Social Media is a wasteland of opportunities..majority of the businesses uses social media to grow their businesses however, end up wasting their time…WHY????
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One of the most valuable benefits of an Internet savvy approach to marketing your company online is the increased visibility that can reach an audience of millions with a few strategic and well-planned clicks and using social media tools. So, to start with the basics….let’s start with this simple question!!
How Well Is The Visibility Of Your Company Online?
The more online visibility your company has, the more likely people within your industry will look to you for necessary products or services. The site gains an insane amount of traffic due to name recognition and search engine priority alone.
From social media profiles to online directory listings, there are a wide variety of ways as well as social media tools to bolster the visibility of your company. Determining which approach is best suited to your marketing needs is one of the most important tasks.
A poorly marketed company may still succeed depending on its luck and the quality of its products, but a well marketed company will always hold an advantage. If your prospective audience isn’t aware and knowledgeable about your product, your company may suffer. Having strong online visibility is the most efficient way to avoid this situation.
Misunderstanding How Social Media Really Works
Here’s a common mistake: not understanding that all social media outlets are different. For example, Facebook is great because it’s the most frequently used social media service and it’s the most trustworthy. But, it may not fit your business.
True Facts of Social Media
- One billion people actively use Facebook every month
- 500,000 people use Twitter every month
- Google’s +1 button is used 2+ billion times each day
- 5 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every hour
- 3,600 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every hour
There Are Few Things You Should Know About Social Media Tools
97% of consumers turn to the Internet before making contact with a business. Social media is likely the first point of contact your potential and existing customers will have with your business.
With nearly 1.5 billion users on Face Book and 300 million active users on Twitter, the visibility that social media offers is unlike any other marketing medium.
Social media helps attract new employees, customers, and influencer by strengthening relationships and increasing brand awareness and stickiness. Social media is valuable in any industry because it helps audiences form impressions about your brand, judge the reliability of products and services, make purchasing decisions, and influence the decisions of their peers.
Many brands are on social media because they know they have to be – in fact, 94% of B2B marketers use social media marketing to market their business – but few understand how to use it correctly…..so what goes wrong with them
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Social media objectives not well-defined
Before jumping into social media, determine what you expect to gain from social media – both short and long-term – and how social media will fit into your broader marketing goals. Remember that everything you put out on social media should reflect these goals.
Not sure which social media channel to pursue
Doing social media successfully does not mean being on every social media platform. The social media platforms that will perform well are unique to every business. For example, a retail store would likely perform well on Instagram because of the focus on visual content. Defining your objectives will help determine which social media platforms to utilize and how to use them. It’s crucial to identify which social media sites are popular with your prospects and customers.
To identify your target audience, ask yourself: Who are they? Where do they live online? Which social platforms do they use? Once you have determined this, focus your energy and investments where your audience is.
Delivering relevant and valuable content
With Google’s most recent algorithm update, social shares now have a big influence on your page rank on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This means promoting your content on social media helps increase your page’s search engine rankings. The more engaging and relevant your content is to your audience, the more valuable it will appear in search engine rankings.
Content like blog posts, infographics, videos, images, and white papers feed social media marketing. Give your customers the content they want by listening to their questions related to your product or industry. When creating content, abide by the 80-20 rule – 80% engaging content, 20% promotional.
Lack of monitoring and measuring
For example, you realize that Facebook is the best network for your brand. But, how well is your Facebook campaign doing? How many likes or shares is your content receiving? Are people leaving comments? Are you making any money or new subscribers because of your awesome Facebook content? These are important questions that need to be answered.
Hence; it is important to understand that where your audience is located, their basic demographics and the above mentioned points to keep in mind when you start with social media.
Social Media Tools For Small Business
One of the main aims of social media marketing is to stay relevant to your audience.
Social media tools can help reduce the stress of multi-tasking and keep your social media activities consistent.
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Below are some of the best social media tools for small business to help make your life as a social media marketer easier.
HootSuite
HootSuite is the most popular social media management tool for people and businesses to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks like Facebook and Twitter from one web-based dashboard. Recently it has become an essential tool for managing social media, tracking conversations and measuring campaign results via the web or mobile devices.
It offers a free, pro and enterprise solution for managing unlimited social profiles, enhanced analytics, advanced message scheduling, Google Analytics and Facebook insights integration.
Buffer
Buffer allows you to post to Twitter, Facebook profiles and pages, LinkedIn profiles and groups (currently not company pages) and the niche social network app.net.
When it comes to the next time to post for your Facebook page, Buffer will post the first post in that queue and the same for each other network. Hence; you don’t have to wait for your Buffer queue either, if you want to post something straight away, then you can do.
Canva
With social media, visuals are a great way to grab your user’s attention. However, social media managers for small businesses rarely have enough time to create detailed visuals — this is where Canva comes in. Canva is the easiest way to design beautiful images to go along with your social media posts.
The social media tool provides features that make it easy to turn ideas into visuals. Furthermore; you can create images with quotes, conversation bubbles, custom icons, and stickers.
It can enhance images further with it’s various amazing filters/effects and the ability to straighten, crop and resize images.
SumoMe
SumoMe provides free social media tools you need to grow your WordPress site. This plugin will make it easy for your readers to join your email list, share your articles and optimize with analytics.
Bit.ly
You may or may not think it odd to include bit.ly in this list. You may not even have heard of the service. bit.ly is a URL shortener. One of the big advantages in this historically, was its use on a social network that has a limited number of characters such as Twitter which only as a maximum of 140 characters. Using a full URL like the example would be a huge waste of space.
33Across
33Across it helps brands get a more complete picture of their online audience by analyzing how they interact with the brand’s social media interactions. That’s good for both companies and their customers. 33Across helps companies figure out the best places to focus their marketing efforts, which leads to more relevant ads for consumers.
Why Run Paid Social Media Campaigns?
The days of being able to do social media exclusively free are sadly behind us. But a lot of marketers seems to have a problem paying for social media campaigns.
Metrics are all well and good but does social advertising have a positive effect on results? Well, the signs are good. With Facebook ads for example, you can expect engagement levels of between 1% and 3%, far greater than you would expect from an alternative paid advertising channels.
Wrapping It Up
Driving conversions and traffic from social media requires a combination of tweaks to your posts, and some structural changes to your website and blog. At the same time, you need to keep a close eye on your social media stats to understand which content is performing well and how you can leverage it to increase your overall social media engagement. Thus; if you can get this combination right, you can create sustainable stream of high converting social media traffic to your blog or website.
Do you need help getting your business website noticed in search results?
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