These Popular Social-Media Habits Are Bad for Your Brand

If you're staring at your screen incredulously or are about to write an angry comment, hold on a minute.David Spark, founder of Spark Media Solutions, social media marketing news recently published an ebook filled with 50 pieces of social media advice that, over the years, has gone sour.The book, "Hazardous to Your Social Media Health: 50 Previously Condoned Behaviors We No Longer Recommend," lists 50 behaviors communicators should stop. Spark shared with us the five he thinks are the most controversial.Before you come after us with torches and pitchforks, hear him out. The engagement process can begin when a marketer provides something of value to the consumer. This doesn’t have to be an items that’s valuable in a monetary sense, as some individuals will find great merit in information. By giving customers something that they deem to have worth, you are building trust from the beginning and positioning yourself as an authority figure.For example my company posted on its website a publication that’s free for anyone to use, The Complete A-Z Online Marketing Strategy Guide. A relationship is established when the site visitor accesses the free offer.Sometimes a business might want provide something of value to consumers in exchange for their filling out and submitting by email some simple information that can be used to build the company's marketing list. Or the firm can require individuals to perform an action to receive the offer.This is a great way to accumulate social media followers. Ask for a “like” on Facebook or a “follow” on Twitter and your company wins a chance for future engagement with the customer. social media marketing classes If the company’s offer is widely well received, garnering lots of esponses from consumers, this can help it quickly build up an email list or social media following. Instagram also allows people to be tagged.To use the new features, you'll need to download the latest version of the Twitter app for iPhone or Android.

Stop focusing on your nonexistent community

Very few companies truly have a community," Spark says. "It's kind of a misnomer."The book explains that true communities are in places like churches, synagogues or little league teams. top social media marketing companies People join these communities because they're passionate about a certain topic and want to talk about it.People don't typically form communities around brands. They follow brands on social media not because they want to talk to each other about their passion for the brand, but simply because they're fans.Spark uses Oreo, which has thousands of fans, as an example: "They don't want to talk so much to each other as a community. People talk to each other to make jokes or share something here and there, but they're not truly a community."Instead of focusing on nurturing a community, B.J. Mendelson, author of "Social Media is Bullshit," recommends creating good content that can help people. He says in the book: "I don't recommend people focus on the 'community.' The only thing that matters, and arguably ever mattered, was generating good material and then using the media to get it in front of the right people. When consumers are presented with something of value, they may tend to view the source as an authority. If consumers keep that perception, this can results in high open rates for the company's email and individuals' active interaction with a company’s social media profiles.A company’s blog can provide substantial value to the consumers who visit it. But though many businesses do indeed have blogs, they fall short because two ingredients are missing: quality and value.A blog isn’t going to magically gain traction overnight; that requires a lot of high-quality content and social-media promotion, which can require a lot of time and money on the part of the company. social media marketing salary Tweets with multiple photos will be seen on iPhone, Android and twitter.com.After selecting your photos, you will have the option to tag the photo in question. Go to Settings to control who can tag you in photos.With its latest update, Twitter is following in the steps of Facebook, which has long allowed its users to tag each other in photos and to post entire albums.

Stop pitching bloggers you don't know

I get these mass emails that just say, 'Would you like to talk to our CEO of company XYZ?' Spark explained. "And, sure, if you send a thousand of those emails, one or two people are going to respond and say yes. social media marketing job description Kind of like if you put something on Craig's List asking for anonymous sex, one or two people would probably come back and say yes."Spark's point is that you shouldn't waste time sending generic mass emails and hoping for the best when, instead, you could be building relationships with journalists and bloggers who will then pay attention when you pitch them."Discover people now," Marshall Kirkpatrick, CEO of Little Bird, says in the book. "Get to know them over time and then pitch them later once you're a known and respected entity. Why do so many company blogs fail? Many companies publish publish material of extremely low quality on their blogs, accepting any guest post thrown its way and littering the site with overly promotional content. This low quality was exactly what Matt Cutts was referring to in his blog post , which triggered many to declare that guest blogging was dead.But It is far from dead. When visitors land on a business blog, they immediately know which entity is presenting them with content but it doesn’t have to be super promotional. Consumers might then view the blog as a source of useful information rather than as an advertisement. The blog can lead to the company's building a connection with people. Consumers are much more inclined to engage with a company online when they don’t feel like they are being pitched.Engagement marketing is a strategy that relies on communication to build the trust and authority of a brand in the minds of consumers. When done correctly, social media marketing for small businessthis can result in sales conversions. If socializing photos is a big part of your marketing strategy, you’ll want to pay attention to this. Twitter is rolling out two new mobile features the ability to include up to four photos in a single tweet and to tag others in photos.When you put four photos in a tweet, it'll automatically create a collage.