Realizing that it isn’t a trend going away anytime soon, more and more businesses are starting to utilize social media for marketing. Social Media Examiner recently released their 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report social media marketing campaign that takes a close look at how marketers are embracing social media and even utilizing it to grow their businesses. The report offers quite a bit of insight into what businesses can do to better use social media for marketing, so in this article we are going to take a look at the report and some quick tips you can use starting today. 2800 expert marketers took the time to answer Social Media Examiner’s questions about what is working for them. The 50-page report, written by Social Media Examiner’s founder Michael Stelzner, breaks down the ideas from these marketers into manageable pieces social media marketing degree that even the most novice promoter can implement. Businesses are seeing social media as more important and the statistics are rising. In 2013, only 86% said social media was important to growing their businesses, but the 2014 report saw a rise to 92% seeing SSM as important. Google+ seems to be the focus of many marketers, but they don’t quite understand it as well as Facebook and Twitter. About 65% say they want to understand Google+ better. Most marketers (58%) feel that original written content is still vital. Whether you already have a social media marketing plan in place or you are just getting started writing one, these 18 tips will make your strategy smarter and more effective. They should also go beyond vanity metrics like retweets or Likes, in favour of more advanced metrics like leads generated, sentiment or website traffic referred. Strive to approach these goals using the SMART approach, meaning they should all be specific, social media marketing los angeles measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound.A simple way to start your social media marketing plan is by writing down at least three social media goals. Make sure to ask yourself what the goal will look like when completed, and use that to determine how you will track it.
Prior to creating your social media marketing plan, you need to assess your current social media use and how it is working for you. This requires figuring out who is currently connecting to you via social media, which social media social media marketing strategy template sites your target market uses and how your social media presence compares to your competitors’.Once you’ve conducted your audit you should have a clear picture of every social account representing your business, who runs or controls them, and what purpose they serve. This ‘living inventory’ should be maintained regularly, especially as you scale your business.It should also be evident which accounts need to be updated and which need to be deleted altogether. Reporting fraudulent accounts will help ensure that people searching for you online are only connecting with the branded accounts social media marketing resume you manage and your approved messaging.An important part of your social media marketing plan will be to create mission statements for each social network profile. These one-sentence statements will help you focus your attention on a very specific goal you want to accomplish using Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. They will guide your actions and help steer you back on track when these profiles become less effective. They also force you to realize that not every social network is good for the right thing. Instagram might be great for selling a clothing brand, but for construction supplies Facebook might be a better medium. Take the time you need to determine the purpose of every social profile you have. If you can’t figure out its purpose, social media marketing campaigns you should probably delete that profile. To help with creating these mission statements, learn about your audience on each profile by using Forrester’s Social Technology Profile Tool. This will provide you with data that classifies consumers into seven levels of how they engage with technology. By profiling your customers’ habits on technology, you’ll be able to gain a clear perspective on where each of your social media profile stands with your customers.
You could look at this two ways, actually. Perhaps Facebook has a better system for targeting your ads. On the other hand, if nearly everyone is using Facebook for advertising, it might benefit you to be one of the few advertisers on a different social media marketing pricing social media site. Some A/B testing could help you see which is most effective for your business.Interestingly, while marketers plan to increase original content, they also want to increase their usage of other people’s work. This can include pulling upon reports, as we are doing with this article, and breaking them down for the reader or getting permission to use another writer’s original content (with credit given, of course).While SMM is on the rise, the best marketers know that you should never ignore other forms of media for a single type. In addition to increasing SMM, they also plan social media marketing blog to use email, search engine optimization and events to pull in new site visitors. Interestingly, female marketers were more open to event marketing than their male counterparts, with 62% using event marketing and only 56% of males using events to market to new clients.At the end of the day, using what works best for your company is always the wisest approach. While knowing what professional marketers are doing to promote on social media is beneficial, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Each business is unique and the customer demographics for that business are unique. Test the different marketing methods you use, pay attention to patterns and keep working on your social media campaigns.The first step to any social media marketing strategy is to establish objectives and goals that you hope to achieve. Having these objectives also allows you to quickly react when social media campaigns are not meeting your expectations. Without these goals, you have no means of gauging your success and no means of proving your return on investment.These goals should be aligned with your broader marketing strategy, social media marketing experts so that your social media efforts all drive towards business objectives. If your social media marketing strategy is shown to drive business goals forward, you’re more likely to get executive buy-in and investment.
In order to keep up that type of pace, marketers must plan ahead. You should have an idea in mind for how you plan to promote for the month or even the quarter, content should be written ahead of time and posts scheduled to go up on social importance of social media marketing media in advance.The report also showed that those who have been marketing for a year or more tend to build more partnerships with other businesses. This increases your social media exposure, because these partners will promote your products and vice versa. Once you’ve been marketing for a bit, you may be approached about a partnership or decide to approach someone else. Keep in mind that the other business should be complimentary but not competition. In addition, make sure you want to put your name behind the product. Ask for a sample, test it out, check out reviews of the business social media marketing agencies to make sure there are no serious complaints. When you recommend a product to your readers, they expect you to have done a bit of research on that other product.As mentioned before, there are dozens upon dozens of different social media platforms to get involved in. However, one thing this report showed was that there are seven that are most frequently used by marketers. There is a reason these are the top seven and that has to do with the number of users they have and how much those users utilize the site. Make sure you utilize these platforms first before moving to others for the best results.Smart marketers are utilizing videos to engage readers. From how-to videos to funny viral videos, there are a lot of different techniques you can use to engage your readers. If you aren’t already on YouTube, set up a channel for your business and figure out what you have to offer viewers. Even though marketers aren’t always sure how effective Facebook search and social media marketing marketing is, they still see it as the most important social media platform currently available. In a pie chart in the report, Facebook gets 54% as for it’s marketing importance while its closest competitor gets only 17% rating for importance. What this means is that your business simply must have a Facebook presence.
Prior to creating your social media marketing plan, you need to assess your current social media use and how it is working for you. This requires figuring out who is currently connecting to you via social media, which social media social media marketing strategy template sites your target market uses and how your social media presence compares to your competitors’.Once you’ve conducted your audit you should have a clear picture of every social account representing your business, who runs or controls them, and what purpose they serve. This ‘living inventory’ should be maintained regularly, especially as you scale your business.It should also be evident which accounts need to be updated and which need to be deleted altogether. Reporting fraudulent accounts will help ensure that people searching for you online are only connecting with the branded accounts social media marketing resume you manage and your approved messaging.An important part of your social media marketing plan will be to create mission statements for each social network profile. These one-sentence statements will help you focus your attention on a very specific goal you want to accomplish using Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. They will guide your actions and help steer you back on track when these profiles become less effective. They also force you to realize that not every social network is good for the right thing. Instagram might be great for selling a clothing brand, but for construction supplies Facebook might be a better medium. Take the time you need to determine the purpose of every social profile you have. If you can’t figure out its purpose, social media marketing campaigns you should probably delete that profile. To help with creating these mission statements, learn about your audience on each profile by using Forrester’s Social Technology Profile Tool. This will provide you with data that classifies consumers into seven levels of how they engage with technology. By profiling your customers’ habits on technology, you’ll be able to gain a clear perspective on where each of your social media profile stands with your customers.
Analyze What You’re Doing with Social Media
68% of the marketers surveyed indicated that they measure the effectiveness of social media marketing. You can easily repeat this by creating landing pages specific to different campaigns and utilizing A/B testing of which landing social media marketing service pages work best for different forms of social media. Facebook has actually increased in importance even since 2013 when it was at 40%. That is a 14% increase in one year of how important marketers think Facebook is to your SMM campaigns.The report also took a look at what social media marketers plan to do in the future. 68% of them plan to blog more and 67% plan to use YouTube and Twitter more. Apparently, they are seeing the same trends with YouTube that other marketers are seeing. The value of a strong blog with solid, unique content is and will remain vital going forward.Twitter social media marketing conference has moved up from number five in importance to marketers to number three in one short year. About 67% of marketers plan to increase their Twitter efforts. If your business doesn’t have a presence on Twitter, you should at least give it a try. Keep in mind that people can favorite and retweet, which can increase your reach with no additional effort from you.Podcasting seems to be an untapped social media market. Even though the survey showed that only 6% of marketers are using podcasts for promotion, 21% stated they plan to add this SSM method in the near future. Podcasting seems to be growing and you could get in ahead of the next big trend.Snapchat is a social media site where users can take a quick picture and post it. As soon as the other person views the photo, it disappears within seconds, depending on settings. While there were over 400 millions snaps per day; the app doesn’t seem to be a very viable marketing option at this time. Only 7% of marketers have any plans at all to use Snapchat for marketing with 85% shying away from it at the current time. The report also surveyed effective social media marketing marketing professionals about whether they pay for ads on social media sites. It seems that here Facebook is still very much king. About 90% use Facebook when paying for ads with only 20% using Linked in and even less for other social media networks.You could look at this two ways, actually. Perhaps Facebook has a better system for targeting your ads. On the other hand, if nearly everyone is using Facebook for advertising, it might benefit you to be one of the few advertisers on a different social media marketing pricing social media site. Some A/B testing could help you see which is most effective for your business.Interestingly, while marketers plan to increase original content, they also want to increase their usage of other people’s work. This can include pulling upon reports, as we are doing with this article, and breaking them down for the reader or getting permission to use another writer’s original content (with credit given, of course).While SMM is on the rise, the best marketers know that you should never ignore other forms of media for a single type. In addition to increasing SMM, they also plan social media marketing blog to use email, search engine optimization and events to pull in new site visitors. Interestingly, female marketers were more open to event marketing than their male counterparts, with 62% using event marketing and only 56% of males using events to market to new clients.At the end of the day, using what works best for your company is always the wisest approach. While knowing what professional marketers are doing to promote on social media is beneficial, it doesn’t tell the whole story. Each business is unique and the customer demographics for that business are unique. Test the different marketing methods you use, pay attention to patterns and keep working on your social media campaigns.The first step to any social media marketing strategy is to establish objectives and goals that you hope to achieve. Having these objectives also allows you to quickly react when social media campaigns are not meeting your expectations. Without these goals, you have no means of gauging your success and no means of proving your return on investment.These goals should be aligned with your broader marketing strategy, social media marketing experts so that your social media efforts all drive towards business objectives. If your social media marketing strategy is shown to drive business goals forward, you’re more likely to get executive buy-in and investment.
Don’t Get Stuck on Facebook Marketing Only
The majority of marketers reported that they either aren’t sure or they don’t feel that their Facebook marketing is working very well. The larger the business, however, the more they felt their efforts on Facebook were working. About 52% social media marketing articles of businesses with over 1000 employees thought their Facebook marketing was on target but only 34% of small businesses felt their efforts were working. The takeaway from this is that you should try different types of marketing and not only limit your efforts to Facebook. Programs like HootSuite can help you preschedule posts to different social media and may be a good solution for small business owners.More and more people are using mobile devices. According to the Pew Research Internet Project 58% of Americans have a smart phone and about 42% own a tablet. The marketing report shows that marketing experts are starting to embrace this trend. About 43% of marketers surveyed said that their blogs are optimated for mobile readers. This is still a minority, social media marketing dallas but that percentage is up 15% from 2013. About 37% were engaging in social media for 11 hours or more. Even if you have a very small budget, you need to allot some time to social media marketing. If you can afford to hire a social media marketer to do this work for you, however, it will free up your time for writing and other marketing efforts and increase the time spent on this endeavor. The report states that 92% of marketers feel one of the biggest benefits of social media marketing is that company exposure is increased. They feel they gain new followers and that these followers are loyal fans. You can use this information to change the way you interact with your own followers. They are loyal friends to your business. Do you treat them that way? Do you engage them and post snippets that will interest them?The majority of marketers promote on at least three social networks. The big three are Facebook, Twitter and Google+, learn social media marketingbut there are dozens of others out there. Does your site sell products crafters would be interested in? Then getting engaged on Pinterest is an excellent idea since the user base on Pinterest is women.In order to keep up that type of pace, marketers must plan ahead. You should have an idea in mind for how you plan to promote for the month or even the quarter, content should be written ahead of time and posts scheduled to go up on social importance of social media marketing media in advance.The report also showed that those who have been marketing for a year or more tend to build more partnerships with other businesses. This increases your social media exposure, because these partners will promote your products and vice versa. Once you’ve been marketing for a bit, you may be approached about a partnership or decide to approach someone else. Keep in mind that the other business should be complimentary but not competition. In addition, make sure you want to put your name behind the product. Ask for a sample, test it out, check out reviews of the business social media marketing agencies to make sure there are no serious complaints. When you recommend a product to your readers, they expect you to have done a bit of research on that other product.As mentioned before, there are dozens upon dozens of different social media platforms to get involved in. However, one thing this report showed was that there are seven that are most frequently used by marketers. There is a reason these are the top seven and that has to do with the number of users they have and how much those users utilize the site. Make sure you utilize these platforms first before moving to others for the best results.Smart marketers are utilizing videos to engage readers. From how-to videos to funny viral videos, there are a lot of different techniques you can use to engage your readers. If you aren’t already on YouTube, set up a channel for your business and figure out what you have to offer viewers. Even though marketers aren’t always sure how effective Facebook search and social media marketing marketing is, they still see it as the most important social media platform currently available. In a pie chart in the report, Facebook gets 54% as for it’s marketing importance while its closest competitor gets only 17% rating for importance. What this means is that your business simply must have a Facebook presence.
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