Why Blog?

This post is a part of an ongoing series in which I teach you on how to shape up your business's social media marketing strategy. Blogs are the cornerstones of any company's social media strategy.

Blogging is essential for your social media prospects

In order to grow its customer's base, a company needs to create the entire social media strategy based around the blog. Here is how blogging is crucial for your social media marketing strategy -

Blogging is your voice

Through your blog you get a centralized way of communicating with your customer. Remember, Facebook isn't forever, neither is Twitter and neither was MySpace. So, essentially, by blogging, you are actually saving your voice from losing listeners. Blogging is how your customer is going to find you from any social network you are on. So, Blog.

Blog=Brand Image

How you blog equals how your brand is looked at. There are a number of people who are always on the go. They are so busy in following and unfollowing people on Twitter, promoting their stuffs on Facebook, Twitter that in the end, they forget about the kind of image that they are creating in the minds of the audience. When you are small restaurant owner, you need to stand up for your business, but in a way that makes you popular with your customers.

Time-Saving

Gone are the days when you had to think about so many things before writing a blog. Before, blogging was all a personal affair. But, not anymore. When you are blogging, all you need to do is follow certain simple rules and get your brand the necessary eyeballs. If you find Facebook, Twitter too complex, then you will definitely find blogging easy.

Instant feedback

With blogging, you are at a better chance of measuring your reach with the audience. Be it publishing something creative or your business, you can instantly know about what customers feel through the comments' section. This way, you will know where you are going wrong. And one place where Blogging outshines social networking sites is that you get to play the role of a moderator. You can allow or ban comments. However, I would want you to allow the comments, both negative and positive and work on rectifying your mistakes too!

Obvious SEO Benefits

With cross-linking and promoting your website, it goes without saying, your blog will enhance your website's SEO rankings for sure. I will elaborate about this later on.

If you like this piece, then please "Like" my Facebook Page. Thanks.

pic courtesy - http://krazzybuddies.com

Twitter Sign-Ups Triple with Apple iOS 5 Launch!

Twitter Times are Here!

Last week, Apple launched its latest operating system which Twitter had a deep integration with. Thanks to the popularity of the operating system, it has been nothing else but just beneficial for the micro-blogging site. Twitter reported three-times the sign-ups it normally reports everyday!

But here is the awesome part! This news piece just covered the first day of the launch which was reported by Costolo. With 4 million Apple 4S phones sold on the first weekend and with around 20 million users already upgrading the operating system, you can only imagine the number of first time users. Users have an option to sign-up to the site and there is not a single reason why they wouldn't!

Have you upgraded to iOS 5 yet?

With Twitter and Apple going the full distance in ensuring a deep relationship, small business owners need to stand up and make sense of their Twitter strategy. With 200 million users (half of them active round the clock) and a rapidly growing base, Twitter can change the shape of your business for sure! 

Top Brands and Measuring Social Media Success

With many small and medium businesses doing a number of stuffs to measure their social media success, it is curious to see how major brands get on their with their social media marketing and how they measure their brand's success. This is how major businesses like Ford talk internally about their social media ROI.

At Ford, they measure the sentiment!

This is simply quite amazing on how big brands perceive their social media outreach. When a businesses needs that one chart to measure their ROI, I am sure Ford does it in the best way possible.

For more such brands and how they track their Social Media ROI, read this article at PR-Squared.

Beginning Your Social Media Campaign

Yesterday, I told you about how you can increase your Facebook Likes. However, there is more to it than just that. One needs to first sort out the priorities and then look forward to creating a strategy. There are many who simply want to increase the site visits while there are others who want to increase their Facebook Likes. 

But first, let me tell you on the important things that you need to first sort out before you begin with your digital marketing.

Begin Your Race Today!

Blog

Having a blog is the first thing that you need to do in order to connect with your customers. If you don't have a blog, then create one ASAP! It takes hardly a few minutes and won't hurt your finances as such. Choose WordPress or Blogger for the blog platform and commence blogging! 

In this blog, I have said before on how you can ready your blog, carry it forward, gave more tips and finished it with how you can deal with blogging problems in a 5 part series (here, here, here, here and here). Hopefully, you won't have a problem.

Facebook

Create a Facebook Fan Page. Make sure that the welcome banner is properly created. Here is how even you can create a Facebook Landing Page quickly. You need to engage with your Facebook audience on a regular level, on a time they are most likely to be online. Facebook pages now work like individual profile. Simply, do the following -

1. Go to Facebook Page - Swtch to the Page - Click Home.

Notice the profile change to that of your page. This is how new Facebook pages look like. "Like" a few pages and groups through this page with similar interests. Comment and engage via this page and you will soon grab eyeballs. Your popularity will slowly rise. 

2. Schedule your posts - Use Hootsuite to schedule tweets and posts to Twitter and Facebook. I don't use Hootsuite for Facebook pages as of yet as I am focussing more on Twitter. All you need to do is simply follow the guidelines and create a profile with your Google id. Add new tabs of Twitter, Facebook and simply share interesting content! That's it! You will be able to "be there" round-the-clock. This way, you can save a hell lot of time! 

Be sure to schedule posts at a gap of couple of hours as users hate spamming. Post interesting news in the industry, like a new game in the market, or a new technology. Get users to sit up and notice your site. They will soon follow.

3. See the Insights (just below the newsfeed) and track the growth and engagement. 

Twitter 

This is the greatest medium ever (personal opinion). You can do wonders by connecting with your audience and using nice tools to follow and unfollow bulk users in your niche. This way, you can aim to connect with a huge number of customers and potential ones, instantly.

LinkedIn

When you are looking for more people to take a look at your website (and your company), you can't afford to miss LinkedIn. I have shared before on how you can increase your LinkedIn reach, before. Simply join groups, connect with the members, and you will pretty soon have interested people.

There are other ways like YouTube video marketing which help you create viral campaigns for your products and businesses.

Begin your Social media marketing with these simple tips and you will surely find a footing quickly. Watch out for more as I discuss on how you can specifically increase Facebook Likes and website hits in my later posts. 

Do post a comment if something pops up in your head.

Making a Facebook Fan-Page Popular

With Social Media marketing experts getting down to business, Facebook pages is the first stop for all of them. Social media marketing now begins with Facebook pages. If you are new to Facebook Pages and you are unable to decipher on how you can make the most of it, then here are the tips that will help you a lot - 

An Awesome Welcome Page - This is like designing your own home page. Make sure to have a beautifully designed welcome page. There must be a strong call-to-action and the visitor must be tempted enough to click "Like". Make full use of FBML and embed your Twitter, YouTube and Flickr links. Simply highlight latest offers and other 'cool' stuffs and visitor will soon hit "Like".

CocaCola has an awesome welcome page. No wonder so many Likes!

Cool Content - Create content that surrounds the theme of your brand. CocaCola is, for example, focusing on Happiness. So, it provides updates based on such theme. They create these themes from time to time and the people simply lap it up!

Manage Angry Customers the right way - With a big brand, there is always a chance of you making a wrong move somehow. The right way of managing angry customers is pretty complex. When you are able to manage angry fans, you help in developing your brand in the long run. 

Create Creative Contests - When you are creating contests that make people refer your page to their friends, then regardless to say, you will be at the receiving end of a lot of attention. Be sure to capitalize on it. Companies are making a killing by providing coupons and discounts and are thus able to convert their fans into real like customers and vice-versa.

Social Games - This is another way of getting more people to be your brand loyalists. Create games where the user get to experience your brand in a large way. Social Games have made it big. Brands have made social games bigger. Are you in?