How to Master Facebook Marketing The Right Way

Posted on March 7, 2013 by admin

Offline marketing strategies are expensive, ineffective and in many ways outdated. To rise above the din of constant advertising in the media one has to spend such a substantial sum of money just to be heard above the noise that this prevents many smaller business operators completely out of the market. This is especially true when safe in the knowledge that marketing messages need to reach would be consumers a number of times before the advert even register with them. Without being aware of the advert in the first place, it can have no impact at all on any possible buying decision later.

With an online presence, having your own web site is crucial to brand creation or maintaining an existing brand in the online world. This used to be enough, but now it is necessary to create a branded fan page on Facebook, possibly a Twitter account and other social media profiles so that your business can gain marketing traction in as many markets as possible.

Consumers are spending more time using social media accounts and less in traditional media markets like Hollywood filmed entertainment, radio and news programming. Increasingly, in a fast moving online world, people check Facebook on their smart phone using the Facebook app, read a couple of Tweets on TweetDeck and check their email at the same time. Smart businesses know that they need to go where their customers and prospective customers go or they get left behind with the changes.

One Voice

All the Facebook communication that comes from staff should be speaking in a single voice. Whether it is one person or a collection of people responding to messages on a fan page, it is important that the message that is coming across is consistent.

Create Communication Policies (For Larger Fan Pages)

For fan pages that receive an unusually large number of comments daily, it may be impossible for staff to keep up with the stream of comments being posted. For such companies, it is crucial to create a clear policy for what messages will be responded to and which will not be. Where at all possible, making this clear on the fan page is also useful so that followers do not feel ignored and customers are guided to communicate using the appropriate channel.

Post Interesting Customer Stories Relating To The Use Of Your Products

Post stories and photos of unusual situations that have occurred and wherever possible, show positive outcomes. If the customer service team went above and beyond the call of duty to help a customer out, see if the customer will share the experience publicly. Add humor (carefully) and personality to the people that work for the company by posting interesting photos.

Keep It Simple, Silly (KISS)

Keep communications simple, clear and consistent. Avoid confusing followers and redirect serious customer service issues to the appropriate employee who can deal with it away from the Facebook platform.

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | Tagged facebook marketing, how to market on facebook, how to market with facebook, marketing on facebook | Leave a comment

What Are Twitter HashTags and How Do They Work?

Posted on January 21, 2013 by admin

When first getting to grips with Twitter, you need to learn a confusing array of Twitter-related terminology, do’s and don’ts, and best practices. Twitter is its own ecosystem and people behave differently on Twitter than elsewhere.

What Are HashTags?

When sending out a 140 character limit Twitter message, called a Tweet, within the Tweet itself a hashtag can be included. It may look like the following:

#britneyspears

The purpose of a hashtag is to point to the Tweet being related to a particular topic of discussion and to include the Tweet within that respective group by using a keyword associated with it. By adding a form of category, called a hashtag, Twitter users can search for any new Tweets with the same hashtag and your Tweet may show up in their search. Therefore, a hashtag is a way to quickly categorize a Tweet message, or to try and find new Twitter Followers.

More than one hashtag can be used in a single Tweet, however it is important not to make most of your message a single stream of hashtags as that could seem to be excessive. The current recommendation is to keep hashtags to a two tag maximum per Tweet.

Clicking on a hashtagged word will bring up a search for other recent Tweets using the same hashtag.

A Twitter official page covering hashtags in more detail can be found below:

https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309-what-are-hashtags-symbols #

Search For Relevant HashTags Before Tweeting

When posting a Tweet, it is important to search for similar Tweets and existing topics of discussion so that you can determine if there is already a relevant hashtag relating to what you are about to Tweet. This avoids duplication and aids in the faster dissemination of your Tweet message to a wider audience.

Creating Your Own HashTag

Try to be consistent with naming conventions if you choose to create your own hashtag. Shorter is better too. Long tags are difficult to fit into a 140 character-restricted Tweet after all.

Trending HashTags

Watch out for high trending topics that have a hashtag that is in frequent use. Trending topics are highlighted in searches and on the Twitter home page.

Keeping Up With Industry News

Following ongoing Tweet discussions using industry specific hashtags is a good way to keep up with the latest goings on in your industry.

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | Tagged hashtags, twitter hashtags, what are hashtags, what are twitter hashtags | Leave a comment

How to Deliver on a Twitter Contest and Do It Right

Posted on January 2, 2013 by admin

Twitter can be a really cool place to launch a contest. Contests can be a great way to add some fun to a fan page for a business that is too large to do large scale product give-aways, but can instead create a buzz with cleverly crafted contests instead.

Using Contests To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Contests can be a great way to boost your Twitter follower numbers. Many people love a good contest and want to try their luck to see if they can win even if the odds are stacked way against them (think: Lotto!).

Promote a new contest through all the available free channels such as the official web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and mailing list.

Sending Out The Contest (Party) Invites

In order to get people successfully invited to your little contest, they first need to be Twitter followers of your account. Pull as many people in as you can through your promotional channels, funnel them into your Twitter page and get them signing up as a follower. Or you can learn how to get more Twitter followers as well.

You can then send a single Tweet to invite a group of people to your contest.

How To Run The Contest

There are a few steps to follow to conduct a proper contest on Twitter.

Set the ground rules. Each contest needs to have a clear set of rules so that the prizes are known and it is clear what it takes to win each prize. There are people out there who specialize in looking for contest loopholes in order to extract the largest (unintentional) gain from a contest. Setting up the prizes, contest structure, how each contestant may qualify (age, sex, etc.) and how people participate, are the most common rules to set.
Attend to the Details. The rules must have a start and end date for the contest, the prizes must be ready in advance and if prizes are coming from sponsors, then these need to be named & publicized.
Set up a hashtag for the contest. This way there is a single location where people can place contest entries and the contest progress can be actively monitored.
Promote the contest through a wide campaign on all social media accounts owned, web sites, mailing lists, etc.
Launch the contest and monitor closely for any unexpected issues.
Select a winner or winners. Follow your own rules and be fair in making the winning selection(s).
Announce who the winner or winners are and give out the prize(s). If it is necessary to nominate an impartial outside party to adjudicate and award prizes, then do so.

Above all, make contests fun and easy to follow along. It can bring much needed publicity and excitement to your brand for a small outlay.

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | Tagged best twitter contests, how to run twitter contests, twitter contest, twitter contests | Leave a comment

Ideas and Thoughts About How to Earn Money on Facebook

Posted on December 27, 2012 by admin

For millions of Facebook users who use Facebook to share their photos, add video content, comment on what is going on in their lives today and follow along with topics of interest to them, Facebook simply helps them communicate in new ways. Facebook has become a kind of TV extension and in some cases replaced TV news watching and some newspaper reading, with Facebook users now getting a lot of their information directly from Facebook users, fan pages and other free online sources.

Enterprising Facebook users and business people look at things a little differently than the average Facebook user. They see millions of people all collected on one large web site and wonder how they can gain access to these “eyeballs” profitably. In this new way of thinking was born the question of how exactly one can think about making money with Facebook?

Facebook Advertisements

Facebook advertising can be purchased which targets specific industries, age groups, interests and even right down to people living in individual towns & cities. The power of Facebook data from all the fan pages, comments, friends lists, and conversations taking place in real-time provides Facebook with an enormous amount of relevant data points and the ability to target advertising very specifically.

This provides advertisers with a new way to promote the right product, to the right consumer, at the right time. Things have changed in a big way and so this is very different from spending tens of thousands of dollars to pay for a one page glossy advert in a magazine. Often this glossy advertisement promoting the latest shampoo innovation to the magazine readership who at that time was not looking to change shampoo brand anyway was a very inefficient way to promote a product and drive sales. But someone who has joined a beauty products fan page or channel, who was recently discussing wellness products with her friend over a private chat within Facebook, might just be the perfect person to target with an advertisement.

Savvy business owners are using Facebook advertising to streamline their advertising budgets whilst making them far more effective at the same time.

Build a Branded Image With Your Facebook Account

The Facebook background image, messages, photos and videos added, as well that the Timeline information paints a picture for visitors to your fan page.

Sometimes this is a consistent picture and a clear message, but more often than not it is not so clear. Speak with a consistent voice. Make posts interesting and intelligent. Engage your audience, ask smart questions and provide good answers. People do business with people that they like and a good Facebook image can be its own positive word of mouth. And at times this can be the best form of advertising. You can also learn how to get more facebook likes to get you started off on the right track.

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | Tagged earn money on facebook, facebook, make money with facebook | 1 Comment

What Is Involved In Getting a Verified Twitter Account?

Posted on December 24, 2012 by admin

A verified mark is shown on a Twitter account with the distinct badge designed as a rounded blue background with a white check mark overlaid over it. It signifies that the account has been separately verified to be that of the actual individual, company, charitable organization, band or other entity represented by the Twitter account page.

In an age where anyone can write using a fake persona and claim to be someone that they are not, web users need a way to clearly identify who is who when it really matters. In the case of Twitter, they surely wanted some accountability for the more highly trafficked fan pages in order to foil the many false accounts that sprung up claiming to be the real celebrity Tweeting or a business with supposed current employees answering on behalf of their company. A Verified account cuts through the noise.

Getting Verified

Twitter has an interest in ensuring that popular celebrities, notable people within specific industry groups, journalists, newspapers and major international businesses brands are verified in order to bring some respectability to Twitter accounts.

While 1 million Twitter followers is a good enough number to raise the possibility that verification might be requested, in reality it also depends on who the person or entity is, rather than being purely a focus on how many followers a certain Twitter member page might have currently.

The verified badge itself sits right above the Twitter user’s name and not on another part of the page such as being part of the background or elsewhere on the page where it was intentionally made part of the design to confuse people.

Getting Respect Even When Not Verified

Even if it is too soon to obtain verified status or you simply do not qualify, there are still some useful things that you can do. Linking up your Twitter account to your official web site, Facebook page or other official page relating to yourself, your business, charitable organization, band or other activity brings some respectability with it.

It is possible to complete a request form to Twitter if you would like a personal page to be made official. It is no guarantee that you will be verified, but it is a good start.

Whatever you can do to lend some authenticity to your online presence is generally a good idea because this gives people confidence when reading Tweets and other forms of online communications purporting to represent you.

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | Tagged twitter, verified, verified twitter account | Leave a comment

How to Get the Best out of the Pinterest Secret Boards

Posted on December 16, 2012 by admin

Another change for Pinterest in November – those guys keep innovating which is great to see – was the introduction of secret boards within the Pinterest eco system. The restriction is that up to 3 secret boards can be created per Pinterest account

There is quite a bit of confusion as to how one can use a secret board on Pinterest and how it differs from a regular board. There is the belief in some quarters that all pins on a private board can only stay private and that they cannot be repinned to a public board. This belief is false.

Members of a private board are the only ones that can see the pins there, but they are free to take a pin and repin it to a public board. The major difference is that because the originating board is a secret board, there will be no referral link to indicate what board the pin originally came from. Therefore, with pins, credit or props does not follow to where credit is due in all cases.

Collaboration between Departments

In the past, some of the best ways for small departments to interact was through email and sometimes a collaborative web app. Depending on the size of your business or employer, and the relative size of their IT business, this may not be an affordable solution. Now with free business accounts on Pinterest and secret boards that can be opened inside a business account, it is possible to use a board to share thoughts, ideas and private business documents between employees and departments.

Open a Private Shared Pin Board

It is now possible to create a shared pin board between a select group of people – from an extended family, mastermind group or company department – to share memories, ideas and fun times. This is like a Flickr page for private groups.

Keeping Your Hobbies Separate

Some people, like this author, like to compartmentalize friends and colleagues in order to keep everyone together who should be together and those separate who should be separate. Secret groups can be used to keep a person’s roles in life separate. Their work role, their husband/wife/partner role, their father/mother role and to have a separate secret board shared with only the right people. This prevents overlap and ensures that the pins and repins are far more relevant to the participants too.

Posted in Pinterest, Social Media | Tagged pinterest, pinterest secret boards | Leave a comment

Pinterest Gets Serious About Business

Posted on December 10, 2012 by admin

Pinterest is a hugely popular social media platform, especially with women who seem to enjoy taking photos, sharing content and commenting on the content far more than men do. This tracks well with the fact that women talk more on any given day than the average men.

Just like with Facebook advancing well beyond personal fan pages, to various types of pages one can open for businesses, brands, and so on, Pinterest in late November decided to get serious about business by opening up their user accounts to allow ones specifically for businesses and brands.

Along with new business accounts for Pinterest, there is a new set of terms of service to adhere to. However, along with the new type of accounts, there are some additional features like conversation tracking, that has been added to help businesses understand how the social media site is helping to make money for you.

New business accounts can now be set up with a business name, instead of by only using the first and last name of an employee of the said business. As more businesses take advantage of the business accounts (pre-existing accounts can be switched over from a personal account to a business account) the amount of content shared with pinning and then repins elsewhere on other business sites, the business accounts will begin to see a great deal of use. It is expected that additional Pinterest badges relating to business accounts will start to appear to allow pins, repins and so forth, whilst making it clear that you are pinning to/from a business page.

Cat Lee, a product manager for Pinterest stated, “This is the first step to helping businesses make the most out of Pinterest. We hope to basically give businesses more tools and more resources.”

It is now widely expected that this first foray into business interaction by Pinterest will broaden out into a much larger assault into the the business realm with a wealth of new tools to help continue to increase the traffic reaching Pinterest.

Currently the site lacks the type of analytical data available to users of other social media sites. Ways to directly make money with Pinterest is decidedly lacking presently and an actual money making model for Pinterest is also missing, so we can expect continued changes in the Pinterest camp as time moves on.

Posted in Pinterest, Social Media | Tagged pinterest, pinterest business, pinterest for business | Leave a comment

How to get more YouTube Views

Posted on December 7, 2012 by admin

YouTube has become a major player in the consumption of recorded content. When we think about filmed entertainment, we think about the major TV networks ABC, NBC and CBS. In fact, YouTube views now exceed four billion views daily, which is more than double the prime time numbers for the big three networks combined.

We are in a new era and things are changing fast. In order to take advantage of this, it is important to create YouTube videos, upload them and then ensure that they receive enough views.

With YouTube, the home page and categories are ranked according to the most recent viewed and total views of a video. If you have an account with YouTube and you are logged in, then the site will track your usage and adjust what videos they show in order to be more relevant to your interests. Just like with Amazon.com, the more you use the site, the more data is collected on videos you view and this helps to customize what you see next.

In order to start to show up on lists of the best videos for individual categories and site searches, it is important to get your YouTube views up. This means daily views and also the total views of your video. If you can spread out the location of the viewership, that is all for the better. Just like like an Amazon.com bestseller rising to the top of DVD listings, popular YouTube videos rise to the top as well. We offer YouTube views (LINK here) as a package to get your started.

How to get more YouTube views:

Give your video file a keyword relevant file name. This helps to categorize it.
Think creatively about your video title.
Research other popular videos and include references in your title to these, to try to get cross-linked in searches.
Fill out the tags section so that you can rank for your chosen keywords better.
Make a video response to a very popular video to try to suck out some of that traffic to your video.
Enable comments on your video page to encourage social interaction.
Embed your video in your website to create two way traffic.
Ask bloggers to add your video to a new post on their site.
Offer to guest post for other bloggers and embed your YouTube video in the guest post.
You can also Buy Youtube Views to get a head start make your video look like it is the most popular one around.

If you can stick to these basics then you will be on your way to your first 1,000,000 views before you know it.

Posted in Social Media, Youtube | Tagged get more youtube views, how to get more youtube views, more youtube views, youtube, youtube views | Leave a comment

How to get more Facebook Likes

Posted on December 6, 2012 by admin

When wanting to improve your Facebook stats and the interaction you can achieve through your Facebook association, boosting your Facebook Likes is a key strategy. Many people have asked me How to get more Facebook Likes?

When a Facebook user clicks the Facebook Like button, they will they begin to see new content that is posted to your page, within their own account. Today they are able to adjust what they see and how much they see, but it is still some great exposure of fresh content to thousands of people, all done in an automatic way with little personal effort. This kind of digital distribution of content and marketing is highly effective and cost efficient.

Here are some quality ways to get more Facebook Likes:

Log In and Comment & Like responses to your posted content. Interact with Facebook users that wish to contribute. Other people see that you are actively following comments and will respect it. If they like the posts and the replies, they are then more likely to click the Like button.
Join Other Pages and Groups. If you Like pages and content from other Facebook profiles that you enjoyed, then you automatically follow that, this puts you inside their group.
Comment about content posted on other Facebook pages. Interact further than only Liking, by posting insightful comments. This will bring you further to the attention of the Facebook page owner, beyond merely Liking their page, and they may well begin to reply back to you. People curious about your own page, will then enjoy visiting your Facebook page to see what you have going on.
Track down topical content to post. Read widely across your chosen niche and post links to the best in class content.
Find where people in your niche hang out and spend time there too. Discuss with them, link back to your Facebook page. People that enjoy your comments and messages will want to check you out further.
Make sure you have a Facebook plug-in to place a Like button in a prominent place on your blog or web site. Never miss an opportunity for Facebook users to choose to follow your Facebook page.
Customize your Fan page Url. Make it short and easy to remember and to type. But remember that you cannot change it later, so make sure that it is correctly spelt and will be a good url to have long term.
You can also Buy Facebook Likes to get your page off the ground until you get the real likes coming through.

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | Tagged facebook fans, facebook likes, get more facebook fans, get more facebook likes, how to get more facebook likes, more faacebook fans, more facebook likes | 1 Comment

How to get more Twitter followers

Posted on December 5, 2012 by admin

Occasionally you might meet someone that argues that they do not need more Twitter followers, that what they have is enough. People in this camp will argue that they are looking for quality Twitter followers, rather than pure numbers. For others, it is the number of Twitter followers that is most important to them. I am not sure it matters either way. Some Twitter followers will be quality followers and others will not be, but numbers do matter, just like in life.

Here are some ways to get more Twitter followers:

Show your Identity in a face shot. People like to connect a person with a face and it is a better way to identify with them. People are social creatures even if we increasingly communicate digitally.
Make your biography interesting. By interesting we mean thought provoking, rather than a work of fiction! Keep it light but factual.
Make sure you have a nice About Us page. You can link up your Twitter profile to a personal blog or business site to link directly to your About page. This way you can provide much more detail about yourself, your life or for a business, your products and / or services.
Provide Tweet This type links on your blog, about page and profiles. Make sure it is real easy to promote you. People are promoting your content for you when they Tweet it, so make it accessible.
Share high quality content. Do not only post about your latest blog posts or product launches to your Twitter page. Post about other people and share the love around. People appreciate the recommended content and will return for more tips from you and about other site content. They are also more open to commercial offers if they think you are trying to help them in a genuine way.
Reply publicly whenever possible. It is easy to reply with a direct (private) message, but then people do not see your reply. If you do not this too often, you might find you rarely publicly reply on your profile and people think you are snotty and unsociable.
Following people in your industry or niche. Make sure you follow the right people who have a solid position in your industry. This is a good way to get noticed when you reply to them and start a dialogue.
Do not promote yourself too much. No one enjoys someone that is over hyping themselves or talking too much about themselves. Seek balance.
Do not post cryptic Tweets. Ensure your Tweet will be understood by all.
Do not Tweet if the content is dull! If it is not interesting, then skip Tweeting it. This way, you will not lose followers while you are actively trying to increase the number of people following you.
You can buy Twitter Followers from us. We provide high quality twitter followers to make you look like an authority. Once, you have so many you can then follow as many targeted people as you like. So this will help you build a following that is interested in you and not be stuck at the 2,000 follow limit because you have way more than 2,000 followers.