You hear people gushing about Facebook marketing, but is it really working for you? Ask yourself these 5 questions to see if your Facebook marketing campaign is a success:

1. How many fans do you have?

More isn’t always better – after all, if your business is targeted at 30-somethings, a page full of 16-year-old fans doesn’t help! Successful Facebook pages focus on quality and quantity – meaning that you need a lot of fans that are also part of your target audience. The more targeted fans you have, the higher your chances of getting some word-of-mouth advertising.

2. Are you steadily getting more fans?

Facebook marketing has a lot to do with momentum. Consider it to be like rolling a snowball down a hill; the more it travels, the bigger and more powerful it gets. That’s why the number of Facebook fans you have should always be growing, and growing steadily.

If you suddenly stop getting new fans – or, worse start to lose fans – you’re making big mistakes that need to be addressed immediately.

3. Are people interacting with your Facebook page?

Having all of the fans in the world doesn’t help if people aren’t actually engaged by your Facebook page. Remember, Facebook marketing isn’t about talking AT people; it’s about interacting WITH people.

If your fans are truly interested in what you’re posting, they’ll leave a comment, “like” it, or share it on their own wall. If you’re not getting interaction like this, it’s time to come up with new ideas for getting your fans interested in what you’re doing.

4. How often do you update it?

If your company’s Facebook page sits unchanged for days on end or has comments on it that you take forever to respond to, you’re simply encouraging your fans to leave – and not come back.

A successful Facebook page needs to be updated at least once a day, so that people know to check back with you often for new stuff. The more stagnant your Facebook page looks, the more stagnant your business looks!

5. How much money have you made off of it?

This might be the measure you’re most interested in – but it’s also the toughest question to answer. That’s because Facebook-related profits aren’t necessarily immediate. Sure, if you offer a Facebook-only coupon or put a shopping cart on your Facebook page, it will be easy to tally up direct profits.

However, that’s not the only money you can make from a successful Facebook page. For example, someone may become your fan, keep an eye on your page, but not spend any money for 6 months. And, remember, it’s nearly impossible to put a price on all of the word-of-mouth advertising that Facebook gives you.

Bottom line – if you’re satisfied with your answers to the first 4 questions, you’re doing something right – which is translating into extra profits!

Kirsty LaVier is editor for Shopping Cart Reviews, the leading site dedicated to helping you find the Best Shopping Cart software.

We all know Twitter, we may not all be on it (if you not I suggest you do so), but we have all heard of it. If you are a business or a brand or just a person that wants to make a name for themselves, there are certain steps that you should take in order to become a Twitter assassin. It’s not just as simple as creating an account and then seeing your profile go viral (unless you are Charlie Sheen of course), no there is work required.  I myself have a passion for twitter and I am constantly trying to broaden my horizons with the untapped marketing potential of the Twitterverse.

So just what’s the plan of action here then, well take a look at the 18 tips sure to set you off.

1.       It all starts with setting up an account with an appropriate name photo and a bio. The bio should include who you are and what you are going to tweet about, this is a sort of an advertisement for yourself.

2.       To have a logo as a profile picture is ok, but people like that feeling of personalisation so try using a picture of yourself or if you are a business use a photo of a prominent member of the company. You can even add your logo to the picture so that you can have the best of both.

3.       Now there is a place to add your personal website or blog, so if you are a brand or business it would be logical to put your homepage there to build the connection. If possible it would also be good to have a designed background customised specifically for you eg. @calepissarra. In my experience it has proven to give your account a sense of authority and apart from the obvious branding benefits, it can make a user feel more connected.

4.       When you are followed by someone new, send them a tweet welcoming them to the family, but never send a direct message as they can seem spammy and prove to be irritating.

5.       The hashtag # is a wonderful marketing tool and can help you to find interesting topics to tweet about and find those people to follow. Who knows maybe you will be able to get something trending if you start an interesting topic.

6.       With this you can become interested in what is going on and start tweeting interesting things yourself and join into the conversation. After all Twitter is about making connections with interesting people, so why not @mention someone and spread the conversation.

7.       Tied to the above is never underestimate the value of a Retweet (RT), if you enjoy a tweet then share it with all your followers, it can be seen as sharing the love and users appreciate all the RT’s that they get.

8.       Ok this is a hard one, Twitter may be seen as a numbers game, you need to ignore this. As hard as it might be to resist the numbers game, you need to, if you Tweet good content then the followers will come, more importantly they will become loyal followers.

9.       Engage, engage, engage, if you take it upon yourself to actively tweet all the time, make sure you engage with people outside of your normal friends circle. It can be a great way to spread the brand, and even lead to viral following or at least bring a large amount of people to your profile to check you out.

10     Make sure Twitter is installed on your Smartphone, if you don’t have a Smartphone, then I would suggest you get in your car and go and get yourself one right now. You can’t always be next to you computer and often there are very interesting things that need to be tweeted on the move.

11     If you are at an event then why not tweet live from it. Tweeting from live events keep your followers engaged and makes you appear as though you are an expert, even if you are not one. You have to think of it from another person’s perspective, would you follow you?

12     Share Links, yes after all Twitter is a great marketing tool, so why not spread some information. Use Bit.ly and other URL shorteners to give your tweets more room and share the knowledge. If you take this on right and do it regularly you could be seen as an information hub and the reputation that goes with it is yours.

13     Saying this make sure that you keep a good balance. It is all well and good to promote your own links so that people share in your expertise, but it would be wise to promote others and not just promote them, promote them more than yourself. The reason being that spamming your feed with your own links can be seen as well…Spam.

14     If you are a brand, company or somewhat of a personality then search for people talking about you and follow them. What goes hand in hand with this is that if you receive an @mention from someone respond to them. Users will appreciate the interaction and feel more connected to you and become more loyal to your account as well as checking up on what you tweet regularly.  Not every business responds, but they should specifically because what I have said above.

15     Always try and keep it fresh with the latest trends and topics in your field of interest. It has proved successful to subscribe to a list of feeds from prominent information sites to make sure you are always a step ahead and tweeting the right stuff, and most importantly be yourself, people like to see a personality.

16     If you have idea’s; run them by your followers (of course not sensitive stuff), bring your followers along in the process. Imagine how this will make them feel, they will feel so involved in what you doing that they will unconsciously become brand ambassadors for you. They could even give you some great ideas and insight into what you need to be doing as well as allowing them to feel connected to your account.

17     There is a lot of fear of the damage that Twitter could do to your PR, but remember, human error is natural, people understand that we make mistakes, just be honest. In fact don’t be afraid to ask tweeps for help, Twitter is an amazing form of PR and can help you a lot more than it can hurt you.

18     Promote your Twitter on business cards, forums or even at a conference you may attend. It’s all about putting that human face to your brand and showing people who your twitter team is. This leads me to say never let interns manage your twitter accounts, they are not as interested, passionate or as involved as a full time employee might be, you would be better off running it yourself.

Cale Pissarra is an experienced online content writer who enjoys writing about various topics such as corporate team building Gauteng, smart business practices, magaliesburg activities and customer interaction. 

So, you’ve created a Facebook page that you’re pumped about…but no one else seems to be joining in on the excitement? Luckily for you, this predicament can be fixed in no time at all.

Here are some really easy ways to increase your readership and get more people to “like” your page:

1. Personalize, personalize, personalize. Call your page fans by name. Actively engage in conversation on your page, and try to make each reader feel as if they are special and unique to the conversation. When you see that people have joined your page, thank each person for the contribution they’re making to your cause. This will make people feel good about being fans of your page, which will result in positive word-of-mouth, which will net you even more fans!
2. Keep coming up with new and exciting content for your page. Nobody’s going to be exactly thrilled if your page doesn’t contain some variety. Try to come up with as much content as possible, on a daily basis – the more content you have, the more people you’ll reach. You also might try having contests or promotions on your page. Tell people that if they want to enter, they have to become your page fans. This has proven to be a great incentive for people to “like” a page – after all, who doesn’t like free stuff? Also, make sure the content you already have is universally engaging – this is crucial. Simply put, if people don’t like the content on your page, they won’t hesitate to “un-like” it.
3. Advertise like crazy. This is going to be a really important part of the process. If you think you’ve already done all you can to advertise your page, guess what? You haven’t. There is always more to be done, in this case. You’ve got to think outside the box, and outside your own virtual realm of friends. So, try getting some of your most loyal fans (ideally, they’ll also have substantial friend lists) to invite at least 100 of their friends. You’ll start to see an increase in your page fans almost immediately. There are countless ways to advertise your Facebook page.
4. Encourage the fans you already have to tag some photos. If you’re hosting events for your fans, take care that you always remember to take many, many pictures. Really, you can’t take enough pictures. Everyone loves to see themselves in pictures, right? Right. Upload the pictures to your page, and ask your friends to tag themselves. This way, the tagged photo appears on each and every one of your fans’ walls, and bingo! More advertising for you!
5. Add a Fanbox to your website. This is that nifty little box that allows people who visit your site to simply click “like”, and automatically become fans of your page. Most people will already be logged into Facebook anyway, so they won’t have to make much of an effort at all to become your fans. This is an incredibly easy and effective way to increase your fan base.

This is a post by The Thailander, covering Bangkok and beyond!

Social media is changing all the time and if you aren’t careful, you could easily end up in the slow lane to nowhere instead of in the fast lane to being a social media maven. Here are five social media trends which seem to be on the outs as opposed to being new and fresh:

YouTube Amateur Videos

It’s not so much that people aren’t still posting massive numbers of amateur videos to the original social media video sharing site so much as that Google, which owns YouTube is trying to move away from this as a focus. Instead, they want to focus more on the professional side of YouTube videos, offering scripted materials and professional quality.

Look for YouTube to deemphasize these videos and possibly even to remove some of them in favor of the videos which include professional quality, scripted materials. Other smaller video sharing sites such as Daily Motion are likely to take over from YouTube though in offering those amateur videos, so if you still want your daily dose of inanity, feel free to look for it there.

Telling Everyone about Everything

While Facebook’s status updates are great for telling your friends about the latest date you were on or even what you just ate for lunch, there’s really no reason that your boss needs to know about the fact that you had a hot date with some guy last night. Google+ introduced a new feature which allows you to choose whom you will provide what updates to and Facebook recently introduced a similar feature.

This means that you can hopefully expect a better quality and more useful stream on your Facebook wall than you otherwise would have.

Collaborative Document Editing

Google made a big fuss out of their Google Wave service, which was meant to allow people to share documents and to work together on editing them from different locations. While not so much a social media trend as a business social media trend, this concept is dying a slow and agonizing death. Google already dropped their Wave service quietly a few months ago and it’s beginning to seem that shared editing of a document will once again remain the exclusive province of the interoffice network rather than some kind of a larger social media mélange.

Location Sharing

Yes – we know, everyone seems to be in love with location sharing right now and it seems like it’s likely to be the next big thing in social networking. So how can we say that location sharing is a social media trend which is on its way out? We have two words for you: home invasion. Yep, that’s right. The economy is in the toilet with real unemployment in the 18% range and people regularly losing their homes. Statistics show that every time the economy tanks, crime and especially house robberies go up.

This whole trend of telling everyone where you are at the moment and how long you’ll be there for (so ostensibly your friends can what? Drop by?) is likely to end up being one of those things that people didn’t really think about in advance.

Think about it – you’re a thief looking for an easy mark where you can score some easy cash, maybe a few laptops and whatnot. If you have any brains at all, you log on to a site like Four Square and look to see who is currently out of the house. Boom – no need for surveillance or watching for patterns. The mark will tell you whatever you need to know and when to make your move. In short, this is a technology which has no real value and which can lead to a lot of heartache for a lot of people so we expect it to be one of those social media trends which will be on its way out in another year or two.

Plain Corporate Pages

Finally, now that every guy and his brother has a corporate Facebook page, it’s no longer enough to simply have a page where you post a handful of status updates periodically. You need to be able to show your visitors why they should like you and why they should spend time at your page. This means that you need to step up your game and offer unique and truly interesting content or you’ll find that your corporate image online is a social media trend which is definitely on the way out.

Frank Anderson is a regular contributor to many popular social media and tech blogs.  He also works with web hosting and other Internet technologies.

Google plus has been receiving a lot of attention lately it is widely discussed in the social media circles. The Google plus, the latest offer from Google is all set to change the landscape of social media it is going create a revolution the way people interact with each other on the web.

Google plus aims to re-organize the user’s network into circles its objective to bring the closer friends that share similar interests. Users also have the flexibility to create their pages that will show in their profiles, in social media. The aim of Google plus is not to reach masses it wants to bring users that share something in common together. This can be huge plus for companies since the involvement will increase the awareness of the brand, and the good brand has no problems scouting for business.

Social media is all about sharing; it is all about people and their passions. Google plus will help companies target the users who are passionate about the company’s products. A company like Ford has many people who prefer Ford, these people and their circles can make a significant impact on Ford’s sales. For Ford, this works like wonders since it saves its precious resources in reaching the mass.

Google plus is an excellent tool to receive the quick feedback from users. The company or the user can get quick insight into their products with just the click of the button. Google plus will be instrumental in creating real time interactions and feedback. The Google Plus is full of benefits for a marketer. The number of Plus a person receives will increase his author rank, and help him rank higher in search engines weeding out those marketers who use questionable methods to rank higher in search engines. Google even plans to add YouTube thus allowing the author to use videos to increase his rank.

Google plus will have a enormous impact since it will be able to provide insights into the people and companies that are influencing the people. Google plus has become a craze. At the initial launch, Google plus managed to have 20 million users in 3 weeks. The users have the freedom to choose the people with whom they want to share the information.

Google Plus has advantages over Facebook its Plus button works similar to the like button Facebook. Statistically, the Google Plus button allows added advantage since it integrates with Google’s ranking algorithm. Google Plus allows people to chat with each other through the feature called hangout; what’s more, people can even share videos with each other.

The privacy feature of Google Plus is advanced than Facebook. If one wants to share the content with his friends, he can share without the fear being spotted by his family members. Google Plus is they game changer in the Social Media.

Kathleen Hubert is an avid tech blogger. See some of her other work at LED Reviews or cheap laptops.

When done well, the power of Facebook advertising is undeniable. You have the potential to reach not only existing customers but also new ones through word of mouth, the most time-tested and valuable advertising of them all. As advertising on Facebook becomes more sophisticated, however, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and uncertain where to invest your energies (and dollars). While Facebook does provide several handy dandy guides to help you navigate Facebook ad services, even those can be daunting as you weigh all of your options. Understanding some Facebook for Business basics, however, will help you make your decisions.

Facebook divides its marketing tools into four different categories: Pages, Ads, Sponsored Stories, and Platform. While all have their perks, the most important one is your page, and, even better, it’s free! There is no point sinking time and money into paid Facebook advertising if you are not making the most of your Facebook page. It is very easy to do, but you would be surprised by how many businesses drop the ball and neglect even the simplest things, such as providing all of your business’s information on your page. So, fill out your page completely and upload not only a profile picture but at least five more images as well, so the Photostrip at the top of your page will have content. Also, the more interactive you make your page, the better. Post links, “like” other pages, add friends, and use your status updates to keep your fans informed about your business. These are just a few of the things you can do to develop your Facebook profile. Videos, events, discussions, and other features can also make a real difference. In many ways, you are recreating your official website on Facebook. Keeping your page informative, active, and interesting will foster visibility and cultivate a following.

Ads have been around for a while, and the main difference between an ad on Facebook and an ad anywhere else is the extensive targeting you can do. Granted, the more specifically you target your ads, the less expansive their reach. That also means, however, you can run several narrowly targeted ads to reach various demographics, rather than one ad that is supposed to appeal to a wide range of people. While it is slightly more work, it seems far more beneficial to run a handful of very specific, more likely to be effective ads than one ad that may reach a wider audience, but has less of a chance of engaging the people who see it.

Platform has four main components: building one or more apps, installing social plugins on your website, creating a personalized mobile experience, and Facebook Credits. Installing social plugins on your site, such as the “Like” button, is a no-brainer and, hopefully, you have already done this. Building an app or two can create a more dynamic experience for Facebook users, but is not for everyone. Facebook’s approach to mobile is closely linked to apps at the moment, but it also encompasses mobile websites. If you have begun the process of optimizing for mobile, it is well worth exploring your Facebook mobile options. Unless you are selling digital or virtual goods in games and apps on Facebook, you really do not need to be concerned with Facebook Credits. Eventually, Facebook Credits may become a viable currency system for other items, but that is probably down the road aways.

Sponsored Stories are perhaps the most novel form of Facebook advertising. As you know, when someone interacts with your page in some way that activity appears in his or her feed. Due to volume, personal settings, and the many other factors that can affect a person’s feed, those friends may or may not see that activity. A Sponsored Story, however, converts that activity into a fixed ad that appears on the right-hand side of Facebook. In some ways, it is analogous to the difference between organic search results and PPC ads. In this scenario, a user’s news feed is part of the organic results, but the Sponsored Story is paid advertising in a prominent area. Rather than worrying about keywords and designing an entire ad, however, you select one of seven Sponsored Story types: Page Like, Page Post, Page Post Like, App Used and Game Played, App Shared, Check-in, and Domain. Facebook actually provides a very clear chart comparing the different types of stories in their Sponsored Stories guide (page 10, as of this writing). The beauty of Sponsored Stories is that they seem less like ads, and more like information that your friends feel is worth sharing.

As you can see, you have a lot of options when it comes to advertising on Facebook, and not necessarily all of them will be a good fit. Determining what will work best for you can seem like a murky process at best. What is clear, however, is that Facebook is here to stay and is becoming an increasingly prominent presence. To continue to grow your business, you need to cultivate a Facebook presence, and Facebook ad services are definitely one way to do that. Whether you decide to experiment with Sponsored Stories, build an app, or simply maintain a dynamic Facebook page, you are establishing yourself on Facebook and taking important steps to making your business known, both online and off.

Facebook Advertising Can Be A Powerful Force, But Deciding Which Facebook Ad Services To Use Can Be Difficult. Understanding Some Facebook For Business Basics Helps.

Social media marketing is an essential tool for any business, and Facebook is by far the most popular and most effective network. If you have your own business, it is so important to understand how to use Facebook to promote your brand. When you create a page for your business, you are potentially reaching millions of consumers, and you make your brand more accessible to them. You can directly interact with your customers, and keep the conversation about your product or service going. How you brand yourself on Facebook is worth putting extra effort into. You will want to maintain consistency and humanize your brand. Here are some strategies to keep in mind for branding on Facebook.

1. Consistency

Your Facebook page will be a direct representation of your business. For many people, it will be the first, sometimes only, place they look for more information about you. You want to make sure that your Facebook page is consistent with the image you want to portray. Make it an extension of your website or store, and build upon the marketing strategies you already use. Your Facebook page shouldn’t be an entirely rogue enterprise, it should a dependable example of what your business is all about.

2. Humanizing

Facebook is an amazing tool for humanizing your brand because the nature of Facebook is to connect and share with others. When you bring your brand directly to the people, you humanize it for them. Your customers will be able to learn about your product or service on a level they can relate to. When they interact with your business, they will feel that it is accessible to them rather than a complicated corporate enterprise that is above their reach.

In order to effectively market your brand on Facebook, you will want to use all of its available features to achieve the consistency and humanization you’re striving for. Here are just some ways you can use Facebook for your business.

3. Consumer Interaction

The best way to make your brand seem current and relatable is to interact with your consumers. Encourage them to tell you what they think about your product or service through comments and messages. Respond to their inquiries in a timely fashion. Keep the conversation going by posting updates with questions and interesting information and encouraging your fans to comment. If someone has a complaint and you quickly offer an apology and a solution, you will show that your business cares. Use your page to further humanize your brand by asking for your customer’s opinions and suggestions. As a business you should truly take their feedback into consideration.

4. Trends

You can keep up with trends in consumer opinion through Facebook much more quickly than with market research studies or other methods. Just log on and see what people are saying, then use this information to improve your brand.

5. Expansion

Use Facebook to expand your business and branding. Create opportunities for people to get to know your business more, with pictures of your work environment and profiles of your employees. Offer exclusive discounts, coupons and contests that will encourage people to “like” your page. Post about relevant news and information relating to your brand. Just make sure everything you post is consistent with the personality of your brand.

6. Social Marketing Ambassadors

A good way to maintain consistency in your branding on Facebook is to keep it consistent with who does your social media posting. Appoint employees who have a good understanding of Facebook to be your social marketing ambassadors. This will help keep your brand consistent by introducing your customers to certain employees that they hear from regularly. This will help ensure that the voice of your Facebook page is reliable and unchanging.  

Grammarly the premier grammar checker on the web encourages you to be a grammar-savvy community manager by reviewing basic grammar rules posted on our handy online manual.

If you are reading this article then no doubt you are looking for ways to promote your business or service online. You may be new to the world of online marketing or perhaps you are looking for ways to increase the presence you already have. The first, most important point I have to make is that you should never underestimate the power of online marketing and the new levels to which it can take your business.

You may ask why I am singling out Twitter on this occasion, well the answer is simple: the impact you can make on the social network reaches a lot further than a simple Facebook page or advertisement. If you use the right words in a Tweet, your message can reach tens of thousands of people within the space of minutes. I can assure you that the same effect cannot be made on other Social Networking sites.

Target Audience:

By using hashtags on twitter you can target an audience that is actively looking for the information you are sharing. You can also target companies and vendors that you know can avail of your product or service.

Spreads like wildfire:

A well-written tweet can spread like wildfire across twitter, even if only one person clicks the ‘retweet’ button initially.

Competitions:

There are millions of people that actively search for competitions and giveaways on Twitter every day. Use this to your advantage. If you are selling a product or service, perhaps you can offer some freebies? Use the hashtag #competition and watch your tweet go global in a very short space of time. Include a link to your website where the competition is taking place and ask participants to actively communicate with your site. If only 1 in 50 take an interest in your product or service then it’s been a worthwhile exercise.

Build connections:

The best way to make connections on Twitter is to interact, interact, and interact. No one likes to read the same old promotional tweets again and again. Make sure you interact with other peoples conversations and build up a following of people that will come to you when the need your product or service in the future.

Twitter keeps you on your toes:

Check out your competition on Twitter and follow them, even better if they follow you back. You need to know what your competition is doing at all times so you can be one step ahead of the game.

Stay on topic:

Check out what’s trending on Twitter each day and use this to your advantage. ‘Trending’ means that this is the most popular subject on Twitter at the moment, so you know you are targeting a huge audience base. Design your tweets to be in-line with these trends and you will find your followers growing at a nice rate.

There are of course many other ways to get yourself noticed on Twitter, getting yourself a verified account is always a good one. So start working on a celebrity status!

I have to say, that over the past 6 years Twitter has become an integral part of my everyday marketing strategy. It’s inexpensive, only time consuming if you let it be, and it gets great results. Bear in mind there are many tools available on the Internet that can help you automate a lot of the twitter processes, so keep an eye out for them. The best advice I can give is to keep on interacting and you will see results in no time.

Scott is a Twitter addict, both personally and professionally.  He works for a digital agency, blogging for them, as well as for some of their key clients – an airport lounges business and a gritting company

Social media has exploded over the last five years. With the downfall of MySpace and the uprising of Facebook, people have been wondering how they can use their social media profiles to link back to their websites. Social media is one of the best ways to get traffic to a website or product that you are promoting. Social media is scoured by millions of people every day and websites like Digg and Twitter have made it even easier to link back to your websites. But there are a lot of problems that can actually hurt your standing with the search engines and the people that would have clicked on your link. Here are some methods that will help you properly link back to your website without being flagged as spam or seen as unnatural by viewers.

ClaimID

ClaimID is a great website for linking your social media profile to your website. The site allows you to create groups of links about your site. You can link to your main homepage or content on your site and add the link to all of your social media profiles. This tool is more for organization than anything else, but it will help you weed out bad links while attaching solid links to your profiles. The best thing about ClaimID is that it gets indexed very quickly by search engines.

YouTube

Although this is not a new concept, YouTube is one of the best resources for gaining backlinks to your website. Do you have a YouTube account with content on it? If you don’t, you should create one. There are a lot of screen capture programs on the market if you don’t want your face in the video. Create little tutorials and then add your webpage link to the URL field on the profile page. YouTube is constantly crawled by the search engines so you can depend on it to send you traffic.

MyBlogLog

MyBlogLog is a cool website that allows users to create mini-social communities around blog posts. If you are using a blog, this can be a great tool to link all of your content together through your social media profiles. The communities will allow you to link to your Facebook, Twitter or directly to your blog. If you are running a website instead of a blog, you can use the MyBlogLog services.

Technorati

Technorati is a resource that allows you to submit links from your blog or website and create a profile. This is a heavily crawled website so you can get your website links indexed as well as your social media profiles. One of the best features of Technorati is that they allow you to submit your RSS feeds. A potential downside is that you do not get to submit any anchor texts. Other than that, the website can easily allow you to link your social media profiles with a backlink to your website or blog.

CoRank

CoRank is a website that allow users to submit Internet content to share with family and friends. The website will keep track of all the pages that you submit. They also allow you to submit social media profile links on your account so you have backlinks for your content and the profiles together when they get indexed. This site is crawled a lot so it’s definitely worth looking into for getting backlinks.
Social media is a great way to gain exposure with your target demographic. Getting backlinks indexed with your social media profiles is the best way to gain traction in the Internet market. All of these sites will help you achieve this with little hassle and minimal knowledge of SEO.

Jeff is a blogger for 4 years and has been contributing on blogs since 2007. He is a professional IM and SEO consultant. In his free time he guest lectures for business and marketing students at various colleges in NY. At the moment, he is writing for a real estate agency in NY that makes Queens condominiums.

There is a fact about online companies that many people have not yet learned: you can be doing everything right, but if you are missing out on social media then you are not reaching your marketing potential.

Occasionally, you will have someone who comes out and says that having a social media strategy for your business is pointless. But they are just one of those unfortunate few that haven’t gotten on board with what is more than a trend. It is a way of operating a marketing campaign. Which is only holding them back in a market more saturated and competitive than ever before.

Still others are working that area, but aren’t doing it the right way. This ends up spending time and energy on a process that won’t yield any results. What good is that?  None at all, which is why you need to start approaching your social media culture as a major priority, to help expand your visibility and draw a wider customer base.

The Biggest Problem

Different people will have different opinions on what the biggest problem is with those companies who are not properly utilizing social media. But most would agree that the idea that everything has to be centered around a single social media “expert” is the largest. This includes that one content provider, one blogger, one Twitter or Facebook updater…well, you get the picture.

The truth is, everyone from the highest member of the company to the lowest level employee can be doing their part to strengthen your social media culture. Because in the end, the entire point behind social media marketing is spreading the word and interacting with customers or potential customers. Period.

Big Changes In Little Time

If you are hoping for some good news, I have it. It is actually pretty easy to restructure your whole approach to this brand of marketing. All it takes is a little bit of effort, and a surprisingly small amount of time to get started. But you also need the help and support of your employees, so don’t underestimate the importance of their cooperation.

Here are some tips to get you going:

1. Get Everyone On Board – As I said, it is gravely important that everyone be on the same page within your company. Because everybody is going to have to do their bit – even if that bit is very small – to make it work. So gather them together, send out a mass email, or do whatever else you think will bring it to their attention.
2. Be Clear and Accept Questions – Giving your employees a complete rundown of what you intend, what social media culture is, how it can help market through content and especially what they can do to contribute within their own area is 100% necessary. Be sure to answer any questions in that initial meeting, and encourage them to tell you anything they might not understand.
3. Utilize All Social Media Powerhouses – When you think of the major players in this process, the same names probably come to mind: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These are all helpful, but you shouldn’t underestimate other sites such as YouTube (very important for viral content), and share sites like Reddit. The easiest way for employees to participate is through having different channels to put their energy. Some might want to make videos for YouTube, some might make updates on Facebook or share links.
4. Get Everyone Involved In Blogging – If you don’t have a company blog, get one. But you probably already have one, like everyone else and their mother does. You should really focus on content for posts to this blog, and start building it up. It is a great way to generate sales, while keeping people informed and ushering in brand loyalty. Get employees involved by having them come up with blog topics and titles, and give their ideas on how to make it better.

Conclusion

You might be surprised to see that there are only four tips here. In reality, it is all you need. Using this general guideline, you and your company can get right down to business and start changing your social media culture in big ways. The fact it is so simple should show you that there is no excuse.

So get started today! You will be amazed by the results.

Jessy Troy is a social media enthusiast and business blogger for Life Insurance Finder, the free income protection insurance comparison app based in Australia.