1.     Visually Post on Behalf of the Face of Your Brand

Think about Apple’s apple, Geico’s gecko and Spotlight’s Roxie. Does your company or blog have an identity or mascot who is the face of your brand? If not, now may be the time to create one.  Try to come up with an image that corresponds to your brand’s identity, whether it is funny, quirky or 4-legged (like ours). Get started by adding the image to the top of every post you make, effectively branding your company across the board and giving a virtual face to your next post.

 2.     Show and Tell it!

Did you know that 44% of respondents are more likely to engage with brands if they post pictures than any other media? So, whenever possible, use visuals to share your message.  If you want to get additional mileage out of the photos you share on your social sites then try adding text to your images. Use captions and descriptions, keywords and #hashtags, or your website URL, so users have a place to go to find additional information.

Before

After

3.     Turn Ho-hum Numbers and Statistics into Beautiful Graphs and Infographics

To the average person, reading number after number can be daunting. One simple way to protect against number overload is to create a visual graph, and a great source for creating these visual graphs is the site Infogr.am. The site offers a bevvy of different chart styles and colors to choose from, and with the new Pro version you can download your finished chart as a PNG. Another great way to bring life to factual information is via infographics. Check out Piktochart for hundreds of downloadable templates.

Source: Visual.ly

Source: Piktochart

4.     Short on Time? Make a Vine Video in 6 Seconds or Less

Heard of Vine? The Vine app is a tool that can be used to create a 6-second video that you can share with your audience using Twitter, Facebook, and via your website or blog. Our attention spans online are incredibly short, and they’re only getting shorter, so six seconds works perfectly for Vine fans.  Keep in mind that with vine, companies have the ability to capture and share life in motion. If used correctly, this 6-second video app can be highly effective for promoting and enhancing your company’s social media presence.

5.     Try SlideShare, It’s Like YouTube for Slides

SlideShare is just like YouTube, but for your slides! You can use it to upload files as PowerPoint’s, PDF’s, Keynotes or Open Office presentations. Slide decks can then be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or embedded on other sites. Use SlideShare to demonstrate your expertise through visual presentations, encourage people to register to view your upcoming presentations, increase your SEO, and for lead generation.

What visuals do you add to your social posts? Let us know in the comments below. 

The difference is often in the social media and marketing efforts used to promote content.

A decade ago, simply blogging well and often was all it took for word to spread. Now, a content creator’s biggest challenge is gaining the attention necessary to get more subscribers.

Based on the experience of some of the world’s sharpest blog marketers, we’ve curated some brilliant advice to help you triple your subscriber count:

1. Blog More.

-Pamela Vaughan, @Pamelump

Your readers and Google love fresh content, and it’s much easier to build authority if you’re posting on a regular basis. As Vaughan points out, “truthfully, the most successful blogs publish content daily – or multiple times a week.” You should never let your commitment to quality slip in order to take a more aggressive approach to your content calendar. However, if you’re only publishing occasionally or erratically, being more consistent could help you get more subscribers.

2. It’s Not a Numbers Game

- Jeff Goins, @JeffGoins

While blogging frequently is certainly a step in the right direction, remember, no one has time to read your content if it isn’t outstanding. Goins writes that consumers “are no longer hungry for content.” No one needs to read something that’s less than fresh. If you’re not investing in quality blog articles, adjust your quality standards to get more subscribers.

3. Don’t Make Anyone Search Too Hard

-Brett Kaepernick @Kapp06

No one should ever spend time reading your content, share with their friends, and then leave your website because they couldn’t figure out how to become a subscriber. Include a clear option to subscribe by email above the fold, which means website visitors don’t need to scroll to find the option.

4. Offer Value

-Shari Stauch, @ShariJStauch

Who wouldn’t act for free stuff? Exclusive, list member-only promotions can be an effective way to get more subscribers. Stauch suggests considering an eBook or resource list as a way to help your email list skyrocket.

5. Bring Something New to the Table

-Derek Halpern, @DerekHalpern

Consumers have enough information in their world. Your blog needs to add value, and Halpern defines that concept perfectly: “you don’t need unique ingredients. You need a unique recipe.” You might be one of 30, or 30,000 blogs in your industry covering the same topics, but you need to be covering them differently. Add your own perspective and branding to get more subscribers by offering a unique value proposition.

6. Narrow Your Approach

-Jay Baer, @JayBaer

If your blog focuses on a dozen different topics in a single week, you’re probably maximizing your traffic, but doing nothing to get more subscribers. Blogging expert Baer has found “the narrower your content focus, the more likely you are to drive sharing and subscription behaviors.” You may have to sacrifice variety to dive deeper into your subject, but it will likely pay dividends in authority, SEO, and subscribers.

7. Be Nice

-Brian Clark, @copyblogger

Other people’s audiences are your best tool for expanding your own exposure, but many tactics for winning attention are less effective than they used to be. Google is probably on to your reciprocal link exchanges or other antiquated SEO techniques, which is why you should focus your efforts on old-fashioned networking. Clark writes “there are real people behind these blogs, and they respond to good will.”

8. Guest Post

-Neil Patel, @NeilPatel

Capturing the attention of a digital influencer’s engaged audience can send your traffic and subscribers skyrocketing. However, it’s no longer as easy as leaving a few blog comments, or Tweeting a big-name writer’s work. Patel recommends going straight to the source with a brief, to-the-point, and thoughtful offer to write a guest post. The worst a digital influencer can say is “no thanks.”

9. Continually Promote Winners

-James Penn, @JamesPenn

Every blog has a few hero posts, who outperform other articles by leaps and bounds. Use your most-viewed and shared articles as a tool for continually acquiring new subscribers, by giving them some extra sharing love on your social channels. Penn advises bloggers to “capture as much [attention] as possible, and turn those visitors into subscribers.”

10. Consider Using a Pop-Up

-Shane Atkins, @BlogShane

While pop-up windows can be obtrusive or obnoxious, they can also be a powerful tool to get more subscribers. Ensure it’s easy to close the pop-up to avoid irritating any website visitors. Atkins reports that 65% of his blog subscribers come through his site’s pop-up.

11. Reach Out to Low-Hanging Fruit

-Amanda Maksymiw, @AmandaMaks

Your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, and email list already like your brand, and trust what you have to say. Have you asked them to become subscribers? Maksymiw recommends targeting your lowest-hanging fruit first, and reports that contacting in-house lists about becoming a blog subscriber can yield 20-30% conversion rates.

Your business blog can’t thrive without regular readers, and increasing your subscriber count is a key step towards building an engaged audience. While this list is by no means comprehensive, applying these tactics will certainly assist in your goal to get more subscribers.

We’re curious – what tricks have you successfully used to get more subscribers?

Top Image Courtesy of feelart/freedigitalphotos.net; Bottom Image Courtesy of Tormentadigital.com.

Another big aspect of my role is keeping a close eye on the social media world as a whole. This isn’t so much a part of my job role, rather something that I enjoy doing; something which our MD is incredibly keen to promote and indeed practice. I often find myself having fairly casual chats with clients about the latest social developments and they’re always keen to get my opinion on certain platforms or updates.

Rarely does a client want to fully embrace a new platform, which is understandable. It’s my job to track the growth of a new channel and communicate this back. We’d then make a calculated decision as to whether or not we would be embracing these emerging platforms.

Yesterday’s meeting

Yesterday afternoon I had a great meeting with one of my clients. The sort of meeting that makes you appreciate the company you work for, and the talent embedded within. This is a multiple service client with SEO, PPC and social media included in their campaign. All three campaign delivery managers updated the client on progress, achievements and plans; each of which complemented the last. The full package!

“Let me tell you about Vine”

I spoke to this client about Vine. Vine is by no means a ‘new’ platform, having been released at the beginning of 2013, but it is, in my opinion, under-utilised.

It starts with a simple question to the client:

“Have you heard of Vine?”

“No”.

My favourite response.

Time to get excited

It’s then my job to convey my excitement for such a platform; giving them relevant examples of how their company can use Vine. This is the key: excitement and relevancy. The moment the client realises that I’m passionate about something, that feeling is shared. The same rule applies in a restaurant for example: a waitress last weekend was telling me about a new desert their chef had just made: ‘Banoffee Cheesecake’. She talked with such passion and enthusiasm, I had to order it. I don’t even like Bananas!

I’ll admit it: my own research into Vine produced little ‘excitement’ per se. However, I listened to Tony Wang (GM – Twitter UK) talk about Vine at an event last month. He talked with such desire and delight about it that I felt compelled to go and investigate further. This wasn’t a sales tool. It’s genuine emotion.

So, last night I began drawing up some solid ideas for using Vine for this particular client. If I’d sat in yesterday’s meeting just explaining the very basics of Vine, showing some irrelevant examples, no one round that table would have been convinced, least of all the client.

There’s a simple lesson here

Get excited by what you do. No one will ever listen to you or trust someone that talks so unconvincingly about their supposed area of expertise. I’ll keep you updated on the Vine strategy for this client; it’s a good’un.

Why couldn’t Tumblr get rich on Native?

1. They were selling a product that was not well understood
2. Brands did not have assets ready-created to run in these new ‘product’ areas
3. Few agencies had a firm grasp on the Tumblr platform as a communications medium

The principle reason is that Tumblr was ahead of its time.

Yes the idea is gaining ground, yes there are leading brands with content marketing strategies playing out who can adapt their content to the needs of the Tumblr native advertising asset.

But No, there are not a heap of advertising agencies recommending this route to their client brands, no there are not a heap of brands doing content marketing and the nail-in-the-coffin NO is that few people use and understand the Tumblr blogging platform.

I have been doing social since 2006 and I don’t know a single person who uses Tumblr. Who will sell something they don’t understand? Only a fool.

Native is gaining acceptance

The Atlantic newspaper group recently announced that 50% of its revenues come from native advertising.

“Why not have our marketing team be as well trained in creating content as our journalists are.” For a news organization established in 1857, that is an incredible revelation, something that would shock many old school news veterans. For The Atlantic, the strategy is working. In the company’s much heralded digital resurgence, branded content now accounts for 50% of their ad revenue and, according to the panelists, is expected to grow. Newspaper executives recently told Pew that a culture war between old and new school elements of their companies was the number one factor holding them back from realizing a greater gains in digital revenue. The Atlantic’s story shows how important it is for the new school to win that war.

And Today I saw the Guardian use this strap line in the footer of a seriously interesting article about an up-coming football team manager [sidenote, I don't know much about the sport but I was really interested in the solid team he'd developed and the management techniques he used - I only found it was native advertising at the end of a really engaging read.] Did I mind? Not at all – the content was engaging and I’m happy to know about Puma.

Puma native advertising article credit.

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that instaporn runs rampant on the photo sharing network. Articles published last August from Huffington Post and Daily Mail, among others, have already exposed the sexier side of Instagram. I’m not here to discuss whether or not this is wrong.

Fact of the matter is we live in a sexually driven society and if a 14yr old boy wants to see some T&A, he’ll find it somewhere else, like tumblr, where x-rated material is commonplace and allowed, if it’s not available on Instagram.

Innocent Victim

So where’s the beef? My contention comes from the manner in which Instagram chooses to play their “terms and condition” card. You see, I have a friend who recognized an opportunity to help attractive girls get Instagram famous.

I’ll refer to him as Kevin because he wishes to remain anonymous for fear that IG will disable(delete) his personal account, too, if he speaks out. But I’m not scurred, I’m gonna stand up and fight for equal rights anytime.

Here’s the long and the short of Kevin’s operation. He would give shoutouts to girls wearing skimpy outfits such as bikinis and lingerie. A shoutout is when you mention/recommend to follow another Instagrammer. Here are a few examples of what was posted on Kevin’s page (faces blurred since posts are no longer on Instagram and not considered public anymore)

I don’t see any nudity here, or partial nudity, for that matter. Are these pictures provocative and/or maybe suggestive? Sure. Is it anything you couldn’t see in a Maxim Magazine or Victoria’s Secret catalog? No. But, the funny thing is, Kevin has had 2 instagram pages shutdown for violation of terms since Mid-March.

I know firsthand how much time and energy he put in while building each account to 19,000+ and 28,000+ followers, respectively. For instagram to disable these pages without any sort of explanation or response is preposterous, if not insulting. Though, not responding to concerned users seems to be the norm with Instagram… unless you’re a major website or magazine, of course.

Preferential Treatment

With me being that instafamous guy and all, I offered my assistance to see if I could garner a response from their support team. Over the last month, a combined 40+ emails went unresponded to. Now, after investing all this time and experiencing such frustration, it’s personal. Especially after seeing “about us” entries such as this

SO THEY REALLY DO RESPOND!?! It would be one thing if Instagram was REALLY putting forth an initiative to rid its network of mature content. However, it’s a completely different animal when a network is obviously choosing who gets immunity to post what they want and who goes to instajail.

This is all the proof needed to show that Instagram is giving the green light to post racy pictures. Before I go on with the additional evidence, allow me to say I love The Chive website. I also admire and appreciate the women who are in Suicide Girls or published in Playboy. I think they should be allowed to have Instagram Accounts, BUT ONLY IF PEOPLE LIKE KEVIN CAN DO THE SAME THING!

A network as large as Instagram should know better than to allow certain brands/publications to post content which is even more revealing than what they shut down other pages for. Call me crazy, but these pics look a lot more nude and suggestive than what Kevin was running!

Granted the kibbles and bits aren’t showing, but they all have seem to be missing something… CLOTHES! So much for not allowing nudity, right?

Instagram does offer a feature to report/flag content that you find inappropriate. To further my point, I went ahead and flagged each of these posts on multiple occasions last week since they’re clearly in violation of IG’s mythical terms. Not surprisingly, all three of these accounts are still active and none of the posts were removed. If these three entities are allowed to post beautiful women, why can’t Kevin?

Stop the Charade

I’ll be the first to agree that there is no place for underage nudity or sexually explicit content, but I can still find both on Instagram. Worry about that getting rid of that stuff so I don’t have to see a dude’s junk when I’m searching tagged posts. Worry about the spam-bots and fake profiles that have overrun your network. Stop acting like a playground bully and let everyone play in your sandbox instead of kicking the small guys out.

Really, there are two choices for Instagram and their Big Brother, Facebook. Either manage/limit ONLY the smuttiest (underage/explicit) OR eliminate the showing of skin altogether FOR EVERYBODY… none of this half-assed “We restricted a few tags and are removing a few pages” strategy.

So the ball is in your court Instagram Team… what’s it gonna be? Either shutdown these popular pages which are in violation of your terms or reinstate my friend’s @fantassticgirls account since you knowingly allow these pages to post content more mature than what he was posting.

I want to hear from you…what do you all think about this? Am I overreacting or do you agree are clearly two sets of standards here? What other examples of preferential treatment on social networks have you seen?

Image from Robert Scoble on Flickr

It lost users.

While the network did pass the 1 billion monthly active user threshold globally in 2012, Facebook also lost 1.4 million U.S. monthly active users late last year, a small but symbolic decline. Nor was it the only network experiencing a slowdown.

After years of double-digit expansion, social media use in the U.S. leveled off markedly last year. American social media users grew an estimated 6.8% in 2012, a far cry from 30 percent growth rates just a few years ago. With so many of the country’s 221 million netizens already logging into social networks, growth is forecast to slow to a trickle in the years ahead.

Overseas, however, the social media landscape is entirely different.

In India, social media users grew by an estimated 51.7% in 2012, no small change in a country of 1.25 billion people. Indonesia followed closely behind with a 51.6% growth rate. China’s social media user base expanded 19.9%. Latin America grew at a 16.3% clip, while Russia grew by 11.1%.

To be sure, an ever-growing number of these international users are turning to Facebook. In fact, Facebook is now estimated to be the most popular social network in all but 10 countries.

But there are numerous and notable holdouts. Around the world, localized, country-specific social networks are expanding, commanding the attention of billions of users in some of the planet’s fastest-growing economies. For global companies willing to dive in, the rewards are sizeable. But so are the risks.

International Social Media Giants

Perhaps nowhere are stakes higher than in China, where the blocking of Facebook and Twitter has given rise to wildly popular homegrown alternatives. By some estimates, nearly half of the country’s population of 1.3 billion is online and active socially.

The Chinese social media landscape, however, is far from settled. The most popular networks are complex hybrids, combining the functionality of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and instant messaging in one platform. Dozens of sites vie for supremacy, and millions of “zombie accounts” make it difficult to pinpoint where users are most active.

The aging Goliath of Chinese social media is QQ, an instant messaging platform started in 1999 that claims some 800 million monthly active users. Nowadays, users treat QQ as a jumping off point to access a range of popular networking sites controlled by its parent company, Tencent Holdings.

Arguably the most important of these is WeChat, a mobile platform similar to WhatsApp that mashes up instant messaging and video calls with photo sharing and status updates. Launched in January 2011, WeChat (known as Weixin in China) already counts 190 million monthly active users (nearly as many as Twitter) and is growing at an astounding clip of 25 million users per month. Brands like Starbucks, Nike, and Durex are just beginning to test the waters.

Chinese social network QQ

Another Tencent offering is microblogging platform Tencent Weibo. A fusion of Twitter and Facebook, it counts 277 million monthly active users, with a strong base in smaller cities and less economically developed areas.

As on Twitter, messages on the network and other weibos like are limited to 140 characters. But, since each Chinese character represents an entire word or phrase, users have significantly more room for expression than afforded by a standard Tweet.

Outside of the Tencent universe, the key fixture on the Chinese social media landscape is Sina Weibo, a similar microblogging service with 287 million monthly active users.

Popular in larger cities and among educated users, Sina Weibo has drawn significant attention from international businesses, with 25% of Fortune 500 companies already onboard. It’s China’s original weibo and remains perhaps the country’s most important social network overall.

The presence of so many competing networks, not to mention regulatory and censorship hurdles, poses distinct challenges for global companies wading into Chinese social waters. But rewards are just as great. Chinese netizens made a staggering $160 billion worth of online transactions last year, closing in on the estimated $226 billion spent in the U.S. Half of this sum was spent by just 17% of buyers, a coveted demographic known collectively as the “golden shoppers.”

VK.com is getting big

Russia offers another case of social exceptionalism. With a reported 100 million monthly active users, VKontakte, popularly known as VK, is the country’s most popular social media network.

VK’s functionality is reminiscent of Facebook, with the familiar news feed and Like button, as well as Public Pages specifically for businesses. But VK also has hashtags like Twitter and photo filters like Instagram, and it’s used for music and video storage and content sharing.

Demographically, VK users have traditionally been on the younger side, with professionals increasingly migrating to Facebook. In fact, VK is often looked at as the network of the people, useful for generating buzz but not necessarily for pitching high-end products. However, it is a paradise for millions of small businesses and serves an important niche reselling goods from Chinese online giant TaoBao. Not to mention that international brands including the BBC, National Geographic, Victoria Beckham and Tom Cruise have all plunged into VK with active ad campaigns.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev seems interested in this laptop.

Slightly less popular is a site called Odnoklassniki, Russian for “classmates.” (While monthly active users aren’t disclosed, the network claims 148 million total registered users.) Positioned as a network for finding relatives and schoolmates, Odnoklassniki skews toward an older crowd and is particularly popular in less economically developed regions.

In appearance, it resembles Facebook. However, a popular paid feature also enables users to assume “invisible status” and visit other users’ pages without being noticed. While officially Russia’s “second network,” Odnoklassniki enjoys widespread cultural cachet, as evident in this popular music video, showing a schoolgirl singing about the network and the joys of “online communicating.”

Cultural Challenges

While global companies willing to look beyond Facebook and Twitter have a chance to reach billions of social media users, gaining a foothold isn’t necessarily easy.

English may be the international language of business, but it’s hardly the language of choice for online commerce and socializing. A recent European Union study showed only 18% of web surfers would make purchases from sites not in their native language. For social networking, users are even more inclined to communicate in their native tongue. Tapping country-specific networks, therefore, starts with effective translation.

Social media etiquette and expectations also vary from country to country. International marketing giants Lewis PR recently ventured a few ground rules. The Dutch are notoriously averse to self-promotion, while in Russia puffery is par for the course. The Brits admire cheekiness done right, while Singaporeans are straight-laced. Privacy is paramount in Germany, while anonymity is often key in China. While these social types are obviously generalized, they do reveal that social media mores are far from universal.

Social media users’ need for speed presents other challenges. If a company plunges into social networks halfway around the world, will representatives be able to respond in real time? What happens if a customer in Beijing complains and staff in New York are already fast asleep? A minor issue left unattended overnight can can grow into a viral nightmare by the morning.

The right technology is also critical. Social media management systems – software for monitoring multiple social networks at once from one page – can help. Some systems are already incorporating country-specific sites into their lineups. At HootSuite, for example, we allow users to move between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and local networks in China and Russia, not to mention Latin America and Western Europe, from a single dashboard. The means less time spent navigating exotic interfaces and more time spent communicating directly with users.

Kenneth Cole’s infamous Twitter fail.

Ultimately, however, global success on social networks – whether localized platforms or transnational giants like Twitter and Facebook – comes down not to equipment but to local knowledge and sensitivity, plus a little common sense.

Just ask Kenneth Cole.

During Egypt’s revolution in 2011, the clothing designer reached out to his tens of thousands of followers around the world with this message of inspiration. ”Millions are in uproar in #Cairo . Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online …”

Here’s guessing sales in Egypt haven’t exactly been brisk since.

Let this be your warning: by ignoring Facebook, you’re turning your back on the opportunity to interact with more than 1 billion users. It almost sounds silly when you look at it like that, right? You may argue that your intended audience isn’t on Facebook, but that simply isn’t the case.

Of course your audience is on Facebook. They may not view Facebook as a medium for business, but they certainly have a presence, and you should too.

Here’s how you can use Facebook effectively:

1. Integrate it with the Rest

The first key to properly using Facebook is to integrate it with the rest of your marketing campaign instead of treating it as a standalone strategy. This will enable you to reach broader business goals as it will supplement the campaigns you are already running.

Post SlideShare presentations or event links to Facebook. Share your email marketing campaigns and other helpful material.

2. Don’t Talk Like a Business

The second key is ensuring you use Facebook the right way by humanizing your company. Remember, people use Facebook to connect with family and friends, and to find entertainment. They’re not usually there looking for business. You need to craft messages that align with those habits. According to Jason Miller, Marketo’s social media strategist, “humor is vital” to making Facebook work.

B2B companies that can make a prospect laugh are using Facebook exactly right. It’s about showing a lighter side and maintaining contact with your key audience.

The Personality Effect

When you boil it down, Facebook is an opportunity for B2B companies to show their personality. Because of Facebook’s casual, visual environment, it can’t be treated like other channels where the goal is closing a deal. It’s important to use humor and a relaxed tone instead of driving home the hard sell. By keeping in touch with prospects on Facebook in an informal and fun manner, you are ensuring your company is top-of-mind when it comes time for business decisions.

March Communications is a tech PR firm located in Boston. Be sure to check out our blog, PR Nonsense, for more stories like this.

A capacity 90,000 crowd will watch the first ever all-German Champions League final on Saturday between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund. It really is an all-German affair – the clubs boast a combined 36 German players in their squads and both have German managers at the top of their games.

Both teams are in great form, having swept aside Spanish giants in the semis. While Bayern’s 7-0 thumping over Barcelona was their biggest aggregate win in history and shocked punters, Dortmund ousted the most successful European Cup side ever, Real Madrid, 4-3 to reach Wembley.

For Bayern, this is a chance to redeem their final defeat against Chelsea last season and Juup Heynckes’ side are preparing for their third final in four years. They’ve lost the previous two but do have European Cup success from previous generations, having won the tournament four times. Dortmund, on the other hand, reached their maiden final in 1997 and went on to win it.

Saturday’s clash is going to be close, with many betting fans on Titanbet expecting the flair players to dominate. Robert Lewandowski is Dortmund’s main threat after scoring four against Real Madrid in the semis and the Pole has contributed 10 of Dortmund’s 23 goals in Europe this term.

He will get service from attacking midfielder Marco Reus, whose quick brain and feet so often carve defences open, while Mats Hummels is the defensive rock Dortmund need to keep out a persistent Bayern attack who have netted 31 already in Europe.

Hummels will have his work cut out against the lighting-fast Arjen Robben and David Alaba – who will dominate the wings – plus Bayern’s midfield engine Bastian Schweinsteiger. This trio often surpass the forward line and take the initiative and, with Tomas Muller also on hand with eight goals this tournament, Bayern are sure to score on Saturday.

Infographic source: Titan Bet

Small and large businesses around the world need to adapt to a world by a business landscape that has been changed completely by the rise of reliable Internet search and smartphones. The future will be dominated by mobiles. Many businesses already have a robust mobile strategy in place – they are the beneficiaries of the mobile revolution. But the majority of companies around the world is clueless about that changes, or are not able to formulate a response to the changing needs of their consumers.

Whether you are businessman, business manager, or independent mobile app developers, facts regarding the mobile marketplace will help you to profit from the changing world. Let’s take a look at the infographic designed by PLAVEB, that explains an array of mobile statistics from some of the largest and fastest growing mobile markets and figure out what it all means.

1. Use a few hashtags

Using hashtags can be a very effective way of building traffic and getting new followers. Including such tags in your tweets is also a great way of building credibility in your niche. For instance, if your site is about web design and web hosting, you could use hashtags such as #webhosting and #webdesign in your tweets once in a while.

2. Respond to direct messages and mentions

The best way of getting more shares, followers and traffic is by engaging the people who tweet you, as well as your followers. Therefore, before doing anything else, you need to take time to check and respond to all your direct messages and mentions. People always appreciate it when they some feedback on their messages and tweets. However, if you ignore them, they will lose interest and might simply unfollow you.

3. Share other people’s content

Most people appreciate having their content shared. Therefore, sharing other people’s content on Twitter can be a great way of getting their attention and initiating conversation. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by sharing a link to someone else’s blog post, and then notifying them using a tag. Alternatively, you could simply retweet other people’s tweets.

Sharing other people’s content also ensures that your followers always have something to read or look at. If your twitter stream is often empty, your followers will get bored and might decide to unfollow you. Take time to look for relevant and useful content which your followers would find interesting. This will give them a reason to keep returning. There are several free apps which you can use to schedule tweets to get posted automatically, even if you are not online.

4. Share your own content

As you share other people’s content, don’t forget to promote your own content. However, don’t make the mistake of always tweeting about your products or services. This might only end up overwhelming your followers. Out of 10 tweets, not more than 3 should have a direct sales message. When sharing outrightly promotional messages, it would be advisable to use hashtags. This will make it easier for you to get the message to new people.

5. Unfollow inactive users

If you have been following an individual who hardly ever tweets or shares anything with others, it would be advisable to unfollow. Such people are simply not adding any value to your Twitter marketing plan. Commun.it is a great tool which can help you find out who is active and who isn’t.

6. Follow active and relevant users

To be effective in your Twitter marketing strategy, you need to follow people who are relevant and active. Tools such as commun.it can be very useful for finding such people. Alternatively, you could look for popular tweeters and find out who is following them. Have a weekly goal of following several new interesting people. Connecting with a few new people regularly can have a positive impact on your Twitter marketing plan. For instance, if you follow only 20 new people per week, it means you will have at least 80 new connections per month. This can make a major impact on your business and site.

Ever since Google launched its Panda update, the search engine has been cracking down on spammy content. This has a lot of people (rightfully) afraid of abusing keywords. Google frowns upon keyword ‘stuffing’ because it’s unnatural and difficult to read. But one place where you should still use keywords is your article’s headline. What Google cares about more than anything is helping people find information as efficiently as possible – using keywords in your headlines furthers that cause. Straightforward, keyword-rich headlines are essential because they appeal to both readers and search engines.

Keywords help your headline appeal to readers by declaring unambiguously the topic of your article and speaking the same language in which they are searching. Keywords also appeal to search engine bots. From an SEO perspective, the most important part of your article are the html tags at the top of the page, especially the title tag (<title></title>). Putting keywords in your headline will do more than anything to help your article rank well for the terms people are searching for. It may sound cynical, but without keywords in your headline, there’s a strong possibility people will never even see your content. These days great content doesn’t do any good if it doesn’t rank well in the search engines.

Offer a Benefit to the Reader

Including relevant keywords in the title will help search engines know what your article is about and (hopefully) get it plenty of impressions. But how do you get readers to click on your page instead of the competition? Let them know what benefit they’ll derive from reading your article. That benefit could be information, instruction in a certain skill, a quick summary of industry news, the answer to a specific question, or just pure entertainment. Whatever it is, you need to incorporate it into your headline so searchers have a reason to click on it.

For example, “how to” headlines are popular because they clearly promise the reader a new or enhanced skill if they invest the time in reading it. Likewise list posts such as “Seven Tips for…” or “Twenty Reasons to…” promise information in an easily digestible format. Question headlines implicitly promise to answer the question stated in the headline.

Whatever you do, you need to provide readers a reason to select your article beyond mere relevance. Leave entertainment and attention-grabbing as the icing on the cake. Many people believe a headline’s number one job is to grab attention. Look no further than the latest Cosmo for an example of headlines that titillate, rendering irresistible the content between the covers – at least in theory. Other publications take a similar, albeit less tawdry, tack. The New Yorker, for example, often goes for wit and the New York Post is the master of the pun.  You do want to grab people’s attention, but clever headlines don’t necessarily serve your site best – especially if you’re hoping to attract organic traffic to a business website. In fact, you’ll be lucky if it gets picked up by the search engines at all. These sorts of headlines are only effective if you have a loyal base of readers who will come to your site no matter what.

It’s okay to throw in an exciting adjective or grab people’s attention with an interesting angle, just make sure it doesn’t compromise the essential foundations of a great internet headline: relevant keywords and a promise to the reader. Focusing on these two elements will drive more relevant visitors to your site and ultimately drive increased sales.

The difference between paid, earned and owned media stumped me for the longest time, so I thought I would lay out a a simple explaination:

Paid Media: Positive publicity gained through paid advertising

Earned Media: Positive publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising.

Owned Media: Promotion channels that you control, such as your website, Facebook Page and Twitter account.

Below is a great infographic from the view from here that gives examples that makes it easy to understand the difference between paid, earned and owned media:

Let’s say you have made up your mind to get rid of your debt for good, but it’s gotten to a point that you don’t even know where to start. If that’s the case, the first step you need to take is entering a Debt Management Plan. From then on, your creditors will be presented with a payment arrangement that will allow you to make monthly deposits that a credit counselor will administer to pay down your debt, until you’re home free in as soon as 5 years. If that sounds like a long time, simply consider that if you tackled debt on your own, you could end up worse off than you are right now.

Specialist, thought leader and even guru are some of the glib terms used. Maybe we should be using words that are a bit more fun.

Like…savvy, adept, adroit or even crackerjack.

Just imagine being at a dinner party and someone asks you what you do. You respond with.

“I am a Crackerjack Savvy Social Media Marketing Specialist“.

Bit more fun really.

The “Guru” term is the one phrase that makes me cringe the most. To me it is someone who has disappeared into the Tibetan mountains, had a vision, hummed a lot and and has come back with insight and enlightenment that is god like and transcends being human. They are wearing sandals, donned a magical cloak and the halo is shimmering.

Sorry…haven’t met one of those yet.. but looking forward to it.

The path to professional

Becoming well known and a professional in your industry is often a journey that starts with a burning passion. This is maybe the most important quality because you need that fuel to maintain the dedication and discipline required to be at the top of your game.

In social media marketing the two most common formal paths that converge in a social media expert and specialist are from public relations and marketing. With the rise in the importance of content marketing, multi media and technology the skills required can even extend into creative, technical and writing.

Also thrown into the mix is an understanding of data that keeps us on track in our quest for determining what does and doesn’t work.

Creative Ninja Geek

One term we should maybe kick around is “Creative Ninja Geek“. This conjures up a picture of someone that understands tech but hasn’t forgotten to be human and social. They have cloaked their nerdness with a creative streak and a large dash of humanity.

They are the sort of people I often enjoy hanging out with.

Ever been to a software or technology conference? Men in suits are often in abundance.

Attended a social media marketing conference? The women show up and there are a lot more hugs to be had. A bit Californian really.

That is why I like social.

How do you become a social media marketing expert?

Here is an infographic that provides some hints, colleges and education ideas that you may find useful on your path to becoming that social media expert.

Infographic source: Schools.com

What about you?

What was your path to being an expert in your area. Are you self taught or is it a combination of formal education, experience and learning on the job?

Are you passionate about social media marketing?

Look forward to hearing your stories in the comments below.

Image by Shutterstock

We recently caught up with Paula to ask her about her current art projects and how Pinterest has played a pivotal role in her creative inspiration.

When did you start using Pinterest and what about it caught your interest?

My friend introduced me to Pinterest about two years ago while I was on maternity leave with my third child. I was desperate to reconnect with my creative side and was having trouble finding a balance with three young kids in the house. Pinterest came along at just the right time and I connected with it instantly. The Pinterest community shares such fantastic visuals that it kept the creative wheels in my head turning in a way that I needed and appreciated.

Were you on any other social media platforms before Pinterest?

I was only on Facebook before, and Pinterest has definitely opened my eyes to a variety of different social sites like Tumblr, which is great because I share a lot of images pinned from Tumblr. I also created a Tumblr page for bearabbit, my current art project, because it’s a nice visual platform as well.

Speaking of bearabbit, could you tell us more about this project that you and your friend are collaborating on? Are you working on any other art projects?

My friend Anne and I have known each other since undergrad, so it’s been almost 13 years now! Both of us traveled abroad after we finished undergrad, and reconnected back here in Toronto. We started having coffee meetings once or twice a week and talked about how we wanted to keep our creative ideas going with my background in printmaking and hers in installation work. It took us two years to get off the ground and bearabbit finally came together back in January.

Bearabbit began as a creative collaboration for us to explore design together. Our focus at the moment is terrariums that combine the lush world of succulents and moss with tiny miniatures that are created in such a way to reveal an intimate moment on a very small scale. We are also currently in the midst of designing our own textiles suitable for young children – focusing particularly on boys.

Where do you look for creative inspiration?

Pinterest has played a pivotal role in helping us get bearabbit off the ground in terms of ideas, design possibilities and what’s trending — details that I’ve always been fascinated by. I love being involved with things are evolving in interesting new ways, like The Great Gatsby movie and the resurgence of art deco, which I’ve always adored. As an artist, Pinterest has been a great resource.

When did you notice your following go up and why?

Pinterest is a great way to test what people like. I remember thinking it would be great if I could get up to 1,000 followers to see what people think of the content I was pinning. At a certain point, my following started to grow exponentially. In a week, I noticed my follower count went from 300 to 10,000 followers! I did a lot with food at that point and I was very diligent about being on Pinterest regularly and being interactive with my followers and following them back.

What’s your favorite thing about being a tastemaker?

I really love when people respond to my pins with positive comments. It makes it easy to build a relationship with people you don’t know in person but you share similar tastes with. I like the reciprocal following/follow-back relationship so I can see what they curate on Pinterest too.

Being a tastemaker has also helped me focus more even on my own taste. Looking at my boards every day I can see aesthetically what fits and what doesn’t. I really like that I’m learning about myself in the whole process.

What’s something someone wouldn’t know about you just by looking at your Pinterest boards?

I love to travel and I’ll be traveling to Cozumel, Mexico to dive with whale sharks in June! It has been on my bucket list forever. I will officially be a qualified diver and cannot wait to experience warm water diving!

If you would like to follow Paula and her work, visit her social links below:

• Pinterest – bearabbit Facebook – bearabbit Tumblr

SEO, or search engine optimization, is still fairly new territory for some business owners, and local SEO is particularly challenging. At its most basic level, though, local SEO marketing is simply a matter of optimizing your online presence to reach out to as many local customers as possible. There are several ways to do this, including the six tips listed below.

#1 Have an SEO-Driven Site for Every Location

How many locations does your business have? If you have an advertising agency or a plumbing company, you may just have one central office; if you are the owner of restaurants or retail stores, however, you may have multiple locations. For the purposes of local SEO marketing, it is critical to have a separate website for every physical location you have—each one customized with geospecific keywords. For local SEO marketing, having a single online hub will not suffice for companies with various locations.

#2 Build Local Links

If you know much about SEO, you know that “link building” is a key concept. For businesses doing local SEO marketing, of course, local link building is especially integral. That is to say, you need to win backlinks to your site from directories, blogs, or publications that are known to be authoritative within your geographic area. Submitting to directories, like online yellow pages listings, is one approach. Also reach out to local newspapers, your local Chamber of Commerce, and any professional organizations within your city or town. Getting links from such authoritative sources can go a long way. BUT don’t cheat or overdo it because Google will kick you @%&$

#3 Optimize for Video

Video can be a powerful tool in any local SEO marketing campaign. Upload videos to Google, but before they go public, make sure they are optimized to provide local value. Including your company phone number in the title or meta description of a video is not only a great way to boost local SEO, but it also allows mobile users to call your company directly from the search engine results page.

#4 Bring in Online Reviews

Reviews on Google, Yelp, and other user-generated review sites are powerful components in the SEO process; the more reviews you get, the better your local visibility will be. You can’t force people to leave you reviews, but you can ask them to—and your faithful customers and clients will likely take you up on it. Make sure your review profiles are clearly linked from your main company website.

#5 Use Press Releases

Press releases can prove mightily helpful in your local SEO marketing endeavors, generating local buzz and ranking well in local news searches. Make sure that any press release you send out is genuinely newsworthy—a new product launch, or something similar. Also make sure that your press releases include geospecific keywords in the title.

#6 Use Twitter Search

Finally, remember that local SEO marketing is not just a matter of optimizing your site and winning links, but also of directly connecting with local customers and clients. Twitter is a great resource for doing exactly that. Using Twitter’s search function, you can seek out tweets from local consumers seeking information about your industry or niche; for example, a quick search for “Charlotte plumbing,” or “Charlotte toilet repair,” will yield local Charlotte residents who are asking questions about local plumbing services. A quick tweet to these folks may be all it takes to get them to click over to your website.

For business owners, of course, local SEO marketing is not really a matter of choice any longer; if you want to bring traffic to your website and through the doors of your business, you need to make your online presence as visible and as attractive as possible.

Are you afraid of SEO rip offs?

Photo by: Danard Vincente

Pinterest announced yesterday they’re rolling out rich pins, powered by Schema.org and OpenGraph code, for pins. So far the feature is only available for products, movies and recipes. They’ve teamed up with several big brands like Netflix, Anthropologie and The Kitchn to begin showing users just how quick and easy it is to find the information they want.

Now when you click to expand a product pin, you will see the real time price of the product, where it can be purchased and whether or not it’s available—information that’s updated daily. When you view a movie pin, you can view ratings, reviews and cast members. For pinners who love to cook, you can view cook times, ingredients, serving size and even dietary classifications such as vegetarian or gluten-free without ever leaving the platform. This encourages much more qualified traffic to brands’ sites by allowing users to decide if a product fits in their budget, or a recipe fits their current dietary needs, before clicking through.

To take advantage of this new feature, brands will have to do a little work. Sites must be prepped with meta tags, and then rich pins will have to be validated. After that, brands must apply to have their rich pins approved and added to Pinterest. You can get started with Pinterest’s detailed Rich Pins guide. Pinterest plans to make rich pins available for all pins in the coming months.

What are your thoughts on this new feature? Will more brands become serious about adding Pinterest to their social media strategies? Tell us in the comments.

Image credit: Pinterest

Differentiators

Besides serving front-and-center in Facebook’s most prominent location, retargeted ads in the News Feed offer a higher-quality, more engaging advertising experience. With the additional 500 characters of text in the message portion, advertisers can connect with potential customers with more nuanced updates, descriptions, and/or offers. In our campaign, for example, we used that space to introduce retargeting as a concept and elicit initial reaction from viewers. Facebook’s trademark like, share and comment buttons underneath each retargeted News Feed ad serve to increase engagement and improve social sharing of the units.

Another nuanced difference is that technically speaking, News Feed units are bought and served on a Cost-Per-Insertion (CPI) basis, deviating from the usual Cost-Per-Impression (CPM) model. Instead of focusing on a single ad impression, we now bid on insertions or slots in a person’s News Feed. This results in the potential to serve more than a single impression per insertion – an added bonus! The insertion remains in a feed until it’s forced out by new events.

Performance

These units have performed incredibly well for our initial group of advertisers. We’re finding click-through-rates (CTR) to be in the single digit percentages orders of magnitudes better than the fractions of a percent we see on standard FBX ads. Additionally, ads are seeing viral distribution — our house campaign is a great example of this.

Our call-to-action inviting those who viewed our ad to “comment to let us know if you’re excited about retargeting in the News Feed” saw more comments and likes than any other post on our page.

Best Practices

We’re ramping up more and more clients each day and are excited to see how these units perform. In the meantime, we’ve come up with a few early best practices and will be posting more retargeting best practices in the next few days:

• Carefully choose creative (image and copy) when launching campaigns. Because of the highly-visible nature of these units, users aren’t going to be able to miss them! Advertisers need to make sure they’re putting forth only the most relevant and useful information.
• Keep an eye on frequency cap and adjust accordingly. Advertisers will know if their potential customers enjoy the advertisements or not – customers can easily leave feedback in comments. Keep heed of the responses (and number of likes) and don’t hesitate to test and iterate.

Conclusion

News Feed retargeting is the newly-minted gangbuster of Facebook advertiser. With an opportunity like this, there will undoubtedly be a few challenges to overcome. However, those who can do so quickly will be rewarded handsomely.

Today’s post originally appeared on FBPPC.com. 

Think about it: the go-to route for breaking news in emergency has long been the Emergency Broadcast System (cue the loud beeps and the scratchy test signals). But in this era, people aren’t glued to the main over-the-air TV networks at home or conventional radio in the car. Yet so many people always have their mobile devices handy and on-alert. The sheer volume of users makes social media an extremely powerful emergency broadcast tool (over 2.5 billion users every month between YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter alone).

Image source: www.emergency-management-degree.org

Now that Google+ has been around for a few years, the benefits have come into sharper focus. Most notably, this rapidly-growing social network is proving to be a popular, integrated platform for small business. The brilliance of Google+ lies in the variety of engagement opportunities it offers. With tools like Communities, Hangouts, and Circles, small business owners can simultaneously build broad networks while engaging customers and prospects directly.

Let’s take a look at some of these features, and how brands of any size can unleash their power.

Boosting your presence with Google+ Communities

The objective behind Communities was to create a platform within Google+ where individuals, organizations, and businesses could meet and engage based on shared interests and passions. The 235 million active users on Google+ have quickly shown an affinity for the Communities platform, using it to discuss topics of all kinds—from hobbies to pop culture, politics to business, and everything in between. This video perfectly demonstrates its ability to connect large groups around common interests.

Communities is ideally suited as a virtual space for meeting and engaging customers and prospects. Aside from offering an accessible front-facing platform where you can join in dynamic conversations with your client base, Communities makes it easy to share multimedia content as well. Sharing a new video tutorial about your products or how your brand is positioned in the industry has never been easier.

Of course, the other great benefit of Communities is that it offers users a two-way street for engagement. The most proactive small businesses will take advantage of this knowledge by asking questions, creating polls, and finding other innovative ways to get their community members off of the bench and into the game.

Narrowing your focus with Hangouts

While Communities are excellent for facilitating public exchange, sharing ideas over a broad network, and meeting new prospects, Hangouts is more of an invitation-only gathering. As such, Hangouts allows small business owners the opportunity to make more direct, customer-specific contact. With this feature, your brand can host online video chats with as many as 10 people. This tool is invaluable for hosting meetings with associates, clients, or prospects spread across the globe, and it’s easy to set up. Just get your webcam ready and pick your participants from your Circles. If Communities is the best place for a business meet-and-greet, Hangouts is where deals get done.

Targeting your content with Circles

No platform makes narrowcasting as easy and part of the experience as Google+. Let’s face it: social platforms have become busy, crowded places. While it’s important for you to get your message out, it’s equally important not to intrude. By targeting your posts to specific Circles, you avoid crowding others’ newsfeeds with useless information. Circles perfectly demonstrate the new maxim that one-size-fits-all marketing simply doesn’t have a place in social media. By segmenting your message to prospects and clients at different levels of the buying cycle, you will sustain a higher level of interest in your brand by always presenting the right kinds of content to the right kinds of people at the right time.

Please share your experience using Google+. Are you using Communities, Hangouts, and Circles to connect with your customers?

According to the folks at PostRocket, there are 6 easy ways you can get your posts seen by more of your fans:

1. Shorter is Better – post between 100-250 characters get 60% more engagement than those over 250 characters.
2. A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words – Images and videos garner 100-120% more engagement than posts without them.
3. Just Ask – Asking your fans for their opinion, or a question garners 90% more engagement than the average post.
4. Be Useful – You’ll be more successful on Facebook if you provide useful and relevant content to your fans without the selly-sell. Tips, how-tos, recipes, advice, it’s all fair game.
5. The Time is Now – There is no one-size-fits-all answer for the best times to post on Facebook as it depends on who your fans are. Does your company target 18-24 year old males? They may be most active on Facebook at 11 pm, but the maternity store down the street will most likely have a much different ideal time to post.
6. Do It Daily – Posting engaging content on a daily basis is the best way to have a chance to get on the News Feeds of your fans. Remember, most folks see your posts within their News Feeds, not on your Business Page.

PostRocket also created this super-useful infographic which breaks down EdgeRank into easy-to-understand language. We think you’ll like it.

Infographic courtesy of PostRocket

Commitment. It means different things to different people. When it comes to social media marketing and Facebook in particular, it means making the choice to work hard, keep going, and stay disciplined.

Facebook is extremely fickle. Its algorithm relies on momentum, something that dies very quickly after only a few bad posts or skipped days. It’s for this reason that businesses and marketers have to make a choice before diving in. Are they going to take it all the way or is it better to keep it slow and simple?

Both methods work at achieving their respective goals. The majority should consider going for the latter as the effort that goes into going “all the way” must be sustained indefinitely to be successful. There are plenty of strategies that work with each method, but before we get into those, here’s the difference between the two.

Keep in mind, there’s really no in between.

The Easy Road

This isn’t the “stick your head in the sand approach”. Let’s assume that you wouldn’t be reading this article if your goal is to pretend that social media doesn’t exist, that it’s a fad, or that your business cannot benefit from being on it.

The easy road is one that is only targeting interested parties. It isn’t about aggressively going after new fans. It isn’t about using Facebook advertising. It isn’t about playing the algorithm game or going for additional reach for your message. The easy road is only targeting those people who will find your Facebook page through search or through your website. This isn’t about getting into users’ news feeds.

This path takes very little time. While I would never suggest using automation such as RSS feed posts, it’s just a notch above that. With this strategy, the goal is to make sure you’re presenting a strong presence for those who find your page. It means posting text, images, links, and videos on a regular basis. Once a day is plenty but a business on this path can easily get away with a couple of posts a week.

This takes very little time and effort. Use Post Planner, Buffer, Facebook’s native scheduling tool, or any tool with a queue feature and make sure it’s loaded up. That’s it. Put a week’s worth of posts in every week, schedule the replenishing tasks once a week, and let your presence become a good representation of your business for those who proactively seek your page.

There are plenty of advantages to this style. It takes much, much less time. It requires fewer touches of your social accounts. Your posts can be easily scheduled and as long as you’re monitoring via email or alerts for inbound contacts, this method is almost foolproof.

Again, it’s important to remember that you will not be getting into news feeds. Very few people will see your posts, but those who do see them will not be disappointed by seeing and abandoned page or one that is RSS automated.

The Hard Road

The other option is to commit. It’s that simple. If you’re wanting to use facebook as a true advertising and marketing platform, you will want to be extremely active. You’ll need to learn about and keep up with the algorithm, touch your account daily (possibly multiple times per day depending on your reach), and craft content perfectly.

This is the path that most want to take because it’s aggressive. It is the way to get real exposure through Facebook, to get into news feeds and to get your message in front of as many people as possible. The key point is to understand that social media doesn’t sleep, it doesn’t take weekends off, and it knows when you’ve been away for an extended period of time.

It also requires an investment. Any expert that says Facebook can be effective in an aggressive strategy that does not include a Facebook advertising spend is trying to sell something to a potential client. It cannot be done unless you’re an A-list celebrity or a major brand. Local businesses, smaller brands, and just about any entity that is not a household name within their market cannot achieve maximum success on Facebook without spending on ads. I’d happily debate that with anyone who says something to the contrary.

The hard road requires constant monitoring and interaction. If someone comments on a post, it’s imperative that there’s a very quick response. The next day often won’t cut it. You can get more engagement when people are replied to while they’re still online and the comment is fresh to them. It’s also the quickest way to get your posts to spread quickly. When a long conversation thread can be sustained, those involved will help your post become visible on others’ feeds, they’ll tag people that they want to join the conversation, and suddenly the post has the ability to get real traction.

Most of these things are obvious to those who have been doing it for a while, but one thing that so many are missing is that you can never waste a post. There is too much algorithmic damage that can be done with bad posts. They all have to count – every single one of them. They all need a purpose whether it’s creatively delivering a business-oriented message or just posting high-quality content that can be universally liked to boost your algorithmic authority.

One can still use tools and plan out posts, but it’s important to not let them make you lazy. Just because you’re scheduling posts ahead of time doesn’t mean that you can let it sit dormant or that you can stop paying attention for a little while.

This isn’t intended to scare people. It definitely doesn’t mean that you have to live on Facebook to be successful. It’s just necessary to make the commitment to spend enough time, energy, and money to make your Facebook presence strong and to aggressively pursue greater reach. It’s not a matter of fans. The truth is that fans are a very small part of an aggressive strategy. The hard road takes you down a path where reach is 99% of the goal. The more people you can get to see your message and to communicate with you, the more success you can have.

To reach this success, you have to be willing to go all in. There is no gray area. There’s no middle ground. A halfway aggressive approach is not half as successful as the aggressive approach. It’s barely more successful than taking the safe road, which is why most businesses should opt for that path.

It’s all or nothing. Which is best for you?

Your overall digital marketing strategy is made up of multiple elements that all feed into the bigger picture. Ideally, you want each element to work in tandem, from your email marketing, to your blog to your social media.

When it comes to your social media especially, keeping a cohesive presence throughout all the various platforms is key to communicating a clear message and building up a strong image of your brand.

Keeping your social media channels integrated and consistent helps you make your social media presence stronger and more productive – and here are 5 tips to help you do just that:

1. Share and Share Alike

You don’t need me to tell you that social media is about sharing. Sharing across all your social media platforms is reaching out to your widest possible audience and it is also doubling or even tripling the chance they will see it. Missed that Tweet? Don’t worry it’s on Google+ too.

Got a great blog post? Share it everywhere! There’s no need to focus on just Twitter or LinkedIn, post it on Facebook, pin it on Pinterest do anything you can with it to get the word out there. Multiple shares leads to multiple engagements.

2. It’s All About Image

Across every part of your social media, branding should be very much a part of your strategy. From the profile pictures you use, to layouts, colors and logos – leave no stone unturned.

So much of social media is visual communication, so visually branding your social media communication at every level maintains a consistent look and feel throughout while also doing wonders for your brand awareness.

3. Don’t Let the Side Down

Often the issue with having multiple social media channels is maintaining them all to the same level. One can regularly get left behind because of lack of engagement, low productivity or just not enough time.

One weak link can start to bring down the rest. Have a great Twitter account but your Facebook is lacking? Why back yourself into a social media dead end? Try to continue the conversation in as many places as possible.

It could mean scaling back activity on one site to focus on boosting another, but being consistently active in all your social media, rather than an unbalanced portfolio of active and inactive accounts, will keep your engagement high and your network interested.

4. All Roads Lead to Rome

One of the cardinal sins of social media if neglecting to include a link to your website. It’s more common than you think. Your social media accounts are not out there by themselves, they are extensions of your blog which leads to your website and ultimately comes back to your business.

Think of your social media as sign posts, all pointing in the same direction. In the back of your mind you are always trying to encourage your network to follow the signs from social media, through to your content and where you can have their undivided attention.

5. Look at the Bigger Picture

As I’ve said, your social media accounts don’t just operate by themselves – they all for part of your wider strategy. So instead of planning your strategy across one social media, why not work across three or four? Think of how the activity on one account can reflect on another and how they can work together. Stronger social media is an extension of your overall digital marketing strategy so in planning your social media strategy, keep your overall strategy in mind.

Maintaining consistency across your social media takes a lot of forward planning and micro managing. For social media to work everything needs to work together – sharing content across multiple platforms, reaching the widest possible audience, keeping your branding in clear view and making sure you’re working towards a common goal.

Could your social media do with a work out or is it pulling its weight?

If you’re in any doubt about the strength of your social media strategy, why not take a look at our Definitive Guide to B2B Social Media

IPL teams on Facebook

In terms of Fan growth rate, Sunrisers with the help of paid activities have attained the highest Fan growth rate of over 6% WoW with the addition of more than 35K new fans in week 6. Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians lead the engagement front in week 6 on Facebook while Delhi and Pune are still the least engaged pages on Facebook.

Chennai Super Kings who has been consistently leading the other IPL teams on Facebook again is the most active on Facebook in terms of posting activity. And I am also not afraid to say that their fans are the most enthusiastic and active fans on Facebook. In terms of Interactions per Thousand Fans, CSK occupies 60% of the posts in the top 10. Below are the top 5 posts of Week 6 with the highest amount of interactions per 1000 fans:

SRK’s confession that he might own KKR but his favourite team is CSK has created quite a bit of conversations for the southern IPL team with the post being shared more than 18K times. Kings XI have also stirred up their conversations from the past 2 weeks (post David Miller’s blitzkrieg) and with Adam Gilchrist playing his last edition of IPL, the fans have surely started discussing about the legend on their page.

In terms of responses, no IPL team is still focusing on giving out responses to fans on their wall posts. The IPL franchises feel Twitter is more suitable for one to one conversations and don’t use Facebook for those conversations. And with the spot fixing scandal in the news, the IPL brand and especially the Rajasthan Royals have got a task in their hand to curb the negativity around their fans.

IPL teams on Twitter

On Twitter, we do get a more even competition with all the handles having a consistent follower growth along with fair bit of conversations. However, Kolkata Knight Riders and Pune Warriors seem to fall behind in terms of follower acquisition which might be owing to their low activity in week 6.

Pune Warriors did not reply to any tweet in week 6 and may be have slowed down on their social efforts owing to their team’s dismal performance in this edition. Sunrisers took the highest response time with an average reply in 4 hours while Sunrisers and Rajasthan seem to reply within the 10 minute range.

Rajasthan Royals invited participation by running #MyRoyalHero contest on Twitter and got a fair bit of response from the RR followers. The contest generated more than 700 tweets with more than 160 contributors (Source: TweetBinder). Mumbai Indians also came up with their own ‘Spot the Ball’ contest on Twitter which CSK was conducting on their Facebook pages successfully for the past 2 weeks.

The RCB team in order to pledge their support for a greener planet donned a green jersey against their match with Punjab. The twitterati were keen to jump in on the #RCBGoGreen initiative and pledged their support to RCB in a positive manner. There were more than 2,000 tweets with the hashtag and a potential reach of over 1.6 million on Twitter with over 800 contributors tweeting with the hashtag (Source: TweetBinder). It was a good initiative on behalf of Vijay Mallya’s team to unify and spread awareness among the people for a greener planet within the spirit of cricket.

Get #RCBGoGreen trending in support of @rcbtweets initiative. Also, the @twitter handles on jerseys is so cool twitter.com/IPL/status/334…

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) May 14, 2013

IPL teams 0n YouTube

On YouTube, Royal Challengers has been a consistent performer in terms of it’s content as well as gaining eyeballs. The RCB franchise has added more than 440K views this week along with 2,000 new subscribers. The content uploaded again has Gayle at the centre stage with after match party contents and some behind the scenes footage which I am sure the RCB fans love to get a sneak peek in to. Rajasthan has also been quite active this week with 15 uploads and garnering more than 73K new views. The content strategy for all the teams on YouTube has been around the same theme (Interviews/Candid talks and after match facts).

And the most viewed video in IPL in Week 6 goes to:

Although CSK and MI have a pretty strong holding as far as their Facebook community is concerned, RCB is also doing a good job overall and exceeding other teams as far as YouTube and Twitter is concerned. Although this week, no one team has been consistently performing on all the platforms, one thing for sure is that the bottom three teams (KKR/DD/PWI) still continue to lag behind in content strategy as well as activity.

And for the overall community size of all the IPL teams, here is a week over week overview:

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