The Importance of Social Media to Your Business

Leveraging the Internet to Build an Online Presence and Gain Customers

Marketing your business can seem intimidating when you’ve got so many other things to worry about (such as overall management and finances). In fact, many businesses overlook their marketing efforts – which can greatly affect profits and incoming customers.
Fortunately, it isn’t that hard to market your business now that the world has social media at its fingertips. Facebook and Twitter are indisputably the most popular and well-known social networks, allowing people to communicate and network with one another. With over 1 billion users on Facebook and half a million users on Twitter, your business can tap into a huge pool of potential customers around the world.
But what’s the right way to market your business on social media, and how is it done? Just like in the real world, you want to be personable, friendly, timely, and engaging in your communication with customers. Examples include responding to customer inquiries/issues, holding giveaway contests on Facebook (think gift cards, coupons, freebies), and posting interesting content relevant to your business to maintain a presence and welcome interaction. There are countless ways to market your business via social media, and no business is the same.
Thankfully there are a bunch of tools on the web to help you streamline and manage your company’s social media accounts. Tools such as Buffer let you schedule posts and content ahead of time, and another tool called Hootsuite gives you an all-in-one dashboard of your social accounts so that you can engage with customers and fans under one hood.
Overall, social media is an extremely convenient tool for customers to get the latest deals, updates, and information about your business. One Facebook share can go a long way, as its reach is amplified through your customer’s own network.

Source: http://socialmediaworld.com/the-importance-of-social-media-to-your-business/

5 reasons to look again at Google+

Google Plus is currently the second-largest social network globally according to Global Web Index; it is growing faster than Facebook and has more users globally than LinkedIn and Instagram combined.

Marketers often think of this platform as a mere SEO booster, but two years since Google Plus launched ‘Pages’ for brands it has evolved into an integrated social ‘layer’ that works across Google’s many online properties.

Here are five reasons for brands to take a second look at Google Plus:

1. Google Plus is not Google’s version of Facebook: it’s not about stories and experiences. It’s about being part of a system based on a search engine that expands its power to different platforms that people use every single day. Think of it as a huge dashboard where you can manage your life online.

You have probably noticed that Google is everywhere, not only in search. Chrome? Check. YouTube? Check. Android? Check. Google Play? Check. Not to mention email, chat, maps, calendar, documents and so on. Thanks to Plus, Google knows about people’s contacts on Gmail, the YouTube videos they watch and comment on, the places they go on maps and how they spend their time online on the websites in Google’s ad network. This makes Plus a powerful insights tool for marketers.

2. There’s another reason why Google Plus is different from Facebook. Plus allows people to customize their experience: they can choose the content they want to read in their news feed and decide what is more relevant for them, without allowing an algorithm to do it on their behalf and filtering friends’ posts. Thanks to Circles, one of its key-features, they can also choose the right audience for a specific content they share.

This means: the user’s needs and interests come first on Plus. Google knows that users want to be more and more in control of their social experience, while Facebook makes decisions for users about what they do, or do not want to see or share in their news feed.

3. Google Plus offers different ways to engage with users and be closer to them. In Communities, people come together to have relevant conversations and discuss shared interests (music, art, tech, news, etc). This is an important opportunity for brands that want to listen to people’s opinions, participate in the conversation and drive it to a specific topic.

Within Communities, brands can also offer frictionless customer service to a specific audience without building a dedicated space on their website or forum. Hangouts help brands to engage with users on a more personal level: video chat, live show broadcast, virtual meet and greet, live support and much more can be implemented thanks to this powerful feature.

4. Google Plus obviously offers brands incentives in terms of SEO and visibility to sign up on its social network: it guarantees prime placement on the right-hand side of the search results, with photos and promotional posts to companies with Google Plus profiles. On top of business information, logo, location, website and so on, people can also follow and visit brand’s profile on Google Plus right from Google search results.

5. Google knows that content is king, and wants to make it go faster. With the new +Post ads, it allows brands to turn their Google Plus content into expandable display ads, and those ads can be shown as innovative and conversational display ads within the Google Plus interface. For example, a brand can take the opportunity to re-purpose pictures, videos, Hangouts and potentially show its content on over 2 million websites. This kind of feature is something that only a search leader such as Google can offer brands.

Google is constantly integrating Plus into its different products and services; this makes the people using them also active users of Google Plus. In fact, Google Plus provides an ecosystem for any business looking for massive potential engagement, promotional opportunities and importantly, SEO.

Giants like Cadbury, Ferrari, H&M and obviously Android are already interacting with people on Plus, with big success.

Based on the growth and integration of the platform over the past three years, Google will no doubt continue to expand its offering and opportunities for brands, large and not so large. Watch this space.

Source:http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/04/reasons-google/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wearesocial+%28We+Are+Social%29

LinkedIn Uses Big Data to Increase Profile Visibility and Enhance Professional Brands by Caitlin Zucal

Who wouldn’t like more LinkedIn profile page views? Thanks to the newly updated “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” section, users can now take advantage of personalized tips aimed at boosting page views.

One of the main features that has distinguished LinkedIn from the other major social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, has been the ability to see who has viewed your profile. Now, by tapping into the power of big data, LinkedIn’s new layout for “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” includes impressive analytics and real-time “actionable insights” meant to increase profile visibility and enhance one’s professional brand. Before, users could only see how often their profile was viewed and a list of the most recent users to check out their page. Now, LinkedIn breaks down the data even further, showing the industry viewers work in, the keyword searches that brought them to a profile, how they found a specific user, what regions they live in, what profession they are in and what companies they work for.

Despite these new LinkedIn capabilities, users still have the option to protect their privacy by changing what others see when you have reviewed their profile. Instead of showing a name and headline, users can edit their settings and choose to display anonymous profile details, such as title and industry, or go completely anonymous.

In addition to the increased data potential, LinkedIn’s update also offers its users personalized tips on how to gain more clicks and views. For example, building connections can draw more eyes to your profile and lead to exciting new sales opportunities.  Adding skills and a strong, detailed summary makes a LinkedIn profile more relevant and helps one stand out against the competition. Or, sharing a suggested trending article can help establish industry thought leadership and build a larger online following.

Check out other new LinkedIn features here.

This guest post was provided by RegEd. View the original article here.

 

- Source: http://financialsocialmedia.com/linkedin-uses-big-data-to-increase-profile-visibility-and-enhance-professional-brands/#sthash.BnhsAhc1.dpuf