Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips

Building on from the recent theme of preparing for the holiday season sales rush, this week I’m delving into the world of social media marketing.

The numbers around social media at the moment are mind blowing, so it should definitely be a consideration of any business before heading into the holiday period.

Before I delve into the tips, here’s a video I shared during a social media presentation I gave last week. It helps set the scene for the importance of social media for modern businesses.

1. Give your social media profiles a makeover:

When was the last time you checked how engaging your social profile is? Social media is an extension of your brand. Use the holiday season to give your profiles a make over:

1. New twitter background: did you even realise you can customise your twitter background. Check out these backgrounds to get inspired.

50 great examples of business branded twitter pages: http://www.creativeopera.com/2010/corporate-branding-on-twitter-50-excellent-examples/

2. Business Pages on Facebook: Is it time to create a Facebook business page that is more interesting than just a feed of your business’ activity and discussions?

Look at some of these company pages to see how you can take your business page to the next level.

Redbull – http://www.facebook.com/redbull
GAP – http://www.facebook.com/gap
L’Oreal – http://www.facebook.com/lorealparis

Here’s a list of 40 more: http://speckyboy.com/2010/08/15/40-highly-effective-facebook-business-pages/

3. Blog Design: Let’s not forget our good old blogs. Perhaps its time to add some new banners, change the template or even update our widgets on our blogs to give them a bit more sizzle.

2. Build your followers and connections

The size of your social media captive audience is a key influencer on the success of your campaigns. So it’s important to build your audience so that when you distribute content, engage in conversations and share offers – there’s enough people listening/watching.

1. Migrate existing clients across to social media

Use this as a time to try and encourage existing customers to connect with you via their social networks. It will provide you with another way to communicate with your clients outside of emails, the phone etc.

2. Encourage prospects and browsers to join your network

Even if you don’t convert a prospect or browser on first visit, persuading them to connect via social media gives you further opportunities to engage with them which can help you convert them later.

3. Get more reviews

Peer reviews are becoming more and more important in people’s buying process. So have you checked how many reviews your business and products have? Are they positive or negative.

It’s important to encourage your new customers to post reviews (preferably positive) on the major reviews sites. Make it easy for them and suggest where to go after the sale (either in person or via follow up marketing)

Here’s a list of the some of the review sites to focus on:

Yelp.com
Insiderpages.com
Maps.google.com
Citysearch.com
Local.Yahoo.com
Local.com
MerchantCircle.com

4. Special Offers for your followers

Use the holiday season as a chance to create social media specific campaigns and offers. IT’ll serve two purposes

Reward the people who have taken the time to connect with you in the social media sphere
It’ll give potential new social media followers a reason to connect with your company.

5. Engage in the Conversation

While social media is a great marketing tool, it’s often most effective when it’s used in a non direct marketing manner.

Commit to engaging in your social media sphere through conversations and contributions; comment, answer questions and posing opinions rather than just trying to promote products and services. You’ll be amazed at how effective this can be at driving new business if done effectively.

6. Integrate Social Media with other marketing

Social media is another one of the channels in your marketing mix. So use it in conjunction with other online and offline campaigns. It can help extend the reach of your marketing message, or alternatively provide another form of conversion from other campaigns.

7. Commit to creating some quality holiday valuable content

One the major strengths of social media is the viral nature of the medium. By creating and sharing valuable content (e.g. articles, videos, industry news, etc) – your social media audience can become your marketing force. They’ll share your content and ultimately promote your brand. The sort of marketing that money can’t buy!

So that’s my Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses this holiday season. As with most of your holiday season marketing strategies, the sooner you get started, the better the results will be when it counts.

There’s plenty of other social media marketing strategies to leverage during the holiday season, so what will you be using this year? Share your tactics with our readers below.

 

Thanks ,  Brought to you by : MSG Webmasters

How Social Media Marketing and SEO Are Inter-Linked

Building on from the recent theme of preparing for the holiday season sales rush, this week I’m delving into the world of social media marketing.

The numbers around social media at the moment are mind blowing, so it should definitely be a consideration of any business before heading into the holiday period.

Before I delve into the tips, here’s a video I shared during a social media presentation I gave last week. It helps set the scene for the importance of social media for modern businesses.

1. Give your social media profiles a makeover:

When was the last time you checked how engaging your social profile is? Social media is an extension of your brand. Use the holiday season to give your profiles a make over:

1. New twitter background: did you even realise you can customise your twitter background. Check out these backgrounds to get inspired.

50 great examples of business branded twitter pages: http://www.creativeopera.com/2010/corporate-branding-on-twitter-50-excellent-examples/

2. Business Pages on Facebook: Is it time to create a Facebook business page that is more interesting than just a feed of your business’ activity and discussions?

Look at some of these company pages to see how you can take your business page to the next level.

Redbull – http://www.facebook.com/redbull
GAP – http://www.facebook.com/gap
L’Oreal – http://www.facebook.com/lorealparis

Here’s a list of 40 more: http://speckyboy.com/2010/08/15/40-highly-effective-facebook-business-pages/

3. Blog Design: Let’s not forget our good old blogs. Perhaps its time to add some new banners, change the template or even update our widgets on our blogs to give them a bit more sizzle.

2. Build your followers and connections

The size of your social media captive audience is a key influencer on the success of your campaigns. So it’s important to build your audience so that when you distribute content, engage in conversations and share offers – there’s enough people listening/watching.

1. Migrate existing clients across to social media

Use this as a time to try and encourage existing customers to connect with you via their social networks. It will provide you with another way to communicate with your clients outside of emails, the phone etc.

2. Encourage prospects and browsers to join your network

Even if you don’t convert a prospect or browser on first visit, persuading them to connect via social media gives you further opportunities to engage with them which can help you convert them later.

3. Get more reviews

Peer reviews are becoming more and more important in people’s buying process. So have you checked how many reviews your business and products have? Are they positive or negative.

It’s important to encourage your new customers to post reviews (preferably positive) on the major reviews sites. Make it easy for them and suggest where to go after the sale (either in person or via follow up marketing)

Here’s a list of the some of the review sites to focus on:

Yelp.com
Insiderpages.com
Maps.google.com
Citysearch.com
Local.Yahoo.com
Local.com
MerchantCircle.com

4. Special Offers for your followers

Use the holiday season as a chance to create social media specific campaigns and offers. IT’ll serve two purposes

Reward the people who have taken the time to connect with you in the social media sphere
It’ll give potential new social media followers a reason to connect with your company.

5. Engage in the Conversation

While social media is a great marketing tool, it’s often most effective when it’s used in a non direct marketing manner.

Commit to engaging in your social media sphere through conversations and contributions; comment, answer questions and posing opinions rather than just trying to promote products and services. You’ll be amazed at how effective this can be at driving new business if done effectively.

6. Integrate Social Media with other marketing

Social media is another one of the channels in your marketing mix. So use it in conjunction with other online and offline campaigns. It can help extend the reach of your marketing message, or alternatively provide another form of conversion from other campaigns.

7. Commit to creating some quality holiday valuable content

One the major strengths of social media is the viral nature of the medium. By creating and sharing valuable content (e.g. articles, videos, industry news, etc) – your social media audience can become your marketing force. They’ll share your content and ultimately promote your brand. The sort of marketing that money can’t buy!

So that’s my Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses this holiday season. As with most of your holiday season marketing strategies, the sooner you get started, the better the results will be when it counts.

There’s plenty of other social media marketing strategies to leverage during the holiday season, so what will you be using this year? Share your tactics with our readers below.

 

Thanks ,  Brought to you by : MSG Webmasters

Those who are successful in internet marketing world are those who take the advantage and opportunities offered by both the search engine optimization techniques and the social media marketing otherwise called the SMM. Social media marketing make use of the people as the end and the means. Social media marketing is a recent development in the internet marketing strategy. Since its emergence as marketing effort almost every known online marketer try to identify with the system, especially searchers online. It generates enough clicks through rate when site are promoted through the system.

Ideally social media were meant for help desk for customers and for branding purposes, but it has spread its tentacle to other marketing areas of the internet such that the name is synonymous with internet marketing as it has potential of linking and reaching out to all types of audience and researchers of any niche.

On the surface there may not be any linkage between the social media marketing and search engine optimization, the SMM was traditionally oriented towards off site relationship while SEO is oriented towards traffic generation to the website. However, their is potential use of social media especially the link and connection it can create between social media users, and the ability of interaction to be carried further to other discussion groups and related forums creating links in the process.  

It offered advantage in that it allows users multiple keywords as against limited keywords which were the case in SEO. It increases the chances of the website being gained access to and patronized. In this way it influences Search engine optimization.

The share relationship and mutuality involved in social media marketing help promote the site contents. Inbound links are created through mutual sharing and understanding between social media practitioners or clients. The concept of “share this” phenomenon that is characteristic of social media help create links between two friends sites thereby promoting the sites before other visitors to the social media forum or discussion group as the case may be. Bloggers can allow outsides to insert links to their post which help cement the brand credibility and solidify the community which is good for internet marketing.

However, in sharing and exchanging links markers are advised to be cautious, they should avoid incorporating and tracking codes. This has a negative effect, it does not benefit page ranking and search engine optimization results. To aid optimization in social media marketing make use of targeted keywords. To get the utmost search engine optimization values adopt the use of independent page titles.

Mobiles can also be used to gain access to social media but that can only be possible where such information is inserted in the social media tool.

For one to make it through the social media marketing network one needs total commitment. You must put in your time and power to participate actively. That did, expect a great pay off or divided from your time and efforts. It helps put your site at advantageous positions for constant indexing by the search engines. It enhances the profitability and growth of the site through constant traffic.

Through the effective use of social marketing you have, access to customer evaluation to your contents. It enhances great keywords for customer utilization. Social media marketing is great marketing tool.

Question by Stranger Than Fiction: Help! Professional name for a Social Media Marketing company?
A friend and I are sitting here trying to come up with a catchy and professional name for her Social Media Marketing Consulting business and we are coming up completely empty handed…major creativity block….

Any ideas?

Best answer:

Answer by Ed Atun
THE INNOVATORS

TOMORROW TODAY

FAST FORWARD

THE MARKETING GENIUSES

SEE INTO THE FUTURE WITH US

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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