If you are searching for the answer to the question "What is social media marketing?" then you can find out more information here. It is simply the process of promoting different brands, people, products, or services by using popular networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or any other popular social media platform. This type of online advertising has done wonders for small businesses.
Although radio and TV ads are just as effective as Internet for promoting brands, products or services, they can cost a lot more money than promoting products on the internet. You will have to spend your entire budget on advertising campaigns that are not always guaranteed to be successful. As competition to promote businesses is fierce, individuals must take different advertising steps to attract their target audiences and customers.
The quality of your services or the products you are trying to sell will ultimately be the deciding factor in the global market, but visibility is just as important. The internet offers a world of opportunities for small and big businesses and you can get global exposure at little or no cost. This is the reason why it is essential that you learn about generating leads through social media.
The first step to take for generating leads using this strategy is to build your own business website. It is best to invest some time and money in creating a professional site that represents the product or service you are offering. Include your contact details, features of the product and any other information about your brand, products and (or) services. Make sure the keywords are search engine optimized before submitting the website to popular search engines.
If you are a Facebook user or Twitter user, you can use these sites as the advertising options to place ads on profile pages of other people. One of the main advantages of using these networking sites is that you can place ads on profile pages of your target audience, so that they will be able to read about your products. Make sure you include Fan or Like button feature on the site so that other users can spread the word about your services or products.
As your company website has information about your products, you should create a dedicated blog to back it up. Write about the latest developments and keep your blog updated at all times. The blog will generate leads, especially if you put videos about the product you are offering via YouTube.
Online marketers should use every opportunity to build a strong social media presence that can be gained by utilizing various features of the popular social networking sites. The wider will be your exposure, the higher will be your chances of visibility. So broadening your social media presence will automatically ensure that you will get more targeted audience and will generate more customer leads.
So next time if you are asked the question "What is social media marketing?" you can confidently say that it is all about promoting your brand, products or services on social media channels. Online marketers must analyze the market and find out all the tactics and strategies that will help them attract potential customers to their websites. Utilizing the features of popular social networking sites are the strategies that you need to follow to become successful in your business.
Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses
Social Media Marketing is still relatively new for small businesses, and advertisers are only beginning to experiment with Facebook ads and some other small campaigns. Even digital marketing experts, familiar with advanced targeting techniques in paid search and display advertising, are just now figuring out how to effectively run advertising programs on Facebook. This could include writing different ad copies, the inclusion of Like and sharing buttons on your site and presenting user-generated content such as videos or reviews.
Social media websites’ users can list any terms they want to define their likes and interests. So in order to target a full audience of potential customers, you may have to do some investigations for those terms and phrases that go beyond your general keyword search. For example, using the targeting parameter "camping," your ad will not reach users who have listed "camping in the mountains" or "tent camping" on their profile.
Various social media websites like facebook offers exceptional, low-cost marketing opportunities for small businesses as well as powerful platforms on which a business can build a brand presence. A Business Fan Page allows your customers or fans to "like" your business and get the updates of the business via their news feed every time they log in.
Social media advertising holds tremendous promise for marketers looking to reach targeted audiences online. Nowhere else do people willingly share such specific information about themselves – enabling marketers to target ads and evaluate performance based on details about consumers such as their age, interests, employers, location and even friends and relationships.
For Social media marketing of small businesses, Facebook has come up with the biggest platform to hit social networking in a long time. Today almost everyone has a facebook account and users check their Facebook news feeds on regular basis for interesting tidbits, articles, and news. Making sure your company's posts are included in the news feeds of people looking for your products is essential. Business pages (also known as Fan pages) should be built under your personal page. Keep posts interesting and open to participation, as opposed to a steady stream of wall-to-wall advertising to ensure plenty of ‘shares’, ‘likes’ and ‘follows’. Here is a Facebook’s illustration about Testing a New Way for Marketers to Tell Stories in News Feed -
Facebook is taking a bold step by focusing on a user’s activity to create ads. Some users may be annoyed or even offended when they find that their posts are being shared as advertisements. The biggest risk here is that right now people are making the choice to share their favorite brands and products with their friends directly. It may become invasive when a general post gets targeted to a user's friends. It will be interesting to see how effective 'Sponsored Stories' will be, and also what the reaction will be from the masses. Here is the official Facebook video introducing 'Sponsored Stories' -
Social media marketing like utilizing the features of facebook pages are an excellent way to add value and create raving fans for promoting small businesses. However, without a solid plan in place, your page could actually do more harm than good. When you plan ahead and create a guide, growing your fans and building relationships becomes effortless.
Tips for Building Profitable Social Media Marketing Campaigns in 2015
The Right Niche Service at the Right Time for Virtual Professionals
Like a freight-train steaming ahead, the Social Media revolution shows no signs of slowing down in 2015, but will only continue to chart entirely new terrain in the way we interact, and how businesses reach their customers. When a new trend takes root and changes the landscape of doing business, a new need for assistance arises along with it! Ever been in the right place at the right time? Today, there is no better place for Virtual Assistants and Online Professionals to bring their valuable organization and technical skills to the table with Social Media Marketing. Bringing existing and new clients into the prosperous world of Web 2.0 and establishing their business presence online will put you in demand and skyrocket your business in 2015.
Bridging the Gap between Online Service Providers and Businesses Needing Help
Many businesses, entrepreneurs and organizations learned about Social Media in 2014, and know for sure they need to jump on board to meet their target audiences and customers online in 2015. With 75% of internet users last year hanging out in Social Networks, traditional means of marketing has now given way to the new paradigm of building relationships to make those valuable connections that will ultimately grow their business. There are so many businesses needing help with where to even begin, which presents a fantastic opportunity for virtual assistance and Online Professionals to carve out an in-demand niche service providing Social Media Marketing know-how. With the struggling economy demanding businesses get creative with their marketing and more transparent with their audiences, these skills will win clients and build your practice in 2015 like no other service.
What's Hot in Social Media marketing campaigns?
Businesses are scrambling for help. As a Virtual Assistant or Online Professional, offering these much-needed services will keep you a few steps ahead in the exploding industry of social media marketing. You can help clients navigate through the virtual marketplace and bring them to an entirely new level of exposure and influence, for the most effective mass exposure of their message, products or services.
Services in demand right now include:
1. Strategy and Action Planning
2. Online Video Marketing
3. Social Network Profile Set-up in Various Key Networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google plus, Pinterest and LinkedIn etc.
4. Building and managing business social profiles, pages and communities.
5. Online Reputation Monitoring
6. "The 1-2 Punch" - Content Creation and Distribution for micro-blogging on platforms like Tumblr, twitter etc.
7 Ways to Build a Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign
Want to GROW your Virtual Assistant or Online Professional business, and give clients a solid voice in Web 2.0? What more valuable service can be offered today in these times? By taking a few steps to build your qualifications, you'll take your business to a whole new level very quickly.
1. Continue your education to gain knowledge and expertise to provide Social Media Marketing services.
2. Join a network of Virtual Assistants or a community of Online Professionals for support, ideas and inspiration - there's many of them.
3. Stay updated on industry trends by subscribing to a few select blog and article sites such as Ezine and HubPages.
4. Consider a professional photo shoot for the right picture to show the world.
5. Update your website and build a Facebook Business Page showcasing your skills and services, and start connecting.
6. Create your own Twitter and LinkedIn profiles and participate in discussions with people in the industry that you can learn from, and also contribute to.
7. Get the word out about your services with local community advertising, your own blog and articles, or a press release.
Now's the time to jump on board with these hot new skills to build profitable Social Media Marketing campaigns in 2015! Want to learn more about this exciting new niche service?
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Using your Facebook Fan Page to increase your business exposure and revenue is simpler than you've been told. Everyone with a Facebook fan page faces the same two problems:
[Problem #1] How To Find the Targeted Facebook Audiences?
[Problem #2] How To Bring Them To Become Your Fans?
5 Sneaky Ways to Amp up Your Brand on Social Media
Social media marketing is a tool that has helped many businesses grows up. You can find a ton of helpful hints and "secret" tricks that you can use to boost the social media presence of your brand. Find the things that work best for you and you will see the benefits of this marketing strategy.
Here are the five sneaky ways that brands are using social networks to add more power to their campaigns. If you are looking for some new ways to pump up your brand online, give a try to some of these.
Sell your products
Several sites like Facebook and Twitter are looking into adding a "Buy" button to make it easier for users to make purchases without leaving the social sites. Until then, you are not supposed to sell directly from those channels.
What you can do is to take the maximum advantages of the news feeds by using tools such as ShopPost to draw attention to your products. It helps get you noticed by your target audience and also gives you some helpful insight with analytics and statistics.
On sites like Pinterest and Instagram, you can install the handy Like2Buy button from Curalate that lets you link directly to your products from your profile.
Use a live stream video
A marketing tool that is growing in popularity is the live stream video. Businesses are using tools like Brand live to post videos to Facebook in order to bring physical products together with a digital audience.
You can also include links to the products you show in your video in order to make it easier for your viewers to make a purchase.
Share your reviews
Review sites are everywhere. Consumers are happy to give their opinions about your business to sites like Yelp and Angie's List. The types of reviews your business receives can be a huge deciding factor for potential customers. If someone is on the fence about buying, they will turn to posted reviews to make a decision.
Make sure that people are seeing as many reviews as possible by sharing them with tools like Get Kudos, which collect and share your reviews online.
Get help from your fans
Do not assume that the people following you on social media are taking action on your behalf. This is where engagement comes in to help. Make sure you are interacting with your audiences regularly and build their trust. Then, you can ask them to help.
Be direct in your posts. Tell them what you need them to do, whether it's to share, comment or like your posts. Encourage them to re-tweet your links. Calls-to-action are an important part of getting your audience to work for your brand.
Another way to do this is to include share buttons on your blog and website that make it easy for your fans to share your content and products with their own circle on social media.
Watch the hash tags
Hash tags are still a popular way to find out what is trending on social networks. When you keep track of the trending hash tags, you can find smart ways of connecting them to your business and including them in your posts.
Using trending hash tags in your posts will ensure that more people are seeing you online. Be sure to only use the tags that are relevant to your brand. Use tools like Sprout Social to stay in the loop on the tags.
