3 Important Tips for Effective Social Media Contests

Today i am going to tell you about the Web marketer "Justin Palmer"
g has run dozens of social media contests for his clients, and gaining “likes” and “followers” is something he does with relative ease. So, for any of the company that wants to run a social media contest to gain new business.



                                        Justin has the following advice given below :

1. Have a Goal :

As is the case with nearly of any marketing effort, social media contests must have a clearly defined goal in order to generate any value at all. Most marketers think they know their goals, and it usually follows the formula of, “I want to raise my followers on social by X amounts.” So, Unfortunately, this approach is fundamentally wrong, and few companies seem to be know it.
While it is nice to have a large number of followers on various social channels, it should be almost never be the end goal of a contest. Companies need to delve a layer deeper. As Justin said, followers gained from contests alone are unlikely to have much interest in the business beyond the prize.

So, what do you will ultimately want out of your contests? In most cases the answer is money. That’s why you need to measure your actual ROI in terms of new leads or conversions from the contest. Other goals could include, conducting research, or revealing a new consumer base. The point is to determine what you ultimately want to achieve through your social efforts and measure the direct impact of the contest.

Bullet Point Branding CEO, Bryan Fulton, had a lot of followers on social media, but needed to find out more about his niche customers. In particular, he wanted information on potential leads in the cosmetic field. He offered a free lipstick pen to the 500th follower of a contest. Based on the specific nature of the prize, he was able to determine which clients were interested in the product. He had a clear goal and was ultimately able to meet it.

2. Develop a Target :

Having a defined target is ust as the important as your goal. Many social contests cast a wide net hoping to draw in as many people as possible. This is counterproductive because it forces the business to cater to an audience that either only cares about the prize or doesn’t really care at all. It is more effective to align a target audience to a specific goals and market the contest to them.
For Volusion — an ecommerce platforms — most successful contests were the result of the specific nature of Volusion’s targeting efforts. In this case, the audience was “mompreneurs.” Volusion knew that this was a growing ecommerce audience, and that many of these are the women would appreciate sharing their stories. Part of the contest involved having the women describe themselves and the reason they started their business. Many moms participated in the project just to tell their stories, and one participant even described her entry as “therapeutic.” Because of the Volusion’s successful targeting strategy, they tapped into a rapidly growing market, and gained many faithful clients.

3. Pick the Right Prize :

Most of the contests feature a prize that can best be described as shiny. Think the latest tablets, vacations, or just good old-fashioned money. Marketers assume that a lot of people will be drawn to this, and they are correct. The issue is those people for just want a shiny prize. In general, there are three types of prizes that companies offer in contests: third-party prizes, a product from the business running the contest, or intangibles.
Of the three categories, third-party prizes are the most common, and the most misused. Stephanie Cicarelli, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Voices.com, ran a contest in January 2011 that featured an iPad as the main prize. Normally this would be a dangerous. However, the goal of the contest was to get photographs of singers in their studios or recording environment submitted to Voices.com. The mass appeal of the iPad was reason enough for many contestants to submit photos where they otherwise might have preferred privacy. In this case the appeal of the third-party prize was leveraged for a direct, tangible win.

Prizes that come from the business itself can be just as desirable as a third party product, with the added benefit of less up-front expense and the creation of brand advocates. Also, since the prize comes from the business running the contest, some targeting be already built-in. Powderhorn Mountain Resort featured a contest that asked visitors to upload photos of themselves enjoying the resort for a chance to win a free season pass. This was effective because their target audience already loved the business, and it encouraged winners to return again.

The final will prize category, the intangible prize, requires some creativity to use effectively yet can produce a massive ROI. SpeakSocial a marketing firm that focuses on the innovative use of social media, ran a contest to drum up support for a new sushi restaurant, Roll-On Sushi Diner. The contest allowed participants to submit ideas for the name of a roll that would be served at the restaurants. The winner would have to both the name of their roll and their real name featured on the restaurant menu. The prize cost absolutely nothing, yet opening days was an enormous success.

Read More

Social Media Marketing

In today's marketing world social media is no longer a nice addition but rather a must. Gone are the days when someone could create a Facebook page and update it weekly then call it a night. There are three major aspects to social media marketing and when done right can lead to great rewards for your brand.

Engaging Your Audience

Today social media is about connecting with your current and potential clients and interacting with them via several social platforms. If your band is not engaging via social media you are well behind the times. Generic posting about your company or brand can get old and causes your audience to get bored. Studies show if you engage your audience they become fans and are more likely to share your content, which will help you reach new customers.

Compelling Content

Engaging is only half the battle when it comes to social. Creating compelling content whether it's articles, videos or graphs can help get your band more attention online. No one will share a video with their friends if the video is bad. In fact they might not even watch the entire video. This is the same for inforgraphs and articles. You have to get their attention and keep it. Social media works best when something goes viral and only compelling content goes viral.

Content Promotion

You can create the most compelling content but if nobody sees it, you will have wasted your time and money. Most content does not get attention useless an influencer gets a hold of it. Someone with relationships on social media platforms. We have a case study on our blog about a video that almost didn't get the attention it deserved. Content promotion is the most time consuming and expensive part of social media marketing.

Social Media Marketing Services

We offer a full services of social media marketing services from engaging, content creation and promotion. Our services our tailored to your business and can include; Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, and Linkedin.

Social Media Consulting

Want to handle your own social media marketing? No problem, we love to discuss and train the best social media strategies. We offer our consulting on an hourly basis. This is a great service for a business just getting into the social space. We can provide pre-implementation and post implementation consulting and anywhere in between.

Optimization Overseas

Social media marketing is complex and is ideally targeted specifically to the culture of another country. Our friends at the Web Showroom are keen to assist companies that target solely the Australian residents. Aside from social marketing they also provide search engine optimisation for Google Australia. However, as mentioned they cater solely to Australian companies.

Social Media Tools

In the past few years many companies and individuals are starting to get their feet wet in social media marketing. It can be difficult to manage and keep up with the all the tweets, diggs, posts, updates and shouts.

To help monitor and stay connected with your social media efforts, we've compiled this list of seven great tools that can help you do more with social media in less time. Most of these tools are also a good way to stay organized and will ultimately make you a better friend to your social media buddies.

BackType

URL: http://www.backtype.com/

BackType is a conversational search engine that indexes and connects millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media so people can find, follow and share comments. One of the most useful features is BackType Subscriptions sends you e-mail updates whenever someone comments on a post you specify.

Flock

URL: http://www.flock.com/

The Flock browser is designed to complement exciting social services. It utilizes their People Sidebar, allowing you to instantly interact with your friends on Digg, AOL, Gmail, Picasa, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Truveo, MySpace and many others.

Social Mention

URL: http://www.socialmention.com/

Social Mention is a social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services. They also provide a feed API for developers to access search results in several different formats.

Social Media for Firefox

URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7888

Social Media for Firefox shows the number of Diggs, Reddit Votes, Stumble Thumbs and or Reviews, and Del.icio.us tags, Tweets, Sphinns, Mixx, and Tip'd votes so you can quickly see how popular certain content is. It can also scan said social sites to show you what content hasn't been submitted to other social news sites so you can be the first to add it. This can be a great tool and help you save time on Digg and Reddit.

TwitterFox

URL: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5081

This FireFox extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their status. Also it has a small text input field to update your status.

PostRank

URL: http://www.postrank.com/

PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeed all in a convenient single place. It can help by continuously monitoring RSS feeds, finding the good stuff, and then creating a PostRank Score for each item to help filter the information

Read More

Why Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Aren't Working

If you’re frustrated with the results you’re getting from your social media marketing efforts, you are not alone. Following are some of the top reasons your strategy isn’t working, and how you can turn that around to achieve better results.

1. Lack of Clear Goals: If you’re sharing content on social media networks without a clearly defined end goal, then your efforts are likely being wasted. With social media—or any marketing that you do for your business—you need to choose an intended outcome. Do you want to increase website traffic? Encourage people to sign up for your mailing list? Get exposure for your book? Improve brand recognition? Your goals become the target that you aim for. Without a goal, you might as well shoot arrows up into the sky and hope they land somewhere near the target.

2. Unrealistic Expectations: While clearly defined goals are important, it’s equally as important to make sure that your expectations are realistic. Social media is not a magic wand. It’s unlikely to attract truckloads of customers immediately. It is, however, a long-term marketing strategy for building brand recognition, getting repeat exposure with clients, attracting leads, promoting events, and eventually generating sales. Incidentally, social media should not be your sole marketing strategy; it should work in concert with your other marketing tactics such as print advertising, PR, referrals, etc. Every business should always run multiple marketing campaigns concurrently.

3.  Disconnected from Your Audience: Before you can begin to connect with people via social media, you have to first understand who those people are. You should know your audience intimately and understand who they are, what motivates them, what frustrates them, and what their needs are. These key elements will help you develop and share content that appeals to them.

4. Not Blogging Enough:  At the heart of a solid social media marketing strategy is your blog. You need great content to share, and a reason to bring people back to your site to read more and engage with you. Ideally you should update your blog a minimum of two to three times per week, and then share each new post with your networks.

Also, your content should clearly convey what your brand is about and should appeal to the needs and interests of your target audience. If your content isn’t connecting with your audience, then reconsider your strategy. Perhaps your blog posts need more enticing titles or you need to write more prescriptive content to help your target audience deal with their pain points. Maybe your content is boring! Inject some personality into your efforts, write really great titles, and strive to deliver value.

5. Treat it as an Obligation: If social media is just another item you feel you have to do each day and you resent it, that’s going to come across with your audience. The people and companies that are doing well with social media are the ones who embrace it and enjoy it. Imagine if you treated your clients like they were simply an obligation—they would certainly notice. Find a way to see the value and the fun in social media and allow that to shine through.

6. Lack of Direction: Yes, strategy matters with social media and you have to find one that works for your business. Pay attention to what is working for you and what isn’t, and do more of what works! Or hire an expert to help you craft an effective plan.

7. Missing Cross-Promotion: Let your existing clients and website visitors know about your social media presence and invite them to participate. Feature links to your social media profiles from the header of your website and across all web pages. You can also promote your links in your email signature, print advertisements, electronic newsletter, and other marketing collateral. Most of the major blog platforms have plug-ins that can feature recent Twitter posts on your website sidebar or view your Facebook followers. And don’t forget to add social sharing buttons to your blog and make it easy for readers to share your content with their networks.

8. Not Engaged: If you aren’t responding to your audience, appreciating them, and responding to their questions, then they will go elsewhere. Also, it’s not just about broadcasting your message. You will see far more results when you like and share other people’s content, mention them in your posts, and even recommend their products and services. Imagine if everyone in social media sent a shout out to recommend just one small business each day!

9. Failure to Build Your Audience: With social media, you have to actively recruit followers and fans. For Twitter, I believe in following back the people who follow you. This is good social etiquette, while also letting your audience know that you’re paying attention to them too. For Facebook, you can invest in ads to help get more “Likes” on your page. For LinkedIn, import contacts from your database and proactively send connection requests to people you know. For Google+, add people to your circles. The point is that you need to be proactive in building your audience and not just sit back and wait for them to find you.

10. Partial Effort: One of the biggest complaints I hear about social media is that it takes too much time, which leaves a lot of people either ignoring it altogether or trying to work it into their schedules when convenient. But an inconsistent effort leads to inconsistent results. If you were to commit to engaging with your social media networks on a consistent basis, you could discover a tremendous return on your time investment, and you’d realize it should be a top priority.

Nothing you do in life will produce great results if you aren’t fully committed. And the truth is that social media can be managed for most small businesses in under an hour per day. If you set realistic goals, develop content that appeals to your target audience, and consistently engage with your networks, you will begin to understand the real value that social media can bring to your business.

Read More

How to Increase Your Social Network

Social networking is one of the biggest things to come about in many years. The more people that someone has on their social network, the more popular that they are in and the more contacts that they have to rely on. Therefore, several users of these networks are always looking for several ways in which they can increase their social network size. It is relatively easy to do and those that are serious about this will find that after putting in the time that they can get their social network to the size that they need.

One of the first ways in which someone can increase their social network is through joining groups that are going to be of interest to them. When a person joins a social network site they will find that there are several groups. These groups can relate to interests or hobbies, or even the type of work that the person does. These are all groups in which the person can find people that have similar interests and would be interested in being included in someone\'s social network.

Another method that is used to create a bigger social network is through including those that the person has a relationship in everyday life. They will find that through including their friends, relatives and the like that they can open up new ways in which to meet new people. It is all about connections when looking at social networking. For example, a friend of a friend could find the person and realize that this is someone that they want as a friend due to the same interests that are present. Thus, the network has been increased through a friend that the person already had.

The idea of building a social network is going to take time and effort and realizing what it is that you want in contacts. You will find that in most cases, you can make contacts rather easily through those that you already have on your contact list. The goal is to get a network that is strong and resilient. The more contacts that someone has, the bigger the chance that they will be able to use these contacts in order to get ahead professionally or when looking for helpful and friendly advice.

It is advised that no one turn a contact away, as you never know when this person could be someone that you need in the future. Thus, dedicate some time to keeping contacts and talking with them regularly to cultivate strong relationships.

Read More

3 reasons why social traffic is worth it

“I came, I shared, I left.” – in many cases, this is the pattern that forms from traffic arriving from social platforms to many sites on the web today. Take a snapshot of the traffic to your website from social bookmarking sites, Twitter, Facebook et al, and you’ll see high bounce rates, low time on site, and generally low engagement. The upshot, for many site owners, is that social traffic is harder to monetise and indeed to convert to sales, or to advertising clicks.

So why the fuss?

This is the very question someone from a traditional business background asked me recently. Is social media really all hype, considering it offers low quality traffic? My response, was firmly no. There are a number of advantages to obtaining social traffic at any volume to your site, which aren’t immediately obvious, and justify why it requires attention from business owners regardless of their industry. Here’s why it should be ignored as a traffic source.

Social media traffic increases brand recognition.

To anyone with basic knowledge of economics, business works like this.

Revenue  - (Advertising Cost +Production Cost) = Income.

When it comes to quantifying social media ROI, it looks like the online advertising cost in this case really hasn’t paid off, particularly when compared against say, cost per click.You have to think about the brand reinforcement and recognition that will somewhere down the line convert to business, to treat it as a way of solely generating direct business is a flawed approach. Think about the long game.

Social media traffic powers your SEO.

Here’s the kicker that many people don’t get. Social traffic, and a social presence generally is massively important for organic SEO. Directly, AND Indirectly.

It is a massive driver in delivering links, and exposure. Here’s a breakdown of how it works for the unconvinced. Lets take two fictional website case studies, one using social media marketing (website X), the other not (website Y).

Website X

Website ‘X’ regularly create new content on their blog. Although similar to many other pieces of content found on competitors websites, it is well written, and is seen by 10% of the existing customers to the website for that day. However these visitors are concentrating more on buying, and haven’t got much time to read Website X’s blog. It is tweeted and shared a few times by those existing customers that see it, but it doesn’t get much traction. It is picked up by Google, and due to the websites current popularity and incoming links, ranks poorly on Google for it’s chosen keyword terms.

Website Y

Website Y begins a social campaign that concentrates on building an existing audience to market to on a variety of channels.  Prior to the content creation process, they have implemented RSS (subscriptions), an email marketing database, a Facebook page with over 1000 subscribers, and are engaged on Twitter with another 1000 followers.

Whilst these audiences don’t match the profile of their customers who normally buy widgets from Website Y, they have managed to accumulate over 4000 people on these channels who enjoy the content that they share on a daily basis. Website Y spends on average about 2-3 hours every day sharing useful content from other websites and their own to create a loyal following.

Website Y decide to publish an exceptional blog post related to the widgets that they sell. It’s completely unique in its approach, and can’t be found anywhere else online. They know that they can’t rely solely on the existing visitors to the website to gain traction and get it seen, so publish it on all the channels that they have available to them. They engage in an outreach program with other Widget bloggers to see if they would be interested in linking to it. They promote the content on other channels around the web with more traffic than them.

Thankfully the efforts pay off.

Website Y’s content gets infront of an influential twitter user who in turn retweets to his collection of over 1 million followers. The retweets explode, and the content begins to get shared all over the web, and saved in people’s bookmarks. It hits the Delicious hotlist. This in turn results in new links back to Website Y, all with the valuable link text that drives SEO positions. In a few weeks, the article’s popularity results in a first page position on Google due to the number of links from around the web that it generated, and a new fresh collection of targeted, relevant customers. Website Y adds a few links to the bottom of the article to push traffic through to its main ecommerce offering, further increasing sales.

Which of these scenarios looks more like your marketing? Website X have identified that content brings visitors, yet continue to develop it on mass, hoping something sticks, and attempting to build traffic a dribble at a time. Website Y have identified that firing a more direct shot, with a more tailored approach to their marketing AND content brings the kind of results that drive both sales and traffic. You can have your cake and eat it.

Google have also mentioned that they are tracking social mentions in their algorithms now as well, so the benefits are two fold. Links + Social mentions are now driving SEO positions. Matt says so too.

Social media traffic grows traffic.

Social traffic doesn’t provide direct sales. What it does provide however, is volume, and we there is inherent value in that. That volume of traffic is useful for ad impressions. It’s also useful for building relationships with people who ordinarily wouldn’t have visited your site. You may not be able to convert it to sales; but are you measuring how many RSS subscribers you gained, or how many additional followers on Twitter, or how many new Facebook fans you’ve received?

You should be.

All of these pull marketing platforms make a difference for the next time you’ve got something to broadcast, and increase the likelihood that you’ll be able to get your message to stick. That’s the real value. It increases your reach exponentially, and increases the chances that your future content will see the light of day, and indeed generate the links that make the difference between being first on Google, or on page ten for your chosen terms.

I think social traffic is a must for any website, in any industry. Hopefully I’ve convinced those of you who don’t already believe, that it is too.

Read More

Facebook reaches 1 billion monthly active users

NEW YORK: Social media company Facebook Inc (FB.O) reported on Thursday it reached the 1 billion user mark last month, while Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said it would keep pursuing growth through mobile devices.

The No. 1 social network has faced a rough road since its May initial public offering. Investors and analysts have fretted over a sharp slowdown in revenue growth and questioned how Facebook will make money from users as people access its site on mobile devices.

Facebook shares have lost more than 40 percent of their value since the stock debuted at $38.

Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, hit the 1 billion milestone on September 14 at 12:45 p.m. Pacific time, the company said on its website. This is up by 45 million users since June.

It said it had 600 million mobile users, according to a fact sheet the company posted.

In an interview on NBC's "Today" show broadcast on Thursday, Zuckerberg was asked by co-anchor Matt Lauer about how, with 1 billion users, the company wasn't "killing it," by making money.

"I think it depends on your definition of 'killing it.' I mean we are making billions of dollars," Zuckerberg said. In its last earnings report, Facebook said revenue increased by 32 percent to $1.18 billion in the second quarter.

The 28-year-old CEO talked about the growth potential from mobile users. "There's 5 billion people in the world who have phones, so we should be able to serve many more people and grow the user base there," he said.

In September, Zuckerberg said the company's new mobile ads were delivering better results for advertisers than its traditional ads on personal computers.

As for his own phone habits, he said he has several devices, but recently had been using an iPhone 5 he received from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that morale at the company could be better but that its 4,000 employees remained focused on building and improving Facebook's products.

"We are obviously in a tough cycle now ... that doesn't help morale," he said.

The 1 billion user count is up from the end of June, when it had 955 million active monthly users.

Zuckerberg, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and board member Marc Andreessen have been courting investors this week with appearances on the CNBC business channel and on panels at a high-profile advertising conference in New York. It also unveiled a video touting Facebook's connection with people across the world.

Facebook has rolled out a spate of initiatives to spur more growth, including a new advertising platform and measurement methods to show companies they are getting their money's worth with Facebook ads.

The company also said on Thursday it has seen 1.13 trillion "likes," or endorsements by users, since it launched the feature in February 2009. Many advertising campaigns that companies conduct on Facebook are designed to garner "likes."

Analysts were not surprised by the timing of the milestone. Hudson Square analyst Dan Ernst said Wall Street had expected Facebook to hit 1 billion in the third quarter.

But it still faces the task of making money from its user base, Ernst said. "The key, of course, is monetization of those users," Ernst said.

The median age of a Facebook user was 22, it said, and the top five user countries were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the United States.

The new data came a day after the company said it was letting U.S. users pay a fee to boost the visibility of their postings - the latest effort to look beyond advertising for revenue.

Advertising accounted for roughly 84 percent of the total revenue in the second quarter.

With Facebook's revenue growth rate slowing sharply in recent quarters, analysts and investors believe it needs to find new ways to make money and Facebook has been rolling out new products to generate revenue.

Last week, Facebook unveiled a feature that lets U.S. users buy and send gifts such as eyeglasses, pastries and gift cards to friends, signaling its intent to play a bigger role in e-commerce.

Facebook rose 0.6 percent to $21.97 in early trading on Thursday. -- AGENCIES

Read More

Young Facebook users spend 8 hours a day on Facebook

18-25 year olds Facebook users spend eight hours a day on the most popular social networking site and check their Facebook accounts more than 20 times a day, according to a survey conducted by  VoucherCodes.Co.Uk, a UK based e-commerce site.

Young Britons are so obsessed with Facebook that they log onto the social networking website over 20 times a day, remain worried always about their ‘online appearance’ and spend over 8 hours a day which is equivalent of a full working day, according to the upshot of the research.

Dodgy images noticed by friends are the major worries in life for more than 38 percent of Facebook users, especially for girls.

Duncan Jennings, co-founder of VoucherCodes.Co.Uk said: “Facebook is an integral part of young people’s lives but it’s putting pressure on them to fit in and look the part, which is especially challenging for groups likes cash-strapped students.”

Read More

Seeking Ways to Succeed As a Social Media Strategist

Good things happen because of social media. Many companies or organization are now happy in their online presence because they are portrayed in a positive light. They can expand further in their business and reach out for more people as long as they know how to manage their social media networks and use it wisely.

Since social media is being used by hundreds of companies and other organizations, it's important to focus on the strategies to successfully launch the business. If you are just starting out in the social media practice, it's unlikely that you'll be finding the solutions quickly or there is a chance that you'll end up making huge mistakes. If you really don't want to lose clients, you really need some help to launch a successful social media program. For that, you need to become a good strategist. Here are a couple of ways on how you can become one:

Be proactive
When you are talking to a prospective client, you don't wait for the company to tell you what to do. If there is something lacking in their campaign strategies, advise them on what to do. Tell them exactly what needs to be done and not waste time. Provide them with a list of programs that you are offering and be clear with the guidelines. One example would be advising your prospective client about using Facebook Fan Page or setting up a Twitter account especially if the company's customers are found in these platforms.

Take action immediately
Once you have taken the role as an adviser, don't wait and move on to the next phase. You got to "talk the talk" and take action. Show your clients how social media works and how it's supposed to be done. Remember that your client may express skepticism at first and do not entirely trust social media unless he or she has seen the results. Assure your client that social media is the real deal by simply showing them your experience and skills.

Educate your clients
Of course, you cannot be there entirely for your client forever and would not need your services all the time, especially if you are really a busy person. So what you can do is provide enough training and seminars for employees who would be taking responsible soon in their programs.

Make sure to organize
You really don't want all your hard work go down the drain and you certainly don't want your client to end up getting disappointed. With that, you need to work on some organizing for your clients and introduce them with about social media guidelines policies, legal issues, processes, and even set up an ongoing education program for the employees. Make your clients understand that there are also limits as well. If restrictions are not set for every employee, it would be a breach of confidentiality.

Introduce social media programs
To make everything easy and smooth for your client, you can introduce a variety of programs for them to use and exhaust. There may be hundreds of social media management systems that will be of great use to their company. What matters though is that these channels would be used to interact and engage with your client's audience and make their community expand and grow better.

Go beyond marketing
As a strategist, you should make your client know that social media should surpass marketing, and exhaust it to improve your client's customer service, make their products and services better, respond to complaints and negative feedback, and accumulate customer experiences for promotion.

Bear in mind that even you are a social media strategist, it's unlikely that you'll be staying with your client forever. You may be an internal consultant for the company; however, with so programs or platforms that your client is running, you know they cannot manage all of them, so you need to teach your client to form a team. By leaving them on their own and for them to fend for themselves, they will be able to learn how to do it and can do some adjusting later on.

Read More

Social Media 101 Seminars - How to Teach a Class That Rocks!

We recently taught a Social Media 101 Seminar at a local Chamber of Commerce. We had a sold out program and a room full of folks ready to learn how social media can help their business grow.

We've had requests from around the globe for a recap of what we did so it can be leveraged for other coaches, mentors and trainers. Thus the reason for this post. If you need more info. please feel free to contact me direct.

The class had a mixed audience of newbies, "sorta knows", and "know enough to be dangerous". There is so much fud about social media we made the decision to ensure all left knowing what social media was and how it could help their biz.

We purposely made the decision NOT to teach the details of HOW you setup a Facebook page to a later class. We had folks in the class who didn't know the difference between a "twit and a blog" (their words) so talking FBML for Facebook would have lost them at the "FB".

Just because class participants have a Facebook page or Twitter account doesn't mean they are experts nor that they know how to properly use them.

We wanted to set the tone as fun and ensure people felt comfortable asking the most basic question. We kicked off with a role play which included Tiara crowns for the men, slinky's, money hungry scammers and candy. This helped everyone comfortable with each other and helped participants feel comfortable asking questions.

Tip #1: Know Your Audience 
Know their business, market, knowledge of social media, marketing and technology.

Tip #2: PREPARE! 
I can't stress this enough. Know your audience, your strategy, your pitch and your content. Ensure you are prepared so that you can focus on your participants. The day is about THEM, NOT YOU and your business! Keep the focus on inspiring them to ignite the passion for their biz into new heights!

Tip #3: Set & Communicate Clear Objectives

Tip #4: Use a Variety of Mediums 
Combine role play, lecture and video to keep participants engaged and learning.

Tip #5: Include Current & Compelling Statistics Showcasing the Power of Social Media

Tip #6: Start with a Role Play to Engage your Audience 
Rob Zulkoski of RobZ Fitness deserves a huge pat on the back for being such a good sport in his pink Tiara! Our role play focused on the importance of authenticity and content for building profitable relationships in social media.

Tip #7: Query Your Audience about their Knowledge and Usage of Social Media. 
Do this prior and during class if at all possible. See our presentation on Slide Share for an example.

Tip #8: Review Stats: Ensure they are UPDATED, RELEVANT to your AUDIENCE and COMPELLING

Tip #9: Address Barriers to Adoption (relevant to your audience). 
I used a myth vs truth vs set of questions and had participants guess the answers.

Tip #10: Review Biz Benefits and methods for achieving a positive ROI (relevant to your audience)

Tip #11: Review your specific approach to social media. 
If you don't have an approach, define one. Customers and class participants will expect this level of knowledge and content.

Tip #12: As part of your "approach" to social media be sure to include goal setting, listening, measuring and executing at minimum!

Tip #13: Discuss the Importance of Social Media as PART of an INTEGRATED Marketing Program. 
It is very important for people to know the best ROI is derived when social media is part of an integrated marketing, not the only medium!

Tip #14: Demo social media tools as time permits. 
If you have time include a demo of a couple automation tools. This will bring smiles to the fellow geeks in the room. I'm a geek at heart so can always pick em' out of a crowd

Tip #15: Share Best Practices. 
Include examples from your own as well as industry experts, your mentors social media platform pages, profiles etc.

Tip #16: Share Case Studies 
Use case studies from clients you have worked with or are working with. If you are still in startup and don't have any to reference be sure to beef up the middle section of your preso when you discuss strategies and approach to adoption of social media.

Tip #17: Use VIDEO! 
Capture video before, during and after the session if at all possible. You will receive excellent feedback post class to validate your approach as well as help you make improvements for the next session. It's best to have extra folks there or a 3rd party to manage the video so you can focus on your participants. We partnered with CateTV for a fun capture of the day.

Tip #18: Capture 411 of ALL Attendees 
We captured names, company, email, Twitter handle and Facebook page url of all participants. Not only did this provide the 411 but also helped us understand where they were in adoption of social media.

Tip #19: PARTNER with the Host 
Review your goals with the host company or person. Our session was part of a Chamber of Commerce Biz Ed 101 Series. We reviewed objectives prior with key stakehollders to ensure communication and expectations were 100% inline.

Tip #20: Pre-Market the Class 
Maximize every opportunity at networking events, inclusion in newsletters, host communications and PR to publicize the event. We started promoting our event a couple months before it happened. They sold out of seats. It was the first time they had sold out in 1.5 yrs so we were quite pleased.

Tip #21: Be AUTHENTIC! 
Remember people are people. Be real, be authentic and your class will love you! If you don't know an answer to a question, don't fake it. Capture it in a parking lot and be sure to answer it within 24 hours.

Tip #22: Post Survey 
Have all participants complete a survey. Since this one was hosted by the Brandon Chamber of Commerce, they took care of the survey. We received valuable feedback to help us improve for next time. We also learned key areas of the content they liked. Our participants enjoyed the role play, statistics, and commented on our knowledge of social media.

Tip #23: Post-Class Marketing 
Share the class immediately. We posted the videos the same day. Tag participants in photos, Tweet about them, post on their Facebook pages, include mention of them in your videos. Publicly thank the host on social media platforms. Write a blog post just as this one.

Tip #24: Keep it Fresh! 
Don't use a deck from a year ago. Social media seems to change by the hour. Ensure your stats are current, screen captures are from within the last 7 days. Focus on content that inspires and connects with your audience. Don't lecture to them... inspire them!

Tip #25: Have Fun 
Assuming you are well prepared for the class day, there is no reason you simply can't have fun! By the day of the class you should be 100% comfortable with the content, have a basic understanding of your audience, know your "pitch" and be ready to rock it out! Focus on inspiring them to ignite their business. The day should be about them, not you! Watch their eyes light up as they learn the power of social media, the fact that they can adopt and see real, measurable benefits from social media regardless of how big or small they are.

Pam Moore, CEO and Founder, Fruitzoom, Inc. A passionate marketing, social media, brand and internet enthusiast with 15+ years experience building brands, communities and businesses with winning integrated Go To Market and Social Media Strategies and tactics to increase awareness, sales, and maximize ROI in both B2B and B2C markets.

Read More

5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Writing a Social Media Strategy

We all know that we should promote our business on social media, and that the main reasons are usually that we want to build meaningful relationships with our customers, build upon brand awareness and extend our reach further.

Using social media for business is a fairly new concept, and it seems to be common place for businesses to begin their social media journey without a good, solid strategy in place. Knowing the why and how could not only save time and money in the long run, it's key in keeping existing customers happy and preventing the loss of potential new customers.

Why? 
Ask yourself why you are deciding to embark upon a social media journey. Is it purely to 'get out there', or do you wish to engage with your customers and build awareness for your business? Understanding the why, will help you to clearly define the 'how', and not only make your job a lot easier, but it will also get you to your business goals that little bit faster.

Which Platforms? 
Finding the right platforms for you business is key; what works for one industry may not work for your own, and spending valuable time nurturing a network that does not attract your target market is pointless. Take a look at what other businesses in your industry are doing. What platforms are they on? Is it working for them? Research is key, so do a lot of it. It may take some time in the beginning, but it will save you both time and money in the future.

What information? 
It may go against everything that you believe to know about 'making the sale', but keeping the information that you post, tweet, blog etc. informative and beneficial to the reader, will greatly help in ensuring your businesses online success. This means no hard sale! Fight it. Your business may be fantastic and have some cracking offers on, but your readers do not want to hear about these every time you reach out to them. Discover the questions that your customers are asking and be the one to answer them.

Who? 
Knowing your audience is one of the most important questions that you will need to ask yourself. What sort or people buy your product or service? How do they live? What do they do for fun? How old are they? Building a customer profile or profile groups, enable you to precisely know what to say, how to say it and the best place to say it.

Am I being social? 
It's called social media for that very reason; the main objective is to be social. Automating everything and not checking in to reply and answer questions from people who have taken the time to interact with your business, by definition, isn't social. More importantly, being social is about having fun! So fun with it!

What questions do you ask yourself when developing a social media strategy?

Read More

How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines

Being listed your site on search results would be more helpful to interested visitors to find your content more easily and to drive more traffic. Search engines are designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and other servers. So periodically most search engines will crawl and update their index of website links algorithmically to find and offer them in search results whenever an user perform a search. But sometimes search engines may still unable to find your content or crawl your site.

Though your website not listed on search results, you don't need to wait until they find and crawl your site. You can submit your site to search engines manually.

Submission of URL

You can submit the URL of your site to search engines to let them notify to crawl your site. You don't need to submit each and every page URLs here, just top-level page will be enough. Submission of URL not guarantee that it will crawl your all website page URLs.
Submit your website URL to,

Google
Bing
Yahoo

Submission of XML Sitemap


A Sitemap is a page where visitors prefer visiting if they are unable to find particular page on your site or if they need to browse your posts. An XML Sitemap is a XML file with list of URLs. So submitting XML sitemap to a search engine helps it to find and crawl all your pages associated with your site. So it is far more effective rather than submitting each URL of your site.

First you need to create an XML sitemap and grab URL or link for sitemap file before you submit it to search engines.

Create and obtain the URL of XML Sitemap of your Website
i. Generate an HTML sitemap for your site using a sitemap generator such as XML-Sitemaps by entering your website URL.

Note: Beware of free sitemap generators' limitations.

ii. Now right click on generated XML sitemap file link and copy link address of the XML sitemap file (sitemap.xml). The link address would be similar as below if we assume your site is MyBlog.blogspot.com,

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/download/MyBlog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

Else you can download XML sitemap file (sitemap.xml) and upload it to domain root directory. Then you can grab URL of your XML sitemap file uploaded. It will be similar as below if your website is MySite.com,

http://www.MySite.com/sitemap.xml
Now you are ready to submit your XML sitemap to search engines with the URL of your XML sitemap. Copy the submission URL relevant to search engine from below with added XML sitemap URL of yours and enter to submit after pasting it on your Internet browser address bar.

Submit your XML sitemap to,

Google

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=[URL of Your XML Sitemap]

Bing

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=[URL of Your XML Sitemap]

Ask

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=[URL of Your XML Sitemap]

Read More