7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2015

By Jason DeMers at Forbes: 

It’s that time again: When I look ahead to 2015 to predict social media marketing trends we can expect over the coming year. If you want to see what I predicted for 2014 (and whether those predictions came true), you can do so here:

But without further ado, here are my top 7 social media marketing predictions for 2015!


1. We’ll witness the rise of Ello

What we couldn’t have predicted last year was the emergence of a new social platform intended to go head-to-head with social media giant, Facebook. The platform, which is still in public beta (meaning invite-only), has caused quite a stir; dubbed by some as the ‘hipster social network’, Ello offers a forever ad-free experience and promises to never sell its users’ information to third parties. Their website states: “Collecting and selling your personal data, reading your posts to your friends, and mapping your social connections for profit is both creepy and unethical. Under the guise of offering a “free” service, users pay a high price in intrusive advertising and lack of privacy.”


It’s unclear at this point whether the extreme buzz around the platform is simply because of its positioning as the ‘anti-Facebook’, or whether it has the substance, design and functionality to actually become a serious competitor for Facebook. Engagement on the platform doesn’t seem to be high at this point, and some are pointing out the current weaknesses of the platform, including the lack of video-integration and meaningful conversation and engagement.

Regardless, Ello is likely to grow in 2015, both in terms of numbers and engagement, and many will be watching closely. For more background on the platform, see my article,

Ello: What Is It and Why Does Everyone Want an Invite?


2. Facebook ad pricing and demand will significantly increase

It’s no secret that Facebook post reach is significantly decreasing, and has become a serious problem for business owners who are using the platform for marketing purposes. This steady decline in reach is what has been coined the Filtered Feed Problem.

As Facebook continues to limit the number of posts page fans actually see, the demand for promoted posts and ads will continue to increase. And with this increased demand will come increased pricing. According to an Ad Week article earlier this year, 2014 Q1 Facebook ad pricing was up 10% over 2013 Q4 pricing. This trend is likely to continue into 2015 as organic post reach continues to fall.


3. Twitter’s new business advertising model will skyrocket in popularity.

With Twitter’s move to offering businesses more choice and flexibility in how and what they pay for in terms of advertising, more small and medium sized businesses will jump on the Twitter ad bandwagon.  The new fee structure allows businesses to pay for certain performance-based actions rather than just retweets or clicks.

These objective-based campaigns, which are still currently in beta, will offer more flexibility including tweet engagements (retweets, replies, etc.), website clicks or conversions, app installs, new followers and leads. These campaigns will be particularly appealing to small business owners who want to pay for results, not just for brand visibility.


4. Google+ will begin to fade into obscurity

With the failure of Google’s Authorship experiment, Google+ now brings no unique value that Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook don’t already provide. After the highly publicized departure of Google+ chief evangelist Vic Gundotra earlier this year, along with TechCrunch declaring Google+ “The Walking Dead”, the platform is quickly making the descent into obscurity.

In fact, according to Tech Crunch, Google+ will “no longer be considered a product, but a platform — essentially ending its competition with other social networks like Facebook and Twitter.”

For an in-depth conversation on the rise and fall of Google+, see my post Is Google+ Really Walking Dead?.


5. Instagram will become essential for image-based social media marketing

Instagram isn’t showing any signs of slowing down; not by a long shot. With 200 million monthly users, Instagram has become the network when it comes to image-based social media marketing. Research confirms this, although perhaps not to the same extent: According to the Social Media Marketing Industry report, 42% of marketers are planning to increase their use of the platform this year, compared to 38% in 2013.

Instagram will also continue to grow in the micro-video space. With both Vine and Instagram vying for billing as the top video networking site, the platforms have continued to differentiate themselves from the other offering different features, video lengths and editing capabilities. However, I believe we’ll see Instagram begin to outpace Vine as we enter 2015.

And with the recent emergence of Instagram’s in-feed video advertising, marketers will now have the option of paying to target their 15-second videos to users based on age, gender and country. While some have called the new video ads incongruous, the new feature is a welcome addition for marketers looking to promote their wares to Instagram’s young, affluent user base.


6. LinkedIn will widen the gap as “the” B2B social network

LinkedIn has been the top network of choice for the B2B crowd for years already, and I believe we’ll see the gap between LinkedIn and other networks continue to widen in 2015.

While B2C marketers report LinkedIn as being significantly less important than Facebook or Twitter for their marketing efforts, the numbers are quite different for the B2B crowd: according to the 2014 Social Media Examiner survey, 88% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn, compared to 89% for Facebook and 86% for Twitter. I believe 2015 is the year LinkedIn will surpass Facebook for B2B marketing.

For guidance on using LinkedIn for your business, see my article, The Definitive Guide to LinkedIn Groups for Marketing.


7. Social media marketing will finally be embraced as a core pillar of content marketing

In 2015, marketers will finally realize that there are two core pillars of a content marketing strategy: publication and distribution. Marketers will learn that social media is the most effective method of expanding the reach and visibility of their content, and because of this, will come to view social media as more of an “amplifier” for their published content rather than as the content itself.

In 2014, we saw marketers succeed at realizing the importance of creating and publishing content with the rise of “content strategy” as a buzzword and core focus of online marketers, but many failed when it came to designing and executing a successful content distribution strategy. I discussed this trend in my article, Why No One’s Reading Your Marketing Content.

So, while the content marketing buzz continues to pick up steam, marketers needs to remember that a distribution strategy for that content is just as important, if not more important, than the content itself.


Conclusion

These predictions aside, I’m curious to see the state of social shopping in 2015, particularly as it relates to Pinterest and to Facebook’s new ‘Buy’ button. I’ll keep an eye on this and other trends, and keep you posted as we venture into 2015 and beyond.

5 Rules for Super Effective Hashtags on Twitter

By Jennifer Bourne at Social Media Today:  


Want to get noticed on Twitter? Use hashtags! Using the right hashtag(s) in your tweets will bring you the relevant audience and exposure. This is also with those that you will be able to follow conversations known as chats.

How to use hashtags efficiently? How many is too many? Let's have a look at hashtags best practices on Twitter.


1. More than 3 is too many.

Social media professionals all seem to agree that 3 is the maximum number of hashtags that you should include in one tweet. Don't overwhelm your followers with too many hashtags. Instead, choose them well, the more relevant the better.


2. Stay away from irrelevant popular hashtags.

Yes, they are widely used for a reason, and you'd like to jump on that wagon. But if your tweet has nothing to do with the hashtag you use, as trending as it is, you or your brand will become instantly irrelevant to both your current and potential followers.


3. Size does matter.

When it comes to hashtags, the shorter the better. First, it will save you space in your tweet. 140 characters are not a lot, so don't use half of those for your hashtag only. Two to three words are enough, no need to make a full sentence out of it. Use capital letters for each words so it's easier to read.


4. Go specific.

Stay away from hashtags that are too general. Using #marketing or #business in your tweets won't bring you more exposure as they are widely used words. Target specific conversations instead with hashtags like #TwitterTips or #NativeAdvertising, depending on your topic. Creating a hashtag for yourself or a specific campaign is tempting. It has to be well advertised and shared though so you are sure it is used correctly... or used at all!


5. Do a pre search

Search the hashtag on Twitter first to see if it is used and by who. What kind of conversations does the hashtag trigger? Is it where you want to go?



Happy hashtagging!

#INFOGRAPHIC: Global Spending on Facebook Ads Up 50 %

Quarterly spending on Facebook advertising has increased 51 per cent year-on-year in Q2 of 2014, a new study shows.

According to research by predictive media optimisation company Kenshoo, both search and social advertising have seen increases in most metrics both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, with advertising spend on search up 25 per cent compared to last year, and a 15 per cent increase on search clicks from last year.

You can find these facts and more in the infographic below.

#INFOGRAPHIC: Tracking Social Media Data

By Christie Barakat at Social Times:


Many businesses make an effort to be active and involved on social media. But information-sharing and interactivity with users does not go far enough.  Tracking data and its effectiveness across channels is crucial to examining and altering activity levels and success strategies.

Traffic, the relevance and quality of content, voice, community size, engagement and sentiment can be tracked with measurable data and channel specific tools. Dashboards let you measure data from multiple sites at once. Aggregators are great for discovering Internet trends.

In addition to measuring the success of your social media profiles, other tools let you measure data such as click-through rates, when most of your followers are online and more. Infographicworld.com created the following infographic to break down what you should be measuring, the most useful tools and the capabilities of each.

Courtesy of: Infographic World

#INFOGRAPHIC: The ROI Of Social Media

By SlideWorld at Visually:  

Do you spend hours on your social media outreach and have no idea if it’s successful?

How to Create Content That Goes Viral

By Danielle Brooks at Social Times:  


With so much content on the Web, it can be difficult to gain exposure. Even if you produce the best resource on your topic, there’s no guarantee that your website will attract more visitors than usual. While Google gives precedence to higher-quality content when determining their search rankings, making sure your efforts are rewarded requires more than just writing. Without an outreach campaign, you may never get decent results.

Getting your content shared online is one of the best ways to gain exposure. While it can take months to rank your website organically, sharing gives you the chance to receive a significant amount of traffic. Gaining social shares isn’t as difficult as you may think. As long as you create a useful resource and contact the right people, there’s no reason why the content you produce won’t get shared.

At The Pink Group, we recently produced a piece of content that amassed over 12,000 social shares. Below is a step-by-step guide on how we achieved that.


Research and write
Performing market research is probably the most important part of the content production process. The Internet is riddled with low-quality content that’s been rehashed time and time again, so unless you find a topic related to your industry that will actually benefit readers, you will have no chance of acquiring social shares.

After researching social media branding, we discovered that one of the primary issues businesses face – regardless of their field – is seamlessly integrating their brand logo across the many social networks. In the business world, convenience is essential, so we developed “The Social Media Cheat Sheet” to streamline the process. After the research stage, developing the content was easy.


Communicate with your industry
After you develop your content and publish it on your website, you will need to communicate with other bloggers and businesses within your field. At this stage, the idea is to simply make them aware of your content in order to generate interest and acquire feedback. Some people may share it voluntarily, but that’s not the purpose. It’s more about honing your piece and developing relationships.

At The Pink Group, we contacted other businesses that were directly related to the branding industry. We carefully selected the candidates based on their social following, relevance and whether or not they actually needed help.


Ask for shares
With a free “product” that actually benefits others, asking for social shares isn’t unreasonable; therefore, most bloggers and businesses will be more than happy to help promote your content. However, asking for shares without building a relationship isn’t recommended – that’s just spam. Be polite and go the extra mile by writing personalized emails in the build-up to asking for help.

As expected, when we asked for shares there were some people who were unwilling and thought it was rude; however, they were the small minority. At least 95 percent of the contacts we communicated with were willing to share; not because they wanted to give us exposure, but because the product offered their readers something beneficial that they couldn’t provide.


Establish a community
Getting social shares is just the beginning. Don’t just take what you want and leave your contact in the dark; make sure you send them a thank you message, give them updates on new developments and ask them how your content has helped them. If you keep them in the loop, they may share it again in the future. In addition, be sure to respond to queries and feedback from their readers via their social updates. Simply acknowledging comments is a great way to encourage other readers to share your work.

At the Pink Group, we continue to maintain relationships with those who have shared our content in the past; and some of them have gone on to share it multiple times, providing more than enough traffic to make the time and effort worthwhile. In addition, we’ve managed to establish new relationships through their followers.



Conclusion

Fundamentally, social media marketing is about building and maintaining relationships. Selfish behavior and simply asking for shares won’t cut it. Unless you develop content that’s unique, beneficial and targeted towards your industry, you’ll never achieve viral success.

But don’t give up. Not everything you do will have viral potential or reach the same level of success — you can never fully predict the outcome of a marketing campaign and even if you develop the best content on the Web, it could take multiple attempts before you find something that’s genuinely worth pursuing on a greater scale.

9 Ways to Use SlideShare for Your Business

By Michael Jaccarino at Social Media Today:


SlideShare is a popular presentation tool for the business world that allows you to create presentations, upload them to the cloud, and share them with colleagues. With a globral ranking of 124 on Alexa, SlideShare is the most visited document and presentation-sharing website in the world, getting over 60 million users a month. As the network still isn't over-saturated from marketers, SlideShare is a fantastic social network to promote your presentations both in and out of network and get the visibility you need. Here are nine great ways you can use SlideShare for your business.


Use SlideShare in Meetings

Keeping your employees’ attention is easy when you are sharing a creative, informative SlideShare presentation during a meeting. SlideShare relies on the power of images and colorful headings to get your message across, and even when that requires more slides per presentation, each slide takes 10 seconds or less to read, allowing for a presentation that will ultimately be memorable and useful for your employees.


Get Found Through Search

SlideShare content is frequently featured in Google search results making it an extremely effective platform to use in your SEO efforts. Just take a look at the following screenshots. The following image is a screenshot using the keyword "types of conflict" which shows up as #1 in Google.

Here's another screenshot for keyword "how to get taller" which shows up as #5 in Google

As with any other content that you create, it's important that you optimize to ensure the full potential to rank. There are a few basic things to keep in mind to help you with ranking higher in search (both for search engines and to be found internally through search on Slideshare).

The first thing to keep in mind is the name of the actual file you create. Make sure to name your document, PDF, presentation or video using the keywords that you want your presentation to rank for.

You should also use your keyword in the title as well as some long-tail keywords in the description of your presentation. Also don't forget to take advantage of the presentation tags. You're allowed to use 20, and while it's unkown whether Google crawls these tags, they will help with ranking your presentation within SlideShare's search.


Measure Your Visibility Online

If you are serious about bringing success to your business through your online presence, premium SlideShare features allow you to measure how often people are viewing your SlideShare presentations. This information will allow you to continually develop a strategy to make sure your SlideShare content is being seen by as many people as possible.


Drive Traffic to Your Website

As mentioned above, creating a Slideshare presentation is a great way to get your content discovered through search. By including a link or links within the presentation to your website, you'll be able to drive visitors that may otherwise not have found you.

Aside from just adding links to your slides, you should also consider using a call-to-action that directs visitors to take a specified action. You can direct users to a dedicated landing page where they can get more information about the services you offer or offer them a free eBook that goes into more detail on the information in your slides.


Gain Free Exposure

When someone views and reaches the last slide of your SlideShare presentation, they have the option to share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or by hyperlink. The availability of so many sharing options makes your SlideShare presentation easy for those with whom you have shared to continue to share it with their own contacts, who will also continue to share the content if they find it valuable. This exponential sharing can only help your business because it increases your exposure and lets more people know you are available to meet their needs.


Inform and Educate Customers or Clients

The most valuable thing you can share with customers and clients you want to gain or retain is engaging information that will help them to understand who you are and ways your company is useful to them. SlideShare is designed to help bold infographics shine, so you can share statistics and quotes that will show customers and clients you are informed about your industry. “How-to” guides are also very valuable for customers and clients, because it gives you a chance to educate others about how they can incorporate knowledge related to your field into their everyday lives.


Discover Presentations Relevant to Your Field

The best thing about SlideShare operating online is that you can easily search for and view other SlideShare presentations that people in your field are creating. It is important to always keep updated with current trends in your field, so you can keep up with the competition and reflect valuable insight in your own SlideShare presentations.


Use SlideShare to Support or Complement Other Marketing Content

SlideShare is one of many social media tools you can use to market your business. Add a Slideshare widget to your website, blog or LinkedIn page and anyone who views social networking platforms associated with your business will have immediate access to your SlideShare presentations. A SlideShare presentation may even drive traffic to your blog or website for the first time, giving new leads a chance to learn more about your business and what you can do for them.


Become Part of a Valuable Community

When you become a part of the SlideShare community, it gives your SlideShare content a chance to be featured on the SlideShare homepage. Every month, SlideShare staff members hand-pick some of the best SlideShare presentations they can find and put them on the homepage, where they will be seen by thousands of people. This means invaluable exposure for your company as well as the gratification of knowing that a powerful social media platform supports you and recognizes your potential for success as a business.
With so many great reasons to use SlideShare for your business, it is no wonder that thousands of people are a part of the SlideShare community. Join this powerful community today and watch your business grow!

Instagram for Small Businesses: Your New Best Friend

By Stephanie Jones at Social Media Today:  


Instagram is possibly the new lifeblood of social media platforms for small businesses.  Is that overdramatic? I thought so, but it’s true in a sense.  Businesses are seeing a drastic decrease in organic reach to their followers on Facebook, which until the last year or so has been the bread and butter for small businesses.  We’re not saying you need to get rid of your account, but it’s a good time to start putting you eggs in some other baskets, too.

Instagram is a great place to start.  Just in case you don’t know, Instagram is a social media platform that allows its users to share images with other followers.  For now, it is free to all users and is an easy way to get your business’ name out into the universe.  And it’s a growing universe; there were 200 million users as of the end of March 2014.  What’s more, 75 million are daily Instagram users.

Whether you’re brand spanking new to the world of Instagram or have found yourself unsure of how to manage your account, here are some tips to turn you into a small business Instagram marketing guru.

1)     Brand Your Account
The first thing you should do when setting up an IG account is to make your mark by personalizing and branding your profile.  Add your logo or headshot as your profile picture, type up a quick bio and include a link to your business’ website or Facebook page.  Leaving this information out is a red flag to other IG users as it appears you aren’t a credible source or a spammer.

2)     Grow Your Following
The next step is to connect your IG account to your Facebook account.  This not only allows you to see who is on Instagram, but it also allows you to cross post your images to Facebook – a great way to drive engagement on both platforms! The area where Instagram is the same as other social platforms: you must engage.  Like other users’ images and leave comments.  You can also create Facebook Instagram apps via Woobox. This gives your account further exposure on your business page.

3)     Follow Back
You don’t have to follow ALL of your followers, but those whose ideas and interests align with your business are exactly the type of folks you should follow.  That way you can stay engaged with them and they, in turn, will engage with you and your content.

4)     Don’t Over Post
It’s kind of easy to get carried away on Instagram, especially if you have several pieces of content that you know will make your followers go gaga! The great thing about Instagram’s news feed is that it’s pretty laid back, where an image can be viewed in a feed for up to 15 hours.  Because of this, it’s not necessary to even post daily, but many brands do.  The average amount of Instagram posts by Top 100 brands is 5.5 times per week.

5)     Balance Your Images
While Instagram is a fun platform and is a great way to share your business’ story, you have to remember you’re there to engage your customers.  Make sure that you have a balance of fun photos with photos that highlight your product or business.

People love visual content, so that makes Instagram the ideal social media marketing platform for small businesses.  It’s also currently a completely free way to market your business to potentially millions.  Follow people, engage and you will have an impassioned following before you can say hashtag.

#INFOGRAPHIC: The Science of B2B Online Marketing

By Tim Asimos at Circle Studio:  


Doing” B2B online marketing is not going to maximize success, and your website isn’t going to just magically generate new business because it’s there and it looks good. You need the right strategies to attract visitors and convert them to customers.


There are a lot of moving parts with a B2B online marketing and lead generation program, so we’ve designed this infographic to help you visualize the components and the overall process.



The Science of B2B Online Marketing infographic designed by circle S studio.

13 Steps to Your First Facebook Advertising Campaign

By Stephanie Winans at Social Media Today:  


The truth is, whether the question about Facebook advertising is asked directly or it's the answer to another question, I often find myself explaining the basics of Facebook Ads.

If you’ve wondered about how to set up a Facebook Ads campaign, here are 13 steps to getting started:

1. Know why you're doing it. Because "your biggest competitor is doing it” is not an answer. Whether its increasing website traffic, driving ratings, adding VIP members, generating brand awareness in the market or improving social engagement, you should have a concrete goal in mind for what you’re trying to achieve.


2. Define your KPIs. A KPI (key performance indicator) is how you will define the success of your campaign. Sometimes KPIs are obvious (for example, if your goal is to increase Facebook likes then your KPI is the number of likes your page receives during the campaign), but sometimes they aren’t so cut and dry. It’s important that your whole team be on the same page in the early planning stages so your expectations are clear and you know what “successful campaign” really means.

3. Make sure Facebook is the best choice. Facebook is often the first social advertising platform used, but it’s not the only digital advertising option out there. Once you’ve defined your goals and KPIs, you can consider other platforms before settling on Facebook. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to website content you could consider a content distribution advertising platform like Taboola or Outbrain. If your goal is to generate brand awareness in the market, you could consider a geo-targeted display ad campaign.

4. Determine your budget. Advertising doesn’t come free. (Just ask your Sales department!)

5. Set goals. No, really. Goals ALWAYS make you work harder. Whether you say them aloud or keep them in your head, give yourself reasonable benchmarks to strive for. Personally, I prefer post-it notes on my desk so I have visual accountability reminders.

6. Do your homework. Spend some time scrolling through your own newsfeed and notice the ads you’re being served. Which ones seem effective?

7. Develop your creative. You’ll need to develop different copy for the newsfeed and the right column because the character count is different, and you’ll need multiple versions for each. Think about your call to action. What do you want the user to do?  And don’t slack off when it comes to the images! An attention-grabbing visual for your ad can make or break it.

8. Define your audience. Part of this is easy; you already have your target demographic defined. But depending on your goals you may be targeting people who already like your page or people who don’t. Additionally, you may want to target people who like your competitors’ Facebook pages or who have specific interests relevant to this campaign. If you’re targeting more than one demographic, set up two different Ad Sets in Facebook Ads with the same creative but with a different audience. You’ll be able to measure how well your campaign is converting with each.


9. Sleep on it. No matter how good of a job you do, you can always improve when you leave it and come back to it. If you’re on a deadline and you can’t sleep on it, walk away from it for thirty minutes and review it with a clear head. Or ask a friend of co-worker with social advertising experience to take a look with fresh eyes.

10.  Pull the trigger. Input your ad copy and visuals with the audience targeting you’ve defined. Start with multiple ads in each Ad Set. Just like everything else in marketing, A/B testing is key.

11. Walk away for half a day. While it can be really exciting to watch your campaign when it’s first launched, it can also be frustrating as it takes time to achieve results. Plus, you don’t want to make any rash changes to your campaign before you can really tell if it’s working.

12. Babysit. Even if your campaign is performing well, don’t forget that the Internet is the Wild, Wild West and things can change quickly. Check your campaign twice a day and make optimizations to your ads and audience targeting until you reach the goals you’ve set.

13. Remember my golden rule. “You can always do better.” Keep optimizing your campaign until you plateau. For example, if you’re trying to drive entries to a contest or sweepstakes, keep adding variations of copy and images to lower your cost per acquisition until the cost plateaus no matter what you try. While I use this mantra to push my myself into milking advertising campaigns for everything I can get, it’s a great rule to live by in all of your professional endeavors.

#INFOGRAPHIC: 7 Tips for Posting on Forums

Many people who are new to the forums do not know what to do after joining and how to go about posting a query which many times results in posting irrelevant questions or posting in wrong forums. Here is an Infographic about 7 tips for posting on forums to help you work around forums with ease.

#INFOGRAPHIC: Most Powerful Blog Promotion Tactics by Marketing Experts

So you’ve got your blog up and running, and you’ve been writing a bunch of quality posts. Yet the traffic isn’t quite what you wish it were. What do you do?

Well, Brian Lang from Small Business Ideas Blog asked precisely that question to over 40+ experts from fields as diverse as SEO to (believe it or not) Real Estate. We took the information and laid it out in a coherent infographic. Enjoy!

ReferralCandy - Refer-a-friend Programs for Ecommerce Stores

3 Best Tools to Gain More Twitter Followers

By Ryan Lum at Social Media Today:  


Gaining Twitter followers is no easy task. Well, for some anyways. There are many articles on the subject of gaining Twitter followers, but in this article I've boiled down the 3 best tools and services to jumpstart your Twitter marketing efforts and gain a following fast.

It is important to note that follower count is only a number. What really matters is engagement. I'll talk about  that in a future blog post. So for now, here are the 3 best tools to gain more Twitter followers.


1) Fiverr

There are many people on this site that are offering 10,000 followers to your Twitter account for a mere $5. Awesome! Keep in mind that most if not all of these users WILL BE FAKE. This is a very controversial subject regarding buying followers. To me, it really depends on what you plan on doing with your account. Take for instance two different scenarios.

The first scenario is if you later plan on running Twitter ads for promoting a product or service later down the road. If you were to buy followers and you run an ad to serve to your audience, it would then be highly ineffective knowing that a considerable portion of ad will be "seen" by fake accounts that won't do anything. If this is the case, buying followers does not make sense.

The second scenario is if you run advertising on your site. If you plan on selling tweets to potential advertisers, they generally care about reach. True, if they get no engagement, they will most likely not send another tweet ad on your account.

Ok, so is buying followers all that bad?I believe it can work for some. It helps build social credibility. If you just started an account that only has 5 followers, it's obvious that the account is new and most likely I won't follow you. Now imagine you have 10,000 followers. Well, that might be someone worth following. So, how do you make this worth your while? Well, that's where the second tool comes in.


2) Manage Flitter

I discovered this tool awhile back and noticed it greatly supercharged my Twitter growth efforts. This tool allows you to discover users you should be following and find the users that you should probably unfollow. The reason why you'd want to do this is based on the golden ratio as covered in TechCrunch.

If a person has more followers than they are following, they’re probably a good person to at least consider following. If they are following more than they have more followers, the opposite may be true. The greater the discrepancy between the two numbers, the more likely each of those is true — to a certain point, since celebrities like Oprah throw this system out of whack. But for regular, non-Hollywood celebrities, the system works remarkably well as a filter.

I use this tool to then start adding real and engaged followersto my account. Usually fake followers will start to unfollow, which is perfect. This allows you to then capture a better audience who is more likely to follow you because right now, your ratio is well, pretty awesome!


3) Twibble 

Of course this is plugging our tool, but I do so with great reason. The whole reason it was created was to help grow engagement and following, and it's quite effective in doing so.

In a recent social media study via Social Media Today, it was discovered that tweeting twice as often produced about 38% more retweets, about 14% less mentions and about 70% more favorites. It also led to 124.60% increase in referral traffic.


Twibble is basically an RSS to Twitter service much like Twitterfeed, Dlvr.it or IFTTT. Those are all very good services; however, I wanted to create something where simplicity, design and usability was the core focus. So how do you use Twibble?



Imagine you're a social media consultant. You can now regularly feed relevant content to your Twitter account such as Mashable, Tech Crunch, Jay Baer, Mari Smith, etc. This allows you to keep your account active and relevant to your users. By no means am I saying you should only do this. Using a RSS to Twitter service is only meant to supplement your current social media efforts. You can also add relevant hashtags so that your content is seen by a much larger audience. This way when people discover your content, you'll already have a great following and you're regularly providing relevant and engaging content.

So there you have it! I'd love to hear what other tools you use. Let us know in the comments below!

Twitter Launches Interactive Small Business Guide

By Lauren Dugan at Media Bistro: 


Today’s small businesses have it tough when competing with bigger firms. Whether it’s retail or services or something in between, a small business must have a solid marketing strategy in place to help build a relationship with their customer. Fortunately, a new interactive guide from the fine folks at Twitter is here to help a business build that strategy – no matter what level of understanding they’re at.

The interactive guide begins by asking you how well you understand Twitter. For each section, you’ll get four graphically rich tutorials about beginner, intermediate and advanced Twitter topics.

For each section, you’re able to click on a button to proceed to a relevant page somewhere in Twitter’s business or help pages.

The guide certainly illustrates how far Twitter has come from the simple messaging app it once was. A small business now has the option to utilize detailed analytics, specific advertising strategies and content calendars to support their business strategy.

In the intermediate bracket, there is an option to download the #MktgKickstart tool kit, which is a collection of useful tools to review your profile, create a content calendar and write tweets from template. This could definitely be something useful to hand to a new social media representative for your business.

You can start “The Small Business Guide to Twitter” here.

#INFOGRAPHIC: Top Social Efforts to Boost Referral Traffic to Your Website

By Thomas J. Armitage at Social Media Today:  

Social media has many benefits for a brand. Raising awareness, generating buzz around events or news, keeping your name or products top of mind, managing customer service, gathering consumer-generated content, market research, and the list goes on. But for some reason, many of us get hung up on the fact that social media has to have an immediate, short term return on investment. Many social strategies are long term investments, so when looking at a tight time frame, we migrate towards metrics that try and allow us to justify our efforts. Enter: referral traffic.

Referral traffic is a very important thing to measure within a social media campaign. For many companies, bringing visitors to your website helps them learn about your products and services and establishes one more touchpoint in that very important buying process. It gets the user away from all the chaos on social media and lets them solely focus on one thing…you. And that’s valuable stuff. So after using many social media channels over the past few years, I’ve learned which ones generate the highest return on investment, based on time/cost vs referral traffic. Of course numbers will very based on your industry and the content you’re producing, but for the most part, this will give you a simple indication of which channels are best for driving traffic back to your website.

1) Blogging

The only one with 5 stars in terms of referral traffic is blogging. Are you surprised? If on a subdomain, blogging can be tremendously helpful to sending traffic to your website, if using links properly. If housed on the company site itself, blogs will generate organic traffic from search and attain visitors from referral links from any sites or bloggers who re-run your material or cite your writing. A misconception is that this effort is free but it is one of the biggest investments your company can make in the social space. The best blogging companies invest tons of time and resources into blogging efforts. Beyond time for writing, you will want to budget money for stock photography or time for your design team to create custom graphics, infographics, charts or visuals to supplement your material within the post and/or for social media when distributing. It makes the world of a difference in getting people to read, react and share your content. It's also helpful to promote your blog articles on social using ad dollars to "light the fire" and get the traction rolling.


2) E-Newsletter

Email marketing may not be the best approach to reach your teen audience (most do not use email with the exception of using it for registration purposes) but email is still widely used among most working professionals. It’s a great way to reinforce messages, introduce the latest news to a loyal audience, and keep them coming back to your site. Carefully design a layout – don’t have too much information there – and drive people deep into your site on specific landing pages, not just the homepage. Tell them what you want them to be looking at. Costs here are associated with monthly software fees (MailChimp, Constant Contact, etc), stock photography, design costs, and the time it takes to prepare and distribute. Your list is critical. Always be conscience about growing this – whether it’s through other social channels, events, contests with registration walls, etc. Your list is powerful in bringing visitors to your site.


3) Twitter

Many of us know how great this tool can be at luring traffic to your site. But this audience is very cautious what it clicks on – simply because we are being bombarded with hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of tweets each day. Because of this, be strategic when you include a link to your own site. Always use the old adage “What’s In It For Them?” Push them to an educational blog posts, a cool new product, a fun contest going on, etc. Be creative and straightforward in your limited description too, because you have to convince them to click in less than 100 characters or so. Costs here are related to stock photos or designs you’ll want to use to pair with your content. Also, do not overlook Twitter advertising. It’s a great way to get new users in front of your material and you can select the type of person that is most appealing to your business, so it works well.


4) LinkedIn

Of all the promoted post-style advertising on social media, LinkedIn can often times be the most expensive. But it’s a great way to get highly targeted people in front of your content and lead them to your site. The filters available through LinkedIn are extraordinary, allowing you to target by age, geography, profession, industry, hierarchy, group, and more. Naturally, you’ll pay for this luxury in your higher cost per clicks. But regardless, it can be effective. LinkedIn readers love tips on how to do their jobs better, motivational articles, and the inside scoop on new jobs available in their fields. Keep this in mind when sharing material that refers back to your website. You don’t want them to be disappointed when they go for that click. So make sure it’s meaningful and in line with the type of professional readers that are here.


5) YouTube

I have YouTube listed as the most expensive of all the tactics. Because quite frankly, video production ain’t cheap. Sure, you can get away with haphazardly winging some videos together and throwing them up online. You might get a few views. But ever notice the ones that we gravitate towards every week (if they are a regular series) or the ones you pull to use in presentations or demonstrations. You and I both are using the ones that look professional, are in high definition, boast great audio quality, and subtly use visuals as examples to support the verbal discussions. You’ll need lights, microphones, a great camera (preferably two), lots of time and research, a personable and lively spokesperson, and more. But here’s the bright side. Of all the types of content available to you, in my opinion, videos are the one type that is most likely to really take off if done right. You can include links in your description area or within the videos themselves. And finally, you can expose your messages to more people through advertising (which again, costs money on this platform). But think about all the embeds and shares you can get if your videos are valuable to your target audience. In all, YouTube can be one of the biggest spends in your social media budget but can also see one of the greatest returns on investment, especially in terms of referral traffic.

Social media has a variety of benefits. Gaining visitors to your website is only one – though an important one if it matches your goals. Share content that is worthwhile and carefully select the channels that you wish to invest in to see high levels of return. Keep in mind that you don’t want to *just* share content about yourself – social media is all about sharing the wealth and getting involved in conversations that are out there on the web. But being selfish every now and again to impact the bottom line is a no-brainer.

Which channels, in your experience, have you seen bring about the highest levels of referral traffic?




Authored by:

Thomas J. Armitage

Thomas J. Armitage is a digital marketer and PR professional with a concentration on social and new media. He helps lead the social and content efforts at Site-Seeker Inc and has a track record of researching, interpreting and executing the latest and best tools/techniques available to clients. He is also an adjunct professor at Utica College where he teaches on PR and social media.

#INFOGRAPHIC: 22 Rules to Reach Your Facebook Fans Today

When Facebook changed its algorithm again, many brands — we’re betting MOST brands — noticed a major decrease in their organic Facebook reach. It used to be around two percent and now it’s closer to one percent. While this is undoubtedly frustrating, we’ve focused our attention on working with the new Facebook reality instead of fighting against it (and/or complaining about it!).

Designed By Lea Heckley, Published by Shortstack.

Explore more visuals like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

#INFOGRAPHIC: Guide for Small Businesses on Facebook

By Mona Zhang at SocialTimes:  


For small business owners, launching a social media presence can be a daunting task. Which platforms should I be on? How much time and money should I be investing? And, of course, the ever-vexing question: What’s my ROI?

Step one is to decide which social platforms to invest in. Here’s some advice from Peter Friedman, whose guest post on SocialTimes can help you figure out which sites make the most sense for your business:

When companies worry about overextending themselves on social, I tell them to start out in one channel rather than spread themselves too thin. Different channels also lend themselves to different levels of interaction. Twitter is primarily experienced as a newsfeed, constantly streaming by, so conversations tend to happen in real-time. Meanwhile, Facebook’s page format supports asynchronous communication, so it may be a better choice if you don’t have full-time resources for social. Get to know each of the platforms and how various brands are using them before you commit to a direction for your company.

If you’ve decided that Facebook is the right platform for your company, this guide for small businesses on Facebook can help you get started:



Are you a small business owner thinking about setting up a facebook page? Don’t know where to start? Check out our step-by-step guide. (via SimplyBusiness).

5 Of The Biggest Social Media Marketing Mistakes You Can Make

Via DigitalSherpa Blog: 


The press loves to share social media marketing blunders that brands make, and we love reading them because quite simply they are entertaining. However, when the joke is on your brand, you might feel differently.

What measures do you  have in place today to help prevent a social media PR crisis? If the answer is none, it’s time to start thinking about an action plan to help rectify the situation in the event that your brand becomes involved in a social media blunder. In the meantime, we wanted to share 5 of the biggest social media marketing mistakes that we commonly see businesses making, and hopefully this article will help you to avoid them:

1- Neglecting to implement a social media policy.

You absolutely need to have a clearly defined policy for how your brand’s social media will be handled, and this is especially important if you are going to allow your team members to access your social media accounts. Not having a social media policy that explains how employees should represent your brand online can put you at increased risk for a social media PR disaster.


2- Using the same marketing strategy for every social media channel.

Not only do the audiences vary on social media sites, but so does the lingo and content that you should be sharing. If you’re new to a social media site, take the time to research how your audience communicates before jumping on board.


3- Having an incomplete social media bio. 

Always be sure to include an excerpt about what your business does, where you are located, and your website address. Surprisingly, many businesses don’t complete their bios in their entirety, causing them to potentially miss out on leads and lose credibility with their audience.


4- Assuming that social media is a one-way street.

You audience does not want to constantly see push marketing efforts from your brand in their newsfeed. Instead, businesses need to realize that social media is a two-way street and provides a unique opportunity for them to connect with prospective customers and deepen the relationship.


5- Focusing too much on the number of fans versus the quality. 

Yes, it’s great to have a lot of people that “like” your Facebook page; however, if you are just willy nilly trying to increase your fan base on social media by asking everyone to “like” your page, you may not have the best strategy in place. Instead, if you take the time to focus on the quality of your followers, you can build a much more powerful marketing resource.


While social media is arguably one of the most powerful marketing tools that business owners have available, it can also be very damaging to your brand’s reputation if mistakes are made. Remember that it’s better to be prepared with a policy and strategy in place before it’s too late!


After reading through this list, can you relate to any of these common mistakes? Any other mistakes to avoid?

Is A Smaller Fanbase Now The Key To Facebook Success?

By Chris Crum at WebProNews:  


Komfo recently released results of a study about Facebook Page reach and engagement that’s currently making the rounds. The study looked at 5,349 Facebook Pages. It found that fan penetration has decreased from 25.2% in August to 11.3% in March. Likewise, viral amplification has decreased from 0.42% to 0.39% in that time. The good news is that clickthrough rate has actually increased from 5.62% to 8.33%.

This report makes the case that you should focus on rallying around a smaller community on Facebook. Would this work for your business? Let us know in the comments.

“If you think about it from your own perspective as a Facebook user, our lists of friends are constantly increasing. We follow more and more brands on Facebook, we participate and involve ourselves in different groups, and last but not least we often access Facebook from our smartphones”, says Hans Tosti, Innovation Director at Komfo. “If you melt this down to the very basics, you will see that being mobile and continuously on the run also means that we no longer spend time clicking on different profiles, but primarily focus on what we are exposed to in our newsfeeds. The newsfeed offers limited space, and if the users have many friends and like many brands it becomes really important to expose them to the content that Facebook knows is interesting to and engaging for them.”

“For a long time now, when our customers came to us and said that they wanted to spend money on advertising in order to increase their fanbase, we instantly told them that the size of their fanbase is not directly related to their success on Facebook. As always, it is better to count on quality than quantity”, he adds. “Instead, brands should focus on having smaller fan bases, create some local pages and actually ensure that the users who like their page really love the brand and want to engage with it. Fan engagement is a crucial factor on Facebook, and as long as you prove to Facebook that your fans really are willing to engage with you, no matter the size of your fanbase, the algorithms will automatically ensure that your brand shines through in the newsfeed.”

That might be a bit optimistic. Consider what Valleywag’s Sam Biddle recently wrote, discussing the big decline in organic reach:

A source professionally familiar with Facebook’s marketing strategy, who requested to remain anonymous, tells Valleywag that the social network is “in the process of” slashing “organic page reach” down to 1 or 2 percent. This would affect “all brands”—meaning an advertising giant like Nike, which has spent a great deal of internet effort collecting over 16 million Facebook likes, would only be able to affect of around a 160,000 of them when it pushes out a post. Companies like Gawker, too, rely on gratis Facebook propagation for a huge amount of their audience. Companies on Facebook will have to pay or be pointless.

That 160,000 still sounds like a lot of people, sure. But how about my favorite restaurant here in New York, Pies ‘n’ Thighs, which has only 3,281 likes—most likely locals who actually care about updates from a nearby restaurant? They would reach only a few dozen customers. A smaller business might only reach one. This also assumes the people “reached” bother to even look at the post.

How engaging a Facebook post is is subjective, but things aren’t easy for those just starting Facebook Pages. If you have a small number of fans, at least in some cases, you’re looking at miniscule reach.

Furthermore, more engagement from a small group of readers isn’t necessarily the best outcome for a business who needs to reach a larger amount of people to get its message out. Obviously advertising is the option you’re left with, though plenty of brands have complained about the effectiveness of that too.

Komfo says, “The bottom line of our study is businesses must create Facebook relevant and engaging content, and move their focus away from a large fan base to a smaller fan base that really loves the brand and wants to engage. At the same time, businesses should consider lowering the amount of their call to action posts and focus on interactive posts instead. Brands must also support their content efforts with Facebook advertising, in order to maintain a high level of Fan Penetration, while improving their page’s reach and engagement.”

The reality might simply be that Facebook is no longer for you. That’s what Eat24 recently decided. There also happens to be another social network pretty well known for its smaller communities and higher engagement, and it (so far, at least) hasn’t reduced Pages’ organic reach to get them to advertise. In fact, it doesn’t even have ads on it – at least not on the News Feed-like destination of the product.

Forrester recently declared that marketers need to be using Google+, finding that 0.69% of brands’ fans or followers interact with their posts, which is significantly better than the percentage for Twitter, and only slightly smaller than Facebook. With organic reach on Facebook dropping rapidly, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Google+ overtaking it on this metric.

Another recent report from Shareaholic found Google+ (and connected YouTube) to be a whole lot better than Facebook for post-click engagement:

To be clear, this isn’t some endorsement for Google+ on my part. There are no doubt plenty of people getting much more out of Facebook (or other social networks), but these numbers are worth looking at as businesses grow increasingly frustrated with a social network they once had success with.

7 Common Hashtag Mistakes To Avoid

By Lauren Dugan at Media Bistro: 


Despite the rumors that Twitter might be changing the way hashtags work, the little pound signs continue to be one of the core features of Twitter – and one of the most frustrating for businesses to implement.

Hashtags can improve the reach of your content, and get it in front of the right audience. They can help promote an event, sell a product or even augment a TV show. Here are seven common mistakes that businesses and individuals make when using hashtags – so you can tweet and tag with confidence.


1. Not researching them thoroughly.

Because hashtags can be created and used by anyone, it’s important that you know two things when creating a new hashtag: one, whether it is being used by another group; and two, if it is, whether you want to join in that existing conversation.

When brainstorming a new hashtag, take five seconds and pop it into Twitter’s search bar. You’ll quickly see whether or not it is already in use, and if it is, what kind of conversation it is attracting. Then, you can either join in or start fresh with a new hashtag.

Oh, and researching your hashtag can save you from an embarrassing mistake like the one Susan Boyle’s marketing team made a few years back:

2. Making them too long, or too ugly.

#thisisnotanattractivehashtag. Sorry if that gave you a bit of a headache. But it’s a good example of a bad hashtag.

The best hashtags are short and sweet, and encapsulate the topic succinctly. They are not a pain to read, and they are visually appealing.

Often brands will just go with the first hashtag that comes to mind when discussing a particular topic. But if you take a few minutes and develop alternatives, you just might come up with a shorter, catchier way to say the same thing.


3. Using too many in a single tweet.

This account is clearly trying to sell shoes… but because they’ve decided to stuff as many hashtags into their tweet as possible, the “trying” really comes off as desperate.

Hashtags can get your tweet in front of the right audience – anyone who loves #shoes, for instance – but it’s better to include only one or two per tweet rather than alienating any one community because you’re trying to target too many.


4. Spamming them.

Like hashtag stuffing above, using the same hashtags over and over and over in tweets, on repeat, is a big no-no.

If people click over to your profile and see that your latest 20+ tweets all contain the same hashtag, you’re bound to turn them off.

Note: The exception to this rule is if you are participating in a hashtag chat, which requires using one hashtag in a short period of time (usually an hour) to live chat with a group.


5. Using spaces between words.

#this is not a hashtag. #thisis.

Remember that hashtags are only the characters directly following the “#” symbol, so if you have a space between your words, only the first word will be considered the hashtag.


6. Making them too difficult to understand.

Acronyms, abbreviations and slang can work in hashtags, but only if you know your audience.

For the most part, businesses should create a hashtag that is easy to understand, even by someone who is unfamiliar with the industry or topic. This will ensure a wider audience overall.


7. Not promoting your hashtag properly.

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make when creating a hashtag is failing to let people know that the hashtag exists. It could be the best hashtag in the world, but if no one knows it’s there, what good is it?


Hashtags can be promoted via Twitter and Facebook, and elsewhere on the web, but they can also be promoted offline. Think about including them in printed marketing material, signage in a storefront or at an event, or on a business card.