

The backbone of a successful social media marketing plan is engagement. If your followers are not sharing your links, commenting on your posts or retweeting your message then you are not getting the word of mouth buzz needed to get your message to the masses. There are countless ways to help you motivate your social media network into action. Below are few suggestions to get the conversation started.
The simplest way to get people talking is to ask poignant questions that will illicit a genuine response. Vague questions will in turn garner vague replies, but if you ask a specific question people are more likely to relate and reply or comment on your posts.
Twitter is much more than a sounding board to share content with your followers. Respond, retweet, and reply to engage your followers in two way communication. When you retweet your followers they too take note and reciprocate.
Short videos are another great way to open the lines of communication. Whether you’re posting a video response to a tweet, sharing a viral video or creating content about a product your followers will appreciate the effort and often times will share the love by tweeting or reposting your video on their social media pages too.
Create a community where your fans and followers can feel at home. A sense of camaraderie built around a shared interest is a great way to grow awareness for your brand and promote involvement.
User generated reviews can also promote brand awareness while trumpeting your business. By monitoring these reviews you can help shape the conversation while also receiving valuable feedback about how to improve. You’ll also find out very bluntly where you are succeeding and failing from your customers point of view. Be sure to take the good with the bad and your business with grow as a result.
Fun incentives like contests and quizzes are another aspect of engagement that can grow your customer base significantly. Everyone loves to be to win. Often times entrants in a contest will share the post with their friends and family to improve their chances of winning. Whatever the case, by offering an incentive to join the conversation you are connecting with your followers in a fun and exciting way.
There are so many ways to create a link between your business and your followers. What types of things are you doing to engage your customers?
Social media is much more than posting your everyday comings and goings and instagraming pictures to friends, family and followers. A well balanced social media plan is a necessity for anyone looking to build and grow brand presence online.
Whether you’re marketing yourself, your small business or a major business brand you need to be aware of the obstacles you may face and how to avoid them to be successful. That includes knowing when to ask for the professional help to make your campaign a hit in the social media world.
If you not able to consistently put out messages and engage with your audience it is time to seek help, in many cases all you need is a way to manage your efforts with a well written plan and management tool. Whether it is for the long run or get the ball rolling anyone can benefit from a meeting a with social media consultant.
Simply participating in social media is not enough anymore. The novelty of connecting with your friends, family, business partners and clients is simply not enough. As social media grows from infancy into it’s tween years more must be done to capitalize on your online engagement. In order to do this you first must review your social media engagement to determine what has benefited you the most, i.e. more meaningful followers, popular campaigns etc. To achieve this first take a look at the

The number of members or followers you have on any given platform is a good start to focus your social media marketing campaign but don’t let that alone be the deciding factor. While Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have huge membership numbers, engagement should be one of the guide by which you proceed. For example Google+ users only spend an average of 3 minutes per month on the site while Facebook members spend nearly 7 hours per month on average. Although you’d assume Facebook is hands down the engagement winner, Google incorporates Google+ data into organic search results which could be a key factor if your business relies heavily on search engine placement for lead generation and sales. Your companies unique social media plan should have specifics on what type of ROI you want to achieve.
Since social media is a conversation not a monologue engagement is usually at the top of the ROI priority list. Measuring this engagement is a sure fire way to determine whether your content is resonating with your target audience. Retweets, replies, comments and shares are all meaningful ways to track the success of your online campaign. Online service Klout takes this metric one step further by examining your online presence and scoring you based on your overall influence.
In a word you are ultimately interested in results. As technology continues to drive innovation and in turn social media, measuring the variables that can help you succeed are paramount to business growth and longevity. Never before have so many metrics and data pertaining to a campaign been available at the click of a mouse or touch of a screen. To get ahead of the competition start measuring results and tailoring future social media campaigns to meet your business strategy and goals.
As workers log-in, check-in and engage online many people get caught up in idle surfing rather than engaging in meaningful online marketing. Spending countless minutes pinning things on Pinterest or commenting on Facebook, may be wasting valuable time if you don’t have a set social media plan on how to get a ROI from your online platforms. Once you know what your social media marketing goals are get your surfing skills in line and avoid idle online time with Firefox’s new add-on for your web browser, MeeTimer. Google Chrome users don’t dis-pare there’s an app for you too.
If it’s true why is the first thing
potential fans see is your Facebook “Wall”?
Instead Create a Custom Landing Page
Getting Started:
Create a custom landing page with graphics
that will encourage your visitors to “Like” the page
before they start browsing.
Put into Action:
Update your default landing page under
“Manage Permissions” to direct towards your new page.
Use Your Blog as a LinkedIn Update
It’s a great way to connect with industry professionals
Talk to your social media administrator about integrating your blog topics into your company’s LinkedIn account.
Don’t have a blog yet? Talk to your administrator about finding a blog platform that’s right for you and your company.
Why post a blog on LinkedIn?
- Provide insights into your company and it’s operations
- Present knowledge about the work you do to as a professional
- Connectivity to your your audience via newsworthy blog info
- Branding and credibility are enhanced
- Post to a huge network of professionals
Write Effective Twitter Messages
Tips to make sure your Tweets are clear, concise, & professional
Spell Check: As a professional it is important that common misspellings and typos are NOT a part of your Tweets
#2:
Slow it Down: Don’t rush to sendoff — take your time, think about your message, then type it out
#3:
Abbreviate Sparingly: Personal use is a different case, but when Tweeting for a business purpose try to avoid too much abbreviated lingo
*Via Helpful Hint:
Open a Word Document to write a first draft of your Tweet. Here, you can use the spell check feature AND the word count tool.



