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A Social Media Marketing Industry Report surveyed 3720 marketers, owners and solopreneurs. Interesting trends emerged from this survey. Understanding these trends can prove to be useful for your business, leading to sales. So, here are 4 important social media trends gathered from this industry report: 1: Social Media is Vital for Any Business 92% consider social media to be vital for any business. It’s not surprising that 96% of respondents use social media. If that’s not enough, most respondents use Facebook to promote their business. 2: B2B and B2C Use Social Media For Different Purposes B2B marketers consider LinkedIn to be the #1 social media platform. B2C marketers use Facebook and other platforms. Also, 71% of B2B marketers want to learn more about LinkedIn even if only a handful use ads. 75% of these marketers use Facebook ads. This is because every consumer they’d like to reach out to is on Facebook. 3: Marketers Aren’t Sure If Facebook Efforts Are Working Most small businesses use Facebook for promotional activities. Yet marketers aren’t sure if these efforts are working. In other words, whether they are building brand awareness and customer relationships. This could translate to leads and sales. Either they haven’t met their goals or don’t have any. This is why only one in three marketers consider Facebook to be effective. 4: Small Business Spend 6 or More Hours on Facebook Social media management requires a decent amount of time. Small business owners worry about this as they have to work on other tasks. While Post Planner and HootSuite help to reduce time, it still isn’t enough. In fact 33% spend 1 to 5 hours every week while 25% spend 6 to 10 hours. Only 19% spend 20 hours and above each week. Link:...
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Improving your social media engagement has a number of benefits not limited to an increase in comments and likes. Without a doubt, creativity plays an important role in achieving this objective. Here are four ways by which you can increase your social media engagement: #1: Question Your Audience Creatively Asking questions might be a simple thing but to infuse a bit of creativity involves much more effort – something that can result in engaging more of your customers. Instead of asking a basic question, make it witty, funny while trying to get your customers better. This will make a real difference. Zomato is one prominent example of this technique. #2: Unique Social Media Contests A number of brands hold social media contests. So it is rather common and demands something unique if you want to make an impact on your engagement stats. Make sure you think about your contest carefully so that people want to participate, share and discuss on their personal pages. #3: Q & A Sessions Establishing a forum for your customers is an excellent idea since your customers are more likely to have questions rather than you. Facebook posts, Google Hangouts and Twitter Chats are ways by which they can find out more about your company and your product too. Interviewing experts related to your industry is a good way of getting attention from your customers too. #4: Work with Social Causes Connecting with social causes not directly related to your brand is actually a good thing. Doing nice things for these causes can enhance your branding. So, you can either create a separate campaign or spread the word throughout your social media pages....
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As per figures reported by comScore in mid-April, Bing has been able to reach a 20% share of the search market in the USA. This is a record for the search engine. As for Yahoo, the percentage of market gained is at 12.7%. Since Bing and Yahoo have now joined forces in an alliance, the Yahoo Bing Network is currently enjoying a 33% market share. This figure is by far the highest market share that the search engine alliance has been able to reach. In December 2012 comScore has reported that the alliance was at a 28 percent in the search market. As for the market leader, Google is at a 64.4% share this year against the 67% reach it enjoyed in 2012. These figures alone are of prime importance to search marketers. Optimizing for the search engine that holds a third of the market is crucial. However, the adoption rate for the Yahoo Bing Network by marketers has not significantly increased. According to a recent study pertaining to the performance of paid searches on Google AdWords and Yahoo Bing Network, it was found out that on average, only about a third of advertisers had displayed an ad on the first SERP for both Yahoo Bing and Google during the year. The percentage who had displayed Google alone amounted to 66% while those displaying Yahoo Bing alone were only at 2%. This implies that marketers banking on Google alone might be missing out a third of the consumer searches and might consider Yahoo Bing in their...
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By Pierre Zarokian from Reputation Stars Nik Ritchie, known partier and exposer of dirt, started TheDirty.com to try and out people in his local community for the rotten things they do. It was meant to help warn people of an incoming disaster, but the site does a poor job moderating content and posts almost everything someone says. Some of that information amounts to slander, but TheDirty uses the Communications Decency Act to get away with their illicit activities. If you’ve been listed on TheDirty, here is what you need to do to get your posting removed. DMCA and Legal Approaches Most smaller websites are scared of legal action, which makes a DMCA an effective tool for removing something online if the webmaster is a single person without much money. TheDirty is a much larger operation and is prepared for legal battles. Nik Ritchie even publicizes them. Don’t make the situation worse by letting TheDirty publicly air your complaints even further, and forget the DMCA. You would be lucky if Nik Ritchie responded at all. Nik Ritchie is still protected by the CDA because he posts content written by others. The only time Ritchie has ever lost a legal challenge over this was the time he added his own comments to the content in question. However, there is a proprietary and legal method practiced by our legal team. TheDirty is a bit more responsive to legal action than Ripoff Report, but you cannot simply file a complaint and have the posting removed. If you need assistance removing a post from TheDirty, contact our reputation management firm...
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By Pierre Zarokian of RepEngage Your reputation means more than just the opinions of people around you. Companies like Google and Yelp struggle with a basic problem: how to determine the authenticity of a person. Reputation management is commonly employed to fight off a crisis, that’s true, but it’s also useful when you want to grow a brand or distinguish your name from someone else’s. Here are some tips to help manage your reputation. Remove Unwanted Content The first step in managing your reputation is to get whatever unfavorable content exists off the Internet. The basic route to do this is using a DMCA notice, which allows you to essentially claim a copyright on content that involves you. This doesn’t always work, which can sometimes mean a legal method is required to get the content removed. This is costly, and doesn’t always come with a guarantee. A better, and more cost effective approach, is to address the problems within the review (if any real complaints exist) and build up your image further. Create Profiles The next step in building your brand is to claim the real estate associated with it. Start claiming social profiles and YouTube channels related to your name and your brand. Don’t leave them idle; construct a plan to post content regularly. Make it interesting and try to get your ideas to go viral on social media. This does an effective job at switching focus away from the crisis towards more positive aspects of your business. Become an Expert Solidify yourself as an expert with thoughtful and timely content on high-profile blogs and websites. Start applying to write for places like Forbes, Wired and Wall Street Journal. These sources are looking for business professionals to bring more commentary to their publications. That presents you with an excellent chance to establish what you know, and talk more about your products and...
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Google+ Local is an invaluable tool for businesses’ local SEO campaigns. This is because the platform drives search results on to Google Maps. In order to maximize the efficiency of this tool, businesses need to foster unique and good quality content, positive reviews but also a consistent and ongoing strategy. Even though Google+ Local does not have an huge pool of active audience for the time being, it presents with a great potential when it comes to local SEO rankings. Brands, therefore, need to devise their strategy by including Google+ Local in their local SEO initiatives. However, one of the most notable mistakes made by businesses when using Google+ Local is that they do not maintain the efforts. The listing will sure need to be created, but that is not the end of the local SEO strategy. The listing would need to be updated. New content would need to be regularly added. The contact details and descriptions should be used to their full potential by including interesting items such as pictures. The keywords would also need to be developed around the site’s content. Brands can also make use of their past experience with Yelp to bring a boost to their local SEO using Google+ Local. The product from Google is now standing where Yelp was about eight years ago. Yelp was offering rewards to users in order to build a community of active and trusted reviewers of local businesses. Google is set to surpass the success of such destination review sites such as Yelp or even...
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Instagram has recently surprised quite a few with their surge in active users to reach 300 million users. This figure is not only significant in itself. It also marked the fact that Instagram has now surpassed Twitter in active users. The latter is at 284 million users now. This brought speculations about whether Instagram is on its way to un-crown Twitter when it comes to be the best social news provider. Speculations have been going haywire and some social analytics experts have even chimed in to remind marketers that Instagram has already surpassed Twitter when it comes to user engagement. The social analytics firm Socialbakers has, for instance, compared the top 25 brands for Instagram and Twitter engagement. The survey has demonstrated that engagement rates per post were nearly 50 times higher on Instagram. The firm analyzed data for the 3-months period ending December 9 and found that the average engagement rate on Instagram was 3.31% per post for a major brand (taking into consideration likes and comments). For Twitter, however, the rate was at 0.07% per tweet and this took into consideration retweets, replies and favorites. During the 3 months period, brands had on average 38 times more interactions on Instagram than on Twitter. For a comparative figure on Instagram the interactions amounted to 6.5 million a month while that on Twitter was about 167,000. Some of these brands were Starbucks, GoPro, Aeropostale, Victoria’s Secret and Forever21. Speculations even considered whether Instagram would soon rise to be able to keep up with...
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