The downside to social marketing is that it can be time consuming, as you have to update your profile accounts, status updates and send out messages and broadcasts in order to keep your accounts fresh.
One way of automating your account updates is by subscribing to the free services at
http://www.Ping.fm
will automatically update multiple social profiles at once, and provides you with the opportunity to schedule future updates, so your accounts can stay active and fresh even when you aren’t around! If you are interested in using Twitter as part of your marketing campaign, you’ll be able to automate your updates as well.
The service that I personally use is found at
http://www.SocialOomph.com
and it not only auto-posts updates to your Twitter feed, but it also enables you to send automatic tweets to those who follow you.
You could send a welcome message thanking the user for following you, and offering them a free product by directing them to your squeeze page, or you could simply use this automated feature to establish a relationship with those on your following list, the choice is yours!
Facebook Marketing
Facebook is the leading social community online. With over 300 million users, there has never been a better way to maximize your exposure, and get your message seen by a massive customer base.
The greatest thing about advertising with Facebook, is the flexibility of your advertisements.
You can customize your advertisements so they appear only to specific groups or segments of people based on the information contained within their profile or based on gender, location or personal preferences.
For example, if your product is tailored towards single mothers, you could develop your advertisements so that they are triggered to appear only for those who have indicated that they are single mothers in their profiles, or who have demonstrated interest in similar products or services based on their personal profile, communities or groups they've joined, or other advertisements they've responded to.
Create Targeted Advertisements
In order to create the most compelling, responsive and profitable advertisements, you need to utilize Facebooks option to heavily target and tailor your advertisements based on your target market.
With facebook, you can set your ads up so that they appear only to specific people, based on age, location, gender, interests, hobbies or even based on the groups they have joined within the Facebook community. You will want to conduct market research so that you can accurately define your target market and develop advertisements that target specific segments of your market.
Facebook implores a quality control system to ensure that the advertisements that run throughout their community stay within their guidelines and do not offend or disrupt member activity or overall experience.
Use their quality control system to develop compelling advertisements that stand out in the marketplace, and capture the attention of potential buyers.
Also keep in mind that Facebook advertising is based on display, rather than search. This means that your ads will be automatically triggered to appear based on your settings, rather than when a user conducts an on-site search.
Users can also choose to rate advertisements, helping to retain quality throughout the community.
Improve your Click Through Rate
Your advertisements click through rate plays an integral role in saving you money while boosting exposure and reaching out to your target market. It’s important to keep a pulse on your click through rate so that you can correct any problems with your advertisement, or make adjustments to improve your overall CTR. If your advertisements CTR drops too low, it could be automatically paused or removed by Facebook, so you really want to pay attention to how well it’s converting.
Typically, your ads should never fall below a 2% conversion rate. One of the easiest ways of increasing your CTR is by creating a highly targeted advertisement.
You want your ad to appear only to those who are within your target demographic, while making sure that your advertisements text or any images used speak directly to your customer base.
Consider split testing various advertisements within the Facebook community to determine what works best, based on your industry or niche market. You should also pay attention to the times of day that your ads appear. You can choose to either run your ads consistently throughout the day, or have them only appear at specific times (or even specific dates).
Keep in mind the time zone of your target market, so that your ads are running based on the most active time of day or night.
Stay Within Facebook Guidelines
It’s important to understand how Facebook advertising channels work, and what is permitted as well as what is not allowed within the marketplace.
Facebook is very flexible with the types of advertisements that are allowed to be displayed within their community, however they do not allow images or text that may be considered offensive.
Setting Your Maximum Daily Bid
One of the most important aspects of setting up an effective Facebook advertisement is in the maximum daily bid that you are willing to pay. The higher your daily bid, the more exposure your ad will receive. You want to start off with a lower bid if you are just getting used to advertising with Facebook, and increase your maximum daily bid as you fine-tune your advertisements for maximum results.
It’s important to always keep a pulse on how well your advertisement is converting, so that you can improve click through rates and overall response. When you create an advertisement with Facebook, they will suggest a maximum bid based on your advertisements focus and target market (based on your personal configuration and preferences).
You can start off by setting your maximum daily bid slightly lower than what’s suggested and increase it as you improve your advertisements conversion rates so that you are getting the most bang for your buck!
CPC Versus Impression Based Ads
With Facebook, you can develop advertisements where you either pay for impressions or based on the number of clicks your ad receives.
If you are just getting started with Facebook advertising, I recommend choosing cost per click (CPC), so that you can accurately test your advertisements, while paying only for responses rather than just views.
You can always change your advertisement format to ‘impression based’ later on in the event you wish to test out alternative options.
Twitter Marketing
http://www.Twitter.com
Social media platforms, like Twitter, have changed the way people communicate and interact. This micro-blogging platform that has had a never-before-seen growth, at an over 1,000 percent increase in its user base year-on-year, is the equivalent of a virtual social club where people can meet, get to know each other, socialize, make new friends and maintain existing friendships.
Twitter is a highly effective platform where you can begin to learn about your target market. You are no longer in the situation of other businesses that two decades ago had to pay market research companies a fortune to find out who their ideal customer is and they would receive a profile after the company had done extensive research. However, even this would still be a generalized profile, whereas Twitter
allows you to come into contact directly with your prospects, not simply an ideal based on a generalized profile.
This allows you to learn about your prospects directly, without having the information filtered and categorized by someone else. Additionally, it is a much more affordable solution, since it’s practically free, and you can even design your own survey and ask your customers and prospects to offer you feedback on your service or product. This information will prove invaluable because you can basically ask your prospects what they want in a product and you can offer it to them. If you offer people what they want, then the product or service will sell itself and your customers will also sell it for you.
Never underestimate the power of understanding what your prospects and target market want. The more you know and the more you understand about them, the easier it will be to create a product they need and want which will lead to higher and easier sales. Not only will your revenues increase, but so too will your profit because you won’t be spending as much on new customer acquisition.
Identifying Your Target Market
Your first order of business is to find highly targeted and qualified leads for your business. If you are selling baby strollers then tweeting to male
golfers all day isn’t going to get you a single sale. However, tweeting to pregnant women and young mothers with newborns will be much more effective.
Finding your target market on
Twitter is not quite as hard as you may think it is. As is to be expected with such a popular service, many third party applications and websites have popped up that make our lives easier when it comes to working with Twitter. One such site is Twellow.com, which is the Yellow Pages of Twitter.
Other effective tools you can use include:
www.TwitterSearch.com – this is Twitter’s built in search engine which can be quite helpful in locating prospects;
• www.Twitterfall.com allows you to search by keywords and hash tags;
is especially useful since you can search a wide range of social media sites, regular websites, news and almost all the Internet for certain keywords. It is a system that can be used to identify prospective clients as well as to stay up-to-date with what people are saying about your products and business.
• www.Twitterment.com and www.TweepSearch.com are also two highly effective search tools that are slightly more useful than the Twitter search engine because they can also search the bios of people. Bios are effectively where people list their interests, hobbies,
profession and so on and so forth. This is basically most of the demographic information on people which will help you find your target audience.
• www.NearbyTweets.com allows you to search for users according to location and you can then narrow down your results even further by searching according to keyword;
• www.Twellohood.com and www.Twwtmondo.com are similar services that allow you to identify prospects by location.
Understanding your audience is a key step in creating and guaranteeing the success of your marketing strategy.
The more you know the people you are trying to sell to, the more you understand what they value, what they dream of and what their fears are, the easier it will be for you to find and create offers that appeal to them as well as products and content that will be useful and provide value.
Additionally, understanding your target market will allow you to stand out from the competition.
Remember that people receive vast amounts of information on Twitter and if you want to succeed you need to make sure people notice what you are saying. The best way to do this is by tweeting about things that interest your audience and by learning about them, you will discover what will get their attention.
Here are the top social media networks that you should consider including in your marketing campaigns:
http://www.Facebook.com
http://www.Ning.com
http://www.Linkedin.com
http://www.Xanga.com
http://www.Orkut.com
http://www.Fubar.com
http://www.bebo.com
http://www.Zorpia.com
•
No comments:
Post a Comment