social business Archives

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!

Social Media Demographics Broken Down [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 17, 2012/by Corey Padveen

When it comes to social media, where should you be looking for your target audience?

We posted recently about integrating you social media network strategies in order to reach every possible demographic, but there still looms the question of whether or not a social media network is right for you and your business based on the demographic you wish to target. Below is a great infographic from AdvertisingAge that does an excellent job of breaking down exactly who is talking and where they are doing it.

Maximize Your Twitter Marketing

December 15, 2012/by Corey Padveen

How can your Twitter marketing efforts pay off for your business?

Having a Twitter marketing strategy in place can do wonders for your social media marketing, but if you don’t know how to properly monitor and optimize your Twitter marketing, how can you know if you are doing it right? Below are a few pointers that can help you get the most out of your Twitter marketing by using some analysis techniques that often go overlooked.

1. Monitor Your Click-through

URL shorteners like bit.ly can be very helpful when it comes to monitoring click-through rates for a given campaign, the only problem is that studies show that people are hesitant to click through to a link when they do not know where it is going. So, the first step is to customize your bit.ly links. This is easily done, even if you do not have a professional account. For the Webmaster experts, there is a free way to customize a bit.ly link with your website. However, for those of us who are not well versed in the world DNS servers, shortened URL customization is as easy as typing in a new extension. When you save a bit.ly URL, you can edit it by simply clicking on the small pencil next to the link, and typing in your own title.

Now that we have that settled, we can employ a strategy for these links. Data in the backend of your bit.ly accounts allow you a great deal of insight into who is clicking, how often and which links are working best. Take advantage of these bits of data when it comes to evaluating your Twitter strategy, and find out where users are clicking. It is important to make sure that links are not used without a conscious decision on where they should be focusing. So if you have a link that you have designated to a Twitter campaign, keep it in Twitter so measurements are not skewed. You can also pull out the bit.ly link after it has been active for a while and add a “+” to the end of it. This will bring you to that link’s statistics page where you can evaluate how it is working. This is also great if you plan to use a link for multiple platforms, as it tells you where the clicks are coming from (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Comments, etc.).

2. Don’t Focus on Going Viral

Hashtags might be nice to use if you are trying to join a conversation, but they are relatively useless when it comes to generating business from Twitter. Marketers love seeing a campaign’s virality on social media, but virality does not necessarily mean business generation. If you use a generic and somewhat obscure hashtag, like #blahblahblah, you might find that it picks up steam in the Twittersphere, and you might even find that your hashtag is a trending topic on Twitter. That’s great news, right? Not necessarily. Particularly if it is a generic term of phrase. Specificity trumps obscurity when it comes to trending, because you might see #blahblahblah trending, but does anyone even know that you started it? There is no point of origination that users can observe on Twitter when it comes to trending topics, so while you might have started a trend, you will eventually get lost in the noise.

Using something specific might benefit you far more, like #yourcompany. If you see that trending, then you have good reason to be on cloud nine. But you might be better off focusing your efforts on measurable actions, like the click-throughs we mentioned above, as opposed to something like hashtags.

3. Pay Attention to Your Google Analytics

Sure, click-throughs from your shortened URLs might look good. And hey, you might notice a spike in traffic on your Analytics dashboard. But how much of that traffic is converting, and what is the quality of the traffic you are driving from Twitter?

It is important to pay attention to your social signals in Google Analytics by setting up a Social Media Dashboard. It is here that you will be able to see exactly what the quality of your social traffic is, and if your efforts on social media networks like Twitter are paying off. This is especially important if you are seeing clicks but no conversion. Google Analytics gives tremendous insights into your social activity, and it will help you greatly when it comes to evaluating your Twitter programs and repositioning them to increase your returns.

What other Twitter marketing tips can you think of? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Google+ Communities: Revolutionizing Niche Social Media Marketing

December 14, 2012/by Corey Padveen

Social media marketing took a major leap forward recently with the creation of Google+ Communities.

Considering Facebook’s first mover advantage when it came to social media marketing, it has always had an edge over the competition, namely Google+, when it came to businesses setting up shop and promoting themselves within the social network. So, despite the numerous complaints businesses have launched against Facebook for the poor quality of their business services, companies and brands have stuck around. With the launch of Google+ Communities, however, that might change very soon.

The key issue businesses have with Facebook for their social media marketing efforts is that the EdgeRank algorithm is quite biased, and the result is a lack of exposure for businesses on their fans news feeds. That’s right – EdgeRank determines what people see and what they do not see on their news feed. The EdgeRank system is based on engagement, so if a fan neglects a brand, it is unlikely that the brand’s post will appear in their news feed. Seems hard to believe considering how much companies spend on their Facebook advertising efforts (i.e. promoted and targeted posts) but it’s true. In fact, it was recently announced that only roughly 16% of a brand’s fans see that brand’s content. If only there was a better way! Well it looks like there might be.

In the last week, Google+ has launched their Communities feature which rivals Facebook’s entire marketing core as it guarantees that 100% of community members will see a brand’s posts. This means that 100% of a brand’s social media marketing efforts on Google+ can produce results, and that is a return no company can ignore. Facebook Groups, despite their targeted nature, still abide by the EdgeRank system when it comes to a Facebook user’s news feed. With Google+ Communities, any member of a community can see the content posted by a brand. Not only that, but because of the infrastructure and backing of Google, posts on Google+ Communities are also indexed on the social network and the monstrous search engine. That means that content posted by a brand on a Google+ community is available to 100% of both Google+ members and your average Google user. Oh, and did we mention that you don’t need to pay Google for this service? That’s right, contrary to Facebook where you must allocate a portion of your social media marketing budget to gain some exposure to your fans, Google+ Communities is a free service integrated into the social network, and the benefits are substantially higher.

With the superiority of Google+ Communities, it seems like Facebook may have to reevaluate their platform as it pertains to businesses. The advantage of exposure, cost and SEO (Oh yeah, did we mention Google+ is backed by Google?) it is a wonder why businesses would continue to allocate so many, if any, resources to the social networking giant as opposed to Google+.

Would you considering focusing more of your efforts on Google+ now that Communities are available? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Marketing: 4 Ways to Improve Your Facebook Engagement

December 13, 2012/by Corey Padveen

When it comes to social media marketing, engagement is crucial, and Facebook is one of the best avenues to get the most out of it.

Despite the fact that Facebook is apt for social media marketing and a key source for customer engagement, several companies are not approaching the social network in the right way when it comes to business. Below is a set of 4 tips you can use in your social media marketing strategies to improve your Facebook engagement and get the most out of the social network for your business or brand.

1. KISS: Keep It Short and Simple

People, particularly experts in a given field, feel as though Facebook is the perfect place to showcase their talent and boast about their services over a competitor’s. While Facebook is a great place to capitalize on watchful eyes, it is the wrong place to bore potential leads to tears with long, drawn-out posts explaining what you do and how you do it. This is a step best left to the lead nurturing phase of a relationship, and it is the wrong way to approach social media marketing. In fact, a recent study shows that the optimal number of characters for an engaging Facebook post is 80. By keeping your posts short, to the point and full of engaging content (Point 3) people will feel more compelled to engage with your brand and find out more about you. While you may be able to write paragraph after paragraph of self-touting information, Facebook users are not looking for that. So, to sum up, keep it simple!

2. Nobody ‘Likes’ a Showoff

That holds true for both the real world and the world of social media marketing. Social media is about being social, and one of the least social things a brand can do is post content that is purely self-promotional. (This holds true for parties as well, by the way.) LinkedIn is a network designed around the concept of promoting services and expertise, and Facebook is not. Like we mentioned above, engagement arises out of commonalities, not from promotional posts. Share information, ask questions, and get visitors to your page interested in carrying on a conversation.

3. Engagement Only Happens if People are Encouraged to Enagage

We noted above that you’ll need to post updates with engaging content. Now you may find yourself, asking, “Well, how can I have engaging content that is short and simple?” There are two answers to that question that have proven effective and easy to use: questions and pictures. Images and questions prompting an answer have the highest engagement rates of any for of content on Facebook. By asking short questions or prompting a comment like, “Provide a caption for this image!” people are seeing far more engagement than they do with other types of posts.

4. Do Your Research

Those first three tips are a cakewalk. They’re easy to follow, easy to employ and do not require much more work than simply following the given steps. This last tip is a little bit trickier. If you want to capitalize on views, shares, comments and other engaging aspects offered on Facebook, you’ll need to do you research to find out when your optimal times to post might be. Luckily, Facebook Insights offers tons of great information that can help, but you will have to find it, study it and adjust your Facebook strategy accordingly.

If you follow these four steps you are sure to see quite a bit of improvement when it comes to your Facebook engagement. Can you think of any other helpful tips that will add to you engagement levels? Tell us in the comments below or on Facebook or Twitter!

What is Pinterest? [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 11, 2012/by Corey Padveen

What exactly is Pinterest and how can you use it for your social media efforts?

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social media networks, and was one of the first of its kind with regards to an image-centric social network. Since the launch and immediate success of Pinterest, social networks like Facebook have been looking for ways to improve on their photo sharing aspects, and businesses have taken advantage of the use of images for their social media efforts. The infographic below details exactly what Pinterest is and how you can use it for your business.

Pinterest – The Social Media Darling Of 2012: Infographic by Infographiclabs

Do you use Pinterest in your social media efforts? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

How Are Small (and Some Large) Businesses Using Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 10, 2012/by Corey Padveen

How exactly are businesses implementing their social media strategies?

In a recent blog post, we showed you where small businesses were spending when it came to social media, but how exactly are they using it? The infographic below does a fairly good job of showing you exactly how small businesses are using social media, and how it is paying off.

How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media by Infographiclabs

How are you using social media for your business? How do you plan on using it in the new year? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

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