Customer service on social media is a tricky business. You must think carefully about how you respond to messages, regardless of their content. Each organization will have its own idea of how to answer the questions of current and prospective customers.
Many people will simply have a question about your products or services. Others will mention your organization in passing during conversations with friends or family members. If you notice a message that contains an inquiry, you can offer to reach out and help. People will love this proactive approach – and it will provide a boost to your online reputation. Some organizations reply to all messages, while others don’t. What happens regularly is that organizations don’t react to Facebook status updates or Tweets that mention their names but not their Twitter handle.
How to Recognize Customer Feedback
If users choose to compliment your organization, it’s recommended that you thank them publicly or click “Favorite” on their message. If users instead choose to mock or insult your organization, don’t incite an argument by posting a reply. Ignore these messages and, if necessary, address them offline. People are free to divulge their opinion or critique your products or services, but don’t let the situation escalate further.
Businesses can understand and influence the conversation as never before, while listening to what their consumers are saying. Social media has affected the role of the public relations professional remarkably. The job has become more demanding as these front-line practitioners must think quickly on their feet.
How to Monitor Social-Media Conversations
Given the arrival of Facebook, Twitter and other up-to-the-minute social-media sites, businesses must respond quickly when a crisis occurs. It’s an intelligent tactic to monitor conversations focused on your industry competitors. In this action, you’ll learn what their strengths and weakness are – which gives you the opportunity to capitalize on their shortcomings. You can use all your newfound information to improve the experience of your own customers. Small business owners have the ability to communicate in an instant and establish a rapport with customers.
Keep tabs on the online mentions of your business and its products and services.
Social-media channels are available at all times. Most small businesses focus on peak usage times – but customers are accessing these networks at their convenience. It may be hard to devote time to this habit, but many small business owners are managing just fine. According to a recent MarketMeSuite infographic, 26 percent of small businesses devote an hour or more to these social-media channels each day. Although some of these small businesses are Web-only entities, these numbers indicate the importance of taking stock of your online reputation.
How to Turn Readers into Customers
One last note: You should not try to fabricate your positive reviews. The best strategy is to create articles, blogs, infographics, videos and other forms of content that will accentuate the best aspects of your business and assist your audience in some way. Google is getting smarter about understanding web content, and will display videos and images right alongside text content. Social-media fans and followers like to think of themselves as creative, so giving them the opportunity to share their artistic flair could result in a considerable amount of traffic. The more traffic that visits your site, the more sales that you’re likely to experience. You should also strive to interact with potential business partners and industry leaders who could prove to be major benefits for your business.
Small business owners are leaving sales on the table when they fail to their online presence. Don’t get left behind.
About the Author:
Blake Jonathan Boldt is a content strategist for Reputation Advocate. He provides writing, editing, social media and content strategy services for both domestic and international clients. His articles have been featured in numerous magazines, newspapers and digital media outlets.
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1/22/2014 | Continue Reading...
Pinterest has quickly emerged as one of the web’s most valuable content-marketing tools. Its visual nature and layout makes it easy for people to discover and share new content.
From the perspective of businesses, Pinterest presents itself as a showroom for displaying products and advertising space for content marketing campaigns. This content-oriented platform serves as an avenue for companies to generate brand awareness and to cultivatean online community.
Third-Party Endorsements
Pinterest gives brands a unique opportunity to encourage third-party endorsement through the “pin” and “repin” buttons. Just as you would hear one of your friends discussing a new product and become interested, seeing that another user pinned an item evokes an equivocal level of interest.
If a piece of content is repined multiple times, its exposure multiplies exponentially. With the value of pins and repins established, the challenge for marketers becomes creating content worth sharing.
Pinterest Content
Pinterest’s platform offers companies a medium for communicating their brand’s personality while also sharing products. You can think of each Pinboard as a facet of your brand identity. This means it is in your best interest to create boards to represent your brand’s products, style and voice.
Make sure your images are high quality photos with aesthetically appealing overlaid text or a comment explaining why the pin is important to a pinner. Check out Havahart’s Pinterest page for great examples of what your Pinterest board should look like.
NBA
One example of an organization that has managed to bring the diverse facets of its brand to Pinterest is the National Basketball Association. The NBA’s Pinterest features pins for everything and anything NBA, including product, a board for NBA championship images and a board for famous NBA quotes. Also, there is a board for NBA’s “NBA Cares” program, which is the organization’s initiative for social responsibility.
When you view this Pinterest page you instantly know what the NBA is and what it stands for. Across a fairly small number of Pinboards, this organization was able to tell its story and convey its brand while interacting with their fans
Peugeot
While utilizing pinboards in a traditional fashion is a great start, Pinterest’s platform leaves ample room for creativity in your branding. One example of the creative freedom that Pinterest affords content marketers is Peugeot’s Panama Puzzle campaign. By capitalizing on Pinterest’s grid layout, this French car company developed an ingenious contest as a part of its digital marketing efforts.
In this contest, each individual pin on Peugeot’s page servedas a section of a larger, incomplete image that represented a puzzle. With the missing piece located on the Peugeot Facebook page, users could track down the missing image, pin it and claim their reward. This puzzle concept led Pinterest users on a wild goose chase through Peugeot’s digital assets with ample content exposure along the way.
Prior to this campaign, Peugeot was a French car company with limited brand awareness. Following the contest, Peugeot had announced its brand with a fun, creative connotation.In terms of thinking outside of the box on Pinterest, this campaign is just about as good as it gets and left creative directors wishing they’d thought of it first.
Community Development
Once you’ve developed your own strategy for spreading the word about your brand on Pinterest, the work doesn’t stop. Having achieved some level of brand identity, a company needs to seize the opportunity to engage with its Pinterest following. This means responding to comments, repinning relevant content from other users and interacting with pinners through contest or other sentimental activities. These are the activities that continue to drive traffic to your own boards and encourage third-party endorsements.
While the key to sparking brand recognition on Pinterest is content, it is community management that keeps the flame burning. If Peugeot were to simply let the hype from their campaign dwindle, it would have been ineffective in the long run. Rather than allowing this to happen, the company kept the conversation going with its users and came up with other creative campaigns.
Developing a brand on Pinterest means creating a content-marketing plan that communicates key components. By leveraging Pinterest’s format and content sharing tools, you can develop a strategy for spreading your brand’s unique identity.
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12/18/2013 | Continue Reading...
Social media, in the present time is important! Important and life shaping relationships are build on these platforms and hence, for business brand, it has become more important now than ever before for the brands to optimize their social media efforts.
Although concentrating on the search engine optimization of your brand and perhaps investing in a fully scaled PPC services would offer remarkable returns to the business, but if your vision for your brand includes longevity, you would like to optimize your social media efforts as well, in order to maximize the chances of success.
Social media in its most basic form is the means for establishing a strong online community around your brand. And while there is a complete host of endeavors which a business house, entrepreneur or organization may undertake to optimize their social media presence, we shall here concentrate on the content. If you have always wondered the type of content that you should create or post on your social media profiles, we come with a few possible options readymade for you. With our expansive knowledge of the social media platform, we are hopeful that the following suggestions and principles of social media marketing would work for your brand too:
1. Create Content worth Sharing
Content is all about your distinctive playing with words and its related collaterals, and words have the power to either make or break someone. While churning up content for your social media, try and design a story – something which inspirers people, shared a chord with them, is something that they can relate to. Do not use social media platform as a monotonous robot, which only wishes to drive more traffic to their website or are there to share yet another discount scheme or special offer.
We are not asking you to turn overtly devotional, but the point is simple – while coming up with a piece of content, do ask yourself – is it worth for an online reader to share?
2. Concentrate on One Platform for Now
Optimize your endeavors for a particular platform, instead of creating a complex potpourri of different available networking sites. The point here is exclusivity. The reason why a particular customer or online user would subscribe to a particular channel of the online marketing mix is because of its exclusivity – the exclusive ounces of information shared via that particular platform.
Thus, understand your business and your customers well, and decide what works best for them – email marketing, Facebook or Twitter, or YouTube etc. and optimize your social media optimization for that particular platform. By the virtue of the viral nature of various social media platforms, the content will get shared everywhere else even before you could tell.
3. Everybody loves a good contest
The point is simple, allow users to showcase their talent on your social media platforms, or ask them to participate in any which way possible. If you are an ecommerce store, ask for your trusted online followers to post a picture of themselves posing with a product that they brought from there store – offer free goodies or gift vouchers to one that comes up with the most beautiful or maximum number of pictures. Or, run a photography contest; ask them to upload a picture on a particular theme suiting the niche of your business operations and offer handsome prizes to the winners. This is a good way to get the activity rolling on your social media pages.
4. Share Your Stories
If someone is following you on the social circles, and that too for a considerable amount of time, you can be rest assured that they are really interested to know more about your business, its various initiatives and its personality as a thriving entity. Hence, mingle! Share with them the stores, the struggle it took you to be where you are today, your experiences, what drives you, and get chatty! Ask them about their feedback, views, or in any way to supplement to the discussion. Share your pictures while you are headed to a conference in a foreign locale, or when you are partying on the occasion of your company having completed 2 years, etc.
Be more than a trade and commerce entity, express your personality, be a human that they can connect with, not just a good business deal or a trading opportunity.
5. Let Your Followers Shine on Your Page
Often we grow older but never grow over the fact that we would like an audience to our lives; and if not a full-fledged audience then at least someone to notice us in some way. You have the opportunity to provide your readers with that stage subtly lit up with the lime light, and allow them to actually shine. All you have to do is to acknowledge. Run a ‘Member of Month’ contest on your Facebook, wherein the one with the maximum and the most meaningful activity on your page would be acknowledged at the end of the month – with perhaps a public acknowledgment on your page and a special goodie bag for the same. You can also create ‘Hero of the Month’ wherein you would share about a customer or an employee or any contact whatsoever, who was your hero – and why?
Summary
Each brand has its own story, its own uniqueness. We hope that the above mentioned suggestions work for your business brand, and if you would be so kind enough, we would like to know your story. How you turned social media in your favor, and what kind of content would you usually share? Share with us your thoughts and opinions about the same in the comments section below.
About the Author:
Arbaz Khan heads Tech Plus Reviews and SEO service delhi company and has a special skill for providing the most competitive SMO Services Delhi. Get in touch with Arbaz to discuss any of your online marketing campaigns.
Posted by Ravi Kolhe |
12/16/2013 | Continue Reading...
Facebook is a powerful marketing tool. With over one billion users, you can only imagine the reach this social networking site has.
But, it is not enough that you have an account here. You also need to know what works and what doesn’t for you. Here are few ways how you can boost your Facebook marketing.
Employ knowledgeable social media managers.
Inviting managers to your Facebook page is easy.
You can do it by indicating the manager’s personal Facebook page or sending them, an invite. Either way, it is best that they know what they are aware of their specific roles so they know which area to focus on. Make it clear who’s doing which.
Think carefully as well about the number of managers you are employing. You will not need ten people when two can manage the workload well.
Employing knowledgeable community managers allows you for more productive brainstorming sessions. These people know what they do and are talking about so you can be sure your page is in good hands.
Target posts.
Who do you want to share that information with?
One reason why Facebook users hide posts on their timeline is irrelevance. They do not need the product or the services so they do not want their friends think they are associated with it.
Make your posts work for you and share it only with those people you believe do care. You can always filter your audience before hitting the publish button.
This option is even more beneficial when you have audiences from varying countries. Say, you only want the post seen by a particular community. Then targeting posts is the solution.
Hit the right timing.
Study the best times to post so you can earn more views, shares and likes.
You want your posts, after all, reach as many people as possible. Note, however, that just because that certain day and time is apparently when the most activities happen on Facebook, does not mean that same schedule will work for you.
Conduct experiments by monitoring your posts and comparing feedback from the audience. This process, by the way, requires committed and passionate community managers.
Organize and pin posts.
I thought of using this Facebook feature too many times, particularly when looking for friends who can possibly help me with the research as I write my papers.
Before, (well, if you're like me) we tend to repost repost an announcement over again so it does not get buried deep on our timeline.
Nowadays, you can easily prioritize a post and make sure it stays on top of your timeline simply by clicking ‘pin on top.’ Yes, all it takes is one option from the dropdown box.
You need not worry about an ongoing contest you organized from being thrown into oblivion as you regularly update your page. You can make sure that your followers see this first on your Facebook by pinning it.
Optimise your account.
Your Facebook account could also use search engine optimization.
Your main website, for one, isn’t the only page, linked to your organization that show up in search engines. Even your Facebook account do, too.
Add keywords to your posts, and to their links before publishing. Share links to your page through the About Me or Website tab. Think of as many pages on your site that you can share, from contacts to products tabs. It also helps that you add keywords on captions of photos you post.
And since we have mentioned about hosting promotions or contests earlier, see to it that you indicate your main page as landing page when creating announcements. This is to ensure that your followers still find valuable information even after the campaign has already ended.
About the Author:
Nettie Gray isn’t the one to regularly post on Facebook about her personal life. She enjoys experimenting with it for marketing purposes.
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9/30/2013 | Continue Reading...
As most webmasters begin to build their business’ presence on social media pages like facebook, they often have one simple goal: to drive people to their website. While this is the undisputed goal of almost any online marketing effort, it doesn’t mean you can’t also consider SEO when working the benefits of things like social media. Every time you make a choice in your facebook page to promote something, or drive traffic – you’re engaging in SEO; whether you realize it or not. Let’s take a look at some of the basic ways you can get some SEO leverage out of your social media, even if it’s not your main goal with the channel.
How are SEO and Social Media Connected
Any time you create a post on facebook that promotes your products, services, or any part of your website – you’re creating a call to action. This call to action can be as simple as “visit this page”, or as complex as “read this whitepaper”. Either way, the end gratification of the user is going to determine how much they share your content. While this sharing will often happen on social media pages, it will also happen organically online in the form of links. As we know, links are major SEO currency – and you want them! Therefore, if you are trying to move the natural ranking of a product page; you might as well promote it in facebook. If it’s a product that will make you money anyhow, and will convert well there – go ahead and get some potential SEO value form the action as well. Why not take the opportunity to promote a page your trying to grow ranking for, rather than an equivalent page that would also convert well?
How to get started
Just as you might create an SEO strategy plan with incremental page launches, and devoted timelines; so should you adapt this to social media. Architect your posts for engagement, and revenue – then schedule those based on the landing pages and keyword terms you want to move across the same time period. For example, if you’re an online printing company, and you’ve already decided to create 25 facebook posts this month about your top products; you should align at least 15 of those as emerging products you’d like to rank for, like Clear Plastic Business Cards. If the image is extremely engaging, and the post ends up getting say 25 – 30 shares, it’s likely that the page will also get at least 2 or 3 natural links as well! This is the kind of natural growth that google wants to see, and social media is exactly how you can get those links going.
Respect the Medium
The main thing you have to be careful of when creating SEO opportunities in social media is to respect the medium itself. If you forget the flow of engagement that you’ve designed for your facebook page, simply bombing it with all of your newest SEO landing pages – you’re going to lose followers pretty quickly; and then you’ve lost all the value of your social media efforts. Social media is all about keeping the fish on the hook. A large portion of your posts should be simple fun junk; just because this is what people expect. Only every third post should be about your company or product anyhow. Follow this formula, and you’ll be able to create as much SEO value as you want.
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6/20/2013 | Continue Reading...
This little title could mean a lot of things, so let us clarify it. You have just typed a comment onto a blog comment section, or onto Twitter, or Facebook, or whatever website you happen to be on (e.g. Knickers Sniffers dot com). You would like your comment to be shared amongst your online community.
This is possible in many cases, via whatever means that happens to be on the site. For example, on Twitter someone could re-tweet you, or on a blog comment section someone may hit a share button. This is a type of “share click” and many people feel that they are important.
Some feel that they are important because they want to get a certain message “out there” and others feel that they deserve to be heard. Others want their comment to go viral, and others want their comment and link to be spread around for a possible search engine optimization benefit. Whatever your reasons are for wanting a social media share click, here are seven tips to help you get them.
1 - Be funnier than a kitten with treacle stuck to its paw
A funny comment is always shared by someone. This is especially true if the comment is attached to someone else’s picture. Someone will post a picture, and every now and again you get a comment that is funny or clever and that needs sharing.
Facebook (of all places) is great for this sort of thing. You will see a big emotional speech on an image file, about something serious and heart wrenching, which usually ends with something such as “how could you?” And every now and again you will see a funny comment underneath that says something as profound as “F**k you.” Or the more funny and abusive ones that come attached to those serious-message images, which have comments such as “I hate your face so you are wrong.” These comments are shared so much that they are even written about by authors of articles (hmmm).
2 - Make variety a cornerstone of your commenting practice
Boredom is never shared, but variety and surprise is. There is a part of the human brain that releases chemicals every time it sees/hears/reads something different. It is a process that allows our brains to run on autopilot. It means that we can see the same things every day without having to re-learn or re-pay-attention-to it every day. These chemicals make us sit up and take note, which may be why some people find profound or traumatic moments hard to forget.
If your comment allows a person to stay in auto-pilot mode, then where is the incentive (reason) to share it? If your comments have a bit of variety, then you stand a better chance of knocking them out of auto-pilot mode, and at that point there is a chance that they will decide to share your comment.
3 - Make your comment conversational so that people want to share it
This is a tricky one to get, in-fact it is the trickiest tip on this entire article. You have to consider the tone of your message. Many comments can be read with an almost robotic tone, and even if the comment is profound, it still seems artificial. When you create a conversational tone, you are actually encouraging people to quote you, whereupon it is easier to just share your comment.
It is a little bit like saying, “hey, this guy said” when you share a conversational comment. If you need a little help, then try writing your comment, but in your head you should have the voice of Jerry Springer when he does his final thought on his TV talk show. Have that voice in your head as you write, and if you struggle to read back what you said with his “final thought” voice in your head, then your tone is not conversational.
As a side note: yes, the people on Jerry Springer are paid actors. There is literally nobody who is dumb enough to go on that show and expect to receive news that their spouse has been faithful. In all cases, divorce proceedings would be filed the second that a person received a request to go on the show.
4 - Optimize your comments to demand attention from certain people
“Abortion is the work of evil,” and “Science is just a way of controlling us.” There are comments that are going to elicit a very strong emotional response from some people, and they will either share your comment or fight against it. There are some people out there who are really dumb enough to believe that abortion is evil, and so they are going to share your comment.
Three are people out there who think that science is an entity as oppose to a practice/process, and so will share any negative comments about it. If you aim your comment so that it demands attention from people, then they will share it as a result (because it caught their attention).
5 - Be present on the platform that you comment on
This means you are present to return any comments that are made about your comment. People are more likely to share the comment of an active contributor. They are more likely to share a comment that may be amended or added to in the near future. They may share a comment that is created by an active member because they know that it will bring more people into the conversation. Certain online “gurus” rely on this sort of behavior in order to get them more followers.
6 - Ask people to share your comment
What is wrong with simply asking people to share your comment? There is a chance that people will do it for the simple reason that you asked. Others will do it because they share your opinion and want others to know it.
7 - Give your opinion and do not sit on the fence
A person who argues for something may often feel alone and attacked. They may not have many people who share their belief. He/she will like the fact that you agree with him/her and so will want to share your comment because it validates their own feelings on the subject.
About the Author:
My name is Sonia Jackson. I write for the Australian web-site http://www.essay-bag.com that provides well-written and quality essays and research papers for college and university students.
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6/17/2013 | Continue Reading...
There’s nothing wrong owning a Facebook account. The way you use it is however another story. Anything you post reflects your character. So be careful what you share as it might backfire on you.
You do not want careless posts after all ruin things you value the most, your professional career for one.
Look into these things that are likely to send negative message to employers, and which are best kept to yourself.
Say you’re bored.
Even if you feel you've lost the spark toward that job you used to love doing, do not confess publicly.
You have your closest friends. You can talk to them about matters like these. This is just downright foul if you are also friends with your office mates, bosses most especially.
Professionals handle situations like this differently. Instead of letting it out publicly, they would talk privately to people concerned so they can reach a resolution that is favorable to everyone.
Criticize higher ops.
Everyone commits mistakes. So do not be too critical about other’s shortcomings.
If someone among the bosses annoys you, think that talking about it (even when you do it anonymously) would not help calm your senses. You might only regret what you said later especially when everyone knows who you are referring to.
If you have sentiments to raise, talk to your immediate supervisor so your concerns can be escalated the proper way. Do not take it to social networking accounts to let the person know that you are not in favor of their actions. Your can raise eyebrows, too.
Blogging about internal issues in the workplace.
Here’s one that will not only destroy your reputation, but your work colleagues’ confidence and trust in you as well.
Talking about matters that should be left only within the office premises is uncalled for, no doubt.
This is the reason why confidentiality is strictly imposed at work. Remember when you disclose classified information, you are not really throwing tirades against your company. You are only pulling your manners down.
Involving in a public fight.
You are an adult. You are a professional. You should act one.
There is no reason you should put up a public fight against that woman who stole your bestfriend’s boyfriend, or against anyone for that matter.
Arguments are never settled by verbally attacking the other camp. This is more so unbecoming if the person you are talking about is among your office mates.
Badmouthing clients.
Even when the client is testing your patience to the hilt, still do not resort to Facebook to venting your frustrations.
Your clients are private individuals. And at the end of the day, they are among the company’s biggest assets. There is no question you can lose your job if you happen to go against one of the top clients.
And again, think of the impact of your actions first. It is easy composing messages when you are angry. Repairing the damage it has done is the hard part.
About the Author:
Nettie Gray distances herself from social networking accounts when she’s upset or anxious about someone. This is her way of keeping herself from publishing unnecessary posts out of intense emotions, She chooses to write essay instead.
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5/30/2013 | Continue Reading...
