6 Successful Podcasting Tips To Embellish Your Social Media Efforts

We have always believed that content is the king. There have been constant efforts being made by everyone to ensure their websites have exceptional content. Well, content doesn’t necessarily mean text. It could also stretch up to the other ways we have been using to communicate to the audience, like videos, podcasts and graphical representations.

The most recent technique that is being used these days is to transcript videos to make articles. However, if you want some more artistic and creative input to bring more life to your text, you might want to consider using podcasting as a tool. So, what are podcasts? Well, these are nothing but digital multimedia files that are uploaded on the for the user to

How Google+ Makes an Impact on Search Engine Optimization

Google+ is actually one of quite a few of Google’s attempts to break into the social media circuit. After a few failed attempts, they have finally found a winner. It stands no chance of competing with Facebook (at least not in the foreseeable future), but is still popular enough to enable you to grab a few SEO benefits from it. It is possible to use Google+ to help you get a little bit higher in the search engine results pages.

Google will follow some of your profile links

If you add a bunch of links onto your Google+ pages then Google may pay them a passing interest, but if you can connect a link to your Google+ profile, then the more popular your profile becomes then the more attention Google will pay to your connected

Staying Social: Social Media Updates

Social media technology is constantly evolving and it can certainly be challenging to stay up-to-date with the evolution of familiar products. The business world has reached a point where social media participation is not only expected, but required in order to stay relevant among competitors. Here are a few updates from around the social media world to help you stay tuned into what’s going on within this infinite space.

•    In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Home , a new platform for the social network available on certain Android devices. At the announcement, Zuckerberg said, “Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around.” Features include a live news feed of “friend” updates

5 Exclusive Facebook Marketing Resources

With over 1 billion people now on Facebook it stands to reason that Facebook advertising alone can target a wide range of people. However it wasn’t that long ago that many doubted Facebook’s strength in a marketing capacity. Yet fast forward a few years and many businesses feel social media is an integral part of their marketing strategy. In fact there has been a 75% increase in social media campaigns since a few years ago. There are still various companies out there that may find social media intimidating and haven’t embraced it yet. If you don’t know where to begin, check out these 5 marketing resources from Facebook to get you started from the very source itself.

Facebook Marketing Page

Facebook’s official marketing page currently has over 2 million likes and is designed to help marketers and businesses use Facebook’s marketing platform more effectively. The marketing page posts valuable information about webinars that they are holding for marketers as well as providing statistics about Facebook’s advertising platform. This can come in useful when you’re trying to pitch for Facebook advertising to a marketing team or a client. Facebook representatives will also answer any questions that are posted on their wall.

Facebook Advertising Page

This page describes the online advertising process – how things work and examples of

5 Reasons Why Pinterest Drives Traffic To WordPress Sites

If you are looking to get your WordPress site ready for Summertime, Pinterest, and other similar social media networks, are user friendly and great for giving your site a fresher look. Whether you are researching new marketing techniques or you are launching a new business website, social networking deserves your attention.

It is no secret that social networking is a major component in ramping up your business’ marketing plans. After going to a site like best10webhosting to compare hosting companies, and then choosing an attractive web design, many businesses rely on sites likes Facebook and LinkedIn to connect to their customers. What might surprise you is the rapid growth that Pinterest has experienced this year. Mashable.com reported earlier

7 Old-School Ways To Build Your Brand Rep In Your Community

Branding is essentially, aligning your company’s internal activities with what it produces for the outside world. It’s not a communications strategy, but rather a business strategy; a long term, sustainable product or service that is consistent, clear, and delivers time and again.

Whether it’s with clients embarking on a new campaign or on your own trying to define your personal brand, the term “branding” seems to be the popular buzzword these days. “Branding” is often misunderstood and is frequently misused. Yet, a business’s brand represents the company’s reputation externally and reflects how employees feel about the company internally.

Currently, we are in a climate where small and medium-sized enterprises are being squeezed and forced to create a clear point of difference. Small businesses especially, need to find a way to compete.

The following are 7 old-school ways to build your brand rep in your community.

1. In a Nutshell

Ask yourself what you want the customer to feel when interacting with your business. Then, find one word or phrase that most accurately sums up what you stand for.

Continue on to your website, your offices, and other extensions of your business and ensure that they convey a similar theme. Think of ways to conjure up that feeling in customers without saying it explicitly.

Once you determine your strategy, run it through all of your activity including the logo, tone of voice, and dress code. Remember that dissatisfaction is what drives customers. Develop and communicate a relevant brand promise and deliver.

2. Get it right the First Time

Deliver on your promises. Competitive markets have and will always punish companies that are unreliable.

A relationship of trust is an integral part of growing a strong brand. Reaching the point where customers trust you allows clients to feel at ease, even if you do get it wrong on occasion.

Any advertising expense spent in a small business is better focused towards “performance marketing.” Focus on delivering an augmented product that is continuously improving.

3. Build from Within

All big business brand icons have distinctive company cultures or “value systems” that give the brands definition. A company brand should permeate the organization and drive decisions.

Involve your employees in building the brand from Day 1. Allowing them to help shape the values makes it easier to convey them to customers. Spend time on developing a message that resonates throughout your staff.

Remain flexible enough to occasionally evaluate and tweak your brand message’s effectiveness and make sure to communicate it internally. Beware of becoming too formal or risk losing engagement. The best way to get customers to trust you is to start trusting your employees.

4. Consistency is Key

Be absolutely transparent to your audience about your brand values from the outset. Your products and services are likely to evolve as you grow, but your brand values should remain consistent.

Keep in mind that for many, your marketing message is the first impression they will have of your company. Resist the urge to tweak established values.

5. Customers Contact

To some extent, your brand takes care of itself if your product is good. On the other hand, involving customers in product development has become somewhat of a trend that provides customers with a sense of co-creating products.

Customers love to feel close to the creative process, and you can build reciprocal respect, by featuring them as case studies.

6. Social Media

Stay on top of what’s out there to build a brand. Social media is just as important as a communications tactic and something that could be applied internally.

It’s a great strategy for small businesses to provide customer service and support, while getting their name in front of people.

7. Create a Community

Social media has hastened an importance of community in brand building by sharing knowledge and extending the network online. It’s important that information about the business doesn’t just come from the marketing division.

Whatever your means of communicating, show your personality. Focus on where your customers are, be that on YouTube, eBay, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, but use each medium appropriately.

Differentiate yourself by what you stand for and let the personality and values formulate organically. Innovate beyond the familiar and keep these 7 old-school tips in mind when developing a brand rep in your community.

original:SociableBlog

Social Media Profiles for Online Reputation Management

Your reputation, online or offline is vital extremely important. Recently, a friend of mine owned a travel business. After hiring an employee with a light criminal background and having thousands of dollars embezzled from him, he started to pursue legal action against this individual. This person decided to get revenge by badmouthing the owner and business through Rip Off Report and other online platforms. Now, anytime you Google his name or business some very offensive things are displayed as a #1 result. Consequently, his business has suffered tremendously.

This situation is the perfect example of the need for reputation management. One of the most powerful (and easiest) methods to begin to control your reputation in the search engine result pages (SERPs) is to create social profiles on major social media websites. Since domains like Twitter or MySpace have such high authority it takes a lot less effort to rank, than creating your own site, by creating a profile that will outrank and push down undesired search results. Also, these search results gives you the added benefit of having control over your brand and being accessible and available on multiple platforms strengthens your overall branding efforts.

Which social profiles should I have?

Once you understand that you should be monitoring and repairing your reputation, you will need to figure out how to do it. As a rule of thumb the Big 4 social media sites are a great place to start. Generally your goal would be to obtain user profiles that are an exact match as the keyword you are trying to manage. In most cases this is a branded term such as your company name. Additioanly branded usernames are generally available on social media websites. Many sites, particularly niche sites, can be useful to your company and your specific ORM situation. But the 4 you must have are:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• MySpace

If you want to check across 120 different social sites to see which keywords or names are taken you can do so very easily with one of the best social media monitoring tools out there called KnowEm.com. Just type the desired username and click “Check Username”. Additionally, they offer a service that will register you on all those different social media sites as well for .50 cents per social media site.

Steps to Take

Once you have your accounts setup, you will need to do a few things before your campaign can be effective.

1. Create a complete profile
Simply obtaining the name twitter.com/companyname, isn’t enough. You need a complete and full profile to have a legitimate working account, this includes bios, avatars etc. As much information that you can fill in and feed to search engine spiders, the better.

2. Engage and Interact
Participating in the community strengthens your profile and gives your account credibility. An account that has your name but nothing else looks like a spam account.

Also, you gain the added benefit of internal links from these social sites. If you just create a profile and let it sit then it doesn’t gain internal link equity it needs, for high SERP rankings, from other profile pages, group pages, etc.
Interacting (e.g. returning messages, commenting, voting) is vital to the strength of your profile. For an example, check out the hat tip to Steve Espinosa for showing how to get DoFollowed links on YouTube here.

3. Monitor
When a company engages in social media they are opening themselves up for a lot of commentary regarding their brand. Be prepared to monitor the sentiment to measure if it’s positive or negative. Have a contingency plan for when you come across negative sentiment. I’ll spare the lesson on monitoring and handling sentiment and direct you to The Online Reputation Management Guide by Outspoken Media.

Read More>> 

5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest

One of the best ways to drive engagement and build word of mouth traffic about your brand is to run a contest via social media channels. Not only does it engage consumers with your brand in a fun and exciting way, it results in a treasure-trove of customer information, preferences, and feedback you can then mine to improve your business. And, best of all, launching an online contest can be very inexpensive.

However, there is a subtle art to social contests. Your brand needs to appear neither too “cheesy” nor too “salesy,” and you must deliver a prize that people really want. This can be a standard product or gift card, or a “notoriety” prize, such as publishing a winner’s video. What’s more, the contest itself has to be fun and easy to participate in. Few prizes are worth doing something extremely boring, monotonous, or complicated.

Here are five specific strategies you can follow to launch and manage a social contest, and leverage it to deliver real business value:

1.Define the marketing goal:

 Every contest you launch should meet a specific marketing goal. Do you want to drive awareness of a new product or service? Collect a list of customers interested in a specific product segment? Encourage new participants to use your company’s social networking channels? There are many valid reasons to launch a contest, but it’s important to know ahead of time what you’re trying to accomplish.

2.Get Creative:

Here’s the fun part: Creating your contest. The sky’s the limit when it comes to the type of contests you can launch. Here are a few ideas:

- A video contest inviting users to create a new commercial for one of your products

- A user-generated content contest that awards the best ‘personal experience stories’

- A photo contest related to your product or service

- A product invention contest with a large cash prize.

3.Leverage  Social Channels: 

The best part about online contests is how easy it is to take them viral, encourage participation, and link them into your social marketing activities. Promote your contest via Facebook, Twitter, your company blog, and all other social channels, as well as via traditional marketing channels such as print, e-mail, and in-store signage.

Just search the word contest on Twitter to see hundreds of contests going on right now. The best contests are intensely social by nature, because people like to play games and contests together, and most people love to share the chance to win a cool prize with friends and family. Ensure your contest is easily sharable by embedding “share this” links on the contest site, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (YouTube), and everywhere else people will come across it.

4.Finish the Contest: 

Everyone loves a winner, so make sure you don’t let your contest drag on too long. A typical social contest runs about four weeks –- longer.hen the winner is chosen, do a PR push to publicize their win. Of course, use Facebook and Twitter to promote the winner like mad. Go back to your social media tracking software and find out which people and social sites are talking most about the winner, then post comments on those networks to drive even more interest in the winner.

5.Measure the Contest: 

Of course launching a contest wasn’t just for fun, it was to achieve a specific marketing goal. So after the contest is done, you need to measure the impact it had on brand engagement, clickthrough to your site, conversion, and bottom-line sales. Again, you can use your social media tracking tool to measure all of these success metrics. Find out whether your contest drove as much traffic to your site as you had hoped, and whether this traffic resulted in conversion.

Sorce: Mashable