social media marketing Archives

Best Mobile Tools for Social Media Marketing

February 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

When you’re on the go, what are the best mobile tools you can use to manage your social media marketing?

Social media marketing is no 9-5 gig; far from it. When we’re on the go, we need to have access to our dashboards and accounts, because social media is all about real-time engagement. If we miss an opportunity to engage, we might be missing an opportunity to acquire and possibly convert a new customer.

With that in mind, what are some of the best tools we can use when it comes to mobile social media marketing? The app store is filled with some great (and almost all free) business apps that can help us efficiently run our social media programs when we’re out of the office. Have a look below for a list of some of the social media marketing apps we think are the best.

Facebook Pages

The Facebook Pages app is an excellent tool for monitoring your company or fan pages on the go. The app allows for nearly all the same insights and features as your admin when using your Facebook pages on a desktop. You can view insights, receive notifications, and even monitor the success of campaigns as they are executed. This is a particularly great tool for marketers managing client pages. This allows you to be away from the computer and still engaging with your clients’ customers and fans in real time.

HootSuite Mobile

HootSuite is a favorite among marketers when it comes to social media marketing management. It is an easy-to-use, efficient dashboard that incorporates the majority of the most popular social networks. Considering the vast number of users, it is no wonder that they have developed an excellent mobile app. The HootSuite mobile app allows users to manage a number of profiles from their phone. Granted, there are not as many options available on the mobile version as there are on the desktop dashboard (it is effectively just Facebook and Twitter at the moment) but it does give you some of the same capabilities as the desktop version.

iDashboard

Google Analytics is a vital tool. And while we may not necessarily need to constantly access it in real time on-the-go, it is still nice to have the option. And the option of using iDashboard is a nice one. The Google Analytics app (paid version) has a ton of great features. Not only can you access all of your Analytics accounts, you can also look into specific data regarding traffic, referral data, social monitoring, and much more! So when you need a quick bit of information when you’re on the road, the iDashboard has it for you.

Foursquare for Business

The Foursquare for Business app allows owners of a business (or businesses) and marketers to claim locations, and create and monitor campaigns as the move. As they expand their business frontier, Foursquare is looking to make it as easy as possible for marketers to access the social network for business purposes wherever they are. It is for that reason that they developed the app. So whether you’re monitoring your own location or a client’s, you can do it from anywhere with the Foursquare for Business app.

These are just a few of the great apps available for running your social media marketing on the fly. There is no shortage of other apps, including stand alone apps for Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and more. What are some of your favorite social media marketing apps? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Mobile Marketing Tips: Capture Your Mobile Audience

February 12, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Mobile marketing is quickly becoming one of the biggest trends when it comes to engaging with your audience.

Numbers don’t lie. In the past year, we have seen the use of mobile devices when accessing the web and social media rise sharply. According to a recent report, consumers increased their use of social apps on mobile devices by 76% in 2012 compared to 2011. For some users, most of the time they spend on social networking sites now takes place on a mobile device. And the number of users of the mobile web nearly doubled in 2012 compared to the previous year. Taking these figures into account, it would be foolish for any marketer to ignore the power of mobile marketing.

With that in mind, we thought we would share a few helpful tips when it comes to optimizing your mobile marketing strategy. Have a look below to find out what you can be doing (and in some cases, for much less than what you might expect).

1. Mobile Site

Whether you are an e-commerce store or a restaurant, having a mobile website is going to be a crucial part of your mobile marketing. Simply having access to your website on the go can help users engage with your brand wherever they are and whenever they need to. Furthermore, this is not as complicated as it might seem. Today, there exists a number of services that help transform your site into a mobile-friendly one without much configuration. Nearly anyone can do it! Tools like Mobify or MobilePress (for WordPress sites) can help you transform your website. Furthermore, there exist numerous options in some of the more popular CMS platforms that automatically render your site for mobile devices. So when building your site, keep your mobile marketing strategy in mind, and be sure you are constructing a mobile-friendly one.

2. QR Codes

QR (Quick Response) Codes are a great way to engage with potential customers visually, and drive them to your mobile site or mobile landing page with an offer. Essentially, a QR Code is a pseudo call to action that leads people to find out more by scanning it. What a QR Code does is it sends data to your device and loads that information immediately on screen. This is growing in popularity in the real estate world, and is catching on elsewhere as well. The benefits of a QR Code lie in its mystery. People want to know more about enticing offers, and a QR Code allows them to do that right away. Furthermore, they are not all that expensive to incorporate into your mobile marketing strategy! There are even free services like Quikqr that you can use.

3. Geo-Targeted Mobile Marketing

This is where mobile marketing really pays off. Geo-targeting and location-based marketing are the real bread and butter of a mobile marketing strategy. These strategies give you the ability to directly target potential clients in your area and offer specials or promotions to users who visit your store, restaurant or location. Optimizing your social networks like Foursquare and creating deals therein are where you stand to reap the highest benefits.

A tool used by a popular shoe store in Europe to attract nearby patrons begins a countdown when a potential customer enters a competitor’s store. The countdown starts at 100 and works down to 0. Users who see this countdown must make it out of the competitor’s store and into the other shoe store as quickly as possible. As soon as they enter, the timer stops and the number on which it lands is the discount the customer can receive. This strategy is literally dragging clients out of a competitor’s store and having them run to yours!

4. Mobile Applications

This is where you can get very fancy – but for a price. Customized mobile apps might be the most expensive form of mobile marketing, but they certainly have the highest payoff. As we noted above, mobile app use has skyrocketed in the last year, and those numbers show no sign of slowing. Users like the idea of a customized mobile application that they can use to interact with your brand. Whether it is an app for an airline to book your seats, or an app like the TV series (The Walking Dead has created where users can “zombify” themselves) people like to have fun with their mobile devices. So, if you have the budget, consider spicing up your mobile marketing strategy with an app tailored to your brand.

What are your mobile marketing strategies? Tell us about them in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media at the Super Bowl [INFOGRAPHIC]

February 11, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media was the big winner at the Super Bowl, and these numbers show exactly why.

We all know that social media made a splash this year at the Super Bowl. As we noted in a recent post, roughly half of all Super Bowl ads this year featured some form of social media integration, mostly in the form of a hashtag. That was up from just a few last year, and only one two years ago. Clearly, the trend of social media for business is picking up steam in the marketing and advertising world.

Well, a week after the big game, Marketing Profs has put together some great infographics detailing exactly how social media was used during the Super Bowl, the impact social had on the game, and the impact the game had on the world of social media.

Have a look at these infographics below and tell us what you think; where does social media in the world of business head from here? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Facebook Marketing: The Impact of Graph Search [INFOGRAPHIC]

February 8, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Facebook marketing is seeing some major changes with the introduction of the Graph Search feature.

Not long ago, Facebook announced that it would soon be introducing the Graph Search functionality to the social network. This meant quite a few changes to the world of Facebook marketing, and we noted a few of those changes in a recent blog post about Facebook’s Graph Search. But while we all might understand that the advent of Graph Search will mean a changed landscape with regards to Facebook marketing, we might not necessarily understand why.

This wonderful infographic that we pulled from our Pinterest page does a great job of breaking down and really detailing exactly how Facebook marketing (and digital marketing, in general) stands to change as a result of Graph Search. So, while we all know that there will be a change, now we can understand exactly how and why. With that, we will be able to better execute Facebook marketing strategies, taking into account Graph Search and all that it brings to the table with regards to our marketing efforts.

Have you had a chance to use Graph Search yet? How do you feel this feature will impact your Facebook marketing strategies? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Marketing: Finding Great Content

February 7, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media marketing can only be successful if you have great content.

Marketers are always looking for tips and tricks to boost their social media marketing efforts. Well, while there are many steps one can take to enhance one’s social media marketing, the only true key to success is finding content that followers and fans not only want to see, but want to share. Content is king when it comes to a successful social media marketing campaign, and today we have a few great tips to help you find that content and boost the loyalty of your fan base.

Have a look below for four great tips when it comes to seeking out great content to showcase in your social networks.

1. Keep an Eye Out for Big News

Millions of people download apps and monitor news sites every day to keep up to date with the goings on of the world. With such a vast audience already tuned in, you can always be sure to increase your audience engagement when sharing news content. But be careful: sharing top stories is all well and good, but you should be sure that these stories are relevant to your niche. If, for example, you run a marketing agency that specializes in mobile apps, you shouldn’t be posting news about farming subsidies increasing with new laws passed in Congress. While this may be intriguing content for some, it is not an issue that that audience will be looking at you to find. And furthermore, it is not something your target audience will necessarily want to hear about. So take advantage of sites like Mashable, AllTop and major new sources to feed relevant content to your networks and boost your fans’ loyalty to your brand.

2. What’s Hot on Social Media

It never hurts to follow pages and brands that share relevant content. In a study done by Dan Zarrella at HubSpot, he notes that while 22 is the observed maximum number of tweets per day that a brand should be sharing, if your content is relevant, there is no maximum. So when it comes to social media marketing, you should be paying attention to the most popular content of the day. Whether it is top news on your LinkedIn page to share to groups, trending content on Twitter, or highly shared articles or posts on Facebook, popular content exists for a reason: people want to read it. So find what’s hot and share it with your followers.

3. Find Your Top Sources

You should always have a set of blogs, websites or social media sources that you check regularly for great content. This takes quite a bit of time and research. The initial step will be a widespread search with your keywords, followed by some filtering to find only the best sources of content you have seen on the web. Of course, promoting your own content is always the goal, but social media marketing is also about sharing great content. So do the research and find some sources for content, then get sharing. AllTop, noted above, does exactly that. Like many news aggregators, AllTop pools together all of the top news from the day from a variety of sources and shares it in one space. Aggregators are a great place to find relevant content, so find the best ones for your niche and check them daily.

4. Create Content

Of course, the best thing we can do as marketers when it comes to social media marketing is share our own content with our networks. This is much easier said than done. Sourcing content and sharing it is far simpler than taking the time to develop our own blog posts or images, and posting them to our networks. But the payoff is much greater in the end. If we can develop original content (and don’t forget, this content can be derived from other sources we have read) then we stand to reap much higher benefits when that content is shared to our social networks. Again, the two things to keep in mind when drafting content is interest and relevance. In order for our content to be shared with our audience, we are going to want that content to both appeal to the interests of our audience and be relevant to our social communities.

Where do you find the best content? What social media marketing strategies have you implemented when it comes to sourcing content? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Pinterest Marketing: How Are Users Interacting? [INFOGRAPHIC]

February 6, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Pinterest marketing is growing increasingly important, but how are users on the visual social network engaging?

There is no shortage of literature out there telling marketers how important Pinterest marketing is for business. At this point, we all know that Pinterest marketing is going to be a vital part to any successful campaign. While this might be well understood, we might not all understand exactly why. When it comes to any aspect of our social media strategies, we should be able to justify why we are implementing a certain element. This is the case regardless of whether or not we are working with the “next big thing” (in this case, Pinterest marketing).

In the infographic from ViralBlog below, we can see exactly how people are engaging on Pinterest. So from now on, when we are told that Pinterest marketing is a must when it comes to our social media strategies, we will understand why, and we will be able to justify our use of Pinterest with some of this impressive data.

How do you incorporate Pinterest into your social media marketing strategies (if at all)? Where have you found the visual social network to be most beneficial (if you use it)? If you are not using it, why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Monitoring with Google Analytics

February 5, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Measure the success of your social media marketing with the help of social media monitoring in Google Analytics.

There are plenty of features in Google Analytics that most users never bother learning about. One of the major categories where many of these features exist when it comes to social media monitoring. You can monitor a ton of social media data using Google Analytics – and there is so much built in that even beginners can do it!

Below are a few ways you can use Google Analytics to monitor traffic from your social media accounts and measure the success of certain social media programs while determining ways in which to improve on others to capitalize on all that social media has to offer when it comes to getting found.

1. Identify the Sources of Your Social Traffic

Watching the visits counter on Google Analytics can be extremely rewarding when you start to see the numbers rise. But in order to incorporate these results into your strategies, you need to know where this traffic is coming from. Luckily, Google Analytics has a feature built in that shows you the sources of this traffic, including social media. In your dashboard, on the left hand side, you’ll see the Traffic Sources tab. Under there, you’ll see two areas that will help you determine which social networks are driving traffic: Sources and Social.

To take it one step further, under your Sources menu, you can search by Referrals to see exactly which sites are driving traffic, and to narrow it down by social alone, you can select the Network Referrals tab underneath Social.

Knowing the sources of your social media referral traffic will help you do two things. First, you will able to see which social media networks are driving the most referral traffic to your corporate site. Second, you will be able to see where your social media efforts need improvement in order to drive increased traffic from those networks. One tip that will help is if you look at your Content tab in Google Analytics. It is there that you will be able to see which pages are being viewed the most, and, with a little tweaking, you will be able to see what the sources of the traffic on those individual pages are. If, say, you have a blog and notice that this is the most popular page on your site. If you see that much of your referral traffic to your blog is coming from LinkedIn but little comes from Twitter, you might want to consider promoting your blog a little more in Twitter.

2. Pay Attention to Mobile

As we all know, social media interaction on mobile devices is becoming increasingly popular; the numbers prove it. Therefore, it is important that we appeal to the mobile market be it from custom apps to mobile-friendly options on our websites. Now, while this should be a consideration, it is always important to do a cost-benefit analysis of any business decision. And in order for us to measure these benefits, we will need to measure how much of our social media traffic is coming from mobile.

In the Audience tab, there is a Mobile option. It is there that we can see what portion of our audience is coming from mobile.

To see if they are being driven via social referral, we need to create an advanced segment that segments only traffic from our social media networks. In order to do this, we follow a few simple steps from Google. First, we select Advanced Segments in the top left hand bar beneath the dashboard title. Then we create a new one inserting only those sources we wish to view. It should look something like this:

From there we can segment our mobile traffic to view only those hits coming from social referral on a mobile device.

3. Set Social Goals

Here is where things become a little more customized. In order to measure the success of certain social media campaigns using Google Analytics, you are going to need to set up Goals. Goals in Google Analytics can be a tremendously valuable tool. Not only can they help you see where you are finding success with social media campaigns, but you can also use them to measure ROI from social media. As we all know, ROI is the key to business decisions, and as marketers, we know that it is often the one mitigating factor when it comes to C-level decision-makers moving ahead with or shutting down social media programs.

Goals are set up in the Conversions tab of your Google Analytics dashboard. Under that heading, the first tab is Goals, where you can select the “Set up goals” option. Goals can range anywhere from a visitor downloading a white paper to making a purchase. It all depends on what you are defining as a conversion for a given campaign. Say for example we want to set up a simple goal whereby a conversion is made when a visitor from social media visits more than two pages. First we define the goal parameters.

Now that the goal has been defined, we can move on to segmenting the traffic so that only traffic vis social referral is measured for this particular goal. On the Overview page for our goals, we can select the advanced segment we defined earlier and apply it to any of our defined goals. After that, we can simply monitor the traffic coming from social that achieves the goal of multiple page visits.

These are just a few of the amazing things you can do with your Google Analytics account when it comes to monitoring your social media activity. There are plenty more – albeit slightly more complicated – features that can help you optimize every one of your social media channels.

Take a look at some of the social media traffic on your Google Analytics account and let us know if you have noticed anything particularly interesting in the comments below or on Twitter!

Social Media Tools: Tips for Using Them Efficiently

February 4, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Social media tools can be very beneficial to your campaigns, but in order for them to work, you need to be using them efficiently.

We are all aware of the vast buffet of social media management and marketing tools at our disposal. And if you have ever taken part in a social media webinar, you will have undoubtedly heard questions asking what the best tools are, or which tools an individual should be using to maximize returns on a program. Frankly, answers to questions like these are useless if you do not understand both the benefits of a given tool, and which social media tools compliment others and serve to create a fully functional, highly versatile set that can be used to execute successul social media programs.

Below are a few tips that can help you narrow your search when looking for the right tools for a program, and a few things to keep in mind when using these tools or dashboards to maximize the efficiency of your campaigns.

Do Your Research

Perhaps the most detrimental mistake marketers make when choosing a platform on which to run social media programs is forgetting to do their research. We all know about social media management and CRM dashboards like HootSuite, Argyle and Jugnoo, but we may forget to take the time to research them. Each of these tools has its own benefits and drawbacks. And while they may all be similar in terms of what they offer, each one touts a different USP (unique selling proposition). So, without a set of defined goals for a given program, you can never be certain about which dashboard is right for you. And, more importantly, without understanding how these tools differ, you might be choosing the wrong one.

So take the time and do your research to ensure that when choosing a tool, you know exactly what it offers, and what it does not. What it’s missing is going to be extremely important to helping you with the next tip.

Make Sure Your Tools Are Complimentary

As marketers, we know that time is an invaluable asset (despite all of our best efforts to assign a value to it). As such, wasting time is one of the worst things we can do. So how do we avoid wasting time when it comes to social media management? We make sure that everything we do is well thought out, well researched and covers all the bases without any redundancies.

This comes back to the last point made above: find out what each tool is missing. You might find that HootSuite is your top choice for a social media CRM dashboard. Great! But you might also find that you need access to a Pinterest management platform, an add-on that is not yet available to HootSuite users. Instead of going out and finding another dashboard with all of the same functionality as HootSuite that includes Pinterest, either make the switch entirely to the new CRM tool, or find another stand alone product for Pinterest.

Your tools should not be creating redundancies. For marketers – and agencies in particular – managing multiple accounts is difficult enough as it is. You do not need to add another degree of confusion by overlapping your work. In doing so, you run the risk of being half as productive and taking twice as much time. Ask anyone – economist or otherwise – if that makes sense from a business perspective. The answer will always be no.

Have a Strategy in Place Before You Start

Each of these tips builds off the last. Here, we are coming back to an old favorite of ours: strategy. When it comes to social media management, strategy is the key to success. This applies on the macro level when looking at the program as a whole, and the micro level when looking at something like, say, the tools you are using.

We noted above how one of the keys to success is going to be research. The second key to success is alignment. There should be configured linearity to your program, and your social media tools should fit in with that. While you might find something new that you just need to have, figure out how it works in with your strategy first. If it is a reporting tool, like SocialBro, look at the strategies you have in place and see if this can organically work itself in. If not, do not wate your time. If it does, then go for it! The key to success with social media marketing is knowing exactly in which direction you are heading, and taking calculated steps to get there. Playing it by ear, so to speak, will cost you time, efficiency and ultimately money. So plan ahead for best results.

What are your favorite tools to use for social media marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Twitter Marketing for the Super Bowl

February 1, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Twitter marketing will be a major part of Super Bowl ads this weekend.

Twitter has been growing in popularity for brands for quite a while now. More and more, we see Twitter marketing incorporated into television ads or TV programs with custom hashtags added to the bottom of a television screen. Well, it looks like this trend in Twitter marketing is catching on, and that is clear with Twitter’s key role in this year’s Super Bowl.

According to a report on CNBC, roughly fifty percent of this year’s Super Bowl ads will feature a hashtag, incorporating Twitter marketing and customer engagement into a multi-million dollar TV spot. Considering there were only a few hashtags last year, and only one two years ago, that’s pretty impressive. Furthermore, when you take into account the fact that brands are paying upwards of $3 million (much more in some cases) for a few seconds of TV space during the most-watched TV event of the year, it is no wonder they are trying to keep the engagement going with a hashtag. This invites viewers to reach out to the brand after the commercial has aired, and once a dialogue is opened, the possibilities are virtually endless.

Audi is a prime example of the integration of Twitter marketing. Below is the video for their Super Bowl spot this year (for which they spent roughly $4 million!) which features the hashtag #BraveryWins at the very end:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANhmS6QLd5Q

What’s more, Twitter is expecting this to be one of the most active periods they have ever experienced. The number of tweets is expected to be in the thousands…per second! This is not surprising considering some of the statistics revealed in the NM Incite and Nielsen study conducted in 2012. Below are a few of the astounding findings from the study with regards to Twitter marketing as it relates to television:

41% of tablet owners and 38% of smartphone owners use their device daily while in front of their TV screen.
During June 2012, a third of active Twitter users tweeted about TV-related content, an increase of 27 percent from the beginning of the year.
Nearly a quarter of people aged 18-34 use social media to comment on what they like/dislike about a storyline while watching TV.
Adults aged 35-44 are the most likely to discuss television programming with their social connections.
23% of mobile users and 35% of tablet users have looked up information related to the TV program being watched.

With numbers like that, it is not hard to understand why brands are turning to Twitter when it comes to second-phase marketing in this year’s Super Bowl.

How do you interpret this major change in Super Bowl and Twitter marketing? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

LinkedIn Tips: Maximize Your LinkedIn Company Page

January 31, 2013/by Corey Padveen

Having a LinkedIn company page is a great place to connect with professionals. But to optimize your return on the time spent on LinkedIn, you should optimize your company page first.

Optimizing your LinkedIn company page should be approached from two avenues. First, you should be optimizing all of the sections at your avail in order to showcase as much as possible about your company. Second, you should be taking advantage of the SEO capabilities offered on a LinkedIn company page in order to increase your brand’s exposure on search engines.

Below is a set of tips that should help you do both of these things and get the most out of your LinkedIn company page.

1. Fill Out Every Section

Contrary to a Facebook brand page, which has a limited number of tabs from which to work when you first get started, a LinkedIn company page provides you with tabs for a corporate overview, careers offered at the company and products and services you offer. Where there is a little bit of a downside is that a LinkedIn company page is essentially a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) platform. There is little in the way of add-ons when it comes to a LinkedIn company page. But that’s ok! There is plenty you can take advantage of on the basic page layout.

First, you will want to fill out every section on the page. Add your logos and banners and, more importantly, link them to your site! Add your headquarters and phone numbers. Boast all of your specialties and link your most lucrative groups. Every little bit you can add to your LinkedIn company page shows that much more about your company. And the more transparent you are, the easier it will be for visitors to see your expertise and why your company is the best one for the job.

This also applies to your products and services. Your banners should link to your website. And you should definitely have banners on each page! There is not much in the way of creative leeway on a LinkedIn company page, and this is one of the few areas where you can showcase your brand visually. So take advantage of it.

2. Link Everything!

This ties in closely with your SEO efforts through LinkedIn as well. You will want to link every one of your external profiles and employees to your LinkedIn company page in order to increase your exposure. While having a LinkedIn company page is all well and and good, if it is simply relegated to the annals of the 200 million-person social network, it is not doing you much good. If, however, it is linked to your profile, all of your employees’ profiles, your website and all of your other social networks, then you stand a much better chance of having your company found.

Take advantage of the sections on your LinkedIn company pages where you can link something- be it a website, a blog article, an employee or a social network.

3. Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Page for SEO

Here is where you can use your LinkedIn company page to really drive traffic and get found. SEO is still one of the best ways to get your name out there, and there are quite a few tips and tricks you can use to reap the benefits of SEO through LinkedIn.

First, we reiterate the previous point: make sure to link your banners and sections. Links are still the best way to increase your SERPs (search engine ranking positions) and there are plenty of areas on a LinkedIn company page that can help you do this.

Second, encourage your staff to add anchor text to both the company page and their own profiles. Anchor text is another huge asset when it comes to SEO, and there are plenty of areas where links can be designed as anchor text on your page.

Third, recommendations are a great way to boost your page’s rankings. The recommendations feature on LinkedIn is great for both showcasing your skills and getting found. The skills and areas of expertise you insert into your profile and page should be written in the form of meta tags, and for each recommendation your page increases in authority. The greater your authority, the higher your rankings. So remember to go out and ask for recommendations from your network – these will help with your SEO on LinkedIn.

Lastly, update your page regularly with news and content. Whether it is sharing articles or brief synopses of your blog posts with links, anything you add to your page will help with your SEO. Your LinkedIn feed is like a pseudo blog within the social network, so take advantage of this feature and post content whenever you can in order to reap the benefits that come with it.

How do you use LinkedIn for your business? Do you already employ any of these tips for SEO when it comes to your LinkedIn company page? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

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