Social media has gone from internet oddity to one of the strongest tools in an online marketer’s toolbox. These days, social media presence can be just as important to your online marketing as your website. In some markets, social presence can be even more vital.
Many companies have already stepped up the the plate to meaningfully incorporate social media marketing into their brand experience, and they’ve found that the tactic can be a serious powerhouse for marketing at a fraction of the cost of many campaigns. The trick is knowing exactly how to use the medium.
The successful marketers on social media aren’t yelling about their products at every turn, they aren’t taking part in silly novelty marketing attempts (Chipotle’s recent Twitter “hacking” …), but most importantly they aren’t ignoring their customers. Social media creates a brand new opportunity for consumers to directly interact with the brands they purchase and create a real relationship between businesses and their audience.
Social media is new, and the companies finding success are experimenting and taking advantage of the real benefits the platforms provide, but they aren’t playing completely by ear. There may not be a rule book set in stone for social media marketing yet, but there are definitely some guidelines.
MarketingProfs tried to tie down some of these guidelines and guiding traits of successful social media marketers, and they put the results into an infographic (seen below). If you’re struggling to find your brand’s voice in the social arena or simply haven’t lept into action yet, this infographic will help you develop a useful approach.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-08-15 13:36:042013-08-15 13:36:0410 Traits of a Successful Social Media Marketer [Infographic]
Every business with an online brand presence fears the day they run into a social media crisis. It could be anything, and there are plenty of recent examples. Taco Bell had an employee caught licking food, some companies have been hacked (not “hacked”, Chipotle), and sometimes drama that should be resolved within the company spills onto social media, such as the Amy’s Bakery freak out not too long ago.
While most brands with solid social media presences most likely have steps or employee guidelines to prevent problems like some of these, it is impossible to be fully prepared for a social media crisis. You can’t prevent hacking or service outages. But, as the business owner or social media manager, it is your job to manage the crisis and steer the ship out of the storm. If you do it well, you may even end up attracting some new clients. If you fail, your entire company can go up in flames.
As the VP of marketing for Nextiva, Yaniv Masjedi has some experience dealing with catastrophes both online and off, and he says the most important thing you can do is have a plan. “Every business should have a minute-by-minute strategy for how it will deal with a service shut down or public relations disaster.”
You need to know who will be handling the social media, how they will have access, and what the messaging across platforms is. Will you have a team responding to social media, or will it just be you manning the ship until everything dies down?
Masjedi published a step-by-step guide on the Huffington Post to help with handling these huge messes and preventing any extra damage once your social media has gone into full alert. You will have to be on your best game and be patient and understand with customers even when they are being rude or inappropriate, and you have to have a clear united message that doesn’t seem like a stock response, but an established response to whatever situation has arisen.
Before you ever run into these problems however, sit down and go over the guide and make sure you know how your company will respond in crisis. You can’t be prepared for everything, but you’ll be much better off knowing how you will approach any problems.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-08-09 15:22:322013-08-09 15:22:32How Will You Handle a Social Media Crisis?
Social media analytics and publishing platform Viralheat announced today they will continue to expand their dashboard with new advanced Facebook targeting. That means businesses and marketers will be able to publish and customize ads and other marketing content targeted towards specific relevant demographics based on criteria such as location, age, gender, education, and marital status.
Viralheat has been expanding their dashboard since their redesign was unveiled in February adding the capabilities to manage multiple accounts and engage with audiences easier, as well as including new tracking analytics.
The platform is one of many social media marketing platforms, but the makers of Viralheat hope to simplify the tedious task of managing multiple social media account. It allows users to create Smart Stream Feeds which filters based on keywords, social networks, and sentiment. It also allows users to publish directly to personal accounts.
“We saw the need for our larger clients to be able to target their audience based on specific demographic criteria,” TechCrunch reports Viralheat CEO Raj Kadam said in a statement. “Often times they’ve expended their marketing budgets trying to manually reach a target audience without blasting announcements or offers to their entire following. Our advanced Facebook targeting features allows users to reach a very specific demographic. It has been particularly helpful to our customers that are trying to reach very niche audiences.”
Pinterest is quickly gaining popularity. Over the last five months, its user base has grown 43.7 percent, reaching over 70 million users. Not only is it one of the most popular social media platforms around currently, it is also generates the most revenue and draws in the highest rate of active consumers. Pinterest users aren’t there just to look, they are there to spend money.
While Pinterest has normally shied away from being a direct commerce site, they have recently begun to make shopping through their platform easier over the past year. Now, Marketing Land reports that last week when they announced they have introduced price-drop notifications on pinned items. Now, when an item pinned by a user goes on sale, the user will get an e-mail notifying them.
This builds on the previous introduction of “rich” product pins. At first, Pinterest wanted to be a social site, but now it is trying to “turn pinners into shoppers” and it appears they are going to be very successful.
There will be no fee associated with these price alerts or the rich product pins, however it seems very likely Pinterest could turn to some sort of “promoted pin” offer in the near future, as they try to woo consumers and marketers alike.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-08-05 13:53:342013-08-05 13:53:34Pinterest Now Alerts You When Pinned Items Go On Sale
It has become pretty obvious that traffic potential increases quite a bit when a YouTube video or tweet is embedded into posts. Most people consider videos as more valuable content than regular blog posts, and the appreciate posts that condense relevant tons of tweets on a topic so that they don’t have to dig through all the spam, “trolling”, or other nonsense. Now, as Search Engine Journal reports, Facebook has made it possible for you to embed posts from their site as well.
The social media platform shared the above image as an illustration of the concept, which shows that you’ll be able to click on the ‘Embed Post’ button and be given a simple code that can be placed into an article. It’s pretty simple, though it hasn’t been widely released yet. Only a small group of organizations and businesses have already been given the ability. Instead, the embedded post ability will be rolled out with the new hashtag capability.
The new announcement also means that your Facebook posts can get additional exposure and sharing, as well as opening another way for advertisers to connect with people.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-08-02 10:10:372013-08-02 10:10:37Facebook Announces The Ability To Embed Posts
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.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-07-31 14:41:102013-07-31 14:41:10Should Your Business Really Be On Social Media?
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.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-07-26 11:54:572013-07-26 11:54:57What Social Sharing Buttons Are You Using?
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.
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.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-07-22 15:36:392013-07-22 15:36:39How To Use Social Media To Create Conversions [Infographic]
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.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.png00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2013-07-17 12:08:112013-07-17 12:08:11What Are You Forgetting In Your Social Media Campaign?
