Facebook Marketing

Facebook Likes and Loves

If you want to give your friends’ Facebook posts a boost, don’t just like it with the default blue thumbs up. The other ways to like a post rate stronger in Facebook’s algorithm because they take a little more thought and effort to choose.

• Heart (Love) the posts you love.
• Caress (Care) the posts you care about.
• Laugh (HaHa) at the posts that are funny.
• Awesome (Wow) the posts that amaze you.
• Cry (Sad) the posts that make you sad.
• Be Angry when posts make you angry.

These other ways to like a post do so much more to boost a Facebook post than the default blue thumbs up. That boost allows a Facebook user’s other posts to be seen by more people. Why? Because Facebook’s algorithm rates these other forms of likes as stronger indications that a post is more important AND that the Facebook user is more worthy of being showcased more often.

Give your friends, family, associates, and top influencers a boost with a Love or a Wow or a Laugh.

And, of course, ask them to do the same for you.

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Pinterest Marketing

Pinterest Freebie Offers

Pinterest is a very powerful social media platform that can help you get more visits to your website as well as more sign-ups for your newsletter. So learn how to get more people to visit your website by offering freebies!

Kay Moody, author of young adult fantasy books, gets 2.6 million views every month on Pinterest. In her Pinterest profile description, she offers the following: Visit my website to get my FREE short stories.

Check out her Pinterest profile here: https://www.pinterest.com/kaylmoodybooks

If you have something free to offer, add your free offer to your Pinterest profile description just like Kay did! You can also add your free offer on your Pinterest board descriptions.

By the way, her website is https://www.kaylmoody.com. Below is one of her ebooks she offers for free via her website.

If you offer a free report featuring keto recipes, for example, send people to your website via your Pinterest profile and some of your Pinterest board descriptions. Something like this: Get 100 free Keto recipes by visiting DailyKetoSuccess.com.

Using freebies on Pinterest is a very powerful way to get more people to visit your website and sign up for your email newsletter. And those newsletter signups are the first step in creating relationships with potential customers.

Check out the email I sent to another Pinterest user:

Add this to your Exploring Retirement board description: Read This FREE REPORT “3 Big Retirement Questions (and What To Do)” at my website. Also add this free offer in your profile description on Pinterest.

Finally, be sure to add your website URL on your Pinterest profile.

You can see the website URL and my Pinterest profile description in the image below. I don’t yet offer a free report here, but when I have a great free report, I will add access to the report in my Pinterest profile description and some of my Pinterest board descriptions.

Pins That Produce Results

The most active Pinterest users are doers. In using Pinterest, they are looking for things to add to their shopping lists, their action lists, their wishlists, their bucket lists. But they don’t just make lists or pin things to their Pinterest boards. They act on what they find on Pinterest.

If you want to attract their attention, you must produce pins that are attractive, useful, and actionable. Pretty pictures might get pinned to a wishlist Pinterest board, but they rarely get pinned to an action list Pinterest board. And it’s the action list boards that produce clickthroughs, visits to your web pages, and buying actions.

For instance, the following image which was shared by a student of mine is cute, but I would bet that it got very few repins and even fewer clickthroughs. There’s nothing in the image to inspire action.

People that love cute dogs might repin the image to one of their dog boards, but they will not act on the image. The image has nothing to do with anything they might want to buy for their dogs.

Now, the image was linked to a site where you could sign up for a money-making opportunity webinar for stay-at-home moms. So the image had a vague connection to the actual website, but not enough to attract the real audience for the webinar.

But, if you combine the image with a headline telling people what’s on offer, more people would share the image and more people would click through to sign up for the webinar. That’s the purpose of an actionable Pinterest pinned image!

These headline graphics, however, still do not do as well as a tip-o-graphic. Active Pinterest users have clicked through on too many of these headline graphics only to find a spammy offer, a weakly written article, or nothing at all useful. So active Pinterest users rarely share these headline graphics. Even more rarely, they click through to the website behind the pin.

Active Pinterest users want to know more before they spend their time clicking through to a website. They want to know that the website truly has something to offer. That’s where tip-o-graphics come into play.

Tip-o-graphics give Pinterest users a deeper look into the web page they will find when they click through to the website linked to the pin.

Here’s a short tip-o-graphic that I created to play off the above two graphics. Notice that the same image of the woman, dog, and computer are incorporated into all three images in this article, but only the tip-o-graphic actually offers enough detail to inspire someone to click through to the web page.

Answer “yes” to any of the three questions in the tip-o-graphic, and you could be motivated to click through to find out more. Now, if your website doesn’t deliver on the implicit promise, you might not make the sale. But there is a good chance, in this case, that many of the people who come to the website will sign up for the webinar to find out more. The questions in the above tip-o-graphic have provided enough incentive to sign up.

Why not try more tip-o-graphics? It took me less than three minutes to create the tip-o-graphic above. I guarantee you that the tip-o-graphic above will get more clickthroughs than the plain image or the headline graphic.

Personally, of course, I’d want a better web page URL than the one above going to aweb.page. That URL includes no keywords. If I saw that URL on an image, I would not click through. Again, no incentive. No reason.

So, besides a great tip-o-graphic, you’ve got to create descriptive URLs that deliver on the promise made in the graphic (like the URL for this post: https://bookmarketingbestsellers.com/social-media-marketing-ideas-twitter-facebook-pinterest-and-more).

Creating Great Pins

Many of you might have received this email from Pinterest today, but if you didn’t, here’s the essence of their message:

We studied thousands of Pins to figure out which ones people engage with most. Here are our top 3 tips for making your Pins stand out:

1. Bring your best ideas: Great Pins are inspirational and actionable. Create Pins that help Pinners do things in real life.

And this Pinterest advice: Content relevancy matters more than anything else on Pinterest. Focus your energy on creating great content that’s tailored to your audience’s interests and needs. … When you create new Pins, start from your audience’s perspective. Why do they use Pinterest? What kinds of ideas are they looking for? How can you help them make decisions?

Note from John: Pinterest users are action takers so they look for help to do things in real life! Help them do what they love to do!

2. Use a 2:3 aspect ratio—Vertical Pins look best in Pinterest’s column layout. We recommend a minimum size of 600 x 900px.

Note from John: I like the 720 x 1776px size for tip-o-graphic Pins. It’s much longer than the typical pin but it allows me to share more tips. And tips are what active Pinterest users want to see, share, and act upon.

3. Write helpful descriptions so people know what your Pin is about, and feel free to include #hashtags.

Note from John: Use descriptions and #hashtags that are accurate to your Pin. Don’t deceive people.

Bonus tip #1 from Pinterest: Pin regularly. Most importantly, save Pins weekly to keep your audience engaged.

Add new Pins over time rather than uploading a bunch at once. This helps you reach a wider audience. You can schedule Pins up to two weeks in advance with our scheduling tools.

Note from John: Yup, you don’t have to Pin a dozen pins a day. 3 to 5 good ones a week will drive as much traffic as dozens of bad or mediocre Pins.

Bonus tip #2 from Pinterest: Get ahead of seasonal trends.

When it comes to holidays or seasonal events, people use Pinterest to plan long before they turn to other platforms. Remember to factor this timing into your Pinterest content strategy.

We recommend that you start saving seasonal content about 30-45 days in advance. Activity will keep picking up as you get closer to the big day.

Note from John: Active Pinterest users love seasonal content, not just Christmas or Thanksgiving, but also Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the 4th of July, and the local and religious holidays of people around the world.

Bonus tip #3 from Pinterest: Pick a landing page that says more about your pin.

When someone clicks on your Pin, they want to learn more about it. You can link Pins to your site, blog or any other website. Make sure to pick a landing page that feels like a natural progression from the Pin, to your site.

For example, Pins that feature a product should link to a page where people can buy that product. If your Pin features a do-it-yourself project, it should link to the article on your site with full instructions.

Note from John: Since 80% of Pinterest use is via a smartphone, be sure any landing pages you create (sales pages, blog posts, podcast pages, etc.) are mobile-ready. And be sure the pages that you send Pinterest users to provide value for those users (based on the Pinned images you shared).

Note: I break my own rule with the graphic above. It’s a headline graphic rather than the tip-o-graphic image I have found produces the best results (as described in a previous section above).

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Twitter Marketing

Twitter Handles: How to create a Twitter handle that gets attention and follows.

A few weeks ago, I discover this Twitter handle @HireMeImFunny. I thought that was a great Twitter handle.

Orli Matlow is a comedian and writer. As she notes in her Twitter profile: If there were a self-deprecation competition I’d probably lose.

I reviewed the last 30 to 40 tweets and retweets of hers. They were more political than funny. Sadly, if you are going to use a handle like @HireMeImFunny, you really need to be funny and also stay away from politics unless you can make that funny. She didn’t. Alas.

But her idea for a Twitter handle is spot on.

Can you come up with a Twitter handle that sells what you do?

If you’re a novelist, you could be @FamousNovelist (Gail Bolland has that handle but is not active) or @RomanceNovelist (she’s a romance novelist on Wattpad.com) or @RomanticTales (not active since 2015) or @FantasyStories (not active since 2009). Alas, someone already has @BuyMyNovel and he/she doesn’t seem to be a novelist.

Perhaps you might be able to reach out to one of these people with a Twitter direct message and see if they will turn the Twitter handle over to you.

Children’s book author Suzanne Lintz Ives has taken this handle: @BuyMyBook. I wish I had thought of that sooner since she joined years after I joined Twitter.

Johnny Apples has the handle @IWriteSalesCopy. Yup, he writes sales letters, emails and web pages that SELL! Expert in growing (or acquiring!) highly responsive marketing lists. His Twitter profile is no longer active. Alas, he must not have been as good as he thought.

And here’s another inactive Twitter profile that had an incredible handle but no activity: @ISellHomes. Wow! Some realtor should have gotten that @handle.

You Can Change Your Twitter Handle

Note: You can change your Twitter handle whenever you want and your Twitter URL. Of course, only if the Twitter handle and Twitter URL are not already owned by someone else.

For instance, I once had @BooksToEbooks but decided to change that to Book Marketing Tips at @BookMarketTips with the Twitter URL of https://twitter.com/BookMarketTips. I automatically tweet to that Twitter profile whenever I post an article at https://www.BookMarketingBestsellers.com.

Twitter Tags

Would you like to reach more people via Twitter? One thing you can do is to alert top influencers whenever you post a tweet on Twitter by tagging those people. Below, for instance, is one person’s tweet about free speech on campuses with @tags to a number of key influencers:

Here is the video from the Battery today at Chico State. College Republicans across the nation experience treatment just like this on their campuses. It has to stop! @realDonaldTrump @scrowder @benshapiro @FoxNews @BrandonStraka

If, for example, you are a romance novelist, you could @tag famous romance novelists who have a presence on Twitter. Authors like: @PatriciaMcLinn @BethBarany @HelenPollard147 @DebKastner.

Or you are a business author and want to connect with some top business/marketing influencers, you could tag people like: @SethGodinBlog @SMExaminer @BrennerMichael @JordanMcAuley @TerriLonier @MikeMichalowicz

Using Hashtags

Besides @tagging key influencers, of course, you can also use #hashtags to alert people to your topic. Here’s one user doing that for her tweet, using the hashtags of #amwriting #authors #writers.

If you want to use more hashtags related to your writing, books, etc., check out this blog post: The Ultimate Guide to Social Media Hashtags for Book Authors (375 author hashtags).

Twitter Follow Trains

Check out this Twitter Follow Train to see how they operate. With an effective Follow Train, you can get more followers on Twitter while also helping other people get more followers.

TUESDAY BLOGGERS FOLLOW TRAIN🤗

Let’s get our May goals started!🌺

– Leave your blog links below😊
– RT this tweet and follow everyone else that does🌟
– Find lots of amazing new blogs to follow & leave comments💎

— Rachel (@rachtalksbiz) May 5, 2020

Click on the above Follow Train to see the original post as well as the thread of related comments that become part of the Follow Train. If you like this Follow Train or you create your own Follow Train, be sure to follow the people who become part of the threaded comments.

Note how a Follow Train works:

• Comment on the Follow Train tweet and leave a link to your blog.
• RT (retweet) the tweet and follow everyone else that retweets the tweet.
• You could discover some great new blogs, some great people to follow on Twitter, and get many followers yourself. Leave comments on their tweets. And, if you like their blogs, leave comments on their blogs as well.

Below is an image from the above Follow Train. It looks like an effective Bookstagram.