As with most success stories, tales of a meteoric social media campaign gone viral can make you believe that the same kind of success is right around the corner for you, too. You might imagine sitting back while the visitors roll in on your Twitter and Facebook pages, and while you wonder why you didn't get into social media marketing earlier.
Peg McDermott
The labyrinth of ever-evolving Facebook changes can be difficult to keep up with, but there are always a few tips and tricks out there to help make your life easier on the world's largest social network. Here are a few recent tips that can help you navigate the site more efficiently, and get more out of your efforts.
Most businesses and individuals are on all the major social networks. This means that marketing for Facebook, Twitter, and the like becomes somewhat easier over time, as there is a lot of group knowledge about the best ways to reach out to an audience via these regularly-used channels. But what if there's a social network out there that is a little more tailored to the focus of your business?
Having a blog for your business is a great way to communicate with your audience, and it's also a great way to give your business a more "human" element. Within the context of your company blog, you can share all kinds of useful or even just entertaining posts. Some business blogs, however, are more focused and company-oriented than others.
Trying to keep up with the latest social networks and social media marketing opportunities is a never-ending battle. As soon as you get to grips with your Twitter and Facebook strategy, up pops Google+. Some businesses also found significant marketing milage on Tumblr. More recently, photo-curation site Pinterest has gotten the attention of businesses who have discovered how to leverage its features for marketing purposes.
It's happened to most of us at one time or another - you get something on your Facebook page all set up just how you want it, and then boom, Facebook goes and changes everything and your hard work goes down the drain. While most of Facebook's changes actually benefit page owners in the long run, it can be hard to remember that when you've just spent hours on a feature that suddenly gets disabled or removed. It can also leave you wondering if you'll ever be able to stay ahead of the curve when things on Facebook seem to change almost monthly.
Redesigning your website is a major project that's not to be taken lightly. Aside from the expense involved, there's also likely to be a significant time and effort investment on your part. A website redesign can make you feel more confident about your online presence, but there are some factors to take into consideration when deciding when and how you're going to go about it.
If you were a business owner before Twitter was around, chances are most of your marketing messages (aside from maybe your company slogan) were at least somewhat longer than 140 characters. With the explosion of Twitter both as a marketing tool and a social media platform, you may feel like the medium places difficult restrictions on the types of messages you can reasonably fit into the space provided. However, this may work to your advantage - here are some tips on how to use Twitter more effectively for spreading the word about your business.
You've probably seen plenty of business sites with blogs, but maybe you've been hesitant to get one going yourself. After all, it takes time and effort to make sure that you're putting out content for your audience - wouldn't it be a better idea to focus your efforts on techniques that will actually help get customers to your doorstep?
So you went out and bought the most expensive web design that money could buy, but did you really get your money's worth? Just because you've paid for something to be extra-fancy doesn't mean that it's useful for your visitors, or that it's doing you any favors in terms of SEO. Here are some of the traps people frequently fall into when they assume that more expensive sites are automatically better.
We saw a hint of the future last year when Facebook introduced the Timeline format for personal accounts. Some loved it, some complained, but eventually everyone was moved over to the new design.
Just as search engines update their algorithms from time to time, SEO as a marketing tool is constantly evolving. Practices that were both effective and encouraged five years ago are likely not the same ones you'd want to use on a website today.