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Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

6 Ideas to Engage Customers in your Small Business

Friday, January 6th, 2012

Working for a small business can have its challenges when it comes to engaging customers with you and the business. However, when customers do become engaged with your small business the benefits are very valuable.

Use Facebook to Show them some Love
Engage with your customers via social media such as Facebook! Facebook is an excellent social platform to recognize a customer. Many people are on Facebook and they will appreciate the public recognition that you give them.

Put Money in their Pockets
Connect your customers to businesses you think will benefit them or that could use them. There is no greater compliment than referring somebody to their business. Your customers will appreciate that you want to help them.

Call them
By keeping in contact with your clients, you are continually developing a working as well as a personal relationship with them. A one-on-one phone call is engaging and can very beneficial to you and your company.

Use YouTube
YouTube is an easy and inexpensive way to create a fun and engaging experience between you and your customers. Upload videos of you and your team doing creative things such as featuring the services of your company.

Make Yourself Accessible
Make sure that you are accessible to your clients. People like to know that they can get a hold of you whenever they may need you whether it be by phone or email. Clients do not want to feel as though they are taking to somebody they can never get a hold of.

Spotlight Customers
Give your customers the recognition they deserve. If your customer sees that you have taken time to mention them in a blog post or on your webpage they will appreciate that you have taken time to speak about them and what is happening with their company. It will also make them feel more engaged with you and the company.

Tags:customers, facebook, small business, Social Media, youtube
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B2B Companies Embrace Social Media in 2011

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

In 2011, the use of social media platforms for business-to-business companies became more important in the marketing mix than it has in previous years. For many B2B companies, social media can seem to be a daunting endeavor, but with knowledge of how to enter the world of social media, social media can bring success. In this past year, many B2B companies have started to engage in social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and have found that these sites are generating success for their companies.

“Leveraging social media for branding and awareness-building can help humanize B2B companies, establish them as thought leaders, and offer new touchpoints for connecting with customers and prospects,” said Kimberly Maul, eMarketer writer/analyst and author of the new report, “B2B Social Media: A Growing Focus for Marketers.”

Knowing which social media sites to use and which ones will bring more success for your company can be understood by knowing who you want to reach via social media. Social networking site, LinkedIn, is used more as a professional networking site for B2B companies and is seen as a way to generate more effective leads and other sites Twitter and Facebook are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, are helping B2B firms reach customers in new ways. In a web survey conducted by iTracks, survey respondents often site Linked In as the top social media site for B2B marketers while putting Facebok and Twitter above as the business minded social network. According to Sagefrog Marketing Group, by the summer of 2011, 58% of US B2B marketers that were engaging in social media used LinkedIn, compared to 50% for Facebook and 43% for Twitter.

There is no doubt that social media is an effective tool for any B2B company and that the use and understanding of social networking sites will remain important for B2B companies in their marketing mix in 2012.

Source: eMarketer.com

Tags:B2B Marketing, facebook, linkedin, Marketing, networking, Social Media, social networking, Twitter
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B2B Marketers Still Uncertain About Social Media

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

According to research from Accenture, almost two-thirds of B2B marketing executives view social media as an important marketing channel. However, only 7% felt that they were leveraging social media very heavily while 9% were not using social media at all. Business-to-business marketers have been acknowledging the value of social media yet have been slower to adopt social media strategies compared to business-to-consumer marketers.

Another study that compares B2B and B2C social media involvement showed that 12% of B2B companies are not using social media compared to 2% of B2C companies. B2B marketers say that technology, tools, metrics, and collaboration could be useful to strengthen their social media programs. Uncertainty of social media is definitely a factor in holding back B2B marketers in getting serious with social media. The fact that it is still a relatively young marketing channel has B2B marketers taking the wait-and-see approach.

It boils down to the age old sales and marketing question, “How much has it contributed to our bottom line?” Like many other marketing efforts, the number is tricky to quantify with social media. Thus, marketers are apprehensive in putting too much time and effort into social media at this time.

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Tags:B2B, B2C, facebook, Marketing, Social Media, social networks, Twitter
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British Artist Draws New Twitter Followers

Monday, November 7th, 2011

British artist Greg Burney has exploded on Twitter thanks to a very creative social media marketing strategy. Burney began with around 70 followers before he came up with his Twitter project called #drawmyfollowers. With the project, Greg Burney set out to do a sketch of every single new follower that followed him before November 14. He would then send the sketch to that follower. The message tweeted on October 31 read as such:

Not realizing the impact this was going to have on his Twitter profile, let alone his time, Burney had to ultimately had to tweak his promise. Within two days, he had 700 followers. Some media outlets picked up on it and the followers kept on coming. He then changed his November 14 deadline to promising to sketch his first 3,000 followers. If you’d like to get in on the action, it’s too late. I went to his page this morning and he now has over 5,000 followers. Brilliant!

By thinking outside of the box to use his craft and tie it into the social media platform he wanted to promote, it’s safe to say that it’s mission accomplished for this artist. We sure hope he enjoys sketching- he has his work cutout for him.

Tags:art, drawing, Marketing, sketch, Social Media, tweet, Twitter
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Twitter Hits 100 Million Users, So What’s Next?

Friday, September 9th, 2011

Twitter announced this week that the social network hit 100 million users and that 50 million of them log in everyday. Wow, that’s an astounding number! Twitter defines an active user as an account holder who logs in at least once a month. 40 percent of current Twitter users are signing in just to observe what’s going on, without sending messages. There are 200 million registered Twitter accounts total.

So now what is next for Twitter? What can users expect to see changing as this social network grows? One thing that CEO Dick Costolo is aiming for is no more fail whales. If you use Twitter often you’ve probably noticed an improvement regarding the site reaching capacity. This is because last year, Twitter beefed up their infrastructure to accommodate to their growth which they plan to keep up with during their next phase of growth.

Twitter also plans to aim for the mainstream. While 40% of users don’t actively tweet, Costolo has talked about creating workflows to turn passive users into active ones. Simplifying a user’s ability to find content is another goal. While there is so much mainstream and niche content floating around on Twitter, many users aren’t up to speed enough to know how to find it. For example, using hash tags and other characters are foggy to many users so Twitter aims to have the content delivered or at least a lot easier to find.

Design changes are also on the horizon for Twitter. They plan to simplify the interface and make it consistent between platforms where Twitter.com will look the exact same as Twitter on tablets and mobile phones.

One thing Twitter will not pursue are obnoxious ways of increasing revenue. Costolo says the health of Twitter is great and although he is presented with hundreds of ways to increase revenue beyond advertising, he declines, “The advertising business will sustain us”.

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Tags:growth, Social Media, social networking, Twitter
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Google+ Vs. Facebook: Feature-By-Feature

Monday, July 11th, 2011

Recently Google launched its new social network, Google+, in hopes of delivering a huge blow to the Facebook empire. My first thought was this: I don’t want to invest the time in diving into Google+ when Facebook suits my online social needs perfectly well. My plan was to wait until I witnessed a large amount of my friends migrating over to Google+. Within a few days, I was noticing many of them were far too curious and invites were flooding my Gmail. So what else could I do but check it out myself. Here’s a little info on the features of both:

FEEDS

The feeds in Facebook and Google+ are very similar in that they both allow users to post text, links, photos, and videos. Facebook’s feed has “Top News” as well as the “Most Recent” posts which are visible to whoever your “friends” are. Google+ has a “Circles” friend organizational tool where posts can be shared with as few or as many people as you like. However, its criticism is that it is much like a populated Twitter feed.

FRIENDING

Google+ works different than Facebook in “Friending”. Adding contact in Facebook is a two-way street where users must accept you as friends in order for you to connect. Google+ allows any users to follow you while you can follow anybody as well without having to accept friend requests. This is a huge difference between the two making Google+ more like Twitter than Facebook. The “Circles” feature in Google+ allows users to put all of their contacts into groups and if desired, be able to communicate with particular groups without all of their friends seeing a particular post. That’s a very handy tool.

Google+ users can also create profiles using any name they’d like, far different from Facebook’s real-name only policy. This could potentially make it difficult to find people you’re looking for.

NOTIFICATIONS

Notifications in Facebook and Google+ are pretty identical. Both tell you when someone comments on your post, tags you in a photo, or wants to be your friend. The only difference is that Google+ shows all notifications beneath the same tab where Facebook has a tab for messages, friend requests, and other activity.

BUTTONS

The buttons for Facebook and Google+ are very similar where users can click the buttons to show approval of particular content. Facebook however, also has sharing capabilities where a user’s “Likes” show up in their feed. Google+ doesn’t do this.

PHOTOS

Facebook has turned into the largest photo sharing site on the web making it simple to upload, share, and tag photos. The Google+ functionality is very nice as well and differs from Facebook because users can edit their photos easily. Editing features including rotate, crop, adding colors, and effects. The editing can be done in the photo album itself by clicking an “Actions” tab. Also, in Google+, comments appear to the right of the photos rather than the bottom like Facebook so you don’t have to keep scrolling up and down.

VIDEO

Video functionality is something that Google+ could offer that Facebook couldn’t. That is until Facebook announced last Wednesday their merger with Skype. A very good move by Facebook to quickly answer to the only clear cut advantage that Google+ would have. With that said, Google+ does have the edge in video. Facebook’s Skye video doesn’t have group-chat functionality where Google+ features “Hangouts” where you can video chat up to 10 people at once.

PRIVACY

Facebook has been heavy criticized in their privacy efforts especially in recent years. Setting your profile so your thoughts and actions are not viewed by the entire world is very difficult. In an effort to capitalize on this blunder, Google+ goes out of its way to make privacy controls a prominent feature. The privacy policy itself is much easier to read. It should be of note that Google+ doesn’t allow for a completely private profile. Facebook allows users to adjust their privacy settings themselves (though most users do not have a great understanding of them) and Google+ has placed privacy at the core of the social network.

So what is the future of the two social networks? It’s hard to foresee Google+ taking over in the short term as a lot of Facebook users, including myself, have invested a lot of time in building networks, pages, photo albums, etc. In the long term it will be interesting to see if Google+ will turn into the new hip place to be on the web and if Facebook will fade away like Myspace. My guess is no but a lot can change in a couple of years.

Tags:facebook, friends, google, photos, Social Media, social networking, Twitter
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