Erik Qualman's Blog, page 585

11 Elements of a Winning Content Strategy

The traditional methods of marketing like radio, TV, billboards and print media require huge monetary investment. These try to seek people’s attention by interrupting them as they are busy in their tasks like watching their favorite programs on TV, reading news in a newspaper or going out for work. Due to this very reason, people are not responsive to advertisements presented in the traditional media. Consequently businesses are unable to garner the intended benefits even after investing in so much money and effort into their marketing campaigns. This has forced them to look for such mediums which require considerably less investment and are more rewarding.

Content marketing is such an enterprising platform that requires very less budgetary investment, but is far more beneficial. It can also be successfully employed by even businesses with modest means who can thus better compete with more resourceful and established businesses.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is about creating useful, engaging content on a consistent basis and disseminating it on various online marketing channels. Businesses employ this form of marketing for providing their audience with unique and relevant information. So people can know if a business has got something valuable which will be able to address their pain points. If they think solutions or products offered by a business would be able to change their life for the better, they will gladly respond.

But content put up by a business should be capable of impressing them. It should be able to earn their trust and credibility. It has to ensure that its content is not a sales copy, but is meaningful, rich and knowledgeable. Only then people will be willing to connect with a business and respond to its interests. Then they could be turned into prospective customers.

The way some of the small businesses have achieved significant amount of success with their contenting marketing efforts, has motivated other businesses to take to content marketing in a big way. But many of them have been unable to achieve that much success. This is primarily due to lack of thinking and planning on their part. They simply went ahead with their marketing campaigns randomly, made their presence felt on some channels and then ignored them altogether. This is not the way to go if a business wants its brand to get noticed and talked about. It needs to proceed in a systematic and step wise manner.

Businesses need to think deeply and brainstorm before going all out with their content creation and dissemination. They have to carve a content strategy first, draft plans accordingly and then get these executed properly. This is the right approach to adopt.

Creating the prudent content strategy is pretty important for attaining success in content marketing efforts. We need to consider these 11 important points for carving a robust  strategy.

Deciding the objective of content strategy

A business ought to be clear about what would be the main objective of its content strategy; what it is trying to achieve with it. Once it has been decided, other associated goals and objectives can be easily set.

Identifying the right audience

A business has to identify its target audience. This will help it to focus on specific users, groups, professionals, companies and others. So it can engage them selectively by providing them with the useful content as per their needs. Generalizing its content marketing practices would not give it much return. A business needs to do adequate amount of research for identifying the buying behaviors, needs, interests, literacy level and other traits of the people it is targeting. It should collect relevant statistics, demographic patterns and other related data to get a clear picture of them. Thus it would be able to frame the right strategy and devise plans accordingly.

Studying successful marketing campaigns

A business should study those marketing campaigns which resulted in great successes for the involved businesses. It needs to look into such marketing endeavors both within its own industry as well as in other segments. By analyzing them minutely, it would be able to know what worked in the favor of the concerned businesses. Thus it can draw valuable conclusions from them and model its own own strategy, plans on their pattern. But it has to mold them as per its own brand.

Choosing the right channels at the right time

There are thousands of channels to choose from which can be used for a business’s promotion. A business needs to be active on as many channels as it is possible. But it has to use them tactically. It needs to determine which specific channel has to be actively used in place of others at a given time. But this does not mean ignoring other channels altogether. A business should post content on its website in a timely manner as well as approach other sites for posting guest posts and articles. It can also go with email marketing campaigns. Promoting articles on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. will improve user engagement and generate increased response.

Approaching influencers, experts and media

A content strategy should also emphasize on connecting with influencers, media professionals and other people who are an authority in their fields. A business needs to connect with established bloggers who have a huge fan following. It should comment on their posts as well as approach them for putting its guest posts on their sites. So more people will come to know about its own brand and may turn into potential customers if they are impressed with its content. By connecting with the established media personalities, a business stands to gain a lot as these can improve a business’s reach to an increased number of people and spread a word about it. So this is going to help a lot.

Closely working with other disciplines

A content cannot succeed on its own. Content creators and planners need to consult and share ideas with people from other disciplines like designers, user experience team, SEO department, marketers, public relations agents, stakeholders besides others. By gathering expert input from various disciplines, a comprehensive and holistic content strategy can be created which is capable of making an impact. So a business is going to likely succeed in its marketing endeavors.

Using the right tools for improved collaboration

Content marketing plans and projects devised by businesses have to be executed in a planned and smooth manner. But these can contain a huge number of content creation, submission, promotion and other related tasks. It becomes difficult to remember all such tasks, track and execute them as per schedule and plan. Also members within a team have to communicate fast and transparently. For attaining proper task management, improved team collaboration and enhanced management in projects, right tools need to be used. So team members would be able to execute their tasks quickly, systematically as well as  improve their efficiency. Web based project management tools like ProofHub, Basecamp and Asana can be quite useful in this regard. These can be easily accessed from remote locations and from various devices like mobile, laptop, desktop or tablet. By using them, project managers are able to flexibly manage their projects and control their functioning. These tools enable proper tracking of progress achieved in content marketing projects as well as facilitate their timely and successful completion.

Good knowledge of SEO techniques

For gaining the most from its content marketing efforts, a business should be able to use various search engine optimization techniques in an effective manner. It should know various unethical practices in the SEO field and avoid them. Otherwise it can invite harsh response from Google which can blacklist a business and impose severe penalties on it.

A business should use an appropriate amount of keywords in its content, so people can easily search the content they need for enhancing their knowledge. This also helps in a business’s content getting exhibited in the search results which boosts its prospects. Its web developers should have good knowledge of metadata (a set of programming guidelines) and know how to use it properly, so search engines are able to find its content fast. They should use web standards like HTML5 while building a website, so the content in the site gets displayed consistently in all the browsers. This enables search engines to thoroughly crawl and index the site’s content. This is of great benefit to the users looking for a rich and meaningful content for fulfilling their specific needs.

Responsive web design

A lot more people today are using mobiles for accessing sites and for making purchases. A business needs to consider this fact for getting improved response from people. Its website should appear perfect and aesthetically pleasing on all the devices whether it is a mobile, laptop or desktop. It needs to have a clear and engaging website design. A business should put relevant and informative images in it for creating an impact on visitors. The site needs to load fast for a great viewing experience and for enabling improved user engagement. If it takes too much time to load, people would be forced to go to the competitors’ sites which will harm a business’s interests.

Maintaining the right quality of content

For attaining success in its content marketing campaigns, a business has to present content in an engaging and informative manner as per the audience, context, time and the chosen channel. It should be able to present a business’s voice consistently on all the chosen channels. The tone in a content should fit in nicely as per the given context in a channel. The content should be able to impart some value to the users. It should spur people to take a responsive action, so these can be turned into prospective customers.

Reviewing content market strategy

A content  marketing strategy needs to be reviewed from time to time to see if it has been able to deliver as per the expectations. This would help a business to know which of its efforts were able to impress people and turn them into customers. It can also know what did not work in its favor. So a content strategy can be accordingly fine-tuned for getting better results. Various analytical tools like Google Analytics and data provided by them, can be used by a business to track its marketing campaigns and measure their effectiveness. This enables it to discern where it needs to focus at; like redesigning its website, work on the landing page, improve content’s quality as well as take various other measures. So it would be able to generate more benefits.

Businesses need to emphasize on the above stated points while drawing a content marketing strategy that delivers. So they would be able to rightly formulate various content marketing plans, projects and get them properly executed. This will enable them to better fulfill their marketing objectives.

Author Bio:

Upendra Rawat is a freelance writer who likes to blog about technology-related issues. Impressed with how technology is playing a keen role in changing life and work for the better, he feels the urge to share this with more and more people. So they can gain the most from the use of technology. He is a voracious reader devouring whatever interesting comes his way. Traveling, playing soccer and basketball, listening to music are the pastimes he likes to indulge in. Spending some serene moments in the lap of nature enthuses him the most.

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The College Athletics Social Media Machine

In February of this year, I wrote a Socialnomics column titled “College Athletics: A Fuel for the Social Media Fire” which outlined a number of issues around college athletics and social media while offering a few potential resolutions.  Most notably a series of behavioral challenges among student athletes that were all easily preventable were shared, followed by discussion of policy responses, social media policing, or outright bans by some coaches and athletic departments.  Since then, there have been a few great discussions about social media and athletics such as:

The decision of Penn State Assistant Coach Herb Hand to not offer a scholarship to a potential football recruit because of that student’s social media presence sparked much debate and discussion;
Higher Ed Blogger Josie Ahlquist took an educative approach, penning an article called Supporting Student Athletes’ Use of Social Media where she shared recommendations and best practices for coaches and athletes;
ESPN published an opinion piece offering differing positive and negative viewpoints from Hall of Fame University of Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino and University of Kentucky coach John Calipari; and
During the summer, ESPN also discussed the constitutionality of actions by coaches such as the University of Georgia’s head basketball coach Mark Fox, who actively monitors student behavior in several forums, most notably social media posts.

In spite of much of the apparent fear, reticence, or lamenting that may be associated with social media use by college athletes, there is still no doubt that athletic programs do not want to miss out on the exposure and brand recognition that social media offers.  Numerous universities have shifted major resources and significant attention toward developing a strategic social media presence.  The alumni engagement, student connectivity, and international reach for universities that actively & intelligently leverage social media are all undeniable.  Let’s take a look at a few universities who are using social media effectively in their athletic departments:

The University of Louisville (my undergraduate alma mater) has one of the most active social media engagement structures in the nation via Gocards.com which even includes a robust Pinterest Page.  UofL social media is led by Nick Stover who provides real time access to all sport events via twitter. UofL also offers a new Gameday Experience App via Apple ‪ and Android.
Auburn University has a robust Digital Media Portal with presence for each sports team.  Auburn also has active Instagram and Vine pages for student and alumni engagement, and shares information using Infographics to communicate through university digital platforms.  Additionally, Auburn posts a Social Media Top 25 Rankings List to measure feeds and activity for social media in athletics among colleges and universities.
The University of Tennessee’s Social Media Portal and Gameday App via Apple or Android each offer a myriad of digitally engaging options for Vols Fans.  UT also tracks the Top 25 Twitter Accounts by Athletic Departments as well as lists of Coaches, Teams, and Sports using Twitter API to assure accuracy of the calculations.
Indiana University Southeast Athletics is active on social media, most notably offering an RSS Feed, live game streaming, and an interactive App for students, alumni, and friends of the university to actively engage all sports programs.  The IU Southeast website also earned recognition as a top five “Best NAIA Athletics Website” by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and Sports Information Directors of America (SIDA).
Illinois State University offers social media connectivity options for their sports teams and coaches, but is unique in having the rare gem of social media presence for their Student Athlete Study Center on Facebook and Twitter.
At the University of Florida, the GatorZone has 1.5 million Facebook likes and just under 300k followers, as well as nearly 2.4 million views on Google+.
NCAA Division II program Merrimack University recently announced a new social media presence which includes a social media directory as part of an intentional and strategic shift to leveraging social media as a part of their athletic experience.
Among Eastern Michigan University Athletics’ social media forums is a cool YouTube video by the EMU Dance Team where they taught the “Wobble” line dance for a home game, to encourage active crowd participation.  With 42,000 views, this creative approach to social media ensures unique fan involvement and is another way that campuses can engage fans using digital techniques.

There are numerous athletic programs who are relying on social media to expand their reach and branding.  Among the programs listed above are some of the most unique and expansive.  Next time someone is discussing the woes of a college athlete who gains attention due to wayward social media activity, just remember, there is likely a social media machine on that very same campus that offers so much exposure that even with a few bad actors, isn’t likely to stall any time soon.

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Going Forward Socially on Title Loans

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The world of social media has become a treasure trove for both consumers and businesses.

For the former, social media is a great means by which to find out more information on a wide variety of products and services. For the latter, social networking allows them to promote their products and services to a whole host of eyes that otherwise might not be familiar with them. In the end, it is a win-win for both sides.

With that said, how can consumers take to social media to learn more about products and/or services that are of interest to them?

Drive Off with the Right Title Loan

When it comes to locating the best title loan for drivers, social media can be a great starting point.

Whether you are looking at TitleMax or one of the other title loan providers out there, start by checking out different company social sites.

Many of these companies are active on a variety of social sites, some of which include Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instragram, Pinterest and more.

Take a look for starters to see how active the respective title loan provider is on such sites.

If they are sharing and tweeting rather frequently, that stands a good chance that they are active with consumers who are also social online. If they are not updating regularly, it tends to show they do not put as much importance on social media, something more and more businesses are learning is not an option but a necessity in today’s information-driven world. That said some CEO’s are still having trouble getting their hands around social networking, something that could very easily lead them to miss out on all important revenue.

Social Interaction

Next, check to see if companies are interacting with consumers via Facebook, Twitter and other social venues.

While they likely do not have someone monitoring social sites 24/7, many companies do put a premium on one or more employees (or even an outside firm) to strictly focus in on sharing and tweeting with consumers daily. This is a great tool whereby businesses can find out the pulse of consumers, answer their questions, and provide those links to important product and service information and more.

Lastly, consumers should use social media to interact with fellow consumers.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook are perfect for shoppers looking for title loans and many other products and services to chat about companies.

Take the time via these social chats to learn how other consumers are being treated by respective companies for starters. If you hear of people having bad social experiences with company customer service reps, it may lead you to think twice before starting business with that company.

While social media sometimes gets bad grades because just about anything goes in the online networking world, social media can be a great tool for both consumers and businesses.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Marriott Hotels Launches A Virtual Reality Travel Experience

In its journey to explore the future of travel, Marriott Hotels is taking an unprecedented leap into virtual reality by teleporting travelers to the beaches of Hawaii and downtown London.  The brand partnered with Academy Award-winning Framestore to create Marriott Hotel’s virtual travel experience, giving consumers a fully immersive, 4-D sensory experience based in Oculus Rift technology. An industry pioneer, Marriott Hotels is embracing innovative technologies to redefine the future of travel for generations to come. And now, travel enthusiasts can see, hear and feel what it’s like to be in destinations halfway across the globe and at Marriott Hotels of the future – all within its traveling teleporter coming to eight cities across the U.S. this fall.

The groundbreaking program is anchored by the Marriott Hotels virtual travel experience Teleporter – a phone booth-like structure that takes cues from iconic science fiction books and movies. The Teleporter features the Oculus Rift DK2 virtual reality headset, wireless headphones and suite of onboard 4-D sensory elements.

To create a virtual travel experience that truly feels like “being there,” Marriott Hotels turned to its partners, video effects and creative content studio Framestore and experiential marketing agency Relevent, to pioneer several new virtual reality innovations. This included developing a new, unparalleled technique for capturing 3-D, 360 degree live-action video, and then mixing that video with photo real CGI (computer-generated imagery) and 4-D elements such as heat, wind and mist. The result is an unprecedented depth of immersion, a virtual reality experience that delivers the feeling of actually traveling to Hawaii’s Wai’anapanapa Black Sand Beach in Maui and London, seen from the dizzying heights of Tower 42. To learn more and see a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the virtual reality travel experience, go to TravelBrilliantly.com/our-innovations/oculus-get-teleported.

“Marriott Hotels is pioneering the use of innovative technologies that will transform the guest experience to heights unseen in the current reality experience in unprecedented ways,” said Michael Dail, vice president, Marriott Hotels Brand Marketing. “Marriott seized on virtual reality and teleportation to give the next generation of travelers the clear cut notion that more amazing travel experiences are coming and to encourage them to co-create the future of travel with us on TravelBrilliantly.com, where their best ideas enter Marriott’s innovation pipeline. Together, we are pushing the limits of what is possible.”

During the Marriott Virtual Travel Experience, guests enter the Teleporter, where they will put on virtual reality headsets and headphones to be completely immersed in a virtual world. From there, they will visit a virtual version of a new Marriott Greatroom lobby, and then virtually travel to a black sand beach in Maui, Hawaii and to the top of a skyscraper in downtown London, England. While “traveling,” 4-D elements kick in – the feeling of the warm sun on your skin, breeze in your hair, rumble of waves under foot and ocean spray in your face – to make the experience feel extremely lifelike.

 

The Teleporter is touring eight select Marriott properties from September to November, offering hotel guests and the public the chance to teleport themselves at Marriott Hotels in New York, Boston, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Dallas, San Diego, San Jose and San Francisco.

·         September 19-23: New York Marriott Marquis

·         September 26-29: Boston Marriott Cambridge

·         October 2-5: Marriott Marquis Washington DC

·         October 9-12: Atlanta Marriott Marquis

·         October 17-20: Dallas Marriott City Center

·         October 24-27: San Diego Marriott Marquis

·         November 6-9: San Jose Marriott

·         November 13-16: San Francisco Marriott Marquis

Since the launch of Marriott Hotels’ transformational journey with its Travel Brilliantly campaign in June 2013 – Marriott Hotels has been engaging guests, experts and influencers to join with the brand in co-creating the future state of travel by asking “How can we make travel more brilliant?” The results are tangible with innovations including the brand’s new stylish, modern Greatroom lobbies, mobile check-in and checkout from anywhere, a mobile app for chatting between guests and property hosts, a healthy vending machine with fresh food on demand and digital power sources to juice up devices. Marriott is also co-creating with unexpected partners like the MIT Mobile Experience Lab. Marriott and MIT students – future travelers – co-created Six Degrees to reinvent the hotel lobby as a social hub, using a mobile app to connect people with similar backgrounds and interests.

About Marriott Hotels

With 500 hotels and resorts in nearly 60 countries around the world, Marriott Hotels is evolving travel through every aspect of the guest’s stay, enabling the next generation to Travel Brilliantly. Boldly transforming itself for mobile and global travelers who blend work and play, Marriott leads the industry with innovations, including the Greatroom, Future of Meetings and Mobile Guest Services that elevates style & design and technology. All Marriott hotels participate in the award winning Marriott Rewards frequent travel program that allows members to earn hotel points or airline miles for every dollar spent during each stay. For more information, visit www.MarriottHotels.com.

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Market update: hello to Ello, goodbye to Facebook?

Considering the huge variety of social media sites that were sprouting with remarkable regularity a few years ago, it seems like a reasonably long time since there was a new platform generating hype.

Which perhaps explains the huge amount of buzz for ‘Ello’, a new alternative to Facebook that has been making waves off of the back of huge engagement over in San Francisco, and spreading around the world on a tide of media coverage.

Why all the excitement? In truth there are probably several factors that contribute to Ello’s early success. It has an exclusivity – the service is invite only – that mirrors the early days of Facebook, and allows people to leave behind the baggage (for some almost a decade old) weighing down their Facebook profile.

The dearth of coverage about new social media is probably contributing to the huge amount of hype as well; after a surfeit of new platforms the market has gone quiet and that makes Ello seem fresh and exciting.

Ello’s true USP, though, is its outspoken refusal to utilise ad revenue for profit – meaning that newsfeeds are kept clean and companies are kept away. That may seem like an unlikely reason for millions to flock to Ello – after all private, ad free alternatives to Facebook are nothing new and have so far failed to attain mass exposure – and in truth it is benefitting hugely from ‘hipster’ uptake in San Francisco, a lot of buzz and a fair amount of luck. But there are several reasons why people may turn away from Facebook, either to Ello or another platform in the near future.

Facebook has been listed on the US stock market for a little over two years, out of its ten-year lifespan. Its IPO was viewed as something of a failure, despite taking the mantle of largest web IPO ever (recently lost to Alibaba). After six months on the market, Facebook had shed 50% of its value: despite reporting ever-increasing user uptake and engagement.

Then in July last year Facebook announced a huge leap in advertising revenue, up 61% from the previous year. Mobile ads generated 41% of revenue and ads overall represented 88% of Facebook’s earnings.

The markets responded accordingly, Facebook shares leapt 30% in a day and were up 100% before the year was out.

12 months on, Facebook released another earnings announcement . Ad revenue for the three months to June 30 2014 was $2.68 billion, 67% up from the previous year. Mobile ads increased to 62% of ad revenue and ads were now 92% of total earnings.

Shares went up again, this time 8.5% in a day. All in all, Facebook is now worth 200% more than it was in July 2013, and that is largely down to ads.

That huge turnaround is stunning for investors, but it isn’t too hard to see why some of Facebook’s users may feel left behind. The large amount of publicity for their rise – and attempts from Twitter and co. to emulate it – has seen some public opinion turn against Facebook.

There is also a similar situation occurring in China, where leading micro-blogging service Weibo.com is seeing increased competition from other social media sites, and has increased its popularity with business to the possible detriment of its users. Clearly, balancing the books and keeping users happy is a fine balancing act.

Whether Ello can maintain this balancing act remains to be seen. Its belief that a feature-rich ‘freemium’ service can keep the business afloat (and it has had a lot of venture investment, so needs to generate profit somehow) could be tested. After all, features outside of advertising earned Facebook just $234 million from 1.32 billion active users last quarter – and Ello has nowhere near that.

However, should Ello succeed in converting large numbers of Facebook users to its cause, the period of dominance for Facebook may be at an end sooner than many traders thought.

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The Facebook Update Brands Need to Know About (and 3 Ways to Take Advantage of It)

Facebook is working to reward brands that produce videos that spark the interest of users and hold their attention. A new announcement from the biggest social networking site in the world details the changes in how videos are ranked. The main component of these changes revolves around whether or not a user has watched a video and for how long the user watched. Up until now Facebook has ranked videos using the same metrics as every other post such as likes, comments, and shares. So far, videos are a hit, with Facebook reporting that the number of people looking at videos has more than doubled in the last six months.

This means people who watch videos on Facebook will see more videos in their feeds, while those who skip over them will see less. Meanwhile, videos that are watched for longer periods will reach a larger audience than videos that people ignore, or stop watching quickly.

This move continues Facebook’s trend of attempting to make every user’s newsfeed as personalized as possible. Because Facebook wants people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, one way to do that is to show content that the user will find engaging, entertaining and useful. By adding the time watched metric to the algorithm, Facebook can move one step closer to ensuring the best video content is displayed as often as possible.

To maximize the reach and ultimately the engagement of videos on Facebook, brands should follow these 3 best practices.

1.     Focus on the Video Metrics that Matter

In May, Facebook debuted a slew of new video metrics to keep an eye on how each individual video performs. These metrics include views, which encompass the following: the video was watched for at least three seconds, the amount of views that make it to 95 percent completion, and audience retention that tracks exactly where users stop watching the video.

 

On the page insights section, brands can track the number of views that reached certain checkpoints – 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent, 95 percent and 100 percent.

This data, which should be carefully monitored and tracked, is what will help brands take advantage of Facebook’s algorithm change and maximize the exposure of every video. For brands the key is to test different types of videos, video lengths, posting times and freeze frames to find what works best and then focus on the most effective strategies.

2.    Watch and Emulate Two Big Brands Finding Success Today

One brand that does a great job at making engaging videos on Facebook is Red Bull. The energy drink company uses videos to promote and advance the brand’s culture more than the product itself. It also tends to keep its videos on the shorter side, with most videos being between 15 seconds and a minute and a half. This keeps the videos long enough to get the message across while not being too long to the point where a viewer gets bored and moves on before it finished.

Another option for brands is to use Facebook videos to promote a longer version of a video being promoted through other marketing channels like television. Beats by Dre, which was recently bought by Apple and one of the world’s best known headphone brands, has used Facebook to share and promote a viral campaign that precluded the World Cup. The video, which is more than five minutes long, is an extended version of a commercial that the brand has been running on television during the sporting event. Beats has been able to keep the attention of Facebook video watchers by including dozens of athletes and other celebrities, using eye catching and high quality video and a unique soundtrack. By racking up more than 4,200 likes and 1,200 shares in two weeks, Beats has been able to spread the video organically, which was likely the brand’s goal.

3.  Focus on Quality Over Quantity

With the number of people watching videos on Facebook increasing at a rapid pace, and Facebook putting a premium on videos that people watch, the goal for brands should be to create the most engaging videos possible. They can do this by using high quality footage, invigorating music, interesting freeze frames and catchy headline. As marketers test video lengths, video messages, and more, they’ll each discover what elicits the most engagement from fans by using the available metrics. Brands that focus on creating the best videos possible, instead of focusing on creating the most videos, will see the best results in terms of engagement, and gains in fans and followers.

 

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Being Social in the Drive for Auto Insurance

Social media is just as much informative as it is social, which is exactly why auto insurance companies are steering toward social avenues when it comes to marketing.

Whether it’s updating social audiences on car insurance basics or offering up advice on safe driving habits, social media is the place to go for all-things auto insurance.

If you’re looking to revamp your car insurance, here are just a few ways socially savvy insurance companies can help:

Getting Social with Insurance

Nobody likes talking about car insurance, but thanks to social media, researching your auto insurance needs is a little less boring and a little more social.

More and more auto insurance companies are taking the social route when it comes to spreading the word about their services and audiences are really starting to respond.

In fact, according to Property Casualty 360, roughly 65% of auto insurance agencies use Facebook and 34% use Twitter to reach their customers. So, what should you look for in a social auto insurance company?

Rates on the Go

Searching for car insurance rates and quotes online can take hours of mind-numbing research.

Since you’ll likely shift your attention to social media for a break from the insurance monotony, why not use your favorite social sites to find competitive rates and helpful quotes?

Whether you’re looking for rate comparisons from top insurance companies or you’re on the west coast and in need of a “free auto insurance quote California”, social media is a helpful resource.

Getting auto insurance information is as easy as friending, following, and messaging insurance agencies on social sites like Facebook.

Car Crash Costs

Maybe you’re thinking about reducing your insurance coverage or switching to a cheaper plan? If so, your favorite social sites are a great place to visit when it comes to the decision-making process.

In order to help keep consumers aware of the expenses involved with common traffic accidents, many insurance companies are posting average car crash costs on social media.

From fender benders to vehicles deemed totaled, the more you know about the cost of a crash, the more likely it is you’ll make an informed decision about your insurance needs.

Gathering Insurance Advice

Expert advice is always helpful when navigating the car insurance waters, but so is advice from trusted friends and family.

Before you choose an insurance provider, take a minute to ask your social followers what they think about the insurance providers they have.

Getting an inside opinion on the quality of a company’s customer service could be the difference between choosing an auto insurance company that puts your concerns first and one that puts your needs in the backseat.

What to Look for in a Social Auto Insurance Company

If you’re looking for an insurance company with a strong social presence, then it’s important to visit each company’s Facebook business page.

Does the company respond to its followers’ questions promptly? More importantly, are the responses well-articulated and helpful?

In addition, does the insurance company make it a point to include new posts about policies and company updates on a regular basis? The best auto insurance providers are embracing social media by making it a part of the new auto insurance frontier.

When you’re ready to make a change with your car insurance, don’t be afraid to turn to social media for a little assistance.

Photo credit: Image courtesy of Naypong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Benefits of Social Media

Logically, every entrepreneur or any other business/economics minded person across the globe would develop the urge to know and/or understand the impacts of social media on humans’ daily lives. This would be in regards to the diverse ways in which businesses can tap the power of social media in order to upsurge their sales, directly reach their target audience or consumers, and minimize their marketing costs. Socialnomics thereby drills deep into the ways in which businesses, consumers, and the entire society come together through creating both offline and online relationships in order to take a grip of the profound implications of the social media on the world’s economy and businesses operating within it.

Social commerce, social search, online word of mouth, mobile apps, as well as the influence of peer-groups are jointly making the traditional marketing strategies archaic. Consequently, people (mostly entrepreneurs) no longer have an option on whether to go online via the social media or not; it is their obligation to do that or else, face the wrath of business failure. Therefore, the only choice is to question when and how well it can be done. If not everyone, then a significant percentage of the world’s population is now familiar with at least one of the social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Tumbler, and WhatsApp among others. These sites have gained sufficient fame to an extent that has made them more than just a platform for people to socialize; they have become very effective tools for marketing, with great impacts on small scale businesses.

Social Media Takes Digital Businesses to another Degree

Both small and large scale businesses currently use the social media to inflate their networks and grow their clientele. People in different levels of authorities within the business and organizational set-ups employ the social media in order to keep in touch with each other, their subjects, clients (consumers), business friends, family members and other individuals who could help enhance the business or organization success, hence economy’s upsurge.

Social Media vs. Education

Digital and hopeful college students are now able capable of zoning together in the social media in order to get into the courses and schools of their dreams. Additionally, they are able to discuss their educational affairs, class activities and learning programs with their tutors, as well as sharing the available learning materials and videos through the social media. These altogether forms the basis for the success of learning institutions, thereby producing experts and specialties in different economic sectors.

Impacts of the Social Media on Small Businesses

- Easy communication between businesses and their clients: The more businesses and organizations communicate to their clients/customers, the more they learn and continue using the social media, thereby making it easy to interact or talk with their target audience in a friendly and non-formal environment.

- Platform for conducting market research: The Social networking sites offer businesses and organizations a perfect platform for conducting market research since one can obtain information and learn much more about consumer habits as opposed to other forms of survey and research.

- Social media offers the platform for personal advice: Through word of mouth advertising, friends are capable of sharing information about a particular company with others. As they talk positively about the company and possible customer experience with the company’s business activities. This can thereby encourage other people to choose the company and the products and services it offers.

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Don’t Commit these Huge Faux Pas on Social Media

In the world of stock investing, there’s something called as “irrational exuberance”—a term coined by Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor. He refers to the madness you see on stock markets as people trade mindlessly; it’s not too different from gambling.

You don’t trade that way. Well, who’s in the mood to listen, right?

Social media is something like that. Although there’s good advice out there, no one is paying attention.

Everyone is busy getting “busy” on social media. According to Jay Baer of Convince and Convert, about 76% of Facebook users post updates regularly. Facebook influenced 47% of Americans with regards to their purchasing behavior. Over 12 million Americans use social networks several times daily.

However, social media isn’t going to get you sales. It’s not for you to pitch, hustle, and spend all your time trying to build leads.

Social media IS NOT a marketplace. Even seasoned marketers and savvy business owners just don’t get it. Here are some huge faux pas you are likely to be committing on social media:

Big isn’t always better (for you)

You need to dig statistics. You can’t continue helplessly gawking at the hundred different “insights” about your social media provided by the various networks, and how these numbers and timelines grow over time.

Stats are nice to know.

Consider platitudes like:

“Social media is big.”

“Social media is where you ought to be.”

“Let’s be social!”

These don’t really help businesses. While the enthusiasm is appreciated, you aren’t doing this right. Social media is big and there’s no denying that. Your social networks could be sending you traffic, help convert your goals, and generate leads perhaps.

But it may not be the best medium for you. Yet.

Email marketing could be it! Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Industry Census makes a good case: Revenue from email alone has increased 28% in a single year from 2013 to 2014 for companies in the survey. More than 68% of the companies rated email as the best ROI generator for them by attributing 23% of their total sales from email alone.

Yet, the focus isn’t always on email because it’s unsexy, unglamorous, and old. Everyone likes “new” and “big” helps.

You are looking in the wrong direction. Social media isn’t everything; it’s a part of digital marketing mix.

You are madly in love with social. You can’t see its faults.

You know how it is when we fall in love, right? You don’t see the potential difficulties you are likely to have going forward. What (or who) seems cute today will turn out to be sore tomorrow.

Most people (especially marketers and business owners) are in love with social media. That’s fine, but you aren’t seeing the problems and glitches as they arise.

Facebook, for instance, is slowly pushing you into the “paid” and “this is going to be super-saturated one day” world of advertising. According to Kevan Lee of Buffer, organic reach has already declined to negligible.

Kevan’s tip: Don’t care so much.

Then, there’s “shelf-life.” Pamela Vaughan wrote on HubSpot that a link on Twitter has a half-life of 2.8 hours. That link will survive on Facebook for 3.2 hours. On YouTube, a link lives up to 7.4 hours. On an average, social updates live just for about 3 hours each.

You seriously want to depend on these short-lived updates alone?

Time and focus go for a toss

Either you spend too much time on social, or you barely manage to update once a week. Both those approaches are bad.

There’s a reason why tools like Buffer and HootSuite exist. Set up the updates scheduled to go live in the future and only login to do some real engagement.

Assuming you get the “time” part of it right and manage to squeeze out every hour, there’s another issue with social: focus.

Answer these questions:

What are you on social media for?
What was supposed to be the outcome of the 300 or so updates you made in the whole of last month?

Without answering these questions, you are not running a business. You are just lounging about in a virtual stronghold of people.

Look to other brands in your industry for inspiration, trends and choice of appropriate social networks to be on. For instance, IM Creator is a simple and free DIY website builder. Check out how they do a great job on Pinterest, where they post free template ideas, amazing sites that their users have built, and product videos, amongst other things of interest to their audience:

With tools like Snip.ly available for setting up a specific call to action for every update you make, the question is this: Why don’t you have focus?

Put up every update for a reason. Every engagement has to have motive and direction. All time spent on social should have a payoff.

Which leads us to…

It’s not always about money

Any talk of Social Media “Marketing” leads you to believe that there’s cash at the end of the update. It’s not there all the time. It might come in sometimes, but the new media isn’t for that.

Social media introduces you to people. It helps you “build a tribe,” as Seth Godin puts it. It opens up the doors for you to interact with anyone, anywhere, anytime. As a result, you’ll make friends, build relationships, find partners or vendors, recruit employees or contractors, and also get customers.

As to what comes when, no one really knows. So, the “ROI” you are looking for isn’t always revenue. The kind of ROI you get from social probably has no place on your financial statements (except for actual business earned).

It’s not straightforward.

It was never meant to be straightforward

One tweet here, a Facebook update there, a series of blog posts, and a downloaded report later, you might have a sale. Or you might earn yourself a raving fan. Randomly, you’ll hear people praising you. Or, scathingly criticizing you. Meanwhile, your content gets amplified. Traffic flows to your web properties. People talk. If they like you, they’ll take action.

There are multiple routes to your website (and to the sale). I could have first read about you in a print magazine, watched a YouTube video where someone talked about you a few days later, followed you on Pinterest the same day, and then contacted you using your fancy Ajax form after being amused by one of your updates.

See?

The point is: stop doing anything that’s rigidly “defined and planned” with social media. You can, to an extent. But don’t sacrifice activity for structure.

What are some major mistakes you think people do on social media? Share your stories with us!

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Don’t Be Frightened by Social Media

When any holiday rolls around, retailers start preparing weeks (or even months) in advance to promote their holiday-related products.

While Halloween certainly isn’t the biggest holiday in terms of spending (Christmas is first, followed by Thanksgiving), it does bring in extra sales year after year.

Retailers big and small release and promote their Halloween costumes, candy, décor items, T-shirts and other promotional products.

While sending out ads and flyers is a good way to get business, it’s not the only way.

Nowadays, marketing with social media can play a huge role in gaining sales and giving your business a jump-start on holiday shopping.

Using social media to promote Halloween

There are many “spooky” social media campaigns stores can launch to bring in customers.

Between Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and dozens of other social media platforms, the options are endless….

Have a costume contest – Ask your followers on Instagram or Facebook to post photos of their best scary Halloween costumes from years past. Retailers such as Walmart typically carry a wide array of costumes for shockingly low prices, so you could advertise where to purchase these costumes from in your contest. Let fans vote for the winner or choose it yourself and reward the winner with a gift card to your store.
Don’t forget about hashtags – Hashtags are used for everything from weddings to funny toddler videos to holidays. Use a hashtag of your store name followed by Halloween to promote all your new Halloween costumes, décor and more! #WalmartgoesHalloween
Take surveys geared around Halloween – Find out what your customers want by conducting surveys across multiple social media platforms. Ask followers what their favorite part of Halloween is, what types of costumes they want to see more of (baby costumes, couples costumes or simply more variety, for example), what their favorite Halloween candy is, etc. Conducting surveys are not only fun for your customers, but they also give your retail store valuable insight on what the customers want.
Have a Halloween-themed event – Offer trick-or-treating for the kids a few nights before Halloween, hold a live pet-costume contest or even host a Halloween-inspired chili cook-off. Promote and advertise your event (and your store!) on all major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. On the actual night of your event, post photos and host giveaways live on social media and use hashtags to keep everything organized.

As a retailer, Halloween is a great time to jump-start your holiday sales and promotions.

Typically, Black Friday marks the first shopping day of the holidays, but as the years go on, Halloween is beginning to mark the start of the shopping season. Give your retail business an edge by really pushing and promoting Halloween.

Think of Halloween as the starting point to your total holiday sales and really go all out on your social media marketing campaigns for this spooky, frightening holiday.

The results may surprise you even more than if you were to see a ghost!

Photo credit: Image courtesy of digidreamgrafix at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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