Ten Social Media Marketing Ideas from Big Brands

There is an under-appreciated difference between a story and an idea.

A story is captivating and memorable. It entertains and often stays with you for longer than you thought it would. An idea, in contrast, is a spark. It happens in a moment and then it’s gone. And if you missed it or if you never acted on it … then you lose it.

Recently I’ve been to several storytelling events. One gathered together a dozen innovators to share their stories on human behavior. Another curated every form of storytelling you could imagine – from stop motion Vine video creators to street opera singers. Each offered an amazing collection of stories that entertained and inspired. And I remember those stories.

Today I have been moderating an event filled with ideas instead of stories. The Corporate Social Media Summit in San Francisco (#CSMSF) is the second edition of a popular series from the Useful Social Media team that includes a flagship New York event, the West Coast edition today, and a European edition next month. In listening to more than a dozen brands sharing their experiences with social media – there were several ideas that emerged which got people talking. Here are just a few of those ideas:

1. DEFLECTION ISN'T ENGAGEMENT

As more brands turn to tools like Twitter for customer service – one of the increasingly common strategies is to “escalate” issues to the call center. What this actually means is that brands immediately engage with customers who share a question via Twitter by telling them to call the 1800 number to speak to a customer service person. As Adobe Director of Strategy and Business Development Jeff Feldman shared in the opening keynote session, this type of deflection isn't optimal. Instead, brands that aspire to provide great service need to answer questions in the channel they are asked (unless you truly need to access their private information, of course).

2. B2B IS BETTER THAN B2C FOR SOCIAL

Thanks to the visibility of efforts from leading brands like Coke and Oreo’s, it is easy to focus attention on the role that social media has taken in helping major consumer brands to create lots of buzz and some engagement. Instead, Dell’s Global Director of Social Media Richard Margetic pointed out that social media is actually better for B2B brands because they tend to be far more about relationships than B2C brands. As a proof point, he noted that more than 9,000 of Dell’s employees have gone through social media training and are allowed to represent the brand in their engagements online.

3. SOCIAL GRATITUDE IS POWERFUL

It is no secret that people passionately share stories and images of pets online. So when Kat Smith, PETCO Director of Social Media and Commerce took the stage to talk about how social media could engage pet owners – the opportunity was pretty obvious. Still, the big question was how a brand in the popular pet category could engage with these passionate pet owners in a way that wouldn’t just try to upsell them more supplies and materials. One great strategy Kat shared in her presentation was the power of offering validation to customers. Simply by having the brand like customer’s Instagram photos, for example, PETCO could offer tangible proof that it was listening and engaged in its community. And this one act caused intense consumer gratitude … which then led to engagement and conversation.

4. SOLVE UNIQUE PROBLEMS

As often as we hear about social media offering yet another channel for brands to interact and solve customer challenges, there may be situations that social media or social customer care is uniquely positioned to solve. One example that Kimarie Matthews, Wells Fargo Vice President of Social Web shared was of a customer tweeting about there being trash outside of an ATM machine. This is exactly the sort of thing that no one would ever call into a 1800 number and wait on hold in order to report. Yet thanks to this tweet, the brand was able to respond both to the customer as well as respond by actually correcting the problem and cleaning up the trash!

5. TREAT EVERYONE LIKE AN INFLUENCER

In a highly entertaining presentation about the state of the travel industry, disruption, handlebar moustaches (for Movember!) and being Canadian – Flight Centre Global Social Media Leader Gregg Tilston shared a powerful story about the nature of influence. Using the example of how you might be influenced differently to attend a food related event whether you hear about it from the newspaper versus a restaurant versus a chef versus your best friend … he noted that the most influential source among those is probably your best friend. That is also the source among those listed with the least ACTUAL influence when it comes to potential reach and size of their network. So who is truly influential? His ultimate conclusion: “Treat everyone as if they have a Klout score of 80.”

6. SOCIAL CAN FORCE CONVERGENCE

Telling the story of how the Clorox brand thinks about social media, Helen Lee shared how increasing conversation online inspired far more convergence and collaboration among all of the more traditional silos of the marketing organization – from advertising to PR to in-store promotions. One interesting conclusion her presentation raised was to turn one of the most often cited challenges about social media into perhaps its greatest opportunity. As brands struggle to align efforts among multiple teams and divisions, the crossover potential of social media may become the driving force to actually help make it happen.

7. FOCUS ON THE AUDIENCE YOU HAVE

As audiences shift and the attention paid to social media platforms evolve, segmenting an audience is a consistent challenge. One of the downsides of this challenge, as Ammiel Kamon from Kontera noted, is that sometimes brands can get romanced or misled into focusing on creating content and messages for the audiences they want instead of the ones they have. The key is to remain connected to the audience you have today and grow that organically rather than dreaming of a nonexistent audience you wish you had instead.

8. AVOID OVERENGAGEMENT

What if greater engagement wasn’t the ultimate goal that every brand should aim for? As Charles Schwab VP of Owned Media, Content & Client Marketing Helen Loh shared, “money is important, but sometimes people don’t want to engage with it day in and day out.” As great as the temptation may be for any brand to think that customers always want a brand interaction, the reality is that most of the time they probably don’t. Understanding customer journies and engaging customers at the right moments along that path is more important, according to Loh – and something that really allows the promise of content to connect with social media.

9. DON’T MEASURE SOCIAL MEDIA, MEASURE INITIATIVES

In an interesting caution against taking data from a unique effort and overestimating its ability to define the entire value of social – Thomson Reuters Senior Director of Social Strategy Jen McClure shared that the real key to understanding the power of your efforts is to separate out what the results are truly telling you about what went right and wrong, and how to apply those learnings effectively.

10. FIND OPPORTUNITIES TO DELIGHT

Southwest Airlines has built a reputation around having a personality, and as Senior Communications Specialist Christi McNeill shared – this extends to creating opportunities for staff to build on the strong culture to delight customers with service. KLM Manager of Social Media Karlijn Vogel-Meijers also shared several new initiatives that KLM is pursuing which have the potential to truly drive the airline industry forwards. Already launched is a unique feature on Twitter that allows anyone to see the average response time for KLM to get back to you on a tweet you send directly (on average, it is 23 minutes). In addition, a soon to be launched idea she previewed at the conference was a new program called Wanna gives which will allow consumers to pay for a surprise gift to be delivered to a friend or loved one in flight.

You can also make your business achieve big successes optimize your business for social media marketing services or learn something more about social media optimization visit my posts.

The Basics of Using Social Media Marketing Services to Market Your Business, Hidden Pros of Social Media Marketing That can Make You a Big Win !, Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Increase the Exposure, Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Increase the Traffic, Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Reduce Marketing Expenses .

Why You May Be Losing Followers on Twitter??

Many join Twitter to grow an online presence. But not everyone gets fast results. Here are 10 things NOT to do to ensure you won’t sabotage your Twitter growth.

Since Twitter banned auto-follow and auto-follow back (see my earlier article from July 1013), I’ve been spending a lot more time vetting who I follow and follow back on Twitter. As a result, I’ve been following far fewer people on Twitter every week than I used to. Naturally, this is due in part to the fact that it takes a lot more time now that automation is no longer allowed. But it is also due to the fact that I have become much more selective about who I want to follow.

During the vetting process, I’ve noticed the same 10 criteria keep cropping up as ‘deal breakers’ helping me decide whether or not to follow, follow back or unfollow people on Twitter. As these criteria are probably being used (consciously or not) by other Twitter users, I thought I’d share them with you today, so you can avoid these pitfalls, and make your Twitter profile an irresistible force to you ideal audience.

Reason #1: Inadequate bio information

Twitter gives you 160 characters to fill in your profile. Use them. Make every character count. Make sure it SAYS something about you and/or your business, so people can judge whether or not they want to follow you.

Reason #2: No profile image

No matter how camera-shy you may be, don’t fail to upload a headshot or company logo. When people see the default Twitter image in your profile, they tend to assume a) that you don’t know what you’re doing on Twitter yet; b) that you don’t care; or c) that you’re not a ‘real’ person but a spammer/robot. Say cheese!

Reason #3: You have a private account

If you set your account to ‘private’, prospective followers won’t be able to see your Tweets. Why would people follow you if they cannot know what you Tweet about? I wouldn’t.

Reason #4: You don’t speak the same language

If you are multilingual and you are trying to target a specific audience, be sure your Tweets are consistently in the language of the audience you are targeting. Otherwise, people might start unfollowing you if they start to see Tweets they cannot read. Remember: you might understand their language, but they might unfollow you if they cannot understand yours. You might wish to have multiple accounts for different languages.

Reason #5: YOU USE ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME

Gosh I hate that. I never follow people who ALWAYS WRITE IN ALL CAPS and I unfollow them FOR THE SIMPLE REASON THAT IT IS ANNOYING.

Want to improve other social media then must check this post Methods-for-Improving-Your-Social-Media-Optimization-Services

Reason #6: You use WAY too many hashtags

I love hashtags, but some people will put a hashtag at the beginning of every word (frequently combined with #USINGCAPSALLTHETIME). Apart from being damnably irritating to your followers, there are SO many reasons why over-using hashtags is pointless. See my earlier article ‘5 Ways to Use Hashtags on Twitter or Facebook’ to find out wise ways to use them.

Reason #7: You’re just interested in getting followers and have no focus

Some people are on Twitter for no other reason than to get followers. They talk about NOTHING other than to say ‘Follow me’ or #TeamFollowBack. All they tend to do is tell how many new followers they got that day. I never follow such people. What’s the point?

Reason #8: You don’t bother to follow people back

In direct contrast to #7, there are also people on Twitter who hardly ever bother to follow (legitimate) followers back. Personally, except for large organisations that don’t tend to follow anyone back, I will unfollow people if they haven’t followed me back after a couple of months. Some people will unfollow you if you don’t follow back within the week. If you are losing followers, this might be the reason. Take a look at who’s following you that you are not following.

Reason #9: Never talking to anyone else

If you never take time to say ‘hi’ or ‘thank-you’ to people, or you never ReTweet or reply to people’s comments, your followers will get miffed and are likely to unfollow you. If prospective followers see no engagement, they might not bother to follow you in the first place.

Reason #10: ALL you do is talk to other people

The flip side of #9 is when someone ONLY uses Twitter as a kind of global instant messaging service, and is constantly engaged in chat. Being sociable is great, but if all you ever do is chat-surf, some people might not wish to follow you.

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Methods for Improving Your Social Media Optimization Services

These are the seven steps that can be incorporated to improve Social Media Optimization- 

1. Engagement - encourage more engagement, sharing & reciprocate
2. Authority - become a notable authority in your field of expertise
3. Leadership - harness originality & creativity, be a Thought Leader
4. Social - be social, find and engage sociable experts in your field
5. Media - know your social media platforms to maximize influence
6. Optimization - improve technical aspects to increase optimization
7. Reputation - build your reputation as a reliable qualified source

These seven steps provide a good benchmark against which you can assess and plan your current SMO activity.

If I may be allowed to stand on the shoulders of a giant I would add my thoughts to each of these seven steps as follows:

 Reputation

Your reputation in my view starts with ensuring you are either an expert or you act as an expert curator. This means undertaking thorough research and producing original content or curating quality content. This will make you a respected and qualified source.

Your reputation is also about how you engage and support people. Your reputation will be enhanced if you openly share your content and expertise including content that is not your own, engage with others through discussions and commenting, and if you are friendly and helpful to people.

I think fundamentally your reputation is enhanced by simply being helpful to people.

Engagement

You need to actively engage with your audience. This can include commenting, mentions, shares, likes, and plus ones. No one is as smart as everyone so share other peoples' content and provide a good user experience by providing feedback and comments.

You need to target the networks with which to interact and make it easy for people to interact. It may be that people will interact with content on your site but you may find a far greater number of people willing to interact in their existing communities such as Google+ communities and LinkedIn groups. You can combine these by using say Google+ comments on your blog. Asking users to create accounts on your site will discourage users from commenting so use existing social logins such as LinkedIn or tools such as Disqus.

You can also encourage people to engage with a call to action, for example if you find this article helpful please shares it. If you think I have missed anything please add your comments below.

Authority

There are many aspects to authority. Search engines are interested in ascertaining what individuals and brands are seen as authoritative and trusted by real people on the Internet. The most obvious example of a move in this direction is Google Authorship. Setting up Google Authorship can help establish you as an expert and show your profile prominently in search results. For example I have spent many years researching the elearning market and writing a monthly market update. Thus when you search for 'elearning market' you will hopefully see my result (image below) with my picture and a link to my profile.

You can also enhance your authority and the value of content through social proof. In essence the more your content is shared through plus ones, retweets, bookmarks or likes the more it indicates the value and usefulness of your content. It may also encourage others to read your content. For example, my recent post on Google+ and SEO received over 2,500 plus ones and a thousand retweets. Hopefully this means a fair number of people found the article helpful and shareworthy. I am sure it also helps the SEO, as if you search for "Google+ SEO" the article was at the time of writing appearing high on page one of the results page.

Leadership

To me leadership is about high quality research, thinking and original content production.

A leader will research everything they can about their areas and share thoughtful insights which will add value to your audience. Poor quality content will be perceived as such and as a consequence will not be shared. As a leader you can also create value for your audience through content curation. This means adding value to content by providing a summary, adding context or a perspective to the content you are sharing.

Social

You also need to build high quality networks; quality potentially matters more than quantity. Seek out the experts in your field, read what they say, engage them in debate and share your ideas.

Media platforms

It is important you focus on the right platforms and communities Where does your audience hang out? Find and focus on the platforms, communities and groups where your audience hangs out. Some platforms are far more effective in improving the SEO benefits of SMO than others. In my view the most effective platform is Google Plus for many reasons which are set out in the article I mentioned on why Google Plus will improve your Search Engine Optimization.

This was reinforced in recent days by the post I mentioned from Dustin Stout on social signals and Google+. His research led him to conclude that Google is counting all activity from all Google+ posts back to the original blog post. Thus in Dustin's view "Google is trying really hard to give your shared links all the social credit they deserve."

Optimization

I have included below some of my thoughts on the practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO below. Share buttons - make it easy to share for users by adding share buttons to your content. You should also show the numbers of shares to demonstrate social proof. Social Icons - group and display your social icons in a prominent place on your site.

• Subscription options - group together subscription options such as email, RSS, and newsletters.
• Shareable content - some content is more readily shareable such as infographics or 5 top tips articles. I think this is partly because it is short and scannable. However, I hope and believe longer but well written content will also be shared.
• Social login - use social login options to make it easy for users to comment.
• Rich snippets - social networks pull in rich snippets, data designed to summaries the content of a page. These are very useful for users. The different social networks pull in this data in different ways. Facebook uses OpenGraph, Twitter uses Twitter Cards and Google Plus will take values from OpenGraph, you just need to set up your authorship profile for your rel="author" tag to work correctly.  If you use WordPress you can use the Yoast plugin to manage and optimize these rich snippets
• Title tags - Optimize your title tags for sharing, especially on Twitter where there is a character limit and include your name.
• Images - they really do say more than a thousand words. Include images that add value and include an image that can be used as a thumbnail for your content.
• Thanks again to Joshua Berg for his Real Social Media Optimization framework and for the work of Dustin Stout and Mark Traphagen. I hope through my reflections and additions I have added some value to the way you think about and approach the Social Media Optimization of your Search Engine Optimization.

6 Fundamentals of Social Media Marketing

1. What Your Customers Say about You Matters

Let’s face it. We live in a world full of advertisements and we just don’t trust what brands say about themselves.

However, we do trust what our friends say.

That is why so many people are willing to try something new based on what their friends say on social media.

Some call this word-of-mouth; some call it peer-to-peer recommendations. No matter what you call it, getting people to recommend you can go a long way to driving both new and repeat business.

2. Online Recommendations Translate into Purchases

Good or bad, people are influenced by their friends. So friend recommendations have a significant impact on purchasing decisions.

How big is that impact? According to a Marketing Profs survey, 73% of the U.S. participants had learned about a product online and 51% had purchased a product based on an online recommendation.

3. You Must Provide a Great Customer Experience

Social media provides every person with a stage to share their thoughts and opinions with friends and other consumers.

If you provide them with a great customer experience, social media will reward you with positive reviews and endorsements that attract new business.

If a customer has a less than perfect experience, social media will let you know. But that's not such a bad thing so long as you take the opportunity to respond to them and use that feedback constructively to improve the way you serve your customers.

4. Permission is Key

In a world full of interruptive marketing noise, permission-based marketing is a powerful tool for fighting through the clutter.

Simply put, by obtaining consent from your customers and prospects to contact them with marketing messages they are more likely to respond to your offers, more likely to share with their friends, and less likely to ignore you or consider your messages spam.

Permission comes in many forms:

1. Opt-in with an email address
2. Facebook "Like"
3. Twitter Follow
4. LinkedIn Connection
5. Attendance at an Event

That permission is part of what makes both email and social media marketing so powerful.

Permission is good for Business

People, who like a brand on Facebook, follow a brand on Twitter or subscribe to a brand’s email newsletter, are more likely to buy and recommend.

5. You Must Listen and Respond

To be a good conversationalist, you need to be a great listener.

Social media marketing is more about listening and responding than it is about broadcasting a message.

It's critical that you monitor what people are saying to you and about you, your industry, your areas of expertise and your competitors. (Don’t worry, we'll show you how easy it is to monitor the online conversations.)

You've also got to be responsive—whether it's to respond directly to a customer’s question or suggestion or join a discussion where you can share your knowledge.

Remember: To build relationships you don’t need to speak “social media,” you just need to be yourself.  Talk on social media the same way you do in real life.

6. Social Media Marketing is a Commitment

Don’t worry, you don’t have to put a ring on it, but just like in real life, it takes time and effort to build relationships. And unfortunately, sometimes that effort doesn’t generate immediate results.

With social media marketing, you need to be consistent and patient. Those relationships you build will pay off over time through increased customer loyalty and advocacy.

To be an effective social media marketing you need to:

1.     Invest time in both talking and listening (Even just 10-20 minutes/day)
2.     Have a plan for creating engaging content
3.     Find the right tools that will help you save time (We can help you with that!)

Get Seen! How to Optimize Your News Feed of Facebook

Now that you are up and running on Facebook, we have something to tell you... not everything you post will get seen by all of your fans. We know, we know. How could that be?  Well Facebook does their best to make sure its users aren't overwhelmed by messages they don't want. In this section we'll show you how this works and what you can do about it with News Feed Optimization (NFO).

While NFO doesn’t necessarily sound like the most powerful marketing tool in your arsenal… trust us, you’ll start to appreciate its power soon.

We’re going to show you data from BrandGlue, a company that helps brands reach more eyeballs by ranking higher in the newsfeed algorithm using NFO. They’ve helped a lot of businesses, including Intel, icanhascheezburger Networks/Fail Blog/LOLCats, Microsoft, Mint.com, the Washington Redskins, and Kiva.

The Truth about Facebook Pages

Marketers often think Facebook Pages equal "fan websites,” so they build lots of fancy tabs.

In reality though, research shows that 96% of fans never even revisit fan pages once they’ve “liked” them. That means that in most cases your fans see your posts in the personal newsfeeds and decide whether to "like" it, comment on it, share it, or do nothing right in their newsfeed, not on your Facebook Page.Fans won’t treat your Facebook Page like a website they visit and read, instead they’ll interact with it if you're doing the right things.

Content that attracts your fans' attention in their newsfeed is the holy grail.

Effective Facebook strategies focus on content that looks compelling in a user's newsfeed to generate likes, comments, and shares.

The Facebook Algorithm

What is the Facebook Newsfeed Algorithm?  

We're not going to get into all of the details, but what you need to know is:

Facebook didn’t want to crowd your newsfeed, so they created an algorithm that hides content it thinks you might skip anyway.

That means that just because you post something to your fans, it doesn’t mean they’ll all see it.

Unfortunately, average fan Pages rank low in the algorithm so that 50-70% of fans never see the content in their newsfeed.

You need to focus on driving the actions that impact NFO "like" impressions, likes, and comments.

Impressions Are Your Best Friend

Lots of people look at Facebook Insights and get confused about why their total impressions are higher than their total number of fans. Total impressions are a count of everything, but what you should really care about is unique impressions -how many different people you reach, not how many times you reach one person.  And how many impressions you get are what measures how often you show up in fans newsfeeds.

If you want to rank extra high in the algorithm, you might want to hire an NFO agency (such as BrandGlue). It’s similar to SEO, except it’s for the Facebook newsfeed. And it’s very effective at reaching more eyeballs.

Math Equation for the Algorithm/Impressions

Unique Impressions / Total Fans = X

Average fan page reaches X% of their fan base (calculated by taking unique impressions/total fans).

Six Tips for Optimizing Your Newsfeed and Status Updates

As with all social media, creating great content is the key to social media marketing success. Here are six tips to help you get noticed in the Facebook newsfeed.

1. Be human! People come to Facebook to interact, not to buy your product or read every blog post you’ve written.
2. Keep your status updates short & sweet, otherwise folks won't read them.
3. Remember that your fans like photos and videos so include rich media if possible.
4. Think about time of day: what time are your most of fans online and checking Facebook?
5. Use the 80/20 principle: Post 80% about things related to common interest of your fan base, 20% directly related to your brand/company.
6. Don't post more than 1-2 status updates per day, otherwise fans who see your content will get irritated and un-like your fan page right in their newsfeed.

Hence in this way Social Media Optimization Services are very helpful for the growth of any business specially Facebook is most favorable. We are SMOExpert providing Social Media Optimization Services in India

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Improve Sales

While sales should be higher on this list of benefits, the bottom line is that it’s difficult to attribute revenues back to each piece of marketing touched. Therefore, the last piece of social media marketing used often gets credit for delivering the sale.

Yet in today’s multi-platform, multi-device world, the reality is that multiple pieces of marketing contribute to a purchase. 50% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to improve sales.

Further, since much of the sales process occurs before the marketer is aware that the customer is in purchase mode, it’s unlikely they can track these results.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Incorporate a contextually relevant social media call-to-action. Encourage social media followers to take the next step such as signing up for emails or looking at product on your website. Don’t ask for “personal” information upfront (Note: This includes mobile phone numbers!)
2. Offer targeted discounts and deals on your social media platforms with care. Be careful since you don’t want to train your followers to show up only for deals. To this end provide other useful content and fan support.
3. Create tailored landing pages. Encourage social media fans to engage with you on your site. Keep the scent of your marketing consistent.
4. Take your time romancing your prospects. Don’t expect your social media services followers to convert to buyers immediately. They’re on social media to socialize with their family and friends not to get sold to.

For more information visit us at Social Media Optimization.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Reduce Marketing Expenses

A few short years ago, marketers called social media the free marketing format. The reality is that, while some social media marketing platforms may be free to use, they were NEVER free since they required employee effort and other resources.

Instead marketers should measure improved return on each marketing dollar invested in social media. This requires tracked all resources used including employee time (across departments), special services and outsources support. 51% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to reduce marketing expense.

This means that marketers must become better at capitalizing on each social media interaction. Think beyond vanity metrics such as likes to engagement and hand raisers.

Change your thinking from increased interaction to more effective interaction, even if this means additional resources are needed for better quality content or supporting social media advertising.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Track your full breadth of social media activities. This means employee time (across disciplines such as marketing, creative and technology), resources and outsourced support.
2. Create more effective and reliable metrics to track your social media investment. Work with your finance / analytics team. With regard to expenses, this means return on social media investment and sales and leads attributable to social media.
3. Augment your social media optimization interaction with social media marketing. Many platforms are starting to test and rollout advertising products. As a result, your natural social media traffic and reach will get eroded. Therefore add a small budget to test advertising.

For more information visit us at Social Media Marketing Services

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Grow Business Partnerships

While social media marketing is more likely to yield business partnerships for B2B marketers than B2C marketers based on the research, underestimate this benefit at your peril.

Also, this is more important for small businesses with limited resources since you can make your business appear larger than it is. 58% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to grow business partnerships.

Every business works with other businesses in one form or another such as suppliers, and distributors. Assume that the executives and sales team are looking at your presence and your employees’ presence on social media at a minimum to gain insights to help their business relations.

Remember in today’s social media services connected world chances are that your business contacts and future employees are following your activity as well as that of your employees on social media.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Set social media guidelines for your entire organization. Don’t limit this to your social media managers. This means all of your employees and customers. Consider what they can do as employees and as private individuals.
2. Create a business presence on the major social media platforms. At a minimum, consider Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.
3. Leverage social media to build contacts. Use social media engagement to help build your thought leadership and following.
4. Use social media for hiring purposes. Your current and former employees can be great sources for new employees.
5. Social media optimization services maintain relationships with former employees. The objective is to continue to nurture relationships with employees since they may become future employees or other business contacts.

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Improve Search Engine Rankings

This should be a no-brainer for marketers. Every planned piece of content and communication posted on a social media marketing services platform should be optimized for search, especially since social media interactions show up on search engine results pages (or SERPs). 61% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to improve search rankings.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Optimize every piece of content you post on social media for one of your keyword phrases. This is particularly important for non-text information that might not be searchable otherwise.
2. Create a social media optimization process for your organization. Distribute it to everyone involved in social media marketing and related teams such as your web team.
3. Incorporate social media optimization into people’s job. This means track how well they’re doing and contributing to your social media rankings.
4. Track social media marketing services contribution to search rankings. Don’t assume that a list is sufficient to get you to the next level. Measure it.

For more information visit us at Social Media Optimization Expert

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Generate Leads

Leverage the power of social media to grow both the quantity and quality of your leads. Understand that social media marketing is part of the sales process but not necessarily the entire thing.  (To help you with your lead generation, check out these best lead generation tips ever!!!)

Most of this gets down to offering the 5 basic content formats. 66% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to generate leads.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Answer your customers’ purchase related questions. If you don’t, your competitors may! This should be a no-brainer because your entire customer facing employees answers them on a regular basis. Don’t take my word for it, see how Marcus Sheridan generated $2 million by answering 1 key question about his pool company.
2. Offer ratings and reviews. This is scary for most marketers. Understand that customers trust other customers more than they trust your marketing communications. If you’ve got a problem, fix it and respond to upset customers. Skip the Teflon “We’re sorry!”
3. Use premium social media options to extend your reach. Pay to collect prospect information and be able to continue the conversation. This is particularly useful on social media optimization services like SlideShare.

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

SMO Expert the Social Media Optimization Service Provider in India

It is possible to revamp your business through social media optimization. Social media sites offer great opportunities for businesses to expand its base at a great pace. The products and services can be promoted through social media sites. In this context, social sites are coming up with new solution to offer a solid platform through which targeted audience can be reached and returns on investment can be enhanced in an efficient manner. Regardless of the kind of website that you will create, you should want to implement Google SEO techniques so that your website’s visibility becomes very high.

Through Social Media Optimization (SMO) process we make your content easily shareable across the social web as there are many options available in today’s world where people can view your content. Target is to drive as much traffic to website as possible and ensure people go through creative content and attractive designs. 

The content and the design of the site should be developed in such a way that it should be visible on every required widget, required app and social media entry points providing desired benefits to your brand, the content should be more transportable for better and desired results.

Social Media Optimization Services Which and We More We Provide:

1. Integration of social media into your Website
2. Setup and configuration of Social Media Accounts – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and other Web 2.0 websites
3. Linking Social Media accounts together for greater efficiency
4. Blog design, setup and optimization on Word Press, Blogger, and other CMS platforms.
5. Engaging followers of your brand with special offers
6. Customization of your Facebook page
7. Customization of your Twitter background
8. Customization of your YouTube channel
9. Customization of your Google+ page Widget strategy development
10. Brand Promotion and Customer base building
11. Creation and promotion of videos for better search engine rankings and targeted traffic to website
12. Targeted PPC campaigns across all social networks
13. Viral Marketing
14. Write and distribute articles and press releases
15. Create and/or run contests using social networking accounts

SMO Expert provides you these Social Media Optimization Services to make you rank first and achieve a big win in the market and web.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Provide Marketplace Insight

Monitor social media to find out more about your prospects, customers, business partners, employees and competitors. 71% of marketers benefit from social media optimization to provide marketplace insights.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Check what your competitors are posting on social media services. Examine the quantity and quality of their interactions. What can you learn from them?
2. Find out what your followers want by asking questions. Where possible use open ended inquiries that require more than a yes or no.
3. Examine social media platforms by categories. This is particularly important to see what information customers are seeking. Look at YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram who are very much work in social media optimization India. How are your products and your competitors’ products being shown in context?

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Increase the Fan Following

Remember that not all fans are created equal. 72% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to develop loyal fans.

To support loyal fans, you need to be present and engaged on social media. This means regular interactions.

Fans that have purchased from you in the past provide credibility that’s hard to acquire as a marketer. Marketers are learning that most fans become fans post-purchase, according to research by Synapse.

Many prospects will follow your company just for the special offers or discounts.

Actionable Social Media Tips:

1. Build your social media fanbase. Make targeted offers and special content only on social media so that your customers will want to be associated with you there.
2. Leverage your website and other owned media to build your fan base.  Social media fans rarely happen without marketing. You need to leverage each element of your marketing mix to support this goal.
3. Use your follow up emailing to drive fans. Ask fans in your emailing and other content to like you on Facebook.
4. Include a call-to-action on your post purchase email to encourage photo sharing and reviews. Go one step beyond the easy fan action. Ask new owners to strut their stuff wearing your stuff. Bear in mind Instagram is starting to hit its stride with buyers.
5. Encourage fans to invite their friends. The logic is that people are friends with other people who share their interests. Of course, with social media services you may need to make them a special offer!

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Increase the Traffic

Given social media’s large and broad usage across demographic and other segments, it’s a must-have for most marketers. Your audience is there, even if you can’t necessarily target them tightly. 80% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to increase traffic.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Create a marketing persona as well as a social media persona. Appreciate who your target audience is and what type of information they’re seeking from you.
2. Incorporate links to your website and other owned content in your social media shares. The objective is to peak your prospects’ interest so they visit your site. (Of course, don’t make them register to see the information in the links!)
3. Use a variety of content formats on social media optimization. Understand that different elements attract different customer segments. Post images, photographs, videos, presentations and audio.
4. Share other people’s content. Pay it forward is at the heart of social media. You want to build your thought leadership while getting other people to check out your bona fides.
5. Optimize your social media profiles. Help prospects to find your owned media from your social media presence.
6. Participate in social media gatherings. Think Google Hangouts and Twitter Chats. It’s even better if you get known as one of the experts who are interviewed on these events for social media optimization services.

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

Benefits of Social Media Marketing to Increase the Exposure

In part the strength of this benefit is due to the fact that marketers must be present where their potential audience is. 92% of marketers benefit from social media marketing to increase exposure.

Remember that multiple impressions are needed before prospects act.

Also, it’s an easy answer that doesn't require hard analytics, the way that lead generation, sales and expenses do.

Actionable Social Media Marketing Tips:

1. Tailor the content you share by social media platform. Social media is NOT one-size-fits-all. Your social media efforts will drive better results if they’re adapted by platform.
2. Use images. Make your content stand out by incorporating attention grabbing visuals. People process images faster than text.
3. Write attention grabbing headlines. Realize that only 20% of your readers will get past your headline according to Madman David Ogilvy. Make them work harder.
4. Brand your social media content. Incorporate your 360° brand into every interaction you make on social media to support your image.
5. Drip out social media shares over time. Where appropriate, chop your content into small bite-size shares. This works well with tips and quotes.
6. Add social sharing icons to your owned content. Encourage your audience to help distribute your content more broadly.
7. Involve influencers and fans in your social sharing. This doesn't mean make a pest of yourself but rather ask others to help you social media optimization services where they've been involved in the creation process.

For more information visit us at SMO Expert

Buzzword’s Importance in Raising Your Brand Awareness Socially

The Science of Buzzwords and How It Can Raise Your Brand Awareness

When it comes to brand awareness, content development plays a huge role. Creating dynamic, shareable content can actually become quite scientific. The other good news - it’s not rocket science. In this post, we'll dive into the art and science of content development and how buzzwords play a significant role. Buzzwords Raises your Brand Awareness and Social Media Marketing.

Effective Buzzwords in Social Media Marketing

There are several buzzwords that motivate your audience/readers to share your content with their networks. When crafting blog posts, headlines containing words like “huge”, “surprising”, “smart”, and “hacks” are more often shared by readers than headlines that don’t contain these phrases. With Twitter, tweets that get shared the most are usually asking users to do something, or making a big announcement. These use commanding phrases like, “Please Retweet”, “Follow”, “Check it out”. When it comes to Facebook, it is important to focus on creating a particular feeling. Shareable Facebook content is highly motivational. It inspires and amuses through strong visuals and catchy copy.

Why This Word Science is Important

Knowing what words have performed best in a blog post headline, tweet or Facebook post is an incredibly powerful tool for marketers. It takes a certain amount of guesswork out of the content creation process and empowers you to take control over how you are framing your brand messages. Of course, it's important to realize that this is not a rigid science. Social media services are evolving constantly because users are evolving constantly. Users follow your brand because they love the products/services you deliver. Using key buzzwords in your copy can serve as a starting point, but is not the end destination. You already know who your ideal customers are - now go talk to them with the help of a few key phrases. In this way these buzzwords attracts and let people like and share interesting contents and material. And this kind of thing also enhances your brand value and social media marketing.

There are lots of thing which is used to optimize your social media image we recommend you to let your business do Social Media Optimization with SMO Expert then see yourself and your brand in big talk.

3 Social Media Optimization Drawbacks from Which You Can Recover

When it comes to social media optimization, mistakes can happen. The good news is - not all social media mishaps are insurmountable. Since social media marketing moves at such a rapid pace, it is important to handle these mistakes in a quick and efficient manner.

Here are three examples of potential social slip-ups and how to respond when one happens to you:

1. Inappropriate Postings

Your brand's social media manager likely works between your businesses pages their own personal social pages. What do you do if the unthinkable happens, and your social media manager accidentally makes an inappropriate post on your brand's social page instead of their own?

This exact scenario actually happened to Red Cross. One of their employees accidentally posted a less than positive tweet from the SMO Expert official Twitter account instead of their personal account. Thanks to quick action on the part of Red Cross, this scenario was contained. The SMO Expert immediately deleted the post and responded with an apology. They thanked their fans for understanding and worked to move past the incident quickly. Instead of the anticipated backlash, fans actually got a kick out of the faux pas. Twitter users began donating both blood and money to the Red Cross because of the publicity this incident fostered.

2. Responding to Negative Comments

Complaints and bad reviews are an unfortunate part of conducting business online. You may not be able to prevent them, but you can turn unhappy customers into happy customers by responding quickly and professionally. For example - if someone posts a bad review on a product, quickly respond with a helpful solution, an offer for a refund or even a gift certificate. Even if you don't convert that person into a happy customer, others will see your company's response and realize that you stand by your products and/or services.

3. Typos

Spelling errors and other grammatical mistakes are a very valid social media taboo. It's hard for a customer to put their trust in a brand that doesn't seem to have a good grasp of language. Consumers expect companies to proof and edit to avoid unnecessary typos. So, how should you react online if a typo accidentally gets posted? If no-one has commented on the mistake, fix it quickly and without comment. If attention has been brought to the mistake, fix the error anyway and give the person or people quick thanks. Acknowledging these users will alleviate the pressure of the situation and allow your brand to move past the incident.

SMO Expert the social media marketing and social media optimization service providing company is always available to help businesses to make them popular and branded with our social media services.

Benefit Yourself with Our Social Media Services If You Are a Small Business

With the explosion of social media services over the last few years, you might be hard pressed to find a social media marketing expert who doesn’t recommend social media optimization as part of a holistic marketing strategy. But, is it really worth the time and effort to build a social media presence at this point? What are the overall benefits of social media marketing services for small business?

There are eight simple ways your business can benefit from implementing an effective social media marketing plan:

1. Social Media Can Reduce Your Overall Marketing Costs

First and foremost, the ability to tweet a message or post something to Facebook is dramatically more cost effective than running a paid ad or mailing thousands of marketing pieces. However, there are also advanced advertising tools that allow you to run a marketing campaign that is both keyword- and demographic-specific so that you can get the best bang for your marketing dollar.

2. Social Media Can Impact Your Organic Search Results

When it comes to impacting your website’s position in search engines, you have been told that you need to create both optimized and compelling content if you want to be found. Part of this is so that other websites will find your content and link to it, thus boosting your search ranking.

What social media does is allow you to broadcasting your content out to a wide range of interested readers. Interested prospects then visit your content, subscribe, tell their friends, and ultimately link to it. Google and Bing both pay attention to social signals like this when they decide how to rank links on the search results page.

3. With Social Media You Can Offer Better Customer Service

If you are looking for a way to field customer comments, concerns, and questions, then you are going to find social media optimization to be extremely beneficial. Customers using one of the common platforms like Facebook or Twitter can easily communicate directly with you, and you can quickly answer them in a public format that lets other customers see your responsiveness.

4. With Social Media You Can Design Your Own Online Personality

The idea is that social media is more like a cocktail party than a business meeting. You will always do a lot better in a social situation if you are more like yourself and less like a corporate robot. Social media optimization is a great way to display your business’ personality, as well as behind-the-scenes information about you, your employees, your workspace, and more. When you humanize your brand in this way, it makes it easier for consumers to connect with you and develop loyalty.

5. Social Media Lets You Associate with Other Businesses

The fact that you are able to connect directly to the consumer means you can use this platform to also connect to other entrepreneurs and business owners. From possible strategic business partners to new distributors, social media lets you have real conversations with actual people who might otherwise be socially or geographically inaccessible in the real world.

6. Customers Can Validate Your Business on Social Media

The idea behind allowing customers to correspond directly with you is so that they can get the best customer service possible. When this occurs, it happens in a very public forum that can be seen by other prospects. So when customers sing your praises to their friends it not only validates you, but increases the chances that someone else is going to give you a shot next time they need your services.

7. With Social Media You Can Provide Value

The idea that you can provide a truly valuable service to your target market means you are positioning yourself as an expert in your industry. Whether that’s educational and entertaining blogs, posts, or tweets, if you are solving a problem or providing information, you’re adding value that customers will appreciate.

8. Social Media Lets You Gain the Competitive Advantage

If used correctly, we have SMO Expert for social media marketing to boost your search engine rankings, allow you to provide better customer service, build an effective online personality, connect with new business partners, build connections, and validate your professional standing all while providing your consumers with the value they want.

The Basics of Using Social Media Marketing Services to Market Your Business

Social media marketing are internet marketing services that let you interact with others and share and create content through online communities.

Social media present great marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes. You can use social media to:

• Promote the name of your brand and business
• Tell customers about your goods and services
• Find out what customers think of your business
• Attract new customers
• Build stronger relationships with existing customers.

Advantages of using social media

Social media marketing has many advantages:

1. Broad reach - social media can reach millions of people all around the world
2. Ability to target particular groups - many forms of social media (e.g. Facebook, Foursquare) allow businesses to target specific groups, often in particular locations
3. Free or low-cost - many forms of social media are free for business, and paid options are usually low-cost
4. Personal - social media services allow you to communicate on a personal basis with individual customers and groups
5. Fast - you can quickly distribute information to many people
6. Easy - you don't need high-level skills or computer equipment to participate in social media marketing. The average person with a standard computer should have no difficulty.

Risks of using social media

Of course, marketing through social media also has its risks. These include:

• Wasted time and money for little or no tangible return
• The rapid spread of the wrong kind of information about your business (e.g. incorrect information accidentally posted by you, negative reviews posted by others)
• Legal problems if you don't follow privacy legislation and the laws regarding spam, copyright and other online issues.
• It's important to be aware of these risks and to have social media optimization strategies in place to avoid them if you decide to get involved in social media marketing.

Key social media services

Different types of social media are good for different marketing activities. The key social media services are:

• Facebook - a social networking site that allows you to have conversations with customers, post photos and videos, promote special offers, and more
• Twitter - a 'micro-blogging' service that allows you to send and receive short messages from customers and potential customers
• YouTube - an online video-hosting service that lets people share their videos
• Blogs - internet sites that contain a series of entries or 'posts' about topics of interest to the author, much like an online 'diary'
• Coupon sites - websites that offer discount coupons for goods, services and events
• Online photo-sharing services - websites that allow users to store, organize and share their photo collections
• Location-based marketing sites - websites that deliver targeted social media marketing messages to customers in particular locations, through mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets
• Customer review sites - websites that feature customer reviews of goods and services.

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