social media strategies Archives

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!

Social Media Marketing Trends in 2013 [INFOGRAPHIC]

December 20, 2012/by Corey Padveen

Where should you be focusing your social media marketing efforts in the new year?

Social media marketing evolves constantly with trends in social media. Knowing what social networks and what media are working well is essential to success when it comes to social media marketing. This infographic does a great job of detailing how social media is trending and where we can see it going in 2013. Have a look below and let us know, is this where you expected to see social media marketing trending in the coming year? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!

Optimizing Facebook Social Media Strategies for SEO

December 19, 2012/by Corey Padveen

Social media strategies are crucial to the performance of your search rankings, so how can optimize Facebook for SEO?

Back in November, we posted an article on the importance of social media when it comes to SEO. With the ever changing rankings criteria at Google and other search engines, there is no question that your social media strategies will prove to be all the more important in 2013 when it comes to getting found. But while you may know that social signals are important to your search rankings, you may not know how to optimize Facebook in order to ensure that search engines pick up your social networks. Below are a few helpful tips to help you optimize your social media strategies in order to increase your search rankings in 2013 and get found by potential customers on Facebook.

There is no shortage of tips out there with suggestions on how to optimize a Facebook fan page for SEO, but there are really only a few main areas of focus one should look to when it comes to optimizing a Facebook page so as not to waste time on unproductive tweaks. Below are three tips that are sure to increase your exposure to search engines from your Facebook page, and should be key components to your social media strategies when it somes to Facebook optimization.

1. Obtain a Vanity URL

Once a fan page reaches 25 ‘Likes’ , it is eligible for a vanity URL. What is a vanity URL? Well, when you first created your Facebook page, you might have noticed that the page title was something like, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Your-Company-Name/1234567890. Considering the weight put on URLs by search engines, a title like the one provided by Facebook is doing little to benefit your exposure. Once your page has reached the coveted 25 ‘Like’ mark, visit https://www.facebook.com/username, select the page you wish to provide a custom URL for, and type in your new URL. This will give your Facebook a much cleaner URL that search engines will recognize.

Now for the worst case scenario: your company name is somehow taken. This is unlikely, but the more generic your company name, the higher the likelihood. Not to worry – if this happens, then choose a URL that describes your company. This will also benefit your search rankings due to the keywords registered in the URL. So, if your company name is John’s Store, and you see that …/Johns-Store is taken, then choose something like …/Johns-Car-Parts-Store.

2. Keywords Are Important…In Certain Areas

Posting regularly on Facebook might garner attention from other Facebook users, but regular posts might not necessarily mean more attention from search engines. Unlike a website with thousands of indexed pages, search engines do not index Facebook posts the same way. So, while you might have one of the most active accounts on Facebook in terms of regular posting, it does not necessarily mean that search engines can find you.

There are a few areas on Facebook, however, that search engines categorize the same way they would a web page. Your page title is registered as both your SEO Title and an H1 Tag. Your page’s description in the About or Company section registers as the Meta Description. These are two areas on the page that are extremely important for SEO, and what you include should be well thought out.

Once these areas are optimized it is important to optimize the beginnings of your posts. The first 18 characters of a Facebook post register with search engines as meta descriptions for those posts. So, if, for example, your company’s focus is web design, the first words of your posts should focus on the web design keywords you wish to focus on.

3. Backlinks Are Still Key to SEO

Don’t leave your posts to wither away on Facebook alone, build links back to your posts. These serve as backlinks to your page, and the more backlinks you have, the greater authority your Facebook page is given by search engines. Despite the growing force of social signals in SEO, links are still the most relevant criteria, and Facebook is one of the easiest ways to build a network of backlinks to your page by sharing posts across the web.

Helpful Tip: This is also a great way to build exposure and increase search rankings for your website. Include links to your site in your posts and encourage the sharing of those links. Shared links are recognized by search engines as backlinks to your site, and will help increase both the exposure and the authority of your site much faster than conventional link building.

You social media strategies are proving ever more important to getting found. Facebook can be a phenomenal resource for increasing your exposure, and optimizing your Facebook fan page for SEO should not go overlooked by any brand.

Social Media Marketing in 2013: The Essentials

December 18, 2012/by Corey Padveen

What does your social media marketing strategy need to have in 2013 in order for it to be successful?

Social media marketing has, once again, proven to be a crucial tool for a brand’s growth in 2012. The marketing medium has made tremendous strides over the course of the year, and it is sure to grow even larger in the next. As we approach the new year, we thought it might be helpful to take a look at some of the most important items to address with regards to your social media marketing strategy for 2013 in order to see your success grow, too.

1. Set Your Goals and Your Road Map for Achieving Them

As with any venture, social media marketing requires a strategy in order for it to be successful. The concept of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is one that no longer applies in the conventional sense. (RIM, the makers of BlackBerry are a perfect example of this.) The contemporary version of this theory falls more in line with, “if it’s working, figure out a way to get the most out of it” – and that is exactly where your goals should focus if that’s the case. Below are a few pointers to consider when devising your social media marketing strategy for the new year:

Who is the audience you are looking to target with your social media?
How effective was your social media marketing in 2012?
What aspects work, and where does your social media marketing need improvement?
Are you studying the right data when it comes to analysis of your program?

These pointers follow a general theme, and that brings us to our next point.

2. Before Anything, Evaluate Your Social Media Marketing in 2012

As the pointers above may suggest, evaluating the performance of your social media marketing in 2012 is going to be crucial to the success of your strategy in 2013. Where did you benefit? Where did your stretegy fall short? What were your goals for 2012? Did you achieve them? Why or why not? These questions all need to be answered before devising a strategy for your social media marketing in the coming year. And there are quite a few ways you can go about doing this.

The first aspect you need to look at are your goals in 2012. Using some of the insights tools available both in social media networks (e.g. Facebook insights) and external tools, you can see where you reached your goals and where you need improvement. Then evaluate each social network individually to see what strategies you employed that were either a success or a bust. Build off of these in order to get the most out of your social media marketing in 2013. Trim the fat where it is necessary and devote those resources to areas that saw success in order to maximize the efficiency of your strategy. Social media marketing is not about quantity necessarily, but about quality. Don’t forget, despite what some people might suggest, social media is not free, and if you are draining resources into something that is not benefitting your brand, you are losing considerably more than you might think.

3. Take SEO Into Consideration in Your Evaluation

SEO has long been a cornerstone of web marketing. And social media plays an integral part in your SEO efforts. In a post last month, we noted why social signals are an ever-growing part of the Google algorithm. It stands to reason that social signals will continue to factor into SEO in a significant way in the coming year, so evaluating your SEO strategy and aligning it with your social media strategy will prove to be crucial in finding success.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+ directly impact your search rankings, so look to your keywords to find out how you can capitalize on this reality. Shares and retweets with links work the same way as a backlink, but they make the link-building process infinitely simpler. So use your Google Analytics Webmaster Tools to find your best keywords, and optimize accordingly.

4. Make Sure Your Entire Team Believes in Your Social Media Strategy

What is the biggest hinderance to the success of a social media marketing strategy? Skepticism. For marketing divisions and firms alike, hesitation by management to accept social media as a crucial avenue to a brand’s success has proven time and again to be biggest hurdle when it comes to reaching al of your goals when it comes to social media marketing. So before moving forward, take the steps necessary to ensure that everyone, from the highest level executive to the mailroom clerk believes in the strategy, and you will be able to move forward faster than ever before.

Can you think of other points that will be crucial to the success of your social media marketing strategy in 2013? 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.

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