Social Media Marketing aids in Relationship selling

Your company’s success depends on a good sales cycle format. The pattern of sales cycle differs from business to business. So then, what’s the key to expand a business? Nowadays the online platform has a large number of people connected with each other. With the arrival of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn; the distance factor has almost vanished and people can stay connected quite easily. A traditional sales cycle looks something like this:

Social Media

Lead Generation is a crucial part of a business. There are many ways to generate leads. Social media marketing can provide a lot of support in generating these leads. Every networking platform has its own uniqueness; it depends on how you use that platform to engage with your audiences.

To retain a client is always a challenge and there are number of ways that you acquire to maintain a good relationship. When you use social networking platform, it becomes quite easy to keep in touch every now & then without any hassle.

Things not to forget

1. Say no to SPAM!

Sending links of your company can result in you being labeled a SPAMMER. It does a lot of damage to your reputation; your account may even get banned.

1. Selling forcefully – not the right way.
2. Engage a dialogue with the audience to the maximum extend.
3. Be careful while sending out your marketing messages; revise it twice/thrice to avoid any negative feedbacks.

How can SMM agencies act as an agent?

In order to execute & regulate Social Media Marketing campaigns, one needs an expert in the segment. Experts who can analyze the current state of the company’s branding / reputation in the online world, assess their online reputation and, choose the right techniques to build the company’s branding and reputation.

Key aspects of SMM:

» Customer’s Business Model and Business Objectives
» Competitive Landscape
» Customer Segmentation
» Marketing Communication and Messaging
» Current Online Presence and SEO Compliance
» PPC Audit (if running)
» Conversion Analysis
» Measurability
» Website User Experience

In today’s time, every business house, irrespective of size, is definitely looking at social networking channels to market itself. Initially, when social media sites came into being, the idea was to network, gossip, connect and share. They were nothing less than a revolution in communication and brought people closer.

Marketers have discovered great potential in these social media sites and online tools in terms of generating leads, creating a strong brand presence and reaching a large segment of the market. Recently, I got a call from a friend who lives in small village in India. He asked me to create a Facebook Page and a Twitter account for his shop where he sells mobile phones. Well, I am not promoting his shop on this blog, but his request took me by surprise, considering there is hardly any internet connectivity in the village. Heck, this guy didn’t even have a mail id, so why would he ask me for such a favour? His plan was that whenever his village is blessed with broadband connectivity, people will find his shop if they google the village name or if they join relevant friends on social networks.

Earlier, when marketers promoted their website, seeing themselves on the first page of search was their only goal. Then, in addition to that, came content ads and search ads for lead generation. I am sure by now, you are clear about what Social Media can offer to marketers, it’s potential in generating huge relevant traffic, branding, customer feedback, larger market share and, of course, leads and business opportunities. I have seen many marketers focused on creating brand presence even before launching their website. Although very channel and idea has its own useful period, in the current scenario, the usefulness of social media marketing cannot be decoupled from the overall marketing objective.

Twitter’s recent Ad crackdown alienating the developer community comes as no surprise. In fact, many industry watchers have seen it coming for some time now; it was just a matter of ‘when’. And well, as expected brickbats have started flying in thick and fast, especially from the developer community and third-party advertising networks like Ad.ly and 140 Proof who will be cut deep by this move of Twitter.

Twitter on its part is doing all it can to make the “updated terms of service for developers” where no third-party advertising networks and developers can insert ads into a user’s stream, very reasonable. In the words of Dick Costolo, Twitter’s COO, the decision is to “preserve the unique user experience Twitter has created” and ensure the “long-term health and value of the platform.” Well, how far are these sincere remains to be seen, if one goes by the recent developments in Twitter.

Twitter had launched its own official Twitter clients a few weeks back, and now the prohibition barring ads developers from using the most obvious way of monetizing unofficial clients is not merely a co-incidence. Developers have no choice other than showing ads outside of the stream as they can no longer insert ads into the user’s streams. So, the stream, a ‘cash cow’ for most developers who have hitched their wagon on Twitter, is out of bound now for advertisers other than Twitter itself.

It is great news for Twitter; however it doesn’t definitely bode well for the 3rd party network developers. Twitter has in fact pulled on a fast one (on the developers), this time round.

This decision of Twitter would undercut and destroy many businesses that have been created and developed on Twitter. Well, the coming days would be interesting. Let’s watch!

Social Bookmarking is still doubted by many marketers for its ability in supporting their Online Marketing campaigns. Marketers always tried escaping from the use and important of Social Bookmarking and often considered it as a time taking unnecessary activity. They would rather find investing their time on Facebook and Twitter neglecting usefulness of Social Bookmarking sites. Guys, I am very serious about Social Bookmarking as an essential online marketing and link building tool

There are always some questions in the mind regarding Social Bookmarking, like…

• How a Social Bookmarking can promote my site?
• What are the correct ways of Bookmarking posts?
• What are the best Social Bookmarking sites?
• Is it possible to Bookmark all of my posts?

These questions are not new, I often hit by these questions numerous times speaking to my clients, colleagues and friends. Whenever I talk about Online Marketing and Social Media Marketing contributing major portion of it, I don’t forget to explain them the importance of Social Bookmarking. Well, this article may help you find answers to these questions.

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources and contents. In social bookmarking websites, users create and store bookmarks of their choice. These bookmarks can be viewed by others and that let them know about new services and latest concepts which are making news in the online world. For example del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit and Stumble Upon are some of the most popular social bookmarking websites.

Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of metadata helping other readers understand the content of the resource without first needing to download it for themselves.

Social bookmarking is a great way to direct visitors to your blog or site. First, you have to build a site that is worth reading. Build on your blog content, and make sure that these are up to date as well. Of course, everything in print must be interesting if you aimed at making online readers your regular visitors. Millions of people use these Social Bookmarking websites daily to search for information on various topics. Naturally, when it comes to promoting your site or the content, the idea of bookmarking is to post links back to your own website pages on these traffic heavy websites.

Social bookmarking is a not only a powerful tool but you must be careful and not to become a social bookmarking spammer. Social bookmarking spammer will find himself in trouble getting his account banned and in result negative reputation over the web.

A one way link is created to your site, everytime a website is bookmarked. Most social bookmarking websites have high page rank scores and are considered to be authority websites in the eyes of the search engines. Resulting in your bookmarks being indexed very quickly and the relevant back link will be added to your overall link count.

The best thing about Social Bookmarking is that you can always re-bookmark your website or an article with different titles and description. By doing so, you will figure out the best title that can gain the most attention and visitor to your website, which may ultimately convert all the traffic to sales.

Social bookmarking sites are becoming increasingly popular to use as an alternative to search engines. By submitting your content to these sites, internet users are able to find your information without having to visit to search engines. The concept of searching in a social bookmarking site is very similar searching in search engines. Tags are used as keywords for search engines, so that when a user is searching for information related to your content, your information will appear in the search results.

Since there hundreds of social bookmarking web sites, you probably want to be a little selective regarding your content to be submitted to. There are many sites offering news and resources in specific categories for e.g Health Ranker is best considered in resources related to health, fitness, and medicines. However, there are many sites offering content from large category to choose from.

Click here for the list of Social Bookmarking websites.

Imagine, you start your day sitting down with a cup of coffee… you search your company name online and the top result is someone slamming your company, your brand or you.

I am not kidding, it’s very possible that conversations about you and your company are taking place across the web on various social networks 24X7. A single negative feedback can cost you millions. Hard to believe? Look for Dominos or America online. That’s a pretty big reason to worry, when your customer determines your success.

They say, with power comes responsibility. In the case of social media, prosperity brings threats to businesses. You have to be on your toes while running an inbound marketing campaign, as you don’t want to miss any of the conversations online about your products or even about yourself.

Now, let’s get to the source of the problem and some precautionary steps:

Why you should care about ORM?

1. Your customers are online taking keen interest in your deliverables.

2. Several positive reviews bring more sales prospects while a single negative review will bring down your actual sales.

3. Your competitors are more interested in you than you yourself.

4. People miffed with you (for no reason, maybe) are online.

5. Future of your company in online.

What actually happens Online?

1. A dissatisfied customer posts a review about your products or service on social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the result shows in the first page of Google overnight.

2. A single review is enough to start a conversation and that will be enough to give you a headache.

3. Your competitors will see this little conversation as a Golden Opportunity to take the discussion to the next level, making matters worse.

4. Non-response to a query seeking necessary information about your products makes you a picture of poor marketing and customer service.

5. Your past employee, frustrated at your policies / remuneration is enough to cause turbulence in your business and brand image.

6. False information and misrepresentation about your products and service.

Key to Manage Online Reputation:

The above are some of the major causes of a sullied online reputation. But hey, for every problem, there is a solution out there. Online reputation can be protected by just being cautious, alert and following some necessary steps:

1. Create a sound social media plan for your business to be present on major social networks where your customers are online.

2. Maintain consistency throughout all social networks where you are present; with same level of information and services you provide.

3. Don’t overlook the importance of SEO as it helps improve your page ranking and makes your site rank well on various keywords.

4. Don’t run away from discussions. Instead, enter the discussion and try to get the issue resolved by offering active customer services.

5. Maintain a corporate blog and share useful insights about your company, services, and achievements, even social and corporate events. This allows people to get to know you better, builds loyalty and diminishes animosity and scepticism. Sun Microsystem’s CEO blog

6. Don’t just advertise about your products and services. Offer the opportunity of reviewing and rating your products to your fans, friends and internet users. Starbucks did it right with “My Starbucks Idea.”

7. Twitter and Facebook are great platforms for building a community around your product or brand. It makes it a lot easier for people to discuss and find information about you by just visiting your profile or page, best example being, Zappos

8. Listen to customer feedback and act accordingly. Thank the customer for his positive feedback and get the problem resolved if he has a negative feedback.

9. Don’t hesitate to promote your content through Videos, Images, Blogs, PPT and PDFs on various social media sites like YouTube, Flickr, Slideshare, Scribd etc.

10. Don’t enter a war of words, if someone presents false information about you or your brand to promote negativity. Instead, calmly ask him to remove his comment or, get into the legal action if you are sure about his intent.

11. Come up with better customer support service and offer rewards through contests and gift coupons. Contests and promotions are an equally important aspect of inbound marketing as they are of outbound. Eg Dell offering discount coupons on Twitter.

12. Ask your employees to blog about their learning and achievements while working with the company as customers are always keen to know the company from inside.

13. Treat your customers as a part of your company; you cannot survive without them. Enter into some social cause and invite other members to lend a helping hand…Like Aircel with their initiative “Save our Tiger”.

Tools to monitor online reputation

1. Google alerts and Yahoo alerts can be used to track conversations happening around your brand online.This tracked information is supplied to you based on your targeted company keywords through email.

2. Sometimes the most important conversations don’t happen on blogs. Forums and message boards can also host conversations about your brand and you’d never know about it. Boardtracker makes your work easier with providing conversations happening on forums around your product or brand.

3. Technorati is the leading blog search engine indexing millions of blog posts in real time. It also tracks the authority, influence and popularity of blogs.

4. Monittor and Twitter Search can track conversations happening on twitter about your company.

5. Social Mention - A social media search engine that searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and microblogging services and even more, with user sentiment and tonality of discussions.

6. You can use paid tools such as Reputation Defender, Trackur etc to monitor your presence online.

Maintaining Online Reputation is not a tough task, it is a bit challenging though. Being active, with smart marketing skills will do the business for you. However, don’t expect to move mountains in a day. Instead, give yourself some time, and expect better results in a longer period.

“Because a negative message is more viral than the positive one”

We understand what it takes to manage online reputation while everyone is on a mission to move you out of the playground. If you are worried about managing your online reputation, whether as a company, campaign or as a celebrity, get in touch with us and make yourself ‘authentic’ in the eyes of people.

Mail us at info@omlogic.com or join us on Facebook

When I am talking about Social Media, particularly for the small businesses and for whom the time to invest in less and want to jump into social media quickly being on one or two social media site out of continuously growing social media tail, then I’d suggest them to try LinkedIn or Facebook, the truth is if I had to pick just one, LinkedIn would definitely comes first and I’d have a solid reason of recommending it.

Let me tell you why?

LinkedIn is one of the site that has different demographics than Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social networking sites. LinkedIn is a site that trends to get brushed aside in shiny and flashy world of Social Media. LinkedIn is a place to sit and realize it’s more than just another place to add friends and share photographs. Very little layout control, minimal advertising and organized like an address book.

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professional and business- oriented relationships. It instead helps you discover inside connections to recommend Job candidates, business partners, employees and Industry experts.

The first thing you should care about is creating a searchable public profile in LinkedIn. This Article will help you create LinkedIn account and get quality traffic to your site both from LinkedIn and Search Engines.

LinkedIn strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts by using “Build your Network” feature. The purpose is to contact people on your email address book and letting them know that you’ve arrived on LinkedIn. Once you completed inviting people to join you on LinkedIn, ask your staffs, employees, friends or colleagues at work to join LinkedIn and put links to your site on their profile. Ask them to use keywords liberally in their profile, thinking of it as an SEO page. Such that your LinkedIn profile may land business directly from the contacts you’ll make on the site.

LinkedIn is no doubt a powerful social media marketing tool. By using LinkedIn, you’ll have an option to promote your content through integrating Blog, Videos and Powerpoint Presentations. Use LinkedIn for recommending people for their work, sending messages to your connections regarding Job Openings etc.

Join the relevant groups; participating in discussions always brings prosperity to your business. LinkedIn Answers is a great way of getting your query responded by people in your network and also gives an opportunity to help your connection by answering their questions.

Being on Facebook is like being a citizen of third most populated country in the world. Well, don’t be surprised. If Facebook were a country it would have been the third most populated county in the world.

Personally I’ve become addicted to Facebook, and in particular with the Facebook Platform and the FanPages. I’ve spent hours upon hours experimenting with new ways it provides to connect and communicate, I’ve created several successful fan pages and communities for my clients and in this article i’ll try to explain how to use Facebook to make a big impact on your business, and why it’s substantially different than any other social network that’s come before.

There are two primary ways for companies to market on Facebook. The first is through Facebook Groups and the second is through Facebook Pages. Groups are more focused on bringing together groups of people who share common interests, whereas pages are places where users can interact around and with a particular brand or product. They share their opinion about you, your products or get in touch with you through your page.

Because Facebook pages are typically the best option for organizations to promote themselves on Facebook, I will focus on Facebook pages throughout this article.

Creating your Facebook Business page:

1. Creating your genuine Facebook profile would always be the first step to being successful on Facebook.
2. Create your Facebook business page with your Organization name or specific product where you want your fans to engage or share their views. Keep in mind Facebook is not a selling platform, it will always be a risky decision experimenting it.
3. Clearly define the objective behind creating the page, your objectives should always have a goal to develop a community through interaction with the public.
4. Your page must give a social look from the first impression; avoid limiting it to boundaries and certain users. However, relevancy is always an important criterion.
5. Make full use of Photos, videos etc. to make your page look more interactive.
6. Make a custom landing page for users; don’t make them fall directly on your page wall without providing them the clear idea behind your initiative. You can create custom tabs with the help of Static FBML language.
7. Make your page active by posting Atleast one update daily. Don’t post long and 2 many updates in a particular day; fans may get distracted with your updates popping up everytime when they log in.
8. Make it a habit of responding to the fans comment or their posts on your wall. They will get the return out of their participation as they will not feel isolated and left out.
9. Applications are the best way to promote your content available on the web, you can find many applications advantageous to your page.
10. Contests and Promotions always generate lot of engagement among community members so don’t miss the opportunity to offer some rewards to your fans. You can send a message to all of the fans of your page with a special promo code for a freebie or invitation to an exclusive event. Then, use the Wall or Notes section to publicize the winner of the promotion.
11. Get more fans to your page by running Facebook ads. It is tough to get the large fans without using Ads.

The most successful business pages (if you measure success by the number of fans and level of interaction) are those that foster and encourage user’s comments and reply to those comments sincerely whether they are positive or negative. So, in conclusion, don’t hesitate to go out and join the community, interact with your customers, and most importantly, listen to what they are saying about you, your organization, and your competitors.

If you like to harness the power of Social Media and want to make a strong brand presence on Facebook and other Social Media networks, please feel free to drop us a mail at info@omlogic.com.

Click here to connect me on Facebook.

I recently wrote an article on Social Media Marketing- Boon or a Bane, and this blog post follows up on that by offering a list of the best social media websites to start your business idea with.

There are a great deal of social media sites on the internet, sometimes too many. Most of them are dormant and are no longer active, largely because they were poorly marketed and hence, never had an active community of users in the first place. They are riddled with spam or are so ill-promoted that they’ll never attract a critical mass of viewers or social media users.

The first and foremost problem that business faces is taking the first step, it means, where to start from. You want something that sends prospects and traffic while branding your website or business. Here’s a list of some of them. However, it may depend upon the location as well but are mostly used to promote the idea globally.

“What the heck is this Social Media Marketing”?

Since, I am into the Online Marketing Industry; I heard this statement hell lot of times from friends, relatives, colleagues and professionals working in different domains.

Well, I am not considered to be a Social Media Guru nor an Online Marketing expert. I am just a common man who takes lot of interest in stuffs going around Social Media or in online world. There are so many blogs and articles written on Social Media that a common and simple man can get confused and would feel that it is not that easy to get into it.

Social Media has become a trend and every human being from school going student to 60 yrs old Businessman wants to get a taste of it. It itself created a lot of business opportunities to everyone. Social Media marketing brought people closer and business activities became more transparent than in any other form of marketing. Along with the prosperity it also brought lot of threats to the business as now you should expect your customers to be smarter than ever. They are closely monitoring you are your activities that a small mistake could turn into a blunder; take the case of Dominos Pizza, where two fools with a stupid idea destroyed the 50 years old reputation of the company in just 2 days with the help of just a 3 minute video clip posted on YouTube. This is the power of Social Media Marketing.

Social Media is a medium of communication in a more informal way and to make most out of it is really a challenge. Things are changing so fast in Social Media that you hardly get notice of it and so you lose advantage over your competitors. Social Media has brought the customers and producers closer with an always invite to competition. So, think and think again before entering into Social Media.

Feel free to know more about us and our services, contact us at:

info@omlogic.com or visit us at www.omlogic.com

YouTube has been a revolutionary invention in promoting your message through videos. It has been a one of its kind of digital communication tool to facilitate your message reach to your audience in a more absolute manner. You can find almost every video you are looking for on YouTube from science and history to astronomy. YouTube is therefore consider as a major Social Media marketing tool to reach customers scattered in almost every corner of this world and hence it has become equally important to follow the right guidelines to make most out of this video hub.

Tips and Instructions;

1. Don’t start promoting a video directly through ads

2. The best way to start promoting a video is to respond your videos to other video, it drives traffic to your site.

3. Creating a playlist of videos are always the best option for getting promoted on YouTube. It shows that you are genuine YouTube users and is always active on making people interested.

4. Your Video title must be catchy like “How to”, “Do you”, “Are you” etc.

5. Description should be short and catchy, just not explaining the content carried in the video.

6. Getting Video Response is the key to success on YouTube. It will impact users, as this video is popular so is getting responses.

7. Do not take part in comments.

8. Reply to the mails on YouTube will get the subscribers in touch with you.

9. Make sure your Video is embedded on your website before uploading it on YouTube. The reason is simple after your video is viewed by the user, he automatically visits your website to find more info about you, your business and it will bring more visibility to the viewer.

10. Social Bookmarking has always been a great way to promote your video on YouTube.

11. Upload on as many video sites as you can but not more than a video or two in a particular day.

12. The best way to get featured on “YouTube Featured Video” is uploading the video at time when you think most of the targeted users are online. For e.g. I want to upload video for specially Indian targeted customers, then the best way to upload the video on YouTube is in between 6-9 PM. It’s the Indian prime time and most of the people want to relax and get entertained at this time. However, your video takes 48 hours to get featured on YouTube. It is not sure, that you will get featured but if got featured than, you should not like to missed the opportunity.

13. Don’t change the Title and Description of the video once posted, It will have a negative impact on Subscribers as when they will see the same video with different Title and description, they will get the impression that you are promoting the same video with different titles and making fool of your subscribers.

14. Like for your Business, your customers are GOD, same with YouTube, here your viewers and subscribers are good.

15. Joining the relevant groups on YouTube. It will help you get more visibility on YouTube.

16. Annotations are good for your business, but there should not be more than one annotation on a single video. I have got to learn this trick, earlier I committed mistake by embedding too many annotations.

17. Your video should end with an appealing call to end; asking your viewers to rate, to comment in the video is very appealing. The reason is simple you have to ask for anything to come to you.

18. Make friends on YouTube, It is a social Networking site and people want to interact with you.

19. Getting on top of search engine is the most perfect idea to get tonnes of subscribers and viewers, use appropriate keyword with the help of keyword tracking tool.

20. Don’t judge your video by Subscribers, as there are lot many people like me who often visits YouTube but don’t like to subscribe or comment. It’s good to get views and rates on people.

Take the First Step;

1. After uploading the videos you should not let people come to you and see, rate, fav, comment on your video. Initially, you should send your videos to your friends, colleagues, mates and other known people on Social Networking sites. It will be a lot better option to make them comment on your videos, the reason is simple, if you want to win the race you should have to get a strong start.

2. The most difficult part of getting popular on YouTube is getting initial views, comments, subscribers etc. The objective should be let other people know you are on YouTube and is a creative video producer. Therefore, use your channel link as email signatures and on other social networking sites.

3. Twitter is the best way to get promoted, by just tweeting………..NO. You should be direct messaging to all your followers a message and link to your YouTube video.

4. Make your profile on other games and make friends there; it can bring lot of traffic to your channel.

These are some simple steps to get promoted on YouTube. Make your subscribers happy to make, yourself happy!!