Social Market Branding

Are you planning on running a contest this holiday season to stimulate your brand? Social Market Branding has put together an action plan that will help make your campaign successful.

First you must have a clear GOAL:

1. Are you trying to increase SALES

2. Does your Facebook page need more FANS?

3. Is your EMAIL SUBSCRIBER list lacking?

Define what you want to achieve before you begin to brainstorm contest ideas. This is important because without a definite purpose you will not be able to measure your success. Setting a clear goal will also keep track of your performance.

Once you are clear on what your goals are you can start to think about the contest itself. How will it look now that you know what the call to action needs to be? This is the best part of the contest itself because it’s time to get creative.

Designing and executing your ideas:

Unless you have an in-house design and development team you want to look to use third party apps to host your contests. Below are a list of the most popular third party apps used.

1. Binkd Promotion

2. Wildfire App

3. Bulbstorm

Keep in mind that these apps are not free to use. Depending on how often you use the service the fees can add up. An alternative to using third party apps would be to hire an agency like Social Market Branding to create a custom app for your company.

Benefits of hiring an agency are:

1. You have unlimited freedom when it comes to design

2. The app that is built is your properties

3. One time fee instead of recurring fees.

Just like with your holiday shopping list. Your holiday promotions list can be easily navigated when the proper steps are taken. We hope this helps to focus your goals this season.

Need help in creating your contest for holiday or any other occasion? Tweet us @SocialMbranding or shoot us an email at info@socialmarketbranding.com.

Kevin Bacon is now obsolete because of Facebook. Think about that for a second. How is that possible?

 

Well, according to a study released by Facebook, the 6 degrees of separation has now been shrunken down to 4.74. I think I hear Mr. Bacon crying somewhere. This study furthers the notion of the ever shrinking world. Everyone is becoming more and more connected, the world is figuratively shrinking. This isn’t breaking news, we all already knew this, what actually is breaking news is how quickly this is happening and how quickly the number will become less and less. With the rise of social networks and the enormous numbers of users we all are becoming closer and closer. You know how the conversation goes “my friend knows your brother’s girlfriend’s cousin…boss”.  We have all had those conversations. Well now you can now multiply those conversations with the addition of Linkedin connections, Twitter Followers, Blog readers and Facebook Fans.

 

Facebook examined 721 million users and found that “six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6 percent of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees, 92 percent are connected by only four degrees”. It is common sense that as Facebook continues to expand the degrees that everyone is separated by will continue to shrink. When you look at a specific geographic area we see the numbers continue to decrease. Facebook has estimated the number to drop to about 3 degrees when you pick a certain city. 

 

Can these findings be leveraged to actually help your business? Sure! Think about a local business that uses Facebook to market. Now think about advertising and connecting with your customers on facebook and the reach it will have to your local target demograhic. This evolution makes word of mouth marketing infinitely easier. This allows you direct access to your customers and all of your customers friends who likely live in the same area. This wields a powerful marketing tool. However, knowing that Social Media already forces you to provide stellar customer service, this pushes it even further in this ever connected new digital space. You can not afford to not take part in social media with 721 million people on Facebook alone. These are your customers, this is your target demographic. They are all waiting in one place for you. What are you waiting for?

 

I am going to ask my friend of a friend to call Mr. Bacon to see what he thinks of this! I guess, I am going to have to come up with a ice-breaker game for my holiday parties this year!

 

As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns on how you can use this study to improve your customer service or just a plain ol’ social media question you can reach us @SocialMBranding on twitter or here at Social Market Branding on Facebook.

 

 

Source: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/anatomy-of-facebook/10150388519243859

Linkedin has been for a long time looked at as Facebook’s boring little brother. However, if you are looking to find new business, a new job, a business venture, consultants and a plethora of other business like activities, you better get on board with Linkedin. In the beginning, I was not enamored with LinkedIn. I was bored by it, until I learned how to harness the enormous power of it.

If you are involved in the Social Media world, then you already know that this is a must. Any savvy recruiter looking to fill a social media roll will come to Linkedin first. Even if you are not involved in Social Media most recruiters and HR departments are employing this as their #1 tool to find eligible job applicants. I was recently told by a Director of HR for a well known company, that she only uses Linkedin now and how much easier it has made her job! It has cut out the now obsolete sites such as monster.com and HotJobs.com.

Personally, I feel that is enough to convince you to join Linkedin, but for those of you that need a little more of a push, I will help you with that.

For those of you that like numbers, take a look at these impressive ones.  As of November 3, 2011, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with more than 135 million members in over 200 countries. LinkedIn counts executives from all of the 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members. More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages. LinkedIn members are sharing insights and knowledge in more than one million LinkedIn Groups.

This may sound intimidating or even daunting to you, but let us help you.

Steps to get started on Linkedin (This might sound like a big duh! to you, but do ALL of these):
- Fill out your profile as completely as humanly possible.
- Add skills along the bottom.
- Look for groups that you are interested in and are relevant and interesting to you.
- Participate in those groups, join in on the conversation. Sounding a bit like twitter now, doesn’t it?
- Network! Network! Network! Add everyone you have ever worked with and/or have known.

At this point, your Linkedin profile should resemble an online resume and that’s exactly what it should look like!

I was recently asked the question, “Why would I want to put my resume online?”. The answer is quite simple, to grow your business and/or experience in addition to connecting with like minded people in your fried. You never know who you can meet through social media. Social Media is all about sharing. People are more apt to share advice, tips and tricks to people they are connected with via messages or their status updates.

I know, I know, it sounds like building your profile can be more tedious than tantalizing but Linkedin will provide results. We all know and love Facebook but you don’t get the job of your dream or new clients by looking at your brother’s girlfriend’s cousin’s wedding pictures now do you?

Now, go and join Linkedin. You can thank us later.

If you ever need help or even just have a quick question about Linkedin or any social media platform, please ask us on our Facebook page here or visit www.socialmarketbranding.com

Early this month Google released Google+ for business. You may ask yourself:

1. Why add another social site that I have to monitor to my work load?

Although Google+ may be another social site to add to the list, it is a very easy site to update.
From your Google+ business page you type and send.

There are a couple of draw backs but a MUST HAVE social site nevertheless. As a Google+ business page you can not +1 anyone that is not following you (or has +1 your business). This can be tricky unless you set up a personal Google+ page and encourage your personal followers to +1 your page. This is very similar to Facebook.

I would encourage you to set up a Gmail account if you don’t already have one and start playing with Google+ on a personal level. Give it two weeks and then set up your Google+business page.

Once you have set up your business page even if you are still not comfortable with Google+ or even understand what it is you MUST take this next step. This is very important especially if you are a New York business.

SET UP A Google+ badge on your website

In line with text | Fixed position


The Google+ badge is the most important badge you can have on your site. Google is setting up specific algorithms to give more credibility to those sites with : 1. Direct Connect to their Google+ pages, 2. Number of +1s  a particular subject or brand has.  


This means that now you don’t only have to optimize keywords, content and meta tags for your SEO, you must also include Google+.  In New York there are so many similar businesses competing for the top searches on google.  If you do not have your Google+ page and badge set up correctly you are decreasing your chances of landing on the first page of Google.

If you are a developer or  feel comfortable with HTML follow this link https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/+1button/#plusonetag-parameters.

It is a step by step guide to set up your Google+ badge and your Google+ business page.

If you are not a developer and are grasping how this new social site is going to TREMENDOUSLY  effect your business please contact us @ 646-493-2576. We would be happy to get you set up on your way to a new kind of SEO.