1) Social Bookmark Links
Improve sharing by incorporating social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts.
2) Social Profiles
Build buzz that leads up to the holidays by using your social profiles. People often only start as holidays are happening. Start early and build up the buzz for the holidays on your social profiles.
3) Good Content
People want to share compelling, inspiring, educational and valuable content. Produce great content which is interesting and it will automatically be shared virally online.
4) Writing Blog Content
Content is crucial to kickstart a successful social media campaign. Write blog content that is catered to your target audience and what your community wants to know about.
5) Branding
Use social media to enhance your branding. Design a seasonal branded image to match across all social networks and the company site.
6) Be consistent
Update your content regularly and consistently. People tend to keep coming back to a site if they know that the site is frequently updated with new content.
7) Craft Compelling Headlines
When promoting your content on social media networks, craft headlines that interest people such that they want to read the rest of your article.
8) Evaluation and Measurement
Track and measure social media ROI by analyzing how it performs compared to more established channels or advertising methods. Compare the quality of traffic they drive to your website and the conversion rates.
9) Metadata and Tagging
Metadata is data that is a description of the characteristics of a piece of information. Tags can be terms or keywords that are assigned to particular resources. Tagging and incorporating other metadata can help improve searching and measure the spread of information.
10) Popular Lists
‘List’ posts tend to get passed around online very quickly. An example will be the “Top 50 ways to make money online”.
11) Combine Social Media with Traditional Marketing
Include social media profile addresses on printed advertising materials like brochures, fliers, newspaper ads, etc.
12) Retweet Buttons On Blog Posts
Locate and install WordPress plugins that enable you to place a Retweet button on your blog at the top of all your posts.
13) Community platforms
Build up community platforms like forums, fan pages, groups, etc. around real communities of shared interest and keep the conversation going.
14) Microsite
Build a microsite that encompasses all of your social and overall marketing efforts. This site can contain a hyper-focused campaign as well.
15) Facebook Share Button
Locate and install WordPress plugins that enable you to place a Facebook share button on your blog at the top of all posts
16) Be Careful When Using Hashtags On Tweets
Studies have found that hashtag stuffing caused 5% fewer click-throughs.
17) Facebook Like Box
Add a Facebook ‘like box’ near the top right side of your blog /website. In this way, people can ‘like’ your Facebook page even while they are on your blog/website.
18) Having More Followers Than Following
Having more followers than following on your Twitter account enhances your Twitter influence and thus adds to your Twitter account’s SEO potential.
19) Posting Useful Content
Avoid aggressively pushing your products or services on your social profiles although it may be the holiday season. Rather, post useful content on your social profiles and think about how to help the people on your network to get through the busy holiday season. In this way, people tend to trust you more and like you more hence increasing the chances of them converting to buyers and customers.
20) LinkedIn Share Button
Locate and install WordPress plugins that enable you to place a LinkedIn share button on your blog at the top of all posts.
21) Online Community
Build a substantial online community by asking for feedback, offering prizes and giveaways, and actually saying “thank you” for their interactions, mentions, and contributions to good content.
22) Advice And Tips
Give advice and tips on your topic’s challenges. You can do this by providing short tips on Twitter (using a branded hashtag). After which stream these tweets into a dedicated Facebook tab, and expand on these tips by creating tutorial videos for YouTube.
23) Blog Commenting
Make a connection with influential bloggers in your niche by commenting regularly on their blogs and posts.
24) Benefit-oriented Content
When writing a blog post, share the problems that your product or service is able to solve. No one actually cares about what is your product or service and its features, they are more interested in what your product or service can do for them.
25) Conduct Polls
Research by polling people about what are the biggest challenges they face. After which, look at how your own product or service can help them and communicate that to them.
26) Tell Stories
Marketing is like storytelling and your customers are just like the characters in the story. Craft content that motivates your customers or readers. Let their actions, wants, and needs drive the story.
27) Influential Bloggers In Your Niche
Find which bloggers are most influential in your niche and learn how they got their influence through their content and social media efforts. Imitate and implement.
28) Creating a Personable Image
Post and share photos of your company parties, or your participation in charitable events. This brings the company to a personal and amicable level with your readers and customers. People nowadays value that personal touch.
29) Email Subscribe
Make the usability of your website easy for people. For example, simplify the process it takes for someone to subscribe to your updates via email. You can use an autoresponder account.
30) Show Some Discretion In Sharing
Being personal draws people to you but there is a need to show some discretion when doing so. Always stay professional and positive in the portrayal of your online social profiles. Avoid depressing tweets, vague tweets, humblebrag tweets and etc.
31) Audio And Video
Create a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing.
32) Think Long Term
Create content for the long term and envision keywords with next year in mind. This is so that your subject can enjoy ‘longevity’ with your readers.
33) Guest Post
Write to influential bloggers in your niche and request to do a guest post on their blogs. Craft an agreement that encompasses them to provide a link back to your blog.
34) Answer Simple Questions
Think about these questions: Who am I speaking to? What do they want from me online? And cater your content accordingly.
35) Talking About The Weather
People like to talk about the weather where they are at. So, pay attention to the weather where your customers are located and sensitively consider this when posting content.
36) Social Media Subscribe Buttons
Place social media subscribe buttons such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. in a visible place on your website/blog so that readers can follow you on your social media networks.
37) Tweeting Blog Posts
When you publish a new blog post on your website or blog, post several tweets of that post and track the conversions of different times and keywords you use. In this way, you can evaluate what times of the day, and which keywords are optimized for conversions.
Note: Please take note to include tweets that are of value and non-promotional in between these blog post tweets.
38) Flickr and/or YouTube Groups
Build media for your events by experimenting with Flickr and/or Youtube.
39) RSS Subscription Button
RSS feeds are a powerful medium to push your new blog posts to people in their “Google Reader” accounts or other reader accounts. Hence, provide a subscription button via RSS so people know that your blog or website is updated and new content is published.
40) The Secret Of Retweets
Tweets referring to the author himself or herself have been shown to get fewer retweets than other information. Hence, share more relevant and good information that is not about yourself. Retweets drive traffic to your blog posts and can boost SEO. Start generating quality content on Twitter that helps you connect with more followers.
41) Staff Blogs
Get your staff to start personal blogs on their personal interests. This is so that they can have a feel of what it would be like to promote, drive traffic to a particular website and etc.
42) Fine-tune Your Strategy
Test out different techniques on different social networks and determine what type of content your readers are responding to.
43) Blog Updates On Facebook Page
Once you have published new blog posts to your blog, update them on your Facebook ‘Page’. There are programs that do that for you automatically, ie. Networked blogs.
44) Social Media Campaign Plan
Plan out an integrated social media promotion project that incorporates blogging, the use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product or service.
45) Thematic Pictures
Post interesting and cute pictures that revolve around a theme and share it on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. For example, Halloween theme – Pets in Halloween costumes.
46) Ask For A Response
After posting cute thematic pictures on your social network, start a conversation with your followers by asking them questions relating to the theme. For example, what their best Halloween costume was as a child, and ask them to share a photo as well.
47) Facebook Page
Share content and links on your Facebook page that will make your fans want to share and like your updates.
48) Measuring Social Media Metrics
Take a step back and think about why you are tweeting this information, or why you have a Facebook Page. Is it because you want sales? Then measure conversion rates. Is it for market research?
49) Live Videos
Conduct live interviews, online talk shows and etc. with uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone. Such sessions become viral very fast.
50) Contests And Competitions
Create competitions or contests on social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. to conjure up the buzz surrounding your company’s products or services.
