5 Steps To a Winning Social Media Strategy

If I could teach companies one thing about social media and know that they'd "get it" before I walked out of the room it would be that social media is not a quick-fix. Like most strategies in internet marketing it takes time, commitment, consistency and effort. If you are not willing to invest in social media it will never bring you the results that you desire.

Social media isn't just about signing onto Facebook, Tweeting, creating a LinkedIn profile or signing up for Google Plus. To get value from social media, you must share value. I'm going to show you how to get, share and integrate value into your social media strategy.

I like to think of social media like a ladder, you climb up one-step at a time until you reach the top. When you reach the top your plain is solid and your efforts will be noticed by your prospective clients and customers. Now, with that being said let me remind you the strategy works, but it will not work overnight - it's going to take you being dedicated and investing time daily to create a solid foundation.

Are you ready to get started? If so, let's proceed.

Social media is about learning, listening and creating relationships. Social media gives us the ability to:

• Listen to your potential customers and clients and gain intelligence.
• Learn about what it is they want. What are they looking for? How can you help?
• Build relationships, because people want to buy from people that they not only know, but that they like.

We are enabled through social media to build authentic and personal connections and in return those connections will help us in growing our businesses. Those connections will come from sharing value - not selling.

Step 1: ContentThe social media strategy ladder looks like this:

• Step 2: RSS (Real Simple Syndication)
• Step 3: Social Search
• Step 4: Social Bookmarking
• Step 5: Social Networks

Each step is in order of importance and where you should spend the most time. Let's take a look at each step individually -

• Step 1- Content
  Don't you dare moan! I know that content takes time and effort, but remember I didn't tell you this would be easy. There are some that will refer to content as blogging, I prefer to call it content so that you don't think I'm referring to writing about what you had for lunch yesterday. Content is the foundation of social media marketing. Content will leave a longer lasting impression than anything else, so it arms you with value that can be shared. Content will engage your target audience and drive profitable action to your business. Content also isn't just about your content, it's about reading content from others commenting on that content and sharing. You will get back as much as you put into others - if you can keep that in mind you will be well on your way to building a strong and reciprocating foundation.
• Step 2 - RSS
  What is RSS? I view RSS as an easy way curate information that will give you ideas, help you think of new topics and also give you information to share with your networks. RSS stands or real simple syndication. It’s an easy way to aggregate and filter content around particular subjects that interest you and your target audience. RSS is easy to use and is delivered right to your desktop. 

• Step 3 - Social Search
  That's right, social search has increased in importance over the last few years. Social search is the integration of personal social results and their social graph in public search listings. What you say and what others say about your business on social networks, gets listed. You can use social search to not only stimulate conversation, but to also assist you in managing your reputation. Do you see how your content plays into social search? By posting content or sharing content it will begin to appear in the search engine results of those that have your business in their social graph. This is still playing out and this is just the beginning, but my personal opinion is we will start to see social search take the place of search engine optimization on a broader scale.
   
• Step 4 - Social Bookmarking
  Social Bookmarking sites provide you with a way to find and bookmark and tag stuff all over the web.   You can curate information that interests you and share it with your social bookmarking community. Tagging content to and participating in social bookmarking communities is a great way to open up more channels to your business and drive search traffic.  Sounds great, right?  Good – because it takes work. Social bookmarking creates valuable links and search engine juice, these two things empower your content to rank higher in search engine results.   Creating a systematic approach to social bookmarking, will help in building hundreds of links to your website and in return creating hurdles for your competition on key search terms.
   
• Step 5- Social Networks
  Last, but not least your social media strategy must include social media networks, but it's not where you should spend the majority of your time. Branch out and take advantage of the numbers of potential prospects that you might find in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ but unless you’ve implemented the previous steps climbed up the ladder, you will only find frustration.   The social networks take time to understand and they thrive on content and new ideas, but without anything to share I’m afraid you will not see the positive impact on your business that you hope for.   Social networks should work to grow your business, not just suck away your time.Social networks networks carry a lot of value to your business, but without content and engagement these networks will leave you empty handed.

Social media does have value, but you must be willing to:

• Climb the social media marketing ladder and invest in each and every step.
• Develop a clear and concise strategy that you and your team can follow.
• Be committed.
• Be consistent.
• Set benchmarks and milestones to gauge what's working and what's not working - this will help in finding social media marketing success.

Social media marketing does work, but it does not work overnight - it takes work! Invest in it, you won't regret it.

 

By Laura Lake

Marketing Expert

Article and picture sourced from - http://marketing.about.com/od/socialmediamarketing/a/5-Steps-That-Will-Give-You-A-Winning-Social-Media-Strategy.htm

Use Social Media To Your Advantage

How to beat Facebook’s algorithm changes

Like a leopard’s spots, the Facebook algorithm changes regularly. For the average small business ownertrying to get onboard with the overwhelmingly vast world of social media, these changes aren’t always welcome. It is harder to make sure your posts are appearing on people’s news feeds with stricter and more stringent rules being set by the social network. So how best can you jump through Facebook’s impossibly high hoops?

Source: nectarmedia.co.uk

1. Don’t just use Facebook. There are other social networks out there which both businesses and users are turning to. An integrated approach is by far the most sophisticated – use pins and tweets, post to LinkedIn for a more professional readership as cross-promotion ensures a wider audience and means that you’re not so heavily reliant on Facebook. Don’t forget the humble email marketing – this doesn’t mean spam, but a well written newsletter or infographic because for many small businesses, email marketing still trumps other channels with regard to sale conversions. 


2. Quality over quantity. You should be using social media not just for vanity metrics and numbers but as a tool for real engagement. No matter what the algorithm is, great content will always rise to the top. You need to be sharing content that is useful, interesting and different. On top of this, don’t be afraid to ask for customers’ interaction; hosting competitions –‘caption this’ or ‘tag friends’ are good starting bets – will increase views and traffic as they incentivise fans to get involved more actively. In return, make sure you are responding to questions and comments and reviews (both positive and negative). Make it personal with a direct tag and response! 


3. The right place at the right time. As a general rule of thumb, it seems that the more you post, the more you’ll get back. This links to point number two, as what you’re posting has to be of decent quality. Posting 4-6 times a day increases engagement without having to pay for it. If you know that your readership is international, try to take into account these different time zones – you may see a spike in views in the middle of the night as our friends across the pond are waking up. You can find out when your fans and customers are online by going to your Facebook Insights and clicking on the Posts tab. With this in mind, boost your posts and pin them to the top – equally, you can repost popular posts from before, kind of like a Throwback Thursday. If it was good quality content then, it’ll be good quality content now. 


4. A picture speaks a thousand words. Where once Facebook was all about the number of ‘likes’ you got, now the new algorithms are punishing posts that use words such as ‘like’, ‘comment’ or ‘share’. Think outside of the box and use images. There’s a reason Instagram is so popular; we like visuals. They’re fun to look at. They’reeasier and quicker to digest than words. The more the better. 


Hopefully with a bit of creative input, your small business can still get the most out of social media and networking – in many ways it’s a blank slate, so get thinking!

Katie Rowley 

  

Recent graduate and now interning as content editor, when she's not writing articles Katie can quite likely be found festival-ing, holiday-ing or reading a book (dedicated English student that she is). Follow her @KatieAtSMF.

Article sourced from - http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/

Google Ready To Censor The Internet?

Google is at the centre of controversy on social media after it removed a seven-year-old article criticising a former Merrill Lynch chief executive. It was removed from the search engine on Thursday, and now the Internet giant is facing heavy criticism from all quarters due to its apparent censorship.

Source: velocityagency.com

Google responded to the EU ruling on the “right to be forgotten” by removing various articles from its Europeansearch rankings, and this action led to accusations of censorship and over-reach. The blog post that has caused so much controversy was posted by Robert Peston and titled “Merrill’s mess,” it described how Stan O’Neal left the US investment bank after it suffered massive losses on high risk investments.

Mr Peston acknowledged that Google had banished his article from the Internet, and he stated that the company had in effect removed his article from the public eye, “given that Google is the route to information and stories for most people.”

Before the Internet giant had removed the article, he had received a “notice of removal,” telling him that his article would no longer appear in the results of Google searches. All this comes after a court hearing in May, when the European Court of Justice, ruled that individuals had the right to request the removal of search results if they deemed it “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” This rule will now be upheld even if the information was originally published in a legal manner, and it now poses the question, when does something that was relevant once become irrelevant?

Google opposed the decision that the court ruled, and responded by introducing an online form giving visitors to its European sites a formal route to make removal requests. As a result of this tactic by Google, within the first four days they received more than 41,000 requests.

Ben Bradshaw who is a former Labour culture secretary said that Google seemed to be over-interpreting the courts decision: “Mr Peston is right to say the information he published is still relevant […] I can’t see why Google would do this. It is either a mistake or could be an attempt by them to whip up a storm of indignation against the regulatory authorities in an attempt to influence the bigger battles to come.”

Source: digitaltrends.com

In the end, Mr Peston conceded that he could be “the victim of teething problems,” as Google begins to implement the new rules. He later added: “There is an argument that in removing the blog, Google is confirming the fears of many in the industry that the ‘right to be forgotten’ will be abused to curb freedom of expression and to suppress legitimate journalism that is in the public interest.”

This is maybe the start of a transition period on the Internet, where free speech will be slowly drowned out. It is a worrying concept for many, as the Internet has long been seen as a space where anything goes, and where alternative opinions could be voiced. If rulings such as the one above continue, the Internet will be as regulated as the life that people lead away from the screens, and eventually people will feel claustrophobic, and the consequences could be dire for society.

Alex Smith

Alex is an English Literature and Sociology undergraduate whose love for written word has led him to write about some obscure topics in his time. Currently a content writer at Social Media Frontiers, be sure to follow him @AlexSatSMF.

Article sourced from: http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/

Real Estate Broker Gets Rich Via Social Media

Start selling in the digital world!

You can get rich by utilising social media in the right way. If you don’t believe it then read on. A broker in New York recently sold $13 million worth of real estate just on social media. This is an amazing statistic and shows the route the business world is heading down. This broker could well be the pioneer of a new age of big business online.

Others have made monstrous amounts of money online, and some have had careers erupt with the help of the internet, but this story possesses charm and a human aspect that allows the working class to dream, and believe in their own abilities. Social media could be the gateway for people with fewer resources than most. Last month, Ryan Serchant, a NestSeekers agent says his team received a message on WeChat, one of the most popular social networking sites in China, from an investor declaring that they wanted to buy property in the city. The investor was interested in purchasing a unit at the Baccarat Hotels & Residences, which is a luxury condo, and he did with the aid of Serchant and other members on his team. He ended up purchasing a $10 million three-bedroom and a $3 million one-bedroom, all without setting foot in the city.

Sechant acknowledges that unseen deals are common, but they are more likely to take place via phone or email. This deal though is very special. “This price for a deal that was done and initiated 100 percent through social media and across the world?” he asks. He goes on to discuss details of the deal and still seems in shock at how it came about: “A complete stranger who learned about us via social media ad basically gave us $13 million and change to invest in something that’s not even been built yet in a city they’ve never been to? I don’t think [anyone else has done that].”

This deal has cemented social media’s place in real estate for eternity, as the possibilities are now endless when networking is concerned. Serchant’s co-worker, Fredrik Ecklund of Douglas Elliman said that last month around a quarter of his business resulted from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. “It’s a viable piece of themarketing mix” says Matt Leoe, who is the director of web marketing and social media at Halstead Property.

This recent revelation is just more proof that social media is the strongest marketing device out there. It enables people to connect easily whilst advertising products, and this cannot be done in the traditional methods such as print. It makes life a lot easier for companies who rely on sales, and it allows firms to interlink all the departments, such as sales, customer service, and marketing. This creates a clean feel to a business model, and if the sales will increase like the one above then surely any companies that are not using social media will quickly consider otherwise.

Alex Smith

Alex is an English Literature and Sociology undergraduate whose love for written word has led him to write about some obscure topics in his time. Currently a content writer at Social Media Frontiers, be sure to follow him @AlexSatSMF.

Article sourced from - http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/

9 Ways Social Media Marketing Will Change in 2014

Image: iStockphoto, DrAfter123

By Scott Gerber Jan 27, 2014

From the decline of Facebook use among teens to Twitter's IPO, if there is one thing we know for sure about social media, it's that few trends hold on for long — so marketers need to stay on their toes.

See also: The Top 10 Most-Shared Super Bowl Ads of All Time

With that in mind, we asked nine successful entrepreneurs how they are planning on altering their social media marketing strategies in the next six months, based on their predictions for the new year. Here's what they had to say.

1. Graphic software will rise.

Posts on Facebook with photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs than text-based posts, according to Kissmetrics. With the rise of Pinterest and Tumblr, it's going to become increasingly important to produce content in visual form, whether it is infographics, images with text overlay or pretty quote graphics. We'll be using more graphic software to turn our written content into visual content to make it more shareable on social media.
- Laura Pepper Wu, 30 Day Books

2. Social won't be use for sales.

People love to buy, but they hate to be sold. Companies currently celebrating the most success in social media focus on engagement, nurturing relationships and sharing value through their social outreach. Customers and prospects will seek out companies offering value, entertainment, discounts, help and engagement.
- Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits

3. Automation will explode.

A lot currently rides on the shoulders of social media marketers. They have to be on top of brand voice, any current company promotions or marketing campaigns, the tools they measure social media with, the various communities on the platforms, etc. It's a lot, and it's more varied than most people are capable of doing well. In 2014, we'll see a lot of automation of the tactics (think timing, platform, structure, etc.), so social media marketers can focus on the content and the genuine social interaction. Autonomics is being adopted now and will only explode as more technologies come online in 2014.
- Brennan White, Watchtower

4. LinkedIn will become the most important publisher.

Imagine a publication with more than 100 million captive readers and writers, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, all natively hooked into and targeted to a social network. LinkedIn will become a premium destination for industry news, and you need to take part in that ecosystem early and often. Publish original content, network among peers in groups and raise your profile now.
- Trevor Sumner, LocalVox

5. Content will be bigger and better.

Simple messages and simple questions aren't enough anymore. To achieve a deeper connection with your customers, a company needs to engage on a deeper and more intelligent level. Short videos, infographics, quality imagery and polls are all ways to engage deeper. Companies need to look at the content they put out and ask themselves, "Is this shareable?" An example of a huge company that's doing this really well right now is Wal-Mart. Its content is smart and engaging, and the fan engagement is very high by comparison to its competitors. Also, companies need to focus on the fans they have and not the fans they want. If your message is always trying to reach out, you'll bore the fans that have chosen to connect with you.
- Andrew Howlett, Rain

6. Social will need to stand out.

Social media has really started to mature. Therefore, it will be a lot harder to stand out. To win big in social media, you'll have to think outside the box and find ways to get your content to stand out in all the noise.
- Wade Foster, Zapier

7. Social media campaigns will have to be paid.

I assume that the most effective social media campaigns in 2014 will be paid. The key is learning how to use Facebook and Twitter's paid tools now so that you'll have an edge on the competition. For instance, are you using Facebook's advanced audience tool? It allows you to upload your email database and send specific response messages directly to your focused audience. Imagine being able to segment both email marketing and Facebook ads to your target audience. Facebook already offers these types of advanced tools, and they will become more mainstream in 2014. Similarly, Twitter is now public and has been making an aggressive push into paid advertising. If you are a brand and want to succeed on Twitter in 2014, get ready to pay for it.
- Kristopher Jones, ReferLocal.com

8. Interactive content will trump static content.

Creating static content is too easy. In 2014, the bar will be raised on the type of content people choose to engage with. Expect to see content become more interactive (think software-like). The year 2013 was the year of "Top 10" lists. To get users to engage to the same degree in 2014 and subsequent years, publishers will need to make it increasingly engaging, and one effective way to do that is to make your content interactive.
- Chuck Cohn, Varsity Tutors

9. Google+ will merge into the social scene.

As Google continues to merge its products, it’s becoming more and more important in the social media landscape. There are so many benefits to using Google+. It creates a strong community that allows you to use your brand and identify consumers who share an interest in your products. It also allows your brand to become more social with like-minded consumers. They provide like-minded consumers a platform to connect with one another. This builds a strong community, which is a great way to get feedback on new and old products from real-time consumers.
- Nicolas Gremion, Free-eBooks.net


Article sourced from: http://mashable.com/2014/01/27/social-media-marketing-2014/

5 Social Media Rules Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Image credit: Shutterstock

Social media can level the playing field between industry leaders and upstarts, between multinational corporation executives and small-business owners, making peers of all participants. Yet appearances can be deceiving. To borrow from George Orwell's Animal Farm, all social-media users are equal, but some are more equal than others.

So what makes the difference between a following of 500 and a following of 500,000? While A-list celebrities can have an advantage over most everyone else, other social media darlings have grown their base of fans more organically, and you can learn from their strategies.

What follows are five keys culled from darlings of the current social media landscape for increasing your influence in a way that can make a difference to your business strategies.

1. Produce quality content.

If you want to make your mark on social media, first and foremost you should provide quality content. "Content is twofold," says Mari Smith, a social-media marketing expert and author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web (Wiley, 2011). "It's generating your own, [being] a thought leader. The other element is what I call OPC -- other people's content -- and not being afraid to share that."

One man who successfully balances both elements is entrepreneur, investor and author Guy Kawasaki. "He's a self-professed 'firehose of content,' " says Smith. "He has a way of creating a nice blend of other people's content as well as his own thoughts and opinions." Not only that, but according to his Twitter bio, Kawasaki repeats every tweet four times in order to reach all time zones.

Quantity is not the same as quality, of course, but what is remarkable about Kawasaki, says Smith, is "his masterful ability to curate such volume. I could skim through his tweets and probably find a few things every day that I could pass on to my followers."

2. Be open and engaging.

On social media, it's important to be available to your audience, and few people exemplify that principle better, says Smith, than entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. "On Twitter, he does a lot of responding" to followers, she says. "He treats everybody as an equal, and he responds at an amazing velocity."

What's the upside of all this time-consuming engagement for Vaynerchuk? A loyal and devoted following for his business books and priceless visibility for his consulting business, VaynerMedia. "People love it," Smith says. "If they get a response from Gary, even if it's a smiley face, they're like, "Oh my God, Gary tweeted back at me!'"

3. Focus on a specific niche.

On social media, you can either be a generalist -- producing and curating a hodge-podge of content across many different disciplines -- or you can choose to specialize in one or a few areas. Specialists tend to bend more ears than generalists, says Smith. "Social media is extremely noisy. You've got to be able to stand out," she says, and the best way to do this is to own a particular subject.

Jessica Northey, founder of Tucson, Ariz.-based social-media marketing boutique Finger Candy Media, "owns" country music, says Smith. Northey hosts a live weekly Twitter chat and Google+ "twangout" for country-music fans. This year, Forbes ranked Northey at No. 3 on its list of the Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers. She has more than half a million followers on Twitter and more than 700,000 on Google+. "In my travels, if I came across anyone in the country-music arena, Jessica would be my choice" of someone to connect them with, Smith says.

4. Use social media to build your business, and vice versa.

For an entrepreneur, time spent on social media might seem like a distraction from the more important tasks central to running a business. Because it's so time-intensive, you should back up your thought leadership on social media with a real profit-making enterprise. Chris Brogan, founder and chief executive of Human Business Works, a business-training company in Portland, Maine, is one example, says Smith. "He walks his talk. He speaks all over the world, and he consults with a lot of companies on social media."

In other words, Brogan demonstrates his expertise in blog posts, uses social platforms to broadcast those posts and then uses the resulting visibility to market himself for speaking gigs, coaching sessions and more. These, in turn, increase his social media following. And it doesn't hurt that he was able to carve out a place for himself by being an early adopter of social platforms, Smith says.

5. Embrace each social network's unique culture.

Each social network has a "unique culture," says Smith, and the best users embrace it rather than sharing identical content across platforms. Take Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J. He relies mainly on Twitter, where he has more than 1.2 million followers, and Facebook, and uses each platform in a way that takes advantage of its native capabilities.

"On Twitter, I see him retweeting people, I see him thanking people and engaging with them," Smith says. She also notes that Booker makes use of hashtags, a popular way of marking your tweets for a specific purpose or larger conversation.

On Facebook, by contrast, Booker posts less frequently. "You don't want to bombard people on Facebook," says Smith. He finds more elaborate ways to involve his community in his activities. For instance, he uploads albums of photos from various events where he has spoken.

Some power users maintain a presence on multiple networks, Smith says, but for most people two are enough. "Really you want to have Facebook and one other [platform] that you're active on," she says.

 Article by 

BRIAN PATRICK EHA

Sourced from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/227016