The Power Of Social Media

 

 

 

 

It is a fact that developing a presence on social media is far more complex than simply making a Facebook page.

Social media marketing tools have become intricate and numerous this year, and the evolution of social media is peaking.

Businesses are struggling to keep up with all the new technology, and are finding out just how important it is to learn tools and techniques for online marketing and social media. As a result, there is now there is a big emphasis on teaching online marketing in universities, as the Internet becomes more and more relevant for conducting business.

Marketing instructor Jessica Rogers from Texas A&M University is a major supporter of taking advantage of every social media tools available.

According to Rogers, “Social Media creates a whole new world…Schools embracing these tools deserve a lot of kudos.”

Both students and companies around the world have more access to information than ever before, thanks to the Internet. And now social media has allowed businesses and consumers to connect and engage with each other on a more intimate level than ever before.

One of the latest tools used by students to get more in tune with social networking is Chatter. This platform is similar to Facebook, but allows for more privacy and has private, numerous subgroups that can be created. In addition to engaging through these subgroups, you can go into separate chat rooms to exchange and view videos and slides.

Always remember that there are so many different social media platforms in existence, so take advantage of the platforms that make the most sense for your business goals. There are sites with more simply stated and shared information, and other sites that are more “hands-on” and require a greater level of engagement.

Today’s students are gaining knowledge of social media because when applying for jobs, companies know social media and social media marketing are the future of business, so knowledge of how to properly use these sites is extremely important.

With all of this in mind, it is clear that knowing social media networking is power. You can take your business to new heights by learning and utilizing the right social media marketing techniques for your business.

In the social media world, the sky’s the limit!

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Some Negatives To Google+

 

 

 

 

With about 90 million users joining Google+ since it came out in June, it would seem as if Google+ has become a successful social media platform.

However, that number of users doesn’t explain how Google+ really matches up in the social media world. In fact, compared to its rival site Facebook, Google+ seems almost invisible. Research firm comScore Inc has found that while Google+ is getting many users to sign up for the site, users really aren’t actually on the site utilizing the tools Google+ has to offer very much.

Users on personal computers spent an average of three minutes a month on Google+ during the months between September and January, whereas they spent six to seven hours on Facebook during this same time, according to comScore.

In addition to this lack of engagement on Google+, there’s also the issue of differentiating Google+ from Facebook. With the launch of Google+ last year, the site was positioned as a Facebook rival where users could share content with very specific groups of people, however sharing on Facebook is much more commonly used.

An original feature of Google+, the “Hangouts,” where users can conduct a videoconference with up to 10 people, hasn’t seen much excitement from users. This feature has not proven to be compelling enough to convert Facebook users to Google+ users.

Executives at Google have tried to ignore this comparison to Facebook and continue to state that they are making a long-term investment on a strong idea and that they are still working to build up more tools to make Google+ triumph over Facebook’s features.

Google vice president of product management, Bradley Horowitz, claims that Google+ is meant to be more than just a destination site and acts as an auxiliary to other Google services like YouTube and Gmail, by adding a social-interaction component to those services. However, other Google+ partners are concerned by the lack of activity on the site.

Google still has not gotten companies to advertise on Google+, and some marketers testing the site have found that brand messages don’t seem to reach consumers as much as they had hoped.

It seems that Google+ does not have the same frequency of activity that sites like Twitter, Facebook and the latest, Pinterest, currently offer. And without the level of engagement on the site, there’s not a strong desire to advertise on the site.

Twitter and Facebook have come to change the way people find new content on the Internet, which competed with Google as the main gateway to the Web. Most activity done on Facebook cannot be accessed from the Google search engine because of privacy controls, which have made the search engine less useful since people are spending more time on Facebook.

So, what’s the main point to take away from all this? Google+ is definitely a prominent site in social media networking, but to find the benefit out of it, you must be effectively engaging on the site. Keep in mind that as far as consumer usage on social media sites, Facebook and Twitter are still the dominant sites used.

 

 

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The Power of Pinterest

 

 

 

 

 

The latest social media craze is Pinterest. Currently, Pinterest is not as big as Facebook and Twitter, but companies should look into adding Pinterest to their social media strategy to build up their brand.

Pinterest is an online “pinboard;” users can “pin” content and images they are interested in and can share it with users with similar interests, family and friends.

Just since last May, Pinterest’s audience has grown 76%! This shows just how relevant this site is becoming. In fact, it’s becoming one of the fastest developing social media site ever and is a great site to use to show off products and get noticed.

Right now, brands should develop their image on Pinterest before the site explodes and becomes even more popular. Become a brand already noticed on Pinterest right now before you become lost amongst even more brands in the future looking to join the site.

Build a strong presence on Pinterest now so you get used to the site and know exactly how to use it efficiently. The site is the newest way to visually show off what you have to offer in a new way that Facebook and Twitter cannot. Furthermore, it allows you to build strong relationships with consumers who share your same interests.

After finding these consumers who are passionate about your brand, they will share your content on the site, ultimately bringing you more consumers who fit into your target audience.

Make your boards fun, creative and exciting to get some attention and highlight what you have to offer. Pinterest is great for retailers showing off fashion trends, restaurants showing off their best dishes and brands that really target the youth culture-music, movies, celebrities, festivals, etc.

Give Pinterest a shot and give the world visually pleasing images of what your brand has to offer and watch your brand identity and loyalty grow!

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A Peak Into Pinterest

 

 

 

 

With social media marketing, there is always a new platform coming out to learn. Pinterest happens to be the latest social media channel, and it is quickly becoming a popular site among users. Pinterest lets users “pin” things they find on the web that they like onto an online pin board. This new platform has great potential for small businesses selling visually unique products in particular.

Another appealing element to Pinterest is its strong social factor. Users can share their pins with followers on Twitter and fans on Facebook. These pins can then be repined and shared. Furthermore, users are also able to make new pins from anything they find on the web, or other social media sites.

Marketers everywhere are starting to discover how much potential Pinterest has to offer. Here are a few things to expect if your company starts using Pinterest.

1. More traffic to your site

After importing a “pin” (an image) to Pinterest, the site then links that pin back to its original source. For example, if a restaurant posts a pin of one of their best dishes, users can click on the image and will be directed to that restaurant’s website. This element of Pinteret will certainly drive traffic to your main site and increase your company’s SEO.

2. More insights into followers’ interests

Companies are using Pinterest for market research. The site is a great way to connect with consumers knowing that anyone can create a pin board in the site. This means that a clothing boutique could use Pinterest to discover what trends users are sharing with others. Then, using this information, the retailer could use these trends and styles and post similar clothing onto their pin boards. Or, they could use this information to make their own board that users could pin clothing trends that they’d like to see in that boutique. This gives businesses great feedback and insight from their followers.

3. More relationships with customers

New companies will find great success using Pinterest to get their name out there and create lasting relationships with new customers. The pin boards are public, so anyone can see and share pins. With a strong brand community, businesses will ultimately expand, and sharing your product images on Pinterest is sure to spark interest around your brand.

With any social media channel, it’s important to have strong connections and be active and engaged with your followers. Simply sending out promotions is not the way to start to reach customers. With Pinterest, users will immediately follow businesses that provide them with valuable content that connects with them on a personal level. After gaining a solid base of followers, slowly engage more and more with promoting your brand, but first begin by joining Pinterest to connect with people. Repin things you’re interested in and create your own pin board to get your business rolling with Pinterest!

 

 

 

 

 

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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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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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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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