Did Google Kill Social-Media Marketing

Google is putting out its Wildfire. The seemingly harmonious relationship between the search engine giant and the social software platform is has come to an end after a partnership that lasted about 20 months. social media marketing plan pdf As a part of Google, Wildfire’s aim was to help businesses improve their social media marketing efforts. Google’s interest and investment in Wildfire legitimized social media marketing in the eyes of many observers. Well, as the NFL has taught us, something being dropped is just as newsworthy as it being picked up. So what does Google dumping Wildfire mean for social media marketing? Is it dead? Has it devolved into simply throwing money at social networks for ads? I don’t think so. Google has its reasons for its loss of interest in Wildfire, but it should not signal marketers that content marketing campaigns are useless. In my opinion, ads are no good without a solid content basis behind them. That said, creative and integrated campaigns that drive consumers to social channels and encourage them to interact with brands are tough to pull off without some serious strategy behind them. An infographic that hits a home run with its data and presentation can deliver a tremendous amount of website traffic and exposure. This can happen when it is distributed correctly. Instead of just placing the infographic on your blog and hoping it catches on, define social media marketing reach out to websites that you feel might have an interest in the subject. The time and effort required to do infographic outreach is often rewarded with high-quality websites publishing the infographic. This results in natural links and targeted website visitors. If consumers become caught up with an infographic and then visit the website responsible for it, they may tend to have a genuine interest in the product or service being provided.

Connect campaigns to in-store promotions

If you’re a brick and mortar marketer, you have to start connecting social to what goes on inside your store. cost of social media marketing Use user-generated content as in-store ads to connect real people to your products. Promote hashtags in store, and encourage customers to Instagram photos with hashtags for chances to win a contest or be featured on a website. Get people involved in your brand’s social happenings before they even become online fans. Look for interactive infographics to become extremely popular this year. Animation is great way to capture the reader and visually tell a story. A great example is an infographic by NSF Health Sciences that uses simple graphics and animation to explain why hand washing is so important within the pharmaceutical industry. It does a great job of getting the point across in an easy to absorb visual manner. Infographics that incorporate an interactive element will become the new benchmark for infographic design.Unless you’re involved in politics, keep your views to yourself. Everyone has opinions, right? But most fans aren't following an Etsy shop for its views on Obamacare or a flower shop for its feelings on gun control. Strong opinions on divisive issues can be seen as off-topic and polarizing -- and could end up hurting business. You know that most businesses aren't successful overnight. So know that you won’t amass tons of followers as soon as you sign up. That said, do not buy followers. It’s misleading and these robots don’t interact with you. Everyone has bad days, but you don't need to take to Twitter to share yours. Of course this doesn’t mean you need to pretend everything is perfect either. social media marketing chicago There is definitely a balance…you’ll figure this one out! Important: Whatever you do, don't start or participate in a Twitter fight. Nothing good comes from that. One important thing to remember is that it is just Twitter. A good rule of thumb is to think before you tweet so you won't say something you'll regret later.

Tie a social campaign to TV advertising

I bet a thousand bucks you saw the brilliant Esurance hashtag commercial that aired just after the Super Bowl. social media marketing blogs Almost everyone did, and they tweeted. Not all brands have TV ad budgets, but for those that do, tying advertising into social campaigns is the future of social marketing. Let those budgets work together and stretch the reach of campaigns beyond a Facebook page. People have two screens now, if not more. Make the transition between social media and TV seamless on behalf of your brand. If you don't know what to tweet about, try looking at the calendar. For example, when it is St. Patrick's Day, tweet something green (like your green shoes or green beer). If it the anniversary of your storefront opening, offer a special discount code to fans. You reached 1,000 followers? Awesome! Thank your fans for your support - and they'll likely start tweeting about you. Check out what is trending that day. (If you're using your phone, “Trends” can be seen when you swipe left; on the web, you'll find them to the left of your feed.) Do you have anything to add to the conversation?If someone mentions you in a tweet, say "Thanks!" If someone you are following shares a useful article, tell them! That is how you get noticed. On the flip side, if someone doesn’t respond to you, don’t sweat it. Everyone is doing a million things these days. Tweets with photos are more likely to get retweeted which will then increase your brands exposure. Keep in mind that Twitter recently adjusted its presentation to give more exposure to photos. If you use other people's photos, social media marketing plansmake sure you credit them.Hashtags are useful for social campaigns or for following along at events like the Oscars or conferences. But use too many and you’re bound to look desperate. Tweets with a massive amount of hashtags look like an ad (or worse, spam!) and your followers will blow right past it. More hashtag tips here.

Your Sneak Peak at the Future of Infographic Marketing

Infographic marketing started off with a bang a few years ago and still remains a very popular way of delivering a message to a targeted audience. social media marketing Why did infographics become so popular and why does this form of media continue to be an effective content marketing vehicle? Like many mediums, if businesses want to make sure that people see their content, the best strategy is, and always has been, paid advertising," the spokesperson said. Of course, Facebook has never been completely free. Regardless of whether or not a company pays for visibility, someone has to run the account, even if that person is an intern. As with traditional advertising, paying for reach doesn’t mean users will "share" or like something either. The article, photo or video still has to strike a chord with the audience.The demise of organic reach could end up hurting the small businesses trying to make a name for themselves on what could very likely be a shoestring budget.It’s not all bad, though. Brands will have to be more selective in the content that they share and promote to make sure they get more engagement with their followers. As Ogilvy & Mather points out, the Facebook changes reinforce the need for businesses to explore all channels like Twitter, Pinterest, etc. instead of committing to a single medium.Facebook, meanwhile, is offering brands new (and free) ways to experiment with pages. This month, Facebook is rolling out what it calls a more "streamlined" look to the Pages. One fixture is the "Pages to Watch" feature in the Page Insights tool that allows administrators to create a list of other businesses and compare their performance to their own.Every day, marketing by social media millions of businesses are mentioned on the web. Of course, this will only grow in the years to come.My company, Mention, analyzed one billion instances where companies are referenced online from almost 200,000 alerts created by brands and businesses over the past two years.

Natural link building and website traffic

When a popular infographic is shared across social media, other websites may pick it up, resulting in natural link building. best social media marketing These are two things that are great for search engine optimization. Infographics also can drive highly targeted traffic back to a company's website.In order for marketers take full advantage of the power of infographics, they would be wise to initiate some changes. There are lots of platforms out there besides Wildfire. They may not have Google’s backing, but they work for designing, creating and managing social campaigns with specific goals. For example, you can use a hashtag to encourage user-generated content or run a Pinterest contest that drives traffic to your website. Apps help marketers set and reach goals, and many offer valuable data to evaluate and use as a basis for future campaigns. Offerpop is a great alternative, as its products run from the very specific (Hashtag Gallery) to the broad (referral campaign). Chose a platform that offers great customer service, aggregation tools, and data options. I cannot stress this point enough. Use data to power your ad purchases to make smarter decisions, even if you are an in-house social media coordinator at a small agency. Boosting a post for $20 isn’t going to help if you don’t know who to target that post to. Power campaign decisions based on the demographics, behaviors and habits of the people who interact with your brand online already. Start with Pinterest or Facebook’s own analytics tools, because they are free and easy to digest. Then you can move on to other tools such as Simply Measured or Socialbakers. It’s important to build social campaigns that drive audiences back to your website to interact with your products or offerings. For instance, JustFab.com encouraged fans to browse its product line and tweet their wish list link with the hashtag JustFabWish. For tweeting, fans got a chance to win their most-wanted style. social media marketing 2014 I’m willing to bet a good portion of those who entered also browsed the site and made a purchase they couldn’t wait to win. Do not fear the seeming decline of social media marketing. Brands still need to use social media in creative ways, and there are plenty of platforms, advice columns, and services out there to help marketers of all levels continue to do it.

Don’t just pump out infographic after infographic

s this genre has become more popular everyone has started to produce infographics, focusing more on the quantity instead of the quality. With so much free infographics-template software available, how to social media marketing companies began to throw any data together and call it an infographic.This quickly diluted the quality of the format. Facebook has been having conversations with clients over in recent months about what it calls the "declining organic distribution in News Feed," a spokesperson told Entrepreneur.com. Facebook says the reach of posts will vary, so it hasn't specified what an average page can expect to see.An infographic needs to tell a story visually in order to be successful and not just contain random data compiled together. One single amazing infographic can produce better results then a half dozen assembled without proper research and a well conceived-visual design. Focus on quality not the sheer number of infographics that you create. The Boston Consulting Group recently published a study: “How Millennials are Changing Marketing Forever.” The report detailed what they coined “the reciprocity principle” as they wrote, “Millennials expect a two-way, mutual relationship with companies and their brands.” As individuals become brands in-and-of themselves, the tables have turned, so the smartphone generation expects these brands that they consume to not just communicate at them but also with them.Here’s the best news for entrepreneurs: The two-way communication is far less expensive than traditional branding. The channels of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr, are all entirely free to use, and it is on these channels that this two-way communication occurs. how to start a social media marketing business The reciprocity principle requires not cash but authentic communication. Having a conversation with your community is free and when done right (that is to say done authentically), it converts mere customers into true brand ambassadors. And these brand ambassadors are powerful multipliers of your brand.

Why Brands Need to Shut Their Mouths and Open Their Ears

Traditionally, branding has been a one-way communication stream. Successful brands from Coca-Cola to Coco Chanel have spent huge sums of money creating ad campaigns of polar bears or models in exotic locales. social media marketing agency The aim of these campaigns was to dictate to audiences what was cool. And not so long ago (think Mad Men era) there were far fewer channels of communication. Everyone sat around reading one of a few newspapers or watching a handful of television stations. As a result, these expensive campaigns placed in one of these channels had guaranteed exposure. Today that kind of guarantee doesn't exist.The rise of the internet, and more importantly the ubiquity of the smartphone, has shattered this traditional system. The advertising playbook has expanded from television, radio and print to also include banner ads, mobile ads, Facebook and streaming content, just to name just a few. If it were just an expansion in the menu of options, traditional brand builders would be fine, as it would be just a matter of tailoring the same message to all these different formats. But that isn't the case.The impact of the smartphone has turned the consumer of brand building into their own brands: through every Instagram image she captures, message she sends through Twitter or post she pins on Pinterest, each individual creates a story, a brand about themselves to share with the outside world. What does this have to do with traditional brands? Everything.Another key clause to include in any endorsement agreement pertains to termination and suspension. social media marketing jobs Under what circumstances can you terminate or suspend your endorsement agreement with a particular celebrity? Most endorsement agreements include a ‘morals clause,’ which will allow you to terminate or suspend the agreement if the celebrity engages in conduct that is “criminal” or “morally reprehensible.” However, be sure to define criminal and morally reprehensible behavior. What you find morally reprehensible Lindsay Lohan may not.

Ask and you shall receive

We noticed that a customer posted a photo on Instagram of their latest Zady package with their dog, and requested that Zady carry sustainable products for their pets. We didn’t let this comment go unheard.what is social media marketing But we wanted to test the waters, so we re-grammed the picture on our Instagram feed and posted it to Twitter, asking our audience what other products they were interested in seeing us carry.Your company can do the same simply by asking, preferably with some visuals, what people want to see either on your site or with your product. Avoid vague terminology and aim to be as specific as possible. Clauses that contain amorphous wording are oftentimes unenforceable in a court of law. So when crafting your ‘morals clause,’ think about what values your company represents and what behaviors and actions are in direct opposition to those values. The last thing you want is for your bourgeoning company to be associated with a salacious scandal. Finally, always make sure your endorsement tweets are in compliance with federal rules and regulations. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose mission is to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive, deceptive or unfair to consumers, regulates the phrasing of endorsements on social media platforms. If a celebrity is compensated to advertise or promote a product or service, the FTC requires that the endorser disclose the nature of the endorsement.Disclosure must be clear and conspicuous and should be placed as close as possible to the claim they qualify. To ensure compliance, the FTC recommends endorsers use such hashtags as ad or sponsored in conjunction with endorsed tweets. social media marketing companies Stress the importance of these rules to your celebrity endorser.Facebook defines organic reach as “the number of unique people who saw your post in News Feed or on your page, including people who saw it from a story shared by a friend when they liked, commented on or shared your post, answered a question or responded to an event.”

Prior and future agreements

There are several warranties and assurances you will want your celebrity endorser to make in an endorsement agreement. Firstly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that his or her arrangements with you do not legally violate any previous agreements with other third parties or companies. social media marketing plan Secondly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that he or she will not enter into any subsequent agreements with other companies that are in direct competition with yours, at least for a certain period.The re-gram garnered an overwhelming response that folks wanted sustainable dog products.Everyone wants to have his opinion heard, and you will get responses to the question, but just make sure that each person feels heard. You can do this simply by liking their comments or reposting their comments on your company’s social accounts. We followed up to this query by searching for a stylish, long-lasting, locally and sustainably produced dog product. By the time we had the product up on our site and sent an email out alerting our customers of its arrival, our audience was so engaged that our first run of the pieces sold out within days.Of course, the key to the two-way conversation is the response. You have to make your company flexible to following what your community tells you.We see examples like this as not just good for sales in the short run, but more importantly they help build a sustained, long-term relationship with the customer. This helps convert customers into crusaders for your brand: All of that without spending a penny.In other words, organic is basically free marketing. social media marketing strategy But it looks like organic is dying a slow death.At a time when Facebook is rolling out a new look and controls for its Facebook pages, it is also making it harder for businesses to get their content seen for free. In February, organic reach hovered around 6 percent, about half of what it was in October of 2013, according to recent analysis by Ogilvy & Mather.

Social Media Tricks to Boost Your Business

Social media offers diverse benefits for business owners. The evolution of different social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn means that you need to be aware of general as well as channel-specific hacks to fulfill your social media marketing objectives. benefits of social media marketing Here are five social media hacks that will enable you to save time and gain wider exposure, more followers, higher conversion rates and better engagement.By the way, posting on their Facebook wall is almost equal to ignoring their birthday. Everyone is posting stuff on that person's Facebook wall. At a minimum, if you are going to post on someone's Facebook wall, put a photo or a video so at least it gets noticed among the flood of birthday wishes. Better yet, don’t post on their wall at all. Send a card or pick up the phone to offer a birthday wish. I use the SendOutCard system to organize a list of tons of important birthdays so that I can send out cards and gifts with literally no effort.In many ways, hashtags mirror the rise of search engines. But in other ways they are the next evolution of discovery and aggregation for a social media world that is much more interactive, participatory and flexible.Social media is maturing. And hashtags are becoming a critical tool in organizing, aggregating and harnessing the millions of social conversations streaming across multiple networks. Just like Google grew from a search engine to an advertising vehicle, hashtags are maturing into a valuable tool for brands to not only disseminate their marketing messages, but listen to, and converse with, social media marketing tools their consumers.With an average of 5,700 tweets per second, many tweets now contain celebrity endorsements similar to Messing’s. Celebrity endorsement tweets are an extremely cost-effective advertising mechanism for many entrepreneurs. However, before hiring a celebrity to endorse your product or company, there are several legal precautions to follow (both on and offline). It should go without saying that any arrangement entered into between you and a celebrity endorser should be in writing.

Social media is speaking a new language

And the language is one of images, videos and infographics. These types of media are generating excellent engagement numbers for businesses that have made it standard practice to employ them in a pertinent and creative manner. social media marketing tips Vine, the video sharing app for Twitter; Instagram; and Flipboard for iTunes are just some of the apps that enhance the appeal of your posts and make them stand out on your followers’ pages or timelines. Creative calls to action used with such media can help bridge the gap between entertainment, information and lead generation. Here are a few of the key legal clauses these written agreements should contain as well as other legal safeguards.There are several warranties and assurances you will want your celebrity endorser to make in an endorsement agreement. Firstly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that his or her arrangements with you do not legally violate any previous agreements with other third parties or companies. Secondly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that he or she will not enter into any subsequent agreements with other companies that are in direct competition with yours, at least for a certain period.Lastly, you may want your celebrity endorser to warrant that he or she will keep their social media platform active for a set amount of time. Celebrities can be fickle when it comes to social media profile up today and gone tomorrow. You want to be sure that the impact of their endorsement tweet resonates with followers longer than a few seconds. social media marketing world Another key clause to include in any endorsement agreement pertains to termination and suspension. Under what circumstances can you terminate or suspend your endorsement agreement with a particular celebrity? Most endorsement agreements include a ‘morals clause,’ which will allow you to terminate or suspend the agreement if the celebrity engages in conduct that is “criminal” or “morally reprehensible.” However, be sure to define criminal and morally reprehensible behavior. What you find morally reprehensible Lindsay Lohan may not.

Embrace change and be in the know

When a social media platform changes its guidelines, you have two options. You can take the change in stride and adaptDo not post negative stuff via social media. social media marketing plan template Do not complain. Do not share negative articles about your competition. If you choose to post about your political preferences, do so only with the knowledge that you are probably eliminating 50 percent of your followers as potential clients. Presumably, you want to grow a following for your business. To do so, you must have posts that are inclusionary. Therefore, don’t give people a reason to walk away from your business,. A person’s birthday is the most special day of the year, for that person. Ten years ago, collecting a database of birthdays would have been time-consuming and cumbersome.Today, you have this information at your fingertips. Don’t miss out an amazing opportunity to honor your customers, employees and sphere of influence on their birthdays. or give up. When you opt for the former approach, you give yourself an opportunity to occupy the space left vacant by those who gave up the fight. For example, a recent Facebook update prohibited informing contest winners of results through Facebook; this restriction has since been relaxed, however. Last month, LinkedIn introduced enhancements such as the ability to block profiles and unwanted messages. These have clear benefits for popular LinkedIn groups that have had to deal with a lot of spam until now. It pays to be in the know. While most social media hacks are little more than commonsense activities, social media marketing company the ones that may surprise you with their effectiveness are those that you come up with through observation and learning. Entrepreneurs can become busy and can easily forget to allow time each week for creative thinking. Do some strategic thinking on a regular basis and keep coming up with ways to extract better results from your social media marketing.

Stop Talking About Yourself So Much on Social Media and Listen

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Oh my! Now entrepreneurs have so many ways to reach out and talk to the world. Entrepreneurship is all about building a platform of loyal advocates who are excited about listening to your message and hopefully buying from you. social media marketing b2b That said, the five biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make on social media all come down to one important lesson: You talk too much (at least on social media). Stop talking and start listening and you will turn your use of social media into a lean, mean, money-making, advocate-building, client-relationship machine. Stop humanizing your brand" doesn't translate to "be stuffy and corporate." It just means you should consider the differences between humans and brands, and act with discretion."Humans bicker, brands shouldn't; humans behave frivolously, brands shouldn't," Joe Chernov, vice president of marketing for Kinvey, says in the book.Chernov goes on to say that humanizing a brand was good advice initially when brands acted too corporate on social media, but now, "I see brands sharing absurdist memes or making politically charged statements, and I realize it's time to reintroduce a measure of sobriety into our corporate feeds. It happens some customers aren't always happy with your product, website, what you wrote on the blog, the way you handled something, etc. But you shouldn't ignore them simply because the two of you don't see eye to eye."If we have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with one of our users, we will usually have a fan for life," said Ethan Austin, co-founder of GiveForward, social media marketing courses in the book. He admits that most of GiveForward's most loyal users were once complainers. "We treat every email, complaint, or inquiry about the site as an opportunity to inject humanity into the conversation and win over a customer," says Austin."Now, granted," Spark added, "if they respond back, 'You're a moron. Go away,' don't respond. But if it's a thoughtful response, obviously you respond.

Pivot from always using your lips not your ears

Most entrepreneurs use social media as their lips, not their ears. Instead of spending 30 minutes a day posting, spend that time scrolling through posts by friends, followers and potential clients to see what’s going on in their lives. social media marketing software When something awesome is happening in the life or business of one of your followers, act on it! Send a card or pick up the phone to acknowledge it. I spend 30 minutes a day scrolling through my social-media feeds to see what’s happening in everyone else’s lives. When I see anything at all, like a celebration or a challenge in their life, I consider this to be a prompt that I must act upon. If there is anything that the growth of Google has taught us, it is this: the internet highly values organization, aggregation and search. It’s still mind boggling that a simple search box and a back-end algorithm turned into one of the world’s most dominant companies, valued now at more than $395 billion.But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Before the search engine rush that resulted in Google's dominance, the internet was a scattered landscape of millions of pages that viewers had to hunt-and-peck through. After Google, through one simple search bar, every topic on the internet was at a person’s fingertips. This history is repeating itself in the social media universe. The amount of data that streams through social sites is breathtaking. Every minute, Facebook users share more than 685,000 pieces of content, Twitter users shoot out 100,000 Tweets, and YouTube subscribers upload 48 hours of video, according to Mashable data.Just like the early days of Google, social media marketing manager social media users, brands and marketers are still trying to make sense of this torrent of social media information. And just like Google’s simple search bar, one elegantly efficient solution is making that happen the hashtag. The simple pound sign is now used across social networks, making sense of a complex social media world fractured into multiple platforms and multiple media.

Too good for social media? Forget that

Surprisingly there are still individuals and companies that are resisting social media. Wow, these individuals and firms are missing out on a free opportunity to build a following. social media marketing strategies I’ve had conversations with business owners like this and the big reason they have resisted social media is because they personally hate social media. My advice to them is to get over it!I know lots of entrepreneurs who hate selling yet they realize that this activity is so fundamentally important to their business that they figure out a way to get good at it just as they should do with social media.To build a tribe, you must be accessible in a way that people can easily learn about you and your business. The easiest way to do this is through social media. There’s a good chance that your competition is eating it up on social media, and so should you! Using the hashtag, marketers can now aggregate social content and reach social users across Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram with a single campaign.It has also transformed the way that marketers tie social campaigns into their overall marketing strategy. Through a simple hashtag, brands can now collect, curate and aggregate user-generated content into cohesive social campaigns. And by putting a hashtag as a call-to-action in a traditional advertisement, social campaigns are now taking a central role in how brands execute and follow up on traditional advertising.Super Bowl advertising was perhaps the most visible example of this growing hashtag phenomenon. More than half of the ads used hashtags, using social media for marketing and brands including RadioShack used hashtags such as InWithTheNew to drive awareness about monumental business decisions a modernization and re-structuring of the company that will define the future of the electronics retailer.The integration of a central hashtag in the campaign that announced a major new direction for the company caused Advertising Age, in a column following the Super Bowl, announce, “In Shocking Upset, RadioShack Wins the Super Bowl.

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.

Want to Gain Influence on Social Media? Get to Work

How do you build, grow and nurture an online community? Over the past several years, I have worked hard to build and grow vibrant and interactive communities on social channels including Twitter, social media marketing definition Facebook, Instagram and Google+. Building a following takes time and effort, and there are no shortcuts. As someone with more than 377,000 Twitter followers (all organic), people often ask me how they can succeed in social media. My simple answer is that you get out of it what you put into it. The more effort you put in, the greater ROI you will receive. Unfortunately, people aren't always happy with that answer. Too often, people look for instant results. But creating and building online communities simply doesn’t work that way: It's a long road. The key is to create compelling content that resonates with your community, then create interactions around that content to build your audience. Video watchers are especially engaged and are more receptive to links within video descriptions, the study says. YouTube produced the lowest average bounce rate (about 43 percent), the highest pages per visit (2.99) and the longest visit duration (just under four minutes) the study reports. Viewers are used to spending a lot of time watching video, so what’s one more click to them? While Google+ and LinkedIn don’t rake in the social referrals, the ones they do get are solid. Google+ users on average spend more than three minutes clicking things shared by their connections and bounce about 50 percent of the time. LinkedIn users normally spend more than two minutes on each link.The time you spent crafting the perfect tweet and Facebook post amount to similar bounce rates (56 percent), social media marketing packages pages per visit (just over two), and time on site (two minutes). Remember to have fun with your audience. Think of your social channels as television stations. Keep it fun, positive and engaging, so your audience will enjoy tuning in. To stay relevant on multiple social channels, you need to consistently create entertaining and valuable content.

Seize opportunities to build your brand

Be smart in spotting opportunities to build your brand. Be generous: If all you do is take, people will stop responding to your emails. Instead, establish partnerships with other key influencers in your niche.social media marketing consultant Serve as a trusted curator and provide your growing audience with high-quality content that aligns with their interests and passions. (Of course, you must first get to know their interests and passions through interacting with them online.) This will build your thought leadership and authenticity with your community and will help build your brand. Although lists are often purely subjective, if you are fortunate enough to be included on a list of top social-media influencers published by a well-known personality or media outlet, view it as a positive development. Besides someone else declaring that you are influential, this will be seen as validation of your skills and leadership by your community. Achieving sufficient prominence on social media to be top of mind for such lists also takes hard work, dedication and focus: People can’t list you if they’ve never heard of you or seen your posts.If you are not already doing so, follow them on their social networks. Reach out and say hello. Take the opportunity to establish new contacts and relationships. You never know where the serendipity of social media might take you.As you build your online network, opportunities will materialize. Act on the right opportunities the ones that will pay off in terms of brand recognition, money or some other benefit. Then set yourself to the task of achieving the desired results. For instance, if your dream client wants you to drum up mentions on Instagram, take and share eye-catching photos. Write pithy captions. social media marketing certification Reply to people’s comments. Share your Instagram photos for the brand across your other social channels to help the campaign gain traction.Build a vibrant community. Success on social media happens when you create meaningful relationships with others and maintain a consistent focus on building your brand. Gaining a following on social media takes a lot of work and, as with most things worth doing, there are NO shortcuts.

Learn to work with others

There’s always something new you can learn. Keep an open mind. Think in terms of abundance and friendly competition, rather than being territorial or defensive. marketing through social media Support other blogs, and look for opportunities to collaborate with others. Select partners wisely, and you will build a powerful team. The social-media universe is practically infinite: There’s room for everyone to succeed.Pursue complementary partnerships and relationships. Find people who exude positive energy. Whiners and complainers are rarely doers!We all have different strengths, voices and perspectives and that diversity is key in building powerful and supportive communities. Treat people as allies, not assets, and your community will grow. Years ago a business would take out a print ad, release a commercial on radio or TV and send out mailers. The business would deploy its message and hope that it crossed paths with consumers interested in the firm’s products or services.Fast-forward to today, and the internet has given consumers control of what they see. Just as quickly as they can locate what they are searching for online, they can figure out how to avoid what they don’t wish to view, including advertisements.Direct traditional advertising is not completely 6 feet under the ground, but the hole is now being dug. These days it is far too easy for consumers to avoid advertising and they can spot it a mile away. Consumers are much more savvy when it comes to detecting pitches or plugs than their counterparts were years ago. This is going to be a pretty controversial one, I know," Spark admitted. He also acknowledged that for everything the book tells people to stop doing, he knows there are still good reasons to do them.That said, Spark explained why stories are not always necessary: "There are many brands and products out there for which we do not need to know their story. And yet I'm a very, very happy consumer. social media marketing network People consume products and buy products all the time not knowing--never knowing--the story."Lisa Barone, vice president of strategy at Overit, puts it this way in the book: "Don't assume all your customers want to be tied into your every action or that they care about you. Some just want your news, or your offers, or, more likely, your discounts to your products.

Yes, You Can Kick-Start Your Own SEO Campaign

Search engine optimization can be a confusing and frustrating topic for an entrepreneur. He or she probably knows that SEO contributes to online success but may not always understand what it entails or how to best approach it. social media marketing degree Consumers turn to search engines when they look for products and services online, so positioning your website so it can land higher in search results can prove beneficial. Search engine optimization involves improving elements on your website's pages as well as increasing the number of inbound links (from other sites) to raise its ranking in nonpaid search results. A new business can be inundated by offers from SEO agencies from every corner of the world, all promising the same outcome: top rankings in search results. Some digital agencies will quote five-figure monthly retainers. Or overseas companies will promise the world for a monthly stipend of a few hundred dollars a month. But overpaying for a service that doesn’t deliver on its promises can quickly deplete a marketing budget; selecting a poor service can result in a website's penalization by Google. The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is contract for a low-quality SEO service in an effort to save money. The cost of cleaning up the mess created can surpass the steep fee for hiring a more experienced agency at the outset.If your business doesn't have the budget to hire a SEO agency, then take a deep breath, grab the SEO reins and follow these tips to handle your search engine optimization process internally for a while. Once people start talking about you, the best way to continue growing is to detect these mentions and to reply to every one of them. By doing so, it fosters a lot of motivation for them to talk and mention even more about you, creating a network of trusted brand advocates. social media marketing campaign By having alerts based on keywords like the name of your company, your products or your competitors mention allows you to stay in the know and react in seconds by connecting your social accounts directly to the app.With these five tools, you’ll find yourself developing and maintaining a clear brand voice in no time. And it’s then that you’ll start to see your online presence heating up.

Optimize on the page level first

Many businesses forget one of the most important elements of search engine optimization: focusing on the text within a page of a business website. marketing on social media Not only should your business website have a blog that's updated regularly, you can assign posts to staffers that hit the keywords you're trying to target for SEO. Have one employee manage the blog and delegate writing assignments throughout the company. This involves making sure that website elements are properly optimized to make a given page worthy of a high ranking on a search engine's results for a desired keyword.Besides cutting her chops in the world of marketing, Lord has been an entrepreneur herself, as she is the founder of ISITaYES, a social-shopping app. This experience has allowed Lord to know the inside workings of startup life, a world that isn't as sexy as many perceive it to be.When I talk in front of newly minted co-founders or startup teams I like to point out how hard it’s going to be. I like to throw at them all of the things that went wrong and all the lessons I learned the hard way," says Lord. "I like to remind them it's not about the exit, that they probably won't have a salary for a while, and they just entered a relationship with their desk. Then I like to point out I’m sharing all of this with a big smile on my face because I couldn’t be happier.For this month only, Lord is looking forward to answering your questions pertaining to the world of branding and marketing. Her expertise runs the gamut, so feel free to include queries about growth marketing, analytics, community marketing, consumer engagement and how startups can build a brand. Submit your questions in the comments section below or tweet us, using the hashtag ENTexpert. social media marketing plan sample One topic will be selected by the editors of Entrepreneur and addressed by Lord in a weekly write up here. While the quality of YouTube comments can be questionable, YouTube drives the most engaged traffic, according to a new study from Boston-based content-sharing Shareaholic. Meaning, YouTube users can be some of the most desirable customers a brand can have.

Curate a social media presence

A website that has its content shared across social media will attract social signals (tweets, "likes" and shares) and also receive visits from various social media channels, small business social media marketingwhich will contribute to its ranking by search engines. A business needs a social media footprint from its birth, and while you might not be able to afford a full-time social media manager or agency, that doesn’t mean the company's social presence should be neglected. One startup I know would designate a single employee to be the “social king” for the day. (Yes, the staffer wore a crown.) That person would be responsible for running all the social accounts. This included posting the new daily blog posts across the company's various social profiles, interacting with followers and handling any customer-support inquiries arriving via social media. The company had only a shoestring budget to begin with but got creative and made things work.Look for guest blogging opportunities. Guest blogging on industry-related sites that receive a lot of traffic is great for brand exposure but can also result in other sites' taking notice of your company and linking back to your site. This is a type of natural link building that Google loves when ranking websites.Seek out industry blogs with the potential to provide your business some exposure and traffic and then offer them guest posts. The tasks can be spread out thoughout your company at first. Have a contest that rewards the employee who lands the most guest posts and reward the staffer who creates the guest post driving the most traffic to your site. This kind of competition can produce great results while building camaraderie, which is very important for a new business.It’s ok to ask people to share. But the simpler it is, the more people you’ll get to do so. social media in marketing By giving out a simple, pre-composed click-to-tweet URL for your audience to tweet in seconds, you’ll find that your potential for virality is drastically increased.Later on, when your business becomes more successful, then you'll be able to bring on full-time content marketers or hire an agency to handle the creation and distribution of such content.

Tools For Entrepreneurs to Grow Their Online Presence in No Time

Growing your online presence is no easy job Content sharing is one of the easiest way to grow and nurture your community. Yet, with more and more social platforms popping up online, social media marketing conference content sharing can be time consuming, as each has its own style and messaging. Enter Buffer. This tool is a great way to streamline your posting and schedule on multiple platforms, making sure you’re talking to everyone where it counts. Plus, it’s a great way to keep your communications going on the weekend, a time when many users are interested in sharing online content. especially for small and midsize business that are often lacking the brand awareness and resources of their much larger counterparts. Fortunately, now, more than ever there are a plethora of tools to help newly-minted entrepreneurs build their brand quickly and cheaply. This is what I like to call "winging" social media. Your company has a presence on many social media platforms, but instead of approaching it with a strategy, you're throwing content up there and hoping it will stick. While it's great that you're building a presence on social media and probably gaining some followers what you should be aiming for is engagement and winging it likely isn't doing it for you. Because you'll get down in the trenches with day-to-day social-media posts, you'll want to make sure to have an overarching plan to guide your everyday efforts. This can be as simple as writing down your goals, figuring out what content you'll share to achieve those goals and setting up a social media calendar to make sure you're posting consistently. It's great to sing your own praises but no one likes a bragger. social media marketing service Make sure your posts don't only include information about your offerings or news from within your company. I like to think of it as a rule of the thirds: one-third of the time, it's ok to talk bout your company. But the other two-thirds should be focused on sharing outside articles, engaging with your audience, asking questions and sharing other words of wisdom.

LaunchCrew to launch campaigns

When launch day comes, startups need to get the word out to as many people to have the most impact and increase the probability of being heard in crowded industries. Often this entails getting your current followers to share with their friends, family and connections. LaunchCrew will help you do just that. social media marketing campaigns It lets you cast a much wider net, practically doubling or tripling your impact. But how? By asking your audience for their credentials to be able to post on their behalf on the day of your launch. Or for any major campaign. You’ll get that initial boost you’ve always dreamed of the one you really need these days to break out of the pack from the very start. One of the trickiest parts of social media and marketing is figuring out what your voice sounds like. This can make or break your marketing. So you'll want to figure out what persona you need to be channeling to attract and retain your audience.DiGiorno Pizza is an example of a company that rocks their voice. They realized that they needed to be channeling a couch potato a mid-20's guy who would rely on a good frozen pizza while watching the game. Then, they took it a step further and added a layer of cynical snarkiness that helped propel them into Twitter stardom. Once you get going in the right direction, make sure to track your efforts. Are you gaining followers? Which of your posts are getting engagement? Doing so will help you not only understand if what you're doing on social is getting attention, but you'll also find the likes and preferences of your audience, so you can constantly rework your plan and gear it towards those likes. If you need an analytics tool, I suggest using SumAll.Social media success doesn't just happen overnight. In fact, it can take months or years to see a huge, active audience. social media marketing resume But if you do things right, you'll start seeing engagement right away in the form of one like or one comment. Revel in these small successes and stick to your plan. Before you know it, you'll start getting referrals, new clients or recognition through social media and then you'll wonder why you ever doubted it.

Unbounce to create landing pages

Landing pages are now a must-have design choice to boost your online special operations. By customizing these towards a targeted audience, along with specific and relatable calls to action, it makes them way more efficient at achieving higher click-through rates. social media marketing strategy template Unbounce allows you to create landing pages incredibly fast, with no technical skills required, making it easy not only to build but also to A/B test and implement the best results.Twitter is going all in on its effort to make things more visual, but that doesn't mean feeds are getting packed with photos. At least not yet.In the first week since Twitter gave users of its mobile app the ability to include up to four photos in a single tweet, a number of brands have experimented, but the single-photo option still appears to dominate. The feature is still new and could catch on with time, but brands might be slow to adapt because it's not yet available on Twitter's web platform.This could all change rather quickly if Twitter adjusts its website interface to allow for multiple photos in post. Twitter also launched the ability to tag photos. As of now, a tag only links to a user’s profile and all tagged photos are not kept in a single place.Thank goodness for Joanna Lord. As the chief marketing officer at BigDoor, a Seattle-based startup focused on branding and loyalty programs for big brands like Pepsi, Starbucks and Microsoft, she knows a thing or two about the world of marketing -- and she is looking to help newly-minted founders."Entrepreneurs have an exciting time ahead of them," she says. "There are some brilliant brands out there doing remarkable things, and the opportunities open to this next generation of big thinkers are huge. I’d love to help them in anyway I can."Prior to her CMO role at BigDoor, Lord was the VP of growth marketing at inbound-marketing and SEO software company Moz, social media marketing los angeles where she managed acquisitions, retention and brand marketing. Throughout the years, she has taken her marketing skills outside the business confines by mentoring at both TechStars and Founders Institute, while also teaching students at the University of Washington and making her way on the speakers' circuit, discussing an array of relevant topics.

Memorable Ways to Launch a Product to Wow Customers

Marketing to consumers offers a brilliant challenge: You know you have an amazing product. And if only you could get people to try it, they would love it, social media marketing articles you think.What many marketers don't understand is that the way you furnish a product to consumers is super important for their initial hands-on experience. When done in an innovative and unexpected fashion, it provides context, builds equity and communicates value. People are busy. They have full schedules, plus a range of "screens" continually competing for their attention. If you want to capture a piece of their time, you need to be clever and engaging. For instance, Coca-Cola's Happiness Machine and Honest Tea's Honest Cities campaign stopped consumers in their tracks to sample products and fueled a wave of social-media chatter with videos that went viral.Uber showed consumers how easy its app was to use by creating a series of campaigns in which people ordered (and had to sign up to do so) something fun to be delivered to the office. Uber's ice cream truck went global and a subsequent campaign, Uber Kitten, delivered kittens to offices in Seattle, San Francisco and New York in honor of National Cat Day, raising funds for the SPCA. We are known by the company we keep. A company can communicate volumes about a new brand or a refreshing of an old one simply by associating it with brands that already have equity with the targeted audience. To introduce Lincoln's new MKZ to a target of discerning tastemakers in L.A. (a notoriously jaded market when it comes to cars), we created an exclusive event series structured around the brand's pillars of design, architecture, social media marketing experts food, photography and fashion.We leveraged influencers in each segment to create engaging content and invite their networks, seamlessly integrating the car into the experience. A concierge service offering test drives at homes and offices the following week gave attendees an opportunity to learn more about the car and engage more deeply with the brand on their terms.

Enlist the friend-to-friend network

According to Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Survey in 2012, 92 percent of respondents in 56 different countries said they trusted word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of communication. social media marketing blog An introduction to a new brand from a trusted friend is incredibly powerful and can significantly compress the time from awareness of a product to its trial and then adoption. This is also true when a product is related to a sensitive topic, such as family health. To introduce German-based Bionorica’s Sinupret for Kids Syrup in the U.S., one of the key tactics of our multi-pronged campaign was to engage influencer moms in key markets and provide them tools to share their discovery with friends. This resulted in more than 135,000 passionate advocates who further spread the word.So, in closing, let’s go over this one more time, corporate social media managers everywhere. Here’s a word of caution: Yes, trending on Twitter is a generally good thing, especially if you’re a corporate marketer. No, trending on Twitter for pornographic shocker brand tweets like this one is not a good thing, again, especially if you’re a corporate marketer.Please slow down. Please pay closer attention. Please handle your brand with care. Please think before you tweet. Your job depends on it and a whole lot more.Tweets with photos are more likely to get retweeted which will then increase your brands exposure. Keep in mind that Twitter recently adjusted its presentation to give more exposure to photos. If you use other people's photos, make sure you credit them. If someone mentions you in a tweet, say "Thanks!" If someone you are following shares a useful article, tell them! That is how you get noticed. On the flip side, if someone doesn’t respond to you, don’t sweat it. social media marketing pricing Everyone is doing a million things these days. Everyone has bad days, but you don't need to take to Twitter to share yours. Of course this doesn’t mean you need to pretend everything is perfect either. There is definitely a balance…you’ll figure this one out! Important: Whatever you do, don't start or participate in a Twitter fight. Nothing good comes from that.

This is the new world of advertising

Traditional radio commercials were zapped by satellite radio. Television ads were nuked when digital video recorders careened on scene. And now, even digital recorders are being outrun by instant streaming. social media as a marketing tool Mute buttons, spam filters, pop-up blockers all are ways audiences keep slipping through marketer’s fingers.What if people actually wanted to engage with your brand? What if, instead of ducking behind junk settings and filters, people actually pushed a button of their own free will to watch your brand in action? Snapchat introduces a groundbreaking forum, one where people are interested in what you have to say and offer. Remember when YouTube grew in popularity and politicians began to realize the simpler, less professionally-staged videos were ranking better with audiences than pristinely polished ones? Savvy marketers are realizing the same is true of Snapchat. The app is supposed to be less-than-perfect, and that’s why people love it. The bonus for businesses is that you have the chance to kick your shoes off at the edge of the dance floor and have a little fun.If you hadn’t heard of Snapchat before Facebook’s stunning $3 billion offer (or before you started reading this article), you’re not alone. That’s part of what adds to the inherent allure of the app. The number of users is growing exponentially, but it’s still new enough to make those who use it “in the know.”The Snapchat frontier is still wide open for adaptive marketers who are ready to start exploring. Those who hit the ground running will have the biggest impact, plus the chance to define the ways marketers will use an emerging genre. Can anyone say, “Innovator Award”?If you don't know what to tweet about, try looking at the calendar. effective social media marketing For example, when it is St. Patrick's Day, tweet something green (like your green shoes or green beer). If it the anniversary of your storefront opening, offer a special discount code to fans. You reached 1,000 followers? Awesome! Thank your fans for your support - and they'll likely start tweeting about you. Check out what is trending that day. (If you're using your phone, “Trends” can be seen when you swipe left; on the web, you'll find them to the left of your feed.) Do you have anything to add to the conversation?

Many Reasons Every Business Should be on Snapchat

Snapchat is the newest social tool that lets you share photos and video, or “snaps,” with the bonus of adding drawings or captions to whatever you record. Here’s the catch: Snaps disappear after a few seconds, marketing using social media and the sender gets to choose how many seconds messages will be visible before they self-destruct. The concept basically blends photo and video texting with the age-old tradition of sending notes with disappearing ink. What’s the appeal? Less pressure to be perfect than on other platforms such as Facebook, where content is more permanent. It’s a simple way to share simple things, and in a world where every social media lover has to become their own personal public relations guru, Snapchat offers a stress-free way to say whatever. Here are five reasons your business should utilize the app. Do you ever feel like Facebook is dominated by baby photos, potty-training updates and moms creeping on their children’s pages?Well, you’re not crazy.Twenty-seven million U.S. mothers are on Facebook, with 79 percent of them visiting just about every day, reports Facebook. Moms are also the most engaged and connected people on Facebook, posting 1.4 times more comments and 1.3 times more updates than other U.S. women over 18. Vice President Joe Biden, who currently follows only the White House and First Lady Michelle Obama, currently has over 12,000 followers after joining the social-networking site earlier today. So far, the VP has posted two photos. The first is an almost perfect Instagram shot: Joe is blurred out in the distance, thoughtfully reading, with his Ray-Ban aviators taking center stage. The second is a snap of him exiting a helicopter in Pennsylvania.By now you’ve probably heard about US Airways’ gross, social media marketing applications jaw-dropping (and, ahem, “toy” airplane-centric) porno pic tweet gasped about across the globe yesterday. If you haven’t, it’s scrubbed clean from Twitter now, thank goodness.Thanks to the unforgiving foreverness of the interwebs, you can Google screenshots taken of the offensive image, but we don’t suggest you do, especially if you’re at work and you value your job.

People use it, and they’re going to keep using it

Snapchat first caught on among high schoolers, but now college students have checked in to the craze. The app, designed by Stanford students Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy as part of a class project, launched in Apple’s app store in September 2011. By October 2012, search and social media marketing the company tallied its billionth snap. The company is estimated to have more than 30 million users as of December 2013, although they’re coy about sharing the actual number.Scoffers might wrinkle their noses and shrug Snapchat off as another passing phase. But skeptics were momentarily silenced in November 2013 when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg offered the infant startup $3 billion in cash and was promptly turned down. Whether you’re keyed in to Snapchat or not, Facebook knows Snapchat’s hot, but Snapchat knows it’s even hotter.If you thought having your own dedicated social media account rep was only for the “big guys,” think again. $99Social was created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. It understands you need the coverage and the help to get your successful social media campaign off the ground and on a budget (as you may have guessed, at $99 a month). You fill out a pre-questionnaire so your account rep can get to know your business and needs, then they help create a meaningful social media presence for you. That plan includes daily postings, responses to social media comments and even spam removal on your branded Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts. There’s no contract, no hidden fees and no price increases. It’s straight up $99 and provides a tremendous value for the cost. Yeah, it was that bad. A public relations train wreck easily a thousand times worse than Target’s recent “thigh gap” shame spiral. When we heard about the beyond NSFW tweet and then, yes, social media marketing agencies rushed over to US Airways’ Twitter feed and got an eyeful of it (then slammed our Macbook shut, lest anyone should see) we thought it was all a sick joke. A disgruntled employee must have hijacked US Airways’ Twitter account, right? Maybe hackers had more than a little fun with it.Not so. Turns out the worst branded tweet of all time was an inside job, one that we hope wasn’t intended, an epic accident.

You’ve already built the audience on other social platforms

Snapchat is part social hybrid and part revolutionary, but adding it as a marketing platform doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. After all, what about all those Facebook fans and Twitter followers you worked so hard to collect? importance of social media marketing Does Snapchat mean those metrics have an expiration date? Not at all. Existing social platforms can remain healthy even as they drive fans and followers to explore a new sharing tool with you.Incentivize your audience to join you on Snapchat and you’ll not only gain an instant audience on an emerging platform, you’ll find a whole new way to interest them. Offer mobile coupons, the chance to take a sneak peek behind the scenes, and the promise to deliver hot brand news to Snapchatters before anyone else, and fans will follow. It all started when a customer took to Twitter yesterday to complain to US Airways about, but of course, flight delays. US Airways responded with the standard apologies. After all, the airline doesn’t like flight delays either, it said. The customer responded by expressing yet more dissatisfaction and frustration. Then US Airways inexplicably fired back with the shocking image, which stayed live online for around an hour. Yeah, that long. Long enough for kids to bump into it.How the seriously nasty image was irresponsibly left to litter Twitter for so long has us questioning the entire corporate communications team at US Airways. Then there was the outpouring of rude, downright tasteless tweets essentially saying that the lewd image was proof that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane had been found after all. Wrong on so many levels and a massive PR disaster on top of an already massive PR disaster . learn social media marketing There was also no shortage of hilarious reaction tweets, 38 “priceless” gems of which were lovingly listed by Mashable (warning, some of them aren’t safe for work either). Imagine how much of a blast Saturday Night Live is going to have with this giant fail over the weekend. And an hour is also about how long it took for US Airways to issue an apology tweet.

Social Media Marketing Plans for Every Startup Budget

A solid marketing plan is key for any successful entrepreneur’s product, business and service. One great and cost-effective strategy for getting the word out is to utilize social-media marketing. atlanta social media marketing While there still needs to be a plan, objective and follow-through applied to this branch of your marketing plan, you can achieve some great results on a shoestring budget if you know where to look. As social media is becoming more engrained in our everyday lives, it is becoming imperative for businesses to get on board. And Twitter is huge for companies, as it provides a place to share news, engage with loyal customers and attract new ones. But it isn't easy.While some opt for quick fixes, like buying followers (something I have never done), I don't see the point in these sketchy tactics. It may offer short-term spike, but it doesn't provide the kind of engagement that organic followers do.Here are a few very simple ways to grow your following (along with the process of what I do on Twitter) that you could also implement on your other social channels.Follow people that retweet or favorite your tweets, especially when they take the time to read articles you've written and share a comment with you. Also take the opportunity to engage when possible. The more you reach out, the more folks will return and reciprocate by following or making comments. You can apply this across all your social networks.When I joined the social media movement in March of 2009, I was just an observer for the first six months. But by remaining consistent and sticking with daily-following methods, my account began to grow. Now with more than 380,000 followers, hotel social media marketing people often ask me for advice on growing a following on Twitter.Follow new people every day even if you can only afford a few minutes on each network. I usually do this on my phone while I am waiting on someone. People say quality over quantity? True, however, I would rather have both to maximize your reach. You must continue to build your community whether online or offline.I've met many of my community contacts from my tweets or share.

Do-It-Yourself Budget

Hootsuite. If you really are strapped for cash, don’t stay out of the social media game just because of a liquid capital shortage. Hootsuite is one of the most widely-used platforms for managing social media.disadvantages of social media marketing Schedule posts between your web content and social outlets, or schedule specific messages to each outlet at specified times. Hootsuite is kind of like the Lowe’s or Home Depot of social-media marketing it puts the power to do things in your hands. There is a completely free option that gives you the Hootsuite basics, or for just $11 a month you can get the pro version that gives you all the bells and whistles you need to effectively set up and manage a social campaign. This route takes a bit more of an investment in time and self-sufficiency than others, but at a cost so low, it’s a great approach for the truly bootstrapping startup. Although I have many followers to focus and respond to, I make my rounds every day to retweet at least one new person a day. This sometimes will give you a fan for life. You can apply this same exact method to grow your following and community on any of your networks. I love Instagram, I spent a month focusing on following, in no time my social media presence grew there very quickly. That said, you must be consistent in harvesting your following and engaging with others on a daily basis.Keep your eyes open for those who retweet you often or share your blog. Favorite a tweet to let the individual know you see them. At a later point in time, perhaps return the favor as time permits. How does this help with your following? The more people see that you appreciate their efforts, they will more likely retweet you whenever online. facebook social media marketing The more visible your brand or Twitter handle lands on other pages, the more likely you will generate more organic following.Tweet relevant and high quality content. People will regularly visit your page to share your tweets. When people are excited to pass along your message, additional branding and visibility to your account.

Business Is Blowing-Up Budget

Hubspot is a great place to start for any entrepreneur looking to develop a social-media and inbound marketing plan. It offers tons of great advice, case studies and free reports that can help you get started on your marketing strategy. social media marketing university review If you want to work with Hubspot, don’t be intimidated. Yes, it has a big price point for large businesses, but there’s still an entry point for the up-and-comers, too. Its basic plans start at $200 a month and are a great jumping off point for the entrepreneur whose business is starting to blow up and needs more out of their marketing plan than they can manage alone. Take it offline. These days, people share their love of food, nature and other passions. For instance, if you are passionate about photography, organize a photo walk. When you take social media offline, people will share photos of you along with your Twitter handle to their audience, in turn you will get more followers. This is a great way to start a conversation online and offline. Twitter is a great place to show off your talents, especially writing and photography. If you are a writer with informative, pertinent content, put it on Twitter. Same goes for amazing photos. People will share your articles or images and this will give you visibility to more admirers.Reach out to other thought leaders and feature 10 people on your blog. They will be happy to share your content to their readers and this will also grow your readers as well as followers.Do not put all your eggs in one basket. With this last point, apply these ten tips in other social channels where the methods may fit to grow your network. los angeles social media marketing Technology changes very rapidly, it's smart to keep a pulse on the current social world.I hope that these ten points will help you grow your brand. Remember the more seeds you plant, the larger the harvest. An hour a day focusing on following will give you a robust community. Please leave me a comment, question or suggestion.

The Best Tools for Understanding Your Social-Media Accounts

So much data. Over the past few years there have been analytics tools popping up all over the place, and frankly, it can be incredibly overwhelming for marketers. social media marketing course Over the years I’ve grown to leverage a number of them on a daily or weekly basis to keep an eye on how different campaigns and channels are performing.Google Analytics. While other analytics tools and apps have come and gone, I still use Google Analytics at the core of my reporting. They announced a week ago that Universal Analytics, or Google Analytcs for all devices, is out of beta, and I think this is a huge step in the right direction. They have been moving toward user-centric reporting and visualizations, which is where marketers need to be putting their efforts. It’s a match made in heaven.If you are looking to learn about the latest ways to leverage Google Analytics, check out Justin Cutroni’s blog. He is an analytics advocate for Google and is honestly pushing analytics in the right direction. I’m a big fan of what this inbound-marketing software company has done to show visibility at the top of the funnel for marketers. The app is amazing, and it allows me to keep a pulse on things over the weekend and out of the office as well. HubSpot does full funnel reporting amazingly well, so their data has become integral to how we report on the state of marketing and sales. They are also building out fast. It will be exciting to see what other views and reports they introduce in the year to come.Getting the data is only half the battle. Once you have it, it needs to tell a story. social marketing media Tableau helps you visualize the data effectively. It makes the analytics approachable. First of all, the content you create must provide your customers with some real tangible value. Entertainment (a good cry or a hearty laugh), new information (an “aha” moment, if you will), or a different perspective ("never thought about it that way") whatever the value, your content must do something.

Native social-platform analytics

It’s worth mentioning that the social platforms themselves are working and improving their analytics. social media marketing pdf While their paid advertising options tend to offer the best insights, I often leverage the native analytics for Twitter, Facebook (insights) and LinkedIn. I am hoping they continue to invest there.To hit maximum productivity during the day you need to be getting good sleep. That means something different to everyone. SleepCycle has helped me assure that I am getting “good”sleep so I am ready to tackle the day. Basically if there is an app out there that helps me track my health I have it on my phone and use it. It’s really easy to neglect that part of our life, but just like I optimize my marketing campaigns I want to be optimizing my health and energy levels. These apps have analytics to keep me eating healthy, staying hydrated and getting those endorphins. Your content should also be in a format that’s easy to pass along. If it’s too unwieldy or cumbersome to forward, then it won’t be shared. Make it a piece of cake to share, and your customers will bite.Finally, when people share, they also like to include their personal opinions. So when creating content, make sure your customers can add their own slant to your point of view as well. If your content makes them cry or educates them, they will want to share that experience!Look at what Pantene has done lately. The brand has made a habit out of being a social-media fixture during big pop-culture moments on television, The Golden Globes and The Academy Awards are two examples. Pantene has been actively commenting on celebrity hairstyles and providing content on how to copy the look. social media marketing new york The content is valuable, shareable and commentable via the IWantThatHair hashtag making it all a perfect part of the brand’s integrated marketing plan, in synch with what’s going on in pop culture and with women’s emotions about beauty and fashion.Sure, Pantene is a huge brand with more resources than most small businesses. But you can still take a page from the Pantene content-marketing playbook, and get inspired to create content that is equally as valuable and commentable.

Don’t use social media to just talk about your business or product

provide useful information and news related to your specific audience’s needs and interests. Also, share related content from other sources, not just from you.Plan your messaging strategy. Make sure your branding strategy and story brings your company to life. social media marketing trends That said, keep in mind, it's not about you or your brand, it’s about what your customer likes and wants. Connect your customer's interests and challenges to your content and how your products or services can help them.Keep your website as your home base. While social media is imperative, make sure your website remains your anchor. (Also, don’t neglect building your own opt-in email list.) Post original content on your site along with guest articles in places your customers and influencers visit. Then use social media to share the content and drive traffic to your website and sales or lead pages.Social Media Examiner, HubSpot and Buffer each use an outstanding blog with expert content that is so helpful people want to share it with their connections, resulting in widespread exposure. Their creative social-media posts drive traffic to their blogs and more importantly, attract and engage customers.Listen first. Before engaging, make sure you understand the feel and tone of the social media platforms you’re interested in using. Think about the kinds of customer-service issues or pitfalls that might arise. For example, anywhere your business has a presence like on Twitter or Facebook, customers will expect you to answer any inquiries or complaints quickly. Also, think before you post, as even if you delete it, how to do social media marketing once it’s public, it’s hard to take it back and messages can go viral quickly.Social media isn’t a megaphone, it’s a conversation. It’s a great opportunity to connect with customers and influencers from bloggers to media people. Seek out related tweetchats, LinkedIn or Facebook groups or Google+ communities. Pose thoughtful questions and respond to people’s queries with helpful information that isn’t just pitching your business.

An Entrepreneur's Social-Media Plan for Success

Social media can give entrepreneurs the same opportunity to build community and engage customers as their better funded competitors. But when time and resources are limited, it’s crucial to laser focus social-media efforts to achieve goals: Do you want to drive sales, social media marketing chicago generate qualified leads, build relationships with current customers and bloggers in your industry? And of course figure out how you can measure it.For entrepreneurs needing a little help developing their social-media plan, here are a few tips.Too many marketers obsess about the raw data and forget that the average business colleague doesn’t love the data the way marketers do. They need the key insights pulled out, they need charts and trend lines for context. Tableau is a great tool for empowering everyone on the team to get in the data and use it.Social ROI For the win! Marketers today are expected to build and share content that helps grow our businesses. To do that effectively you need to understand your most successful posts, channels, content and identify the influencers that matter most. Awe.sm is great for that. I’d also throw a hat tip out to the team over at FollowerWonk, because they are also really diving into social analytics and making waves.Hopefully this was a helpful list. Over the years I’ve seen a lot of analytics tools pop up and some have faded away, while others have made it into our daily routines. There is a very clear trend toward centralizing our analytics and making a marketer’s day more efficient. The result is we have single log-in dashboards with really rich, effective data. I love this.As Pinterest has rapidly gained popularity since its rollout in 2010, it has also had to adapt to users and marketers who are utilizing the social network in different ways. social media marketing blogs A few months ago, it revised its usage policies that could land users in hot water.Unlike so many other social media and online outlets, Pinterest has always wanted its users to find what they need or want on their site and then go use that knowledge offline.

Be crystal clear on who your target audience is

Determining your target demographic is imperative for success (without customers there are no sales). Make sure you have a clear image of who you exactly what to reach. Make sure you know them inside and out and are familiar with their interests, needs and biggest challenges. real estate social media marketing How does your product or service solve their problems? Also look at influencers in your industry, as they can play an important role in reaching your audience.It’s a unique concept that accounts for the incredible popularity of Pinterest. You can find a recipe, but Pinterest wants you to get offline and go make it. You can find a party theme, which Pinterest then hopes you’ll have all the useful tools you need to then go create. The whole point is for Pinners to find useful and relevant ideas and tools that they can then use in the “real world.” The most recent change to its usage policy concerns the common practice of Pinner compensation. Like Twitter before it, as Pinterest has expanded, more and more brands have began pursuing and compensating influential Pinners to promote their products, and often that compensation hasn’t been front and center to the Pinterest community. The update usage policy from Pinterest says that compensating Pinners in any way is now strictly prohibited.ShareRoot co-founder and CEO, Noah Abelson, which creates holistic marketing campaigns on Pinterest for their clients, says the change is in line with the philosophy of the social network.Each member of the ShareRoot team understands the importance of Pinterest’s policies and continually ideates around creativity balanced with strict compliance,” Abelson explains. social media marketing podcast “This recent change is about making sure the authentic nature of the Pinterest communities stays intact.Since one of Pinterest’s founding pieces of etiquette states, “we think authenticity is more important than getting followers,” it does seem natural that this ban on compensating for pinning has come to a formal policy. While that may have been implied before, it’s clearly stated and required in the updated acceptable use policy.

Which social-media sites are they on

Determine where these people like to socialize and stalk them. If you’re tightly staffed and have limited funds to contract help, it can be difficult to actively engage in a variety of sites. social media marketing plans In that case, pick two or three sites preferably the ones that are used most often with your audience to do well. You can always add more sites later. While Pinterest policies on contests have existed for some time now, the recent FTC violation ruling against Cole Haan’s “Wandering Soul” campaign has brought increasing awareness to the importance of disclosure compliance. When you think about these changes, they are intuitive to the Pinterest brand of organic, relevant content for its Pinners. It really make sense,” Abelson says.If you’re looking to get into video, the time is now on Facebook. Since Facebook began autoplaying videos, video plays are up 785 percent year-over-year, according to the report.If your brand is paying for Facebook ads, that's good news for you. Click rates are up 70 percent year-over-year and 48 percent quarter-over-quarter. This is especially good news since click rates often slow after the holiday season.Facebook is the only social channel that did not see a dip in referred revenue per visit to retail sites over last quarter. Tumblr however, had a strong showing with 55 percent increase in year-over-year referred revenue traffic.The major takeaway? Facebook is king, but don’t count the others out. More and more social networks pop up everyday. Prioritize. Focus on what is most important and test what works best for your specific audience and message. How will you measure what success looks like? Assess regularly and tweak what you do based on your results. Monitor website traffic to see which social media sites are driving traffic. What patterns drive your website, e-commerce and sales stats? Watch for which days of the week and time frames you post and which kinds of content seem to work best. Don’t get too caught up in any one social-media site or tactic unless it’s giving you fantastic results. b2b social media marketing Keep an eye on changing trends and how you might take advantage of it, such as if a new social-media site is growing in popularity with your customer segment. And lastly, tie in your social media strategy with your other marketing efforts.