Let’s give a look about: Composing Posts, Competition and Role Model
Match writing style with audience
Consider your audience. Are they young people? Are they old people? Are they conservative individuals? Are they outgoing?
Are they sensitive to some forms of speech? Consider these factors and write accordingly.
Write in an active tone
A paragraph or a sentence with an active tone makes use of action words.
Instead of saying ‘You can save money by…” you should say “Save money by…”. This style of speech encourages readers to take action.
Use highlighting techniques
Highlight important words to make a message or blog post more noticeable.
So instead of simply posting “Save up to 10 USD and get a free headphone”, you should post “SAVE up to 10 USD and get a FREE headphone”.
You can also highlight using underlined and bold text.
Hire people to compose blog posts for you
If you are not confident enough that you can properly compose blog posts, you should outsource the task to those who can.
You can find freelance blog post writers at www.odesk.com.
131 Make sure your writers understand your trade
If you outsource this task, make sure that the writer knows about your product, services, and your policies.
Communicate closely with the person you hire.
CLOSING THE COMPETITION
Topping your competitors
Offer something more
Are your competitors getting more subscribers and more views? Then try offering something more.
If they are always posting good multimedia content, then start by posting more multimedia content that are of better quality.
If you cannot beat them, be good in something else
Can’t beat your competitor in terms of multimedia content? Then beat them with better blog posts.
Can’t beat their frequent discount offers? Then beat them with better quality products.
Aim for their numbers
Use their numbers as the goal that drives you.
If you have 1000 subscribers and your competitor has 10,000, then your goal is to get another 9,000 subscribers.
Aim for their subscribers
Why not attract their subscribers towards you?
Maybe you can send them newsletters.
Learning from your competitors
See how your competitors use social media
Admit it. Your competitor might be better at handling their social media account.
In which case, simply learn from their expertise. Do how they do things.
See which of their messages get more response
Which among the blog posts of your competitor are getting more likes and replies?
Study those posts and analyze why those posts are viral. Apply what you learn to your own blog posts.
Analyze what about their page you find unattractive (from a customer’s viewpoint)
Imagine that you are a customer. As a customer (not a competitor), what do you find disappointing about their profile page?
Identify the mistakes and avoid making the same errors.
See how they make use of multimedia
Check out the video clips, images, graphics, sound clips, slideshows, and other media content posted by your competitors.
See how they do things right or wrong.
Monitoring your competitors
Regularly check the page of your competitors
Keep checking the page of your competitor at a regular basis. See how often they are updating their page.
Observe their movements and marketing plans.
Ask someone to do the monitoring
You might not have all the time to snoop around your competitor’s page round the clock.
Ask someone to do it for you.
Check out their future plans
Your competitors will announce things on their page. Keep checking for such posts and see their future plans.
You particularly want to keep an eye on their marketing plans (e.g. discount sales, promo offers, etc.).
Check out their growth
Check out how fast your competitors are growing.
They will usually announce such growth to entice their subscribers.
Subscribe
Create a dummy account. Subscribe to the site of your competitor.
This is because some competitors restrict some information and some features to their subscribers and members only.
Dummy Profiles
Make a dummy account
Dummy account should not be traceable to you. Create a new email account for this purpose only.
Reply to blog posts and suggest your brand
This will lead the subscribers of your competitor to check out your brand.
You might convert some of them.
Make suggestions subtle to avoid spam alert
When you suggest your brand, you must do so in a subtle way.
It should not sound like a Spam or it will be removed. Be creative.
Make multiple accounts
If you use only one account, people will notice that you are a spammer.
Make about 10 social media accounts.
Create a comment string
Create a conversation between your dummy
When one account says: “I also liked <brand>”, another account may say “Yeah I agree”.
Make the dummy profile fully private
Dummy accounts will likely have no friends, no real address, no albums, and such.
You can mask this by making the dummy profiles fully private.
This way, people will think that the albums and posts are not visible only because the profiles are private and not because those elements are really not there.
ROLE MODEL
Check how industry leaders do it
Industry leaders are the popular brands. With toothpastes for example, you can say that Colgate is one of the industry leaders.
Check out the profile page of the leaders in your industry and see how they do things.
Analyze why they succeeded
Study and observe the social media of these industry leaders.
Why is their page viral and popular?
Why are they getting a lot of subscribers?
Make a draft of how to imitate them
You should not just copy them. You should make a plan on how to do it.
Apply their techniques to your social media accounts
Take note that there are a lot of differences between your company and your role model company even if your company is in the same industry.
Do not just imitate things as they are.