Don't be a social media chatterbox

Have you ever met a person who seems like they don't pause for breath? Who speaks and speaks and speaks and doesnt let you get a word in edgeways?

How do you feel when you speak to them? That's right, like you may as well not be there. There is no balance of listening, no two way dialogue, just a rambling monologue by one person.

The quickest way to lose followers in social media? Post too much. Tweet incessantly, post 5 facebook posts in a row, update your status 10 times a day...guess what?

The one person people are sick of seeing in their news feed is YOU.

Of course, you don't want that to happen right?

To avoid that, you only need to keep one simple social media philosophy in mind:

Social media is a conversation.

The art of a great conversation?

Listening, appealing to the other person's values, telling them something funny or interesting, sharing a personal story, updating them on a news story you have heard- it's all the same, just virtual.

No matter how loyal you are to a brand you would soon stop following them if all they did was post about themselves- and too much. It smacks of desperation.

As long as you post in intervals, people will more likely want to listen to you or look at what you've said. Too much 'noise' from you, and people will just switch off- the same as if they would do in real life.

So when assessing your social media engagement and developing your online 'voice', don't be that person that never shuts up!

Don't forget the SEO in Social Media!

You have created your social media community, you're happily tweeting/blogging/posting away to your many followers...but have you thought about:

a) what you are saying

and

b) how you are saying it?

Now, hopefully you will have already optimised your main website/blog so that it is easy to find you in search engines (This is called organic search engine optimisation, or SEO for short).

You'll probably have 'landing pages' on your site that are full of keywords related to your product or service and that are different or unique to those of your competitors.

Because this isn't an SEO blog, I'm not going to go into the finer details of SEO and how it works. All I will say, however, is that you need to have your list of relevant keywords that are applicable to your site and what would be your search terms through using a keyword tracker (i.e. http://www.keyworddiscovery.co.uk )

Once you have your list compiled, its good to start utilising them in your social media conversations. Think about your aim- are you indirectly wanting your followers to go to a specific landing page?

If so, make sure you make best use of keywords. Especially for content that can be shared- optimising your social media 'currency' is one crucial task that many fail to overlook.

Remember- more optimised shares = more inbound links = more targeted traffic to your site.

One tip, however- don't compromise the quality of your conversations. If your keywords dont fit what you are saying, that's ok. Just remember that the majority of what you post should be keyword-focused. Mentioning your brand or company name is a good idea, too.

Don't forget the SEO in Social media- optimise your conversations for success!

Encourage community content creation- around your brand

In the realm of social media marketing, the best way to get your community to engage with you and your brand is to create something that is easily shareable.

We exchange social currency on the web- videos, articles, news stories, music, photos- anything that we can comment on or create a shared interest around a particular topic.

To create a great social media campaign, you need to think what kind of currency you can create that will a) capture your target market and b) leverage your brand.

Firstly, find out where your customers hang out. Is it Youtube? Is it Bebo? Twitter? Linked in?

There's no point creating a targeted strategy if none of your customers are using that social media platform, so find out where your target audience spend their time.

Once you've identified the platform(s) you want to utilise, think of a way that will get your followers talking.

What are they passionate about? Connect their passion to your brand and encourage them to share or create content that they post to your social media platform.

What do I mean?

Well, for example a friend of mine works for a tv channel that sells painting and watercolour products. On their facebook page, she encourages fans to post their watercolour paintings, and other members comment or 'like' those members paintings.

The facebook page then becomes a community on watercolour paintings- all residing comfortably in the confines of your own brand, in which you can indirectly market your products to them.

Social media marketing isn't about ROI- its about building a social network of people who are passionate about what you do, and leveraging your brand through building your online community.

Take Deadmau5 for example. He's my favourite dj, and recently leveraged the power of social media to draw more attention to his music.

His new video, some chords, is being created by fans as a competition- http://wooshii.com/projects/113/create-the-official-some-chords-video/

this creates lots of viral activity- and keywords- for deadmau5's brand. Furthermore, the voting system is a Facebook 'like' http://wooshii.com/deadmau5-competition.php?id=410

so each person's vote shows up on their personal Facebook page...and in turn attracts more attention>>more traffic>>more views= more music sales.

Clever huh?

And of course, your community LOVE it. Give them the opportunity to create or share unique user generated content and it will get their creative juices flowing.

You never know, you may even learn a thing or two yourself!