Why Many Small Businesses Fail at Social Media. "I’ve Done Social Media and it Doesn’t Work" As a social media manager, I’ve heard many clients say these exact words. It took a while but I have now learned how to hear those words without laughing. It’s the whole concept that social media is something to be “done,” like it’s the end result of a process. Social Media isn’t a thing to be done. It’s just a part of a process of business promotion that includes of advertising, marketing, communication and most importantly, creating relationships.
In the business world, social media can be a great tool to use to promote your products and services. For the small business, social media needs to be about the conversation between their business and its customers, or potential customers and building a level of trust and loyalty. Social Media Isn’t Quick As a small business owner, time is money and typically, there isn't a large marketing budget to go around. Social Media Is About Listening to Your Audience Social Media Isn’t About Being Everywhere. Frank Kern presents "The State Of The Internet" Facebook Begins Testing Sponsored Results, Its First Search Typeahead Ads. Heads up, Google. Facebook is testing a new format of search ads called Sponsored Results that lets advertisers show ads in the Facebook search typeahead to users looking for a particular Page, app, or Place. It basically will let businesses divert traffic from each other. For example, a competing game company could target Zynga’s CityVille so anyone searching for “CityVille” would see an ad leading to their game alongside the organic search result leading to Zynga’s game.
Sponsored Results could be big for Facebook’s bottom line, pulling in ad dollars from direct advertisers with something to sell. The Sponsored Results will look just like organic results in the typeahead search box atop every page, except for being marked with a tiny word “Sponsored”. Facebook tells me they’ll be sold on a cost per click basis, can be targeted to people searching for any Page, app, Place, (and possibly event) without that business’ permission, and the tests begin tonight. Best Practices – Google Account Setup for Clients for Web Developers and Agencies | HelpSpa.
In the first article in this two-part series I talked about best practices for setting up Google Accounts for personal use and for business use. In this second part I am going to discuss best practices for developers and agencies for setting up and managing Google Accounts for their clients. Before you read this article, you may find it helpful to review the first article as this article continues with example scenarios used in the first one. When we last left John Doe, he had a Google Account for his two blogs — his personal use, (johndoe@gmail.com) and a second Google Account for his company (johnsmadeupcompany@gmail.com)– for business use.
Scenario III – Google Accounts and Google Product Setup for Clients (Scenario I and II are in the first article) So all is well and then finally John gets a client! He wants to manage Google Analytics for this client and the client also wishes to give AdWords a go, as well. Google AdWords: John’s client now wants to start advertising using AdWords. Social Media Marketing Mistake Every Small Business Makes. You constantly extend your virtual handshake in every possible direction... yet no one embraces it. Very few people follow, connect, or "like" you. Why? Simple: You're looking in the wrong mirror. This is the fourth in my series where I choose a topic, pick someone smarter than me (finding smarter people is turning out to be way easier than my ego prefers), and we trade emails. To find other articles in the series, go here, here, and here. This time I talked to Shama Kabani, the founder and CEO of The Marketing Zen Group and the author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing.
Shama's premise: Most social media marketing efforts fail because, at a fundamental level, people don't use social media to connect with businesses--or even with each other. Jeff: You realize this premise is completely opposite from what most people think? Shama: And that's why most businesses get poor results. Jeff: You're going to have to explain that. While I was doing the research I had this light bulb moment. 1. 2. How To Get 100,000 Facebook Likes For Your Blog Fan Page. Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. You can follow him on Twitter @jaltucher. I wanted to have 100,000 Facebook fans for my blog. I don’t have a product to sell. I’m not trying to get advertisers on my blog. We have entered the “Choose Yourself” era. [See also: "Self-publishing your own book is the new business card"] Now, if you want to spread the truths of your brand, of your ideas, of your products, of your message, you have to create your own platform, you have to spread it across all media, and then you have to manage each medium differently.
For each medium, you have to ask: why this medium? BUT, on Facebook, as opposed to any other medium (other than twitter) you pay ONCE and then forever after you can market to that Fan for free. So here’s what I did. And, of course, the final outcome: FanNewscast. Internet 2011 in numbers. So what happened with the Internet in 2011? How many email accounts were there in the world in 2011? How many websites? How much did the most expensive domain name cost? How many photos were hosted on Facebook? How many videos were viewed to YouTube? We’ve got answers to these questions and many more. Email 3.146 billion – Number of email accounts worldwide.27.6% – Microsoft Outlook was the most popular email client.19% – Percentage of spam emails delivered to corporate email inboxes despite spam filters.112 – Number of emails sent and received per day by the average corporate user.71% – Percentage of worldwide email traffic that was spam (November 2011).360 million – Total number of Hotmail users (largest email service in the world).$44.25 – The estimated return on $1 invested in email marketing in 2011.40 – Years since the first email was sent, in 1971.0.39% – Percentage of email that was malicious (November 2011).
Websites Web servers Domain names Internet users Social media Web browsers. VeeV Açaí Spirit. The Blog | Nifty Marketing | Local Search Marketing. Outreach & Editors: 5 Ways To Make Editors Thankful Outreach & Editors: 5 Ways To Make Editors Thankful There are two types of outreachers. Those who understand how their emails are received and those who do not.
The former enjoy greater success, while the latter bemoan less lousy response rates, time wastage and cranky editors. While it is true that editors have their nit [...] A new division for us: Meet NiftyLaw A new division for us: Meet NiftyLaw I’m not going to spend much time on this blog talking about it. 10 Random People’s Reactions To Google Local Carousel 10 Random People’s Reactions To Google Local Carousel Carousel Results in Local is the biggest change to Google’s local SERP’s since the introduction of map listings in organic search results.
Local Search Directories for Attorneys Local Search Directories for Attorneys We put together a Spreadsheet of local directories where lawyers can list their practice for the Avvo conference today. Pubcon New Orleans 2013 Pictures. Lp.wildfireapp.com/rs/wildfire/images/Wildfire_Ebook_EdgeRank_Unveiled 3_30.pdf. Speed Summary | Wired Feb 2011 Cover Story on Social Commerce. So next month’s (Feb 2011) Wired magazine (UK edition) has just dropped, with a cover story on social commerce, by editor David Rowan and editorial assistant Tom Cheshire. The cover text- “What are you selling? Big Brands want to cash in on your Facebook friends: Ecommerce is over – Long live social commerce” gives you a flavor of what to expect. The article is a well-written executive briefing of the social commerce space, peppered with smart quotes and buzz-worthy data-points (summarised below); the sort of content agencies will want to hand out to clients, entrepreneurs to VCs and marketers to budget holders.
We recommend getting your hands on a copy; currently it’s languishing in dead tree media only – no iPad or web yet. But here’s our annotated speed summary: Speed Summary: Social Commerce, building “a social layer on top of online commerce”, “turning products into conversations”, is attracting big funding, big buzz and generating big revenue. Social Commerce Factoids. The Psychology of Social Commerce Here is a great infographic that really highlights the power and potential of social commerce with some great take away stats and insights. We all understand that in order to effectively market products to consumers you need to have a good understanding of the attitude and behaviour patterns of your target audience. Psychologists have defined six universal traits that have been seen in shoppers and are now being seen in social commerce. Social Proof: 81% of customers reach out to friends and family members on social networking sites for advice before purchasing productsAuthority: 77% of online shoppers use reviews to make purchase decisionsScarcity: 77% of people like getting exclusive offers that they can redeem via Facebook.
We assign more value to products that are less availableLike: 50% of shoppers have made a purchase based on the recommendation of the people they follow(and like) on social networks. Be Sociable, Share! Social Media Marketing infographic. Does Social Media Marketing Really Work? [INFOGRAPHIC] From Twitter to Facebook, to Google+, to YouTube, to Foursquare and more, social media use is the hottest thing in marketing. But does it really work? Brands and businesses are certainly making a stronger push than ever on social media, which makes sense — that's where the people are.
Figuring out just how much social media marketing returns on investments of time and money, however, is harder to do. Facebook marketing company Pagemodo recently pulled research from sources around the web to produce the infographic below, looking at just how much faith marketers have in social media. The aggregated data shows a sense of conservative optimism. Sixty-four percent of business owners say social media marketing is a promising tactic and they believe it provides returns — but they aren't willing to go all in with it just yet and favor a more cautious approach.
How do marketers and entrepreneurs measure whether social media marketing pays off? Thumbnail image via iStockphoto, courtneyk. Lp.wildfireapp.com/rs/wildfire/images/Wildfire_Report_Best_Practices_For_Engaging_Messaging.pdf. Curious Consumers Begin Scanning QR Codes. Half of smartphone users have now scanned a QR code at least once, according to research from Chadwick Martin Bailey, but findings suggest marketers have still not proven their value to consumers.
As QR codes pop up in more places, awareness of them is growing, and many users seem to learn what they do before learning what they are called. Chadwick Martin Bailey found that while just 21% of internet users surveyed had heard of QR codes before, more than four in five knew one when they saw one. QR codes are becoming hard to miss, even for those without a smartphone. Data from mobile marketing firm Nellymoser indicates that well over 90% of the top 100 magazines in the US have featured at least one mobile barcode since May 2011; as recently as November 2010, just 9% had. The proportion of ad pages in those magazines that now feature mobile barcodes hovers around 5%. These results may give marketers pause. ClickZ | Marketing News & Expert Advice. The importance of headlines should never be overlooked, a little time spent finding the right headline can make a lot of difference.
A good headline means more people will click on your article wherever they see it, it ensures that the effort you spent in writing an article doesn’t go to waste, and it can also help your content to be picked up by search engines in the weeks and months after publishing. Here are a few areas to think about when writing headlines. It should be noted though, that its not about writing sensation headlines for short-term traffic gains, it’s about ensuring that, if you write a quality article, the headline works to sell it. 1. As I mentioned in a recent post on journalism and SEO, some lamented the passing of the pun headline with the coming of the web. They were fun, and there’s nothing to stop them being used in print, but web headlines do need to be descriptive.
The problem is that non-descriptive headlines don’t work so well out of context. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Find Market Research Companies and Focus Group Facilities. Is There a Problem with Facebook Advertising? Facebook has received a healthy amount of criticism for its platform’s failure to generate returns on paid advertisements. Part of the problem might be on the brand side, though, with advertisers concentrating too hard on direct-response metrics like conversions instead of long-term awareness and engagement KPIs. Facebook users are disinclined to spend much time with Facebook ads.
According to a May 2012 poll by the Associated Press (AP) and CNBC, 83% of Facebook users in the US hardly ever or never clicked on online ads or sponsored content when using Facebook. This stat may baffle marketers, given the amount and frequency of Facebook usage—and the clear evidence that consumers do engage with brands there. According to the AP and CNBC poll, 30% of respondents who used Facebook said they visited the site several times a day, and 75% said they visited Facebook at least on a weekly basis. However, that time might be split in a number of ways.