Social Media Marketing: Where to Begin?

By Tabitha Jean Naylor 

The buzz on social media is that small businesses are succeeding more and more, thanks to websites like Facebook and Twitter. Of course, the buzz is all over because of social media websites.
There are many reasons to utilize social media for marketing, as many business owners are already aware. Beginning to advertise can be stressful enough, but finding how and where you’re going to market is another step in the direction of confusing.

To make matters worse, with all of the social media outlets available, you’re left with the mind-blowing question: where the heck do you start?
Knowing the pros and cons of the social media outlets available for marketing can help provide assistance in choosing where to begin your advertisement process.

Facebook

Facebook is usually the first place to begin advertising and marketing on, because it is used so often on a daily basis by a number of users, including you.
Some of the pros for marketing on Facebook are:

• Marketing on Facebook makes it easy to target an audience. In fact, Facebook now has ads that appear in the suggested interest of each user, so targeting is almost inevitable.
• With the continuously growing use of apps on Facebook, choosing the right apps can help promote your business. A lot of the apps available are great for driving traffic towards your page.
• Facebook allows users to easily access information about your business as well as its employees and owners. It can give you the option to remain personal or completely anonymous when uploading information onto your business page.
• Commenting and sharing gives users the option to spread the word about your business or company, bringing more potential clients your way.

Cons of Facebook marketing are:

• A lot of communication is required, especially if users are consistently sending messages to your company. Your lack of a response can make the consumer think you’re unavailable or not interested in their business.
• It is time consuming to set up the perfect page as well as respond to all of your followers.
• You must pay to advertise on Facebook and their advertisement prices vary.

Pinterest
Pinterest is another new and developing social media outlet to market through.
Some of the pros are:

• Marketing is mainly visual. This allows the readers to get the picture rather than reading through a boatload of text.
• The audience available to market through seems endless. There are so many different kinds of people who use Pinterest, so the ability to market to people you hadn’t intended is possible.
• Whatever your business or company is selling or marketing can be specifically searched, making it easy to find. If the user types it in, or even a keyword attached to it, it can be found.

Cons:

• Your pins can get lost or go unseen. It’s almost like rankings on search engines. If they’re not frequently viewed or re-pinned, it’s almost like they disappear.
• Your page requires a lot of updating because users want to see new pins from you regularly or you’re just another follower on their list of friends.
• Liking and repining can get confusing and may not actually bring the attention your page needs.
• The rules of Pinterest read along the lines of ‘no self-promotion’. This can make things fairly difficult.

Twitter
Last, but certainly not least, is Twitter. Twitter users can be a great audience to market to.
Some of the pros are:

• Tweets are easy to see because they immediately pop up and are not hidden by other posts or long written stories from other users.
• Everything is straight and to the point. Whatever it is you’re trying to say, the reader will be able to digest because of the 140 character limit.
• The Twitter world is like Pinterest: endless. There are so many users on Twitter, many of whom are willing to follow anyone because of their following count.

Cons

• The 140 character limit can also make it difficult to get in what you need to, to persuade interest to your business.
• Twitter is not good for visuals. Unless you’re a celebrity or close friend, clicking on links to visit the picture is almost too inconvenient.
• Twitter must pre-approve you to promote your business. Like Pinterest, that can make things very difficult if you’re unsure of the process.

Read more at business2community.com/social-media

10 Benefits of Social Media for Business Every Skeptic Should Know

By Kristina Cisnero 

Sharing content with thousands of followers at once isn’t the only benefit of social media for business. Small businesses all over the world have been discovering the ways social media can contribute to success and growth in all areas of their companies. However, there are still skeptics who still don’t see or understand the benefits of social media for their business. In this post, we go over 10 benefits of social media for business that will turn skeptics, like your boss (or even yourself!), into believers.

Here are 10 benefits of social media for business

1. Social media is an easy way to learn about your audience

For businesses in any industry, the key to success is knowing your audience. Social media makes this possible, and easier to accomplish than ever. With tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite you can learn the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience, as well as their age and gender. This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment.

2. Social media helps target audiences more effectively

Geo-targeting is an effective way to send your message out to a specific audience or demographic based on their location. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have tools that allow you to communicate the right kind of content to your audience. For example, in Hootsuite you can target by ‘Location’, ‘Language’, ‘Age’, ‘Gender’, ‘Relationship status’, ‘Interested in’, and ‘Education’ on Facebook, and ‘Country(s)’ on Twitter. For example, if you want to send out a post to people who speak Spanish, geo-targeting is an easy and effective way to do it.

3. Social media helps find new customers and expand your audience

Social networks like Twitter allow small businesses to locate their current customers or seek out potential customers. For example, if you open a new coffee shop in the neighbourhood, you can create a geo search in Hootsuite to locate anyone tweeting about needing a morning cup of joe within your area. After locating those tweeting about coffee, you can start reaching out to them, and invite them to come try a hot bevvy at your new coffee shop.

4. Social media allows you to receive instant feedback from your customers’ perspective

Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. For example, if you launch a new product and share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. Another way to gain customer perspective with social media is by learning how they use your product; brands often base new products or services on their customers’ original ideas.

5. Improve market intelligence and get ahead of your competitors with social media

With social media monitoring you can gain key information on your competitors, therefore improving your market intelligence. This kind of intel will allow you to make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead of your competition. For example, you can create search streams in Hootsuite to monitor mentions of your competitor’s name or product. Based on your search results, you can improve your business to offer something your competitors are missing.

6. Social media can help increase website traffic and search ranking

So you built a website for your company, now what? One of the best benefits of social media for business is using it to increase your website traffic. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be. For example, if every person who follows Hootsuite on Twitter retweets this post, it’s more likely to rank higher in Google’s search engine results page for variations of “social media for business.”

7. Share content easier and faster with social media

In the past, marketers faced the challenge of ensuring their content reaches their customers in the shortest possible time. With the help of social media, sharing content got easier and faster. When you use social media for business, specifically for sharing content about your business, all you need to do is simply share it on your brand’s social network accounts. But keep in mind that getting your customers to share your content with their followers means you need to make sure your social media content aligns to your brand and interests your audience.

8. Social media helps generate leads for one third of the cost

Social media is an easy way to generate leads. For example, Hootsuite’s marketing department was built around content and social platforms, and Twitter ads has allowed us to scale, increase reach, and fuel demand generation. Hootsuite promotes two types of content via Twitter Ads: ungated content (free content requiring no email address for access) and gated content (free content requiring an email). Sharing gated content on social media is a great way for any company to generate leads.

9. Create meaningful relationships with customers through social media

Social media is great for creating meaningful relationships with your customers. For example, social media allows tourism brands to create dialogue with travellers, therefore creating relationships with customers before, during, and after they have booked a trip with the company. This kind of social media dialogue between brands and customers is something traditional advertising will never achieve.

10. Social media lets you increase brand awareness and reach with little to no budget

Social media for business has allowed companies to increase brand awareness and reach of their brand at little to no cost. The costs associated with these strategies are a lot higher with traditional advertising methods. Recently, marketing departments across companies started hiring community managers to increase brand awareness and reach through social media. Community managers foster relationships with online audiences in different regions. At Hootsuite, we have community managers for each of our three regions: APAC, EMEA, and The Americas. This helps us make sure we keep expanding the reach of our brand to those regions and maintain relationships with key stakeholders.

Read more at business2community.com/social-media

Webcasts: Enterprise Social Media Success Leadership by Example

Register to watch these Webcasts:

Enterprise Social Media Success Leadership by Example

See also:

• How to Effectively and Efficiently Leverage Social Media For Your Business
• Social Media Marketing: Separating Fact From Fiction
• The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales & Customer Service?
• How to Prepare Your Brand for Today’s SoLoMo Marketing Environment

Is Social Media Necessary For Getting New Customers?

By David Cuevas

Being a successful entrepreneur requires the ability to develop potential customers by using any means necessary. If you are not currently active on social media marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you can bet your competitors are and they are producing significant results.

83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%.

Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

Still think social media is a fad? Here are some usage stats for you.

• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket. This demographic has grown 79% since 2012.
• The 45–54 year age bracket is the fastest growing demographic on both Facebook and Google+.
• For Facebook, this group has jumped 46%.
• For Google+, 56%.
• YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18–34 than any cable network.
• Every second two new users join LinkedIn.

Social media can also be used to help you find more details about your business than you ever imagined possible. An example of the power of social media is the use of hashtags and trending topics, which allow you to find specific information about your company, what people may be saying about it, or even find insights regarding the market in which you are involved.

Now What?

Social media is a vital tool that is readily available and will help your business reach new customers and grow in ways – and at speeds – that more traditional marketing can’t accomplish. As the statistics above show, social media usage has gone mainstream. Because people are spending significantly more time on social media sites, the battle for the attention of all of these eyeballs has also intensified.

Develop effective social media campaigns. 

Social media marketing is now becoming a necessity for most businesses.

Companies MUST move in this direction by allocating resources to sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. While costs have increased, the rewards are significant. Social media has quickly become the best way to develop social influence and increase brand awareness on the web.

Be sure to implement social media into your marketing campaign today, as it will be the best way to keep up with those around you.

5 Reasons Brand Strategy and Social Media Should Work Together

By Liz Papagni

While a social media department that exists in a silo is certainly better than none at all, it’s not nearly as effective as an integrated brand strategy.

Social media is now the most popular online activity, accounting for 27% of time consumers spend on the internet. 74% of marketers consider their presence on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other major networks an integral part of generating new leads. Simply put, the potential of social media is far too great to not use to its fullest potential. The most effective marketers today actively work to integrate their content marketing and communication across platforms, so their customers and prospects can benefit from their company’s consistency and clarity.

Consider the following reasons why your social media should be a cohesive component of your greater brand strategy:

1. You’ll Remove Inefficiencies

If your social media isn’t actively working to elevate your organization towards its larger goals and KPIs, the effort could be wasted. As Rocky Cipriano points out, integrated marketing communications are naturally a better use of limited resources: “your marketing is more powerful when every advertisement, every email, and every marketing piece communicates consistently.”

Not only will consistent brand messaging allow every Facebook post, Tweet, and Pinterest pin to further your company’s unique value proposition and personality, you’ll ensure that your social media inputs are aligned with your goals as a company.

2. You Will Achieve More Effective Content Distribution

While creating custom content is a highly effective way to help your organization increase lead generation and customer conversions, your blogs, whitepapers, and other forms of web content simply can’t exist in a vacuum. Every 24 hours, 2 million blog posts are published. The science of content distribution has become a crucial component of being noticed in an era of content saturation.

By aligning your social media with your content creation strategy, you’ll achieve more effective promotion and distribution of your brand’s content assets, allowing your organization to maximize exposure and ROI on major social networks.

3. You’ll Build Stronger Relationships

While the internet has drastically changed human behavior, the fact remains that trust is an enormously important factor in motivating human behavior. Studies have found that the average consumer doesn’t care if 70% of brands disappear tomorrow. The remaining 30% includes organizations who’ve managed to transcend transactional relationships and build greater trust with their prospects and customers. Your social media outreach should include the same messaging and strategy as your brand position, so your customers know what to expect and are able to begin trusting you.

Additionally, a social media strategy that’s integrated with your larger marketing goals will allow your social media managers to more effectively target their posts to your buyer personas. By tailoring your messages to you ideal customer, you’ll improve your chances of capturing the business of your most profitable prospect segments.

4. You’ll Avoid Brand Confusion

Brand confusion is a real and dangerous threat to modern organizations. Research by the Harvard Business Review has found that differentiation has become more challenging today due to a proliferation of new brands, and even worse, that most modern marketers are doing nothing to solve the problem. The key to eliminating this threat is to avoid thinking in a promotional or limited-time mindset, and focus on longer-term goals. If your social media posts are consistent with your brand’s personality or tone, you’ll likely achieve much better differentiation than your competitors who don’t have the same long-term outlook.

5. You Can Achieve “Triangulation”

Marketing thought leader Aaron Perlut believes that earned media outreach is effectively useless if you’re not moving toward “triangulation;” which is defined as the integration of social media, search marketing, and PR. Your social media posts shouldn’t just be viewed as updates to your Facebook or Twitter audience, because they’re so much more. Social media has the potential to be the cornerstone of your brand’s web presence, which is why it’s important to ensure that each piece of outreach is effectively targeted, and consistent with your brand strategy as a whole.

80% Of Social Media B2B Leads Come From LinkedIn

Social media continues to grow as a lead generation avenue, and according to a new infographic from Oktopost, 80 percent of B2B leads were through LinkedIn.
Oktopost is a social media marketing platform, and analyzed over 100,000 posts spread across four major social networks.

Here’s the percentage of B2B leads generated through each social network:

• LinkedIn – 80.33 percent
• Twitter – 12.73 percent
• Facebook – 6.73 percent
• Google+ – 0.21 percent

According to Oktopost, B2B leads are most likely to convert between 1 and 4 PM.

Here are the most popular posting methods on LinkedIn to generate leads, followed by conversions:

• Discussion Groups – 96.22 percent of posts, 86.30 percent of conversions
• Company Pages – 0.59 percent of posts, 10.07 percent of conversions
• Personal Profiles – 3.20 percent of posts, 3.63 percent of conversions

The average length of a B2B-related LinkedIn post is 248 characters, and one out of every three posts contains a question mark in its subject line.

Social Media B2B Leads Come From LinkedIn (Infographic)

Social Media Shows Creativity

When it comes to social networking and job search, creativity thrives.

A CNN article gives a wonderful example of a creative use of the social media site Pinterest as a resume. Rachael King, a community engagement professional for Adobe, created the "living resume," which is a collection of high points in her career. The living resume provides King a visual representation of the work she’s done that’s much more exciting to sift through than bulleted list on a resume.

Tumblr is another visual social media site ideal for photographers and artists looking for jobs.

5 SEO Trends Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know for 2014

BY Jayson DeMers

"Is SEO dead?" It's a common question within the online marketing world today.

If you're an entrepreneur relying on a strong online presence to connect with customers, you're right to pay attention. It's undeniable that the SEO landscape is changing.

For instance, Google is taking a hardline approach. Shady link-building tactics (think Rap Genius), poor quality content and bad design are just a few of the factors causing websites to get penalized. So what's worked for your business in the past may no longer work, and in fact, could actually hurt your business now.

Today, successful SEO strategies have to incorporate diverse components including brand building, mobile optimization, content marketing and social media integration. It's time to adapt your strategy to address these realities. Here's a closer look at five trends that will shape your SEO success in the year ahead.

Effective SEO has three pillars.
A strong SEO strategy has three core components: links, content and social media. What's become more pronounced in the last year is the relationship between these elements. Content must be laser focused on your audience's needs and honed to drive specific profit-generating actions. Social media amplifies your reach, signaling to search engines that users find your content valuable. Links from high quality sites also reinforce that you're a solid, trustworthy site. A virtuous cycle is starting to emerge that all begins with writing great content.

The rise of content marketing moves toward digital maturity.
Content marketing was the top marketing buzzword of 2013, and it's a trend that's here to stay. Brands need to become savvy about telling their own stories and creating content that resonates with audiences. As the initial fascination with content marketing wears off, marketers are now demanding more return on investment, or ROI. Content marketing is maturing, and as a result we're better able to effectively target content, measure performance and correct course to improve results.

Mobile optimization is no longer optional.
With the release of Google's Hummingbird updates, it's getting harder for sites without a mobile strategy to rank well. This includes both a responsive design and a mobile content strategy. Realistically, it's time to invest in this anyway from a business perspective: Half of Americans own smartphones and more than a third own tablets according to Pew Internet. Responsive design ensures that your site looks great across a range of mobile devices. A mobile content strategy targets your content to the context, needs and behaviors of mobile users.

Building your brand is more important than building links.
A strong brand is playing an increasingly important role in SEO. One tangible example is Google's introduction and emphasis of Google Authorship, a program that connects content to your author profile with recognized authors' content performing better in search engine results. Building your brand and thought leadership in your space are critical steps to ranking well over time.

Social media, especially Google Plus, plays an integrated role with SEO.
Google is relying more than ever on human signals in the form of shares and mentions on social media to help vet sites. If you don't have a strong social media marketing presence and a strategy that makes it easy for people to share your content, it's time to implement one.
Social media has matured to the point where it's intersecting with SEO to help determine search rankings. Two easy places to start are building your Google Plus presence and ensuring that your website and blog have content sharing modules built in.

As you're developing your company's SEO plan, remember that all these trends add up to two things: integration and balance. Invest in all the key areas -- from writing good content, to building links and developing your social platforms -- with the understanding that they mutually support each other. Customize your plan by identifying your company's gaps and opportunity, and focus on the channels that bring you closer to your audience. Good search engines rankings will follow.

14 free MegaUpload alternatives

By Andrew Couts
Digital Trends

Last year, file-sharing giant MegaUpload was dead, following an international criminal sting spearheaded by the US Department of Justice. Prior to its closure, the site boasted 50 million users a day, and accounted for four percent of all Internet traffic, according to the DoJ. That means a lot of you out there are looking for a new way to  store and share your files. Here, a quick list of 15 sites that will fill the gaping hole in your life left by MegaUpload’s abrupt departure. Just don’t blame us if the feds seize one of these next.

• RapidShare: The most like MegaUpload of the bunch, RapidShare lets users upload files of unlimited size, and share them via an emailable, tweetable, Facebookable link. There is also no storage limit, but files are automatically deleted after a certain period of time. Users who want to utilize RapidShare as a cloud storage service can upgrade to RapidPro for about $39 (29.9 Euro — RapidShare is based in Switzerland) for 150 days, or about $130 for two years.

• MediaFire: A stripped-down version of RapidShare, MediaFire also lets users upload any type of file, with a max upload size of 2GB for free users. There is no storage limit, but also like RapidShare, your files will be deleted after certain period of time. Users can upgrade to a Pro account for $9 a month, which also ups max file size to 4GB. Files are shared via a link.

• Dropbox: A popular, robust cloud storage service, Dropbox gives users 2GB of storage for free, and lets users share files with anyone via their public folder, or other Dropbox users through email invitation. Users can upgrade to 50GB for $10 a month, or 100GB for $20 a month.

• Box: Like Dropbox, Box is primarily a cloud storage service, as opposed to a straight file-sharing service. Users get 5GB for free, and can share via a direct link to a file, or can invite users to view the contents of an entire folder by email. Free users can only upload files 25MB or smaller. Paid users can up their upload limit to 1GB-per-file for $10 a month, which also expands storage to 25GB, or $20 for 50GB.

• YouSendIt: One of the original file-sharing services, YouSendIt offers 2GB of free storage, with a per-file upload limit of 50MB. (Free users also have to deal with ads.) Files can then be shared via email, but only five per month for free users. Up your storage to 5GB for $10 a month (or $50 per year), and you also get a maximum file size of 2GB, and 10 shares. Unlimited storage and unlimited shares (but the same max file size) is also available for $15 a month, or $150 a year.

• Minus: One of the easiest options available, Minus lets users who sign up for an account simply drag and drop any file (up to 2GB) to upload, and gives users up to 50GB of free storage. Uploaded files can be shared via an automatically-generated link. It’s that simple.

• Amazon Cloud Drive: Like a no-frills version of Dropbox or Box, Amazon’s Cloud Drive gives 5GB of storage space for free, and can be upgraded to 20GB, up to 1,000GB, for about $1 a gigabyte, per year. (Making it by far one of the least expensive options.) Max file size is 2GB. The biggest downside: No files sharing allowed (unless you give someone your Amazon password, of course).

• Microsoft SkyDrive: Completely free, SkyDrive gives users 25GB of free storage, and the ability to share files with others via email. Unfortunately, users can only upload files up to 50GB. Also, you have to have a Hotmail (or other MSN) address. Lame!

• SugarSync: Nearly identical to Dropbox and Box (for most intents and purposes), SugarSync gives away 5GB of storage for free, and offers paid plans that range from $5 per month (30GB) to $25 per month (250GB). Free accounts are limited to 25GB file uploads, or 1GB, if you are a paid user. Files can be shared via link, or by inviting users to join a folder.

• Oron: Super stripped-down, Oron lets free users upload files up to 400MB, up to five files at a time. Uploaded files, which can be shared via link, are only kept for a short period of time, and upload speed is slow, for free users who don’t create an account. Registered users can get upload files up to 1GB in size, and have 250GB of storage. Premium accounts (which cost 10 Euros to 75 Euros, depending on how long you want the account) allow file uploads up to 2GB, with unlimited storage and much faster upload speeds.

• Deposit Files: Similar to Oron, but max upload size jumps to 2GB for all users. Files are also not deleted, like they are with other services. Gold members get a number of perks, including faster download speeds. Prices for Gold accounts range from $12 for one month, to $75 for a year. No sign-up necessary for free users. Files are shared through a link.

• FilePost: Remember all the stuff we just said about Deposit Files? File Post is that, but with a max upload size of 5GB for paid users. Everything else is basically the same.

• FileSonic: A bit more polished and robust than either Oron or Deposit Files, FileSonic offers free users 30 days of storage time, and maximum uploads of up to 1GB. For $9 a month, users receive unlimited storage, unlimited storage time, maximum download speeds and max file uploads of up to 5GB. And yes, files are shared via link.

• WUpload: WUpload sells itself as a “100 percent safe and anonymous” file-sharing site, that gives free users a maximum upload size of 2GB. But free comes at a price: no simultaneous downloads, and a mandatory delay before download can begin. Free users storage space is also limited to 750GB. Premium users can erase all the negatives, and up their max file upload to 10GB.

Why Short Videos Are Wildly Popular Over Social Media

BY Michael Miller

When it comes to marketing your brand or business online, can you tell your story in 15 seconds? How about six?

That's all the time you have when you use one of the new short-video sharing apps available for iOS and Android devices. Vine was the first of these video apps, enabling you to shoot and upload videos no more than six seconds long and loop over and over. Not to be left behind, Instagram recently added video sharing to its digital photo app, and upped the time limit to a whopping 15 seconds per video. Instagram videos don't loop.

Then there's MixBit, which lets you shoot short videos but also enables editing of multiple clips into longer one- and two-minute videos.

All of these services are mobile-only, with videos shot and shared from iPhones and other mobile devices. Vine and Instagram video, especially, are proving to be immensely popular. Vine, which is owned by Twitter, amassed 13 million users in its first four months on the market. Instagram Video was immediately available to the service's 130 million users, who uploaded more than five million videos in the service's first 24 hours.

But, let's be serious: What is up with the short videos? Are six seconds and 15 seconds arbitrary amounts of time? Or is there some method to this madness?

The short-video approach is designed to offer viewers a much different viewing experience than with traditional longer-form videos. Case in point are Vine's six-second videos, which are immediate and without pretense. They're also short enough to upload and view quickly, even on slower mobile connections. Instagram went for slightly longer videos that enable companies to upload new or existing 15-second commercials.

In practical use, Vine's shorter videos tend to inspire more creativity. 
Since you can start and stop recording for multiple shots, many companies are creating interesting stop-motion animations that showcase their products. The looping nature of Vine videos can also result in interesting effects as videos circle back into and through themselves. The "summer up" roller coaster video from Target is a perfect example of Vine's stop-motion and looping in action.

Instagram, on the other hand, is attracting more traditional promotional videos.
You don't have to be as inventive to fit your message into a 15-second container and many companies appreciate the extra time to tell their stories and showcase their products. For example, a Starbucks video gives a short tour of the company's original Pike Place store.

Since both Vine and Instagram encourage social sharing, the most interesting videos can quickly go viral. It's not unusual to see popular Vine and Instagram videos popping up in Twitter and Facebook feeds. The sharing nature of both services offer the potential for significant customer engagement.
If you want to see how the different services require different approaches, search for Gap's stop-motion videos on Vine and Gap's more traditional customer testimonials on Instagram.

Key Ingredients to a Winning Mobile Content-Marketing Strategy

BY Jayson DeMers

When you think about the different ways customers land on your company's website, mobile is most likely a growing driver of traffic. According to the latest statistics from Pew Research, 56 percent of Americans own a smartphone and 34 percent own a tablet. Then consider that 63 percent of smartphone owners use their devices to go online.

Does your content-marketing strategy take these trends into account?
Plugging new channels or technologies into your existing content strategy isn't enough. As a business owner, you need to consider how your site and your marketing are being delivered over the devices people are using. If you're not delivering your marketing messages in a way that's tailored specifically to the experience of a smartphone or tablet user, chances are you're turning customers away.

Here's a closer look at some critical points to consider about your company's mobile content-marketing strategy:

Mobile isn't just about the device.
Don't just look at the mobile channel as a series of devices. It's true that your content needs to be optimized and look great across different brands of tablets and smartphones. But mobile is also about the context and behaviors of your customers while they're on those devices.

What are they doing on that smartphone?
Are they accessing content relaxing at home, or glancing quickly during their commute? Your content strategy needs to represent a deeper understanding of your users' mobile context and what that means for both your content and experience creation.

For example, I recently bought a new home theater system. As I was setting it up in the living room, I realized that I lacked a particular part to enable the wireless rear speakers. I needed to figure out how to buy that part while I was next to my speaker system so I could examine their part numbers and other information printed on the speakers. I pulled out my iPhone and began searching the web. Plenty of suppliers had the part available, but I made my purchase based on what I needed at that moment: Assurance that it was the right part, trustworthiness of the supplier and a reasonable price. I purchased from the supplier that was able to convey each of those things in the easiest, most efficient manner on my smartphone.

Base your strategy on how your audience really uses mobile.
An effective mobile content strategy demands an understanding of your audience's mobile usage. Marketers like to imagine they know their customers. But the reality of mobile usage may differ from your perception.

Part of your audience profile should focus on how mobile fits into your customers' lives.
What devices are they on? What kind of an experience are they looking for from you?
Data from your existing website analytics program can give you mobile insights, as can targeted surveys, to form the foundation of your mobile content strategy.

Think before you shrink.
The old model of content creation was to adapt content from other formats, usually the web, to a small screen. Text was chunked differently, visuals updated and overall layouts simplified and made more "tappable" for touchscreens.

Instead, look at all of your content through a mobile lens at the point of creation. Copywriting and visuals should be as short and minimalistic as possible, while effectively conveying your message. Then adapt your ideas from there to the bigger screen. Scale content creation up, rather than down.

Rethink your user experience through design.
Every business needs a website that looks great and functions well on mobile devices. If information is hard to find or your site is impossible to navigate, you'll lose customers. But mobile design goes beyond basic functionality. Ask yourself if you're providing the right experience in terms of content, look, feel, functionality and tools to help your customers achieve their end goal.

Going back to my example about buying the part for the home theater system, during my search for suppliers I found several that had awful mobile design. One in particular wouldn't even let me add my item to the cart. Needless to say, I didn't make my purchase from that supplier.

Focus first on the experience, and then optimize the visuals.

Expand your understanding of conversions.
In the mobile universe, conversions go way beyond the sale. Signing up for a newsletter, sharing your content or downloading a white paper may be valuable customer touch points. Think about the range of mobile conversions with value for your business and develop mobile content to support that funnel.

Take advantage of location.
Geolocation technologies are giving businesses creative ways to engage customers, from sending market research surveys to customers nearby to offering discount codes to drive sales. Examples of these technologies include Apple's Siri, Google Now and GPS-enabled apps for iOS and Android.

Mobile devices are the lever these campaigns hinge on. Consider how location-based technologies could increase immediate engagement with your customers.

Leverage the rise of micro-video.
As visual content such as videos and infographics become the preferred form of content, specific opportunities are appearing for mobile. Short videos on Vine and Instagram have provided marketers another way to reach their audience. What part of your story can you tell in a micro-video? For some interesting takes on Vine campaigns check out Oreo's campaign and Lowe's six-second home improvement tips.

Make social engagement easy.
Is your content easy to share and easy to engage with? Simple like and share buttons encourage social engagement. If you're requesting information, avoid long essay questions and forms that are awkward to navigate.

With more opportunities to reach customers and prospects by mobile, companies can stay relevant by creating mobile-focused content marketing strategies. This can help you to concentrate on high-return mobile activities that drive website traffic, engagement, leads and sales.

Social Signals Are “Backlinks” of the Future

BY Chris Guthrie

For years, Marketers have been jockeying for page #1 rankings, focused solely on backlinks.

Well guess what...
The future of SEO has EVOLVED and making a major shift towards CONTENT and SOCIAL SHARING.

Google and other search engines have realized that people LOVE to share content via social media.
...and that measuring engagement, social sharing and social signal diversity is a better indication
of what is quality content and worth of high organic rankings.

- Share buttons (like, recommend, tweet, bookmark, etc.)
- Connect buttons (Like a Facebook page, Follow on Twitter, Follow on LinkedIn, etc.)
- Social commenting

Which means that Social Signal monitoring is the NEW backlink monitoring for SEO.

Which is why Marketers NEED to Check out WPSocialTracker:

http://chrisloves.com/signaltracker

WPSocialTracker is a social signal monitoring dashboard that will allow you to easily monitor social signal/sharing across your website and individual posts for the most popular sharing sites like...

- Facebook
- Twitter
- StumbleUpon
- Pinterest
- Google+
- Delicious
- LinkedIn

Its by far the easiest way to monitor your social sharing effectiveness between you and your competitors.

How to Determine Which Social Media Network Fits Your Business

BY Jayson DeMers

There are numerous variables that go into running a successful social media campaign. Factors like quality and frequency of posts, along with proper engagement quickly come to mind. These are obviously important, but choosing the network that caters to your target audience is equally important.

Since there can be a disparity in terms of user demographic on different social media sites, you should understand which network best fits your business before launching a full blown campaign. Here is a rundown of the demographic of some of the most popular networks to help you choose which one to use.

Facebook and Twitter
These two heavyweights are at the top of most marketers to-do list, and rightfully so. With Facebook recently surpassing one billion total users worldwide, it can be used by marketers to reach consumers in nearly any industry. Twitter isn’t all that far behind with over 500 million users that also are seeking content in a multitude of niches. Consequently, both Facebook and Twitter tend to be great places to start your campaign and test the waters.

If your business has a broad demographic, you should be able to effectively reach your audience. The same thing can be said even if you have a relatively small demographic, and you’re trying to zone in on a smaller segment of the population. Regardless of your industry, you should be able to bring exposure to your business and establish a community around it.

While creating a presence on both of these networks is applicable for nearly any business, Facebook can be even more advantageous when you’re looking to reach females between the ages of 18 and 29. According to CMS Wire, the vast majority of Facebook users are women and young adults, which makes it ideal if this is your business’s main demographic.

When it comes to Twitter, it’s also popular with a young audience between the ages of 18 and 29. A large part of its user base is comprised of African Americans and individuals living in densely populated, urban areas.

Google+
Although this network didn’t receive all that much attention a few years ago, it’s seen steady growth and currently has over 500 million users. Unlike Facebook and Twitter which have a relatively balanced gender demographic, Google+ is heavily favored by males. According to Social Statistics, nearly 70 percent of total users are male, which makes it the perfect network if your business focuses on this demographic.

Taking it one step further, the majority of the users are fairly well educated with many having a background in technology based fields like web development and software engineering. Nearly 44 percent are single and nearly 42 percent are looking for friends. As a result, launching a marketing campaign on Google+ could serve you well if your company offers a product or service that appeals to men that fall into these categories.

LinkedIn
If you’re looking to grow your business and gain B2B networking opportunities, LinkedIn is an effective way to do so. Unlike many other social media sites that are more casual in nature, this one is more designed for educated professionals that are looking to advance their careers. According to statistics by Quantcast, the majority of users have earned either a bachelor’s degree or completed grad school. Male users outweigh females, and a large percentage of them have no children.

LinkedIn users also tend to earn considerably more money than those on other networks. For instance, individuals earning over $150,000 annually account for the largest number of users. Not far behind are individuals earning between $100,000 and $150,000.

Another factor that differentiates this network from others is the average age of its users. Unlike many that cater to a younger demographic, LinkedIn users are typically older and range between 25 to 64 years of age. If you want to connect with an audience that is well-to-do and mainly consists of business professionals, this can be the perfect resource.

Pinterest
This social media site has really gained a lot of momentum in the past couple of years. While it pales in comparison to the user base of Facebook and Twitter, it’s seen plenty of growth since its conception and could be a major contender in the near future. The concept of Pinterest is incredibly simple, which involves “pinning” images onto boards.

This simplicity combined with its eye appealing aesthetic probably accounts for the success it has seen. Like Google+, Pinterest also has a significant disparity in terms of gender. The difference is that it swings the other way and has a massive female user base of around 72 percent.

Most users are relatively educated and have either attended college or have at least a bachelor’s degree. Users are primarily Caucasian and between the ages of 18 and 50. Going even deeper, the top geographic location of Pinterest is the south east United States including states like Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi. Due to the large volume of females who use this network, some of the most widely shared content is based in the following niches.

    Cooking and recipes
    Arts and crafts
    Clothing and fashion
    Home décor
    Home design
    Gifts

If your business focuses on any of these areas, Pinterest can be a potential gold mine. Since this site is image centric, it’s a great resource for displaying pictures of your products or services in action. It’s also possible to achieve a level of virality on this network because of the ease with which users can share content.

Tumblr
Many business owners have heard of this site, but aren’t necessarily sure how it can fit in with their marketing campaign. In a nutshell, Tumblr is a microblogging site that allows users to share a variety of content including text, images, audio and links. They can upload their own original content or re-blog content from other users. It has an incredibly easy to use interface which many people find appealing and has contributed to Tumblr’s success. While you could consider this network in its early stages, more and more legitimate brands like IBM and J Crew are taking the time to build their presence on it.

The most noticeable aspect of this site is its young audience. If you’re in a business that’s looking to reach people over the age of 35, then Tumblr isn’t for you. However, if you’re mainly looking to connect with consumers between 13 and 25, you should definitely consider this network. One of the most interesting statistics is that more young people in this age group now use Tumblr than Facebook. According to The Real Time Report, 61 percent of teens and 57 percent of young adults use Tumblr regularly, while only 55 percent of teens and 52 percent of young adults use Facebook regularly.

While it’s not completely clear why Tumblr is so popular among young people, it’s suspected that it relates to the fact that most parents aren’t using the site. Consequently, teens and young adults can use it without their parents constantly keeping tabs like they can on Facebook and other more notable networks. If your business offers a product or service that’s youth oriented, Tumblr can be an excellent choice. The best part is that competition is likely to be minimal for at least a few years.

4 Low-Cost Ways to Turbo-Charge Your Website

BY Jonathan Blum

Creating the most dynamic and effective business website doesn’t have to break the bank. With reasonable effort, investment and a modicum of Web know-how, you can either build a website or significantly improve your existing Web presence -- for less than $200 in one-time costs.

To do so, you’ll need to know which tools are essential and how to use them. Here are four low-cost ways to get your site not only functional, but attracting customers and helping you close more sales.

1. Get a professional look.
One of the easiest ways to create an effective, low-maintenance website is to combine off-the-shelf content management systems with a pre-made Website template. That way you have a unique-looking site that’s distinguished from basic Web tools such as Google’s Blogger format or Typepad that can also support complex live content.

Among the most popular website hosting services that support free content management systems are WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. All can manage dynamic content without any tricky or costly coding on your part.

The basic software packages for Joomla, Drupal and WordPress are free. Premium features and extensions, such as e-commerce tools, can be purchased but prices vary. Downloading and installing the basic and advanced versions of these tools does require an understanding of Web software. WordPress, however, offers a hosted version which doesn’t require any software installation.

You’ll also need a professional-looking template for your site that is compatible with your content management system. Options include New York-based Template Monster, which lets users narrow down themes based on business type and website purpose. Templates can cost about $50 each.

2. Analyze your website.
Not getting an accurate picture of how customers use your site might be the single biggest mistake online businesses make. Analytics tools can help you find out how many people visit your website, how much time they spend on each page and what service referred them.

One option is Visistat, which not only offers a number of web analytics services but also tracking of your online marketing campaigns and behavioral data on your site’s visitors. The average package costs about $50 per month.

But the most popular and perhaps the most effective analytics tool is Google Analytics. This free service generates deep, constantly updated visitor statistics. Installation usually only requires you to copy and paste a line of tracking code into your Website code, although some content management systems including WordPress make it even easier through plugins.

3. Get feedback.
Constructive criticism can be key to any business website. While full-on website testing technologies can be effective, they can also be costly.

Southborough, Mass.-based uTest offers access to a global network of 50,000 Web-connected testers and can create custom testing templates for everything from usability to security. Basic usability testing starts at several thousand dollars per engagement.

But there are numerous low-cost online testing services that can provide reviews. For example, Washington, D.C.-based Feedback Army lets businesses post four to six questions about its website, which are answered by online testers. Prices start at $20 for 10 reviews. For $39, Mountain View, Calif.-based UserTesting.com, can provide you with a video of an actual human tester using your website and talking about it as he or she navigates it.

4. Integrate social media.
Your website should link to your business’ social media accounts, but it’s even more important that your visitors be prompted to share your website through their own social media identities.

Most social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, provide detailed instructions for how to insert “Like”, “Share”, “Comment”, and “Tweet” buttons onto your Web page. Depending on how your website is hosted, can be installed as simple as copying and pasting some code into a website template or downloading and installing a plugin.

They also provide feeds showing your Facebook updates, Tweets and other ways people are interacting with your website -- which can be some valuable information when it comes to knowing your customers.

Bottom line: Working through the fundamentals of good design, compelling dynamic content, properly installed social media and user data can be the fastest and most affordable ways to gets results online.