Promote your website using Social Media

First I would like to say something in honor of the late Michael Jackson. Even though you might have hated him, loved him, made fun of him, or adored him, what ever you felt about him you have to know one basic thing. He was a great performer and singer. No tricks or gimmicks behind it.

He was genuine, a one of a kind person. He might have had a few problems but if you ignore that fact Michael Jackson was a star.  Here are the tips to mimic him. Read closely and apply it your own writing.

1. Find something you love or are good at: Write about something you know about. Do not write half minded about a topic you have no clue about. The more you know about it, the more quality content you can put into it which in turn will make your readers enjoy it more.  Remember Quality = Great Content which leads to Readers = Interaction. Plus if you consider something boring do not write it your readers will feel the same way.
2. Be Full Of Energy: Write with lots of voice and energy. Put lots of exclamation points and adjectives and verbs. Make it like your writing an action book. Make excitement at every turn.
3. Plan: Plan out everything completely. There is no margin for error especially since you have less than 10 seconds to catch your reader’s attention.  Plan out your post completely and do tons of research so you know what your saying is credible.
4. Finish It All Off With A Bang: After you have gotten their attention finish it all of with a bang. More excitement, suspense, a controversial question. Make it full of explosions. Just do not over do it that it gets annoying. Picture seeing an Action/Adventure movie where there is bang, bang every second. It is just mindless slap stick and explosions that gets tiring- and annoying. Put a plot to it.
5. Ignore Hateful Comments: Just like Michael you have to ignore hateful comments. Do not let it ruin your self-esteem or creativity. What ever bad comments there leaving try to fix what they say you’re doing wrong or suggesting. Also there are going to be trolls and haters who just like to make people feel bad and besides not everyone will like your content. Just let it slide.

If you take all these suggestions to heart and try to make each post better than the next you will have a following. After I implemented these tips to my own website I got tons more interaction with you’re my readers and more traffic.  Let your name live long in the inter webs with a nice outlook.

In a recent community discussion article entitled What is a Brand? you provided some amazing concepts about the building blocks for a successful brand for a business or a blog.

It was also neat to note the shift in perspective that so many of us have clearly made in our ideas of branding. We discovered together that branding isn’t just about logos, slogans, and designs. It’s about the perceptions that potential customers have in their minds when they think of it.

The responses in that post were remarkable. Below you’ll find a sampling of some of the concepts that were shared in the conversation.

Branding isn’t visual…it’s mental.

A brand is something that is not recognized visually but mentally.

~ Mike Stenger from MikeStenger.com

A strong brand draws people in.

A brand to me answers the question “What is the business or individual known for?” It’s a combination of traits that form something valuable that people are drawn to and want to tell their friends about.

~ Tim Zager from Magic Dude Marketing

A brand is the very core of your business.

The fact is however, that branding goes much further. A brand is the very core of your business or organization, from it’s appearance on print and web, to it’s personality and clientele. Every time someone speaks to you on the phone, an impression of your organization is being made, thus branding is in the making.

~ Thomas McGhee from WinePress of Words

A brand sets you above your competitors.

The best part about the whole brand thing is that customers may choose you over competitors (often, even) just because they like the brand image you’ve built, not even due to the quality of your product or whatever.

~ Jason Periera from The University Kid

Group Reflection

Remember that a brand isn’t just about what your promoting. It’s about what people are getting from your promotions.

Toyota has been building a brand around the idea of reliability for the past 10 or 15 years and it’s worked to propel them to the top of the automotive industry. This year, however, that has all changed with their massive negative publicity related to the accelerator sticking on their newer models. It doesn’t matter how reliable they say their vehicles are when the news is running non-stop that the controls don’t work properly.

So what are doing to build your brand? Are you projecting an image to the world of reliability, expertise, and professionalism?

With the explosion of social media the last several years, the internet is becoming even more interesting. People just like you and I are building big brands and building their blogs, on a platform that costs zip, zero, nada, just some time and effort.

Just the other day I came across a post titled “Top 10 Reasons to Care About Social Media” and here are just a few of the statistics:

• 2/3 of the global internet population uses social networks.
• Social media is the #1 online activity, beating out porn and email.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be larger than the US and the 3rd (yes, 3rd) largest country in the world!

Social media isn’t just some fad…it’s where the internet is shifting and where those who understand it and use it, can make big things happen.

If you’ve been following Nick’s blog, you see that he puts out consistent content to really help you blog better. What I wanted to do was come in and touch on some ways to build your blog through social media and have it be much more of a good traffic source.

Step 1: Make sure people have a clear idea of what you do/write/do videos about and where they can find that content.

I’ll see people all the time who just throw a link up that goes to one of their “social profiles” account and that has a link to their website. Screw that! If you want people to really see your content, put your website up where everyone can see and so that site will be associated you. That way, when they come across your Twitter, Facebook, etc., they’ll be like “Yeah, that’s the guy from robsfriedchickentips.com”.

Step 2: Setup a way of getting your content posted to your social networks (consistently) and at good time intervals.

Like I replied to someone recently about this, “If you throw up a billboard in a small populated area, you’re not going to get nearly as many eyeballs as if you posted it downtown.” You want to make sure your posting your new content at peak traffic times. I myself find the best times to be between 12PM and 6 or 7 PM. Of course this isn’t the same for everybody, just a good gauge that you can start testing with.

Step 3: Make sure your blog is “optimized” for that social media traffic.

The downside of social media traffic is the high-bounce rate. Considering that most of that traffic consists of people wanting something and wanting it NOW (very distracted most of the time too), you’ve got to make a clear focus to the content. A bunch of ads and all these popups will just frustrate the reader and then they’ll get back to what they were doing.

On my blog where I talk about business, success and social media strategies, you’ll see that there is a clear focus on the content. I’m not saying that to brag but it’s very important because that’s what really matters at the end of the day. I found that by de-cluttering my site, I was able to bring my bounce rate down 9%. Not a huge improvement but it helps…

In further optimizing your blog, make sure you have easy ways of sharing that content on AT LEAST Twitter and Facebook. You can support more than that but you want at least the basics because it’s great that people read your content but it’s even greater when they share it with their friends and followers.

Step 4: Always be testing.

You want to always be working on and improving what you do and how you do it. If you sit still and don’t do anything differently, nothing will likely happen. They say the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” Don’t build your blog through insanity…build it through some good ol’ testing and consistent action, not just in social media but in general.

Discussion

What ways are you capitalizing on social media traffic. Do you have any unique or different ways of getting more eyeballs to your site through social media?

According to dictionary.com, the word social refers to the relations of human beings in a community. Technology has now brought us together into a broad, global online community. Twitter, facebook, and other forms of social media have brought us together. They now allow us to connect with each other from across the globe.

I can now communicate instantly across the internet with my wife, my in-laws, my parents and even my grandparents. I can reach out to new people and make friends and safely connect and engage perfect strangers in conversations.

But as with any good thing, people soon try to figure out how to monetize it even at the expense of it’s quality. People spam their links across Twitter. They market their worthless products. They excessively use auto-tweeters and affiliate links. They don’t engage and connect as real people. They don’t understand what it means to be social.

Even though I say they, I really mean we. We do these things. We spam the people around us thinking that it helps build our online products.

Group Reflection

What ever happened to being social? What ever happened to acting like members of a community? When did we stop having real conversations? When did we stop acting like humans?

Internet surfers are looking for access to fast, easy-to-find information. They don’t want to spend any extra time searching for information. They want to find what they’re looking for so that they can move on and get back to whatever else they have to do as quickly as possible.

When a reader lands on one of our articles, most aren’t going to take the time to read the entire thing. I know that I rarely do. I seldom take the time to read an entire article. I peruse the article for concepts that can help me the most and I read only those paragraphs that interest me the most.

How to Create Content for Casual Readers

Here’s some ways to make your articles easier for your readers to skim.

• Use headlines: Making use of headlines like the one above allows readers to know exactly where one concept ends and another begins. If they’re not interested in your first point, this allows them to skip immediately to the next.
• Use lists: If you have a list of concepts like the ones in this article, then using organized lists are a perfect way to allow people a quick overview of each point.
• Emphasize important information: Don’t be afraid to make text bold, italic, or underlined. If something is important, make it stand out to your readers eyes.
• Break up your paragraphs: On my site, I try to make ever paragraph six lines or fewer. If one extends beyond that, I find a way to break it up into two paragraphs. People aren’t going to dig through a mile long block of text.

Community Reflection

Do you resent the fact that people don’t read your articles all the way through or do you embrace it and cater to it? Do you make it easy for your readers to find information quickly and efficitently?

Most people don’t want to spend 20 minutes at your website. They want to get in, get their information, and get out.

What are you doing to make that easier for your readers? What other ideas are you implementing on your blog?