Social Media and its Potential for Testing Creative Campaigns

Despite the massive popularity of social media, truly creative social media campaigns are hard to find. Many brands still nurture the wrong notion that a little semblance of social media in a campaign is more than enough to get consumer attention. Unfortunately, it isn’t quite so. Social media is evolving rapidly, so if you want your campaign to get the attention it deserves, you will need to evolve as well.

Gone are the days when your YouTube followers would watch every video you uploaded and your Twitter followers would click on every link you posted.  Now it is a battle to create engagement.

Consumers are now being bombarded with numerous social media campaigns. Unless you launch a truly creative campaign, you cannot expect the user to engage with your brand. Interestingly, this isn’t all that difficult. The very nature of social media allows advertisers to be creative.

Creating content for social media takes a great deal of time and effort. What’s more, social media doesn’t allow the marketer to launch a campaign and then take a sabbatical. In order to create engagement, the advertiser needs to work on the campaign constantly.

It is the next big thing in advertising

Social media has caught the attention of big names in advertising and marketing. Businesses too have started realizing the potential of social media. Needless to say, many brands now don’t mind spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media campaigns. All of these factors have led to the development of some killer campaigns.

Creative convergence and its potential

Nowadays, we access information through many channels, and interestingly this has led to the convergence of different media platforms. It is now possible to access the same content on multiple platforms, albeit in different forms. This allows advertisers to be creative. 

Social media allows you to be crazy

In spite of the popularity of social media, very few advertisers are spending huge amounts of money on their social media campaigns. Most marketers don’t even spend a dime. They somehow create a campaign and then launch it hoping that it would be noticed.

 

For most social media marketers, their only investment is their time. And because of this, marketers are betting on crazy ideas that have the potential to go viral. If it works, everybody behind the campaign attains iconic status. If it doesn’t, well, nobody is going to lose anything. After all, hardly any money had gone into the making of this campaign. This again allows an advertiser to be creative.

You get to try anything and everything

Unlike other advertising channels, social media allows marketers to explore interesting ways to engage customers. Of course, some of these can be crazy, still they are considered acceptable. The goal is to create engagement and this allows marketers to try every trick in the book to create amazingly smart campaigns that have the potential to reach millions of people.

Social media calls for innovation

Social media is an ever-changing dynamic landscape. Existing platforms are constantly being updated and new platforms are being launched almost on a regular basis. Consequently, the user behavior and expectations change constantly. A campaign that does amazingly well on Facebook may not be that popular on Twitter.

 

This dynamic nature of the media itself spurs creative professionals to try out new and interesting ways to engage audience. This also means that advertisers have to constantly test new ideas and campaigns.

How to Promote Your Online Business with Facebook Apps

Many businesses are yet to fully leverage Facebook's potential as a marketing tool. Nowadays almost everybody has an account on Facebook and most of these folks log into their account at least once a day. That means any business that has a presence on Facebook gets an opportunity to reach potential customers on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, many businesses still haven’t launched an effective social media campaign. If you feel that your brand is yet to take advantage of the massive popularity of Facebook, the first thing you need to do is to launch a fan page for your business. The next step is to get people to like your pages. Businesses can consider offering discounts or special prizes to users who like their Facebook page. Post regular status updates. Your updates must be engaging enough for people to interact with them.  So for example, if you run a restaurant, you can post updates featuring the day's menus or specials. Of course, these are the most basic things. Building a commendable presence on Facebook takes a great deal of time and effort. Fortunately for us, plenty of apps are now available to make this job easier.

Why do you need Facebook apps?

Facebook apps can be a great way to create engagement with your fans. Apps can be used to promote online sales, incentives, competitions, and more. Since they create engaging content, they make sure that your users interact with your brand.

Small businesses don't have to create their own apps. Instead, they can choose some of the available apps. A successful app can go a long way in establishing and strengthening your social media presence. While selecting apps for your business, choose the ones that are simple, quick, and user-friendly.

Here is a list of some Facebook apps that you can use to promote your business:

If you run a restaurant, you should use Heyo. This Facebook app comes with mobile widgets that allow your customers to redeem gift coupons on their mobile phones.

North Social is another company that builds apps for Facebook. It offers apps for mobile promotions, contests, coupons, sweepstakes, and more. These apps allow businesses to launch limited-time promotions almost every day.

Woobox is another app popular with local retailers. It allows small stores to create and launch contests. The most popular feature of this app is its photo contest feature which allows users to upload their own photos and let other users vote the best. A clothing store can take advantage of this feature by encouraging its fans to post photos wearing their latest clothes for a discount or a prize.

If you offer a professional service, you can use an app like FaceItPages to improve your social media presence. This app creates ads that will only show up to users who might need a service like that.

Whatever may be your business needs, there are plenty of Facebook apps to make your job easier. Since the number of people who interact with your Facebook page is far more important than the number of people who like it, creating customer engagement should be your goal and apps make it possible.

Using Images to Make Sales on Facebook

If you’re using Facebook for sales promotion, we have a few suggestions regarding how you can increase revenues using graphics on Facebook. A lot of ecommerce brands are following these practices to boost sales online:

Why use images?

According to a study, image posts attract 53% more likes as compared to others, get 104% more comments and generate 120% more engagement.

Offer promotion codes for seasonal sales

Whether you’re offering a Thanksgiving discount, a 15% off discount or a Buy 1, Get 1 Free sale, consider the option of creating an interesting graphic to showcase this. An appealing graphic can draw greater attention than regular text.

Make sure you include a promo code because this will help track revenues generated. While posting the image on your Facebook timeline, make use of a clear action call in the post copy so that fans know the exact procedure for completing their purchase.

Offer rewards to fans who tell others

Craft an engaging graphic telling your fans that a special promo code will get unlocked if your image gets a particular number of shares. Since the updates on your page are seen mostly by people who already engage with it, you may want to get greater engagement using a promoted post. This kind of promotion can help increase organic engagement and you will not be required to pay for the promotion of your next offer!

Along with driving revenues, an additional benefit of such promotions is that there’s an increase in fan engagement and brand awareness is built within friends of fans.

Show off product specifications

“If you have it, flaunt it!” This perfectly applies to the arena of Facebook marketing. A Facebook page is an ideal place to showcase the outstanding features of all your products. Design a graphic that’s sure to capture the attention of your fans and highlight product features not visible at first glance. Posting the image with a direct call to action such as a link to your online store will make purchasing easy.

When it’s a brick-and-mortar store, the sales team can speak about the salient features of a product at length before potential customers. Its different online – state-of-the-art graphics should do all the talking and all the selling!

Offer free gifts with purchases

Though offering free gifts with purchases is one of the oldest promotional mantras, it’s still around because of its effectiveness as a revenue-generating tactic. Design an appealing graphic for offering a free gift relevant to your audience. If your fan base is big, use the various Facebook features to ensure that the correct people  know about your offer. Using the appropriate graphics is likely to make your gift offer stand apart.

Make use of countdown promos

Countdown promos keep fans hyper-engaged over extended periods of time. For example, you could design a graphic that shows a 24-hour sale of various popular products from your online store each day for a week. Excited fans are likely to visit your page every day to see the image of the day and you’ll have a boost in revenues for 7 days straight.

Promote a limited-period offer

A worst case scenario in the arena of Facebook promotions is when a fan says, “Oh, I’ll come back tomorrow." When an image promotes an exciting offer for a limited period, it creates a sense of urgency that’s required for immediate driving of sales.

In conclusion, combining the draw of a discount or sale with the power of image posts can result in a substantial increase in online revenues.

The Impact of Mobile on SEO

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We as internet marketers constantly look out for ways we can get the most out of search engines. Search engines in turn constantly look for ways in which they can make their searches fair. So search dynamics are constantly evolving. This is also very relevant in the mobile search scenario. Whether we’re building mobile apps for using websites or trying to optimize mobile websites for SEO, there are lots of things to take into account.

Here are the factors currently influencing mobile SEO:

The Role of Page Speed

Since processor speeds and internet connections of mobile phones aren’t as fast as those of traditional computers, mobile searches are slower. Even if there’s 3G or 4G internet on a phone, the speed cannot measure up to DSL and satellite speeds on computers.

So to get a good search engine ranking, it’s crucial for mobile websites and apps to load quickly. For this, you might want to use fewer images on a mobile website, make use of HTML5, or design a special app for running the site to address speed issues and improve SEO.

Size Is Important

Mobile users generally want information instantly and they tend to use shorter phrases for searching. Also because it’s less convenient to type on a smartphone than a standard computer, search phrases stay short. This indicates that short content that’s keyword rich is important for improved SEO.

Additionally, consider writing smaller text blocks for mobile sites. Mobile users have limited space for reading text and if there’s too much text, they’ll move off. Most of the larger cell phone models are not even one fourth the size of a regular laptop screen.

Local Results Do Better

Typically, people use cell phones to hunt for things close by when they’re moving around. For example, they might need information regarding where they could go for dinner or want to look for coupons of a store they are visiting. This indicates that local results have a greater tendency to show up in the search results of mobile search engines.

To improve mobile SEO, the way to go is the provision of content that’s likely to appeal to an increasing quantum of people who are working with their devices whilst they’re on the go. I agree that it’s difficult to rank well for all locations, but you can carefully zero in on areas that you want to target and optimize keywords accordingly. This will help drive local user traffic to your mobile site.

More Traffic with Social Media

One more important mobile SEO aspect to keep in mind is that people using smartphones are more likely to engage in social media than those who don’t. Studies have shown that mobile users spend much more time on social networks than on search engines. So to improve mobile SEO, stay active on various social media platforms and add social sharing buttons to gain extra traffic.

As user behavior changes, mobile searches are going to keep evolving and it’ll hold us in good stead to adjust our strategies accordingly.

10 Effective Ways to Generate Leads

You can't build a successful online business without leads. If there are no leads, how are you going to make any sales?

 

Here are 10 cost effective ways to create leads. However, before you start generating leads, you should know the basic rules.

Rule 1: Create value

If you are really serious about your business, you should create a great value machine. This could be your blog, your YouTube channel, or something else where you post content on a regular basis. It is not easy, but it is the most effective way to create a loyal following.

Write a 100% useful post every day. This strategy takes a while to generate results, but it is highly effective.

Rule 2: Attract leads that will turn into buyers

If you are building an email list, your objective should be attracting buyers, not leads.  There is no point in building a list of freebie seekers. So generate leads that will ultimately turn into buyers.

Building a list full of people who want free stuff is relatively easy, but that is hardly worth your time.

Rule 3: Encourage people to act fast and don't wait until you have built a relationship

Building a relationship with your potential buyers is good, but this might take a while. If you can't wait that long, encourage people to buy faster.  If you are in business for selling, make no excuses about it. Just sell.

So, here are the most effective ways for generating leads:

1. Post viral videos

Create a video that has the potential to go viral and post it your own blog and YouTube. If you post it on your blog, it may generate lots of incoming links. You can promote the video by buying PPC adverts on Facebook. Make sure that your video is entertaining because that is what people like.

2. Be active on social media

It is not exactly clear whether social media is good at generating sales, but when it comes to creating awareness, it is quite effective. Encourage your leads to spread the word for you. Put a Facebook 'Share' button on your 'thank-you page'.

3. Start selling right away

Put an offer in front of your leads. You will get to know how many of them are willing to buy.

4. Don't ignore the easy stuff

Don't overlook cheap and free ways to generate leads. For example, you can include your offer in the email signature.

5. Give away free stuff but make it useful

It is no longer possible to attract people by offering them free junk. This strategy used to work in the past, but now nobody will subscribe to your list just because they will get some free stuff.

So, if you are giving away free stuff, make sure that it is useful.

6. Promote your products as if they were a rare commodity

Everybody wants things they cannot have easily. So when you promote your products, present them as something they can't have easily. If you keep your funnel open all the time, people will have no reason to buy today and not four or five years later.

7. Think big

Many lead generation techniques do not produce the desired results. So instead of putting all your time and money on one lead generation campaign, launch ten. Try every trick in the book. Write good sales copies, great articles, and press releases. Launch banner and PPC ads. If you want to win, you should give yourself plenty of chances to win.

8. Fully leverage all opportunities

Whenever you find an opportunity, think about creative ways to fully leverage it.

9. Link bait

Link bait still works and you don't have to publish sensational or scandalous stories to encourage people to link to you. Instead, publish content that is truly valuable.

10. Don't forget the basics

Success will be yours if you execute the basics well. There are three steps to generating leads. You must have a great offer. You must make it visible to the right people. You should give them a reason to act now.