Social media marketing is a powerful tool and you can generate huge amounts of traffic if utilized properly. The problem with using social media networks these days is that spamming has become a major issue. Social networks are changing the interface completely and you need to tweak the way you use them to generate a buzz and traffic to your blog. If you’ve been experimenting with social media strategies and are unable to produce solid results, the chances are your using tactics that no longer work.
Let’s look at 5 social media strategies that won’t produce the same type of results they once did.
#1: Trying to Follow Just To Be Followed
High numbers can be impressive especially on social networks because it shows people you have a great product or service. However, I’ve seen a growing number of people who follow others just so they get followed back increasing your follower count. Those who use this strategy don’t understand the basics of user engagement and often end up hurting themselves. How?
First, they add random people who have nothing in common with their blog, product or service. If your going to share your content with people interested in something different, it’s not going to generate traffic and user engagement. Next, the way social networks value a user’s social profile has changed because of spamming throughout the years. For example, you can simply buy thousands of followers, likes and tweets to improve the outlook of your account. This strategy doesn’t score points with social networks because they’ve changed the algorithm used to determine “what’s trendingâ€.
Social networks are getting smarter and they have a sophisticated system in place to determine how many of your followers are real through engagement frequency. Remember “fake†followers don’t engage with your content so don’t count on them to increase the popularity of your profile and shared content. Less engagement means a slim chance of generating any traffic through your social media accounts.
A great way to build your solid following is to look at your competitors and add some of their followers. This is a good starting point and you know they’ll find your niche relevant because their following your competitors. Sponsored tweets work well and Facebook advertising can build your profile quickly. Be sure to target relevant people and be selective when choosing your keyword, geographic location and landing page.
#2: Not Optimizing Before Sharing
I can’t stress how many people make this mistake when sharing content on social networks. If you don’t add the right code to your pages you won’t be able to optimize your sharing. For example, many believe sharing content is simply about copy and pasting the URL and they couldn’t be more wrong. When pasting “only†the content URL you’ll notice your “share†or “tweet†will show up without an image. Images have been known to capture the user’s attention and act as a visual aid for your content. Without having the social meta code within your page, you’ve increased the chance of your content not being seen. What does all this mean?
The old way of sharing content by simply pasting the URL is obsolete and you need to optimize your pages for social sharing. The good news is many platforms like WordPress have plugins you could install to automatically add the code to all your pages. For those of you adding code manually, you can find awesome resources online which outline the entire process step-by-step. Here’s a great resource to get started: Social Media Meta Tags: How to Use Open Graph and Cards
#3: Selling Directly To Your Audience
At one point selling a product by posting the link on your social media profile would have been able to generate huge sales. However, things have changed dramatically when people started spamming on social networks. There are way too many people posting useless links and people have lost trust in direct buying. The only time a direct link on social networks produce results is when your offering a discount or coupon. It’s important to remember not all people following you have come through your website which is another reason why direct selling doesn’t work well anymore. Some people have found you through social media searches, etc and you need to find a way to utilize these networks to build loyalty with everyone of your fans.
A great way to build loyalty and increase conversions through social media marketing is by setting up a funnel. For example, instead of pasting a link directing social users to the sales page, you can send them through a funnel on your website. It’s a great way to capture email address and showcase the product further.
For example, if you send 1000 people directly to a sales page it’s a hit or miss, however sending them to a funnel and capturing their email allows you to keep marketing your product over several weeks. The visitor is still reachable improving your chances of a conversion.
#4: Posting Anytime
When posting, it’s important to choose the right time since this will make the difference between a successful campaign and one which provides NO results. Just because your online browsing through social networks doesn’t mean your followers are. For example, you should be sharing online when you’ll achieve optimal results usually measured by engagement. The tricky part is finding out when your followers are online and when #hashtag meter is at its highest.
Each person has a different schedule so use free tools like Simply Measured to analyze user engagement on your profile. You’ll have to do some trial runs figuring out when users are online and the optimal time to share and/or tweet content.
Including #hashtags when sharing content can produce enormous results because when people click them it provides a list of content including that tag name. Use the same tools to find tags with  high levels of activity and include them when sharing. You’ll be surprised how much traffic will trickle to your website through #hashtags.
Find the right time when your followers are active and don’t forget to add popular tags when tweeting to increase user engagement.
Here are some  #hastag tools you can utilize…
- Tagboard
- Twubs
- oneqube
- hashtracking.com
- Hashtags.org
 #5: Too Many Social Buttons to Your Site
Adding too many social sharing buttons to your content page may have the opposite effect. By now you should have a good idea of the popular networks so don’t give people a chance to share on low traffic social networks. If you give people too many options, they might share on a network which has 200 visitors per day compared to one which has 30,000 per day.
For example, it’s well known that Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest have huge amounts of users. Add these 4 buttons below your content so when users share your content, it shows up in front of millions of people.
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