Social media has reached a tipping point; it’s now a part of every marketer’s arsenal. However, while roughly

eight out of 10 marketers use social media, only three of them believe that it’s effective, according to Junta42/

Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs’ just released B2B research. Social media accounts for roughly

one out of every five minutes spent online, as tracked by Nielsen. Put together with ExactTarget’s consumer-focused

findings, which show that Twitter followers are more likely to purchase and recommend brands once they follow

them than are consumers on Facebook, and you’ve made the case to add social media to your marketing mix.

(For more customer details, see ExactTarget’s research.) As a result, marketers are present where their prospects,

customers, and fans are despite their inability to prove its effectiveness in meeting business objectives.

7 Ways to Make Your Social Media Marketing More Effective

Since integrating social media into your marketing mix helps expand your reach, increase sales, and build

your fan base, it’s important to maximize your social media marketing’s efficiency. Here are seven tactics to

help achieve this:

Include a call to action.

Once you have your prospect’s attention, what do you want them to do next?

1. While every marketer will say buy, consider where you are in building your relationship

and where the potential customer is in terms of her purchase process. Traditionally, direct

marketers focus on purchase-related calls to action; with social media, calls to action can comprise

a broader array of options such as likes, social sharing, comments, reviews, and RSS feeds.

To improve tracking, especially for price deals, include a promotional code that’s associated with

the original media source. Even though today’s consumers are more likely to share offers with broader

audiences, you can still determine which  source initiated the sale.

Provide at least one response channel for participants.

This channel should encourage participants to take an action that leads toward greater

engagement with your firm. Think broadly in terms of likes, follows, check-ins, and RSS feeds.

Also provide an alternative where they can reach a form of customer service such as

old-fashioned phone calls, e-mail, and chat. (Here are more options for customer service via social media.) It’

critical to make sure that you’re staffed to respond to these inquiries, since they come from interested prospects.

Include post-interaction marketing.

Because the purchase process may take time, it’s important to stay top

of mind with prospects. This is especially true in the current environment where the purchase process

takes longer and

is more social. You need to have on-going communications and interactions to convert prospects into customers.

Ideally, this should continue beyond the actual purchase.

Incorporate your social media into your overall marketing plan.

Social media doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

It must leverage and extend other forms of marketing, PR, and communications efforts, both online and offline.

Make sufficient investment in your social media marketing.

Contrary to popular belief, social media

marketing isn’t free! While social media platforms may be free or inexpensive, social media marketing done

right takes headcount and resources. (To better understand social media marketing’s hidden costs, here’s a list.)

Make your story memorable.

Considering doing this when you integrate your story into your social media.

This helps participants and their friends to embellish it and share it.

Be device indifferent.

With broader use of mobile devices, your prospects can reach your social media

execution on the go. Ensure that they can take action regardless of how they found you and the amount of time

they have to interact. Remember that you don’t need a mobile marketing strategy for users to find you on a mobile device!

Metrics to Determine Social Media’s Effectiveness

As with any marketing program, it’s critical to monitor a variety of factors to ensure that you’re on track.

To improve your social media marketing’s effectiveness, here are five elements to track.

Audience.

Are you reaching your target audience in terms of prospects, customers, influencers,

and the general public? In terms of earned media, how has your reach been extended through the use of social

media marketing?

Interactions.

Track these in terms of views, shares across social networks, likes, and comments.

Have they increased with the use of the calls to action and promotional codes?

Brand perception.

How has sentiment towards your brand changed as a result of your social media marketing?

How does this relate to intent to purchase? If it isn’t positive, what can you do to improve it?

Expenses.

Calculate expenses in terms of marketing executions, creative, technology, and head count.

Remember, social media costs more than you think, so include the hidden cost factors as well.

Sales.

Track sales related to specific calls to action and promotional codes as well as social media’s

contribution to brand favorability, prospect acquisition, and post-sale retention.

While it’s important to be where your target audience is, social media platforms can be a double-edged

sword.

You and your fans can promote your offering while new options are introduced that may sway consumers towards

other options. Therefore, you must incorporate social media marketing into your overall marketing plan, include

ways to make it more effective, and track results.

Consumer behavior has evolved rapidly in recent years, and as traditional media marketing tools such

as print publishing and television continue to return flat growth at best, the internet is looking like an

increasingly seductive alternative for brands.

However, although beauty and cosmetic companies recognize the growing importance and influence of

social media as a result of this increased internet use, a newly published white paper from beauty social

marketing consultancyBeautystat.com finds that these companies have varying degrees of digital marketing

strategies in place.

Indeed, a recent report is cited in the paper from Heishman-Fillard and Harris Interactive that finds Americans

are now spending more time online than engaging in any other media.

Internet usage surpasses all other mediums

The Beautystat report underlines this fact by pointing to recent research showing that the average US consumers

spends 17.8 hours a week surfing the internet, while watching television only accounts for 14.0 hours a week and

time spent reading newspapers averages just 2.9 hours.

The Beautystat researchers point out that if these figures were reflected in beauty companies’ marketing budget,

the internet would already be commanding the biggest slice of marketing spend – something that is clearly not

happening yet for the vast majority of businesses.

“Social media, simply put, is the most engaging channel available for consumers today,” the report states.

“The brand that learns how to swim best with the social media current will be the one to maximize the

tremendous Return Of Investment (ROI) it has to offer.”

To gauge the degree to which companies are taking advantage of social media, Beautystat.com has compiled

key figures reflecting how much engagement there is amongst the top ten beauty companies in the US for the

two leading social media channels, Twitter and Facebook.

The figures show a big variety in the way different brands have tapped into social media, with this disparity

showing up even among those brands marketed by the same companies.

Big disparity in approach to social media

The research figures show that the Estee Lauder brands really underline this difference, with the company’s

Bobbi Brown brand having one of the highest engagement scores, at 5.3 percent, while its Ojon brand had the

lowest engagement score at 0.0 percent.

But the highest score was for Avon Products, which had an engagement rate of 6.9 percent, reflecting the

concerted effort the company has made to tap into social media websites, a means of marketing that fits in

neatly with its direct sales approach.

However, the Beautystat research suggests that Facebook and Twitter are just the first step towards establishing

a social marketing strategy and points to the fact that the second phase should concentrate on Social Outbound

Engagement.

This important stage of the social media strategy should include a clear plan that should culminate in a high ROI,

and is best targeted by following a ten point plan, outlined in the paper by the researchers.

This ten point plan will be clearly outlined in part two of this article, which will be published on Cosmetics Design

later this week.

Social media marketing is the concept of promoting sites, businesses and causes through social
media channels.
There are two strong reasons for the success of this marketing revolution, namely, a large number
of links and an increased volume of traffic. It’s quite intuitive to understand that a large number of
links to a website makes it more popular and increases its search engine rankings. When people visit
these links through referrals, the website becomes more trusted through peer recommendations and bookmarks.
The advantages are manifold, including: low costs, promising returns, wide publicity and better advertising.

A few months back, Facebook and AOL established a partnership that enables AOL users to integrate Facebook
with chat and import Facebook friends to their chat list. This can be seen as yet another step to make Facebook
a “universal login.”
Other websites like Scribd and Docstoc, which support document sharing, have also introduced the option of
using their services by signing in through one’s Facebook account.
These are clear examples of the large scale integration that has been possible through social media marketing.

Whether it is Facebook or Twitter, social media is all the rage.  More and more companies are

trying to friend you on Facebook, or get you as a follower on Twitter.  Even this article has social

media features such as Facebook “like” and Twitter “retweet.”  A recent study from the

Brand Science Institute, a German brand management think-tank, researched why social media

projects fail. Mashing the BSI research with the human dimension of sustainability, failure happens

because corporations forget thatsocial media is, for lack of better terms, both amedium and social.

The technology of social media is a medium for communication.  Traditional media, like magazine

advertising, billboards, or television commercials is a one-way street, from the company to you.

With traditional media, a company has no direct interaction with the customer.  Social media changes

this dynamic, yet the medium itself is not the answer.

An old adage suggests, “Technology doesn’t solve problems.  People do.”  Likewise, social media does

not solve marketing problems.  People do.  Not only does social media create a two-way street, it creates

forks, intersections, and freeways.  Providing great customer service can resound positively through a

customers network.  A bad customer experience can result in a customer badmouthing a company to

their friends and followers.  The technology makes sharing the customer experience, whether joy or

sorrow, enthusiasm or dismay, faster and more widespread.  The experience needs to be created in the

first place.  Social media is not just a medium, it is social.

Obtaining a twitter account and bombarding the internet with information will not work.  There is nothing

inherently social with pushing out information.  This is where the human dimension of sustainability fits in.

There needs to be a meaningful relationship, between the company and the customer sans any social media.

That relationship can be cultivated in the customer experience of a service, a product, or even information.

The strength of that relationship is tested when you are not touting yourself, but getting others to tout you.

Or to use the language of Facebook and Twitter, the trick is not in “liking” or “tweeting” yourself, but getting others to

“like” or “retweet” you.  More power to a company that can be tweeted without originating a tweet. Take a look at

Apple which does not have an official Twitter account, yet whose products are tweeted and retweeted endlessly.

The company has built up a relationship with their customers where the customers do the “liking” and “tweeting” for them.

It’s all about creating a sustainable relationship with your customer, be it online or offline.  Social media can only help

strengthen or erode that relationship, but it cannot readily create it.  People need to create it.

And now the true test for my social media reader-writer relationship is if this article will be “liked” and “retweeted.”

When I started my senior year at the University of Washington in 2007 I still had no idea what I

wanted to be when I grew up. I fell into political communication as my major because I was interested

in Barack Obama’s use of social media in the 2008 presidential campaign. Like many students, I worked

weekends at a low-paying job and was hoping to someday pay my dues putting in long hours and working

my way up to a quality position in a great company.

At the time, Twitter was a new novel tool, Facebook was still growing in popularity, and the true value of

blogging was the topic of hot debate in the journalism department. “Social Media Marketing” was a term

that elicited mostly blank stares.

Fast forward four years. Whole Foods has 1.8 million Twitter followers, Facebook is the subject of a major

movie, people carry PCs in purses and I’m working for Microsoft on the Windows social media team and

blogging for the Huffington Post. Nobody is more surprised than me.

Managing how the Windows team uses technologies that were once dismissed as “interesting but useless”

(Twitter) or “the realm of teenagers” (Facebook) is now my full-time job at Microsoft. As the Social Media

Marketing Manager for Windows Digital and Interactive Marketing, my job is to help our marketing and PR

teams think about new ways of engaging customers. We do that by integrating elements of social media into

nearly every campaign we develop.

As students, we’re told that it could be years before we have real responsibility at work. My social media work

provided me a shortcut to the table. Microsoft takes social media engagement seriously, and I have a real voice

in developing multi-million dollar campaigns. Here are three tips I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that can

help give you a leg up:

1. Speak Up: You Have Skills to Pay the Bills
At first, I assumed no executive would take social media seriously. That assumption was wrong. Today, top

consumer companies like Microsoft, Pepsi and Whole Foods understand that social media is the way to connect

directly with customers and get their feedback. Microsoft uses social media to have conversations with customers

about everything from news announcements to insider tips to customer service. But what is most empowering is

coming to the realization that on any given day, I reach well over one million members of the community with

messages informing them how to improve their Windows experiences. At that rate, and to put this in perspective,

I will reach a population the size of the U.S. within the year. Not bad for a few years out of college, right?

As someone fresh from college, you are on the front lines in understanding how customers are using social media

to make purchase decisions. Companies are eager for those insights. Your challenge is to be smart and creative,

help companies determine their social media needs (e.g., customer feedback, customer service, brand marketing)

and then develop clever strategies that offer a solution.

2. Be an Authentic Voice
Social media purists would say that the best way to use digital media is to “engage with your audience.” Across

the globe, companies are recruiting students and young people to help them have an authentic conversation with

their audience using social media applications like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. At times, some companies think

social media means putting the marketing-speak on Twitter and hitting send. Companies that understand social media

know that it’s about having a conversation with customers.

Being able to speak the same language as your customers is a valuable skill that you already possess. Use it.

3. Build Your Online and Offline Networks
Your online and offline networks are both essential to finding a job these days. In my search for employment,

I spent months talking to professionals of all types and looking for opportunities that fit my skillset. I also reached

out through LinkedIn and other social networking sites.

Eventually, I sat down for coffee with the manager of an online network for Microsoft called the CIO Network.

After learning my interests, he pointed me towards the blog of my soon-to-be manager. A position was posted;

I applied, and was brought in for an interview.

Be smart about how you manage your networks. What you decide to post on your Facebook profile is just as

important as how you present yourself in person. Recruiters are constantly surfing the web for new applicants and

you need to make sure that some of your most embarrassing moments aren’t visible for everyone to see. What you

post today never goes away. Also, keep your email address simple and sensible. AlthoughDoinworkson1212@hotmail.com

raised a few laughs in college; it’s not appealing to future employers. I guarantee they will not chuckle.

Source : Matt Bernardy via  Huffington Post

Holiday shopping is just around the corner, and a recent report from PRWeek and MS&L Group

indicates that 79 percent of marketers are spending more than $100,000 on social media campaigns

this year. At the same time, more than one-third of these marketers (36 percent) say they have

“no specific approach” to marketing on social platforms. As sites such as Facebook and Twitter

become more cluttered with brand information, it’s time for marketers to put a plan in place, and

they may look to Nokia for inspiration.

The communications company excels at listening to customer chatter and, importantly, responding.

Nokia started a social blog - Nokia Conversations – during its transition from a hardware manufacturer

to a mobile device services company. As Brafton has reported,

marketing blogs are a burgeoning tool among businesses.

Nokia’s blog readers have the ability to comment, and bloggers for the company take the time to respond.

Plus, Nokia uses this information when tweaking business plans. Laurie Armstrong, director of communications

for Nokia North America, told PRWeek, “the feedback we’ve received… is helping to shape our products and our

approach to the marketplace.”

Nokia also keeps up the conversation on its Twitter and Facebook pages. It has more than one million fans on

Facebook, and it keeps these consumers engaged with interactive posts. The company offers videos from its

YouTube channel and broadcasts its blog posts on its Facebook wall, but it repositions this content by directly

asking fans to respond. For instance, Nokia posted its YouTube video about the company’s N8, and then asked

Facebook users what they would do with the new device. The post had garnered 1,193 “likes” and 184 comments

at press time.

Similarly, Nokia’s Twitter page is a healthy mix of product-related content and interactive tweets.

It offers followers information about new services, but it also provides links to some mobile games that may

catch consumers’ interests. It’s also clear that Nokia employees scan Twitter for brand mentions, because the

company tweets ample @replies in response to users’ Nokia-related comments. This could be key to converting

followers, as Brafton reported earlier this year that Twitter users want a little more conversation from brands.

Marketers should get their own social strategies in place to boost their brands on social networks in light of the

big shopping season ahead. Last year,comScore reported that nearly one-third of holiday shoppers (28 percent)

said social media influenced their gift-buying decisions, and the platform is poised to impact even more purchases

this year.

While new entrepreneurs wear many hats as they drum up sales, pay bills and fill the coffee pot,

they should also devote time to the role of ‘chief technology officer’ to grow their business, reduce

costs or improve productivity.

In fact, small business observers note that today’s buzz words among big business — from virtualization

to mobile marketing — will be crucial to small companies in the coming years. For example, many small

businesses are already experimenting with social media tools, from Facebook to Twitter, to stretch marketing

dollars beyond old-school tactics such as flyers and cold calling.

“An entrepreneur should watch tech trends and recognize that opportunities exist beyond traditional thinking,

” notes David Wilton, director of small business banking at Scotiabank.

“For instance, some businesses are applying mobile technology and websites to forgo traditional ‘storefront’

locations, choosing virtual offices without costly leases.”

“Try to think creatively about how new technology might fit with your product or service, or how it could

provide a way to present your capabilities to new customers,” says Mr. Wilton, who recommends entrepreneurs

be very clear about what they expect from the new initiatives. “It’s important to have a realistic understanding of

the costs and benefits and then take small strides to test the water.”

A good first step toward social media marketing–attracting consumers to one’s business via social media —

may be to start a simple Twitter account. Like a giant chat room, this micro-blogging tool can help a business

build a community of supporters by sharing expertise online, seeking opinions from consumers or announcing

business events.

For example, a flower shop may tweet seasonal garden tips or issue a friends only discount coupon.

Avoid blatant advertising and instead build connections and referrals. For that reason, most B2B firms

use social media for business networking and lead generation.

“The key is to start slowly and learn from others to get applicable ideas,” Mr. Wilton says. “Then, like any

business investment, you should set specific targets, evaluate your results and revise the plan as needed.”

http://www.oceanmarketinginc.com

So much of our online marketing efforts overlap with one another. With the right coordination,

the line between search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing begins to blur.

Marketing tactics that started out solely as a means for improving social media visibility are

now transitioning into viable SEO strategies. One of my favorite examples of this is link building

through social media monitoring.

Social media monitoring is basically the process of monitoring conversations about your brand

and/or product(s) across social communities. This can range from tweets to blog posts to mentions

in news articles. The point is, if someone is talking about you or your products – you want to know

about it.

But what if someone mentions a keyword you are targeting for SEO? Doesn’t that stand out to you as a

new link opportunity? In addition to tracking brand and product mentions, you can use your favorite

social media monitoring tool as an automated link researching tool. It’s like having that intern you keep

trying to get your boss to let you hire, except this one will work 24/7 for you and you don’t have to teach

it anything.

So what all should you be monitoring? Here are three ways you can take advantage of social media

monitoring for SEO.

Keywords your targeting. I mentioned this one at the beginning of the article. The idea is if someone

writes a blog post about a keyword you’re trying to rank for, it could be a great opportunity for you to

reach out to them and convince them to insert a link to your site in the post or to allow you to guest post

for them. It’s also a great way to discover popular communities in your industry (e.g. forums) that you should

be participating in daily – and including links in your posts where relevant. The opportunities are endless, especially

considering how many keywords you’re probably interested in ranking for.

Keeping an eye on your competitors. Where are your competitors building links and participating?

This is a great opportunity for you see see where they are focusing their link building efforts so you can also

engage in those areas. It’s also a great way to keep tabs on what anchor text they are focusing on so you know

what keywords they are targeting. You just mind find a few that you hadn’t though of targeting in the first place.

Identifying industry authorities. Finding the key influencers in your industry and getting them to write

about and discuss your company, products and services can be a dream come true for your SEO. With just a few

simple reviews on their blog or even just through their Twitter stream, you’ll start to see more organic reviews

showing up that didn’t require any effort on your part.

What ways are you using social media monitoring for SEO?

http://www.oceanmarketinginc.com

Social media is the rage these days. As well it should. A new channel to access customers –

that’s great stuff.

Clearly, it’s having a big impact on marketing. Arguably, it has changed the face of marketing forever.

Or has it? Yes … and no.

Social Media has Changed our Environment

People who have a beef with a company can make their opinions public quite easily, and reach a large audience.

One famous example of this was a video of a Comcast technician sleeping on a customer’s couch that was put up

on YouTube. The video has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

Individual consumers can easily access a large audience with their views. This gives the consumer a lot more

power in the relationship with the companies they buy from.

On the other side of the coin, companies can use social media to improve their interactions with customers.

Using Comcast as an example again, Comcast’s Frank Eliason has begun an active support channel on Twitter.

This open channel allows consumers to air complaints, and get responses directly from Frank, or others in the

customer service department.

Comcast is using this to provide another channel for dealing with customer complaints. Comcast scored a lot

of points in the social media community for this initiative.

Bottom line: thanks to social media, the pressure is on companies to be more transparent and accessible.

Why Social Media is Basically PR

That’s right. Social media is basically a PR/customer service function.

In the old days, you issued press releases, hoped a media person would pick them up, write a story,

and then you would get your message out to consumers. The nature of the benefit you would receive

from a press release wasn’t well defined, but one of the key goals you had was to create some real buzz

in the market about your product or service. You sent it out, followed up with some direct outreach to

key media people, and then hoped for the best. Sure, there was more to it than this, but you were basically

dealing with a broadcast channel.

Social media is quite similar in that respect. The social sites are channels for communicating with media people

and customers. Yes, you can have direct interactions with individual customers, but overall you’re looking to

reach a mass of people and create buzz about your product or service. As with PR, you should also reach out to

key influencers to get their endorsement of whatever you’re trying to promote.

That doesn’t mean you can’t affect the outcome by being smart about what you do. You absolutely can. It’s

critical to put together a campaign that fits the medium you use, and will be well received by your audience.

You need your idea to stand out and be distinctive, but you also need to do that with conventional PR.

These are all examples of broadcasting a message to an audience. Yes, you can interact with users, test ideas,

tune what you are doing, but the scopee of the end benefit isn’t well defined. Will it go viral and spread? Will a

major influencer pick it up and write about it? You can use a number of tactics to help increase the likelihood

of these things, but that was true in the pre-social media days too.

Summary

The medium has changed. It’s easier to create viral events, and you can more easily interact one on one

with some of your customers.

These are big changes, but the marketing goals and underlying structure of the activities to accomplish those

goals haven’t changed at all. Because of those similarities, I believe that in the end social media will in fact be

handled by PR departments.

Source Eric Enge

Social Media Marketing (SMM) involves using online communities like Twitter, Facebook,

LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, blogs etc for marketing & promoting your services. SMM includes set

of activities for generating publicity through Social Media websites.

Social Media websites provide tools & platforms to share opinions, experiences & perspectives

with each another. It can take many forms including text, images, audios, videos etc.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing:

Provides you large number of new & repeat visitors Helps you to get links Helps in syndicating your

content Makes your website more visible in social media searches Helps in creating awareness

Social Media Marketing is recommended for all website owners however you need to make sure:

You should have regular updated content available on your website in the form of blogs, Articles,

Newsletters etc. Static websites which do not get updated regularly are unlikely to be optimized on Social Media.

You need to make certain changes on your website for making its tagging and bookmarking easier E.g. you can

add quick buttons like share on Facebook or add to digg / delicious on your website which makes the tagging easier.
Share information. Be like a resource area for your industry audience, so users will start sharing your content across

Social Media Channels

Social Media Marketing Tools – There are many Social Media Marketing tools available. Some of the famous one’s are:

Facebook – In past few years, Facebook has transformed from a photo sharing website to a business networking &

advertising platform. Facebook provides businesses many ways in which they can market themselves. Following

options are available:
Pages – A company can create a page to promote its business. Facebook page has its own tabs for Wall, Info,

Boxes, Notes, photos etc. You can add applications to customize your page and you can change the landing page

on which the visitors will land when they come from outside the Facebook. You can share news, offers, article topics,

product updates etc with your fans on Facebook. Other Facebook users can also become you page fans and they will

start receiving your updates. Discussions – You can join other groups or create your own group and participate in

discussion with other members of Facebook.
LinkedIn – Linkedin is another medium through which businesses can market services to other Linkedin members.

Linkedin has its own profile page which is publicly available and you can control what you want to show on that page.

You can also participate in groups and market your services. Participate in Q & A i.e. Questions and Answers which

helps in branding your profile. Your answers if selected will also be displayed on your profile.
Digg – Digg is a user-driven content site. Digg has a system where members can vote, bury and comment on stories

submitted by other members. More votes will make a story popular and will get you onto Digg’s front page which

often results in large number of visitors visiting your website.

We at  Ocean Marketing Inc. keep supplementing our clients with the most basic to the most advanced techniques

for any goal they decide to reach with their website. Our step wise approach gives them the complete visibility of

their website, which more often than not, they are deprived of, in absence of a trustworthy resource.