Facebook, being the most popular social networking site on the Internet, is great for staying in touch with friends and even making new ones. What some people don’t know is that Facebook can be great for business as well. Internet marketing becomes more popular daily as more companies, both big and small, have success with it. This Social Media Examiner article provides six habits that if done daily can greatly improve your chances for social media marketing success.

Source: Social Media Examiner

Facebook marketing, when done right, is an extremely powerful tool. It can increase your leads, attract highly targeted prospects and position you as a sought-after industry leader. To reap these business-building benefits, the key is to develop daily habits.

The following list of six daily habits will keep you focused on what really matters when it comes to Facebook marketing: real fan engagement.

#1: Become addicted to solving problems

When you regularly solve problems and answer questions for your fans, you not only foster trust, but you also set yourself up as the go-to expert in your niche.

A surefire way to create engagement on your Facebook page is to regularly offer your expertise and insight. One great example of a master problem-solver is Facebook expert Mari Smith. Mari encourages her fans to ask questions on her Facebook page. Because she is quick to respond with valuable responses, she’s turned many Facebook fans into loyal followers and customers.

But she doesn’t stop there. Mari takes her support a step further by providing a resource center directly on her Facebook page. She continually keeps this resource link up to date and full of valuable information. As you can see in the image below, Mari has set up multiple info tabs including Changes, How To and Rules & Safety, all related to Facebook marketing.

#2: Talk to individual fans daily

I make it a habit to comment on other people’s posts 3-5 times each day. I do this because these comments are the real conversations that build relationships.

Taking a minute to comment on a fan’s vacation photos or adding my two cents to a peer’s recently posted video is my way of letting my fans and peers know that I genuinely am interested in what they are talking about online.

To check out what your fans are posting on their own pages or profiles, first check out which fans are posting on your page. When fans post on your page, you can click on their avatars and you will be taken to either their pages or profiles, depending on how your fans have posted on your page. You can then post on their pages (or if you are also a friend via their profiles, you can post on their profiles as well).

Here are a few tips when commenting on fans’ posts:

• - Use first names. When your fans know you are paying attention to them, they are much more likely to speak up and tell you what’s on their mind. Knowing what your fans are thinking is invaluable!
• - Be yourself. Talk to others in the same style you would talk to a friend over dinner. Before you click send, read your post and make sure it really sounds like you.
• - Be brief. If your post is too long, it will be overlooked easily. To get more people reading your post, get to the point faster.

For the full article, click here.

To learn more about social media marketing solutions or other Internet marketing solutions, visit this Internet marketing company’s website or click here to contact us!

Social media is quickly changing the way that companies do business and interact with potential customers. Even though social media is a relatively new medium, lots of companies have developed very effective social media strategies to harness the power of the social web. For a company just implementing internet marketing knowing where to start can be daunting task. Start with the larget social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, before going to smaller niche sites. Below are some helpful pointers to help you hit the ground running.

Source: HubSpot

The 7 steps below work for internet marketing, ecommerce, B2B and even publishers. I’m also going to share some examples from each as well. However before we get to each of the steps, I’d like to make sure you can manage and impact your Facebook Fan conversion rate. I urge you add Google analytics to your Facebook page so that you can get better insights into who is visiting the page and how they are getting there.

1. Offer a Custom Welcome Page

Many of the most highly engaged Facebook fan pages have leveraged the ability to take non-fans to a custom welcome page instead of taking them directly to their wall. If you don’t know how to do that my friend Mari Smith can walk you through adding this custom landing tab to your Facebook fan page.

2. Remind Them Why

I am hoping you have built a customer experience that is truly remarkable much the way Zappos has. People really do love Zappos. Notice how they not only remind them of that on their welcome tab but how they also remind them that by Liking them on Facebook they get access to exclusive content. If you are truly a fan then you’ll really want access to something exclusive. Zappos also does another brilliant tactic by highlighting their Fan of the Week in their banner. People might kill for money but they’ll more likely die for recognition. So don’t forget to recognize your top fans.

3. Offer Them an Incentive

People may need a little more to get them to click the Like button than just being reminded how awesome you are. So once they see your custom landing tab, you’ll want to offer them a powerful reason to Like you. What I love about the way HubSpot does this is that the offer regularly changes and that they promote it through their various channels as a seamless experience. Who doesn’t like getting something of value just for clicking a button?

4. You Don’t Get What You Don’t Ask For

If you don’t ask them to take an action with a good call-to-action then your visitors won’t take that action. Notice how L’Occitane combines an offer to win a free trip to Provence on their custom landing tab with an arrow pointing to the Like button and asking you to Like them.

5. Make it Interactive

The biggest advantage a Facebook Fan page offers is the ability to interact with your customers - the opportunity to dialogue. Make sure to highlight this interactivity on the welcome tab. Notice how BMW shows a video that features two of their fans. I also like the design of their call-to-action. Another way you can make your page interactive is by adding a bit of personalization to your Facebook Fan page and adding your visitors name to the page.

6. Tease Them

Depending on your brand and on what you are offering on your Facebook fan page you may not want to open your kimono all at once. I have seen many pages like Red Bull use a graphic that teases their visitors to like them first before they engage with your content. A note of caution here: A. people must have some really strong reasons to like your brand in the first place B. the content you offer after the tease better not disappoint them.

7. Give Them All the Info

Ultimately, people like to connect to people and Smashing magazine does a great job highlighting the staff behind their fabulous publication. I highly suggest you have an additional tab to talk about the people behind your company and don’t forget to fill out all the information on your info tab (including several links) and on your about us section.

Source: HubSpot

This Internet Marketing Company values the importance of social media and the impact it has for sales.  Posting content that is valuable for readers is just the first step with social media.  It can then result into potential sales leads for the company and generate more business.  This article by Sbpost, discusses the importance of social networking as a part of Internet Marketing and sales.

Source: Sbpost

The explosion of social media cannot be ignored by companies seeking sales success, according to Frank Hattann of LinkedIn.

‘‘As a company, if your strategy is to stay away from social media, you are missing the boat because in the end you can’t do that,” the company’s EMEA regional sales manager told the National Sales Forum 2011 in Croke Park last week.

‘‘People will comment on your products, people will comment on your sales packets and people will send Twitter messages about who just came to their office and tried to sell them something.

‘‘Do get on a plane, do go out and talk to your customers but in the end you can’t escape the new Web 2.0, or what we call social media. It knows whatever is happening in our world now. It’s somewhere noted, commented on, clicked on, photos [taken] of it.”

Hattann said that networking used to be about walking into your local pub and talking to two or three people. Now, social media means ‘‘your message is heard potentially by people in a pub in Australia, in South Africa, in Brazil’’.

While this ‘network effect’ projects a message further afield than ever, Hattann said that this brought its own dangers as people could create content about a company and its product. ‘‘To manage that content in a social media world, that is the challenge.

How do you manage people saying something about you that you have no connection with? You have no control of that message,” he said. Hattann said that social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn each had its own role to play in sales.

‘‘If you want to just broadcast information and get people to hear a message about you, Twitter may actually be the appropriate forum to use.

If the product you’re selling, and if the public you’re selling the product to, is social and people want to communicate about a fun thing to do, then maybe Facebook is the right tool,” he said.

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.

As social marketing evolves, so will search engines.  This article from Search Engine Watch, reviews the new updates Google and Bing will be making by integrating organic search results and social context via Facebook and Twitter.  Single Throw can help your business grow in search engine results and social media marketing with internet marketing strategies and a great team!

Source: Search Engine Watch

Social search updates by Google and Bing have generated a lot of buzz in recent weeks. Instead of separating results from social networks like Twitter and Facebook from organic results, both search engines are streamlining search engine results pages (SERPs) by combining organic results with this social context.

Both Google and Bing have declared that, for some searches, social context will boost the rankings of results higher on the SERP than regular results. These announcements are just further confirmation of the convergence of social and search, and signal the growing importance of social media marketing for businesses.

What’s noteworthy about these changes:

• Both Google and Bing have moved away from showing tweets and sectioned-off “Liked Results” in the SERPs.
• Search engines are now sending users to the correct websites, as well as providing the detail about the origin of the recommendation (i.e., friend’s profile, original recommendation).
• With these social annotations, the search engines are giving users some visibility as to why they’re algorithms are picking certain results over the others.

Google’s Evolution: Twitter Integration

Google’s SERPs have progressed from showing organic results as a website link, to a specific tweet from a user within your social circle who mentions a link, and now to a combination of the two: the website result, a link to the friend’s social network profile (e.g. Twitter account) who did the sharing, and a link to the original recommendation are now combined into one result.

• Classic result: Google’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• Tweet result: An link to the actual tweet from friends within your social network, mentioning your search query.
• Combined result: The website result, with additional annotations linking to your friend’s profile and a time stamp that redirects to the original recommendation are all combined in one result.

Bing’s Evolution: Facebook Likes

Bing has primarily focused on the integration of Facebook Like data in their SERPs and algorithm. Their social search features have evolved from showing organic result as a website link to a module within SERPs that’s set apart the organic search results with the header, “Liked by your Facebook friends,” to listing organic results with an added social annotation mentioning friends from your Facebook network who have also Liked the URL.

• Classic result: Bing’s organic result for a keyword search pointing to a website.
• “Liked Results”: A separate module included alongside organic results in the SERP (includes the website result, friend’s profile)
• Combined result: The website result front and center, with social context (friend’s names and profile pictures who have liked the link).

Facebook Uses Bing Search Results

Another development of note is coming from Facebook, which has started providing Bing’s web results as a part of their internal search feature. Twitter isn’t using Google results, just yet, but judging from Facebook’s and Bing’s partnership, it might be a matter of time before we see this unfold.

How Significant is This Change for Marketers?

This is yet again confirmation that social media optimization should be an integral part of any company’s search strategy.

Actions like getting retweets and mentions on Twitter, Likes on Facebook, and mentions on Quora are crucial for today’s online businesses to gain visibility through search engines and social networks.

As search gets more social, the idea of the social footprint which gives you exponential reach into a follower or fan’s social network just from a simple @mention, retweet, Like, or follow will have a whole new large-scale network effect.

When people share your content, it will show up across their social networks and in their friends’ SERPs.

For the full article, click here.