How to Use Google+ to Expand Your Business Influence

Are you looking to tap into the power of Google+?

Is your business leveraging all that Google+ has to offer?

Have you created a personal profile or business page on Google+, but want more influence?

Why Google+?

According to GlobalWebIndex, Google+ now has 359 million active users, which puts it ahead of Twitter’s 200 million active users. With that jump in numbers, it’s clear that now is the time to use Google+ to promote your brand.

Here’s an updated guide on all of the things you need to take advantage of Google+ to gain more exposure for your content and your business.

#1: Claim Authorship With Your Personal Google+ Profile

Google uses Authorship to create a visual tie between you and the content you publish. The enhanced search result listings help readers identify your content at a glance and help you build authority and influence.

There are two ways you can claim your Google+ Authorship.

You can either register an email from the domain that you contribute to (you@socialmediaexaminer.com, for example) or you can link your content with your Google+ profile. If you contribute to multiple blogs, I suggest the latter.

Here’s how:

• First, in the author bio of each of your blog posts, include a link to your Google+ profile with a ?rel=author tag attached to the end of it. It should look like this: https://plus.google.com/118321989430962111396?rel=author
• Next, go to the Contributor to section on the About tab of your Google+ profile and add a link to your author page for each blog that you contribute to.

Add contributor links on Google+ personal profiles.

When you’ve claimed your Authorship, your Google+ profile photo will automatically show up next to each of your posts in search results.

An example of how content looks in search results with Google+ Authorship.

As an added bonus, you can look under the Labs section of Google Webmaster Tools to see analytics for all of the posts that are linked to you via Google+ Authorship, including posts that aren’t published on your own website. This is especially helpful for writers who contribute to multiple blogs.

Viewing analytics for all your Google+ Authorship-claimed posts in Google Webmaster Tools.

Google has hinted that they are working on a system to rank content based on the influence of the author and it’s presumable that one of the ways they will do this is through the use of Google+ Authorship.

Claiming your Google+ Authorship will enhance your visibility in search results, create more authority for your content and provide valuable insights into which content receives the most attention from readers.

#2: Make a Direct Connection Between Your Business Website and Your Google+ Page

The Google+ badge allows you to link your Google+ page to your website. Using the badge will help you increase your Google+ audience from your website and from within search results.

Install a Google+ badge on your website to let readers follow you on Google+ without leaving your site.


Social Media Examiner’s Google+ badge in the sidebar.

When you add the Google+ badge for pages to your site, an active Follow widget will show up next to your listing in search results.


Google+ page display in search results.

You can also use the Direct Connect option to link your Google+ page to your website without using the official Follow badge or button. This is simply one line of code that is added to the <em>head</em> element of your website. This code can be found further down on the Google+ badge page.

Much like Authorship for Google+ profiles, this piece of Direct Connect code will help establish your blog as a publisher by tying it to your Google+ page with a rel=“publisher” tag.



Direct Connect your Google+ page to your website.

Once you connect your website to your Google+ page, the latest status update (and timestamp) will show up in search results. Ensure the best first impression to visitors who may come across your Google+ page in search results and keep your page posts up to date.

Use the connection between your website and your Google+ page to increase your followers and establish your business as a source of quality, authoritative content.

#3: Start Using Hashtags

Hashtags are a useful tactic to get added exposure to users beyond your followers and Google+ has recognized them for a long time.

But now they are prominently displayed next to every update.

Hashtags on Google+ updates.

If you don’t voluntarily place hashtags in your updates, Google+ will sometimes suggest hashtags for you. Be sure that what it chooses is in line with the topic of your update.

#4: Express Yourself With Bigger, Better Cover Photos

If you’ve visited your profile or page recently, you’ve likely gotten the message that Google+ cover photos are now bigger. Take advantage of this great visual branding opportunity and upload an impressive design that is 2120 pixels wide by 1192 pixels high.

Social Media Examiner’s cover photo.

You can use your cover photo to showcase your new products, express your brand’s image, share your physical location, show what your average customer looks like and advertise your next major event. With a good photographer or graphics team, the possibilities are endless.

#5: Use Google+ as Your Business Page

Boost followers and exposure on Google+ for your business page instead of your personal profile when you interact with others on Google+ as your page. To make the switch from your personal profile to your page, click the dropdown arrow next to your picture at the top right of your Google+ screen; your page will be listed under your active profile. Simply click on your page and you’re ready to go.

Select your Google+ page to use it throughout the network.

Now, you should see the photo for your page at the top of your Google+ display.

Similar to how you can use your Facebook Page to like and comment on other Facebook Pages, you can use your Google+ page to +1 and comment on other Google+ pages.

A Google+ page’s comment on another Google+ page.

Use your Google+ page when you interact with people in Google+ communities and to interact with the people (personal profiles) who are following your page and people who share public updates, regardless of whether they are following you.

Find the most active Google+ pages, public personal profiles and communities to start interacting with and you will gain more exposure for your Google+ page and your business.

#6: Host Google+ Hangouts

If your business isn’t ready to invest in webinar or online meeting software, Google+ hangouts can be a great, free alternative. While you can only have 10 participants actively on video, you can stream the video to an unlimited number of viewers using YouTube, making it much like a webinar.

Google+ hangout with multiple panelists.

You can use Google+ hangouts for a variety of things including interviews, panel discussions, live webinars (with screen-sharing), private meetings and just about anything else you can think of. Best of all, you can keep the recordings to add to your YouTube channel, boosting your video content.

Head over to the Google+ hangouts page to see all of the live hangouts happening right now. You might find some open invite hangouts that you can jump into to get to know your audience better or you can create an open hangout party in hopes that some members of your Google+ audience are online and want to chat.

#7: Join and Create Communities

Google+ has a large variety of communities to choose from, similar to the selection you might find on Facebook or LinkedIn. If you can’t find the right community for your business, you can create it using your personal profile or your page.

A selection of Google+ communities formed around social media.

Like many other social network groups, Google+ communities attract spam but Google+ has the best spam management system in terms of catching spam and holding it for approval by the moderator instead of making it public. Moderators can also quickly remove and ban users who repeatedly spam.

Google+ community spam notice.

If you want to circumvent spam in your own conversations, create your community as private and invite people of your own choosing. Alternatively, you can set your community as public and moderate all requests to join the community.

#8: Get Local

Google+ has replaced Google Places and customers who are on Google+ leave reviews on your local Google+ places page regardless of whether you are active there.

Why Is Google+ so important for local businesses?

First of all, search results now show the reviews, additional details and photos on your Google+ local places page.

Google+ places page in search results.

Next, Google+ local users receive prompts to review your business if they search for it on Google.

Suggestions for places to review on Google+ from a user’s search history.

Last but not least, Google+ is looking to become an even bigger resource for local through their mobile app for iOS and Android.

The main screen of the Google+ local app.

If you don’t have a Google+ local places page or haven’t claimed yours yet, you can start by going to Create a Page, select Local Business or Place and enter your phone number. Google+ will connect you with your page if it already exists or prompt you to create one.

Your Turn

From claiming Authorship to participating in communities, these Google+ features can do a lot to help you establish authority, increase visibility and grow an audience.

What do you think? Have you used any of these features? What Google+ features do you find most beneficial for your business? Please share in the comments!


author: Kristi Hines
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/google-plus-for-business/

3 Social Media Tools That Improve the Sales Cycle

Do you want more leads from your social efforts?

Did you know there are great social media tools that make the sales process easier?

In this article, I’ll review 3 tools to help you get the information you need to generate revenue from your social media activity.


#1: Nimble—Nurture Your Relationships and Get Sales

Nimble is a social relationship manager. Through social media you can build a large network of people whom you connect with, but there is likely to be a smaller group of key people who are potential advocates, influencers or customers for your product or service.

The development of relationships in social media is very important for your business.

Nimble will automatically identify contacts’ social profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter so that you and your team can easily connect, listen and engage with your most important business associates.

But you need to be proactive, organized and efficient and Nimble is a great tool to help you achieve this. Using it as part of an effective social media plan can result in more sales for your products and services.

By effectively managing the development of these relationships, you have a much better chance to grow your business through social media.

Features

• Contact management—Manage the important contacts within your network directly from Nimble. Enter the contact information or import directly from a social network (e.g., a list within Twitter). You can also have company profiles with one or more contacts associated with the company.
• Engage with your contacts through Nimble—A social profile is built for every contact. Nimble attempts to find other social networks your contacts are part of and adds them to their profile. You can then view and interact with all of their social media activity directly from Nimble. Nimble currently supports Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Twitter. There is also limited support for Google+ due to restrictions from Google.
• Activity management—Sync up your calendar with Google and create appointments directly in Nimble that are synchronized with your Google calendar. Create tasks for you or your team in relation to your contacts.
• Sales automation—Track all business opportunities generated through lead management functionality provided by Nimble. Add custom fields to the lead management section to reflect your particular business and use Nimble’s third-party integrations to further enhance lead management capability.
• Extend Nimble with apps—Nimble integrates with a large variety of other applications so you can leverage functionality provided by other companies. Nimble is also available in the HootSuite application store. This allows you to view a Nimble profile of a Twitter user within HootSuite and also add someone to Nimble who is not already there.
• Social inbox—Instead of having separate inboxes for email, tweets and LinkedIn/Facebook updates, you can now view and interact with messages from all of these channels via your social inbox.

You can view and respond to your contacts’ emails and social media activity directly within the social inbox.

The setup process is straightforward. Enter your personal details and an address for your installation. This will normally have your company name included in it (e.g., https://razorsocial.nimble.com) and cannot be changed later.

When you create your account, you are then asked if you want to import your contacts. You can select from LinkedIn, Gmail or Twitter.

You may not want to import all of your contacts. In the example below, we imported a list from Twitter called “Top People” and in Nimble we tag them as ”Potential Customers.”

When you tag a group of people you can find them easily by filtering your contacts based on this tag.

Here is an example of importing a Twitter list and how it appears after import.

Connect to a range of your existing networks and import your contacts directly into Nimble.

When you select a particular contact, Nimble tries to find other social networks that this contact is on and allows you to add these to the profile.

In the example below, we are looking at Marcus Sheridan’s profile. Nimble has detected that Marcus has Google+, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts, so you can add all of these accounts to his profile.

Add your contacts’ social accounts to their Nimble profile so you can view their social activity from all of these accounts.

When these are added to your account, you can then view all activity from Marcus in each of the connected streams via the Social Stream tab on his profile.

This is a great time saver and you can now easily browse through activity from Marcus on any (or all) of his social channels and interact with these updates.

Within the profile, you can also view:

• Detailed contact information taken from the social networks you have connected to. You can view this by hovering over the icons for the social networks.
• Social stream—The latest status updates from the user across each of his or her streams.
• Communication with that contact—A breakdown of communication you have had with this contact.
• Activities—You can create activities directly related to the contact. These can be either tasks or events and you can even log activities that have already taken place so you can keep an accurate history of all your interactions.
• Deals—If you believe there is potential to do business with this contact, you could create a deal using a standard form or a customized form based on your requirements. The sales pipeline allows you to track deals from initial creation right through to sale. Nimble also supports many integrations that will be helpful in this area; for example, integration with HubSpot.

Create a record of any potential opportunity to sell your product or service and track this opportunity.

• Send message—Communicate directly with the contact over the social networks you have connected such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Foursquare. You currently cannot send a message to the contact over Google+.
• View shared connections—It is quite useful to know if there are other people in your network that you both know.

Nimble also records the “last-contacted” date so you know when you last interacted with a person. Being able to sort based on last-contacted date is really useful as it encourages you to initiate conversations if you haven’t recently.

“With Nimble’s automatic social profiling and integration of social communications streams, we know exactly who the customer is, what’s on their mind and how best to connect.” Charles Wilson, Director, RJT Compuquest

Benefits of Nimble:

• Effectively managing and growing the relationships that are important to your business will lead to increased revenue.
• Social media can be a real drain on time. By being more organized and efficient with your social media activity, you will save significant time. Reducing time on social media means more time for other areas of your business.
• Traditional customer relationship management systems are not as integrated with social media. A system that is built as a social media platform has a huge advantage in managing social relationships.
• As your connections through social media increase, it becomes very difficult to stay focused on the connections that really matter. Nimble is ideal for this.
• The deals functionality helps you grow and develop opportunities and progress social media connections into sales.

Summary

As you grow your presence on social media, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain relationships with all of your fans, followers and contacts.

Nimble is a social relationship management tool that helps you manage the most important relationships to you within social media.

It is a very effective tool that will help you nurture those important relationships and ultimately develop leads and sales.

#2: NeedTagger—Find Potential Business Opportunities Through Twitter

NeedTagger is a search engine for Twitter. Through its smart technology it searches through Twitter to find conversations worth engaging in.

Twitter can be a great source of potential business for your products or services, but it’s hard to find the most relevant information.

A recommendation for NeedTagger found on Twitter.

Through NeedTagger, you can find leads for your business, questions on competitors’ products that may lead to sales, problems with your products that you could solve to ensure that the sale goes ahead and much more.

Features

• Find opportunities on Twitter to sell your products or services.
• Use pretested streams of content based on your target industry. This further helps filtering to make sure you get the most appropriate content.
• Perform relevant actions based on useful content found. Follow or tweet the user, email the tweet to yourself and/or tag relevant content so you view filtered content later.

Setup

When you go to NeedTagger and want to create an account, you are brought straight to the NeedTagger configuration screen where you can enter in details of what you are searching for. This is referred to as a stream.

But before you can create your first stream, you need to connect your Twitter account to authenticate you as a user.

To register with NeedTagger, you need to connect to your Twitter account.

You then define the filter you want to create. The example below is based on a business that sells marketing automation software and that wants to identify potential customers looking for a solution.


Predefined templates and keywords help you find the best opportunities.

This would be set up as follows:

• Stream Name—This is the name that identifies the filter you create.
• Target Industry—Select the industry you want to target. If the industry is not available in the list, select Other. We selected Marketing as the target industry.
• Pre-Tested Stream—Depending on the industry you select, there is a different set of pretested streams, which are basically commonly used searches. NeedTagger works best if you select an industry from the list and a pretested stream. For this example, we selected “People discussing marketing automation software.”
• Conversation type—Indicate what type of conversations you want to track. Because we want to find potential sales opportunities, we indicated that we were interested in conversations around “buying,” “asking questions” and “needing.”
• Keywords—Enter in any specific keywords you want to use that are relevant to your search. For example, you could enter some of your competitors’ names. If you don’t want to use any keywords in the search, that’s fine. In this example, we chose not to enter any keywords and instead used a set of the pretested keyword groups.
• Pretested keyword groups—Depending on the stream selected, there are different pretested keywords that you may want to use. We selected the pretested group for “Marketing Automation Vendors.”

When you click Next, you are asked to set up your account’s login details, at which point your account is created and the search you just defined is run.

As a free user you can create one stream and are limited to view only 20% of the results of that filter/search. This allows you to test out NeedTagger for free before you buy. While 20% may not seem like a lot, if you cannot produce results for your business with 20% of the data, it is unlikely that you will produce results with higher amounts of data.

Viewing Results

Here are some of the results from the stream we just defined.


As well as identifying opportunities, you can interact with people directly within NeedTagger.

There are some results that are relevant and some that are not. For example, while they are all related to marketing automation software, some are not related to buying. As you can see here, the first item is not relevant but the second one is displayed because Eloqua provides marketing automation software and “buying” is mentioned.

While there is no sales opportunity here, this is a very relevant user to follow as they provide market research for IT products.

The fifth item is very relevant as the user is about to buy 14 licenses for Salesforce, so this is a sales opportunity if you provide competing software. You can choose to send him a message there and then via the Outreach button.

And the second-to-last item is about somebody looking to buy a CRM and sales management tool. As this may not be your core business, you may want to just flag them for follow-up at a later date as they may consider marketing automation at a future date.

For the second query, I changed my conversation type to “complaining” because I wanted to find people who were unhappy with their current product.


Test out the different conversation types. “Complaining” could also be an opportunity to sell.

The results provided were very good. In this stream, there were lots of people complaining about issues they had with their current marketing automation software. This is an opportunity to engage with people to convince them to change their software.


View a stream of potential opportunities and interact with these opportunities within NeedTagger.

When you do want to engage with someone, you just click the Outreach button, which allows you to send him or her a tweet. The person’s Twitter username is not automatically added, so remember to click the Insert@ button to include their username.


Follow a user who is a potential opportunity and reach out to that user.

You can also insert links, which are automatically shortened for you. If you feel you want to monitor this user a bit longer before engaging, then you can choose to follow them or you can just tag them so you can follow up at a later date.

You can view your tagged tweets by clicking on the Filter Tagged option at the top of the results list.

Another handy feature is the ability to save your messages as templates so you can reuse them. All saved messages and links are stored in the Resources section. You can then easily insert them, as shown here.


Saving a range of templates can help speed up the process of outreach.

When you do some outreach, it is recorded in the My Activity section so you can keep track.


Your interactions are recorded under the My Activity section.
Insights

The Insights tab displays analytics on the opportunities available and the results of your outreach.

On a daily basis you can view the opportunities generated. If you respond to any of the opportunities you can also track how many people are clicking on the links or sharing the messages.


The Insights feature displays opportunities found and results of interactions.

Benefits of NeedTagger:

• A sophisticated search that helps identify relevant opportunities for your business.
• Once you find opportunities to sell your products and services, you can immediately reach out to them to start engaging.
• You can track the results of the outreach to see which messages are getting the most clicks and shares. This helps with formulating a plan for further outreach campaigns.

Summary

NeedTagger functionality is far more sophisticated than using a search facility such as Twitter Advanced Search.

To get the best use out of NeedTagger, you need to spend some time setting up your streams and keywords, and you can produce very good results.

There is plenty of room for NeedTagger to expand on current functionality; for example, the addition of more pretested streams, support for other social networks and integration with relevant third-party tools.

However, NeedTagger in its current form is still very useful and we were certainly able to find opportunities by using it.


#3: Virally App

When a visitor wants to access a special piece of content on your website, quite often you request an email address before you give them access; for example, before allowing them to download an eBook.

Virally allows you to restrict access to content until a user connects to their social network of choice.

With Virally, you set up a page that asks the user to click on a button to connect to LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. When they do this, they get access to the content.

The big advantage to you is that you now have a lot more information about the user. The contact can also automatically send out an update about the content they accessed through the social network they connected to.


Setting up Virally involves a few straightforward steps.

It is easy to connect and when they do, you have a much deeper profile of users.

Setup

Registration is quite straightforward. Enter your personal details and select the account type.

There are two account types: Lite—Free Forever is completely free but has some restrictions on functionality, while the Business 2-Week Free Trial allows you to try out all functionality before making a decision about purchasing.

Once you are registered, you are ready to create your first campaign. You are taken through a quick 3-step setup.

1. Enter the name that will identify what the campaign is about. This name is used as for the page name and title on the Virally website.
2. Upload the document that users will get to download as part of this campaign. With the free version of Virally, there is a size restriction of 1 Mb.
3. Create the campaign and promote it either using the link to your campaign on the Virally website or embed the campaign on your own website.

To display it on your own website, you need to take the embed code displayed above and copy that onto a page on your website.

This is how the campaign would appear when displayed within your website:



The form can be embedded within one of the pages on your website.

If a visitor to your website wants to download the guide, they select one of the options available and are then given an option to Download Only or Download and Share.

When they choose Download and Share, a message is automatically shared out on their behalf to their friends or followers on the social network they connected to.


When users choose to Download and Share, a message is sent out to their social network, which encourages more people to download the guide.

Virally collects information from the social network they connected to and builds a full profile of the user that also includes the email address. For example, the following profile was built based on connecting via LinkedIn.


Virally creates a profile of any person who downloads the information.

You can see that the email address, profile information and details of their social network have all been collected so you build up a much bigger profile than just email. Over time, the profiles will start to build and grow as the user starts sharing your content, which generates clicks or even connects with your content via other social networks.

Advanced Configuration

There are some additional configuration options available for the campaign. To further configure the campaign, select the Settings option for the appropriate campaign.

There are four different sections to the configuration for every campaign.

Refine Your Campaign

Some of the settings will already be configured based on what you entered when you initially created the campaign. But now you can further refine your campaign using these additional settings:

• Pay with an update—Before users download a document, you can ask the user if they want to share out the fact that they downloaded this document on the social network they connected with.
• Status update content—This is the content that you want to appear in the status update.
• Update picture—If someone shares an update on Facebook, you can attach an image to this update.
• Update description—If someone shares an update on Facebook, you can create your own description of this update.

If you want to further customize the campaign, there are additional settings you can change.

• Download action text—This is the text that appears within the buttons to download.
• Campaign tags—Enter some information that can be used to help you categorize future campaigns.
• Draft status—If you want to disable the campaign without removing it, you can change it to draft status.

The download action text is the text that appears within the buttons to download.

Decide Which Social Channels to Share Through

You can decide which social networks are displayed for users to connect to. Manual means that a user must also fill in a form.

The Connectors are the social networks you want to make available to users to connect to if they want to access the content. By default Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are available.

There are also two additional settings on this screen:

• Manual—By default this is not enabled. If you enable this setting, then users will have the option to enter their details (such as name and email address) on a form, rather than connecting via their social profiles. This form can be customized to suit your needs (see later in this article).
• Automatically approve—By default, users will automatically be able to download the content. However, you can set this up so that their request for the content is added to a pending queue for you to approve. You can then view a list of the pending profiles and decide whether to approve them.

If the flag for Automatically Approve is not set, then users are put into a pending queue where you need to approve entries before they get your content.

Design Your Virally Landing Page

When you set up Virally, you can choose to either embed the download links within your own website or you can direct them to the landing page for your campaign within the Virally website.

If you do decide to use the Virally landing page, then you can add images, links and some additional text explaining to users what you want them to do and what benefit they will get from downloading your content.

You can also add some text to the page displayed after people connect via their social network of choice.

If you’re using the Virally landing page, you can customize it with text, images and links.

Publish Your Campaign

This page is where you get the web address for the form if hosted on Virally or the embed code to display it on your site.

You can also take the code from the Manual Form section and build your own form on your page.

When you want to publish your campaign, you can display the campaign within Virally or on your website.

Integrations

Virally currently supports integration with MailChimp so you can automatically add your contact email addresses to MailChimp.



Virally supports integration with the email marketing tool MailChimp so any leads generated can automatically be added to one of your email lists.

Viewing Results of a Campaign

When you make the campaign live and users start to register and download your content, information is collected in the Insights area.

• Overview—This contains a selection of graphs that show the activity on the form, shares out on social networks, volume of users connecting, the conversion rate and so on. It also provides a summary of the performance of each of the channels so you can see which one is providing the most leads.
• Profiles—This section shows the people who registered. You can see that although they connected via social media, their email address is automatically recorded.
• Influencers—When a registered user shares out that they downloaded the guide on one of their social channels, the number of clicks they generated for the link they shared out is recorded. You can then identify your most influential users.

Virally tracks interaction with the campaign so you can monitor how well it’s doing.

• Traffic—The traffic section shows where the clicks back to the page are coming from when items are shared out

When the campaign is shared out by users through social media, Virally tracks where the interaction is happening.

Benefits of Virally:

• Instead of just collecting email addresses, you gather a full social profile. The more information you have about people signing up, the better chance you have of identifying potential business.
• People sharing to their friends or followers that they downloaded your content will lead to more signups and the potential for more sales.
• It’s easier to connect via a social network than typing details into a form.
• Identifying influencers can be very useful for follow-on campaigns. If you know the influential people who are signing up, they could be targeted in the future. A Peer Index Integration feature will be released as part of the user’s profile, but it wasn’t ready at time of writing.

Summary

Virally is an interesting application with potential. Encouraging users to use their social profiles instead of just providing an email address gives you the potential for getting to know a lot more detail. Virally is working at adding functionality to identify the influential users signing up and this will add further benefit to the product.

You may question if the email address provided through the social network would be as good as the email address provided by people keying it directly in. If you have concerns in this area, you could also request the email address as part of signup.

There is a lot of additional functionality that would further enhance the Virally offering. We would love to see further integrations with third-party systems and we know that Virally is currently doing work in this area.

Virally is very easy to set up and well worth trying out.

Final Thoughts

Increasingly we are going to need tools that will help us collect, manage and filter information from social media to build and nurture relationships and develop sales. So we are going to see more tools focused on getting that return on investment.

These three apps all have very good potential.

What is your opinion? We would love to hear your thoughts. Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-social-media-tools-that-improve-the-sales-cycle/

author: Ian Cleary

21 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros

Are you struggling to keep up to date with the best social media marketing tips?

Would you like to know how to get the best results with your social media marketing?

We asked twenty-one social media marketing experts to share their best social media tips today.

Here’s what they had to say.

#1: Attract Leads With Facebook Offers

Amy Porterfield

If you’re looking for a new way to attract quality leads using social media, try Facebook Offers.

Facebook Offers are a type of Facebook ad, but they work a bit differently than a traditional Facebook Ad. You can set them up directly from your Facebook Page (no need to go into the Ads dashboard) and they can be created for offline and online businesses.

Although you can use them for many different promotions, I’ve seen the highest conversion rates when marketers use Offers to attract quality leads.


Here's an example of a lead generating Facebook Offer.
Here’s why they work:

1. Offers are promoted in the news feed (as opposed to being placed in the right-hand column on Facebook where you usually see marketplace ads).
2. Ads in the news feed can get up to six times more engagement than ads in the right-hand column on Facebook.
3. You can hyper-target your Offers to ensure that only the Facebook users who will have a genuine interest in your brand see them.
4. When a user clicks on your Offer in the news feed, Facebook sends that user an email to their personal email account outside of Facebook. That means that your Offer is not only seen on Facebook, but now you are getting into the email boxes of interested prospects.
5. When prospects open their email, they will see a link to your website or an opt-in page (wherever you choose to send people to claim your offer).

See how powerful Facebook Offers can be? Not only do you get optimal exposure in the news feed, you also get into personal email boxes and you can hyper-target each Offer. The way I see it, Facebook Offers are a triple threat!

Amy Porterfield, social media strategist, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies.

#2: Use Social Media to Engage With Your Email Subscribers

Melanie Duncan

The best social media marketing tip that I have for businesses is to use social media to engage with your email subscribers.

I can’t take total credit for it—it’s a concept that I heard at the Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Francisco. You see, everyone is trying to use social media to get new leads, which you definitely can do, but not enough business owners are using social media to build lasting and profitable relationships with their current subscribers.

You probably don’t want to email your list every day, but you likely want to stay top of mind and connect with them on a daily basis somehow. Social media is the perfect solution!


Use social media to build lasting and profitable relationships with your current subscribers.
 Image source: iStockphoto

I suggest putting an email in your autoresponder and invite your new subscribers to follow you on Pinterest, or like your Facebook Page, and then remember to tell them WHY.

Do you host exclusive promotions and contests on your Page? Will they have access to information that you don’t share anywhere else? Make it worth their while and watch your business and your bank account flourish.

Remember, when it comes to your audience, you want quality over quantity.

Melanie Duncan, a serial entrepreneur, owns a successful apparel and home décor ecommerce business and teaches other entrepreneurs how they can get more traffic and sales with Pinterest.

#3: Combine Your Marketing Channels

Brian Carter

My biggest tip is strategic: combine all the best of digital marketing for what I call your “Perpetual (Pro)motion Machine.”

If you use SEO, organic social media, search advertising, social advertising and Google remarketing ads, then you’re doing the best of everything.

You’re raising awareness for new business via Facebook, you’re getting the low-hanging fruit of buying-intent keywords via Google, and you’re making sure that people who’ve been to your site keep seeing you via Google remarketing and your Facebook fan base.


The "Perpetual (Pro)motion Machine."
Also, most companies’ analytics are incomplete. They usually make Google look better than it really is and Facebook look worse than it really is. So allocate some money to raise awareness via Facebook as a best practice. Win the war at the mindshare and awareness level, not just at the bottom of the sales funnel.

Brian Carter, develops strategies and builds social marketing fan bases for companies of all sizes, and is the author of The Like Economy.

#4: Create a LinkedIn Company Page

Viveka Von Rosen

If you don’t have your company page up on LinkedIn yet, what are you waiting for?

LinkedIn Company Pages are not only a great way to get more branding for your business, but they are also an excellent way to reach your target market on LinkedIn.

Many business owners and executives like to keep a more private profile on LinkedIn, but would also like exposure for their company.


Get exposure and target your products and services.

LinkedIn Company Pages are the way to do that. You can grow your company following as large as you want, regardless of the size of your personal network. If you have employees, they can also become administrators of your page and help you promote and manage it, thereby exponentially increasing its visibility.

You can also target your updates and services and products to a specific market. This allows you to craft a message and a presence specific to your different audiences. If someone comes to your Company Page from the financial, legal, medical or marketing industry, you can customize your message to speak directly to them.

Not only that, but you can create “click-through” banners to entice your target market over to your website, sales page, commerce site or other social media sites. And it’s free!


Add video, documents and pictures to your Company Page.
And you can add video, documents and pictures to your company page too!

So if you don’t have a LinkedIn Company Page yet, what are you waiting for? And if you do, now’s the time to refocus it to target exactly the people you are hoping to do business with.

Viveka von Rosen, known internationally as the “LinkedIn Expert,” author of LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day.

#5: Identify Your Outcomes

Ric Dragon

When we talk about the best thing to do in social media marketing for any given business, we have to begin with what that business is trying to achieve—its “desired outcomes.”

The best thing for a manufacturer of underarm deodorant is likely to be something quite different from what might be best for a company that tests those same products.

Before you go jumping into one platform or another, imagine what it would require for you or the company to go out and buy a $1,000 bottle of champagne and share it with the team. That’s your “1K Champagne Result.”


Start thinking about your 1K Champagne Results.
Image source: iStockphoto

The next part of the puzzle is to understand that not all social media efforts are the same. There are some really big differences in approaches, and thus outcomes. The five big approaches are:

• Brand maintenance—monitor your channels and respond when appropriate, and perhaps post a bit here and there.
• Community-building—whether it’s internal advocates, external brand ambassadors or groups of people who share the underlying passions of the brand, in this work you endeavor to join and nurture community.
• Influencer outreach—identify and engage the people who are influential around your passion points or industry.
• Reputation management and development—the project wherein you either repair or develop thought leadership or positive reputation.
• The big splash—these are the big creative campaigns that garner a lot of short-term attention.

You might very well decide on a mix of these five approaches. If you start by thinking about your 1K Champagne Results, you can more easily line up your big approaches with whatever it is that’s going to make that cork go flying across the room.

Ric Dragon, co-founder and CEO of DragonSearch, author of Social Marketology and DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual.

#6: Become the Wikipedia of Your Industry

Marcus Sheridan

Over the last couple of years, a very interesting shift has occurred with each and every one of us who use the Internet. And what is this shift?

We’ve all grown incredibly impatient online.

In other words, if we go to a business’s website, and we can’t find what we’re looking for, it bothers us. We get frustrated quickly. And unlike a few years ago when we might have “hung around” to try to find the answers we were looking for, we now move on quickly—knowing that if we keep searching, we’ll eventually find a website that has the answer(s) we seek.

Interestingly enough, although we’ve all grown more impatient when it comes to websites that don’t bother giving us the answers we’re looking for, we’ve also grown more loyal once we stumble upon the information jackpot.

Basically, if we feel a website is a true “go-to source” for information and answers, we’ll keep coming back—again and again and again.

It’s for this reason that the best social media strategy any company can take in 2013 and beyond is to become a true teacher (Wikipedia) within their industry. The golden rule of marketing is this:

They ask, you answer.

In other words, if a consumer has ever asked a question, you should be answering it on your website. And considering most industries have literally thousands of potential consumer questions, content should always be growing, evolving and added to.


After owner Steve Sheinkopf followed the "They Ask, You Answer" strategy for his company's content marketing approach in 2012, the Boston-based business Yale Appliance watched their web traffic, along with sales, explode.
With the average business website answering about 10 consumer questions, if a company is willing to follow the “They Ask, You Answer” mentality, amazing results will often occur. The brand will grow. Traffic on the site will increase. And above all else, sales will likely have a huge upturn.

Marcus Sheridan, co-owner of River Pools and Spas, the founder of PoolSchool.us—an educational site on selecting the right pool, founder of The Sales Lion.

#7: Meet in Person or “Virtually Connect”

Andrea Vahl

Some of my strongest online connections and relationships have developed because I took the time to connect in person.

Either by organizing a “meetup” or “Tweetup” with a group, going to a conference (such as Social Media Marketing World) where I knew the people I wanted to meet would be or even just connecting one-on-one through Skype.

I highly recommend you take some of these online connections offline to make a deeper connection.


Use Google+ Hangouts to meet up with your peers.
Think about organizing a Google+ Hangout with several like-minded people with whom you are interested in connecting.

Even “virtually” connecting can help strengthen that relationship and spark some ideas for collaboration. Meeting someone makes retweeting and sharing their posts much more fun. Not only that, it can have a profound effect on your business. I know it has for me!

Andrea Vahl, social media coach, speaker, strategist and the Facebook community manager for Social Media Examiner, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies.

#8: Ask Your Audience Anything

Pat Flynn

Ask. Plain and simple—just ask. Ask anything. Why? Because when you ask your audience something, you give them permission to speak. When it comes to social media, you want to do two things: engage and get people involved.

Asking encourages both and taps into the human nature of people who are online and participating in social media—the urge to be heard.


Asking your audience anything gives them permission to speak.
Image source: iStockphoto

Once you’ve enabled others to speak by asking, you’ll learn a lot about your business—what’s working, what’s not and where to go from here. At the same time, you’ll learn a lot about your audience—who they are, what they like and dislike and the language they speak.

From there, you can start a real conversation and build a deeper relationship with your audience.

Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive Income.

#9: Like Your Customers on Facebook

Mitch Joel

Instead of asking your consumers to like your brand on Facebook, why don’t you start liking them?

Most brands use Facebook as an extension of their traditional and mass-marketing initiatives. As such, we have what can only be described as an “arms race” for likes on Facebook.

The average person on Facebook has 120-200 connections (depending on whom you ask… and when).


Start liking your customers on Facebook.
 Image source: iStockphoto

As big as Facebook is, it’s actually many, many, very small circles of close (and semi-close) connections.

Facebook and brands are less about advertising and much more about creating, nurturing and developing a more direct relationship between individuals and the brands that serve them. This isn’t for all brands. This isn’t for all consumers. This is (still) a massive opportunity for those who can rise above a traditional advertising strategy.

Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image, blogger and podcaster, author of Six Pixels of Separation and the forthcoming book CRTL ALT Delete.

#10: Listen First and Never Stop Listening

Dave Kerpen

Listening to your customers across social media is most important. There is little sense in social media marketing if you are not following this simple rule.

Social media is based on conversations; it’s not just another marketing channel for you to push out your content or promote your product. You have to have a conversation in which you’re engaging your customers. And in order to have a good conversation—whether online or offline—you have to listen and respond to your audience.


Listening to your customers is most important.
 Image source: iStockphoto

Use Twitter search terms like “need an accountant” if you’re an accountant or “We’re hiring” if you’re a recruitment firm. Then take what you learn from listening and use it to build better products, services and marketing campaigns.

Sun Chips, for example, returned to their old packaging after customers complained widely on the Internet that the new biodegradable packaging was too noisy.

Following this simple tip of listening to your customers AND prospects will empower your business with knowledge about what your customers really want. This is crucial for your business to grow and achieve high customer satisfaction. Customers like businesses that listen and respond to them.

Dave Kerpen, CEO of Likeable, author of Likeable Social Media and the forthcoming Likeable Business.

#11: Move From Social Like to Social Trust

John Jantsch

Smart marketers use free content as a way to attract fans and followers. Others create and hide content in an effort to get Facebook and Twitter users to like their Page or submit their email to get to the good stuff.

If you really want to see the power of this idea, combine these approaches. Create and share valuable content with no gate or requirement. Then offer those readers even more content when they like your Page or visit a landing page to sign up for more updates.


Duct Tape Marketing's offer on Facebook.
The power behind this two-step approach is that it not only allows more people to see and interact with your first wave of content, the people who then take your call to action are much more highly qualified because you’ve already built a layer of trust with them before you asked for anything in exchange.

This approach works in almost any social network and is particularly effective using a combination of Facebook Offers and Sponsored Updates.

John Jantsch, founder of the Duct Tape Marketing Consultant Network, marketing consultant and speaker, author of Duct Tape Marketing, The Commitment Engine and The Referral Engine.

#12: Secure Your Brand and Product Names

Justin Levy
Whether you’re taking baby steps into social media or have jumped in with both feet, it’s critical that you secure your brand and product names on all major social media channels. This is as important as the domain name you choose for your company.

Too often companies will tweak or completely change the name of their company to fit an available domain name but they don’t treat social media channels the same way.


Secure your brand and product names on all social media channels.
Image source: iStockphoto

Even if you’re not ready to launch an active presence yet, at least secure your company handles on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, SlideShare, Flickr, Instagram and others.

Ideally your company handle will be consistent across all social media channels (e.g., @yourcompanyname), because once you start setting up variations on different channels, it makes it more difficult for your prospects, customers and fans to find you.

To that end, take a few minutes to set up minimal branding such as adding your company logo, website and bio information. Once you’ve completed this exercise, it becomes easier to just secure your company name on the new shiny social network of the month.

However, initially you may consider using a service such as KnowEm which allows you to easily search across 550 social networks. KnowEm even has premium packages available where they will take care of complete signup of all profile info, thus making it even easier for you.

Justin Levy, strategic advisor on all social media activities at Citrix Online, editor-in-chief of Workshifting.

#13: Find Your Content Marketing Mission Statement

Joe Pulizzi

According to Wikipedia, a mission statement is a company’s reason for existence. It’s why the organization does what it does.

Southwest Airlines’ mission statement has always been to democratize the travel experience. The mission statement for CVS is to be the easiest pharmacy retailer for customers to use. So, in simple terms, the mission statement must answer the question, “Why do we exist?”

In almost every one of my keynote presentations, I cover the content marketing mission statement. I feel it’s critical to set the tone for the idea of content marketing and social media, or any marketing for that matter.

Marketing professionals from so many small and large businesses get so fixated on social media channels such as blogs, Facebook or Pinterest that they honestly have no clue of their underlying content strategy.

So, the why must come before the what. This seems obvious, but most marketers have no mission statement or core strategy behind the content they develop.

Think of it this way: What if you were the leading trade magazine for your niche area? What if your goal was not to first sell products and services but to impact your readers with amazing information that would change their lives and behaviors?

If you can get your mission statement straight, you’ll make social media marketing that much easier for yourself.

Inc. magazine has its mission statement in the first line of its About Us page.


Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses.

Let’s dissect this a bit. Inc.’s mission statement includes:

The core audience target: entrepreneurs and business owners
What will be delivered to the audience: useful information, advice, insights, resources, and inspiration
The outcome for the audience: growing their businesses
Inc.’s mission statement is also incredibly simple and includes no words that could be misunderstood. Perfecto!

If you want your social media to work, first stop what you are doing and start thinking about what your content marketing mission statement will be. Put the “why” before the “what” or “where.”

Joe Pulizzi, founder of The Content Marketing Institute, author of Managing Content Marketing and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers.

#14: Listen 100% of the Time

Sarah Robinson

The best social media marketing tip I can offer is this: Talk about yourself 10% of the time, engage with others about what matters to them 90% of the time and listen 100% of the time.


Make sure you listen 100% of the time.
Image source: iStockphoto

I was having lunch with a really sharp guy and the conversation turned to social media (Twitter specifically). He said, “I just don’t get Twitter. I post some stuff there and that’s about it. I don’t see any real return.” I quickly checked his stream and the only thing in it were his posts about his business. Later, I replied, “Twitter is a two-way conversation. Think of it as a cocktail party. It’s not a place to talk only about yourself and hawk your wares.” “Huh,” he said. “I never thought of social media as a conversation.”

I know people who go to cocktail parties and don’t think they’re for conversations either.

Don’t be the guy no one wants to talk to because he’s only interested in talking about himself. Be the one who draws a crowd because you are interested in and attentive to others. Offer helpful resources and connections. Solve problems.

This earns you the right to eventually talk just a little about yourself and what you are up to. And when you do, everyone will be listening.

Sarah Robinson, a seasoned business coach, strategist, advisor and speaker who helps business owners set their companies apart from the pack. Author of Fierce Loyalty: Unlocking the DNA of Wildly Successful Communities.

#15: Create a Systematic Approach

Stephanie Sammons

To be successful in leveraging social media for growing your business, I believe you have to create a systematic approach to building your network and your brand.

Developing a system that is focused on high-impact social media marketing activities while spending the least amount of time possible allows you to be a consistent and efficient marketer. Consistency builds trust and efficiency lowers your marketing costs.

Many people don’t realize how important consistency is in marketing. Simply by staying top of mind with your community, you will reinforce your messaging over and over and create loyalty within your community (your messaging must be unique, helpful and insightful). Also, by being more efficient with your marketing, you will save time and money.


Be more efficient with your marketing. 
Image source: iStockphoto

By developing a systematic approach, the members of your network will be able to count on you to show up week after week with valuable insights, information and guidance. You will grow accustomed to a schedule that works for you, and over time, you will build online influence by meeting the expectations and experiences of your clients and prospects.

Here are some components that your digital marketing system should include:

• Time to create and publish unique content to your blog each month
• Time to share reputable and helpful content with your community on social networks
• Time to engage in conversations and discussions on social networks
• Time to empower and promote others
• Time to grow your network and community
• Time to analyze and reflect upon what’s working and what can be improved upon

Planning, dedication, and social media marketing software tools can all help in achieving a systematic approach while shaving off significant time in building your brand. It is feasible to spend only 3 hours a week on your system and realize success. If you map out your plan and make the commitment to marketing, you will achieve results.

Stephanie Sammons, founder and CEO of Wired Advisor.

#16: Create Your Voice

Neal Schaffer 
Of all the companies I consult with, the one social media marketing tip that is always part of my advice is the importance of blogging.

Creating a social media presence and engaging with both consumers and potential clients requires companies to have a “voice” and to be able to share something of value in social media communities.

A blog is a perfect place to establish that “voice,” and it also serves as a logical vehicle to help both seed conversations in social media and help lead those same social media users back to your own website.

Simply being active in social media helps attain brand awareness, but when a user comes back to your website, it gives you a higher probability of converting them into a customer.


A blog is the perfect place to establish your voice.
 Image source: iStockphoto

Obviously, providing unique content means that you can reap the potential benefit of that content being shared in social media, helping to expose your brand and website to more potential customers.

It’s also a logical boost for your search engine optimization. Some have claimed that with the advent of social media, blogging is dying. I believe that blogging is more important than ever before, and those who blog relevant and shareable content for their social media communities will continue to reap the benefits.

To build upon this tip, the keys to successful blogging are being able to create content that others would want to share (“shareable content”) and also create a content strategy for your blog that is aligned with your marketing goals.

Start with organizing content into “buckets” of categories that are aligned with your present sales or future marketing plans. If you can organize these categories into four “buckets” of content, blog once a week for each category and you’re on your way to becoming successful at business blogging.

Neal Schaffer, president of Windmills Marketing, author of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing, Understanding, Leveraging and Maximizing LinkedIn, and the forthcoming Maximizing Twitter for Business.

#17: Share Content That Resonates With Your Audience

Jesse Stay
The best tip I have to offer for social media marketing is to stick to your passions! Share messages and content that resonates with your audience. Are they going to feel strongly, “I agree with that!” or “I strongly disagree with that!” when you share your message? Those are the types of messages you should be sharing.

Passion should emanate from every part of your social media campaign. From the name of your Facebook Page, to your advertising, to the content you share. Everything should resonate and strike a chord, in one way or another (usually in a positive way), with your audience.



Share content that really resonates with your audience.
Image source: iStockphoto

When you focus on passion, your engagement will go up, your shares will increase and your audience will grow. When you can create content that builds passion, your audience will come. Focus on passion and you can’t go wrong!

Jesse Stay, social media director for Deseret Digital Media, author of Google+ Marketing for Dummies and I’m on Facebook—Now What??? 2nd Edition.

#18: Exchange Contact Information

Paul Colligan
There are no guarantees that the social media network or platform that you are part of will have the same shelf life as your business. Networks come and go (MySpace, anyone?) but your business, hopefully, will not.

Yes, social media is a “party” and you want to play and interact on the terms of your host. But just as important is the simple fact that said party will end at some point.

Just as you might exchange phone numbers or email addresses (with some people) at any social event, you should, and want to, consider doing the same thing on any social network you want to be part of.


Consider exchanging phone numbers and email addresses with people within your social network.
Image source: iStockphoto

Regular contextually appropriate opportunities to exchange phone numbers or addresses inside of a social network are just good business. Be strategic, but be purposeful. The test of any good party is the relationships that come from them. Everything else is just fleeting memories of “another party” and a bad headache in the morning.

BTW, I met my wife at a social event. I sure am glad we exchanged contact information and didn’t hope everything would happen within the confines of where we met.

Paul Colligan, CEO of Colligan and Content Czar at Instant Customer.

#19: Distribute Your Blog Content to the Most Popular Groups on LinkedIn

Michael Crosson
It is easy to gain very valuable distribution of your content to some of the 200,000,000+ members of LinkedIn.

Here’s how to get exposure to some of the largest and most popular groups.

Find the LinkedIn Share button on articles or posts throughout the web.

• Find the LinkedIn Share button on articles or posts.

• Cut and paste your content under Post to Updates and then check the Post to Groups box.

Cut and paste your content under Post to Updates.

• Select the groups you want your post submitted to.

Select groups.

Done! This is super-easy and helps accelerate massive exposure.

Michael Crosson, founder and publisher of SocialMediopolis, founder of the fourth-largest LinkedIn group, the Social Media Marketing Group.

#20: Integrate Social Media Best Practices

Carrie Kerpen
The most important social media marketing tip for businesses is to integrate, integrate, integrate. Social media can’t exist in a silo. Instead, it should be a core part of your strategy.

A company that’s responsive on Twitter but has poor customer service practices won’t do well. A company that produces great content on Facebook but has a closed, non-transparent corporate culture will eventually fail. Successful social media has to start with integration.


Integrate your efforts for successful social media outcomes.
 Image source: iStockphoto

Social media is not just a function of marketing or public relations. Of course social media includes marketing, public relations and advertising, but it also includes customer service, customer relationship management, sales, operations, human resources and research and development.

Ideally, everyone at your company should be trained in the fundamentals of social media as it touches many different areas of a business.

Furthermore, there are numerous opportunities throughout the customer experience for integration of social networks and social media best practices. The more open and transparent you are with customers throughout the entire customer life cycle, the more comfortable they’ll feel about continuing to buy your stuff, hire you, like you and your Pages and recommend you to friends.

Carrie Kerpen, Chief Like Officer at Likeable Media, author of the upcoming book Social Moms.

#21: Focus on Getting Attention First

Aaron Kahlow
If I had to boil it down to one social media marketing tip, it is to focus on the marketing element.

We are marketers, we need to get some movement beyond buzz and really drive progress. In that vein, my tip is to focus on getting attention FIRST.


Focus on getting attention first.
 Image source: iStockphoto

So many of us think about the end game of generating leads or sales, and others think about the metrics of engagement. But like a magazine ad, you must get someone to stop the virtual page flipping and say “Hmm, that’s interesting.”

Focus on headline writing and visual storytelling (I steal from Lisa Buyer) to get someone to pause for that millisecond and lean in. Your content is only as good as that which gets the attention of the inundated user.

Then of course you must test, iterate and measure. Tools to do this will be critical.

Aaron Kahlow, CEO of Online Marketing Connect, chairman and founder of the Online Marketing Summit and its related educational arm, the Online Marketing Institute.

Who are these social media marketing experts?


The social media marketing experts who contributed to this article are all speaking at Social Media Marketing World.

Social Media Marketing World is Social Media Examiner’s latest mega-conference—taking place at the waterfront San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina in San Diego, California on April 7-9, 2013.

Social Media Examiner recruited the biggest and best names in the world of social media marketing for this conference. Only the best for you!

All of the experts you’ve come to respect and admire will be in one place. Be sure to check it out.

What do you think? What’s your best social media marketing tip today? What’s the one thing businesses need to know for successful social media marketing? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Images from iStockPhoto.
author:Cindy King
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/21-social-media-marketing-tips-from-the-pros/