Category Archives: social media

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5 Reasons to Use Social Media for Your Business

No matter if you love them or hate them, Social media sites are here to stay.

Combined, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest, have more than 2 BILLION users. With the massive amount of people using social media sites, there hasn’t been a better time for businesses to join in.

Social media has opened up some new doors in terms of marketing to your local consumers. Most of them are using these social media platforms, so there’s no reason why your business should not put yourself right in front of them.

In case you are still waiting to get started, I have put together a list of 5 great reason why your local business needs to get started with Social Media.

* More and more people are searching for businesses on social media sites. In fact, approximately 1/3 of consumers say that they usually search for and check out a company’s Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter page before considering a purchase. If the company is new and has no social media page, these consumers typically move on and look for a company with a social media presence. When a business has social media sites, it helps customers feel more at ease about purchases and in their mind, reinforces the company’s credibility.

* Customer service has never been easier and more convenient. Instead of customers having to wait days for a returned call or email, you can quickly resolve issues in real-time. You also have a simple way to engage with many customers all at once, which helps promote a sense of trust between you and your consumers. In addition, you’ll be able to give your business its own unique personality which will attract like-minded people.

* Social media helps your company get more online visibility. The more pages you have, the more likely your company will rank higher in the major search engines. Social media sites already rank strongly in Google and other essential search engines. If you have a presence in the popular social media sites, not only will your social media accounts rank higher in searches, but your company website can be pushed higher as well. If you’re in a high-competition industry, having your business presence show up on the first page of search engine results is imperative.

* The way consumers shop for products and services has dramatically changed. People are conducting more business via the Internet and social media sites than ever before. A good majority of consumers who shop online are regularly active on at least one social media site. Most of these consumers become social media fans of the businesses and companies they purchase from, and almost all would post positively on social media sites about their experiences with these companies.

* Social media is free. Aside from optional advertising costs that you can usually purchase for a nominal fee, creating and using social media doesn’t cost a penny. It’s free exposure for your business and a way to reach customers worldwide. Despite Internet hoaxes and rumors claiming that the top social media sites will start charging, all of the major sites have confirmed that the services will remain free. In addition, not only is social media here to stay, it’s expected to grow exponentially as users can now use their smartphones to check out their favorite sites.

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Twitter Advertising Seeks to Evolve with New “ads editor” Tool

Advertising on social media has been a dominant force for several years now. In fact, search advertising has even taken a hit in recent years due to the amount of time people spend browsing social networking sites. It’s not like Google’s trembling in their Adwords boots right now, but it’s probably been on their radar.

That said, social advertising has had the disadvantage of being relatively uncertain for a time, due to the platforms and tools that facilitate it not having as much time to evolve like the ones that support more traditional online advertising. Twitter, long the number two social media network in the English-speaking world, is looking to rectify this by rolling out a feature they call “ads editor” – yes, all lower case – which allows advertisers to bulk edit the parameters and copy of their twitter ads using excel spreadsheet uploads. The use of such techniques is far from new, but it could certainly be a blessing for those who manage hundreds or thousands of different twitter advertisements for their clients’ campaigns (or their own, for that matter).

Things like end dates, budgets, and targeting criteria can be changed en masse by simply downloading a spreadsheet of your campaign, making the appropriate edits, and re-uploading it, explains twitter’s project manager Deepak Rao. Once uploaded, a single click will apply the changes you’ve specified to all affected campaigns; it’s that easy.

The tool will be especially useful to large-volume advertisers, who have the budget to bankroll massive trial and error campaigns based around hashtags and keywords much in the same way Adwords giants work: They begin with ads based around thousand of keywords, sometimes with multiple variants of copy each, and slowly trim the fat, taking away those that perform poorly and focusing instead on split-testing frontrunners. In theory, twitter’s new ads editor will allow advertisers to conduct these types of changes with relative ease compared to the manual editing required before.

Of course, your own intuitive (or learned) marketing savvy will be your best tool here, but no one ever complained about a little time-saving help from technology, right? The tool itself is not available to the public yet, but twitter plans to begin rolling it out to select advertising partners over the next few days. These individuals and firms will get the first chance to test the new product, before twitter expects to have the platform fully rolled out for everyone within two to three weeks. If you’re keep to see if you’re one of the chosen few for this tiered testing, keep your eyes peeled for a notification from ads.twitter.com

Of course, early skeptics of the tool have already emerged, arguing that the use of such a primitive tool as Excel might mean limiting the capabilities of users on ads editor. For example, finding a simple way to factor potential reach and suggested bid into spreadsheets will be difficult, as a spreadsheet will exist as a static, offline document once you edit it on your computer. If the tool worked in a browser-based office variant, however, it might be able to make suggestions in real time in accordance with your edits.

Of course, only time will tell how well the tool actually catches on, but here’s to hoping for the best.

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Social Media Managers to Get New Tool for Fielding Feedback on Facebook

Social media has forever transformed the way that reputation managers and PR professionals go about their daily business. So much has this been true, that companies now regularly hire “social media managers,” professionals who are solely responsible for posting on social media, responding to customer mentions and messages, and sourcing/writing new content to keep people interested in liking, sharing, and interacting with a brand.

Facebook, which still sits atop its throne as the biggest social media platform around, is about to roll out the ability to answer comments privately. In the past, companies were limited to responding via the same Facebook channel that they were contacted on (responding to comments by commenting, messages by messaging, etc.). Now, Facebook page managers will have a new option to click when fielding page comments which will take the comment conversation into a private thread with that individual. The thread will include a link to the original comment, and will allow the two parties to communicate privately.

Of course, as the tool is used more and more, more individuals will likely take advantage of the increased speed and communication with companies on Facebook. This will mean an increase in the amount of messaging threads that social media managers have to deal with. To help alleviate message overload, Facebook also announced that they will be introducing new messaging tools.

One of the most welcome additions will be the way in which companies can save boilerplate responses and messages to commonly asked questions. Customers can therefore be easily responded to and would cut down on the time spent servicing the most common, easy-to-fix issues. This feature has been in testing for several months now, but it will soon be available to everyone.

Facebook itself is one of the fastest growing customer support platforms on the planet, and Facebook has created more incentives for companies to use their pages as their primary response method. For one, the company has created a badge that will display on company pages in order to let customers know that a page is very responsive to its messages and feedback. For the badge to display, Facebook pages will have to respond to 90% or more of their customer messages and have a median response time of five minutes or less; data will be based upon the last seven days. It’s unclear if “hours of operation” will be available so that companies won’t lose face their status if their support would not normally be open 24 hours per day (or perhaps this itself is a requirement).

What does this mean for you? It means that Facebook is getting more useful as a customer management tool, but along with it will come more responsibility and the need to learn new tools and functions. Let’ be honest, though: If you’re managing social media for a company you’re already likely a digital native who gets excited about such updates, rather than shying away from a new social challenge.

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Social Media Marketing Tips That Works

Marketing your business through social media is quickly becoming a necessity rather than an option. If you’d like to see how this can positively affect your business, keep reading for great ideas on how you can utilize these online platforms to market and advertise your company, product or business.

If you are going to create a social media profile, you must be willing to continuously update it. Your customers may expect regular updates. If you don’t provide these, you may find yourself losing customers. Aim for publishing updates more than a couple times a week.

Always answer to the messages and comments you receive on social networks. Be sure to check for comments and questions at least once a day. They’re easy to miss, so you have to be vigilant.

If you are considering social media marketing, the first thing you should do is sign up with as many social media websites as possible with your preferred account names. These account names should include your business names. This is particularly important for websites like Twitter where your account name is your displayed name. As time goes on, it will become more and more difficult for you to get the account name that you want. Reserve those names now.

Employing social media marketing strategies can be a great way to keep in contact with your customer base, and develop relationships. Customers that friend you on Facebook, or follow you on Twitter do so willingly. They want to hear from you. You can therefore notify them of new upcoming products, sales and discounts, or even just information concerning your business and industry without the fear of being too intrusive.

Monitor the work of your competition. Find them on social networks and pay attention to their methods. You could either try using a similar method or think of something they have not yet started.

When you are introducing a new product or looking for feedback, use social media websites for market research. People love to give feedback about products and are eager to chime in. Their feedback will let you look at your business from the outside through their eyes, seeing the things they want and the things they have yet to find. On top of all this, this feedback is of no cost to your business.

To make the most of social media marketing, respond to questions and comments in a very timely manner. You do not want to sit at your desk refreshing your inbox 24/7, but you do want to check in multiple times per day if possible. Anyone asking questions is either a loyal customer you want to retain and get more business from, or an interested prospect who might open their wallet if you give them some personal attention.

Branding is so important within social media. You need to always incorporate your logo into your social media profile. Use the same color palette on every one of your social media accounts. Your followers will associate these colors with your brands and trust you because you are consistent. Consistency means advantageous branding in identifying yourself and letting you stand out from your competition.

Establish your business’s presences by name, on both Twitter and Facebook. Staking a claim to your business’s name on these sites will prevent someone else from posting content that is meaningless or even damaging to you. Even if you are far from actively employing the account, you’ll have staked your claim to your name.

Taking your business to the next level requires a new wave of marketing efforts that you have not previously tried. Social media marketing could very easily be this new wave that you are searching for. If you use the tips and suggestions here, you can find success in your new marketing efforts.

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3 Reasons Your Social Media Presence Sucks

Social media has been hailed time and time again as the new (which is a bit out of date now, really) big player in marketing and brand engagement. Then again, the reality of the situation has shown that the vast majority of brands, individuals, and even social media managers don’t actually find themselves successful in cultivating a large following. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, here are a few mistakes that keep marketers from ever reaching their maximum potential.

 

1) Not being a creator.

The people who have the biggest social media followings on the planet, or even just within whatever niche(s) you find yourself marketing, are people who create something. Their tweets, posts, and pictures carry weight because they’ve got something solid to back them up. Too often, people as for “follows” and other social media engagement without giving anyone a good reason to actually do so. If you’re begging people to retweet your link, you sure as heck better have something on the other end that delivers true value if you want those who get curious enough to continue to engaging with you.

 

2) Mistaking social media for a one-way channel of communication.

In other instances, I’ve actually seen it be the case that someone had great content on their blog, but wasn’t having much luck getting people to engage on social platforms. One of the reasons this happens is that people assume importance too early. It’s like any kind of marketing that isn’t in its infancy anymore: You don’t get widespread recognition just for “doing it,” or even doing it well, because the market is too saturated.

So, how do you stand out? You start talking with people, and not just at them. Make sure that you are giving out what you’re asking for be engaging with others you find interesting, asking them questions, and commenting on their content. Real comments, not the “wow, great read!” variety. Some of the biggest names in social media still take time throughout the day to respond to people messaging and asking them for advice.

 

3) Automating.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a mind that’s built up companies based almost exclusively on social media expertise, has an interesting stance on automation; it’s a stance you can learn from. First of all many people get caught up in automating their social media endeavors far too early. In a sense, they haven’t really maxed out their time, they don’t really need to back away from active engagement, they’re just lazy. Or maybe they’re just putting the cart before the horse. Automation isn’t inherently bad, but it is when you try and hide the fact that you’re doing it. Another way of putting this is that it’s fine to automate simple tasks that don’t involve direct customer interaction, but you shouldn’t fake interaction. Customers know that the mass email you sent out wasn’t personally directed to them just because their name is in it. They know that your auto-following them back on twitter wasn’t out of genuine interest. Don’t be fake, people will see through it.

While social media isn’t intensely complicated, it’s also not hard to end up doing it wrong. Make the time to strategize and account for factors like these before you actually touch your fingers to your keyboard… or your phone… or your tablet… you get the idea.

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Introducing Weibo, the ‘Twitter’ of China

Despite having the world’s largest population and the second-largest economy, social media in China hasn’t taken off as quickly as it has in other developed countries.

Part of that has to do with the Chinese government. Although it may not be as strict as it once was in terms of censoring the content it allows its citizens to view online, it still is far more restrictive than most European countries or the US. The Chinese government continues to be serious about cracking down on dissent and keeping tabs on those it considers to be enemies of the state.

Still, the Chinese are beginning to go just as crazy about social media as people everywhere else in the world. And the biggest name in Chinese social media today isn’t Facebook, Twitter or Google+. It’s a site called Weibo.

 

Popularity of Social Media in China

Weibo has exploded in popularity in recent years. It currently has 176 million active daily users and 503 million registered users. While that’s still only about half of China’s estimated 1 billion citizens, that represents a 36% growth over last year.

The site is used regularly by about 30% of Chinese Internet users. That’s about the same market penetration that Twitter has in the US, which has prompted Weibo to get the nickname “The Twitter of China”.

The site is only a couple of years old, having been founded in 2009 by SINA Corporation, which still owns 56.9% of the Weibo. Alibaba owns another 32% if the company. Stock in the website has been publicly traded on Nasdaq since last April.

 

Enter Oracle

Just recently, Oracle announced that its Social Cloud will provide the publishing, engagement and analytical support for the site. The purpose of the move is to boost Weibo’s usage outside of China, as well as to grow the site within that nation.

Oracle also will provide engagement and analytic services for Instagram within China. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and recently offered the ability to post 15-second videos as well as images and photos, is rapidly becoming one of the most popular sites among 18 top 24 year olds in that country.

 

Who’s Using the Site

Like Twitter in the US, Weibo allows its users to follow posts from their favorite celebrities, sports stars, political leaders, media figures, businessmen and religious leaders. Users also can share their own microblog posts with their own followers. It’s estimated that the Weibo’s top 100 users have an estimated 485 followers combined.

But companies and commercial interests both inside and outside of China are huge users of the site as well. More than 5,000 companies and 2,700 media companies are believed to use the site regularly.

 

Censorship on Weibo

One of the biggest differences between Weibo and western social media sites is that Sina cooperates with Chinese Internet censors, setting strict controls on the contents of its postings. Comments about politically sensitive topics, as well as those containing blacklisted keywords, are regularly deleted.

But when compared to other Chinese media, Weibo is relatively permissive. Criticism of the Chinese government, while not encouraged, isn’t as controlled on Weibo as it is on Chinese TV, newspapers or radio.

 

Where Its Name Comes From

In Chinese, the word for microblog is “Weibo”. Sina Weibo launched it as the service’s domain name in 2011. While other Chinese microblogging services such as Tenchent Weibo, Sohu Weibo, and NetEase Weibo also include the term, most people in China recognized Weibo as the leading social media platform in the same way that the term “Facebook” is synonymous with social media in the US.

When it comes to social media, 500 million Chinese social media users can’t be wrong about Weibo.

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Choose the Right Social Media Platform with This Simple Question

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: when it comes to social media, you shouldn’t have a problem putting all of your eggs in one basket if you don’t have the time or budget for an extensive social media campaign. There’s nothing worse (in terms of social promotions and brand imaging) than putting social widgets on your website only to lead to malnourished, underwhelming social media sites.

The Importance of Updating Social Media

When a viewer gets to a neglected social media page, a few things happen. First, your lead might think you are out of business. They also might think they are in the wrong place. Third, they might just assume that you don’t care about your customers (or don’t care in general) and just write you off as an option for buying.

The bottom line? If you’re not going to update every one of your social media pages constantly, it’s better to cut your losses and just delete the accounts. Of course, social media is super-important, so a better option would be to delete all but one, but which one?

The One Question that Tells You Which Social Media is Right for You

The best way to figure out which social media platform should be your main focus is to ask yourself the following question: If I only had to use one social media platform for the rest of my life, which would it be? This might seem simplistic, but let’s look deeper into the question.

What is in a social media platform for you? Do you need pictures of your products to get visitors over to your affiliate sites? Is your marketing based on real-time actions? Are you a B2B or B2C marketer? In short: what drives customers to your site?

When you know what your audience is doing, you know what you need to do. For example, if you are an affiliate marketer for Amazon and your only social media presence is to share reviews, having a Facebook account set up where you can share links complete with pictures might be your best bet. On the other hand, if you only deal with flash sales online, Twitter will allow you to stay plugged into the pulse of your audience so you can reach them as it happens. Looking to land higher-ups in the company and sell them software? LinkedIn has the largest amount of professionals so that’s where you will want to be.

The key here is to recognize what each of the social media platforms means for your specific means of promotion. If you only want to pin up items that you are reviewing and then forget about them, Pinterest might be the way to go since you won’ t have to deal with answering questions from posters and commenters.

When You Have It, Run With It

Of course, if you can’t decide on which social media platform you’d choose if you could only choose one for the rest of your life, there’s a very simple option: look at your Google Analytics and see which social media sites are driving the most traffic to your websites. Then, take a serious look at how much time you’ve put into each of those sites.

Are you getting 20% of all your traffic from LinkedIn but only spending 5% of your time there? Then increasing your effort on LinkedIn might be a good strategy over focusing on another platform that brings in 30% of your traffic but takes up 85% of your time.