Social Media
Is Your Business ‘Checking-In’ With Social Media?
With more than 60% of new phones being smartphones there has been a huge increase in mobile Internet… I myself wonder how I found my way around before having an iPhone with Google maps! The growth in location-based smartphone applications (apps) has been massive and is continuing to grow at a rapid rate.
For bricks and mortar businesses, location-based social media strategies provide a great opportunity to increase exposure and drive sales, as customers can now ‘check-in’ or ‘rate and review’ the business through Facebook Places, FourSquare and Google Places.
What Is A ‘Check-In’?
A ‘check-in’ is very much in the hands of the social media community and it is where a social media user tells all of their friends, family and connections that they are at a particular location.
On a smartphone you can check the Facebook and FourSquare apps to see if your business is listed, although it is likely that your business will already have a listing created by users who have already ‘checked-in’. If you don’t have a listing, then you can simply add one. It will then appear whenever people in the surrounding area click on the ‘check-in’ button.
Once the listing has been created on a mobile device you, as the business owner, are able to claim and edit the place listing (upon providing the necessary verification). With Facebook you can integrate it with your business Facebook page, and with FourSquare you’re able to create check-in rewards and setup loyalty campaigns.
How to Create Compelling Status Updates For Facebook and Twitter
Setting up a Facebook page and Twitter profile for your business is easy… the hard part is creating the information you need to share to make social media marketing a success. So, how do you write interesting, engaging and informative updates to share with Facebook and Twitter followers?
What You Should NOT Do
1. Don’t fly blind.
Before posting your first update on Facebook and Twitter it’s important to have a goal for what you want to achieve. If don’t have a goal when entering this new marketing channel, then you have no framework to work within and no clear strategy for how you will convert your followers into clients. Sit down with your team and brainstorm topics you can share through your updates, why you want to share those topics and what level of engagement you expect to achieve.
2. Don’t self promote.
It’s great to share updates about your products or services, but it must be done subtly and should not be overtly promotional. Self-laudatory statements about your business can come across as arrogant and can cause disengagement with your social media followers.
3. Don’t forget about the character limit.
For Twitter, the character limit is 140 and Facebook is 420 (including spaces). With Twitter make sure to be concise and communicate your entire message in a single update rather than breaking it up. With Facebook it’s important not to make your update too long… because if it is too long, your fans will need to click on ‘expand’ to see all of the information, and this can affect the click-through-rate of people reading your updates. Experiment to see what works and identify the ideal character count formula for your business.
7 Steps To A Successful Social Media Campaign
Social media is growing at a rapid pace. More and more businesses are seeing the benefits of entering this space, not only from a branding perspective, but also to increase online profitability.
With updates in search and Google’s focus on sharing real-time information, Tweets and Facebook streams are now included in their search results. This development now allows us to draw a direct correlation between social media marketing and increasing your business’ presence in Google to drive further organic traffic to your site.
Whilst the need for your business to utilise social media platforms (eg Facebook, Twitter etc) is undeniable, many businesses are baffled as to where to start.
Here are 7 steps to follow to ensure your entry into the social media world is well planned and thought-out.
1. Know Your Audience
It is important to know who your target market is. These may not necessarily be the same people you market to via other marketing channels. Therefore, it is important to have a clear outline of who your audience is, and ensure you market to them effectively with relevant information and a targeted message.
7 Ways To Make Facebook Ads Profitable
With Facebook getting bigger and bigger, its advertising program becomes more and more interesting for both large and small businesses. Facebook offers unique targeting options and thereby allows you to come up with creative advertising angles. This article will show you 7 ways how you can get more out of Facebook advertising.
1. Get Your Demographics Right
The most common mistake advertisers make is to target an audience that is too broad. You need to know your demographics, it’s most likely that it’s not men and women aged 18 to 50 across the whole of Australia. Don’t set your demographics as broad as that. There will be certain age ranges that respond better to your products or services. Equally, your product might be purchased mainly by one gender. If you don’t know your demographics, keep testing until you find the most responsive demographic.
2. Use Google Analytics To Track Your Facebook Traffic
You should be tracking your traffic using the Google URL builder. Every ad can be assigned a specific ‘campaign name’. That way you can evaluate in Google Analytics which ad converts the best. In order for this to work, you also need to have goal-tracking setup in Google Analytics.
Is Social Media Right For Your Business? To ‘Tweet’ Or Not To ‘Tweet’?
Whilst many people thought that the world of social media may merely be a fad, its importance and relevance in society today is undeniable. A day does not pass without hearing some mention of Facebook or Twitter, whether it is on the news or from a friend or colleague. In only six years the site has gained more than 500 million active users worldwide. Twitter receives on average 90 millions tweets per day. And the popularity of these sites is far from dissipating; in March 2010 Facebook overtook Google in winning top place for time spent on the website by users. However, the question remains are these sites nothing more than ‘social’, or are they a viable form of ‘business’ media?
Social Media And Your Business
A recent national survey conducted by Optus found that only 28 per cent of small and medium businesses (SMBs) are currently active in social media. In the same survey Optus found that over 50 per cent of SMBs not involved in social media believe that social networking is not appropriate for their industry. The survey highlighted that SMBs owners were ‘yet to be convinced’ that social media was worth the time and investment.
Let’s cut to the chase, it would be unrealistic to say that social media marketing was right for every single business but it would also be wrong to dismiss it without proper thought. Social media is developing at an exceedingly fast pace, each week there is a new announcement or development: this week Facebook’s Zuckerberg announced a new modern messaging system, in the last month there was the big news about the partnership between Facebook and Bing that will return search results based on the Facebook “Likes” of the searcher’s friends and networks. This fast pace of development should not deter businesses from getting involved with social media, but rather view it as a challenge or adventure and get on board now whilst the majority of businesses are also still learning.
