Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
How to Cut Down on Social Media Clutter
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on May 17th, 2012
Update your tweets. Set a new Facebook status. Foursquare, Instagram, Meetup, Pinterest, Tumblr… it’s enough to make you a little crazy keeping up with your content.
But what happens when you need to change your settings? You have to click through site after site looking for the right page to edit your profile – if only there were a way to manage it from one place! Wait… what there is J
Manage All Your Social Network Settings With BlissControl
In an instant, BlissControl happens to direct you to the right setting page within the social network you choose.
There is no annoying login or application that “grants access”, because BlissControl doesn’t actually dial in to the various social networks.
The site offers the ability to do these great things from one place: change your bio, change your password, change mobile settings, update design, delete account, and more. It supports about a dozen major social networks.
BlissControl is free and easy, and we’ll be enjoying it from now on! Let us know what you think by commenting below or sharing it on our Facebook page.
How to Get a Social Media Audience
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on May 10th, 2012
Setting up Social Media profiles for your business may seem like the hardest part; you have to know the technology to accurately create them, have appealing graphics, and know how to sprinkle the right keywords into your about page.
Most people assume if they master this part they can kick back and watch their social networks “get to work”. Post some great articles, offer valuable and helpful information… wait. Where are the likers and followers?
Yes, content is king – but without an audience listening to your great tips what good is it?
Here are a few ways to attract people to your Social Media pages:
- Put Facebook and Twitter links on your website that direct users to your social media pages
- Put Facebook and Twitter links in your email signature
- Put Facebook and Twitter names on print materials
- Advertise your social media sites in your newsletter – make sure to highlight the benefits
- Put a sign in your lobby or front desk; a sign will remind both prospects and residents to fan you
- Get vendors to follow you and retweet and share special offers
- Run a contest and use social media to help promote it
Your turn: what methods do you use to increase your fan base on Social Media? Comment below or share it on our Facebook page.
Are You Making These Marketing Mistakes?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing on April 11th, 2012
Where’s my audience?
Did you rush out to create a kickin’ new website, Facebook page, and Twitter account? Great! You’re ahead of the game. Except, after that you sat back and waited for fans, followers, and customers to flood your contact page and phone lines.
Just because you built it doesn’t mean they will come! You have to actively market yourself with smart strategies. It takes time to cultivate relationships over social media by consistently tweeting, blogging and even setting up joint venture and affiliate programs. In addition, you must balance this with offline activities such as networking and speaking.
I put myself out there but no one responded.
Be consistent with your value, messages, and efforts. As with any marketing media, success takes time and regular exposure.
Jack of all trades, master of none.
Don’t try to be everything to everyone. You are an expert in your field for a reason. While your company may be more than capable of handling multiple roles and specialties, market to a specific audience with specific needs and you will start reaping the benefits. Be crystal clear about who you serve and you will attract the ideal clients.
You reel ‘em in and leave ‘em hanging.
Follow-up is where many small business owners fall short. A trusted connection takes consistent presence without pushing or spamming. The easiest way to do this is to set up a drip campaign that provides value over a series of regular emails. You will stay top of mind and establish yourself as an expert before ever trying to pitch your product or service.
Do you use drip campaigns? Follow up phone calls? What works best for you?
Newcomer Takes the Cake with Women
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on April 10th, 2012
As the new kid on the block, Pinterest seems to be already beating Twitter and Facebook when it comes to trust among women.
According to BlogHer’s annual study on women and social media, 81 percent of women said they trusted blogs and Pinterest, while 67 percent said they trusted Facebook and 73 percent said they trusted Twitter.
Interestingly enough, 61 percent said they’d made a purchase on a blog recommendation and 47 percent said they’d acted on one from Pinterest. Facebook and Twitter can only tout around 30 percent.
Women seem to trust other women in their circle when it comes to taking action online. Facebook is primarily used for fun and connecting with family and friends; blogs help them learn about new products and read reviews, which is a major part in the purchase decision-making.
The Pinterest community has more than 11 million unique visitors a month (according to recent numbers from comScore) – an impressively fast-growing social networking site. Its design plays a big role in that popularity.
What about you? Are you using Pinterest? Who do you trust online when it comes to making purchasing decisions? Share by commenting below or posting on our Facebook page!
Social Media Dollars Increase
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on March 27th, 2012
In an Advertiser Perceptions semiannual survey of nearly 1,200 people involved in deciding how ad dollars are spent digitally, 59% of respondents said they would increase social media ad spending in the next 12 months.
The survey also found that social media marketing will make up about 27% of digital budgets, compared with 22% in the previous 12 months. No other digital category will see this kind of growth.
Does this growth come at the expense of other ad dollars? We’re not seeing that currently.
The one true element that will make or break this new media for clients is essentially the “why”. If clients are allocating dollars to be on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook they will not see the results to support the new distribution. Social Media must be analyzed on a client-by-client basis, creating a unique campaign on the networks that best reach their relevant audience.
This is a very labor-intensive and time consuming task, but when implemented correctly will yield a great “ROV” (Return of Voice). Idea Associates knows the balance needed and will manage the laborious task of keeping a constant presence on the social web, leaving you to do what you do best: run your business.
How is your social media budget divided? Do you foresee an increase in ad dollars spent on social campaigns?
It’s Time for Timeline to Hit Brand Pages
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on March 20th, 2012
Rolling out in small waves since September, Facebook’s Timeline profile format is finally available for brand pages.
While many of the features are the same as the consumer version, Timeline for business pages also adds features not previously available to brands.
Instead of posted content having a chronologically short shelf life, companies can now star posts to expand their appearance to widescreen or pin posts to appear in the top-left area for seven days. There is even a “milestone” feature, which is comprised of widescreen content boxes with photos and text that can detail specific points in a brand’s history.
Of course if your company posts frequent, engaging content, Timeline will benefit you greatly. However, keep in mind that it will show all the historical activity – both positive and negative. If you have any type of damaging conversation or content you may be forced to rehash it over and over.
We love the new friend activity feature that shows Facebook friends’ interactions with the page, such as when a friend links to a page in Facebook post.
Even the stats are enhanced. In addition to the standard number of likes and people talking about the page, you can now also see a detailed demographic breakdown with vital information such as age ranges, weekly popularity for the page, and top cities driving the most traffic.
Like it or not, Facebook will automatically update pages to the new format on March 30. We suggest you do it early and start familiarizing yourself with the new format. Kudos if your personal profile has already been converted; this should be an easy transition for your business page. But if it you’re not sure how to best format Timeline or are confused by its functionality, let Idea Associates help you make the best of Facebook’s ever evolving marketing strategies so your brand is successful on the social web.
How Well Do You Know LinkedIn?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on March 7th, 2012
LinkedIn has been proven more effective at generating leads than Facebook or Twitter, especially for B2B companies. It boasts over 100 million users and affords brands and individuals the opportunity to build valuable industry connections that can lead to new business, co-marketing and affiliate agreements. You can even find your next new hire.
There may be some hidden LinkedIn gems that you’re overlooking when navigating your social message. Some examples are:
LinkedIn Answers
LinkedIn Answers is a forum for people to ask and answer questions about virtually any topic. By answering questions in your industry, you build credibility and show your expertise and value. But that’s not all – it’s also a great opportunity to identify industry influencers with whom to network. In fact you can even search through experts in the Top Experts section.
If you’re looking for guest writers for your Blog, the top experts on LinkedIn Answers are the people to reach out to. Ask them to take some of the most common questions they answer, and write a post for your blog on that topic. Then whenever the question comes up again, they can refer people to the blog post they wrote for you on the subject. They get to build their reputation, and you get the SEO benefits.
Subgroups
You may belong to several LinkedIn groups, but did you know there were also subgroups of those groups? Click ‘More’ on the tab of your LinkedIn group, and you’ll find them.
Subgroups help maintain relevancy; as groups grow there are naturally some topics, industries, or side projects that develop that don’t pertain to everyone. Subgroups offer a chance to filter out any content that isn’t relevant for the entire group and keep your members engaged.
LinkedIn Apps
Enhance your profile and better collaborate with your network with the many available apps, like SlideShare Presentations, WordPress and Company Buzz.
News Module
Everyone with a LinkedIn Company Page should be using this feature. The News Module feeds mentions of your business to your LinkedIn company page, and also shows news to those who have your name listed in their profile. This helps your information be seen in multiple places. Go to your page’s ‘Overview’ tab while in edit mode, and check ‘Share news about my company’ to enable it.
LinkedIn Polls
Within your group you can now offer polls. Polling not only lets you perform your own market research and collect interesting data for content creation, but doing it on LinkedIn also means it can be extremely targeted based on group demographics.
Export Contacts
You can export all your LinkedIn connections to a .CSV or .VCF file. You even have the ability to filter out certain people — like friends and family — that aren’t relevant to your business. The only rule of thumb here is to make sure you do NOT include them in your email campaign list – being a LinkedIn connection is not synonymous with opting in to receive emails from you.
Are you using these to your advantage? What works better for your business? What tools did we leave out?
The Dangers of a Laissez-faire Attitude with Your Social Media
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Social Media on March 6th, 2012
If you’ve been on Twitter for any length of time you’ve noticed that everyone and their uncle seems to be a “Social Media Expert”. We agree with social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk when he stated that 99.5% of self-proclaimed social media experts are clowns. Setting up a Facebook page with a bunch of links to your website does not make you an expert. Sorry.
If you want your social media efforts to create an actual return on your time and money investment, it starts with the same solid strategy you would apply to traditional marketing, coupled with consistent, targeted implementation. Otherwise there are more consequences to bad social media than just the absence of “likers” and followers.
Why Google Hates Too Much Even More than Too Little
One of your goals for your social media campaign is of course getting your website or business noticed, chiefly through obtaining a higher search engine results ranking on Google.
But laissez-faire doesn’t mean tweeting too little; it is more comparable to doing too much. Google actually hates it when a site engages in an excess of aggressive, blatant self-promotion. So much, in fact, that such a practice can lead directly to your site being blacklisted by Google, resulting in a severe down ranking of your site and annihilating your traffic numbers.
Google wants to create the best possible experience for their users, which means helping them find the most authoritative, relevant sites as quickly as possible. If your social media campaign is solely broadcasting self-serving messages without offering valuable, relevant content to back it up Google will punish you via your search engine position.
What is the Right Balance?
This of course depends on the goals of your campaign, but here are some definite no-nos right up front:
- Creating multiple profiles and linking all of them to your site
- Having a severely out-of-balance ratio of following to followers
- Exclusively bookmarking pages that link to your site
- Using a software program to automate and steal followers
- Only talking about your company over social media
If you see your actions as clear self-promotion, odds are good that Google will too.
Second Biggest Mistake
The more common pitfall we see in a failed social media campaign watching a company dive into social networking with great enthusiasm, only to fizzle out shortly after. Whether they find they lack the resources, desire or motivation necessary to maintain the momentum, this is actually worse than not starting at all.
We know a customized social media campaign is very labor-intensive. Going for quantity instead of quality is how the big fizzle usually occurs.
Social networking site users expect interaction, and lots of it. If your company cannot answer comments and questions on all sites that you are engaging, users will not stick around. One-directional conversations are not tolerated.
If you are overwhelmed with your social media, let us help you create the right balance of content and keep the conversation going.
Still Think Size Matters?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Social Media on February 21st, 2012
You’re a social media marketer – are you still worried about quantity over quality for your success measurement? Does size matter? Really?
In a recent study, 75% of the respondents really are still worried about size.
Sure, it would look great to be able to tout that your client has 25,000 followers on Twitter or 75,000 Facebook Likes, but how many leads and sales have your efforts led to? With the current options of buying followers and likes so prevalent how can anyone put any stock in numbers, anyway?
A more viable goal would be to drive as many people to a website as possible, having those become actual leads and, eventually, sales.
If your content, products, and services are top notch, it really doesn’t matter what your grand total is. It’s more important to look at the steady rate it is climbing, if people are hiding your messages or unsubscribing, and the quality of the comments and engagement.
What do you focus on when it comes to metrics and measurement? Let us know by commenting below or posting on our Facebook page!
Valentine’s Day is Coming… Are You Courting Your Readers Properly?
Posted by Sibet B Freides in Marketing, Social Media on February 10th, 2012
Remember when you first started dating your special someone? Did you jump in, head first with expectations of what they “owed you” or were you constantly thinking of little things you could do to surprise them and make them smile? A card, an impromptu dinner, little gifts… it felt good to give freely of yourself, didn’t it?
So let’s think about your readers and potential clients. Are you jumping into Social Media with expectations of a set number of followers and fans, comments and shares? Do you wonder why people aren’t just signing up for your newsletter or subscribing to your blog with that kind of attitude?
If you’re treating today’s social networks as an extension of your brochure, print ads, radio spots, or even press releases, you’re not courting your readers. You are probably repelling them.
So What Do You Do?
Think about what your audience really wants from you. Provide it.
Too simple? It really isn’t that complicated. Write your posts intimately to provide real-life tools and tips for those in need. Let them take away value whether or not they buy your product or hire your services.
Give them gifts. Thank them for signing up for your newsletter or liking your Facebook page with a free eBook or Special Report. Even an audio message or interview makes a great (unexpected) gift.
Be present and attentive. Do your readers hear crickets when they do finally offer their opinions and comments, or are you right there with a reply, letting them know that you appreciate and value them?
You may be looking at these actions and thinking, “How will these few things make my pocketbook bigger? This is silly.”
Think again. Your work will always speak for itself but you have to extend an effort to make your readers feel special. That’s what they’ll remember more than the product you created for them. That’s what they’ll tell their friends about. That’s what they’ll share on their Social Networks.
What about you? How do you make your readers and clients feel special?
