Staying On Top Of The Changing Social Media World

 

 

 

 

After playing with social media for a few hours, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. You quickly realize that there are so many new tools constantly coming out that you feel obligated to learn in order to keep your social media marketing plan strong.

You can be sure that with Internet marketing, once you conquer one social media platform, a new one will come out soon enough, so always be prepared for continual learning! However, understand that sometimes it is worth learning all the new social media tools, and sometimes you might not need to invest so much time in learning a new platform; it all depends on your specific marketing plan and target audience.

While it can be demanding to have to constantly keep up with the latest social media tools, there are tricks to help keep your cool and stay strong in the ever-changing Internet marketing scene. Here are three elements to stick with in order to keep your social media marketing plan sturdy when approaching new social media channels.

1. Stick with what you know

If you’ve been playing with social media for a while now, you should know what works for you and what doesn’t. If there’s one social media platform you know is bringing you success, stick with it and maintain that success. When you find a new social media channel, experiment with it, but don’t neglect your best platform.

2. Stick with your marketing plan

If you know certain social media platforms won’t work well with your company’s marketing goals, don’t waste your time with them. Know what your company message is, what content you want to deliver, and who you want to deliver it to. Keep this plan flexible so it can adapt to the latest platforms, but never forget what your marketing plan is. Only spend time looking into new platforms if they seem to align with your marketing goals.

3. Stick with your customers

To be successful with social media marketing, you must know who your target audience is and know what social media platforms they use the most. Take this information into consideration when new platforms pop up. Think about if the new platform seems like something your target market would get into, or not. If it is, take the time to learn it to reach those customers.

Even though there is a lot to learn with social media marketing, if you spend your time wisely on learning what will work with your social media campaign, you will stay successful.

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Using LinkedIn to Market Your Brand

 

 

 

 

There are several marketing opportunities with LinkedIn. Most companies know the basics, but there are some other unique tools that more brands should look into. With some of these tools, you can bet you will increase sales and boost brand awareness. Not of all these tools are free, but if your company can make some extra room in its budget, these LinkedIn tools will surely be worthwhile.

1. Upgrade company pages

Most businesses have filled out their company’s LinkedIn page, but it’s a good idea to consider buying extras to enhance your visitors’ experience. An analytics tab will let page admins get insights about company followers. An overview tab gives LinkedIn members a network-aware overview of your company. A products and services tab allows you to highlight your top products and services and lets you display product recommendations. And finally, a career page will let you advertises job opportunities and allows you to interact with those searching for a job. If you invest in a Silver or Gold Careers page, you can add more content and even videos to emphasize what your brand is all about.

2. Self-serve LinkedIn ads

Start with these ads on LinkedIn. Use geography, industry, age and gender, company size, LinkedIn group and job function to target your ad. These ads will be seen at either the right side of a home or profile page, or at the top of bottom of the page. They can be composed of text and images. If you link these ads to your website, or your LinkedIn company page, you can give visitors access to further information about your brand.

3. Display ads

You can purchase display ads from the LinkedIn field sales team that will give you ad space on the right side of the home and profile pages, where you’re likely to get lots of views. With this ad space, you can add blog feeds, videos, or a Twitter feed. A recommendation ad is a great idea to increase word-of-mouth advertising. If someone in your network recommends your product or service, the recommendation shows as an ad on others’ profiles who are also in that network.

4. Customized groups

With a custom group, you have more space for customization on the ride side of the page. You can even add a blog, video or Twitter feeds. Also, consider adding a poll so you can ask group members questions to get quick responses and keep them involved with your brand

5. Use Partner Messages

Partner messages are similar to the InMails service available on a premium LinkedIn account, where you can send private emails through the network. Partner messages allow you to send these kinds of messages, but you can send them as a bulk mailer. Companies can send out notes to a target segment and include a call-to-action button, an ad unit, and a co-branded landing page. Additionally, these messages can be shared through Facebook and Twitter.

Consider trying some of these marketing tools on LinkedIn and see if you notice a positive change in your marketing strategy!

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7 Ways To Engage With Your Followers on Twitter

 

 

 

 

Twitter is a great social media tool for sharing information and building a community of loyal customers. It is ideal for keeping customers informed about your brand and can also be used very efficiently to drive traffic to your other social platforms. The most effective use for Twitter is certainly its ability to help build lasting relationships with people who share your same interests.

Here are some tips that will help you to boost your level of engagement with your target audience on Twitter.

1. Leave space, yet Tweet consistently

If you send out 10 tweets in one hour about your brand, your followers will be overwhelmed and annoyed. Your Tweets will end up looking like spam. However, it is important to Tweet consistently throughout the day so that your followers will come across valuable content that they will want to share. Leave at least 30 minutes in-between your Tweets to keep a good balance between informing and over-informing.

2. Connect people

On social media sites, people want to make connections with those who share their interests. When you help to connect your followers with similar people, your followers will be grateful and have more respect for you. In return, they will be more likely to engage with your brand.

3. Show your personality on your profile

Having a real picture of yourself or your company will make people trust your brand more. You will appear more human and more relatable. Add personal information into your bio to get people interested in what your brand is all about. This way, people will feel passionate and make connections with your brand and look out for your Tweets, and hopefully, will retweet more.

4. Ask questions, and give answers

By asking questions to your followers, they automatically become engaged with you. It gives them a moment to think about what you’ve asked and might spark an interest in them to give you a quality response that you can learn from. When they ask questions back, be sure to answer those questions to build a conversation with your followers.

5. Break the news first

Think about some issues that are relevant to your brand and your company’s interests and provide valuable content continually about those issues. This positions you as an expert in your field, and your followers will know they can count on you to keep them updated about certain topics. Try to be the first to spread news on issues to increase the number of retweets you get, and get the conversation started in your community of followers.

6. Promote your followers

A great way to engage with your followers is to retweet your most passionate followers’ Tweets. Take time to thank them for sharing content and #Recommend and #FF others.

7. Ask for a retweet

If you add, “please RT” to your Tweets, you’ll find that you will get an increased number of retweets. It’s a simple way to remind your followers about retweeting and shows that you want to spread your information and reach out to others.

Twitter is not a site you can use to gain customer loyalty through without engaging with your followers. Always stay active on your Twitter account and listen to your customers to build a strong, lasting, engaging relationship with them

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Gain Brand Loyalty with Email Marketing!

 

 

When you combine the benefits of email along with social platforms, you can promote any product, increase sales and build brand loyalty in more ways than ever.

Big brands like Starbucks, and daily deal brands like Groupon have found success from combining rewards and discounts with their social media strategies. But what about businesses that aren’t so well known, or don’t promise amazing daily discounts?

You don’t need to be a top name retail brand or have thousands of Twitter followers to get the most benefit out of your social media strategy this year thanks to combining email and social marketing.

By combining social media efforts with a well-targeted email marketing strategy, companies can easily gain customer loyalty. To do so, you must use the perfect incentive and target the perfect audience, at the perfect time. Use these three ideas to increase your word-or-mouth marketing and boost customer engagement by using both social and email strategies:

1. Offer an appropriate incentive

Discounts are great, but there are other ways to push your email subscribers to get social with your brand. Some techniques marketers use to increase engagement include altruism (the idea of people passing on information they find valuable) or use unique social games like engaging videos or fun quizzes. Whatever technique you choose, make sure that the content and tone of your incentive align with the interests of your target audience.

2. Look for the social butterflies

Doing some research to customize your social engagement strategies will end up being more successful than simply asking your email subscribers to “like” or follow your brand. Find the consumer “influencers”-those who are active social media participants. Market to these people so they can help influence potential clients and bring more customers to your brand. You must find how engaged certain email subscribers are to your brand and pick out the most active social members, most loyal to your brand. To do this, use social data, social monitoring and listening platforms to examine existing email files with information about subscribers’ social interactions. With this information, you can come up with email-marketing segments based off subscribers’ social profiles. If you discover you have an active group of subscribers, think about creating a referral marketing campaign to push those subscribers to recruit new potential customers.

3. Learn your consumers’ passions

The key element of social media is about people being brought together who share a common interest. If you try to force your brand on an audience not interested in what you have to offer, no marketing strategy is going to work. You must find out what your target audience likes and interact with them based on those likes.

You might find your audience has a common interest in your product or service, but you must dig deeper to find the best way to get them excited about your product or service. You can’t expect your customers to buzz about your brand just because they’re interested in what you have to offer. Come up with ways to market to your audience that involves their passions. If your company sells car parts, think about igniting your consumers’ passion for cars and racing. Don’t just make your marketing about car parts; be creative and think of ways that can get people who share the common interest in cars to be active with your brand.

A thorough marketing strategy that utilizes the benefits of email and social tools can provide new and exciting ways for companies to build brand loyalty and boost sales. No matter what your company has to offer, it all comes down to how you connect with your consumers!

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Choosing the Right Social Media Tools for Your Business

2012 has been called the, “Year of Social Media.” Reports have found that 75% of marketers plan to increase their social media spending this year, and social media is expected to have a major impact on television and the presidential election.

With such high expectations for social media, you may feel like if your business is not in the social media loop, you could quickly go out of business. However, before rushing into multiple social media platforms in a panic, consider your business needs. Social media can certainly help your business, but some platforms aren’t the best options for your company, so don’t feel like you must enable all platforms.

Today, a wide variety of social media platforms exist that have various features to cater to specific needs. Come up with an effective social media strategy that will use your money and resources the most efficiently. Don’t believe the hype that getting thousands of Facebook followers, or sending out dozens of Tweets per day is the key to social media success for every business. To get the most out of social media marketing, you need to figure out which social media tools are right for you, and focus specifically on those.

First, identify your audience. You need to define whom it is you want to talk to. If you try to communicate with the most number of consumers possible, you won’t see much brand loyalty in return. If you want to engage with as many consumers as possible efficiently, you need to use different tools in different ways. Every social media platform has its own culture. They have specific tones and engage a specific type of person. This is why it is crucial for you to pick the platforms that best reach your target audience.

Next, define your social media needs. Are you simply trying to increase foot traffic to your stores? Or are you trying to see large sales increases? Maybe your issue is not so much about your customers as it is about your company’s communication techniques. All social media platforms don’t fit all business needs. Figure out what your goal is with social media for you company, and choose the platforms that best fit those needs.

Thirdly, make a plan for how you will use social media. The main goal of all social media platforms is to connect to others, but different platforms do this in different ways. Are you trying to get feedback from your customers? Are you trying to improve your recruiting efforts? Figuring out how you want to use your social media accounts will help narrow down the available platforms to the ones that are most relevant to your needs.

And finally, choose the right tool! After you’ve found your target audience, defined your needs, and decided how you want to use social media, you’re all set to choose the right platforms.

Now do the research necessary to find the right platform for you. If you want your social media strategy to be more private than a public network like Twitter, look into a site like Yammer. Yammer allows you to securely communicate private information.

If your business is trying to build a stronger relationship between its staff and outside contractors, use a platform that can be easily integrated into your business. Think about creating a Wiki or checking out a site like Huddle.

If you’re a local company, wanting to connect with those close to you, platforms like Gowalla or Foursquare give users rewards for check-ins and other discounts that will lead to more foot traffic to your store in a way that a larger platform like Facebook cannot do as successfully.

Clearly social media strategies are complicated and there’s no single, right answer for finding success. Investigate the available platforms and experiment. Find what’s working and what’s not. If you find that a certain platform is not generating results, don’t waste your time with it. Move on a focus on other platforms that are better suited for your business.

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The Benefits of Blogging


 

Blogging has certainly become a huge part of social media marketing today. By providing quality information, a consumer can understand exactly how your company works and exactly what kind of products and services you provide. A powerful blog can provide an eye-opening insight for a consumer to realize how your business is relevant to their life.

Blogging is similar to a company newsletter. If your business still hasn’t launched a blog, you probably have a company newsletter lying around the office. These newsletters provide information, possibly show pictures, and are a way for employees and consumers to check out the latest updates happening in the company. Perhaps they even offer articles with tips for employees, or maybe a list of employee birthdays.

The point is, newsletters like this keep the company unified and up to speed. However, the problem with printed newsletters is that they have a limited life span and come with publication costs, which limits circulation. This means the information is provided then quickly lost, and only a small number of people end up seeing it.

With this in mind, consider the power of blogging! Everyone in your company can access it, and consumers and future customers everywhere can view it as well. With all the free sites available to start a blog, cost is not an issue. Even creating a section on your website dedicated to blogging is a free way to post information that will remain available for anyone interested.

Additionally, information on blogs can be added, edited and updated as needed. And with powerful search engine technology, users anywhere interested in your company’s line of expertise can be directed to your company’s blog. This will lead to a greater awareness of your brand, and a greater increase in potential customers.

So, if your business is set on printed newsletters, take these thoughts into consideration and see for yourself the benefits of online blogging. Think about any amazing articles published in magazines and newsletters that you’d be dying to read again. If those articles had been blogs online, you would be able to refer back to them anytime.

Keep in mind that with all the power that comes from blogging comes more responsibility. Your readers and followers will have questions, want further information, and the Internet makes it easy for them to give quick feedback to your blogs. So be prepared to be active and address your readers and learn from their feedback to strengthen your blog.

It’s time to grasp the importance of blogging, and reap in the benefits! Through quality blog posts, you will keep readers coming back to your blog and potentially gain consumers through interesting and informed blogs about your company.

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Tips for Using Twitter for Small Businesses

 

Twitter has undeniably become an effective tool for carrying out social media marketing campaigns. For small to medium sized businesses specifically, Twitter can be one of the most efficient platforms for gaining brand awareness and loyalty.

Just like with any other social media tool, it’s crucial to first set a campaign plan before jumping onto the site. You must first establish how your company will get the most benefit out of using Twitter.

To help get the most out of Twitter, here are some tips for your business to follow to find success.

1. Decide what you’re going to tweet before tweeting it

You want your brand to have a distinct and uniform communication style. Keep your way of speaking to consumers consistent to give your brand it’s own unique voice. Everything you tweet should relate to a common message that reflects your brand.

By creating your tweets ahead of time, you can check to make sure they give off a common vibe and provide quality content that connects to your product or service.

2. Follow your customers back

One of the benefits of being a small-sized business is that you are able to have close relationships with your consumers. On a site like Twitter, people enjoy being followed back. It shows your interest in them and helps create and build a relationship.

When you gain a follower, follow them back as a way to return the favor. They followed you out of interest for your brand, so follow them back and show them you’re interested in them as well.

3. Search for possible followers

On Twitter, people usually follow a brand not only because they’re interested in that brand, but also because that brand provides quality content. If your brand can come up with continually quality content, you will gain more followers who have an interest in your brand’s area of expertise.

You can find more potential followers by making searches simply by using the subject matter from your content and searching for others who are discussing the same topic. Follow these people and see if they end up following you back. But, be careful that these people are truly interested in what your brand is all about, as you don’t want to end up gaining a bunch of followers who are not interested in what your product or service has to offer.

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12 Best Online Marketing Strategies For 2012

At this time of each year we think about what we accomplished over the last year – and what we want to improve on for the upcoming new year.

From a marketing perspective, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with all new ideas and bright shiny objects out there to pull our attention away from the marketing strategies that matter most – those that will actually improve your business and expand your marketing reach.

So, in honor of the new year – I present to you the 12 best online marketing strategies to focus on for 2012. There could be more – but these are in my opinion the best strategies to bring you quicker to your business goals using online marketing strategies that work.

Don’t choose them all! Focus on the 2 or 3 that you feel could impact your marketing effort the most – and carve out the time and plan for implementing them next year!

1. Improve your irresistible free offer. Perhaps it’s time to replace that outdated “free report” or “eBook” with an even higher value freebie to offer site visitors. As I referred to in my post about the best freebie out there – my favorite is still the Audio CD – which has huge intrinsic value because it’s a physical “thing” and you can capture mailing addresses in addition to just email address.

2. Launch a new product or program. There is always something you can “launch” whether it’s a new product or program. You can also “re-launch” something you did this year that performed really well. My post shares some great methods for launching a new product or program. Think about what you can do differently this time around to make it even more engaging and worthwhile for your audience. Add more bonuses and juicier incentives to help increase sales.

3. Do a new webinar or teleseminar. Each new year is a great time to host a new topic using either a webinar or teleseminar. It can also be a perfect time to switch up the format and see what works best. Been doing a bunch of teleseminars lately? Try a webinar? Doing just webinars? Try a teleseminar. And, choose a topic that is new to your audience and see what kind of response you receive.

4. Connect with a new joint venture partner. Have this year be the year you establish a great partnership with a new strategic alliance or joint venture partner. I explained how to do this in my post about joint venture as a great list building strategy. Someone that you feel can really pull you and help you in a big way – while you can do the same for them. I always like to think outside the box about who to connect with – and expect something great as a result.

5. Create an affiliate program. Perhaps this is the year you launch an affiliate program. Affiliates are a great way to spread your message and build your list – while also supporting your sales of products or programs. Pretty much most shopping cart programs support affiliate programs and are easy to establish.

6. Update your website / blog. Website looking a bit outdated? Perhaps it’s time to hire a graphic designer for that new logo you’ve been craving or hire a website developer to update your entire site. I shared how important design is when it comes to marketing online in an earlier post so don’t skimp on the important details when updating your website. First impressions matter most when designing your website.

7. Be more active on social media. Are you one of the folks who has a Twitter account but hardly ever uses it? Perhaps you’re wondering exactly what to post on that new Facebook fanpage you created? Have this year be the year you be more “social” on social media. Remember, you can’t be active on these social media sites unless you show up and do the work.

8. Start a pay-per-click advertising campaign. I’m a huge fan of pay-per-click advertising. One of my earlier posts about PPC explains that it’s one of the best and most effective ways to quickly and authentically build your list with highly qualified leads. Whether it’s Google AdWords or Facebook ads – they convert brand new prospects onto your list and you can target very specific groups of people searching what you have to offer. Yes, you gotta pay for the traffic – but – it’s definitely worth it on the long run.

9. Add video to your marketing. It’s 2012 and you’re still not using video in your online marketing? It’s time to jump onboard with the most powerful and effective way to connect and build trust online with visitors to your site. With the advances of technology and video equipment costs plummeting – you really have no excuse to do more video and start reaping the benefits immediately.

10. Generate more content. Only posting to your blog once every other week or once a month? This is the year you need to generate a ton more content – way more than you’re even doing now (unless you blog every single day.) Putting out high-content and high-value articles and blog posts is how you get new traffic as well as nurture the existing audience you have on your list. Content is king.

11. Be smart about SEO. Still don’t have a clue about search engine optimization or how it relates to your blog or website? SEO is critical for having massive success online – and can’t be ignored or overlooked anymore. Develop a comprehensive SEO strategy about how to improve your search engine rankings for your best keywords and let’s get to work.

12. Email your list more often. Only sending the email newsletter out when you have the time for it? This is the year we get you on a consistent and frequent schedule of emailing your list all this great content you’re now generating. If you’re doing monthly now – consider bi-weekly. Sending the newsletter every other week? Let’s make it happen by sending it weekly. The more you email your list – the higher your open rates and consumption of your content – which is all good.

There you have it! The official 12 best marketing strategies to grow your business with online marketing for 2012.

Until next time… Learn It, Love It, Live It!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6785650

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Seven SEO & Social Media Trends For 2012

 

 

In the year ahead, there seem to be some major social media tactics you can expect to see affecting businesses. Some of these trends have already been carried out by companies, but in 2012, expect to see a mass adoption of these plans carried out by all types of businesses.

1. Google+ Explosion

Google+ will continually come out with new features, and Google+ pages will continue to become more business-friendly. The integration with other Google properties, like in paid search ads, its search engine results page, Google Reader and YouTube will be the greatest advantage for Google.

Google had a strong focus on social media last year by basing its employee bonus and salary structure off of its success through social media. This has resulted in everyone involved the Google world constantly considering social media. This internal focus will lead to an external force where consumers will make Google+ a main social media platform in 2012.

2. Creating Engaged Communities

Businesses will be sure to pay attention to their current community members in 2012, as marketers become more advanced in planning and measuring their campaigns. There will be a stronger emphasis on creating an engaged community as opposed to mere numbers of followers. So, community managers need to energize community members and engage with them in multiple areas, like market research, product development and product discounts, for example.

Managing and building communities is about the consumers, the information and staying consistent. This strategy will be seen heavily in 2012 and will become a key part of community management.

3. Stronger Marketing Intelligence

Last year there was a lot of new technology platforms that changed social media monitoring and provided advanced data to help drive marketing campaigns.

This year, businesses will move beyond just looking at company mentions and influencer scores, and move more toward combining different social data in order to create a marketing intelligence that will drive future marketing campaigns. Many tools do this already, but there is sure to be more this year.

4. Social Media Driving SEO

The usual on-page SEO factors will still remain constant, as it makes your content search friendly, but in 2012, strong sharing activities through social media will drive SEO results.

SEO conversions will be higher and simpler to measure on organic search. And as a result, more companies will carry out a closer collaboration between their social teams and searches.

5. Real, Quality Content

Everyone appreciates content that is relevant, engaging and unique to the consumer. In the past few years, companies have worked hard to come up with content with the sole purpose of creating content for SEO.

In 2012, there will be a more structured way for businesses to form content with a focus on giving unique value to consumers that will lead to higher engagement levels with community members.

5. The Power of Facebook

In the past, companies worked to get a somewhat superficial quantity of Facebook fans without considering the quality of those fans. This year, expect to see companies focus on finding greater profitability with a sharp ROI emphasis in the form of Facebook ads, contests and promotions.

Companies will find that there’s more to Facebook than measuring a linear conversion path from a fan to a consumer. Marketers will measure the non-linear path of ROI more by making Facebook-exclusive promotions to drive foot traffic to the retail stores.

Facebook Ads campaigns will be measured based on the profitability that leads to revenues or supports.

7. SoLoMo (Social, Local, Mobile)

More integrated campaigns that combine social media with local offers involving mobile devices will be seen in 2012. Socially promoted mobile content can build brand loyalty, and ultimately increase sales.

Sites like LivingSocial and Groupon are good examples of using deals to drive local sales. Foursquare is another example of the SoLoMo strategy.

It’s clear that the quickly changing social media environment can be overwhelming. However, by staying on-top of the latest social media tactics, your company can stay strong in the social media world.

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