Social Media Mistakes For Chicago Businesses To Avoid Part 2

October 29, 2009

In our last post, we discussed some ways that companies frequently make mistakes while using social media for their business, resulting in a passive approach and eventually a failing social media campaign. The following tips will help you and your company avoid making the opposite types of mistakes, being too aggressive with social media:

Creating Pages On Too Many Sites: Since social media for business is a time consuming endeavor, it is impossible to reach everyone and be involved on every social media website, all while running a successful business. Devote some time to research your industry on different social media sites and identify which ones will benefit your company the most. You need to find the place that will allow you to interact the most with your potential customers, and that is going to be different for every company.

Abusing The Rules: Social media users are a group of intelligent people that don’t want to be manipulated. If your organization uses certain techniques, for example, posting multiple spam-like messages in Facebook or Twitter to try and attract more fans, people will get upset with your company and stop following you. The majority of companies that make this mistake are just starting their efforts in social media and want to try and get their message out to the highest number of people as fast as possible. However, the better approach is to sign up, read what other people are talking about and get a good feeling about the overall conversation on that social media site, and then slowly join in with valuable information.

Obvious Selling: Companies that go on social media and try the usual hard sell tactics in business will find that followers/fans don’t respond positively to it. The whole social media culture is based on people communicating with others in order to help everyone. It is not about businesses selling their products to consumers in the social media realm, so don’t treat your followers like they are just there to buy your product. Remember, you have to contribute to the conversation before you can expect anyone to buy what you’re offering.

Deliberate SEO: It is not a secret that social media has become an important part of search engine optimization. This shouldn’t mean that the only reason why you’re on social media sites is to get more links to your website. Your success on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else depends on how much you offer other people. They aren’t just search engine robots scanning your page and looking for keywords, so don’t expect them to stay your follower if all you’re looking for are keywords and backlinks.

Social Media Mistakes For Chicago Businesses To Avoid Part 1

October 27, 2009

Chicago social media is becoming more and more prominent within the small business community. Whether a company runs their own social media campaign or hires a Chicago social media expert to bring results, we should all be aware of certain mistakes that companies across the country have made on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

The most common mistakes companies of all sizes have been making in the social media community since businesses started promoting themselves can be broken down into two categories. There are the mistakes that are made because a company is not being proactive enough, and there are the mistakes made because they are being too aggressive with their social media campaigns. Here are some mistakes that fall in the first category:

Incomplete Profiles: Nobody recommends businesses to join every social media outlet; it’s just too time consuming. So if you choose two to three of the most beneficial ones to your company, there should be no reason why your efforts on that site aren’t completely devoted to succeeding there. If you make the decision to create an account, take the time to enter all your information and make your identity unique to your company. Add pictures, descriptions etc. so you can show people who you are. This is where your social media brand begins, and it is very important to have a good start so visitors know you are involved in social media for the right reasons and will have a better chance to engage with you.

Not Communicating With Fans: If you have a following, however large it is, make sure you are part of the conversation. If you don’t engage with the people who are talking about you on social media sites, their expectations won’t be met. There are plenty of companies that are great at responding to fans or even replying with a thank you, which means if you don’t do that consistently you will loser followers.

Quitting Your Campaign Too Early: Many of the small businesses in Chicago try out social media but don’t give it enough time to see results, so they just give up. Try to begin with a good marketing plan before you setup all your accounts, and use different tactics to engage with your followers/fans.

Inconsistent Posting: Social media is an ongoing approach to marketing your organization, and you need to understand that people use it every day and expect new content from you on a regular basis. You don’t have to update your pages every day, but if you take weeks at a time to post something new, you will most likely lose followers.

Coming up: social media mistakes because of being too aggressive.

Marketing Tips: 5 Benefits of Social Media

September 26, 2009

Not sure if it’s worth the time to invest in your company’s social media efforts? Besides the fact that social media sites are almost all free to setup and use, here are 5 other benefits for using social media for your business that stand out for us.

1. Engage your customers. Cost benefits aside, social media lets you communicate with your customers in ways that no amount of advertising can bring. You’ll stay updated on the latest trends in your industry by actually having ongoing conversations with the people that matter the most to your business.

2. Brand your company or yourself. Build your brand by having all of your social media efforts look and feel the same, so that visitors will know what your brand is all about.

3. Get feedback and results faster. Instead of waiting around to hear your customer’s concerns and feedback, you will have everyone at your fingertips on social media sites. You can be sure that people are accessing social media multiple times a day.

4. Create more links for people to find your website. The more involved you are in social media and the more often you update, the more links you’ll have going back to your website.

5. Find people who are interested in what you offer. On social media sites, people are going to follow what interests them the most. You don’t have to worry about your message being wasted on people who aren’t looking for it because your followers will consist of people with similar interests.

Just remember, social media is a great tool to use, but the goal is to bring people to your own website, so make sure you make your Twitter and Facebook fun and interesting to stay in the loop and keep visitors coming back.

Did You Know? – A Video On The Influence Of The Internet

September 20, 2009

I thought I would share this video and let you know what perhaps you did not know about the influence of the internet and the world today, and into the future.

Social Media Benefits For Retail Stores And Malls

September 12, 2009

We recently did a post on The Steps For Creating A Facebook Page For Your Business to show you how to setup Facebook for your personal or business use, and some tips on how to use it. This article is going to focus on the importance of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter for retail stores and malls.

General Benefits for Using Social Media

One of the greatest things about social media sites are cost benefits. Most of the social networking sites out there that you can setup a business account for are free, like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. You can add as many things to your account as you want and watch the number of followers grow without having to pay any fees. Social media also helps get more traffic to your website, so instead of spending a lot of money on online advertisements that may or may not turn into revenue, you can direct people to your company through free links.

Another unique reason for using social media marketing to grow your business is because you are instantly entered into a world where you can directly communicate with customers and fans of whatever it is that you offer. Instead of just trying to create new ways to find business, you can actually talk to the people who are interested in your company and have a one to one dialogue with them, which is beneficial to you both. You will be able to understand them more, offer them customer service faster and more efficiently, and also be able to stay current on all the latest trends in your industry.

Social Networking Usage for Stores

Companies on Facebook and Twitter are using social media to connect with customers by notifying them about special promotions, coupons, seasonal promotions and new website or store openings. Not only will a larger number of people be aware of these offers, but they will learn about them faster than any other form of marketing. With the use of Web-enabled mobile devices, customers of any age can know about your promotions as soon as you send them out.

Even whole shopping malls are creating Facebook and Twitter accounts so that they can connect with shoppers going to a variety of stores. By using social networking, malls are telling people about special events and in store promotions that are going on. Usually stores within a mall will have seasonal promotions, so social media is perfect for the whole mall to tell customers about annual promotions and events.

Challenges Businesses Face in Social Media

The main reason why so many companies struggle to succeed with social media is that it takes a lot of time to maintain a worthy campaign. There are too many sites out there to use, so it is important to choose the right ones for your specific industry. Also, if one area of social networking is very time consuming but not producing the right results, it is wasting a lot of your time to keep up.

You must also be aware that the mere number of posts or offers you have means nothing unless they are useful to the people looking at them. It’s important to make sure what you’re putting out there is interesting and valuable, while being eye-catching and user friendly at the same time. The popular example within the Facebook community is Wal-Mart, who made a page that had a corporate feel and didn’t fit in the Facebook world.

Visit our Facebook page: Design & Promote Facebook Page

The Steps For Creating A Facebook Page For Your Business

August 20, 2009

Many of you may have a business website, but may not be able to generate proper traffic for the site, from which you can earn revenue. There are many ways of ensuring that your site gets enough traffic to keep your business running in a profitable manner.  One of the very simple ways is to create a Facebook page for your own business.
Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world which is being used by millions of people all over the world.  It is very simple to open a Facebook page for your business and start drawing traffic into your site.
To start you need to visit the Advertising Page of Facebook where you will find four tabs. The tabs are titled Advertising, Pages, Connect and Facebook Share.

• The Advertising tab is used to create advertisements that will be displayed on Facebook.
• The Pages tab will allow you to create a page for your business on Facebook, where people will be able to join in.
• The Connect tab will allow the users to connect to your business site, thus giving you valuable traffic.
• The Facebook Share tab allows you to design a button for your site, with the help of which people can join your Facebook Public profile.

You need to choose one or all of the above mentioned options in order to open up your business page under Facebook.
Then you need to create a page for your business under Facebook. It is not very difficult. If you already have a personal profile under Facebook, then it will be easy for you.

The step-by-step form makes it simple even for the new users. You need to add the images and the information regarding your business in the page under Facebook. Add as much detail about your business as possible, as that will help you in attracting maximum traffic to your site.

You also need to choose a category for your business. Facebook gives you many options to choose from. Be careful to choose the right option, as that will attract the right kind of traffic that you are looking for.
Facebook also gives you options to include some useful applications in your business page. Some of the popular options are Discussion Boards, Events, Information, Notes, Photos, Reviews, Video, Wall, etc. You can choose all or any of these applications that suits the requirements of your business. You can even hire Design & Promote to create a Facebook page for your business or sign up for a professional social marketing package that would include that and more.

Visit the Design & Promote Facebook Page

Using Linkedin To Help Promote Your Business

August 13, 2009

Most people manage to open a website of their own and stack it up with products and services. At the end of the day, the thing that most websites lack is the required traffic that ultimately generates revenues for the site. There are many ways of increasing traffic in your site. Some of the methods are very expensive, while others are relatively cheaper. There are some other methods which do not require any money at all. If they are used properly, they will help you create traffic for your site.

One such method is by using the Linkedin. This is very easy to use and gives brilliant results if you can follow some simple steps. The most basic step to utilize the capability of the Linkedin is by providing the name and link of your business website in the Website Section of Linkedin. This will ensure that people visiting your profile will end up visiting your site too.

Always keep your status message in Linkedin updated, this is visible to your connections so the more often it is updated the more views it will get. There you can write a few words about the things you are working on or about the products and services that you are offering. This will help you generate a lot of traffic for your website if you put in a link.

Use the blog link widget to the maximum effect. The blog link widget can be easily added to your Linkedin profile. This blog link automatically displays the latest blog updates and Twitter that has been posted by you. The people visiting your profile will be attracted to your twitter or blog and may end up visiting your site.

You must avoid being a silent member of Linkedin. You need to be active and visit the site regularly and update your profile too. You also need to join various groups which are relevant to your field of work. In this way you will increase the visibility of your site and also draw traffic into your site. Generally you will be required to apply to a group in order to join it. But try to select those groups only which have many members, as that will serve your purpose well.

Try to answer some of the questions that have been put forward in Linkedin. This is a very easy way to draw traffic into your site if you provide a link to it as a resource.

There are many more ways to use Linkedin to help promote your business. You can discover them on your own, or use Design & Promote as your mentor on using Linkedin to help you gain more customers.

How to Use Facebook and Twitter to Attract Clients For Your Chicago Area Small Business

June 21, 2009