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Category Archive: Social Media

  1. How to Use Social Media and Get Great Results

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    Today in marketing, one thing is undeniable: social media is in. That’s why for beginners, it pays to learn about the long and short routes of using social media. Better yet, answer the question: How to use social media and get great results?

    Social media, like SEO, is one of the hottest marketing trends today. Amazingly so that in less than a decade, it already landed a unique position as the marketing tactic of choice among many businesses.

    But before we give off with the tips on becoming the next social media rock star, we’ll first settle some issues of concern among marketers – effectiveness of social media in driving results or return on investments.

     

    To be or not to be in social media

     

    For marketers, one question remains: is it the best time now to dive in and embrace social media?

    Let’s consider some facts. In a study conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, it showed that 87% of business-to-business now run their marketing programs via social networking sites.

    Then if this is any indication, believing that social media is popular is nothing short of logical. This was also the same basis for recent claims that social media has become “the most popular marketing tactic” in recent years.

    This is not merely an exaggeration after all. By just looking around, it’s not difficult to see why.

    The impact and sweep of social media across the world of marketing and branding from every board meetings, books, blogs to Twitter conversations are overwhelming.

    According to the Social Media Examiner, there are 58% of marketers using social media for the past three years have reported sales improvement. The same report showed that 65% of B2B marketers have earned a customer through Linkedin.

    Moreover, folks at CMI, who surveyed marketers about the effectiveness of social media for marketing, further revealed that only 49% of marketers believe social media is effective.

    The CMI, in effect, represents an important reality: social media tend to be the least effective means to use as a marketing tactic.

    While popular, the effectiveness of social media remains, by and large, something to be proven. But the most important insight above all these is that social media may probably be poised to change the marketing landscape anytime in the future.

     

    Factors to Consider to Leverage Social Media

     

    To better understand and leverage social media’s use in marketing, let’s look over some factors to consider when viewing its effectiveness, ROI-wise.

     

    Know the buying behavior of your target audience

     

    Buyer preferences, behaviors, and problems they want solved are just a few things you need to understand about your customers.

    Having a clear grasp of buyer persona would help you arrive at the best solution to meet your customers’ needs and interests. To better get a pragmatic take on trends, use research.

     

    Include social media in your end-to-end marketing campaign

     

    Plan carefully and then decide whether your brand communication campaigns will do better if you have social media incorporated within your end-to-end marketing campaign.

    Buyer understanding must be matched with a grasp of your customers’ buying cycles. Your understanding of your customers’ journey through your brand will give you an idea whether or not it’s time to leverage social media. The latter part will show you whether it’s ROI-wise to consider bringing social media to the fore.

     

    Have a goal, make efforts to reach it

     

    Like anything before you start something, it is essential that you have your own set of goals and objectives when planning your social media projects. A clear mission statement can be useful when setting a benchmark to measure your progress.

     

    Offer Quality Content

     

    Content that is engaging and relevant to your audience are proven and effective when it comes to driving sales leads. In itself, social media will not drive ROI. Hence, it is vital to develop a sound content marketing strategy.

    To create a truly effective content strategy, create content that will interest your buyers and engage them to progress to the next stage of the buying process: checkout. Raise awareness as well about your brand’s trustworthiness over your rivals.

     

    Use Metrics

     

    Develop benchmarks that you can use in measuring the effectiveness and success of your sales ROI goals. It is not optional to measure results but must be obligatory. In this regard, you might choose a tool that offers social media analytics features.

    With the right tool to provide you with metrics that you need most, you can get the real numbers of the leads generated through to sales closed. The end benefit is letting you see how effective social media has delivered for your venture.

     

    Final thoughts

     

    As consumers’ reluctance to use social media are beginning to wane and regard the platform’s power in performing job search and even shopping, businesses, meanwhile should take notice.

    With carefully crafted strategies and posting of quality posts over Facebook and Twitter, businesses can incredibly increase the benefits offered by their mindful use of social media use.

    From getting huge savings for promoting and advertising their business versus advertising in radio or television they can let social media deliver profits and return on investment.

    Social media is here to stay and the best that your business can do is to enjoy it while it’s offering the best that your company can get out it. Enjoying does not necessary mean merely posting arbitrary posts or tweets, or posting only whenever you feel like it. If that’s your idea of fun, then you’re definitely waiting for negative ROI to emerge and hurt your bottom line.

    Remember, as a new field in marketing, social media is not yet mature, hence, there aren’t really some hard-and-fast rules.

    And perhaps one rule to stick by is to always ask this one important question: is social media offering my business the benefits or return on investments while saving on cost? If the answer is yes, well, you definitely must give it a go!

     

     

  2. Top 5 Benefits of Outsourcing Social Media Management

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    There’s almost nothing that you can’t outsource these days, including your social media works. And if you’re planning but still not sure, here’s an article to provide you with additional insights on the most available options, risks and critical benefits of outsourcing social media.

    And I will not hide the mixed reactions people throw against outsourcing. As many remark about the good, the negative impressions grew even further with regard to social media management.So we’ll now take a look, one-by-one what are the remarkable benefits of social media management.

     

    Soaring Global Consumption of Social Media

     

    global social media

     

    Call centers are receiving flak lately from customers who’ve grown tired and have bad experiences from unhelpful agents. As customers sought for more accessible means to voice their sentiments and queries, online customer services suddenly emerged as a plausible option.

    A 2011 survey by ComScore backed the realities of call center gaffes and misgivings, adding where 82% of the world’s online population are turning to these days – social media. These users apparently spend a fifth of their online time clicking the pages of their fave social networking pages.

    On Facebook alone – which now accounts to 15% of the entire world’s population – 1.1 billion are said to be active on a monthly basis. Hence, the extend of potential customer reached through social media cannot be discounted as irrelevant.

    With these, companies – big and small – are turning to social media platforms to engage their customers with quality and compelling brand message. It’s costly, of course and time-consuming also. Composing a message, creating photo covers and responding to comments can really be demanding of your and your existing staff’s time.

    Thanks to outsourcing, someone can now manage social media pages for you as you wait for your efforts to yield both tangible and intangible benefits for your business.

     

    Should I Hire A Social Media Manager or Assistant?

     

    hire a social media manager

     

    We belong to an era when social media has dramatically changed the way small businesses engage their customers.Today, it’s also no longer just the big, resources-rich brands who can dominate the realm of advertising and marketing to better engage their customers.

    Almost anyone with big ambition, commitment and strategy can make their social media presence utterly compelling and engaging. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks are pretty making it easier for small businesses to reach their business goals and grow more edgy in facing the giant brands of the marketplace.

    Small- to medium-scale enterprises can only succeed if they can grasp the most desirable options to seize the benefits of social media management. You also need to answer to a couple of questions either a “Yes” or “No” to common perception and notions about outsourcing your social media brand presence:

    • It’s too risky to outsource to others the management of your brand image.
    • The one and only individual passionate about serving your customers is you alone.
    • You know your business too well and no one else as you do.

    Although these can be counted as pretty valid reasons (excuses!) for not hiring or outsourcing a social media manager, I will entertain a more flexible and lenient answer. I, for one, would give a “Yes” for an answer but under certain conditions.

     

    Outsourcing Benefits of Social Media Management

     

    The benefits of social media management outsourcing are just too hard to ignore and sacrifice. But considering whom to outsource your social media must be properly address to be effective.

     

    Time Efficiency

    Time Efficient

     

    Some costs are intangibles like time and energy. By outsourcing the responsibility of social media management, you could actually be effective in achieving time efficiency.

    Just imagine how much outsourcing your social media management saves you or your team: it can be an hour a week that can add up to 52 hours comes the end of the year. This extra week can be utilized to more profitable endeavors of your venture.

     

    Save Costs

     

    cost savingWhile hiring a third party service provider means you’ll be required to fork some cash, it’s all worth paying for someone who’ll be responsible in managing your social networking accounts, however.

    Listen out. When you divide your time to your core and non-core business processes, isn’t it frustrating to realize that you didn’t really accomplished much? Even how much you project you’re getting or saving, the truth will just boomerang to you its resounding siren: “No!”

    This feeling of getting to overwhelmed with the thought of accomplishing much will eventually take its toll. Unfortunately it will weigh down your revenue and profit margins. So here’s one very important benefit of hiring an outsourced social media expert.

     

    Access to Professional Marketers

     

    access to professionalsToday, you can hire someone who’s knowledgeable enough to provide engaging content marketing for just a fraction of the cost it takes to pay a local social media marketing expert. You can also expect your outsourced staff to manage responses and keep up with the evolving social media platform.

    As a small business, hiring an in-house full-time social media professional other than your marketing staff can be an extra burden financially. So far, it’s outsourcing that’s your best option.

     

    Increased Posting Speed

     

    Increase Posting SpeedOperating in a 24-hour real-time world is much different than it were during the pre-Internet and social media eras. To engage your customers a bit faster, you need to keep an always-on mode to reach out to them. Messages need to be sent faster.

    When you publish at a faster rate, you’ll be able to gain more retweets and shares faster. Outsourcing your social media works can help you achieve this goal. Being your speedy best will allow your fans to click the share button almost simultaneously as well. The outcome is more people getting to read your message in less time.

     

    Louder Voice

     

    Louder VoiceOne particular benefit of outsourcing your social media is a more empowered brand voice. This is better because you get access to each of your vendor marketer’s platforms, fans and followers. https://www.bigoutsource.com/blog/top-benefits-outsourcing-social-media-management/The more of these resources become available for you, the louder your brand voice becomes.

     

    Final Thoughts

     

    It’s hard to simply ignore the benefits of outsourcing your social media now you know its impact to your overall business. If you presently feel ill-afford to hire or outsource during a financial slump, just remember what you’re missing: peace of mind.

     

     

  3. Top 10 Social Media Management Tools That Your Business Needs

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    These days, businesses are opening up their social media presence to seize the immense opportunities to expand their brand influence and engage customers.

    What emerges as the bigger challenge for marketers, however, is keeping their Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts active.

    Good thing, there’s plenty of social media management tools that are available at your disposal and use to keep posts flowing.

     

    Social Media Marketing Explored

     

    It’s pretty obvious why entrepreneurs add social media marketing as part of their integrated marketing communication efforts. Not only it’s less costly to invest money into social media marketing than advertising, the added benefits include gaining more customers engaged in real-time and generating new leads.

    The actual work of social media marketing involve ensuring that your startup or enterprise is constantly looped in on relevant conversations and manage your conversations. There is also the aspects of setting a benchmark and analyzing the metrics of audience reach and conversion rates.

     

    Optimizing Social Media with these Tools

     

    After looking into what social media marketing gurus are using to manage their multiple accounts, we’ve only selected ten. Here they are:

     

    1Buffer

    bufferA very popular choice by social media managers, Buffer helps keep a consistent social media schedule all week long without ever having to micromanage the delivery times.

    Acting more like a virtual queue, Buffer lets social media managers fill your social networking presence pages with content. This tool also helps systematically post the content throughout the day. With Buffer, you can also analyze how your brand fare in engaging and reaching your audience through posts.

     

    2HootSuite

    hootsuiteAmong other more popular social media management tools around, Hootsuite is well-loved by brands with social networking presence. With this tool, collaboration among social media managers is a breeze when executing brand campaigns across social media.

    Hootsuite provides one web-based dashboard to to allow marketers to manage social media pages, track conversions and measure campaign outcomes in the web or mobile devices. Managers can avail of Hootsuite’s free, pro or enterprise options. The paid versions give more flexibility to the features offered.

     

    3TweetDeck

    TweetdeckHere’s a social media management solution that comes with powerful filters to help you focus on what matters in your Twitter social media management tasks.

    Available for Chrome, Windows and Mac desktop browsers, TweetDeck’s other benefits for marketers include the ability to schedule tweets and receive notification alerts so you are abreast of you and your followers’ Twitter activities.

    TweetDeck was acquired by Twitter and had recently shut down its mobile apps in order to focus on the web and desktop platforms.

     

    4SproutSocial

    Sprout SocialSocial businesses looking for a facility to manage and engage audiences through their social media presence can find some help with SproutSocial.

    Through a single stream inbox, you’ll sure never again miss a message, post content, and collaborate and schedule messages across your social media presence.

    SproutSocial also lets you perform social media monitoring. Through the analytics that it provide, SproutSocial helps managers visualize important metrics.

     

    5CrowdBooster

    crowdboosterTo help measure your brand’s social performance, here comes a handy social media management tool called CrowdBooster.

    Offering a variety of paid plans depending on the number of accounts that you manage, CrowdBooster gives marketers plenty of features to help review which content marketing efforts are working best and the ones that need improvement.

     

    6ArgyleSocial

    ArgylesocialLike CrowdBooster that helps discover the performance of your B2B marketing content on social media sites, but ArgyleSocial’s difference is that it quantifies the value of your content efforts in social media.

    ArgyleSocial has a feature that allows marketers to merge social data with sales and marketing figures.This valuation of content efforts helps in optimizing content in order to build stronger relationships with social media actions.

     

    7SocialOomph

    Social OomphA paid and free productivity social media management tool with a slew of helpful features useful in updating and scheduling tweets, tracking relevant keywords, viewing mentions and retweets.

    There are also a Direct Message (DM) inbox cleanup, auto-follow and auto-DM features for new followers. Plus, SocialOomph also has an option that lets you auto-follow any new follower of your brand on Twitter.

     

    8SocialFlow

    socialflowWith its full suite of features that lets you watch real-time conversations on social media, you can now predict the best times to publish and post content with the ability to translate revenue per customer.

    Big known corporations like Mashable and National Geographic (as of this writing) use this tool because it provides marketers with social signal data, which are helpful in keeping marketers informed with the best opportunities where and when to implement a paid Twitter and Facebook strategies.

     

    9SocialBro

    socialbroWhen it comes to helping entrepreneurs better manage customer engagement in Twitter, SocialBro comes to the rescue. It’s a tool that social media managers can use to explore your community and identify key influencers.

    SocialBro also lets you determine when the best time to tweet by analyzing not only your followers’ timelines but that of your competitors as well.

    By knowing the best time to tweet your content, you seize the opportunity to reach the maximum amount of followers and benefit from more retweets and replies.

     

    10SocialMention

    socialmentionThis tool, which is very helpful for organizations with unique brand or company names, gives you a list of all mentions of your name online, including how you are rated for the type of mention you obtain.

    For reputation management purposes, SocialMention is very helpful since it pulls from a vast array of resources.

     

    In Closing

     

    Social media marketing may appear as a brand new branch of marketing but the difference lies in the type of platform used, which is the social web. Social networking channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linked, Pinterest and Instagram have transformed the way businesses operate with tons of advantages and disadvantages.

    Engagement has become more real-time through social media. The challenge then is keeping abreast with real time conversation and messaging with customers and prospects. But the serious disadvantage is that your brand reputation can quickly turn into ruins when customer backlash are unaddressed.

    Whether you are a small or large enterprise, use these social media management tools to give you extra valuable time and resources to manage your other core processes. In addition, you don’t have to lose the best opportunities to reach out to your customers and respond when issues arise.

     

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