It doesn’t take too long on Twitter to realize that there is a whole lot of “stuff” out there. In fact, with an estimated 65 million tweets a day, we all have to be selective about what we pay attention to.
With that in mind, it’s a good idea to not use Twitter as a soapbox to scream a sales or advertising message – followers will drop you like a hot potato and the rest of the world will tune you out. Instead, share stories and experiences, or point out things that are fun and interesting.
When you use Twitter as a marketing medium, your primary goal shouldn’t be to sell anything. You should be looking to come up with something that people will either respond to or pass along to others. Why? For one thing, it’s the only way to hold their attention. And for another, the goal isn’t to bump your sales revenue (at least not right away), it’s to start conversations.
Over time, you can bet that those conversations will lead to other connections, and eventually new sales and accounts. But if you start off the wrong way, you’re never even going to get a foot in the door. To work at all, social media has to be fun. This is especially true on Twitter, so tone down the commercials and start being an interesting tweeter.
Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio Website Design Company, can help your business utilize Social Media.
Ask a handful of business owners what they would need to make their social media marketing plan top notch, and probably more than one would wish for an expensive consultant, unlimited budget, or full-time staff devoted to updating Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
But while any of those could help, they aren’t what you really need. In fact, the three requirements for a strong business social networking plan can boil down to four simple things:
The right customer. If you’re going to find customers and sites like Facebook, then you have to have a very good idea of who you’re looking for. Get to know your perfect customer inside and out.
The right offer. Of course, to actually make any sales you have to sell something that your perfect customer wants. Make sure that your offer stands out in a crowded marketplace.
A plan. Which social media sites are going to be most helpful to you? How often do you need to update them, and with what kind of messages? It’s important to sort this out before you begin, otherwise you could get lost in the day-to-day details.
Some simple tools.Finally, you just have to stay organized and keep your plan on track. With the right tools, like the ones we offer on this site, turning your ideas into new business is simply a matter of connecting the dots.
Social media marketing doesn’t have to be as expensive, or mysterious, as a lot of people think. Just begin with the right questions and ideas, and then use the proper tools to lead you to bottom-line results.Call Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company to help with your web, marketing and advertising campaigns.
With the steady flow of hype and attention that’s being thrown out on social media, mobile marketing, and other newer tools these days, it’s appropriate for business owners to wonder which of the old ideas and tricks are still worth devoting any time and energy to – especially when it comes to blogs. There was a time, only a few years ago, when the first thing a web designer, online marketing expert, or search engine specialist would have advised the business owner to do would be start a blog.
These days, however, there are a lot more blogs than readers, although many of them haven’t been updated in months or longer. So should blogging still be a part of your marketing mix? We feel strongly that it should, but with one minor tweak: the focus shouldn’t be on blogging quantity, but on content quality. Search engines still love blogs, and a fresh supply of writing is a good thing for any business or website. But it’s hardly worth the effort if no one actually reads what you post, so skip the absolute fluff, the keyword-rich “articles” recommended so often in the past, and turn your attention to topics and insights that actually matter to the men and women who buy from you.
There’s always a place online for quality content, and people can recognize it when they see it. As an added bonus, keeping to a regular blogging schedule forces you to come up with new ideas at regular intervals. After a few weeks or months, you might find yourself thinking about things that might not have occurred to you otherwise, which can in turn lead to some of your best strategic breakthroughs. Blogging might not be the hot marketing topic it once was, but that’s actually helpful if you’re willing to devote time and energy to producing something worth reading. So make a regular appointment with yourself to sit down and come up with some fresh posts – you might just surprise yourself and your customers.
Blogging is still an effective form of social media marketing, but only if it’s done the right way. Talk to Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio website design company, about making your blog a stronger tool for bringing in new clients and customers.
To Have More Fun – and Get More Business – Use Social Media to Get Feedback from Customers
It’s often been said that it’s more profitable to listen than it is to speak. As it turns out, at least on social media, it’s a whole lot more fun, too…
Too many small and medium-size businesses use their social media profiles to simply broadcast information and specials. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but it sort of misses the point: social networking works best when it’s fun.
Take advantage of that and make connecting with your company a more enjoyable experience by offering feedback. Rather than giving a coupon for a pancake breakfast, for example, offer a discount on a meal for anyone who will send in their mother’s favorite recipe. Don’t just advertise a sale on flowers; give a free bouquet to anyone who can send a picture of the best arrangement in their home. Or send a gift certificate to the customer who forwards you the best joke on a Friday…
We could go on and on, but you get the idea. To make social media marketing more effective, don’t think of it as marketing at all – consider it a chance to have a fun give-and-take with your customers. They’ll enjoy hearing from you a lot more, and you’ll enjoy what it can do for your business. Contact Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio Web Design company, to find out why so many businesses trust us with their social media marketing
Early on, the developers at Amazon.com figured out something that’s simple, yet profound, and it’s helped them sell billions of books, DVD’s, and other merchandise: customers don’t trust you.
They do, however, usually trust each other.
For Amazon, the natural extension of that realization was to make it simple and easy for customers to review their purchases online. Even if you didn’t like what you bought, at least you could get the satisfaction of warning someone else away from it. On the other hand, if your pick turned out to be a great one, you are encouraged to share your joy and satisfaction.
You can do the same with your company. All of the marketing copy in the world, regardless of how good it is, can’t help you build trust or excitement nearly as quickly as a recommendation from another live person can. It doesn’t matter what you say, because people know it’s coming from you, and so third party endorsement is worth its weight in gold.
Here are three quick ways you can encourage customer feedback online:
Embrace social media. The give-and-take of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn makes it easy for people to comment on their purchases from you. Maintain profiles on all of them and ask people to share their experiences.
Make sure your contact info is everywhere. Few customers are going to dig through your site to find contact information unless their experience with your company was extraordinary. Make it easy for them to find you online and drop you a quick e-mail of thanks while it’s on their mind.
Don’t edit the feedback you get. Sometimes, the news isn’t going to be so great. Believe it or not, though, that can actually help your sales. Reviews work best when people know they are from real customers. That means they don’t expect everything people say about your company to be perfect.
Want to make your company’s website more interactive? Contact Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio Web Design company, to see how we can get customers and visitors more involved with your web pages.
In web design and online marketing circles, we hear a lot about what social networking is, what it can be, and how it stacks up against other ways to reach customers like search engine optimization or online videos. When I hear these conversations, two things stand out: first, that none of these are truly even separate disciplines anymore – what you do on social media sites affects your search engine optimization, and vice versa, for example – and also that it misses the point a little bit.
It doesn’t matter what we, as marketers, think about social media. The fact is that customers everywhere love them, so they are going to be an increasingly-important part of our plans to reach them whether we want them to be or not.
At the time of this writing, Facebook alone boasts somewhere around 500 million members, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing up. Twitter is nearing 200 million, and LinkedIn is connecting more than 50 million professionals with one another. The more people continue to sign up and use social networking sites as a forum to meet one another and share ideas, the more we are going to have to use them as marketing mediums.
The bottom line with social media is that your customers and potential customers love it. That’s reason enough for all of us to keep paying attention to it. Contact Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio Web Design company, to find out why so many businesses trust us with their social media marketing plans.
As the social media wave continues to pick up steam, businesses are taking a closer look at sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to see whether there might be a way they can turn friends and contacts into customers. It’s a good question; with hundreds of millions of people using social networking sites, it’s clear that your prospects are out there. But to find and reach them, you are going to have to take some cues from businesses in other industries that are already making it work.
Here are five things you can learn from other businesses about social media.
Social media takes some time… but not necessarily a lot of money. You would think that large, multinational corporations, with their extensive public relations teams and market research staff, would dominate social media, and some do use networking sites effectively. But in many cases, it’s the smaller players – family-owned candy companies and Main Street specialty stores – that are using the personal nature of their businesses to meet the big boys step for step. To make social network marketing work, you’ll have to be patient and invest some energy, but not necessarily a whole lot of cash.
Connect with your best customer. One of the reasons those smaller players are doing so well is that they typically don’t have any trouble finding focus. Given that there are literally hundreds of millions of social media users, trying to target them en masse is never going to be effective. Instead, think of who your very best potential client would be and then arrange a profile that speaks to them. You can’t sell to everybody online, but you can use social media to attract good customers.
Keep your marketing messages subtle. You’ll hardly ever see movie stars and musicians advertise on social media, but they’re always promoting their latest projects. You can do the same. Since social networking sites make a poor outlet for outright advertising, try to layer your sales pitch within informational articles and other “soft” forms of content. Once people are familiar with you, it’s only natural for them to take the next step and buy from you in the future.
Be fun. In the same way, take a cue from our friends in the public relations world and try to blur the lines between marketing and entertainment. Social media marketing is really about winning attention, and there’s no substitute for being fun when it comes to drawing readers and followers online.
Stick to the plan. If there is one thing you want to borrow from the corporate giants, it’s this: focus on the bottom line. The advertising departments of Fortune 500 companies don’t spend much time worrying about how many friends they have; they just want to know how social media is supporting their other online and offline marketing goals. Your thinking should go the same way. Social media is fun to use, and it can be effective, but only if it works along with everything else you’re already doing.
Need help making social media work for your dealership? Contact Marcy Design, a Columbus Ohio Web Design company, to find out why so many businesses trust us with their online marketing plans.
If you scour the Internet, you’ll find a lot of advice on what the most important parts of your businesses Facebook page should look like. Some experts will tell you it’s all about the logo, or company photos; others will point to your slogan, quotes from satisfied customers, or even updates about pricing.
These are all relevant, but we feel like they sort of miss the point of it. That’s because, when it comes down to it, every business and industry are different. And for that matter, every customer is different, too. So how can anyone piece of advice cover what it takes to reach all of them effectively?
It can’t, so there isn’t a whole lot of use in trying. What really matters about your company’s Facebook page isn’t that it show off a certain color or mention a specific phrase — it’s that it’s interesting, informative, and makes your business seem like a reputable partner.
That might sound like it’s oversimplifying the issue, but at the end of the day, a Facebook page isn’t very likely to be your first or only marketing avenue. Instead, it’s going to be a place where potential customers are going to stop by to see what you are all about, and what other people’s experiences have been like. They just need to see that you can be trusted to do (or deliver) what you say you will.
Facebook, like all social media sites, is constantly changing, and so the best strategies for marketing through it are going to keep changing too. If you want to attract customers, however, just concentrate on being interesting, informative, and trustworthy. And don’t forget to contact Marcy Design, the leading Columbus Ohio website design company.
It’s hard to gain any real traction on Twitter if you don’t have any followers. That’s because, no matter how witty, informative, or insightful your tweets are, there just isn’t going to be anyone reading them… much less passing them along. With that in mind, here are five quick tips to help you stop being invisible on Twitter:
Be funny. Everyone likes a good joke, and working a little humor in with your marketing messages is a great way to gather followers quickly.
Choose a better handle. If you choose a Twitter ID that makes you sound like someone nobody wants to hang out with, then you can’t be that surprised when they don’t.
Reach out. In the beginning, it’s mostly going to be up to you to make friends and hope that some of them decide to follow you back. Make a point of adding a couple new contacts a day.
Think keywords. Although Twitter isn’t a search engine, you can still optimize your tweets and profile to gather attention the same way you would on Google or Yahoo. Make sure you mention your most important keywords at least once.
Get out of “marketing only” mode. Unless you are already a very well-known personality, and probably not even then, don’t get stuck in the trap of constantly shouting about your work or products. Have a little fun and act like a human — pretty soon, you’ll have more followers and better conversations. And don’t forget to contact Marcy Design, the leading Columbus Ohio website design company.
One of the things you learn very quickly in the web design and Internet marketing industry is that tools and technologies change, but people don’t. While the ways we tell people about our products and solutions are constantly shifting, the reasons for choosing them are almost always the same. And one of those important reasons is what advertising experts and psychologists call “social proof.”
In a nutshell, the “social proof” concept basically boils down to the fact that we are a lot more likely to buy something that has been recommended by a friend than we are something that hasn’t. That’s why so many companies strive to achieve a healthy amount of “word-of-mouth” advertising – you just can’t beat it for bottom-line marketing.
That isn’t likely to change anytime soon, but the way word-of-mouth spreads already is. Not many of your buyers have the time to sit around a barbershop or cocktail party anymore. When they have a need, or are looking for advice, they aren’t likely to make a personal visit, or even pick up the phone. Instead, they’re going to tap into their entire network at once by using sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
As a marketer or business owner, it’s important that you understand what this means. Customers might be going to search engines to find vendors, but they are turning to their trusted friends and colleagues for recommendations. When they do, it’s important that they be able to find your business’s profile.
People will probably be buying for the same reasons they always have a thousand years from now. But by embracing social media, you can use technology to help them speed up the process. And for Columbus Ohio website design call Marcy Design at: 614-224-6226.
It doesn’t take too long on Twitter to realize that there is a whole lot of “stuff” out there. In fact, with an estimated 65 million tweets a day, we all have to be selective about what we pay attention to.
