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

Many people think there is “secret” for developing the perfect social media plan; however, social media needs a well thought-out strategy with goals and tactics.  Social media marketing is widely successful for many companies and this Internet marketing company knows the importance of these seven steps below.

Source: SocialMediaToday

Social Media Plan

Do you dream about the perfect social media plan? The perfect social media template? Many business leaders wanting to get social dream about it.  They think they need it. The social media magic template. The one that includes the perfect strategy, tactics and themselves as the social hero of their company and social superstar of their market niche!

You know the social media template I am talking about.  The one that will help you see a positive return on investment where everything is measurable and justifiable to stakeholders. The one that will make the boss scream with delight and as a result enable you to keep your job or even get a promotion!

The question is does the perfect social media template or strategy for your business exist?

A perfect strategy or template, well probably not! A good template and structure, yes!

Do you want the answer? Are you ready for the top 7 tips to develop a social media strategy that will make your ROI zoom?

Here ya go…

Step 1: Do your own research on how to best leverage social media to meet business goals and objectives.

Step 2: Develop a business and integrated marketing plan inclusive of goals and objectives. Be sure to focus clearly on your target market segments with a goal of knowing them and getting in their head the best you possibly can.

Step 3: If you don’t have the skills and knowledge of social media internally, hire the agency or consultant to help you integrate social media into your business. Be sure that they understand integrated marketing, the importance of setting goals and objectives and can help you develop and execute a plan to meet yours! Refuse to accept a list of random acts of social media (RAMs). If the plan is not integrated then the RAMs will eat your ROI for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Step 4: Integrate social media into your business plan with a focus on leveraging social media to support biz goals and objectives. Your business plan may need to be adjusted based upon your new findings and research of the social media landscape.

Step 5: Develop an integrated social media strategy, approach and plan that best supports your business goals and objectives.

Step 6: Execute the integrated marketing, social media and business plan.

Step 7: Continuously analyze, measure and refine your approach, strategies and tactics based upon achievement to goals and objectives.

Do you see any theme here peeps? There is no magic blue carpet tweet ride to skies of social ROI.

The best way to see results is to get focused, integrated and execute!

For the full article, click here.

Image is everything, especially online in the age of social media.  This Internet marketing company understands the importance of maintaining a company’s reputation on social media sites.  This play on words article from Search Engine Watch, help companies acknowledge the  importance of avoiding a “Social PR Hangover.”

Source: SearchEngineWatch

Retracing the steps of what happened after a social PR campaign “gone wild” is reminiscent of the movie “The Hangover.” Despite the right intentions, the plan just goes sideways when the mixing and mingling ends up with the wrong crowds, miscommunication, and bad decisions. The result can be quite a sobering (and unpleasant) experience.

Where’s the coffee and two aspirin? Waking up, looking around and realizing the plan didn’t go quite as planned can cause severe social media hangovers like these and worse.

Social Media: One Big Cocktail Party

Some refer to social media as “one big cocktail party.” The tweets flow, the posts fly, the emails ping, and the search results rankings climb. Then, out of nowhere, someone is “over-served” and the party suddenly comes crashing to a halt.

While a hangover usually describes the sum of unpleasant physiological effects following heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages, a social media PR campaign gone wrong can induce the same headache, nausea and possible long-term side effects as a few too many dirty Grey Goose martinis.

Out partying like it’s 1999 (again), it’s a case of:

• That tweet didn’t chirp as planned.
• Wait! That email wasn’t intended to be reprinted in the Wall Street Journal.
• No one was supposed to notice we deleted that negative wall post from Facebook!

Tweet Timing and Appropriateness

Case in point: The brand Kenneth Cole offended just about everyone when they hijacked the #cairo hashtag in a marketing ploy promoting its Spring fashion collection during the height of the Egyptian revolution.
The hangover: TechCrunch offered up a serious tweet and the classic brand wound up with negative publicity in the Huffington Post, MSNBC and Mashable, to name a few. Five months later, negative search results still show up when you search “Kenneth Cole” in Google.

Employees Tweets Gone Wild

Then there was an incident in 2008 at my own agency, when a former employee told an influential blogger to “eff off” in a tweet. This resulted almost instantly in a negative article about my employee and my agency.

The hangover: I still cringe thinking about it. While able to recover immediately by reaching out to the blogger and apologizing, that won’t always be the case for everyone.

Under the Influence of Reckless Emails

Good lessons of what not to do often come in the form of backlashes from media outlets busting PR flacks in the line of duty. Most recently there was the Facebook PR campaign against Google.

The hangover: Being ousted and having your emails published in USA Today and TechCrunch should scare any PR pro into walking the walk of honesty, integrity, and complete professionalism when playing the PR game. Let’s get the story straight before sending an email.

Party or not, social media is serious business and today’s most fluid and digital forms of word of mouth marketing can result in an instant PR success or nightmare.

For the full article & more ways to avoid the social PR hangover click here.

Social media marketing is ever-changing and learning how to grow a business on social media sites, has to constantly be researched.  These ten proven strategies are just a few that Single Throw follows daily as its team monitors social media accounts.

Source: Mashable

We all intuitively know what likeability means. We have friends who are easygoing, good listeners and there when we need them. But what does it mean for a brand to be likeable online? Now more than ever, when a “Like” is arguably more important than a “link,” brands must demonstrate core values of responsiveness, transparency and likeability across Facebook and other social networks.

Listen to your customers and prospects. Deliver value, excitement and surprise. And most importantly, truly engage your customers and help them spread the word. Here are 10 universal laws for brand likeability in social media.

1. Never Stop Listening

The number one benefit of a brand’s involvement in social media is the ability to listen to conversation about its brand, competitors and target audience’s wants and needs. Listening is 50% of communication. Just as nobody wants to be out on a date with someone who isn’t a good listener, consumer don’t want to feel ignored by brands on social networks.

For a good case study on how listening in social media has impacted millions of dollars worth of sales, check out IBM’s Listening for Leads program.

2. Leverage Facebook’s EdgeRank Formula

EdgeRank, Facebook’s algorithm for determining what appears at the top of people’s News Feeds, might be the single most important online innovation of our time. EdgeRank uses multiple factors to determine what’s relevant and appealing to users. So unlike email, through which we receive a constant barrage of pushed messages all day, every day, Facebook updates surface to the top of our feeds based on how likeable and relevant the updates are.

At any given time, as a brand, you’re competing with all of your fans’ friends and other brand pages for attention. This is a great thing for consumers because it means they’re not spammed with irrelevant, sales-heavy messaging. But it’s also a challenge to marketers. You’ll want to use photos and videos, keep the text short and drive as many Likes and comments as possible.

3. Improvise Your Engagement

There is a difference between talking at people and engaging with them. I often use the analogy of a Broadway show versus an improv show. TV advertising is like a Broadway show — a one-way communication in which a huge production and great creative can make a strong impact. Social media marketing is more like improv comedy — a back-and-forth between performers and audience, different every time yet totally effective at a fraction of the cost, when done right.

One brand that does an excellent job of engaging in social media is Zappos. Zappos goes back and forth with customers on Twitter and Facebook, discussing its product — shoes — or anything else customers want to talk about.

4. Respond Quickly to Negative Comments

Customers have taken to social networks to share their frustrations. Unlike 10 years ago, when you could get away with putting people on hold for an hour or responding to letters on your own schedule, negative sentiment can spread lightning-fast on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The faster you can respond, the better.

The best practice is to respond publicly, indicating that you’re addressing the issue through a private message. The customer will feel that he or she is heard, and most important to your brand, the public sees that you care and are responsive. “I’m sorry” are the two most powerful words for brands in social media.

5. Respond to Positive Comments, Too

Many brands are not yet leveraging this opportunity, but your positive comments on Facebook and Twitter are likely from your biggest brand advocates, capable of spreading your messages far and wide and defending you against naysayers at no cost. If you owned a retail store and a customer walked up to you and said, “I just love all your products and have been shopping here for years,” would you ignore them? Don’t ignore them on Facebook either. “Thank you” are the other two most powerful words for brands in social media.

For the full article and last five strategies, 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.