Why People Follow Brands on Social Media

Amidst the low quality selfies, hilarious pet videos, and mouth-watering cooking tutorials, social media users in recent years have found a new kind of post on their feeds. This post, if done right, simultaneously advertises and entertains, capturing the user’s brand loyalty as well as their spending dollars. Brands, realizing the opportunities that come with social media, have pounced on the chance to put their products or services directly in their customers’ news feeds. With 78% of consumers relying on companies’ social media posts to help them make purchasing decisions, according to a study done by Forbes, it’s not all that surprising that people would choose to mix their social sharing and shopping research on the same platform. But what compels a user to follow a brand in the first place?

Why do people follow brands? Incentives

As much as we’d like to think that consumers are following our page for a good laugh or the informational content we spend hours producing, it turns out there is a little more to it. Before they can become a loyal and engaged user, there has to be good reason for them to click the “follow” button. A whopping 56% of social media users surveyed by MarketingSherpa said they originally followed brands to see promotions or coupons regularly. In a similar vein, 44% said they followed to enter a contest, get a discount, or win a gift card. Evidently, many are most interested in what companies have to offer them.

Incentives really serve two purposes. First, they attract new users to follow your account, buy your products, or (ideally) both. Second, they keep loyal customers coming back again and again – an equally important task. Discounts or promotions serve as reminders to consumers, positioning your brand at the top of their minds.

Why do people follow brands? Content

According to the same Marketing Sherpa survey, less than half of all consumers (38%) follow a brand for their informational content. Those how-to posts, reviews, and tip sheets you slave over? Apparently they’re not as alluring as the twenty-percent-off coupon that takes you a few minutes to throw together. Even fewer (31%) follow for entertaining content such as funny videos, memes, or bits of pop culture. But don’t let this discourage you, as informational or entertaining content serves its own purpose in attracting and keeping the right customer. As we discussed in our 80/20 Rule of Content Marketing post, all of your social media efforts are in vain if you are not aware of and catering to your target market. While a discount will get you a new follower, your content is ultimately what will determine whether or not they stick around after the promotion is over.

Good content is what turns your brand’s account from a bulletin board of coupons to a social page where users can stay engaged.

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In the delicious and complicated soup that is social media marketing, it’s important to remember that each ingredient gives your social platform a different flavor. Pushing out too many incentives can make your brand seem impersonal, but too much informational or entertaining content might allow customers to forget that you have something to sell them. Striking a balance between the two gives you the best chance of accomplishing the dual goal of attracting a large following and keeping them coming back for more.

What Is Twitter (And How Can It Help Your Business)?

What makes Twitter different than other social media platforms?

What Is Twitter?

Maybe you’ve heard it before. There are some people who will say, “What is Twitter?” “I don’t ‘get’ Twitter,” and “how can Twitter help my business?” The implication is that they ‘get’ other social media, but not Twitter. This makes as good a place to start as any, if we are to examine Twitter as a social medium where businesses could and should have a presence. Twitter.com is a social media platform like no other, and grasping its differences is the first step to understanding how a business can get the most from it.

Facebook vs. Twitter

So, why do some not understand Twitter?

Probably the biggest reason is that they bring the wrong expectations to it. Other social media platforms have more straightforwardly obvious reasons for existence. Facebook, on the web, is ubiquitous. And as such it is generally the standard-setter, where social media is concerned. It is quite different from Twitter. Facebook is about personal connections and keeping up with one’s friends, family, and such. Where business pages on Facebook are concerned, the functionality is rather similar to a website, and everyone on the web knows what a website does. A Facebook business page holds the business’s vital information, and even has pages, as a website does, for drilling down into greater detail. Further, many companies even have a Facebook store. Web commerce is done there, just as it can be done on a website.

Pinterest and Instagram vs. Twitter

Other social media are likewise rather obvious in their function. Pinterest is a sort of scrapbooking site. Pinterest does much more, of course, but we can all see the usefulness of Pinterest at a glance. Instagram is about sharing cell phone photos — that, too, is plain, and also useful.

What Is Twitter? Twitter is essentially a real time chat room.

Twitter, on the other hand, is not equipped to provide these services — not as straightforwardly, anyway. Twitter is essentially a chat room. And like a chat room, Twitter is more “real time” and immediate than other social media. Twitter is more about breaking news than Facebook is. More than Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, and Google Plus are, as well.

Twitter is also about conversations. Rapid-fire communications. It is very news- and trend-driven. Twitter is a platform that people turn to when news is breaking and they want to see what the reactions to it are, in real time.

Twitter’s Noisy Rep

It’s often said that Twitter is “noisy,” and by “noisy” someone means that it can be a firehose of content. Nothing is thinned out or excluded. Every tweet goes into a feed, and every follower of that tweep (individuals with accounts on Twitter are called “tweeps”) receives that message. That has pluses and minuses. The good part, obviously, is that Twitter does not have the constriction of reach that we must contend with on Facebook and other channels. The bad part is, of course, the chaos and noise, and that fact that messages can be missed by followers in the torrent of content.

What Is Twitter? Twitter does not restrict content like Facebook does.

There are ways to reduce that chaos and noise. We have more to say more about that in the future, but for now, we are still analyzing Twitter’s differences.

Facebook vs. Twitter (once more)

We found this question posed on Quora: “If a business could choose only one, which network should they choose (Facebook or Twitter)?” A representative of Zoho.com offered this answer:

“It depends on these considerations: (1) On which network does most of your target audience hang out? (2.) What is the primary objective for your social media presence? If you want to create and share content and get more reach for it, then Twitter is definitely the better network since its format lets content get shared/spread more easily. (Emphasis ours.) If you want to showcase your products online and enable people to place orders from your page when they see them, then Facebook is the network to choose because the format makes it easy for your audience to view your products for a longer period of time. (3) How much time can you invest? While both networks will require you to put in time and effort, Twitter is more real-time in nature than Facebook. So if you’re going to actively engage your audience on either network, trying to do it on Twitter could take more time (although it may be worth the extra time, in most cases).”

Perfect for Mobile

Twitter is well suited for mobile users. Its 140-character limit for messaging makes it easy to operate in one’s palm, on the fly.

What Is Twitter? Twitter, and its 140-character limit. is well-suited for mobile.

Twitter is efficient. Because it is so “noisy,” it is also very forgiving — and that forgiveness makes it the perfect platform for repeating and re-using one’s content. Twitter followings are very tolerant of message-repeating. That’s largely because Twitter’s firehose feed means that most tweets don’t get seen by most followers on the first pass, anyway. So transmitting a tweet hours later, or days later, is commonplace on the medium and the Twitterverse is generally fine with it. That means you can get extra mileage out of your content creation. If you’re using Twitter for link-building, that means you’ll get more links built with less time and money.

Growth Hacking and Twitter

Twitter is also a productive place for growth hacking, and given that many companies like to use Twitter to build followings and to move those followings over to Facebook or LinkedIn or other more “aggressive” sites, growth hacking on Twitter can be a very worthwhile proposition.

What Is Twitter? Twitter make building personal connections easy and breezy.

As author and digital marketing authority Gary Vaynerchuk said in his book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, “Twitter is a marketer’s dream come true because it allows you to initiate a relationship with your customer.” That’s a good way of thinking about Twitter. It’s an easier, breezier environment for making personal connections, because of that “chat room” feeling. And savvy marketers will then want to cultivate connections by coaxing them over to other social media or to the company’s website.

Twitter Versatility

Moreover, Twitter is a social platform uniquely positioned for customer service, direct influencer-outreach, content distribution, and social listening. For insights on all four, see this source.

What Is Twitter? Twitter can help with customer service, reaching influencers, content distribution, and social listening.

Now that we’ve covered the main aspects of the “Twitter Difference,” we can hit some high points of how to make the most of your business’s Twitter presence. For that, stay tuned for our next deep-dive into Twitter. And be sure to follow us on Twitter for timely tips and links to more in-depth content, not just on Twitter practices but on web marketing and social media—in fact, on all digital marketing efforts in general. Happy tweeting!

For more on Twitter for business, see our article on Twitter Do’s and Don’ts.

 

Why SEO And Content Marketing Are Much The Same Thing

SEO and Content Marketing Pie

Nearly three decades into the game, SEO is now practically synonymous with content marketing.

The trick of ranking atop Google’s results pages has been reduced to a few simple truths: size, content, and targeting. Search engines will no longer bend to our wills; we must bend over backwards for search engine users.

In the early days of the Internet, search engine optimization (SEO) resembled the Wild West. Outlaws resorted to all manner of nefarious tactics to improve their search ranking and visibility. Such tactics included keyword stuffing, bait-and-switch, and other “black hat” methods that would be considered spam today. These practices have been rooted out in the name of reader service. They simply don’t work anymore—the loopholes have been closed. The logic behind Google and other engines closing these loopholes is simple: provide a better user experience.

Remember: Google, and the concept of SEO itself, does not revolve around who ranks at the top. It’s all about granting ease of access to the content that best serves readers. It’s an end-user product rather than a marketing platform, and thinking in these terms is helpful when evaluating the content we publish.

Internet users scouring various search engines for answers know what they’re looking for. Sometimes it takes a few searches, but they know it when they see it. Users don’t want pages that use metadata to misrepresent what the content is actually about, and they definitely do not want spam. The better results a search engine like Google can provide its users, the more likely they are to use Google the next time. Rendering dishonest SEO practices obsolete is simply a part of the natural evolution of a search engine. “Better search results” precludes weaker or misrepresented web content.

The “outlaws of Internets past” held that SEO was all just a game. One could simply work the system in place at the time and reap huge rewards. The game has changed. With Google effectively acting as a world power now, there is no more latitude for playing around. Getting to the top of the first page for high-competition keywords is not a matter of paying your way to the top (that’s what Google AdWords is for), nor is it something that can be attained through savvy trickery. The game is now entirely above the table, rather than below it. The only way to sneak an ace up your sleeve is to be a huge brand or content farm.

And for the rest of us with average-sized websites and strictly regional brand awareness? We can’t all be Internet giants, but we can become elite at integrating our marketing communications and expertly targeting our specific niches.

The SEO Pie

It helps to think of your SEO efforts as working in concert with the rest of your digital marketing efforts. While trickery is not a valid SEO method anymore, on-page optimization is only one slice of your SEO Pie. On-page is still important, but without an overarching strategy encompassing your web content, social media, advertising, etc., you are only working with a small portion of the pie and should adjust your expectations accordingly.

The SEO Pie - Jemully Media

As marketers, strategy and goal-setting are so vital to what we do. Remember, goal-setting is not as simple as “sales.” Marketing campaigns can raise brand awareness, educate the public, entertain, and lead to many different calls-to-action. Without a specific set of goals, it’s easy to fall into the trap of repeating yourself over and over. Instead, try to design your efforts strategically and with specific goals in mind. The difference is that goals represent a finish line, but selling is never finished. While “sales” and “success” can often look like the same thing, it is important to delineate the two.

It’s difficult to have major SEO success without orchestrating all of your digital marketing efforts around it. First things first; you need an overarching digital strategy. Next, you can’t be worried about SEO unless you have a website, preferably one meeting modern criteria such as mobile-friendliness. Tailoring your web content to your audience using appropriate landing pages and a company blog comes next. Don’t forget about links! Building a strong portfolio of inbound links through social media and email marketing are oft-forgotten ingredients of SEO.

Do you use Google AdWords or Facebook Ads? They may not be traditional forms of SEO, but they regularly deliver traffic to your site’s landing pages. Landing pages work best when they are built and targeted with skill and intent. The better your most important landing pages are, the better your SEO will be.

SEO And Content Marketing

Speaking of landing pages, they are typically your interior pages, containing your meatiest content. Knowing your business’s most valuable long-tail keywords (the three-or-four-plus-word queries that tend to bring people to your landing pages) is emerging as the best way to own your niche, and become a champion targeter. A sound SEO strategy should include building at least one well-written and optimized page tailored toward every long-tail phrase that is important to your business. If you don’t know what those long-tail keywords and phrases are, then spend a some time getting to know your web visitors. Get to know your niche!

In today’s SEO landscape, questions demand not just answers but relevant answers. This means there is now a great deal of overlap between relevance, content marketing, and SEO.

How many pieces of your SEO pie are you using? We want to know!