Social Media for Business – Myths about Social Media for Businesses

In the world of business, marketing strategies and techniques are riddled with myths, just to discourage people from using them. When social media became a popular marketing avenue or option for business owners, it had its own myths that discouraged traditional and old-school business owners from using them. Before the advent of Twitter and Facebook, it was considered a leap of faith for business owners to abandon traditional forms of marketing and use Internet marketing as a viable marketing option. So, what are these myths?

1.) Everybody’s on social media – Internet marketers will perpetuate these myths to business owners who think social media sites like Facebook can rake in millions of visitors. Internet marketers will do anything to hook business owners in, which is why this is the most prevalent myth. Facebook and Twitter may have millions of visitors, but it won’t guarantee that you’ll earn the same amount of visitors for your account or page. This is due to the fact that not everyone on social media is looking for you. If you’re using social medial, you need to set a realistic expectation on the kind of traffic you want to generate, like hundreds or a thousand a month.

2.) Social media requires special companies – Yes and no. Social media management is something that can be done in-house or you can hire companies to do it for you. The latter is often perpetuated as a myth to generate customers. Social media management is not that difficult. The concepts are easy to learn and the theories are easy to understand. There is no need for a specialized degree or graduate program to be considered as a social media guru.

3.) Social media generates traffic overnight – Again, yes and no. While social media will boost traffic to your company website or office, it won’t be in the hundreds or thousands overnight. Traffic generation with social media is gradual. You’ll increase your traffic the more you work on your social media efforts, which will bring us to the next myth.

4.) Social media requires 8 hours of work and attention – This is not true. You’d only have to spend at least a couple of hours to update your Facebook or any other social media account. This is to ensure customers that the page or account is being managed and they can expect fresh updates from you. This also gives them an idea that your business’s social media account is an avenue for customer interaction, which is a huge bonus.

Social media may have its myths, but it shouldn’t stop business owners from taking advantage of using sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Social Media For Business

Create Targeted Advertisements & Improve Your Click Through Rate

In order to create the most compelling, responsive and profitable advertisements, you need to utilize Facebooks option to heavily target and tailor your advertisements based on your target market.

With facebook, you can set your ads up so that they appear only to specific people, based on age, location, gender, interests, hobbies or even based on the groups they have joined within the Facebook community.

You will want to conduct market research so that you can accurately define your target market and develop advertisements that target specific segments of your market.

Facebook implores a quality control system to ensure that the advertisements that run throughout their community stay within their guidelines and do not offend or disrupt member activity or overall experience.

Use their quality control system to develop compelling advertisements that stand out in the marketplace, and capture the attention of potential buyers.

Also keep in mind that Facebook advertising is based on display, rather than search. This means that your ads will be automatically triggered to appear based on your settings, rather than when a user conducts an on-site search.

Users can also choose to rate advertisements, helping to retain quality throughout the community.

Your advertisements click through rate plays an integral role in saving you money while boosting exposure and reaching out to your target market.

It’s important to keep a pulse on your click through rate so that you can correct any problems with your advertisement, or make adjustments to improve your overall CTR.

If your advertisements CTR drops too low, it could be automatically paused or removed by Facebook, so you really want to pay attention to how well it’s converting.

Typically, your ads should never fall below a 2% conversion rate. One of the easiest ways of increasing your CTR is by creating a highly targeted advertisement.

You want your ad to appear only to those who are within your target demographic, while making sure that your advertisements text or any images used speak directly to your customer base. Consider split testing various advertisements within the Facebook community to determine what works best, based on your industry or niche market.

You should also pay attention to the times of day that your ads appear. You can choose to either run your ads consistently throughout the day, or have them only appear at specific times (or even specific dates).

Keep in mind the time zone of your target market, so that your ads are running based on the most active time of day or night.

source: Target Marketing

Automating Your Marketing

One easy way of automating the list building process with Twitter is by using the services of www.SocialOomph.com

You can send out automatic direct messages to those who begin to follow your updates. These automated messages could include a direct link to your website, blog or better yet – your squeeze page where you offer each Twitter user a free incentive, such as a report, ebook, article content or guide based on your niche market.

When it comes to using Social Oomph to build your list and initiate first contact with those that follow you, be sure that the product you are offering on your squeeze page is extremely focused on your niche market and offers something of value.

You don’t want to give away a product that is already saturated online, such as outdated PLR. Try to offer something original, even if it’s a short report or mini-product, the more exclusive it is to your list, the more likely that your visitors will subscribe to your newsletter.

Just like with every other social community, your marketing campaign needs to be tweaked and offered in a slightly very different format that caters to their desire to network with other like-minded individuals.

This means that you want to make sure your automated DM message, as
well as every tweet you broadcast is seemingly written for the benefit of the reader, rather than direct advertisements.

Posting entertaining and useful tweets is an important part of successfully building your online business with twitter, however you want to focus on spending your time wisely and ensuring that each tweet is productive in helping you further your brand, right?
This is where twitter link bait comes into play. Rather than posting a link to a direct news story, post a summary of it on your blog and direct people to your page in order to read the message you are broadcasting.

This is a passive aggressive marketing tactic that works very well within twitter, because rather than directly trying to sell to your following base, you are simply posting about something you found interesting, useful or entertaining.

Once you have them on your blog, they’ll likely explore your website and if you’ve done your job of developing relationships with your following base and staying active within the twitter community, it will be a lot easier to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter or purchase your products.

Show people that you are interested in getting to know them, what they are interested in, what they are looking for.

Focus on giving, more than receiving and you will quickly discover, just how effective twitter can be in helping you further your brand and building your online business.

By answering questions and providing help, tips or advice on questions that people have, you can establish yourself as a credible source for information within your niche market, quickly and easily.

Source: Marketing Tactics

Use Facebook Ads To Attract More Clients

Facebook Ads Make a Huge Impact In Your Business - Rhonda Swan

Promoting your business with social media is the “hottest thing since sliced bread”, and I don’t see any signs of it cooling down.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look at these statistics from around the web:

• 78% of people who use social media to sell perform better than their peers (Forbes).
• 64% of people who use inbound social selling achieve their targets (The Aberdeen Group).
• 90% of all buyers admit that by the time they come into contact with the seller directly, they’ve already decided that they’re going to buy via social media (Forrester).

The Bottom Line About Facebook Ads

With over 2.2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is almost certainly where your ideal clients are hanging out online. Facebook also recently rolled out a new Ad Preference feature. The great thing about this, is that Facebook is able to tailor ads to people even more.

If you’re not making any attempt to reach them using Facebook ads, you’re leaving good money on the table and clients who need you, in the dark.

Anyone who’s played with the Power Editor knows there’s a lot more that goes into setting up an effective Facebook ad campaign, besides writing copy that connects and uploading a picture that pops in the news feed.

Let’s face it: if your ad doesn’t reach enough of the right people, the leads that do convert will wind up costing you a whole lot more.

How to Get More Facebook Engagement on Your Posts

The more people see your posts, the better it is for the growth of your business. When people see what you have to say and engage with it, then Facebook will reward you and share your post with more people.

There are a few simple ways that you can get more people to see what your posts. I call this posting with purpose.

For example, if I am going to post a picture of something, I will write something that people can really engage with. I will share a story about the picture or talk about something that will inspire me. In closing, I’ll ask a question that will get people engaging in the comments.

Once people start commenting, you need to write a message back to them in the comments section, not the reply section. Instead, you will use the @ sign and their name in the comment section. This will give you more engagement on the post. Simply using the reply button will not do that.

Another thing that you can consider doing is replying with another picture. Sometimes, I’ll comment a picture of myself or something relevant to make it a bit more personal.

Promoting Posts and Ad Campaigns

Those few tips I gave you will help out with your natural and organic traffic on posts. However, if you want to really shoot your engagement through the roof, you can boost your posts. Also, you can create ad campaigns that will get your message in front of more people.

If you are interested in Facebook marketing you can this information inside of the Freedom-Preneur Academy.

We have put together step by step guides on how to build successful campaigns and exactly what you need to do to promote them.

You’ll learn how to:

• Use Facebook video ads for .01 a view and reduce your cost per lead through retargeting
• Promote your lead magnets, webinars and offers with targeted Facebook ads.
• Master the Facebook Power Editor so you can confidently place your own ads.
• Determine where your ideal clients are hanging out and which audiences to target with your campaigns for the best conversion.
• Market the new Freedom-Preneur Sales Funnel and let us do the rest.
• I will also reveal my secret weapon or having sexy image ads DONE FOR YOU.

We tell you about the different types of ads you can post and when it is best to use each kind. There are 10 different types of ads, so it can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you are doing.
Source: How to Use Facebook Ads Manager

Why Video Marketing Is A Must

Why Video Marketing Is A Must

Video Brewery revealed that 100 million Internet users watch online video content daily. While most of them watch the latest viral video, other viewers want to learn about a certain topic or know more about a product or service before buying.

Creating video content should be a staple in your company’s marketing endeavours. It’s that important.

Benefits of Video Marketing

Apart from the fact that numerous people watch online videos, who can also be potential prospects, here’s a list of other advantages that come with using video marketing:

1. Authenticity

Using videos is a very authentic form of communication. Viewers get to see you and your mannerisms in actuality, rather than just reading your words (through copy or emails) or hearing your voice (via podcasts or webinars).

Essentially, video marketing allows you to do what copy alone does not– show your audience the person behind the words.

In the world of video marketing, there’s no room to be fake because people hear and see what you do. It’s only after you meet someone in person that you’ll get a clear indication of his or her intentions, and only then can you firmly shake on it and come to an agreement.

2. Cost Effective

You can spend a lot of money on creating good quality video content, but you can also create effective ones for almost nothing!

The important thing to remember is that you just need a camera phone coupled with some creativity, and you’re ready to shoot. For free!

All you need is your iPhone or any other good quality mobile phone and you’re ready to record. The iPhone, for example, has a good quality microphone that allows you to record high standard audio. You can seamlessly upload your finished piece to your YouTube account in under a minute once you’re done.

It’s an office studio with good filming equipment.

3. Anybody Can Do It

As mentioned above, it’s not expensive to shoot your own videos if you’re unable to afford high-end cameras at that moment. Additionally, it’s not difficult to do so either.

If you don’t consider yourself tech-savvy or only have a little experience in making videos, you can easily learn it online. Just go to YouTube and enter something like, “How to create video content using my phone,” and you’ll have a number of tutorials explaining how this can be done.

When Creating Videos, Tips

Now that you know the advantages of creating video content, here are a few things to keep in mind before you begin filming.

You can easily edit your videos using something like iMovie or Camtasia if you’re unable to hire a media team to handle your footage or editing requirements. Both software applications are easily accessible online.

1. Fight the Fear

If you’ve never done video marketing before, then, understandably, it can be quite daunting at first.The only way you can fight that fear is to appreciate the outcome. That means you need to understand the positive effects of video marketing to get over your fear and start recording.

That will motivate you to work hard at completing your first video.

2. Practice Makes Perfect

The more you practice, the better you’ll become. When I started out, talking to the camera used to feel “forced” and I found it difficult.

With enough practice, you can quickly become much better at making videos and feel more comfortable speaking in front of the camera. And when you’re relaxed, the audience will feel comfortable, too.

Think of it as watching a bad actor. His bad performance will make you feel uncomfortable. Not only does it feel unsettling, but it also spoils all credibility and the movie is pretty much thrown out of the window.

Like with most skills, only experience, repetition and practice will make you a better performer.

Grab your recording equipment and shoot a video of yourself within 5 minutes and then evaluate your performance. After 10 days, you’ll get over the fear of recording yourself.

3. Don’t Waffle

Whenever you are filming, look into the camera and imagine that you’re conversing with someone. It not only helps keep the conversation natural, but it also prevents me from waffling or going off-topic.

Conclusion

Don’t forget to include a clear call-to- action at the end of your video so that customers will know where to go to find out more. Video Brewery reports that 90 percent of online shoppers at a major retailer’s website find video helpful when it comes to buying decisions.

In the world of video marketing, there’s no room to be fake because people hear and see what you do. Just go to YouTube and enter something like, “How to create video content using my phone,” and you’ll have a number of tutorials explaining how this can be done. If you’ve never done video marketing before, then, understandably, it can be quite daunting at.

Again, after filming your first few videos, review your work and look out for any mistakes that you can avoid in the future. Keeping your content engaging and succinct will also work best for time-constrained audiences.

Video Brewery reports that 90 percent of online shoppers at a major retailer’s website find video helpful when it comes to buying decisions.

Source: Video Marketing Tips

Create The Hub For Your Business On Facebook

Facebook Competition is Rising - Rhonda Swan

In fact, recent research from Econsultancy shows that 71 percent of brands plan to invest more heavily in social media in the coming year to reach new followers and build brand reputation.

Want to join their ranks and become known in your industry?

Use Social Media!

Facebook is by the far the best platform for promoting brand awareness, as nearly three quarters of Americans adults use the site.

Where to Put Your Social Media Efforts

Each of the social media platforms can be used for different purposes. I’ve found that Facebook is my best bet for reaching my audience. That is not to say that the other platforms are not valuable.

Not sure which social media platform you need to invest your time in? Here’s a few good rules to follow when using a platform to create the hub for your business.

Facebook is a great platform for promoting virtually any brand, due to its very heterogeneous user base.

Instagram is a great option for brands that rely heavily on images, such as clothing companies and retailers. It’s also particularly effective for reaching young adults, Hispanics and African Americans.

Pinterest is an excellent social network to reach women, especially for brands selling jewelry or clothing.

Twitter is perfect if you are trying to spread news and articles. It is also a good way to network with other professionals. While you may not get someone through their email, you can tweet at them to start a relationship.

Finally, if you operate a business-to-business company, LinkedIn is a stronger choice for promoting business-related content and connecting with other corporate influencers.

Learn the Best Times to Post

There are certain times of the day that you should be posting for each social media platform. If you have an internet business, then it is best to post according to the EST time zone. For those that have brick and mortar businesses, you will want to go with the times that your audience is on.

Here are some suggestions to stick with when it comes to posting for best engagement.

Use the Value, Value, Offer Method

When you post, be sure to use the value, value, offer method. This is where you will post at least two value based posts for every offer based post that you share. If you bombard people with your offers, you will turn them off.

Related post: How to Create Killer That Keeps Giving and Leverage Facebook 

Focus your attention on giving your audience a lot of value. When you have given them value, value, then you have earned the right to share an offer with them.

Source: Business on Facebook Tips

Unsubscribes: When Letting Go is Good for Business

Unsubscribes: When Letting Go is Good 

Small business owners work hard into generating and expanding their email lists because they are perfectly aware that each contact corresponds to a potential customer whose lifetime value will boost the business’ bottom line and revenue growth.

A lot of things go into capturing these leads which makes it tempting to cling to them if they regrettably choose to unsubscribe. That’s acceptable because when you’re a newbie to email marketing, having someone unsubscribe from your list may seem like a personal rejection.

As the number of unsubscribes swells, you might even feel that you’re hitting the bottom completely. You may start asking yourself questions like, “Am I doing something wrong? Why are they getting upset? Why are they unsubscribing?” You might even think of toning down your message.

Truth be told, there’s actually no need to worry about unsubscribes at all.

Every day that a person sends out an email to over half a million people, he could possibly get over 1,000 unsubscribes—that’s incredibly a lot. But 1,000 unsubscribes is just a tiny fraction of the list. In essence, it’s nothing to be worried about.

In fact, not only should you not worry about unsubscribes—you ought to like them instead.

Here’s why.

If someone dislikes your message (or some aspect of your personality, or your offer, etc.), then you surely don’t want them to be on your list from the very start.

If they stay on your list, there is a possibility for that person to either mark your email as spam, which will adversely affect your deliverability, or they won’t open your email, which will lower your open rate. Without you knowing, you may even be shelling out just to have that subscriber on your list despite ignoring your message. So, you’re better off removing them from your list and moving on.

Another thing that factors into unsubscribes concerns your overall messaging. Think of it this way: your marketing ranges from hot to cold – and what’s in the middle is lukewarm.

The most horrible thing to do in your marketing is to be lukewarm—because it’s like you are striving to appeal to everyone. And when you start pleasing all people, your message will eventually turn weak and generic, and you surely wouldn’t want that.

Instead, you want to sort your audience. You aspire to earn your raving fans, while identifying some people who don’t really like your message. And that’s perfectly fine.

Consider Howard Stern, for instance, the radio “shock jock” in the U.S. Howard Stern polarizes his audience. A lot of people really like him, at the same time a lot of people strongly dislike him. But he makes an absolute fortune nonetheless.

The same is the case for many prominent celebrities—Oprah, Rosie O’Donnell, Justin Bieber—they all have a multitude of unfaltering fans, but they also have people who would rather veer off from them.

A more valuable use of your time is to put a lot of effort on the big picture items, just like growing sales. Instead of holding on to one email contact, let go and acquire another 20 or 50 email addresses.

Set your mind in terms of abundance rather than zeroing in on the small details that weigh nothing much in the long run. Remember, letting go is sometimes what you need. You’ll be pleased you did.

Source: When Letting Go is Less Painful

You Are a Brand- It’s Time to Share Your Personal Brand With Others

What is a perfect example of a brand? You, my friend, are a brand.

An artist. A photographer. Life coach. Presentation expert. Alternative energy entrepreneur. Website developer. Skin care clinician.

This is not a trend. This is social media, publishing, marketing, sales, work, play, passion and everything you read about all rolled into one.

1. Define your audience.

Tell yourself this: The focus of your blog—and all of your content—must be your readers. What do they need? What are their pains? How can you help them?

Of course, doing guesswork is possible, but chances are, you’ll run the risk of being wrong. One ideal way to removing the guesswork is to conduct a survey. You can ask a few specific questions to uncover demographic and psychographic information.

From the results of your survey, you’ll be able to profile your audience and work toward developing a more focused content with a higher probability of connecting with your readers.

2. Create a clear value proposition.

What is the unique thing that you can offer to your audience? Are they going to get something from investing their time in your content? What resources do you offer? Do you offer resources to help people work smarter? Leadership insights? These are just some examples of questions you should be asking yourself before proceeding.

What you need to do is to create a succinct and simple answer and you have your value proposition. However, you may have to experiment with your value proposition and revise it from time to time.

What will serve as the framework for all your efforts is your clear value proposition .

3. Write a compelling brand slogan.

Always be aware of the level of noise in media today and then recognize how critical it will be to make a strong impression quickly.

A great way to address this challenge is to put your value proposition into a slogan.

Here are some good examples:

• Lifehacker’s slogan is “Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done.”
• Social Media Examiner claims to be “Your guide to the social media jungle.”
• Ramit Sethi promises, “I will teach you to be rich.”
• Feldman Creative promises to “Turn on the power of online marketing.”

Now, how can you summarize your brand promise in a concise slogan?

4. Show yourself.

Of course, the best thing you should remember is that people want to connect with people, not merely brands.

One way is presenting a great photo of yourself which helps establish credibility and build trust. It also helps you connect via social media.

You can do this by simply getting a great headshot that captures the real, authentic you. You can invest in a professional photo shoot or if you prefer not to part with the money, hit up a friend with a quality camera and a command of portrait photography.

Always go into the session with a plan. You have to tell the photographer the impression that you aim to create, the you you’re looking to capture.

After reviewing the photos, pick one headshot to use on your website and across all your social media networks.

• Working at your computer
• Analyzing your client’s data
• Coaching one-on-one
• Facilitating a small group meeting
• Recording a podcast
• Shooting a video
• Speaking before a large crowd
• Autographing your book at an event
• For the photo that will serve you best is simply you looking into the lens smiling, looking friendly and approachable—with no distractions.

5. Establish a look.

Any brand that is memorable, your personal brand included, should present itself consistently. Using a variety of logos, colors, and fonts will confuse your audience.

Develop a look for your personal brand with simply the following:

A professionally designed logo

A pleasing color palette

A limited menu of fonts

Then you can now apply the standards you created to everything—your website, business cards, advertising, etc.

For now, you’re off to a good start….

‪#‎BEUNSTOPPABLEwhileBRANDING‬
Source: Personal Brand Definition

If You Consider Yourself a ‘Newbie’ This Is for You

There’s approximately 200,000 people on a company’s mailing list who regularly receive varied emails every week.

We label them into 3 categories:

1.)  6 figure + earners-people who are making steady sales online and are building their business full time.

2.)  Those who are working their way to be part of category one, and who are making sales here and there with rising frequency. All they need is to spend more time redoing the actions that brought them those sales, and instituting systems to do more of those actions in their behalf.

3.)  Newbies and / or those who’ve been striving to make internet marketing work for years, but still get meager results.

If you’re in the first 2 categories, you may get off now and quit reading this because this message is not intended for you.

If you’re in category 3, please stay as it’s you who we’d like to speak to today.

The main reason why you’re not earning positive results is because you haven’t got the knack of the basic concepts of this industry. Or you’re just not putting them into practice.

Don’t feel bad, it’s never easy learning something new for the first time – especially when there are a number of people all informing you they have the ‘secrets’ in your email inbox all the time.

It’s possible that no one has ever discussed with you and went into details on how all these pieces fit together.

Most of the people sending you emails about marketing are obviously marketers. Their job is clearly NOT to teach you what works.

It’s to sell you their products.

We’re no different, just maybe a little more clear-cut.

But in most cases, a majority of them won’t let you know the truth. Let me say that again – they’re going to reveal the truth, but it will be the secondary concern behind telling you what needs to be done to get the sale.

For example, if they intend to sell their product which happens to be related to developing web pages, they’re going to tell you that you definitely have to create these pages on your own, and that knowing how it is done is fundamental to your success.

What they’re not going to tell you is that you can outsource it for even half the price of their training course primarily because that does not go along with their objective (to get you to buy.)

Therefore, everything you’ve learned about marketing is about complicating things than they actually are – leaving you confused, overwhelmed, puzzled about which information to believe in, and weakened with inaction.

We intend to change that. Believe that being clever in the market can help you become pretty good at making difficult concepts simple.

Source: Internet Marketing Advice for Newbies