Social Media Marketing

Pick one or two social platforms
Because of the proliferation of social network sites, many businesses have accounts on
many of these sites, but they are effective in none. It’s better to pick one social media site
and manage it extremely well – because you will see far better results.
Twitter is my favourite platforms for the following reasons:
• Great for trending topics
• Easy to implement and grow a presence than many other sites
• Has a paid search platform
• Quick response from followers
Other platforms to consider are Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube.
Increase awareness
Whether it’s a product brand, a website, a business or your personal brand, social media is
a great place to raise brand awareness and create a lasting impression on your target
audience.
All your posts and interactions should be consistent with your brand identity, and this
should be reinforced with the activity you do on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+
and any others.
Increase sales
After raising awareness about your products and business, sales usually follow. If you’ve
created a product that meets the needs of your fan base, and you promote its benefits
effectively, you will see an increase in traffic and website sales.
However, you should avoid excessive promotion on social media and aim for the 80/20
rule – 80% non-promotional, interesting and engaging content and 20% promotional
content.
Grow your platform
Social media is a perfect place to grow your audience and platform especially if you are
looking to publish a book either through a publisher or self-publishing. Publishers want to
be convinced when that see your platform that you have a large audience following that
could potentially buy your book when released.
And if you are self-publishing, you can’t hope to sell any books without a platform – and
this is what social media can do for you.
Connect with like-minded people
Connect with people in your industry to learn and share with each other. On Twitter,
LinkedIn and other social platforms, you will find people with great ideas that you can
implement in your social media strategy, to help you achieve objectives. You will discover
how they’ve built a great platform and what you need to do to achieve your social media
marketing objectives.
Answer customer queries
Customers will have comments and questions about your products, and they will expect a
quick response too. So make sure you are always available to respond and show that you
care about their concerns.
This goes a long way towards building trust and loyalty – two things that many businesses
find difficult to achieve on the web.
Launch a product
Have you just released a new product and wanted the world to know about it? Social
media is even quicker than Press Releases for garnering interest and awareness, and the
best part is that it’s free. There is always a ready audience of people who are following
you or your business, and that will be interested in your new product launch. And you can
send them an exclusive discount to trial the product too.
Generate leads
If you are in the B2B sector, sites like LinkedIn and Twitter have a huge audience of
people who will have an interest in your products or services – and they will retweet or
republish your content to their lists, and you will potentially see greater interest from
target prospects.
Increase engagement
People who you connect with on social media have shown an interest in what you have to
say and when they click through to your website, they will be more engaged than visitors
from other channels like organic and PPC.
Gain market insight
With social media, you can easily keep up with the latest trends and gain greater insight
into your industry by following thought leaders and experts.
Promote your content
Have you just written an ebook, published a whitepaper or written some great blog posts,
then social media is the best place to promote it. It’s quick, and you should start to see
traffic in minutes when you check your real-time reports in Google Analytics.
Sign up to Hootsuite
Hootsuite is my favourite tool for scheduling, tweeting and keeping an eye on mentions
and retweets. It comes with a 30-day free trial, and that’s longer than other Twitter tools.
It has an easy to use interface that is simple to navigate and as a novice user, you won’t
find it difficult to master because it doesn’t have a steep learning curve.
So if you want to save yourself a lot of time and not have to be on twitter all day posting
and retweeting, then this is the tool for you.
Retarget on Facebook
Run a remarketing campaign on Facebook to retarget people who’ve visited your site in
the past. This can be your customers, and you can upload a data feed of your customers
and send them regular offers. Or you could target people who visited your website or
mobile app but did not complete their transaction.
Post daily
Few things are more important on social media sites than posting daily and connecting
with your followers and connections. There are tools that can help you automate this like
Buffer and Hootsuite.
Follow back
Use a tool like Hootsuite to automate this process and follow back people and
organisations that have followed, as long as they are not spammers. This encourages twoway
communication and helps build stronger connections
Tweet varied content
Tweet your own posts and posts from other sites that you think will be of interest to your
followers and could benefit them greatly. It will also help you to create new connections
with the owners of the content that you post and retweet.
Use hashtags sparingly
Avoid cramming your tweets with loads of hashtags because that just looks spammy and
makes your tweets unreadable. Two or three at most should be fine and ensure that they
are relevant to the message you are sending.
Connect on other platforms
Use a tool like socialOomph to send direct messages to your followers and encourage
them to connect with you on your other platforms like LinkedIn. This is an effective
strategy that will help to connect more with target audiences and grow your followers and
connections.
Use socialOomph
Use socialOomph to send tailored direct messages to your followers like asking them to
join you on other platforms, to visit your website or promote your book and services. You
won’t get this feature on other Twitter tools.
Sign up to Slideshare
Upload your PowerPoint presentations, documents, videos to slideshare and use that to
promote your website, products or services. Visitors can leave comments and download
your documents and share them with others, and this extends your reach.
Track with Google Analytics
Use analytics event tracking to track shares and likes on your website. You can create
events in the admin section of your analytics account, and they will be available in the
Reporting section of your account.
Check your social influence score on Klout
Your Klout score reflects how influential you are on social media. Knowing your score
helps you to focus your efforts and post only content that people will like, retweet, share
and so on. The more you get off that, the higher your score will be.
Run Twitter paid ads
Twitter ads are effective at putting your messages in front of people you want to target.
Cost per click rates are quite low compared to other platforms, and you can create wide
awareness for your business.
Create Facebook Ad campaigns
You can promote your products, services, website, business page, fan page with Facebook
ads and you can send visitors to your website or your page. Facebook ads are precise at
targeting and more effective than other PPC platforms because you can segment your
target audience based on demographics, geographical, lifestyles and categories.
Design great social media covers
Hire a freelancer on Fiverr to create stunning covers for your social media profiles. Make
sure you use the cover to convey a key message about your products or services and add
any books you’ve written to encourage enquiries.
Join LinkedIn groups
There are many quality groups to join on LinkedIn in your sector, and you can post links,
articles and like and comment on other people’s posts. Use a tool like Hootsuite to post to
each group you are joined to but avoid posting the same articles to multiple groups at the
same time because members across groups are usually the same.
Take advantage of tools to share relevant content
Use third party social media tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialOomph and ManageFlitter
to automate your Twitter marketing strategy. You can use these tools to:
• Schedule tweets and free up your time
• Follow back people who follow you
• Follow people and businesses that are of interest to you
• Respond to mentions
• Thank people for retweeting your tweets
• Gain insight into your key metrics with analytics
Use social media to research
Social media sites have a wealth of information about target audience interests, social
lives, topics they enjoy and what they dislike. This is all helpful for creating and
enhancing your brand, which is almost impossible to do with other online channels.
Use social media analytics
Use analytics tools provided by the social networks to understand your target audience,
who they are, what their interests are, their demographics and locations. This helps you to
target your messages effectively, and you can also run ads to increase followers and traffic
volumes. 3rd party analytics tools are available like Google Analytics which have a wealth
of features to understand social actions on your site like visitors, shares, likes, etc.
Add a Twitter card
To increase follower engagement and interest in your tweets, then consider adding Twitter
cards to display images with your tweets. People naturally are drawn to images, and
tweets which include them have over 30% engagement than those without, so no matter
how targeted and well written your content is, you can gain more exposure and interest by
including a Twitter card.
Brand your profiles
Whether you represent a company brand or personal brand, you need consistency
throughout your social media profiles and website. So create a brand identity that includes
your name, tag line, colours, messages, etc. that are essential to positioning yourself or
your business. These identity elements should be part of your profiles because these are
some of the most important things that visitors and customers will remember about you
and your business.
Develop social media plan
Create a social media that covers the following elements sequentially:
A. Research your markets
B. Choose your social media objectives
C. Monitor competitors
D. Create a competitive advantage
E. Target your markets
F. Set your budgets
G. Implement your strategy
H. Track the results
B2B social platforms
Not all platforms work for B2Bs simply because their target markets will not use all
platforms to acquire new products or services. A social network to consider is LinkedIn
which styles itself as a professional social media site and many B2Bs uses it to engage
with new prospects and recruit qualified professionals to fill their positions.
Also, sites like slideshare.net are used by businesses to distribute their whitepapers,
presentations, videos and demonstrations to showcase their skills and inform prospects on
how they can benefit from their services. Prospective clients can then follow your
organisation and receive updates on new material that you share. This helps to highlight
your expertise and demonstrate how your business can offer its services to the benefit of
these prospects.
Messages You Want To Promote
The messages you send out on social sites are what people will identify your business with
– so they should be of the highest quality. All messages, whether they are tweets, images,
pictures, links, etc. should be in line with your brand identity and brand values, and they
should reinforce the image that you want to put out there.
That may mean working with a brand strategy expert to help you create a unique
positioning that is evident in your profile, cover images, logos, messages and everywhere
else your target audience encounters your brand on social sites.
Who You Are Targeting
Knowing who you want to reach with your messages, offers and products is one of the
first things to include in your social marketing plan. Whether they are existing customers,
prospects or business customers; you should also know who they are and what they
actually need.
Knowing who they are, helps you also to identify which social media sites are important
to them. For example, if you want to reach professionals in your industry and highlight the
launch of a new service or product, then LinkedIn and Twitter are likely the best platforms
to use.
If you are an online retailer of women’s fashion, then Facebook is likely a good site to
help you boost brand awareness and create buzz around your products.
Your Social Budget
Now that you’ve decided which strategy you will implement, and you’ve chosen the
tactics that will help you achieve your marketing objectives, it’s now time to include the
budget in your social media marketing plan. Setting the right budget is important because
it helps you to implement all the tasks that are important to your strategy.
So, start by making a list of all the tactics that are part of your strategy and then find out
what the costs will be for each and then add them to come up with your final budget. Also,
include any costs related to hiring a social media expert that will help you to manage your
accounts.
Advertise on social media
Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn now have many features, and some
of these include paid advertisement to reach a wide range of demographics. These
advertising tools make it possible for you to target individuals and businesses that are in
your target market and increase your sales and leads.
These advertising tools aren’t free of course, and you pay for traffic that clicks through to
your website. However, this an effective customer acquisition strategy that leads to an
increase in sales.
Offer discounts
Coupons, vouchers, money-off offers are effective at increasing interest from target
markets especially for consumer markets, and this helps to increase the customer base.
Discounts can be offered and promoted in your online advertising campaigns and on
platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.
However, discounts are not very effective at creating customer loyalty and often these
customers who are looking for them will shop around to get the best offers.

11 Tips for Safe Online Shopping

let's face it, there's each reason on the planet to shop on the web. The deals are there. The choice is psyche boggling. The shopping is secure. Transportation is quick. Indeed, even returns are really simple, with the right e-rears. Shopping has never been less demanding or more advantageous for buyers.

In any case, shouldn't something be said about the terrible folks who lay in hold up? IID's Third Quarter eCrime Report for 2011 shows that utilization of phishing assaults (where hoodlums endeavor to cheat you out of your sign-in certifications and even Mastercard information by putting on a show to be a genuine site, or even an online bank) is down, as much as eight percent since the second quarter and 11 percent since the second from last quarter of a year ago. That is extraordinary news—aside from the same report says locales with malware (malignant code went for trading off your security) has expanded by 89 percent since the second quarter.

Occasion Gift Guide 2013Stay quiet. While to some degree disturbing, these details ought not keep you from shopping on the web. You essentially require some judgment skills and down to earth counsel. Take after these fundamental rules and you can shop online with certainty. Here are 11 tips for staying safe on the web, so you can begin verifying things on that Christmas shopping list.

1. Use Familiar Websites

Begin at a trusted site as opposed to shopping with a web search tool. Indexed lists can be fixed to lead you off track, particularly when you float past the initial few pages of connections. On the off chance that you know the site, odds are it's more averse to be a sham. We as a whole know Amazon.com and that it conveys everything under the sun; similarly, pretty much every significant retail outlet has an online store, from Target to Best Buy to Home Depot. Be careful with incorrect spellings or locales utilizing an alternate top-level space (.net rather than .com, for instance)— those are the most established traps in the book. Yes, the deals on these destinations may look alluring, yet that is the way they deceive you into surrendering your data.

2. Search for the Lock

Never at any point, ever purchase anything internet utilizing your Mastercard from a webpage that doesn't have SSL (secure attachments layer) encryption introduced—in any event. You'll know whether the site has SSL on the grounds that the URL for the site will begin with HTTPS://(rather than just HTTP://). A symbol of a bolted latch will show up, ordinarily in the status bar at the base of your web program, or right by the URL in the location bar. It relies on upon your program.

Never, ever give anybody your Visa over email. Ever.

3. Try not to Tell All

No web shopping store needs your standardized savings number or your birthday to work together. In any case, if criminals get them, consolidated with your Mastercard number for buys, they can do a great deal of harm. The more they know, the less demanding it is to take your personality. Whenever possible, default to surrendering minimal measure of data.

4. Check Statements

Try not to sit tight for your bill to come toward the end of the month. Go online consistently amid the Christmas season and take a gander at electronic proclamations for your Mastercard, platinum card, and financial records. Ensure you don't see any deceitful charges, notwithstanding starting from locales like PayPal. (All things considered, there's more than one approach to get to your cash.)

On the off chance that you do see something incorrectly, get the telephone to address the matter rapidly. On account of Mastercards, pay the bill just once you know every one of your charges are precise. You have 30 days to inform the bank or card backer of issues, in any case; after that, you may be at risk for the charges in any case.

5. Immunize Your PC

Swindlers don't simply lounge around sitting tight for you to give them information; some of the time they give you a bit of something additional to help things along. You have to ensure against malware with customary redesigns to your hostile to infection program. PCMag suggests Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (4.5 stars, Editors' Choice, $39.95 direct), which has additional items to battle ID burglary, or at any rate the free Ad-Aware Free Internet Security 9.0 (4.5 stars, Editors' Choice).

6. Use Strong Passwords
We like to beat this dead horse about making sure to utilize uncrackable passwords, but it's never more important than when banking and shopping online. Our tips for creating a unique password can come in handy during a time of year when shopping around probably means creating new accounts on all sorts of e-commerce sites.

7. Think Mobile
The National Retail Federation says that 5.7 percent of adults will use their mobile devices to do comparison shopping before making a purchase. (And 32.1 percent will comparison shop online with a computer, as well.) There's no real need to be any more nervous about shopping on a mobile device than online. The trick is to use apps provided directly by the retailers, like Amazon, Target, etc. Use the apps to find what you want and then make the purchase directly, without going to the store or the website. (For more complete information, be sure to also read our tips for shopping safely on a mobile device.)

8. Avoid Public Terminals
Hopefully we don't have to tell you it's a bad idea to use a public computer to make purchases, but we still will. If you do, just remember to log out every time you use a public terminal, even if you were just checking email.

What about using your own laptop to shop while you're out? It's one thing to hand over a credit card to get swiped at the checkout, but when you must enter the number and expiration date on a website while sitting in a public cafe, you're giving an over-the-shoulder snooper plenty of time to see the goods. At the very least, think like a gangster: Sit in the back, facing the door.

9. Privatize Your Wi-Fi
If you do decide to go out with the laptop to shop, you'll need a Wi-Fi connection. Only use the wireless if you access the Web over a virtual private network (VPN) connection. If you don't get one from your employer, you can set up a free one with AnchorFree Hotspot Shield, if you're willing to put up with the ads, or pay $4.99 a month or $44.99 a year to skip the ads. There's even an iOS app version of Hotspot Shield, but that will cost you $.99 per month or $9.99 a year after the first seven days.

By the way, now is not a good time to try out a hotspot you're unfamiliar with. Stick to known networks, even if they're free, like those found at Starbucks or Barnes & Noble stores that is powered by AT&T. Look for the network named "attwifi," then open a browser to click into the "walled garden" to get final access. You can also find free Wi-Fi at McDonalds, Panera Bread, and FedEx Office locations, not to mention libraries and local cafes.

10. Count the Cards
Gift cards are the most requested holiday gift every year, and this year will be no exception. Stick to the source when you buy one; scammers like to auction off gift cards on sites like eBay with little or no funds on them.

11. Know What's Too Good to Be True
Once again, McAfee has compiled a Twelve Scams of Christmas list, all things to be aware of while shopping. The "coupon scam" offers of a free product with purchase, in particular an iPad (a very coveted gadget at any holiday) or even holiday job offers. Many of these "offers" will come in via social media. Beware even of your friends, who might innocently forward such a thing. Be very wary even if you get a message from friend claiming he or she has been robbed, especially a friend overseas looking for money to be wire transferred, unless you absolutely can confirm it by talking to him or her personally. Skepticism in most cases can go a long way toward saving you from a stolen card number.