How Marketers are Using LinkedIn to Get More Than Just a New Job!

Posted on by tena

 

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Photo by Nan Palermo

Other than just looking for a new job, for which it mainly gained its reputation within a wide audience, LinkedIn is a very useful tool to promote your business and build a brand identity. Marketers have found their way to increase engagement with their customers and clients via this professional social network which has a user count of more than 332 milion.

LinkedIn is largely focused on B-to-B connections, so its definitely a tool to seriously consider within your social media marketing strategy. However, like any other social network, it’s important to be aware of your audience and to know who they are and how actively they use this platform. Based on that information, a quality strategy can be designed.

Marketing Land explains that there is big value for marketers on this platform as it provides targeting options, including the ability to target by job title, employer, role, skills, and interests. Also, it provides up-to-date professional profiles, compared to what people list on their personal profiles on other social networks. Not only that, LinkedIn also provides valuable updates and stories.

According to a LinkedIn report from 2013, 43% of marketers have found a customer on LinkedIn and had a conversion rate of 2.74%, almost 3 times higher than both Twitter (.69%) and Facebook (.77%)

So, what exactly do marketers undertake on this social network to achieve those results?

For delivering ongoing results, marketers use features such as the company’s business page, company’s group and sponsored updates and LinkedIn ads. Social media Examiner explains that displaying compelling graphics, adding products and services and even including job opportunities are pieces of a compelling LinkedIn page.

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Groups are places where we can also share the content, build our network by sharing it within our employees and costumers and engage with our connections by asking questions which call for discussions. LinkedIn expert Viveka Von Rosen explained that for soft market research, groups are great as they are full of like-minded targeted audiences. She also suggests to ask questions and help out where possible.

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Similar to Facebook and Twitter which I mentioned in my last blog posts, LinkedIn’s very important aspect for digital marketers is Ads manager tool. For more information on LinkedIn Ads manager, take a look at this introduction video courtesy of the official LinkedIn page.

Another recommended feature are Showcase Pages which give fans the ability to pick and choose which sections of your business they’d like to receive updates for and also they give administrators the ability to share organic and sponsored updates.

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Since LinkedIn launched its new blogging option last February to the world, it has become an extremely important part of the social media and content strategies of marketers as well.

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Sponsored In-mail is another way of getting your message distributed to a wide audience.

Overall, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for marketers and companies alike to delve into a deeper conversion with potential customers, other businesses and their wider network.

Are you on LinkedIn? Let’s connect!

SVM Solutions Blog –  Article by Bob DeStefano which shows the first steps for using LinkedIn.

Marketing Land – Article by which explains steps to use LinkedIn promoted ads. It also explains reasons of why marketers should use LinkedIn as a marketing tool.

LinkedIn Marketing – Article on how marketers use LinkedIn company pages to grow their business.

Social Media Examiner – Article by on how to build a LinkedIn marketing plan that delivers ongoing results. It shows 5 marketing ideas every business can integrate into a comprehensive marketing program.

The Sophisticated Marketers Guide to LinkedIn – guide for marketers to successfully use LinkedIn as part of their integrated approach to marketing.

Sprout Social – Article by Kevin King which shows a guide to LinkedIn ads.

Vertical Response – Article by Lisa Furgison which explains the blogging aspect of LinkedIn.

 

Top 10 Tips for Using Twitter to Market your Irish SME

Posted on by tena

(Photo by Kevin Lim)

We all know the importance of social media marketing as a modern aspect of promoting your small business. In order to have a quality and effective strategy, it is important to understand the relationship between business and social media as well as to be familiar how each social network works.

Twitter can be a challenging tool for any small business. Trying to deliver original, helpful content, constantly gain followers, and keep up with current trends, is not an easy task for the person tasked with managing the Twitter page.

Here are some tips, which can help any Irish SME to gain more traffic via Twitter.

1. Always do the basics right.

There is nothing worse than coming to an incomplete or poorly edited profile description. Make your profile look professional and complete as this is how you present yourself and your business online. Name, logo, cover image, profile details, location are some of the basic things you should have collected before attempting to even publish the page.

2. Choose carefully who you follow.

Don’t just hit the follow button to any profile you come across, but try to build your list by searching for ones who suit your niche. Otherwise, you will end up with too much irrelevant content you don’t need.

3. Know your audience.

If you own an information website for parents you know who to target. Put yourself in their shoes, find out their behavior and try to apply the right strategy to the audience you have.

4. Retweet and favorite follower’s tweets if you like what they share.

That is a good way to get even more followers and to build stronger relationships with them. There is no harm in reaching out and being active.

5. Don’t just post your tweets at any time.

Be aware at what times your audience is awake and adjust to that. Usually the best times to tweet are between 1PM and 3PM. Also, if your Irish SME’ audience is on another continent, be aware of time zones.

6. Plan and schedule your tweets.

Make a weekly calendar on what you want to deliver in that specific period and adjust your content to it. There is very useful software for helping you scheduling posts such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck.

7. Ask questions.

That is a good way to get your page more active and again a very good way for connecting with your audience.

8. Use relevant hashtags #.

There are lots of hashtags out there that actively promote Irish business. Use them to build your network Some of them include #bizitalk #bizbritain #irishbizparty #CorkHour #FPSbs #tweeturbiz #sbs

9. Use Twitter Ads.

Twitter ads are a great way to get your content to a wider and targeted audience. But don’t forget to be aware of Twitter’s rules and regulations of advertising.

10. Be interesting…

…and consistent. Keep your content interesting and funny and post something you would like to see on your news feed!

#HappyTweeting everybody!

Are you on Twitter? Let’s connect!

Moz: Infographic which brings some facts and very useful tips on the usage of Twitter. It also brings study on people’ behavior on this platform.

Hubspot: Article by Corey Eridon which include infographic which explain the best and worst times to post on social media sites.

Entrepreneur: The article online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy offers Twitter tips that can help you figure out how you want the world to view your brand.

Zonua.ie: Article which brings some of the most effective hashtags used by Irish SME’s.

Web Summit 2014.

Posted on by tena

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This week I had a privilege to attend one of the biggest internet and technology events in the world, Web Summit. This massive Dublin’ event was visited by over 22,000 attendees, 300 start-up companies and exhibitors and 200 speakers. As a volunteer, I had incredible experience meeting some great people from all corners of the world. After hard working hours we had a chance to attend lectures by Drew Houston, (Dropbox), Bono (U2 frontman), Jay Bregman (Hailo), Adrian Grenier (SHFT.com), Dana Brunetti, Eric Wahlforss, David Carr, Bill McGlashan and many others. It was definitely a learning curve and can’t wait for next one, even bigger Web Summit.

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Facebook – Playing by Their Rules Matters

Posted on by tena

Facebook – Playing by Their Rules Matters

Photo by Wikimedia.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else. – Albert Einstein

Casting the mind back to January 2012 and this was the first time Facebook changed it’s Wall feature to what we all now know as the Timeline. People were shocked. They were threatening to leave in droves if it wasn’t reverted to its original look and feel. Pages named ‘I will leave Fecebook if wall doesn’t come back’  or ‘I want my wall back’ sprung up everywhere, followed by massive numbers of people. It was a real online moment of hysteria equal to street protestors fighting for their rights.

 

It was very similar when Facebook first time changed its privacy settings. That time, a private profile automatically opened to everybody and for it to change, a person had to manually change all privacy settings in order to protect his or her profile from the public eye. Most of the general Facebook audience didn’t even know that happened, but those who did their homework, were again very angry and disappointed at this social network as it was directly reaching into their privacy, far more than ever.

Some would say it is a privacy concern, others would say that is something to simply expect, since we all agreed with the company’s terms and conditions when registering on the site.

‘Small print’ matters

But what about those general terms and conditions which are written with ‘small print’ on hundreds of lines, when we first registered on this social network? What exactly happens to all the information we give and the content we share while using it only for fun?

The Telegraph did interesting research on it, accenting on photos and videos uploaded to the site. The article says Facebook has a license to use them in any way it sees fit ‘with a license that goes beyond merely covering the operation of the service in its current form.’ They also explain that Facebook can transfer or sub-license its rights over a user’s content to another company or organisation if needed. What one should be even more aware of is that ‘Facebook’s license does not end upon the deactivation or deletion of a user’s account, but once all other users that have interacted with the content have also broken their ties with it.‘

 

When it come specifically to the business side of this social network, which includes rules about pages, ads, post reach and other general terms of usage, costumers are forced to be part of the game as well. Nowadays, a lot of companies, which use the Facebook pages feature, complain about organic post reach on Facebook which has been drastically dropping for the last couple of months. Organic reach these days counts  barely 3% of complete page’s fan number. Vice President of Ads Product Marketing at Facebook, Brian Boland, explains the reason. More and more content is being created every day, therefore in order to create a better user experience there must be some kind of filtering taking place, which they appear to apply pretty dramatically. Brian Boland also stated the reason for this organic post reach decreasing is not helping Facebook making money. (If that is the case, why would he say it out loud?)

Pay as you go

So, if we as a business want to be relevant on Facebook, we simply have to follow its stream or in other words, for a post to be seen by more than an average 3% of the pages audience, we simply have to pay. Features such as boosting posts and other tools, are nowadays the only way to all fans news feeds. It is the same when it comes to changes in the pages appearance. Recent bigger changes in page design for both page visitors and admins, happened in back in March of this year when a few key tools on the screen moved to different locations of the interface. Admins weren’t particularly happy with it and not all of them decided to move to this new feature during the ‘trial’ period. Ultimately, everybody had to adopt to the new look, weather they liked it or not.

Facebook is not a tool which will be stagnating. Technical parts of it will be updated all the time and costumers just have to get used to that fact, as these are all part of its ever changing road-map as well as current trends. Privacy settings are becoming a regular part of the online modern day lexicon, big brother is watching you!

Are you on Facebook? Let’s connect!

The Telegraph: Article by Oliver Smith who explains Facebook rules and regulations.

Inside Facebook: Article by Justin Lafferty who explains Facebook decreased organic reach.

Facebook product news: Brian Boland explains reasons of Facebook organic reach decrease.

Mashable: Article by Kurt Wagner describing Facebook changes in design applied in March this year.

 

The Future of Social Media Marketing is Mobile

Posted on by tena

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(Photo by Roel Wijnants)

As the present now, Will later be past, The order is, Rapidly fadin’, And the first one now, Will later be last, For the times they are a-changin’, Bob Dylan, January 13, 1964

In the last decade or so, technology has drastically changed the way society communicates. When we look around ourselves, people’s cravings to be connected to the online world are very obvious. Free WiFi in public places is not a synonym to SciFi anymore. Seeing people with their heads angled downwards means nothing more than consuming not just news but all types of media on their tablets; scrolling around their smartphones searching for new Amazon purchases, tagging friends in photos on Facebook from last night adventures and checking in at their location to get a ride with Uber. That’s right, you do not need to communicate with anything other than your friend the mobile to book a ride home!

Digital natives as target audience

According to wearesocial.com, there are more than 3.6 billion unique active mobile users, 2.01 billion active social media accounts and 1.58 billion active mobile social accounts worldwide. It is pretty easy to visualise what the future is bringing us in terms of social media marketing. One word – mobile. That 3 year old next door neighbour who is already unlocking mum’s smartphone and playing Angry Birds will soon become the target audience of digital marketers, who are already planning and applying marketing strategies for mobile users on social media. A growing market for the future one might say, certainly.

Social media mobile usage growth

Some research shows that users are spending more time accessing social media from mobile devices than from desktop computers. Social Media Examiner brings an interesting fact that over 92% of Pinterest users, 86% of Twitter users and 68% of Facebook users are accessing those sites via mobile devices.

Discarding these statistics and not applying mobile social media strategies to your business would mean that you are willingly turning away potential customers, who are both ready to spend and inclined to purchase repeatedly from your business. These Internet customers will inevitably find an alternative and very quickly too from the palm of their hand.

What do we as consumers want?

It is not a secret advertisers are tracking us on our mobile phones and here is a great article by Mashable explaining the topic in detail. We are still all shocked when somebody brings up the idea of us being tracked, but at the same time, we all know that is the recent reality with regard to US Intelligence Agencies. On a slightly lighter note, anyone searching for a white dress? (I did this the other day!) No problem, once typed into Google, all kinds of white dresses will follow you around your social media journey until you actually purchase it. My experience of this is pretty easy to see…

My very own Facebook wall, suggested posts!(Photo by Tena Glaser)

Let’s admit it – we like the idea our smart phone is our daily companion who is helping us to choose our Saturday night outfits. It knows what we want and it is going to be even more accurate (and scary) with time.

Wearesocial.com : Article by Simon Kemp showing Social, Digital and Mobile reports, which contains individual data points for more than 100 countries around the world. It contains a slideshare presentation of global digital statistic showing figures from October 2014.

Social Media Examiner : Article by Debbie Hemley which explains how to use social media to appeal to mobile users. Author used suggestions such as making Facebook tabs accessible, engaging with near by customers and designing a mobile friendly blog.

Mashable : Article by Tod Wasserman which explains how advertisers track customers through their mobile phones. Key mobile tools for tracking user behavior are highlighted in the article.

Irish Times : Article by Ruadhan Mac Cormaic reporting on a case taken by an Austrian privacy activist over the alleged mass transfer of personal data to US intelligence services. It outlines the Data Protection Commissioners very real role in privacy in this changing world of the Internet.