One of the most consistent challenges companies face with content marketing is that they get a lot less engagement than they should for the amount of time and money they're spending. Why? The Three Horsemen of the No Sharing Apocalypse: Inconvenience, Forgetfulness, and Busyness. If you want more people to share your posts, you've got to make it more convenient for people to share, gently remind them you would like them to share your posts, and ask at a time that they're not already really busy. In this post I'm going to explain how to use email to solve these problems and get way more sharing for your content.
Your loyal customers and employees love your brand, love your content, and want to support your company. They have the best intentions to be your advocates and social ambassadors. But on the road to advocacy, the best intentions often get waylaid by Inconvenience, Forgetfulness, and Busyness.
The first step to increasing sharing is to understand what makes it convenient for busy people to remember to share your content:
The Three Principles of Convenient Sharing
- People need to choose what they're going to share;
- People are most likely to share when they have been prompted with content they can share immediately;
- Sharing needs to work on whatever device they are using at the moment they are prompted.
So how to do you combine these principles with an approach that helps you increase sharing? Well crafted emails. The best marketing medium of the 90s is still the best way to increase engagement with your core audience of customers, fans, and employees.
Why is email an effective approach to improve social media marketing? Here are a few reasons:
- Because your customers, fans and employees are busy at work, so often they missed your posts.
- Because they didn't check Twitter or Facebook that day.
- Because they weren't on Twitter at the exact moment you tweeted, so your post was lost in a flood of tweets.
- Because Facebook limits the number of fans who see posts that you haven't paid to promote.
- Because they don't spend as much time on social media as you, so email is still their primary online communications medium.
- Because they like you, so a highlight of your best updates is a convenience, not a burden.
- Because sometimes busy people need a gentle reminder.
But email is old! Aren't there better ways to do this?
My company, Elevate, embeds social updates from Twitter and Facebook directly into email. Why did we invent this? Because we literally tried every other option we could imagine and email was the only way we could get consistent increases in employee and customer engagement with social media content for our customers. And trust me, we tried every version of a customer community we could think of before we discovered that fans, customers, and employees find email the most convenient way to engage them. I know what you're thinking, "But I get tons of emails I absolutely hate!" Yes, there is one caveat to using email: your emails can't suck. As long as you pass that threshold, email works and your audience will love it.
So how do you make an email that works?
I'll write a longer post on this soon, but for now, here's an overview:
- Give your audience choice: provide a few updates so they can pick one they like.
- Give them the info they need to decide: this includes what the Tweet says, what site the link points to, what the article behind the link is, and ideally a short description of the article.
- Make sharing one-to-two clicks: this means you need to include active links for "Like", "Retweet" and "Like (for LinkedIn)". If possible, try to use the same code that Facebook does so the like is registered on your post to improve your Edgerank (and the same for LinkedIn / Twitter). You can do this by copying the "Like" link from the post on your Facebook page / Tweet / LinkedIn update, or by using software that does this for you.
- BONUS: Show them the update: this is tougher and usually requires software, but even more people will share if they can see the actual Tweet or Facebook post they're sharing. It requires less thinking than seeing a blank update page and having to customize it.
So that is the secret to using email to make sharing more convenient for busy people. How have you used email to get better results for your social marketing?