eMarketer recently published an article explaining that most marketers are using their social media platforms as a way to gain brand awareness and customer loyalty. What most companies where not trying to do is bring in new customers. This is a sound emphasis for several reasons.
Social Media Is Long Term
Expecting to hop on Twitter or Facebook and get a bunch of prospective customers to seek you out for a purchase is dream. You have to take your time. Follow people and engage in conversation with them. Provide relevant and entertaining information. People will find your social media accounts for the content you produce on them, not the product or service you sell. Once you position yourself as an expert in your industry, people will start coming to you.
Social Media Is Not Hard Sell Friendly
As mentioned early, people come to your social media accounts for the content that you generate. What they are not looking for is a pitch. Constant sales pitches are a sure fire way to disengage your audience. The only way to get around this is to offer discounts. People do not mind finding coupons and offers on social media, but you will still need to balance it with interesting content.
Social Media Gets You Seen
Everytime you tweet on Twitter or post on Facebook, your logo is shown. When people are consistently exposed to your logo and company name, they will remember it. If your content is good enough, people will share or retweet it. Often times, this will expose your logo and company name to people that would not see it otherwise. Of course, this means an increase in brand awareness.
Social Media Is Engaging
Social media gives you a great way to interact with customers. If you are doing business with another company, it provides an easy way for you to promote them and the things that they do well. An act such as that will be greatly appreciated. If you are doing business with individuals, you can see what complaints they have about you and change them. This will certainly help your customer loyalty.
But Will It Make Money?
It can, but your goal should be long term growth. Social Media will not send people running to your website to make a purchase. What it will do is expose you to new people and help you to retain the customers you already have. Eventually, one of the people who discovered you will be in need of a service you provide, or a customer you may have lost will be saved. New customers are always great and retaining customers is even better.
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Monday, September 20, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
How to: Get Started on Twitter
If you're just getting started on Twitter, it can be very confusing and overwhelming. You've got things to say and websites to link to, but how do you get followers so that someone actually reads what you're putting out there? Here are some tips:
1. Follow the accounts on this list
Almost everyone that appears on the list will follow you back. You might be thinking that this will just pad your follower numbers without providing you with an audience that is genuinely interested in your topic. You're absolutely right. Fortunately, I'm not just having you increase your followers for nothing. It makes a big difference to a prospective customer whether you have 100 or 10,000 followers on Twitter. More followers looks like your company is a well respected authority in your particular industry.
2. Follow related accounts
If you sell cars, follow accounts that talk about new cars, new car technologies, and industry trends. If they notice that one of their followers is tweeting information that would be relevant to them, they will most likely follow back. This way you can gain more followers while working on building an audience that cares about what you have to say.
3. Follow your target audience
Now that you have a decent base of followers, seek out your target audience. This is easiest to accomplish when the target audience is based in a certain region. When this occurs, you can find accounts for newspapers and sports teams in that area. Look at the list of people that are following those accounts and follow them. Again, they will most likely follow you back.
4.Retweet other people
Whenever you see a tweet or a link to an article that you find interesting, retweet it. This helps you to form relationships and engage your audience. Often it will result in a retweet or a suggestion from the person you retweeted to their followers to follow you. Both of those can result in more followers for you. Do not, however, hit the retweet button below their tweet. If you do this, your company logo and name will be replaced by theirs. Instead, copy and past their tweet and before it write RT @whomever.
5. Use hashtags
Hashtags are words or phrases that are put after a "#." They become hyperlinks. When you use these, it makes your tweets, and by extension you, easier to find. Make sure they relate to the article or tweet. For example, on our Twitter page we talk about marketing, social media, advertising and graphic design, so some of the hashtags you will find include #marketing, #socialmedia, #advertising and #graphicdesign.
Other than that, the biggest thing is to be patient. It takes time for people to notice you, it takes time to get people to care and it takes a lot of time before it will affect your sales.
1. Follow the accounts on this list
Almost everyone that appears on the list will follow you back. You might be thinking that this will just pad your follower numbers without providing you with an audience that is genuinely interested in your topic. You're absolutely right. Fortunately, I'm not just having you increase your followers for nothing. It makes a big difference to a prospective customer whether you have 100 or 10,000 followers on Twitter. More followers looks like your company is a well respected authority in your particular industry.
2. Follow related accounts
If you sell cars, follow accounts that talk about new cars, new car technologies, and industry trends. If they notice that one of their followers is tweeting information that would be relevant to them, they will most likely follow back. This way you can gain more followers while working on building an audience that cares about what you have to say.
3. Follow your target audience
Now that you have a decent base of followers, seek out your target audience. This is easiest to accomplish when the target audience is based in a certain region. When this occurs, you can find accounts for newspapers and sports teams in that area. Look at the list of people that are following those accounts and follow them. Again, they will most likely follow you back.
4.Retweet other people
Whenever you see a tweet or a link to an article that you find interesting, retweet it. This helps you to form relationships and engage your audience. Often it will result in a retweet or a suggestion from the person you retweeted to their followers to follow you. Both of those can result in more followers for you. Do not, however, hit the retweet button below their tweet. If you do this, your company logo and name will be replaced by theirs. Instead, copy and past their tweet and before it write RT @whomever.
5. Use hashtags
Hashtags are words or phrases that are put after a "#." They become hyperlinks. When you use these, it makes your tweets, and by extension you, easier to find. Make sure they relate to the article or tweet. For example, on our Twitter page we talk about marketing, social media, advertising and graphic design, so some of the hashtags you will find include #marketing, #socialmedia, #advertising and #graphicdesign.
Other than that, the biggest thing is to be patient. It takes time for people to notice you, it takes time to get people to care and it takes a lot of time before it will affect your sales.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
5 Blogs You Need To Follow
Blogs are popping up left and right these days, but with so many to choose from, it can be hard to tell which ones have information that will be valuable to you. To make things easier, here are five blogs that provide excellent content that will be useful to business owners, social media gurus, and bloggers.
Here they are in no particular order:
This blog covers all topics related to promotion. New technologies, social media, and mobile advertising are just a few topics that are routinely covered by Big Promotions
Topics include finance, technology, innovation, management, small business, and global. This is an excellent resource for keeping up with current business trends.
This advertising strategy blog covers everything from SEO to writing headlines.
This blog focuses on the impact and importance of social media. It also covers current and emerging trends.
Mirna Bard is a strategy consultant who specializes in social media, SEO, and eMarketing. her blog focuses on tips that maximize the value you gain from your social media efforts.
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