Clients come to us often with questions about Twitter. There is so much you can do with this tool to promote your business – the difficulty is knowing where to begin. So here are five practices that you can begin this week to maximize your twitter presence and promote your business.

Put a hashtag on it

Variety is key

Make friends

Enjoy the social media playground

Put yourself out there

You may already be swept up in the new social bookmarking site, Pinterest. It’s not hard to get lost in the visually rich social network, where millions of users share what they like on virtual pinboards. Pinterest is gaining popularity at lightning speed, quickly catching up with the top social sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. New users are joining every minute, sharing images, products, recipes and much more.

Should your business jump aboard this latest craze? Absolutely! There are many ways you can leverage the increasing popularity of Pinterest to expand your brand awareness.

Share your products

The most basic thing you can do with Pinterest is share your products with other users. It is a fantastically easy way to build a virtual product catalogue for a wide variety of consumers.

Once you have your account set up and your Pin It toolbar installed, you are ready to pin products from your site directly to your boards. You can organize your products as gift guides, by theme, season or other categories, but you should create specific product category boards to reach the widest audience (for example, separate boards for each audience, from kids to pets to professionals). Your pins will link back to your site, so that users can easily connect to you and find more information.

Pinterest is starting to add features tailored to advertising products on their site, including a Gifts sections. When you pin one of your products, if you add the $ symbol and price in the description it will automatically add a price tag banner to the image and include it in the Gifts section. Awesome!

Comment on other pins

Pinterest is a social app, so take the time to connect with other pinners around your interests. The more you interact with others by liking, commenting on or re-pinning pins, the more people will pay attention to your brand. Social media users don’t like to be marketed to all the time – find a balance between self-promotion and sharing.

Pinterest does offer great opportunities for direct marketing. A huge percentage of what people pin are wish-list items and you might just have the product someone is looking for. Pay attention to what people are pinning and jump in on the conversation with a comment and a link to your product, inviting them to check it out. This will make them aware of your brand and may even lead to a sale. Just keep conversations genuine and be helpful, not spammy.

Make your presence known

Let the world know you’re on Pinterest! Invite your network on Facebook and Twitter to sign up and follow you; add Pinterest to your Facebook Timeline so that your followers can see that you’re using it. The more social networks you’re active on and the more interconnected they are, the more brand awareness you will stimulate.

In the Goodies section of Pinterest, you can learn how to add Follow and Pin It buttons to your website. This makes it is easy for other Pinterest users to connect with you and encourages them to pin images from your site to their boards.

You can monitor if users are sharing your site content on their boards with the following link: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitename.com/. Simply replace “yoursitename.com” with your domain name.

Pinterest is a really exciting new social tool that you can use to expand your brand awareness – it’s fun, visual and sharable! Don’t wait another second to get on board.

Contracting a seasoned social content creator to manage your social media is a great way to move your business forward while efficiently engaging your audience. It doesn’t mean that you won’t be involved – in fact, being involved is encouraged.

Remain authentic

Having an outside person manage your social media doesn’t mean you lose the personal touch. They are there to make sure your profiles are consistent and up to date. They do things like relay important interactions to you that need attention while you focus on running your business.

As with email, social media involves a lot of housekeeping tasks. Having someone to remove spam tags, sort inbox messages and properly engage other users takes a lot of the hassle out of social media so that you can focus on what matters.

A good SMM appears transparent to the end user, working closely with your business every step of the way. They’ll guide you in the start-up phase – and maybe longer – to make sure your social media engagement is stress-free, and you’ll learn a lot in the process.

Move your business forward

Looking to an expert for social media support is a smart business decision. Not everyone has the time or skills to maintain an effective social media presence. If you want to move your business forward, hiring a SMM can be an excellent way to get your social media marketing up to speed.

A forward thinking SMM will become part of your team. You’ll be able to interact with them in person (if local), over the phone, as well as by email. SMM’s are trained to develop online social interaction between your brand and your customers. This is the only form of promotion available that has instant return on investment (ROI). Many businesses and organizations are realizing the power of social media, and are transitioning their traditional advertising budgets over to having their social media properly managed.

Stay on track

Are you eager to get your social media up and running? Are you feeling time-pressed and overwhelmed at the thought of adding something new to your ever-growing list of tasks? How valuable would it be to have someone help you establish social media goals and ensure they are met? A social media manager can even work with you to integrate social media realistically into your work routine if you decide you want to take the reigns.

Find someone you can trust

When you look for a SMM, don’t just trust anyone. Look for someone who has a background outside of social media. With social media being relatively new, self-proclaimed experts are popping up all over the internet. You want to work with someone who has a background in traditional marketing as well as experience in design and web development – invaluable skills for many of the tasks involved in setting up social media.

In the hands of an expert, your social media presence will grow quickly and organically. Most importantly, they will ensure that your social media engagement is seamless, even during your busiest times.

If you’re new to the world of social media, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed. Don’t be intimidated by online social trends. You’ve been doing social promotion for years – it’s simply communicating with people who care about the things you do. Social media is just social marketing in an online setting.

Align yourself with those in the know, and you’ll learn how to take your marketing to the next level.

Read social media blogs

If you’re reading this blog, you’re already ahead. There is a lot of valuable information available out there for those new to social media. If you have a question, chances are you will find an answer out there. Or a hundred different answers. The trouble is that with so many resources out there, it can be difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Finding a reliable resource is important.

Sign up for a training workshop

A training course can be one of the best ways to gain an introduction to social media and get your strategy on track. A hands-on approach in a supportive environment is a hugely effective way to learn social marketing. In a workshop setting, you have the opportunity to cover a lot of ground and customize a social media plan to fit your business.

Make sure that you choose a training workshop with a low intake number in which you’ll be able to work on your social plan with the group. Don’t have a laptop? Get one. They aren’t expensive and will allow you the hands-on experience you need when away from the office. Next, take the time to talk with the facilitator before you commit. It’s important that you connect with them and what they’re saying – you won’t learn a thing from someone who is uninspired.

The best way to achieve social media success is to align yourself with someone who is passionate and knowledgeable about social media marketing. Blue Cow Creative is immersed daily in the newest social media trends, technologies and strategies. Our job is to distill this information down to the most valuable and help you develop a strategy that works.

Jump right in

There is no way around it – eventually, you’ll have to just jump in. Part of learning social media is making mistakes and asking a lot of questions. Depending on your level of experience, it may come naturally or be a bit painful. Guaranteed, it will be worth it, and if you’ve done your homework, you’ll make quick progress.

Consistent brand messaging will make you more recognizable across multiple platforms. Major brands succeed because they consistently meet a customer expectation. As a small business, you need to do the same. Your brand should evoke an experience, a feeling rather than a business. Once you provoke an emotional reaction in your clients, you have arrived at a successful place in your marketing to them.

Consistency

Your website, social media profiles and everything you do online should present a cohesive brand identity. Many businesses invest time and money in their website – a great place to start – but they fail to carry over the strong branding on their website to their social media. What a missed opportunity!
Set up official, branded social spaces on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that make sense for your business. Your customers will look for you there, and you don’t want their search to come up empty. If you engage customers through video promotion, consider a branded Youtube channel.
Your customers should be able to recognize your brand immediately when they see you online. Keep your logo, design, colour schemes and themes consistent and prominent. Customize your profile settings as much as possible to your brand and include a well written bio along with your essential information. Social media platforms frequently update their tools and settings, so keep up to date on new trends.

Cross Platform Promotion

Cross platform promotion (CPP) makes it easy for small business to stay active on multiple social media platforms and more effectively manage their brand online. CPP applications – like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck – help you manage all of your social profiles so that you can post a single post on multiple platforms with the click of a button.
The temptation with CPP is to fire out message after message and rest assured that your brand is reaching the right people. If you rely too heavily on these tools, they can backfire. These can be fantastic efficiency tools for a small business, but they should not replace engagement.

Remember the social in social media. One of the greatest things about social media is your ability to monitor and manage how your brand message is received. By all means post the same content on multiple profiles, but be sure to engage with the unique audience available to you on each channel.

Connectivity

The easiest step you can take to enhance your web presence is to connect your online profiles. Your website should be your headquarters, the first place customers visit for information about your business. Have clear links on your website to your social media spaces, ideally in the prominent top-left position. Link back to your website on your social profiles.

Be search friendly. Your customers will search for you on their social media networks, so make sure your business is easy to find using predictable search terms. Whenever possible, use the same user name, logo and brand identity so that, when they do find you, they recognize you without a doubt.

While user-friendly software and social media certainly make it easier to take control of your brand online, it can still be overwhelming. At Blue Cow Creative, we know you’re busy working to make your business the best it can be. We’re here to help you to optimize your online profiles to power up your brand.

Word of mouth advertising is the most powerful form of marketing. Testimonials from satisfied customers give your business credibility and boost sales. Collecting and sharing these testimonials online can be an affordable and effective marketing tool for your business.

Be a collector

You should regularly solicit testimonials from your customers. Make it routine to ask for a testimonial immediately after completing a project so that your work is fresh in their mind. You can never have too many testimonials, and it is important to have a variety of recent ones on hand. You don’t have to use them all – select the best and most relevant.
If you want to offer something to customers who provide testimonials, it is best to do so after they provide their honest feedback. If a customer is truly enthusiastic about your work, they will be happy to recommend it to others without an added incentive.

Make it easy

You want to make it as easy as possible for a customer to provide a usable testimonial. Have a feedback form or questionnaire on your website. If a customer offers verbal feedback, ask them if you can use their quote in written form. One thing you can do is have testimonial postcards printed so that when you complete a project for a client, you can send one already addressed and stamped in an envelope. They simple write their testimonial on it and drop it in the mail.

However you request a testimonial, be specific about what you want to be included. Also, make sure you obtain permission right away to share their testimonial online.

Get creative

Be creative when soliciting customer feedback. If you’ve completed a big project for a client, ask them if they would grant you a brief video interview. A video testimonial is a hugely powerful form of advertising and fantastic to share on your website, Youtube and other social media channels.

Customer driven review sites are another exciting online trend that can be very positive for small businesses. On review sites, like Yelp, you can set up deals for customers to unlock when they publicly check-in to your business. If a satisfied customer is also an active blogger, ask them if it makes sense for them to write about their experience on their blog.

Your Facebook page and other social media channels are great forums for your customers to post reviews. Also, if someone tags you or your business in their Facebook status in a testimonial, you can use that as it will show up on your wall. A recommendation on Facebook is even better.

A variety of honest customer reviews on third party sites will boost your web presence and your reputation, with very little investment on your part.

Share strategically

There is nothing more persuasive than a satisfied customer, which is why you should let testimonials speak for your business at every opportunity. Keep your website updated with new testimonials. If you start to offer a new service or product, promote it with a recent and relevant testimonials. Post them prominently on your website and social media – wherever you promote your business online.

When using testimonials, be selective and strategic. Target your testimonials to your individual clients and don’t always use the same ones for everyone. When marketing your services to a particular client, share testimonials from similar clients and include a few others to show the cross section of the clients you work with.

The most important thing you can do to ensure great testimonials is provide an excellent service or product. You have to earn your testimonials, but once earned they will pay you back tenfold. Simple, honest feedback from satisfied customers will get people talking about your business.

During holidays and other busy times for small businesses, social media often gets bumped down the to-do list. But neglecting to keep your online profiles up to date could mean missing out on great marketing opportunities. Setting some easy to achieve milestones can get you through busy times so that you come out on the other end winning.

When you share and engage with your customers online, you are sending the message that they are an important part of your business. Acknowledge this and you will experience a new kind of customer loyalty.

Be Yourself

Be Present

Mix it up

Those who are new to social media aren’t always sure what to do once they’ve set up their profiles. Your business may create a Facebook Page and a Twitter account, but without fans or followers, you may as well be posting into a void. So how can a small retail business, for example, build their social media presence to improve customer service and promote their business?

Listen To The Post

In our last post, we talked about the power of storytelling and the role your social media networks play in broadcasting your brand. This concept wouldn’t be complete without looking at the role your customers play in your online story.

What people say about your business online becomes part of your image. While it’s crucial to play a part in shaping this image, it can also be a good thing to step back and let your customers tell their side of the story. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Provide a forum

The world of social media is dynamic, and it can be uncomfortable to give up control when marketing your message. It can also be difficult to have a clear view of a picture that’s made up of multiple posts scattered all over the Internet. This is why in your best interest to provide online channels – such as a Facebook Page or Twitter profile – for customer engagement.

Consumers today have a lot of clout online. If they have a bad experience with a product or service, they are likely to broadcast this to their social media networks. This dialogue will happen with or without you; it’s up to you to jump in and participate. The faster you respond, the more control you have over how your brand is perceived.

Customers will also use these forums to share their positive experiences, rave about your products, and participate in a community – this is an opportunity you certainly don’t want to miss out on!

Give up control, gain insight

The story of your brand will grow and change over time. The dialogue that happens around your brand online can provide key insights into how it is perceived and the direction in which it’s heading. There is definite value in giving up some control, but it is crucial to remain engaged and pay close attention to how people respond.

Your customers might participate in your story by sharing or re-tweeting your content or – even better – they may contribute their own original content. How do you encourage this?

Ask questions, engage in meaningful dialogue, invite them to contribute content, and take the time to respond to and even reward customers who engage in your online promotions and share their stories. This is an investment of time that will bring an invaluable return.