Twitter can be overwhelming; it can be difficult to separate the interesting nuggets from the thousands of irrelevant tweets. Hashtags can be your best friend on Twitter, helping you to easily seek out what interests you and allow you to get your message out there to the relevant people.

What’s a hashtag?

If you use Twitter, you’ll notice tweets featuring the # symbol followed by a word, phrase or acronym, like #cloud, #jobfairy or #UCC. These hashtags are clickable and will bring you to a page that lists all the most recent tweets that also used these hashtags. Here are five ways you can make use of hashtags for your business.

Find relevant people to follow

Hashtags can be a great way to look for people who have similar interests to you. If someone is using a hashtag you’re interested in, chances are they may be a good person to start following. Look for hashtags relevant to your business or your target audience. Check out the people regularly tweeting using these hashtags – these could be thought leaders or key influencers in your area.

Make your company easy to find

Use hashtags to allow relevant people to easily find you. If you’re a prolific tweeter, hashtags can be a great way to categorise your tweets into different areas. If you’re a large business with several different divisions, segregate your tweets using hashtags relevant to your different business units or areas of interest.  This will help interested people find your tweets and start following or engaging with you.

Join the conversation

Hashtags group tweets with a common theme together. By seeking out the hashtags that focus on your key areas of expertise you can join in with conversations that are already happening on Twitter, allowing you to showcase your knowledge.

Start the conversation

You can also use hashtags to start the conversation. This is a useful way to drive engagement with your company, by encouraging people to interact with you on various topics or asking for their opinions. If you do go down this route, make sure to promote your hashtag, add it to your social media bios, website, marketing collateral, etc. There’s no point in having a hashtag if no-one sees it.

Promote an event

If you’re organising an event, hashtags are a great way to spread the word before the event and also boost interaction with attendees during the event. In the run up to your event, add your hashtag to all promotional items. At the event itself, make your hashtag feature prominently on any pop-up stands or multi-media displays. This could encourage attendees to tweet about the event, upload photos and comment on speakers, etc. This activity could help to boost interest in your event on social media and, if it’s a regular event, could increase attendance at future events.

Things to bear in mind with hashtags

• If using a hashtag to promote an event, be vigilant to the possibility of someone hijacking your hashtag and using it to tweet inappropriate content.  Here’s a short video showing you what to do if your event hashtag has been hacked.
• Keep your hashtags short and sweet. A long, convoluted hashtag can be difficult to read and could lead to misspellings when people are using the hashtag. This could mean your hashtag gets diluted and pertinent content ends up getting lost in Twitter.
• Now that you know what hashtags are and how to use them, resist the urge to go hashtag crazy. Not every tweet needs a hashtag. And if you are using hashtags in your tweet, limit it to one or two. The idea is you want to focus your content on one, or two, key topics – using too many hashtags in one tweet means you’re joining too many conversations, and it can also make the tweet difficult to read.

How are you using hashtags for your business? What clever uses of hashtags have you seen on Twitter?

Main image: Mike Cogh

Deirdre
@deirdreenn

How to use hashtags on Twitter is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

It’s easy to think that content generation is the essence of content marketing. Nope. Promoting the content is actually the heart and soul of a content strategy.

When I was working as a journalist, I remember someone saying to me, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one issues a press release, does it make a sound?” Back then (I’m talking 1995 through 2010), press releases were the best way to reach journalists. Now, the mainstream media have set up social media listening stations to rival anything the intelligence community could concoct. Journalists listen to social media, watch hashtags and seek out high-Klout influencers to see what they’re tweeting and to whom.

Because journalists listen to social media, that’s where you must go to promote your content after you create it. Whether it’s a blog your sales director has authored, or a curated piece of content that your CEO just read in Forbes magazine, your nuggets of content collectively draw a picture about the expertise of your company and its people. Sharing those nuggets online helps you “own” your keywords in the eyes of Google and cements your reputation as an authority.

Content all ready? Here’s how to promote it and what to avoid

Of course, if you’re reading this, you’re already sold on the reasons content marketing works. But how are you going to get people to look at your content? Here are my four dos and a don’t for promoting your content:

1. Have an email newsletter: I admit that, although I emailed the top tech stories to thousands of my subscribers when I ran the IT newswire ElectricNews.Net, I didn’t send out the promotional newsletter for my content strategy business, ENNclick, until that business was a few years old. I guess I was afraid of spamming readers with sales messages. But our ENNclick newsletter – and, I’m reliably informed, the newsletters of companies of all types – is a key means of generating business. We don’t spam in our newsletter, but we do share the content marketing blogs and social media how-to videos we’re creating. The content is wrapped around sales messages, but sales blurbs aren’t the primary content.

2. Write a status update on LinkedIn: Write one-sentence summaries of the content you’ve written (each blog post or article needs its own status update) and post those sentences as status updates on LinkedIn. My colleague Deirdre can show you how to post status updates on LinkedIn, if you’re not sure.

3. Get the boss to comment or share your LinkedIn status update: The marketing team can’t do it all alone! Today, every member of the team is responsible for content promotion. Each salesperson, plus the boss, the techies, the operations people and anyone else using LinkedIn should be “liking” or commenting on the status updates you created at Step 2 above. This is the best way to achieve reach: using the exponential power of each team member’s LinkedIn contacts.

4. Use advanced social search to reach out to influencers: What’s the hashtag of your topic? #cloud? #Leinster? #sxsw? Search Twitter.com for the top people using those hashtags, and think about reaching out to them to let them know about your blog. Hootsuite offers even more powerful searching: I search by keyword, save the search as a stream, then filter the stream by Klout to zero in on the top influencers tweeting on a topic (see my how-to video on Hootsuite searching here). There’s no better way to unearth the analysts, journalists and bloggers who matter in your industry.

5. Don’t be a megaphone: Twitter isn’t a press release distribution service. Carefully craft your tweet so that you don’t sound like an announcement machine. Try to strike a conversational, helpful tone, as if you’re letting your followers in on a secret. “Engagement” – a word that’s much used in regards to social media – is nothing more than acting like a human being, and not a megaphone. Listen and respond to what people are tweeting about your topic, and look for a way to help them.

What’s your favourite means of promoting the content your company creates?

Main image: Marc Falardeau

Four dos and a don’t for promoting your content is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

It’s how-to Tuesday and I’m looking at how you can control your privacy settings on LinkedIn, allowing you to view other people’s profiles anonymously.

If you use LinkedIn, you will be familiar with the “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature, where you are presented with identities of people who’ve checked out your profile. But what if you want to take a look at someone’s profile without them knowing you’ve done so – perhaps if you’re researching a competitor or heading up a recruitment phase and want to investigate some candidates.

This short how-to video shows you how to change your privacy settings to restrict the details people will see when you’ve viewed their profile.

Are there other quick social media how-to tips you’d like to see ENNclick demonstrate for you? Just send an email to deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre
@deirdreenn

How to be anonymous on LinkedIn is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

For how-to Tuesday I’m tackling a thorny one: how to keep your email inbox empty. The techniques I’ll describe here have worked for me brilliantly for more than a year: I start and end most days with an empty inbox.

First, brace yourself: this technique is going to take 30 to 45 minutes of your time every day. But if you’re like me and receive hundreds of messages daily, that’s a worthwhile time investment to prevent e-mail inbox overload and its associated problems (missing critical messages, wasting time on low priority mail, working longer hours than needed because you can’t focus on a client’s work).

1. Start each morning by writing a to-do list. Do not start the day without that list, and definitely don’t start going through your e-mail without that list. (My to-do list includes approximately 30 minutes devoted to cleaning out my inbox.) Section the rest of the day into time segments devoted to individual clients or other business activities. Leave a 15 minute buffer between time segments to give yourself a breather and cater for any overrun. For example, my blocks today are devoted to the following:

• inbox clear out
• break
• brochure writing for client 1
• break
• blog edit for client 2
• lunch
• blog edit for client 2
• break
• business development
• break
• social media check for client 2

I was fascinated to see that Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, recently wrote about the virtues of the “buffer time” as I have described here, in his blog, “The Importance of Scheduling Nothing.”

2. Don’t use your inbox as a to-do list. See above — use your handcrafted to-do list instead.

3. Don’t go through the messages in your inbox one by one in the morning. Instead, use the techniques I will describe at numbers 5 through 10 below.

4. Set up quality filters that pre-mark certain messages for your attention. I use Gmail, where I’ve made good use of the Filters tool to apply a “star” and a folder name to anything that will always deserve my attention (mail from my key clients, family, high-priority mailing lists). Filters are all important, and pre-marking certain message types with a folder name ensures you can archive them for later review with a single click.

5. Get ready to delete the non-essential mail. In Gmail, I use the “Select” feature to choose and prepare to delete anything that has not been pre-marked for my attention, but I don’t delete it yet.

6. Delete, with caution. *Before* you press the delete button, check that you’re not throwing away something important. If you see something that you were just about to delete, mark it to be kept – in Gmail, I apply the “star” — then select only “unstarred” messages and delete them.

7. File messages you’ve already read. Maybe these are messages you checked late last night or forgot to filter yesterday; but chances are, if you’ve chosen to read them, they deserve to be archived rather than deleted. Use the Select feature to choose all messages you have already read. Now check to make sure that all of those “read” messages have been pre-marked with a folder name. Unselect any messages that have been read but have not been marked with a folder name already. Archive all read messages that have a folder name.

8. Refine your filters. This is IMPORTANT: any “read” messages that don’t have a folder name must be assigned one straight away. The fact that you’ve already opened it before your “e-mail box clear out time” means it’s from somebody important and needs a label going forward. Open every message that has been read but did not have a folder name, and select “filter messages like these” to set a new filter that marks any incoming mail from that person with a folder name.

9. Manually review whatever is left in the inbox. Now your inbox should contain only unread messages which have been pre-marked for your attention. Open one by one and handle them if you can do so in less than a minute. Otherwise, file them and handle them later in the time block already assigned to that client.

10. Have a cup of tea, then go back to the to-do list. After your breather, return to your to-do list to devote the pre-specified time to each client, being sure to check the folders where you’ve filed messages needing action.

That’s it. There will always be messages that don’t fit into this structure, but I have found this methodology catches 98% of the mail from my inbox.

Q. How do you organise your day? Do you live by your to do list?

Main image Intersection Consulting

The 10 Commandments for keeping your email inbox empty is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Do you want to be more organised with your social media updates? Here’s a short video showing you how to schedule your posts using Hootsuite.

If you manage a number of social media accounts for clients or different departments within your organisation posting regular updates can be complicated and can eat into your other daily tasks.

Scheduling your social media posts allows you to become more organised with your social media strategy.

• Company announcements: schedule posts to coincide with company news or product launches.
• Blogs: if you have a blog calendar in place and know when specific blogs are going to be published on your site, think about scheduling updates to promote the blog posts as they are published.
• Company newsletter: as soon as you send out or publish your company newsletter, line up a series of updates focusing on specific articles and schedule one update each day. This gives you a great opportunity to promote your content without bombarding people with multiple updates one after the other.
• Event presentations: if you, or your company executives, are speaking at  a conference, you could schedule snippets from the presentation to go out while they are on stage.

Scheduling ensures you are on top of any set announcements or content from a social media perspective and by spending just 30 minutes on a Monday morning lining up any necessary updates for the week, you can free up your time during the week to focus on other important social media business, like engaging with followers or responding to any enquiries.

Of course, scheduling posts is only one part of the job – it’s important to be aware of what’s going on in the world too and if there is breaking news dominating social media you need to be alert to how people will perceive your brand if your scheduled updates are sent out in the middle of a tragedy. In these instances you should consider cancelling any scheduled posts and re-schedule them for a more appropriate time.

Are there other quick social media how-to tips you’d like to see ENNclick demonstrate for you? Just send an email to deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre
@deirdreenn

How to schedule posts using Hootsuite is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

It’s How to Tuesday here at ENNclick – and today I’m sharing some ideas on how to improve the quality of the photographs you share on Twitter and Facebook.

If you tweet, today’s how-to video will show how to make more of the photo editing enhancements Twitter has added to its mobile app, courtesy of another gorgeous animated video by Ian Padgham.

When you share content on Twitter or Facebook, you are almost guaranteed that the posts which include photographs will draw attention, but let’s face it: if you’ve just snapped a picture with your mobile phone camera, it’s probably not going to win any photography awards.

This step-by-step video from Twitter’s official YouTube channel demonstrates how to use the new, built-in photo editing features on the Twitter app to auto-correct colour problems in your photos, add filter effects such as black and white, or simply crop the image. These new features weren’t visible to me until I updated the Twitter app on my phone, and voilà, there they were.

By the way, the Twitter app is just one of a host of tools you can use to glam up your photos before you share them on social media; I’ve also tried the limited but functional Adobe Photoshop free app, and if you are an Android user like me, you’ll discover useful photo editing tools inside the general Gallery app on your phone.

Of course prevention is better than cure, so it pays to learn a few tricks that improve the quality of the original photos you take. If you’re attempting to take photographs inside under incandescent or fluorescent lights, for example, take the time to quickly adjust the white balance on your camera phone before you take the photo, to avoid sickly skin tones and an overall green cast that’s hard to fix later. This tip is especially pertinent if you run a retail operation and attempt to share interior images of your shop on Facebook or Twitter: a cold cast to the images won’t help you attract customers.

Are there other social media how-to’s you would like to see? Drop me an e-mail at sheila@ennclick.com

@sheilaenn

How to improve the photos you share on Twitter is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Have you ever noticed the small globe icon in the status update window on Facebook? The globe means the status update you’re about to post will be public. But you can click that icon, and choose instead to share your update only with selected friends.

This is the “Lists” function on Facebook, and it was rolled out some time ago. But from my conversations with Facebook users, it seems people don’t make good use of this feature.

Let’s face it: if you use Facebook, the odds are that some of your connections aren’t really friends, more like acquaintances or business colleagues. I’ve done a quick how-to video, demonstrating how to send a status update to friends and family only. With Facebook Lists, you can ensure that those holiday snaps or other updates don’t go to all and sundry.

I’ll show you how to find the Lists that Facebook already set up for you, and how to post status updates which are visible only to selected lists.

To see the video in clearest resolution, click the bullseye-like ‘full screen’ icon below. Are there other simple Facebook tips you’d like to see? Drop me an e-mail on sheila@ennclick.com

How to send Facebook updates to friends and family only is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

In regular update terms, LinkedIn is a much quieter network than its more social cousins Facebook and Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post updates there.

Here are three reasons why it’s a good idea to share status updates on LinkedIn.

First things, first. If you’re not sure how to post a status update on LinkedIn – it couldn’t be easier. You can do it directly from the LinkedIn “Home” page, or from your own profile page.

And if you have a LinkedIn Company page, you can share status updates directly from your Company homepage too. From your Company page you can share any type of content, thanks to a new feature allowing you to upload images or any other type of files.

Stand out from the crowd

If you’ve ever looked at the LinkedIn “Home” page, you’ll notice that the bulk of status updates comprise the following: “Jane Smith has a new connection”; “Jane Smith has joined a Group”; “Jane Smith has been endorsed by/has endorsed John Smith”. In a sea of sameness, a fresh status update is more likely to stand out and attract attention.

Drive traffic to your site

Though it may be seen by some as a poor relation to Facebook and Twitter, the level of traffic LinkedIn refers to your site can be significant. For us at ENNclick, LinkedIn is our third highest referrer of traffic behind people directly coming to our site through their browsers and searching for us on Google. Take advantage of this by sharing blog posts, company news, commenting in relevant Groups, and generally being active on LinkedIn.

Nurture relationships, generate quality leads

LinkedIn is not so much about building relationships but rather nurturing relationships. On LinkedIn you typically connect with people you already know and who know you. Posting regular status updates that are relevant to your business gives you the opportunity to show your connections what you do and highlight your skills and expertise, allowing you to enhance the relationship and generate quality leads.

If you would like any more information about LinkedIn or other social media sites you can mail me at deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre McArdle
@deirdreenn

 

 

Why should you create status updates on LinkedIn? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Why should you create status updates on LinkedIn? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

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In regular update terms, LinkedIn is a much quieter network than its more social cousins Facebook and Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post updates there.

Here are three reasons why it’s a good idea to share status updates on LinkedIn.

First things, first. If you’re not sure how to post a status update on LinkedIn – it couldn’t be easier. You can do it directly from the LinkedIn “Home” page, or from your own profile page.

And if you have a LinkedIn Company page, you can share status updates directly from your Company homepage too. From your Company page you can share any type of content, thanks to a new feature allowing you to upload images or any other type of files.

Stand out from the crowd

If you’ve ever looked at the LinkedIn “Home” page, you’ll notice that the bulk of status updates comprise the following: “Jane Smith has a new connection”; “Jane Smith has joined a Group”; “Jane Smith has been endorsed by/has endorsed John Smith”. In a sea of sameness, a fresh status update is more likely to stand out and attract attention.

Drive traffic to your site

Though it may be seen by some as a poor relation to Facebook and Twitter, the level of traffic LinkedIn refers to your site can be significant. For us at ENNclick, LinkedIn is our third highest referrer of traffic behind people directly coming to our site through their browsers and searching for us on Google. Take advantage of this by sharing blog posts, company news, commenting in relevant Groups, and generally being active on LinkedIn.

Nurture relationships, generate quality leads

LinkedIn is not so much about building relationships but rather nurturing relationships. On LinkedIn you typically connect with people you already know and who know you. Posting regular status updates that are relevant to your business gives you the opportunity to show your connections what you do and highlight your skills and expertise, allowing you to enhance the relationship and generate quality leads.

If you would like any more information about LinkedIn or other social media sites you can mail me at deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre McArdle
@deirdreenn

Why should you create status updates on LinkedIn? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

In regular update terms, LinkedIn is a much quieter network than its more social cousins Facebook and Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post updates there.

Here are three reasons why it’s a good idea to share status updates on LinkedIn.

First things, first. If you’re not sure how to post a status update on LinkedIn – it couldn’t be easier. You can do it directly from the LinkedIn “Home” page, or from your own profile page.

And if you have a LinkedIn Company page, you can share status updates directly from your Company homepage too. From your Company page you can share any type of content, thanks to a new feature allowing you to upload images or any other type of files.

Stand out from the crowd

If you’ve ever looked at the LinkedIn “Home” page, you’ll notice that the bulk of status updates comprise the following: “Jane Smith has a new connection”; “Jane Smith has joined a Group”; “Jane Smith has been endorsed by/has endorsed John Smith”. In a sea of sameness, a fresh status update is more likely to stand out and attract attention.

Drive traffic to your site

Though it may be seen by some as a poor relation to Facebook and Twitter, the level of traffic LinkedIn refers to your site can be significant. For us at ENNclick, LinkedIn is our third highest referrer of traffic behind people directly coming to our site through their browsers and searching for us on Google. Take advantage of this by sharing blog posts, company news, commenting in relevant Groups, and generally being active on LinkedIn.

Nurture relationships, generate quality leads

LinkedIn is not so much about building relationships but rather nurturing relationships. On LinkedIn you typically connect with people you already know and who know you. Posting regular status updates that are relevant to your business gives you the opportunity to show your connections what you do and highlight your skills and expertise, allowing you to enhance the relationship and generate quality leads.

If you would like any more information about LinkedIn or other social media sites you can mail me at deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre McArdle
@deirdreenn

 

 

Why should you create status updates on LinkedIn? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

Why should you create status updates on LinkedIn? is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

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Fresh photographs on your Facebook page are an effective way to keep followers engaged. If you’re taking pictures on your phone or tablet, but find it fiddly to get them from there onto Facebook, you need to know your secret email address.

Social media platforms like Facebook want you to post photos using their own apps, but sometimes email is still the quickest and most effective way to go. Here’s how to find your Page’s secret email address (and why you need to keep it secret).

Facebook, like most social media platforms, wants to make it easy for you to share images. Did you know that every Facebook Page has a unique, secret e-mail address that lets you post pictures directly to the Page? Any photo sent to your secret e-mail address will immediately appear on your timeline, and anything written in the subject line of the e-mail becomes the photo caption — so it’s imperative that, once you know your secret e-mail address, you do keep it secret.

Five easy steps to finding and using your secret Facebook e-mail address

• Go to Facebook.com
• In the upper right corner, click the gear icon to Use Facebook as page, not as your personal identity
• Go to Edit Page
• Click Update Info
• Click “Mobile” in the left margin and your secret email address will appear in bold blue letters in the middle of the page. (The beginning of my secret email address is shown in the image here). Take note of your secret mobile e-mail address and don’t lose it!

Now, any time you snap a photo on your mobile phone or tablet that you’d like to share – perhaps from an event you’re attending, or something that catches your eye when you’re out and about – just use your phone’s sharing function (pick the e-mail option from the choices) to share the image. When I share pictures from my android-powered HTC Desire, I go to the Gallery, click the double pointy arrow, then I select the image I’d like to share by email. It’s a similar process across other smartphone operating systems.

Your phone should open a new, empty email message for you: enter your secret Facebook email address in the “to” field, type a photo caption into the subject line, and press send. Don’t forget to leave the body of the message completely blank.

Your photo will appear immediately on your Facebook page.

Bad quality pictures are worse than no pictures at all

As you’ll quickly realise, photographs with a landscape orientation look better on Facebook than portrait-oriented photographs: the latter often get cut off, especially if fans are looking at your page over a mobile device.

To improve the quality of images you take on your phone, don’t forget to check the white balance before you snap that picture. Choose fluorescent or incandescent white balance if you’re taking pictures in a location with indoor lighting, or you could end up with blue-green tinted images that make everyone look sick.

Do you have any questions about the instructions above, or other how-to’s you would like to see? Just drop an e-mail to sheila@ennclick.com

How to post photos to Facebook from your phone is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.

It’s How To Tuesday at ENNclick and today we’re bringing you a video looking at some well-known retailers and their sales tactics on Pinterest.

Compared to other social networks, figures indicate that Pinterest users are in a buying frame of mind when on the site.

Cosmetics giant Sephora says its Pinterest followers spend a massive 15 times more on Sephora products than its Facebook followers do.

“The reality is that when you’re in the Pinterest mindset, you’re actually interested in acquiring items, which is not what people go to Facebook for,” Sephora’s head of digital Julie Bornstein told John Koetsier at venturebeat.com.

This interesting tidbit from Bornstein prompts the question “how do you sell stuff on Pinterest?” I’ve had a snoop around to see how some of the big brands use Pinterest and I’ve put together a short video with pointers from two retailers, Sephora on Pinterest and Ikea on Pinterest.

Are there other quick social media how-to tips you’d like to see ENNclick demonstrate for you? Just send an email to deirdre@ennclick.com

Deirdre
@deirdreenn

How to use Pinterest to sell your products is a post from: ENNclick - Expert copywriters in Dublin, Cork and Edinburgh.