Why Quality Social Media Marketing Just Looks Easy

Today’s many social media platforms make engaging with customers and prospects easier than ever. Unfortunately, this fact gives many business owners the mistaken impression that social media marketing is a simple undertaking. In truth, getting your target audience to engage with you on social media is no easy task.

In her article, 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing, Susan Gunelius tells us that social media can dramatically increase a company’s following. But like anything else, what you put into your social media marketing strategy is directly related to what you will get out of it.

If you publish amazing, quality content and work to build your online audience of quality followers, they’ll share it with their own audiences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, their own blogs and more.

This sharing and discussing of your content opens new entry points for search engines like Google to find it in keyword searches. Those entry points could grow to hundreds or thousands of more potential ways for people to find you online.

At GoLeads, we tell our customers that the more accessible and inviting a company’s social media marketing efforts seem, the more hard work and strategizing actually went into those efforts.

Your social media strategy should always keep in mind the audience you are trying to reach. For example, if you are looking to attract investment bankers, your posts should contain information that specifically speaks to that audience. And fluff copy isn’t going to do the job. After all, these professionals know their industry inside and out and won’t waste valuable time on content that doesn’t bring something new to the table. Gunelius’ Law of Value talks about this:

You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversions and more on creating amazing content and developing relationships with online influencers. In time, those people will become a powerful catalyst for word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

Producing quality content takes a lot of time and a great deal of research. And it’s important to remember that it takes patience to achieve social media success. Therefore, don’t get discouraged if it takes longer than you expected to gain traction. When it comes to social media, slow and steady really does win the race.

/0 Comments/by

Nearly 100 million U.S. Smart Phone Users

With nearly 100 million U.S. smartphone users, you should have a mobile app for your business. If you don’t use mobile applications as part of your social marketing, you’re missing thousands, if not millions of potential customers. Look at these stats:

More interesting stats about mobile phone usage:

Mobile Stats

  • 98% of iPhone users use the data features of their phone, 88% use their iPhone to surf the internet and 75% download apps. Source: The Neilson Company
  • 60% of iPhone users access the internet at least once a day. Source: Rubicon Consulting Research
  • The App Store is popular among iPhone owners, with 55.6% accessing news and information via a downloaded application, compared with 22.1% of smartphone owners, and 6.3% of all mobile phone users. Source: Comscore
  • Smartphones are used everywhere: 95% – “downtime”; 82% – at work; 81% – shopping; 80% – at home; 65% – commuting to work. Source: Questus
  • 37 percent of smartphone owners have purchased something non-mobile with their handset in the past 6 months. Source: Compete’s Smartphone Intelligence Survey 2009
  • 50% of iPhone users are under thirty, and 15% are students. Source Rubicon Research Consulting
  • The largest age group of iPhone users is 35-54 who account for 36% of all users, followed by 25-34 at 29%. Source: The Neilson Company
  • 75% of UK iPhone users are males, mostly between the ages of 18-44. That figure is slightly up from UK smartphone ownership demographics, which suggests males comprise 65 per cent of owners. Source: Comscore The Neilson Company has revealed that 5% of iPhone owners are between 13 and 17 years old. Source: The Neilson Company
  • By mid-January 2010, three billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s app store alone. Source: Apple
  • Apps that break the top 50 are generally downloaded over 10,000 times daily. Source: AdMob
  • Mobile Analytics firm Flurry suggests an app ranked in the top five is downloaded more than 50,000 times a day. Source: imediaconnection.com
  • In the US, mobile marketing budgets leapt by 26% in 2009, in contrast to a reduction of 70% in overall marketing spend. Source: MMF Panel.

Get in the hands of your prospects. Get a mobile application!

/0 Comments/by

Starting your Social Media Marketing

If your business doesn’t participate in social media marketing, it’s missing out on numerous opportunities traditional marketing cannot produce. Thinking about starting online marketing might be daunting, but when done correctly and with a plan, social media marketing is a cost-effective, simple way to grow your business. It will increase your sales leads, grow your brand recognition and provide excellent opportunities for clear customer-based communication. Social media marketing should be started today, if it isn’t already happening.Use these tips to start your social media marketing:
Define your Goals: Your online marketing should help grow your business and increase brand awareness. It should:

  • Build authority
  • Provide direct connection between customer and your company
  • Educate and inform customers
  • Gain inbound links
  • Generate leads & drive sales
  • Improve customer service
  • Learn more about your target audience
  • Monitor brand reputation
  • Reach new channels of customers
Develop a Plan: Use a social media marketing plan to provide more sales leads, grow your business and maintain what you’ve already got. Your plan should include a:

  • Schedule
  • Ways to build Relationships
  • Plans to stay the Course
  • Ways to measure the Results
  • Enough flexibility to make the Right Tweaks
Determine the Methods: With so many different methods for social media marketing, determine your target audience, figure out where they will most likely see you, and focus on a few online mediums rather than all of them at once. A few popular places to grow your business online include:

  • Your quality Web site
  • Your company Blog
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • Google +
Create and Maintain a Schedule: Create a schedule of what you’ll post, when you’ll post and when you’ll respond to others comments and posts.
Ways you can Measure Social Media Marketing Success: With so many different methods for social media marketing, determine your target audience, figure out where they will most likely see you, and focus on a few online mediums rather than all of them at once. A few popular places to grow your business online include:
/0 Comments/by