You need a promotion plan for your content and products and services. Social media is a big part of that plan. In this episode, we cover how to create a promotion plan for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and a couple of niche communities that people often don’t think about using to promote their content and services.

Give People a Reason to Interact by Building a Community

Not surprisingly, we are big fans of building a community before you start offering products and services. This builds trust and true customer loyalty.

• If you have a free community, start with something that drives your audience to download an item, and invite them into your community. Free downloads provide value to your community and offering a free community takes it to the next level.
• Once you capture an email address so can build your email list and communicate with people more directly and effectively.If your free community leads to a paid product, you need to have a more sophisticated promotion funnel. Keep providing value that eventually leads to an offer or sale.
• Many people create a community as a part of their paid product. This is a place to create more value for your customers.

How do you promote your community on social media platforms?

Once you build your community, you want to choose the platforms you will use to promote your community and build your tribe. We went over our favorite social platforms and how you can use each one.

Facebook

• Facebook Pages are still a great way to connect, and paid advertising makes them more effective. We recommend that you originate Livestream video on your business page, then share to groups and your personal profile to gain extra viewers.
• Facebook Groups are a great place to get your community to interact with you and each other.
• Your personal profile can be utilized to connect and bridge friends and personal connections.
• Paid ads are a good opportunity to promote your content on Facebook. TIP: Retarget ads to people who watch your live stream videos. This is a warm audience that costs a lot less per click than cold traffic.

Twitter

• Use Periscope to live stream to Twitter. Kami runs a live stream from both Facebook and Periscope, which streams to Twitter, for the Social Media Breakfast event every month.
• Schedule tweets to promote your offers and gifts to grow your email list and community.
• Invite people to connect with you and ask questions via a Direct Message on Twitter.

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn’s feed has become an active platform for posting articles, information and videos.
• Post on your personal feed and/or company page to promote what you’re doing for your community.
• The LinkedIn Groups feature has undergone some changes to make it more integrated in the feed. Depending on your audience, it might be a good choice for your community.
• New: Now you can use live video on LinkedIn

Instagram

• Stories can be created to direct people to take an action or join you for something. Stories ads in Instagram allow you to insert the “swipe up” feature without 10,000 followers.
• Direct messages are good for one-to-one.

Niche Communities

• Avajunto, which is run by Mac Patel in our community, is an interesting tool for building a mastermind community and promote your content and share with each other.
• Slack and Reddit both have a lot of large, active communities. 

How do you get people to join your community?

• Give them a sample. The Internet equivalent of a sample or a taste test is a free gift, lead magnet, challenge, webinar or something related to your product or service.
• Mention it often. Tell people you have a group and how it can help them. Talk about your community and to spread your message. At every opportunity, mention how your group can help people.
• Use opportunities like blog posts, emails, podcast episodes, events and in conversations to promote your group. Describe how people in your community are seeing results.

Tools, apps, and links mentioned:

• Strategies for Staying Connected Through Social Media with Tyler J. McCall – Ep 68
• Build a Facebook Messenger Bot with Mikael Yang from ManyChat – Ep 59
• Avajunto
• How to Share Calls to Action without Sounding Like a Parrot – Ep 76
• How to Build a Converting Community Using Content with Gini Dietrich – Ep 35
• Social Media Lab – Let’s See if Facebook Hashtags Get More Reach!
• Social Media Lab – 1-5 Hashtags on Twitter: Which Gets More Impressions?
• Social Media Lab – Using LinkedIn Hashtags in Posts- Does it Matter?
• Social Media Lab – 30 Hashtags on Instagram Posts: Yes or No?

How to reach Kami:

If you’d like to learn more about Kami Huyse, visit her website at www.zoeticamedia.com. You can contact her by email at kami@zoeticamedia.com or tweet to @kamichat.

How to reach Madalyn:

If you’d like to learn more about Madalyn Sklar, visit her website at www.madalynsklar.com. You can contact her by email at madalyn@madalynsklar.com or tweet to @MadalynSklar.

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