Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Once considered “new media,” social media has been around for over a decade. In fact, Facebook recently turned 10. No longer “new,” social media marketing appears to be here to stay. After all, users continue to flock to social networks, and so do marketers. What’s in it for your business? Check out these benefits of Social Media Marketing

  • Traffic and exposure - Social media marketing allows you to reach a much wider potential audience as your followers interact with your social profiles. In addition, many businesses periodically and strategically link to their blogs, websites, and landing pages from their social media pages which further drives traffic. In addition, you can keep the majority of your status updates social and informative and then encourage users to opt into an email campaign where you have the opportunity to guide them toward a buying decision.
  • Loyal fans and brand advocates - Engaging users on social networks breeds loyalty. In addition, many of your most satisfied customers will share their enthusiasm for your products and services with their own networks.
  • Leads, leads, and more leads - You can also use social media to generate leads. For example, you might offer a special report, ebook, or whitepaper on your blog or Facebook page in exchange for an email address.
  • Marketplace insights - Some social networking sites such as Facebook also provide you with detailed analytics. For example, you can quickly see the demographic makeup of your Facebook followers. In addition, you can target specific demographics through Facebook ads.
  • Improved rankings in search engines - Search engines want to serve up relevant results to their users. Having an active social presence with a great deal of engagement, likes, shares, and comments can signal to search engines that your website is highly topical and authoritative.
  • Increased sales - Who doesn’t want to increase sales? Social media with its ability to deliver additional traffic, loyal fans, and leads can positively impact your bottom line by driving sales.
  • Lower marketing costs - Social media marketing is not free, but it’s also not overly expensive. For example, you can sign up for Facebook and Twitter for free and then interact with followers without any upfront costs. That said, your time has value, so don’t forget to factor that in. In addition, you’ll need someone to write quality content for your blog, email newsletters, content marketing campaigns, and so on, and you may want to invest in targeted ads to attract the right following. According to HubSpot, inbound leads cost 61 percent less than outbound ones (social media is a form of inbound marketing).
  • Business partnership opportunities - Finally, social media is a fantastic place to network with other business professionals in your industry as well as potential partners. Start by joining LinkedIn or Facebook groups and becoming an active contributor.


These are but a few of the many benefits you can expect from social media marketing. Your customers, prospects, and potential business partners are using social media. This means that you should, too!

Source: www.grosocial.com

Avoid the following when marketing on Pinterest

When pitching your company or product in Pinterest make sure you are not doing any of the following:

No description of your business
If I visit your Pinterest site, how do I know who is responsible for all the beautiful pins? If I don't know who you are and what you are selling why even bother looking at your content.  When opening a Pinterest account always fill every space in your profile and put as much information about your company and products.

Missing link to your website
OK great I'm there, I love your content and your product.  How do I get to it?  Linking is the most important step in order to get potential costumer or client to your site, and don't forget to have a great landing page with clear call to actions so you can land that sale.

Not enough pins from your website or blog
If you concentrate too much on pins related to your business but forget to pin your blog or website content then you are missing the whole point of Pinterest.  Pinning your content from your website or blog will help drive visitors traffic to your main sites.

Low quality pictures
Have you seen all the great pictures that are in Pinterest, then how come yours look so bad?  You can do much better; get a good shot of yourself in good light and a clear background.  If you are a company a nice high-resolution picture of your company headquarters, I know you have lots of those lying around.

Messy Boards
Why do your bring your desktop clutter to the Pinterest board?  A Pinterest board should always be neat and organized.  Don't mix your content; keep one board per relevant subject.  If you do your visitors will thank you while being able to navigate easily through your content and filter out what they don't want to see on the fly.

Missing links to your Social Media sites
I’m there, I like your product but I am a Social Pineapple and I like to see what else is up your sleeve in your Tweeter account and Facebook.   Mentioning these sites in your profile will allow me to go there and check your other side.

Don't Pin just for the heck of it
Keep your pins relevant to your board subject matter.  Always describe briefly what you are pinning so that people have a clue of what you are offering.  Don't over do it either keep those descriptions just to a max of two sentences.

If you apply these concepts to your Pinterest board you will have an excellent board that is balanced with rich content, not boring and your visitors will keep coming back for more.
Take a look at our Pintetest: http://www.pinterest.com/boutiquebusines

Vine

Vine is an app owned and created by Twitter that allows you to create and share short video clips. Dubbed the Instagram of video, Vine encapsulates what twitter itself encourages, small, snappy moments or thoughts that appear to be spontaneously shared with the public. Yet unlike Twitter or Instagram, Vine has the novelty factor- people’s interest is piqued. Tweets and photo shares are old news, but 6 second videos? Well, the possibilities are endless! The influence of Twitter as the biggest and best form of social media marketing is by no means in question, yet Vine can undoubtedly support and emphasise Twitter marketing campaigns.

Vine shares more with the animated GIF than YouTube, and almost doesn’t feel like a video app at all. It is its own thing. It’s a code that unlocks creativity in six-second bursts, a powerful tool for real-time journalism, an entirely new art form.

And after spending a week with it, I’m influenced it’s going to be big. Genuinely, big !!!

One of the ideal marketing features of Vine is that the videos are on a continuous loop so that viewers actually see a clip at least a couple of times, making it the perfect tool for optimising product recognition and branding. If anything, the use of Vine at least shows that your company or business is up to date in the world of technology, something that is becoming increasingly recognisable as a necessity in the modern world. Though there is of course a challenge in making sure your videos are engaging rather than annoying, if the result is positive, Vine can definitely be considered an unbelievably influential tool in the world of social media marketing.

Vine lack some basic features, it need a better linking method, for example. People – discovery is a mess, especially since Facebook quickly blocked vine from using its social graph. You can’t edit titles or tags or comments once your video is posted. And you can’t go back later and export your videos on twitter or Facebook. Twitter is working on fixing all of these things. It already removed the ability to search for videos tags. A sharing fix should be impending.

Here are a few helpful tips we’ve put together to help you make the most of Vine:

  1. The use of humour in videos, if done correctly is always guaranteed to entertain rather than annoy possible clients or customers
  2. Use the app to advertise competitions, discounts, sales and promotions to increase coverage about your company or business
  3. Like Instagram, use Vine to show your company’s personal side. Take sneak-peaks of what goes on behind the scenes. Introduce yourselves as people rather than faceless businessmen and women. This can also be linked to the tip about humour- show you are human!
  4. Use the app to engage your followers in conversation- pose a question or a thought and invite people to respond
  5. Use to show off a new product- video allows you to provide more detail than a picture could
  6. Use the app to support your tweets and make them more interesting- people are more likely to watch a video than read a blog
  7. Be entertaining! As long as your video has some sort of link to your business or what you stand for- then it’s worth it!

2014 Social Media Trends

We love infographics at Boutique Business Consulting. They are great at giving us a snapshot of info in an easy digestible format. They also teach us things. So this shows us that there are some new social platforms that I didn't know about. The question is do we need to know about them for business? Can they help my business grow?

In future articles we will look into Vine, Snapchat, Pheed and Line. We already know a lot about Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. So its time to look into the rest - to see if they have relevance for business.

Klout – Online Status Assessor

Klout – Online Status Assessor

What is it?
Klout is a website as well as a mobile app which uses social media analytic to rank its user based on online social standing through the Klout Score, counted numerically from 1 to 100. To determine any user score, Klout calculates the length of one’s online social network  and makes a comparative analysis based on the content designed to gauge how other users make interactions to that content.

How does it work?
Klout keeps a minute eye on impacts emploting data points from Twitter. This includes follower count, following count, list memberships, retweets, unique mentions, how influential the people are who retweet him, and how many spam accounts he is followed by. The information is then mixed with data collected on other social network interactions and followings to form conclusive Klout score. Klout score is influenced by the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, as well as Klout itself. There are three measures that Klout score is supplemented with. These measures are ‘true reach’, ‘network impact’, and ‘amplification’. ‘True reach depends on the length of the user’s existing audience who engage actively in the messages of that user. ‘Network impact’ shows the computed influence value a person gains based on his engaged audience. 

What is the benefit to my business?
An online store owner can get benefits from Klouts’ business analytic that aims at analyzing the activities of his online audiences. Having a clear knowledge about his online audience, he can take necessary measures to make his business attractive to more and more visitors and thereby help in increasing his sales.

How much does it cost?
Cost an online store owner needs to incur for augmenting visitors for his business with Klout may vary from country to country or even province to province depending on the status his business is in. Yet, roughly a cost of $10,000 can be the initial charge.

 

S Loyalty: Loyalty Suite - Impressive Customer Faith

S Loyalty: Loyalty Suite - Impressive Customer Faith

What is it?
A very easy to install software, S Loyalty allows an online store owner to secure considerable customer loyalty and connect them to come back every time and become true advocates for the brand.

How does it work?

Loyalty Suite is especially designed to meet necessities of different business, enabling each businessman to create his customized loyalty program, suiting his store. It helps increase customer loyalty and sales by offering gifts and incentives. Customers are also rewarded for many other valuable actions like referrals, newsletter signups, and purchases. It attracts customers to get rewarded by actions like writing reviews, following store owners Facebook fan page etc.

What is the benefit to my business?
Loyalty Suite can be easily created in minutes through loyalty and referral program. It runs smoothly with the help of automatic email alerts for engaging and fulfilling the rewards redemption. Through bulk coupon code creation, one can easily design his one-time codes for coupon with which his customers can redeem their rewards. Every coupon code is unique for each reward. Points from any member’s account can easily be added or subtracted, which allows online business owners to plan rewarding his customers for various actions. Auto-reminder emails of this system remind customers and lead them to get back to the store to which they owe rewards after accumulating sufficient points, to redeem their rewards. Counting on past orders import, reward can be planned for previous purchase as well - be it any date when the purchase took place.

How much does it cost?
To fully activate one’s customized version of this software, and get it going, one needs to incur a per-month expense of $49.99 -$199, 99.

How we can help?
As an online store owner one can give his branding a whole new look and feel. Rewarding his customers for their points accumulated with each purchase motivates his customers to come back to his store every time, whereby he makes huge increase in sale.

 

Social Media - Combining Marketing Channels

#3: Combine Your Marketing Channels

My biggest tip is strategic: combine all the best of digital marketing for what I call your “Perpetual (Pro)motion Machine.”

If you use SEO, organic social media, search advertising, social advertising and Google remarketing ads, then you’re doing the best of everything.

You’re raising awareness for new business via Facebook, you’re getting the low-hanging fruit of buying-intent keywords via Google, and you’re making sure that people who’ve been to your site keep seeing you via Google remarketing and your Facebook fan base.

The "Perpetual (Pro)motion Machine."

Also, most companies’ analytics are incomplete. They usually make Google look better than it really is and Facebook look worse than it really is. So allocate some money to raise awareness via Facebook as a best practice. Win the war at the mindshare and awareness level, not just at the bottom of the sales funnel.

Brian Carter, develops strategies and builds social marketing fan bases for companies of all sizes, and is the author of The Like Economy. As seen on Social Media Examiner.

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SocialMediaChannels.png

Social Media - Email Marketing Tips

#2: Use Social Media to Engage With Your Email Subscribers

The best social media marketing tip that I have for businesses is to use social media to engage with your email subscribers.

I can’t take total credit for it—it’s a concept that I heard at the Traffic and Conversion Summit in San Francisco. You see, everyone is trying to use social media to get new leads, which you definitely can do, but not enough business owners are using social media to build lasting and profitable relationships with their current subscribers.

You probably don’t want to email your list every day, but you likely want to stay top of mind and connect with them on a daily basis somehow. Social media is the perfect solution!

Use social media to build lasting and profitable relationships with your current subscribers.

I suggest putting an email in your autoresponder and invite your new subscribers to follow you on Pinterest, or like your Facebook Page, and then remember to tell them WHY.

Do you host exclusive promotions and contests on your Page? Will they have access to information that you don’t share anywhere else? Make it worth their while and watch your business and your bank account flourish.

Remember, when it comes to your audience, you want quality over quantity.

Melanie Duncan, a serial entrepreneur, owns a successful apparel and home décor ecommerce business and teaches other entrepreneurs how they can get more traffic and sales with Pinterest. As seen on Social Media Examiner

Social Media - Attract Lead with Facebook

#1: Attract Leads With Facebook Offers

If you’re looking for a new way to attract quality leads using social media, try Facebook Offers.

Facebook Offers are a type of Facebook ad, but they work a bit differently than a traditional Facebook Ad. You can set them up directly from your Facebook Page (no need to go into the Ads dashboard) and they can be created for offline and online businesses.

Although you can use them for many different promotions, I’ve seen the highest conversion rates when marketers use Offers to attract quality leads.
juice offer

Here's an example of a lead generating Facebook Offer.

Here’s why they work:

Offers are promoted in the news feed (as opposed to being placed in the right-hand column on Facebook where you usually see marketplace ads). Ads in the news feed can get up to six times more engagement than ads in the right-hand column on Facebook.

You can hyper-target your Offers to ensure that only the Facebook users who will have a genuine interest in your brand see them.

When a user clicks on your Offer in the news feed, Facebook sends that user an email to their personal email account outside of Facebook. That means that your Offer is not only seen on Facebook, but now you are getting into the email boxes of interested prospects.

When prospects open their email, they will see a link to your website or an opt-in page (wherever you choose to send people to claim your offer).

See how powerful Facebook Offers can be? Not only do you get optimal exposure in the news feed, you also get into personal email boxes and you can hyper-target each Offer. The way I see it, Facebook Offers are a triple threat!

Amy Porterfield, social media strategist, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies - as seen on Social Media Examiner.

What customers do and don't like on social media

More than 80% of Australian social media users have connected with a brand on social media, according to a new study, but almost half have also ditched a brand on social media, suggesting businesses should rethink their strategies.

The findings come from Latitude Insights and Social Hatch, which joined forces to produce Always On – a study that highlights key drivers of engagement in social media.

The study incorporates multiple data sources, including a series of in-depth interviews with Australians, ranging from heavy to light social media users.

The research also included an online survey with 1,057 Australian social media users and a private online community for qualitative data collection.

The study shows 82% of Australian social media users have connected with a brand on social media, with 29% of respondents saying they have connected with 10 or more brands.

Social media is also emerging as a preferred channel for brand communications – 30% of respondents choose social media for offers and discounts, compared to 12% who choose the web.

For general information, 28% choose social media, while another 28% choose the web. In contrast, only 17% choose email.

But according to the report, many social media users feel let down by the current experience brands are providing.

“Consumers are interested in getting to know brands better on social media, in many instances preferring this over other media,” the report said.

“However, our research also shows that social media users are currently underwhelmed by brands’ activity in this space. While some brands are getting it right, many are not.”

The report reveals 44% of respondents have ditched a brand on social media.

The main reasons were too many posts (55%), boring content (36%), and lost interest in the product or service (31%).

Meanwhile, 19% of respondents have ditched a brand on social media because they felt the brand behaved badly, while 12% were worried what their friends would think of them being associated with that brand.

“To succeed in the social media space, brands need to understand that it is a different kind of social space, with its own set of social norms,” the report said.

“Brands need to ensure that social media users feel like the content is specific to them. In this space, a brand’s product, service, content and tone all need to make consumers feel like it has been developed just for them.”

The benefit to consumers of connecting with brands in the social media space needs to be more than having a good product or service, the report said.

Beyond competitions, freebies and discounts, the report said consumers are compelled to connect with brands for a number of other reasons, including:

  • Social currency. This means being “first to know”, whether it’s breaking news on brands, first access to a new product, new advertisements, promotions, etc.
  • Information education, such as uses for a product.
  • Entertainment, such as interesting content.
  • Having a voice, such as co-creating, helping develop better products, etc.
  • Immediate answers to questions.

This article first appeared on StartupSmart.

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