As I joined a new company this Fall, my background as a publisher is brought to focus with the heavy emphasis on content marketing and social media. In the first 4 months we have increased our inbound links from social media by over 500%! Here’s how we did it:
Content marketing is at the center of our strategy. Previously we created many different types of posts, but ultimately we had very little call to action items on them. With content, the number of folks engaging on social has gone up, and the number of people linking back to our site has grown exponentially.
For a small business, one without a large dedicated content development staff, we needed to cut some corners, but barely.
First, we focused some of our social team on developing content as opposed to just posting content. Next we automated the posting process. While I know of many social media folks that will tell you, you should customize your social content for the channel you are using, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Other marketing folks will also tell you that you shouldn’t just post content automatically…In a perfect world I agree, but when you are strapped on people or budget, this automated process works fantastic.
Workflow:
- Create content in WordPress (our CMS of choice).
- Schedule post(s) starting at 7am the following day, and subsequent posts every 2 hours, but not past 2pm.
- We connected Twitterfeed (or you can use another service like dlvr.it). These services are connected directly to our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook corporate accounts. They will check your WordPress rss feed every 1/2 hour and then automatically post to your social networks.
Our social media team still monitors our feeds and reposts interesting topics, posts, and responds to users. However, we have freed up time to focus more on creating content, rather than just posting it.
In the end, numbers matter. One of our measurable goals is increased inbound links from social media. In four short months, this workflow, and increased call-to-actions, have netted an increase of inbound links from social media exceeding 500%! Great data to share with the CEO.
