marketing strategies Archives

Social Media Strategies Are Overlooked by Executives [INFOGRAPHIC]

January 5, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media strategies need to be considered when making business decisions, yet many executives overlook them.

This is an issue that has long plagued the advocate of social media strategies. Executives are often hesitant to incorporate social media strategies in their business decisions, and these choices can be quite costly. The irony is that executives of larger companies, on a much larger scale, do consider their social media strategies when it comes to making decisions. So why do smaller businesses not follow suit? We have past the point where people can argue that social media is not crucial for the growth of a business – be it local or worldwide. There is simply too much evidence to the contrary.

And yet, a recent study shows that the majority of small businesses and B2B companies are ignoring social media strategies in their decision-making processes. We noted in a post a while back how small businesses are using social media, but it would seem that this strategy has not caught on fully. Have a look at the infographic below to see where executives are missing the mark when it comes to their social media strategies.

Have you had trouble dealing with your executives or a client because of skepticism when it comes to implementing social media strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Strategies Trending in 2013

January 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media strategies are constantly changing, and we can expect to see some new ones grow in popularity in 2013.

Social media has brought about quite a few changes in the way companies conduct their business online. With the advent of social media strategies in business, brands have completely restructured their approach to online marketing. Below are a few of the rising trends in social media strategies that we can expect to see pick up steam in the new year.

1. Customer Surveys No Longer Anonymous or Confidential

More and more we are starting to see brands transitioning away from conventional customer service approaches and incorporating this facet of their business into their social media strategies. This shows two major changes: customer satisfaction is no longer measured at a fixed point in time and it is no longer a measurement that is hidden from public view. We have often stressed that engaging with your customers in real time, be it for positive or negative comments, can do wonders for your business, and several companies are starting to realize that. No longer will companies wait for a crisis to arise before addressing an issue en masse. Instead, issues can be dealt with in real time using social media, which the public can see and appreciate (be they customers or not).

2. Social Analytics Result in Higher Efficiency

Considering every word posted on social media is stored in a virtual database, it is no wonder that there are virtually endless insights to sift through and analyze. What does this mean? Companies can use these analytics to conduct business more efficiently. Self-reported demographics, sentiment analysis and precision monitoring of activity allow businesses to see exactly how they can modify both their social media strategies and conventional marketing strategies in order to generate the highest results at the lowest cost. Social media is no longer simply about driving traffic and revenue (although that it still a major part of it) but also about smarter business.

3. Expect More Competition

Corporate espionage has often been a shady grey area when it comes to moral business conduct. Well, whereas in the past it required undercover operatives infiltrating a company (pardon the melodramatics) social media has not only made corporate espionage easy, but free and legal. Studying a competitor has never been easier than with social media, and we can expect to see several businesses using it to their advantage. By studying a competitor’s data, client feedback and successful campaigns, brands can manipulate their offers and promotions to mimic or even best a competitor’s in order to poach business. While this may not be the most ethical way of building a social media program, the hurdle of morality has never stopped businesses from profiting in the past.

Can you think of any other trends we can expect to see pick up momentum in 2013? Do you plan on implementing any of these tactics in the coming year? Tell us in comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Marketing: Top 3 Twitter Marketing Tools

January 3, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What tools can you use to enhance your social media marketing when it comes to Twitter?

Social media marketing has paved the way for developers to create some fascinating and efficiency-boosting tools when it comes to Twitter management for your business, but with so many tools out there, it can sometimes feel like the more complicated aspect of your social media marketing arises when you have to choose the right tool for your Twitter management. Below is a breakdown of the three best social media marketing tools to manage your Twitter efficiently.

1. Hootsuite/Seesmic

Millions have signed up for and are currently using Hootsuite to manage their corporate Twitter accounts. The numbers alone go to show that this is a powerful tool when it comes to social media marketing, and there are a few reasons why. First, Hootsuite allows users to amalgamate all fo their Twitter handles under one roof, which eliminates the time wasted when it comes to managing multiple handles for one business. This may seem like a minor detail, but when you think about it, how much time can be wasted switching from account to account throughout the day and managing all of these accounts properly? It adds up.

Second, Hootsuite is one of the only tools available that allows you to integrate your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ accounts. Once the API is made available, Pinterest will be added to the mix, and virtually all of your brand’s social media marketing efforts will be manageable under the Hootsuite dashboard. No other programs make it as easy as Hootsuite, but that does not mean you can simply sign up and go. Yes, Hootsuite is a relatively intuitive program, but in order for your social media marketing to be successful, you need to take the time to learn the program. This means signing up for the Hootsuite University and going through every aspect of their training. It does not take long, and the benefits to understanding the program in its entirety will make for a much simpler management of your social media program.

There are also some strong reporting capabilities when it comes to the management system, so you will be able to observe, tweak and develop reports for your campaigns that allow both you and your managers to see exactly how successfully your programs are working.

2. SocialBro

SocialBro is a tool developed exclusively for Twitter and, more importantly, focuses on optimizing your Twitter efforts to get the most out of your campaigns. The reporting capabilities of SocialBro are unparalleled, and the data derived from the software gives insights that will help you maximize nearly every aspect of your campaigns.

SocialBro develops reports that show exactly where your tweets resonated, at what times you stand to derive the greatest benefits from tweeting, where your audience is most active throughout the day and week, and so much more. Using these reports in-house will allow you to quickly and efficiently modify your social media marketing strategies in order to ensure that every aspect of it is performing at peak levels and driving the highest results.

We have pointed out multiple times in past posts how crucial strategy is when it comes to successful social media marketing, and SocialBro allows you to optimize that strategy much faster than almost any other tool available on the market.

3. Buffer

Buffer is a simple, efficient publishing tool that, like Hootsuite, allows you to incorporate Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Combined with SocialBro, this tool is made all the more impressive as you can coordinate your scheduling with the reports generated with SocialBro to ensure that your social media marketing is functioning at maximum capacity and you are not missing out on any opportunity.

Buffer allows users to load multiple accounts, schedule posts and messages across a variety of networks, and provides some solid analytics when it comes to the success of your campaigns. (Never ignore the power of good reporting!)

There are also a ton of great apps and extras that are available with Buffer that make your social media marketing management that much simpler.

While these are just a few of the tools you can use to manage your Twitter and social media marketing, they are certainly not the only ones. However, these have been tried, tested and are true, hence our listing them as the top 3.

Can you think of any other tools that you have worked with and find to be among the best? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media: Moments to Remember 2012 [INFOGRAPHIC]

January 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

What were some of the biggest social media moments of 2012?

There was no shortage of major events that took place in the world of social media in 2012. Having rung in the New Year earlier this week, we thought we would take this opportunity to share an infographic detailing some of the biggest social media moments of the last year. We all remember Kony, Gangnam Style and the Facebook IPO, but there might be a few moments we forgot about, or even overlooked. Have a look below for the social media year in review, and tell us in the comments or on Twitter is there are any other major moments you can think of that aren’t listed!

Optimizing Social Media Strategies: 5 Tips to Maximize Success

January 2, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Why worry about mowing the lawn when your house is on fire?

Social media strategies require a great deal of planning in order for their execution to generate success. While the statement above may seem a tad extreme, it holds very true: why worry about the less industry-relevant networks when you should be focusing your efforts more heavily on other ones? Below are a few tips and pointers that should help you understand how to organize your social media strategies in order to focus your social media efforts where they stand to generate the best results.

1. A Presence on the Big 4 Is Important, but Focus Shouldn’t be Uniform

Having your brand or business present across all of the Big 4 (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn) is important, but the focus of your social media strategies should not be uniform across all four of these networks. For certain industries, some of these networks prove to be far more important than others, and your time should be well divided among these four so that those networks apt for your industry receive more attention than those that are not. Below is a great breakdown from the experts at HubSpot detailing where a large number of industries are focusing their efforts, and should give you an idea of how to align your social media strategies when it comes to the Big 4.

2. Think Pinterest Is Just for Visual Industries? Think again.

We recently posted about incorporating Pinterest into your social media strategies, and this article details exactly how you can go about using Pinterest for your business. But if you think that Pinterest is simply about loading pictures for a visually-oriented industry, you might be missing out on an incredible opportunity to capitalize on the social network’s referral power. Our article explains that in great detail, and this pie chart shows a breakdown of the top 10 industry websites to be using Pinterest to drive referral traffic.

[iframe src=”http://infogr.am/Top-10-Industry-Distribution-Using-Pinterest/” width=”550″ height=”805″]

3. Google+ Helps You Target a Niche Audience

There is plenty of literature out there that might suggest Google+ is a waste of time for many businesses looking to optimize their social media strategies. This is simply is not true. A little while back, we posted an article about the new Google+ Communities and how they are revolutionizing the way businesses share content. These Communities offer businesses the ability to target niche audiences made up of people who have all expressed an interest in what you have to offer. Furthermore, the content on these communities is shown to everyone, as it does not follow the same EdgeRank system as Facebook, which limits exposure of some content. That said, Google+ may still not be where you should be focusing all of your time. Have a look at the breakdown below to see which industries are focusing their efforts on Google+, and see if you fall into any of these categories.

[iframe src=”http://infogr.am/Top-10-Industries-on-Google/” width=”550″ height=”805″]

4. Set a Timeline and Stick to It

No, this has nothing to do with your Facebook Timeline. We are talking about a roadmap. One of the most important elements when it comes to successful social media strategies is not rushing through the process. Now that you know where you should be focusing the majority of your efforts, set an execution agenda and stick to it. It is easy to expedite a process when you think you have done everything you set out to do, but monitoring and tweaking your strategy as you go along is par for the course. You should be setting yourself timeframes in which to work in order to ensure that when you are ready to move on to a new social network, you have optimized every aspect of the last one.

Say you begin with Facebook and Twitter accounts. Set up is simple, and publishing content is easy as well. But over time, you may notice, through the use of analytics and insights tools, that certain posts garner more exposure, and certain types of tweets generate more referral traffic and higher click-throughs. Using this information, you will be able to optimize your social media strategies so that when you move on to the second stage, you won’t find yourself overwhelmed with the unresolved issues of the first.

5. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

You might model your social media strategies after some of the more successful campaigns you see out there, and then you might find that your social media strategies are not exploding at the rate you had hoped for. That’s ok. There are two things to keep in mind when running your social media campaigns. First, like anything, it takes time for your efforts to show results. Second, social media is ever-changing and thus, your social media strategies will constantly evolve, and by the time you see major results, your campaigns might be completely different than when you initially launched them. With proper social media strategies in place, however, you stand to see results at a much faster rate than if you launch your campaign blind, and with these tips properly incorporated into your social media strategies, those results will be much greater than the average.

Do you know of any other helpful tips that can help build up a social media campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Leverage YouTube for Your Social Media Strategies

December 29, 2012/by Corey Padveen

YouTube can be a vital part of your social media strategy, but in order for it to drive success you need to be able leverage all of its capabilities.

YouTube users watch over 3 billion hours of video every month. However, those hours are limited to only roughly 30% of the videos uploaded to the video search engine. That’s right – According to James Zern at YouTube, 30% of videos uploaded to YouTube account for 99% of the video views on the website. So how can you get your video into that coveted 30%? There are a few tips you can apply to your social media strategies when it comes to YouTube to better your chances of having your video found and increase your exposure, traffic and social media success. Have a look below for the top 4 ways you can better your social media strategies when it comes to leveraging the power of YouTube.

1. Brand Yourself

This may seem like a simple and obvious tip, but a branded YouTube channel adds a great degree of credibility to your videos and gives you the opportunity to showcase your content with your brand at the forefront. It allows you to post comments as you would on any other social media network, and provide an abundance of links to promote your properties outside of YouTube.

2. Engage with Your Subscribers and Commenters

YouTube affords you the opportunity to develop a virtual community surrounding your content. But while you may have hundreds or even thousands of subscribers and tens of thousands of video views, this community goes to waste if an engagement plan is not a part of your social media strategies with regards to YouTube. Listen to your fans; check comments, trends and subscribers in order to get the most out of your community. Remember, these are people who have come to you because they like what you have to offer. Don’t turn them away by not engaging.

3. Optimize Your YouTube Video

This is the real bread and butter of getting the most out of YouTube. Optimizing your videos does as much as optimizing your site for SEO. YouTube is a search engine. Not only that, but it is the largest site of its kind, backed by Google, and generates the third most traffic of sites on the web. Furthermore, videos are ranked both on Google and on YouTube itself. So, in order for your video to get found, you need to optimize it the same way you would a blog post or website.

First, optimize your content. Originality is crucial when it comes to YouTube. There is virtually endless content on the video search engine, and for yours to stand out, it needs to contain content people want to see. So be original and relevant when it comes to making your video. Second, be wary of your video’s length. Studies show that the optimal length for a video is between 2 and 4 minutes. After this point, analytics show a drop off. With so much going on – both in our lives and online – a 5 or 6 minute video may seem like an eternity. So keep your videos short and to the point.

Third, professionalism is a major factor. If you are a brand or business making a video, you will want to keep it as professional as possible, both in terms of your content and the quality. High quality cameras are no longer a high-priced commodity, and making a professional looking video no longer comes with an astronomical price tag. Fourth and finally, pay attention to the search criteria of your video in order to ensure that it gets found by Google and YouTube. How can you do this? Well, a title with keywords (similar to an h1) is extremely important. This is the first category recognized by search engines. Next comes your description. A video without a description is the equivalent of a web page with out a meta description. This is an area that should be optimized for your keywords and links. After that, traffic will boost your video in the rankings. The number of views and the ratings will help your rankings and bring your video to the top of the list.

4. Check Your Analytics

Once you have reached five subscribers, you will have access to analytics about your audience that provide deep insights about who is watching your videos, where they are dropping off and what audience you appeal to most. This will allow you to tailor content to your demographics, or target new, unreached demographics by creating new content for those groups.

YouTube can be an extremely helpful tool when it comes to getting the most our of your social media strategies, and these tips should help you maximize your efforts on YouTube to help get your content found. Can you think of any other ways you can optimize your YouTube account? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Tips for Incorporating Pinterest Into Your Social Media Marketing

December 28, 2012/by Corey Padveen

How can you leverage the appeal of Pinterest in your social media marketing strategy?

Shortly after its launch, Pinterest exploded as the fastest growing social network and, more important, the first of its kind. This first mover advantage meant that an entirely new demographic now had a social network that differed from all others. What did this mean to marketers? It meant that social media marketing strategies had to be tailored to include Pinterest along with the majors. At first glance, marketers may shrug off the idea that Pinterest is a crucial tool for business. After all, it is simply boards with a collection of themed (or not so themed) images for people to share, right? Wrong. Pinterest is a traffic driving juggernaut that is quickly moving up in the ranks to be among the top sources of referral traffic from social networks. The image below from Shareaholic back in February 2012 shows just how quickly Pinterest is moving up, and there are no signs of slowing down.

So how can your brand leverage the referral power of Pinterest by incorporating it into your social media marketing? Below is a set of tips that can help you benefit from all that Pinterest has to offer, and take your social media marketing to the next level.

1. Create a Pinterest Business Page

Back in mid-November, Pinterest launched business pages. For the first time, a business was able to set up an account separate from a personal account and include some information that was otherwise unpublished on the social network. Creating or converting an existing account into a business page is as simple as opening the “About” section and selecting “For Businesses”. Once there, you will be able to select the appropriate option, and customize your business page for Pinterest.

2. Don’t Forget the Links

People are constantly clicking on images in Pinterest, but if they are not going anywhere, then you’ve missed an opportunity to drive new traffic. After loading an image onto one of your boards, you can edit it to include a link back to your site, or blog, or store. It’s as simple as typing it in. These links will help drive traffic directly from the social network as opposed to hoping the individual viewing the image will visit the site organically. Oh, and did we mention that links benefit SEO as well?

3. Keep SEO in Mind

Just as with the links for your images, keyword-rich captions and properly categorized images will help with your SEO. Simply posting an image onto your board with no description or category is the equivalent of posting an image on your site with no alt tags – it makes it much more difficult for search engines to find. Furthermore, a caption will also engage your audience, and as we never tire of pointing out, engagement is crucial to the success of your social media marketing.

4. Create a Catalog

Did you know that Pinterest is a phenomenal source for driving traffic to your online store, particularly if you are using Pinterest as an online catalog? And it doesn’t take much tweaking either. For those looking to drive customers to a store of advertise items for sale, Pinterest automatically includes a small price tag in the top left corner of a pinned image when the caption ends with $X.XX. So next time you’re looking to showcase a product at a great price, do it on Pinterest!

5. Engage!

We noted briefly that engagement is crucial to the success of a social media marketing strategy, and that holds true for Pinterest as well. It is one thing to pin thousands of images, but if you are simply posting the images and leaving them to be seen by Pinterest users, you are missing out on one of the most important aspects of brand growth on social media. Post comments on other pins, engage with users who comment on your images, and share pins from your followers.

Pinterest is as important as any other social network, even if you may think it “doesn’t apply” to your industry. Anyone can be using the social network, and the numbers show that it is an essential tool for driving referral traffic from social media.

How are you using Pinterest for your business? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media in the New Year [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 27, 2012/by Corey Padveen

Social media was huge in 2012 – what can we expect to see in 2013?

There were some major developments in the world of social media in 2012. We posted an article not long ago about social media trends in 2013, and we thought we would follow that up with another infographic detailing in numbers why social media will be as important if not more important for businesses in the coming year.

Social media is constantly evolving, and we need to evolve with it to be successful in the online world. Knowing the facts and figures and how they impact your industry and brand is just as important a part of your strategy as anything else. Take a look below to find out how social media will matter in 2013.

5 Tips to Optimize Interaction in Your Social Media Marketing

December 27, 2012/by Corey Padveen

What are some ways you can optimize your interaction to maximize your social media marketing efforts?

Social media marketing is about one thing: being social. It is one thing to have a Facebook page, a Twitter or YouTube account or any other social profile, but if you are not engaging, you are not reaping the benefits that social can offer. Perhaps what is most important is to realize that your social media strategies and social interactions should not be confined to the individual social networks alone – you need to incorporate your social media strategies into your web strategy.

Below are a few helpful pointers that you can use to optimize your social interactions and get the most out of your social media marketing strategies.

1. Incorporate Social Media Into Your Site

It may sound intuitive, but you would be surprised to find how few brands incorporate their social media into their websites. If you are looking to optimize interaction with leads and clients, your social media marketing efforts must go beyond social networks themselves. By simply incorporating social media into your website, you are extending the ability to interact with your brand beyond social networks themselves, and opening up a whole new realm of possibilities when it comes to lead engagement.

2. Don’t Forget the Little(r) Guy

Everyone knows about the Big 4: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. But there is a ton of potential when it comes to smaller, or less frequently used social networks like Google+ and Pinterest. With the growth Pinterest has seen in the last year, it won’t be long before it is added to the Big 4 to make it the Big 5, but until that happens, it is still one of the most overlooked social media networks despite the tremendous potential it holds when it comes to growing your brand.

A little while back, we posted an article about the benefits of Google+ to your business. With the added benefit of being integrated with both YouTube and search giant Google, Google+ offers certain benefits to SEO that other social media networks do not. So remember, as your social media marketing grows, don’t forget the little guys.

3. Focus On Your Blog

HubSpot conducted a study some time ago and put together a few impressive marketing statistics that should not go unnoticed. One of their key findings was that companies that blog get 55% more web traffic than companies that don’t. Take a survey of every brand in the world, and we bet that increasing exposure by 55% is something every one of them would agree they want to do. Now, operating a blog with consistent and engaging content being published is not the easiest thing to do. It takes a time and resource commitment, but the numbers show that it is one of the most effective ways to increase your audience and get them engaged with your brand on-site.

4. Reward Your Fans

People like being rewarded for their efforts. By rewarding fans for their engagement, you prompt a much higher interaction rate with your brand than if you simply wait for engagement to increase organically. There are a few ways of doing this, like caption contests, promotions on different social networks, and there are even plugins with different CMS tools that allow you to reward fans for high levels of engagement. One example of this is Achievements for BuddyPress offered on WordPress. This is a simple app modeled after the concept of achievements and rewards available in video games. It is as simple as fans engaging with a brand and receiving badges and awards for high engagement rates. And putting this campaign together is as simple as installing the plugin.

5. Any Press is Good Press – Especially if it is Good Press

Review sites are a great way to get found. Reviews are taken into account heavily by search engines, and the more positive they are the better. This last tip is a bit of a two-fold pointer. Social media is a great way to conduct customer service. It is a public forum, and if done right, people will want to work with your brand is they see you are professional, courteous and helpful when it comes to helping your customers in real time on social media. If you can do this, encourage your audience to post reviews on sites like Yelp!. Again, these are very helpful when it comes to getting found, and the more positive they are they more authority your brand has.

Can you think of any other ways brands can optimize their engagement using social media? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

The Best Social Media Marketing Campaigns This Holiday Season

December 21, 2012/by Corey Padveen

Which brands stole the show this holiday season with their social media marketing campaigns?

Marketing comes alive during the holidays more so than any other time of the year – with the Super Bowl at a close second – and this season some brands showcased their social media marketing talents better than anyone else. Have a look below to see who we thought took the cake this holiday season with their social media marketing campaigns!

Video Social Media Marketing Was a Real Standout for FedEx

Commercials are and have long been a cornerstone of marketing success. But with the proliferation of television channels over the years and the relative difficulty of ensuring that mass audiences will see your ad (without spending millions) social media marketing has provided a cost-effective alternative: viral marketing. Creating video content that people not only watch, but want to share is a marketer’s perfect Christmas gift. Last year, the runaway was the Old Spice MANta Claus campaign. This year, we thought FedEx did a great job with their short, quirky video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJV05_K0XlY

Viral video marketing is as much a form of social media marketing as anything else, and FedEx hits the mark every time.

Coca-Cola Nails Cross-Platform Social Media Marketing

This season, the marketing minds at Coca-Cola decided that the best way to get their message out was to promote across multiple platforms. And what is the best way to do that? To stretch a campaign across all of their social media platforms, leading all visitors to a campaign spread across a multitude of social media platforms. Every one of the video campaigns created by Coca-Cola was promoted on each of their platforms to ensure that no avenue went uncovered by their holiday marketing campaigns.

This was a phenomenal use of social media. In a recent blog post, we noted the importance of interconnected social media marketing, and Coca-Cola gets it right in this year’s campaign.

Zynga Embraces the Spirit of Giving

The spirit of giving has always been the theme of the holiday season, and Zynga recognized that more than anybody. This year, the gaming giant Zynga decided to use their social media marketing efforts to spread holiday cheer to others, and did so by offering players the chance to donate to charitable causes while engaging with their apps. The result? Over $13 million in donations since the campaign was launched.

What other holiday campaigns can you think of that have been outstanding this holiday season? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!