The Social Media Optimization (SMO) of SEO: 7 Key Steps

Social media optimization (SMO) was originally designed to drive traffic from social media sites such as bookmarking sites and social networks. However, SMO is now significantly more important and not simply because social networking has grown but because SMO also improves SEO performance. Good SMO will drive traffic from both direct social site referrals and from search engines.

The Origin of SMO

Social media optimization (SMO) was first used in 2006 by Rohit Bhargava in his article the 5 rules of social media optimization. At this time the core focus was driving traffic to websites from social sites. 

This remains the core purpose of SMO as outlined in Wikipedia "SMO is similar to search engine optimization in that the goal is to generate traffic and awareness for a website. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content in terms of sharing across social media and networking sites."

The SEO Shift

In Rohit's initial article the focus of SMO was on linkability, portable content and easy bookmarking. This has changed over the years as social networks have changed and also as search engines have looked to social signals to help rank content. Wikipedia says "social media optimization is becoming increasingly important for search engine optimization, as search engines are increasingly utilizing the recommendations of users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to rank pages in the search engine result pages."

Arguably traditional SEO focused on the technical structure of websites rather than the user experience or even the quality of content itself. SMO is very concerned with the quality of the content, the authority of the author and the user experience of interacting with the content and the author. These aspects of SMO can help improve SEO performance as search engines increasingly look for social signals to aid the ranking of pages. 

This was highlighted very clearly by Joshua Berg and Mark Traphagen in a recent Google+ hangout on SMO and SEO. Joshua and Mark are two of the most knowledgeable people in this area and both commented on the growing importance of the social web to search engines.  Joshua Berg commented that “social signals provide a much better way of filtering out the noise and improving the quality of search results”  and Mark Traphagen agreed that “as the social web emerges it provides a better set of signals about what is valuable on the web.”

This was reinforced in a post last week by Dustin Stout. He concludes "social proof is now being factored into search engine rankings. There are various studies that have been done on this, but all of them agree that the more social shares a website or blog post has, the better it is likely to rank."

Social signals may not as simple as the number of shares or the size of a person's network. For example, the network size may be less important than who is in the network and who interacts with a user's content. Social networks provide vast volumes of data which can be analysed to identify patterns and collective preferences. Machine learning, the construction of systems that can learn from data, is increasingly being applied to this data to develop new insights so search engines are likely to use something more complex than just the number of shares.

Word of Warning: Excessive Link Dropping Is Not SMO 

You might be tempted to think that one way to SMO your content is to join every LinkedIn Group, Google Plus community, etc., and to share links to your content seeking shares or comments. You would be wrong, very wrong.

This behavior is not only frustrating for other users but counter productive. Firstly real users are likely to unfollow you or hide your posts on Google Plus or even report your content as spam. The situation is even worse with machine learning. If there is no interaction with your posts and links, such as sharing, commenting or liking, then this would indicate to any machine trying to learn from the data that your content is not valuable. Thus the more you post the more your content may be seen as not valued or authoritative. 

You would be far better focusing in specific communities and really engaging with a relevant audience and authoritative experts. 

7 Steps To improve Your SMO

Joshua Berg is one of the leading advocates of SMO. He has promoted a seven step model REALSMO, which is:

• Reputation - build your reputation as a reliable qualified source
• Engagement - encourage more engagement, sharing & reciprocate
• Authority - become a notable authority in your field of expertise
• Leadership - harness originality & creativity, be a Thought Leader
• Social - be social, find and engage sociable experts in your field
• Media - know your social media platforms to maximize influence
• Optimization - improve technical aspects to increase optimization

These seven steps provide a good benchmark against which you can assess and plan your current SMO activity. 

If I may be allowed to stand on the shoulders of a giant I would add my thoughts to each of these seven steps as follows: 

1. Reputation 

Your reputation in my view starts with ensuring you are either an expert or you act as an expert curator. This means undertaking thorough research and producing original content or curating quality content. This will make you a respected and qualified source.

Your reputation is also about how you engage and support people. Your reputation will be enhanced if you openly share your content and expertise including content that is not your own, engage with others through discussions and commenting, and if you are friendly and helpful to people. 

I think fundamentally your reputation is enhanced by simply being helpful to people. 

2. Engagement 

You need to actively engage with your audience. This can include commenting, mentions, shares, likes, and plus ones. No one is as smart as everyone so share other peoples' content and provide a good user experience by providing feedback and comments.

You need to target the networks with which to interact and make it easy for people to interact. It may be that people will interact with content on your site but you may find a far greater number of people willing to interact in their existing communities such as Google+ communities and LinkedIn groups. You can combine these by using say Google+ comments on your blog. Asking users to create accounts on your site will discourage users from commenting so use existing social logins such as LinkedIn or tools such as Disqus.

You can also encourage people to engage with a call to action, for example if you find this article helpful please share it. If you think I have missed anything please add your comments below. 

3. Authority 

There are many aspects to authority. Search engines are interested in ascertaining what individuals and brands are seen as authoritative and trusted by real people on the Internet. The most obvious example of a move in this direction is Google Authorship. Setting up Google Authorship can help establish you as an expert and show your profile prominently in search results. For example. I have spent many years researching the elearning market and writing a monthly market update. Thus when you search for 'elearning market' you will hopefully see my result (image below) with my picture and a link to my profile.  

You can also enhance your authority and the value of content through social proof. In essence the more your content is shared through plus ones, retweets, bookmarks or likes the more it indicates the value and usefulness of your content. It may also encourage others to read your content. For example, my recent post on Google+ and SEO received over 2,500 plus ones and a thousand retweets. Hopefully this means a fair number of people found the article helpful and shareworthy. I am sure it also helps the SEO, as if you search for "google+ SEO" the article was at the time of writing appearing high on page one of the results page.

 

4. Leadership 

To me leadership is about high quality research, thinking and original content production. 

A leader will research everything they can about their areas and share thoughtful insights which will add value to your audience. Poor quality content will be perceived as such and as a consequence will not be shared.

As a leader you can also create value for your audience through content curation. This means adding value to content by providing a summary, adding context or a perspective to the content you are sharing. 

5. Social 

You also need to build high quality networks, quality potentially matters more than quantity. Seek out the experts in your field, read what they say, engage them in debate and share your ideas. 

6. Media platforms

It is important you focus on the right platforms and communities

Where does your audience hang out? Find and focus on the platforms, communities and groups where your audience hangs out.

Some platforms are far more effective in improving the SEO benefits of SMO than others. In my view the most effective platform is Google Plus 

This was reinforced in recent days by the post I mentioned from Dustin Stout on social signals and Google+. His research led him to conclude that Google is counting all activity from all Google+ posts back to the original blog post. Thus in Dustin's view "Google is trying really hard to give your shared links all the social credit they deserve."

7. Optimization 

I have included below some of my thoughts on the practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO below.

Share buttons - make it easy to share for users by adding share buttons to your content. You should also show the numbers of shares to demonstrate social proof.

Social Icons - group and display your social icons in a prominent place on your site.

Subscription options - group together subscription options such as email, RSS, and newsletters.

Shareable content -  some content is more readily shareable such as infographics or 5 top tips articles. I think this is partly because it is short and scannable. However, I hope and believe longer but well written content will also be shared.

Social login - use social login options to make it easy for users to comment.

Rich snippets - social networks pull in rich snippets, data designed to summarise the content of a page. These are very useful for users. The different social networks pull in this data in different  ways. Facebook uses OpenGraph, Twitter uses Twitter Cards and Google Plus will take values from OpenGraph, you just need to set up your authorship profile for your rel="author" tag to work correctly.  If you use WordPress you can use the Yoast plugin to manage and optimise these rich snippets 

Title tags - Optimize your title tags for sharing, especially on Twitter where there is a character limit and include your name.

Images - they really do say more than a thousand words. Include images that add value and include an image that can be used as a thumbnail for your content.

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7 Tips For Social Media Optimization

Social Media Optimization (SMO) refers to using social media outlets to increase awareness about your brand/product and increase web traffic. But, SMO is no longer limited to marketing and brand building for organizations, but has grown to encompass many different departments within the organization such as Human Resources, Client/Customer Satisfaction, product development, Business Development and Sales. As these other departments start to realize how to effectively utilize social media channels, SMO is taking a bigger focus within organizations.

So what can you do to make sure your website and social media strategies are having the best impact on your business?  Below are a few things to consider that I have noticed when discussing SMO.

Optimize your share buttons- The worst thing you can do is place a social share button at the top/bottom of your piece of content and not change the automated messaging. You are already asking your visitors to share your content; the least you could do is make it easy for them to do so. Including the title (or message) of the content you want shared and your company’s twitter handle (for tweet buttons) is a great way to maximize this sharing opportunity. If your visitor has to look up your handle to manually add the “via @AGSalesworks” your chances of getting the share decrease tremendously as well as your visibility. If your visitor has to manually add the title of the content to the tweet/share, your chances of getting the share dropped to just above zero. Lay the ground work for your visitors so that all they need to do is click the share button and move on.

Allow employees to share job openings on their Social Sites- Recruiting on social sites has become very main stream. Most HR suite of services have realized this notion and optimized their own offerings to include social media in the recruiting strategy. Jobvite and Bullhorn are two of the bigger ones that I seem to run across routinely on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook. Organizations should be utilizing their employee’s as a resource to increase the number of applications and qualified candidates.

Include Social Icons with employee email signatures- Increase your company’s visibility and traffic by driving potential prospects to the appropriate social media channels. Most email recipients will click the icon they are the most active on so include all of the icons where your company has a presence. If your company has multiple accounts active, I would cap the icons at 5 and choose the ones that are most active or have the highest following and most success.

Add your social sites to your marketing collateral- Most people are on social media in some form. Facebook seems to be a staple, but Pinterest and Twitter are gaining in popularity quickly. Let your prospects know what sites your business can be found on and where they can best interact with you. This is your opportunity to start building more relationships through your social media outlets and gaining new visitors.

Target at least one Social Tool/Application to utilize- The market has become over saturated with social media tools or applications to assist with your social strategy. That said, there’s a reason why there are so many; in most cases you will save a lot of time and energy when monitoring or engaging on your social sites. Tools such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, and SproutSocial are a few of the bigger names that come to mind. SocialBro is another good one that works great with Hootsuite. Find a tool that you like and make the investment; in most cases the monthly dollar amounts are very minimal and reasonable.

Link your social accounts? ­- Be wary of using the same message on all social media accounts. It is best if you adjust your messaging depending on what social account you are using. Each social media account should be developed with a specific focus. Example: Facebook may be used for showing company culture while Twitter is used for sharing company content. Linkedin is developed to show the company’s solutions or services while Tumblr may be used to share different aspects of your company persona. Why would someone follow all of your accounts if they can see the same message by only following one account? Know what message works best with each social account to maximize its benefits. Your follower’s on different accounts are doing so for different reasons, don’t confuse the message.

Include social share buttons on your landing pages- You accomplished one task of driving traffic to your landing page, now give your web visitor the opportunity to share your content should they find it compelling enough. Again, make sure you have adjusted the message so that it projects the message you want shared and make it easy for visitor to share your content with their audience.

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Four things to always avoid in social media

It really was just another session, but as it was one of the only ones focusing on social media, sometimes it's good to go back to basics. Part of the panel session highlighted top tips on what not to do in the social media space.

1) Don't overpromote/ sell

When people use social media on a personal basis, they aren't in a mindset to be sold to so don't invade their personal space. Most social media purchase decisions happen in the back of the brain because you've planted a seed by just being there in the first place. Direct selling will undo all your social media efforts.

But where can you sell? You have to watch the terms and conditions on each platform. Though it is commonly known that you can't offer rewards or have competitions on your Facebook page, as platforms change so do the rules. Now that cover photos have been introduced, there are a few things you can't do:

• Price or purchase info such as 40% off
• Contact info such as web addresses, phone numbers, etc
• References to user interface elements such as like or share
• Calls to action such as get it now or tell your friends

If you do any of these things, then you can get shut down without any warning.

2) Don't be lazy

It's very easy with tools such as ifttt.com as well as cross connection between platforms to automate your posts. 

• Though it's tempting, don't forward tweets to Facebook. Though the panelists suggested that you can send Facebook posts to Twitter, I wouldn't recommend it. If your fans follow you on multiple social media sites, you want them to get different messages at different points of the day in order to give them what suits the platform and why they are there in the first place.
• Don't post a link without explaining why you are posting - otherwise it looks like a virus.
• Auto replies are not genuine to people that support you more than once i.e. already follow you elsewhere or have purchased from you in the past. If your call to action, things like "also like me here" is one that doesn't apply to everyone who could start following you. This approach doesn't make you feel important or connected. Basically, don't set it and forget it.
• Don't invite everyone on your list to Facebook events if they aren't applicable. It may be 3000 miles away, the event may not be interesting, and if you send it at short notice, it could cost 2000 to get a plane ticket.
• Don't set up a page just to grab the URL unless you're also willing to engage and create and share content. Nothing is worse than your customers heading to empty pages or messaging you in places you aren't active so they don't get the response they're expecting.

3) Don't act desperate

Begging is not attractive. Personal requests are OK but really if your content is good enough, people will know what to do. How you present yourself in the space translates to how you do your business.

As Shannon Vogel said, if your audience is a woman at home, at night, after the kids go to bed, and she is relaxing, she doesn't want to see the prescheduled punch in the face "buy from me, buy from me, buy from me." Your opportunity is to connect and help. Most of all remember to be more interested than interesting.

4) Don't do it if it doesn't feel good

If you ever ask yourself, should I post this, does it sounds spammy or sales pitchy, or wonder if it will offend someone, don't take the risk.

My favorite analogy from the Affiliate Summit East came out of this session: social media engagement is a lot like sex. Tips included:

• You don't ask for it right after you say hi
• You have to work for it if you want more
• It takes work if it's going to be any good
• It's better to be attentive to the right people rather than not fully present with many
• Flattery will get you everywhere. "Look at me, look at me," not so much.

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Social Media: new rules of business etiquette

Today, more business-related discussions take place via e-mail, social media and web conference than over lunch. Unfortunately, the finer points of ‘tech etiquette’ are less established. One bad social media blunder could put you career at risk.

Unlike professional networking portals, Facebook and Twitter were initially designed to keep up with friends and family. Now, individuals increasingly leverage these tools for career- and business-related purposes. While the line between ‘personal’ and ‘professional’ continues to blur, many job hunters and employees damage their credibility with ill-advised keystrokes.

To help you avoid career-limiting faux pas, here are some social media do’s and don’ts.

DO post polished content. When using your accounts for business purposes, think strategically about every piece of information you share. Proofread your status updates and tweets. Even in the relatively fast and loose world of social media, poor spelling and punctuation can negatively affect your credibility.

DON’T post empty updates about your lunch or desperate pleas for FarmVille assistance. Instead, highlight your professional knowledge. Share thoughts on industry trends and developments, link to insightful news articles or ‘retweet’ pertinent posts from others in the field.

DON’T let your guard down. Think twice before venting. Going public with job-related gripes and groans is a recipe for disaster. The same is true of off-color jokes, gossip, inappropriate photos and potentially controversial comments about touchy topics such as politics and religion.

DO pause before posting to consider how your professional contacts (or a future hiring manager) might view your questionable content. One imprudent post is all it takes to do irreparable harm to your reputation.

Technology continues to create fascinating new forums for connecting, sharing and, yes, blundering. Unfortunately, certain technology-related bad habits have spread like viruses.

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Cleaning Up Your Social Media Presence

Social media are a given in our lives. They are a great tool for staying in touch and communicating with people, as well as a critical channel for networking when doing a job search.That said, social media are a bit of a double-edged sword.

Today’s recruiters are using the same tools to find out about others and to learn about you. Have you reviewed your history on Facebook? Which photos are public? Do you have posts on Facebook that anyone can view? Are those going to be seen as a positive or negative reflection of you by a recruiter or hiring manager?

LinkedIn is predicted to be the dominant recruiting portal of the future. Many employers I speak with actively use LinkedIn to source talent and to check out people before they interview them. Before meeting with someone for the first time, I automatically go to LinkedIn to learn a bit about his or her background.

If I’m interviewing a candidate for a job, I check out the LinkedIn profile to see what is posted. Does your profile match your résumé? Have you spent the time ensuring that your online profile is rich in information that will give the reader a better impression of you and your experiences?

As a job seeker, it is important that you understand the search process from the recruiter’s and hiring manager’s perspectives. Too often, job seekers are wrapped up in seeing things only through their own lenses. To be successful and more strategic about your search, I encourage you to put on the other party’s hat for a moment.

If you understand the tools the recruiter is using to identify talent, you then know how to best present yourself when using those tools. For example, if you know recruiters are using LinkedIn to identify talent and you know the type of position you’d like, is your profile reflective of the key characteristics/traits for that type of role? If you are looking to become a marketing manager, are you highlighting the same accomplishments and qualities you’ve highlighted in your résumé? You’ve spent an agonizing number of hours on your résumé. Have you spent enough time and effort on your LinkedIn profile?

What about the information you’ve put out in cyberspace through Facebook and Twitter? You may want to go back and review your tweets. Is there anything embarrassing out there? I suggest you ask a good friend to take a look at your tweets and Facebook page through the lens of a recruiter or hiring manager. It can be difficult to judge oneself.

Social media are terrific. But be mindful as a professional that you don’t want anything out there that could prevent you from being the candidate of choice. Take a closer look at your electronic profile.

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Marketing to Women? Keep These 3 Facts in Mind

Throughout history, women have strongly impacted buying habits — they control 85% of purchasing in the U.S. And so, brands have tapped their influence by creating strategic marketing campaigns that relate personally to the female audience.

Although a different beast, social media marketing continues to make headway by targeting a powerful subset of connected and engaged women, especially mom bloggers with big social followings.

A survey conducted by Women’s Marketing Inc. published new findings that shed light on social media marketing and women. We’ve pulled three important lessons from the data, which will help businesses to refine their marketing tactics, especially as they pertain to the female demographic.

1. Women Are More Likely to Purchase Brands They Follow

It makes sense, really, considering women are more present on social media than men. On Facebook alone, women are 55% more engaged than men. Similarly, 55% of women are more likely to purchase from brands they interact with on social media.

Bonnie Kintzer, CEO of Women’s Marketing Inc., offers some initial advice for small business marketing strategies targeted to women. “First you have to know your customer and whom you want to reach,” she says. “Who is she and how does she buy? What media does she see and what channels does she shop in all day long? Once you know that, you know where to focus.”

2. Women Use Social Media to Connect Different Aspects of Their Lives

Four out of 10 women feel that the primary benefit of social media is to connect with family and friends. But not far behind, 37% of women think the primary benefit is being alerted to coupons, promotions and deals by connecting with brands on social media.

This data demonstrates that women are primarily on social media to forge meaningful connections with their personal circles, but a similar set is also willing to interact with brands. As a small business, look to combine the two different kinds of outreach into a sincere and personal marketing strategy. In other words, humanize your brand to create a social media presence that women are willing to connect with — and share with friends.

Almost three-quarters of women (72%) like to use social media to connect various parts of their lives. “Women use social media to integrate disparate roles – family, work and personal — online, says Kintzer. “They use it to connect with family, friends and brands.”

3. Different Women, Different Outreach

Although you probably wish you could reach all women with one marketing strategy, the reality is that women of different ages and backgrounds access social media in various ways.

In general, 46% of women first turn to their smartphones first thing in the morning; 31% access their computers. This data indicates that to reach the largest female audience possible, you should tailor a strong mobile campaign.

However, also think about the age group and demographic of women you’re targeting. These factors strongly influence the type of marketing content a woman encounters. Women under 40 are more likely to check their smartphones first thing, whereas women over 40 are more likely to check their computers and/or watch TV. Furthermore, full-time employed women more often turn to smartphones, but female homemakers rely on computers for their first doses of information.

“Consumption of traditional media, such as print and TV, goes up at night and on weekends,” adds Kintzer. “To reach women, know who she is and what media she consumes all day long. Plan an integrated campaign, because all the channels feed off each other. If a potential customer hears or sees your message in more than one context or venue, she will remember it, and it is far more effective.”

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Overall, 30% of women report they have become more social offline since participating in social media. That doesn’t mean they’re spending less time on social media. It certainly means, however, that the more often women interact with your brand online, the more likely they are to carry that experience into their everyday lives.

As a business, never discount women’s roles as strong brand influencers. Just remember that they overwhelmingly prefer a personal component in their online activities. Develop a way to combine the two and you will have created a promising marketing strategy indeed.

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10 Ways Social Media Technologies Are Adding Value And Productivity

Social media technologies have touched humanity in a primal way. You only need look at the adoption rates of Facebook and Twitter to realize that the web is indeed connecting human consciousness.

At almost no cost we can connect with like minded tribes globally at scale and speed. We can share ideas and knowledge in words, images and with the virtual face to face technologies of online video that transcends time and place.

Knowledge transfer is almost instantaneous. It is transforming humanity deeply at the personal and business levels.

Social technologies are unlocking ideas from isolation and allowing them to be free to roam and add value to our lives.

This process is also being accelerated and amplified by the wide adoption of the smart phone.

The potential value of this transformation has been estimated by a study from McKinsey Global Institute as having a value of up to $1.3 trillion across just the 4 industries that they studied.

1. Consumer packaged goods
2. Consumer financial services
3. Professional services
4. Advanced manufacturing

This is just a sample of the potential that awaits globally across many more industries that could benefit from the efficient use of social technologies.

Potential is Largely Untapped

The potential for the enterprise is still largely untapped despite the widespread adoption by consumers as evidenced by the following facts and figures.

• 
  
• There are 1.5 billion social network users
• 80% of online users interact with social networks regularly
• 70% of companies are using social technologies

Social networks can add value to almost any business but companies that will benefit most from social technologies will have these characteristics.

• 
  
• High percentage of knowledge workers
• 
  
• Business success is dependent on brand recognition and consumer perception
• 
  
• Need to build credibility and trust to sell their products and services
• 
  
• Digital distribution of products and services
• 
  
• Experiential or inspirational products and services

The report estimates that consumer goods companies could increase their margins by up to 60% using social technologies through goods that better meet customers needs and improve the productivity of knowledge workers.

Ten Ways Social Technologies Add Value

Across every industry there lies enormous potential to add more value through implementing social technologies from better customer insights, improved marketing to social commerce.

Here are ten ways social technologies are adding value that are revealed by the study from McKinsey.

1. Co-Create Products

Companies using social platforms can crowd source ideas from their consumer community. This could include product ideas, evaluation of the ideas by the crowd and the continuing modification and evolution of the products and services to produce a better product that better meets needs. It could include consumers submitting designs.

2. Demand Forecasting

Through multiplying the the potential sources of information about demand, companies can obtain more accurate and granular data. This could lead to better inventory control and better placement of stock where local demand is higher. The buzz from social networks can help pinpoint where the first responders are and allow staff to redirect additional stock to the highest buzz spots.

3. Distributing Business Processes

Companies such as TomTom and Google Maps are using inout from users to locate and qualify mapping errors and the latest updates to road networks. TomTom is even now adding crowdsourced real time traffic flow to its service that provides the latest data on traffic jams and accidents provided by users from their cars.

4. Market Research

Market research can be costly and take months but now you can gather online chatter about your competitors in real time. There are now tools that can measure sentiment as it happens that allows companies to see if the latest feedback about a product is positive or negative. Brand health can be now checked by the “Chatter” tone online.

5. Marketing Communications

Marketing interaction was limited in the past to snail mail and was costly and slow. Now we have communication that is effectively close to zero cost and provides feedback in minutes. You can see what types of marketing communications are engaging and what aren’t. Online customer communities are being created by the savvy enterprise with Adobe’s forums having one million members.

6. Lead Generation

Sales opportunities required telemarketing and expensive advertising to make the phone ring. B2B companies are now discovering the power of social networks to attract customers and drive inbound inquiries. Displaying a companies expertise via blogs and online whitepapers and ebooks are transforming how professional services companies market their business. Software companies such as Hubspot have created online tools that allow companies to become much more efficient with their marketing.

7. Social Commerce

All of us listen to the recommendations of friends and family and social commerce allows companies to make it easy for their consumers to share what they have bought or “like”. This amplifies the marketing message and also improves conversion for online stores.

8. Customer Care

Companies such as SouthWest Airlines use channels like Twitter to respond to potential PR issues that are quickly diffused before they turn into public relations disasters. Agencies and larger brands are monitoring social media channels with community managers who monitor social networks such as Facebook to turn customer care problems into opportunities to impress customers with the speed of the response.

9. Collaboration

Social technologies are improving organisational performance by making collaboration and co-creation efficient both internally and with external suppliers and partners. This reduces time spent in face to face meeting and ensuring that best practice is followed and shared. Companies such as 37Signals uses social technologies to run a multimillion dollar company that operates with only 16 employees and is spread across 6 countries.

10. Matching Talents to Roles

Social platforms such as LinkedIn provide insights into people’s skills, passions and interests that provide a more complete picture of a candidate than a one dimensional resume will ever achieve.

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How to Increase Your Social Media Following via Email

Email is far from dead. It’s a very personal channel that is effective in raising the level of engagement with consumers. Here are some tips on getting consumers to “like” or follow your brand on social media channels even more.

1. Start With the Signup Page

Tell your followers who you are on your signup page(s). Make it easy to find your social media links by putting them on your email subscription page.

If you can — and if your consumer is willing — facilitate the email signup via social media. The Wall Street Journal does a nice job in this respect. Privacy issues may stop you from using the Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter sign-in to create an email account, and a few financial institutions have learned this the hard way.

2. Don’t Ask Users to “Be Your Friend”

Instead, make it a value exchange by featuring a discussion, asking a question or even offering resources (this could be access to a sales page, white papers or webinars). Using a certain level of intrigue and reciprocation is much more effective in obtaining new signups. Now, when consumers show up at your social site, be tactful and nurture them just like you would with your email marketing program.

3. Make it Mobile-Friendly

With more than 40% of consumers checking their email on mobile devices, make the mobile connection easy. You can do this by optimizing your content for mobile, reducing the content and by having an interactive exchange with your consumer. Ask for feedback on merchandise, solicit opinions on a column and add mobile surveys. The key is to give people the ability to interact via mobile devices.

4. Send a Socially Focused Email Message

Run a campaign each month where your primary call to action is to invite your consumer to join your social media following. When you do this, don’t take them to an empty discussion board. Instead think about getting your consumer into a discussion that is already well underway. Hold back on the offer to sell to the consumer within the email or even on your social media site as soon as they get there. Instead, use a content engagement strategy to get them there, get a dialogue going and then make the offer. This step-by-step approach works very well.

5. Reward via Exclusivity

Create special emails for your social media club by making exclusive offers to your insiders first. In fact, consider making the offer to your insider group and then seek their help in getting the word out to their group of friends. Prior to sending the email message, let people know that it is coming via social media. It is very easy to segment your email list, so why not share your message with your social club first?

• Promoted Tweets See 1% to 3% Engagement on Average
• Arby's Goes Way Back for Facebook Promotion
• Upping Your Social Media Following via Email
• Connect Big Data With Customer Behavior to Improve Social, Email, and Web ROI

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5 Insights into Global Social Media in 2012 (Infographic)

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