Social Media Marketing

Social Media - Facebook Business Page

How Do I Promote Local Business on Facebook?

in Social Media Marketing  by atsny

Social media has taken over our lives in many respects. We have built stronger networks, we are able to stay connected with friends and family, make new friends, or promote a brand. There is so much that social media is capable of doing beyond what most of us imagine.

For a business, nobody wants to get a negative reputation. We live in a time when things are updated and advanced, nobody wants to be tagged as outdated. It is important today for a business to build a trustworthy approach and that starts with being involved in social media.

Developing a strong social presence is even more important for small businesses. Social media can help grow your brand and the more people that know about you, the more customers you will gain.

If you’re not ready to get on all the social platforms, you should at least have a presence on Facebook. The world uses Facebook to communicate. You can maximize your potential audience if you use Facebook as a marketing tool.

There are several options within Facebook that you can benefit from, starting with groups, pages with advertisement options. With the many options to promote your business, it can be a little overwhelming.

These five steps can help you get started in growing your customer base:

Make One Business Page on Facebook

Giving your business a professional presence starts by creating a business page. This page will be similar to your personal profile only its focus will be to highlight your business. You won’t be required to make friends to help people know about you. Instead, people can just show their interest in your business by liking your page.

It is important to add as much information as you can so customers can know all the required things about you. You will also want to add a relatable profile picture and cover photo of your page that will be the face of your page and let people know what your business does.

Maintain the Regularity of Posts

Once you have a page created, you are not done. Creating a page is just the first step. Next, you need to post content on it that relates to your business and products/services.

In the beginning, it will be difficult to get lots of likes. Creating posts is something you need to work really hard to get noticed and convince people to like your page. Posting often without large gaps in between is important.

You can make a plan of when you will post each week. These posts are how you engage and attract attention. You can post videos, photos, write-ups, anything that relates to your business.

You can even come up with some short clips that may give a behind-the-scenes look into your business. This can help build trust with potential customers.

Promote Your Facebook Page as Much as Possible

There is no point in putting so much effort into creating posts if nobody will notice it. While building out your page you can send invitations to your friends and people you know. If your business has a website, then you can add to the header for the footer area of your website design a link to your Facebook page to help drive people to your page.

You can have your Facebook link printed on business cards. You can add great deals or discount coupons on your Facebook page to help improve your follower base and ask people to like your page and share it with others

Related:  Promoting Your E-Commerce Store to Drive Traffic & Increase Customers

Engage the Followers on Your Page

Facebook has a sophisticated algorithm, and it prefers pages that have maximum engagement. It is important to not just post just anything. What you post needs to have content that is interesting enough to attract and engage customers.

It is a good idea to be social and engage with your followers. Create some posts that are more conversational and less formal. It is also advised that you be active in responding to your customers, so they know you are conversing with them.

Utilize Facebook Ads Option

Getting organic likes can take a long time and the result may not be as huge as you may want. Don’t get discouraged as you have another option to grow likes. You can advertise through Facebook ads. Promoting your page or a post will reach more people than just organic reach alone.

It can make targeting a particular type of audience much easier. You decide who are your potential customers and reach out to them using ads. Facebook ads can be customized to target a certain base of people by means of age, gender, location, interest, etc. As Facebook collects data on its users, it can reach out to people who have similar interests.

Facebook is just one social media platform, but it is a good place to start to gain a presence that can benefit your business. By not taking advantage of this platform, you are missing out on the growing number of potential online customers. Over the years we have helped thousands of clients get proper guidance and have helped strengthen their online marketing through social media platforms.

Nine Rules of Social Media Marketing

Nine Rules of Social Media Marketing

in Digital Marketing / Social Media Marketing  by paulalbee

Nine Rules of Social Media Marketing

If increasing your audience and customer base is important to you and your business the understanding the power of content and social media marketing is important. It’s imperative to understand the social media marketing fundamentals. Taking from these nine rules of social media marketing will help you build a foundation that will serve your customers and your business.

1. Listening is Rule Number One

To be successful with social media marketing it requires that you do a lot of listening to your customer base. Read your target audience’s online content and join the discussions to learn what is important to them. By doing this you can create content that will spark conversation and add real value.

2. Focus is Key

When it comes to integrating social media and content marketing into your overall digital marketing strategy, working to build a strong brand through a well-focused strategy will give you a much more chance for success than spreading your attempts to broad.

3. Quality vs. Quantity

The old adage is still true in the social media age. Quality is better than quantity. It is more beneficial to have 1,000 connections who read, share and talk about your content than to have 10,000 connections who vanish after connecting with you once.

4. Patience

While it is possible to have success quickly, it is more likely that you will need to be diligent to achieve success with your social media marketing.

5. The Rule of Compounding

If you put up real quality content and work to build your online audience, you will have them share that content with the own audiences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even on their own blogs. One of the most effective ways to grow your audience quickly is to make sure your website design includes an integrated blog that can be shared widely. Using WordPress as the foundation of your website is ideal for this purpose since it has a robust blogging platform built in. It is also one of most widely used website development platforms in the world, and Google loves WordPress website.  So the sharing of your blog posts and online content directly from your website opens a world of new possibilities for search engines like Google to find that content and you through keyword searches. Those entry points could grow into thousands of potential ways other people find you online.

6. Influence Across Platforms

Social Media Marketing Syracuse New YorkWhen it comes to the social media marketing, rule number six is probably one of the most important.  It’s also surprisingly easy, and one of the most enjoyable.

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Don’t limit yourself to thinking only about Facebook.  Look elsewhere.  Google Plus is an excellent starting point.  Make sure you have a verified Google Business Page and connect with influencers in your topic areas in Google Plus circles. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

7. The Rule Called Value

If you spend all your time on the social web strictly and narrowly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversation and create content that educates and develops relationships with your target audience as well as other online influences. If people feel they get something out of your content then they will be more willing to share that information and continue to spread that knowledge (and your name).

8. Be Consistent

It is impossible to overstate the importance of posting regularly and being available and active in comments and discussions. Engagement and participation is key. Be available, be connected, be engaged, and above all be interesting and thoughtful.  At the end of the day, building relationships online is a lot like building relationships face to face.

9. Turnabout is Fair Play

It’s really all about networking and relationship building.  Share other people’s content and comment on it, and they will do the same for you and your meaningful, original content. Remember, social media is first and foremost “social.” It’s all about sharing.

 

Paul Albee is the digital marketing director of ATS Design Group in Syracuse, New York. Paul and his team specialize in all aspects of online digital marketing including website design, SEO search engine optimization, social media marketing as well as print and advertising design.

Online reviews. Reputation Management Syracuse.

Online Reviews and Reputation Management

in Digital Marketing / Social Media Marketing  by paulalbee

Online Reviews and Reputation Management

For most small businesses marketing has changed. Today most searches for a local business will start on mobile devices and not the big yellow book in the past. Consumers now consider reviews, testimonials, case studies and social media to determine if a company is worth doing business with. Because of this, the competition is greater than ever for business and a positive reputation can be a key factor in standing out.

Line Of Credibility

We all have a line of credibility in our mind. When we hear an idea we immediately place either above or below this line. Below the line we discredit them and above the line we are willing to accept it. We also have a line of  “super credibility” that we reach when we hear an of something that we are blown away and accept it immediately.

In the world of online and social media marketing, credibility can be lost or gained over time. Some may seem credible to start and lose that over time while other may have less credibility at first then gain credibility over time and even become super credible.

In the example below see if you can decide what order they would go in listing from “dismiss,” “credible,” and “super credible.”

  • You get an email promising you “Top Google Ranking for Only $99 a month. The email has grammatical errors and miss-spellings and comes from a generic email service.
  • You search for a plumber and you get a local pack of plumbers in a search engine results with one at the top of the list.
  • A search for a marketing agency shows a company first in the PPC results with seller ratings (5 gold stars), third in the local pack with 5 gold stars, and in the organic results with review stars showing for the organic listing.

It is easy to see which of these three business listings you would consider credible, super credible or dismiss out of hand. This example illustrates just how credibility is layered over a typical local search.

Credibility: An Ongoing Process

It is important to be aware of how potential customers become aware of your business and how credible your business looks as visitors travel down their path to purchase.

  • How professional and credible your website looks.
  • How you stack up on local review sites.
  • How you project an image of professionalism and credibility on a variety of social media channels.

Online credibility is an iterative process that is never truly finished and not something to simply check off your list. A single new review each month may be plenty for some businesses, while others may need daily reviews. The point is to tailor the maintenance of your credibility to the unique needs of your business.

Facebook Video Advertising SMB

Facebook Video Advertising on the Rise. Big time!

in Social Media Marketing  by paulalbee

According to the latest Mixpo survey, Facebook is set to seriously challenge Youtube for video advertising spend by agencies and individual businesses alike this year.  According to its survey, more advertisers, both independent and agency, plan to target their video production budgets for online video advertising or promotional type content on Facebook vs. YouTube this year.

Related: What is Business Video marketing

It’s all about engagement.  In commenting on the survey, Andy Smith at ReelSEO said:

Not surprisingly fan engagement was the winner when it comes to most important metrics for video ads on social. Shares, conversions, time spent watching and views were the next most important categories (in that order) but the respondents showed that social marketing is more than just getting exposure, it’s about creating buzz and building relationships with fans.

Check out Andy’s post here.  Great food for thought if you’re considering internet video marketing this year.

Youtube connected account Facebook.

YouTube: No More Connected Account to Facebook

in Social Media Marketing  by paulalbee

Youtube creators can no longer automatically post their content to Facebook via a ‘connected account’ integration between the two services.

Youtube to Creators: No More ‘Connected Account’ Option.

Any long-term effects of this move, apparently made by Google/Youtube, have yet to be determined, but for those content creators who rely on the ability to auto-share their content to their facebook page or timeline could see a silent hit to their Facebook video engagement from their Youtube channel.  We say “silent” since this disconnect was not announced.

The silver lining may be that this might be a good time to test out posting videos on Facebook itself.  For those who may not have noticed, the video wars are heating up between Google, the owner of Youtube, and the folks over at Facebook.

Generating Website Traffic for Syracuse SMB

Generating Website Traffic: The Long View

in SEO Search Engine Optimization / Social Media Marketing  by paulalbee

Here are five simple rules to increasing traffic to your website or blog:

1. Get Social

There’s all kinds of social media networks out there:  Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Youtube, the list goes on and on. The more quality posts you create and share, the more likely you are to attract the kinds of people (and customers) you’re looking for.  Be sure to use hashtags to help your content be found.  We’ll discuss hashtags in another post.

2. Write really good content.

What you write about is important to you and to your audience.  Always strive to give something of value to your audience.  You don’t want to read boring, rehashed stuff and neither do they. They came to you for information. Give it to them.  Inspire people with what inspires you and gives you the passion to get out of bed each morning.

3. Links. Links. Links.

Regardless of which social network you happen to be on, be sure to include your website URL (address). Basically, it boils down to “the more inbound links to your website the better.” A word of caution: be conscious about where you are getting those links.  Low quality links can be bad news when it comes to Google ranking your pages in search results.

4. Don’t stuff your content full of keywords.

Keyword stuffing is a Google no-no, and you’ll get your wrists slapped and your website demoted for it. Keep it natural and you’ll be better off in the long run (and so will your website traffic).

5. Video is hot!

You don’t just have to write articles.  You may not feel comfortable doing that a lot.  Not to worry.  Youtube is the second largest search engine in the world.  Between Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, not to mention your own website blog, there’s plenty to share along with your written words.  Mix it up with relevant, well crafted videos and pictures to keep your audience engaged and more likely to share your content and your message.