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The Power of Pinterest for Small Businesses

Pinterest

Savvy small business owners have long discovered the benefits of social media. In the hopes of maintaining an online presence, they have created an account in virtually every social platform there is. Now, the thought of using yet another social network seems time consuming and daunting. But if you want to make your company’s presence felt, then you need to stay up-to-date on the world of social media.

There are a number of reasons why small business owners should be interested in Pinterest. Here are some of them.

A whole new audience

Today, there are only 500,000 business accounts on Pinterest as compared to 25 million business pages in Facebook. If you already have a Facebook page and you want to extend your reach to a whole new audience, Pinterest can help you with that.

Since users only see posts that are focused on the categories that they’re interested in, there’s a good chance that your audience in Pinterest aren’t the same people who are following you on Facebook or Twitter.

Drive traffic to your website

Recent study shows that Pinterest is more effective in driving website traffic as compared to Google +, Youtube and Twitter combined. It is a great tool for increasing links back to your site. If you rely on your website to fuel sales and marketing, then you should include Pinterest in your marketing plan.

It’s a great spot to advertise

Businesses from all over the world are using Pinterest to market their products and services. Since Pinterest is such a viral, sharing community, this is also a great place to promote special deals and discounts. The key is to create a visually appealing image. Pin a colourful and chic-looking coupon, and include details on the caption. The more captivating your pin is, the more likely will it appeal to your audience.

It is growing

Pinterest is becoming more and more popular. In fact, the photo and video sharing site has more than 25 million members and gets 2.5 billion page views every month. It wouldn’t hurt to jump on the bandwagon.

 

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Facebook Cover Photo Ideas for Your Business Page

FB photo

Your cover photo is one of the most noticeable parts of your page. In fact, it is the first thing most people would look at when they visit your Facebook page.  Don’t you want to make it impressive?

We understand that finding the perfect Facebook cover photo can be a challenge. You only get once chance to make an impression so you need to get it right. Here at BIMS, we’re all about sharing information that can help your business grow. Here are 4 Facebook cover photo ideas that will make an epic impression on your fans. Pay attention.

Show them what you do

With millions of users from all over the world, Facebook is one of the best places to establish your brand. Your cover photo is a great way to promote your business, your services and yourself. Use this space to show people what your business is all about.

Take advantage of this space to show people the products and services you offer. If you are an artist, feel free to display some of your work. If you have a new product line or an upcoming event, this is the perfect place to put it.

Put your customers and fans center stage

Instead of using this space to promote your business, use it to highlight photos of your fans. You can also use testimonials from customers to your advantage. This adds a human touch to your company and shows the credibility of your business. Plus, it’s a great way to show your fans that you value and appreciate them.

Introduce yourself

While most companies would showcase their products and events, why not shed a little light on the amazing people who works behind the scenes? It makes your business much more personable and gives viewers a more intimate look into your business.

Call to action

Including a call-to-action to your cover photo urges people to instantly respond to your request. Social media is an effective tool when it comes to lead generation. Use your cover photo to encourage people to visit your site, leave their email address or buy your products.

 

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Tips for Proper Social Media Etiquette in the New Year

BIMS_1.5As 2015 draws to a close, many of you are probably preparing for the biggest party of the year. Whether it’s a family event, work party or a purely social gathering, there’s a social media embarrassment waiting to happen.

A careless Facebook post or tweet can alienate your loved ones and damage your social and professional image. Start the year right by paying close attention to your social media profiles and activities.

Take a good look at these tips for proper social media etiquette.

Take your complaint offline

We understand that you’re frustrated about a company’s customer service or the long lines, but you don’t have to post it on social media for everyone else to see. Rather than slamming them on Facebook or Twitter, it is better to contact them privately and settle the issue offline.

Avoid over-sharing

It’s okay to share how awesome your dinner was or what your cat is up to occasionally, but sharing every single bit of activity you did all day is the fastest way to lose your friends and followers. You are free to share a few times a day, but be sure to space your posts.

Use caution in posting and tagging photos

You may look good on a particular picture, but if a friend’s hair looks like a rooster and your sister’s skirt is twisted, then you shouldn’t post it. No matter how good looking you are at that picture; please think about the others before posting and tagging them. You probably don’t like it when someone tags you in candid or unflattering photos, so why would you do that to them? If you really want to post the picture, then crop it. Your friends will thank you for it.

Be respectful

Avoid engaging in aggressive debates online and sending out potentially offensive tweets. Remember, there’s another person on the receiving end. If you wouldn’t speak to the person that way face to face, then you shouldn’t do it online.

 

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Tips for Creating an Effective Facebook Ad

facebookadsThere are 890 million people signing in on Facebook every single day. Given that number, it is safe to assume that your potential customers are a part of this massive community.

Facebook ads have enormous potential to drive traffic and grow your business. But how do you get people to click on your ad and get them to buy your products? Here are a few tips.

Define your goals

You first need to define your goals before you spend a single cent on Facebook ad. What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you want more fan engagement? More Facebook likes? More website visits? More sales? The type of ad you should use depends on what you want to achieve.

Choose images that stand out

If you’re planning to promote a post, be sure to use powerful images. Remember, your ad photo is the first thing people are going to see. These photos can make your ad be more eye-catching.

According to studies, ads that use pictures of people do really well. Take a look at the ads, and you’ll notice that most of them use pictures of people. Why? It’s because people likes people. If you want to promote your products, you might want to use a photo of a person using your product.

Include a call to action

An ad with high quality content and powerful photos is great, but without a call-to-action, people might not understand what’s in it for them or don’t not know what to do next. As a result, your ad fails. Adding a call-to-action encourages people to take your desired action. Plus, they won’t waste time figuring out what to do next.

Ad placement

When it comes to where your Facebook ads will appear, you have 3 options: right column, mobile and news feed. Instead of going for all news feed ads or just choosing right column ads, why not test the different placement ads? This allows you to determine which one performs better.

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Dos and Don’ts of Using Social Media for Business

socialMediafroBusinessBy now, you already know the importance of leveraging social media to grow your business. However, it can be a waste of time and money if you don’t know what you’re doing. Instead of connecting with your target audience, your existing clients may be having second thoughts and potential prospects may get turned off.

These dos and don’ts will help you in building your social media community and start seeing results.

DOS

Be active

Active social media profiles can help build your brand. You can’t expect results if your page is inactive. Create great content that your audience will want to share. Post different things. Share tips on how to use your products, industry news and fun stuff. Make sure majority of your posts are non-promotional in nature.

Define your target audience

It is important to know you’re targeting audience if you want to maximize your sales. Learn as much as you can about your target audience.

Your customers are concerned about what you can do for them. Make sure your contents are tailored to your customer’s need.

Interact with your audience

Communicate with your target audience on a regular basis. Social media is about relationships so try to converse with your audience as much as you can. Don’t talk too much about your brand. Stop and listen to what people have to say. It should be a 2-way conversation, not a one-sided dialogue.

DON’TS

Share too much

Don’t overwhelm your feeds with too much advertisements or promotions. This can cause your followers to stop following your posts. People don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements and promotions.

Forget your spelling and grammar

What you put out there becomes a representation of who you are. Consumers value proper grammar and spelling. Grammar mistakes could hurt your brand’s reputation and turn off potential customers.

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How Facebook Ads Can Grow Your Fan Page

fcebook ads

Increasing Facebook likes can be a tricky process. With the algorithm changes, Facebook page engagement decreased over time; thus, making it difficult for business owners and marketers to reach their fans.

Since Facebook is one of the biggest and most popular social networks, you should be looking for ways to increase the number of people who like your page. Advertising using Facebook ads is one of them.

Facebook ads are the easiest and most effective ways to increase your likes. If you don’t already have some good Facebook ads strategies, you better get started.

Ability to reach smartphone users

Facebook has about 1.20 billion active mobile users as of December 2014. That’s a lot of people, and the number of users is increasing over time. Because of that, mobile should be your priority. By advertising on Facebook, you’ll be able to reach your audience right at the palm of their hands.

Enhanced audience targeting

There are billions of people on Facebook. That said, you need to make sure that you use at least the most basic of targeting when you set up any ad on Facebook. Otherwise, you’ll end up advertising to the wrong people and waste money in the end.

Facebook advertising allows you to target a specific group of people based on their age, gender, geographical location, interests and more. This gives you the chance to be more precise in your audience targeting. Think about your ideal customer and what they’re interested in. Decide who you want to reach before creating an ad.

Heightened audience engagement

Before, you only needed to come up with great content and wait until you get all the likes you deserve, but all that has changed over the years. Now, you have to promote your content to ensure that your existing and potential customers see it in their newsfeeds.

Your primary goal is to capture the attention of your target audience and get them to engage with your posts. In addition to ads, you need to make sure that your content are interesting because users only see posts from pages they engage with. Build trust with your followers and get them to share, like or comment on your posts.

 

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How to Measure Social Media ROI

BIMS_11.10We all know what ROI stands for. Unfortunately, not everyone understands its meaning and importance.

If your company is spending money on social media marketing, you want to measure your ROI. This is important so you have an idea what exactly it is you’re getting out of the time, effort and resources you commit to your campaign. It helps you measure the efficiency of your social media marketing efforts.

To show you how you can track your social media ROI, here are the steps you should take to help you gauge the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign.

Identify your goal

Different organizations will have different goals. Before you can track and measure your ROI, you first need to identify your goals. Is it to generate more product trials, get signups for your newsletter or increase traffic to your site?

Track your goal

Each of your goals can be measured using specific metrics such as traffic, engagement, reach, lead generation etc. It all depends on your goal.

There are certain tools that can be used to measure the effectiveness of your actions. You can track follows, likes and share in Buffer. Website actions such as signups, downloads and sales can be tracked in Google Analytics.

Quantify social media return

Add up all the expenses, including the cost of boosting a Facebook post, running a promoted ad and everything that go into generating content and maintaining social media presence.

Determining how much you have spent will help you determine whether you’re getting a positive or negative return on your social media marketing efforts. Now, calculate your ROI using this formula: (Earnings – Costs) x 100 / Costs

Adjust tactics

Monitor the impact of your social media efforts using the formula given above and then adjust your tactics as needed to improve your social media ROI.

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Tools to Help with Scheduling Your Social Media Posts

social-media-toolsSocial media is a necessary part of marketing these days. Having a strong brand presence on social media is of great importance.

As a business owner or a marketer, you probably have a lot of on your plate and maintaining a constant social media presence can be difficult.  To make the process easier, the best thing you can do is to use a social media scheduling service. Even if you’re stuck in a meeting, you can still keep your status updates and tweets flowing.

Here are 4 tools for auto-scheduling your social media posts.

Sprout social

Price: $59 per month

Sprout Social is an engagement and management tool for social media.  It gives you a clear overview of response rates and follower demographics.

You can also use this tool to schedule and post updates to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Sprout Social provides a 30-day free trial. But if you wish to continue using it, you’ll have to pay a whopping $59 a month.

Hootsuite

Price: Free; Pro version – $8.99 a month

Hootsuite is a big player in social media management. It schedules your posts based on your previous social history so you’ll reach the largest number of followers. You can also edit the times and days before they go live.

Hootsuite lets you to schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Google +. However, free users are only allowed to add up to 3 social networks. The Pro version, which starts at $8.99 a month, allows users to schedule up to 350 updates at once and add up to 100 social accounts.

Buffer

Price: Individual account – free; Business plan – $50 per month

Buffer lets you schedule 10 social updates all at once. This tool will spread your content throughout the day or week, making sure you have a solid social media presence even if you don’t spend much time in front of the computer.

As a bonus, Buffer also provides analytics from your social media posts. It works with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Timely

Price: Free

Timely allows you to choose the number of posts you’d like to auto schedule per day. Add to that, it also reviews responses from your previous tweets to determine your most optimal posting times. Timely only posts to Facebook or Twitter.

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How to Bring Old Blog Posts Back to Life

bims_10.20If you’ve been maintaining a blog on your website, you have probably built up a pretty hefty archive of old blog posts. Even with the abundance of blog posts, studies reveal that fresh contents outrank older contents, both in terms of clicks and search engines.

Does it mean that you have to create more blog content? Not necessarily. You can reuse, repurpose and reinvent your blog posts. Here’s how to breathe new life into an older blog post.

Create a killer headline

Creating a title is easy, but if you really want to capture the attention of your target audience, then you need to make it compelling.

Take a look at the title of your most popular posts. Do you think it is good enough to compel people to read the rest of the article? Is there any way you can make it more appealing or relevant to the article? Now, go and create an attention-grabbing title.

Keep the content updated

The world is constantly changing. Some of the information you have offered in 2012 are now irrelevant or outdated.

Revisit old posts and delete any parts that are no longer relevant. Also, you might want to incorporate new information and brush up on what has changed in the industry. This is especially beneficial if you’ve seen continuous interest in a certain post.

Look for the evergreen content

If a certain blog post has garnered the attention of the public, then it’s definitely worth coming back to for a spruce up.

Marketers focus on creating evergreen content because it still has an appeal even after months or years after it was created. Consider modifying the original article instead of publishing a new article with the same content. Duplicate content on your website is a bad idea. Once you’ve made some adjustments, publish it as new.

Repurpose into a new format

There’s no reason to waste the time you spent creating those blog posts. You can repurpose the content and turn it into a slide presentation, ebook, podcast, infographic or a short video. Remember, not everyone chooses to consume information the same way.

 

 

 

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Easy Ways to Expand Your Facebook Reach

BIMSFor many businesses, generating lead is one of the biggest advantages of creating and maintaining social presence. You create content that would pique the interest of your target audience and hope that it goes out to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, the days of posting and reaching all of your fans are gone.

The last year has brought many changes to social media. We’ve heard complaints from several businesses about the drop in organic reach for Facebook pages.

Using the right tactics will give you better results. Follow these tips to ensure that your posts can reach the audience you define.

Create awesome content

Like Google, Facebook puts a lot of emphasis on content quality and relevance. Being one of the biggest social network platforms, there’s a lot of competition out there. If you want to capture the attention of your target audience, then you need to provide them with killer content.

Higher engagement can increase your reach. The more people engage with your page, the more likely are they to see your posts. But if your content is not that interesting, you suffer the consequences of losing organic visibility.

Ask questions

One of the best ways to engage your followers is by asking them a question. Your goal is to start a conversation so be sure to start with an interesting question. Now that you got people to air their opinions, it is important to keep the conversation rolling.

Asking questions does not only help increase reach, it also provides answers to questions that may be crucial for your business’ marketing and sales.

Add call-to-action

Call-to-actions are a great way to get people to engage with your posts. Believe it or not, your audience tends to respond better when they are told what to do. However, most marketers and business owners fail to include a call-to action with their status updates.

Use better visuals

We’ve all heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. But it’s actually worth more than that in social media.

Videos and images often get more likes, shares and comments as compared to text-based status updates. ForCall  a more powerful post, consider placing your message along with the photo.

 

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