When someone mentions your company in an online post, does it make a difference? The short answer is “yes,” definitely. The long answer is, without some noticeable attention, a social share often gets lost in a sea of information and quickly vanishes without any positive effects.
Standing out and getting noticed online is challenging. Once you have been mentioned or reviewed online, it’s important to take a couple of extra steps to make sure you get the recognition you deserve. The more engagements you can show from different people and businesses, the higher you will rank in search engine rankings. And when it comes to converting that traffic to sales, statistics prove that social proof is a significant decision factor in the online buying process.
As you grow your business and online presence, building on these engagements (mentions, reviews and referral links) is an important part of your SEO strategy. Here are seven actions you can take when you receive a social mention to leverage that social currency and create more sales.
Be Gracious
The tone with which you receive a mention is very important. Always be sure to acknowledge those that have helped you to this point. When you’ve received something, make sure you always give back first. Being gracious can go a long way in facilitating sales.
Tag Influencers in Posts
A rising tide raises all ships. Take time to share your post and tag influencers that are interested in what has been shared. Help them further their message with your shared story. Bolster your tagging efforts by tweeting small excerpts and key points as you tag different people to create engagement and variability with your messages.
Add Mentions to Your Signature
This is a great way to add additional resources and social proof to your email correspondence. Add links to your mentions or the recognizable logos of places in the media where you’ve been talked about as a tagline in your emails, like “See my latest article in The Huffington Post here.”
Add a Media Bar to Your Website
Immediately increase your reputation and influence on your website by prominently displaying a logo of the websites where you have been mentioned or published. Showing recent testimonials is also very powerful. Adding this social proof before your call to action directly increases your interaction with current customers.
Share Mentions with Investors
Make sure your investors, supporters and potential supporters are aware of how well you are doing with social shares. Sharing good news and mentions from other people is a great way to promote your business with all of them.
Incentivize Referrals
Make your company worth mentioning. Create a rewarding referral program for brand ambassadors, current users, and influencers in your target market. This is a larger scale project but works really well as a way to incentivize people who are already your users and fans to mention you to their networks. Affiliate programs work best if you’re able to connect your product to key influencers of your target market.
Increase Conversions
All the traffic in the world won’t turn into sales unless a clear opportunity is available. Make sure the URL link that you share is a page that converts. Study your analytics and build your page to match the buying process of social proof and call to action. Clearly guiding new traffic to your product will make all your efforts worthwhile.
