Pay-Per-Click Advertising Tips

There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website; Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign.

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to set up a pay-per-click campaign versus months for a good SEO campaign.

Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that
most search engines, including some of the largest ones, now offer. It requires a bid for a “per-click” basis, which translates to your company paying the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site.

There is the added bonus that when a per-click site sends your website traffic, your site often appears in the results of other prevalent search engines.

As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective.

One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in
search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO
campaign. What you do have to do in a pay-per-click
campaign is pay a fee.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you’re up and running. It doesn’t demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the easier – and more effective – the process will be.

The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position on search engine results. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position – which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.

In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must do some computing to figure out how much each visitor to your site is worth.

You can compute this value by dividing the profit
you make on your website over a given period of time by the total number of visitors for that same time period.

For example, if your site made $5,000 in profits and there were 25,000 hits, each visitor would be theoretically worth 50 cents. The basic formula is profits divided by visitors.

The figure of 50 cents per visitor is the point at which
your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50 cents per click.

Be aware that the most popular keywords often cost
considerably more than 50 cents a click. The only way
around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual hit.

The key (pun intended) to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keyword research. The good news is there isn’t a limit to the amount of keywords you can add to your bid because additional keywords do not add additional cost.

This translates into a lot less hassle for you because there is no need to optimize your site to index a particular set of keywords.

Obviously, some keywords are much more effective than others are, but they will not cost you anything except time to set-up your account in your pay-per-click bid.

Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, one now called Microsoft Ad Center/Yahoo provides an online tool that will give you the data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine.

I have effectively used Microsoft Ad Center to get instant results and generating hundreds of leads and sales using this method.

I highly advice in investing in a training course or membership that offers you a step by step training that walks you through the setting up and placing your PPC Ads because if you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily blow your entire budget and not get results!

They also offer suggestions for keywords after you enter a description of your site.

Number one crucial part of your pay per click ad is, ” Your Headline “. If your headline is not enticing enough then they will not bother reading the rest of your Ad.

I have tested this extensively to tell you without a doubt that your headline needs to have to right message to attract people to read more.

In pay-per-click, the written description is also crucial. You must understand that the objective of your description is not to generally attract visitors, but to be as specific as possible so that only those visitors who are likely to buy your service or product go to your site.

You must use expert marketing copy to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site. This description is your most powerful tool to insure that your bid is profitable.

Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid. It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Microsoft and Adwords, usually appear on other popular search engines.

Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.

If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on
that particular keyword and try another one.

Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war.

Since losing is not acceptable, you must have a plan in
place to closely track the effectiveness of your keyword. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least on a daily basis until you have a winning keyword that is profitable for you and your business.

Not only is careful monitoring important, but the analysis of visitor behavior can produce invaluable knowledge about consumer motivation, habits, and trends.

Expert monitoring and consumer analysis is essential to your overall business needs, and will also insure that your pay-per-click campaign is a success.

It is also important to know what’s working now in pay per click whether you are using Facebook PPC or Microsoft Ad Center to place your paid advertising.

Share this with someone who deserves more success and you care about, let’s help some more people!

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5 Steps To Grow Your Blog Traffic For Free

Do you feel like your blog has a lot to offer? Do you feel like your content deserves to be read more than it currently is, but you can’t seem to get enough traffic?

It can be frustrating when your traffic levels don’t reflect the quality of your content, but the reality is you can’t just write compelling content and then sit back and wait for readers to flock to your website.

If you want people to read your posts then you need to actively promote them. You need to put your content in front of your target audience; and if it’s good enough then they’ll share it, and your content will get spread to more and more readers.

And perhaps most importantly, you have to do this consistently! You need to consistently create engaging and content, and consistently market that content to your target audience.

But how do you go about promoting your content to your target audience? Let’s look at five steps to generating a buzz around your content and blog, and generating your site the traffic it deserves for free!

1. Interact and Network with Your Target Audience in a Genuine Way

Who is your target audience? And where do they hang-out? If you are actually part of your target audience, then you most likely already do this to some degree; but if you’re blog is targeted at a group of people that you do not associate with, then you may need to do some research to find out where people from your target audience are congregating, and then you need to start conversing with them.

This could be on forums; Q&A sites such as Yahoo Answers; or other blogs (speak to other blog owners directly by leave a comment on their blog with a link back to yours).

This first step is perhaps the most crucial. Creating a prominent and vibrant blog involves being genuinely active in the sector your blog exists in. If your blog is about methods for weight loss, you should be actively offering out advice to people on forums, discussing and critiquing other people’s ideas, answering questions others have regarding weight loss.

Worried that this sounds time consuming? Well, it is. And this is why it is greatly beneficial to have a genuine interest in and are extremely passionate the field your blog is related to. But if you’re not actively out there promoting your blog, and creating a buzz around your ideas, then you’re just hoping someone is going to land on your site, stick around, and hopefully come back.

2. Social Network sites

Share your content on social networks like twitter and FB – this gives a place for users to find you, engage with you and follow what you are saying. On its own social media will not likely generate you the traffic you are looking for, but combined with your other efforts and interactions, it gives those who take an interest in what you say a way of staying up to date with what you are saying, and reply to what you are saying, without having to continuously visit your website each day or week.

Be Genuine!

This doesn’t mean that you should just post/ tweet a link to your blog posts each day, with a comment that took you five seconds to think up. If you are not genuinely interacting with other users; discussing ideas, answering possible questions; looking at trends; paying attention to what other people are saying, and replying to them; then very few people are going to be engaged by your tweets/ Facebook posts.

Remember that it’s a competition!

You have to remember that, depending on the niche your blog is in, there are likely hundreds of thousands of other bloggers doing exactly what you are doing, who you are competing with. Unless you want to get lost in the sea of spammy social signals, your tweets need to be more exciting and engaging than the next guys!

3. Create content that is Likely to be shared

Infographics, top ten lists, controversial titles… these are all amazing “link bait”. Some of the content on your website might be extremely informative, and in depth, but it may also be highly niche. A good strategy for getting your content shared by a large proportion of your readers is to create at least some content which will be fun, easy to read, and which will appeal to a large proportion of your target audience. This will help to ensure that your readers share your content.

Interact with your visitors

Creating a conversion on your blog posts by replying to blog comments is also a good strategy for getting your content shared, as people are more likely to share a post they’ve read if there is also an engaging discussion at the bottom of the post which opens up new and interesting points.

4. Make your content SEO friendly to maximise your organic rankings

As your site begins to generate more backlinks and more and more people are mentioning your website in their own posts and on social media, your site will begin to rank for relevant search terms within Google and other search engines.

At this point every visitor your organic rankings generate for you are so much more valuable; as when they land on your site, they are going to see extremely engaging and sharable content, they’re going to see a lot of interactions going on in the comments section, and they’re going to see really engaging social profiles, which will draw them back to your site time and time again.

In order to maximise your rankings in the search engines you want to be making all of your content SEO friendly. Generating large reams of good quality backlinks is great, but it also helps to have your on-site SEO down to a T. After all it is free to do.

• Research some related keywords/ search terms while writing your article, and try to make sure that your article is at least based around some subjects which are being searched for.
• Make sure that your Meta-Data – Title Tags, Meta Descriptions are written well to inform web users about the content of your page, and maximise your click-through-rate.
• Page titles should be informative, and may benefit by containing your main keyword or one that is at least semantically similar.
• Page layout should be designed around delivering quality content to website visitors, and should make navigation of the site easy. Sites which are top heavy with adverts will be less likely to appear high on the results page, as compared to a site with no ads. Added to this, websites which do not have adequate content above the fold will struggle to rank high on the results page, so always make sure that visitors are instantly engaged with quality content above the fold of the page.

5. Use analytics

Now that you are generating hundreds of hits to your site each day, you can now begin to analyse the traffic you are getting. Google Analytics is an invaluable tool when it comes to analysing the traffic to your blog (so it’s a good thing that it’s free to use!). It is especially useful for analysing the behaviour of your visitors, and the sources of your traffic. You can analyse:

• Geographic location of your visitors
• How visitors found your website: i.e. social media, organic traffic, referral, directly by entering your URL into their browser
• User interaction: what did users click on, and which page did they go to next?
• What percentage of your users are returning versus new

Using this information you can, for example, view which sources of traffic are working for your site; which demographics are visiting your site most, and try to replicate what is currently working. You can build on your strengths and generate more traffic from these sources.

And, you can view what is not working, which types of content do not get viewed as much, which visitors are not visiting your website, and you can either give up on these avenues, or try something different with them.

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8 Must Follow Google Analytics Tips To Understand The Data Better

You are running a business online and have a huge data to manage and obtain meaningful results from. There are many tools that have come up in the market to solve this problem but why to waste money when Google is generous enough to provide effective tools such as Google analytics that is available easily and free of cost. It is not a tool to be sniffed at as it has proved to highly useful for small businesses with nearly 90% businesses opting for it to measure the web data accurately. Learn the skills of using it right and set the stage for quick business growth. Read on to get an answer to all your questions regarding Google analytics. This blog discusses 8 different ways in which Google Analytics can be helpful and do not let you falter at any stage.

1) Clear goals are necessary

The first thing to do is to know what you want from the website visitors. Is it something as simple as signing up for a newsletter, downloading a pdf or watch a video and so on. With clear goals emerge clear actions that result in meaningful data and detailed analysis of the same for the fulfilment of the business purposes. It is easier to gauge the number of leads and/or conversions that emerged from a particular route you included in the website. So, do not blame web analytics for not giving the right kind of results but set a clear goal and implement it on priority.

2) Know how the visitors reach you

There are branded as well as non-branded traffic that becomes the source of the leads. It is not difficult to find out how the visitors found the company when it is using non-branded ad words with the help of Google analytics. Google analytics can help you find out the traffic source so that you can save your money that was otherwise invested in using the expensive keywords for the PC campaign. Search engine optimisation can be done at a much lower costs with web analytics tools that analyse the data and pave the way for finding good solutions for the same.

3) Dashboard is necessary

The data obtained through Google Analytics tool is large enough and it is not an easy task to manage it all without a proper platform where it is displayed in a comprehensible manner. A dashboard is the answer for the problem of not being able to manage the data effectively. It manages the data well and not only shows the source of web traffic but also gives the data on the keywords that are used by the visitors to reach a company’s website. The referring websites also come in the ambit of Google analytics. If it is desired to understand the results obtained from a recently launched campaign, set up a dedicated dashboard for the same.

4) Be present on social media

It is not just necessary to be present on social media but also track the campaigns on the same. Google analytics can be set up to know the most fruitful social media campaign and the account that is bringing in the maximum leads. Social media is complex and until and unless there is some handy and meaningful information, you cannot optimise the same.

5) Track the campaigns for better results

Say you have launched multiple campaigns viz. email marketing, mobile marketing or PPC campaign on different platforms. The first step to increase the return on investment is to know what type of audience is responding to the campaigns and how are they interacting with the brand. Google analytics is the tool that can be set up at the website and used to extract the necessary information. Just use a URL for the campaign and let the tool guide you further to know the results obtained from the campaign.

6) Website visitors’ behaviour understood better

When a visitor comes to a company’s website it is to fulfil an agenda. A clear analysis of the website visitors’ behaviour is very helpful and a prerequisite for designing the future marketing strategy. The keywords that the visitor is entering into the search bar and the pages he is surfing are all determined by the Google Analytics for the good. A web analytic tool is mandatory to understand the mindset of the web visitor and formulate the strategy to interact in a more fruitful manner.

7) Track all domains without fail

Google analytics will serve the purpose well only if each and every online activity is tracked appropriately. The content may be floating on various platforms and hence it is essential to track it all to understand the diverse nature of the people interacting with it. The only thing that must be remembered is that there must be unique tracking code designed for the purpose and the parties involved are using it for sure. The third party websites, blogs on social media or any other platform or your own website that invites visitors can be tracked accurately with the tools like Google Analytics. The number of visitors that come in and the percentage that is converted into leads and the final sales data are all relevant when we talk of Google Analytics.

8) Track the video usage

Nowadays, the businesses are using videos to interact with the potential customers in a lively way. Google Analytics makes it easy to know how many times the video has been watched or how interactive it proved to be with the users. The number of times the pause and play buttons are played are all recording by the tool. It also shows the time spent on the video and lets the company understand the success level with the video. It can make the necessary changes in the same and use it further to get more and more leads. 

One bonus tip to leverage Google analytics is to not include the time spend by the company and its team on the website as the tool will include it if it is not altered that way.

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9 Email Marketing Steps Small Businesses Should Follow

Although a customer only sees the tip of the iceberg, there’s a range of tools and tactics you can implement in the back-end, that will give you the power and potential to achieve really good results.

To get as much involvement, and as much success out of email marketing campaigns, you need to give people what they want, and make the experience really easy and enjoyable. Here are nine tips that will help you do this:

1. MAKE SUBSCRIBING EASY

The easier you make it to subscribe to your email, the more subscribers you will get – simple as that. Make sure it’s on your homepage. 

2. TELL THEM WHAT THEY’RE IN FOR

Tell your subscribers explicitly and simply what they can expect. Just a short statement about whether you intend to send them updates regarding the company, special offers, or anything else will suffice. It’s vitally important to tell your readers what to expect and how often to expect it. Don’t softsoap them, or take advantage of them in any way. Be straightforward and transparent.

3. REWARD THEM FOR SIGNING UP

Send all of your customers a welcome email. This reminds people that they’re on their list, and reassures them that signing up was a worthwhile act. You could even send new subscribers a special offer or exclusive content, in order to welcome them on board.

4. KEEP BRANDING CONSISTENT

Branding is one of the biggest buzzwords in the world for a reason. It works. Your emails should not merely fit into the brand that your company is projecting, it should make a contribution towards building it. Make your emails match the colour scheme of your company, and ensure that the tone of the text is appropriate. If you don’t think you can write well enough to do this, hire someone.

5. MAKE YOUR EMAILS EASY TO READ QUICKLY

Make your emails easy to read via scanning. We’d all like to believe that information we produce and send out is of vital importance to people, but that’s not the case. People receive hundreds of emails a day, and can’t dedicate enough time for everything. You need to be able to grab people’s attention quickly with your emails, so break them up into manageable bite-sized pieces. Use headlines to tease the email, and make the subject line to the point and clear as well.

You should also make it really easy to read from any device. Optimise it for mobile and tablet devices, so people can read on the go. More than 60% of emails are read on a mobile device now.

6. SEND THEM WHAT THEY ACTUALLY WANT

This might seem straightforward, put yourself in your customers shoes, and send them content that they will actually want. One of the most basic facets of consumer psychology is to make people feel as if they are getting something for nothing, and this should be the absolute by-word of your approach to email marketing.

7. KEEP TRACK AND PLAN AHEAD

Keeping a publishing calendar will be extremely useful for you. Don’t underestimate the commitment required to produce a regular viral marketing campaign. If you send too many emails in too short a period of time then you will annoy your subscribers, but if you don’t send anything for months then you will be forgotten. Plan your time accordingly.

8. CHECK EVERYTHING TWICE

There is nothing that screams amateurism more than basic spelling and grammatical errors. Make sure your work is proofread diligently, ideally by someone else, and ideally by someone else with editing skills and a proven reputation. If you can’t acquire such a person, make sure you run it through a suitable word processor spellchecker.

9. TEST EVERYTHING

Finally, test out whether your emails are working, and different approaches to the process, not to mention the visual appearance of your emails. Send test emails to colleagues, or use a testing program to make sure your emails are suitable. Try A/B testing, to see what works better. When you look at your test emails, consider what you’re trying to convey. Get the opinions of others, and encourage them to be constructive and objective.

These tips are simple when you know them, but a lot of it is about being diligent, focusing on the detail, and planning and testing everything you do. If you follow these tips, your customers will love you for it.

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7 SEO Tips And Tricks That Will Get You Ranked In 2015

There is no better spot than number one. Second place, in life or within Google, doesn’t cut it. You need to ensure that you are aiming for the spot of top dog in 2015. SEO has been the way to do this for years. There is no sign of that changing anytime soon. But, now it’s time to get your eyes on the prize. Number one and higher rankings are the way forward in the coming year. Of course, every business, marketer and digital expert all have their eyes on the lucrative prize. But, there are some savvy ways that you can ensure SEO success. Whether you are new to the game or a world hardened marketer, there are some excellent tips and tricks that you can use. This is imperative when honing your new SEO strategy for 2015.

Entrepreneurs, bloggers and marketing gurus all want to know two fundamental things:

• How can I achieve more traffic?
• How can I make sure that I don’t get attacked by Google’s animals? Namely, Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird?

SEO Tips And Tricks

Avoiding penalisation and securing the top spot within Google doesn’t have to be a difficult task. On the contrary, there are some savvy ways to reign supreme within Google. You can ensure maximum success. But, do be prepared to put in the legwork. This will take time and success cannot be attained overnight.

Let’s take a look at seven SEO tips and tricks that will guarantee rankings in 2015.

1. It’s Time to Hit More Traffic and Focus on the Local

In life, no one wants more traffic, aside from the SEO whizz. So, now it’s time to make sure that you are focussing on attaining more traffic to your site. Your website needs to be optimised for success. This means that you need to include your location on your site. Hit directories. Use citations. These are all fundamental ways of growing your business and making sure that you are getting on board with local SEO. Local SEO is one of the best ways of making your rank higher. What is more, it’s going to be a key way to ensure higher rankings going into 2015.

2. Optimise Your Site With Mobile in Mind

Mobile optimisation is not just user-friendly, it is Google friendly too. So, if you want to make sure that you are ranking higher than before, you need to devise a strategy with mobile in mind. Apps and responsive design are vital to your success. Google has stated that it loves responsive design as it feels that it has the customer in mind. Google has a number of mobile-friendly tests that you can take to ensure that your site is hitting all of the right notes. If your site is not as responsive as it should, or it does not pass the Google mobile-friendly test with top marks, it’s time to devise a new site. Yes, this can be expensive. But, it’s a keen way of ensuring success in 2015. Do bear in mind that mobile traffic is paving the way to a brighter future.

3. Don’t Forget About Bing and Yahoo (Yes, Really)

Okay, so coveting the top spot on Google is the ultimate dream. But, you need to think outside of the Google box. With this in mind, consider the other search engines. Yes, there are others. Bing and Yahoo are used widely by a lot of people. Yahoo is going to be the default search engine within Firefox. What is more, the Google deal with Safari is drawing to an end in 2015. While Google is a great place to start thinking about rankings, you need to make sure that you are thinking about the other search engines too. These options are becoming more commonplace with internet users, so don’t alienate a potential customer or viewer base by solely focussing on Google.

4. Take a Look at ROI Metrics

Keywords are vital. But don’t forget to take a look at your ROI metrics. In the coming year, this is essential that you do this. You need to ensure that you are looking at metrics, so that you can see what is working for you and what is not. This means that you can look more closely at conversions and viewership. Then, you can ascertain whether this has seen a definite return on investment. You can then hone and adopt new keywords to ensure that you are targeting the right people.

5. An Integrated Social Media Approach: Make Social Media Your Focus

Social media is so much more than merely sharing content. Of course, we should never forget the importance of content. But, you need to make social media your focus in 2015 if you want to get ranked. According to Jacob Maslow, social media is a positive marketing channel. But it can also be used as a customer service focal point. You need to engage with your brand and talk to your clients and viewers. Without this, you are just another faceless business. It’s time to get personal. Focus on the main social media sites. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Don’t sign up to every social media site under the sun and spam relentlessly. A loyal customer base is vital. But, you can also generate more revenue from doing this.

6. Earn Your Links

Earning links is now going to be the best way of ensuring that much-coveted number one spot. Inbound links are essential. You need to ensure that you are earning your links. This should be done on high authority sites. Do ensure that you are not spamming or using too many links all over the place. This is not the way to achieve success. What’s more, you may incur a Google penalty in the process.

7. Keywords, Keywords, Keywords!

Keywords are still a mainstay for SEO experts. But, you need to ensure that you are researching your keywords in a more robust way. You need to understand traffic patterns, buying habits and purchase patterns. This helps you target people in a more robust way. What is more, you can guarantee more success from using this kind of in-depth keyword research.

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The Social Media Marketing Tips You Can’t Go Into 2015 Without

Some people would’ve spent 2014 digesting every blog on social media marketing tips, ever best practice eBook, and every enlightening industry interview that was published. Great, but did you really have time for that? What if you haven’t unearthed the best slices of wisdom, insightful quotes, or planet-shaking theories on social media marketing?

Don’t worry, because we’ve been keeping tabs on the things that have been working for the best brands this year. From that we’ve noted ten core pieces of advice that no social media marketer should boldly head into the new year without.
 

Focus On Posting What People Care About

As people spend longer on social networks, their community expands. With every person followed, page liked, or friend added, we have a whole new set of posts and stories vying for our attention. The competition to be seen will be fierce, and brands who have little respect for what people want in their newsfeed will find themselves further fenced off than before. Facebook have spoken to some of their users about what they want to see, and have used that to inform changes which will be coming onto the platform in 2015. In a recent post on their newsroom, they highlighted the kind of posts that will receive less space on newsfeeds. Avoiding posts like the ones they list below, and focusing on the opposite, will see your social channels perform far better than businesses who aren’t careful.

People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content. According to people we surveyed, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:

Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app

Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context

Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Focus on posting things on social media that your audience are actually interested in.

Make Plans & Set Goals For Your Social Channels

If you haven’t yet, it’s time to look at what you want to achieve on each channel. For example, some of your target personas may be more active on some social networks compared to others. This means that the precise personas seeing your Pinterest activity may be different from the ones following your Twitter profiles. Therefore it’s worth figuring out which of your target personas are most active on which social channels and tailoring your output on those channels to suit them. Think about why you are there, what your objectives are, and set someSMART goals to help you fulfil your aims for those channels.

Before starting a social media campaign, ask why you’re doing it and what you want to do. Then set your goals.

Keep It Simple

There’s nothing wrong with the odd spot of verbose loquaciousness every now and then, but remember there are no points for being unnecessarily clever on social media. If you want to make sure your brand’s message is delivered to the optimal amount of people, it’s best to keep your wording as basic as possible. The Tweets with the most engagement by the top 15 brands on Twitter could be read and understood by someone with the reading age of an average 8 year old. Could you say that about most of your posts?

The most successful Tweets by brands could be read and understood by the average 8 year-old, could yours? 

Make Creative Competitions That Fit Your Brand

While “RT/ To Win” competitions may still work for minor contests or promotions, if you really want to strengthen your brand you need to think outside the box to make competitions that are well-matched to it. They can be integrated with wider campaigns, they can solicit user generated content from your community, or even get people to find something in real life. It could even be a game, like the one below from Marks & Spencer, which uses an app to help its community play pass-the-parcel to win prizes. Whatever you choose, it has to be easy to enter and enjoyable to partake in. For more inspiration, we have some ideas and examples here.
 

Be Consistent With Content Sharing

Why should you share content? It helps you to be an interesting, valuable member of your social community and establishes your brand by associating yourself with content your followers enjoy. Set up a regular schedule of useful, relevant content to share among your community and include some thoughts or observations of your own to show you’ve actually understood it. It doesn’t have to be all of your own content. In fact, sharing the content of other people – who aren’t competitors – shows you’re aware of what’s going on in the industry outside of your bubble. It also gives an opportunity to connect with other content creators, who may be willing to repay the favor in future and expose you to their audience.

Regularly share high quality, interesting content from reliable sources to establish yourself as a clued-up brand. 

Make Your Targeting As Accurate As Possible

With the growing wealth of targeting options available on platforms, the percentage of disinterested people you could be advertising to and communicating with is falling. If in the past you have advertized to people with “food” in their bio to get them to visit your tapas bar, in 2015 it’ll be worth being more specific, and aiming for people interested in “spanish street food” and “cocktails”. You may reach a smaller audience with this approach, but it will contain people who are more likely to be interested in your brand than if you’d gone for generic, broad keywords.

In 2015 there will be no excuse for lazy, generic targeting. Be thoughtful and specific to make better connections.

Look At Ways To Break The Fourth Wall

Social media marketing has grown up. As more people begin to understand how it works, those who are marketing on social media need to be a little more inventive with their campaigns than in the past. Depending on your brand, it may be worth taking an approach that acknowledges the brand-customer relationship, or looks to break the fourth wall in some other way. This transparency can help to build brand trust, while also creating head-turning campaigns that will get people talking about you and sharing your campaign.

Use Social Channels To Inform Content Creation

It’s no good guessing what your audience might want to see, some market research can help and where better to find out about your target audience than your own social community? Asking them what they like is a start, but you can also use social analytics tools to get under the skin of large groups of your followers to discover what they are interested in. It’s also worth using tracked links to see what people are actually clicking, and take note of their responses to help you decide what to create content based around. These insights should also be used to help inform the curation of your content sharing as well.
 

Get In The Habit Of Checking The News

If you’re not already doing this at least once a day, you must start. Social media covers all aspects of people’s lives and interests – the more you understand about that wider context, the more you can understand where your brand will fit into your followers’ timeline. Before you begin work for the day, get in the habit of checking news from both the wider world and your industry. You don’t need to read an entire newspaper and multiple trade journals before breakfast, simply bookmark a few key sites or blogs and skim the headlines at the very minimum. This will also help you to find real time opportunities and avoid a social media faux pas.

When representing a brand, you must know what’s happening in the news to understand where to place yourself.

Learn To Manage Your Time Effectively

Ever find yourself quickly going to post a quick Tweet, but find yourself scrolling endlessly through your mentions for the next hour? We’ve all done it. With 64% of marketers already spending at least 6 hours a week on social media, you need to be careful that the time spent on social channels is appropriate and doesn’t impact your other duties. As more social channels are added to your strategy, along with more tools and features being added into your marketing mix, timekeeping skills will become even more vital for an efficient social media marketer. Make sure you’re getting everything done by creating checklists for regular tasks, use social media tools that help you work smarter, and use a time tracker like RescueTime to monitor how long you’re spending on each activity.
 

Those were the key skills we think that social media marketers will need to have in 2015. But are there new skills that you think will be even more vital? We’re always keen to learn, let us know in the comments below. 

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