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FingerCandyMedia.com Friday: Social Media Networking

Friday, April 6th, 2012

I regularly attend social networking events such as Chamber Mixers, Leads Luncheons, Industry Associations and Community Outreach Programs. These are perfect places, with some designed specifically for professionals and entrepreneurs to get together, trade business cards and obtain business from each other.

Networking events deliver value through idea sharing, communication techniques, relationship building and promoting goodwill in the perspective community. Over the years I have learned a few things from these events that I apply to Social Media/Web 2.0 Networking.

Like elbow-to-elbow networking, here are six ways to put social media to work for you!

HAVE A STRATEGY

You choose networking events wisely and should pick your social media communities the same way. Tools will change. There was a time when we all used AOL, Yahoo, MySpace … even MSN instant messaging. If you concentrate on tools, you’ll constantly be changing strategy. What’s your goal for gaining more business? Know what your target audience is looking for and how that applies to you. Focus on platforms that make sense for you your goal achievement.

10 SMS Text Marketing Advantages

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

There are numerous SMS text marketing advantages for small businesses and organizations needing to increase sales, without increasing their advertising budget. It has quickly become the leader in the mobile marketing advertising medium and for good reason. Businesses who could no longer afford or stopped getting the same results from traditional marketing such as print or direct mail have found text marketing to be the answer they have been searching for. Let’s take a look at the top 10 SMS text marketing advantages.

1) Redemption Rates: SMS text marketing averages 20% or higher redemption rates. Compare that with traditional media such as coupons, newspaper ads, radio, or direct mail which hoover around 2%.

2) Open Rate: Open rates are extremely high with text marketing. Your message is being read by 95% of recipients within 15 minutes of being sent. Email open rates in comparison average less than 20%.

3) Permission Based: Your customers must opt-in to receive messages from you. These are active buyers who want to receive more information, coupons and special offers so they may spend more money with your business.

Having a Facebook Page is not Enough

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

Is having a Facebook Page for your small business enough? More than likely it is not. While true, Facebook allows you to reach more of your customers and engage them in conversation, but if you only have Facebook as part of your online or mobile marketing strategy, you are only reaching a very small number of your customers.

True multi-channel marketing means you have multiple ways to reach and communicate with your customers. By including your website, social media, print and mobile marketing as part of a larger multi-channel marketing strategy, you are able to reach more customers and increase your sales.

From the recent Facebook Marketing Conference (FMC), page updates from your small business only reach 12% of your followers. Social media whiteout is increasing as that is a 4% decline from last year. While someone may have been engaged last year when liking your page, they are more likely to browse over or skip completely business posts and get onto interacting with their friends and playing games.

Reasons Why Businesses Engage in Mobile Marketing

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

If you haven’t already heard, mobile marketing is quickly becoming one of the “go to” marketing strategies for businesses both small and large. It’s a trend that is tough to ignore, as more people have access to a mobile device or smart phone than they do a regular computer. When you add that to the fact that a record number of people are shopping and purchasing things through their mobile devices more than ever before, you will begin to see the incredible potential for businesses to expand their reach and gain new customers.

Why Every Business Should Use Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is one of the fastest and most innovative ways to market your business to new and potential customers. It’s also one of the most cost-effective methods out there, too (when compared to print and media advertising).

If you’re on the fence about using mobile marketing to help grow your business, here are a couple of reasons that will show you why other businesses are jumping on the opportunity and why you should join them.

Mobile Phone Market Growth

Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

Mobile phone market growth has grown steadily in the smartphone market in the United States. The latest data shows that an estimated 49% of all mobile phone owners have a smartphone. Smartphone ownership also appears to be closely tied to how old you are and how much money the owner makes.

A recent Nielsen survey shows 66& of those aged 25-34 own a smartphone. For those buying in the last 3 months, a full 80% choose a smartphone. Even in other age groups, 50% choose a smartphone when making a purchase decision over the past 3 months. When accounting for income of the user, those aged 55-64 making over 100K a year, are just as likely to own a smartphone as 25-34 year olds who make much less money.

Mobile phone market growth has shown the largest growth among 18-24 year olds (up 18%). The next highest mobile phone market growth was among adults aged 45-54 (up 16%). The slowest mobile phone market growth was among people aged 64 and over (up 2%).

Understanding Twitter Follower Value

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Understanding Twitter follower value can help you decide the best course of action for managing you account and developing a Twitter marketing plan. Putting a dollar value on Twitter followers is not an exact science as not only followers have the same value.

Twitter followers that you have bought through one of many online services have ZERO value. These people were paid to follow you and are not likely to turn into a paying customer. Organic twitter followers have the greatest value. These are people who already love your business, followed a link from your website or searched for you in Twitter and want to follow you for more information and access to communicate with you.

When understanding Twitter follower value, do not confuse the number of followers with value. If you have thousands more followers then your nearest competitor, but they do not forward your links, share your tweets or click through to your website to make purchases or redeem Twitter offers, they are not of value to your business.

Use these services for further understanding of your Twitter follower value:

FingerCandyMedia.com Friday: Don’t Get Lucky- Get Results! 21 Ways to Rock Twitter

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

I write about Twitter a lot because next to MySpace it has been one of the easiest platforms I have ever used professionally to grow Social Media Networking contacts. Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs are limited to the people you bring to them, so it can be difficult to grow outside your existing network. Twitter is also been a great tool to increase traffic to other Social Media Platforms including Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and even LinkedIn.I even have clients who report website increases of up to 5,000% through Twitter efforts.

When I first wrote this list, it was January 2010. I had just about 40,000 followers on Twitter, these days I have a few more, but I still try different stuff on my account, ALL the time. It is important to experiment to see what works for you. RSS feed aggregation, curating content including quotes/posts/great articles, Re-Tweeting others, strategically following people who follow people that I think I have things in common with, and many others.

During the process I am also developing my own Socialality…Socialality is different for everyone and just like your ‘Personality,’ your Socialality should reflect you or your brands unique attributes including behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental that give you character. If you focus on your message and target people you share common ground, you WILL get results with Twitter!

I never tell people do things this way or do things that way. I firmly believe there is only one way that works. YOUR WAY. These are just suggestions that have worked for me!

SMS Text Marketing – How it Can Help You Win Over New Customers

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

Are you looking for an innovative and affordable way to reach new and existing customers? Do you want to get the most “bang for your buck” and connect with as many targeted customers as possible? If so, you need to try your hand in SMS text marketing, as it could dramatically change your business!

Why SMS Text Marketing?

It doesn’t take a hard look to see that a significant amount of people own a mobile phone. In fact, more people are switching to a mobile phone as their primary communication device. That means they have it on or around them at all times. By taking advantage of text message advertising, you have an opportunity to reach these people faster than ever before!

Why Does it Work?

When it comes to a majority of SMS text marketing campaigns, a person has to “opt-in” to receive advertising messages, making them ultra-targeted prospects. These are customers who love your business and want to receive future offers from you so they can spend more money. Combine that with messages that are short, sweet and simple and you have an incredible chance at having an incredible open rate that you will not find with ANY other form of advertising. Open rates are as high as 95% within 5 minutes of the message being sent. There is no other marketing medium that can match this. To compare, average email marketing rates, on a great campaign, only hover around 20%.

It works because people who opt-in are specifically looking for what you have to offer. All you have to do is connect with them through that one simple 160 character text message.

Reese’s runs SMS program to interact with basketball fans

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

SMS marketing contests are an interactive and fun way to engage your customers, build a mobile marketing list and attract new customers to your business. Our contest feature allows two different campaign types. Either “Text-2-Enter” or “Text-2-Win.” Text-2-Enter allows you to collect new subscribers for a set period of time and then text back individual winners of the contest. Text-2-Win allows winning text messages to be sent back instantly to winners while the contest is live. Select a certain percentage of winners to be sent winning messages instantly. Those who are not randomly selected are send a secondary message that can include a special offer or losing message.

With both types of contests your business builds a opt-in list that can be marketed to in the future with special offers, coupons and discounts. Contests when used for list building purposes can have a very high opt-in rate compared to traditional SMS marketing text-2-join list building techniques.

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