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4 Social Media Marketing Tips for Beginners

Social media marketing is beneficial for small business owners as it helps them build awareness about their business and products or services through different social media channels. With the right tactics, you’ll be rewarded with increased product visibility, a new batch of potential clients and bountiful sales as well.

As a beginner, building a social media presence may not be that easy. We have compiled a few tips to make the process easier for you.

Choose a social media platform

As a beginner, it would be best to choose 1 or 2 social media platforms and stick with it. This would be easier instead of working across different platforms at the same time.

A great way to determine which platform is best for you is to follow the influencers and learn about their success story. Follow the leaders in your niche and check out their Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and other social media accounts.

If they have 50,000 Facebook fans but only 5,000 Twitter followers, then Facebook may be a more suitable social media platform for your niche.

Optimize your social media platforms

Decide which social media tools you’ll be using and optimize your profiles. You are more likely to get more followers and boost your SEO efforts by optimizing your profile.

If you wish to have a trusted profile, then using a real photo would be of great help. Social media is all about connecting with people, so you have to show the people who you are in order to get their trust.

Connect your social media accounts with your blog or website

If your social media profile is ready, connecting your blog or website to your social media account would be the next step. Each platform has a certain set of procedures to follow. So, you have to abide by these rules and do it correctly.

Add social media buttons to your blog or site

Adding social media buttons on your blog or site is beneficial as it could help reader share your content easily.

For increased exposure, it is best to place the buttons above the fold. Also, larger buttons are more visible and are more likely to get you more clicks compared to smaller buttons.  

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5 Best Business Apps

As business owners we are on the go a lot, it is great to find those apps to make your life just a little bit easier! Here are 5 apps we love and use on a daily basis!

1) Flipgram- Bring Moments to Life! Create beautiful short video stories using your photos, set to music you love! http://flipagram.com/  This app is great for businesses they can take pictures of events they are at, or presentations or even new products and then take those pictures and create a nice short video to share on Instagram and social media.

2)  Web Recording Tool- Get ready to impress and be impressed, with this first of a kind app that is not only extra original but super useful too! Looking for the best way to explain or show someone how to navigate a specific area of the Internet but don’t have the words for it? Show it with a video! This is a great app for businesses when they are wanting to show someone their website, or how to explain something on their website, blog, YouTube, Social Media etc. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/web-recording-tool/id683468115?mt=8

3) Dropbox- Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again! This app is a great tool for businesses that are virtual or on the go a lot, you can upload important documents that you use daily on your computer, upload to Dropbox then when you are out and about if you have this app you can view and edit from your phone or tablet!

4)  Hootsuite– HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audiences, and distribute targeted messages using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard. https://hootsuite.com/features/mobile-apps This is a great app for businesses that are trying to keep up with their social media in a busy life style. You can log into 1 platform and be able to post to all your social media profiles. It is so easy!

5)  Evernote- Remember Everything- Evernote apps and products make modern life manageable, by letting you easily collect and find everything that matters. http://evernote.com/ As business owners we are very busy everyday trying to manage a company, social media, the books, personal life, bills the list goes on and on, this is a great tool to help you remember those things!

 

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Social Media Tips for Small Business Owners

Planning and implementing an effective marketing strategy is one of the biggest challenges business owners are dealing with. Being successful in marketing your brand through social media means being able to introduce your products or services in a fun and creative way.

 

In this article, you’ll be able to discover some of the strategies experts use to boost their social media marketing. Read on and we’ll tell you more about it.

Diversify your social media presence

While Twitter and Facebook still dominate the social media scene, there are a lot of social media platforms being introduced from time to time. Instagram has also been increasingly popular among users.

In order to see better results, it is important for business owners to diversify their social media presence and interact with their clients through a variety of platforms.

Tell your unique story

Make your company stand out from the competition by sharing your unique story through social media. This way, consumers may be swayed to purchase from you instead of your competitors.

While most of your existing customers are familiar with your story, your potential clients may have no idea about it. So, try to maximize the power of social media and share your story to your audience.

Research popular content from your competitors

Try to sneak a peek into your competitor’s posts and see which types of content are popular with their audience. If this catches the attention of their audience, there’s a great possibility that your followers would be interested too. It’s not about copying their content; it’s about creating contents around a similar topic.

Use images to amplify your updates

Fan engagement is necessary in order for your post to be continually seen in the newsfeeds. So, if you’re Facebook posts are not generating enough shares, likes or comments, you’re wasting time.

One of the easiest and most effective ways of boosting fan engagement to your status updates is by using images. You can search for blank images, edit them and add a text or a question that your followers could answer or share with their friends.

 

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Internet Marketing Trends for 2014

As another year comes to an end we have seen the online world continue to evolve!  Businesses are finding more success with original content than with advertisements within content. They are also building brand awareness and building online communities.

Internet Marketing Trends for 2014

1. Content Strategy- Businesses gain consumer trust by creating valuable content, this content can be different amongst social media platforms. This takes into consideration industry information that gives greater insight and entertainment to audiences. Having a good content strategy and marketing in social media on websites, blogs, as comments, in emails plus videos and more often provides opportunities for businesses and high brand recognition.

2. Social Media- Social Media is not going anywhere, but the key factor is to see what platforms work best for you and your business. There are always new Social Media sites popping up, that does not mean you need to be on every single one, you do need to do your homework and see if Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr etc. are a good fit.

3. Keep it simple– People want simple! Keep your marketing messages and recognizable logos simple, they are the key to your online marketing. Don’t burn out your audience by constantly barraging them with advertisements and content that is irrelevant, boring or non-productive. Consumers today want to look at what you have in about ten seconds and move on to something else!

4. Mobile Marketing- The usage of smartphones continues to grow, this means you need to make sure your website is mobile friendly, and may require that you have apps and online marketing adaptable to smartphone and tablet use. They say by 2017, it is predicted that 87% of cellular phone use will be via smartphones. Provide a marketing experience that can be easily used through smartphones.

5. Info graphics- We are a visual society, people want to see pictures and info graphics that explain something to them in a simple format. Info graphics are a great way to create a blog, social media post and post on Pinterest.

6. SEO (search engine optimization) will continue to be used in online marketing and play a very important role in search ranking in 2014. Providing users with the best and most relevant content is what makes Google run. Share good, targeted content, and the higher ranked a website will be. Also keep in mind that top ranking search results often connect to social shares.

With all of this being said online marketing will continue to grow and it is important that your business is online and being seen! Social Media and blogging and add some videos into that mix can really help your SEO for your business. Does all of this sound a little overwhelming? We are here to help you navigate your way through your online marketing and manage it for you! Email us today for a FREE 30 minute consultation!!! Marketing@TheBIMSTeam.com

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Rules of Social Media Marketing

Leveraging the power of social media and content marketing could help increase your followers and customer base dramatically. So, it is important to understand the basics of social media marketing. From increasing your online presence to maximizing quality, abiding by these rules could help you build a foundation that will help stabilize your brand and increase your sales.

Rule of listening

Your success with content and social media marketing requires less talking and more listening. Know your target audience and join discussions so you’ll have a better idea of what they think. After this, you could create content that would capture their attention and spark conversations.

Rule of quality

Quality is more important the quantity. It is better to have at least 800 people who read, share and discuss about your content rather than having 8,000 people who would disappear after reading your content.

Rule of patience

It is impossible to achieve social media and content marketing overnight. If you are determined to introduce your business through social media, you’ll have to invest a lot of time and exert a lot of effort in order to see results.

Rule of compounding

If you publish high quality and interesting content on a regular basis, there is a greater chance that your audience and followers will share them in their own social networking accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even their own blogs.

When people shares and talks about your content, this provides more entry points for search engines; thus, allowing your keywords to appear in search engines. These entry points could potentially grow into thousands of ways for people to find you online.

Rule of acknowledgement

Acknowledging people who reaches out to you online is important. Building relationship with your followers and audiences is one important aspect of your success. So, try to reach out to them as much as possible.

Rule of accessibility

Publishing a great content and then disappearing afterwards won’t do you any good. Instead, try to come up with high quality and interesting posts once in a while and don’t forget to take part in the conversation. Online readers could be fickle and they won’t even hesitate to jump to another site if you disappear for a week or so.

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6 Tools for a Social Media Marketer

With the popularity of social media, there is an increasing demand for business owners to market their products and service via social media. In accordance to this, the number of tools and technology to support this marketing strategy is also abundant.

Mention

This is a reasonably priced social media tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand or keywords across social media channels and over the web. Mention would also provide you with a list of mentions and enables you to respond or delete these mentions.

Scoop.it

People use this tool in order to share and find contents in boards regarding a particular topic. If you do not have time to write contents, you could find someone in scoop.it to write it for you. Plus, it is a great source of traffic. So, you might want to try it out.

Google Analytics

Through this app, you could easily check your traffic and see how well it’s doing. Plus, you could also determine how many people have read your blog post.

Evernote

This is a great note taking app that you could use on your phone or computer. This app could capture images, texts and videos. It could also come in handy if you come up with an idea that you might need for your blog and need to jot down notes.

Nimble

This app is especially designed to help build and manage relationships via social media. This is becoming a popular app among business owners since it does not only help you interact with your followers; it also allows you to build relationship with them.

Hubspot

WordPress is a popular platform that most bloggers use in creating blog posts and content that could be optimized for search engines. If you are in need of a tool that covers both marketing functionality and blogging, this is the best option for you.

 

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Tips to Maximize your Facebook Ads

Facebook has more than 1 billion users from all over the world and majority of which log in on a daily basis and spends a few hours on the network. So, if you are a business owner who is planning to advertise on Facebook, this could be advantageous since everyone is there. You just have to tweak your strategy a bit in order to start seeing great results.

In this article, we’ll give you a few tips on how to maximize your Facebook ads. Follow these guidelines and you’ll be rewarded with a higher conversion rate.

Use the newsfeeds

Nowadays, majority of Facebook users are accessing their accounts through their mobile devices or tablets. This has a great impact on the part of the advertisers as mobile users are unable to see the right hand column. So, it is important to divert some of your advertising on the newsfeeds.

In a study which was conducted by SocialCode, they revealed that Facebook mobile ads earn up to 2.5 times more compared to desktop-only ads.

Custom Audiences

Most advertisers have one simple goal – to sell more. In this case, it would be better to focus on people who are already leads, like the ones who are included on your email list.

With the introduction of the “custom audience feature”, you are now given the option to upload your email list on Facebook. This is especially helpful as you can easily choose them as a custom audience when targeting a certain group of people.

Stick to the 20% rule

Facebook has made a revision on their guidelines regarding ads that appear in the news feeds. Now, all ad images that appear in the news feeds can have a text overlay. However, advertisers should take note that the text should not take up more than 20% of the ad image.

Make sure that you adhere to this rule so you won’t get penalized.

 

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Things to Consider When Measuring your Social Media ROI

If you think tracking the return on investment of your company’s social media is not necessary, then you might want to re-think your priorities. When tweaked and tracked properly, it could provide a powerful web presence to any start-up company and could help you keep up with large companies. Plus, it helps business owners to determine if their marketing strategies are working or not.

Web analytics

Web analytics is one of the most efficient ways of gauging your social media marketing ROI. Most business owners use Google Analytics to do this. By using this tool, you can easily determine the number of people who clicked on the link you shared on any social media channel. Most importantly, you’ll have a more accurate count on the number of people who visited your site through the link.

Engaging contents

Before focusing on the metrics, you’ll have to post meaningful and interesting contents through all your social channels on a regular basis. Also, take note of the kind of contents that your followers share, like and comment on the most.

Create posts that will capture the attention of your followers. This way, they’ll be interested to share your posts and could lead to a more solid fan base. Though there are no guarantees of turning these followers into paying customers, having numerous followers might actually help.

Frequency

While we fully understand the importance of keeping track of your social media ROI, knowing how often you should check on the metrics is also helpful. Experts suggest you keep track of your metrics at least once a week. This way, you’ll be able to understand the types of content which drives the most number of web visits. Most importantly, you can focus on determining which content turns into sales.

Mistakes

Obsessing over the number of likes and followers your company gets is one of the biggest mistakes most business owners commit.

Please bear in mind that these information could be used in improving your social media marketing campaign. So, dig deeper and focus on the metrics that could help you climb the ladder of success.

 

 

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5 THINGS YOU NEED TO DO WITH GOOGLE+ NOW

If you haven’t already heard, Google+ is become a force to be reckoned with on the web. It’s still too early to predict if it’s a “Facebook killer”, but it’s already obvious that Google+ has caused a major shakeup of the social aspect of the web. It will affect you; I’d like to explain what Google+ is, how it will affect you, and the five things you need to do with Google+ now.

What Is Google+?

Google Plus is essentially a way to connect your entire Google experience with the people you know. Think of it as a very Google-centric version of Facebook. In fact, you will find it very similar to Facebook – except all the features, and their connection to your browsing experience, are amplified.

The most noticeable example of this is the +1 button. This works similarly to the Facebook Like button in that it functions as an upvote for pages you like. Site owners can install code for +1 on their site in order to allow people to vote, and when you vote for something using the +1 button, it shows up in your activity stream. The button also shows up directly in search results (if you’re logged in).

What are Some of the Main Features of Google+?

Instead of having “friends” a la Facebook, you have “circles” in Google Plus. These are groupings such as “Work”, “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, etc. that allow you categorize your connections with people. It gives you a bit more flexibility than the Facebook “friend” – especially since Google Plus allows you to make your own types of circles. This is a major difference with Facebook – and Google Plus has the advantage.

Another useful feature of Google Plus is it’s “Sparks” feature, which is similar to an alert feed. Not everything in sparks has necessarily been shared before in Google+, and it’s a good way to keep up with topics of interest to you.

A feature of interest to people who use instant messaging or Skype is the “Hangouts” feature, which is similar to Skype. Hangouts are virtual chat rooms that you can setup and participate in voice (using Google Voice) or text chat sessions. This can be very useful for business use.

How Does Google+ Affect the Rest of the Web?

Google+ is bound to affect the search ranking calculations, if it’s not doing so already. Twitter and Facebook shares, along with other socially-connected sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon already play a part in the ranking algorithm – and Google is sure to use +1 votes in a similar fashion. Aside from that, +1 votes already affect personalized search results. Expect to see different results delivered to you depending on what you’ve voted for in the past!

Google+ has well over 10 million users, and that number will only grow exponentially as more and more people adopt Google+ as just another aspect of the Google services most web users depend on in some way. Expect Google+ to become a vital part of social traffic – and get used to seeing the +1 button all over the web.

OK, OK…But What Should I Do Now?

There are 5 things you should do now – now that Google+ is beginning to influence the web.

  1. Grow your following, and don’t be afraid to add people.
  2. Treat it like Twitter: follow, follow, follow.
  3. Ask for shares and +1 on your posts.
  4. Add a +1 button to your site – either directly or by using one of the many social plugins.
  5. Share good content with your circles – because content is still king

(http://www.searchdiscovery.com/blog/5-things-you-should-be-doing-on-google-plus/)

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Tweet Science– One Reason Twitter’s Confident About Its Ad Possibilities

At Boundless, we know that Twitter is a powerful tool to help businesses grow and share information about it’s products and services. But lately, one of the big questions facing social media giant Twitter ahead of its New York Stock Exchange debut this week is how much money it could actually make for investors.

Here is an interesting article we found and wanted to share.

“We have incurred significant operating losses in the past, and we may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability,”the company writes, in its business prospectus.

Twitter expects revenue growth, but that it will be slow. We’ve written before on how it’s planning on cornering mobile advertising as its main revenue booster. These user numbers a new Pew/Knight study out this week help its argument.

Even though Facebook dwarfs Twitter in the number of users (Facebook’s at more than one billion to Twitter’s 200 million), the study shows those who consume news on Twitter are younger, better educated and more mobile than Facebook news consumers. That’s a huge selling point for Twitter in its bid to lure advertisers.

“Mobile devices are a key point of access for these Twitter news consumers. The vast majority, 85%, get news (of any kind) at least sometimes on mobile devices. That outpaces Facebook news consumers by 20 percentage points; 64% of Facebook news consumers use mobile devices for news. The same is true of 40% of all U.S. adults overall, according to the survey.

Twitter news consumers stand out for being younger and more educated than both the population overall and Facebook news consumers.

Close to half, 45%, of Twitter news consumers are 18-29 years old. That is more than twice that of the population overall (21%) and also outpaces young adults’ representation among Facebook news consumers, where 34% are 18-29 years old. Further, just 2% of Twitter news consumers are 65 or older, compared with 18% of the total population and 7% of Facebook news consumers.”

The study is based on survey data and a multi-year data analysis of tweets around news events.

That this group relies on Twitter as a “second screen” during major news events means Twitter can promise advertisers an “in” to target certain groups at moments they’re paying attention. The mobile-first behavior also plays well into the company’s revenue plan, as it recently acquired MoPub, the world’s largest mobile ad exchange, as a way to sell mobile ads that target their dedicated users based on data that Twitter has collected from them.

 

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/11/05/243221309/one-reason-twitters-confident-about-its-ad-possibilities

For more on Twitter’s business prospects, check out Joe Hagan’s piece from New York Magazine,

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