Posts Tagged manage brand communication
Create a Cohesive Social Media Brand for Your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on June 14, 2012
People who come across your content online should be able to recognise your brand immediately, whether or not your logo or company name is there. This is what we call social media branding and it’s implemented across all your social media platforms -from Twitter to your blog, from Instagram to Pinterest – creating a brand personality.
If you have a good marketing campaign in place, then you know your target demographic, and hopefully you’ll have a tone set for your advertising, but what a lot of companies forget is that branding goes so much deeper than the font you use in your posters. Branding is in the way your employees answer the phones. Branding is in the way your shop staff greet customers. Branding is an on-going process, and it happens every time a potential customer or client interacts with your business.
The question which you need to ask yourself is: Does my brand have a personality?
And the second question you need to answer is: Is that personality cohesive across all our social media platforms?
Many companies use the different platforms in different ways, and this is recommended as users go to Facebook for a different experience than Twitter, or Pinterest. However, in trying to appeal to the varied ways in which people use social media, a company’s personality, or branding, can get lost in the haste to gain ‘Likes’ or get ‘Pinned’. It may even be that what ‘works’ in gathering this validation does not actually fall in line with the company’s values.
Perhaps your target demographic are adventurous and fun-loving, but you suddenly receive a lot of likes on Instagram for a photo of your boss’s dog. So naturally, you start sharing a few more photos of the dog because it gets good engagement. Adventurous, fun-loving people love dogs too, right? Except, you sell climbing gear and no-one’s ever scaled Mt. Everest with a dog. (Not with its own crampons, anyway.) People who start to follow you on Instagram who love dogs then go to your website, which is dog-less, and they get upset. People who add you on Instagram because they enjoy your funny climbing stories on Twitter get confused because all they’re seeing is dog pictures.
This is the time to sit down with your social media manager and discuss a cohesive brand identity for your social media marketing. When you decide what your brand personality is (and this might be different from your target demographic’s qualities) then anyone should be able to run any of your social media accounts using this information as a touchstone. Every tweet, photo, update, link and pin should reflect your brand identity, to the point where customers and internet users are able to recognise your signature style without having to see your logo or company name.
Buffer Your Tweets for Round the Clock Social Media Branding
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on May 29, 2012
If there’s one thing which puts companies off using Twitter, it’s the perceived need to be present absolutely all the time. Should businesses be employing people to staff their tweetstreams twenty four hours a day, seven days a week? Even with the incredible popularity of Twitter, and the expectation that any company worth their salt will be present there, this doesn’t seem like the best use of staff power, or resources.
So what can you do to appear present on Twitter at all hours? There are quite a few Twitter scheduling apps currently in creation, and we’re going to talk about these today.
Buffer is a scheduling tool which automatically tweets the content you give it at a time calculated to have the best probability for a retweet or click-through. This is definitely a tool to use when tweeting information you want the most possible users to see; such as links back to your new product, or competition information. You can also see the analytics of each tweet: how many people potentially viewed it, and how many people clicked through. The free version allows you to add one Twitter account and have ten tweets scheduled at one time, then there are two paid options with appropriate increases in the amount of social accounts you can add, and technical support which you receive.
Timely is very similar to Buffer, with one advantage – the free option is unlimited. Unlimited accounts and unlimited tweets. Again, the times for the tweets are pre-chosen for the highest probability of a click-through or retweet, and you can view the analytics for each tweet. There isn’t an option to change the times of the tweets, and the schedule sets for three tweets a day; early morning, lunchtime, and late evening. Both Timely and Buffer do offer a ‘post now’ option, as well as a browser plug-in, so if you find an article which you just can’t wait to post then you can click on the browser button and create your tweet, and either post it straight away or load it into your queue.
Twuffer is still in Beta at the moment, which makes it slightly unreliable, but it does have a huge advantage over Buffer or Timely, and that is the ability to choose the times of your tweets yourself. You can literally schedule a tweet for every five minutes of the day. One thing to be aware of is that it doesn’t always allow you to post the exact same tweet, so even if it appears to be scheduled, it may not tweet. As it is in Beta, there are occasionally problems with the site not tweeting any of your scheduled tweets all day, and then suddenly posting them all in one go, but this is rare. The tool is completely free, with no limit to the amount of tweets which you can schedule. While you can’t add accounts as you can with Timely, you can sign in and out with different accounts.
This tool looks more complicated than the others, but its functionality is much the same. You can use it to simply schedule unlimited tweets over five accounts, or you can take advantage of its advanced features to create reports and join organisations. If you’re monitoring a particular campaign, then the analytical reports which it provides are more in-depth than Buffer or Timely’s, so if you’re looking for a great all-rounder, then this would be it.
Taking just a few minutes each morning to schedule important tweets for the rest of the day will have a huge impact on the social media branding of any company or business. Using Timely and Buffer, you can discover the most effective times to tweet. Using Twuffer or Hootsuite you can schedule more tweets around these times to really boost your on-line visibilty.
At RoryMartin.com we stay on top of the latest developments in social media branding in order to bring you the highest quality advice in promoting your brand online. We didn’t discuss the importance of engagement in this post and while we’d love to auto-tweet and never have to look back, the truth is Twitter is about CONVERSATION. You have to take time to check your Mentions and Interactions and directly engage with customers and prospects.
Social Media Strategies Made Simple with TweetReach.com
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on May 1, 2012
Have you ever wanted to know how far one of your tweets travelled? Or how many people are exposed to your twitter account on any given day? Maybe your company regularly throws hashtag parties, where lots of people join in, but you’re never sure who else is listening. With TweetReach.com, you can know all of this in seconds! Just head on over to their user-friendly search interface, type in your twitter handle, a marketing phrase, or recent hashtag, and get a snapshot report which displays all the important analytic information up front. You can search for free as many times as you like, but each search will only return data for the last fifty tweets. There is a paid option, but it’s still a fantastic free resource for monitoring real-time events.
Let’s look at the ‘Reach’ first. This is how many accounts your tweet, or hashtag, reached. You are able to see everyone who actively retweeted or participated in your event, but all of their followers too. Say you have a reasonably small following on your personal twitter account, around two hundred and fifty followers. Search your twitter handle and you may be pleasantly surprised to discover that a couple of judicious retweets by followers means that you have reached up to eight thousand accounts!
Numbers like this are great, but engagement is what Twitter is all about. So, secondly, TweetReach shows you the top contributors – accounts with the highest number of followers to have retweeted you – and the most retweeted tweets.
If a hashtag promotion is a part of your social media strategy, this information is more valuable than gold dust. You can immediately discover the major influencers in your conversation, alongside which tweets in the conversation are getting the most play. In a nutshell, you can find out who is engaging, and why.
Why is this information useful? If you know which users are the most engaged with your product or most vocal about your promotion during a social media campaign, then you can use that data to concentrate your efforts on a more targeted market next time. Instead of spreading out a net and catching empty tin cans, you can bait your hook appropriately to lure the clients you really want to your site.
If your aim is to bring clients back to your website, then a follow-up to TweetReach use is to monitor the click-throughs coming in from Twitter during the promotional time. If you then compare conversion rates to the engagement data, you’ll have a wealth of information on the kind of Twitter campaign which draws in paying customers against the kind which just gets people chatting.
RoryMartin.com specializes in social media strategies, so if you’re as excited by this as we are, get in touch to have social media marketing made simple for you.
Pinterest Influences Web Design Trends
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 15, 2012
Pinterest is big in the social media marketing sphere (Haven’t heard of it? Click here to read about how businesses can use Pinterest), and it’s making waves in web design as well. The unique layout Pinterest offers is becoming incredibly popular with businesses who are looking to reinvent themselves online. In fact, some magazines from publishing giant, Condé Nast, are launching new designs using a grid-style layout, with minimal text and tons of pictures. Not only are publishing houses looking at this new style, Flickr – the popular photo-sharing website – is set to upgrade and redesign it’s site within the month, to make it look more like Pinterest.
The success of this type of layout could be because Pinterest users say they need to create and curate, organize and compartmentalize ideas in an increasingly scattered digital world.
Companies are working to create sites that feel more like brand lifestyles than sales pitches and corporate information. Mashable’s Community manager, Meghan Peters says that Pinterest allows users to “experience the web in a way that makes them feel productive and inspired”. This is one of the bigger roadblocks to creating an engaging corporate experience. In fact, Flickr has switched to this design style because, ““We see in our first metrics that people consume a lot more photos, they interact so much more with photos in this view.”
In web design and typeography, Pinterest is also inspiring designers – not through its layout, but through mood boards created by other illustrators, graphic designers, typographers, etc. We’ve been using Jquery plugins that accomplish Pinterest-like layouts for the past couple of years. Our vertical layouts emulate the forward thinking of Pinterests vertical layouts.
What we do at RoryMartin.com is remain technology agnostic. Since we use the latest and greatest technology from the vast world of open source developers we can stay ahead of the times when it comes to making our customers’ users happy.
Pinterest’s success is an example of proving our philosopy; that new information architecture can and should be adopted based on what users tell us they want. In this case – Pinterest users spoke up – and we will continue to listen.
Build a Better Website with Tips from Rory Martin
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 5, 2012
Netcraft reported that as of November 2011, there were approximately 525, 998,433 websites out in Internet-land – and many of them aren’t perfect. Think about it: when you look at your website, what do you see? Do you see a sleek design? Is it easy to navigate? Do you see compelling imagery or a big block of text? Are you missing the little things like SEO or a Footer? Are you effectively using Social Media? Or have you forgotten to actively add that element to your website?
To make your website more “perfect”, you need to think about all the things we’ve just mentioned. Seattle Web Design and Social Media Marketing company, RoryMartin.com can help you perfect your website with a few tips on designing a better website.
It’s true that content is key when it comes to making an impact on the web, however design is also key. There are a variety of browsers, processors and monitor sizes, so it’s important to design a site that looks great on all of them. While you may use Firefox or Chrome, and so you may design for those two browsers, consider the fact that 40% of internet users STILL use Internet Explorer. Cross-browser compatibility can be a difficult problem to solve, but producing a sleek design without all the extra bells and whistles can save you some time in trying to determine why this or that widget doesn’t work.
Design also plays a big part in your website’s layout and navigation. Consider this – 60% of the time, users cannot find the information they’re looking for – and much of that is due to poor execution in navigation and UI design. Making sure your site is simple but well-designed could save your visitors a lot of time and effort trying to find out where you’ve hidden that gem of information they’re looking for. And where user interface is concerned, users report clicking away from a page that has pop-ups or plays music or video automatically when the webpage has loaded.
One big part of web design that is often overlooked is the footer. Often, businesses forget all about the SEO properties and usability of their footer in favor of more visible elements like header images and information. At RoryMartin.com, we build footers for clients that include copyright information, the company address and contact info, their business tagline and even quick navigation links for the web-user who’s made it to the bottom of your page. We also recommend links to your social media profiles, because, as users arrive at the bottom of your page and want to know more, the footer can convert your web visitors into Twitter or Facebook followers.
Are you actively using social media? Is it easy to find your social media links (and maybe even your Twitter stream) on your website? Web marketing consultant Chris Brogan says, “Social Media puts the ‘public’ into PR and the ‘market’ into marketing.” Social media is one of the easiest, most direct, and most prominent forms of both public relations and marketing, available to businesses today. If you’re not using social media, and displaying your information prominently, you’re missing out on a huge target audience. And, studies have shown that social media builds customer loyalty.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is probably the biggest key to driving customers to your site. Using a correct combination of keywords and search terms throughout your website in strategic places will help propel your website to the front page of Google. Of course, being on the second page of Google’s search isn’t bad either – considering a quarter of all web searches progress to the second page of Google. But keywords aren’t the whole story: Though 42% of users click the top ranking link on Google, the text that shows up beneath your link is REALLY the driving factor. It’s this text – copy pulled directly from your website, that truly drives traffic to each site, while your strategic keywords ensure you’re listed in those search results in the first place.
If you’re looking to update your website, grab the wide world of social media marketing by the horns, or just looking to manage brand communications, our skilled staff of social media marketing and web design experts can help. Find out more about what we can do for you at www.rorymartin.com.
Making the Best Use of Edge Rank
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing on December 14, 2011
A while back we wrote an article on making an impact on Facebook through your business Facebook page. We wrote:
While Facebook updates may seem like a way to alert fans to events and news – showing up like messages in users’ in-boxes – a very small percentage of updates are actually visible to fans, because of an algorithm called EdgeRank.
EdgeRank gives every post a quality score – measuring the number of comments, likes, and shares per post against the number of fans a page has. Businesses who want to be seen need to build up their EdgeRank, by making their posts interaction friendly – which means businesses need to spend more time building community with their fans.
If you can succeed at building your EdgeRank, your business has a higher chance of increasing your brand recognition and therefore, your revenue. If you’re like most businesses, this means that EdgeRank should probably play a larger role in your marketing efforts.
As a Seattle Social Media Marketing company, Rorymartin.com focuses on helping our customers build their EdgeRank. Our clients are better equipped to educate their target audience and build brand awareness. Our clients are able to win and retain customers with engaging and impactful websites and web marketing.
So how is EdgeRank calculated, and what do you need to do to improve yours?
Every post (status updates, polls, photos, etc) is an “object” and objects all have edges – therefore each of your posts has “edge”. Every single EdgeRank score depends on individual Facebook users’ post consumption. The EdgeRank Algorithm was designed to show individual users more of what they “like” to see in their news feed. The higher the EdgeRank of your particular post, the more likely it will appear across your users’ feeds.
The algorithm looks like this:
So what does this algorithm mean?
Social Media Affinity is the relationship between your business and your target audience, based on frequency of contact, logins, likes, post responses, shares etc. If a user has interacted with your business Facebook page in the past, the user has an affinity for your brand. The only way you can build affinity is to create engaging post content that will entice your target audience to come to your page to interact.
Weight is based on how many clicks a post receives against each major Facebook metric (clicks per like, clicks per comment, clicks per impression). For example, just getting a bunch of users to click “like” won’t cut it – unless you have millions of them each day. What you really need are comments, since comments have 4 times the weight of “likes”. How do you create comments? Comment generation is done in much the same way as building affinity – create engaging content.
Time Decay is KEY. Think back to your Facebook timeline. How many times does that page change in an hour? In a minute? In 10 seconds? EdgeRank changes the time-decay factor based on how frequently users log into Facebook – so if your users are used to checking Facebook several times a day, your post may disappear more quickly based on this time decay-factor. EdgeRank Checker explains,
“With the new hybrid news feed comes more objects in the feed, as Top Stories happen at a faster rate than previously. Facebook most likely increased the speed at which objects time decay. It seems that this has created a more “honed in” EdgeRank effect. Meaning, EdgeRank is creating Top Stories for users who are more likely to engage and dropping less engaging objects into Recent Stories.”
How do you overcome time-decay? Post when your target audience is ready to engage. This means doing a little research on your target audience. Know when they’re online and what they’re talking about.
Other tips: Treat each “like” as a potential brand ambassador and make it worth their while to be on your page. Offer exclusive fans-only content. Use calls to action – for example “Like this status if you agree!”
Well this all sounds pretty difficult, doesn’t it? That’s where Rorymartin.com comes in. We’re focused helping our customers create and execute their social media campaigns. We offer a comprehensive set of services from website design and web development to search engine optimization and search engine marketing and social media marketing. From entrepreneurs to established businesses, we do the work so you don’t have to – making social media simple.
Twitter and Facebook Build Customer Loyalty
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on October 24, 2011
As a company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Marketing, the RoryMartin.com team likes to keep you informed about new studies regarding social media. A recent study, generated by Chadwick Martin Bailey, states that Twitter users who follow brands on Twitter are more likely to buy from and recommend that brand. The group also produced a previous study correlating Facebook users’ purchases with the brands they “like” on Facebook.
This is good news for businesses who are using social media networks to improve their marketing efforts, especially because Twitter and Facebook users are some of the most frequent internet users in general. The study showed just how Twitter users were interacting with brands, reporting that 84% of Twitter users who follow brands do actually read brand tweets, making Twitter an effective form of presenting your company and products. Even better, approximately 1/4 of users who follow brands on Twitter do tweet about the brand. 1 out of every 4 users in your Twitter audience are likely to be talking about your brand right now.
Twitter is proving itself a very useful forum for customer loyalty. It’s important to know your audience and to make sure you’re tweeting authentic content, though. 67% of users expect unique content from the brands they follow. In the decision to follow brands on Twitter, customers cite exclusivity and promotions as some of the top reasons they follow brands. Here are the top five reasons users follow brands:
- 64%: I am a customer of the company
- 61%: To be the first to know information about the brand
- 48%: To receive discounts and promotions
- 36%: To gain access to exclusive content
- 28%: To receive content/information to retweet and share with others
If your business is not using Twitter right now, you are missing out on a very valuable marketing method. The report shows that businesses shoud be tweeting to their customers as a means of building brand loyalty. Don’t know where to start? At RoryMartin.com, we help businesses customize their social media marketing plans, provide customized facebook pages, overall website overhauls, web design, and perfectly timed tweets.
We can help you build a Social Media Strategy that reflects your unique brand and meets your business goals. From a one-time site analysis to full search engine optimization strategy and execution, RoryMartin.com makes social media simple.
Why Should I Customize my Facebook Business Page?
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Web Design and Development on October 10, 2011
With the popularity of Facebook fan pages and the releases of new timelines, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to implement a customized Facebook page for your business. Since the new Facebook Timeline feature shows your posts to your fans and your fans friends, in a ticker at the top right-hand side of the page. Your posts now reach a much wider audience – and you need to stand out from the crowd.
Offering interesting updates with a well-designed Facebook Page is often the deciding factor in whether or not your fans will choose to interact or share your page with their friends. Building interaction with your fans is an important factor – you need to have relevant information that isn’t always self-promotional. However, we like to stress the importance of having a well designed Facebook page, that offers incentives for prospective fans to click “like”.
Do you "like" the RoryMartin.com reveal tab?
Consider this: The first thing users see is your business’s wall – and while that may have relevant information, it may lack the branding your company needs to make an impact. We’re finding that businesses are increasingly aware of the visual impact their Facebook page has, and trends point to the increased use of “splash pages” or reveal tabs for facebook pages. It’s the equivalent of having an active ad built directly into your page that’s clickable. You can set these Facebook reveal tabs to be clickabe so that users can click to like, which would reveal discounts, for example.
When it comes to the internet, looks are everything. The design is as important as the implementation. Having a well-designed landing tab will help you stand out from the crowd. Keep it simple, and neat. Don’t go overboard with apps. Be consistent with your branding, and display different pages for fans and non-fans. You can even engage your current fans to take another action via links or reveal tabs. RoryMartin.com builds these welcome tabs and customizes facebook pages for a variety of clients.
And while you’re customizing your Facebook fanpage, it’s a good idea to consider implementing a custom URL. If you have 25 or more fans, implementing a custom URL on your facebook page will increase your search engine rankings and will be easier to promote. Consider your custom URL another step towards branding your business.
Here are a few simple ideas for implementing customizations on your Facebook Page
- Display the services or products you offer
- Be sure to include a specific call to action, along with a link so your fans can actively participate
- Host a contest
- Make sure to post about your blog, and share your blog posts with fans
- Let people know who you are and what you’re about
- If you do any charity work or special events, make sure to share those
- Give fans a reason to like your page by using reveal tabs, or by letting users know what to look forward to
- For your fans, let them know how they can contribute
- Share your twitter posts
Now, more than ever, it’s increasingly important to make sure your social network business profiles are integrated into your marketing and branding. If you’re not sure how to implement social media into your marketing strategy, come see us at www.rorymartin.com.
Forbes: 10 Social Media Mistakes
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on August 5, 2011
We found an article on Forbes this morning listing 10 social media mistakes businesses commonly make. They range from not addressing negative feedback, to skimping on social media time, to not measuring your return on investment. Forbes tells you what to do, and at RoryMartin.com, we tell you how to do it:
Mistake No. 1: Not Having a Plan
Sit down with your marketing guru and map out where you want to be with your social media campaign and what you want it to do for you. Be realistic about what you can achieve in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 3 years. Figure out how you’re going to do it and who’s going to administrate your accounts. Map out your monthly social media calendar and estimate how much time you need to spend on each piece of the puzzle. Great planning produces great results.
At RoryMartin, we create customized social media calendars for each of our clients, making sure we match our marketing recommendations with your marketing plan.
Mistake No. 2: Too Much Too Soon
You don’t have to do everything all at once. Your plan (above) should work in waves. That way, you have ample time to put into each step of your plan and nothing is missed. If you follow your social media calendar you should avoid that overwhelmed feeling of trying to do it all. Keep it simple, and only build when you’re ready to take on a new challenge.
If you don’t have the time to keep up with your social media accounts, consider hiring a company like RoryMartin.com, a search engine optimization, web design and web development, social networking, and social media marketing firm.
Mistake No. 3: Not Measuring Your Success and Return on Investment
You need to know if what you’re doing is producing results, right? Get Google Analytics and become familiar with that tool. Check out Google Webmaster tools (and yes, the two are very different). Create Google alerts, email alerts and Twitter alerts to find out when, where and how your company is being talked about. Analyze which avenues work the best and build on them, which will help you cut out the unnecessary steps in your social media plan.
RoryMartin.com specializes in helping businesses create social media strategies with the analytics and reports that help you see the effects of a good social media strategy.
Mistake No. 4: Underutilizing Social Platforms for Branding
Make sure you fill out every available field you can on those social media accounts. It’s like talking about your company or touting your elevator pitch. The more complete your profiles are, the more accessible your business becomes and the more transparency and brand value those sites have. Won an award? Manta asks for those kind of stats, and that can be the reference your brand needs to pick up that high profile account. Got a blog that offers industry insights? Put that into your LinkedIn profile, to make sure other professionals in your industry know about your blog and have the chance to stay up to date. Make sure your Twitter account is linked to that blog, and to your LinkedIn, and to your Facebook. Leave no stone unturned.
Mistake No. 5: Promoting Without Listening or Engaging
We’ve talked about social media engagement, here on the RoryMartin blog. Social media is a communicative tool. As with any form of communication the best thing you can do is listen. Listen to your audience, your competitors, and people you want to work with. Listen, or look for conversations that you want to be a part of. Listen to, and watch social media influencers and keep track of ways that you can contribute to become an authority.
Be a part of the conversation – the HUMAN conversation. Creating relationships in the social media world is important to creating trust between your brand and the world. Develop a deeply human relationship with your audience, and your audience will reward that relationship.
Figure out why your customers would want to befriend you in their social media networks. They want to know “what’s in it for me?” And you need to be able to answer that question. At RoryMartin.com, we can help you answer these questions and show you how to engage your social media customers.
Mistake No. 6: Not Addressing Negative Comments or Feedback
Instead of responding with ire, or just ignoring this conversation completely, ask those negative commenters what you can do to “make better”. Customer service is all about finding better ways to communicate and better serve your customers. Look at those avenues of social media as creative ways to give better customer service. Start a dialogue with your unhappy customers, and they’ll be a lot less unhappy.
Mistake No. 7: Not Claiming Existing Profiles
Your business is most likely listed in several places you didn’t know about. And the info on those sites may be old, outdated, incorrect or incomplete. The strategy here is to search for your company, across the web, to find out where you are listed and what needs to be updated. After you’ve made a list, go through and systematically update your profiles to reflect your website, your address, your contact info and interlink your profiles – adding things like your Twitter account and Facebook page.
Mistake No. 8: Skimping on Time
Let’s face it: Social media is a time investment. It can take months for your social media efforts to pay off, and patience is key. That’s why tip #2 is so important. Don’t bite off more than you can chew, and know that you’re going to have to block out chunks of time to monitor and engage in your social media efforts. If you don’t have the time, hire a professional who knows the ins and outs of social media engagement, or look for a Social Media Marketing company like RoryMartin.com who can help you build and implement your social media strategy – so that you have more time to run your business.
Mistake No. 9: Lacking Passion
If there’s one thing we have here at RoryMartin.com, it’s passion for social media. Without the passion, your social media efforts may fall flat – you know your brand and as a business owner, you more than likely love what you’re doing. Try to channel that into your social media efforts, since social media is an extension of the way you promote what you love. If you just can’t get jazzed about interacting on the social web, consider hiring social media professionals who have the passion and knowledge to be the voice of your brand.
Mistake No. 10: Not Knowing When Social Media Isn’t Right for Your Business
81% of entrepreneurs still don’t take advantage of social sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and 40% small and medium-businesses don’t even have a Web site. That said, internet users spend approximately 22% of their Internet time in social media, making social media a priority for any company that wants to be visible. Think about your target market and your audience. Who are they and where do they spend their time. Maybe social media isn’t right for your business, but how will you know unless you try it?
At RoryMartin.com, we’re focused on finding the right social networking and social marketing options that are right for you. We do the work so you don’t have to, bringing social tools to every business, and making social media simple.
Make the Most of Linkedin for Your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Social Networking on July 28, 2011
As a web design and web development, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and social media marketing firm, we like to keep on top of the trends – and exploring trends on LinkedIn is no exception. We stumbled across this article that boasts 10 LinkedIn Tips for Professionals, that says:
Despite the hype over Twitter and Facebook, Linkedin offers the greatest opportunity for professionals to make connections that lead to business.
We agreed with Ian Brody’s article, especially the following tips
1. Don’t make your profile look like your resumé. Brody says that the number one temptation when setting up a LinkedIn profile is to fill in all those prior job slots, but that’s ineffective where LinkedIn is concerned. The business connections that you’re looking for are going to want to see solution-oriented details. Add the business name and title, leave out things like, “managed four people who perform business-related tasks.” Explain where you went above and beyond the basic job task, improved something, saved money, or where you were excelled and were just plain awesome.
2. Find Connections – Know your Strategy. LinkedIn is social, and there are a lot of professional networks on LinkedIn, where you can flex your knowledge and show off your skills – for example, you might find us in the LikeSocialMedia.com group. Of course, like any social network, it’s best to get a feel for the pulse of the community. Listen, watch and learn; find out what other pros in your industry are doing and saying and be cautious at first about sharing dissent. Like anywhere (or any social network) first impressions are lasting impressions. And Ian Brody notes, “Create a connection strategy to build valuable discussion.”
3. Ian Brody suggests updating your status to remind people what you do, and what you’re currently working on. If you connect with a lot of people, staying current with status messages can do anything from help you connect with someone who’s looking for YOUR expertise to keeping you up to date on news in your field, to helping you and your brand grow in ways that your clientele are looking for.
What do you think readers? Have anything to add to Brody’s tips for LinkedIn?
If you’re curious about how to use LinkedIn for your business, contact RoryMartin.com to find a strategy that fits your social networking needs, as well as the social tools that simplify your social media integration. We offer a comprehensive set of services from website design and web development to search engine optimization and search engine marketing and social media marketing. If you need creative ideas, easy implementation, and a limited investment into your social media campaign, RoryMartin.com has experts available to assess your needs, provide excellent customer service and innovative marketing tactics before you’ve even signed a contract.
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