Chapter 11

Engaging Your Brand Audience Online with Social Media

In This Chapter

Mapping and navigating the social-media landscape

Developing and sharing content that pulls people to your brand

Leveraging blogs, video, and presentations into online engagement and interaction

Social media is where your brand goes to interact with its online audience. It’s also where your customers and fans introduce your brand to their friends and followers through their comments, likes, posts, retweets, and more. Their actions make transmission of your brand message a customer-generated action that builds both your reach and credibility.

On social media you can share information, make friends, generate leads, develop followings, and post content that pulls people to your point of purchase, whether that place opens from a front door or a home page.

The downside is that social media is also where your brand can get beat up. When brand builders forget that social media is, first and above all, social — when they jump over the sharing and interacting steps to start pitching and selling — they lose not only their audience but also their likeability. Worse, when brands lose a grip on their brand message, promise, personality, character, and common sense, the backlash can be brutal

This chapter helps you manage the balancing act as you get social, stay social, and mind your online manners. If you have a brand and it has a good and positive social-media presence, we tip our hats and suggest you scan this chapter for steps and advice to help as you strengthen your good start. If your brand isn’t already active on social media, for the strength of your brand please make each one of the upcoming sections required reading.

Getting Organized before Getting Social

With three out of four screen-connected adults spending time on social-media networks, it’s no wonder that nearly all marketers consider social media important for brand exposure. Yet in marketing and branding meetings, social media is still the elephant in the room: Everyone knows it’s important, but most aren’t sure how to get in on the act.

The most frequently asked question usually has to do with how much time it takes to “do” social media right. Here’s the answer: Social media can take as much time as you have — and a whole lot less if you lay the foundation by taking the steps outlined in the following three sections, one time only.

Define your social-media objectives

Like any other part of your marketing plan, your social-media plan needs to start with your aim in mind. What do you want to achieve? Here are examples of some possible answers to the “what’s your social-media objective” question:

• To achieve brand awareness and trust as a leader in your field or community
• To attract the attention of prospects and generate leads
• To gain awareness, credibility, and trust with those who influence the opinions and decisions of your customers
• To engage and interact with customers
• To tune into conversations about your business, products, or business sector
• To create interest that leads to positive decisions and transactions ranging from sales of products or services, speaking engagements, news coverage, mailing list opt-ins, subscriptions, or other desired outcomes

Don’t confuse social media with a call-to-action sales channel. If you try to use it primarily for placing brand or sales messages your efforts are almost sure to backfire. Instead, aim to develop an engaged following by posting useful, interesting content that isn’t always about you or your brand. After you develop a following that might appreciate special offers, post promotional offers only rarely. Never forget: Social media is social. Participate to develop relationships and trust above all else.

Reserve your social-media name

By a mile, the best name to use across social media is your brand name. Check out the brands whose names you know best and you’ll find that nearly all use only one name — their brand name — everywhere. For example, Starbucks has the domain name Starbucks.com, the Twitter name @Starbucks, and the Facebook name Starbucks. Perfect! One name, everywhere.

If you’re developing a brand-new brand, turn to Chapter 7 for advice on researching and selecting a name that’s available across all channels, and then turn to Chapter 10 for help reserving your brand name as your social-media username.

But if you’re working to strengthen an established brand with a name that’s not available for use across social media, you’ll need to get creative. The following tips will help:

• If your brand name is long: If your brand name has more than 15 characters, it exceeds Twitter’s name limitation. If that’s the case, devise an alternative that conveys your brand identity. For example, National Geographic, uses @NatGeo on Twitter, with accounts under the name @NatGeoChannel, @NatGeoPhotos, @NatGeoTravel, and others. Hamburger Helper goes by the friendly name @helper. Luxor Las Vegas goes by @LuxorLV. Southwest Airlines goes by @SouthwestAir.
• If your brand name is already in use: You have two choices:
  • Go to the account and see if the name is used by an egg. Don’t laugh. On Twitter, an account with only one tweet, no or very few followers, and an egg instead of a photo or other avatar, is likely a dormant account. If your brand name is trademarked, and if your trademark is in use by an inactive or dormant account, you can look into Twitter’s trademark policy to see if you can get the name released for your use, but don’t count on a positive outcome.
  • Come up with an alternative username. Twitter suggests that you add hyphens or letters or develop an abbreviation. YoungDesign could become Young_Design or YoungDesignUSA, for example. Or PhilsBookstore could become PhilsBooks.

When you find a name you want to make yours across social media, go to a username directory such as NameChk.com, KnowEm.com, or CheckUserNames.com. For free and in seconds, see if the name you want is available, and reserve it if it is. Then protect it with a strong password and by setting up two-step authentication on any network that offers the option. Two-step authentication requires an additional passcode should your account be logged into from a new machine or location.

Turn your brand’s elevator pitch into a 160-character social-media introduction

Online, more than anywhere else, you have only seconds to introduce yourself and convince people that they want to follow you or note what you have to say. While Twitter allows you 140 characters per tweet, the character allocation for your Twitter bio is slightly (only slightly) more generous. You get 160 characters — about 20 words — to introduce your brand in a way that turns heads and creates interest. In those few letters (and spaces), include some or all of the following information:

• What you or your business does and for whom
• Keywords or terms people are likely to use when searching for people or businesses like yours
• A sense of the kind of information people following your social-media posts can expect to receive
• A sense of the tone of your brand, whether humorous, serious, controversial, authoritative, academic, newsy, whatever
• A thought-provoking, interesting, likeable indication of why you’re credible, trustworthy, and worth following
• Fun facts about who you are, what you’re into, and what you’ve done that’s cool and brag-worthy — without actually bragging

Visit the social pages of competitors, friends, and brands and people you admire. Read their introductions. Great and likeable bios can be friendly, funny, or factual. But none are self-aggrandizing. Strike terms like premier, expert, or guru in favor of facts that convey your point of difference while making people want to know more. Here are examples from some widely applauded business and personal brands using social media:

• @Oreo: Your favorite cookie. Filling your world with Wonder 140 characters at a time.
• @GoPro: Official GoPro Twitter. We make the World’s Most Versatile Camera. Wear it. Mount it. Love it.
• @Netflix: Official Netflix US Twitter page. Tweeting about movies, TV, docs, comedies and Netflix original series anytime, on any device. Customer service: @Netflixhelps.

Mapping the Social-Media Landscape

Want to know where to dive into the ever-expanding world of social media? The answer is really pretty easy: Go where those you want to reach hang out.

Start by reviewing your social-media objectives. If you aim to reach industry and business leaders, business-oriented social networks fill the bill. If you want to generate customer or client leads, learn where customers and clients spend time online and make those networks your jumping-off point. If you’re working to develop credibility that draws customers from competitors, watch what your competitors are doing online. Go to their websites, learn which social networks they use, and click to study their pages, posts, and followings. You’ll gain insight into what others are doing on social media and how their activity syncs with or differs from the aims you want to achieve.

The most prominent social networks fall into these categories:

• The major, dominant social networks: Facebook leads the pack with the most active monthly users, trailed closely by LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+, which gets indexed by Google and is a hub for Google properties including Picasa, Blogger, and YouTube.
• Location-based, geosocial check-in sites: Foursquare and Google are the major networks for on-the-go, screen-connected customers seeking storefront locations, user reviews, and check-in or purchase incentives.
• Review and rating sites: Yelp and TripAdvisor are the best-known review and rating sites, but other sites serve regional, special-interest, and industry-specific audiences.

The dominant social networks

This section comes with a caveat: The social-media landscape is growing and changing so quickly that no published list stays accurate for long. To stay on top of breaking news, follow the same blogs or social-media feeds that social-media pros follow, including Social Media Examiner (www.socialmediaexaminer.com), Tech Crunch (www.techcrunch.com), Mashable (www.mashable.com), Social Media Today (www.socialmediatoday.com), and Small Business Trends (www.smallbiztrends.com).

Facebook

Unlike Facebook Profiles, Facebook Pages are for businesses and brands. They’re discoverable through Facebook and browser searches, they help you develop a community, and they let you share updates, video, and links that brand followers can reshare within their social circles. Other advantages:

• Because Facebook Pages are public (unlike Facebook Profiles), Page updates and posts help boost your brand’s search results.
• If you have a physical storefront, customers can use the Facebook app to check in and alert friends to their whereabouts.
• You can post questions and interact with responses and comments.
• You can promote events for free by clicking the Event tab in the Status section of your page.
• Posts are free. That’s the great news. The not-so-great news is that thanks to Facebook’s algorithms, the average Facebook Page post reaches as little as 7 percent of your page followers. For greater reach, you have three choices: Develop a history of sky-high sharing and interaction, pay to promote your posts, or buy ads at low prices that have made Facebook a top selling platform for brand owners. See Chapter 11 for information on how to tread carefully into the arena of social-media advertising.

Especially if you serve customers rather than other businesses, if you haven’t already done so, set up a free Facebook Page. Follow these steps:

1. Log into your Facebook Profile, hover over “Pages” in the menu, click “More,” and then click to “Create a Page.” Only someone with a Facebook Profile can create and administer a Facebook Page.
2. Select the classification category for your business. Be careful about your selection, because it can’t be changed later. And when Facebook invites you to share your page, wait until it’s completed and ready to represent your brand well.
3. Quickly acquire 25 fans so you can customize your URL. After your Facebook Page is up, invite friends, family, employees, and customers to become followers. When you have 25 fans you can change your page URL from the default string of characters to a more findable URL featuring your social-media user name. Go to www.facebook.com/username and follow the prompts.
4. Develop your community by following brands, customers, media outlets, and others who affect your success and influence your customers. Following other pages lets you benefit from their posts, plus liking begets liking and is a quick route to growing your own Facebook following.
5. Participate regularly by commenting on relevant posts by others and, especially by posting interesting, useful updates accompanied by photos, video, and graphics, because images drive 50 percent more engagement from followers. See the upcoming section “Getting and Staying Active and Engaged” for more tips on content creation.

Monitor your Facebook activity to see what’s working by clicking Page Insights from the top-of-page menu. You’ll be able to track which mentions result in Page likes and which posts achieve high reach and engagement.

Twitter

For just about everything you’d want to know about using Twitter effectively, check out the page titled “Getting started with Twitter” in Twitter’s own help center. Keep this advice in mind:

• Become findable in Twitter Search by creating a Twitter bio that presents what your brand offers, why it’s credible, and how your brand’s Twitter stream is interesting, valuable, and worth following. Use keywords (no hashtags necessary) to show up in user searches.
• Maintain your brand message and voice in all tweets, whether you’re creating, replying to, or sharing the content of others. (Chapter 18 is a guide to crisis management if your brand seriously goes off brand message, but we hope you’ll never need it.)
• Choose a couple of hashtagged keywords — topic categories noted by the symbol # — that you want associated with your brand. Develop authority in your topic areas by keeping your Twitter interactions on message and by using hashtags (but only a few per tweet) to attract the attention of topic followers.
• Keep tweets short. Twitter allows 140 characters, but don’t use them all. Leave at least 20 characters for followers to use when they retweet your posts. Less is often even better: Example “Click for five Twitter don’ts,” followed by a link to great content. (The word “click” is proven to increase engagement and retweets.)
• Share content, photos, and video to make your tweets more interesting and sharable.
• Include a call to action that conveys urgency (for example, right now) and invites engagement and interaction (for example, watch, discover, do or don’t, or a good reason to click to reach the content you’re sharing).

The key to success on Twitter is to use it frequently. Tweet, retweet, reply, and mention others by using their Twitter handle (for example @ForDummies). The Twitter app or one of many other free third-part apps including HootSuite and TweetDeck let you organize followers into groups, schedule messages, and study interaction analytics.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the 21st century version of the Rolodex file — and a whole lot more. It’s where people turn to find people they want to work with. It’s also where LinkedIn members increasingly turn for business content and news.

Take these steps to get started:

1. Set up a free personal LinkedIn Profile. Your profile allows you to be found by LinkedIn users, plus LinkedIn profiles rise to the top of online search results for your personal name. Think of your profile as a second or stand-in personal website.
   • Place keywords for your area of expertise in your headline, titles, and descriptions of your specialties, interests and education, and ask those writing recommendations to use your keywords as well.
   • Use a close-up photo that presents you as a professional, preferably with a smile.
   • Personalize your public profile URL by clicking Profile, scrolling down to Public Profile, clicking Edit, and changing the default address to read http://linkedin.com/in/[yourname].
   • Give people reasons to connect and to consider your offerings. Include testimonials, success stories, and easy-to-scan descriptions.
2. Set up a free Company Page. This business profile presents your brand, keeps people in touch and engaged with brand news and job openings, and links to your brand website and other digital marketing channels. From your personal LinkedIn profile (or from the profile of the person who will serve as your company page administrator), click “Interests” from the top-of-page menu, click “Companies” from the drop-down menu, and click “Create” to make your page. Use personal outreach or LinkedIn targeted ads to attract followers.
3. Create Spotlight Pages to showcase individual products or business units. Just click the Company Page edit menu and select “Create a Showcase Page.”

Get active by joining groups, starting groups, participating in groups, and asking and answering questions relevant to your brand and its topic areas. Post status updates to share news, valuable information, and useful links, taking care to avoid a slew of sales-oriented self-congratulatory messages.

Google+

The name says it all. Google+ is a Google network, and Google+ posts are indexed by Google. Who doesn’t want their content to be indexed by Google?

Go to www.google.com/+/brands to take five steps, each accompanied by instructions that lead you through the easy process:

1. Create a Google+ page.
2. Complete your profile.
3. Verify your page and claim your customized or vanity URL.
4. Add the Google+ badge to your website and other brand pages.
5. Link your Google+ account with your YouTube account, if you have one. This link gives you added YouTube management capabilities and the ability to run live broadcasts via Hangouts on Air, which stream worldwide and are automatically saved on your YouTube channel.

To use Google+, establish circles for various customer segments and influencer groups so you can target your posts to those with specific interests. Then post regularly, using a keyword-rich headline for search optimization.

Pinterest

Pinterest is the corkboard of social media, where people and brands pin and repin images and videos that drive more referral traffic to websites than any network except Facebook.

Pinterest isn’t a showcase for your brand so much as a portrayal of the culture of your brand and the interests of your brand followers.

• Share bold, attention-grabbing behind-the-scenes images and videos of the origins of your products, the activities of your customers, infographics of your findings, and inspiration behind your innovations.
• Create boards for various topic areas, each named with keywords that make them findable.
• Post content to your own website or blog first, and then pin it to Pinterest. That way the image will link back to your site, increasing your traffic and search rankings.

To open a brand page on Pinterest, go to business.pinterest.com. When you’re asked to sign up from your Facebook or Twitter account, choose your business Twitter account unless you want to tie your brand’s Pinterest presence to your personal Facebook profile.

Instagram

Sixty million photos — and climbing — are uploaded daily on Instagram, and they aren’t all selfies. Instagram users are young (most are under 35), mostly female (60 percent), and highly engaged, clicking more than a billion “likes” daily and commenting at a rate of more than a thousand times a second. No wonder brands are signing on in ever-growing numbers. Following are some examples:

• Virgin America invites followers to “tag travel pics with #virginamerica.”
• American Express offers followers “insta-access to exclusive experiences news, and rewards through our lens.”
• Warby-Parker used Instagram to celebrate the brand’s fourth birthday by posting photos employees when they were four years old.

On Instagram, you can’t schedule posts, embed links, or use a third-party tool for analytics or insights. What you can do is publish images on-the-spot, using the free Instagram mobile app, to reach followers known for sky-high levels of user engagement and customer conversion.

For help, check out business.instagram.com and follow the Instagram For Business Blog at blog.business.instagram.com.

Location-based and check-in sites

If you have a physical location, two major sites help you lead mobile customers to your door and reward them with check-in offers and perks:

• Google My Business (google.com/business) is the most recent version of Google Places, providing a free opportunity for businesses to show up in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. Establishing a Google My Business page lets you post your address, phone number, store hours, contact information, photos, virtual tours, and updates. The result: Customers can find you, reach you, and interact with you. They can also read and add reviews.
• Foursquare split itself into two apps in 2014: Foursquare and Swarm by Foursquare. Foursquare focuses on location-based recommendations and suggestions. Swarm is how customers check in and broadcast their locations to friends and family. Go to business.foursquare.com/listing for information on adding your business, rewarding your customers with check-in perks, placing ads, and interacting with followers.

Review and rating sites

We’ve yet to meet a brand owner who doesn’t care about customer reviews and ratings, because what people say can make or break brand reputations.

Take the following three steps to manage your presence on review sites and improve the odds that people say good things often enough to overshadow the occasional and likely inevitable one-star rating someone lobs your way.

Claim your presence on review sites

If you aren’t sure which review sites are important to your business, ask your customers. In person or through surveys (Chapter 5 can help as you conduct research), learn which sites they turn to when making business or product choices. Likely your findings will lead you to some of the following review collection points:

• Almost any consumer-serving brand can benefit by claiming presence on Yelp (biz.yelp.com), Google Places for Business (www.google.com/business), and CitySearch (www.citysearch.com).
• If you’re in the travel business, your customers or those who influence them most likely use TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com).
• Restaurant-goers count on sites like UrbanSpoon (www.urbanspoon.com), OpenTable (www.opentable.com), Zagat (www.zagat.com), ChowHound (www.chowhound.com), and others that reign in regional areas.
• Depending on your business sector — legal, medical, consumer electronics, and so on — there’s likely a set of review sites where customers and clients weigh in, and where you need to keep your ear to the grapevine.

Encourage reviews

Here’s your goal: Get your customers to say great things so that when some malcontented customer (or the friend of a competitor, or someone who wandered in on the one day your brand experience was sub-par), the praise will drown out the pan. Take these steps:

• Display review site logos in your business and on your web pages so people know where to go to share their experiences.
• Personally invite best customers to share their opinions. Make it easy by providing links or handing them cards with your review URLs. You can give them a next-visit discount or offer with the request, but you can’t reward or try to bias the review. Google warns about paying for reviews, writing negative reviews of competitors, posting reviews on behalf of others, or misrepresenting your identity or affiliation when posting reviews. The warning is stern and worth heeding across all review sites.
• Cultivate a steady stream of reviews rather than a slew of reviews over a short period. When review sites see a burst of good reviews, they look into whether incentivizing is going on.

Don’t lose your cool over an occasional bad review

Sooner or later, someone will write a review you don’t like. When the inevitable happens, take these two steps:

• Look for any truth you can find in the complaint or criticism. Even if the transgression was minor, fix it. Then use your blog, the review comment box, your Facebook page, and — best of all — direct contact with the reviewer to describe the changes you’ve made. Telling a disgruntled customer, and all who read about that person’s experience, that you care is often more valuable than the rant is damaging.
• Don’t get defensive and don’t try to tell the customer they’re wrong. You’ll escalate the argument and give it even more online attention. Instead, double your efforts to overshadow the rant by generating good reviews, with full knowledge that people reading review sites expect a bad rating from the occasional can’t-be-pleased customer.

Getting and Staying Active and Engaged

Reaching brand goals on social media engagement results from three activities:

• Create and post relevant, interesting content or information.
• Share relevant, interesting content created and shared by others. Think of it as re-gifting.
• Interact with thanks, praise, expertise, and input by posting comments on your own pages and by engaging on the pages of others.

This section helps you get organized, visible, and active.

Setting your social-media strategy

Flip back to the start of this chapter to review your social-media objectives. They’ll be the basis of your social-media strategy.

• If you’re aiming to heighten brand awareness and credibility: Plan to develop and post content that establishes your value and reputation, including publicity, reviews, research findings, white papers, presentations, and other interesting, useful, sharable information.
• If you’re aiming to increase interaction with customers and influencers: Plan to create and post surveys, ask questions, host forums, announce events that prompt engagement, and engage in two-way conversations and discussions that deepen relationships and loyalty.
• If you’re aiming to gain customers or increase sales: Plan to share content that pulls people to your business, perhaps by offering free samples, estimates, e-books, survey results, white papers, or other information customers and prospective customers find valuable. Be sure offers are social and useful — not just sales pitches — and that they link directly to the page on your website that fulfills the interest you generate, because most people won’t bother to click twice.

If you think those in your audience will see your post on a mobile device, keep your message super-short to win attention and interest. Then, especially if you’re aiming to develop credibility or a position of thought-leadership in your field, link to longer content, including traditional reports and white papers, but also videos, infographics, and landing pages on your website.

Creating and posting content

Grab a stopwatch. The key to getting recognized online is to seize interest immediately because nearly everyone has a short attention span and people sweeping their eyes down social-media screens are the most elusive of all. You have seconds to win attention.

• Each online post needs to make a single point — fast. Studies show that 80-character posts win a quarter more engagement than longer posts, and short questions or fill-in-the-blank requests do even better. When you can, include a link, photo, video, or graphic to dramatically boost how well your post is shared.
• If posts link to your website, be sure web pages load at lightning speed. Realize that a third of web users abandon slow-loading sites within five seconds, with each one-second delay further reducing page views. On average, those who do stick around stay less than 30 seconds, with half of all visits lasting less than four seconds.

  Here are some tips for increasing speeds:

  • Reduce web page size to speed loading.
  • Use headlines and visuals.
  • Keep text spare and scannable by using bullet points and short copy blocks.
  • Use clickable hyperlinks to site sections and secondary pages with more information.

  For more information on creating websites, turn to Chapter 10.

• If your posts link to video, realize that video viewers won’t tolerate slow loads or long introductions. One of ten online video viewers clicks away in the first 10 seconds, and three more are gone after 30 seconds — and that’s without buffering problems, which cause viewer abandonment following a two-second wait.

  Make opening seconds captivating and relevant to viewer interests. YouTube advice is to keep brand introductions to less than five seconds “unless it’s hilarious.” Instead, front-load content, because the average view lasts less than three minutes. If your video content runs longer, consider dripping it out in a series of segments.

  For more information, see the section on creating and sharing video later in this chapter.

Before approving brand content, make sure it passes this three-question test:

• Is it consistent with our brand message and tone and does it strengthen our brand image?
• Will those in our target audience be convinced that it’s worth reading, watching, or hearing?
• Is it easy to share, and, at-first-glance, will those we’re targeting think it’s worth passing along to others?

Making blog posts the backbone of your content strategy

Inbound, or pull, marketing (there’s more on these terms in Chapter 10) involves sharing useful, relevant content that attracts people to your storefront or website.

If you have one of the Internet’s 200 million-plus blogs, your social-media content strategy is already underway, because maintaining a blog forces you to create useful information that you can repurpose and feed into your social-media streams.

Blog topics run the gamut, but most blogs share the following features:

• They’re graphically simple and full of short posts or entries that are added frequently and arranged so that newest items appear first.
• They focus on a single point of view or interest area and reflect the opinions of the blog owner. They contain news, but they’re also a lot like the newspaper’s op-ed page.
• They present an informal version of your brand voice.
• They feature content using keywords those in your target audience are likely to search for and topics they’ll want to find, read, and share.
• They allow users to search story archives.
• They use RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) or a similar format that allows blog posts to be distributed and shared on other sites with a link back to the originating site.

Blog publishing platforms

Most blogs are published using one of three platforms:

• WordPress is the most popular blog-hosting service. It gives you the options of free hosting through the site or self-hosting on your own website:
  • If you create a free hosted blog through wordpress.com, your design choices and features are limited and your blog will have a name like yourbrandname.wordpress.com unless you pay extra to use your own domain name.
  • If you create a self-hosted site through wordpress.org, you can upload and install the blog on your own website. Benefits include greater design customization and features, the opportunity to accept advertising, and the ability to add a shopping cart, membership forms, or other extensions. Also, self-hosted blogs use your own domain name as an address, driving site traffic and improving your site’s search ranking.
• Blogger (www.blogger.com) is owned by Google. It’s free and easy to use but doesn’t offer a self-hosting option.
• Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) is a microblog site that’s free, cool to view, and easiest of all the platforms to use. What you can’t do is self-host your Tumblr blog with your own domain name, archive your Tumblr contents for user searches, or expect much success if you aren’t an active user.

Anatomy of a blog post

Good blogging follows a consistent posting schedule and a recognizable blog-post format that includes the components shown in Table 11-1.

Table 11-1 Blog Post Components

Announcing, repurposing, and republishing blog posts

Automated plug-ins like Twitterfeed (twitterfeed.com) and Jetpack by WordPress (wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack) let you schedule and automatically post your content to selected social-media networks.

Whether you use auto-posting services or not, as soon as your content is online, boost the chances of it being seen by taking these actions:

• Announce and link to the post on your social-media pages by sharing a summary, quote, or key point, and by tagging those you’ve mentioned.
• Use subsequent updates to link to the post by presenting different key points, subheads, or interesting sentences.
• Offer your post as a guest post on another blog. Or turn it into an ezine article (check out ezinearticles.com). Or publish past posts into an e-book you offer as an incentive for blog or newsletter subscribers
• Update and retitle blog posts to give them new relevance. Take a new angle, use new examples, or offer updated advice. By revising and republishing, you’ll extend the post’s life and reach those who may have missed it the first time. Just be sure the update is significant enough that Google won’t view it as a duplicate, which can work against you as you try to build search authority on key terms.

Before finalizing and publishing blog posts, be clear about what you want readers to think or do after reading the content. Whether you want them to laugh, learn, click, complete a lead form, subscribe, buy, or share (almost certainly, you want them to share), develop your content accordingly.

If you’re aiming for conversions, tell people the benefit of taking action, give them clear instructions for easy steps to follow, and watch your site analytics like a hawk to see what’s working.

Creating and sharing video

The quickest way to humanize your brand, short of meeting people face-to-face, is to share interesting, entertaining video featuring your brand leaders, staff, customers, experts, products, and behind-the-scene views that let others get to know your brand and the value it provides in your marketplace.

Videos also help improve your brand’s online visibility, because they provide content to post on YouTube, which is the second-largest search engine. They’re also easier than ever to create, with Vine and Instagram 6- to 15-second microvideos (the topic of an upcoming section) quickly eclipsing all other forms of sharable content.

Shooting, editing, and posting video

Whether you opt for broadcast-quality studio-produced video, video produced from an in-home, in-office, or in-garage studio, or video produced using a mobile app, the price tags vary (hugely) but the requirements are the same:

• Create video that matches the quality, image and voice of your brand and the interests of your target audience. Make sure that every segment offers what you think people — particularly customers, prospective customers, and customer influencers — want to see.
• Open with a strong introduction. Research shows that viewership plummets after the first few seconds if the introduction doesn’t immediately grab attention.
• Edit your video with viewer retention in mind. Videos of five minutes or longer outperform all others in YouTube rankings, but first you have to hook and hold viewer interest. From the opening seconds include content that’s surprising, unusual, funny, new, different, entertaining, or especially useful and valuable — and clip out everything else.
• Include a call to action. Invite viewers to visit your website, subscribe, like your brand on Facebook, or take some other action.
• Choose a video filename using keywords that targeted viewers are likely to use in searches. For example, “brand_keyword_tips_video.mp4” and a video title that begins with keywords, such as “Choosing Brand Keywords in Five Steps.”
• Create a keyword-rich summary. Include the link to the video and a summary of about 250 words that tell what it’s about.
• Share the video. You can upload your video directly to your blog, Facebook page, or other sites, but you’re smart to upload it first to YouTube, for no cost, and then embed it from YouTube onto your other online locations so that all viewer engagement is captured on your YouTube channel.

  YouTube ranks video based how many people view it, how long they watch, how many comments they leave, how many subscribe after viewing, how many share the video or click to “Watch Later,” and how many incoming links point to it. By pointing all traffic to YouTube, you improve your ranking. Just don’t try to pump up your numbers with fake views, because YouTube deletes videos with suspicious activity.

  With just a Google account, you can watch, like, and subscribe on YouTube. But without a free YouTube channel your business or brand won’t have any public presence on YouTube. To create a YouTube channel for your brand, Google Help provides these instructions:

  • Make sure you’re signed into YouTube.
  • Go to “All My Channels.”
  • If you want to make a YouTube channel for a Google+ page you manage, you can choose it here. Otherwise, click “Create a new channel.”
  • Fill out the details to create your new channel.

  After your channel is created, click “Upload” to add content to your brand channel. Then as you share links to your video on your social-media pages, alert followers that the post includes a video by using a headline like “(VIDEO) How to Post Video,” Or “WATCH: Five SEO Tips from the Pros.”

Brand-building with microvideo

With video on track to account for two-thirds of consumer Internet traffic by 2017 and with 6- to 15-second microvideos more likely to be shared than any other form of online video, it’s no wonder that brands of all types and sizes are adding quick-clip video to their social-media pages. Following are the top microvideo options:

• Vine (vine.co) is the Twitter-owned mobile app that makes creation of looping, replaying video easy and inexpensive. Just download and install the free Vine app and sign in with your Twitter account or email address. From that point, it’s a matter of coming up with ideas for super-short video content that can inspire, entertain, impress, tell a story, and contribute to your brand image in six-second increments.

  You can face the camera toward or away from you before clicking the app’s camera icon to record. You can save videos for later consideration. You can use low-tech editing features to slice out bits and pare the video down to a quick, smoothly flowing piece.

  When it’s ready, click “Share,” add a caption with hashtagged keywords, your location, and your channel tag, post it on your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and embed it on your website or blog to encourage the kind of viral sharing that microvideo often generates.

• Instagram lets you share 3- to 15-second video that you’ve recorded using the Instagram app. In addition to length, Instagram microvideos differ from Vine’s 6-second videos in several ways. They don’t loop and replay. They appear on Twitter as links and on Facebooks as videos — the exact opposite of how Vine videos display. They can be customized with filters and edited with features not available to Vine producers.

With either platform, use great lighting, quality production and editing, a clear visual cue that establishes your brand identity in the first seconds, and an amazing, entertaining concept capable of winning attention, recognition, and, best of all, viral transmission of your brand’s micromessage.

Giving slide presentations long life through social media

If your brand goals include developing credibility as a thought leader, move SlideShare (slideshare.net), the world’s largest online community for sharing presentations and professional content, onto your list of social-media tools. Take these steps:

• Create a set of PowerPoint or Keynote slides to support a new presentation or to compile and repurpose content from your blog or from a recent webinar, conference, report, or other material.
• Give your slide presentation (often called a slide deck) a title, description, and individual slide labels that use long-tail keywords, which are more specific than single words and more apt to be searched by those seeking detailed information. (Flip back to Chapter 10 for more information on keywords.)
• Be sure your first slide uses bold graphics and colors, an interesting and legible type font, and a title conveying a strong and interesting topic that will attract attention from those glancing at thumbnails of your slides.
• Use as little text as possible to convey information that’s highly informative, interesting, and capable of building into a story that viewers feel you’re narrating. On average, SlideShare presentations have 19 slides and 24 words per slide. Develop a look and use a template throughout the presentation and, ideally, for all brand presentations so you save time and build awareness for your brand look at the same time.
• Feature hyperlinks on slides to drive traffic to your website landing pages and social-media brand pages, along with a call to action that inspires people to click the link. (Be careful, though: SlideShare doesn’t allow hyperlinks in the first three slides, to other slides within the deck, or within infographics.)
• Upload your slide deck to SlideShare and enable the share function to allow and encourage others to share or embed your presentation.
• Click the “Embed” icon to add the slide deck to own website or blog. Then share the link on your social-media brand pages and in other online communities or comments.

Whether you create slides for a new presentation or to repurpose content from your blog, webinar, conference, or other presentation, by uploading it to your free SlideShare account you expand the reach of your material, extend the life of your message, and improve search ranking in one fell swoop.