Luxury Brands: Breaking All the Rules For Social Media

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Mostly, I use this space to talk about concerns and tips for small to medium business owners. But today, let’s look at how the other half lives, so to speak.

When it comes to so-called luxury brands, which means companies who sell very expensive things that you don’t really need, all the rules and tips for social media marketing don’t apply.

Unmetric recently published their Luxury Fashion report to shed some light on how well-known labels like Dior, Burberry and Louis Vitton conduct themselves online. Erika Morphy has more on that at Forbes. What I learned is that those luxury brands don’t need to follow the rules.

You’re told to interact with your audience and make your business’s page a community. Some luxury brands don’t allow any consumers to even comment on their Facebook page and most others won’t respond. Some brands won’t even respond to tweets.

So let this give you something to shoot for. Become a globally recognized force in your industry and you won’t have to try anymore to maintain a profitable social media presence.

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10 Ways Social Media Can Produce a Career After College

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If you’re a college student, you’re using some form of social media. I say that with the utmost confidence because you’re reading this, so you know how to use the Internet.

However, the way you use social media should change the closer you get to graduation. Your profile can’t all be about last night’s kegger or foam party. Employers are not as impressed as they should be by that.

So, follow these 10 tips, as initially suggested by Meagan Cook at Business2Community.

1. Be you

I’m not suggesting you abandon all fun aspects of your life in order to showcase your employable attributes. You still need to come across as a real, multi-dimensional person. Just don’t eliminate yourself from contention for a job with questionable statements or pictures.

2. Connect with the pros

Just because you’re still in school doesn’t mean you can’t connect with those working in your desired field. Use Twitter to retweet them or ask them questions. Use LinkedIn to network with them and get career advice. The more familiar they are with your name and background, the better chance they’ll think of you after graduation.

3. Hunt for jobs

Follow recruiters on Twitter and respond to possible opportunities. Even if you aren’t quite qualified, you can ask for any similar internship or entry-level openings.

4. Ask questions

You can strike up a conversation with those already working in your industry by asking them about what you’re learning. You’re not trying to argue with them, but you’re also not a ‘yes man’. Have an intelligent discussion.

5. Speak English

Or, more accurately, don’t speak in text lingo. It doesn’t paint you as an intelligent, employable person. Typing out full words and correct spelling may be hard, but it’s way easier than unemployment.

6.  It’s not always about you

Sure, you are hoping your social media presence helps you get a job. But, you can’t always talk about your accomplishments. Give credit to others when applicable. It makes you seem less selfish, more well-rounded and increases your chance to get mentioned by others.

7. Show-off

When you have a chance, showcase your expertise in proper forums. Establish yourself as a knowledgable, credible source.

8. Don’t work blue

You don’t have to pretend you’re in church all the time, but there’s no need for explitives in social media. You’ve got time to think of something more clever and something that employers won’t object to.

9. Plant seeds

The earlier you start the process, the better off you’ll be. You want to be able to allow the process to work, not rush it along. Gradually build yourself up and establish a presence in your field.

10. Stay in the discussion

Even if you aren’t knowledgable about a specific subject, you can still be a part of the conversation. Showing a readiness to learn is important so ask questions.

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Get The Most Out Of Facebook Ads

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Facebook Paid Ads are a great way to spread the word about your business. They also help drive people to your company’s Facebook page, where you can share content and your messages at no cost. Why wouldn’t you want a captive audience of consumers who actively seek out your message? Well, Mona Elesseily, of Search Engine Land, has five ways to get them by effectively utilizing Facebook Ads.

1. Target your target

Be as specific as possible when using targeting features. Instead of limiting your ads to ‘only men’ or ‘only under 30’, narrow it down further by using education level, specific interests or workplace. The idea is to make a user feel as if your ad is speaking directly to him or her.

2. Use effective goals

While I think using ads to drive users to your fan page is a great idea, you need to set specific goals and track your progress to get the most from your effort. Exactly how many fans do you want to add each month? Exactly what demographic do you want to see improved growth from?

If you’re the type who wants to see their Facebook fans turn into conversions, you can set goals for that too. For every 50 fans on Facebook, how many conversions do you want to see?

Set specific, trackable goals, then be sure to follow up and tweak your strategies to discover what works and what isn’t worth your time and money.

3. Grab users’ attention

Put yourself in a typical Facebook user’s shoes. Your eyes aren’t focused on the sidebar where the ads are located. You are reading your friends status updates and looking at their latest pictures.

In order to steer their eyes away from their timeline, you’ll need bold colors. You can try using a colored border for your ad, but I tend to think this has been done so much, users are starting to tune it out.

Images of celebrities, especially female celebs, still tend to get a few looks, however.

Once you have a user’s attention, be sure to give them a reason to click on your ad. Put an immediacy to your ad with phrases like ‘Act now’ in order to take advantage of a specific, limited-time offer or special.

4. Images plus text

An ideal ad combines a brightly colored, eye-catching image with big, bold font that is easy to read. Again, the message should compell users to act.

5. Don’t get stale

I mentioned users tuneing out, or glossing over ad styles they’ve grown accustomed to, so take that lesson to heart. Change your ads often so users don’t get so used to seeing them that they stop even noticing.

You don’t necessarily have to reinvent your ad on a weekly basis. Instead, change details like color of your logo, font or just a different image.

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Find Out What Your Audience Wants To Know

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I’ve talked a lot about how important it is to try to think like your customers. It’s always important to find out what people are thinking, what questions they are asking, etc., but I didn’t offer any specific ways to accomplish this. But today I have one method of finding out what questions people are asking about topics important to you.

Justin Arnold from The Mighter Pen suggests using Twitter because it offers real time feedback on what people are talking and thinking about relative to keywords.

Of course, this is pretty common knowledge, but what people don’t realize is Twitter has some key features built into its search engine that really benefit the person looking for questions people are asking.

Finding out what questions people are asking is as simple as adding a space and a question mark after a querie. Suppose you are writing about painting. You can search ‘painting’ but you probably will get a lot of extraneous posts not of interest to you. If you search ‘painting ?’ however, Twitter filters your results to only include tweets with questions.

Now, the problem we are faced with is Twitter is used pretty heavily for promotion. Don’t you wish you could filter out any tweet containing links to avoid all of the ads? Well, you can. Just add ‘-filter:links’ to your searches to do away with all of the promotions. What you have now is a list of questions users are asking about a topic in real time.

This is just one way to try to get into the minds of your audience. Trying to gain some perspective is always important when creating content.

 

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Get the Most Out of Twitter and LinkedIn

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Social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn can be overwhelming. There are so many users, all looking for a different experience, that it can be difficult to find who and what you’re searching for. Mallory Woodrow has five ways to network better in her post at Forbes.

1. Connect with those with an opinion you value

Next time you’re reading an article or blog post in your area of expertise, note the author and seek them out on social media. Comment on their articles and tweet at them to build your connection.

2. Write your own content

If you have a business and an are of expertise, you must have something relevant to say and share. Write your own articles. You can share them through social media and connect with others who comment and connect with you.

3.  Use Keywords to sift through Twitter

Twitter is utilized everyday by professionals and non-professionals alike. Even your own timeline may be muddled with a range of personalities. So, to get what you’re looking for, search for keywords. Try to narrow it down as much as possible by getting specific.

Once you’ve found some relevant tweets, get in the conversation with some replies.

4. Join LinkedIn Groups

Similarly, you can search for LinkedIn groups on your specific area of expertise. In some cases, you’ll be able to poke around and make sure a certain group is what you’re looking for before you join.

5. Connect with people interested in you

Be sure to check who is viewing your LinkedIn profile about once per week. If someone who’s shown an interest in you is relevant to you, meaning involved in your field or in a position to help you, reach out to them and build a new professional relationship.

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Facebook Success Measured Differently Than Marketing Success

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I’ve read a number of articles suggesting that Facebook is not an ideal marketing platform because your business will see a small click through rate from your Facebook page to your website and, perhaps, an even smaller conversion rate. And you know what? That opinion is dead on.

Those aren’t the proper metrics to measure Facebook success, however. In baseball, you don’t figure batting average by how many times the hitter successfully contacts the ball. He has to actually get a hit. Well, in terms of Facebook, your business gets a hit when a user ‘Likes’ your page, not when a user buys something from you. I know, that’s pretty contradictory when you consider the basics of marketing. But, it’s time to embrace the idea that sometimes brand awareness is the goal.

Avinsash Kaushik wrote a tremendous, but lengthy, blog post recently on this and many other topics that I urge you to read. He touches on advertising on Facebook, as well. Again, this is not a way for you to drive traffic to your site. You advertise on Facebook to get Facebook users to your Facebook page. It’s all very Facebook-centric.

Obviously, Facebook is not the only weapon you need in your marketing arsenal. Having a large, interested, captive audience on Facebook is a great thing. You can deliver as many messages to fans of your page as you want and they don’t cost you anything. But, while those fans might buy your product when a need arises and they might tell others about your product, you need other, more traditional marketing methods to truly impact your bottom line.

The most interesting part of marketing on Facebook seems to be that you can’t be marketing to users on Facebook. That is, those that attempt to use Facebook in the wrong way, which is marketing directly to consumers rather than attempting to build an audience with their page, fail with Facebook. But, if you have great content and create an entertaining forum for fans to gather with your Facebook page and don’t alienate them by bombarding users with ads and attempts to turn them into conversions, you’ll succeed with Facebook. Soon, those fans of your page will turn into conversions on their own and may even breed more conversions.

So, whether you’re struggling to gain ground or are just starting out with Facebook for your business, remember to measure success the right way and always consider your audience.

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Facebook Mobile Ads Are a Huge Hit

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Facebook recently gave advertisers the option of where to place their ads. The options, including desktop newsfeed and sidebar, desktop newsfeed only or mobile newsfeed, create many possibilities, but the best value has quickly become evident. For the highest click-through-rate and second highest conversion rate, John Constine, of TechCrunch, reports using those dollars on mobile ads is the way to go.

CEO of BLiNQ Media, Dave Williams, says their numbers suggest “that mobile beats desktop placement by a 3 to 1 ratio.”

The one drawback is a positive for users. Facebook limits the number of ads for mobile users in order to keep their experience enjoyable. This means advertisers won’t be able to overload any group with their ads. So, those advertisers will have to be more clever in how they gameplan.

Also, companies are finding that mobile users that ‘Like’ their page are “worth” less than their desktop counterparts. This is because the mobile users are less likely to view photos and videos and also because desktop users are generally more active on a company’s page since they may have to do more work to seek them out.

Though fans of a business’s page only see about 16-percent of their posts on average, Facebook certainly seems to be worth the effort. Once a company has gained that ‘Like’, they are essentially marketing to interested consumers for free.

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Facebook Introduces ‘Promoted Posts’ to U.S.

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It’s no secret that Facebook is searching for new ways to monetize their site and improve their IPO. In doing so, they are bound to take some missteps. Perhaps, like their latest venture, ‘Promoted Posts’.

As Adi Gaskell reports for Technorati, users now have the opportunity to pay for a better chance for their friends to see their posts. ‘Promoted Posts’ was already available in 20 countries, but it wasn’t until last week that American users were included.

To use the new feature, users simply update their status as usual, then click a button to promote it. That luxury will cost about $7 for now. That post will then appear with a ‘Sponsored’ tag, which allows the user to keep tabs on how helpful promoting has been.

For you next community event, party or insightful political post, maybe ‘Promoted Posts’ will be worth the money.

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How Aligning SEO Strategy and Social Media Builds Backlinks

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It is way too common for people in SEO to forget to align their SEO strategy with social media activity. Often, the two teams work completely disconnected from the other. This is in no way a comprehensive, efficient marketing plan.

SEO must be integrated into social media activity. Here are some suggestions for specific strategies you can take to bump up the effect your social media activites have on SEO performance.

1) Using Social Media for Link Development – Since search engines have begun incorporating social signals into their ranking algorithm, it has become essential for SEOs to pay attention to social media. Now Google+ has become a part of Google search, and Bing uses Facebook data to personalize what people see in their search results.

While all of that is practically common knowledge, Ray Comstock at Search Engine Watch believes “link development is the most important benefit that social media can bring to the SEO table.” Google’s Panda and Penguin updates has made using social media to foster relevant link connectivity has become as important as they could be. The most effective way to market content online is through social media.

It is critical for SEO professionals take advantage of the activities of their social media team to gain relevant links through marketing quality content.

2) Aligning You Blog for SEO and Social Media – If you can create consistently quality content, blogging is easily one of the more efficient ways to build links and authority. It attracts links within your industry, but it also becomes keyword focused content that tends to rank highly in the long-term. Most often, bloggers forget to create relating internal links from a company’s blog to their main website content. Blog posts are an opportunity to direct people to other relevant content, especially your own.

3) Aligning Your Blogging Team for SEO & Social Media – Blogging is an important part of an SEO strategy, so you want to make sure your blogging team is trained on the best SEO policies and practices, as well as giving them the most important keywords and landing pages on your site. If you do that, your team will be more likely to create content based around those keywords, and creating internal links within the blog assists with your SEO goals. Plus, it is always nice for visitors to be able to find more content on your site.

Bloggers should also be interacting with the authoritative blogs in your area of expertise by contributing in intelligent and thoughtful ways which will build relationships with other experts in your field. It builds your reputation as well as making valuable connections that can lead to guest blogging.

By making sure your SEO and social media efforts are alligned, you both streamline the process in an effective way, as well as boosting SEO performance from a link building perspective.

 

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Facebook Basics For Your Business

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Last week, I gave you my fundamentals for success on social media. Mark Thompson also has some fundamentals specific to your business’s Facebook page at Business2Community.

1. Facebook isn’t for sales

As I’ve discussed in this space before, Facebook doesn’t really translate directly into sales. But, it raises the awareness of your business and helps you build relationships with relevant consumers.

Users don’t log on to Facebook to shop for products, so a sales pitch isn’t going to make your page popular.

2. Build your audience

Instead of sales, focus on gaining ‘Likes’ and fans. There’s no risk involved when a user ‘Likes’ your page and its a one-step, one-button process.

Most of these users ‘Like’ your page in hopes of finding deals and special offers. Give them what they want.

Create an active community that includes you sharing entertaining and useful content and a forum for fans to gather and discuss. Unlike email, you can post multiple times a day to your Facebook page without wearing out yoour welcome with consumers.

3. Make Facebook work for you

With your content and fans in place, you now have to get something for your effort. Without being overbearing, streamline your purchase process so users can take the fewest steps possible to go from Facebook to checking out on your website.

The basic goal of marketing is getting your message seen by as many people as possible. Facebook is a great tool to accomplish just that, as long as you are using it wisely.


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