All posts in Social Networks

FREE Exclusive Report – 7 Biggest Social Media Marketing Disasters

By On February 22, 2011 In Social Networks With No Comments Permanent Link to FREE Exclusive Report – 7 Biggest Social Media Marketing DisastersPermalink

7 Biggest Social Media Markerting Disasters

7 Biggest Social Media Marketing Disasters

Uncover the 7 Biggest Social Media Marketing Disasters that could cost you £££’s and loss of credibility.

  • Discover Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Disasters that threatened the credibility of companies such as Honda, Domino’s Pizza, Taco Bell, Walmart, Habitat & Rentokil.
  • Whether you are just starting out or have been in business for years, this FREE report is a must read so that you can avoid committing these mistakes and protect YOU and YOUR business.

Simply click on the link below to grab a FREE copy of this report right now goo.gl/CWKWv

7 Compelling Reasons To Have A Business Blog

By On August 18, 2010 In Social Networks With 1 Comment Permanent Link to 7 Compelling Reasons To Have A Business BlogPermalink

To manage the complexities of a Business Blog could appear quite daunting for a business owner. It shouldn’t be. A great business blog will actually help simplify your internet marketing program. Blogging accomplishes multiple marketing functional goals with minimal structural elements.

It is like killing many birds with the same stone ! Below are 7 compelling reasons why you should consider having a business blog. If you are already into blogosphere, then use the below checklist to evaluate if your blog is fuliffling the below functions.

1. Search Engine Optimisation – Blogs such as those based on WordPress are indexed favourably on the search engines improving your [intlink id="344" type="post"]SEO[/intlink] rankings.

2. Social Media Optimisation – This really goes hand in hand. When you engage customers on the [intlink id="420" type="post"]social media sites,[/intlink] blog content will ensure that the targetted traffic is driven back to your sites.

3. Lead Generation – Blog content can be an effective tool for lead geenration as prospects will read what you have to offer as a company and will make decision to buy or not.

4. Value to Customers – Blogs are a great way of delivering solid value to your current and prospect customers and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

6. Customer Nurturing - Blog content is a powerful tool that can enable business owners to educate propsects and build trust with them until they’re ready to buy.

7. PR – Blogs again act as a conduit for all your online PR efforts and to drive [intlink id="347" type="post"]targetted website traffic[/intlink].

Inspite of many benefits listed above business owners don’t quite understand the importance of blogging. Business Blogging is really the road to profits that you should be on right now !

Social Media Marketing Tactics Used By Businesses – 2010 study

By On August 11, 2010 In Featured, Social Networks With No Comments Permanent Link to Social Media Marketing Tactics Used By Businesses – 2010 studyPermalink

What social marketing tactics are most often used by organizations for marketing purposes? The accompanying chart is a result of the survey conducted by MarketingSherpa.com to list the sort of social media marketing tactics that are being used by the business owners in 2010.

Social Media Marketing Tactics used by business owners

1. Participation on company branded & managed social networks such as Facebook, Linkedin (78%).

2. Microblogging such as Twitter etc (63%).

3. Content Sharing – Youtube, Flickr, Slideshare etc (63%)

4. Company Owned / Managed Blogs (59%)

5. Social Meadis News Releases (48%)

6. Using Social Media to improve [intlink id="22" type="page"]SEO[/intlink] rankings (47%)

7. Advertising – Blogs, Social Media sites (31%)

8. Email content sharing with Social Media sites (30%)

This chart shows the average percentage of companies using each of the social media platforms listed above for marketing purposes but ‘not how they should be using it’.

Are you using any or all of the above [intlink id="22" type="category"]Social Media Marketing [/intlink]tactics ? Please leave a comment below to share your success stories.

Business Blogging – Introduction

By On August 4, 2010 In Social Networks With No Comments Permanent Link to Business Blogging – IntroductionPermalink

The word blog is short for web log and refers to a web site written in a diary format, with regular entries (or posts) by the blog author. Blogs can cover any topic and can even be written by multiple authors. Perhaps the best way to familiarise yourself with the format is to read one of the more popular blogs.

What do blogs look like?

Blogs tend to list the most recent post at the top of the page, with the posts getting older as you scroll down. This tends to be the model your readers will expect, and most blogging software is configured this way. A typical blog post includes a title, the body of the post, optional images, the date and time of the post, a permanent link to the post, a comment link for readers to leave their feedback, and a trackback link.

What makes blogs different from other web sites?

There are a few important ways blogs differ from regular web pages.

First, blogs are designed to be frequently and easily updated. Creating a new blog post usually involves nothing more than entering some text into a form and clicking Submit. No HTML or programmememing skills are required. A regularly updated blog can help your site get crawled by search engines more often. If a search engine finds that your page is being updated every day, it’ll be more likely to reindex that page frequently to ensure that it always has the most recent copy.

The second important way that blogs differ from normal web pages is that they actively promote and distribute themselves throughout the Internet using a technology called RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (It can also mean Rich Site Summary, depending on which version you’re talking about).

A blog is also a type of content management system (CMS) that makes it easy for any business owner to publish and make great hubs for your other social media marketing efforts, as they can be integrated with nearly every other tool and platform.

Every business with a website should have a blog that speaks to its current and potential customers as real people and should be conversational in nature.

Blogs can be set up on a variety of platforms - Hosted Versus Self-Hosted

Hosted software resides on a server owned by the organisation that maintains the site. Many hosted solutions will give you a URL to use, such as http://.wordpress.com.

Self-hosted software is run on your own server. Self-hosted platforms require installation and configuration, but once they are set up they’re completely under your control. Blogs running self-hosted software are located on a domain owned solely by you, as opposed to the shared domains often used by hosted blogs.

Hosted software is often easier for new bloggers to get started on, but for best results your blog should appear on your own domain. Some hosted blog systems allow you to use your own domain; take advantage of this if you can. Most popular blogs today use self-hosted software, and chances are good that you’ll need help installing, designing, configuring, and maintaining your blog to get it running to your needs.

WordPress

WordPress is the most well-known and widely used blogging software, as well as our personal favorite. It is free, is open source, and has a robust community of developers and designers who’ve built thousands of plug-ins and themes for it, making it the most customizable platform available. Once WordPress is installed and set up, it is also one of the easiest to use. Infact WordPress is now being widely used as the content management system for full websites (such as this website where the blog is integrated into the main website). Wordpress.com also offers a hosted version of WordPress software that can be used for free.

Blogger

One of the earliest blogging platforms, Blogger is hosted software owned by Google and most sites using it appear on URLs such as http://.blogspot.com. It is very easy to use, but it lacks many of the features available in other platform solutions. It is a popular choice for new bloggers creating their first sites.

Best Practices for Ensuring Success in Social Media Marketing

By On July 28, 2010 In Social Networks With No Comments Permanent Link to Best Practices for Ensuring Success in Social Media MarketingPermalink

Assessing opportunities in social media marketing may seem like a daunting task paritcularly for a small business – There are thousands of social media platforms out there and not all of them may be right for your business. Like with any marketing strategy, business owners are often challenged to find and build strategies that provide the best opportunities for establishing a relationship with their customers. However, this process becomes much less daunting when armed with key insights and clear objectives to use as a prism for assessing which platforms have the necessary scale and engagement opportunities for your brand.

Below we present a 3 step process which will act as a guide before you jump into social media marketing:

STEP 1 – Define Marketing Objectives

Strategic development starts with setting clear objectives. Goal setting for your social media marketing program should be no different than with any other marketing plan. The goals that work best are traditional marketing objectives such as to increase overall business/brand awareness, higher sales converssions, list building, driving website traffic and building loyal customer base.

STEP 2 – Evaluate Opportunities

Innovation in technology has lead to advent of endless social media platforms. Innovation, creativity and outof- the-box thinking often lend themselves to successful interactions in social marketing but often at the expense of acheiving marketing objectives. Remember businesses benefit more from the direct response element rather than awards. Awards don’t pay the bills; results do. Also remember that just because a social platform grows rapidly and/or gains a lot of media attention, this does not mean that you should jumo on the bandwagon as well.

Use the following simple checklist to evaluate opportunities for your business:

1. Objectives: Does the opportunity meet your business objectives? Does this opportunity provide value that will help me achieve my stated goals? How will I measure the opportunity’s contribution to achieving these goals?

2. Assests: Does the opportunity leverage your business’ existing tangible assets? Can it showcase the strengths of your business – online content, endorsements, customer testimonials, partnerships, sponsorships etc?

3 Rules: Does the opportunity abide by the social media rules of the road? Does this opportunity allows you to strike a balance between your brand’s own style and the specific rules of the social space you wish to occupy – without sacrificing creativity and innovation ?

4. Value: Does it provide significant value to your customers ? Is this value perceived by customers to be more than that of your competitiors ?

STEP 3 – Selecting Appropriate Social Media Platforms

Once you have defined marketing objectives and evaluated opportunities, selection of appropriate social media platforms should take place. Just becasue your competitor is using Twitter doesn’t mean you have to be on it as well. For instance, Flickr (photo sharing site) would be ideal for wedding photograhpy business but perhaps not for an Accountant. Do you get the idea ?

This 3 step process should be an essential element of any effective [intlink id="50" type="page"]Social Media Marketing Strategy[/intlink]. Please also remember that this has to work in conjunction with any other offline or online marketing efforts and not in isolation.

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