Social Networks: How Many Is Too Many?

Blogging takes a lot - creating awesome content , designing , moderating comments , commenting on other blogs, guest posting , … And social media is just a part of it. There are over 200 social sites (at least according to Wikipedia ), but does this...

Marketing Experts - 7 Common Omissions from Social Strategies

When it comes to devising your brand’s social media strategy, the devil is in the detail. Small mistakes and basic omissions can leave your efforts falling short, potentially impacting your online presence. There are numerous, simple mistakes that business owners are still making on social media, so here are 7 critical elements that often get neglected: 

1.) Email is NOT Dead
It may be the oldest online social network, but don’t go writing email off just yet. It is still a great and powerful way of connecting with your clients, and has the added bonus of being cheap. The majority of businesses check their inbox regularly throughout the day, and research by Zapier suggests that customers who receive their emails are more likely to share important information across other networking platforms too. 

2.) Link Back to your Website
So many brands invest time and effort into creating great content for their Facebook or Twitter pages, however trying to find a link back to their website is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Your website should be your priority, and your social media channels should drive traffic back to your site. Make it super easy for those who are interested in finding out more about your services to find your site. 

3.) Focus, Focus, Focus
With a plethora of networks now available, keeping a cohesive social media strategy can seem like a full time job in itself. A lot of business owners may feel that they have to be active on all social media channels, all the time. In reality, it’s far more valuable to focus on one or two sites and use them really well. Do some research into what sites your target audience are using and focus your efforts there. You should be able to see higher engagement and conversions at a lower cost.

4.) Make your Employees your Advocates
Bring your brand back to even more customers by utilising one of your greatest assets - your employees. Make them advocates for your business by including them in your social media brand-building efforts and welcome their strategic input. Not only will it build the brand amongst employees, but it will foster greater employee advocates too, creating a strong all-round presence. 

5.) Don’t be Afraid of Retargeting 
If done right, retargeting can be a very powerful marketing tactic. By using past social media campaigns and specific URLs, it is possible to track specific leads around the web from a simple tweet or Facebook post. Following on from this, you can target your potential customers the ads that are most likely get them to convert, as well as being able to quantify this data to see how much of an impact your social media is actually having on sales.

6.) Use Facebook Targeting 
So many businesses forget to capitalise on Facebook’s targeting software. With this tool, certain posts only reach a certain demographic to strengthen the appeal in one without turning off another. The targeting function can be found on the Facebook admin pages and could make an impressive difference to your marketing strategy. 

7.) Use YouTube!
YouTube is often forgotten in social media strategy because it is often not thought of as a social network. In reality, it is one of the most powerful sites you have in your tool kit. Users tend to browse the site, and the related video suggestions YouTube shows users in the sidebar are almost as good as buying ads on the page. 

Make videos that are either useful (e.g., expert how-to's), which potential customers are likely to come across when searching for information on their own or that are entertaining (e.g., funny commercials). Ultimately, make something that people would share amongst themselves. Search results featuring videos have a higher click-through rate, so not having a video presence could mean missing out on potential customers from organic search traffic.

Special thanks to Madeleine Hammond for today's guest post. Madeleine is a marketing executive at Skeleton Productions - one of the UK's leading video production companies with Skeleton Productions

6 Social Media Tools for Enhancing Your Marketing Efforts

Social media is becoming an increasingly important component in the plans of many organizations. The social web has plenty to offer, but making the most of it is much more than setting up a profile on a few popular sites. It’s about creating an active presence and having the tools that allow you to manage it effectively. These six tools will help you tune your social marketing efforts to peak-level performance.

1. HootSuite

HootSuite is a very popular choice among small businesses. This tool is essentially a web-based platform that lets you manage your presence across the social web. So you can manage profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other networks from a single interface. In addition, the streamlined goodness of the HootSuite allows you to schedule posts, monitor brand mentions, and even analyze social traffic.

HootSuite is free to use, but you can upgrade to the paid Pro version, which of course, frees you of the limitations that accompany the free version.

2. Traackr

At one time, social analytics tools were scare. Now they’re all over the place. Traackr is a little known tool slowly but surely proving to be one of the best of its kind. With Traackr, you can easily identify the influencers who are the most valuable to your brand. It lets you see how these authority figures are responding to your content by viewing who is contributing the most to your social marketing campaigns. From there, you can build new strategies around the data, and then view the results of your efforts.

Traackr is available at a fixed monthly rate, but plans can be scaled to fit individual needs.

3. TwitterSearch

If Twitter is one of your preferred social networking channels, then TwitterSearch should be one of your favorite tools. This tool can help you find just about whatever you need on the popular microblogging site. For example, you can use it to find out what people are saying about your brand, or what they are saying about your competition. It’s also great for researching trending topics that would fit into your content marketing strategy.

Freely available, TwitterSearch is an underrated social discovery gem you don’t want to sleep on.

4. Wildfire

Wildfire is a powerful platform that lets you monitor and manage your social media presence. An integrated suite of solutions, it offers advertising, messaging, analytics, and various other features for brands looking to maximize their efforts. With Wildfire, you can create engaging experiences that captivate your audience, and then have a comprehensive view into deep insights that enable you to do it again, this time, even better.

Wildfire, now owned by Google, is a in Pro and Enterprise pricing plans for social marketers with slightly different needs.

5. Postano

Postano provides a convenient way to stay active across all your social spots. It lets you aggregate content from each of the top social networks, and even those that are not directly supported can be connected via RSS feeds. Furthermore, you can designate specific times to post your updates, make edits before publishing, and prevent specific users from seeing specific content. With Postano, sharing your content is a breeze as it allows you to easily embed posts into web pages, sidebar widgets, and various management interfaces.

Postano plans come in three pricing tiers, but you can also give it a test drive with a free trial.

6. VenueSeen

Last on the list is VenueSeen, definitely one of the most interesting social tools around. VenueSeen is unique in how it tracks the activity of photos taken within your place of business. This app collects data related to the pictures you post on Foursquare and Instagram, and serves it up in a way that makes it easy to see what type of buzz you’re generating. The platform offers additional tools for connecting with your audience through marketing campaigns, and even developing custom experiences with API integration.

VenueSeen is available on a monthly subscription at a price that you may find surprisingly affordable considering what’s included in the package.

Load Up the Toolbox

Ignoring social media is starting to become a bigger risk than taking the actual plunge. This space is filling up with competition and while there is still plenty of room, you want to have your feet firmly rooted in a comfortable position. Stock your toolbox with options that will take your social media marketing efforts to the next plateau. It’s the only way to fly.

Guest post written by Francis Santos who is a writer for Benchmark Email, a best practices event marketing company.

5 Important things to remember when planning your social media strategy

A lot of mistakes I see businesses making when joining social media networks is leaping in without a plan – or to put it more precisely – without a strategy. It’s something I think many of us overlook. After all, when we use something on a day-to-day basis for our own personal enjoyment (I mean, who doesn't log into Facebook during their lunch break or on their night-off?) we assume we can treat social media marketing with the same flippancy and casualness.

But social media marketing is just that, it’s marketing. You wouldn't jump head first into a print ad campaign without thinking about the marketing credentials and the strategy behind it first and you shouldn't jump head first into social media marketing either.

The sheer power of social media marketing has already been proven so don't waste your time trying to convince yourself of the potential opportunity. While I'm not claiming every company needs to hire a social media professional to plan out their strategy, what I do recommend is sitting down with your marketing team and answering a few questions, outlining a key points, and jotting down some ideas or key concerns.

1. Think about your demographic
Before you start posting status updates, think about who's going to be reading them and what time of day they're most likely to check their updates and news feeds. Take for example, if your main demographic included teenagers and school children, posting during school hours would be a big waste of time because they would be in class (hopefully) and wouldn't have access to their accounts. Posting during the evening however or during lunch break would be prime time for updates as this is when they'd be online and looking through updates.

2. Brand your pages
Your social profiles are just like your web pages and emails. They should all be branded. Make sure you've got your logo clearly and concisely displayed somewhere on your profile and make sure your colors and design features echo your websites in some way as well. Make sure these choices are consistent throughout your social networking too – because it’ll be confusing for customers and fans if not.

3. Set a budget
A great part of social media marketing is communicating with your customers and fan base, encouraging their interaction. While you don't need a budget for this initially, in order to drive your presence forward on a larger scale, you might want to set up competitions or give-away's. To do this effectively, you need to set aside a budget and a realistic one too. Do you want to give away smaller prizes on a regular basis, or do you want to give away a large prize once or twice a year? All these little details need to be taken into consideration for your promotions.

4. What are using social media for?
While social media is for encouraging brand communication and inevitably increasing traffic and sales, you need to consider what your customers and followers are interacting with you for. Are they following your updates because they're funny, or do you give away bargain discount codes? Do you post interesting and insightful content or are they following you because they get a behind-the-scenes look into your company? All these thing matter and once you've identified this pull, making updates become easier.

5. Set targets
Set yourself realistic targets on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Think about how many updates you want to post daily, and then (on a larger scale) how many likes and interactions you want on a monthly basis. Keeping track of these things is a great way to prove how worthwhile your work has been – but it’s also a good idea as you can see if your technique and strategy is actually working over time. If not – it might be time to try a different social network – or reevaluate the strategies you’d had in place.

By asking yourself these questions and taking the time to answer them honestly, you can dramatically improve your chances of social media success. The benefits of social media can be yours with a little planning and hard work.

This Guest Blog Post was provided by Elle-Rose Williams – who works with WhoIsHostingThis. You can find out more about them, here.