Advertising Your Facebook Contest

We all love a good contest and we enjoy winning them even more! Facebook contests are a lot of fun and can really boost a business online. They also allow you to easily collect data about your fans, data you can use to better target ads and specific posts.
There are right way and wrong ways to promote your contest. Setting up and posting once or twice, leaving the rest to fate is wrong. Actively promoting it and advertising your Facebook contest is the right way to go. You’ve spent time and money on your contest app and set-up, and you want to make sure everyone has a chance to enter. Posting the link and hoping they will come isn’t a realistic approach. Active promotion is.
When promoting/advertising your Facebook contest, consider the following:
1. Pin the link to the top of your Facebook page. While I know that research shows that fans do not typically come back to the actual page after liking it, you never know who may be visiting for the first time. It’s prime real estate on your Facebook page and a perfect way to showcase your contest.
2. Promote a post announcing the contest. This is one of the few times I think using promoted posts is okay. You want to make sure everyone knows about your contest. Be careful, though, because any pictures used are subject to Facebook’s 20% text rule. Check out this tool before you upload your image to make sure it’s compatible.
3. Runs a news feed-only ad and target people not currently connected to your Facebook page. The promoted post will, by default, show up to just your fans and their friends (though there are other targeting options available). Running a news-feed only ad allows you to target potential followers, bringing new fans to your page. With this type of ad you specifically target a certain market or group of people.
4. Promote it on other social media sites & your website. If you have accounts on Twitter or Google Plus or Pinterest, create a contest post and share it frequently. While you have a small percentage of fans following you on all platforms, the majority do not. With a different audience on each platform you want to maximize potential new fans and contest participants. Make sure you also have a link or graphic on your website to catch those who may not be connected with you via social media.
These four tips will ensure your Facebook contest has the best chance for success. Have you found other successful ways to promote a Facebook contest?  If so, please share in the comments!

Managing the Social Media Mix

The following is an excerpt from “Managing the Social Media Mix” an exclusive whitepaper brought to you by Oracle. Download the exclusive whitepaper now! This white paper provides a step-by-step guide for determining your strategy—and the proper mix of marketing channels—in social media. With it, you can use the time you have to efficiently define a balanced social media mix.

Eight Steps to a Better Social Media Mix

Social media is a continually evolving realm with amazing potential for business communications, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By following the eight steps outlined in this white paper, you can clearly make decisions about your social media mix and online communications strategy.

1. Gather Your Portfolio

Start by doing a quick inventory of the social media channels that you already use. If you are like most businesses, you will find that you already have different channels set up and managed by different people. Write each channel name on a Sticky Note: one for Twitter, Facebook, the company blog, e-mail, and any other online communications channel you use. (For the moment, don’t worry about social media channels you want to use in the future. Those will be covered in a later step.) Having this data in front of you can help you organize your channels by overall reach.

Figure 1. Gather your portfolio.

2. List Your Content

Inventory the kinds of information that you distribute through your social media channels, such as white papers, status updates, case studies, event information, customer service, and industry discussions. List each content type to make the first column of a table. As you make your list, keep in mind that—beyond different information—there are also different types of conversations you’re trying to foster with each piece of informational material.

Figure 2. List your content

3. Look Through Four Social Media Lenses

Four lenses—frequency and formality, the condensing funnel, the waterfall, and subscription size—offer different ways for you to look at your communications to generate new ideas and understanding about how social marketing works.

Figure 3. Look through four social media lenses. Lens 1: Frequency and Formality

On the content list from Step 2, add two columns, “Frequency” and “Formality.”

Frequency means how often you send a communication. Formality means the general level of resource investment the communication requires, how conventional it is, or perhaps how geared toward a strategic audience, response, or result. Frequency and formality tend to be inverse: formal messages go out less often; informal messages, more often.

Rank all your content by frequency and formality. For example, if you have 10 content types, rank each from 1 to 10. Your most frequent communication—say Twitter posts—ranks a 1, second-most frequent ranks a 2, and so on.

Now, rank the formality of each channel 1 through 10, as well. Formality is perhaps tougher to gauge than frequency, but remember, it’s a relative scale. Deciding whether e-mails are more formal than blog posts can start a good, strategic discussion with your team.

Lens 2: The Condensing Funnel

Consider whether or not your content funnels through your communication channels. For example, your organization might tweet everything, blog about industry trends, and use a newsletter mostly for promotions. Thinking of that content in a funnel that leads toward a business goal will highlight how and where content gets redistributed.

Overall, where does your funnel lead readers?

Lens 3: The Waterfall

As you think about the funnel, begin to think of content as a waterfall that runs through it. For example, some tweets may lead to blog posts, and some blog posts may lead to white papers. You want to highlight this flow, because it leads to better content development once you have an online communications strategy in place, as shown in Step 8.

As this relates to the first lens, you’ll see that formality often increases as you move down the waterfall.

Lens 4: Subscription Size

Ranking social media channels in terms of subscribers has a huge impact on your communications strategy, too. It takes time and effort to transition communities across social media, and attrition happens all the time.

Rank your channels by number of subscribers. Write the rankings on the Sticky Notes you made for each channel in Step 1.

How I Increased My Twitter Followers By 30% in 6 Months

6 months ago I had 1,238 followers less than I have now. That's a 30% increase!

I'm not telling you this to brag, but rather to help you do the same. In this post, I'm going to share with you exactly what I've done differently and how you can use my same strategy to increase your Twitter followers.

A few things you should know first:

1. I did not buy any followers. 
I am very against the practice of paying for fans. If you want real followers who actually care about you, your message, and your business, then you should earn them -- not buy them.

2. I didn't pay for any advertising to my Twitter handle. 
I did pay $20 for a promoted tweet which was spent in about 5 minutes and brought me a few retweets but no new followers.

3. I didn't follow-unfollow. 
In other words, I didn't follow a bunch of people and unfollow those who didn't follow me back. This is another practice I think is ridiculous and quite selfish.

Yes, folks my strategy is 100% all-natural. It takes time, but once it takes hold you'll be happy that you actually worked for it rather than cutting corners.

Here are the 6 things I did to grow my Twitter following by 30% in 6 months:

How To Increase Your Twitter Followers Naturally & Organically

1. Blog On A Regular Basis 
This by far is the most important thing you can do to increase your Twitter followers. By now, you should know that when it comes to blogging, I mean business. And rightfully so, because it is my business. At Convert With Content, we manage social media & blogging for our clients. It is also my business as a marketer to educate clients and potential clients on why blogging for your business is a practice that can increase your social media presence, your authority, your traffic and your leads.

I'm living proof that blogging on a regular basis helps increase your Twitter followers. The reason is simple. When you blog, you have something to share on social networks and you have something for others to share on social networks. If that person has good Twitter etiquette, he or she will attach your name to it. Boom, your Twitter name just got pushed out to a new audience.

2. Tweet On A Regular Schedule 
This is the second most important thing you can do to increase your Twitter followers. Like blogging consistently, Tweeting consistently will keep your name out there, increase the likeliness of getting replied to and retweeted and increase your reach.

Social Media doesn't sleep and neither should your online presence. I automate many of my tweets to keep my profile updated. If you automate right and follow my rules (insert link to automation article) you will see the benefits of your actions. Now don't get me wrong, you can't rely on automation alone. In fact, that's poor practice. But as long as you're sharing valuable content and relevant content this strategy will work.

Because Twitter is a massive search engine, when you tweet about relevant topics to your industry, you will be found by others interested in those topics. People follow keywords and lists on Twitter. Make use of that wisely.

3. Guest Blog 
By creating a presence beyond your own website, you will be introduced to a new network and with that comes new followers. I am a regular contributor to Social Media Today, Business.com,StateOfDigital.com and other online publications. Anytime I blog for them, they share my content with my Twitter handle attached to their audience. It works.

If you're looking for opportunities to guest blog, you can find many by typing in "Guest Blog Submissions" or something similar in Google. Another way to approach the subject is to ask blogs that you follow and pitch them on a topic that suits their audience. Like all things in social media, it's about building relationships.  If you are an Entrepreneur, you should check out EFactor, it's a great network to blog on.

One thing I know for sure is if you blog regularly on your own site and you create great content other people will come knocking at your door to have you guest blog for them.

4. Include Your Twitter Handle In Your Email Signature (& Everywhere)
If you email a lot, include your Twitter handle in your email signature, on your website, within your blog, inside your Pinterest account, in your LinkedIn headline and anywhere else that's public. The easier you make it for someone to find your profile, the more followers you'll get.

5. Live Tweet & Participate In Twitter Chats 
If you attend conferences live tweet them. It's a great way to grow your following with a targeted audience and network. Participating in Twitter chats has the same effect. I participate in them at least once a month and each time I gain new connections and start to build new relationships.

Pretty simple right? You can do it! I'd love to hear what you do to grow your following.