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12 Things Social Media can do for your Business

Apr 032012

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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Pinterest Driving more Traffic than Twitter …

Mar 092012

In a recent study by Shareholic it was established that Pinterest actually drove more traffic to blogs in the month of February than Twitter did. This is an amazing fear as the relatively new social network only has an estimated 11.7 million active users compared to Twitter’s 100 million or so users.

Shareholic’s sharing widgets are used by more than 200,000 online publishers, most of which are independent bloggers who altogether reach about 270 million unique visitors every month.

February saw a little less 50% of all the traffic coming from Google, Facebook generating just over 6%, Yahoo (1.61%), StumbleUpon (1.29%), and Bing (1.21%). Pinterest came in at 1.05% and Twitter only at 0.82%.

In January, Pinterest fell into line just behind Twitter and so it is clear that Pinterest is definitely growing in popularity. The biggest beneficiaries of the growth seen in the new social network have been women’s lifestyle, home décor and cooking magazines amongst others.

Would your brand or company benefit from being on Pinterest? If so, it would serve well to make sure you are on this new social network.

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5 Business Website Must Haves …

Jan 052012

If you are running a business, a website is essential in order to increase sales and build stronger relationships with your customers. When designing websites, however, many business owners run into problems as many business owners take the idea of a brochure and try to put it online. The fact is that a website is not just an online business card and brochure about your business. The result is that these companies end up having websites that do not engage their target market and have no quality traffic coming to their website either.

There are some important must haves for your business website that can help to build engagement and let you reach your target market with your website:

1. Database of subscribers

Implement a signup form to a newsletter from your website so that your customers’ names, addresses, emails and other details can get registered. You will soon build a database for your business which you can use for other marketing campaigns down the line.

2. Use an Enquiry Form

Encourage questions from your customers on your website and make sure that your company contact details are clearly specified on your website. Try to include as many ways to contact your company as possible so that your customers have their choice of ways in which to contact you.

3. Make use of Testimonials

Use testimonials from existing clients in order to engage your customers, build up trust and win customer loyalty. When people see that others have had a positive experience with your company, they are more inclined to use your company for the products, ranges or services that your company offers.

4. Use a standalone page for products/services

If you can use a standalone page for your products/services, this will mean each product can be featured with its details and special features. You can use images, model numbers and descriptions in order to promote each product. If you have implemented search engine optimisation in your images and your text correctly, you will drive more traffic to your website.

5. Blogging regularly

People enjoy reading content that offers information and answers to questions they may have. You will be able to include articles that are related to your business which will capture the attention of your target market while also keeping search engines happy with the fresh and unique content you are creating on a regular and consistent basis.

All the above can help you to make an otherwise boring website into a more interactive tool you can use to engage with your customers.

5 New Year’s Resolutions to market my business

Jan 022012

We have officially entered 2012 and as many of my Facebook friends are posting away what their New Years’ resolutions are, I feel compelled to at least make a list of things I may not achieve. Granted, my list is purely on the business side as a new small business owner trying to get my little company off the ground. So, here are my 2012 New Year’s resolutions:

1) Use email as more than just another communication medium

Email can get a bit overwhelming at times and I tend to check it at least every 15 minutes but I don’t think I am using it nearly enough to market my business. Email marketing can be an integral part of a business’ success so while I use it effectively as a communication medium, I want to be more proactive this year and send out marketing messages to my target market this year – all to legitimate subscribers, of course as I wouldn’t want to spam anybody. Nobody likes a spammer.

2) Make at least one business lead per day

When everything is online and you spend 7-8 straight hours communicating with people all over the world, you may be pushed into the misconception that you are working … when all you are really doing is networking with people who may never become solid business leads. I resolve to make one legitimate business lead a day. Whether that means phoning possible business leads, or being a little pushy when I meet new people about whether they may require my services, so be it. While not everybody likes that person who pushes their business at social engagements, the fact is if you don’t ask, you don’t get an answer. You may just meet a very important business connection at a social gathering.

3) Double My Twitter/Facebook Audience

While some people may think that the number of Twitter/Facebook followers you have doesn’t matter and it’s all about the quality, in fact, I think I may have said that on occasion, social media really is all about 1) networking and 2) getting traffic leads. So, if you communicate with people and you’re trying to get your message spread across your industry, why wouldn’t you want to have the largest audience possible? I have plenty followers who are not necessarily in my home country and so may never develop into legitimate business leads. Perhaps they just like my articles and enjoy hearing what I have to say about social media and implementing it as a marketing method in their marketing mix. But I would like more people in my home country to be aware of my business and even more international people to read my articles. I guess the main thing I am going to have to do in order to accomplish this is just to be consistent with what I have been doing as I can’t very well control how many people follow me on Twitter or Facebook at the end of the day and buying followers isn’t something I would recommend to anybody. But nevertheless, this forces me to be consistent with my article writing etc.

4) Revamp my website

I guess this is par for the course of being a web developer. As you develop more and more sites, you look at other websites and when you look at yours you start to realise that what you did 6 months to a year ago is stale and really does need a revamp. I want something cleaner, with bolder headings and more colour. I can’t very well sell web design when I am not happy with my own website – but as said before, this is probably just because as you go along, you develop bigger and better websites and since you are so busy with other websites, as a one-man-show, you don’t get to put the attention you may want to into your own.

5) Complete my Facebook Timeline profile

I love the look of the new Facebook Timeline but I must admit I find myself so busy with responding to messages, and the general everyday stuff, that I haven’t had the chance to update all my info on Facebook. I haven’t even found that profile header that will really express who I really am yet. But I will make sure I get this done in 2012. Otherwise it looks as though I have just dropped into Facebook one day and that’s just weird.

So, these are my resolutions, and hopefully, by next year, I will have accomplished them all. In reality, I hope to have accomplished at least 2 of these by the end of the first half of the year, but that is me being over-zealous and optimistic as I tend to be when it concerns business. Have a great one, peeps, and I hope all your New Year hopes and dreams for your businesses come to pass!

Are you encouraging a sharing community on your social media network?

Dec 202011

It isn’t only about making sure your social media content is informative and engaging, you also have to make it easy to share. Over half of Facebook users who have liked a company page later decide they no longer want to see posts from that company. Are you doing everything you possibly can to keep your users reading relevant posts, but also everything you can to encourage them to share your content?

Here are some methods you can implement in order to develop a sharing community within your network:

1. Make sharing easy

While some may not like the look of social sharing buttons on business websites, it increases the likelihood of your content being shared by others. When you make it difficult by not having these buttons in place, chances are no one is going to copy and paste your link just because you article is interesting.

2. Keep it relevant

Segment your followers and determine who your current followers are, what they like to share and in what format they prefer to share socially. For instance, with Google+ Circles you can share with specific circles and create a customised message for specific circles.

3. Don’t limit yourself

While social media is primarily a marketing tool in order to drive traffic to your website, consider using it for other resources as well such as recruiting new employees or encouraging employees to work as a team.

4. Create lists

People seem to love lists. Make interesting lists based on your followers and their interests. They are a great way to segment your followers and recognise a certain number of them as experts in their field.

Making the effort to do some of the above means you get an engaged audience which is easier to reach as they are segmented. You now have a ‘smaller’ network to reach per topic and you can concentrate on engaging these users further. Since you are targeting these users specifically, you will get more shares within your network and gain exposure to their networks too.

Look at you current plan and think about the following:

Is your information easily shared?

Would you want to re-share your information?

What do you want your users to do with your content?

How to drive more traffic to your website

Dec 082011

In any business, that goal is to get more traffic whether this is foot traffic, phone traffic or web traffic; the goal is to get more people coming in to buy your product. It makes sense that you would want to use every resource available to you in order to reach that goal.

Truth be told, a lot of small business owners don’t really understand the concept of link building. They don’t get how and why this could possibly be relevant to their business. But, in fact, link building is very much relevant to your business.

Here are some very good reasons why link building can work for your small business if you give it a go:

1. Relationships

Small to medium businesses focus more on relationships that larger corporations do and link building is really about building relationships. You introduce yourself to major players in your niche industry and have to convince them that your site is worth linking to. Most people think that link building isn’t valuable but it really does boil down to relationships and how you introduce yourself to another small business. Large companies don’t focus on micro-level relationships and don’t commit to making friends out of customers. Connecting with people is a century-old practice and an effective link builder looks for organic connections with people which is why it is often time-consuming. This really makes link building and small businesses a perfect fit.

2. Networking

Successful small and medium-sized business owners have the ability to network. This is a must in their trade as potential customers abound in community events, volunteer organisations, local schools, universities, and the local chamber of commerce. A small business owner builds up a contact list which is built through years of data collection. Contacts that you have offline are potential online contacts. Their online presence can be a foundation for link building. As a small business owner you just need to take the opportunity to get encourage reciprocal links when you move the relationship from offline to online.

3. Local News

Local online media have a lot of space to feature stories that have local flavour. Small to medium businesses can take advantage of this with new product launches or unique events. The media is always looking for useful and easy content and this is one of the ways you can secure inbound links.

These are only 3 reasons why link building can be successful where it has thought to be a waste of time in the past. Small and medium business owners are already networking and building offline links. There is no reason why they can’t take these connections online as well.

What Can Social Media do for your business?

Dec 062011

Social is the current marketing buzz word but perhaps some of us still aren’t exactly clear as to what social media can actually do for our business and whether it is a valuable resource or not. So what exactly can social media do for your business?

The answer is quite simple, really. Social media is a growing lead generation channel. Now it certainly isn’t the biggest lead channel but based on being able to generate those leads, social media is worth the time and effort you put in.

Other benefits of using social media are that it can help nurture prospects to the point of sale, build relationships with and retain customers, help us listen to our target market and help us communicate internally. People buy from people they know, like and trust. At present, in marketing techniques today, there isn’t a better way to get people to know, like and trust you.

So how do we use social media in order to generate those leads? The main thing to realise here is that social media only works when you share links to your own content on your own site. It is hard to generate leads for your business on Facebook or Twitter alone.

Social media gives companies a new channel to reach customers and find new customers as well. While many people are separating social media from overall marketing practices, this is not necessarily the best way to look at things. Social media should essentially be mixed in as part of your integrated marketing strategy in order to give you the optimal results.

At the end of the day you have to give your community members a reason to click through to your site so your content has to be really great and it has to draw them in. Social media could, with time, account for half the traffic you receive on your website.

Can you get more out of your best blog posts?

Aug 082011

Forming Backlinks

If you have a blog, you probably know all the well-known dos and don’ts on writing a blog. You probably already know that you need to use search engine optimisation to get the most out of your blog and also to link to the popular social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

But in addition to creating new content for your site on a regular basis you also need to continue optimising your sites older content in order to get the most out of your more popular pieces of content. There are various tools to use to check which of your posts are the most popular but I would suggest using Google Analytics report “Top Content by Title” to check this figure reliably.

Things to consider in this endeavour are where your traffic is coming from, how interested they are in your company or organisation, what actions you can expect them to take and what stage they are at in their relationship with you.

Once this has been established one should go back and follow the below suggestions to optimise the popular posts so that you can encourage more traffic and more visits to those pages:

Give more attention to your posts – List your top viewed posts in a sidebar to make them even more popular which can push up your page views on your site.
Add new content to your posts – Send out an email with the updated post to your subscribers. This will increase backlinks to the page and strengthen search rankings.
Create topics and write a series of posts around the topic – Make sure that each new post links to an older post on the same topic.
Optimise posts for action – Include a call to action in each of your top viewed posts. Consider what action you want your visitor to take and encourage them to take it in these posts.
Make sure that each of these posts has some sort of link to your social media presence online. Should the visitor wish to find your Facebook Page or your Twitter feed, it should be easy for them to do so without having to go and look for it.

6 Steps to Optimise your Social Media efforts for search engines

Jul 152011

Your digital marketing strategy should be much the same as your traditional marketing strategy except that you need to integrate different tools that you may be not so familiar with but the principles are the same.

What many don’t know is that optimising your social media content is also a must. You may know that you need to optimise your website but useful social content that cannot be discovered with a search is wasting a valuable opportunity to reach your audience.

The real key to SEO success is combining content as well as links. The basic process for social media marketing should look something like this, though:

1. Identify your target market

Understand behaviours, preferences and influencers. Get to know your audience: what content do they prefer, how do they share their content and when is the best time to engage with them? Some companies even use social media monitoring software to do this.

2. Set the goals you want to reach

You want to influence the discovery of your content via a search and while search engine optimisation has been accountable for a lot of the improvements in web sales, social media isn’t direct marketing and so the measurements are, in fact, different. Social content can improve search traffic by boosting links to website content.

3. Set the strategy and tactics

New content or consumer generated content needs to be proactively encouraged as well as easy sharing within the community or platform being used. Content and interaction will always be the main focus as far as social media goes as this is what people discover and share.

4. Decide on the tools

Find out where your desired audience spends its time and invest your time and effort into these relationships.

5. Search Engine Optimisation

Keyword glossaries are useful for writing headlines, anchor text and blogger interactions.

6. Measure your results

There are tools available to monitor the effects of your social web participation as well as search engine performance. If your campaign has been successful, these measurements should line up with what your original goals were.

Using search engine optimisation within your social media marketing can extend your online reach as well as attract new customers via searches. Advertising via social media campaigns can become a lot more effective with a long term traffic inflow when interactive content has been keyword optimised.

Are you optimising your online presence enough?

Jul 112011

Here are 7 tips on how to optimise your online presence using content and networking effectively with social media.

1. Participate in Q&A on the forums

This often sends referrals to your site from those who check out your profile. The traffic gained from this method can be useful and earn you links. Spending a few hours each month contributing to relevant Q&A sites can have a valuable impact on traffic and links you generate in your community. It’s also a great way to get to reach those who might otherwise have never stumbled across your site.

2. Submit interesting posts to niche portals

If you have a post which you feel is especially interesting and potentially viral, there are portals to which you can submit it to which can help to drive traffic through editorial review etc. Submissions should be carefully considered as if you spam these sites with irrelevant pieces, you can be banned or shunned by other contributors. The best is to read the sites top pieces regularly so you know what is appropriate and what isn’t.

3. Post all feeds to Twitter/Facebook

Promote everything you post on Twitter/Facebook and other social networking platforms
as your fans, friends and followers may be disappointed if they cannot see your stream on these platforms.

4. Use guest posts to reach new audiences

Create content for another site and you will be able to earn readers for that site and is a great way to create value for both parties. Just don’t abuse this and use this method very strategically. Ensure that your posts are of great quality. Keep useful and long term value posts for your own site and keep immediate and short term value posts for guest posting.

5. Remember that traditional media is useful

Mainstream media can use blogs as a source of inspiration. Engage with the press to help your blog gain exposure. Follow reporters/journalists on Twitter and comment on their personal blogs. Build relationships and possible link citations can follow. Reference their content in your posts where applicable.

6. Attend local meetings and free conferences

Meet up with real people in your niche. Build up your online relationships with these people and they can result in corresponding link building as well as valuable relationships to further your business.

7. Stategically link to your online bio

Make your online bio usefel, easy to embed and valuble to your site by embedding links and references. Come across as interesting and approachable.