How To Be More Productive on Social Media

How to maximise your time on Social Media

Ever wondered how much time you actually spend on social media per day? Apparently the average person spends 3.6 hours per day on social media websites, that’s a pretty crazy statistic.

We just came across this infographic by Quicksprout that has a series of well laid out tips on how to maximise your time on social media.

How to Be More Productive On Social Media
Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Conclusion

Most of us don’t have a heap of spare time, so managing your time well on social media certainly is a good idea.

The free tools and ideas in this infographic will surely help you to maximise your time on social media and get a lot more productive than you would have without them.

Social media is one of the best ways to drive more traffic to your business website and to get users following and interacting with your brand.

Got any success stories from utilising social media for your own brand? Please let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear your story.

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Which Social Media Platforms Suit Your Business

Which Platforms Should You Use?

Not every social media platform is perfectly suited to your business model, and many small businesses don’t have the time to manage multiple social media accounts.

This infographic from Quicksprout clearly explains which social media platforms you should leverage for your business based on actual real world data.

You could be wasting your precious time and resources on a particular channel that isn’t exactly ideal for your business type and customer base.

What Social Media Platforms Are Best Suited For Your Business
Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

Which Platform Is Best For Your Business?

We find that Facebook, Google+ and Twitter work the best for us.

After taking a look at the statistics in the infographic which social media channel do you think best suits your business? Feel free to let us know in the comments below on this post, we would love to hear from you.

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Get Your Fans Creating & Sharing Content For You

User Generated Content Made Easy

This excellent infographic from Quicksprout gives some practical tips on how to get your fans and followers to create and share content for you. This will save you money on promoting your brand and will generate extra revenue for your business.

User generated content that is endorsing a brand has a massive influence over people, as shown in the infographic 51% of Americans trust user generated content more than actual company website content.

Just think about every time you go to research a product online, first thing you would normally do is a Google search for product reviews and look for user testimonials.

Another interesting statistic from the infographic is that there are 10 times more views on YouTube for user generated fan videos than for brand owned content.

How to Get Fans Creating and Sharing Content for You
Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

 

Conclusion

As you can see most user generated content comes about by simply asking your followers questions, engaging them to carry on a conversation and share their opinions.

Also asking your fans to re-share your content within your your actual post really does work. Just adding ‘retweet’ to one of your tweets can generate a much larger percentage of retweets.

Hopefully you can get some useful ideas from this infographic and learn how to make your fans and followers do some of the work for you.

If you have any other great ideas on ways to get fans sharing content for you, we would love to hear about it. Feel free to add a comment on this post. Ask About Social Media Management  

Hashtags – What They Are And How To Use Them

Not sure what Hashtags are or why you would use them?

Most people who frequent social media networks these days should be familiar with the #hashtag.

But even if you have seen them around, have you used them and do you really know how to leverage them to your advantage?

hashtag

 

We can explain what hashtags are and how to use them on your social media pages and profiles.

We’ve also found a handy infographic with some interesting information, and some pro tips for the power users and online marketers out there

What are hashtags?

Hashtags used on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are a way to sort or label your posts using certain keywords preceded by the hash symbol. Basically you are using the keyword phrase used in the hashtag to categorise your post.

Twitter was the first social media website to use and popularise the hashtag.

When you use hashtags in your post it then allows other people who aren’t your friends or directly connected to you to see your posts. Clearly this is a bonus for businesses and brands who want to leverage extra exposure by clever use of hashtags within their posts.

Special events across many different industries will create a unique hashtag for that event, so anyone wanting to join the conversation can simply use that hashtag on their post and get to the right audience who is actively searching for that tag.

See the explanation of Hashtags on Wikipedia

Check out the infographic from Quicksprout below for a few pointers about how to use hashtags to create an online presence for yourself, or for your brand.

How to Use Hashtags to Increase Your Online Presence
Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

 

How you can benefit by using Hashtags

  • Easily and effectively brand your posts
  • Gain more exposure to your content
  • Create a buzz around a special event
  • Increase your engagement rate
  • Gain more followers
  • Improve your brands reputation
  • Run competitions using a hashtag
  • Educate people on a particular topic
  • Track your online presence
  • Find related or trending topics

Conclusion

Hopefully you can now understand what a great tool hashtags are, and why you should be using them for your social media campaigns.

Do you have any success stories from your own clever use of hashtags? If so we would love to hear about it, leave a comment on this post with the details.

Or if you need a hand with your social media campaigns feel free to enquire below, we’d be more than happy to help. Ask About Social Media Management  

    Social Signals and Search Engine Rankings

    How Social Media Signals Impact Your Search Engine Rankings

    We just came across this fantastic gifographic from Quicksprout which explains how your social media presence for your brand can positively affect your search engine rankings. In case you are wondering, a gifographic is basically an animated infographic.

    Google and Bing both access and use data from your social media accounts and use this as a ranking factor. This allows them to rank the big brands with larger social media followings and engagement rates higher than much smaller businesses.

    The bottom line is you really need to be building your following on social media for your brand, and engaging with your audience.

    More social sharing of your brand’s content on your social media channels is going to benefit you with how your website ranks in the search engine results.

    If you position yourself as an authority in your field then get influencers on social media sharing your content to their networks you should see some great results in growing your traffic. See the case studies in the gifographic below for an idea of what can be achieved.

    How Social Signals Impact Search Engine Rankings
    Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

     

    How To get More Social Shares Of Your Content

    Here’s a list of the key points in the gifographic above explaining how to increase your social media shares.

    • Sharing a URL(link) on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 9am, 12pm, 3pm or 6pm EST you are more likely to get your content shared.
    • Social media followers are much more likely to engage if you ask a question in your post.
    • Putting on a competition can boost your engagement by up to 39%
    • Adding images to your posts is definitely going to increase your engagement quite substantially.
    • Asking people to vote can increase the likelihood of people liking your page considerably.
    • How to‘ and ‘top list‘ posts will most likely get more social media shares.
    Social Media Logos

    Conclusion

    If you aren’t already utilising social media channels to promote brand awareness and grow and engage your audience, now is the time to get busy!

    As we have been saying for quite some time Google+ is the social media channel you need to be using to help with your organic search engine results. Being a part of Google it is very tightly woven into their whole network, there is no excuse not to be taking advantage of it to promote and grow your business online.

    Facebook and Twitter are definitely excellent social media channels to use to build your brand, by following some of the tips above you will see an improvement in social media shares of your content. Also check out these two articles:

    Increase Your Pinterest Engagement by up to 275%

    How To Increase Your Facebook User Engagement Rate
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    Increase Your Pinterest Engagement by up to 275%

    Practical and easy to implement tips to increase your user engagement rate on Pinterest

    Neil Patel at Quicksprout has just released another fantastic infographic that is just too good not to share. This time it’s about increasing your user engagement rate on your Pinterest page. There sure are more than a few eye opening figures in the infographic.

    Pinterest Logo

    According to his data Pinterest will generate four times more money for you per click than Twitter, and 27% more than Facebook. Clearly Pinterest is a lucrative online marketing channel that should not be ingnored. The tips listed in the infographic will help you to achieve a better engagement rate, see the sections called “Getting More Engagement” and “You Must Engage With Your Audience“.

    How to Increase Your Pinterest Engagement by 275%
    Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

     
    Pinterest isn’t the biggest social media network out there, however the rate it is growing at and the conversion rate its traffic delivers means you really should be taking notice. You can easily create a Pinterest business page for your brand and start using it to regularly promote your content. Use this infographic as a guide and you will be able to get better results from Pinterest.

    Also make sure you follow our pins on Pinterest.

    How To Increase Your Facebook User Engagement Rate

    Learn how to increase your user engagement on your Facebook page

    We thought we would share this excellent infographic created by Neil Patel at Quicksprout. It shows you exactly what your can do to increase your user engagement rate on your Facebook business page.

    It explains simply a few facts about what kind of posts have more chance of getting a higher interaction with your audience. By implementing these suggestions you can make the most out of your Facebook page, without having to spend up big on Facebook ads to promote your brand.

    How to Increase Your Facebook Engagement by 275%
    Courtesy of: Quick Sprout

     

    Social Media Management with HootSuite

    What is Hootsuite?

    Social media management is a rapidly evolving service being offered through a host of software platforms by various internet marketing developers. HootSuite is one such service that offers a dashboard that allows users to manage, measure, and track activity over a broad range of social media platforms.

    Such an ability would be useful to small businesses just beginning to set up their online presence, as well for any ongoing firm’s social media footprint, especially if they are communicated through multiple social media spaces.

    Hootsuite logo

    Firms as large as Seagate, Pepsico, Sony Music, CBS Interactive, and the World Wildlife Fund use HootSuite, but the software would be equally as useful to small businesses who prefer to manage their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus accounts all from one locale.

    HootSuite Features

    HootSuite features management tools for all of the major social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Foursquare, WordPress, and Mixi. It also includes an app directory that allows users to add more social media platforms to their dashboard like YouTube, Tumblr, MailChimp, and Flickr.

    Hootsuite Owlys

    Once these sites are added to a HootSuite dashboard, users can obtain a bird’s eye view of their overall social media footprint – an ideal situation if you are trying to manage your company’s online marketing strategy. From the dashboard, users can obtain Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, Twitter profile stats, Ow.ly click statuses, and an array of other analytic reports.

    Audiences can be categorized into various teams or communities, so one type of message can go directly to your Twitter followers, while another message can go to those who might be reading on Facebook. The dashboard itself also has controls, so that various levels of your marketing team can share, post, or create new content, based on the level of access set by an administrator.

    New communications can be created in message drafts, scheduled messages, and users can even upload .csv file content in bulk. The dashboard can even monitor RSS feeds, as well as any hashtags or “@”tags used with your company or product name. This feature allows you to see who is subscribing to you, and who is talking about your product or service.

    The entire platform is security enhanced and requires logins for each device. Additionally, logins are required if you choose to allow certain types of access to your marketing team. These permissions allow you to not only protect your own information, but the information of target audiences to which you wish to send communications.

    Trying it out

    HootSuite is available as an app for iPhone, Android, and iPad devices. Users interested in trying out what HootSuite has to offer can choose between three versions: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. Those who choose Enterprise will receive enhanced technical support, professional services, an account rep, compliance integration, geo-targeting, and custom invoicing.

    Hootsuite Social Media Management

    Additional resources are available for users to peruse as well, such as HootSuite University, a lecture and training series that helps those new to Internet marketing make the most out of their own social media strategy in tandem with HootSuite products. HootSuite also offers HootSuite guides, info papers, whitepapers, tips and tricks, video libraries, and webinars.

    Perfect for those just starting out or companies with a well-defined track record for online marketing campaigns. HootSuite offers something for everybody at almost every experience level, from beginners to mid-tier companies to Fortune 500s in need of simplified analytics and bird’s eye view management of its online presence.

    How Hootsuite will make managing your social media a breeze

    • All of your social media profiles can be accessed via the Hootsuite interface allowing you to streamline your social media campaigns
    • You can plan and schedule posts in advance on any of your social media channels which will help you improve productivity
    • Hootsuite has built in Analytics so you can easily view a cross section of how each of your social media channels are performing
    • Hootsuite Teams allow you to deliver large scale team management within your organisation
    • Hootsuite Conversations allow your team to communicate internally within the Hootsuite interface.
    • You can access Hootsuite via your iPhone, Android device or iPad using the Hootsuite App
    • You can track brand mentions across the social sphere, then be ready to join the conversation just at the right time
    • Managing your social media with ease

      Hootsuite will streamline your social media management for your brand being able to access and schedule posts for all of your accounts in the one place. No more multiple account logins, everything is all in the one easy to use inerafce.

      Make your social media management faster and smarter with Hootsuite. It connects to over 35 different social media platforms and allows you to make custom pre-written responses to save you time doing repetitive tasks.

      Hootsuite is suitable for large, medium or small organisations – even for sole traders. Get a Free Trial here now.

      Conclusion

      Hootsuite is a rock solid and mature tool that allows you to win at social media with ease. It is definitely suited for use by a brand or business that has multiple social media channels and needs a way to streamline the management of them.

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