What can social media do for your business?
Marketing experts are united in declaring that social media platforms can serve as an effective promotional conduit for small businesses. It is definitely worth testing the waters and joining the increasing number of businesses that now maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts. Surely you want to be sure that you will be profiting from it mainly because you will be investing money. If you want to benefit from social media marketing, you need to know a few things about it first.
Work for success
A business can gain significant competitive advantage when it has a social media presence. There is no denying the fact that more than a handful of small businesses are now enjoying prosperity mainly due to their immense popularity on Facebook and Twitter. A report from the Social Media Examiner revealed that there was increased traffic in 75% of small and medium-sized enterprises. Meanwhile, there was 89% increase in exposure. More visitors could easily translate to increased conversion especially if the products present compelling features that consumers will have difficulty resisting.
But success can only be attained after much hard work is accomplished. Building a social media presence does not take overnight and attaining major profits require a waiting period. There are certain requirements as well. For instance, a marketing strategy that is centered on social media should be holistic, streamlined, and targeted.
So, what are some of the benefits of using social media for your business? Here are a few possibilities to convince you that it is worth the effort to include social media platforms in your marketing strategy.
Exposure ad brand recognition
In the world of marketing, repeated exposure is said to be important in enticing a customer to buy a particular product. This old adage applies in today’s consumer culture, and there’s no better and more consistent exposure than what awaits your business in social media platforms. Account users check their newsfeeds a number of times during the day and anywhere that they have a decent Internet connection. Everyone who is part of the network can be reminded every so often of product features to help seal the decision for them.
In addition to exposure, social media platforms can contribute significantly to brand awareness, such that the public knows what the company is about and what the product is for. Building a community that keeps talking about the positive attributes of the product is one of the most effective means of spreading the word about it. Social media account users make up a community that are engaged in an ongoing dialog about your products and that is definitely helpful in building up the brand’s reputation. It does not matter how small a company is. It can exert a huge influence with the help of social media. This is usually achieved by the snowball effect which is always effective in attracting customers.
Lowered marketing costs
Another huge benefit of this form of modern marketing is that it is very cost-effective. Surely, there are expenses to be incurred, but it is nothing compared to the expenses of running paid ads and implementing other advertising strategies. You can broadcast content to a wide audience and they are sure to be interested because they “like” your page, right? You won’t have to spend additional money to spread the word beyond the existing circle of followers because the people who “like” your company will be doing this for you. They will share information about your products and services with their own online network of friends. These social signals are what search engines are looking for. Consequently, you’ll get better rankings on search results just because your brand is popular in social media. You won’t even have to pay for SEO to get the desired outcomes.
Customer service 24/7
Another great benefit of using social media for your business is that you open up opportunities for your customers to express their concerns in the most convenient way possible. They only need to log in to their Twitter and Facebook accounts and every inquiry or concern that they have are sent directly to you. You can provide better customer service because you are communicating directly with your customers and an open line is maintained 24/7. You can demonstrate your devotion to them by being responsive to their inquiries and by accommodating any request that they may have.
There’s no real importance of the current size of your business, if a small, medium or big business social media marketing can help your company experience and maintain growth. Companies like Social Media Combo are an excellent and fast way to make social media work for your business SEO and SMO marketing strategies. There are millions of potential customers using social media right now, even your competitors. So what are you waiting for?
Twitter’s black market for fake followers continues to grow..
Have you ever wondered how much can 1000 followers on Twitter cost? There are sites that sell Twitter followers, retweets and likes where anyone can purchase packages starting at $5 dollars while a package of 50 Retweets can have a cost of around $10 dollars.
With an estimate of 500 million users Twitter has become one of the most successful startup companies of all time by market capitalization, revenue, growth and cultural impact. However, it is estimated that 20 million users on this social media network are fake, representing 4% of the total users.
The above figures are part of a study by two Italian researchers, Andrea Stroppa and Carlo De Micheli as published in one of the New York Times blogs. The researchers used several of the best sites to purchase Twitter followers. Something similar had been done in the middle of last year by Barracuda Labs, which to date remains one of the most comprehensive reports on the subject.
Stroppa and Micheli found that, to a large extent, the problem originates with the ease of been able to create fake accounts on Twitter. One seller said they owned a software that could be able to create 100,000 new Twitter followers in 5 days. The same seller stated that even “a kid could avoid Twitter’s defenses”.
Fake Twitter accounts vary widely in sophistication, from the most primitive, with no profile image, no biography description and only a few followers or activity, to accounts that could pass for authentic with a detailed Bio, a couple of thousand followers and with a live stream of recent tweets. The black market of Twitter followers has indeed grown without precedents. It has become a very advanced game and the earnings in this industry are starting to rise rapidly. Merchants sellers can earn up to $3 to $ 30 per account and it is estimated that this business could be reporting earnings from 40 to 360 million dollars annually.
Why doesn’t Twitter do anything?
Although last year Twitter sued 5 companies creators of spamming software, including TweetAdder, this clearly is not enough. Their statement regarding fake Twitter followers is that its not that easy to detect these false accounts, since 40% of the users only reads and writes little or nothing. A study from 2013 analyzed 36 million accounts and revealed that:
- 25% of Twitter’s users have never sent a tweet.
- 6% of the users don’t have any followers.
- 10% of Twitter’s registered users don’t follow anyone.
- 60% of the users don’t have a Bio description.
I’m not sure how much more difficult this bullet points statements can make it for Twitter to delete these fake accounts since the patterns of use of inactive users are very different than the bots or false accounts. Without a doubt its certainly more complicated to review an account activity with account facts, but Twitter would do well to devote more time into this problem, because it is something that can become a serious problem. There are tools to verify this in our accounts, but a solution at the level of the entire platform is needed ASAP.
In the meantime, the problem with Twitter followers, retweets and likes for sale remains and it doesn’t seem like is going to disappear soon. As long as there are “professionals” and unscrupulous agencies to fool their customers, and worse still, as long as there are brands and companies that only use the number of followers as the only metric of success, traffickers of followers will continue to see their business grow like never before.
What do you think of Twitter’s black market of followers? Would you buy Twitter followers for your business?
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This year 2013 has been filled with a lot of innovative changes as far as social media marketing is concerned. As this year comes to an end internet marketers are looking forward to what the marketing terrain will be like in the year 2014. It is predicted that mobile marketing will surpass normal ways of online marketing, #hashtags are on their way to become a leading online search tool and social media will become an essential aspect of all business strategies.
Indeed, 92 percent of marketers already use content marketing, and 58 percent of B2B and 60 percent of B2C marketers plan to increase their budgets in this space over the next 12 months.
Nowadays every brand has the same ability to communicate in social networks, closeout a successful year and prepare for the 2014 looking for greater performance and more challenging goals.
The last month of the year has its own emotional & commercial peculiarities that prepare users to receive thousands of offers and see miscellaneous messages with an incentive to buy in the Christmas season.
From Social Media Combo, a social marketing company providing affordable packages where webmasters, SEO firms, journalists and musicians are able to buy Twitter followers without following and Facebook likes to help any business fanpage on their contests and promotions, we want to share three ways your business can take advantage of in 2014 and fully exploit your brand using social media, generating promotional actions of incentive and engagement.
Your brand should take advantage of the trend and follow simple steps:
- Seduce & Attract: Think wisely on strategies that call the attention of your audience and generate interest because this way you can connect the user with your ideas engaging him/her to be part of your brand. Some strategies may be in the visual attraction with a contest of images. You can also use sites like Pinterest and Instagram for image contests. Be creative, though, and show the world what you have to offer with a gallery of products.
- Be YOURSELF: We’ve all seen how BIG and small brands create contests, the important thing is to be different in the prize/gift or the way to reward your customers. Think of gifts that will engage your customers with your brand. Five ways to choose a cash prize for a contest can start to awake the desire, expectations, connect the award/prize with your brand, risk but win and rely on simplicity.
- Sell: Planning your social media strategy for 2014 is and should be all about selling! Right? For that to happen we have to learn first how to communicate your personal brand in a more personal way with more efficient communication with your audience. Once you dominate this you can offer products or services with a lot more trust.
Visit SocialMediaCombo.Net and start preparing for the explosion of your brand on Facebook, and Twitter in 2014.
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