How to Build TRUST on #SocialMedia,

by Jason DeMers

There are dozens of factors that contribute to the size, loyalty, and engagement rates of your audience on social media, and whether you're interested in building an audience for a personal brand or a corporate one, improving those metrics is often your key to success. You can objectively measure the number of followers your brand has, and execute strategies that increase that number, but if you want to build an audience that truly cares about what you have to say, you need to go a step further.

Almost every brand in the world has some kind of presence on social media, and individual users are growing tired of being advertised to. If you want to cut through the white noise and earn the attention and interest of your readership, you'll need to build trust.

Building trust on social media, just like in real life, is neither easy nor fast, but with these eight strategies, executed consistently, you can get closer to cultivating a trusting, dedicated audience:

1. Communicate in a consistent, personal brand voice. Step one is very simple. If you want people to trust your brand like a human being (rather than a corporate entity), you have to write in a way that reaches your readers on a human level. Minimalistic, robotic messages have no personality, and such forms of communication can instantly turn off an otherwise interested party. If you haven't already developed a brand voice for your company, spend some time thinking about what key qualities you want to communicate through the tone and word choices of your writing, and practice implementing them through a written voice.

Once you've established a brand voice, you'll need to be consistent with it. If your posts sound perky and casual one day, but formal and stingy the next, your audience could become confused, and start to lose trust or interest in your brand.

2. Make time for humor and entertainment. Most of your posts should be about things happening in your industry, or a showcase of your content marketing strategy. However, it's also important to make time for humor and entertainment. If you find a short video clip on Monday morning that makes you laugh, consider sharing it with your audience (as long as it's appropriate for your brand). Chances are, they'll find it funny too.

Sharing these types of content is a way to lower your audience's defenses, and demonstrate that there is a human being behind all these posts. It gives your brand a fun and trustworthy personality, and lets people know that your main goal is communicating with an audience, not just pushing a product.

3. Post unique, original ideas. Thought leadership is a key quality among trusted brands. On social media, sharing posts is easy and commonly accepted. It would be possible to build up a network of followers simply by sharing or retweeting some of the most popular posts of the moment--but doing so simply turns you into a glorified news feed constructor, and your brand becomes practically invisible, buried in the other brands.

If you want to earn the respect and trust of your audience, you'll need to demonstrate yourself as the trendsetter by posting unique, original ideas of your own. That doesn't mean you can't share other posts for your audience--but do so sparingly, and make sure you prioritize your own original content.

http://goo.gl/8M743M

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How to Build a Following Using Other People's Content

Content Sharing: 

Do you have a content sharing strategy for your business?  Are you interested in discovering ways to leverage great content to promote your business and drive sales?  To learn how to build a following by sharing other people's content, I interview Guy Kawasaki.  More About This Show  The Social... Read the rest of this article...

 

 

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7 Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog

• Written by Michelle Horton 

Categories: Blogging, Social Media Marketing

Blogs have become one of the most fascinating and popular platforms upon which individuals may sell their wares, offer advice or simply journal about their daily lives.

But what is the point of having a blog if no one is going to read it?

There are many reasons why you’d would want to increase the traffic to your blog . It could be for monetary reasons, to gain more public exposure or to show off your skills. Bloggers want to see their sites develop, evolve and grow.

So, how can you get more visitors to your blog?

Here are 7 easy ways to increase traffic to your blog.

1. Optimize Your Content

The initial structuring of a blog should evolve around designing it to attract maximum traffic. Pages on your blog can be optimized to attract readers and potential consumers. This can be done by organizing content by putting it into categories that will enable readers to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. 

This includes sub-titles, bullet points and lists.

Search engines pick up on themes of related content, so include keywords and keyword phrases. If you work a little on your blog’s SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in this kind of way, you’re likely to get more search engine t

Read more at http://www.jeffbullas.com/2013/09/18/7-ways-to-increase-traffic-to-your-blog/#ZxFEzzx9yFSptoEo.99

Facebook Fashion Ads Linked to Fakes

One-Fourth of Facebook Fashion Ads Linked to Fakes

New research by two Italian cyber-security experts found that about a quarter of the fashion and luxury ads they examined on Facebook are for knockoffs. The ads, touting things such as $180 Ray-Ban Aviator eyewear for less than $30, linked to bogus e-commerce sites registered by Chinese front companies, according to Andrea Stroppa and Agostino Specchiarello.

·         Read the article: Bloomberg

State Department Increases Security After Hacking Concern

The U.S. State Department recently detected “activity of concern” in portions of its e-mail system, a senior official said. U.S. officials aren’t saying whether it could be a hacking attempt by a foreign government, but the State Department is now stepping up security of its unclassified network during a system shutdown, the senior State Department official said.

·         Read the article: CNN

Privacy Concerns Arise Over Classroom Conduct App

Many teachers say the ClassDojo behavior-tracking app helps them automate the task of recording classroom conduct, as well as allowing them to communicate directly with parents. But some parents, teachers and privacy law scholars say ClassDojo, along with other unproven technologies that record sensitive information about students, is being adopted without sufficiently considering the ramifications for data privacy and fairness, like where and how the data might eventually be used.

·         Read the article: The New York Times

Corporate Advocacy Group Pushes Net Neutrality

A corporate alliance with subtle interests in the net neutrality fight has been quietly pushing the Federal Communications Commission for strict broadband rules. In a series of meetin

What Small Businesses Need to Know About Social Media Marketing

Brett Relander Founder, Launch & Hustle@BrettRelander

Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) are now spending more money on social media marketing than any other category, according to a report published byBIA/Kelsey. In a survey of more than 500 small to midsized businesses, it was found that last year they spent approximately 21 percent of their media budgets on social media. A report issued by MarketingTechBlogfound that 8 out of 10 SMBs are using social media to drive growth.

Despite the fact that an increasing number of small businesses are spending money on social media marketing, not all of them are reaping maximum benefits. This is often due to their inability to develop a personalized marketing plan targeted toward a specific audience.

Finding Yourself

Among the most common problems faced by many small businesses attempting to develop a social media marketing presence is that they simply do not know where to begin. Far too often, they are all over the map, or they allow decision paralysis to interfere with developing a social media marketing campaign. 

The first step should be to define who you are and why your consumers should care about your business. Think about why you first started your business and how you want to present it to the world. Ask yourself: if someone else was describing my business, what would they say? Answering these questions should provide you with a clearer vision of how you wish to portray your business to the social media world. Keep in mind that you could have the best products in the world, but if you do not have an interesting story for each of them, your business will not be remembered. Make your presence memorable.

http://goo.gl/XcTMbK

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How to Transform Your LinkedIn Profile Into a Marketing Tool

By Kristina Jaramillo

Published November 12, 2014 

Do you want to use your LinkedIn profile to market yourself more effectively?

Have you thought beyond adding a list of jobs and responsibilities?

LinkedIn is the number-one social network for professionals, but that doesn’t mean you have to treat your profile as a traditional, boring resume.

In this article you’ll discover four ways to turn your bland LinkedIn profile into a LinkedIn marketing tool that attracts potential decision makers.

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Twitter Small Business Planner:

This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published November 8, 2014 

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

What’s New This Week?

Twitter Introduces New Small Business Planner: “A mobile app full of tactical guidance for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in North America, the UK and Ireland.”

“Visit the App Store or Google Play to download the Twitter Small Business Planner today.”

Google Ads Rolls Out New Report in AdWords: This new report will show “you how your ads perform when they appear with automated extensions.”

SlideShare Announces Haiku Deck for SlideShare: “SlideShare users can quickly and easily create compelling visual presentations and share them directly with [SlideShare's] community of more than 70 million people, through a special integration with Haiku Deck.”

http://goo.gl/01vwk6

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How to Respond to Facebook Changes - PODCAST

By Michael Stelzner

Published October 17, 2014

Do you use Facebook to promote your business?

Are you curious how to respond to the recent changes to the Facebook news feed?

To learn how to navigate these important changes to Facebook’s news feed, I interview Mari Smith, the “Queen of Facebook.”

More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

6 Ways to Improve Twitter Engagement With Psychology Principles

By Beth Gladstone
Published November 6, 2014 

Want to discover how to engage more users on Twitter?

Have you considered using psychology techniques?

Using some psychology tips in your tweets can make your Twitter feed more interesting and your followers will be more likely to engage with you.

In this article I’ll share six psychology tips you can use to create tweets that’ll engage your audience.

Learn 6 ways use psychology to improve twitter engagement.

Why?

http://goo.gl/3qkRaj

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INFOGRAPHIC - Optimal Social Media Message Legth

Infographic: The optimal length for social media updates and more

Click to enlarge. And check out the instructions at the bottom to embed this graphic on your website.

Share this image on your site!

If you enjoy the snazzy look and helpful info in this infographic, SumAll published a companion infographic (in a super cool, printable pdf format) over on their blog.

For the free, print-ready infographic, visit the SumAll blog.

SumAll is one of our favorite social media tools. They do social media tracking better than anyone we’ve found—all your data, all in one place, for free.

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll find in the downloadable, printable version of the infographic.

The data-backed findings for the optimal length

It seems like people love to be told what works best. They love to have a starting point.

And that’s what these ideal lengths represent: starting points. We wrote a bit on the topic of how to implement data into your social media strategy. Do you take best practices like these ideal lengths as gospel truth? Not quite.

Take these as best practices, as jumping off points, as ideas to iterate on.

Put them to the test, and see what is right for you.

The optimal length of a tweet — 71 to 100 characters

Not only does this length give you enough room to share your message, it also provides room for someone who retweets you to add a message of their own.

If you’d like to get ultra-specific with exactly the optimal length of a tweet for your specific Twitter account, you can find this by running the numbers on your Twitter analytics. We wrote up instructions on how to find your ideal tweet length by graphing it vs. engagement.

For the Buffer account, our sweet spot is between 80 and 120 characters.

Until you test and discover the right length for you, stick to the 71-to-100 character guideline.

What makes this length optimal? Tweets at this length get more retweets. They also have higher reply rate, retweet rate, and combined reply/retweet rate (these latter of which shows engagement per followers).

Where’d this data come from? A pair of studies have found the 100-character mark to be the sweet spot for tweet length. Track Social studied 100 major brands (Oreo, Zappos, ESPN, etc.) for a 30-day period in the fall of 2012.Buddy Media studied 320 Twitter handles from major brands for two-and-a-half months at the beginning of 2012.

The optimal length of a Facebook post – 40 characters

Shorter seems to be better on Facebook.

Maximum engagement happens at 40 characters (so, too, does minimum quantity, meaning that a vast minority of Facebook posts hit this 40-character mark). And engagement slowly wanes the longer you go.

An 80-character post is better than 100-character post.

A 40-character post is better than 80.

The upside to such a small window is that sharing a Facebook links lets you fudge a little on the amount of text in your update. Links show the title and description of a post, along with the update you type.

And how much can you fit in a 40-character window?

Here’s a post that landed under 40 characters (26 to be exact).

What makes this length optimal? Posts at this length tend to receive higher like rate, comment rate, and combined like/comment rate (stats that include a comparison of total engagement to number of Facebook fans.)

Where’d this data come from? A pair of studies have each found that shorter is better on Facebook. A Buddy Media study of the top 100 retailers Facebook pages during a six-month period in 2011 is one of the most-cited sources. Also in 2011, BlitzLocal studied 11,000 Facebook pages over a seven-month period.

The optimal length of a Google+ headline – 60 characters maximum

Google+ updates often take on the appearance of blogposts with bold headings up top and a body of text below. These top headings are the ones you’re best off optimizing. And 60 characters is as long as you should go.

What makes this length optimal? It’s the maximum length for a Google+ headline to span one row before breaking to a second line.

Where’d this data come from? Demian Farnworth of Copyblogger tested out the length with posts on the Copyblogger page. He found that bold headlines could reach 60 characters before additional words would be bumped to the second line.

The optimal width of a paragraph – 40 to 55 characters

Before researching this one, I seldom thought about the width of my paragraphs. Readers might not think much of it either, but usability studies and psychology suggest that they notice it nevertheless.

What makes this width optimal? At this width, the content appears simple to understand, and readers feel they can comprehend the subject matter.

Where’d this data come from? Derek Halpern of Social Triggers synthesized a pair of research studies to arrive at the 40-to-55 character recommendation. The studies he cited include a 2004 meta-analysis by Mary C. Dyson of the University of Reading and a 1992 study from a team of Netherlands researchers.

The optimal length of a domain name – 8 characters

What characteristics do some of the best domain names have in common?

1. is short
2. is easy to remember
3. is easy to spell
4. is descriptive or brandable
5. does not contain hyphens and numbers
6. has a .com extension

Length, in particular, can be a tough one to nail down as dot-coms get snatched up so quickly. If you can’t secure the dot-com of your dreams, there are more and more websites going the route of .co and .io.

What makes this length optimal? This is the most common domain name length for the Internet’s most popular websites.

Where’d this data come from? In 2009, Daily Blog Tips conducted an analysis of the top 250 websites in Alexa site rankings, counting words and characters that appeared in each domain name.

The optimal length of a hashtag – 6 characters

What makes this length optimal? The 6-character hashtag recommendation comes from a handful of Twitter experts and is cited by Hashtags.org, one of the leading sites on the data and usage of hashtags.

The optimal length of an email subject line – 28 to 39 characters

How does an optimal subject line look in the inbox? Here’s a sample from my Gmail.

Clearly, there are a ton of different ways to approach writing a subject line, and length is equally as important to test as the rest of the elements. If you’re looking for a place to start your tests, the optimal length of 28 to 39 characters is a good bet.

What makes this length optimal? You may see a slight uptick in open rate and click rate at this length.

Where’d this data come from? A 2012 study by Mailer Mailer looked at 1.2 billion email messages to identify subject line trends.

The optimal length of an SEO title tag – 55 characters

SEO titles are the titles of your webpages and blogposts that show up in search results.

If you want this …

… instead of this …

… stick with the optimal SEO title length.

What makes this length optimal? Google search results tend to truncate titles with an ellipsis (…) if they go beyond the 55-character mark.

Where’d this data come from? In March 2014, Moz analyzed 89,787 titles in search results pages.

The optimal length of a blog headline – 6 words

I absolutely love good headline advice, which is why this bit is such a fascinating learning. On the Buffer blog, we tend toward the biggest, boldest headlines we can come up with. Could it be that the smaller, six-word headlines do best?

vs.

What makes this length optimal? Our eyes tend to pick up on the first three words of a headline and the last three words.

Where’d this data come from? KISSmetrics author Bnonn cites usability research that confirms scanning of headlines. Also, Jakob Nielsen ran usability testing in 2009 based on the idea that readers typically consume only the first 11 characters of a headline.

The optimal length of a LinkedIn post – 25 words

The results on optimal LinkedIn length depend on whom you’re targeting. Are you trying to reach out to businesses or consumers?

One of the few studies on LinkedIn length—a 2012 report from Compendium—pulled statistics for each type of business: B2B and B2C. Here’s what they found.

What makes this length optimal? The results in the Compendium study tend to focus on clickthroughs as the basis for recommending best practices. It’s safe to assume an ideal length of a LinkedIn post would be based on clicks, too.

Where’d this data come from? In 2012, Compendium released its findings on a study of 200 companies on social media, looking at business-to-business and business-to-consumer best practices.

The optimal length of a blogpost – 1,600 words

We recently ran a blog content audit, and one of the results of the audit was some insight into the ideal length of Buffer blog posts.

1,600 words makes for a good guideline to get started.

We’ve found that 2,500-word posts tend to do best for us.

This reinforces the need to check these lengths against your own data. And if you’re just starting out, it might be smart to start off with 1,600 words per post and adjust from there.

What makes this length optimal? At this length, you can expect readers to spend the maximum amount of time reading your content. Total time on page is highest at the 1,600-word length than any other length.

From the Medium study:

7-minute posts capture the most total reading time on average.

Where’d this data come from? In December 2013, Medium published the results of its time on page analysis for blogposts on its network.

The optimal length of a YouTube video – 3 minutes

How much time do you get to tell your story in a video? How long until someone loses interest and clicks over to the next link? These are big questions for video marketers who compile their content with timestamps in mind the same way bloggers compose with word count.

What makes this length optimal? This is the average video length of the top videos on YouTube.

Where’d this data come from? In 2012, ReelSEO counted the length of the top 50 YouTube videos and found the average duration to be 2 minutes, 54 seconds. Google researchers from the YouTube team confirmed the ideal length to be three minutes as well, according to an interview with Clinton Stark.

The optimal length of a podcast – 22 minutes

Podcasting has become more and more a part of content marketing strategies for brands big and small. There are sure to be additional studies that come out on best practices for publication and promotion. In the meantime, optimal length is a good place to start. Keep things 22 minutes or shorter.

What makes this length optimal? The 22-minute mark is when an average user disconnects from a podcast.

Where’d this data come from? The data is reported from Stitcher, an online podcast streaming service.

The optimal length of a presentation – 18 minutes

Famously, the 18-minute mark is where TED Talks max out their presenters. Anyone who shares must stay under 18 minutes. Here’s why.

What makes this length optimal? This seems to be the upper limit for how long a person can pay attention before losing focus.

Where’d this data come from? Author Carmine Gallo, who has written on the history of TED Talks, cites scientific research from Dr. Paul King of Texas Christian University as well as insight into how the brain processes new information (and expends energy while doing so).

The optimal length of a SlideShare – 61 slides

You’d think that SlideShare best practices would be cut-and-dry. My research wasn’t quite so clear.

The 61-slide recommendation comes from HubSpot’s Dan Zarella who is well-known for his in-depth and accurate research on social media. From a data-backed perspective, 61 slides seems like a safe way to go.

Per HubSpot:

We can only speculate about why this is true, but it may be owed to the fact that SlideShare is a site mostly used by professionals who are likely seeking data-focused, meaty presentations with a lot of depth. Don’t be afraid to get detailed in your SlideShare content, and load your presentations with lots of data. Unlike YouTube, where shorter content tends to be more successful, SlideShare users welcome comprehensive content.

Here’s the breakdown of number of slides per presentation and SlideShare views, courtesy of Dan.

Beyond the data, there is a bit of opposite advice that many hold as a best practice: Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule.

• 10 Slides
• 20 Minutes
• 30 Point Font

It’s a system that a lot of people swear by. Is it right for you? There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by testing.

What makes this length optimal? Slide decks of this length get more views on average.

Where’d this data come from? In 2010, HubSpot’s Dan Zarella shared results from his social media research, pointing to this optimal length.

The optimal size of a Pinterest image – 735px by 1102px

Curalate found that vertical images, featuring an aspect ratio between 2:3 and 4:5, receive 60 percent more repins than images with a more vertically-skewed aspect ratio.

Combine this with the best practices from the folks at Canva who recommend a starting point for Pinterest image templates at 735 pixels wide by 1102 pixels tall and—bang!—you’ve got your ideal size, backed by data.

What makes this size optimal? At this size, you can expect more likes, repins, and comments.

Where’d this data come from? In June, Curalate analyzed over 500,000 Pinterest images posted by brands. Their findings also included recommendations for faces, hue, texture, brightness, color, and more.

Bonus Pinterest tips:

As for the optimal length of a Pinterest description (maximum is 500 characters), Dan Zarrella found that 200-character descriptions are the most repinnable.

A great use for the description is a call-to-action. Brandon Gaille found that pins with CTAs receive an 80 percent increase in engagement over those without.

http://blog.bufferapp.com/optimal-length-social-media

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