10 Ways How To Achieve Your Social Media Goals

Every marketer that delves into social media is doing so in hopes of achieving success. Of course, the reality of the situation is that some marketers are going to end up failing; and a great way to avoid becoming just another statistic is to create and achieve reachable goals one at a time.

Biting off more than you can chew, so to speak, is often the cause of failure.

Marketers setting their hopes too high and then spending too much time and money in the wrong areas is a recipe for disaster. Below, you will read some tips to implement in your social campaign pertaining to brand achievement.

10 Tips For Creating And Reaching Goals In Social Media

1. Create An Outline Of Obtainable Goals

What types of goals do you have in mind as a social marketer? The first thing you want to do is ensure that your goals are realistic. Instead of having a goal like cornering the market and outshining the competition, start with the goal of competing with a few thousand fans, increasing your sales by 10%, building more overall brand awareness, etc.

Social media goals should remain realistic.

Not every kid playing hoops is going to reach the NBA, and having that sort of goal, while there’s nothing wrong with it, is rather lofty and likely to fail. On the other hand, there are many milestones along the way that are much easier to achieve and all of which stand out as successes.

2. Understand Your Audience

When you outline goals such as increasing your fan base and your brand awareness, the next step is understanding the type of audience you’re delivering material to. For instance, a brand that deals in the tech industry might not make a splash if the material they’re releasing deals with everyday news and gossip.

Understand what your audience expects from you.

As it stands, no one understands your brand and your mission better than you. Relay this message in your material and deliver it to the type of person most likely to respond positively to the message. Niche marketing is smart marketing.

3. Take Part In The Conversation

No social media marketer reaches success without actually focusing on the social aspect of the genre. In order to be successful in reaching the goals you have outlined, you need to participate in the social experience. Whether on Facebook, Twitter,Google+ or any other site, be a social brand that seeks to treat people well.

Respond to people, show fans that you appreciate them in your material, and engage with people by Liking, sharing and commenting on their material at times. Engagement can’t be a one-way street if you’re hoping to be successful.

4. Choose The Right Platforms

Part of reaching your goals has to do with the social media platforms you choose to participate on. Although there are some popular options to choose from that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, many social networks come and go like the seasons.

Choosing steady networks is a huge plus.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even a video site like YouTube are all great options. With a site like Facebook, for example, you get a full range of customizable features, a slew of ad options and different ad management apps to choose from, and your content distribution can be streamlined and focused on a direct target without fear of an audience dwindling or a site collapsing.

5. Develop A Strategy For Content

The next step in this process is to actually devise a strategy for releasing your content. This strategy can be broken down into sections to help you better understand it:

• The Target Market
• The Quality Of The Content
• The Release Schedule

Refer back to the previous tip about understanding your market. You want to target your material—your ads and posts—directly to an audience that is more likely to engage with you.

Secondly, you want to ensure high-quality content that actually aims to solve real problems within your niche. Don’t present generic content for the sake of releasing something.

Thirdly, you want to focus on a release schedule. Find out when the bulk of your audience is online and deliver content at times they’re most likely to see and engage with it.

6. Develop A Schedule

Following up on the previous tip, let’s speak in a little bit of detail about developing a posting schedule. Since you may have more than one active platform, you need to understand how the traffic flow works on each one.

Your Facebook audience might be at its peak when your Twitter audience is fairly slow, leaving you with a lot of work to do if you’re trying to keep up with your posting times. This is why you should implement a program to help you release content on a schedule. You can simply put the content into the management system and set the times for release. This decreases your workload while helping you to get the most engagement.

(See related post: The Secret Of Timing In Social Marketing)

7. Keep Up With Trends

“Quality” is often dictated by the viewer, not the poster. In other words, something that’s popular may not be something that actually earns points for its craftsmanship or forethought. This is often the case with hashtags, and also with memes, polls and other material that’s frequently shared. Part of your social media marketing campaign should involve keeping up with these trends and playing to the crowd.

TIP: The Secret To Crafting Killer Memes

Developing and using hashtags, for instance, gives you a great opportunity to track your content, to see who’s saying what about your brand, and to reach a much larger audience. Sharing other material also puts you smack-dab in the middle of the social experience, allowing you to play to that proverbial crowd and to generate more of a buzz.

8. Ask For Engagement

The call to action has long been one of the best ways any Internet marketer induces follow-through after the material is released. Relying on people to click-through on something has never been a marketing principle; instead, inserting a variety of actionable calls—“Click here”, “Want to know more?” and “Act now while supplies last”among others—has always been a preferred way to coax the traffic in the right direction.

You can use a call to action in the material you’re releasing to increase your odds of engagement. Actually, asking for engagement, such as comments, Likes and shares, can have a very positive effect on your marketing.

9. Be A Generous Brand

Social media is unique in that you have so much control over the material you’re releasing to the public. It’s also unique in terms of how many options you have available to you for marketing your material. Take a site like Facebook for example. You can operate a contest from the site and develop new lists of thousands of members.

For example: Creating a contest on Facebook, where you’re offering a monetary prize, can create a lot of buzz and traffic. Supplementing your marketing efforts by using Twitter, Instagram and other social networks, you can draw huge exposure and end up with a lot of interested subscribers.

Getting 100 new customers out of 1,000 new leads more than pays for any prize you’re giving away; and look at it this way: The bigger and better the prize, the more people who join to win it. The end result could be a huge windfall.

10. Monitor Your Results

Last up on the list, you want to carefully monitor the results of any content you release. You can check your analytics on a site like Facebook, or you can get a third-party monitoring system to help you make sense of everything.

Keeping up with your results helps you to achieve your goals a lot quicker and without having to trash a campaign to start from square one. You can see what you’re doing correctly and incorrectly, and you can subsequently double-down on what’s working to increase your odds of success.

Start with goals you can actually reach.

Overall, the best way to achieve your goals is to start out with goals you can actually reach. Once you approach social media marketing realistically, you will find that the tools are available to help you achieve success as long as you’re willing to follow a formula.

http://socialmediarevolver.com/10-ways-achieve-social-media-goals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+socialmediarevolver+%28Social+Media+Revolver%29

5 Steps to Content Marketing Awesome – You Can Do This!

Successful content marketing programs are ongoing communications efforts that empathize with customers and deliver useful experiences. Each content object published is a promise to the community that something relevant, useful and info-raining is in store.

Consistently producing content experiences that inform and inspire creates one of the most powerful customer states: anticipation. Few things are more powerful for attracting a loyal following of customers and advocates than the anticipation to see what’s coming next.

But how can companies with slim budgets create such a content marketing program? While there are entire books on the subject, I think these are the 5 essential components for initiating a growing momentum of content awesome.

1. Identify customer segments – Start with something as simple as best and worst customer scenarios. What are the common characteristics of the customers you want to do business with? What distinguishes the need or reason to buy your products and services for one group of customers compared to another? What are the demographic and behavioral differences amongst groups of customers? Create profiles or personas for each distinct customer group.

2. Map the buying journey – For each customer segment, what are their preferences for information discovery, consumption and taking action? What channels are influential during the buying cycle? Do they use search? Do they use social? Do they respond to paid or social ads? Do they subscribe? What is it like for them to buy from you from awareness to interest to consideration to purchase. Map it out – for each customer segment.

3. What questions do buyers have during the sales cycle? – Every customer has questions that lead them to purchase. What are your customers asking? For each customer segment and each customer journey from awareness to purchase, identify the important questions your buyers need answered into order to gain the confidence and certainty needed to buy from you. Survey your customers, look at your on-site search engine for logged queries to find questions used as search terms, look at social networks for relevant common questions as well.

4. Leverage those Q & A’s for your content plan – The most fundamental and impactful thing a business with little marketing resources can do to create awesome content marketing results is to answer the questions customers have as they go from awareness to purchase. BUT: Don’t just inform your customers, help them feel that your business is the best answer by providing experiences. Articles are great, but videos, interactive tools and engagement with other customers in the same situation is even better.

5. Optimize for search, social, and user experience –  Don’t fall victim to random acts of marketing disease. Organize your content Q and A according to customer segment and how they will discover, consume and be inspired to act on your content. Optimize your content for what buyers are searching for – use the language of the active buyer, who is looking for solutions. Optimize for social discovery and sharing too. Also optimize to info-tain and to create a great user experience. Make it easy to find the right information and for buyers to act with speed and convenience. Solve information problems with your content but also create great experiences when finding, consuming and acting on that content as well.

If you have to, start small focusing on your best customer segment with a blog, video and one or two social networks. Walk before you run and develop some kind of hypothesis for your initial experiments with answers based content. Just understand that these 5 steps are the content marketing muscles you’ll need to exercise on a regular basis to create momentum, anticipation and content awesome that builds community and grows revenue.

http://www.toprankblog.com/2014/04/content-marketing-awesome/

Why You Shouldn’t Be A People Pleaser

Pleasing people is probably holding you back from your dreams…

You know when you want to do something, but get a gut feeling that people in your life won’t like it? You end up not bothering because it’s not worth the hassle – even though you long to do it. We’ve all been there…

This can lead you to avoid things in life that would help you feel happy and fulfilled.

A well meaning friend may scoff your plan to quit your job to become a full-time internet marketer. “You’ll go mad at home all day.”

Erm no, YOU’LL go mad at home all day. I’m fine with this.

That’s a big problem pleasing people – they give advice based on what’s good for THEM, not you. We’re all different…

Many people can’t cope with working from home. They miss the traffic jams, the annoying bosses, and having to beg for a day off.

Not me. I love living life on MY terms. But I digress…

When you are a people pleaser, those around you get comfortable with this. They feel safe with your predictable and compliant nature. They’re reassured they can drag you to things THEY want to do – and you’ll always accept.

They like that you lead a life that enhances theirs, and naturally don’t want the party to stop. That’s why they get so upset when you want to do your own thing.

You want to quit your job? But how will you afford to watch me perform in my next play?

You HAVE to do what’s right for you – and that might be completely different to what’s right for anyone else. As long as you are not harming anyone, you owe it to your existence to go for it.

People often like to guide you based on their biased self interest. Look out for it and don’t let it happen. Yes you can listen to friends and families advice, but make up your own mind.

People will be shocked when you live life on your terms. They will complain, and pester you to get back on “the path” – their path.

Keep persisting. It’s your life not theirs. The more you persist, the stronger you become. You will get more used to living life on your terms, and so will they.

Eventually they will leave you alone. They will stop expecting you to be so compliant to their ideas. Given enough time they may compliment you for following your dreams. If they don’t then they don’t care much for you do they?

You must fight for your life – the life you want to lead. Don’t spend it helping someone else chase their dreams. Follow YOUR dreams.

http://www.affiliatehelp.info/2014/03/12/why-you-shouldnt-be-a-people-pleaser/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+affiliatehelp%2FyPyX+%28AffiliateHelp%29

20 social media resources you need to keep pace with the industry

Social media is a rapidly changing industry. You can be a skilled social media marketer or an enthusiastic newbie that has social in their blood, but keeping up with the changes is highly important for your work.

What is more, you can't think of social as a separate world with its rules and trends, but you'd rather think of it as of an integral part of internet marketing process.

In this article I'm going to share some resources that I personally use for getting most of necessary information about social media.

Official blogs of social media networks

If you use a particular social media network, I highly recommend reading its official blog.

Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn blogs are recommended to read even if you don't use these largest social networks. It is needed for overall understanding of processes going on in the industry.

Websites on social media

1. Social Media Examiner – in-depth tutorials, helpful tips, detailed updates description

www.socialmediaexaminer.com  - This website is a great collection of extremely useful content about social media. Tutorials, explanations of the latest changes and helpful tips can be found here. In fact, if you are a newbie, Social Media Examiner appears to be a great study book to get into the depth of rocket social media science.

2. Mashable – social trends, celebs and happenings

http://mashable.com/category/social-media/  - Mashable social category is about "the latest happenings in social media, plus tips on using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other social tools on the web", as they say about themselves. Here you can also find information about latest social trends and celebs on social, tools collections and more.

3. Forbes – analytics, social media market news

http://www.forbes.com/social-media/ - Forbes social media category is more about analytics, connection with the marketing niche and economy, thus, many articles are also worth reading to understand the situation on the market.

4. BuzzFeed – social trends

http://www.buzzfeed.com/  - You can say it's more like an entertainment website and shouldn't be included. It is. But BuzzFeed does real journalism and collects things that are really popular on the web and are talked about. As a social media manager you should be aware of trends, jokes, memes and feel comfortable when talking about them. And using them in your work!

5. Razorsocial – social media tips and tools

http://www.razorsocial.com/  - It's a blog by Ian Cleary, a well-known social media enthusiast. Also he is a writer for Social Media Examiner. Ian pays special attention to social media tools.

6. Virante – analytics, effectiveness and impact on SEO

http://www.virante.org/blog/category/social-media-2/ - This blog's author is Mark Traphagen, who writes very deep articles, focusing on effectiveness studies, the impact of social on SEO and other analytics topics.

Some more links! They can overlap each other but still you'll find some additional info while scrolling your RSS feed.

7. HuffingtonPost - tutorials, news and marketing stuff

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/social-media/  - Like Forbes, HuffPost is good when you need to go through social marketing news and its connection with the economy.

8. Entrepreneur.Com - tips, news and using social media for business

http://www.entrepreneur.com/socialmedia/index.html  - This is a great resource to know more about using social media for your business.

9. Econsultancy - tips, tutorials and case studies

http://econsultancy.com/by/topics/social - These awesome guys share great articles about how different companies and projects use social as a part of a digital campaign.

YouTube, Scoop.it, SlideShare – popular niche videos, decks and articles

1. Besides following official YouTube accounts of social media networks (like one from Twitter) have a look at Ignite channel.
2. Once in a while I check popular presentations on Slideshare – just search for niche keywords and sort the results by popularity.
3. Speaking about Scoop.it, I think searching for trends is more useful here compared with following specific boards, but there are some decent niche boards by professionals that you may want to read. This resource is helpful if you got tired of the same shared articles in your timelines, and it's a great place to find some not very popular but still pretty decent articles and tutorials.

Reddit – popular articles and discussions

1. This Social Media subreddit is pretty much useful for reading.
2. Also you can have a look at the Webmarketing one from time to time.

Your social timeline – all-in-one source!

You can read certain people on social – SM professionals often post valuable links and related stuff. Build a circle of pro people that tweet news you like. A solid choice of Twitter users can replace a whole world of social media news resources.
What is more, use Twitter lists. For example, you can find social media influencers in this collection of Twitter lists by KISSMetrics. You don't have to follow all of them at once, that's why Twitter lists are handy.

Hashtags – trending articles on Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook

It's great to read news, but it's greater to know what people are really talking about.
So when I need to look over the activity in the niche and see what people are really discussing and sharing, I like to research what is happening under certain hashtags.
Remember that you can use it not only on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Google Plus. I frequently use #social, but I advise to check the hashtag activity you want to research using hashtags.org or any other analytics tool.

To sum it up

This collection is more like a base of knowledge you need to keep up with the industry. Also this list is a must read collection of resources for social media newbies and covers pretty much all segments of social media marketing.

http://www.link-assistant.com/blog/20-social-media-resources-you-need-to-keep-pace-with-the-industry/

Why every startup should consider a multilingual strategy

For startups looking for a new competitive advantage, a multilingual presence may be the answer.While non-native English speakers have long realized the value of pushing their products to the English-speaking market, native English speakers are just beginning to realize the value of a multilingual strategy. More than just being able to launch a business in a second language, the world is becoming a multilingual marketplace. And whether it be Spanish, French, or even Mandarin, an additional language is becoming a necessity for many entrepreneurs to get ahead as the process of globalization continues to accelerate.So what are the real advantages of a multilingual strategy? When we launched Everypost, a social media management mobile application, we made the app available in six languages from the start. Why? Because it was a more cost effective way to market our new product against larger competitors and create more awareness for our brand quickly. We were able to reach an international audience, giving us more users and more feedback faster than we could ever generate from solely launching in the English market. With each additional language, we had the opportunity to reach more customers. A multilingual approach is a cost effective way of marketing, widening your reach, and promoting your brand in new markets without having to spend heavily on other strategies.With every additional language, the potential customer base widens. There are few other ways to receive a dramatic increase in customers for such little investment. In our case, we discovered there are over 101 million Internet users in Japan, over 17 million of whom are on Facebook — so translating our mobile application into Japanese was a definite way to find targeted users that would appreciate our social media solution. Even though our native languages are English and Spanish, a large segment of our customers are using the app in Japanese.

French startup Likebook, a service that pulls users’ Facebook updates, photos, comments, and compiles the information into a unique paperback or hardback book, quickly internationalized as well. That company offers the service in six languages, specifically building on an enormous opportunity in Brazil — the country with the second largest number of Facebook users in the world.Another company that took on the “reach-as-many-as-you-can” strategy from the start is Kiip’s self-service advertising platform, offering businesses the ability to instantly run their own ad campaigns to offer users real-world rewards. Kipp made the move to launch the self-service product globally in a whopping 11 languages across Latin America, Europe, the Mideast, Asia, and Japan — giving brands more reach, and giving developers of Kipp apps greater opportunity to successfully monetize their creations.Setting up a business in multiple languages isn’t an easy task, but it’s feasible — and there are ways to make it easier. If you are just starting out or want to test offering your products or services in another language, try translating your business website with the help of a multilingual website plugin. It also helps having a multilingual team as part of your long term global strategy. This will ease the costs of translation services and you’ll receive continuous feedback from native speakers.ClickBus, a Brazilian online booking platform for bus travel, has set out to reach 14 countries in its first year. After immediate success in Brazil, the decision to move into Mexico and Germany – after a law binding all German bus companies to the government came to an end — is giving ClickBus a huge chance to capitalize on the situation and expand its global customer base. With headquarters in Brazil, ClickBus plans to employ local representatives in each new market — a great way to smooth out the process of setting up shop in another language.

A multilingual business strategy is not only a gateway to global success, but also a tremendous advantage to increasing awareness for your brand. With Internet and mobile phone usage growing at an accelerated pace in the non-English speaking world, your business needs to plan how to keep up and stay ahead of competition. It is only a matter of time before multiple languages will become a standard for businesses, so by investing the time and energy now — or before even launching — your business can reap the benefits of the global marketplace.Fernando Cuscuela is an experienced entrepreneur who likes nothing better than to start new businesses and make them profitable. He founded a successful Digital Media Agency, Clickbunker, and most recently he started Everypost, where he now focuses most of his attention.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/01/why-every-startup-should-consider-a-multilingual-strategy/#!

Starting a Business: SAYING IT vs DOING IT

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They say everyone has at least one business idea inside them but how many people actually have the conviction to follow their ambition?
Having an idea is one thing but what a successful business needs is competent execution and a receptive marketplace.
One of the reasons I am passionate about small businesses is their energy and creativity. A small, emerging company has the great advantage of being agile. It can try new ways of doing things, new ideas for delivering a service and new ways to save money. SMEs really are a breeding ground for ideas and creativity.
Once the idea for a business has hatched, it then needs testing and challenging and there is no better way than asking your potential customers what they think. The idea may be good but it will only ever be a viable business if there is strong execution and a commercial market for it.
This process is critical for your long-term business success. You can make a written business plan say anything and convince yourself that your profit will materialize – but if customers don’t like or need your service then it will fail.
What I look for is that innovative, well thought out business from a passionate entrepreneur.
Recently I was introduced to an entrepreneur who has started an online business; Really Useful Stuff. I regularly meet entrepreneurs and they will always take the opportunity to pitch their business to me. However, what I liked about this particular business and the approach was the fact that the founder Kay had thoroughly tested every aspect of the business and brand. The idea had been tested with focus groups and key stakeholders. The great thing about an online business is that you can create a beta version of the site and put it out there to gauge reaction without actually spending any money. Doing this will give you the research to improve your offer.
This brings me to the point of social media. We all know that it’s a great promotional tool, but it’s also a great source of feedback. It costs next to nothing and allows you to really grasp the opinions of your customers.
Feedback can of course be brutal as well as constructive. You may find out some truths about the business and brand that are not easy to hear, but the most important skill to have is being able to take the criticism and adapt the idea to suit the market.
It’s a competitive world, but there is always room for a great idea or adapting an existing idea that has the right mix of planning and testing.
But it’s also not enough just to expect customers to find you online – for a company to be truly successful you have to constantly think of innovative ways to engage with them and build their loyalty. Customer service must be woven into the DNA of any business.
Moving from ‘saying it’ to ‘doing it’ requires a combination of executing a great idea, willingness to adapt, passion and an appetite for challenge.

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130702105655-32175171-starting-a-business-saying-it-vs-doing-it?trk=cha-feed-art-title

Opt-In for Email Marketing Success

                                                                                                    

Running a successful email marketing campaign isn't as simple as erratically sending out emails. An ideal approach is to request that potential customers visiting your blog or website subscribe to receive company emails. This approach is known as Opt-In or permission marketing, and has a number of distinct advantages such as:

• Low-Cost Promotion
• Simple & Easy Process
• Quantifiable Results
• Direct Marketing
• Rapid Communication

Opt-In marketing is a great advantage because only interested customers fill out an email form on your website, meaning your message goes out to individuals who truly qualify as potential customers for the company. Their email subscription through the Opt-In Form is an expression of their interest in what you have to offer-- unless the Opt-In Form is clearly created with the intention of grabbing their attention.

Website visitors do not always have an inherent interest in signing up for the company’s email promotions. More often than not, they begin with building interest in the company’s products, services, or website content, and signing up for Opt-In is an extension of that interest. Therefore, an Opt-In Form should be noticeable and innovative. When constructing your Opt-In form, try to:

• Use catchy headlines
• Format content to grab attention through subtitles and bullets
• Add sharing options for social media networks
• Follow attractive font and color themes
• Insert relevant images
• Make Enticing Sidebars

http://www.volacci.com/marketing-news/opt-email-marketing-success

3 Ways Social Media can Boost Sales Success

Recently there has been a lot of conversation against the importance of relationships in selling such as this recent Harvard Business Review article on Selling is Not about Relationships which makes it seem like social media would not make a good fit for sales people.

But a new RAIN Group report proves otherwise and shows that sales people that truly “connect” with buyers in this “always on” environment we live in to win more often. So here are 3 reasons why …

Social media provides great way to connect with potential buyers

• Social media provides the sales person with unprecedented ways to connect with potential buyers, build relationships and most importantly start conversations
• Social media provides the sales person with a platform to allow for their online personality to shine and begin that trusted relationship which can create affinity with the buyer
• Social media provides the sales person a platform for sharing value, which builds reputation and affinity for the seller

Social media provides a platform to collaborate with potential buyers

• Sales people can use popular online meetings tools like Google Hangout or even GoToMeeting to create spontaneous meetings with potential buyers
• Other technologies like Postwire can be used for more direct collaboration with more middle of funnel prospects
• Social listening technologies like Radian6, Hootsuite (or whatever your favorite is) will allow you to chime in at most relevant times with potential buyers, middle of funnel prospects or even existing customers – keeping you top of mind at all times!

Social media allows you to educate potential buyers with new ideas

• Social media provides plenty of ways to do this. Sales people that tweet their own ideas or find blogs articles that espouse their position – make it easy to connect with buyers. Content is king so being able to use it to your advantage is key.
• Marketing teams provides the platform and resources to sales to be able to do this. Too many companies in my opinion leave it to the sales team to figure this out all this by themselves. Content is the new collateral. If marketing creates the platform and the sales team can bring it to life with customers then sales will surely flow.

An integral part of the sales process is getting to know your prospects and establishing relationships—and it turns out social media can help you accomplish this quickly and easily. Follow the steps above to help your sales team make the cash register ring using social media. Remember – when you’re there alone there is no one to compete!

http://pauldunay.com/3-ways-social-media-can-boost-sales-success/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BuzzMarketingForTechnology+%28Marketing+Darwinism%29

7 METHODS TO INCREASE SOCIAL MEDIA MENTIONS EXPONENTIALLY

These days, one question that companies may ask their PR branding managers or any other PR agencies, is how they may increase the number of social media mentions for their brand.

Social media mention refers to how often your brand has been shared and talked about online on social media. For example, take a look at how many times your Facebook post has been shared; how many re-tweets you received for a recent tweet promotion and so on.

Here are 7 methods to increase social media mentions exponentially for your brand.

1. Challenging the norm

Any brand, organization or person can set up their own Facebook page, Twitter handle, Pinterest, Google+ or YouTube channel anytime. The question we need to ask ourselves is, how is our brand different compared to others?

Communicating the unique selling proposition (USP) of our brand to the consumers in social media is the key.

2. Ask for people’s opinions

Ask questions that will lead people to give you their opinions and comments on social media. Make sure your posts are interactive, that is, they induce active participation from your consumers on social media.

3. A picture tells a thousand words

Most people, especially men (don’t ask me why), are very visual creatures. Pictures are more convincing and your consumers are more willing to share them on social media. However, posting pictures that are irrelevant to your brand or your consumers can be detrimental to your brand as well. Hence, choose your pictures wisely.

4. Find the right audience

Always target the right group of consumers such that your brand will have a stronger fan base on social media in terms of quality. There is no point in having 100,000 likes (quantity) in your Facebook page, but only less than 1% of them are genuine fans of your brand.

Disloyal fans (or what I term as “fair weather” fans), are usually the result of hard-selling social media campaigns; during which companies will either have giveaways or lucky draws for people to win attractive contest prizes, in exchange for a ‘like’ on Facebook or a follow on Twitter. These types of campaigns are unlikely to gain loyal raving fans on social media.

5. Have a Laugh!

If used correctly, humour can be a very powerful tool for your brand. Humour contains the entertainment factor that makes people feel good about sharing it virally to their friends on social media. It is always the funniest and most entertaining video or picture that has the most number of shares, retweets or likes on social media.

However, like a double edged sword, humour can also “destroy” your brand when it is used incorrectly. No matter how funny the joke is, try to avoid sensitive topics related to sex, politics or religion.

6. Content Speaks

Organise your content in a way that speaks strongly about what your brand is about. If your business is about organic vegetables then all your pictures, links and videos on social media should be all about organic vegetables or topics related to healthy living. Make your content speak around a brand theme and write about topics that will be interesting to your consumers.

7. Be Timely

Timely articles gain more social media mentions than others. For example, your posts can be related to some current news or interesting trends that are recently happening in your country. When the original Gangnam Style by PSY took the world by storm in 2012, some brands came out with their own version of Gangnam Style dance videos to entertain their consumers.

Timely also refers to post related content that are relevant to upcoming seasons such as weekends and holidays; such timely posts will make your brand look more ‘personal’ to your consumers on social media.

At the End of the Day

It is all about putting yourself in your consumers’ shoes; think about what they want and what problems they may face and how your brand can help them. By doing so, you can definitely come out with many creative and successful marketing strategies to increase your brand’s social media mentions.

http://prcompany.org.uk/7-methods-increase-social-media-mentions-exponentiall/

Social and Digital Media Revolution Statistics 2013

Your Marketing Strategy is Outdated if…

The marketing landscape is constantly changing. If you're not careful and proactive, it is easy to get left behind. For marketing to be as effective as possible, you have to be able to keep up!

Erik Qualman shared in Socialnomics to reach 50 millions users: in Radio it’s 38 years; TV it’s 13 years; the Internet is 4 years and the iPod is 3 years. Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months; iPhone applications hit 1 billion in nine months.

In other words, you continually have to adapt to stay relevant to your audience.

Take a few minutes for a short self-checkup to see if your marketing strategy is current or outdated.

1. Your Marketing Strategy is Outdated If You Aren't Using Video Yet

Youtube is the second most-used search engine in the world. Without video content, you're missing a huge chunk of your potential audience. In addition to that, optimized videos can rank very highly in traditional search engine rankings, especially Google, which owns Youtube.

Beyond their importance for search rankings, video is a powerful way to connect with your potential customers. Consumers are increasingly looking for brands with personalities, brands that excite them. They've come to expect more than text and basic graphics on company websites.

Video can entertain, educate and sell your products and services in a way that resonates strongly with today’s multimedia-obsessed society.

There’s also the social media aspect. Using video on Pinterest will set you apart from the crowd, as nearly all the content on the site are photos. Embedding video in LinkedIn profiles (using the Slideshare or Google Presentation applications), is still rare enough to make a real statement for those that use this capability.

And of course, video is shared frequently across all social networks.

2. Your Marketing Strategy is Outdated If Social Media Isn't Included in Every Part of Your Strategy

BrightEdge Technologies did a study last fall that found that the homepages of almost half of the top 10,000 websites studied had no social links installed. Social media buttons make it much easier for visitors to share content with their network. For example, Bright Edge’s research showed that sites with a Twitter share button were shared nearly seven times more frequently than those without the button.

Social sharing buttons make it easier for email recipients will share messages they get. They've also been shown to increase click-through rates by 115%. This simple step more than doubles the engagement you get with your email marketing campaigns.

Your prospects and customers are on social media – you should be too. Give them ways to connect more deeply with your brand and learn more about how you can improve their lives and stay updated with the latest news. The loyalty you engender can pay off big time.

With that in mind, make your social network profiles as visible as possible on all your marketing materials, from your business cards and brochures to your website and TV commercials.

3. Your Marketing Strategy is Outdated If You're Not Optimizing for Mobile

As of May 2012, 10% all internet usage is accessed via mobile devices, according to Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers.

That trend is quickly increasing. In fact, Google predicts that by the end of this year, 1 billion people globally will use their phones or tablets as their primary point of internet access.

In light of mobile web’s rapid growth, it’s no longer optional not to have a mobile-friendly website, even if your business is a one location brick-and-mortar store. Search Engine Land indicates that

“Google found that 92 percent of smartphone owners in the US seek local (offline) information via their devices, and that 89 percent of those people took some form of action after such a lookup. Beyond this Google said that 25 percent of people in the US made a purchase after a local lookup. In addition, in the US, 51 percent called a business and 48 percent actually went to the business location.”

4. Let’s not forget about email.

In Knotice’s Mobile Email Opens Report for the second half of 2011, we find that open rates increased by 36% over the course of the year. Despite that fact, 39% of marketers have no strategy to optimize their email campaigns for mobile, while 37% have only a “basic” strategy in place.

This is a huge missed opportunity! When you think about the difference in screen size between a smartphone (which has a 4-inch screen at the most) and a desktop computer, it’s not difficult to see why emails and the web pages they link to have to be structured differently.

You should respect your customers enough to give them the right kind of experience, whether they're looking at your marketing materials on their phones, tablets or computers.

We've seen an increase in the use of mobile apps, SMS marketing and QR codes (half of smartphone owners have scanned them and 18% make a subsequent purchase) reports Mashable.  Clearly, it’s very important and increasingly profitable to reach your audience through their handheld devices.

So, how does your strategy stand up? There are many more ways to stay on the cutting edge of marketing trends, but these four can have the biggest impact on your customer engagement and brand recognition. If you're behind the curve, it’s time to catch up. The benefits will far outweigh the cost and effort you put into the proces

http://www.zddesign.net/blog/your-marketing-strategy-is-outdated/