social media Archives - NextJSjointviews

How Secure is Your Social Media Profiles

Posted on April 3, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Recently, you have been hearing so much about Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal. This makes us think about how much secure is social media profiles and what you can do to make it secure.

There are few things to keep in mind while handling social media. First, let’s take a look at the recent Facebook scandal and get an idea of what happened exactly.

What exactly is this Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal?

It all started when the voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica gathered private data from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their authorization. This was one of the biggest data leaks in the history of the social network.

This breach enabled the organization to exploit the social media activity of a large population of the American electorate and creating techniques that supported its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.

After effects of Facebook Data Leak

This major data leak has affected the Facebook users worldwide. Not only normal users got agitated but also advertisers began pulling ads from Facebook, organizations started wiping out Facebook log-in functions, a large number of users are creating #deletefacebook campaign and more. What’s more? All these resulted in a dramatic drop in the stock price of Facebook.

Not only Facebook but also high profile Twitter accounts are targeted by cybercriminals. These criminals hack the Twitter accounts and direct message to the contacts in the victim’s account with purposeful publicity about their motivation or attempt and convince the victim’s contact to click on a scam link.

Also, these issues have raised a question in social media users about how secure is their information in social media. So it’s high time to concentrate on securing your social media accounts. Let’s take a look at the common kind of threats in social media and ways to avoid them and staying safe.

1. Identity theft

Cybercriminals gather your personal information from social media sites as said before. Regardless of opting for highest security settings, still there are chances of your information getting leaked.

Most of the social media sites have the basic data like the birth date or email address, which can be used by a hacker to hack your email address easily. Let’s take an example, cybercriminals commonly hack the information by using the common technique of “forgot password.”

When a user clicks on that and tries to recover the account by email address, then the hacker can easily access your data and at that point, they have the complete access of your social media sites.

No need to panic or to delete your social media accounts. You only need to take these precautions listed below:

Strong password

Ensure you have a strong password for your accounts. Make it hard enough to guess. Make use of a mix of special characters like symbols or capital letters while creating your password. Also, take note that you don’t use your birthday or spouse/kid’s name on your password.

Be careful while updating status

Cybercriminals usually search for status updates to get any vital information for them. The most common mistake we often do is posting status updates on birthdays of your parents and tagging them in that post.

From these posts, chances are high that the hackers, for example, get the maiden name of your mom which can be used by the hacker to answer the security questions like “What’s your mother’s maiden name?.” If you are sharing that kind of updates, you are risking yourself and your social media accounts.

Never reveal your location

Social media sites usually ask these questions and it’s not necessary that you correctly enter it. Use fake location or leave that column. Don’t let your actual location published on social media.

2. Phishing scams

Phishing scams are fake messages pretending to be sent from famous organizations that you are likely to trust. Those are sent via emails, text messages, social media platforms etc.

These scams often come with a link leading to a fake website where you will be tricked to enter your details which will be confidential such as online banking details, credit card details etc. So make sure that you never give usernames or passwords.

The best practice is to never click on the links from emails you are not expecting even if it sounds from a genuine site or an organization. Make sure that the link is safe, for that you need to check these:

Hover over the suspicious link

Before clicking a link, hover over it; then it will show the full URL in the lower corner of your browser. If you recognize that website, then go ahead and click that link.

Link scanner

If you are not sure about the authenticity link, use a link scanner. It is a website which allows you to enter the URL you are suspicious about and checks whether the URL is safe. URLVoid and MyWOT are some of the link scanners.

Shortened links

Shortened links are most commonly seen on sites like Twitter where the character count is limited. Sites like Sucuri checks whether the real URL is safe or not.

3. Cookie monster

When you use social media sites, you post a lot of your personal information. Once it is out, then it is not private. Your enemies can use this information to harm you.

Also, you visit lots of pages and hit “like” button on the pages you like. These pages can extract your information and use it for their purpose like we have discussed above.

The pages you subscribe, applications you have downloaded and social networking site’s games and all contain your personal data.

The pages you visit can put invisible cookies on your site which are used to track your activities and your online behaviours.

To avoid this, click on “Do Not Track” feature on these sites. Also, you can regularly clear cache and cookies on your browser to avoid any malpractices.

4. Don’t share your holiday plans

If you are going on for a vacation, you need not announce that on social media sites. Letting the world know that you are away from home can attract burglars to your house.

Don’t let the world know where you are going, how long you are going and where you are staying. Burglars are constantly searching for information and these updates can do no good than harm.

Keep these things in mind when you are going for vacations:

Never post about your holiday plans like where you are going, how long etc.
Even if you want to post pictures, post that only after coming home under a title like vacation album or something.
Opt for highest privacy control. Select the audience group for your pictures and posts like friends, relatives.

5. Never be overconfident

Most of the people think that if they have a firewall or an antivirus installed, they are safe. Also thinking that you don’t have data worth to be hacked, then you are wrong!

With the advanced technology, you are connected with more people. With your carelessness and negligence, you are also risking other people’s information also.

Avoid posting the following information online:

Information regarding banking activities
Address and birth date
Your spouse/kid’s name, school/work details, their birth dates
Your workplace location
Your daily activities

These kinds of information can be exploited by criminals for identity theft, to access your bank account, take loans or credit cards under your name.

Final Thoughts

Despite these threats, you can make use of social media sites; however, you have to play it safe to ensure that your data doesn’t get into the wrong hands.

Now that you know what are the possible threats that you are vulnerable to and the ways you can avoid it, we believe that these tips can help you in protecting yourself and your social media accounts.

If you have any questions, please feel free to share your thoughts. We would love to hear you.

Why Marketers Should Have a Content Plan for Social Media

Posted on January 26, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Do you have a social media strategy prepared?

Do you know what to tweet, share on Facebook and write as your blog posts?

If you answered a yes, great! You are on the right track. If you answered a no, you’re just like the others in the market.

Marketers understand the importance of social media but don’t generally know how successful their campaigns are. They don’t focus on the content and cannot figure out what must be posted when.

If you’re also sailing in the same boat, here are a few questions that you need to ask yourself:

Do I have my existing and prospective customers here with me?
Is my post of any benefit to the consumers?

There are some other questions to ask as well but if you didn’t have the right answers to the above questions, you need a content plan.

Let us go through some of the key reasons to understand why creating a content plan for social media is so important:

1. Gives you a direction

Writing, posting, sharing – these actions become redundant if you don’t have a content plan in place. You must have clearly defined goals along with pre-decided metrics for success. You must know how and where you need to communicate with your target audience and what is it that they are expecting from you. A content plan adds a sense of purpose to your business and at the same time gives you a blueprint for the journey to your final destination.

2. Have a better sense of the target audience’s needs

If you have a content plan, you will know how to target the right audience with the right services. In the absence of a plan, customer demand for online services can be incorrectly evaluated.

3. Develops Opportunities for Conversations

A content plan helps you measure the success of your conversations. You know what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Social media platforms help you engage with the end consumer and if you are doing correctly with an appropriate content plan, you will notice an increased social media ROI.

4. Helps with Integration

A social media content plan enables everyone in the team and organization to remain integrated. All employees know what communication must be made with the target audience and there are clearly defined goals for everything.

5. Scope of New Strategies

If you are aware of your content plan and its ROI in terms of the metrics you set, you have the option of tweaking it to make it work. Without a concrete plan, knowing what works and what doesn’t is challenging.

Social media changes regularly. This means that you must also change with it. However, this change must be planned according to the current strategy. You must adapt to the changes introduced by the different social media platforms.

6. Identify your Audience’s language

If you keep tweeting without a specific content plan, you would be talking about anything and everything without knowing what your audience is searching for. It is important that you have a well-defined voice and use it when you are sharing content.

7. Eliminate the Guess Work

Once your content plan is ready, you know where your efforts need to be invested. You know how your content functions and are not wasting any time finding what you need to post. Social media platforms are time sensitive and if you are ready in advance, you are ready to make the most of this marketing tool.

8. Increased traffic

Website traffic is an important KPI for every business organization. Well planned and well placed social media updates attract more engagement, thereby generating higher click-through rates and leads for conversions.

9. Better Engaged Visitors

There are options to buy followers and traffic on social media. However, with a solid content plan, you can engage with your target audience realistically. The quantity of followers, clicks, and traffic does matter but the quality must be your focus.

10. Improved Customer Retention

Your bounce rate will start to lessen if your social media campaigns are being executed effectively. This means that you are reaching out to the right audience with the right information, and they are appreciative of the content you are providing.

Remember, social media does not have any magic formula. You need to understand what works for your business and what does not and this can only be done by devising a social media strategy and content plan.

10 Successful Affiliate Marketing Strategies for Social Media

Posted on December 19, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Affiliate marketing is one of the first methods marketers and bloggers use to make money online. It is, in fact, one of the oldest ways of making money online. Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry and is rapidly growing.

Affiliate marketing is a process wherein you promote another company’s products or services and when sales increase, you earn a commission. Depending on the efficiency of your marketing skills, you can achieve great sales targets and ultimately make more money. Revenue is generated in affiliate marketing only after a specific action is performed. This action needs to be completed by a sale and only then will you get your payment.

Here are the top 10 social media affiliate marketing strategies that will help you gain success:

Create Affiliate Redirect Links

A raw affiliate URL does not look friendly and therefore, people are afraid to click on it. They are unsure of where it will deter them. A re-direct, on the other hand, looks much cleaner and attracts more clicks. It is ideal to use in affiliate marketing, email marketing or on any other social media platform.

Create Excellent Content

Creating excellent content that is better than other affiliate marketers and proving to be the best in the value chain is a challenge these days. Affiliate marketers have the ability to create content of high standards while others don’t have the ability to compete them. This helps them in winning their customers and increasing sales towards their product.

Know Your Audience

Affiliate marketers are always smarter and know what their audience wants. The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to try and promote the products and services that match the needs of your audience. In short, try and educate your audience about the relevant products and the services that they are interested in and give them the right content for their product. This will help in generating more sales.

Keep Your Relationships Clear

Feel free to disclose your affiliations with your clients. They will appreciate this quality and work with you for longer, increasing your earnings. If they are not satisfied, they may just bypass you and go directly to the vendor.

Honesty is very important to build a healthy relationship with your client. Transparency between both of you also helps you in offering some kind of bonus or incentive from time to time to your reader. Trust building can definitely be a powerful tactic that can increase the number of affiliate sales you generate.

Write Timeless Content

Try and write content that can be updated from time to time simply by adding links to your recent articles. Even if your article gets shifted from the front page, your readers should be impressed going through it. Most platforms allow you to show ‘most recent’ or ‘most popular’ on every page, so even if your article is not new, it will always show access to your new pages. Old content shared by you can still give you good revenue.

Be Patient

Affiliate marketing strategies need time to build and revenue from these also builds with time. Some of these affiliate programs give lifetime revenues. It forms a chain. So, if you refer a visitor, you continue to make money from that visitor even if he doesn’t come back to your site.

If your focus is on promoting a particular type of product, you can keep getting your commission every month on the same product, thus increasing your revenue. Affiliate programs are not a get rich fast plan but can give you an opportunity to make slow and steady income from your blog.

Select Affiliate Products Carefully

Try and go through all the different options for products or services available through different marketing programs. Study them well and figure out which ones are best for the end users. Next, try and put attractive logos or change the ad patterns and use different graphics and texts to see which are the most expensive. Working on all this might take some time but you can figure out the best way.

Trying and changing ads regularly will definitely attract more viewers. You should strongly promote digital information products. These products are very active because customers can get instant access when they purchase them and these provide higher commission rates than buying physical products.

Promote High-Quality Offers

Affiliate marketing tends to do exceptionally well on social media when you promote a high-quality offer. In such a situation, everyone wins. The customer wins since they obtain an awesome deal; the affiliate marketer wins since they earn a heavy commission on driving traffic to the website, earning sales and the product manufacturer wins by generating revenue for what they have created.

Content Comes First

Content marketing strategy should be your first priority. Content is the base foundation for any product or service. It behaves like a life-saving drug for any product. There will be no traffic on your page if your content is not interesting or effective. If you compromise with your content and only think about making money online, you will lose viewers on your page.

Your strategy for the site should be to find products that add value to the site’s readers and also products that have the potential to increase the site’s revenue.

Use email auto-responders

Email auto-responders help to convert new subscribers into trusted readers. These readers will click on the links you recommend and get influenced by the products you propose. Set weekly responders to remind the customers and readers about your products every alternate day.

Affiliate Marketing helps to increase sales and when effectively combined with the right social media strategies, the results are highly commendable.

How Visual Content Enhances Your Social Media Marketing

Posted on November 21, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Are you struggling with social media marketing for your business?

In this blog we will show you how visual content can help you get you more likes, shares and comments for your business on social media. We will also give some tips on how to use visual content to boost engagement.

Reaching your followers without paid marketing can be difficult and frustrating at times. That means marketers have to find ways to reach target audience organically. Visual content is a better way to spice up boring content and increase your shareability.

Visual content includes pictures, graphics, memes and videos. According to Viraltag, visuals get 94% more views than plain text content. Posts with visuals grab attention easily. This is why Facebook has introduced the coloured status background for text only posts.

The popularity for visual content is proved by the tremendous growth of visual social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest. Instagram users number has grown from 200 million in 2014 to 800 million in just three years.

Marketers know that visuals are a must -have rather than a good-to-have component of content strategy. In 2016, 53% of marketers stated that over 90% of content they produced contained visuals.

Here is how visual content will enhance your social media marketing

Increase Engagement

Posts with visuals get more likes, comments and shares on social media. According to Hubspot, Facebook posts with images get 2.3 times more engagement than those without images. Visual content is also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content.

However, social media feed is overloaded with images today and there is something you can do to stand out among that. Your brand needs something more with their image to stand out. There are many strategies that successful marketers follow to increase their chances of going viral.

Check out this post by EA Sports:Madden 25. They have successfully used a call to action to drive user engagement.

Adding a clear call to action in your images will drive up engagement on your posts. Some of the other strategies that marketers use are sharing DIY photos, entertaining or funny memes, optical illusions and images that evoke emotions.

Create Brand Personality

Visuals communicate much more than words ever can. Images and videos evoke emotions and connect with the audience instantly. You can communicate all that your brand stands for in less than two seconds (which is great considering the fact that human attention span have fallen to eight seconds).

For example, RedBull Facebook page regularly posts videos on adventure and sports. This connects with their audiences who are adventurous and identify with the brand for ‘pushing the limits’.

Images are also more memorable and increase your brand recall. According to Lifelearn, people retain 65% of information when content is paired with relevant image compared to only 10% retention when that information is heard.

Posting images with consistent theme, font and logo increases brand recognition and builds a place in the minds of audience.

Drive Conversion

Visual media can directly increase your traffic and conversions. Visuals are great to if you are a product company. In fact, there are many small businesses which have grown big supported only by Instagram sales. Marketers are now giving due place to visual platformssuch as Instragram, Snapchat and Pinterest in their digital marketing strategy.

Instagram has over 1 million advertisers since the introduction of its ad services only four years ago.

Both Facebook and Instagram have introduced carousel ads (pictures that you can scroll sideways) to make their ads more visual. All social media platforms prefer visual content in their organic as well as paid feed for the simple reason that it converts better.

Tips for creating visuals for social media

Whether you are just starting out with visual content or want better strategy for your visual content marketing, following tips will help you:

> Recreate your best text posts in visuals. You do not need to create fresh content every time. Go back to your best performing posts and blogs and redo them in a visual infographic.

> Know your type of visuals. There are so many things you can dowith visuals. You can use photos, quote covers, comics, infograhics, memes, videos, live videos. Understand your audience and analyse their response to different type of visuals. Also keep in mind your brand personality. A funny meme on Donald Trump is not a good idea if you are a professional and serious B2B brand.

> Optimize images for each platform. Keep your posts in line with the overall mood of the social media platform. For example, Instagram is great for a lifestyle and fashion product whereas LinkedIn would be a better place for a B2B software company. Also keep in mind that the dimension and photo quality requirement may differ slightly in each platform.

> Managing too many platforms can get overwhelming. Limit to three platforms to start off with. Choose platforms based on where your target audience is.

> Keep a good variety of content. Some options that are popular are – DIY graphics, educational infographics, funny comics or memes, entertaining videos, GIFs, etc. Be creative and play around with what sits well within your brand voice.

> Use live videos to show the human side of your brand or to give behind the scene updates. Live videos are not yet very popular but they are very engaging. It’s the perfect time to jump on the rising trend that will be common in coming future.

> Use contests and user generated images to engage your users.

Conclusion

We are naturally inclined to prefer visuals to text. The amount of visual content is only growing on social media platforms. Brands must stand out with their creative use of visuals to enhance their social media marketing. Using images, videos and creative graphics will increase user engagement, build your brand voice and ultimately lead to conversions.

7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Presence

Posted on October 24, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Having a stellar social media presence is on every marketer’s agenda this year and there is a good reason for it. Social media drives more than 31% of all referral traffic and it has emerged as the most important traffic source after SEO. Not only does it get traffic, it gets ‘targeted’ traffic that is easier to move along your sales funnel.

But social media marketing can be frustrating for many small and medium size businesses. Founders and marketers invest time and post regularly only to see no visible results. They either struggle with increasing their followers or getting conversions. This can be disappointing and many give up on social media altogether.

Unfortunately , most people are not aware that there are some tactics without which you cannot succeed at social media. Hard work with no smart work can be tiring. In this blog we will tell you how to do that.

But, first things first. You need to understand that social media growth takes time. Just six hours a week on social media can start showing you results in three to four months. However these six hours must be well planned. Work smartly with the following seven tips to improve your social media presence.

1. Get Social

You must use the social networks in social media to your advantage. Invest time in building relations with peers and industry leaders. There is a lot that can be done in collaboration with influencers and communities on social media.

Neil Patel ran a campaign on social media where models with large following were paid to promote ‘#whoisneilpatel’. As a result the hastag #whoisneilpatel was used 11,000 times and Google searches for ‘Neil Patel’ went up by 71%.

You do not have to spend hefty amounts on Influencer campaigns. A free gift or a percentage of revenue generated by their followers is also good offer to make.

Participate in communities and groups that are relevant to your industry. Answer queries and comment on blogs posted on groups other than yours. Don’t be salesy and avoid talking about how great your product is. The point is to add value to other users. If they see you as a subject matter expert they will follow you.

2. Include your followers

Social media channels are a two way communication street. Just posting interesting content with no conversations is a disengaging and boring way to exist on social media. Instead, make your followers an active part of your page or profile. Here are some ways to do it

Start a trivia game. Pick a topic that is close to your follower’s heart and related to your brand.
Ask your followers to post how their life has changed after using your product.
Use Facebook Polls to understand their interests.
Word your posts to get more comments and responses. For example, a fitness apparel brand can post asking followers of ‘their favorite fitness activity and what they like about it’

3. Promote Everywhere

Let all your customers know that you are on social media. Mention your twitter handle and facebook page on all company merchandise, marketing material, PR and advertising copies, blogs and product packaging.

You can get decent traction even if all your current customers and employees promote your page among their friends. Make sure you are creating interesting content. This way they would be happy to share without feeling spammy.

4. Use your website

You can optimize your website to drive more traffic to your social media profiles. Make it easy for your visitors to share at the click of a mouse button.

Install Click to tweet plugin that allows you to convert blog text into tweetable text.

Use social media icons on your website pages. However, be sure to insert them only where they are relevant. Putting social share icons on your home page or contact page is useless as nobody is going to share these pages.

Instead, place the icons on pages with content that is funny, informative and valuable. Make sure your icons scroll down the page with your visitors. Use Add this plug-in to add scrollable icons and make your images shareable on Pinterest at a click.

5. Be human

It helps to show your soft side on social media as people want to connect with real humans and not a faceless brand. Feel free to share behind the scene photos or founder’s story.

Not every social site is fit for all types of content. Always keep in the mind the mood of the social media platform you share on.

Instagram is great for lifestyle promotion; feel free to share glamorous photos here. LinkedIn is professional and suitable to share your expert take on your client’s industry. Facebook has a friendly mood and you can show your personal side here.

The rules of great conversation also apply to social media interactions. Make the conversation more about your followers than about your brand.

It’s good to post content that is not directly related to your products but connects with your audience. Use the 80:20 rules. 80% of your posts should be non-promotional and only 20% should be promotional.

6. Have a Plan

You already know the result if you have been posting on social media sites without a formal plan. It gets you nowhere.

You must have a goal and a content strategy that chalks out how you are going to get there. It does not have to be a super complicated document. Just a structured content calendar that lists what you are going to share everyday will be good to go.

You must decide what platforms are best suited for your brand based on where your target market spends their time. Also make sure your goals are specific, measurable, realistic and time-based.

A structured plan will serve two goals. First it will make sure you post regularly. Second, you will get the content ready beforehand since you know what you have to post. This removes haphazard posting.

7. Live Videos

Live videos have made a mark as the most exciting marketing tool this year. Internet celebrities like Gary Vaynerchuk have used it successfully to grow their following on social media.

According to Livestream.com , 82% of brand audience would prefer a live video rather than social post. Individuals and brands are using it to give more immersive feel of their life to their followers. It has become the new reality TV in every person’s hand.

Live videos are not yet fully exploited which is why social media sites are pushing the feature. Facebook and Instagram send users a notification every time any of their contact starts a live video.

Conclusion

Following these seven practices consistently will increase your social media presence. What are some other tactics that have worked for you to increase social media presence? Let us know in the comments below.

How Businesses Benefit from Social Media Marketing

Posted on October 12, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Social media was considered to be a passing fad a few years ago. Today it is a proven platform for businesses to reach target audience and grow revenue. Businesses are taking social media seriously. Facebook reported $9.16 billion in advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2017.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter help businesses reach out to their prospects personally and develop relations. Here are some ways businesses benefit from social media marketing:

Builds a Brand and Brand Loyalty

A brand is built by consistent messaging and presence. According to Global Web Index, people spend more than two hours on social media platforms daily. You are missing out on precious customer attention if you are not active on social media.

Source : MarketingProfs

Having a profile on social media allows you to post and interact with your target market. A Study by Convince and Convert has also shown that people who follow a brand on social media are more loyal to that brand.

A profile on these platforms ‘humanizes’ your brand. You can like and comment on your followers’ posts like a friend. This is great because people like to do business with humans and not a company without any human traits.

Social media is a necessary platform to be on and give your audience a seamless experience between the offline and online branding efforts.

Reach more people

In traditional marketing, businesses had to spend big money to reach their target customers. Advertisements in print and television assured no guarantee that your target audience would see it despite investing huge amount.

This has changed with social media. Now you can reach the right target audience for free! Followers increase consistently with time as long as you post content regularly. What’s more, users who follow you are interested in your brand and ready to engage with you. This is much better than placing a hoarding that most people don’t even look at.

It is also an excellent platform to reach the global audience. Viral marketing can increase your followers exponentially overnight. Although there is not set recipe for a viral content you must strive to post content that connects with your audience and is something that they identify with.

Source of Inbound traffic

Social media is an important source of traffic in inbound marketing. It is a channel for content distribution and is great to attract new visitors to your site.

Every post, infographic or video you share can lead your followers to your site. This is the reason why more than 58% of marketers who have been using social media for one year or longer see improved search engine rankings (Source: Social Media Examiner, 2015). Most of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow you to include a link in your post.

Make sure to include a call to action in your post. This way social media will give you a steady flow of traffic to your website. This works great for your inbound sales funnel as more targeted visitors convert to leads and eventually customers.

Get Detailed Customer Profile

Never in the history of marketing have marketers been able to gather so much data about their audience. You can know the locations, interests, like and dislikes of your followers on social media. Social media is a gold mine of data for marketers. You can know your customers and prospects intimately by the conversations they are having and concerns they are voicing.

A simple search on your industry or topic can give you large amounts of data for research.

This detailed data on your followers can help you in market research, business idea validation and customer profiling.

Grow a Community

Social media is a two way communication platform where you can grow a community. Some companies are using it to foster brand loyalty among their current customers. This can be done by encouraging conversations between customers.

You can also share tips on product usage and lifestyle. For example, if you are a company selling bicycle you can share information on fitness and diet to encourage a healthy lifestyle among your customers. This lets the customers know that you care and increases chances of them recommending you to their friends.

Brands are also using Facebook pages for handling customer complaints, feedback and product training. In fact social media has now emerged as the top choice for customer care contact.

Source: Sproutsocial

Increase Conversion rate

Yes! Social media has a direct impact on your sales too. Studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.

This is because you can get highly targeted leads from social media. Only users who are interested in your brand follow you and are more likely to visit your website. Also, a higher number of social media followers tend to improve trust and credibility in your brand which then drives higher conversions.

Support HR and R&D

Social media has benefits beyond sales and marketing too. Human resource can use social media for recruiting, employee engagement and monitoring employee sentiment. According to Jobvite, 59% of recruiters rated candidates found through social media as “highest quality”. LinkedIn has become a major source of data on prospective candidates for HR.

Contacts and conversations on social media can also be helpful for product development and research teams. Social media is also the place for latest news and trends in the industry. Therefore all departments can benefit from having a presence in social media and being in touch with industry influencers.

With so many benefits at no extra cost, a brand must invest in social media platforms. It does take time to build your followers on social media but the opportunity of being in close touch with your market is something we must take advantage of. It is something the previous generations of businesses had no access to.

According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers found that as little as six hours of effort per week were enough to generate increased traffic. Even an hour a day can show results over the long run.

How Social Media Can Help SMEs to Acquire New Customers In 2017

Posted on July 28, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Today, Social media presents entrepreneurs with a pool of opportunities to expand their businesses and boost their profitability. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are great platforms for small businesses to expand their businesses by creating conversations with prospective buyers and by serving as a medium for customer care services. Engaging with the customers via social media platforms helps understand their needs better and improve their service delivery.

A quick view on social media platforms:

Facebook: Widely used social media platform all over the world with over 2 billion active users. It helps SMEs both in brand awareness as well as lead generation.

LinkedIn: One of the main factors which SMEs can’t avoid as there is no other platform better than LinkedIn for quality leads.

Twitter: Twitter is slightly different from other social platforms as it’s mostly news based. But still, it has immense power to change the image of your brand if done right.

Instagram: Owned by Facebook and is the fastest growing social media, thanks mainly to its focus on visuals. Best medium to promote your products as there is no better way to showcase your product’s quality than through pictures.

Pinterest: Another social discovery platform that gives importance to visuals. In this, you can portray the complete story behind your product via images.

In recent times, social media has helped both SMEs and multinationals to effectively handle customer relationships.

If you have a reasonable social media presence, let your customers understand that everything is under control.

One of the main areas where small businesses have made good use of social media is in advertising and marketing. Earlier, companies had to use television, newspapers or other conventional platforms to promote their services and products globally. Many people couldn’t afford this as it was an expensive exercise.

Today, with enough effort, anyone can create a good number of Facebook fans, twitter follows or YouTube views. And you can both advertise and market your products and services at minimal costs to a global audience.

SMEs can attract new customers via social media in various ways:

You must know how to engage people on your selected social media platforms. Researchers revealed that people spend their most of the time on social media. Posting image of your products or sharing information about your products and services in a correct way can help you to reach out your targeted audience.

1. Be Flexible: Every strategy may not work for you as situation changes. You may identify that it is time to change your current strategy and try out something new and more interesting than the previous. Don’t stick to a strategy which doesn’t work for you.
Produce Quality Content That Is Genuinely Useful: People usually think many times before purchasing any product. Experts say that people wish to purchase from the one which is quite popular or they have seen many times in their everyday life. So you must be very careful while marketing your products- use images, interesting words and so on…

2. Entertain Your Fans: Always engage your fans or followers with your posts. Keep an eye on what they like and their comments in your posts, you can get to know from their comments if they get bored. You are supposed to be persistent while implementing a plan and in monitoring your results to know whether you’re on a right track which can let you achieve your goals.

3. Social Organic Search: Sharing a post several time is good for organic search as it will make the post reach to a huge audience. Search engines assume that more shares a post has, the more useful and important readers deem it.

4. Follow Branding Guidelines: You must follow the branding guidelines whenever you are promoting your brands. As if you don’t follow those guidelines it may affect your brand negatively.

5. Social Ads: Social ads provide the most flexible content promotion and are proven best to turn visitors into leads and customers. Making use of social media ads can build your brand recognition and double your organic search click-through and conversion rates!

6. By Creating Events: Social media event marketing isn’t too much time consuming and moreover social media can play a huge part in an event promotion. Consider creating a branded area for people to create good images, take photos, etc.

7. By Initiating Group Discussions: As all know, Facebook is one of the largest social networking sites, so creating and participating in Facebook groups is simply beneficial. It will help you to get noticed by others.

8. Leveraging Social Media Influencers: Influencers are really one of the big deal in social media. Leveraging the influencers enables you to access to a huge circle of influence instantly, helping you to build more audience from which you can build a long-term and stable campaign.

To get the best from social media for your small or medium enterprise, you must lay out a plan first. Do you really need to join social networking site? What is the goal? The objective may be for promotional purposes, customer relations, marketing and advertising and sales among others. The goals have to be measurable.

The most important question, however is among the many social networking sites which are fit for your business? To answer this, consider reviewing where most of your customers belong. To stay safe, use more than one, have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account for a start.

Social media tools that no “SME” should be without:

Social media can be the most powerful method of gaining exposure for SME globally as having a social media presence creates a close connection between the brand and its followers. Following are 4 tools which no SME can avoid.

Evernote: A free platform helping users to share their ideas and with this, you can also compile content.

Google Analytics: Provides free and enterprise tools so as to measure online & offline data to gain customer insights.

MailChimp: An online email marketing solution to send email, manage subscribers and track results.

Statusbrew: Allowing users to schedule posts and manage audiences on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus.

Social media is an effective and adorable way for SME to attract their target audience all over the world.

If you’re an SME and not on social media, then you’re missing all the fun…

How does Social Media Support Content Marketing?

Posted on July 10, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Content is at the centre of all digital marketing efforts. But how do you ensure that your content reaches your readers once it is ready ?
There are many channels to make sure your content is read by the right audience. Email, SEO, Social media, PR, Paid advertisements and videos are some of them.

Social media is one of the most important platforms to promote your content. According to CMI 93% of B2B marketers list social media as one of the top five content marketing tactics.
Here is the breakdown of social media platforms used by marketers.

Source CMI

Content marketing and social media go hand in hand. Good content has no value without being promoted on social media. And social media marketing will fail without good content strategy.

Social media should always be a part of the overall content marketing strategy. It is important to ask following questions before developing content:

Who are we writing content for? Who is our audience
What social media do they use?
How much time do they spend on each platform?
What are the most popular formats for each platform?

Social media is a way to reach your target audience. It is the vehicle which is fueled by good content. This is how social media can support your content marketing:

1. Reach out to the world

Great content is no good if it does not reach people. Social media is one platform where you can promote your content to reach maximum number of users.

Social media has more than 2 billion users currently. Facebook users alone generate around 3.2 billion likes and comments everyday! It is undoubtedly the best platform to reach to large audiences and engage with them. Sharing your content on social media will help you to get more traffic and higher conversions for your website.

2. Let users do the marketing

The beauty of social media is that the users themselves will market content for you. Content that is relevant and timely will be shared multiple times by users. A positive word about your brand on Facebook is seen by other members and builds trust in your brand.

You can also encourage influencers to share your media. Influencers are users with large following and good engagement on social media platforms.

Influencer marketing is one of the top content marketing strategies for 2017 and has been successfully used by big companies like Adidas as well as small start ups.

3. Get Real -time feedback

Social media is also a good way to listen to your audience. Many companies use Facebook platform for customer support, feedback and online community of customers.

It opens up two way communication between your business and its users. You can use this platform to generate new content ideas that your readers want.

You can also create polls in Facebook to know what your readers want to read about.This will keep your content relevant and responsive.

4. Build a loyal community

Social media also allows you to build a loyal online community that is invested in your business. These community members identify with your brand and share a common purpose with your business (which is why they follow you).

You can build a sense of community amongst these users with the right kind of engagement. These are your loyal base of customers who will spread your message in the digital world.

5. Drive traffic

Facebook shares, re-tweets and instagram impressions can get you huge traffic. Social media drives more than 35% of traffic and is the top driver of website referral traffic.

Your shares and posts act as baits to lead to your website and leadpages. Make sure that your blogs and content are socially sharable. You can follow following best practices to maximize the use of social media to drive traffic and conversions.

How to make Social Media work for you

Follow the best practices below to make sure that your social media presence supports your content marketing strategy. Once you get this right a lot of your content marketing and content delivery will be done by your loyal followers automatically.

Choose the right platform

As mentioned above you must ask yourselves what is the purpose of your content and who are you writing for. Once this is clear you must choose which platforms you must be present on. A B2B business must have a presence on LinkedIn and Slideshare while Vine may not be so important.

There is no hard and fast rule however. Figure out your brand personality and your buyer’s behaviors. Different platforms can also be used to portray different sides of your brand personality.

4-1-1 Strategy

This is a strategy recommended by Andrew Davis, author of Brandscaping. It recommends that out of every 6 pieces of content shared,

-4 should be popular or interesting content by other influencers

-1 piece should be your own and educational

-1 piece should be sales-related

Again, this is not a hard and fast rule and should be tweaked according to your industry. However, the important point here is to share a lot of good content by other influences. This keeps you social and also gets influencers to notice and remember you.

Visual Content

Keep your content visual to get maximum shares on social media. According to Kissmetrics photos get 53% more likes and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts.

Use infographics, videos and compelling pictures to get to your point quickly. Nobody likes to click on lengthy text on social media. Optimize your photos so that they do now appear cropped or odd on social media.

Add social media sharing buttons

Use social media sharing buttons on your blogs and sites. You can also insert tweet text in your blog. Use plug-ins to add these to your site. Ease of sharing will make a big difference to your share number as 51% of users access web on their phones.

Current topics

Use tools like Google Trends and Buzzsumo to find out topics of conversation on social media. Keep your topics relevant and fresh.

You can use industry events, sports tournaments or political elections to spike interests in your posts. Keep your posts focused rather than generalized for most part.

Listen to your audience

Keep a close eye on your social media accounts. Closely monitor the likes, comments and feedback. What are the posts that are doing well?

Which platform drives maximum engagements and why? Learn from your experience and continuously improve your content marketing strategy accordingly.

Social media is where you promote your content. It is an important part of a content marketing process and cannot be separated from it. In fact, introducing your content before your target audience would be difficult without depending social media platforms.

How to Decide the Ideal Social Media for Your Business

Posted on October 27, 2015 by NextJSjointviews

Social media is an inevitable platform when you come to marketing. An efficient social media strategy helps you boost your brand and business. The main idea here is to select the best social media that is apt for your requirements. Approaching a Digital Marketing Agency solves this issue for you.

A large number of social media platforms are available these days. You need to go through them and select the one that offers you the highest potential to reach out to your ideal audience. You need to broadcast the type of content you need to market your company. It is not possible to be the best on every platform. It is better to concentrate on a few of them and try to make your best.

Read Also: Effective Social Media Marketing Tricks for 2015

An online marketing agency will be able to choose out the best for your company. The professionals help you build an amazing online profile to make your mark among the target audience. Here are the most common social media that your social media expert would suggest you:

Pinterest

Pinterest is a simple content sharing service. Members are able to pin or post their videos, videos, and other such content on their boards. Such media are shared among others.
Pinterest is known to have a majority of female users. As such, it will be highly effective for businesses where visual imagery plays an important role. This platform is apt for businesses involving travel destinations, fashion or foods, wedding planning, interior decorating, and so on. A great deal can be marketed about your products by using videos and photos on Pinterest.
Pinterest has generally got a niche market. It serves this purpose really well. You have the option to share posts, comment on posts or boards, and also click to go to the web page from where a particular image came. You could “pin” something on to your board if you like it. The boards are attached to every user’s profile. This helps people see the person or company from where a particular video or photo came.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a very popular networking site. It mainly aims at creating contacts in the world of business. You connect to people or companies, and you could utilize this network to build up your profile.
LinkedIn helps you create professional networks. This way you could connect to people and be there for them when they require your services. There are groups and discussions where you can actively participate to get noted. Politely discussing your interests, showing your transparency, impressing others with your expertise, asking and answering questions, and interacting with others does the trick here. This is not a visual medium, and you get to talk about yourself, and what your business does. Service providers are a majority in here as compared to retailers.

YouTube

This visually driven media is a much more powerful tool than you think. It has got high potential if you utilize it well enough. Homemade and company made videos are found in abundance. People keep posting videos on it hoping them to get viral and earn popularity. If you feature your business in an efficient manner, you can make it big. The user base of this medium is really high, and you get a huge audience. Make it exciting and you will achieve what you want.
YouTube is based on visuals. You could see millions and millions of videos here which have been watched numerous times. Check out the videos that have generated maximum hits to get an idea of what will work out for you. Demonstrating your product, teaching people to do something, and introducing something new are cool ideas to start with.

You may also like: Video Marketing and Its Impact On Your Business

Twitter

Twitter is another popular social media platform that is an ongoing conversation. Twitter is more of a real time thing that is based on “in the moment” concept. Users can choose what to view and whether to respond.
Using twitter, you could reach out to the public and wait for them to respond. Breaking news, questions, updates, opinions, and other such things can be shared via twitter. You “tweet” whatever you feel like. This reaches out to the public. You directly interact with the people here.

Facebook

At this point of time, Facebook is the most popular social media in the world. It is a must for online marketing. The size of Facebook is enough to realise its importance. It is safe to assume that every person is on Facebook.
Businesses have the option to build their profile and show the image they prefer to show out to the public. People get to directly interact by commenting, asking questions, and expressing views. Facebook is more of a long-term commitment.

The main purpose of Facebook is to show out your face to the public. It does not deal with selling alone. You portray your business in a way that users are able to relate to you. By using this platform to its full capacity, you can generate a large number of fans and become popular.

Being active on all platforms is hard and not at all practical. An effective online marketing strategy is to select the three that suit your requirements aptly. Hire a Digital Marketing Agency to choose the best ideas and monitor your online activities. Stay involved on social media and see the difference it can bring out in your business!