In episode 152, I chat with Tina from Social Web Suite, a WordPress plugin and solution for your social sharing strategy. There’s a lot around scheduling your social and we will learn what Tina has discovered from both her customers and her research.

We talk about:

• Strategies that help online stores avoid social shares that look like ads.
• When to schedule your shares and is there a sweet spot for online retailers.
• Taking advantage of the character limits in Twitter.
• Some ways that online stores might share on social that will turn people off.
• What Tina recommends when someone asks her what social platform they should start with.
• The one feature of her plugin, Social Web Suite that is especially helpful for online store owners.

Some of Tina’s Tips:

Making sure your social shares don’t look like a big ad

You should do 70-80% educating people or providing them some of the value. And 20-30% of social shares should be offering your services or products. .

Use common sense. What do you want to see when you go to somebody else’s Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram profile? Products blasted out all the time or useful and valuable content?

Social sharing and when to share

LinkedIn is mostly for business people. So people are checking LinkedIn profiles during nine to five when they are working. Facebook and Twitter are a little bit different. People may be tracking Facebook when they are commuting to work or coming back, or Twitter during the lunch break.

If you want to share your products, the sweet spots are Wednesdays and Thursdays. The other days, like Monday, Tuesday and Friday, I would suggest basically some other content.

There is no best time that works for everybody. It really depends on your audience, and where they are based, and your time zones.

Just pushing out social shares that look like ads isn’t the only problem.

If you are selling something, the image is important. You have to have really nice images of the products. And, for your social profile, make sure your images are optimized.

Go to your Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram and check out what it looks like. If it doesn’t look good, drop out of that social sharing service immediately and use somebody else.

What social platforms an online seller should start out on

First of all, what are they selling? That’s the most important thing, right? And the images are really important. For example, with clothing or makeup, obviously they should start with Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.

Pinterest and Instagram used to be a female-dominated. They were all mostly females. So basically if that is your audience, then obviously we want to go there first.

Twitter is important for brand engagement and awareness. The hope is that they will click on your link and check out your site.

LinkedIn is more selling to companies. If they find out you have products that they need or want, some marketing manager or you know, financial director is more likely to contact you.

Find Tina at:

SocialWebSuite.com

Social Web Suite on Twitter @SocialWebSuite

Tina on Twitter @TinaTO

Tina on LinkedIn

Tina on Facebook

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