Social Media Insanity

We understand that things didn’t seem that crazy when you only had that one Facebook account that you started. Slowly things started getting out of control. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on, and so on. Now managing all of them can be a daunting task especially if you’re logging into each account x number of times a day to see what’s going on.

Working Smart Not Hard

Our friends at Constant Contact have a tool that can help simplify your social media life. It is called Nutshell Mail.  The answers to all your social media prayers.

Nutshell Mail

Using Nutshell mail is free and you can use either your Facebook or Twitter account credentials to log in.  Yay!  One less login and password to create as well as remember.

Just as it’s name suggests, your social media activity is summarized in a mail.  With it’s various settings, you can fine tune what you want in the summary as well as the frequency.

You have nothing to lose.  Well unless you count your sanity.

You advertise your business in many ways, such as print materials, radio ads, social networking, and your website. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort developing your marketing strategy and implementing it across many different channels. But are you doing enough?

It’s no secret how popular smartphones have become, and there’s no sign that people will ever want to give up text messaging or having access to the Internet in their pocket. Mobile platforms are what will allow you to reach customers via smartphones wherever they’re located. Of course, beginning an advertising campaign on an entirely new channel isn’t easy or cheap. Before you invest, you want to know it will be worth it. So should you advertise your business on mobile platforms?

Who are Your Customers?

Before you begin advertising on mobile platforms, consider your target demographic. Many people own smartphones, and the number is only growing, so most businesses can reach their target audience with mobile marketing. If your target audience is under 18, you may find it slightly more difficult to reach them via mobile marketing; your mobile marketing strategy might be better directed at their parents. If your target audience is over the age of 45, especially 55 and over, you may also find fewer members of that audience with a smartphone.

Where are Your Customers?

Some businesses lend themselves very well to mobile marketing. If you have the type of business that people want to locate when they’re on-the-go, such as a restaurant or retail store, you can have a lot of success using mobile platforms to bring in new customers. Businesses that don’t get a high volume of walk-in customers or that require more research, like doctor offices, law firms, financial companies, and B2B, can still benefit from mobile platforms, but their mobile campaigns might be scaled down a bit.

How Do You Advertise on Mobile Platforms?

There are lots of different ways to take advantage of mobile advertising. Third-party platforms can help get your advertisements out to smartphone users. For example, you can pay to have your ads appear within apps that relate to your business in hopes of attracting those app users. You could also make use of things like QR codes, text messaging campaigns, and mobile landing pages that will optimize your website for smartphones. The methods you take advantage of, and how much effort you put into mobile platforms, will depend on your marketing goals. Everyone can benefit from listing their business on local listings such as Yelp, Google Places, and Foursquare.

The Bottom Line

For just about every business, it’s advisable to use some mobile platforms for advertising. As long as you don’t miss your target demographic or annoy people by sending unsolicited text messages, for example, you can usually benefit from mobile platforms. It’d be unwise to ignore mobile advertising considering how popular smartphones are for Internet use and local business searches. You should test the waters with mobile advertising now and work on discovering what method works best for your business.

This and many other educational articles helping web professionals understand the challenges of the web and how to promote business concepts online have been prepared for you by Travis Lee thanks to SEOMap – the keyword strategy experts.

Millions of people watch YouTube videos every day, and videos are excellent marketing tools. The conclusion is simple: your business needs a YouTube channel. In order for your YouTube channel to be effective, you need to consider some of the differences between other forms of social media and tailor your strategy accordingly. Here are some do’s and don’ts of YouTube marketing to keep in mind.

Do Customize Your Channel

YouTube channels – like Facebook pages – are fully customizable. Take the time to make your channel look like your brand by adding your logo and using your business color scheme. Fill out profile information with a short (but strong) bio about your company, and add links to your other social media pages and websites. Your YouTube channel is an extension of your marketing efforts, so make it fit.
Don’t Annotate Too Much

YouTube allows you to add annotations of text to your videos. This is a great tool for adding links to relevant parts of your video, so that people who are watching can instantly connect with additional content and information. However, don’t overdo it. It gets very annoying to see annotations continually appearing over your video, and it doesn’t look very professional. Keep annotations to a minimum, and only use them at times when they would be maximally beneficial.

Do Offer Captions

There are millions of hearing-impaired Americans, and they deserve equal access to your YouTube content. Consider adding two versions of each video: one original and one with subtitles. The captions will allow everyone to benefit from your videos, regardless of hearing abilities.

Don’t Forget to Tag

You can add tags to your YouTube videos to describe their content and make it easier for people to find them. Don’t forget to do this for all your videos, and don’t be shy about adding as many tags as are relevant. The categories you choose will help your video be seen, so experiment with them, too, to find the ones that work best for your content.
Do Engage with Viewers

As a business owner or representative, you’re encouraged to reply to comments on your social networks, and YouTube is no different. Reply to the comments people leave on your video – thank them, answer their questions, etc. Don’t, however, give attention to any trolls who leave inflammatory comments. If someone leaves a comment that is particularly offensive or obvious spam, don’t be afraid to delete it. Legitimate negative comments, on the other hand, should stay, for the same reasons you leave them up on your other pages (integrity, customer dedication, etc.).

Don’t Forget to Post

A YouTube channel needs to receive regular updates, just like your blog, Facebook, and Twitter. While it’s not as easy to create video, try to do so even just once per month. If videos are a very important part of your marketing efforts, update more often. You want to show viewers that your company is active. If you don’t post new material, you won’t be offering as much value or a reason for viewers to come back.

This and many other educational articles helping web professionals understand the challenges of the web have been prepared for you by Alexander Bagnall thanks to SEOMap – the keyword strategy experts.

Photo Credit:  ipodfan1

The Breakthrough of Mobile App Technology

Only about ten years ago was there a world in which cell phones didn’t all have data plans, and only the lucky ones among us even used laptops at work or at school. But the times have changed and today, small and large businesses, enterprise companies, techie geeks, and the average person, all seem to have and use a smartphone, tablet, or both, on a daily basis. While these new developments in internet usage is quite a feat for our society in general, it’s also fascinating for another reason: the breakthrough of mobile app technology, which today is one of the fastest growing, highest grossing, and most dynamic fields in internet technology that the world has ever seen. In fact, by the end of this year, mobile application development will outnumber native PC application development by a staggering ratio of 4 to 1. This infographic gives some great statistics on this new phenomenon in internet technology, and what the breakthrough of mobile app technology means for our digitial economy in the next five to ten years.

So what does this mean to you?  Take the measures to get in on the action and don’t get left behind.  Make sure that your website is mobile friendly.  Contemplate on getting an app created (if applicable) to get your audience more engaged with your business/brand!

This infographic was made by ClickSoftware, the leading provider of field service and workforce management software and solutions. Find Mobile Business Applications from ClickSoftware.

If you have a Fan Page or a social media profile that belongs to a brand or even a business, you know that what may have worked yesterday may no longer be the case today. This is what makes social media great. Many might look at change with a pessimistic point of view however, I see it differently. With the ability to change and modify your strategy to see what works with your audience is such an advantage. You’re not stuck or locked into any particular strategy on a long term basis. Furthermore, social media will typically give you a good idea if something is working or not in a short period of time.

Which brings me to my point. I found an interesting article that says:

In any given week, less than 0.5% of Facebook fans engage with the brand they are fans of. Source: Marketing Science

That’s not a lot of interaction. Even well known brands didn’t fair that much better.

I know a lot of you out there are thinking or perhaps using interaction and engagement as a benchmark for your social media success but when you look at this percentage, is that truly a variable you want to use?

It all goes back to the time old question ever since social media was brought into the spot light. How do you measure your ROI in social media? Some will base this on the number of Likes they get, the number of Shares in a post they receive, etc.

Although we may not be getting interaction we’d like to see, we should be stepping back and thinking to ourselves that we are still bringing exposure to our businesses by being in the consumer’s eye through our social media means. This is why being consistently active within your social media platforms is important.

So how do you feel about engagement on your Facebook page?

There are a lot of contests that are going on nowadays through social media.  You see at least one that is going on every day whether it be announced through Twitter or Facebook.

However, what most people and businesses don’t realize is that running a promotion on their Facebook page can a be a little tricky.  It’s not as simple as randomly choosing one of your fans on your page or asking them to share a story they might have to win.  Facebook actually has specific rules and regulations on running on promotion via their site.  If you haven’t read the fine print already then here’s the link:

Facebook Rules and Regulations for running a Promotion

As long as you’re giving something away through Facebook, it’s best to use a 3rd party application.  And speaking of 3rd party apps, there are quite a few out there such as WildFire, NorthSocial, and many more.  However, for the budget conscious businesses and pages out there, there’s actually an app that you can use at no cost called Rafflecopter.

When Rafflecopter first started it was by invite only and was limited to use on blogs.  They have since evolved to allow anyone to join and apply their promotion widget on virtually any platform (html, Blog, etc.).

Stay tuned for our next blog entry where we’ll show you how to use this simple app!

Call me a geek or a blog nerd but I do find it similar to shopping therapy when I look around at different plugins and widgets that I can add to my blog.

If you haven’t noticed already, Owl Desk uses WordPress and there are so many possibilities when you host your own blog.

My favorite area to shop is the Plugin section of WordPress which can be found here.  They are broken down into categories and featured plugins on listed on the main page.

The great thing about this market place is that they are typically rated by real users like you and me.  Furthermore, you can take a quick peek at screenshots that are often provided by the developer.  This is great if you want to see what it looks like before installing it.

Here’s an example:

So if you haven’t already, take a look at what new widgets or plugins you can add to your WordPress hosted site to freshen it up!

Unfortunately, if you are using the non-hosted version at WordPress.com, you won’t have the ability to add all these custom developed add ons.  Another reason to host your own blog!

We know there’s a silent war going on between Google + and Facebook.  Heck Google + is implementing and pretty much offering things that Facebook made mistakes on.

Now that we’ve had the chance to play around with the business pages for Google + (which we’re liking by the way), we’re finding that the simplicity and ease of use is quite refreshing.

With that being said, I recently received an e mail from Facebook asking for feedback as a page admin.

Frankly I’m surprised that they even sent out a survey to the page admins considering this is something they should have done a long time ago.  Don’t you think?

One of my biggest gripes with Facebook is that their support is terrible.  They provide areas for users to post questions and ask for help however, when it comes to someone actually answering the question or providing a solution from Facebook, you can forget about it!

In the past, when we’ve had a question we’ve simply by passed using their help section through Facebook.  We’ve found other Facebook forums (not owned by Facebook) a lot more helpful and responsive.  Many of which are from regular users like ourselves.

Which leads me to the next thought.  Is Facebook feeling the pinch from Google +?  Is it too little too late now from Facebook?  Feels like some scrambling but then again they have over 700 million registered users?

In case you’re interested in what kind of questions the survey contained, here’s a sample:

• Based on your experience using Facebook Pages for your business, how likely are you to recommend Facebook Pages to a friend or colleague?
• Overall, how satisfied are you with your Facebook Page experience?
• Have you ever had a question about setting up, managing, or using your Facebook Page in general?
• The LAST TIME you had a question about setting up, managing, or using your Page in general, how did you find the answer?
• Overall, how satisfied are you with getting the answers to the Page questions you have?

The survey has been completed and submitted.  Let’s see if I can help make a difference.

Anyone else get this survey?  What are your thoughts?

If you’ve ever wanted to upload a video to multiple sites, you’ve probably found it a big pain to do so. Typically you’d go through the following steps:

1. Go to the website.
2. Log in.
3. Upload the video.
4. Enter all the video information (title, description, tags,etc.).
5. Post.

If you have more than YouTube that you upload to then this can be repetitive and time consuming.

There’s a great tool out there for those of you who want to upload your video to multiple video related sites.

Take a look at TubeMogul, which enables you to upload your video through their site and then feed it to other ones that you’re registered with.

Here are some examples of the sites that your video can be uploaded to through TubeMogul:
Dailymotion

• Veoh
• Metacafe
• Flickr
• Facebook, and more!

Basic reporting tools and administrative tools are available with your account.

There is no cost for personal use however, for commercial use there is a charge.

We hope you find this tool useful!

We can’t seem to get away from it no matter how much we try and that is social media tunnel vision.

Humans can be creatures of habit and that means if you’re used to using the same tool or medium all the time.  Chances are, you’re like the many people out there that are comfortable just doing so.

Are you experiencing tunnel vision?

A great example is that many of us are using if not interacting on Facebook and although Google + is available to everyone; you may have stuck to Facebook because it’s what you’re used to.  However, we all know that not everyone is staying on the same platform.  Others like to branch out and try different things.  This can all be due to different experiences, passions, likes and dislikes.

Which leads me to my thought about this so called social media tunnel vision.  When we are talking about businesses that are invested in social media, we need to think outside of the box.  Questions to consider:

Is being on Facebook reaching your target audience?

Is LinkedIn better suited for your needs?

Is Google + another alternative for you way of networking?

Should you consider being involved in Geo-locating apps i.e. FourSquare, FB Places, etc.?

Perhaps a blog will suffice?

Is TripAdvisor or Yelp a site I want to actively participate on?

Is social bookmarking for our business?

Will Twitter help or hinder my social media strategy?

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that you should be involved with ALL the social media platforms out there because that is just not realistic (unless you have the man-power to do so).  You should however concentrate on where your market and the people you want to reach hang out the most.

Do consider though that your market over time will start branching out (if they haven’t done so already) to different social media platforms.  What you want to do is to make sure that you’re also doing the same.