Social Media Management

The social media hype has made it possible for people from various parts of the world to communicate, come together and work collaboratively with each other in an efficient manner. But this has a downside as there are several social media websites which are engaged in different conversations. These increased venues make it difficult to handle the social medias and thus requires more labor and time.

Social media management solutions are systems which can manage incoming and outgoing social media messages and also device other business marketing strategies. Conversations are taking place all over the web on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other groups and communities. The social media management solution helps the user to make a basic design and work in a unified manner to take part in these conversations effectively.

It keeps a check on the talks that go on the web regarding your business. The system helps to send out messages to several social media networking sites at a time. It contributes to multiply the presence of the company on several platforms simultaneously.

With the improvement in social media networking and its role as a marketing mode, the tools play a crucial role to help the businesses plan the other marketing methods in alliance with the social media activities. These include newspaper ads, events, email marketing, contact systems, website and SEM campaigns.

Why Care About Social Media Marketing?

The power of word of mouth marketing has been recognized for a long time and social media marketing works like it but with an increased vibrancy. For a successful business enterprise, it becomes essential to take part in maximum conversations that not only involve your company, but also other rival companies, about the industry and also the related sections.

Some companies will not have hosted an outbound marketing plan via social media, but yet they have their representatives who keep a close watch on people's reviews and feedbacks about it, the rival activities and the trends in the industry. With a social media marketing plan, it is possible to present your business in a credible manner, and it can help you connect with the prospective customers quickly.

Such a monitoring system can also ensure that you can provide valid replies to any complaints that have been raised against your business. It can also drive the potential customers to your other marketing programs making it easier to keep track and manage the conversion of views to customers through proper communication.

With proper techniques, social media sites will serve as an arena to make you understand the needs of the clients and even create highly potential leads. As mentioned earlier, the increased number of networking sites makes it a difficult task to stay on top when done manually. The primary jobs that have to be taken care include

1. Handling several platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs to ensure constant content updating, analysis of views data, comment moderation and responding to replies.

2. Keep a regular check on Twitter to join in on any conversation relevant to your business and keep a check on the RSS data to know about related articles and latest ideas.

3. Google Alerts is used to maintain track of the mentioning of your enterprise on the internet.

4. Community and topics about the business is created and maintained in social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

The to-do-list for social media promotion will be ever increasing, and an instant result cannot be attained from social media marketing. Other marketing strategies are carried out in parallels like SEM, email newsletter, and contact management.

Customers are the key factors, and social media management brings together the customer interactions and conversations from different venues into a single platform making it easier for the businesses to handle it efficiently.

Web Content Syndication

The selection of web content from one source and publishing it on another source, when done automatically is known as Web Content Syndication (WCS).

This activity can be compared to the newsletter subscriptions sent out by most websites to keep their viewers informed about the latest events. But with WCS system, it works without the need for the email address of the viewer ensuring the privacy of the viewer. The content is re-published on a wider platform making it easier for the viewers and also gives the businesses a greater audience to the content when compared to email newsletters.

Web Content Syndication does not have any standard file formats or methodologies. Most of the businesses make use of XML derived file formats to reach out their publishing to the viewers. On having a look at the websites on the World Wide Web, one can notice that most of them are adapting their site to have its contents delivered via feeds.

Website owners utilize WCS system by using software like content management solutions which represents the contents in XML format. It appears like a list of headings of the content with a two-line introductory matter. The link on the title connects to the full content. Feed subscriptions, when compared to online newspaper and magazine subscriptions, have the advantage that they are free of cost.

Sometimes the full web content is delivered in the feed format, but mostly it would contain only briefings of the internet content with links to the whole matter. The file that is thus provided in the XML format is known as a feed, web feed, stream or channel. The contents of an XML file based feed is mostly stories or blog posts in a summary form which are connected to the full versions through links that are provided in the archive. The feeds are mostly derived from blog websites and news contents. There are also feeds that contain lists or organized information like weather update or top ten lists.

The visitors to the website can subscribe to the feed if the website has a site feed added to its page content. Currently, feeds are added to sites that are frequently updated with content.

Websites make their content available to be used by other websites, and this is referred to as “publishing a feed” or 'syndication'. It works like syndication of newspapers or other broadcasts as other sites can include the feed content on their site or even share it.

Other than re-publishing of the data, WCS also allows frequent enthusiastic readers to be updated with the latest content. The feed published by the website can be tracked by the user using facilities like feed reader or aggregator

The different available modes of feed delivery are

1. Feedreader can be downloaded to the viewer desktop, and it runs to decipher the feeds working in an independent way.

2. Feeds can be accessed in the email. External plug-ins are available for viewers who use Outlook express or POP service who can use it to read the feeds in their email.

3. Through browser. There are two modes to read feeds on browser,

* Browser Plugin

* Websites that work as an aggregator.

They allow the user to view feeds from any source through its browser. By using the web-based feed readers, viewers need not have to download and install the software. The feed can be accessed from any location. But it still has the limitation that the user will have to visit that web page each time to get the feed file.

4. On Mobile

As the web feeds are XML coded, it can only be decoded using a machine. This makes such web feeds to be used by businesses to communicate and send sales data without involving human interference.

Marketing Automation

A few years back, the benefits of an automated marketing system could only be enjoyed by the affluent business enterprises. They produced the automated marketing system as an 'in-house' venture by investing a huge amount to develop the technology to create the system. But the problem with such a system was that the investment required was greater than the amount saved with this automation.

There was yet a high demand to make such automated systems available at lower costs, and several third party suppliers took up the challenge. They has made it available for large and medium level B2B and B2C companies to make use of such automation software quickly.

The best use of this is for the B2B businesses that have integrated such an automated system with their customer relationship management system. Both the businesses can be benefited in doing so, whereby marketing and sales drive can be taken up in a parallel mode.

Marketing Automation for the User

One of the biggest breakthroughs towards marketing automation was provided by the development and popularization of social media. Earlier the only modes of automated marketing were through emails, snail mails, and targeted ads. Presently, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social media networks have made it possible to send out messages to customers, and they can even send back messages to the businesses. This has made mutual communication a possibility.

With such an interactive platform, companies that can take advantage of this facility by conversing with the customers in real time, are becoming successful in their venture. For a beneficial social media presence, it requires the business to invest time, skills and resources.

Advantages of Marketing Automation

The reasons for a business to invest in marketing automation are:

1. Time Saving: Advertisement campaigns can be pre-set and scheduled to be launched at different times with different targets. The user can set the desired release date and time. It can save a good deal of useful time.

2. Cost-effective: When compared to the manual marketing methods, it takes up less time and labor.  There is a smooth flow to the advertisement launch,  saving time and cost.

3. Combining with CRM: The leads produced from the marketing ads are maintained in contact even after unsuccessful business completion attempts. This ensures that all leads are maintained in the database and kept in constant contact.

4. Collect Customer Data: Businesses can use these automated methods to get to know more about the customer and make necessary changes to their advertisements and communication methods.

5. Email Management: Usually businesses maintained only a single email channel, and this was easy. But currently, there are multiple email channels used by customers and handling several of them has been made possible with marketing automation systems.

6. Uniformity: Branding requires that the look and feel of all the ad promotions should be the same. With a single platform that handles all of the marketing promos, this consistency is ensured.

7. Customization: The business can personalize the advertisement campaigns according to the customer. The user will rather welcome this and thus, increase the conversion rate.

Platforms for Marketing Content

Some software serves the purpose of content marketing for the user by taking care of all or parts of content process concerns and is known as Content Marketing Software. This software handles the job of saving the contents, managing and distributing them efficiently. Some of these software are equipped to check the effectiveness of the content.

Content management and marketing system have been evaluated for their functionalities. They have been found to focus on the below goals.

1. Teamwork on Content: The content marketing software should work like a space to create and manage content. Several people of the content team should be able to able to work together on the software creating innovative content.

2. Organization based on Dates: The software user should be provided a scheduling system to allow them to organize the content creation, updating and launch based on calendar dates.

3. Assignment of Jobs: The workflow should be maintained by controlling the allocation of resources for the content development and also approving them. The content marketing system can ensure this by notifying the respective users of the workflow updates and the system managers should be able to keep a close watch and audit the content development and updation process at each step.

4. User Management: Different types of users should be able to operate distinctively in the content marketing solution. The admin person should be able to deny or approve access to the users to create, launch, accept or even view the contents.

5. Manage Digital Assets: The system should enable to save and revoke digital assets like photos, videos, audios, and documents. These should be searchable making it easier to access.Some content solutions save these files within it while others combine with the prevalent digital asset deposit center of the client.

High-end web content management systems provide better and much-advanced operations.

1. Distribution of content: Push and distribution network is applied in some web content management solution whereby the approved content can be directly sent to blogs, wikis, and other content sites. There are also automated systems which integrate together salesforce, marketing, and content systems to recognize the content and send it out differentially for email newsletters, blogs, landing pages and other web properties.

2. Content Expiration: Sometimes it becomes necessary to update content on a scheduled basis.Advanced systems allow the user to specify a content expiry date while creating content. It can be set to be disabled at the time of expiry. The user can also use a content push notification system, where the content solution sends out information on expiry and notifies the need for content re-evaluation before the expiry date. This will prevent any outdated data.

3. The value of content: The amount of content is a measure of the analytics and output driven by the content. Content marketing platforms with the capability of reporting analytics create proper information regarding the activities on the content pages like promotions, link click-throughs, shares and downloads that convert to conversion.

4. Buyer based content: The solutions comes preoccupied with the ability to relate web analytics to the customer profile and deliver related content of interest.

How to Create a Successful Facebook Advertising Campaign

There are elements which are very commonly used by all people on the internet. It includes emails, search engines and of course Facebook. When you own a website or being an internet marketing executive, the main job is to pull in traffic from various sources. The trick is to get to the target audience and then present the content to them. There are several ways to get a content before the exact target audience, and Facebook provides several ways to get it done. And the best method is through Facebook targeted audience advertisement. According to reports, about 1 million small businesses from around the world are making use of the publications.

Even though there are many reports to prove the efficiency of Facebook ads, people will tell you that it didn't work for them. This is because some small businesses spend a few pennies on Facebook advertisements and don't get any results. The underlying reason is that they do not know how Facebook ads work and how to utilize the platform.

1. Create an attractive advertisement

Before you begin creating your first ad, take a sharp look at your Facebook newsfeed. There are several things in spite of the pictures and feeds from your friends. These are all awaiting a click from the user. The news feed itself contains posts from brands that you have liked or those shared by your buddies.  So what you understand from this? This outrightly means that, with so much going on Facebook, your advertisement must stand out to be able to attract the attention of the viewers. All the ads and brand posts are competing to gain the attention of the audience. You have to find some unique way to get your message to the viewers.

Elements of a Facebook Ad:

Image: It is the most attractive and colorful portion of the advertisement and occupies the major part.

Heading: It is the significant text in sidebar ads but less relevant in newsfeed ads.

Description: In the newsfeed, the description appears above the ad and towards the side in the sidebar ads.

More than half of a full screen Facebook window is usually filled with ads mostly by the big players.

The role of image in the advertisement:

The first trick to finding attention is to place it right. The image is the most important and captures the highest attention in an ad post. It also occupies the major part of the post. The title is always blue, and the description is black and blends with the overall look of the Facebook newsfeed page. Therefore, it's only the image that can get help you stand out from the others. You will be able to find information online as to how to create the best image for your ad. The base rule is to use an image that relates the best with your ad, and it has to be unique. The idea is to use an intriguing image so that people are anxious to know about the advertisement.

Facebook Ad Description:

The description is what people look for in an ad post after the image rather than the title. The information that is not clear in the image is expressed through the description. The maximum allowed character count is only 90. So you have to provide precise information so that the viewer is lured to click the link to know more about the ad. It can be single sentences like “ Make one million in 10 years the Easy way”. There is some credibility to the phrase. If you had given -” Make 1 million in 10 days”, very fewer people would have clicked the link as they stow it away as scam link.

Landing Page for the Link:

Once the viewer clicks the link; he is taken to the respective external website. Most people relate it to the product. Some link it to a special offer for people who have clicked the link. Many other companies aim at creating a unique quality customer who is genuinely interested and makes content rich page as the landing page.

2. Spend a Few Pennies on the Image Creation

You now know that the most important element in a Facebook ad is the image. So if you are planning to spend on advertising your business, then you should consider spending on producing the right image too. A bad image will bring no conversions or valuable clicks. You should hire a designer and let him work his designing and creative skills to come up with a picture that depicts your offer or product in the best possible manner.

Right Image size:

Different kinds of ads can be run on Facebook. When considering the main news feed ad area, Facebook has predefined the best dimensions for various ad types. Facebook automatically compresses the images, therefore if you can stick to the defined size, you can be safe that even when the image is squished, it is displayed well.

Color of the Image:

Color and contrast play the crucial role in gaining attention. Facebook is primarily blue links, white and black. So when you are creating your image, you should rather stick to contrast colors like red, pink and orange. No such specific color scheme will work wonders for your image; the trick is to use colors that stand out.

Let Your Image Speak:

Facebook has imposed a limit of 90 characters for description and 25 characters for the headline. And the image being the most prominent part of the advertisement should be able to speak for your business. it can be just two or 3 words like “ Limited Period Offer'. Facebook has a rule about the text in images that it should not exceed 20% of the picture space.

Create a Shareable Image:

People nowadays share every simple thing on Facebook that they find attractive or useful. You can make your ad go viral with a cute element, great offer or useful information. Viral ads can gain you more clicks without paying for them. The most famous viral ads are usually kids or pets as people love to share cute things on Facebook.

Original Image:

Make sure that you do not use stock pictures especially the ones with the watermark. People do not accept the credibility of such images, try to use original pictures that have some surprise or new element in it that makes people take a second look at the post.

Once your Facebook Ad post is ready, make sure to choose the right target audience before sending it live and reaping the benefits of this social media advertisement.