I’m very excited about writing this article, but I held off doing it for a while, just to be sure I could give you the greatest amount of information possible in the limited of space allotted to an article. And,also to be sure that the trends in social media, which change in the blink of an eye, weren’t on the cusp of any giant changes over the next few weeks. So, at long last, I get to talk about how to sell your software through social media.
I’ve hinted about the power of Social Media in the past, and I’ve even pointed out some general things you can/should do when using this tool in order to maximize your results, but I’ve never really dived into the topic. Well, today, that changes.
Social media is the marketing and advertising of the now and the future. The first thing to bear in mind when discussing how to sell your software, via social media, is that it’s more of a passive aggressive method than PPC or traditional marketing systems. Users will voluntarily approach your social media channels, and follow/friend/subscribe to your feeds. This is different from PPC, which randomly “forces” ads inside websites and other structures you use, and it’s also different from the proactive approach of traditional marketing- that gets right up in your face.
Traditional advertising and marketing can be so annoying that people have found ways to block them entirely. Hence, they are no longer the effective channels they once were.
So, how do we use social media, in an effective way , to sell our software? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Below are the top three social media services (and the ones that I have the most experience using) – Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
#1 – Facebook
I’ll start off with Facebook – the least useful of the three big social media applications. Yup, I find it the LEAST useful – but that doesn’t mean it should be counted out. While it’s not as effective as other outlets for active advertising to people, it is a good way to gain feedback of how users feel about your product. You can see how many people friend, view, like and share content on the page, and read the comments left by these people. Facebook is also a good way for users to feel like they can contact you.
Facebook also allows you to see how well your other social media channels are doing in raising awareness of your product; studies show that users will often come to Facebook after they’ve discovered you through other services. This is the passive metrics component for your social media marketing, and it works well for that purpose.
#2 – Twitter
Twitter is one of the more active tools for marketing your software socially, and it still remains one of the simplest and easy-to-use. People who claim to barely use social media will still often confess to being fairly frequent Twitter users – and that’s because it’s a useful tool. It can be used to communicate with important people in society such as the secretary of state, or your favorite celebrity. It is a channel where your ideas can be heard and shared in a safe environment with minimal invasiveness.
Marketing with Twitter is done by creating a company account (or an account for the specific software), and tweeting frequent messages about features and solutions that the software can provide. Talk about real world problems and how your software can help solve these problems. Chime in on trending topics with hashtags and follow companies or individuals that will find your software relevant.
Respond to any tweets which mention your company or software, either congenially when it’s positive, or apologetically when it’s negative. Be proactive and be heard – then people will be sure to follow you. Little by little, others will follow via search suggestions or word of mouth (word-of click), and you will establish a presence.
#3 – Tumblr
Tumblr is Twitter as a blog, with pictures. Meaning that through this channel, you can use SEO marketing practices as well as blog journalism to illustrate what your software is intended to solve, how it works, and what makes it great.
Using SEO key terms will optimize your visibility within internal Tumblr searches as well as through big search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Tumblr’s technology is surprisingly powerful, far outshining blogspot or other similar social blogging sites.
Tumblr is where your journalism, case studies and white papers go – and given the viral nature of Tumblr – if you have a genuinely good product to sell, it’s guaranteed to spread like wildfire
This is just the beginning of what’s involved in how to sell your software through social media channels. Next up II will tackle other popular social media outlets such as Pinterest and Reddit .