5 Ways to Boost Social Media Presence of Your Brand or Business

Do you know? More than 2.7 billion peoples are using Social Media Networks in the world. Now, if you are not using Social Media for your business then you are missing out the fast and an effective way to reach almost half the world’s population. Hence, for any successful brand, Social Media presence is very important.

But, by social media presence, it does not mean you keep posting on various social media networks. Posting random articles will not help your brand. For improving social signal, a proper strategy is required. Hence, in this post, we have shared 5 ways (in fact secrets) to increase the social media presence of your brand.

Use of Proper Hashtag

The hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash mark (#). For Example, #SociablWeb is a hashtag. A hashtag can boost your social presence when they’re used correctly in your social media strategy.

The hashtag is the best way to drive more engagement during your events. Your attendees will share the message using the event-specific hashtag and expand the reach of your event. Next, anyone can join these events by using the same hashtag. Being a part of the same hashtag, it will create a great exposure for your brand and business.

Automate Social Media Sharing

One of the ways to boost your social media presence is to take the help of untapped networks. Create an account on these Social Media Networks and thereby increase your target base.

But, managing these social media accounts is not as easy as creating it. It is very difficult to stay active on each social media networks. Hence, the role of automation gets aroused.

5 Useful Tools To Improve Your Instagram Marketing

Instagram is the most popular social pictures community with an estimated user base of more than 100 million members. With its huge audience, Instagram is becoming a major asset for companies to reach their target audience. If your business isn’t already on Instagram, it is the right time for you to jump ship and create an account.

Unlike other social media sites, the marketing success of Instagram solely depends on the quality of pictures you’re posting in the network. By posting good quality pictures which are eye catching, you can get a huge number of following which will ultimately help to get better results for your business. In this article, I am sharing the 5 useful tools you can use to increase your following, get them engaged and get better results with your

How Should Niche Businesses Use Social Media to Best Effect?

This article gives suggestions and best practice tips to niche businesses around capitalizing on the potential of social media.

Time to Socialise

The big mistake that many smaller niche businesses make is to forsake social media platforms completely. There is a prevailing attitude that, because only a few people will probably be seeking out a social media presence, that there isn’t any point in doing it.

Instead, these businesses should view social media in much the same way that they view search engine optimisation. Accept that yes, fewer people will be seeking you out, however take that opportunity to focus on the specific market that has an interest in you and make your social media content as relevant as possible.

How to Stand Out

If you are a niche business then it is not easy to stand out in a world where the biggest

How to Promote Your Blog in Social Medias

You should use social media to increase the reputation and readership of your blog. If you are trying to increase its PageRank using social media, you will make the acquaintance of failure. The Google programmers are never going to put too much faith into social media because it is too easy to manipulate.

A person may start 100 new accounts today, and use them every day, then once a week they may comment on and link to a website. If Google were paying attention, the websites in question would rise high in the Google search engine results. Manipulating social media for search engine results improvement is too easy and hence unimportant unless Google decide to take note of social media mentions/likes.

Your job is to raise the reputation and prestige of your website through social media, so that people will wish to link to you of their own free will. So that people will comment positively on your blog and will follow it of his or her own free will.

Do not forget to put the little social media widgets/buttons on your blog somewhere, so that you blog readers may also follow your social media actions. It is not necessary but is a good idea if you run competitions, surveys or offers on your social media site.

Facebook

If you have a business page feed, you should enable the auto-share function. It will share

Is Your Brand Like-Worthy-Ways to Drive Engagement on Facebook

The results of a study released in January of 2012 by the Australian think tank Ehrenberg-Bass Institute say that less than 1 percent of the people who “like” a brand actually engage with it. When it comes down to it, the level of engagement is much more important than the number of likes you have. Beyond cultivating likes, you have to cultivate engagement. So how do you convince people to like your brand AND engage with it on Facebook? Here are some of the things that can be successful for driving engagement.

Photos

Photos are the most shared type of content on Facebook. Brands that post different types of content often find that popular photographs also receive the highest number of comments. Photos are great because they’re content that can be consumed instantly. You don’t have to read anything or even click “play” to get the message. Especially if a photo is really funny, people will want to share it with their friends. If you can post photos that are really unique, hilarious, beautiful, or attention-grabbing, you will see more user engagement on that post.

Questions

This is perhaps the simplest and most obvious way to encourage engagement. Ask a question, and your fans will answer you. The best questions are touching on subjects that matter to them. One thing that matters to everyone is themselves, so try asking personal questions (not too personal), like about people’s preferences, opinions, or experiences. Try a fill-in-the-blank type of question, like, “Fill in the blank. This summer I’m most excited about (blank).” Asking questions about your brand is a good way to drive engagement and receive feedback.

Talking Back

The most important way to drive engagement is by engaging, too. When your fans make comments, write back – always respond when they answer a question or give feedback, and often respond to comments even when no response is required or asked for. Even simply “liking” a fan’s comment makes an impression. When you demonstrate that you’re a brand who wants to interact with its customers, more fans will initiate that interaction. Just be careful that your responses are always consistent with your brand’s image and values.

Valuable Content

Really valuable content will inspire engagement. People will feel compelled to comment on something that interests, impresses, or surprises them, and they’ll also feel compelled to share the valuable information with their friends. Valuable content can be anything from a demo video to a news article to a short tip, but it always helps your fans in some way. It might offer them new or useful information, and many times content can be valuable for the entertainment it provides, too.

Calls to Action

Never overlook the power of the call to action. A call to action will significantly increase engagement on any post as compared to the same post without a call to action. Something as simple as, “Share if you like this!” or “Check out this video!” or “Tell us what you think,” can do wonders for engagement on your Facebook page.

original: SociablWeb

How To Gain More Blog Traction With Less Effort

The average blogger spends around 3 hours on getting his article read. Recent studies from blog polls show that the outcome is about 40-80 visitors a day.

So, how can you create more traffic for your blog, without wasting critical time you could use for creating good content?

In this article i will give you some tips and tweaks that help you get more traction with less effort.

1. Don't prostitute for views

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_likes

We could also call this the “Don't be angry at friends that don't like to read your articles” rule.

Everyone has this one friend who completely ignores your social media activity.

This doesn't mean he/she doesn't like you, it just means that a given topic might not be that interesting to him/her or just there's just no time to engage in it. So, don't make reading your articles a favor, find the people who appreciate your writing.

If you want to attract a certain group of readers, write something they care about and then share it with them.

2. Link building is dead

Back in the old days setting links on your website created huge traffic on your blog. This way of SEO is dead. Since the new Google penguin update (release April 24th) it seems like Google doesn't care that much about link velocity any more. They are now confident enough to prefer good written content on certain topics to articles with a lot of interlinkage. This is something many SEO people in my surrounding noticed when their SEO businesses started struggling last month.

There is no need for link spreading anymore, being particular about what and where to spread matters again. So stop the link spamming.

3. Get your articles on Newsgrape

If promoting your content consumes so much time, why not let somebody else do the job for you?

The Newsgrape platform has a wordpress plugin to automatically sync your content with a large community without having duplicate content issues.

What happens with your article:

1. Newsgrape connects your articles with similar ones. Meaning: If somebody reads a topic connected to yours, they will see your article pop up at “related articles”. Cool about that: They are more likely to be genuinely interested and appreciative of what you have to say.

2.

Newsgrape informs readers with certain interests that articles have been written about those given topics. This means, if you write something of popular interest, you have the chance of attracting over 5000 currently active readers on the site.

4. Automate your social media appereance

Its good to have a constant information flow about your website going on out there. But don't waste every single day on setting up new facebook and twitter updates - use tools to automate your appearance. Of course there are thousands of plugins for wordpress, but i will give you two powerful tools you can use with any blog:

Twitterfeed  - is the most automated system to do so. It creates twitter, LinkedIn and facebook updates by crawling your feeds. You can customize your updates a lot, for example how often and how many articles it should publish and define prefix/suffix etc.

Buffer - You have a productive week ahead of you? Fill your Buffer with twenty to forty updates, define the frequency and you are set to go.

Of course you can connect your social media accounts with Newsgrape as well.

To wrap it up

Don't prostitute, no SEO bulls%*&, connect with distributors and last but not least automate your social media appearance.

original post>>

Should You Pay for Social Media Marketing ?

 Social media marketing has changed the way that businesses advertise online. Many marketing departments now include a social media manager. Campaigns include updates and postings to social websites that drive customers towards products or services. The initial costs of entering into the social media marketing arena are very low. The ongoing cost of maintaining the campaign, however, can increase over time. There are several reasons why a business should invest in social media marketing.

Companies that communicate with customers through social media are able to engage in a very unique way. Existing and potential customers can feel as if the business is speaking on a very personal and informal level. The answers to questions like ‘what is the best credit card‘ will seem much more genuine when coming through interactions with a business through a social channel. The mechanism of social media also provides customers with a ready outlet to respond directly to the company.

The return on investment from social media marketing is usually positive. The underlying costs of maintaining a profile or website is generally very low. Marketing campaigns that overlap into the social realm are developed in tandem with existing marketing efforts so there is no added cost. People online might also tend to gravitate towards the social page of a business without any active marketing effort simply as a result of an experience with the company elsewhere.

The marketing content that is developed for a social media page can be of great value because it is persistent once it has been posted online. This type of reusable content has a higher return on investment than an email campaign that is sent out to customers once and then fades into the archives. Persistent content can also become important if a video, posting or image happens to spark a viral response. This can then draw attention to the business for no cost at all.

Advertising programs that are offered by social media companies can be far more effective than other types of traditional campaigns. The media company already has customers segmented by a number of different variables. A credit card company has a good chance of being able to target marketing efforts directly at users who have been looking for a business credit card offer. This type of marketing power is unique considering the low cost of entry into the field.

The importance of maintaining and promoting a social media presence online can be seen with search engine rankings. Cultivating a good relationship with customers can lead to a proliferation of links that can drive up the ranking of a business within search engines. Investing time and money in social media marketing will also inevitably benefit companies as new technologies and online services emerge in the future.

original article

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