There has been a lot of debate over what, if anything, Google+ brings to the table in terms of small business marketing. Opinions tend to be highly polarized, with some saying that G+ is the absolute way forward, and others claiming that it's nothing but a lesser Facebook clone. If you're wondering whether to push forward with your G+ marketing or abandon it altogether, you should consider these four points.
Peg McDermott
The early days of the web were mostly about exchanging text, but as computers and download speeds got faster, adding images and even video to web content gradually became more and more common. Over the past couple of years, there has been an explosion of image sharing as mobile apps have made it simple for anyone to take a photo wherever they are and send it all over the world with a single push of a button.
It's already abundantly clear that social media marketing is a huge factor in how businesses develop their online presence and connect with their audience. It can be frustrating, then, when despite your best efforts, your social network clout seems to go nowhere and you don't see the growth you were hoping for. If this is the situation you find yourself in, here are a few things you can do to help get things back on the right track.
Now that all Facebook Pages for brands have been moved over to the Timeline format, if you haven't optimized your Timeline you're missing out. Some business owners have stubbornly avoided making changes on the basis that they never wanted to be moved over to Timeline, but now that it's a done deal, you may as well make the most of all the features that are now available.
In many ways, when you first have a look at Twitter it seems like a free-for all. Millions of users, everyone talking at the same time... it can be both exciting and frightening. Although it may look like there's no rhyme or reason to it and that you can say anything you want, how you present yourself does matter, especially if you're representing your business. Here are four things you want to avoid when you're trying to build a good social media reputation.
There are a lot of fun aspects to using Pinterest, and if you're using your account to promote your business, there are even more ways to reach your audience in an effective way. Sometimes even small tweaks to your social media use can yield major results - here are some Pinterest tricks that can help give your marketing efforts a boost.
When you're focusing on social media marketing, you might think that the broadcasting is the whole point - after all, you want to get your message out to the greatest number of people, right?
We've all been there: you're building up your company's social media accounts, and it just seems to be going so slowly. You get a trickle here, a trickle there, but in the end the growth is not nearly what you'd hoped it would be. You look at the social media accounts of your competitors, of celebrities, even of your personal friends, and wonder why your numbers aren't up where theirs are.
Thanks to the internet and especially social media, the way business owners communicate with customers is changing rapidly.
If you're spending a significant amount of time on Twitter trying to increase your presence there for marketing purposes, it can be frustrating when you don't get the level of following you expected. What's even more frustrating is when people do follow you, only to unfollow again a few days later. If you're finding that your Twitter following is waning despite all your efforts, here are three issues you might want to have a look at to help turn things around.
If your company deals mostly in business-to-business (b2b) transactions, you may not think that there's anything a site like Pinterest can offer you. After all, on the surface it can appear that Pinterest is more like a turbo site for the Etsy crowd - perfect for artistic types who are selling handbags or home decor items. But if you're looking to up your b2b marketing game, Pinterest has a lot to offer you, too.
So many businesses have Google+ accounts that they barely use, or that they use in the same way they use Facebook or Twitter. There has been a lot of confusion about the best way to use G+, and so a lot of businesses have failed to develop their G+ marketing strategy to the fullest. If you're looking to get more out of the G+ marketing experience, here are a few tips to boost you up to the next level.