Audience-Development-Strategy

Facebook

You can always promote
your free white papers on
Facebook. You can even
promote those posts so
that they get more reach
beyond the usual measly
percent that Facebook
allows to see it. But you
can also create a custom
tab that shows up on your main page, like Natural Health Advisory.

This leads to a full landing
page that asks the user to
“like” the page and also
collects their email address.

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LinkedIn

Same idea here. If you can get your editorial staff and anyone engaged in the
production of your freemiums involved in promoting them, you’ll have a bigger
network of people to promote them to! Your brand page can also be used for
promotion and you can add them into your “products” section, too.

Google+

Google+ acts much like Facebook in the way posts are made, so go ahead and post
your free white paper on your brand page. Heck, ask your editors to post it too.
When we’ve talked to publishers about using Google+, they swear it boosts the rank
of their posts (even if Google swears it doesn’t!)

Bonus points if you host a Google Hangout every time you launch a new freemium.
You can set up the Hangout with a few of your editors, review the key takeaways and
ask attendees to download it too. You can then do a Q&A about the freemium, or,
depending on your niche, have a group discussion about the topic.

YouTube

Think you can’t collect an email address through video? Well, publishers like Knitting
Daily create short clips of how-to projects and then give viewers links to download
the patterns online. In some cases, they might ask for an email address, but there’s an
email-collection floater that they’ll see when they visit, and each page is designed to
have a related free report promoted as well. Basically, if someone comes to the site
from this video, they’ll have no trouble discovering a call to action.

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Pinterest

Our friends at FaveCrafts are circ-building geniuses on Pinterest. Then again, if any
publisher were going to thrive on Pinterest, it would certainly be a craft publisher!

Search “craft ebook” and you’ll get pages of pins of their ebooks, pinned by users
everywhere. But how do you think that might have happened? Well, FaveCrafts has
their own Pinterest account where they have a whole board dedicated to their ebooks.
And judging by the number of repins they get on each project, nobody cares that
they’re self-promoting. Not all of their ebooks require an email to download, but they
do all have a giant floater that pops up to capture their email address.

YouTube
Think you can’t collect an email address through video? Well, publishers like Knitting
Daily create short clips of how-to projects and then give viewers links to download
the patterns online. In order to download most of the patterns, the user must submit
their email address.

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What is Social Media Optimization?

Develop your social media strategy in eight steps

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is what we call the process of optimizing your
content and your business, for social media.

In Audience Development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes first because
content comes first. You’re creating content that has been optimized for some set of
keywords that our target audience is looking for.

SMO is what we do with that content after it has been produced, and it’s not easy. If
you want to be successful in social media, and you want your content to be read,
clicked and shared, then it takes as much work as any other task. To get the most out
of your social media efforts, keep reading.

1. Create a social media style guide.

Before anything, pull down your editorial style guide and highlight anything that
might apply to social. For example, don’t just look at, say, how you capitalize words,
but also look at how you handle competitors. Some brands are happy to ReTweet
and comment on the Tweets of their competitors, or share a recipe from an unknown
blogger on their Facebook wall. And some simply are not OK with that one bit.

2. Pick a platform.

We’re hot for CoSchedule. It’s a WordPress plugin that allows you to schedule
Tweets directly in WordPress, on the same page as the article itself. If you’re a
Mequoda Gold Member, you either have, or will soon have Haven Social, which is

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powered by CoSchedule. Hootsuite is another option which works great for
businesses because they offer reporting and it allows you to assign different tasks to
team members.

3. Assign responsibilities.

As you know, the age of the Internet has turned editors into marketers who are
responsible for their content. This applies to social media too. Unless you are a power
house publisher that can afford a room full of social media specialists, like the
Chicago Tribune (@ColonelTribune is totally worth it, FYI), then your editors will
most likely be running your social media. First of all they know the content best,
second of all, they’re already grammar savvy and probably won’t let out any typos.

If you have an online marketing team though, they might have secure jobs in social
media. For example, maybe your Managing Editor just writes the Tweets, and your
marketing team is responsible for editing the Tweets, scheduling them, sending out
promotional Tweets, and brand building beyond just content marketing. Or maybe
your Managing Editor does it all. Anyway, use this step to determine who does what,
and especially, who hits the “send” and “schedule” buttons.

4. Create social media formulas.

What is SMO without structure, right? Over the next few chapters you’ll learn how to
use the 12x12x12 content recycling method. You’ll write twelve unique Tweets for
each article. You’ll schedule them for 12 days. Then you’ll schedule them for 12
months. For an entire year, your article will be promoted and you only have to do it
once. For Facebook, LinkedIn and G+, write two unique posts. Schedule on the first
day, then again in six months.

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5. Create a series of non-promotional posts.

What else will you publish as part of your SMO strategy? For example, on
“Throwback Thursdays,” People posts old covers of their magazines. Martha
Stewart sources ideas from their Facebook fans for future issues. Be creative and
come up with a series of images you can share, that will provoke comments, likes,
and more shares. This strategy in particular will be the key to increasing
your Facebook visibility.

6. Decide what to do with premium content.

Does your content sit behind a paywall? That’s cool, you’re already used to forgoing
search traffic anyway. But if you decide that you want to drip out tips with links back
to some kind of access challenge page (see below), just be clear on that strategy out of
the gate. Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz) allows social users to read five
articles for free, then they get this paywall. And it’s OK because they’re not getting it
the first time.

7. Integrate social media into your advertising packages.

Another use for social media is advertising. Publishers are beginning to include sets
of social media posts, or co-sponsored posts as a part of their ad packages. If you
decide to do this, remember that advertorial guidelines still apply and you must add
#ad or #sponsored to your post or make it abundantly obvious that the post was
paid for.

8. Create a social media calendar.

Once all of the above is figured out, it’s time to create your social media calendar.

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This will be your structure and it will look a lot like your editorial and email calendars
combined.

• Editorial posts get posted on the same day they’re published (plus scheduled
out into the future)

• Promotional posts get posted on the same day they’re emailed out to your
email list

• Branded posts will get posts on the days you determine.
• Ad posts will also get posted on the days you determine.

Set your editorial and marketing teams up for success by creating this calendar. It will
give them a checklist of sorts, so that they know exactly what’s going out and when.

There are a lot of balls in the air at all times when it comes to social media, so
structure will turn it into a more enjoyable process. One where your editors and
marketers look forward to creating social posts that get clicked, rather than just trying
to get social off their plate while they attend to other duties.

In fact, set your team up for success by following this entire list in order. Social media
optimization gets a bad rap for being easy, which is a joke to anyone who has ever
done it. It’s only easy if you’re doing it wrong. Do it right instead.

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Recycling Content on Social Media for Improved SEO

One of the best ways to recycle old content is to re-promote it
in social media

Posting on Facebook feels like traveling to the Emerald City to visit the Great Oz.
You post a blockbuster article, or a hilarious behind-the-scenes photo, yet it’s
some man behind the curtain that determines who sees it. What determines your
“reach” on Facebook has little to do with variables that you control.

In contrast, Twitter is straightforward enough to let you maintain control of the
factors that determine your visibility. This makes you responsible for its reach.
When using Twitter for content marketing, these are the variables you control, and
the ways that you can improve each element:

• You control the copy: You have the ability to adjust your copy again and
again to promote the same article. Test the title versus a quote versus pulling a
snippet. Keep testing different clickable Tweet formulas to get different
results.

• You control when the Tweet is delivered (and re-delivered): Whether you
live-Tweet or schedule posts, it’s in your power to decide when people read
Tweets. Rather than testing times by exhausting your followers with duplicate
Tweets, switch up your Tweet copy each time you promote the article in the
same day.

• You control how a Tweet gets shared: There are external factors at work
here, but you have the ability to set up a Tweet for success. The combination

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of great copy, room for comment, an @ with your name on it and even
a “please reTweet” increases your odds.

• You control the visibility: Instead of shouting your content aimlessly into
the wind, you can use hashtags to define your content and inject it into
existing conversations on relevant subjects. Use any opportunity you have to
@ someone in your Tweet, because it gets the Tweet in front of them and in
front of their followers if they decide to reTweet.

• Promoted Tweets: If your ad budget includes room for Twitter ads, you can
give your Tweets preferential treatment to people with the demographics and
interests that relate most to your content.

Tweeting sounds a whole lot like email marketing, doesn’t it?

The main difference is you can recycle content over and over again on Twitter. In
fact, since nobody is monitoring their feed 24 hours a day, you could get away with
promoting the same article five times in a day using a variation of these tips and a
little creativity.

Why You Should Recycle Content on Twitter

Twitter isn’t just about the here and now. You could post the same article 10 times a
day, but your traffic would only be driving traffic to that one page. That’s why it’s
always a smart idea to recycle your articles so that blog posts from a month ago, six
months ago, and a year ago get a new life.

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When we talk about recycling Tweets, we mean that in the same breath that you’re
posting a Tweet today, you should be scheduling it to reappear next month, the
month after that, six months after that, and a year after that. As long as the content is
evergreen, you have every opportunity to stick it in your future feed.

And if you’re wondering whether this effort is worth the return, here are five good
reasons you should recycle your content on Twitter:

1. More Visibility: If every single person in your target audience took a vacation
today, none of them would see your Tweet. Essentially, it would be lost in a sea of
Tweets, and the people who would see it and click your link wouldn’t be those most
likely to complete a sale. If you only post your articles once, they may never be seen
again.

2. More SEO Benefit: If you title your posts with brilliant SEO keywords, Google is
taking notice. In fact, Google associates the words in your Tweets with the URL you
are Tweeting about, so the more you post it, or people re-Tweet it, the better you’ll
rank on your targeted keyword.

3. More Opportunity for Clicks: Obviously the more times you post a Tweet, the
more traffic it’s going to bring in. However, if it’s a holiday, or even holiday season,
you probably aren’t going to see the results you’re looking for. Or, if you posted at
the wrong times of day, or a natural disaster occurred, you’re obviously going to see a
drop. Instead of calling it a loss, you have the next two reasons to consider.

4. Diversity of Timing: Recycling posts means that you can schedule them at
different times in the upcoming days and months. Perhaps today you schedule your
Tweet for 10am and 3pm, and next month you schedule it at 9am and 5pm, and six

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months from now you might post it at 2am and 11pm for international readers. Then
you look back regularly to see which times brought in the most traffic and begin to
work on a more calculated schedule.

5. Experimenting with Headlines: Writing Twitter headlines takes practice,
because what works on a blog and what works as an email subject line doesn’t always
work on Twitter. Folks on Twitter appreciate hashtags and call-outs to signify a more
“human” feel. The more you post an article, the more opportunities you have to
work with these types of elements to see which headlines pull better. Does a question
work better? A statement? The title of the post? The email subject line you used?
These are all different formulas to try.

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A Year in the Life of an Article on Twitter

A social media campaign for every article

What you’re about to read is our secret sauce to social. Year over year, we’ve seen a
149% increase in traffic from using the social strategy that you’re about to learn. Our
clients have begun to implement the same strategy in their businesses and we look
forward to reporting back their averages when we update this handbook next year.

By combining the elements of copy formulas, scheduling, hashtags and @s, you can
grow an entire ecosystem around each article you promote on Twitter.
Moving forward, let’s discuss what this ecosystem looks like and how you can
repurpose one article into infinite promotional opportunities.

To start, pick the most recent article you’ve published on your blog. Hopefully it’s
SEO’d for search and contains evergreen content (content that doesn’t expire with the
direction of the wind) because this content performs best.

12 Twitter Formulas

Next, begin to think up different ways you can promote your article. Keep in mind,
that this is by no means an exhaustive list of every Twitter formula that could exist
and in fact we suggest that you test these out and create your own. The purpose of
using these formulas is to determine which ones your audience responds to best, and
then improve from there.

1. The title: Easy, just use the title.
2. The title & subhead: Or just the subhead, if it’s too long

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3. The excerpt: Interesting statement
4. The summary: What they’ll learn by clicking the link
5. The shout-out: @ anybody mentioned.
6. The hashtag(s): Insert extra (related) trending hashtags
7. The quote: Find a relevant quote and use it
8. The quippy click-bait: Short and sweet
9. The friendly suggestion: First-person request to read/share
10. The question: Ask a related question
11. The engagement: Ask them to comment/give feedback
12. The takeaway(s): Subheads and major points

In our example, below we’re using a blog post titled “How to Sanitize a Sponge: Are
Your Kitchen Sponges Safe?” from our friends at CSPI / Nutrition Action
Healthletter.

1. The title: Easy, just use the title.

Goal: Find out if your title is click-worthy enough and which titles in your Tweets
end up performing best.

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2. The title & subhead: Or just the subhead, if it’s too long
Goal: Add more context to the Tweet, which is often lead to retweets if it’s catchy.

3. The excerpt: Interesting statement
Goal: Make a bold statement from the article to get more retweets.

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4. The summary: What they’ll learn by clicking the link
Goal: Give them the facts, and challenge them to keep reading to find out why your
statement is so.

5. The shout-out: @ anybody mentioned.
Goal: Get your post in front of the people you’ve mentioned and hope for them to
retweet the post too.

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6. The hashtag(s): Insert extra (related) trending hashtags
Goal: Get your post in front of other link-minded readers who enjoy similar topics.

7. The quote: Find a relevant quote and use it
Goal: People love to retweet and favorite quotes, both of which send great social
signals to Google about your post.

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8. The quippy click-bait: Short and sweet
Goal: Forget the small talk, just get them to click and read.

9. The friendly suggestion: First-person request to read/share
Goal: This first-person request can garner more replies, retweets and favorites based
on the personal nature of the request.

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10. The question: Ask a related question
Goal: Inspire followers to engage with you. Ask them a question related to the article
and get them to read on.

11. The engagement: Ask them to comment/give feedback
Goal: Get followers to your site and boost its SEO with more post comments.

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12. The takeaway(s): Subheads and major points

Goal: Lay it all out there. Some people just want the facts, Jack. Bring on the
retweets.

Scheduling Your New Tweets

Now that you’ve written your Tweets, you’ll want to schedule them. This is the part
that’s tricky only because you don’t want to overlap. In Haven Social, our custom
CXMS, and in CoSchedule, you can tell the system to pick the best time to send out a
Tweet on the day you choose. But if you’re using something like Hootsuite to
schedule social ahead, here’s a basic twelve-day schedule for a publisher that posts
one article per day.

Daily Publishing Schedule

1. Title: January 1st, 9am (the first time the article is promoted)
2. Title & Subhead: January 2nd, 10:35am
3. Excerpt: January 3rd, 11:35am

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4. Summary: January 4th, 12:35pm
5. Shout-Out: January 5th, 1:35pm
6. Hashtag: January 6th, 2:35pm
7. Quote: January 7th, 3:35pm
8. Quippy Click: January 8th, 4:35pm
9. Friendly Suggestion: January 9th, 5:35pm
10. Question: January 10th, 6:35pm
11. Engagement: January 11th, 7:35pm
12. Takeaway: January 12th, 8:35pm

Of course, you can come up with your own timing system, but I find that
incorporating the goal of choosing different times for each of your formulas can also
help determining the best Tweet times for your followers. Next, these Tweets get
scheduled out for a year.

Monthly Publishing Schedule

1. Title: February 1st
2. Title & Subhead: March 1st
3. Excerpt: April 1st
4. Summary: May 1st
5. Shout-Out: June 1st
6. Hashtag: July 1st
7. Quote: August 1st
8. Quippy Click: September 1st
9. Friendly Suggestion: October 1st
10. Question: November 1st
11. Engagement:December 1st
12. Takeaway: January 1st

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Promotional Tweets

And according to your social calendar, don’t forget promotional Tweets. If you
follow the Mequoda best practice of sending at least one spotlight (promotional)
email per week, and one circ-builder (freebie) per week – set up promotional Tweets
for the same days. Feel free to use the formulas above, or make up your own!

What about other social networks?

On Twitter, no one user is going to see every Tweet you send out, because the
timeline moves so quickly in real-time. Less content is shared on platforms like
Facebook and LinkedIn (and G+ and Pinterest), so we recommend using the same
formulas above, except only once and then again six months later. Replace @ing for
tagging in the shout out. Everything else works the same, except you don’t have 140-
character restrictions.

You can also try toying with images. Try switching up your featured image on posts
to see which ones work best.

If you follow all of the advice above for every post, especially the ones optimized for
search, you’ll find that they rank higher and longer. The ones that you don’t do it for,
will simply dissolve into your online archives.

This method for recycled promotion has been working well for us and keeps bringing
in a steady stream of traffic by keeping our feed populated. It lets you focus on
promoting one article a day, but drive traffic for an unlimited amount of time. Every
day you move forward, you’re adding more scheduled post to each day in the month,
leaving you with more time to write better headlines and less time thinking about old
articles.

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About Mequoda

Mequoda Group helps legacy publishers make the transition
to digital… Can we help you make that transition?

If you’re a publisher, content producer or content marketer searching for a simple yet comprehensive
way to create, build and maintain long, lasting and profitable audience and customer relationships,
your search may be complete.

Mequoda Group offers consulting services for publishers on content marketing, online publishing,
search engine optimization, email newsletter marketing, editorial management, landing page best
practices, social media optimization and online business management. For the right client, our
Consulting services can go on to include Keyword Research & Reporting, Website Systems Planning,
Business Plan Development and ultimately Website Design, Development and Support.
Mequoda Group supports publishers who use some variation of the Mequoda Content Marketing
System (Mequoda System). Our members include more than 36,000 individual marketers, editors,
writers, copywriters, graphic designers, webmasters, information architects, software developers,
project managers, usability engineers, media producers and publishers.

Mequoda Group members create and monetize content on hundreds of special-interest topics
ranging from investing to human resources, cooking to healthcare, and archery to zoology. Our
members serve audiences, users and customers who are both consumers and professionals with
content, communities and commerce that improve the quality of their lives.

Mequoda Group Mission

We’re dedicated to helping content marketers, producers and publishers use the Internet and other
media to create, build and retain long, lasting and profitable audience and customer relationships.
Learn more at Mequoda.com.

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