Social Media For Small Business

Social Media Benefits

Is Social Media Marketing Really Effective…????

Growth of Twitter

Where should you post your status..???

What is Social Media ?

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Social media is media for social interaction as a super-set beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate.

Common Mistakes You Made On Social Networking Sites Unintentionally!

With the introduction of social media as a marketing tool and with its growing popularity marketers have very high expectations out of it. And it does get fulfill too.

As this medium is new, the marketers have built some perceptions regarding the advertising which may not be entirely true. It is the fastest medium today and will reap you good results but not with the blink of an eye. It will reap you the results you want out of it but it certainly isn’t the Alladin’s Magic Lamp.

Struggling with these issues many marketers feel disappointed when they do not get the desired results even after making so much of efforts. You can avoid such problems by taking care of the points mentioned below.

Here are these three mistakes and the ways to fix them up:

1. Asking the Wrong Question:

People run behind the number of tweets they should do per day or the selection of the day they should schedule their posts.

But these questions are futile. Please remember social media is not the savior of your brand, it is you and what you offer.

If you are offering a product make sure it is unique in nature , user friendly so that it finds place in the top of the mind recall in customers mind. Same goes for any service you provide that it fulfills or exceeds the customer’s expectations. If you write a blog, make sure that it informative and provided answers to most of the queries of your reader.

• How often is it that you’ll suggest your friend to try a brand? Focus on this question and then segment your customers. You can read further to know how to carry on this:
• Customers are divided into 3 categories and they respond to your offering on a 0-10 point scale:
• Promoters- Those who score 9-10 on the scale. These are loyal enthusiastic who’ll continue buying and act as referrals too. These are helpful in your growth.
• Passives- these are less enthusiastic and satisfied customers but they are susceptible to competitor’s offerings. They score a 7-8 on the scale.
• Detractors- these are the most harmful ones as they are the unhappy customers who can damage your brand image with the negative word of mouth the spread. They score a 0-6 on the scale.
• By subtracting the percentage of promoters from the detractors one can arrive at the NPS i.e Net Promoters Scale. Focus on this and then plan which social media you should choose where the max NPS score is available for you.

2. Disillusioned Focus:

It is the absolute priority of marketer to stand out from the crowd and attain a proper place among its niche as well as its customers. But people mistakenly think that by spreading themselves on every social media will do the need full. This is not true. Avoid going too thin on the social media platform and focus on one major social media is what you should do.

I give you the example of the late Steve Jobs when he joined apple. He faced the same problem with apple’s product line. At that time apple was producing too many versions of the same product in order to satisfy its customers. When Jobs asked a simple question to the team mates about a product that which product out of the many versions of it should he, suggest to his friends. When he did not get a suitable answer the first thing he did was scraping apple products by almost 70%. He stated that “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” This fits in perfect to social media.

Now, how do you decide?

• Find out where your customers will be mostly available?
• Narrow down on the activities which will fetch you highest marketing ROI.

Like if you feel that email marketing will do for you then hire a blog writer proceed further. If you rely heavily on SEO then you can take the help of google plus and avoid the rests.

3. Having Unrealistic Expectations:

As I already said that social media is no magic lamp which will fulfill your wishes with the blink of your eye. One has to be strictly patient. One may say with the growing expenses day by day how can one may be patient. The quote by Marketing Expert Seth Godin,” If you want to make a sale next week, you can’t start marketing today. You should have started three years ago” very aptly explains this.

You need to have any of the 3 things to survive on the social media – time, energy or money. If you are short on money then you need to rely on time and energy to gain trust of your customers over time if you can’t spend much in monetary terms.

You need to understand the ways to get traffic and convert them into loyal customers and focus on the right channels you use to attract them.

Just take care of these few points and you’ll be just inches away from where you want to be.

Social Media Management Applications

The features, layouts and levels of user-friendliness are different each web app, but they all get the job done when it comes to organizing and maintaining several social media accounts.

1. HootSuite 

HootSuite is arguably the most popular social media management app with a slew of options, settings and dynamic features to backup it’s reputation. You can monitor and post to several popular networks including both Facebook personal profiles and business pages, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. With a built-in custom analytics system, the ability to monitor selected keywords and the option to conveniently schedule posts–HootSuite sets the bar high for competing social media management tools.

2. TweetDeck 

TweetDeck is another popular web app for social media management. Unlike HootSuite, which operates within your Internet browser, TweetDeck can be installed as a separate program on your hard drive as a desktop application. For those who want the flexibility, apps for the iPhone, Android and Chrome browser are also available. With TweetDeck, you can watch your updates stream in real-time when you connect with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more.

3. Seesmic 

Like TweetDeck, Seesmic has app integration for practically every major platform out there, both mobile and web-based. Streams from your networks can be processed and viewed in an interface that resembles typical email platforms. While Seesmic allows social media management for major sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, the application also offers more than 90 third party integration options including sites like Klout, Zendesk, Salesforce Chatter, Yammer and Stocktwits.

Things Your Business Should Never Do On FaceBook

In order to ensure an effective social marketing strategy, you need to equally develop the art of emphatically saying “no” to the things which does not feel appropriate to you. After all, it takes ages to build the customer base, but split of a second is enough to loose them altogether, especially if you are not knowledgeable about the things to refrain from.

Therefore, it necessitates you to know the following coveted things to avoid on Facebook, so that you can create a brand for yourself by equally strengthening relationships.

Never indulge in the competition associated with “like and share”

Facebook promotion rules and guidelines never ask you to run “like” or “share” competition on your Facebook page. Since, it can easily be found by Facebook Insights which is considered to be a powerful tool. Especially as the page starts getting burgeoning amount of traffic which will indeed be clicked and reported as SPAM by people.

Never concentrate totally on selling

A strategy is going to be your best friend. Therefore, you should not just limit your relations with your customers on professional ground. Social Media is about how you conserve and engage. Look beyond the realms of just marketing and selling your products and this can be done by helping others.

After all, social media sites such as Facebook involves a tricky process where your noble acts automatically give you much needed promotion, thus your increasing base of customers will be more responsive to your promotional posts. They will equally pass your promotion to other networks as well.

Do not post your entire Page updates at one go on Facebook

Readers want to be a witness to informative and engaging articles on periodical basis. Therefore, never post all the articles on a single basis and then be absent for another set of days. This will discourage your readers as they will either unlike you, hide you or even mark as a SPAM.

Never spam pages of other people

You might be unintentionally marketing your pages to potential fans, but this could lead you to various limitations or even ban.

Don’t post about politics or religion

Speaking on the matters of politics as well as religion will deter your audience towards establishing connection. Since, some where down the line you cannot be neutral in such debatable topics. You can have your own opinion but you should keep it limited with your close friends but when it comes to openly showcasing on Facebook, there is an increasing risk that it is going to make matters worse for you. Since, you can’t afford to have these interaction with the people with whom you are doing business. Isn’t it?

Never expect immediate success

Relations take time to nurture and Social Media site such as Facebook is not an exception too. After all, life is regarded to be a learning phase. Hence, patiently learn the things in order to strengthen and cement the relations like never before.

Final thoughts

Therefore, by reading the aforesaid article, you know the things which you should refrain from doing on Facebook as it will act as a death knell for your business. After all, as it is said that “If you suck in real life, you will suck on Social Media”, therefore be cheerful since it is the best remedy to make fortunes like never before. Great, isn’t it?

Firms spending more on social media

Most enterprises these days – be it banks, retailers or the government, are adopting social media strategies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Foursquare for efficient communication. Organisations use social media for their customer service function and also for their sales and marketing functions.

With over one billion individuals logged on to various social networks, people are now using social media for advice on what products to buy, where to shop and even what firms they want to work with.

In a report titled the SMAC Code, consulting firm KPMG states that the introduction of various technologies such as social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing, businesses are becoming extremely swift to give a free rein of unlimited opportunities for everyone involved.

These technologies collectively referred to as SMAC will be the leading business-technology enablers of the next decade.

“IT-BPO firms will have to re-invent themselves in order to be aligned with SMAC and follow a four-step roadmap which consists of creating a safe environment, enabling organisational agility and broadening their horizons. SMAC (Social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing) collectively is considered to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity globally for the IT-BPO vendors,” K K Raman, partner, KPMG in India said.

TOI – 28th September 2013