Your New Social Media Strategy: Visualize and Attack

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In case you haven’t noticed, Pinterest has exploded over the past year and a half. In fact, it is now the fourth largest driver of traffic worldwide. The lesson to learn is that visual content moves the masses. Ryan Wilson at Business2Community has some clever ways to  increase social media engagement by using more images in your posts.

1. Create your own Meme

They are easy to create and give a fun, lighthearted vibe rather than a more desperate, “we want your business” type of message that drives away social media users. And they are literally everywhere.

2. Infographics

We’ve used quite a few on this very blog. They contain a ton of information that you would never read an entire article to glean.

3. Regular Photos

Old school and timeless. Whether it’s of customers, your store or your new product, take a picture and share it with the masses.

4. Take Submissions

Ask your audience to send in their own pics of them utilizing your products. They do the heavy lifting but you reap the benefits.

The point is, be creative and visual. You’ll see a remarkable difference.

 

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Improve B2B Business Through Facebook Ads

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Can Facebook ads help business to business sales? Adam Proehl of Business2Community says ‘of course!’

There’s bound to be some opposition from those established in B2B marketing, but consider some of Proehl’s main points. Though users aren’t going to Facebook to look for what your business is offering, that doesn’t mean they can’t find your business that way. Because, regardless of why they’re there, all of your potential customers are likely visiting Facebook.

Plus, through remarketing, you can gain an additional way to reach users who visited your website and left without a conversion. At worst, you continue to make potential consumers aware of your brand and what you offer.

So, don’t think of Facebook as direct marketing, necessarily. But, do consider it helpful to your business.

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What SEOs and Business Owners Need To Know About Facebook Graph Search

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On January 15th, Facebook announced they will be starting their own personal search engine called Facebook Graph Search. That’s right, the little white bar at the top of your page now has an actual purpose. The search engine relies strongly on “likes” and other relevant Facebook information such as page popularity and location signals.

While this new change could lead to some interesting methods of finding businesses close to you (for example, Facebook claims you will be able to search things like “Italian restaurants that my friends have been to”), but it also has business owners and SEO experts wondering how to take advantage of Facebook’s search. As Matt McGee found out however, Facebook was already ahead of everyone.

They released tips for how to make sure your business gets found in the Graph Search. Releasing these tips helps them as much as it helps others use the search, because it will help business position themselves to appear in the search while simultaneously populating the search engine for Facebook.

The most important things to know are that Graph Search is only available for a few right now, but it will offer local search from the very start, and the search results are created by compiling information created and shared by businesses, especially through their pages.

That doesn’t mean you have to have a page for your business however. It will help enormously, but businesses also will show up so long as customers or visitors have tagged them as a “place”.

We will have to wait to see just how Facebook’s Graph Search works once it is unveiled for the wider public. It could become another gimmick type feature of Facebook that many don’t use, like the FourSquare like ability to check into locations is treated at the moment. But, it is possible Facebook’s new search engine could be a useful tool for finding local businesses.

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Create New Posts From Facebook’s Ad Tool

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Though it isn’t a groundbreaking update, Facebook has made their ad tool a little more seamless by allowing users to create a new post without leaving the ad center.

This isn’t a development that will improve your ad performance or get you a bigger audience, but it might make your life just a little easier. Head over to Inside Facebook for Brittany Darwell’s article on the details.

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Facebook Mobile Ads: A Growing Trend

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Facebook mobile has allowed ads for less than a year, but they’ve put a lot of effort into making it an effective platform. Now they are seeing the benefits of that, as 20% of the ad buys on Facebook are for the mobile format.

The price of the mobile ads are significantly higher than their desktop counterpart, but they are worth it considering their higher visibility due to mobile showing only one ad at a time.

Head over to TechCrunch to check out the full story on the growing platform of Facebook’s mobile ads. If you haven’t already gotten started, you may want to consider allocating some of your ad budget there.

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Free Advice From a Social Media Consultant

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Regardless of you company’s current social media standing, you could probably benefit from the advice of a consultant. NBC Chicago recently published some free advice from a Chicago-based social media expert, Tim Schraeder.

Be sure to read through the article to get advice on how to create conversations with your audience, how to make the most of each post and how to measure success.

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Turn Your Fans Into Loyal Customers Through Social Media

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At the core of most articles on social media is the question of how to turn Facebook fans or Twitter followers into an increase in revenue. There are many theories and plenty of suggestions out there from a variety of experts, but possibly the most effective is also the most obvious. Simply interact with your fans.

What a consumer is essentially saying when they become a fan of your company’s Facebook page or follow your Twitter feed is that they want to have a relationship with your business. They want to be a part of your conversation and they want to hear what you have to say. All you have to do is to give them what they want.

There are plenty of strategies aimed at increasing your social media audience. Promotions will draw in consumers, but they won’t stick around if they don’t continue to gain from the relationship. You should use social media to give fans something they wouldn’t get by simply visiting your physical business. Deals, inside information, pictures or videos or even just interesting or entertaining anecdotes. Let them into your business enough to make them feel comfortable enough to continue visiting it. More than comfortable, they’ll develop a sense of loyalty.

This type of social media relationship cultivation will not only supply you with an army of loyal customers, but it will also help you add to your audience as word spreads about your social media prowess.

Ernan Roman has an excellent example of how to use social media at Business2Community. He highlights Starbucks’ efforts to build great relationships with their customers.

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Social Media’s Advantage Over Email Marketing

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Recently, I wrote about the dangers of trusting the wrong, essentially superficial, metrics when diagnosing your social media strategy. Today, let’s talk specifically about the great battle of social media vs. email marketing.

Errol Apostolopoulos reports for BostInno that “unique impressions delivered via Facebook’s sponsored posts average out to be 18x more cost-effective than those delivered via traditional email acquisition methods.” When you add in that you can use standard posts to reach a wider, if less concentrated, audience, Facebook, and other social media sites, really set themselves apart. 

Does this mean you should completely forsake your old pal email marketing? Heck no. It still has an important role to play. Pairing email and social media can lower your cost per acquisition on both platforms. 

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Bring Relevance To Your Metrics

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Is your social media marketing strategy relying on so-called “vanity metrics”? Pageviews, Twitter followers, Facebook likes and even conversion rates fall under that umbrella, as Ivory Madison reports for Harvard Business Review.

Instead, you should be relying on “actionable metrics”. Relevant revenue, sales volume, customer retention and relevant growth are counted on here. To determine your success in these areas, you simply need to compare your company’s results with the involvement in social media in certain projects.

At the core of any good metric is a clear cause and effect. You should be able to translate the actions taken on social media and translate them directly into the success of your business.

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Nonprofits Social Media Model Could Improve Your Own [INFOGRAPHIC]

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INFOGRAPHIC

In 2012, even nonprofits were utilizing social media. MDG Advertising looked into this developing trend and found that the inclusion of social media marketing meant more exposure and more donations for these organizations, as reported by The Huffington Post.

The innovation of ‘Giving Tuesday’, which grew over social media, is a glowing example of what is possible when online marketing is utilized properly. The model used by nonprofits is not revolutionary. Rather, it is simply a testament to why putting the time and effort into social media marketing is necessary.

While you browse the included infographic, think about how you can increase your conversions through a better social media strategy.

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