Customers are the oxygen of any business, it is that simple, and unless you can get the attention of those customers you just can't sell to them. Years ago it was easy to get the attention of the consumer. An advert in the local paper or even some radio time would massively increase your business. However that was then, right now the world is on social media and in this article we share with you 25 social media strategy examples that will help to grow your business. But if you needed convincing on why you need to focus on social media marketing, you need to read this; It is estimated that the average person spends around a third of their time on their smart phones and checks their social media around 17 times a day, and if that isn't enough; Social media now drives a massive 31% of all internet traffic. The simple truth is that if you are in business you need to become a ninja at using social media and in this article you will learn a range of social media strategies that will take your ability to a whole new level.

You will learn how to gain leads using content that other people create (yes this is perfectly legal to do and free).

You will learn how to create content that goes viral (and we have examples) and how you can create viral content overnight.

You will learn a multitude of growth hacks for YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, and a range of social media strategies and tools that will have you crushing it online in no time!

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So if you are ready let's do this:

1. Use Sniply To Get Leads From Every Post, Even If The Content Shared Is Not Yours!

Wouldn't it be brilliant if every piece of content you shared could bring a lead to your site, and that includes content you share on Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter. Well, you can achieve this using Sniply.

Sniply is a tool that literally lets you add a link to content on the content itself. Here is how it works. Once I have a Sniply account I add the extension to my Chrome browser and whenever I find a piece of content I like I click the Sniply icon:

Once there I can create a call to action button and alter its colour and location as you can see below I have changed it completely.

After I have decided on it's location and style, I will then press the snip it button and a range of sharing options pop up as well as the finished call to action.

If I am happy with it I literally just click the icon of the social media network I want to share it on and off the snip goes. This is what the Tweet looks like in my feed:

When one of my audience sees the post and clicks on it, they will go to the original content and see my pop up as it has been designed and if they click the link they go to my home site.

This technique is amazing, and I can use it to get leads from the amazing content that others have created. So it is a win, win situation for everyone. In this example I used the amazing post on list building by Brian Dean at Backlinko, I can literally share the best content and get the potential of leads from every share.

2. Use Storify To Gather Amazing Content And Get Noticed By Social Media Influencers

Storify is one of those things I wish I used more often because it is so fast and easy to use to curate great content.

To use it create an account and you will be greeted with a dashboard:

From this part, it is very similar to using WordPress as you have a title and a description you can add. However, you will notice that you have a search field to the right. This is a very powerful search engine that will get content from the web on any subject you wish. For an example I have decided to curate some of Neil Patel's videos and articles in one place, partially for my use and also because I think others will find it useful who follow me on social media.

Storify is so easy to use, I literally just search for the content and then drag and drop it into the post and once I publish the story I get a really professional looking web page (see below) But wait, that is just the beginning, you soon get noticed as I will show you next.​

The great thing about Storify is that it will notify all those who are mentioned in the story, this is an amazingly fast way to draw attention to the post. Just check the views when compared with the minutes on my story

That is 7 views in just 8 minutes and I know that this story will just grow and grow because it is literally packed with content.

3. Use Wisestamp To Help Develop Trust With People You Email

There is a saying "people buy from who they know, like and trust" and it isn't rocket science to realise that it's true. In fact, leading social media expert Gary Vaynerchuk wrote in his book The Thank You Economy "Real business isn't done in board meetings; it's done over a half eaten plate of buffalo wings at the sports bar, or at the intermission of a Broadway show. It's done through and enthusiastic greeting, with an unexpected recommendation, or by offering up a cab when it's raining. It happens in the small personal interactions that allow us to prove to each other who we are and what we believe in. Honest moments that promote good feelings and build trust and loyalty."

As building trust is essential to business, wouldn't it be great if there was a way to speed up this process?

Well with Wisestamp there is​!

​Wisestamp is a free tool (they have a premium version) that allows you to add your image and social media links to your email signature in seconds. All you need to do is ​go to their site and create your email signature from a range of templates.

​ And once done it will insert into every email you send (as mine is below). This way, every time you send out an email you are starting to build trust with people by showing them all your contact details and media channels.

4. Send A Customer A Thank You VideoEmail To Help Deepen Your Relationship Using BombBomb

This tactic is again another great one to increase the personal connection you have with a lead or a customer.

But why is this so important? Let me explain. According to Radicati.com ; "In 2015, the number of business emails sent and received per user per day totals 122 emails per day. This figure continues to show growth and is expected to average 126 messages sent and received per business user by the end of 2019."

That means that over a typical working week the average person sends and receives 610 emails! ​That is a lot of time spent typing and receiving emails! But that is not all.......... We have to remember that everyone we send an email to is a human being, with their busy life, family and workload. It is likely that you have never seen or met a lot of the people you email. It does dehumanise the process of communication. BombBomb changes this and according to a customer survey they ran, video email achieved:

80.72% of people generate more replies and responses

of people generate more replies and responses 87.03% get more clicks through their emails

get more clicks through their emails 68.21% convert more leads

convert more leads 90.10% stay in touch more effectively

stay in touch more effectively 55.88% generate more referrals So how can you use BombBomb to help you? Well here is a great idea. Send all your customers a thank you email using the service; This helps to improve your relationship and maybe even get some repeat business. Here's how: Once you go to BombBomb, you can have 14-day free trial. And within the dashboard, you can create lists and contacts, and you can quickly send your customers a video. It really is a simple as clicking on the send a thank you message button, and then a window pops up..... Then record your message and simply send it, for those of you using Gmail you can add an extension and a button will appear on the left of your screen.

We all like to be appreciated, and this tactic will certainly put your personality behind the emails you send and help you to grow your business.

5. Find and Use Trending Hashtags To Get Heard and Seen By More People

One of the world's most annoying things is to see a tweet of a Facebook post with about 15 hashtags that the person just made up. Yes, they technically could become viral, but it really is not likely. Hashtags allow you join the conversation on a variety of platforms and allow others to find your content more easily, so it's essential to find trending and the right hashtags for your content. One way to do this is to use h﻿ashtagify.me .

To do this just go to the site and type in your market in the search bar on the right top corner.​

​ Once you do this, you get some amazing results with a full list of the best hashtags and also the recent top media on the right.

So you can now pick the best hashtags for your content that will help it get shared and seen. However, there is more. You can actually scroll down and click the show more button on the right-hand side.

​And this will give you access to a whole wall of hashtags

So now not only can you use the best performing hashtags you can join in conversations in your market with others, and this helps to grow your network and get your content seen.

6. Use Hellobar on Your Site To Get More Likes, Fans and Followers

One of the best things you can do is take a look at what the best in your industry are doing and then try and do the same. Neil Patel is one of the best, and he used Hellobar on his site Quicksprout to get more likes on Facebook. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg for its uses.

To get started go to the Hellobar site​ and add your url and also log in.

Once inside you have a range of options, as you can use Hellobar to grow your site, send a message or get more likes/ follows etc.

You can customise almost every aspect of the Hellobar and engineer it for more like tweets or even email sign ups. Once you are happy with your design and location, just download the script via a plug in and add it to your WordPress site buy going to the plug in section and uploading it. (Please note this is for self-hosted WordPress sites only)

Once you have uploaded the plug in you can manage the pop up from the Hellobar site, and you are all set to grow your audience. My follow us on Twitter pops up on the bottom corner of my site.

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7. Create a Quiz Using Fyrebox To Boost Engagement

I started using Fyrebox for clients to increase the engagement with their site visitors, and it works like a charm.

It is a quiz builder that has a free and paid for version, and it is fast yet simple to use, and you can embed the quiz into your WordPress blog also. To start using you can either create your own Quiz or use one of their templates.​

From there all you need to do is start to add your questions within your chosen format

Once you have added your questions and answers it is a case of embedding your quiz in your site or literally just sharing your post on quiz on social media via a link. I personally suggest embedding your quiz so that you increase your site visitors time on page which is great for SEO purposes. But what were the results of doing this?

Well one quiz I did gathered 86 email addresses and had a 167 users in one day! Not bad for 15 minutes work.

8.Make Sure You Invite Video Liker's To Like Your Facebook Page: This Will Help Grow Your Fanbase

​This is a really cool trick that so many miss. You spend all week creating a great video and once you add it to Facebook people love it. It gets lots of likes but for some reason, these people do not 'like' your page. I am not sure why but I personaly think people just press the like button for the video, and they think that's all. However, we need to get them liking your page and here is how.....

​Go into your Facebook page and go to your video section

Once there pick a video that has a good number of likes, once you click on the video you will see the names of all the people that liked your video.

Next you need to click on the 'others' text and up pops a box

You can see straight away if the person that liked your video likes your page and then you can invite them to like your page if they haven't. This is a quick trick that is out there but few know about. ​

9. Create Memes With Get Stencil To Get Massive Shares And Likes

A lot of people think that memes are a thing of the past and Gifs are the way forward. That might be correct to a degree, however, every day I keep seeing memes on Facebook and as such they still have relevance. But if you step out of the traditional way of doing memes you will see epic results.

You see most people use the same old boring quotes and cat images. My way is to create your own. And the tool I use for this is Stencil

Stencil was previously known as Share As Image but recently was relaunched with a bucket load of great features

Once​ logged in you can choose from a wide selection of images, upload your own logo and add a quote or saying and you are soon ready to go.

Stencil has really taken the viral image game further and included over 6,000 images you can use and within the editor, you are able to change the fonts, colours and pretty much everything you could need.

But Stencil has one amazing feature that really sets it apart. With just a click you can instantly size any image for the social media network of your choice. No more downloading and then resizing, this allows you to produce content that is native for the network. I checked and it took me 2 minutes to post an image to 3 different networks in 3 different sizes

I know what you are thinking. This is all well and good but are the results like?

41 likes and 58 shares for something that took me 10 minutes to put together isn't bad at all! The trick with this technique is to use it sparingly. Maybe once very 14 days, so you can afford to spend time looking for comments and quotes that will really work. One super tip I have is to see what is working now and look on the same line. To do this, I log into Facebook and go to their search bar and search for pages. I then look at the popular ones and click on them.

I then look at their photos and see what they are uploading and what is getting liked and shared and I will use a Google Doc to record the meme words and phrases. This way I have a go-to resource for memes that get liked and shared. The effort level for this is pretty low but it works really well.

10. 7 or 14 Days of Tips To Increase Your Engagement

Permission based marketing isn't anything new and it is something that Seth Godin talks about a lot in his blogs and books. However it is still extremely effective. As marketers know it is a case of giving something really valuable in exchange for a name and email. Once you have this you can build upon the relationship you have with more great content and eventually offer them a paid for service. However instead of just giving one item in exchange for an email what about a free course or programme? This can be seen being used by The Body coach who gives a 14 day get lean guide.

One of my clients really wanted to try this so we used Thrive Themes content builder and Thrive Leads Plug in to create a new landing page for them.

Now I have to admit I basically stole this idea from Bryan Harris at Videofruit , after he wrote an article about the 'upside down landing page' . I read about how this approach increased his subscribers. So we tried it out.

Although Bryan used lead pages for his and we used Thrive, the idea was quite simple. To grab the attention of the visitor right away. Did it work? Take a look at the conversion rate for the page after a few days!

Now for those of you who think this isn't social media think again, because we promoted this free course on Facebook which helped with the exposure and the results as well. But a 20% conversion rate is not to be sniffed at

11. Use Sumo Me Highlighter To Get More Blog Readers

If you are into content marketing and social media you need to check out Sumo Me and also their really cool highlighter tool.

The tool is free and is easy ​to install on wordpress. However here is a really quick guide: First go to your plugins section on your wordpress dashboard:​

Next up click the add new plug in and type in Sumo Me in the search bar and up it comes.

Once activated you will notice a very small blue icon tucked away at the side of your screen, put your mouse over it and the crown sign will pop out and you can click on this

Once clicked and logged in the sumo me store opens up with lots of cool free and paid for things however for now we want to install the Highlighter tool:

As you would expect you can edit the pop up however you wish and there are some paid for features but this tool allows you to be able to highlight any part of your text and share it as a Facebook post or Tweet. Just think about that for a second, you can literally take any element of your post and re-use this again and again. It takes seconds to do, just highlight a line of text and away you go

I'm sure you can see how super powerful a feature like this is and it can give you a whole lot more to Tweet or post about whilst driving great traffic to your website

12. Use Vid IQ With YouTube To get More Video Views

I have an extensive guide on using Vid IQ here however today I will give an overview for you. Vid IQ is basically an intelligence tool for YouTube. It allows you to see what the best videos and keywords are for your niche so you have a better chance at being discovered by the world's second largest search engine .

Once you sign up with Vid IQ you have a load of options but once their extension is installed you start to see more data than you ever thought possible:

Without going into too much detail here, Vid IQ is literally a power tool for YouTube, and it has amazing features that will help you to rank videos. If we look at Tim Ferris (author, speaker and 4 Hour Brand genius​) on YouTube and go to his top video on how to peel a boiled egg, we can see that it has over 7 Million Views!!!!

However using Vid IQ we can see exactly where those views come from and what types of tags he is using.

Vid IQ also has a very handy keyword score which let's you know how easy it will be to break into a search term. So this will stop you wasting your time when trying to rank a video for a super competitive search term.

A lot of people ignore YouTube and forget it is a search engine Vid IQ allows you to really lift the bonnet on the search engine in a way you have never seen before. (Update to the post)​ Since the time of writing this article VidIQ has made some upgrades to their service and now has an amazing keyword/ SEO section to their tool​. This will allow you to gain even greater traction on YouTube. To use the tool you will need a paid account form them but once inside your dashboard go to the SEO function. and you will be able to see what Keywords are now trending.

You can also quickly make changes to a lot of videos with their bulk SEO feature or you can plan your video SEO using their Keyword research tool.

You will be able to see what words are searched for on YouTube and this can really help you in targeting videos that are easy to rank for and help to increase your channel views.

13. Use Pagemodo To Create Awesome Facebook Posts And Find The Best Content To Share​

Pagemodo is a great tool for Facebook that allows you create great looking pages, Contest,posts and ads with little fuss or stress and as we know Facebook is key when developing your social media marketing strategy. However, one of the best features I have found is that it allows you to find great web content that your audience will love. To do this simply go into their suggested posts and enter your topic or niche. Here I use the phrase 'SEO'.

Once you have done that you will see a range of the best content on the web that you can check out and share.

From here it is a case of choosing which images you want to show and the layout and you are away.

When you are running one Facebook page, finding content is easy however I have found that when running 10 or more client pages life gets tricky and Pagemodo saves a massive amount of time by helping me to find relevant content for the clients audience.

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14. Post Off Peak To Facebook To get More Engagement

The common goal with Facebook was to try and post when your audience was on-line. It makes sense right? Wrong.... whilst in essence, you would think that it makes sense for you to post to a bigger audience, in actual fact you are going up against increased competition. In his excellent post on Facebook reach Neil Patel goes into detail on this subject and in the last 8 months I have been testing this idea out and this is what I discovered....

On one page I look after for a client I started to run some tests based on audience location. To do this I went into their page manager and checked on the insights tab, from there I went to people. What I was able to tell was where in the world the vast majority of the people that liked the pages are based. This page I have shown has a huge quantity of Indian based fans who speak English.

Now if you are newly taking over a Facebook page as a social media manager do not assume that this is a sign of 'fake likes'. In fact, with a global business, you can really grow your Facebook page by targeting English language speakers in a foreign country. However the game here is simple...... to get your posts seen by the most people. ​To do this you have two options depending on the amount of time you have. Option 1: Post Once To Get Both Audiences​

As my largest audiences for this page are India with the UK coming in as second, I know that these are the 2 areas I want to promote a post to get more people seeing it organically.

If we go to posts and see when my audience is actually online we see the following:

You can see from this data that my audience is pretty low on a Wednesday and slowly builds up over the weekend and drops off like a cliff between Tuesday and Wednesday. The data also shows me that my audience is mostly on line between Lunchtime and 6.30pm. Although I have no hard evidence I think this is due to the large Indian Audience becoming active around the time they finish work which coincides with the lunchtime of the UK. So my off peak time is clearly midnight! And guess what time it is in the UK when its midnight in India? 6.30pm! For this page I tested posting at 6.30pm and it worked brilliantly. Take a look at the engagement:

Although you never know for certain, I believe that I am actually competing against less people in both the UK and India with this tactic. Which allows me to get the best of both audiences, however there is another way I can use to be more exact.

Option 2: Target Your Audience​

The second option I have used is to ​target your specific audience. To do this you simply click on the ​'target' icon as show in the image above when you post. Next you have two options:​

For my page I would probably like to target separate countries with posts that are specific to them, this in itself would really help with engagement. So I simply click on audience restrictions and set my locations and away I go. The second tab, prefered audience is a great one to use if your business has multiple products​

Preferred audience would be great for example if I was a large store/ chain and I was selling multiple product lines. Depending on your audience you really tap into the right people who want that type of post and it is also a grat way to reduce people 'unliking' your page.

15. Cross Promote With OPP's (Other Peoples Pages) To Grow Your Own Audience.

This one is super simple so I won't over do it. I actually picked this up from Neil Patel's $100,000 challenge.

One of the best ways to stay relevant to your audience is to actually post content from other people. In fact a recent guide was put together by Sproutsocial

The snippet above is from sprout social's great guide to Facebooks Edge Rank. However just as Neil Patel uses this technique so can you.

As the image at the top shows you, simply go and search your niche in Facebooks search bar and click pages. In this example you might be the social media manager for a shoe company, so simply find a page with a decent number of likes and click on it....

Once on the page check it out and simply message the page admin. Here is an example of an out reach message I used recently for a page I run:

The trick is knowing that everyone is really busy, so having great content from another page can really be helpful for both of you. Social media is about people and not robots so go out and build relationships.

16. Use Twitter Lists To Connect With Influencers

Twitter is an excellent tool but it is filled with noise. If Twitter was a room with real people in, I think it would resemble the stock exchange. So you need a way to stay focused on those things that matter to you. To achieve this I use lists. If you head into your Twitter account and click on your profile link

You can then see your lists and create a new one. You could have one for authors you like, one for SEO, one for influencers and even a local one. To add people to your lists simply click on the cog icon, in this example I pick my favourite writer James Altucher

Now when I log into Twitter I can just check my lists to see what the influencers are up to and I can join in with their conversations. It means that my Twitter account becomes far more useful for my goals (which are to be educated and help others). Does it work? Well I am still trying it but here is what recently happened to one of my Tweets:

I used the same approach for one of my favourite bloggers and SEO experts Glen from @Viperchill, if you haven't already you need to check out his amazing site.

A word of warning though! This is not about stalking but actually about getting involved with a conversation on-line. I am not a huge Twitter fan, but I am using it more these days and trialling it at the moment and loving it more since I started using lists with more precision.

17.​ Get Your Business Ready For SnapChats Impending Growth

I have to admit, I didn't like the idea of Snapchat at first. However this was before Facebook started to get harder to get engagement due to the sheer amount of competition. I was looking for a platform that allowed people that wanted to hear from me, to actually be able to see my posts and not what Facebook decided. ​I have to say it was Gary Vaynerchuk that really got me into thinking how great Snapchat is and will be. Check out his YouTube video below to see why it is so great:

Part of snapchats appeal is that it forces you to pay attention to the things that matter most, so this mini-guide I have put together is both a way for you to start using Snapchat and also to get something cool from me. Why Use Snapchat?​ According to stats there are over 100 million users of Snapchat and most of them are under the age of 24. In essence when everyone's mums started using Facebook we saw the teenagers of the world go to Snapchat. A place where parents couldn't snoop and messages disappeared.

However those teenagers are now growing up and are adults and guess which social media app they are using..... you guessed it. In fact, if you go to Google Trends and look at compare searches for Twitter and Snapchat the results are surprising. ​

I truly believe that now is the time to develop a following on Snapchat and over time you will start to see great results.

​Follow Me on Snapchat To Grow Your Blog To 30,000 Visitors Per Month

So here's the deal. This is a shot of my site stats for Dec 2015 to January 2016. Over 70,000 page views and 31,413 sessions on another site I run. In this mini guide I will show you exactly how to get on Snapchat and use it, however, I am also giving you a hands-on tuition with a bonus. If you follow me right now on Snapchat, every day from the time this post goes live I will be telling you on Snapchat how to grow your blog to 30,000 visits per month!!! I will literally tell you everything, no stone unturned, every day there will be a new social media or blogging tip. All you have to do is follow the steps I will outline today. But don't worry I will explain here not only how to follow me but the basics of Snapchat.

​The Basics of Snap Chat

If you are scared of Snapchat don't worry. All you need to understand is that it is the app that requires attention. So for example if you don't see my snaps every day you could miss out on key advice that could help you to grow your business. Why? Well, that is because the snaps disappear after 24 hours! In this guide, I am specifically going to show you how to use Snapchat to promote your business, blogs or whatever else you want. I would love it if you join me as I start to do the same. Here we go..... To start off with Snapping go to the app store or Google play and download the app. Gary Vaynerchuk has a great guide to the basics of Snapchat here.

However once downloaded open the app and take a picture of yourself and set up your profile

There are 2 ways to snap. 1. The Basic Snap

This is where you take a video or a picture and send it to one of your contacts. You can add filters, speed up or slow down the video, however it is the second element that you need to start to take seriously! 2. Stories​ Stories are a way you can communicate with all your followers​ and it will be the exact way that I will be sharing all my tips and advice. Posting Basics: Photos: You can post a photo by simply tapping the big button in the middle of the page​

​As you would expect by touching the buttons at the top you can add emojis and text as well:

Videos: You can only post 10 second videos in your stories and they disappear after 24 hours. To post a story all you do is record a video by holding the big button and after recording you add it to your stories by clicking on the + box.

Building A Following Now I have to admit I am literally just starting off on this platform and I have a grand total of 9 followers now! However, everyone has to start somewhere and to be truly honest it is not going to be easy to build a following at the moment as Snapchats search features are not that great. However this is how I am going to do this: ​1. Add Your Snap Code To Your Website

The first thing you need to do is go to https://accounts.snapchat.com/accounts/snapcodes Once there you will see the above code. Download it and then extract the jpeg file. The next step is to go to your wordpress blog/ site and add it to your media in the site. use the Jetpack feature that is free. From there go to the sidebar and click the image tab like so: Next, use the Jetpack feature in WordPress that is free and go to your Widget dashboard. From there go to the sidebar and click the image tab like so:

Once you have done this you can add you jpeg Snapcode url from your media gallery and also a message such as a call to action like "Follow us to get a blogging tip every day"

From this area your snap code will be visible in your blogs side bar like mine is

But wait that is not all you can do to build a Snapchat following. You can share your snap handle to other social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. To save you time all you have to do is click on your Snapcode in the app and it will take you to a second screen on your phone. Then it is just a case of clicking the share icon and picking which network to share to

And slowly over time your Snap Chat presence should grow (I know mine is already). However what I want you to do right now is take action! Get out your phone right now and sign up for Snapchat, it takes seconds. Next ​simply open the app and press it over my snapcode below and it will allow you to add me:

18. Use Grum To Get Likes And Comments On Instagram (Instantly) Instagram is hot right now but it is also a tough landscape to get traction on. Especially if you are not young, hot and like posing semi naked. That being said everyone can gain traction on Instagram if they are prepared to put the effort in, and just like all social media platforms there are a few quick hacks to help you get started.

How To Schedule Instagram Posts Using Grum​ The first ​hack I use on Instagram is a platform called Grum. This nifty little website allows me to schedule my Instagram posts from a computer and that is really useful, from both a time saving point of view, and if you are like myself running multiple Instagram accounts can be time consuming. That being said this is my 'Instagram strategy​' and so far it is working well. What I do is head over to a design tool. I use Get Stencil but you could use Canva or many other design apps. The aim then is to create content that gets seen and here is a post I created in Get Stencil for Instagram (for a client)

I will then download the image (Get Stencil allows you to download in retina format which is great for Instagram), and then upload to Grum.

The beauty of Grum is that it allows you to add Hashtags inside the first comment rather than inside the post, which looks cleaner and more professional (and like you are not trying to get attention, even though we actually are). But what Hashtags should you use? Well I got this tip from a webinar featuring Foundr Creator Nathan Chan who was promoting his Instagram Domination course​. Head over to Tagsforlikes.com and you will see a range Of tags that might be suitable for your industry, either way copy and paste ones you like and head back over the Grum.

Once in Grum just paste the hashtags and then schedule the post and rinse and repeat. The downside of adding so many tags is that you will get bots following you, spammers and also people who just want 'follow for follows'.On the surface this looks like a bad idea, but you actually do get real people following you and also some influencers! ​Check these results:

We posted this image to a new and fresh client account. Sure only 13 likes but one of the people commentating was Cris Cyborg, who is she?

Cris Cyborg is an industry influencer for the client and has a whopping 341,000 Instagram followers. Not bad for a few minutes work ​19. Create Viral Videos That Grow Your Product Or Service For many of you this part of the article will be the best/ most useful because viral marketing can make any business an overnight success. A classic story of Virality is that of ﻿﻿﻿﻿Karen X. Cheng​. Karen is pretty much (in my opinion) a real virality expert because she has achieved success time and time again. That being said, the work in which Karen puts into her videos is simply amazing, so it is no wonder that she has now worked with brands such as Beats and Microsoft. Check out her video on learning to dance in a year which has had over 6 million YouTube Views.

​ So how does she and others actually go viral? Well there are a variety of recipes and we are going to look at a few of them. The first recipe we are going to look at is called STEPPS and this was created by Professor Jonah Berger who is the best selling author of the book Contagious. ​In his book he has laid out a system that teaches you how to go viral and in a nut shell here it is. Social Currency: This is perhaps the most powerful of viral techniques because it taps into a core reason people share, to make themselves look good. When you share any content you often do so to show people what you believe in. This is almost a 'told you so​' kind of approach from people. For example if you believe coconut oil is the best thing anyone can use for their health, if you read an article that supports your view then you are more likely to share this to your friends. Another aspect of Social Currency is that people share remarkable content because it makes them look remarkable as well. ​ People want to be the life of the party and if they are sharing amazing content online it shows them in a positive light as well. Triggers: For years we saw a great advert in the UK with a brand called Kit Kat. Their marketing message was simple, 'Have a break, have a Kit Kat'. This is what is called a Trigger. From that point on, people associated breaks with the Kit Kat. We Have Seen the same with Diet Coke and their female orientated 'Diet Coke Break' advert too.

If you can link your product or service with a Trigger then you will have great success because when people think of one thing they automatically think of you, and the more that trigger is part of everyday life the more viral your campaign will be. Emotion: People share things that stir up powerful emotions and this is a tactic that works well. But you need to stick to high arousal emotions.​

HIGH AROUSAL

Awe, Excitement, Amusement(humour)

Stick to creating content that is either positive or negative in context but invokes high arousal emotions and your traffic will soar. Public: People can't share things they cannot see​ and being public is a key to growing a viral campaign. In the past we saw this on full display when the UK fashion brand French Connection UK created a campaign called 'FCUK ​Fashion'. It sold over 20 million units long before the world of Facebook was around, and yes I owned a few versions of them. The person behind this campaign was a marketing genius called Trevor Beatie​ who realised that the words FCUK resembled a certain swear word, and so it went viral in a non internet way. More recently we have seen similar success with the campaign Movember

The Movember campaign is all about raising awareness and support for Testicular cancer and by growing a moustache people can see who is supporting it. We have seen the same with things such as The Ice Bucket Challenge and now The 22 Push ups campaigns which were made public via social media. Practical Value: Practical value is yet another great way to go viral and look no further than sites such as Buzzfeed Food or Facebook pages like Bright Side to ​see this. If you run a food business this is your key to gain amazing traction online for very little money.

This short video on making Pizza Cones netted Buzzfeed food over 155 Million video views!!! Story: The last part of Jonah Berger's system is all about story telling. We are hard wired to learn things via stories, and if you can tell a great story then you can achieve virality for your product or service. ​A good story can spread like wild fire and a great example of a superb story is used by Google themselves in their Parisian Love video. What we see on display there is the story of people falling in love told via Google searches:

But what about Karen X. Cheng's methods for going viral? Well fortunately she put together a great article on going viral but I will break down her 10 points here, please note these virality tips are focused on video and not articles though. 1.Don't Be Too Good For Marketing This is a great tip, make a marketing plan.​ 2. Understand How Things Go Viral Things go viral because of a few key factors, people sharing, people embedding into blogs and if you are lucky enough you might make it to the front page of YouTube or Reddit as well. ​Once you start to look into this you can see what is already going viral and have a greater chance of success. 3. Release On A Monday Or Tuesday Karen believes videos go viral because they are ​being watched whilst people are at work, weekends slow growth. This is a really good point which I agree with after my own viral success. Case in point release early in the week. 4. Figure Out Who Has A​ Stake In Your Video In this post I have mentioned a lot of services and guess what, I will be letting them all know about this article as well. ​The same applies for your video, figure out who would benefit and let them know about it. Some might share, others might not, but give it a try. 5. None of This Matters If Your Video Isn't Any Good Pretty obvious, make a great video and people will watch it. Yet many people fail at this first hurdle. I watched a video by rising (and leading) social media Guru ﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿Steven Bartlett﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿ only last night (I have linked to his Facebook feed so you can check it out). Steven talks about how as marketers we fail to make content for the audience and too often focus on what we want. Great advice and well worth checking out. 6. Tell A Story This cropped up in the STEPPS system so you can be sure that it works. Karen's dancer video was a story of a girl learning to dance in a year, yes there are a lot of great dancers out there but that wasn't the point. It was a story as much about dedication as to dancing. Tell stories.​ 7. Make Your Video Shorter People are seriously short on time, make your videos short so they can watch then share within a minute or two.​ 8. Write A Viral Title The headline makes the difference, so your Title of your video is key to getting great results​ 9. Learn What Your Willing To Compromise This is a tricky one but I get what Karen means. If you create something you tend to love it and want it in the format you love. But going back to Steven Bartlett's advice 'It is about them and not you'. You might have to compromise on your personal beliefs to ensure that you get more exposure/ virality. 10. What To Do Once You Go Viral​ This is something that Jonah Berger goes into detail about as well but he calls it 'Valuable Virality'. Karen admits she made a mistake when she failed to have a way to collect email addresses on her website. Once you go viral you need a way ​to make the most of that power. It might be trying to get more work off the back of the success, make those calls that you need to and start hustling to grow your brand, service or business. ​How To Go Viral Over Night Case Study Although I am yet to have Karen's success I have achieved some viral traffic of my own.

These are the video stats for a Facebook video I created for a client. It has been viewed by over 400,000 people and I can tell you that video views for 2 others I have done are over the 200,000 views mark. But how did I do it? ​To be honest I used a combination of the STEPPS formula, Karen X. Cheng's tips and my own system that I use to generate Facebook Traffic that I call The Shareaholic Method. For this video I picked a person that people in the clients niche relate to, Bruce Lee. I then went off and researched some great comments he has made on self defence and I wrote an article for the client

​As you can see the article was a success with over 2,000 Facebook shares (It also got stolen by a viral site and that gained over 16,000 shares). As I had proof of content success I decided to create a short video of the core points. I used a combination of text and video mash ups and it went off like a rocket. The results helped boost the clients video stats to 1.4 million views:

​Not too shabby when you consider the videos took me just a day to create. Ultimately you need great videos and articles but if you can hit those high arousal emotions you have a great chance to go viral. 20. Document, Don't Create



Gary Vaynerchuk created this phrase recently and it has become very popular. In essence Gary was addressing the whole issue around time. So many of us want to grow a social media following it seems impossible unless you have a full team of staff at your disposal. Gary views your life as an opportunity for growth and if you simply start to document what is going on around you then you will have plenty of content soon enough. You can read the whole strategy in detail here 21. How To Vlog

I am pretty new to vlogging but so far I am loving it. So what is it? Basically blogging but on video but much more than that. The written word is timeless in many ways but video is new. Imagine if your great grandfather had the technology to of recorded his life, how cool would that be. I view vlogging as just that, a record of my life. I think it will be great to look back on my journey when I am much older and see my life and journey recorded down. On a business perspective I think vlogging allows people to learn more about me as a person. This breaks down barriers and I think it is a good thing. I am just starting to get to grips with vlogging but in the video guide below I walk through the tools I use to create videos.

22. Use Story Content For LinkedIN To Boost Engagement





LinkedIN is changing fast, gone are the days where it is a stuffy platform full of old geezers or recruitment specialists (well they are there too but not as popular). The new LinkedIN is a place where content rocks and the people producing the content are getting more exposure. I try and post most days on LinkedIN and I use a combination of quotes and stories. Story content is growing in popularity and is easy to replicate.

The above post took me a few minutes to write yet gained me over 1227 views. Personally my record is around 15,000 views but put this into perspective, business people are seeing your content daily. If you simply post a quote or a story each day and only 400 people saw that post that would mean you were seen 12,000 times in a month (400 people a day over 30 days). I will take those stats any day.

23. Use Viral Loops To Grow An Email List

I first learned about Viral loops from this article in Ahrefs and I have seen them repeated time and time again. A viral loop is a type of article that people get something tangible from, such as a free guide but the article spreads because people have to comment or share the article to get the freebie. In the above example Ilan Nass has created 60 social media marketing plan templates to give away. but there is a catch you must also comment in the post (which is what makes it go viral) The article sends you to a landing page where you have to sign up to get the free goodies and this grows your email list. Now you might be thinking that this can't or won't work for you, think again, check the posts below to see something as routine as 'team building' gain traction. In this example we simply have a team building pack. Nothing more than some things you can do at your next team meeting and check out the comments and likes! Again the process is simple, create a post or an article and then ask people if they want something for free in return for their email. Again the same steps were followed This viral loop trick can work in any market and on any platform, you simply need to have something valuable to give away in return for the email and you are on your way. 24. Use Facebook's Debugger Tool To Make Posts Look Perfect This is something that I learned from Noah Kagan when I did some work for him. If you ever post a blog article or content and find that Facebook is pulling out of date information from your website you will know exactly what I am talking about (for everyone else move onto the next strategy). The Facebook debugger tool will give you control over your content and if you make changes to a blog post, ensure Facebook shares the updated version of that post. 25. Bring Your Website To Life With 'In Use' Photographs This is a great tip and tool with so many uses especially if you want your business to look great on social media. We all know that sharing a screenshot of your business app or website is boring, instead you can bring it to life by creating an 'in use' mock up. Place It is a free web based tool that allows you to do just that. Place works simply by either uploading an image or providing a URL and then it takes care of the rest. You can choose anything from smart phone mock ups to I macs and your website or image will come to life.

Conclusion So there you have it, 25 social media strategies you can use to grow your business, increase your website traffic and brand visibility. If you have any others please feel free to comment below and I will update this post with some more as they come in. Andrew Holland