Getting a Sharper Picture of Social Media’s Influence

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?
Go through the website http://www.vaclassroom.com/ for more information on training and skills that are in demand for Virtual Assistants.

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.

5 Benefits of Social Media Business Owners Need to Understand

Introduction
Social media marketing goals are much more gaining retweets, fans, friends and likes. These are some glimpses which help in improving your business growth on social media.  Social media marketing is one such opportunity online which helps you in better understanding about your business and its various aspects. Social media marketing is considered as one of the best ways for online business growth.

Sharing content, ideas, thoughts, and images with hundreds of followers isn’t sole perk of social media marketing. People worldwide have discovered that social media marketing has contributed to growth and success of many small businesses. Nonetheless tranquil profaners are there who have not discovered the perks of social media marketing.  In this post we will see 5 benefits of social media business which every business owner should know about. This will definitely turn profaners into believers. 

1.      Increase Brand Awareness
Introduction
Your company must be offering one of the greatest products worldwide but until and unless customers are unware bout the product, its quality and usage your product becomes useless. Due to this there would be no sales and your business will be under losses defiantly. For every business owner it is very crucial to create brand awareness. Foe creating and increasing brand awareness you should ensure that best marketing strategies are used for products visibility. Once you have come to a point where you start generating sales, make sure the product’s quality should not drop down at all. After your product has become popular word of mouth is enough for promoting your brand. The best part about this promotion strategy is that it involves no cost.  This is what you call increasing brand awareness.
How it helps
Since businesses use social media for increasing brand awareness, it also helps them in brand promotion with very little or no cost. If some costs are involved or required to be paid then these are linked with the strategies. Most conventional and powerful methods are used for advertising thus promoting your brand in the best possible way. In recent times, marketing departments of many companies worldwide have started appointing community managers so that they can plan and help in increasing brand awareness. They help companies to reach social media in different ways for brand awareness. Community managers uphold relationships with audience online in various regions. In this way community managers can assure that business keeps expanding in every region and relationships are also maintained with premium stakeholders.
How can you use it in your business?

Social media is one great platform where a business owner can introduce its brand. People should be aware about your business and its existence on internet. This is because until and unless they see the shop online how will they buy it? How do customers know what kind of services you are offering? There is a simple equation to this. More than two thirds of the country uses social media or social networking. To make it your perfect business channel brand promotion to potential customers becomes compulsory. According to the research 78% of small businesses have attracted new and potential customers by using social networks. Apart from this about 75% of Americans online said that social media has influenced their shopping by availing product information and enhancing brand loyalty.

2.      Legitimize a Brand

Introduction
Increasing brand awareness and establishing brand are two both different prospects. Social media also helps you in legitimatizing your brand. This helps a business owner is gaining potential customers. When customer wants to use a specific brand product, they would always want to know a little more about it. For this purpose they visit the company’s social media page. You as a business owner should always keep your social media page updated with comments and new posts. Having an established website reveals that your brand exists whereas having an established social media page reveals that your brand is active.  There are 3 basic criteria related to legitimatize a brand. Below you can have a look at those.
·         The first thing you should know about legitimatize a brand is you must have a social media page. This page helps in knowing about your business, its objectives and products. By keeping updated information on your brand proves transparency to customers.
·          Your business must be independent. Since your business is independent and self-governed you can clearly understand customers’ requirement and make them understand about your prospective.
·         To legitimatize a brand you will have to invest in some marketing strategies so that it can be valuable to customers. Customers look into the efforts of a business owner. They can see how much planning has been done to legitimatize a brand. Thus by proper planning you can increase your brand and business value.

How it helps
If your brand is legitimate and customers get positive feedbacks about your product or brand from various social networks then they definitely would buy it. Resources say that if you have a legitimate brand then people can trust you. A genuine product will always gain more profits than any other product.

How can you use it in your business?
You can use to legitimatize your brand for simply generating sale. Once your product’s genuineness is verified on social media then you do not have to worry further. A legitimate brand will never have to put in efforts for selling or proving its genuineness. Social media is the best platform which can be used for increasing your business sales thus legitimating your brand.

3.      Increase Sales

Introduction
Increasing sales is one of the most prominent factors required by every business owner whether small or big.  It is considered as of prime importance because it leads to revenue generation.

How it helps?
Social media is the best perspective through which sales can be increased. A social network helps to be in touch with your customers. It also helps you to keep informing about your products and latest updates and upcoming launches. For clients and fans you can update and write posts that relate to your business products, its sales etc.  You can also update about various offers, discounts or sale which your company is going to start with. Other ways in which marketer can use social media is by advertising and promoting content to sell products. These products should be targeting audiences those who are not aware about your brand. 

How can you use it in your business?
According to the research social media helps in generating one-third of your business profit. This is the easy way to generate leads. For example every company has marketing departments. Marketing department heads plan to increase sale thus using some techniques. They built content for social platforms, use ads to scale, increment reach and fuel up demand generation. However there are some basic steps involved in increasing sale. Proper planning is required. This planning will be shown to you in following points. The system begins as follows:
·         First step is to know about your audience. For example if you have jewelry business then your target audience is female sector.  Knowing your audience is a first step to success. Social media makes it possible in the easiest way. You can cater product offers and campaigns to target audience this will be a good return on investment.

·         Target your audience more effectively. Knowing your audience and targeting it is not enough. You should target them effectively so that it really works. You should know how to use social media can be used for doing so. One of the most effective ways is geo-targeting. This means you can send message on demographic based to specific audience. This means specific area audience can be targeted. Social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook are the best tools for communication. You will get the right audience there. You can also target customers on the basis of country, education, interested in, relationship status, gender, age, language and more.

·         Find new customers thus expanding your audience: Limited audience will never help in your business growth. Gradually you should bring in more customers and expand your targeted audience. You never know from when and where you can get potential customers. For example if you have opened up a coffee shop in your neighborhood, then you can use Geo-targeting for bringing in potential customers. You can use Facebook and Twitter for posting pictures and services provided in your coffee shop. You can cater to campaigns around schools and colleges. This is how to can target new customers.

·         Always ask for instant feedback from customer and ask what their perspectives are. Increasing sales requires a lot of aspects. When you give services to customers ask them how you can improve it, what are their suggestions, what do they feel about quality of your products and more questions like that. By looking into customers’ perspectives you can improve your services thus increasing your sales. You can ask people on social media also to give review about your products and services.

·         Improving market intelligence and going ahead of your competitors plays a significance role in increasing sales. With the help of social media monitoring business owners can track their competitors. They can track their each and every movement and thus using market intelligence can enhance their business growth. With this type of intel, you can make profound business decisions thus always being on the top and ahead of your competitors. You will have to do a little research. Finally you get better sales than before.

Search ranking and increasing website traffic is another effective way of increasing sales. When customers search for specific products online, they tend to choose only those which are on the top list of search engines. So if you want to increase sales you will have to make sure that you are on the top list of search engines. Apart from this you have to generate a lot of traffic on your website. If you will be ranked on the top list of search engines, traffic will automatically be generated on your website. The more traffic your website has, the more sales you make. Social media helps in this too. They help you to link with websites directly. They also help you in getting higher rankings on search engines.

·         Building relations with customers on social media is utmost important. You have to maintain relationships with your customers. When you build a relationship of trust and reliability, customers tend to fall on your side. Even if your products are expensive they will end up in buying them. For example if you have a tourism website and have upcoming tour packages piled up. Any queries coming from customers towards you are your responsibility. You should response to it very nicely.  In this way you will gain customers’ trust.
All these aspects are considered as most important in increasing sales. You have to plan everything carefully so that your business can earn a lot of goodwill in the market. You should also maintain your dignity online.

4.      Customer Service
Introduction
Customer service is a very predominant aspect in every business. Every business owner should serve best to its customers. It helps in increasing the business very easily and the growth is phenomenal. Social media can be the best way to give your customers best service ever. Giving information on products, details about product variations, prices related to that and many more information can be given to customers through social media. Giving customers’ information about upcoming products, discounts, and various sale schemes is also a customer service which can be availed through social media.
How it helps
Customer service helps a lot in business growth and increment. Social media had proven itself to be very beneficial in these aspects. Since everything is online now and as people majorly use social networking websites, it serves as a great platform. Not only information on content but also through images, customers can very well know about products.

How can you use it in your business?
Customer service can only prove to be beneficial if you have best customer service department in your company. When you put information about your products on social page, you also mention customer service toll free numbers or email-id for customers to contact you. This is the easiest way. Customers call you up and you can answer to their every question.  Various communication ways are also given to the customers. Blogging and reviewing are parts of customer services. You have to be quick and smart in giving response to your customers. Customers rely on your answers so make sure you give them in the best possible way. This will help in building trust and good relationship for the future.

5.      Distribute content

Introduction
We have come to the last benefit of social media and how it helps a business owner to increase its business. Social media contributes about two-third in the business growth. Since everything is online content distribution is also done online now. You will find every type of content on social media.

How it helps?
Referral traffic is bought by social media. This is with the help of word of mouth publicity. Content like pictures, tweets, posts all help in generating traffic to your website. They increase your social page SEO results. Due to this there are chances when new customers can see it and drive into your website. People always look for interesting content and not the same usual and boring ones. If you as a business owner want to gain customers with the help of posting content then make use of content marketing techniques on social media page. You will defiantly bring in customer at large.

How can you use it in your business?
In old times, marketers use to face many obstacles for increasing their business and income. They had to be very particular about content sharing and content distribution. They didn’t know how to do it. But now with advancement in technologies it has become very easy. Using social media can help in sharing content faster and in easy ways. For content curation or business use, you can share content on web page. This will keep your customer interested in you and also will always maintain your brand name. 

Conclusion
Social media marketing is much more than what you think. It has never ending aspects. Apart from the above mentioned (distributing content, customer service, increasing sale, legitimating brand and increasing brand awareness), there are many other factors you should know about your business. You should know how important social media marketing is? You should make continuous efforts to increase your business growth. You have to fulfill customers’ expectations always. So it is very clearly from the above post that social media marketing is a need of every business owner. You should utilize it for procuring money and above all increasing your reputation.
All the above mentioned points are easy to be focused upon. You should have proper plans to execute them. If you are a company owner then make several departments so that they can work upon each and every aspect of social media marketing for success and growth of your business.