Tag Archives: Social Media Marketing

How to use hashtags as content marketing tools

Why use hashtags as content marketing tools?

More and more people are relying on social networking websites to find valuable, useful and relevant content. Random searches can be tiresome so people who are really interested in a topic follow hashtags (also called trending topics). They can either create streams based on a hashtag based on their favourite social networking tool (something like Hootsuite) or they can simply click the popular hashtag to view all the updates in the stream. For instance, if you want to know what all people are saying about content marketing today on Twitter, you can check out the hashtag #contentmarketing. So if you want to say something that you can somehow relate with this hashtag append it at the end of your message and post it on Twitter. All the people following this hashtag will be able to view this message. A problem with popular trending topics is that the message may not stay in front of your viewers because they scroll very fast – sometimes thousands of people are posting every second.

Do you want to use the trending topics as content marketing tools?

This is how it works…

Find out what’s trending and think of how you could use these trending topics for your content marketing requirements. Doesn’t matter if some popular trend is being promoted by a company, a sports club, an NGO or a political party. If it is in the public domain and if you can creatively incorporate it into your content marketing effort, you should go ahead and do so.

But make sure you don’t end up irritating people. I don’t believe that bad publicity is better than no publicity – in the business world it doesn’t work that way. You ruin your reputation as a business and it takes lots of time to undo the damage.

How to find hashtags that you can use as content marketing tools?

The first spot is of course the Twitter website itself if you want to use some Twitter hashtag. In fact most of the prominent hashtags are displayed on their respective websites. On Twitter you can find them on the left-hand side. You can see international hashtags as well as the ones specific to your country or region.

You can also create a list of hashtags that would be relevant to your business or your target audience and then routinely post updates and content links accordingly.

After content marketing, definitely focus on networking

Things you can do to reduce your dependence on search engines

Please keep in mind that the steps listed below are not something that you can achieve in a few days or even in a few weeks. Formulate a strategy for at least a year. The key is not how much you do, it is how persistently you do. You can assign different tasks to different days of the week and then stick to that routine. Once you have formulated a routine, don’t think much unless “thinking” is really crucial to what you intend to achieve. Excessive thinking leads to procrastination and indecision. Just keep on working.

Spread your presence evenly. Routinely write for other websites and blogs. This is not just good for your search engine rankings it will also boost your direct traffic and help you come in touch with more and more people.
Build your mailing list. This is something I have been planning to do for a very long time but haven’t gotten to it. This is VERY important. A major source of your business can come from your mailing list. A mailing list is not just useful for learning email marketing campaigns; it also helps you keep in touch with your prospective clients.
Interact on other online forums. Join related forums. Leave comments on blogs. Participate in discussions on places like Quora.
Be more active on social media. This doesn’t require much explanation. Be regular on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – basically wherever your target audience spends its social media time.
Keep in touch with your clients. Whether you’re working with them right now or not, always keep the channel of communication flowing. If they have previously worked with you and if they were happy with your work, sooner or later they are going to require more work. There are many businesses who generate almost 40% of their revenue off their existing clients and customers.

Creating content for Twitter and Facebook

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Creating content for Twitter and Facebook is all about targeting and engagement (I know, clichéd expressions, but they are relevant). Remember that people interested in Twitter and Facebook marketing aren’t interested in the billions of members, they are interested in vertical niches, even if it means interacting with merely 100 individuals.

You need to create content in such a manner that it creates a platform for your target audience/customers/clients to interact with you. You become easily reachable to them. The content must be generated according to people who will likely follow you on Twitter and Facebook. And they shouldn’t just follow you, they should also respond to your content and share it, among their own friends and followers.

Even among Twitter and Facebook, the formats are quite different. You post content on Twitter mostly

To forward relevant news and updates about your business, about your product or service, or about any event affecting your customers and clients
To share interesting information on your own website/blog or from somewhere else
To share interesting thoughts and anecdotes
To interact with people who want to interact with you or with whom you want to interact
To post answers to queries made by your customers and clients regarding your products and services
To carry out awareness and PR campaigns

Facebook on the other hand is more informal and flexible simply because you can post more than 140 characters (a limitation in Twitter). Compared to Twitter, it is easier to post videos, images and links on Facebook, although you can easily share links to videos and images on Twitter too. Before deciding on what sort of content you want to produce, you have to figure out where your audience hangs out; is it Facebook, Twitter or both? If it isn’t both, you shouldn’t waste your time creating content for both.

For Twitter, as already mentioned above, you create content to share information, internal and external links, reply to questions from customers and other people and to create general awareness. Visibility is very crucial on Twitter. People’s timelines are extremely fast and within a couple of minutes your updates are going to scroll down out of their sight. It doesn’t mean that you constantly post, but be as regular as you can. On Twitter, you are known by the tweets you post. So be very careful what causes you associate with and what ideas you promote. Your messages become your brand on Twitter, no matter what your profile says. Twitter is also used for curating… more on that later on.

Facebook is being used by many individuals and companies as a full-fledged content publishing platform. People are posting long updates in the blog format and they seem to be working quite well. Facebook is more transparent in the sense that people can immediately see which users are responding to your content in various manners (replying, commenting, sharing and liking). You can also create your company’s Facebook fan page and initiate a dialogue with your customers and clients through it. Most of the mainstream companies these days have a vibrant Facebook fan page (it is another matter how they manage it).

No matter what platform you choose, the basic idea of having a Twitter or Facebook profile is to facilitate real-time two-way communication between you and your audience. It is well and good that people should appreciate your content over there and your content should go viral and lots of people should share it. But all this means is, you get more people to talk to and exchange ideas with. That’s the fundamental purpose of creating content for Twitter and Facebook: expanding your circle of influence.

Managing Your Social Network: Dos and Don’ts

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This is a guest post from Carrie Oakley.

Social profiles are more the norm than the anomaly today; most people have more than one because they don’t want to miss out on anything happening in social media. However, not everyone who’s online knows how to maximize the use of their social profiles and minimize the damage that they can cause; they sign up and start doing what everyone else is doing without realizing that information that goes online stays online for eternity and renders your life an open book and your privacy a thing of the past. There are no written rules or laws to use social networks, except of course that you don’t abuse or spam other people (you risk getting your account blocked). However, in order to protect yourself and prevent strangers from gaining access to your information, here are a few dos and don’ts to manage your personal social networks.

Do’s

Protect your profile adequately; this means you need to separate your friends into groups – family, close friends, and just acquaintances. Allow each group different levels of access; for example, your close friends can see all of your profile; your family is allowed access to your photographs and personal contact information; your acquaintances can see only relevant updates and information; and those not on your list of friends cannot see anything beyond your name and sex. Facebook has many privacy settings that you can use to protect your data from being used against you, so utilize them effectively.
Keep monitoring updates from Facebook – there have been times when your privacy settings have reverted back to the “default” settings that Facebook deemed appropriate enough. Most options were opt-out instead of opt-in; so check your privacy settings every now and then to ensure that people can see only what you want them to see.
Delete friends who are abusive and intrusive – you don’t have to inform them, and they will not know until they explicitly try to write on your wall or see your profile.
Report as spam anyone who harasses you or forces you to friend them.

Don’ts

Accept friend requests from people you don’t know – even if they’re friends of your friends, it’s not wise to put them on your list unless you know them personally.
Do not Put up photos that are not appropriate for public viewing; they could come back to bite your butt if potential employers use them to discriminate against you in a job interview.
Don’t say anything you don’t want the world to know – status updates and comments on your friends’ updates are public and could come back to haunt you if you’re not careful.
Send out friend requests to all and sundry; ask politely, and if people ignore your request, don’t keep asking again and again.
Intrude into the lives of people you hardly know; they may have accepted your friend request just to be polite, but if you see that they’ve blocked you from seeing their wall and photos, leave quietly instead of calling them out on it.
Waste time playing games and checking out new applications all day – social networks could get addictive, so restrict the time you spend on them to an hour or less every day.
Use social networks to spy on your spouse or significant other; in fact, it’s not wise to friend them in the first place – you may be married, but they deserve their space just as you do. If you get too snoopy and start questioning their every post or comment, your relationship could be in danger.

Social networks are supposed to make our relationships stronger and easier, not destroy them through nosiness and jealousy; bear this in mind when you sign on to use one.

The connection between content, strategy and social media

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These days having targeted content alone doesn’t help you much. You have to approach it from different directions. There was a time when you could attract targeted traffic by simply having good content on your website or blog. Now you need a strategy and while formulating the strategy you have to keep in mind how you want yourself represented on social media and networking websites.

Combine content and strategy and they give you good search engine traffic and add social media and the combination gives you fruitful engagement with your prospective customers and clients. As mentioned in my earlier post the days of one-directional marketing are over. Now you have to engage people in conversations. It is no use having conversations just like any other person because then you become just like any other person. You need to become an authority figure. People should be able to trust you and trust your judgment. You become an authority figure by continuously sharing your knowledge and wisdom with your friends and followers and visitors. You can do this on your blog and through your social media and networking profiles/pages. When you give unconditionally people trust you. This trust is your capital.

So when you are creating your content strategy you also need to simultaneously create your social media strategy because they are interrelated. By the strength of your content you can build your social media presence and through a credible social media presence you can engage your prospective customers and clients and once you are able to engage them positively they do business with you more eagerly and they have no problem recommending your business to their friends, family and colleagues.

Developing a content strategy

In order to develop a content strategy you must realize what you want to achieve through your content. Identify your audience and identify what that audience is actually looking for. You don’t have to provide exactly that but initially you need the traction so be tactful. You have to be attractive enough to your core audience. As a ground work you must

Identify your core audience
Develop a dos and don’ts policy for publishing content
Create a list of your primary, secondary and ancillary keywords
Decide whether you want longer or shorter articles/blog posts/web pages
Decide whether you will be generating content in-house or by outsourcing
Develop metrics to continuously analyze the effectiveness of your content
Develop long-term evaluation policies

A well-defined content strategy helps you focus better and consolidate your content publishing effort. Since you will be investing money and effort into producing content you have to be particular about exactly what sort of content you want on your website or blog. A list of dos and don’ts helps you keep distractions at bay. Keywords will help you increase your search engine rankings, although you should put more stress on the relevancy of your content rather than the keywords but they definitely help you create more targeted content.

The choice of longer and shorter articles may also affect how well your content performs. You will need to decide whether your audience wants longer web pages or shorter. Here is a nice analysis of the benefits of long and short articles by usability expert Jakob Nielsen. It is an old article but it is still relevant.

Routine analysis keeps you on the right path. Before launching your content strategy you must clearly define where you currently are and where you want to go. Analysis helps you gauge whether you are moving towards your destination or not and you can then make changes accordingly.

Content strategy and social media

People are constantly curating content on social media and networking websites and then talking about that. They find an interesting link, post it on their profile and then their friends and followers comment on it. Their friends and followers may also share the posted content with their own friends and followers and this is how your content may go viral. The more relevant and useful your content is the better exposure it gets on social media and networking websites.

But it is more than that. It is not simply about posting your content. Your content gives you an authoritative presence but you have to strike up conversations with people. Seek feedback and provide answers. Express doubts and show disagreement wherever necessary. The underlying idea is keep the conversation going by seeding new thoughts. This is where your content helps. If you just seed thoughts without backing them with authoritative text people soon begin to lose interest. They need something to read and ponder upon.

Your content begins to make an impact when it encourages people to have conversations. When it stimulates it creates impressions. When they also begin to find your content on search engines the bonding strengthens.

Stay tuned, I will write more on this.