by Francois Muscat | May 19, 2014 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
Kickstarter is an interactive, online platform-website which consistently generates funding, momentum and exposure for your innovative creative projects. Kickstarter opens your creative concepts to inspired financial backers who will support you in bringing your creative projects to life.
Ultimately Kickstarter allows your inspired, creative projects to acquire the necessary financial support and exposure they need to grow and materialise into tangible success.
Approaching your project launch on Kickstarter
First just choose your project category. This is a breeze due to the category list being absolutely endless. The next step is giving your creative project a title, image and video (+-3 mins), as these ultimately display the image of your creative project. These three criteria are vital to clearly and convincingly conveying your vision to backers.
Include the minimum funding figure you require for your project and set a deadline for this funding (up to 60 days). Displaying project rewards for your backers is essential. Project rewards are the benefits your backers will receive from you throughout the duration of your project development; they add value to your project, entice interest from your backers and allow you to actively engage with your backers throughout the duration of your project. Your backers are the online community which drives your project. This is where you require skills in community management.
Backers’ pledges to your project are processed through Amazon and will only reach you once your minimum funding has been achieved. If the minimum funding isn’t acquired, backers’ pledges are automatically transferred back to them.
Kickstarter also facilitates project updates. Updates on Kickstarter are crucial in allowing your backers to engage with you and remain involved your project development. This builds a vibrant, strong relationship between you and your backers and stimulates a positive reputation surrounding your project development.
To receive the strongest guidance on your website optimization, contact WSI OMS.
by Francois Muscat | Apr 9, 2014 | Articles, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
by Rob Thomas
Recognised as an expert in ‘social selling’ reputation management, digital and mobile marketing, Rob is a professional speaker both in the U.S. and across Europe.Rob is also co-author on one of Amazon’s top sellers Digital Minds: 12 Things Every Business Needs to Know about Digital Marketing – wsiuk.so/DigitalMinds
In this blog, featured on his LinkedIn, UK-based WSI Internet Consultant, Rob Thomas writes about imminent demise of the LinkedIn Company Service/Product Pages.
Monday next week (April 14th) sees the removal of products and services from LinkedIn Company Pages.
Frustrating though it may be for those of us who’ve worked hard to refine our products and services pages and get good client recommendations on them, they are going and we have to be prepared. We have to make sure we have everything in place so we do not see a major adverse impact on our company pages.
The view of LinkedIn is that by now having dedicated Showcase pages you can build stronger relationships with members who want to follow specific areas of your business, while still keeping those who have a general interest in your overall business up to date with what’s going on.
There are 3 key things you need to do
- Set up your Showcase Pages
- Copy/recover your products / services recommendations
- Think about ways to use past company recommendations and what you’ll do with future ones (personal ones can still go on LinkedIn)
The reason I put them in this order is that even though the product page recommendations will disappear on the 14th along with the pages, there is still a chance for you to recover them from LinkedIn up until 30th May. Once the product pages go, they’re gone forever!
1. Set up your Showcase pages
Each product or service you want a dedicated presence for will need its own Showcase Page. This will allow you to share product/service specific information with your target audience. Your audience will now be able to follow the areas of your business they value most, in addition to the general company content you share. You can now focus your content even more and build relationships with specific audiences.
Your company page can have up to 10 showcase pages attached to it. It’s worth taking the time to think about the essential pages you need and what you’ll call them before you start setting them up.
Click on the down arrow next to Edit at the top of your company page (don’t click on the word edit, this takes you to your main company page information). Select ‘Create a Showcase Page’ and follow the instructions.
When putting in your banner images make sure there is a consistent brand message. You may want to vary them slightly depending on your product or service but remember, these pages can now be searched for and found independently of your main company page.
We’ve decided to set up 5 Showcase Pages for now – 4 covering our main client offerings across Digital Marketing, namely; Site, Search, Social & Mobile and the last one, a repository for past recommendations and client feedback , and a place that in future we’ll share case studies and other useful information for prospective clients doing their “due diligence” – take a look:
2. Recover/retain your recommendations
If like us you’ve worked hard to get satisfied clients who use your services to publicly recommend you, then you won’t want to lose the detail of those recommendations. In some instances you may well have the recommendation elsewhere too, but if not, you only have a limited time to copy the details or get them back from LinkedIn themselves.
The quickest way is to copy and paste all the recommendations in to a document of your own. If you haven’t got time to do this before they disappear then you can request the details of recommendations that were showing on your pages up to March 4th from LinkedIn. You’ve got until May 30th to do this.
We’ve created a PDF document which people can view or download. It’s stored in a location that allows it to be easily downloaded from a link (e.g. in your email signature) AND in the personal LinkedIn profile as a document somewhere relevant (e.g. Summary or Experience).
3. Think about ways to use past company recommendations and what you’ll do with future ones
Rightly or wrongly the ability of contacts to publicly recommend your company and the services you provide via LinkedIn is gone, and recommendations will now completely relate to individuals. If you haven’t already got a Google+ page for business now may be the time to think about making sure you get one. A Google+ page connects you with customers, whether they’re looking for you on Search, Maps, Google+ or mobile devices and a business page will show your reviews.
If you are going to copy your existing recommendations and plan to use them elsewhere, make sure you get the permission of the individual who gave you the recommendation before you do.
Whilst we will still seek personal feedback through LinkedIn (as for us it’s still THE B2B Social Technology), we will now be asking for feedback on the company via Google+. I guess it’s also a good reminder never to have all your eggs in one basket!!
Here’s an example of what we’ve done. The primary advantage of using Google+ of course is that, as they are “independent reviews” (the reviewer must be logged-in to a validated Google+ account themselves) not only can the viewer see they are real and not “made up” but they’re indexed straight into Google’s SERPS results too!
You can follow Rob on Twitter or Google+
by Francois Muscat | Apr 1, 2014 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
Geo-targeting is a process by which your company delivers different information via social media to different website users based on their geographic location. If you’re a company that regularly hosts promotional parties or events in different locations, it’s a waste of time to send out the same information to people who live all throughout the country. In addition to wasting valuable time and resources, you run the risk of losing the attention of website users who simply don’t find it relevant to receive information that doesn’t pertain to them.
Using apps like Plancast, a social media platform that specialises in geo-targeting, is an excellent way to share relevant information with website users and spread promotional materials to people in specific geographic areas. Plancast, like other geo-targeting apps, allows users to say where they’re going and when and it also allows businesses to promote events and activities to people in the local area.
During a time when many people are overwhelmed with too many e-mails, too many notifications and too many e-newsletters, it’s critical to ensure that they receive information that is useful to them and geo-targeting allows you to do exactly that.
At WSI, we understand that the world of social media can seem complex and confusing at first, but it’s a necessary element of being a business owner in this day and age. If your company isn’t taking advantage of the many opportunities that social media offers, you are undoubtedly losing out on reaching new customers. We have a team of professional social media managers who can help you develop and maintain a social media presence that has a positive effect on your business – contact us today.
by Francois Muscat | Mar 20, 2014 | Social Media Optimization
Are you a business owner who is interested in improving your social media efforts, or do you need help creating a social media presence? Then WSI is here to help! Any business owner can tell you that social media is too important and too prominent to ignore; ignoring it means missing out on potential business opportunities and missing out on reaching millions of potential customers around the world.
At WSI we have a team of social media experts who specialise in social media optimisation and online community management. Social media optimisation refers to the process of identifying which platforms are best suited to your company and creating strategies and goals to build your online presence. Online community management is the process of managing the effectiveness of online campaigns your business runs. It includes monitoring the conversations involved in the campaign and evaluating its successes and failures.
- It saves you a tremendous amount of time.
- You’ll have access to our team of experts as well as the results of their extensive analytics.
- You’ll receive recommendations and insights from people who are seasoned social media managers.
- Creating an impactful social media presence can lead directly to an improvement of your company. Millions of people use social media to search for recommendations on products and services, so if you aren’t taking advantage of this then you may be missing out.
Our team of experts is standing by and ready to help. For more information about the social media services available from WSI OMS or if you have any questions, please contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you!
by Francois Muscat | Mar 13, 2014 | Social Media Optimization
In today’s business environment, having a website simply isn’t enough anymore. Having a social media presence is crucial to the success of many companies and organisations and although the world of social media can seem confusing and overwhelming, the pros at WSI are here to help. We specialise in helping companies create and establish an effective social media presence and when you partner with us, you’ll have the best in the business by your side.
Why invest in our social media services?
- We’ll help you decide which social media sites are the right fit for your company. Rather than creating an account on every popular social media site, we use our expertise to determine which sites are best suited to your industry. This saves you a huge amount of time and effort.
- It frees up a lot of valuable time for you; this is time you can devote to growing your business and other important tasks.
- Our analytics tools and social media knowledge allow us to determine which strategies are successful and which strategies aren’t, so we can create a pragmatic plan to move forward.
Establishing a social media presence isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes time, careful consideration and smart strategies. On the surface it may seem easy, but you’ll quickly find that the knowledge and expertise of our team is invaluable. Whether you want to create a social media presence from scratch or you want to improve upon your existing social media pages, WSI has the experts you need.
For more information about the social media services available from WSI OMS or if you have any questions, please contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you!
by Francois Muscat | Mar 6, 2014 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
It’s impossible to deny that social media is a huge part of almost all companies and organisations in this day and age, but many business owners find the world of social media to be confusing and overwhelming. Not to worry, because the team of social media experts at WSI is here to help! We specialise in a variety of social media services including social media optimisation and online community management; we can help your business create or improve your social media presence.
Why invest in professional social media services from WSI?
- It saves you valuable time. Creating and curating social media pages takes a considerable amount of time and your day is undoubtedly already busy.
- We can advise you on which social media platforms will be best for your company. Some social media sites may be better suited to specific types of businesses, so rather than creating an account on every single page, it’s more effective to focus on the ones that are the right fit for your company.
- We can help you through the online campaign process. From conceptualisation to execution to post-campaign evaluation, our team will be there to help you through it all.
Any company that isn’t taking advantage of all the benefits social media offers is certainly missing out on a variety of opportunities. It’s an excellent way to position yourself as an industry leader, increase your credibility, reach new customers and improve your business.
For more information about the social media services available from WSI OMS or if you have any questions, please contact us today. We look forward to hearing from you!
