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3 Reasons Your Social Media Presence Sucks

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Now when I say your Social Media Presence Sucks, I don’t mean that literally, I just mean you can always improve it! So here are 3 Reasons your social media presence sucks. Social media has been hailed time and time again as the new (which is a bit out of date now, really) big player in marketing and brand engagement. Then again, the reality of the situation has shown that the vast majority of brands, individuals, and even social media managers don’t actually find themselves successful in cultivating a large following. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, here are a few mistakes that keep marketers from ever reaching their maximum potential.

1) Not being a creator. The people who have the biggest social media followings on the planet, or even just within whatever niche(s) you find yourself marketing, are people who create something. Their tweets, posts, and pictures carry weight because they’ve got something solid to back them up. Too often, people ask for “follows” and other social media engagement without giving anyone a good reason to actually do so. If you’re begging people to retweet your link, you sure as heck better have something on the other end that delivers true value if you want those who get curious enough to continue to engaging with you.

2) Mistaking social media for a one-way channel of communication. In other instances, I’ve actually seen it be the case that someone had great content on their blog, but wasn’t having much luck getting people to engage on social platforms. One of the reasons this happens is that people assume importance too early. It’s like any kind of marketing that isn’t in its infancy anymore: You don’t get widespread recognition just for “doing it,” or even doing it well, because the market is too saturated.

So, how do you stand out? You start talking with people, and not just at them. Make sure that you are giving out what you’re asking for be engaging with others you find interesting, asking them questions, and commenting on their content. Real comments, not the “wow, great read!” variety. Some of the biggest names in social media still take time throughout the day to respond to people messaging and asking them for advice.

3) Automating. Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a mind that’s built up companies based almost exclusively on social media expertise, has an interesting stance on automation; it’s a stance you can learn from.  First of all many people get caught up in automating their social media endeavors far too early. In a sense, they haven’t really maxed out their time, they don’t really need to back away from active engagement, they’re just lazy. Or maybe they’re just putting the cart before the horse. Automation isn’t inherently bad, but it is when you try and hide the fact that you’re doing it. Another way of putting this is that it’s fine to automate simple tasks that don’t involve direct customer interaction, but you shouldn’t fake interaction. Customers know that the mass email you sent out wasn’t personally directed to them just because their name is in it. They know that your auto-following them back on twitter wasn’t out of genuine interest. Don’t be fake, people will see through it.

While social media isn’t intensely complicated, it’s also not hard to end up doing it wrong. Make the time to strategize and account for factors like these before you actually touch your fingers to your keyboard… or your phone… or your tablet… you get the idea.

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5 Ways to Increase Click-Through Rates with Killer Descriptions

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You can increase traffic to your website in one of two ways. The first is to improve your page rankings on the search engine results for your keywords. The second is to improve your click-through-rate (CTR). Improve click-through-rates (CTR) on email, facebook and everywhere else with killer descriptions.

Most Internet marketers focus on the first approach. But improving CTR can provide you with huge results, especially since it’s so easy to do.

Over the years, I’ve discovered dozens of effective ways to increase CTR, some of which yield better results than others. Here are the seven that are easy and provide huge results very quickly:

1. Copy Off Other People

While this technique may have been frowned upon in high school, it should be standard operating procedure for successful internet marketers.

A lot of online marketers are allergic to the idea of paying for traffic. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything to learn from the people who do buy paid ads.

The truth is that people who pay for traffic spend a lot of time and money testing their ads to make sure they get the optimal results. The result is ads that already are fully optimized.

All you need to do is swoop in and mirror their optimized copy.

In fact, because Google Ads are limited to the number of characters they can contain, it’s a safe bet that the keywords paid marketers include are the ones that perform best and get the most conversions.

2. Copy from Non-Paying Competitors

As long as you are mirroring your competitors’ paid ads, why stop there? You also can take pointers from the most successful competitor’s copy, who use organic SEO strategies.

Look to see which keywords and phrases they are using. What benefits or features do they highlight? Then take them for your own and use them within your copy.

This isn’t stealing. It’s known as “not reinventing the wheel”.

3. Tickle Your Customer’s Curiosity

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also caused billions of web users to click through on links because they were dying to find out what happened next.

In fact, this is a strategy you see all the time on social media sites such as Facebook. Marketers will post something like, “A Woman in Texas Stopped to Give a Dollar to a Homeless Man on the Street. You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next … Wow!”

This may be an overused trope, but it’s overused because it works like magic. Try other clickbait phrases in your meta descriptions like this to exploit people natural curiosity. Other phrases include:

– “Find Out How …”

– “What You Do If … ”

– “Discover the Amazing Way …”

– “Have You Ever Wondered What Would Happen If …”

4. ‘Features Tell, but Benefits Sell …’

This is a phrase that is as old as advertising itself. People aren’t interested in the facts and statistics about what they are buying. What they really want to know is what it can do to make their life better. Explain that and you can sell practically anything to anybody.

Start your ads with benefits. Features like how much something weighs, how big it is, how long it lasts, and so on, should only be included if they drive the story you are trying to tell. If they don’t, leave them out.

In your descriptions, include benefits phrases like “Make More Money by …” or “Lose Weight and Feel Great with …”

5. People Love Numbers

Getting clicks is easier when you use numbers in your descriptions. That’s because people believe something is more factual if you qualify it with real number.

For example, which would you be more likely to click on?:

– Learn How to Improve Your Click-Through Rate

– 5 Ways to Increase Click-Through Rates with Killer Descriptions

Considering you already are reading this, I think you just answered the question!

Of course once you get the click, you still have to SELL, and to sell your product needs a great hook!

If you feel you still haven’t developed the perfect HOOK for your product get in touch with me over at FetchFunnel.com we can help you produce sales copy that converts like crazy!

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SEO Doesn’t Look Like It Did Last Year

A perfect search engine optimization strategy has been the stuff of dreams since, well, the beginning of search engines. Since that time, SEO has gone over so many facelifts and iterations that seemed to completely reinvent what it meant to maintain “best practices” when it came to search engines. As recently as a couple years ago, “link building” was hailed as SEO king, and link building networks found themselves in high demand.

Too often, the trend of providing SEO work became about ‘tricking’ the search engines, particularly Google. Funny, since what search engine companies have always wanted hasn’t really changed in two decades: Google and its competitors simply want to provide the best, most relevant search experience for their users. This is what keeps searchers coming back for more. Over time, they’ve perfected their search algorithms to better achieve this goal by excluding results which try to game the system.

Professional SEO outfits know this, and have for some time. More and more, working in SEO means becoming proficient in a larger number of tasks than ever before in order to guarantee Google’s good graces.

First of all, if you want to be working in SEO in 2018, you’d better know how to write and prepare some great content. More and more now, SEO positions look for someone who can create the actual content that will help to populate, update, and keep their web properties valuable. This means that being able to write blog posts, scripts videos, create images in Photoshop, and more should be in your CV’s skill list. Let’s face it, SEO now is an aggregate of other tasks and companies aren’t looking to pay four different salaries to have them accomplished when one ambitious employee with a bit of know-how can make it happen.

You also need to be a strong team leader. This is truer if you’re working in a brick and mortar company than if you’re doing SEO for your own blog, but it’s still relevant to enterprises of any size. A large part of an SEO expert’s job is educating others. Because content creation, social engagement, and more all tie into SEO these days, it’s important than anyone and everyone on a team have a basic working knowledge of what SEO is and how you seek to achieve it. In a sense, your job is to help instill SEO into workplace culture so that employees are keeping search engine impact in mind when they work on their own projects. Even if you’re a solo marketer working from home, instilling SEO smarts in any freelancers you hire or business partners you might be taking on can be invaluable.

In the old days it seemed to be that everyone was preaching the “building” of links, when what they should have been on about was the “attraction” of them. Now, more people are catching on, and so should you. Create content that is so good it has to be shared, and make good use of social channels. Your goal should be to attract links from other people who want to repost and talk about your content – what was once limited to syndication is now expanded into the entire arena of social media.

And finally, always keep your eyes peeled for the next trend – the most successful SEO’ers don’t chase waves after they crest, they ride them as they form.

If your websites are WordPress blogs you may want to look into the “SEO Pressor” WordPress plugin that helps with Google ratings for your blog.

Check it out now!

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Facebook PPC – What Works, What Doesn’t Work, What’s Profitable

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Facebook is one of the largest additions to the advertising giants of the world. Yet many internet marketers still haven’t made the most of what this platform has to offer. The reality is, most people are so used to the PPC model that they haven’t quite gotten their minds around how Facebook works just yet. Advertising on Facebook, though it’s charged by PPC, is really a completely different ballgame.

Understanding Facebook PPC shouldn’t be understood based on a “what’s different from AdWords” framework. Instead, it should be learned from the ground up. The psychology that goes into it is completely different, as are the methodologies you need to succeed.

Understanding Interruption Marketing

The most important point to understand about Facebook PPC is that you’re doing interruption marketing, not permission marketing.

With AdWords, you’re presenting people looking for a service with a solution. For example, someone types in “Cheap Web Hosting” and you advertise your hosting services. Your CTR’s going to be high, because people are looking for you.

With Facebook, you don’t get to target people who’re looking for you. You only get to target people who’re likely interested in what you have to offer – And you have to interrupt them as they’re browsing friends’ profiles, posting updates or uploading photos.

Targeting on Facebook

Facebook ads targeting works based on two primary factors: Demographics and keywords.

First, you absolutely need to know your demographics. If you don’t,

Facebook can be a very expensive place to test it. If you have other advertising alternatives, you should probably try those first and get a good sense of your audience before you spend money on Facebook.

Keywords can help you really narrow down a large audience. For example, if you’re advertising an online game, you could easily target people who’ve listed “gaming,” “Starcraft” and “League of Legends” as interests. You could also narrow your demographics to 18 to 28 males. Though there are definitely females who play online games, your ROI is going to be much higher with males.

To succeed on Facebook, you want to start with tight targeting.

Then once you’ve proven profitability, expand your targeting while broadening your reach. Your ROI will decrease, but volume will increase. Keep expanding until the ROI drops to a point where it’s not acceptable.

Creating an Ad That Catches Attention

In AdWords, the most important thing on your ad is your headline.

On Facebook, your headline scarcely matters.

What needs to catch attention on Facebook is your image. Your image needs to jump out and grab attention. Unusual images like babies with four eyes, optical illusions, IQ tests, beautiful girls and other such shocking images have done very well on Facebook because they interrupt people and get them to pay attention.

Your text just needs to play an informative role. Use the image to catch attention, then use the text to tell them what they’ll get by clicking.

If you combine a great image with stellar targeting, you’re likely to have a high CTR campaign on your hands. If you have a solid sales funnel and you split test well, you have a very good chance of landing yourself a very profitable campaign.

For a much more detailed breakdown on how to get massive traffic via Facebook get a free consultation over at FetchFunnel.com.

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Should You Advertise on Social Media?

Putting ads on social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is an effective way to increase followers, build your email list, and to engage with your audience more. At this time in history, you can practically reach out and touch your ideal audience with just a few clicks of the mouse. But first, you must get their attention. One of the best ways to do that is to advertise on social media.

* It’s Inexpensive – You can place ads on any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter with as little as 20 dollars and get results. This is amazing because other types of advertising are so expensive. You can test an ad inexpensively, tweak it, make it better, then run it again – increasing your budget based on your desired ROI.

* It’s Effective – Paid ads work very well since so many people are regularly on social media. If you plan the advertisement correctly, it will seem as if you’re just engaging with your audience more. You don’t want the ad to look like a TV ad, but instead more like another share with valuable information.

* Targeting Is Amazing – The way that you can laser target your audience on social media is reason enough to start using paid ads. You can run remarketing campaigns that show an advertisement to people who already went to your site but left without buying, for example.

* It Boosts Brand Recognition ñ Even if someone doesn’t click on your advertisement, they may still see it in their feed. That seeing can’t be undone, and the more times they see it, the more likely they are to act on the advertisement.

* Provides More Opportunity for Your Leads to Convert – If you really want to convert more leads, a direct paid advertisement on social media is an excellent way to accomplish it because you’ll reach more people than a regular post.

* Improves Your Brand’s Authority – Most social media ads will show that they’re ads with the word “sponsored” showing up on the post. While this might seem like a negative, it’s not. If you’re seen as someone who spends money on social media ads, your audience will realize you’re making money in your niche. This will then start to bring you up to authority status in their minds.

* Brings More Traffic to Your Website – Social media advertisements will bring more traffic to your website. Make sure you send them to an amazing landing page, specific to the social media site you’re placing the advertisement on.

* Builds Your Email List Faster – There is no doubt that using social media advertisements to offer a freebie (lead magnet) will help you build your list faster. But, it needs to be very targeted, solve a serious problem easily, and be set up correctly with the social media platform you’re using.

Paid advertising on social media, if targeting is sufficient, is an excellent way to increase brand loyalty while also spreading brand awareness. The more eyes you can get on your offers, the better. Using social media advertising is a good way to do it due to the costs and the amazing targeting technology.

Next…

Start writing your ads. Remember your Headline is the most important part of any ad. If you need some help check out Funnel Scripts. If you’re uncomfortable with selling you can use their templates.

Check it out here