Why your business needs to get an early start on new tools.

New technological and social media tools are always emerging and creating new opportunities for businesses. It is important for your business to create an account and stay up to date amongst new tools for a multitude of reasons. One reason it is important to keep up to date with new tools is because you never know what will become incredibly popular, and it is crucial to claim a user name. For example Facebook was once a new tool and now has helped to increase social media marketing capabilities. Another reason why it is important to keep up on new tools is your business can get ahead of its competitors, and gain a high social presence within the tool.

                One new tool that that should be adopted into businesses social media strategies is Vine.  Vineis an application that allows users to upload 6 second videos that are edited in short clips. Businesses can use Vine to humanize their brand and give customers a simple, sneak peak of meaningful content.  So what exactly can businesses do with Vine? There are a lot of possibilities such as product demonstration, elevator pitches, marketing promotions, testimonials and interviews that can take place within the six second limit of Vinevideos.

Vineand other new tools are very important for businesses to join and stay up to date on. Hopefully you learned something interesting today and can use this information to give your business a head start on new tools. Thanks for reading my blog today!

Get on the map with Geotagging!

Location based tagging services, also known as Geotagging are becoming increasingly popular amongst consumers in the United States. Currently Foursquare is dominating the market and is the leading Geotagging application. Foursquare allows users to check into their current location and earn points to compete with their friends. They can also compete to be the “mayor” of that certain location by having the most check-ins within a certain time frame. Foursquare is a tremendous opportunity for businesses because consumers tend to trust peer recommendations over traditional advertising and love getting discounts.

Consumers can leave tips about a location as well as search for recommended places nearby. Businesses’ can offer specials to users that check in on Foursquare, as well as create badges for completing certain tasks. This will help to build customer loyalty because people will want to keep coming back to earn more points and receive more discounts. Foursquare can not only help businesses build a strong loyal customer base, but also help to bring in new customers and let the business know exactly who those customers are. After becoming familiar with Foursquare businesses should create their location and add the company information to their page.

Tips to best utilize Foursquare

·         Advertise your Foursquare account

o   Make sure to tell customers to check into foursquare with advertisements throughout your brick and mortar business.

o   Have your employees informed about your Foursquare specials.

o   Use other social media sites to promote your Foursquare location.

·         Use a variation of specials

o   Offer different specials every week so customers stay interested and engaged.

o   Offer better specials for the mayor to increase customer loyalty efforts.

o   Offer group specials such as a checking in with multiple people.

o   Get creative with unique specials to stand out amongst other businesses.

 

Foursquare has incredible potential for creative advertising strategies, and increasing brands awareness. Businesses should take advantage of this type of social media and use it to its full capability. Thanks for reading my blog today! Hopefully you learned some helpful information on how to get on the map with Geotagging!

Blogging your way to a better brand

Blogging is a very important aspect of social media marketing that is frequently underestimated. A lot of companies think of blogs as an outdated source of social media and decide to skip creating them altogether.  However, blogs are one of the best forms of social media to easily create relevant content for your target audience.  Blogs are extremely effective in increasing your brands SEO and drives search engines to new up to date information. They can also help to increase the traffic to your website and are a great way to communicate with customers. Southern New Hampshire University has multiple blogs from the president, faculty, current students, and alumni. They do a great job creating content, however they could improve on sharing the blogs through social media.  Some important tips to blog your way to a better brand are outlined below.

How Often Should You Blog?

·         Frequency of blogs is important but consistency is key.

o   It is important to blog often depending on your company’s capabilities. For example a small firm might only be capable of blogging once a month compared to a large firm blogging weekly.

o   The key is to keep your posts consistent. For example, if you post weekly try to post around the same time on the same day of the week so your audience will know when to look for your posts.

Guidelines for your Blog

·         Keep the format and fonts unique and consistent.

o   Make sure to use the same font, style, and personality for your writing throughout the existence of your blog.

o   Create a unique background display, relating to your company.

o   Have an exciting title to get users to read your blog

·         Content is more important than length.

o   Make sure to create meaningful, current, and relevant content.

o   Keep the length between a half a page and 2 pages.

·         Integrate your blog with other sites.

o   Link the blog and create share buttons with other forms of social media to reach the largest audience.

o   Make sure to link the blog to your website to increase the traffic flow and brand awareness.

o   Use Google AdWords for your title to increase SEO.

o   Use “link love”, make sure to provide backlinks to other sites that are referenced. This will help you in the future if you ever need help from these sites.

Hopefully this information will help you start blogging your way to a better brand. The most important thing to take out of reading this blog is that blogging is not an outdated from of social media, and is actually one of the best ways to create meaningful content on the internet. Thanks for reading my blog today! Hopefully you found this information helpful, and will check back for my next post.

Picture Sharing is Taking Over!

Well, that title might be a bit of an exaggeration, but picture sharing is certainly blowing up right now. With the rise of smartphones, people are now uploading pictures on the go and picture sharing is really taking off. One of the most popular picture sharing applications is Instagram. Instagram allows users to upload and take pictures with their mobile phone and edit the pictures to their liking. Users then post the photos with a description, and it appears on their follower’s timeline.  Brands everywhere are jumping on the Instagram craze, but like all forms of social media it is crucial to understand how to correctly utilize this application. Southern New Hampshire University does an excellent job correctly utilizing their Instagram page and provides many great examples I will outline below.

Keys to a successful Instagram campaign

·         Integrate with other sites:

o   When creating an Instagram campaign it is important to not just rely on Instagram and to integrate your account with other social media applications.

o   @SNHU links their Pictures to Twitter and Facebook to maximize the viewing potential.

·         Use #hashtags:  

o   #hashtags will allow you to easily connect and find related content and users.

o   @SNHU will follow and create certain #hashtags such as the #SNHUItaly and be able to follow events related to campus.  

·         Involve the community

o   Repost pictures from users that are relevant to your content and make sure to credit them in the post.

o   @SNHU will repost pictures relating to campus and give credit to the user and tag their name.

o   Create best picture of the week contests to get the community engaged.

o   @SNHU successfully did this and featured a theme of the week such as alumni weekend.

·         Allow people to see behind the scenes and promote your features and products.

o   Giving people a look behind the scenes will keep people interested and talking about your brand.

o   @SNHU Instagram pictures of updates on new construction on campus such as the inside of the new dorm building.

These are just a few important tips and examples to get your brand on track.If you would like some more information check out this helpful video below by 500 social media tips. Instagram is unquestionably a great tool for businesses and can help to create a positive perceived image in the consumers mind. Thanks for reading my blog today; hopefully you can take away with you the importance of picture sharing in social media marketing!

How to Optimize Microblogging for Brands

              

  Microblogging is a great tool that allows you to quickly and easily create content that can spread like wildfire across the internet.   Twitter is currently the most predominant and successful Microblogging media, and if used correctly can significantly improve a brands image and awareness. Everyone has heard of Twitter, however, it is important that brands are aware of the potential behind this microblog. Twitter is an easy to use social network that allows users to create 140 characters worth of content and tweet it to the world. Most major companies have already started using Twitter to their advantage. One brand that has an impressive Twitter campaign is Southern New Hampshire University. This school does an excellent job of correctly utilizing Twitter to accomplish goals.  Below I will outline some of the tips of becoming a pro Microblogger and give an example of how SNHU is correctly utilizing Twitter.

Tips of becoming a Pro Microblogger

·         Engage and interact with your followers

o   Retweet and reply to users

§  @SNHUOnCampus retweets positive tweets about SNHU from Incoming and current students and many others

§  They also respond to negative comments and concerns and attempt to resolve the problems.

o   Utilize #hashtags and Twitter parties

§  @SNHUOnCampus follows #hashtags involving SNHU students such as #SNHUItaly when students went abroad through the school for spring break

§  They then retweeted the tweets and increased the awareness of the program

·         Provide relevant information

o   personable and interesting

§  @SNHUOnCampus will tweet about interesting topics for their audience

·         Class cancellations

·         Campus events

·         Articles about SNHU

·         Student and faculty success’s

These are just a few key factors of becoming a pro Microblogger that can be used to improve both brands and personal accounts.  Thanks for reading my blog today, hopefully you learned something new and found it interesting! Stay posted for my next blog about picture sharing!

Target Audience

Hello, today I will be talking to you about the difference between online and offline target audiences.  Throughout the semester I have been following Southern New Hampshire University through various forms of social media. SNHU is a brand that does a great job with social media, partially due to the fact that they understand the difference between their online target audience and offline target audience. Both online and offline target audiences are important in developing a strong perceived image and awareness of your brand. In terms of social media, which is made up of user generated content it is important to be able to understand your audience.

This is where the Groundswell tool comes in handy. This tool classifies consumers into seven overlapping levels of social participation. This tool is extremely helpful in understanding your audience and what types of social media will best reach them. For Southern New Hampshire University the groundswell tool is as follows. SNHU’s main target audience’s demographics are both males and females in the united states between the ages of 18- 24. According to the Groundswell tool, SNHU’s target audience mainly falls into the spectators and joiners classifications and has a very low amount of innovators.  SNHU does a very good job of targeting their online audience and understanding where and what they will be doing online.

Once you understand the Groundswell tool in relation to your company you can start to understand and use COBRA motivation. When developing a strategy and deciding on objectives, it is essential to make sure to look at the motivations of your target audience.  COBRA motivations are motivations to consume, contribute and create content and are separated into low, middle, and high engagement. Southern New Hampshire University also must have a good understanding of the motivations of their online target audience because they are very active and engaged on social media. Thanks for reading my blog today, hopefully you learned something interesting!

Tweeting Bikes Coming to South By Southwest

Today i will be blogging about an interesting current event that i read about on mashable.com. The article was titled Tweeting Bikes Coming to South By Southwest.   Digital ad agency Razorfish will be sending out about twenty bike strategically placed at high capacity events. These bike will be free to use and contain GPS and its own twitter ID. They will then be tweeting this about there location, the weather, and other topics of interest. The bikes will also have QR codes that will send the riders to usemeleaveme.com and are pushing the hashtag usememleaveme. If the bikes are stolen the twitter account will then tweet RIP and sign off.

I think this is a very cool idea to promote Razorfish's ad agency and is a very unique social experiment. I think that if this program works well, other businesses could develop similar products which would be a great form of social interaction and involvement between companies and customers.  This will be an interesting concept to check up on and see how the program worked out.
Thanks for reading today and come back for more interesting posts in two weeks!