The 3 Social Media Networks That Are Best for B2B Marketing

Social media is the number one content marketing tactic used by B2B marketers as measured by the 2014 B2B Content Marketing Trends-North America: Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs study.social media marketing statistics That same CMI/MarketingProfs study B2B marketers are using many different social media networks, albeit to varying degrees.You don’t have to be on every social media network.Instead, B2B marketers should strive to have a solid social media presence on a few networks instead of a weak presence on many. As B2B marketers increasingly adopt the use of social media, it's easy to be overwhelmed by all the different networks. This can lead to a tendency to overextend your brand on too many networks. The problem in trying to have a presence on too many social media networks is that it stretches the resources of your marketing team. It can also prevent you from having a meaningful (i.e. effective) social media presence. As a result some companies end up having a social media presence that is a “mile wide and an inch deep.” If you only use one social media network, make it this one. LinkedIn currently has 260 million users in 200 countries (and in 20 languages).The greatest benefit of LinkedIn is its ability to make contacts and build relationships. And the key to a successful presence on LinkedIn is providing valuable support and information to your connections and Groups.LinkedIn also enables executives and companies to build their brands and establish thought leadership. LinkedIn Groups is where most of this happens. There are over one million LinkedIn groups, some with a very narrow industry focus, including your own. The best networking happens in the context of comments and status engagement.
But the most appealing feature of LinkedIn, especially in B2B sales, is the ability to find out most everything on a professional level about a target prospect. top social media marketing companies And, you can determine if there’s an opportunity for a warm introduction through one of your connections. At that point, you will want to take the conversation from LinkedIn to an offline, person-to-person interaction. From a marketing standpoint, LinkedIn allows you to run advertising that can be extremely targeted by location, industry, title, company and other demographics. With over 540 million active users, Google+ is larger than LinkedIn and Twitter. And while it cannot currently match the networking strengths of LinkedIn, from a search engine ranking standpoint, you really can’t afford not to have a Google+ presence.It’s sometimes easier to think of Google+ not as a social network, but as a social layer. When your content is published on Google+ it can rank higher as the content is fed into the personal search results of your Google+ circles. And images and video can gain even higher exposure.Google+ has also become instrumental to Google in verifying content authorship. When you are a known quantity to the search engine (via the rel=”author” feature), it can further increase your visibility in search engines.And on Google+ you can have a business page, too. This allows people to follow and engage with your business, which creates opportunities for relationship building.Think of Twitter as an enormous cocktail party where you may listen in on others’ conversations. That can include thought leaders in your industry, your prospects and even your competitors.

Social Media for Real Estate Agents

Realtors are some of the best marketers in an offline person-to-person environment. You’re incredibly brilliant at getting to know your clients on a very personal level, getting involved in your community,social media marketing training and connecting with your local market.What you’re not very good at is applying this to your social media.(Well, most of you aren’t!).The best real estate marketers think of social online like they do social offline! In this article I’ll give you an overview of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (and a few more) and how real estate agents can use them for social media marketing.Don’t use your personal Facebook account for your real estate services. Why? It lacks professionalism, and you miss out on a lot of essential business features (such as the ability to run Facebook contests, and check your Facebook Insights). It’s really easy to make a Facebook Page, and it’s worth the effort.Show off your listings’ neighbourhood. This both markets your area to prospective residents, and it also shows your passion and knowledge of where you are selling homes. For example, If there is a new community centre being built, post about it, and express the merits and how it will make the lifestyle better for new (and existing) residents. Images on Facebookare the most engaging types of content. The more Likes, shares and comments your posts get, the more they will be viewed in News Feeds by the friends of your Facebook Fans (people who Like your Page).Social media provides a way to further connect with your local clients and groups and boost your real estate marketing efforts. Social can build trust, and spread your marketing through friends of friends.
Show how wonderful your city culture is. Post about local events in your town. If you’re going to a neighbourly event, tell your Fans, and invite them to join you. social media marketing classes Ask questions, too, to spark engagement.Check out how Polygon Homes uses this tactic on their Facebook Page. They engage with their market (Vancouver) and show off the amazing events you could go to if you lived in this city. They ask a question, too, to get more comments and create a friendly tone. You do this in person, so show you care about your clients on your Facebook Page too.Check out how Realtors Marni and Shannon elegantly welcome new homeowners on possession day. The post is visually appealing, and subtle (by not mentioning names). The new clients know who they are, and it shows prospective homebuyers that you genuinely care and follow up.Contests and Sweepstakes provide an amazing way to create more engagement on your Page, and have fun with your Fans. You can use all kinds of contests to develop deeper relationships with your clients, get to know their likes and dislikes, and promote yourself as a realtor who listens. You can even use them as a way to market your listings, too!On Facebook, you need to use a third party app to run contests and sweepstakes. Here’s my bias - Wishpond makes incredibly simple to use Facebook contest apps, and we give you a comprehensive social contact database too - for your email lists.For example, run a Vote Contest to ask your Fans what photo they like best from your latest listing.

Statistics and facts about Social Media Marketing

You can build Twitter lists (which can be public or private) of people you want to follow. And it does not require that they follow you back. social media marketing news Lists enable you to filter out all the tweets from your main news feed and focus just on a particular subset. For instance you can build a list of reporters who cover your industry. If they ask a question or need some help, you can respond, help them and be on your way to building a relationship. The same goes for lists of your prospects.Similarly, on Twitter you can search for mentions of your company or key industry or competitive terms. When someone tweets a question or has a problem, you can respond and help them or otherwise engage in the conversation.Certainly, there are other networks that make business sense for B2B marketers. But until you have these first three nailed, remember that it’s more effective to have a strong presence on a few networks than a weak presence on many.Or, run a Photo Contest on your Page. You can use photo contests to get more images of a new listing, to follow up with clients who’ve recently renovated, or to get photos of your neighbourhood, etc.Yes, use Facebook to post your listings, too. The golden rule in social media is 80/20. That is - post 80% of your content about lifestyles, customer interests, and other updates; post 20% of your content about you and your product. This keeps your social media social, and engaging.When you post your listings, keep the personality of you and your Facebook Page. This is not a print ad. Tell about the home, and what points will sell it. Tell how many bedrooms and bath. Tell the address. Tell the price. But keep it engaging.
Ask questions about your new place, to get comments about what people like about it, what they like about the neighbourhood, or comments about the schools and community facilities. social media marketing network Post about your Open Houses, too. Facebook lets you target your ads very specifically. You can use promoted posts, for example, to get your great Facebook posts seen by other Facebookers in your geographic target market.Twitter is another amazing way to keep connected to your clients. Twitter gives you 140 characters (or less), to give updates to your Followers. Use it to engage, and keep strengthening your relationships.Help out your clients (and yourself), by teaching them how to stage their home for better sales. Post links to good articles and videos on how to present a residence when you’re selling it. Twitter tends to be a great place for news. If there’s a new school being built in your area - tweet about it. Good news stories to show how great your neighbourhood is - and how well you know it.On Twitter, using hashtags gets your Tweets seen by more than your Followers. Use relevant and specific s to get found by those looking for your subject matter. Here’s an example of how to use hashtags for a local geographic neighbourhood. The BOTTO Team uses parkgate, deepcove and seymour. Their tweet will be found in these category listings when someone sees these hashtags feeds, or does a Twitter search for them.Tweet about local events you support. Show you are connected and trustworthy, and care about your community. Twitter lets you send tweets to specific people. Aside from using the Direct Messages, send out a Tweet to congratulate a new home owner, or to thank a local merchant for assisting you, etc.

Best Social Media Sites for Small Business Owners

Are you confused and overwhelmed by social media? Face-what? Twit-who? You-how? In this post, I’m going to lay out a few of the best social media sites for small business owners, and why. social media marketing courses First off, when considering your online marketing strategy, your website MUST come first. Think of it as sort of a “base camp” that you will connect to/from any number of external points. Your website is property owned by you, whereas social media pages are owned by someone else. Look at social media sites as simply a vehicle to get your message out there and drive traffic back to what you have control over. Still, getting “social” is an important component to any marketing plan.Did you know… there are more than 100 thriving social media sites online right now and more popping up every single day. It’s enough to make a persons head spin! Launched in February 2004 for college students, Facebook has come a long way in a short seven years. Now with an estimated 800 million active users it is ranked as the most used social networking service in the world (by the number of active monthly users).Lucky for you, starting a business page - and tapping into the power of Facebook – is pretty easy. Once your page is created, users ‘like’ it (opt-in to get your posts) and your news will be posted to their ‘wall.’The Facebook interface makes it easy for your fans to ‘like’ or share your posts and when they do, their friends (the average user has 130 friends) will see this activity, therefore putting your brand in front of an audience you may not normally have access to. A micro-blogging social media site that has been around since 2004, Twitter has an estimated 300 million users world-wide. It has been described as SMS of the internet, because posts are short, sweet and to-the-point.
Twitter is a tidal wave of information. Posts come in at 140 characters or less and can be organized via hashtags . Topics range from totally practical (I often search Boulder) to the absolutely absurd (gympetpeeve). social media marketing b2b Twitter differs from Facebook in that users ‘follow’ each other. If someone follows you, you can follow them back. Therefore it is easier to gain a following, but the followers are not as targeted as they are on Facebook. I have found that Twitter is an awesome way to connect with people and/or other businesses participating in the same event. Following a hashtag at a concert, live performance or webinar creates a richer experience. As a business owner you can utilize this at events your company participates in – try it! – I’ll bet you’d be blown away by the response. YouTube is a video sharing social media site that is owned by Google. There are more than 48 hours of new video uploaded to the site every minute. Wow! As a small business owner, using video in your online marketing strategy – and the back-end key words of your YouTube video - is just as important as your other online strategies. YouTube recently announced YouTube for schools and I predict more ‘stations’ will be rolling out in the future. Will your specialty be included? Maybe! Google is a power house, this is no surprise. Originally launched as a search engine company in 1996, Google has continually added, updated and created new products that will appeal to it’s1 billion unique visitors per month.Google Plus was introduced in June 2011 for personal use and in November 2011 was opened to brands. Some of the features of Google+ include: Circles, Hangouts, Messenger, Instant Upload, Hashtags and more.

Real social media marketing takes dedication

The term “Social Media” has entered that rare stratosphere of fame and recognition normally reserved for rock stars and Presidents. social media marketing for small business Now, rock stars and Presidents bow to the power of social media.But what does “social media marketing” truly mean, and how can we use it’s dominance on the world scene to grow our businesses? If you’re new to social media marketing you might believe that a few blog posts, daily, random status updates, and a healthy number of “followers” and “likes” are going to magically grow your business. The truth is: this stuff takes real planning and dedication. And what do you share, and hope that others will? Content.There is no such thing as effective social media marketing without content.Your social media strategy originates from your solid content marketing strategy. Great content gets people to share, and that sharing widens your audience to a whole new world of potential fans, friends, and customers.Whether you’re a large business or a lone entrepreneur, social media marketing can be the most inexpensive and powerful marketing tool in your arsenal to build the trust and authority that in the best case helps exponentially grow your business. It is commonly suggested that to increase your brand presence, you need to be active on all forms of social media. While that may be true, unless your company has a dedicated social media coordinator, finding the time to maintain every platform out there can be extremely time consuming.If your company is just starting out on the Web and need to pick a few social media networks to rule over, here is our guide to choosing the best platform(s) for your business, and how to make the most out of them.
Twitter is the dominant democracy of the social-sharing economy. Relevancy, personality and brevity are the keys to making your voice heard. social media marketing job description Buffer lets you stockpile and schedule content in advance. Tools like this allow for posting around-the-clock, increasing the likelihood of snagging followers beyond your country or time zone without being working 24/7.It’s a guarantee by this point that a conversation relevant to your industry or business is occurring on Twitter. Instagram invites brands with visual content into their customers’ zone-out time. Create and post content accordingly.You’ll want to experiment with your own userbase and followers, but it’s likely that the best time to target your posts will be to get to your audience’s eyes during their commutes, nights, and weekends. While hashtags are clickable and useful for search purposes, links in comments and captions are not.Instead, use the integrated sharing functions for Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter to repurpose your Instagram posts for more shareable media. Include a relevant hashtag to become more discoverable on Instagram and to track engagement across sites where you share the content.Additionally, Followgram is a great tool for tracking your stats on the most liked and commented posts, along with top tags and locations.Keep a company description and profile page mindful of keyword SEO, but your network of employees and contacts is your most valuable (and potentially damaging) content on LinkedIn. Make sure people in your organization are appropriate, professional and on-brand. There’s nowhere online where employers and employees are more intimately linked.

Social Media Planning without a Mind Reader

Company seeking clients and individuals seeking employment should grow their LinkedIn networks by adding as many real connections as possible. marketing and social media Use your second and third-degree connections to request personal introductions (when reasonable), and weed out the Internet’s infinity of companies and applications, focusing on opportunities where you have some real connection. Consider advertising or paying to promote your page on Facebook, but don’t make your brand’s Facebook page itself look like an advertisement. Inspire conversations and shares – and be sure to ask questions.Of all social networks, Facebook is best equipped to linearly share responses to a post asking a question or sparking conversation. Answers then appear in friends of your respondents, spreading the conversation. Facebook offers personal connection and an enjoyable distraction amidst the work day, but use typically peaks outside of work hours. There’s no shortage of options for analyzing Facebook data. Track the success of your content by date and time to hone in on the best times for engaging your audience. As Google’s proposed alternative to Facebook, keywords and search engine optimization are central to the appeal of Google+. Link often to content on your own website to direct this search boost where you want it most. Useful tools: URL shortener Bitly does more than just shrink down links. Each time you convert a link, Bitly offers stats on clicks generated from that specific link, making it helpful to see how much traffic is brought directly from sharing to Facebook.
Have you ever wished for a crystal ball so you could gaze deeply into the thoughts and needs of your customers? Sometimes B2B social media can feel like playing Go Fish with only half the deck. social media marketing salary You’ve only got a dolphin and all they ever want is a shark. Nobody wins… much less your business. Luckily we have some articles here that can help you cut through the miasma of uncertainty and build a successful B2B social plan without employing a psychic.Social media marketing is not about completely giving up all control of the brand, but changing methods to maintain influence in the new consumer-controlled social media reality. The social media audit tool helps marketers make sense of the many opportunities these platforms offer by allowing marketers to see their brands from the perspective of the consumer. People don’t always tell you what they’re thinking. In personal relationships, we use body language, tone of voice, micro expressions, actions, and other intangibles to infer someone’s perspective, attitude, intent, and desires. Business relationships rely on some of the same data points but are often distanced from targets and customers by geography, station (status in the food chain of the individual with final say-so) and decision-making protocols like RFP docs, requisition requests, and other confounding red tape. The separation between key stakeholders and those of us trying to escort them along the buyer journey presents some challenges. There are ways we can learn about our prospects and buyers to improve opportunities for consideration and conversion

Essentials to Building Your Brand on Social Media

Join us at Entrepreneur magazine's Growth Conference, Dec. 15 in Long Beach, Calif. for a day of fresh ideas, business mentoring and networking. using social media for marketing Register here for exclusive pricing, available only for a limited time.Whether you want to sell products, gain subscribers, persuade followers to a point or sway the hearts and minds of readers to your cause, they’ve got to know who you are in the first place.Your ability to encourage any of these actions comes from your brand’s authority -- and one of the best ways to build that is through the savvy use of social media. In fact, recent research from Econsultancy shows that 71 percent of brands plan to invest more heavily in social media in the coming year to reach new followers and build brand reputation. Today, social media spending makes up a small fraction of most business’ marketing budgets. A recent Duke University survey found that, on average, social media spending accounted for just 9% of the overall budget. But that number is projected to expand to nearly 22% in the next five years.Clearly, ecommerce marketers recognize the power of social media to connect with an audience. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are nearly ubiquitous in our lives. They’re like the 21st-Century Main Street; we use them to communicate, find information quickly, and increasingly, to shop for products. For Web businesses, effective social marketing represents real value. Social networks offer new ways to reach first-time customers, engage and reward existing customers, and showcase the best your brand has to offer. Your social network profiles and the content you share are as important as a business’ storefront signage and displays in the 1950s.
Why? Social networks are evolving from merely places to find and distribute content; they’re becoming commerce portals. Businesses that integrate social media into their marketing strategy – from customer acquisition, social media marketing strategies to sales, to re-engagement campaigns – will benefit. Small Business Marketing | As the heaviness of social media signals (Facebook likes, Google pluses, tweets, stumbles, pins) increase for marketers, it’s vital for any business to involve their community of fans and super-fans with shareable content. How we uphold relationships and communicate with each other both personally and professionally will never be the same because social media has made it all so much more accessible, effective and fun. For business owners and marketers, being successful in marketing through social media means figuring out how you can plug your brand into those things in a creative, fun and entertaining way that can result in helping to build both sympathy for and loyalty to your brand.Establishing goals is an important requirement for any project. There is no human effort that cannot benefit from goals. In daily life, we can establish enduring goals but also short, mid-term and long term goals. A marketing plan can be formal or informal, but it should detail who your customers are, where they get their particulars and how you’re going to deliver your marketing message to them.Social media is a vastly underutilized instrument for delivering personalized content. This channel can be tricky because if the content is not custom-made enough due to automation, the user will know it and the brand will look like spam. However, with enough profile data, a customized social communication at the right time can be a powerful marketing tool.

Choose networks that support your brand image

According to Convince and Convert, 22 percent of Americans use social media multiple times a day, making it one of the best mediums on which to build your brand. social media marketing manager There are literally hundreds of social networks out there, but most of them aren’t worth investing your time and energy.Facebook is by the far the best platform for promoting brand awareness, as nearly three quarters of Americans adults use the site. Facebook is a great platform for promoting virtually any brand, due to its very heterogeneous user base.Instagram is a great option for brands that rely heavily on images, such as clothing companies and retailers. It’s also particularly effective for reaching young adults, Hispanics and African Americans.While Google+ hasn’t taken off as well as many people predicted, it can be a great platform to reach men in the technology industry, as two-thirds of the network’s users are men, most of whom work in engineering or other technical professions.Pinterest is an excellent social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewelry or clothing.Finally, if you operate a business-to-business company, LinkedIn is a stronger choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers. It should go without saying, but you’ll create a much stronger brand reputation if you focus on creating useful content that viewers will want to share, rather than cranking out content to meet arbitrary publishing calendars or that covers subjects only you’d want to read. Every single piece of content you share should support your brand image. Remember, humor can be difficult to pull off. If you can use memes effectively, they can be powerful brand-building tools. But if you aren’t 100 percent sure how your audience will respond to your image, resist the temptation to create memes or engage in clickbait strategies that have the potential to reflect poorly on your company.
Go where your customers are. It’s a marketing maxim, and it’s never been easier to accomplish than today. marketing with social media There are many different ways social media can improve the way you interact with customers, whether they’re first-time buyers or loyal fans. Marketers can see in real-time what your audience cares about most, their interests, the conversations they’re having and what they like. Use your social networks to better segment audience and understand your target demographics. This will help you optimize your campaigns and deliver more targeted messaging.Immediacy is big in social media; we want information and we want it now. That’s why social networks are so great for customer service. They enable businesses to quickly respond to customer inquiries. Plus, social media makes it easier to spot and respond to unpleasant customer experiences. Develop a strategy for responding to customer inquiries via social media. Your social profile is really your storefront. Customers are now using social networks to research companies and products. Your Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social pages provide the perfect opportunity to make a lasting impression. Start by optimizing your profiles and making important information easy-to-find. Also, encourage your existing customers to review your company on Facebook, Google, or Yelp.Don’t think of social media as another way to generate sales and drive traffic. Use these platforms to demonstrate value and validate your marketing efforts. Take a look at the camera maker GoPro on Facebook; very rarely is does the company share content that is designed to sell product. Instead, their posts highlight the best quality videos and pictures taken on their cameras, and they effectively showcase the brand. Develop a social content strategy that is designed to highlight the best, most unique, most surprising thing about your brand.

Appreciate your Followers | Small Business Marketing

The more appreciated your followers feel, the more likely they are to share your content with their networks. People like compliments and companies do too. social media marketing software A large part of success in marketing essentially comes from ‘paying it forward’ to others. If you simply show your genuine and enthusiastic gratitude for other people, they will return the favor and then some. Rewarding your fans is a great way to show how much you appreciate their role in your achievement.If you’re running social media for your business, you must listen to your customers and respond quickly in order to be fully effective. Even if you don’t want to respond to a post (for example, a bad product criticism), it is important that you show your appreciation for their initiative in reaching out to you.Small businesses can be practical when it comes to finding new followers. One way to accomplish this is to find Twitter profiles of your industry’s authority data. Set up custom alerts for specific terms relating to the company’s customers, industry, influencers, and trends. Create custom searches on the social networks by keywords, clients, and also the competition. The more a business listens and learns the more knowledgeable and able it becomes in serving their clients and growing their social media presence.Attracting a high number of fans and supporters isn’t the best way to measure success if your followers can’t help your business. You’ll want to put a calculable outcome in place along with a timeframe in which to achieve the goal. It is important to remember that social media engagement is no different any other marketing strategy. It is just one piece of the pie, and in the end, what we learn should be measurable on some level. It’s the only way to know if you are achieving your business aims and goals.
The days of free marketing on social sites are numbered. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have all made paid advertising a more important part of their businesses, how to use social media for marketing and ecommerce marketers will likely have to increase their paid advertising spends to reach the same audience. Think about it: Facebook and LinkedIn have made it much, much easier for marketers to target customer segments, by age, location, interests, job title and much more. Shopify, an online retail start-up, saw a 50-percent reduction in cost-per-lead thanks to the Facebook Custom Audience segmenting tool.A recent study found that YouTube led all social networks in its ability to convert users. There are a few reasons for this. First, video is an amazing way to showcase your product. Consumers are researching the products they buy online more thoroughly these days, and video provides an interactive way to see these products in action before they buy. Additionally, video is much more engaging than text, and when your audience is more engaged, conversion follows.A number of tech companies are making products that enable marketers to measure every aspect of their social campaigns – from top-performing networks, to the types of social content that works, and the actions that customers take. These kinds of social data analytics tools make it easier for ecommerce marketers to tie social campaigns to results. It’s been said that every brand is a publisher, and today, anyone with an Internet connection and a social profile is a publisher. Take a look at Starbucks, the coffee company. They don’t just sell coffee; Starbucks is an Instagram rock-star, as one of the most-followed brands on the site.Today, it’s extremely easy for businesses to generate content and distribute it directly to their audiences. We can look at GoPro again. They use produce and curate more effectively than most on the GoPro Channel.

Social Media Marketing Trends Dominating

Would it surprise you to learn that some experts believe Google GOOGL +0.26%+ is on its way out, that MySpace is making a last-ditch attempt to re-engage users, social media marketing plan template or that Foursquare is in the middle of a radical overhaul?Late last year, I made some predictions for social media trends in my article, The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2014. In this article, I’m going to examine where things are now that we’re around the mid-way point of 2014, and assess how my predictions have fared so far. Join us at Entrepreneur magazine's Growth Conference, Dec. 15 in Long Beach, Calif. for a day of fresh ideas, business mentoring and networking. Register here for exclusive pricing, available only for a limited time.Leveraging the power of content and social media marketing can help elevate your audience and customer base in a dramatic way. But getting started without any previous experience or insight could be challenging.It's vital that you understand social media marketing fundamentals. From maximizing quality to increasing your online entry points, abiding by these 10 laws will help build a foundation that will serve your customers, your brand and perhaps most importantly your bottom line. Success with social media and content marketing requires more listening and less talking. Read your target audience’s online content and join discussions to learn what’s important to them. Only then can you create content and spark conversations that add value rather than clutter to their lives. It’s better to specialize than to be a jack-of-all-trades. A highly-focused social media and content marketing strategy intended to build a strong brand has a better chance for success than a broad strategy that attempts to be all things to all people.
Quality trumps quantity. It’s better to have 1,000 online connections who read, share and talk about your content with their own audiences than 10,000 connections who disappear after connecting with you the first time.Social media and content marketing success doesn’t happen overnight. social media marketing world While it’s possible to catch lightning in a bottle, it’s far more likely that you’ll need to commit to the long haul to achieve results.If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.If you get on their radar as an authoritative, interesting source of useful information, they might share your content with their own followers, which could put you and your business in front of a huge new audience.If you spend all your time on the social Web directly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

Investment in Social Media will Become a Necessity, not a Luxury

With 92% of business owners recently indicating that social media is important to their business (up from 86% in 2013), this prediction appears to be on track. social media marketing tips Businesses are continuing to re-allocate budgets away from traditional methods of advertising towards social media and other inbound marketing strategies.A major concern among business owners remains measuring the ROI for their social media efforts. Other issues that may be hindering the effectiveness of social media for some businesses include a lack of education and trained personnel – making it difficult to efficiently carry out day-to-day social media tasks (never mind strategizing or tying social media into wider business goals). Pinterest is very visually oriented (every post has to be an image or video), and like Facebook, it is also fairly low-maintenance as far as post frequency is concerned. However, keeping your boards organized and search-friendly can be time-consuming.You wouldn’t ignore someone who reaches out to you in person so don’t ignore them online. Building relationships is one of the most important parts of social media marketing success, so always acknowledge every person who reaches out to you.Don’t publish your content and then disappear. Be available to your audience. That means you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations. Followers online can be fickle and they won’t hesitate to replace you if you disappear for weeks or months.You can’t expect others to share your content and talk about you if you don’t do the same for them. So, a portion of the time you spend on social media should be focused on sharing and talking about content published by others.
Companies continue to find creative ways to use image-centric networks to reach new, younger audiences: for instance, Mashable recently announced that MTV would be using its Snapchat account to announce the nominees for the Video Music Awards. social media marketing tools According to Global Web Index data, while Facebook still remains the clear winner in terms of its user base, among social networking sites Instagram experienced the biggest rise in active user numbers between quarter 2 and quarter 4 of 2013; it will be interesting to see if this trend has continued into the first 2 quarters of 2014 and beyond.With hundreds of active social networks, it can be tough to know where you should start when it comes to marketing a business or building an online community. To help you get a better understanding of each network, and how you can use them for your business, we put together a quick rundown on some of the top sites and services for your to build out your social media marketing strategy. Facebook recently reported 1.49 monthly billion users with Asia accounting for 28%, Europe for 24%, USA and Canada for 17% and the rest of the world for 30% of those users.Long-form content – with no character or word limit – gets the most Facebook shares and likes, so start writing! Encourage your fans to post reviews or stories about their experiences with your site on your brand page. Facebook is also a great platform to offer insider tips, troubleshooting ideas, meetup and event invites, and promotional offers. Facebook is the largest platform for sharing worldwide, and when it comes to brands, users can share products and content that resonates with them. The social media platform also offers brand pages where users can interact with and review brands based on their experiences.

Google+ will Become a Major Factor

With just over half of marketers using the platform, and 61% of businesses planning on increasing their Google+ activities this year, Google+ is clearly still top of mind for marketers. marketing social mediaBut while more and more business owners believe that an investment in Google+ is a necessity, many are still struggling with making the platform work for their business.With Google announcing earlier this year that social signals are not part of their ranking algorithm, some business owners are wondering whether an investment in Google+ is as valuable as previously thought. Add to this the recent decision to remove Authorship photos from the search results, and it’s not surprising that some marketers are confused about how Google+ is different or better than Facebook or Twitter . With the head of Google+ social efforts Vic Gundotra suddenly leaving the company in April, and reports of Google+ being ‘walking dead’, the future of the platform is unclear. For now, business owners should continue to focus on using the platform as a way to connect with prospects, but perhaps more importantly as a primary method of establishing Author Rank and authority for their content. For more on this, see my post Is Google+ Really Walking Dead?Image-centric social networks like Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat may not be serious competition for Facebook, but they continue to draw in a loyal user-base, and that may ultimately be the key to their success.Pinterest, for instance, is experiencing some pretty astounding retention rates: according to recent research by RJ Metrics, while 2014 has seen a drop in male pinning activity, women actually appear to pin more the longer they’re on the platform. Robert J. Moore of RJ Metrics writes, “While the average female user posts 42 pins in year 1, by year 4 she is up to 152! If you set out to build a habit-forming product, that is exactly the type of trend you’re looking for.”
As of Q2 2015, Twitter reported 304 million active monthly users with a majority of those users prevailing from Asia, benefits of social media marketing North America and Western Europe.Twitter was made for short commentary – 140 characters or less – and users can use it to talk about and interact with brands about their products or services.Encourage your users to tweet out a pre-written tweet about your brand letting others know why they love it, or create a hashtag to help start a conversation. Be sure to retweet others to show appreciation and respond if asked a question or tagged in a tweet. If appropriate, brands can post about what’s trending to increase visibility. The rule of thumb for Twitter is not to just talk about yourself, but to start and continue a conversation.YouTube claims to have over one billion users worldwide with 70% of visitors coming from outside the U.S. and is broadcast in 54 languages.YouTube offers users the opportunity to watch videos for free, or create and upload their own. Videos are easy to comment on, rate, and share on social media and blogs.Create videos and upload them! YouTube is a great platform for creating longer videos (as opposed to other video services such as Vine), like product overviews, tutorials, interviews, and more. People who are active on YouTube are looking to watch creative, fun and informative videos, so you have more flexibility on this medium – think outside the box to help engage their attention!Pinterest has 72.8 million users, 85% of which are female in the U.S., however, in Britain it skews more even, with 56% of its users being male.Users pin products and content they like from the Internet so they can come back to it later. They can also organize their pins into boards around a topic or theme.

The Most Effective Social Networks for Marketing a Business

More than half (52%) of marketers say Facebook is the most important social network they use to grow and market their business, according to a recent report from Social Media Examiner. social media marketing university The 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report was based on data from a survey of 3,720 marketers; 61% of survey participants focus primarily on attracting consumers (B2C), and the other 39% primarily target businesses (B2B).Some 21% of respondents say LinkedIn is the most important social network they use to grow and market their business; Twitter ranks third (12%), followed by YouTube (4%) and Google+ (4%).Though Facebook is considered the most important social network overall, LinkedIn takes the top spot with B2B marketers: 41% say it is the most important network they use (30% pick Facebook). One of the most common business dilemmas is figuring our where to start with social media marketing. Today I would like to introduce a few high level ideas to help you decide where to put your time for the best results for your business. As with anything in life, there is often a trade-off between effort and business benefits and social media is no different.I need to make a very important point right up front. There is NO common solution or strategy that fits every business. What I am proposing here should not be taken as “The Gospel.” This post contains broad generalizations — you still have to use common business sense to determine what fits best for you. OK? Let’s get started. There are lots of amazing things a business can do to create benefits from the social web — customer service, business intelligence, and creating awareness to name a few. But today I want to assume that your primary goal is to create an actionable audience — that is, develop an online community who will create some business benefit for you over time. A common misconception is that “audience” equals “action. It does not.
If you are reading this post, you might have discovered it through Twitter or Facebook. But if you have no emotional connection to me as a blogger, are you going to hire me? Buy my marketing books? what is social media marketing No. Social media marketing simply opens up the door for connections through weak relational links. You still have to do the hard work to turn those folks into buying customers. My friend Jay Baer coined a term I like very much: “reliable reach.” If you tweet something, it’s kind of like throwing a message in a bottle into the ocean, isn’t it? You don’t really know who will read it … or if anyone will. However, if somebody subscribes to a blog or YouTube channel, they are asking for your content. There is a good chance they will actually see it. The goal of social media marketing is to direct more audience member to subscriptions — reliable reach — over time, There is generally a relationship between the time you put into social media and the level of reliable reach you attain. Content is the catalyst that leads to awareness on the web. Awareness may then lead to engagement and engagement may lead to trust, and even loyalty over time. Creating, curating, and distributing content is the economic driver of social media success. The different platforms require different types of content, some simple, some complex. This is important for a business to consider. The default position for social media marketing seems to be Facebook. While Facebook is undeniably important, let’s stack it up to the other platforms in the context of our ultimate goal of building an actionable audience. In this analysis, I am covering the top social media platforms based on visits, plus a few others like Slideshare and Meerkat for fun.

The best social media platform for your organization

If you were to draw an arrow from the lower left quadrant (low time required, low audience ownership) to the upper right quadrant (high time required and high audience ownership), social media marketing jobs it would also present a useful continuum of the less complex content to more complex content requirements. Let’s look at each platform starting roughly from the lower left to the upper right. Streaming video is hot right now but at this point the genre is limited in its ability to attain reliable reach. You can stream live from an event or from your home but it has a limited opportunity for sustaining an audience because who you reach is dependent on who is available in that moment. But keep your eye on this space. I think over time, these platforms will improve in their ability to create reliable reach as users figure out creative new uses for regularly-scheduled programming and even integrating with traditional media. Of all the platforms listed here, I think this one has the most potential to shift to the upper right in terms of sustaining an actionable audience. A lot of people still love to visit old school forums and Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. Recent research from Edison suggests that more people visit forums than blogs. However a forum is somewhat limited in creating a sustainable and actionable audience. You might answer questions for an entirely new audience each time you visit the site. In this case, Yahoo really owns the audience, not you. Twitter is not as simple as it might appear. Although you are limited to 140 characters, it can be quite difficult creating something meaningful in that small space.Twitter stands alone in its ability to create a huge, relevant audience quickly, but since you cannot target groups of followers with messages (at least yet), it sometimes feels like you are throwing a message out to a big silent world.
The platform is great at making initial connections which can lead to reliable reach on another platform like a blog or podcast. social media and marketing One of the reasons this platform is so popular is that it is so easy to use. Snap a photo and post. This is one of the reasons that Instagram is used at work more than any other platform (85% of its users do so!). In fact it is probably unique among platforms in its opportunity to create connection with relatively little work. Another advantage is that there is no timeline editing. Every subscriber has an equal chance of seeing what you post. But like Twitter, your content is somewhat ephemeral as it slowly sinks to the bottom of the news feed. Pinterest is the only platform in the box of “low work, high reach.” Primarily, you are creating audience value by curating content (rather than creating content) from other sources on the web into logical pages that will inspire and entertain. And if you do an excellent job with curation, you can build a very loyal audience. One sign of the platform’s ability to create an active audience is that “pinned” items drive more web traffic than any other platform. Google+ is the most mysterious of all the platforms. Is it vital and vibrant? Or, is it a desolate ghost town? The answer is, “both.”Despite the cries of its stalwart defenders, Google+ is simply not a mainstream public platform. Most people simply don’t care about the SEO benefits. It’s never mentioned on TV, you don’t see businesses asking for a follow on G+, and it’s not on the radar screen of Millennials. So your access to mainstream consumers is extremely limited. We profiled the top social media platforms, so you can learn how to utilize each one for your business and determine which ones fit your needs.

Social Media for Business: Marketer’s Guide

Should your business be on social media? Absolutely. social media marketing agency But should you have an account on every platform? Not necessarily.Your social success depends largely on the type of business you run and how much time and effort you intend to put into your strategy. Some networks, like Facebook, are more low-maintenance and work for every type of business, while others, like Instagram, require more dedication, working best for businesses in certain niches.Want to create an enviable social strategy? Familiarize yourself with all of the social networks at your disposal, figure out which features will work best with your business and focus on the platforms that best reflect your business's mission. Facebook is the biggest social network out there, both in terms of name recognition and total number of users. With over 1.39 billion active users, Facebook is a great medium for connecting people from all over the world with your business. And Facebook is not only the biggest network, it's arguably the most versatile one. In the 11 years since it launched, Facebook grew from a simple website where college students could keep in touch into a multifaceted Web and mobile social-platform where anyone can connect with not just their friends and family, but also with celebrities, organizations, businesses and more thanks to the Pages feature.Since Facebook has a wealth of options for any type of organization, it's a great starting point for your business, regardless of your industry. You can use it to share photos, videos, important company updates and more. Additionally, Facebook is a lot more low maintenance in terms of posting frequency — whether you post several updates a day or only a few a week won't make much of a difference in terms of what your fans think of you.
To find out more about Facebook for business, check out our guide. Twitter is another social network where mostly anything goes. social media marketing company With Twitter, you can post short (140 characters or less) text updates along with videos, images, links and more. You can also easily interact with other users by mentioning their usernames in your posts, so Twitter is a great way to quickly connect with people all around the world (the platform has more than 500 million users worldwide). Because of this, Twitter is not only a great way to market your business; it's also an effective channel for handling customer service. For example, if you maintain an active Twitter presence, then customers who are also active on the platform will seek you out to express concerns or share their praise. If you have interesting content, Twitter is also a great tool for quickly spreading the word. Retweeting and sharing other users' content is incredibly simple, and if a user with a lot of followers retweets you, your content has the potential to go viral. But with Twitter, it's important to remember to find balance — don't simply share your own links or media; make sure you are also sharing a lot of interesting, relevant content from other Twitter users so your audience doesn't think you only care about what your business is doing. This platform consists of digital bulletin boards where users can save and display content they like in the form of pins. Users create and organize their boards by category, so for example, as a personal user, one might have a board dedicated to food where they pin recipes, another board dedicated to photography they find interesting and so on.

Take advantage of Facebook for your business

Social media is huge. Just look at the stats. Below are 18 simple ways to get your social media marketing right.There are now over 900 million users on Facebook and 140 million tweets every day on Twitter.marketing by social media Social media has a plethora of uses, from branding to data capture, market research to customer service and sales. And there are SEO benefits too. Get it right and social media can deliver traffic, sales, brand awareness and more. Get it wrong, however, and you could suffer at the hands of a cynical web-savvy crowd. Join the social-media-marketing revolution: learn how to promote brands, increase sales, engage customers, and drive site traffic using Facebook and Twitter. This course helps marketers and business owners craft, implement, measure, and optimize a winning social-media-marketing strategy. Author Brad Batesole starts with the best uses for social media marketing, and the best platforms for each use. Once viewers understand the conceptual underpinnings of social media marketing, Brad shows how to create Facebook and Twitter profiles; write engaging, high-quality content that incorporates the unique features of each platform, such as hashtags and rich media; and maximize your reach by adding followers and fans. Finally, learn how to measure the results of those efforts using analytics, and see how well your posts and tweets are performing. There are now over 900 million users on Facebook and 140 million tweets every day on Twitter. Social media has a plethora of uses, from branding to data capture, market research to customer service and sales. And there are SEO benefits too. Get it right and social media can deliver traffic, sales, brand awareness and more. Get it wrong, however, and you could suffer at the hands of a cynical web-savvy crowd.
Facebook can be useful for brands as it is possible to add brand pages and use Facebook apps for advertising and promotion. social media marketing Twitter is about to add brand pages too in conjunction with trending topic advertising and sponsored posts. Using these two platforms it is possible to build both a presence and a community.To succeed with social media you need to invest in great content that gets shared. Think about ways to capture the imagination of your audience.Aim to build relationships, identify advocates and make your social content easy to share.Social media can also make a business money. By driving traffic to your website via discounts or promotional offers, it’s possible to boost sales.Social media can help you retain happy customers. Recruiting new customers can be hugely expensive. So, using social media can be a cost effective way of making your business more profitable. Zappos com, a clothing website, is a big advocate of social media. The company uses it as part of their overall brand building and marketing strategy. It is important to be aware of how your business is perceived when you use social media. Authenticity and an appropriate tone can be critical for brands. If you get it wrong, it can backfire! McDonald's have made mistakes on Twitter with poorly thought out tweets, and received a barrage of negative tweets in return. It’s important to know why you’re using social media. Business owners should ask why they are doing it, and what are they trying to achieve. Once you’ve identified your goals you can build your campaigns around these solid fundamentals.Build on your company’s strengths. A long term plan for your social media has a greater chance of success.

Offer excellent customer service

Social media can help you retain happy customers. Recruiting new customers can be hugely expensive. social media marketing strategy So, using social media can be a cost effective way of making your business more profitable. Zappos com, a clothing website, is a big advocate of social media. The company uses it as part of their overall brand building and marketing strategy.Facebook can be useful for brands as it is possible to add brand pages and use Facebook apps for advertising and promotion. Twitter is about to add brand pages too in conjunction with trending topic advertising and sponsored posts. Using these two platforms it is possible to build both a presence and a community.To succeed with social media you need to invest in great content that gets shared. Think about ways to capture the imagination of your audience.Aim to build relationships, identify advocates and make your social content easy to share.Showing the same ad over and over again on Facebook can kill clickthrough rate. This can happen in a couple of weeks, days or even hours, so have backup ads ready to go. Use different images, offers and headlines.Think about whether ads need to run all the time or whether they can be day parted. Facebook has a basic scheduling system, though it can be clumsy.Use campaign budgets to cap exposure to your target groups. As a rule of thumb do not show people the same ads seven to eight times a day. Automation and scheduling tools are great for convenience. Tools can save time and social monitoring tools are crucial for brand awareness. However remember that none of these should be used as a replacement for human interaction.Ensure you have decided on your key performance indicators (KPIs) before you launch. The more you measure, the more you can spot trends.
Measure as much as is practical. Be aware that Google Analytics doesn’t measure Twitter traffic properly due to the short URLs often used in tweets. social media marketing plan It is possible, though, to set up tags in Google Analytics to solve this.Today Facebook has become the synonym of Social networking site, so Facebook marketing has come forward being boon for so many organizations. Marketing with Facebook helps in the campaigning of any product easily and intuitively. Business may grow rapidly if we take right decision on right time using Facebook Analytic Tools. At present many firms market business on Facebook as per a recent survey more than 900 million people on this social networking platform, constantly viewing, sharing, liking, commenting and suggesting ideas to one other and experts says the organizations with quality Facebook campaign may bear the palm. But it’s really hard nut to crack, thus you need proper guideline and good Facebook marketing services.For Facebook campaign you will have to be alert and active every time, because it needs regular update in contents, prevention of image fatigue, change of background colour, slight variation in images, and always engage users in something to respond. Thus Marketing with Facebook is considered as tough task, by many Facebook marketing company. But no need to worry, with Redrock Info Solutions you are now in safe hands, as we are equipped with so many social media marketing strategies and innovative Facebook Analytic Tools. You can avail our Facebook Marketing services anytime by giving us a call. For your Facebook campaigns call us anytime as we are available 24×7.

Think about public perception

It is important to be aware of how your business is perceived when you use social media. Authenticity and an appropriate tone can be critical for brands. social media marketing companies If you get it wrong, it can backfire! McDonald's have made mistakes on Twitter with poorly thought out tweets, and received a barrage of negative tweets in return.It’s important to know why you’re using social media. Business owners should ask why they are doing it, and what are they trying to achieve. Once you’ve identified your goals you can build your campaigns around these solid fundamentals.Build on your company’s strengths. A long term plan for your social media has a greater chance of success.Automation and scheduling tools are great for convenience. Tools can save time and social monitoring tools are crucial for brand awareness. However remember that none of these should be used as a replacement for human interaction.Ensure you have decided on your key performance indicators (KPIs) before you launch. The more you measure, the more you can spot trends. Measure as much as is practical. Be aware that Google Analytics doesn’t measure Twitter traffic properly due to the short URLs often used in tweets. It is possible, though, to set up tags in Google Analytics to solve this. Whatever you have read in the above mentioned Facebook Marketing article, if you wish to experience them, then must ask for our Facebook Marketing Services which may change how you are performing your business today. Use our Facebook Marketing services and leave all your marketing perplexity upon us.Facebook ads are similar to paid search in that Facebook runs an auction that is similar to Google’s AdWords, but remember there is no search word intent.
On Facebook you should aim to offer value to people. Always analyze the true value are you offering your fans, and consider whether you could do more. social media marketing services The image on your Facebook ads should really grab attention. Logos don’t tend to work as well as a relevant photo with ads, so select a suitable image of a person or hero shot because an image can help drive up to seven times as many likes .Use the features on Facebook to target your ads based on a user’s location, demographics, and interests.Showing the same ad over and over again on Facebook can kill clickthrough rate. This can happen in a couple of weeks, days or even hours, so have backup ads ready to go. Use different images, offers and headlines.Think about whether ads need to run all the time or whether they can be day parted. Facebook has a basic scheduling system, though it can be clumsy.Use campaign budgets to cap exposure to your target groups. As a rule of thumb do not show people the same ads seven to eight times a day.Generate thousands of relevant keywords to improve your organic and PPC search campaigns.Optimize your website content by using the most popular keywords for your product and services.Research online markets, find niche opportunities and exploit them before your competitors.Social media itself is a catch-all term for sites that may provide radically different social actions. For instance, Twitter is a social site designed to let people share short messages or “updates” with others. Facebook, in contrast is a full-blown social networking site that allows for sharing updates, photos, joining events and a variety of other activities.

Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media and marketing are two terms that are increasingly viewed as one and the same. In truth, while there is a certain segment of the user community that maintains their social media profiles purely for social reasons, how to get 1000 free instagram followers an increasing majority of users also see social media as useful advertising tool. If you are in the latter category, you can use these tips to craft a simple and effective social media marketing strategy for your business. Best of all, you will pay nothing (or next to nothing) for creating a very effective advertising strategy! Another great way to build a relationship is to extend an offer to cross-promote – you promote their brand to your audience and they promote your brand to their audience. You may also want to host a Google Hangout or Twitter Chat together to bring your audiences together and expand your reach jointly. The more you befriend other industry influencers the faster your own audience grows.This definitely seems counter-intuitive at first – after all, isn’t promotion the whole reason you are spending all this time on social media in the first place? Yes and no. You do want to be able to promote what you have to offer, but you want to do it in such a way that your community online doesn’t quite realize they have been promoted to until they are already purchasing what you offer.In all of this, it is vital to understand that you are your own best representative for your brand. Social media marketing is all about relationships. It is not about products and services. People buy from people, not companies, so your community will be buying from you, not from your company or your brand. The more people get to know you and what you stand for, the more they learn about your company and what it stands for as well.

Choose Your Social Media Platforms With Care

Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter regularly cull and deactivate accounts that have not been used within a period of time. This is done to keep their content relevant and fresh and also to keep their use statistics accurate. how do i get free instagram followers fast In the same way, you should choose which social media platforms you engage with carefully. Your business will not be helped – and may be harmed – by keeping a social media account open that you do not actually use.If you have limited time to spend on social media, choose just one or a few platforms to engage with. Facebook and Twitter still command the largest user databases, but Instagram, Pinterest and other image-oriented platforms are rapidly gaining ground. The key is to choose the very best social media platforms for your products and services.Sharing current content, trending content, newsworthy content, will mark you as a vital news source as well as a place to buy products or services. This will keep your community tuned in to your social media profiles for other reasons than just because they need a product or service your company offers.Did NASA discover another planet? Post about that! Did you just donate to help disaster relief victims? Retweet the donation link. Did your cute dog (or any cute dog) just win a noteworthy competition? For sure share that! Keep on top of the current news and events feeds and you may soon find you are being shared and re-posted and re-tweeted as well, with the effect of improving your brand awareness by default.With Facebook celebrating it’s 10th birthday yesterday we wanted to celebrate social networking and highlight some very simple ways to make the most of these highly trafficked, highly used and cost effective marketing arenas as well as highlighting some potential pitfalls businesses have and will fall into every now and then.

Seek to Create a Lively Online Community

Rather than viewing your followers and fans as wallets, you will have greater success in social media marketing when viewing them as your community. Interacting with them on a personal as well as professional level (where appropriate) can do more to increase brand awareness and loyalty than any number of special offers and discounts buy 100 instagram likes cheap although those are very helpful too!Here, the more you can do to make your content humorous, memorable, relevant and timely, the more success you will have in building an online audience that sticks to you like glue. Also, do your best to promote your fans’ content as well – retweeting, re-posting, liking and connecting with them about what matters to them most.You can use your social media platforms to share customer testimonials. Many customers would be just delighted to see their face and name and a short quote online! You could provide a form on your website and regular reminders over email and on your social media platforms for how to submit a testimonial that might get featured.Google Adwords, Facebook ads and other inexpensive, highly targeted advertising programs are tailor-made for even those with the most limited advertising and marketing budgets. So long as you know who you are trying to reach and where they are (in terms of location as well as which social media platforms they prefer) you can use these programs to your benefit. You can target very specifically to demographics including age, gender, area of the country, interests, status and more.If you notice that such-and-so has a huge following, this indicates a person of influence within your social media sphere. Not only can you friend or fan these folks, but you can actively seek them out and begin to build a relationship with them. One great way to bring yourself to their attention is to continually re-post or re-tweet their content.