Social Media Marketing Archives - Page 46 of 57

Should Your Business Really Be On Social Media?

Source: Alan Reeves

It seems like every business has some sort of social media presence, but you’d be surprised at the huge difference of engagement across many companies. When you look at businesses struggling with social media, you’ll often hear that they signed up simply “because everyone else is on there.” That could be a good argument for keeping up with your competitors, but it doesn’t actually mean you need to be on Facebook.

The problem is that many companies who try to branch out to social media don’t actually understand the platform and can be actually injuring their brand’s reputation. Blindly following the competition into the online arena can be leading yourself to slaughter if you can’t follow the best practices and actually establish your brand’s online presence.

Marketing Land came up with five reasons you might consider not signing up for Facebook, Twitter, or whatever the next popular social media platform is. Don’t get me wrong, social media can be hugely beneficial for your brand, but if you have any of these problems you won’t be seeing any of the benefits.

Not Updating – The number one issue with small company social media accounts is the eventual neglect they fall into. It is easy to set up an account, get going steadily for a week or two, then gradually let the account slip into an artifact from an earlier time. Even worse, rather than giving up, most accounts stay “active” but without any actual presence or content. Not updating your social account may not seem like a big deal “because they can still find me that way” but in reality it gives the perception that your company may not be current. Visitors may find themselves thinking, “are they still in business?” or “what else are they neglecting?”
Using the Wrong Platform for Your Industry – Not every social media platform is created equally. In fact, they all have their own niches which can be confusing when you are unfamiliar with the market. LinkedIn is for business professionals and companies looking to recruit workers, while Twitter facilitates direct interaction between brand and consumer. For that reason, advertising your local plumbing business on LinkedIn or Pinterest can be confusing or desperate looking. The best trick is to figure out what others in your field are using, and try to learn about those social platforms.
Not Knowing What You’re Doing – Even companies that manage to select the right platforms for their brand might not know what to do once they are there. While personal Facebook pages are often used for sharing baby pictures, family events, or whining about life in general, most of those things shouldn’t go on a company account (unless you’re company is family based and your family event is related to business). Figure out what your customers care about, and focus on providing them with that type of content. The best guideline would be to post roughly 60-70% industry-related news and content, and 30-40% personalized content related to your business such as company events or important aspects to company culture. Customers want to be informed, but they don’t want to be blasted with things they don’t care about.
Not Responding – Social media works both ways. It isn’t strictly for you to yell about your business at customers, but to create an environment where individuals and brands can freely and directly interact. That means you will start getting comments, questions, and posts from your user base (if you’re posting the right content.) It is your responsibility to respond in a respectable amount of time. Not responding makes it appear that you are only trying to sale things, not interact with your community.
Not Taking Advantage of Interaction – While it is awesome that social media makes it possible for consumers to directly contact you, you should also be contacting them. Ask the community for their opinions and feedback about anything you want to know. How are they reacting to your products? What about your services? Consumers are usually more than happy to share their opinions, so give them the opportunity and listen to their thoughts.

All of these issues can be easily fixed and a social media account can always be salvaged, but it takes time and resources, which many small businesses don’t have. If you have the means to do it right, social media can be a big boost to online brand engagement. But, if you can’t afford to do it right, leave it alone. There are other ways to make your company findable online without taking on the responsibilities of social media.

July 31, 2013/0 Comments

What Social Sharing Buttons Are You Using?

Facebook, News, Social Media Marketing

In the current internet ecosystem, social sharing buttons are considered one of the best ways to let people share your content organically without making them feel forced. All you have to do is create great content, and the audience will do the rest. But, add too many of the sharing buttons, and your site starts looking overzealous, crowded, and a bit dated; smaller social media sites are constantly rising to popularity and falling into obscurity, so what is popular this second might look old in a month.

Too many choices also water down the effect of sharing to the most important platforms. How many people are going to see your site if you share it to Myspace? (Can you share to the “new” Myspace? If so, is Justin Timberlake the only person who will see it?) It is important to choose your social media buttons individually and to keep them updated to reflect the latest favorites.

Samuel Miranda from Search Engine Journal recently talked about the most commonly seen sharing buttons and whether they should be used on your site. While he frames the choices around whether they would be appropriate for the casino portal he runs, the actual advice is largely solid.

Facebook

Facebook is by far the biggest social media site, and currently the only one to have a movie devoted to it. The 1.1 billion users are also the most engaged and active users. Facebook should be a no-brainer for anyone running a site, and it is easy to find a “like” button for Facebook that has been styled to match your site’s aesthetic.

Twitter

While Twitter doesn’t have nearly as many active users as Facebook, it is still the second most popular social platform with 200 million active users. It is also more open and caters to direct interaction between brands and the public. The ability to follow anyone rather than Facebook’s model which limits you to people you know, also means that a single share by an influential person can have an extraordinarily wide impact. While it can’t compete in user numbers, the open interaction across the site makes a Tweet button nearly as important as a Facebook button.

Google+

This is where the decisions have to start being made. Google+ supposedly has 343 million “active” users, but the majority are most likely engaging through their other Gmail accounts (Gmail, YouTube) more than their actual G+ homepage. Few seem to actually use Google+ like a normal social media site. But, Google obviously favors their social site and the ‘+1’ button appears to have some great SEO advantages because of it, making Google+ shares fairly important for sites that rely on search for much of their traffic.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been described as the Facebook for business. People don’t share entertainment or funny links, nor do they tend to promote brands through their opinions. The site is mostly used for job hunting, recruiting, and staying connected to business associates, so it doesn’t make sense for most informal or content-driven sites to pay much attention to the platform.

Reddit/Pinterest

Reddit and Pinterest are both vastly popular niche content sharing sites. They both have their differences in function. Reddit links lead to images, outside websites, and “self-posts’ that are user-generated text while Pinterest focuses on large images, tutorials, and occasionally links to blogs. But, both are similar in that the focus is sharing content, but can only be relevant to niche groups. For example, Miranda’s gambling site example wouldn’t benefit much from the demographics that make up either site, but tech and game related content can be extremely popular on Reddit, while home decoration, style tips, and recipes tend to be the norm on Pinterest.

Buffer / AddThis/ShareThis

While you’ve probably seen buttons for all the sites above, chances are you may not have noticed the new buttons popping up for social media sharing services that schedule your shares across multiple platforms with a single click. They streamline the actual effort of users to engage their friends, followers, and social communities efficiently and at the appropriate times. They also ease the load of content marketers who have been manually tweeting throughout the day (hint). But, these buttons aren’t relevant for many sites. Most average social media users tend to only share one thing on a platform at a time. They will post one thing to Facebook, then Tweet something else entirely, assuming most of their friends follow them on both services. These multi-share tools may eventually rise to prominance, but they need more time before you start implementing their buttons on your site.
Conclusion – When it comes down to it, choosing the social media sharing buttons on your site really depends on your demographic and how people find and use your site. Keeping yourself limited to a select number of buttons keeps people sharing your content on the platforms where it will actually be seen, and keeps your page looking clean.

July 26, 2013/0 Comments

New Tool Gives Marketers Some ‘Reddit Insight’

Marketing, News, Social Media Marketing

Social media marketers have been aware of Reddit for a long time, and many have even tried to take advantage of the large community. But, the site is notorious for rejecting any attempts to disguise marketing, not to mention being confusing for new users and too streamlined for marketers to track any meaningful data.

Now, Marketing Land reports a free new tool called Reddit Insight has been created by Hack Reactor to help Redditors and marketers alike analyze their accounts, posts, keywords, and subreddits.

The tool can analyze an entire profile or a single post simply by entering the username or URL. It displays where users are gaining Karma or Upvotes (signs of approval on the site that also increase visibility of posts)as well as detailed information on numerous other site specific information, such as how keywords are faring by subreddit through word clouds and topic clusters.

The tool allows marketers and analysts to explore the data from as large or small of a scale as you want. While you can overview entire subreddits or user histories, you can also break down how users are reacting to specific comments and interactions.

They present it all in bright colorful graphs that are easy to immediately understand which makes the data both accessible but also great for explaining your social media tactics and their results to clients.

July 24, 2013/0 Comments

How To Use Social Media To Create Conversions [Infographic]

Infographic, News, Social Media Marketing

Establishing yourself on social media and gaining plenty of followers and friends has numerous benefits for your search engine optimization and even site traffic, but just being retweeted and getting plenty of likes doesn’t necessarily translate to paying customers or conversions.

As Entrepreneur shared, Wishpond, creator of numerous social-media focused marketing applications, surveyed companies and found that roughly 77 percent of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers have gained customers through Facebook, but business-to-business (B2B) marketers tend to be more successful on LinkedIn.

Just knowing that little bit of information can help focus your social media strategy and mold it to fit your marketing strategy, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. An under-informed social media campaign is like blindly shooting at a target and hoping to get a bullseye. Sure, it’s possible, but you have much better chances if you keep your eyes open and aim your weapon.

Thankfully, Wishpond created an infographic (seen below, click to enlarge) with tons of information which can help you create an informed socia media marketing campaign, and turn likes into conversions. With all this information, you can create an effective social media campaign that matches your marketing strategy.

How To Use Social Media To Create Conversions

Click to Enlarge

July 22, 2013/0 Comments

What Are You Forgetting In Your Social Media Campaign?

Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Details can make or break a social media strategy. Little mistakes and small forgotten aspects can make your company look unprofessional and under-prepared. Listing all the ways I regularly see companies making small mistakes that still severely handicap their strategy would be practically endless, but Mashable had nine entrepreneurs share what they think is the one most important detail they see others routinely forgetting. You may have an otherwise strong social media strategy, but if you’re neglecting any of these, you are under performing.

Link to Your Site – It is way to common to see small businesses creating great content and sharing them on their Facebook or other social pages, without any sort of link to the actual website anywhere readily available. Even if users like what you’re putting out, they can be turned off by searching for a link and simply give up. It should be easy for them to find out more about what you do.
Retargeting – Many small businesses forget to retarget people based on their own social media campaigns using specific URLs in order to track specific leads around the web. If done right, this can be a highly effective marketing tactic, but it continues to go under-utilized. If you are retargeting, you can serve potential leads the ads that would make them most likely to convert, as well as collecting data to track exactly how effective your social media strategy actually is.
Focus Your Social Media – Too many small businesses spread themselves thin across a barrage of social media sites. Focusing on a couple of the most popular sites like Facebook and Twitter makes a much larger impact than barely having a presence on all of them. You’ll find you’re better connecting with your audience and making more conversions without any more effort than you were already using on social media.
Email is Still Important – Email may be the oldest “social” way to connect with customers one-on-one, but it is still the easiest method as well. Everyone checks their email, and statistics show that customers who receive emails are more likely to connect on other social sites.
Don’t Forget About YouTube – If resources and skills allow, YouTube can be an incredible piece of your social media strategy. Videos that show your expertise cement your reputation and showcase your skills to potential customers, while entertaining videos draw a wide audience base that otherwise may not be interested in your service. YouTube content is one of the easiest to share across all platforms, but if you can’t invest in a quality video, you might consider putting your resources elsewhere.
Keep the Original Content Coming – The big catchphrase now is “content is king” but for that content to do anything, it has to be valuable. If you create content that is worth viewer’s time, you can easily connect with a wide range of viewers and build your brand’s reputation.
Run a Personal Blog – Running a personal blog humanizes your company and raises your value by highlighting the intelligent and skillful people working within your company. Everyone knows that companies are always trying to market their service, but they view personal blogs as a more honest way to assess the abilities of those actually running the company.
Don’t Forget Facebook Targeting – Targeting software for Facebook admin pages allow select posts to only reach a specific demographic so that you can more narrowly market to their tastes without hurting the sensibilities of others. It’s easy to use (it’s one of the three icons beneath the text box), yet so many small businesses forget about it.
Make Your Employees Into Advocates – Including your employees in your social media builds trust between your potential customers and your business and puts a face on your brand. If you use organic thoughts from your employees leveraged with your strategic direction, you can make your employees some of your biggest advocates.

July 17, 2013/0 Comments

What Is The Key To Successful SEO? Social Media Integration

News, SEO, Social Media Marketing

What makes one SEO company successful and another fail? There could be a multitude of factors, but according to a recent study by Ascend2, chances are social integration is the key. Successful SEO companies integrate social media into their SEO plans and strategies far more than companies who report they are struggling.

Ascend2, a popular research agency, surveyed nearly 600 businesses and marketing professionals from around the world and asked the participants to rate their own companies’ SEO success. The survey then compared the answers from the 15 percent who rated their companies as “very successful” with SEO and the 18 percent who reported being “not successful.” This creates a relatively small sample size, but the findings are still interesting, and as Matt McGee from Search Engine Land suggests, would appear to hold up to larger samples.

By far the biggest difference between the companies is their use of social media within their SEO strategy. Their charts show that 38 percent of those reporting “very successful” with SEO are doing extensive social integration, while only two percent of the “not successful” companies say they are. On top of that, a full 50 percent of the “not successful” companies report doing no social media integration at all. Frighteningly, when looking at the results of all those surveyed, almost a quarter of the companies said they were not integrating social media into their SEO strategies.

The full report is available for free, though you do have to give your contact information. You would think at this point most SEO professionals would be aware of how important social media is to your SEO strategies. These results however show just how many companies are working with strategies that are behind the times and dragging their companies down.

July 16, 2013/0 Comments

Handling Social Media Errors: Don’t Feed The Trolls

Advertising, Facebook, Social Media Marketing

Regardless of how well you plan your social media strategy, you’re bound to make some missteps along the way. Erin Lynch, of Multichannel Merchant, points out the recent JC Penny uproar over a tea kettle resembling a certain German dictator. JC Penny couldn’t be expected to foresee that outcome, but they handled it impeccably. The tea pot was pulled from the store’s website and they used their social media profiles to apologize, with some good natured humor included.

The worst possible move in this type of situation is to ignore it. Had JC Penny’s social media team remained silent while the internet made the photo of their tea pot viral, they may not have escaped unscathed. Remember that in your own social media policies. When unhappy customers come calling, respond politely and apologetically. If it all possible, remedy the problem and report back so they, and others, can see how well you handled the issue. If ignoring problems is the worst move, then debating or challenging customers is a close second. The customer is always right, especially when your conversation is on a public, social media forum.

June 10, 2013/0 Comments

Some Tips For Great Customer Service Through Social Media

Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Perhaps one of the most effective ways to market your business on social media is to use it as a customer service tool. The benefits include being able to publicly respond and alleviate any negative feedback or issues and it shows other potential customers that they’ll have a direct line to you.

As Business Journal reports however, great customer service, which in turn means great PR for your business, doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning and effectively executing that plan.

That all starts simply enough by having the right people in place. If you want great customer service, you should employ a staff capable of humanizing your social media presence while staying within your desired message. Second, in order for them to execute your plan, they have to know what it is. You should clearly define and spell out how quickly they should respond to messages and a plan of action of how to deal with them.

While building your customer service practices, be sure to measure how well you’re doing just as you would study analytics for new ad campaigns. If your customer service isn’t bringing you more customers or more repeat business, you need to change something.

June 4, 2013/0 Comments

Breaking Down The Big 5 Social Media Platforms

Advertising, Facebook, Google Plus, Social Media Marketing

There’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest. All offer something unique and a unique demographic to those that create a presence for their business there. So which one is best suited for the needs of your company?

Jen Wilson, of Business Journal, recently published an in-depth look at who exactly is using each site and what type of company will flourish there. Here’s a quick rundown of the findings.

Facebook: Best suited for established brands with a dedicated following that will share success stories. Ages 18-55.

Twitter: Great for developing relationships with customers and for PR. Younger demographic than Facebook with an added bonus of well-known personalities among the users.

LinkedIn: B2B sales is perfect here, but it can also be used to establish yourself as an expert in a given field. Wide age range, but users are college educated and often advanced in their careers.

Google+: Tech companies, internet services and gaming works great considering there’s a high concentration of young, tech savvy males here. Also, get a boost in search as your picture appears with your articles or web site.

Pinterest: Any image driven company, specifically fashion or design but could even be adapted for certain types of sales. The best place to market to women under 50.

May 30, 2013/0 Comments

Do Local Businesses Really Need Online Marketing?

Google, News, SEO, Social Media Marketing

You run a small local business with brick and mortar locations. What reason do you have to invest in online marketing? Actually, there are quite a few reasons local businesses can benefit from online marketing.

You want your business to be reaching out to customers everywhere they are looking for you or services like yours, and more and more people are turning to the internet before they make a purchase. If they aren’t buying straight off the web, they are checking reviews and public perception of the products they are looking for.

A recent BIA/Kelsey report said that 97% of consumers use online media before making local purchases, and Google suggests that 9 out of 10 internet searches led to follow up actions such as calling or visiting businesses. That means the majority of consumers are turning to the internet, and if your business isn’t there, they will find others.

Online marketing isn’t as intimidating as many thing, either. Search Engine Land says that 50% of small businesses’ online listings are wrong, and the majority of small business owners claim they don’t have the time to keep online listings up to date. Keeping Google’s information on your business updated only takes a few minutes, and that is where most will find you. You can create a local business listing even if you don’t have a website or sell anything online.

The one step above this is to embrace social media. Many smaller businesses focus almost their entire web presence on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter, because these are where the brands can reach out directly to consumers.

If you do wish to fully capitalize on online marketing, but don’t think you have the time, hiring someone to manage your online brand and website eventually pays itself off in public awareness of your brand and cementing your brand identity as a trusted business in the community. However, you can’t just do a little. A shoddy or out of date website can hurt public perception of your company, so keeping your site up to date with all the current web standards is important to maintaining your brand’s integrity.

May 30, 2013/0 Comments

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