The Digital Practitioner: content
Showing posts with label content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label content. Show all posts

Wednesday, 27 June 2018

Your Personal Brand & The One Thing Needed For All Your Content

June 27, 2018 0
Your Personal Brand & The One Thing Needed For All Your Content

In taking a look at Instagram - it really sets itself apart from the other social networks offering multiple approaches in   how and what you post. 

It’s a creative canvas as well as a content generating monster and with the advent of IGTV, the platform is quickly becoming the one stop media centre for anyone wanting to grow their brand. 



Effectively at this point in time we have the power of a full blown media company right here in our mobile phone! Thats crazy. And whats more, there is no financial barrier to entry - the platform is free! Thats just insane! But this is the reality we live in. 

Just today I was looking at my own businesses and considering what kind of content I should be putting out there in order to cover the various streams and content channels. And I have to say it's overwhelming, if you are trying to attack each one individually. 



So here are my thoughts on what I am currently doing and I hope it is something you can yourself consider.  

It’s based on just 4 simple points.

1. Document instead of creating! This one sticks in my mind from Gary Vaynerchuk and is probably one of the most important pieces of advice, which is especially relevant today. With so many platforms and options out there, trying to create different pieces of content for an individual or small business would indeed require a fully functional media company. So the thing that I am doubling down on is creating one piece of ‘pillar content’ which will be 90% video content, that is purely based on documenting what I am doing and the process I am taking. 


This content can be repurposed and placed on all the different social media platforms to create more native content depending on the platform. 
2. Focus on the Personal (Grow Your Personal Brand). This is the most powerful thing you can focus on right now and applies even if you run your own practice or business or even if you’re an employee. Why?  Because, you’re going to evolve a lot over time. 

Your priorities, values and even the focus of your work. 

You’ll learn new things, maybe even start new companies or websites. 

And when you do, you don’t want to be leaving all the amazing work and followers that you acquired behind you. 

The following, readership, and the expertise; you can keep it all, if you stick to your name. So allow your online presence to evolve with you.

3. Do Video. Now for many people this may seem daunting. Often the thought of going live or recording a video can be too much never mind bringing across your true character, flaws, vunerabilities and all. 


I get that, believe me…from someone who had a crippling fear of public speaking and from my school days used to make up all the excuses of the day to avoid having to read aloud in English class as the teacher went round the room asking each student to take a turn with a few pages of the current English Lit book. 

The irrational fear of this simple task was horrendous for me to the point when I had to read I would forget to breathe and start shaking. With time, experience, practice and a stronger mindset you come to realise that we all have our flaws, insecurities and fears. 

I’ve never done any form of video work before but I made the decision to go live every day on Instagram (now on day 20!) and this has proved to be quite therapeutic for me. 

Even after a few days I could see my confidence grow and have become, I think, more natural in my videos.  

The one key aspect I have noticed is that yes, you need to prepare what you want to talk about if you are bringing across an informative video, but don’t overthink it before going live. Just hit live, start having a conversation and be natural - Just be you!

4. Just Start! It’s as simple as that. Starting is the most important part and the biggest hurdle that most people are facing. 

Don’t let the fear of being judged, or the insecurity of thinking “do I really know what I’m talking about” stop you.  

Pondering and strategising has prevented me from making content for probably 7 months from when I conceived 'The Digital Practitioner’. 

Stop debating what’s going to happen and just get yourself out there. 


I hope you found this useful. As always I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback or indeed any questions you may have. AB

by: Alan Bryden





Sunday, 17 June 2018

Create Content That Your Customers Want To Read

June 17, 2018 0
Create Content That Your Customers Want To Read

Content is the core of your online business. Whatever you sell online, you have to publish content on your website or blog in order to attract people's attention toward your business. 

You might agree that content is king, but it's more than that. Content is the heart and soul of your business. Moreover, it has a very important role to market your business to your audience.
However, you have to be aware that not all content will bring positive response from your audience. In order for you to attract your audience's attention toward your business, you have to be able to create the content that they want to read, which means the content that meets their demand. Here are 5 simple tips to create content that your customers want to read:
1. Offer Solid Advice with a Twist
If your customers are following your business updates, you have to keep them engaged with you by consistently offering good and solid advice that they can trust. But, not only that, you should add a twist on your advice as well. What does it mean? People like learning from others, but if the process of learning is unpleasant to them, they'll easily get bored. So, if you are giving a solid advice about something, and the way you give that advice bored your customers to death, then it won't effectively reach their mind. So, you will use a twist in explaining your ideas to your customers. You are going to do it in an interesting and entertaining way. Use humor and tell a story to make your advice sink in their mind.
2. Find Hot Shared Content in Your Market
Let's take a look at your niche market, and let's take a look at what your audience is doing. People are constantly sharing things on social media, and some of them become viral very quickly. If something goes viral, it means that people like it. If people like it, it means that if you can create content around that viral topic, people will be willing to read it. So, this is your strategy. You will find hot content that are being shared incessantly by your audience within your niche market. You will analyze those content and make them your basic ideas to write your own content. It's a simple way to come up with a big idea that will help you to attract more attention from your audience.
3. Make Them Love Your Product Even More
The essence of content marketing is to promote your business with your content. So, of course you should be able to make people to like your product even more with your content. Remember that once people buy your product and trust your business, they want to be kept feeling privileged with it. 

If you create content that will help your customers to get in touch with your business in a better way, you will be able to keep them buying from you. For instance, if you regularly create content that offers tips and advice related to how they can use your product more effectively, then they will keep coming to your website to learn more about your product.
4. Be Unique and Original With Your Ideas
If there is one advice that you have to learn about content marketing, it is this: you should create your own uniqueness and originality with your content. Original and unique content will always be able to win your audience's heart. Moreover, unique and original content is the one that will dominate the search engine game, meaning that your content will have higher chance to get high ranking in the search engine result page. So, it's important to keep your ideas unique and original. Write your content with your own unique style, and don't try to be someone else when you are writing your content. This is an important principle that many content marketers seem to ignore.
5. Make Your Content Presentation Visually Stunning
How you present your content will affect how your customers think about your content. It's simple. If your content presentation is visually stunning, then people will feel comfortable to read it. Thus, they will want to read more and more of your content. But, if your content presentation is boring and visually not appealing, then people will not be willing to continue reading, let alone visiting your website again later. So, give your extra effort to polish your content so that it will look visually stunning, such as by formatting it in a beautiful way, adding nice graphics, putting informative videos, and so on.
Those are some simple tips that you can apply to create content that your customers want to read. If you want people to read your content and trust your business more, those tips are important for you to follow and implement in your content marketing strategy.
Anil Valvi is the founder of Dynastic Tech, help to businesses recognize how to use marketing stuffs to find leads, increase sales & improve branding. Want to follow me elsewhere online? I'm most active on Twitter @anilbvalvi

by:  

Tuesday, 22 May 2018

Content Marketing Strategy | Joe Pulizzi

May 22, 2018 0
Content Marketing Strategy | Joe Pulizzi


Content marketing is essential for any Healthcare Practice to really stand out from the crowd.

It establishes the practice as the go to place for the patients specific needs.

A regular and consistent schedule will develop trust and bring across the personality type of your business. 






Have you got an effective strategy in place?



Monday, 16 April 2018

4 Amazing Tips on Content Marketing for Small Businesses

April 16, 2018 0
4 Amazing Tips on Content Marketing for Small Businesses

Historically, small businesses have been slower in adapting to content marketing methods and / or strategies that are utilize by corporate marketers. 

However, as (SEO) Search Engine Optimization practices have evolved considerably in the last couple of years - it's become more than obvious that small businesses need to add eBooks, comparison guides and how-tos, as well as other content strategies to remain in competitive rankings.
It doesn't matter if content is outsourced to an agency that offers content management servicesor done in house - ideas for creative, informative and engaging content more than often becomes scarce.
Regardless of that fact, we have 4 amazing tips on Content Marketing for small businesses. Check them out below:
1. Develop a Calendar for Content Marketing. Developing a calendar for content marketing will allow you to document content strategies and methods. Also, it's an awesome way to ensure that content creation is done in a timely fashion and remains on schedule. This amazing method for content creation is often neglected and overlooked by many small businesses.

Approximately, 61 percent of content marketers have said that their greatest issue when creating content is that it's too time consuming. Only 44% of marketers have reported to keep a calendar with documented content marketing methods and strategies.
Developing and putting together a calendar that's designated for content scheduling for the month is the 1st step in setting aside time to brainstorm, strategize, create and finally publish content.
2. You Need to Find Out What Works For You!Before you go on a scavenger hunt for inspiration on other websites you need to have a good understanding of the features and components of past content that has been beneficial to you and your small business.
We advise you to utilize Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to check on the leading, trafficked web pages and queries, so that you're able to identify what content has worked the best and which keywords have been used to find your content. Furthermore, it is recommended to use Social Statistics, as they can also, give you insight on content that has done really well.
You can check out Social Media performances by using services, such as - Add This, which embed buttons to share on blogs and also, have tracking info. These are user friendly dashboards, which offer information on an array of click backs and shares.
3. Comprehending Social Media Trends for Topics. Social Media networks and/or platforms are extremely helpful in getting new idea topics. Creating content revolving around trending topics will give you invaluable content ideas, which people are actively searching for on real time.



For instance, Twitter has now had trending topics accessible for quite some time. Earlier this year - Facebook introduced trending topics as well... If you need or want to view trending topics on a more local scale, then you can utilize Trendsmap, which offers users a close and intimate look on trending topics and news that's over laid on a map with information from Twitter's social media platform.
Amplify content by covering different aspects of a story. Take a stance that's controversial in nature or supplement it by using an array of media options, such as - infographics or videos.
4. Use Content That's Visual. Although, the majority of SEO practices tend to focus on text that will be digested by different search engines - now, visual content has become a lot more appealing and interesting for your fellow, human readers. People seem to be naturally wired to be more attracted and more likely to engage with visual content. Ninety percent of the info that enters the human brain is acquired visually.

With that being said, content that uses images receives an estimated 94% more views than content without any visuals.
A recent survey on marketers from Marketing Sherpa observed that visuals were the simplest form of content to create. Develop infographics utilizing research that's been done already for content or you can outsource image and/or visual creation to add on to your blog posts. You can easily keep your users and visitors engaged and scrolling through your website pages by simply adding interesting and eye catching GIFs and still images to your written content.
If you're running a small operation or business it is still essential that you remain in the loop. As always, content is vital to the success of your SEO campaign. Start incorporating these tips to your current and future content and you'll notice that you'll experience less difficulties coming up with new topic ideas and/or interesting content for your users and visitors.
Tune into Mystic Web Designs' Blog post for weekly updates on Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Web Design, Search Engine Optimization and so much more!
Rosario Berry is a professional freelance writer, like to introduce Mystic Web Designs. It doesn't matter whether content is outsourced to an agency that offers Content Marketing or done in house - ideas for creative, informative and engaging content more than often becomes scarce.

by: Rosario Berry
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Rosario_Berry/1668823


Monday, 12 March 2018

How to Have a Great Amount of Assets on the Search Engines

March 12, 2018 0
How to Have a Great Amount of Assets on the Search Engines

One of the main focuses of a website should be on getting a lot of assets on the first page of the search engines. This effectively knocks other competitors off the same page. This means that the company has more assets to get more clicks and traffic than the competitors. This all translates into more sales for the company.

Many people say that micro sites are the best way to do this action. A micro site is a site that is a small version of any other site. They are usually one to three pages big and they do not have much content. These are very popular for smaller internet marketers to use because they can get a lot of these assets up in a short amount of time.
However, this is not a good thing to do. The recent update to a major search engine has basically crushed this model as an SEO tactic. Many people used to get different domain hosts and use these small micro sites to point to their main website. However, the big search engine figured out this tactic and now penalizes a person for using this tactic.
It is also very difficult to get a micro site to rank on a search engine because of the lack of content. The new model of the internet is built around content. This means that a site with very little content is already behind the 8 ball when comes to getting ranked on the search engines. The search engines want to see a lot of content before they begin ranking a site. Therefore, a site with one to three pages will usually be nothing but a complete waste of SEO time and money.
The best thing to do is to develop a multitude of media assets. This includes videos, PDFs, and possibly audios (that can be pushed through pod cast networks). Not only does this increase the amount of engagement that a person can have with a company, it also helps the business compete for SEO slots developed for those media types (which also take up room on the first page when available).

Different media types give a user a lot of leeway in the way they like to be communicated to on the internet. Even though the internet is very much a text based medium, there are still people who like to watch videos on the internet. There are people who also like audio on the internet (mostly because they like to listen to the internet while they work or do something else).
In conclusion, a business is better off when they have a lot of assets to take up room on the search engines. These assets should be diversified and not micro sites as micro sites tend to no longer work on the search engines. Therefore, a business that spends their time generating different types of assets are businesses that are able to grab more spots on the search engines than their competitors. This leads to greater sales and more success.
Scott Buendia is an internet marketing expert who is well known for his SEO, social media, and marketing prowess. Check out his companies website at [http://www.oncomingstormmarketing.com]. You can connect with Oncomingstormmarketing.com here as well, http://www.bizbuilt.com/cards/portlandseo.



by: S. Buendia  
Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/S._Buendia/1373894


Saturday, 6 January 2018

Boosting Your Audience Engagement to the Max

January 06, 2018 0
Boosting Your Audience Engagement to the Max

You probably think and read a lot about engaging your target audience members. The idea that you need to do it is an absolute. However, exactly how you accomplish that may be easier said than done sometimes. The fact is that the more you engage your target audience, the more likely they will be to buy what you are selling at some point in the (hopefully near) future.
Engagement is essential to your brand's success
You may have the most amazing offerings and your content marketing materials may be top-notch when it comes to the quality of the writing. However, if you aren't able to engage your target audience members so that you can really get them acquainted with what you are offering, you won't have a prayer at selling anything to anyone.

You may or may not be familiar with exactly what is involved in engagement (or you may have no clue about what it involves). Well, engagement means a lot of things. When it comes to audience engagement, you are going to be examining bounce rates, how many people have visited your particular pages, how many people have clicked on your particular social media channels, how many people have shared your content, and how many people are reaching out and interacting with you. Whether you think about it or not, the reality is that engagement equals return on investment (ROI).
You are building loyalty
If you are able to achieve loyalty from the other person as a result of your continued interactions, that person will not only engage with you but he or she will also probably be happy to tell other people about your brand and what you can do for them as well.
One thing that you need to understand is that engagement doesn't usually happen overnight. It takes a lot of time, effort, and careful nurturing. Once you have reached a certain level of engagement, there are some other extremely important aspects to the relationship that go along with it: trust, a consideration from the other person that you are the best choice to solve his or her problem because you are the most knowledgeable about that particular issue (in other words, you are positioned as the subject matter expert), and a relationship that will stand the test of time.
However, the reason that it is not so easy to get your target audience members to engage with you is that there are so many people who are competing for a piece of the pie and each one of them is claiming to be the best at what they do, which is exactly what you do as well.
It is important to remember at this point that the relationship that you are building with the other person is mutually beneficial. It is not just that you are getting something out of it. The other person is going to get a great deal out of it because you are going to give a lot to that person. Through your content, you will be sharing all sorts of exciting ideas about all sorts of things that will benefit the other person and his or her business.

In order to really engage effectively, you need to wade through all of the noise and all of the volume that is a regular part of the Internet. It is really fierce. Even though you have obstacles in the way of your being able to engage with your target audience members easily, it is still far from impossible to accomplish what you set out to do. You just need to approach it in a sensible way. If you follow the following principles, you will make a lot of progress.
  • Make sure that your content is truly scanable: When the other person comes upon your content, you need to make sure that it looks a certain way, a way that is conducive to the other person having the ability to get a lot out of it in a very short amount of time. It is that scanability that will drive them to want to read more and to engage with you. The way that you will accomplish that is by using a font that is not too small and by using a font that is easy to read at a glance. The truth is that very few people nowadays will be interested in reading long, small font size content. They probably neither have the time nor the inclination to do that. People are very busy and they don't have the patience to stick with any content for too long, especially when they first start reading (before they even get a good idea of what the content is all about). In fact, you have exactly three seconds to get them to read on. If you can't capture their attention in three seconds, they will move on to someone else's content and it will be over for you. You understand that three seconds is not a long time. The other person will be able to tell in those three seconds if they want to continue. If the physical aspects of your content catch their eye in the right way, they will continue. One thing that is very important here is that you make sure that your content looks the same every time. That doesn't mean that you are writing about the same thing every time. In fact, you should never write exactly the same content twice. It is just that the first glance should have the same feel to it each time. Another important aspect of what makes content scanable is the graphic element. Graphics are so important when it comes to attracting your target audience members. It is the first step on the way to solid engagement.


  • Make sure that people can start to interact through your content: If you share interactive content, the other person will feel as though he or she is a part of what you are offering. It gives them a sense of control and power (in a strange way). It also gives them a desire to connect with you. The more you connect with the other person, the better and stronger your engagement with that person will be and that engagement will hopefully last for a very long time. The interactivity is essential and it is important for you to remember that as you are writing the content that you intend to share online. If you are not the person who actually writes the content, it is important for you to let the writer know how important that interactive element is to incorporate into the content. It is actually a simple concept but it is one that will bring you very far. Some of the ways that you may be able to achieve the interactivity piece of it is by using contents (with prizes), surveys/polls, quizzes, etc. Those are all effective interactivity tools, if used appropriately.

  • Make sure that your content loads easily and quickly: There is almost nothing more annoying than trying to download or upload content only for nothing to happen. Your content must be uploaded or downloaded easily and quickly. Otherwise, you will surely lose the attention of the other person and your relationship and engagement will be over before it has had an opportunity to begin. You can do certain things to avoid that situation, such as minimizing the size of your graphic images. Of course, you will want to make sure that your content delivery system is up to par and up to speed.

  • Make sure that your content can be shared easily: Having other people share your content is the ultimate prize for your brand and for your business. You want to make it as easy as possible on the other person to do just that. Make sure that the other person can share your content with one click. Most people will be more than willing to do that if it is that easy. However, the more important statement that the other person's willingness to share your content is that they value what you are saying and they value what you represent. You will get a great deal of mileage out of that.

  • Make sure that engagement is seamless: Your engagement with other people should flow easily and if you plan a strategy, that roadmap will help you to achieve your goals. Easy is the essential concept that you need to keep with you. If your engagement is easy and it accomplishes a great deal, the other person will be right there with you. It is that simple.


Conclusion
Engagement is critical for your business. However, remember that the engagement doesn't have to be painful or draining. If you remember to make it scanable, interactive, easily loaded, and easily shared, you will successfully engage and your brand will be a booming success. The more you engage, the better you will become at it and the more successful your results will be. As a part of engaging your target audience, it is very important to listen to what the other person is saying, thinking, and feeling. The more you involve the other person, the more valuable that person will feel. That is a sure way to keep him or her engaged.
Michael Cohn is the founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CompuKol Communications. He has over 25 years of experience in IT and web technologies. Mr. Cohn spent a significant amount of time at a major telecommunications company, where his main focus was on initiating and leading synergy efforts across all business units by dramatically improving efficiency, online collaboration, and the company's Intranet capabilities, which accelerated gains in business productivity. He also reduced company travel and travel costs by introducing and implementing various collaboration technologies.
His expertise includes business analysis; project management; management of global cross-matrix teams; systems engineering and analysis, architecture, prototyping and integration; technology evaluation and assessment; systems development; performance evaluation; and management of off-shore development.
Mr. Cohn earned a Master's degree in project management from George Washington University in Washington, DC; and a Master's degree in computer science and a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, NJ.
Mr. Cohn is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).




by: Michael Cohn 
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9853222

Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Email Marketing for Small Businesses: Four Must-Have Tips

November 29, 2017 0
Email Marketing for Small Businesses: Four Must-Have Tips

Direct email marketing is a powerful, cost-effective and simple way to build strong relationships with your customers. It allows you to interact with all your customers at one time and at anytime you decide. Once they get to know and trust you, they will buy your product or service again and again. 

Developing an effective small business email marketing campaign involves advanced email marketing tools, polished communication skills and many other factors, but the following tips can give you a great start.
Start with the Basics
Effective email marketing for small business starts with list management. If you prefer a low-cost option, you can simply use an Excel spreadsheet, but an email database management system such as Aweber is cost-effective and fairly simple, and it even allows you to create and send newsletters. Aweber has many tutorials that make it easier to use and learn. Once you've determined how to create and distribute your material, you can start building your list.
Don't Wait, Communicate


One of the worst email marketing mistakes you can make is to not communicate with subscribers right away. Establishing relationships with potential customers as soon as possible suggests professionalism, and your subscribers will be especially impressed if you send them valuable links, information or even media downloads. You can boost your email's visual appeal with a custom-branded template, but plain text can get through most spam filters easily.
Automation Keeps It Simple
An autoresponder is a great email marketing solution that enables you to create your messages in advance and send them automatically at a later date. Another great option is that you can send one time broadcast messages to your list sending promotions, upcoming sales, and business updates all on auto pilot. When your list operates on auto pilot, you only have to set your system up once, and you won't need to hire someone to manage subscriptions or schedules. Automation takes most of the work out of email marketing for small business, so you can spend the extra time focusing on other important business matters.
Strength In Numbers: Partner Up

Successful email marketing for small business often includes partnerships with companies that sell related products or services. This strategy can produce thousands of new subscribers, and many companies are more than happy to join forces and help others succeed. By including your link in their newsletter, your partners can actually help you market your list.
Peter A. Santiago is the successful owner of Inbox Engagement [http://www.inboxengagement.com]. He assists others with showing the best ways to convert emails to sales. Peter is the author of Engineering a Profitable Email Marketing Business with Strategies that Work and he is giving this to you for free. Click here to instantly download your Free copy: [http://www.inboxengagement.com]




by: 
Peter A. Santiago 
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7785962

Wednesday, 22 November 2017

Some Do's and Don'ts of Social Media

November 22, 2017 0
Some Do's and Don'ts of Social Media


Don't be afraid to put content out there!


Relate this to you, your brand and your business, express yourself....BE YOU!











Are you hesitating to put out content due to fear of what others may think?

Monday, 6 November 2017

Quick Tips to Boost Engagement on Your Social Media Pages

November 06, 2017 0
Quick Tips to Boost Engagement on Your Social Media Pages

Before you plan your next post, start using these easy engagement tips to set your pages on fire!
Read on for our favorite social engagement ideas to boost everything from page likes, post likes, comments, shares, followers, to full-blown stark raving mad fans!
1. Instagram - Boost Engagement & Conversions
50% of Instagram users follow at least one business, the app has continued to grow in popularity since being purchased by Facebook in 2012. Making Insta ideal for communicating your brand's message using visual content - however posting pimped up images is only one part of the equation. If it's engagement you're after (and it is... ), it's important to pimp up the captions that go with those awesome pics!


I've curated the main tips below; if you're after the real nuts and bolts see Aaron's full article at Social Media Today.
Write With an Authentic Tone of Voice - Instagram users aren't expecting a serious tone of voice - they're generally using the app in their free time to look at cool visuals and be entertained.
Include a CTA (Call To Action) - 65% of top-performing brands post on Instagram feature products. Directly instructing people to check out your product or make a purchase can work well on this platform.
Utilize Hashtags - Instagram posts with a minimum of one hashtag generate 12.6% more engagement than those without. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!
Include Emojis - Almost 50% of captions and comments on Instagram contain at least one emoji. While there's a range of emojis at your disposal, the most popular one is the heart.
Mention Other Instagram Users - It's important to remember that Instagram is a social network. Brands that relentlessly self-promote with little regards to community never do well.
Place Important Content at the Beginning - In a user's Instagram feed, captions are cut off after the first few lines. To see the entire post, they have to click the "View More" button - which they won't if the first few lines are unappealing.
2. Facebook - Boost Engagement, Leads & Sales
Explore 11 of the most effective strategies for enticing your Facebook Followers to get enthusiastic about your page and start encouraging likes, comments, and shares with their closest friends. Facebook is the perfect platform for small businesses to build a relationship with their customers and many are outperforming their big-budget competitors by employing a personalized social media approach.

I've curated the main tips of Andrea's case studies below; if you're after the real nuts and bolts visit Social Media Examiner for her full article:
Move Your Audience to Action - Litographs came up with a fun idea to create temporary tattoos of sentences from Alice in Wonderland. They invited 5,000 people to join the world's longest tattoo chain. This kind of idea is a great way to mobilize your audience and make them part of something special.
Host a Facebook Party - Mamavation is a website that teaches natural wellness and nutrition and champions GMO-free food and products. They have held fun Facebook parties to give away gift certificates and discounts to people who engaged with each post.
Show Personality - Through a Dog's Ear is a small 7-year-old company that makes music to help calm anxious dogs. Their Facebook page is filled with personal photos of the founder and her dogs.
Incorporate Humor - Cool Mom Picks is a website that curates gifts, gear, tech, and resources for moms. They have great video tutorials and they bring together interesting finds in blog posts. They also use humor and show some personality in their posts.
Have Fun - think about using Facebook as it was originally intended: a social site where you let people know what you're doing. Author Erica Spindler does a great job of getting personal and having some fun. Share things that you find funny or you feel are important for people to know.
Be Responsive - Make it a habit to respond to comments and your messenger inbox quickly.
Create a Facebook Event - If you have events on Facebook, re-share them, post in the events to get more visibility and encourage people to join them.
Post to Your Page and Profile - David Newman of Do It Marketing uses his Facebook page and personal profile to market his business, which helps speakers get more opportunities. He's connected with many speakers personally, so it makes sense for him to get extra traction by posting about his business on his personal profile. If you occasionally share your business page posts on your profile, you can extend your reach.
Invest in Videos - Videos are huge on Facebook and Learn Cake Decorating Online uses them effectively on their page. They have a featured video and regular quick videos that get lots of views and engagement. The company also uses the 22Social app to give away a free video class to build the email list and then offer a membership to people who sign up.
Provide Great Local Content Realtors sometimes find Facebook a challenging place to market. Posting images of houses is great, but Realty Austin offers great local content, too.
Go Behind the Scenes - Getting personal on Facebook is a great tactic, but so is giving your community a sneak peek at something no one else can see. The Celtic band Barra MacNeils literally takes people behind the scenes during their shows.
3. Twitter - Boost Engagement & Attract Followers
Social Engagement on Twitter helps to build and nurture a relationship between you and other industry peers and experts. Hearting, retweeting and commenting on each other's quality posts build peer relationships and industry street cred for your small business. Clicks on content you post can drive traffic directly to your site, increasing leads, visitors, and sales.

I've curated the main tips below; if you're after the real nuts and bolts visit Adesspresso for Ana's full article:
Engage with Other Users Content - If you want other users to engage with your content, a good way to start is to always interact with their first. Like, respond to, and retweet your users content when you can, and following them can also help.
Retweet Other Users' Tweets - You want to do this early and often. I'm singling out retweeting as engagement because this is what most users value the most; not only are you liking their content enough to confirm it, but you value it enough to share it.
Keep Your Tweets Brief - We are all forced to keep our tweets relatively brief automatically, with Twitter limiting our posts to 140 characters. This is challenging enough as it is, but limiting our posts just a little more can actually increase engagement.
Share a Variety of Links - If you want to get clicks to your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!
Respond When Someone Tweets to You - This is particularly challenging for large brands or brands that have a large amount of engagement (even if it's just when major content goes live), but doing your best to respond in some way when a user tweets to you can go a long way.
Know Your Peak Hours - Just like with Facebook, there will be certain times of the day or days of the week when more of your users will be active on the site or more likely to engage with your content. By being able to find those peak hours and posting them, you'll get more views and you'll be more likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post.
Use Twitter Ads - When you're looking to best engagement quickly, Twitter Ads are a good way to do so, especially if you don't have a lot of followers or followers that often engage with your content. Twitter Ads do cost money (and are more expensive than Facebook Ads), but they can still help increase engagement when you need it. Promoted tweets work best for this purpose.
Always Provide Value - Social media, for many, has become an environment where many users will share every thought that pops into their heads. While non-brand users can get away with letting the world know that they can't decide if they want a coke or a lemonade, brands definitely cannot.
Always Use Hashtags - Hashtags are an essential part of Twitter usage; just like with Instagram, you pretty much expect a Tweet to come with at least one hashtag attached to it. Not only do hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they search the hashtag you're using, but they can also increase engagement.
Share Images - Images are an important part of social media; this is particularly true when we're limited to 140 characters.
4. LinkedIn - 5 Ways to Increase Engagement with Your Content on LinkedIn
Fast approaching 400 million users, LinkedIn has become more than just an online resume platform. Learning how to use LinkedIn marketing tips is essential for any small business. LinkedIn is still drastically underutilized making it an easy opportunity to make a splash if your target market is hanging out on this professional platform.

I've curated the main tips below; if you're after the real nuts and bolts visit LinkedIn Business for Pearce's full article:
Keep it concise and prompt an action - Drive higher engagement by keeping description copy <70 characters and feature a call to action. Keep in mind that copy will get truncated on the desktop after 100 characters and likely adversely affect your engagement rates.
Don't just report the news, analyze it - Yes, your audience wants to stay up to speed on industry news and trends. But they also want to know the impact it will have on them. On top of reporting key industry news and trends, take it a step further and offer key insights, takeaways, and your unique perspective.
Repurpose compelling 3rd party research - Creating great, in-depth content is time and resource intensive. Find a 3rd party source that is already developing the type of content that aligns with your audience's interests.
Use the power of video to tell your story - YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare videos play natively within the LinkedIn newsfeed. This allows you to engage your audience without disrupting their experience. It also allows you to tell your story in a much more vivid, creative format.
Professionals are people too - While it's always an effective strategy to aim to create content that helps solve your audiences' business challenges, keep in mind that they are also people too. Human interest stories help prove your brand in an engaging, less overt way, as well as diversify the type of content you are publishing.
5. YouTube - Boost Visitor Engagement & Channel Subscriptions
Using YouTube to market your small business, involves creating videos with content your target market will find engaging on some level (entertaining or educational) are the most common formats. While social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have a strong focus on creating, posting, and sharing different types of content, creating content for YouTube means you'll be investing your time in video production and video production only. Learn how to set up and create valuable and engaging content on your YouTube channel to attract an engaged fan base of subscribers to your business.

I've curated the main tips below; if you're after the real nuts and bolts visit bplans for Briana's full article:
Set up your YouTube channel - Setting up a channel couldn't be easier; in fact, if you already have a Google account, you technically already have a YouTube channel, even if you don't know it.
Add a banner and create a trailer - Before you start focusing on putting out video content regularly, it's important to make your page on YouTube visually appealing.
Create videos that show off your brand - Is your brand serious and formal? Prank or joke-style videos are probably a bad fit. On the flip side, if you've built your brand tone around a light, conversational style, don't create video content that feels stuffy or overly professional.
Post your video's on your blog - With YourTubePlayer you can easily generate and customize YouTube embed codes from the video ID or URL with options like autoplay, loop, hide controls, eliminate related videos and much more.
Focus on informational videos, how-to style content, video series, or vlog content - If you have a product or service, feature videos of your product in use. Similarly, if you offer a service, show how your service benefits customers. Informational videos are a great place to showcase your product or service in "the real world," to give customers a sense of what's in store for them if they buy from you.
Feature client testimonials or other customer feedback - When brainstorming what kinds of content you can feature on your new YouTube channel, you may want to look to your satisfied clients and customers. What can they say about your business that would make a valuable addition to your video content?
Pay attention to title keywords - Much of your organic traffic will be search-driven. That is to say, if someone is searching "braided updo tutorial," and you just happen to have those keywords in the title of your YouTube video, there is a higher chance that searchers will find your video.
Subscribe to similar channels and interact with them - One of the best ways to get your YouTube channel out in front of a potential new set of viewers is to leave a thoughtful comment on other YouTuber's videos (ideally, on a YouTube channel that produces content similar to your own). Hopefully, your comment will be upvoted by other viewers, increasing its visibility and therefore potential clicks back to your own channel.
Interact with your viewers - Once you start getting engagement on your own videos, make sure you are reciprocating! Respond to your YouTube comments in a thoughtful way that makes it clear you are tailoring your response to each commenter. Make sure you avoid responses that sound canned or insincere.
Include a call to action and track your success - What is your goal with creating YouTube videos? Is it to increase brand awareness, build up a more comprehensive social media presence, drive viewers back to your site? There are plenty of different goals you could have, and be clear what they are early on. Including a call to action in your YouTube videos is a great way to push people to take the steps you'd like them to take that coincide with your chosen goal.
Finally, remember the goal here is to create a raving fan base. In order to capture and convert all the traffic, your highly engaged posts have generated, you will need a responsive Lead Capture Page.
The team at Her Digital Domain has collectively worked with numerous organizations to connect and promote brands into the digital community.
Our clients ranged from small business owners through to leading brands, who chose us to help with their website development, graphic design, SEO & digital marketing campaigns; assisting them consistently grow their brand, attract more qualified leads and convert them into sales through the delivery of custom marketing strategies.
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by: 
Danielle Paphitis
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9801225