Email Still Trumps Social Media for Online Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

Email marketing wins more online customers than Facebook and Twitter, but it lags behind organic search.

The customer acquisition landscape is constantly in flux. The introduction of disruptive technologies and tools over the last few years has spawned enormous changes in online marketing. But a recent report from Custora, maker of a predictive analytics platform, reveals that online retailers are winning new customers via traditional email marketing at quadruple the rate they did four years ago. The good old-fashioned marketing method still provides the biggest bang for the buck when it comes to reaching and retaining high-value customers online.

The study analyzed data from 72 million customers from 86 U.S. retailers across 14 industries and tracked the channels from which customers were clicking to e-commerce sites. While email proved to be a strong channel for growing a customer base, organic search was found to be the most popular driver. Facebook drove very few sales and Twitter drove none. Email was also shown to carry a higher customer lifetime value (the profit a company expects to earn from their entire future relationship with a customer) than social media channels.

The report also revealed that the lifetime value of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average, and that the most valuable online shoppers tend to come from more rural states. Here is some more detailed information from the study:

Channels

Customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the last 4 years.

Email marketing has been a growing trend in e-commerce, with an increasing number of retailers building communities and collecting email addresses, then converting those contacts into customers. Organic search continues to grow as a reliable channel, accounting for nearly 16% of customers acquired. The latter finding reinforces the use of content marketing along with investing in search engine marketing.

Customer lifetime value

The CLV of customers acquired through Twitter is 23% lower than average.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) refers to the future profit a company expects to earn from a customer throughout their relationship with the business. The highest-value customers arrive through organic searches (54% higher than average). Customers acquired through Twitter tend to be worth about 23% less than average. This may be attributed to the frequency of discounts offered within tweets.

Geography

The most valuable online shoppers overall tend to come from more rural states.

Shoppers in rural areas tend to have fewer options for buying specialty goods locally and make more purchases online.




Article curated from Social Media Today

To learn more about how email marketing can help your business, call us at 855-IES-MARK or click here.

4 More Ways to Boost Your Twitter Followers

Social media experts weigh in on the best ways to attract loyal followers.

I'm so close I can feel it.

Over the past months, I've been experimenting more and more with social media, trying to find out how to gain more followers. It's not just for fun. If you only have a few hundred followers, you're speaking to a small audience.

For me, Twitter helps spread the word about new articles and keeps me connected with readers. It's also one of the primary tools I use for connecting with public relations folks. Sometimes, I even send out a mass tweet and let people know I'm leaving for the day or that I'm focusing on answering emails for the next hour or so. It's invaluable.

Back in 2011, I wrote a fairly seminal piece (at least, it was seminal for me) about gaining more Twitter followers. My goal back then was to hit 800 followers in a few weeks. I used a tool called Sprout Social. (In fact, I'm still using this app on my HTC One smartphone, on the Web, and on my iPad after two years.) It's best feature is the ability to post one tweet to multiple accounts at once and then track your success in how many people retweet what you say. And, I love the simple interface.

After two years, I am now approaching about 5,000 followers. It's great. I know my social media efforts have paid off and that there's a wider audience that reads what I post. What I've heard from a few experts is that my audience for social media is more "organic" than most. People seem to follow because they really want to read my posts. They say it's better to have fewer "real" followers than thousands of fake ones who may or may not care about what you have to say--and never click on your links.

That said, I'm still open to ideas. So I put out a call with a few social media experts who looked at my Twitter activity and they came up with a few more ideas. These tips seem to be working so far, although I have not quite hit the 5,000 mark yet. I'm close!

1. Post the same links multiple times
Rebecca Caroe is a social media expert at Creative Agency Secrets in New Zealand. She helped me quite a bit because I was making a big mistake. I usually only posted a link once or twice, but people tend to make "drive-bys" on a Twitter stream and only check for recent activity. There's a reason why the show Million Second Quiz on NBC posts a dozen tweets an hour. They are hoping casual followers at least see a few interesting links.

Caroe told me to post my own links at least three times in a day hitting a few different time zones. I've started doing this lately. Over the past month, I've added about 130 followers which seems to be tied to this change in how I post my links. I may even start posting the same link more times per day and see if that helps.

These links increase your followers when people visit your Twitter page and see what you've been up to and what you do. People follow active posters.

2. Follow your followers on other social channels
This one seems obvious but it's easy to overlook. The fact is, the followers you have on Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn might not be following you on Twitter.

Maybe they don't even know you are on Twitter--or they don't know your handle. Caroe also told me to ping my followers on other nets and ask them if they want to follow me on Twitter. This is a manual process, unfortunately. (There's a good start-up idea right there--a tool to automate this.)

Of course, the trick is to follow people in your same field and who have similar interests. You should also look for "influencers" who have a lot of followers. By following these folks, you are making an introduction to state your intent and, in many cases, they will follow you back. In general, following the influencers is a strategy every social media expert told me about. 

By spending a few minutes looking for the gurus and following them, you can find a bastion of new followers for yourself.

3. Interact with your followers like crazy
Harry Hawk, the social media strategist for Leske's Bakery in Brooklyn, told me he increased his followers to 5,000 in just two months, mostly by following key influencers. He says the key is to go beyond just a follow, though. He told me he's interacted with high-profile companies like @KlondikeBars and @Toyota by posting questions and interacting with them. Eventually, after a relationship develops, the influencers will feel compelled to follow you back. This is also a great way to keep the followers you do have--letting them know you are alive and active on Twitter, not comatose.

4. Show your personality
I keep hearing this advice from most social media experts like Phil Laboon, the CEO of marketing agency EyeFlow, so I've been trying to live this one out. The idea is to be yourself--to show your character. Too many Twitter streams have a banal list of links and nothing else. You get the feeling there's a bot generating them. New followers will find you eventually, but they will decide whether they want to stick around when they see you are a real person talking about a real company. I've been inserting a few jokes here and there, adding quips and quotes, and always (always!) answering direct messages. When someone gives me a mention on Twitter, I try to thank them and post a follow-up response. This tells new followers they will get the same kind of attentive response.

"Don't just build followers. You really need to stay active and continually engage with your audience, not just build useless followers you never engage with. You need to share engaging, valuable, or educational content. You really have to establish yourself as an resource for something whether tips, articles, news, opinions, or humor," says Laboon.

After two years of working hard, my goal is on the horizon. When I finally do hit 5,000, I'll post again with the tips that worked the best.

To learn more about how Twitter can help your business, click here.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

4 Key Elements of Your Facebook Marketing

With all the ongoing changes happening with Facebook, it’s sometimes tough to keep up and sort out what’s important and what may or may not impact your everyday efforts to engage with a vibrant community, reach a wider audience and ultimately communicate more efficiently. Below are the four key components to consider in order for brands to succeed on Facebook:

1. ORGANIC EFFORTS

Folks familiar with Facebook’s infamous EdgeRank algorithm will know that brands posting on Facebook will only reach, on average, 16% of their fans. Depending on size of page, type of industry and audience and, more importantly, how the page is managed, this percentage can vary anywhere between 7% to 33%, and sometimes as high as 50%. To reach such levels of penetration within your Facebook fan base usually requires dynamic community management, with tactics such as:

• Posting aspirational, humorous or emotional pictures
• Asking questions, not always directly linked to the brand, but coherent with its identity and community interests
• Contests and special offers – after all, number one reason why people “like” a brand is in order to get deals, discounts or access to exclusive offers or events
• Sharing relevant articles, photos and videos
• Asking people to complete a sentence, fill in the blank, insert a caption, etc.

As part of its recent major changes, Facebook announced two features – Story Bump and Last Actor – allowing engaging posts you haven’t seen to be bumped up to the top of News Feed later in the day, thus increasing the odds of you seeing it and interacting with its content: like, comment or share.

2. PAID COMPONENTS

The truth, however, is that no matter how dynamic their community management may be, brands now need to plan for investments on Facebook in order to reach more people, get more likes, shares and comments, and to enhance the overall page performance. And while Facebook ads are still part of the equation, there are now a variety of options to consider:

1. Classic Facebook Ads, appearing in the right side – desktop only. These can be purchased directly within the Facebook ad platform, or through more sophisticated techniques using retargeting, through Facebook Exchange (FBX).
   
    
    
    
    

   
   

   
   

   
   

   Boosting a Post on Facebook

   
   
2. Promoted Posts, also known as “boost” posts. For a given amount, you can ensure that a given post will reach a wider audience, with the range varying according to the set amount you invest in.
3. Page Post Ads are similar to promoted posts, in that they serve to highlight a given post. However, its mechanism resembles more of classic media buy, with CPM  or CPC targets, and more precise audience demographics and targeting capabilities.
4. Sponsored Stories are ads appearing in your Newsfeed, including on mobile devices. This is important since 60% of active users access their account through a mobile device! Brands highlight a given user’s activity, so there is less creativity and control, but these ads tend to perform better given their authentic nature, since user’s friends are exposed to a “genuine”message from someone in their network.
5. Facebook Offers. Facebook used to offer the option to send out online offers to fans, but this ceased on July 3rd, 2013. There is still the possibility to extend in-store offers, using the “offers” feature. Facebook Offers are free to create, but you will need to spend some money to promote them to your selected audience.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to spend money to spark your fan base, and savvy community managers now juggle between some of these initiatives in order to follow up with organic, more natural techniques to keep the interest alive and conversation going.

3. CROSSING PLATFORMS

The biggest mistake brands make, and most organizations in general, is to look at Facebook as its own entity. Facebook is a great platform, but it ought to be inserted in an over-arching online vision and strategy, aligning with email marketing initiatives, i.e. newsletters, automated emails, etc. as well as other social media, such as Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube or TripAdvisor. There also needs to be a content marketing approach, identifying what role for the corporate blog, what role for social media, what role for user-review sites, and so on… within an editorial and tactic calendar.

Brands who achieve optimal results with Facebook are those who cross-promote their various channels, including moving beyond online with offline (in-store) offers, for examples. Such initiatives also help providing tangible results, which in turn tend to contribute to ROI calculations that are often an issue to demonstrate, specially for brands who rely solely on engagement indicators.

4. ANALYTICS

Speaking of indicators, Facebook greatly enhanced its Insights module in the administrative panel. Among other improvements, we can now clearly see the distinction between paid and organic reach, with simpler metrics and easier to download, for those wo wish to export or extract data for further analysis. In case you missed them, here are some of the salient improvements:

• Each post now has its own scorecard, which helps to determine which type of post works better for your specific audience.
• The “Virality” indicator has been replaced by “Engagement”, in which post clicks are now included.
• There are now six tabs to choose from and where one can dig for lots of useful data about the page performance: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People.

BONUS: A REVIEW SITE?

A lesser known feature was also unveiled recently that could prove to be a boon or a bombshell with the travel & hospitality vertical: the “Review” button that now appears on Facebook pages.

The new “Review” button on Facebook Pages

Most people don’t necessarily rely on Facebook for other users’ reviews and comments, with sites such as TripAdvisor or Yelp that have a strong leadership and awareness for this purpose alone. Nevertheless, Facebook positioned itself strategically earlier this year within the search field, launching its Graph Search functionality, so it would only make sense to now add this layer of user reviews. For an upcoming trip to Las Vegas, Chicago, Paris or Rome, users may want to use their Facebook search capabilities, now combined with these reviews that add context, in particular if comments come from folks within our network. Is that really Facebook’s intention? Hard to tell at this point, but travel marketers should take note of these developments. One never knows…

Sample of user reviews for Fairmont Chateau Frontenac hotel, in Quebec City

Are there other new features within Facebook you think are true game-changers or should have been mentioned in this post? 

To learn more about Facebook's recent changes or how Facebook marketing can help your business, click here for a free quote from IES Marketing.

Article curated from Social Media Today

Five Easy Ways to Expand Your Clientele Using LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a versatile platform for businesses to expand in many different ways. If you know how to use the networking site to your advantage, you can take your company to greater levels using it. Here are five simple tactics by which you can bring in more clients and more value to your business.

Use company status updates






If your gutter guard manufacturing company has a LinkedIn page, then make sure that you use the facility where certain employees and managers under you can update news and other relevant information on the page directly. By doing this, you are effectively cutting down your own work regarding developing and updating the page, and at the same time keeping your followers engaged. These updates can then be shared, commented on and liked by viewers, which helps keep them thinking about your company at all times. This way, clients will think of your company first because of the repetition and frequent renewal of interest.

Focus on specialization and find an exact target group



LinkedIn is different from other networking sites because it is targeted at working professionals and people who wish to expand their network of like-minded people in their areas of expertise. Since the target group is already specialized, you can grab the attention of a very specific group of individuals. These people are already prospective clients, making it easier for you to communicate with them.

Head hunting and LinkedIn



Search for skilled labor through this networking platform. LinkedIn makes things easier for you because information is freely available. Background checks can be done and you will be able to hire
 competent and efficient workers. If your staff is good, it is an automatic indicator that your company will deliver positive results. Many clients look at the employees of a company before working with the company itself.

Differentiate yourself and stand out among the crowd



There are many opportunities for you to expand your clientele using LinkedIn. However, it is important to remember that there are a large number of organizations participating in similar activities as you, each one trying to best the other. If you do not have anything special to catch people’s attention, it will be difficult for you to be found, even to your target audience.

Use LinkedIn as a place to promote even offline activities



If your company conducts seminars or other such sources of information regularly, it is advisable to promote this through LinkedIn. Send out invitations to such events online, and you will find that you have an additional number of interested people attending them. This will give you a better opportunity to pitch your business strategy and acquire more clients. Offline methods are excellent for sealing deals.

LinkedIn can only help you get the attention of potential clients. Offline advertising has more of a personal touch and is directed only at the select viewers at that moment. The Internet simply provides you with opportunities to eliminate a large number of people so that you know who to pitch to. 

Article curated from Social Media Today

How Often Should You Post Social Media Updates?

One question that business owners new to social media ask us often is this one: How often should I post status updates to my social media accounts?  The answer is, it depends.

Keep in mind that all social media is different. Facebook and Twitter are very different from Google+ and LinkedIn.
 
Before you start posting to any social media site, you should take some time to understand the expectations of its current users. Social media communities are all different, and each of the popular social media websites are a unique community with distinct differences.

Twitter users, for example, don’t mind seeing your posts several times throughout the day. Twitter streams are so full of messages that fly on and fly off your screen so fast that you can miss most of the updates one of your followers posts and you won’t miss a thing. You can always go back and review those posts if you want.

Facebook is a little different. You want to stay relevant and visible, but not post too much. Typically one to two posts per day can be enough for  Facebook.

LinkedIn users, on the other hand, expect that you’ll be too busy to constantly post to your LinkedIn profile. On LinkedIn, a couple of times a week is generally enough.

So to answer the question, there’s no definitive answer. Post to your social media accounts as often as you have something useful to say, but keep in mind that each community is a unique community and has its own set of standards and expectations. Learn what those are and see how you – and your unique business message –  fit in, and you’ll find the recipe for your social media posting frequency that works right for you.

Article curated from Social Media Today

When to Tweet It Twice

Maximize the potential of your most popular tweets by recirculating them (but don't just literally retweet yourself).

For brands or individuals on Twitter, getting a blizzard of retweets can be a coup--and a disappointment. There's nothing like the thrill of successfully engaging your fans, delighting them enough to share whatever you had to say or link. But you also know that only a portion of your audience saw your uber-shareable message. In that case, you might wonder: Can I tweet it again?

Tomasz Tunguz, a Redpoint Ventures partner and former product manager for Google's social media monetization team, had the same question. Tunguz, who focuses on consumer Internet, online marketing and digital media investments, decided to experiment with periodically re-upping some of his older tweets.

While his methods wouldn't hold up to peer review, the results should still intrigue anyone managing a social media account. For this experiment, Tunguz used his personal Twitter account, which has just over 10,000 followers. He chose 30 of his previously-used tweets to recirculate, using identical language each time, but varying the timing of attempts. 

"Sometimes it's a few days, otherwise it several months or even quarters," he explained over email.

Tunguz's results hint at two potentially useful discoveries. First, "each subsequent attempt gains about 75% of the previous number of retweets--a very encouraging metric," he wrote on his blog. This would indicate that the second or third tweets aren't likely to achieve the success of the original, but could still be worthwhile for driving attention.

What's really interesting is what Tunguz found by looking more closely. He noted that tweets with high initial retweet rates acted differently than those with low rates. "Recirculating a moderately successful post, one with about 2 initial retweets, results in about 2 more retweets. But recirculating a very successful post, one with on average 9 retweets, creates a cascade of another 4 retweets," he blogged. The numbers suggest that it's only useful to recirculate your most popular content.

While Tunguz is clear that his results may not be consistent for different publications or accounts, it seems like it might be a strategy for others to test out: Let unpopular tweets drift down the Twitter stream for good. But if there's something your audience really likes, recirculating it, even months later, may help draw noticeably more attention.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

How Online Marketing As You Know It Has Changed

Google just took big steps to make search more secure. What it means for marketers? Time to rethink your SEO strategy.

Think search marketing is old fashioned? Maybe, but it's still probably the source of your most valuable customers. The thing is, the way you handle SEO has just changed for good--but not in a way that will make you happy.

What Happened

Google has just moved to secure search. That is, all searches are now performed using HTTPS rather than just those for people who are signed into their Google accounts. Put in non-technical terms, that means that Google will no longer pass keyword search data to websites. That means you can't track users by the keywords they've used.

Knowing keywords is vital in online marketing because that's how you know what prospects and customers were looking for when they show up at your virtual doorstep. You might be able to adjust your content and targeted keywords and then see how each change affects trends, but forget real time. You're running blind. Here's how integrated marketing firm V3 puts it:
 
For instance, if I've got a client that sells little girls' accessories, and I know there's a lot of search traffic for the phrase "girls red tutu" (instead of, say, the phrase "red tutus for girls") I'm going to make sure my product descriptions on the website use that phrase, my blog content uses that phrase and my social media content utilizes that phrase. That's like using honey to draw the bees. You do the homework to find out what it is they are searching for, then make sure your marketing messages and content speak in the language customers and prospects use when they are searching.

The change at Google doesn't affect what other search engines like Bing do, but let's get real: Google has maintained about two-thirds of the search market. When you lose Google, you lose the big majority of the keyword data you used to get.

As V3 notes, this isn't a death knell. It takes the emphasis off getting on the first page of Google and puts it onto creating content that provides real value to customers and prospects. Simplistic strategies such as relying on the right combination of a few words lose power. Instead, you need the expertise to create what people will actually want to read, view, and hear. However, make no mistake: this is one major upset and a lot of marketers will have to make some big shifts.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

The Surprising Identity of Each Social Network

Facebook boasts the largest and richest demographic, Twitter has a surprisingly young user network, and 68 percent of Instagram's users are women.

Each social media platform has cultivated a unique identity thanks to the demographics of the people who participate in the network. Some platforms are preferred by young adults, who are most active in the evening, others by high-income professionals, who are posting throughout the workday.

We explained in a recent report why many brands and businesses need platform-focused social media strategies, rather than a diluted strategy that aims to be everywhere at once.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we break down the demographics of each major social media platform to help brands and businesses decide which networks they should prioritize. Being able to identify the demographics of social media audiences at a granular level is the basis for all targeted marketing and messaging. The report also spotlights the opportunities that lie ahead for each social network, how demographics affect usage patterns, and why some platforms are better for brands than others.



Here are some of our surprising findings:

Facebook still skews young, but the 45- to 54-year-old age bracket has seen 45% growth since year-end 2012. Among U.S. Internet users, 73% with incomes above $75,000 are on Facebook (compared to 17% who are on Twitter). Eight-six percent of Facebook's users are outside the U.S.

Instagram: Sixty-eight percent of Instagram's users are women.

Twitter has a surprisingly young user population for a large social network -- 27% of 18 to 29-year-olds in the U.S. use Twitter, compared to only 16% of people in their thirties and forties.

LinkedIn is international and skews toward male users.

Google+ is the most male-oriented of the major social networks. It's 70% male.

Pinterest is dominated by tablet users. And, according to Nielsen data, 84% of U.S. Pinterest users are women.

Tumblr is strong with teens and young adults interested in self-expression, but only 8% of U.S. Internet users with incomes above $75,000 use Tumblr.

Click here to learn more about IES Marketing's social media marketing services and how your business can take advantage of these social media networks and their audiences.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

Facebook wises up with dumbed-down ad tools

The social network is guiding marketers though the ad creation process, telling them exactly what to buy based on what results they want.

Facebook is aiming to take the guesswork out of picking the right ads with new tools released Tuesday designed to automate the process around an advertiser's expressed objectives.

The social network has reconfigured the ad-buying process to start with a question: What's your advertising objective? Facebook will then recommend an ad type for one of eight possible objectives: Web site conversions, clicks to Web site, Page post engagement, Page likes, app installs, app engagement (a new option introduced last week), offer claims, or event responses. The system is designed to give advertisers more of the results they want with the least amount of manual labor.

Facebook will, as usual, auto-determine where to place ads, but it is also letting advertisers chose where their ads appear so they can tailor desktop and mobile ads to link to distinct destinations. In addition, the Ads Manager tool now correlates campaign results with chosen objectives and calculates the cost per conversion. 

The objective-based system is built into all of Facebook's ad creation tools, including its API, meaning advertisers will have access to the hand-holding approach no matter where they purchase ads.

The new leave-it-to-us system seems geared around giving Facebook's selection of advertising options, already simplified in recent months, the broadest appeal possible. By telling marketers and advertisers exactly what to buy, how to bid, and where to run their units, the social network is dumbing down the process so that even clueless advertisers can get more bang for their buck. If it works, the new formula could have a noticeable impact on Facebook's advertising business.

Click here to learn more about Facebook marketing for your business with IES Marketing's social media marketing services that start at only $100 a month.

Article curated from C-Net

3 Things You Didn't Know About Mobile (But Should)

If you're halfway paying attention, you know mobile is big. But just how big? Early results from a massive study shed light on the topic.

Mobile is important, right? There are all those many hundreds of millions of people who can use their smartphones and tablets on the Internet to do research, view videos, and see consumer product recommendations. Smart marketers and entrepreneurs know that mobile is a must.

But that's often just a vague sense, like so many trends in business that exist because enough people point to them and say, "Look, there's a trend!" Consultants, vendors, and would-be gurus all want business owners and managers to buy into whatever it is that they're selling.

Here is some data coming out of AOL and University of Virginia researchers about how consumers are using mobile. (Disclosure: I write for AOL Jobs, among other places, though I learned of this independently.) What makes it interesting is two-fold.

First, someone crunched through a hell of a lot of data: 500 billion online ad impressions in travel, retail, auto, and telecom and 100 million conversion events across all devices. The conversion events were booking a hotel, flight, or car reservation for travel; making a purchase for retail; finding a local dealer, requesting more information, or configuring a car for auto; and purchasing of new plans and devices for telecom.

Although volume doesn't necessarily make information representative of markets as a whole, take an honest look at enough of it and, almost by definition, you have something that is of interest to businesses. Second, some of the results show that mobile may be taking off faster than most people, including industry cheerleaders, expected.

Mobile is important for conversions
In these four industries at least, 31 percent of conversion events happened on a mobile device, and that was up by 28 percent from the previous year. Telecom had the highest mobile conversion at 37 percent, while the lowest was 20 percent for travel. If you aren't advertising smartly on mobile, chances are you're giving away a chance to do business.

Mobile is big at home
Mobile is supposed to be when people are on the go. But apparently much of the public's get-up-and-go got up and went. Consumers spent 25 percent of their online time at home on a smartphone or tablet and three-quarters of all mobile ad impressions happened at home. That can affect how you structure a marketing program.

iPads really sell
You knew that iPads were the biggest seller in the tablet space, though devices running Android are quickly catching up. But when it comes to selling products, iPad is king by a long shot. About 65 percent of mobile conversions happened on tablets and 85 percent of those happened on iOS devices. No way to know whether that is due to the total volume that has shipped or if iPad owners are more likely to respond to advertising.

It's impossible to know whether there is a novelty factor at work--people taking action because the whole process of using a tablet is still relatively new, which would leave room for conversion rates to drop over time. However, the prudent approach for entrepreneurs for now is to make sure they treat mobile as an important marketing channel and one often used at home, so don't assume that mobile is only good for catching people when they are near your establishment.

Click here to learn more about how our mobile marketing services can help your business.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine

How to Create a Great Hashtag to Advertise Your Business

It goes without saying that if a business has a Twitter account, they’ll probably be including a hashtag in their tweets. Or several hashtags, many of which may be generic keywords to better attract new fans to follow them with (#business #branding #tips), but some will be created specifically for the business, by the business. For some companies, especially those with less hashtag crafting expertise, this fun activity can easily turn stressful if all you have on your mind is the need for trending speed and to go viral in the span of a few hours. What’s a brand fresh to this #PoundSignScene to do? As my own company works on building a hashtag for a contest we have coming up later this month, I picked up a few tips along the way to help your custom made hashtag stand out from the crowd.


1) Conduct research.
While you’ll never be able to trademark a hashtag for your personal use, it’s important to keep an eye out on whether or not the hashtag you have in mind is unique to what the business does and how they do it. The simple way to do this is to type in the hashtag into the search toolbar and see what else shows up and in what capacity. 

#RulesoftheDunk might sound just right for a basketball team’s account but it’s a hashtag that makes a regular appearance on Oreo’s feed to talk cookies with. You can use that hashtag if you like, but remember that in doing so you might confuse other Twitter users when your “rules of the dunk” don’t include a glass of milk on the side.

2) Integrate your brand’s name (or product) into the mix.
Don’t take this tip too literally, especially if you have a business name that’s pretty long. You don’t have to put your entire brand name into a hashtag and it doesn’t mean you don’t have to concentrate on skimping out on being creative either. Just keep a few small elements in the hashtag that will keep it from being confused with another brand’s. A great example of a company that does this well is Victoria’s Secret with their #AskAnAngel hashtags. Q&As catch the eye when the subject of the chat is identified and in the case of VS, long noted for referring to their models as “angels”, it’s a safe bet that you’ll be sending your tweet questions to a Victoria’s Secret Angel to answer.

3) Keep it on the short side – and easy to read.
Hashtags are at their best when they’re to the point and you have no trouble reading or typing them out. Avoid placing two of the same letters together unless one is capitalized – a hashtag like #letsstoppoverty is slightly better when spelled as #LetsStopPoverty or even shorter at #StopPoverty. Caps go a long way in making the hashtag stand out legibly. Additionally, keep in mind that you can’t include punctuation or Emojis in a hashtag, just in case you were looking to include that thumbs up symbol everywhere you tweet. And while we’re on the topic of everywhere, use your hashtag when it’s most appropriate. You don’t need it in every tweet you send out and it won’t fit into the context of every message either. That only means one thing… time for you and your business to get cracking on making more unique hashtags!

To learn more about how Twitter can help your business, click here to learn about IES Marketing's social media marketing services.
 
Article curated from Social Media Today 
 
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How to Optimize Your Facebook Fan Page to Get More Traffic

Social Media Platforms are the place to keep ongoing social communications as well as these are the potential sources of website and business branding. One of the biggest social media sensations is Facebook which has started his journey from February, 2004. Either you are an internet marketer or a webmaster; do you know Facebook fan pages could drive more and more traffic to your website? You may have heard that one is getting hundreds and thousands of visitors from a fan page to their website. You may ask yourself how they do it. Even, one of my friends asked me if it is possible or not. But on that moment, I didn’t know how they drive so much traffic like that. But after a deep research, I came to share some effective Facebook Fan Page optimization tips that will certainly lead you a high number of traffic daily. No problem how many visitors you got in the past, but optimizing your Facebook with these strategies will surely make changes in your traffic stats.

 

 

Top 8 Strategies that You Should Apply On Your Facebook Fan Page:

1. Design Informative Cover and Profile Photo: A Fan Page will look outstanding only when you will use a high quality and informative cover photo and a profile photo. The cover photo is an 851px wide and 315px height image area what you have to design depending on your page niche. You have to use this pixel resolution to fit the area perfectly. As it is for your website, you should include your website title and tagline on the cover with some attractive graphics. Your website URL should also be included there which will encourage the visitors to check your website first. And the profile picture would be your logo but don’t forget to resize it into a square image. Facebook profile photo area is optimized to show square size images. And the minimum size of profile photo should be 180px width and 180px height. If you didn’t learn yet how to design, you may contact with a designer.
2. Make an Arrow From The Cover to The Like Button: An arrow from the cover to the like button will encourage the visitors most to like your page. Likes mean vote. So, usually the fans who liked your page will get all updates from your page to their wall. So, it would be helpful for the fan page increasing likes and also increasing the amount of targeted visitors.
3. Make a Redirection of an I-Frame Tab to Your Website: You should build up a tab just along with the photos and like count tab where the visitors could click on it and enjoy your website live. Redirection tab will redirect visitors to your website or an I-frame tab will show your website in an I-frame box. The good news is that you can create it easily using Facebook static html page app Static IFrame Tab  or Woobox.
4. Include Your Website URL on The Fan Page Short Description: You should include your website URL in the short page description. Because the link on description will be clickable and it would be easy for the visitors to go to your website with just one click. The short description will also be shown on the root page. So, you will get better chances to have clicked on it. 
5. SEO the Fan Page: It is just like the same SEO process as it is for a website. The title of the page will be used as the Meta title and the short description will be used as the Meta description. So, you have to do deep keyword research, choose suitable key phrase and put it in the title and description. Now get some backlinks to your fan page to rank it on the search engines.
6. Regularly Update Your Website News and Offers: As the main purpose of the fan page is promoting your website, regularly update your website news and offers into the page. That doesn’t mean spamming the page all over with links. You have to share relative things with a brief description along with the link in the status updates. If someone likes the status, he could share it and you will get more explores to your status. That’s mean you will get more visitors.
7. Promote Your Fan Page: Start promoting your page through Facebook groups, pages, own websites, forums, advertising etc. But always keep in mind that spamming should be prevented. Because most of the people don’t like spam. Even, for spamming your page could be blocked by yourself. Facebook is now removing spam from their website. They have the full rights to completely delete or block your page. That’s why you should aware of spam otherwise your journey could be finished at the beginning.
8. Get Genuine Fans: The last and important point is getting unique likes. It doesn’t mean to have 10K or 20K likes in a single day using bots. I think, 100 real likes are 100% better than 10K fake likes. Likes from bots won’t help you in branding website or getting visitors. It is sure that you will get zero traffic from bots like. So be conscious to get likes. I advise you not to buy likes from those providers who provide 1K or 2K likes in 3-5$. If you really want to buy, you should choose someone that will guaranty you 100% real fans whatever he cost. Getting fans will never end up and it won’t have any limit. The more you lead likes, the more you get visitors.

Analyze How Traffic Increase from the Referrer Facebook:

After implementing all tactics, now analyze how visitors increase from Facebook. Check for your website stats and you will see the changes. But never expect to have 100 visitors daily only having 100 genuine likes on your page. That is unspecific but the more fans will drive you more traffic.

Article curated from Social Media Today

Facebook Really Wants You to Advertise

The social network is trying to make it easier than ever for small businesses to buy ads. Here are 3 questions you should be thinking about.

Should your business be advertising on Facebook? The social networking company thinks the answer is yes--and they want to make it as simple as possible.

So far, their efforts seem to be paying off: the company's earnings release noted that Facebook had surpassed 1 million active advertisers. This included 300,000 small businesses using promoted posts in the third quarter; the number increased by 66% just by the next quarter. 

Facebook's latest move to woo entrepreneurs looking to advertise is the just-launched Facebook for Business, which is intended to make it easier than ever for small businesses to get started creating targeted, inexpensive, quick-to-create ads.

Is this something that's right for your company? Here are three things to consider.

What's Special About Facebook Marketing?
It's where the potential clients are. Because ads can be targeted in highly specific ways--married men in Chicago, fans of Breaking Bad, 33-year-olds with children, Dunkin' Donuts employees--it's possible to aim for the exact audience you want.

Facebook can also serve as a branding tool. Increasing the prevalence of a company's name can help it seem popular and ubiquitous, and having a well-maintained, professional looking page can increase trust.

What Are the Ad Options?
Depending on your type of business, there are various options for ads. A marketplace ad, which appears in a side column of a user's newsfeed, can be used to drive traffic, increase page likes, or multiply app downloads. It's not unlike a classifieds ad in print. It's a simple ad that remains static throughout its life, so it's an easy make-and-place design. 

A sponsored story is created organically, whenever someone interacts with the company page. A newsfeed message appears if a user's friend installs an app, likes a post, or makes a comment. It works on the bandwagon principle: a friend did it, so it must be popular.

One new product, mobile app install ads, has recently risen in stardom. These ads, for mobile devices only, encourage the download of other apps. This can be helpful for new developers who have created a product but don't know how to get people to try it out. Now, they can direct their ads to certain devices, categories, and platforms. 

I've Got $500. What Would That Get Me?
50,000 clicks. Advertising is simple and inexpensive, costing only $0.01 per click (CPC). The process allows for budget control on different schedules (daily, monthly, lifetime) and enables additional optimizations, such as paying for ad views or page likes. With CPCs, you pay each time someone clicks on an ad or sponsored story. 

Facebook makes it fairly simple to test out ads for a few weeks, or up to a certain budget level, using a unique attribution link, which is simple to create. By the end of the probation period, you can determine how much traffic is coming from those ads as compared to another service and decide if it's worthwhile to continue.

Even without a designated social media or marketing employee, most of the promotions can be created quickly. The account and ads could be ready less than ten minutes, enabling a campaign to be up and running in the same time as a coffee break.

To learn more about how to use Facebook advertising for your business, click here to learn more about IES Marketing's internet advertising services.

Article curated from Inc. Magazine