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Marketing Tip of the Week: Which Social Media Platform is Right for You? (Part 2)

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Last week we began discussing different popular social media platforms and which would be best for your business. The differences between Twitter and Facebook are obvious and both sites have a distinctive flavor different from the other, but what about two social media platforms with a lot more similarities than differences?

Marketing with Photos

  • Pinterest – THE social media platform for Do-It-Yourself, and a great marketing platform for businesses that sell DIY items or are friendly to DIY’ers. For example, a florist may write blogs about DIY decorating tips with flowers. This business would be best served by placing links to those blogs on Pinterest. This would generate interest in their business as well as their industry. With the ability to have different boards used for different topics, they could also have a board dedicated to their best work. This type of approach is perfect for the system that Pinterest has in place.
  • Instagram – There is no better platform for visual businesses. If you create or carry visually striking items, or you enjoy taking photos of everyday items and using photo filters on them, Instagram is for you. That’s not to say the same visuals wouldn’t do well on Pinterest or Facebook or even Twitter, but Instagram is all about the creative picture and digital modification of same. The community there enjoys interesting photos but suffer obvious advertisement poorly. Always work within the community. It’s the hallmark of a good marketing campaign.

Come back next week for a quick look at how best to leverage these sites to your advantage!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Which Social Media Platform is Right for You? (Part 1)

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“There are only so many hours in the day.”

You’ve heard that before. It has certainly been said more times than one could count, but it’s lasted so long as a cliche because it’s true. No matter what you have to get done or how badly you want to do everything on your list, you are still limited by the restrictions on your time. And that is never more true than when talking about marketing with social media.

The Social Media Logjam

There are so many viable options in social media, and all of them seem important to the success of your business. They may be, but if you aren’t leveraging them properly, you are probably doing more harm than good. It is far better to master one than perform badly across several. There is only one social media site that any business with an online presence must be using, and that’s Google+. But as for the others, which social media platform is right for you?

Finding the Perfect Fit

Every social media platform has a target audience and an expected tone. The key to understanding where you belong is understanding what those expectations actually are.

  • Facebook – This platform is probably the most popular and the most inclusive. Every business can find an audience, and most of your customers will have an account. Your potential market there is larger than most anywhere else, but with its pay-to-promote system in place, it’s no longer the cheapest and easiest way to market your business online. Also, its popularity acts as both a boon and a curse.Everyone uses Facebook and everyone markets themselves there. That ties into this little issue of the news feed which grows along with Facebook’s popularity. Facebook should definitely be on your list as it is easy to master, but it may not be your best and most lucrative outlet.
  • Twitter – The bird is great if you are a business that likes to be directly involved with your customers. It promotes a level of customer interaction at which other social media sites only take a swipe. Most Twitter conversations take place as discussions around current topics or news items. When something changes or is added to your store or industry, tweet about it and if enough people are interested, you can potentially start a trending topic.This does require a more hands-on approach, but the 140 character limit on post length makes it a quick distraction from your daily duties.

The differences between these two platforms are very obvious, and the audience you will reach while using each is variable. Do neither of these options sound like the ideal fit for your business? Make sure you check back next week when we look at two more social media sites and how they might fit into your business marketing strategy.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Social Media and the Art of Listening

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Last week’s post focused on listening to your customers, but that doesn’t stop at the people who enter your store. You have many customers (and potential customers) in the social media realm that need your time and attention as well. It’s no secret that social media is the future of marketing, and effectively navigating its waters requires attention to your followers and those you want to be your followers.

How to Listen on Social Media

Listening through social media is less about asking direct questions (though you can do that too) and more about reading what your followers have to say.

Companies have long understood that people with similar interests in a particular product or brand often have other similar interests. If they model their marketing campaigns after one of those other interests, they can appeal to a certain demographic. You can easily do the same thing with your own marketing strategies.

By paying attention to the posts of your followers, you will quickly begin to garner a sense of where their interests lie and how best to approach them. It truly is as simple as paying attention.

Focus Your Attention

But what if you believe you’ve fully harvested your current crop of followers? Where then do you turn?

Again, listening to your current followers is the key. If a majority of your followers are also interested in another market, it would stand to reason that people in that market could be interested in your business. Rather than just going out and following a lot of random people on Twitter in the hopes they’ll follow you back, it would be better to focus your attentions and socialize within the group or #hashtag that you see popping up most often among your current followers. By doing this, you could potentially discover an entirely new pool of customers!

Listening is an important part of owning a business, and listening to your customers is always a good idea. The secret is in knowing what to do with what you hear.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Understanding Your Multiple Doors

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The purpose of marketing is to get the customer walking in your door. But in this modern age, how do we define door? Aren’t all access points available to your customer doorways? They are, after all, a way to access your business. Your website, Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter pages are merely doors your customers digitally walk through. In fact, every new post you make creates another doorway, opening opportunities for a customer to find and connect with you.

Beautifying Your Door
Marketing Tip

When the customer walks through your physical door, he is greeted by trained customer service personnel. The store is well-maintained. The products are prominently displayed and easy to find. Your specialities are highlighted and anything less impressive is downplayed. Shouldn’t the experience through your online doors be as attractive and enjoyable as that which you work so hard to achieve in your brick and mortar location?

Each online access point is as much a reflection of your business as your physical building. You have to maintain it with the same fastidious attention to detail. Just as you would never want a customer to see the inside of your store if all the shelves were covered with an inch-thick layer of dust, you shouldn’t want customers viewing a website or social media page you haven’t updated in months.

It is imperative that you provide the best customer experience regardless of the method that customer uses to enact their visit.

How to Keep Your Online Door Swinging Free

Making your site attractive and enjoyable is predicated on one thing, the content you generate. If you read my column, you know that I pound the podium on this issue at every turn. Why am I so adamant? Because it’s that important! The days of the static web page has passed. Search engines don’t like them, and there are just too many sites out there interacting with their visitors regularly for any customer to be satisfied with the passive approach.

Click the name for more detailed information on how to improve your content in general or for websites, Facebook, or Twitter. Thanks for reading this week’s column, and come back next Friday to check out our newest Marketing Tip of the Week. As always, your comments or questions are welcome!

Marketing Tip of the Week: Pinterest and B2B’s

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Pinterest is often viewed as a B2C (business to consumer) format. It’s true that the platform allows for many options in that arena, but it is in no way restricted to it. Pinterest can be just as effective for B2B (business to business) companies, and I want to lay out a few tips illustrating why and how you should be using it!

Go to Your Clients
Marketing Tip

There’s no doubt that Pinterest is an excellent B2C tool, and one of the most compelling things about it is that often consumers search out the businesses! They see a compelling photo? They pin it. They find a tasty-looking recipe? They pin it. They find a gorgeous hand-knit cardigan? They pin it!

Because of that, businesses who market to consumers are flocking to Pinterest. And if those companies are establishing a presence on Pinterest, shouldn’t you, as a marketer to those companies, also be establishing a presence? Marketing 101, go to where your clients live!

Direct Traffic to Your Content

Remember all the quality content that we’ve been talking about these last few months? Pinterest is an excellent tool you can use to direct customers to that content! Did you use the perfect image in your last marketing campaign? Pin it. Did you write an excellent blog post? Pin it.

These images will link back to your content, and the viral power of social media will do the rest. If a company who Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Pinterest and B2B’s” »

Social Media: Helping Grow Your Business

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Gold Crystalline Bowl from Ellie Pots Inc.
Social Media CAN Help Grow Your Business

In a fast paced, ever-changing market, social media has become a necessity for businesses. Whether your business is a mom and pop store or an international leader, social media is important. Often times TV commercials are fast forwarded, newspaper sales are declining, and billboards are becoming outdated. Social media is fast and easy to manage for a company of any size. The three main social media resources a company should use are Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

  1. Tweet Tweet – Information is passed to someone in the blink of an eye, for free, and can include a link to your website or a picture. Not only is it appealing to younger generations, but all generations are quickly becoming engaged in Twitter. Give it a try and see where it can take your business.
  2. Insta – what? – Instagram is the newest social media platform to take off. This social media tool allows users to post pictures and videos to their profile for followers to see. Therefore, followers of your company’s Instagram account can see exactly what your products look like, which leaves a lasting impression.
  3. Is It Facebook Official? – A company can utilize everything from videos to pictures to text posts. You are free to add as many “friends” as you would like, which is a way for your company name and image to reach the masses, again FOR FREE!

Keeping up with current trends in the ever-changing landscape of online media will be key in developing and growing your business to levels you never imagined! Read More About Social Media
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Marketing Tip


Create a Clear Identity
A term commonly tossed around any marketing department is “branding.” In a nutshell, branding is the image, or identity, by which your business is known to the public. This can refer to a logo, and often logos are part of branding, but it is by no means limited to a logo.Read More
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Marketing Tip of the Week: Use Google+ Local

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So you’ve been reading the column for a while and you are confident that you are properly leveraging your website through quality, engaging content and intelligent SEO practices. However, in spite of your brilliant application of internet knowledge, you aren’t seeing a relevant increase in traffic. What else needs to be done? Is there anything else that could help to improve your exposure?

Short answer? Yes.

Google+ Local

Google+ Local, formerly Google Places, acts as an aggregate of all your information on the web. Did someone review your store on a third-party site? Google will collect the review and attribute it to your store so that you get the credit. That way, all the good things being said about you and your shop are available to anyone locally searching for your industry!

Marketing Tip

Google relies heavily on the information provided by Google+ Local to compile their local search results. If you have a site that is maintained and up to date, you ensure that anyone locally searching for your industry gets all the details needed to choose your store.

Consistency is Key

One of the largest deterrents to getting your information properly collected is a lack of consistency in your information. To see if you’re having this issue, Google your business. Click the links that direct people to your site and see how those sites have your information listed. If one shows you to be located at 300 W Main while another shows 300 Main, it means that you have your information entered inaccurately somewhere.

Some of your reviews may not be attributed to you because the inaccuracies in your information have confused the search engine. It can also make your location incorrect on Google maps. How many people are going to drive all over town trying to find you if their phone takes them to the wrong place on the first attempt? Not very many.

You’re Not Finished Until It’s Complete!

In addition to consistency, make sure your information is complete. When filling out the page, you will want to check all the boxes that apply to your business so that Google will pull your name when searches are made for those categories. However, just like your website, it’s important not to select something that you don’t offer. A lot Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Use Google+ Local” »

How Social Media Can Help Grow Your Business

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In a fast paced, ever-changing market, social media has become a necessity for businesses. Whether your business is a mom and pop store or an international leader, social media is important. Often times TV commercials are fast forwarded, newspaper sales are declining, and billboards are becoming outdated. Social media is fast and easy to manage for a company of any size. The three main social media resources a company should use are Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Tweet Tweet

social
social
Twitter was first started in 2006 and was envisioned as being just another social networking site with micro blogging capabilities. What happened in the few short years since its creation is mind-blowing. Twitter now has 554,750,000 active members in only 7 years. Twitter’s ability to reach the masses has grown exponentially, and doesn’t seem to be going towards a decline.

For the younger generation, Twitter is a tool to keep up with friends, but it is more and more becoming the only news outlet they see. Information is passed to someone in the blink of an eye, for free, and can include a link to your website or a picture.

Not only is it appealing to younger generations, but all generations are quickly becoming engaged in Twitter. Give it a try and see where it can take your business.

Insta-what?

Instagram is the newest social media platform to take off. This social media tool allows users to post pictures and videos to their profile for followers to see. Facebook recently purchased Instagram, and the growth is expected to continue. Followers of your company’s Instagram account can see exactly what your products look like!  Being able to show off your special work is an important way to connect with customers and leaves a lasting impact. Images and videos are more likely to stick in the minds of the viewer than a boring, old newspaper ad.

Is it Facebook Official?

Facebook is the largest and most interactive social media platform available. 1.11 billion people use Facebook today. This platform allows users to create pages about themselves or their company and post to their profile. A company can utilize everything from videos to pictures to text posts. You are free to add as many “friends” as you would like, which is a way for your company name and image to reach the masses, again FOR FREE! Side note: you can buy ads for Facebook which will appear on the side of user’s homepage and also ads that show up within the user’s feed.

Along with these three social media platforms, others are becoming very popular. Pinterest, Reddit, Etsy, Tumblr, and WordPress are rising stars in the social media sphere. Keeping up with current trends in the ever-changing landscape of online media will be key in developing and growing your business to levels you never imagined!

Source: Expanded Ramblings

Marketing Tip of the Week: Social Media (Twitter)

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We’ve talked about websites and we’ve talked about Facebook, that’s enough isn’t it? The short answer? No. Your website and your Facebook page are great, and you will see positive growth from them, but there is one more social media service you need to be using, Twitter!

Is Marketing with Twitter Possible?

Twitter is an odd form of social media in that it is restricted in ways that most of the others are not. On Twitter, you only have the opportunity to phrase whatever you want to say in 140 characters. The only way to exceed that number is to break your tweet into more than one post.

You also can’t post an entire memory stick full of photos at once like you can on Facebook. In fact, if you post more than one or two at one time, your followers may become annoyed and stop following you! Twitter is its own animal, and it’s important to understand what it is and how to use it in order to be effective.

However, in spite of its limitations, or perhaps because of them, twitter is an excellent source for marketing. Finding success there can be challenging, but your influence has the potential to be more broad more quickly than with Facebook. So what do you need to know? Lets dig in!

Marketing with #Hashtags
Marketing Tips

The best way to communicate with people who aren’t actively following you is through the use of #hashtags. A #hashtag is when you place this symbol “#” in front of a word or short phrase. You can have no spaces between the # and the word or words you are using. For example, instead of #FG Market, I would have to use #FGmarket. If I typed #FG Market, only the FG is tagged, and Market is left off.

Why is this important? Twitter is set up so that you can search it’s entire network for everyone tweeting under a specific #hashtag, and you can read all the posts associated with it. Therefore if you post and use a #hashtag, anyone searching under that #hashtag will be able to see and read your post. Anyone. Anywhere. Now that’s reach! When multiple people are using the same #hashtag, that’s referred to as trending.

Of course, the secret here is not to make up your own #hashtags, or at least not always, but rather to piggyback on one that is already in use. It’s also important that your post be relevant to whatever tag you are using, as an errant post will be ignored and not garner you additional followers or the attention you want. In fact, it could result in some negative backlash. This is where my mantra once again comes into play:  Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Social Media (Twitter)” »

Marketing Tip of the Week: Social Media (Facebook)

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The past two weeks we’ve covered website content and website SEO. This week we’re going to shuck and jive our way out onto the Social Media dance floor with some basic tips for operating on Facebook.

Content is King

Just like with your website, the content you generate will be the driving force behind traffic to your page. However, the difference here is that you have to be cautious about how often you post. With your website, the more you update the better. Facebook is a bit different.

Marketing Tip
Marketing Tip

On Facebook, anyone who has “Liked” your page will see anything that you post on their news feed. If you post too much, they will become annoyed with the constant bombardment and “Unlike” your page. You don’t want that. People who have liked your page are potential outlets for free advertising. Any post has the potential to be liked and shared by them, thereby causing it to show up on their friends news feed. It’s a viral form of marketing that has the potential to go very far afield.

Remember to use the medium effectively. Much like a standard website, Facebook lends itself to photos and graphics as well as text posts. There is room to say whatever you need to say, but ensure that it pops visually to get the reader’s attention. It’s also okay to talk about things that may pertain to but are not specifically about your business. Find out what’s trending and see if you can use it!

Promotions

How do you get people to share your posts? That’s easy. Just run promotions! One day you may choose to offer a coupon to anyone who has liked your page. The people who have already liked you will share the post so that their friends can benefit from the coupon as well. Those people will navigate to, and like, your page. If your page is interesting and well designed, they may take some time to read over who you are and what you offer.

If your particular business model does not lend itself to coupons, do not fret! You can always run a “Fan of the Week” or similar promotion. Encourage people to interact with your page by hosting a weekly contest. Maybe they send in a photo of themselves enjoying your product or write a post declaring their excitement. You select one of these posts as the winner, and give that picture or the fan’s profile picture some face time in the corner of your banner. You’ll generate a lot of traffic at no actual cost to you!

Culture

It’s important to understand, and promote, the culture of your followers. You will discover what this is through interactions with them. You may cater to a certain age Continue reading “Marketing Tip of the Week: Social Media (Facebook)” »