Tips to Become Better Integrated in Your Niche Community

The new wave in marketing is clearly social media. However, social media marketing involves more than just creating accounts on every social network. Businesses that are using social media to its full potential are seeing more click-throughs and more conversions. These companies are using social media integration strategies to engage customers, expand their reach and enhance the online reputation of their brand.
Social networks provide platforms where communities can form around specific topics, industries and interests, and your business can become an influence in the conversations revolving around your own brand.

Using Google+ for Your Business

Google+ is fast becoming a necessary part of any social media marketing plan. With personalized search results, Google+ is one of the best ways to reach your niche community. Take advantage of the following G+ capabilities.
1 Become a member of any Google+ Communities which relate to your industry. You can’t circle an individual until they circle you, so Communities allow you to extend your reach and create business contacts when appropriate. You can also influence conversations amongst consumers about your brand.
2 Google+ Hangouts are an easy way to create content marketing. You can hold panel discussions with experts from your field or Q&A sessions with actual customers about new products and services. Record this video chat session and upload it to YouTube from the same G+ network. One Canadian photographer, Billy Wilson, has had success creating a following on Google+ using Hangouts On Air. He brings together artists, musicians and personalities every week to discuss world issues in a Hangout called, “That Show With Billy Wilson.”
3 Being that Google is already a search engine giant, establishing Google Authorship is the way to place your business at or near the top of search results. This is established simply by linking your G+ profile to your company website or blog and vice versa. Google ranks Google Authorship posts at the top of the results. The link to your post, which will include your profile picture, will stay ahead of any knock-off posts which might have followed your original content.
4 Google+ Events is a great way to promote parties, promotions or sales, and webinars for your business. The invitations sync automatically with Google Calendars, and attendees can share photos of the event directly to its photo album using a mobile app.

Develop a Community on Facebook

Approaching one billion users, Facebook is obviously a marketing force that can’t be ignored. Zappos, an online shoe sales company, has created a successful Facebook marketing campaign. Their slogan, “Let’s be in a Like-Like Relationship” is a clever invitation to become a fan of their Facebook page. Here are three other ideas which can help you develop a Facebook following.
1 Offer certain “fan-only” content.
2 Start a photo contest such as Fan-of-the-Week where fans can share photos of ways they are using your products.
3 Giveaways encourage fans to invite their friends to like your page.

Integrate Your Platforms

An essential part of any marketing plan is knowing the message you want to share. The delivery of this message should vary with each platform but the message itself must be clearly maintained. Consumers lose interest quickly in businesses that copy and paste content into multiple platforms. However, you can link your accounts and platforms to help spread the word about your brand. For example, Vivint, a home security and automation company, is an active user on Google+, using it as a platform to connect people to their blog and websites. The final three tips for integration are taken from Vivint’s example.
1 Post regularly to a company blog and share the links on social platforms.
2 Use a variety of content for posts including video, articles and photos.
3 Use widgets on your blog and websites to encourage users to share content.
With these tips, you can use Google+ and social media platforms to develop a community. When customers feel a part of your community, they develop trust, which results in more loyalty and referrals for your business.

http://www.onesocialmedia.com/tips-to-become-better-integrated-in-your-niche-community/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=tips-to-become-better-integrated-in-your-niche-community

Social Media Training for Sales Professionals - Social Media Training

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUKoaHtfiPA

Social Media Marketing in 3 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gza8dvN8Hkc

10 Things Entrepreneurs Should Be Tweeting About

Image credit: 1000 Words | Shutterstock.com
 

Apart from creating a vibrant branded Twitter account for your startup, business owners should consider creating their own personal account on Twitter. Fans and followers often want to connect with the person behind the brand.
Giving customers and prospects a glimpse into the entrepreneur's life and mindset can allow them to cultivate a deeper relationship with customers separately from the brand. The goal, of course, is to increase customers' loyalty to the brand.
Here are 10 things every entrepreneur can tweet about, which can allow your clients and prospects to see another side of you:
1. Personal news: Share the big events of your personal life -- vacations, weddings, births -- the type of info you'd share with close friends. It can help keep your followers feeling like they're "in the loop." You're also more likely to make a connection with followers who have experienced something similar.

 

2. Mistakes and lessons: Sharing mistakes and what you learned is a sign of growth, not weakness. Try doing a "What I learned this week" tweet and see how your followers respond.
3. Answers to questions: If someone asks a question on Twitter and you know the answer, share it. This can also be a way to develop a FAQ within your industry, which you can later point them to via a link.

4. Links to articles: They key to sharing articles is to also include your unique opinion. Let others know why you liked or didn't like an article.
Just remember that your opinion paints a public image, which means you should be cautious about which opinions you choose to share -- ideally only those which are congruent with your market. Keep the rest to yourself.
5. Pictures of unusual things you see: If something catches your attention, it's probably going to catch the attention of others, too. So why not share it? This includes visually impressive products, food and architecture.
6. Wisdom from the book you're reading: When you hit a "golden nugget" of wisdom in a book, share it. It not only shows that you're well read, but that you value wisdom. Those are two things that can only help your reputation.
7. Interesting advertising: When a billboard or any other advertising catches your attention, take a picture and tweet it. Everyone can benefit from seeing smart marketing.

8. Fun purchases: Sharing your recent purchases, such as music, video games or sports equipment can stir up comments and conversations from others that have bought similar items and enjoy the same kind of entertainment.
9. Share wisdom from outside the world of business: Quotes from sports heroes, military leaders and artists can teach us about innovation and leadership, which are essential to business success.
10. Your work: The greatest links you can share are links to your personal work, but don't limit that to what you do professionally only. If you have a hobby or passion for something creative, share it.


http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224972

How to determine what’s working in your social media campaign

Even though social media has been around for a quite a while and is still trending, many digital marketers are struggling with how to measure the ROI of their social media campaign. This question gets asked a lot, even though many large and small organizations have already integrated this communication medium into their traditional marketing efforts.
Naturally, it’s common sense that businesses want to see if their social media campaign is helping them reach their goals. Social media is all about the community which you do your business with, and actually has little to do with “media”. So in truth, if you are measuring your social media campaign, it must focus on and reveal insight about the members of your community and how engagement with them impacts your business. Social media is a medium that works because it allows people to communicate with each other and it’s not about disruptive communication where you don’t have a say.
With social media it is key to continuously evaluate and monitor what people are talking about that is relevant to your company and respond to them appropriately. There are hundreds of tools available that you can use to measure basically everything regarding your social media campaign, but in reality it’s a waste of resources, time, and money if you fail to monitor only selective metrics that matter to you.
There are many metrics you can use to measure your campaign and many of the tools that measure this will have their own metrics, but which actually matters? Find below a couple of metrics that I use as a baseline for all my social media campaigns.
Social media measurement metrics
Engagement: How many comments or replies are generated by the updates and posts that you make? This is a key metric that will reveal the level of interaction that will show you what content works and what doesn’t. Tracking and analysing the responses you receive from your posts, tweets, and status updates will give you a view of which topics are the most effective in engaging with your target market/community. By measuring this, you can adjust your content plan to get the best engagement.
Number of shares: How many shares do your updates and post receive? This metric takes advantage of the fact that each update and post that you make to your community is the start of a conversation or share on another network. It can gain momentum if your content gets shared outside of your direct network.
Reach: What is the size of your network and how many people are you reaching with your updates? Your target audience consists of the people who complete an action or interact directly with your brand. If you combine reach with engagement, it can allow you to prepare magnetic content that has the ability to go viral. If you have a bigger reach, you have the potential that your updates can turn into a snowball and increase your exposure.
Sentiment analysis: What are the emotions expressed by your network in regards to your updates and posts? This metric isn’t always easy to measure and can be hidden by your social media efforts, but there are many tools (like socialmention.com) where you can view how people feel about your business and brand.
It isn’t always easy to measure the success of your social media marketing strategy, but using these metrics as a baseline in your reporting will give you a good indication of what is working and what is not

http://memeburn.com/2013/04/how-to-determine-whats-working-in-your-social-media-campaign/

10 Tips for Using Twitter Like a Pro

It's been seven years since the popular social network was first launched.
In honor of the milestone, we've compiled this list of tips for how entrepreneurs can get the most out of Twitter for their businesses:

1. Ensure your Twitter account reflects your brand.
Believe it or not, some companies don't take full advantage of Twitter for branding purposes. When setting up your account, create a handle that's related to your brand name and use your company logo as your Twitter picture.

 

2. Keep photo size in mind.
When choosing images for your profile, be mindful of the type of image you're selecting and the size it will appear. Profile pictures, for instance, are small: 81 x 81 pixels. Your header image should measure 520 x 260 pixels.
3. Go beyond general, impersonal marketing messages.
Of course you want to use Twitter to spread the word about your products and services. But if that's all you share, and if you share them frequently, you can bore your customers and turn them away. In addition to your marketing, sprinkle in unique, personalized messages that engage consumers one-on-one, as well as links to interesting, useful articles online.
4. Don't ignore customer service.
An increasing number of your customers are most likely taking to Twitter to voice their satisfaction -- and potentially their problems -- with your products and services. Don't ignore these messages. Monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand and respond quickly to any questions or concerns. You might also consider creating a secondary account specifically for customer service.
5. Use hashtags wisely.
You can use hashtags -- a word or series of characters preceded by the # symbol -- to categorize messages and can make it easier for other Twitter users to search for tweets. But remember that you can't control what your followers and others on Twitter will say using hashtags you've created. Some of those comments could be negative or otherwise used in ways you didn't intend.
6. Play nice.
You might be tempted to talk politics on Twitter. Or bash your competition or voice personal opinions about sensitive topics. But if you wouldn't say these things in front of clients, it's probably best to keep them off your branded social media accounts. On Twitter, adopt a tone that reflects your company's image and keep your personal opinions to yourself.
7. Try creating a Twitter contest.
Help spread the word about your products and services for free. When a third party spreads positive comments about your products or services, it gives your company credibility and helps sell your products.
8. Track analytics to develop more effective marketing campaigns.
Although Twitter doesn't really offer an internal analytics program for standard users, tools such as Tweriod and Followerwonk can allow users to track things like the geographic distribution of followers and the hours your followers are most active. Understanding this type of information can help you plan more effective marketing campaign and schedules.
9. Clean up your account.
On Twitter, one of your primary goals should be to interact with followers. Consider unfollowing low-quality accounts including spammers and people who don't follow you back. FriendorFollow is a popular service that makes it easy to see and disconnect from any non-followers.
10. Change your password regularly.
You don't want your branded Twitter account falling into the hands of hackers. Change your passwords frequently, and consider using random numbers, letters and symbols that aren't necessarily related to your brand.


http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226178

Facebook marketing: 5 effective ways to cater to your mobile audience

There are 1.08-billion active monthly users on Facebook, which is why your business would be crazy not to have a marketing strategy for this platform. However, many businesses don’t realise that it’s also important to cater to a mobile audience. Currently, there are 680-million monthly active users, and this number is growing. So here are five effective ways to improve your mobile Facebook marketing efforts.

Optimise all website content for mobile users

If you plan on sharing content on Facebook, you should realize a lot of users will click through on a mobile device. So you need to make sure all of your content is mobile optimized. This means you need to have a mobile website that adjusts your content for smaller viewing screens.
According to a 2012 Mongoose Metrics report, only 10 percent of websites are currently optimized for mobile use. This presents a unique opportunity for you to boost traffic. A developer can help you out with mobile optimization, or you can choose an app to turn your website mobile.
It’s also important to note that the number of mobile users is growing, making mobile websites even more important to businesses. According to HubSpot, more smartphones than PCs were sold in 2011, and one in seven searches is performed on mobile devices.
Case in point: Kiddicare.com grows via mobile optimisation
A good case in point would be Kiddicare.com, an online nursery and infant supply company that experienced significant growth thanks to a mobile optimized website. Kiddicare discovered that seven percent of its traffic came from mobile devices, but its website was too difficult to use on a smaller screen. That’s why they decided to optimize, which was a process that took seven weeks from concept to launch. After the optimization, they predicted 20 percent of their revenue came from mobile users in 2012.

Build brand awareness with Facebook business pages

It’s important for every business to have a website, but it’s equally important to have a Facebook business page. This can drive more traffic to your website, which helps acquire more customers. Additionally, people search for local stores and businesses when they are away from home, and Facebook drives some of that traffic through its mobile app.
The mobile business page on Facebook features recent photos, events, and check-ins, so it’s very important to use compelling images that look good in a mobile browser. Plus, as more and more people use the Facebook mobile app to interact with brands, fostering brand awareness is more important than ever. Ergo you need to carefully choose the content you share.
Case in point: Property Minder gains new Facebook fans
Property Minder is a web-service firm that offers services to real estate companies. The company used its Facebook business page to establish credibility in the industry. It worked on brand awareness, and subsequently gained new fans. It also had 584 whitepaper downloads through brand-awareness efforts.

Integrate coupons and promotions into your Facebook posts

Facebook users want to read informative and useful posts. Your business will be “unliked” if you’re too promotional. So the best way to overcome this is by integrating coupons and promotions into your Facebook posts. For instance, you can offer a coupon or run a contest via Facebook’s “Offer, Event+” function. You’ll be advertising, but users will also like the content.
Promotional Facebook posts are also important from a mobile user’s standpoint. Conversion rates are 12 times higher with sponsored ads on Facebook mobile than with the desktop version.
Case in point: BellaSoleill increases sales
BellaSoleill is a Tuscan home décor retailer which decided to offer a special code on their Facebook business page for 10% off merchandise. This offer increased profits by $10 000, and it helped subscribers grow by 200% in only three weeks. This was all because Facebook users had to like the page to gain access to the promotion.

Create targeted Facebook ads to promote your business

Facebook was originally slow to adopt ads on its mobile platform, but it now nets US$305-million from mobile ads quarterly. These ads look and feel more like natural posts, which means more clicks for your business. Additionally, people using 4G phones can access Facebook feeds as quickly as someone on a laptop or desktop computer.
The Facebook app is the third most downloaded app for mobile phones — it’s only behind Google Maps and YouTube. This means mobile ads on Facebook get a lot of views. You can used sponsored stories to drive more traffic to your business, because these stories have a click-through rate that’s seven times higher than regular posts.
Case in Point: Zappos.com increases annual ROI
Zappos.com claims that Facebook ads drive traffic in the US$10-million range each year. This demonstrates the obvious advantages of using Facebook ads. Plus, these ads can be targeted toward specific demographics, meaning you gain traffic outside your page’s own fan base.

Build a customer list and discover customer interests

From a marketing standpoint, one of Facebook’s biggest advantages lies in creating a huge list of followers with relatively little effort, especially if your business is already has a big name in the mainstream public. Then you can learn about customers by reading their comments and viewing the limited information on their profiles. You can also target potential customers based on their location. If you have a physical location, there’s also a check-in feature for mobile customers to share their patronage with friends.
Case in point: Sugarbush Resort increases subscriber list
Sugarbush Resort had a goal of increasing their email subscriber list and Facebook fans to have more opportunities for targeted marketing. The company ran a sweepstakes on it Facebook business page and gained 3 000 likes in only one month. Additionally, they gained 2 000 email list subscribers. This helped Sugarbush in its mobile marketing efforts, too.
Mobile marketing is a constantly changing animal, but your business is missing out on a lot of traffic if you don’t implement a mobile strategy. Use Facebook in your marketing efforts and you’ll likely see a significant increase in sales and customer loyalty.

http://memeburn.com/2013/03/facebook-marketing-5-effective-ways-to-cater-to-your-mobile-audience/