Social Media Marketing

Essential Social Media Tips for Beginners

If you are a freelancer or run a business of your own, taking your first steps into social media as a beginner can be a confusing one as there are is a variety of strategies that you can choose from, and it can get confusing, to say the least.

What is for sure is that there is a learning curve that you must be willing to put in the time and efforts to learn (with great benefits, of course) and so here are a few social media tips that will help you get started with an appropriate strategy for greater reach and profitability:

Tip #1: The Importance of starting small

The best way to get started with your social media strategy is to start small even if it means using only two or three ways by which you can get your message across. It’s been observed that newbies often sign up for a lot of social media services only to struggle in keeping up with these services as they grow.

Tip #2: Building a number of followers the right way

There are several e-books out there that provide you with tips that can get you thousands of followers each day but most of the followers that you will get on your social media profile will be ‘bots’ and not the type that will engage in conversation with you on the social platform of your choice. Remember that it takes time to generate a large number of followers but these followers will be much better than the thousands of bots that you can generate in a day’s work.

Tip #3: Learn from the pros

Since learning about social media strategies isn’t just about following guides and books, there are certain people who are the real deal when it comes to developing social media strategies, and following these people can help you customize your social media profile with their innovative ideas.

Social Media Marketing

Is Google Plus a Facebook ‘killer’?

The highly anticipated Google+ Project has been launched and marks the entry of Google into the social media arena, and according to experts who have taken a tour of the features of this new Google product, will turn the rest of Google’s offerings into one giant social network.

There’s no doubt that this new social network targets Facebook as its competitor, and what it provides its users (even though it is restricted to invitation only) sets it apart from the popular Buzz and Orkut social media platforms that are being used these days.

Yet it’s going to take a while before Google+ can compete with the 700 million users of Facebook, there’s one of m any features that distinguishes it from Facebook in its current ‘avatar’: Circles.

Yes, you can create “circles” (smaller groups) that segregate your family members, colleagues, schoolmates for the purpose of being able to share specific information with each of these groups.

Until now, people would have to share information with everyone or message people in private if they wanted to convey information, and which can be a bit awkward especially in public – and this is where Google has customized the ability to share specific information with certain people only. Perhaps a feature that isn’t available on Facebook which makes one wonder why!

Now each of these Circles has their own streams (similar to Facebook’s Newsfeed) where you can share what you would like to each group without having to worry about any of the other groups seeing what you are sharing with the others.

Hangouts, a video group chat feature and Sparks, a search engine for hobbies are also two other features that this new social network has to offer, and even though the opportunity in this social network is by invitation only, people who are lucky enough to participate say that it is a winner alright.

Yet what is for sure is that there’s a long way to go before it threaten the reach of Facebook in the world of ‘social media’.

Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Learn How to Make Your Website Search Engine-Friendly at SES San Francisco

Is your website as search engine-friendly as it should be? If you don’t know the answer to this, chances are that it isn’t. A website architecture which makes it easy for major search engines like Google to find your content will increase the chances of higher placement and better results.

If you want to learn more about building websites that are as search engine-friendly as possible, you need to attend the “How to Architect a Search-Engine Friendly Website” training sessions at SES San Francisco on August 20. Taught by Omni Marketing Interactive founder and SEO director Shari Thurow, this session will teach you all of the tips and tricks to ensure that your website is as accessible to search engines as possible.

The half-day session covers such topics as information, site, navigation design and webpage architecture and how they relate to SEO. Learn something new if you are a veteran webmaster or someone with no HTML experience! Visit http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanfrancisco/training.php for more information on this powerful training session at SES San Francisco.

Genreal, Social Media Marketing

Using Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Twitter is a fantastic medium to get through to a wide spectrum of people. While it started off as micro-blogging tool which was to let people stay in touch with each other and let everyone know what they were doing, it has now turned into an excellent marketing tool. Users from all walks of life like politicians, musicians, authors, internet gurus, etc use it to promote themselves.

The important thing to note here is that the smart ones will never ever say “do this because I say so” or “buy my album – it’s great” or any such thing. Twitter marketing is about being subtle. The celebrities are using it simply as a way to keep their name in the top of people’s minds. For example it’s a long time since Soleil Moon Frye did anything big, but she constantly Tweets and therefore people still remember her.

If you want to push your product using Twitter, you have to understand that it is a gradual process that has to be carefully attended to. For example if you are selling Red Roses, you should search with the keywords that are relevant to that matter – like “red roses”, “flowers”, “fresh flowers”, etc. Then pick the people with the largest amount of followers – these are your base accounts. Now start following the people who are following your base accounts.

From this point make your Tweets interesting. Any reference to the fact that you sell flowers should appear somewhere down the line. For now ask questions, post links to interesting plant & flower articles and most importantly reply to other people’s Tweets and engage them. The key thing here is to build relationships.
Now you can slowly start dropping in a Tweet about your business activities. Perhaps one in 5 or more Tweets is the best way to go about it.

For those in need of professional social media marketing services, iClimber offers Twitter Marketing & Promotion services.

Social Media Marketing

Three Things to Remember When Using Social Media Networking For Business

This article was submitted by iClimber.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to businesses these days as it introduces them to a world where there are several customers that are already looking for products or services that your company might offer.

However, with these benefits come certain caveats that people have to be cognizant of, and so here are a few things that you should keep in mind when using social media networking sites for your business:

#1: Whatever you post using these networking sites immediately go public, and one of the most important things that you must keep in mind is to keep your personal and business profile separate. Leaving comments that can be seen by both these groups might not be a very good idea.

#2: Keeping your social media site updated with the latest information is one of the most important tasks that you must follow up on. Imagine a potential customer visiting your page to find that the information regarding your product or service is outdated. That won’t necessarily set a good impression with them.

#3: Don’t hard sell

One of the most important things that you must remember is that using any of these social media sites is for the reason of “building leads” by using a forum (of sorts!). If you understand that this is more of a marketing initiative with the purpose of having people to get to know your company and products rather than pushing your products down people’s throats immediately, then that will be the right approach to using these online tools to get the word about your business out.