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If you are struggling with your campaign, it’s critical to remember that social media should not be seen as a simple add-on to your business. It should also not be measured in its own silo because it should be integrated in everything that you do on your other marketing campaigns. What can you do to ensure that your social media campaign stays on track? Remember that the main focus point of your social media campaign should be to reach your business goals.

Here’s a couple of tips to help you understand this.

Social media business goals

What do you want to reach? Having a goal about being more social is too general and won’t work. Be specific about what you want to reach with your social media campaign.

Is your goal realistic? Be sure to measure goals with your social media strategy that are achievable. Success on the social web doesn’t happen over night and it usually takes a lot of effort and time. Be sure to take note of this.

Do you have a plan? What are you going to do with your social media campaign? Are you going to blog, post updates on Facebook or Tweet on a daily basis? If you don’t know what you are doing, you are planning to fail. An easy way to get started is to create an editorial calendar that outlines when and what you should post.

Set reasonable milestones to work towards: Engaging with your target audience and building lasting relationships on the social web doesn’t happen overnight. Creating an editorial calendar, and calendar takes effort and time.

Ask for everyone to get involved: If you are not running a one man operation, ask for everyone to get involved with your social media marketing strategy to help you transform your business into a social business.

Everyone won’t always run smooth: With social media, part of achieving success is to make mistakes and learn from it. If you fall behind with your updates and blog posts, the solution is simple, start writing again!

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If you are already in the digital marketing space, you should know the importance of putting your best foot forward on the web and you most likely follow a couple of rules that you live by. If you don’t, you can miss out on some great opportunities online. Here’s a couple of rules that I follow on the social web so that all my social media effort adds value to my digital footprint.

Be genuine

This is one of the most important rules that you should follow. Be yourself and be genuine in everything that you do online. This means being truthful, real, and transparent about what you believe in and who you are. Never go out with only self promotion and share in an honest way. Networking online is very similar to networking offline. If you are genuine and yourself with others, they will trust you and long term relationships can be created.

Respond in time

Online it’s good practice to respond to emails with a personal tone and promptly. If anyone is sending a direct message to you, respond to them. On Twitter, respond publicly and positively to any mentions you might receive. It is also good practice to mention others in your social circles. The more you mention and interact with others, the more likely they will mention you in a public and positive way.

Sharing is key

By being present, participating, and commenting, rather than just being a troll online, you can build quite a lot of credibility online.  When you like other peoples status updates, comment on posts, like Business Facebook Pages, retweet, Reddit or stumble interesting articles, you are giving people a give. And trust me, it will come back to you. Ever saw the movie pay it forward?

Acknowledge other people

When you refer someone or mention them on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, link to them and acknowledge them. Everyone is trying hard to build a name for themselves online, whether it’s through networking, writing or curating content. It’s a fact that everyone wants to be recognised for what they are doing.

Helping others

The more helpful you are the more you are adding to making a difference. Share good content, and answer questions. When you do this, the more willing others will be to help you. It does sound easier than it is, but there is no better way to get the ball rolling than right now. What problems are your customers experiencing? What questions do they have? How can you help them?

One of the first rules you learned when you were young was to say thank you and please. Manners online works the same as they do offline. Thank people for acknowledging you and for sharing your content along to their own social circles. Thank people by using their name and do it publicly. When you value others efforts they will feel appreciated.

What you do and who you are online says a great deal about you and how you do business.

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If you have customers that are highly satisfied with your service, did you know that you can use them as a marketing weapon? Whether you provide services to customers, manufacture goods or have a retail business, play your cards right and you can turn your customers into brand ambassadors that will help you spread the word about your business. These people can be used to create magnetic content that will help you promote your brand online without asking to be paid for their help.

Do you know your customers?

One of the first steps in helping your customers become brand ambassadors is finding out who they actually are. What do you know about them? An easy way to find out is by creating an old school survey that will contain a couple of questions. Ask them to complete the survey on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or your website where they feel comfortable. Ask them to rate you on a scale from 1-10 on how likely they will recommend you to their family and friends. Those that answer above 8 are potential brand ambassadors.

True brand ambassadors recommend their preferred services and products because they like them and would want to tell others about it. Make it easy for your customers to create testimonials, reviews, Facebook Likes, Tweets, photos, and videos that boosts engagement about your business. Offer them the tools to create content and interact with you.

Help them spread the word

Also, there are many social media sharing and bookmarking tools that integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and other social media channels that you can integrate on your website and blog so that your customers can share their experiences with their own networks. Encourage them to use these tools.

When your brand ambassadors share their experiences with their network by posting recommendations and comments on your website and social media channels, recognise and acknowledge them. Measure these results and keep track of them. What was the reach of the comments and shares generated? Using this data can also help you discover new areas and channels where you can further your digital marketing campaign.

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While it’s super easy to create your profile on the top social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn, if you are not sure on what you want to achieve and how you are going to engage with your target audience, you will get frustrated because no one will notice you. Here’s a couple of tips that I always give my new clients on the rules of engagement on the social web.

Social media engagement

Social media is all about engagement: Rule number one with any social media campaign is to be social and engage. You can’t join the social web and then just post updates about you, your products or services. If you do this, you will be ignored. People buy from people and companies that they know and trust. It takes time to development lasting relationships. With social media, it’s important that you take the time to add value to the people you are targeting before you start selling.

What do you know? With social media it’s important to establish yourself as the leader and expert in your niche and area. It’s a good idea to mix it up here and there to get extra followers, but don’t confuse your network by engaging into a topic that is way outside of your core business focus.

Be consistent: It’s not that easy to maintain a steady pace on social media, but remember the importance of always staying consistent with your audience. Your absence over long periods of time will have a negative impact on your social media campaign and it can cost you dearly. Create a social media editorial calendar for your campaign so that you know when and what to publish to your audience. Stay consistent with your strategy.

Patience is key: Patience is a virtue and plays a big role in social media. Even though social media is real time and content travels at the speed of light on this medium, don’t expect instant results.

It takes time: Social media is really time consuming. I know. To get the best out of your campaign, it’s important that you put in the hours. Where does your audience spend there time online? Choose the right channels and create a schedule so that you can keep up.

Listening: You must have heard this a thousand times before, but it’s true. Listen to the current conversation going on so that you can also join in. Share things that are relevant and that your target audience will find interesting. Listen first and speak later. It really does wonders in the world of social media.

Be courteous: When others are responding to your comments you have to remember it takes a piece out of their time, so do the right thing and respond back. It’s always nice to be acknowledged, but return the favour because social media is all about building lasting relationships.

Search for people: The easiest way to build relationships on the social web with your target audience is to go out and search for them. Look for the people that you would like to have a conversation with and follow them. Use the same offline method of creating relationships by being friendly, helpful, and asking questions that will interest them.

Do you have a voice? Everyone online including any size of business has a personality. It’s important that you determine how you want to represent your brand online and by finding the voice that your target audience would like to hear, you will have an easy time engaging with them directly.

Don’t forget sales: While selling shouldn’t be the first thing your tackle with your social media campaign, in the end, you are using social media for a reason. Being social is the first step with your campaign, but don’t forget your business goals and the milestones you would like to achieve with your social media campaign,

The tips above doesn’t guarantee instant success with your social media campaign, they will at least give you a very good indication on engaging with your target audience. Your campaign should focus on conversations with your target audience, providing them with interesting and relevant information, and creating a valuable resource for them to come back to again and again. Social media can really add a huge benefit to your business, but only if you use it correctly.

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Community management is a solid foundation of any social media marketing campaign, but how can you use “social search” so that interested people can find you on the social web through other means than just going directly to your social media profiles? Find a couple of tips below on how you can start optimizing your social media campaign on to take advantage of social search.

Focus on your customers

Social media made everyone a citizen journalist. Your reputation can be made or broken in 140 characters or less. Many businesses see this as a big risk when starting with social media, but they have to understand that the days are actually over where they can control what is being said about them. It now all depends on how you handle it and become part of the conversation.

If you care about your customers, then you most likely care about your reputation. Comments, retweets, mentions, and shares are only some of the actions that you can use to engage with your customers in a personal way. Don’t sound like a robot and shrug of the whole salesman approach with social media. Having a meaningful relationship with your customers means a lot to them. As long as you are engaging with your customers online in relevant and useful topics, appearing on the social search will follow.

User generated content

User generated content can provide fuel for your social media campaign. It’s important that you make an emotional connection with your audience. Don’t start a conversation as a salesman interested in selling. I know it’s sounds easier than it usually is, but start this by asking an open ended question to get the ball rolling. A community manager plays a key role in these situations, because they can shape the direction of the conversion to transform into a trend.

It really doesn’t matter if you are big organisation or a small one, ask your network some engaging questions to establish an emotional connection with them. When you make your network feel that they are part of the conversation and their contribution is valued, you are not only improving your outreach, you are also increasing positive mentions about your brand on the social web and the more your name appear, the better your chances for appearing in social search.

Newsjacking

This is the process of integrating your message and ideas into break news items in real time. Newsjacking is used for the sole purpose of generating awareness for your business or yourself. For brands, it’s an excellent way if you use your employees and contributors to start tacling trending news and integrating it into your current marketing strategy. By aligning your message with current trending news in real time is an approach that can give you quite a lot of exposure.

Social search is a great approach if you are interested in growing your network on the social web.

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Most online writers and publishers uses call to actions on a regular basis. They add them to their emails, website content, and sales letters, but for some obscure reason, many are forgetting to add these to their blog posts. This can cost them dearly with the level of engagement they are experiencing on their blog from their readers.

Blogging is about engaging with your readers

One major part of blogging is to generate engagement from your readers and this becomes difficult if there are no call to actions on your posts to direct them on what to do next. It’s important that you guide your readers to take an action and with an optimized call to action, this is possible.

The reason you write and publish blog posts is to get your readers to take an action in some form, shape or way.

Where should I place my call to action?

From a pure blogging perspective, you can practically place your call to action anywhere in your blog post where it is relevant to your content and where it makes sense. If y you are writing about a specific topic and you want your readers to take action, use your call to action prominently in your content. It is also not uncommon to see a couple of call to actions on a blog post (images, links, buttons, etc), but don’t make it spammy. You can use your call to actions in the beginning of the posts, middle, and at the end. I try to place a call to action at the very top of the blog post (usually a link) and my other call to actions at the bottom (related blog posts, comment form).

Next time your write a blog post, add a call to action by asking a question in the form of a link or just a simple reminder to your readers that you would like to engage with them. The only thing you should remember by adding call to actions to your posts is that they should always be relevant to your post no matter what shape you use them in.

What sort of call to actions can I use?

You can ask your target audience to try a number of different actions on your blog posts. Just like the optimized call to actions you use on your website and other marketing materials, your call to action should be fresh and change from time to time. Here’s a couple of call to actions you can use in your posts.

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Various social media elements have already been integrated into Google’s search algorithm and these have already made a huge impact on search engine rankings. Although it is still not clear how much influence social media signals have on organic search results, using social media is not a nice to have anymore, but a must have if you are serious about your precious rankings and your authority online.

Every retweet, “like” or share on Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, or any other social media channel counts as a social signal. A social signal is basically telling Google that the content being shared is valuable and others will enjoy it as well. The more shares, likes, and retweets you receive from something you have shared, the higher the chance that it will be assigned a high value on the search engine result pages.

Aside from just adding a huge benefit to search rankings, another great benefit to having high likes and re shares on your content is the fact that more people will see your updates helping your content travel. This translates directly back to more website visitors, since a recommendation by a friend that is trusted will have a better mind share compared to a random result on the search engines.

What should you do to get started with social signals

If you already have social media profiles setup on all the top social networks like Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, you have to realise that this is only one part to get it going. You need to be active on the social web and regularly curate and create updates and posts that are relevant to your business and your target audience.

Focus on finding ways to enhance user engagement with your brand, and make it easy for your target audience to share your content with their own social circles by using a magnetic content marketing strategy. Magnetic content is designed to attract interested readers instead of pushing them in.

By using social signals and integrating social media into your overall marketing strategy, you will not only be able to enhance your presence on the social web, but you will also have the ability to improve your organic search engine rankings.

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With the birth of the social web and popular channels like Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy to voice your opinion about anyone and anything in 140 characters or less. More businesses are also realising that they should pay more attention to monitoring what is being talked about them online. There are many social media monitoring and ORM (online reputation management) tools available that can track any mentions and basically anything being talked about online. When using this software, they can weed out all the serious mentions or posts, trace what was the cause of the mention, and then answer all the mentions that are worthy of a follow-up.

There are many effective ways that you can use social media to solve your problems. Here’s a couple of suggestions to make sure your mention, complaint or appraisal gets noticed.

Social media to voice your opinion

Be yourself: Social media is not a medium to only flame complaints. When mentioning a company, always use your real name so that the company you are mentioning can find out who you are and have the ability to respond to your mention or query.

Try traditional customer service: This might sound old school and it is, but having your name and concern on record is by far one of the best ways to build a relationship with a company.

Research the company: Before you start complaining, check some background information about the company’s reputation first. How are they currently handling customer complaints? Search for them on all the popular social media channels to give you an indication of their reputation.

Don’t be a black sheep: Don’t start flaming them publicly before you are sure of your facts. This can backfire on you. Ask if someone can contact you to resolve your issue. Remember, social media is public and you don’t want to be labelled as a black sheep.

Blogging: If you have a blog, tell your story in great detail on your experience. Use a magnetic title and stay away from bad language, and sarcasm.

Going over the top: If you really want to get noticed, create a video and share it on the social media channels that you use. This is dangerous and can also backfire on you so keep it professional and to the point.

Businesses that are building their brand online want to keep their profiles professional and upstanding. Have you voiced your opinion about a brand or product online with social media? Did you get any response?

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Jeremy Ryan, a 21-year-old web designer graduated with a liberal arts degree from a small west coast college. Web design had been his hobby for 8 years. Jeremy created a resume blog that focused on his Internet skills and projects that he had worked on. He used his blog to chronicle his job search as well as giving out the latest web tips that he found while surfing the Internet. Within 3 months Jeremy landed his dream job with an advertising firm.

Blog reading recruiters

According to a Wall Street Journal article, Wal-Mart Stores recruiting manager Ryan Loken spends 2 hours per week reading thru blogs locating candidates for management positions. Blogs have helped Ryan fill 125 corporate jobs. Many of the candidates were referred from other bloggers, but some were the blog writers themselves.

Blog for a specific job

Utah blogger Carolynn Duncan had her eye on a position at Provo Labs. Provo Labs is a web 2.0 consulting company. Carolynn created a blog “Why Provo Labs Wants to Hire Carolyn Duncan” at blogspot. Not only did she get the interview, but she landed the job.

Blogging to find your perfect job is a great way to make yourself heard and seen online.  You can use your blog as your “online resume”.  By using it this way, you are making yourself visible to the widest group of potential employers.  Your resume blog could be much more in depth on what you do than your traditional paper resume.

Post stories on your resume blog about your projects, accomplishments, education and any other topics that you are really passionate about. Always be fresh and unique.  Use your resume blog to encourage two way communication by enabling comments on your posts.

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