HubPages is a content sharing site that allows you to create a web page, called a “hub”, where you can post different social media content including articles, photos and videos on a particular subject.

Why should you use HubPages for your social media marketing campaign?

Benefits of using HubPages for social media marketing

1) HubPages provide great search engine ranking. A single HubPage can get you ranked number one in Google for a particular keyword or phrase in as fast as two weeks.

2) HubPages drive a lot of traffic to your page. Traffic that is coming in through HubPages through their search engines is around 25% of the total traffic you can get from Google.

3) HubPages is great for building image. Without realizing that you are actually writing for your own company, visitors view your hubs as a third party recommendation from an independent authority.

4) HubPages allow you to build incoming links to your site.

5) HubPages allow you to monetize your pages so your articles become more profitable to you than publishing them on your own blog or site.

Rules on putting up social media content on HubPages

To make sure your articles get approved for publication by HubPages, you must be aware of the following rules.

No spam. You cannot publish articles that promote another site or business.

No adult content. You cannot publish articles that contain nudity, sexually explicit content, and links to adult or pornographic sites.

No gambling. You cannot publish articles that promote gambling or online gambling sites.

No unfinished hubs. If you have an unfinished hub that you want to complete at a later time, leave it unpublished. You are also not allowed to do strictly personal or “test” hubs.

No deception. Your hub title and tags must match your hub content. You cannot add links that say they are going to one thing and they go to something else.

No non-English content. Unfortunately, HubPages only accepts predominantly English content.

No copied content. You cannot publish an article you have already posted on your blog or other content sharing sites. HubPages content must be absolutely unique.

Tips on how to write social media content on HubPages

When writing social media content for HubPages, make sure that your articles are informative, useful, richly detailed, and truly original. No fiction, no poetry, no promotional stuff.

Here are a few tips on how to create great hubs.

1) Add at least one picture to your hub and use the text wrap tool. Images result in higher readership and better search engine rankings.

2) Write good headlines to attract readers.

3) Monetize your hubs so you can earn a share of the advertising revenue.

4) Create a sidebar and add some useful resources or side commentary on it.

5) Break your long article into smaller sections and use the capsule ordering tool. If you have an 800-word article, you may want to consider breaking it into two or three smaller article capsules with around 200 words each plus an image, and then another capsule of 200 words with a YouTube video. Do not post just one set of text that goes all the way down. Make sure that your hub is visually attractive.

6) Use a combination of general and specific tags.

7) Use anchor text links. You are allowed to put two links on each hub. You may want to add one link to your site, and another link to your blog, or another HubPage, or an Ezine article, or a YouTube video.

The Social Profit Formula has an entire video module on how to make money from HubPages. Whether your objective is to drive traffic to your money site, build audience trust, rank high on search engines, or earn revenue through ads on your hub pages, HubPages should be a fundamental piece in your social media marketing toolbox.

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How do you pimp out your social media articles?

Let’s face it, no matter how interesting and helpful your information is, nobody wants to read through huge chunks of text on a computer screen. Your articles, blog posts, press releases, tweets and other text content need some spicing up to attract readers, elicit a response, and create a dialogue.

The easiest way to add zing to your social media content is to add pictures. An illustration, photograph or clipart can go a long way in building conversations with your audience.

Where to find pictures for your social media articles

You cannot simply grab an image from the Google Images results page and attach it to your post. It is not only unethical but illegal. You can be sued for millions of dollars in punitive damages if you use online images without permission from the rightful owners.

There are plenty of stock photo sites where you can buy images in bulk. The Social Profit Formula course has an entire video module dedicated to stock photography for social media content where you can learn which sites have the biggest libraries, the best photo quality, and the most attractive subscription rates.

If your only option is to use free pictures for your articles, you can download Creative Commons licensed images from Flickr.com.

Free Flickr photos for your social media content

Flickr.com is probably the most famous photo-sharing site out there. Users who upload their own images to the Flickr site have the option to share their content under a Creative Commons license so they can protect their work even without a full copyright.

Creative Commons has four types of licenses:

•    Attribution – you are allowed to copy, distribute and display images provided you give credit to the owner.
•    Noncommercial – you are allowed to copy, distribute and display images for noncommercial purposes.
•    No Derivative Works – you are allowed to copy, distribute and display only verbatim copies of the licensed image, not derivative works based upon it.
•    Share Alike – you are allowed to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs that particular image.

How to find Flickr photos with a Creative Commons license

Go to Flickr.com, type your keyword on the search box, and click Advanced Search on the results page. Find the Creative Commons section below and select the options to only search within Creative Commons-licensed content and find content to use commercially. Click the Search button to view all the Creative Commons-licensed images that are relevant to your keyword.

On the bottom right section of each photo page, click on the license link to see what you can do with this particular image and in under what conditions.

If you are allowed to share and remix the image as long as you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author, then do so.

Module 3 of the Social Profit Formula program will teach you how you can create image attribution statements with links that can drive lots of traffic to your social media articles.

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Social media content images make your articles more appealing not only to your readers but to search engines as well, whether they are photographs, illustrations or clip arts. But how do you find great pictures for your blog or content sharing articles?

You can get images from stock photography websites two ways – you can either pay for them or download them for free.

Free stock photos for your social media content

The only advantage of using free stock photos is that they won’t cost you a thing. Here are the disadvantages:

1) Poor quality. Free stock photos tend to be grainy, blurry and out of focus. These are pictures that were probably not good enough to be sold on paid sites.

2) Low resolution. Most free stock photos are only available in thumbnail-sized pixels.

3) Copyright violation. Most free stock photo sites publish a disclaimer that they cannot be held responsible for any copyright infringements. In other words, use these photos at your own risk. If you get sued by the rightful owner of these photos, the website will not be liable and you will have to deal with the legal consequences yourself.

Free stock photos of people are especially risky to use because they are not covered by a Model Release statement. A Model Release form is a contract in which the subject of a photograph consents to the use of his or her photo by a third party. If you are using a free picture that has a person in it, you could potentially get sued for tens of thousands of dollars by that person for using that picture.

4) Spyware. Some free stock photo sites embed spyware and viruses on your computer every time you download an image.

All of these issues can be avoided by simply buying photos from reliable stock photography houses.

Paid stock photos for your social media content

Stock photos used to very expensive. They cost somewhere between $300 and $10,000 several years ago. Today you can get them for under a buck!

iStockPhoto has one of the biggest libraries of royalty-free content on the Internet. They offer photos, illustrations, video, audio, and even flash.

You can purchase photos through pay-as-you-go credits or subscription plans. An extra small picture at 353 by 340 pixels will cost you around $1.13-$1.60. Medium-sized photos with 1409 by 1363 pixels are available for $6.78 to $9.60.

If you want to build a photo library for long-term use, you might want to consider signing up for a subscription plan. For only $979, you get 30 extra small pictures per day for three months. Or you can choose other plans that allow you to download 10 images per day for six months or one year.

When buying stock photos, make sure that the images are royalty-free. Some stock photo services set a limit on the number of people who can view a particular photo.

Clip arts for your social media content

One of the cheaper ways to add images to your social media articles is the use of clip arts. At ClipArt.com you can get up to 250 clipart images per week for only $15. Clip arts may be cheaper than photographs but you have to exercise caution when using them because they tend to look cartoonish which could harm the serious image of your business.

The Social Profit Formula course features a few more highly recommended stock photo sites that you can use to enhance the look and feel of your social media content so you get better readership and better response out of your articles.

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Many online marketers are so eager to get on Facebook and other social media platforms because of the huge press these places have been getting as money-making machines, and oftentimes they end up frustrated with the results.

The Social Profit Formula course will teach you how to create powerful and effective Facebook posts so you can make the most out of your social media marketing efforts.

Posting vs. tweeting

Twitter allows you to post messages up to 140 characters. Essentially, you are only writing headlines on Twitter.

Facebook gives you more room to write copies. You can carefully craft out messages of up to 420 characters although you cannot write a separate headline.

Facebook posts also enable you to attach a link to your content and promote interaction through the like and share buttons and the comment space.

Types of Facebook posts

There are three types of posts that you can do on Facebook.

•    Link post – attach a link to point your reader to another place to expand that entire communication.

•    Tip post – write a short informative message without any links.

•    Conversation post – start a conversation by asking a question or posting a poll.

How to create link posts on Facebook

On your Facebook wall or news feed, click the Link button to attach a link. A text box will appear where you can put your content. Tell your readers what your link is all about and why they should click on it. Get your audience interested by adding value, mystery or a sense of urgency to your copy.

In the Social Profit Formula course you will learn how to use the HootSuite program to edit the text that comes with your link, including the headline, body copy and thumbnail image, as well as add attachments.

How to create tip posts on Facebook

Tip posts are standalone Facebook posts. No links, no images, just plain text that adds value to your readers.

How to create conversation posts on Facebook

In a conversation post, you want to start a conversation by asking a question or making a point specifically designed to start a conversation on a particular topic. A few examples are “What do you think?” or, “What is your experience?” or, “Share your tips here”. You can also combine conversation posts with a link post or tip post.

Whenever you are posting content on Facebook and other social media places, keep in mind that you are participating on these platforms to engage customers, not to sell something you want them to buy.

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A lot has been said about Facebook as an effective social media marketing tool. Every business, big or small, wants to be on Facebook to reach out to its audience of half a billion users.

Before you jump on the bandwagon, you must first understand how Facebook works.

Facebook is a social medium, not a sales forum

Some Facebook facts you should know:

•    Internet users spend 95% of their time browsing websites.
•    They are spending 5 hours a week on Facebook on average
•    They are spending around 55 minutes per session

Facebook is a place people go to hang out. It is not a search engine or a lead generation site.

Think of Facebook as a sales cycle, not a sales funnel. You won’t go out there pitching your products. You participate in Facebook to build relationships that could translate into sales over time.

By constantly putting new information in front of your audience day after day, people will start to like you, follow you, and eventually trust you. When they are ready to buy, they will come to you because you’ve already built a rapport with them. And even if they don’t buy from you, they interact with other people who will.

Virtual interaction on Facebook and other social media

Virtual interaction not only refers to people interacting with you. The vast majority of virtual interaction on Facebook involves other people interacting about you by commenting, liking, and posting pictures and videos. Over time, when other people see your followers interacting with you and about you, that becomes social proof.

Social proof on Facebook

According to Wikipedia, “social proof, also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others who are perceived to possess more knowledge about the situation.”

Social proof is the whole essence of fashion. Tight jeans, bandanas, hair coloring and wedge shoes all became popular because someone made it fashionable to wear them. That someone is usually a person with social influence – it could be a celebrity, a high school jock or a lead cheerleader. People tend to follow what the people they admire are doing.

Facebook was designed to emphasize social proof. People can see how many friends you have and how many likes your page has. When they see that their own friends are your friends and that their friends have liked your page, they will do the same.

You should implement social proof in everything you do in Facebook as well as throughout all social media.

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Squidoo is a content sharing platform and social network site that allows users to create social media web pages on certain topics. You can post articles, photos, videos and other types of content on these pages, also called lenses, and drive a lot of traffic to your site.

As a lensmaster, you own the content that you put up on Squidoo but you cannot post that content anyplace else as part of Squidoo’s terms and conditions. If you want to reuse your content and distribute it to other places, you will have to take down your Squidoo lens and not duplicate it elsewhere.

What can Squidoo do for your social media marketing campaign?

Advantages of using Squidoo for social media marketing

Just like any other content sharing site, Squidoo generates traffic for you. The biggest difference, however, is that Squidoo gives you a DoFollow, instead of a NoFollow, immediately on Day One.

Unlike most content sharing places, Squidoo has a less serious, more fun environment. You can personalize your lenses and throw in some cool stuff in there to attract more readers.

Squidoo allows you to put links in your articles and your author bio so that your site can get a lot of search engine traffic from them.

Lastly, Squidoo allows you to donate part of your earnings to charity.

How to optimize your Squidoo lens for readers and search engines

Here are a few tips on how to use Squidoo to improve your readership and search engine ranking.

Make your Squidoo lens unique. Personalize your theme with different layouts, colors, fonts and module designs. You can add, delete and rearrange as many modules as you want very easily to achieve different looks for your lenses.

Put your keywords in your title, URL and tags, and pick an appropriate category for your lens.

Add one picture for every text module to keep it interesting.

Break long text into short paragraphs and use subheads for easy reading.

You can put a maximum of two links per lens so use them wisely.

Add monetizing modules to your lenses. There are plenty of profitable modules that enable you to earn revenue directly from affiliate-based programs.

Making money from Squidoo lenses

Squidoo splits its earnings two ways: Pooled Revenue and Attributable Revenue.

Pooled revenue is revenue that is not specifically credited from any lens. Squidoo uses its pooled revenue to cover its overhead and shares the leftovers with lensmasters based on lens performance. If you are a Giant Squid, or a very good lensmaster, you obviously get a bigger piece of this pie.

Attributable revenue is revenue that comes from a specific lens. The Social Profit Formula course will teach you how to monetize each of your lenses through affiliate programs so you can get half of the generated attributable revenue.

Squidoo is a great place to build your social media presence. Post great content to send lots of traffic to your sites and monetize your lenses so you can make money and even donate some of your revenue to charity if that is your preference.

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Affiliate programs you can integrate with social media marketing

Affiliate programs help social media marketers make money by driving leads or sales to companies who are selling products or services. Some of the more popular affiliate programs include Amazon, eBay, ClickBank, Commission Junction, LinkShare and ShareASale.

There are four types of affiliate programs: pay per sale, pay per lead, pay per click, and private agreements.

What is social media pay-per-sale?

Pay per sale is the most common type of affiliate program. Affiliates get a commission every time someone buys something after clicking on one of their links.

Pay per sale affiliate programs are a great complement to your social media marketing efforts if you can drive a lot of traffic and if you have a small audience that listens to what you say and does what you want them to do.

What is social media pay-per-lead?

In a pay per lead affiliate program, you get paid every time you send leads to a company. These leads could be a name, a phone number or e-mail address that you generate through an online form.

Pay per lead programs are common in the insurance and mortgage refinancing businesses. As an affiliate, you aggregate all of the information you are able to gather and sell it to different insurance brokers. The sale is usually done face to face so you have no way of tracking whether or not a sale actually took place.

What is social media pay-per-click?

As the name suggests, pay per click affiliates get paid every time someone clicks on one of their links, whether a purchase is made or not.

One way to do pay per click is to put AdSense advertising on your website. The Google AdSense program pays affiliates whenever someone clicks on an ad.

What are private affiliate agreements?

Private agreements are exclusive deals that you make with companies directly. Look for businesses that do not yet have a formal affiliate program and negotiate a special agreement with them to be their affiliate.

These can be incredibly lucrative if you have a huge audience that a particular company is eager to have.

You may want to experiment with a little pay per click advertising or pay per lead programs, or grab the chance to sign private agreements when the opportunity presents itself, but most of your affiliate programs as a social media marketer will probably be pay per sale.

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Social media content can continuously make money for you for years, provided that it is high quality content that you are putting out there.

Each individual article is like an employee that works for you round the clock, which means having hundreds or thousands of articles out there is like having hundreds or thousands of employees working consistently on your behalf.

Social media content: what you should write and which ones you should outsource

Producing social media content can be time-consuming. And even if you are a great writer, you should not be doing all of writing. You have more important usages of your time. Get a few people who you can pay a fraction of what you are worth to do the vast majority of the writing in your behalf.

What you should concentrate on writing yourself are seminal articles, or content that tells your audience what your company is all about. You can write a few blog posts that describe the personality of your company or money pages that talk about your products or services. Everything else should be outsourced.

Social media content: the principle behind outsourcing

Most businesses are run by two basic teams: production and management. People who stand on the assembly line, or make the calls, or write the ads are all part of production. You can usually hire lower skill level people to do the production work.

Anytime you are working in production, you are working below your worth. You should be spending your time in management, not in production. And part of your management skills is to find people who are really, really good at production.

Social media content: insourcing vs. outsourcing

The vast majority of the content that you produce for your social media marketing campaign should be done by other people. Those tasks can be outsourced or they can be insourced.

When you insource your content development, you are getting someone who is an employee of your company to write your articles. Outsourcing, on the other hand, means that you pay someone outside of your organization to produce your content.

Hire writers for a fraction of what it would cost you to go and produce that content, to create very good content that will make money in your behalf. The end result is that you are able to spend your time getting more content employees out there to bring you money-making social media content over time.

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Participation is a key factor in expanding your social media presence – every time a person comments on your blog, make sure you respond and engage people in conversations.

Participation, however, is not only limited to your own social media space. You can get the attention of your marketplace and drive more traffic to your site by commenting on other people’s blogs.

When to comment on other social media blogs

Here are a few tips on how to comment on other people’s blogs so you can get the attention of your target audience.

• Identify the 20 most important blogs that your target audience reads.

• Sign up for e-mail alerts so that you can read the articles as soon as they are posted. The Social Profit Formula course has a well-crafted strategy on how to get blog updates in the event that the blog you are following does not have an e-mail alert function.

• As soon as the blog is updated, make a comment on the blog post. You want to be the very first person on the comment list because readers oftentimes only see the first few ones and ignore the rest.

How to comment on other social media blogs

When making a comment on other people’s blogs, make it a point to add value. Do not leave feedback just for the sake of getting your name and URL up there. In fact, do not put any URLs on your comment the first few times you are doing this.

Your objective is to impress the audience of these top social media blogs so they will start following you, interact with you, and eventually trust you. Make sure you are adding only quality comments which could be in the form of a question, a supporting statement, or additional information.

Sometimes you can add a URL that points to a post that adds value. It can be a post on your own blog or someone else’s.

If they post something really good, tweet about their post and include their Twitter handle so they see it. You can also talk about their posts on your own blog.

Rules on commenting on social media blogs

There are certain rules you must follow when commenting on social media blogs.

First, do not spam. Some people use automated software to put their comments and links all over other people’s blogs, which can be really annoying. Remember, spamming could severely damage your social media reputation.

Second, do not make comments that criticize or ridicule other people. You should be able to impress your audience without sounding condescending.

Check out Module 3 of the Social Profit Formula for a detailed strategy on when and how you should comment on other people’s blogs so you can establish yourself as an expert in your field and reach a wider social media audience.

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There are different types of blogs that you can use for social media marketing. You can have one type of blog or a combination of multiple blogs on your website. The most important thing is to put up a blog that caters to the needs of your specific audience.

Social media blogs: the online journal

The earliest and most ubiquitous type of blog is the online journal. Many teenagers put up a blog to talk about their beau, their parents, their teachers, the new kid in school, where they are going to hang out this weekend, and just about anything. Adults keep online journals, too, where they blog about sports, travel, politics, relationships, and whatever interests them.

You can build an audience through blogs that are humorous or controversial. But in terms of making money, online journals are pretty useless because the people who follow these blogs rarely click on any ads and very rarely buy things.

Social media blogs: the corporate blog

Corporate blogs usually contain news about the company and its products and services. They are written primarily for consumers or other businesses and are often used to announce new products and services, to explain policies, or to respond to public criticism.

Social media blogs: the CEO blog

Although CEOs are probably the busiest people on the planet, some of them maintain blogs where they post commentary about the latest industry news and how their companies are responding to recent developments.

Some of the more popular CEO bloggers include Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, Alan Meckler of Jupiter Media, George F. Colony of Forrester Research, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Squidoo founder Seth Godin, and Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki.

Social media blogs: the article blog

The article blog is probably the most profitable type of blog because you can drive a lot of traffic to your site and get advertising revenue from all the information and links you put up on your page. Article blogs inform, educate, and even entertain readers so they do something in return.

Social media blogs: the aggregate blog

Aggregate blogs are blogs that pull feeds from other blogs, summarize them, and point their audience back to the original article.

If you are doing an aggregate blog, do not simply grab content from someplace else and post it as your own. Be sure to ask permission first from the original author, link back to the original content, and give credit where credit is due.

Social media blogs: the “tips” blog

Blogs that contain tips are usually short and posted frequently. Because people love quick tips, these blogs can be valuable in terms of audience building. But when it comes to search engine ranking, it can be somewhat of a challenge because most search engines tend to not index pages that contain less than 100 words.

Social media blogs: the “_____ of the day” blog

The _____ of the day blog features a specific topic that points readers to other people’s content. Your blog could feature the video of the day, picture of the day, recipe of the day, or coupon of the day.

Social media blogs: the commentary blog

A cross between an aggregate blog and a CEO blog, the commentary blog pulls content from other places and makes a commentary on that particular subject. You can talk about what a competitor just did or a recent industry development and share your point of view.

You can put up multiple types of blogs on different social media spaces or even on your own website.

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