7 ways to improve your social marketing

As a marketing professional I am concerned about innovation and I am always looking for new ways to improve results both for me and my clients.

I have recently decided to take a deeper look in what is considered the new nirvana of business: the social networks.

It seems that almost all marketers involved in this medium are looking for what they call engagement, which, according to their definitions, is the quantity of likes, shares and comments on their posts.

When I got married I didn’t get engaged. I´ve never had a fiancée in my life, since I´ve never been convinced what the use of an engagement is. Similarly, I understand that the goal of commercial relationship is the marriage, i.e., the sale.

However, if engagement is the buzz, let´s work on how to improve it. So I went into the playing field and found out which the most effective ways to get a lot of likes, shares and comments are, as follows:

1.   The language trap: always publish your posts, articles, and papers in English. No matter where you live and what second class language is spoken in your country (in mine is Portuguese, a late Latin derived language). English improves the value of the writer and gets more attention of the public you want to reach. If you don´t know English, Google Translator can help you (it´ll help a lot of your readers too, so, what´s the use of being a nationalist?)

2.   Make an offer they cannot refuse: if you want to build a huge database of gullible people you just have to make a gullible offer like an Excel spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group to unemployed persons or even an article about how to improve your social marketing. I´ve already written about this subject but, unfortunately, the article was in Portuguese, so no one paid serious attention.

3.   Hyperlink to exhaustion: since it´s not practical to hyperlink each and every word, at least insert a hyperlink per paragraph. I do strongly recommend you  shorten all your hyperlinks so that the reader cannot identify where he is being led to (and insert some absurd ones in order to confuse your audience or to make them think you are a funny guy).

4.   Viral is cool: do you want to be over shared? Say your content has turned viral, even if it hasn´t, it will. This is the simplest way to make it through in as many social networks as possible.

5.   Quote famous people. Borges said that “life itself is a quotation”, and Roux used to say “A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.” On the other hand, Baldwin remarked: “When one begins living by habit and by quotations, one has begun to stop living”. But who was Baldwin anyway?

6.   In the shoulder of giants: illustrate your content with images of great business people. Steve Jobs is a must when you want to look innovative. Zuckerberg is fine when writing about social. If you are writing about strategy Welch or Porter are the men.

7.   The best title: finally, remember to title your post with a numeral. Always use odd numbers that lead to a miracle solution. They seem to be more attractive. The only even number accepted is ten (I assume it has something to do with Moses commandments). People like to consume plug-and-play instructions so they don´t need to use their neurons, which is a tiresome activity.

If following all the above instructions you don´t succeed, you can always blame your public who was not sufficiently intelligent to understand your witty approach.