SMM Tips –Top 30 Social Media Marketing Success Questions of 2011…

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SMM Tips –Top 30 Social Media Marketing Success Questions of 2011…

I guess the trap that most businesses fall into is that they kick off their social media journey without a M.A.P. (Massive Action Plan – a motivational expression created by renowned peak performance specialist and keynote speaker Anthony Robbins). If you want to skyrocket your social media influence, you must have a crystal clear vision of where you are, where you want be and how can you get there socially speaking.

To help you out, we have assembled the top 30 questions that you need to answer accurately for massive social media success. Enjoy!

Top 10 SMM Success Questions for Startup Phase

This is the hardest phase of all since you haven’t yet learned the ropes and will prone to endless trails and errors. That’s why; it is best if you could answer the following 10 questions prior to starting.

1. What is my social media campaign vision?

2. What is my number one SMM priority? (It could be corporate branding, customer acquisition, cost reduction, more leads or higher sales conversion rates. I can here you say: I want’m all! For starters, try to focus one SMM priority)

3. Is my goal timely and realistic? (A good way to find out would be reading case studies of successful SMM endeavors)

4. Who is my target audience? (Now, that’s a question that you MUST answer on your own and make sure to answer it correctly as it could make or break your entire SMM campaign)

5. What is the exact message(s) that I want to send my audience about my brand/services?

6. How can I build credibility and trust with my audience?

7. Which social media networking sites should I join? (The Bare minimum is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn)

8. How can I constantly monitor and improve my social media campaign?

9. Who are my key competition and how can I outperform them?

Top 10 SMM Success Questions for Mid Phase

Now you started to get your hands dirty and determined your goals, target audience and key competition, it is time to ask yourself more in-depth questions.

1. How effective is my current SMM plan in supporting my business goals?

2. Am I leveraging the best tools available for my social media campaign?

3. Am I carefully aware of what my audience are saying about my brand?

4. Am I effectively engaging with my fans/followers?

5. Do I attend to people’s questions/comments about my brand promptly?

6. Did I hit my target number of followers/fans? If not, what am I doing wrong?

7. How effective was my social media strategy so far and how can I further tweak it for optimal results?

8. Do I encourage more engagement and participation from my audience?

9. Do I have enough time for social media influence or should I hire a social media professional?

10. Am I generating a positive buzz for my brand?

Top 10 SMM Success Questions for Advanced Phase

By now you have already accomplished some of your SMM goals yet need to level up your game in order to cope with never-ending evolvements in the social media world. “The only constant thing is change” and social media is certainly no exception! As things get a bit challenging, you need to ask the following questions.

1. Am I really giving my audience what they are hungry for?

2. What if I received negative reviews or bad PR, what would be my plan “B”? (Sometimes having the worst case scenario mentality is the wise things to do. In other words, be proactive rather than reactive)

3.  AM I addressing my audience needs effectively?

4.  Do I have enough financial resources (in case you are using fee-based social media services/tools) to expand this campaign?

5.  Am I capable of measuring the ROI (return on investment) of my SMM in terms of lead generation and sales conversions?

6.  Where do I see my social media campaign 5+ years from now?

7.  Is my SMM time, money and effort brining me the desired results in terms of sales revenues?

8.  How often do I add the “fun” factor to my social media activities in order to engage more audience?

9. Do I give my audience enough attention and recognition?

10. How can I improve my overall strategy based on my audience feedback?

I couldn’t stress more on the utmost importance of answering the above questions carefully if you are after optimal SMM results. Jumping in the deep social media sea without enough planning means getting mediocre or no results! The more specific you are in deciding how you want to leverage SMM; the better your chances will be in meeting or even exceeding your goals. Good luck!

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12 Social Marketing Myths: How social media can assist you take your company to the next level

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12 Social Marketing Myths: How social media can assist you take your company to the next level

For brands, resistance to social media is futile. Hundreds of thousands of persons produce content for that social Web on the daily foundation. Your buyers take place to be utilizing it to get a lengthy time. Your rivals have embraced it. In situation your corporation just isn’t placing itself out there, it ought to be.But you’ll discover some recurring fallacies and misconceptions available on the market. Rather a few providers are discovering that these instruments don’t reside up to the hype, especially modest providers. You’ll discover a lot of issues that are not instantly obvious. Are you currently currently considering Twitter, Facebook, et al as component of one’s marketing plan? Prior to you leap in, maintain these myths in thoughts:1. Social media is cheap or free. Yes, a number of social media tools are totally totally free to use, for example Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, the social network building tool Ning, and content material materials aggregators like StumbleUpon and Digg. You will find many free of charge blogging instruments, too, like WordPress, Blogger, FriendFeed, and Twitter. But incorporating them correct into an organization marketing program requires time, skill, and dollars.2. You’ll be able to make a large splash in fact simply. Positive, occasionally this occurs. Social media is terrific if you’re by now a star, but there undoubtedly isn’t any these thing as an overnight sensation. As an example, tweets can drive traffic to articles, Web web web-sites, Facebook pages, contests, apps, videos, and so on. — this really is easier in situation your viewers presently cares about your model or in situation you possess a genuinely original item or notion that excites men and ladies to your extent that they desire to share with their buddies. On the other hand it takes a lot of time and dedication to preserve your content materials fresh.three. You will desire to be on all the large internet web sites. Most manufacturers which have succeeded with social media internet web-sites normally focus on just a couple of of them. Just for the reason that the media says it is cool to tweet doesn’t imply it has something to total together with your organization. Inside the occasion you strategy to regular social networks, don’t spread your self as well thin. The firms that choose their weapons properly and give it their all could be the ones that succeed inside the social space.4. In case you generate some factor that is excellent, people today will come across it. How’s that supposed to occur? Unless needless to say you will have the ability to drive traffic for the social media work, it really is akin to a tree falling within the woods with out 1 about to listen to it. Lots of tools can drive visitors, for example Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, blogs, and Search engine optimization, but phrase of mouth trumps all of them — 1 buddy telling another, “Hey, check this out!” is incredibly effective.five. It is for kids. Contrary to the notion that social media is for tweens, teenagers, and 20-somethings, older demographics are rapidly evolving into this region. In accordance with analysis by iStrategyLabs, Facebook experienced 276% improvement in customers aged 35-54 in 2009 and is its fastest developing section.6. You cannot create top high quality relationships on the internet. The thinking on this goes that it’s a waste of time connect with men and ladies on-line which you do not know in actual lifestyle — that it is a pointless physical workout that doesn’t result in lasting relationships together together with your model. It is genuinely really the opposite: Social media enables you to be cope with to face together with your target audience. Despite the fact that they don’t alter into spending customers, you nonetheless acquire beneficial insight into what they really feel and what they react to.7. It gives away content material and suggestions you should be charging for. Basically place: The significantly more you give, the a good deal additional you obtain in social media. You need to let go of the idea that all of the content material you produce is is proprietary, engage together with your audience, and encourage them to share what you’ve created.8. It is a fad. The drumbeat about social media has turn out to be deafening. But a lot of entrepreneurs stay skeptical, hesitating to create budgets and expend sources on the craze. But social media is really a basic shift in communication — it really is not just a brand new set of resources, but a new sphere of networking, communicating, living, and organizing. It has become intertwined in our lifestyles, so it’s here to stay.9. Anybody can do it. It certain sounds that way, doesn’t it? You will find a wonderful deal of males and ladies, from whiz kids to a great deal far more experienced entrepreneurs, who claim to become social media specialists. Some even portray on their very own as gurus. But how fairly several of them have produced successful social media initiatives for clients? To turn into successful, a campaign have to integrate social elements into all elements of marketing, such as marketing, digital, and PR. Principle is no match for knowledge, and the finest social media entrepreneurs now have a lengthy time of understanding incorporating interactivity, forums, viral video clip, apps, social networks, blogs, user-generated content material, and contests to the marketing mix.10. It’s a cure-all. Whilst social media is definitely a good tool for online reputation management, it’s not a panacea. Do not get so wrapped up within the idea of of the social Web that you just dismiss the other issues with your marketing strategy. Social media is an additional inside a lengthy checklist of tools you should leverage for model messaging.11. You are able to do it all in-house. You need technique, tools, contacts, and expertise — a mixture not generally discovered in in-house teams, who’re normally tempted to make use of the incorrect instruments or to reinvent the wheel… which leads to (you guessed it) lousy outcomes. How a lot of in-house teams have the knowledge to conceive and put into action a social media marketing campaign AND drive visitors to it by way of weblog marketing, Search engine optimization, Twitter, and so forth?12. Social marketing results cannot be measured. You’ll discover a selection of procedures and instruments you’ll be able to use for this, and additional turn into accessible every single day. You may monitor weblog comments, mentions within the media, visitors stats, Facebook followers, Twitter followers, feedback in your content material, real-time blog advertising outcomes, click-throughs to your Web web web site. The gear are readily available, as well as the amount of individuals who know tips on how to aggregate and interpret the data is developing.

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Is Twitter The Best Social Media Marketing Platform?

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Is Twitter The Best Social Media Marketing Platform?

It seems that every time I open my email there is an invitation for at least one new social media network that has some revolutionary way to redefine my universe.

Some new networks are clones or adaptations of previous sites and target very specific segments. Twitter has taken the concept to the level of bumper stickers – short, simple and to the point. Just like a newspaper headline, you are able to get your message directly into the minds of your followers and provide them with links to more information.

As a professional Internet Marketing Specialist I know the power of the headline. Headlines need to encapsulate the entire story in the briefest possible way so that if the reader continues no further, they still have an understanding of the entire story, and have the option if continuing to find more information. With Twitter the information is provided with links, so that you can focus on creating attention getting “headlines” to drive traffic to your site or give a short synopsis of the story or product. With the number of media sources available it is the best that we can hope for with the apparent shrinking attention span of the human species.

Most of the social media sites have this short headline ability that can be used in the same way, but Twitter is the first site to slap the market “upside the back of the head” with the obvious power of the 140 characters available in each “tweet”. And if you can’t get it out in 140 strokes, is your message really going to be worth saying?

Twitter has also taking texting up a notch with the shortening of words, so you may have to spend some time “dcifrn” (deciphering) tweets. The downside to twitter is that for many users it is a novelty that is quickly set aside as not everybody wants to update the universe with a step by step breakdown of their life. What you notice pretty quickly is that the users who update the most frequently are businesses (especially media agencies such as news sites), marketing and public relations professionals, entertainers and politicians who may or may not even be doing their own tweeting. It is therefore essential that you target your tweets to followers who will be interested in what you have to say. Or, for that matter, what you have to sell.

So, yes…If you have to limit your marketing resources to one social media marketing platform Twitter is the one, but relax, most of the other sites are integrating direct connections with Twitter updates and can be cross posted.

No matter what form of marketing you engage in, you need the best education possible. An online university for internet marketers and community of entrepreneurs that will educate and guide you on your path to success is the best way to ensure that you reach your goals.

Wishing you every success,

Mike.

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SEO and Social Media Joining Forces

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SEO and Social Media Joining Forces

What Have You Heard?

Lately I have been hearing a lot of debate over what is exactly considered Search Engine Optimization and what is considered Social Media. Honestly, recently I have been feeling like the two have really started to come together and become the ultimate online marketing machine. To have an effective and successful internet marketing strategy you really have to use both in order to do so. Content Development, Link Building, Traffic Growth, User Engagement, the list could really go on about how SEO and SM can work together to boost up your ending results.

Below I will give quite a few strategies on how both SEO and SM cannot work without each other:

Content Development & Content Promotion

When you create unique content that has correct Title Tags, H Tags, Keywords, Keyword-Rich URLS, it will only take you so far. Of course your content can get you some good organic traffic and readers, but when you want traffic to be more exponential you need to promote it more and this is where Social Content Promotion comes in. Amplifying a Twitter account, gaining Facebook fans, interacting with Bloggers by commenting on blogs, answering questions in Forums and promoting other peoples content will help take your content visibility to the next level.

Link Building & Social Sharing

Link building comes in a number of different types of strategies. You could be building localized links, relevant links, high Page Rank (PR) links, traffic links, etc. But, from the social side of things you could be bookmarking all your content, submitting content to Web 2.0 sites that link back to you and even though Twitter and Facebook does not follow on their links, it can still have an effect because of the traffic that it brings to your website. Since Google and other Search Engines are indexing updates that are real time, status updates is actually considered a form of link building. Take for example; If you are a guest speaker for a web design Toronto company, it is one thing to get a link from their website, but to bring in live tweets, videos and living blogging can bring more viral links, than just one from the website.

Conversion Rate Optimization & On-Site Social Engagements

I personally feel that when you improve your websites usability and conversion rates it usually falls under the SEO strategy. How does Social Media help? Facebook and Twitter allows users to sign up on a website or blog by using their social media account. When you pull Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn updates it can keep users on your site a lot longer and read your updates and check your links.

SEO Strategy & Social Media Strategy

When you start to create your overall Internet Marketing strategy you need to have some continuity across all your tactics. If you are formulating your site and layout, you may want to find out ways how to bring social elements throughout the site. For example it is good to have a blog RSS feed, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Page Widget, Social Bookmarking Buttons, those all should be apart of your overall strategy of building good content while promoting it.

So, what do all of you think about the relationship with SEO and Social Media? Do you agree that they should blend together and work as a team? Have you noticed any other way that SEO and Social Media are interacting to form a marketing strategy?

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Six Essential Social Media Tools For Business Success

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Six Essential Social Media Tools For Business Success

1. Your Own Blog

RSS feeds are the proverbial backbone of the Social Web. You can only benefit from the exposure in the many RSS feed directories on the Web if you have your own RSS feed to publish on it. The easiest way to have your own RSS feed is to start a blog.

But merely starting a blog is far from enough. Your blog needs to be optimized and your blog post content must be kept fresh, engaging, and integrated into your other social media tools.

Free and nearly free blogs can be started using tools available through WordPress.com, Blogger, or Typepad. You can also install a blog on your existing site with tools at WordPress.org.

2. Get Your Facebook On

A Facebook presence can consist of both a Facebook profile and a Facebook page. They are different things and it is very important to know which is which.

Facebook profiles are for individuals, not a business. A business can create a profile for a key representative of the business, but not for the business itself.

Always take time to optimize your Facebook profile by completing it as thoroughly as possible with content that contains key terms that are relevant to the individual as a representative of your business. Be sure to import your blog and all your other social tools into your Facebook feed.

The Facebook page is for your business. A page can be created for a service or product business, a local business, or for an actor/artist/musician/writer, you name it.

Your Facebook page is like all first impressions: you want it to represent your business effectively. Below is a list of a few Facebook applications to add to your page that can help make your impression a great one:

Social RSS is an app that imports RSS feeds or blog entries
MyFlickr imports photos and images from your Flickr account
YouTube Box helps you add your video clips to your Facebook page
ShopTab is a great app for selling your products, but it has a modest monthly fee
Static FBML gets HTML code onto your page
Causes enables donation acceptance for your nonprofit business

3. Professionals Get a LinkedIn Account

While Facebook is for social networking, LinkedIn is designed as more of a professional networking site. It is, therefore, an essential tool for business – especially for those businesses that do B2B.

Since your LinkedIn profile may be the first impression someone gets of your business, you need to take time to optimize it. Fill in every profile section using your edited content and best key terms.

It is a good practice to add applications that enhance your profile. A must-have is the BlogLink application for importing your blog entries. Another good tactic is to join LinkedIn groups that are relevant to your business.

4. The Twitter Account

Small but powerful, Twitter is a micro-blogging tool that allows short entries of only 140 characters. Limited though it may be, it is a social networking tool that lets users interact with posts in “real-time.” It is an incredibly effective way to spread the word about events, products, and services, but you want to use it in addition to your regular blog, not as a substitute for it.

Tools like TweetDeck or HootSuite help keep your “tweets” fresh and plentiful. These tools let you post-date your tweets so you do not have to be in constant tweet mode. You can add several at one sitting and let the app post them at designated times. HootSuite also has an option for importing your blog posts as tweets.

Managing all of the people you are following can be problematic, but use Twitter lists to help minimize that issue.

5. A Flickr Account

The Flickr media community makes uploading and sharing your photos and other images very easy. It is a highly underrated social media tool. It is surprising to people how you can get such great exposure and enhanced search engine placement when you use Flickr wisely.

Per usual, the secret to good placement is consistent use of key terms in names, tags, and descriptions. When you add images to Flickr, rename your uploaded files so they include a few key terms that are relevant to the image and to your business. Be sure to include those same key terms for your tags and the image description.

Again, don’t forget to integrate your Flickr account with all your other social tools and be sure to add them as galleries to your Website or blog.

6. A YouTube Account

The power of viral video is undeniable. If your business makes use of video in any fashion, you have to get those videos on YouTube. Even if you don’t have videos of a product or a meeting or as a training tool, you can create a playlist of videos already on YouTube and reap the benefits of their popularity. Commenting on other videos can also glean benefits for your business.

And whether you have your own videos or have created playlists, you definitely want to import them into your other social sites or use them to embed a video gallery onto your blog or Website.

As in Flickr and any other image tool, you need to use your best key terms in file names, tags, and descriptions of the clips you add to these media communities.

Here is a presentation to help you initiate a realistic social media strategy for your business:

http://www.slideshare.net/deltina/social-media-and-web-20-fundamentals-webinar

Regardless of the tools you implement, remember: The Social Web is about interaction. Join or start a conversation whenever you can, today being as good a time as any.

Here’s to your success in the Social Web! Ready? Let’s do it.

Social Media Marketing can be benefical to Your Business !

admin    Social Media Marketing     benefical, Business, marketing, Media, Social

Social Media Marketing can be benefical to Your Business !

A question that almost everyone would like to ask is how effective are the online activities one is carrying out for their businesses. Which processes would be best for your business in particular so that you can reap maximum benefits? Spending money from your pockets to get some traffic to your website is good but the efforts and the means have to checked and validated.

If you’re considering online business, no doubt you would have (or plan to have) a website built. The website is your end-point, kind of like a cash register. Tell people to pay too early, and you’ll miss them.

The secret to getting them to buy is a blog. A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.When you start a blog (and write GOOD content), you’re providing an unselfish method to communicating with a relevant audience.

GOOD content means:

* Tangible advice, not sales pitches
* Quality information someone can take away with them, not rubbish
* Professional input, not hearsay

If a user likes your blog, they’ll be back to read more. The thing you want o build with them is TRUST. Trust allows a user to know that you won’t take them for a ride, and subsequently, will find their way to your website, and potentially become a customer.

The magic number is 7. Seven interactions with the same interested person equates to a commercially viable experience.

Social media websites do give you a great platform to test your writing skills, build your network, and make your products and website known to a large number of people. Personal interactions with individuals are possible with almost each and every member of the network.

Just remember to link your site at the end of every blog to be able to translate readers in to customers more efficiently.

To know more about Social Media Campaigns,social media marketing company Australia, social media company brisbane, social media expert brisbane visit – http://socialmediabrisbane.blogspot.com

Avoiding Pitfalls of Social Media Marketing — Imagination and Inflation-beating Social Media Marketing

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Avoiding Pitfalls of Social Media Marketing — Imagination and Inflation-beating Social Media Marketing

SMM or Social Media Marketing seeks to combine natural skills, expertise, and social media skills allowing us to take full advantage of the Social Web.

Marketing is what most of us do all day long, and Marketing in the beginning was simple word-of-mouth conversations that has brought together sellers and buyers for thousands of years. Experience is what reputations were built on. With the introduction of modern advertising, mass communications, and public relations, the individual conversations that drove the sales cycle were all but buried. As mass communication developed and grew, so did the control of the Marketer. Each tag-line, professionally created ad, and PowerPoint slide deck exerted control of the message into the hands of the Marketers.

Now the pendulum is swinging back: The fundamental value of the individual is once again part of the landscape, pushing control to the ad-hoc communities created online and collective conversations that are created with ease on the Internet. The social Web is bringing the voices of customers to the forefront. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have huge social communities. These along with Micro-blogging, on sites such as Twitter and Seesmic, together with photo and video sharing, are in essence shouting the customer messages. As a result, some Chief Marketing Officers now find themselves in a tough spot. Anything that comes into the path of the consumer can be restated, remixed, and published. Now markets, at all levels, are dealing with the changes and fragmentation of traditional channels with the addition of the prospect of having an outright takeover of the communication message by the customer. When they agree and boost your message, it is the wonderful, but if they do not, things look bad real fast.

Building on the individual freedom and empowerment that the Internet is known for, consumers are actively talking online with each other, to share stories and information about anything and everything from toys and tools to food and drink. As they do so, they are amplifying and reinforcing marketing efforts or beating marketers at their own game by simply sharing their experiences and thoughts with each other. Because customers seem to trust conversations between each other a lot more than advertising, markets are now finding their advertising message held up for verification on a routine basis and the agencies and public relations firms have little, if any, control over this. This is a game changer – for these industries who are used to being in control.

This series of training will show how to properly use the Social Web and allow marketers to gain the skills needed to effectively take advantage of the opportunities, by adopting the behaviors that power the Social Web, enabling them to build business and marketing plans. It’s about an odd paradox of gaining control while giving up control. You cannot control social conversations, however, you can become a respected member and valid resource of the social communities that matter most to you. This training will help you realize and put to business use the powerful connection that exists between participation and influence, and to embrace what is coming next. You will see solid examples and trends and get the encouragement needed to plan ahead.

This article is part of the �Commanding The Social Web� article series, offered to the public, at no cost, and can be effortlessly found on the Internet. I know you will want to discover and understand the entire series, to seize the success that can be yours from your interaction with the online community. You will be choreographing your own success on the Social Web.

5 Steps to a Winning Social Media Marketing Plan

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5 Steps to a Winning Social Media Marketing Plan

What is the single most important action you can take to improve your chances of success in implementing a social media campaign? Create a well-researched and carefully thought out social media marketing plan, which lays the foundation for executing a winning social media campaign. Although there is no concrete roadmap to crafting an effective social media marketing plan, there are guideposts that can direct you along the way. The following 5 Steps provide the guidance you will need to develop a successful social media marketing plan.

Step 1: Establish Definitive and Measurable Goals. Social media marketing goals include, improving brand awareness, search engine rankings, relevant site traffic, and conversions performance (e.g., sales for a product or service), as well as reputation management and engaging with consumers.

The challenge for some of these goals, such as engaging with consumers, is to make them specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely (SMART). In addition, objectives must be established for each type of social media platform in order to maximize results. The following are examples of SMART goals for four popular social media platforms: blogs, microblogs (Twitter), social networking sites, as well as image and video sharing sites:

Blogs:

• 20% improvement in the ratio of posts to comments (i.e., visitor’s comments/posts=conversions) within six months
• 30% increase in total number of unique visitors within six months
• 20% increase in average number of unique visitors within six months
• 40% growth in total number of views within six months
• 10% growth of RSS subscribers within six months
• 5% growth of RSS feed requests within six months

Microblogs (Twitter):

• 20% growth in number of followers within 30 days
• 30% growth in the number of retweets (message amplification) within 30 days
• 10% increase in click-through-rate (CTR) of the links posted in tweets within 30 days (Hint: Observing which types of links garner the highest CTRs can help you tune your tweets to provide what your consumers with links they are interested in and, hence, further improve your CTR.)
• 15% increase in visits to Web site from tweet links within 30 days
• 10% growth in time on Web site from tweet links within 30 days
• 5% increase in Web site conversions (e.g., sales) from tweet links within 30 days

Social Networking Sites:

• 20% growth in the number of friends within five months
• 30% growth in the number of comments within five months
• 40% growth in the number of posts and comments in discussion groups within five months
• 20% increase in the ratio of comments on uploaded videos to number of videos uploaded within five months
• 20% increase in the ratio of comments on photos uploaded to number of photos uploaded within five months
• 30% growth in the number of comments left on profiles within five months
• 50% growth in the number of questions answered or asked within five months

Image and Video Sharing Sites:

• 30% growth in the number of images or videos viewed within four months
• 20% growth in the number of unique visitors within four months
• 10% increase in the number of subscribers to your channel or stream within four months
• 30% increase in the ratio of comments on images or videos to the number of images or videos uploaded within four months
• 15% growth in the number of embedded links to your images or videos (i.e., links from other sites to your images or videos) within four months
• 30% increase in average rankings of images or videos by viewers within four months

Step 2: Identify Your Target Market. Who is your intended audience (target market)? Where do they hangout on the social Web? How do they participating on these social media platforms? Forrester Research’s Social Technographics Profile enables you to use age, location, and gender to identify the type of activity people are engaged in on the social Web, such as create content, critique, collect, spectate, and so on. Depending on what they do, you can determine which social media platform they are likely to frequent. As an example, spectators are not likely to participate in social network like Facebook or LinkedIn, while they might watch YouTube videos and read blogs, but not comment on the posts.

Step 3: Conduct a Competitive Analysis. What are the trends in social media (i.e., which social media platform are growing, which are declining?). What needs are not being meet by your competitors? Who will be your main competitors? What are the best practices in social media marketing? Conduct a SWOT Analysis, identifying your company’s strengths, weaknesses, along with the opportunities and threats in the marketplace and economy.

Step 4: Design innovative strategies.

Select the optimal to social media platforms to reach your target market. Then, construct a specialized strategy for each social media platform to achieve the tailored goals for each platform. Each social media medium has distinctive features and means of communication. For example, a corporate blog strategy will differ markedly from the strategy you use to achieve your goals on social network like LinkedIn. In other words, a one-sized strategy doesn’t fit all.

Hence, you must adjust the following 8 C’s of the Social Media Marketing Mix for each social media platform. Here are some suggestions on how to accomplish this feat:

• Categorize social media platforms by target market relevancy(i.e., the ones where your target audience resides)
• Comprehend the “rules of the road” on the platform by listening and learning how to behave, successfully spark conversation, and engage and energize the participants
• Converse by acknowledging and responding to other users of the platform, always remembering to be a contributor, not a promoter
• Collaborate with platform members as a means of establishing a mutually beneficial relationships with the platform participants
• Contribute contentto build your reputation and become a valued member, helping to build the community
• Connect with the influencers, so you can enlist them to help shape opinions about your product or service
• Community creation enables you to build discussion forums where consumers suggest ideas and receive customer support.
• Conversion of strategy execution into desired outcomes (e.g., increased brand awareness, website traffic, sales, etc.)

Step 5: Monitor, Measure, and Tune. Accessing your progress, then tune your marketing plan based on the feedback to optimize goal achievement. Reevaluate and adjust your social media marketing plan to account for the ever changing nature of consumer tastes and the social Web. For example, if the number of viewers and subscribers to your blog are declining, you can adjust your content to more closely match your target market’s interests. If the number of comments on your blog posts is declining, you can adjust your strategy by asking a question at the end of each post that inspires people to respond. In short, planning and executing a social media marketing campaign is a never ending cycle. You should constantly monitor and tune your strategies to maximize the impact of your campaign.

For more information and resources on planning social media marketing campaigns, be sure to visit my blog at www.SocialMediaMarketingResources.info.

Social Media Consultants Finest Traits

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Social Media Consultants Finest Traits

This is not the first time anyone has ever told you that the best thing that recently happened to human society is the Internet. It is only been more than a decade but the Internet has practically changed the way society interact. Take for instance social media. Today, almost everyone is traceable via social networks. No wonder all businesses are glued to social media marketing / SMM because of the pot of gold within it: people.

You bump into this entry maybe because you are curious about finding ways to fast track your entry to exploiting SMM for your business. Thinking of hiring social media consultants? There are several of freelancers and firms who offer best social media consultants to varied level of business clientele. You could find the finest social media consultants by checking on these traits:

He who has the capacity to produce quality and optimized content. A genuine social network expert knows how to maximize existing content and website, transform and optimize them to generate more traffic. He does this by adding visual media like photos and video clips and press releases. A social network expert can also optimize content by placing and distributing them elsewhere and create link to bring people to your Web page.

He who has extraordinary skills to develop SMM strategy. There are essentially no templates to social media in terms of strategies. Everything has to be evaluated to suit the business products and services and consider the target niche. Narrowing down the objectives are critical to building a concrete marketing social media plan. From this, you can identify various media tools, distribution mechanisms, and zero in on social network sites where your target niche is.

He who is undeniably a social animal. Social network can be fully beneficial only of you are highly interactive. SMM is really about reaching out and connecting to people within communities. Social network consultants who are proactively engage in various social networks are excellent choices for both small and large-scale businesses.

He who offers post website development monitoring. A social network expert extends his intervention all the way to monitoring effectiveness of your marketing plans. He will continue to get in touch with you to see if your site is drawing traffic as your initially planned it to be.

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Is Social Media Marketing on Gaming Portals the next big thing in India?

admin    Social Media Marketing     Gaming, India, marketing, Media, Next, Portals, Social, Thing

Is Social Media Marketing on Gaming Portals the next big thing in India?

Social Media marketing is comparatively a new concept in the Indian scenario which is at a very nascent stage but has been successful so far. Web 2.0 platform is widely used wherein the content is made attractive, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.

Zapak.com which is India’s No.1 Gaming portal has over 120 million clicks per month with 33 million unique users who access these portals for online gaming apart from 7-8 million active users playing games like Farmville, Fishville, Mafia wars and Dragon wars on social networking websites like facebook and other gaming portals.The companies are now eyeing this new trend of users on web 2.0 platforms with the new medium of social media marketing mainly after the recent allocation of 3G and BWA licenses which is expected to convert more and more internet users to broadband facility which is now only available in few selected cities and towns, which in turn will give them access to high speed broadband and will attract new users as well as upgrade the dial up connection users to play games online.As per the recent data of IAMAI the number of active gamers in India has now reached 41.2 percent of the total internet users in the country.

Social Media Marketing has been found successful by India’s No.1 gaming portal Zapak.com wherein featured games are now being offered to its users by bigwigs like Hindustan Unilever, Mahindra & Mahindra, United Spirits, Hewlett Packard and Reebok who are part of its esteemed clienteles apart from movies like 3 idiots and Kites who have taken help from Zapak.com to promote their movies through this medium and have achieved significant brand awareness and large amount of clicks on featured games.

Companies like Mahindra & Mahindra promote by giving a chance to the gamers to drive their latest SUV’s and scooters online which attracts a lot of users who would like to drive a latest vehicle online whereas companies like Hindustan Unilever has been busy promoting Axe range and entertaining visitors by attracting not only users to its website but also letting users attract girls in the virtual place towards the Axe Effect. Basically all the games have been intelligently designed to showcase the product, the brand and the capabilities of the product online.Let it be by Mahindra by allowing you to drive SUV’s in hilly terrains or using Axe on the beach or under water. Mahindra and Mahindra have gone a step forward by stating that it is not only nurturing the current customers but future customers who now drive in a virtual world but would love to choose Mahindra SUV’s when they attain legal age.

The Gaming Portals users have also responded positively towards the brand and Mahindra has achieved over 8 million plays whereas Axe Twist has registered over 10 million plays in the current year with the next 7 months to go and new technologies making way, the growth would be tremendous and also considering the cost of advertising on this platforms is comparatively low when compared with the traditional advertising mediums.The integration of social networking websites with zapak.com the market is just becoming exciting for the advertising industry.

Gaming portals cannot be misquoted to be attracting only the kids as it has been observed that a lot of office goers in the age of 25-35 are active users apart from the housewives who play games on web portals of zapak.com in the dedicate girls website in the afternoon time after their daily routine. Kids do make up for the majority of the gamers but with the growing importance of the kids in the household decision making while purchasing new products has got the companies to a new destination of gaming portals to attract and share their thoughts on the product through their internet exposure in the decision making.

With growing internet access through 3G, BWA and Broadband, online game portals like zapak and social networking portals like facebook will have a remarkable growth and companies will be surely moving towards this new trend of promoting products through social media and making aware of its products.

So the next time you log on to Zapak.com don’t be surprised to get your hands on new Mahindra vehicles,or hoardings of Axe in your Farmville while you play and visit others farm, while you may be busy browsing though my website let me check out the new Mahindra Rodeo on Zapak.com.

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