how to increase social media exposure

It might sound funny coming from someone that will tell you if you don’t show up online you don’t exist, but the truth is, in-store signage (especially through the holidays) plays an integral role in your business as well.

Your store is about to be packed and (hopefully) have more customers than usual. Even better, NEW customers. I want you to leverage this time of year to help drive your business into 2020 and beyond.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re paying attention to your social media marketing- virtual high five for that! 🖐🏻 So get these new customers to follow you on social media while they’re in your store. You won’t have a better more captive audience than them!

It’s easy to create simple in-store signage with your social handles and place them in critical spots throughout your store (like at the register, in dressing rooms, or the restroom). You know as well as I do that, during busy, high-traffic times, it’s unrealistic to ask every customer to follow you on social media. So let the signs help! And, if you’re a CM Insider we have templates you can use by clicking on the Guides, Worksheets and Checklists icon on the Insider Dashboard. It’s one of our holiday gifts to you! 😉

Have you ever felt like there’s more you could be doing with your social media accounts, but you’re not really sure what it is, or how much time or money it will take?
There’s always something more we could be doing, right? I think this is especially true when it comes to social media marketing.

The 5 tips below are easy to do, won’t cost any extra money and is something you can start doing today. I call it social media cross-pollination and I think it is a critical component to social media success.

1. Promotion. One of the best ways to draw attention to a social media account is by promoting it on another social media account.

Example: Take a screen shot of your Pinterest profile; upload the photo to your Facebook page’s timeline and include text like, “On Pinterest? Us too! Let’s pin together! {Pinterest link}

2. Top Trends. To take the above tip a step further, find the content that is popular from your own Pinterest profile. These items will be the pins that have the most repins and/or likes. Take a screen shot of the top pin or board and post something like “Top Pinned Item of the Week {Pin link}” or “Check out our Pinterest board that’s filled with popular trends and fashionable finds for fall. {Pinterest board link}.”

If you’re new to Pinterest and still building your content and exposure, find top pins uploaded by others by clicking on ‘Popular’ in the top left search section. Next, scroll through pins to find something that has 100’s of repins that is a picture or video that relates to your type of business.

Example: If you’re a baby boutique, you might Repin this Potty Training Chart that has over 350 repins, take a screen shot of this image, add to Facebook and say, “We just found this helpful potty training chart on Pinterest. You can view it/print it/repin it here – {link to YOUR repin of the chart}.

3. Social Media Tabs. I’m assuming you use Facebook to market your business being that it is the largest social network with more than a billion users. If you haven’t added social media tabs to your Facebook page, you’re missing an opportunity to cross-pollinate and provide additional content to your page.

To do this, the tool I use is woobox.com. I like WooBox because it’s extremely easy to use and the social media tabs (Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube) are free to add to your Facebook page. To add, just go to woobox.com and click on Marketing Apps. Then click on the app you want to add like Pinterest Tab or Instagram Tab. Scroll down until you see a green button that says, “Get Started for Free” and then be prompted to sync your Facebook account with WooBox.

After adding the appropriate social media tabs to your Facebook page, I suggest taking it a step further and adding a branded graphic to the thumbnail image. Here’s an example from Natural Life, notice their Email, Instagram and Twitter application thumbnails all match their brand.

If you don’t have a graphic designer to create these for you, I highly recommend PicMonkey.com to do it yourself.

4. Pin a Facebook post. You might have noticed that Facebook and Pinterest don’t really play nice in the sandbox. Unfortunately (but fortunately from a personal privacy standpoint) you cannot pin pictures from Facebook. However, you can use one of my favorite tools called ShotPin which is a Chrome browser extension to take screen shots easier and add them to Pinterest.

So, you can take a screen shot using ShotPin of a post on your Facebook page that got a lot of likes or comments, and add it to Pinterest saying something like, “Trending post on our Facebook page! Like us here {Facebook page link

5. Just Tweet It. Finally, for those of you who tweet, make sure each week you’re linking and promoting your other social media accounts. Make your tweets more enticing by sharing the type of content on your page, if something went viral, or maybe something like, “New Arrivals in this week. Check our Facebook Album to see what’s new {shortened link to Facebook photo album}.

Here’s your action item: cross-pollinate two social media accounts and then leave a comment on this blog post including the link to where you did this so I can check it out.

Here’s an example where I cross-pollinated Pinterest and YouTube, by pinning one of my Crystal Media TV episodes, ‘5 Things to Know Before Hiring a Social Media Pro.’