Optimize Social Media ROI-Return on Influence!

 

 

Return on investment with social media can polarize several public relations, marketing and advertising efforts since there are a growing number of agencies and businesses utilizing social media marketing and analysis efforts to see return on investment. While some companies get ROI through social media use on Facebook or YouTube, marketers need to realize that in order to optimize their social media efforts, true ROI is about influence from consumers!

ROI needs to involve connections companies make with their customers. Companies’ social media marketing should act as recommendations and inspirations to buy certain products and services. The goal is not to get an instant purchase from consumers, but to get the customer interested as they search a companies’ social/mobile web, and potentially gain a customer for life.

Relationships with customers are directly linked to the value companies get in return from investment in social media. With Twitter, it should not be a brand’s objective to sell the most products by tweeting. Instead, Twitter should be used to inform customers and show them all about their brands’ experience so they understand what the brand is all about, not just what they’re selling.

The stronger the connection brands have with their customers, the more likely those customers will be inclined to buy into the brand for life. Some ROI models for social media are focused on a direct marketing approach, also known as an offer and response approach. The problem with that is that companies end up chasing a platform where their target market might be, instead of understanding how to influence that target market with a social experience. Companies need to stop focuses on seeing ROI from social media coming strictly through direct sales!

Strong, productive social media marketing will influence business outcomes, just as a good public relations campaign will. Positive media coverage leads to awareness and inspires interest and discovery of the brand. Social experiences can provide brand-advertising benefits and push consumers to purchase sooner, and/or more often.

When it comes to social media marketing, most markers are just chasing popular platforms with their own ideas of what they think will motivate their customers to buy. But, what they should be doing instead is interpreting customer preferences and optimize their efforts to address the kinds of social experiences that will bring about a purchase and gain loyal customers. Social media is a platform to help businesses serve customer needs throughout a lifecycle, not just during a time of peak sales. With this in mind, new opportunities in social media marketing are available for those businesses willing to be influenced by their consumers!

 

 

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Different Attitudes Towards Social Media Between Consumers and Marketers


 

New survey data suggests that marketers are disconnected from the attitudes of their targeted consumers. About 60% of consumers have ended engagement with several brands due to poorly targeted communication.

This data comes from Experian, an information services firm, which surveyed 1000 consumers and 330 Australian marketing professionals from government, technology, retail, digital, travel and financial service industries.

At the top of the list of consumers’ most preferred way to engage with brands was through giveaways and incentives. In fact, 70% placed this method in their top three ways to receive information from brands.

Regarding brand websites, marketers and consumers were in agreement, with about 91% and 85% claiming websites were the most important source of information on brands and product services.

There was however, a disconnection found in attitudes regarding print and social media. 70% of consumers seem to value print media, and 60% value direct mail more than social media, while marketers see print media as one of the least important sources of information. Only 28% of markers felt print media was an important channel for communicating.

The survey also found that in looking at consumer trust of marketing channels, surprisingly, consumers aren’t as trustful of newer channels like social media and SMS for communicating with brands. About 30% of consumers placed social media at the bottom three trusted channels, with only 4% claiming social media was the channel they trusted the most.

General manager of Experian Marketing Solutions, Matt Glasner, feels this distrust may come from the relative infancy of social media’s use in marketing, along with the fact that while 89% of Australian marketers now utilize a customer segmentation strategy in general, this strategy may not be applied to newer communication channels, like social media.

Glasner also claims that this is comparable to examining where email and EDM marketing was five years ago. “The challenges uncovered by the research are similar to the barriers we saw five or so years ago when customers lacked trust in emails and EDMs. Yet, for many brands, these are now common place communication channels which are highly valued by customers.”

In the year to come, most marketers plan to increase investment in social media advertising. “Marketers are working hard to ensure their messages are heard. However, our research highlights that there is still a huge opportunity for marketers to further understand how and when consumers want to engage across all channels, including social media,” says Glasner.

Glasner thinks there’s opportunity in bringing the level of consumer segmentation seen in traditional channels to social media campaigns, and worries that the age of multichannel marketing comes with the challenge of information overload, therefore marketers must be more selective than ever in their choices of communication!

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Social Media Marketing Strategies

With the influx of different social media tools there are now so many different ways to target your chosen audience compared with 10 years ago.

When using social media one strategy is to remember that you can do so much more than provide just text based information, you can post videos, photos as well as links to other interesting resources that might add value to your followers.

There are many different ways that you can make use of videos, with this and general internet marketing activities such as, visual case studies, how to videos or client testimonials.

Pictures of you, your staff and perhaps even pictures from company social events, can also be very positive as users like to see who they are dealing with, it’s easier to build relationships with the people in the company if they can see who they are and interact with them.

Also when producing videos use the staff that your clients would see if they came into your store or office, this helps to maintain familiarity with clients and can help to build better relationships.

Social media strategies only work if your target audience access the outlet. To make sure you clients and potential clients know that you’re on Facebook or Twitter make sure that you tell them. Send out a newsletter to your clients and contacts to tell them they can follow you on Twitter etc. and ensure that any printed marketing materials feature the URL’s for your various social media accounts. Social media needs the social part to work; therefore you need to have people join for it to be an effective tool for your company.

Once you have people following you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ you have to keep them interested. One strategy is to have promotions, small things like posting sales through you tweets or putting coupons up for friends on your Facebook page keeps people interested and attracts more to join.

Social media strategies are slightly different from print or person to person strategies. You have to remember that you need to update your information and promotions so that more people want to follow you. It only works if there are members in your online community so you have to promote yourself to your audience to make them want to be part of your community.

The great thing about Social Media Marketing is that not only is the opportunity vast, but it is also one of the lowest cost marketing activities available to businesses today.

Clearly the way companies use Social Media Marketing will vary depending on the type of business or target market, but businesses that are serious about competing in today’s markets need to ensure they are making use of these tools. Simply having a website is no longer good enough, you must promote your business in the online world and engage with your target audience.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6697852

 
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Business and Marketing Trends in Social Media in 2012!

 

 

 

What’s going to happen in the New Year with social media? Social Media is expanding quickly and marketers everywhere are catching up! Look out for these trends to come.

Disappearing Social Media Marketing:

Social media is becoming an integral part of all aspects in marketing our businesses. Therefore, social media marketing will be included in overall marketing plans; it won’t be a separate tool. Just like email marketing or SEO, social media will be a vital activity.

Integrating Social Media:

Big brands will start using social media more to connect to customers through user-generated content. This helps businesses get the most out of their true customers and loyal fans.

Supporting Social Media:

The integration of social media into marketing will result in people reporting their problems through their channel of choice. Companies should try and find ways to avoid having their social media channels turn into a mere helpdesk, but social media integration will indeed let consumer problems be handled by peers.

Increasing Social Sales:

Customers will get a stronger real user experience before making purchase decisions with social media integration. People can make purchase decisions based on a brand’s marketing materials and receive feedback from existing customers through ratings, comments and reviews.

Leveling off of Group Buying Sites:

Group buying sites will level off. They will not go away, but businesses will better understand how it works and use it accordingly. With group buying sites, businesses buy an opportunity to allow potential consumers to sample their offering at a discounted rate with the hope of getting continuous business.

Growing ROI:

Social media ROI is an important topic and still less than half of marketers claim to see it. As budgets grow, social media will become more important in a brand’s marketing mix. ROI will be seen through direct sales from Facebook, or perhaps more conversion rates of people from social channels.

Growing Social Media Advertising:

Social media channels are trying to find ways to get at your advertising budget so they can turn a profit. Social media sites are looking at new ways to display more marketing messages to users. This will result in larger budgets dedicated to social media advertising.

Mobilizing Websites:

More businesses will start making their sites mobile. 10 years ago companies began making websites because other companies were, now companies will start making their sites mobile as more and more companies are starting to!

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The Future of Branding, Marketing and Social Media: 3 Important Facts

A new report from Havas Media titled, “Meaningful Brands For A Sustainable Future,” is one of the most insightful reports in revealing the punitive aspect of the social business marketplace, which is often overlooked! It specifically examines the expanding awareness and capacity of consumers to punish brands that lack social responsibility.

Three key facts stand out in the report as warnings that all marketers need to be aware of!

1. Just 28% of consumers worldwide feel that businesses today are effectively working to solve the social and environmental challenges people care about.

There are two things to consider regarding this fact. First of all, this statistic proves that a very small percentage of consumers think companies are working efficiently to address social crises. Secondly, the phrase, “challenges people care about,” should be taken into consideration. A hallmark of social marketing is that it’s a real-time conversation between brands and consumers. If businesses want to get loyalty from consumers, they must perform and communicate in a meaningful way to be apart of their consumers’ lives. Ignoring social and environmental challenges that consumers care about means companies could become irrelevant and/or experience consumer backlash for their lack of social responsibility.

2. 64% of consumers feel most businesses merely “act” responsible to improve their image.

Consumers consistently demand that brands use social media platforms to promote their products and services in an authentic manner. It’s a major issue if over half of all consumers think brands are not genuinely addressing issues that are important to consumers. Our current marketplace gives consumers the ability to gather information and share it through social media. So, with more companies seeking to connect to customers, there’s competition in this marketplace to win the loyalty of consumers. But since consumers have so many options, if they feel a company is insincere in their social efforts, that brand will immediately lose that customer’s loyalty.

3. If 70% of brands disappeared in the future, most people would not care.

This fact highlights a deep consumer distrust of brands in the marketplace.  Just because a brand has strong leadership as a company does not guarantee its security in the market. Technology is quickly changing how business is conducted across all industries and now consumers are pushed more than ever before to find and embrace the tech-savvy AND socially responsible brands.

The Havas Media report concluded that brands that improve our personal and collective world systematically will be rewarded with greater consumer attachment and brand equity. The bottom line is brands MUST be meaningful to their customers’ lives!

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Successful Advertising with LinkedIn in 5 Steps

LinkedIn is a growing social media platform with over 100 million business professionals worldwide.

Business messages are well received within the professional environment of LinkedIn, which makes the site ideal for advertising for lead generation for B2B companies.

LinkedIn ads appear along the sidebar with a photo and text. They include the photo, a 25-character headline, and a 75-character description. You can also try different versions of your ad to test which ones drive the most click-throughs.

As you create your ads in LinkedIn, keep these five tips in mind for success!

1. Use powerful copy with relevant images

Come up with a great ad before fine-tuning your campaigns. Write an effective ad copy; on LinkedIn, it will only allow the copy to be 75 characters of description, so every character counts! In your copy, convey a sense of urgency and highlight a unique benefit. With PPC ads, the picture is very important! Make sure the image matches what you’re offering.

2. Target ads to specific audiences

Only target your ads to the most relevant prospects. You can choose this based on industry (marketing, Internet, banking, etc.), job function (academics, engineering, marketing) and groups. The more specific your offer and targeting are, the better chance your ads will be successful!

3. Split-test different versions of your campaign

Each campaign on LinkedIn has its own targeting options, daily budget and ads. It’s recommended that you create at least three ads per campaign, each with a different headline, different call-to-action phrases and images. You’re allowed to come up with 15 different ads per campaign, so take advantage!

4. Spend your money strategically

LinkedIn will display ads at different rates throughout the day depending on when users are active on site. So, consider spending 50% of your budget in the morning, and maybe 25% in the afternoon, and the other 25% towards the nighttime. After you hit your daily budget limit, your ads will stop showing for that day.  Keep calculations of your average spending per day for the past week, then compare that amount to your daily budget and figure out if you can increase your daily budget to get more clicks. Also, an “auction” will occur between your ad and other advertisers each time a prospect visits a page on LinkedIn. The site will give you a suggested bid range or an estimate of current bids from other advisers. The higher your bid, the more likely it is to win the auction.

5. Measure your ads performance

Pay attention to metrics to understand your ads’ effectiveness. Also consider your overall business and marketing goals before you consider your goals for LinkedIn ads. Be sure to measure CTR; according to LinkedIn, good ads have a CTR higher than .025%. Also measure leads and take your landing pages into consideration.

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Connecting With Brands Using Google+ Badges

 

Google’s newest widget, Google+ Badges for brand pages, lets brands use Google’s social network to promote their presence.

Similar in form and function to Facebook’s Like Box social plugin, Google+ Badges lets users either +1 a webpage, or add that webpage to their Google+ circles. While it doesn’t have Facebook’s ability to show your friends’ faces first, the widget does display the faces of other users who have +1ed the webpage.

Businesses now have the ability to create a strong presence on Google’s growing social network thanks to the launch of Google+ Badges that came alongside the development of Google+ Brand Pages.

Another feature of Google+ Badges is that it contains a snippet of code connecting your website to your Google+ page. In an e-mail to developers, the company stated, “In addition to helping us better index your Google+ page, this snippet will help you show more personal recommendations around the web by linking your +1’s on sites, your Google+ page, search and display ads.”

Additionally, Google has revealed that the badge must be included for the Google Direct Connect feature, which makes it possible for users to find a Google+ page from a Google Search. By typing in “+”then the name of a brand in Direct Connect, the search results lead users straight to the company’s Google+ brand page.

Given the success of its Facebook counterpart, this widget is certainly a necessary component for Google+. Even though it doesn’t have the benefits Facebook offers with “Open Graph,” the Google+ Badge definitely gets the job done. Google still must work to convince both users and brands that it is a social network ideal to do business through, but this Google+ widget will be of great importance in building the relevance of Google+!

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The Best Facebook Page Apps to Improve Communication with Fans

With over 100,000 Facebook applications available, it can seem overwhelming to try and determine which apps will be the most important for your business. To help you out, here are four essential Facebook apps that will help you to communicate and interact with your fans!

1. Tweets to Pages

This app has about 1.2 million monthly active users! It creates a tab on your Facebook Page that shows your company’s most recent tweets displayed in a timeline. This feature is great for giving real-time information to Facebook users without a Twitter account and helps to avoid annoying fans by constantly streaming your tweets to Facebook as wall updates.

2. Static HTML: iframe tabs

With 61.8 million monthly users, this app simplifies the process of creating a custom landing page. You can simply copy and paste textboxes for your custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript instead of creating a developer account and your own application. You can also remove scrollbars and enable Facebook’s FBML if you’d like. And you can enable “like-gate” if you want to incentivize Likes on your Page.

3. ContactMe

This app has 180,000 monthly active users. It adds a contact form tab on your company’s Facebook Page that allows anyone visiting your page to easily contact you the minute they’re interested! It also has customization options, like choosing whether you want to show your company’s contact information or social media icons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Skype. It also lets you add, remove, reorder and require specific fields in a simple user interface through contactme.com.

4. RSS Graffiti

With 1.5 million users, this app lets you post wall updates automatically, whenever there’s a new item in one of your specific feeds. This saves you time and effort in having to create a new wall update every day to distribute your company’s content. It also has customization options to make it stand out. The configuration interface is intuitive and easy to use!

If you don’t have time to sift through the hundreds of Facebook apps available, start with these four apps to better communicate with your fans!

 

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3 Simple Facebook Marketing Tips to Keep in Mind

This is a great article:

With over 750 million users globally on Facebook, Facebook marketing is a popular way to reach a wider target audience. Since Facebook marketing is totally different from any other type of marketing previously done on the Internet, it is important to learn how to use Facebook properly for business. Otherwise, it will cost you money, time and effort.

Tip #1: Keep it Social Before Selling

With the thought of millions of customers in short reach through Facebook, many businesses make the common mistake of pitching their product or service directly to the users.

The most crucial factor to remember is that people on Facebook are there primarily to socialize with other users. They are not primarily there to shop and purchase products. If you attempt to sell directly or hard sell to members of Facebook, you will not be successful.

However, if your business is serious about using Facebook as a tool to market your product or service, the first step is to create a Business/Fan page on Facebook and invite people to like the page. Use this page to create buzz around what your business has to offer. Your product or service should offer solutions to your target audience.

The next step is to post value driven content to the people on your page. You can post pictures, videos and other commentary that provides some kind of benefit to your target audience and fans. Urge your fans to take action by posting comments and queries pertaining to your post. The key here is to get them to engage with your page, and develop relationships with them. Since Facebook is an online platform where people go to socialize, ensure that it is an exciting experience for them to go to your page.

Tip #2: Increase Your LIKES or Fans

Why is it desirable for your business for people to click LIKE on your page? Every time you put fresh information on your page, each person who LIKED your page will see the post on their newsfeed.

Therefore, if two thousand people LIKED your Facebook page, there is a potential of up to two thousand people to see your post, and potentially create a viral effect.

Tip #3: Use Facebook Advertisements

You can spread the word of your page and increase the number of Likes to your page by using Facebook Advertisement (Ads). Facebook Ads are quite different from Google AdWords. With Facebook, it is easier to target a specific demographic audience. A crucial feature of a Facebook ad is the graphic or picture used in the advertisement. It is essential to select an image that will draw the attention of people, which encourages them to see your advertisement and click on it.

To achieve success with your ad, you should target your possible viewers, and you can use the services of a website like Quantcast.com to access the demographics of the types of people who may be interested in your particular product.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6656830

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Combining SEO and Social Media

Experts suggest marketers integrate their SEO campaigns and their social media accounts into one strategy.

When SEO and social media are divided into separate entities, firms often end up choosing one over the other. This could end up being costly in the long run.

A more efficient strategy is to utilize a joint social media and SEO campaign in order for your business to get the most out of both tools.

Online marketing blogger for columbiatribune.com, Rob Stretch, explains, “One channel can be leveraged to improve another benefit to a whole campaign; such is the case with social media and search engine optimization.”

Stretch also explains how social media can be used to establish and expand brand relationships. These relationships can then be used by SEO to create links between the interested parties.

Additionally, Twitter can be added to generate content and spread banner messages to put businesses in contact with influential people in their distinct industries. This will then boost brand awareness and build further connections.

These social media connections should then be promoted. Place tabs on each web page to allow users to “Like,” “Tweet” or “+1” it, to help further promote the website and its content to the target audience while giving it greater authority in search engines as well.

On yourdailyupdateblog.com, Stretch concluded that, “Despite multiple differences, both channels are the same in that they can be leverages as traffic sources to your website.”

In your company’s social media efforts, it’s clearly a wise choice to consider integrating social media and your SEO campaigns to a single strategy to see the greatest benefit!

 

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