Wednesday, August 22, 2012

5 Reasons a Social Media Marketing Agency Boosts Your Business

A social media marketing agency creates, builds and manages your social media marketing program for your business. Yes, when you outsource this aspect of your business to a social media marketing agency, it costs you money. The benefits you and your business receive in return, however, tend to more than pay for the cost of hiring the agency to start. Discover the top five reasons you should consider using a social media marketing agency for your business.

Frees Up Your Sell Time 

The biggest reason to work with an agency is that it frees up your time to do what you do best. Whatever type of business you are in, your role is not social media marketing professional. If you’re an owner, you probably wear enough hats as it is. When you turn the social media marketing aspect of your business over to professionals, you free up a major amount of your time to sell and promote your products and services in other ways, or to focus on completing activities that make your business money.

 Possess the Knowledge 

A social media marketing agency is full of knowledgeable professionals. All they do all day long is focus on social media marketing. These professionals already know what you need to do to use social media marketing for your business. If you decide to use social media marketing as part of your marketing plan and run the program yourself, you first have to take the time to gain the knowledge you need to do so. When you work with an agency, you can hit the ground running instead.

Tested, Tried and True 

Additionally, agency professionals already know what works and what doesn’t work in social media marketing. They have tested strategies. They have tried strategies. They know what strategies are tried and true and which ones are just a waste of time. They can also assess how to personalize and customize strategies to best fit your business.

Dedicated Services 

When you work with an agency, you also have a person or a team of professionals that are dedicated to the effort. This agency focuses solely on the social media marketing aspect of your business. They work in conjunction with your other marketing efforts so that all of your marketing components are in sync, but the professional that knows social media best is running the social media arm of the campaign. 

Stay Ahead of the Game 

Finally, a social media marketing agency stays ahead of the game. They are in the know when it comes to new trends or new avenues you can take your business with social media marketing. They can evaluate whether it is something that can advance your business or is something that you might want to hold off on doing for some time until they can figure out if it is a trend or a tried and true option.

A social media marketing agency creates, builds and manages your social media marketing program for your business so that you don’t have to. The money you pay to the agency is more than covered by the business that comes in from the efforts the social media marketing agency manages for your business.

Need a social media marketing agency to help you boost your business? Visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com for more information.

Monday, August 13, 2012

5 Social Media Marketing Strategies for Small Business

Social media marketing is a must for all businesses because it brings many benefits to businesses. Small business social media marketing needs some tweaking to the strategy so that small businesses can level the playing field and play in the same game as big businesses. Experts agree that these five small business strategies for social media marketing pass the test for efficiency and effectiveness.

Set up Google Alerts

 One of the biggest advantages of using social media marketing is that it allows you to monitor conversations about your business. Since you cannot be everywhere, all of the time, set up Google Alerts. Setting up Google Alerts is free.

You can choose the keywords you want to set up as alerts. You’ll want to choose your business name, your name, and names of your products or services. When any of these keywords are mentioned online, Google sends you an email with the page or site where the keyword is.

Not only does this allow you to monitor your own business, but it also permits you to monitor your competitors as well.

Use Video, Audio and Text

 When you are planning your social media marketing campaigns, think about the different formats you can use to spread your message. Blog posts are great. Updates on your social media profiles work. Consider using video and audio files, pictures, diagrams and other formats to get your point across.

Each of your consumers takes in information in different ways. Some are visual learners. Some are audio learners. Try to think of all the different ways to produce content so that you are able to approach all of these different learners appropriately for their learning style.

Make It Consistent

 With so many social media networks to choose from, it is best practice to have several different accounts. The key is to infuse some consistency into your social media accounts, profiles and user names. If you use the same business name, for example, for all of your social media profiles, then brand recognition increases, you have better search engines rankings and it’s easier for prospects and customers to find you and your business.

Put It on Autopilot

 Numerous social media tools are available to help you streamline the social media marketing process. Additionally, these tools allow you to put your social media marketing efforts on autopilot. Hootsuite and TweetDeck are but two of these types of tools. Find a tool that allows you to monitor, update and manage your numerous social media marketing efforts in one place.

Connect all Your Accounts

 Cross promote your social media marketing efforts by connecting all of your social media profiles to each other. Connect your Facebook account to your Twitter account. Connect your Twitter account to your Facebook account. Add both your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your LinkedIn account. This helps to cross-promote your social networks and make sure your message is consistent across all of your channels.

Not only does this ensure that your message is consistent. Connecting your social media accounts also helps to connect with your followers in more than one place. The more connected your followers are to your business, and vice versa, the more loyal they tend to be and the more likely they are to continue to do business with you.

You already know that social media marketing is a must for your business. Social media is a marketing channel you can use that brings numerous benefits to your business. When you are a small business owner, you can use social media steps and tweak them to the needs of a small business. These tweaks level the playing field and play in the same game as big businesses. Experts agree that these five small business strategies for social media marketing pass the test for efficiency and effectiveness, so start implementing them in your business today.

Now you know the top five social media marketing strategies for small business. For more information on social media marketing services, and the benefits they can bring your business, visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Social Media Consulting Services Give 5 Reasons Social Media Rocks

Social media consulting services have numerous professionals who focus on social media marketing. These social media consulting firms push out the information they find from their efforts to help their own clients, and prospects that can benefit from the information too. Some of the experts in social media marketing cite five top reasons that all types of businesses should be using social media marketing to their advantage: (1) It’s inexpensive (2) It’s always there (3) Opens a two-way street of communication (4) Boosts brand recognition and (5) Facilitates brand monitoring. 

Inexpensive
 
Probably one of the biggest reasons businesses should be using social media is the cost. Aside from the investment of time, social media is free to use. Maintaining social media marketing doesn’t costs a dime either. Even in instances where a business wants to pay for a special application to run its marketing campaign, the cost for these applications is much less expensive than traditional marketing methods.

In addition to having profiles on social media networks, blogging is another social media tool businesses find highly effective. Blogging allows the business professionals to share their expertise and build credibility with their audience. Again, aside from the time it takes to write the blog posts, answer questions and monitor comments, it’s free.

It’s Always There

The key to turning prospects into customers is the communication. The key to maintaining customers and making them repeat customers is communication. With social media marketing, businesses have the opportunity to be omnipresent. They have the opportunity to be in front of prospects and customers at all times.

Not only can visitors to your social media networks access existing information, but you have the opportunity to continuously add new information. One of the key marketing rules is that the more you can get in front of your prospects and customers with useful and relevant information, the better your odds are of converting them into repeat customers.

Opens a Two-way Street of Communication

Today’s consumers are savvier than ever before. They are no longer accepting whatever marketing information businesses push in their faces. Today’s consumers want to be the media. This means that they will listen to what you have to say, but they also have some things to say too. Additionally, they want to know what their peers, friends, and even complete strangers are saying about you, your business and your products and services.

Social media creates a two-way street of communication. You can share. Your customers can share. Your prospects can share.

Boosts Brand Recognition

Brand recognition is all about someone acknowledging it is your service, product or business when they see your logo, colors, fonts or other symbols that represent your business. Creating brand awareness is all about getting in front of the people that are most likely to do business with you. Boosting brand recognition becomes a simple task when you have social media tools that allow you to easily get in front of your audience time and time again.

Facilitates Brand Monitoring

You also want to know what consumers think of your brand, your business, your products and services. Social media allows you to monitor the conversations the others are having about all of these things. Monitoring social media networks permits you to make changes, correct problems, address issues or even continue to do what everyone thinks you’re doing a great job doing.

Now you know the top five ways that social media consulting services say that social media rocks for business. For more information on social media consulting services, and the benefits it can bring your business, visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Social Media Agency Gives Tips for Changing Social Media Game

When you work with a social media agency, you are working with professionals who provide advice on the most efficient and effective ways of using social media as part of your marketing strategy. Here are some social media agency tips on ways to ensure that your use of social media marketing provides you with the results you are seeking. Essentially, you want to create a social media campaign, set the campaign schedule and always provide exclusive content to your followers. 

Create a Campaign 

Your first step is to create a social media marketing campaign. When deciding what kind of campaign you are running, you first need to consider what you are doing in your other marketing avenues. Social media should be an additional tool you use in your marketing toolbox, rather than running social media campaigns that are completely separate from the rest of your strategy.

In other words, you want to run a social media campaign that is in line with the campaigns you are running through your other marketing channels. Keep in mind that running the same campaign via social media allows you to broaden your reach and use a different channel for disseminating your marketing message. 

Set and Stick to a Schedule 

Just like you plot out a calendar, schedule or timeline for your marketing campaigns in print, on your website or via the radio, you need to do the same with social media marketing. In fact, social media marketing even allows you to ramp up your schedule. Since social media marketing is free, you have the opportunity to use it on a higher frequency than paid avenues.

Create a schedule where you update your social media pages on a regular basis. Scheduling tools are even available so that you can plot out your social media updates for months at a time and set them on autopilot. In order to fully implement and test your social media marketing plan, make sure that you stick to your schedule, once you set it. 

Provide Exclusivity 

One of the biggest pieces of advice you can follow is to provide some sense of exclusivity via your social media marketing efforts. One of the biggest reasons followers on social media outlets say they follow a business, company or professional is to obtain exclusive deals, content, information sales, and more. Make sure your followers are receiving information before you send it out to the public.

Additionally, make sure these followers are receiving items that the public doesn’t ever have access to.
This might be in the form of:
  • Coupons
  • Private sales
  • Exclusive content
  • Special event invitations
  • Free products or service offerings
  • Bonus products or services
  • Access to information, products or services that are not publicly available
While a social media agency creates and manages your social media campaign for you, you can take their best advice in branching out on your own, too. As you plan marketing campaigns for your other marketing channels, you too have to plot and plan the campaigns you plan on rolling out via your social media networks.

As you are planning the campaign in general, you also want to set the updates and offers to a schedule. It should go without saying, but once you set the schedule, you also need to stick to that schedule. Sticking to the schedule is the only one to measure the effectiveness of the campaign and give followers what you promise them. Finally, when you make your followers feel special, they will remain loyal followers.
Need a social media agency to help you launch and maintain your social media campaign? Visit www.maximizesocialmedia.com without delay.