Category Archives: Social Media

SMM – Start a conversation with your market

Posted on by

SMM
The world has gone Social, especially when it comes to online. 95% of people carry smartphones and “Check-In” when they are having their coffee, or eating lunch, getting their hair done. We spend hours each day surfing Facebook, Pinterest, Yammer……

Smart businesses are using Social Media Marketing (SMM) to promote their Services, Products, Causes. SMM is about promoting a website, business or brand through the various social media channels. Engaging, inspiring, interacting with potential customers and other stakeholders, nurturing existing consumers to continue bringing business back to the company.

Markets are places for conversations, marketing is your part of the conversation, social media provides a medium through which the enduring conversation between customers and brands is realized. Social media engages and interacts with customers and empowers their lives, activities and interests by assuming the role of a participant instead of a spectator. SMM creates, fosters and drives conversations through engagement, interaction and relationships. It demands and reciprocates attention, inspires change in the way brands communicate.

Internet marketing and also offline marketing efforts can be used in SMM. The techniques used are aimed at generating traffic for their websites, buzz for their business or products, and has the added benefit if done correctly to build relationships and also links. SMM is the process of getting established content distributed widely across many social media platforms.

Social Media Marketing Different Platforms

There is an ever increasing number of platforms that can be used. Some platforms are suited to certain types of business, other platforms suit other businesses. Here are some of the platforms available (the list is much longer than the following):

  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • Del.icio.us
  • Bebo
  • Flickr
  • Friendster
  • Google+
  • Instagram
  • Buzznet
  • Tumblr
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest

Content and “ideas” get submitted to these and many other platforms in the form of Pictures, Memes, Stories, Invitations, Games, ads, questionares, all created to be sharable, and all hoping to go viral.

Off Page Social Media Marketing

Off-page social media marketing include writing compelling content, shareable because of it’s uniqueness, or value to viewers. Consumers are entertained, educated,  engage by brands through their SMM. The job of the Social Media Marketer is to create great content that people are eager to share to their friends, and the world.

Social media marketing builds bridges between customers and brands , creates conversations in the Internet ecosystem to generate greater and more comprehensive brand visibility.

Read about “10 Social Media Marketing Tips to Help You Avoid Social Media Failure!”

Track your SMM metrics: “Tips to Track Social Media Analytics”

 

 

 

 

Social Media and Social Media Marketing

Posted on by

social mediaSocial media and social media marketing appear to be the buzzwords as the past couple of years. We hear a lot about ways that companies can use to beat social media communities and the strategies involve in building a following on social media platforms.

For all time respond.

To the good and the bad. Let your audience know that you are there with them. Let them feel like they have a direct line to the show hosts.

Listen keenly.

This is a big mistake most people make. They desire to push their own agenda and it does not work. This audience is the key to success, and they are telling you exactly what they want. “Give the people what they want!”

Be consistent.

So many who have failed did so because they didn’t adhere to this rule. Update consistently and produce fresh content on a schedule. People come back when they know they could be missing something. Humans are creatures of habit. Help your audience create a habit out of you.

Content is King.

Today, He/She who has the gold does not make the rules. They simply have more money to create more content! Status updates, photos, blog posts, events, episodes, shout outs, discussion boards, press releases and articles (like how to guides). All of it is content, and you should always be adding more.

Create Value in Everything.

This especially concerns to rules two and four. For all time be sure what you are posting has some type of appeal to your audience. Find out what they want and tailor your content accordingly. When people find value in what you’re saying they post comments, share it and make it viral, and that’s the goal!

Make it special.

Create incentives for people to join your network and tune into the shows. Make them feel like they’re a part of something exclusive and fun, even though anyone can join.

Stand out.

The average Facebook user is connected to 80 fan pages, and Facebook has over 25 billion pieces of new content posted every month. You are competing for attention, how are you going to get it?

Create Evangelists.

Get your audience to promote your brand. Truly understanding your audience will allow you to appeal to them so well that they will take ownership of your brand (think Apple fans) and sell your brand for you. Nothing sells products faster than your own customers (through comments, testimonies, sharing content, etc.)

Measure results.

Look at your inputs and correlate them with the outputs. In other words, see if what you’re doing is working, and identify which things generate the biggest buzz.

A vital part of social media marketing is thinking creatively. Be valid creativity to every campaign and program, and do not trust on a single strategy for success. Plan your campaign carefully.

Search and Social Media

Posted on by

Previously, content quality was a requisite for owning relationships. In the last few years, online publishers have learned that they can instead master the nearly free discovery pathways of search and social media. This spring, a Search and Social Mediahorde of AOL journalists, Paul Miller, Joshua Topolsky and others, left after learning that they would be required to produce content based on trending interest according to Google and Twitter reporting.

Ironically, it is this approach to audience marketing that appears to worry Google. In recent weeks, Google announced it’s +1 listings feature, which allows account users to rate both organic and paid listings, increasing their favorability by the engine directly or indirectly. Meanwhile, earlier this year Google also announced changes to its search algorithm meant to mitigate the effect of low-quality content pages.

Social Media and Search

Quantcast and comScore reported significant traffic declines for the standout content farm, eHow by Demand Media, shortly afterwards. We believe that Google realizes that the quality of its listings is critical to its continued success as the de facto navigational and discovery tool for online content. As Matt Cutts recently stated on the official Google Blog: “Our goal is simple: to give people the most relevant answers to their queries as quickly as possible.”

In the long run, we believe there will be plenty of opportunity for high-quality content. The Wall Street Journal, the largest newspaper in the country with a print-and-digital paid circulation of 2.11M, charges for access to its content. Likewise, the risky and much-criticized move by the New York Times to gate its content has resulted in year-over-year gains in digital ad and circulation revenue, stemming the ongoing sales loss faced by this incredible brand in recent years.

Social Media Search

This event has particular meaning to RBM, a New York Digital Marketing Company, because in the past, the major media brands able to survive with gated content were large financial news outlets. The New York Times, by contrast, is squarely general interest. Despite the high profiles of free and user-generated content brands, we believe professionally produced content looks forward to a long and profitable future in the digital media world.

At RBM they do things a bit differently: they seek to enable a business through social media, rather than simply run creative ideas or campaigns. They create a road map for their clients to deploy a social infrastructure across their organization, taking into consideration team restheirces/assets, governance, existing marketing infrastructure, and the unique technology needs.