In our growing culture, technology is thriving, giving way to amazing advancements. Internet technologies have improved communication one hundred fold, allowing people from all over the world and all walks of life to engage in discourse. Social media and social [...]
Struggling to use social media marketing to take your business to the next level? Discover how to achieve just that… Social media marketing is fast gaining popularity among marketing professionals. This fact is evident from the growing number of groups [...]
Social media is just part of an overall well planned SEO strategy to grow your company market presence and stay in touch with your customer base. Having a consistent web presence is enhanced by having a campaign that’s always active [...]
Social media is the ultimate list building activity. In fact, it is not a stretch to say that social media and list building are actually the same activity. Social media and list building have so Many Things in Common That [...]
In our growing culture, technology is thriving, giving way to amazing advancements. Internet technologies have improved communication one hundred fold, allowing people from all over the world and all walks of life to engage in discourse.
Social media and social networking have had some profound effects on the way businesses are run and how people interact with one another. Although most use the terms “social media” and “social networking” interchangeably, there are some distinct, subtle differences. Let’s take a look at these differences.
Defining the Terms
Simply put, social media is a means of transmitting or sharing information with a general audience. As long as you have a computer connected to the Internet you can partake in social media. Everyone has the opportunity to create and distribute information. Consider the concept of media in the past as dominated by TV, newspapers, magazines, and so on. Social media broke away from those static forms to create a real sense of interactivity.
Social networking is an act of engagement and connection. Groups of like-minded people with common interests as well as people with totally different world views come together through various social networking sites to build relationships through that online community.
Communication
Both social media and social networking encourage communication, but the style of communication is a bit different. In the world of social networking, communication is a two-way street. People may congregate around a central topic of interest to share in their similar experiences, but it is all much more akin to a simple conversation. Through those conversations, users develop relationships.
Social media is more of a communication channel, like TV or radio. It’s a format meant to convey messages and information. Social media isn’t a place you visit but simply a means of distributing information.
Responses and Effort
Between the two, social media is hard work. Unless your business is already well-established, you can’t create an overnight following nor can you automate conversations. Getting into social media is a continuous task.
Social networking is direct communication between parties, often leading to much richer, personal conversations. Even better, your network grows the more you interact. Creating a “social network” does not take nearly as much time, though you still have to invest a great deal of time with that network.
Blurring the Lines
Twitter and Facebook-probably the most popular social platforms out there today-have made discerning between social media and social networking a bit difficult because they essentially make use of both. They perfectly straddle the line between the two, allowing users to have unique, personal conversations while also sharing interactive information.
Tarik Sansal is an internet entrepreneur. He is currently the founder and CEO of Romio, which is social site that leverages neighborhood networks.
Tarik started his careers in investments. He was the first investment analyst at Moon Capital, the emerging markets hedge fund. He is passionate about leveraging socially conscious internet ventures to make a positive social impact. He also has ideas around new alternative investment models which leverage a socially conscious approach to deliver superior returns to investors.
Struggling to use social media marketing to take your business to the next level?
Discover how to achieve just that…
Social media marketing is fast gaining popularity among marketing professionals. This fact is evident from the growing number of groups based on a niche, product or expertise. An important aspect of this form of marketing is that it is practically free of cost. All it requires is an active and intelligent participation in the chosen media, be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or any other. However the success of your marketing efforts will depend on the intensity and involvement that you display. Let’s discuss some basic rules for success.
Read, Review and Reply to Comments
As a basic ground rule, one should take viewers comments seriously. Each and every comment must be responded to. Always pay very close attention to any negative comment. Reply in a very thoughtful, intelligent and neutral manner. Be tolerant. It is generally observed that those who leave a negative comment become your leads fastest. At all costs, avoid giving the feeling to your visitors that they are ignored.
Encourage one-to-one Interaction
Follow the golden rule of social networking sites – interact on a one-on-one basis with your visitors or prospects. Remember your prospects want to deal with a person and not a corporation. In dealing with a person they expect that their concerns will be addressed, it give them trust and faith in you, your product and your company. Generally personal interactions have a bigger conversion rate than impersonal, third party interactions.
Further, you should always encourage your visitors to sign up to receive alerts for your new posts. This is another way to stay connected and also build your list.
Display Professionalism- Build Your Brand
Irrespective of the type of media chosen by you for marketing, make sure that you use correct language. It is very tempting to use casual abbreviations in a post, however that will not project you as an expert or a professional.
Use correct, easy to understand language. Ensure that the grammar and spellings are correct. Use right punctuation where ever needed.
Patience is a great virtue.It comes in very handy when you are networking on a social media site. Allow time for people to start trusting you and the product that you are selling. Relax and try to gain the trust of people. Before long, you will have a large base of prospects. People want to conduct business with people they trust. Build yourself as a brand as best way to use social media for business.
Stay Ahead of Competition
Always visit competitive sites that are succeeding through social networking marketing. Study and analyze their style, approach and strategy. If they are performing better than you, there is no harm in using their proven marketing style as a base for your social networking marketing strategy. It will only require adaption to suit the peculiarities of your product or niche.
Similarly, identify your competitive bloggers, writers and experts. Read and study their posts. Post your expert opinion or comments on their posts. Let their readers start noticing you through your comments. Soon you will start getting cross traffic and reciprocal comments making your site more active and dynamic.
Hiring Social Media Marketing Agencies?
If you are looking to hire professional media marketing agency to handle your social media marketing, be extremely careful in its selection. Observe the site of agency or agencies you are considering. Evaluate the performance of their own site and then take a call. It is highly unlikely for them to produce expected results for you if they are themselves not performing well.
Social media marketing is a very effective tool to promote a product or a niche. The only caution one has to take is to understand the dynamics of marketing, adapt to the needs of the product and launch.
Social media is just part of an overall well planned SEO strategy to grow your company market presence and stay in touch with your customer base.
Having a consistent web presence is enhanced by having a campaign that’s always active and relative with your target audience. It’s best to have a person behind the face of the company or better put, in “front” of your target audience as the face of the company.
When a company needs social media marketing services, it’s best to be selective and find out what the experience of the prospective company is, in order to evaluate the success of the campaigns.
Ask these questions:
· What media landscape is essential for your target audience?
· Will they be consistent on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?
· Do they really understand that it’s about “building relationships first and then about marketing?
· Can they point to any successes they’ve had in the past?
· What will the cost be?
· Who will your company representative be contacting at the marketing services firm, to keep fresh information flowing to?
Services includes shaping the brand, reliability, consumer base and relationships. A good firm will provide a highly modified marketing management service that assist businesses with their continuing marketing needs.
A well designed plan begins with the understanding the business and finishes with the expansion of the business.
Social media marketing services includes a number of services which help a business grow and attract more and more customers day by day. With search engine optimization, the results can take months to see results, and a great deal of patience.
Marketing services can see results in as little as a week or a month.
Recent studies reveal that a majority of customers purchase goods or services and they want information before they do so, so they look in blogs, forums, video search engines, and other media.
These marketing services that play an important role in a company’s brand and reputation:
Using relevant content, social bookmaking, forum posting, blog creation and social media profiles, you will begin generating traffic and finally increasing the number of loyal consumers.
What is the need of professional Social Media Marketing Services?
Social media is an element of daily life for many online users. Social media is mainly a platform for individual communication between users. Social media sites are used to find opportunities to connect with businesses.
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are an enormous way to produce new business by using the existing network of contacts.
Traffic can also be generated by posting articles at social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious and others. Your website can get thousands of visitors from these social media sites.
Blogs and forums allow you and your users to post additional content there, resulting in more traffic to your business website.
How can you “track” your social media marketing services?
f you’re thinking of trying your hand in making money through social media, there are a couple of things you need to keep in mind. Whether you’re taking social media jobs or starting your own campaign, the core of earning through networking online is very simple.
The very first thing you need to remember is that you should present yourself as a person as well. Keep in mind that people use these sites to connect with other people and not businesses, because if they wanted that, they could just go to your website instead. Make sure to not only post about your products, but also about other things that your contacts will find useful as long as it doesn’t compete with what you sell.
Knowledge about the ins and outs of social media is also necessary. You will want to know your way around a specific networking site so you can take full advantage of it and reach its potential for your own needs. Explore the different features of the website that you may find handy to your campaigns and get a good understanding of it. Reading research and articles online on how you can get more out of an online social network is also very ideal. You can learn a lot from the many available details on the web.
You see, social networking accounts can easily connect you with a great amount of people, but it doesn’t mean that things can just happen if you don’t make it. Websites have special features that can make it more useful to its users, it’s just a matter of the right techniques to allow you to make money from it. By learning what they can do and how you can make use of them, you can take advantage of these additional features to help you promote your business and earn more.
Forming relationships with your contacts and followers is another basic thing about social media that you can help you with. It is also one of the things that you should definitely bank on when trying to earn through this technique. With better relationships with followers, the better chances you’ll have at building a product and company name as people want to have connections with real people, even if it is behind a business. They want to know that they are dealing with an actual person and not just some bot who’s just out to get their money.
Keep these things in mind and you’ll surely be able to cash in on the web through social media jobs.
Social media is the ultimate list building activity. In fact, it is not a stretch to say that social media and list building are actually the same activity. Social media and list building have so Many Things in Common That a Person Would Not Know the Difference between the Two when presented with the definitions of both activities side-by-side. Therefore, someone who wants to get good at Internet marketing might want to start with social media because that will teach them how to generate audience that is interested in what they have to say before they take that skill out to other traffic generator methods such as SEO or pay per click.
It is also not a stretch to say that a company that understands how to build a list is a company that can do well in almost any space. The only caveat to this one skill is that the market has to actually exist and they have to have money to spend on a solution. Too many entrepreneurs spend their time in a campaign that will not make money because they love a niche that will not generate traffic or conversions. This is the death of many good entrepreneurs and it forces them back to 9-to-5 jobs which they do not want to do.
However, the fix for this is to find out if a niche has people who are willing to buy inside of it. The fastest way to do this is to use the social media systems to try to find audiences that will buy. If that is unsuccessful then the entrepreneur can easily leave the system and find a new place to do business that will make the money.
This is not to say that and entrepreneur should totally give up on the market place. This is to say that an entrepreneur should find a marketplace where they can make money so they can go back to the business where there may not be as much money but they truly love the topic. What is always important is to pay the bills therefore it is important to find a niche where a person to make money so that they can spend all their time doing what they really want to do.
Therefore, because social media and list building are so similar it makes sense for the business owner or marketer to use this traffic generation method to hone their skills down before having to use the skill anywhere else. This also gives them the added benefit of having a captive audience that is listening to them and has already bought into the USP (which, by the way, is most of what selling is about anyway.) A lot of selling is about finding people who will buy into your USP and then selling them products and services. These people are predisposed to doing business with the business in general and these are the people that a business should focus on getting more of because they are good clients whereas other people may not be good clients because they do not understand processes that the business uses to achieve success.
Don’t kid yourself – it’s not just rookies who make social media mistakes! Many very experienced social networking gurus have made them too. Paying more attention to how you are perceived online will only help you build your network and grow your business.
(5) Common Social Media Mistakes to Avoid:
With all of the new technology and various Internet tools constantly coming our way, it’s impossible to avoid all of the potential pitfalls! But if you use common courtesy, and consider what you would like to read before you post something, you’ll find yourself making connections that mean something to you and your business.
So what’s the big deal about Social Media? I know, it’s been around for over a decade, but what is its big appeal? I haven’t taken any surveys, or done a statistical analysis of it. I know there has to be a few out there, but I will go by what I’ve seen and what I can infer. First, let’s see why people initially join. What I have seen is that social networks, initially, was just for communication via distances, that didn’t take up too much time, or money. Think email, or texting. As it evolved, it has become more of location to gossip, except it was kind of open, so it didn’t feel like gossiping. Think about where the social networks have found their initial following. The tweens, the college kids. Social life is life to them. And here they have a voice after classes, and with newer technology, in between and during classes. It’s like hanging out in the cafeteria or after school with your friends all day. What’s not to like. After the sites get some traction, the older crowd starts filtering in.
Why do they come? This may be more psychological. The just out of college crowd and the young professionals don’t want to give up their college years, mainly because they found out once you leave, you have to work… all day. And the bosses won’t tolerate late assignments, and you can’t go out to the bar and pound a few everyday and show up to work hung over, or drunk. So many rules. So they gravitate to where the college kids are socializing. The bars on weekends. But now, social media let’s them “be at the bar” all day. Then, the death knell of most social media sites, the over 30 and over 40, and beyond crowd starts showing up. The 30′s and early 40′s don’t want to be considered old, and out of touch. They still feel like they are the young professionals. So they start getting all their friends onto this or that site. Then the “beyond” crowd comes in, as their younger friends are on it, and it’s a good way to socialize with them. And so on. While the 30′s and 40′s start coming in, the tweens and college kids find another site.
This was Friendster. This was MySpace. This is Facebook. Yes, it is happening. Many people think Facebook will be around for a long time. I give it a few years. Some Social Media sites will last longer because they target the older audiences, like the LinkedIns. What about Twitter? This a little bit more interesting. This isn’t just saying things to your friends, but to the (net) world. It’s a voice to the unheard. How poetic. It will also go away, although it has in my opinion, more years left than Facebook. I’d give it 5-10 years (less with better/new technological advances). Beyond the ageism, essentially the flaw is that the Social Media sites don’t advance/upgrade/innovate after their initial couple of years. Oh sure they try, but the users don’t want the change, and resist it, complain about it, and may leave because of it. It’s a conundrum. If they don’t change, users will leave in time for something new. If they do change, users complain, and may leave because they don’t want “change.” Inherently, all Social Media sites will fail. I’ll blog more about what the sites could do to prevent their own demise, and about the business side of Social Media in my next post.
Social Media Is the Ultimate List Building Activity
Social Media News
September 5th, 2012 
