How to get more attention with your social media messages - 4 Tips

Get more attention with your social media marketing messages?

La la la la I'm not listening! Just think of fighting that uphill attention battle every time you want to be heard in “free” social medium forums. There is more clutter now than ever, and people are going to get savvier at learning how to filter out the noise.

Do you Tivo/DVR? Get frustrated when opening up a video and seeing a pre-roll advertisement? People will continue to look for VALUE, and will get better at being able to search for relevant content. Here are tips to help you break through and get people to really want to listen:

1. Headlines - Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
There is a definite art to headlines, and to tweets that grab attention. Guy Kawasaki is a master, and Personal Branding Expert Dan Schawbel is another - if you don’t believe me, just check out their twitter feed, better yet, follow them, and you will see that the reason you should click through is apparent RIGHT AWAY. If it’s a REPORT, OPINION or ADVICE, I know if I should bother finding out more. They saved their audiences time, and it is definitely appreciated. Be open and honest (transparent) as to what VALUE someone will find and people will be more likely to NEED to find out more.
2. What’s your hook song, or first track?
If you’ve ever bought an album, you know that the opening track has to really grab your attention for you to feel the rest of the album is worth your time listening. Same thing with your social media content - Don’t give people a chance to shut you out too soon. If you’ve got a very relevant piece of content for your target audience, think of what part of your content is going to be catchy enough to make them want to keep listening!
3. Keywords, people!
On a social media project recently, I was assigned the task of broadcasting social media content across a wide variety of platforms. Problem was, in order for me to broadcast it, I’d have to rewrite most of the headlines, so I’d have to take time looking through a lot of content to feel if I could put my own brand on the line by broadcasting it. The professionally produced video content, I felt was valuable information, but hidden beneath rather weak descriptions. Don’t make any effort you have wasted, especially with professionally produced content like video, or even a blog post you took time writing - think of it as your front door!
4. How Tos and Tips
It has been found that tweets most likely to get retweeted contain the phrases “How To” and “Tips.” People want to know how they can learn how to do something better, or even just how to do something period. And tips, well, by breaking this blog post down into four easy to digest chunks, you could quantify right away how many tips you were in for. There are too many decisions we all have to make as technology makes life ubercomplicated. If we can save each other the trouble, it makes life so much easier, and gets people to want to listen that much easier.

Isn’t that what this is all about? Please help me by sharing your comments and suggestions with me on these tips, and thoughts on others you’d like to know more about. Thanks!