How To Use Hype In Your Social Media Marketing

Hype Works. None of us like it; all of us succumb to it. "They" keep doing it, because it works.

The reason hype works is because of the feelings that are generated with hype. There's excitement in the spokesperson's voice, enthusiasm and energy. There's the hope that whatever is presented really IS the solution to every problem on the planet. There's the vision of a better, brighter, richer, thinner, bug-free tomorrow. And if the practitioner does the hype really well, the price sounds like the bargain of all time.

What we resent about hype is that we are raised up with massive expectations and then inevitable reality sets in. We fall hard when the picture that was painted turns out to be smoke and mirrors. We resume gloom, feeling "taken" once again. As per usual.

Getting Fans and Engaging With Customers on Facebook - Part 1

There is no super secret on how to succeed on Facebook: it's all about hard work. The platform was created around personal relationships, and that's what you have to focus on. There are many strategies you can use to connect with your fans, but we are going to start simple. Right after you finish setting up your business page, Facebook will show you 4 ways to get fans: Invite your friends, tell your fans, post status updates and promote this page on your website.

1. Invite your friends: In this option you will be able to invite your friends from your personal account to join your page. Just click on INVITE FRIENDS, and choose who you want to invite. Check the box next to the person's name, and then click on SUBMIT. Facebook will automatically invite them to like your page.

2. Tell your fans: That's the most effective way to get fans, but you'll need to have an email database or an email account to link to Facebook. 

How LinkedIn Can Be Part of Your SEO Solution

LinkedIn is very SEO-friendly and therefore, is a service you should use. I use LinkedIn and find it more valuable by the day. "SEO," in layman's terms, means using Internet tools to help your ideal customers find you, your products and your services. When you first visit www.linkedin [dot] com and create an account, you create a personal profile. The profile reads like a Resume. It has your name, current job, previous job(s), education and recommendations. Because the LinkedIn profile reads like a Resume, I tell people to have their complete Resume in electronic format before creating their LinkedIn profile. They can simply copy and paste text from the Resume to the LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn is very SEO friendly. I've had several occasions when I posted an entry at LinkedIn, Googled my name and found that entry at the top of the list. Not only did Google pick up the new entry within 30 seconds, but it also placed that entry at the top of the Search Results window.

Is Your Business Missing Out On These 5 Advantages Of Facebook Marketing?

As Facebook users breached the 900 million mark this March of 2012, the value of Facebook marketing has significantly increased again. Such a large user base means that Facebook is a leading source of user-generated content in the web, and that in itself makes the social network very valuable for business through:

Ratings and Reviews

A simple 'Like' might not be an explicit recommendation, but for people who have a friend on Facebook that 'Likes' something, they can easily see and feel the positive reinforcement it brings to whatever item or content was 'liked.' And then, of course, there are actual comments. This facet of Facebook that provides multiple ways to rate or review items, Fan pages, or content is quite invaluable to businesses.

How Social Media Has Affected People's Ability to Communicate Effectively

During the 20th century the school systems made it a part of their curriculum to teach students good communication in English class. Towards the end of the century and technology influenced the business more and more, especially the use of social media where people could communicate in the least amount of space, people started losing their ability to communicate effectively.

Before the advent of social media on the Internet, people networked by attending Chamber of Commerce after hours meetings, where they would introduce themselves, pass out their business cards, and develop a one on one relationship by talking face-to-face. On social media you can befriend someone, whether you know them or not. This can be a good method of building a business, but at the same time you don't know if this is a criminal that you are connecting with.

Branding For Social Media Use Can Be Summed Up In 3 Points

Branding for social media use comes down to 3 points - the look, the tone and the feel. It's useful so that your content or your story can be instantly recognizable, Your "brand" is a visual shortcut. It enables you to SHOW your story and it requires you to be congruent with your target audience. Therefore, when you think of branding your business, you are also identifying who that target audience is!

The Look, Tone And Feel In Practical Application.

It is likely that you have heard the phrase: branding (or brand marketing, as it is often called by the folks who provide this service professionally) is all about the look, tone and feel. You may be wondering what that means in terms of a practical application:

Get The Most Out Of Social Media Marketing

One of the marketing advancements that is gaining grounds is social media marketing. This marketing style takes advantage of the internet to promote products and services.

The people's fascination and involvement with social media has made it the perfect tool to get people to notice the new products being sold and services being offered.

Social Networking sites are now not just for updating family members and friends about what's going on in a person's life. It is not just for communication. Today it is also for advertising.

Advantages of Using Social Media Marketing

What About Going Social on The Net to Reach Your Customers?

Gone are the days when you had to travel a lot to meet your relatives or your friends to keep up your social standing in the society. Nowadays all you need is an internet connection and an account in Facebook or Twitter to socialize with the rest of the world. I am amazed at the pace of technology and often wonder at the dependency of all on it. Even my six year old daughter wants to open an account in one of the social sites to be in touch with her friends, such is the influence of social media. There is no doubt that the computer technology has made things easier for us, but we need to use the same in the right way to increase our efficiency rather than replacing our social communication with it fully, especially in personal relations.

Video chat and Skype has given us a new way of communication thus increasing the accessibility and multiparty gathering from different parts of the world. The day is not far when we will see people getting married on a video conference and different relatives coming to the wedding through the same link.

Twitter Tips - How to Send a Direct Message

Twitter is one of the most popular websites on the Web, with 175 million tweets being sent every day. Most of those tweets are freely visible to the public, but sometimes Twitter users want to send a private message to another user. The only way to do this in Twitter is to send a direct message, which can only be seen by the user you send it to, much like an e-mail.

You can only send a message to people who are following you, though. That's the only catch. If you want to send a message to someone who isn't following you, you'll have to send a public tweet and include the @ symbol followed by the person's user name. However, for anyone who is following you, sending a message is simple and can be done in one of two ways.

One way to send a private message is from your profile page. At the top of the page next to the search box is a generic picture of a person. 

Don't Waste Your Money on Social Media Two-Timers

Small business owners! I know... you recognize how powerful social media can be for your business vs traditional marketing, but are you noticing the lack of engagement by your followers? But you say you really don't have the time to invest in doing it right for better results?

Consider outsourcing. BUT be careful who you hire!

Don't fall for: "No time for Social Media? Pay just $___ a month for twice daily posting, five days a week."

That's like saying: "No time to answer customer phone calls? Pay just $___ a month for twice daily answering, 5 days a week." NOT! Get it? Oh, sure... having someone post 2x a day at least keeps you active for search engines... but isn't the goal customer face-time and response?

To Pinterest or Not?

What is Pinterest and Why Should You Care

Pinterest isn't new but it's just in the last few months that there has been a buzz about this new social media site called Pinterest, which actually was started by a couple of college guys. They had been looking at paper catalogues and then they suddenly had a brilliant idea about how much fun it would be to be able to look at a catalogue of items their friends had picked out. In began in December of 2009 and by March of 2010 they had a prototype in use for friends and family. Since then every user has been given a handful of invites to share with their friends and family.

In December 2011, Pinterest was on Hitwise's ten social networks list in position #5 ahead of Google+ and even ahead of LinkedIn.

Earning Using Social Media

New advances in technology have completely revolutionized the manner in which people interact. Physical presence is no longer a requirement to keep in touch with your friends and family. With a few clicks and keystrokes, one is able to view the most recent photos, find out the current location, as well as know about the latest developments in people's lives. Remarkable, isn't it? And all this can be done in real time. There is yet another advantage of the increased accessibility of information: you can earn income from it.

Social media marketing encompasses a wide range of marketing strategies. By definition, it is the process of employing social media in order to promote or sell products and services. You will later find out that it is not limited to computer usage.

Using social media marketing to promote your products has several advantages over the traditional means of marketing. 

How Don Draper and Roger Sterling Succeed in Advertising - Martinis Anyone?

When Don Draper's highball glass starts to twinkle & glisten like his eyes, it is almost guaranteed that the sexy ad man from Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Pryce has come up with a yummy campaign cocktail sure to entice and inebriate his potential client.

The days of "taking your client out for liquid lunches" and showing them a "good time" at the local go-go palace have been shoved aside to make room for coffee conclaves at Starbuck's, tuna salad sandwich trysts at organic health stores and even more prevalent is the ever so popular Noon-Time Showdowns on Skype. What happened to good old fashioned face-to-face, get down and dirty, this is what I look like when I've had a few too many, sign the contract and let's do business kind of work ethics?

Social Media & Social Networking are, for now, our modern day "sign the contract" work ethic. It's the way most advertising & marketing gets out there.

Social Networks: Understanding Each One

You know you should listen to your customers and you are aware that social media has been the new way for people to express their opinions about products and services. But what are the platforms available and what are the differences between each one of them? Here is a quick guide for you:

FACEBOOK

What it is: It is the most popular social network with over 800 million users. People usually build profiles to keep in touch with family and friends. Lately it has been used by businesses as a marketing tool. On Facebook people can send and receive messages, chat online, post pictures and share links and videos. They can also "like" a page - there are six types of pages: local businesses, companies, products, artists, entertainment and community. Facebook offers many options to interact such as the Wall, photo albums, comments space and the "like" button, where people click if they like the comment or post. If users don't like something or someone, they have the option of blocking the person's updates or deleting the person from their profile.

Using Social Media for Your Event's Success

The social media explosion has changed the way events were being organized so far. The platform for social networking has been serving a lot as a marketing and promotion tool these days. Today, organizers across the world explore every aspect that a social media site offers to promote events. In fact, social media is infused with today's event promotion strategy, thus opening up new avenues to promote events virtually.

In this article, we are going to share four key tips on how to maximize the usage of the social media platform to execute a successful promotional campaign for events.

1. Create buzz by setting up an account

The promotion of an event starts long before the scheduled date of the actual program. You can start by creating an event page on leading social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn,etc. 

Using HootSuite to Help You

I often hear people share they are losing all their time in social media or they just can't ever find the time.

With so many social media platforms available to you, however, it can be tricky to manage all of them. You may even have multiple accounts in one site - for example, in Facebook, you may have a personal account and a page you created for your brand. It's very time-consuming to have to log in to all of your accounts, as well as input the information you need to post. So is there a better way to do this?

Well, HootSuite can definitely help you. It's a social media dashboard that can help you manage all of your social media accounts in one simple and easy-to-use interface. And that's not all it does - it even helps you monitor, track and measure your brand, so you can determine if you're getting a good ROI in your social media investments.

Managing your brand in one dashboard

Social Media and Email

There are so many available ways to make connections online and you can't just rely on email marketing to get great results. When used separately social and email are powerful tools, but used together they can really bring your customer engagement up to new heights.

Here are some tips for combining social and email:

    Use social media to get more people on your opt-in list. With a Facebook page for your business, you can provide page visitors an opportunity to "like" you and to register to be part of your email; on a Twitter account you tease followers with short blurbs from an upcoming newsletter or an offer.

    Flip the first tip and use your email to boost your social media fans and followers. In email marketing messages, you can invite people to find you on Facebook and Twitter using embedded links and buttons.

Your Fears Make You Foolish - Tackle Social Media NOW Before Competitors Leave You in the Dust

If you are one of those small business or non-profs who is still confused, frightened or wary of Social Media, please keep reading.

As with any tool we don't know how to use, social media is a potentially fearful unknown. A beast that looms in the dark waiting to pounce on us if we don't conquer it first. Yet your competition is whacking away at it, bit by bit, and you're still trembling in the corner waiting to be eaten?

The good news for small business is that social media is not a monster to fear.

The bad news is that like all monsters in the closet, social media continues to frighten until you expose the beast: a harmless tool waiting to be used in most any fashion you like.

How to Social Network Marketing on Facebook: Tips for Engaging the Right Audience

When you first learn how to do social network marketing, one of the key skills you must know is how to perform a paradigm shift. The nature of Facebook is a place where people socialize; it's not an online marketplace. Why market on Facebook, then? Marketers and business owners know that they must create brand awareness and increase community which will eventually lead to sales. Finding your target audience and interacting with them will certainly lead to future profits if you know how to do it right. When customers are genuinely interested in you and your brand, that interest can eventually lead to sales. Here are some tips for finding the right audience.

Avoid the hard-sell

Conventional marketing allows for hard-selling to individuals. Do not use this type of marketing method on Facebook. 

How to Make the Most of Facebook for B2B Marketing

Most b2b marketing experts constantly find ways of how to utilise social media. And why not? Since almost everyone is into social media-plus marketing the "social" way is more subtle and effective than doing it the hard selling way.

Facebook for Business to Business Marketing

It all began in this social network. For marketers, it's a good news that Facebook-what was once considered to be a social network for requesting friends can already be used for business purposes. Here's how:

1. It can be transformed into a lead generation channel. So who says you can't generate business leads on Facebook? Sure you can-especially now with its latest Facebook Timeline rollout; though you can't place calls to action within your cover photos, but then you could place them in its "Views and Apps" part of the page, just below your cover picture.