Create Your Social Media Presence with These Fundamentals

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To maximize your business’s potential, you need an online presence. But in order to be successful with your endeavors into social media, there’s a foundation that must be layed. Here are four fundamentals, or building blocks, to get you started on creating your social media presence.

1. Set Goals, Make a Plan

Without a plan and clear goals in mind, you are already doomed to fail. Afterall, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Or, more importantly, when you veer off course.

Think about how you will define success and how you plan to achieve it. Consider why you are using social media and how you’d like it to benefit your business. Also, put yourself in your desired audience’s shoes and try to discover what they’d like to see out of your profile.

The Digital Relativity blog has more on setting goals.

2. Tools

By tools, I mean the social media platform of your choosing. This goes right along with making a plan because before jumping in, you should be researching various platforms to make sure you are using the most effective one for your business.

If your target demographic doesn’t include women 18-30, maybe you can skip making a Pinterest account.

If you want to concentrate more on articles and written content, you may not need to spend time on Instagram, YouTube or Tumblr.

Not that you can’t manage more than one social media platform at once, but you’ll likely be most effective with your time if you narrow down your choice as much as possible so your message is most powerful and received by your desired audience.

3. Be a Credible Source

Once you’ve landed on the right site for you, become a source of constant, consistent, credible content. Not only should you create your own, but you can also share content from other sources. You can even share competitors content and add a little extra commentary to set yourself apart.

The idea is to send the message that your business is the expert in your field. Ideally, when people think of topics that pertain to your business, they’ll think of you.

4. Build an Audience

What good is any of this if no one is around to see what you’ve done? Certainly, being on the right social media platform is a great start. Boxcar Marketing has some tips for building an audience on specific platforms.

Having great content is also key to making sure you have users continually viewing your profile.

Once everything is in place, target influential users that boast a large following and send them your content in hopes that they’ll share it. This isn’t necessarily someone you personally think is influential, but rather someone your users will respect and likely be paying attention to already.

Also, be active on your profile and on other user’s profiles. If you receive comments on content you’ve shared, comment back and start an intelligent discussion. If you see interesting content shared by someone else, drop in your two-cents, which again helps you become a trusted expert in your field. Interaction will bring potential customers back more than sterile content.

Above all, be professional, be courteous and be relevant. Don’t stray off course from your business. This isn’t a profile where you share your views or you interests. This profile is for the users that need your service. Give them what they want.

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Facebook Friends with an Ex Not Just Bad, Bad For You

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A recent study led by psychologist Dr. Tara Marshall found that conitnuing to be Facebook friends with an ex after your break-up can be psychologically damaging. And here you thought “Facebook stalking” was just a fun term to throw around.

Dr. Marshall concludes that keeping tabs on an ex actually hinders the healing process after a break-up. In other words, it’s harder to move on when you constantly see the person you used to date smiling in your timeline.

Another Facebook landmine exists for those who are now in a stable relationship. Finding an ex and friending them can be upsetting to your current partner, even if it’s for nothing more than catching up.

Julie Kent has more at The Cleveland Leader.

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The Cost of Social Media Continues to Rise

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I’ve written before about the hidden cost of social media marketing. While Facebook, Twitter and the like are all free to use, their is the inherent cost of your time to keep your online presence where you want it.

Heather Clancy, of ZDNet, now reports that managing social media for small or midsize businesses often costs hundreds of dollars per month for tools or for outsourced manpower.

Clancy’s report is based on research done by Duct Tape Marketing, who’s creator, John Jantsch, attributes the findings to business owners’ realization that social media is “an essential element of the marketing mix.”

Despite spending nearly $1000 per month on social media, almost all responding business owners said their online presence has “somewhat helped” or “helped a great deal”.

It appears social media has joined the ranks of print, radio or TV ads. It’s a pay to play system, so you’d better be sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

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Social Media: From Private to Public?

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Facebook, Twitter and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other social media platforms have become a public forum where ideas, opinions and news are exchanged. Peter M. Gunn, of Huffington Post, argues that because social media is a essentially a public service, it’s time to take it out of the private sector and into the public one.

Social media companies have, without a doubt, changed the way we communicate. But then, fire stations changed the way we fought fire and they began as private entities. There’s actually a good argument that your privacy would be better protected by a government run social media site than it is on Facebook. For example, when is the last time the Post Office ‘shared’ your personal information with another company? Now, when is the last time Facebook ‘shared’ your email address, demographic stats or browsing habits?

Also, Facebook and Twitter can’t protect First Amendment rights. Thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which says law enforcement can gain access to electronic documents with only a subpoena, they can’t protect Fourth Amendment rights, either.

Perhaps, rather than the broad step of government run socia media, stricter regulations on existing social media could be put into place. Considering the deep pockets of the existing companies, however, and their current investment in lobbying, that seems unlikely to occur.

Certainly, there could exist a public-owned social media alternative that protects your freedoms, while the privately-owned alternatives continue to thrive. Case in point, the US Post Office doesn’t run FedEx or UPS out of business. It comes down to how much protection you want for your online communication.

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You Should Be Tracking These Social Media Goals

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Want to know how to evaluate your buisiness’s performance in social media? Is your time and effort getting acceptable returns? Andrew K. Kirk, of Social Media Examiner, has 4 goals you should be tracking to ensure a positive social media ROI.

1. Brand Recognition

Obviously, you need people to be aware of your business. But the more people know, the more likely they will become active members of your online community.

Track your growing popularity with Klout, which gives you a social influence score based on your performance across multiple social media sites. Log your score each month and think about what actions you took during that time frame. Soon, you should be able to pinpoint what positively and negatively affects you online presence.

2. Traffic

Just as people need to be aware of your business, people also need to visit your website. Visitors will likely learn more about your business directly from your site than from anywhere else.

With Google Analytics, you can easily track visits and discover what is affecting those.

3. Repeat Business

Any business needs repeat customers to thrive. For your online presence to thrive, you need visitors to return to your site and stay longer.

To track loyalty, you can customize Google Analytics and then do a little math. Well worth it in the end.

4. Conversions

The previous steps don’t necessarily translate into an improvement in your bottom line. Afterall, the effort you put into your online presence better be worth it. You should know the ratio of overall visitors to your site to conversions. You should also know the correlation of social media activity to conversions and the source for the majority of your traffic that converts.

Again, Google Analytics has you covered. By setting up some goals and tinkering a bit, you’ll soon have all the data you need to measure your goals and get the most out of your time on social media.

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Facebook ‘Offers’ No Longer Free Ride

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You’ve seen the deals in your newsfeed. “Free chips and salsa” or “15% off next purchase” claimed by friends. These are part of Facebook Offers, which launched earlier this year as a way for businesses to reward their Facebook fans. It began as a free service, but Alistair Barr and Alexei Oreskovic report for Reuters that Facebook has announced merchants will be required “to pay at least $5 on related ads to promote each Facebook Offer to a targeted audience of fans and friends of fans.”

This change is likely in response to growing concerns about how Facebook can monetize its site. 

In addition to the cost, Facebook has opened up Offers to online-only businesses and adding barcodes for easy deal redemption. 

With the included cost for each ad, users will likely get a better experience. No longer will irrelevant ads for deals from businesses with no local stores appear in your newsfeed.

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Facebook’s ‘Snitchgate’ Ends With a Whimper

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Recently, Facebook conducted, what they called a survey, to root out users who registered their accounts under fake names. In a sort of watered down McCarthyism, they asked their friends to “snitch” on other friends and answer whether the name on their account was real or not. As Kashmir Hill, of Forbes, found, those involved in the so-called ‘survey’ didn’t particularly appreciate it.

Facebook’s terms and conditions include a clause that user’s must register under their real name, so it doesn’t seem outlandish that they would want to know whether or not users were living up to that agreement. What’s drawing comparisons to Caligula and the KGB, which is admittedly a bit strong, is the way Facebook went about rounding up the fake name account holders.

Facebook spokesperson Fred Wolens insists that the survey will not be used to enforce the real name policy, but rather to teach machine algorithms to determine real accounts from spam accounts.

This claim, however, suggests that Facebook itself is ignoring its own terms and conditions and those who violate them. So how seriously should users take those same terms?

Also, the options for answering the question: ‘Is this your friend’s real name?’ were: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I don’t know this person’ or ‘I don’t want to answer’. Every choice carries a possible backlash and since Facebook is being so cagey about how they plan to use the information gathered, there’s no telling what consequences those answers will bring.

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Combine Email Marketing with Social Sharing [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Facebook features about 800-million users, yet there are nearly 4-times that many users of email. With numbers like that, you’re likely already using email marketing to reach your audience. If you’re not, look at that number again and get started immediately.

Shelly Kramer, of v3im.com, advises you to get the most out of your emails by combining them with your social networks. As the included infographic shows, you can improve your click through rate significantly simply by including social sharing in your emails. You can also build your audience for your online profile and, as your customers share your message through their own account, you get a larger audience for each message.

You can also include a prominent ‘Subscribe’ button on your site so that you can do the most with each email. And be sure to research plug-ins that can add links to your social media profiles in your signature and include your latest blog post as well.

As with any message, the goal here is to be seen and heard by as many people as possible. These are a few easy ways to build a bigger audience.

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Who’s Using Social Media Sites, Anyway?

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The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently released it’s findings from a phone survey of about 1-thousand US adults. As Matt McGee reports for Marketing Land, the survey aimed to discover who exactly is using various social networking sites. Some of the findings you may have already assumed, such as, Pinterest is dominated by women and those with good, higher paying careers are using LinkedIn. All of the information is valuable, however, so you can tailor messages on specific sites to the demographics that are most often found there.

Facebook

66-percent of Internet users are on Facebook, which is by far the highest percentage of users. Users are fairly evenly distributed between men and women, education level and annual income. The biggest advantage Facebook features is the captivation of older Internet users. 56-percent of those age 50-64 have an account, which makes Facebook the clear top choice for marketing to the older crowd, despite the fact that younger users also flock their.

Twitter

Though Twitter does not hold a large market share of Internet users overall, it is almost entirely populated by well-educated men and women under 50. The annual income data is well dispersed across the spectrum, which sets Twitter apart from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn

As I mentioned earlier, LinkedIn is generally used by successful professionals over the age of 30. Its clientele is made up of 36-percent of Internet users with college degrees and 34-percent of Internet users with an annual salary over $75-thousand. With the exception of Facebook, which posted large percentages in every category thanks to their sheer number of users, LinkedIn is by far the leader in those two categories.

Pinterest

19-percent of female Internet users have a Pinterest account and that number is almost certainly still growing. Though their ages tend to skew younger than 65, you can reach nearly every female group through Pinterest.

Instagram and Tumblr

These image based sites returned data that is remarkably similar. Their users are mostly young, 30 or below, with at least some college experience. Oddly, Instagram features a large number of well-off users, 16-percent of those with a salary above $75 thousand. Tumblr is more evenly dispersed and, if anything, tends to attract those with a salary below $50-thousand per year.

 

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A Guide to Awesome Facebook Posts

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“Write something…and make it count.” Daunting words that have kept plenty of marketers awake at night. Before you make your company’s next Facebook post, consider Ron Schott’s elements of a succesful post.

Rather than a broad, please everyone approach, utilize Facebook’s advanced targeting and create copy specifically for your diverse range of consumers. Study your audience and create targeting profiles filtering by: age, gender, ‘interested in’, ‘relationship status’, language, education, workplace and location down to city.

Find a relevant, interesting picture that’s ideally no bigger than 403 px by 403 px. That way, your loyal customers will pin the image and spread the word for you.

Time the relese of your brilliant post based on the activity of your audience. Be sure to consider outside influences that could cause social media to blow up. I’m talking about political debates, press conferences or sporting events. Plan ahead so your work of art doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

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