Blog

Should Your Small Business Use Twitter?

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Twitter has grown to over 100 million users and recent Apple iOS integration has increased signups by over 25%. More than 5 years old now and still less than 10% of small businesses use Twitter as part of their marketing strategy. Twitter can have a tremendous upside when used to attract new customers and communicate with existing ones. Reduced marketing expenses is also a key reason to continue exploring social media as way to cut costs while driving new brand engagement and sales.

Take a look at this infographic from flowtown to help you determine is your business should use twitter.

Young Adults the Most Active Users of Text Messaging

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

A study by Pew Internet confirms that text messaging is the most common use of mobile phones outside of voice calls. Some 73% of all users use text messaging and send or receive an average of 41.5 messages a day. If your primary marketing demographic is 18-29 year old people, the reach potential for your customer base is staggering. 95% of people aged 18-29 use text messaging daily. In this demographic, an average of 87.7 messages are sent or received each day.

For those of you with businesses in college towns or focused on a younger demographic, the potential for you to reach out and market to this audience directly with text marketing is huge. No other medium allows you to build a list of customers that want to receive your offers and market to them where they communicate.

SMS Marketing White Label Launch Next Week

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

After many months of development, we are closing in on our official launch date of January 23, 2012 for our much anticipated white label program for text message marketing.

Please fill out the online form and tell us a little about you and your company. This will only take a minute of your time and will help us to ensure we are a great match to work together.

FILL OUT THE WHITE LABEL APPLICATION HERE

We are opening slots in blocks of 5 to ensure we are able to provide the best customer service and support available in the white label market.

Features Include:

The ability to integrate our SMS marketing platform with your website and company.
Fully brandable interface.
Accept payments directly and set your own pricing.
Sign up customers automatically online.
All of the SMS campaign types featured at Moto Message.
No technical skills required.
Training and support included to maximize your potential.

FingerCandyMedia.com Friday- @HashTracking #Twitter #Chat Analytics

Friday, January 13th, 2012

I have had a few people ask, “How do you get the analytics for Twitter Chats or Hashtags.” Well, I recently started using a service called HashTracking. They are very wonderful people, quick to respond and very easy to work with. They even provide Snapshots of Tweets, Impressions & Reach, Top 20 List, Drill-down Content Analysis, Detailed Contributor List and Full Transcripts. (mind you this is not a paid endorsement or advertisement of any kind, I just REALLY love their service!)

Twitter hashtag analytic’s also give you a way to:

Track Campaigns
Measure Reach
Calculate Influence
Create Beautiful Presentations

8 Free Tools to Make More of Your Small Business Marketing

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

HubSpot has a suite of free tools you can use to measure the effectiveness and reach of your website, social media and marketing efforts. Each tool takes only seconds to input the required information and have relevant data provided to you on screen that you can use to increase and dial in your marketing campaigns.

Their Twitter grades will tell you in seconds how you rank in key metrics such as power, reach and authority versus other businesses in your market.They also have a Facebook grader which works in a similar fashion.

The Search grader is the best free tool we have come across to instantly view where your website is ranking for found keyword terms and we use it to help improve our search engine optimization efforts.

Take a few minutes to check your marketing efforts using these free tools and use the results to tweak your social media, blogging, website and SEO campaigns.

View all of these free tools and more at Grader.com.

FingerCandyMedia.com Friday: Are You Talking To Me?

Friday, December 30th, 2011

When you tweet, post, blog, circle, email *send smoke signals* who are you trying to reach?

Are you trying to reach me? Well, not technically me, but the “me” in your audience. Do you talk to “me” in words “I” understand and follow things that are important to “me”?

There is this term in ad sales called “Spray and Pray”. It refers to throwing a bunch of things at people hoping one will stick. It assumes that you are not listening to your client and just trying to push something on them or sell them something. Granted not everyone is trying to sell online, many people just use Twitter or Facebook as a personal branding tool to express their individuality, and some might only hope that this will attract and lead people back to their primary business. For example, I am not selling a book, seminars or any product *yet* and my consulting specialty doesn’t really cater to the average person online. My business is niche media and to be honest, I don’t really get clients from Twitter or Facebook. My business has been 100% referral from past involvement in broadcasting as a Non Traditional Sales Manager (that’e what we called digital marketing back then) and speaking at a lot conferences; however I got there by proving myself and knowledge I have gained from using these platforms.

Text Message Marketing White Label Program Update

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

We will be launching our powerful text message marketing white label program in January 2012. This SMS platform is for agencies who would like to offer SMS marketing to existing and new customers. The platform will utilize Moto Message’s technology integrated into your own website.

If you are interested in adding text message marketing to your suite of marketing options for your clients, please join our early notification list. We will be opening the program in waves of 10 to ensure we are able to provide the same high level of customer service that we do to our own clients.

Agency partners will be able set set their own rates, accept direct payments and create robust text marketing campaigns that will help their clients increase sales and exposure into 2012 and beyond.

Join the email list here to receive notification in mid January of the first 10 spots to open.

FingerCandyMedia.com Friday: Do You Have An Eggs or Bacon Social Media Plan?

Friday, December 16th, 2011

The other day, over my bowl of cereal, the ole Bacon and Eggs adage came into my mind; you have heard that one right?
In a Bacon and Eggs breakfast, the Chicken is involved BUT the Pig is committed.

The act of committing yourself to something is defined as pledging and/or completely engaging yourself in the endeavor. It can be very easy to mistake enthusiasm for a project, as dedication, often times we just ‘get involved’ in projects and fall short of seeing them through.

Over three years ago when I started Finger Candy Media, had no idea what I was getting myself into. I understood marketing, promotions and advertising just as much as anyone else who has been in the business over 15 years; but initially only courted the idea of a Mobile Marketing company. After doing the research and running the numbers it just didn’t add up to what I thought were my strengths.

Mobile Pull and Mobile Push Marketing

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Mobile pull marketing and mobile push marketing are terms also used for text message marketing. Mobile pull marketing is a way to have your potential customers interact with your advertising and “pull” them into a purchase. A method to use Moto Message for mobile pull marketing is adding a “text call to action” on your print marketing, online marketing and in store. The customer responds by texting your keyword to our shortcode, 83936. A text message special offer is automatically returned to the customer with the goal of pulling them into taking action towards a purchase.