An important part of internet marketing is consistently communicating with a client’s target market.  At Single Throw, we understand the significance of a blog as well as social networking.  A blog needs to engage its readers and be search engine friendly as well, just like the clients actual site.  These tips below can definitely make creating a blog run more effectively.

Source: Mashable

Lots of companies benefit from having a blog. For some, it’s a friendly, accessible way to say hi to devoted fans, curious onlookers and likely a few haters and skeptics. For others, it’s simply the way they communicate important messages. The role of public relations professionals in this chatty puzzle is to help companies build, shape and fine-tune their public voice. In fact, many PR campaigns aren’t complete without a blog strategy. But building a client blog from the ground up can be daunting. So where do you begin?

Start, With Help

When it comes to picking out a blog platform, there are certainly plenty to choose from, but Jeff Davis, who runs the content services team at San Francisco-based PR firm LaunchSquad, generally points clients towards WordPress, a mostly-free, open-source platform. Davis also makes another point: When you’re just starting out, don’t go DIY. “If you’re building something strategic for a client, even if it’s small scale, hire a WordPress developer to handle set up, find the right plugins and design a nice UI. It can be fairly inexpensive and is critical to building a blog that will work the way you need it to quickly and effectively.”

With a bit of help, WordPress’ initial set up process is simple and fast, and yet it offers a huge range of customization and configuration options. And with thousands of plugins, there is one that will satisfy any need that you can think of, often for free. For those who are coordinating blogs for multiple clients, WordPress also offers admin features for easy management across the board.

Optimize, But Not Too Much

According to Rich Brooks, President and “Chief Blogging Officer” at Flyte New Media, your SEO practices should have a very simple goal: rank high in search results for the things that your client’s customers are looking for. He recommends starting with a keyword analysis service like Raventools, WordTracker or Google Adwords’ keyword tool.

You want to pick one keyword topic per post, mentioning it once in the post title and once in the body of the post. Be sure to link important words to past posts as well, but keep it to one or two internal links at most. Beyond that, make sure you’ve got the WordPress SEO plugin installed and place the rest of your focus on working with your client to create engaging content.

Make It Worth Sharing

The company and product news that grace the vast majority of corporate blogs can certainly be both useful and good, but it’s just a tiny snippet of what is possible and inspiring. Arik Hanson, principal at ACH Communications, recommends considering content that is less about your client’s product, and more about the “culture that surrounds” your client’s product.

For the full article & more tips, click here.

Many companies understand the importance of its brand image, especially online; and more companies are turning towards online reputation management services to assist in how the brand is perceived online.  Negative comments tend to be posted more frequently, than positive ones; and Single Throw Internet Marketing is here to help a company RECOVER™ from such statement.  Enjoy this great article from Amsterdam Printing and how reputation management is a key tool in social media.

Source: AmsterdamPrinting

Small business marketing and advertising is constantly monitored and measured to determine its return-on-investment. Are marketers seeing a significant number of new customers or increased purchases to continue running a campaign?

However, social media is different and, as a result, much harder to quantify. How much is a “like” on Facebook worth, or a post on LinkedIn? Instead, social media marketing must use a different set of metrics, including reach, branding, actions, costs and reputation issues avoided, ClickZ explains.

“Establish goals for your social media marketing and related metrics that can effectively track your progress and allow you to tweak your social media campaign to improve its effectiveness,” the site noted.

Of the mentioned metrics, reputation issues avoided may be one of the most critical. As social media gives a voice to anyone at any time, the potential for an unhappy customer to make a small issue into a public one is quite large.

Small businesses looking to manage their reputation via social media should consider how large financial institutions are using the channel. Citibank, for example, has a specialized Twitter feed to answer customer questions and concerns.

For the full article, click here.

At Single Throw, we understand the importance of social media and how it effects businesses.  This article from Entrepreneur has outlined six key points as to why social media marketing is a must for any business.  Single Throw thrives on researching and developing new ways to reach the target market of its clients with social media marketing.

Source: Entrepreneur

If you’re not only the CEO, but also the CMO you may be wondering if all of your social media efforts are panning out. According to a new report, you’re not alone.

While 90 percent of marketers now say that social media-related marketing is important for their business, nearly 25 percent are still in the dark when it comes to measuring its effect, according to the third annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Michael A. Stelzner, founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Although it’s hard to justify plowing resources into something that you’re not sure is working, marketers overall have deemed social media a must. Here are six of the key takeaways from the more than 3,300 marketers from businesses of all sizes who participated in the survey:

1. Social media takes time.

Fifty-eight percent of marketers said they use social media six hours or more a week and another third spend 11 or more hours a week on it. Those with the most years of experience pour more than 20 hours a week into the effort.

2. Have a goal in mind.

Eighty-eight percent of marketers said social media was ideal for generating exposure for their business, while 72 percent claim it has helped increase traffic or subscribers. Sixty two percent of marketers added that social media improves their business’ search rankings. Other benefits of social media marketing include creating new business partnerships, generating qualified leads, reducing marketing expenses and improving sales.

3. Social media isn’t just useful for reaching consumers.

Business to consumer, or B2C, marketers continue to place a high value on social media, with 90 percent saying it is most important for their business. But business to business, or B2B, companies have joined the fray — with more than half saying they’ve been engaged in social media longer than a year. That’s compared to 31 percent in last year’s report.

4. Pick your medium.

Not every social media site will help you accomplish your goals; it’s best to pick according to the sites that your customers use. But if you want to build a presence in front of the most eyeballs, Facebook edged out Twitter for the top spot — a change over last year. With 92 percent of marketers saying they use the tool and 75 percent planning to use it, Facebook once again reigns supreme. Still, 77 percent of respondents say they intend to increase their YouTube and video marketing efforts — making it the top vehicle that marketers want to invest in for 2011.

5. Wade in to new(er) sites.

Less than one third of marketers say they’ll hike their participation in geolocation services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. And a paltry 19 percent of marketers plan to step up their use of Groupon or similar group-shopping sites.

6. Consider getting help.

Twenty-eight percent of businesses plan to outsource part of their social media marketing efforts in 2011. That number has doubled since last year’s report when 14 percent said they outsourced such tasks as design and development, content creation and analytics to others outside the company.

For the full article, click here.

Customer service month gains significance with image-minded companies.

As social media continues to grow rapidly, word-of-mouth becomes prominent and customer service is always a number one priority.  Single Throw understands the importance of customer service, especially when a brand is online and needs to maintain its reputation on social networking sites. This article, by Read Media, discusses the underlining importance of customer service, brand image, and social networking.

Source: ReadMedia

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA (04/06/2011)– April is customer service month, a time to celebrate the myriad ways companies can delight their customers. Today’s customer may be reached through multiple channels, both online and off; in turn, there may be the expectation on the part of the customer that the brand is similarly accessible, even responsive thanks to social media.

It is with the proliferation of public online platforms and an increasingly socialized culture that new opportunities and responsibilities emerge in the area of customer satisfaction. Gone are the days in which a company simply maintained a customer call center or monitored a generic email box for customer queries and complaints, keeping any displeasure within the walls of the organization. The always-on, ever-reaching web introduced us to new ways of sharing brand experiences, and to the chagrin of many brands, both positive and negative sentiment can be seen and absorbed in real time by anyone with a smart phone or broadband connection.

Platforms like Twitter, user forums, blogs, and others have shifted the power from brands to customers eager to share their delight and disappointment. Research suggests that while trust in brands has eroded, trust in peers, endorsements, and confidence in rating & review systems has strengthened.

Insights & Ingenuity Principal Heather Rast has written an opinion paper that provides perspective on the topic of customer satisfaction and its impact on brand image in the age of social media enablement. Titled “The Rant Heard ’round the World,” the high-level view explores how a new complaint aggregator service may influence the way companies structure customer service frameworks and the manner in which social media impacts service delivery and customer loyalty programs. Brand image can strengthen or deteriorate in accordance with the attitudes and behaviors demonstrated by customer service personnel; leadership teams will be well by learning more about the intersection of satisfaction, social media, and brand image.

For the full article, click here.