Have Writers Block? Here’s the Secret to Developing a Constant Supply of Content Ideas

21Jul

As someone who is passionate about marketing, I love nothing more than having a solid list of approved resources to use when marketing on social media. In this post, I want to share how to concoct your own comprehensive list of content resources that you can add to and edit organically.

Businesses should have two sets of content resources that they use for marketing on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+:

1. Industry topics, news, and trends that you read

2. Information that your target market read to learn more about your industry

If the second set of resources is new to you, don’t feel left behind. Many marketers leave these by the wayside when formulating a social media marketing strategy. The problems with leaving out this set of resources is that you lose touch with what is important to your target market and just push your agenda down their throats, no matter how off-base it is. Remember, your content needs to be engaging, and understanding what your audience wants is the first step towards engagement.

First, I want you to think about key problems that your product or service solves. Get a pad of paper and write down five or more problems that your product or services alleviate.

For example, if I was an assisted living facility that specializes in Memory Care for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, my list might look like this:

1. Alzheimer’s

2. Dementia

3. Aging Parents

4. Memory Care

5. Respite Care

All of the above directly relate to assisted living facilities with memory care units. Let me share another one. How about a diet pill that suppresses hunger?

1. Eating Disorders

2. Overeating

3. Overweight

4. Obesity

5. Weight Loss

See how each of these is related to the diet pill?

Now, for each problem that your product/services solves, come up with 5-10 topics that can be associated with each problem. For example, let’s use the diet pill again. The problem it solves is being overweight/obesity. So 5 topics that can be associated with the problems of being overweight are:

1. Diabetes

2. Lack of Energy

3. Low Self-Esteem

4. Loneliness

5. Heart Problems

Now identify at least one online resource that corresponds to each topic. An online resource can be a website, newsfeed, or even a hashtag! In the case of the diet pill, a health blog or an online fitness magazine could be a great resource, write down the name of the resource with the website address next to it for easy future access.

When you are done with this, start a list of websites that you personally visit to find news related to your industry. Write down all of the websites that you go to for the latest trend and news with the website address written beside them. Come up with 5-10 of these as well.

To help you get started, here are a few sites to try out:

1. Alltop

2. Feedly

3. Hashtags.org

4. Quora

5. Buzzsumo

These lists are invaluable going forward because you need to generate content when using social media to market your business. Having an approved list of resources is paramount to success. These will help inspire your writing as well as help you easily find information to share with your target audience that will be valuable to them.

If you like this process, and would like some extra credit, expand your list to include opinion leaders within your industry. These people share lots of valuable information that you could repurpose as useful tips for your audience. In order to create an engaging social media strategy, knowing where you can go to pull fresh, engaging ideas for content is an absolute must!

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The Definitive List: 30 Online Marketing Must-Haves

By Christopher Tompkins

8Jul

Social Media, Uncategorized

I want to share with you my top 30 suggestions on how to effectively get started with your online and social media marketing. As no business is alike, my guess is that each and every one of us are at different levels of preparedness. With that in mind, I started with the most basic point; (developing your website) and go onwards from there. Each point is an important action that sometimes we in the social media arena tend to gloss over.

The following list shows the order of how I would suggest you execute them for your brand. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t jump around. After all, this is your social media marketing campaign…and you are executing it! Use this list as a guideline to flesh out your plan even further, give you new ideas, and help you rediscover points you may have forgotten.

Of course the list isn’t limited to 30, but I think these offer a great primer in helping you jump start your conversation with your target audience….online!

ONE
You must have a website or online point of sale. Your website should look professional, be informative, educational and engaging. Make sure that your domain reflects your brand to the letter and aim for a dot com extension. Also, if using an outside designer, make sure that the relationship is strong and contains trust.

TWO
There is nothing worse than a website that is down 40% of the time. My advice: find a reliable web host that comes highly recommended and is built around a culture of service, rather than up-selling and hiding charges.

THREE
Now that you have a website, domain, and hosting, install a blogging platform into your website (recommended: WordPress). Check out the plugins, see what is the best for you and, of course, consult your developer with any questions you may have. Ensure you are able to integrate your social profiles into this platform.

FOUR
Excellent copy is an absolute essential, for both your website and your blog. Make sure when developing your content (and blog posts) to use keywords, the correct metatags and more. You want to create a promotional hub that can be found on search engines. Can’t create content? Find a writer pronto!

FIVE
Use the wonderful (and free) Google Analytics. This will help you track the sources of traffic to your website, what pages people are viewing and so much more. For those of you who have never taken a look at the power of this platform, you will be absolutely bowled over. An absolute must for tracking success.

SIX
Add RSS to your website and blog. RSS (which means Really Simple Syndication) allows your audience to subscribe to your latest updates and be sent an email directly to their email address when you add a new page to your site, a new blog…anything.

SEVEN
Once the previous steps are complete, make sure to create a consistent schedule for blogging. The most common is around 2-3 per week, but some people go for one per day! Do what suits you best and keep them between 400-600 words. Longer or shorter works as well, but the more words, the more options to add keywords!

EIGHT
Create an ebook or white-paper that you can feature on your website as an incentive to capture the names and email addresses of your target audience. My tip: Find something that your audience would find valuable (such as a tips report) and offer it in PDF form for download. Make sure that there is a picture of the incentive, short copy explaining it followed by two opt-in boxes: one for their name and the other for their email address.

NINE
Start building your social media profiles on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Make sure to fully complete each of the fields provided in the profile in addition to adding the links to not only your website and blog, but your other social media profiles as well. Consult your plan regularly!

TEN
Pick one professional headshot and company logo and use it as your avatar across all platforms. This is extremely important as it allows for your brand image to be consistent in addition to helping people quickly identify you across the different sites.

ELEVEN
If you are going to use LinkedIn, make sure to contact your professional contacts (that you have worked with in some capacity) and request recommendations. These are a great way to build your profile on the site. My only advice is to only take and give recommendations to people you have actually done work with and don’t solicit them from strangers.

TWELVE
Join groups! On sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn there are more groups than you can shake a stick at. Find the ones that are relevant to your purpose and goals, then join them. But don’t end your activity there…participate! These groups have discussions, questions, answers, news and more for you to dig your professional teeth into. So don’t under-use them.

THIRTEEN
Another great way to get the most out of your branding on LinkedIn and Facebook is to start your own branded group! This would not be directly branded with your company, but more along the lines of your industry. For example if you are a dentist, then your group could be “Heroes of Dental Health” and be based around talking about the best way to keep your teeth healthy.

FOURTEEN
Aside from the groups, create a page for your company on LinkedIn and Facebook as well as a profile for it on Twitter. These are great ways to announce new and exciting developments as well as gain more visibility on these sites.

FIFTEEN
Twitter has a great tool to help you keep organized and not to be overwhelmed: Lists! Create lists of your favorite people on the site and it will help you pay close attention to the influencers that you want to interact with the most. Also keep your eyes on the recent Twitter trends for content ideas.

SIXTEEN
Don’t be afraid to get out there and comment like crazy! Not only on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but get out there and leave thoughtful comments on blogs. Make sure that they are well viewed and get ready to share your expertise like there is no tomorrow! New professional and personal relationships can result as well as strengthening bonds with key influential figures.

SEVENTEEN
Create visual content. There is nothing more powerful than video or still visuals on social media. Shoot short informative videos, host them on YouTube and then share them throughout. Have photos from a recent event? Make sure to share them on your social media profiles pronto to increase engagement!

EIGHTEEN
Find ways to save time when you are managing your accounts. There are free and low-cost tools readily available to help you view your activity on various sites from one platform. The most popular is Hootsuite and TweetDeck.

NINETEEN
Want to manage your reputation AND find great content ideas? Another Google tool that is absolutely vital are Google Alerts! You simply type in your email address and what you want to be updated on (and the frequency of the search) and Google will trawl it’s entire database each day and send you an email with the content you are looking for. This is great for not only listening to what is being said about you and your marketplace, but also to find topics for blogs, tweets and more.

TWENTY
Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. Don’t be shy about offering help to those who need it. I know it may sound silly, but when you connect with a new professional person, don’t be afraid to ask them “Is there anything I can do to help you at the moment?” or the flip-side “Do you have any contacts that need my service?” You may just be surprised at what you find!

TWENTY-ONE
Go beyond the written word and share videos, audio and pictures that you believe your audience will enjoy. Sites such as YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram are fantastic for storage and make it easy to share across your social media profiles.

TWENTY-TWO
Make sure that everything that you share can either entertain, educate, enrich or engage. If your content ticks one or all of these boxes, then it has a much better chance of being shared. Which means other people are doing the work for you of virally spreading your content. This is a crucial goal of a social media campaign.

TWENTY-THREE
Start to become an opinion leader. Find allies in the social media world and network with them! Create and host local or virtual events and even try to get speaking engagements. Social media is a great place to not only promote events like this, but also a great place to share the content generated. The more of this you do, the more people will view you as an opinion leader.

TWENTY-FOUR
If you connect with someone of great value, remember that it is important to move the conversation offline to either a meeting or phone conversation. This can solidify the relationship and add lots of credibility points (after all, you ARE exactly what you say you are). At the end of the day, social media doesn’t close the sale….you do!

TWENTY-FIVE
Everyday there are new applications, social networks, tools and tricks that are released in order to help people use the medium more effectively. Don’t knock them until you try them. There are useful ones and not so useful ones, so approach with caution. Also, there are other fantastic ways of spreading content from online radio shows to webinars, don’t limit yourself with just the three main sites…try new things and think out-of-the-box.

TWENTY-SIX
Be honest, be caring, be interested. Simple as that.

TWENTY-SEVEN
Get your blog to feed automatically to suitable social media profiles (the same with YouTube, Instagram, and more)

TWENTY-EIGHT
Be constantly visible on your social media accounts daily. Don’t go heavy one week, just to be absent for two months. That can actually un-do lots of valuable work.

TWENTY-NINE
It can take time to reap the results: sometimes a week, sometimes months. Just stay focused and consistent!

THIRTY
You have nothing to hide, so be transparent as possible. Humanize your brand and use real emotion to connect with your target audience. Never bait and switch – that’s a HUGE mistake and can hurt your authenticity.

What tips would you add to the list? And remember -sharing is caring! Share this blog with anyone whom you think would benefit from it.

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Increase Social Media Engagement: 10 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Content

By Christopher Tompkins

22Jun

Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

Attempting to master social media marketing can be both confusing and overwhelming at times. Keeping track of all of the latest changes and trends, while trying to implement all of the newest tips and tricks can be challenging for a busy company.

When it comes to social media, the nucleus of all engagement is content. So no matter what different changes may happen to the structure of social media sites, the one thing that will remain the same is the importance of well executed, optimized, engaging content.

Say you already have excellent content in place, but your posts are not generating the results that your campaign needs to deliver. What’s the problem?

While writing great content is a constant, optimizing it is a constantly evolving medium. Optimizing your content for social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can be as specific as changing an element within your post to work with the infrastructure of each one of these juggernauts.

We all know that writing custom content for your social media marketing campaign can be time consuming, so let’s make sure that all of that time spent is an investment that will go towards accomplishing our goals.

What I want to share with you here are ten of my own personal tips for helping your social media marketing content truly “pop” online so that you will get increased engagement through shares, likes, comments and much more!

The list below is not in order of importance: these are all vital factors that will help enhance your social media campaign’s success over time:

1. Keywords: When developing strong social media content, keywords are absolutely essential. The words or phrases that your target audience use to find your company (both online and offline) should always be handy when you are developing your content. My tip is to create a list of keywords that you can add to your updates, and then use them when suitable. These keywords will turn into hashtags and will help increase your visibility and engagement (more on this later).

2. Be Conversational: What does your content look like? When you read it out loud does it sound like a used car advertisement? Does the post draw you closer, or push you away? Imagine your post intermingled with all of the other posts (of direct and indirect competitors) vying for your target audience’s attention. Does it still stand out? One of my top tips with social media posts is to remember that they need to be “social” i.e. conversational. You want to start a conversational exchange with your audience – which is what engagement is! So read your content out loud after you write it and make sure that it reads as if you are saying it – not writing it. Having your content sound “human” and not like “sales and marketing copy” is absolutely essential.

3. Use Different Content Lengths: Not every social media site is looking for a 140 character solution. So writing one update and sending it through to all social media networks is not the best rule. The ideal way of optimizing your content for size is to begin by writing a short update for Twitter (maximum 120 characters to promote sharing). Then write a slightly longer one that you can post on Facebook and LinkedIn. This way you are able to move beyond Twitter’s character constraints when writing content, giving you freedom to enhance your posts with more engaging content, as well as giving you the ability to add further optimization through additional hashtags, tags, links, and more.

4. Call to Action: One of the first things I learned when I launched our online marketing agency 7 years ago was the power of asking for what you wanted. People move through social media content so fast that they don’t have time to read your mind and or read between the lines. If you want someone to perform a certain action, make sure to tell them what you would like them to do: read this story, click this link, sign up today, etc.

5. Shorten Your Links: On some social media sites, namely Twitter, size is everything…when it comes to characters of course. So when you are sharing a link within your allowed 140 characters, and the link takes up nearly 60% of your available characters allocation – how are you supposed to engage your audience? Use a link shortening tool to save space to allow your content to breath. Also, if you are sharing links on other social media sites, a short and concise link will prevent the link breaking when posting to your social media profile. It’s a little extra insurance that will come in handy.

6. Hashtags: A hashtag is a type of label used on specific social media sites which makes it easier for users to find social media updates (or messages) with a specific theme or specific content. In basic terms, a hashtag indexes a post to be about a certain topic, rather than just mentioning it in the conversation so that it can easily be found and referenced. By hash tagging your KEYWORDS within your social media content, you will enhance your “find-ability” on the social web exponentially, thus optimizing it.

7. Tagging: Tagging on social media is a way of connecting YOUR social media content with another person, company, topic, or event. So whereas hashtags connect general KEYWORDS together (such as #socialmedia, #onlinemarketing, #contentstrategy), tags connect social media content to specific social media accounts. This is a great way to increase your visibility with not only potential customers, but also referral sources and influencers. These are essential in helping your content gain more visibility and engagement through association.

8. Photos/Images: While many people are getting wrapped up in the semantics of writing the “perfect social media post”, they are forgetting one of the most straightforward engagement enhancer: visuals. While you can have a perfectly optimized post, it is not truly optimized unless you add a visual. By adding a complimentary picture, a custom designed graphic, infographic, or even a candid shot that you took with your phone, you engage your audience in a more instantaneous way. For example, think about when you scroll through the newsfeed, are your reading the content or looking at the pictures? You’ll find yourself engaged with visuals more quickly than the actual written words.

9. Videos: Videos have long been heralded as the “be all and end all” of online marketing optimization. So why aren’t more people doing them? Time, money and lack of know-how. Well, you are not alone if this sounds like you! Videos done professionally or casually with your mobile device, can bring your content to life and create engagement. You don’t have to be Steven Spielberg to create an engaging social media video. As is true in the previous point (visuals are crucial to enhancing engagement), videos really promote enhanced engagement. For example again, think about how many times you stop at those auto-play videos on Facebook. You probably remember the video as opposed to the content. Or the video led you to actually reading the social media posting associated with it, which you would have normally overlooked.

10. Don’t Always Rely on Third-Party Scheduling Tools: Especially when it comes to Facebook and LinkedIn. While third-party tools won’t affect your Twitter posts, they really do reduce your optimization opportunities on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn: your hashtags won’t work, your tagging won’t show up, and your previews are tough to edit. Not to mention the fact that many sites don’t add posts scheduled through third-party tools to the insights that help you understand what posts are successful and which ones aren’t. By adding your content directly to Facebook and LinkedIn you will escape this risk. This way you will have full control over how effective your content is. It will take extra time, but will increase your overall effectiveness!

These are my top 10 ways of optimizing your social media content to promote increased engagement. While they may take a little extra time, it is a worthwhile investment. Engaging your audience with your content is one thing, but actually having the tools to make your content more findable is absolutely essential to success.

I’m sure there are also ways that have worked for you. If you have any others that you think should be added to the list, what would they be? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Tag, You’re It! The Importance of Tagging in Social Media Engagement

By Christopher Tompkins

16Jun

Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

If you are executing social media marketing campaigns for your company, the odds are that you are encountering a foreign language. Not necessarily a foreign language in terms of continent, but in terms of social media lingo.

Social media lingo is one of the biggest barriers to entry for many companies. Learning a whole new “online language” is not something that many rapidly growing businesses have time to learn, or even the patience to deal with.

But with that said, if you want to start generating leads for your business on social media, you need to learn a few key terms.

In order to gain more engagement with your content, it needs to be optimized for social media so that the largest audience will be exposed to it. The first optimization tool was hashtags (which I have written about previously) and the second I want to discuss here is Tags.

Tags are generally referred to as a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information. This kind of tag helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. I want to stick with one aspect of that definition and go into more detail.

Tagging on social media is a way of connecting YOUR social media content with another person, company, topic, or event. So whereas hashtags connect general KEYWORDS together (such as #socialmedia, #onlinemarketing, #contentstrategy), tags connect social media content to specific social media accounts.

Whereas a hashtag uses the “#” symbol, you would tag another account by using the “@“ symbol.

For example, say I wanted to tag The Go! Agency in a Facebook update. This is how it would look as you type it:

“There is nothing worse than not being able to get people to read the social media content that you are writing. Try these quick tips to increase your Facebook Page’s engagement, courtesy of @The Go! Agency.”

Now, when you put the tag into Facebook (not through a third-party tool like Hootsuite), when you type the @ and then begin typing “The Go”, you will see a drop-down list appear and you choose The Go! Agency from the list. So when you post the same update above it would look like this:

As you can see The Go! Agency is underlined in the post. This is now hyperlinked to The Go! Agency’s page. By doing this, if I am posting this tagged post on my personal Facebook Page or another Facebook Page, The Go! Agency would not only be notified about the post, but if they allow posts from others on their Page, it would show up.

This will not only increase the number of eyes that your post will receive, but this will increase engagement.

Think about it like this: tagging helps you get in front of a whole new audience – one that you normally wouldn’t be able to access.

Let’s go for a multiple tagged post and see what that looks like…

Say I am an Austin, Texas-based pharmacist who owns a range of pharmacies in the area. Here is an update that I might share with my audience.

“If you are located in the Austin, Texas area – I’m sure you have heard about the wave of sinus infections that have been making the rounds lately. It is always good to keep up with the latest pharmacist-recommended health products. Here is a list of all of the pharmacist-recommended health products of 2015: http://ow.ly/OowWp”

Now this is a terrific update. It targets the appropriate local market, it talks about a current event, and offers a list of engaging helpful information for the target consumer. But it might only be seen by a small few. Why don’t we enhance it so that it can get more views.

Take two:

“If you are located in the @Austin, Texas area – I’m sure you have heard about the wave of sinus infections that have been making the rounds lately. It is always good to keep up with the latest pharmacist-recommended health products. Here is a list of all of the pharmacist-recommended health products of 2015, brought to you by @Yahoo Health: http://ow.ly/OowWp”

Now, let’s look at that same post with added hashtags:

“If you are located in the @Austin, Texas area – I’m sure you have heard about the wave of #sinusinfections that have been making the rounds lately. It is always good to keep up with the latest pharmacist-recommended health products. Here is a list of all of the pharmacist-recommended health products of 2015, brought to you by @Yahoo Health: http://ow.ly/OowWp #SouthCongress #SunsetValley #AndersonMill”

The hashtags increase the optimization of the post by pointing out the keywords that people may use to search for this topic or like topics (sinus infections). To increase the local focus, the pharmacist tagged the areas of Austin where he has locations (South Congress, Sunset Valley and Anderson Mill).

Now this is very specific Facebook tagging. Let’s quickly look at how you would tag content on different social media sites:

*Facebook: You tag another account using the “@“ symbol. If you are using your Facebook Page, you are ONLY able to tag other Facebook Pages. If you are tagging from your PERSONAL Facebook Profile, you are able to tag both Facebook Pages AND Facebook Profiles. These tags ONLY work when you post natively on Facebook. When I say “natively” I mean directly to Facebook and not using a third-party tool.

*LinkedIn: From your LinkedIn account you are able to tag BOTH people and companies by using the “@“ symbol. This will only work if you post natively on LinkedIn and not through a third party scheduling tool.

*Twitter: This is where the social media tag originated from. Here you simply add the @ symbol and then the account’s username you want to tag. For example if you wanted to tag me in a post on Twitter it would be something like this: “Struggling with understanding tags? Check out this great new post by @ChrisGoAgency.” The best part? You CAN use a third-party tool to schedule and get the same effect. You do not have to post natively to Twitter to gain the benefits of tagging.

There are many other sites that I could mention here, but these tend to be the most popular for new companies just jumping into the “tagging”, “hashtagging”, and social media optimization process.

Remember, by tagging another company you will increase the size of your audience as well as the amount of engagement that you can expect on your posts. Have any questions – please ask!

What the #Hashtag?! The Simple Explanation of What Hashtags Are and How They Are Used

By Christopher Tompkins

8Jun

Social Media, Uncategorized

Anytime that I do a one-on-one consultation, group training class, or speech – there are a myriad of questions that I am generally asked:

How can I generate leads on social media?
I don’t have any time. How can I do social media?
What’s the ROI of social media?

Over the past year I have noticed an interesting trend: the basic questions have now been replaced with more advanced questions such as:

How does social media advertising work?
How can I increase engagement by 2% per month?
How can I create visuals on a regular basis on a time-poor schedule?

Let me stop us here. What excites me about the evolution of the social media conversation is that more and more people are gaining a solid baseline understanding of how to use social media, and are now trying to understand the more difficult topics that will help improve their engagement levels.

Getting back to the point here, the one question I am asked more than any other is: What the heck is a hashtag?!

A hashtag is a type of label used on specific social media sites which makes it easier for users to find social media updates (or messages) with a specific theme or specific content. In basic terms, a hashtag indexes a post to be about a certain topic, rather than just mentioning it in the conversation so that is can easily be found and referenced.

To create and use a hashtag, you simply place the hash character (or number sign) # in front of a word or unspaced phrase. This can be placed in the main text of a message like this:

Have you heard about The Social Marketing Academy? If not, it is time to enroll now for free #socialmedia classes! http://ow.ly/O1myl

Or, it can be placed at the end of the message like this:

Have you heard about The Social Marketing Academy? If not, it is time to enroll now! http://ow.ly/O1myl #socialmedia

Once you use this hashtag (and post the content), the hashtag will be hyperlinked. By clicking on the hashtag in a message, it will show all of the results within that social media site that include the same hashtag. Also, other users can search using that hashtag to pull up all of the content site-wide that have that hashtag.

Which sites currently use hashtags? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest…but this is growing all of the time!

So, why use it? To see and be seen!

See: Hashtags allow you to easily search for information on the social media sites listed above. This is valuable as you are not only able to follow topics and keywords, but you can also follow major events. For example, if you are exhibiting at a Chiropractors National Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, the conference should have a hashtag. Possibly, #Chiro2015. By keying that into a search on the sites listed above, you will be able to find ALL of the people that are discussing the convention…many of which are actually there on the floor walking right past your booth. So imagine the power when you tweet this on Twitter:

Are your feet tired of walking the exhibition floor yet? Stop by Booth C122 and get a free massage and enter to win an iPad mini! #Chiro2015

Also, by following this hashtag you will be able to learn what public opinion is like on the event, and gather lots of valuable feedback in real-time that you can use to your advantage.

Be Seen: The example above involved a bit of the “Be Seen” aspect, but if you are experiencing extremely low levels of engagement on your social media accounts, hashtags can open you up into a whole new audience that is currently not being exposed to your content.

For example, if you would normally share an update on Facebook like this:

Are you struggling with your bills? There is a lot of power in consolidating your debt and our debt management services can help! Make sure to drop into our office in Austin for a free financial checkup!

Now, let’s look at how you might write that same post with hashtags:

Are you struggling with your bills? There is a lot of power in consolidating your debt, and our #debtmanagement services can help! Make sure to drop into our office in Austin, #Texas for a free financial checkup!

By hashtagging “debt management” we were able to enter the post into searches for all of the people seeking debt management services. By hashtagging Texas, we are entering into all of the conversations about the state. We didn’t choose to hashtag Austin as it is a very common name and would not bring in the quality results that we were looking for.

As you can see, hashtags have a lot of value and can really open up your content to an entirely new market that you thought to be out of reach. They also help you join conversations in a meaningful way in real-time, that will bring your brand more exposure and credibility.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and get #hashtagging!

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The Best Times to Post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

By Christopher Tompkins

6Mar

Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

When you are executing a social media marketing strategy, there is a lot to think about. You might be concerned about:

The use of visuals
Your content strategy
Who will be executing the work
How will you measure your results
When the work will be done

There is such an overwhelming amount of planning that goes into executing a social media marketing strategy that it is inevitable that something will be left to the last minute. In my experience an extremely vital point that gets left out in the cold during the social media strategy planning stage is when is the best time to post content to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?!

While this is a seemingly unimportant factor, I am here to tell you that it is absolutely vital to your social media strategy. Just think, for example, of an email marketing campaign that you have previously executed. If you have looked at the studies done on email marketing, I am sure that you found out that by altering the time and date of your blasts, you can increase effectiveness.

And I am here to tell you that this is definitely true. We have executed email marketing campaigns for our clients and when we discovered the optimum time and date for them to be sent, their success rate skyrocketed!

This holds true also when we find the optimum posting time for our clients on social media. Before, they had a well written post with wonderful content that was languishing at the bottom of the barrel. Once we found the optimal posting time and used it, we could take this same exact post and garner exponentially more engagement…with only changing the time and date it was shared!

Have you ever posted something to social media that you truly believed to be earth-shatteringly good and….crickets? This is a prime example of the importance of choosing the right time and date when posting your social media content. I know how much time it takes to formulate good, engaging content, and I for one want it to be successful every time I post it!

To help you along, here are some times that we have found to be helpful when posting content to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter respectively.

Facebook:

Best Time to Post: Daily, between 1-4pm
Peak Time to Post: Wednesdays at 3pm
Worst Time to Post: Saturday and Sunday before 8am and after 8pm

Twitter:

Best Time to Post: Monday through Thursday, 1-3pm
Peak Time to Post: Monday through Thursday, 9am-3pm
Worst Time to Post: Everyday after 8pm, Fridays after 3pm

LinkedIn:

Best Time to Post: Tuesday through Thursday
Peak Time to Post: Noon, 5-6pm, Tuesday through Thursday
Worst Time to Post: Monday through Friday, 10pm-6am

These are simply guidelines for you to use which will effectively bring you closer to finding the optimal time for you to post on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I know some industries that we work with where these hours don’t always hold up as the best.

The moral of the story is to try these out, and monitor your success. You will need to massage these times and dates to find out what works best for you. When it comes to your content, what should be the most important thing is that you plan to deliver it to the correct audience at the time when they are ready to receive it. This will create a social media home run not only for your content, but also your campaign!

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A Comprehensive List of Social Media Sizes

By Christopher Tompkins

19Feb

Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized, YouTube

Are you trying to make a splash on social media, but struggling to present your images in the best way possible? It all comes down to formatting your images to the best size on each of the different social media sites.

This blog is all about social media sizes. Scroll down and you will see not only the optimal sizes for each social media site, but also some tips to getting the largest amount of engagement with the images that you do use online. Enjoy!

Facebook:

There is nothing worse than trying to create a huge impact on your Facebook Page, but struggle to get the quality right on your images. In order to get the best quality images for your page, you should invest in either a good graphic designer, or a graphic design program that you can create and edit images in. If you are comfortable with Photoshop, it is a very useful tool to use to create eye-catching images for your Facebook Page. The ideal file format to use on Facebook are jpegs and pngs, so make sure that you save your files in either of these two formats.

Here are the sizes that you need to use to get the best resolution and present your branded images in a professional way:

Cover Image: 851 x 315 pixels
Profile Photo (Logo): 180 x 180 pixels
Tab Image: 111 x 74 pixels
Newsfeed Image: 1200 x 1200 pixels
Link Image: 1200 x 627 pixels

These are the main sizes that you need to be aware of. I would suggest that when you create your branded images for Facebook, you create a file in your Social Media Folder for Facebook, and place these in a new folder entitled “Branded Images”.

Twitter:

Twitter is a bit more challenging when it comes to images, as the cover image is absolutely massive. So if you want to re-purpose your Facebook Cover image, you will be coming up rather short. I suggest creating a brand new image file for Twitter. If you use your smaller Facebook cover image it will not only distort the image, it will reduce the resolution drastically. Use the same principles as Facebook when designing your image, just understand that you have a whole lot more real estate available on your cover image – so use it wisely!

Here are the sizes that you need to know to get the best resolution and present your brand professionally:

Header Image: 1500 x 500 pixels
Profile Photo (Logo): 400 x 400 pixels
Shared Photo: 1024 x 512 pixels
Photo Preview (In-Stream): 220 x 440 pixels

Again, I suggest that you create a Twitter folder inside your main Social Media File, and create a folder called “Branded Images” and add these to it.

LinkedIn:

When you think about networking on LinkedIn, the idea of photos and images does not immediately jump to mind. The reason is that most of LinkedIn is based on content, where sites like Facebook and Twitter tend to be more visual heavy.

In order to jump into the visual game, LinkedIn has done many improvements to their site to enhance their competitive nature in the extremely crowded social media space. These image sizes will cover both your Profile as well as your Company Page! I’ve also added the Custom Group sizes just as an encouragement to try one out for your company.

Profile Page:
Header Image: 1400 x 425 pixels
Profile Photo: 200 x 200 or 500 x 500 pixels

Company Page:
Standard Logo: 100 x 60 pixels
Square Logo: 50 x 50 pixels
Banner Image: 646 x 220 pixels

Custom Group:
Standard Logo: 100 x 60 pixels
Square Logo: 50 x 50 pixels
Banner Image: 646 x 220 pixels

My one tip for LinkedIn is to use a recent photograph as your profile image. Why? Because you want to represent yourself as you look so when you go out to meet clients or potential referral partners, you look the same: online and off. If your picture is drastically different, people may find you less credible or may not recognize you when they are meeting you in person.

Google+:

On Google+, there are lots of opportunities to brand yourself as an expert, especially with content. The powerful combination of SEO and content on Google+ has been one of the main reasons that businesses have flocked to joining and networking on the site.

But images are important as well! Google+ has a more unique format for pictures that is drastically different thank other social media sites. Here are the three sizes that you need to be aware of:

Profile Photo: 250 x 250 pixels
Cover Photo: 2120 x 1192 pixels
Timeline Image: greater than 250 x 250 pixels

Remember when you are adding your finished photos to Google+, test them to see how they look. Sometimes they do not show how you think they will, so just make sure to test the resolution and size!

Pinterest:

Of any of the social media sites, getting your images sizes right on Pinterest is an absolute must! You cannot reap the benefits of Pinterest without killer, high quality, images. Compiling your photos and organizing them into boards is a lot of work, so don’t add the extra work of having to redo your pictures at a later date.

Here are the best sizes for your Pinterest pictures:

Profile Photo (yourself or your company logo): 600 x 600 pixels
Board Thumbnail: 222 x 150 pixels
Pin: 600 x 600+ pixels

Just make sure to never pin something that is less that 600 x 600 in any way, shape, or form. This will result in poor resolution on Pinterest, which is an absolute no no. As Pinterest is reliant on visuals, you need to be vigilant and post only the highest quality of image.

YouTube:

As you know, visuals are extremely important in social media marketing, and videos can be at the top of the list many times. YouTube is a great source to use to upload your videos and enable a whole new market to view them.

You can customize your YouTube channel to fit your brand. One thing that is really handy to have in advance of creating your YouTube channel is a Google+ account. The reason is that you can not only easily share your videos from YouTube to Google+, but YouTube also pulls your profile image from Google+ for use as the Profile photo of your YouTube Channel. Make sense?

Here are the images sizes that you need to be aware of on YouTube:

Profile Image: from Google+ – 250 x 250 pixels
Channel Art: 2560 x 1224 pixels
Custom Video Thumbnail: 1280 x 730 pixels

The Custom Video Thumbnail is a great tool for branding and organizing, so it is definitely something to utilize. You can find out more about this on YouTube.

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You Can Do It! The Simple Steps to Creating Your First Online Video

By Christopher Tompkins

2Feb

Uncategorized, Video, YouTube

On a weekly basis, I sit down and consult with businesses who need help creating effective marketing strategies. I relish these face-to-face meetings as they focus on two of my most favorite topics: marketing and strategy. Something that I have noticed lately is the companies that I encounter have a growing interested in video, which excites me. Online influencers, including myself, have always touted the power of video in promoting your brand online. Your target market engages more with visuals than the written word, so it is an important aspect of the online marketing mix.

The scary part of this ride is not knowing how exactly to create the video without hiring a specialist. If you are fortunate enough to be a business with a large marketing budget, then I suggest hiring a professional. This will save you time, a very expensive asset in your day-to-day live.

But, not many companies have an endless marketing budget that provides enough capital to produce a professional video. So the answer is the create the video in-house, with your own team putting all the pieces together. But how will busy marketers find the time to create a cutting-edge promotional video?

The answer is to take it step-by-step, not all at once. Creating a video is a fluid process that you can take at your own speed. To help you do this, I want to share my own step-by-step process on how you can complete your first video!

Let’s get started:

Invest in an inexpensive video camera that can controlled by remote control. Go Pro’s are great (albeit a little pricey) and have lots of easy applications and settings. But just a thought.
Print a blog that you have written, or some marketing collateral with a good chunk of copy in it. Setup your camera and record yourself reading the copy directly to camera. Then review the video and check the following aspects:
Lighting: is it too dark, too light, too grainy?
Setting: is it appropriate, too busy as a background, too cavernous?
Sound: can you understand what you are saying, is there a lot of ambient noise?
Frame: do you like how the camera is situated in the shot, are you cutting off anything important, or leaving in too much?
Once you have done this, do a few more practice runs, making adjustments to the A-D elements above.
Now you should be at a point where you can create a script/outline for your video. The first video that you create should be an ABOUT video explaining your business.
Once you create the script, read it aloud and ensure that it does not clock longer than 3 minutes. Remember your audience is exposed to LOTS of information and visuals, so keep it concise and engaging.
Decide who will be featured in the video. Usually go with a highly visible and credible person in your organization (which sometimes is not the CEO).
Use the guidelines that you created in #3 and do a few dry runs taping the person.
Review these and make any further adjustments.
Do the final taping.

Now that you have the raw video, you can use a program such as iMovie (which is an Apple program) or a Windows Movie Maker (for PCs) to format the video. The main formatting items that I would suggest that you add to your promotional video are:

*Titles at the beginning: possibly company logo and slogan
*Titles at the bottom to introduce the speaker (or speakers)
*Call to action at the end with contact numbers and logo again

What is great about the video editing programs is that you can learn them easily (believe it or not) and you can create a wonderful video in no time. Also, to make you feel a little less overwhelmed, there are templates in these programs that you can apply to your video, thus enabling you to brand and edit it much easier.

My top tip here? Relax! This is your first trial, so it is going to take the most time. Once you nail the format, just imagine how easy it will be to create ones in the future. Generally I find that once I teach someone how to do this process, the first one takes a bit of time, but the second video takes about 60% less time.

Now get out there and try it! I would love to see what you come up with! Please email a link to me directly at christopher@http://citsprojects.in/clientprojects/thegoagencyusa

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17 Irritating Social Media Mistakes You Are Making

By Christopher Tompkins

20Nov

Social Media, Uncategorized

As an online marketer, I am in the business of finding and rectifying mistakes in order to create success for my clients. I think at the heart of every marketer out there is a love of finding and solving problems, turning situations around, and turning lemons into lemonade.

Over the years I have seen some of the most irritating mistakes made by some of the largest brands time and time again. New brands coming to social media make many mistakes as well.

So…what are they?

Here is my list of the 17 most irritating social media mistakes that you might be making, and why you need to fix them!

Your Profile Picture is pixelated. Would you ever use a blurry or pixelated picture on your business card, brochure, website, or billboard? Then don’t do it on social media please.
Your Cover Image is pixelated. See point number 1.
No Descriptions. Don’t leave sections of your social media profiles blank. How are people going to find you? Onsite SEO anyone?
Last Update in 2013. If your last social media update that you posted was over a year ago…maybe you should either post something or take down your profile.
Your Facebook Page name is not your company name. It needs to be.
No links to your website anywhere in your profile. This legitimizes you and helps your target audience find you. Add it.
You want customers in your store, but you provide no address. Add your address!
#Hashtaghashtag. Don’t over hashtag. It is annoying and doesn’t help you.
Spelling and grammar errors in your posts. To err is human, to consistently err is irritating and unprofessional.
Pictures posting sideways. Preview everything before you post to make sure they post correctly!
No comments to your comments! If a member of your audience takes the time to write you a note or comment on a post – reciprocate with at least an acknowledgement.
Posting dead links. Make sure that all of your links are working before posting…or wait until everyone else tells you publicly that they are dead.
100% self promotional posts. It is hard to be social when all you talk about is how great you are.
Always posting 140 characters on Twitter. Use less characters so people can share your information more easily. 120 is a good idea.
Using old logos, company names, imagery. This goes without saying.
Using out of date information. Again, this goes without saying.
Not tracking success. How successful is your social media campaign? Why don’t you know?

Are you making these mistakes? If you are, every SINGLE one of them is easily rectified. With a little time and focus you can create the perfect social media campaign that creates success for your company!

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3 Time Saving Social Media Content Shortcuts

By Christopher Tompkins

11Nov

Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

With all of the importance companies are beginning to place on social media, it’s imperative to stress the right aspects of your business. When we speak with potential clients at The Go! Agency, we find that many times their focus is not on their message, but on the return they can expect.

While I think that ROI is an important topic to discuss, what’s more important with social media is the term “social”. When a business gets involved with social media marketing, what they are agreeing to is the fact that they are ready to join the online conversations that are already happening regarding their industry, and their very own company.

So….what are you going to say?

Formulating creative and engaging content on a regular basis can be overwhelming. On average, companies are putting out two status updates per day per network. So as a baseline, the average amount per week is 14 individual posts. That’s a total of 56 per month!

Here are a few ideas that you can add to your monthly content list which will help you to reduce the amount of time that you spend generating new content. Sometimes by half!

Themed Days
Above and beyond, this is the easiest way to not only create a conversation with your target audience, but help engage them in a familiar way. Have you heard of “TBT” or Throw Back Thursday? This trend has swept through the social media world and now more and more companies are using this tactic in an effective way. My suggestion is to choose one or two days per week to start. For example maybe you can use Monday and Thursday. If you are a healthcare related business, perhaps Medical Monday and Thankful Thursday and share content that is branded to those to titles and ideas. Remember to use visuals as much as you can.

Ongoing Quizzes
Asking questions is always a great way to engage your audience, but if you want to go one step further have an ongoing quiz plan. First, you can create the theme of your quiz around a certain month. For example, Breast Cancer Awareness Month for a woman’s hospital system. You probably have many interesting statistics and FAQs about breast cancer that you can share. So why not run a quiz for 5 days in a row each week – Monday through Friday. Come up with a new question (along with a visual) dealing with breast cancer and ask your audience. An example could be: “True or False: Breast Cancer is the leading killer of American Women.” Something as simple as that can work wonders!

Fill in the Blanks
People love engaging and sharing their opinion. Providing fill in the blank statements is a terrific way to get your target market talking. I wouldn’t suggest going overboard with these, but once a week why not try one out. It can also be used in conjunction with your Themed Days, for example on a Thankful Thursday you can share “Today I am most thankful for ______.” These also can help you see what your audience is most interested in.

Now, by just using these few tools listed above you can cut down the amount of content you have to create by half, if not more. Creating an ongoing content strategy is a must, and by adding these elements to the mix, you cut your work down while creating instantly engaging content for your audience!

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