Guest post by Liz Azyan

Are you wondering how you can grow your business online using social media?

Do you want to get more clicks, likes and most importantly, more sales?

This was the question on my mind and many others who attended the “Using Social Media and Copywriting to Get More Clicks, Likes, and Sales” course with @AndreaVahl and @HarrisonAmy in London.

With Facebook and Twitter both having a total of 809 and 416 million visits respectively, every single month, its no wonder everyone is desperate to know…

How can you sell using social media?

Luckily for us who attended the course, we now know EXACTLY how we can raise our game and generate a profitable business online using some of the best practices in social media and copywriting with the help of our social media and copywriting Gurus, Andrea Vahl aka Grandma Mary and Amy Harrison.

The Top 10 Social Media and Copywriting Best Practices to Grow Your Business Online

In this article, I’ll share with you 10 of the top best practices I’ve learnt from the course and hopefully improve your social media presence and and start generating some leads and profits for your business.

Here are my top 10 tips for you from Andrea’s and Amy’s social media and copywriting course to get more clicks, likes and sales: –

#1 Optimize Your Social Media Accounts

Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you’ve got to optimize your account to really benefit from the exposure social media can give you on their search engines’ and Google too. How do you do this? Simple, just follow the tips below: –

• • For Facebook, make sure you fill in your ‘About‘ section for both your profile and fan page. You can add testimonials, information about your products and services, keywords, milestones and events onto thissection to give people a more rounded view of what your company is all about.

• • For Twitter,make sure you fill out your profile section appropriately.Again, be sure to use keywords and maybe even sneak in a couple of hashtags that are relevant to your business so people know what your interests are.

• For LinkedIn, you should look in your summary section: –
  • make sure you are letting your potential customers knowthe best way to contact you,
  • why they should hire you,
  • what’s in it for them,
  • express how YOU specifically can add value and
  • add interests, experience and media to your profile to create a richer presence.

#2 Make use of the features available on every social media platform

Don’t neglect the features each social network has to offer you to exploit. Often enough, business owners open a social media account and immediately start posting status updates without truly exploring other aspects of the platform they’re using. For example: –

• • On Facebook, you can use: –
    • Facebook Apps,
    • the timeline cover,
    • events,
    • ‘Pin to Top’,
    • ‘Highlight’,
    • offers,
    • post scheduler,
    • the Power Editor for Facebook Ads creation andmanagement,
    • Facebook lists,
    • groups and
    • graph search

These can all increase visibility, reach and presence of your Facebook page.

Not only that, these tools have the potential of helping you keep up with your competitors and generate quality content for you to share with your fans on a daily basis.

• • On Twitter, you can: –
    • take advantage of Twitter lists,
    • Direct Messaging,
    • hashtags,
    • Twitter Cards and
    • Twitter advertising

All of these can leverage your visibility on Twitter. Being smart about who you follow, getting quality leads from lists of thought leaders in your industry and using local hashtags to generate local business leads are just some ways you can really connect with your target audience and start building a relationship that will convert your followers to buyers.

• • On LinkedIn, you can greatly improve your presence on this platform by askingfor recommendations from former clients, give recommendations andendorsements to others, find new connections, join relevant groups within your industry and share tips and good articles in your status updates.

#3 The Power of Email Marketing

People often believe that because of rise and popularity of social media, email has become obsolete or dead. This is simply not true. The truth is, in order for social media to truly have a meaningful measurable ROI and generate quality leads for your business, it is essential that business combines both social media and email marketing together to convert those fans and followers into paying customers.

Protecting your tribe

If you really examine who owns your social media fans and followers, some of you might be shocked to discover that you don’t actually own the list of fans and followers that you’ve worked hard to acquire on these platforms. This is because the social networks are the ones who own it! But not unless you have funnelled those fans and followers into your sales funnel and email list by capturing their email address from your social networks.

This way, even though one day one of these social networks might shut down, you will not lose the connection you’ve built with your fans and followers and can easily continue engaging and building that valuable relationship with them. Andrea mentioned that by taking that relationship and interaction from social media to email marketing, you’ll be able to take the relationship to the next level and always be able to be on top of mind of your potential customers.

How to get them to give you their emails!

What are you offering them in exchange for their email address? Are you simply asking for them to sign up for your newsletter?

This can be tricky as people have to already be invested in you or your product and vision before they decide to sign up for a newsletter. So what can you offer?

Think about offering a free ebook, whitepaper, video tutorial series, a webinar, an offer or a discount, or even tell them the benefits of signing up for your newsletter. These are proven and tested giveaways that can naturally get your social media fans and followers on their journey to discovering even more about your services. And don’t be afraid to email your list! Given that it takes between 5 – 7 interactions before a customer decides to buy from you, this means its not an issue of ‘Are you interacting too much?’, but it’s an issue of ‘Are you interacting enough?’

#4 Use social media tools to manage your social media presence

Let’s admit it, social media can get a ‘TINY’ bit overwhelming, right? In order to get your ‘social media overwhelm’ under control and really focus in on the social media tasks that will bring you the money, you can use a wide selection of tools to support your day-to-day social media tasks.

Here is a list of tools you should consider to manage your social media presence: –

• For social media management
• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck
• Buzzspice
• The Facebook scheduler
• Buffer
• ContentDJ
• Tweepi
• ManageFlitter
• BundlePost
• Sprout Social
• Scoreboard Social and so much more!

Email Marketing

• Infusionsoft
• Aweber

For creating custom graphics

• Picmonkey
• Pixlr
• Canva
• Snagit (screen capture)
• Jing (screen capture)

To see what Andrea uses, catch my interview with her in this video!

#5 Create and editorial and activity calendar that talks to your bottom line

Another side-effect of being overwhelmed on social media is due to being disorganized. With all the social media content out there, it’s not hard to get a bit messy and disoriented. Andrea wants us to get focused and start generating profits for our businesses. So the only way to do that is by reducing our overwhelm and knowing where we are going with our social media.

Having an editorial and activity calendar will help you see the bigger picture and ensure that in the midst of distributing valuable content for your social media followers, you are also consistently creating compelling content that subtly highlights the benefits of your service or products. Make sure your editorial and activity calendar not only keeps you organized, but ensure it allows for content that answer these questions about your business.

• What is your Unique Selling Point (USP)?
• Are you communicating in the the right voice, platform, format andtime for your target audience?
• Are you answering questions they need answers to to make a decisionabout service or product?
• What values are you providing to your customer and what problemsare you solving for them?
• What type of conversations do you want to have with your audience?

This way, you’re addressing your customers needs as well as your business without overwhelming yourself.

#6 Measure! Measure! Measure! Align your social media goals along with your business goals

Another important tip is to always be measuring. Social media is a fast paced environment. It can change everyday without warning. Therefore Andrea advises us to use web analytics tools like Google Analytics and creating Google goals to ensure we are measuring our performance and keeping on top of any decrease in traffic and subscribers opt-ins.

Here’s a video tutorial I did on how to create Google goals within Google Analytics to get a rough idea on how you can track your social media campaigns. I hope it will be useful for you.

#7 Write social media updates that people love to click and share

@HarrisonAmy did a wonderful job at explaining to us what really makes people ‘click’. I’ve been tweeting for 5 years now and I was still blown away by what Amy was teaching us. Did you know that there were certain words that you could use to make people want to click and share more than others?

These include: –

• different phrases styles (showing social proof, let them know youhave something new, promote the benefits of your offer etc.)
• most retweetable words (follow, how to, check out etc.)
• unexpected words (shocking, weird, abnormal etc.)
• dangerous words (kills, risk, fear etc.)
• viral words (history, critical, science etc.)
• words to add spice (reply, follow, download etc.)

You can also create eye-catching headlines for your social media updates like: –

• How successful [target market] get [results]: [link]
• Are you tired of [problem] advice that doesn’t apply to [targetmarket]?: [link]
• Unusual strategies for getting [results]: [link]

To get more phrases and copywriting tips, be sure to download Amy’s Copywriting Phrase-book. I’ve downloaded it and I think it’s awesome!

#8 Tell Your Story

Although copywriting might have its technical aspects that can help us reach our target market more effectively, it is really about telling our stories. Copywriting is as good as the story it tells, the journey it documents and the ups and downs it reveals.

Copywriting in social media is about being human.

Being ‘vulnerable’ to making mistakes and being ‘able’ to connect on a simpler, deeper and meaningful level that businesses found hard to do before. Tell your story and use social media as a platform to showcase your passion.

#9 Put Your Customer at the Heart of Social Media Content

Social media has allowed businesses to have conversations with customers more cheaply and quickly than it has ever been before. Therefore, for creating copy or content that is truly compelling, it must put the customer at the heart of its source for inspiration. Good content speaks TO its readers, whilst bad content speaks AT its readers.

Speak TO your customers by talking about them and their problems. Address their fears and their failures. Once they know that you truly understand their predicament, then you can provide them with a solution.

#10 Develop your relationship on social media and off social media

A message or status update that can really grow and engage with your community is one that is nurtured and sowed. Just like a farm, you need to plant the seeds with the intent to see them grow, flourish and produce results. All the social media farming activities in between like updating your posts, deleting spam, scheduling updates, crafting the perfect headline, replying to questions, delivering only the best content that provides value, posting at the right time for your audience and funnelling them into your email list, these are all the mechanics to ensure your social media is working for you.

But how are you working for your social media?

YOU are the missing link between your customer and your social media strategy.

The human interaction is one that cannot be replaced, therefore taking your social media engagement from online to offline is often the missing piece of the puzzle for many social businesses. We’re all social animals and at the end of the day, everyone who interacts online who is looking for a meaningful relationship (business or personal), will always look to meet face-to-face. Well, unless you’re a catfish!

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there, take Facebook and other social media platforms to the next level and get FACE-TO-FACE.

Hope this was useful

Liz Azyan is a social media marketing professional who helps small businesses develop and maintain their social media presence, content and strategies. Download her free Facebook Marketing Ultimate DIY Guide. Follow her on Twitter @Liz_Azyan & Facebook.