Published on: 20 August 2018
Last Updated on: 13 September 2024
Innovation is essential to attain success in any field. It becomes all the more important in the business sector. Trade and E-commerce are always evolving and is hardly ever stagnant. Over time, there has been a massive change in the mentality of customers. Thus, it is necessary for business owners to keep up with these changes and alter their marketing strategies accordingly. Failure to do so will result in losses in business. If you are catering to millennials and Gen Y, then you have to understand their psychology. You have to think and perceive things like them. The new generation is dependent on technology and electronic gadgets. They hardly get time to go through day’s newspaper. So, if you limit your advertising strategies to traditional media, then you will fail to make a mark on the minds of new-age buyers. Invest time and effort to understand their mentality. It will offer valuable insight that will come in handy to revamp marketing strategies, with the help of social media.
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Keep an eye on customer behavior :
Charting the behaviors of the customers on your site is a must if you desire to target the new-age clients correctly. If you can influence these people positively, then your advertisement techniques will be successful. Specialized software and digital tools are available, which help online business owners to watch and monitor client behaviors. Not all clients will offer feedback or take part in online surveys, which help traders to finalize their marketing strategies. If you can monitor the online behavior and activities of a prospective client, you will be able to understand his/her needs. Depending on the analysis of this data, you will be able to chalk out the perfect advertisement strategy on social media.
Using online influencers :
Their idols greatly influence youngsters. Whether it is pursuing their aspirations or taking pointers for the latest fashion trends, millennials depend heavily on the virtual world. It is here that online influencers play a massive role in manipulating a person’s purchase decisions. Youngsters have a particular liking towards action stars. If you come across a picture of Vin Diesel, sporting lotto shoes, then you will try to copy the same look. Thus, your search for the perfect lotto shoes online will commence. Such individuals, who have imminence following on the social media, can later customer behaviors easily. Business houses, big or small, have recognized the importance of social media influencers. Thus, companies are approaching these individuals to promote the products to the target clients.
Special offers on social media platforms :
If you think that social media is only useful as a marketing platform, it is about time you shun that notion forever. This platform will also assist a business owner in increasing his/her sale of products. Yes! By now, you must have understood that social media platforms are millennials’ and Gen Y’s playground. Thus, the best way to attract their eyes and compel them to make a purchase is by announcing special offers or new launches, which will feature exclusively on social media. As these individuals are always hooked on their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or MySpace accounts, advertising or offering exclusive discounts on these channels will ensure that your target customers don’t miss out on the opportunity. New-age buyers are always looking for a good deal on quality products. If you offer the best goods and services, at exclusive discounts, there will be an immediate rise in your overall sale. Sending the word out to millions, with the touch of a button, would not have been possible without access to social media platforms.
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Create exciting and visually appealing contents :
Creating and posting content, on social media are mandatory for any business operator. Online marketing has surpassed traditional shopping. More and more people, especially millennials and Gen Y depend heavily on online shopping because it is convenient and saves time. If you desire to stay in the limelight for all the right reasons, then publishing interesting content about the company and the brand is a must. But dry words alone will no longer make the cut. You need to spice things up with visual stimulators. Graphs, infographics and related images will not only enhance presentation but will also add value to your content. Presence of infographics offers the information in a summarized format.
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Social media will strengthen the communication bridge between the sellers and the buyer. The producers can inform clients about the launch of a new product or the positive aspects of existing goods, while customers will be able to send their feedback to the manufacturers. The business owner has to pay heed to these feedbacks and make changes accordingly. If now, then clients will switch over to another company in no time. If you continue to lose customers, it will harm the goodwill and status of the company in the business arena.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
Pinterest is one of the most popular social media platforms that widely makes use of images. The site it full of amazing photos and you could be wondering how you can use it to promote your brand. Here are some tips on how to use Pinterest for business.
1. Add Save Button to Your Website
If you would like your visitors to act, you must allow them to do so with a lot of ease. When you add a save button to your site, people will be able to pin your content with a single click. This will take place even if you have not installed the Pinterest browser. It will significantly increase the number od content that pinners save from your website. If you choose the automatic buttons, there will be a clickable Pinterest save button on all the images that are on your site. You can also use hover buttons that only appear when a person hovers the mouse over the images. The last option is to add the Pinterest save button to a particular image on your website.
2. Pin Consistency
Pinners suggest that you pin at least one thing every day especially during the peak season. For most U.S-based brands, the peak times are in the evenings and over the weekend. The other element that Pinterest highlight to be crucial is consistency. In case you want to post huge number of posts during the week, it is good to divide them up so that you can post a few each day instead of posting all of them at once. If you want to create pins that will coincide with an upcoming event, season, or holiday, be careful to start posting them approximately 45 days in advance.
3. Pay Attention to Great Visuals
Pinterest is a largely visual platform and hence you have no choice but to create high-quality imagery. Make sure you have clear, well-composed, and well-lit photos. In case you lack the skills, the time or the tools to create the images by yourself, we have thousands of stock photography sites that have high-quality photos that you can use. Think of the most creative ways of showcasing your brand and products visually. From recent studies on the performance of 50,000 pins that are promoted, Pinterest discovered that lifestyle images tend to outperform the product images. For example, style and fashion pins displaying products that were in real life use had 30% more clickthrough and 170% higher rates of checkout that the ones that were showing the product alone.
4. Don’t Neglect the Words
Yes, Pinterest is a highly visual medium but you cannot create serious engagements with great visuals alone. Make good use of the description field by telling viewers what they will exactly get by clicking through the linked content that is on your website. Use relevant keywords so that your pins can appear in the search. However, do this in a helpful and natural manner and don’t practice keyword stuffing.
5. Use Rich Pins Where Appropriate
The term rich pins refer to enhanced pins that utilize metadata that is pulled from your website to offer additional information on what pinners will get by clicking on a certain pin. You can find Rich Pins for articles, products, recipes, and apps. Therefore, you will get them for almost all the content you would like to pin or expecting other users to pin from your site.
6. Go Social
Pinterest is a social network and not a billboard. Therefore, people will not engage with your pins unless you get engaged yourself. Follow accounts or board from the non-competitive but relevant brands within your niche. Be keen to actively like and also engage with pins that are related to your industry. You may also involve your brand evangelists and employees. You can invite these individuals to contribute to your Pinterest group boards.
7. Improve Results by Using Analytics
Pinterest analytics offers critical insights about the kind of content that performs well on your network. Therefore, you may tweak and advance your Pinterest for business outcome over time. You will be able to observe the most popular pins and the ones that drive the highest amount of traffic. You can focus on the specific metrics that are particular to your specific business. You will also view the boards where your pins are included in and this will help you to understand how people are thinking about your products and business. You will get some new ideas on the best way to position your efforts on Pinterest. You will also get some tips on the interests and demographics of people who are interacting with your pins. It will give you valuable insights that will assist you to precisely target your strategy to the right audience.
8. Try the Pinterest Promoted Pins
Pinterest ads or promoted pins is an excellent way to allow more people to see your pins. It also helps in creating new exposure to your brand. Promoted pins can give you an exposure that go beyond the payment you make. To know a promoted pin on interest, you will find the word ‘promoted’ below it. However, when a pinner saves the promoted on their personal board, it will become the regular organic pin. Therefore, it strips off the promotional label.
9. Make the Pins More Accessible
Pinterest is highly super-visual and relies heavily on images to establish meaning and context. Therefore, users who have low visibility, certain disabilities, or need screen-readers will struggle to use this platform. Therefore, you have to pay more focus on the text. You can use several strategies to make your pins more accessible. It is a good thing to connect with a long list of members from your target audience. Your primary goal should be to make your content accessible to all users. One strategy would be to add context through the descriptions. You can also use strong typography and incorporate color contrasts. Lastly, make sure that you use large texts so that people with visual problems can read with a lot of ease. This article should have answered your questions on how to use Pinterest for business.
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Nearly everyone aspires to have a meaningful and successful career. But unfortunately, many of us fail to make a satisfying job decision, either due to lack of resources or awareness. But, have you ever tried to discover the power of social media in career development?
Read also: How Studying Abroad Can Benefit Your Career
Social Media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook are becoming increasingly popular tools. It is playing an imperative role in career building. It offers numerous opportunities as compared to traditional employment methods. These platforms provide you with the amenity to enhance your visibility.
Here are some more vital roles of social media in career building:
Organizations utilize these platforms to know about candidates:
As per annual social media recruitment survey conducted by CareerBuilder, 60% of the employers use social media networking sites to screen the job candidates. The social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter gives a better glimpse of the candidate’s personality and behavior. It provides an insight of the candidates which is more comprehensive than a cover letter or resume. Moreover, LinkedIn not only provides the complete details of a candidate’s job history but also their activeness in community and involvement in organizations. The recommendations on LinkedIn give the idea of people’s perspectives about you.
Read also: 9 Ways To Use Pinterest To Promote Your E-Commerce Store
It helps to discover job opportunities:
Nowadays, many firms embrace social media as an imperative part of the talent attraction strategy. Therefore, they advertise the internship and graduate opportunities on the social media networks. As mentioned above, Assignment Writing Service companies also use these platforms to get proper insight about the candidates.
It assists in interaction with the professionals:
Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are called social networks, aren’t they? These are great ways to interact and develop relations with the people of your chosen field. LinkedIn is a social media channel which is specially developed for professional networking. It has an approximate of 200 million members all over the world. It allows you to follow and engage with particular brands which create a direct impact on the follower’s perceptions about you. It offers job seekers an opportunity to learn from the social media profiles of the companies. It’s a perfect way to know about their activities, values, and feedback of customers and clients.
Read also: How To Write An Effective Resume That Get Noticed?
It allows engagement with the targeted clients and customers:
Social Media not only allows interaction with professionals but with targeted clients and audience too. You can make use of these platforms to brand yourself to the potential customers and clients. The two-way communication line permits you to get customer reviews about your products or services. You can show the targeted audience that you appreciate and respect their views by giving prompt replies to them.
It keeps you updated:
Are you acquainted with words such as “Newsfeed” or “Twitter trends”? Yes right! The Newsfeed is the place which is constantly updated with the latest stories, news, statuses and much more. Twitter trends show you the latest news and world events through hashtags. Due to worldwide followers, almost every social media platform gives you insight regarding all the events happening. Furthermore, social media also increase your knowledge regarding marketing and career prospects.
Some special social media tips for you:
Your profile photo should be relevant and worth sharing with your networking.
The Profile should abide by the social media etiquettes and have a level of professionalism in it.
You must try to engage with people to your best because engagement leads to network building.
Share your valuable opinions in conversations related to your career and professional interest.
You should refrain from presenting anything negative about yourself as it lowers your chances of being selected for the job.
Are you ready to utilize these key platforms for job searching and career development? Great! All you require is a good internet connection to remain active and an enriched online profile with recommendations from clients and colleagues.
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Using Social Media To Promote Start-Up Businesses
Social Media Marketing Role In Technology
Why Your Business Should Care About Social Responsibility
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Social media has been the cornerstone of B2C marketing for a long time. However, when it comes to B2B marketing and sales, it is only fairly recently that social media channels have started to dominate.
And while most B2B marketers now realize the enormous potential of this type of marketing, only true experts have figured out that simple presence on social media is far from enough. To raise awareness of your business, you need to be social on social media, which is, after all, very logical.
In other words, you need to initiate relationships, interact with people in a personal way and absorb your customer’s feedback. But apart from this, you also have to showcase your expertise in a humble way, listen to the voices and trends in your industry and keep an eye on competitors.
Marketing your business on social media can help you generate leads, improve website traffic, increase sales and create a brand identity with your target audience.
That being said, the sooner you realize that investing time and money in social media is necessary, the better results you will get. However, this type of marketing, just like crafting a Sales Enablement Strategy, takes time and skills.
Let this article be the first step on your journey to improving your B2B social media marketing. In it, you will find out the reasons why social media is essential for B2B sales and the tips on how to improve your sales through social media channels.
Why is social media so important?
Have you heard of social validation? Social validation is a basic human necessity and its presence has but skyrocketed thanks to social media.
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s report from 2017, as much as 83% of B2B marketers use social media as their preferred marketing channel. And even though increased brand awareness is one of the main goals of social media campaigns, it is far from being the only impact of this type of marketing.
As the matter of fact, social media is right at the top when it comes to the factors making the biggest impact on purchasing decisions, closely following industry analysts and web search. Therefore, it is obvious that social media is essential for B2B sales.
If you want to increase your B2B sales, you need to use the following social media platforms:
Facebook
Without a shadow of a doubt, Facebook is the number one platform. It is important for creating a community, marketing, and advertising, as well as influencing decision makers.
LinkedIn
As a platform originally intended for business purposes, LinkedIn is as influential as Facebook in some segments.
Twitter
Twitter is the final element of the social media triad, but slightly less important than Facebook and LinkedIn.
You may be wondering why Instagram and Snapchat are not on this list. And indeed, these two platforms, especially Instagram, are great for marketing. However, they are more effective for B2C marketers.
Benefits of social media marketing for B2B sales
To give you a clear picture of how social media can increase B2B sales, we will list some of the main benefits of social media marketing.
- Firstly, it builds brand awareness and visibility.
- It serves as an effective distribution channel for your business’ ideas, content and offers.
- You can create PR opportunities, brand loyalty, SEO, as well as positive web mentions by building brand advocates.
- Social media marketing drives new leads into the funnel when combined with whitepapers, fact sheets, eBooks and other content offers.
- Have you tried to use social media to increase the number of email subscribers? If you want to add more people to your mailing list, this will do wonders for your business.
- Moreover, this type of marketing is great for B2B customer feedback program and understanding the needs of your leads, customers, prospects, and advocates.
- Social media marketing can greatly improve your SEO results through third-party links, mentions, and interest in your content.
- You can build trust with your buyers by educating them and helping them understand the major factors that influence their purchasing decisions.
- Social media is perfect for B2B loyalty rewards programs and customer care.
Challenges of B2B social media marketing
There are always two sides of a coin. In spite of the numerous benefits of B2B social marketing, there are also certain challenges that B2B marketers face on a daily basis when it comes to social media.
When in Rome…
If consumers use social media for connection and entertainment, your message needs to address these requirements.
In other words, you shouldn’t slip into business jargon on Facebook or post silly memes on LinkedIn. Apart from that, you should try to establish a deeper connection with your customers by finding out what they read, what they comment on and who they follow.
This will help you better understand your prospects and existing customers, and tell them what they want to hear and how they want to hear it.
Being present 24/7
When your audience needs guidance or asks a question, you should be there for them. It is all about responding when they reach out for help.
The challenge here is to anticipate such moments and be ready to shine. Create a list of tips, reviews, product demonstrations, and video tutorials, and promote them through paid search and social advertising.
For this and similar reasons, you should constantly use social media for real-time marketing, an increasingly popular method which allows you to engage with your customers instantly.
Cherishing your influencers
Finding your perfect influencer and starting a conversation with them is one of the keys to a successful social media campaign.
To choose the right influencer for your brand, you need to study their audience, understand why they engage, what is their reach, style, and many additional aspects.
Getting serious about selling on social media
Once you have put in a lot of effort toward entertainment and connection, you need to sell. After all, that is the main goal of each business.
To grow your website traffic and nurture leads, you need to match your marketing efforts and sales goals. When you engage with the knowledgeable, empowered and well-connected customers, you practically close the gap between the social world and the business world.
The elusive ROI
Oh, the infamous ROI… This is definitely among the top challenges for all marketers, not only in the B2B field.
To get a satisfactory return on investment, you always need to give your customers new and fresh content on social media, as well as attend to their needs and join conversations with influencers. Then, when everybody starts listening to what you have to say, seize the moment and make the final move.
It is all about timing. With the right timing, you can sell everything, even ice to Eskimos.
The future of B2B sales
Everybody is wondering what the future of B2B sales will look like. So far, we can identify three main trends.
The buying process will become easier
In essence, a more open approach to purchasing is obviously emerging, as well as a multi-channel unified experience closely resembling the B2C experience.
Moreover, along with those two, the need for highly personalized interactions will result in increasing buyer trust and lead to more data becoming available.
The focus will shift to long-term customer value
Businesses will have to focus on customer needs and customize their selling approaches, Also, adding value to products and services will be an indispensable part of every sales process.
In addition, selling will become more intelligent. In other words, sales teams will need to educate customers about their needs and engage with stakeholders and decision makers to discover and highlight those needs.
Data and analytics will play a major role in creating customer value
The days of guessing in sales have long gone. To create value for customers and interact with them effectively, social media marketers will have to use data and analytics through:
- science and sales
- AI and the virtual experience
- sales and the social business
In many of these strategies, social media will play an important role. From the multi-channel approach and market intelligence to education and connection, B2B sales will be impossible without social media platforms.
Finally, from a technical point of view, it is evident that outsourcing social media is becoming increasingly popular. This is a strategy that can be very effective, especially for small businesses. However, if you decide to do this, we advise you to be careful and avoid the most common social media outsourcing mistakes.
How to Sell More on Social Media
Now that you have learned why social media is so important for the B2B sales process, you probably want to know how to use social media to increase sales.
Here are the five useful tips on how to sell more and better on social media.
Choose the right social network(s)
Not all the platforms will work for all businesses. When choosing the best social media channels for your business, you need to consider several factors:
- your niche
- your audience
- your goals
For example, according to a study by Google and Millward Brown Digital published in 2015, the number of decision makers aged between 18 and 34 years increased by 19% in only two years (from 27% in 2012 to 46% in 2014).
This is why you need to find out the favorite platform of your customers and tailor your message to them, the network and your brand.
Remember – no business jargon on Facebook or crazy memes on LinkedIn.
Be active on LinkedIn
Whatever other networks you choose, keep in mind that LinkedIn is a must. When it comes to B2B marketing, this platform is essential and you can’t risk not using it.
To shine on LinkedIn, you will have to be very active. This means that you should:
- use LinkedIn’s Saved Search feature in order to create a search based on your ideal customer profile and be notified each time such a person signs up
- join and participate in LinkedIn groups to build your network and referrals
- connect with potential customers to start conversations
Contribute to existing conversations
This goes for all the social media networks you are active on. When you contribute to conversations about your brand and interesting topics in your industry, customers see this as adding value.
The best way to do this is Twitter and its search function, but you can use other networks too.
Share relevant content
More and more B2B buyers search for information on services and products on social media. Your answer to this should be simple ‒ sharing relevant content.
This is another way to add value, and you can do it by providing white papers, product sheets, case studies, webinars, comparison worksheets and so on.
In addition, you can share useful blog posts, infographics, tutorials and other types of content. In a nutshell, you can share anything that you think could help your customers.
Use the right tools
Finally, using social media for marketing purposes without different kinds of tools is practically impossible. There are so many aspects software tools can improve and so many ways they can help you rock your campaigns that not using them is a real waste of time.
Using effective social media marketing tools will help you find more relevant content, schedule your posts, measure and analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns, as well as use that data to improve your future campaigns.
Wrapping up :
Social media networks are becoming an essential part of every B2B sales process. However, in order to sell more on social media, you need to understand all the benefits and challenges of this process.
This is definitely not a one-time activity. Rather, think of it as of a long journey that includes a lot of small steps. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock your B2B social media campaigns.
But if you take all the steps that we listed, you will find that the results will follow. This is one of those journeys that you have to enjoy if you want to reach your destination.
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Social Media Marketing: Six Trends To Keep Your Eyes On
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