There is a reason why it is called “social” media and there are rules that you should follow when it comes to employing “social media” to market and brand yourself and your art. Every day I see small businesses that are ruining their brand by abusing social media. Artists are no different, as they are a “small business” too! Here are some quick rules of social media that you should follow:
1. When a social media account is set up make sure that all of the information is complete and well written. Think of this page or your profile as a business brochure. Whenever possible, have links to your website, contact information and alternative ways for people to find you. Always upload an up-to-date “professional” picture of yourself and make sure that you have a pleasant smile on your face too!
2. Set aside some time each day to visit your social media pages and do some housecleaning. Read the posts, messages and any updates. Return your messages and comments promptly. A half hour a day is all you need to devote to this.
3. Always reply back to someone who has sent to you a post or comment and acknowledge it in some form. If someone makes a comment on your art, send them a thank you note. This can be done right on the page or privately back through their email. Either way thank them for their nice comment, thought or interest. It is the right thing to do.
4. If someone tries to engage you in some form of negativity, political, religious, controversial or otherwise. Do not take the bait! Ignore it and move on. If they persist in this behavior, you may have to unfriend them, block them or report them. Whatever you do, do not engage yourself with someone like this as you will not win and you will only waste your time. Being a part of this type of behavior will only hurt your brand.
5. Be helpful to be people. If you read or see something that someone might be interested in, send them a link. Always be responsive if they ask questions or have concerns, get back to them with an answer. If you do not know, say so.
Think twice before you send anything out. Try to imagine that every friend, follower or contact that you have on your social media pages will be reading your reply or post and that they will form an opinion of you by what you have written.
6. Neatness counts. By this I mean, shortcuts, abbreviations and poor spelling may be acceptable in some forms of social media. Here, it is not wise, as again, this is your “company brochure” and it is an important part of your marketing and brand development.
7. Engage your followers with information, content and ideas. Become an expert in your niche and share it with others. No one really cares what you are drinking at Starbucks at that moment. …
Social Networking Tips – Are You Spending Too Much Time on Twitter?
Everybody loves Twitter. I get. Heck, even I spend some time on it each day. The operative word being “some.” I do not live there. I do not make it my home away from home like some of you marketers do. And the question that has to be asked is this. Even if you are getting a following on Twitter and making some cash from doing so, are your efforts worth the time spent when maybe you could be doing something else that would bring you a bigger return? This article takes a look at that issue.
I’m going to throw some hypothetical figures at you here in order to illustrate my point. These are in no way meant to reflect actual reality because the truth is, everybody is going to be different. But this should give you some idea of whether or not your time is being utilized properly.
Let’s for argument sake say that you spend two hours a day on Twitter chatting with your followers and getting new followers. Okay, great. Let’s say that those two hours a day, after a 30 day period, bring you in an additional $500 a month. That comes out to about $17 a day more or less. So you’re working two hours to make an additional $17 or at a rate of about $8.50 an hour. Now I don’t know about you, but I can make more than that working at a McDonalds.
Now, I know what you’re going to say. If you didn’t spend that two hours, you’d have $500 less at the end of the month. if you were to spend those two hours a day writing articles and submitting them to directories instead. With the proper niche research, two hours of article writing a day could easily mean an extra $1,000 a month. That’s twice as much income as what you’re making chatting on Twitter.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use Twitter. I use it. I use it all of about five minutes a day and that’s been good enough to increase my blog readership by four times. But I’m not going to put an exorbitant amount of time into Twitter when I know that for that same amount of time, I could be doing something that will bring me more money.
Too many people don’t value their time, and that’s the problem. They look at their time as free. It’s not. In fact, once you’ve spent your time on something, you can never get it back. Money, you can always get back from a decent return on your investment.
Think about this the next time you decide to fritter away your day on Twitter.
To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim…
Make The Most Of Social Media Marketing With These Important Pointers
Think about adding social networking to your marketing strategy, if you find that your statistics for the month are disappointing. Incorporating something new and fresh might be just what your business needs to help it claw its way out of a slump. Social media marketing can be successful, cost effective, and gets you out to a new audience. This article provides smart, easy steps for starting a successful marketing campaign with social media.
Create a plan before you start social media marketing. You will have to determine how you want your page set up, how often you can work on it, and who will do the work. Establish time guidelines for each aspect of your campaign. Stick to your plan as firmly as you can, and you will find success in social media marketing.
Become completely compatible with the big social media sites by adding comments, ratings and a sort function on your website. By adding these things, your readers will be able to mark their favorite articles or pictures. You should keep track of what kind of content is popular.
Post new updates as often as possible. A lot of social media users expect frequent updates; if you don’t come through, you may lose a lot of people. Work on updating your followers a couple of times each week.
Utilize social media to create a user friendly atmosphere. Design a store on Facebook which can be readily accessed through your posts, as an addition to your independent site. Many Facebook users prefer to remain on the site while browsing, so this option allows them to see and even purchase your products without leaving Facebook. You can have them make their purchase without leaving Facebook to go to your main site, which is usually their preference anyway.
When posting from your social media accounts, you should strive to come across as humble and approachable. Regardless of whether you are a start-up or an established business, readers will recognize arrogance and be turned off by it. You must always remember that it is your customers who ultimately wield the most power in your relationship, not you. Without them, your business can never be successful.
If you don’t already have a Yahoo account, make one so you can go through Yahoo Answers. Users submit their questions here and other users can answer them for free. Search questions in your market niche and give answers that highlight your products or services. You can become an expert through giving quality answers in a specific category.
You will frequently see interesting photo-shopped images on social media ad pages. Using these images is very smart because it draws peoples eyes to your ad. Once they look at your ad, then there is a greater chance they will visit your site.
This article should have convinced you that it’s pretty easy to get into the social media marketing groove! Once you start something like this you can keep on educating yourself in the ways you can make …
Advice To Help You Succeed In Social Media Marketing
If you have a website in order to generate a steady income, or plan to create one, you need to know how social media marketing can be used to your advantage. Making your online presence known is but one of the best ways to bring in faithful customers.
Start a conversation with your customers. Getting feedback from a customer is the first step to starting a conversation about improving your business. Talking openly with your customers is necessary to improve your products. Make it your mission to learn everything you can about their needs, and use this information to make your next move more effective, or improve your company as a whole.
Offer exclusive deals to customers who sign up for your social media sites in order to attract customers to those sites. They’re more likely to follow you if they can get deals only by doing so.
Look into adjusting your Twitter account to ensure the posts on your blog are tweeted automatically. An option for you is to pick a few bloggers that always post professional looking content and link to their posts. Your Twitter followers will appreciate the quality content, and the bloggers will welcome the exposure.
If you decide to use YouTube for videos, be sure there is a link back to your site, as well as buttons for Facebook or Twitter. This allows you to reach a broader base of customers, and your YouTube users will more than likely pass on your videos to others.
Yahoo offers an excellent opportunity for promoting your product in their question and answer section. Users submit their questions here and other users can answer them for free. Look for unanswered questions that relate to your products and services, and find a way to organically recommend those products and services as part of the solution. You could quickly become an expert by providing quality answers, in a particular category.
All your blog posts should show up on your LinkedIn web page if you have the blog feed. An article can be posted and will immediately update on your LinkedIn page. This will allow you to save time and you’ll enjoy more exposure on LinkedIn.
Make sure you track your progress. You should keep track of your traffic and how many brand new subscribers you get each week. In order to identify the most effective decisions you have come up with so far for developing better strategies, work to link the figures with your actions. If you fail to take note of results, you may never know whether or not social media can work for you.
Offer exclusive coupons and discounts to those who follow you on social media sites. This will let your clientele feel privileged, and you can boost your sales.
At first, you’ll notice a small rise in traffic. It will build gradually as you draw in customers throughout the area you are targeting. If you do this correctly and sell the right kind of product, your customers …
Social Media Marketing Takes You Into The Big Leagues
As with any type of internet marketing campaign, your social media efforts need to include a great product, a great platform and target marketing. With all of the above figured out, there should be nothing stopping you from forging ahead and utilizing the advice given here.
Never forget that conversation is important. Companies often forget that when a customer offers feedback, they are also opening up a dialogue. Start a conversation with your customers who leave feedback in order to develop your relationship with them. Figure out what they want, and let those needs guide development of future products and services.
At the top right of the page your blog is on, place a “like box” for Facebook. This button makes it easy for readers to “like” your content on Facebook. By placing this on your blog it lets your consumers “like” you without even needing to go to your page. This makes it easy and more likely that your visitors will do this and you will see more traffic because of ity.
Make certain to update your social media sites regularly. Remember, people using social media are always looking for updates. They want to read fresh content and see new videos and pictures. Give them something to keep them happy. Work on updating your followers a couple of times each week.
Allow consumers to easily subscribe to your social media pages. The majority of Internet users make good use of social media sites daily. It only makes sense to set up your website so that Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook users can connect with you easily and see all your comments.
Something that people should remember when they’re using social media to market is to stay as active as they can. If you are going to be successful then you need to stay social! If you don’t provide any activities or interact with people, your social media marketing strategy probably will not work. However, if you are active and constantly updating and promoting your business through social media, people will always be aware of what you are selling.
When you reach an important milestone in your social media program, write a post about it. For example, you could celebrate your 1,000th “Like” on your Facebook fan page by creating an article to commemorate it. Be certain to demonstrate gratitude to those who enjoy your contributions and make sure they know about your social media involvement. Information of this type is sure to spread.
You will not have a successful social media campaign if you do not have a good understanding of your target audience. You must be aware of why these consumers are using the social network, what they do there and what kinds of content they are seeking.
By following those tips and absorbing new information each day, you will grow as a businessman and as an advertiser. Of course, it will require dedication and hard work, but learning to master social media marketing opens your business to virtually …
Learning Is Key When It Comes To Social Media Marketing
Marketing campaigns that make use of social media are some of the most effective ways to promote your company over the Internet. On the other hand, a lot of business owners have no idea how to properly initiate marketing campaigns, define a target demographic or even how to properly execute their marketing resources. For insight into building an effective social media marketing strategy, keep reading.
If you are using Twitter as a branch of your marketing plan for social media, make certain your tweets are varied in content. Send out tweets with advice and insights relevant to your niche. By mixing these tweets in with those that boldly promote your business, your followers are more likely to stay interested in your tweets.
Make sure that you really want to build a two-way relationship with your clientele before you get aggressive with social media marketing. Keep your messages simple if you want to be successful and increase sales with social media marketing. To establish rapport with your target market, you should take the initiative to make the first move. At that point you’ll find that your customers show you want they want from you, you just have to give it to them!
Don’t be afraid to get help with your marketing. This market is large and many designers and consultants can create a website and social media strategy that works for you. Although they are expensive, they can be well worth the price. Therefore, it is important to include this expense in your budget.
Place buttons all over your pages. Have them on your blog, emails, and anything else you can think of. Try to add your links to other profiles as well to encourage multiple sources of traffic for your site.
If you are a Twitter user, it is important to take advantage of options such as automatically twitting your new blog posts, to keep your followers constantly updated. Including links in your blog to other bloggers content that is well written and interesting, can really help keep your readers happy and coming back. The people who follow you will appreciate your efforts to bring them content they enjoy, and the bloggers you choose certainly won’t mind the increased exposure.
When you post something to Twitter, it is a good idea to add a tag. Using hash tags makes your updates immediately available to your followers. Be careful when selecting tags and seek out groups your target demographic are likely to join.
A catchy title is important when you are posting video on YouTube or other media outlets. Add strong keywords to your titles so your videos are easier to find. If the video has real value, it should be easy to find by attaching significant keywords that you know your visitors will use.
Set up your account so that all posts that you make are shown on your company LinkedIN page immediately. You can post an article, and it will appear as LinkedIn updated. This will not only save …
Social Media And You – Marketing Information You Need To Know
If you are a business owner, many, if not most, of your customers have one or more social media accounts. You need to make sure your business is also on these sites. Discover which social media sites are of the most interest to your customers, and get your business branded on them immediately. WIthout it, you are missing opportunities to build deeper relationships with current customers, and to find new customers that may have never heard of your business before.
Maintain a current and relevant blog. Post everything new you have to say on your blog. Your blog can also announce clearances, specials and changes in location or hours. – don’t forget to add them to your blog.
Businesses that rely on Twitter to promote upcoming sales should make an effort to interact with customers. Give people who retweet your content a thumbs-up, and quickly respond to questions people ask. This creates a growing and interactive relationship rather than a simple “company to consumer” transaction. This also helps your followers connect to you as a person, rather than a representative of a business.
You should always link all of the sites together. Put links in place on your blog that allow readers to follow your Twitter comments, view your YouTube videos and “like” your Facebook page. List your blog and your Facebook page on Twitter. Creating links in different forms of media will widen your costumer base.
Make sure that you really want to build a two-way relationship with your clientele before you get aggressive with social media marketing. If you desire to maximize sales, try to advertise using social channels and remember to keep it simple. If you desire getting on the same level as your customers, just say hello to them! Your customers will let you know where to go from there.
One of the best ways to attract your target market is to promise incentives and offers exclusively to those who follow your business on social media. If they’re noticing deals that they can’t get elsewhere on their page, they will pay a lot more attention to your social media marketing. This leads to them telling their friends, which costs you nothing.
Before getting started in social media, find out what your options are on these sites. All social networking sites function differently, and if you are aware of how their differences can benefit you, then it will help you greatly in your promotional efforts. If you know which sites reach the most people in your target audience, you can use your time wisely when reaching them.
Be flexible with updating your pages. Your audience will be looking for frequent updates on any new campaign, right after you launch it. But, if you cannot come up with good content topics, you may be better off posting less frequently.
Social media networks are great ways to help your business grow! It allows you to communicate with your customers, attract new customers and get the word out about your …
Strategies For Success In Your Next Social Media Marketing Campaign
A business must stay up with current marketing trends in order to both survive and grow. Advertising through social media sites is the newest way to increase your business. Use the concepts in this piece to utilize such sites to your fullest business advantage.
Before you decide to create any social profiles, make sure you have a thorough list of people to invite. Some of these people may not be interested in your business right now. However, letting them know it exists and giving them a way to share the news with others may help you land big deals and important clients.
YouTube is a great way to target a large audience through social media marketing. YouTube is good for getting visitors to your website, because the visitors will already have knowledge about what kind of things you’re marketing. This is because they have seen your videos about it. This tool can help you to increase hits to your site and sales of your product, too.
Do not begin marketing on social networking sites until you come up with a plan. Consider page management, the layout of the page and the amount of time to be invested into it. As with any other campaign, you should set a timeline. If you don’t stray from your plan, you have a very good chance of making money with social media marketing.
To get a large following for your social media marketing, do not just push products. Post links or stories about providers that are relevant to your niche or industry. Aim to bring in new followers through contests, photos and question and answer sessions. Draw your readers in with engaging content. Rather than looking for areas to place your products cleverly, you should think of how to generate interest in your products through content. You want your customers to mentally associate the brand you offer with their own concept of personal individuality and the life they live, not how much it might cost them in their checkbook.
Be sure and include a way for visitors to subscribe to your Facebook page, Linkedin, Tweets, etc. Your customers are likely to already be using social media daily, so leveraging that to remind them of your deals or special offers is effective in keeping them coming back to your site.
If you are active on Twitter, consider tools such as Twellow and Tweepi. These are great ways to find not only your general target demographic, but also the primary individuals among them. You can then build a list of individuals you need to be following, in hopes that they soon start following you as well.
You can share the tweets of popular Twitter names by putting their handles after the @ symbol in your own tweets. These people will get a notification and will probably re-tweet your post or answer to what you said.
Social media has helped many businesses in a variety of ways. It’s easy to create an online presence for your business …
Social Media Marketing And Creating A Solid Plan
The popularity of social media marketing reflects the time we live in. Yes, traditional marketing methods can still move the needle, but social media can be exponentially more effective in generating web traffic. If you are not sure where to start with social media marketing, the following advice should be of assistance to you.
Be wary of hiring a social media marketing company. Media companies of this nature are often scam operations out to bilk novice marketing businesses. The companies utilize thousands of fake twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, which they create using proxy servers and automated registration bots. They can show you impressive viewership counts for your advertising, when in fact you’ve sunk serious money into having your ad watched repeatedly by a software program.
Invite your friends, family and co-workers to your page to get your name out there. This can increase the awareness for your business so that you can get on the map.
Is a relationship with you and your business something your customers want? If you want social media to simply be a sales channel, then just buy some advertising on social media sites to simplify things. If you choose to communicate with your customers on a two-way basis, start slowly with a simple “Hello.” Your customers will let you know where to go from there.
Be sure that you are updating your social network site frequently. Most social network users expect updates as often as possible, and if you do not provide them with it, you could give yourself a bad name and lose many customers. The optimal frequency for updates is several times per week.
Try playing games on Facebook. You might want to consider creating a custom game of your own that relates to your business. A lot of popular brands have created some successful Facebook games that have become viral phenomenons. Think about having a professional designer create a game for your business.
Make relevant and interesting Twitter posts at least once per day. You want to stand out, but make sure not to be annoying. Posting on Twitter is related to volume, so you have to post often and your posts have to be of high quality. If your tweets are short, you can send out several updates from one event.
Come up with good titles for your posts. Include important keywords that people searching for your type of content will recognize. The more helpful your videos come across as, the more views they’re ultimately going to receive. And keywords can help with users finding them.
Remember that social media is social. It is not just a place to advertise your products and services. You can become better acquainted with your customers by using social media. Customers can interact with both you and the brand. Social marketing is, of course, a great way to extol the virtues of your products, but you should look at it as more of a form of great customer relations.
Now you know that it …
New To Social Media Marketing Or A Pro, Our Advice Can Help
At one point in time, many businesses viewed the world of social media as a playing ground for kids. Those days are long gone. In today’s society, social media sites provide a valuable tool for marketing and branding any business. With such a level of importance placed on these sites, it is equally important to make your social media marketing plan an effective one. In this article we will give you a few tips for starting out right.
A good way to advertise your business is through Twitter. If you invest some hours into learning how Twitter operates, you can make your business visible to hundreds, and even thousands, of new prospective clientele. Take some time to learn about hashtags, keywords, and all other things in the Twitter world.
Intriguing and engaging titles can be your company’s best friend on social media, whether in your tweets, posts or YouTube videos. With headlines and titles that stand out, they can be powerful tools which draw in people and make them want to know who you are and eventually will lead them to your site.
If blogging is part of your plan, utilize a “Retweet” option on each blog posting. This will make it easy for visitors to share posts with their Twitter followers. Not to even mention that more and more people will see your material as it’s shared across the web.
Keep your readers informed of the progress that you are making with your social media marketing. For example, create an article when your company reaches five thousand fans on Facebook. Thank people as often as you can for showing interest towards your business. Information of this type is sure to spread.
Your Twitter account can be set up to have your blog posts tweeted automatically. You can also select a few of your favorite bloggers and you can post tweets and link to their blog posts. They’ll like the exposure, and the followers will like the quality content you’re offering them.
One-on-one contact is the most valuable benefit to social media marketing, giving you personal contact with your client base. No customer wants to have a conversation with a large establishment, but rather an individual. It’s all about trust here. People on social sites are there to be social. Give them a real person to speak to, and trust grows tremendously.
Understand that social networking shouldn’t be just used for posting ads about your products. Social networking allows you to learn more about your customers. These sites also allow you to connect with your business and strengthen customer loyalty. You can also distribute product information this way, but social media should primarily serve as customer relations.
Connect social media profiles with your website. You can always put up share links on your site so that visitors can share the content you have posted with their friends. Try including these buttons anywhere you can. Try to link to blog posts and RSS feeds and that will make the customers have …