Social Media Optimization For Dummies E-Book

Shreves Ric

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 455

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Optimize, optimize, optimize to get the most out of your company's social media presence As it turns out, social media is good for a lot more than funny cat videos, memes, and sharing what you're eating for lunch with the world. As the social media sphere continues to grow and be redefined, it's more important than ever to arm yourself with the latest information on how you can use it to drive traffic to your website, raise awareness of your brand, and promote your products or services. If you're a marketer who has asked yourself how you can possibly stay afloat in these newly chartered and oft overcrowded waters, Social Media Optimization For Dummies serves as your roadmap to smart marketing in the digital age. So, what is Social Media Optimization (SMO), exactly? Well, it's comprised of two closely related practices. First, SMO refers to a set of techniques in which social media is used to drive traffic to a website and create an interest in a product or service. Second, SMO concerns the optimization of the social media presence itself with the goal of building followers, increasing engagement, and, again, generating interest in a product or service. Each of these parts supports the other and, when the channels are managed efficiently, enhances the other's effectiveness. In this plain English, easy-to-follow guide, you'll quickly discover how to apply SMO practices to your marketing plan to accomplish those goals. * Integrate social media into your website * Drive traffic to your website * Build followers and generate a buzz * Increase engagement with customers From integrating social media into your website to building your social media presence to everything in between, Social Media Optimization For Dummies points your business toward success.

Leseprobe

Social Media Optimization For Dummies®

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014958469

ISBN: 978-1-119-01609-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-01613-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-01612-0 (ebk)

Social Media Optimization For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/socialmediaoptimization to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Cover

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Social Media Optimization

Chapter 1: Building the Foundations of Social Media Optimization

Defining SMO

Seeing What SMO Can Do for You

Making a Commitment to SMO

Finding Your Voice

Chapter 2: SMO Is the New SEO

Creating a Business Case

Creating a Connection between SMO and SEO

Reaping the Benefits of SMO

Chapter 3: Starting Your SMO Journey

Establishing Your Presence in the Social Media World

Getting Off to a Painless Start

Picking the Low-Hanging Fruit

Matching Content to Channels

Part II: The Push and Pull of SMO

Chapter 4: Driving Traffic to Your Website

Blending the Right Mix for SMO Success

Leveraging Likes and Shares on Facebook

Finding New Fans and Creating New Mavens

Chapter 5: Widening Your Reach

Taking Your Content to the World

Making Content That Travels Well

Chapter 6: Raising Awareness of Your Social Media Presence

Publicizing the Existence of Your Social Media Presence

Displaying Social Media Content to Your Website Visitors

Part III: Leveraging Social Media with Your Website

Chapter 7: Integrating Social Media Tools

Improving Your Visibility

Using Facebook Tools

Integrating Google+

Tapping Into the WordPress Community

Implementing Social Login

Chapter 8: Inspiring User Engagement

Inviting Comments and Discussion

Implementing Social Discussion Tools

Chapter 9: Implementing Social Media Standards and Protocols

Introducing Semantic Markup

Making Sense of Schema.org

Applying Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol

Dealing with Twitter and Pinterest Microformats

Part IV: Mastering Practical SMO

Chapter 10: Promoting Your Content

Getting the Big Three to Work for You

Getting Visual

Reaching Out through the Social News Networks

Tailoring Content to Specialty Channels

Reaching Mobile Users

Chapter 11: Using SMO to Sell Products or Services

Generating Prelaunch Publicity

Spreading the Word with Snapchat

Reaching Out to Bloggers

Converting Followers to Customers

Chapter 12: Enriching Events with Social Media

Generating Pre-Event Buzz

Creating a Sense of Community for the Event

Providing a Real-Time Channel

Encouraging Fan-Created Content

Chapter 13: Building Your Brand and Establishing Expertise

Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Brand Building

Creating the Perception of Expertise

Chapter 14: Managing Reputation

Building and Preserving Reputation with Social Media

Discovering the Pain and the Power of Review Sites

Encouraging Positive Reviewers

Managing Online Detractors

Tracking Online Reputation

Chapter 15: Creating a Crisis Management Resource

Embracing the Tyranny of Immediacy

Becoming a Resource in a Time of Crisis

Owning the Discussion

Part V: Building Your Social Media Presence

Chapter 16: Integrating SMO into Your Workflow

Planning for SMO

Staying SMART

Managing Multiple Social Profiles

Keeping Control of Your Social Media Life

Keeping Up with the Social World

Chapter 17: Finding Your Followers

Finding an Audience You Didn’t Know You Had

Building an Audience on Facebook

Finding Followers on Twitter

Chapter 18: Tapping Into the Vox Populi

Designing for Virality

Discovering Techniques with Viral Appeal

Chapter 19: Tracking Progress and Measuring Success

Identifying the Key Metrics

Analyzing Your Facebook Page and Twitter Activity

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 20: Ten Rules of Social Media Optimization

Be Authentic

Engage — Don’t Broadcast

Leverage Your Efforts

Stay Fresh

Be Selective

Be Share-Friendly

Be a Resource

Create Great Content

Know Your Audience

Plan the Work; Work the Plan

Chapter 21: Ten Tools for Managing Your Social Media Presence

Hootsuite

Quill Engage

Buffer

Instagress

Facebook Insights

Twitter Analytics

Klout

Circloscope

BuzzSumo

Tagboard

About the Authors

Cheat Sheet

Connect with Dummies

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Introduction

Over the past several years, social media has come to dominate conversations about digital marketing. The rise of social media as an online influencer has been dramatic and has happened quite quickly. In traditional media, the concept of word of mouth has always been respected as one of the most influential forms of marketing. In the Internet age, word of mouth now happens online, via social media. When your friends recommend things, you listen. When they share and like things, you notice. The concepts are as old as marketing itself, but the tools are new.

Social media optimization — or SMO, as it’s often called in this book — is a marketing discipline that focuses on creating effective social media. This book starts with the assumption that you’re already onboard with the idea of social media, but now you want to find out how to work with social media better, faster, and more effectively. Over the course of these pages, we share with you our experiences in managing social media, and try to communicate the lessons we’ve learned and explain the tools we’ve used. The goal of this book is to help you build a social media practice that gets results and doesn’t make you nuts in the process.

The one given that you have to keep in mind is that social media is a fast-changing, fluid area. New tools will arise. New channels will take on importance. Books, by contrast, are largely static things. After you read this book, the burden is on you to make an attempt to stay abreast of things in this field and to keep your eyes open for new techniques and tools that you can fold into your practice.

About This Book

Social media has the potential to be rather overwhelming. The sheer volume of channels is daunting. After you pick your channels, the experience is still a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose; the amount of information pouring out can be phenomenal. This book is about taming the beast. It’s about how to approach social media marketing, how to find the right channels and the right tools, and how to use them to your advantage.

As you read this book, you should be thinking about how the techniques and tools discussed can be integrated into your practice. Throughout the book, we make an effort to discuss different implementations, but every person has different priorities, abilities, and resources. This book can’t be a one-size-fits-all text — and it doesn’t try to be. Instead, the book highlights underlying principles and then shows how they can be implemented in various scenarios using a variety of tools. In other words, a philosophy is at work here, and you need to think about how it’s relevant to your work. Don’t get caught up in mechanical application of examples; rather, think about the underlying principles and how you can apply them to your needs.

Note the following text formatting conventions:

Bolded text should be typed exactly as it appears in the book. The exception is when you’re working through a step list: Because each step is bold, the text to type is not bold.

Web addresses and programming code appear in monofont. If you’re reading a digital version of this book on a device connected to the Internet, note that you can click the web address to visit that website, like this:

www.dummies.com

.

Foolish Assumptions

The world is full of assumptions, some foolish and some not. Here are ours:

You’re interested in social media marketing.

You have some experience with things like Facebook and Twitter.

You want to be an effective social media marketer.

You’re comfortable working with a browser and capable of executing common tasks.

Icons Used in This Book

The icons you see in the sidebar of the text signal important additional pieces of information.

The Tip icon marks tips (duh!) and shortcuts that you can use to make life easier.

Remember icons mark the information that’s especially important to know. To siphon off the most important information in each chapter, just skim the text that has these icons.

The Technical Stuff icon marks information of a highly technical nature that you normally can skip.

The Warning icon tells you to watch out! It marks important information that may save you headaches or help you avoid disaster.

Beyond the Book

You can find more information than what’s available in the pages of this book. On the Dummies.com website you can find a number of resources that supplement the book and provide you with more information about social media optimization:

Cheat Sheet:

The Cheat Sheet (

www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/socialmediaoptimization

) for this book includes at-a-glance references for common social media tasks.

Dummies.com online articles:

Visit Dummies.com for additional articles on social media optimization, including tips on how to add images to your tweets, how to put a Facebook Like Box on your web page, and how to get started with Hootsuite. You will also find a helpful list of free social media analytics tools. To read these articles, visit (

www.dummies.com/extras/socialmediaoptimization

).

Where to Go from Here

One of the neat things about For Dummies books is that they’re not purely linear — that is, you’re not expected to start on page 1 and read the book in sequence to understand things. For Dummies books are meant to be more like reference books, in the sense that you can start anywhere. If Chapter 8 looks interesting to you, great; start there. Everything you need to know about the things discussed in Chapter 8 is included in Chapter 8. The same is true of the other chapters, of course; each is self-contained.

That said, for those of you who are looking for a quick start, we’ve included a chapter especially for you. If you need to get a social media campaign up and running today, start with Chapter 3.

Part I

Getting Started with Social Media Optimization

Visit www.dummies.com/go/socialmediaoptimization for additional For Dummies content and resources.

In this part …

Formulating a definition of SMO

Understanding the connection between SEO and SMO

Getting started with your social media campaigns

Chapter 1

Building the Foundations of Social Media Optimization

In This Chapter

Formulating a definition of SMO

Understanding the benefits of SMO

Committing to SMO

Finding an appropriate voice

Social media is now part of every digital marketer’s tool kit. We’re moving past the adolescent days of social media and moving into a more mature market. As social media has grown in importance and sophistication, a new discipline has emerged: social media optimization.

New tools and new techniques are great, but they bring with them increased complexity and risk of confusion. In an area that changes as quickly as digital marketing, it’s easy to get sidetracked and distracted by new things and lose sight of the importance of the process behind social media. It requires effort to separate what really works from what is simply the hot new topic of the moment. Social media optimization emphasizes process and techniques and has proved its worth to brands worldwide. It delivers tangible benefits and can be reduced to a repeatable system that makes implementing social media optimization practical for digital marketing teams.