Social Media Marketing

In order to be effective with internet marketing, you need more than just a website. Social media has evolved from a powerful communication medium to a key marketing channel. It offers a platform for customers to find you when they’re seeking reviews, comparing pricing, or researching offers. Increasingly, people end up on websites after encountering a brand on Facebook or clicking on a link in a Twitter feed. The more platforms on which you are present, the more you will turn up in search results, especially now that social is a part of search engine algorithms. Today, using social media to direct traffic to your website and generate new leads is an indispensable part of your marketing mix.  This will help you to help you identify the key social media channels where you should be present and how to optimize them for lead generation.

Where to be present

Have your friends started posting product questions on Facebook? What about looking for recommendations on Twitter? Have you watched product videos on YouTube? If your answer to any of these questions is “yes,” then you know that customers are using social media to do research. But a challenge for many marketers is deciding where to spend their time within the realm of the internet. There are countless social networking sites out there, and it seems impossible to maintain a presence on all of them while achieving the same success. To help you focus on the most important ones, here are four popular networks that are widely recognized and used:

1. Facebook

2. Twitter

3. LinkedIn

4. Google +(Very new and will be a big player soon)

Facebook

Thanks to its interactive capabilities, a Facebook business Page is a great supplement to any website. On it, you can include everything from company location and contact information to updates and multimedia. Formerly generating a “fan” count, Pages now track “Likes” , share and comments.

Customise Fan Page

• Customise the URL of your fan page for example www.facebook.com/asquithlondon instead of the long name you have already. This is great to put on business cards, in signature of emails, fliers and most importantly easier for your potential clients to remember.
• Create a custom welcome page to entice new fans to your fan page. This can be done in many ways with creative designs, promotions and allowing potential fans to receive something for liking the page (brochures, prizes, discounts etc.).
• Create other custom tabs to suit your needs or to give more information to your fans on upcoming events, sales, job offers, videos the possibilities are endless.

Shop Tab

• Integrate  your existing products with a new Facebook shopping page
• This is a stand-alone shop which can work completely independent to your existing e-commerce website or fully integrated (dependant on your e-commerce platform.)
• This shop is for YOUR fans and by being fans they can receive discounts, group offers and of course be the first to see new stock.
• The exciting part of this is the ability for resellers to set up their own FB fan page shop so that they can promote and sell your product at a fraction of the cost of a fully integrated e-commerce website.

Promotions and Marketing

• Create competitions to drive people to your fan page.
• Offer fans a reason to “like” your page.
• Have group offers
• Fan only discounts

Content And Management Of Page

• Research and write original content
• Work with and understand your company and your  goals
• Strategy on promotions, discounts and competitions
• Constant monitoring of wall posts and engaging with fans
• Management of competitions, group deals, giveaways
• Regular changes to all pages to give your brand a constantly fresh feel
• Daily topical posts (image and text).
• Daily Links to relevant industry news, events etc.
• Running polls to get market research from the most important people “your fans”
• Links to other social media sites

Twitter

Twitter is a real-time network allowing users to post updates (tweets) using up to 140 characters. Whether you represent an individual, business, venue, blog, group, etc., anybody can use Twitter to let the world know what’s up.  Facebook and Twitter are two different types of platforms to we will treat them in that way.

Management

• Customise your page to make it look inviting
• On a daily basis look to follow individuals, companies and products in your industry
• We will post daily with information, images, industry news and gossip
• Links to all other social network sites
• Tweets are intended to be informative and newsworthy, so use we will use them that way.
• We will send out helpful, interesting Tweets anywhere from 3 to 5  times a day
• Promote events, products and offers

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most popular place for professionals to network on the internet. As of March 2011, over 100 million users worldwide had activated accounts. This social network makes it easy to find potential employees and customers as well as seek industry-specific advice. On LinkedIn, you can post jobs to your company page and pose questions for the community to answer. LinkedIn Answers also provides valuable industry insights. Does your company have a LinkedIn company page?  Over two million others do.

Here’s how you can benefit from it:

• Generate leads, especially if you are a B2B company

• Connect with millions of professionals

• Participate in industry discussions

• Share content relevant to your company

Let Others Learn About You:

• Highlight company’s purpose and products

• Announce job openings

• Boost status with auto-updates

• Publicize recent tweets and blog posts

• View recent company activity (like new hires)

Google +

When Google opened the flood gates to businesses and organisations, there was a rush to lay claim to brand names. One flaw in the sign-up page for Google+ Pages was the lack of verification required to set up an account.

When you start the process of creating a page for a product or brand, for example, you only need to enter what you want the page to be called, the website you want to associate with the page, the category and who will be able to see your page.

If your business is actively involved in social media or you think it may want a Google+ Page in the future, it’s a good idea to claim your business’s name to prevent squatters from holding on to it.

One feature that’s clearly missing in the launch of Google+ Pages is the ability to add multiple administrators to a company’s account. As it stands, only one person can access and post to the Google+ Page through the Google account that created it.

While this certainly isn’t ideal, there is an easy workaround. For example, businesses can disseminate the account’s username and password to those who require access to it, such as the marketing department or customer service representatives. Clunky, but it works for now.

Conclusion

Evolve Digital Media will act as your community manager and run a full time social media campaign to maximise your brands presence via all the above social channels and more. Active will work with your company in strategy and performance to gain a jump on all competitors. We will constantly monitor performance through analytics to make sure the strategy we put in place is working and growing.