Social Media Marketing Tips From The Pros

If you want to know how to do something right, you learn from the people who do it best. The same is true for social media. So, I’ve gathered some of the best and brightest social media professionals and asked them a few questions about social media marketing.

Meet Our Social Media Marketing Pros:

Ann Handley is co-author of the best-selling Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, columnist for Entrepreneur magazine, a keynote speaker, and a mom.

Ann Tran is a respected social media consultant, travel writer, and influencer, a regular contributor to Huffington Post, and a sought after speaker at social media and technology events

Jay Baer is a NY Times best selling author and has spent 20 years in digital marketing. He is also the President of Convince & Convert, which provides social media and content marketing advice.

Jeff Bullas is a blogger, author, strategist and speaker, who works with companies and executives in optimizing their online and social media presence.

John Paul Aguiar is an Internet Entrepreneur – Social Media Consultant and experienced Online Marketer. Covering topics like driving traffic, twitter marketing, social media, and internet marketing.

Jay Oatway is the author of the book Mastering Story, Community and Influence: How to Use Social Media to Become a Social Leader and co-founder of HKSocial.

Tia Kelly is a digital content strategist and is currently Unbounce’s social strategist. She’s always on the search for new ways to reach her audience on social media.

Below are six questions that these social media pros have answered to help individuals and businesses improve their social media marketing initiatives.

1) What is one social media marketing tip you learned recently?

Knowing When To Walk Away

“By taking time away from social media sites, your interactions online will begin to feel more real and natural. When you are ‘online’ too much, your tweets begin to look somewhat robotic. If you are doing it right, successful social media takes work and work needs breaks (unless you are doing it wrong).” – John Aguiar

The Art Of The Headline

“When you learn how to write a good headline you’ll know how to write a good tweet that gets your audience’s attention right away. The more people’s attention you get the more your tweets and posts will get shared.” – Jeff Bullas

2) What social media network is neglected by social media marketers?

Google+

“Google+ is the main channel that I feel is underestimated by marketers. People I speak to feel that taking on one more channel would be “too much” for them.  I disagree—they can’t afford to neglect this powerful source. Especially with its interactives posts, communities, and how it aids SEO.”  - Ann Tran

Slideshare

“It’s not really a social network but, with content marketing on the rise, social media marketers cannot forget to include slideshare in their social media strategy. With over 60 million monthly visitors, slideshare is another avenue of distributing our content. After all, social media is a distribution channel.” – Ann Handley

Linkedin

“If your audience are business professionals, Linkedin is a social network that shouldn’t be neglected. You can take advantage of the many groups to gain content ideas, and have the ability to share your content made for a b2b audience.” – Jay Baer

3) What is your biggest daily social media marketing challenge?

Balance

“My biggest daily challenge is balancing the numerous platforms, while making the connections face-to-face, while juggling my travel schedule. There are so many creative writers out there in the social channels. You need to write often, and well to get people addicted to your content. You have to be on the cutting edge and always inventing fresh, compelling and informative content.” - Ann Tran

Time Management

“Social media has a lot of demand on your time. One of the hardest things is finding the time to manage your personal accounts. But, my trick is to squeeze time whenever you can, dribs and drabs, here and there. I find that there’s no need to have allotted time to do social media but to just do it when you can. Throughout the day I use my phone to effectively respond and engage to tweets or posts. Before meetings I’ll spend the 2 minutes before it to send out a tweet or post.” – Jay Oatway

4) What social media marketing habit would you most want to fix?

Get Less Distracted By Analytics

“Being addicted to social media feeds and measurement is a quick way to waste time. Try to get less fixated on the numbers and spend more time doing actual work. It helps to have a business plan from the get go and lay out your goals, target audience and great reasonable targets to get you started.” - Jeff Bullas

Effective Scheduling

“Get social media scheduling done in advance. I get caught up in the day to day that I forget to set time aside to plan and schedule my posts. So, managing my time on social media is a habit I want to fix most. The best way to fix this is to ensure I set time aside to effectively plan out my posts for each of my social media campaigns and initiatives.” – Tia Kelly

5) What’s the first thing a new business owner should do when creating their social media marketing strategy?

Personalize Your Brand (Not Get Personal)

“The former means showing that you’re a real human being, with actual blood flowing through actual veins. You have a point of view, real character, a personality. The latter is sharing details that are intimate or too specific to you to have relevance for the larger community you are trying to build. Exactly where that line is varies according to your own brand and that of your company. But to give a broad example: It’s one thing to mention feeling under the weather—that’s personalized. It’s another to say you have an irritating rash in a sensitive spot.” - Ann Handley

Understand What You Want Out Of Social Media

“Knowing what you want social media to do for you business is the first thing a new business owner should do when creating their social media strategy. Do you want to: create awareness? Generate sales? Boost loyalty? Social must support business objectives. Always remember that the goal isn’t to be good at social media, it’s to be good at business because of social media.” - Jay Baer

Have A Social Media Strategy

“Have a plan and know what your goals are. If you don’t have a goal, you will be wasting time morning, noon and night. Bad social media works like no social media, with bad social media it’s like not doing it all.” - John Aguiar

6) One last social media marketing tip?

Respond More Than You Interrupt

“Go to social media the way you would go to a cocktail party. Listen to what people are talking about and respond to what’s happening and add value to it. Remember to not be rude, it’s the same as talking to people in person, and don’t do your sales pitch right off the bat. Building relationships is key to social media.” - Jay Oatway

Never Stop Learning

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Even though you can learn a lot on your own, it’s good to find one or two people you trust to ask questions. Learning from other professionals will help so you don’t learn the wrong thing, it will save you time in the long run. Last tip, find one or two people you admire on social media in your community and reach out.” - Tia Kelly

I’d like to thank these social marketing pros for sharing their tips and tricks. Want to keep learning more from them? Be sure to follow them on Twitter.

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Social Media Marketing Tips From The Pros