Trends on the Treadmill - 6 Daily Habits of Facebook Marketing Success P...

Social Media Strategy? What’s the Point!

Some would snicker at the idea that a business would require a strategy in order to approach their social media marketing campaign effectively.  However, it isn’t as black and white as many may think.   

Your social media marketing strategy requires an extensive amount of consideration, from the status updates your company posts, graphics, consumer sentiment evaluation, brand strength, to industry conditions.   

Social media strategy allows your business to build on a continuous premise in order to effectively manage your engagement.  Engagement allows your business to learn what is being said about your brand and to evaluate what is being said about your competitors’.  Being able to stay updated on industry trends, as they occur, is the new way of ‘staying in the know’. Customers feel valued when they are heard, are receiving assistance, or have an opportunity to validate their understanding by helping others within the community. This interaction reverberates intensely and in the end.... facilitates loyalty. 

The importance of knowing the key performance indicators for your business, setting and enforcing clear policies and procedures, and defining marketing activities is clear when moving forward into implementation and measurement of activities and their effectiveness.

SO, the point is.......A social media strategy encompasses so much for a company just by formulating strategic page partners in social media, monitoring communities, and staying involved in the conversation, a business is more likely to succeed in the long term with building customer loyalty, gaining awareness, and identifying possible trends.  THAT’S THE POINT!!!

Sales Goals and Accountablity with Zero-Time Selling

AddressTwo University Weekly Podcast 

with Author of Zero-Time Selling Andy Paul

Tune in 4pm (E.S.T) Tuesday April 3rd

U.AddressTwo.com

 

Andy Paul is the author of Zero-Time Selling, 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales. Zero-Time Selling was selected as one of the Top 3 Sales & Marketing books of 2011. He is also the founder of Zero-Time Selling, a consulting and training organization that empowers enterprises and individuals to transform their sales results by integrating a higher order of responsiveness, speed and information content into every step of their sales cycle. Andy has more than 30 years of successful sales and sales management experience in a sales career that has ranged from selling women’s shoes in JC Penney during high school to selling complex multi-million dollar communications networks to some of the world’s largest companies. For more information, please visit www.zerotimeselling.com.

Facebook Timeline: 5 Big Changes For Business Pages

A guest blog post from SteadyRain 

As Facebook Business Pages start to settle in to the new timeline, there are a few important things all businesses need to acknowledge during this transition. Several new features will be introduced, which will enhance the business’ overall presence on the social network. Consider these five changes and how they could help improve your overall online marketing strategy.

1.    Cover Photo

Every new page will be able to implement a cover photo, which will be posted on top of the page, adhering to the size of 851 pixels by 315 pixels. Positioned as a page’s first impression, a cover photo is a great branding opportunity to highlight a business’ photography or basic information such as service or product offerings. But one thing is not allowed on the cover photo: calls to action.

Brands and businesses cannot include items such as website URLs, phone numbers, or verbiage that encourages action that will take the visitor away from Facebook. Although a business is unable to use the cover photo in this way, it is still a great promotional opportunity for organizations that can be updated when needed. 

2.    Profile picture

The updated profile picture is now designed to feature a business’ logo only. It will no longer be cropped to live next to Facebook page stories. Instead, the 180 pixels by 180 pixels image will shrink down to 32 pixels by 32 pixels. The new profile picture is meant to be only a brand signifier. Additional design elements and company information, minus calls to action, can be added to the cover photo.

3.    Landing / Welcome Pages

The new timeline for businesses will no longer be able to use a Welcome page or “Like” gate for a user’s initial interaction with a Facebook page. Although these items can live on separate tabs, just as they have in the past, a user cannot be directed to this page from an outside link.  

Therefore, it is important for brands to provide thoughtful labels and icons to draw attention and encourage visitors to click on the tab. Give visitors a reason to want to see what is featured.

4.    Star a Story

Have a great story that you want to highlight on a business page? Each page will now have the option to not only hide but also star a story. When an administrator stars a story, the story spans the width of the page and the image becomes larger, drawing more attention and making it the “star” of the page. 

5.    Pinned Posts

Perhaps a business doesn’t want to “star” a story but make it the top story on the page. In addition to hiding or starring, an admin can pin a post, which will anchor the story to the top of the page for seven (7) days. Pinned posts could be a great way to highlight an ongoing promotion or upcoming event. 

Now you are prepared with some of the most prominent changes to Facebook business pages. Have you switched over to the new timeline or are you waiting until the end of March to make the transition? Curious about how these social network updates as well as new social platforms could fit into your business’ current online marketing strategy? Contact SteadyRain’s social media marketing team today.

Using Content to Make Your Social Media Strategies Work

Social media is probably the single biggest change that our world has seen in since the invention of Television. Television gave us a great new way to consume content and it provided lots of opportunities for brands to increase their exposure.

Social media provides the exact same opportunities for brands that Television did, but it is a very different medium and the tactics you'll need to utilize to win are very different. Television is a unidirectional medium. The video is consumed by the audience, but the audience can't talk back. There is also limited choice of what to watch, so TV networks can pretty much guarantee brands that at least a certain percentage of the viewing audience will pay attention to the ads that are shown.

With social media, not only can the audience talk back, but the audience is also creating their own content, discussing that content, and there is so much choice, that very often advertising is completely ignored. You can't buy your way in. The only thing you can do is participate with the crowd at a high level.

The Role of Content

Participating at a high level requires creating content that can be distributed and consumed and talked about socially on the web. Creating content on the web is the equivalent of buying ads on TV and it is the only way to build your online brand in a scalable way over a long period of time.

Ads don't work online (at least not very well). They get ignored. People don't have to look at them or click on them, so they choose instead to focus on content. Therefore, if you're a brand, then it makes sense to focus 100% on building content.

Content on the web can take one of 4 forms:

1. Text: Which ideally would be posted on your company website or blog.
2. Audio: Which can be posted on your website or blog, but can also be effectively distributed as podcasts on iTunes, Soundcloud, or other audio sharing sites.
3. Video: Which is highly viral and can be shared on most social networks as well as Youtube (don't make the mistake of not putting your video on youtube).
4. Images: Images can be photographs, infographics, or any other still image that engages people online. With the current popularity of Pinterest, Instagram, and even Facebook, I would say that images are one of the hottest and fastest growing ways to share your brand's story.

I generally recommend to my clients that they focus on creating text and at least one other type of content. Text is important because of search. Search is the #1 way that people discover new content online, so it makes sense to create lots of blog posts and web pages that can then get you lots of search traffic.

The choice between audio, video, and images depends on the nature of your business. Images make a lot of sense in most cases, because they are low-cost and easy to generate. Audio works really well for certain verticals, but video is highly engaging and sharable, so it definitely pays to try creating lots of different types of content and seeing what works for your business and industry.

The most important consideration when creating content is to make sure that you create content that is useful, sharable, and cool. Tell us what you do and give us examples of why we would want to do business with you in an entertaining way. Make sure all your content can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social networks. Spend time creating content that we want to consume online and your brand will thrive online.

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Colin Clark is the CEO of Tribeswell LLC, a design and consulting firm based out of Bloomington, Indiana. Tribeswell helps its clients build full-featured websites and web apps and create sharable and cool online content to build their brands online.

What Social Media Questions Do You Have? w Sheryl Connelly of Marketing Media Management

Join us Tuesday March 27th at 4pm for our podcast with Sheryl Connelly from Marketing Media Management.
Click here to listen: u.addresstwo.com

We are looking to hear from you for this podcast, please visit our Facebook page or send us a Tweet with your questions on Social Media and we'll get those answered for you on this podcast.

Sheryl Connelly started her career in social media in 1997 when it was trendy, but definitely not cool, by using forums, blogs, discussion boards, and instant messaging.

Over the years, she experimented with using social media platforms and quickly discovered the power of using online and social media marketing techniques.

Sheryl’s first case study in using online marketing tactics was with her first published fiction work, Celtic Sacrifice, written under the pen name of Sheryl Brennan. When the first print run sold out, the seed of using social media tools to promote businesses was planted.

In 2009, a lay off from a 13 year sales career propelled Sheryl into the role of business ownership in Marketing Media Management, a full service social media management agency. Her experience and techniques have earned her acclaim as a presenter to national and local groups such as the Financial Executives Networking Group, National Association of Automobile Museums, Association of Bridal Consultants, Execu-Net, and Louisville Sales Leaders. Sheryl is also a contributing author for Inside Self Storage Magazine, Indiana Small Business Development Center, and The New York Enterprise Report.

Sheryl is not only a multi-published author and consummate speaker, but a single mother to three teenage daughters and the CEO/Partner of four companies: Marketing Media Management, MMM Entertainment, Louisville Diva On A Dime, and Online Marketing Pros.
For more information about Sheryl or to engage her services, log on to:
Marketing Media Management- http://www.managemmm.com

Social Media ROI: Approaching It From Another View

It’s frustrating to me both as a business owner and a marketing company when it comes to measuring the ROI of social media. You can research it – and the so-called experts can give you their theories and own ways of measuring it, but if you keep going, you will find another expert with another idea. There is no one-stop tool to understand, calculate and measure social media campaign successes.

I recently read a great article on Mashable that instead of trying to solve the social media ROI, it discussed how to approach it. Here are the three things to consider:

1. Social Media is the Vehicle, Not the Destination – a follower or fan represents potential – it’s a starting place. Then you take action from there, maybe some sort of call to action, to see if you can turn them into transacting customers

2. Listen and Apply Learnings to Every Department – pure numbers don’t say much – what is your interaction level – what are your followers or fans enjoying most from that? Use that data and apply in other aspects of your business

3. Performance Metrics are Media Agnostic – impressions are impressions – how are you measuring offline activities, such as networking, billboards a magazine ad? Social media is just another avenue and should be measured equivalently.

Serina Kelly
Relevate
www.getrelevate.com
serina@getrelevate.com

Tying it all together - Integrating CRM into the rest of your I.T. world

Choosing a CRM system such as AddressTwo can be one of the most rewarding decisions a small business can make. You get an affordable, easy to use way to manage your contacts, track your leads, keep in touch with your customers, and measure several pieces of information that are critical to your company's success.

One of the questions I've seen raised across the Internet when someone is looking to choose a CRM is, "How will it integrate with my other systems?" This is especially common when considering a system such as AddressTwo, whose claim to fame is simplicity and ease of use through a cloud based, minimal  frills interface. By it's very nature, systems such as this are not designed to integrate with every other piece of software on the market - it would simply bog down the system with cumbersome rules and "features" that really just get in the way of simple yet effective contact management.

This question can take many forms:

• How do I sync my contacts with Outlook?
• Can I keep my tasks and project schedules coordinated with my Google Calendar?
• We already have some systems in place for [insert A2 feature here]. How can I "connect" my existing system with AddressTwo?
• I'm building an interactive website for my customers / vendors and want to integrate it deeply with my CRM solution for tracking history, tasks, and such.  How can I accomplish that with a system as simple as AddressTwo?

One of the things I love about AddressTwo is the great set of documentation write-ups and videos that they provide. I'm the kind of guy who likes checklists and step-by-step walk-throughs, but I also like to be shown how something works. Take for instance the problem of integrating your Google, Outlook, or other electronic calendaring system with A2. There's a great explanation of all you can do with Google Apps right here. There's also some great walk-through videos that will show you how to sync your Outlook contacts, along with many other common tasks people want to accomplish. It may not be as simple as "flipping a switch" but let's be honest, sometimes all that magic that "just works" just doesn't fit the mold of exactly how we tend to operate day after day. If we're willing to take a minute to learn, put together a process, and develop a habit, many things we didn't think were possible are actually quite simple.

Beyond some of the simple tricks of synchronizing data between other applications, there are also many other things you can do with AddressTwo. Our company, C2IT Consulting, has come on board as an A2 Partner Provider for just those scenarios. When we partner with a small business that has some great internal IT systems already in place but wants to integrate it into a new CRM system, we can confidently say that we can make it happen using AddressTwo. Right now, for example, we're helping a small manufacturing company who is building an online store connect directly with their contact and project records in AddressTwo. When a customer logs on to the public online store, we establish a link to their AddressTwo account. When they create an order, we can log a history item on their account, along with a followup task to check back with them. We could even automatically add them to an e-mail campaign that would automatically follow up with them a week later to invite them to share their experience with their friends.

The sky is the limit when it comes to integrating and connecting tools such as AddressTwo with other systems you may already be using. In future posts, we'll share in a little more detail about how some of these features work, and how you can put them to work in your business.

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This is a guest post by Chet Cromer of C2IT Consulting, Inc. 

C2IT helps small business DO business in a big business world by leveraging technology in a way that focuses on discovering and meeting true business needs and goals, incorporating existing systems, and focusing on an affordable, flexible solution that is just the beginning of a long term partnership with our clients.

New Twitter vs. Old Twitter – Make a Twitter List

One helpful Twitter feature is the ability to make a List. You can add those you follow to a list so that you can see all related tweets at once. Think of it as a customized timeline.

Ideas for lists to create would be Family, Friends, Clients, Financial, Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Vendors, etc.

Old Twitter:

To create a list in the old version of Twitter you would click on “New List“ in the Lists section on the right side. Once you have created one or more lists, they will appear above where you create a new one so you can easily access them.

New Twitter:

In the new version, click on the dropdown arrow beside “Lists” and then click on “Create a list”.

The process of actually creating your list is essentially the same in Old and New Twitter. Assign your list a Name and Description then choose whether you want it to be “Public” or “Private”. When finished completing this screen, click on Save List.

Once you’ve created your list, you can add people by searching for them:

Or just go to your follower list and find the people you want to add. Just click the icon on the far right and you can select to add the person to any of your lists.

Once your list is complete, you can click on it to see the tweets of those on your list only.

Follow Me @Jwestwood

List your Twitter Name below so we can follow you.

What lists did you create?

This is a guest blog by Joanne Westwood, Owner of Westwood Virtual Associates, LLC.

Social Media with Web Media Expert

Join us Tuesday March 20th at 4pm on to hear from CEO of Web Media Expert Michelle Hummel
Click here to listen: u.addresstwo.com

Michelle, CEO of Web Media Expert LLC a full service social media agency. She holds an Internet Marketing Degree and 10+ years of successful online business development, sales and marketing experience. Michelle has a proven track record of internet marketing success and is a highly sought after speaker demonstrating her knowledge and passion for social media marketing. She is a current contributing editor to The Social Media Monthly Magazine and writing a book to share her best kept secrets to success. She is available for interviews via email, telephone, Skype video, news segments on location and more.

Michelle Hummel is also an ambitious entrepreneur having founded several social media businesses under the Web Media Expert brand:

Web Media University: provides on-going Social Media Training and Certification. Learn the best kept secrets from the top experts in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Video, Networking and more!

Like Social Media: offers free tools to help businesses connect and grow with the “Like Exchange”, "Follow Exchange" and “Directory”. Monitor your growth with the “Social Bug” ranking tool that lets you track your Facebook engagement and ranking scores.

Send Social Media: #1 Social Media Management Dashboard. Join the thousands of businesses using this service for Social Media Management, Email and SMS marketing. Engage with customers, measure results and monitor your brand across 30+ social media channels all at once.

Social Media Matcher: makes it easy for you to get your business started on the right track with the social media business tools directory. Discover the best apps for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google, WordPress, Mobile and the Web!
Linkedin Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michellesummaiyahummel

How to Super Charge Your Business with Social Media

Join our Podcast today with Krista Neher CEO of Boot Camp Digital

Listen by clicking here:  u.addresstwo.com

Krista Neher has over 10 years of marketing experience and is an educator, best-selling author and international speaker on digital internet marketing  and social media.  Krista is currently the CEO of Boot Camp Digital – a marketing consulting and training company that emphasizes the creative use of technology and social media to grow brands online.  Krista is also the Managing Director of the Institute for Social Media at Cincinnati State where she created and runs the social media marketing certification program.  Krista is also co-authoring a textbook on social media marketing and is a contributing faculty member to ClickZ Academy and Instant ETraining.

Krista has trained thousands on social media and internet marketing including creating customized training programs for the biggest and best companies.  Krista has provided marketing solutions for Fortune 500 companies as well as start-ups and small businesses.  With over 10 years of marketing experience, Krista brings a unique combination of traditional marketing skills and experience, technical knowledge as well as creative new marketing approaches with an emphasis on online and social media marketing.

Krista has deep roots in marketing having worked at Procter and Gamble (originally in Canada – EH?)  for 5+ years in a career spanning sales, finance and marketing. While at P&G Krista worked on the biggest brands and on some of the largest and most successful product launches in product categories including customer sales teams, laundry detergents, coffee and Pur water.  She also created and ran a variety of successful corporate training programs and was officially trained and certified as a P&G trainer.  Krista had a strong track-record of performance and was consistently promoted and recognized for outstanding work.

Social Media and Lead Generation Potential

Another great post from

 https://twitter.com/#!/QuezMedia

 

Take advantage of Social Media for your lead generation, and you’ll realize what a diverse range of opportunities it can provide you. But as the availability and variety of social mediums continue to increase (to an exponential degree), you may find yourself overwhelmed or confused as to where to start. These platforms’ intuitive structures lend themselves to new, inexperienced users, but before you jump in too quickly, take a moment to consider these tips and truly take advantage of the potential that lies untapped.

Stay on top of new trends

Social Media platforms are changing and developing faster than most companies can keep up; by taking advantage of the newest areas, you can keep an edge over your competition, and do well in securing your company’s image as a well-informed innovator.

Be Creative

Today’s audience thrives on the new, the fresh, the exciting—don’t let yourself fall into a generic, boring presence online. Show your personality. Do something different. Rise above your competition by engaging your customers’ craving for something original.

Embrace Minimalism

You want to stand out—but you don’t want to turn people off. Avoid gimmicks or too much “sales speak” in your social media lead generation campaigns. People have short attention spans, especially when they’re online, so don’t bog them down with too much fluff.

Deliver

Give people something they want. Make sure to incentivize your potential customer base, through one means or another. Consider a contest, giveaway, or other direct means of offering something significant as a way of gaining attention and trust. Otherwise, make sure you have enough solid content to make your presentation worthwhile.

Have a Game Plan

Most important of all, think ahead! Have both broad and smaller, specific goals for your new means of lead generation through social media. Develop a plan of attack, and in following through, measure and track your progress frequently to make sure you’re still on pace. And don’t be afraid to consult an expert if you’re feeling stuck, or if you need that little extra push in finding the right direction.

Simple and Easy Suggestions to Target Your Leads

You have a website, a blog, Facebook Page, LinkedIn Page, Twitter and YouTube… Now, how do you get real LEADS from them?

The questions we all try to answer on a daily basis. Sure you can tweet a million times a day, “Come to my website!” or post to your groups, “Did you know we exist!?” But what are you really gaining?

I have found that providing simple answers to these queries is the best answer, your audience wants to learn more about you, and in return you need to learn more about them, right?

Here are my top three suggestions to help you turn clicks into leads.

User-reviews:  Providing a place on your website where your fans and follows can comment and leave feedback for their favorite thought leader (that’s you) is key!  If you are a brick and mortar location Yelp is a great app that you can use. And here is a tool where you can monitor the feedback easily, Send Social Media.

Quizzes: Offer a quiz that is prominent on your site that offers information to your fans as well as information to you. This is a perfect lead generation, and helps with the dreaded, “cold calls.” Here is an example of the Quiz that we offer FREE Social Media Score. You can get your own here SurveyMonkey.

Participation: Are your visitors able to participate when they come to your website? We are an interactive people, and we require stimulation! I suggest offering a “FREE Guide” or a “FREE White Paper” to your visitors when they sign up for your email newsletter. Use an email marketing campaign system like this one, AddressTwo, and watch the leads flow into your inbox!

--Stephanie Klein

Trends on the Treadmill - Top 5 Twitter Tools Pt 3

Hot Social Media Tools for Lead Generation

Social media is a great way to not only generate exposure for a business and website, but also generate high-quality leads. The question for many business owners is which social media tools will provide the biggest benefit and how to go about using it to their advantage. Here are some of the tools that you can use and how to get the most out of them.

The first social media tool is Facebook. With more than 800 million active users, Facebook could possibly be the most important social media asset to generate leads for your business Studies show that more-and-more people “like” products, services and businesses on the site. By setting up a business page on Facebook, people can spread the word about your business. Most people also use Facebook by default so it is easier for them to spot updates about your business than through other avenues such as email or direct mail.

Twitter is another tool you can use to help generate more leads. Rather than making short tweets about news or deals on your site, use the site to post links to valuable content. People will appreciate your post and will be happy to give you their information once they are on your site as well as re tweet your post to their followers. This can quickly turn into a short burst of incoming leads.

YouTube is another great social media site to help you generate leads for your business. Many businesses ignore YouTube because they feel they would not have time to make videos on a regular basis. Creating videos is really simple and can even be outsourced. If you post a video with great content, you can lead the viewer back to your site in order to collect a lead. By properly optimizing and promoting your videos, they will show up in the top results for specific search terms.

There are many other websites that you can use such as Yelp.com, LinkedIn and Tumblr. The most important ones are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for most businesses. However, certain industries and markets will find that sites like Yelp and LinkedIn are worth investing their time and resources in as it is very profitable to do so.

When it comes to generating leads, promoting your business and sharing content on these social media sites is only part of the equation. It is also important to have your own blog where visitors can be directed to from your social media assets. Once on your blog, visitors can digest more of your content and grow to like and trust your business.

You can get even more leads by adding incentive for people to subscribe or submit their information. The easiest way to add value in this case is by offering whitepapers. Offering a short yet valuable and relevant report in exchange for a few pieces of the visitor’s information (i.e. name, email, telephone number, etc.) action can turn more of your visitors into solid leads you can follow up with regularly through a simple CRM tool like AddressTwo.

You can also segment your leads by offering multiple whitepapers and having visitors submit their information for the one they are most interested in. In short order, you will build multiple lists with each one giving you an idea of what the person is interested in. The advantage of this is that it allows you to follow up with your leads with the right products, services and content.

Event-based marketing can also be a great way to add tons of leads in a short amount of time. Announcing a high-quality Webinar will entice visitors to submit their information so they can sign up and get the schedule of the Webinar. This is more of an event rather than a simple white paper so it will gain more attention.

You have to make sure that you tie in everything together when using social media for lead generation. For example, you can post on Twitter linking to a valuable blog post. Once the visitor reaches the blog post and reads through it, there can be a request to submit their information in return for a whitepaper. On your blog, there will be options to subscribe to your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube since you never know where the traffic is coming from.

Social media is a very effective way to generate leads. It can be very cost effective and the fact that your content can go viral is an attractive element of this strategy. One word of caution: be careful to learn the boundaries on how commercial you can be on these social media sites as they often have regulations on commercial content.

Patrick is owner of PWG Marketing, a small business marketing and digital technology firm located in Perrysburg, OH. In 2008, Patrick was selected as Ohio’s only Certified Duct Tape Marketing Consultant. The Duct Tape Marketing System is a framework that brings forth the idea of marketing as a step-by-step system that produces predictable and consistent results. For more information, visit www.pwgmarketing.com.

Social Media for Lead Generation in 2012

A guest blog post from Quéz Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing for lead generation is fresher, more applicable, but also more challenging than ever as we move further into 2012. The single-faceted networking opportunities of the last decade have expanded, and continue to expand, into broader, more diverse pathways. Learning the subtleties, advantages, and disadvantages to each of these platforms can help you master the current trends, keep abreast of new ones, and develop a stronger and more automated stream of leads for your business.

• Use the right medium

Social networks are spreading both in number and in purpose exponentially. You won’t be able to categorize your lead generation into a single, generic “social media marketing” oriented plan of attack. You’ll need to become familiar with each platform’s advantages, and really understand your target demographics to choose the strategy that will win you the greatest leads.

• Don’t get greedy

Nobody accesses social media to read a boring sales pitch. Trying to use tricks, gimmicks, or fluff will only make you look opportunistic and undesirable. It’s fine to sell to people, but you need genuine content to back up your surface designs—you have to be valuable to people. This could mean offering giveaways, discounts, services, or simply getting creative and showing off your personality.

• Be prepared to invest

There’s no getting around it: harnessing social media for lead generation is going to take time and money. Despite the fast and frequent changes that continue to shape the world of social platforms, using social media marketing for lead generation is a long term investment. If you just try and throw something together without firm goals or a solid understanding, it may prove fruitless. You’ll have to use your resources to offer incentives and take the time to structure something effectively. If you don’t have a lot of experience, or have those resources to put up, it may be worth hiring an outside expert to be your social media champion.

A Perspective on Social Media for Businesses Online

A Guest Blog Post from Forefront Marketing Concepts (Cincinnati, OH)

 It is often hard to convince a client that the networking success they have in person can be carried out over the computer through social media websites. Although difficult to achieve, effective online social media strategy can help a business increase their profits and increase customer satisfaction rates. Many factors determine a successful online presence, but the following three steps are my first recommendations for any small business looking to venture into building their brand online.

Three Steps To Success:
(1) Brand Awareness
(2) Up To Date Information
(3) Sales Pitch Driven to Collect Leads

Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is a goal of all social media campaigns.  Companies need to tread carefully because social media marketing can be both positive and negative.  Social media marketing opens the doors for clients to interact and leave their personal comments about experiences - both good and bad.  Ideally, a company will want to create a positive interactive presence that leads to an increase in website traffic and ROI.

Learn these simple three P's of marketing:
1.  Product – Explain what you are selling to your networks
2.  Placement – Besides a common social media connection, why should someone choose you?
3.  Price - Is your product priced effectively?

Up To Date Information
A good marketing campaign will need to inform current and new customers about the company, products and/or services.  This should be created by an easy to navigate website, periodic updates, and rotating specials.  I recommend a reputable company specializing in Wordpress software, easy social media integration and training to save headache.

Connect/Collect
collecting data is often overlooked by many business owners and website development companies. Proper content writing, design and branding on every social media front will help users connect and utilize your marketing driven towards their needs. A business owner should be actively involved in the social marketing processes and be able to answer the following questions:

Do you know how many people visit your current website?

Does your social media drive traffic to your site?

I hope that you are able to look into all of the questions and examine how they pertain to your business. Please feel free to ask questions and I will do my best to discuss this topic with everyone during the next seven days. If you would like more information about my company please visit www.forefrontmarketing.com

Follow my updates at:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/foremarketing/    

Twitter: @fmconcepts

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/fmconcepts