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Five Ways to Encourage Customers to Share Your Brand’s Content

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Content is everywhere. From YouTube videos to Tweets and Facebook posts to Pins on Pinterest, you can’t avoid it. The creation of content is a highly important aspect to any marketing plan because of how active today’s consumers are on digital. In order for your content to be effective, it needs to be visible. One of the best ways to make sure your brand’s content is being seen is to encourage your own fans and customers to share what’s relevant to their own channels, friends, and family.

Integrating social media tactics into any marketing plan is important considering that is where a lot of today’s consumers spend a majority of their time. Whether it is at home, on a bus, or during their lunch break, your audience has access to social media anywhere they are. To ensure your fans are sharing content on your behalf, you’ll want to give them a compelling reason to do so.

With an advocate marketing platform, a brand can easily manage and curate content while incentivizing their customers to share it. There are other ways to reward your advocates for sharing content other than simply providing discounts on products.

Here are 5 ways to encourage fans and customers to share your brand’s content.

Offer them exclusive ‘first-look’ content they’ll want to see.

Fans of any brand are particularly interested in feeling like they’re a part of something exclusive. A great way to encourage passionate fans to start talking about your brand is to offer them early access to articles, videos, product orders, and more. The chance to see something before anyone else will encourage them to jump on board and start sharing.

Let your fans pick the reward, (or vote on it).

One of the best ways to get anyone involved in content sharing is to offer them exactly what they want. How do you know what that is? Ask them! If you have a variety of incentives you can offer your advocates, let them vote on which rewards they’d prefer to receive. This way, everyone wins.

Prove to fans that their opinions count.

Brand advocates like to feel like their opinions matter, and in return they love brands that give value to those opinions. Ask your fans how they feel about a new product, store opening, or social event, then recognize them for giving you input. The more you interact with them, the more they’ll feel appreciated and want to share more of your content in the future.

Appeal to their benevolence.

Many people have the desire to do good things for others, especially if it’s made easy. For example, if a non-profit organization proposes to give $1 to their cause for every share or retweet, chances are most fans will participate. Give your audience the chance to get involved in a way that doesn’t require them to jump through hoops.

Create entertaining and shareable content.

This seems like a no-brainer, right? If you really want your advocates to share your brand’s content, it needs to be worth their time. Brand advocates will share content for rewards points, but more importantly, they’ll share it on their social media platforms if they truly want others to see it because it’s interesting. Images, videos, and other visually appealing content will likely receive more engagement. Give them a reason to share your content by creating something that is one-of-a-kind.

An advocate marketing program is meant to help your brand spread its message through passionate fans who love to share their opinions. In order for your brand to have a strong and positive presence, you need to make sure you are encouraging your advocates to do their part to spread your content across their social networks.

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The Steps to Building Advocacy through Social Media

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There are many benefits to using an advocacy platform for large corporations and brands. For starters, you let your advocates be your own personal marketing department. When you have fans that spread the good word of your business for you, there is no need to pay for expensive advertising.

Today, social media is such a significant part of the advertising industry’s marketing strategy that there are entire jobs and positions dedicated to it. You can use social to drive traffic, build brand awareness, improve your reputation, and eventually create new sales.

However, there is a missed opportunity, as not all brands employ social media for advocacy purposes. Social channels are a great way to create promoters and highly engaging advocates for your brand. They are a spectacular way to spread your message because they believe in your product and are willing to testify for your brand in a public way.

So why use social media for advocacy? It’s simple. It’s where your customers – and potential customers – spend the majority of their time. According to Mashable, more than 66% of adults are connected to one or more social media community. Sharing your brand’s content on social platforms can significantly help you reach new audiences. Incentivizing advocates to spread your message will also rapidly increase your fanbase, and in turn, your sales. According to a recent survey from Yesmail, social media users are more likely to respond to product offers shared by friends and family in their networks than to offers included in sponsored posts and social display ads.

Here are the steps to building brand advocacy through social media:

  1. Find your advocates.

It’s important to know where your advocates are and how to connect with them. Identifying who your brand advocates are on social media is the key to spreading awareness and increasing all-around engagement. The best way to do this is by searching for those who are already sharing and promoting your content.

There are many tools available online to help you discover which people are sharing your message, like Traackr or Viral Heat. These can help you monitor who is saying what about your brand. There are also free analytics tools on social media platforms that will help you narrow in on who your true advocates are, like Facebook Insights and Twitter Insights. They aren’t that difficult to find, either, because true believers in your brand are liking, commenting, and sharing your content already.

  1. Build rapport.

Starting, growing, and maintaining a positive relationship with your advocates is necessary if you want them to continue sharing content on social media. All relationships are a 2-way street, and if they don’t feel the the love from your brand, they’ll likely back away.

Once you’ve identified who your brand advocates are, you’ll want to be sure to keep them on board. When you build a rapport with them on social media, they’ll feel secure, engaged, and then more likely to continue their commenting and sharing for others to see. Engage with your customers and join their conversations. Replying to their updates, commenting on their blogs, and e-mailing them to brand advocates your appreciation will prove that you care about fostering your relationship with them.

  1. Encourage and Inspire

Brand advocates are well connected. They enjoy sharing content, reviewing products, and telling others about their experiences. In order to keep them active, they will need to feel inspired and excited to share new content. Surprise your customers by creating events and promotions worth talking about and watch the positive word-of-mouth spread like wildfire. Advocates are also more likely to share content than any other customer, so you’ll want to make sure they continuously have good reasons to vouch for your brand and keep your positive reputation.

  1. Measure and Analyze

The entire point of having advocates for your brand is to let them do the talking for you while you maintain a great and reputable business. If you’re using an advocacy platform like Spendsetter’s, you already know that there are many benefits to having a dashboard and reporting tab where you can measure the success of your advocate marketing. If you’re not already on board with an advocacy program, you probably at least understand the importance of being able to track your progress and stay in-tune with who is saying what about your brand. Spendsetter lets you create a fully customized dashboard with the information you value most to better understand your advocates and their actions. You can also manage all of your campaigns, rewards, and offerings all in one place.

When you invest in your brand advocates, they will bring incredible value to your brand. By using Spendsetter’s advocacy platform, you can manage, incentivize, and target campaigns to those in a certain demographic or location to positively promote your products on their social media channels.

5 Tips for Nurturing Your Brand Advocates

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Advocates are a necessary marketing tool for your brand. They have high value and can help get you a great return on your investment. Advocates can account for large sums of money in purchases, from apparel to electronics. By sharing the good word of your brand, additional consumers will come to know and trust you.

Once you have discovered who your most powerful brand advocates are, it is important to nurture them. Developing a relationship with your most loyal customers doesn’t just happen overnight. In order to build a strong, trusting relationship with those who are willing to champion for your brand, you need to take time and understand how to take care of them in return.

Treating your advocates with respect and appreciation is essential to your brand’s reputation. They are people, after all, and not just a means to an end. Advocates not only purchase your products or services, but they evangelize your brand by providing testimonials, sharing your message on social media, giving feedback regularly, and motivating you to stay up-to-date with your marketing efforts.

Reach out to your advocates. There are plenty of ways to show how much you appreciate them.

Here are 5 tips for nurturing your brand advocates:

  1. Ask for their suggestions and ideas to generate participation. Starting a conversation and asking questions will prove that you acknowledge their opinions.
  2. Respond as often as possible to their social posts. Recognize their willingness to vouch for your brand and thank them for their support.
  3. Share their meaningful content they crafted to advocate for your brand. A simple retweet on Twitter or Facebook share can mean a lot.
  4. Feature them in a blog post to show your appreciation. Putting the spotlight on your most influential customers is also a great way to generate new content for your brand’s website.
  5. Reward them for spreading your message and brand awareness. You can give them additional rewards points, send products, or even offer a discount code.

When advocates encourage their friends and family to purchase from your brand, the buying power rapidly increases. In order to maintain a positive reputation, you’ll need to motivate your biggest fans to continue sharing your product or service on social networks.

The wonderful thing about fostering concrete relationships with your brand advocates is that they have a high impact on advertising at a low cost. As you continue to nurture a strong and healthy relationship with your advocates, they will have more reason to recommend your brand.

6 Simple and Free Tips for Increasing Traffic to your Blog

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200197880-001Whether you’re a news journalist, lifestyle blogger, freelance copywriter, or you just have a passion for creating content; there are a few things you should know in order to promote your published work if you really want to extend your reach. In order to get the most out of your post, it’s necessary to promote it in places where readers find it relevant, interesting, and helpful. Your blog, just like a business, needs to be well-marketed in order to bring people in and keep them engaged. You aren’t writing content for nothing, right? Increase the awareness of your blog and give it the exposure it deserves.

Here are 6 simple & free tips for increasing traffic to your blog:

1. Use Social Media

Promoting your blog on social media should already feel like second nature to you. If you aren’t already publishing your posts through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social media platforms, start now. Leverage these networks to your advantage to gain traffic and engagement.

As soon as you hit “publish” on your blog post, make a habit of pushing the post’s link through Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. For added traffic, create an account for your blog on Pinterest and pin to your boards that are relevant to your blog’s topics. Programs like Hootsuite, Buffer, and SproutSocial are great resources for social media management.

2. Be Consistent.

Staying consistent is one of the most important factors to making your blog successful. Nobody knows your brand better than you do, so don’t compromise it by posting things that are irrelevant or incompatible to you and your brand. Also, search engines love webpages with quality content that is fresh and persistent. In order to keep a steady increase in your blog’s traffic, you’ll want to publish content at least 3 times per week.

3. Engage with other Bloggers

If you want visitors on your blog, try visiting other blogs and starting a conversation. Commenting on other blogs (and including a link back to your own) will promote ongoing engagement with other bloggers in your online community. It’s also important to reply to comments on your own blog so that your readers feel their comments and opinions are valued. The more connected they feel, the more likely they are to visit again.

4. Optimize Each Post

Keywords are important in your blog’s content. Using the Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool can help you find great keywords to be using in your blog posts that are both relevant to your topic and stand against your competitors. Also, avoid overkill by placing too many keywords into your content so that readers are distracted and turned off by your difficult-to-read blog posts.

5. Guest blogging

Another great way to gain some exposure is to write guest posts on other blogs with a similar audience. If you’re a fashion blogger, submitting a guest post on another fashion blog chock full with photos and outfit inspiration will encourage readers to check out your blog and potentially follow you. Be sure to include a brief bio about yourself and a link back to your blog for easy access to readers.

6. Utilize Multimedia in Blog Posts

Is your blog visually appealing? Would you want to look at it if it wasn’t yours? One way to bring readers in is by having attractive imagery and videos that readers can engage with. Visual content can be  just as important as the content you are writing. Also, referring back to #1, if you have great corresponding photos that are relevant to your topic, pinning the photo to your Pinterest account can be very beneficial.

There are a plethora of resources available online if you’re seeking new ways to drive traffic to your blog. Although great content is key, it’s not always sufficient. Bringing extra attention to your blog is simple and necessary. Follow these 6 steps and you’ll be well on your way to gaining readers and increasing your overall blog traffic.