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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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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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Be Heard with Social Media Marketing

 

 

 

Businesses today have an increasing number of online tools for social media marketing to quickly inform consumers about their products and services.

In addition to the well-known sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+, companies can access over 300 social media sites, like Buzzy, StumbleUpon and ZingMe.

But, with such a multitude of social media sites, businesses must develop a proper online marketing strategy to see success. Managing director of the Institute of Online Business, Nicole Coughlin-Smith, claims that, “Creating a social networking existence is paramount in this age of new technology and businesses that don’t engage in some form of social media communication will struggle to survive over the longer term.”

Smith suggest to, “Invest in a Facebook page dedicated to your business, a Twitter account where followers can see instant news and updates, and a YouTube account which is an ideal platform to show how-to tips or product testing videos to potential or current customers.”

Here are five simple business tips to make social media work:

1.The key factor to remember when making a social media platform is to always redirect customers to your original site. You will maximize potential conversions by allowing customers to link back to your main business site.

2. Focus your social media marketing on a few platforms, rather than taking on too many at once.

3. Interact with customers through social media before, during AND after a sale.

4. Remember that Twitter is very effective for short news updates and information bulletins, so take advantage of short 140 character postings.

5. Facebook’s recent change to give businesses more functionality on the site allows businesses to no longer have to link their profile back to a personal profile. This makes it easier to track traffic, control posts and customize settings.

 

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Generating Content To Lead To Sales

In Internet marketing, a company’s target audience is never made of impulse shoppers, but rather thoughtful buyers who want to invest in a quality product. This means it’s important to continually deliver relevant, meaningful content so that when your customers are ready to purchase, you’ll be in their minds.

There are three steps to take in communicating with consumers:

  1. Give Something (tips, insights, information)
  2. Share Something (referrals, resources)
  3. Say Something (give an opinion, start a discussion)

If all you ever deliver to consumers is promotions or a hard sell, you will be quickly tuned out. If you come across as a thoughtful, generous expert who wants relationships with consumers, your business will be more effective.

Next, consider these three ways to be on the top of consumers’ minds.

1. Make it easy to be found online

To attract target consumers, optimize your website with the right keywords. Consumers do lots of research before making an important purchasing decision, so if you take the time to strategize the keywords/phrases people will search, you will become more visible. Think about the main five words/phrases you want to be known for and optimize your Internet presence based on those.

2. Leverage Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the three most common social networking sites that companies use to market themselves. Utilize these sites by attracting fans and enticing them with unique, fun posts so you’ll be consistently remembered. Choose the social media sites you want to use and build a strong presence in them and provide continual, updated posts to keep consumers interested.

3. Consider a regular newsletter

While a regular newsletter seems like a big commitment, ongoing communication to your target audience is always worth it. Consider a regular correspondence to your target audience, and use the 80-20 rule: 80% of the content should be informational, and 20% should be promotional.

To create and maintain positive visibility with your target market, you must give and share first before you can sell. This will ensure sales in the long run as you will be a memorable brand to of your consumers.

 

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Using Twitter As a Reactivation Strategy

 

 

 

 

While Twitter is great for sending out messages to a mass audience, its main strength to marketers is in its ability to build one on one relationships.

What marketers should strive to do is deliver campaigns in the public timeline when there’s an opportunity to get the audience’s attention by utilizing the @mentions feature. @mentions lets users put the @ sign before a username with a message that goes directly to that user’s homepage.

After the user sees that tweet, they either can reply, retweet, mark as a favorite, or ignore it. This is where an intimate relationship with a consumer can begin or be renewed.

To develop a Twitter reactivation program, start with an initial test group. Keep in mind that these campaigns will happen in a public timeline, so do not flood the stream with span-like behavior.

When choosing your test group, remember that it’s recommended to use a maximum of 30 total outbound tweets a day from any account. If you have an account that currently has high volume of outbound tweets for customer service, perhaps use one account for customer service and one for marketing.

To match email addresses to Twitter users, you can import your email list to a gmail account and upload it from the “find friends” tab of the “who to follow” tool on Twitter. You can then choose to follow all the matches, or save them to a list. Because you want to keep your following and follower counts in check, don’t automatically follow everyone. Try instead to save the matches in a private list.

Also consider using customer relationship management platforms, like Salesforce, to help maintain your lists, manage and analyze campaigns, and export campaign messaging for uploading to a Twitter dashboard like HootSuite.

 

 

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Is Social Media Marketing The New SEO?

People who are not familiar with how internet marketing works might think that social media marketing is the new Search Engine Optimization. No, it’s not! Social media marketing is an effective supplement to any standard SEO endeavor that you do, but it can’t be used as a replacement. Implementing this strategy is like employing a PR firm once you’ve released your SEO-optimized website. On-page SEO is obviously not as captivating as social media marketing, but it is still the most significant effort you can implement to your website.

As for your social networking efforts, you should visit your existing social accounts, and focus on how you can bring more visitors to your website. However you have first to determine who your target visitors are, what keywords they use in searching for information in the search engines, and in what way your website can help them. Be sure not to miss any of these as you go through your optimization process. All of the social networking sites and traffic won’t result in anything if your target visitors are not part of your online connection or network.

If you didn’t earn the ROI, don’t fret. Most often, it is based on whom your target visitors are, where they can be find, the kinds of services or products you provide, and if your website genuinely supplies your visitors with what they’re searching for.

Applying basic SEO such as building a crawler-friendly website that is made up of relevant keywords that people often typed in the search engines to find the things you offer, shouldn’t be underestimated. These SEO factors can be considered the foundation of your SEO efforts to achieve results.

SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide is written for companies that don’t have the luxury of a big marketing budget, and don’t have the time or staff to devote to a full-time online marketing project. Get it today!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/5573060

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Video Marketing: Discover These 5 Tips When Marketing With Video

Video marketing is nothing new when it comes to effective internet marketing tools. The internet is always changing and if you want to stay ahead of the game, you need to know how to effectively use videos the right way. In other words, you cannot create a video, place it on your website and expect to get results. Video training is a must and I can tell you from personal experience that creating short videos and uploading them to the internet without effective strategies will not get you very far.

Your message needs to capture the attention of your audience. Let’s face it… the internet marketing game has definitely changed. Consider the fact that just several years ago, no one was talking about video to promote businesses. Nowadays, I think it is fair to say that most business owners realize just how important video is to their income.

Benefits That Video Brings To Your Business

•Videos equate to a great response (Everyone loves to watch videos)
•Excellent conversion rates
•The ability to create a captive audience
•Videos build trust!
•Builds relationships with potential customers
•Better online SEO (Google loves videos!)
•Videos are more personal giving you and your business that “personal touch”

Videos are fast becoming the way that people do business. Whether you are an online or an offline business, it does not matter. What matters most is that you get the business exposure and videos will give you the edge over your competition.

5 Tips When Marketing With Video

•Tell your personal story with an interesting video… the more compelling, the better
•Introduce YOU and your company with a testimonial from one of your customers because this will show your credibility
•Integrate video with social media by offering people something for free when they “like” you
•Creating videos will help you stay in touch and maintain relationships… following up is a must when marketing online
•Create videos as a way to automate your business using campaigns… doing so will allow your videos to work on autopilot!

The idea is not just to simply create business videos and then upload them on the internet. Instead, you need to do the following…

Separate Yourself From Your Competitors!

You can easily do this by creating videos to attract people to you and your business but again, knowing how to effectively do just that is essential to getting exceptional results. I believe that the majority of marketers understand how videos are playing a major role with marketing their business, especially over the last couple of years. My personal belief is that those who effectively use it with a compelling video will not only get noticed, but make a significant amount of money because of the power that this has on ones business results.

Just think about how many people are online marketing to others for just a moment. Think about when you go to a marketing event. Chances are you meet a lot of people but do you really remember everyone’s name, let alone what company they are with? Unless you have met the person before or have seen them in a video, it can be downright difficult to remember everyone. Videos can be a great tool to help build a relationship that truly lasts and they have the great potential of getting the results that equal more profit!

Sure, business cards, newsletters, brochures, flyers, postcards can be effective with your marketing efforts but I do believe that when given a choice, most people are more likely to watch a video which is why more and more online and offline business owners are taking massive action using videos to promote their business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Josephine_Monty

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