Social Media Marketing

Social media networks were a novelty five years ago, however nowadays their importance is no longer debated. Yes, businesses have undoubtedly realized the power of social media and accepted that social media promoting needs to be a part of their selling and PR mix. In Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Year End Report, marketers currently place an extremely high price on social media marketing:

eighty six percent of marketers stated that social media is vital for his or her business

eighty nine percent of marketers stated that accumulated exposure was the top advantage of social media marketing

These are the definitive advantages of social media marketing that are listed:

increased exposure
accumulated traffic
Developed loyal fans
Generated leads
Improved search ranking
Grew business partnerships
Reduced promoting expenses
Improved sales
Provided marketplace insight

Social Media is a Game Changer

It’s obvious that social media can continue to have a major impact in 2014 on marketers and business owners: They currently have theability to reach out and communicate on a private level with their audience everyday. This is often a game changer for businesses participating in promoting, sales, customer service, and alternative business activities. This is often extremely powerful and has never
been available with traditional marketing! The success gap is widening between businesses that are taking advantage of social media in a casual, unexpected manner and people taking a more planned and strategic approach.

This has important implications:

Businesses that use social media strategically are more highly satisfied with the results than unexpected users, who are more skeptical about the value of social media.

Businesses that use social media as a part of a planned company approach are 1.5 to 2 times more probable to anticipate revenue growth than unintentional users. Much has changed over the last year in social media, and it can and will change in 2014.

Here are my best tips for thriving Digital and Social Media marketing in 2014

Some Powerful Stats and data from 2013:

Social is currently the highest web activity. Americans spend more than thirty seven minutes daily on social media, a higher time-spend than any other major web activity, email checking included. Take a look at this info-graphic from Digital Insights on social media facts, figures and statistics from 2013:

Facebook continues to be the leading social media network and continues to grow.

Here are the newest facts and figures:

Facebook currently has 1.26 billion users

Facebook averages 1.23 billion monthly active users

There are 128 million daily active Facebook users located in the USA

Facebook averages 945 million monthly active mobile users

Facebook usage is highest in North America: Facebook has fifty nine percent of all net users in North America as active users.
Google+ only achieves fifteen percent and Twitter twenty five percent.

Google+ is currently the second largest social network at simply over five hundred percent, with Facebook still dominating at seventieth.

Keep in mind that a Google+ account is necessary whenever someone creates a brand new Gmail account. this is often pushing up the account ownership stats. But no other social network has Google’s web assets leverage.

Read more on how vital Google+ is for your business and how it has a major impact on web search results for your business:

The number of individuals who watch TV has fallen behind the amount/the quantity of individuals who watch YouTube on a daily basis. This makes it clear that televised content is undergoing a decline, online consumption of video is on the incline. Many corporations have taken advantage of this by advertising or promoting campaigns on YouTube before they debut on TV. Take several of the 2014 Super Bowl XLVIII ads (like Budweiser) that were shown on YouTube before the big game and were rewarded with triple YouTube views. LinkedIn continues to be the number one professional business network and continues to grow but not at the pace of Pinterest, Google+, or Twitter.

Here are some numbers from Visual.ly

Pinterest is the quickest growing social network as of right now. The visual net is driving the rise of Pinterest and Tumblr with growth rates of eighty eight percent and seventy four percent and increasing in over the last twelve months. Pinterest in addition is among the leading referral sources for organic traffic, which is good for high search rankings.

Some social media networks have a more active user-base than others. statistical research has discovered that over ninety five percent of Facebook users log into their account on a daily basis. That range for Twitter is sixty percent and for LinkedIn is thirty percent.

What area unit two key factors driving the social internet in 2013 and 2014?

According to the worldwide internet Index study it is:

Mobile – the amount of individuals accessing the net via a smart phone increased by 60.3% to 818.4 million within the last two years. In the USA, there are currently one hundred and one million daily mobile users. Facebook’s one hundred and one million US daily mobile users make up a extraordinary seventy eight percent of its 128 million daily US users.

Older user adoption – On Twitter the 55-64 year age group is the quickest growing demographic with seventy nine percent rate of growth since 2012. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook’s and Google+’s networks are the forty five to fifty four year age group at forty sixth and fifty six percent resultantly.

So maybe that’s the reason your folks and grandparents aren’t visiting that much any longer — they're too busy on Facebook and Twitter!

The top challenges businesses have in applying social media are:

Lack of your time
Inability to determine actual value
Problems with integration social media with alternative business activities
Lack of budget

I absolutely acknowledge this, and hear of it many times from my clients first hand. But these trials can be overcome, if social media is planned and done strategically!

Social Media Channels- The Right One to Choose??

Business Proprietors ought to concentrate on how social platforms, help them reach their goals with relevant audiences, whether or not that’s generating sales or larger visibility. A part of my job is helping business owners decide which networks are best for his or her business.

Here are the most well-liked ones:

Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Google+
Pinterest
Instagram
StumbleUpon and Digg social bookmarking
Slideshare presentation sharing

And after all, blogging is key! Here are some tips to generating admirable online content to feed your social media networks!

Integrate!!

Social media isn't a boundary unto itself. It should be integrated and work hand-in-hand with all of your alternative marketing and PR initiatives which ought to be continued to achieve all of your promoting touch points and your eventual success.

These can include:

Email marketing and growing your email list
Search Engine Improvement
Event promoting (speaking and networking)
unsolicited mail
online ads (Google Adwords)
Print display ads
Sponsorships
Mobile marketing
Radio/TV Ads

Sharing is Caring!

I know this sounds basic, but you need make sure your web site, web log, and email newsletters include social “share” buttons for folks to simply share your content on ALL their social networks. Don't forget to add your social network links on your email signature.

So, what can Social Media Do For Your Business?

Making social media a priority for your business can enable your business to:

Be found!
Establish a stronger brand
Boost sales
Share expertise and information
Tap into the knowledge of consumers
Interact and receive valuable client feedback
Free advertising: happy customers mention your company, this is often the strongest word-of-mouth-marketing

Build a community

Social media undoubtedly must be a part of your Business Marketing in 2014!

It’s hard to imagine a life before social media, despite the fact that sites like Facebook and Twitter have been around for less than a decade. As businesses reminisce over that decade, they'll see how these sites are ever-changing the way accomplish everything. Professionals use these sites to network, interact with customers, and bring team members together. Yet social media has the flexibility to divide industries, with out-of-date corporations falling behind their competitors. Social media are
often a distraction, zapping employee productivity throughout the day, however it can also be the way to open up opportunities that may never have existed. It'll become clearer that social media is a necessary part of doing business nowadays.

CEOs Need To Evolve

Despite the fact that a 2013 study showed over eighty percent of those surveyed feel it's important for CEOs to act on social media, there are still various CEOs who decline to participate. These CEOs are busy meeting face to face with potential clients and networking within the community. Meanwhile, their younger counterparts are checking for mutual connections on LinkedIn and crunching numbers to determine the success of their Twitter campaigns. Both modes of operating have their advantages, requiring professionals to strike a balance between their online lives and real-world networking. however with additional customers turning to the web to seek out information about a business, a comprehensive online presence is becoming more and more crucial to a business’s success. just as retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart must learn to keep up with Amazon’s forward-thinking marketing techniques, old-school businesses must find ways to reach out to this new generation of
social media-obsessed shoppers.

Upstarts Prevail

Interestingly, some of the foremost businesses are tiny startups that have learned to use technology to achieve a foothold. Instead of shelling out countless dollars for a super Bowl ad, these corporations learn to generate buzz by making viral content and encouraging shares and likes. Once a product or service becomes the one everyone seems to be talking about, customers gravitate toward it, desperate to learn more. The best part about social media marketing is that it can be deployed without spending millions of dollars out of pocket. If businesses handle it on their own, it costs nothing but the time of the person doing the updates. The worst but, however, is that the results aren’t always as immediate and powerful as they are with an upscale advertising campaign. Professionals should wait patiently as a slow buzz is generated, using analytics and sales numbers to work out whether or not their efforts are paying off.

Customer-Driven Change

As businesses continue to attempt to redefine themselves in this new technology-driven world, customers are crucial to those changes. While a CEO might not be needed to spend all day retweeting revered colleagues or posting insightful comments on Facebook, it's necessary that they notice the value of social media in driving decisions. Realizing that value is the opening move toward starting to look at the numbers and use them to drive decisions. How many client complaints came through Twitter last month? Which posts on Facebook received the most “likes.” Social media-savvy CEOs notice the insight that may come from gathering statistics on that information and use it to gain an edge over the competition. As social media continues to influence everything businesses do, everyone from the CEO to the new summer intern will need to understand the part it plays in daily duties. Those professionals will be forced to keep up or be left behind. however it’s equally vital that professionals balance their social media efforts with face-to-face networking and traditional
advertising to remain in contact with the customers who aren’t on social media round the clock.