Successful Social Media For YOUR Small Business?

How to successfully use social media for business..

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The core of any business revolves around the right marketing strategy to gain leverage over competitors.

And knowing how much time, effort and money are spent making a sustainable business, choosing to use social media as one of the vehicles in expanding any company's reach is no longer ignored these days.

Social media, however, is more than just being connected to the internet and having a spot in the virtual world.

A business would not have a successful online presence without putting all these factors into consideration: audience targeting, writing, designing, budgeting, time, resources, and analyzing all data.

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Here are 3 simple steps for successful social media advertising:

Knowledge

It is a known fact that no one can prosper in anything that he has started without having enough knowledge of what he wants to offer to the consumer and being able to identify how to get to them. Additionally, as social media advertiser, before you can actually ask them to purchase anything from your business, you need to establish a connection that could stir their minds so they would consider to purchase from you.

A very important reminder when using social media is to help increase audience awareness of your brand by focusing on organic social media posting and strengthening your top performing content. The reaction of your virtual audience serves as your guide on how to tickle their minds about what you offer.

One of the biggest opportunities for many brands with restricted time and resources is to boost top performing posts from their Facebook page. It is not only the inexpensive form of social media advertising, but also provides the business with a way to reach a new customer segment that has not been tapped by traditional ads.

Making organic social media content is a powerful catalyst that helps increase word-of-mouth marketing. It is unlikely for people to share an advertisement that feels like an advertisement within their social circle.

Related Article: What Other Peoples Advertising Can Teach YOU?

Recognition

This is the stage where your brand needs to have that "umph" which can be easily distinguished from other competitors. This is the stage where consumers are either familiar with your product or recognize that they have a pain point and are researching options.

Using Facebook ads, targeting the correct audience can lead to higher conversions and lower costs. You can target users based on age, location, mobile device, interests, income, job title and tons more. But the greatest success is targeting users who like pages similar to yours.

Remember, successful content at this stage depends so much on the value and perceived value that you're providing. There are important things that you should consider:

1. You want to let people know what makes your brand different from other similar brands.

2. You want to make a compelling advertisement that can encourage them to click.

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Transformation

This stage, also known as the conversion stage, means that people have already become familiar with what you offer and are ready to purchase from you or that they have identified a solution to their problem and are ready to purchase a product. This is the stage where you can say that you have converted a non-believer into a believer.

The success of this stage is due to the following critical components:

1. The quality of the targeting audience that you chose.

2. The quality of ads created.

3. The ability to track results from the ads created.

Guest Authored By Armando Bartolome. Armando is an ABS CBN Columnist, Business Mentor and Professional Speaker. Follow Armondo on Twitter.

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"15 mistakes startups make on social media that yours can easily sidestep..

Too many platforms being used? Lack of visuals? Misuse of hashtags? No social media manager? The list goes on.." -AJAgrawal

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  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, CO  where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

How Social Media Fits Into YOUR Hiring Plan?

I’ve said it countless times: Meet your audience on their platform of choice. We’re no stranger to this tactic in the world of PR, digital and social media marketing agencies..

You use social media for business strategies, but are you making the most of this cost-effective tool in your hiring process?

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How Social Fits Into Your Hiring Plan

At my company, we’ve expanded this theory above and beyond consumer and B2B marketing and into the world of social recruiting.

Businesses know that millennials are the largest generation in the U.S. workforce, and social recruiting uses digital platforms to meet future employees where they are: online.

A candidate’s digital presence serves to supplement a resume, but that’s just the beginning of how social media can reshape your hiring plan.

Social platforms essentially facilitate conversations, be it between individuals or brands and consumers. When qualified candidates are in the final rounds of consideration, social media can serve to show which ones are already contributing to digital conversations.

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What To Look For In A Social Profile

Common sense keeps most candidates from posting questionable content on their public profiles, but that’s just the basics. Identifying skilled candidates means recognizing potential. Are they retweeting articles by industry thought leaders? Do they have LinkedIn endorsements for skills that can add to your agency’s capabilities? What type of content are they resharing or interacting with?

A designer’s Instagram may serve as an unofficial portfolio while an account exec’s blog posts may showcase their aptitude for branded content creation. In many cases, personal profiles show a distinct voice, visual identity or overall brand. A sense of awareness is a sign of emotional intelligence, which is on every recruiter’s radar.

While a social media profile doesn’t need to be sterile or professionally branded, it should convey a sense of that candidate’s relationship with social media. Someone who is passionately plugged-in can bring that curiosity and drive to their work. And, on the other hand, for those who display highly negative or concerning behavior on social media, you should be mindful of how they would fit in with your culture.

Related Article: YOUR Social Media Brand Voice?

Make The First Move

Your agency can strategically reach out through social channels for cost-efficient results, from directly engaging with passive candidates via LinkedIn to targeting the ideal applicant with Facebook ads. By customizing an ad’s audience on Facebook or Instagram, you can boost messaging to reach a finite demographic.

For example, if you are using social advertisements to recruit for an entry-level position, your agency can pay to target ads to recent graduates as opposed to an experienced audience or passive candidates. You then effectively spend less while reaching more realistic candidates. By targeting likely candidates online, agencies can stretch ad spend while increasing efficiency.

It’s a unique advantage for both the candidate and the employer to connect organically online. Savvy job seekers know to use their public social media platforms as a tool to share their skills; it’s up to your hiring team to identify these standout candidates.

Guest Authored By Kelly Ehlers. Kelly is Founder and President of Ideas That Evoke. An influencer and social media agency focused in the beauty, lifestyle and luxury markets. Follow Kelly on Twitter.

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“It’s a unique advantage for both the candidate and the employer to connect organically online.

Savvy job seekers know to use their public social media platforms as a tool to share their skills; it’s up to your hiring team to identify these standout candidates.."

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  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

How To Make Social Media Pay?

Quantifying the tangible value of social media can be tricky, but travel marketer Nick Livermore has some handy tips to measure its ROI..

The state of social media marketing in 2017 is better than it's ever been. According to reports there was a 61.5% increase in businesses' media spend across social channels -- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Snapchat -- in the first quarter of this year.

This strongly suggests that social media is moving ever closer to the center of marketing budgets.

But something doesn't quite add up. There lingers a perception that social media is "fluffy", and unable to deliver or contribute to the sales ambitions of a business. That social media is only good for brand awareness.

While brand awareness is useful, the perception surrounding social media also isn't true. In fact, measured correctly, social media can be shown to contribute to critical points in any business' sales cycle.

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Why The Misconception?

The issue stems from the ways in which we choose to measure success on social media.

These are the metrics that platforms like Facebook spoon-feed us. Little to no legwork is needed to report on these, so that's what we choose to do.

Attributing actual value to social media is more difficult, but it can absolutely be done.

Attributed Sales Modeling

Here's where things get a little more involved, but this particular method of measurement is essential to understanding what social media is actually delivering for your business.

Related Article: YOUR Social Media Sales Targets?

This is especially the case because of the sheer number of marketing channels there are: from email to social, direct to pay per click (when a company pays Google to appear as a sponsored site when customers enter an agreed search term on Google).

The attitude that "they booked directly from pay per click, so it should be attributed 100% of the value of that sale" is somewhat archaic in 2017.

This is especially true in the travel industry where consumers now perform their research across a relatively large number of sources and long period of time.

Clearly, in 2017 it's important to understand the role each of your marketing streams has in driving online bookings.

The first step towards achieving this is to ensure that your Google Analytics (GA) is set up correctly.

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Get an expert to appraise how you are currently using GA to ensure you are correctly mapping the purchase and customer journey and that all goals are correctly created.

This is a one-off requirement -- do it once and you'll reap the rewards of the data from that point onwards.

Deciding How To Attribute

Once you have GA tracking set up properly you can use it to see exactly how your clients are making their purchasing decisions.

In GA, this may look something like "Social Media > PPC x3 > Direct > Purchase". This might be the case when a new user spots a post you make on social media and clicks through to your agency website, for example. The next day, they might type your site into their search browser.

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The problem with attributing the full value to the last click involved in the decision is that the "direct" traffic has been your most important source.

In fact, it's probably more accurate for you to give equal weighting to social media, pay per click and direct traffic.

There are other attribution models, but I advocate the usage of those that intelligently distribute value to contributing marketing streams.

For instance, you might give equal value to the first click involved with the purchase, and the last. Or, you might consider a model which attributes increasing value the closer you get to the "last-click" in the purchase cycle.

In this time of multi-channel marketing, this is vital not just from a social media perspective, but to properly understand where your money is best spent.

Guest Authored By Nick Livermore. Nick is a Travel Marketer at TTG. TTG was established as Travel Trade Gazette in 1953, as the world's very first weekly travel trade newspaper. Follow Nick on Twitter.

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“Only by taking the time to truly understand the role social media is playing in the purchasing journey of your clients will you be able to realize the return on investment it is having for your agency.." -Nick Livermore

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  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)

Blockchain Revitalizing Social Media?

Social media is everywhere. The big players in the industry carry billions of users and boast massive layers of data and content. These days, though, social media may be in for a major change, possibly due to the rise of blockchain..

After Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others spent the better part of the millennium rising at meteoric rates, users have recently started to abandon social media accounts, opting for a single account, or no social media at all. Recent reports about how social media affects psychological well-being reflect a general malaise among former fans, and it seems that even faithful social media addicts are starting to grow discontent with pictures of food and long diatribes about political issues.

Users who took social media seriously and produced quality content discovered that all their hard work was consumed by the platform itself, leaving them with no financial gain, and just a few million likes and a moment of fame as compensation. Content on social media became the stepping stone to massive financial gain for the platform rather than the creator.

What’s more, information on social media that had been intended to be private has been made public to governments, advertising companies, and more, making users far less willing to share intimate details of life. Potential violations of privacy abound, with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the rest being willing to change the order of feed, link users with advertisers, and make information more transparent than users might like.

Related Article: YOUR Social And Digital Transformation?

In other words, social media is losing its edge. Meet Blockchain - Enter blockchain technology..

Blockchain is the technology behind the recent media darling Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency built on the decentralized platform. A decentralized database, or decentralized ledger, blockchain technology creates new ‘blocks’ for information that is being stored or processed. For a new block of information to be stored, it must be approved by the entire chain, meaning that the chain is completely ‘decentralized’ and therefore secure and transparent.

As Ian Khan, one of the TEDX speakers, puts it, “No more missed transactions, human or machine errors, or even an exchange that was not done with the consent of the parties involved. Above anything else, the most critical area where Blockchain helps is to guarantee the validity of a transaction by recording it not only on a main register but a connected distributed system of registers, all of which are connected through a secure validation mechanism.”

Blockchain amps social media up to a whole new level. The very nature of blockchain technology provides a methodology whereby users can have vastly more control over privacy of information, while at the same time, potentially receiving monetary compensation for the viral content they create. Two companies have seen the potential and are leading the way.

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Privatizing Your Experience

In the area of privacy, one such company is Nexus, the creator of the Social coin via a coming ICO (initial coin offering - think digital currency token). Nexus is designed to be a social media platform where users are able to post information, send private messages, and create public transactions, sales, and crowdfunding, all through the blockchain.

The benefits should be immediately apparent. For starters, all the information that’s contained on the blockchain is private, and therefore any instant message could be sent between two people “without anyone, even Nexus, knowing its contents,” says Nexus founder Jade Mulholland. Information sent and received, as well as all data stored on the site and all transactions within the platform, would be completely private, creating a veritable haven for consumers burned by the world of social media.

Further, Nexus intends to issue its own cryptocurrency called Social, which can be used as monetary device within the platform. Social can be earned and used to purchase goods and services, and all these transactions are also managed on the blockchain and free from prying eyes. Nexus has even linked their Social coin to a debit card, allowing users to spend their Social as fiat currency (dollars, pounds, euros) anywhere Visa is offered.

Related Article: Money YOU Left Behind on Social Media?

Getting What You Deserve

When it comes to monetizing content on social media, Synereo has produced a stunningly creative system called WildSpark which utilizes blockchain technology to allow users to get paid for what they create. Like Nexus, Synereo has created a cryptocurrency called AMP that can be used by ‘curators’ (those who see good content and distribute it, i.e., ‘like’ or ‘share’ it) as well as by the content creators themselves to distribute content and receive payment.

Rather than all the financial gain being absorbed by the content middle man - the social media outlet - AMPs provide a means for users to share, enjoy, and get paid for creating and sharing information and content.

If this sounds complex, it’s not. It’s simply using blockchain technology to allow users to control how their content and shared information is distributed, and help them to make a profit.

Founder Dor Konforty says, “This way, a new economy is created, enabling users to employ their curation skills to profit from the successful distribution of UGC [user generated content], while granting creators a form of passive income.”

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In other words, creators and curators get paid for making and sharing social content, rather than the platform leveraging content for profit. Named one of the top 5 ‘Cool Vendors in Blockchain Technology’ by Gartner, Synereo is rapidly gaining traction in its Beta phase.

Moving Forward

As the heyday for legacy social media begins to wane, these companies, and others like them, are seeing the great potential of blockchain technology to revitalize it. Blockchain promises to move foundational social media to an entirely different level, and has the power to reinvent the very nature of how content and information is privately and profitably distributed.

Guest Authored By Steve Olenski. Steve writes about advertising, marketing, media and all subgroups therein. He is a Forbes contributor, writer, content marketing influencer, advertising/branding guy, screenwriter, idea generator, massive coffee imbiber and member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing. Follow Steve on Twitter.

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“As the heyday for legacy social media begins to wane, these companies, and others like them, are seeing the great potential of blockchain technology to revitalize it.

Blockchain promises to move foundational social media to an entirely different level, and has the power to reinvent the very nature of how content and information is privately and profitably distributed.."

• 

  Authored by:

  Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Loveland, Colorado. I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)