How to Find Great Content to Share on Twitter

What content are you sharing on Twitter?

Do you struggle to find interesting, relevant things to tweet about every day?

In this post, I’ll show you how to curate content your followers will love so you can build a loyal community on Twitter.

Why Curate?

Today most marketers understand the need to create informative and relevant content. But it’s equally important to curate informative and relevant content.

In addition to creating great content for your site, the links to the other people’s content that you share on Twitter also matter.

When you share good content on Twitter, the kind your audience loves, it’s easier to build a strong community. And sharing great content will also increase your credibility in your industry.

retweet
When you create and curate relevant content, people are more likely to retweet and share your stuff. Image: iStockPhoto

#1: Know Your Audience

So what content should you share on Twitter? Before you can determine what is the best content to share in your social updates, you need to dig deep and go inside your followers’ heads.

You’ll want to know your social media audience. What keeps your ideal follower up at night? What are his favorite blogs? What’s the first thing that pops into his head when he thinks of you?

If you’ve ever created a buyer persona for a marketing campaign, this is the same exercise.

You want to find the intersection of what interests you and what interests your audience.

You can also ask your followers to find out what they want. You may find general open-ended questions—such as “What would you like me to tweet about?”—too broad to give you the information you need.

Instead, ask your followers a multiple-choice question such as, “Would you like me to tweet about a) social media marketing, b) mobile, c) productivity hacks, d) all of the above?”

You can use their answers as a starting point to plan the content you share and identify what your followers want from you.

Once you identify the content your audience is interested in, commit to this topic. Don’t dilute it.

For example, Social Media Examiner focuses on social media. So you’ll find articles about generating email leads using social media. But you won’t find content devoted to increasing email open rates or the perfect auto-responder series or other topics with no connection to social media.

Find out what topics interest your audience most and share content related to these topics on your social profiles.

#2: Tools to Help You Curate Content

Once you know your audience well, you’ll want to set up a good aggregation tool to find content worth tweeting about.

Here some of the popular news aggregators in the market today. Use the ones you like for your business to find the content you need to provide a valuable stream of daily tweets for your followers.

Feedly – Your News Delivered

Feedly is a tool to help you curate content. Feedly makes it easy for you to look for the articles most relevant for you to share.

One of the best aspects of Feedly is the variety of viewing interfaces available. You can format it to show articles in an email-type layout with headlines or arrange them as image cards or also choose a more traditional magazine layout.

Feedly is a great alternative to Google Reader and offers a variety of layouts to make RSS more enjoyable.

Regardless of the layout you choose, Feedly shows you new content from the blogs and news sources you subscribe to. And it offers a consistent presentation across devices, so you can tweet from your laptop, your tablet or your smartphone.

One of my favorite features is Feedly’s integration with multiple online tools such as Google+, Evernote, Buffer, Instapaper and more. This makes your content curation easier.

You can share and save your favorite articles to multiple social networks and web tools.

Fever – Find Out What’s Hot

Do you want to know how hot the story is that you shared? Fever is a content feed reader that ranks the stories in your feed with a temperature gauge. This allows you to measure how many links and shares a story has within your network.

Fever is a paid service that reads your feeds and picks out the most frequently talked about articles from a customizable time period.

This is a visual way to see how the content you share on Twitter resonates with your audience. It’s an easy way to be sure the content you share matters to your followers.

It is important to note that Fever comes with a one-time price of $30 and you need to host the files on your own server.

The setup is a bit technical, so you may want to ask your IT department to help you get started.

Prismatic – Discover New Content to Share

While RSS readers are great for keeping up with your favorite blogs, Prismatic helps you find new and interesting blogs.

Prismatic delivers socially curated content based on your interests to help you discover new blogs and content sources.

If you like to keep your content curation fresh and interesting, Prismatic does a great job of introducing new blogs and content sources you may never have come across otherwise .

Here’s how to get the most out of Prismatic.

Step 1: Sign up

Sign up for Prismatic using your Facebook, Google+ or Twitter login, or create a stand-alone account on Prismatic.

Sign up at GetPrismatic.com.

Step 2: Choose Your Interests

After you sign up, you can pick the different topics that you and your audience relate to. As you use the service, Prismatic will suggest new topics based on what you share and click.

Find new content by choosing topics your community is interested in.

Step 3: Pick Your Favorite Publishers

You can also use Prismatic as an RSS reader. Under the Favorite Authors section, add your favorite blogs and publishers to Prismatic.

Add your favorite blogs so you won’t miss a thing.

Step 4: Share Your Curated Content

After you’re all set up, share the articles your audience is interested in reading.

It’s easy to share the content you like from Prismatic.

When you share content, remember to include the author’s Twitter handle, so you can introduce your followers to new and interesting people.

And be sure to include relevant hashtags, but don’t overdo it. Buddy Media reports that tweets with one or two hashtags receive higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags.

Prismatic has good sharing features and can help you share great content with your audience.

#3: Analyze and Repeat

One of the most important steps to curating amazing content is to measure the results.

Are there certain articles that get more clicks, retweets and favorites than others? Is a certain topic or interest driving more engagement with your followers?

You can use Buffer to analyze shares, but management tools like HootSuite, SproutSocial and TweetDeck can all provide good analytics on your tweets.

These tools help you analyze metrics such as the number of clicks, retweets, favorites and potential reach each individual tweet receives.

Track who retweets your content and the reach they have.

Use this data to see what really resonates with your audience and A/B test different headlines for your content. Here’s an example of results from two different tweets promoting the same content.

The example above shows how a simple product mention can help spread your content to a greater audience.

Be sure to measure the response to different headlines to see which one interests your audience most and learn from your results.

Share the Content Your Audience Loves

With the wealth of information that exists on the web, marketers have a harder time finding great content to share.

Use these tools and tips and you’ll not only discover content that you enjoy consuming, you’ll also find content that drives greater engagement with your Twitter following.

What do you think? Did I miss any great tools? What are your favorite tips to curate content? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Images from iStockPhoto.


author: Steve Young
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-find-great-content-to-share-on-twitter/

26 Social Media Marketing Tips from the Pros

Are you looking for actionable tips to improve your social media marketing?

Are you wondering what the common themes of social media experts are these days?

This April, 1,100 passionate marketers from every corner of the world traveled to San Diego for Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW13), to find out.

The number of conference takeaways and buzz was immense.

For this article, I’ve focused on 26 takeaways from SMMW13, including notable quotes by presenters and their session titles.


CATEGORY: Calls to Action

#1: Get More Leads With Calls to Action

Throughout the conference, the topic of calls to action (CTAs) came up in numerous sessions. What is a CTA?

A social media call to action is an integral and often overlooked element of an effective social media strategy. Social media gets prospects, customers and the public primed to want to find out more about your offering or to engage with you further, but you must lead them to the next step in your sales or other conversion process.

Regardless of the platform—blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.—posts will receive better success rates if they contain calls to action, compared to ones without them. So, all the more reason to use them!


From the post, "Theft: 9 Ways to Protect Yourself From Losing Your Data" by Michael Stelzner.


#2: Optimize Your Facebook Posts With Calls to Action

“On Facebook, posts that include the call to action “share” receive more shares, comments and likes.”
—Mari Smith, 10 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Reach

Sometimes just the act of inviting someone to share your post will be the encouragement a fan needs to take your suggestion. Once they share the post, it will travel on further to their colleagues, friends and family, thus expanding your reach. Truly one of greatest benefits of social media!



This post was shared by 42 people, in addition to 59 likes.


#3: Grab Readers’ Attention With CTAs

Examples of calls to action include: click here, sign up today, get your ticket, join us at, RSVP here, buy now, enroll here, check this out, click, and comment.
—Rich Brooks, Beyond Likes: How to Turn Fans Into Customers; Amy Porterfield, Facebook Strategies to Launch a New Product; Pat Flynn, Podcasting for More Exposure, More Leads and More Money

When a reader is on your page and you have the privilege of having their attention for even the shortest span of time, make your CTAs an integral part of your marketing plan. Something you had front of mind—not an afterthought. Then you’ll have some influence on where readers navigate next and what steps you want to encourage them to take.

Calls to action grab attention.


#4: Get the Most Bang for Your CTA Buck

Make your CTAs crystal-clear and stick to one CTA per post. Avoid excessive calls to action.

—Cliff Ravenscraft, 15 Tips for Creating a Podcast People Can’t Live Without

When you present clear and direct CTAs, you reduce the risk of overwhelming readers with too many choices. They came to your post to learn something and the last thing you want to do is to make them feel they have to give you everything if they decide to become a follower of your content.


Decide what action you want users to take.


#5: Experiment With Different CTA Touch Points

On Twitter, if you want to target people who aren’t following you, try using a call to action to engage.

—Kyle Lacy, 5 Social and Digital Trends Impacting Consumer Behaviors

Twitter is a fast-moving stream of content. Updates can quickly flow by readers. While they’re deciding on whether to read your full update, a call to action can help seize the moment. If they like what they see, they’ll be more inclined to follow you, retweet your message and visit your website.

Reach out and touch someone!


#6: Take the Guesswork Out of CTAs

Effective calls to action can result in completed lead generation forms, phone calls and email signups.

—Rich Brooks, Beyond Likes: How to Turn Fans Into Customers

When you put a call to action out there, you’ll know which ones have been effective. For example, if no one is signing up for your free website consultation, ask yourself if the call to action is buried too far down on the page, could the wording be more enticing, are readers worried that once they do that they’ll be hounded by salespeople?

What can your call to action do better to be more effective? Knowing the answer will enhance your marketing efforts.

Gather information with forms.


CATEGORY: Content Strategy

#7: Give Content the Priority It Deserves

It may not be much of a surprise that the topic of content received “royal” treatment at SMMW13. Whether the focus of a workshop was on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, etc., many focused on the importance of fresh, frequent, quality content.

“Content is King but engagement is Queen, and she rules the house.”

—Mari Smith, 10 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Reach

Content is kind of a catch-22. The best content in the world won’t receive traffic unless people engage with it—sharing, commenting, liking, etc. Give your content the royal treatment—dot the i’s, cross the t’s, and most importantly, make it engagement-friendly. Then you’ll be able to see great results!

15,000+ tweets and pics sure sounds like good engagement!


#8: Be Generous With Your Content

Useful content that people continue to remember long after the post was read becomes “sticky.” The content keeps you in the person’s mind. They may be willing to check out your products and services. By giving generously and gaining a reader’s trust, you earn a reputation of being a reliable resource. With all the competition out there, useful content will help differentiate you in the marketplace.

Content is fire, social media is gasoline. Content should be so useful that it’s seen as a “YOUtility”; in other words, content marketing that is so useful, people will want to keep you close and even be willing to pay for it.

—Jay Baer, How to Create Customers for Life by Informing More and Promoting Less


Switch from a "me" to a "you" mentality


#9: Keep the Content Flowing

We’ve all been there. Landed on a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. Or on a Twitter account that has an egghead avatar and was abandoned in 2010 after the user wrote: “Hello world.” What’s wrong with these pictures? Lack of content.

[Only] 36% of people surveyed believe their content marketing is effective. Biggest challenges they’ve faced are producing enough content and the kind that engages.

—Joe Pulizzi, 10 Content Marketing Secrets That Will Propel You Beyond the Competition

Content requires a strategy, a production schedule with designated authors and engaging topics that encourage readers to return. Find ways to cover your content bases with an effective content plan.

Verbal and visual content that delivers on a frequent and regular basis will increase your chances to catch up to your competitors and join the ranks of those with effective content marketing strategies.

How will you create more content?


#10: Offer Subscriptions to Your Content

Content can easily be missed on Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds. One way to help ensure that your content is seen is through subscriptions.

Focus on subscriptions to your content; for example, “Join over 40,000 of your peers. Get daily articles and news delivered to your email inbox and get CMI’s exclusive ebook…free.”

—Joe Pulizzi, 10 Content Marketing Secrets That Will Propel You Beyond the Competition

Delivering daily articles and news to a subscriber’s email inbox is highly effective for busy businesspeople. Even if their inbox is overflowing, when they chip away at reading their emails, they’ll find your content pointing and linking to your articles.

Users may miss your tweets but will be more likely to receive your email.


#11: Give Credence to Analytics and Post Data

Social media data is the keeper of all kinds of useful information such as location of readers, topics and keywords that attract and time and day an update is more likely to be seen by your audience.

Amazing content yields great leads. Don’t get attached just to shares—find out which posts are getting leads.

—Brian Carter, Turning Social Advertising Into Leads and Sales

Set aside time each week to review your analytics and what you can learn from them. Content may not magically convert a lead to a customer, but you’ll be more likely to increase your funnel of leads when you provide great content.

Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut around the sales cycle. Print placement ads, radio and TV commercials never promised that either. With social media marketing, you still have to work a lead!


Could it be any clearer?


#12: Give Your Posts More Pizazz

Some posts read like they’re just giving the facts, something that you’d find in an old-time Yellow Pages ad.  Nowadays, we have to go the extra couple of miles.

Posts that are shareable give advice, warn, amuse, inspire and amaze… don’t be boring.

—Cliff Ravenscraft, 15 Tips for Creating a Podcast People Can’t Live Without

“Don’t be boring” might be one of the harshest tough-love pieces of advice that you’ll receive. But it’s true. How many times are you more willing to read an article with catchy titles and cool images or watch a video with great camerawork and music or listen to a podcast that presents a dynamic interview or industry report? If you build amazing content, they will come!


What? We need to be interesting, too?!


#13: Meet Social Media Followers Where They Are

How many times have you felt that a company isn’t letting you in? That they’re not telling you more about the business culture or values that are important to them? One of the true assets of social marketing is the ease with which we can converse with our followers.

One kind of content that has been effective for TaylorMade is real-time, ‘inside-the-ropes’ information to consumers.

—Liz Phillips of TaylorMade, Twitter Marketing: Success Tips From Brands

Real time is the real thing. Inside-the-ropes information makes followers feel a part of an online community—and connected.

Consumers like to be in-the-know.


#14: Tune Into What’s Being Talked About

Time passes quickly and topics do, too. It’s become increasingly important for social media marketers to know what readers are most interested in today, this week, this month—and as projected into next year.

Content is the greatest sales and trust-building tool in the world.  Find the most common phrases and their keyword rank in monthly searches.

—Marcus Sheridan, How to Build a Business Blog That Grows Your Brand, Generates Leads and Makes Sales

With free and paid keyword tools at our disposal (e.g., Google Keyword Tool, Long Tail Pro), you have a tremendous opportunity to tap into the content that is resonating the most with your audience. This will cut down on useless projects and make each and every post an important spoke in your marketing hub.

Using higher-ranked keywords will make a difference.


#15: Look for the Best Ways to Promote Your Content

Content promotion is an important part of content marketing strategy. With the ease of ebook creation, many businesses have found that putting together new or repurposed content into an ebook format may be one of the most advantageous ways to get their content out there.

Ebooks are best used to promote content. Businesses should focus on the value that users will receive from your content.

—Rebecca Corliss, How to Generate Leads With Social Media

Ebooks offer the ability to create cost-effective, well-designed pieces that don’t require the expense of printing.

HubSpot displays their ebooks on a Pinterest board.


#16: Know Thy Customer

By keeping your customer in mind during your content strategizing, you’ll be more likely to engage the people you’re looking to attract.

Use the social data you have about your customer to improve content strategy.

—Kyle Lacy, 5 Social and Digital Trends Impacting Consumer Behaviors

Buyer personas and knowing how topics rank among their interests will be helpful ways to improve content strategy.

Knowing who you're talking to is a big part of the content equation.


#17: Write Great Blog Posts

In an earlier 26 Tips piece, we discussed Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts. Writing great content involves many aspects beyond the ideas you set down on the page. It includes factors such as layout and design, formatting, whether the content is original or curated and more. Producing quality content requires proactivity.

Take an active approach to content development. Create content all the time.

—Amy Porterfield, Facebook Strategies to Launch a New Product or Program

Even when you’re not in the middle of a new post, jot down ideas as they come to you and see whether you can work them into a post.

Keep the content rolling.


#18: Think Beyond the Written Word

Content assets include images, videos, printed word and audio. When you have an idea for what you want to communicate, you may find that one format will serve your audience better than another. At SMMW13, there was a lot of buzz about podcasts and the impact that mobile phones and working on-the-go have on our ability to reach people, even when they don’t have time to sit down and read an article.

Podcasts cannot live without content.

—Cliff Ravenscraft, 15 Tips for Creating a Podcast People Can’t Live Without

What information could be communicated to your audience via a podcast?

Offer a variety of topics.


#19: Deliver Targeted Content

If the demographics of your target customer are diverse, then targeted topics or specific platforms may suit one audience better than another.

Slice and dice content to make it highly targeted… be consistent, authentic and relevant.

—Michael Bepko of Whole Foods, Twitter Marketing: Success Tips From Brands

Maybe you have one blog that speaks to a younger audience and another that addresses issues of more concern to middle-aged people. Messaging isn’t one-stop shopping.



Whole Foods takes "slicing and dicing" very seriously (and literally).


#20: Motivate Customers
Don’t just communicate. Motivate. Find the niche area that makes readers stop, listen and watch.

Who are your customers, what do they want to hear about, what do they talk about to friends and family, what are their obstacles, what are their worries, how can you inspire them, how can you coach, mentor and motivate?

—Brian Carter, Turning Social Advertising Into Leads and Sales

Make your content motivating and inspiring.


#21: Use Keywords Strategically

Keywords should stay front and center. Don’t think of them on a piece-by-piece basis. Instead, what are the topics that will cover the range of topics of most interest to your audience?

Develop 5 key topic areas and at least 20 unique pieces of content for each of 100+ keywords per year.

—Joe Pulizzi, 10 Content Marketing Secrets That Will Propel You Beyond the Competition

Being prepared with topics and keywords will make it easier to create unique content.

Knowing keywords and topics you will be writing about will help keep you focused. Readers will learn what they can expect.


#22: Alter Your Ways of Looking at Content Development and Delivery

Your content strategy will make a lot more sense to your authors and your audience if you think about people and where they are in the sales cycle. The information will be helpful in making a decision about whether to write a blog post, conduct a webinar or engage in a LinkedIn group forum.

Map content to customers’ journeys through the sales cycle—awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention and advocacy.

—Lee Odden, How to Integrate Blogging With Content Marketing That Inspires


Targeting content to the sales cycle can be highly effective.


CATEGORY: Email and Social Integration

#23: Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing

Consider this: “Email has had a long history, beginning in 1971 when U.S. programmer Raymond Tomlinson allegedly sent “QWERTYUIOP” as the first network email, and he was the first to connect his computer to his mailbox by using an ‘@’ symbol… Email has become a major part of our lives, consuming 28% of our workday.”

With the maturity of media, preceding ones will become displaced. Email, which has been a key player for 20 years, hurt postal delivery. Today, many are using Facebook messages instead of email.

—Mike Stelzner, Social Media Marketing in 2013: New Research and Its Implications

Facebook messages improve the odds of having direct contact.


#24: Interact With Your Audience Via Opt-In Emails

With the subscriber opts into your emails, your business can get in front of your audience’s eyes on a daily and weekly basis.

The inbox is the best social network in the world.

—Chris Brogan, Are We Getting Better or Just Busier?

Social Media Examiner not only sends email updates, but also tells you the number of subscribers.


#25: Vary Your Email and Social Integration Strategies

Below are a number of great suggestions from presenters at SMMW13:

• Advertise on Facebook to your email list.—Brian Carter, Turning Social Advertising Into Leads and Sales
• Subscribers who follow brands on Twitter are three times more likely to open an email than a subscriber who’s not on Twitter.—Kyle Lacy, 5 Social and Digital Trends Impacting Consumer Behaviors
• During the promote phase of a Facebook campaign, build your launch email list with a signature promotional giveaway. When launching, your email list can be your most powerful profit-generating resource. Use an autoresponder as part of your email campaign.—Amy Porterfield, Facebook Strategies to Launch a New Product (autoresponder)
• The third time you email someone, just pick up the damn phone.—Jay Baer, How to Create Customers for Life by Informing More and Promoting Less

Set up any number of email messages to be sent either immediately after a new user subscribes to your mailing list, or after any period of time has passed.

#26: Set Personal and Business Goals for Social Media

• Personal: Self-expression, exercise writing, be a useful resource, connect with bloggers, contribute to the community
• Business: Brand awareness, elevate publicity, support customers, recruit, attract new business referrals, create an editorial calendar

—Lee Odden, How to Integrate Blogging With Content Marketing that Inspire

Google Analytics to create and track goals via a goal funnel, a series of pages leading up to the goal destination—for example, a contact page.

—Rich Brooks, Beyond Likes: How to Turn Fans Into Customers

Be sure to create and track your business goals.

Concluding Thoughts

Perhaps the most telling number about the significance of social media marketing was reported in the April 8, 2013 PeekAnalytics report for the hashtag #SMMW13 that states:

The content [at SMMW13] was shared by consumers who have a combined total of 4.8 million social connections across their social graphs.

The speed-of-light communication that social media provides with its far-reaching capabilities is unprecedented and undoubtedly will continue to change the way businesses engage with customers, prospects and leads. What will we be talking about at SMMW14? Stay tuned!

What do you think? How do calls to action, content strategy, email/social integration and goals play a part in your social media efforts? What is working well? What goals will help you make improvements? Leave your comments in the space below.

author:Debbie Hemley

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/26-social-media-marketing-tips-from-the-pros/

How to Attract More Customers With Content Marketing

Are you looking to attract prospects, convert them to customers and keep them coming back?

Then social media and content marketing are a match made in heaven.

The key to success is to make the connection between content marketing and social media.

Let’s look at the content needed to get your marketing to that lucrative intersection.

#1: Attract Prospective Customers

The first question on a prospect’s mind when considering a purchase is, “What solutions are available?”

Your goal is to create awareness and make sure that your solution meets the buyers’ need when they’re ready to make a decision.

According to data from Google and Shopper Science’s Zero Moment of Truth report, consumers in 2011 consulted an average of 10 sources before making a buying decision. That’s up 100% from five sources in 2010.


The number of sources a buyer consults before making a decision doubled year over year.

Successful businesses are communicating with prospects on social networking sites and directing them to the material the prospects need to make an informed decision. How are they doing this?

One way is to create informational articles.

Social network users are constantly sharing, curating and consuming informational content. Often, the headline or a short description of the content appears on the social network together with a link to view the content on a company website.

Businesses need to share this informational content and have it written for prospects who are in research mode, learning about the solutions that are available.

Charles Schwab, a financial planning company, distributes links to resources via social networking sites and makes them available for prospective leads who reach out via social media.


Charles Schwab diverts this prospect who is early in the buying cycle from Facebook Page to a free resource on their website.

Another method is to raise awareness of your products and services through informational webinars and seminars.

Informational webinars and seminars can demonstrate your expertise while providing prospects with the information they need during the research stage of the buying cycle.

This tweet from Cleveland Clinic is an excellent use of social media to lead those interested from Twitter to the informational content a decision-maker needs to make a choice.


Cleveland Clinic provides a link via Twitter to register for a webinar for those considering epilepsy surgery.
In this case, the conversation begins on Twitter, but continues to a registration page and ultimately to informational content delivered via webinar.

Key Takeaway: Conversations about your products and services often begin within social networks, but additional content may be needed to assist the prospect. Make sure that those who are communicating with prospects via social media are aware of all of the resources your business has available for prospective customers.

#2: Convert Prospects

The second question on a person’s mind when considering a purchase is, “Which is the right solution for me?”

Businesses that successfully convert new customers from social media create and distribute content that provides proof points to the sale. Content that assists in meeting this goal proves that your solution provides more value than the other solutions the prospect has researched.

A very effective piece of content to meet this goal is the demo video or “explainer” video. The social media tool Little Bird provides a demo video on their home page that displays the tool in action and details the benefits.


Little Bird investor Dharmesh Shah provides a link from Twitter to see a demo of the application.
A second piece of content that will build the type of trust that closes the sale is the case study. Case studies close sales because they prove that others have had success with your solution.

The Mayo Clinic has dozens of success stories on their website that they distribute via Facebook.

This Facebook link leads to a Mayo Clinic success story that provides proof of their expertise.

A third piece of content that can convert leads into sales are white papers. For B2B marketers, the white paper is a staple piece of content used by possible buyers to assist in the decision-making process.

Gene Marks, an author, writer and speaker, makes good use of social media and white papers.


This tweet diverts those interested in CRM software from Twitter to a white paper download page.

Key Takeaway: Create content that provides the proof that prospects are looking for before they will part with their hard-earned dollars. Distribute that content through social media channels.

#3: Keep Existing Customers

The last question on a buyer’s mind is, “Am I happy with the decision I made?”

This goal is about retention and referral. Successful businesses will use social media and content to keep customers satisfied.

One type of content that retains existing customers is support documentation.

At the Crazy Egg software company, part of their content and social media strategy is to reduce the number of support tickets and raise customer satisfaction by resolving as many issues as possible through the use of online content.


Crazy Egg efficiently handles this technical issue with a link to support documentation on their website.
They could choose to divert these questions to a tech support phone call or email-based ticketing system, but in many cases this is neither convenient for the customer nor efficient for the company.

A second content type that increases loyalty is documentation of best practices.

Businesses that create content that teaches customers how to get the most out of their product or service will increase customer satisfaction.

Charles Schwab provides in-person workshops that teach their customers how to better manage their money.


This tweet leads interested individuals from Twitter to a registration page and ultimately an in-person workshop.
Another content type that increases retention of existing customers is case studies.

While the function of the case study in converting a new customer is to provide a proof point, the case study is also useful in retention because it provides guidance to the existing customer.

Unbounce, the landing page software company, does an excellent job of providing case study material to existing customers.

Unbounce’s Ultimate Guide to Landing Page Optimization report has numerous examples of the do’s and dont’s of using their software.


This Unbounce customer is grateful for the additional value the company provides through its content, so he shares a link to it on Twitter.

Key Takeaway: We’ve all heard that it’s much cheaper to keep existing customers than to find new ones. Use social media and content marketing as a customer-service tool to increase satisfaction and referrals.

Final Wrap-Up

Social media and content marketing are joined at the hip.

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn are not always where a conversation begins and ends. To attract, convert and keep customers, social media and content marketing should be parts of a seamless marketing, sales and customer-service strategy.

Your current and future customers are using social media. Make sure you have well-planned content marketing and give your social media team the information they need to share the content your audience needs.

What do you think? How do you integrate content marketing with social media? Leave your tips and comments in the box below.

author:Russ Henneberry
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-attract-more-customers-with-content-marketing/

8 Ways to Discover Valuable Social Media Content

Do you struggle to find good content to post on LinkedIn, Twitter or your Facebook page?

Would you like to find reliable sources of content your fans and followers love?

This article contains eight tips to help you quickly find great content.

Why Share Other People’s Content?
It’s all about becoming a valuable resource.  When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in–regardless of the source–you’ll become more respected and your content will be widely shared.

And when you have some of your own content to share, people will be more likely to help spread the word.

Here’s where to find valuable content:

#1: Watch Large News Sites

Depending on your industry, you may find topical and interesting articles on large news sites such as USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have a news site or magazine for your niche that provides industry news, make sure you have that bookmarked as part of your content.

The Huffington Post has a lot of different categories to draw your content from.

Dive into the different categories and subcategories available on the Huffington Post to watch for content.

#2: Watch News Aggregators

If you want to make content sourcing a little easier, use a news aggregator website or tool. Certain sites do a great job of bringing in the latest news and sorting it by industry or niche all in one place.

Stuff To Tweet has some of the most popular posts on different sites including CNN, YouTube and more. Yes, it does mention tweeting, but these articles are good for Facebook, too.

View some of the popular posts on several sites at once.

Popurls is another similar site that has a few more sites listed. You can also customize the results if you sign up for an account.

Alltop is another news aggregator where you can customize your results. The topics are organized by topic alphabetically and by site.

Find topics listed alphabetically or by site.

Inbound also uses categories to help organize their content. They tend to be more online-related topics.

Inbound also uses categories.

If you like receiving an email with aggregated news, SmartBrief may be a good fit for you. They include a variety of industries and send you an email with the popular news.

SmartBrief sends the news stories to your email address.

#3: Pay Attention to Popular Posts

You can also see things that are trending and popular on some of the other social media sites and share them to Facebook.

LinkedIn today has some great features such as Trending in Your Network, which is a natural filter if you are connected to a lot of people in your niche.

LinkedIn today has generally trending articles and also Trending in Your Network.

You can also see what’s trending on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Just go to any Twitter account and look on the left side to see the hot topics.

See the trending topics on Twitter from any Twitter account.

Notice that you can switch the trends by clicking the Change link and selecting a certain region to get more localized results. Are these trending topics always the best things to share on Facebook? Maybe not, but they can be relevant.

You may be better off just using Twitter Search and plug in some of your niche keywords to find some good articles to share on Facebook.

You can narrow your scope to see what is trending on Twitter in your region.

#4: Have Go-to Sources to Share

Many times you know which other Facebook Pages consistently have good content and valuable posts. They may be in your industry or they may be a complement to your business so your audience will also be interested in their content.

There are a few different ways to watch their Facebook posts. One is to like their Page as your Page and then watch your Page news feed. This makes it easy to share their posts when you see them in your news feed.

Another way to easily monitor other Pages is to create an Interest List of all of the Pages on your personal profile and periodically monitor that feed.

You can make this Interest List public so other people can follow it, or you can make it private so only you know who is on it.

Mari Smith made a public list of Facebook Experts and it’s followed by almost 30,000 people!


Use an Interest List to generate a separate feed of your go-to sources for content.

When you have the Interest List on your personal profile, sharing it to your Facebook Page is not hard. Just select the Share button and then switch the selection to On your Page. Then make sure the right Page is selected and the post will be shared by your Page.

Easily share content from your Facebook Interest Lists to your Page.

You can find public lists that other people have created by going to Facebook Add List (this is the same URL you use to create your own list). They first show you some of the lists that your friends have created or may be on and then they sort the popular lists by topic.


Find other lists to follow or create your own list.

#5: Use Google Reader and Google Alerts

If you have several (or even several hundred) blogs you enjoy reading that provide great content, use Google Reader to access them all from one place. You can easily see the latest posts or just click on the particular blog in the left sidebar to see some of their latest posts.

Google Reader gives you a dashboard for all of your best content sources so you can see which ones have new posts rather than checking on each individual site. You can sign up here.

Use Google Reader as a dashboard for all of your content sources.

Google Alerts are another great way to monitor the web for fresh content. Google Alerts use the latest relevant Google results and send them as an aggregated set of stories to your email address.

You can use keywords related to your niche and have a set of fresh posts brought to your email inbox every day.

You can sign up here for Google Alerts. If you find that your keywords aren’t bringing the right content in, you can always delete the alert by clicking “Manage your alerts” in the lower-left corner.

Having your company name as an alert is also useful to watch for any new mentions of your company on the web.


Try adding a few Google Alerts to bring fresh content into your email inbox.

#6: Look for Funny Posts

People are typically on social media to have fun and be social. Even if you’re a more serious brand, don’t forget to lighten up every once in a while with a humorous post. Humor can be difficult and you always run the risk of offending someone, so be careful.

George Takei posts a lot of humor (but not all posts are appropriate for a business Page).

Sometimes you can create your own funny posts using sites like Quickmeme or Someecards.

Or you can find sites that post a lot of funny content such as Know Your Meme or Cheezburger.

Just make sure you know the rules of the sites and understand how you can share their content so you don’t have any problems with copyrights.

#7: Create Your Own Images

Images are still getting a lot of engagement on Facebook. They continue to get a lot of comments, likes and shares even if they don’t have the same reach as a text post.

Images take up more space in the news feed and 0are generally more interesting than a plain text post.

But what if you don’t have many pictures to share? You can find images to illustrate a point at sites like iStockphoto or 123RF (you can’t just find images on Google and upload them to Facebook).

If you would like to find free images, you can use the Creative Commons area on Flickr or stock.xchng (make sure you read the guidelines on giving proper attribution).

You can also use Compfight to help you search for photos that you can use. You can use the Commercial hotlink to see which ones are for business use (again, make sure you read about proper attribution).


Use Compfight to find images you can use.

If you want to add your own text to the photo to illustrate a point or add some special effects to make the picture more interesting, use an online editing tool like PicMonkey or iPiccy.

Special quotes are popular things to share on Facebook, but you can use these tools to turn the quote into something more visual. Of course if you’re well-versed in something like Photoshop, creating an image to use is a breeze.

You may also have an occasion to take a screenshot and edit it. This technique works really well if you’re teaching something about websites or computers.

Social Media Examiner frequently have “Hot Tip Tuesday” which shares a hot tip from one of the social sites.


Use a screenshot tool to create a picture that helps your audience do something.

Use a screenshot tool such as Jing or Snagit to help you easily create and edit screenshots.

#8: Monitor Your Stats

Finally, make sure you watch what works with your audience.

Dive into your Facebook Insights and sort the posts you have by Engaged Users. The Engaged Users stats include the number of unique users who have clicked on your posts, which can include people clicking on the photo or link, liking the post, commenting or sharing your post.

Notice what types of posts your audience responds to and post more of those.


Sort your posts by Engaged Users to see what interests your audience.

Hopefully this gives you a running start to find more awesome content that your audience will love.

Once you get some of your favorite content creators in place, don’t forget to continue to monitor the web for new sources of great content. And make sure you work in plenty of your own original content!

What about you? Where are you finding your best content to share on Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.

Author:Andrea Vahl
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/8-ways-to-discover-valuable-social-media-content/