Social media marketing uses social networks to reach a target audience. Your business can reach your ideal client or customer through social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This will help you increase brand awareness, share valuable information, generate leads, and more. With 49% using social media, which is only expected to rise, it’s more important than ever for businesses to be active on these social platforms.

Social Media Marketing is Essential for Businesses

Social media can serve as a bridge between customers and brands. It is a great way for customers to find out more about your business, decide whether your brand is right for them, and then contact you. Your business can benefit from social media marketing in all the following ways:

Establish Relationships

Many customers use social media platforms to connect with brands they like. They share content from your site with their friends and comment on it. Social media can be used by your business to interact with customers in ways that aren’t possible elsewhere. Social media can allow customers to reach you via additional channels.

Increase Brand Awareness

Your social media posts will allow you to share your brand’s message with the world. You can share videos, make thoughtful posts and share content from other professionals in your industry. To help people know your brand better, give them a peek into its behind-the-scenes life.

Inform

Social media content can help people learn about your products and services and how they can benefit from them. You can post tutorials, step-by-step instructions, or informational videos and let people know about new products. You can also use social media to share industry news and authoritative content that will help you position yourself as an authority in your niche.

Market

Social media marketing is a great way to market your company! Social media marketing has a unique advantage over other marketing methods. It can reach a wide audience. A paid advertisement can go viral if more people engage with it via comments, likes and shares.

Social Media: How to Create a Profitable Marketing Strategy

These top-level tips will help you get started using social media to your benefit.

Concentrate on Specific Platforms

Your target audience may not be on all platforms. Many businesses make the error of believing they must be present everywhere. It is almost impossible to concentrate your efforts in the right places.

Facebook, for example, can be difficult to compete with due to the many businesses already present. It is possible for your photos, video, or copy to get lost in the shuffle. Your home improvement brand might be more popular if placed on Instagram. This is because people are drawn to your visually appealing photos.

You can start with just two or three platforms you are most interested in. Once these platforms are successful, you can always expand.

Find Your Ideal Customer

Once you have a good idea of where your customers hang out, it is time to target them on each platform. Twitter and Instagram heavily rely on hashtags. However, keywords drive a lot more traffic to YouTube and Pinterest.

Understanding your customers’ personalities is more important than keyword and hashtag targeting. Look into the minds of people who might search for your product, brand, or service on social media. What would they like to read or see? What information do they want? How will social media help them find it? Your research will guide your content strategy.

Automate the process

Today, social media tools are available to both casual users and professionals to manage their accounts. You can save time with scheduling tools that keep your social media accounts updated throughout the day.

You can automate your social media posts by placing social media buttons on the website. This encourages others to share your content. As visitors discover and digest your content, you’ll receive free shares!

Analyze and tweak

The algorithms for social media are constantly changing, so it is important to keep track of your analytics to ensure that your social media marketing strategy succeeds. Analytics tools are available on most platforms to help businesses track their impressions and reach.

To determine how well your content resonates and attracts your audience, pay attention to engagement. This includes comments, likes, shares, and comments. If your content receives few engagements but thousands of views, likely, it is not performing well.

These social media statistics will help you understand each social channel, user behavior, and social engagement. This will allow you to choose the right strategy for your company.

Installing social sharing buttons and follow buttons on your site is a great way to simplify your social media marketing. This makes it easy for visitors to share your content and follow your social media profiles. 

No matter how small or large your target audience is, all marketers want to make connections with them on a personal level. Social media marketing can be used to help your target audience find the right information, often to your blog or website.

Once a visitor has visited your blog or website, you can engage them and convert them to subscribers, leads or customers. First, consider this question: Which social media platform(s) best reaches my target audience?

Are they using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube are all options. These are just some examples, but your audience will determine how social media platforms are used. Twitter is great for sending short messages and getting messages out to a wider audience for impressions and general reach. Facebook allows you to post longer messages and reach a wider audience between 20-65 years old. Pinterest is best for imagery. If you are in the art business, this is the place to be. LinkedIn is a popular platform for B2B professionals. If you are selling products or services to B2B customers, LinkedIn is your best choice.

After you have decided which outlets you want, here are five additional tips for your social media marketing posts:

1. Social media marketing can take up a lot of time.

 You can use a social media tool such as HubSpot or HootSuite to link all your accounts and schedule posts during your free time. This will allow you to post less frequently throughout the day. Don’t forget about the time changes. Posting something at 9 pm EST is likely to be missed by most of your UK audience. To find the best time for each day, consider how your audience interacts with previous posts. This will help you determine the best time to engage.

2. Be Unique in Your Content

What makes you different from your competitors? You can show your uniqueness and post links to articles and blog posts that highlight achievements, news, or other benefits. These are the cornerstones of a successful social marketing strategy. Create your hashtags to use on Facebook and Twitter. Host caption contests and share photos. Ask experts in your field questions. To provide unique content that your followers will love to share and engage with, think outside the box.

3. Be genuine with your connections

Social media is not the place to always push for sales. You can use it to meet people from your industry. Establish and maintain mutually beneficial relationships both with your potential customers and thought-leaders. These influencers can have a huge impact on your social media marketing success. One retweet, like or comment from a key influencer could put your content in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people!

4. Engage with your posts

Did you ever go to a party only to discover that you didn’t know anyone and that the few people you know won’t introduce you to anyone? This is how social media marketing can feel initially, even though you might be posting to very few people at the beginning. This feeling is not something we like, but it’s where most of us start. Follow people and engage with them. Your followers can find the information they need online. Answer their questions online and engage with them. Spend a few minutes each day commenting on key influencer accounts to share your honest opinion. You’ll quickly attract people’s attention and build your network if you do it honestly and intelligently.

5. Be real with your followers

People want to be able to communicate with people and not robots. They don’t like to be spammed constantly. Encourage people to feel happy for the opportunity to interact with you. It would be best to thank them for sharing, following, and posting your content. You’ll see the social media momentum build if you do your best to repay them.

You may eventually hire someone to manage your social media marketing. But until then, you can start thinking about these tips that will help you master your social media strategy. Once you get comfortable with your social media marketing style and rhythm, you’ll be able to create your voice.

Although social media marketing is essential for any business, it can be challenging to keep up with changing trends and changes in the industry. These are some tips to make sure you don’t fall behind.

Be consistent.

Consistently posting can help you cement your business’ presence on social media. This will increase your chances of customers seeing your posts. If your posts get enough engagement, it can also help you attract new customers.

You should at most post once a week. If you can post daily and simultaneously every day, it is worth it. If you don’t have a dedicated team for social media, posting more frequently than this will eat up your time. You should create a daily post that engages with your audience to engage back.

Social media users have a very short attention span so keep your posts as short as possible.

Remember to consider the content. Even if you are in the same industry, what works for one company might not work for you. Your brand and image should be reflected in your content. Trendy posts will make you look trendy. Make your posts sophisticated if you want to appear trendy.

Your branding, marketing and social media all need to be consistent with the tone your audience is used to.

Keep your posts engaging and interesting.

While not every company needs to be creative in its marketing plans, keeping posts interesting is important.

You can include different types of content, such as videos, polls and AMAs. So your posts will stand out.

People love novelty, so it’s a good idea to add a twist or unexpected ingredient to your posts. People think of Old Spice when they think of Terry Crews and his pecs. Or a young man was riding a horse on a muscled horse. Both are done funnily.

Engage with customers via social media. Share what they say with the world. Could you do it? Make sure to ask your customers first and credit them where credit is due.

Use hashtags to increase engagement. Hashtags allow you to add a keyword to your posts to increase online visibility. The hashtag does not replace keywords. It works alongside them to increase visibility for your posts online. It is important to remember that the more relevant the hashtag, the greater the chance it will gain traction.

Offer value to your audience

Many businesses mistakenly believe that social media is only about selling. But that’s just one part. Your followers should find interesting, relevant content that is valuable to them.

It’s a sure way to gain their trust and interests by providing valuable content.

There are many popular social media platforms out there. Each one is unique in their offerings and the people they serve. Find out who your audience is, what they use it for, and build your marketing plan around them.

Be open-minded to new ideas and suggestions.

Your followers and customers should have the opportunity to provide feedback, suggestions, or comments. This can build trust and rapport with your followers. This can help you gain valuable information about their preferences and dislikes about your product/service in return.

Pay attention to what your followers say whenever you can and respond promptly. You must prioritise any criticisms and respond to any feedback as quickly as possible. This is a great way to keep customers loyal and ensure that employees and customers feel valued.

Be authentic.

Social media is a great way to see a brand or business not be true to themselves, or at least not interact in a way that aligns with its existing branding.

If you approach things wrongly, customers will see through your façade and not be surprised when you fail to deliver what you promised. It’s essential to be authentic to create a strong following on social media.

Be alert for algorithm changes.

It could be an indication that your algorithm has changed or that ads are burying your posts.

You cannot usually look up the exact algorithm changes, so you will need to examine each post to see if a pattern suggests a change.

Notable is that not all social media platforms include real-time metrics in their algorithms.

Understand your social media goals, and then act accordingly.

It is a good idea for you to have a clear vision for your social media goals and your actual business goals. These goals will guide you in determining where and how social media can achieve them.

If your goal is to reach young adults, for example, you might research the most popular platforms and then work from there.

You can increase your social media presence and sales by learning the workings of each platform and identifying your target audience.

Social media has an estimated 2.65 Billion users around the world. Social media is a highly adaptable tool that must adapt to the constantly changing world. There are many ways that social media can make companies more visible, appealing, and accessible, whether it’s through valuable content, customer service, or paid promotions.

Develop a social media strategy

What party would you throw without a plan?

You could, but it may not be as enjoyable as if you hired a DJ, caterer and bouncy house. The same applies to your social media strategy. The better your outcome, the more you think about what posts you make.

A well-thought-out plan is a key to creating a consistent and effective social media presence across all platforms.

PR Smith’s SOSTAC(r) framework is a great way to organize your plan.

It is broken down into six steps and provides a guideline to help ensure your social media channels have a clear direction. This guide is based on where you are now and where you want it to go.

These are:

Situation Analysis: Where are we?

Objectives Where do we want to go? (e.g. Gain followers, improve engagement and customer service.

Strategy – How can we get there (Reflect on the content and audiences you currently have)

Tactics: which strategies do we need? (e.g. Which social networks to use? Post frequency? Content themes?

Actions: How will tactics be implemented, and who will take part? Consider things such as staff capabilities/time, outsourcing, internal processes and systems, etc.

Reports. control how we will know that we are there? (KPIs and analytics, customer feedback/surveys. Who monitors the results?

Know your audience

If you don’t know your audience, you can’t create relevant content. Make sure you learn about your audiences – whether it be through market research, social insights, creating personas, or social media listening/monitoring.

Social media monitoring is stalking, waiting for the whispers and gossip that might be about your company. You can learn valuable insight into your customers by listening to what is being said about you, your industry and competitors on social media and the internet.

These honest, objective insights can help you fine-tune your targeting strategy.

Make sure your brand image remains consistent.

Every social media platform should consistently reflect your brand. It includes visual aspects as well as tone, messaging, and values. It’s also important to link these themes with your overall branding strategy, including your website.

You can quickly and easily brand social media posts using various online tools, including Canva or Adobe Spark.

Share useful and valuable content that aligns with your business goals.

Nothing is worse than content just for the sake of content.

You might need to rethink how you use social media when creating posts and campaigns.

These are just a few examples of the objectives that social media can help you achieve:

• Increase in engagement – shares/likes/clicks/replies
• Customer satisfaction/service increased
• Increased sales of your product/service
• Increased visits to your site
• Increased number of followers
• How far can brand awareness take your message?

Keep an eye on your results.

When monitoring your campaigns, you must focus on more than just ‘vanity metrics .’ when monitoring your campaigns.

You can also gain valuable information from social networking, including customer service, community engagement and sharing tips and information about your product or service.

Once you have identified the metrics you need to measure to achieve your goals, you can start looking for a tool to help you track them. There are many scheduling tools available and social media channels that offer to track. You can also explore third-party avenues or build your APIs.

It is important to stay on top of the latest trends, features, and algorithms social networks throw at you. This will make social media marketing more efficient and hopefully more rewarding.

We came across an interesting article in Entrepreneur magazine which outlines 5 Ways to Use Your Network to Grow Your Business The article lists 5 tips that you need to keep in mind when you ask your network members for advice. Below we try to look at these tips from a social media perspective to grow your fan base and build an engaging network.

1. Before you ask for something, give something

It’s no secret that today many brands seek consumer opinion through social media. While this is a good strategy to reach your consumers and get their feedback, it is important that you build an engaging network by offering giveaways and promotional deals through social media pages. It’s not a good idea to expect something for nothing. To better solicit feedback from social media users, first offer them a reason to do so. Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. Serene is a boutique hotel which maintains a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a Foursquare place to reach their consumers and create a fan base. Serene can offer, 20% off on ‘Breakfast all day’ for their Facebook fans and Twitter followers or 10% off on drinks for Foursquare check-ins. These giveaways can be tied to landing pages to track their performance using an analytics tool. Once they have acquired a considerable number of followers in their network, Serene can post questions for users to give their feedback in order to better their service.

2. Restrict your requests for advice to a person’s area of expertise

It is crucial that your social media posts are appealing to your network. When you ask for advice or opinions, make sure that the question is understood and is in the area of expertise of your network.  Identify you network’s most engaged and influential users, find out their interests and expertise and make sure you address and focus on them when posting content or promotions. Always take their opinion into consideration and thank them for the valuable feedback. It’s important to stay within your network of verified customers to get feedback. This is better than trying to send blanket requests for feedback from any social media user.

3.  Don’t have hidden motives

Transparency is a key factor when it comes to social media as it is a platform where good and bad sentiment can spread at the blink of an eye. So whenever you post content, be transparent and to the point. Being transparent includes, divulging who you are and your intent with any given post that requests action from social media users. Hidden motives can discourage users from giving their feedback. For example, let’s say you are a high-end spa who just hired a new manicurist and is eager to know what your consumers think of her services. You could post on you Facebook page or Twitter account, “Anne recently joined us as a manicurist. How do you like her signature manicure? Please give your feedback to help us train her”. Also, in such situations, you could offer promotions like 50% off a manicure with Anne.

4. Avoid potentially controversial and sensitive issues

Like the article says this is pretty much common sense, yet needs to be carefully adhered to as  this can lead to social media disasters. When you are posting content stay focused on what you provide as a company rather than ideologies, political statements, etc. that can lead to hurtful social media posts.

5. Don’t ask for advice people would normally charge you for

Again, this comes down to staying on topic about your products and services. When you post content make sure it is to build awareness about your brand and gain more impressions.  If you do want to ask for advice that needs to be paid for, offer a reward. For example, you could be the newest pub in the town and you want to introduce a new beer. So, perhaps you put out a call to beer specialists to come in and rate your beer. If you’re asking for specialists, they’ll likely need to be rewarded more so than a typical customer. Here, a free beer may not be enough. Consider something of more value, such as naming a beer after them.

Social media continues to press new boundaries for companies, small and large, to develop more direct relationships with potential customers. Done right, social media can also be a platform to learn what to do to improve your product or service. Just be careful to stay on task, be transparent and to measure results so you can improve them for the next campaign.

Popularity can be defined as the state or condition of being liked, esteemed or supported by many people. Social media is a powerful way to reach out to a lot of people in a very short time. It offers an opportunity to increase the popularity of just about anything – a person, a brand, a movement, etc. – unlike any other medium. For brand managers and marketers, they can reach out to more customers and to positively impact revenues. Social media opens up an entire global audience to your brand. The problem is, how does one popularize their Facebook page, Twitter handle or Google+ profile?  And how does one inspire more followers and fans? Creating a Facebook page in itself doesn’t guarantee that your brand is immediately exposed to the world. You’ll have to put together an organized effort to interact with social media users.

According to available statistics on Facebook’s performance, there are more than 900 million people using Facebook around the world. According to the Guardian.co.uk (2012), Twitter has over 140 million users worldwide. These numbers are staggering and it gives us a clear picture about the potential to expand one’s brand through popular social media networks like Facebook or Twitter.

Here are some best practices to increase you brand popularity via social media. Let’s begin with some basics. First of all one should engage with social media interactively. If it’s a Facebook page we are focusing on, it should be simple in structure and filled with ample content. Facebook pages with incomplete information do not impress users. If we consider a Twitter handle, there should be regular tweets evangelizing your brand. Being interactive makes visitors feel like their opinion is imperative to you. It might be a good investment to have someone constantly broadcast snippets about one’s products or services, and to participate in conversations on your Facebook page or via your Twitter handle, representing your organization’s viewpoint. Additional interactivity can include campaigns with calls to action. For example, one can do a contest in Facebook to earn likes, or in Twitter to earn followers. Surveys to cast votes about a topic is another opportunity to get interactive. It’s important that such interactivity relates to your brand and social media goals. Of course your Facebook page, Twitter profile, etc. must be customized to your branding.

It is a useful practice to leverage famous brands by tagging them in your posts. For example, let us assume you are a start-up restaurant and new to your industry. You could create a wall post saying ‘Batter fried chicken with Coca Cola’.  Coca Cola is a well known brand and has already engaged thousands of fans in their Facebook page. You can grab the attention of Coca Cola fans by displaying the tagged post in the Coca Cola page. The same concept could be employed on Twitter as well. You can use key words and hash tags to get more followers to tweet your handle.

One should always build a relationship with one’s fans. Social media is about two-way communication.  This means that your followers can ask you questions in public and you should be able to reply with your point of view in public too. Questions must be answered expediently. This will build trust around your brand and give it a greater chance to entice customer loyalty. Bolstering customer relationships is the key to popularity in social media. It’s also a good idea to establish social media policies for your social media communicators, to know who and how they are to interact with the public.

Advertising within Facebook can of course enhance your brand reach within social media. Your advertising strategy can be twofold; via traditional media such as newspapers or search engines (Google AdWords) and via Facebook advertisements. Even within an old-fashioned newspaper advertisement, one can display one’s Facebook page or Twitter handle in an eye-catching manner. Traditional advertising still remains a component of marketing. For smarter “indirect” advertising one could use market research data to one’s benefit.

However, the single most effective strategy for exploiting the immense popularity of social media is to actively leverage them in your sales processes. Social media engagement is best achieved through discounting tactics, like issuing discount coupons for every 1000^th fan of your Facebook page. Or it could be leveraging engagements  for further promotion, such as a customer posting a photograph on your Facebook page of their favorite product that you sell. This displays his or her brand loyalty to friends. In return, you reward the loyalty with a percentage discount, points scheme, etc. Investing in mobile apps or mobile friendly websites where location-based check-ins to your store are shown on your customer’s Facebook timeline is also a great way to enhance your brand. Again, automated discount schemes tied to the use of your store’s Facebook app is a great way to entice new customers via Facebook.

Who is an influencer? An influencer is an ordinary person who has an above-average impact on a specific topic, in a social environment.  Influencers persuade others in favor or against a given parameter of consequence in society. For example, one can find influencers of brands, products, ideas or beliefs. Sometimes, influencers band together towards a cause, like consumer groups, industry associations or community advocates. For one to standout as an influencer, in a statistical sense, one must be able to influence the minds of the community well beyond the average influence of any other single person or small group.

Influencers can be important to your business. They may not even be aware of your company, but may possess control over a customer segment you seek. It might be beneficial to recognize and win over such pillars in your target community, not merely as marketing tools, but as more subtle “social relationship assets.” They could act as people responsible for leveraging key contacts, supporting new product releases or simply to increase market awareness and foster industry paradigm shifts (e.g. evangelizing the value of Mobile Apps).

An exciting new development is the emergence of influencers via social media, and the possibility of identifying and rewarding them for their good work towards a particular cause. Let’s consider the story of Yago, a hypothetical small to medium-sized dress store. Yago updates their Facebook page and Twitter stream on regular basis, as their principal method of promoting the store. Fans can get actively involved with the Facebook page by:
– Liking the posts and photos
– Commenting on photos and posts
-Sharing the posts and photos, etc.

Followers of Yago’s Twitter handle can get involved in the evolution of the brand by mentioning or re-tweeting posts. Thus Yago can begin to recognize their Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers as potential influencers. For example, a fan can share a post from Yago’s Facebook page and thus make it visible to  her entire network of friends. This would introduce Yago to a whole new audience.

This theory of influencers via social media is nothing new – it’s indeed what attracts people to social media use. This is the era of social media, and thanks to social media users everyone now has the opportunity to standout and become leaders with respect to their interests. According to Social Media Today, influencers on social media are either passionate individuals who turn out to be specialists or they are professionals who use Web 2.0 tools as part of their regular work. They tend to take advantage of their presence on social networks for personal gain or as a representative (or “ambassador”) to a brand or a company. They produce and share relevant content, appealing to the interests of the community at large. This can trigger discussions that might have influence on consumer behavior. As a result, marketers and public relations professionals have obviously been forced to reassess their approach to social media and to define the influence and influencers via social networks.

According to Barone, L’ study (2010) there are five types of influencers:

• The social butterflies – The social butterflies love to connect people from inside their different networks. For instance if you need a stylist they would know one. If you need to get drawings they’d have contacts. Social butterflies are always willing to do the introduction for you. They’d have the biggest contact list and establish themselves on all social media platforms. The problem is in finding out how one can identify them. One could create contact groups (Twitter lists, Facebook groups, etc.) and then check for overlapping names. These folks would be likely candidates for butterflies.
• The Opinion Leader (Thought Leader) – The opinion leader can become an excellent ambassador of a brand he/she has built, relying on her strong, proven competency in her field. Their messages are the ones that are commented on or re-tweeted most often. Thought leaders can help you construct a “social imprint” by providing you their endorsement. When they re-tweet your tweets or recommend you with a Facebook post, you may be able to benefit from their circle of influence and thus could massively boost the audience for your product or website. How can one identify thought leaders? This is fairly easy; they usually are well known personalities in social media culture and thus, have high counts of followers, etc. They’re likely to speak at conferences and are always being referred to in other’s tweets and posts. And so on.
• The Discoverer/Trendsetter – these types are continuously on the lookout for new trends. The Discoverer is always the first to use a new platform. They’d know every detail about the newest technologies before others. Discoverers are powerful social media assets because they are the news distributors. If you looking for discoverers, you could find them reading tech notes, commenting on new articles and tweeting about sites and applications you have never heard of before.
• The Reporter/Sharer – Reporters distribute information to bloggers and journalists through dedicated webzines. They are extremely important since they hold three desirable traits; press, coverage and links. Creating links with reporters helps you to enhance your public relationships.
• The User/ Everyday Customer – She signifies the regular customer. These folks are just as important as the above; because they will pass the experience along to their families and friends.

Social media influencers are a new breed of opportunity for marketers.  They include a larger variety than influencers pre-dating social media such as, press, analysts, politicians, etc.  Today, social media has made it possible for the average Joe to become influential on a topic, brand, etc. unlike ever before.  But, remember that influence can be both positive and negative.  Therefore, continually monitoring the impact you have with such influencers for your brand and website is more important than ever.

Typically, content performance related to popularity of a website is determined through web traffic. You would analyze the number of visitors and the pages they visit. While this is important analytics, web traffic alone cannot determine the popularity or reach of your web content. It is important that you also know how people engage with these pages. Social media networks have emerged as an opportunity to analyze this type of engagement. Social network users share your web content, tweet it, like it, and comment on it – these actions can help you determine how viral your web content is. While Google Analytics can give you all the necessary web analytics, there is a very valid reason to have an equivalent tool to measure your web content’s popularity in social networks.

Let’s look into some hypothetical scenarios where page-wise social analytics can be useful. Serene is a boutique hotel which recently launched a new in-hotel Italian restaurant. Their website has a page for the new restaurant. In this scenario, Serene could benefit from measuring and monitoring the social activity for this page. If a user shares or likes this page, it shows their attraction and interest towards the restaurant. Simply, they liked the food or the atmosphere of the restaurant. Just the same, it could let them know if any negative shares are occuring so they can act before things get out of hand.

You could also be the author of a blog looking to determine the popularity of your blog posts on social networks. Analytics based on social activities such as impressions, likes, shares and comments can be immensely useful to you. It could show you what works and what doesn’t, to spot good trends and bad trends, and so on.  Conversions such as how many of the impressions were realized into a comment, a like, a tweet or a share can help you determine the user engagement.

Content performance analytics is a great way to figure out how popular and attractive your web content is to social network users. It is a must have feature in any social analytics tool. One such tool to help with this is Xaffo, a social media intelligence platform which allows you to measure and monitor the popularity of your web content in social networks. Xaffo’s page-wise performance reports include the growth of social activity for your web site and pages, daily activity count, forecast of social activity and your top 100 pages. Each report provides the breakdown of social activity for you to determine which social network generates the most traffic. However, Xaffo could improve to include conversions such as conversation rate, attraction rate and amplification rate for individual pages.

Monitoring the performance of your web content within social media networks has become more than useful – it’s important.  The use of proper analytical intelligence can give you great insight into what works and what doesn’t.  With such data, your web content strategies can take on whole new approaches.

There is without a question a right way and a wrong way to use social media marketing to build your business.

Social Media marketing can significantly increase the exposure to your business which equates to more customers. Remember that a website is the foundation of your online presence while a blog is the start to social media marketing.

We already know that posting to your blog and social media on a weekly basis are strong strategies that can substantially increase your search engine rankings

Once your blog is set up, it is time to set up specific social media accounts that will serve various purposes including:

• Branding your business
• Creating a following of specific groups of people that are interested in your products or service
• Building links that will increase search engines rankings
• Creating a marketing funnel that starts within social media and ends with the purchase of your products or service
• Creating valuable content that gives your followers information they can actually use
• Creating a video marketing campaign

Remember that each social media account serves a different purpose. Facebook is great for branding and building a following that will lead to your blog and website. Facebook though is not a great source for backlinks as they have “No Follow” with all links.

YouTube is one of the strongest sources for both links and to begin a video marketing campaign. Keep in mind that within most searches you will see YouTube on page one of the major search engines. More to come on this within another post.

LinkedIn is a great social media platform that can build a tremendous community of like minded people that are interested in your products or service. This platform is filled with professionals from every walk of life and can be a tremendous source for business relationships.

While you are able to create backlinks in LinkedIn, those links will not usually get you on page one of the major search engines. Linked In though should be included within a backlink campaign.

While we will cover the type of information to share within another blog post, remember that educating people about the field you are in and the type of products and services you offer is the primary goal.

Don’t forget to connect all your social media accounts to your blog. There are various WordPress plugins that can used that will automate the process. Now each time that you post to your blog, that information will be shared throughout your entire social media platform.

At J&M Marketing Consultants we have companies from around the globe that retain our firm to establish their presence online. This of course includes everything from a professional website right through a complete social media marketing campaign.

“Every day, millions of consumers converse in online communities, discussion boards, blogs and social networks. They turn to the Internet to share opinions, advice, grievances and recommendations. Are you listening, connecting and responding in a way that protects and promotes your brand?” Nielsen Online

Fragmenting media and the overwhelming presence of social media websites have changed online consumer behavior. From blogs and micro-blogs to streaming video, the consumer has moved from the interruptive advertising model, to reading peer reviews and testimonials.

Companies that are not monitoring these online conversations are vulnerable to the viral effect of negative messaging. These effects can include intellectual property theft and brand threats. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have used these methods to protect themselves from fraud sites and internal leaks.

Domino’s Pizza paid a high price to learn about monitoring their brand. Two employees shot a video showing health code violations. The video was posted to Youtube and viewed by millions for several days. Domino’s immediately experienced a decrease in delivery orders worldwide. The President of the company responded with a video, which mitigated the effect on the company’s bottom line.

In the late 1990’s everyone became aware of domain names and their relation to brand identity and keywords. The same is true of online user names at Twitter. Early adapters were able to get corporate names. Companies need to reserve their brand names and all associated catch phrases.

1. Set up systems to guard intellectual property. With the rise in blogs, copyright infringement is increasing. Look for use of your logo, photos and content. Often, unauthorized channel resellers will set up a fraudulent website and redirect traffic using your materials.

2. Be pro-active about monitoring threats to your brand. Large Corporations may create a full time position for a director of online brand monitoring. Others may hire companies specializing in social media monitoring.

Small and medium size businesses can do a great deal of monitoring in house through Google Reader and Google Alerts.

Use Google reader (www.google.com/reader) for blog monitoring. Set up your account, it’s free. For example, you can follow many blog posts through Technorati. Go to Technorati.Com and type your keyword into the search field. The results page will offer a subscribe button, click on it. When the page comes up, copy the URL. Then, go over to Google reader and click “add a subscription” and paste the URL into the box. Google will aggregate all feeds into one easy to monitor page.

Google alerts, at www.google.com/alerts will monitor all videos posted to Youtube. Simply open their page and type your keywords. Google will email an alert every time a video is posted.

Other important websites include; Twitter, Craigslist, Facebook, WordPress, MySpace, and Bebo. Depending on your needs, you may want to do searches at these websites. We’ve seen recently how movie buzz on Twitter can ruin an opening before the weekend is over.

Regardless of the method chosen, it is important to set up real-time alerts based on triggers. A quick response is imperative (as in the case of Domino’s). Decide internally who has the ability to respond to brand threats. Set up metrics and time how long it takes from incident to notification. You’ll also want to track how long it takes to go from notification to solution.

Social media offers companies the ability to execute quick, focused, brand related messages to their target market.