5 Content Marketing Strategy Tips for 2014
Almost everyone knows how to post on Facebook in today's world. But what about life outside of Facebook? Is it important? Worth the extra marketing time spent? Also, are you maximizing your company's presence on Facebook? As we enter 2014, these are some of the top questions we are answering as more and more clients and advertisers begin to not only understand but embrace the concepts found in Interpersonal Marketing.
Always remember, Facebook is great, but it's incredibly easy for both you and your competitors to post, and your competitors are! It's a busy world in the Facebook social media news feed, so to stand out, it's important to first maximize your Facebook presence while ensuring the work you're doing here is helping to further enhance and maximize your reach OUTSIDE of Facebook. Following these tips and strategy pointers will help you maximize your social media outreach and enhance your search engine optimization for your business. In many cases, you can more than double your marketing reach by following this strategy and tapping into that wider social media world of Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
When it comes to deciding what to post, you can consider commentary on links to other articles you find online related to your industry, various announcements about your business, event updates and more. Once posted in a blog format such as Tumblr, they can be easily spread through various social media networks online, including quick and easy posting onto Facebook and Twitter, as well as LinkedIn groups related to your business, and Google Plus as well.
Also, measuring results more directly using TweetReach.com or SproutSocial.com are recommended for more specific analysis of your social media marketing effectiveness, and services such as SimplyMeasured.com are there for you when you're ready to jump into some even more advanced online analytical marketing tools.
So when choosing to work with a marketing company to help you get the word out even more to a specific niche audience they may specialize in (in our company's case, the LGBT market), ensure that they can help you get your story out there to their audience as well. A media company in 2014 should be your marketing partner, helping you to get your photos, content and blog posts delivered to their audience, wherever that audience may be. They should have a plan to put your story on their website (either as you've written it or reviewed it, if written by one of their writers), their newsletter, their mobile presence (website optimized to work on smartphones and/or an app) as well as a strategy to get that story distributed far and wide via their social media network of Facebook pages and groups they're a part of, LinkedIn groups, Google Plus, Twitter, Vine, etc... In today's world, savvy media companies are ready to do that, providing their clients full reports on their outreach and its effectiveness in how far the photos and postings were shared, commented on and liked via their own social networks.
For more information, or if you've decided to give Pink Banana Media a try, contact us today and we'll follow up with you ASAP.
SIDEBAR and Other Information and Links:
What are hashtags and how can they help me in my business? Hashtags are the universal SEO of social media, allowing you and your business to be discovered based on unique hashtags “specific” to your business, as well as more general hashtags “related” to your business such as #GayTravel or #GayMiami. They function much like search engine key words of yesteryear, as well as blog and word phrase tags used more recently… you remember those beautiful “word clouds” found everywhere online back in 2012?
For more information on the selection of a #hashtag, read our friend Meilani McDonald's blog post Why Hashtags Are Awesome, found here: http://meilanimacdonald.com/business-blog/why-hashtags-are-awesome/.
Always remember, Facebook is great, but it's incredibly easy for both you and your competitors to post, and your competitors are! It's a busy world in the Facebook social media news feed, so to stand out, it's important to first maximize your Facebook presence while ensuring the work you're doing here is helping to further enhance and maximize your reach OUTSIDE of Facebook. Following these tips and strategy pointers will help you maximize your social media outreach and enhance your search engine optimization for your business. In many cases, you can more than double your marketing reach by following this strategy and tapping into that wider social media world of Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn and Google Plus.
1. Using Photos with Text
Photos have become the #1 content medium posted nowadays, exceeding status updates, videos and link posts. For your business, think about creating a photo or image with a text overlay on top, similar to creating an ad. If you size it to 612 pixels wide x 612 pixels square, you've created the perfect Instagram photo with no need for cropping. This can then be posted on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and other social networks with ease. User interactions with these, as measured by shares, comments, retweets and likes, is very high for most photos with text.
2. Write Out the Photo Text When Posting
When posting on social media, use #hashtags (see below for more information on #hashtags) and write out the text from your uploaded photo, image or ad. This text increases the likelihood that your photo will be "discovered" in someone's news feed, as well as increase your search engine optimization and placement, as text is indexed by all major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) and search functions found in social media sites today. The #hashtag simply ensures you'll be discovered by an even greater audience as they peruse various social media postings related to the #hashtag set you've selected for your post.
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3. Post Your Content in a Blog Format
Status updates are great, but not as easy to work with. Make sure your content marketing strategy includes expanding upon those status updates in the form of a short-form blog... perhaps Tumblr, Google's Blogger.com or a Wordpress site... so that these content marketing posts can both be posted directly onto Facebook, and have a life outside of Facebook. Tumblr, Wordpress and Google's Blogger.com maximize your content's potential reach by automatically creating an RSS feed output that makes content sharing with other social media a breeze. In addition, other media and individual users can quickly and easily repost and share your blog posting by using it's link URL... status updates are stuck where they are posted and cannot be quite as easily shared. For your photos with text, as highlighted above, post these with text into your blog in order to truly maximize their reach. Search engines pick up Tumblr and Twitter posts based on the text they find written out. In addition, Image Search found in Google, Bing and Yahoo will pick up your ads and display these images more effectively, helping to maximize your photos and imagery to work for you.When it comes to deciding what to post, you can consider commentary on links to other articles you find online related to your industry, various announcements about your business, event updates and more. Once posted in a blog format such as Tumblr, they can be easily spread through various social media networks online, including quick and easy posting onto Facebook and Twitter, as well as LinkedIn groups related to your business, and Google Plus as well.
4. Post Your Photos, Videos and Links Directly in Your Social Media Profiles
It's fine to have your Facebook posts and photos automatically go to Twitter, but it's better to post directly on Twitter and use #hashtags. The postings from Facebook into Twitter appear with the fb.me URL only, and for anyone using either Twitter or one of the many visual representations of Twitter such as RebelMouse.com and TagBoard.com, your photos and other visual content items posted fall flat and don't appear as well as they could. For photos, post directly to Twitter and Instagram and use #hashtag technology to further your reach. For videos, it may be time to take a closer look at the short-form video revolution unfolding on Vine and now Instagram as well.5. Monitor and Analyze Your Social Media Activity
You can view your results using RebelMouse.com for your own activity summarized in one place, and Tagboard.com to monitor what both you and your users are saying and posting about your business. You can also monitor how you're postings are doing when using #hashtags. For example, if you're a hotel in Miami making outreach to the LGBT travel community online, you would consider using the hashtags #GayMiami (for covering your regional/local hashtag), as well as #GayTravel (for covering your topical/categorical hashtag). Tagboard.com, while providing you and your users a visually appealing representation of social media postings based on a specific #hashtag, also gives you a strong, visual indication of your Social Media Share of Voice (SOV), allowing you to see how much of any #hashtag conversations are related to you and your business.So when choosing to work with a marketing company to help you get the word out even more to a specific niche audience they may specialize in (in our company's case, the LGBT market), ensure that they can help you get your story out there to their audience as well. A media company in 2014 should be your marketing partner, helping you to get your photos, content and blog posts delivered to their audience, wherever that audience may be. They should have a plan to put your story on their website (either as you've written it or reviewed it, if written by one of their writers), their newsletter, their mobile presence (website optimized to work on smartphones and/or an app) as well as a strategy to get that story distributed far and wide via their social media network of Facebook pages and groups they're a part of, LinkedIn groups, Google Plus, Twitter, Vine, etc... In today's world, savvy media companies are ready to do that, providing their clients full reports on their outreach and its effectiveness in how far the photos and postings were shared, commented on and liked via their own social networks.
For more information, or if you've decided to give Pink Banana Media a try, contact us today and we'll follow up with you ASAP.
SIDEBAR and Other Information and Links:
What are hashtags and how can they help me in my business? Hashtags are the universal SEO of social media, allowing you and your business to be discovered based on unique hashtags “specific” to your business, as well as more general hashtags “related” to your business such as #GayTravel or #GayMiami. They function much like search engine key words of yesteryear, as well as blog and word phrase tags used more recently… you remember those beautiful “word clouds” found everywhere online back in 2012?
For more information on the selection of a #hashtag, read our friend Meilani McDonald's blog post Why Hashtags Are Awesome, found here: http://meilanimacdonald.com/business-blog/why-hashtags-are-awesome/.
To sign up with Pink Banana Media on an entry level basis, be sure to follow one of the links below:
- to reach LGBT Consumers: http://www.pinkieb.com/Page.cfm?page=Business
- to reach LGBT Travelers: http://www.pinkbananatravel.com/Page.cfm?page=Business
- to reach LGBT Business: http://www.pinkbananabiz.com/Page.cfm?page=Business
For a limited time we are offering a FREE MONTH (valued at $49) when you purchase your first month’s listing. To create a profile on one of these sites, you can sign up at the links above, or follow this How To tutorial on maximizing your business on the Pink Banana Media network of sites.
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