Business
I know this chapter is going to
throw a lot of people off, but people
need to understand this. One of the
major reasons why a lot of
otherwise intelligent and
experienced social media marketers
fail to get the results that they're
looking for is the fact that they're
using the wrong approach. Their approach to social media marketing and the websites they're promoting is a one-size-fits-all approach.
Now, you don't need me to explain to you why that is a bad idea. It doesn't work in most areas of your life and it definitely doesn't work when it comes to social media marketing. You can't look at this project with the mindset that as long as you pull traffic from social media platforms, then you can use the exact same method and the exact same communication tactics, regardless of the online entity or business you are promoting.
Since we're using content to develop relationships on social media platforms, this one-size-fits-all approach is even more fatal. I mean, it's a bad enough idea as it is, but if you were to use a content-based campaign, it gets even worse. The reality is that different business types require different content and publishing strategies. You have to customize, modify and tweak your particular content and publishing strategies on social media to fit the type of website you are trying to promote.
Now, there are a huge number of website variations out there. In fact, there are too many. I would venture to say that the only limit, really, is your imagination.
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But if you were to categorize these different website types into four rough forms, they would more or less fall into the following: publishing, e-commerce or drop shipping, email lists, and traffic sales.
Again, there are many variations of these, but if you were to look at the different types of business es out there, you can pretty much reduce them to these four
types. When you study these closely, they have different needs. They have different features that must be addressed, otherwise, you're not going to get the results you're looking for.
Unfortunately, a lot of social media marketers would try to promote a blog the exact same way they would try to promote a drop shipping or e-commerce website. Similarly, somebody who is essentially just trying to sell their social media traffic is trying to do content marketing like somebody with a blog. It doesn't work. It doesn't make any sense.
The bottom line is obvious: different strategies require different content types.
You must start with the type of online entity you are promoting. Are you promoting a blog? Do you have a website that uses a lot of articles? Do people contribute content? Well, you have a publishing website. Do you have a drop shipping online store? Maybe you built it with Shopify and you use Oberlo to get products from Aliexpress.
When people buy stuff from your storefront, your software orders the materials from Aliexpress and you keep the difference. Maybe you sell from your own inventory, it doesn't really matter. You run an e-commerce website. This is very different from a publishing business. Similarly, if you make your money through your mailing list, you can't market on social media the same way as you would if you had an online store. Again, different strategies require different content types.
What do you have available?
Now that I've gotten you thinking
about how special your specific
website target is, I need you to look
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at the different content types
available to you. You need to think
outside the box. You need to look at
all the available options out there
and how you can create content that
is tailored to your specific type of online entity.
Here are the list of content types you can use to promote different online entities, but your specific focus and specialization should weigh more heavily on certain types of content instead of others:
Audio clips
Slideshows
Infographics
Diagrams
Blog links
Videos
The Bottom Line: Don't Just Think Links
It really freaks me out, in fact, it really
saddens me when I see a lot of
otherwise capable social media
marketers focus almost entirely on
spreading their links. They think that
is the endgame. Well, yes, links are
important. I can see where they're
coming from because when people
click on a link, that's instant traffic.
But you have to understand that depending on the type of target site you are promoting, you would build a tighter brand if you share different types of content.
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In many situations, you probably would be better off sharing more audio or infographics and diagrams than if you were sharing naked links because people are bombarded with links every single day. You have to pay your dues. You have to become familiar enough to your target audience members using these different content types for them to eventually trust you enough to click on your link.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have this in reverse. They start with the links and when they get desperate, they then use other types of content. At that point, they are a day late and a buck short. Don't do that. Instead, use the derivative content first and then play up the links. Also, not all of these formats work with your particular type of website.
I would suggest that you look at your competitors first and pay close attention to the type of content they are currently sharing. What kind of format do they use?
Are they sharing mostly picture quotes? Are they focused primarily on video? Do they have a special fondness for diagrams? This is not random. This is actually telling you all you need to know about how to appeal to your target audience members.
This is no time to "be revolutionary" and come up with something completely out of left field. That's not going to work. There's a reason why your competitors are not doing that. At this point in the game, you should focus on what everybody else is doing and reverse engineer their formats.
Once you have established a distinct brand, then you can experiment with different formats, different ways of doing things, and possibly come up with something that is distinct to your brand.
But until and unless you reach that point, you need to focus first on reverse engineering what everybody else is doing. In other words, let them do your homework. Focus on what they're doing right and build on it. Figure out their areas for improvement and come up with a more compelling offer. Pay attention to what they're not doing. Avoid those because obviously it doesn't pay.
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I hope I'm being clear here. Make sure that your content types as well as your sharing strategies fit the type of business you're in. A little bit of reverse engineering can definitely go a long way.
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Chapter 04 - The Classic Way to Do
Social Media Marketing and Why it is a
Waste of Your Time
Before I jump into the actual meat and
potatoes of this training, I need to
devote some real estate to how other
people are doing social media
marketing. I need to do this because
it's very tempting for people to engage
in the same practices.
I can see where they're coming from. It is easy. It's like seeing some chump change in front of you and it's almost irresistible to fight the urge of bending over and picking up that change.
But when you do that, it will throw you off. It will give you a false sense of incentive or reward and don't be surprised if you end up giving into your worst instincts only to walk away with less than nothing.
This happens all the time because human beings, being the way they are, would always take the path of least resistance. Who can blame them? But by warning you about how this works out, it is my hope that you stay away from this and focus instead on investing your time, effort and energy on the right way to do things.
The Classic Approach to Social Media Marketing So what is the classic approach to
social media marketing? Well, it's
actually quite simple. Whether we're
talking about Instagram, Twitter or
Facebook, you need to only "follow,"
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"like" or "friend" people who are interested in your niche.
You connect with all these people, and then after you have followed them, a lot of them would actually follow you back. For example, on Twitter, for every 100
follows, don't be surprised if maybe 20 to 30 people follow you back.
Now, this is where it gets really bad. Classic social media marketers would then spam their followers. They would just send all sorts of unrelated garbage, and then they would unfollow. Do you see the pattern? Follow, get followed, spam, unfollow. And I wish I could tell you that they do this sporadically, but instead, these self-professed "professional marketers" use all sorts of sophisticated software to do this.
Up until a few years ago, this worked like a charm. This was a great way to get a lot of Twitter traffic. But not anymore. This pattern, instead, can get you banned.
More importantly, whatever traffic you do manage to get using this tactic is not going to be any good. Why? There's no targeting. You're not pre-qualifying these people who would follow you.
The only reason why they followed you in the first place is because you followed them first. Where's the selection there? Where is the targeting there? Now, you can make wild guesses, but ultimately, it's a volume game and it leads nowhere.
The return on effort is not there.
I'm not saying that you can't make any sales doing this technique. I'm not claiming that. But what I am saying is that whatever rewards you get are not offset by the wasted time, effort and energy as well as opportunity costs involved. You're better off using a quality-based approach.
Audiences are Looking for Quality
The bottom line to Social Media
Marketing Revolution is to use quality
content. Your content will speak for you.
Your content will do the pre-sales job
regarding your brand.
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In other words, your content is your representative. It speaks to the values you want your brand to be associated with.
The Sad Reality
Even if the "follow, get followed,
spam, and unfollow" technique
still works for some people, the
rules have changed. Social media
platforms will reward or punish
you based on engagement. If you
want an extreme example of this,
just look at Facebook. Facebook
used to be a traffic goldmine. Not
anymore.
You need a really high level of engagement to preserve your reach on Facebook.
If you get normal levels of engagement, good luck. That's how bad things are, and that's why I need to take this time to spell out why this "classic social media marketing" no longer works.
Other Failed Methods
I would be remiss in my duty to educate
you on failed social media marketing
strategies if I don't also mention other
failed techniques. First, hashtag
hunting no longer works. This
technique involves marketers finding
hashtags that are trending. They
basically would publish niche-specific content, but use unrelated or irrelevant hashtags and pair them with their content.
They do this because they want to "hitch a ride" on the upward trend of those hashtags. They know people are searching for those hashtags. They know that 29
these hashtag trends are hot, so they want to poach as many eyeballs as possible.
Unfortunately, the traffic that you get is not going to be any good. People are looking for specific types of information, and when they see that your content is so obviously unrelated, they're not going to click through. You might even get reported.
Another failed method you should stay away from is influencer spamming. There are many influencers in almost all niches. If you want to see this in action, go to Facebook or Twitter. There are many specialized pages and specialized Twitter accounts.
Now, constantly mentioning those influencers on your content is not going to help if your content doesn't really add any value. There has to be a reason why you are engaging with these influencers. And drawing their attention is not enough. Getting them to look at your content because you think your content is hot is a lousy idea.
Instead, you should focus your engagement tagging based on what they did. For example, if an influencer was talking about recent trends in athletic shoes, then that person would be fair game for an article I post regarding the latest trends in athletic shoes and what they mean in terms of the bottom line of large footwear apparel companies.
That influencer would be directly interested in what I have to say because I am sharing content that is not only high quality, but is directly related to stuff he or she is already talking about. Do you see the specificity here? Do you see the direct link? Now, compare this with an influencer who talks only about forex and I tag that influencer when I'm talking about bitcoin.
That person is going to be annoyed. Do you see the difference? Finally, automated publishing with no outreach is not going to work. Basically, what you're doing is you're throwing spaghetti on the wall and hoping something sticks. If you're just publishing content on an automated basis on Twitter, 30
Facebook, Pinterest and other platforms, it's anybody's guess whether people would actually engage.
You have to do some outreach. You have to draw eyeballs to your content. You have to find existing pools of highly qualified audiences and get your social media account in front of their eyeballs.
Use your very best content. If you do this right, your automated publishing on social media will be greatly rewarded. Use a shotgun approach and you're probably going to get the same results as other failed social media marketers.
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Chapter 05 - Steps to Quicker and Easier
Modern SM Marketing
In this chapter, I'm going to give you
an overview of the 10 Steps I'm going
to teach you in this training. This
training is a product of many failed
experiments. Believe me, if you've
been exposed to some type of "hot" or
"ground breaking" social media
marketing technique or strategy, I've
been there. I've done that. This training is a product of all my experiences.
I know what works and I know what doesn't. I also understand that people have different skill levels, time horizons, and project resources. I understand the limitations. I understand most people's concerns regarding social media marketing. Accordingly, I've come up with a 10-Step Program that appeals to most social media marketers, regardless of how small or how big their budget is, and regardless of their skill levels.
If you're looking for a truly effective social media marketing game plan that you can set up to pretty much work on autopilot, this is it. Please understand that these steps that I'm going to lay out are exactly that. Steps. You need to follow them. You can't skip a step. You can't assume that since I mentioned certain keywords or I'm talking about certain themes and topics that you have mastered this already.
I need you to look at all this information with an open mind and pretend you are learning social media marketing all over again. If you don't have that mindset and you are all too eager to skip steps, don't be surprised if the plan that I'm teaching you will not work for you. How can it? You zipped through it. You rushed. You skipped through certain key parts.
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You need to be patient with this program by going through each step. Don't go to the next step until you've mastered the step you're on. I know you're busy, I know you don't have the time, but you need to do this right. Otherwise, you only have yourself to blame if things don't work out. Are we clear? Okay.
Here are the 10 Steps to Faster and Easier Modern Social Media Marketing: Niche research and targeting
Content curation
Reverse engineer your
competition's top content
Create fine-tuned payload
content
Market your mailing list right
Unlock the power of repurposed multi-platform content Automate content sharing
Scale up your targeting
Sell to your list differently
Reinvest your profits the right way
Those are the 10 Steps. I know they sound pretty simple. They definitely appear pretty straightforward, but the devil, as always, is in the details. See you in the next chapter.
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