bigmikeyt17

[bigmikeyt17]

Marketing Success

Anytime you startup a business you are going to have to learn how to market it. There is no way around it. The reason being is because other companies and people want to what you are all about. This article, 4 Ways to Get Marketing Results on a Starter Budget by Joseph Pigato, shows four ways that you could possibly market your startup company. Those four ways include retargeting, email marketing, public relations, and A/B testing. All of these ways can prove dividends for your company because of how cost-effective they are. They all have a different purpose, but they have a common goal and that is to gain revenue for your company.

Retargeting is basically a company running an ad on their website and then running it again on another relative website. According to the article, this is where most of your online ad spending should be at when doing marketing. This form of marketing is relatively cost-efficient and it shows that people are interested in the product that is being advertised. If it looks appealing, more likely than not, I am going to buy the product. So retargeting really does help in the long run. Email marketing is what it says it is. You select who you want added to your mailing list and they will get emails from your company. This is the one that you want to make a top priority because it can prove to be one of the best decisions for your company down the road. This article also list four common methods of building an e-mail list. Those include requesting signups on your site, providing valuable content pieces to encourage readers to join your mailing list when they download the content, collecting business cards at events and conferences, and running webinars and collecting emails from participants. There are other methods when it comes to making that list, but these are the most common ones listed. While this form of marketing is efficient, you don’t want to abuse it, as the article says. You want to share content that is useful and relevant to the company and keeping them brief while using visuals at the same time.

Public relations has to do with the image of the company. You want to make sure that you are getting the most positive attention that you can get on the most well-known news sites. But if you are a smaller company you might want to take a more targeted approach, according to the article. Instead of reaching high caliber businesses it might be more reasonable for you to get the attention of the niche bloggers. Since they are focused on what you are they might be looking for a company like yours that is out there. Who knows, maybe that blogger could help you get your company to the next level. Lastly, A/B testing can determine whether you spend your money on a well thought out idea or throwing your money in something that shouldn’t be worth your time. If you want to increase your click rates on your mailing list you have to have a strong subject line. If something doesn’t like that appealing, more likely than not, people are not going to click on the link and your chance of increasing in popularity as a business. By doing this you can easily see what is going to work and what isn’t.

Like I said earlier on, all of these ways are cost-effective. With retargeting, the people get to see the advertisement more than once. That allows for an image to stick in their mind of the company advertising. Email marketing is probably the best out of all these. It is almost guaranteed to reach a large amount of people when you send it out. Public relations is all about the company’s image. If you align yourself with the right kind of people you will do just fine. Through the A/B testing you get the chance to see what will work and will not. It will end up saving you money in the long run. If you follow these ways the way they are supposed to your company will achieve great success.

Thanks for the read.

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

Social Media Trends

When it comes to being successful as business you have to have a strong social media presence. This article titled, 3 Social Media Trends That Need to Be on Your Radar for the Rest of This Year by AJ Agrawal, helps with that. In this article Agrawal describes three popular trends that you should become part of. Those trends are live video, platform crossover, and the integration of virtual reality. These trends have grown in popularity and should be taken advantage of if you want to have success on social media.

Live video is becoming more and more popular because of the engagement that it allows for the customers. It allows the customers to feel that sense of being there without actually being there. It is like they are up close and personal with the people and stars of the event. According the article states that since live videos are on the minds of every platform that they should be on the minds of every marketer as well. The last thing that Agrawal says about live video is that they are far from perfect, even though they are real, today’s audience craves authenticity in social content. In other words, audiences crave in the moment events and not events that have been pre-recorded.

Platform crossover is now becoming a thing where two social media outlets have morphed into versions of one another. The examples that are used in this article are Facebook’s stories launch and Snapchat’s new universal search functionality. This has prompted the expansion of some of the features we use on our social media outlets. This method has also discovered the fact that it may no longer be necessary to expend equal amounts of budgeting and resources across platforms. It turns out that platform crossover is very beneficial to one person’s business.

Lastly, the integration of virtual reality. The technology in behind virtual reality allows brands the chance to tell completely innovative and interactive stories, according to the article. As virtual reality begins to expand and grow the expectations of the audience will increase exponentially. The article also says how some marketers are thinking that they have plenty of time to adopt this practice. Why wait when it is right there at your fingertips. This technology is so helpful and marketers are not even taking advantage of it. Why do such a thing, when it can do such wonders for your company and yourself.

Overall, these three trends can prove to be very key to helping your social media presence. If you take advantage of these trends while they are still a thing, it will help you in the long run. This article is very helpful if you want to find out more ways to help you succeed in your social media presence. These trends are short-lived and should be taken full advantage of if you want to have a successful social media presence.

Thanks for the read.

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

The Rising Popularity of Facebook Messenger

So everybody knows what Facebook is and the stand alone app that they have called Messenger. Well just in case you haven't heard, it is an app that allows you to message back and forth to people on a stand alone platform. The only thing is that you need a Facebook account for it to work. According to an article, Facebook Messenger Passes 1.2 Billion Users by Kathleen Chaykowski, the other day Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, announced that the messenger app had reached over 1.2 billion users. That is astounding if I do say so myself. There is another Facebook owned messenger app called WhatsApp. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg WhatsApp serves as a replacement for SMS services, whereas Messenger aims to be a more "expressive and rich environment" with a broad range of content. Also across both Facebook messenger and WhatsApp there are over 60 billion messages sent. Facebook is still coming up with new things to add to the messenger app. With the things they have been testing they haven't really generated a good amount of revenue. So they are still experimenting. Overall, what this article is stating is that the messenger app on Facebook is growing in popularity and all of the cool features that are included. The messenger app is a cool and convenient app that will allow you to message back and forth as long as there is a Facebook account connected. With all of the things that Facebook is trying to do with the app it is going to be interesting to see what comes of it. This was an interesting read and I strongly recommend it. Thanks for the read. Michael

[bigmikeyt17]

'The Price is Right' and Social Media

We all know of the popular game show, 'The Price is Right'. The show where contestants wear funny costumes and play games for fabulous prizes. You might be asking why this is being mentioned in a social media blog. The reason is because there is a correlation between 'The Price is Right' and social media success. This article by Carol Roth titled '3 Social Media Tips You Can Learn From 'The Price is Right'' gives tips that you can use in social media that you can learn from the show. The tips are ask questions, stand out, and proper placement is key. All of these tips can be learned from the show and here is how. Under ask questions it refers to how the studio audience is always willing to help the contestants guess the price. Same thing goes for social media. What you do for social media is to create a relationship with your community so you can get feedback and ask questions. But the article also says to be aware of the vocal minority and listen to your loudest followers. Under stand out it points out how to be a contestant on the show you must standout which includes visuals and clever phrases on t-shirts. Same thing for social media. In order to stand out on social media use posts with pictures with appealing text. Doing so will increase your likes and shares. With proper placement is key it refers to how placing the chips in Plinko determine how much you will win. Same for social media. In order to reach your desired target audience you want to use hot topics, celebrities, and influencers that you're desired audience will be following. Doing so increases the probability of increasing your customer base. Reading this article was very interesting. It provided two things I like, game shows and social media. It was a very short read and very appealing. It has great tips in it and should be looked at by all social media professionals. Thanks for the read. Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

How to Improve Your Instagram Game

In today’s world we are constantly posting on social media. One of those popular forms of social media is Instagram. We as individuals not only use it, but corporate and small companies use Instagram. However, the uses for each are different. We as individuals usually use Instagram for likes and selfies. Whereas businesses use Instagram primarily for the promotion of their business in order to get more likes and followers which will convert to consumers of their products. This article that I came across, “5 Ways to Improve Your Instagram Game” by Katrina Padron, gave tips for businesses on how to more properly utilize Instagram for the business. The tips were advertising, know your message, leave breadcrumbs, offer unique content, and create a special deal for Instagram Users. These tips are very useful and how you use them will determine how many followers/consumers you have on Instagram.

Under advertising it says that you should focus on a specific design aesthetic for all of your pictures posted. Doing so will allow users to recognize your ads just by looking at them. They will see the picture and they will know that it’s your business that the picture is representing. With knowing your message you give the consumers a brand they can identify with. They will also know what the brand stands for and your message should tell that story consistently which in turn will cement your authority. In order to do so you should have attractive images and videos so that your follower will come back for more. They will come back because you’re no longer a brand to them, you’re a brand that enhances their lifestyle. If you can hone in to a consumers lifestyle then you are doing something right. Under leaving breadcrumbs it lets you know of the geotagging feature that you can use. You can use this feature to add your location to your photos and help people find your physical location. You can also add custom hashtags and/or your Instagram handle to your posts so that other users can tag you when the post is shared. In the long run that helps you keep track of the content that they have responded to. Offering unique content is pretty self-explanatory. You want to think outside the box when it comes to creating content. If you just base your content off of another businesses post then it will become repetitive to the customer and you will lose customers in the process. The article also states that you can share posts that include up to 10 photos. With this you have an opportunity to create longer visual stories that are more appealing to consumers and will convince them to want to see the ad. The last tip, create a special deal for Instagram Users, all it says is that you should offer coupon codes for a product or service to anyone that follows or interacts with your Instagram account. Also include in that are sweepstakes and contests. An example of that is Starbucks. Back in December of 2015 they launched their #RedCupContest in which customers were asked to post images celebrating their iconic red cups. The top five winners were given a $500 preloaded Starbucks gift card. This goes to show that a simple contest can go a long way in customer interaction.

When I first saw the title of this article I thought that this was no use to me because I don’t have an Instagram. I know that comes as a shock to most people, but I don’t have one. But when I started reading it I got into it and I learned a lot. These tips are not just helpful when it comes to Instagram. They can also be used on other platforms, but would have to be adjusted to fit the platforms use. Instagram is on the rise and should be taken full advantage of with the use of these tips found in this article.

Thanks for the Read.

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

March Madness and Social Media

It is March and March Madness is in full swing. Whether your team is a title contender or not you still enjoy March Madness because of the intensity it brings. March Madness also brings in a lot of traffic on social media and this article, "‘March Madness’ Dominates Social Media" by R. Thomas Umstead, proves just that. This article talks about how much traffic certain key games drove in on Twitter and Facebook. For example, one of the games mentioned is the South Carolina vs. Duke game that saw South Carolina upset Duke. This game alone drew 3 million interactions and it came from more than 1.3 million unique users. Another game that was mentioned was Arkansas vs. North Carolina. It drew 1.5 million Facebook and Twitter interactions with over 654,000 unique users. According to the article, coverage of the tournament across the four networks used averaged 11.9 million viewers. Which is an increase of 34% from what last years was. Overall, Facebook and Twitter help drive the craziness around March Madness. Whether it be to bring hype to a game or to get people to watch the game. What can be said though is that March Madness will always drive in a large amount of interactions on social media. March Madness is just one of those events every year where college basketball is going to be tweeted and shared throughout social media and this article proves just that. Thanks for the read. Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

How To Make Your Business Flourish on Facebook

Facebook is one of the most popular social media outlets in today’s society and is a good social media tool. Making a Facebook page for your business is beneficial and often results in an increase in brand followers. I came across an article “10 Easy Steps to Help Your Business Flourish on Facebook” by Will Scott and it listed the 10 steps to help your company flourish on Facebook. Those ten steps are as follows. Flesh out your Facebook page, schedule frequent and consistent posts, learn about your customers, pay attention to — and encourage — reactions and comments, post content that gets shared, stay engaged, connect with the community, post and share events, pay for advertising, and build social media into your SEO budget. Using these will help build your social media following and here is how you want to use these tips. 

Fleshing out your Facebook page means you want to take the time to create an appealing yet professional Facebook page. You’ll want to include pictures of your storefront and staff to make your page look relatable. With scheduling frequent and consistent posts you want to post at least once a week, but prioritize quality over quantity first. Doing this gives the customers time to actually take in the advertisements and really get the message. Learning about your customers means what it says. You look into their demographics and you use it to reach to, potentially, more customers. Paying attention to and encouraging reactions and comments I means exactly what it says. You want to pay attention to the comments that you get on your page. Positive comments develops more followers. Negative comments need to be addressed with caution. With them you need to let the dissatisfied customer that they can call or email directly. When doing so you need to make it succinct and professional. Post content that gets shared means you want to post content that will become popular. With this you want to avoid any controversial subject matter and stick to your area of expertise.

Staying engaged means you want to be active and responsive on your page. In order to get responses on posts you have to make sure that your posts are relevant to your target audience. You also might to consider engaging with employees in third personal pages as well. Connecting with the community means you are on track with what is going on in the community. If your employees volunteer for the local non-profits you want to post photos of them volunteering. Doing so allows for a positive brand image. With posting and sharing events you want to create Facebook events for your next big sale and you can even advertise for local events as well. By creating the event you increase the chances of having a higher turnout for the event. Paying advertisements is simple you pay for advertisements and that allows for you to target people with interests relevant to your industry. You can also target specific demographics and areas. Doing so allows you to maximize your advertising dollar. Lastly, building social media into your SEO budget means what it says. It’s hard for companies to get a specialized for someone in social media, so what they have to do is bundle their social media maintenance with other SEO services.

Having a Facebook business page is a necessity in today’s world if you want to get the word out about your business. These tips were really interesting to me and I think that they are very beneficial to anyone who is struggling in the social media side of their business. I strongly recommend giving this article a look if you need help developing your Facebook page.

Thanks for the read.

Michael Thomas

Source: http://marketingland.com/10- easy-steps-help-business-flourish-facebook-208734

[bigmikeyt17]

Hootsuite Reflection

As part of our curriculum for my social media marketing class we had to use Hootsuite and become certified. When I first started Hootsuite I thought I had everything figured out about social media. It turns out that I was completely wrong. There is more to meets the eye than what the majority of the world sees. What the Hootsuite courses and certifications showed me was the analytics, metrics, and how to do certain things involved with Hootsuite. The two Hootsuite certifications that I got while doing Hootsuite were the Social Marketing and the Hootsuite Platform certifications. It involved multiple hours of video lessons and quizzes that helped me to prepare for the exams. There were several lessons involved, but the two lessons that stood out for me was Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles on the Social Marketing certification and the Advanced Uses of Hootsuite on the Hootsuite Platform certification. I am considering going into the world of social media as a career so these lessons helped me out a lot. They taught me multiple new skills that I never would have known if it had not been for Hootsuite.

Under the Optimizing Your Social Media Profiles set of lessons I was introduced to specific features, tips, and tricks of each network in order to create a professional and engaging social media network. When I mean each network that means creating a powerful Twitter profile, Facebook Page, Instagram profile, and LinkedIn Company page. Each section in this lesson focused on a different social media network. The social media networks involved were Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. The subsections focused on optimizing your profile settings, tips for increasing engagement, and strategic best practices for each network. It showed me that you need to focus on what content you want to create before you publish the content. You want to be sure that you have totally maximize the strength of the unique features involved with each social media network you use. It also showed you how that should always use your best practices while creating that professional and engaging social media presence. It also said that while using your best practices you can help set your company up for long-term success.

The Advanced Uses of Hootsuite lesson was a different story. It required you to watch the set of lessons before to make sure that you were comfortable with the basic functionalities of Hootsuite. It showed you some of the same things as the lesson before telling you all about Hootsuite, but this one was more advanced. The different sections of the Hootsuite product including Hootsuite Engagement, Hootsuite Publishing, Hootsuite Campaigns, Hootsuite Analytics, and Hootsuite Mobile and their advanced uses were discussed. This lesson also showed how Hootsuite account administrators can manage teams and team members. This lesson also taught me advanced publishing techniques such as bulk uploads and RSS feeds, advanced engagement techniques like geo-targeting and social media search, and advanced functionality on Hootsuite Analytics. Geo-targeting is when you set up your posts to be specifically targeted toward a certain region. Say for instance you are wanting to see what your competitors are doing in your area. You can set up a geo-target post that sees where they are doing their advertising and what is working for them. 

Overall I learned so much from Hootsuite. Whether it be how to take full advantage of social media or creating a proper content strategy that ensures long-term success. Becoming Hootsuite certified is one of the best things, career development wise, that has happened to me. It will help me in the future with my career and getting a job. I plan to use this platform as a leverage tool in my career. Through this class I have learned that I belong in the field of social media marketing. I plan to use it in the collegiate athletics industry which is my inquired career field I strongly suggest getting Hootsuite certified because it can do wonders for yourself and your career.

Thanks for the read.

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

The Promotion of a Business

This week in class we were talking about how to create a strategy to generate buzz for a business. We were then told as an assignment to pick a local business and take an eight second video or picture, as long as it conveyed a story for the business. The business I chose was a place that I had previously worked for as an intern and that was the Williams YMCA of Avery County in Linville, North Carolina. This may just look like a flat area of dirt, but it represents a lot more than what is in the picture.

As far as their Social Media Presence across all platforms go they are pretty well in tune with the local community. They mainly use Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as a side source. They are currently building their Facebook posts around the concept of youth development. They have a Jr. Leaders Club that just recently had a meeting with the local sheriff about how to become better leader. Their Twitter environment is a little bit different. Their Twitter account is mainly used for getting quick information out, for example if a class is cancelled or if they are going to be opening up later than planned. Their YouTube page does not have much of a following, but what it is doing is trying to describe why the YMCA is so important to Avery County and there is even some success stories on there. They post quite often as well. Depending on the platform, whether it be Facebook or Twitter, they post two sometimes three times a day. this allows them to get the word out to the community that they are trying to expand. 

The Williams YMCA of Avery County is building a brand new facility in order to further expand their programs to the youth of the community. Which ties into the concept of youth development. The YMCA has always been strong on developing community ties and keeping them strong. The brand new facility only helps that concept further. By expanding program opportunities for the youth it will lay the foundation for a healthy future for both the athletes and non-athletes. This picture may only show the foundation of the facility, but it represents so much more than that. It represents that the community was at one level before this facility and when the facility gets finished the community ties that the YMCA has will only become stronger. This generation of youth will have the most benefit from this facility because it lays a foundation for them to grow on and develop their athletic abilities or just having some fun in the process. A sample post on one of their platforms, along with the picture, might look a little something like this. “We here at the YMCA are proud to announce that we are bringing a brand new facility to you. This is just the foundation of what can be for years to come.”

This facility is going to not only do wonders for the community, but the YMCA itself. It is going to do wonders for the community in the sense of they have another facility to go to if needed. It can be used for the serious athletes in the county and that will generate buzz more than anything. In terms of the YMCA it is going to allow them to bring in more programs than what they had previously. That in turn will possibly generate more revenue for them and that is always a plus in business. It is going to be interesting to see how this new facility will truly benefit the YMCA in the future. 

Thanks for the read. 

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

Keys to a Great Social Media Campaign

By now everyone knows that the key to gaining more customers is through social media. Some companies out there have a better control on their social media campaign than most companies. One article that I stumbled across, 5 Best Tips for Running Your Best Social Media Campaign Ever by Juliet Carnoy, refers to five ways that Juliet herself has found useful in creating a social media campaign with her company Pixlee. The following tips are to set your campaign goals, choose your social networks, engage with your campaign’s participants, display your collected content, and measure and analyze your campaign’s success. According the article, “If you follow the above five steps, your social media marketing campaign is guaranteed to see results.”

When setting your campaign goals you want to decide what you want out of this social media campaign. You have to find your focus and identify how the social media campaign will help you achieve the goals for the business. Some examples the article uses are increasing social media followers, generating more buzz online, or accumulating brand mentions. The second tip that Juliet provides is to choose your social networks. Once your goals for the social media campaign are determined you need to decide which channels you are going to use to collect the customer content. Whatever you decide to go with must reflect your target audience.  Some social media networks are more effective for different ages than others. For example, if your target audience was young adults between the ages of 13-18 you would choose Facebook because the majority of those aged kids today have an active Facebook account.

The third tip that Juliet provides, engage with your campaign’s participants, states that you need to be active in responding to all positive submissions. Whether it be through a like or a comment you need to make an effort and pay close attention to all the positive submissions. A customer watching a business engaging with real people helps validate that businesses social media presence. The fourth tips that Juliet provides, display your collected content, states that you will want to put the highest quality and most on-brand content to display on your marketing channels. Both online and offline. It also states that one of the best ways to increase customer loyalty and retention is to celebrate your customer, with their permission, on the owned media. If that were me and one my favorite companies done that for me I would be ecstatic. The last tip mentioned, measure and analyze your campaign’s success, you will want to see how much progress you have made on your original goals. The results can be both quantitative and qualitative so you will be expected to measure both. By analyzing you will be able to see how customers are using your products after they have been purchased.

By following these steps you will have guaranteed results and hopefully see an improvement in the number of customers. From determining your goals for the campaign all the way down to analyzing and measuring the campaign’s success developing a social media campaign is simple if you follow these tips by Juliet Carnoy. These tips are very beneficial to anyone who is struggling in trying to create a successful social media marketing campaign. I strongly recommend looking over them if you’re having any trouble getting a campaign started.

Thanks for the read.

Michael Thomas

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272231

[bigmikeyt17]

Keys to Success in Social Media Marketing

So the point of social media marketing is to gain an audience that will become your strong advocates for the brand. It is also used for creating a brand image like no other. You have to be careful though. Advertising too much can be a drag for your audience. I came across this article called the 10 Laws of Social Media Marketing and in this article the author, Susan Gunelius, gives the 10 laws that you should abide by to help build your foundation that will serve the customer, your brand, and your bottom line. The 10 laws are as follows: the law of listening, the law of focus, the law of quality, the law of patience, the law of compounding, the law of influence, the law of value, the law of acknowledgement, the law of accessibility, and the law of reciprocity. These laws are key to building your image and here is how to use these ten laws.

With the law of listening what you need to do is read your target audience’s online content and join some of the discussion boards to see what is important to them. By doing this you get a first hand look at what your target audience likes and you can market to them a whole lot easier. With the law of focus you want to specialize in something instead of being the jack-of-all-trades. By being specialized you have a higher chance of being successful than what a broader strategy attempts to be. The law of quality basically states that it is better for you to have less followers who constantly read, share, and talk about your content than more followers who go away after the initial contact. So if you do not have that many followers for your brand, as long as they keep sharing, reading, and talking about your content you are going to be fine. The law of patience is simple, you will not achieve great success overnight. You will most probably have to be in it for the long haul.  If you constantly work at it and are patient with the growing success of your company then you are going to be fine. The law of compounding refers to by creating quality and amazing content you will open the door to eventually an entry point such as Google and that then increases your chances of being found by thousands upon thousands of other people. You want to constantly create content like that because that increases the likelihood of someone finding your brand on a search engine and that will lead to more followers and more advocates. 

Continuing with the ten laws, the law of influence refers to how you should connect with the online influencers in your market. Also if you impress them well enough they will share your content with their followers and that will put you in front of an even bigger audience of people. So you want to network as much as possible with people from within your market and the most common way you can do that is through LinkedIn. The law of value refers to how you need to add value to the conversation of your advertisement. If you stick to just directly promotion your products and services people will disappear. By adding the value you will gain more followers and those followers can become a great asset in the word-of-mouth marketing business later on down the road. So if you want to be successful in advertising add a little bit of value to it and don’t just advertise the product or service. The law of acknowledgement pretty much says to not ignore every person who reaches out to you. By building that relationship you will make the person feel like they are a valued part of their brand and they will continually talk good things about the brand through word-of-mouth. So don’t ignore your customers, because they are your biggest asset. The law of accessibility refers to how you need to consistently publish content and participate in conversations or you will be replaced by someone else. You want to be there for your audience and if they are not getting any content from you then they will leave you behind. Always stay connected with your audience. The last law, the law of reciprocity means that if you want others to share your content you should do the same thing for them. By doing this you will create a broad range of networks that will help you build your brand if you help build their brand. 

These 10 laws can serve as a valuable resource for you in your attempt at building your brand. I agree with everything that was said and if a person follows these 10 laws they will have a successful brand and an even more positive brand persona. 

Thanks for the read. 

Michael Thomas

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/218160 

[bigmikeyt17]

Engagement in Social Media Marketing

Social media is all around us and it is very important for a company to get involved in it. Some end up failing because they overload their customers with advertisement or they send out too many tweets a day. I was doing a little bit of research as to what a company can do to avoid that and I came across this article called  3 Never-Fail Tactics for Superior Social-Media Engagement by Rohan Ayyar. In this article states the three tactics that never fail to get your customers involved on your social media presence. Those three tactics are quizzes and contests, focus social media on growing your mailing list, and automation breeds engagement. 

With quizzes and contests the reason why the work is because of the guilty pleasure that comes along with it. Most people that are on Facebook will see a link to Buzzfeed quiz and take it because they are bored. While a quiz and contest is among the simplest tactics to enact, it is also the most effective. Buzzfeed has millions of people coming back everyday to their website and it is because of the interesting quizzes that they create everyday. He goes on to say that you can create your own as long as it is easy to complete, has a hook that attracts the fans, and is complimentary to the quiz taker it will be shared far and wide. 

Focusing social media on growing your mailing list basically states that you grow a list of users that are relevant to your brand. You can do this by converting them from the social users they are to email subscribers that you want them to be. The benefits, according to the article, include more exposure to your brand, you reach more people than Facebook or Twitter, and you have to pay virtually nothing. You want to build your brand and this tactic is a great way to do so. You reach a more broader audience and you cut down on costs, what more could you ask for. 

Lastly, automation breeds engagement. You don’t want to solely depend on an automated voice to answer and solve any problems that your customers may have. There are multiple tools that you can use that will automatically post things for you and created automated responses to people’s problems. By doing this it allows you to spend more time interacting with your customer and engaging them in the real sense as the article states. Interacting with your customers will make them feel important and that their voice is being heard. So, in reality this a very vital tactic for you to use in your company. 

All in all these are great tactics and by instituting them into your own company benefits you in the long run. Quizzes and contest gets the people coming back to your website because they want to know what kind of quiz is going to be up the next day. By growing your mailing list you cut down on costs and you reach a more broader market than what you would with traditional advertising. By creating automated responses and posts it allows you more time to interact with your customers in real time and that will increase brand loyalty because the customer will feel more important knowing that their voice is being heard. These tactics are great for any business and you want to use them in your business if you want to be successful in social media marketing engagement. 

Thanks for the read. 

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

B2B Personas and Some of the Pitfalls

As I was studying personas I came along this article titled “4 Common Pitfalls of B2B Buyer Personas”. This article by Luke O'Kelley describes the four Pitfalls people come to when creating a B2B Buyer Persona. They are persona detours and delays, content congestion ahead, the dead end, and the path to persona peace and love. In persona detours and delays he refers to how you need to use personas to inspire and guide you to create more relevant content. This is saying that you want to use your persona in a way that inspires the customer. He also states that you need to focus your energies toward creating content that you think your audience needs. You can polish it later on when you find out what works and what doesn’t, according to the article. The next one, content congestion ahead, he basically states that you want your branding to be strong that way you don’t attract the same exact same buyer personas as your competition. He also says how without good branding you will always fall flat in your attempt to create your persona. The next one that he refers to is the dead end. Basically what he says in that is that you always want to use your persona. It constantly needs to be tweeked and worked on. You always want to make sure your persona is relevant to what you have or else you won’t have much success in the market place. Lastly, the path to persona peace and love. This is probably the simplest one of them all. You can include love and peace in your persona, but don’t fake it. As he also states in the article if you are trying to fake the peace and love then you are doing no good for anyone. This article was a great source for anyone who is having trouble creating a B2B buyer persona for their business. It gives the readers things to do and what you should already be doing. Creating a brand persona for yourself is key to any business deal and in the real world. If you don't know who you truly are, then how can you sell yourself for the job that you want. Thanks for the read. Enjoy Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

My Strategic Plan

This week in class we learned the importance of a strategic plan when it comes to social media marketing. You're presence in the market place all depends on how good your strategic plan is. After studying this matter I thought that our ability to land the job we want in the social media market or anywhere really, depends on how we plan it out. So here is my strategic plan that I plan to follow in order to land me a job.

I am on five different social media networks and use almost all of them on a daily basis. My Facebook is strictly used for communication between family and friends so there is no problem in controlling the feed on there. Twitter I hardly ever use so that isn't even a factor for me. I need to use Twitter more often because research has shown that Twitter is becoming more and more popular. My LinkedIn page is strictly professional and all I plan to use it for is to stay connected with people who might be of assistance later on down the road. LinkedIn's importance I feel is often understated, simply because you can find so much information on your industry and so much more. My Tumblr account of course is used to post blogs about issues in the social media market. Lastly, my Klout account is only used to monitor my feed in all of my connected accounts. So with Klout I keep it strictly professional.

How does all of this rambling tie in to my strategic plan one might ask. It is very simple. What I plan to do is use all of my social media accounts and create a presence that allows me to display my professionalism. I don't post on my accounts much, so I need to post more in order to do this.

Thanks for reading.

Michael Thomas

[bigmikeyt17]

Facebook and it Role in Social Media Marketing

It’s a new year and we all know that social media is not a new thing. Facebook is one of the best ways to get the word out about a business or brand. So I was just scrolling through the web and saw this article called 10 Facts You Didn't Know About Facebook Advertising. It looked interesting so I opened it and started reading on it. Here are my findings from the reading. 

The author, Rocco Baldassarre, starts off the article by saying how great of a tool Facebook is for advertising because of the low cost. But he also states that there are some things that Facebook has up their sleeve that would change the company’s strategic approach and the rest of the article from then on states the 10 facts that he wants the readers to know.

The first fact that he states is Facebook bids are sensitive to seasonality.Depending on what time of the year it will depend on how much the impression will cost. Another factor that went into that was the amount of people bidding on the target. The more people that were bidding the higher that it was going to cost. The second fact is that Facebook offers a click to chat ad option. I am on Facebook every single day and I have never heard of the click to chat ad option before this article. It is one of the least used features on Facebook and is great for people who are familiar with a product or service and they might have questions before committing to an actual product. The third fact is Facebook placement needs different ad strategies. Turns out that Facebook has an ad platform that allows you to create advertisement that can go across any device. But, the downfall of that is each device has specific requirements for it.The fourth fact is the amount of text in the image influences delivery. Advertisements are meant to be short and sweet, not lengthy and boring. The more concise and to the point the advertisement is the more likely the success to generate revenue.The fifth fact is refreshing ad creatives is extremely important. Facebook campaign types are not giving their advertisers control over the frequency of ad delivery to the same user. This causes the people advertising money because their target market is not seeing the ad over and over and that might stray them away from that product and/or brand. So Facebook needs to work on that a little bit.

The next fact is audience insights are a great source of targeting methods. With this you want to have your target market give their insight to the advertisements that are being shown online. By doing this it helps you to see what is effective and what is not in terms of generating the revenue from your target audience. The seventh fact is that Facebook has a pre-selected similar reach targeting option. Basically with this he is saying the Facebook shows a similar option of the advertisement you selected and in turn it helps businesses expand their overall reach and visibility. The next fact he states is that Facebook allows you to limit the exposure on the audience network. With this he states that Facebook sometime filters what can and cannot be seen in terms of advertisements such as dating or gambling. This in turn helps overall performance by limiting the amount of clicks from placements that will never turn out to be a conversion. Next fact is that video ads don’t generate a great direct response. To put things short don’t advertise on Facebook if you are going to do it through a video. It is going to end up costing more than it’s worth. Lastly, the same bid won’t work forever. This goes back to every business course that you have ever took, you need to adapt to the times and changes of the business world, the same applies for Facebook. Facebook has to change to cater to the ever changing times, if not they will become one of those has-been social media platforms that never went anywhere. 

Overall the article was a very interesting read. Facebook is great way to get the word out about the product you are trying to sell. There are a few kinks involved with advertising through them, but in the end a business will see a boost in revenue. Facebook’s role in the world of Social Media Marketing is second to none and will be around for a long time to come. 

Thanks for reading,

Michael 

[bigmikeyt17]

Introduction

Hello everyone,

As part of starting my new blog I thought that it would be nice of me to tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Michael Thomas and I am currently a senior at Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC. I am a Sports Administration Major with a concentration in Sport Business Management. I am graduating a year early and I will be graduating this coming May. Throughout college I have worked two part-time jobs and have managed to maintain a 3.51 GPA. I work hard and put my best foot forward in everything that I do and it will be shown throughout my blog.

The purpose of this blog is to discuss current and future topics in Social Media Marketing. This is also serving as part of one of my classes Social Media Marketing. I will be posting weekly updates on article analysis that I have read and I appreciate any input that you might have. I am willing to discuss your input as long as it is in a respectable and reasonable manner. Thanks and enjoy.