Gaining popularity on social media is only half the battle. How do you convert those "Likes" into paying customers?

According to data compiled by Wishpond, a maker of social-media marketing applications, 77 percent of business-to consumer (B2C) marketers have acquired customers through Facebook, while business-to-business (B2B) marketers have found more success on LinkedIn -- finding it a whopping 277% more effective than Facebook or Twitter.


For more on how social-media marketing helps generate business leads and ideas to stand out to potential customers, take a look at the infographic below.

Twitter is about making news, information and content flow across the social web.
It is loved by politicians, often used badly by celebrities and is a bloggers best friend. Twitter is often misunderstood as it has a funny name, can be seen as trivial (only 140 characters) and only available in mono-media (text only).

Scratch its surface and start to dig deeper and Twitter’s true character starts to be revealed. It is nimble, efficient and it works well in a time poor society.

It has developed multi-media capabilities and YouTube videos, images and even Slideshare presentations are viewable and can be embedded in the stream of tweets.

There are two basic principles that will help you get your tweets to be shared by your followers in large numbers.

1. Quantity – Build a significant following on Twitter as bigger is better.
2. Quality – Engage with your followers and build a  loyal and fanatical fan base that will love to share your tweets.

Combine these two and you are well on the way to having your news, information and content retweeted widely at velocity.

So how do you get more retweets on Twitter?

10 top tips to get more retweets

There are some  basic tips that will help you get your tweets retweeted  more. Some are obvious and others may surprise you.

Here are some easy to implement tips on how to get more retweets.

1. Ask  for a retweet (eg. “Please ReTweet”)
2. Tweet links
3. Pick the right time of day (Tweet between 12-2)
4. Leave room for a retweet (The sweet spot for a retweet is use between 71-100 characters)
5. Use hashtags
6. Include one of the top retweetable phrases
7. Write a tempting headline
8. Pick the right day of the week (Friday)
9. Don’t make the tweet about you
10. Tweet the latest news

Here is an infographic which puts the art of getting retweeted on Twitter in a visual format.



Infographic source: Visual.ly 

Twitter has been my number one social media platform for quite a long time. That was actually the first social network I embraced after I started my blog.



Over the course of more than two years I dedicated a lot of my free time to not only expanding my Twitter network but to also to actually engage with  people who cared about what I shared and who enjoyed my content.

As much as you’d like to say that quantity doesn’t matter, well, it does.

The more people I “persuade” to follow me, the more visitors my blog ends up receiving. The traffic Twitter brings me is now significant with 5,500 visitors a month coming from the 140 character social network.

If you’d like to increase your targeted Twitter traffic the way I did, here are six of the most effective ways to get more quality Twitter followers that I have discovered.

Anyway, let’s get started:

1. Start with the profile picture

When someone lands on your profile, the first thing to catch their eye is your profile picture.
Especially now with the new profiles, where the photo is at the center of the header, it can really give people a hint of whether or not they should click ‘follow’.



So, when it comes to choosing a suitable avatar, there are three golden rules:

1. Make sure it’s a photo of “you”

When you follow someone you expect them to be a real person. And unfortunately when it comes to Twitter, there are literally millions of fake accounts. That is why you have to make sure to add a real photo and not one you found on the internet for instance. Additionally if you are a business then you are far better off creating an additional Twitter account instead of putting a business logo on your personal profile just to promote your business.

2. Make sure it’s big enough

A lot of people tend to click on the avatar to see a person’s profile picture in a bigger size. There are a lot of folks out there however, whose photo is just as big as the size of the frame. What I’d advice you is to re-size your photo to say 300 by 300 pixels, so that it actually becomes bigger once someone clicks on it. A small, blurry and pixellated picture says that you don’t pay attention to the small details and that isn’t a good start.

3. Make sure your face is recognizable

What many Twitter users do is to simply upload a picture of them in full-size. Consider how small the avatar is, if you put a whole-body picture, then end result will be hard to distinguish. So absolutely make sure that the photo is only of your upper-body.

2. Don’t forget about hashtags

Hashtags are kinda like when you use a specific keyword within an article to make it rank higher in the search engines. When you use them, you are targeting your tweet to the people using the words you’ve included in your hashtags.



I used to have a problem with hashtags. In my eyes they just didn’t look good and were making some of the tweets look quite unreadable.

But you know what?

Hashtags aren’t the problem. Using them is a great way to guarantee your message gains more exposure with the right people.

The problem is how you use them.

The 3 “Don’ts” of Hashtags

1. Don’t include too many

Let’s assume you are sharing an article of yours on Twitter and decide to add some hashtags to improve its visibility. Since the title is short and doesn’t take much of your 160 characters limit, you decide to include five hashtags. Is that a good move? No. It just looks spammy… And no one likes that kind of obvious self-promotion. I’d say two or three hastags at most.

2. Don’t be too specific

Twitter unlike Google doesn’t have a huge search volume. This basically means that you can get your message seen even if you use a broader term. On the other hand if you are too specific, probably no one is going to see your tweet via Twitter search. I’ve found that including more general terms like #Marketing, #SocialMedia, #Blogging or #Design results in the most retweets and favorites.

3. Don’t make your tweets unreadable

A bad practice I often see is replacing parts of an article’s title with hashtags. For instance if we have the article “10 Great Social Media Tips for Marketers”, some folks would tweet it like “10 Great #SocialMedia #Tips for #Marketers”. The end result is a tweet that you don’t really feel like clicking or retweeting just because it looks ugly.

3. Get into guest blogging

Guest blogging… What does this have to do with getting more Twitter followers?



Guest blogging is a popular link-building technique. Many bloggers out there write guest articles only because they want to improve their search traffic. That behavior is probably one of the reasons why Google will keep a close eye on guest blogging this year.

And indeed guest blogging is much more than just being a way to improve SEO. In fact getting your content published on well-known, high-trafficked blogs is a sure way to create awareness about your brand.

This can be done by being a guest author. I have written articles for blogs like Traffic Generation Cafe and Kikolani.

Although all those guest posts helped me boost my organic traffic, the more important benefit was that I got in front of a new and highly relevant audience. This resulted in a torrent of new subscribers, followers and fans.

The thing is if people enjoy what you have to say, they will most certainly look for your social accounts. You don’t even have to share them. To date my five-week guest blogging endeavour has resulted in hundreds of new Twitter followers, Facebook fans and Google Plus users circling me.

4. Follow others with a strategy

Following new Twitter users is a great way to discover people with similar interests and to find interesting sources of information.

Another great benefit from doing so is that you can also get more eyeballs on your content.
How is that possible?

Well, the fact is a lot of people take a look at your Twitter profile when you follow them. So, if you follow people in your own niche who share your topics, there’s a good chance to get them to also follow you.

If we have to speak in numbers, I am able to get around 20% of the ones who I follow to also follow me back.

But how do you find relevant folks to follow in the first place?

Obviously you shouldn’t just go for the first dozen of Twitter users who you come across. You need to think strategically.

Tweepi is a great tool that allows you to follow either the followers or the friends (i.e. mutual followers) of a Twitter user of your choice.

For instance you can discover some of the influencers in your niche and start following their followers. Additionally Tweepi allows you to filter the list of followers by how active they are, how much tweets they are sharing, how much followers they have and how much people they are following.



How to use Tweepi

• You sign-up for an account and connect your Twitter profile. You hover over “Follow Tweeps”, click “@user’s friends”, choose whose friends you’ll follow and click “Start Following“.
• From that point on you can simply click on the different fields (e.g. “#followers”, “#friends”, “#statuses”), choose filters and set them up.
• Once you are finished with that you start following people from the list. Make sure to follow only those who have a real photo as an avatar!

NOTE: You should be very careful with the number of people you follow per day. I’d say you are safe with around 100-150 follows every day. That way you are far from the 1,000 follows limit and your account is safe.

5. Think about your email signature

As a blogger you will be sending and receiving a ton of emails.

And when it comes to email that is probably the most “personal” way to communicate in the online world. That in terms means most of the people you email to will probably be interested to stay in touch.

The simplest set-it-and-forget-it kind of thing you could do is to create some sort of signature. The signature will be automatically inserted at the end of each email you write and send.



If you are an Yahoo user, you can easily set your signature by going to the wrench-like icon on the right hand side, beside your profile image. Clicking on it will display a menu. There you choose “Mail options” and go to “Signature”. Now it’s all up to your creativity. You can include fancy images and HTML if you like.

As for me I am sticking to simplicity:

Follow me on Twitter | Join my Facebook page | Connect with me on LinkedIn | Circle me on Google+
That is basically how my signature looks like. Simple yet effective.

You definitely won’t get a ton of new followers that way, but you can be almost certain that the ones who follow you will actually engage and click on your tweets.

6. Feel free to ask for retweets

Some weeks ago at my blog I shared a very interesting infographic that shared a study’s results on how to get more retweets. Something important that the study reveals is that you can get a lot more people (around 51%) to retweet your tweets if you simply ask them to.


And since that seemed like a very promising strategy I decided to give it a try. Now over the course of almost a month I have probably sent out over 30-40 tweets, asking people to retweet the tweet.

The interesting thing was that although those tweets ended up receiving double or even triple the usual retweets, people were not clicking at all.

So it turns out that for instance tweeting something along the lines of

“I would really appreciate a retweet! –> Post Title http://post.url.com” is a better way to promote your profile and get people to see it than to actually get a ton of traffic from clicks.

Basically since your post will get more retweets, more of the followers of your followers will see the tweet. Hence you can expect new follows from Twitter users, who you haven’t been able to reach before.

And there’s the question, how often should you follow that practice?

I am doing it every time I publish a new article, which equates to not more than three times per week. That is how I’d recommend you to proceed as well.

































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Twitter is a great tool for finding potential customers, whether your company sells business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C). The easiest way to generate leads on the internet is to create an interesting free report or informational video that talks about one of your customers’ biggest problems. In the report or video, you focus on “why” they need to change something in their business to become more successful or profitable. The report or video doesn’t have to solve their problem. You just want to focus on telling them why they need to change the way they're doing business if they want to see better results.


The lead-generation process is very simple and can be broken down into 14 steps:

1. Survey your followers.

If you don’t know what your customer’s biggest problem is, survey your customers and ask them. You can also Tweet the question to your followers and see how they respond.

2. Offer a solution.

If you don’t have one already, create a product or service that solves their biggest problem.

3. Educate your customers.

Create a free report or informational video that focuses on why they have that problem and why they need to change something in their business to overcome the problem. You’ll tell them how to solve the problem after they hire you.

4. Create a landing page for the video or report.

Create a landing page on your website or blog. A landing page is a page on your website that doesn’t have a navigational menu or anything that would distract the web visitor from reading the content on the page.

5. Collect contact information. 

The only content on the landing page is a headline describing [your customers'] biggest problem and a few paragraphs describing what they'll learn about their problem by reading the report or by viewing the video. The purpose of the landing page content is to get them to fill out the web form. You don’t want to talk about your product or service that will solve their problem until later. Right now, you just want to collect their contact information.

6. Use an email marketing tool.

You need an email autoresponder program such as AWeber.com or Infusionsoft.com so you can set up web forms to collect names and email addresses. You don’t need to collect more than that.

7. Set up your email campaign.

Install the web form on your landing page so you can collect their first name and email address. Your email autoresponder program will have detailed instructions to help you set up your email campaign and web form.

8. Create a 'thank you' page on your website or blog.

This page should use the same template as your landing page. This is the page they'll be redirected to after they fill out their web form. They can download their free report or watch the video on this page.

9. Direct followers to your landing page.

Now you want to send a Tweet with a link to the landing page. The Tweet should mention the problem they're having and hint that there's a solution to their problem. You want to use a URL shortener that tracks the clicks on the link. HootSuite, www.bitly.com, and www.budurl.com all shorten and track your links.

10. Set up auto-response messages.

After they fill out the web form, you'll have their contact information. In your email autoresponder program, you can set up a series of automatic email messages. You'll create one message that will be sent immediately after they fill out the web form thanking them for joining your email list. You should also tell them how to download their report or where to watch the video.

11. Send reminders.

Set up a series of five or six emails that will be sent every other day. The first couple of emails will talk about why they have the problem and that many businesses have the same problem. You can share some stories about other businesses that struggled with the same problem and overcame it with your help.

12. Don't sell your product just yet.

The emails should transition into “what” they can do to solve the problem. Don’t tell them “how” to solve the problem yet. You can create more free reports or videos that teach them how they can solve the problem by making changes to their business. Don’t try to sell them your product or service yet. Just get them focused on what they can change in their business.

13. Explain how to solve their problem.

The last few emails should start talking about “how” they can solve their problem. Once they start understanding how the problem can be solved, you can start offering products and services that will solve their problem quickly.

14. Repeat the process.

Do this for each problem your customers have so you can build an email database of customers and prospects for your business. This way you can build a relationship with them and retain them as customers for a long time.













































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Brands that want to succeed on social media know the number of followers they have isn't as important as how engaged those followers are.

But engaging followers is no easy task.


You have to know what kind of content your customers like, and when they use various social media sites.

To help you out, an infographic from Fusework Studios offers a few general guidelines on how to get more engagement on Twitter.

For example, tweets sent on the weekend get 17 percent more engagement than tweets sent during the week. Wednesday and Thursday are the days with the lowest engagement rates.

Also, tweets with less than 100 characters see 17 percent more engagement than longer tweets.

Are you looking for more retweets? Just ask your followers. A tweet's retweet rate increases 12 times when you ask followers for a retweet. Only 1 percent of brands actually do this.

Check out the infographic for more:



 

Tweets are like the subject lines of your emails. A good email subject line is usually less than 100 characters. Use the same thought process when sending a Tweet, and in no time, you'll get over your fear of Tweeting.


Keep your business Tweeting professional so you project a professional image. You want to make your business Tweets interesting and compelling so people will want to follow you and click on the links you add to your Tweets, but you don't want to offend people with unprofessional behavior.

If you're still stuck, here are some ideas to help you create Tweets that your followers will enjoy.

This is the easiest and most obvious thing to do. You can find people to follow using the # Discover tab in your Twitter account where you can find Twitter users in any category under the Browse Categories tab.

You can start by ReTweeting and adding your comments to the Tweet. When you ReTweet a business leader's Tweet, people subconsciously associate you with the person, adding to your credibility. If you continually ReTweet another expert's Tweets and add value, often that person will reach out to you and start ReTweeting your Tweets.

Tweet breaking news. 

Twitter is the first place you find breaking news from around the world, whether it's related to politics, business, sports, or natural disasters. You can follow popular media outlets like @cnnbreak, @nytimes, or others, and ReTweet breaking events, or create new Tweets with links to their news items. You will be helping tell your Twitterverse about breaking news and people will know you're someone who keeps up with current events. You can also Tweet about breaking news in your industry, which will add to your credibility. Don't forget to add hashtags to your Tweets so people on Twitter who are not following you but monitoring hashtags will see your Tweets.

Be a curator. 

We all read articles about our industry and profession on the internet. As you come across interesting or controversial news stories related to your business or industry, Tweet a link to that article. In the Tweet, tell your followers what you liked or disliked about the article. Adding your perspective adds value for your followers.

You don't have to Tweet only articles you agree with. When you disagree with an article, let your followers know so they see where you stand on the subject. Disagreeing in your Tweet can lead to stimulating Twitter conversations with your followers, and the conversation will often expand outside your Twitterverse, expanding your following.

Help requests. 

One of the most popular uses of Twitter is to reach out for support. Every day people Tweet to find solutions to their problems. You can monitor popular hashtags or keywords related to your products or your industry and help people when they have questions. When you reply to their Tweets to help them, people will see you're an expert in that area. You can send links to webpages that can solve their problem or make suggestions in your Tweets.

You can also ask other Twitter users for help when you have a problem. You can Tweet something like, "Is anyone else having a problem with #Firefox crashing since the last update?" Notice how you can turn "Firefox" into a hashtag so nonfollowers will see the question and be able to reach out.

Evaluations, reviews, and opinions of products or services. 

When you're thinking about purchasing a product or service, you can use Twitter Search to see what others are saying about the product or service. You can join in the conversations by replying to their review of the product or ask them questions. When you purchase products or services, you can share your opinion with others on Twitter. Include a relevant hashtag so more Twitter users will see your review.

Promote your company. 

You can Tweet links about your company. Some of the most popular topics people Tweet about are:

• A new blog post
• Client acquisitions
• Press releases
• Jobs available
• Awards/recognition
• Events you're hosting and/or attending
• Discussions you're hosting on LinkedIn
• Special offers, sales, or discounts

Twitter was never meant to be a social network. In fact Twitter started life as an internal messaging service for a podcasting company just over seven years ago.



But how things have changed.

On the social web we live on a diet of fast change and rapid media evolution. Twitter’s slow burning maturation often flies below the radar and Facebook changes such as the new timeline and graph search attract numerous blog articles, comments on Facebook and mass media attention.

Twitter has become a multi-media social network without anyone really noticing.

Are you just tweeting text?

Many of us are just using it for tweeting text and links and forget that you can increase engagement by including video, images and even Slideshare presentations that can be viewed within the Twitter platform. Twitter is hoping that we will use the network to share multi-media in new ways.They are even punting on changing the world of video marketing and communication by integrating their new 6 second video service called Vine into the Twitter ecosystem.

Twitter’s aim is to make video an acceptable marketing medium that is short, snappy and sharp, that cuts through the clutter just like they have done with the humble 140 character text.

Effective marketing is multi-channel and multi-media

The question is often asked “what social network should you be using?“. The answer is, “As many as you can manage and that time and resources allow where your target audience is hanging out”

Multi-channel marketing should be your goal.

Coca Cola knows this well and Wendy Clark the  senior VP-integrated marketing communications and capabilities at Coca Cola had this to say about effective marketing strategies in a digital world.

“None of our plans are simply social, or TV, or mobile or experiential. On the contrary, it’s the combination of owned, earned, shared and paid media connections“.

She went on to say

“No single medium is as strong as the combination of media”

To highlight this point she mentioned that for their Olympic campaign in 2012, Coca Cola used 60 different types of media!

In other words multi-channel  and multi-media combined are vital to create marketing synergies that have the potential to become viral.

Did you know this about Twitter?

Twitter has released some internal research that shows how multi-media rich its platform has become and also its increasing role as an effective buzz and engagement tool that can used by journalists, news organisations and  users to increase their Twitter followers and retweets.

#1. Tweeting more gets you more followers

For journalists who post a concentrated number of Tweets in a short time span, follower growth is 50% more than expected.

 

#2. You can send tweets with a text message

Twitter was born with mobile in its DNA and that is obvious from its 140 character limit that was designed around the texting constraints of  mobile SMS. When Twitter became embedded within Apple’s mobile operating system it reached a tipping point that has continued to cement its place as the the web’s go to channel for breaking news and quick bytes of information.

Twitter can be set up to integrate with your texting.



Not only can you send tweets with a text message but you can receive text messages when someone new follows you, your tweet is retweeted and even when your tweet is marked as a favourite.

Below is the screen you see when setting up your mobile for texts and Twitter. To make sure that you aren’t receiving texts all the time from someone new following you or retweets it may be best to turn most of these off.



#3. Tweets with media receive on average 3 to 4 times more engagement

Twitter started as mono-media but has evolved into a multi-media social network. Media can include videos, photos and even Slideshare that can be viewed within Twitter. Tweets with multi-media receive 300-400% more engagement than tweets without media included.



#4. Using more @mentions increases your follower growth faster

Twitter research of its Twitter stream shows news organizations that tweet 20% fewer URLs and 100% more @mentions grow followers 17% more than expected.



#5. Hashtags can increase engagement by almost 100%

According to research from Twitter, journalists using hashtags increased engagement by 100% and the increase was 50%  for news organizations.



#6. Retweeting more gets you more followers

Sharing more but letting them know via a retweet can get you more followers.

So use the retweet button.

Twitter found that journalists with above expected follower growth send 200% more retweets (3X) compared to journalists with below expected follower growth.









































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Mistakes are a good thing if you learn from them and they don’t kill you.



Well, that is the common wisdom.

The reality is that mistakes can cost you your job, your relationship and significant dollops of money.

All of these are painful.

Social media provides a public platform that make stuff ups visible at velocity. Humiliation on a global scale is the downside of the social web.

Tweet some stupidity and you have the potential for a viral campaign of the very wrong kind that provides a new category of embarrassment.

Embarrassment at speed.

Public relations agencies have made a lot of money from advising companies on how to be ready or recover from a social media disaster.

So not engaging your brain before you post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter is a mistake that should be avoided at all costs when participating on social media networks.

So what should you do?

There are are some basic principles to keep in mind when you next punch out 140 characters to 200 million people.

• Think before tweeting
• Summon your commonsense
• Don’t drink and tweet
• Don’t tweet when angry
• Implement social media policies or guidelines

There maybe more but these will enable Twitter harm minimization that will help you retain your job, your business and your sanity.

What shouldn’t you do?

Here are 14 Twitter mistakes to be avoided to ensure that the boss values you on Monday morning, your wife still loves you on Friday evening and your career path is not hijacked by an insane moment.


Infographic source: Boot Camp Digital 











































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The question that seems to be on everyone’s lips on the social media marketing team is “How can I increase the number of Facebook likes?”



This has led to tactics emerging to increase engagement by posting frenzied Facebook updates many times a day. Brand pages are offering incentives, bribes and tactics that look very much like begging.

Just to gain those precious additional likes.

The magic marketing goals often heard around the water cooler are 1,000, 10,000 or even 100,000 Facebook fans. Always numbers with many zeros.

It all has become a bit unseemly really.

Despite large fan counts being the social media managers holy grail, the core challenge on Facebook is that it is filtered. It is lucky if even 15% of updates such as photos, quotes and videos even appear in people’s Facebook timelines.

This filter on Facebook is due to censoring being applied by the social network called “Edge Rank”.
So the question that needs to be asked is this “Is a Facebook like worth what we think it is?”

The Twitter advantage

Twitter might seem a bit more wild west. But its advantage is that is not filtered. Every tweet appears in your followers streams.

This is something that the marketing team quite often forgets.

What is not appreciated by many is that it is easier to build a loyal tribe of fans on Twitter who are interested in your content and subject than it is on Facebook.

Maybe you should rethink your social media strategy?

Top tactics to gain more Twitter followers

So how do you get more Twitter followers?

• Follow people on Twitter. The law of reciprocation is what works with this tactic
• Have great content that links from your Twitter account. People will check you out and if your content is good on your blog or website then it is more likely you will be followed
• Engage with your followers on Twitter with retweets, comments and questions
• Make it easy for people to follow you on Twitter from your website by including a follow me on Twitter button that is obvious and near the top of your page

40 ways to increase your Twitter tribe

So you are still short of ideas? Here is an infographic to get you started.



Infographic Source: Twiends














































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Social media marketing is simple in one sense. Create content that adds value and then pop it out to as many people’s eyeballs as possible.

That’s reach.

If you do it well then the crowd shares and it travels around the world at the speed of a click. Get lucky and it goes viral and those thousands turn into millions.

So, have you been spending time on social media and are looking for ways to expand your social media reach?

If you’ve been an avid user of social media networks, I’m sure you’ve heard all about the benefits and what it can do for your business. So I won’t be going down that road and “lecture” it to you.

Instead of doing that, I want to go straight ahead and share some tips and tricks that have helped build my social media reach.

1. Share useful content

Probably the simplest and most basic step – but definitely one that you can’t escape – is the need to share useful content. If you want to expand your social media reach you have to be writing and sharing great articles, blog posts, tips and tricks that add value to your community constantly.

When people find that you are helping to them solve a problem that they’ve been having or adding value to their everyday lives, they are more likely to not only subscribe to your blog and follow you, but they might also share it with their followers and fans and even talk about you in their blog.  Social profiles or blogs that are successful have one common similarity, which is each and every last one of them share valuable content for their readers.

Another tip to remember when posting content is that you must be consistent. You can’t be writing or sharing one day and disappear for the next month or two. You have to be consistent so that people would remember you and remember to visit your social media platforms to get their updated content.

2. Organize a social media contest

A social media contest is a great way to reward loyal followers, fans, or readers who have been following you for a while. It can be used to extend your social media reach too.

Social media contests can be used as a motivation for new audience to share or connect their social media profile and emails. Social media contest platforms like Binkd not only comes with an email-capture function where people would need to fill in before joining a contest, but it also comes with a share or tweet button to get people to share the contest.



And since your goal would be to get as many new contacts as possible, Binkd has made it so that, for Facebook contests, participants will be motivated to refer some of their friends and family as they would be able to get another entry when someone they refer decides to enter your contest. This means that when more referred people joins your contest, the more entries they earn.

For Twitter contests, fans would need to tweet to validate their entry helping your contest go viral and increase subscribers.

3. Guest Post

Guest posts (like this one) is an excellent way to expand your reach, it helps you to reach readers that you weren’t able to reach beforehand by tapping into an unfamiliar community.

My metaphor for guest-posting is like being invited to speak at a fully packed conference. Prior to the conference, not many people might know who you are or what you do but after your talk, people will know about you and will most likely want to know more about you and your business.

Buffer is a great example of a startup who have used guest-posts to increase their reach, customers and sales. Guest-posts alone had helped them increase their customer base to over 100,000 people in a year.

4. Learn how to maximize your marketing

Every social network has their little ways to maximize your marketing. Each social network have their strengths and functionality, and one of the mistakes most people do is post the same exact set of messages to EVERY social network.

Why is this a huge mistake? Because every social network is optimized differently. For example, on Twitter people use hashtags to increase reach, but nobody uses hashtags when posting on Facebook.

On Facebook, pictures work well to attract attention and expand reach. But people tend to overlook this and decide that it’s alright to post tweets with hashtags and link it to their Facebook status. Not only does it not work, the problem is they are posting the least effective type of content on Facebook.

Join Twitter chats

A Twitter chat is like a group discussion multiplied by 100! It’s a “chat” held during a particular time and day where Twitter users would get together to discuss a particular topic and share their own ideas, tips, and thoughts using a particular hashtag.

It’s also a great way to expand your social media reach and get noticed when not many people know who you are.

Following those who are on Twitter chats help you to follow relevant people in your market too.
There are many Twitter chats available out there. Here is HUGE list of twitter chats

6.  Use infographics

Here is a little secret that I learned on a webinar by Kissmetrics, it is no other than infographics! If you follow this blog closely, you’ll notice Kissmetrics uses infographics in their posts. They have used infographics to grow their blog and it has brought them over 2 million visitors.



Here are is a tip shared by Neil Patel in the webinar.

The topic of the infographic has to be unique and relatable. It shouldn’t be too basic as it won’t benefit the reader. Stats, facts and data is extremely important. How color affects purchases is an example of a great infographic. This infographic alone has over 10,000 social shares!

Building your social media reach takes time and a lot of commitment. You have to put in the hard work before you are able to reap the results but it is a small price to pay to be able to grow an amazing community behind you.















































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The goal of most Twitter contests is to increase the number of targeted followers. Targeted followers help spread the word about your products and services for free. When a third party spreads positive comments about your products or services, it gives your company credibility and helps sell your products.


You also want to collect contestants' contact information so you can nurture new leads and eventually turn them into customers. You collect their contact information by enticing them to fill out a web form on your website or blog.

There are several ways to attract targeted followers during your Twitter campaign:

1. Have a clear goal for your contest. 

What are you trying to achieve with your Twitter contest? Are you trying to generate new leads? Are you generating traffic for a new website or blog? Are you announcing a new product and want to generate a buzz? You need to have a clear goal and outcome for your Twitter contest or you'll be disappointed with your results. The clearer your goal is, the better your results will be.

2. Choose prizes carefully. 

This is where people make some of their biggest mistakes when they conduct a contest. Your prize should match the goal for your contest. If you're trying to generate more targeted followers, offering a large cash prize isn't the right prize. Offering a $1,000 prize will attract a lot of new followers, but they may not be targeted. In fact, many of your new followers will be participating in the contest just to win the $1,000, not to support your company.

If you're trying to attract landscape artists as followers, for instance, you could offer an autographed book of landscape pictures or artist accessories as your prize. This would be a more effective way to attract targeted followers than offering a large cash prize.

When you create a plan for your Twitter contest, it needs to do two things:

• Encourage people in your niche to participate 
• Discourage people who aren't in your niche from participating

Twitter is a great tool to build your brand and spread the word about your business. Here are six tips for building your brand on Twitter.


1. Use your brand name as your Twitter name. 

This seems obvious, but I see many companies not using their brand name as their Twitter name. They use a cute Twitter name that isn't related to their brand name.

2. Use your logo as your Twitter picture. 

Again, this sounds very obvious, but some companies don't use their logo for some reason.

3. Send Tweets that provide useful information to customers and prospects.

Always add a link to more information on your website. It should be a page on your website that adds value to the Tweet but doesn't require them to fill out a web form to view the information. This complements your lead-generation Tweets. You don't want to make people fill out a web form every time or they may get frustrated.

4. Send Tweets to new blog posts or videos. 

You can also send Tweets to older blog posts and videos that are still relevant.

5. You should Tweet 10 to 20 times a day to keep your brand name in the Twitter stream. 

You can schedule the Tweets that have links to valuable content and complement that with five to 10 personalized Tweets where you are interacting with other Twitter users.

6. Create a persona for your Twitter presence so people will get to know your brand.

Investopedia defines brand personality as "A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name." A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate, and an effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits. There are five main types of brand personalities: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication.

• Excitement. It's easy to spot a person who's excited on Twitter.These people love life, and they love everything they do. They also love to share their excitement with the Twitterverse, and it's fun to follow these people. Their Tweets will almost always uplift you.
• Sincerity. We all know the sincere people in our lives. They really care about you and your well-being. They Tweet the same way by always being genuine, caring, and sincere when they converse with others on Twitter.
• Ruggedness. These are the tough guys who never shed a tear. Their Tweets sound like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood confronting their adversaries and never backing down. You'll never see a hint of compassion or sympathy from rugged Tweeters.
• Competence. This is a well-educated, knowledgeable person who loves to Tweet information that will impress others. They love to share their knowledge and use big words in their Tweets, which can be challenging with the 140-character limit.
• Sophistication. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are sophisticated Tweeters. They love to Tweet pictures of their shopping trips and expensive cars, and let you know they're eating in the finest restaurants.