SOCIAL MEDIA

DOMINATING
STRATEGIES FOR
Social Media Marketing with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
and Instagram

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Copyright 2014 by Michael Richards- All rights

reserved.
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The publication is sold with the idea that the publisher is
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professional, a practiced individual in the profession should
be ordered.
- From a Declaration of Principles which was accepted and
approved equally by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any
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The information provided herein is stated to be truthful and
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publisher for any reparation, damages, or monetary loss due

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TABLE OF
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SOCIAL MEDIA ADAPT OR DIE
TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE FACEBOOK
HOW TO USE BLOGGING TO DOMINATE
TIPS ON HOW TO USE TWITTER TO DOMINATE
TIPS ON HOW TO USE YOUTUBE TO DOMINATE
TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE LINKEDIN
TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE GOOGLE+
TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE INSTAGRAM
TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE PINTEREST

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TIPS ON HOW TO DOMINATE OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS

DONT MAKE THESE MISTAKES IF YOU WANT TO DOMINATE
SOCIAL MEDIA
CONCLUSION
FREE BONUS GUIDE

INTRODUCTION
I want to thank you and congratulate you
for downloading the book, Social Media:
Dominating Strategies for Social Media
Marketing with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
and Instagram.
This book contains proven steps and
strategies on how to create and grow a strong
social media brand presence so that you can

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tap into the limitless potential that social

media have to offer.
Every business owner or marketing executive now agrees to the fact that their business has to adapt to social media or end up
losing touch with its customers. If the report
by eMarketer is anything to go by, the over
1.73 billion people who are on social media
cannot be overlooked; one in every four
people uses social media today. From a marketing perspective, we all know that is a hell
lot of market for us to tap and penetrate with
greater efficiency and effectiveness. It
doesnt matter whether you are a small or
large business; you can use social media to
target your target audience, interact with
them and widen your customer base beyond
levels you could ever imagine.

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Knowing that there is a huge market isnt

enough; in any case, everyone knows that!
You need to know how to build your social
media presence so that you can derive the
full benefits. How do you do that and how do
you ensure that you keep on succeeding in
each one of your strategies? This book will
introduce you to the world of social media to
help you appreciate the importance of using
various tips and strategies when marketing
your business on different social media
platforms.
Thanks again for downloading this book,
I hope you enjoy it!

SOCIAL MEDIA
ADAPT OR DIE
Gone are the days when small businesses
could not advertise their products to the
masses because of cost restrictions, as large
corporations that have huge marketing
budgets scramble for all TV and radio ad
space!
So, what do you do to fully use social media to derive the most benefits? As a rule of
thumb, dont just get right into it without
proper planning. You need to figure out how

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you are going to execute your plan in a manner that guarantees success. Here is what to
do before you jump right into social media
marketing and end up making some costly
mistakes. But before we go there, what do
you understand by the word social media?
Well, much as it seems like an obvious word
that you would know, you probably dont
have any specific definition of what it is.
Nevertheless, it refers to applications and
websites that make it possible for users to
create and share different kinds of content or
take active part in social networking. In
simple terms, these are platforms that enable
the user to participate in the communication
process (at least you should know that the
internet is nothing more than just an information database that we all try to access). With

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social media, you can add comments, add

videos, like or participate in any other form.
It includes social bookmarking, social news,
wikis; social networking and social photo
and video sharing just to mention a few. In
this context, it is worthwhile to consider the
history of social media and how we have adapted to it as a race.
The emergence of social media
The World Wide Web was developed circa
1991, and immediately attracted a community of people with like interests this
was a necessarily limited number, since few
people possessed access to the internet, and
fewer still the sophisticated skills required to
connect to it. However, the rise of the personal computer and the graphic interface

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made using a computer much more simply

and intuitive, giving rise to a new generation,
which began taking the Internet much more
seriously. Through this time, the Internet
began becoming more and more important
to businesses and families alike, allowing
people to meet and bond over shared interests. The nucleus of a social network was
formed with the idea of creating fan zones
for popular media. This allowed fans of the
same TV shows, games, or books to create a
community around the media. These communities began to become stronger and
more diverse as more and more people from
around the world began to have access to the
Internet. Blogs and websites are thus the
oldest form of social media, which were
formed with the intention of creating a space

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where like-minded individuals could engage

with each other.
The first major social network on this
note was MySpace, which saw a huge swing
in numbers from 2002-2004. However, issues with privacy led to the site closing
down, losing a majority of its members, as it
happens, to Facebook, which has consolidated that position into being the largest social network today. Twitter also emerged a
few years later, and achieved first a niche in
celebrity social media and then became a vibrant network on its merit. The success of
Twitter opened up the possibilities for what
could be done with the idea of social networking- Pinterest focused on communities
around shared interests, Snapchat on chatting through photographs, Instagram

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through a feed of photographs, and many

others. Suddenly, social networking had become different from what it was when Facebook was consolidating its position it had
evolved to become the main reason why
someone would use the Internet.
Marketing was still slow to realize the potential of social media. Most brand pages
were formed merely by fans, and while they
were happy to advertise on Facebook, they
did not consider the potential of being able
to interact with their customers. It was only
when Facebook revolutionized their Pages
feature, making it much more streamlined
for the benefit of brands that companies and
brands began to take to Facebook in a big
way. Today, social media marketing is one of
the chief focus of any advertising agency. The

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number of people (constantly growing populations of adoptees) is too much to ignore.

The question we have to ask when talking
about social media, thus, is why people use
social media.
Undeniably, the reasons why people use
social media have changed. From becoming
a way to break socio-cultural barriers over
like interests, social media has begun to be
appreciated for its own worth. Now, social
media exists as a blueprint for the kind of a
person someone is. Before meeting them, all
you shall need is their name and you can
know much more about them. Thus social
media presence becomes a kind of footprint
that you leave online. It informs almost every
portion of our lives to such a high degree.

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Why do we need to think about this? The

answer is that we cannot truly target audiences in this medium until we understand
the medium. If we know the purpose for
which our audience uses, say, Snapchat, we
can best use the medium for our purposes.
However, I hope another key point about social media has come to light. It has been a
very personalized experience. It is very individual, while being focused on a community.
This has meant a somewhat startling change
for brands. Now, brands can speak directly
to their audience, in real time. Customers
may complain about the service, the
products, or the brand itself. However, there
will also be loyal customers who will stay
with the brand. It is in this context that we
frame the first critical question that we need

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to answer if we are to use social media for

marketing purposes effectively: why are we
using social media?
We will answer this question in a short
while. Let us return to the basics of marketing on social media. The journey building a
strong social media brand entails having a
strong positive presence in as many of these
forms of social media as possible. Social media enables a brand to connect with its target
group in an impactful and memorable manner and along with its ability to provide exposure, and brand recognition, also remains
an exciting and interesting media for the
purpose of marketing. If you are still wondering why you should really embrace social
media or die, here is why:

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Why go social?
Increased brand recognition
Think of different social media sites as a
street intersection that attracts different
numbers of people at different times and
your presence in the different platforms as
your billboard at that intersection. The more
pronounced or outstanding your billboard is,
the more the number of people who are going to notice who you are. Just like the billboard, having a strong social media presence
will help boost your brand recognition since
as we have seen, 1 in every four people uses
social media. Social media provides an avenue for your brand to be seen and heard while
making it easy for your current and prospective customers to find you. For instance,

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someone will know about your company by

simply seeing a friends recent activity of liking your page. Additionally, your photos on
Pinterest making them gain some interest in
your business could wow someone. Your social media updates also help you rank highly
in the search engines especially because they
are indexed a lot faster. This in turn means
more people can find you with a lot of ease.
The more your brand becomes visible on social media and the more you engage your target audience, the more your business grows.
Along with every post on social media being,
essentially, premium ad space, the expanding horizons of social media as it grows in
range from the more developed countries
and areas to lesser developed regions means
that it is an exciting opportunity to connect

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with a new emerging market in a meaningful

way.
Increased opportunities to convert
Think of every new post you make on social
media as a prime time ad. This simply means
that you have an opportunity to sell (even if
it isnt hard/direct selling) to your audience,
which in turn means that there will be some
conversions. Unlike in a TV or radio ad
where those who are not actively watching or
listening dont get to see your ad, the fact
that the post is written or in picture format
means that current, past and future followers/customers will have access to such content, which simply means that the conversions will be perpetual. With every post,
video, comment or image, you are presenting

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an opportunity for your audience to react in

the form of a visit to your website, email subscription, or purchase or any other form of
conversion that you have set. Although every
post wont result to a positive conversion, the
more you interact with your following, the
more chances you have that someone will
want to react. The fact that you are giving
your audience an opportunity to react is
enough to attract attention. The basic goal of
social media marketing is to take one step
further from conversion from liking the
brand, to loving the brand, and finally, to
swearing by the brand. Social media can,
with its advanced targeting methods, and
improved connectivity, help you to find the
precise kinds of customers to reach with your
posts, and advertisements, and allow you to

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have direct conversations with them. You

want your social media presence to helpful
for your customers, but also provide some
meaning to their lives and social mediums
that can connect well with your brand. The
result is exciting options creatively speaking
which can help your brand become one that
is loved and cherished by your customers.
Reduced marketing costs
Most small businesses cannot compete with
large multinationals that have huge marketing budgets for advertising space on TV and
radio. This means TV and radio advertising
are out of the question for them as far as advertising is concerned. The internet and in
particular the social media has made it a lot
easier and less costly for small businesses to

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target their audience with great ease. What

social media provides in this scenario is a
similar kind of reach, a different kind of
audience, and flexibility in terms of both frequency and advertisement costs. You could
even reach out to over 10,000 highly targeted people with a budget of less than $20 if
you are opting for paid advertising. This is a
very tiny fraction of how much it would cost
you to advertise on TV and radio. Nonetheless, if you dont want to go this route,
spending about 6 hours a week is enough to
result to increased traffic; you can split this
into one hour daily for 6 days.
Enhanced customer insights
You can easily listen to what people are saying about you, about themselves and about

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different issues that concern them that might

be of interest to you. By following peoples
comments, likes, shares and follows, you can
easily tell what it is they really like. This can
in turn help you make an informed decision
with respect to the kind of content to share,
when to share it and how to share it. You can
then try different campaigns just to help you
understand what works and what doesnt. In
fact, social media marketing campaigns can
be goldmines of data, which can provide you
an insight into the kind of products, advertisements, and brand identity that your target
group prefers, and which find a better response from customers. Further, more sophisticated methods of statistical data collection can provide your brand with a well-developed idea of the kind of customers they

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have, their interests, and their desires. This

gives a better idea to the brand in that they
can make their products and other advertisement more appealing to their customers.
Enhanced brand loyalty
A research published by the Texas Tech
University has proven that by engaging your
current, past and prospective customers
through social media, you are likely to enhance brand loyalty. This could be mainly
because people want to be heard and
answered whenever they have anything that
they need answers on. Actually, another research published by Convince & Convert
showed that over 50% of Americans actually
follow the brands they are loyal to on social
media! As you can clearly see, you have

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everything to gain when you engage your

audience through social media. The critical
difference between conventional and social
media is that of voice. The voice of a brand
refers to the manner in which it engages with
its audiences and the ideal voice depends
both on the kind of brand it is, and the customers it hopes to attract. For example, a
brand concerned with luxury clothing would
ooze of high society speech, a focus on sophistication, and the feeling of luxury. In the
same manner, a t-shirt brand focusing on
young adults would benefit more from an
edgy, slightly self-mocking voice that is cognizant of trending topics and media. Brand
voice is important because it distinguishes a
brand from its competitors. It allows the
audience of a brand to associate the brand

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with the voice and build up the brand identity along these lines. The critical difference
between social media and conventional media is in developing this kind of a voice, and
thus, in building this kind of an identity.
While in conventional media, owing to high
costs and low audience reaction times, few
risks can be taken, the flexibility in content
and finances that social media provides allows the brand to experiment with different
kinds of voices. It also becomes a very important form of intensifying the voice. For
many customers and audiences, the social
media presence of a brand can be the side of
the brand that they are most exposed to
and so the right kind of content and style can
help build this voice, and thus, the identity of
the brand.

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Better customer experiences

Engagement could be taken as interacting
with your friend; as you well know, the more
you interact with anyone, the more you get to
know them and the closer you become. The
inverse is true; if you dont interact, you will
grow apart! Social media is a communication
tool that allows direct communication
between you and your current and prospective customers. Unlike phones where you answer questions to individuals, with social
media, you are interacting with your follower
live, which simply means that other people
could easily check out older threads if they
are looking for something.
The more you engage your customers, the
greater their level of satisfaction, which as

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we all know is one of the top ingredients to

nurturing customer loyalty. Social media can
help you clear confusion and misunderstandings making it easier to keep customers
happy. For instance, if a customer complains
about your product or service on Facebook, it
is easy to address that issue publicly either
through offering an apology or explaining
whatever issue is bringing confusion. It
doesnt have to be complaints; you can also
appreciate a followers positive comments
just to show that you really appreciate that
feedback. Customer service also works on
one key principle: the customer does not interact with the brand as if it were the brand,
but as if it was a person thus customer service on social media provides a unique

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opportunity to fine-tune the voice of the

brand.
Improved brand authority
Have you noticed that people always tend to
brag about their experiences on social media? When more people are talking about
great experiences they have had when using
your products or services, you definitely
stand to gain if you have a good social media
presence. Actually, as people talk about you,
new users regard the brand highly. This ultimately results to more conversions and easier attainment of your companys objectives.
Tap SEO power
If you have any experience in marketing a
business online, I know you are aware of how
hard it can be to appear in the top search

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results of the different search engines. Actually, updating a blog as often as possible,
having excellent meta descriptions and having backlinks isnt just enough to make you
get a spot in the top searches for your targeted keywords. The truth is that search engines nowadays largely consider social media
presence in determining the rankings of different sites. Therefore, the more presence
you have on social media, the higher you are
likely to rank in the search engines since you
are considered trustworthy, legitimate, and
credible. It is pretty simple, right!
Greater inbound traffic
Before using social media, the only people
who will probably visit your website will be
those who are already familiar with your

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brand and those who are currently searching

for the keywords that you rank highly (if you
have any). When you create a new social media profile, you are actually building a new
avenue for people to visit your website and
check out what you have on offer. This
coupled with the fact that every post is an
opportunity to attract interest means that
you are actually increasing the number of
ways through which people can see you,
which ultimately results to increased
conversions.
With the countless ways in which you
stand to gain when you embrace social media, I know that you are definitely interested
in getting started right away. Marketing on
social media is slightly more difficult than
just forming a page or a profile, and then just

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posting content. Since social media provides

a flexible avenue for all kinds of marketing, a
dedicated plan is a necessity to take the maximum advantage of the opportunities of social media. While social media will provide
you a lot of leeway with any plan a broad
strategy in how to approach the medium can
save you a lot of time, effort, and money.
Getting Started
Well, before you get started in social media
branding, you need to do some form of preparation to be sure that you know where you
are headed to; in any case, how can you tell
where you are headed when you dont have a
plan? Answer the following questions to get
started:

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What is your objective for social

media utilization?

Who is your target group?

What is your expectation out of

that particular social media site?

What is the easiest way of attaining

your objective?

So, why do you need to answer these

questions? Lets understand how each of
them relates to attaining your ultimate goal
of succeeding in developing your social media brand.
Setting objectives
Your objectives for using social media
could be such things like:

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Developing awareness about your

business

Engaging your target audience effectively and building customer

loyalty

Increasing website traffic in a bid

to increase leads

Increase the credibility of your

business to become a thought
leader

Increase
generation

conversions/revenue

Enhance operational efficiency

Spur innovation through observing

and sharing trends

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You need to know why youre using social

media for your brand. Depending on the
kinds of objectives, which depend on a variety of factors such as your degree of proficiency and comfort with social media, the
kind of brand you represent and the degree
to which it can be incorporated in social media, and many more; you can choose the kind
of plan, platform and posts that are uniquely
suited to your brand, voice and identity. As a
rule of thumb, ensure that your objectives or
goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/result focused, and Timebound). Obviously, these need to be detailed
enough to ensure that you dont leave anything to chance. Lets talk about this in greater detail:
Specific

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Ensure everything is simple and clearly

defined in order to eliminate fuzziness in all
your goals. In simple terms, you get rid of all
ambiguity when you make your goals specific. Dont just say that you want to be more
social or want to make more sales with social
media; instead, you should specify what
more means to you. Just to help you get
started as you develop any social media goal
you should ask yourself some very important
questions:

What do you really want to achieve

with your actions?

Who is really involved with the

goal?

Where exactly is your activity

located?

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Why do you really want to achieve

the goals you have set?

When do you want to start working

towards the goal and when do you
want to accomplish that?

What exactly is needed to get the

job done?

Let me give you an example:

By February 1st, I want to have attracted
100 likes to my Facebook page by posting
2-3 times a day and responding to customer
queries within 24 hours.
Just to help you understand, this answers
when the goal is to be achieved, specifies the
goal (100 likes) and how to get it done.
Measurable

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It is very simple to set broad goals which

leave a lot to be defined. However, that is
counter-productive to the good social media
plan. It is far more worthwhile to outline
measurable, and incremental objectives that
you can track and focus on. Your specific
goals should have a measurable milestone
such that you can tell how good or bad you
are doing based on the set targets. For instance, you can measure your posts in terms
of the number of people that specific post
has reached. This simply means that the
method of measuring performance in different social media sites is bound to be a lot different. For instance, you could think of such
things like number of shares, number of
retweets, likes, follows, reads etc. You can
also measure it in terms of the number of

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people who actually purchased your product

or service due to your social media activity.
Here is an example just to make you understand what I am talking about:
By April 1st, I will have increased my content sharing, clicking and commenting by
10% to help us reach a larger audience.
The example above is pretty straight forward and features specific measurement criteria of a 10% increase in comments, shares
and clicks, which will be the indicators of an
increased audience and engagement.
Achievable
We all know that any goal you set should be
challenging such that it pushes you to move
out of your comfort zone. However, it
shouldnt be unachievable or frustrating to

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achieve. As such, you should first evaluate

your current skills level and resources before
you can set the goals. Test your skills level
before setting the goals just to be sure that
you can actually achieve such goals.
Relevant/result focused
Your social media activity isnt relevant to
the platform alone. What is important is that
you must measure goals and not your social
media activities. For instance, you shouldnt
set goals such as sending 20 tweets daily. Instead, you should focus on what these actions are meant to achieve; this could be increasing awareness of your brand and many
other subtle goals. Here is an example to
help you understand what I am talking
about:

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st

By May 1 , I will develop a system that

directly ties all social media activity to lead
collection through giving a sign up reason for
an exclusive newsletter where I will be
delivering early-bird deals to customers.
As you can notice from the above example, the result here is to achieve a 1-1 contact with customers.
Time bound
You dont have until eternity to do what you
have to do to achieve your social media
goals. Your social media marketing goals
should be properly timed to create a sense of
urgency and tension that pushes you to
achieve your goals. All the examples I have
mentioned already had a date if you were
keen to notice!

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If you have thought and deliberated

about the objectives of your social media
plan, you must also begin thinking more
keenly about your brand the kind of voice
and the kind of identity, surely, but one of
the most important avenues of thought in
terms of social media is the target audience.
Since social media can allow you to connect
with your target audience with targeted ads
and data analysis, marketing in social media
requires a more nuanced understanding of
the target audience, their needs, and desires.
When you have everything thought out as far
as goal setting/ setting of objectives is concerned, you also have to consider the target
audience for your marketing efforts.
The target audience group

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Determine the target audience for your social

media marketing efforts; you simply cannot
be targeting everyone! Unlike in TV and radio advertising where you might not have the
options on who to target, social media has
such options so you need to choose who you
target. You can make a decision based on:
Age group
A particular community
Gender

A particular group that has interest

on specific products

A global presence
A particular location

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People who
preferences

have

certain

Those using a certain social media

platform

A well thought out target audience can

make seemingly large and important decisions become simpler to decide such as
choosing a social media platform. While it
can seem like a very important decision considering the variety of different social media
platforms and their differences, the most important factor in this decision is target audience since they are the ones you need to
reach. If your target audience is young
adults, who are interested in arts and photography, and their preferred platform is Pinterest, you would not want to use, for

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example, twitter. A keen understanding of

the target audience is important also for
good content, since only if you know their
needs and desires will you know the kind of
content that will provide value to their lives.
It will become very easy to choose any social
media platform if you settle on the target
audience. The next step is to map your expectations from whatever social media site
you will settle on. In any case, any SMART
goal should be Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.
What is your expectation from using
any social media platform?
As you list your expectations, you should ensure that you are very specific about what
you want. That is the only way you can tell

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whether you are actually attaining your objectives or not. Different social media platforms also have different conversion rates so
you have to understand that beforehand so
that you can know what to expect from your
marketing efforts. Here are some things to
answer before you can continue:

What level of performance do you

want to attain?

How easy is it to attain that level of

performance?

What will you need to attain that

level of performance?

How many people do you want to

attract in the process?

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Will you be able to measure your

audience vs. increase in sales with
precision?

Once you map out your expectations, the

next thing you need to do is to determine the
best strategies to use to attain your objectives and expectations with ease.
What is the easiest way of attaining
your objective?
Every social media site has its hacks that
the pros have already mastered so that you
can attain faster results. You need to understand what is needed for you to attain that.
Do you need to pay anything in the process
or is it something you can do on your own?
Do you have to get any technical expertise
for you to attain your objectives with greater

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ease? When you answer these pertinent

questions, you will be well on your way to developing a strong social media brand. Remember, however, that organic growth with
good content and quick customer response
time is the best recipe for success in social
media.
After deciding on that, the next step is to
start evaluating the different social media
platforms so that you can tell how they will
be of importance to you in developing a social media brand. You will discover that you
might probably need many of the social media sites/applications discussed in the next
segment once you read how to use them and
the benefits you can get from using such applications. We will look at each individually
and in detail to help you understand how to

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develop a social media brand in that site/application/platform so that you can unleash
the full power of that particular platform.
Obviously social media can be categorized depending on a number of factors. Perhaps the best way of categorizing is on the
degree of maneuverability and flexibility you
are allowed in kinds of content. So you can
choose between websites and blogs which
give you every freedom to post, integrated
social media websites which have a broad set
of guidelines such as Twitter and Facebook
and more secure websites of the latter kind
which have many more restrictions on the
kind of content and strategies you use.
However, the benefits of having a blog in
that context is balanced by the number of existing audiences that sites like Twitter and

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Facebook can give you Facebook has a

growing population of more than 2.1 billion
people, and Twitter is a constantly expanding social media platform as well. The number of dedicated followers means that the integrated social media platform have much
value to add to your social media strategy.
Because each social media platform and blog
provides different kinds of target audiences,
value additions and other quirks, a plan for
each social media platform is a good idea.

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TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE
FACEBOOK
Facebook boasts of over 1 billion active
monthly users spread across the globe making it by far the most popular social media
site across all age groups and societies. Facebook also attracts over 4.5 billion likes daily,
665 million active users daily, and over 765
million mobile monthly users. With this
huge user base, it means that you can take

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advantage of the platform to promote your

business to Facebooks users. Going back to
our billboard analogy, Facebook is the busy
intersection where over 1 billion people pass
through so having some presence there will
mean that you can attract a fraction of this
insanely huge number. Just to give you some
inspiration on why using Facebook is critical,
let me give you some reasons why:
Why use Facebook?
In addition to the social media marketing benefits weve already talked about, these are
pretty much unique to Facebook.
The numbers
As I already mentioned, Facebook is by far
the biggest social media site based on the
number of users. In Facebook, the secret is

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to get as many people as possible to see your

posts or your brand, like it, follow, share or
whatever action they have to take. The good
thing about Facebook is that it is used virtually everywhere around the world so you can
be certain that there will be millions of
people in whichever location you are in. The
fact that an average Facebook user spends
about 21 minutes daily means that being on
Facebook and sharing your content gives you
an opportunity to engage with as many
people as possible. Well, here is an interesting fact that will give you greater motivation.
An average Facebook user has about 130
friends. This simply means that when you
share anything that people share, you are
creating a ripple effect when several people
share that. Your posts could easily go viral if

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they can generate many shares because

whenever anyone shares anything, such
people are subtly promoting you. As such,
the key to success is ensuring that your posts
capture the attention of the first group of
people who encounter that content so that
you can stimulate response.
Cross promotion
Facebook is constantly updating its algorithm such that people see less of irrelevant content on their feeds. One way of ensuring that you get people to see your posts is to
have a Facebook Fan page for your business.
This Facebook page acts like some sort of
mini website for your business. Although this
doesnt automatically mean that the numbers will jump from one hundred to tens of

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thousands of users, you can be sure that the

more you keep promoting the business, the
more it grows and the more it promotes your
website or brick and mortar store. We will
talk about how to move from few likes to
thousands or tens of thousands of likes later
in the book.
Future proof
As I already mentioned, Facebook is always
updating its search algorithm. For instance,
recently, Facebook banned the use of like
gating as a method of attracting likes (we will
discuss this later). Paying for advertising
seems to be a norm today unlike in the past
where it was easier to promote a business
without paying a cent. Although this (paid
advertising) is fairly easy and affordable, it is

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better to use the method now and not later

because as more businesses adopt this model, the competition becomes higher, which
means that the effectiveness of such ads will
probably be lowered. As such, it is better to
adapt whatever strategy you use to get likes
now and not later! Facebook will definitely
not strip you off your likes if you obtained
them legitimately even if it updates its search
algorithm to make it harder to attract new
likes. So, when you have more likes, you are
sort of shielded from any changes that might
make it harder for you to succeed in future.
This also means that you have to invest in
providing value to your current audience if
you really want to keep them checking your
page.
Targeting

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Unlike in Google and other search engines

where you can only target someone based on
his or her search preferences, Facebook allows you to target your audience (if you use
paid search) with great precision. For instance, you can target audience in terms of
gender, age, location, apps, mobile device
use, education, life events, interests, travel,
likes and purchase behavior with utmost precision, which simply means that there will be
a high conversion rate. This is simply because Facebook users unknowingly or knowingly build a very comprehensive profile
about themselves making it a lot easier to
target them with pinpoint precision. No other platform, online or offline provides such
targeting precision.

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If you are using paid advertising on Facebook, you could easily target audience that
has similar characteristics as your existing
audience, which simply means that the conversions will definitely be higher if your existing audience has had good success. You
could for instance target lookalike websites,
lookalike pages, lookalike mobile app users,
and lots of other lookalikes! This ultimately
means greater marketing ease and ease of
audience expansion.
I know you know the limitless potential
that Facebook provides to your business but
what has been preventing you from taking
advantage of Facebook to market your business fully is lack of knowledge on how to do
it right. In simple terms, you are asking,
How can I effectively market by business or

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increase my
Facebook?

brand

visibility

through

Here is how:
As we know, Facebook is not only used for
chatting; it allows you to upload photos,
videos, share the links, share the feelings,
and share the interests just to mention a few.
If I am a customer interested in buying a
particular product that your business is
selling, I will probably first check what others are saying about the product or your
business. I will then go on to check reviews,
ratings and anything else that would help me
make an informed decision on the subject
matter.

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In that case, if you create a centralized

hub for your business in Facebook, dont you
think people will find it easier to access all
that information in just one place? You can
even be answering all questions or concerns
that your target audience might have to
make it easier for others to make decisions in
future. In simple terms, you might not need
to be answering the same questions over and
over again when you have a central page on
Facebook since people can always read responses relating to various issues that others
have had.
Facebook Page
To get started, simply create a Business
Facebook Fan page for your business then
invite your friends to like your page, join

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groups that have interests in your products

or business, post all your offers in that page
and make your customers to visit that page.
Well, since it isnt as obvious as it sounds, let
me take you through the business page creation process:
Step one:
Visit this page to create a new page (Please
note that you can only create a page when
you are already a Facebook user so if you
dont have an
account, please create one. You can use your
personal account if you want this account to
act as the admin account for that page).

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The process is pretty straightforward.

However, here are some things to note that
will make the difference between a killer
page and one that is not:
#Fill all the fields
Make sure you fill everything that needs to
be filled including your contact, website (if

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any), page description, etc. The page description also helps in organic search and Facebooks search so ensure that you use some
descriptive keywords just to make it easier
for people to find you. However, dont stuff
the keywords!
#Categorize your business wisely
This will make it a lot easier for people to
search it, which means categorizing your
business in the right category can make the
difference between being found and being
confused with another business. For instance, if you run a bar, dont categorize your
business as concert/venue unless you are
promoting concert and venues in your bar.
Also, dont say it is a food grocery if you are
running a plumbing company!

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#Customize your page URL

You dont want an unprofessional page URL.
At best, you should ensure that your URL
has the exact name of your page (this helps
in organic search in search engines). For instance, if your page is named Michael
Roberts, your URL should be something like
facebook.com/michaelroberts. Please note
that you can only change your unique address once. Also, you cannot change the Page
name when you hit 100 fans.
#Profile photo
The profile picture should speak volumes
about your business; you shouldnt just
choose anything that comes (It is even advisable to have your company logo).

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#Should you start inviting people right

away?
I wouldnt recommend that you start inviting
people or advertising your page if you dont
have anything on your page yet. Your first
priority should be to start posting stuff that
people would want to check around when
they visit your page. Think about it; would
you want to like a page that has no photos,
updates, likes etc? If you hardly like pages
that have nothing to like, dont push people
to like your page when it has nothing. Asking
people to like a blank page will be a wasted
opportunity to sell yourself better.
#So, should
immediately?

you

like

your

page

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Much as you might think that it doesnt hurt

to like your page as the first person, I would
advise against it. Since liking your page will
appear in your timeline, you dont want
people to see that you are liking pages that
dont have content yet; you want to reserve
that for the time you will have populated
your page or when you think you have had
enough posts to make people to want to
share, like etc. In simple terms, liking your
page as the first person will be wasting potential traffic, which you should have gotten
had you opted to wait until you have populated your page with great content.
#When to invite your friends
If you have guests that you are inviting over
to your house, would you want them to find

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that the house is not in order? Well, if you

dont want to be embarrassed by the emptiness in your house, have stuff filled in it; it
could be decorative art that captures their attention or furniture! Similarly, your Facebook page needs to have content before you
can invite friends to check out what you have
been up to!
#Should you pay for ads yet?
Well, much as it might be tempting to boost
your posts through paying for ads on Facebook, dont just jump right into it. Instead,
you should ensure that you have enough content to keep any lead you generate through
paying busy and interested in what you have
to offer.

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You might think that doing just that will

guarantee that you will get the maximum exposure needed for you to have a strong social
media brand. This is not the case. You need
more than that to succeed; after all, so many
others do just that but end up giving up because they dont attain their goals. Do you
know why? The reason for all this is pretty
simple; they dont get to attract their target
audience. Just as in the search engines
where SEO is critical for success, you need to
use some strategies to succeed in attracting
the audience you want. So, how do you attract more likes to your page?
1. Share a link to your Facebook page
on the groups that you join-some
members of these groups could

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probably like your page in the

process.
2. Add a like us button on your website and share it constantly in your
social circles.
3.

Invite your business contacts to

visit and like your page.

4. Ensure that you have a clear and

fresh call to action on your landing
page-dont be afraid to ask people
to like your Facebook page! You
should even set up a landing tab:
Before announcing your page publicly, you should probably set this
one up; this gives you control to
get people to respond to your call

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to action. Although like gating is

not allowed (Facebook stopped
this in November 2014), you can
use this landing page to increase
conversions as opposed to having
new people landing on your wall.
You just need to set up an effective
call to action that will prompt a
new visitor to like your page. Even
if you dont set up any application,
you can pin a post, which has the
call to action
5. Use high quality and fascinating
images and content to attract
people to share your content and
even prompt more likes. Actually,
you will realize that the more

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visual you are in your content, the

greater the number of likes. Dont
be afraid to post video tutorials or
share relevant videos on your page
to help your audience in various
ways. You can also think of sharing
photos of people enjoying your
services just to give your business
a sense of humanity.
6.

Always strive towards telling

people what they would want to
know about the business or industry; do your research. This
means having some information
relating to the stuff that happens
behind the scenes.

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7. Ensure that your email signature

has a link to your Facebook fan
page.
8. Tag the fan page so that it can appear on your friends news feed.
Use the tag @fanpage or #fanpage
when referring to your Facebook
page. This comes in handy when
you have a personal account that
already has your friends on it. You
could also ask your friends, employees and other groups admins
for help on that.
9. Master how to target fans based
on their interests, demographics
and location.

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10. Leverage the existing traffic on

your website for greater likes and
social media publicity. Place the
social media icons near the
homepage to maximize click
through rate (CTR).
11. Set a specific time when you post
and maintain consistency in
posting.
12. Use Facebook groups for greater
engagement-You can create open,
closed or secret groups depending
on the nature of discussions that
go in this page. We will talk about
the power of Facebook groups
shortly just to help you realize how
much you stand to gain.

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13. When everything fails, use paid advertising on Facebook to reach out
to your target audience. Well, using paid advertising doesnt mean
that you have not had success in
what you are doing. This can fast
track the entire process thus ensuring that you get more likes
within a shorter period without
much struggle. Let me discuss this
a little further.
The power of a Facebook Ad
A recent survey found that most of the online
advertisements are reaching only 27% of
their intended audiences. However, the same
survey is explaining that an advertisement in
Facebook is making 90% reach to its

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intended audiences. So now you have the understanding about the power of a Facebook
advertisement, right? How do you get
started?
Though it is easy to think that an ad will
result to automatic increase in likes, the real
picture is not exactly the same. You need to
ensure that you target your ad to the right
audience to maximize your conversion rate.
Since Facebook paid ads cost money, you
dont want to be wasting your advertising
credits re-advertising to the same people especially those who have already converted to
paid customers. As such, you should master
the power of remarketing on Facebook. Let
me explain that.
So, what is remarketing?

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In its simplest terms, remarketing is simply a

tactic that helps you to advertise to individuals who have shown interest in your product
or service after visiting your website. In this
case, you segment the website visitors
through creating custom ads for such groups
of people. In this case, only such people get
to see such ads on Facebook. In essence, remarketing on Facebook enables you to increase conversions while ensuring that you
keep your cost of customer acquisition as low
as possible. One of the greatest benefits of
this technique is that it only shows ads to
those who are genuinely interested in
whatever you are selling. For instance, you
can remarket to those who already visited
your website but did not buy anything or
those who have already completed an initial

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sale. Another target audience for your ad

could be those who dont know about your
product but are already interested in
something similar.
Since there are both organic and paid visitors, you need to ensure that you differentiate paid and organic traffic. So, how do
you stand to gain if you start remarketing?
Reduced cost per click
Remarketing on Facebook results to reduced
cost per click (much lower than on search
engines) especially because Facebook traffic
is usually supposed to be far less targeted
than any search engine traffic. In essence,
people on search engines are already searching for a certain product or service, which
means that they are asking for your service.

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On the other hand, social media traffic is not

as targeted because people are not actively
looking for whatever you are selling. In the
search engines, users are usually searching
for a particular product, which means they
are asking for your product (pull marketing)
but in social media, the users are not really
searching for anything and may not even
convert to paying customers (push marketing). This in turn makes Facebook ads a lot
lower than ads on search engine since technically speaking; users on Facebook are not
really searching for your product or service
at the moment. Here is a picture showing
how to hyper target your audience.

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With this model, you can easily target

people who have visited your site but have
not converted yet, which means that you are
ultimately keeping your cost per click costs
low while maximizing customer acquisition.
To go about this, you will need to have consistent quality marketing, which entails

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customizing the message such that it includes some additional information to what
such customers are already aware of about
your product since their last visit to your
website. With that, you can expect to see increased CTR (click through rate) than other
marketing campaigns while ensuring that
you keep customer acquisition costs low than
first time visitor conversion costs. You are
also likely to have a lot better engagement.
#Improve conversion rate
If you have ever marketed anything, you can
be certain that converting first time website
visitors into paying customers is not easy
and takes time. Actually, if your industry is
highly competitive, such visitors are likely to
be checking out multiple sites before they

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can even make a purchase. The truth is that

they will compare several sites before they
can make the purchase so if they leave your
site, some will probably have a problem finding your site in future even if they are interested. As such, you risk losing sales if such
people dont finally find their way back. Others could probably have converted had they
gotten some motivation from your end. Remarketing comes in handy in such circumstances because when such visitors see your
ad especially if it features some more info
that they probably didnt know, they are
likely to convert to paying customers.

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With remarketing technique, you can

even opt to exclude those who have already
made a sale through creating a custom remarketing segment for those who have
already visited your thank-you page; in this
case, you can prevent them from seeing that
campaign.

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#With remarketing, you can capitalize

on social proof
As you go on with your marketing efforts, try
not to be too limited by the fact that you are
only targeting qualified customers. You can
show your ads to a wider audience such as
those who already bought products or services from you just to ensure that you let the
two groups of people interact. You will be
amazed by the fact that happy customers will
be highly willing to post something encouraging that will make those on the fence want
to buy from you. Actually, when someone
sees that others have already purchased your
product or service, they are likely to feel
more comfortable buying from you, which
means that they are likely to convert to paying customers. By doing this, you are also

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enhancing your brand loyalty; you want

more loyal customers than just new customers because loyal customers will buy from
you with little or no marketing effort i.e. near
zero cost of acquisition.
One interesting thing about loyalty is that
if you extend your audience to start including your current customers, it is a lot easier
to upsell while ensuring that you are more
social and more engaging. This is mainly because when any customer sees you on any
social media platform, they will probably engage you resulting to more conversions.
With that, you will have a larger audience
so that you can start attaining your goals. So,
what impact should you expect from your
efforts?

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The Facebook Impact

Now you have created the page and have implemented the strategies for increasing likes
that I mentioned above. What should you expect after that? How do you stand to gain
from your marketing efforts?
1. When you frequently post offers of
your products in the Facebook
page, it will make more visitors
and more hits to your page. This
will drastically increase your web
traffic.
2.

When you engage your fans on

your Facebook page, they will have
better experience, which means
that they will probably respond
positively about your business.

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This in turn attracts more likes/

fans since people want to associate
with good businesses that give customers excellent experiences. The
more positive comments and reviews you get, the more business
will come your way. Once you start
receiving positive reviews from the
customers through email, you can
publish such reviews in your Facebook page in order to attract many
more customers, which will generate more leads for you.
3. When you do post sales or post
service follow-up, it will increase
the number of repeat customers;
you will also get referrals through
word of mouth.

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Every business that is on Facebook and is

serious about its social media activities can
probably pay for likes, and figure out ways of
getting people to like its page. However,
some businesses are simply exceptional in
the way they do their stuff; they dont just do
the minimum! Since each business has its
unique strengths as far as social media is
concerned, you would probably want to spy
on your competition just to be aware of what
is happening. Here are some creative ways of
spying on your competition on Facebook.
1. Make use of Facebook Pages to
watch
Your biggest strength here is the fact that
very few businesses are using this feature
and the fact that the competitor can never

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know that you are spying. Instead, they get a

message that someone has placed them on
the watch list (without specifying who). So,
how do you start using this feature?
-When you login to your Facebook page,
navigate to the overview section located on
the Facebook insights tab then scroll down to
add page then select this option (although
there is an option for you, you can simply
search a specific page to add).
-You can then add all the pages that you
would want to watch (you have up to 100
pages to add). Ensure that you add a few
pages from industry leaders within your
niche just to make sure that you are getting
insights on what works for them and what
doesnt. You could also know which kinds of

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posts are popular. To check out how a page

you are watching is performing, you simply
need to click on the pages name to get all the
data.
-Go to the section for posts (in the insights page) and then click the option for top
posts from all pages that you are following
(you will get 5 popular posts from all the
pages in your watch list). You can get more
info about the posts by clicking on each post
just to know the type of engagement in each
post (likes, shares, comments etc).
2. Use vital photos from post planner
This is a premium service that goes for about
$29 a month and helps you get to know such
things like all time popular photos. To get
info about any page, you simply need to add

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its URL to the app. So, how can you use that
to your benefit? Simple; you can share it on
your page to help drive more likes and comments. Just make sure that it doesnt promote the competitors business (such things
like watermarks or copyrighted images are a
no no)!
3. Facebook interest list
This is another excellent way of tracking
your competition without them knowing.
You can add a page to your interest list even
if you havent liked its page. So, how do you
set this up?
Locate the interest option on the left side
bar of your pages home page then click add
interest. You can then move on to create a
list then proceed to search for the page(s)

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that you want to track/monitor then click

next. You will then be given an option to
provide a name for your list. I should point
out that you should set your privacy setting
to only me just to ensure that no one else
can access it. If you dont mind having the
list public, just provide a very descriptive
name for your list. You can then click done.
Once you are done, you can always visit
the interest section to check the most popular and most recent posts. Through that, you
can be more confident on the kind of posts
that spur conversation and action. Actually,
you can even track your competitors actions
without visiting their page!
4. Use Simply Measured to get free
reports

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Simply Measured provides free social media

reports for literally all social media platforms
including Vine, Twitter, Facebook Google+,
LinkedIn etc. All you have to do is share your
experience with Simply Measured on any social media site. With this platform, you can
actually compare 2 weeks reports against
your competition. You could also opt to upgrade to the paid service. The downside of
this service is that you can only know whether a post is promoted or not by visiting that
page, which can be tedious to follow up!
Knowing what your competition is doing
and knowing how to attract likes to your
page is a very good thing. However, this
might not really cut it when you want to be
outstanding. Here are some actionable tips

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on how to customize your Facebook page to

make it a like magnet.
Tips for greater success on Facebook
as far as branding is concerned
#Join as many groups as possible and share
links to your page as often as possible. You
could even post in the name of the Fan page.
If done well i.e. images and captivating content, you could easily make people to click on
your page and like the page. This in turn increases traffic to your Fan page.
#Be active-Joining the groups isnt
enough; you need to post as often as possible (dont spam though). The more people
see links to your site, the more they will be
inclined to check it out.
#Organize events

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Organize events and invite your friends or

members of the groups that you have joined.
You could hold events in various groups or
on your Facebook page. Also, attend other
peoples events and post comments about
various issues discussed in such groups. You
could combine this with doing surveys on
various issues relating to your business.
#Piggyback on some hot topics-After
Gregory Levey wrote the book titled shut up
Im talking, his Facebook group has grown
from the initial 700 people who had purchased his book to over 6million likes. Try to
use catchy headlines and even go on to
reference hot-button issues in order to capture the attention of the masses. Actually, the
more people like your page, the more people

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actually continue liking and the viral effect

will be highly likely.
#Your Posts
Posts that have between 100-250 characters
have been proven to attract up to 60% more
likes, shares, and comments than those outside this limit. Be observant on your post
length, just to help you analyze how you can
actually derive more value from your Facebook posts. You should probably experiment
with different post lengths just to help you
determine your ideal post length. Trust me;
those seemingly minute things that you
would probably overlook actually count.
Your posts should be short, engaging and
shareable.

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#Start using link posts in order to

drive people to your site
Facebook now shows a clickable thumbnail
when you add a link to a website making it a
lot easier to attract people to your site. All
you have to do is to enter your sites URL
then press enter. By doing that, the title of
the page, plus description and image in that
URL will be visible (you can also choose to
customize the text or image if you want).
Tip: Ensure that the image that displays
is catchy to make people want to click on it.
#Converse with your audience
You should try asking your audience to share
their thoughts or feedback with respect to
your products and services. Through that,
you can easily get to know what customers

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are looking for and ways through which you

can enhance your business. Once this is
done, you should then go on to post content
that shows that you really took whatever
feedback or suggestions they had into consideration. This should in turn build a strong
and loyal customer base because they know
that you value their ideas.
#Be the discount/promotions business
Everyone loves free stuff. Offering special
deals or perks to your Facebook fans is a
great way to keep them visiting your page
and website just to hunt for free stuff. This
will in turn drive more sales and traffic. Ensure that you have clear call to actions that
have links to the most relevant page.

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Some interesting ways of enhancing engagement include having clear calls to action
and even some redemption details. Also,
dont forget to let your audience know about
when the promotion ends just to help you
create a sense of urgency.
You can blend the discounts and promotions with provision of exclusive information
to your fans. You will be amazed by the manner in which this gets people to keep on
checking your page just to know what is happening. This is a very handy method of driving loyalty and sales because you make your
fans to feel treasured/valued because of having exclusive access to events, contests and
news just to mention a few.
#Strive towards being timely

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I wouldnt want to visit a page that still has

last years cyber Monday offers appearing as
its recent posts when it is Easter the year
after. As such, you should ensure that you
have posts that depict what is happening at
the moment. If it is Valentines Day, your
posts should probably be tailored towards
resonating with whatever is happening at the
moment. You should also be timely in your
responses; you wouldnt want to be texting a
friend who replies to your message five days
later! In essence, you will notice that the
faster you respond, the more your fans will
engage you and the move visits you will have
to your page.
Tip: Try posting sneak peeks of some upcoming product sales some 1 or 2 weeks before major holidays like Cyber Monday,

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Black Friday, Christmas, New Year, Easter,

and Valentines etc. You will be amazed by
how you will keep your fans glued to your
page!
#Develop a posting calendar
Although it is sometimes good to go with the
flow, planning has a profound effect on your
success rate in everything you do. Try to
have a calendar showing what you want to be
talking about (posting) in each week or
month. Through that, you can have enough
time to research on what you want to post
(dont just post aimlessly). You should also
try to find a frequency that works for you. In
essence, you should try implementing any
strategy you embrace for at least a month

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before you can switch to another strategy if

that doesnt work.
#Master how to schedule your posts
I already mentioned the importance of having a consistent posting schedule. What I
didnt tell you is that Facebook now allows
you to use a scheduling feature just to make
sure that your posts go live at specific times.
This will help you cover up for times when
you might be busy with something else making it hard for you to post. So, instead of failing to post when your audience is expecting
your posts, you can schedule posts by clicking the clock icon located at the lower left
hand corner of the pages sharing tool.
Tip: Ensure that you schedule your posts
when a large number of your fans are

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online just to be sure that you will have

greater engagement. You can know stats
about that when you visit your page insights (within the posts tab).
To manage all your scheduled posts, you
simply need to head to the top of your page
then choose edit page before choosing Use
Activity Log.

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#Micro target your posts

If you are targeting specific group(s) of
people with your posts, you can micro target

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them with ease by simply clicking on the target icon that is located at the bottom left
corner then choose add targeting. You will
notice that you can target your posts based
on relationship status, interests, gender, language, location, age, and educational status.

#Constantly
insights

review

performance

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Dont expect to get any different results if

you are constantly using the same strategies.
The only way you can know how to track this
performance is to check your Page Insights
as often as possible just to get a clear picture
of what seems to be working and what isnt
working. With that, you can make sound decisions on the kind of posts to have just to
keep your page engaging and relevant. With
Page Insights, you stand a better chance of
understanding whatever your audience
wants by simply analyzing the kind of content they seem to comment, share and like.

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This post shows some advanced page customization techniques that you would probably find effective in making your site to
stand out.
I had mentioned about groups in passing
a while ago. Since this is a very critical part
of establishing a solid foundation in Facebook, lets discuss it in greater detail.
Unleash the power of Facebook groups

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If you want to develop stronger ties with

your customers, a Facebook group does the
trick in helping you develop and nurture
strong ties. As such, you could create a Facebook group for fans to discuss literally anything. Let me explain this by giving real benefits of how this works.
#Use the group to get real customer
feedback
Having a Facebook group allows you to engage with your members with greater ease
especially because group updates will be visible on recent activities of different members. Since your fans cannot receive notifications about what is happening in the Fan
page, a workaround for that is to have a
Facebook group. This in turn enables you to

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talk directly to people who are really interested in the subject matter (including those
who need help). Groups also provide easier
engagement among members through responding to questions that members might
have. Members can also post images about
themselves using whatever products or services you have on sale, which in turn allows
those who are still deciding to have a better
idea of what to expect.
This high level of interaction enhances
the truth factor between the business, customers and members, which in turn makes it
easier to know what such people are interested in.
#Use a group to offer support

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There will be times that customers will need

help or motivation. Instead of cluttering your
page with discussions (well, a page doesnt
display the recent posts as a group does), you
can support anyone who is in need through
the group. Whether you are using an open,
invite only or public group, you can be sure
that a group makes it easier for some of the
knowledgeable group members to assist
those who need help. This in turn helps build
confidence in members.
Even with a large group, it is very easy to
have non-affiliated group admins to help
steer conversations in the right direction.
#A Facebook group can help you to
spot new opportunities

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If you have a vibrant Facebook group, members will often come up with lots of ideas
some of which could be very easy to implement. Even if you wont be the one to implement that idea, you will definitely find it a lot
easier to sell that idea to an interested party.
#A group helps you to generate qualified leads
Members of your group have a certain interest. This makes it easier to sell anything to
them with little effort while ensuring that
you keep your customer acquisition costs
low. Your audience (qualified leads) is equal
to the number of members in your group so
the more members you have, the higher the
number of leads.

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Before we can conclude on how to dominate Facebook, I should perhaps remind you
that the more visual you are in your postings,
the higher the likelihood that you will attain
success. Here are some ingenuous ways
through which you can become more visual
in your Facebook marketing efforts.
#Convert your ideas into images
Humans are highly visual beings; we simply
cannot help it but be glued to amazing images. So if you can compile everything you
are thinking in some sort of image, you can
easily capture the attention of your audience.
This can be done through creating graphics,
slideshows, images, infographics, and animations that you can use to animate and even
teach your audience. The high level of

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engagement will amaze you when you use

captivating images that prompt your audience to be interested. You will hardly need to
tell them to share or like because they will do
so without thinking!
#Tell your story
It is easy to digest information contained in
an image than when it is contained in a long
post. So, instead of wasting too much time
writing a highly detailed story about yourself
or your business, you could simply convert it
to an image (some sort of a flow chart) that
tells your story in a glance.
Tip: Blend images with words to increase
conversions. It might be challenging for
some people to understand your photo so
having some words in there can help make

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the image clearer. You can do so with captions, photo descriptions and adding some
hashtags and keywords to make such photos
more descriptive.
Keep in mind that you can always hire a
designer to create captivating photos to rocket fuel your campaign.
Facebook has over 1.1 billion mobile
users per month and over 700 million daily
users. As such, you cannot overlook mobile
marketing if you really are to dominate your
niche on Facebook. You need to realize that
content, audience and device are not a one
size fits all sort of thing; each requires a
unique engagement approach if you are to
dominate. So, how can you go about that?

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Here are some mobile marketing tips that

will help you become better at it.
#Make sure that you know how your
posts look like on mobile
You dont want annoy your audience by posting content that makes them have a hard
time accessing. The first thing you should do
is to be sure about how each post would appear if viewed on mobile. Your posts should
be designed with a mobile user in mind.
Such things like Facebook tabs can make
your users to have an amazing or annoying
experience when viewing your posts. Oneway of making your tabs easier to access is to
custom make them using different tab creation tools.
#A mobile friendly blog does the trick

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Even as you promote a website on Facebook,

you cannot afford to have a site that is not
mobile friendly. This is especially because a
large number of mobile users will often click
away if a page seems to be taking longer than
usual to load. So, if you want to maximize
your conversions, ensure that your blog or
site loads easily on mobile.
#Geo target your audience
The fact that smartphones support GPS
means that you can easily target specific
groups of customers within a certain location
to increase conversions. This is especially
helpful in instances where you are promoting
a brick and mortar business or a local event.
You can combine these with click to call

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extensions on Google to make it a lot easier

to convert such leads to paying customers.
#Listen constantly
Since your audience will definitely engage
you even when you are out of your work
desk, you also need to engage them constantly. You can use social monitoring apps
like Mention since these often make it easy
to filter sources hence making it a lot easier
to engage your audience without wasting too
much time.
#Dont be afraid to share photos
The good thing about social media is that it
allows brands to humanize themselves
such that the audience even forgets that they
are interacting with a company; it becomes
more of a personal relationship. To make

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your relationship even juicier, you should

probably try posting photos of your business
being social. These random photos really
connect with your audience by capturing
those human moments.
We will later on talk about popular mistakes that people make that make it difficult
to achieve dominance status that they are always looking for; you cannot dominate any
social media platform if you are constantly
making some silly/innocent mistakes!

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HOW TO USE
BLOGGING
TO DOMINATE
What do you think of when you hear the
word blogging? Well, I see blogs as information resources that enable people to make
various decisions on different issues. Well,
not all blogs help in decision making per se
since some of them simply exist for entertainment purposes; some people want to follow the latest gossip on various people. A

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blog is essentially a personal kind of website

in which you can add content of any kind you
see fit. Because of this, a blog stretches to fit
any kind of interest however, the chief interest of a blog should probably be the
spreading of information. For example, a
blog is a popular platform for creative
writers and artists since it enables them to
keep all of their artworks and writings under
one banner. A blog acts as a mini-website
that interested audiences can use to know
more about your brand. Thus, the kind of
audiences you reach on your blog they are
already ones who are interested in your
product, your brand and your content. Unlike with Facebook, Twitter or other integrated social media platforms, when blogging,

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you must focus almost exclusively on good,

informative and entertaining content.
Before you buy any new product, you will
probably search it on various search engines;
the search words could be anything such as,
ABC safety, ABC side effects, ABC reviews,
ABC benefits, etc. From the search results,
we look for such things like comments, pricing, reviews, and experiences of others with
respect to that product or service. Blogs can
become the comprehensive space in which
your audience can know all about your
brand. We wont go too much into detail on
what a blog is and what it is not because you
probably know a bit about blogging,
WordPress, Blogger etc; instead, we will concentrate on how to use blogs to build a
strong social media brand. Here are some

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tips on how to guarantee success through

blogging.
Know how to set up a blog
Before you can even start attracting visitors
to your blog and making them click around
your blog, you should probably ensure that
you have set the blog properly. Whether you
are using WordPress or Blogger, you should
at least have some basic understanding of
how to set up your blog. In essence, your
blog should give users a good experience.
Here, having some degree of comfort with
HTML and JavaScript coding can enable you
to provide a more personalized experience
with your blog. Further, platforms such as
WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr offer various kinds of themes that can further allow

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your blog to look distinctive. However, focus

on keeping your blog clean. Just making it
look striking does not mean it should be a
clutter. It should be simple for your audience
to use and access all the features of the blog.
Optimize your blog for mobile
Since blogs can have a lot of information in
text and images, they can take a while to
load, especially on mobile. With the growing
use of smartphones, more and more people
are using such devices to access information
online. So whether you are promoting your
blog on social media or are simply relying on
the search engines to drive traffic, you
should ensure that whoever visits your blog
from a mobile device has a great experience.
Navigation should not be a problem.

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Additionally, the pages should load pretty

fast. If you dont want to lose mobile customers because of a bad experience (slow loading
speed or difficulty in navigation), you should
probably hire someone to optimize your site
for mobile view. The trend of social media is
that more and more people are going to access the Internet on their phones, and therefore it is important to have an optimized,
durable, and entertaining social media presence for people on phones everywhere.
Get a premium domain
The blog could be part of your website for
easier navigation. But ensure that it doesnt
go anything like yourblog.wordpress.com or
yourblog.blogspot.com. Instead, it should go
like yourblog.com. Doing this costs a little

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bit of money, but lends a sense of exclusivity

and panache to your blog.
What do you want?
Determine your objectives while ensuring
that you put into consideration the way you
want others to see your business. How would
you want people to think about you? How
can you implement that in your blog? This
will help you in working around the content
you publish on the blog for greater success.
This is because content is the main kind of
driver for your blog, unlike in Facebook
where the focus is on conversations with
your audience. Content is the only way in
which you can address your target audience,
and thus it is necessary for a clear vision of
what you want from your blog. The

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underlying focus of a blog must be to increase engagement and awareness of the

brand.
Consistency pays
Be consistent in your posting. Your audience
needs to feel that they can count on your predictability. A blog that has recent posts from
two years in the past is not an attractive destination for potential audiences. Youll be
able to attract the attention of audiences
with a frequent schedule of posts and with
a plan on seeking what the audience wants,
finding content to post will not be a problem.
As you do this, keep in mind that projects
and products can come and go but your
brand will remain indefinitely; your blog
should be timeless.

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Watch out what you post online

Whatever you put there sticks there forever.
Therefore, dont put anything that could
jeopardize your brand image. The Internet
has a long memory, and nothing really can
get deleted. Be conscious that everything you
posts can probably be scoured up by
someone at any time in the future, and post
accordingly.
Create sharable content
For every post, ensure that you have a picture to it then share that on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram
and other social networks that you could be
in. You will be amazed by the limitless power
of Pinterest in driving sales and conversions.
People are often attracted by images; the

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more captivating your picture is, the more it

will be shared, the more pins it will get and
the more repins it gets. In simple terms, captivating photos have a high click through rate
(CTR) so use them to your advantage while
blogging. This should ultimately direct traffic
to your site. Blogs can be an excellent avenue
from which other social media can drive content off. Keeping a Facebook like bar under
every blog page is commonplace, and necessary, but you can also play around with sharable content in other ways. It is only when
you get enough third party clicks on your
blog that your blog moves up on the Google
Search Rankings and drive clicks from
Google searches. This should be a priority for
you: searching on Google is now a default for
most audiences new and old to the internet,

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and having a high position on the search list

in regard to your product lends you more authority than any other thing.
Get a theme color and some logos on
your blog posts
People need to feel that they are visiting your
blog based on the layout, color pattern,
themes, and other core aspects of your blog.
In essence, a logo or theme color creates a
sense of brand awareness. Dont be afraid to
develop a logo and theme color at the onset;
actually, the earlier you start engaging your
audience with all these features, the easier it
will be for you to create a strong sense of
brand awareness. These give a personal
touch to your blog and enable it to stand out
amongst the rest.

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Develop a blogging style and language

and be yourself
Your audience should be able to tell the difference between your posts and anyone elses
posts based on your way of thinking, your
writing style, and everything else about your
blog posts. This helps in developing your
brand. The point is to humanize your blog as
much as possible just to make sure that your
audience feels truly connected to you. You
should strive to show your personality
through your blogging endeavors so that
your audience can truly tell who you are.
Good blogging leads to conversations you
can see on any good blog, that the blogger often converses with people in the comment
section, to the extent of there being a community behind a blog. This can only be

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achieved by having a distinctive and characteristic voice that can be identified easily.
Your goal must be that even without a logo
or a brand print, your audience should be
able to know that is you, by your writing style
alone.
Always treat
product

your

posts

as

your

On the Internet, the rule goes that if you are

not paying for it, someone else is. As such,
you cannot afford to sell yourself short by
writing blog posts that dont stand out. If you
were developing a product, would you not
use the best ingredients? Would you not constantly want to make it better? Before posting, be sure that people want that product
(your blog post). Gone are the days when

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consumers didnt have an option on what

they consumed. As such, you should get their
input if you want to stand out from the competition. As I mentioned, if the reader is not
paying the content, someone else will (is)
(there is no free stuff). As such, you should
always think of whether someone would actually pay for your content before hitting the
publish button. Dont just give opinions on
the subject; do your research if you are to
stand out as an authority. Thats the only
way you can say that you are providing content that someone would be willing to pay
for.
Give it all for free
Dont be afraid to publish content that you
would actually make a living by selling. Your

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valuable advice is what makes you stand out

as an authority. No one wants to steal your
ideas. When people constantly find that you
are always giving insights that they would
not find elsewhere, you will be amazed by
how many calls you will be getting from
people who are hungry for information. Attempts to make money out of blog posts are
really transparent and are not appreciated by
most audiences. Instead, try to let your content on your blog be a teaser for your
products. But your content should be your
product by itself you should take these
teasers and other contents seriously. And let
it be free.
Have a clear call to action in each of
your blog posts

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Always be selling but ensure that your blog

posts dont sound salesy. Instead, you can
have a call to action at the end of each blog
post. It could be share this blog, check out
our products etc. Your call to action, of
course, should not be transparent as one, but
leaving something for the audience to do
after perusing the contents of your blog can
help each blog post be a part of the whole
and do what it is supposed to do sell your
product and your brand.
Guest post
Guest post in reputable blogs so that you can
drive traffic to specific social media sites
through leaving signatures in your posts. You
should also invite guest bloggers to post
something on your site. This especially works

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magic if you feel pressed for time. It also

works well when you want to give your audience a fresh perspective; this helps in bringing in some new eyes to the blog. It also
helps in developing connections and friends
who have similar tastes and ideas, and thus
conversations and a sense of community
around your blog.
Same username
Ensure that you use the same username
when creating blog posts and various social
media platforms.
Quality content
Showcase your expertise in the specific area
by posting high quality informative blog
posts that people will use as reference material when making various decisions or

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performing various tasks. Blogs focus almost

exclusively on content all kinds of post
may be posted but they will all be heavy on
content, and avoid posts that are heavy on
direct advertisement. Thus it is important
that the quality of your content be top-order
and nuanced. When it comes to blogs, your
content is your selling point and what will influence the further decisions of your audience with respect to your brand. This is what
this section has been building up to. All the
tips suggested above make it easier for you to
know the kind of content your audience appreciates and needs. You should develop a
certain kind of plan as to what you are going
to be posting about, and then focus on developing quality content to that effect.
Build trust

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The end goal to any social media plan would

be to build trust and loyalty amongst your
audience. Blogs, like every social media network are uniquely situated to building up
loyalty and trust to the brand. This must be
your end goal or one of your end goals for all
ventures in social media marketing. Work towards building trust and relationships with
your readers so that they feel comfortable
buying products or services from you. You
cannot afford to overlook the power of personal relationships in blogging since this
drives traffic to your site by making people
want to check out your opinion about a certain issue of interest to them.
Consult your audience

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Ask for ideas from your followers; some

people have ideas about different issues but
simply need someone who they consider as
an expert in a certain field to address that issue. You will be amazed at how many people
will be willing to share ideas on what to blog
about and what kind of products or services
to offer in order to make them feel more satisfied. Building a community around your
blog with responsive and excited audiences is
not only a well-planned social marketing
plan, but also an immensely satisfying experience in itself.
Inspire your readers
Readers dont just want to read about you all
the time. They want to hear your perspective
about different issues and how you can

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inspire them to achieve different goals.

Readers want you to add value to their life as
opposed to just entertaining them. Content is
usually informative, but you do not need to
inform them about your life. Your opinions,
experiences, and ideas are of much more
value to the world than you think just remember to package it well for your readers.
Make your blog easy to navigate
Dont give your audience a hard time in finding whatever content they are looking for on
your site. Ensure that access to content can
be done within the least number of clicks as
possible. This is just another step from making sure that your blog looks good, distinctive, and striking. A clean and uncluttered interface makes your blog look far more

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appealing to audiences, and is easier to navigate to boot. Further, it also makes accessing your blog easier for people with low
bandwidth and those on mobiles.
Stop promoting on your business blog
When people are visiting your blog posts,
they are not looking for unending sales
pitches from one post to another. They want
to interact with your company on a personal
level without feeling as if they are being
pushed to buy stuff; they are hungry for information so provide information that adds
real value to that reader. Try to write articles/posts that are not directly related to
your product in order to provide real value to
your readers and even prompt them to take
action. Your blog must only refer to your

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product obliquely and in a tangential manner. Your blog cannot be the stand-alone advertising features for your product, except, of
course, when your product is your blog itself.
Your blog must add value first, and then sell
by way of brand recall, trust, and voice.
Strive to deal with negativity positively
The truth is that there will be people who
may not like the way you think, the way you
do business and everything about you. Especially on social media, you are going to face
negative reviews, reactions, and people who
do not appreciate your product. There are a
few ways of dealing with them. Instead of
simply hitting the delete button even before
you can go through all the negative comments, you should instead use these as an

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avenue to win your customers and even offer

them guidance. Try to use their critique as
constructive advice look for a dialogue instead of conflict, and if there is a kernel of
truth in their critique, acknowledge it graciously and attempt to work at the flaws. Initiating dialogue and conversations with respect to negative response makes you look
genuine, and as someone who cares deeply
and passionately about the medium, their
product, their brand, and most importantly,
about the opinions of their audience. In this
way, you can actually make your response to
a negative comment become something that
advertises the way your brand responds to
something, and well-constructed debates
and analysis online is appreciated by audiences. You could also try to find out if

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anything went wrong. You should let your

business have a personality then let it shine
through as it deals with all negativity and adversity; you shouldnt be so scared about saying sorry!
Claim authorship for your work
This does not only mean putting your name
at the end of a post, but the use of a rel=author tag, which is recommended by Google
to claim authorship for your work. This tag is
important because when you claim authorship for your published articles, your profile
picture will show when next to all your articles on search results on Google. Essentially,
every article you post anywhere on the web
will link to your blog by virtue of your profile
picture. This increases the CTR ranking for

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your blog, letting it reach higher for search

results do with its contents, and thus direct
traffic to your site by pushing it to become
more relevant. Perhaps you should know
that search results that have a Google+ profile picture often have a higher CTR than
those that dont have.
Tag carefully
Blogs give you the ability to tag your posts
with different taglines. All posts that use a
specific tagline can be seen under the tagline
itself. In a sense, the tags work like hashtags
on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
However, because of the longevity of blogging as compared to other forms of social
media, and because of the near limitless flexibility in terms of content, tags on blogs can

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drive up Google search results. Further, an

effective and creative tag can become a
byline for certain kinds of posts, can indicate
contests, debates and discussions, and can
signal the voice of the brand. Posts from your
blogs only appear on Google search results
depending on the tags, thus make sure to
keep your tags simple and comprehensively.
They should cover the main problems of
your audience. Try to imagine what you
would search on Google if you were looking
for the solution your blog provides and tag
accordingly. More importantly, do not tag indiscriminately, many tags together do not
work as effectively as a few tags that cover
the entire post well, and are a turn-off. Remember, the main goal of the tags is to drive
search results to your blog.

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Titles do the magic

Most of us click on blog posts because we
find them descriptive of what we are looking
for. In other instances, we click on them because they are catchy; we simply want to
check out what the whole thing is all about.
Experiment with different titles to find what
works for you in capturing the attention of
your target audience. Catchy titles make your
work stand out from the rest, and grab the
attention when displayed either on another
social media platform or as one of many
Google search results. Your post is basically
competing for the attention of the audience
with a bunch of other websites, who are trying to do the same things you are doing. A
catchy title may be the difference between
two or more posts in this regard. Posts on

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social media have a catch life of about fifteen

minutes, after which they need to be bumped
up to, receive any attention. In these fifteen
minutes, you need to catch the attention of
the audience so that they click on your page
and you do it via your title. However, because the title has become the most important part of the post for all, several titles
choose to detract from the content itself and
are catchy for the sake of it this is called
click bait, and is one of the most pronounced sins that you can do while marketing on social media. We will discuss more
about it when we discuss things to avoid
while on social media, but suffice to say at
this point that headlines that do not have
anything to do with the post, are misleading,
or even contradictory are not appreciated at

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all as cheap ways to catch some attention.

Coming up with a catchy and meaningful
title is a creatively challenging task, with
great results if you get the hang of it. The
most important requirement is almost always practice. The title should never summarize, but also point to what your post is all
about. Different posts work better with different titles, and the kind of brand voice you
have influences the title as well.
Share, Repost, and Collaborate with
other Blogs
Mentioned under the Guest Writers tag,
however, you want to keep an eye on other
blogs that cover similar topics, content and
posts like yourself. Unlike most of the world
of advertising, which can be a series of

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cutthroat competition, blogging is a very collaborative space. There is never enough good
content. Watch out for other blogs and share
good content that they post (with the appropriate credits, of course!) if it is related to the
kind of content you post. To that effect, websites like WordPress and Tumblr have implemented the ReBlog feature, which is similar
to the Retweet feature in Twitter. These help
you increase the profile of the other blog, but
also catch their attention. If you have any insight into their content, do comment and let
them know initiate a conversation and discussion with which the audiences of both the
blogs can benefit, and perhaps you may even
be able to start up a collaboration with another blog, providing great content, the

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audience of the other blog, and exciting avenues to explore in the world of blogging.

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TIPS ON HOW TO
USE
TWITTER TO
DOMINATE
Twitter is the second largest social media
site after Facebook with over 280 million
monthly users and up to 500 million tweets

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sent daily. This is definitely a huge market to

market your products but the challenge is;
how do you do that with just 140 characters
per tweet? In actuality, it is the 140 character
limit that makes Twitter such an interesting
medium to use for social media, and using it
appropriately is not only creatively satisfying, but owing to the relatively slow manner
in which advertisers have taken to Twitter.
How do you use the famous hashtags and
other features that Twitter provides users to
drive traffic to your blog, website or other social media sites? Here are some actionable
tips to help you get the most out of Twitter.
Tips on social media branding through
twitter
Know what you want

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You need to know about what you want from

all social media platforms, but it is the most
important facet of marketing on Twitter. You
can only know the nature of information that
you will be tweeting if you know what you
really want. Are you a blogger wishing to
share ideas and content about what you
write about or do you simply want to be
sharing news or following celebrities? Tweeting generally takes the form of sharing information in the form of videos or other media, sharing news articles, and other forms of
pertinent articles on the web that have to do
with the kind of topics you wish to talk
about. When you know your purpose, you
will definitely be tweeting on relevant topics.
Make the Twitter handle (name) exactly the
same as your other Social Media

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applications page names. This is self-explanatory, but having a common name around all
social media platforms helps improve brand
recall and consciousness, and makes it easier
for you to distribute your content around
your social media platforms. Twitter is usually not the single form of marketing, and
thus works as a way to engage the very large
audience towards the platform that you do
use for your product. For example, if you are
a photographer, you might want to use Instagram: Twitter works well in gaining attention towards your Instagram and thus increase the publicity of your main medium of
choice.
Make sure your profile has keywords

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This will make it easier for people to search

you on Twitter. You should also publish your
Twitter handle in other platforms simply to
attract a new following. Your author bio in
your blog, for example, or on any guest,
should contain your Twitter handle. For a lot
of people, Twitter is the preferred form of
communication as it allows a person to be
the most accessible compared to other social
media platforms. Twitter also has a helpful
verified option that can help you verify your
account to represent your brand. Your profile should be a creative and clever way to introduce yourself or your brand, (depending
on what youre marketing) and be representative of the kind of work you do and your
products.

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Provide all the required and relevant information while creating

your Twitter account, as it will
make people more aware of your
business.

Give your audience reason to want

to follow you
Ensure that you give your audience some
form of incentive of why they should follow
you. For instance, you could offer exclusive
access to something that your audience
would be interested in. Post regular offers
and promotions for stuff that your audience
finds amazing. Knowledgeable and well-curated content can make your Twitter worth
following. Remember, one of the ways in
which media goes viral on Twitter is through

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its retweet function you never know when

good content becomes one of the most
shared topics of the day. So keep your content informative, brief and well thought out.
As in all social media, images have better
tractions than just text on Twitter, and thus
use them judiciously to push engagement
with your Twitter profile.
Avoid using special characters and punctuations so that users will be able to reach your
website with ease. Twitter is truly a world
medium, and thus making your posts simple
and easy to understand is imperative to connect with audiences who are not as comfortable with the language(s) you use.
Customize your Twitter profile to make it
more interactive and attractive. Make it look

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more like you. Your goal is to develop a social media brand so try to use the same
branding features you have on your Facebook profile on Twitter. However, Twitter is
slightly different from Facebook, in that it is
not necessarily so personal, and that it works
much better with brief and concise words as
compared to Facebook.
Engage: Follow people or businesses that
you consider important based on the industry they are in and the kind of stuff they
tweet about. Go on to favorite tweets, retweet
tweets, and respond to tweets. This works in
that people will start listening to you when
they notice that you are acknowledging or
listening to them. Likewise, if anyone follows
you or even mentions you on Twitter, you
should try to respond to them and even

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thank them. Retweet any great content that

you find. You will realize that more people
will start engaging you when you engage
them. Look for weekly chats and participate
in the conversations. In this case, engage
them with hashtags but ensure that you dont
overuse them (one or two is just okay). Also,
ensure that you dont use hashtags that could
easily make your content end up being
grouped with inappropriate content. The follow feature is indeed a very powerful one; it
is one of the most powerful data metrics
available to you to measure your social media worth. You can use the follow feature to
find pertinent and important information
that you can further retweet to your own followers. In turn, the posts that you tweet will
be retweeted by your own followers to do

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well in social media. Your hashtags can further help in making your posts engage
further.
Alternate your tweeting times
The best way to know when your audience is
listening is through alternating your tweeting times until you find what works for you
in attracting maximum engagement. This is
where the flexibility of social media helps
you to experiment when and where your target audience is located, and what kind of information and content appeals to them.
Be creative in your content creation
Use the 140 characters you have at your disposal to craft captivating tweets. In some instances, you might need to retweet other
peoples tweets or content unlike creating

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your own content. As you do that, ensure

that you keep in mind why you are doing it,
who is your target audience and what you
hope to achieve through that. While the limit
of 140 characters may seem daunting, the
limitation can really exercise your creative
juices to come up with creative, memorable,
and appreciated tweets. Twitter especially
works well with humorous and edgy content,
but there is no restriction to be placed in this
regard, even perfectly serious posts can
stand out from the rest of the crowd. Work
on the kind of tweets you can make, but remember that above all the content must be
pertinent to the kind of brand voice and
identity that you wish to build up. The same
joke might work well if youre representing a
food brand, but might not if youre

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representing, say, a brand that sells luxury

watches. In this regard, also be aware of the
trending topics of the day and take advantage of the hashtags to respond to the topic in
a way that connects your brand to it. Remember, you cannot post about everything
under the sun, so unless you can think of
something extraordinary and engaging, do
not post on Twitter. Try to keep to a schedule, reblog interesting articles and tweets you
find interspersed with your own original
content. Make sure to not let your audience
be bored.
Be captivating:
Learn to use pictures to pass 1000 words as
opposed to relying on the 140 characters at
your disposal. Use inline images in your

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tweets to generate more followers. As you do

that, use images that speak positively about
your brand. You will notice that tweets with
images have more favorites and retweets. According to the Twitter Media Blog, posts that
have images attract over 30% more engagement than the standard tweets. The reason
this is so is that humans are incredibly visual. We tend to remember things better when
they are presented visually. To this effect,
Twitter also provides increased metrics to
pictures, making it likelier for pictures to appear on the newsfeeds and twitter-feeds of
followers than those tweets that do not contain images. Therefore, it is clear that you
should be relentless in your image creation.
Share infographics that explain some complex concepts in simple and few words. In

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doing so, you are bound to have far more engagement than constantly tweeting empty
(with no image) tweets.
If a photo speaks 1000 words, then a video
does speak 10,000 words simply because it
can help edutain your followers and spur
conversations. As I mentioned, people are
very visual. Actually, a video can help you increase engagement by over 25 percent. Although photos as mentioned above have
more engagement, it has been proven that
videos usually have a greater effect in building relationships with followers. As such, you
will find that videos can help you nurture followers until they become customers. You
dont have to post a very complicated video;
simply posting a photo of yourself doing
something in your business could be all you

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need to start engagement. In comparison

with images and words, videos are much
more likely to find better engagement. Remember to keep your videos brief for those
who have slow Internet connections. The
short video-posting app Vine is an incredible
addition to the already formidable arsenal of
apps compatible with Twitter you can post
short 4-6 seconds of video footage to drive
engagement to your Twitter feed. As a rule of
thumb, ensure that you have a clear call to
action in each video then drive people to the
relevant landing page on your site where
whatever product or service you are selling is
available. You can do all that on YouTube.
You can also hire professionals to create your
videos for you.
Consistency

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Consistency is key in any social media marketing effort. You can do so through creating
tweets that are in line with your brands
tone, mission and vision. Ensure that your
voice is unique and active on Twitter. Also,
ensure that you are consistent with as far as
timing for Twitter is concerned. If you are
usually active on Twitter on specific days, be
active on those days. You could even automate the tweeting process to ensure that you
dont miss an important moment to tweet.
Further, you can schedule tweets to ensure
they appear at the times of the day and the
days of the week in which you want them to
appear in. Most importantly, remember to
keep your Twitter feed uncluttered. If you
have a post announcing a contest, new
product, or anything that you wish to

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highlight, give it some time at the top of your

newsfeed. Consider making a cover picture
with the words to drive engagement. This
will make your followers expect something
from you during those days, which can ultimately grow your audience.
Take note of trending hashtags
You can ride on a trending hashtag to promote your business. For instance, you can
ride on such hashtags like cybermonday,
TGIF, Travel Tuesdays, Terrific Tuesdays
and any other popular tags. Just check the
popular tags and figure out how you can add
value to the conversation while ensuring that
you promote your business. Try to offer an
attractive deal to get guys to like your page.
Trending hashtags drive engagement to your

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Twitter feed by virtue of a number of people

who follow trending topics. Try to add a
unique spin on the trending topic, to make
your entry stand out from the many others
that mention the topic as well. Make sure,
however, that your spin on the topic is relevant and pertinent to the information that you
usually share and the kind of identity you
wish to create with respect to your brand, if
you cannot find a way to incorporate
something then just do not, because there is
a multitude of trending topics for you to
choose from.
Learn to manage your Twitter account
professionally
You should experiment with tweeting at different times to learn when best to engage

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your audience because they are listening.

Also, there is a limit on the number of times
you should probably tweet; you can only
know that when you experiment. You could
also schedule your tweets and monitor notifications to ensure that you have an organized way of doing things.
Identify influencers and work with them to
grow your presence
Whether you run an online or offline business, you can seek a popular blogger within
your niche then offer him or her a good deal
(say a commission, discount or upfront payment) for tweeting about your business. You
could then have that blogger have a unique
discount code that anyone who buys from
you through him or her uses to access a

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discount. This is a win-win for both of you

because you get followers while the blogger
gets to strengthen his or her following for
getting good deals for his readers or
followers.
Help people
If you know something that someone else
might not know, dont be afraid to tweet
about that. The level of positive response
that you will get from those who find your
tweet very helpful will amaze you. The rule of
thumb is that you ought to treat others how
you would want them to treat you if the roles
were reversed. If you would sometimes want
someone to help you on something, dont
just withhold information that you know can
help that person. Just like in blogging, dont

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be afraid to share it all because this will definitely pay back in multiples. For instance, if
you are attending a conference, which is
bound to attract people who dont live within
your city, you could for instance tweet about
the best hotels, best restaurants, best gyms,
best cabs, best night out joints, best
churches, fun things to do in your area and
many other things. The more help you give,
the more people feel as if they are indebted
to you. Actually, they will always stop by to
check out what you have been up to.
Tweet stats and data
It is very easy to click on a tweet that has figures on it than one that seems to provide an
opinion on something. Giving stats simply
makes you to have more credibility whatever

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you are tweeting about. This way, you stand

a better chance of attracting people who are
looking for hard facts about the subject. Stats
and data have been proven to attract 17%
more engagement. They are also safer to
tweet, as they are less likely to attract negative attention. This does not mean that you
should not share your opinion, but when doing so, you must be understanding and conscious of the different kind of followers and
opinions you have. You must be respectful,
empathetic yet stick to your own point of
view. Nevertheless, in this day and age of
politically correct responses, it is very likely
that your content is actually offensive to
someone sometimes. Tweeting statistically
correct data is helpful because it eliminates

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such responses (well, almost) and is easier to

crosscheck.
Tweet quotes
The Internet is a haven for all kinds of content it has been very difficult to analyze the
different kinds of content and find out how
many people seem to appreciate that kind of
content. This makes sense: there are many
different people, and obviously they all like
different things. However, there is one key
exception to what seems to be the rule. Most
people simply seem to like famous quotes
about a certain matter of importance to
them. Actually, if someone finds a quote that
relates to an issue of interest, they are likely
to retweet it or favorite it. A study done on
2million tweets showed that tweets

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containing quotes received 19% more engagement than standard tweets with no
quotes. Find quotes that are relevant to the
kind of engagement and information that
you post regularly your audience is likely
to appreciate it as well. Further, if you can
present this quote in an elegant image, it is
likely to engage even better with your
audience.
Use the resources on Twitter to manage
campaigns with greater ease. Twitters
small business planner app does the magic in
getting you to plan all your campaigns, monitor engagement create a competitive edge
for yourself and your business. You can find
out more about the small business planner
here. You can also use Tweepi or Insightpool
to help you target who you should follow or

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who should follow you. This greatly helps

you to build a network of people who have
interest in whatever you are interested in,
which means that your followers are more
valuable than just random followers. You can
as well use Twitonomy or Twtrland;
Twitonomy offers analytics while Twtrland
provides social intelligence. You can as well
use Topsy to know whether people are interested in whatever issue you are interested in;
with Topsy, you can check the latest results
hourly, weekly, 20 days, a month or lifetime.
The wealth of data available through Twitter
present you different matrices through which
you can identify the kind of content that is
received well, the times as well as the days in
which content receives high engagement and

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the topics that are appreciated by your

audience.
Observe the follow-first rule and favorites
follower rule
Dont be afraid to follow people. Some will be
courteous enough to follow you. Also, you
should favorite other peoples tweets then
they will probably follow you. With this
option (favorite-follower rule), you can be
sure of a higher quality and highly engaged
following. An engaged following builds a
sense of community around your twitter account which can help your brand grow much
better organically as compared to buying follows online.
Select your lists carefully-You can use Twitter lists to listen to whichever conversations

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you are interested in. You can also use the

lists to identify influencers and even filter
out any noise so that you can focus on the issues you care about.

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TIPS ON HOW TO
USE
YOUTUBE TO
DOMINATE
YouTube is the most popular video channel
with over 30 million daily visits and over 100
hours of video posted every single minute.
This makes it a great avenue to establish
your online brand. Nevertheless, the countless videos posted every single day onto the

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thousands of other videos could easily make

any videos you publish end up being buried
deep within the many others such that you
end up not reaching out to your target audience. Just like in every other social media
channel, the secret to success is getting a following or audience to broadcast your videos
to. Actually, the more views you get, the
more popular your videos will be and the
greater success you will have in ranking
highly on the search results. YouTubes popularity is reflected in the native support it receives on Facebook, Twitter, and Android.
YouTube thus is a great way to engage audiences because it can easily be accessed
through the popular social media platforms.
It is worthwhile to note that Google+ is required to use all the features of YouTube,

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giving access to another formidable social

media platform. Its popularity, however, also
means that you must have to deal with a lot
of competition to receive any attention from
people on YouTube. However, it is possible
to do so with your followers from other social
media channels owing to YouTubes flexibility and functionality, and thus earn a lot of
viewers and followers by cross posting your
videos to other sites. In short, YouTube is an
excellent and exciting opportunity to drive
engagement towards your brand. Here are
some tips to get you started when creating
and promoting your YouTube channel.
Setting up the channel and initial
design:

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When creating your YouTube channel, ensure that you use your companys name and
any relevant branding resources to ensure
that your channel is easily identifiable to
your target audience. Also, ensure that you
have a clear, catchy and straightforward
company description. Look for ways of linking your YouTube channel to your other social media pages to ensure cross promotion.
You can also do cross promotion through
linking your channel to other pages that you
are affiliated with. YouTube is especially
flexible when it comes to the purpose of
cross promotion as mentioned earlier, it
receives native support on the most popular
social networks today. When you start, the
next step is to promote your channel to

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ensure that you get the most views to your

videos. Here are some tips to get more views:
#Set up an email signature that features a link to your YouTube videos
Through that, your email recipients will
probably want to check out your videos. You
can be changing the link when you want to
promote a new video through the email signature. Choose the video for your signature
judiciously. It should definitely be indicative
of the kind of videos your audience can expect to find but must also be entertaining
enough that your audience watches the
whole thing. This method is a way in which
you can guarantee that some people shall
link to your video, but to keep them hooked
on to your videos requires a grasp on the

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kind of content you wish to post. Also, you

can post a link to your website in the description section just to drive traffic to your site.
Ensure that your URL starts with http://
since this is the only way YouTube can detect
that the content is a link.
#Post high quality videos that subtly
attract people to click on them
In this case, you should strive to shoot and
upload all your videos in HD format. As
such, you must ensure that your videos are
shot in an environment with very good lighting. Use a professional camera, and learn the
basics of camera angles if you do not know
them already. It is your responsibility to ensure that your viewers are able to see clearly.
Further, you do not want your audience to be

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distracted from your videos. All these further

make your videos look attractive and
interesting.
Keep your videos short
You really dont have to do hours of video to
pass your message across. Actually, more
people are likely to watch short videos than
extremely long ones so keep that in mind
when creating videos. It is important to keep
a constant length for your videos people
enjoy similar patterns, and more importantly, it makes the one-off video that is
longer or shorter than the norm stand out.
These one-off videos should be special ones
that announce a major event, a launch of a
product, and other such important events.

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#Ensure your blogs have a link to your

YouTube channel
In another note relating to cross posting, it is
imperative to link your YouTube channel to
your blog or website. To that effect, blogging
platforms such as WordPress, Blogger and
Tumblr provide a widget that allows your
YouTube videos to easily be accessed. This
will make it easy to attract your readers to
your channel, which ultimately increases
views and subscribers to both, your blog, and
your YouTube channel.
#Have a catchy thumbnail
To be honest, most of us only click on
YouTube videos that already seem to be descriptive of what we are looking for. We
mostly judge this by looking at the

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thumbnail. Make sure the thumbnail is representative of the kind of video it is, because
otherwise it will be seen as misleading, and
your video may also receive down votes for
that reason. Therefore, ensure that you have
one that is highly captivating to maximize
clicks to your channel.
#Strive to ride on hot topics when creating titles
Although you shouldnt be misleading in
your titles, using hot titles will increase your
chances of attracting an audience through
organic search. This works in a similar manner with the thumbnail. A catchy title can increase the number of views on your videos to
a large extent. The title of the video drives in
quite a few clicks, and therefore it is

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important that they be catchy, representative, and indicative of your content. As with
all others, coming up with the ideal title is a
difficult task, but it becomes easier with
practice. After a while, you will be able to
write a headline in a jiffy.
#Brand your videos through having a
logo or channel name
At the beginning of the video and at the end
of the video, you may want to consider
adding a logo and other effects indicating
your brand. You could even have a video effects editor to animate your logo and anything that could make your channel even better. The video effects that accompany your
logo could also become indicative of your

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brand, and would improve brand recall and

recognition.
#Unleash the power of annotations
You can interlink YouTube videos through
annotations (these can appear at the top left
and at the top right corner of each video
whereby the ones at the bottom link to the
previous video while the ones at the top link
to the next video). You can use annotations
to develop a menu screen at the end of each
video whereby the viewer is presented with
other videos that he or she can choose from.
With this option, it will be a lot easier for
people to navigate between all your videos,
which in turn result to more views. Additionally, you can use annotations to point users
to a playlist or the page that prompts the

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viewers to subscribe to your channel. In this

manner, you can link your viewers from one
video to another and drive views towards
your content. Annotating your videos can
help making your videos accessible, and the
playlists, or the campaign videos become
easily available in order for the viewers.
#Transcribe your videos too for SEO
purposes.
The content on your transcribed video will
also add to the keywords, which will in turn
help in driving traffic to your videos since the
content is usually searchable. This will drive
the Google page rank of your YouTube videos
higher, and thus make them more likely to
appear on the front pages when searching for
the appropriate keywords. Transcribing is

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also incredibly helpful for people who are not

comfortable with the language you have used
in the video.
#Let some background music do its
thing:
Dont just post silent videos (they suck!). Ensure that you have some background music
for your videos just to break the boredom of
watching a 2-minute video without any
sound. Remember to source the background
music appropriately; and use the effects creatively in your video itself if you can the
best YouTubers use background music cleverly and appropriately to drive tension within their videos.
#Add your videos to a playlist

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Group similar videos (those with similar

keywords) together in order to make better
placement in the searches. Also, search those
with playlists that match your search preferences then add them to your playlist. This
drives the page rank of your videos higher,
sorts your video and makes them easier for
consumption, and places the keywords together to make the videos easier to find.
#Share your YouTube videos on other
social media sites
Whenever you upload a video, share it in
your networks like Facebook and Twitter and
ask your friends to share it or like it as well.
Ensure that each video has a clear call to action asking viewers to subscribe to or share
the videos. You can opt to use this in the

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middle or at the end of the video. Another

appropriate call to action is merely to call for
discussion about the video. If you can get
your video to trend on other media sites as
YouTube with its native functionality on
many social media channels is bound to see,
you can increase engagement with your
video manifold.
#Ensure that you optimize all video
metadata
This will ensure that you drive more traffic
through Google searches. Metadata includes
functions like annotations, thumbnails,
titles, descriptions, and tags. Also, ensure
that the name of the raw video file is identical to the keywords you are trying to rank
highly. This will drive the video higher and

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increase its page rank. Because YouTube is a

subsidiary of Google, YouTube automatically
gets a higher placement on its search engine
compared to other video sites such as Dailymotion and Vimeo.
#Dont overlook the power of captions
If you dont want to lockout people who have
hearing problems, you can use captions in
your YouTube videos (captions are simply
the YouTubes subtitles). These captions also
come in handy for those who want to watch
videos without turning on their volume. Additionally, the content is also searchable on
YouTubes search, which in turn means you
will find it easier to rank. To add captions,
click edit a video then choose the captions
tab. However, note that the captions tab on

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YouTube is prone to errors. Make sure to

check if it is working appropriately or not. If
not, you might want to invest and create captions for your YouTube videos by yourself instead of relying on YouTubes native caption
app.
#Ensure that you have a consistent
pattern
Upload new videos in a regular, consistent
pattern to your YouTube channel. This predictability is very critical if you want to have
a dedicated following. More than anything
else, YouTube channels can get loyal visitors
owing to the subscribe function wherein
those who have subscribed to your channel
get notified about every video you make.
These people would be happy to check out

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each and every one of your videos make it

easier for them to do so by posting videos at
allotted time intervals. You may also want to
indicate the time you will be posting your
next video at the end of a video. On the same
note, if youre going to be absent from
YouTube for a while, it may be worthwhile to
mention a possible date by which time you
would return.
#Ensure that you engage your followers constantly
Respond to comments, suggestions and other forms of feedback from your audience.
Your response can either be in the comment
section of your videos, or in other videos by
themselves. You can participate in several
engagement opportunities in this regard by

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answering questions from your audience,

participating in giveaways and other such
activities. Your responses should be prompt
(dont take weeks or months to respond to
other peoples comments!) and polite. There
are a lot of YouTube commenters who are
nothing but trouble, and how you engage
with them would indicate your success with
the community.
#Partner with bloggers within your
niche
Bloggers and other vloggers who share similar themes or content with you would probably be willing to share high quality and informative videos on their blogs and media
platforms. With this option, you will generate more leads, more views and more

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subscribers. You will also have a valuable

backlink to your video. Actually, having your
video embedded in a page with a high page
rank increases your chances of ranking
highly on YouTube. You might need to give
them an incentive to promote your video on
their blog. You can as well have a blog that
features the video.
#Be selling
You should have a clear call to action in your
videos. Ask viewers what you want them to
do; it could be subscribe to my channel,
click on the link in the description, leave a
comment, like my video, share with
friends, add video to favorites etc. You can
present the call to action through an annotation or in person; whichever way you do it,

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you will notice that there will be an increase

in engagement. Such an annotation gives
your commenters something to do, and thus
drives up engagement. Contrariwise, if
youre
spreading
information
about
something, you can provide links for a more
comprehensive understanding of the topic.
For example, if you mention a charity, you
can leave a link to the charitys website for
your audience to use if they wish to donate.
You can measure the amount of clicks made
to such a website to measure how well your
call to action does.

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TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE
LINKEDIN
LinkedIn is the third biggest social networking site after Facebook and Twitter and
the #1 professional networking site with over
200 million users. This presents limitless opportunities when you establish a strong
brand presence on the social media site.
LinkedIn is a very useful site for B2B advertising, where you can try to interest not your

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audience itself but other brands with your

own brand. A strong brand presence means
having as many connections as possible and
engaging them actively. As you start your
journey towards exerting your dominance in
LinkedIn, you should perhaps keep some of
the following statistics in mind because
LinkedIn is different from Facebook, Twitter
and any other social network:
68%+ of users in LinkedIn are older than
35 years.
72%+ of users in LinkedIn are college
grads
66%+ of users in Linked in earn more
than $60,000 annually.
The good think about LinkedIn is that interaction is a lot more professional than in

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any other social site; you wont be posting

photos of your recent wild parties on your
profile lest your future boss sees that! The
primary thing youll be marketing on
LinkedIn would be yourself your audience?
Future clients and employers. Thus your
LinkedIn presence must be professional and
elegantly displayed.
So, how can you stand out while presenting yourself professionally in LinkedIn? Here
is how to get there:
#The first step is to create a LinkedIn
company page
Here is where you will be engaging your followers by posting news, events, content and
other updates. You will be amazed that having a LinkedIn page will also help you rank

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higher on the search engines. This is not so

much because of LinkedIns reach, but because a profile on LinkedIn and a presence
on the website indicates to several people
that the brand is professional. Thus a presence in LinkedIn is enough by itself to build
up a level of trust amongst your audience.
Research has already shown that up to 50%
of the members of LinkedIn are likely to buy
from the companies that usually engage
them on LinkedIn.
Once you create a page, you need to optimize that page so that it can show whatever
your company offers. You could even build a
products and services page on your page to
attract more people. Ensure that you are very
convincing on why people should follow you.
LinkedIn company pages are also highly SEO

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friendly; Google even shows a preview of up

to 156 characters so you need to have a compelling description that captivates everyone.
Use relevant keywords as well. Dont forget
to have your companys contact information,
and any other information relating to your
areas of expertise in this page. After doing
that, ensure that you ask your customers to
endorse your products or services. This company page will be the hub for all audiences to
see a hall or a boarding room if you will.
Thus it should be clean, and clutter free, but
also elegant and striking in terms of design.
#Complete your profile: People want to
know who they are interacting with on
LinkedIn. Actually, the system is set in a way
that makes it hard to find connections when
you havent filled your profile. As such,

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upload a good photo or logo of your company and complete every entry until your
profile shows 100% complete. You can also
post previous jobs or projects on the page
just to show your credibility. A complete profile provides the best opportunity for connections and engagement, and provides clients
and interested audiences with all the necessary details about your company.
#Engage with your audience
Engage with your audiences as much as
possible by responding to member comments. Ensure you interact with people in
corporate blogs, company posts and product
updates to ensure that you always keep
knowledge of your company in peoples
minds. Also, ensure that you customize

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content to your customers or followers professional interests since this resonates with
them. You can do that through sharing your
content to all followers or to a specific targeted audience based on level of seniority,
company size, industry or geography. Targeted engagement is a must have if you are
to succeed in LinkedIn. Always ensure that
your posts start with catchy introductions
and headlines; keep in mind that the audience wont read your posts if they dont find
them captivating. However, captivating in
LinkedIn is not necessarily the same as captivating your audiences in Facebook or Twitter. The much more formal atmosphere in
LinkedIn requires titles that are formal, very
short, and descriptive. As with all social media platforms, the ideal title in this regard

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will come to you via practice. Also, ensure

that you keep your titles short (40-49 characters). Nonetheless, you can always have
the freedom to experiment to find out what
works for you. The audience determines
what is interesting by a simple overview of
the first two or three sentences so ensure
that you start on a high note. Additionally,
keep in mind that questions dont really
make good or captivating titles on LinkedIn.
Also, ensure that your content is of high
value to your readers by ensuring that you
write something easy to consume and easy to
share. This in essence should include such
things like pictures, chats, articles, videos
etc. You could also ask questions to engage
your audience more.
#Add a LinkedIn button on your website

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You may even add one to your email and

blogs signature. This would ensure that it is
easy for other LinkedIn members to follow
you in a single click. Thus when sending
mailers or when recommending your blog,
website or any other web platform, add a
LinkedIn button to be seen clearly, yet unobtrusively to your media.
#Set up a custom URL
Simply click edit profile then click edit
(just besides the public profile section). After
doing that, check into the right bar on an option for customizing your URL. Ideally, your
customized URL should be the name of your
brand or the name of your other social media
platforms so that it can be found easily. Also
make it quick and easy to type.

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#Send updates about job openings to

your connections.
Also, search and answer various questions on LinkedIn and join groups that you
can participate in. You could even create
your own group to discuss different issues of
interest to your audience. Remember that
you must have a serious and well thought out
plan on the kinds of information you wish to
be sharing with your audience create a
group around this concept.
#Start some LinkedIn campaigns
LinkedIn campaigns can be used to engage your audience with a combination of a
set plan, theme, and content. By exploring
around with different ideas of content, you
should find out what kind of content receives

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the best engagement statistics, and incorporate that into a campaign to maximize your
engagements. Further cross post to other social media to drive engagement further.
#Promote your LinkedIn page
Link your LinkedIn profile on other social
media accounts you have to drive traffic to
your page. For instance, connecting your
LinkedIn profile with your Twitter account
can be a good idea. One way of setting up
your account for that is to auto post your
tweets in your LinkedIn status. Another good
way is to choose to send tweets that have #in
hashtag to your LinkedIn profile. This ensures that you keep your profile clean and
professional. Connecting your LinkedIn profile to your Twitter profile can drive

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engagement with both. If youve set your

LinkedIn feed to automatically post
whatever you tweet, be careful while tweeting; not all kinds of posts are appreciated
and find a place in LinkedIn.
#Use LinkedIn publishing to grow your
network
According to LinkedIn, LinkedIn users
who usually consume professional content
usually spend about 8 hours every week
reading about industry trends and news. You
can leverage on the power of LinkedIn publishing to grow an audience. You should
ideally create posts that are between
1900-2000 words since this has been proven
to attract more shares, views and comments.
These posts offer you an opportunity to truly

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engage with your audience without the help

of catchy but misleading headlines, tags or
otherwise. The thing you should be focusing
the most on should be content. You should
as well post regularly and engage your audience consistently if you really want to grow a
large readership. Here are some more tips on
success with LinkedIn publishing.
-Think of a middle school audience:
Dont write posts that are too complicated
for people to comprehend. Even if the audience is largely an educated lot, most people
still want to read posts written in an easy to
understand writing style. Not only are they
easier to understand, they also make it easier
for you to write without committing any errors or mistakes. These attract more shares,
views, and comments.

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-Dont be too opinionated: Try to jog

peoples minds instead of providing a good
or bad opinion about an issue of interest.
Everybody is opinionated, and thus just
sharing your opinion may cause a backlash.
Instead, try to be as objective as possible. If
youre going to post your opinion, make it
clear that it is just so, and try to respect and
acknowledge those who do not share the
same opinions as well. If you really want to
post your opinion, back your points with
statistical data; you will really come out as an
authority in your profession.
-Use images: As I have been insisting, an
image speaks 1000 words so use it to capture
peoples attention and attract engagement.
You should ideally use 8 images to attract
the maximum engagement in terms of

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shares, comments and views for each of your

posts. Videos dont really add much value to
engagement on LinkedIn.
-Break your content into small chunks for
easy reading. Dont forget to use H1, H2, H3
tags to break your posts for easy reading and
improved performance. It has been proven
that 5-9 headings perform better.

TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE
GOOGLE+
Google plus is increasingly becoming popular making it a great tool to use in order to
engage your audience in a better way. Built

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as direct competition to the stranglehold of

Facebook and Twitter to online social media,
Google+ combines the heavy presence of
Gmail (the #1 email client of the world)
among its desired audience to create a rival
social media presence. Google+ replaces the
friends and followers button you would be
used to in Facebook and Twitter in favor of
the Circles feature, which places friends,
relatives and other contacts in varying circles
depending on what kind of privacy setting
you wish to set in front of every group. Thus
in comparison to Facebook, Google+
provides much more flexibility in privacy setting and in targeted advertising. Further,
Google+ accounts use information generated
from the respective Gmail accounts, which
signify that you have access to a lot of data

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about your clients. In addition, Google+ natively supports YouTube and other Google
owned media, such as Google Docs, Hangout
etc. To balance this, however, advertising on
Google+ is still not as nuanced as it is on
Facebook, and it is a much smaller social
network in size and in terms of bandwidth.
Apart from certain brands, it is just not costeffective to advertise on Google+. But if you
feel that you can really make a splash on the
platform, here are some tips to help you solidify your brand on Google+.
#Optimize your Google+ profile
Try to make your profile appear on the
search pages while ensuring that it is captivating to your audience. Your brand colors
and logo should be added to the profile and

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any other information that you would want

your business to be identified with. As I have
already mentioned, it is best to use a profile
that is consistent across different social
networks.
#Use Hangout cleverly
Hangout is the proprietary chatting and
video chatting software that is built into
Gmail and Android. Think of it like Skype,
except with more options and wider availability. Use Hangouts to communicate with
your customers in case of one-on-one communications, such as to thank or praise certain groups of customers, as this provides
direct face-to-face interaction between customers and businesses. You can get valuable
insight on how to enhance customer

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experience, audience demographics, and

audience loyalty through Hangouts.
#Get your customers to participate
You can host a Hangout, with which, due to
the face-to-face interaction, you can give
your customers an opportunity to participate
in the process of your business. You could
blend this with allowing your audience to see
the human aspect of your business. You are
not restricted to Hangout alone; other aspects can do so as well such as videos, advertisements, and the like. However, hosting
a Hangout is absolutely one of the easiest
ways through which you can make customers
have that kind of experience owing to its
video chatting functionality.
#Promote your content on Google+

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Further, ensure that you use Google+ as part

of your email signature as well as on your
blog, website, or other social media. Make
sure that you can give users the option to
like your content on Google+ by providing
the unique + button clearly on your content
on emails, websites, and other content. Just
as Facebook likes, individual blog posts can
also receive a lot of attention from the
simple, unobtrusive, and clearly visible button on the screen. This is referred to as
Google+ badge. As I have already mentioned,
cross promotion will be a majorly important
asset in driving your social media brand to
success. On that note, remember that a majority of the people in Google+ actually have
presences in other social media such as Twitter or Facebook. When cross-posting,

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remember to keep content fresh for all your

social media groups, otherwise your social
media presence would be considered stale
and boring.
#Participate in communities
Communities work very similarly to the
concept of Facebook groups. You can find
great opportunities for engaging with others
on Google+ through the community feature.
Participating in communities which deal in
the topics and conversations that are of interest to you drive traffic to your profile. In
this context, converse with people; provide
insight as well as gain insight from others in
the community. Your presence in the community serves to increase the profile of the
brand you represent, so maintain the kind of

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voice youd want to be associated with the

brand and work on aspect of increasing your
profile. You can combine this with using
Ripples to determine the effect of different
marketing techniques in enhancing your
brand image.
#Use images and videos
Just as in every social media network, data
suggests that content containing images is
more likely to be memorable and remembered by audiences. This hearkens back
to humans being highly visual and sensory.
Try to fascinate your target audience;
Google+ like other social media platforms
seeds images higher than plain text, so use
this to your advantage. The more you

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captivate anyone who sees your posts, the

bigger the following you shall receive.

TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE
INSTAGRAM
With over 200 million active users, Instagram stands to be a great tool for you to
tap into the immense potential that the

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platform offers in generating leads and increasing conversions. It is an enormously

growing social media network, especially
amongst youth, and boasts high levels of engagement and interest from its expanding
user base. For a brand that focuses on youth,
Instagram looks like, and is, an exciting avenue for exploration, but there are a few
things that you must keep in mind about Instagram, as it is slightly different from the
other social media networks we have been
discussing so far. For example, before you
can jump right into Instagram, you should
probably understand that you wouldnt have
the luxury of publishing links to your eCommerce site, pushing sales, and pumping
products through countless advertorial copies. You can only stand out based on how you

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set up contests, how your profile looks like,

and how you create your photos. Instagram
is a photo-heavy site, while text can be posted along with pictures; they are casted directly as just accompaniment. That is why Instagram works so much better with brands
and companies that can easily be seen in the
form of the photograph food, clothing and
travel. While it is not limiting in the least,
these are the primary fields in which you can
make a difference with a campaign. A lot of
Instagram is just trying to carve out a space
with your photographs that can stand out
amongst the rest. So, how can you stand out
from the competition?
#Create a killer Instagram profile
Let me explain how you can achieve that:

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-Use high-resolution photos: High-resolution photographs are a must to grab the attention of potential customers. While there is
a lot of high quality photography on Instagram, it is still populated for the most part
by amateur photographers with their phone
cameras. The professional photograph in
high resolution always stands out amongst
such photographs. These are likely to grab
the attention of potential buyers with a lot of
ease. If you want to stand out from everyone
else who is using smartphones to capture
photos, get a good camera or hire a professional to take high-resolution photos for you.
-If you are selling, make it easy to buy:
Characteristic of Instagram is the low attention times that dot the landscape of social
media today. It has one of the fastest

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newsfeeds, in that your post will hardly be on

the front page for a few seconds. If you are
selling something, ensure that you make it
absolutely easy for people to buy. You can do
this through posting an image description to
include a link to the specific page where that
product can be purchased. This can greatly
maximize conversions. Anything more complicated than a single click is likely, on the
other hand, to reduce conversions. Keep it
simple.
-Avoid hard selling: Try not to sell directly on Instagram it is not a medium that
is conducive for such a strategy. Instagram
has a very casual and personal feel towards
it, so you can probably benefit much more by
posting photographs featuring what your
audience could do with your products and

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services. Just feature a single hint as to

where your audience can find these products
in a simple manner with a single link to a
buying page or your blog in the post description section. This subtle selling strategy
greatly helps connect with the audience,
which ultimately results to increased engagement and conversions. You can greatly boost
your companys reputation by posting in-the
moment photos that make your audience feel
more connected to your business. These
could include pictures from an office picnic,
a birthday party, or a session with some experts. Get your audiences to know more
about the personal nature of your brand, to
make it more connected with them.
-Nurture the habit of using Instagram
Direct: Instagram Direct is an incredibly

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useful feature that is perhaps not fully understood by many. This service enables users
to send messages to specific users. You can
target your recipients based on their location
and demographics. This means greater engagement and higher conversions. In essence, Instagram Direct is a feature that can
serve as an advertisement, where you can
target specific profiles by the little data they
share with Instagram. It is clear that it is an
incredibly powerful feature. Since it has been
proven that the most active fans are the ones
who convert more, you can simply find the
users who are the most active and then send
them messages introducing new products or
introduce giveaways (promotions) and even
run contests. You can also use this option to
drive traffic to your website. You can provide

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them with some incentive to do so, as well as

a code by which users who are directed towards your brand receive an incentive as
well, converting more visitors directly, and
benefiting the active user and encouraging
them to continue working with you.
-Free offers and discounts: Conversely,
the broad audience of Instagram is always
ready to take advantage of contests and discounts. Try having strategic offers and discounts on your profile to build engagement
and increase the number of visits. People
love free goodies, and they will not only be
willing to visit your profile often to see if an
offer is available, but if you can encourage
them to judiciously use the tag a friend feature as part of a, say, contest, you can drive
even more traffic to your profile. You can

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also blend these occasions with regular

giveaways and contests to get people to keep
coming back to your page. As you do this, ensure that you use a special hashtag created
for the specific giveaway so that it is easily
recognized, especially make sure that the
hashtags have the name of your brand in
them to drive up brand recall and
engagement.
#Stream your Instagram photos on your
website: This simple procedure helps in increasing visibility to your Instagram profile
and makes your website look good as well.
This greatly helps in building awareness
about your brand. As your audience grows,
you can start generating buzz about your
brand through private and public campaigns,
contests, and giveaways. Instagram is home

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to some of the most prolific contest campaigns, because its audiences are far likelier
to participate in contests and giveaways.
What kind of contests can you have?
>Like to win contests- In these contests,
you simply ask your audience to like a specific post after which they will automatically be
enrolled in the contest to stand a chance to
win amongst everyone who likes the post.
These are extremely easy to enter, and are
easy to arbitrate as well. All you need to do is
set up a random generator to select the winner. These kinds of contest work extremely
well when you have a large audience and do
not have much time to come up with a more
sophisticated contest. Obviously, however,
they do not build the brand all that well.
These are very easy to enter, easy to set up

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and easy to use to grow an audience.

However, they have low engagement and low
consumer engagement.
-Hashtag user generated contest- Simply
set up a hashtag for your contest then ask
users to post a photo or video, and then use
the contests hashtag to participate. The best
photograph or video can be decided either by
its popularity or by the brand, depending on
your choice. This helps strengthen your connection with the audience and helps popularize your brand especially if the hashtag has
your brand name in it. However, this increases barrier to entry because you are asking users to generate their own content. This
makes the contest much harder to participate in.

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-Email gated contests: In this case, you

ask people to provide their email addresses
to participate in the contest. This makes this
an excellent option for building a mailing
list.
All of these strategies help you to create a
representative Instagram profile that adds
value to your brand when mentioned, which
drives more brand engagement and recall,
and which provokes positive reaction to your
brand. You should want your photographs to
receive several comments and likes, and
there are several data measuring tools to
measure the depth of engagement you Instagram profile receives. There are several
other techniques that you can use to build
your profile up.

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#Use text overlays on your images

As mentioned earlier, Instagram is a picture
heavy site. The space for text is usually reserved for purposes of captioning, and in
general text is not often seen. This does not
mean that text has no place in Instagram.
Try to use text overlays on the images to
communicate whatever message you wish to
do. These should be brief, descriptive, and
indicative of the kind of brand youre representing. Communicate any information you
want to pass across to your audience through
text overlays. You can use any major photo
editing software to achieve this.
#Have clear calls to action in your
captions

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Your captions are the closest thing to the

conventional advertising space on Instagram. Captions are hardly read, in comparison to the images itself; try not change that.
At all costs, do not be vague on what you
want your audience to do. Your captions
should include a clear, simple, and direct call
to action. Ensure that you are very descriptive of what you want the audience to do. You
can have such calls to actions such as like it
to lower the price; in this case, you should
set milestones of how many likes you should
get to lower the price by a certain percentage. You can use others like click on the link
in the bio section. The focus is on simplicity
and ease; you need not be extremely creative
with your captions.
#Unleash the power of hashtags

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Your captions or comments should have relevant hashtags to help you increase your
reach, overall visibility and engagement. You
can use hashtags that are related to your
business, your target audience, your posts
and anything else. Hashtags work slightly
differently in Instagram unlike in Twitter.
For starters, the lack of a character limit
means that you can use as many hashtags as
you would like. Unlike in Facebook, where
too many hashtags is frowned upon, the fact
that relatively few people pay attention to the
captions of the images in Instagram means
that you may use as many hashtags as you
like. Thus, dont be afraid to use many hashtags (as many as 30 hashtags or more). Try to
incorporate a mixture of popular, unique
(custom hashtags) and less popular

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hashtags. However, do not use a hashtag for

the sake of using a hashtag. Work with the
above combinations to come up with 5-10
hashtags, which seems to be the best range
for Instagram.
#Use other social media platforms
All social media platforms involves crosspromotion. This is a strategically useful tactic, because every social media platform
provides something different that you can incorporate into your overall social media
strategy. Instagram, for starters, is owned by
Facebook, which means that it can directly
be incorporated into your Facebook page,
however a simple widget can also provide a
stream for a website or blog, and Instagram
can easily connect with Twitter as well. You

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can use Instagram with other social media

platforms to take full advantage of all the benefits of the individual platforms. You can
cross promote your social media accounts
just to increase your audience in each platform. However, the benefits of cross promotion extend far beyond introducing new
audiences to the brand: it can give rise to
several creative opportunities as well. Just
remember that owing to the differences
between the platforms, they should not be
exactly the same. If they are, you are probably using one platform too many you
should consider merging both of these platforms into one, and the one which is suggested is the one which has greater engagement
returns for you.
#Be unique

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Since Instagram is essentially a photo-feed,

your competition in gaining the attention of
your followers is all the other photographs in
the platform. As usual, the trick is to not
view these as competition at all. Have a clear
idea of what you wish to do with your Instagram profile, and then work at it by highlighting your individual talent. Your uniqueness or creativity in your photo creation will
ultimately determine whether your photo
stands out or not. You can showcase your talent in cooking, dancing and doing lots of
other things. DIY how to videos can also do
some magic in impressing your audience and
generating a larger audience. You should
also ensure that you bring out your personality excellently such that your audience can
clearly tell between your content and other

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peoples content. Unique, zany, and brilliant

content that is posted regularly are the perfect ingredients for you to build up a community around your Instagram account,
which should be your overall aim with the
platform. You shouldnt forget to post consistently though; this helps you to build trust
in the audience.
#Analyze
This is true for all social media in general,
but Instagram in particular can provide a
rich amount of data that you can analyze.
Analytic tools that help you in this regard include Iconosquare and Totems. You can
come to an understanding of the kind of content that your target audience likes: Instagrams hashtag feature gives you a

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constant grip on the trending topics, which

you can cross measure with other social media platforms to build an idea about how impactful trends in Instagram are in other platforms. You should also have your benchmarks like the number of likes, comments
and shares based on the number of your followers. Additionally, you should try posting
at different times to know when you get the
most engagement. The purpose of data collection and analysis is to build a comprehensive picture of how your social media
plan is doing, and what you need to change
and build on to make it work better for the
demands of the brand.

TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE
PINTEREST
Today, there is an added focus on visual
marketing. The era of long copy newspaper
ads has passed, being replaced instead by

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ads with low amounts of text and a focus on

the image. If visual marketing is the current
trend coupled with the fact that a picture can
tell 1000 words, all you need is Pinterest to
tell your stories. As you have noticed
throughout the book, I have been emphasizing on the importance of using pictures,
videos and other visual stuff to captivate
your audience. How does Pinterest work?
Pinterest basically acts as a way to pin interesting articles from all around the internet.
These can be grouped under several sections
so that they can be accessed easily and
without any hassle. People with shared interests can pin stories from other peoples
Pinterest boards, giving the website a sense
of community. In a very short time, Pinterest
has become a vibrant and thriving social

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network that is especially prized by marketing experts. Actually, research shows that
Pinterest brings in more buyers than any
other social media site, ahead of Facebook,
Twitter and Google+. Pinterest is one of the
fastest growing social networks that bring
high levels of engagement, increased audience response, and a very high click-through
rate. Success in Pinterest is imperative for a
number of social media projects, especially
those that have a lot to do with images. So,
how do you succeed on Pinterest? Here are
some tips to guide you towards success:
#Ensure all your posts have a captivating photo
Essentially, Pinterest works to collect information from various sources. It does not

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work like a content creating site but as a content sharing site. However, as a content sharing site it has many features that can lead to
it becoming your social network of choice. A
pin on a Pinterest board is represented by
the image that is attached along with the web
page. You will likely be pinning your own
blog posts and content on Pinterest, so make
sure that each of your posts has an elegant,
contextual photograph. Pinterest is highly
visual, as is its audience, and having a photograph is absolutely necessary. If you have
older posts that have no photos, start adding
photos to them and then pin them.
#Create a business account
Pinterest has many features that are tailored
for businesses. This is part of the reason why

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it is one of the most exciting social networks

around today. Thus, when creating an account, make sure that you create a business
account, so that you can benefit from the
various features and perks of the social network. Doing so also gives your brand a face
that people can associate with. If you already
have some followers on a personal account,
change it to a business account. As you do
this, ensure that you use a profile image that
people can recognize easily; it could be a logo
or a product that you want to be known for.
#Partner
pinners

with

influential

guest

Look out for popular Pinterest bloggers who

have boards that relate to your brand, and
invite them to partner with you in creation

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and curation of content. This works as a

symbiotic relationship with you gaining access to the guests audience and following
and the guest having access to concessions
and first glimpses at your product. The
keywords for this activity are hence increased sales and following, ultimately leading to brand awareness and recall.
#Engage creatively with your audience
You could show your appreciation for your
audience by baking a cake for them and pinning the photo on your board. You could also
find a way of ensuring that you inspire your
audience based on the kind of pins you have.
You could also use this to help people generate new ideas on various aspects of their life.
This should help you in getting more pins,

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followers and repins. You need to be useful

for your followers, while also being relevant
to the kind of brand your represent and the
kind of voice and identity your brand wishes
to pursue. However, there is no dearth of
creative ways in which you can engage with
those who follow you. Ultimately, you are
looking to build a community around your
pin, and thus around the brand, which is
vibrant, self-perpetuating and supportive.
#Ensure that your bio and board are
descriptive
Your bio and board represent the kind of
brand you are and the kind of information
that you wish to be thought of in association
with. Keep your bio simple, clean, and direct.
Similarly, categorize your pins so that

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anyone can navigate your page with ease.

Moreover, ensure that you dont have too
many boards that could end up having irrelevant photos. Give some thought to your categories. The solution may not always be to
create a new category, but when you do so,
think of the future and other posts as well.
Does your post-fit better in another category? All this helps in making your Pinterest board an organized, informative, and
fun experience for your audience.
#Be a regular pinner
We have already talked about the short span
of attention that posts receive in social media. A post lasts in popular consciousness for
less than half an hour. In this context, it is
important that you post regularly. The

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benefits of posting regularly cannot be diminished. This can be a great way of attracting a huge following by engaging them actively since very many of your competitors
might probably not be pinning regularly.
This means that you can easily attract a fairly
good following by just pinning as often as
once a week. With regular pinning, you will
be creating a competitive edge. Posting regularly not only helps build followers for the
short term, but keeps you comprehensively
in the trending topics of the day and age, and
helps you stay relevant, fresh and creative.
#Dont just pin photos
While popular consciousness often frames
Pinterest as a board devoted to pictures, it is
much more flexible. You can pin videos from

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YouTube and Vimeo as well, which means

that Pinterest is an exciting avenue for cross
promotion, providing support to video channels and to major photo blogging websites as
well. As a place to curate content, you should
build up a vast and varied amount of content
about all sorts of subjects while staying pertinent to your core interest. Specifically in
this case, however, Pinterest can provide you
with a huge boost to your video view count.
#Follow more people on Pinterest
Pinterest provides a host of exciting engagement opportunities. You can find people who
share interests with you in a very simple
manner (that is, indeed, the point of the network) and then you can follow them to view
the kind of websites and articles they are

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pinning. You can thus get an idea about the

kind of content you should post. If you like
any of the contents they share, make sure to
engage them with that share or repin their
pins and leave a comment if you have an insight. Engage your followers regularly and
thank those who share or repin your pins, especially if they do so with original content.
Yet again, a sense of competition is not characteristic of Pinterest try to work with
people with shared interests rather than
against them. This will help you create a
community around yours and other related
boards. The more you do that, the more you
will have an army of people who will be constantly pinning, sharing, and following your
content.

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#Have a board where you pin your

products and product ideas
Keep all of your products under a single
board (though you can add secondary pins to
them depending on the products). Also, ensure that you have a Pin it button on your
website, blog posts, and other places. This
should make it easy for your followers to pin
and follow you, and your products. If your
brand has a substantial presence on Pinterest, you can also add a simple widget that
can display the best of your Pinterest board.
#Be human
Social media places most of its emphasis on
human interactions between the brand and
the audience. It is by virtue of personal attention placed by the brand towards its

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customers that the brand awareness, recall

and identity is built. You need to show this
human aspect of your brand through the cumulative sum of your activities on Pinterest.
Share your goals, desires, dreams, preferences, aspirations, and style. In a bid to do
that, you could have a board about whatever
happens behind the curtains (who is behind
the business, how do you do stuff etc).
People like knowing stuff about others. Loyal
customers can appreciate a personal angle
about your brand.

TIPS ON HOW TO
DOMINATE OTHER
SOCIAL NETWORKS
The tips mentioned above are related to the
most popular social networks today. Together, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube,

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Instagram, and Pinterest account for much

of the social networking that is done in the
world. However, remember that they are not
alone. The world of social media is still in an
experimental stage. Newer and more intriguing concepts are continually being
formed which compete or work well in a
cross platform with the above media. The
following are general tips and strategies for
some of these platforms. The platforms I am
going to discuss here, in brief, are Tumblr,
Snapchat, and Flickr. All three are very different from one another.
Flickr is an image and video hosting
platform that provides native functionality to
be embedded in any website. It has its own
community, and focuses on high quality photographs, but its largest traffic comes from

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hosting photographs, images, and videos in

blogs and websites. Flickr had a reported
membership of 87 million in 2013, while
hosting over 6 billion images, a number that
continues to steadily grow. More than 4 million images are uploaded daily.
Flickr works in a fairly simple manner.
Every image uploaded goes into a sequential
Flickr photo stream, which can be accessed
by all. The photographs are viewable in all
kinds of modes, including portrait and landscape, justified and as a slideshow. These
photographs can be tagged, with Flickr being
one of the first websites to implement the tag
cloud feature that is commonplace
nowadays. The community functions around
these tags, Flickr Groups, and by Following
the photo streams of other Flickr

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photographers. Flickr also provides photo

editing and filtering options for its users. As
one of the fastest growing image sharing and
hosting websites on the web, Flickr may be
the perfect fit for your social media strategy.
While using Flickr directly for advertising
purposes is against its terms of conditions, it
is a valuable way to build engagement for
your website or your blog and earn indirect
marketing exposure from the medium. Here
are some tips to do so:
#Use your profile to advertise your
brand
You can add the name of your company, your
website, and a description about yourself in
its profile. Your profile will be one of your
most visited links on your Flickr photo

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streams, and thus a well written, creative,

and descriptive entry here can be an excellent way to increase publicity for your brand.
Remember to keep it informal, and not like a
sales pitch. Another thing you can do is make
the company logo as your profile picture.
#Upload quality pictures relating to
your products
This is where you can know whether Flickr is
useful for your brand or not. Can your workplace and your brand easily translate to the
medium of photography? If so, Flickr is definitely for you. For example, if youre in the
hotel industry, you can take pictures of the
view from your hotel, some of the meals, and
other things that have directly to do with
your company. Another example is that of a

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woodworker, who can show pictures of the

wood, some of their designs, their workplace,
their studio, and other such images. Dont
just show off your products, but be creative
and artistic. Do not sell your photographs,
but share the best photographs with your
audience.
#Avoid the hard sell
You can add text as captions to your photographs. Unlike Instagram and other image
sharing websites discussed above, text on
Flickr is not consigned to the bottom of the
page. Be as creative as you like with the text
provided, but remember to be brief and descriptive. However, avoid the hard sell by all
means. Not only is directly trying to sell your
products on Flickr against the terms and

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conditions, it is also considered bad form.

Flickr is just not the space for that kind of
marketing. The focus should be on the photograph, not on the sales pitch. The caption
should not even be the sales pitch. The photographs will sell your brand for you.
#Share your photos in the appropriate
groups
Flickr groups cover a variety of subjects.
Your brand will definitely be covered in some
of them. Find appropriate groups and post
your pictures there. For example, if youre
running a scented candle shop, you will find
groups to share pictures of some of them.
Also remember to share your pictures in local groups, like that of the locality, the city, or
the state. When appropriate, posting pictures

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in such groups will allow you to reach the

perfect audience those who are local to
your company or business, and who are interested in precisely the things that your
company offers.
#Link your photo stream everywhere
Your website, blog and other sites should
leave a prominent display to your Flickr
photo stream, if you have one. The reasons
for this are more than one. Firstly, your audience would appreciate having access to your
Flickr stream. Secondly, some of your audience will also be on Flickr and may follow
you (remember to return the favor if they
do!), and thirdly and most importantly,
people clicking on your photo stream from
your website will drive the page ranking of

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your website and your Flickr stream higher,

making it more likely for them to appear
higher in search results relating to your tag.
#Participate in the community
The Flickr community is vibrant, informed,
and helpful. Join in with the community
like and comment on photographs that are
interesting, provide any insight if you have
any and participate in the activities brought
up by the groups. All these will incrementally
raise the profile of your brand and company.
To conclude, Flickr is admittedly not very
useful if youre representing an insurance
company, or a bank. However if your brand
has strong visual elements that can translate
into great photographs and photo-stories,
Flickr can be an excellent app to both share

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and promote great content and an exciting,

innovative brand image.
Snapchat is a video/photo messaging
application that was first released in 2011.
Snapchat works on the basis of sending
snaps, photographs or videos which can be
viewed by everyone a friend list or by selected people, which disappear a few seconds
after they are opened. Users of Snapchat
were sharing more than 700 million photos
and videos last year, and it is a growing platform that has taken the fancy of a young generation of users who can take photographs of
moments and send them to their friends.
However, from a personal photo-sharing app
built primarily for teenagers, Snapchat has
evolved into a very interesting marketing
tool. As noted before, Snapchat allows a

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photo to be seen for a maximum of just a few

seconds long, after which the photo disappears forever. This means that you as a marketer need to make the most of the ten or so
seconds you have to deliver an exciting,
catchy, and irresistible product. Heres what
you need to know:
#Understand your audience
Even if your target is a group of executives,
you need to grasp a critical idea about the
kind of environment Snapchat has developed. It has always been an app that encourages casual conversation in the form of
photographs and videos amongst its users.
The kinds of activities that are documented
are not professional in nature, but are those
of informal situations such as dinner, or a

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picnic. In fact, the overall casual nature of

the app is critical for a well-constructed marketing strategy. The language you need to
use should be easy to understand and comprehend. Your posts should have a sense of
fun; for example, try experimenting with the
draw feature that Snapchat provides. You
can take snaps at your workplace with the
usual shenanigans as long as it is not contrived it will only give your brand added humanity in the eyes of prospective customers.
#Play with the time limit
Just like Twitter, the time limit of Snapchat
may seem daunting, but it is an exciting limitation that you can creatively incorporate into your marketing strategy. Snapchat is an
ideal opportunity to provide your followers

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with teasers to new products, teasers and

other changes. They also work very well with
certain themes in mind, such as festivals,
parties, and others. You can build up to the
launch of a major product with several small
teasers on Snapchat and the necessary deletion of the data afterwards will mean that
the community will create a sense of anticipation around your product by itself.
#Contests
The time limit can also lead to you making
innovative contests where you can encourage
your followers to share a picture with your
product with their followers. The idea is to
constantly engage with your followers, not as
a brand or a company but as a person, and to
encourage the generation of user generated

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content that can be provided by your

followers.
#Videos
Just like the images, the videos on Snapchat
disappear once seen. Videos offer you a
chance to verbalize your message, and to retain a sense of exclusivity around it, seeing as
people who have missed your message shall
not be able to see it again. In this age when
almost anything can be found on the internet
for free anyway, a sense of exclusivity around
your products never hurt. You can take
videos of company lunches, crazy moments
at work and other such videos your followers will appreciate these. Further, you do not
require a professional remember:
Snapchat works in a casual and informal

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atmosphere, and a shaky camera will work

better as long as the moment seems (and is)
genuine.
#Show your personality
Social media is the great enabler that lends
some personality, vivacity, and verve to a
brand. It helps build a voice that the customers and target audiences of the brand can relate to in a tangible manner. And Snapchat
has the potential of being the most capable
to bring out this human side of your brand,
bar none. Try to bring some variety into your
snaps by asking various people at the company to contribute, and try to express that
unique spirit that best represents your brand
the contribution it can have to your companys success is just immense. The value of

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humanizing brands in the age of social media

is limitless, but doing well at Snapchat can
be incredibly helpful to build a community of
interest audiences, and get your brand and
company to trend.
With approximately 30 million users in
the US alone, Snapchat provides an incredible opportunity for your brand to connect
with a lot of people in your target audience.
To use it effectively is to understand the
audience and the environment that informs
the app casual, informal, and genuine will
always trump something that looks like it has
been carefully and deliberately done.
Tumblr is a microblogging website that
was launched in 2007. Tumblr, like
WordPress or Blogger, provides a platform

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for a blog-like interface, however the site

promotes an instant sharing, and photoheavy stream of content, similar to Twitter.
Tumblr is especially popular with the teenage and young adult demographics, with half
of Tumblrs visitors being under the age of
25. Tumblr hosts over 250 million blogs and
more than 100 billion posts in total. The
numbers are clear; Tumblr is the largest hosted platform on the web, with WordPress
lagging far behind with about 70 million
users. However, the most unique and catching aspect of Tumblr is its demographic.
While teenagers have been leaving conventional social media like Facebook, Tumblr
still retains one of the largest online presences curated and made by teenagers on the
web today. This means that it is more than

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just a niche group that can be looked at for

the purpose of marketing. Tumblr works by
providing the functionality of a blog and the
services commonly found in a social network, such as likes, hashtags, sharing, and
following. Simply put, its a blog with incredible viral potential owing to its built in social
media functions. Further, it is incredibly
visual, borrowing a page from Pinterests
books in terms of how it handles images
placing them all in one blog page instead of
multiple boards. Heres what you can do to
take advantage of one of the fastest growing
social media platforms out there.
#Post Images
Over 75% of all posts on Tumblr contain images with good reason. It is remarkably

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friendly to images, and they look great in the

Tumblr feed. As mentioned before, for marketing purposes an image nearly always
works better than text, and the medium of a
microblog is even more conducive to increased engagement via the popular reblog
function. The reblog function allows you to
post content posted by another blog, and
links the content from their site, giving both
blogs added views. This is a very popular
function, with many tumblrogs choosing
just to reblog content all the time.
#Focus on a Niche
The sheer number of diverse audiences
means that Tumblr can quickly become overwhelming for the marketer. For this reason,
focus on a very tight and specific niche group

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that is appropriate for your brand. This will

also lend your brand an identity and voice,
something which is really necessary for the
often chaotic website.
#Link to your main website
Tumblr provides almost endless customization options of your homepage, and while a
great look is necessary, and provides an excellent understanding of your brand to your
visitor, it is very important to provide a link
to your main site so that followers can access your content off Tumblr as well.
#Link every image to your blog
Images made by you can and will go viral at
any time. This is the reason you always want
your images to link back to your own post.
Link every image to your blog, and no matter

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when and where the image goes viral, your

blog will receive the hits, and the users will
always find their way back to your site.
#Join the Community
Tumblr has a growing, expanding, and enthusiastic community around it. That is why
you are encouraged to look around and find
blogs which blog the same content you do,
and follow them. Most blogs follow back, and
you can find great blogs to engage with by
just looking around the kind of content being
posted by blogs you follow. Further, join in
with the community and participate the
profile of your brand will invariably improve.
#Add social share buttons
Tumblr supports the addition of a widget
that can help content on your tumblrog be

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seen on other media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and your website. Cross platforming can only help your audience to find
out more about you as usual, remember to
focus on providing distinct and useful content in every blog, each blog should have a
distinct purpose of its own.
#Connect Instagram
Instagram is one of the media platforms that
are similar to Tumblr, in that a majority of
the community on both platforms is members of both platforms. Simply connect your
Instagram profile to your Tumblrog, and you
will have double the exposure on both feeds
for a little effort. Remember that Instagram
essentially
provides
cross
promotion

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functionality, and Tumblr can be a viable

means to support this feature.
#Use Hashtags
Tumblrs usage of hashtags is distinct from
both Twitter and Instagram, in that hashtags
are seriously used by content creators to advertise their content. Using hashtags judiciously, but in the casual spirit of Tumblr
that encourages informal catchphrases can
allow you to use hashtags for added exposure
and visibility. Try getting your brand name
in the hashtag, though it is not as likely to
succeed as in Twitter, or in Instagram, because of the very casual community around
Tumblr.
#Be responsive

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Social media provides an important opportunity for you to directly interact with your
customers. Use this opportunity well focus
on providing quick and useful response to
commenters about all kinds of insight this
well help increase brand recall and recognition and further allow your brand opportunities to engage with your audience and be
seen in a good light.
#Engage with other posts
The incredible number of content on Tumblr
means that there will always be something
pertinent to do with your brand on your
dashboard. Leave a comment or a response
to something most tumblroggers will definitely appreciate it and participating in

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the community allows your blogs exposure

and visibility to rise.
#Videos
Videos are also provided native functionality
on Tumblr. Keep your videos short videos
that are shorter receive up to 40% more engagement than longer videos. Non-celebrities on videos receive much more engagement
than videos with celebrities in them the
site is full of videos about celebrities, advertisements work better with a real touch.
To conclude, Tumblr is the 28th largest
site on the Internet, and receives the highest
revenue per click after Facebook in the entire
Internet. As such, Tumblr still has a restricted demographic with youths and teenagers
dominating.
However,
with
great

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functionality that combines the best of three

sites to provide a unique experience, Tumblr
is almost certain to become one of the most
important websites from the point of view of
marketing. Its stickiness and high clickthrough rate already make it an immensely
important tool for the purpose of marketing
giving you a highly versatile platform that
can be used for a variety of purposes. Perhaps the only limitation to Tumblr as of now
is that there is no real mobile functionality so
far once that is found, Tumblr is set to be
one of the largest and most important websites on the internet. And it is much better to
ride that wave if you already have a brand
presence in Tumblr at that time. Several big
money brands have joined in on the Tumblr
bandwagon, such as Adidas, Coca Cola, and

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eBay, Disney, GQ, Gucci, NBA, and BMW.

All these brands are trying to pre-emptively
arrive on the platform, and on the basis of
the rising evidence, what is clear is that
everyone else must, too. You are almost certain to find value in a tumblrog.

DONT MAKE THESE

MISTAKES IF YOU
WANT TO
DOMINATE SOCIAL
MEDIA

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Social Media is a landscape of exciting opportunities for the purpose of marketing. A

steady stream of content generation with
very little monetary input may seem like a
perfectly good deal, but it is also imperative
that you be conscious of certain important
things. Etiquette is a very important facet of
judging a brand your voice may be informal or formal, based on witty repartee or not,
however, you must never break the simple
rules of etiquette that the Internet works
around. The Internet can have a really long
memory when it comes to something negative since nothing can truly be deleted from
the Internet. If you make a monumental mistake, be warned, someone will remember
that mistake every time you try to do

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anything on social media. Though a mistake

here is not the end of the world, do not consciously break any of the following rules:
#Do not spam
Spam is one of the single most annoying
things that is commonly encountered on the
Internet. Spam is the incessant providing of
links and websites that offer no constructive
benefit to the visitor. In fact, it is often seen
that clicking on one of the spam links downloads malware or a virus to the computer.
Spamming is usually perpetrated by online
robots, but do not post too much at once,
and do not post information that is useless to
anybody. This is just annoying, and is a
major turn-off. It can also be incredibly damaging to the reputation of your brand.

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Spamming is considered one of the biggest

breaches of etiquette online.

#Keep your mind open

Do not reject a form of expression out of
hand. Different social media platforms are
better for different kinds of media. Try creating content in different topics, and choose
the best medium for your content based on
what your audience prefers not on any other
criteria. In general, a healthy social media
presence recommends a mix of both images
and video and sparse but constant usage of
text. Most importantly, be well informed
about the content you post and make sure it
is sourced, and documented. If your data
then turns out to be wrong, you may

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graciously apologize, but you should not post

without the bare minimum of having done
your research. Use multimedia and other
features to add value for your audience.
#Do not ignore the data
One of the chief virtues of marketing on social media is the wealth of data collecting options that you can use to measure the impact
of your social media strategy. Overlooking
the important of analytics can be a huge mistake. Today, the importance of statistics on
social media is far beyond justifying a campaign or two it can provide an insight into
the brand and its products. This is the chief
difference as compared to conventional media, where it is not as easy to measure engagement or impact however with social

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media it is much easier to measure both and

to compare with the increase in the performance of the brand over the same period.
Ignore the statistics at your own peril but
the well thought out social media plan takes
the data seriously, and attempts to make use
of it in a constructive manner. For this reason, do not measure data for the purpose of
measuring data. Measure data for an explicit
purpose. For example, if you want to measure the increased engagement with the brand
over the time of a particular campaign, you
will want to look at the specific reach of posts
after the campaign has been launched. If you
do not know why youre measuring the data,
you will never know what data to measure in
the first place. You simply cannot know how
well you are doing unless you measure your

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performance. As a rule of thumb, the numbers never lie; your gut feeling could be very
wrong.
#All platforms are not the same
This is one of the most common sins done
even by major brands. The problem is that
most brands realize that having a presence in
different social media platforms is advantageous. They then proceed to post the same
content on different platforms. This is a dangerous assumption. Different platforms are
different. Different kinds of posts work better on different platforms owing to a host of
reasons. One of them is the environment
around which the social network is built.
Another is the target audience that can be
found in the different social networks. A

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major reason is simply that, like you, several

members of your audience are on different
platforms as well, and seeing the same content everywhere makes your brand look lazy,
uncaring, and uninterested in the platform.
For a kind of marketing that most requires a
brand to be genuine, human, and responsive,
this kind of judgment can be incredibly
harmful. Treat every platform you are on
with respect. Understand them and the audiences you will be exposed to in each of them.
Do not just push content and ideas to them.
Understand what your audience in each platform wants and then develop a strategy for
providing what they want; not for what you
are selling.
#Do not focus too much on yourself

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Since social media provides you the opportunity to, it is tempting to always tell audiences more about your brand, the way it
works, and the services that it offers. But this
is counterintuitive. Social media does not
work on this basis at all. By all means, talk
about the values of your brand, but posts
such as these, known as proprietary posts,
should be few and far between. The focus
should not be on your product and your services, but on the problems of your audience,
and how your products help them in that direction. If you talk merely about your
products or your brand, your audience is going to have a tough time relating to what
youre trying to say. In this regard, it is probably worthwhile to note that a variety of
posts is the best option for social media.

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Provide different kinds of information in different ways to best contribute to your audiences lives with your posts. One of the most
important kind of posts in this regard is user
generated content. If you do not have any
available, try hosting a contest, which encourages the submission of user-generated
content, and then post them. In time, you
may have a steady stream of user-generated
content, which will reduce your workload,
and place the attention back to where it belongs: your audience. Another way of posting
content is curating content from around the
web bringing important information to the
knowledge of your audience. As long as this
information is relevant to your brand, this is
an excellent way of helping your audience
while reminding them that your brand can

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be a help while dealing with the problems

mentioned in the posts that you have shared.
Go for variety and flexibility they work
much better with the chaos of social media
than a rigid schedule.
#Promote your content
Just posting your content on a social media
platform is not enough. Nearly every social
media platform provides way to promote the
content you post. For example, on Facebook
you can highlight a post for a nominal fee to
make it appear on newsfeeds of targeted
audiences. On Twitter, Instagram, Blogs, and
Tumblr, tags and hashtags can help audiences find your content even if they are not
directly following your blog. Give a clear call
to action that will tell audiences what do with

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your content this may be as simple as like

and share this image to more complicated
call to actions. The idea is to acknowledge
that different social media platforms work
differently and are particularly suited for
certain kinds of content. You need to know
what platform is the best for the kind of content youre posting, not just in the terms of
target audience or the environment of the
platform, but also in terms of how you can
effectively promote your content after creating it. Know your social networks, and analyze the kind of content, format, and posts
that your audiences in each social media
platform prefer. But also keep an eye out on
ways to improve the engagement of posts on
specific social networks. Whilst doing this,
also step up the production of content that is

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almost universally applicable. One kind of

content that falls into this category is quotes,
which is appreciated in all formats and in all
social media platforms. Another way of guaranteeing that your content is well received is
by partnering with influential users of the respective social network. This will increase
engagement with your posts, create a buzz
around your content, and provide for brand
recall and awareness.
#Maintain Etiquette
Be aware of the basic etiquette when conversing with another person. Do not use
complicated words, and do not by any means
make a grammatical or spelling error. If you
do so, correct yourself promptly and apologize for your error. Do not aggressively type

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in larger case (except in informal scenarios

when it is accepted to do so) and be polite,
erudite and professional with your audiences. Reply promptly to any feedback you
receive, and thank the commenter for the
feedback, whether negative or positive. The
rule of thumb is to treat other people the way
they would treat you, and this is no different
when youre representing a brand. Courtesy
and informative behavior is always remembered and appreciated by audiences.
Strive to be helpful, and if you do not have
access to the information that the customer
needs, make sure to keep them informed
about the way their feedback is being
handled every step of the way this will give
a positive image to your brand as one receptive to communication and feedback and as

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one that respects and considers the advice of

its customers.

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CONCLUSION
Thank

you again for downloading this

book!
I hope this book has helped you learn
about some effective strategies and techniques you can use to create a strong social
media brand presence. A strong social media
presence is predicated, as I hope you have
understood, on a decidedly human, personal,

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and unique touch. Thus by definition the

hints and tips suggested in this book are useful only as a guideline for the kind of content,
strategies and tactics you will use. In social
media, there is no formula, but the great aspect of the medium is that it allows you the
room to explore and experiment with different kinds of content to find out what format
of posts, and what kinds of information is
best suited for your brand, and for you target
audience. Considering that a large part of
our social media presence involves some
kind of marketing or another, it is also important to note that this is just the
beginning.
As we have discussed while talking about
the history of social media, social media received a huge splash because it broadened

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the avenues for people with common interests from around the world to interact
with each other. It then became an industry,
and marketing has entered this industry to
find the audiences that have been weaned
away from conventional forms such as television and newspapers towards the Internet.
However, the current generation has been
raised almost exclusively on the Internet,
and is very savvy with social media. Technology, too, has been advancing to fulfill this
need. It is interesting to note that a majority
of the world actually does not have access to
the Internet, whilst in the developed world
plans to experiment with Virtual Reality
have already seen the light of the day. In any
case, whatever the future of social media itself is, marketing on social media has just

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seen the beginning, it is an industry that

needs much fine-tuning and work. Thankfully, the ample amount of room to experiment and develop the perfect working
strategies is a boon that guarantees success
in the field. On that note, the role of the competitor has changed as well. Earlier, the promotions between rival brands would be intense, but with the advent of public social
media, every brand is brought to an equal
level. Now, a global brand such as Nike
might have to compete against local shoe
brands as well, if they have a well thought
out media plan. Access to more money
means better chances of good advertising,
but social media has been the great leveler in
that even brands with comparatively low
funds have been able to find success online

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social media prizes creative nous and plain

luck much more than conventional media,
meaning that it is much more unpredictable.
Nevertheless, always ensure that you check
out what your competitors are doing on their
social media accounts; you could get a lot of
insight on how to mold your business for the
best.
Competition on social media networks
thus works in a slightly different manner.
This difference is especially pronounced on
platforms that see a lot of curating instead of
content generation by themselves, such as
Pinterest. Here, the competition is not for
the better pins, because everyone has access
to the blogs to pin, but the competition is towards generating a community around a
board. Thus the conventional arenas of

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competitions have changed and have been

replaced by new, virtual ones.
And as a last note, it is important to note
that statistically speaking, organically grown
social media presences boast far better brand
recall and engagement statistics than a media strategy that focuses on engagement over
content. Engagement is a very important
metric for social media, but good content, irrespective of how it is presented and how
many opportunities it has to engage with the
audience, always wins. Do not worry so
much about engagement as you should about
content the network guarantees engagement by itself, but good content is what will
let you stand out, stick out of the crowd, and
capture the attention, love, and loyalty of
your audiences. Thus it may seem like your

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methods are not working, but keep going at

it, and try to capture the attention of your
audience with your content. While how to
best engage your audience is an important
skill, it can be learned with some ease,
good content comes from practice.
Once again, thanks a lot for choosing to
purchase this book.

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Finally, if you enjoyed this book, please

share your thoughts and post a review on
Amazon.
Thank you and good luck!

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