June 28, 2022

2022 Social Media Marketing Guide: Grow Your Business Using Social Media

Thanks for dropping by and welcome to our social media marketing guide, a complete guide to social media marketing, optimization, planning and growth. 26 full chapters to give you the insight needed to rock on social media. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner to social media marketing or a seasoned veteran, this social media guide is useful to all levels.

It’s no secret that social media has become a major influencer for thousands of businesses all around the world. Nearly all of the big brands are active on social media. Countless companies are growing on social media, not only in terms of followers and fans, but also in sales. Social media brings an opportunity for us all and it’s up to you to develop a social media marketing plan that will accomplish your goals.

You may be a social media guru or perhaps you’re new to social media marketing, but winning on social media takes a lot of work. While some companies work social platforms with ease, I guarantee you some smart minds were behind their planning and approach. There’s a lot that goes into the planning, approach and tactics of successful campaigns.

Today, you’re going to learn everything you need to know about social media. Our social media marketing guide covers a wealth of experience that you’ll be able to implement into your own strategies and planning.

Social Media Marketing Guide – Table Of Contents

1. What Is Social Media
2. Social Media And Your Business
3. Social Media Now And The Future
4. Social Media Helps You Build Relationships
5. Using Social Media To Start Your Brand
6. Social Media Integration
7. The Value Of Social Media
8. Building Engagements, Interaction And Comments
9. Start Engaging Your Audience
10. Customer Service And Social Media
11. Empower Your Social Media Marketing Team
12. Learn What Your Audience Wants And Needs
13. What Types Of Social Media Content Do I Need
14. Setting Goals For Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns
15. Which Social Media Platforms Should I Invest In
16. Human Resources And Social Media
17. Social Media Content And Sharing
18. Social Media Platforms To Jump Start Your Social Sharing
19. Connecting With Others In The Industry
20. Social Media Keywords And #Hashtags
21. Consistent Branding And How Your Brand Is Portrayed
22. Earning Trust Through Social Media
23. Data And Analytics On Social Media
24. Social Media ROI
25. Social Media And SEO Often Work As One
26. Learn, Adapt And Be Patient To Grow Your Social Media Channels

Truckers Logic uses Facebook to engage the company’s audience. They use a creative method of funny pictures related to trucking that has their post reaching thousands.

(1) What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on finding your target audience using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and other social media platforms.

With social media marketing (SMM), you can use both organic and paid strategies to accomplish your goals. Each social platform is unique, so businesses have to determine which social media platforms give them the best opportunity to find their idea clients and customers.

Today, social media platforms have become powerhouses and major influencers on how we conduct daily business. Can social media help you grow your business? Without a question, it can. Learning how to use social media to market your business is the key and this SMM guide covers everything you need to know.

In the beginning, there were social media platforms available, but the first powerhouse in this area was Facebook. Today, Facebook is the most popular social media platform online. Over 1.44 billion users globally. Others soon followed as social media gained momentum, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Flickr, Instagram, Vines and so on. Billions of people use social media and many use it every day. On average in the United States alone, users average 40 minutes on Facebook a day.

At Hale Associations, we use SEO Profiler and Google Analytics to report how our social media marketing efforts help bring traffic to our landing pages.

(2) Social Media Marketing And Your Business

Why should I promote my business online? How much time should I invest in social media? Will social media work for small business? I’ll answer those questions now, Yes, Yes and Yes!!! Social media hasn’t even begun to peak. Companies have been using social media marketing for years now and with great success. It’s time to bring your company into the mix, it doesn’t matter if you know social media now or not. By the end of this social media marketing guide, you’ll have the knowledge to be successful with your social media marketing campaigns.

Social media brings opportunity for your business, but also a responsibility. This is especially true for SEOs and social media marketers. With the opportunity to share content to potentially thousands, you have a responsibility to uphold the brand you work for or your own brand. You have to think about how the message you want customers to know. You have to consider how you’ll engage with others, how you will respond to comments, both positive and negative.

I like to point new users to Susan Gunelius’ article 10 Laws Of Social Media. Very helpful article, one that has been shared over 15,000 times. But to Susan’s credit, these social media laws are super important. Every one of them are centered around success on social media, all of them relevant today. The biggest element that I take away from this is patience. You can’t expect to be a social media success overnight, it doesn’t happen that way. It takes a commitment, a dedication, but ultimately knowing what you’re doing.

Looking for some quick tips to promote your business on social media. April Joyner, an Inc. senior writer, gives you 30 tips in her article entitled 30 Tips For Using Social Media In Your Business. I love this article by April because these are not your “normal” tips for using social media for your business. The point to take away, social media is a great way to grow your business.

(3) Social Media Now And The Future

What are the trends of social media marketing? Is social media going to last for years to come? Is it worth the investment? While we’ve seen incredible growth in social media over the last few years, the growth is only the beginning. Nearly all of the major social media platforms are growing at good rates. Once smaller social platforms are also gaining traction and this just means more opportunity for us all.

If anyone knows social media all around, it’s Jeff Bullas. I connected with Jeff on Twitter and become an instant fan. Jeff has achieved some great things in his career and still does today. Check out his 33 must-know stats regarding social media. Once you grasp the unbelievable stats associated with social media, it becomes crystal clear that social media marketing is a huge opportunity for all businesses.

Building Relationships Through Social Media

One of the greatest resources a business can have is people. Be genuine and make the effort to grow both business and personal relationships via social media.

(4) Social Media Helps You Build Authentic Relationships

One of the greatest benefits of social media is the audiences that can be reached, the engagement and connections that can be made. The greatest tip that I can give you is to take the time to make authentic relationships. Be genuine about connecting with others, responding to comments and building your social platforms. A lot of people get caught up in growing your followers, some even consider paying for them. What good does 10,000 followers do you if they don’t interact and engage on your page? Your focus should be authentic relationships and not growing your social numbers. If you make genuine connections via social media, your numbers will grow naturally.

Anyone that reads our blogs and guides, knows me personally, you’ve likely heard what I’m about to say. When I first began my career online, I didn’t take the time to build authentic relationships. I viewed everyone as the competition and boy was I wrong. It was a big mistake on my part, especially those of us that are in SEO, SEM, SMM, online marketing, PR and so on. I was a few years in before I made a genuine effort and when I think about it today, I can’t believe I was so one-sided. It’s a very simple rule to follow, if you make that effort, your social platforms will grow with targeted traffic, not just any users from paying for followers.

Social media has become a major part of branding companies. Your customers are online, they are on social media platforms and more people are connecting with their favorite brands. Social media is a great way to build these relationships with your customers. It gives your brand a whole new level of customer service. It allows you to reach out to your audience for feedback. There’s so many values when it comes to social media and every company, small business and everyone in between should be invested in social media.

(5) Using Social Media To Start Your Brand

A lot of experts agree that social media shouldn’t be used to start your brand. They refer to it as common mistake that small businesses do all the time. I don’t suggest using social media to start your brand. Instead, social media should be used to take your business to the next level. Can a brand use social media alone and be successful? Not likely, but it happens. I know that. However, if you’re in this situation, you should put focus on building your website first. The reason I suggest this is because there’s a trust factor to the online buying experience. If you don’t have that trust, it can turn away potential buyers that would have purchased if the brand was more credible. Rather, it’s important that you solidify your brand through a company website or blog first before you attempt social media.

Before you begin your social media marketing campaign, you should take the time to make sure you have the appropriate content on your website. If you have a store, make sure you have all your products listed first, privacy policy and return policy. You should want some type of foundation for your brand before you begin your social media efforts. Doing it backwards can cause you more harm than good. Even if you’re simply testing social media marketing, make sure your brand has a solid foundation before you take that next step.

Using Multiple Marketing Channels For Your Business

Developing multiple marketing channels for your business is a proven strategy that works. As seen above in this example by Make Extra Paper, there’s a wide range of marketing channels you can include social media marketing with.

(6) Social Media Integration

When you have a solid foundation for your brand, the key is integrating social media into your full-scale marketing plans. You want to make sure that your social media marketing efforts are in relation to the marketing and advertising that your brand does now. It should be a full part of your plan. There’s no right and wrong time. If your brand has a solid foundation, take it to the next level. If your brand doesn’t have that solid foundation, hold up on the social media. And when I say foundation, I’m mainly referring to the brand’s website.

By including social media into your full-scale marketing and advertising, your brand should see growth throughout your company’s departments. This is another reason I suggest waiting until you have all your departments running and in order. This is because social media will benefit them all. Customer service can respond on a personal level and quicker than ever before. Your advertising can have more reach and potential. You will be able to connect with new users that find your brand worthy through social outlets. Sales can increase as you build genuine relationships with your target audience.

Value can vary when it comes to social media marketing. In this example, Brand Watch gives us a look at some of the value SMM can add to your business.

(7) The Value Of Social Media

This is a common question we always here as social media marketers, “what’s the value of social media?” If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Of course, it depends on how you value your own social media efforts. While I’m trying to refrain from getting into social media ROI until later, the value of social media can translate to a number of different things, impacting different areas of your business.

Loyalty goes a long way in the branding and the buying process. We know that when a customer is loyal, they are often repeat buyers. Repeat buyers mean more sales. The value of brand loyalty is priceless. These types of relationships are what keeps customers coming back to you. But how can you build brand loyalty? You need customers to do it and that’s the reason we call for a full marketing plan in all departments to build a customer base. And again, social media marketing is your golden ticket.

Published Author and Life Mentor Robin Rice uses video marketing to engage her audience. Anytime you can create 64 comments on one post, you’re certainly doing something right.

(8) Building Engagement, Interaction And Comments

You can’t expect social media to be an instant success for your company. But with effort and persistence, you’ll find that building engagement and interaction on your social media platforms is vital to social media success. The value in responding to customer inquiries is priceless. As a consumer, we want our voice to be heard. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new startup company or you’re the owner of a brand such as Coca-Cola, you need to have the ability to respond to your customers. Social media allows us to do so and in a matter of seconds. So responding to your customers in a timely manner is important.

It’s one thing to build likes, followers and fans, it’s another to build engagement, interaction and comments. You’ll quickly find that it’s much harder to build this engagement. Going back to what we learned earlier in the guide, it takes a genuine effort. People know when you’re being genuine, so always be invested in your customer’s needs.

Engagement allows you to be a thought leader in your industry. Being a thought leader for your brand is highly valued as it can lead to customer growth, new partnerships and new opportunities. The end goal is building trust. The trust factor is a part of the buying experience. If someone doesn’t know you or don’t trust you, it’s going to be tough to make the sale. We all have a starting place in business. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business for decades or today is your first day, ALWAYS take the time to engage with your audience.

You want others to see the engagement on your website. Think about both SEO and SMM, user metrics are important. When engagement is high, your audience stays longer. This increases the opportunity to sell your products, sell your services. It gives you the chance to show your level of expertise because this is what many look for, so become an influential expert in your industry. If potential customers visit a website or social platform that has no engagement, they’re likely to go elsewhere.

How To Engage Your Audience On Social Media

On our social media platforms for Hale Associations, we invite users to comment by asking questions, a technique that we know works. In fact, as you’ll see below, there’s a number of ways to engage your followers and get to join to join the conversation.

(9) Start Engaging Your Audience

There’s a number of different elements that we can define as “value” when it comes to your social media marketing efforts. On Facebook, this can be likes, shares and comments. On LinkedIn, this could be connecting with a top expert in your industry. On Twitter, it could be a retweet. There’s so many creative ways that you can interact with your audience. And the more genuine and authentic you are, the better results you likely see from your efforts.

Once you start seeing your engagement increase, continue to build the bond between you and the consumer. We all appreciate being called out for a good deed, right? We all enjoy good surprises and being appreciated. If you can personalize your engagement, the better the results you’ll likely see. When you first begin building your social platforms, take the time to invite your contacts to interact with your page. If others see the engagement, they’ll be more likely to leave comments. Getting the conversation started is the toughest part.

Remember, you don’t want to build relationships that only last a few minutes. Your goal should be long-term relationships. Here’s why. For one, when you first begin engaging others, customers are not going to have deep meaningful relationships with you or the brand. These take time to develop, I keep pointing back to genuine relationships. Customers appreciate a brand that takes the time to help them, answer questions, list to their concerns. The more you engage with them, the better.

Social media isn’t the only strategy for engaging prospects, don’t forget about email. Get emails – if you can get a prospect’s email, that gives you another avenue to communicate with them. You can use lead magnets for this, a lead magnet is something of value you give prospects in return for a name and email. It could be an article, a video, a tool, a free trial, a demo, anything you want. Of course, it needs to be something your audience needs or finds useful for it to work.

Social Media Today gives us great insight to how social media relates to customer service. The stats don’t lie, social media is providing a better method of customer service.

(10) Customer Service And Social Media

Why should we use social media as an avenue of customer service? What a great question. I get the “we have a 1-888 number for that” a lot. Without your customers, where would you be? Where would your business be? I’m sure you’ve heard the statement,”the customer is always right.” It wasn’t meant to say the customer is always right, but rather that the customer is the most important element of your business. If you can give your customers pure gold, you do it.

Social Media Today’s Daniel Matthews gives you 7 Great Tips For Improved Customer Service.

So, if you can add another line of communications and customer service to your audience, you do it! Simple as that. You should put the highest value on your customers an you should care about their happiness. You should want your customers to have a great experience. This can work two ways. If you give your customers a great experience, some will tell others. Word by mouth referrals are always great for business. But in the same token, bad customer service can get others talking as well.

Customer service can give you the opportunity to make bad experiences better. Face it, mistakes happen. From the bottom to the top. Some customers will understand this, others won’t. But there’s a power in the fact that a company is trying to right a wrong. If you’re ignored, it doesn’t seem fair. Not every customer will reach out to you, but when they do, you have to be there to provide great customer service. Think about what we’ve been stressing the whole time, build engagement, build interaction, build connections. Great customer service can never be undervalued.

Top Spot Internet Marketing tells us that 40 percent of consumers in the path to purchase use social media during the decision to buy process. That’s a huge jump and why your business needs to be active on social platforms.

(11) Empower Your Social Media Marketing Team

If you have a social media marketing team for your business or a social media marketer, you need to empower them with the proper resources, tools and experience needed to help you properly market on social media platforms. There’s a ton of self-help guides like the one you’re reading online. Take the time to bookmark this guide so your team can learn the correct way to promote your business on social media.

There’s a wide range of social media software out there to help you with your efforts on social media. If you can make your life easier on social media, do it. The biggest element that your team could be faced with is time. Social media marketing is time consuming, much more than people think. If you want to make an impact on social media, it will take a genuine effort and time. If your staff can learn one thing, let it be this. Don’t concentrate on the marketing, concentrate on the engagement.

If you have staff that have social media accounts, you can utilize them for your own social media marketing efforts. If you can give them the proper experience and resources, it can make an impact. Having your staff available to interact with customers and providing customer support is a beneficial advantage. Engagement is so critical to social media marketing success.

Social media marketing should be a team effort, but budget and time limits may only allow you to have one person promoting on your social platforms. There’s nothing wrong with this, but social media should be a complete team effort. If you do have a team available, ask your staff if they are available to spend an hour or two a week promoting the business via social media. While you may have multiple users promoting your business, it’s important to note that keeping a similar tone in your branding efforts is important. Terminology in your marketing can be played with and tested as needed. But the overall tone should be the same across all your marketing platforms.

If you’re flying solo with the company’s social media marketing, you should consider which social media platforms will work best for your company. We’ll talk about this in more detail later in our social media guide. For now, you don’t want to spread yourself thin. If you have to, you could take the time and promote on various social platforms until you have enough data to test which sites are working and which are not.

In this example, Saavy Panda shows us the customer buying cycle. You can use this as guide to see how your social media marketing efforts relate to the buying process.

(12) Learn What Your Audience Wants And Needs

You know the importance of engagement, I’ve brought it up multiple times in this social media marketing guide. Of course, this is going to be dependent on the type of market and niche you work in. See, you have to give your audience some type of value to keep them coming back. It’s one thing to get them there, it’s another to keep them coming back for more. This is why the social accounts you decide to promote on will need to be updated daily to give you the maximum reach.

I’m a big fan of A/B testing and if you’re running social media marketing campaigns or marketing campaigns elsewhere, you need to know the results of your efforts. If you don’t have it tracking yet, you have to get Google Analytics. This will allow you to track the results of your marketing campaigns, no matter what channel you choose to promote on. Take the time to learn how Google Analytics works. You shouldn’t rely on just one marketing channel anyway. But more importantly, you need to know the results.

A/B testing allows you to see how users are engaging with your content. User metrics are critical to the growth and development of your business, social media or not. You need to learn what types of content work best for your audience. There’s a wide range of social media analytic tools out there to use.

Constant Contact shows us some of the most popular social media platforms and different types of content that are used to market on the specific social outlets.

(13) What Type Of Social Media Content Do I Need

Your social media content will be the vital source for taking customers from your social media account to where ever you need to take them. Not an easy transition by any stretch of the imagination. Your social media content often falls within 4 categories, described as;

Question And Answer – This type of social media content is designed to engage your audience and to build relationships with others. When customers have a question, they want an answer as soon as possible. This type of content allows you to address the concerns of your customers. By providing this high level of customer support, you help your customers feel that you care about their needs. This is a big plus in the mind of your customers.
Learn And Development – We all enjoy learning about new tools and resources that make life easier. This could be personal use or for workflow. This type of social media content is designed to give your customers solutions. This is an awesome way to increase engagement on your social media accounts. Personally, I love marketing tools and resources that I can use myself to build engagement, leads, conversions and sales. So will your customers.
Discovery And Exploring – It’s human nature to want to be the best at what you do. We’re always looking for new creative ways to use a service or product. And when we find something cool, what do we do? We tell others, especially when it’s something cool, new and exciting. So this social media content is used to thrive engagement and thought leadership.
Solutions To Problems – Technically, this category can fall in line with the others, but I wanted to give it a spot on the list because there’s no greater power than being able to solve someone’s issue. It’s supply and demand, which thrives business. Creating the type of social media content that gets comments, shares and builds community.

Rasha Proctor explains how you can implement your social media marketing goals in this visual. Every business has goals that need to be met via social media.

(14) Setting Goals For Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

If you’re going to invest the time, money and effort into your social media marketing campaigns, you need to make sure that you’re setting goals. So take the time to write your business plan/case for SMM. Here’s some important questions to ask while you stage your planning.

What are your goals for social media marketing?
What is your cost of achieving those goals?
What type of resources will you need?
What are the problems you’ll solve?
How will customers respond to your content?
What type of social media management technology do you use?

When writing your business case, you should take a safe approach. The important metric is keeping your data accurate. Use your first campaigns as case studies. Find what works and track the results. A/B testing different marketing channels and different content. If you have to, this can be shared with the higher ups in your company. Setting goals for your social marketing will give you benchmarks to achieve. This can also give you a general idea of ROI.

Social Media Marketing Platforms For Your Business

Snyder Group Inc. portrays 6 of the largest social media communities online and metrics that make each one unique. It will be up to your business to decide which social media platforms make the most sense.

(15) Which Social Media Platforms Should I Invest In

Here’s another area where businesses can fail. What social media platforms should I invest in? Which are the best social media platforms to market my business on? Valid questions. Many people think they can promote on any social media platform. That’s true, but the results have to be there. Just because you can promote on any social platform doesn’t make it right to do so. But why?

Most of us have a specific target audience that we must reach. In a lot of cases, compared to the overall market, that niche is very small. It takes a specific customer to buy your product, what ever that may be. The point to take away, one social platform may be better to promote on when compared to another. There’s no questions that Facebook can work for most companies. But no other social platform compares to Facebook, not even close. So Facebook is a given, but the others are not.

Your business will have to figure out which social channels are worth investing on and which to avoid. The last thing you want to do is commit (X) amount of hours every week to see no results. Don’t get this confused with the process of build your social media foundation, it takes a little time to see results. It’s important to note that you need to be active on these platforms also. Followers and fans will expect your routine, so have a schedule. This way, they know when to come to your page to see new content.

As for which social media platforms are the best to use to reach your target audience, that’s going to be dependant on your business. If you don’t know, find out. Run multiple marketing campaigns to see which brings results. You can never go wrong A/B testing. Note that. This also depends on what you’re trying to accomplish on social media because this varies. While the end goal will always be sales, it doesn’t mean that leads are not worth their weight in gold. Many companies use social media as a funnel to get emails, opt-ins and so forth.

(15) Top 7 Social Media Websites June 2022

Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
YouTube
LinkedIn
Snapchat
Twitter

Statista shows us that social media plays a vital role in Human Resources, especially in the B2B communities.

(16) Human Resources And Social Media

What role does social media play in human resources? Employee engagement is one of the big factors, allowing your employees to interact with one another, as well as the business. This goes back to what you read earlier in this social media marketing guide. You want to teach all of your staff how to utilize social media for the business. Give them the proper training, share this guide with them. Having your team employed with the experience and knowledge to effectively promote your business on social media is priceless. And with the whole team involved, each will only need a few minutes. (Depending on the size of your business of course…. but you get the point.

Your HR department can also find new applicants for your business. And I love this idea. While being able to visit social profiles can give you a glimpse of the personality of new recruits, it also allows you to connect with them personally. That’s it, personally. How many job applicant processes are outdated and boring? Too many. By recruting new job prospects online, you’ll be able to connect with applicants in a personal manner. And if the skills require online experience, you can get a great glimpse at potential candidates.

When you think of social media platforms, most think about open networks, but there is exceptions. Some social communities were specifically designed for companies. Social media accounts used for organizations are perfect for the Human Resource department. Most of these platforms have great social tools that not only help HR, but help the whole business. Being able to control and monitor your businesses’ inside social media efforts from one dashboard is a big benefit. Here’s some websites to consider;

We know through case studies that social media signals for specific pages play a role in SEO and how a page ranks. To Google, social signals are more trustworthy than backlinks. But it doesn’t mean that it’s a higher SEO ranking factor because backlinks are still the priority.

(17) Social Media Content And Sharing

There’s a mass range of great content ideas that deserve a position in your content bank or your scheduled content. We’ll shortly go over the different types of social media content. Your social media content is crucial to your success on social accounts. If you fail to deliver the right target audience for your business, you’re going to fail. If you fail to engage your audience and connect with them, your business will fail. So the content you share is a vital piece of the puzzle.

When it comes to social media content, what’s the best approach? For starters and I always say this, “humanize the content you share.” What type of social media content doesn’t get shared? Simple, it’s content that sounds automated. It’s social content that constantly promotes services and products. You might as well post BUY! BUY! BUY! If you constantly push your services and products when building your social pages, you’ll fail. It’s not maybe you fail…, you will fail. Think about it, If all of your content is pushing services or products on your followers, likely they want respond. This is why your social media content should be carefully planned in advance.

Every social media marketing account should have a set plan in place. There’s a number of benefits to planning your social media marketing in advance compared to posting freewill. Let’s take a look at those benefits;

Scheduled post help you hit peak hours for maximum performance
Pre-planning will save you time
Allows you to experiment and track performance results

Viral Content Buzz And Social Media Sharing

I’ve been a big fan of Viral Content Buzz since day one. VCB will help your content get shared via social media. You can make some great relationships along the way also.

(18) Social Sharing Platforms To Jump Start Your Social Media Sharing

To get your social media sharing campaigns jump started, you can use websites like Viral Content Buzz. I’ve been using VCB for several years now. Viral Content Buzz allows you to earn points by sharing the content of others. When you gain enough points, you can submit your own social media campaigns and the results are quick. The great thing about VCB is the fact that it has dozens of topics, so it appeals to all markets.

Viral Content Buzz is also a great place to meet influencers via social media. And this helps you build your network, resources and businesses. Take the time to connect with others that share the same common interest as you. Daily Blog Tips. a must visit for anyone, shares some great advice on connecting with bloggers. Writer Ali Luke had this to say, “Whether they’re brand new, well established, or A-listers, fellow bloggers are an invaluable source of support.“

If you take the time to share the content of others, you will see some of them share your content. However, this is not the most effective method. Rather, you should concentrate on building a genuine relationship with them first before you ever consider asking them for anything. We have a lot to learn from other. Together, we can accomplish great things. But you have to be genuine, so important. And if you do, you’ll see that connecting with others will be more effective.

Scoop It is another option for you. You can share content here for free, but you can get more features with a paid account. Mosaic HUB is a new option that I have found. Great for marketing professionals to connect, some what like LinkedIn. Get Social is another sharing community with free and paid features. The more you put your business out there, the more opportunities you create to be found. Give yourself every advantage. Especially those of you that have startup businesses.

Hubspot shows us which industries lead in social sharing. This is relevant because you want to make meaningful relationships with leaders in your industry.

(19) Connecting With Others In Your Industry

Relevancy is so critical in social media marketing and SEO. Don’t make the same mistake I did early in my marketing career. I never took the time to make genuine relationships with those in my industry. It was a HUGE mistake. If you want to be a thought leader in the industry and want to have success via social media, make an effort to connect with those in your industry. On top of that, the customers you target are going to be the same as the accounts you connect with. If you choose to cross promote or work with other social influencers, it can benefit both parties.

Take the time to research influencers in your market. You can use #hashtags to find others that may share similar interest as yourself. Hashtags are a whole new subject we’ll get into later, but use them in the social platform’s search field. Use an appropriate hashtag, find your connections , connect with them and begin building your relationships.

Not everyone is going to be open to connecting to you. The reasons can vary. Some are just way too busy, others may have social media managers operating the channels, others may have most of their social media marketing effort automated. Don’t expect quick replies, but do be persistent, but patient. The best advice I can give you, please don’t ask for something in your opening message. I know I hate it, nothing looks so automated. Connect with them first, get to know them. Interact with their social pages first. You have a higher chance of a response this way compared to jumping right in for the kill.

Business 2 Community shows us that #Hashtags can be used for a variety of different purposes.

(20) Social Media Keywords And #Hashtags

If you have paid attention to the world we live in now, hashtags can be found nearly everywhere. #Hashtags work in a variety of different ways. Most commonly on social media and company branding. Hashtags are found throughout social media communities, you can how find them being used on all the major social channels of the world. But what does it all mean? What makes the #hashtag relevant?

Hashtags are used in social media marketing to define specific post and help users that search via the hashtag find relative topics they’ve searched for. For example, if we wanted to share this social media marketing guide on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ or Instagram, we may use hashtags such as #SocialMedia #SocialMediaMarketing or #SocialMediaMarketingGuide All of these hashtags are relative to our social media marketing guide. By doing so, we stand a good chance of being found when others search for these keywords via social search engines.

Hashtags also help us find relevant content, we can use hashtags to find any type of content that we may need. This is a great resource for researchers, writers, marketers or anyone looking to capture breaking news. Companies have even took hashtags to a whole new level with company branding. #PutACanOnIt and #Shareacoke are two great examples of top brands cashing in with hashtags. Just like users know to use Google, the same can be said about social media search engines. I expect social search engines to get better and return even more results than now.

Check out Hootsuite’s How To Use Hashtags.

(21) Consistent Branding And How Your Business Is Portrayed

When it comes to proper branding of your business, there’s a lot of different factors that have to be considered. One of the most important elements is brand consistency. As we dig deeper, this can also refer to numerous elements also. From day one, you should be adding brand value. Some examples include earning trust, a great reputation, a leader in the industry or excellent customer service. Companies are always reviewed in these areas and if you miss on your branding, it can put a kink in your customer buying process.

Most companies start with branding rules, branding guidelines, what ever terminology you wish to use. In short, this is a list of rules that revolve around the brand. One simple but important brand rule would likely be color schemes and font in marketing, perhaps also including the logo. These rules keep your brand consistent on a global level, that’s the point of having them. It doesn’t matter if these instructions or guidelines are for social media marketing or content marketing, the brand should carry the same principles throughout all levels of the company.

So, how does consistent branding translate to social media marketing? On social media platforms, we share a variety of different content types. While this content may not be direct branding, anything you share will always carry the brand name. Therefore, everything that is published is branding. Some of you may be promoting on 3, 4, 5 different social media channels daily. While the best practice would be to use the same content on all channels, not all companies follow this route. But if you do, the goal is to make sure you’re following branding rules and staying consistent across all social platforms.

If you’re company doesn’t have integration among the social channels, you’re likely missing out on the benefits of content integration. Use social media management software to ensure that your social media content is published at the same time and published on all your social platforms. Social media integration is crucial to any brand, the message should be similar, the target audience should be similar. *Depending on the business of course) Bottom line, customers trust a consistent brand more and this is some of the value you build with social media integration.

Bright Local gives us some great insight to how reviews play a role in customers trusting a business.

(22) Earning Trust Through Social Media

Speaking of trust, do you purchase from companies you don’t trust? Likely not, right? But what’s the trust factor? A runned-down website? No social media channels? Years between last published content? Bad reviews? The point to grasp, there’s a lot of different factors that can turn a customer away and that’s the last thing you want. So the GOAL for all brands isz to earn TRUST from their target audience, and this is through all marketing channels, online and offline.

Back to Bright Local and the great visual resource above, reviews play a big role in the buying process, social media or not. I wanted to mention reviews because customers can leave reviews on Facebook, Google+, Yelp and other social platforms. Customers that don’t know your brand will likely look you up before they even consider doing business with you. Great reviews can help while bad reviews can be damaging. You ALWAYS need to be aware of what your customers are saying. If a customer has a bad experience, make it better for them.

What have we talked about the most in this social marketing guide? HINT: ENGAGEMENT. Engagement drives success, loyalty, trust, relationships and connections through social media. This is why I always suggest the “human approach.” You have to be real with the connections you make, especially a start-up business or a relatively new business that has little online presence.

Building relationships via social media is just like building relationships offline. The concept is the same and we tend to forget that as we’re caught up in the digital world. We expect it to be that way perhaps, I’m not quite sure. I think we complicate the process and while it does take effort, it’s just like making friends and relationships in your town, city, ect. Don’t complicate it.

SEO Profiler allows us to track traffic from social media that land on our website pages. We can also see how traffic from specific social media platforms interact with our pages with this software.

(23) Data And Analytics On Social Media

Now that you have the inside intel on promoting content through social media, you’ll need a way to monitor the data, analytics and results taking place through your efforts. Google Analytics is likely one of the most used analytic tools and for good reason. If you’re using Google Analytics, get it right away, the insights are priceless and so is Google Analytics, (FREE).

With your Facebook marketing campaigns, you get useful insights to the pages you manage from Facebook itself. Other social platforms are not as advanced. so you’ll need some type of software or tool to get valuable data and insights to analyze.

Pictured above, this is one of the tools that we use here at Hale Associations. SEO Profiler has a wide range of insights for your social media marketing. Above, you can see that we can track users that come from social media, how many page views occurred, how long our social traffic averages on our website and the number of goals that were completed (if any). These social media marketing insights allow us to see how our audience responds to our content and how that relates to traffic to our website. It also tracks the exact pages, which is extremely useful for landing pages.

SEO Profiler also allows us to track engagement of most major social media platforms as seen above.

As you can see above in the visual, the example is looking at interaction on our Facebook page. We’re able to track likes, shares, clicks and comments. If we see a spike, we can go back to that day’s publication to know which content type gave us results. Very useful insights.

You’ll need software and tools to track your results from social media marketing. These results serve another purpose, determining your social media marketing ROI.

(24) Social Media ROI

Even with the best social media marketing tools and software by your side, determining your social media ROI can be difficult. Social media ROI, it’s a term that marketers hate discussing and a term that clients often ask. Face it, your clients want to know what results their investment for social media marketing is bringing. And the better you can explain it with results, the better off everyone is.

How can I determine social media marketing ROI? First, you have to give every action a value. Easier said than done. So let me give you a good example. Customer A clicks on a post from your Facebook page and travels to a landing page where a purchase it made for $20. From this sale, your profit margin is 75 percent, so you take home $15. This is the ROI for that action. It’s easy to determine because it’s priced and you know your profit margins.

Now, what happens if you get someone to subscribe to your free email list? This list is important to your business, you use it twice a month with your email marketing campaigns. But that’s converted traffic. For now, all it’s a free email signup. Because this action is not a paid action, you’ll have to determine the value for email subscribers. The same can be said about a new social media follower, app downloads or visits to your website. All of these have some type of value to your business. You should assign a value for each for better tracking and understanding.

For more insight, check out this informative infographic by My Marketing Cafe.

There’s a lot of ways that social media marketing can bring value. Your business has to determine what those values are. Make no mistake, social media marketing takes time. You can’t expert to have a superstar Facebook page in a month or two. It takes a genuine effort and proper understanding to master social networking.

Barn Raisers shows the cycle of how social media supports SEO. The two feed off each other in many ways.

(25) Social Media And SEO Often Work As One

You’ve likely heard of SEO before, also search engine optimization. The two relate in many ways. With SEO, you use targeted keywords to drive in organic traffic. With social media, you do the same using hashtags to categorize your social media post and content. Just as a website has SEO value, domain authority, your social media accounts have this also. You can add SEO value to your social media accounts with backlinks and other SEO tactics.

Your website content should always have social media sharing buttons. In SEO, we know that social media shares adds value to a page and the keywords attached to that page. The more social shares any given page has, that page will have added SEO value. While the SEO value is minimal, every piece of value you can gain is important.

Major search engines can pull up your content on your social media platforms. You want users to be able to find these platforms. You want them to have the ability to follow you on social media. Think about adding ways to connect to your social platforms on your website. Brand mentions also have SEO weight. The more your brand is discussed, the better. So SEO and social media marketing cross a lot and integrate. Learn more ways that SEO and Social Media work together.

An awesome visual by Viz Wiz on Blogspot (Google) showing growth of users on the top social media platforms.

(26) Learn, Adapt And Be Patient To Grow Your Social Media Channels

I know I’ve covered a lot of different topics. Over 8,000+ words of content in our social media marketing guide. Remember, you can always save it as a bookmark. And we thank you for taking the time to visit us and read our guides.

I know some of you may be at different levels with your business. Some of you likely have aged social platforms while others may just be now building their social network. But we’re always LEARNING. You can never learn enough. Don’t get comfortable in your ways, you should always be willing to try new things. Social media basics will always be the same, but few give out their best kept secrets. So you have to be willing to try new things and experiment in your social media marketing efforts. A/B testing, case studies, stand behind your data and analysis.

Growing your social media platforms takes time and patience. But if you take the time to learn the social media marketing strategies I’ve listed and you get your resources in place, you will have the opportunity to be successful on social media.

Make sure you take the time to research successful social platforms in your industry and market. This is a great way to see what’s working with them. You also learn by doing this and it can inspire creativity in-house as well. The learning process is important because knowledge is power. This is especially true for those of you that offer social media marketing services.

Social media influence is just now getting started. New social platforms are always rising and falling. All of this equals opportunity on your end.

May 20, 2016

| by richardhale

How to Get an Edge When Promoting Your Web Development Facebook Page

It seems like it took marketers forever to finally get the gist of EdgeRank, Facebook’s old algorithm. EdgeRank decided what each individual Facebook user saw or didn’t see in her/his timeline. Then, EdgeRank was suddenly gone and marketers were once again scrambling to try to understand the Facebook algorithms. And, with the latest changes being aimed towards businesses, you need to have an edge when promoting your web development Facebook page.

Facebook went to great lengths to recreate its algorithms in order to create better experiences for its users. Unfortunately for businesses, this had a negative impact on organic traffic immediately following the new algorithm rollout. According to Facebook’s November 2014 announcement:

“As part of an ongoing survey, we asked hundreds of thousands of people how they feel about the content in their News Feeds. People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.”

So, with all these changes to the Facebook algorithm and the ways it handles business page posts, how can you get ahead? Are there ways to promote your web development firm’s Facebook page without breaking the marketing budget’s bank? Yes, there are.

How are Your Facebook Page’s Posts Ranked?

Many social media marketers are upset about the drastic decline in Facebook newsfeed activity for Pages. Some believe it’s all a ploy to get entrepreneurs and small business to dish out cash for those paid ads or promoted posts. It’s widely believed that promoted content is the only business content actually getting exposure in users’ Facebook news feeds.

Whether all of that is true or not, one thing is fact: You must be willing to put in extra work promoting your company Facebook page, or your posts will never be seen by users. So, how do you get an edge up on Facebook’s algorithms to ensure that your Page posts are actually seen in timelines… ORGANICALLY?

Does EdgeRank Still Matter?

Although EdgeRank is now a thing of the past for Facebook, it’s almost certain that the site’s new algorithms include its basic concepts. There were three key elements that EdgeRank used to decide what hit the timelines of users, all three of which you should consider when promoting your web development company’s Facebook page:

Affinity Score – Measurement of how strong your brand’s relationship is with a specific user based on the user’s engagement with your Page on Facebook. In other words, those who liked, shared or commented on your Page’s posts had higher affinity scores. The higher the score, the more likely it was they’d see your posts in their newsfeeds.
Weight – Each interaction had a specific weight. For example, likes carried less weight than shares or comments. So, theoretically, posts with a lot of shares and/or comments will be shown in more timelines.
Time – The older the post became, the less relevant it was… that simple. So, it would show up in newsfeeds less and less over time.

5 Tips for Promoting Your Web Development Facebook Page

Ready to start marketing your web development business online? Already have a Facebook Page, but it’s just not getting the results you’d like? Well, here are five tips to help you be more effective when promoting your web development Facebook page.

1. Use Eye-Catching Images and Videos in Your Posts

Facebook news feeds are filled with text updates from friends and family members. It’s no wonder the social media site doesn’t want to clutter newsfeeds with text posts from businesses, which may end up being spammy or salesy in nature. Posting visually appealing, relevant videos and images increases the chances of user engagement, which Facebook likes, increasing visibility.

2. Target Your Posts on Your Web Development Company’s Facebook Page

Since the decline in reach for Facebook pages, some marketers have reported seeing positive results come from targeted posts. This just may be one of the best ways to get your page’s posts in front of your target audience, without spending on ads. You can target your Facebook ads by:

Age
Gender
Educational Status
Relationship
Language
Location
Demographics

3. Combine Text with Images Properly

You must use the right combination of what Facebook calls “images and alluring copy” when posting visuals. The social network penalizes images posted on page that contain too much text copy. Keep your sentences instructional and short to grab users’ attention immediately. And, stay clear of those salesy “shop now” and “buy now” phrases.

4. Request Feedback from Your Audience

When promoting your web development company’s Facebook Page, engagement is extremely important. Questions promote engagement. It can be anything from a simple web design question like “Do you use WordPress for your DIY site?” Or, it can be a more focused web development question like “What is your strongest Full Stack JavaScript skill?”

Two things to remember when posting questions for promoting your web development company’s Facebook Page:

Theoretically, the more users interact with you on your Page, the more they’ll see your posts. Requesting feedback can help to increase engagement drastically, if you ask the right questions.
Theoretically, comments weight more than likes. Feedback requests increase the chances of getting more comments on your posts.

5. Sponsor “Fill in the Blank” or “Help Us Name It” Contests

Lays pulled off one of the greatest Facebook Page promotions ever with its “Do Us a Flavor” contests. During the contests, fans were asked to submit their own ideas for location-inspired Lay’s potato chip flavors. The amount of new Likes gained and increased Facebook user engagement was astronomical with each contest.

Your web development firm can sponsor something very similar. Just make sure that both the contest and the prizes are relevant to your industry, niche or brand when promoting your web development company’s Facebook page. And, litter every post with catchy hashtags.

Ready to launch your career in the web development industry? Orlando’s F.I.R.S.T. Institute offers a Graphic Design and Web Development Program designed to prepare you for the working world. Jump start your new web developer career and give F.I.R.S.T. Institute a call today at (888) 9FIRST1 or click here to apply online today.

Social Media Marketing |

March 23, 2016

| by richardhale

Managing Your Reputation In Social Media

A good reputation is worth its weight in gold and can have a notably positive impact for a business. Social media needless to say, makes managing your reputation quite a trial, however with a little savvy any issue can be dealt with. One of the ways you can accomplish managing your reputation on social media is by connecting with customers.

Get Your Customers To Share Positive Experiences

It’s easy to get reviews by adding a gentle, unobtrusive request or reminder on specific webpages, at the bottom of the receipt, or on a sign inside the establishment. A simple message such as “Did you enjoy our service? Please share your experience!” should suffice. It’s very important that you don’t overdo it, though – be subtle, don’t force it. Customers are usually quick to share complaints and negative comments, but often they don’t think of voicing their appreciation with positive reviews when they enjoy a place. In other words, begin working on your reputation before a potential problem arises and risks ruining it.

Connect With Your Customers And Solve Problems

This will demonstrate that your company wants to add value to the customers’ lives, and that they care about dealing with their needs and making up for any harm you it may have caused. Various large companies create a special account in social media in order to address consumer complaints specifically. When they notice that your company cares and works to help them with their issues, it’ll significantly improve your reputation. Here are some good tips from Marketing Donut.

Find Creative Ways To Share The Story Of Your Company

A great way to connect with your customers is by providing content that reveals your company’s story – even mentioning its mistakes. Perhaps you can use true, real-life examples of how a service or product of yours has managed to help somebody. Utilize a conversational, friendly tone instead of confusing corporate jargon. It’s a great idea to humanize your company, allowing you to relate to consumers, – it will help you jump ahead of your competitors which don’t take such measures.

Direct The Conversation And Monitor Your Presence

Even when you’re not posting about your business, others probably are, and it’s important to know what they say. Imagine if a few customers go on social media and begin complaining about your company’s customer service. If you didn’t notice it, you’d lose a valuable opportunity to deal with the situation and improve your reputation.

Give Employees A Way To Share Content

Every week or so, there is a news story about an employee posting an ill-conceived comment or sending an offensive Tweet through the company’s social media account. This has the potential to seriously damage your brand and make it into laughingstock. UK reputations business Reputation Communication advise you make sure you have a set of rules for social media usage, with consequences for misbehaviour and management oversight. It is best to give employees a method of sharing curated content, through a safe platform.

Remember How Powerful Social Media Is

After Google and Twitter have re-established their agreement which allow Tweets to be displayed in search results, it can have an even larger effect on your reputation. Even if there are only a few negative mentions about your company online, they might be the first thing potential customers find after Googling your company name, as opposed to all the good news you may have preferred them to see. News media have been picking up on social media posts as well – so everyone could potentially end up seeing them. What you say on such platforms – and what others do – matters to your reputation, and thus, to your company and your profitability, so do not neglect it.

Instagram, Social Media Marketing |

March 22, 2016

| by richardhale

How To Gain Followers On Instagram

More Instagram followers is something that takes effort and isn’t easily done. However, there are plenty of ways to give yourself a better chance of becoming more successful on the image social media site. We take a look.

The Beauty Of Your Photos Matters

Becoming successful on Instagram begins with beautiful images. If your photos don’t deliver on this fundamental point, you won’t gain any followers. Give people a reason for following you, and post photos that show an exceptional moment in time.

Front Facing Cameras Don’t Work For Instagram

The quality of the photos taken with your phone’s front facing camera is of substantially lower quality than photos taken with your rear facing camera. It’s easy to see why using this camera is such a bad idea when you consider that the software such as image stabilization built into the rear facing camera doesn’t come with the front facing camera.

Exposures Should Be Manually Set

It’s much more difficult to restore highlights than it is to bring back shadows, which is why your best bet is to shoot your pictures slightly under exposed.

With a quick tap of a button or a touch on the screen, it is possible to capture bright and happy shots, dark moody pictures, and everything in between. People who use iPhones can set image focus with a tap on the screen that brings up a small icon of a sun on the focus square side. In order to adjust the slider for the exposure, swipe it up or down until you have the look you desire.

Break Out Your Accessories As Night Falls

In order to get a night time still shot, use a tripod to hold your phone still. Light comes in three stages using the light cue. It’s possible to create a psychedelic feel to your pictures by incorporating some of the strange color functions into your shots.

Natural Light Sources

Natural light cannot be mimicked or replicated and remains better than any type of artificial light. In order to create moody depth within your images, use gloomy and overcast weather conditions. To create interesting shadows, look for shade areas that block vertical light. However, one of our favorite things to do is to use the softest rays of the day that occur during the magical sunsets and sunrises.

Using Other Types Of Cameras

The Camera+ and VSCO apps can separate focus from exposure by controlling the shutter speed. Users can decide which areas of the photo they want to focus on and/or expose by moving a marker around the screen. Camera+ users can capture images in both the TIFF and JPEG formats. This ability to obtain TIFF images means that your smartphone can deliver pictures of higher quality.

Carry Extra Battery

I never leave my home without an extra battery pack. In an Instagrammer’s backpack, you will always find a mobile charger because we are always on our phones. Plus, you gain the ability to boost your power on the go.

Figures Matter

People like to see success and having more Instagram views makes people feel you are offering something. If you buy Instagram views you can imagine you can expect people to think you’re popular and this can have a positive impact.

Explore The World

There is more to your city than you are aware of, even if it sometimes makes you feel claustrophobic. It is a simple matter to head out on a mission to find secret spots and hidden gems with your camera thanks the Instagram’s many photographic communities. Take your adventurous spirit, your camera phone, and some lunch out for a day of exploration.

Collaborate With Others

Photographers and Instagrammers love the chance to explore their world and capture images on an Instameet. It’s a wonderful way to find places located all over the world. In fact, I got the opportunity to head out with others in South Africa and discovered places that I would never have found on my own.

Remain Genuine

Tell the stories of your time with a genuine and open heart.

Search Engine Optimization, SEO Ranking Factors, Social Media Marketing |

July 11, 2015

| by richardhale

How Much Does Social Media Influence Play A Role In SEO And Keyword Rankings?

SEO, Social Media Influence And How It All Works

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 10 years performing and consulting for SEO projects, it’s the fact that SEO ranking factors are always changing. While that’s so true, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We’ve seen some SEO ranking metrics stand the test of time, such as backlinks and publishing high quality content. In the same breath, we’ve seen design, user metrics evolve to add more weight to your SEO value.

But what about social media influence? How much does social media influence play a role in SEO and keyword rankings? The truth may just surprise you. Is social media signals enough to take a 10th page SEO rank to the first page of Google? The answer is yes.

Truckers Logic is a platform that delivers useful topics to truck drivers. Naturally, the keyword “deaf truck drivers” would be a term they wanted to rank for. While they did target the keyword, it was never higher than 6th-7th page. That changed when the article went viral for a few days.

Once the article caught fire on Facebook, it went straight to page one, position one. As you can see now, the page has over 7K Facebook signals. 2.4K when the page first appeared on the top spot of page one.

Facebook Is The Top Social Media Signal

While we see so many people say Google+ is the top social media signal, our case studies and experience tells us Facebook is. We’ve seen Google+ carry weight but off and on. Facebook remains consistent and most certainly the social signals you want to push to increase SEO rankings.

My team and I work on a variety of different SEO projects over the past year. From hands-on SEO strategies to search engine optimization consulting, we’ve worked at every end of the spectrum. I’ve seen social media influence peak and I’ve seen it fall. With our case study, it’s important to note that the domain had decent web metrics.

At the time, it had a 22DA. Over 23,000 backlinks. So we know that if website A has more backlinks and authority, social media influence is going to be higher. That’s probably more natural than influenced, but worth noting.

Social Media Influence Heavily Among Top Ranking Factors

Going back to the information in that article, we find that 7 out of the top 10 SEO ranking factors were related to social media influence. 4 social media platforms that drive results are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. I believe LinkedIn will certainly be included in 2016. The company is taking a great approach that I feel Google likes. LinkedIn has become a publisher and you’re hearing it now, in 2016, LinkedIn will have something to say about that as they try to become part of the big 5.

But right now, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest are the four social media platforms that play a role in your SEO efforts. Why is Google giving social media such an impact on SEO and organic results? I have a theory. I think it all relates to another major SEO ranking factor, “backlinks.” For years, backlinks have been a ranking factor for SEO. Not just a notch in the algorithm, we’re talking about a major contributor to how your website ranks in Google’s search engine results. Think about this, backlinks are often very questionable, they are no longer a trusted ranking factor due to spam and link building strategies. Does backlinks still have major SEO weight? Absolutely, but we’re seeing backlinks play less of a role in SEO and we’re seeing social media influence and social media signals reigning supreme over backlinks.

Why Trust Is Important To Google

There’s one major reason why social media influence is ranking above backlinks, “trust.” Social media influence is more authentic. If a webpage is being shared thousands of times, Google knows that the content is likely good. Before, Google would look at the backlinks to that domain. Now, social media signals can be enough to pull first page ranks in Google depending on the level of competition for the keywords associated to the page. But no matter what market you’re in or what type of niche you operate, social media signals is a strong ranking factor for your search engine optimization.

See, it’s much easier to get a backlink than to fake a social media share, like or tweet. Backlinks can be created on autopilot with the right software. But social media signals are often authentic and a much higher trust rating than backlinks. Authority backlinks are still important, so don’t get me wrong. Backlinks are still a strong ranking factor, but social media is pushing ahead because for the most part, Google can trust the data given.

Google Favors Social Media As A Ranking System

I thought carefully about this, but I feel confident that this is fair enough to say, Google favors social media as a ranking system. In SEO, we’re taught that backlinks were like a rating system. Popular content gets backlinks, these backlinks are like a positive vote for a website. Think about it, if you’re publishing content on your website, do you link to just anyone? Perhaps back a few years ago, but now? You don’t. Unless, you know the link you’re sending is going to a trusted website. Why? Well, if you link to bad websites, sites that Google view as spam, it can hurt your rankings. And this still holds true today, you can’t link to just anyone.

The subject of link building, we can go on and on for days. But we’ll leave that for another article. Now, SEO 2015, we’re seeing social media signals as votes of trust. Why? Because we just don’t share anything, unless we’re marketing for someone. We only share things we like, things we find an interest in, articles that we feel connected with. We’re not the only ones that know that, Google does too. And due to this, Google can measure a large percentage of the quality of any given webpage by social media metrics alone. This is due to the fact that Google views social media influence as a heavy weight SEO ranking factor.

The Keys To Success On Social Media

For those of you that have played your hand in social media marketing, you likely have some insight into how social marketing works or doesn’t work. And keep in mind, every social media platform is different, markets are different, there’s no one approach or solution to successfully making a webpage go viral. There’s a lot of strategy and techniques that go into the process of marketing on social media. But none the less, there’s a lot that is in your control and you can make your website successful on social media. And in return, you get that extra SEO benefit.

If you’re selling a product or service, you just can’t approach your social media platforms expecting people to buy. It doesn’t work. You have to build your social media platforms and following with real authentic users. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Let’s take Facebook for example. When you get on Facebook, are you looking to go shopping? While some of you may be thinking “or course I do,” the majority of people don’t visit Facebook to buy. Yet, Facebook is full of potential prospects in all markets, age groups, classes. The key is turning a non-buyer into a prospect, lead or sale.

Again, think about how you use Facebook. How many times have you been looking through your Facebook feed and see something that catches you eye, catches your attention? This is where we make our living. Your content has to be interesting enough to capture the attention. Once you have them, you can control where they go, send them to a offer, a product, or landing page. What ever it’s you do. But the hardest part is the first step, getting that click, gaining the attention of another.

What about emotions? We’re taught in marketing that emotions do play a role in the buying process. Those who promote on social media successfully knows this. So in the end, there’s a lot of different ways that you can see success in your social media marketing efforts. Companies have seen great results with polls, free giveaways, engaging content and other techniques. The key is finding what works. And in turn with SEO, you want to make sure you use your hashtags. You should be using the same keywords you want to rank for in your hashtags.

Social Media Influence And Signals Matter

If you don’t have social media sharing buttons on your website, the time is now to add them. This is going to give customers the opportunity to share your content. If you’re on WordPress, there’s a ton of great social media plugins that can give you these features. Make sure you make a genuine effort on all of your social media accounts.

If you’re an active reader to my blog or have read other articles onsite, you may have read me talking about one of the biggest mistakes I made in social media marketing. I failed to make real connections to others. I failed big when I first started my career in SEO and Web Development years ago. Connecting with authority social accounts and influencers is very important. Building last-longing relationships is important to anyone trying to grow and develop a name or brand.

SEO Is Only One Piece Of The Puzzle

For those that truly don’t understand SEO, search engine optimization alone will not get you where you need to be. Can you see good results from our SEO efforts? Sure. However, it takes a total effort of all online development phases to see a high level of success online. Working both SEO and SMM is a good start to achieving maximum results. Social media and SEO work together, and the better you understand that relationship, the better off you’ll be.

Learn how to grow your online business, learn all the different strategies and techniques that can be applied to your development plans. If you’ve struggled online with your SEO rankings, this may be the reason why. Those who are achieve the highest level of success online are the companies that have the complete package, working SEO, SEM, SMM, SMO, PPC, online marketing, content marketing, digital marketing, email marketing and all the other strategies that can be used to grow an online business. When you

If you want to see the best results in terms of both SEO and social media, the two have to work together. It doesn’t matter if you want to choose one or the other, you now need them both. And as we’re quickly approaching 2016, don’t be surprised if social media influence, signals and engagement have more value as a SEO rank factor. I just can’t see why anyone would not want the added value of SEO and SMM working together.

Don’t Forget Your Social Media Tools

Lastly, it’s so important that you respond to your engagement. Look for genuine conversations. Try to answer questions in a reasonable time. Treat your social media as a form of your customer service. You ALWAYS want to keep customers happy, so do make that effort.

There’s a lot of great tools out there to help you with your social media marketing. I’m not referring to a tool to help you post, but rather a tool or SMM software that allows you to know engagement, social signals, social media mentions and so on. This is for those of you that want to make a serious effort on social media. Take the time to do your research and find the needed tools and software within your budget. You won’t regret it.

Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing |

December 26, 2014

| by richardhale

How Does SEO And SMM Work Together?

SEO And SMM Benefits

SEO and SMM are like peanut butter and jelly, eggs and bacon, we get the analogy. You can’t have one without the other, or at the least, you don’t want too. SEO and social media work great together for a number of different reasons that we’ll get into detail in this article. According to a lot of different elite SEO communities and metric websites, social media controls 7 out of the top 10 SEO ranking factors for 2015. I’ve studied several case studies at the end of the year and after evaluating the data, I believe it to be true. At the least, we’re looking at 5 out of 10. None the less, SEO and social media are crucial to the success of your website.

Many business owners and webmasters searching for SEO services believe that SEO is enough to make a business successful. After nearly 8 years of providing search engine optimization services, I can confidently say “SEO is not enough.” I’ve always been truthful with my clients before we begin the long journey of search engine optimization. Can SEO take your business to another level. Absolutely, it can, I’ve seen it time and time again. However, SEO can only get you so far.

Our monthly SEO packages at Hale Associations automatically come with social media marketing services. Very simple reason, because SEO is going social. We clearly see this with the new SEO ranking factors in 2015 and I’ve seen it in recent case studies. Social media metrics can help you increase your SEO metrics. The combination of the two is exactly what you need going into 2015 and beyond until we’re told otherwise.

Establish Your Social Platforms

One of the first orders of business is to establish your social platforms. Likely, if you’re already have an established website, you may already have some social platforms. If you don’t, you need to build your social communities. (4) social media platforms count toward your SEO rankings and include Google+, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. These are the four social platforms that are listed in our 2015 SEO ranking factors. It doesn’t mean that LinkedIn, YouTube and other social profiles won’t help. So do keep that in mind. You should have a general idea how much traffic is coming from your social websites. If not, you need to start tracking this with Google Analytic or some type of SEO software.

Building social communities takes a lot of work, and I mean a LOT of work. If you’re not promoting your website through social platforms, you likely have no clue how time consuming this can be. Sure, you can make a post in a minute and share it to all your platforms in 3 minutes with your software. Here’s the question, “how is that working for you?” If your social traffic is leading to sales and revenue, then awesome! Keep it up. If your social traffic is not buying anything or non-existent, time to make some changes.

I do a lot of training and speaking locally here in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia. One word that often comes up in my marketing training is “human approach.” I use it all the time, our clients hear it all the time. What does human approach marketing mean? It’s very simple, your marketing efforts need to have a human approach. If your social media marketing looks automated, I doubt many people read it. You have to connect with your audience on a personal level to be successful. If you don’t content with your audience in terms they understand, you’ll never convert them.

I learned the hard way coming up as a young marketer. I loved marketing but I hated the time that it took, I didn’t have time for this. I wanted automation. I wanted an easy route. This is exactly why I failed at marketing for the first few months, I never connected with my audience on a personal level. I didn’t have the human approach. I’ve gone a little off topic, but I wanted to mention this because it’s critical in any type of marketing, social media marketing or elsewhere.

Be Active On Your Social Channels

If you want to target the right type of traffic to your websites, you have to be active on your social platforms. All of your social platforms should have at least one new post a day. And just as we talked before, you need to make sure that your post have a human approach. If the pot doesn’t connect with the user, it’s likely that it won’t be read. Think about, when you’re on social media, why do you click on a post? You click because you find it interesting, you click on it because it’s useful. Yes! The human approach.

How many likes you get, shares you get, comments you get, retweets you get and pins, all of them matter. Getting the engagement and interaction going is not always easy, especially when you first start out and nobody knows you exist. It will take time, hard work and patience. The fastest way to grow your social platforms is by providing great high quality content.

Use Your Targeted Keywords In Social Content

Just how you target specific keywords in content on your website, you can do the same in your social post. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ all allow you to use #hashtags in your post. This is very important, all of your social post should contain at least one hashtag. This will allow users to possibly find your social post. You can concentrate on both main and secondary keywords. The more prominent your social platform becomes, the higher you will rank in social search engines.

Of course, before you do so, you’re going to need to know how to research keywords for your business. If you already have your keywords, then you can get straight to work.

When you publish a new article on your website, you should immediately share it on all your social platforms with the most relative keywords to the content. In some cases, this may free useful information. Perhaps, you did an article on a new product that you’re selling or looking to build a specific email list. There’s many purposes for sharing your content on your social platforms. The more you build your social communities, the more they will benefit long term.

Organic Traffic VS Paid Traffic

Both SEO and SMM bring in organic traffic. In some of my studies, I learned that organic traffic is more likely to remain with you for the long term compared to paid traffic. Both organic traffic and paid traffic take an investment. With paid traffic, you have to invest your money. For organic traffic, you have to invest time and effort. If you’re paying for your SEO and SMM services, then you also have to invest money.

A lot of people think that SEO and SMM are different, but in many ways, they are two of the same. The combination of both search engine optimization and social media marketing can be enough to take your business to the next level. Likely, you’ll need other marketing techniqes mixed in but to the point, the combination of both are better then only SEO or SMM.

SEO Is More Then Just Ranking Keywords

Search engine optimization is a deep often misunderstood technique. There’s hundreds of techniques that could be classified as SEO. SEO is more then just ranking keywords. Rather, SEO is the process of optimizing your website and business to perform at a high level. The combination of SEO and other optimization techniques is the key that takes a business to another level. Understanding it all can be tough and honestly takes years to master. I thought the same when I was a young SEO. I quickly learned that SEO is just one part of the equation of success. SMM is another. Together, you give yourself the best benefit to growing your online website and business.

Marketing, Social Media Marketing |

August 22, 2014

| by richardhale

Marketing Tips For Start-Ups; Building Your Brand

I’ve seen a number of marketing tips for start-ups over the years and while some have provided actionable advice, many are repeating the same tiered branding tactics everyone else uses.

Look, there’s nothing easy about marketing your start-up business. With trillions of websites online and thousands of start-up companies entering the market daily, many webmasters and company owners can feel extremely lost in the massive online world.

Many start-up companies can have great services, great products, great aps and customer service. They can have a solid business plan, feeding a market with millions of potential customers. You can have all the cards stacked in your deck. Although you will cross many obstacles during your run, one huge obstacle that you most overcome is marketing.

In this article, we’re going to explore different marketing tips for start-ups and locally owned start-ups. You’ll be able to use these marketing techniques to help your company grow pre-launch and after-launch.

Marketing Defined

What is the definition of marketing? According to trusty Google, marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. Simple in terms of defiance but marketing is one of the most vital skills of any business. If you can’t market your start-up business correctly, you won’t succeed.

Marketing Types

Believe it or not, there’s easily over 100 different marketing strategies that can be used to promote your business. While I won’t discuss them all, we’ll take a look at some of the most important marketing techniques used to promote your business online.

Affiliate Marketing
B2B Marketing
Brand Marketing
Content Marketing
Contextual Marketing
Digital Marketing
Ecommerce Marketing
Email Marketing
Facebook Marketing
Inbound Marketing
Local Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Search Marketing
Social Marketing

These are just a few of the many marketing types available to you. You may choose one, two or many of these marketing techniques to use for your start-up business. The key is planning which marketing types will be best for you and your business. You’ll have to consider your budget, staff and the time involved to perform in your plan. I always suggest A/B testing, start-up or not. If your not testing and running analytics on your marketing results, your making a mistake. Record and track everything.

Marketing Your Start-Up Business Pre-Launch

I’ve seen a number of companies, both online and offline, fail to market their business before the company launches. While for some, this may not be such a big deal, but you should always market and promote your business before your launch. There’s a number of different ways that you can do this successfully. One common way companies are promoting their business before launch is through social media marketing. You may want to consider using Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to reach your potential audience. Likely, you already have a Facebook page. If you don’t, go ahead and build a page for your business.

Another great way to promote your start-up business during pre-launch is through email. Hopefully, you already have a decent-sized email list. Write up an email about the launch of your business and send it out. Now, if you don’t have an email list, you may want to build one. Yes, this can be time consuming but it can also be well worth while. Networking is important to any business. Take the time to research authority names in your niche. We use this same technique in SEO and link building. Look up their emails and send them out. If you can get a phone number, take the time to call. You’ll be surprised how many friends, associates and clients I’ve gained by doing this. Everybody needs somebody.

If you have money to spend pre-launch of your start-up, this is going to give you many more options for marketing and promoting. You could run Facebook ads, Google Ads, pay for press releases or advertise on a related website. You need to plan and think this out, don’t just throw money here and there because you have it. All of these are the same techniques that can be used pre-launch and after your launch.

If you are planning to launch products and special services with your pre-launch, there’s several ways that you can gain interest. Free giveaways and drawings are a great way to build interest in your brand, products and services. Think about giving discounts to the first 20 people that buy your product or service. You may want to give some things away for free to draw in interest. Anything you can do to create engagement and have people talking about your brand is great. You can do this pre-launch and after-launch.

Marketing Techniques After You Launch Your Business

There’s also a number of marketing techniques that can be used after you launch your business. Again, we’ve briefly discussed Facebook ads and Google ads. With Facebook, you can set up ads that will be displayed all over Facebook. You’ll be able to promote in your city, state, country or around the world. You get to target your audience as well. The same can be said about Google ads. I would suggest that you know your customer profile before you do this, also the demographic you are targeting.

One of the best ways to market your start-up business I with a website of course. Websites are usually part of the launch but I wanted to include this just in case you’re launching your business without a website. We’ll discuss some marketing strategies for those of you that are opening a local business later in the article.

Content marketing is another common marketing technique to promote your start-up website. I would suggest including a blog with your website. Some people believe blogs are dead since more people are moving toward social media. While this may be true, blogging is not dead, not at this time. You can write articles about your business, about your niche. Showcase your skills and experience by writing helpful articles and content related to your business. This is a great way to promote your start-up business and showcase your experience as an expert in your field.

Email marketing is a great way to make sales. We’ve been using it for years and others have been using email marketing for decades. To be successful, you do need a website to capture emails. You can use what we call opt-in forms to capture names and emails. If your having a giveaway, you can promote the giveaway on your website and have people sign up to have a chance to win. Email marketing can get complicated for those that don’t understand it completely. You need a great auto responder email series to close sales. I would recommend Aweber but there’s several similar services online.

Marketing Tips For Start-Ups Promoting Locally

For those of you that are promoting a start-up business locally, the same marketing tips for start-ups above should be considered. You should take the time to get a website built. Even if it’s just a 5 page website, it does serve a purpose. I know web design services can cost a lot but not with Hale Web Development, we’d be more then happy to help.

You should also take the time to build a Facebook page and use other social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram. If you can do your social media marketing yourself, this is free advertising. There’s also a number of local websites and directories that you can list your business for free on. This is crucial for any business, locally and online. Google recently made changes and local rankings benefited. More now then ever, local citations count. You can use Yellow Pages, Google+, Super Pages, Manta, Yelp and many other local citation websites to list your business for free.

There’s also various marketing techniques you can use that doesn’t involve working online. You can take the time to make business cards, make flyers, make signs or make shirts with your logo. You could also put your logo and business number on your car or company vehicle. You could also pass out bumper stickers. Go to other companies and ask them if you can partner and help one another promote. As long as it’s not your competition, this could be a great technique to use. Reach out to your family and friends for help. You can even get a mascot to stand by the road and hold signs.

Marketing Is Crucial To EVERY BUSINESS

These marketing tips for start-ups are just a few of many techniques that can be used to market and promote your business successfully. Marketing is crucial for every business, start-up or not. Don’t be afraid to step outside the box and try something new. I always recommend tracking your marketing efforts. You probably should invest in software. At the least, you should include your website in Google Analytics if your marketing online.

Every brand needs an identity. Marketing is big for branding your business. You should be planning your marketing efforts from day one. Keep learning. I’ve been in web development for over 7 years and I’m still learning skills that help me today. Become a student of marketing, there’s a lot of great resources online that can help you. I truly do wish you the best with your business and I hope you were able to walk away from this article with new ideas and confidence. If I you ever have questions or need advice, feel free to contact us. If you enjoyed this article, please take the time to follow us on Facebook, Twitter.

Facebook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing |

June 25, 2014

| by richardhale

Facebook Marketing Statistics You Need To Know

If you’re not marketing on Facebook, you’re missing out on a lot. Quit leaving money on the table, you have to get your Facebook marketing efforts planned, organized and optimized. This should be your plan in all social media marketing strategies. It’s no secret that Facebook is the social marketing platform of the world. Facebook has over 1 billion active users, no other social network comes close. Doesn’t mean that you can’t make money elsewhere, just the fact that Facebook is where the opportunity is.

Proven Facebook Marketing Techniques

Over the years, I’ve met a lot of great people that do great things. Today, I’m going to introduce two awesome resources that you may or may not know. Either way, after today, you’ll know them and they will help your Facebook marketing across the board. Powerful resources. Now, I want to give a special shout out to Mari Smith. Mari is an expert Facebook marketer, we all stand to learn something from her when it comes to Facebook marketing. Mari doesn’t know me but I had the opportunity to watch one of her old webinars on YouTube. You can view her YouTube channel here.

Mari has done many webinars on Facebook, she has written books and spoke publically. If you set down and watch one of her webinars, you’ll walk away with a lifetime of knowledge. Be sure to check out Mari’s YouTube channel. Now, Mari introduced me to an awesome website called Social Bakers. Click here to look at Facebook statistics. Social Bakers collects a ton of useful, informative Facebook stats that are crucial to your Facebook marketing efforts. Be sure to check them out and a big shout out to their founder.

Social Bakers collects information on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn. Social Baker has a ton of free tools and resources. They also have premium resources that I would suggest that you invest in if your a social media marketer.

Our statistic is 171,754,610 This is the sum of fans in “Retail Food.” Interesting, huh. Who would have thought retail food would have the highest number of fans. “Retail” was in a close second with 168,143,366 followed by FMCG Food with 130,530,377. What about 4th? “Beverage” is fourth on the list at 96,918,093 and fashion at 96,663,785 rounds out the top 5. What does this tell you in terms of Facebook marketing? If you’re in these niches, you have plenty of marketing fans and similar interest. Perhaps a few post on food, retail or fashion if you can mix your marketing efforts within your niche. Be creative and test it out, trial and error my friend.

Our second stat is American users male vs. female. This is important to know, right? Especially if you’re in a gender specific niche. Female users on Facebook in America as of 5/14, 53.9 percent. Males are 46.1 percent. Not a huge margin but a statistic that matters. If you market to women, you have an advantage. It’s important to know who your marketing too. If you move to India, the rate is 75 percent male and only 25 percent for females. Women are also more social then men. Nearly 50 percent of all women on social media platforms visit their social accounts multiple times a day. As for men, you’re looking at around 34 percent.

A decent percentage of all Facebook users check their Facebook account 5 times or more a day. The total, 23 percent. Surprising to me, nearly 48 percent of marketers believe that Facebook is overrated as a legit marketing platform. I’ve seen great success on Facebook, I’ve seen both sides of the street. I know for a fact that this 48 percent, probably over half of them didn’t run their Facebook marketing campaigns correctly. It is also possible that they didn’t run one paid ad.

78 percent of users log in from a mobile phone. This is a huge stat to take notice too. 78 percent of all Facebook users are logging in from a mobile device. If your website is not mobile friendly, your leaving dollars on the table. If your business is not running mobile ads, your missing out on getting your ads to a large audience. Mobile usage is still growing, this can easily surpass 80 percent and beyond. In fact, it is expected to. Make the changes needed and make sure your website is responsive.

Facebook now has 1.28 billion active users. User growth is up 15 percent year to year. This is great growth and even more opportunity for you to cash in on your Facebook marketing efforts. On average, 1 million links are shared on Facebook every 20 minutes. This is a huge amount of links. That is also a lot of competition to deal with. This is why every marketing technique you use on Facebook needs to be properly planned and optimized. I can’t say it enough, trial and error. Test to see what works for your business, keep what works and move on from Facebook marketing techniques that don’t work.

Facebook averages 809 million visits per month. Again, this is a big opportunity for your business to capitalize on the traffic. Surprising to some, this monthly amount is only second on the list. First, no surprise to me is Google+. Google+ leads the social community with 1.2 billion monthly visitors per month on average.

These are just a few of the many Facebook statistics out there that can influence Facebook marketing. The more in tune you are to such measurements, the better results you’re going to likely see. Trends are trends for a reason, stay on top of all the major Facebook statistics as well as all your other social media profiles. Be sure to watch some of Mari’s webinars and check out Social Bakers. Good luck.

Social Media Marketing On Pinterest

Social Media Marketing On Twitter

Facebook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing |

June 22, 2014

| by richardhale

Marketing On Facebook-Proven Facebook Marketing Techniques

Facebook is still the social giant and no other website comes close to comparing. Marketing on Facebook gives you a variety of different benefits to help your business grow online. The largest social platform has several advertising features to help you reach your targeted audience. Both paid and free advertising campaigns on Facebook work if you know how to successfully run a campaign.

Nearly every big corporation and business has a Facebook page. Over a billion people has a Facebook account and Facebook has over 700 million regular uses. No other social platform compares. The key to marketing on Facebook is audience targeting. Face it, the key to marketing in general is finding the right audience. As you’re going to learn, there’s several ways that you can do this, both free and paid. These proven marketing techniques have worked time and time again.

Connecting And Interaction With Your Fans

No other Facebook marketing technique may be more powerful then interacting with your followers and fans. This proven marketing technique has worked time and time again. Studies have shown the success of connecting with fans on a personal level. Your Facebook page should be diverse, one way of doing this is through personal Facebook post. Post pictures of your new born child, a company party or your family vacation. Successful companies on Facebook are those that have a diverse profile and page.

Many experts believe in the 80/20 rule when it comes to Facebook marketing. For 80 percent of the time, you should concentrate on your business. For 20 percent of the time, you should share your personal side. This shows your fans that you’re a real person. You won’t believe the difference that this can make in your marketing efforts on Facebook.

Engage With Your Audience

This corresponds with our first Facebook marketing technique but this specific strategy has to be mentioned. Two-way dialogue as it is called is a great way to engage your audience. Remember, you want a diverse Facebook page. You want it to be useful, interactive and educational. You also want it to be fun and engaging, this brings fans back to your page. So, why not start the conversation?

Here’s what you can do if you come out with a new product or new service. You can create a post with pictures of you and the new product. Ask your following if they have tried your new product yet. If so, ask them if they liked it. You can try a poll, asking questions or any other technique you can use to engage your audience. Do this through a diversity of post, such as text, pictures, text and pictures or videos.

New Daily Content

Having fresh updated content gives your audience plenty to read, increases engagement and also brings fans back. Some companies try to keep their content at a limit, some even skip days in between. We say you can’t never have enough content. Your audience comes back to your page because they find it useful, helpful and fun. If you’re not keeping your page updated daily, why would they come back to your page? You have to be active daily if you want your Facebook marketing techniques to work.

Make sure you’re using your content right, keeping it diverse and useful. This is especially true with your call-of-action post. We know that a mix of pictures, text, audio and videos perform much better together then alone. Don’t forget to draw attention to your page with free giveaways, contest or specials. Make sure it is part of your marketing on Facebook.

Encourage Conversation And Engagement

There’s big benefits to having your audience talking about your brand. Of course, you want it to be positive rather then negative but it can have huge impacts on your marketing efforts on Facebook. Studies have shown that fans trust their friends more then brands. You want to build trust and you want to become an authority in your respected niche. If you’re getting your audience to mention your brand positively, it can have a huge impact on your success with Facebook.

One of the best ways to create conversations is through a community page. Make sure you build a community page for your business. You also want to make sure you’re active on your community page also. You can offer recognition to the most vocal fans in your community to encourage others to begin the conversation. Give them a free prize or a shout out to show them that their voice is appreciated. This is a great way to get other fans involved and talking about your company.

Smart Branding

There’s a number of different ways that you can brand your company on Facebook. If you already have your logo, you probably can’t go back and have it changed. If you don’t have a logo, you want to bring brand awareness with your logo. Your logo should be unique and remembered. Branding is always important. More then likely, you already have a website. You want to bring your brand to Facebook. Familiarity is important in branding. It doesn’t do your brand any good if your website looks completely different then your Facebook page. Remember to take elements of your website and brand to build into your Facebook page.

You can use your tabs on Facebook to promote your products and services. This is a great area for short videos promoting your business. If you have a new product or service, be sure to at it to your tabs. Having familiar logos and themes will help your audience remember your brand easier.

Have A Purpose And Goal

You should set purposes, goals and milestones for your Facebook page. You can have fun with your Facebook page but you need to remember the goals of your page. More then likely, it is brand awareness, networking or selling products and services. What is the purpose of your Facebook page? What is the mission or goals? What can fans expect by becoming a fan of your business?

Tracking the success of your Facebook marketing techniques is the most important element of Facebook marketing. You have to monitor what works and what doesn’t. See which types of post get the most views or get the highest conversions. All of these Facebook marketing techniques can be done for free, we haven’t even discussed paid advertising on Facebook. You have to have a record of what works and what doesn’t. If you don’t, how can you improve? Always track your marketing efforts and the results so you have a roadmap for future marketing on Facebook.

Paid Facebook Advertising

Paid Facebook advertising can be extremely beneficial to your marketing efforts. This type of Facebook marketing does increase viral reach and organic reach but at a cost. Studies have shown that we see small click-through-rates with paid advertising on Facebook. Paid advertising on Facebook will increase impressions and exposure but less people click on the ads.

Negative feedback increases with paid ads. We all know that negative feedback can hurt business too. The only exception we see is paid links. If you’re looking for brand awareness, paid Facebook ads would be the way to go. If you’re looking for CTR, you need to consider which type of ads to use. According to Salesforce, sponsored check-in stories have the highest CTR at 3.2 percent.

What about hashtags? Many experts believe that hashtags don’t work and there is evidence of this fact being true. However, we believe it depends on a number of elements, including keywords chosen, post type and niche sector. My advice, trial and error. I’ve seen hashtags bring in a big audience and I’ve seen post with no hashtags do the same.

Just like with any type of marketing technique, what works for one may not work for another. Keep records of this, I mentioned this earlier. Try different Facebook marketing techniques and see which work best, which don’t and make the appropriate changes.

Pinterest, Social Media Marketing |

June 3, 2014

| by richardhale

Social Media Marketing-SMM Tips For Pinterest

From Facebook to social media marketing on Twitter, there’s a variety of major players in the social media race. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr and Google+ are all social media giants. Then there is Pinterest. Equally impressive with features to boots, Pinterest could very well take over the number two spot from Twitter. In fact, it is possible that they can close in on Facebook. Not anytime soon but Pinterest shouldn’t be left out of your social media marketing campaign.

Marketing On Pinterest

As more and more people flock to mobile and apps, Pinterest is the perfect playground to promote your business on. More established then Instagram and with a higher user age, Pinterest is the number one platform for social media marketing on mobile. The key is optimizing your Pinterest account for your business or for yourself if you fly solo. In this article, we’ll teach you some great tips to optimize your Pinterest account and help you become an authority on the Pinterest platform.

Getting Started On Pinterest

More then likely, most of you already have a Pinterest account. Some of you may not. Either way, before you even start, you need to make sure you use your business name rather then a personal name. Pinterest even has an option for businesses to sign up for an account. If you have a personal name, you can always create a business account. I would still use my personal account because you don’t want to lose any ground, time and effort already put in. Nothing wrong with having two accounts. It doesn’t matter if you have a new business or an established business, you need to make sure you use your business name. In the end, you want people to know your brand. Very important.

Pinterest has an unique platform unmatched by any other major social media platform. When you first set up your channel, you can post your URL dead top center. This gives you link value and potential clients or customers a route to your website. You want to make sure your description is detailed as possible. Be sure to include your keywords in this description and give the effort to write a few hundred words. Remember, you want to make sure your Pinterest account is as optimized as it can be.

Optimizing Pinterest Boards

Pinterest boards are just like categories and titles, each one plays an important aspect of your ranking. Just like you would want to optimize your categories and titles on your website, you want to do the same with your Pinterest boards. Each board has a title and description. Again, you want to include your keywords in the titles and descriptions. Be detailed as possible and keep everything related.

The more Pinterest boards that you can optimize, the better off you’re going to be. A lot of people fail to write detailed descriptions and this is a common reason why they fail. You have to be real careful when your on your website and pinning back to Pinterest. Descriptions are one of the most important elements into optimizing your Pinterest accounts. Take the time again to write a detailed description.

Using HashTags

Just like Facebook, Google+, Twitter and other social media platforms, Pinterest has their own site search engine. Hashtags play an important role to your Pinterest boards being found. Using the right hashtags is crucial. Although there is no area dedicated to hastags, you can add them within your description. Not to say you get better results nor have I tested it but we suggest that you put your hashtags at the end of your description. It looks much better at the end, in fact, be sure to leave at least one open line space before you place your hashtags.

Relative hashtags are important, don’t go through all your boards using the same hashtags for different topics. Your hashtags will depend on your topic. It should relate to your title and description, very important. Try to keep your hashtags around 3-4 per description.

Add To Your Boards

Put the time and effort in to add multiple pins to your boards. Although there is a benefit to having thousands of boards, the inside details matter more. The more pins you can add to your single boards, the better they will perform. If you continue to be descriptive on titles and descriptions, adding more pins will fully optimize your board. Continue to keep your boards updated, even if it is just one or two pins a week.

Interacting On Pinterest

Just like on any other social media platform, interacting with others is important. Make sure you take the time to follow boards in your niche, comment on other boards and pay attention to your own boards. If someone comments on your boards, be sure to leave a simple thanks or answer to their comment. This interaction will help you build new relationships, friends and customers/clients.

Sharing is an important aspect on Pinterest, yes, just like other social media channels. Having your boards and pins shared increases exposure for yourself or business. Take the time to share other boards, it is possible that they will return the favor. If they don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised. However, as you continue to interact with other users, you’ll find more and more shares along the way. Take the time to follow boards and pins. Some may follow you back or follow a certain board. More then anything, interact with others and you’ll have a more rewarding experience on Pinterest.

Services

Training

Resources

About

Follow Us

Social Media Marketing Guide – Table Of Contents

(1) What Is Social Media Marketing?

(2) Social Media Marketing And Your Business

(3) Social Media Now And The Future

(4) Social Media Helps You Build Authentic Relationships

(5) Using Social Media To Start Your Brand

(6) Social Media Integration

(7) The Value Of Social Media

(8) Building Engagement, Interaction And Comments

(9) Start Engaging Your Audience

(10) Customer Service And Social Media

(11) Empower Your Social Media Marketing Team

(12) Learn What Your Audience Wants And Needs

(13) What Type Of Social Media Content Do I Need

(14) Setting Goals For Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns

(15) Which Social Media Platforms Should I Invest In

(15) Top 7 Social Media Websites June 2022

(16) Human Resources And Social Media

(17) Social Media Content And Sharing

(18) Social Sharing Platforms To Jump Start Your Social Media Sharing

(19) Connecting With Others In Your Industry

(20) Social Media Keywords And #Hashtags

(21) Consistent Branding And How Your Business Is Portrayed

(22) Earning Trust Through Social Media

(23) Data And Analytics On Social Media

(24) Social Media ROI

(25) Social Media And SEO Often Work As One

(26) Learn, Adapt And Be Patient To Grow Your Social Media Channels

How are Your Facebook Page’s Posts Ranked?

Does EdgeRank Still Matter?

5 Tips for Promoting Your Web Development Facebook Page

1. Use Eye-Catching Images and Videos in Your Posts

2. Target Your Posts on Your Web Development Company’s Facebook Page

3. Combine Text with Images Properly

4. Request Feedback from Your Audience

5. Sponsor “Fill in the Blank” or “Help Us Name It” Contests

Get Your Customers To Share Positive Experiences

Connect With Your Customers And Solve Problems

Find Creative Ways To Share The Story Of Your Company

Direct The Conversation And Monitor Your Presence

Give Employees A Way To Share Content

Remember How Powerful Social Media Is

The Beauty Of Your Photos Matters

Front Facing Cameras Don’t Work For Instagram

Exposures Should Be Manually Set

Break Out Your Accessories As Night Falls

Natural Light Sources

Using Other Types Of Cameras

Carry Extra Battery

Figures Matter

Explore The World

Collaborate With Others

Remain Genuine

SEO, Social Media Influence And How It All Works

Facebook Is The Top Social Media Signal

Social Media Influence Heavily Among Top Ranking Factors

Why Trust Is Important To Google

Google Favors Social Media As A Ranking System

The Keys To Success On Social Media

Social Media Influence And Signals Matter

SEO Is Only One Piece Of The Puzzle

Don’t Forget Your Social Media Tools

SEO And SMM Benefits

Establish Your Social Platforms

Be Active On Your Social Channels

Popular Social Post

Use Your Targeted Keywords In Social Content

Organic Traffic VS Paid Traffic

SEO Is More Then Just Ranking Keywords

Marketing Defined

Marketing Types

Marketing Your Start-Up Business Pre-Launch

Marketing Techniques After You Launch Your Business

Marketing Tips For Start-Ups Promoting Locally

Marketing Is Crucial To EVERY BUSINESS

Connecting And Interaction With Your Fans

Engage With Your Audience

New Daily Content

Encourage Conversation And Engagement

Smart Branding