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Are you just dabbling in social media marketing? How’s that working out for you?
If you’re not building a superstar following, getting customers to take action, and building an indestructible brand, then you’re going to love what we have for you right here.
It’s the 20 best social media marketing books, and the lessons in each you can apply to your business.
Just as any great chef needs a recipe and any wizard needs a spell book, here’s your list to dominate on social.
Best Social Media Marketing Books
1. Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence-and How You Can, Too
Success is often found in the road less traveled. In Crushing It!, Gary Vaynerchuk teaches you how you can find success through unconventional methods.
Vaynerchuk focuses on establishing a personal brand and incorporating it with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others.
Featuring stories of real entrepreneurs, Vaynerchuk really emphasizes “living life on your own terms”. What better way than to establish a personal brand where fans and customers are attracted to you?
I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I had to learn the skills I needed and become competent enough to match my confidence, but the thing that surprises me the most is learning that it’s not about how much you know; it’s about how much you care. We can create anything we want to if we have the passion, the energy, the hustle, and commitment to our vision. If I had been a jerk all along the way and I didn’t care about people, there’s no chance I would have been able to do this.
2. The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users
It can be tempting to blow a lot of money on social media ads with organic reach significantly decreasing. Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple, offers you his insight on how to get the most out of your social marketing.
Kawasaki walks readers through the entire process of social media marketing and how to amass a large following.
He also discusses techniques to writing an interesting blog and then incorporating it into your social media. If you’re looking for social media marketing books that will provide you with a bottom-up approach to the topic, you will enjoy this read.
In our opinion, most search engine optimization (SEO) is bullshit. It involves trying to read Google’s mind and then gaming the system to make Google find crap. There are three thousand computer science PhDs at Google trying to make each search relevant, and then there’s you trying to fool them. Who’s going to win? Tricking Google is futile. Instead, you should let Google do what it does best: find great content. So defy all the SEO witchcraft out there and focus on creating, curating, and sharing great content. This is what’s called SMO: social-media optimization.
3. Freakishly Effective Social Media for Network Marketing: How to Stop Wasting Your Time on Things That Don’t Work and Start Doing What Does!
Network marketing relies on independent sales people to sell products and recruit other sales people. A very common business that follows this model is Scentsy. They have people that do not directly work for the company selling their candles and recruiting other people to join their efforts in selling these products.
Ray and Jessica Higdon recognized that a lot of network marketers are still struggling to effectively utilize social media. Marketers, whether in the network marketing space or not, can end up causing a lot of harm to their business if they try to engage with social media without truly knowing how to effectively use each app.
Social media marketing is a lot different than traditional marketing and requires different approaches when it comes to producing content. Read it and execute.
All things being equal, people prefer to do business with people they know, like, and trust.
4. Likeable Social Media, Third Edition: How To Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, & Be Generally Amazing On All Social Networks That Matter
Why spend time and money for no one to follow you, or worse, follow and then unfollow a week later? Gaining followers really is only half the battle. True success on social media depends on the retention rates of your followers.
Michelle Greenbaum and Rob Berk will teach you how to create your personal brand to keep your followers around. This book goes beyond advice. They share various case studies about retaining followers to show how other people were able to gain success using the techniques outlined in the book.
You’ll appreciate the newer social media platforms, like Snapchat, mixed in with older platforms for a full strategy.
Sure, not everyone who posts on your Facebook wall or tweets about you has as much sway or trendsetting ability as some celebrities, but they certainly can spread the word on your behalf—easily and quickly—especially if you thank and encourage them. (Some users probably have more online influence than some so-called celebrities too!)
5. Win: The Key Principles To Take Your Business From Ordinary To Extraordinary
Communication separates thriving businesses from failing ones. And the goal of communication is to ensure that your marketing efforts are clear for the reader to understand what it is your selling and why they should buy it.
Frank Luntz shares 9 essential principles of communication that can be applied to any situation.
Put your business through the test to see if you follow these principles in your communication. If you’re not successful, you now know why.
This social media marketing book is a double recommendation, as Brian included this book on his top 30 best marketing books list.
Winners recognize that even when they aren’t physically selling a product, they are always selling themselves. Every human interaction is an opportunity to connect—and then to sell.
6. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World
Another Gary Vee special. This one focuses on social media storytelling.
Why the second book about social media? Is he trying to dominate the social media marketing books industry?
He’d say what you once knew to be true about social media will very likely change in a few months time.
Now, the content you produce has to be appropriately tailored to fit the social media platform you’re posting on. The best Pinterest content looks different than Twitter content, for example. And you have to be in the know, or suffer irrelevance and a loss of conversions.
Your number-one job is to tell your story to the consumer wherever they are, and preferably at the moment they are deciding to make a purchase.
7. Buy.ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
We all would be nowhere without our buyers.
Tired of losing sales to your competitors? Listen to Martin Lindstrom to first understand, then attract new customers.
Lindstrom discusses his findings from a 3-year long neuromarketing study that looked at brain activity while participants were shown ads and had interactions with brands.
The goal of this study was to truly understand the buyer and what actually motivates their decisions. Surprisingly, the results challenged what many marketers have always thought about buyers and decision making. It’ll challenge what you know to be true about consumer behavior.
Read this book because it’s only what you don’t know, that you think you do, that gets you in the most trouble.
When we brand things, our brains perceive them as more special and valuable than they actually are.
8. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less
You can produce as much content as you want. If the consumer is not interested in seeing it, it won’t matter how much you put out.
Joe Pulizzi recognizes this truth about marketing and spills the beans on what content consumers actually desire.
Today, interrupting a user’s usual content with an ad that they have no interest in seeing is a red flag. Fans will hate it and remember your injustice, damaging your brand equity.
Nowadays, you have to master the art of the sublime to truly produce successful content. Think a carefully placed Coca-Cola bottle in an influencer’s Instagram picture.
You will learn how to get users to buy your products without actually telling them to buy your product.
Pulizzi offers various case studies that showcase what is considered acceptable content. Your content needs to establish some sort of trust between you and the consumer because that is what users value. Explaining why you can’t outwardly advertise to them and be extremely profitable.
Content marketing without a loyal audience is not content marketing at all.
9. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue
I hope by now in this list you’ve recognized that engaging in social media marketing is no longer optional.
Shama Hyder recognizes that there has to be two different approaches to social media marketing and traditional marketing. I’m going to assume that your company is still using traditional marketing, so you will get the best of both worlds with this book.
This book discusses how to use a variety of social media tools to make social media marketing a stress-free experience. You can use these tools to cause your social media to thrive.
Implement these tactics with grace and ease.
Today, you need a multipronged approach. You can’t reach a demographic through one channel. You have to reach people through the channel of their choice.
10. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
Have you thought about developing your voice by telling stories through your content?
Using stories will help establish your brand as authentic and encourage users to care about your every post. And authenticity is huge for building a loyal fan base.
You will be asked to think about why you even generate content in the first place. We’ll be quick to tell you that if you don’t understand why you’re generating content, you won’t be successful.
Every business has a story, and this book helps you understand how to use that story to your advantage.
When we say to be authentic, we mean you should make it clear that your stuff has the stamp of an actual person or actual people and that that person or those people have the qualities (a point of view, a personality, a sense of enthusiasm for the subject, and suitability to your audience) that make for a compelling approach to content as a solid foundation for the start of your relationship with your audience.
11. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
I’m assuming you’re a business owner, marketer, entrepreneur, or a manager. Ann Handley is here to remind you that you’re also a writer.
How can this be? If you are generating content of any kind, you are a writer. You make conscious choices about what words to use, how to cater to your audience and many other decisions that writers make daily.
All of the marketing you will ever do relies on words. Words are what establishes your voice and tells your customers who you are. Even if it is produced in the form of audio or video, it starts with a word.
Believe it or not, we rely on words to distinguish ourselves from our competitors and develop our online personas. You will learn about the importance of word choice and how to apply it to your own business.
So, before you begin the writing, be sure you know the purpose or mission or objective of every piece of content that you write. What are you trying to achieve? What information, exactly, are you trying to communicate? And why should your audience care?
12. Content That Converts: How to Build a Profitable And Predictable B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Creating new, unique content everyday can be a lot of work. Laura Hanly teaches you the benefits of creating a predictable content marketing strategy.
You’ll start by defining your audience and sending them a clear message that conveys what your business stands for, what you’re offering and what value it will bring to their lives. Hanly discusses how to use the content plan you develop to become an industry leader. This is an extremely valuable set of tools she is offering.
Next, you’ll learn content distribution in the mission of generating the maximum amount of leads possible. Don’t be surprised when you become an industry leader.
To develop any successful marketing strategy, you need to have a clear picture of the goals in your business. This is particularly true of content marketing: sitting down to bang out anything that pops into your head is not a sensible way to approach it. You need to have a consistent strategy for the content you’re producing, so that your audience is engaged.
13. One Million Followers: How I Built a Massive Social Following In 30 Days: Growth Hacks for Your Business, Your Message, And Your Brand From The World’s Greatest Minds
There is more than 60 billion messages sent on different platforms everyday. But Brendan Kane doesn’t care about the competition and explains how to cut through the noise.
The rise of influencer marketing has completely changed the social media game in the past few years. Kane recognizes this change and has dedicated his career to finding the best tools to turn any account into an influencer account.
You will learn how to gain an authentic customer base that is engaged with your content. Some of the top influencers on social media drastically increased their own following using this exact advice.
If one million followers sounds like a lot and you’re looking for a more attainable, short term goal, we have a post on how to increase your Instagram following by 1,000 followers.
When one person shares your message, your exposure and range grows exponentially – it eventually reaches hundreds of their friends and can potentially reach their friends’ friends as well. The velocity at which you get people to share your content dictates the success of your organic growth. This also means the more people sharing, the quicker you grow.
14. Social Media Marketing Mastery 2019: 3 Books in 1: How To Build a Brand And Become An Expert Influencer Using Facebook, Twitter, Youtube & Instagram – Top Digital Networking & Personal Branding Strategies
The most prevalent aspects of social media marketing are influencers, platform specific marketing and how to build your personal brand. Robert Miller has covered all of those aspects in this 3-in-1 book.
The first book in this guide is How to become an Influencer. In this one, you learn how to become an influencer. Not only that, you see why consumers respond well to influencers because it feels less like advertising and more like talking with a friend about what they recommend to buy. One of the best ways to advertise is word of mouth and becoming an influencer will help get the word of your product out in the world.
The second book is Power of Instagram Marketing.
Instagram can sometimes be an underutilized platform and he argues that there is great value in building a strong presence on the app.
The final book in this series is How to Build your Personal Brand.
You will find a different perspective on developing your personal brand which can then be used to establish your voice on social media.
Do keep this in mind: businesses can do well without social media. They can make a profit, and break even. But if you want to continue growing, if you want to constantly be improving sales and making more money, if you want to improve your relationship with your customers and engage with them while at the same time not spending too much money, social media is a great way to do this.
15. The Content Code: Six Essential Strategies To Ignite Your Content, Your Marketing, And Your Business
One of the most frustrating parts of social media marketing can be having to start over after building a following. Schaefer saves the day by telling you that you can build strong social media from the accounts you already have and taking them to the next level.
It can be easy to get lost in the excitement of gaining new followers that you lose sight of what you’re doing in the first place. Once you understand the true value of social media, you will learn how to gain achievable results with your social media efforts.
Follow Schaefer’ss 6 digital secrets to fire up your followers to take action.
The future is more than copy writing. The future of marketing is copy igniting.
16. Instagram Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Following Fast, Driving Massive Traffic & Generating Predictable Profits
Jeremy McGilvrey is here to challenge what you already know about social media marketing by focusing on two things:
- Building a large following fast
- Converting followers into dollars
McGilvrey understands itt can be easy to get wrapped up in the popularity game of Instagram and focus solely on gaining followers. McGilvrey will take you a step further and teach you how to convert those followers into dollars.
The amount of followers you get doesn’t matter if you aren’t increasing your profits. Turning those followers into profitable leads is where the magic happens.
All of this was possible because of two simple things that are unique to Instagram. The first is that you can drive traffic at speeds that will blow your mind. The second is that unlike other social media platforms, you have no limitations on what you can put on your promotions. That’s why Instagram is a gold mine and a marketers dream come true!
17. 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, and More!
Implementing a campaign on social media means you have to focus on consistency. Andrew Macarthy will give you 500 actionable strategies for effective social media marketing in his book.
If you were wondering how to approach each platform differently, this is the book for you. This book covers strategies for nearly all platforms you could potentially start marketing on.
You don’t have to read it cover to cover to get all the necessary information you need to successfully implement the strategies. Pick and use what feels right.
With the purchase of this book, you are also given access to YouTube tutorials that support the strategies Macarthy presents.
Implement all 500 tips and you have no idea how much your life can change.
Depending on the type of business you run, not every social media site is going to suit your marketing, your audience, or what you are trying to achieve.
18. Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media
The world of influencers is extremely unpredictable. Brittany Hennessy has analyzed the evolution of influencers and offers advice on becoming famous in this sense.
She goes over core influencer principles that you will need to apply to your own account to claim the title of influencer. Some of these principles are influenced by the research she has done about where she predicts influencer marketing will go in the future. Influencer marketing can be tricky to succeed at and Hennessy is here to help you figure out the world of being an influencer in this social media marketing book.
You’ve probably scrolled through Instagram and thought to yourself, “I could totally do that,” but you might not realize that there is an art and a science to becoming a full-time influencer.
19. Everything You Need To Know About Social Media: Without Having To Call A Kid
Are you an older gentleman or woman? Social media is naturally harder on you than your kids who have grown up with social media.
Greta Van Susteren recognizes this discrepancy and is here to help older generations navigate this unfamiliar territory. You can find step-by-step instructions on how to master all of the major platforms.
This is a simple guide that can be a great place to start when you’re first starting out with social media marketing. If you understand and master the skills presented in this book, you will have a strong foundation to start applying some of the more complex ideas presented in the other social media marketing books.
We are living through a revolution. This revolution is bigger than the Industrial Revolution, bigger than the automotive revolution, bigger than the great space race. This revolution isn’t just changing how we do things, or where we can go, or how we work. It is fundamentally changing how we communicate with and relate to one another.
20. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect
Understanding how people work and view social media is the key to running a successful social media marketing strategy. It’s also a key to business, relationship, and life success.
Matthew D. Lieberman ran studies on the brains of participants to understand how the brain socializes.
Liberman found that our brain works to understand others and our relationship with those people. Our brains our wired to connect with other people. This is the draw of these platforms. Social media gives us a place to connect with lots of people, especially people that we probably would not have been able to connect with regularly.
Understanding why people use social media will help you market like a genius.
As we have said from the beginning, we think people are built to maximize their own pleasure and minimize their own pain. In reality, we are actually built to overcome our own pleasure and increase our own pain in the service of following society’s norms.
Conclusion
Real talk: The knowledge you gain from reading these social media marketing books will be useless if you don’t apply it to your business.
The point of reading these books is to increase your knowledge and apply it. One without the other is a complete waste of time.
Think of these books as tools to improve your social media marketing strategy. Just as a house doesn’t get built if you don’t start laying cement and bricks, your social following and cash flow doesn’t move until you put in the work to apply what you’ve learned.
What is your favorite social media marketing book?
Many businesses are quick to push Twitter aside. “You can’t get customers there,” they say. Let them, while you use these Twitter marketing wins to drive new attention, interest, and sales.
We’re going to share with you our best Twitter strategies, with nothing held back.
This will be shown through screenshots of one of our social media marketing customers, Dr. Leah Houston (@LeahHoustonMD).
Why Twitter?
The data you’re about to read is convincing.
For starters, 326 million people use Twitter every month. That’s a lot of potential customers you might be missing out on if you put out all of your best content on Instagram.
This number is only continuing to grow. Now 9% more people are using Twitter on a daily basis.
Twitter isn’t only for Gen Z and younger audiences. If you typically target an older audience, you will be happy to know that 24% of US adults use Twitter.
With its character limits on tweets, people are 31% more likely to recall what they saw on Twitter due to the forced brevity.
In addition to that, 54% of Twitter users took action after seeing a brand mentioned on the app. Not only are your customers on the app, they’re ready to take action.
For those reasons, your business needs to be on Twitter.
Now are you ready to see these advanced Twitter strategies? Let’s go!
Twitter Marketing Tactics To Copy
1. Ask Great Questions
Twitter, and all social media content really, works best when it focuses on its audience and their needs.
One great way to have an audience-first focus is to ask them an open-ended question. This always produces engagement.
Take this tweet we created for Dr. Houston.
She asks a question that would require an in-depth answer and would likely encourage a discussion that would get even more followers involved. It pays off to the tune of 120 retweets, 529 comments, and 527 comments. Those are huge numbers for a non-celebrity!
You want your tweets to spark discussions like this one because it increases your brand awareness by miles. And the more people that enter your Twitter discussion, increases the odds they follow your account.
They’ll follow because you’ve added value to them, which is the most important goal of your tweets.
You can also ask a question that you have the unique solution to. For example, a chiropractor could ask his followers what kind of pain do they suffer the most?
Once a few responses come in, the chiropractor can reply to all the tweets that his chiropractic office serves, like neck, back, and shoulder pain. These tweet replies can offer helpful insight and then a recommendation to come visit his office for treatment.
Be careful though: Twitter users won’t see your brand as authentic if you are constantly asking for sales in the comments. Do this sparingly and with touch.
If I were you, right now, I’d jot down a list of 20 questions you can ask your audience over the next few months. These can be questions you’re personally curious about, hot-button issues, or a more personal one, like “Are you a dog or cat person, and why?”
2. Do Twitter Polls
Twitter polls are a form of asking questions on Twitter, where your follower’s votes get tracked in real time.
They have become popular amongst personal and business accounts for their ability to acquire quick feedback.
Take these two examples from Dr. Leah Houston.
In the first poll, she learned that the highest health care trend that her followers are worried about iss consolidation. Notice she didn’t need to do hours of research or dive into scientific journals to gather this information.
Just blast off a tweet and let your audience answer for you.
This information is beneficial to her because she can then share an article, that either she or someone else, discussing consolidation.
Now she is solving problems that her followers didn’t even know they wanted solutions for, while establishing herself as a thought leader.
Creating tweets this way also ensures that her followers are seeing content that they are interested in and find valuable.
You can also use polls to break up some of your more serious content with fun, light-hearted questions. Life can be hard and sometimes having a light tweet on your feed is what people need to boost spirits.
Want to go above and beyond after running a Twitter poll? Use the data you collect from your polls to create an infographic, and share with your followers.
For example, using the second poll pictured above, Dr. Houston could create an infographic that visualizes these responses in a pie chart. That’s the cherry on top of grade A, original content.
3. Tweet Multiple Times Per Day
Did you know this? On average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted per second. That translates to about 500 million tweets per day.
It sucks that those sheer numbers of tweets are all competing with your content for visibility.
But don’t panic. There is an upside to this high volume of tweets.
You can post a lot during the day without worrying about annoying your followers. In fact, for your account to be successful, you need to tweet multiple times a day at the minimum.
If you might think that it will be hard to come up with quality content for multiple posts every day, rest assured. It’s actually pretty easy.
Think about all the different types of ways you can add content. You can tweet yourself, retweet others, quote tweet with comments, and jump in the comments.
Community is the foundation of Twitter so you really can’t rely solely on your own tweets to gain traffic.
Your interactions with industry leaders, your followers and Twitter conversations count as new daily content.
Replies to other people’s tweets prove that your intentions are genuine because you’re taking the time to be an active, engaged member of the community.
You can also quote tweet other tweets, where you share their content with your own insights and opinions. This provides additional insight and shows your personality in a different angle for your followers.
In terms of your own content, you can set aside time on Sunday to make a content calendar inside Google Sheets. Here’s an example content calendar.
You need to create all types of content so your followers don’t see the same tweets over and over again. Have some fun with this. Only then will you keep your followers on their toes so they continue to interact with your tweets from a serious Monday afternoon to a goofy Saturday morning
4. Use Controversy
Controversy always sparks conversation. Marketers love the fact everyone has an opinion about hot issues, so you should too. Use this human tendency to your advantage.
Look at Dr. Houston’s tweets. She published two tweets above that discuss controversial issues in the medical industry and got a lot of replies, likes and retweets.
Controversy can help spark really meaningful conversation on the platform. If you’re the one who starts the popular conversation, you will gain a lot of brand awareness and new followers.
You do need to be careful when you use controversy to comply with Twitter’s rules. The rules of the site are split into three categories:
- Safety: to sum it up, you can’t exploit or threaten people
- Privacy: You can’t publish other’s private information
- Authenticity: You can’t manipulate information
If you don’t abide by these rules, you can risk getting the tweet deleted and suspension/termination from your account.
As long as you keep those things in mind, you can create a successful debate about controversial issues within your industry.
5. Retweet With Comments
Retweeting with comments, or quote tweeting, is a great way to increase the amount you tweet each day.
As I mentioned above, quote tweeting allows you to share relevant information to your followers while including your own thoughts about the tweet.
You can combine this strategy with asking questions and using controversy as well.
If the tweet you’re commenting on is about a sided argument, you can ask your followers what they think. Or see if they agree or disagree with your thoughts.
You can also comment on controversial tweets to spark discussion among your own followers and their followers to talk about the issue.
This method leads to making connections with people in your industry. Your tweets get shared their followers, which will increase the discussion and bring more awareness to your account.
You’re also increasing your credibility by commenting on other established account’s content. Quote tweet a verified account, or better yet challenge them, and you’ll earn street credit if you do it with class.
Finally, you’re providing your followers with information that they may not have known before seeing the post. This can be really beneficial because 74% of Twitter users rely on Twitter as a primary source of news.
Quote tweeting does not take long. It can help make sure that your followers know that you’re active. And it’s another example that you’re there to have epic conversations, not there to sell stuff.
6. Join In On The Conversation
We can’t say this enough. The foundation of successful Twitter marketing relies on growing a community. To do this, start and join conversation after conversation until your fingers hurt (half kidding).
Look anywhere and you’ll see conversations you can jump in.
It helps to follow the leaders of your industry because they are usually great about sparking conversations on Twitter.
You’ll want to stick to conversations within your own industry because that’s where you can provide your followers with the most value. Then go to work sharing your knowledge with peers to make a name for yourself.
Engaging in Twitter conversations can also help you gain followers that are guaranteed to be active on Twitter. When you ask questions or create polls, you want people to actually participate in them. Gaining active followers, by commenting on their tweets, helps you avoid getting no responses to your tweets.
There are some do’s and don’ts to Twitter conversations that we should discuss:
- Do: engage in conversations related to your industry, offer insightful comments, bring in external sources to support your points, conduct yourself in a professional manner, respect opinions that both agree and disagree with your own
- Don’t: try to sell your product, disregard the opinions of others, bring up topics and concepts that are not relevant to the discussion
You should always be trying to add value to the chat.
A great way to do this is to include visuals along with the text of your replies. Incorporating infographics and memes can help your comments stand out, while supporting your claims.
Who doesn’t love a good meme?
7. Share Interesting Videos
Two cool stats:
- Tweets with videos are 6x more likely to get retweeted than those without
- Tweets with video attract 10x as much engagement then tweets without.
How come? Videos are more convenient for users to gather information and they add more emotion to the content.
Videos can also help you get more information to your followers, being limited to 240 characters in text tweets.
There are a few ways that you can include videos in your tweets.
Twitter does have an option that allows you to take a video directly on the app. I wouldn’t typically recommend this option because you’re likely to sacrifice quality.
If you’re sharing your own content, I would recommend you shoot the video professionally and then upload it with a tweet.
You can run live videos on Twitter that can be a great tool to encourage engagement.
You can tell your followers that you’re going to be going live on Twitter about a topic. Then they can tweet at you during it with questions and their thoughts about the subject.
Another option is to link a YouTube video.
Finally, you can share a clip of a webinar to give followers a sneak peek of what they’re going to see when they view the entire thing.
Videos crush, if you do them right. Or hire a video production company to do the hard work.
8. Bring The Offline To Online
A final marketing win that establishes your relationship with your followers is bringing the offline to online. By this, we mean inviting followers to your offline events.
Dr. Houston was participating in a panel about healthcare and blockchain. We decided to ask her Twitter followers what topics she should bring up during the discussion.
This really played well. She’s showing she cares about her followers opinions. She’s making them feel valued as this discussion panel has real life effects. And she’s entering opportunities for 1-on-1 conversations through the replies, as well as at the event.
This strategy also keeps your followers updated on what you’re doing.
It can be easy sometimes to forget your Twitter still needs to inform new followers who aren’t familiar with you what your business is about.
Bringing the offline online is a guaranteed way to do this in a non-promotional way.
Conclusion
Hopefully by now you’re a big fan of Twitter and its potential for your business.
It’s time for you to join the community and use these Twitter marketing wins yourself. Why stay on the sidelines when there’s followers, revenue, and new opportunities to be gained?
Those are our best 8 strategies. What are other Twitter marketing strategies you use to gain attention and revenue?
P.S. If you’re looking for a social media marketing company, see what we can do for you.
It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a hot spot for B2B lead generation.
But did you know that—between Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—LinkedIn accounts for over half of the B2B traffic driven by social media? It’s true.
So the real secret lies in how to master this platform to get the maximum number of prospects, new clients, and future clients.
We’re not just going to leave you to figure it out for yourself, don’t worry. We have created a guide that will ensure you get the most out of your LinkedIn lead generation.
Use this guide and you’ll blow up your business so big, you’ll be forced to hire more staff or raise your prices to keep up with an onslaught of demand.
LinkedIn For B2B Lead Generation
1. Send Personal Messages To Connect With Prospects
Before you can start generating leads, you need to connect with prospects.
One of the great features of LinkedIn is advanced search.
This feature helps you find your ideal prospect. You can narrow potential prospects by location, their affiliations and other attributes that you’re looking for.
Once you put in your preferred attributes, LinkedIn will provide you will potential prospects.
The key to connecting with prospects is to build a meaningful relationship right off the bat.
When you go to connect with someone on LinkedIn, you will be given an option to send a message with the request to connect.
Sending a personal message shows the prospect that you care about them. Do this every time. We’re going for quality and quantity, but prioritizing quality first.
A personal message also allows you to show the value you’re going to bring to them.
You should include the following in your message:
- A greeting with the name of the prospect
- Your reason for wanting to connect (You respect their professional experience, you went to the same college, you saw them in the press, you have common interests, you have a common connection)
- The value you can bring to them
- A conclusion where you thank them for their time and encourage them to connect with you
Whatever you do, don’t go for a sale right here. It’s too early, and you ruin your chance of a solid first impression.
Starting the relationship off by establishing common ground and being friendly is a great way to grow your network and increase your leads.
2. Start A Company LinkedIn Page
You can grow LinkedIn connections through your personal profile and a company page.
Setting up a company page is pretty easy.
The first step is to click on ‘Create a Company Page +’. You can find this under the work tab when you log into LinkedIn.
There are only two steps to officially set up a company page.
The first step is to choose the category for your page.
There are four categories:
- Small businesses
- Medium-Large businesses
- Showcase page
- Educational Institution
Chances are you’re going to fall into one of the first two categories.
LinkedIn gives you criteria that will help you determine if you’re a small business or a medium-large based on their standards.
The next step is to fill out some basic information about your company.
This includes the name of your company, your logo, the type of industry you’re in, and a description about your company.
There will be two images that you will include on your page: a profile picture and a cover photo. The profile picture should be your company’s logo. The cover photo should be an image that grabs the attention of the user.
These visuals should immediately create interest.
Once you finish filling out the basic information of your page, it’s ready to go live.
3. Generate B2B Leads From That Page
Now that you have a company page, it’s time to use it to generate leads.
Let’s start with revamping the basic information you filled in when you were signing up.
Your page should offer more than just a description of what you do. It needs to be engaging. You should be focusing on what your business can offer to the visitor.
Take our page for example.
As soon as the viewer clicks on our page, they are greeted with a call to action to visit our website.
Our website is where the viewer can find the services we offer and make the first step in becoming a client.
We also have a simple description of what our company does and how it will benefit the user.
There is no need for the user to search our page for what we do and how to reach our services. We make it clear by providing it as soon as the user clicks on our page.
You should also share your content on your LinkedIn company page.
We share our blog posts to help keep our followers interested in our company.
A business owner might find this post in his feed and read it because he doesn’t have a domain name. After he reads our post and finds it provided him with valuable information, he might go to our page and look at other posts we have created.
Just in that example we have created a relationship with a potential client.
Generating leads with your company page isn’t rocket science. All it takes is knowing how to show the viewer that they’re going to benefit from a relationship with you.
4. Create Showcase Pages To Segment LinkedIn Leads
Some companies offer a wide array of products to specific audiences. It can be hard to advertise every product you offer if they have very different purposes for different people.
Thankfully, LinkedIn has a solution for this.
One of the categories that you can choose when you’re setting up your company page is showcase. A showcase page is used to promote different products, brands, events, etc. that have specific audiences. It’s kind of like LinkedIn’s version of a landing page.
Showcase pages are also called affiliated pages. Even though it’s completely separate, it is still connected to your company’s main page.
Take Procter & Gamble.
On the right of their page they have a section for their affiliated pages.
It would be a disaster for P&G to try and advertise all of their products on one page. Crest toothpaste is wildly different from Ariel India. Each has their own consumer.
Creating a showcase page has allowed P&G to create content specific to the audience that uses Crest.
When your company as a whole targets a broad audience, use showcase pages to offer relevant content to specific audiences.
There’s always edge in segmenting your audience.
5. Publish Quality Content – Daily
One of the reasons LinkedIn requires extra effort to generate leads is that you have to be constantly active.
It is much better to spend 30 minutes per day publishing content instead of spending 6 hours one day updating your page.
There are two different types of content you can use to keep your page active:
- Other’s content
- Your own content
It is okay, and encouraged, for you to share others posts on your page. Sharing posts that are relevant to your niche can actually improve your status on the site.
When you share a post and offer some commentary about your opinion on the topic, you are reaffirming the values and opinions of your company.
It can be hard to publish original and innovative content every single day. Sharing posts can save you time while still keeping your page active.
You can’t rely on sharing posts all the time though. You need to also be publishing your own content as much as possible.
The content you publish for your LinkedIn is slightly different than what you would post on Facebook or Twitter.
Since LinkedIn is a site for professionals, the content you post needs to be both original and innovative.
Your content is going to be the way you establish authority in your network. If you want to be one of the major players on LinkedIn, it’s time to step up your writing.
To begin, you should only be posting original content. If you’re going to share an article you wrote offering tips for SEO, you need to come up with tips that haven’t been seen before.
Innovation and originality will prove to the viewer that you’re an expert in your field.
Establishing yourself as a leader in your network will guarantee that your LinkedIn is going to generate leads.
You want people to look to you when your industry starts changing directions. This allows you to control the narrative when change happens.
And daily content is the foundation for becoming a major player on LinkedIn.
6. Use Data In Your Posts
Original and innovative content will no doubt help you stand out and establish your authority on LinkedIn.
But to take it to the next level, you need to add in solid, reliable data to support your content.
Using data from a reliable source will solidify what you’re saying in your posts. It’s the trusted backbone of your opinions.
We can rave about how great LinkedIn is for generating leads and how the tips we are giving you will guarantee that you’ll see improvements. However, without the data proving those claims, the reader can’t trust that what we’re saying actually works.
Don’t panic! This is where all of the case studies and research you’ve conducted come into play.
We have done case studies on paid advertising and SEO, and use the data we gathered to support our blog posts. Remember how we started this post? With a B2B stat that LinkedIn drives 50% of B2B traffic.
It’s ok if you’re writing about a topic and you haven’t done your own extensive research for it. You can use data from a third-party source as long as you credit them for it.
The origins of the data will not affect the credibility of your post. What’s important is that the data is there and it’s effectively supporting your claims.
The formula for a great post is original content + innovative ideas + relevant data.
Having those three elements are going to prove that users can trust your company to provide them with effective ways to improve their business.
Trust plays a key role in generating B2B leads.
7. Take The Best Content And Sponsor It
Surprise! LinkedIn has paid advertising options.
Sponsored content is an ad-form that helps you reach a wider and or targeted audience.
The cost-per-click is more expensive compared to what you’re used to with Google and Facebook.
Luckily LinkedIn has created a few different types of ads and ways to pay for them.
There are three budget options that the site offers:
- Total budget. This option is for sponsored content that you want to be published immediately for as long as your budget you set allows.
- Daily budget. This option is for sponsored content that you want to run daily and will be shown as long as your daily limit allows.
- Setting bids. This option allows you to set how much you’re willing to pay for clicks, impressions, etc. LinkedIn will stop your sponsored content once you’ve reached your maximum.
The budget option you decide to choose depends on your content and what you think is best.
There are two pricing options:
- Cost-per-click. This option charges you when someone clicks on your content.
- Cost-per-impression. This option charges you when people see your content.
The most common pricing option companies will choose is cost-per-click. That’s a safe option we recommend to clients.
When you make the decision to sponsor your content, you get to choose who you want to see it.
This is your chance to ensure that the right audience will see what you’re posting.
You can start considering sponsored content once you see positive results from your posts.
You’re only going to want to promote your best content to make a good impression on your targeted audience.
Since LinkedIn ads can quickly become expensive, you shouldn’t consider promoting your posts until you’re 100% confident with your content and budget.
8. Create Your Own LinkedIn Group
Joining LinkedIn Groups is a great way to engage with other businesses and build relationships with decision makers in your industry.
Not only is it ripe for networking and prospecting, these groups often have domain experts sharing the best strategies for you to learn and apply yourself.
Once you get a feel for what makes a quality LinkedIn group that provides value to all members, has strict rules, and is a safe-place to share opinions, we recommend you consider starting your own group.
That’s the goldmine. Being the owner of a large and successful group is a guaranteed way to generate B2B leads.
You do need numerous connections before you can even think about starting your own group.
The connections you build in the groups you join will help you with your goal to starting your own groups. So don’t skip the recommended action step number one, above.
LinkedIn requires effort to generate the results you want.
You have to put in the time to engage with others in your field, continue posting original content, and establishing your company as an authority figure in your network.
Start joining a few groups that are relevant to your business and start building momentum to making your own group in the near future.
9. Target High-Value Prospects With Ads
I’ll cut to the chase. Using LinkedIn ads is the best way to make sure your prospects are seeing your posts, staying top of mind, building brand equity, and generating sales.
Yes, it is known for being one of the most expensive pay-per-click platforms. However, there is a reason that they’re so expensive: they work.
Like any social media platform, you get to decide who is going to see your advertisements.
The trick to getting the bang for your buck is targeting your most profitable prospects.
You’re going to want to have a solid plan for your ad before you decide to experiment with LinkedIn ads.
This includes research about your target audience, testing the ad, and making sure you have all of the aspects that make up a great ad.
Once you’re confident in your ad, you should start paying to get it promoted on LinkedIn.
The beauty of LinkedIn ads is that there is a guarantee that your specified prospects will see your ad.
Target your most profitable prospects and let the advertising algorithm do the rest.
Inspiring LinkedIn Case Study
To hit home the power of LinkedIn marketing, I want to introduce you to a Robben Media customer, Dr. Leah Houston.
We started working with her a month and half ago. By putting this guide into practice, we’ve produced the following promising results:
- Got her to 10,718 followers for her personal account (started with 3,821 followers)
- Got her to 1,862 followers for her company account (started with 43 followers)
- Published a LinkedIn post with 12,203 organic views (record high at the time)
- Posts regularly receive 1,000 – 15,000 views and 70+ comments (used to get 100 views)
Again, that’s only after 45 days of marketing work. This is major progress for just getting started.
What’s this mean for you? Be inspired that you can achieve similar results since LinkedIn is ripe for opportunity.
Conclusion
LinkedIn holds the B2B marketing crown. Your B2B company’s online marketing should reflect that with a serious push to optimize this platform.
The results may come slow at first. But you’ll see your efforts compound over time and you’ll come to appreciate every second and dollar you invest into this platform when you get clients weekly, maybe daily.
Use our guide to begin your LinkedIn journey.
Seriously, with this surefire way to generate leads at your fingertips, why would you not get everything you can out of LinkedIn?
So you’re looking for influencer marketing but don’t have Coca-Cola’s budget to splurge on someone like Selena Gomez and her 140 million followers? I have good news for you.
There’s affordable influencer marketing out there that can return 7x your ad spend. But we’ll cover that later.
If you want to achieve meaningful growth for your business with your next marketing campaign, there are probably two major concerns on your mind: maximizing your campaign’s effectiveness and minimizing its cost.
As the marketing landscape is augmented by the rise of alternative media platforms and changing consumer behavior, building marketing campaigns that promote growth and are easy to measure can be more challenging and murky than ever before.
Social media marketing has developed a reputation among many for being hard to measure. And while making tons of cash with social media marketing is absolutely possible, this reputation isn’t entirely unearned.
Using social media effectively requires many skills. To do it right, you need comprehensive media literacy. Deep insight into consumer behavior and your sales cycle. And knowing which metrics are the most important to focus on.
For many marketing professionals, they simply don’t have all the knowledge required. (That’s why your daughter or the office intern can’t produce real results.) And mismanaged social media marketing efforts can lead to thousands of hours and dollars in wasted effort.
Enter the influencer.
Influencer Marketing
Even mentioned in our best social media marketing books, the concept of influencer marketing is when someone with a social media following works with a brand, and promotes that brand’s message to its followers. By paying the influencer to post the picture or video, the influencer shares the trust and attention they’ve earned to the brand.
Despite some criticism from skeptics, influencer marketing is not only one of the fastest growing kinds of marketing. It’s also one of the most affordable.
In the age of social media, influencer marketing has taken on an entirely new role for marketers as an integral part of any contemporary marketing strategy.
Essentially, inexpensive strategic investment in even relatively small social media personalities can have powerful results, transforming your brand’s relationship with consumers and naturally inserting your product in an existing network of trust.
With a little finesse, influencer marketing can be one of the most affordable and effective ways to grow your brand.
Does Influencer Marketing Work, Why?
If you’ve never integrated influencer marketing into your campaign strategy before, you might be wondering if it works at all.
It’s not as simple as yes or no. As with any marketing solution, there are no guarantees.
But strategic, calculated influencer marketing can generate tons of revenue — in fact, in 2017, influencer marketing provided $7.65 in value on average for every dollar spent.
So what separates effective, high value influencer marketing campaigns from ineffective, low value ones?
There are a number of factors, but the most pivotal is consumer trust.
Influencer marketing leader MARKERLY found that 74% of consumers use social media to make purchasing decisions. It also discovered that 92% trust recommendations from other people, including ones they don’t personally know.
This data, coupled with the fact that consumers are becoming skeptical of traditional marketing methods, means that influencers have the unique ability to communicate your brand’s message in an atmosphere of trust and mutual interest.
Think of it this way. Receiving a personalized, authentic product recommendation from someone who posts content you love on a regular basis will almost always be more persuasive than seeing a more general, wide-sweeping advertisement.
What Makes Influencer Marketing So Affordable?
So if influencer marketing is so effective, how is it one of the most affordable marketing solutions out there?
This time, there is a simple answer. You don’t need to work with the most popular, most expensive influencers online to get outstanding ROI.
In fact, in some cases, opting for more popular and more expensive influencers can actually limit your overall ROI.
“Micro-influencers”, who pursue a smaller, more specialized audience, can actually have even stronger relationships with consumers than more widely known ones. A stronger relationship means more engagement: up to 60% more on average, according to recent data.
It’s often a mistake to blow your budget on one big-name influencer. Instead you can coordinate relationships with multiple microinfluencers and get more sales for a cheaper cost.
There are other significant benefits to working with influencers in this fashion. For example, your team won’t have to add any new members or create any new content in-house for influencers to start to work with your brand.
Once you’ve set the terms of the promotion and potentially provided your influencer with sample product to show off, they’ll create the kind of content their viewers love independently. If your deal is based on commission rather than a one-off payment, you could potentially start an influencer marketing campaign with close to zero initial cost.
Now that’s affordable marketing.
How To Maximize Influencer Marketing ROI
If all of this has you excited to start up an influencer marketing campaign, that’s great! However, not all influencer campaigns are created equal. Keep these best practices in mind to maximize the effectiveness of your campaign.
Make Sure Influencer Marketing Fits Your Product Or Service
Unfortunately, not every kind of company is a perfect fit for affordable influencer marketing. A good rule of thumb to consider is this. If a consumer saw your influencer’s promotion, how much work would it take for them to make a purchase?
The less work conversion takes, the better your business fits influencer marketing.
If you’re a t-shirt brand, for example, consumers persuaded by seeing their favorite influencer wear your product can place their order within minutes via a simple link. If you’re a dentist’s office, persuading someone to leave their current dentist, make an appointment, and pay hundreds for an in-person service is going to be much, much harder.
Have Clear, Measurable Outcomes In Mind
As I mentioned earlier in this article, social media marketing can too often be challenging to effectively track.
If you’re advocating to keep or expand your influencer marketing budget, or just want to keep track of which of your micro-influencers are the most effective at converting users, you’ll need to know how to use data effectively.
Your campaign should have a clear, measurable goal, and a simple method for obtaining regular measurements on your way to that goal.
For example, if I was running an influencer marketing campaign for an ecommerce company, I’d have each influencer offer a unique discount code. This would give us a strong sense of who converted based on that influencer’s platform.
If you can’t track conversions explicitly, try to get as close as you reasonably can. Remember, engagement (people interacting with a post) is far better than impressions (people just seeing your post), for example.
Respect Your Influencers Do And Their Audiences
An easy way to frustrate your influencers and hurt your campaign is to not respect them and their value.
Too often, influencers are seen as simple celebrities or overgrown kids who spend all their time online. But cultivating an engaged network of fans in an overwhelming information ecosystem is challenging labor with real value.
So be cautious of micromanaging how they interact with their followers. If you do, you’re undermining their expertise and the authenticity they can infuse into your campaign.
And if the audience doesn’t trust an influencer, everything falls apart.
Value Authenticity Above All Else
What makes influencers so effective? It’s the trust they’ve developed with their audiences. And people who engage with an influencer’s content can see PPC ads as breaking their trust if it’s poorly executed.
Valuing the authenticity of the relationship between influencers and their audience means not having them sell out. Instead, give them plenty of creative and editorial control so that their promotion comes across as a mutual partnership.
You can have some guidelines, of course, but try to take control only when it’s absolutely necessary.
If you can embrace audience-driven marketing that fits your influencer’s personal style, the results will be drastically better.
As a digital marketing agency (or business), do you have tools for managing social media accounts? What about a strategy to save time?
Determining the best tools and strategy for social media can be difficult sometimes, especially when you’re handling multiple accounts across different platforms.
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, and plenty of others makes this is no easy task.
Luckily you’re not left to do it all manually. There are many social media management tools these days that businesses can use to manage the chaos into an organized manner.
Be Smart, Use Social Media Management Tools
We all know the power of social media marketing or we wouldn’t be in this business. If you don’t or want more knowledge, read the best social media marketing books.
If you need a reminder, here are some general social media marketing statistics on how businesses have benefited from using social media.
- Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking (95%)
- 71% of consumers are likely to recommend a brand to others when they have a positive social media experience with them
- Visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
There are numerous benefits to using social media for small businesses, and thus many reasons to use social media marketing tools.
But what happens when managing all the social media accounts becomes more problematic than the benefits of social media? That can happen if you’re running around and pulling your hair trying to get the right pictures and captions in the right accounts on the correct dates.
That’s a lot to remember. So if you need help with organizing your clients’ account then you came to the right place.
The best thing about these tools below is that all of the accounts you manage are in one place. One place where you can schedule posts in advance, run contents, track analytics across platforms, and overall develop a strategy that best fits your clients’ goals.
This boost in productivity from these marketing tools will improve your business, the results you produce for clients, and your future cash flow as they retain your services.
Soon our agency will be known for your organization, dependability, and productivity.
Knowing when to post and planning posts for multiple accounts is also incredibly time consuming. That’s why tools like Hootsuite and Buffer, for example, are so helpful when they allow you to schedule posts in advance.
Scheduling posts in advance will also help you devote more time on the actual content of the post instead of worrying about when is the best time to post on Instagram.
Lastly, not only will using social media management tools make your life substantially easier, it does not need to get budgeting approval. These tools are free to use so no need to worry about extra expenses.
Below are the best seven social media management tools to incorporate in your marketing strategy.
Top Social Media Management Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is the most popular management tool because it is used by over 15 million people. In fact more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies use Hootsuite. The best of the best use it and here is why.
Hootsuite allows you to manage your clients’ account in one place. It is an all in one platform that allows you to create and schedule your content, measure your social ROI, run social media ads, and more.
They offer a free plan and priced ones ranging from $19 to $499 per month, as well as enterprise pricing (with a 14 day free trial).
Hootsuite can make your business incredibly more efficient by allowing you to monitor multiple accounts. This is very beneficial for large agencies managing a wide range of accounts over multiple networks. You can connect with more than 35 social networks with Hootsuite.
2. Buffer
Buffer is a streamlined social media platform trusted by many agencies. Their goal is for businesses to see results, no matter the size, so their focus is to help users with publishing, engagement, analytics, and team collaboration.
Their packages are carefully considered to help social media marketers to work more efficiently and effectively.
Customers have said how much they love the clean design of the website and how easy it is to use. Buffer’s tools are intuitive offering a very helpful experience.
3. Canva
Canva is like Photoshop for beginners who want superior graphic design capability without spending months to learn the technical skill. This tool makes it easy to create social media content and gives you the exact width and height dimensions to design the perfect Facebook cover photo, for example.
Canva differentiates themselves from other tools by focusing on brand design. You can ensure consistency in your branded designs by importing your brand’s fonts into Canva.
You can create branded templates you and your team can easily edit and download. Through Canva for Work you can easily find previous designs you had made for a client’s brand by searching.
Canva for Work has been used by businesses and organizations all over the world. Their website includes case studies where you can see how their tools have produced results.
4. Edgar
Edgar takes a creative approach to social media marketing. All it takes is three easy steps.
First you have to add your content. With Edgar, you build an unlimited, categorized library of updates for business accounts. Edgar can even create updates for you using RSS feeds from websites of your choosing.
Edgar allows you to post content on multiple social platforms that is timed according to the schedule you make. Their goal is for you to spend less time dealing with scheduling and more time engaging with possible customers for your clients.
What we like about Edgar is that it automates social media posting and scheduling in a refined way. Instead of simply posting your social media posts several times, it will automatically recycle previous content.
5. Feedly
Feedly allows you to manage all of your interests in one easy to read format. Feedly can help you save time on research and content sharing while also giving you access to all of your industry news. You can add content using the search bar in the top right or by clicking content on the left menu.
Feedly also allows you to organize your content on the right hand menu. Feedly will recommend more related content when you add new content. This is a really quick and easy way to add other relevant content sources.
You can also save articles to read later by using the bookmark icon. You can view these articles at any time by clicking ‘Saved for later’ in the top left of your page.
Once you have chose the content you want to share you simply need to choose the channel you want to share it on. If your Buffer App account is set up it is recommended that you use this service with Feedly.
As you experiment with the tools on this list, you’ll see how well they complement each other.
6. Bitly
Ever see a URL that is 25 characters too long and just, plain ugly? Bitly fixes this.They take long URLs and transforms them into short manageable links.
One of the reasons that Bitly has received a lot of attention is because of easy it is to use. All you do is go to their website, paste in a link at the top, and Bitly will automatically shorten the link.
Bitly also incorporates a button that can easily copy the new URL, a summary of the contents of the link, how many clicks the link has received, and an option to join Bitly so you can save and monitor all of your links.
Whenever you make a new link on their website, it gets posted into your feed so you can always refer back to it later.
You can also archive, tag, or share each bitlink using the buttons to the right of the bitlink. If you create a lot of bitlinks and need to find something specific, you can use the search bar at the right to find it.
The Stats section of your Bitly lets you see what you have clicked in the past seven days and saves your overall most popular clicks. You can sort these stats by date and even see some extra details as you scroll through each one.
What is helpful about Bitly is how they walk you through the process of setting up your brand’s short domain name. They also walk you through how to track your clicks and stats. If you want to use bitlink for marketing purposes then you can always upgrade to get access to their premium tools for link branding and audience analytics.
7. Trello
Trello is an excellent project management tool that is a visual way to see all the tasks that you and your team need. It allows every team member to to see what everyone else on the team is doing at a given time.
Their service is free so no need to worry about pricing. Trello’s service is available for businesses, we at Robben Media use it daily, and even for individuals who want to track their personal tasks.
Trellos is also one of the easiest project management tools to use out of all of the sites that we have discussed so far.
Trello uses boards. A board represents a project. You use individual boards to organize and track all of your ideas, represented as cards. You or your teammates can add as many cards to the board as necessary. The cards on the board are considered lists. Knowing these terms will help you utilize Trello more effectively.
Despite the websites many features, Trello has an incredibly easy to navigate unlike other project management tools.
The board, list, and card system allows users to get the big picture what is going on with the current tasks. Just one social media account could be very complex and involve many moving parts so Trello is very helpful with its simple framework.
Managing Social Media Conclusion
You need to find a dashboard and workflow that is intuitive. One that makes your employees and your own life easier. And tools that ultimately improve efficiency rather than draining it.
When you test a couple and find the ones you like, you’ll know.
Some social media management tools will be easier to navigate than others. Some may be more helpful for a specific task than others. That is why it is only to your advantage to try out all of the sites mentioned.
Keep in mind not all of the tools may be for you. For example your team may prefer Photoshop over Canva. But if you walked away with only one extra tool in your digital marketing toolbox, consider it a win.
What’s the best social media tool in your opinion? And why?
Whether you are an aspiring model or a young company looking to get traffic to your website, knowing how to get 1,000 Instagram followers in one month is no easy task, unless you visit the best site to buy Instagram followers, of course. But it’s a profitable one.
Because all an aspiring model needs for it to pay off is for the right talent agency, just one, to notice her Instagram profile and then sign her to a modeling contract.
The same goes for a startup. If they just get half a percent of their newfound 1,000 followers to buy their high-end product, they will immediately celebrate the sales.
So I don’t know what business or type of personal brand you strive to become, but I do know that growing an Instagram following is 100% worth every second and penny you invest into it.
How can I be so certain? Besides my own experience growing my Instagram account, I also know that awareness is everything in business.
The brands with the most attention have two powerful advantages going for them: they reach the biggest audience and they convert the most people into paying customers.
On a global scale, think Nike and Coca-Cola. They dominate because everyone knows about them. On a micro scale, your brand’s sales will increase when more people know about you.
That’s why growing an Instagram following isn’t a vanity metric, but a rich opportunity to improve your annual revenue.
After reading this article and applying it, there’s no reason you can’t grow your Instagram account to 1,000 followers in 30 days.
How To Get 1,000 Instagram Followers
When creating your profile you need to consider how you will differentiate yourself from others.
Instagram now has more than 800 million monthly users. Theoretically, you can reach millions of people for free without running a paid ads campaign.
There will be many accounts that will be similar to yours, so uniqueness is vital in this social platform.
For example, say you are a pizza delivery restaurant in New York City. There are about 32,000 pizza places there.
Due to this fact, you would need to find ways to make your business’ Instagram account stand out.
Here is how you do it.
Create An Attention-Grabbing Profile
In order for people to even want to look at your profile, you need to pair an enticing handle with an interesting photo.
Your Instagram handle should be your business name (or a variation of it like “official + insert business name” if a handle is already taken).
For example, you can see that @airbnb is the username for Airbnb’s account on Instagram. Their username is also the name of their business, which makes it clear that this account is the official Instagram account for Airbnb. This handle is also used for the company’s Twitter account.
As for the profile photo, make sure that it is both relevant to your company and top-notch quality. This can be a logo or a product photo. Whatever you choose, make sure it is as attractive on your profile as it is when it is minimized in the feed.
Next, once they open your profile they’ll immediately see your Instagram bio. Your bio is the perfect way to describe who you are and what you do.
If you are a business then this is where you should showcase your company’s uniqueness or personality.
With the bio, you have 150 characters to sum up your company and potentially have a customer take action.
Notice how in Airbnb’s bio they say, “Share your stories with #Airbnb. Book from our feed,” and then they give you the link to their website.
They are both asking viewers to spread their brand by sharing stories on their own personal accounts, as well as providing the link to their website to increase sales.
Viewers will be more inclined to socially and financially invest in your company if you have a website link in your bio.
Find Your Specific Niche
Before you start to work on user acquisition, it is very important to publish content that fits your brand. Find the voice and style you want to portray through your pictures and videos.
In the early stages of your account, Instagram users will be more interested in your profile when there’s more content to look at compared to two posts
And people only spend time with accounts that have character. There are many ways to bring out your personality on Instagram, such as being creative, humorous, or inspirational.
When you are posting content, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Make sure the pictures are high quality. Instagram is all about the photos so people will not want to look at low quality photos that are blurry or pixelated. (Videos don’t have to be motion picture perfect, especially if it’s a vlog, but you should still aim for quality.)
- Try to make your captions funny or inspiring in a way. It is important to stick with good vibes. No one will return to an account that has off-putting content.
- Try to find an overall aesthetic to present on your content. If you are a small business that sells candles, then you should try and go for a cozy and warm aesthetic when posting content.
Below is an example of an account that has found a specific aesthetic and theme. Notice how the content doesn’t contrast itself and sticks to a relative theme? This Cincinnati men’s clothing store, Hellman Clothiers, has definitely found their niche on the gram.
Attracting Organic Followers
A quick option to get more followers is organic user acquisition. This is when people come across your account and follow you.
There are a few ways to do this but the most effective way is to post to strategic hashtags and post at the right time.
Picking the right hashtags will get your content in front of new faces. For a few hashtag tips, try posting 30 hashtags in the first comment and not in a caption.
One form of hashtagging is using trending hashtags. But many small businesses and individuals make the mistake of trying to compete for the most popular hashtags like #love, #cool, and #food.
What ends up happening is their pictures get buried beneath the Instagram influencers and models with millions of followers, never seeing the light of day for new audiences to like and comment on their posts.
Instead, a better strategy, especially for new accounts, is to post less competitive hashtags with multiple words in them.
For example, a new fashion account should start with longer, less competitive hashtags like #streetstyle, #fashioninsta, or #fashiongram instead of #fashion and #style.
Another form of hashtagging is by writing a hashtag that includes your company name or a popular tagline describing your business. These are called brand hashtags. You should try and keep your brand hashtag pretty short and easy to spell. Since you want your customers to remember your tag and use it correctly.
If you are an avid social media user then this should not be an issue. If you see a trend that relates to your business or interests then engage it by hashtagging it underneath your photos on Instagram.
Also, sticking with our fashion company example, say that focuses on trending streetwear then it would be a good idea to tag other streetwear companies like @supreme or @offwhite in your photos. This makes it so when people search those hashtags then a photo from your account will pop up that had the same hashtag in the caption.
Doing all of this will get you a lot more exposure for your content and your brand. If you use hashtags correctly then your account will be #winning in no time.
Engage The Masses
The final way to accumulate followers is by old-fashioned networking.
Networking on Instagram is what you do almost everyday on the app. You like your friends photos, comment on them, or follow someone you used to go to high school with and hope they follow you back.
If you want 1,000 followers in a month then you need to be doing this activity frequently with complete strangers. So spend a few hours each day sending positivity to other accounts in your space.
If you are an active account on Instagram and you are liking peoples’ photos, leaving comments, and following them, then people will presumably take notice and eventually like your account, comment, and maybe follow you back. This concept is called basic reciprocity—and it works like a charm!
Because odds are if you like and make a genuine comment on another fashion account, they’ll check out your fashion profile and be interested in your Instagram content. But it makes no sense for a fashion account to leave hundreds of comments on plumbers accounts.
My only advice is to not be spammy though. Leave genuine, interesting comments on people’s posts for best results and you’ll have no problems. And respond to the comments people make on your posts.
If you want to directly network with another account in order to collaborate and build an authentic relationship then it would be beneficial to slide in the DMs.
There has been negative connotations with this term because of its flirtatious nature but there are actually huge advantages with direct messaging. You can do this from their profile and clicking the three dots at the top right, then clicking “Direct Message”, or by replying to an Instagram story.
Be warned, if your direct message sounds generic then they will not give you the time of day. So don’t sound like a bot, be interesting.
This harmless form of communication can lead to new business, strategic partnerships, or influencer-driven content creation.
And if you’re direct messaging to bring up a partnership, make sure that you have researched the account’s style and feed so they trust that you’ve taken the time to align with their brand.
Publish Videos
Even though Instagram started out as a platform to share photos, it has recently grown beyond just that.
You can now create many different types of content to engage your followers. With features like videos, live videos, and Stories, you can grow your following at a higher rate than before.
Here are a few reasons to try posting these new content types:
- The average engagement for videos is growing faster than the average engagement for images.
- When you go live on Instagram, you will appear right at the front the Stories feed.
- More than 250 million people use Instagram Stories everyday.
Instagram Stories have quickly became a game changer for social media. They have turned into a proven marketing tool for brands.
With stories, your account could send a message to your followers, announce a sale or a new item your business just received, show a testimonial from a customer, show your office in action, and just about anything you desire.
Last year Instagram launched the ability to search for stories by location and hashtag, meaning that if you include a hashtag in your story, other users can see it even if they don’t follow you! For those that do follow you, your stories will appear at the top of their feed.
Video provides an excellent way to share what is happening with your brand. Videos can do a lot more than just a picture with a caption. Videos show your personality better and get attract more viewers. Try it out yourself!
Run A Giveaway
A great way for a small business to increase social media engagement, get more followers, and attract new customers, is to run an Instagram contest or giveaway.
Instagram has been proven to be a great resource for carrying out contests and they’re easy to do.
A giveaway is a nice way to celebrate 500 followers and give back to your followers. Contests also push your followers to comment the names of their friends in your post, inviting others to follow your account so you can make the final push to 1,000 followers!
Here are some contest ideas you can use for your account.
Like to Win
In this type of contest, the participant must follow your account and like the photo to enter. If someone likes the photo but is not one of your followers, then they are not eligible to win.
Tag a Friend
In this type of contest, the participants must comment on your photo and tag one or more users in the comment section of the contest photo.
Post Your Own Picture + Hashtag
This one encourages participants to post an original picture related to your brand with a custom contest hashtag. These contests have a high participation rate because they are easy for people to do.
As you can see, each one of these giveaway contents will promote your account in different ways. If you’re stuck on deciding what one, just flip a coin and go forward.
You can always pick the other ones next time. Or you can run a separate Facebook giveaway if you’re really feeling generous.
Final Words
If you want 1,000 Instagram followers in one month then it is going to require some hard work. But that’s a good thing! Because it means most people won’t put in the effort to do what it takes to get a four digit follower count.
Remember: Social outreach is the fastest and easiest way to gain followers.
However, once you have those followers, it’s a full-time job to keep them interested and coming back for more. This is why finding your personality and brand is very important.
If you engage with people that share your interests, then they will be more inclined to follow you.
Also, stay up to date with trending hashtags and ride the social wave to show up in as many places on the app as possible.
If you can efficiently do all of this then you will undoubtedly reach 1,000 Instagram followers in one month.
Now the only thing that’s left to do is to apply everything you read. Get to work! Your account isn’t going to grow itself, is it?
When is the best time to post on Instagram? This is a question that people often ask, maybe you have yourself, when a post doesn’t get as many likes as they were expecting.
And this isn’t an unusual question. Everyone who puts in the effort to take and edit a picture, write a caption, and find popular hashtags, wants to get rewarded with as much engagement as possible.
The social engagement can feel very good after you’ve put in the time on a post. Everyone wants that feeling of being liked.
The public feedback is often the reason for posting in the first place!
Be it a billion dollar international clothing brand, local business, influencer, or your soccer mom neighbor, people who post content appreciate likes and engagement more than anything else.
So how do you get the most likes? Besides having awesome content (that’s always the first step) you have to be mindful of the time you are publishing your posts.
Timing is very important to maximizing your post’s reach and engagement. What’s great is once you get the hang of posting at the right time, your Instagram likes and followers will soar.
It is actually quite astounding as to how effective your timing can be.
Let’s discuss why timing is important.
Why Knowing When To Post Matters
If you are an avid Instagram user then you may already know why posting at the right time matters so much. For some users it is just a game of likes. For businesses, it is a marketing strategy.
I use Instagram just for fun and it is addicting when you rack up those likes. However, I will post at random times without taking my timing into consideration. There have been days where I’ve regretted not posting my content at a time when more of my followers were online. I could have had 100 more likes if I had been more attentive.
You have probably wondered why some of your friends or competitors have received more likes on their posts than yours. If your content is great (which I’m sure it is) then you may need to check the differences in timing.
This could be the deciding factor for many viewers.
And for business accounts the timing can be the difference between gaining new customers versus losing them to your competitor across the street. Why post content if you are not mindful of your timing?
Instagram Marketing For Businesses
The point of a business posting is getting people to see it, which leads to likes, people tagging their friends and more importantly people clicking the link in the bio to purchase your products or services.
The use of Instagram for marketing purposes has never been so important. Knowing this information now will give you a head start on your competitors.
The Instagram business network is growing fast. In 2016, only 48.8% of US companies used Instagram for marketing purposes. This number has almost doubled in two years with an estimated 71% of businesses now using Instagram.
This increase in numbers has a lot to do with the release of Instagram Business profiles that include new ad platforms. Instagram is a vital marketing tool for businesses, so posting content correctly will increase profits and revenue.
The newest Instagram stats show that there are currently 800 million monthly active users and many experts believe it could reach a billion in 2018. More statistical evidence shows that 80% of users follow businesses on Instagram, with 60% hearing about a product or service through the platform.
With all of these users following businesses on Instagram that means there will be more competition with your posts. According to these numbers, however, there are higher chances that users could see your posts.
These users can be your customers with the right knowledge and execution. More views on a post will directly lead to more customers.
How do you get your posts to be seen by more viewers though? Even if you have thousands to one hundred thousands of followers, many of them will most likely not even see your most recent post.
Among the social networks, Instagram has the highest engagement rates. However, Instagram also deals with content overload. Over 95 million photos are shared on Instagram daily, which means your content could get lost among the other posts. This makes it hard for users to find your content. In fact, 70% of Instagram posts go unseen.
This is a very daunting number I know. Do not panic. Many of these unseen posts have one thing in common: they were not posted at the right time.
The Exact Time You Should Post On Instagram
On Instagram you want to maximize engagement. In order to achieve this you have to take many things into consideration.
The best time to post on Instagram depends on a variety of factors, such as the location or region you’re targeting, the type of information you include on your content, and the audience you’re targeting.
Since all of these factors determine the best timing, we will look at what are the best times of the day and which days of the week usually have more engagement.
There have been numerous studies done on this topic. Analytical sites have used Iconosquare, which is an Instagram analytics tool that has a feature to help you understand when to post to Instagram to reach more followers. Here are the sites that have done this.
Elle & Co: The best day to post on Instagram is Monday. Posting throughout the day would be fine since Instagram users are consistently active. However there is a slight dip in activity from 3-4 p.m.
Huffington Post: The best time to post on Instagram is 2 a.m. and 5 p.m. The peak time and day is Wednesday at 7 p.m.
TrackMaven: The best time to post videos is between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. with picture posts consistent throughout the week with slight peaks on Thursday and Monday.
MarketingProfs: Posting on Instagram between 1-2 p.m. is best for engagement. Monday is a great day to boost your engagement, and specifically from 8-9 a.m.
Quick Sprout: Instagram engagement is fairly steady, with slight increases on Monday and decreases on Sunday. Overall, though any day of the week can be good.
Later: Avoid posting during work hours, especially between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Instead post when people are more likely enjoying their leisure time.
If you thought Sunday was a great day to post then you were wrong. Most people thought this. I used to think posting on Sundays would get me more likes but this is simply not true. Studies have shown that there is very low engagement on Sundays.
Actually, the best days of the week to post content are Monday and Thursday. Instagram audiences are engaged throughout the week but posting on Mondays should get you more attention.
Posting in the evening can be a good idea but the studies have shown that this is not always the case. I still do this but if you are a business profile then you need to post in the morning between 8 and 9 a.m.
Avoid posting at 3-4 pm. Most people will check their Instagram feed early in the morning before they go to work or after work. Posting during work hours is never a good idea, unless it is around lunch time.
Other statistical evidence shows that 2 am and 5 pm have also shown a lot of engagement.
Do not post in the evening around dinner time, but late at night many people will look at Instagram before they go to bed. Users will often look at Instagram once they are done with work so this is why 5 p.m. could be a good decision.
Overall, you should post content more during off work hours than during the work day.
If you are an international brand then you have to take time zones into consideration when posting content. I have a decent amount of followers in Spain. They are 6 hours ahead of my time zone. If I wanted to maximize their engagement on one of my posts then I will post at 4 a.m. so they will see it before they head to class or work in the morning.
These time changes are very important for international companies. They will have to post content meant for customers here in the US and abroad.
Remember that there are time zones in the US! 50% of the population in the US is in the Eastern Time Zone. The Eastern and Central combined represent almost 80% of the population. There are also Mountain and Pacific Time.
Business accounts are not just looking for likes. You want to possibly get a customer out of a post so if you want to appeal to an international audience must take cultural differences into the discussion.
As for businesses here in the US, timing can be a decisive factor, especially if you are a small business competing against a larger one.
Even big companies need to test their waters to find a suitable time to post that acquires the most engagement.
If you are a pizza place on a college campus such as Domino’s then you would have to take your audience into consideration. Most college students will order Domino’s later in the evening. This is why posting content past the usual dinner time would be smart for those locations.
If you are a popular lunch spot, post your deals and offers around 10-11 in the morning before most of your customers arrive.
The right timing for your business may change according to your industry and your region.
How To Remember When to Post
There is so much to consider when posting content that we often forget to post anything at all. This is why scheduling your posts is a great idea.
You can manually set up a reminder on your phone or you could use a paid service like Hootsuite where you can publish a post in advance and schedule it.
With Hootsuite you can easily schedule and publish Instagram posts directly from the dashboard and mobile app.
You can plan and execute campaigns across multiple Instagram Business accounts, assign messages to team members, and engage with followers using a single, secure, and integrated workflow.
It allows you to keep track of customers, competitors, industry hashtags, and photos tagged to locations.
And you can also measure the performance of your content. This way you can prove the effectiveness of your content strategy with visual reports that show you exactly what’s working on Instagram and why.
Hootsuite offers a 30 day free trial so if this is a service that interests you then look into it.
Experiment Posting at Different Times
Just like you would experiment to lower CPC on your Google ads, it never hurts to experiment with your posts until you find the perfect time to post. This is definitely something that you should do if you are a fairly new account.
More established accounts have found their niche and their audience. New business accounts will have to test the waters and find what times will foster more engagement than others.
For some businesses posting at night will work better. For others maybe the morning posts will get more engagement.
Try posting at times that were mentioned earlier as well as ones that contradict those studies because you never know what could work best for your account.
In conclusion, you should post at different times within the recommended window for starters. Then adjust for best results by tracking when you posted and the engagement.
Remember: your Instagram content matters, whether it is a picture or a video—so go for high quality. However, often it is all about timing.