Author Archives: Jake

4 Ways To Optimize Tweets For Increased Exposure

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Twitter only gives you 140 characters to get your message across. While you can easily post a quick statement, it may get lost in the millions of other tweets if you don’t make the effort to optimize those precious 140 characters. There is a big difference between a tweet and an effective one. Businesses who optimize their tweets gain far more followers and see the maximum benefit Twitter has to offer.

Answer Before Asked

As a business, you likely already have a FAQs section on your site. Customer support regularly receives and answers questions from visitors. You may even receive questions through Twitter. Help answer questions by posting the answers to common and not so common questions on Twitter on a regular basis. If your products are used during certain seasons, focus answers around those products as those seasons approach.

Post Stats

People love random tidbits of knowledge. Each day post a quick statistic or fact that’s relevant to your company. These can be serious, humorous or anything in between. The object is to give followers something to look forward to while adding personality to your business.

Master The Hashtag

New followers often find Twitter accounts via the search function. If you want your tweets to be more search friendly, use relevant hashtags. Twitter lets you see the most popular hashtags. Whenever possible, try to incorporate a popular hashtag or something related to the trend into your tweet for maximum exposure. However, only do this if it fits your tweet. Only use hashtags that are actually relevant to your tweet to avoid being classified as spam.

Promotions

Consider having a daily or weekly promotion. Since everyone loves a discount, contest or sale, these types of tweets are some of the most shared. You increase business and gain new followers at the same time. You can also share promotions from partner businesses. The idea is if you share their tweets, they’ll share yours as well.

Whatever you do, always make the most of your 140 characters. Whenever possible leave at least 10 characters free so others can retweet and add their own quick message.

3 Ways To Market On Pinterest Without Breaking The Rules

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Many companies jumped at the chance to add another social network to their marketing strategy. However, Pinterest doesn’t allow any direct selling tactics. On sites like Facebook and Twitter, you could be rather direct. If you don’t want to be banned from Pinterest, learn the best ways to market without breaking any rules.

Coupon Collages

Pinterest has no rules against discounts and contests. If you offer coupons on your products and services, create a coupon board. This gets your offer to more people and creates new customers. Since people love discounts, they’ll share your board with their own friends and family. If you have multiple coupons, coupon collages are not only eye catching, but allow you to create coupon images for different sets of products.

Bundle Products

Just because you can’t sell on Pinterest, it doesn’t mean you can’t offer exclusive deals. Let your customers know that they will receive a special discount if they buy certain products together. Take pictures of special offer packages. In the caption, let customers know exactly how much they can save by using the bundle deal versus buying separately. This lets you advertise, provide a discount and increase sales.

Creative QR Codes

While the last image you may think of pinning is a QR code, don’t underestimate the power of posting scannable images. When posting a QR code on Pinterest, don’t use the typical blocking, black and white image. Instead, get creative. Some businesses create images within QR codes. They are colorful and artsy. They are eye catching enough to be shared and allow you to link to whatever you want.

By creating a board with QR codes, you can put all your current codes in a single location for easy access. Your customers will appreciate you making their lives easier.

You may not be able to open a store on Pinterest, but customers are visual people. Be creative with your marketing images and you will still increase your customers.

4 Quick Ways To Socialize Your Site

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Having a social media presence doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve completely immersed your business in the social world. There is more to social media than having a page on popular social networks. If you have a website, you need to socialize that as well. All of your online marketing efforts, and even many offline ones too, should connect. If you want your social media marketing to be truly successful, you must socialize your site.

Share Buttons

The easiest and quickest way to get a little social on your website is by adding share buttons. You don’t have to have any special web design skills to do so either. This is especially important if you have articles on your site or host your own blog. This allows visitors who find you outside of social networks to share their favorite pieces of content with their friends. Include as many networks as possible so content is shared quickly everywhere.

Social Commenting

Many sites require you to create a special account in order to comment on articles and blog posts. Sometimes businesses miss out on valuable feedback because users don’t want to create yet another account. Instead, allow visitors to log in with Facebook, Twitter or another social media account.

As an added bonus, add a section to your site that shows the latest social media activity from visitors on your site. This includes comments, likes and shares. Those who log in can see any activity from their friends. This creates your own personal social network on your site. Activity is still shared on the social network itself, but users don’t have to skip from site to site to socialize.

Advertise Your Presence

If you don’t want to add any code to your site, you can still be social by at least advertising your social media presence. On your home page, list links for visitors to follow you on every site you are on. You can also place these links on your about us page or at the bottom of every page.

Promote Contests And Discounts

Get visitors excited about your latest contests and discounts on social networks. This advertises your social network pages and helps your contests and discounts appear in search engines, whether users are signed in or not. You can even showcase feedback, winners and ask visitors what they’d like to participate in next.

Customers Want Friends Not Brands – Market Socially Now

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Why does social media marketing work so well? Answer this question and you’ll quickly see just how important it is to add social media to your marketing mix. You don’t have to give up other marketing methods, just add one more proven method to the mix. To answer the all important question – customers are interested in becoming friends. Social networks allow brands to become friends customers can relate to and interact with.

Talk To Customers

Social media is one of the few marketing methods that allow you to actually talk to your customers. Ask them questions about what they do and don’t like. It’s free to get their feedback and your products and services improve as a result. Customers also appreciate having a say in the products they buy. At the same time, you’re becoming a friend to the customer, equaling organic advertising and traffic all for free.

Customer Service Improves

No one really enjoys calling customer service and staying on hold. It feels impersonal and the customer usually feels like they’re wasting time. Instead, social media allows a business a chance to improve customer service and customer relations by talking to customers on a platform they know and trust. A customer can post a question and get a response from the right person the first time. No time is wasted and you’re able to improve website FAQs and products.

Share With Friends 

Marketing becomes crucial during new product and service releases. Once you’ve become a customer’s friend, pitching becomes more like sharing. A customer doesn’t see it as an ad so much as a recommendation from a friend. As such, they are far more likely to check out the product and even share it with friends. Essentially, you pitch the product on the customer’s terms and they’ll be more inclined to buy.

If you ever needed a reason to add social media to your marketing mix, consider the fact that millions use social networks on a daily basis. Unless you purchase an ad, the only cost to market your business is time. No other marketing method is that effective at increasing profits and/or site traffic at the budget friendly price of free.

Adopting Social Media – Everyone Else Is Doing It

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Small businesses are still hesitant to add social media to their marketing mix. They see it as too time consuming with little possible results. However, this opinion isn’t based upon fact. Of all marketing methods, social media is one of the most cost effective and takes little time once a strategy is implemented. Small businesses that don’t adopt social media are losing out against the competition which does use it every single day.

Cost Stats

According to Zoomerang, almost two thirds of small businesses spend less than $100 on social media marketing. Every small business can afford this tiny amount to get their name in front of hundreds of millions of users. This same site found that only 26% of small businesses actually hire a dedicated social media marketing manager. In fact, many small businesses spend nothing on social media marketing except their time.

Increase In Business

Before you discount social media as wasted time, consider the increase in business. A survey conducted by MediaBistro found that at least 50% of small businesses gained new customers by using sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. This same survey found that your followers are much more likely to buy from you than the competition. In fact, Twitter users are 64% more likely to purchase from the brands they choose to follow.

Online Equals Offline Results

While online small businesses usually readily adopt social media, small offline businesses still refrain from social media marketing. However, a Nielsen study of social media activity showed that active social media users are more active offline as well. They are more likely to attend sporting events, make music and clothing purchases, join gyms and even go out on dates. Currently, approximately 53% of active users follow a brand. The study also found that active social media users have a greater influence on their friends. Get online followers and get offline results.

Audience Online

Using traditional marketing methods, you have the opportunity to reach thousands as a small business. With social media, you have the opportunity to reach millions on a daily basis. In Nielsen’s third quarter 2011 social media report, 80% of Americans use at least one social network. Even with all the online competition, users still spend over 20% of their time on social networks. Small businesses cannot afford to hide themselves from such a large audience.

Become A Fan To Get Fans On Facebook

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You already know the first key to success on Facebook is gaining fans. The path to growing your fans varies. However, one often overlooked method is becoming a fan yourself. Remember, Facebook isn’t just for promoting your business. It is also for networking with other businesses. Many small businesses are discovering how profitable networking can be.

Gain New Exposure

Businesses are able to see every new fan they receive. This includes other business pages. Search for complimentary businesses and you may just receive a fan in return. When they become your fan, all of their fans see an update on the page with a link to your page. Suddenly, your page is advertised to an entirely new audience. You may also find yourself gaining a new partner on Facebook who offers to promote you if you’ll promote them.

Provide Value To Fans

Facebook should never be straight promotion. You should always provide informative resources as well. Becoming a fan of other pages helps you provide additional value to your fans. If you run a wedding planning business, fans will find the business page of a local photographer extremely useful. While you should never become a fan of the competition, try to become a fan of businesses your fans will find useful.

Shared Campaigns 

When you find a page you want to become a fan of, study the business. See exactly what they offer and how it fully compliments your own business. The next step is to contact the business about a shared marketing campaign. The campaign should be beneficial to both parties. Using the example above, the wedding planner may offer a discount on planning for anyone using the photographer and vice versa. Both businesses can new customers and fans.

Share Ideas

When you’re not a competitor, other businesses usually don’t mind sharing ideas with you. Become not only a fan, but a friend. Keep up regular contact and share marketing and networking ideas. Together, you can create better Facebook marketing strategies than you would have alone. This is especially useful for small businesses without their own in house marketing team. By simply working together, both businesses benefit.

 

The Best Times To Post On Facebook

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Of all the Facebook questions businesses have, the most common revolves around the best posting times. Even the best posts fail if no one sees them. While Facebook is a 24/7 marketing dream, there are certain times during the day and throughout the week which offer far more opportunities for your posts to be noticed. Luckily, these posting times work perfectly for most businesses.

The Best Clicks

If you’re posting links, the ideal time frame is between 1 PM and 4 PM EST. The majority of your fans are checking their newsfeeds often not only during this time frame, but for approximately four hours after this time. This ensures your post stays on a fan’s newsfeed throughout optimal hours.

Too Early, Too Late

While Facebook fans are on day and night, you’re likely to receive very little interaction when posting before 8 AM EST or after 8 PM EST. By the time most fans check their newsfeed, your post is already consider outdated or has disappeared altogether. Unless your business’s target audience are night owls, avoid posting too early or too late.

The “Time”

Studies have shown that posting on Wednesdays around 3 PM EST is the optimal time for Facebook posts. Traffic tends to be at its absolute peak. Businesses should save their most important posts or links for Wednesday afternoons. This doesn’t mean you should bombard your fans’ newsfeeds every Wednesday with multiple posts. Instead, save the big posts, such as product announcements or contests, for the middle of the week. You’ll see far more likes, shares and comments which lead to more fans.

Testing

While these times work perfectly for many businesses, every set of fans is different. Start with the times listed above and study your Facebook analytics. Adjust your posts approximately a hour at a time until you find your business’s own optimal times. On average, posting during business hours tends to work to your advantage.

The 3 Times You Should Delete Negative Facebook Comments

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Most experts will tell you to never delete negative feedback on your Facebook fan page. In most cases, this is true. In fact, fans expect to see the occasional negative comment. After all, you can’t please everyone. While you shouldn’t delete every negative comment, there are three occasions when it is perfectly appropriate to delete certain comments.

Offensive Language

As a general rule, businesses should never use offensive language in their posts. Businesses shouldn’t have to put up with fans using foul language on their page either. If you feel a negative (or even positive) comment is inappropriate for your audience, remove it.

Follow up by posting rules on your page. Some businesses place posting rules in the About section of their page, in a note or on their website. Regardless of where they are posted, remind fans that offensive language and adult content is not allowed.

Hostile Fans

Though rare, you may encounter a fan that cannot be satisfied. After exhausting all other methods of dealing with the complaint or issue, the fan continues to post negative comments on your wall. Leave the initial comment and remove the remaining ones. Should the fan continue to harass you (and annoy other fans), you do have the right to ban the fan altogether. Use your best judgment and only ban when absolutely necessary.

Self-Promotion

You may check your wall for the latest fans’ comments and notice a fan promoting their own business. Your wall is not the place for fans to promote their websites, blogs or businesses. Unless they ask in advance for permission, these comments should be removed. Fans see these as spam. If you don’t remove them, fans believe you are not effectively managing your page and lose trust in you.

In most cases, removing comments is forbidden. Always try to handle negative comments in a positive manner. The three situations above happen rarely, but when they do, remove the negative posts for a clean, fan friendly page.

4 Deadly Twitter Mistakes – Save Your Tweets

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Businesses love using Twitter as part of their social marketing campaign. Short messages are far easier to compose than longer messages on Facebook. Creating a profile is easier than creating a page. However, these four mistakes could cost you your entire Twitter following. Check your tweets and ensure you’re not making these deadly mistakes.

Never Automate

You may be busy, but your followers should never see you as too busy to compose a 140 character tweet. While it may be appealing to automate your tweets to show your latest blog and Facebook posts, your followers don’t appreciate it. A stream of endless links turns off followers quickly. Create personal tweets, even when you post links, to show followers their time is important to you.

Quit Repeating

Even with a major promotion or contest, you should never post the same message (in any form) more than three times a day. Any more and you sound like a broken record. Your followers follow you because they are interested in learning more, not reading the same message repeatedly. When you tweet, make it new.

The only time you can truly get away with repeat messages is during a countdown. For instance, a movie studio may post a tweet each hour to build hype over a movie release. 

Relationships Before Money 

Introduce yourself before you introduce your product. This applies not only to the tweets themselves, but to messages and conversations as well. Your followers want to build relationships with businesses. They will be happy to buy from you if your relationship is about more than money. When you tweet, create a balance between relationship building tweets and promotional ones. Your fans will love it. 

Don’t Create Spam

While this should be an obvious one, don’t spam your followers. Only create tweets which are relevant to your audience. Many companies make the mistake of trying to gain more followers by asking their current followers to share links in order to enter a contest. Your followers may not mind, but their followers do. Essentially, their followers feel as if they are being spammed. Your followers should only share links by choice, not as a requirement.

These four mistakes can kill even the best laid Twitter plans. Stop them today for better success tomorrow.

 

Social Media No Longer An Option – Get Social Now

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The trend has begun where social media is no longer optional for businesses. Those wishing to go mainstream are quickly finding one of their greatest marketing tools is social networks. Why the sudden change from optional to required? Search engines are now ranking sites based upon social media activity.

Social Media Incorporation

All those social share buttons you see on websites and hopefully your own site are already starting to affect your search results. Comments made through social networks which appear on your blog or site will also affect your rank. More and more users are seeking businesses which incorporate social media so they can easily share with their friends and see which sites and brands their friends like best.

The Next Generation

Search engines are now allowing users to log in and view search results ranked based upon their friends’ social activity. For instance, if you log into Google, you will see sites on Google+ ranked higher than those who aren’t. The object is to showcase the businesses your friends recommend. The more interactions and followers you have, the higher you’ll rank.

Even if a user isn’t logged in, search engines are changing algorithms to rank sites with an interactive social media presence higher than those without one. In fact, many businesses see their social media profiles rank higher than their own websites.

One major benefit of these changes to search engines is the ability to better target your audience. Friends and family often have common interests. Odds are, they’ll see recommendations in a search engine long before their friends may think to actually tell them about you. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll be targeting your audience through the followers you already have.

Get Social Now

The sooner you start building your social media presence, the stronger your chance at ranking high. Search engines are just beginning to truly embrace social media as a ranking criteria. Start now and you’ll already have an established presence before social media becomes an absolute necessity. Wait and you’ll have miles to climb on the search engine ladder while your competition reaps the benefits of proactive social networking.