Twitter Promotion: How to Encourage Others to Promote for You

#1: Include a Customized Tweet Button on Every Single Page of Your Product

When you have several pages on your product, service or event site, it’s important tohave the same tweet on every single page.

The first thing you need to do is create a custom Twitter share button. The button options available are Share a Link, Follow, Hashtag and Mention. You want to choose the Share a Link button.

The next step is to click on the option to include a different URL, rather than the Use the Page URL option. In this particular case, you’ll use the home page of your product, service or event. So when someone clicks on that tweet button to share on Twitter, they’ll be directed back to one central place, which is your home page.

Create a custom Twitter share button.

The next option is Tweet Text. This is where you can write in your own custom tweet. Also make sure you check the Show Count option, because it will display the total number of tweets.

You’ll hear why it’s important to show the number of tweets on your sales page, and the advantages to the Via and Recommend Twitter ID options.

The last step is to add a hashtag. When you visit our event page for Social Media Marketing World, you’ll notice that once you click on the tweet button, not only does it have our customized tweet, but it also includes the URL for the home page and the hashtag for the event.

Always include the hashtag in the customized tweet.

Once you have created your custom tweet, it’ll give you a little piece of code that you can put in a sidebar widget if you’re on WordPress, or embed the HTML where you want it. The good news is that it works over and over again.

Here are a few tips on how to craft your tweet:

• Write the tweet as if the user was writing it him- or herself.
• Make sure it’s not overly promotional.
• Craft it in a way that it’s easy to read.
• Include a hashtag.

Listen to the show to discover the types of phrases you should use in your custom tweet.

#2: Embed a Twitter Widget on Every Page That You Use to Promote

When you visit the event page for Social Media Marketing World, you’ll see the widget below. On the event page it’s live.

You can see the hashtag at the top, and underneath are the tweets relating to the event. The reason that they’re all in one place is because of the hashtag.

Embed the same Twitter widget on each of your promotional pages.

As you scroll through the tweets, you’ll see the people who have clicked on the custom tweet, plus those who are talking about the event in general.

You’ll hear why the value proposition in something like this on your sales page is huge, and the reason why I decided to have it on every single page at Social Media Examiner.

To create a Twitter widget, you first need to log into Twitter and then visit here. Next, click on Create New and then Search. You will see that it asks for Search Query. This is where you want to add the hashtag.

A Twitter widget is a great way for people to share their excitement about your promotion.

I would advise you to check the box that says Only Show Top Tweets. This is really important. Otherwise you’ll see every single retweet. Another box you should definitely check is the Safe Search Mode. This excludes all the profanity and sensitive content.

The next step is to choose the Height and the Theme. You’ll find out what height I chose for our widget, and why I selected Opt Out of Tailoring.

Now you have a piece of code that you can embed into a widget in WordPress or into your blog.

Listen to the show to discover why combining #1 and #2 is extremely powerful.

#3: Create a Transactional Tweet

Once you have the Twitter widget in place, the next step I want to show you is what I call the transactional tweet.

The objective of this type of tweet is to get someone who has just purchased, registered or signed up to share their excitement about the transaction.

In our particular case, once attendees have purchased a ticket, they are sent to a special page where there is a section in bold that says, “Tweet your excitement!”

Offer attendees an opportunity to share their excitement about purchasing a ticket for your event.

Once they click on this link, a tweet pops up in Twitter that says the person is attending Social Media Marketing World. The rest of it is very similar to the customized tweet.

People are so excited when they make a purchase decision. Every single day, a ton of people are tweeting out that they are attending our event. It creates an enormous amount of buzz.

Here are a few tips on how to create a transactional tweet:

• Use a service like ClicktoTweet and log in with Twitter.
• Craft the tweet.
• Include a link back to the main sales page.
• Add the hashtag.
• Check Click Stats if you want to track statistics.
• Copy the URL and paste under your browser. It creates the tweet for you. You can also embed it in your code.

The end result is that you now have a transactional tweet. So when someone has made a purchase, he or she can click on the tweet and let everyone know. The magic happens because you’ve got the hashtag, which will show up inside of your Twitter widget.

Listen to the show to hear what type of wording you need to use in the transactional tweet.

#4: Create Shout-Out Tweets

I recently started to experiment with shout-out tweets. The objective is to get people to engage with other people using some of the techniques in this article.

One of the options you can offer to people who have purchased a ticket for an event is the ability to tweet their favorite presenters. The buzz and excitement that this creates are unbelievable.

This type of tweet is very easy to create. You go to ClicktoTweet to craft a tweet. For this to be a promotional tweet, it’s very important to put a word in front of the Twitter user ID such as “Hi” or “Hey.” This will then be seen publicly in that person’s Twitter feed. Also remember to include the hashtag.

Make it a promotional tweet by adding a word in front of the Twitter user ID.

Once you have the simple URL, you can start to hot link it.

It’s another way to get promotion back to your sales page and aggregate all of those tweets into the Twitter widget.

Listen to the show to find out how it can be effective if you have a conference or event to promote.

#5: Pre-craft Tweets

If you only have time to do one of these steps, then this is the one you should focus on.

The objective with pre-crafted tweets is to get important people to share the content for you, and it’ll also make it easy for you to schedule on your own Twitter account. You need to provide everything so a person can just copy and paste into Twitter. This comes back to frictionless marketing.

You’ll hear how you can easily use this type of tweet for presenters to share on Twitter and why it’s a no-brainer for affiliates.

On our promo page, we have provided tweets for our affiliates.

The use of pre-crafted tweets gets you one step closer to people promoting for you.

I hope this has given you a lot of insight into how we promote our events at Social Media Examiner, and that you try these techniques for your product, service or event.

Listen to the show to hear another way you can use pre-crafted tweets so your customers can help spread the word.

Discovery of the Week

When you are involved in a Twitter chat, it’s important that it’s near enough to real time because of how intense these chats can become.

Recently discovered a new web-based app called tchat.io. It has a very simple interface.

First you type in your hashtag. You can sign in with Twitter if you want. This allows you to tweet from within the app and it will automatically add the hashtag to all of your tweets.

You can tweet from within the app.

This means that all of the tweets are aggregated around that particular hashtag. One of the cool things that I like about the app is that it allows you to mute retweets.

This app is close to real time and as the tweets appear, you can click on the one in question, then hit reply, quote it, favorite it or retweet it. It has all the basic functionality you would expect of any good hashtag-based Twitter chat client.

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New Facebook Features: What Marketers Need to Know

Facebook Features for Marketers

Has Facebook rolled out a lot of changes recently in response to Twitter and Google?

Mari states that there are many reasons for these new changes, although not necessarily in response to Twitter and Google+. However, Mark Zuckerberg and his entire team do keep a very close eye on the competition.

When it comes to features that have been around for a while, Facebook tends to be late with their release simply because they are a much bigger machine. They have a lot more complexity to deal with.

Facebook have a lot of complexity to deal with before they release new features.

With Facebook being a public company, they have to make money for their shareholders. They’ve made a lot of changes to their ad product and it seems like they move things around to try and get the marketers attention.

Listen to the show to find out why most of the features are there to predominantly improve the monetization aspect.

What Facebook hashtags are and why marketers should care

Mari explains that the simple definition of a hashtag is that it’s a way to group conversations together, around the same topic. This makes it easy to discover and follow conversations. Just like you see on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ and LinkedIn.

If you think about TV ads 2-3 years ago, the call to action would be an invite to join the brand, where they would give out their Facebook Fanpage. Now the call to action is a hashtag.

You’ll hear Mari talk about the reason behind why some TV shows have niche hashtags appear throughout their broadcast, instead of one main hashtag.

The TV show, So You Think You Can Dance use specific hashtags for viewer interactions.

As a business owner you need to start to experiment with hashtags. Find one or two hashtags that can help you ride a wave. There’s a term called newsjacking. It doesn’t sound very nice but it’s a very popular way to get your business in front of people who are talking about something anyway.

The great thing about Facebook’s hashtags, is that they are clickable. So if you click on any, whether it’s on a Post or a Comment, it opens up into what is called the Hashtag Feed. This feed displays other posts with the same hashtag.

The Hashtag Feed displays all posts with the same hashtag.

However, recently they have introduced related searches into this feature. So not only will you see the exact verbatim hashtag but also similar ones.

As a strategic marketer, Mari highly recommends every business owner make good use of hashtags. Even if you don’t have them personally, they are active for other people.

Listen to the show to find out how clickable hashtags can get you in front of new people.

Tips and creative uses for Facebook hashtags

Mari uses two generic Facebook hashtags which are #facebookmarketing and #facebooktips. You’ll hear what hashtag Mari uses to separate herself away from her peers.

It’s where you’ll find all of her posts. This is one thing to consider when you create hashtags.

Mari uses a mixture of generic and specific hashtags.

You really want to do your homework before you create a hashtag. Basically use the same best practices as you would on Twitter.

You can search by going to www.facebook.com/hashtag/whatever your keyword is. Every hashtag has it’s own unique URL, which you can use to drive traffic.

The hashtags are still very young on Facebook and most users don’t know how to use them. It’s something that you should experiment with and see if it makes a difference.

Listen to the show to hear why Mari believes Facebook hashtags are the tip of the iceberg and what else there is to look forward to in the future.

The changes on Facebook’s commenting system

Mari talks about the main change which is the Reply feature. It has been around for some time as a Facebook commenting plugin but was finally brought to the main Facebook site.

With the Replies feature it gives you the ability to have threaded conversations. On Fan Pages, you can turn it on or off. It’s a feature you can enable in your admin panel.

The Reply feature is a great way to have threaded conversations with your fans.

You’ll hear about a brand new feature that was rolled out recently, which is the ability to sort.

As a Page owner, Mari advises to make sure you use the @tag for the person or page you are replying to in the Reply feature. As a Fan Page you can hit the @sign and then start to type their name and that way their name will be a hot clickable link and they will also get a notification.

With regards to images, right now you can only use them in Personal Profiles with the Reply feature. When you hit Reply, you can add an image. It’s coming to Fan Pages and mobile too.

You’ll discover the advantages to using the threaded comment capability and what it means for your fans.

Listen to the show to find out what feature you can use to help drive traffic back to your conversation.

How marketers can take advantage of the new changes to the Facebook page cover image

The Facebook cover image is the huge header at the top of your Facebook page and is there for visual branding.

The cover image is the perfect space for visual branding.

When Facebook first introduced the Timeline design about 18 months ago, the rules were very strict about what you could have in the image. For instance, you weren’t allowed your website name, contact information, calls to action or arrows pointing to features.

You are now allowed to add call to actions to your cover image.

Earlier this year the rules changed and the only one that remained in place was the 20% text rule. More recently this rule has quietly disappeared out of the Page Guidelines. The only caveat is that the 20% text rule still applies to any paid products.

This new change got a lot of social media experts and Facebook experts excited.

You can use text in so many different ways on your cover image.

You’ll discover why you need to keep your cover image visually appealing and how frequent you should change it.

Listen to the show to find out what Mari recommends you put in the description of your cover image.

What’s the deal with Graph Search? 

If you make the swtich to Graph Search, you’ll notice that the search box at the top will look completely different. Your name and your page now sits in the white search box.

When you type in any word or name you’ll get a drop down box with a bunch of different icons in there. For example, there is an icon for the hashtag and for photos.

From the drop down box in Graph Search you'll see different icons for each category.

If you haven’t already got Graph Search, you’ll find out what you need to type in the search bar on Facebook.

You are able to search for four things which are photos, people, places/pages and interests. However, it will not surface an individual post and is only available on desktop right now.

You’ll hear Mari give an example of how you can use Graph Search to find people within a very narrow niche and how you can use it to search for specific photos.

Listen to the show to find out how you could use it in terms of a business application.

Discovery of the Week

If you want to find out what your website or blog looks like on a laptop, tablet, smartphone or desktop, then you should check out this free tool by QuirkTools called Screenfly.

Give Screenfly a try if you are interested to know how others see your site on their device.

You can enter any URL from your website and you’ll have options to see how it looks on any size desktop or any hand held device. You’ll also find many other options that are available with this tool.

It’s not perfect but it’s good enough to run a quick test if you hear from some of your readers that your site doesn’t look right on their device or desktop.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

Other Show Mentions

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve done a series on ‘How to Launch,’ using the new site we are launching as an example.

I’m very excited to let you know that My Kids’ Adventures has officially launched this week.

It’s an online magazine for busy working parents, who want to have fun adventures with their kids anywhere. It’s your go to resource to get articles on how to do really cool stuff.

These are some of the articles that came out this week:

• Getting Dirty: Five Fun Composting Projects for Kids
• How to Make an Adventure Movie With Your Kids
• How to Create a Backyard Treasure Hunt, Minecraft Style
• How to Create Glow-In-The-Dark Bowling In Your Home

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Mobile Marketing: How to Get Started

Mobile Marketing

Why marketers should pay more attention to mobile customers

Jamie states that 15-50% of the people who visit your website come in from a mobile device and this number will continue to grow.

When consumers visit your website from a mobile device, you need to be there to meet them, understand mobile marketing and know how to connect with customers on mobile.

You’ll have to learn how to use mobile, as it’s a way to build a bridge between you and your customer.

Make sure you're mobile-ready.

You’ll discover how more people check prices on their mobile devices while shopping and what you need to provide them to make sure they buy from you.

And you’ll hear that when people buy a product on mobile devices, particularly tablet computers, their total ticket price is typically higher than it is via a desktop computer.

It’s important to be mobile-ready—not only for B2C but for B2B too.

Listen to the show to find out how many people bought a virtual ticket on a smartphone while attending Social Media Marketing World.

Is there a social media connection when it comes to mobile marketing?

Jamie sees email as a social media tool. Sixty-seven percent of all “C-level” executives check their emails from their mobile devices. The better-known tools being LinkedIn,Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

We all need mobile websites. Remember when consumers visit your site, one of the prominent things you want to do is give them the ability to connect with you on social media platforms from their mobile device.

You’ll hear Jamie give a great example of how you can use LinkedIn on a mobile device in a business environment.

Use LinkedIn mobile to find out about future prospects.

Photography is easy on a smartphone. Look at how well Twitter and Facebook have integrated photos into their mobile apps. It’s a great opportunity to grab customers. You’ll find out how Ramon De Leon, a regional Domino’s pizza guy in Chicago, evangelizes his business with the use of Twitter.

Jamie explains what mobile websites mean and the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app.

You’ll discover what you need to do to make your website mobile and why the WPtouch plugin for WordPress is an awesome tool to have.

Listen to the show to find out why social is mobile.

The most common types of marketing when dealing with mobile users

Jamie lists 7 things businesses have to think about when it comes to mobile marketing.

1. Mobile websites
2. SMS
3. Mobile display ads/banner ads
4. Mobile paid search
5. Location-based marketing
6. Apps
7. QR codes

These are the primary tools out there. Jamie’s advice is to make sure you always start with a mobile website and then move into paid search or QR codes.

You’ll hear Jamie give an example of how a restaurant can use SMS to drive more foot traffic to their business. It’s one of the tools that’s been around the longest and is well-established. People are comfortable with it.

When you use SMS, you have to go through an SMS service provider. There are many different companies out there. One that has been around a long time is Sumotext. You’ll learn the benefit of carrying out proper research on SMS service providers.

Jamie shares how there are some really cool opportunities when it comes to mobile banner ads and explains how you can do mobile display ads that are targeted on a house-by-house level, based on their purchases.

The advantage is that a mobile device can be identified at a residential location through geotargeting.

Listen to the show to learn how geotargeting works when it comes to statistical data.

How to get started with mobile marketing

Once you have a mobile website, the next step is to get into QR codes. You can search on Google to find out how to do a QR code.

QR codes are easy to do.

Next, you can move into mobile paid search, which is low-cost and easy to get into. You can then start to spend a little more money when you get into SMS and mobile display.

Listen to the show to find out why mobile app development can be complex.

Typical mistakes marketers make with mobile

Jamie states that when marketers at typical small- to medium-sized businesses read about social media as a marketing tool, they embraced LinkedIn, Facebook or Twittervery easily.

However, when it comes to mobile, they think it sounds too technical and difficult. They believe that they have to hire someone to do this for them.

So the #1 challenge is that people are afraid of mobile marketing. Jamie says that it’s not that mysterious—it’s just another channel to use to connect with customers.

Listen to the show to hear why you shouldn’t be afraid of mobile marketing.

Survival Tip: Getting Out

I’m a Fitbit fan. It’s a pedometer, calorie counter and distance counter all in one. I try to walk 10,000 steps a day and as the weather has started to improve, I’ve managed to get more serious about it.

Fitbit is great for accountability.

If you want to get more exercise, the Fitbit is great for accountability. It will allow you to see your progress over a period of time and connect with friends to see what kind of progress they are making.

So let’s get outside and start walking more.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

This Week’s Social Media Question

Stan Dubin from Hiring Tips asked, “If you were going to start over from scratch, which social venue would you concentrate on first, and why?”

Hiring Tips.

Stan also said,”My area of focus is helping people to make better hiring decisions. We provide employee testing and a hiring tips newsletter. We’ve got a lot going with social media and we’re making progress, but a number of our clients are pretty new and I wanted to give them a good starting point.”

Here are some steps to take when deciding which platform to choose for your first social media marketing efforts:

• Ask your customers where they hang out
• Master that domain
• Measure and track what kind of progress you make
• Come up with some metrics
• Measure on a weekly basis
• Start to expand to second- or third-level social networks

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Email and Social Media: Why Marketers Need Both

Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing

Why social media marketers should focus on email marketing

DJ tells a story of when he heard Jeff Pulver talk about his famous quote, “You live and die by your database.” DJ explains how it’s a phrase that he probably says at least once a week. The reason it’s so important is because when it comes to marketing, email is your database.

You have a virtual database of social media followers, but your database is your email contacts. Email is the glue that binds everything together.

Email is your database. Image source: iStockphoto

DJ doesn’t discount social media, and he uses it a lot. But he explains that if Facebook decided to change their terms of service, then the connection with your friends and followers could disappear. Email addresses stick with you.

With Facebook, there are over 100 different email notifications. Even if you turn off most of the notifications, Facebook still messages you through email and Twitter does the same.

You’ll discover how all social networks use email marketing.

Listen to the show to find out why DJ encourages people to log out of Facebook or Twitter and go back to these sites for the first time.

Why social media marketers should work email into their social media activities

DJ explains how he has heard “social media folks” talking more about email.

You’ll hear examples of how Chris Brogan and Amy Porterfield focus on how to grow their email lists.

You can take the loyal followers you have on social networks and bring them over to your email list. You’ll find out the advantages of bringing your social media connections over to your email list and why it’s easier to sell via the email channel versus the social channel.

Listen to the show to find out how at Social Media Examiner, we have about 500 new people every day come to our content.

Where email is heading in the future

DJ shares how a lot happens with email behind the scenes that the average person doesn’t necessarily see.

There has been innovation around filters impacting email deliverability. From a consumer standpoint, there is a new app called Mailbox that helps you manage all of your marketing messages in one place.

Mailbox is an app that lets you put your email in one place.

DJ has started to see a lot more integration of email into social and can see it play out in a couple of different ways.

One of his favorite plugins for Chrome and Gmail is Rapportive. It sits on the side of Gmail and as you hover over somebody’s email address, if that email address is used publicly to tie to different social networks, it will pull in all that information.

You can use Rapportive to find out information about your contacts right inside your inbox.

You’ll hear an example of what information it will show about that person and how salespeople can use it.

DJ explains that the advantage of this plugin is that it shows a little bit more about where he sees email going. The lines are starting to blur between social networks and email marketing.

Listen to the show to hear stats from ExactTarget on the number of people who check their email on a daily basis and the number of people who prefer to get marketing-related messages through email.

Some ways marketers can grow their email lists using social media

DJ says there are many different ways for marketers to grow their email lists using social media.

At a very basic level, if you have a strong following on Facebook, Twitter or Google+, he believes it’s important to let your community know how they can get onto your list.

You’ll hear DJ give examples of social updates you could use to get people onto your list. DJ also reveals how Chris Brogan and Pat Flynn get people onto their lists with the use of video.

On Facebook, you can build a tab that has an opt-in form and a lot of email providers will make it easy for you to create the form directly in their system. You can then drop the code into a tab on Facebook. Although DJ has seen this work, he thinks the problem is that you still put a lot on the potential subscriber.

You’ll hear what DJ recommends if someone is following you and they’re engaged on Facebook.

Listen to the show to find out why DJ would rather have people on his blog than on Facebook.

How can email be used to move your blog readers to action for social campaigns?

DJ has tried lately to practice what he preaches. Now when you opt into his list, you’ll see automated messages as well as some more personal things.

DJ Waldow's opt-in form for the "Waldow Social Weekly" newsletter.

People forget that you have to build your list first, and then build trust with your audience and community. You can’t expect somebody who just opted into your list to do something for you. You have to earn that trust over time.

DJ believes that a combination of both email and social can be really effective, once you have built sufficient trust. One way DJ has seen this work is to create a call-to-action link within your email. You can easily take that call to action and put a link next to it that says “tweet this” or “post this on Facebook.” Prepopulate the tweet or Facebook post with the exact message you want it to say.

DJ gives an example of what he does in his newsletter and where and what your call to action should say.

Listen to the show to hear how at Social Media Examiner, we used our email list for the launch of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

Once someone opts into your email list, what is the appropriate frequency for contact?

DJ advises if you start to do anything that is less frequent than monthly, your audience is not going to remember who you are. He thinks daily is great if you can manage, but a couple of times a week is probably better.

You’ll discover what the sweet spot is for DJ and when he does a sales-type email.

Listen to the show to find out why the frequency question is one of DJ’s favorites.

DJ’s top tips on email marketing

DJ shares a great service that he uses called JA.TXT. It’s an SMS-to-email service, which provides you with a dedicated SMS number.

JA.TXT is a great SMS-to-email service.

You’ll discover how this is a great way to add email addresses to your list and why it’s really effective when you’re in front of an audience.

The second service that has been effective for DJ is LeadBrite. It’s a plugin for WordPress called Welcome Gate.

You’ll find out what happens when you’re a first-time visitor to DJ’s site and how Welcome Gate has helped him grow his list.

Listen to the show to learn why you should give visitors an opportunity to opt in right away.

Discovery of the Week

At Social Media Examiner, we have an awesome free service called the Networking Clubs.

We have made a significant investment in hiring one of the best developers on the planet to put together a social network that lives independently of all of the other social networks.

The Networking Clubs are a great place to connect with other social media marketers.

There are almost 12,000 social media marketers who belong to the Networking Clubs. With the click of a button, you can join using LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. It’s a place where you can lend a helping hand, connect with your peers and get help.

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