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Social Media Trends That Are Bad For Your Brand

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Social media marketing can be comparable to traditional media marketing. The only difference is that it is a lot faster. Trends waxes and wanes in hyper speed, going from cool to super lame in a matter of days or weeks. As a result, it is becoming more and more difficult to stay relevant.

Here’s a list of social media trends that can hurt your brand. Read on to find out which trend you should finally put to rest.

Facebook exclusive

Facebook may be one of the most popular social media channels today, but focusing your marketing efforts on Facebook is certainly not a good idea. Why? It’s because it has the most competition and advertising can be more expensive.

Focusing on one platform is like advertising on TV alone, and not using radio, print, billboards and any other channels to reach your audience.

Live blogging

During the SuperBowl event last year, a lot of people were active online, chatting and posting about the event as it happens. Some businesses took the opportunity to engage with their audience by posting something about the said event. If the brand is about sports, then this is justifiable. But if not, then there’s no sense talking about the SuperBowl.

Try focusing in topics that would be of interest to your target audience. They’re expecting you to provide them with content about specific topics, not some general world news.

Half-baked story

Social media is a great place to keep up with breaking news. We strongly advise that you check your facts first before sharing stories on your blog or business page. Do your research and make sure that the news is from a reliable source.

Sharing half-baked stories will affect your brand in a negative way. The last thing you want is for people to see you as an unreliable source.

Ignoring LinkedIn

If you’re not on LinkedIn, then you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to get more branding for your business. LinkedIn is the best social media platform for business owners and executives to be in. Here, you can expand your network and meet people in the same industry.

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4 Things We All Need to Stop Doing on Social Media

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The growth of social media continues to expand. Facebook has over 1 billion users; while Twitter and Instagram has over 280 million and 200 million active users respectively.

Many of us flock to these popular social media sites to give and receive the latest scoop on pretty much everything. We all love to post different events in our lives to let everyone know what is going on, but some people gets overboard when it comes to using social media.

Whether you’re using social media for professional or personal use, here are 4 things you should stop doing.

Oversharing

You probably have a friend who updates their status every 15 minutes or so. It can get irritating sometimes, especially since your news feeds is full of their postings. We hate to break it to you, but no one wants to be that clued in about your life.

Using more hashtags than words

Hashtags are great for giving your campaigns their own special theme, finding and jumping into conversations and categorizing your posts, but piling on the hashtags just looks desperate. Please keep your hashtag usage in check.

Automated messages

It may seem like a good idea to send a thank you message to users who follow you, but I’m willing to bet that some people consider it as spam.

While there are some people who say that sending automated messages has helped grow their follower count, it may come off as detached, lazy and out of touch for some. Remember, genuineness wins when it comes to earning the trust of your target audience.

Adding people to groups without their permission

Groups are a great place to talk to people with the same interests as yours. Just because you created a group for golfers, doesn’t give you the right to add your golfer friends to the group without their permission. If you think some of your friends would be interested to be a part of the group, consider sending them a message and tell them what it’s all about.

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Strategies to Keep Your Business One Step Ahead of the Competition

bims_8.10Every business owner wants his business to stay ahead of the competition. But if you want to remain successful, a lot of things should be done and most of them are not particularly easy.

Here are some strategies that you can use to keep your business one step ahead of the competition.

Know your competitors

Entrepreneurs can enjoy great benefits by keeping track of their competitors. While we urge you to spy on your competitors, we discourage you from duplicating their ideas. Your goal is to see what they are offering and what their unique selling point is. Figure out a way to make it work for your business and use this knowledge to your advantage. If you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to do it better than they did.

Build a relationship with your customers

You and your competitors will be competing for the same customers. Whoever wins will receive a bigger segment of the market.

It is easier to keep a customer than it is to acquire a new one. All it takes is a better offer from a competitor or a single negative experience. Show your customers how much you value them by interacting with them through social media and improving customer service.

Never stop innovating

In order to succeed in today’s quickly developing world, you need to change more often and sooner than you think. What might be working for you today might not be effective in the future.

Innovation is the key to sustaining your company. If you want to satisfy your target audience then you need to give them what they want. But most of the time, their wants and needs change. You need to be able to keep up with the demands of the people. Follow consumer trends and try to keep up with the developments in your sector.

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How to Motivate Customers to Buy Your Product

BIMS_8.4.15If you have social media buttons on your product page, we’re guessing that you added them because you wanted people to share your products through different social channels. After all, more shares mean more publicity, and more publicity can lead to more sales. But you also have to understand that people don’t just buy things they see online. They need a reason to visit your store or website and buy your products.

Here are 3 simple ways to motivate customers to want to purchase from you rather than your competitor.

Understand your customers

To increase sales, you have to understand the psychology behind how people make their buying decision. It would be extremely difficult for you to motivate them to buy if you don’t know their wants and needs.

Identify your target market and conduct a survey to help you find out the types of products they’re interested in or if your current products meet their expectations and some products suggestions that they would like to see in you sell in the future.

Feel good products

During the times of economic stress, the sales of non-essential items decrease significantly except for one: lipstick.

While people are looking for ways to put food on the table, lipstick sales were still skyrocketing. Why? For women, these tubes of colored wax are more than just cosmetics. When they’re feeling blue, lipstick provides confidence and represents happiness, hope and opportunity. If you think of it that way, then $8 is just a small price to pay as compared to the benefits they can get out of it.

Sell the benefits

You have probably heard of this a dozen of times before. When creating a product, be sure that it solves a problem. Most customers buy a product to solve a specific problem.

After a long day at work, this man found out that his dog chewed off his favorite pair of shoes. Now, he’s looking to buy a new pair of shoes. Now that you have a potential customer, the best thing you can do is to promote the benefits of your product. Don’t just stop at describing the product; provide them with additional information such as the price, features, awards etc.

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How to Market Your Business on a Shoestring Budget

BIMS_7.28Most business owners are too busy running their business that they don’t have time to overlook the marketing side of the business. Because of this, they choose to hire a professional to take care of the job.

If you are running a business and you have enough budget set aside for marketing, then good for you. However, not everyone have the money to hire professionals. The good news is you don’t need to spend a fortune to promote your business, and small steps can bring big rewards.

Here are a few recommendations that can help you market your business on a shoestring budget.

Email marketing

If you are starting a business, begin by sending an email to your family, friends, colleagues and anyone who might be interested in what you offer. Be sure to ask permission before adding their names on your email list.

Build your brand on social media

If you want to build a fan base, then engagement should be on top of your priority list. That said, you need to build your brand on social media.

Social media offers a tremendous opportunity to engage with your target audience. Identify your target audience and find a way to pull them in. If you’re pushing salesy content in the hopes of attracting potential customers, then you’re doing it wrong. Post quality contents that they’ll find valuable and interesting. You can also offer some advice, ask questions or solicit opinions.

Build relationships

It can be a lot more challenging to keep a customer than it is to attract new ones. Because of that, it is important to build a relationship with your existing customers. Keep your lines of communications open. Send newsletters or promotional offers to keep them updated about the events you’re hosting, new products you’re launching and current promotions.

Online contest

Online contests can help create buzz. Yes, you need to prepare some good prizes to get participants, but the number of participants and potential leads will be worth the price.

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5 Ways to Promote Your Blog on Social Media

bims_7.21So you have a great blog. You regularly post relevant and informative content, and that’s great. However, it will do you no good if you don’t have traffic coming your blog’s way. Without readers, your content will never maximize its reach.

For many bloggers, getting the word out about their newest venture can seem like a big challenge. But by promoting your blog on social media, you’re potentially exposing yourself or your business to millions of people from all over the world.

This week, we’re going to shed some light on how to promote your blog on social media. Keep reading for tips on how to drive traffic to your blog.

Add photos

Studies suggest that social media posts that include images get 12% more engagement as compared to those with no photos. So be sure to use full-sized images to get more likes, shares, comments and generate more traffic to your blog.

Share your blog posts on social media

If readers are not coming to your site, go to them instead. Give your fans and followers a taste of your blog by sharing your blog posts on social media.

Include the link to your status post, but be sure to delete it in your text before posting it. Your update will have a clickable image, which will direct users to your blog.

Use the right social channels

Considering that you know your target audience, we’re assuming that you know where they hang out. Concentrate your efforts where you audience spend their time on. If your target audience is foodies, you might want to spend more time on Pinterest. If your audience is the C-suite executives, LinkedIn might be their preferred social platform. Don’t waste your time on social channels that do not appeal to your audience.

Keep it short

Keep your posts short, clear and intriguing. People’s attention spans are short and they won’t be interested to slog through tons of information. Limit your posts to one sentence. If possible, keep it under 140 characters. Remember, short and witty updates generate the most engagement and click throughs.

Use conversation starters

Ask intriguing questions to the readers and direct them to your blog for answers. In order for them to get the answer to this specific question, they’ll need to click the link and read through your blog post. Now that you have captured their attention, write more interesting and informative blog posts to keep them coming back for more.

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Tips for Connecting with Industry Influencers on Social Media

BimsBlog 2.3.15Whether you’re running a small business or a big brand, you can reap great benefits when a highly influential person talks about your business. It can help you drive traffic to your site, increase your SEO and build your online social standing.

You need to be efficient with your time and even more effective with whom you choose to connect with. You want to be able to connect with industry influencers – people who have a success story, speak at conventions, widely published and well respected.

Here are a few tips for connecting with industry influencers on social media. Read on for a simple system you can immediately deploy.

Find your influencers

The first thing you need to do is to find your influencers. Industry influencers are industry experts and thought leaders that have a following that is similar to what you want to achieve. When looking at an influencer, take into account their search engine ranking, Klout score and number of followers.

Interact with them actively

Keep an eye out for influencers for chances to reach out. Interact with them through contents they are sharing. Feel free to ask a question if you think a particular point they’re making requires further explanation, show your appreciation for an article they have written or share their work through social media. Whatever you do, be genuine.

Nurture the relationship

Once you’ve engaged with an influencer, be sure to keep the lines of communication open and reach out to them once in a while. Take the initiative to strike up a conversation. Send them an email to let them know about a campaign you’re running or invite them to events you’re hosting. If you see you can provide assistance, do it. This can help grow your relationship and build trust with the influencer.

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Social Media Marketing Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On

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A few years ago, social media was considered as a new and unchartered territory. But with the popularity of social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, business owners knew that they needed to cope up in order to stay relevant.

If you want your business to stay afloat and thrive, be sure to avoid these social media marketing tactics.

Buying Facebook fans

Having thousands of followers may help validate your business’ social proof, but you also have to understand that social media sites have algorithms that are designed to track and analyze interaction and engagement. Buying fans will reduce the amount of organic reach you do get.

Instead of paying for fake followers, you might want to focus on building genuine relationship with your target audience.

Spamming your audience

Posting one content after another is a great strategy if you want to turn off your followers. Create a regular posting schedule and space out posts and tweets for optimal sharing times. Also, make sure you have a solid content strategy each time you post.

You are always selling

The best content tells stories – stories that tell how you help your customers, what you can offer them and what it’s like to do business your company. But if all you write about is how awesome your products are, it’s not story telling. You call it advertising. We guarantee you your fans and followers won’t like it.

Creating accounts on too many platforms

If you think it’s wise to be everywhere; you’re wrong. Many companies create accounts on different social media platforms, despite their ability to engage with their followers and post quality content.

When users visit your profile and only finds 10 status posts or tweets within the past year, they may think that you don’t care or you’re disorganized. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Keep your focus on one platform at a time, and then branch out from there.

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Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List


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A mailing list is the preferred method of communication and cultivating long-term relationships with customers of smart and creative business owners. In fact, it is one of the most heavily used channels of communication to date.

As a marketer, it is your job to add fresh contacts to your email list on a regular basis. How exactly do you do that? We have heaps of ideas that can help you grow your email list. Read on to grow your audience, generate more leads and bring more business.

Make it easy to subscribe

Keep your offers upfront and be sure to include call-to-action buttons on about every page of your website. Don’t make people dig around your site. Put those sign up forms where visitors can easily see them.

Collect email addresses at in-person events

Collect email address at events such as educational panels, hackathons, conferences, meet ups etc. Just having a sign up form at events isn’t enough. You should train your people to collect email addresses at registration. Be sure to send them a welcome email that confirms their opt-in to your list.

Use social media

Promote an offer that requires an email submission on your Facebook page. Make it easy for people to join your list by adding a sign up form to your Facebook page. You can also create twitter campaign to promote one of your lead generation offers to your followers.

Give away something valuable

Think of building your email list as an exchange. Potential customers give you their email address, and in return, you provide them with something that is of value to them.

Everyone likes free stuff. So be sure to attach something valuable to your email sign up form. It can be an ebook, early access to new features, private blog content, video, cheat sheet etc. This is a surefire way to pique people’s interest and get them to sign the form.

 

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How to Create a Great First Impression Online

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Most of you know that first impressions are a big deal. You only get one chance to make a good impression so you have to make it right.

Living in the digital world, our first encounters with other people are often via social media, blog posts or email. And once you capture the attention of the public, the first thing they’re going to do is to run a Google search on you. The pressure is on. So where do you start?

Here are 4 simple ways to make a good first impression online.

Know your audience

Successful brands start out by getting to know their audience before they try to appeal to them. Consider the interest and needs of your target audience. Focus on people who are most likely to buy your products instead of appealing to the masses. This will yield better results and end up saving a lot of money in the process.

Be informational rather than promotional

A lot of business owner think that they need to do something flashy just to capture the attention of their target audience. But in order to stand out, you need to provide them with quality content, content that will appeal to your target audience. Let’s take Wikipedia as an example. Wikipedia is one of the least flashy sites on the Web, but it is also one of the most trusted. So, if you really want to stand out, provide people with informative and quality content rather than just showcasing your products on a regular basis.

Get your personal life out of the public eye

We often use social media channels to communicate with our family and friends. But now that you’re running a business, be sure to use a separate account when talking to potential clients and customers. Remember, people will be watching you. So you might as well get your personal life out of the public eye.

Don’t forget to clean up your social media profile once in a while. While it’s normal to have fun sometimes, you don’t want people to have a negative perception of you.

Your website

Apparently, you only have 3 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention. If you want them to stay, you need to take into account the design and usability of your website. Mind you, people are going to close the window or start looking at other sites if they don’t like what they see or don’t know what to do. Make sure that your content is easy to access and your site is easy to navigate.

 

 

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