Increasing Sales Leads by Boosting Twitter User Engagement

Twitter is an effective platform for entrepreneurs that want to reach out and increase their online presence. But, these efforts don’t provide a lot of help if you can’t engage your followers.

Twitter user engagement directly impacts your ability to gain sales leads through this social media platform. Engagement refers to the number of followers, retweets, and messages you receive through your Twitter profile.

If you want to boost engagement, then take a moment to review these simple tips.

Shorten Your URL Links

Every entrepreneur should use a web-based program to shorten their URL links. Studies show that shorter URLs receive more clicks.

The programs that generate these shorter URLs also typically provide a method for tracking these links. You can see how many people followed the shortened URL.

Use Images in Your Tweets

Tweets that contain images receive more clicks and more retweets. If possible, all your tweets should contain an image.

If you’re sharing a link to a landing page or a web page that you own, you should set up Twitter cards. This allows Twitter to pull the featured image from your page and place it in the tweet.

You can also upload photos for each tweet. It’s time-consuming, but it can help you get more retweets, clicks, and new followers.

Ask People to Retweet Your Tweets

Sometimes you just need to ask people to do exactly what you want them to do. Ask people to retweet your tweets.

Including “RT” in your tweet can help you gain 10 times as many retweets. On average, including the word “retweet” in your tweet will result in 23 times as many re-tweets.

This only takes up a few characters of the space that you have available. Give it a try. Add “RT” to the end of all tweets moving forward.

Include Actionable Words in Your Tweet

Along with asking people to retweet your tweets, you should include actionable words. You may not have enough space to include a full call to action, but you can use actionable words to increase engagement. Examples of actionable words include:

• Download
• Free trial
• Subscribe
• Learn more
• Read now
• Gain access

 Engage Your Twitter Followers

You should also drive engagement by being more engaging. You can include questions in your tweets, to encourage people to respond. This drive engagement and could result in more followers.

If you haven’t already, you should set Twitter to send email notifications when you receive a new message and when your Twitter tag is mentioned in another tweet.

You should respond to questions and comments as soon as possible. Even if the comment is unrelated to the products or services that you sell, you need to be active on social media. Respond when people talk to you.

Tweet Late at Night

The final tip for increasing user engagement on Twitter is to tweet late at night. These late-night tweets obtain about 10 times as many retweets as similar tweets sent during the day.

If you go to bed early, you can use a social media management platform to automate the release of your tweets and social media posts.

In the end, using Twitter to increase your online exposure depends more on quality than quantity. The number of followers that you have is less important than how engaged your followers are.

Focus on engagement by responding to tweets, asking questions, and using these other tips. Increasing your Twitter user engagement will help you boost the number of followers that you’ve got, along with helping to increase traffic from Twitter to your website.

Gain even more internet marketing tips and access to a system for generating conversion-ready prospects, by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

How to Grow Your YouTube Following

The use of video marketing is becoming increasingly popular for entrepreneurs. The reason is simple. More people are using mobile devices and the videos are easier to view on these devices than reading a lengthy blog post.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of competition on YouTube. Getting noticed isn’t always easy. But, with a few simple tips, you can begin increasing the number of followers that you’ve got on YouTube.
With more followers, your videos are more likely to get noticed. Here are several steps that you can take right now to begin growing your YouTube following.
Increase the Value of Your Videos
The first step is to increase the value of your videos. People won’t share videos that don’t provide any real value. You can’t just create a video introducing your business and hope to get thousands of views.
Each video needs to have a specific focus. It’s much like writing a quality blog post. In fact, you can recycle your most popular blog content into videos.
Whenever you write a script for a video, always ask yourself if you’d share this video with others. The video needs to offer some benefit to the viewer. You can provide instructions, demonstrations, or tips related to a specific topic.
Remain Consistent with Your Release Schedule
YouTube offers video recommendations based on what you’ve already watched. If you remain consistent with your release schedule, you’re more likely to gain new subscribers.
If a viewer watches one of your videos without following, YouTube may recommend another your new videos as they’re released. This helps bring viewers back to your channel.
Whether you release one or four new videos each month, you should stick to a schedule. Decide which day of the week you’ll release your videos. Subscribers will know when to check back and your viewer retention rates will increase.
Ask People to Subscribe to Your Channel
Your videos should serve a specific purpose. As with your blog articles, the end of the video should include a call to action. You could tell viewers to follow a link or you can use this call to action to remind viewers to subscribe.
YouTube also provides the option to include an image or graphic to act as a clickable button overlay directly on top of your video. With this clickable button, you can include a link to subscribe to your YouTube channel.
Include a YouTube Widget on Your Website
You should also add a widget or link on your website that connects with your YouTube channel. Increase exposure to your channel by adding these features to your blog or business site.
If you use WordPress, you can find numerous widgets and plugins that allow you to add YouTube videos to your site. You could also add a YouTube subscribe button on your site.
Become a Featured YouTube Channel
You have the option to add “Featured Channels” to your YouTube channel. These are channels that you follow and recommend your followers to follow.
By getting these other channels to recommend you to their followers, you can boost exposure. There are two ways to go about this.
You can either directly ask a channel to add you or you can start following them. There is no guarantee that the other channel will follow you, but it’s still worth the effort.
Interact with People That Comment on Your Videos
You shouldn’t ignore the comments on your videos. Actively respond to these comments. People may leave a comment without following. After responding, they might rethink their decision and start following your channel.
Increasing your YouTube following is one method for improving your online presence. If you’d like to gain access to more internet marketing tips, and a way to generate new sales leads, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

How to Grow a Targeted Follower Base on Instagram

Instagram is becoming increasingly popular. It’s a useful social media site for any entrepreneur that wants to remain updated with the latest marketing channels.
As with most social media platforms, the more followers that you’ve got the more effective your social media marketing will be. So, to begin increasing your Instagram followers, you need to focus on a target audience.
Here’s a set of simple tips to begin growing a targeted follower base on Instagram.
Start Liking Posts Related to Your Niche
The first way to begin increasing your follower base on Instagram is to start liking posts. Like posts that are related to your niche industry.
For example, if you sell products for internet marketing, you’d want to like posts related to internet marketing.
Liking other posts is a good way to gain attention, especially from industry leaders or people with more followers than you.
Instead of simply following an industry leader, you should go through and like 5 to 10 of their posts. Make sure that you leave a comment on at least one of these posts.
Respond Promptly and Leave Authentic Comments
Commenting is a good way to gain followers, retain followers, and increase engagement. You should respond to comments as soon as possible. You can set up email notifications so that you never miss out on these comments.
Also, don’t be afraid to comment on other people’s posts. As mentioned, this can be effective when you start liking other posts.
While these comments are useful, they need to be authentic. Don’t leave a generic comment as a response.
For example, if someone leaves you a compliment, don’t respond with, “thanks!”
Instead, you should come up with a real response. It only takes a few minutes, but can have a major effect on follower engagement and your overall online reputation.
Create Your Own Hashtags and Get People to Use Them
You can start building your own community on Instagram by creating your own hashtags. Though, you also need to get people to start using them.
For starters, you can create a hashtag related to your targeted audience or niche industry. Combining abbreviations and words is a good way to create original hashtags.
You can also search for hashtags. When you create an original hashtag, perform a search to ensure that it’s not already in use.
Find Out What Your Audience Wants
If you know what your target audience wants, it’s easier to create Instagram posts that they’ll enjoy. You can start by looking at who they follow.
Look for Instagram accounts for other businesses in your industry that are followed by your target audience. See what types of posts these people put out. Also, see what types of posts your audience tend to share and like.
Continue to Release New Posts Each Day
If you want to target a specific audience, you need to remain consistent with your posts. Continue to release new posts each day.
You should also pay attention to the time of the day that you receive the most engagement from your followers. You might find that your target audience is more active during a specific time of the day. Use this to your advantage and schedule your posts to be released at this time each day.
Use High-Quality Photos and Videos
Don’t forget to use high-quality photos and videos. If the photos that you use appear to be professionally-taken photos, you’ll be able to gain more followers.
People perceive the value and quality of your products or services based on what you put out there. If you use grainy photographs, people will assume that you don’t have a quality business, as you can’t afford quality photos.
Start making better use of your Instagram account by focusing on your target audience. If you’d like even more internet marketing tips and a system for getting conversion-ready prospects, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

Creating an Effective Social Media Posting Schedule

The frequency of your social media posts can directly impact the number of followers that you get and keep.

If you post too infrequently or frequently, you’ll lose followers. You’ll also have trouble getting people to take notice of your social media accounts. For this reason, you need to come up with a schedule.

A social media posting schedule takes into consideration the following factors:

• The best time of the day to post
• The best day of the week
• The topics you should post about
• The percentage of promotional content

Determine the Best Time of the Day and Best Day of the Week

The best time of the day to post will vary, depending on the social media platform that you use. Also, your target audience may have different internet preferences.

Don’t forget to take the time difference into consideration. 80% of the US population are in the Eastern or Central time zones. If you’re in California and want to target the largest audience, you’ll want to plan your posts based on EST time.

Engagement tends to peak at the following times during the weekdays:

• 9 AM EST – overall engagement
• 1 PM EST – most shares
• 3 PM EST – most clicks

Next, consider the best day of the week to post. Monday through Wednesday, people are less active on social media. The majority of the population is too busy getting into the work week.

By Thursday, people are looking forward to the weekend and are more likely to spend time browsing on social media.

User engagement peaks on the weekends. This goes against previous studies that showed higher engagement during the weekdays. But, trends change over time.

The bottom line is that you should post between Thursday and Sunday to increase engagement. You should also plan at least one post for 9 AM, and subsequent posts around 1 and 3 PM.

Find Topics That Your Target Audience Will Enjoy

Along with considering the time of the day and the days of the week to post, you need to consider the topics of your posts. Find topics that your target audience will enjoy.

The first place to start is with the platform that you’re using. Facebook makes it easy to share just about anything, but Instagram and Pinterest are more image-centric. This means that content with a compelling image included in the post will be more effective on these platforms.

The topics should also be related to your niche and provide real value to your readers. This could include:

• News
• Tips and tutorials
• Advice and suggestions

Essentially, it needs to contain beneficial information.

You can explore the most popular topics by performing searches through each social media platform. Each of these networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, includes a search box.

Type a keyword into the search box and look at the top results. View the profiles of the original posters of the top posts. Look for posters that tend to share content related to your niche and see what topics receive the most likes, shares, and retweets.

Balance Your Promotional Content

Along with your schedule and topics, you need to balance the use of promotional content. It’s a perfectly acceptable business practice to use self-promotional posts on social media. But, if you use too many promotional posts, you’ll lose followers.

20% appears to be the median where engagement increases or decreases based on the frequency of promotional posts. This means you should plan one promotional post out of every five posts.

If you post once per day, this is one promotional post per week. If you post several times per day, you’ll share a promotional post every other day.

Start using a social media posting schedule to increase the effectiveness of your social media marketing efforts. Along with these suggestions, you can get more internet marketing tips and a system for generating more internet prospects by clicking here to learn about my done-for-you system.

6 Tips to Help You Increase Your Instagram Followers

Instagram is currently the fastest growing social media site. This provides a great opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to grow their brand. With Instagram, you get access to over 600 million active monthly users.

Not only does Instagram have the numbers to help you expand your brand, Instagram followers are also more likely to engage. This means you’ll have better chances of getting followers to follow your links. But, first, you need to gain these followers.

Use these 6 tips to start increasing the number of followers you have on Instagram.

Research Your Competition and Take Notes

The first step is to begin researching your competition. You should see what they’re doing to attract followers. Look at the type of content that they post, which posts receive the most likes and shares, and how frequently they post.

By researching your competition, you gain valuable insight into the needs and wants of your target audience. You eliminate the need to perform detailed consumer research.

Make notes on what you find. Write down the frequency of their posts and other details. Use this as a base for your posting strategy.

Announce Your New Instagram Account

You can also take advantage of your existing follower base on other social media accounts. This can give you a quick boost of new followers to your Instagram account.

Post an announcement on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites encouraging your followers to check out your Instagram page.

Create an Instagram Posting Schedule

The next step is to create a posting schedule. While it’s easy to say that you’ll post a few times per week, it’s hard to stick this routine without setting concrete goals and plans.

Generally, you’ll want to post at least once per day. You don’t want to bombard your followers with posts. But, you also don’t want them to forget about you.

Along with the frequency of your posts, you’ll want to consider the timing of your posts. The time of the day can directly impact post engagement. The best time of the day to post depends on your followers.

Pay attention to what time of the day users engage with your posts. Typically, the afternoon is the best time, as people are out of work.

Take High-Quality Photos for Your Posts

Instagram is highly visual. Each post will contain a photo or a video. Make sure that you use high-quality photos. You should consider investing in a decent camera unless your smartphone has a camera capable of taking quality shots.

If your images appear grainy or out of focus, your Instagram feed won’t be as appealing to potential followers.

Include a Clear Message in Every Post

Along with a photo or video, you’ll need to include a message. This message should be short, concise, and clear. Make sure that people understand the point of your post, especially when promoting your products or services.

Remember to Use Hashtags in Your Posts

After your message, you should add several hashtags. Don’t try to include the hashtags in your message. It makes your message difficult to read.

At the bottom of your message, include several relevant hashtags. This helps people discover your posts when using the Instagram search feature.

Combine these tips to get the most out of your Instagram account. In addition to these suggestions, the use of sponsored posts can help you attract more followers.

Instagram is growing quickly. Get involved while interest is still high. If you’d like to gain even more effective marketing tips and suggestions, along with a way to generate conversion-ready internet marketing prospects, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.

How to Properly Use Hashtags for Social Media Marketing

Hashtags are useful for helping people discover your social media posts. Twitter was one of the first social networking sites to make good use of hashtags. But, they’re now an important part of all social networking sites, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

While hashtags are useful, they can also have a negative impact on your marketing efforts. You need to be careful with how you use hashtags in your posts. So, with that in mind, you should learn how to properly use hashtags for social media marketing.

The Basics of Hashtags for Social Media

First, let’s make sure you understand what a hashtag is and isn’t. You can think of hashtags as keywords. That’s a hashtag in a nutshell. It’s a keyword or keyword phrase without any spaces and it includes the pound sign at the beginning of the phrase.

The reason that you should use hashtags is that they’re used by social media search engines. When a user performs a search, the site finds relevant posts based on hashtags. And, hashtags are now used by almost every major social media site, including:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Google Plus
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Flickr

So, you know the basics. Next, find out how to properly include hashtags in your posts.

The Correct Way to Use Hashtags

If you can remember what hashtags are used for, it should be easy to use them properly. Here’s a quick look at the correct use of hashtags:

• Use up to 3 hashtags per post
• Make sure they’re relevant to your post
• Use local terms to increase local marketing

Generally, you’ll only use 2 or 3 hashtags per post. Adding too many hashtags shows that your posts don’t have a clear focus. Instagram is an exception to this rule. For example, Instagram posts with the highest engagement typically have 4 or 5 hashtags.

When choosing hashtags, make sure that they’re relevant to your post. Don’t include a hashtag simply because you think it’ll attract more users. You can take a look at trending hashtags to find examples, but don’t add them to your post unless they actually make sense in your post.

You can also use local terms to help increase local marketing. For example, when posting about an event, you can include the name of the city where the event will take place. The same applies to posts about local businesses.

The Incorrect Way to Use Hashtags

It’ll also help to learn the incorrect way to use hashtags. These are methods that you should avoid:

• Using too many hashtags
• Including hashtags in your message
• Using the same hashtags every time

Remember, don’t use too many hashtags. Unless you’re using Instagram, you should only use up to 3 hashtags. Otherwise, they’re no longer helpful.

Also, don’t include hashtags in your message. Don’t use them to replace words. This makes it hard to read your message. For example, you wouldn’t say, “check out our latest #SEO #service.” Place them at the end of the message.

The final tip is to avoid using the same hashtags every time. Mix it up. Using the same hashtags will only help you continue to attract the same people. Do you use the same keywords on every single page of your website? No. So, use a variety of relevant hashtags to appeal to more people.

As long as you follow these tips, hashtags should help you gain more followers and improve your social media marketing. In addition to these tips, if you’d like even more marketing suggestions, as well as a way to generate conversion-ready marketing prospects each month, then click here to learn about my done-for-you system.