The online world has been all abuzz with the news of Facebook’s recent $1 billlion acquisition of Instagram with some excited about what this could mean for their marketing, along with the critics who say the move is a desperate one to keep fans on board.

Details are still coming into focus as to how the two platforms will weave together in the future but for the moment Mark Zuckerberg insists that Instagram will be completely independent and will continue to be so.

Nevertheless there are plenty questions about the Instagram/Facebook combo and the new challenges and opportunities that will come up for marketers due to this alliance.

Instagram remains the place to communicate visually with friends via photos, artfully masking suggestions and influence with their users surpassing 30 million and many companies are realising that a picture of what you had for lunch (especially when there is a brand name displayed) can actually be worth the marketing involved. While this is the case, it is a small platform that brands are only just beginning to make use of.

With Facebooks members close to 1 billion, a powerful advertising program and the rollout of Timeline for Brands, Facebook has shown immense support for brands and has established itself as a reputed and imperative platform to make use of in marketing strategy.

By integrating Instagram into a brand’s Facebook communications, the potential is to create a much more visual conversation via rich stories and conversations. This could really revolutionise brand personification by fleshing out previously transparent personalities with no real humanity behind it.

The question really is whether as the branded Instagram content begins to work its way into users feeds, people will notice or mind the instrusion. Paid endorsements are supposed to be unobtrusive but whether this will hold true remains to be seen.

Facebook and instagram will need to maintain independence and their authenticity as separate platforms so as to not push users away. Marketing efforts really do need to have the end user in mind. This doesn’t just go for the way that Facebook and Instagram roll out their paid endorsements but also for the brands that are making use of the platforms.

It is vital that the brands and companies making use of social media marketing remember why their audience is even accessible: the need for entertainment and interaction online.

While this move may prompt many to join Instagram, brands need to continually evaluate their image and whether Instagram is a platform which will enhance their brand reputation or whether the integrity of the platform will be affected by misuse and guerrilla marketing tactics.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook may bear the brunt of anything that may go wrong in the future of Instagram, the real responsibility lies with brands and their focus on user engagement. Used correctly, however, the two platforms could complement each other wonderfully.

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Social media may not be the be all and end all of marketing these days but it is an integral part of the new marketing mix. While many small to medium businesses have been hesitant to start making use of this medium, once they have in fact experienced the benefits of social media in their businesses, it is unlikely that all business owners and CEO’s will really “get it”.

There are no other media that you can make use of in marketing that can give you a global reach with many unique visitors to your site without spending much more on traditional advertising and marketing.

Many businesses are starting to see the benefits of social media though, and here are a few key things that it can do for your business, straight from the real world of business:

The 12 Major Benefits Of Social Media

1. Increased awareness of the brand or organisation

2. Increased traffic to the company’s website

3. Greater positive perceptions of the brand

4. Ability to monitor conversations about the organisation

5. Ability to develop targeted marketing activities

6. Better understanding of customers perceptions of their brand

7. Improved insights about their target markets

8. Identification of positive and negative comments

9. Increase in new business

10. Identification of new product or service opportunities

11. Ability to measure the frequency of the discussion about the brand

12. Early warning of potential product or service issues

VIA JeffBullas.com

SOURCE The Harvard Business Review Analytics Services

This isn’t to say that there are no cons to using social media. As a business owner, it is incredibly important to take note of all the positives as well as the negatives of each marketing medium you make use of. The fact of the matter is that in ordinary word-of mouth marketing, a dissatisfied customer will tell on average about 10 people, however, with social media, he has the ability to tell 10 million people simultaneously.

The real challenge then is not to allow fear of the unknown to hold one back from the real benefits that social media can bring to your business. As with any dissatisfied customer, it is not in the complaint alone that the world sees, but in the company’s response to the complaint and how it is handled. This is why it is always best to address a public complaint publicly in a diplomatic way that will turn your dissatisfied customer as well as all the people who read the complaint and your response into happy and active brand ambassadors for your company.

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Social media has become an essential buzz word in marketing and a very important tool for brand awareness but how do you convert Twitter followers and Facebook fans into paying customers? It really depends on your brand and finding the right marketing mix for your brand and company are imperative if you wish to be successful in this area. Each brand will have different challenges which means that  your strategy has to make sense for your brand.

Often times, people ask me what I charge for social media networking on behalf of a small business and every time, I have to say, “That depends”. This isn’t because I don’t know what my own rates are and there isn’t a value attached to what I do but rather because each brand is different and while one brand may get great engagement from 2 posts a week and basic management and monitoring, another brand may benefit more from more hands-on interaction with daily or even multiple daily posts on their social networking sites.

That said, there are some generic tips that can be used to increase your engagement and as a result turn fans and followers into brand ambassadors who will not only endorse your brand but will also be a paying customer.

1.     Use Search to your advantage

With so many social media network messages sent out into cyberspace every day, there is plenty chance that your company or brand may being talked about without anyone using your handle or hashtag. It is important to be proactive when managing your company’s social media profile. If there are conversations going on, you can always join in, offer advice, answer questions and improve overall brand interaction with your potential customers.

You can also search according to your industry so you can be aware of what people are saying, what they do like and don’t like, which can help you with your marketing techniques for new product/service launches in the future.

Another way of searching is to search for your competitors, monitor who is interacting with them and communicate with those potential customers as well. Make your searches relevant to your business and services and approach potential customers with real human interactions and not just sales speak and you are bound to convert a couple of those users into real customers.

2. A Picture is worth 1000 words

Photos drive double the engagement that text posts do on Facebook so take some pics and connect with fans that way. You are marketing to your fans without annoying them because they are actively engaging with your post in a positive way. You can gain feedback, and the pics need not be product focussed. You could post literally anything and you will find that you will get more engagement as long as the picture can be identified with the brand in some way.

3.     Give stuff away

Internet users LOVE to enter competitions, especially when there is a great prize to be won. It’s a great way to boost followers as well as engagement. Be careful about what you are offering so you can be sure you are attracting the right types of followers.

Build in actions that allow fans to share to their social networks, which will increase virality and stay true to your brand. Make sure the way in which you are running your contest fits with the platform you are using to run the contest on. So this will mean a change in the way you present the contest on each social media network. Make sure your prize attracts people from the same demographic of your target market and that your average customer will appreciate the prize.

4. Use Platforms Exclusively

Make sure your message is unique to each platform. You will gain more followers on each platform that way and you will be able to more easily promote your product to more people if you have a growing following of people.

If you have specific marketing messages or offers that you only offer on Facebook and nowhere else you are reinforcing your investment in the channel.

5. Get more Personal

If you speak to your customers in a personal way that builds the relationship and creates real brand loyalty, you have a higher chance of converting your fan into a paying customer. No one likes being the recipient of a mass message. It’s important to try to humanize your brand so people don’t feel like they are just a number.

Live chats are another great way to offer interaction and engagement with your fans. Also, ignoring negative comments is an absolute no-no. Rather address the complaint and you will be making use of an opportunity to convert an unhappy customer into a brand ambassador who has confidence that your company will take every opportunity to ensure quality service provision.

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Facebook has confirmed that over the next few weeks, they will be changing the way it counts check-ins numbers, photo posts and multiple visits over certain periods of time to locations on Facebook.

Whether this will impact overall numbers of check-ins remains to be seen but the change, according to the developers of Facebook on AllFacebook, aims to give a more accurate picture of how people are visiting your business.

If an individual checked into your business multiple times, each check-in was counted toward your page’s total check-in number. The aim is to be able to discount any erroneous check-ins by counting a person with multiple check-ins within a 12 hour period as one unique check-in.

When an individual checks in to your business and tags a number of friends in a photo they upload along with the check-in, the total amount of check-ins will be that individual, plus the number of friends that are tagged in the photo.

The numbers may not change much as the change occurs, or they may plummet slightly, however this will give page owners a more accurate idea of how many people are actually visiting their business on a daily basis.

Owners of brand pages may have to reconfigure the way they measure success on their page metrics but overall, the developers at Facebook feel this will be a positive step towards more accurate measuring of daily visits to businesses.

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Twitter recently announced that selected small businesses will be able to begin using its self-serve ad platform for promoted tweets and accounts. The select group of companies with initial access to this feature will be American Express merchants and card members.

The credit card company has partnered with Twitter in order to launch the platform and has offered early access to their customers along with $100 credit for advertising for the first 10,000 signup companies.

The first batch of small businesses to have access to the platform will be notified via American Express and access to the platform will be increased to others over the next while.

The Promoted Accounts feature suggest a brand’s Twitter account to users with interests similar to those who are following the brand, while Promoted Tweets use existing tweets that have inspired more engagement than other tweets and promotes the tweet in the search results. A small business will only pay when their account is either followed or someone engages with a promoted tweet.

The self-serve advertising platform which was made available in November to a handful of advertisers remains closed to most businesses.

American Express has been involved in the past with Twitter-based promotions and has shown aggressive interest in pursuing partnerships with other social networks such as Facebook with “Link, Like, Love” and Foursquare loyalty rewards.

Twitter, being a private company, doesn’t disclose advertising revenue on principle but eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s revenue will more than likely total $259.9 million this year alone.

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