Go Viral on 6 Social Media Marketing Platforms

Facebook accounts for more than 10% of overall traffic to publishers and has more than 1 billion users, by far the most of any social network.

I’m gonna start this tutorial with somewhat of a warning. In an Ad Age article, a Facebook spokesperson said that they will be cutting back on the amount of material that people see from companies and brands they’ve liked:

“We’re getting to a place where because more people are sharing more things, the best way to get your stuff seen if you’re a business is to pay for it,” he said.

However, likes will be necessary when you go to target your ads. People who have liked you will convert at much higher levels than random people who see it.

First, start by asking everyone you are close with or might be interested in your business to like your page by sending out a personal post telling them what you plan to do or are doing. Don’t send it to people you know have no interest or buy cheap likes from countries or places where you have no market. That’ll just waste your time and won’t do much for your business.

You’re probably going to find that the majority of likes you get will come from your blog – in other words, organic likes. You can add a facebook like box or a like button by Googling facebook page plugin. It’ll show up as the top choice. You can then change the dimensions, the color, whether to show pictures or not and whether you want to include your posts.

There’s also a link on the same page in case you just want to set up a like button.

Likes, however, can be collected by offering something of value such as whatever you offer on your blog. You can use Facebook Insights and go to the Likes tab to have a better understanding of whether or not “likes” are working for you.

The Like to Unlock and Share to Unlock plugins are sort of exactly what they sound like. They allow you to lock a certain portion of your article or content until someone likes or shares it.

All of these plugins are free and can be used to promote your material on all of your social media sites.

As far as getting on the news feed, you’ll need to post a fair amount. If you’re planning to use facebook as a means of spreading your content, be sure that your fans know when they can expect a post.

Train them to expect it but make sure that if you tell them you’re going to post everyday that you’re confident that you can actually follow through with it. Research firm Social Bakers found that most top brands published once per day. Twice per day saw a drop-off in engagement.

If you want to post something at a later time, you can click on the little clock in the bottom left hand corner or the schedule post in the bottom right hand corner if you’re sending something out from a brand page.

You want to make sure that whatever you’re putting on the page has some value for your readers. And use a mix of video, audio, text, etc. when you post. Use Buffer to see which gets the higher number of clicks so you can focus on the best one. Look at the times of day when your posts get the most attention as well.

Another way of gaining exposure to a wide variety of potential contacts is to join groups that are related to your product. This also allows you to cross-reference your business and mass post to everyone in the group.

Check out FPTraffic to collect and post pictures automatically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ_ePLQPNhg

When you do use images, you should carefully select the photos that you want to represent your page, and make sure Facebook doesn’t choose any photos at random. They could get cropped, or simply be too boring to elicit clicks. Rather, specifically set a size-optimized image that is represents your content well.

You can see some of the optimal dimensions for the homepage on the screenshot. The rest of the optimal dimensions (and there’s a lot of em) can be found in the link from Jon Loomer Digital in the resources labeled Optimal Dimensions. Check out his site for great information on facebook advertising.

Before you start using Pinterest for business, there's a few things you'll want to do.

Verification is not only going to build the trust of other pinners, but it will put your profile picture next to anything that's repinned from you and give you access to Pinterest analytics.

You'll also want to integrate Pinterest with your other social media networks. And include a link on your site or wherever you post back to your pinterest page.

I’ve seen a number of studies about the best time to pin on Pinterest but they all seem to overlap around 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST or between 8 pm and 1am.

Analytics firm Curalate looked at 500,000 pins on Pinterest and found some interesting data.

Taller (3x taller than wide), high contrast, rough textured (think pine cone versus an orange), lighter as opposed to darker and those with several dominant colors received between 60% and 17 times more repins than the opposite. Pins without a face attracted 25% more pins while those using reds or oranges were repined twice as much.

According to a Georgia Tech Univ study of 2.5 million pins, the most repined words within your description or over top of your image, were DIY as in do it yourself especially using photo badges which is text over the top of an image (How to Make Baskets Like a Champ), the heart symbol, cup, cute, recipe, dress and idea, in that order. Food and drink are the most popular categories for men and women according to the same Univ of Minn study I mentioned earlier.

I'm assuming that if you're here, you're familiar with Twitter's basic function. To go past the basics and start using Twitter to build your business, you can add your business profile to your personal Twitter profile bio, and get your employees to do the same.

This is a great idea because @profiles that appear in your twitter bio are clickable. Therefore anyone who checks out your profile also has the opportunity to check out your business profile too.

You can also add a number of different hashtags so that people who search for those words possibly see your page in the results. Once you get yourself going, be sure to feature your Twitter handle prominently on your website and in all your marketing materials so you can build your following. Put a CTA in your bio, too. Send them to your blog or a recent article

To reach the maximum number of people, you'll want to build your Twitter network. For those of you who are new to Twitter and at a little bit of a loss as to how to get followers, first start with friends who you think would be interested and then try these techniques.

The first of these is the “follow-first” rule. You follow someone, and then, as a courtesy, they follow you. This is by far the most common way to get followers.

You can go to FollowerWonk and type in a keyword related to your business and it will sort the results by the number of followers. You can also use Twitonomy, type in the Twitter handle and you get a TON of data on that person. 

To create a list, click on your profile image, go down to list, create a new list and then to add people to your list, you go to their page, click on the gear icon and choose add or remove from list.

Follow a celebrity or at least a semi-celebrity within your category, and they tweet you about them. This allows you to keep up on the ongoings of various people that may be relevant to your own tweets.

With regards to tweeting, pay attention to the material from influential people in your niche that’s getting the most re-tweets, then create a post mentioning their material using the block quote feature on most blogs, which you can do before you post something by clicking the quotation marks or inverted commas for all my British homies just like you see in the screenshot. This way, their passage stands out and it’ll boost their ego.

Then just let them know by giving a shout-out with an at symbol and their Twitter handle and include the quote in your tweet. This is a good way to get on their radar. You can even write a counter-argument. The more controversial, the better. I mean be polite, but if they respond to it, you’ve just gained their entire audience.

On the other side, there is a free service called Status Brew that has about 9 million users. It lets you track the people that unfollow you so you can get better data on why people walk out on you. You can also see which followers are inactive, your follower’s statistics – how many tweets, retweets, etc., people you follow but don’t follow you back.

Optimal image sizes

http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-image-sizes-guide/

400x400, 1500x500, 440x220

Twitter cards are also not as common as you would think even though they’ve been out now for more than two years. This lets you add larger images or cards to your posts and it’s a way of giving your readers a better preview of your material.

You can use a Twitter card to include a picture with your story, a card to include audio or video or one to drive traffic to your website.

  You can see a couple examples in the screenshot here.  This is good because it automatically provides credit when someone retweets your picture.  Sometimes people retweet without an (at) or (via).

To set this up, go into your Wordpress dashboard, go down to plugins and search for twitter card.  The top two options are Twitter Meta Generator.  I like the Generator better, because it gives you the option to use Summary,

You can also give yourself a headstart using some statistics:

Dan Zarrella at Hubspot has found that tweets with URLs in them received up to 4 times as many retweets. Dan’s study further showed tweets posted after 2 pm but not during dinner time (between 6 & 7). between Thursday and Sunday (towards the end of the week) using the words “please help,” “please retweet,” or “please ‘anything’,” using two or fewer hashtags tended to be retweeted the most (15x as much as non RT posts) and also had the highest CTRs.

Moreover, retweets were higher between 8 and 9 when people are in traffic or checking their social media and email accounts before work. Asking for a re-tweet using the actual word “retweet” instead of the letters “RT” also boosted sharing.

In a study of more than 2,000,000 tweets by Twitter, it was found that posts with photos were retweeted the most, followed by videos and then quotes.

And finally, a small study by Tom Tunguz on reposting the same content at a different date resulted in about 75% as many retweets as the first post so don’t be afraid to re-post successful content for even more shares. You can do it more than once, too. Just change up the image and the title a little and it looks like a new tweet.

The reason it continues to get retweets the second or even third time is because some people weren’t following you when you posted it the first time, some are in different time zones, some people miss it and maybe some people wanted to share it but were distracted or didn’t think of it the first time.

It’s a pretty underutilized strategy that you should take advantage of. All of these statistics and strategies are not going to work for every blog or company but they are a good starting point.

You want to pay attention to your analytics and figure out what times of the day, what type of content and what strategies work best for you and your business. 

Answering questions requires a mix of things. The best answers generally start with a little bit of wit (you want to hook them with the first sentence), even a provocative statement, something funny, even a mild jab at the asker, or a personal story make sure your response has relevant keywords for your niche. Personal stories will take the longest to develop but the more work you put into your answer the better readers’ response will be. The length of your answer will also attract more upvotes. Longer answers score higher. I would follow your opening with plenty of specific references, statistics, details and of course the answer. Whatever you do, don’t be boring. Treat it like a short blog post.

Some people recommend answering questions as quickly as possible after they’ve been posted. That way the question will be fresh in the asker’s mind, and they’ll be more likely to upvote your answer or engage you further. Getting there first also means that you won’t have to compete against other answers—you certainly don’t want to repeat someone else’s ideas. Further, if answers within the same question have the same number of upvotes, the older answers tend to stay closer to the top, meaning fresh eyes and more readers! I think that if you have the best answer, it will be noticed. There is not much chance that you have the exact number of upvotes than another person. Quality over speed or quantity. Take your time – several hours if you need to.

I’ve even seen answers that cut off after the first paragraph or in the middle of a sentence or particularly interesting part of the answer that link to their webpage. This has to be done with subtlety. You might get down votes from people who didn’t want to expend the energy to go to your site or see it a cheap promotion tactic.

If you’re going to try to direct the reader to an outside source, I would give an answer to their question but include sort of a call-to-action at the end, saying something along the lines of “There’s actually a great post on that here:” or this post has an extremely in-depth response on that. Link to your blog or a video on YouTube with a step-by-step process if the question is applicable.

By the way, if you see what you consider to be dumb questions on Quora, try to resist the urge to give sarcastic, condescending answers. Remember, you’re representing your company and although people tend to be rather ruthless because of the usually anonymous nature of the internet, you’re using your real name on Quora and trying to create a good reputation. Plus, rude answers tend to be erased by moderators or downvoted so it’s not even worth your time.

If you answer questions well and make it easy to understand and people will come to you. This can be used to find sales opportunities: People are lazy. They’d rather pay people to do things for them. If they see your expertise within some niche, that’s exactly what they’ll do. Bottom line, the majority of people on Quora are not experts in your industry. They’re coming to Quora to find answers to their questions, not answer themselves. Use that to your advantage.

Another strategy would be to create questions with a fake account about your topic or company if you’re well-known enough, answer them with the account you have for that particular niche. Answers given by people closest to the company tend to rate the highest. I don’t think this is unethical either. You’re providing people with inside knowledge of a topic they might be interested in. Plus, everyone answering questions on Quora is in the business of self-promotion. There’s no reason to wait or hope that someone asks a question that you think would be useful for people within that niche to know the answer to.

Go to your topic of expertise, find the unanswered question with the most followers, and write an answer.

Look at Stephen Fry and Dustin Moskovitz’s answers. They are ranked number 1 and 2 for attaining the most followers with the fewest posts. In other words they’re the most efficient Quora answerers out there. Break down their answers and emulate them. There’s a link to a Quora question that asked what answer on Quora have the most upvotes. Look at those answers and see what makes them stand out.

Check out straightdope.com for great ideas on how craft great responses

Images will help you get your point across. Some users will go as far as to create unique images for each post. In a list view of answers, the first photo in a post will appear as a thumbnail beside the text preview. Readers are a naturally drawn to images, and this will entice them to click through and read what you have to say.

I’ve been focusing a lot on how to get noticed by answering questions, it’s probably good to mention that asking questions can be just as important. If you ask the right questions, people will be attracted to that. You can be known as a leader in your niche by the strength of your questions. Look at the kinds of questions people within your niche and people with high numbers of upvotes ask. They’re usually not your typical LMGTFY type of questions. And be sure to follow these influential people, too and anyone else that gives great answers. Follows on Quora are going to be a little like follows on Twitter. I follow you, you follow me. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.

There’s also an Ask to Answer option on Quora. So you can specifically target someone to answer your question. This gets you on their radar if they happen to be useful or influential for your business. You could even use this to ask someone for their opinion. Asking questions also helps you create material for your blog. It can give you ideas for posts, and connect you with people who comment. Ask questions to gauge interest in certain topics. For example, “What do you consider the best…?” You can see who viewed your answer and their profile to get demographic information. Start answering the questions they’re following. If ever they choose to like or comment on one of your answers, then reach out to them with a direct message.

Quora has analytics as well, which you will probably be interested in looking at. By visiting your Stats page at quora.com/stats, you can obtain an overall assessment of how many viewed, upvoted, followed, and shared their questions and answers you’ve had. A quick glance through these stats will tell you which avenues can give you the most coverage.

Now that you know how to create the perfect profile, let’s talk more about how to use it to your advantage within the site. I hate letting any service have my social media credentials but in LinkedIn’s case, it’s going to get you some contacts that you can use to get recommendations and build up your credibility.

Try to get at least 500 connections. In addition to widening your target audience, the magic 500+ in your profile has a psychological impact on those who view your profile. Each week, set aside some time to look through the profiles of 100 or so people that could be beneficial to your business or that work in the same field and reach out to 10 of them with a personalized message.

Start a conversation or if you happen to be in the same area, invite them out for a drink. Personal connections are much more powerful for business than virtual ones.

Once you have a significant amount of contacts, start endorsing people for their skills. LinkedIn is a little like Twitter in that there’s a lot of reciprocation with recommendations and endorsements. You can also go to your Recommendations Manager and run a campaign that reaches out to the people who know you and ask them to provide recommendations and endorse you for your top skills – again using a personalized note. This’ll take longer but it’ll have a higher success rate.

Having the highest number of endorsements for your signature strengths will influence those who are looking at your profile. Once you have recommendations and endorsements, have the courage to delete or reject the endorsements that aren’t central to how you want to be known.

When you’re doing the same for others, only give recommendations and endorsements to those whom you genuinely admire--when you recommend other people, their reputation is seen an extension of your values.

Next, let’s talk about LinkedIn groups, and how they can benefit you. With a LinkedIn group, you have the ability to message other members once a week, which is a great way to deliver special promotions or campaigns. You can use the sharing widget to mass post to groups you’re a member of.

Be sure to join active groups with a lot of members that are related to your area of expertise, industry, alumni, passions, social causes, and other aspects of your identity. This will give you access to more people who matter to your brand. Plus, when others look at your profile, they can learn about your brand by looking at your groups.

You can also consider starting your own group to create the conversations you would want to have with potential customers. Remember, the more active you are in groups, the more visible you become. And I can’t say this enough, good headlines are a must for your group posts or anywhere you post. And don’t be afraid to leave a link to something you’d like the group to check out.

Finally, consider creating a profile for your company using the Add a Company link I have for you in the resources. By creating a company profile, you not only grow your online presence, but also give LinkedIn members the opportunity to connect if they work for/with you, as well as “follow” your company so they can see any company updates.

You can set up your own company profile quickly with a short bio, link to your website, and logo or photograph. You can also search for companies that have already created a profile, and can filter the results by city, company size, and more. This is a great way to find potential partners and organizations that might need your help.

With a company profile, you can also show off your business’s products and services. LinkedIn lets you add a description, a link and a video to all of your products and services. You can also add a recommend button to each of these pages so people can refer you.

Once you’ve finished creating profiles for you and your business, link your profile to your blog and vice versa. Wordpress will let you link them so that when you post something, it will automatically show up on LinkedIn. Consider putting a link to your profile in your email signature and on your business cards.