Not tracking social media mentions is like giving someone your debit card and not paying any attention as to how much or if any money was taken out of your account!
With a little bit of time and effort, you can start paying attention to the mentions on your social media and even recycle them!
If someone with a high influence mentions you on social media, are you paying attention to even see how that could be influencing your growth in business and on social media?
If you aren’t, you need to start doing so after reading this blog post.
Did you know that the outdoor company REI has a 6,557% increase in social media mentions this year than last? Their decision to launch a social media campaign focusing on a very important fact which we’ll go into below is what helped set them far above their competition when it comes to social media mentions.
In today’s blog post we’re going to learn how to leverage your social media mentions.
1. Don’t Start Tweets with @ and a Username
That, which is called an @mention (or “at mention”), will only have the tweet go to the person mentioned directly and not appear on their newsfeed which doesn’t leverage the tweet for social media.
QUICK TIP: To get the most exposure when using an at mention, place a (.) at the beginning of the tweet or to reword the tweet so that the @mention is within the tweet and not the very beginning.
Since I added the period at the beginning of this tweet to Steph Nissen, it appeared in my newsfeed for all to see.
2. Space Out Your Mentions
We all know how exciting it is to see that someone has mentioned you on social media — espsecially if it is a current customer proclaiming great reviews on your business or an influencer speaking about you. However, be sure to not post numerous thank you posts back-to-back. Specifically on Twitter, it makes your profile timeline look cluttered with such repetitious ‘thank yous’ and may not be the best first impression for new prospective followers viewing your profile. Twitter features the three most recent tweets in the user profile preview pane, so consider two your maximum number for consecutive thank yous.
3. Use Great Monitoring Tools
Agorapulse – We’d be remiss if we didn’t include that Agorapulse has the ability for you to monitor mentions for multiple Twitter and Instagram accounts. Manually looking for mentions on social media can be time consuming. Who has time for that? When you take a social media monitoring tool such as Agorapulse for a test drive, your weekly task list (and you) will thank us for the time saved on this one!
Once in the monitoring section, you can add words or hashtags you want to be sure and follow to track influencers and great conversations.
(Not yet using Agorapulse? Start your free trial today!)
QUICK TIP: See how recently the results were discovered and interact as close to real-time as possible to increase positive results on time sensitive conversations. This is especially important for potential leads for new business.
Social Mention is a great tool to uncover brand mentions and interactions in an easy-to-digest visual format for real-time social media search and analysis. Let’s say you are interested in connecting with people that are using your business name. You then can do a search and then intentionally go and have conversations via social media with those very people in real-time on a certain topic and deepen potential relationships.
4. Mention Influencers in your Blog Posts
When you include key influencers in your blog post, you are not only giving validation to the content of your blog but you are giving yourself a great opportunity to leverage that for the growth of your website traffic. For example, after I published “15 Fantastic Pinterest Accounts to Follow on Social Media,” I created social media posts mentioning two people at a time as I promoted the post. By doing an @mention of the influencer on social media letting them know that they are in your blog post, you will not only draw their attention to the post but you will most likely have additional exposure to the people that are following them [which could be HUGE]!
Using more @mentions in your tweets will lead to more retweets on Twitter. However I recommend keeping it to around two. Sometimes more than two can start to feel ‘spammy’.
QUICK TIP: Recycle old blog posts on social media by mentioning different people from within your blog post in a varied rotation. Although the post may be the same, rotating the people that you do the @mention may increase the exposure each time in who will be paying ‘extra’ attention to your post.
Kim Garst mentioned two people by name in this tweet with a link to her blog post.
5. Use Conversational Mention
With a conversational mention on Twitter, reply to a RT with a conversational response about the post to ignite a great discussion. By using “reply” you enable other users to easily follow the conversation thread. When you include a question that is going to basically lead them to interact with you, your chances increase of a dialogue getting started. This is exactly what you want with potential customers and leads.
6. Mention Influencers on Instagram
To mention someone on Instagram, type @ followed directly with their username (ex: “great course, @kimgarst!”). The person you mention will get a notification in their activity letting them know. And the more attention you can get to let others know that they are being talked about on Instagram (and all social media for that matter), the more likely they are to interact with you. Remember we’re looking for interaction because social media is a two-way street.
This Instagram post includes the mention of influencers within the social media marketing space.
Especially on evergreen content, you want to make sure you recycle these types of posts. On Twitter, due to the fast pace of that platform, you can share similar content several times within the same week. And even on Facebook, you can use similar mentions and content — just space it out or use a different image to make the recycled content appear ‘unique.’
7. Create Content that Evokes Emotion
Earlier we mentioned that the brand REI has seen an explosive increase in their social media mentions. In fact it is 10 times more conversations about their business than other comparable brands. It all has to do with their decision to close on Nov. 27, 2015 (also known as Black Friday, a huge shopping day in the United States following Thanksgiving Day) to encourage customers and employees to spend the day after Thanksgiving with family and friends in the outdoors. This approach to a campaign does not necessarily correlate to amazing sales. (However it very well could!) So far, the brand REI seems to be getting very great and positive publicity about this move. Hey, even we’re writing about it!
In Conclusion…
If someone mentions you on social media, that they did it because they want your attention. This is a perfect opportunity to reach back out to them when the timing is right and give them the opportunity to get into your online marketing funnel. The mentions are simply a tool that you can use to deepen your online connections and grow them stronger. The more interactions you have consistently with influencers, clients, prospective customers and more can really make a difference in your own reputation on social media.
What is your favorite way to mention others on social media? What’s your favorite platform to mention others? Let us know in the comments below!
