You are here: Home / Archives for Social Media Marketing

Three Social Media Marketing Mistakes To Avoid

May 24, 2011 By

Three Terrible Social Media Marketing Mistakes And How to Avoid Making Them

Social media marketing is a necessity for growing your business in today’s climate. While just about everyone knows at least a few things about how to make social media marketing work well…hardly anybody has a good understanding about the type of mistakes that can be made, nor do most people know how to avoid those mistakes.

The good news is, we’re about to put you in the ranks of the few…here are three top social media marketing mistakes companies make, plus valuable insights for avoiding these mistakes.

Failing To Monitor Your Social Media

You’ve  done a great job of setting up your Facebook page, and you’ve made friends and fans all over the place. Don’t expect your social media marketing to keep on running on its’ own.

One reason social media marketing works so uncannily well is its’ “social” aspect. You should be updating constantly (at least once every day or every two days) and you should be paying attention to what friends and fans are telling you.
Read the messages that come in – don’t just delete them!

Answer every message that seems to require a response. If you fail at the “social” aspect of social media marketing, you’re just another company, just another cog in the machine.

One of the best ways to avoid making this mistake is to assign someone the task of monitoring your social media for you. This way, you don’t have to wade through everything that comes in, and you can be a resource for the person or team who handles your social media marketing.

Your customers will appreciate the way you interact with them, and you’ll be getting an awesome ROI.

Ignoring Complaints And Failing To Admit Fault

This is one of the biggest social media marketing mistakes any company of any size can make. Imagine you have a dissatisfied customer, who decides to spread his aggravation with your company all over twitter and Facebook.

What do you do?  Should you ignore the guy and hope he goes away?

Absolutely not!  If you make this mistake, people are going to start to wonder.

Be friendly and courteous, and show your customer you care about him.  Make a public apology. While eating crow might not feel the best, it’s a great way to show that “social” side of your business. Who knows, you may even endear yourself to your customers, even more.

Everyone makes mistakes, so if you’re caught in a mistake, don’t lie or cover it up. Handle it, and move on.

Failing To Provide Incentives

Don’t expect fans and friends to flock your way without providing them with an incentive to do so. Offer special discounts to your loyal customers, and give out helpful hints on a regular basis.

My favorite greenhouse gives gardening tips every day, and for some reason, I can’t help but go there and buy more plants and products. I also give them lots of recommends. This is just one example of how much people love to believe that they are getting a value, and illustrates the fact they enjoy passing the things they like on to others.

This is one of the biggest reasons social media marketing works, so give good incentives, and watch your business grow.

 

Social Media Marketing Services Fort Wayne Indiana

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

How Can LinkedIn Help Your Business

May 22, 2011 By

How LinkedIn Can Help Your Small Business

LinkedIn is a social network that is geared toward linking together small businesses. This network – well over twelve million strong – provides an opportunity for folks to stay in daily and weekly touch with their current clients, as well as their potential clients (leads).

Here is a short list of the ways that you can use LinkedIn to improve your chances at small business success!

  • As noted, use LinkedIn to stay in touch with people who resonate with your business. These can be current clients, potential clients, or folks who are interested in your business or have similar or related businesses.
  • Ask your peers about their vendors.
  • Trade services.
  • Use the LinkedIn’s Groups directory to search for industry associations and networks.
  • Find out which conventions your peers (and possibly your competition) is attending (or are likely to be planning to attend).  Similarly answer questions and show your expertise.
  • Use Group Answers (pull-down menu in Groups) to see what questions people are asking (and who those people might be!)
  • Fund Raising: Though you might not actually ask for help raising funds for your venture, just being connected to the right people may provoke them to offer you assistance.
  • Combine your efforts with other social networking accounts such as Twitter – or even Facebook  (You can actually sync your contacts between LinkedIn and Twitter).
  • Provide links to your small business blogs to show your expertise in your area.

Make sure you abide by the rules that LinkedIn sets for business and small businesses. You want to avoid any association with spamming. Like any other business-related activities, this can all take time.

Yes, you have to check in daily and spend time reading other people’s blogs and questions and answers. But using them also adds a certain mystique to your corporate image. Do you want to be seen as the conventional, stodgy homegrown business?

Or do you want to be seen as an entrepreneur?

Finally, Be forewarned: Like other social networks, LinkedIn can become a respite away from business-related business. Be mindful of this and steer clear of the temptation to socialize. Keep community and business functions separate, or better yet, hire a firm to take on some of the most time consuming social media marketing tasks for you.

Your time will be your own, and everything that needs attention will be handled immediately.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Secret To Growing Your Business Quickly

May 19, 2011 By

The Secret To Growing Your Business – Fast!

There must be some reason why some small  businesses outperform others. Let’s pretend for just a minute that you own a small café in a part of town that is just about two blocks off the beaten path. Lunchtime crowds could be a lot bigger!

You’ve noticed that your competition, who has higher prices and worse white bean chicken chili than you…
…and who is a whopping four blocks off the beaten path of the lunch time warriors has a steady stream of customers.

Why?  Stop wringing your hands.  You’re about to find out.

Social Media Marketing: What It Can Do For Your Business.

Social media marketing translates to success. A successful social media marketing campaign can take your little bistro from barely making payroll to a booming success. It can move you from the back lot to the spotlight.

“But” you might say, “I’m a bistro.  How can social media marketing do all that for me?  You people are crazy!  I have soup to make.  See ya later!”

As astonishing as this might seem, and as offbeat as some of the most successful social media marketing campaigns are, they work. Stick with me, soupy sales, here’s why!

Social media marketing gives you the power to reach out to your customers any time of night or day.

Let’s say it’s 10 a.m.  Bored office workers everywhere are looking forward to lunch. In fact, they’re asking each other:

“What do you think, where should we go for lunch?”

They check their twitter and facebook feeds to see what their friends are up to, and then, magic happens.  They spot your tweet or your facebook status. Their eyes light up, and they start to salivate.  “Dude, let’s go to Soupy Sales! He’s got that awesome white bean chicken chili for lunch.

Perfect weather for it.  Man, he’s on Facebook…we better get there before it’s gone!”

At 11:30, you start getting busy.  At 1 pm, you’re completely out of soup, salad, bread, soda, and those cookies you thought might sell well. And, best of all, you’ve convinced your customers that they should not pass up the opportunity to have lunch with you, because you’re just so popular. While this is an admittedly simplified explanation of what social media marketing can do for you, it’s definitely food for thought.

Whether you sell soup or landscaping services, you need to get in the game and stay in the game with social media marketing. So, find an expert, start a campaign, and watch your business grow faster than you ever thought possible.

Social Media Marketing Services For Your Business.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

How To Keep Your Social Media Fans Happy

February 20, 2011 By

Keeping Your Social Media Fans Happy

The secret to keep your Facebook fans, your YouTube viewers, Twitter followers, Linkedin partners, Blog friends happy is summed up in two words: Customer Service.

It really doesn’t get much simpler than that. What works to keep your customers happy offline, works just the same online. Customer service will keep you in business for many years to come and even if you decide to venture into a new business, your personal reputation will be branded positively or negatively by how you treated your customers.

Let’s look at some ways to keep your social media groups happy.

Have A Great Product!

Start off on the right foot and give your customers what they really want from you. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of people are following you on the web, you need to step up and offer consistent quality in your products and services.

Because if you don’t that same crowd will turn on you like piranhas and bad-mouth your business on the viral networks.

Keep Your Promises

Be a business of your word and don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you promised to send free gifts to subscribers or to launch a product on a certain day or to give a special discount, then do everything in your power to make it happen as you said. You don’t want to be leaving a trail of disappointed people who will never trust you again.

Respond Quickly

There are no excuses as to why you can’t respond to a complaint, question or comment within at least one day. It might be a bit hard if you’re running a one man show, but you can easily outsource to a social media manager or virtual assistant. If they are not responding fast enough, then you need to fire them because they are portraying the wrong image for you business

Positive Attitude

In business, it pays to be humble and willing to listen to what other people have to say, especially your customers. If you are really passionate about your business, it will reflect in your positive behavior as you handle your followers politely, happily and wholeheartedly. Getting short and frustrated even with finicky customer demands will backfire on you because all your negative communication will immediately be seen by all and sundry. And that will spread like wildfire through your social media network

Always Be Human And Personal

Always adopt a personal approach with your followers. Don’t write to them as “Dear Subscriber”; instead be on a first name basis and write “Hi John”. Infuse your personality into your customer service- even your quirkiness may stir up affection as people feel you are being real with them. Being human lets people know they are dealing with a fellow soul and not a computer software spitting out robotic answers.

Go The Extra Mile

The viral nature of social media your business’ salvation or their nightmares so it’s imperative as business owners to really go the extra mile to keep your followers happy. Sometimes even more than you normally would in your brick and mortar store.

I once read on a food blog how someone’s kitchen mixer broke down and when she contacted the manufacturer, they told her to ship it them at her cost and they would see if they could fix it or not.

What that company didn’t realize this callous treatment was shared by this lady with tens of thousands of people who view her blog daily. Talk about bad publicity. If they had done their research and put on their customer service hat, they would have offered her free shipping and fixed the mixer for free or better yet offered a brand new mixer.

Wouldn’t that have been a cheaper and more effective marketing strategy than all their Adsense ads?

 

12 Mind-Blowing Statistics Every Marketer Should Know

It’s no secret that the marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years as social and mobile technologies have gone from early-adopter novelties to mainstream essentials.

Still, there are plenty of traditional marketing stalwarts out there who aren’t buying all of the social media hype or can’t convince their boss or marketing team to experiment in the brave new world of inbound marketing.

So we’ve rounded up a dozen powerful stats that are sure to be eye-openers, if not total mind-changers.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Social Media Marketing Strategy for Local Businesses

February 19, 2011 By

Social Media Marketing Strategy for Local Businesses

With everyone extolling the virtues of social media marketing and getting your local business into the social media scene, how exactly should you go about it? You need a strategy- a game plan to win and to win big.

Here are some pointers to a successful social media marketing strategy.

Establish A Resources Budget To Implement Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Know exactly how much of your finances, human resources and time you are going to dedicate to your social media plan. Consider such things as  how much you are willing to spend on ad campaigns; whether its better for you to hire a social media manager or assign an employee to the task ; and if you have to do it on your own decide which days and times are you going to dedicate to focusing on your campaigns.

Do Your Social Media Marketing Research

It pays to get your facts right before you dive into the social media world. Research will show you who your target market is, what products and services they want, their demographics, what appeals to their emotional psychology (since this is what drives buying decisions), which social media platform  they are more likely to use and the best platforms to engage to deliver your  business message.

Choose what Social Media Marketing Channel Best Fits Your Business Niche

A big mistake businesses make in social media strategy is spreading themselves too thin by joining every social media bandwagon. Each business niche is unique and every target market is unique too and some social media platforms just won’t work for certain businesses. It’s always best to focus on the top 2 to 3 social media that work best for your kind of business. A professional consultant would wisely choose Linkedin and Facebook Groups, while an interior decorator would best profile their expertise through YouTube videos and an entertainer would certainly find Twitter and Facebook fan page a good fit.

Establish A Social Media Policy

When you first start implementing your social media marketing strategy it can appear easy and manageable, but as your business gets more popular, you can easily find yourself buried with an avalanche of new followers. A wrong comment by your employee on your company’s social media account or their own personal account can be damaging to the company’s reputation and open the door to legal problems.

If you have employees, it’s therefore best to develop a policy from the get-go that governs their online communications. Have them read it and sign it.

I hope these pointers have opened your eyes to see the bigger picture of social media marketing and how your local business can go about maximizing the potential of social networks by starting out with a plan before engaging in any action.

More Information On Social Media Marketing

How Well Is Social Media Fitting into the Marketing Mix?

Influence: How to get more from social media

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
« Older Posts