Tag: social media

Things To Remember While Marketing Through Social Media Services

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It’s true that without marketing it becomes very hard for every entrepreneur to sell their products. It does not matter whether your business is small or big, digital marketing services like social media play a major role in every business aspect. 

Have you ever thought about why marketing is so important for every service and product-based company? It is because whenever your business comes up with any new innovation, your customers are completely unaware of your latest version. 

However, with the help of marketing tactics, you can spread awareness and people will come to know how your upcoming service or product will help them in improving their lives. 

social media

Usually, people connect their problems with the solutions that are available in the market. Because in today’s modern world, marketing strategies are completely different. Earlier, entrepreneurs used tactics like newspapers, pamphlets, etc for publication. But, these practices are not as effective as they used to be.

Nowadays marketing practices are implemented in accordance with the Inbound methodology which is far more effective. With the help of digital marketing, you can reach out to the audience that is living far away from your location. 

The only thing required is the internet and at present, 70% of the world population spends most of their time surfing on the internet. More than half of those are always active on social media platforms.

Why social media will make you a marketing rockstar?

Well, social media is an integral part of digital marketing services especially in the awareness phase of customer’s lifecycle. 

Social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc are widely used all around the world. Which is why marketing through social media platforms has become a trend. 

These social platforms are completely free as they allow the audience to stay connected with the world.

Let’s go further and check out how to make your business popular on social media?

Choose social media platforms according to your business

It is necessary to choose the right social platform for your business before you get started with social media marketing. Not every social network will allow you to reach your goals. On every platform, you will find different kinds of audiences which are why choosing the right one is so important. 

Here we have some of the most popular social media platforms to check out.

3_Choose social media platforms according to your business
  • Facebook

Facebook is the most popular and the biggest social platform with a huge user base of more than 2 billion. It is known to be the largest social network all around the world. Facebook has great marketing potential as it is accessed by every person who carries a smart device. 

If your business is on a startup stage and if you have a certain budget for marketing then Facebook is the best social platform to choose for marketing. Facebook can be a perfect choice if your business foundation is based on B2C (Business to Consumer).

  • Instagram

Instagram is one of the most successful social platforms that follow the visual approach. According to the survey, it is been found that 60% of the audience are engaged through appealing aesthetics. This social platform is completely free to use for marketing. Free marketing involves organic marketing and it’s all about getting your customers to reach your content naturally.

Instagram can be your social network marketing platform if your ads are more visual-centric. Usually, people are more attracted to pictures and videos instead of reading long content. So, keeping these advantages in mind Instagram can help to build your brand name organically.

Twitter

Many of you may have gotten confused that “How Twitter can be used as a social marketing platform?”. To be very honest, it is the best social marketing platform for posting short and simple ads. 

With the character limit of 280, you can directly provide the information that your audience requires. Twitter can easily raise awareness of your latest ones.

On Twitter, you will find the audience who likes to stay updated 24/7. This can be a better place for your ads to reach the right audience organically. 

  • LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world’s biggest career platform with a user count of more than 600 Million. With this social platform, you can directly reach your ideal customers through posting Dynamic Ads, Sponsored InMails, and LinkedIn Advertising. 

You can even promote your brand name by creating your brand page using a LinkedIn business account. You can achieve high-quality leads as more than 400 Million users remain active through a day. It is a great social platform for B2B marketing.

Scheduled Posting For Consistent Results

It is a universal fact that quality always overcomes quantity. While posting on social media regularly, you will have to be careful that your content’s quality should remain consistent. 

Most of the time it happens that when the quantity increases, quality decreases automatically. So, make sure your content stays informative for your audience even if you increase your content quantity.

4_Scheduled Posting For Consistent Results-1

For every audience, content quality is:

  • Content that connects with the audience problems
  • Provide a solution
  • It should be entertaining

Visual Impression

People are more attracted to pictures, videos and various types of visuals. These pictorial elements help them to understand things in a crystal clear manner. You can put your marketing efforts by publishing more and more visuals in your ads. 

Rather than reading, your audience can define their requirements through pictures and videos. Also, they will easily understand the usage of your products and services.

Conclusion

Social media marketing has a huge potential in building your brand name bigger in the market. Being popular on social platforms will not only allow you to increase your sales ratio but will automatically build your strong customer base. Though, marketing through social media can be free as well as paid depending on the platform you choose. 

For example, you can only perform paid marketing on Facebook but on other social platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc are completely free. 

However, marketing through social media services does not uplift your business instantly. It requires time and a handful of marketing strategies to make your business popular on social media. But the long term benefits of steady social media engagements are immense. 

Still finding yourself confused with social marketing platforms, consider connecting us @QLTech and clear out your doubts.

Social Media Marketing tips, tricks and tactics

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Social media marketing is the course of gaining website traffic or catching the attention of your target audience through social media sites. Social media is a powerful and influential place. If you follow the right tactics, you can not only earn engagement and increase followers but also generate leads and grow your revenue.

QL Tech Tip: If you devise your social media marketing strategy by keeping the social media trends in centric, you will surely come up with a winning strategy.

Social media marketing provides strong support to your advanced SEO efforts in increasing website traffic and boosting brand awareness.

In this blog, we will take you through the most anticipated FIVE social media marketing trends for the year 2018. In addition, this blog also comprehensively covers social media marketing tips and tricks on how to succeed in your digital marketing campaigns.

5 social media marketing Tips and tricks

Social Media Marketing Trends and Tips

Peep into the upcoming trends that will be your secret sauce to social media marketing success

1. More preference to personalization

Social media is a crowded place. A lot many users post their content on lot many social media advertising platforms. It is, hence, a challenge for marketers to get noticed prominently. Here, personalization acts as a saviour.

Personalization helps to reach the correct audience and track their buying behaviour based on their search preferences. You can use social media marketing tools which allow you to incorporate personalized targeting feature. Post your content on social media in front of your high potential customers.

2. More attention to visual marketing

By 2019, global consumer Internet video traffic will account for 79% of all consumer Internet traffic

SmallBiz Trends

Approximately 80% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Video content is on its peak and it is not going anywhere soon. It emphasizes the need and upcoming trend of visual marketing.

On the other hand, live streaming versions are on spree. Be it Twitter Periscope, Facebook Live, Instagram Story, video sharing features of DubSmash and others, live feeds are getting way popular. Such videos can engage with your audience very well.

All you need here is powerful graphics which can fascinate your viewers.

Read here: Magic of Visual Marketing in Beating Social Media Competition

3. More expansion of native Content Promotion

If you rely on a traditional way of social media advertising, your brand will hardly survive in the highly intensified competition. Audience nowadays is more intelligent and aware of what they want, and probably from where.

Based on research, native ads are expected to reach more than $21 billion by 2018.

Native advertising is a form of paid media where the ad experience follows the natural form and function of the user experience in which it is placed. Along with the growing importance of native ads, native content will also grow.

Brands want their native advertising to look as similar as possible to the third-party site’s content.

Content Marketing Institute

4. More admiration of brand sponsorship by marketers

Brands are looking for various alternate means to reach their target markets. This is because traditional advertisements have reached their saturation level. This will shift the focus of marketers towards brand sponsorship, also known as advocate marketing.

QL Tech Tip: Popular brand advocacy tools are LinkedIn elevate, Klout, Ambassador, and Influitive.Most B2B marketers (89%) agree that customer testimonials are among the most effective content marketing tactics, and 88% cite case studies as well.
www.marketingprofs.com

Brands will make efforts to activate micro-influencers such as employees, customers, partners, and others.

5. More focus on Marketing Automation

If you are in digital marketing, to sustain the intense competition, marketing automation is a must for you. The future of social media marketing in 2018 is hyper-focused on the context. To create these contextual experiences for users, social media marketers must realize the need for automation tools, especially marketing automation tools.

Read here: Know the best marketing automation tools for your business

According to Marketo, 91% of users believe that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing across channels.

Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. Nucleus Research

Marketing automation will see an upward trend in the year 2018. Automation tools can help you in lead management, conversions, retention and feedback as well as provide insights for evaluation and future planning. The main purpose of using automation tools is to automate tasks that are monotonous and don’t require personal attention.

You need to formulate your social media marketing strategy by keeping these anticipated trends in the notice. If you are wondering how to do social media marketing, we have come up with social media tips and tricks.

11 Social Media marketing Tips and tactics

Adhere to these top 10 social media marketing tips and tricks and maximize your ROI on social media

1. Formulate social media marketing policy

For being an active and influential social media marketer, you need to formulate your social media marketing policy.

QL Tech Tip: Create a plan strategy document (PSD) for all possible media, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and others.

Your PSD should precisely sketch the way of how to accomplish your goals. You can incorporate your content plan, scheduling of posts, target audience, etc under this document.  Further, your policy should also include action points for the plan. All your efforts should be in line with your buyer persona.

Read here: Top 5 killer reasons why you need to create buyer persona

2. Follow the action plan and monitor your activities

Only PSD will not help to boost your social media marketing, all you need is discipline and consistency. Whether you use one social media channel or multiple, you should use a social media management system. This will help you schedule your posts, know your analytics, and manage your repetitive tasks in a timely manner.

Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Buffer, Post Planner or Sprout Social – all these are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals. Such tools also help in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time. Moreover, its analytics also provide a social media audit report. This report provides you with enough insights on the likes, shares, impression and engagement of your posts.

Read here: All you need to know about the importance of Social Media Audit

3. Repost your posts

Most of the digital marketers make a mistake here. Once they share their blog or any business update, they keep waiting for someone to “like”, “comment”, “share”, or “retweet”.

Let’s be practical and accept that every person in the industry would be following a lot many people. Even after a refreshing feed for every five minutes, there are chances that your content gets lost and may not appear in the top of the feed. That’s why repost your posts. Schedule your posts wisely.QL Tech Tip: You can try out varied versions of your titles and images/ GIFs for the same blog post. It really helps!

4. Try A/B Testing for Ads

Among all social media networks, Facebook advertisements are the most popular. And this popularity is going to remain as is in the year 2018 too.

Now the question is how to ensure that your Facebook campaigns are up to the mark? Well, Facebook Ads A/B testing is the most effective way to successful campaigns. Its targeting options are robust.

Facebook will display your ad to the right audience only. A perfect ad can magically boost your ROI and radically increase the reach of your posts. To increase the likelihoods of your social media success, analyze the performance of your ads.

Read here: Top 6 Facebook Advertising Strategies for Instant Conversions

5. Concentrate on your social media content

Pay special attention to your social media content. It is the online face of your brand. Keep it authentic, non-plagiarized, relevant and updated. Your images, links, and titles should be fresh, engaging, and intriguing for your readers.

A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind.

Use visual content as much as possible. Approximately 64% of the consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. As mentioned above, video content is at its peak and it is not going anywhere soon.

6. User-generated content

User-generated content (UGC) is the most trusted content by the users. It has more weight age than brand content.  Your social media marketing activities should encourage your fans and followers to create such content.

The best example of UGC campaign was embarked by Coca-Cola on Instagram. They had used hashtag #ShareACoke and it has generated tons of UGC. All you need to do is create a buzz for your brand through various quizzes, contests, chats, puzzles or other tactics. Leverage the power of hashtags. Create unique hashtag for your brand.

UGC campaigns work best on Instagram.

Read here: Instagram – A Booming Social Media Platform in Digital Marketing

7. Make your content bank

Don’t just create content when it is time to post. Instead, prepare your social media content bank. Based on the recent trends and updates, you can make quality amendments in your content bank.QL Tech Tip: Create your content bank now, if you haven’t yet.

It should include blogs, articles, info graphs, tutorials, webinars, videos, eBooks, cheat sheets, templates, reports, case studies and others.

8. Make the most use of visual content

Did you know 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual? It taps into the intuitive psyche of your audience and motivates them to discover more about your brand.

Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than the text.

3M Corporation

Visual content has the ability to present complex information in a quick and clear manner. Images, info graphs, videos, memes, presentations, and screenshots are some of the types of visual content.  Visual content is easy to understand and handy to share. Your visual content will get more shares as compared to your textual content.

Read here: Top 6 Types of visuals to boost your visual content marketing

9. Explore the benefits of contests and promotions

People on social media love to interact. They enjoy participating in quizzes, contests and polls. Social media is a beautiful place for engagement. Try to get the attention by vote contest, photo contest, caption contest, and others to promote your brand.

If you promote any special offer, include discounts for your audience. It is an exceptional way to offer value through your social media channels and award people an incentive to keep on following you.

10. Keep an eye on your competitors

Sarcastic but true, competitors are real motivators. You should keep an eye on what and how they are doing on social media platforms. Notice their way of engagement, what they post, when they post, what is unique about them, etc. This will help you frame your marketing strategy in a much better and healthier way.

QL Tech Tip: Following your competitors does not mean that copy what they are doing. But it means to understand what is right and follow the best industry practices.

11. Stay updated with the industry trends

Last but not least; stay updated with what’s going on in the industry you serve. Industry trends can significantly impact your business and marketing strategy. If you identify the market trends early enough then it is easier to plan for changes. You can grow your business successfully. The best way is to subscribe to social media blogs to keep you aware of recent news, amendments, and advancements.

Conclusion

Social media is gaining huge traction for digital marketing. All you need to know about powerful and effective social media marketing is wrapped up in this blog, including trends, tips, tricks and strategies for social media agencies. Keep the latest and upcoming social media trends into notice and accordingly devise your social media marketing strategy.

Get started now with social media marketing that results in success to reach and engage your target market.

5 Ways to Use Social Media Automation in your Marketing Strategy

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Automation – keeping things simple, and making them faster

We are now in 2017, and the era of Social Media automation is truly upon us. Today, we witness a number of scheduling tools for various automation tasks. Such tasks include automation of e-mail responses, automation in industries, automation in banking services – in a nutshell, and many others. A pretty big chunk of the average person’s day is dependent on automation and automated processes. Automation, in itself, is an invaluable tool to boost productivity.

Social media – Killer Shark or a Marketing Runway?

Ask anyone born post the ’90s where the real dynamism is. A great majority of them will tell you it is social media. However, over two-thirds of marketing executives cringe at the very mention of social media. This is because of the overload of social media. Its intrinsic ease of access is, strangely enough, killing marketing. However, on the other hand, it is also enabling a rebirth for marketing, in the form of social media marketing.

marketing-runway-for-social-media-marketing

Let us move towards what exactly social media marketing is. Today we see many small businesses, libraries, and stores purely run based on their social media presence. Moreover, nowadays, we see companies use various channels of social networking to create a self-sustained marketing model for themselves. The more the employees post on social media, the more potential gains the business stands to receive.

The use of social media is not quite universal—but it is getting close. 70% of the U.S. population now has at least one social networking profile, while more than half use two or more social networks. According to CMO survey, the number of global social media users is projected to grow from 2.1 billion in 2015 to 2.5 billion by 2018.

The following pie describes the impact of Social Media Marketing on businesses

social media marketing comparison graph

A dose of insight:

Social media marketing now plays almost as large a role in purchasing decisions as does TV, and 57% of consumers say they’re influenced to think more highly of business after seeing positive comments or praise online.“

Still, some fascinating contradictions remain. Even though businesses today use social media for marketing and those efforts are expected to increase, many marketers and top executives alike find the business value difficult to quantify through this process. Today, as social media is speeding along at a lightning pace, marketing executives are huffing and puffing along in its wake. Now, it is time for marketers to catch up.

That is where the brainchild of the two – social media marketing and marketing automation – comes in. Say hello to ‘social media automation’!

When the worlds of social media and marketing automation hit into one, a union of convenience and connectivity is achieved. A broad bandwidth of experts in this domain does seem to concur with this fact. According to a recent study by Marketo, 91% of the most successful users agree that marketing automation is “very important” to the overall success of their marketing efforts across channels.

Five rules for social media automation

Today, a major amount of our time is mostly spent staring at screens. It seems that this trend is here to stay for long. The devices and their screens are getting more and more sophisticated as well. Keeping that in mind, here is the nitty-gritty of social media automation.

1)Post When Your Audience is up and surfing

The chances of getting higher traffic to your posts are obviously higher when your audience is online. Each business (and social network) is unique. The only way to know the best time to post is to dig into analytics. Once you are well versed with the knowledge of perfect posting times, it becomes easier for you to make data-driven decisions. Rather than throwing posts out hoping for an outcome, better you predict it. Based on our research, we highly recommend a tool called True Social Metrics if you need to understand when and how your audience is spending their time on the web.

bes time to post on social media marketing

Once you know your best time to post, you can then use a tool like Post Planner or Sprout Social – both are excellent social media management tools. Usage of these tools can help you plan or schedule your posts at specific intervals.

When content is added to a unique plan, it is then scheduled based on the pre-determined times. It can also help you sort out the best posting times depending on the type of content you are creating. No huffing, no puffing anymore! Just let your system do all the hard work, while you get some downtime!

The buffer is another important social media tool used to optimize social updates. which conveniently helps in scheduling posts on various other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and others. It also helps in spreading scheduled posts out to publish throughout the day and engagement time.

There you go, an easy way to save a whole lot of time and effort! What are you waiting for, then?

2)Automate to drive it home: Evergreen Content

Your evergreen content is your bread and butter. This aspect of your website never gets old. In simple words, evergreen content is material that is considered fresh and exciting to your readers. It adds value to your audiences, no matter when it is posted. A tool we found to be very nifty when it comes to posting evergreen content is Tailwind. Pin your freshly churned content – be it a blog, a page, an article or a quote. Let it keep showing up on your social media pages.

3) Set up automation meetings between your heroes: multiple social networks

Perhaps another fundamental feature of automation in general, extending even to social media automation is inter-connectivity. As a marketer, you can set up a linked list of operations based on triggers. By combining one social media network with another, you can achieve greater returns and attention to your posts or websites. With a tool like IFTTT (If This Then That) you can share your Instagram post over Twitter for a wider band of users to see.

4) Set up notifications -to keep you up to speed!

Do you know that annoying pop-up which keeps appearing on your smartphone? Well, a similar feature can be implemented here as well! Except, who has the time to interact, respond, and stay engaged all the time? Timing is essence here. To stay up to speed, you need to initiate automated notifications. One such useful tool we came across is Twitonomy. Twitonomy helps you manage your mentions over Twitter, but more than that – you can see your most influential, engaged, and active users (provided you shell out the bucks for a paid version). The beauty is in its ease of use. Find a mention, click on the tweet, respond, follow, or even add to a list. Within a matter of seconds, you can interact with your audience and stay in the conversation.

Set up notifications -to keep you up to speed!

This graph depicts that an average of 68% of social media fan posts is ignored. Here is where you can get ahead of the rest. Just by being responsive and responsible, all without your own precious time being wasted!

TweetDeck is a successful and totally free desktop web app. It is the best fit for those who need to manage varied accounts, follow specific hashtags, respond to lots of distinct users, and see precisely what’s being tweeted in real-time.

On the other hand, Followerwonk is used to explore and grow your social network. It does deep digging into Twitter analytics and let you know who are your followers? Where are they located? When do they tweet? Which tweet gets more fame?

5) Don’t let it do all your work!

It is easy to get carried away these days, isn’t it? Well, automation is a time-saver, perhaps a lifesaver for so many of you marketers! However, having a portion of your work automated doesn’t mean you kick back and grab a breather. Indeed,  social media management tools are surely here to stay, but only because they free up your schedule from monotonous work. Use this time wisely to interact with your customers, to spread your content, and to build relationships!

Finally, since you do spend most of your time on social media anyway, why not utilize that to improve your productivity – as funny as that sounds? That is why, for growing businesses, developing a social presence through automation is perhaps a leap of faith they can afford.

Remember, It is never too late to start!