Social Media Marketing

Top 10 Benefits to Integrating Your Social Media

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social_media_integrationIf you’re serious about social media, you need to be using social media integration tools. If you’re not using these tools, you’ll be wasting a lot of time while inefficiently managing your social media. You’ll have a harder time connecting with your followers and won’t be able to build your connections as easily.

The reality is, using the default settings on tools like Twitter and Facebook work for the majority of social media users, but aren’t terribly effective for a business with a strong social media strategy.

For example, Twitter and Google’s tools won’t natively allow you to schedule your posts. Instead, you can only post only the moment you post a status update. That makes it impossible to “pre-send” your messages for the next few days at one time.

Still not convinced? Here are the top 10 benefits to integrating your social media.

Benefit #1: Post across Multiple Social Sites at Once

Instead of having to log into your various Twitter accounts, your Facebook pages, your Facebook accounts, your LinkedIn accounts and so on to post status updates individually, with social media integration you can just post to all of them in one place.

This can literally save you dozens or even hundreds of hours over the course of a year.

With social media integration, posting one status update to 5 different social media sites takes just 30 seconds. Without integration, just loading up and posting that update to 5 different sites will take a few minutes. However, if you have to log out of Twitter and into a different account every time, it could easily result in 5 to 15 minutes wasted per update.

If you’re updating several times a day, or even just several times a week, this very quickly turns into a lot of time saved.

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Benefit #2: See Your @Replies, Direct Messages and FB Messages in One Place

With social media management, you get to see all your messages in one place. You can then reply to all your messages in one place as well.

If you had all your messages scattered over numerous Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, chances are responding to all the messages would simply take far too long.

Furthermore, they would weigh on you psychologically. You won’t ever really know if your inboxes are empty, because it’s too much effort to log into all your accounts to check.

With an integrated social media strategy however, you’ll know exactly how many messages you have at any given time. They’ll be visible from your feeds.

You’ll be able to respond to messages faster, which creates more of the impression that you really care about the people who communicate with you.

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Benefit #3: Schedule Posts

With just about every social media website, you can’t schedule posts. You can’t tell Twitter to post tweets every two hours. Instead, you have to log into the site and post your tweets exactly when they want to go out.

This is fine for the casual user, but terrible for a serious social media marketer with a lot on his plate. One strategy you’ll often want to use is to sit down for 30 minutes and hammer out all your posts for the next few days.

With an integrated social media strategy, all you need to do is go into your tools and create the new posts. You can drip-feed your content at any rate you choose. You can schedule posts for multiple social media accounts all at once.

This capability alone is really enough for any serious social media marketer to use social media integration.

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Benefit #4: Integrate Blogging and Email Marketing

Your social media strategy should be integrated with your blogging and email marketing strategies.

That means that whenever you post a new blog post, you should send out a tweet about it. Whenever you send out a new email, if there’s high quality content in that email, you should probably post a status update or send out a tweet as well.

This also works as a two-way street. If you regularly post valuable content to your social media communities, you should try to find a way to bring that content to your blog. For example, you might use widgets to put your Twitter feed on your website so your website visitors can see your latest 10 tweets.

Treat your whole social media, blogging and email marketing audience as one whole community, rather than segregated marketing tactics. Using social media integration will allow you to integrate blogging, email marketing and social media into one seamless strategy.

Benefit #5: Manage Social Media as a Team

Trying to manage social media as a team and execute a complex, multi-tiered strategy without social media integration is extremely difficult.

With integration tools, you can easily all stay on the same page about your social media strategies.

Various team members can schedule posts ahead of time and other team members can see what’s going to be posted in the future and adjust accordingly. Reports and analytics can inform a whole team’s decisions and the team can work as a whole to respond to follower inquiries.

Without social media integration, the time wasted on logging in and out of various sites is compounded. Each team member wastes a few minutes here and there logging in, which at the end of the day translates to massive wasted time for the company.

Furthermore, there’s no inherent way to work together in native social media platforms. Facebook isn’t really built for a team to execute a strategy together; but most social media integration tools are.

Benefit #6: Competitive Research & Feed Management

Social media integration tools will allow you to track a number of different feeds in a very simple manner. This is a fantastic way to stay on top of what’s going on in an industry.

For example, let’s say you’re in the electronics industry. You might want to regularly follow a couple different feeds about the latest electronics discoveries. You also want to follow feeds from your competitors to see what they’re offering.

You want to follow these feeds across Twitter and Facebook. If you had to use just Twitter and Facebook, you’d have to visit the individual pages or hashtags every time you wanted to check up on these companies or technologies.

That takes a lot of time. Chances are, you just won’t be able to keep up that level of research on a regular basis.

On the other hand, with social media integration tools, you’ll be able to keep those feeds all on a dashboard for easy viewing. You can easily observe new trends and see when new big topics are being discussed.

Social media integration makes competitive research and staying on top of an industry much, much easier.

Benefit #7: Unique Analytics and Reporting Capabilities

Different social media integration tools offer different reporting capabilities. These reporting tools can often report cross platform, giving you unique data that none of the sites couple independently give you.

For example, let’s say you wanted to explore the clickthrough data from your Facebook page. You want to know what kind of posts and what kind of media generates the highest clickthrough.

That’s something that Facebook’s insights can give you. However, what Facebook’s insights can’t give you is data on how those customers then behave once they’re on your website. They can’t tell you if they stay for longer or shorter than the typical browser.

Social media integration tools can give you this kind of data and more.

Furthermore, if you’re managing social media for clients, you can even brand the reports so it looks like it was generated internally rather than through external tools.

Benefit #8: Share Relevant News and Breakthroughs Quickly

Sometimes getting the edge in business truly is time sensitive. If you run a financial advisory firm and Google’s stock suddenly takes a 10% nosedive, the very first firm to be able to put out a comprehensive analysis is probably going to get a whole lot of traffic and backlinks.

With something like this, the difference of just 30 minutes can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Often time’s responding to big news can be crucial to your business. If you’re in the music business, Michael Jackson’s death should have been considered big news that you should have responded to. It would have generated a lot of discussion and connection with your audience.

Sharing these kinds of news responses and big breakthroughs is extremely difficult if you had to log into and post manually to all your social media connections. On the other hand, if you’ve integrated your social media platforms, you’ll be able to quickly and easily respond to urgent situations all in one place.

Benefit #9: Discover New People to Follow

Using social media integration is a great way to find new people to follow. There are both formal and informal ways to do this.

Some tools, such as Sprout Social, actually have deliberate tools designed to help you find new people to follow. They’ll explore feeds of people who you’ve interacted with in the past, as well as feeds of influencers. Then they’ll determine what kind of topics you tend to be interested in and make recommendations if there’s a match.

This is great for finding new sources of advice, news and interaction. It’s also a great way to find new influencers to reach out to, in order to see if there’s a way you can work together.

Even if you don’t use these deliberate tools, social media integration can still help you find new people to follow. By integrating your feeds, you’ll be able to spot “super fans” who’re interacting with you across multiple media.

You’ll also start to recognize names that are showing up across different feeds frequently. For example, if people are regularly talking about the ideas of Joe Smith, you might want to check out Joe Smith’s feed to see what he has to offer.

Benefit #10: Updates by Email

What if you don’t want to spend ages on social media? What if social media is only part of your overall business plan and you don’t want to dedicate too much time to it?

Social media integration can definitely help there. Instead of having to log into your various social media platforms to make sure your networks are alive and healthy, you can use email updates instead.

Tools like Nutshell Mail will mail you reports about how your social media networks are performing. If problems arise or if your engagement levels are trending downwards rather than upwards, you’ll be able to quickly spot it. If they’re going up however, you don’t need to spend too much time checking on it. Instead, you just receive a quick email daily.

These are some of the many benefits of integrating your social media. The message is clear: If you run a business and plan on using social media as part of your strategy, you’ll probably want to seriously think about integrating your social media. There are immense benefits and very few drawbacks.

 

 

How to Build Trust on LinkedIn

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business_trustLinkedIn is the one social network dedicated to connecting professionals with other professionals. Through LinkedIn, you can reach a completely different crowd of people than any other social network.

Using LinkedIn, you can find extremely high ticket customers. You can find potential investors willing to put in hundreds of thousands, even millions into funding your company. You can find potential business partners. You can find top notch talent to work in your company.

It’s Time for … Recommendations

Ask previous employers, partners and co-workers to write recommendations for you. Having recommendations from people you’ve had professional relationships with can really boost your credibility.

Ask past clients to write recommendations. When a client writes a recommendation, it’s visible to their entire social network. In other words, in addition to be an endorsement for you, you get instant visibility as well.

Proactively write recommendations. Write recommendations for clients, for suppliers, for employees, employers and everyone else. When you write someone a recommendation, there’s a very good chance they’ll write you one back. Give and you shall receive. Best of all, writing a recommendation costs absolutely nothing.

Find More about Events

Attend events where clients, employers or investors might be attending. LinkedIn gives you the ability to see which of the people you know are attending a certain event. This allows you to pick and choose events based on the people you want to “bump into” while you’re there.

Search for Influencers

Use it to meet the people you want to meet. LinkedIn allows you to search for people two degrees of separation away. That means anyone that knows someone who knows someone you know, can be contacted. This is an incredibly powerful way to get your foot in the door.

Promote Yourself and Your Blog Blog

SEO your profile. Putting just a little bit of work into optimizing your profile could help your LinkedIn profile rank when someone types in your name. If you don’t have a website setup under your name already, a LinkedIn profile can be a great way to build your reputation.

Link to content in your profile. If you have a blog or if you’ve written a quality article for a magazine, link to it. It helps build your credibility.

 

How to Setup an Optimized LinkedIn Account in 7 Steps

Step 1: Create the Account

 

Go to http://www.LinkedIn.com to being the account creation process. Fill in your name, email and password to get started.

1-Create-Account

On the next page you’ll be asked for some basic information.

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Click “Create my Profile” and your account will be created.

Step 2: Search for Contacts

 

If you want to import your contacts from your email account, you can do so here. Just give LinkedIn your login information and they’ll use your address book to find everyone who you’ve sent emails or received emails from.

 3-Search-for-Contacts

Step 3: Add a Photo

 

Once you’re in your profile, the first thing you should do is add a photo. Make sure the photo you add is professional and creates a good first impression. Click the “Add Photo” button in the picture frame to add your photo.

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Step 4: Add Details

 

Adding more details will help give you more credibility. It’ll help prospective employers, investors, partners and clients get a sense of who you are. Add as much information as you can.

Click any of the links to bring up a more detailed “add information” screen.

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Each information section looks slightly different. Again, fill out each section with as much detail as you can. It’s not unusual to spend two or three hours on LinkedIn just filling out profile information.

Give people a variety of different ways to contact you. Again, the more you can fill out the better. Some people prefer to pick up the phone and call you, while others will prefer to email you. Still others want to check out your Twitter first, before contacting you on instant message.

Step 5: Add, Change or Manage Connections

 

Connections are the core of LinkedIn. If you want to succeed, you need to have a lot of connections. You need to keep your connections alive by contacting them every once in a while. You need to make sure that you add people who you meet at marketing meetings.

To check or add connections, go to the “Contacts” menu in the top navigation bar.

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If you run a business, don’t forget to ask your employees to start follow the company page.

Step 6: Groups

 

Groups are one of the best ways to meet new people. Groups allow you to meet new people in your industry that you may not have had connections to before.

There are groups for just about everything. From manufacturing to internet marketing, from entry level to executive level. Groups can help you meet employees and employers, investors and clients.

To browse groups, see recommended groups, join a group or see what groups you’re already a part of, use the “Groups” menu tab at the top.

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Step 7: Hire an Employee or Find a Job

 

LinkedIn has one of the most responsive job boards on the planet. Unlike other job advertising sites, the people who tend to respond to ads on LinkedIn tend to be highly qualified.

To post a job or find a job, use the “Jobs” tab along the top.

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Want to know more about Nicole’s skills and expertise? Check her LinkedIn profile.

 

Twitter for Businesses: DOs and DON’Ts

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Social_mediaTwitter allows business owners to interact with customers in a very unique, spontaneous and quick way. With Twitter, you can market to other business owners as often as you’d like. If you “spammed” Facebook status updates or email messages, you’d get penalized. On Twitter however, you could make a new post every hour and be commended for it.

Using Twitter for business? Here are a few tips for building your readership and improving the relationship with customers.

DOs: Add a catchy bio and not just a list of keywords. Remember to include the website URL and your location.

DOs: Use outside tools. Twitter’s default interface is great for the casual user, but is missing many features for business users. For example, you can’t schedule a tweet to be sent later. Use outside applications that add functionality to Twitter.

DOs: Pay attention to your avatar & background. Having an avatar and background that resonates with your brand can work wonders. The moment someone lands on your site, they should immediately “feel” like they’re interacting with your brand.

DOs: Make it easy to follow you. Place a Twitter button on your main website, on your posts, on your pages and generally anywhere that people can find you.

DOs: Search for related keywords and answer questions. For example, if you run a travel website, search for tweets like “going to Hawaii” or “flying to New York” and send people tips about the places they’re going.

DOs: Use RT @name to retweet. The new retweet format won’t get you noticed, because it lacks the @tweet inclusion. If you’re retweeting something, make sure to use the “RT @name” format so you show up on their @ Connect tab.

DOs: Tweet regularly. Get people in the habit of seeing your content. The more often you tweet, the more your content will be exposed to people. On Twitter, it’s very hard to tweet too often.

DON’Ts: It is difficult to read tweets that include more than 2 hashtags. Don’t add a hashtag just for the sake of including one.

DON’Ts: Avoid sending only tweets with a link. Twitter is not a bookmarking site, but a great tool to start a conversation.

If you are new to social media and need guidance to create a Twitter account, here’s how to do it:

 

Step 1: Create a New Account

 

To create a new account, go to http://www.Twitter.com. Fill out the new account form.

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Step 2: Startup Wizard

 

Go through the startup wizard if it’s your first time using Twitter. You’ll be invited to add people based on categories.

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You’ll also be invited to search for and add contacts based on your email.

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Use the categories feature and the search contacts feature to populate your initial follow list.

Step 3: Posting New Tweets

 

To post a Tweet to anyone who’s following you, type your message into the box on the left. Twitter limits tweets to 140 characters. This will be sent out to all your followers.

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Step 4: See Who’s Talking to You

 

When someone wants to talk to you on Twitter, what they do is use a mention. They do this by putting the @ symbol in front of your name. For example, if your username was Jacob123, they would tweet something and put @Jacob123 in the beginning.

To see who’s been talking about you with this feature, just go to @ Connect along the top.

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Note: If you and another tweeter are mutually following one another, you can communicate with direct messages. Otherwise, you have to use @ connects.

Step 5: Discover More People to Follow

 

To discover more people to follow, just click “Discover” along the top navigation bar. You can browse by category, by stories, by level of activity, by recommendations and by finding friends.

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Step 6: Using the Feed

 

Once you’ve followed a handful of people, you’ll be able to see their tweets in your feed. To reply to a tweet, retweet a tweet or favorite a tweet, just hover your mouse over the tweet and click the corresponding button.

How to Make the Best of Google+ Pages

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Google + PagesGoogle+ pages allows you to connect with Google+’s millions of users in a professional way. It helps you separate personal posts from business posts. Google+ also offers a number of unique features, such as the ability to segment who sees what on your page. Here’s how to setup and use Google+ Pages.

Google+ Pages offers are few unique features that no other social networks offer. Taking advantage of these features will help you gain more readership, more followers and build more credibility.

Use Your Circles

 

Separate the different interest groups in your user base and post different messages to them. For example, you might post different messages to prospects, to customers, to suppliers and to the rest of the world.

Take Advantage of the Multimedia Options

 

Google+ allows you to embed images and videos inside the post itself. This is an extremely rare feature that isn’t available on Facebook or Twitter. Furthermore, all the multimedia you post can be easily accessed in the Photos or Videos tabs.

Post Long Pieces of Content

 

Unlike other social networks which cut off your content and require you to link you, Google+ Pages allows you to just post it all on your wall. This is great for event announcements, unique content and product promotions.

Actively Promote Your Page to Your Google+ Friends and Circles

 

While Google+ pages can be a powerful tool for communicating, people simply won’t hear about it unless you talk about it often.

Audience is Sophisticated and Tech Savvy

 

Though Facebook has huge penetration, the majority of Google+ users are early adopters and people who like to test new technologies. As a result, by and large your followers will be very savvy. Don’t give out basic content; instead use your Google+ Page to promote only the best of what you’ve got.

 

If you don’t know how to set up Google+ Page for business, here is a quick guide:

 

Step 1: Getting Started

 

Start by going to http://www.google.com/+/business/ to get started.

1-Getting-Started

Step 2: Select a Category

 

Google has five different kinds of pages you can create. Each has a slightly different look and feel. Choose the one that best relates to the kind of page you want to create.

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Step 3: Basic Information

 

Fill out some basic information about your page. Set the name of your page, your website and your privacy settings here.

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Step 4: Share Your Page

 

Once your page is up and running, Google+ will give you the opportunity to share it with the world. Just enter a brief message and it’ll be posted to your wall.

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Step 5: Posting on Your Page

 

Your page is now up and running. To begin adding content, just click “Post on Your Page.”

There are a few important things to know about posting.

First, if you want to post an image, a video or a web link, just click the corresponding button on the lower right corner. Any photos or videos you post will be added to the “Photos” or “Videos” tabs.

You can customize whether you want the post to be visible to everyone, or just a select group of people by canceling “Public” in the lower left and adding specific circles that you want to post to.

Step 6: Get a Badge

 

Adding the ability for people to “+1” your page or land on your page from your website can be a big boon for your page. The best way to do this is through adding a badge. Just click “Get the badge” and add the HTML code to your website.

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Step 7: Hangouts

 

One great way to connect with users is through hangouts. These are impromptu (or scheduled) video chat meetings. To use a hangout, just click the hangout button on the right.

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Nicole Munoz is the CEO of http://www.StartRankingNow.com. Since 2010 Nicole has helped over 150 clients market their businesses online and has spoken at over 36 live events attended by more than 41,000 people. She has recently published a series of 10 books and DVDs on Amazon called 7 Figure Marketing Blueprint. To discover more about SEO and Content Marketing, sign up for a webinar with Nicole at http://webinars.nicolemunoz.com

 

Webinar Invitation

How to Set Up and Run a Successful Facebook Page

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Facebook is by far the largest social media platform in the world. Creating a page on Facebook’s platform allows you to reach millions of new people, as well as stay in touch with existing fans. Viral pages have been known to reach hundreds of thousands of people in as quickly as a week from creation.

Here’s how to create a Facebook Page, as well as a few tips for success.

Step 1: Getting Started

 

Get started by going to http://www.facebook.com/pages/. Click on “Create Page.”

1-Create-Page

Step 2: Choose Page Type

 

Select what kind of page you want to create.

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Step 3: Name Your Page

 

Give your page a name. If Facebook needs additional basic information, they’ll ask for it here.

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Step 4: Add Profile Image

 

Add an image from either your website or from your computer. Pick an image that accurately represents your brand.

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Step 5: Invite People

 

Once your page is up, it’s time to get people to visit. There are two ways you can do this: By building friends, or by importing your contact list from somewhere else. The first option will send a Facebook invite, while the second will take your existing contacts and let them know you’ve created a page.

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Step 6: Edit Your Information

 

Click the “Edit Info” button at the top to edit your page details.

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Edit your category and most importantly your description. You can also create a username for your page here.

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Step 7: Posting to the Wall

 

All that’s left is to post content to your wall. Posting to your wall is like posting to any other wall on Facebook. You can post in text, as well as attach multimedia content and hyperlinks. One unique feature of pages is the ability to ask questions.

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Play by the Book when Posting Facebook Updates

 

Here are a few tips for running a successful Facebook page.

  1. Short, Snappy Posts. People on Facebook will usually see you content through their feeds, rather than explicitly visiting your page. When you’re appearing in their feeds, it’s best to have short and snappy posts. This helps catch their attention and keep it. Overly long or boring posts tend to lose readership.
  2. Post Regularly. Get people used to reading your content. Try to post on a regular schedule, daily if possible. Since a status update really shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to write, you can even write it all at once for the week and just post it at the end of the day every day.
  3. Have a Two-Way Dialogue. Get your readership involved. Ask them questions. Have conversations. Don’t just use your page as a one way outlet of information and promotions. Instead, use your page to actually talk to your customers. Give them a chance to express themselves.
  4. Encourage Free Speech. One of the biggest mistakes brands make is limiting what customers can and can’t say. Even if customers are posting dissident information on your boards, you should welcome the opposition. Let your readers speak freely.
  5. Respond. If you don’t respond regularly and quickly to comments and questions, people will simply stop responding. On the other hand, if you respond quickly and regularly, people will enjoy participating more and do it more regularly.
  6. Use Multimedia. Don’t just use text. A few years ago, communicating through social media with just text was entertaining and engaging. Today however, to really catch someone’s attention you should use a variety of media, including images and videos.
  7. Be Human. Don’t just be an anonymous brand. Let them get to know you, who you are, what you stand for and your personality. Don’t be afraid to make a joke or let a little humanity come through.
  8. Give Value. Every once in a while, host a contest or giveaway that’s exclusive to your Facebook fans. This helps create reciprocity and increases loyalty. Reward them for following you on Facebook.

Social Media Automation: The Good & Bad

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This week at Search Marketing Expo West 2013  I am speaking on the topic of “Social Media Automation: The Good & Bad”.  Instead of boring the audience with 45 minutes of 150 social media tools, I decided to focus the session more on going into detail on how we use some of the tools and provide a list of the rest here!

Enjoy!

 

Content Curation Tools

 

Curation Soft

Percolate

Feed Magnet

Storify

Flipboard

 

Twitter Tools

 

Bufferapp – Basic tweets scheduling for heavy users

Listorious – Build up a followers list by targeting top users

Twilert – Email alerts

Tweet Reach – Did you know that tweets travel?

Refollow – Helps manage Twitter relationships

Tweet Level – Twitter buzz measurement tools

Twellow – Twitter profiles categorized by profession or expertise

Manage Flitter – Followers management tools

Tweeted Times – Aggregates news in twitter stream and ranks them by followers popularity

Twitter Counter – Most popular Twitter users

Social Oomph – Oldie, but goldie. Clean up Twitter followers list by deleting inactive users, fake accounts (no picture, no bio, no updates) and a lot more

Plume – Twitter mobile management app for Android

Tweriod  – Check when all the fun is on Twitter and make sure to schedule some tweeting time on ‘rush hours’

Contaxio – Manage Twitter followers

Post Post – Twitter search engine

Social Scope, MarketMeSuite – One inbox for all the social media accounts

Nutshell Mail – One summary e-mail for the entire social wilderness’

Amplicate – Love or hate? Find it out

Group Tweet – Teams manage better business accounts

Conversocial – Never miss a comment or a Tweet again

Tweet Archivist – Twitter analytics

Post Acumen – Who said that spying cannot be fun?

Facebook Tools

 

IFTTT – It’s time to ‘bake’ some social media recipes and share what’s important

GroSocial – Creates Facebook contents in minutes

Punchtab – Loyal fans can now be rewarded

North Social – Apps for managing Facebook pages

Graph Science – Optimize marketing spend on Facebook

Hy.ly – Building and analyzing Facebook ad campaigns

Memelabs – Facebook contests

 

Google+ Tool

 

Socialba – Two way sync between Google+ and other social media networks

 

Pinterest Tools

 

Rafflecopter – When it’s time for a giveaway, Raflecopter is easy to use and looooves Pinterest

Reachli – Easy way to market visual content

Pingraphy – Pinterest management tool to schedule pins and engage with followers

Repinly – Find everything that is popular on Pinterest

 

Social Sharing Tools

 

Hootsuite – Popular dashboard for social media management

Cadence9 – Enterprise social media marketing platform

Net Vibes – Social media dashboard

Dlvr.it – Use it to post RSS-feed social media updates to multiple accounts

Postling – Social media managing tool

Social Flow – Optimizing social media engagement

Engage121 – Social media marketing software

Sendible – Monitor brand popularity across all social media accounts

Argyle Social – Never lose any social media lead again

Wildfire – Now everyone can create custom made Facebook tabs

 

Check Social Media Popularity With

 

Stay on top of who’s talking about your business, keywords or favorite topics

 

Klout

Kred

How Sociable

People Browsr

Soc Metrics

Social Mention

Attentio

Traackr

Peer Index

 

Analyze Social Media Reach

 

Awe.sm

Bottlenose

Brandwatch

Sysomos

Beevolve

Trackur

Sentiment Metrics

Data Sift

 

Social Media Promotion

 

Triberr – Blog amplification platform

Social Buzz Club – Social media marketing community

 

blog2Blog Tools

 

WordPress – Blogging platform

Disqus – Global comment system

Poll Daddy – Question your audience

Inbox Q – Get content ideas from what people are buzzing on Twitter

Flickr – Incorporate images with creative commons that allow commercial use for visually appealing blog posts

Why Do Small Business Owners Need To Be On Social Media?

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Many small business owners even in 2013 are reluctant to jump on the social media wagon.  Many still think that they don’t need social media or that they don’t have time to do social media.  The truth is, if you want to be in business and generate income from the internet, you have to be involved with social media.  The trend for social media has gone up exponentially and it is only going to grow more in the coming years.

 

Increase Brand Visibility
The first reason why small business owners need to do social media is to increase brand visibility.  If you don’t have a presence on the social media platforms it is like you don’t exist.  If you are a major company, it is expected that you will have a social presence.  Your fans are searching for you.  If they don’t find you, they will find your competitors.
Increase Client Communication
The second reason is to increase client communication.  The fastest way to communicate with your customers if you have a service outage or a hot item just came in stock.. is through social media.  Your customers are also looking to communicate with you online.  They are tired of waiting on hold for hours to talk to someone.  They want instant communication.  Companies used to have to spend thousands of dollars a year on live chat.. and some still do.  But social media makes it easy to quickly communicate with your customers.

 

Answer Questions
Your customers have questions.  And they don’t want to wait for answers.  Social media enables you to quickly and easily answer questions.  Many times a customer is on the point of purchase but they have that one last question.  They don’t want to call and talk to a live person.. that would take too long.  So they look for a live chat.. which usually also has a wait time!  They then tweet out their question on Twitter.. and get an answer moments later!  That is how it is supposed to work!

 

Increase Client Retention
When your customers have problems they want instant solutions.  Many projects have been saved by a few simple touches.  When a client signs on for a 12 month contract and the only time they talk to you is when the project renews… that gives your competitors 12 months to come in and build up a relationship with them to take them from you.  Don’t let that happen!  Use social media as a way to develop long term relationships with your customers.  Social media is not another sales channel.  It is a customer care and client care channel!

Drive Traffic To Offers and Promotions

Social media if done correctly is a great way to drive traffic to your offers.  When setting up promotions, be sure to have specific, measurable goals in mind.  Maybe the goal is 100 opt-ins to a webinar.  Or 50 new sign-ups to the newsletter.  Whatever it is, be clear in your expectation and design campaigns that get results.

 

If you are not yet on social media, start today!  At www.StartRankingNow.com we can help get you setup on social media in just a few days.  Or consider joining my Inner Circle class where I walk you through it!

3 Simple Ways to Use Pinterest as a Target Marketing Tool

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pinterest

Pinterest is quickly rising as a referral source for e-commerce business, third behind Facebook and Twitter. Internet marketers can no longer ignore this social media site if you want to stay relevant and maximize online opportunities. To successfully use Pinterest as part of your marketing strategy, you need to know the following things:

  • The majority of Pinterest users are women who enjoy crafts, recipes and home décor
  • Pinterest is a visual medium with a high value on artistic expression
  • Various niches within your market
  • What your target market enjoys or is inspired by

With this information in hand (and perhaps the help of a graphic designer or photographer), you can begin to take aim (in a non-violent way, of course) at your target market.

Use boards to target different niches

One of the great things about Pinterest is the way you can categorize your pins onto certain boards. Each board can focus on one niche within your market. For example, if you’re an online shoe company, you could create a board that has to do with kids, one that has to do with athletes, one that focuses on career women and one that addresses foot care or pedicures. Within each niche, you could promote products as well as pin other items of interest to those viewing your board.

You could also set up a board to promote an event, pinning ideas about planning it, pictures of the venue, door prizes, speakers, inspirational thoughts behind the purpose of the event or silent auction items. This includes your followers in the planning stages while building anticipation for the event itself. If the event is for a charity, you’re promoting the charity and announcing your community involvement in subtle ways, too.

Pinterest board

Market a message

Is there a particular statistic that your market should know to motivate them to consider your product or service? Create an infographic about it and post it on the appropriate board. Once you know what inspires your target market, find quotes that reflect that message and re-pin them on your board. If you want your market to know how a product is made so they feel good about purchasing a fair trade product or supporting an eco-friendly company, pin a video showing the process. Or if your product can be used for multiple purposes or in multiple ways, create slideshow tutorials or video tutorials showing all the ideas.

Ask for feedback

Find out specifically what your target market wants by asking for feedback. There are a couple of ways to do that. One way is to create a group board asking for ideas about how you could improve a current product or create a new product. For example, if you sell supplies for babies, ask moms what product they wish somebody would make or what they wish was different about the diaper bags you make. You won’t be able to use every idea, but the feedback will be beneficial and give customers a creative voice.

Secondly, ask people to re-pin your stuff or to leave comments. The statistics will not be totally conclusive, but they can give you some idea about what Pinterest users are looking for, which will help you become a better Pinterestmarketer.

This is a Guest Blog Post by Tiffany Marshall from StartRankingNow.com