How to be A Social Media Rock Star!

We can’t deny how powerful Social Media is nowadays. The time consumers spend on Social Media has ballooned to 250% in just two years! That’s primarily the reason why every marketer wants to get into the ball game.

To rock it on three, four or five Social Media channels, you have to be at least a practiced Social Media individual. But don’t fret, we have bumped into this great article on how to Rock it on Social Media. Here are some tips we’ve gathered on “101 Companies Rocking it on Social Media” published by Hubspot which is written and designed By Desmond Wong.

According to PWC, 60% of consumers use social media to follow, discover, and give feedback on brands and retailers. Use these examples of companies rocking social media to find out what works best for your own company, and be the social business these consumers are following. Good luck!

ROCKING IT ON FACEBOOK

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    Aside from having great engagement, a page should do a wonderful job featuring its new products and businesses

·         Engage your fans with interesting questions and visual content that link to relevant products on your website

·         You should have customized profile images and cover photos

·         Post links to its APIs and other helpful services that fans can utilize

·         Share a variety of links and create discussion topics that draw in fans. Post statuses and links in a variety of languages to engage fans from around the world

·         Including your website in the cover photo is an effective way to draw some attention to your site and bring in some traffic. Describe exactly what the organization does in the first part of the screen.

·         Aside from the creative cover image, you can include fun games and photos

·         Models, fancy clothes, and fashion shows. Pack your Facebook page with great photos of your new collections and videos to keep your fans up-to date with the latest in fashion

ROCKING IT ON TWITTER

  

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    Do a great job at keeping up with replies, retweets, and hash-tagging. Use a nice set of images on your Twitter background that focuses on your latest product

·         Share a variety of quotes, articles, and media that your followers can easily consume and share

·         Post often and interact well with your followers.

·         Include links in almost every single tweet you send. This will always give followers something to engage on

·         Focus well on including links, tagging other users, and relying on hashtags

·         Feature images and videos of your products

·         Actively retweeting, mentioning, and sharing helpful links and tweets

·         Use your Twitter feed to provide your followers with an assortment of helpful articles, ebooks, links, and quotes that are easily shared and consumed

·         Keeping your followers interested is the key to maintaining a strong social network. Post helpful articles and links related to your product that followers can eat up.

ROCKING IT ON PINTEREST

·         Create a variety of great boards in an assortment of colors and are visually appealing to your followers. With Pinterest being very heavy on visual content, it helps to have a set of pleasantly colored images and products to feature

·         Pin board for almost everything you might want. Provide your followers with a number of interesting categories to keep them pinning

·         Create boards full of educational content. Use interesting games, facts, and information for knowledge hungry followers

·         Have a board just for the team. It’s a great way to put some faces to the company

·         Humor always does well on Pinterest. Create humor focused pin boards for everyone’s enjoyment

·         Have a broad selection of pin boards about design, style, food, and even cuteness

ROCKING IT ON LINKEDIN

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    A big focus of companies using LinkedIn is to use it as a recruiting tool.

·         Keep the public informed on new products, events, and updates about your products

·         Keep your profile up-to date. Feature helpful articles and news about your current products

·         Keep relevant and interesting articles in your LinkedIn company stream

·         Use clean and attractive cover image. Aside from that, use recent updates that includes online education and other helpful articles

·         Utilize employee spotlights or highlight career opportunities within the company. Feature a Friday Trivia question to keep your followers on their toes

ROCKING IT ON GOOGLE+

·         Focus on posting an assortment of visual content targeted at building product awareness. Consistently promote your latest products

·         Keep your circles entertained with images, videos, and interesting articles about the company

·         Do an amazing job on engaging with your fan base

·         Showcase the latest fashion trends and deals. Cover everything from fashion week to street fashion

·         Post images that show the value of your product rather than tell it. Use images that will show off the ease-of-use and optimized capabilities of your product

·         Use your Google + account to share with your circles the newest products coming off its production lines. Share images, videos, and articles about anything and everything about your company

Ella Ritalei Panganiban

Marketing Executive 
Drive Social Media

The Final Steps

This is the fourth and final series of posts on business blogging initiated by the blog post:
‘Don’t make your blog a slog!’

The previous blog post shows you how to create your own blog and how to add content to it, but the next question is… How do you attract followers to your blog? You want people to read your posts, but how would you do this?

Always remember that people will be interested to follow you, if they find you interesting.

Writing insightful articles will help people understand what you, or your brand is about, and will keep reading to learn more about it.

Add other blogs from your niche - follow other blogs that you find interesting, and they will hopefully follow you back. Engage with your followers; converse with them so they can get to know you better. You could also refer to other similar blogs in your blog posts, and then comment on their blogs to inform them that you've mentioned them in your post.

RSS feeds, like Google Reader or Outlook, are also very powerful tools you can use to help you generate followers for your blog. RSS feeds (also known as Really Simple Syndication feeds) help you keep track of other blogs and let you know when they've posted new content, so you can easily read them and comment on their posts.

So are there any other ways of letting people know about my blog?

Social Media Sites are also very useful when you want to attract followers. For example, you could let your followers on Twitter know that you've posted a new blog post and encourage them to follow your blog after visiting it.

Use Linked In to update your friends and colleagues there about your blog posts. Don't forget to direct them to your blog by adding the URL in your update as well. Linked In has a lot of groups; join the ones that are in your field of interest and inform them about your blog.

Facebook is also very useful as you can post on people's walls and kindly ask them to share your update with their friends whom they think will be interested in your blog. If you have a Facebook Page, you could post the same message you posted on Twitter and Linked In to keep your fans updated on your blog.

NetworkedBlogs is an application for Facebook that when added to your blog and Facebook page, will automatically pull through your blog feed and post it on your wall. You will have a separate list of followers for NetworkBlogs too.

Another website that's useful for generating followers for your blog is Technorati - one of the most famous search engines for blogs and blog posts. Find and follow similar blogs and promote yours there too.

What are the business benefits of blogging?

Blogging certainly increases your credibility and lets everyone read about your passion and what you're all about. Over time, with an increasing number of followers, people will trust you more and this in turn, leads to an increase in sales for your business.

All your posts will always be available in your archives, so even new users, or new visitors to your blog will be able to go back to those posts to read about you.

Using social media sites correctly will ensure that people will be able to see your blog on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn.. etc. Good brand awareness leads to trust from your target audience and customers.

Any widgets that can help?

Google Friend Connect, LinkedinABox, My Blog Log, Feedburner and Shout List Icons are great widgets to add to your blog to make it easier for your readers to connect with you, so make sure to add a few.

If you have any questions, please feel free to let us know :)

Ayna Gonzales
Marketing Executive
Drive Social Media

Oil and Water by John McGrann

Oil and water don’t mix – neither do internet marketing and social media marketing. The former is an online version of a market trader selling direct and energetically; the latter an extension of word of mouth marketing. It’s not a question of which is more effective marketing. Both can be very effective. It’s a matter of realising that the two don’t mix easily. If at all...

Social media marketers (SMMs) leverage the relationships built on sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for business. All other forms of internet based marketing can be ascribed to Internet Marketers (IMs) including these examples:

• Display advertising

• E-mail marketing

• Interactive advertising

• Cost per impression

• Affiliate marketing

• Cost per action

• Search engine marketing

• Search engine optimization

• Paid inclusion

• Mobile advertising

So what are the differences between IMs and SMMs?

SMMs market their own limited products / services, or as an agency on the behalf of the client. It is a long term commitment and client relationship. IMs will market any products/services which can be monetized and the life of the relationship can be very short. Certain IM schemes allow for IMs to act as agents without ever meeting the client. It’s cold and clinical.

The premise for SMMs success is that of ‘word of mouth marketing’ and relationship building. We like to do business with those we know, we like and we trust. IMs success is down to identifying and exploiting internet based marketing schemes and systems. The requirement is to be sharp, on top of it, and very active using the right systems and tools. There are lots of ‘secrets’.

SMMs will clearly identify a target audience for their products / services and seek out their targets on social media sites. IMs may have many targeted audiences which change often. For them it’s a numbers game. Blast away at the numbers and a percentage will engage them.

SMMs need to be subtle, develop relationships and trust. They are highly visible on social media sites offering lots of added value to prospective customers. It is expected and free. IMs have no such requirement.

In social media, one to one conversations are very important. Emails sent to prospects would be minimal. Sales pitches to prospects would only be allowable after a certain maturity of the relationship, or at the bequest of the prospect. IMs think little of blasting emails on a daily basis to those on their ‘list.’ The ‘list’ is the basis for success. Such emails will be very repetitive and are a form of spamming. The IM would counter that the prospect has subscribed previously. The IM would claim that a prospect needs to view the same information a number of times to make that decision to buy.

The internet is littered with many examples of ‘get rich quick’ schemes which are often nothing more than scams. Many successful IMs will have built up enough intelligence to know the scams and avoid them. Others are less fortunate. Such scams give IM a bad name. There are no ‘get rich schemes’ for SMMs. It’s a long road adding value and building trust – there are no shortcuts.

The successful IM will offer his / her skills and ‘secrets’ as a paid mentor to those seeking large ‘passive’ incomes. Opportunities are in high demand and you need to ‘get signed up quickly – now in fact!’ Successful SMMs are expected to share content and ideas, help others along the way. It is giving with the expectation that rewards will come later.

Social media marketers are social and extend good networking practices to the internet. Internet marketers will go for the jugular, wear down their target if necessary – it’s a numbers game! It’s exciting and fun! It’s not very social...

I am not advocating the IM or the SMM position here. I am merely giving you a few guidelines on identifying the traits of both and their method of operation. Either can be successful and satisfying. It depends on what suits you or your brand. Beware of mixing them!