4 Ways Marketers Can Use Facebook Hashtags

Have you started using Facebook hashtags for your business?

Are you wondering how to best use a Facebook hashtag?

In this article, I’ll reveal four important benefits of using hashtags on Facebook.

I’ll also explore important considerations when putting together your hashtag strategy.

Why Facebook Hashtags?

As you’ve undoubtedly seen, hashtags are now clickable and useable on Facebook.

Using a hashtag # (or pound symbol) in front of a word or phrase turns the word into a clickable link.

When you click on the link, you’ll see a feed of public posts (or posts that are visible to you due to a friend relationship on Facebook) that include that hashtag.

Here’s how you can use Facebook hashtags:

#1: Expand Your Reach

As hashtags gain momentum on Facebook (they’ve been in use on other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+), they’ll help you expand your reach to people who are looking at posts in your topic.

Hashtags have been a great way to help people interested in niche topics find each other and find the conversation.

The #WalkingDead hashtag connects people interested in this show.

By including a hashtag in your post, you can possibly get in front of people who may not have seen your post otherwise.  But you’ll have to monitor this in your Facebook Insights.  Make sure you watch your Reach and Engagement Numbers to see if your hashtags are making a difference in your posts.


Click the Reach column in your Facebook insights to see which posts are getting the highest reach.

#2: Amplify Your Brand

Branding your Facebook Page with your own special hashtag can help an idea or new product catch on.  By branding all your posts about a new product, you can break this information out into a separate stream of information and give people an easy way to share information about that product or idea.

Think carefully about what types of things others would also be interested in sharing.  If the posts are too promotional and not valuable, you may have a hard time getting people to share them with their friends.


Home Depot uses #HDHacks to share fun ideas with their audience.

#3: Cross Social Platforms

If you’ve already been using hashtags in your Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest posts, it’s now more natural to use hashtags in Facebook.  You can save some time by being able to post the same content across several platforms.

While I don’t recommend doing this for every post in Facebook (some people are annoyed by the hashtags entering into the Facebook realm) it does work to your benefit to occasionally cross platforms with a single post.  Plus many people have already been doing this with their own posts from Twitter and now the hashtags are more searchable in Facebook.


The Starbucks #treatreceipt hashtag has been in use on Twitter in the past and is now searchable on Facebook too.

#4: Promote Specials and Events

You can use a special hashtag in your posts to promote something special.  For example, this can work really well for a #contest.


Use a specially branded hashtag to help promote a contest across several platforms.

Realize that you can’t have people enter your contest on Facebook by including your branded hashtag like you can on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter.  Because of Facebook contest promotional rules, you can help people find the content across platforms by including the hashtag in your Facebook posts.

If you know some popular hashtags that fit your marketing goals—such as offering a special coupon or deal—then you can include them in your post as well.  I don’t recommend stuffing your posts with tons of hashtags that aren’t relevant because that doesn’t look good and may turn off some of your fans, but a few relevant hashtags are OK.

You can also attach a hashtag at the end of your post that's relevant to people looking for special deals such as #backtoschooldeals.

Important Considerations When Using Facebook Hashtags

1.  Privacy settings are still in effect.

If you’re using hashtags on posts on your personal profile, they’ll still have the privacy settings set up according to how you control your privacy on your profile.  Just because you use a hashtag doesn’t make that post suddenly public.  If you add a hashtag to a post that you only share with a certain group of your friends, only that group will be able to see that post.


Your privacy settings are still in effect even when you add a hashtag to your post.

2.  Hashtags have to be all one word.

If you wanted to use #Facebook Marketing as your hashtag, it will need to be posted as #FacebookMarketing or #facebookmarketing (see the next tip).

3.  Capitalization doesn’t matter.

You can choose whatever capitalization you want in the words themselves and the hashtags will show the same results.  #FacebookMarketing and #facebookmarketing show the same search results.

4.  You can make up whatever hashtags you want.

There’s no “hashtag registration” or “database of approved hashtags”, you can make up whatever hashtags you want to use.  Consider your goals.  If you want to brand your own hashtags, you can, but make them short and easy to use and understand.

A hashtag that’s overly complex or hard to read won’t get much traction.  If you’re abbreviating, make sure it’s clear what point you’re going for – a hashtag like #IKPMTTTRWD won’t mean much to many people.

5.  Research your hashtag before you use it.

There have been some recent embarrassing cases of brands using a hashtag that’s already in use for an entirely different purpose that doesn’t align with their company message at all.  Take a look at the social sites where hashtags are in use such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ and see if your hashtag is already being used by people.

6.  You can easily look for hashtags on Facebook by URL.

Easily search for hashtags or bookmark their results by using the URL:  www.facebook.com/hashtag/ then just include your keyword on the end.

For example https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/FacebookMarketing shows you the results of posts that include #facebookmarketing or #FacebookMarketing (or any alternate capitalizations).

Conclusion

I strongly recommend you test out hashtags as part of your Facebook marketing strategy and measure your results.  Use them sparingly (not in every single post) and don’t over-stuff hashtags into your posts.

While some people may not be as excited about hashtags on Facebook, they’re firmly entrenched in other social sites and aren’t going away anytime soon.

How about you?  Have you been using hashtags in your posts?  Are you going to give them a try?  Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below!




author: Andrea Vahl
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-hashtag-marketing/

3 Creative Ways Brands Are Using Pinterest

Are you looking for some creative ways to use Pinterest?

Would you like to make stronger connections with your customers?

Although many brands run creative contests on Pinterest, here are some new ways to engage audiences and build your presence.

Take a look at what these 3 brands are doing to get inspiration for using Pinterest creatively for your business.

#1: Run a Campaign to Give Back

One of the most interesting things I’ve seen on Pinterest was Sony Electronics’ Pin It to Give It campaign.


In the spirit of holiday giving, Sony gave $1 to charity for every repin on this board.

Sony Electronics used their Pinterest brand page to curate an array of Sony Electronics products that were pinned to the Pin It to Give It board. Every time someone repinned from the board, Sony Electronics donated a dollar to The Michael Phelps Foundation. The campaign ran from November 27 through December 31, 2012 and raised more than $12,500.

This campaign had a unique spin when compared to other competitions with the overused Pin It to Win It campaign title. Sony’s label clearly communicated that the campaign was about helping others.

This not only helped Sony Electronics build their brand image by showing that they give back to their community, it also helped them engage their audience and create product awareness. Visit the board today and you will see pins that have been repeatedly liked and repinned—many more than 200 times.

How can you get creative with Pinterest contests?

Think like Sony Electronics and create something that is not only unique, but that engages your audience in a way that makes your campaign stand out.

#2: Get Strategic With Guest Pinners

Etsy has made incredible use of Pinterest’s group boards feature, also known as contributor boards.

In addition to the Etsy-curated boards on their brand page, they have several guest pinner boards, on which a contributor who is an expert on a subject contributes pins. Both individuals like Guest Pinner: Automatism and companies like Random House, Whole Foods Market and Martha Stewart Living contribute to boards for them.


A guest pinner board on Etsy.

This association benefits the creator of the board and the contributor and forms a strong relationship between the two.

When Guest Pinner: Automatism’s Lori Langille pins to the group board Etsy created for her, not only does Etsy’s board gather more pins from an expert source, they also attract followers from her because the board is displayed on her personal Lori Langille (Automatism) profile.

In turn, illustrator Lori Langille (Automatism) receives increased exposure through the pins on her Guest Pinner: Automatism board, as well as followers who find her through the guest board on Etsy.


Lori’s guest pinner board has a constellation of eclectic inspirations.

Associating one contributor with one group board, as opposed to associating many contributors with one group board, can help avoid complications with content. Group boards with too many contributors and no moderators often suffer from issues such as oversharing of spam pins that aren’t relevant to the board’s topic.

How can your business best use guest contributors to your Pinterest boards? Which experts are in your network who could share value with your audience on Pinterest? Follow Etsy’s example and create a valuable community on Pinterest with the help of others.

#3: Help People Get to Know You Better

When you think of Ben & Jerry’s on Pinterest, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably a brand page full of ice cream recipes, frozen desserts and other sweet stuff.

True to their roots, Ben & Jerry’s has done something completely different. They have used Pinterest to help their audience learn more about the company.

On their brand page, you find boards that teach you everything about who they are, what they do and how they treat their fans.

The Fan Photo’s board is full of photos from fans who are enjoying Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.


A great way to stay connected with your fans!

These images will help engage their fans and double as testimonials. When people look at others enjoying ice cream, they want some, too. And they might buy some Ben & Jerry’s to get involved like everybody else.

This board shows that Ben & Jerry’s cares about their fans, that they want their fans to be a part of the company. This is an attitude that goes a long way toward attracting more loyal fans.

The Our People board shows you pictures of Ben & Jerry’s employees.


A behind-the-scenes look helps customers know the employees.

The Our Factory board is a collection of images that show what happens inside Ben & Jerry’s factory.


Seeing what happens inside is another great way to connect with the community.

These boards, along with others like On a Mission, History, Vermont and Flavor Graveyard, help Ben & Jerry’s to form a special bond with their followers. As boards are pinned, followers get to know the product, the company and the people who work for them better. People prefer dealing with people they know, rather than companies of strangers about whom they know nothing. Visitors will likely be keen on having more Ben and Jerry’s.

How does your audience want to engage with you on Pinterest? Is your conversation there one-sided? Or are you making it easy for people to get to know you?

To build a committed following on Pinterest, follow Ben & Jerry’s lead. Instead of simply pinning content and products to your boards, make an effort to help your followers learn more about your company and get them involved.

Make the Most of Your Pinterest Community

Pinterest offers unique opportunities to engage with your audience, thanks to the visual interactions.

These are just three examples of brands using Pinterest in creative ways to engage their followers, create partnerships and build community.

What do you think? Have you noticed any other brands with intriguing strategies? Are you inspired to use Pinterest in a more exciting way? Please leave your comments below.



Author: Mitt Ray
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/creatively-using-pinterest/

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

7 Tips for Making Your Blog a Content Marketing Magnet

Do you have a business blog?

Are you happy with the marketing role your blog plays?

Many businesses consider blogs “a cost of doing business,” or code for “We’re not sure what it does but we’re afraid to stop doing it.”

In this article I will explore why and how to make your blog the hub of your content marketing plan?

Why make your blog your content marketing hub?

To put a slightly different spin on what Chris Brogan says, blogs are your home base; they are at the center of your content marketing system.

Whether you’re a small business or a Fortune 100 company, blogs should be at the heart of your content marketing because blogs fuel social media, search optimization and the sales process.

The top five reasons to use a blog as your content hub are:

          1.Blogs are owned media. Your blog content is yours. You’re not at the whim of changes in the rules of third-party platforms, such as the recent changes to LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. A blog has the added bonus of providing an always-on crisis management channel to get your message out 24/7.
          2.Blogs are a form of social media. Through social sharing, comments and guest posts, blogs provide the basis for building a targeted community. In fact, HubSpot‘s research showed that blogs top other forms of social media for effectiveness.

This HubSpot report shows how important blogs are for businesses.

        3.Blogs support search optimization. Because of their structure, blogs are search-friendly. You can enhance this by focusing each article on a specific keyword phrase and link to internal and external content.
        4.Blogs drive sales. To support sales, write blog posts about how to use your products and show them in context to provide prospects and customers with product information they need. Then link to your specific product pages to support the sales process.
        5.Blogs incorporate a streamlined CMS (content management system). At its core, blogs are an easy-to-use, low-cost content system.


7 Tips to Make Your Blog Your Content Marketing Hub

To make your blog an accountable aspect of your content marketing plan, here are seven steps to get on track.

#1: Build a Strong Blogging Foundation to Support Your Content Marketing

In order for your blog to be the center of a strong content marketing plan, you’ll need to make sure you build your blog on a strong foundation.

One of your first decisions is how to set up your blog. Make sure you use your own URL. The best option is to use a self-hosted WordPress blog. Don’t use a free hosting option such as Blogger or WordPress.

Even better, incorporate your blog into your overall business website. Use http://example.com, not http://example.wordpress.com.


WordPress.org provides WordPress software that you can download and install on the server space you rent from a web host.

You’ll need to get technology resources to support your blogging efforts. Blogging should be integrated into your website. For most businesses, this translates to ongoing technology support, rather than a few minutes of someone’s time when they’re available.

These are essential to a strong foundation.

#2: Know Your Audience

Before you begin blogging, you’ll need to know whom you’re writing for and what they’re interested in reading. One way to find out more about your audience is to use marketing personas.

Create a set of marketing personas to clarify and give a personality to the people you’re trying to reach. It’s easier to write for someone you know than a faceless mass. Incorporate their content consumption habits and their social media proclivities.


Know who your audience is. Image source: iStockphoto.

Marketing personas are important for your blog, as well as other forms of content. If you’ve got distinctly different audiences you’re trying to reach, consider creating more than one blog and related content marketing.

#3: Develop Your Content Marketing Plan

Several components come into making a good content marketing plan. Here’s what you’ll want to include in your content marketing plan.

Map out your promotional calendar

Start by planning your organization’s marketing events for the year and use public holidays where appropriate. The objective is to create hooks around which to develop your content.

In addition to seasons and holidays, consider annual events that apply to your product offering. Include relevant tradeshows and conferences, as well as social media participation.


Plan out your events. Image source: iStockphoto.

Outline your major content offerings

Based on the events selected in your promotional calendar, decide what major content offerings you’ll create such as conference talks, ebooks and webinars.

Plan ongoing columns and related communications

Think like a magazine and brainstorm regular offerings such as news roundups, customer of the week and interviews. Develop a set of columns to offer either weekly or every other week. This provides the basic structure for your blog’s editorial calendar. Include themes such as research. Consider how you’ll offer this content to other segments of your audience such as in your regular emails.

Create an editorial calendar

Integrate your events, major pieces of content and regular content offerings into one calendar so you can manage the creation process. It helps to make this part of someone’s job description.

Plan extended content usage

Once you’ve integrated your planned content, assess where you can extend, create or reuse content from your major content marketing offerings on your blog and vice versa.

For example, to promote Content Marketing World, Lee Odden put together an ebook, 29 Content Marketing Secrets and the Secret Agents Who Shared Them. He used the information from the ebook to write 11 separate blog posts and an overview post. In addition, he posted the ebook on SlideShare and encouraged participants to share the content.


Here's content Lee Odden published and used to create multiple content resources.

#4: Optimize Content to Enhance Effectiveness

Your content isn’t finished once it’s written or created. You still have to enhance its attractiveness to readers.

Here are some key points to make your content work for your business.

Integrate your 360° brand into each blog post and piece of content

Ensure that your audience can associate your content with your organization. Among the elements to consider are colors, voice, text presentation, sounds, language and visual representation.

Optimize content for search

At a minimum, focus each post or piece of content on a keyword phrase, be sure to include both internal and external links, and add appropriate search-friendly text to non-text content.

Format content to facilitate consumption

Entice readers by making it easy to read your content. Break your content into bite-sized information chunks, use bold type to guide readers who are skimming to grasp the sense quickly and use photographs to attract attention.


Format your content to make it easy to read.

#5: Plan Your Content Promotion

Just publishing your content isn’t sufficient to reach a broad audience. You’ll also need to promote your content so that more of the right people see it.

Here’s what you’ll need to do to promote your content.

Incorporate automatic blog content delivery

Set up your blog to enable readers to receive your posts via email and feeds without having to think about it.

Leverage social media to distribute

Share your content across the social media platforms relevant to your audience. You can automate this, but I prefer tailored sharing to maximize the impact. Add this activity to your content marketing plan.

Also include social sharing buttons with each blog post and other content to enable readers to share your content.


Include social sharing buttons to extend the reach of your blog post. Image source: iStockphoto.

Extend your content reach

Leverage owned media such as your website and email lists to promote your content.

Where appropriate, use third-party media and advertising to support your efforts. For example, you could ask others to promote your efforts for you.

As you learn more about your blog audience, you’ll find ways to improve your blog promotion to increase your reach.

#6: Allocate Resources to Your Blog

To make your blog the heart of your content marketing, you need human and financial resources. Quality content that attracts and converts prospects doesn’t just happen when employees have time. These resources may be internal or external.

You’ll want to consider a variety of resources. You’ll want to look at resources for content creation to develop the information; creative, including design, photography and formatting; editorial to ensure that the content conveys the appropriate ideas, as well as editing to ensure the grammar is correct; marketing to get your content distributed; and technology to facilitate uploading and other technical issues.


Over time, you'll find the right resources you need to run your blog. Image source: iStockphoto.

#7: Track Content Marketing Results

As with any other business initiative, you must measure your results. Plan your metrics and content creation to ensure that you have integrated the ability to capture the data you need.

Used properly, a blog not only supports your social media, search optimization and sales processes, it acts as the hub for the rest of your content marketing.

What do you think? Is there anything else that you’d add to this list? If so, what would you include and why? Please leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Images from iStockPhoto.
author:Heidi Cohen
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-tips-for-making-your-blog-a-content-marketing-magnet/