Posts

BIMS 5.12.15

Social media is a powerful tool for businesses of all types. It helps you engage and connect with your audience and eventually establish a relationship with them. In addition to that, it also helps increase traffic to your website, increase brand awareness and ultimately, increase sales. However, social media is not perfect.

We live in a world where everyone has a voice. People can talk about their experiences, whether it’s positive or negative, with your business and post them online. Unless you’re perfect, you’ll have to deal with negative comments or feedbacks sooner or later. What should you do when negative reviews come in?

Here are 4 principles to guide the way you deal with negative comments on social media.

Do not delay

Negative comments and feedbacks should be addressed as soon as possible. Mind you, words travel swiftly on social network. This can damage your reputation so be sure to act fast.

Most people post negative comments online because they believe that no one wants to listen to them. Show your customers that you care for them and you’re willing to listen by responding quickly. Also, reassure them that you are willing to set things straight and solve the issue in the soonest possible time.

Own up to your mistake

We are humans, and we all make mistakes. If someone is complaining about your products or services, do not be afraid to say you’re sorry. Recognize the complaint, apologize publicly and then settle things privately.

Offer an incentive

Sometimes, offering a discount, free merchandize or business service can help calm the situation. If your product failed, replace it and offer discount on their next purchase. If it was a dining experience, refund their check. Try to make things right, even if it costs you. This is a great way of showing your customers how much you value them.

 

 

 

BIMS_2.24.15

Creating content is a fundamental component of an online marketing strategy. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners fail to generate a steady stream of high quality content.

While we understand that most of you are occupied with running and managing your business, keep in mind that your content plays an important part in your marketing campaign.

If you find yourself feeling discouraged about how long it takes to write a couple of blogs, please know that there are steps you can take to become more efficient  and effective in your daily tasks and speed up  the content creation process. Here are some of them.

Write about something you love

This is one of the most important tips you should keep in mind. When your write about something you absolutely love, words are going to flow quickly. But if you write about something that is not your area of expertise, it’s going to take you a lot longer.

Outline a month’s worth of ideas in advance

Coming up with new ideas to write about is probably the most challenging part of content marketing. To make things a bit easier, we suggest that you come up with a month’s worth of content ideas in advance.

Just because you have a list of topics, it doesn’t mean that you have to stick to it. You can always write about new topics, especially if breaking news or hot topics come up in your industry.

Do not multi-task

Contrary to popular belief, multi-tasking does not help you get things done faster. In fact, studies show that doing a number of things at the same time may cause you to commit mistakes and even double the amount of time you need to accomplish the task. So do yourself a favor and focus on one task at a time.

Do not self-censor

In an attempt to come up with a masterpiece that would wow your audience, your inner critical voice would hound you to constantly check and revise your content until you are satisfied with the result. However, this can slow you down.

If you wish to spend less time creating content, you have to turn off your inner critic temporarily. Let the ideas flow and give yourself a time to write. Once you are done, you can then review your work and start editing.

BimsBlog 2.3.15

With the powerful combination of social media and word-of-mouth, businesses from all over the world are changing how they market to consumers.

As marketers, our first instinct is to create contents or videos that would allow us engage with our target audience and persuade them to buy our products or avail our services. But today’s buyers are smart and savvy. They start losing interest the moment they realize that you are selling a product. One of the biggest keys to connecting with your target audience is leveraging influencers.

With thousands of bloggers and Youtube stars in your industry to choose from, finding the right influencer to partner with may seem like a daunting task. Find out how to choose the perfect influencers to inspire trust from your customers.

Content

This is the most important characteristic when targeting the right influencer for your brand. Read through the blogger’s posts and determine how aligned their contents are with your brand message.

In order to stay relevant, you need to determine the type of content your audience is interested in. Take a moment to browse through the influencer’s blog posts, infographics or videos. This will give you an idea if the influencer will be a good fit for your brand.

Engagement

Engagement indicates how active an influencer’s social community is. Do they share, respond or comment on his posts?

Just because someone talks about your product, doesn’t mean that you should get in touch with that persons and turn him into an advocate. Your goal is to find someone who talks about your products or services and are earning high levels of engagement.

Reach

Part of what makes a social influencer is the fact that they have a large following.

In order to determine whether or not this influencer will be a good representation for your brand, it would be best to define your target audience and compare them to your potential influencer’s audience. There’s no point in partnering with an influencer with 200,000 followers if their audience doesn’t align with yours.

 

 

BIMS_9.9

Living in the digital world, there seems to be a surplus of information on the web. On average, we create 1.5 billion pieces of content, 2 million videos and 140 million tweets every day. The web is cluttered and the competition is tough.

If you are a digital marketer or a business owner, it is very easy for your content to get lost in the jungle, making it extremely difficult for your target audience to find you. If you want to break through the clutter and capture the attention of your target audience, you’ll have to create contents that are memorable, attractive and of high quality.

Here are some of the reasons why you should include infographics in your content marketing.

Easier to process

Visual content is a great way to make your content stand out online. This is because our brain processes visual content 60,000 times faster as compared to the time it takes to decode written contents. Plus, people are more likely to retain information that is presented in infographics.

Attention-grabbing

Humans are visual creatures. We are easily attracted to visual contents, facts and stats. Infographics presents a lot of contents, and these facts are attention-grabbing. In fact, views can jump up by as much as 48% if contents include photos and videos.

By combining well-written texts with visual elements, it can be a powerful tool that will help your content cut through the noise and into the brains of your target audience.

Positions you as an expert

Infographics are often presented in charts, graphs and tables to present the content in an easily understandable manner. A great deal of research has to be done before compiling the information into a one-page document. This highlights how knowledgeable the creator is in this particular niche.

By publishing useful and relevant infographics that educate and offer value to your target audience, it positions you as an expert in your niche.

Increase brand awareness

Infographics should include relevant information about the creator like company logo, email address, and website URL. This helps brand your business, and if used properly, it can increase your traffic by at least 12%.

 

 

GrowingwithSM

Social media has been so popular nowadays that is has entered the rare stratosphere of recognition and fame that is usually reserved for Presidents and rock stars. Ironically, rock stars of this generation bow to the power of social media.

You’ve probably heard that social media provides business owners an amazing opportunity to market and grow their business. So, how can you use its dominance on the world scene to grow your business? Here are a few tips.

Keep it short

Unlike the text written on your web page, your social media posts must be kept short. Considering that most social media sites allow users to type only 140 characters, you should strive to be concise with every post. Remember, your customers are more likely to remember short and focused messages as compared to long and incoherent ones.

Instead of trying to say everything at once, you should focus on one key message per post. Also, it would be a good idea to schedule your posts over the course of a day or a week.

Keep it fresh

With a continuous stream of new content, old posts rapidly recede. To make your posts stand out, you should post timely and eye-catching content and post regularly. Use videos and images whenever possible.

By creating fresh content, there’s a great chance that your followers will visit your page or site, purchase your products or avail your services.

It requires dedication

If you believe that a few random status updates, blog posts and a healthy number of likes and followers are enough to grow your business, you are wrong!

Social media marketing requires planning and dedication. In order to harness the power of social media, you need to listen to your audience, come up with high quality content and encourage others to share your content.

Whether you’re small or large business owner, social media marketing can be least expensive and most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal that will help you build authority and trust. Ultimately, it can help you grow your business exponentially.

Hastags are everywhere these days. We see them on Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and
Facebook. But do you know how to use them strategically?

Hashtags can improve you SEO, get your content found, target your market, amplify your brand and
expand your content reach. That being said, it is important that you know how to implement them
properly in order to fully enjoy all these benefits.

In this article, we’ll give you some of the most important hashtag strategies that you should take note
of. Read on to know more about it.

Create your own hashtags

Brand and campaign hashtags are the ones you make for your own business. Create a brand hashtag
that is unique to your business and make sure that it defines your business. Use it as your signature tag
and use it on all of your social media accounts. Encourage others to use it as well.

You’ll want people to remember your tag. So, keep it short and make sure it’s easy to spell.

Include a relevant yet specific hashtag

By using the right hashtag, people will come across your content even if they are not following you.

When we say relevant, it means that you should either use a hashtag that has already been searched for
frequently or something that was already been designated for a certain event. However, be sure to
make them as specific as possible so your message won’t get buried.

Trending hashtags

You have probably heard some of your friends talking about what’s trending now. They’re referring to a
hashtag topic that has become very popular and or the most talked about topic as of the moment.

If you come across a trend that relates to your business, take advantage of it by using the tag in your
content update. In a way, you can think of this hashtag strategy as a way of getting your “15 seconds of
fame.” This is beneficial as it will help you get your message to a massive audience.

Be careful not to spam trending hashtags, though, especially if they are not related to your business.

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,

What’s Next for Content Marketing and SEO?

Increased focus on content will provide new challenges as more businesses invest in the area. Competition for those lucrative top spots in organic search results, is likely to increase further as more and more businesses adopt a content focused strategy. More competition in paid search too, means that budgets will need to increase in order to support the higher bids necessary to maintain visibility.

As social media reaches full maturity, so the techniques being used to
build and grow communities will need to be revised and sharpened in
order to rise above the hubbub

When it comes to social media, in order to rise above the high level of noise generated by increased adoption, boosting visibility will become even more crucial. Paid advertising, for example promoted posts and Facebook ads, will become increasingly necessary in order to reach customers. This means that companies who choose not to invest in this area and SMEs who simply don’t have the resources, will gradually loose out to competitors with deeper pockets.

Branding will become ever more important as businesses need to stand out from the competition. Smaller businesses whose activities are not currently strategically driven, will need to up their game in terms of both understanding and conveying their USPs and they will also need to get smart about how they measure their success and how they devise actionable insights.

If small businesses can remain both creative and agile, they will be able to grow their communities and more importantly, they’ll be able to leverage the power of those communities to their advantage. I’m pretty certain then that in 2014 we will see more investment into not just content marketing and relationship building, but into branding too.

Whilst opportunities will continue exist for those of us not lucky enough to have an internationally recognizable brand or large budgets, It’s not going to be easy. As 2014 progresses, small businesses will learn that investing in content marketing and developing their brand isn’t optional, it’s something they have to do in order to maintain their online visibility.

Marketing Insights for 2014

  1. Greater competition as the volume of content being published and promoted online continues to increase, making paid search more necessary
  2. Increased need to differentiate, making branding all important
  3. Increasingly necessary to pay for social media advertising alongside existing organic activities
  4. Social media continues to be an important communications with Increased adoption of Pinterest, particularly for online retailers and increased business adoption of  YouTube
  5. Responsive design will become even more widespread as the use of mobile devices for browsing the internet continues to increase
  6. Greater use of location based marketing, primarily Google Places/Google+ local
  7. Smarter metrics necessary in order to obtain clearer insights and more accurately measure ROI
  8. Strategically driven activities will become ever more widespread as social media reaches maturity
  9. Creativity, agility and innovation will become more important in helping marketers to grab and hold the attention of their audiences

What’s your priority on Facebook? Think about your personal use of Facebook for a moment. Now ask yourself this question: When was the last time you opened up Facebook to: Make a purchase or a donation? Find out the latest news from a brand? Connect with your friends? If you’re like most people, you’ve never done No. 1 or No. 2, and you always do No. 3.

(Source: http://www.socialbrite.org/2013/10/02/the-one-simple-facebook-mistake-most-nonprofits-make/)

So Facebook is about friends connecting with friends, as shown above in this graph from the Atlantic. The biggest mistake that companies make is forgetting that for most, Facebook is all about connecting with friends . So the next time you make a Facebook post or launch a Facebook campaign, think about how you can make it about your community rather than about you.

 

This chart says it all:

If you’re using anything other than bit.ly to shorten your links – certainly if you’re using TinyURL – you’re actually hurting your brand. For a long time Bit.ly was Twitter’s URL shortener of choice and that recommendation, plus the stats and convenience that bit.ly provides, make it nothing less than essential for those looking to get their content re-shared. And while the bit.ly interface isn’t quite as slick as it used to be, it’s still the only URL shortener you should be using.

Tip: the bit.ly sidebar is super-convenient.