The Zen of Social Media Marketing By Shama Kabani
Who is this book for?
This book is for anyone who is new to social media and for those who want a quick refresher. It is a great introduction to social media marketing, providing what you need to know to be successful. The book provides a good outline of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. All the information you need to navigate social media sites and leverage their tools for up-to-date marketing. The end-goal: to drive users/followers to your website and consume your product and/or content.
Section outline and nuggets
Your Website
- Need to have a brand to market before you can expect people to follow you or visit website
- Your website is your office/store front
- Make it easy to find
- 50 milliseconds is what it takes for someone to decide if they like/trust your website
- Halo effect: if your website looks good people will think you do good work
- Maintain website by keeping information up to date
- Offer samples (need seven hits before a person can identify brand)
- Make it easy to share content and connect to social media sites
Your Blog
- Your blog is the hub of your social media strategy
- Good for getting hits on search engines
- Feed reader (RSS feeds)
- Let people subscribe to your blog (send email with blog when updated)
- Blog two times per week, minimum 500 words
- Link other blog posts in new posts
SEO (search engine optimization)
- Identify key words (add-words Google)
- Google webmaster central
- Sitemap .xml
- Google analytics
- Create 404 page
- 301 redirect
- URL naming
- Naming images
- Titles less than 63 characters long
- Meta description for each page <160 characters
- Heading tags (H1 tags most important)
- Search engines pay attention to bold and italic words
Link building (linking from other sites back to your site)
- Seek links that are relevant to your topic (dmoz.org)
- Stay away from link farms
- Add sharing options on website so users can share your website and blogs
- Link like websites and they may link back
- PRweb.com
- Credible websites
Social media marketing
- A lot of methods. Choose one or two, don’t try to do it all
- More than just traffic to your website
- Use your real name
What you need before you start Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- An understanding of your brand
- A website that educates and provides products
- Blog with fresh content
- Think as user first and marketer second
- Make yourself part of the identity the user is trying to project
- Businesses cannot create profiles
- Create a fan page (all fan pages are public, good for search engines)
- Status updates: share only what matches your brand
Start conversations to build relationships
- Facebook marketing
- Can transition profile to fan page on facebook website without outside app
- Best time to post is on weekends and off peak hours
- Ask users to like and comment on posts
- Post as many times as you like per day
- Post pictures and videos (not just text)
- Post quotes, questions about opinion and holiday plans
- Campaigns and contests
- Facebook events (even online events or contests)
o Catchy title and clear/thorough description
o Message attendees
o Bring friends
- Facebook apps
- Facebook ads can target only certain groups of people
- Facebook opengraph https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph
- Comment on other pages using company page
- Drive outward to website and other media
- Socialsafe just in case something happens to your Facebook page
- Tweet at people (tweet replies too)
- Keep track of industry #, event #, and popular #
- User names: the shorter the better
- Keep things short and concise
- Tell story behind the brand – use twitter to drive followers to blog
- Twisdom (twitter wisdom) article by Tom Morris http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-morris/twisdom-twitter-wisdom_b_281098.html
- Tweet only useful information, tweet at people, retweet
- Invite people to follow you on website or other sites https://dev.twitter.com/web/follow-button
- Follow two new people a day (but don’t be afraid to unfollow people if they do not offer anything for you – not bad manners if you unfollow)
- Use https://bitly.com/shorten/ to shorten links and to see how many people clicked on the link. See what attracts people to your page and do more of that :)
- Numbers matter. The more followers the better.
- Autofollow – don’t do it for spam reasons. Same with auto direct messaging.
- Post links to your blog
- Influence marketing http://blog.wishpond.com/post/65439932376/influence-marketing-how-to-find-your-industry
- Wefollow.com localtweet.com twitter lists
- Twuffer.com and others allow you to schedule tweets
- Many good twitter management sites
- Follow bloggers, they may blog about you
- It may seem obvious, but use a good photo
- Use technical and layman terms in profile for better search results
- Answer questions – build your credibility. If you get best answer, turn it into a blog post
- Join groups (can message non-linked members in group without having to upgrade)
- Make profile public so search engines can pick up your profile
Google+
- Turn on search visibility by clicking on help others find my search results at bottom of the page. This will help people find your profile and let Google index your profile page.
- Optimize links on the right side of your profile by using specific SEO key words
- Google circles
- Pages for businesses and brands
o Directly linked to Google search
o Link website to business page
o Business Google+ page
- +1 posts
- Photozoom (chrome extension)
- -1 (chrome extension)
Social Advertising (group buying sites)
- They buyers economy
- Deep discount and limited quantity (Living Social and Groupon)
- Tipping the scale & referring friends
o Exposure
o Finding new customers
o Great advertising even if deal does not go through
o Get them in the door
- Flexible
- Negotiate price and redirect customers back to your landing page
- Ask for email on landing page
Facebook Advertising
- Can target audience
- Facebook is not google. People on facebook are not looking for products, they are looking to connect with friends and family. Not a shopping platform.
- Make sure you understand your customer to get biggest bang for your buck
- Less about you, more about them
- Pay per click
- Pay per 1000 impression (usually ends up costing more in the long run)
- CTR
Video
- If you make a video make sure you have a good microphone (lapel mic) this is improve audio tremendously
- Standard vs. HD – your choice, need a more powerful computer for HD
- Editing – Sony Vegas (PC) or Apple Final Cut (Mac)
- Screen recording software to record computer screen
o Camtasia by techmith (PC)
o screenflow telestream (Mac)
- Start losing viewers at 10 seconds. Has to captivate attention.
- No more than two minute videos
- Moving and changing to keep attention (camera angle) – technology induced ADD
- Transparency (being real in your video)
o Video is social, not “TV commercial”
o Genuine and approachable
- Videos are indexed by the website - not the video itself
- Metadata is important for search engines – use key words
- Video podcasting
Closing hints and social media content
- Social Media Policy
o Rules and policy/suggested guidelines for your employees
- Social Bookmarking
o Delicious.com
o Stumbleupon.com
o Digg.com
- Social media metrics
Case studies and strategy (final section of book)
- Real world best practices
