If you want to see what Facebook thinks your “interests” are you can have a look and edit them. You’ll have a good laugh at the things you apparently like!
Go to Settings > Ads > Ads based on my preferences > edit > visit ad preferences. Then they will all be neatly displayed in little boxes. You can hover and close the ones you aren’t actually interested in.
It can be a lengthy process – but very eye-opening! This is a great experiment to do on your profile to show you why interest targeting on Facebook can be so hit and miss. You’re must better off using custom audiences based on your website traffic or email databases!
This won’t mean you’ll see fewer FB ads, but it might mean the ones you do see are relevant to you! And let’s face it, we’ve all come to terms with the fact that there’s ads on Facebook. PLUS occasionally you’ll see an ad for a flight, concert, or something that you ARE interested in and you didn’t already know about. Ok, it’s infrequent – but it does happen.
What do you think? Did you find this useful? Is it time to update your interests on Facebook, I mean it’s more than 12 years old now – and if you’ve been on it since the beginning you might have changed a bit since then!
Recently I had the privilege of writing a guest blog post for Scope Vision, a wonderful local RTO I’m currently completing an Advanced Diploma of Business with. It’s run by a fabulously creative and quirky lady I just adore, MJ Satterthwaite. Her brain (and business blog) is bursting full of ways to improve your leadership skills to develop yourself; and business planning tips to rock your career!
I had to find common ground between what I’m passionate about, Social Media (obvs) and what subjects her audience is interested in reading about, and have come to expect from her posts – leadership and career development.
Can you see where we’re going here?
You guessed it, LinkedIn is going to feature heavily! But it’s not the only way you can use Social Media to showcase your skills an experience. I discuss the features of LinkedIn you might not be using, and also explore Medium and Quora as other places to publish content to boost your professional authority.
The best thing about these methods is they can be applied by anyone. You don’t have to wait until you’ve entered the workforce, publishing your own content will certainly help you stand out from the rest of your graduating class, especially now there’s a LinkedIn for Students app! Conversely you are also never too old to start!
I shared my top tips for helping you become an authority in your field using Social Media. If you’d like to read it on the Scope blog I’ve linked it HERE for you!
Anther thing I’m often asked is how connected your personal and professional Social Media should be.
Can you use your personal profiles to share your business content, and should you post personal updates on your business or professional Social Media accounts?
Well – the answer is a big IT DEPENDS.
I know that’s not what you were hoping to find, but before we explore the subject together – see what it depends ON.
I would break it down into 2 main categories: The type of person you are, and the type of business you have.
They type of person you are would be more to do with your beliefs around privacy etc., and the type of business you have speaks more about the level of appropriateness to sharing personal content on your professional Social Media platforms.
To elaborate: the level of comfort you feel about sharing certain personal details of your life to your colleagues, customers, suppliers etc. is very personal and no-one can tell you how to feel about this. No one view is right – or wrong. You can be guided by a professional advice, and should solicit some if you are unsure.
Take this example of parents posting pictures of their children on Social media! Some parents go snap-mad posting photo after photo, and other parents never post pictures of their children due to privacy and safety concerns. There’s a whole spectrum in between, but everyone is doing what feels comfortable for them.
The type of business you have makes a big difference to the appropriateness of posting personal content! It also makes a big difference whether it’s your own business or you are an employee. If you are an employee who wants to post something personal on the company Social Media channels and you’re not sure, you can always check with your boss, or your marketing team – so we’re more speaking to you about your own business.
One of the things you’ll need to take into account when deciding whether you need professional Social Media accounts is “Social Media Friendliness” of the business. Is your business in one of the categories that tend to perform well on Social Media; like food, fitness, animals, etc. Is it a SOCIAL industry?
I would expect someone who owns a patisserie to post photos of them baking, but I would not expect to hear their political views. I would not expect an accountant to post photos of them using a calculator (or whatever it is they do…) but an accountant could do well from sharing a personal update like a photo of them on the golf course as it shows their human side. (I have really stereotyped accountants and for that I apologise, I needed an example…) See what I’m saying? Clear as mud.
If your job requires you to get to know people and quickly develop a rapport, sharing personal updates can be an advantage. Think industries like hospitality and retail to name a couple. If your followers have seen your updates they could feel like they know you better – increasing their likelihood of being a customer. In marketing this is referred to as Brand Humanisation.
If you do decide to share personal updates on your professional Social Media accounts there’s definitely some guidelines to bear in mind! Here are a few:
Avoid alienating your potential/current customers – re-think statements that are overly political, controversial or could be offensive. You don’t want someone who loves your product to not love you and therefore stop buying.
Everyone’s sense of humour is different – what you might think is a harmless joke, your business contacts may not. Carefully think about who the target of the joke is. Industry humour can be ok.
Don’t over-share – Your professional contacts don’t need a 1,000 photo album of your recent holiday.
Don’t vent about work – This is a no-brainer. That difficult customer, by all means tell your significant other but do not vent about them seeking sympathy from other customers. This will make you look unprofessional.
Keep security details to yourself – Which days you carry cash to the bank, your work vehicle’s rego number etc. do not need to be on your professional Social Media accounts.
Let’s look at some other people’s thoughts on this subject!
The Harvard Business Review suggests that you can make 2 lists; one for colleagues and one for friends and post different updates to each list. This would avoid most potentially awkward situations – but can you remember to do this? Especially after a couple of drinks?
This article by Sprout Social offers advice in choosing whether you need business accounts and has a pretty good list of pros and cons. Be Inbound also offers some ‘what not to do’ advice for professional Social Media accounts on their post.
If you are still deciding if you need professional Social Media accounts, consider this: What is your goal? What would be the purpose of starting these accounts?
If the goal can be achieved by your personal profiles then I would suggest keeping it simple and hold off running multiple accounts.
If you need to create specific professional Social Media accounts to achieve your goals and maintain boundaries in your personal and professional life then that’s the best course of action for you.
Consider what sharing personal posting might add to your business account, and vice versa – what posting business-related updates will add to your personal profile. If it’s not going to add something or help you achieve your goals (either personal or professional) then re-think it altogether.
As I said – it depends!
If you would like to get in touch I would be happy to discuss your individual circumstances with you.
I like to say Email Database Marketing and Social Media Marketing are best friends. Let’s explore why your business benefits from the combined power of these 2 digital marketing methods – especially if you have a small marketing budget!
I’ve collected some awesome articles from some digital marketing heavyweights to help convince you that you can’t have ultimate success in one without the other, and how to go about setting up this integrated approach!
Neil Patel describes Social Media as “the new kid” and explains why and how to integrate your email and social marketing, he even includes a downloadable cheat sheet in his article “How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts” it’s a long read but includes many step-by-step instructions, screen shots and stats to get you started.
Neil starts by demonstrating that Email Marketing is one of the easiest and most effective digital tactics, and is far from “dead”
Top Takeaways from Neils’ Article
Social Media and Email Marketing work together because they serve different contexts to different sections of your target audience.
Email is a closer relationship with your customer because they have given you permission to enter their inbox. Social Media is public and therefore less close; but a great way to collect those valuable email subscribers, and re-target them.
Email has a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than social media platforms.
You can increase your email content exposure by including social share icons inside your emails. As per Get Response, social sharing boosts email CTR by 158%.
His Step-by-Step guides to uploading your email database to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Then his subsequent Step-by-Step guide to using these lists to target specific advertising messages or paid advertising – RETARGETING.
Social Media tips:
Use contests to collect email addresses
Use your cover page ‘call to action’ buttons to collect subscribers
Use Facebook Groups for subscriber-only interaction
Retargeting
Email Marketing Tips:
Use photos to ‘put a face to the name’ in your emails
Use unsubscribe prompts to try not to lose subscribers
Add an email sign-up to your website and social media channels
Use social media sharing buttons/links in your emails and prompt your subscribers to follow/like you
In this post titled “6 Creative ways to integrate Social Media and Email Marketing” they give away some little-known tactics to getting more traffic and engagement by combining the power of Social Media and Email – and again this article is packed with practical how to’s!
Top Takeaways from Buffer’s Article
Few people make buying decisions anymore based on information from a single medium. So when marketers focus all their energy on one channel, they could be missing out on other opportunities and the natural rhythms of the buying cycle.
You need Email and Social Media to cross-promote your products and services, it re-enforces your messaging and makes sure you remain top of mind when your audience are ready to purchase.
They outline 6 top tips – which are:
Upload Email Database to Social Media Channels (as we discussed – but they add Google+)
Retargeting (we’ll leave this one here too)
Let Social Send Emails For You – this one is new, let’s discuss below
Automation – we have covered this, but Buffer suggest a different tactic which we’ll explore further in a moment
Collect Emails from Social Media – via lead magnet or subscription app/Facebook call to action in the cover photo
Create a Facebook Group for Subscribers – covered
So, we’ve already discussed some of these points above – let’s move straight on to number 3 in our list, Let Social Send Emails For You, how does this work? They’re talking about LinkedIn Groups!
If you are on LinekdIn and you haven’t taken the time to manually unsubscribe from every group you have joined you are probably drowning under a sea of LinekdIn emails…
LinkedIn send email updates of group discussions, so all you need to do to reach someone’s inbox (rather than the folder or burner email we all use for email sign-ups) is to contribute your content to these group discussions.
Now obviously you can’t just post your content and run, and it has to be of value to the group members. But what a novel idea! I hadn’t thought of trying this tactic but I’ll definitely be giving it a go myself. I’ll let you know how it turns out 🙂
On point number 4, Automation Buffer use a tactic I also haven’t tried before.
It goes like this; post a social media update, send it to your email database prompting them to share it (they call it “seed it with shares”) and once the share count is up nice and high, send an email to influencers to share it.
The influencers will see the value of the content due to the “seeded” shares and will be more likely to share it to their own audiences. Buffer describe a tool called Send Bloom which integrates with Gmail and allows you to send these influencer emails automatically.
Not only a total time-saver, but coming from your Gmail makes it so much more personal!
Just quickly we’ll discuss a Lead Magnet as mentioned in number 5 of our list, it’ll be discussed at length in the final article and is an integral part of Digital Marketing!
A Lead Magnet is something people will be prepared to give up their email address for – thus making them a lead. An example of this could be a downloadable how-to guide or indeed Neil Patel’s Cheat Sheet discussed in the first section of this article!
Example of a Lead Magent turned into a Facebook Ad
Most people won’t subscribe to your emails without being offered something of value, so think about what you could use as a lead magnet for your business!
If you want to dig in deeper the full article link is below.
One of my favourite Social Media Marketing resources – Social Media Examiner has many, many articles regarding Social Media and Email Marketing integration. Here is one of their most recent publications on the subject, written by Kristi Hines.
This one’s called “How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media” and covers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter again, with helpful screen shots and how to’s.
It’s focus is on improving the strength of your email database using social media.
Top Takeaways from Social Media Examiner’s Article
Promote your Lead Magnet, or Resources section of your website on your social media channels – so people land on your “squeeze page” (the landing page you make to collect their email in exchange for your Lead Magnet/Resource) resulting in subscriber growth.
Also use your Social Media channels to test headlines to use in your Email Marketing. As you re-post your content (not everyone saw it the first time, right?) you can change-up the titles and images.
You can infer that the one with the most engagement is the “best” one and use these headlines when creating your emails.
Here’s some more tips, broken down by channel.
Facebook
Include your subscribe link in your Short Description
Make an app to collect email addresses (try WooBox or ShortStack for this)
Use your Call To Action button on your Cover Photo
Set up Facebook Ads to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page
Use a Lookalike Audience to target people who “Look Like” your email database subscribers
Twitter
Use your bio to promote your Lead Magnet
Use Twitter Lead Cards – explained below
Use Promoted Tweets to increase the reach of your Lead Cards
A Lead Card is a way for people to leave you with their details without leaving Twitter. Think of it as a mini-squeeze page.
LinkedIn
Promote your Lead Magnet in the Projects and Publications sections of your LinkedIn profile
Pinterest
Pin your Lead Magnet – this can be done multiple times with varying images.
Instagram
Use the link in your bio to send people to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page
General
Make sharing easy! Include Social Media sharing buttons and links on your Squeeze Page and your Lead Magnet.
Read the full article, explaining exactly how to set up your Twitter Lead Cards below.
So here you have it – the world’s top Digital Marketers agree that Social Media and Email Marketing are best friends! Time to dig out that excel spreadsheet and pass it on to your social media team!
We’d love to hear your feedback! What are your thoughts on Email Marketing and Social Media integration? Leave us a comment here or stop by any of our Social Media channels.
The Social Chameleons can be contacted to help you with your Social Media and Email Database Marketing. Feel free to email by clicking here, or fill out the form on the contact page.
