Category: Social Media For Biz

Social media isn’t just a way to get together and talk with friends. While it would be entirely possible for you to set up a Twitter feed and tweet all day about the weather and food and television, this isn’t the most effective way to get people thinking about your offline business. The more effective way to get them to sit up and take notice is by your content. It’s one of the most oft-repeated mantras of our time – content is king. And so it is.

One of the cornerstone tenants of SEO is the importance of having solid, informative content. While it’s possible to stuff your website or your social media page full of keywords, this won’t necessarily improve the status of your site and definitely wont’ charm the customer. The reason why people subscribe to Twitter feeds and friend businesses is because the content those social network pages are offering is informative and interesting. Very few people are going to follow a business’ blog or Twitter feed very long if the content isn’t there.

So, how do offline businesses insure that their online content is interesting and informative? Well, the first thing that you can do is take advantage of the serious one-up you have on online business – that is, your ability to directly interface with the customer. In other words: ask. Ask your customers, “If this business started a Twitter feed or a Facebook page, what kind of content would you like to see? What would keep you interested?” Obviously, it’s more useful if you can ask repeat customers who have shown an open interest in the wares of your store. These are the people who will let you know what they want to see, and if your veteran customers are interested in something regarding your store or product, it’s likely that there’s a treasure trove of other people who would like access to that same content.

Another important thing to keep in minds insofar as content is concerned is keeping your “updates” useful and short. Nobody wants to have their inbox spammed constantly with daily updates from your store. It’s unlikely that many people are that interested, and if you overdo social media networking, it will turn off potential customers. The best way to go about it is to think hard about every update you make. Ask yourself, “Is this informative, or useful? If I were going to receive information from a company using this format, would I want to read this or would I trash it?” If you’d trash it, don’t send it.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your social media contacts updated once a week. This shows constant activity and that the account is a “live” one without being totally overbearing. Keep your content coming, but don’t bury your followers!

As the owner of an offline business, there’s absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be taking advantage of the incredible marketing power of social media outlets. It’s no secret that millions and millions of people are on social media sites daily – did you know that social media is the second most engaged-in activity on the Internet only behind email checking? And did you know that if Facebook were a country it would be the third most populous in the world?

What this means to any business – online or off – is that there’s a congregation of potential customers just browsing these sites in their idle hours when they might be bored and have nothing else to do. This is a perfect opportunity to drop a bee in their bonnet about you and your business. Thousands of companies have done this, and thousands have found success.

However, for an offline business attempting to tackle the social media market, you’ll have an easier time of it if you approach it with the proper attitude. While both online and offline businesses will use social media as a way to engage the customer, the online business deals with social media the way that an offline business would have television ads. It’s a straight way to the sale, since a customer visiting an online business’ site is doing the closest thing to physically visiting the business itself.

If you have an offline business, this is not the case, as the customer is ostensibly at a computer and not at your physical place of business while browsing social networking sites. It’s important to consider this difference and use it to take a different approach to advertising your offline business using social media. While an online business is bringing customers to the storefront, you should be looking to create an impression of your business and try to entice them to come to the physical store.

While it is definitely advantageous to consider making an online version of your site for ease of purchasing, you want to have the customer come to your physical store. This means creating awareness of your products, brand, content, and expertise – and creating that drive to experience the whole package by going to your store.

While it’s likely that the most profitable way for offline business to generate customers in terms of long-term revenue is still offline, the virtual market is taking off fast, and it’s likely that the current state of affairs will change over the next five years. Now is a good time to get involved with marketing through social media and figuring out how it can best serve your offline business before it takes off to a whole new level.

Video: Brad explains why he thinks it’s important to make video marketing a part of your online business.

Video: Brad talks about why you should be utilizing Twitter as part of your social media strategy.

There are literally thousands of articles online speaking about the importance of social media for online businesses. A simple Google search will likely turn up more information than anybody could want regarding how best to use Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for the purpose of online business – and these social networking sites are merely the tip of the iceberg. There are several other, lesser-known social media sites that can factor into the game for online businesses, as well.

It’s obvious why social media sites are important for online business. It’s a free, efficient way of marketing to the virtual crowd. After all, if your business is virtual, then it only makes sense that you should be advertising where the virtual populace goes to hang out and chat with friends. It’s the equal to putting up a sign at a baseball game or the mall. Online businesses must market to an online audience.

However, many people mistakenly believe that social media need not factor much into the running of an offline business, and this is a serious mistake. Even if you own a store front with tangible products and physical shopping carts – and not a Café Press website with a “shopping cart” icon in the corner – you should still be meandering through the virtual crowd with the rest of the world.

Why? Even though your business might be physical, chances are that your customers are spending a lot of time on these social networking sites. If your store exists in the real world as well, working both the social media angle and the traditional means of advertising can give you a double edge over the competition, and that’s not an advantage that should be glanced over lightly. Thousands of people do their shopping primarily online these days in the comfort of their homes – in order to have a chance of bringing some of that business through your physical door, you need to be working on the virtual side of things, as well.

So when you sit down in your store in the real world, don’t forget to spend some time thinking about how you can promote your store in the virtual one. Most people have a foot in the physical and a foot in the virtual nowadays, and you have a serious advantage in being rooted in the physical world. Online businesses have no stake in the world outside of the Internet, but you can step into the virtual world with ease. Be sure to take advantage of this position you have as somebody who owns a physical store, and the benefits you’ll reap will be incredible!

In order to create the most compelling, responsive and profitable advertisements, you need to utilize Facebooks option to heavily target and tailor your advertisements based on your target market.

With facebook, you can set your ads up so that they appear only to specific people, based on age, location, gender, interests, hobbies or even based on the groups they have joined within the Facebook community.

You will want to conduct market research so that you can accurately define your target market and develop advertisements that target specific segments of your market.

Facebook implores a quality control system to ensure that the advertisements that run throughout their community stay within their guidelines and do not offend or disrupt member activity or overall experience.  

Use their quality control system to develop compelling advertisements that stand out in the marketplace, and capture the attention of potential buyers.

Also keep in mind that Facebook advertising is based on display, rather than search. This means that your ads will be automatically triggered to appear based on your settings, rather than when a user conducts an on-site search.

Users can also choose to rate advertisements, helping to retain quality throughout the community.

Improve your Click Through Rate

Your advertisements click through rate plays an integral role in saving you money while boosting exposure and reaching out to your target market.

It’s important to keep a pulse on your click through rate so that you can correct any problems with your advertisement, or make adjustments to improve your overall CTR.

If your advertisements CTR drops too low, it could be automatically paused or removed by Facebook, so you really want to pay attention to how well it’s converting.  

Typically, your ads should never fall below a 2% conversion rate.

One of the easiest ways of increasing your CTR is by creating a highly targeted advertisement.

You want your ad to appear only to those who are within your target demographic, while making sure that your advertisements text or any images used speak directly to your customer base.

Consider split testing various advertisements within the Facebook community to determine what works best, based on your industry or niche market.

You should also pay attention to the times of day that your ads appear. You can choose to either run your ads consistently throughout the day, or have them only appear at specific times (or even specific dates).  

Keep in mind the time zone of your target market, so that your ads are running based on the most active time of day or night.

Stay Within Facebook Guidelines

It’s important to understand how Facebook advertising channels work, and what is permitted as well as what is not allowed within the marketplace.  

Facebook is very flexible with the types of advertisements that are allowed to be displayed within their community, however they do not allow images or text that may be considered offensive.

Setting Your Maximum Daily Bid

One of the most important aspects of setting up an effective Facebook advertisement is in the maximum daily bid that you are willing to pay.  The higher your daily bid, the more exposure your ad will receive.

You want to start off with a lower bid if you are just getting used to advertising with Facebook, and increase your maximum daily bid as you fine-tune your advertisements for maximum results.  

It’s important to always keep a pulse on how well your advertisement is converting, so that you can improve click through rates and overall response.

When you create an advertisement with Facebook, they will suggest a maximum bid based on your advertisements focus and target market (based on your personal configuration and preferences).  

You can start off by setting your maximum daily bid slightly lower than what’s suggested and increase it as you improve your advertisements conversion rates so that you are getting the most bang for your buck!

CPC Versus Impression Based Ads

With Facebook, you can develop advertisements where you either pay for impressions or based on the number of clicks your ad receives.

If you are just getting started with Facebook advertising, I recommend choosing cost per click (CPC), so that you can accurately test your advertisements, while paying only for responses rather than just views.

You can always change your advertisement format to ‘impression based’ later on in the event you wish to test out alternative options.

One of the most important things that any offline business can do when it wants to enter the online realm of social medial marketing is research. Doubtless, no matter how obscure your store is or what kind of niche that you sell to, there is an online store doing exactly the same thing. With thousands (if not millions) of people doing their shopping online every day, it’s absolutely guaranteed that your offline store will have an online competitor. And it’s likely that the online competitor is doing quite well.

While this may be exasperating to a certain degree, you can use this information to help propel your offline business into the fray and even put your offline business into a more favorable position. Be sure to look at your online competitors and see how they market their product and whom they are marketing to. Are they on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace? Do they have an RSS feed? Are they working with online directories? Do they have profiles on forums relating to the product being sold? What’s the tone of their website like, and how do they appear to interact with customers?

One of the most important things to do for an offline business looking to work with the online world is creating an aura of discovery around their store. Since one of the major points for offline businesses when it comes to advertising is to entice the customer to visit the store, you need to foster a sense of discovery on the part of the potential customer. After all, you have to get them off of the computer and into the store.

During the discovery part of your foray into the crazy world of social media marketing, you explore the groundwork that’s already been laid online for you. You look and see what your competitors are doing in terms of social media and figure out how you can do it better. Do they have out of date Twitter feeds? Does their Facebook profile look unprofessional? These are all things you can use to bolster the status of your own personal social media adventure and make yourself look better than your online competition.

In addition, if you own a physical store you have the advantage of asking your customers what they would be interested in, regarding terms of social media advertising. Would they be interested in a Twitter feed, or a LinkedIn profile? Try asking some of your younger customers, should you have them. Most will probably be happy to talk your ear off in regards to social media platforms. After all, the younger group is the one most likely to be on Facebook constantly with their smartphones. Anybody older than thirty is likely to have a less informed opinion on it. At any rate, be sure to exploit the biggest advantage you have over online businesses – that is, the direct conversation with the customer!

There are a lot of myths about online marketing. Now a few misconceptions may not matter all that much if they were harmless, but when it comes to your money, then it’s always better to be well-informed. Some of the worst, most damaging myths out there revolve around business to business email marketing. With that in mind, here are some things you should be aware of before running your next email campaign.

1. Know your customer. The more you know about your customer, the better. What are their problems? What are their current solutions? How can you help them? What do you know about their business? All of these questions need to be answered before you send a company an email message. First, you need to make sure they are a good customer for your offer. Second, it shows respect and they will appreciate that you know something about who they are.

2. Get to the point. Imagine you are meeting with your prospective customer at their place of business. You may start with a bit of small talk, but you wouldn’t linger on it. In other words, you can start your business to business email marketing with a friendly tone, but you also have to stick with a no-nonsense approach at the same time.

3. Remember who the message is for. Yes, you are sending out the email to generate profits for your own business, but the message it contains is for the person receiving it. In other words, you have to be very clear about how your offer benefits them.

4. Ask for their business. One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to business to business email marketing is not being bold enough in closing the deal. You don’t have the benefit of making your presentation in a face-to-face setting, so you need to be clear and direct in what you want the reader of your message to do.

5. Don’t use trickery to get them to open your email. Sure, you may get them to open your message, but you will have done so through dishonesty. That will kill the sale before you ever get a chance to present your offer. You also need to bear in mind that there is a fine line between being clever and being deceitful; make sure you don’t cross it.

6. Track results. When doing business to business email marketing you should keep track of and measure everything you can. When you sent out each message, to whom, what the subject line was, the body of the email, open rates, click-through rates, how many previous messages you have sent, and so on. You can use any and all of this data to refine your sales message and improve your results over time.

In today’s world, mastering the art and science of business to business email marketing is one of the most important keys to success. It’s relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to traditional forms of advertising, and it can give you a very robust return on your investment.

Video: Brad talks about advertising using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Social network websites can be very profitable but before you can profit with them you need to understand exactly what they are and how they can help you. Social network sites are websites where people that share the same interests can connect. I’m sure you would have heard of some of the more popular social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

With social networking websites people from all over the world can chat, message and connect with one another. The can leave messages, comment on one another’s pages, share photos and more. These websites make communication so much easier even if you are communicating with someone on the opposite side of the world. Many people use social networking websites to communicate socially with their friends and family, but there are other benefits to these sites. There are social network websites for many different niches including, business networking, media and news, dating, investing, music, art and many more.

People of different cultures and with different interests can connect with similar people worldwide. People can make new friends, meet new people and even develop new interests by learning from others that they meet. Businesses can use social networking sites to connect with customers as business owners meet people with interests that relate to their business.

A niche social network site like Revelry is designed to connect people who knit and another social site is Deviant Art that connects people who love art. There are many different social networking sites created specifically to connect people that share those similar interests and goals and those people can share ideas, share their creations and just get to know one another. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace offer many ways to communicate such as sharing photos, music, videos and even creating groups within the site to share media and communicate.

Most social networking sites are worldwide websites so someone in Australia can connect with someone in England. Anyone in any part of the world can communicate with one another via these websites. The opportunity to meet new people that share the same interests as you and make many new friends is amazing. Social network sites are also a great way to track down people from the past that you have lost contact with. There are sites that are created specifically to find old classmates and friends from extracurricular activities.

The name says it all with social network websites because they are exactly that – sites that encourage networking socially. However, many business men and women also use these sites for business networking as they are a fantastic means for connecting with potential customers. If a person runs a business that relates to art then they may join the social networking site ‘Deviant Art’ to connect with people that love art. There are many niche social network sites that can enable business people within those niches to connect with their customers.

Some of these social networking sites have been around for quite a while and other new sites are being created all the time. If you search for social networking sites you will find them in all sorts of niches like sites for doctors, articles, book lovers, scientist, dog breeders and anyone that is interested in sharing information, videos or anything else with like minded people. The business possibilities with social networking websites are huge if you do your research and find the right social network site for your business.