It’s important to outline your marketing goals from the outset. Some marketing goals include generating leads, increasing sales, improving customer retention, and growing your business.

Social media isn’t an isolated “thing”. It should help you accomplish all of these goals. But if you don’t have a social media strategy, then you’ll have an “active” social media account and little else to show for it.

Here are some social marketing tips you can use to help grow your business.

1. Answer the Why:  Why are you blogging? Why are you on Twitter? Why are you using social media? Here are the answers you are probably thinking of right now:
   (a) increase brand awareness by growing your reach
   (b) build customer loyalty by providing more support
   (c) increase sales by getting more people to purchase, more frequently.
   If you can’t answer the why, then don’t even start your social media activity!

2. Ignore Your Competition: Trying to benchmark other people’s amount of Fans and Followers is silly and frankly just egotistical. You’ll start making bad decisions because you’re trying to “keep up”. The best tactical ideas and campaigns haven’t happened in your industry yet. So set out your social media strategy to figure out what new, untapped opportunities you can seize and gain an early lead. Look at what businesses are doing in other industries and try to experiment with similar tactics.
3. Don’t Be on Every Social Network: Community management will drain all of your resources, especially if you don’t have marketing departments like larger companies might have. Contrary to popular belief, social media isn’t free! Each social network you manage will cost you exponentially more time, money and energy. It takes tremendous resources to do it properly, and has an enormous opportunity cost. So prioritise one or two networks and focus on strategically developing these.
4. Be Effective: Social media is wonderful, but people confuse busyness with effectiveness. Start with a goal, reverse engineer how you’re going to reach that goal, identify your highest activities, prioritise and set deadlines, be disciplined and accountable. Be effective.
5. Be a Publisher: Digital marketing can’t exist without content. No SEO. No email marketing. No social media. That means you’re in the media business. So you better start learning how to create valuable content. Create content, provide expertise, or use adverts to put yourself in front of communities of people – and give them the chance to find you.
6. Ignore Trends: Trends are like waves in the ocean, they come and they go. Pinterest might work for some businesses. But for others, it’s a waste of time. For your business, it probably has the wrong kind of traffic, not enough users, and a demographic mismatch. Instead, focus and invest in the fundamentals – like your blog, email marketing and your main social media accounts.
7. Create a voice: People don’t want to connect with faceless corporations. They want to connect with real humans. But a lot of companies still don’t understand this. No one will like, trust or respect your company in the long run if they can’t talk to a human, in a timely manner.
8. Stand out from the crowd:  Why are you in business? Why are you using social media? People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Think about the special companies that you like and admire. They start with “Why”. They tap into a bigger cause than themselves, and that emotionally connects with people. If you only sell “What” you do, then you’re going to be stuck selling commodities and you’ll always compete on price. Answer the why!
9. Send an email: Simply put… Email marketing is still the most profitable online marketing channel. 
10. People Talking About You: Facebook’s EdgeRank was designed to keep companies from spamming their “fans”. So, it only allows you to reach the fans that actively engage with your brand. “People Talking About This” is the closest metric you have to increase your “viral reach”. The higher that number goes, the better chance you have of reaching more people. And the bigger your page will grow because you’ll start reaching more “friends of fans”. Get people talking about you – get them liking, commenting and generally interacting with your Page.

Social media is much more than “engaging in the conversation”. It’s a new way of doing things, and a new set of tools to help you do it. But the same marketing fundamentals apply. You need to gain attention, build trust, and keep people engaged longer.

Because in addition to growing your “social media presence”, you’ll also be able to get more traffic, bring in more leads and create more happy customers.

Be a social business, not just a business that uses social media!

The post Ten simple but effective ways to enhance your social media marketing appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

It’s important that businesses realise that they need to do some planning and have a strategy before jumping in and posting random updates on Facebook and Twitter! If brands are going to be successful using social media to boost their businesses, a social media strategy is key. People often get blinded by the excitement of having new social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube that they do not realise they need to plan, set goals and measure results to be successful.

Digital marketing is a constant process. Building a website is just the beginning; keeping it updated with good quality interesting content is the challenge! Sending an email marketing campaign at Christmas is great, but why not send one more regularly and build up that relationship with your readers?

One of the things I do for my clients is creating detailed digital marketing and social media strategy and marketing plans for their business. So, I want to share some tips that I think will help you build your social media strategy:

1. Choose the best platforms for your business:
   If you are a small business with very little resources then maybe consider using one social media platform and do it well. Remember, it is better to be really good at one social media site than be weak on many! Consistency and quality matter more than being on each and every social media platform. Pick one or two social media channels and do them well first and then you can add in more as you go. If you only have time to manage one social media site, you might consider focusing in on Facebook. It is the largest social media site with 1.1 billion users and that is probably reason enough to pick Facebook if you only have time to manage one site.
2. Allocate the resources required:
   Setting up a Facebook page, twitter account or Pinterest profile is the easy part. After that you have to create and post great content, grow your community, engage with your audience, support other people’s communities, keep up with site changes, etc. Who is going to be responsible for these platforms?
3. Set goals and choose a Timeframe: 
   When I ask people about their goals for social media, I usually get one of two answers; “More Sales” or “Ehm, well everyone else is using Facebook so I kind of felt I should too”.
   You need goals so that your social media marketing is focused and effective. I recommend starting with big, wide reaching goals first and then breaking those bigger goals down into smaller pieces and establishing performance benchmarks and timelines for each piece. So, here is an example. A business I met with recently said ”I want to use Facebook to boost my business”. How do you know if social media is working? Instead, I suggested to the client that they aim to “develop a Facebook strategy to drive 50 new potential customers to my online store in the next 3 months”. Automatically their focus was on marketing activities and a social media strategy to support that goal.
4. Carry out real time analysis:
   By measuring and analyzing your social media marketing efforts in real-time, you will track overall progress to your larger goals. However, it also highlights what is working and what is not. By knowing what isn’t working, you can make the necessary adjustments and do more of what IS working!
5. Create a content calendar as part of your content strategy:
   My rule of thumb is the 80:20 rule. 80% of your content should be interesting, useful, relative to your brand but entertaining and so on. The other 20% of your content can be promotional material – although I would also be cautious about how you word promotional posts. If you post promotional updates more than 20% of the time, people will consider you a “spammer” or push marketer and will either unlike your Facebook page, unfollow you on Twitter or worse still stop shopping with you! So, what are you going to post the other 80% – 90% of the time? The answer is things that are interesting, motivational, funny, useful or otherwise have VALUE to your community. How often are you going to post? What times of the day and days of the week are you going to post? A content strategy and plan answers all of these questions!
6. Develop your brand’s tone of voice:
   Work on figuring out your rand’s persona, tone, purpose and language.
7. Carry out regular analysis:
   Use tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter analytics or other tools like Hootsuite, SocialBro, Raven etc. Monitor social media activity by keeping track of activity, influence and interactions. Other metrics worth monitoring include downloads, installs, views, clicks, sign ups and traffic referrals. Don’t forget to monitor strategic objective metrics such as sales, customer service and brand awareness.
8. Be social, be fun, take risks and do more:
   While being informative is hugely important for a brand to communicate their message to consumers, it’s also important to remember that people use social media in order to be entertained and informed.

Do you have a social media strategy in place? If so, what works best for you? Do you schedule posts and tweets?

Download the Social Media Strategy Presentation for FREE

The post 8 Tips for Creating a Social Media Strategy appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

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If you do things in public be aware of social media – most people have a smartphone with good camera and instant access to the internet and social media. Social Media has changed the way people interact. If its not something you would be happy for your parents or employers to see or witness then think twice. In today’s world of social networking, it is hard to strike a balance between staying connected and maintaining a measure of healthy privacy.

How to make your social media more private:

• Be aware and educated. Everyone needs to be more aware of social media – tagging photos or uploading photos is now a part of everyday life.
• Adjust the privacy settings on each social media platform you use. Check which third party apps have access to your social media profile and what information they have access to.
• Change your passwords on a regular basis. Use a combination of symbols, letters and numbers. Also, it’s advisable to use a separate password for each social media network.
• Ask your friends to consider the ramifications too before they post or tag any images of you on the internet. Don’t forget that Facebook uses facial recognition software to offer automated photo tagging now.
• Keep up to date with the Privacy policies which change frequently from site to site so make sure you regularly watch for updates and review your privacy settings.
• Do not post information that would make you vulnerable, including your birth date, physical address or other details that help identity thieves.
• Protect your privacy online and remember that photos are searchable by employers so always think twice before uploading. If you’d rather pictures of you weren’t shared online, then tell your friends.
• Be careful about “checking in” on Facebook and Foursquare. Don’t share travel plans! Some sites will allow other individuals to check you in to geographic locations. Many people don’t mind this option, but remember that when you tell people where you are, you are also telling them where you aren’t – at home.
• Be selective about instant sharing on social media, think before you post!
• Before you click “post” or “share” think about the consequences. Could this embarrass you or damage your career prospects? You need to manage your personal brand, this includes a certain amount of self censorship!
• Use your judgement when it comes to the digital world, just as you would in the real world.
• If something posted about you and you don’t like it or want it there, report it to the social media site immediately.
• Remember, anything you post online can “go viral” and removing a something is not a guarantee it’s gone. People often take screen shots of these “viral posts”.
• Don’t post anything online that you want kept private.
• Don’t put on social media what you wouldn’t put on a billboard!

Think about it — social media has been integrated into our daily lives, and it is now as simple as picking up your smartphone, starting up your favourite social application, and sharing an update to your network. Think carefully about your social media engagement approach.

The post Privacy Tips for Social Media appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

One of the biggest advantages of using Google+ is that if your content is shared on Google+ then it signals to the Google search engine that your content is quality content and improves your chances of getting a good ranking.

Why Google+ is Brilliant for Business

1. Hangouts: Make free video calls with up to 10 people, from your computer, smartphone and tablet. Team collaboration is better when you’re face to face. Google says “Hangouts offers a suite of productivity apps that let you share what’s on your screen, collaborate in Google Docs, view presentations and diagram together. To access these, simply click the “Add app” button inside your hangout to browse and add new apps. If a team member can’t join the hangout, you can also dial the person in by clicking on the “Invite” button and then the “+telephone” link.”
2. Search Engine Optimization: If you are trying to get your website to the top of the search results in Google search engine, Google+ business pages are one of the best social media options. This is because Google+ business pages are quickly indexed and can be followed easily. Also, users can give content a “+1” which gives your website content a boost. Google takes into account the impact your website has on social media networks when deciding its search engine ranking.
3. Circles: Google+ Circles can be used as to target messages to certain customer groups, based on location and demographics. For example, you can create Circles that include loyal customers only, and offer them news or content that only they can see, thus further consolidating your relation with them. Ultimately, Circles let you better manage your followers and target messages more effectively, to ultimately improve customer engagement. 
4. Communities: Just like Facebook Groups, Google+ communities allows the admin to gather real-world groups of people with similar interests. Communities can be public or private.  Google+ Communities have three levels: Owners, Moderators and Members.  The owners and moderators are in charge of the content.  They can delete spam and decide upon the nature of all of the member’s posts. The members can post acceptable content.
   Sharing content regularly with the same core group of people, communities are a fast and fun way to stay in touch. This is also handy for businesses – keep in touch with your customers by regularly posting and communicating via Google+ communities.

As of September 2012, it has a total of 400 million registered users of whom 100 million are active on a monthly basis.  Are you one of them or are you missing out?

Find out more about Google+ here

Download my FREE guide to Google+ here

Add me to your Google Circles here

The post Why Google+ is Brilliant for Business appeared first on Aoife Rigney Digital Marketing.

The Business and IT Conference (BIT Conf) is a series of information nights for business owners and managers on how to integrate IT into the day-to-day running of a business.

The purpose of the BIT Conf is to educate business owners and managers on how to integrate IT into the day-to-day running of a business. This will allow them to create new advertising and marketing strategies, improve work flow and productivity, and build better channels of communication with their clients and customers.

 The first series of talks is ”Social Media for Business” and will focus on the use of social media and the beneficial uses it can have in growing a business. Over 120 Business attended on the night!

The emerging world of social media brings incredible opportunities for businesses to communicate directly with people in ways that were impossible just a few years ago.  Intermediaries are no longer necessary.  Your audience can now have a conversation with you (and your brand).

Here is my presentation from the night – feel free to download it for FREE here!

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