How to get Facebook Likes the Easy Way

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The fact is, whether we like it or not, social proof is more and more important these days. But who has all of the time for it?

Say what you want, but social marketing definitely takes time if you do it yourself (sometimes a lot of time) or, if you go the other route and outsource it, well, it can be quite expensive. Keep in mind that there is a big difference between social marketing and social proof however and what this video is really focusing on is the latter – social proof.

Social Marketing versus Social Proof

So, what’s the difference? Social proof is really just about sprinkling some social love in the form of Likes, Google +’s, Tweets, etc… onto your content in order to show those who view it that it has been socially accepted and liked. If, for example, you come to a page and it has no Likes, no Tweets, no Google +’s, etc… you wonder if others have seen or liked it and if it’s worth your time to checkout. But if you come to view a post and it has 237 Likes already – well, you automatically and subconsciously take that as a sign of quality content and something that you should explore further. It’s just part of our human nature to be influenced by others.

Social marketing on the other hand, is a completely different beast and frankly it’s not one everyone is cut out for. Social marketing is using the social media channels – whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or others – for the expressed purpose of marketing your brand or business. Social marketing is as much art as it is science – to some like me, you might even call it black magic! LOL

What I mean by that is that it takes a special skill, a special ability to connect with people and be able to turn that social encounter into a profitable business experience. I say that to me it’s “black magic” because it is simply not my cup of tea. In fact, neither Mike nor I really practice “social marketing” at all. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t.

Social marketing can be very powerful used in the right hands. But the truth is that there are many out there chasing this idea like it’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and we simply don’t subscribe to that idea. We believe that social marketing is simply another form or another channel so to speak of a much bigger picture of marketing. We don’t give it more or less attention than others because of two primary reasons. For one it is simply not our specialty (we can’t be experts in everything) and for two, it just seems forced for us and hard to show ROI.

The Third Option – Social Engagement

So if we’re not big practitioners of social marketing, what do we do? How do we utilize social platforms in our business? Well good questions – lol. Quite simply we subscribe to yet a third option – the social engagement approach. Yeah, I know, lots of buzzwords – but the truth is they really are entirely different concepts altogether.

Social engagement is the process of engaging your subscribers, customers and followers where they hang out in the form of communication that is most comfortable to them. So, for example, it means having a “presence” in these different social channels and simply being there and providing value. Now some people, some of your subscribers, will just be Facebook junkies, others will be big into YouTube, etc… So the point of social engagement is to be present in those different channels so that you reach those portions of your audience that are there. But you’re doing it not really from a marketing perspective so much as just an engagement and entertainment perspective.

Is it worth while?

In a word, yes. There have been studies that have shown that just having an engaging social presence on Facebook, for example, increases your return customer sales even if you never actually engage with that specific individual they are more likely to become a repeat buyer. Why? Well it really comes down to trust and likeability.

Your customers see you as more trustworthy when they see you in multiple channels. When they see that you’re also out there on YouTube and Facebook and maybe even an author of a Kindle book, etc… it gives them reassurance that they made the right choice becoming a customer. It makes them feel smart to have chosen you and likely to buy more from you because your social proof in multiple channels shows that are serious and a professional.

I know, it sounds like a bunch of psychobabble, but it’s not. We are social creatures by nature and our purchase behaviors are influenced by social behaviors as well. So for us, social engagement is where “things just makes sense”. We’re not going to be the next James Wedmore of video production – lol – though we hope you do enjoy our new YouTube channel and we are putting a lot of effort into producing many more engaging and useful videos like this one.

Likewise, we’re not trying to compete on Facebook either, but we do enjoy building up the TopMarketingStrategies.com fan page and interacting there as well. We want people to enjoy the “Mike & Troy’s” experience wherever they come across us and we feel that’s what you should be doing in your business as well.

About this Video

You’ll be seeing many more of these coming in the next few weeks as we begin to ramp into more video publication. I have the inhouse lighting studio all setup, the white screen backgrounds, the chromakey green backgrounds and having fun with it. I don’t, however, want you to think that we’re doing this all ourselves – that’s not our style.

Like anything new, we tend to immerse ourselves in it first and get the lay of the land. But after that, we look to find ways to automate and outsource as much of it as possible. And that’s exactly what we’ve done with video production as well. In fact, if you pay close attention you’ll see that the majority of this YouTube is a repurposed segment from our Podcast. It only makes sense to take some small nuggets from one channel and share them with other channels.

But you’ll notice that we didn’t just throw an audio and put up a single page powerpoint and call it good – that doesn’t work (well, not well anyway). You have to respect the channel you’re in and market to it effectively. YouTube needs to be respected and your audience in YouTube needs to be entertained as well as engaged with a professional and fun video.

NOTE: If you’d like to read the transcript to the video you can see it in the Pick the Brain segment of the second episode of the Top Marketing Strategies Podcast here.

So we add a personal “intro” to the audios and then make it all fun and entertaining by adding sound, animation, intros, outros, transitions, etc… all of the stuff that makes a video fun and compelling to watch. If you’re looking to do this in your own business, contact us and we can talk about how we can provide many of these services to you.

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