5 Innovative Startups Who Are Owning Their Social Space

For small-medium business owners who are just dipping their toe into the murky waters of marketing, getting to grips with social media management can feel like an overwhelming task.

If you’re struggling to understand how to use social media in a way that grows your audience, boosts engagement and drives traffic to your website, you’re not alone.

5 Innovative Startups Who Are Owning Their Social Space

One of the best ways to get better at something is to learn from those who are already doing it correctly. Of course, with social media there are few hard and fast rules about ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ but there are certain approaches that generally prove effective (and others less so).

Use the following examples to inspire your own social media plan for better business growth and engagement.

Click here to continue reading…

5 Steps to Create Quality Social Media Content

Post submitted by Aprel Downey.

Maintaining an active presence on social media is, in most cases, vital to the success of your business.

Proof?

People ages 35-49 (dubbed Generation X) spend almost 7 hours per week on social media.

Millennials, who come in second, spend just over 6 hours per week on social media.

Dig these stats? There’s plenty more where that came from.

5 Steps to Create Quality Social Media Content

The simple fact is your target customers have their attention placed squarely on social media and other online platforms for a large percentage of the time they’re awake.

They’re looking for opinions, guidance, and expert knowledge when seeking solutions to their problems.

Social media presents an opportunity for your business to be that guide and expert, openly and transparently.

As you share information with your audience on social media, they begin to trust you and, if you’re approaching the medium sensibly, you’ll build genuine relationships with past, present, and future customers.

That trust works its way into future sales down the road.

For these reasons, you have to do more than just show up on social media, post something, and walk away thinking you’re ahead of the game.

That’s a losing strategy.

What you post, how and when you post it, how personable your presence is, and how dedicated you are to having conversations with your customers all play an essential role in your social media game.

Below are five steps that will ensure you’re creating social media content that adds value, instead of turning people away.

Click here to continue reading…

26 Awesome Social Media Statistics to Back Up Your Strategy

Post submitted by Mandy Edwards.

“Social media is not just a spoke on the wheel of marketing. It’s becoming the way entire bicycles are built.” – Ryan Lilly

I came across the above quote and thought it to be a great illustration of how social media is becoming so deeply ingrained in marketing strategies across the board.

Of course, any effective social media strategy is founded in research, analytics, and statistics — consumer behaviors, interests, patterns, demographics, and so on.

26 Social Media Statistics to Back Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Being a fan of data and statistics, I love finding different bits of information among the common data we social media marketing professionals regularly use.

Some bits are eye-opening, some are really odd.

Some make you sit and really evaluate what your actual usage behavior is, while some just make you laugh.

Below are 26 social media marketing statistics I’ve found while doing client research and putting together my weekly Marketing Fact Friday series (you can follow on Instagram) that will help advise your social media strategy.

Click here to continue reading…

Why Connecting Your Brand With Influencers Is Imperative (and How This Applies to Digital Marketing)

As of 2006, Nike was spending $475 million annually on endorsement deals with athletes.

LeBron James made $33 million in 2013 from endorsement deals with companies like Samsung, Nike, and Coca-Cola (Sprite).

Why Connecting With Influencers Is Imperative

Why such huge spending on endorsements?

Based on a 2012 study by Anita Elberse and Jeroen Verleun in the Journal of Advertising Research:

signing top athletic endorsers corresponds with “around $10 million in additional sales annually and nearly a 0.25% increase in stock returns.” (1)

Why do endorsements have such a significant impact on consumer decisions?

And can we use the same rationale to explain why connecting with influencers in your industry or niche is a critical path to growing your brand?

Yep, and here’s how…

Click here to continue reading…

Why Abandoning Facebook Is A Horrible Idea for Your Business

Over the past year or two, there’s been no shortage of marketers and brands complaining about “the ineffectiveness of Facebook”.

  • We’ve read post after post by marketers and business owners expressing the trouble they’re having with updates receiving less exposure (reach).
 Why Abandoning Facebook Is A Horrible Idea

The frustrations are understandable, as Facebook is perceived to have shifted from a platform that gave almost limitless access to your audience for no charge to a platform that gives limited access to your audience unless you pay.

So, what gives?

  • Is Facebook really pulling the rug out from underneath businesses and marketers?
  • Are there legitimate reasons for abandoning Facebook?

Click here to continue reading…