Michelle Krasniak - Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

Contents at a Glance

1 Chapter 1: Discovering Helpful Tech Tools Keeping Track of the Social Media Scene Saving Time with Content-Distribution Tools Alternative Content-Distribution Services Snipping Ugly URLs Using E-Commerce Tools for Social Sites Keeping Your Ear to the Social Ground Measuring the Buzz by Type of Service

2 Chapter 2: Leveraging SEO for Improved Visibility Making the Statistical Case for SEO Thinking Tactically and Practically Focusing on the Top Search Engines Knowing the Importance of Search Phrases Maximizing Metatag Muscle Optimizing Your Site and Content for Search Engines

3 Chapter 3: Optimizing Social Media for Internal and External Searches Placing Search Terms on Social Media Optimizing Blogs Optimizing Images, Video, and Podcasts Optimizing Specific Social Media Platforms Optimizing for Mobile Search Gaining Visibility in Real-Time Search Gaining Traction on Google with Social Media Monitoring Your Search Engine Ranking

4 Chapter 4: Using Social Bookmarks, News, and Share Buttons Bookmarking Your Way to Traffic Sharing the News Benefiting from Social Bookmarks and News Services Researching a Social Bookmark and Social News Campaign Submitting to Bookmarking Services Submitting to Social News Services Using Application-Specific Bookmarks Timing Your Submissions Encouraging Others to Bookmark or Rate Your Site Using Social Media Buttons

Chapter 1

IN THIS CHAPTER

Keeping current with social media

Distributing content efficiently

Giving long URLs a haircut

Selecting shopping tools that work on social media

Monitoring the buzz

In Book 1, you discover that the key to social media success is planning. This minibook reviews useful tools and resources to make your plan easier to execute. Before you start, you may also want to check out Book 9, which focuses on measurement tools for traffic, costs, and campaign performance.

As you select tools and schedule tasks from suggestions in this chapter, remember to enter them on your Social Media Marketing Plan (Book 1, Chapter 3) and Social Media Activity Calendar (Book 1, Chapter 4). You can also download blank copies of these forms by clicking the Downloads tab at www.dummies.com/go/socialmediamarketingaio5e .

Try to select at least one tool from each category:

Resource, news, and blog sites that cover online marketing and social media

Content-distribution tools

URL-clipping tools

Shopping apps or services for social media, if appropriate

Buzz-tracking tools to monitor mentions of your business

You can always jump right into the social media scene and figure out these things later, but your efforts will be more productive if you build the right framework first.

Unless you take advantage of online resources, you’ll never be able to stay current with the changes in social media. Here’s a quick look at how much the landscape changed in the course of just a few years:

Use of social media continued its explosive growth. According to WeAreSocial.com ( https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media ), nearly 4.54 billion people around the world are online, of which 3.80 billion are on social media. And as amazing as it might seem, Internet users in 2019 averaged more than 7.6 social media accounts each ( www.brandwatch.com/blog/amazing-social-media-statistics-and-facts ).

Social media acquisitions run rampant. Facebook alone purchased Instagram for $1 billion in 2012; WhatsApp, a messaging app, for $19 billion in 2014; and Ascenta, a drone manufacturer, for another $20 million, also in 2014.

During the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, social media usage grew by 61 percent and usage of messaging apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp grew by 50 percent. Twitter alone saw a 23 percent increase in daily users ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholmes/2020/04/24/is-covid-19-social-medias-levelling-up-moment ).

New social media platforms continue to pop up, proving that the power of innovation is still strong. Watch the growth of Meetup (social event planning), Viber (secure instant messaging app), and Vero (ad-free social network).

At the same time, other social media services went belly-up. Casualties of the social media wars included Sulia (a subject-matter social media service that connected users to experts), Blab.im (which allowed narrow-casting of video to a defined set of followers), and most notably, Vine.co (the site noted for sharing short, looped videos, which has limited its recording functionality and become mainly a site to review old videos).

To keep current on the changing tides, subscribe to feeds about social marketing from social-marketing blogs or news services; check at least one source weekly. Also, review traffic trends on social media services weekly; they’re amazingly volatile. Table 1-1lists some helpful resource sites.

TABLE 1-1Social Media Marketing Resources