Social Media Guide for the Antisocial

Referral Marketing

Wed, 30 Oct 2013 08:25:03 -0400

The essence of referral marketing is to get your satisfied customers to tell their friends, family and colleagues about your product or service. Let them do the work for you.

Here are some golden rules to referral marketing that can help you leverage your existing relationships to expand your customer base.

First rule is to Maintain regular contact

In order to benefit from referral marketing, you need to ensure that your existing customers have you at the top of their mind when asked about products and services similar to those you offer. How do you go about doing this? The key is to remain in constant contact (with useful information) so that when your existing customers get the opportunity to talk about products and services like yours, your brand is the first one that springs to mind.

Second rule is to Ask for feedback

It’s important to only ask for a referral from someone who is satisfied with your service. And to make sure someone is satisfied with your service, you have to ask for feedback. Feedback is essential with any aspect of your business so that you can improve and leverage both the negative and positive feedback. Negative feedback will highlight areas of your business that you need to improve and positive feedback can trigger a referral request. Just make sure that your referral request is personalised and sincere.

Third rule is Don’t forget the Referrer

Whenever you communicate with a new referral, always leverage your relationship with the referrer. Not only does this add credibility but based on the relationship, a much stronger bond can be developed with the referee.

DETERMINE THE PERFECT SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

Thu, 19 Sep 2013 03:21:00 -0400

Before diving into the social media world, define your purpose. Is your goal to build brand awareness, provide customer service, or generate leads? Your goals will you guidance and keep you on track to completing those goals. Create concrete and measurable objectives for monitoring your progress and re-evaluating your strategy over time. Create a profile of your target audience, including demographic information and other factors, such as location, profession, or interests.

Selecting the best social media platforms for your business is the step that overwhelms many business owners. With so many networks to choose from, the idea of using them all regularly is a bit intimidating. The primary social networking platforms include:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Google+
YouTube

The list of social networks is practically endless—in fact, some businesses use a social strategy that encompasses dozens of social sites, bookmarking sites, slide-sharing sites, and more. There’s a lot of information out there on the user demographics of the popular social networks—choose a few that closely match your target audience. Once your strategy is rolling out smoothly, expand to include second-tier and different types of networks.

Your unique selling proposition is the defining feature or set of features that sets your company apart from the competition. Your USP should be relevant to your target audience and in-line with your social media goals. Using your USP, build a list of key phrases and topics and build your social media strategy around them. This keeps you focused and sets the stage for branding.

Social marketing requires great content, too, and an editorial calendar helps you define themes, identify marketing channels for the content you’re producing and reach your target audience with relevance and precision. Of course, all the marketing you’re doing requires a fast connection, so get set-up with a high-speed satellite internet plan for fewer connection hiccups.

Your editorial calendar includes information such as monthly themes, conversation-starters, and material from your content marketing strategy. Your editorial calendar acts as a guide to define what you’re discussing each week or month, where to share specific pieces of content and how much time you devote to each social platform. Use a variety of content formats, including blog posts, case studies, e-books, images, and videos.

Following these steps results in a clearly defined and focused social media strategy. Once your plan is in place, it’s time to engage your audience, start building brand awareness and generating conversation. Social media plays a critical role in both content marketing and SEO, so continue measuring your results and refining your approach.

Shared Photo Albums on Facebook!

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 03:20:13 -0400

The world’s largest social network announced shared photo albums on Monday, a new feature that allows multiple users to upload images to the same album. The album creator can share access to as many as 50 “contributors,” who can each in turn share up to 200 photos. Album creators can choose a setting that allows contributors to invite others to the album, or retain total control over album invitations.

Previously, users could only upload photos to albums they created, and each album was limited to 1,000 total photos.

The new shared albums have three available privacy settings: public, friends of contributors and contributors only. This gives the album creator control over who has access to the group’s images, said Bob Baldwin, the software engineer at Facebook who spearheaded the project with colleague Fred Zhao.

“Right now, if you were at a party and there were three different albums created, you might not be able to see all the photos [based on privacy settings], which is kind of confusing and frustrating,” Baldwin said. Album creators will have the power to delete or modify photos in the album, but contributors will have editing power over photos that they upload. The feature is not available for Page albums, says a Facebook spokesperson.

The new feature was built during one of Facebook’s company-wide hackathon sessions, a time where employees set regular work aside and dream up new prototypes for the platform. At Facebook, hackathons are a exciting time to be on campus, said Zhao, and many employees spend the week leading up to a hackathon brainstorming ideas for prototypes with colleagues. Baldwin said the idea for shared photo albums was based on user feedback and circled among Facebook employees.

After deciding to tackle the project, Baldwin and Zhao sent out an internal invite before the hackathon in January. They recruited about a dozen engineers from across the company to contribute to the project; many of them worked on the prototype until 6 a.m. the following morning.

Shared albums will clearly be useful for group events like camping trips, weddings, parties and family reunions.

“I think one thing that’s really fun about creating products at Facebook is that you’re never quite sure how people will use the product in the end,” Baldwin said. “We’re really excited for launch because we think people will use [shared albums] in ways that we’re not even thinking of.”

Zhao and Baldwin said they plan to develop some aspects of the feature even further. For starters, the 200 photo limit per person may increase in the future. They also hope to add mobile functionality for creating shared albums (right now, you can only contribute to one on mobile).

Facebook will begin to roll out this new feature to a small group of English users on Monday and then integrate it for all English users before expanding internationally, according to Baldwin.

Facebook Apps to help grow your business!

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 05:53:11 -0400

What kinds of apps (also known as tabs) do you have on your Facebook page? Are you using the right features on those tabs to support your business goals and Facebook strategy?

Goals can include having visitors sign up to receive emails, download a coupon or ebook, enter a promotion or make a purchase. These actions need to be easy to complete. By making it possible for visitors to do this in tabs on your Facebook page, you can increase the rate of visitors successfully completing the desired action.

Using the right tab apps can increase your success! There are some commonalities of tab types that can and should be used to increase Facebook marketing success. So if your industry is not represented specifically, don’t fret—common threads do apply!

#1: Restaurants

The opportunity for restaurants lies in catching the attention of fans or targeted consumers via posts or ads that drive them to tabs on your Facebook page. Once you get a visitor to your tab, quickly offer them the information and opportunities they need, and you’ll make all the difference for that customer. Key tab recommendations include the following:

Show Your Menu

Allow customers to see your specialties easily right on Facebook with a tab that includes your menu and perhaps a PDF download of it, or simply use a tab app solution that allows you to add your menu from your website to a tab.

By iframing in your website menu, efficiencies are gained! Simply make changes on the website and the tab is updated as well. Plus, by having the menu on the tab, your page can use features such as a “like gate” so that visitors must take the quick action of liking the page in order to see the menu.

Add Email Sign-up

Add an email sign-up tab to your Facebook page and make users aware of it through posts and tips in the news feed. Your restaurant can grow its email list and then reach potential customers via email as well on Facebook.

Share Special Offers

Who doesn’t like a deal? Offer an incentive that drives foot traffic—offer a coupon or discount deal on a tab. To get even more long-term marketing value, integrate an email opt-in with the special offer.

Combine a promotion incentive with an email opt-in to grow your email marketing list more quickly than simply using an email sign-up tab alone.

The promotion serves as an immediate way to potentially increase foot traffic to your restaurant, and the email sign-up gives you an ongoing method to market to those same individuals.

For more information on tying promotions with growing your email list, have a look at Growing Your Email List With Facebook Promotions.

Take Reservations

Is Saturday night packed at your establishment? Do customers want to call ahead to reserve their table? Do you already take reservations via your website?

If not, then consider adding a reservations form to a tab on your Facebook page. By using an iframe or website resizer app solution, you can easily add your website reservations page to a tab and make it easy for Facebook users to get a spot at your restaurant!

There are basically two ways to add the reservations feature to a tab:

Have your reservations system functionality built into a custom tab, which can be as simple as a form to enter date, time, name and mobile number.

Use a cost-effective approach of iframing your existing web reservations page URL into a tab which serves to offer the same web feature right in a tab on your Facebook page.

#2: Hotel and Travel Destinations

Hotels and travel destinations have a wonderful opportunity to engage fans and integrate tabs that help guests complete desired actions. Key tab recommendations include the following:

Show Off Features and Amenities

Give your visitors a view of your best and finest features! Add a tab with a gallery of images and perhaps a quick video to inspire visitors to like your page and connect with you further.

A related idea is to offer an events tab, feature special activities or offers for users to learn about or opt into.

The example below showcases key features of the hotel, while also incorporating the ability for guests to look up availability and check rates—a great combination!

Combine Special Offers With Email Sign-up

As noted in the restaurant section, a desired action for visitors to complete that can help grow your business is the ability for visitors to sign up for email lists about specials or events.

When combined with an incentive, the rates of sign-up can be greater. This is a great way to connect with your visitors so that when the time is right for them to plan their next trip, your location can be first on their mind!

Book Your Guests for a Stay

A key for hotels and restaurants is keeping the facility bookings up! Why make visitors jump outside of Facebook to get to a reservation? If you’ve captured their attention in the news feed with a post and brought them to the tab, make it easy for them to check dates and get their reservation started.

Use an iframe or website resizer app solution to add your website reservations page to a tab and make it easy for Facebook users to get a spot at your hotel!

Contest Tab

Hotels and travel destinations can generate buzz and increase reach and engagement on their page when they host a contest or promotion. Contests and promotions can benefit a page in many ways—from growing the email list to reaching friends of fans, and more.

A contest that’s tied to your location, such as a photo contest to win a free or discounted stay, can be a great way to boost engagement.

#3: Local Retailers

A key for local retailers is inspiring traffic to come to their store. As outlined in 11 Checks to Ensure Your Facebook Page Is Up to Date, one important item is to allow Facebook check-ins. This can help you gain visibility in Facebook’s Graph Search and with friends of those who check in.

Tabs can also play an important role for local retailers and here are a few key tab recommendations for retailers:

Highlight Deals and Featured Products

Post enticing nuggets of information to the news feed and include a link to the custom tab where you showcase either a deal or a featured product.

A key decision is to know what the goal of each tab is. Do you want to ensure a user has liked your page, completes an email sign-up, downloads a coupon or something else? Know the action and provide the information to help accomplish that goal.

Collect Email Sign-ups

As with restaurants and hotels, having an email sign-up tab is an opportunity to grow your company email list. As fans sign up, it adds value and potential to your ongoing marketing.

Offer a simple incentive such as a coupon in exchange for the opt-in to help drive traffic to your tab and increase the number of sign-ups.

Give Customers a Map and Directions

With news feed posts that drive interest and build engagement with friends of fans, direct traffic to your location map tab to help Facebook users find their way to your location.

A recommended feature for your map tab is a Get Directions option that will make it easy for Facebook users to plan and come to your location.

#4: Professional Services

As we’ve seen thus far, each industry has unique offerings that can be of interest to particular Facebook users.

Professional service companies cover a wide range of business services from trainers and realtors to social media consultants, doctors and more. The key is for each to identify the fan actions that they want and to focus tabs accordingly to achieve those results.

Each professional should consider what product, service, offering or incentive can drive great interest from potential customers, and how that can be offered turnkey on a Facebook tab. Recommendations include:

Increase Email Sign-ups With Incentives

Display Your Services

Let’s be practical. As a professional service provider, you need to make sure you offer a simple and clear message on the services you provide. Posting tips and then linking to your tab where interested parties can become fans of your page and get clarity on the range of services you offer give Facebook users an easy way to learn about and understand your company.

Build Specialized Tools

A key tab feature that some professional service companies have is the ability for visitors to use their tools to find information for themselves.

Realtor home listings and ecommerce stores are examples of providers using this. Someone making a home purchase is going to want to review homes for sale. Make it easy for fans and interested Facebook users to search for homes while staying on Facebook.

Integrate a tab with a home listing and search feature, either by bringing in a web page or custom-programming a tab to offer relevant and valuable assistance to your consumers.

If you offer services that can be purchased on your website, offer the same purchase capability on a Facebook tab to increase sales.

Conclusion

If there’s a pattern you recognize, good! Though industries can vary greatly, there are some similarities in ways that Facebook page tabs can be used.

Common opportunities include the ability to grow email marketing lists, offer incentives and deals and deliver features that can be critical to gaining customers and growing your business. The key, again, is to offer the right information at the right time and in the right method so that a Facebook user can see, learn and complete an action while remaining on Facebook.

While not exhaustive, these tips can help Facebook page managers reflect on ways they can improve their Facebook page offerings for a variety of industries.

After you’ve decided on the Facebook tabs you need for your business, look for the best tab app solutions or get the technical help you need to create your own.

Social Media and Hashtags

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 04:00:51 -0400

Have you noticed or started using Facebook hashtags ?

Twitter has had them for a while but now Facebook has also introduced the Hashtag.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen, hashtags are now clickable and useable on Facebook.

Using a hashtag # (or pound symbol) in front of a word or phrase turns the word into a clickable link.

When you click on the link, you’ll see a feed of public posts (or posts that are visible to you due to a friend relationship on Facebook) that include that hashtag.

Here’s how you can use Facebook hashtags:

* Expand Your Reach

As hashtags gain momentum on Facebook (they’ve been in use on other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+), they’ll help you expand your reach to people who are looking at posts in your topic.

Hashtags have been a great way to help people interested in niche topics find each other and find the conversation.

By including a hashtag in your post, you can possibly get in front of people who may not have seen your post otherwise. But you’ll have to monitor this in your Facebook Insights. Make sure you watch your Reach and Engagement Numbers to see if your hashtags are making a difference in your posts.

* Amplify Your Brand

Branding your Facebook Page with your own special hashtag can help an idea or new product catch on. By branding all your posts about a new product, you can break this information out into a separate stream of information and give people an easy way to share information about that product or idea.

Think carefully about what types of things others would also be interested in sharing. If the posts are too promotional and not valuable, you may have a hard time getting people to share them with their friends.

* Cross Social Platforms

If you’ve already been using hashtags in your Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn or Pinterest posts, it’s now more natural to use hashtags in Facebook. You can save some time by being able to post the same content across several platforms.

While we don’t recommend doing this for every post in Facebook (some people are annoyed by the hashtags entering into the Facebook realm) it does work to your benefit to occasionally cross platforms with a single post. Plus many people have already been doing this with their own posts from Twitter and now the hashtags are more searchable in Facebook.

* Promote Specials and Events

You can use a special hashtag in your posts to promote something special. For example, this can work really well for a #contest.

Realize that you can’t have people enter your contest on Facebook by including your branded hashtag like you can on Pinterest, Instagram or Twitter. Because of Facebook contest promotional rules, you can help people find the content across platforms by including the hashtag in your Facebook posts.

If you know some popular hashtags that fit your marketing goals—such as offering a special coupon or deal—then you can include them in your post as well. I don’t recommend stuffing your posts with tons of hashtags that aren’t relevant because that doesn’t look good and may turn off some of your fans, but a few relevant hashtags are OK.

Important Considerations When Using Facebook Hashtags

1. Privacy settings are still in effect.

If you’re using hashtags on posts on your personal profile, they’ll still have the privacy settings set up according to how you control your privacy on your profile. Just because you use a hashtag doesn’t make that post suddenly public. If you add a hashtag to a post that you only share with a certain group of your friends, only that group will be able to see that post.

2. Hashtags have to be all one word.

If you wanted to use #Facebook Marketing as your hashtag, it will need to be posted as #FacebookMarketing or #facebookmarketing (see the next tip).

3. Capitalization doesn’t matter.

You can choose whatever capitalization you want in the words themselves and the hashtags will show the same results. #FacebookMarketing and #facebookmarketing show the same search results.

4. You can make up whatever hashtags you want.

There’s no “hashtag registration” or “database of approved hashtags”, you can make up whatever hashtags you want to use. Consider your goals. If you want to brand your own hashtags, you can, but make them short and easy to use and understand.

A hashtag that’s overly complex or hard to read won’t get much traction. If you’re abbreviating, make sure it’s clear what point you’re going for – a hashtag like #IKPMTTTRWD won’t mean much to many people.

5. Research your hashtag before you use it.

There have been some recent embarrassing cases of brands using a hashtag that’s already in use for an entirely different purpose that doesn’t align with their company message at all. Take a look at the social sites where hashtags are in use such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and Google+ and see if your hashtag is already being used by people.

6. You can easily look for hashtags on Facebook by URL.

Easily search for hashtags or bookmark their results by using the URL: www.facebook.com/hashtag/ then just include your keyword on the end.

For example https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/FacebookMarketing shows you the results of posts that include #facebookmarketing or #FacebookMarketing (or any alternate capitalizations).

Conclusion

I strongly recommend you test out hashtags as part of your Facebook marketing strategy and measure your results. Use them sparingly (not in every single post) and don’t over-stuff hashtags into your posts.

While some people may not be as excited about hashtags on Facebook, they’re firmly entrenched in other social sites and aren’t going away anytime soon.

Important to know for your Website and Blog

Thu, 25 Jul 2013 04:12:45 -0400

Building a website or blog is a great way to share your ideas and thoughts with the world, start an online business, share your hobby or gain exposure for a non-profit. When it comes to making use of the different styles and tools available for your text, it can be overwhelming.

Remember to keep it simple. Start by having a clear idea of what you wish to achieve with your website. This idea or goal should be reflected in your approach to the design, building and layout of your website. The first thing you need to do is prepare. Collect all the material you wish to put on your website. This includes your written material, photographs, pictures, diagrams, videos, logos, contact details and maps, etc.

Once you have all this information prepared, you can easily plot out the basic order of your website. This will include things such as how many pages you will need, which headings to give each page and what content will fill those pages. If you’re still unsure where to start, consider that a good website must have a homepage, a contact us page and at least one page that defines your product or service offering. When you are ready to fill your website pages with content, remember to keep it to-the-point, informative and easy to read.

Plot out the layout of each of your pages with your visitors and your original intentions in mind. For text and heading styles, stick to one or two typefaces and two or three type sizes and colors. Try to match the text colors you choose with the rest of your brand colors. Be careful not to match them too closely so that the text is no longer visible.

The key point of your content is for your visitors to be able to read it. Also, stay away from all-caps text for anything other than a heading. Once you start to fill each of your website pages with your content, remember the following guidelines:

Main Header, or Headline

Your website heading will be the most important line of text – the title of the page. It should be the largest and stand out to the reader. You can use Main Header style to define this text. The heading should be the main summary of that particular pages content.

Second Header, or Sub-headlines

Second Header should represent each main section of your content and should contain vital information you want your readers eyes to see. These are sub-headings that can help break up your content and summarize the paragraph text below. You want the information here to capture their attention so they continue reading and remember what they have read.

Paragraph Text

All your written work to follow these subheadings will be your main text body, which should be divided into paragraphs/sub sections in order to make it easier for the reader. Sometimes less is more. You don’t want to go on too long on each of your website pages, otherwise your reader will lose interest and move on. A good rule of thumb is to have between 250-400 words on each page.

Lists

Where necessary, you should consider breaking up your text further with numbered or bullet lists. This will help the reader quickly scan the core points of what you offer. And they are a great way to help add in some extra keywords. Remember to always start with a heading and then flesh out your list of things below it. Keep the list clear, orderly and short. No long explanations are necessary.

Many of these principles can be used for writing a blog article as well.

Whenever you want to create your own masterpiece, remember the basics:

* keep it simple

* stick with your initial goal

* be prepared

* use pictures

* have an easy to read layout

* be original

From 'Sharing' To 'Purchase'

Tue, 23 Jul 2013 01:49:52 -0400

Vision Critical’s recently published study, From Social to Sale provides some answers to exactly how a company’s social media strategy could be tailored to drive sales. Using interviews from almost 6,000 participants, the company evaluated social media purchasing against participation in Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

The top line findings:

About 40% of social media users have purchased an item after sharing or “favoriting” it on these sites. (The company uses “Shared or Favorited” to mean pinned/repined/liked on Pinterest; shared/liked/commented on Facebook; tweeted/retweeted or favorite on Twitter.)

Facebook is the network most likely to drive customers to purchase.

Social media drives not just online purchasing, but in-store purchasing as well – and at about equal rates

“One of the more surprising findings in this whole research for me,” the study’s co-author Alexandra Samuel, Vice-President of Social Media at Vision Critical, said in an interview, “was to see how significant that in-store purchasing is. This is one of those really not intuitive findings.”

She continues, “And just that recognition that you are not getting the whole story on social from tracking social to ecommerce conversions is a huge finding. If you are estimating the ROI on social by looking at social to web, you are missing roughly half your social-inspired purchasing.”

The high volume of ex ante signaling that happens as part of the purchase consideration was also not intuitive, Samuel says. And so the current study she sees as “a call to arms” about companies gathering information to know why this might happen. “You don’t want to miss the most important piece. What was the relationship there? What was it about tweeting the product that lead them to your store? Was it just an accident? Was it a signal that they were literally walking into your store? Was it because they got feedback from their friends? How much of an influence did that sharing have on your ultimate purchase decision?”

Conversion rates are the bread and butter of advertising and promotion spending wherever they exist. So one big disappointment of the work so far is the lack of information on any kind of actual conversion rate, establishing how often the sharer of a particular item converts to be a purchaser of that item. Samuel says that conversion information will always be extremely difficult to get at, even with evolving research tools. “If you ask people how many cars they’ve pinned or tweeted before they bought their car, they would have an idea. But the number of instances vary so much by product category. I mean, if you asked me how many pairs of boots I’ve pinned in the past year, not only would I be ashamed to tell you the number, but I don’t really know.”

Media companies will take away different lessons from this research than brands or retailers do, says Samuel. “So if you are Lowes or Wal-Mart, you need to figure out how to drive people from your site to share something social and then bring that back into the store. That is a different challenge then if you are Fox and you are trying to provide a valuable advertising environment, figuring out how can social extend the brand experience around its TV shows.” She continues, “The smartest media companies are seeing social not as a competing medium, but as an extending medium. They help their viewers engage with advertisers and are figuring out how they can help them make that journey from social to purchase.”

Facebook posts that drive monthly sales growth

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 02:18:16 -0400

A lot of effort and good money goes into writing and promoting your Facebook posts, so it just makes sense to do it correctly. However, there’s no single right way to post on Facebook; but a variety of formats to get your readers engaged.

Don’t just say your product or service is good; show it. Treat your Facebook posts like in-person conversations, and your fans will respond well to them.

Pay attention to the relationship between their viral and paid impressions. The viral impact is huge (34,016) but the organic one is relatively smaller (6,325), which means they traded reach for a higher conversation rate.

There’s a multiplier at work here acting as a discount. They bought 2,000 in paid reach but got 34,000 in viral reach, making this a spectacular buy 1, get 17 free deal. That’s why posts with high engagement often have more net conversions.

Facebook ads aren’t hard to set up — you can set up a campaign in under 60 minutes.

But it’s important to note that you don’t need high virality in every post. Sometimes you just want clicks and conversions, not shared stories.

Traditional advertisers usually have a hard time understanding that social media is different. You shouldn’t just blast your message out like a radio spot, condensing as much information as possible into 30 seconds.

You need to be honest and vulnerable. Not everybody likes your product, and that’s okay. When you pretend you’re flawless, you come across as insincere, which is a death knell in social media.

By asking your fans to share their experiences with the brand, it proves that you value honest feedback. It also gets you free testimonials in the process. In the case of negative feedback, it directs your attention to spots you need to work on, helping you to improve faster.

Inviting fan participation is always a good way to get comments, as well as likes. It also demonstrates an interest in what they have to say, making your brand more likeable.

In order for your fans to see you as more than just a business, you have to act like more than just a business. By showing appreciation to your fans, you befriend them, creating a personal relationship with them that transcends your product.

The world’s most successful brands have one thing in common – authority. Harley-Davidson defines motorcycles for an entire subculture, Apple represents the intersection of sleek technology, and Dove dispels popular beauty myths and helps everyday women feel great about their bodies. It’s about being the first brand people turn to when they think about an industry.

The most lucrative opportunity in social media isn’t about selling at all. It’s about branding. Don’t just tell your customers to buy your products. Ask how they’re doing, re-affirm them, and value them. Build a personal connection.

Is your website or blog mobile-ready?

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 03:29:01 -0400

The way we consume content today—whether it be email, social, using search or listening to podcasts—is mainly through a mobile device.

The first entry point to you, your business or brand is more likely to be a mobile phone. You want the customers’ experience to be very friendly and optimized to whatever device they are on. Around 53% of the US population has a smartphone.

How to find out if mobile users are coming to your website?

The first thing you should do is look at analysis software such as Google Analytics. It will show you how many people in your current audience are coming to your site from a mobile device. It will also break out the numbers by specific device.

You’ll probably discover that 20-50% of the overall visits to your site are coming from a mobile device.

Secondly, depending on your email service provider, some will offer insights into how many of the email opens are coming from mobile. You’ll find out why this is a good indicator if you’re a big emailer.

Why we need to think differently about tablet users versus mobile phone users

There’s a lot of misconception about how people use their smartphones. There was a recent study showing that 68% of smartphone usage is from home. Mobile doesn’t necessarily mean on the go.

You have to look at your own customers and brand and see where they are interacting with you to help determine how much it’s going to affect you.

with the tablet experience, you will start to see more usage in the evening hours. People use them as a second screen experience while sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

Google Analytics helps you see the time of day people are hitting your site with their specific devices. You might then correlate that to the likelihood of people sitting on the couch.

you have a few options when it comes to making a mobile-friendly site. It depends on what type of business you are in.

A great mobile plugin from WordPress is WPtouch Pro. A new version has just been released that offers a little bit more flexibility, with very low cost of entry. Bloggers, content marketers and smaller businesses can get in very easily.

If you’re a brick-and mortar-business, you want to make sure that the potential customer converts as fast as possible. When they search for you, they have a completely different intent than if they are trying to find a blog post.

You need to have a Click-to-Call button or Find Us, which provides directions on Google Maps. This gives businesses with a local presence an advantage, and the ability to turn that potential prospect into a customer within minutes.

With content-based businesses, users might search while waiting in a line and read/educate themselves while killing time.

to move forward, you need to look at responsive design, regardless of what type of business you have. You definitely need to try to provide the best experience on a mobile device for your customers, based on what their intent might be.

On the responsive design front, it’s one of the most complicated things to implement because you are talking about a complete overhaul of the design.

When people try to find a specific location on a mobile device—for example, a fast-food restaurant—a Click-to-Call, Find Us or Find a Store Near You button is the perfect solution. You’ll discover where these buttons should be located and the ideal size to use.

When it comes to blog posts, people use a lot of links and it makes it very hard to click the appropriate link. You need to make sure there is plenty of space and padding, so there is no missed clicking.

Pic sourced from www.ctvideomarketing.com

Twitter introduces new ‘Lead Generation Card’

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 08:57:26 -0400

Social media is fantastic in offering tools that provide a deeper connection with consumers, with Facebook campaigns allowing people to actively engage with your content through likes and the sharing of links, pictures and posts.

Twitter also offers similar features through their hashtag and re-tweet functions, that allow people to comment on your products, Twitter campaigns or company and generate conversation.

It’s also easier for companies to get their name out to the social media masses on Twitter, with the microblogging service offering a feature, Twitter cards, that makes it possible to “attach media experiences to Tweets that link to your content”.

If you add a few lines of HTML to your web pages, users who Tweet links to your content will have a ‘card’ added to the Tweet, which is visible to all of their followers.

Twitter cards can, as a result, help to drive traffic to your site, give some control on how your content is displayed with Tweets and also grow the number of people following your Twitter account through content attribution.

The social platform recently announced (May 22) that they had added a new Twitter card, the Lead Generation card, which will help companies to drive “highly qualified leads”.

“The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form,” Twitter’s revenue product manager Mitali Pattnaik posted on the Advertising Blog.

“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”

The Lead Generation Card is currently only available to Twitter’s managed clients, but Pattnaik notes that they have plans to launch the card globally and to small and medium-sized businesses soon.

Ways to Measure Social Media Results in your Business

Wed, 22 May 2013 03:20:11 -0400

Why Measure?

In order to measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns, it’s critical that you know your objective.

Ask yourself why you are considering including social media in your overall marketing campaign in the first place. How will your efforts impact your revenue and grow your business?

You’ll want to put a measurable outcome in place along with a timeframe in which to achieve the goal.

Now you can determine which social media platform aligns with your objectives.

For example, if you’re trying to reach a female audience and your business lends well to pictures and images, you might want to consider Pinterest.

If you’re a business-to-business brand marketing an upcoming conference, you’ll want to consider LinkedIn.

Quantify Your Social Media Listening

What you’re doing on social media needs to have impact. It needs to actually have revenue.

Listening is one of the most often overlooked uses of social media, yet it’s probably the most important. If you’re not listening to your customers, you’re missing the point of social media.

Create a Rating System for Your Social Engagement

Put a tiered point system in place rather than looking at how many likes you have.

This is a simple yet effective strategy to use when you’re trying to generate awareness and buzz. It’s a smart way to measure the response to your efforts on Facebook, Twitter or any other social channel you’re using.

Here’s how it works.

Say you’re launching a product or service and want to build buzz about it on Facebook. You post an update to your Page about your launch and you get a bunch of likes on it. The next day, you post a different type of update. You get some likes on it, but you also see that people are engaging more with the second update by sharing the post and commenting on it.

Likes show support and comments indicate a deeper interest but shares are most valuable because they move the update beyond your page.

At the beginning of the campaign, translate your objective to a numeric goal. Then, use a tiered point system to weight different types of engagement according to which is most valuable to you.

Here’s an example of a tiered point system for Facebook:

Likes: 1 point each

Comments: 5 points each

Shares: 10 points each

During the campaign, a quick sum of values will help you determine if your efforts on Facebook are moving you closer towards your goal or not.

You can create similar point systems on any of the social channels you use. For example, on Twitter, 5 points for a reply and 10 points for a retweet.

Add Tons of Value, Then Sell and Measure

This strategy is based on providing great content that adds tons of value for your customers before asking for the sale.

For example, say your restaurant is rolling out a new healthy menu. Your goal is to get 300 customers into your restaurant to try the new menu over an upcoming weekend.

Since your food is visually appealing, you develop a Facebook or Instagram strategy. You post pictures of your food, create content around the importance of healthy eating and curate information on your Facebook Page about farmers’ markets in your area.

Offer this valuable content to build trust with people.

Then offer a coupon for your restaurant on your Facebook Page. The number of people who claim and redeem your coupon is a result you can quantify.

Here’s how to measure your efforts when using this strategy:

Use the tiered point system described in strategy #2 to determine if your content is moving you closer to your goal.

Use coupons that are specific to your social media campaign, thus making the return on your investment easy to track and measure.

Create unique landing pages for each of your campaigns where your customers can download or purchase what you are promoting. Since the landing page is used for one specific campaign, this will allow you to clearly see how successful your campaign is.

Promote, Products with Pinterest

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:10:24 -0400

First order of Business! Make sure you have a business account on Pinterest so that you can promote your products, generate sales and leads and use it for other commercial purposes without any worries!

#1: Promote Holiday Products

A great way to drive sales is to create boards where you pin holiday products. This could be Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Mother’s Day or any other day that is of significance to your audience.

You can use Pinterest to show your audience that you’ve got what they need to celebrate.

The first thing you need to do is create a board based on that holiday and label it with a board name, description and category.

After that, you can begin pinning relevant products from your website to this board. You could also upload the images directly to Pinterest, but in this case make sure the image leads to a landing page on your website where people can make a purchase.

Write a good description to let readers know how they can use your product during this holiday. You can also add the price.

Rearrange your holiday-themed boards so that they’re at the top of your profile page during the appropriate season so they stand out (and don’t forget to add a good cover image).

You could also add a board widget to your website to help promote the board.

#2: Group Products Around a Theme

Another creative way of using your Pinterest brand page is to promote your products using a theme. This could be a theme around colors, designs, materials, ingredients, locations or anything else that’s interesting and can be categorized.

After you choose a theme, create several boards based on that theme.

For example, if you choose the color theme, create several boards where you plan to pin products of different colors. Label them accordingly, with different color names and arrange them side by side, so users know that the boards collectively form a theme.

Once you have set up the boards correctly, start pinning products of that color onto that board and add a good description (make sure you mention the color here too). This is a creative way to market your business, as people can easily find products of their favorite color.

This method is also good for search engine optimization (SEO), especially when you mention the keyword (color) in the board title, board description and pin description.

#3: Highlight Your Popular Products

People like popular products. When they know that a product is selling well and everyone else is buying it, they want to get a hold of it before they miss out. This is one of the reasons why there’s the Amazon bestseller list and the option to look at the most popular products on online stores.

Once your products reach that list and are easily visible to your website visitors, they are likely to sell even better.

You can take advantage of this same idea on Pinterest too and list your most popular products.

First, create a board with a title and description to tell readers this is where they can find your most popular products. After that, pin some images of your most popular products here and add descriptions. You could also add the rank of the product.

Make sure you write everything about the product—include the price, whether the product is a limited edition and add a call to action asking users to check out the product or buy it.

Also make sure you update the board regularly. Remove products no longer available and replace them with hot new items.

#4: Generate Leads

Another way to use your Pinterest page is to generate leads. First, create some quality content (such as ebooks, white papers, reports, case studies, etc.) that is gated with an opt-in form on a landing page.

Then add a short description about the content on the landing page along with an attractive image that is also the cover image of your file. After that, pin this image onto a board where you share your premium content. Write a brief description about it with a call to action that asks people to visit your website to sign up.

This will increase your landing page traffic and will help generate more leads, which can be used to increase website and blog traffic and drive sales later.

#5: Build an Audience and Then Sell

The ultimate goal of your campaign is to generate leads and sales for your services and products. In fact, it would be nice to start generating sales as soon as you set up your brand page, but on Pinterest you want to take your time doing this.

You need to build an audience first. And after you gain followers, you can start promoting your products.

On Facebook and Twitter or other social networks where you share posts every day, you might be able to promote your products more than once daily. But on Pinterest, the best way to promote items is to create a dedicated board where you pin the products you want to sell.

Remember, you want to pin your products only once because if you do it over and over again, you’ll appear to be overpromoting yourself.

When you first pin one of your products, you want to get as many initial likes, repins and comments as possible. This will add social proof to your products, encourage users to check out the product and increase the likelihood of more direct shares in the future.

So focus on building an audience first by sharing content regularly and then pin your products to your page.

So focus on building an audience first and share your products after you have achieved this.

Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business

As you can see, there are several ways you can highlight your products on Pinterest. Have a look to see how other businesses are using their Pinterest accounts and figure out which your audience might like best. Choose the boards that will work best for you.

How many people does it take to run your Social Media Pages?

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:43:58 -0400

Image from: marketingsuperhero.blogspot.com

The Manager

Though many companies still operate with just one strategist or coordinater, it is essential that the department has a manager. A considerable number of agencies still operate with only one Social Media girl/guy who manages their blog posts, tweets and sends funny cat pictures to the office, but those employees need a manager. They need to be steered in the direction that is in line with the goals of your company, or the goals of your clients – if they are managing more than one brand. A manager is typically the guy/girl who has had previous experience as a strategist and who has a clear picture of what a good campaign looks like – as well as the tasks involved to get it done. The manager delegates those tasks to the team accordingly and is responsible for the overall output of the team.

The Strategist

Back in the early days of Social Media, the strategist used to be the only role in the department as the strategy would usually consist of doing everything. But big brands require constant focus and attention and coming up with a solid long-term (or short-term) strategy for your clients do take time. The strategist is the person who comes up with the creative idea that fuels the campaign and will work closely with the manager and the implementers in order to get the campaign live. Ideally, you’d want your strategist to have some creative and Copywriting background to ensure that your clients’ messages are being conveyed in a professional manner. Nothing says sloppy best than a typo.

The Analyst

Talking about ROI to a Social Media guru could make them feel uncomfortable because they are creative and do not want to be limited by putting a number on their creativity. However, having an analyst on board your team will turn your department into a Social Media power team. You’ll have your creative who focus on the plan and execution while the analyst sits back and watches, measures the efforts of the creatives and compiles reports. The analyst is a vital part of the team as it is with the insight gathered by them that the strategists can create better, optimised campaigns and content that are tailored to the way the social media user behaves.

The Implementer

After the strategy is conducted and the roll-out plan has been mapped, you will need someone to put everything into action, to make the content provided by the strategist live – this is where your implementers come in. Implementers ensure that the social media plan is put in action exactly as it was strategized. They are methodical and cautious with a keen eye for detail – they need to be as they will be pushing the final publish button on your clients’ Facebook pages, Twitter stream, YouTube Channel, Pinterest board etc.

The Designer

The designer in the social media department has the most pleasant job in the world, in my opinion. They are the ones creating striking Facebook cover photos, Twitter backgrounds and YouTube wallpapers to make your clients’ social media properties look hot. With the rise of dynamic content and the constant change in user behaviour on the Internet, employing a designer to focus solely on designing for social media will be of huge benefit to your department. There is nothing worse than seeing a brand’s page displaying a poor quality/cropped off image of their logo in their profile photo.

Does Brand Marketing Still Matter in the Digital Age?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 03:13:02 -0400

Most of you know that Biznology is all about digital marketing, which is a nice hot topic to cover. And you’ll be forgiven if you think that all this focus on shiny new marketing techniques leave little room for the tried and true. But you’d be wrong. Digital marketing, in fact, is way more about marketing than about digital. Even though there are many things that are changing, the basic still stay the same. One of those basics is brand marketing. Far from becoming unimportant, brand marketing is becoming more important to more companies every day.

Digital marketers (including me) have criticized the old “brand awareness” game, where that was the only measurement we focused on to show that our marketing is any good. I’ve often tried to get companies to focus on actual direct marketing metrics and conversions, reasoning that if they buy from you then at some point they probably became aware of you.

But don’t let that focus on measurement lead you to the conclusion that brand marketing itself is unimportant. Sure, we want metrics focused on sales, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need a strong brand. What’s really true is that band in more important than ever for the simple reason that digital marketing makes marketing important to more companies than ever.

In the old days, B2B companies had no marketing more elaborate than, “What should we put in this year’s brochure to bring to the trade show?” Small businesses had even fewer marketing decisions to make: “Half page or full page ad in the Yellow Book this year?” But digital marketing means that you can affordably reach even the smallest group, so suddenly your brand matters a great deal more than ever before.

Every business must think in terms of digital branding that reflects who they are as a company. Your newsletter, your website, your social media presence, and many other marketing tactics now make sense for any type of business, and with that, your brand matters more than ever before.

What do you stand for? How does that image start with the first digital touchpoints and carry through in every interaction with your company? Digital marketing means that you are competing with companies far and wide that you never had to worry about before. How do you differentiate when being the one down the street no longer matters?

These are big questions that every business must face in the digital age!

Why email marketing?

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:44:27 -0400

A few years ago, marketers were decrying the death of email. Instead of fading away a la

Myspace and mood rings, email remains one of the most productive means of generating leads and

selling products online. According to a 2013 national dMA email report, 89% of marketers consider

email important to their organizational goals. rather than dying out, 56% of email markets plan to focus

Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 2

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 02:54:27 -0500

Continuing on from, Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 1

#7 Purchasing Email Lists

By now, everyone should know better than to buy a “totally legitimate list of 30 million opt-in emails” via some sketchy piece of spam they got. That’s pretty obvious, but there are still some vendors out there selling “opt-in” lists the old-fashioned way. They collect email addresses and ask members if they’d like to “receive special offers from third parties.” Then, they sell those email addresses to other people. It’s not technically illegal, but it sure is stupid. The correct way to do it is to keep the list, and then send special offers on behalf of third parties. Be wary of any groups that just want to give you a big list of emails. They should be doing the delivery for you, so their recipients will recognize the sender, and so you won’t get reported for spam.

#8 Assuming People Know Who You Are

We’ve seen some marketers who created nice email-signup forms a long time ago, and they’re just now getting around to sending emails. Even though they responsibly acquired every recipient’s permission before sending, those recipients have most likely have forgotten in the time since they signed up. So when they get a full-blown email newsletter out of the blue, they report the sender for spamming. This happens more often than you think. A lot of email experts say that permission goes stale after only six months. If you’re not regularly contacting your list, then assume the old emails have already forgotten you. You’ll need to send them a “Remember me?” email.

#9 Assuming People Want to Hear From You

Did everyone on your list specifically give you permission to email them? If not, then you’re just assuming they want to hear from you. Big mistake. They’re going to report you as a spammer. Even if you “spent lots of time putting together that list of prospects.” Even if you “spent lots of money for this opt-in list.” Even if the list is made up of “people in your industry who have certainly heard of you.” If they didn’t specifically ask for emails from you and you put them on your email-marketing list, then you’re sending spam.

This concept seems to confuse a lot of people. They say, “But I get emails all the time from people I’ve never heard of, and I appreciate it.” Know that it’s different if someone sends one email directly to you, with a sales pitch. But when that same person crosses the line and “blasts” his sales pitch to an entire list of people, it quickly becomes spam. So don’t send email campaigns to a list of mere prospects, and don’t just compile all your sales-contact lists (some of them will just be possible prospects who’ve never even heard of you), and never, ever, ever purchase lists (even if they’re “opt-in”). If you have a list of clients and customers that know you, but they haven’t exactly opted-in for newsletters from you, then send them personal, individual email invitations asking them to join your list.

#10 Being in a Rush

The biggest mistakes happen when marketers “have to get this campaign out yesterday!” They don’t do the proper design and coding. They don’t think through the content. They don’t plan their subject lines (perhaps the most important factor in your open rate). They don’t make sure their list is clean and totally opt-in. They ask the sales team, “Hey everyone, I’m blasting out an email. Gimme all your contact lists!” What happens next? Broken emails go out to lots of people who never opted in, forgot who you are, don’t remember signing up for your emails or haven’t heard from you in years. So what do they do? They click the “This is junk” button in their email program (studies show that anywhere from 10-30 percent of recipients have done this, even to emails they requested, thinking it was the only effective way to unsubscribe from a list). Then what happens? Alerts get sent to their ISPs, who in turn blacklist the sender for spamming. So slow down, take a breath, and make sure your list is in tip-top shape before you push it out the door.

#11 Confusing Transactional Emails With Email Marketing

Got a list of customers who purchased products from your e-commerce store? They’ll expect email receipts and email-shipping notifications. Those are transactional emails, and they’re different from email marketing. For those emails, try Mandrill, a powerful product we built specifically for transactional email. Those emails should be sent from your own server, or by using our API for transactional support .

Email newsletters, coupons, and promotions are considered marketing or commercial emails. If you send marketing email to a list of people without their permission, then you’re sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE), otherwise known as spam. Understand where that line is drawn, because if you cross it, you can expect a call from the FTC for violating their CAN-SPAM law. You might also get sued. Which is to say: Don’t be a spammer.

#12 Not Having Permission

Before you can send any email-marketing material, you must have permission from every single one of your recipients. If your initial reaction to that statement was, “But what if…,” then stop what you’re doing, because you don’t have permission.

Permission means that people requested email marketing from you. Before investing your time and money in an email-marketing program, start getting permission from your customers. It’s easier than you think, and it’ll result in fewer spam complaints, better deliverability, decreased legal liability, and—most importantly—better open and click results. MailChimp automatically asks for a permission reminder in your campaigns.

When you’re creating a new list , you’ll have to include a reminder. And every time you manually add someone to your list, you’ll have to promise us that your subscribers asked to receive your newsletter.

Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 1

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 03:36:42 -0500

#1 Ignoring Campaign Reports

Once of the benefits of email-marketing services like MailChimp is that you can measure results after every email campaign. It’s tremendously useful. That’s why we’re still amazed to see some marketers sending dozens and dozens of campaigns but never looking at their reports. They don’t notice that their open rates have slipped from 60 percent to less than 10 percent. They don’t notice that their list is steadily shrinking after every campaign. They don’t notice that key clients are using email filters that reject their emails as spam.

Check your email stats after every single campaign you send. Look for trends. Make changes to campaigns to see if you can improve your open rates, click rates, and, most importantly, conversions. What’s the best day to send your emails? What’s the best time? How can slight adjustments to your template affect sales? Remember: Always be checking.

#2 Sending With a Personal Reply-To Address

When you invite customers to your office, would you rather it be a big, professional office building, or the extra bedroom in your house? When you give someone your business card, would you rather it be printed on nice, professional paper stock, or hand-written on a sticky note?

Same goes for email marketing. Don’t send a big email campaign to your customers, and use your “@yahoo.com” or “@aol.com” home email address. You have a website, don’t you? (If not, you probably shouldn’t be sending any email campaigns at all yet.) Use your website’s domain, on which you probably already have emails accounts.

#3 Forgetting to Test in Lots of Programs

HTML emails look different depending on which email program you use to view them. Just because it looks good in the preview window or when you send a test to yourself doesn’t mean it’ll look like that for all your recipients. You should set up a few accounts with free email services like Yahoo!, MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail. If possible, set up “home accounts,” like with AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, and Roadrunner. Test on different computers and operating systems, like Macs and PCs. If you don’t have the budget to build test computers (Who does?), just enlist a few friends or volunteers at the office. Send them tests, and ask them to tell you if the email looked weird in their programs.

#4 Writing Like a Used-Car Salesman

Since email can be so affordable, it’s often the first attempt at “real” marketing that small businesses make. Unfortunately, small businesses aren’t necessarily writing experts. Instead of thinking, “Hmm, how would XYZ company write this email?” you should stop and ask, “Hmm, what would my customers find useful in my email?” Don’t use pushy sales copy, like “BUY NOW!!!!” or “LIMITED TIME OFFER!!!” in email. It’s obnoxious. Plus, Spam filters will penalize you for using what they consider “spammy” content.

How Spam Filters Think

Spam filters look at a long list of criteria to decide whether or not an email is junk. These items are almost always on their lists of spammy criteria:

Going crazy with exclamation points!!!!!!

USING ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT’S LIKE YELLING IN AN EMAIL OMG

Coding sloppy HTML (usually from converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML)

Coloring fonts bright red or green

Using the word “test” in the subject line

Creating an HTML email that’s nothing but one big image, with little or no text

#5 Thinking “Blast” Instead of “Relationship”

We cringe when someone asks us if we can help them “blast” an email out to people. For one, the word “blast” should only be used in reference to missiles and tanks. Not permission marketing. Secondly, when people say “blast,” it usually means they think email is just a way to shoot out a bunch of emails, whether people want to hear from them or not. Email is all about getting permission from customers, sending them stuff they want to read, and listening to their feedback.

#6 Forgetting to Double Check the List Before Sending

This one mostly applies to agencies sending on behalf of their clients. We’ve seen some people send email-marketing campaigns to lists that are obviously not permission-based. If you do that, you’re breaking our terms of use—and breaking the CAN-SPAM law. Yes, you can be held liable for spam when sending on behalf of someone else. Did you build a website for a local dry cleaner? Did they ask you to handle their “e-blast” too? Ask them how they got the list, and if it’s permission based or not. If it’s a small shop, but their list is 25,000 recipients, use some common sense.

Content Marketing

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 03:22:00 -0500

The key to success is to make the connection between content marketing and social media.

#1: Attract Prospective Customers

The first question on a prospect’s mind when considering a purchase is, “What solutions are available?”

Your goal is to create awareness and make sure that your solution meets the buyers’ need when they’re ready to make a decision.

Successful businesses are communicating with prospects on social networking sites and directing them to the material the prospects need to make an informed decision. How are they doing this?

One way is to create informational articles.

Social network users are constantly sharing, curating and consuming informational content. Often, the headline or a short description of the content appears on the social network together with a link to view the content on a company website.

Businesses need to share this informational content and have it written for prospects who are in research mode, learning about the solutions that are available.

Another method is to raise awareness of your products and services through informational webinars and seminars.

Informational webinars and seminars can demonstrate your expertise while providing prospects with the information they need during the research stage of the buying cycle.

#2: Convert Prospects

The second question on a person’s mind when considering a purchase is, “Which is the right solution for me?”

Businesses that successfully convert new customers from social media create and distribute content that provides proof points to the sale. Content that assists in meeting this goal proves that your solution provides more value than the other solutions the prospect has researched.

A very effective piece of content to meet this goal is the demo video or “explainer” video.

A second piece of content that will build the type of trust that closes the sale is the case study. Case studies close sales because they prove that others have had success with your solution.

A third piece of content that can convert leads into sales are white papers. For B2B marketers, the white paper is a staple piece of content used by possible buyers to assist in the decision-making process.

#3: Keep Existing Customers

The last question on a buyer’s mind is, “Am I happy with the decision I made?”

This goal is about retention and referral. Successful businesses will use social media and content to keep customers satisfied.

One type of content that retains existing customers is support documentation.

A second content type that increases loyalty is documentation of best practices.

Businesses that create content that teaches customers how to get the most out of their product or service will increase customer satisfaction.

Another content type that increases retention of existing customers is case studies.

While the function of the case study in converting a new customer is to provide a proof point, the case study is also useful in retention because it provides guidance to the existing customer.

In Closing…

Social media and content marketing are joined at the hip.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not always where a conversation begins and ends. To attract, convert and keep customers, social media and content marketing should be parts of a seamless marketing, sales and customer-service strategy.

Your current and future customers are using social media. Make sure you have well-planned content marketing and give your social media team the information they need to share the content your audience needs.

Social Media Content

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 03:41:33 -0500

Why Share Other People’s Content?

It’s all about becoming a valuable resource. When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in–regardless of the source–you’ll become more respected and your content will be widely shared.

And when you have some of your own content to share, people will be more likely to help spread the word.

Here’s where to find valuable content:

#1: Watch Large News Sites

Depending on your industry, you may find topical and interesting articles on large news sites such as USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have a news site or magazine for your niche that provides industry news, make sure you have that bookmarked as part of your content.

#2: Watch News Aggregators

If you want to make content sourcing a little easier, use a news aggregator website or tool. Certain sites do a great job of bringing in the latest news and sorting it by industry or niche all in one place.

Stuff To Tweet has some of the most popular posts on different sites including CNN, YouTube and more. Yes, it does mention tweeting, but these articles are good for Facebook, too.

#3: Pay Attention to Popular Posts

You can also see things that are trending and popular on some of the other social media sites and share them to Facebook.

You can also see what’s trending on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Notice that you can switch the trends by clicking the Change link and selecting a certain region to get more localized results. Are these trending topics always the best things to share on Facebook? Maybe not, but they can be relevant.

You may be better off just using Twitter Search and plug in some of your niche keywords to find some good articles to share on Facebook.

#4: Have Go-to Sources to Share

Many times you know which other Facebook Pages consistently have good content and valuable posts. They may be in your industry or they may be a complement to your business so your audience will also be interested in their content.

There are a few different ways to watch their Facebook posts. One is to like their Page as your Page and then watch your Page news feed. This makes it easy to share their posts when you see them in your news feed.

Another way to easily monitor other Pages is to create an Interest List of all of the Pages on your personal profile and periodically monitor that feed.

You can make this Interest List public so other people can follow it, or you can make it private so only you know who is on it.

When you have the Interest List on your personal profile, sharing it to your Facebook Page is not hard. Just select the Share button and then switch the selection to On your Page. Then make sure the right Page is selected and the post will be shared by your Page.

You can find public lists that other people have created by going to Facebook Add List (this is the same URL you use to create your own list). They first show you some of the lists that your friends have created or may be on and then they sort the popular lists by topic.

#5: Use Google Reader and Google Alerts

If you have several (or even several hundred) blogs you enjoy reading that provide great content, use Google Reader to access them all from one place. You can easily see the latest posts or just click on the particular blog in the left sidebar to see some of their latest posts.

Google Reader gives you a dashboard for all of your best content sources so you can see which ones have new posts rather than checking on each individual site.

Google Alerts are another great way to monitor the web for fresh content. Google Alerts use the latest relevant Google results and send them as an aggregated set of stories to your email address.

You can use keywords related to your niche and have a set of fresh posts brought to your email inbox every day.

If you find that your keywords aren’t bringing the right content in, you can always delete the alert.

Having your company name as an alert is also useful to watch for any new mentions of your company on the web.

#6: Look for Funny Posts

People are typically on social media to have fun and be social. Even if you’re a more serious brand, don’t forget to lighten up every once in a while with a humorous post. Humor can be difficult and you always run the risk of offending someone, so be careful.

#7: Create Your Own Images

Images are still getting a lot of engagement on Facebook. They continue to get a lot of comments, likes and shares even if they don’t have the same reach as a text post.

Images take up more space in the news feed and 0are generally more interesting than a plain text post.

But what if you don’t have many pictures to share? You can find images to illustrate a point at sites like iStockphoto or 123RF (you can’t just find images on Google and upload them to Facebook).

If you would like to find free images, you can use the Creative Commons area on Flickr or stock.xchng (make sure you read the guidelines on giving proper attribution).

You can also use Compfight to help you search for photos that you can use. You can use the Commercial hotlink to see which ones are for business use (again, make sure you read about proper attribution).

If you want to add your own text to the photo to illustrate a point or add some special effects to make the picture more interesting, use an online editing tool like PicMonkey or iPiccy.

Special quotes are popular things to share on Facebook, but you can use these tools to turn the quote into something more visual. Of course if you’re well-versed in something like Photoshop, creating an image to use is a breeze.

You may also have an occasion to take a screenshot and edit it. This technique works really well if you’re teaching something about websites or computers.

#8: Monitor Your Stats

Finally, make sure you watch what works with your audience.

Dive into your Facebook Insights and sort the posts you have by Engaged Users. The Engaged Users stats include the number of unique users who have clicked on your posts, which can include people clicking on the photo or link, liking the post, commenting or sharing your post.

Notice what types of posts your audience responds to and post more of those.

Once you get some of your favorite content creators in place, don’t forget to continue to monitor the web for new sources of great content. And make sure you work in plenty of your own original content!