15 Fantastic Books on Social Media Marketing

Do you want to learn more about social media marketing? You’re not alone.

By now it’s clear that whether you’re promoting a business, a product, or yourself, social media is essential in determining your success or failure. It’s more important than ever to master the essentials of how to attract and retain an audience for your brand. New features are constantly being added to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, all of which increase your daily responsibilities as a marketer. Best practices are constantly evolving, and staying up to date with the latest methods can feel overwhelming sometimes.

There are many books out there that purport to teach you everything you need to know about social media marketing. Here are some of the best ones out there — in no particular order — to help you achieve your goals.

15 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Books

1. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype

Drawing from his experience helping more than 700 brands improve their marketing strategy, Jay Baer provides a groundbreaking plan for using information and helpfulness to transform the relationship between companies and customers.

                                                     

                                          

2. The New Rules of Marketing & PR

David Meerman Scott offers examples of success from organizations around the world. He examines newly-popular tools such as infographics and photo-sharing using Pinterest and Instagram, and delivers expanded information on social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

3. Audience: Marketing in the Age of Subscribers, Fans and Followers

Jeffrey Rohrs documents the missing piece in today’s content marketing revolution — proprietary audience development. Audiences are valuable business  assets, and it’s high time we treated them as such.

4. 500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More

Unlike most educational books, Andrew Macarthy‘s practical layout and concise instructions ensure that you’ll take away something valuable every time you read, whether it’s 5 minutes at your desk, half an hour on your commute, or all day on a weekend.

5. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us

Seth Godin will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you think.

6. The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users

With more than 100 practical tips, tricks, and insights, Guy Kawasaki andPeg Fitzpatrick present a bottom-up strategy for creating a focused, thorough, and compelling presence on the most popular social media platforms — from building a foundation to execution.

7. Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

In this step-by-step guide, Michael Hyatt takes readers behind the scenes into the new world of social media success, and shows you what creative people are doing differently to win customers in today’s crowded marketplace.

8. Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks)

David Kerpen gives you the information and tools you need to truly engage your customers and help them spread your message far and wide. He reveals all the secrets to popularizing a brand by being authentic, engaging, and transparent — and teaches you the same methods he used to redefine brands such as 1-800-FLOWERS.com, Neutrogena, Verizon FiOS, and dozens more.

9. Welcome to the Funnel: Proven Tactics to Turn Your Social Media and Content Marketing up to 11

Raising brand awareness, building trust, establishing credibility, and ultimately driving revenue — that’s what the top of the funnel is all about. Jason Miller offers a no-frills approach to practical tactics, strategies, and lessons, all with a touch or rock n roll flare.

10. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

How do you create the stories, videos, and blog posts that cultivate fans, arouse passion for your products or services, and ignite your business?Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman equip you for online success with this resource on the art and science of developing content that people care about.

11. Social Media Explained: Untangling the World’s Most Misunderstood Business Trend

Too busy to spend hours trying to learn the fundamentals of social media marketing? Mark Schaefer explores the fundamental strategies and answers the biggest questions every business professional needs to answer before diving into a social media initiative.

12. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less

Joe Pulizzi explains how to draw prospects and customers in by creating information and content they actually want to engage with, instead of interrupting them with mediocre content (and sales messages) they don’t care about.

13. Global Content Marketing: How to Create Great Content, Reach More Customers, and Build a Worldwide Marketing Strategy that Works

Technology has virtually erased national borders, forever transforming the way we reach and engage customers, as well as the way we search for and consume content. Pam Didner takes you step-by-step through the process of creating and refining your strategies to meet this new reality.

14. Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing

Lee Odden provides you with the tools necessary to plan, implement, and scale an integrated content marketing strategy to boost your online visibility and relevance with prospects, customers and industry media.

15. Social Media Mastery: 75+ Tips to Help you Expand your Reach, Build your Platform, and Establish your Online Authority

Learn how to establish a social media strategy in line with your goals, organize it all with Evernote, and market your content based on your product, service, or credentials. Fire up your brand via social media, Kindle ebooks, or podcasts using this guide from Tara Ross.

12 Secret Facebook Features Every Marketer Should Use

1. Save articles on Facebook with “Save for Later”

The Facebook Save feature is a great tool that can help you curate relevant content that you can publish later on your Facebook page. You can save items like links, places, movies, TV, and music. Only you can see the items you save unless you choose to share them.

You can view the items you’ve saved at any time by going to your saved items in the “More” tab on mobile or by clicking the link on the left hand side of Facebook on the web.

Your saved items list is organized by category and you can swipe right on each item to share it with your friends or move it into your archive list.

To save something you see on Facebook:

• From your newsfeed: Click  and select Save

• From a Facebook Page: Click  and then select Save
• From an event: Click  Save
• Note: You can’t save photos or posts without links.

To view the things you’ve saved on Facebook:

• Go to Facebook.com/saved or click Saved in the left menu of your homepage after you’ve saved something
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• Click a saved category at the top or click a saved item to view it
• Get help for mobile apps and browsers

2. Leverage Facebook Interest Lists to stay organized

Interest lists are a way to organize and view the content you’re interested in on Facebook.You can create your own interest lists based on the things you care about, or follow other people’s lists.

Ideas for creating and segmenting interest lists:

• Create a Facebook list of top social media experts that features thought leaders’ Pages and public updates from the its members
• Create a Facebook list by industry, such as advertising, consumer goods, marketing
• Create a Facebook list by medium, e.g. traditional marketing vs. social media marketing

When you create or follow a list, you may also see some posts from that list in your main News Feed.

Your Facebook lists will also appear in the Interests section of your bookmarks. Simply click the list’s name to see all the recent posts and activity from the Pages and people featured in the list.

3. Monitor your competitors’ Facebook pages

Did you know that you can track your competitors’ pages with Facebook Insights? It’s an easy way to monitor their content.

If at least 100 people like your Facebook Page, you can create a list of Pages to watch:

• Click Insights at the top of your Page
• Scroll down to Pages to Watch and click Add Pages
• Search for a Page you want to watch or choose from suggested Pages and click Watch Page
• After choosing at least 5 Pages, click Done
• You can add up to 100 Pages to Watch, so don’t worry about running out of space.
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Remember that when you add a Facebook Page to watch, the people who manage the Page will receive a notification — but it won’t include your name or the name of your Page.

Once you’ve added Pages to watch, you can see insights about these Pages. To stop watching a Page:

• Click Insights at the top of your Page
• Scroll down to Pages to Watch
• Hover over the Page you want to remove and click x

 4. Download your Facebook history to analyze business analytics

You can download your entire Facebook history and use it to gain analytical insights. The downloadable data includes much of the same information available to you in your account and activity log, including your Timeline info, posts you have shared, messages, photos, etc. It also includes information that is not available simply by logging into your account, like the ads you have clicked on, data like the IP addresses that are logged when you log into or out of Facebook, and more.

• To download your information, go to your Settings and click Download a copy of your Facebook data.
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 5. Tag personal profiles to create more Facebook interaction

Here’s a simple hack to tag people on your Facebook page, which will drive more interaction:

• Go to the status update box
• Start typing your message and when you get to the part you want to make clickable (has to be a page or profile) add the @ symbol, just as you would normally do on your personal Facebook page
• A dropdown menu will appear with a list of the pages and profiles you like/are connected to
• Select the profile or page
• Finish your message and update
• Note: you can’t tag any fan that also isn’t a friend of your personal profile.

6. Pin Facebook posts to the top of your timeline to increase visibility

Pinning a post to the top of your Facebook Timeline makes the content stand out from the pack. You need to be an admin or editor to pin Page posts.

To pin a post to the top of your Facebook Page’s Timeline:

1. Go to the post on your Page’s Timeline
2. Hover over the top-right corner of the post and click 
3. Select Pin to Top

Your pinned post will move to the top of your Page’s Timeline and  will appear in the top-right corner of the post. Your pinned post will stay at the top of your Page’s Timeline for 7 days. After that, it will revert to the date it was published on your Page’s Timeline.

Keep in mind that you can only pin posts created by your Facebook Page. Posts that other people add to your Page’s Timeline can’t be pinned.

7. Find evangelists and weed out fakes with your Facebook fan list

Here’s how to easily track your Facebook fans:

• Go to your Facebook page settings
• Click on “Banned Users” on the left sidebar
• Once you’ve done this, click on the menu that says “Banned” to reveal the dropdown menu
• Click on “People Who Like This”
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8. Mark all Facebook notifications as “read” so you stop stressing out

Receiving constant Facebook notifications about unread notifications can drive you crazy.To stop this from happening:

• Go to your Facebook page settings
• Click on “Mark all notifications as read” in the top right corner

Easy, right?

9. Use Post Attribution settings to keep your identity intact

Ever post on your Facebook page and realize that you used the wrong identity? Use the default Post Attribution setting to solve the problem.

• Go to your page settings
• Click on “Post Attribution” in the left sidebar
• Select your preferred default identity

Now all of your future posts will keep your identity straight.

10. Save time by filtering your Facebook page posts by type

Trolling through a lot of Facebook page posts can be very time-consuming. Here’s how to filter Facebook post by type to save time and be more organized:

• Click on “Activity Log” in the left sidebar of your page settings
• Choose the appropriate post type to generate a specific list
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11. Manage your Facebook ad notifications and emails to keep your inbox clear

• Go to Facebook ads manager
• Click on “Settings” in the left sidebar
• Scroll down to the Ads Emails Notification section
• Select the notifications you’d like to receive

12. Track Facebook Ad Relevance

To ensure that your Facebook ads are delivered to the appropriate audience (thus improving your ROI), you should track your relevance score.

Here’s how to see if you have access:

• Go to Ads Manager
• Click on “Campaigns” in the left sidebar
• Click on your Campaign name and go into the ad set
• Look at the 5th column from the right — if it’s there, you can track away!

How to Double Twitter Traffic to Your Website in 30 days

Ever feel like you’re spending all your time on Twitter but most people are not reading your tweets?

Well…

The reality is that most people are not reading your tweets…!

But… that doesn’t mean that you can’t increase the number of people who do see them.

In this article, I’m going to show you how we increased traffic from Twitter to our website by 106% in less than 30 days.

Yes, we more than doubled our traffic from our Twitter account!

1. We analyzed our account

You may have seen our ultimate guide to Twitter analytics recently, where we shared how you can analyze your Twitter account.  If you did, you will remember this image!

Before you start, you need to analyze your account for the things that are relevant to you in the chart above.

How many people are your tweets reaching?  What demographics do your audience fit into?  How effective are the hashtags you are using?

What you don’t measure, you can’t improve!

It’s important to have a baseline of how things are so that you can measure the impact of any changes you make.

2. We got more followers

It makes sense that, if you get more relevant followers, you have a chance to get more traffic.

Relevant is the most important word.

If they are not relevant, they are a waste of time.  Having a high number of followers who have no interest in your industry or your brand will do you no favors at all!

I’ve been testing out Social Quant for the last couple of weeks, which identifies relevant people to follow.

These tools are not always great but this one is really find good people to follow.  You know it’s working when you are getting lots of opportunities to engage with new followers who then tweet you to thank you for the follow.

They are not passive Twitter users, they are happy to engage right from the start… which is encouraging when it comes to future engagement with your tweets.

3. We started on Blab… hang on a minute, what’s that?

Blab is like Google Hangouts, except it works…

You can have video conversations of up to four people at the same time, broadcasting live.

While that is happening, there is a stream of conversation happening from the people who are watching your blab.

Blab is very much connected to Twitter.  When someone is promoting the show, it’s shared out on Twitter.  When people are sharing information when the show is on, they usually share it on Twitter.

This increased activity on your Twitter account results in more engagement, more followers and more traffic.

4. We improved the content we shared

A couple of months ago, I looked at our Twitter accounts and wondered why so many tweets didn’t have images.

The tool we were using wasn’t automatically picking up the images.

Tweets with images get 150% more retweets

CLICK TO TWEET

Yes…

Tweets with images get more retweets.

D’oh…!

If you look at our account now, you’ll see there are images with 90% of the tweets.  We typically create images for our posts using Canva.  Here’s an example:

Tweets with images are more likely to stand out on a crowded timeline, they look more attractive, and they are eye catching.  Could you add more images to your tweets?

5. We shared more content

As we were still getting good engagement, we started scheduling more content.

Tweets disappear very quickly from users’ timelines, so the likelihood is that most people don’t see your content.

How many people are on Twitter for more than an hour a day?  Not many.  And even those who are don’t see every tweet that passes through their stream.

So… if you share content every hour, the same people don’t see your content.

You can usually tweet this frequently without worrying about overwhelming your followers.  It can be a really effective way of improving your visibility on the channel.

We don’t share all of our content but we are sharing more of other people’s – and our own – and this is getting us more traffic!

What’s next?

We can all be smarter about how we share our content.

If we repeat-share our content (which we advise doing), we should vary the message and image for each post.

For example…

It’s often better to pick out an interesting quote in an article than to share the article title (unless it’s controversial or particularly compelling).

And it’s better to share an image that captures attention… we’re going to start sharing some animated gifs to capture attention.

This way, you can share the same post in a number of different ways: with different text, or different images.  It is not repetitive, and keeps variety in your Twitter stream while promoting the same content