Social media presence is becoming ever more important both in the eyes of search engine giants such as Google, as well as for target markets who are displaying no decrease in the considerable amount of time spent on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, with more and more businesses realising the value of social media and harnessing it in new and improved ways, marketing teams must continually improve their content outreach strategy, or face being left behind. In this blog article we look at seven ways in which you can improve your reach through increased social shares.
1. Understand the key elements of successful outreach marketing
Social influencers
Social influencers are the people within your industry that are respected by your target market. An example of this within the fashion world for a high end brand may be Victoria Beckham; one positive comment from her about a product or collection and the company in question is pretty much assured a surge in sales. So work out who these people are within your world, make a tiered list (from relatively accessible through to most almost impossible) and get in touch with them.
Timing
The saying goes that ‘Timing is everything’, and this can be no truer than when applied to the world of social media. This then means that experimenting with outreach times (and recording the results) is essential. This will help craft you’re strategy and ensure that you’re speaking to your customers when they’re online and alert.
Think outside the box
Using the same forms of outreach as everyone else will ensure you blend in and this doesn’t help. Aside from the links of Buzzstream and others, why not take a lead out of esteemed outreach specialist Eric Ward’s book and use a postage or delivery service such as DHL or Whistl to deliver some outreach. He does this simply because unlike other messages, they get read.
Platforms
Using the right platforms for your company is the subject of our next point…
2. Appreciate which platforms are most valuable to you
If you’ve concentrated on one or two social media websites then the chances are that you’re missing out. Whilst Facebook remains the king of social scaring (accounting for up to 340% more shares as compared to other platforms [BufferSocial 2015]) alternate platforms may boast better share response due to their demographic makeup. For example, a business targeting professionals will most likely reap better results on LinkedIn, or (as a less obvious example) a company targeting Venture Capitalists may receive a far better reception on Digg and Stumble upon (TweetMarter 2011).
3. Integrate share tools
Integrating share tools into your blog and blog articles is essential; featuring share buttons for all of the main networks in a place that is preferably always visible as users scroll your content provides them with sharing abilities with the utmost ease. A particaurly popular (and free) tool to achieve this is the ‘Add this’ tool.
4. Integrate social media comments
Further to making sharing easy, you also want to make real user interaction easy. Any good social media agency will advise to this end integrating social media comments directly into your blog post is vital.
5. Increase your credibility
Trust. It’s important within any industrial and on social media even more so. One effective way of building instant trust is by linking to websites that are considered as high quality; you can also quote the social influencers that you’ve now made a list of, or interview experts within the industry that are widely respected.
6. Create something valuable… and trade it for shares
One of the most effective ways of increasing shares to a specific page, profile or post is to trade something for a share; this is used most commonly on Facebook, where users have to share in order to access the content they want (this could be an essential guide to X, the secrets behind Y or everything you need to know about Z).
7. Learn from your experience and from your competitors
Tracking your social media activity, and the results that it reaps, key to shaping your future strategy. Additionally however you should also keep tabs on the competition; look at what they’re doing and the results that they achieve and compare this to your strategy and responses.
