At times, it can feel like dredging the bottom of the ocean to come up with new, clever ideas. Such ideas have the potential to set a brand apart in the crowded space, but creativity tends to run dry quickly and easily.

Some marketers continually rely on certain detested, albeit effective, tactics for success. Others cringe, criticize the questionable tactics and vow never to stoop to such levels. And yet they find themselves longing for a quick win to gain social traction with their content.

Here are four such social media tactics that marketers hate to love:

1. Ask For What You Want

Whether it’s asking to “like” a page, “share” a post or “retweet” a tweet, when you spell out the action you want your followers to take, it feels like you’re letting them control the game. Instead of letting them naturally decide how—if at all—to engage with the content, you tell them exactly what you expect.

The interesting part? Followers actually do what you request. On Twitter, promoted tweets that ask for retweet see an increase in retweets by an average of 311 percent. Asking for follows and replies also increased engagement.

RT if you love free pizza. Of course you do. We’re giving away over $100,000 worth sometime soon. http://t.co/rRYshFhTgF #DominosQuikly

— Domino’s Pizza (@dominos) June 25, 2014

Referred to as “like-baiting”, Facebook is trying to keep these types of posts out of the newsfeed. To keep your cringe level down and your organic visibility up, use these types of posts sparingly. Try offering a specific incentive for sharing the post, too, such as entering participants into a contest.

2. Click-Bait

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it never really hurt a person. Readers can’t resist fulfilling their need to find out “what happens next” or what it is that they’ll never believe.

Most people crave the unexpected. They want to be surprised. Curiosity may not kill you, but it can definitely entice you. And once your curiosity is piqued, the only satisfaction comes from getting the answer. Click-baiting capitalizes on this need and gets users to click on the article.

Websites such as Upworthy and Buzzfeed often get called out for creating click-bait titles. Some social platforms are trying to discourage marketers from using this tactic by keeping these types of posts from having a good organic reach.

This tactic, despite its ability to drive traffic, should also be used sparingly. When you use click-bait, be sure that you are sending people to content that they are actually going to care about and find valuable, or else you face the possibility of penalization.

For example, in a 2014 update, Facebook started taking into account how much time a user spends away from Facebook after clicking a link to determine rankings in the newsfeed. Do they stay because it’s valuable, or bounce because it’s not what they thought? Click bait works, but only when it’s not chipping away at your audience’s trust in you.

3. The Selfie

The selfie has gotten a bad wrap. With countless apps and filters available to make sure that every photo is perfect, many have started to wonder about the authenticity of selfies and other visual content designed for social media.

Consider the 2015San Diego Comic Con where actors from future superhero movies appeared on stage with Stan Lee to take a picture.

A photo posted by 20th Century Fox (@20thcenturyfox) on Jul 11, 2015 at 8:21pm PDT

In one day, the 20^th Century Fox account saw 11.9 thousand likes and 211 comments on this single image. A different angle of the same shot on Channing Tatum’s Instagram account has 219,000 likes and 1,155 comments.

Many remember Ellen DeGeneres taking a selfie at the 2014 Oscars that became the most retweeted image of all time.

If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014

With that kind of engagement, any marketer should be dying to get a selfie on their page, too. While some loathe this trend, a well-placed selfie can help drive significant engagement and increase followers. The key is to find the appropriate time and place for the selfie to occur. For many brands, an event with a large gathering of loyal customers is a great place to start.

The selfie helps to capture a specific moment with a distinct group of people. By sharing that on social media, you allow your followers to feel like they’re a part of the picture, as if they were the photographer looking through the lens.

4. Buying Followers

The most deadly sin of social media marketing is to use money to buy followers. Any social media expert will tell you that a purchased audience will only result in a mass of fake followers. Many will advise that it’s more important to focus on producing quality content and to just let the followers come.

Sometimes, though, it may actually be beneficial to spend a little money to kick-start audience growth. One data scientist experimented and found that spending even a small amount to gain some followers can benefit you in the long run.

A brand’s follower count is often used to determine its credibility. The data scientist found that while he did indeed gain many fake followers, having an increased number of followers helped his authority, which in turn improved his ranking.

When Google and Twitter announced their partnership to index tweets, brands were excited. Twitter now has an effect on SEO thanks to a focus on indexing tweets from accounts with more followers and a high “social authority.”

Again, this tactic should be short-term and only utilized to get you to a specific point or meet a certain goal. It should never replace the industry-wide best practice of sharing great content consistently to build a genuine audience and following.

Marketers are always in search of the next great tactic that will help their content find the right audience and build an engaged community, but it’s never a quick or easy process. While some may discourage these tacky tactics, when used with the right content at the right time, these ideas can help you gain traction on your social media channels and supplement your greater content strategy.

The post 4 Tacky Social Media Tactics That Actually Work appeared first on Relevance.

I remained silent. Visibly put off, but silent. There’s so much more to it than that. My acquaintance is a perfect example of an individual who does not understand the importance of content curation and the role it plays in social media marketing.

Content curation is when a team or an individual finds, organizes, offers insights, and shares relevant and premium content hand-picked for the target market.

Why Curation?

The most obvious benefit of content curation is the appeal to your target market. Sharing premium content that isn’t your own builds trust in your brand, and shows your brand’s commitment to its industry.

However, that’s not all. Content curation packs a punch of other serious advantages:

Consistency – When it comes to social media, consistency is key. And unless you’re a publisher, creating that much content is a poor use of your time. Curation fills the gap between times when you share your own content.

Industry News and Insights – Curating content gives you the perfect opportunity to stay current with everything going on in your industry.

Connect with Industry Leaders – Sharing other’s content and tagging them in the post (usually by using @ mentions on Twitter) is a great way to start a conversation and connect with others in your industry that are producing premium content.

Competitive Monitoring – Not only does curation benefit your target market and your own industry insights, but it also allows you to keep a close watch on your competition. Monitoring what types of content they’re creating and sharing gives you great insights into their strategy. Keeping track of what type of their content performs particularly well also serves as a benefit to you.

Content Marketing Mix

According to Curata, “enlightened” marketers use a content marketing mix that includes 25% curated content.

That means that if you’re not curating content, you’re only doing 75% of what other marketers are doing.

Even if you are curating content, how can you be sure that you’re doing it right? Think back to my acquaintance, who likened curating to blindly pushing numerous RSS feeds through your social channels. That is a sure-fire way to lose a lot of followers and it certainly is not the right way to do content curation.

Content Curation Is An Art

Content curation is an art: it requires a keen eye, thoughtful additions (and subtractions), and time. When tackling content curation, you must understand that the cost is heavily time-based.

It is not a quick process to sift through hundreds of content pieces from dozens of content sources. Not only that, but you must do that sifting nearly every day.

I’ve experimented with tools that allow you to schedule hundreds of social media posts from dozens of sources. While that is efficient, I found myself reading less and less of the content itself. When I sacrificed a keen eye and thoughtful additions and subtractions for more time, I found that it did a disservice not only to our brand but also to our followers.

That discovery led me to think of the principles of content curation. Interestingly, the principles of design describe content curation wonderfully:

The 9 Principles Of Content Curation Artistry

1. Balance – Is your curated content balanced with your created content?
2. Emphasis – Does the curated content reinforce your created content?
3. Movement – Does the curated content move the reader further into your feed?
4. Pattern – Is your target clearly defined by your curated content?
5. Repetition – Are you sharing based on a focused topic and/or keyword?
6. Proportion – Does the amount of curation complement you created content?
7. Rhythm – Are you sharing consistently?
8. Variety – Are you curating different content types from different sources?
9. Unity – Does the curated content convey wholeness alongside your created content?

The discovery also lead me to the conclusion that we need a better tool – a tool that allows us to give each piece of curated content the attention and insight it deserves so that we can follow the 9 principles listed above.

Finding The Perfect Curation Tool

Most artists will tell you that in order to create a work of art, you need the right tools. The right paints, brushes, and canvas can change the whole outcome of your piece. This is also true with content curation. With the right tool, you can bring the vision in your head of your content mix to life.

Right Intel

The tool we use to curate content is Right Intel. We use Right Intel to identify content to which we can add our own opinions. This curated content can then be published internally among our team and externally to build thought leadership and credibility.

Right Intel’s Curate functionality is our favorite for keeping up with the best content creators in our industry.

Not only can you pull in RSS feeds, but social media feeds as well; talk about serious social listening.

The curation element comes in with the Intel It! function. We add our thoughts on our favorite content pieces from the Curate tab, and that content is then shared with our internal team.

Curation and adding insights are just the tip of the Right Intel capability iceberg. You can also create Stories, which are really only limited by your imagination. Want to recap quarterly content results? No problem. Maybe you want to report on a particular marketing campaign? Easy as pie.

Exporting this content is also simple with Right Intel’s email function. You can import stories or individual content with an eye-pleasing layout. The offerings that Right Intel provides expand even beyond what we touched on here, and have helped us evolve our own content strategy.

Content Curation And Thought Leadership

The artistry of curating content may take a bit of time to master, but you’ll quickly find out how important and vital content curation is to your brand.

Content curation as an art really boils down to a matter of thought leadership. This term is often thrown around in the digital marketing world, but that does not diminish its importance.

To be a true thought leader, one must have thoughts. Shocking, right? These thoughts must be your own and set you apart from the pack. Proper content curation merges your own opinions with others’ and communicates them during the times when you’re not creating your own content.

Content curation is necessary for individual thought leaders, as well as your firm’s brand. Without it, you’re seriously behind the eight ball when it comes to earning credibility within your industry. How do you streamline content curation?

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