Snapchat for Business: How It Works, Why You Need It & How to Build a Following [Infographic]

Back when Snapchat was first released in 2011, a lot of people dismissed it as a passing fad. But with over 100 million daily active users, it's clear the app is here to stay -- and yet, many marketers are still struggling with the concept of actually using it for their businesses. (In fact, a lot of marketers are still struggling to take it seriously as a social media platform at all.)

But a huge part of Snapchat's appeal is the creativity it allows users to express, and the fact that the content disappears within ten seconds. That creativity and sense of urgency are things marketers can tap into on a low budget, and get a lot of reach.

So what exactly is Snapchat, how does it work, and how are brands using it for business? How can you integrate the app into your social media strategy? And how can you build a solid Snapchat following from scratch? Check out the infographic below from SurePayroll and Ghergich & Co. for the answers to these questions and more. (And read this blog post to learn more about using Snapchat for marketing.)

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Social Media Engagement Trends You Shouldn’t Miss [Infographic]

Many companies have clued-up the fact that being present and active on social media platforms is imperative if they are to succeed in their marketing efforts. Organizations have found it critical to use social tools to engage their customers, employees and other external stakeholders. Through social tools, they are able to listen, gather actionable intelligence and measure outcomes and progress.

So social media engagement is as important to organization as their products and services. As a matter of fact, it can be said that social media is the best thing that ever happened to online businesses. According to statistics, 88.2% of U.S companies use social media and the figure is expected to grow to 89% by 2017.

70% of internet users are active social media users

The rise of social technologies and mobile phones has given customers more power than ever. Now, customers are more informed, dynamic and alert to what is happening around them. 7 in 10 internet users are active social media users; hence, they can access information regarding various company offers, news and trends. Their ability to find information in a matter of seconds puts them in firm control of their own destiny. Consequently, this trend is forcing marketers to rethink the way they connect and engage with their customers. About 40% of internet users use social media apps. This means that marketers face the daunting task of providing real-time, tailor-made experiences that make customer experience a blissful event. Whether it be a mobile app that provides online customer care services or a push notification that promotes a sale, marketers must now appreciate the full impact of social mobile apps. This is a grand opportunity for organizations to engage with their customers like never before.

Facebook remains the most active social media platform, while the rest aren’t left behind

Facebook continues to be the most active social media site. According to pew Research findings, more than 71% of internet users are on Facebook. You can’t ignore Facebook as a major tool for social engagement because it is the ultimate beta business. Nearly 50% of Facebook users use it on a daily basis while 25% use it on weekly basis. YouTube (28%), Google + (25%), Twitter (27%) and Instagram (24%) are all social networks that record significant interactions by its users on a daily basis.

Because post engagement on Facebook is about 75% in the first 5 hours, it means that regular updates is important in order to maintain customer engagement. It is also important to note that Thursdays and Fridays record 18% more post engagements. 64% of marketers say increasing customer engagement is an essential thing in their social media marketing strategy. Therefore, regular updates with particular emphasis on Thursdays and Fridays is a sure way to increase your social media engagement.

Instagram has better brand engagement than any other social media platform

According to a recently released study by Forrester, for every one million brand followers on Facebook, there were only 700 interactions (sharing, liking and commenting) and 300 interactionsfor every 1 million followers in the case of twitter.

By all means, these are very dismal rates. However, Instagram presents an exception. For every1 million followers on Instagram, there were 42,000 brand engagement. This is about 58 and 120 times more brand engagement in Instagram than on Facebook and twitter respectively.

This tells us that Instagram is a more effective social tool for brand engagement than Facebook and twitter combined. If you have been overlooking Instagram thinking it isn’t valuable tool for branding, then you might have to think again. Ignore Instagram at your own peril.

Type of social content that result in more engagement

Perhaps another interesting fact about social media engagement is that some rules are quite different from what happens with website and blog content. In social media, engagement is at its peak where the amount of text is kept at its absolute minimum.

Facebook posts with less than 250 characters receive 60% more engagement. 87% of Facebook post engagement happens on posts with images while twits with images receive 150% more retweets. It is even better to post more than one images in Facebook to achieve 12.9 time more engagement. Another interesting take away is that tweeting more than 3 times a day will decrease your brand engagement by more than 300%. Tweeting with 3 or more hashtags will also hurt your engagement by 17%.

Final thoughts

Having said that, it is important to ensure that your social media profiles are complete and optimized to attract and engage your audience the way you want. Adding relevant keywords in your social media updates and profiles is often the first step towards social media engagement success.

Irrespective of the social media platform you are using, integrating visual media is important because it increases engagement. Text-laden and formulaic posts are boring and devoid of human touch. Once you understand the potential of visual social media, you will begin to see dramatic improvement in the way people engage with your brand.

Another critical point of consideration for marketers is not to view social media as simply a platform to amplify their products and services; instead, social media should be used to provide more value to their customers. It should be used to discover new customer trends, new technologies and better ways of relating with customers before the competitors do.

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How Can Marketers & Designers Work Better Together? [Infographic]

It's not uncommon to feel like marketers and designers speak different languages. You have marketers focusing on the timeline, designers focusing on the creation process, and neither of them understanding where the other is coming from.

For example, less than 30% of marketers say designers are anticipating problems and following a transparent process. But at the same time, 39% of designers say
it’s difficult to estimate the scope of projects in the first place.

What are the most common misunderstandings between marketers and designers?

What can each do to address these misunderstandings? To help break down that communication barrier, check out the infographic below from Visually.



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What’s the ROI of Digital Marketing? [Infographic]

Image courtesy of Occam’s Razor

As you see above, defining the ROI of digital marketing is a challenge.

Measuring it is easy, once you have the right definition.

What’s a Tweet worth?

People ask me all the time: What’s a social post worth?

My answer?

Likely NOTHING!

Yeah, I know. Lots of folks disagree with me, but, as noted in the infographic below, the answer is — it depends.

Does that mean digital marketing doesn’t work?

Absolutely NOT!

The value of digital marketing

First, the value of a Tweet or Like or Pin depends on the size of your network — the larger the network, the greater the value of a social post. A network of 16,000 Twitter followers requires only 6 Tweets to return a value equal to the average US car payment– $450.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Size is only one element relevant to the value of digital marketing. Engagement is a much bigger reflection of value. A highly engaged network shares much of what you post across social networks. All those Likes, RT, Re-Pins, etc add up to huge amplification of your message. Thus, a single Tweet, Post, Pin gets magnified to a much larger audience than the original network.

Owned versus earned media

In digital marketing, we refer to this as owned versus earned media. Owned media belongs to the brand and represents their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. Earned media represents the amplification you earn through motivating followers to share your posts.

Engagement comes from posting the “right” content — content your followers find valuable. Valuable content:

• Solves a problem
• Entertains
• Respects your followers

In addition, the right content is posted on a consistent basis when your target audience is likely online. Earned media is likely the most valuable media and much cheaper than paid media (online advertising).

Why is earned media so valuable?

Earned media has so much value because it has the appearance of objectivity. Think about it, we’ve all become so jaded by advertising we barely listen when brands tout their benefits. But, when friends tell us something, we believe them. A Tweet from a friend we believe.

When your followers share your content, they not only amplify your message, they de-commercialize it — make it more believable because it comes from friends rather than the brand. The value of earned media is so valuable, Facebook even use it to support sponsored posts by showing you which friends like the brand.

So, it’s not just the size of your network, it’s how engaged they are.

Influencers

Some brands pay influencers by offering money or free product (hence the offers made to influencers with high Klout scores). I personally think paying influencers is a bad practice as it calls their motivations for sharing content into question and, if used frequently, dilutes their value. I’d encourage brands to develop relationships with influencers rather than paying them.

But, putting the motivation issue aside, evaluating influencers needs more than just assessing the size of their network, and evaluating how well they do in terms of engagement.

Building engagement

If engagement is more valuable than the size of a social network, an important question is: How do you build engagement?

Valuable content

Again, the best trick to building engagement is producing valuable content on a consistent basis. Value comes in the eyes of your target market. Sometimes that’s creating content that solves a problem — like this. In other cases, content that’s interesting, unusual, funny, surprising, or emotionally charged drives engagement.

My advice to new clients is to try various types of content, then see what works best with your target audience by monitoring both reach and engagement for each post. Likely, some combination of entertaining and problem-solving content works best.

Be sure to avoid over promotion. A recent guest post argued for the 80/20 principle where content is concerned — 80% valuable, 20% promotional . I actually try for something closer to 10% promotional content.

2-way conversations

You need to engage with followers if you expect them to engage with you. Thank them when they share your content and when they say something nice about your brand.

User generated content

Treat your network as a valuable part of your social network and get them to generate content.

Ask their opinions about your brand, hold contests to encourage them to generate content about your brand, provide tools to create a true community around your brand.

Engage employees

Employees are likely the best advocates for your brand. Not only can they act as evangelists, they can share unique perspectives about your brand that consumers find engaging. For instance, someone working to make the product might share a typical day at work, a buyer might talk about how he/ she builds relationships with suppliers, a sales person might share about interactions with retailers.

Sharing insider knowledge makes consumers feel like they’re getting a backstage tour of your operation and makes them more engaged with your brand.

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Online Marketing Statistics and Trends for Small Businesses You Can’t Ignore [Infographic]

Do you feel like your small business is being bombarded with marketing distractions, such as changing the design of your website or signing up for a hot new social network that reaches millennials? Do you feel like you are lost in your bid to market your small business? As a small business with limited budget, all you need is a proof that your online marketing channel and strategy is worth your time and effort. The latest online marketing statistics and trends by Invesp shades light on what works when it comes to online marketing for small business. You can use these statistics to make decisions about elements of your online marketing strategy.

Is internet marketing important?

According to Marketing Tech Blog, 75% of small business owners think that internet marketing is very effective or effective when it comes to attracting new customers. As a result 37% plan to increase their marketing budget over the next 12 months. However, 50% of SMBs spend less than $300 on internet marketing every month.

29% of small business owners say they understand internet marketing and do it alone. 28% say they are learning and would like to do it alone. Only 6% say they either don’t understand it or don’t want to do it. The rest, 37%, say they would like to do it if only they would have time and money to do it.

Clearly, there is a lot of room for improvement because 55% of small businesses spend only 20% of their marketing on online marketing while only 10% of small businesses spend 80-100% of the marketing budget on online marketing.

A responsive website is important

Most small businesses (74%) have a website but only 56% say their website is mobile responsive. According to LocalVox, 35% of website traffic is likely to come from mobile devices. This means that non-responsive websites lose on, average, 35% of traffic.

As a matter of fact, the number of mobile traffic is expected to grow in the coming days. So ensure that your website is mobile friendly.

What is the most effective channels of attracting new customers?

28% of small business owners think the Word of mouth is the most effective when it comes to attracting new leads/customers. 20% believe SEO is the most effective channel while 15% believe in online directories. Others are email marketing (10%), mobile marketing (4%) and PPC marketing (4%).

Having said that, the internet marketing industry moves quickly and it’s often demanding to keep up with the swings in technology, consumer behavior, spending and effectiveness. As a small business owner, you should stay vigilant and updated on the latest trends.

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5 Social Media Productivity Tips for Busy Professionals

In the US alone, social networking is ranked as the top online activity, with one typical American allotting 37 minutes per day on social media websites (according to Go Gulf). In addition to that, Global Web Index revealed that 28% of the average online users’ time in the general population, is spent in social media.

    The numbers are quite staggering, aren’t they?

Of course, since everyone believes in this chain of thought, “where your customers are, there you should also be”, it just makes perfect sense for business owners and marketers to just jump in the social media bandwagon.

However, despite how mouth-watering the prospect of marketing via the different social media channels might seem, not everyone are getting great results from it – mainly because they get distracted.

In fact, according to an article published at Contentbistro, social media is pretty much their number 1 source of distraction for solopreneurs and business owners.

Have you ever gone to Facebook with the hopes of pre-marketing your new product, only to end up getting distracted watching videos of Stephen Curry’s godlike crossover moves? Or you ended up watching on of Gary Vaynerchuk’s motivational videos, perhaps?

Friends, the problem is real.

If you’re struggling with getting things done while on social media and are looking for ways to be more productive while on the platform, then you’re on the right place.

Allow me to share with you 5 tips that can help you with just that.

Let’s hop right in.

1. Understand your goals.

Remember that in any business, you can’t afford to play pin the tail on the donkey.

The reason why most companies succeed at using social media is that they have clear-cut goals of what they want to do. In most cases, every single step was thoroughly planned out before they were executed. By having clear goals in mind, you are taking ambiguity and the role of chances out of the equation.

You can start by answering these questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What step was thoroughly planned out and what does your target audience want to know and need to know?
• What should your content look like?
• What are the biggest problems they are dealing with?
• How can you give solution to these problems?

These are just some of the many questions that you can ask when crafting your social media marketing gameplan.

Once you have the core steps planned out, all you need to do is just stick to it so you can avoid reacting to every single thing that comes to your social media profile’s news feed.

2. Work on your tasks in batches.

Time is a resource that is highly valued, and if it is exhausted without you yielding any kind of productive results, it would definitely cost you a lot.

When you have tons of things to do on your checklist, you attempt to switch from one task to another in order to get things done the soonest time possible.

Well. Guess what?

Our brains aren’t made for multitasking, and this article will tell you why.

Batching things up means allotting time for a specific cluster or type of goals/agenda first before proceeding to work on other goals. Simply stated, you do things by batch. This technique will help you get your goals in order, eliminate distractions, and schedule ahead of time.

That being said, I suggest that you categorize your tasks and work by following these tips:

• Prepare your draft of posts or a POST BANK so that it‘ll be convenient for you to just pull them out when the time calls for new posts. Thanks to Facebook’s features, you can schedule posts ahead of time or save drafts:

Time is a resource that is highly valued, and if it is exhausted without you yielding any kind of productive results, it would definitely cost you a lot.

When you have tons of things to do on your checklist, you attempt to switch from one task to another in order to get things done the soonest time possible.

Well. Guess what?

Our brains aren’t made for multitasking, and this article will tell you why.

Batching things up means allotting time for a specific cluster or type of goals/agenda first before proceeding to work on other goals. Simply stated, you do things by batch. This technique will help you get your goals in order, eliminate distractions, and schedule ahead of time.

That being said, I suggest that you categorize your tasks and work by following these tips:

• Prepare your draft of posts or a POST BANK so that it‘ll be convenient for you to just pull them out when the time calls for new posts. Thanks to Facebook’s features, you can schedule posts ahead of time or save drafts:

• Follow peak hours. Web users are more active in specific hours of the day. You can learn more about this by checking out Neil Patel’s infographic.

• Understand which posts are timely and which are not. The point here is to make your product relevant to your customers given the seasons or the trends.

3. Create a content calendar.

Some companies stay active for a period of time and the next thing you know, they’re off-the-grid in social media. A content calendar helps keep you committed. That way, you remain consistent and you won’t have any excuses.

According to Forbes writer Pamela Springer, “For your social media marketing plan to succeed, it’s crucial that you consistently interact online; even if it’s just 10 minutes a day. If you can’t put in the time, it’s best not to start.”

Your content calendar can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. The important thing is that you create one and follow it.

It should contain the plot of your posts, the corresponding dates as to when you want to publish them, include the themes for your posts (among others). Feel free to add other details like specific time of publishing, which social media platform to use and respective purposes of posting.

Important note: If there’s one thing that I really like about using content calendars, it would be that I have a bird’s-eye-view of how my ideas would flow. This helps me polish the message that I am trying to convey on each post giving my updates consistency and more focus.

4. Measure your results.

You can plan all you want, hypothesize all you want, brain storm all you want, but at the end of the day, you’ll never really know how effective your social media marketing efforts are, unless you take the time to measure your results.

Through measuring, you can tell which of your strategies are working, and which ones aren’t.

Once you’ve obtained the hard cold numbers proving to you which of your strategies are bringing you results, you can then scrap the ones that aren’t. Then allocate the budget to those that are working – or to new campaigns that you’d like to try out.

This ensures that your effort isn’t wasted on marketing methods that aren’t working.

If you aren’t used to tracking your results and are hoping to start now, then I’d like to warn you that there are several pitfalls that you just might fall into. One is focusing on vanity metrics like the number of views on your post, when what you should be focusing on are the number of actions like shares, comments, engagements, etc…

There is more to measuring results than simply crunching or analyzing the numbers, while there are several blog posts that you can read to learn more about it, I urge you to go for several online courses so the kind of learning you’ll acquire is something that is more in depth.

Simply reading one blog post to another can cause confusion since there might be inconsistencies between what the authors are imparting. Let alone the fact that some publishers aren’t as careful with the tips they share compared to those who really take the time to create an in depth course on a certain topic.

5. Automate your tasks.

Just because social media sites run 24/7 doesn’t mean you have to be online 24/7.

You can automate a good number of your social media tasks by simply using plugins or even free apps.

For example, if you have a website and are regularly publishing blog posts, then you don’t have to manually share the article that you published on your website across the different social media platforms. If your website is powered by WordPress, then you can customize your website’s sharing options by going to your dashboard, “settings”, then “sharing”.

Important tip – There are others tasks that you can automate aside from getting your published articles on your website shared on your social media profiles. There are free tools that you can use to pull content from reputable sites like Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, and Inc.com (among others), so that everytime these websites publish something, it’ll automatically be shared on your profiles without you doing anything.

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4 Seriously Superior Social Media Tools to Manage Your Accounts

Need Social Media Tools? Start Here!

My good friend and colleague, Ian Anderson Grey, wrote an awesome article in cooperation with G2Crowd.

G2Crowd ‘analyzed hundreds of detailed reviews from users of the top Social Media Management software’ and then created this awesome infographic about it. Ian then explained in plain English what it all means and why the top 4 ‘best’ are indeed the best social media management tools.

Here’s the impressive infographic!

Infographic brought to you by Seriously Social and G2 Crowd

What Tools Should You Use?

I am in no way, shape or form going to rehash all of the wonderful things Ian explained and touched on in his article. Just go read it here. Each person who manages social media will have a different objective and thus a different need for tools. Depending on your situation, and after reading Ian’s article, I would suggest you try out any or all of these

• Hootsuite
• AgoraPulse
• SproutSocial
• Sendible

*Full disclosure; I’ve used Hootsuite and I’ve had access to a trial version for both SproutSocial and AgoraPulse. Sendible I’ve never tried.

Why am I sharing with with you then?

I want to give you a few pointers in what to look for when deciding on what tools to use.

About two years ago I wrote about the best social media tool ever

Have you ever paid for a webinar, a conference, a tool or a subscription and you didn’t use it? What good did it do you? No good.

The best social media tool is one you like, understand and use!

Remember this! Don’t let anyone talk you into buying/paying for a tool you don’t understand or don’t need.

How To Find New Social Media Tools To Use!
(besides trying out the 4 tools pointed out earlier)

• Ask your peers (“What tool do you use for content curation?”)
• Sign up for free trials. Even get trials for similar tools and compare for yourself; yet then pick one to use for at least one month.
• Create a list of social media tools as you heat them being mentioned (use your ‘notes’ app, create a ‘Social Media Tools’ Pinterest board or create a list in List.ly)
• Follow ‘potential tools’ on Twitter (Put them on a list and check periodically for updates and new features!)
• Don’t hesitate to upgrade to a paid version if you love a tool. If they are already awesome for free, they are going to rock it even more for the paid version!
• Check your email! I get offers to try new tools all the time.

What Tools Do I use then?

So I haven’t really told you yet what tools I use, right?

Here is the truth… It changes often.

Ok, I understand you want to know… therefore, here is my most current list of favorite social media management tools.

Management/Scheduling

• Buffer (paid)
• Tailwind (paid)
• Hootsuite

But how about other tools I use to manage my social media accounts? Surely there are other tools I use you ask? There are, so here is the rest of the tools of my trade!

Images/Video

• Canva for Work (paid)
• Clipping Magic (paid)
• PicMonkey (paid)
• Over
• iMovie
• SlideShare

Content Curation

• Feedly
• Facebook Trending Topics
• Twitter Trending Topics
• Daily (from Buffer)

Account Management

• DropBox (paid)
• Crowdfire
• SocialQuant
• SocialBro

Additional Tools

• TweetChat (to participate in Twitter Chats)
• List.ly (to create lists)
• Klout (check influencers)
• HTML color picker (match colors from any picture)
• Twubs (register a hashtag)
• MailChimp (email marketing platform)
• WhatsApp (worldwide SMS platform)
• Skype (worldwide calling platform)
• Blab.im (worldwide livestreaming platform)

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Before I go, I want to tell you a quick story to illustrate the importance of starting small, with basic tools. Before you immerse yourself in a bunch of tools it is important to know and understand what type of learner you are and what task you need done. Each tool will look different to everyone depending on if they are a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner as some people love a full dashboard, big buttons and lots of bells and whistles where others get lost when they see those!

In a social media training session about two years ago I had a hard time explaining Hootsuite to my class. This was a group training and my computer was hooked up to a TV so everyone could follow along. This one person was very verbal (read: getting agitated) and explained they just didn’t understand what Hootsuite did, the potential it had and how using it daily could benefit them, and most people in class that day looked confused. After another frustrating 5 minutes, I opened a new tab on my computer and went to Twitter.com to illustrate a point.

Then magic happened!

Turns out, this person has never, ever logged into Twitter and the rest of the class had never really explored Twitter.com either.

They skipped point A & B and they’d gone to C only to get lost! Once we figured that out, we were back in business and I switched to teaching basic Twitter 101.

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Tools are only going to be useful and helpful if you understand the basics of social media.

Tools won’t ever be able to replace planning a strategy, tactics and setting up campaigns and tools certainly can’t think for you.

Tools won’t replace common sense, kindness and common courtesy either.

In essence, tools are tools and should never fully replace human interaction on social media.
It isn’t called social media for nothing!

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5 Brilliant Ways to Amplify Your Content Marketing Strategy [Infographic]

It’s vital to nurture meaningful relationships with people who are ready and willing to support your projects. One of the most difficult things you will ever have to do online is reaching out to relevant audiences. This can only be achieved through trial and error, continuous experimentation, and, ultimately, by taking a chance and putting yourself out there. In the end, the road to building a strong community is also a road to self-discovery.

This is also why creating relevant content is one of the best ways to engage with people online - content that educates and speaks to them, helps you uncover the voice of your brand, and also asserts your position as an influencer. But how exactly are you supposed to promote this content to the right people? This is what we want to find out. 

In the following guide, we take a look at several unusual content marketing strategies and tools, which can help you connect with relevant audiences.

1. Fuel Engagement through Content Diversity

Blog posting isn’t only about writing a few hundred words and slapping some photos on top to make them look pretty. With so much content going around, it has become clear that writers have to go the extra mile. The good news is that there are so many ways for you to make content more engaging.

First of all, there are alternative forms of content that can be added to the mix, such as videos, podcasts, infographics, content visualizations, presentations and so on. Secondly, you can use page elements that act as powerful calls-to-action. One of the reasons I love reading HubPages is its extremely diverse content. Most articles are complimented by interactive, thought-provoking modules. With these things in mind, here are a few ideas you can try:

• Insert polls into articles: When readers see a poll they simply can’t help themselves. They have to vote! Depending on the length of your article, you should consider adding 1 or 2 relevant polls. This will give you a better idea of your readers’ preferences, fear, or desires. A while back, I wrote an article about solo-traveling, and added a poll about the fears of traveling alone to it. The responses I received prompted me to create a second article that was extremely well received.  
• Use embedded social media: Embedded tweets or Facebook posts will help you break up the text, while also encouraging readers to share your content. Simply add interesting facts, statistics or quotes from your article to make it irresistible.
• Experiment with comics: Everybody loves comics. If what you have to say can be presented under the form of a comic-strip, why not give it a go? You don’t have to be extremely talented at drawing to make this work. Make sure you check out Oatmeal for inspiration.
• Make content downloadable: You can add discrete download links for your content in eBook or PDF format.

• Frame it as a quiz: There are two great ways in which you can use quizzes. The first one is to add a short quiz at the end of the article which summarizes the information presented and helps the reader test his newly-achieved knowledge. The second, and probably more enticing one, is to conceive your content as a quiz that defines the visitor’s needs. This will also help you segment your audience into specific groups.
• Organize Contests: Cracked periodically runs photo contests under the form of articles. Readers are welcome to submit their own images, and as a reward, they get the chance to win a nice prize (of 100 dollars). Needless to say, photo-based articles have the tendency of spreading like wildfire, and when you also get the community involved, it’s impossible to go wrong.

2. Aggregate Awesomeness for your Community

One of the best ways to attract more followers, while also promoting your content, is by aggregating, or better yet, curating relevant articles from other sources.

Note: As mentioned by Tom George on Poynter.org, the main distinction between aggregation & curation, is the fact that the latter also puts content into context and has a distinctive, human touch to it.

There’s just too damn much information circulating the internet right now, and very few of it is actually worth reading. Imagine how thankful your followers will be if you discover, summarize and organize the most interesting things on the internet for them. There are several tools you can use for this purpose. Julia McCoy already covered 17 of the Best Content Curation Tools of 2015, so I will only present some lesser known tools:

Snip.ly:

Snip.ly is not a curation tool in the exact sense of the word (it’s actually more of a link shortener), but the fact that it allows the user to add a call-to-action to every link shared makes it extremely effective in attracting relevant traffic to your website & capturing leads. Simply sign up for the free plans, paste the URL you want to share on Snip.ly, create the custom message and the message for the button URL.

You can use your website’s link for the button and share it across different social networks and blogs. It may not work with certain sites, but this shouldn’t be a reason not to use it. Oh, did I mention that Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner also uses it?

FrontPageit

FrontPageit promises to offer 100% relevant content and 0% noise. I have to admit, I was sceptical at first. Nevertheless, I signed up for an account and found the dashboard quite charming. The newsfeed reminds me of Facebook, but instead of the endless stream of selfies, cat videos and emotional status updates I got an interesting list of newsworthy articles from authority sites like Mashable, TheVerge, and The Guardian, among others.

Curators are selected manually to avoid content ‘overdose’, so being accepted as one in a relevant niche will definitely help. Because FrontPageit focuses solely on ‘content discovery’, each curated piece is accompanied by a short summary (also referred to as ‘the gist of it’). Now, in order to promote your own content on this type of platform, you should follow the unwritten rules of Pinterest: a healthy balance between content you find online, and your own (the 80:20 rule should work wonders).

Zemanta

If you’re looking for a click-and-forget-it tool, then Zemanta is what you need. To start using this small and extremely useful content curation tool you will have to download and install the extension. As you write blog-posts in your Blogger, TypePad or Wordpress dashboard, Zemanta will automatically pull out relevant content from across the web.

But the best thing about it is the fact that, if you sign-up for the service, it will pull your content on other blogs. This means that your valuable content will appear on the blogs of influencers in your niche, thus increasing your chances of being mentioned by them.

Image Source: S.w.org

3. Apply the Principles of Social Media 4-1-1

Although marketers are aware of the power of social media, most fail to harness it simply because they are inconsistent and overly-promotional. Andrew Davis, the author of Brandscaping, came up with the concept of Social Media 4-1-1 sharing. Granted, you don’t have to respect the numbers exactly, but the point of this strategy is to get noticed, and ultimately, to be acknowledged. Let’s say you have 6 pieces of content that you’re planning on sharing on your social channel this week.

Four out of the six should be content from other influencers in the industry, one should be a promotional piece, discount, press-release or anything related to your business, and the last one should be an original article that you created. By consistently sharing content from other influencers, without asking for anything in return, you will be able to reach out to them. Maybe, someday, they will also share your piece, thus, exposing it to a whole new audience.

4. Leverage the Links you Use

Any sensible writer credits his/her sources. But are you truly leveraging the power of your links? Whenever you want to add value to your post, you should link to content that is relevant to it. As a rule of thumb, you should always link to articles from active individuals or websites.

Are the authors of your source content in the habit of engaging with their audience on social media? Good. That means people are actually listening to them. Once your article is published, make sure to reach out to the people that you linked to. A short message and thank you should be enough. Some of them will probably not answer, but those who will might mention you on their social channels. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.

5. Amplify your Reach through Content Discovery Platforms

Sometimes, reaching out through social media or email simply doesn’t help. Have you ever wondered why, no matter how hard you try, your leads and traffic fail to live up to your expectations? That’s because you have to extend your reach even further. I am positive that you are already familiar with content discovery platforms like Taboola or OutBrain - you have probably seen the ‘Suggested content’ or ‘recommended posts’ at the end of articles on major websites.

What you didn’t know is that you can use them to propel your own content on huge sites such as CNN or Inc.com. Here’s a list of questions that you should answers before attempting to use discovery platforms for content amplification:

• What is your objective? Before investing in anything, you should define your goals. Is it brand exposure, targeted traffic or leads that you want? Based on this you can monitor important metrics.
• What content are you going to promote? Conduct a thorough check of your website to identify the best-written and most-successful articles. The idea is to create a lasting impression and encourage visitors to explore more of your site. I recommend that you focus on valuable blog-posts instead of promotional pages, eBooks or downloadable content.
• Is your content ready to be showcased? Before you begin the discovery campaign you might want to improve the design and content on your page. Include call-to-actions, interesting visuals and format the text in an interesting way.

Most content discovery tools are self-serving, so you will want to take advantage of their features. You can choose multiple variations of your headlines and run A/B tests with them. Make sure to include your tracking tokens if you want to monitor the performance of your posts (which you absolutely should).

Image Source: OutBrain

These are five extremely effective methods of promoting content and reaching out to relevant audiences. Alex Manthei mentioned a few others, as well as some interesting tools, in his comprehensive article on the Buffer blog. You should definitely check it out if you’re on the hunt for more ideas.

Image Sources: depositphotos.com

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