The Social Launch

This week, Leslie McDermid covers the latest Instagram update, saving collections, and also becoming the go-to person in your industry. Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, along with the other main social media platforms are constantly evolving, and they should be, just like us. To become the go-to person that everyone thinks about when they think about your niche, you need to:

1. Provide amazing value

Links mentioned in this episode:

• http://www.thesociallaunch.com

As business owners, we handle so many things and when we get busy it is so tempting to stop marketing! Yes, marketing. Please don't stop marketing when you get busy.

When you stop marketing, you lose all the momentum you've built and you will have to restart your hardwork all over again. Even if you continue at a scaled down amount, please continue your marketing strategy even during busy times.

Creating and following a social media strategy for your business is important, not only to keep you focused and organized, but so you can measure your success and alter your social media strategy as needed.

Creating a social media strategy doesn’t need to be complicated, follow these 5 steps to get started.

Setting very clear goals and objectives for why you are using social media, and then more specifically why you are using specific platforms will help keep a clear picture for your business on social media.

More on setting goals for social media here >> http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/setting-goals-for-social-media/

Read more strategy tips here >> http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/5-steps-to-a-social-media-strategy/

questions? email me [email protected]

Are you spending too much time each week creating your own content?

I have a big secret for you.... share your old content.... (Gasp)

When you create a great blog, video or podcast, you don't need to stop sharing after one share. One piece of content can be re-shared multiple times.

First, start with a piece of content that is already popular with your audience. Use your social media analytics to see what posts received great engagement.

If you find a blog post that has way more traffic to it than any other post you have, and the read time is high, chances are it should be shared again!

Do you have a blog for your business?

Need more ideas for creating consistent blog content?

Regularly writing a blog requires consistency, dedication and …. ideas! Here are seven tips to write a blog post that people will actually read.

Use your own unique voice

There is so much content available to us, and you want to let your readers know why they want to read your content. By writing in your own voice and adding your personal spin on a subject, it makes it much more interesting for your readers and can make you more relatable too.

If your blog content sounds like everyone else’s, it will be hard for people to connect with you. But, if you can stand out to people in some way, they are more likely to come back for more.

Write about what interests you

Do you actually enjoy what you are blogging about? If you don’t enjoy what you are writing about, chances are other people won’t enjoy it either.

If you are struggling to put your interests down on paper, but you excel at creating videos, consider creating videos and sending to Fiverr or Rev to have them transcribed. Then you can format the transcription into a blog post and embed your video within your blog post. Now your readers have the option to read or watch your content.

Know who you’re writing for

Keeping your ideal customer in mind, or who specifically you are trying to help with your blog, think about what they want to read about.

Is your blog:

Helping them in some way?

Make it easy to read.

Download a free PDF with 52 blog post ideas http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/blog-post-ideas

Do you have a website for your business, have been around for years, but your site isn't anywhere near page 1 of Google? That's a problem.

SEO doesn't have to be scary, there are some simple things you can do to increase your website rankings:

• Connect to Google Analytics

More questions? Read more about creating a website for your business http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/important-tips-creating-new-website/

Let's connect! [email protected]

Are you looking for ways to increase your engagement on social media?

Want some easy ways to create more content that your customers love?

Including your customers into your social media content strategy is a sure-fire way to not only increase engagement, but to leave them wanting more content from you.

I’m going to show you four ways to create interesting, entertaining content for your social media audiences, plus how to create content using the suggestions of your audience.

Shonduras on Snapchat is a master at incorporating his audience into his Snapchat story and using their feedback and answers to provide content.

This interactive content is not only entertaining but he can use his audiences’ feedback as his content. Genius.

Shonduras uses fun, interactive content on Snapchat to turn a regular old holiday post and incorporates his audience to create more content for him to share.

You could ask for your followers to share a story with you, submit a photo or video, or submit a drawing. Interactive content is fun and different and will grab your audiences’ attention.

Video is huge right now and live videos on Facebook, Twitter, Periscope and Instagram are where viewers’ attention is. When you go live, answering questions helps to increase the engagement and build your community, but it can also give you great insight into what your audience wants more of.

Are you getting a specific question on your live videos all the time? Or maybe you have a Facebook group and this question comes up almost daily. Chances are, if you created content around this, it would be well-received.

Kim Garst did this live Facebook video based on a question she received in her Facebook group.

Not only did Kim give a shoutout to one of her valued members, but she answered a question, gave great value, and she didn’t even have to think up this content, it was asked by her community.

Kim Garst uses audience questions to create amazing live videos that have a very high level of engagement.

You could also gather a few FAQ’s and do one monster video or blog post about them, or ask those people asking the question if they would create videos that you could use within your own social media content.

Have you ever really looked at your website analytics?

Taking a look at your own content and what’s already working can immediately give you some great insight into what’s working well and what your audience wants more of.

When you go to your Google Analytics account, pay close attention to the behaviour of your readers and what blog posts or pages they are not only visiting most but spending the most time on.

Chances are you have some blog posts that are getting huge amounts of traffic, or at least more significant than other posts. You can take those posts and turn into a great lead magnet to offer to get more email subscribers, you could write an update to those posts, or you could take pieces of that content and turn into other content like social media posts, Live videos, Instagram Stories, podcast episodes or YouTube videos.

People love giving their input, so simply asking your audience a question can give you amazing product feedback and give you content to share on social media.

Some creative ways to ask for feedback:

Questions- using graphics, videos, animated graphics, GIF’s

Creating a commun...

Twitter is one of the most asked about platforms when I speak to businesses about social media. I often hear “Should I use Twitter for my business?” “What is a Tweet?”

To be honest, when I started on Twitter 8 years ago I had no idea what to do. And I really didn’t spend any time learning about it, so it didn’t work for me because I didn’t use it properly.

More recently, within the past couple years, I actually started focusing on social media and getting interested in actually using platforms properly. Once I started sharing information and interacting with people on Twitter I saw the huge potential for it and thought there was something about Twitter that could be great for business and building an audience.

Read more here http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/use-twitter-business/

Have you ever wondered how some businesses manage to have consistent content on all of their social media platforms? Chances are they use a social media management tool (or a combination of a few), which is basically a scheduler for your social media posts (though they are much more than just a scheduler).

How do you find the best social media scheduler for your business? In this post, I share my own experience with several, and share an informative infographic that rates the top 5 best social media management tools available; Agora Pulse, Sprout Social, Buffer, Sendible and Hootsuite.

Why should I schedule social media posts?

Scheduling your social media posts does a couple things:

• provides consistent content all week/month

You still want to monitor throughout the week to make sure you are answering questions and interacting with your followers, but you know that your accounts are being updated daily (or however often you decide works best for your business).

read more here http://www.socialmediamarketingtipscanada.com/best-social-media-management-tool-business/

On this episode, I am joined by the very successful Elaine Heney of Merch Entrepreneur. Elaine discusses her success with building (several) businesses online, creating mobile apps, selling t-shirt designs, and how to live a life you love.

Elaine has published over 300 mobile apps across Amazon, Apple & Google, and enjoyed over 20 million app downloads and over 50 #1s worldwide.

She grew her Merch by Amazon business to 6 figures, selling over $128,295 with profit of $53,000 in her first 10 months . Elaine is the CEO of Merch Entrepreneur and host of the Merch Entrepreneur podcast.

Over the last 3 years, Elaine is also triple #1 best selling author, international keynote speaker, movie producer and Amazon FBA and Merch consultant. She has been featured in the Huffington Post, BBC, CNN, Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.

Check Elaine out online on her Merch Entrepreneur podcast at