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

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.

This Internet marketing company understands the importance of incorporating social media marketing and search engine optimization.  By creating social media sites and incorporating keywords on social sites, it can help a company’s ranking with SEO. Learn more on how to properly use social media and SEO with the article below.

Source: Sitepronews

Social Media and SEO

There are numerous benefits to engaging in social media marketing. Some are tangible (number of Likes, Fans and followers) and some are not (enhanced customer service, brand recognition and developing lasting relationships). You may not fully “get” social media, but you can’t deny that it is important and should be included in your overall marketing campaign. Social media is here to stay, and it is up to you to make sure your company uses it to their best advantage.

SEO is another field of online marketing that has earned itself a permanent spot in the marketing campaigns of many companies. With millions of searches being conducted every day, a company that can’t be found in the search engines is practically invisible. SEO isn’t just about ranking well; it’s about building your online brand. There are many factors that affect how a site ranks in the search engines and SEO is about optimizing your site as best as possible to help it succeed.

However, SEO and social media marketing shouldn’t exist in separate silos. In truth, there should be an element of SEO in all of your online activities, as well as finding a way to leverage your offline marketing methods online. As social media marketing matures, it is becoming clearer and clearer that it has an impact on a site’s SEO.

Here are a few ways you can use your social media marketing activities to aid your SEO:

Create Social Networking Profiles

Aside from the big three of social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter) there are literally hundreds of smaller social networking sites for every kind of audience. Each of these profiles has the potential to rank in the search engines, increasing your brand presence online. Keep in mind that you should only create profiles on sites that you actually intend to be involved with. While creating a profile to just get the link is okay, an active profile is going to be worth much more in the long run. Social networking sites are a great place to establish relationships with consumers and build a strong community.

Incorporate Keywords into Tweets and Posts

Twitter only gives you 140 characters, so space is limited. It is a great way to share a link to your blog, an article, video or any other form of content. Incorporating keywords into the Tweet (perhaps as a hash tag, stylized as #keyword) helps that Tweet get pulled into a results page by the search engines. On Facebook, you have more room to target keywords in your posts. The title of your post is a great place to incorporate keywords. You can also write a short description about the content of each post, another good spot to target keywords.

For the full article, 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.