Despite this apparent prevalence of opinion, there are certain hard and fast rules when it comes to the subject of social media. In this month’s article, we’ll look at some of the key pointers for the ever-popular Facebook.

Your Business on Facebook
Social media brings with it a whole new level of customer interaction. Spark discussion; invite feedback; share experiences – and so on. With this in mind, the following tips are designed to focus your Facebook marketing efforts.

Keep Up With The Times
Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with your audience – more so in fact than you could ever hope to achieve through your blog or website alone. If you’re in business for yourself, you’re more than likely to be keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in your chosen field. You may even run regular webinars and talks, alongside consulting with clients and prospects on their business needs.

You can channel all this valuable content into an interactive playground like your Facebook page, where an interested audience seeks out fresh new content to digest.

From industry tips and insider knowledge to the latest trends, your Facebook page is a dynamic environment that promotes discussion and interactivity. By passing on the benefit of your knowledge for free you’ll also be raising your stock.

Keep ‘Em Coming Back For More!
Whether you choose to reward great ideas with discounts, or simply want to conduct a little market research, Facebook represents an invaluable platform from which to reach out.

Keep your readership engaged by adopting a varied approach, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Judge how well you’re doing by the level of interaction occurring on the page itself.

Broaden Your Horizons
It’s no longer just about the wall. Facebook’s meteoric rise in popularity is matched only by the host of plugins and applications flooding the market on a weekly basis. From shopping tabs to hosted support pages, there is a veritable treasure trove of useful material you can use to heighten the customer experience.

Oh, and more importantly, to drive traffic to your site! Check out ‘Get Satisfaction’ and ‘Fan Appz’ to get yourself started.

And Now For Something Completely Different…
Facebook is generally acknowledged as a place for light-hearted social interaction. Even if your company has a reasonably serious image, Facebook provides a valuable opportunity to show some personality by injecting humour into proceedings.

For those of you who want to keep it ‘strictly business’ – Facebook is still a useful tool for promoting your brand and breathing a little life into the business. Use the page to highlight significant events and milestones on the company calendar – supported by high quality corporate images to add a little variety and credibility.

In this article we’ll examine some simple ideas to come up with fresh, engaging content designed to drive traffic to your site and keep them coming back for more.

Blogging Your Way to New Business
The goal for any blogger is to publish unique and compelling content. With this in mind, it’s probably worth noting here that the following ideas are designed as a general guide, so feel free to take the ideas presented somewhere new and get your creative juices flowing!

How to…
How many times have you asked Google to come up with the answer to a particular question? How to? guides present a fantastic way to engage the reader and encourage interaction through working examples and so on. They are also a great way of demonstrating your expertise and credibility within your chosen niche. Support well-written, informed content with great visuals and downloadable content for extra bonus points.

Common Problems – Great Solutions
Just as the internet is a great resource for finding out how to do things, it also provides a valuable opportunity to find new ways around general or specific problems. It therefore follows that presenting a structured, concise entry dedicated to a particular issue is a surefire way of both attracting traffic and presenting yourself as a knowledgeable expert in your field.

Proven Methodology
One drawback with the internet age is that anyone can present themselves as an expert in anything. A great way of building credibility and attracting traffic is through the use of referenced case studies. Back up your advice with hard evidence, demonstrating how a methodology has been applied to assist a particular client and the subsequent results. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

The Latest News
A great case in point for regular updated content – positioning yourself as a valuable resource for the latest industry news is a great way of attracting and retaining traffic. Becoming your clients’ ‘go to’ resource for the latest news via a simple RSS feed is a great way of staying connected to your audience.

Book Worm
Don’t assume that everything your audience reads is online. In fact, the majority of internet users are only interested in snippets of information. Providing references to offline material is a great way of demonstrating both empathy for your readers’ needs as well as your own knowledge on a particular subject.

Feedback
Requesting feedback is by far the most simple method of both gauging your success and encouraging user interaction. Don’t assume you know it all, open up your blog and invite your readers in – you never know what valuable ideas and suggestions could come out of it.

The new position is for an Internet Savvy Account Manager to help promote our internet marketing services to our customers and to help plan and manage or Internet Marketing Campaigns. No campaign is the same. We may mix such techniques as: SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, PPC Pay Per Click Google Adwords Marketing, Social Media,  E-mail Marketing, Internet Analysis, Internet Consultancy and Web Analytics.

We have achieved outstanding results for our customers and are looking for a new member of our team who will add value to our customers.

The Job Specification is below.

New Internet Marketing Jobs at WSI

Role: Internet Marketing Account Manager
Location: Huddersfield
Salary: £20k-£25K according to experience

As the Internet Marketing Account Manager in our growing Digital Marketing Agency you will be responsible for the planning and management of SEO and PPC for client websites. You will also be responsible for analysis and research of prospects. Training will be given, and you will have access to the latest SEO and analysis tools. You will also analyse the results implemented by our SEO Consultants and liaise with clients, looking for opportunities to improve the clients’ online business. You will attend client meetings and be in constant communication with the client to ensure all Search projects are achieving their targets.

You should have hands on experience of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Google Analytics. As this role is client facing you must have strong communication and presentation skills. You will implement Search Marketing strategies and be competent in the delivery of SEO & PPC Social Media and Conversion Analysis. You will also be responsible for making ongoing recommendations and campaign improvements.

There will be significant training opportunities to further develop your skills.

If you would like to apply, please e-mail your CV and a covering letterincluding salary expectations to lisa@wsi-ebizsolutions.biz.

You can checkout the person spec on our careers page

This role overlaps with similar jobs such as

Internet Consultant, Internet Marketing Consultant, Internet Marketing Analyst, Internet Marketing Account Manager, and is based in Holmfirth near Huddersfield

Remember though – with social media fast becoming one of the most targeted and pro-active marketing platforms the question is, can you afford not to have a strategy at all?

Boosting Business With Social Marketing
In part one we looked at identifying your objectives, adopting the right tone, understanding and publishing to your target audience, being consistent and being interactive. Here are the final steps to planning the ultimate social media marketing strategy.

1. Embrace the Blog
It probably won’t come as a surprise to find that social media and the world of blogging are integrally linked. With RSS feeds, Tweets and Facebook plug-ins now coming as standard, blogging has truly become a part of the social media landscape. Blogs are also a valuable tool for updated, fresh content to keep readers (and search engines) engaged.

Decide up front the purpose of your blog and stick to it – a consistent approach is likely to retain visitors. Perhaps you’re after new clients; interacting with other professionals or simply raising your profile – keep your content concise and relevant.

2. Share and Share Alike
Your work is your most valuable asset, and a great tool for attracting new clients. Finished a new piece of work you’re really proud of? Landed a high profile new client? Finally landed that contract you’ve been chasing? Tell the world about it (be careful not to give too much information away) by sharing a link or posting an update via Facebook, Twitter or your chosen platform. You never know, you may just catch someone’s eye.

Don’t forget though – it’s a two way street. Be careful to retain a balanced approach and use a variety of ways to interact with your readership. No one likes a show off after all!

3. Links are the Key
Just as you can link to your Facebook or Twitter profile from your blog, the same is true in reverse. Virtually every social media platform provides a facility to an external website or blog.

Given the popularity of social media sites, it’s a great way to increase traffic by letting others know you have an external profile they can check out. Either by curiosity or whether they wish to find out more about your service – you’re onto a winner.

4. Social Media and Blogging – As One
As we’ve already touched upon, a blog provides an excellent opportunity for a little cross-selling. Whether you’re tracking tweets, linking to your Facebook/LinkedIn profile or using a widget, don’t be afraid to experiment. Most blogs now provide users with a simple button interface which allows users to click straight through to the relevant page or profile.

Try to engage your readership by making it simple for them to follow you – this is also where relevance and consistency play a key role. If the content is relevant and your message clear, they’re far more likely to be interested in what you have to say.

5. Keep Your Eye on the Ball
Don’t lose track of why you started your social media presence in the first place. Keep your long term focus and build your profile by interacting with your users. A decent social networking strategy focuses on the bigger picture, rather than simply going for the quick win.

Given time, a multi-angle social media strategy will prove far more valuable than your website alone. That’s not to say the website has become redundant, it should become the hub of your overall strategy.

A quick word of warning in closing; manage the time you spend on your social media activities. Keep track of how long you are spending promoting your services. – in fact, try and allocate a sensible and proportional amount of time each week (or even daily) to social media marketing.

There is little doubt that having an online (web) presence is vital to the long-term survival of any business. Government statistics last year estimated that around 70% of all UK households have access to the internet. This means the internet represents a portal to a potential 40+ million customers in the UK alone (discounting businesses and users outside the home).

Is a Social Media Presence Enough? 
Let’s take Facebook as an example. Latest figures reflect that there are some 400 million active Facebook users (according to Facebook’s own statistics) on the phenomenally popular social networking site. Of those 400 million approximately 50% are active on any given day, and more than 1.5 million of those users account for local businesses.

When you also consider that the average user has 130 friends networked on the site, the potential of social networking as a business platform soon becomes clear.

Which way to turn? 
What would you prefer to see as a prospective client – a considered investment in an internet presence or a simple profile that makes little impact, or worse still, gives the wrong impression.

While social networking definitely has its place in a progressive online marketing strategy, there is no ownership, little or no brand imagery (for you) and few opportunities for further digital marketing such as search engine optimisation.

Best of Both Worlds 
Conventional wisdom dictates that there is simply no substitute for a well thought-out web presence. In terms of image and brand, a website says more about you and your company than any number of social networking profiles.

The ever-shifting digital landscape requires diversification and given the clear benefits to be enjoyed through both mediums, the logical answer is to combine your efforts. Social media presents a fantastic opportunity to boost your stock and attract new business. It’s another way of getting your name out there and reaching new clients.

It’s all in the message 
Ask enough experts and you will soon realise that there are a range of differing opinions on what constitutes a good approach to online marketing – too many in fact to go into here. Regardless of what form of marketing you are using, certain fundamentals remain true. Sending the right message to push the right buttons at the right time is vital.

Five Website Tips for Engaging Consumers Today
The web is not a static medium: as technologies improve, user expectations increase. As they do, meeting customers’ expectations will mean developing your marketing to be more appropriate, timely and relevant to what consumers want.

Here are five steps to develop your website to engage more effectively with your customers:

1. Study Customers’ Online Behaviour
Use your website analytics to learn from your intended audience – your customers – and give them what they want. Identify website hot spots that attract the most attention; understand when your email marketing messages will be best received; discover which social platforms are leading them to you.

If used well, your web analytics are a key component in understanding and fulfilling your customers’ expectations.

2. Consider Your Content Presentation
The first step in engaging customers is not only the quality of your content, but also the ease with which it can be read and its user-friendliness. A professional web design and carefully thought out content arrangement will help you make a great first impression – and draw your website visitors in.

3. Creative Content Formats
The web is no longer a text-based medium, and hasn’t been for a while. Even the less frequent web user will be used to animated imagery and video content. Be creative with your content to engage your visitors’ senses and get your message across dynamically, but ensure the technology doesn’t distract visitors from your pitch.

4. Emphasise Social Media Connections
Make it easy to share your content across multiple social networks, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and many more. Including an easy-to-use ‘Share’ widget with your content makes content sharing a breeze and demonstrates your intention to be engaging.

5. Make it Easy to Correspond – No Jumping Through Hoops
If you want to encourage correspondence, show it. Make it a simple process for site visitors to leave comments or get in touch to take ‘social conversation’ to the next level. Streamline your forms and have multiple points of contact through which visitors can leave comments.

Finally, with all the above, adapt your marketing mix to incorporate a coordinated, consistent approach. Developing a coherent online marketing campaign can be done very effectively at a fraction of the cost of traditional promotional activities.

Get Social Media Marketing Working for You
The choice of social media platforms continues to grow – with a plethora of social networking websites to choose from. While hugely successful sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube may be taking all the plaudits, there are many more social networking websites to consider. Your first goal is to establish where your target audience is active, and then ‘get on board that bus’.

A final word of warning before we move on to review the 20 social networking tactics for business. Don’t dive in too soon. Take some time to monitor and learn from your customers’ existing activity. This will enable you to participate in a similar fashion, rather than sticking out like a sore thumb.

20 Ways to Use Social Media to Promote Your Business
The following 20 social media marketing tactics will enable you to genuinely participate within social networks while simultaneously promoting your business successfully.

1. Highlight – and link out to – industry news or world news relevant to your field.
2. Share your own thoughts on topics related to your business.
3. Feature links to insightful articles and include an explanation as to why they are valuable.
4. Be helpful; share some of your expertise to help build a positive reputation.
5. Ask questions to get feedback and invite discussion on industry topics.
6. Recommend other social media users –they will usually reciprocate your recommendation.
7. Hold a contest and publicise it across your social media profiles. Competitions can spread like wildfire across social networks.
8. Announce business updates, including links to new products or special features.
9. Link to your website content occasionally; too often might seem pushy, but this doesn’t mean to say you cannot do it at all.
10. Link to rich media content, such as webcast presentations or videos that enhance your message.
11. Announce – and link to – the publication of your latest email newsletter.
12. Similarly, link to your latest blog post with a brief summary.
13. Post discount coupons and other deals exclusive to your social media audience.
14. Personalise your profile with your company logo and colours, and maybe even an image of yourself.
15. Think quality, not quantity. You don’t need to be the most prolific participant to impress.
16. Don’t be afraid to share some personality.
17. Pick up tips and tricks from other experts in your field.
18. Share links to your social media profile, or profiles from your website, newsletter and regular email signature.
19. Combine your content across multiple web platforms, including your website and social media profiles.
20. Identify the best times of day to engage with your target audience

In conclusion, remember that whether you are tweeting, poking or tagging, be yourself and enjoy participating in the social conversation.

At the moment I’ve not had a chance to have a play with it yet, but it looks to be offering an easy way to share content online with an improved mobile experience.

Buzz will show a thumbnail of YouTube video’s and make it easy to play in line.

With photos, it will show thumbnails, with a custom photo viewer, which lets you flip through pictures and see them “big and fast”. You can “like” and “unlike” stuff, and expand comments.

Public/Private sharing – The post box will let you post updates publicly or privately. If it’s public, it will go to your Google profile, and is indexed by Google’s real-time search.

In your in-box, you’ll see notifications that contain real-time comments. It will sit in the same in-box as your regular email, but you can move between your regular in-box and your Buzz stuff.

Mobile could be one of the biggest keys to the success of this product. Google says Google.com is the world’s most popular mobile home page, and Buzz can be accessed from there on iPhone and Android devices.

Buzz could also benefit businesses as an organisational tool. The first thing that comes to mind is the expansion of communication with existing contacts. When you’re frequently seeing what your Gmail contacts are saying, it will not only keep those people fresh in your mind, but it could develop further communication.

The question is, will Gmail users buy into this quick sharing? Google thinks so because it’s a part of the evolution from email, to IM, to status updates. In Google’s eyes, this is part of the evolution to the next big jump to Google Wave. Buzz could be the little step needed to get people to think about communicating in a way beyond email and IM.

We keep hearing about Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. We even hear about big Social Media phenomenon: The Facebook Group set up to get “Rage against the Machine” to number one in the music charts, the spoiler to stop X-Factor winner Joe McElderry being the Christmas Number One. Dave Carroll’s song on You Tube viewed nearly 7,000,000 times that tells the tale about how United Airlines broke his guitar (Search for United Airlines on YouTube and Dave Carroll’s song comes top every time). Millions of people everyday use some form of Social Media every day; we hear of big company campaigns on Social Media, but does it have a commercial impact for local businesses? The short answer is Yes, very much so.

To understand what is happening online, we just need to understand how people buy off line or what we did before the internet.

 People select a shop, bar or restaurant based on many criteria.

• Advertising
• Price Comparison
• Reviews
• Recommendation
• Location

 Online, it is very much the same, except information and contact networks are so much quicker.

  This is why many companies are developing their social media presence ie to extend their brand reach by joining the conversation with their customers. Some essential elements of a social media campaign could include:

• Blogging
• Article writing
• FaceBook
• Twitter
• Questions and Answers
• Social Bookmarking
• Forums
• Monitoring

 More advanced campaigns could include Facebook and IPhone Applications, designed to engage and interact with the consumer.

Blogging

A Blog (weB- log) is a series of entries, records, thoughts and ideas on a website. Google appears to love Blogs, websites that have up-to-date blogs have made some commitment to adding and updating content on their website and are therefore contributing positively to the internet.  Google rewards good relevant content with high search positions. It is possible to get 1st page results on Google and even top positions on Google in under 5 minutes.

 Good blogging practice means writing a blog on a regular basis, daily if possible, but weekly can be sufficient. Other tips may include:

• Being informative
• Not being sales oriented
• Linking to other resources both on your site as well as off site.
• Getting your blog followed by linking into social networks, social book marking sites and article sites

 So as a blog grows it increases the number of pages in your website, as the readership increases, then so the authority of your site will increase. The effect of this is that it can increase the number of search terms that a website can be found on.

Article Writing

Writing Articles on other websites is a great way to improve your reputation as an expert to your customers. Articles on other good reputable websites linking to your site can also build your “reputation” with Google.

Facebook, Twitter and other Social Network Websites

Many Social Network sites have started out as online meeting points for friends and people with common interests. However, 2009 saw more and more  companies using social network sites to engage with their customers, often by creating a more personal face of the company and by deploying targeted content and offers to specific demographs.

Measuring Results

Like so much of internet marketing, it is measurable, with many websites getting over 25% of their traffic from Blogs and visitors from social network sites and blogs being 3 times more likely to buy. Why? because all of the offsite activity is targeted to specific groups, so that the social media marketing has been increasing brand recognition and trust off site; when consumers visit websites, they have already researched the products & services, received recommendations, interacted with the free content, making the final buying decision easier.

Stephen Harvey-Franklin wrote this article that was published in the Harrogate Advertiser’s Business Pink Pages.

Steve is a Social Media and SEO Consultant and Trainer with Ripley Training and a Digital Marketing Consultant for WSI Yorkshire, based in Huddersfield West Yorkshire. Steve also speaks at events on Internet Marketing and Social Media Strategy

Different Ways to Use Twitter Marketing

There are many different ways to incorporate Twitter into your current marketing campaigns.  Possibly the most common method is to utilise Twitter to share information.  Twitter allows you to share small snippets of information with a large number of followers at the click of a mouse.  These small snippets of information can be public service announcements, news updates, business news or family or friend updates.

As Twitter was primarily developed to constantly feed current updates to followers, it is a natural tool for the marketing of a business.  Most commonly short marketing messages are shared over Twitter through a Tweet which contains a link to more relevant information.  Twitter allows businesses to share information over a global network allowing both prospective customers and existing customers to discover and follow the information you share across the network.

Twitter Etiquette

When conducting marketing activities on Twitter a strict etiquette must be followed.  If this etiquette is not followed then followers can quickly feel alienated leading to potential damage to your brand.

Twitter is primarily focussed on the here and now.  It makes a great marketing tool for promoting timely news and products, for example today’s lunch special offers.  The promotion of events is also an excellent and highly rewarding use of Twitter.  Tweets should ideally be kept conversation in tone and casual in tone.  Advertising should not appear as “in your face” advertising.

Give Your Tweets Personality

The more personality you create for your brand, the easier it will be to tweet about it.  A unique voice will make your tweets entertaining.  Entertaining Tweets help to engage readers and attract more followers.  Ideally you should attempt to wrap your tweets around a nugget of important information, and then deliver the tweet in an entertaining and conversational manner. Ideally your followers should look forward to hearing from you, this will increase the likelihood of them reading your tweets and marketing messages.

Another area where Twitter is particularly beneficial is in the area of customer communication and feedback.  Twitter is designed to be conversational, and it is a great way to keep a dialogue going with your existing customers and prospective customers.  Twitter is a great way to collect feedback from existing customers and particularly useful for reputation building.  Both essential if you wish to retain customers and learn how to attract increases numbers of prospective customers.