Medium and small business owners can enjoy a higher level playing field with large companies through social media marketing. Accessing social network sites and social media tools enable you to connect directly to your customers and get a clear idea as to what they want, where they are and what makes them tick. And that is the key to success – Know Your Customer. Once you know them, it becomes easier to reach out to them and create brand awareness by increasing your visibility.

Using social media on a regular basis is a good marketing strategy. But how exactly do you do that? Well, the possibilities are endless, from podcasts to Web 2.0 campaigns, forums and networks to online communities and blogs. In order to use social media to your advantage you need to first formulate a sales and marketing plan for the Internet. What’s the best way to utilize social network sites and content platforms to reach your target audience? How can you improve traffic and start a word of mouth campaign that will positively impact your business? Does sending out surveys to your customers or providing them a forum to give feedback work for you?

Recent research has shown that almost 67% of users access the Internet for social networking. That’s the power of social media participation! It helps you build new relationships and networks, strengthen existing relationships, meet likeminded people with the similar interests, create brand awareness, inform customers about new products and services, get feedback from clients to improve your business and customer relations, increase customer loyalty, know your customer base better and target them more effectively, win new clients, generate direct sales and establish a reputation as a forward thinking company.

The good thing is, social media is cost effective, and it takes less time to reach out to customers and has endless possibilities. You can grab attention by writing your own blog or leaving a comment on someone else’s blog. You can reach out to potential clients in a cost effective manner by advertising on social websites, especially if you’re a small business owner who doesn’t have the budget for television and advertising campaigns. You can also receive and send relevant information, connect and network with groups and individuals through social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

So what are you waiting for? Tweet back on Twitter. Blog until you drop! Squiddo your own page. Reach out through Facebook. SendoutCards to customers. Keep yourself abreast with the latest news. Share videos on YouTube. Digg to generate news. There’s a whole new world of customers out there for you to tap…

Original post by Social Media Online

By Dan Taylor, The Next Web

It’s really no longer a question of to blog or not to blog, but rather how and what you do with your organization’s blog. Some choose to use the platform as a news and announcements rundown. Others prefer to let outside viewers in on the day-to-day developments and goings on around the office. Some nail a proper mixture of both.

Any way you present it, your company’s blog should provide an underlying message targeted directly at consumers. Whether it’s the “We’re the fun folks you should do business with because we’re awesome!” or the “We’re very serious people, who do serious things, so come and do serious business with us.” you’re seeking to support a position. However, a number of businesses on the market today are blogging away, but with little measurable return on their investment. So what can we do to further engage audiences, provide them with the right materials, and convert them to repeat visitors (and customers)?

Here are five simple features your blog should have up and running from the get go.

About Us

Perhaps the simplest of all the recommendations, be sure to include a prominent About Us link and page on your blog. If your content marketing guru is doing their job well, you’re bound to have a number of visitors that arrive at your blog, perhaps not even knowing a thing about you or your organization and what exactly it is that you do. It’s a lost opportunity when you leave them out in the cold wondering who you are.

But what should a good About Us page include? It all depends on what your underlying message is. Chances are your marketing and/or PR team has a store of press ready “About Us text” already on tap, so why reinvent the wheel? Take the juiciest bits and pieces of these preformed texts and meld them into a powerful message that gets across:

• Who you are
• What you do
• What you can do for customers
• How to get in contact

Please note the last bullet point, as it is crucial that you provide visitors with a quick and easy way to get in touch with you and/or your organization.

Subscribe

Since you’re putting a great deal of effort into creating fantasic content for your blog, wouldn’t it be nice to have more than the occasional drive-by of readers, but rather a dedicated and engaged community? Let’s be honest, isn’t that the goal of every blog?

The first and foremost subscription feature should be via a prominent RSS button. Today, most relatively savvy Internet users not only know what an RSS icon and feed are, but have a favorite client for managing their favorite feeds. Make it quick and easy for them to continually keep on top of what you’re producing.

The subscribe area or box (preferably located near the top of your blog) is also an excellent opportunity to offer your readers a newsletter opt-in. Again, if they’re hitting the RSS button, they’re obviously interested in what you’ve got to say. If they want to take the relationship a bit further and offer you more opportunities to get your message across, specifically via email, make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

Social

This should go without saying, but your blog should contain at the very least the prerequisite Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ social sharing options. Remember, your job is only half finished when you hit that publish button. The follow through involves spreading the message as far and wide as possible, and nothing accomplishes this goal better than a few well placed (and timed) social sharing options.

Depending on your blogging platform of choice, there are a number of social sharing plugins available, often requiring nothing more than 3 clicks to install, activate, and customize. Be sure to look for plugins that scroll along with your readers (see TNW’s option above), and provide a number of platform sharing options. That’s not to say that you’ll need all of them, but if you’re going to become comfortable with one sharing plugin, it’s a nice peace of mind to know that you’ve got plenty of room to expand in the future.

Cream of the Crop

One of the easiest and most effective ways to provide visitors with your very best, be sure to include a prominent “Top Posts” section somewhere on your blog. Personally, I’m a big fan of vertical navigation and love to see everything organized in columns. As a matter of fact…if you glance to the right side of this very page right now, you’ll notice a “Popular,” “Commented,” and “Latest” widget in TWN’s right column navigation. Visitors may have arrived via a social share to an article about XYZ, but your analytics show that ABC article is off the charts in terms of time on page, engagement, etc. Make it easy for new visitors to find the very best of your blog.

Speaking of the very best, don’t forget about your top commenters. Everyone loves to be recognized when they add value, so don’t hold back. If you’ve got a regular visitor that’s dropping pearls of wisdom on a number of your posts, go ahead and feature this regular visitor and provide some linking back to their site of origin.

Bonus: If you’ve got a particularly eloquent and knowledgeable commenter, if appropriate, reach out to them and see if a guest post is in order.

Archived

Visitors to your blog are there for one reason only: content. Granted, content is always relative and holds its place in time, but if you’ve stuck to an overall strategy and underlying message, numbers and figures might be dated, but the information is sound.

As human beings, we search by topic (you do have a search option, don’t you?) and/or category first, and then drill down by date. If you’re simply offering up an endless calendar of posts, you’re offering up an endless calendar of posts, nothing more. Break your archive down by category and make it easy for your visitors to find more information on specific topics you’ve written about. This not only provides a complete digest of your organization’s position on a certain topic, but makes it quick and easy for interested readers to find it.

Bonus: FREE!

Free must be one of the most powerful words in just about any language. People love free stuff. Visitors love your content. If visitors=people, then visitors are going to love free stuff, especially when it comes from you/your organization.

A great way to double down, offer your readers a free content piece in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. They benefit from the knowledge of experts, and you gain another interested party that you can further push your message to. Examples of giveaways may include (a):

• Video Tutorial
• Podcast
• Industry Report
• White Paper/E-book
• Etc.

Sure, the success of your organization’s blog ultimately resides in producing valuable and actionable content the resounds with readers and nurturing a growing community. However, by employing the features listed above, you’re well on your way to expanding your audience, fostering deeper engagement, and ultimately driving more conversions for your Sales team.

Article by Dan Taylor. Read Original Article on The Next Web

By Ekaterina Walter, The Next Web

With over 135 million users, 59% of which are located outside of the United States and with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using the network for marketing and recruiting purposes, LinkedIn has become a critical platform for building, connecting with, and growing your personal and professional networks.

As the leading business social network, LinkedIn offers the chance to connect with professionals all around the world and from all industry backgrounds. But how do you convert networks into customers, and ‘likes’ into sales?

1. Learn from your peers

Successful marketing is all about listening to what your market needs. The LinkedIn Groups feature provides a space where you can discuss issues with others in your industry and learn from their advice. You can bounce ideas off industry experts and stay informed on new developments. You also have an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in a certain industry/area allowing you to build relationships with current and prospective customers in a more organic and credible fashion.

2. Build on your niche

It doesn’t matter how specific your company’s product or service, LinkedIn allows you to connect with companies or individuals by industry, company size, geographic location, and more. By targeting your network-building, you are able to focus your time on building relationships that count.

3. Use Company Status Updates

You can post the latest news, product updates, videos and promotions on yourCompany Profile and instantly learn how it is being received with likes, comments and shares. Just like with any community, make sure your content strategy is relevant, adds value and promotes discussion. Use feedback to adjust your posting frequency or alter your content based on what is popular or what is missing.

4. Ask your audience

LinkedIn provides a channel to your audience, but communication doesn’t have to be one-way. You can use your Company Profile to ask customers what they think, and engage with issues they might face. Asking for feedback can provide a wealth of market information from your core audience. If your Company Profile is too limiting, consider setting up a group or groups that meet a particular need among your audience.

You can also use LinkedIn’s polling feature. LinkedIn Polls is just like any other polling service: everyone can ask any query, include possible answers (as much as five) as well as select how much time it’s going to run. There is an ability to share content out via your social networks or upload it on your website to acquire the highest possible voting power. Analytics data is what’s valuable here: you can break down voters by age, gender and even seniority.

5. Use LinkedIn Ads

If used correctly, LinkedIn Ads can offer a low-cost alternative to traditional advertising. Because of the number of LinkedIn accounts (135 million worldwide), each with detailed profile information, LinkedIn Ads can specifically target your demographic by industry, geographic location, seniority, age, or by LinkedIn Group in a way few other channels can.

6. LinkedIn Recommendations: Give Generously

Your LinkedIn profile might look great, and you may have hundreds of connections, but in a crowded market what is going to make your company stand out? How will potential clients and customers know to choose you above your competition? The answer goes back to one of the basics of marketing: a positive recommendation by others is worth a hundred times what you will ever say about yourself. The secret to attracting great LinkedIn recommendations is to offer them yourself. Businesses, whether suppliers, clients or partners, are far more likely to give you a positive recommendation if you offer one first.

7. LinkedIn SEO

When people search for your industry or product, how are you going to come out on top? Just following the basics, such as making sure your profile is complete and accurate can help, but spending a bit of time over the keywords in the Specialties section is also important for driving traffic. You can also customize your URL to give your company’s name rather than a sequence of numbers, which can help search engines to find you.

8. Enrich your profile with LinkedIn applications

You’ve driven traffic to your LinkedIn page with targeted ads, great networking, and an informative profile, but what now? You’ve got so much more great information that will benefit your customers, but how are you going to tell them about it?LinkedIn apps can help, giving you the ability to add your blog to your profile, upload presentations, add polls and your Amazon reading list, collaborate with document sharing, and many other ways of enriching your profile to help it stand out and offer new ways to engage.

9. Meet like-minded people at industry events

The LinkedIn events tool is a great way to easily search for relevant events (physical events, webinars, workshops, roundtables, etc) where you can meet your peers. LinkedIn search will display events related to your network connections as well as industry and geographic location, both past and present. Utilize this feature to extend your network face-to-face.

10. Integrate your LinkedIn presence into your other properties

Prominently display “Follow Us on LinkedIn” button on your other social properties to help grow your network.

You can also add “LinkedIn Share” button to your other properties to make it easy for people to share your content and help it travel father.

The “Recommend” button can be prominently displayed on your website to give visitors to website a little bit of a nudge to recommend you on LinkedIn. The recommend comes in two formats: one for the company page itself and also one for the products and services page.

11. Measure your success

Make sure to track your performance as you go and make changes to your strategy based on that data.
On your Company Page’s Analytics tab, you can now see how many LinkedIn members are visiting your Company Page and how many of them are following your company. You can also see what industries, functions and companies these professionals come from as well as track how they are interacting with your Careers Tab or Products and Services Tab, how many are clicking on your promotional banners, and how many choose to contact employees at your company. And for every one of these data slices, you can compare yourself against similar companies to benchmark your performance.

Just recently LinkedIn also launched a brand new Group Statistics dashboard that delivers unique insights into groups: demographics, growth, and activity.

LinkedIn can seem daunting at first. If you think of your social media marketing as an extension of your traditional marketing, you can start to think of ways to integrate your standard practices into your LinkedIn networking. You don’t have to start from scratch; much of your marketing media, from videos to presentations and documents, can be shared through your profile and used to reach new, targeted audiences, especially those you may have trouble reaching through traditional marketing methods.

Article by Ekaterina Walter. Read Original Article on The Next Web