5 ways to make your content social media friendly

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5 ways to make your content social media friendly

Do you often worry that your content is not being shared on social media and social networking websites?

Aren’t people paying attention to your content or they are not motivated to share it on their social media timelines?

If this is the problem, are you publishing social media friendly content?

What exactly do we mean by “social media friendly” content?

Although it is very important that people abundant share your content on social media, before going ahead with sharing my other thoughts with you, I would like to stress that don’t overtly worry about the social media. Write and publish useful content and make it easy for people to share it and the rest automatically.

There was a time when people knew of Internet by email.

Many people thought that if you were checking email, you were “Interneting”.

Yes, they were familiar with the concept of websites, but it was mostly email.

The same happens with social media these days.

It is so prevalent that many people, people who haven’t used the Internet much before, think that it’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that are Internet rather than millions of websites.

In rural India, shopkeepers selling Mobile Sim cards or people running mobile repair shops are charging Rs. 50 to install Facebook on mobile phones and many think that Facebook itself is the Internet. They access the web for the first time through Facebook.

This means that social media and social networking websites have grown into a totally separate entity and for the purpose of content marketing ignoring these websites is like ignoring the telephone or the email while trying to do business in the contemporary world.

Just as you need good search engine rankings to promote your content, you also need to optimize your content for social media and this is what you mean by making your content “social media friendly”.

Your content is social media friendly when

People feel like sharing it on their timelines (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn)
They don’t need to modify your headlines and descriptions in order to share your links
Sharing your content is just a matter of a couple of clicks

Why do these traits matter? Why do they make a big difference in the way people share your content on social media and social networking websites?

Most of the sharing on social media is instinctive. Sure, professionals like me take extra pains to share stuff even when it is unfriendly and difficult to share, but a normal user doesn’t take extra pains.

Hence, your content should be very easily shareable, preferably, just through a single or a couple of clicks or taps.

Previously I used to think that why bother with people who don’t want to make much effort to share your content, but then I realized that it is not about these individuals.

Even if they themselves are not interested enough to go to extra lengths, your content gets visibility and it may reach people who are more serious about what you have to say.

Why it is important for your content to get social media visibility?

Take for example Facebook. There are more than 2.45 billion monthly active users over there. On daily basis, 1.62 million people use Facebook actively. 7 in 10 US adults use Facebook (source). 89% marketers use Facebook for brand marketing (source).

LinkedIn has more than 575 million users and 260 million monthly active users (source).

On an average, people spend 3 hours on social media and social networking websites. 54% consumers use social media to research products before buying (source).

Many social networking companies, including Facebook, are taking measures that when people switch on their phones, they log into Facebook in the beginning itself so that whatever activities they carry out, they do them within the Facebook ecosystem.

I’m not saying I endorse such developments, but it shows that an increasing number of people might be doing most of their activities, including communication, newsgathering, product evaluation and buying and selling, within social networking ecosystems.

Advertising and PPC campaigns are always an option, but you can increase your reach by writing and publishing social media friendly content on a regular basis. Interactive posting of content, especially created by brands and businesses themselves, get more attention from social media users compared to advertisements.

For a very long time I have been thinking of dabbling with infographics.

I recently tried to work with a neighborhood graphic designer but although she is good at using image manipulation tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, she was terribly lacking on the creative side.

We were working on a project and I had to tell her practically everything.

The only blessing was that whatever I told her she was able to accomplish it.

Anyway, this is the infographic that I have created titled 5 ways to make your content social media friendly. It isn’t much but it’s definitely a beginning.

The five ways are:

Create compelling headlines: Your headlines are, as far as optimizing your content for social media goes, the most important aspects of your content.Compelling in this context means they should invoke strong feelings, so strong that people should be driven to share your content on their timelines.
Publish irresistible content: In my daughter’s social sciences book there is a headline that goes something like this, “one man’s garbage is another’s treasure”.It is about the garbage collectors who make money off the garbage we throw away so thoughtlessly.
So what is irresistible and what is not, depends on individual need, but catering to your niche, create content that is highly useful and valuable.

It should solve some purpose and this is why people will share your content.

When sharing your content people must feel that they are doing a service to their friends and followers.

Always think: why would people share what you’re writing?
Use social buttons: It’s easier to share content when you just have to click a button.I like the way you can share certain portions of blog posts and articles published on Medium.
The relevant, share-worthy portions have a Twitter icon nearby. You just need to click the icon to broadcast that particular sentence.
Use social optimization tags: These tags normally reside in the header area of your web page.In a typical web page there are already title, description and keywords tags.
You can also have dedicated tags for Facebook and Twitter to instruct various social media and social networking channels to automatically pick up customized headings and descriptions rather than using the default ones.

If you are using WordPress to manage your website or blog, you can easily get plug-ins to achieve this.
Choose publishing time carefully: You will need some time to figure out during what time of the day your target audience is most active on social media and social networking websites.Publish your content when there is greatest chance of it being noticed and shared.
Publish different content for different social media platforms: Content consumption on different platforms have different patterns.Content that is suitable for LinkedIn may not be suitable for Facebook and content that is suitable for Facebook may not be suitable for Twitter. Repeated testing will tell you which type of content in your industry performs better on which social media platform.