10 Amazing Things to Know About Social Media Marketing Services for Your Business in 2016

I’m a business owner and I struggle just like you in making sense of all these social marketing services.

When I opened my first business back in 1995, all I had to worry about was Yellow Page placement & creating a decent brochure. That was it.

I’m not a guru or an expert. There are plenty of those out there.

Nowadays, I have to be a writer, a photographer, a video maker, a graphic designer & an analyst….oh my!

People make the mistake of thinking that I love social media.

I can’t say I hate it, I simply had to learn it to survive.

What I am, is a practitioner of Social Media. I try stuff. Sometimes it works and many times it fails. I’ve read a lot of books, ebooks, and follow some the Social Media & SEO visionaries like Gary Vaynerchuck, Seth Godin and Paul Dunn.

This blog represents my observations and thoughts of what works, but especially what you should know about Social Media Marketing Services from the end of 2015 through 2016.

1-This is where everybody is spending their time. Period!

I run a digital marketing agency and a lot of people ask me: “Antoine, is Social Media Marketing important?” or better yet “Does Social Media Marketing really work?”

“Does Social Media Marketing Services really work?”

Look. The question any marketer should ask is; “where is the majority of your target audience and what are they doing?” (aka what are they looking at). The answer is; “They are on a mobile phone checking their social media account” That’s it. Yes all of them. Just look around you.

I came home on Monday night and my wife & the kids were sitting in the living room….the TV was on, and nobody was watching it! They were on their mobile devices looking at Social Media. My daughter was on Tumblr, my son was on SnapChat and Colleen was on Facebook. In essence, the TV was watching them, not the other way around.

Next time you are in an airport, just peek (don’t be weird…just glance) at what people are doing and what are they looking at. The overwhelming majority with be on a mobile device looking at social media networks.

This is where people are and this is what people do. Most people are within an arm’s reach of their mobile 24/7.

You need to learn to figure out how to leverage social media quickly. Maybe reading this blog is your first step….keep reading.

2-Each Social Media Network has its own language

The biggest mistake I see people do is speaking Facebookean (is that even a word??) on Instagram, posting a picture on Instagram and sharing it on their Facebook & Twitter account or using HootSuite to copy a single post to all of their social media accounts.

Big mistake. It’s very convenient, but you are cutting corners. Problem is, that won’t work.

People go to Instagram to look at beautiful pictures and images. Not all your pictures, but the “best” picture you have. Having a brief description below with a couple of hashtags, will be sufficient. Twitter is a loud cocktail reception with lots of chatter, one liner & quick sound bite.

Not the same medium, not the same content, not the same ANYTHING.

Same thing with Facebook. People go on Facebook to browse, socialize, read funny stuff, watch videos, post comments, likes, share if the content is awesome. It’s a totally different experience and behavior than Instagram.

The same applies to all social media networks. If you want to be effective on Facebook, you need to learn how to speak on Facebook. If Instagram is interesting to you, then learn how to create awesome photography and how to tag them properly. Same thing with Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google Plus. They all have their own language and own behavior.

If you want to be effective on Facebook, you need to learn how to speak on Facebook.

You need to learn how to speak & behave on each platform. Follow the leaders on each social media network and see how they behave and speak…and do the same.

3-Stop selling or promoting your stuff

We all know who they are and it’s annoying as heck. All their post is always promoting, inviting or trying to sell something. You may have even unfriended or stop following someone because of that.

It’s a “SOCIAL” network….not a “SELLING” network. The idea here is to provide more value than asking for anything. In his book “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook”, Gary Vaynerchuck explains why you should provide value first and foremost. Then once your followers love & trust you, you can once in a while ask for a sale.

It’s a “SOCIAL” network….not a “SELLING” network.

Social Media Networks offer you exposure to such a wide reach. Ten years ago, a business owner didn’t have the reach one can have today.

The width of the reach is staggering. Your job is to make the connection in depth. Connect with people, be of value, share stuff people will find interesting, valuable, funny, awe-inspiring and the depth & width of your reach will be like you have never seen before.

Social Media

Buy “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook” from Gary Vaynerchuck to improve your social media strategy.

4-Quality is more important than Quantity

Once again, Gary Vaynerchuck nailed it on his #AskGaryVee show one day: 1>0. Having one follower that listens and engages with you is more important than having none.

In other words, the quality of your audience is more important than how many people follow you. I’d be a lot more impressed in a business with 1,000 followers with 150 engaged on a regular basis, than someone with 10,000 followers and 30 likes on their average posts.

The idea behind Social Media is “ENGAGEMENT”. That’s what it’s about. Engage with the network. Respond to comments quickly and like other people’s posts.

If you are wondering how engaging or interesting, your content on social media is, just look at the number of shares, comments, likes, retweets etc you have on your last 10 posts. Divide that by the number of people following you and you got stats. Don’t like what you see? This is the clue that what you post isn’t very interesting.

Divide that by the number of people following you and you got stats. Don’t like what you see? This is the clue that what you post isn’t very interesting.

It’s the good news/bad news. Right?

Social Media will give you instant feedback.

5- Facebook is by far the biggest…for now.

By far the biggest Social Media Monster on the internet. There are 1.5 Billion people on Facebook….can you say OMG?

For many businesses, and whether you do B2B or B2C, Facebook is going to be a key player for you. Unless you are targeting a very young demographic (12-25). Kids and younger crowds are not really on Facebook.

My daughter Lizzie, calls Facebook the “MySpace” for old folks….like as if! Most kids are on Snapchat, Tumblr & Instagram so if you sell stuff to them, that’s where you need to go.

Facebook advertising capabilities are simply amazing and affordable, for now (i.e. 2015 & 2016). Because it is still new and not overcrowded with demand, you can advertise on Facebook and target your audience at a local level for just a few bucks.

Recently, I spent $25 to reach 7500 people over 3 days with a video I had produced on Social Media Strategies. That’s dirt cheap.

Think about it: 7500 people for $25…that’s $0.0033 per person. I just spent $25 and now 7500 people in West Palm Beach know about me. Where else can you get that kind of exposure??

Yes, I know, on Oprah…but she won’t return my call so for now, I do Facebook Ads (aka Boost)

If you want to target: Men, age group of 45-65, living in Boca Raton, FL (or 10-mile radius from your business), follow the NFL, with an income of +$75k/year….you can do that on Facebook. The audience targeting is simply amazing.

The Ads are bulls-eye accurate, where most other advertising medias are buck shot.

Take advantage of Facebook Advertising now while the pricing is still very affordable. Doubt this will last very long. The demand will become so high at one point that pricing will inevitably go up.

6-You need to blog like a Ninja.

You need to learn to write amazing & interesting blogs. The days of writing 600 word blogs are so 2014. You will never get any traction with that kind of content.

They are 2 million new blogs posted every day on the internet….including yours. If you want to stand out, the quality of your blogs needs to get better.

You may think that Blogging is not really Social Media, but it is. People will share your blogs on their social media account and this is a HUGE part of what goes on in Social Media.

Anyone sharing your blog is seen as an enormous compliment.

Remember that you are one blog post away from going viral. And by viral, I don’t mean millions or people sharing it. Viral for you may be few a hundred or a few thousand.

While millions of shares are possible, going viral is having your blog being read 10X or 50X more than what you usually get. Think about it, if you get an average of 10 shares and a new blog post of yours is shared 500 times, that’s an enormous boost in exposure. 50x more than usual is viral in my book.

Make it a goal to have your next blog shared 5x more times than the last one, then go for 10x and so forth.

Social Media platform like LinkedIn and Medium are amazing for sharing your content which will link back to your website. LinkedIn is very big with the business community so I’d recommend posting on LinkedIn if it is business related.

Medium has a very interesting platform for posting your blog. Blogs are reviewed internally and given better exposure based on the quality of your content.

Posting an amazing piece of content on Medium could seriously boost your exposure (keyword here is “amazing”)

Either learn to blog like a ninja or hire someone that does for you, the benefits of writing good meaningful content is far-reaching.

Here’s a great article on writing blogs.

7- Google (i.e. SEO) loves Social Media 

The more your content & blogs are shared on social media, the better ranking you will have on Google.

Today’s SEO tactics include creating amazing blogs that will get shared on social media. The numbers clearly show that social media back links are very important.

From Google standpoint, the more an article or any piece of content is shared, the more relevant it is. Since Google’s job is to put the most relevant results in front of you, if a blog is shared on Facebook or Twitter many times….bingo, your rankings & traffic will improve dramatically. It’s really that simple.

The days of just doing basic SEO on a website are long gone. Now, it is more of one of the methods inside your internet marketing strategy. It must include your content being shared on Social Media.

8-Social Media Marketing Services is hard work

Most people completely underestimate the amount of work involved with social media. Creating interesting & meaningful content takes time…a lot of time.

Social Media is about “Engagement” and engaging on social media is time-consuming, there’s no two way about it. Many companies have figured that out and either hired a full-time employee or hired an internet marketing agency to get it done.

Social Media Management (SMM) is a full-time job. Basically, your social media person/team has to be competent in design & graphics, photography, copywriting content, video editing, and data analyst. Most SMM agencies have a team of people to handle one client. Each one doing their part, the Content Writer writing the content, the Designer doing the graphics, etc.

9-Invest in a Social Media Strategy

This is probably the best investment you could make. What you need to be able to figure out is, who’s my audience, and on which social media platform are they hanging. You can then plan what type of content to provide.

Without a strategy, you will most likely be throwing mud at the wall and hoping it sticks. It won’t!

Spend the time and the money in creating a clear social media strategy, with key performance indicators (KPI) to measure the effectiveness of what will be done.

There are plenty of social media strategists out there. One of my go-to colleague in the West Palm Beach area is Kimball Stadler with Top Dog Performance. She has a great social media coaching program. I’d start there.

10-You don’t have to master ALL the Social Media platforms

Be excellent at one…instead of mostly sucking at all of them!

Having all the social media icons on your website doesn’t make sense unless you are fully invested in each one of them. I see many websites with all the icons but no posts in the last 6 months…what good is that?

Instead of having all these social media accounts with little or no activity, just have one or maybe two. Pick one that is best for your target audience and focus on that one. Learn how to engage in it.

If Twitter is not your thing, you are under no obligations to have a Twitter account. Same applies to Facebook or LinkedIn or Snapchat or Instagram. The question you should ask yourself is; “where does my ideal target market most likely engaged in?” If Facebook is the answer, then focus your time and energy there.

Become amazing at Facebook and forget Twitter, Instagram, and others.

Remember, Social Media is a lot of work. All we have is 24 hours in a day. And unless you can hire a team of people to manage all your accounts, the amount of time you can invest on a social media platform is going to be limited.

Pick the one or two that you like and willing to play in.

Your internet marketing strategy should help you identify which social media network is best for you. I’d put all my chips on the one that has the best return on investment for your business.

Just do one, and be excellent at it. You will get a far better return on your time.

10.1 BONUS: Why Video is King on Social Media

We gravitate towards video. Just look at your own behavior. Are you more willing to watch a quick video or to read an article? When I ask this question at Meetups, I always get over 80% of the room say “Video”.

The issue with producing videos is that it’s probably the most expensive and more complex thing to execute. Video takes a lot of time to produce.

You’ll need to invest in a good microphone, there’s nothing worse than a video with crappy sound. I bought a wired lavaliere microphone on Amazon for $20.

It may not be professional grade, but it works like a charm for now.

You’ll also need good lighting. A video with poor lighting is not pleasant to watch.

When I looked for professional photographer lighting, I kept finding really expensive stuff. So I went to Home Depot and looked at construction site flood light.

I bought a Husky LED Flood light for $100 and it works very well.

My Samsung S6 Droid mobile phone does an amazing job at shooting videos. The quality is quite stunning.

Check out this presentation shot using my phone clipped to a pole.

I didn’t have to use lighting because there was plenty of light in that room.

Allow yourself to suck at it with the first few videos you’ll produce. You won’t get better if you don’t start somewhere.

Remember that “perfect” is the enemy of “good”. You are not shooting an academy award movie or commercial. Start today and give it a shot.

10.2 Another BONUS: Here’s what people share the most

I did some research on this and read many blogs and e-books. I was mostly wrong and told people for a long time the wrong information. A negative tone is not the most shared content. Positive tone rules the day by a very wide margin.

To get this information, they analyzed & scrapped 6 of the most influential blogs, with thousands of posts over a period of almost 10 years.

The results are key to your success if you are going to continue to produce interesting content that people want to share. Here is it is:

First, let’s address the tone. A positive tone is the most shared content on the internet today.

That’s what works best. Next is negative tone, which get a far behind 2nd place. Next is neutral tone which is to be avoided at all cost if you want your content to be shared.

Whatever you do, avoid being neutral in tone at all cost. Try being positive first, if you can’t do that, then negative is your second preferred option.

Here is the list of the most shared content based on the feeling of the post or page:

• Awe (25%)
• Laughter (17%) – aka LOL
• Amusement (15%) – aka Entertaining
• Joy (14%)
• Anger (6%)
• Empathy (6%)
• Surprised (2%)

This blew my mind. My thought was that if I can create a blog post that is “Awe” inspiring and funny at the same time, I have the best chances of having my content being shared.

My problem now is…how do I do that?

I’m not all that inspiring. I can be funny, but I have a tendency to become significant.

Like everything, I have to start somewhere.

I’m now on a quest to find a writer that can write funny & awe-inspiring content.

If you know someone, have them contact me.

The most surprising thing to me was the results around Negative tone and Anger as a feeling.

I would have said that it was on equal footing with Positive and Laughter. I didn’t expect a 10 to 1 ratio.

Like, it’s not even close. Positive, funny & entertaining articles rule the day by a long shot.

Now armed with this information, I hope this will help you improve the effectiveness of your own social media.

Go out there, be funny, engaging with people and see your business or organization grow.

You can find me on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter