A great approach to social media marketing is to search around and find the best social media campaigns and mirror them. If you do a few Facebook or Twitter searches of some of the big time fortune 500 companies you will notice a lot of similarities. Just like a lot of aspects of marketing both online and offline, you need to find out what works for them and tweak it to make it work for you. Researching an authority figure’s page in your niche will be a great way to strategize ahead of time about exactly what you want to achieve from social media marketing and what you need to do to get there.

A campaign that I really love to keep my eye on and take notes of is the brand Starbucks. As of this being written, Starbucks has about 23 million fans and it is still growing at a rapid rate on a daily basis. You can take a look at their page at any given time and find hundreds of different posts from customers every hour or two. What I really love about their page is that even though they are an enormous company that is known worldwide, they often times talk in the first person. Perhaps it is just part of human nature but customers love thinking that they are communicating with a person rather than just a computer owned by a company worth billions of dollars. Even if you aren’t involved in the coffee niche (chances are you’re not), there are a lot of tips that you can take by having a quick look at the Starbucks page.

Another great page to check out is Coca Cola which is coming in with an insane 30 million fans. A big difference that the Coca Cola page has with the Starbucks page is the landing tab. Starbucks has their page visitors land on their wall tab which shows what they post as well as what everybody is posting to them. Coca Cola has their visitors land on a custom made welcome page which is filled with a strong call to action which tells fans to like their page as well as catchy images and links to make a consumer friendly atmosphere. While I certainly can’t say for sure (and nobody else can either), I would suspect that the 7 million fan difference between the two pages may very well be attributed to the landing page. By Coca Cola telling their visitors to “like” their page right off the bat they are giving themselves a huge advantage over leading people to a wall tab.

A common misconception that new social media marketers have is that since they aren’t representing some huge company that they can’t take these blueprints and mimic them. The end goal is to reach existing customers as well as new ones. When one person “likes” your fan page, their whole list of friends will see that. This takes on a “word of mouth” affect and can rapidly make your page go viral. While it’s true that you probably will never have 23 million fans for your page, it is a really bad attitude to have that you can’t mimic their principles to promote your page. The best social media campaigns, especially in your niche, can be an incredible resource to use when promoting a business.

To your success,

Brendan

Custom eMarketing

* You will get higher rankings on search engine results pages, making it easier for you to catch the attention of potential customers. Imagine that your website is the first or second to appear on the Google results page when someone does a search for a topic related to your business. This would make it more likely for a lead to click on the link to visit it than if it was lower on the page, where it might be ignored altogether.
* More traffic means higher conversion rates. When more people visit your site, you have a wider pool of potential customers to offer your products. And since they are likely to be local customers, they are more serious about seeking you out, whether online or at your physical address.
* You have more ways to make your presence felt on the results pages. Apart from appearing on the main results, you can also have a local listing on top of the results as well as a local pay-per-click ad. You can appear on three separate places on the page, giving you more chances to catch the eye of leads compared with national companies.

Here are some simple SEO tips that you can use right away to help make your site more search-engine friendly:

* Use local search terms. For example, locals may use the nickname of the town as a search term so you should use this in the content, contact information, meta tags, link text, page titles and other key places on the site.
* Make sure you provide full contact information on the site, including the street address with zip code and map as well as phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Apart from having a separate Contact Us page with this information, consider placing it on the footer of every page as well.

Take care

Brendan

One of the major cons of social media marketing is that bad reviews are out there for the world to see rather than perhaps just a private email in your inbox. And as many business owners know, no matter how hard you try you can’t please everybody. There is always going to be someone out there who is having a bad day and decides that they don’t like your product or service for whatever reason and they want everybody to know about it. The good news for trustworthy businesses is that these can be flipped into a good thing if it is gone about in the correct manner. If you simply address the customer’s needs politely, no matter how rude they may be, other customers will see that and appreciate the quality customer service and the patience that you show. If you are running a business that is untrustworthy and isn’t providing a quality service or product, social media marketing may not be for you anyhow. The flaws in your business will be exposed and there may not be any turning back at that point.

Another disadvantage of social media marketing is how time consuming it can be. I always try to enforce in my clients that social media management is not for the impatient as starting a campaign from scratch is a very difficult thing to do and at times can be very frustrating. From another point of view, business owners have a difficult time understanding that social media marketing is built for a long term ROI and not just for a quick buck. It requires a long term strategy with the end result being increased customer loyalty and sales. Ten times out of ten it’s the strategists who blast out promotion after promotion who fail and cut ties with social media marketing and chalk it up to “not being effective”, while the patient ones who are willing to put in the effort are the strategists/businesses that reap the rewards.

Like I’ve already mentioned, the hardest thing about being a social media manager is having the patience and also finding like minded business owners who are willing to wait for results. If they want to see quick profits, simply explain to them how your strategy is tried and proven. If they aren’t willing to listen then that is probably not somebody that you would want to work with anyhow. There is nothing worse than working for somebody who is constantly seeking quick profits in a long term marketing strategy. Before taking on any business as a client, be sure that they are mindful of the cons of social media marketing.

Take care,

Brendan

Custom emarketing