Erik Qualman's Blog, page 549

Don’t Forget Socializing Your Marketing Strategy

All kinds of companies are turning to social media to boost their marketing efforts and for good reason.

Socializing your company’s marketing strategy can help take each campaign to new heights.

With advertising advice in mind, here are just a few reasons why your company should get social with its marketing:

Next Level Brand Awareness

The main goal of every marketing campaign you create is to increase brand awareness.

Sure, promoting a new product, spreading the word about a sale, and reaching new audiences is a focal point of your marketing as well, but all of those fall under the brand awareness umbrella.

Going the social media route means you are putting your brand in the spotlight of an extremely recognizable medium.

Whether you choose Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any of the other social avenues, social media can make audiences more aware of your brand.

Millennials to Baby Boomers to next generation consumers are active on social media and the numbers are growing. In fact, according to Pew Research, nearly 75% of all Internet users are on social media. Now that’s brand awareness.

Inbound Traffic and Social Media: A Win-Win Relationship

As the following article looks at, if you’re wondering how to create a multi-strand marketing strategy for your business, look no further than social media.

Not only does marketing via social media increase brand awareness, it also has the potential to increase inbound traffic for your business’s website.

Every social media account your business has leads back to your website.

Likewise, the content you share socially increases the chances of new customers finding their way to your site.

By continuously posting quality content that’s engaging and informative, you are creating more traffic to your site, which translates to more worthwhile leads and conversions.

Social Monitoring is a Huge Plus

Getting ahead and staying ahead of the competition is a must for just about every kind of business. Through social media monitoring, your business can improve its marketing intelligence and outsmart its competitors.

Social media monitoring allows your company to track mentions of your brand as well as your competitor’s brand, products, and marketing campaigns.

When equipped with this type of knowledge, you can track social trends and improve your business’s offerings based on the competition and your own strengths and weaknesses.

Brand Legitimacy

Today’s consumers perform a lot of research before settling on a product or service.

A popular research route is checking social media for business legitimacy. If your company is active on social media and has plenty of followers, then it makes consumers more comfortable choosing your brand.

By having active social accounts, a Facebook business page, and by responding to social comments and questions, you’re making your brand more legitimate in the eyes of the consumer.

Marketing at the Speed of Life

Unlike traditional marketing techniques, social media marketing is as instantaneous as you want it to be. When you’re ready to share content, simply post your marketing campaigns and you’ll reach your audience right away.

If your content to rich enough, chances are your social followers will share your content too. You can’t really say that about any other form of marketing.

When you’re ready to bring your business’s marketing up to speed, keep in mind the benefits of social media.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Shutterstock

[image error]

Twitter now lets you receive direct messages from any user

Mashable - Twitter announced on Monday that all users will now have the option to receive direct messages from any other user.

The setting was originally introduced in fall 2013 but only rolled out to a small subset of people. This time around, Twitter will make the option available to all of Twitter’s 288 million monthly active users, with the social network rolling it out to people throughout Monday. Users can eventually check off  ”Receive direct messages from anyone” on the “Security and privacy” settings page.

For Twitter users who didn’t have access to the setting until now, direct messaging was more limited: You could only send messages to users who followed you, and you could only receive messages from any user you followed.

While the feature may be trivial, it’s another small tweak in Twitter’s recent attempts to have users just plain message each other more, and in turn, boost engagement — particularly among brands and businesses. Twitter’s going to need them if it wants to reach its bold, “strictly hypothetical” goal of $14 billion in annual revenues within the next decade.

Over the last few months, the social network has rolled out a number of new features and tweaks. In January, for example, it introduced group direct messages, as well as the ability to share and edit video inside Twitter. And earlier in April, it officially revamped its retweet feature, making it easier for users to plug other people’s tweets and add their own comments.

Article by JP Mangalindan for Mashable

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

[image error]

Social Skills Lead to Better Career Options

The career search can be stressful. In fact, it usually is.

These days the search takes place beyond career fairs and resumes, you’ve got social media to help you.

But you need to know how to use it to your best advantage, and there definitely are some keys to knowing how to do this.

What social media to hit up?

We’re all aware of the big names and what they can do. But what is out there besides Facebook, Google+ and Twitter?

Along with the big guys, it’s also good to take a look at some social media that has a smaller following, especially ones with a niche:

• If you are in a creative or design industry, use Pinterest. Create a job board and add your own visually appealing pins. You can use infographics for you resume including charts and graphs that depict and illustrate your work self. Think of your headline as your resume headline. A board of inspiration and quotes that reflect you is a good idea, along with any links that show your talents and what you have done already.

• Try Blogging. It’s easy enough to get a blog page up and running, try Word Press or Blogger. You can write about your job search, your goals and your background. It’s a great place to have something all about you and you never who may stumble on it. Once you’ve written your blogs, put them out onto your social media platforms, including LinkedIn and you never who they may get to.

• Jobster is a smaller social network site related to careers. You can post your career profile and your resume. It’s a platform where you can connect with those hiring as well showcase yourself.

• Ecademy is like LinkedIn, but has its own advantages. You create an online profile where you share your career goals and skillset. It’s dedicated to networking rather than a place to find actual job posts, but who you know is a rather big part of the job search.

What to search and key in on…

When you are looking for a particular job, whether you are straight out of college or already a little settled in your career, you need to focus on specifics.

The Internet is too big to randomly search, and when you can narrow down your goals and what you are looking for, you’ll have an easier time finding it.

Not only can you find jobs and employment on the Internet, but you can also find related topics to help in your search, like what employers are looking for and top skills in a specific field.

Here are examples of specifics to search … tailor these ideas to fit your skills and objectives:

•           Take a look at the Top 5 career skills for architects and engineers

•           Career outlook for physical therapists

•           What are the top cities for jobs in medical research?

•           Top 5 things employers look for in education careers

The Internet is a great tool for job searching. Narrow down your field, your area, and utilize social media.

The more “socially” skilled you are, the better your search can go.

Good luck with your search! Share with us any great tips you have that got you where you want to be.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

[image error]

Google is making a giant change this week that could crush millions of small businesses

Business Insider – On Tuesday, April 21, Google is making a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users search for something from their phone.

The algorithm will start favoring mobile-friendly websites (ones with large text, easy-to-click links, and that resize to fit whatever screen they’re viewed on) and ranking them higher in search. Websites that aren’t mobile-friendly will get demoted.

About 60% of online traffic now comes from mobile and Google wants users to have a good experience whenever they click on a mobile link.

The company announced its impending changes back in February, giving webmasters nearly two months and plenty of information to make the changes necessary to keep their sites from disappearing from mobile search results. But the update is still expected to cause a major ranking shake-up. It has even been nicknamed “Mobile-geddon” because of how “apocalyptic” it could be for millions of websites, Itai Sadan, CEO of website building company Duda, told Business Insider.

“I think the people who are at risk are those who don’t know about it,” Sadan says. To him, that mostly means small businesses.

“Come April 21, a lot of small businesses are going to be really surprised that the number of visitors to their websites has dropped significantly. This is going to affect millions of sites on the web,” he says.

Businesses that depend on people finding them through localized search — like, if someone typed “coffee shops in Sunnyside, Queens,” into Google on their phone — could see a decrease in foot traffic as a result of this update, Sadan says.

“Google has always been about relevancy, and content is king,” he says. “But that’s changing. Yes, they’re saying content is still extremely important, but user experience is just as important. It’s not sufficient to have all the right content — if people come to your site and the content is there but it’s not readable, that’s not good.”

It’s not only small businesses that are going to be affected by mobile-geddon though.

Marketing company Somo released a study last week that found that a bunch of big brands, like American Apparel, The Daily Mail, and Ryanair, will all get punished when the change takes place, unless they update their sites before Tuesday.

Article by Jillian D’Onfro for Business Insider 

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

 

 

[image error]

Microsoft Promises ‘Universal’ Office App For Phones Running Windows 10 This Month

TechCrunch – Microsoft promised this morning to release by the end of April a set of Office applications that it calls “Universal” for smartphones running Windows 10.

The company has a two-prong productivity strategy in place for Windows: Office 2016 for desktop use, and, for all other Windows 10 experiences, its touch-focused Office Universal apps. The latter apps, according to Microsoft, will function across tablets and smartphones, dynamically changing their design to allow users to better use them based on their current screen size.

The two names for the two groups of apps — Office Desktop and Office Universal — might seem a bit odd, given that the Universal apps aren’t quite designed to be. The universal tag is instead more useful in the mobile context — these are the apps you will use across Windows devices whenever you’re not at your desk typing away happily on a full-sized keyboard.

Here’s a shot of the Universal Word app, as shared by Microsoft this morning:

Image from TechCrunch

Microsoft is slowly snapping the parts of its new platforms and productivity strategy into place: Windows everywhere; Office everywhere; Office tools for work environments that have a cost attached; Office tools for the on-the-go user for no cost, all glued together by an application layer — the universal Windows Store; and various subscription services to provide additional content and capability to those who need it — Office 365, Xbox Live, and so forth.

The company has also begun to experiment with bundling its services into a single sale. I wouldn’t be flabbergasted if we see a Microsoft Bundle, akin to Amazon Prime from the company that encompasses all its services into a single price, sold on a yearly or monthly basis (probably yearly).

For now, all Windows 10 for phones users can look forward to new code in short order.

Article by Alex Wilhelm for TechCrunch

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

[image error]

The Future of Social Media Marketing, and the Growth of Video

The social media industry is incredibly varied, and the tools, resources, and strategies used by top brands and successful companies seem to change every few weeks or months. Whereas memes and pictures were once the gold standard of social media content, video is now poised to become the most successful medium in the coming months and years.

The Value of Going Visual

The value of video is that the human brain retains the combination of audio and visual signals much better than it does independent sounds or visuals. In other words, people only remember 20 percent of what they hear, and 30 percent of what they see, but a whopping 70 percent of what they see and hear.

That’s why video is so widely used in various areas of business. From training your IT department to engaging with customers, video is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. And, while we could spend hours discussing the value of video in each component of business, we’ll focus on how it’s currently being used in conjunction with social media.

Five Social Video Marketing Tools

Here are five social media video tools you should consider using:

1.      Vine. When you think of social media video production, Vine comes to mind. It’s one of the easiest resources to use and allows you to create short, simple, looping videos. While it may seem like an odd platform at first, you’ll quickly realize that it’s a unique way to attract viewers. You can use it to showcase products, tell a story, or provide glimpses into what you’re doing.

2.      Instagram. Responding to Vine’s success, Instagram launched their own video feature a few years ago, which allows users to post slightly longer, non-looping content. Thanks to advanced editing capabilities, and the ability to easily share to other platforms, Instagram may be a better choice if you’re looking to post more in-depth videos.

3.      Meerkat/Periscope. These are the newest players on the scene. These social networking sites allow you to live-stream video content, and they represent the most promising social media development in recent months. If these platforms are met with success, the capabilities will be endless. From streaming conferences and lectures, to holding Q&A sessions with clients, social media marketing may never be the same again.

4.      Facebook. While Facebook isn’t built on video like other social platforms, it does have its own features that allow for posting video content. In fact, Facebook videos can be as long as 20 minutes and are great for revealing news and posting feature stories.

5.      YouTube. Any discussion of video marketing wouldn’t be complete without a reference to YouTube. This ultra-popular website is among the largest search engines in the world (second only to Google) and is the most flexible of the five platforms mentioned here.

Start Using Video Today

As you can see, there are plenty of options to incorporate video into your social media marketing plan. Research what others are doing within your industry, and find ways to engage with your audience by producing fresh new content.

[image error]

Google Faces Trouble Abroad

USA TODAY  — Facing intensifying scrutiny from regulators, Google is conducting one of its most important searches yet: for an answer to its growing problem in Europe.

The European Commission has formally accused the U.S. technology giant of abusing its dominance in online shopping searches. It has also expanded the antitrust probe to look into whether Google uses its popular Android software to gain an unfair advantage over other applications and services on mobile devices.

The European Commission’s antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, who on Wednesday issued the formal charges known as a statement of objections, warned Google that her inquiry could expand into other areas such as travel and maps.

At stake for the Internet giant: billions of dollars in fines and fundamental changes to how it conducts business, from the money it makes from online search in Europe to the prominent placement of its services and apps on mobile devices.

“The European process is not one in which American tech companies have prevailed,”Boston University law professor Keith Hylton said. “That puts Google in the position of potentially having to make concessions that could be harmful to the company’s business.”

The commission’s probe touches on the everyday activities of consumers across Europe, whether they are searching for the best online shopping deals or pulling out a smartphone to look up directions or watch a video. Google accounts for 90% of all Internet searches in Europe.

Google (GOOG) denies it has broken antitrust rules and insists its products benefit consumers and encourage competition.

“While Google may be the most-used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways — and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide off the mark,” Google’s senior vice president of search Amit Singhal wrote in a blog post published Wednesday.

In a separate blog post, Google said its partnerships with phone makers are voluntary and benefit consumers and manufacturers alike. At issue is whether Google’s practice of bundling apps such as YouTube and Maps with its Android software harms competing apps and services as well as device manufacturers which are forced to take the Google apps along with the rest of the Android software. Android is the world’s most popular operating system with a market share estimated at 81%.

“The European Commission has asked questions about our partner agreements,” wrote Hiroshi Lockheimer, vice president of engineering for the Android division. “It’s important to remember that these are voluntary — again, you can use Android without Google — but provide real benefits to Android users, developers and the broader ecosystem.”

The EU has been investigating Google for five years. Google nearly settled the case without any charges last year but the deal fell apart over objections from ministers in France and Germany and powerful tech groups.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigated similar complaints against Google but ended the investigation in 2013 despite the recommendation by agency staff that the agency take action.

The antitrust case against Google is the largest pursued by European officials since Microsoft’s decade-long antitrust brawl. That case ended in 2009 with Microsoft paying more than $2 billion in fines.

“This case is going to be the defining antitrust case for the Internet economy,” said longtime Google critic Thomas Vinje, legal counsel for FairSearch Europe.

The case also promises to be a distraction for Google management — and could even stymie its momentum in Europe. Legal experts say it could drag on for months, even years.

“To us the most important risks associated with an eventual long term antitrust proceeding would be related to the risk that it could consume valuable management bandwidth, and impose limitations on Google’s ability to innovate in search in Europe for years to come,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Carlos Kirjner wrote in a research note.

It’s unclear if there will long-term repercussions for Google’s business.

Despite multibillion-dollar fines from the European Commission, Microsoft never lost its dominance in personal computers. And Intel, which is appealing its antitrust case, which has gone on for 15 years, is still a powerful chipmaker.

“At a minimum Google is in for a long and difficult fight if they choose to contest this all the way to the end,” said Spencer Waller, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

The Google probe comes amid heightened scrutiny of U.S. tech companies in Europe and a growing backlash against their dominance of this lucrative market.

European antitrust officials are taking a closer look at Apple’s tax arrangements inIreland and Amazon’s in Luxembourg. Privacy officials are zeroing in on how Facebook handles people’s online data.

Article by Jessica Guynn for USA TODAY

Thumbnail from Shutterstock

[image error]

How Much Money Should You Invest In Facebook Ads?

This is definitely one question that we cannot answer for you since it is something that is quite subjective. However, we should highlight some facts that you do have to take into account in order to make a smart decision for your business. When you create your financial business plan, you surely have an advertising budget that is included. You will use a part of it on Facebook but we have to recommend that you only use a percentage based on the goals that you have in the future. Always analyze results and adapt your expenditure based on what brings in the best results.

[image error]

Increasing Page Likes

You want to be sure that the page likes you get are completely relevant. It is hard to make a cold sale on Facebook but you can sell quite well to the people that did choose to see the content you share in news feeds. With this in mind, you do want to increase relevant page likes but you have to be 100% sure that everything is relevant. Do not focus on the irrelevant countries only in order to get more likes.

As a simple rule of thumb, we can say that a relevant like can cost anywhere between 25 cents and 1 dollar based on your industry. You do not have to spend everything on page likes but if your budget is under one hundred dollars, you should focus most of it on increasing page likes.

Post Promotion

If you want to promote posts, you want to promote those that drive people to a website or to a page that will convert something. Many brands do not have such a priority and are just interested in being sure that fans see content. Everything varies from one business to the next but you should never use the boost post button. Focus on promoting posts with these goals:

Reach the fans that missed your posts organically
Reach people that are not fans but are relevant

Generally speaking, marketers expect to reach around twenty percent of the page fans with this type of ad. This is a good assessment that you can take into account. The optimized CPM that you can expect in this case is around $5.

Buying Website Traffic

This is similar with Promoted Posts but the focus is a little different. We are basically referring to the domain sponsored stories. The only problem with this strategy is that it is quite difficult to assess CPM. However, you can expect it to be up to 4 dollars and a minimum of 1 dollar. In this case, you want to target non-fans but you have to be careful with targeting so that you can reach specific interests and get something properly done. It is difficult if you do not know much about Facebook advertising.

Promote Services And Products

Consider this only in the event that you still have budget after you considered the options above. You can easily promote items like:

Webinars
Business services
Virtual products
Webinars
Sign-ups for newsletters

 

[image error]

Social Media Managers: How Best to Spend Your Time

When the average person considers social media, they think about funny videos, pictures of friends, and killing time. However, as a social media manager, the thought of Facebook, Twitter, and other large networking sites comes with different connotations. For you, they aren’t just sites where you go to catch up with friends and see what’s happening in the world; these sites are your livelihood. In order to avoid getting distracted by the constant stream of posts, content, and messages, you need to have a plan.

Taking a Page Out of the Project Management Playbook

Social media marketers and managers can learn a lot from studying project management and applying basic principles, such as development of consistent routines and the setting of daily, weekly, and monthly objectives for each task. With this in mind, let’s take a look at how you, a social media manager, can approach each day for optimum productivity and success.

Rise and Shine: Your Morning Routine

How you handle morning tasks is arguably the most important indicator of whether or not you’ll have a successful and productive day. Generally, your morning should consist of the following:

·         Search for relevant content. Depending on what industry or niche your company is in, it’s likely that industry news and developments change on a daily basis. Though developments will happen throughout the day, it’s important to locate valuable stories in the morning so you can plan your posts and content around them. Spend 15 or 20 minutes browsing websites, looking for fresh, relevant content.

·         Check emails. The last thing you want to do is to leave your inbox filled with unanswered emails. This will leave you feeling rushed and scattered for the rest of the day. Use the early hours of the workday to reply to any messages you received overnight and to organize your inbox.

·         Scan notifications. Finally, use the rest of your time to scan notifications, and respond accordingly. If your social media accounts are highly active, you won’t have time to acknowledge every notification, but do your best to get to as many as possible.

Powering Through: Your Afternoon Routine

If you took control of your morning routine and eliminated distractions, your afternoon should be open to handle some of the following tasks:

·         Write posts. Using your content calendar, or material you curated in the morning, start writing and publishing unique posts to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and any other platforms with which you work.

·         Review stats. After posting new content, keep an eye on your monitoring tools, and monitor the efficacy of your blog posts, pictures, videos, or comments. If something isn’t working, make some tweaks to see if you can improve it. For posts that are being well-received, make note of why they’re working and how you can capitalize on those strategies again in the future.

·         Meet with decision makers. Finally, at the end of each day, you should meet with project managers, decision makers, and team members to determine whether or not goals are being met, how ongoing campaigns are doing, and what tasks need to be handled the following day.

Develop a Schedule That Works

This is obviously a sample schedule; the important thing is that you develop a schedule that works for you. Not everyone operates the same, but every social media manager needs a schedule to stay on track.

[image error]

Microsoft and Yahoo Renew Search Partnership

USA TODAY - Microsoft and Yahoo announced they will renew their search alliance started in 2009, with key changes both companies say will maintain a “strong and productive” alliance.

In a statement released Thursday, the new deal alllows Yahoo to more easily improve the search experience on multiple platforms as well as integrating sales teams with engineers to attract more advertisers.

“We firmly believe that search is still in its infancy – and this partnership marks the next chapter in our exploration of how to make search truly great,” said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in a statement.

The search deal was forged in 2009 by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz, ex-CEO of Yahoo to loosen the grip of search giant Google.

“Our global partnership with Yahoo has benefited our shared customers over the past five years and I look forward to building on what we’ve already accomplished together,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

The deal lasts for 10 years. Last month, Microsoft and Yahoo mutually agreed to extend a deadline on negotiations aimed at reworking the details of their search partnership.

Article by Brett Molina for USA TODAY

[image error]