How to Make Social Media Marketing part of your overall Marketing Plan

Social Media Marketing Equation

“Retweeting”, “liking”, and “blogging” may sound like many of the unintelligible words that come out of your teenager’s mouth. However this new jargon is representative of the way the world of marketing is headed. Online marketing isn’t just about banner ads and e-mail campaigns anymore. The world of the web is becoming more social. Building a strong presence with social media is now more important than ever. However, social media is relatively new; in fact only 11% of businesses have been practicing social media marketing (SMM) for more than 3 years[i]. If you’re not sure how to use social media for your business, you’re not alone. It can be difficult to define the role of SMM in your company’s marketing plan. (more…)

10 Content Ideas That Generate Engagement on Social Media

Generate Engagement

The livelihood of your Facebook post or tweet depends on how people engage with your content. Is your post ignored by numerous followers, or are people actually liking your posts, commenting, +1-ing, retweeting or sharing it.

This post shows you 10  simple ways to generate engagement with your audience on Social Media. Remember though, not all engagement is created equal. So to get the results you want, have your content be related to the results you want to get. If you want more likes, make sure you’re posting content that people will like. If you want to generate more comments and conversation, make sure that your content is stimulating enough that it creates engaging conversations between your brand and your followers.

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Why CEOs use Twitter for Business and how you can get started

When people think about using social media for their business, they immediately think about Facebook. Well, Facebook isn’t the only social media tool around. Working with social media on a daily basis, I come across this day in and day out. People want to know how to create a Facebook Page, How can their business benefit from it?, How long does it take to start seeing results? …And the list continues. What most people don’t realize is that Facebook isn’t the be all in Social Media. In fact many more corporate CEO’s actively use their Twitter accounts more so then their Facebook ones. What business owners don’t get, is that Twitter is all about building relationships. Without a strong relationship with your customers, how do you expect to grow your business? (more…)

10 Cool Ways to Protect Your Brand Name Online

Since our society has grown so dependent upon the internet for marketing, networking and branding, it’s hard to imagine that the technology has only existed for about fifteen years. In such a short time, it’s become nearly impossible to manage your brand or protect it without some working knowledge of the internet. If you’re looking to keep your brand secure, here are ten tips that might smooth your path.

1. Keep It Distinctive – The best brand names are those that are unique and easy to remember. As you begin to build your brand’s reputation, you’ll have to live with the name you’ve chosen or forced to start from square one. Take your time choosing a brand name, and make sure it sticks in the minds of your customers. (more…)

Top 10 Best Social Media Blog Posts of 2011

Social Media Top 10 Posts

It’s the end of the year and I am very glad for the year we have had. We have made improvements to the website and our blog. Robert (Social Media Strategist) and Miguel (PHP Programmer) have joined the Branding Personality team, and our team has written about many social media topics.

Here is a recap of our blog based on the most popular posts this year:

#10: Social Media + Restaurants = Increased Foot Traffic
This post is geared to the Restaurants that want to benefit more from Social Media, but don’t know where to start. Most restaurants do ‘something’ with social media. But to our findings, most aren’t doing it consistent enough, frequent enough or interesting enough to profit from it. We plan on doing more outreach to restaurants specifically in 2012.

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What Channels Influence the Social Consumer?

I recently came across this interesting InfoGraph that discusses which online channels influence the Social Consumer. The InfoGraph is made up from the results of a survey administered to 1,500 participants about the products and services they have most recently searched online for and how they went about their search. What did they find? Well for starters, they found a correlation between certain products and services that you’re looking for and specific channels where the most influence on a purchase decision took place. Lets take a deeper look in this. (more…)

A Viral Social Media Christmas Story

A full year ago, we saw two similar videos that were created by two different marketing firms. The videos were launched about 12 days before Christmas and told the age-old story of the birth of baby Jesus or the nativity story as it’s commonly referred. Today, a full year since they were released, we decided to evaluate the viewership of each video and to some extent, get an idea on how successful each firm perceived their video to be for their business. Although both firms did the right thing (I’m assuming both firms wanted their video to “go viral”) by giving a popular, well-known story a new twist that resonates with a large target audience – the difference in viewership was roughly 9 million views if we’re just looking at how many views were on their own YouTube channels. (more…)

7 Must Do Tips to Increase Views On Your YouTube Videos

30% of videos on YouTube gets less than 100 views. To create a Massive Surge in Traffic to your video’s use these 7 steps to increase the number of views and make sure your viewers are coming back for more.

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How Small Businesses Are Falling Short On Their Online Presence

This info-graph paints a very clear picture as to how many small businesses are falling short, when it comes to building an online web presence for themselves. I break down the statistics of the three main sections, be sure to post your feedback in the comments section. (more…)

Social Media and Small Business Saturday

Millions of small businesses across the United States employ 99.7% of the currently employed population. This is because America has thrived on the success of small businesses from the very beginning. In an effort to stimulate local economies, American Express took to the airwaves using it’s social media to promote “shopping small” and buying locally on the 2^nd ever Small Business Saturday. As small shops across the country were filled with shoppers, many celebrities and top online influencers including President Obama took to the twitterverse to help support shopping locally. (more…)