Social Media Marketing . . . Where Failure To Plan Is Most Definitely Planning To Fail . . .

What do you think is the single biggest mistake businesses make when engaging in social media marketing?

Undoubtedly, it’s a failure to plan. And this ‘lack of planning’ affects businesses of all sizes; from the rawest of start-ups, to the biggest of empires.

So why does this happen? After all, you wouldn’t embark on any new business venture without a solid business plan to hand (I trust).

Possibly because the vast majority of social media is, in effect, a free tool, business owners think social media is something they can dip in and out of.

Huge mistake.

Because the real key to successful social media marketing is having a solid plan you can work through week-on-week, month-on-month, year-on-year.

The stark reality is that the average person on Facebook has 130 connections and belongs to 50-60 online groups. So to really influence audiences on social media sites you will need to break through this already established network.

The only way to do that properly is to devise a social media strategy that’s right for your business.

Here are some proven tips to help you get started:

Define your target audience

Be as specific as possible about who you want to connect with: What is their gender? Age group? Earnings? Hobbies? Relationship status? Build up a picture of your ideal customer – the more detail the better.

The worst case scenario is that you will try to reach everybody, in which case your marketing message will be too bland to make an impact and you will end up reaching no-one.

Decide on the right social media networks for your business

Where does your target audience hang out? LinkedIn? Facebook? Twitter? Create a clear outline of who you want to reach and then determine which of the social media platforms can best help you achieve your goals. Make sure the type of content you intend posting suits the medium you are posting to.

Listen to what your target audience is saying

What is your target audience interested in? What do they talk about online? What worries them? What kind of role might your product or service play in their lives? By listening to discussion groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc, you will gain valuable insights into your potential customers’ lives, which you can then translate into a meaningful action plan.

Call them to action

What do you want to achieve? What are your goals? Once you know what your primary purpose is – what you want to achieve – create a ‘call to action’ that will back up that goal. It could be as simple as asking people to sign up for your newsletter, or phone for a free consultation.

Create a content planner

This is one of the most important, but often overlooked, components of your social media marketing plan. What sort of subjects will you write about? What are the kinds of things that will engage and inspire your target audience? Create a content plan in advance of starting your campaign and you’ll be surprised how much better received your postings are.

Track and measure your success

Tracking your social media marketing campaign in detail will show you what is and what isn’t working as well as proving your ROI. It will also help you identify the best use of your resources such as time and money. Be prepared to refine/ adjust your content in order to achieve the optimum response levels.

Social media is a cheap and easy way to win more fans for your business. The fact that the tools are (mainly) free can create a problem for business owners who are new to social media marketing.

Begin with a well-defined strategy and you won’t go far wrong. In fact, you’ll be streets ahead of those companies who view social media as something you can opt in and out of whenever you feel like it.

You really can’t.

Snoop Dogg Currently Leads The Pack . . . Here’s How Your Business Can Gain More Followers With Twellow

What is Twellow? And how can it help my business?


Twellow, dubbed the “Yellow Pages of Twitter,” makes it easy for you to find people within a certain niche or location, and allows people searching for your business type, product or service to find you!

How does it work?

Twellow analyses publicly available ‘tweets’ and places the writer of those tweets into several ‘defining’ categories. Of course you will need to have a Twitter account first, but assuming you have one already, here’s how to make the most of Twellow:

Use Your Maximum 10 Categories To Define Your Areas Of Expertise:

Twellow allows you to be listed in a maximum of 10 categories. Initially this is determined by the keywords Twellow ‘grabs’ from your Twitter profile. However you can change the categories assigned to you using the Profile Editor. You can also request a category be considered for addition if it isn’t currently available – new categories are being added all the time.

Created An Extended Biography That “Sells” You Better

Twellow permits you to extend your standard bio by 2000 characters, which is ideal for better explaining what you do and what you have to offer. You can also use links to your website, blog, or social media profiles. For example: “Check out my Top 10 Social Media Tips at my blog.” Using keywords and phrases in this way will boost your search engine rankings. You can also include a call to action: “For one week only, FREE consultation on how to get more traffic to your website!”

Use TwellowHood To Help You Connect With The Right People

Looking to do more business locally? Or within a certain radius of a particular place or city? TwellowHood is the tool you need. This giant map of the world will let you place your screen cursor on a particular continent, then zoom in to the locality you need. TwellowHood then identifies the Twitter users in your selected location. TwellowHood is great for finding business leads and joint venture partners. Or maybe you outsource work and need to find a copywriter or graphic designer in your neighbourhood. TwellowHood will help you identify the right people in the right locations.

Check Out Twellow’s ‘Advanced Search’ Tips

Twellow allows you to narrow or broaden your search criteria using characters such as quotation marks, ampersand and plus/ minus sign, then returns the search results in descending order according to each person’s number of followers. This is a great facility as you don’t need to wade through an entire list of search results to find the people with the biggest audience. The advanced search option is full of shortcuts which will make all your searches simpler and quicker.

Use A Twellow Sticker On Your Website Or Blog

Why wait for people to find you on Twellow? Place a sticker on your website or blog and they’ll know instantly. You can choose from four standard sticker colours, or customise your own.

If you’re on Twitter as part of your internet marketing you really need to be on Twellow too. And if you’re not already a Twitter fan, Twellow might just convert you. There are so many potential benefits to using Twellow for business:- people waiting for you to find them and people searching for you, it really is worth taking a closer look at how Twellow can improve your ‘bottom line.’

Oh and . . . in case you were wondering, Snoop Dogg currently has a whopping 4,293,842 followers on Twellow.

Something to aspire to perhaps?

Overwhelmed By Social Media? How HootSuite Can Help You Get Organized And Save Time!

If as part of your small business marketing you’ve already decided your business could profit from social media, but the whole thing is frankly so overwhelming that you don’t know where to start, help is at hand. Perhaps you’re already signed up to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare, but other than that you’ve done nothing with your accounts. Maybe you also have a WordPress blog you make the odd posting to every month or so.


The reality is, dabbling in social media doesn’t work . . . particularly if you’re in business. For businesses, social media is a kind of ‘all or nothing’ experience. And it’s extremely time-consuming, right? Particularly if you’re a one-man or one-woman business when there just never seems enough hours in the day generally.

Well now there’s a programme that can help you automate all your social media activity. It’s called HootSuite – and it’s brilliant for updating all your social media platforms at the same time.

Here’s an overview of what you get when you sign up to HootSuite:

The Ability to Manage Multiple Social Networks

With HootSuite, you can integrate all your social networking sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and update them easily via a single manageable location. HootSuite also lets you update a range of other social networks through Ping.fm.

Control Your Team’s Workflow

HootSuite allows you to add multiple remote users and permit them to update feeds and tweets on your behalf.

Manage Twitter Feeds

Once you start following more than a dozen Twitter accounts, keeping up with all the constant feeds can be an almost impossible task. With HootSuite, it’s a doddle. HootSuite enables you to create lists of Twitter followers easily and stay tuned to their updates.

Upload Files and Customize URLs

HootSuite uses its own shortening function “ow.ly” which enables you to customize URL parameters. And when you want to share updates or files with your followers, HootSuite converts your content into a shortened link and embeds it into the file.

Pre-write Your Content and Schedule It For Posting Later

Another great feature of HootSuite is that you can pre-write content in advance and schedule it to be posted on your Twitter site whenever you want. This facility makes it easier to keep up with the demand for fresh content. With HootSuite, if you want to post a tweet a 3am you won’t have to set your alarm to do it!

HootSuite is iPhone and Droid App compatible

Compatible with the latest iPhone and Droid App, your marketing team can perform their social media functions anytime, anywhere.

Tracking Statistics & Data

Want to know how many clicks your tweets are getting and where from? HootSuite’s tracking system provides you with comprehensive data on all this and much more.

HootSuite is the perfect tool for managing your brand’s social media activity. It allows you to track backlinks and retweets and find out what people are saying about your business. HootSuite encourages greater and more efficient productivity and better interaction with your social media team.

Web Marketing For Business

If you want to succeed in business on the internet, marketing is vital. There are many facets to internet marketing. Which ones are the most important?


There’s no right answer to that question. This is a subjective topic and because the internet is very open source, there is no right or wrong answer but here is some information from a web marketing company about several vital steps that could help you increase your chances of online success:


Do Your Research

Before you embark on an internet marketing campaign, doing a substantial amount of research is essential. You’ll want to research your market, your competition, your audience, and review information to help you define a search engine marketing and / or pay per click advertising strategy. If you can’t do the research yourself either due to lack of expertise in this area or lack of cycles you could hire an internet research or consultancy firm to help you.

What’s important from a research perspective? Whether you do it yourself or get some help, keyword analysis is important. Analysing your competition will help you as well. Looking at various social media strategies can provide a wealth of info and gathering general business intelligence will pay off in multiple ways --- helping you define, strategise, and execute a campaign that will work.
Analysis

After you’ve defined and executed your web marketing strategy, ongoing analysis will tell you what’s going well and what isn’t going so well. Info gathered for internet marketing campaigns can help you with improvements and can also help you fuel future campaigns as well.

Reputation and Relationship Development & Management

Work to develop a great reputation online. Establish yourself as a professional and establish your company’s presence as one that believes in customer experience, value, and service.

Online success needs more that just development of a reputation and / or a brand. It also requires that you nurture relationships. Social marketing is a two way street. So is blogging. Customers are looking for value and this can help to establish trust. Nurturing online reputation and relationships can equate to trust and success in gathering subscribers and followers to your website. Those subscribers and followers could become future clients and sources of word of mouth referrals.

Again, there are many facets to web marketing and taking a step at a time can help you success. Regardless of whether you’re embarking on a campaign on your own or getting help and whether you’re new to this or not, taking steps toward increasing your online presence is exciting and can pay off huge dividends.

Boost Your Search Engine Ranking

For any company operating in today’s increasingly digital age, taking steps to improve traffic to their websites is a must if they are going to remain competitive. But it’s not as easy as it may appear, and sometimes reading up on the subject yourself or taking one of the many quick-fix ‘courses’ on offer is not enough to get you the results you want. This is where it may be a good idea to look at bringing in one of the many online and search marketing companies out there to give your business an expert boost. Here are just some of the key services they can provide you with to take you to the next level:


Increasing traffic: You may have identified the keywords potential customers will need to type into the search engine to bring you to your site, but do you know how to convert these to newly generated traffic? Experienced internet marketing companies know exactly how to place these keywords to improve your search engine rankings. Rather than floundering in the sea of other websites all clamouring to rank highest for those particular terms, a paying for a professional, targeted approach will start getting you visitors quickly, and this will lead to...

Higher conversion levels: You have now got the visitors to your site, which is great – but that is only half the battle. Your site needs to be appealing and, above all, easy to use. If a customer is unsure whether to buy from you and the payment process is complicated or difficult to see, you may well lose that sale. Find yourself an expert to provide the full package, from search engine optimisation to a comprehensive website review and your new site traffic will soon start translating to bigger sales and profitability.

Research and analysis: Do you know how to thoroughly research your market and competitors, as well as providing a thorough analysis of your current website performance? Do you know how to find out the most common search enquiries people are making relating to your sector? Don’t worry if not – these are essential elements to any company’s business strategy but it is also part of what the best search marketing companies are there to do.

Paid online marketing: There are times – perhaps during peak sale times – when SEO methods are not enough. At these times it may be advisable to use online advertising methods such as paid placement and pay-per-click to further enhance your ratings. If employed correctly, these methods can provide a real boost, but handled inexpertly and you are spending money to no purpose. If you’re not sure, it’s best to get expert advice from somebody who can advise you on what is appropriate for your website and your market.

Hiring search marketing companies, then, can be a wise medium-term investment. Do choose wisely though, as the quality of service out there does vary. Most importantly, it is worth finding out whether the company you are considering is highly ranked for their keywords themselves, and whether they can provide evidence and testimonials from clients to back up their claims. If not, move on and look for someone else.

Hiring a search engine marketing company to improve your website’s search engine ranking can be looked on as a wise investment. If you hire the right one you can look forward to increased website traffic and much greater visitor conversion levels.

The Pros and Cons of Paid Search Marketing

Using search engine marketing (SEM) methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) or paid inclusion can be very effective in terms of increasing traffic to your website and widening your customer base. But you have to be aware of the best times to employ these strategies, and if you are considering going down this route it may be a good idea to hire a search engine marketing company to advise you on the latest methods – otherwise you may be spending money with very little reward. So when should you use SEM, and what should you avoid?

On the plus side, paid search marketing is a highly targeted method with corresponding low wastage. Because the traffic driven to your website will be those with the right match types in terms of keywords or Google Adwords, your ads only appear when potential customers are searching for products in your particular area, and therefore have a high purchase intent. Logically, then, if your website has a very specific or niche product to sell, pay-per-click may be the right marketing option for you. Traffic volumes with PPC are also more predictable and easier to manage than with search engine optimisation methods (SEO).

Pay-per-click listings can also give you the advantage of speed, since they can appear within a few hours. Contrast this with SEO, which has a much longer lead time. If you are selling a product within a particular time-frame (perhaps for Halloween, for example), then you will want to make the most of the time you have so in this case PPC could be appropriate in terms of overall cost benefits. On the other hand, if your product is more of a slow-burner then SEO may work just as well, if not better, in building up your brand. Basically, you need to decide which approach will be best for the product or service you have.

One of the major disadvantages of pay-per-click marketing is actually born from its strengths. Because it is such an efficient way for companies to achieve high rankings and drive customers to their websites, there is a correspondingly high level of competition. Pay-per-click is based on competitive bids and for some sectors this can lead to alarming levels of inflation. Basically, this can be a prohibitively expensive business if you don’t know when to employ it effectively, or when the placement costs will begin to outweigh the benefits. If you are at all unsure about this, consult a search marketing company who will be able to give you a realistic idea of your potential return on investment, and whether PPC is right for your company.

Because of the potential for inflated PPC prices, sadly this method can often favour larger brands which have a bigger budget and more effective infrastructure in place for managing competition or bigger campaigns, for example. If you are a start-up, it may be a good idea to build up your brand first before embarking on paid search marketing.

Pay-per-click marketing can be a very effective way of driving traffic to your website and improving your search engine rankings. However, it can also be costly and there is a great deal of competition in certain sectors so you need to think carefully about the right time for your company to employ this approach.

The Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

Traditional forms of marketing such as magazine advertising, billboards, TV etc are slowly being replaced by search engine marketing (SEM). SEM can allow you to reach your target market in a very effective way, wherever your customers are in the world. It promotes your website by increasing its presence in search engine results pages using paid placement methods such as targeted advertising, paid inclusion. All those ads you see on the right hand side of the search results pages when you type in a key word – chances are these are the result of SEM.

The initial outlay of hiring a search marketing company to optimise your website’s visibility in this way can bring substantial rewards, and here’s why:

Typing keywords into search engines is the number one method people use to find websites. If you have used any of the methods listed above then you are tapping in to a global audience, all potentially getting ready to type in your key words. Furthermore, the majority of people will check a search engine every day – that’s a lot of potential clients that you simply wouldn’t have access to using the more traditional marketing channels.

Your website will appear to an audience who are already actively searching for your keywords. For example, if you are a company making toy prams for children, a person looking for this product will type in your key words and, if you are using paid-for, targeted advertising such as pay-per-click your website will appear to somebody who is already in the market for your products. If you pay enough per click then you are almost certain to increase the visibility of your website to your customer base.

Search engine marketing can also be far more cost-effective than other forms of internet advertising. For example, with pay-per-click you don’t pay until a user clicks on your advert so you are really only paying for those interested in your products. Furthermore, it has been estimated that there are 5-6 times more online purchases made from traffic coming from search engines than from banner adverts, and the cost is lower.
Search engine marketing can allow you to keep up with, or ahead of, your competition.

Really, if you want to maximise your business opportunities these days you need to be thinking about online marketing – because if you aren’t you can be sure that many of your competitors, whatever sector you are working in, are already doing it and reaping the benefits. If you want access to the latest search marketing methods, particularly if you are a start-up and want to hit the ground running, it may be a good idea to seek expert advice from a specialist search marketing company who will be able to develop the best online strategy to fit the particular needs of your market.

Search engine marketing is today one of the most sure-fire ways of increasing the visibility of your website and reaching out to a global customer base. Using a search engine marketing company can allow you to increase your profits at a relatively low outlay – and it should be remembered that online marketing is relatively outstripping the more established channels.