by Francois Muscat | Jan 25, 2013 | Social Media Optimization
Social media is an ever-evolving phenomenon and the trends change on a frequent basis. By creating and maintaining a constant presence on various social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Tumblr, you can establish long-lasting relationships with fans and customers and find new ways to advertise yourself. At WSI, our social media experts can help you develop a long-term social media strategy designed to reach your target market.
Building a loyal and interactive following on social media takes time, so don’t expect instantaneous results. It’s important to constantly monitor your social media accounts and keep the content fresh; if people see that your Facebook page hasn’t been updated in a week or that you haven’t sent out any tweets in a few days, they might lose interest and move on. Once you’ve built a solid following and interact with customers on a regular basis, you’ll be able to raise your brand awareness and speak directly to your target audience.
Social media optimisation is an important part of any social media plan. At WSI we offer social media optimisation services including:
- Adding optimised content to your social media pages on a regularly-scheduled basis
- Managing your online reputation and monitoring what’s being said about you
- Track and capitalise on traffic and visitor trends
- Encouraging social media visitors to interact, tag and share your online content
We understand that social media can be overwhelming for a lot of people, and companies may be fearful to get started because it seems confusing and messy. But we live in a digital era and if you don’t have social media pages you are most certainly losing out on business and customers. Let us help you create a social media strategy that works for you.
To learn more about WSI’s social media services, contact us today!
by Marelise da Silva | Jan 10, 2013 | Social Media Optimization
When we think of social media we often think that it is very time consuming. If you are a B2C company you may be using social media for customer support or customer feedback. Many B2C’s use Twitter as an easy channel for their customers to contact their support staff.
If you are a B2B marketer your social media will primarily be a broadcasting tool. Your aim may be to inform and educate your audience. For these marketers it is advisable that their teams schedule updates to go out beforehand. Tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and Sprout Social lets you load and schedule your social updates. Facebook also allows scheduling on Facebook pages.
This means you can effectively manage your work day and spend less time online scanning feeds. Plan your content ahead of time and think creatively about creating more blogs, video’s, Slideshare presentations and free downloads such as e-books that will drive traffic to your site.
Your social media team can then check in on their social media feeds a few times a day to take part in conversations or to reply to comments and replies. We suggest that you check your social media at least 3 times per day. A quick 15 minute scan of your feeds should be enough. Scheduling tools such as Hootsuite lets you add listening tools so that you can stay on top of certain trends or keywords.
Why not spend some time making your social media efforts more efficient this month? If you need help managing your social media or content marketing, contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Nov 16, 2012 | Social Media Optimization
Being seen as a thought leader goes hand in hand with digital marketing. In this day and age, word of mouth an impressive title on your office door will only take you so far. So how do you create awareness about your business, your project or the service you offer? Creating a TED Talk is one of the ways to do this.
When I say “create a TED Talk” – I don’t mean you have to feature a video on the TED website or YouTube channel, what I mean is that you need to start presenting in the same compelling way that TED speakers do. You also need to make a video of your presentation and share it so that more people can see it, thereby increasing the exposure you get from your efforts.
Here are some ways to make sure your presentations and videos are as engaging as TED Talks:
- Make your idea worth spreading. TED’s pay-off line is “ideas worth spreading”, because nobody gets up on stage and starts selling their products or services – what they’re selling are stories. People love hearing stories so you need to make sure your presentation is creating an experience for the audience. Share your facts and expertise through stories for maximum impact.
- Keep it short. TED presentations are 20 minutes max. Many business owners would find it hard to give a presentation on a niche subject in such a short time. The only way to keep it short while still keeping it relevant is to create context quickly. Choose striking images that can help your story along, provide context while simultaneously giving your audience something visually interesting to look at.
- Plan and prepare: Your opening, closing and transitions are very important. Put a lot of time into planning your presentation to make sure you have the same tone and style throughout – this will make it easy to keep your audience captivated.
- Share and post: Social media can help you spread your presentation. You can either make a video of your presentation (while you speak in the background) or you could have someone film you while you talk. Upload to YouTube and share across all your social media channels.
Need help with your digital marketing? Contact WSI OMS today!
by Francois Muscat | Jun 13, 2012 | Social Media Optimization
If you own a business or brand that relies heavily on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, you may often find yourself spending more time than you’d like on updating your accounts for your fans to read. Constantly pulling up different accounts on your computer or mobile phone can be a time consuming process, and finding unique content while you’re busy with more important things can be a serious distraction to keeping yourself or your employees productive during a busy day. Most likely, you need a way to make posting an efficient process that can be done whenever and wherever you are, even if you’re not at your desk or near your phone.
With tools like HootSuite, Tweetdeck or Sendible, you can keep your social media strategy going in your sleep…literally. With the ability to schedule posts all at once for a week, month or even a year (this isn’t advised – but it’s possible), these tools make managing all of your Facebook and Twitter accounts a snap. You no longer need to log out of one account and go to another. You can even duplicate one post across different social media platforms, making things even more efficient than they were before. Simply select the account or accounts that you want to post to, schedule the post and sit and wait for them to appear in your followers’ timelines.
If you do decide to go with a strategy that allows you to bulk update and schedule posts for your social media channels, make sure that you at least continue to monitor posting activity by others who respond to your posts. Not doing so could lead to a very sour taste in people’s mouths. This lack of interaction isn’t only annoying, but it makes it quite clear that you’ve resorted to a method of bulk posting or scheduling posts which often comes off as impersonal.
You’ll also want to make sure that you address any breaking news or happenings that are relevant to your business or brand pages. Keep an eye on the news and use additional posts when necessary to let people know that you are in fact paying attention to what is going on in your industry. Being able to combine these strategies can save you hours of time in the long run. Additionally, bulk updating and scheduling your posts keeps your business going online even when your offices have closed for the evening, but you can’t automate everything and your social media strategy will still require a personal touch.
Need help with your social media strategy? Contact WSI OMS today!
by Marelise da Silva | Jul 15, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
This is the third part in the series Social Media Optimization Fundamentals. Find below links to the other parts.
Social media is huge. If you search on Google for the term “social media”, you will get more than 200 million hits in less than a second. You can find thousands of blogs full of topics regarding social media and hundreds of services measuring it. There is more than 300 million users of online social media tools and the number is accelerating.
Social Media Recruitment
These days if you are looking for a job, most employers will check the obvious social media spaces for more information about you. The same happens in every day when people are searching for more information about you, your brand and your organization. People want to see who they are dealing with and they can make quick judgements on your ability to effectively represent yourself online.
Usually it takes time and dedication to build your reputation with social media so that it is impressive enough to get the job or business lead that you want. Sometimes when people are interested enough to search (Google) about you, it might be too late to update your social media profiles or open a Facebook account. Your social media presence must already be in place and optimized.
Find below a couple of tips you can use to make yourself known in social media circles.
Photo
Get a good photo of yourself and replace it with the current one you are using. No one wants to see an old photo of you in a suit when “mullets” where the in thing. Most of the times your social media photo will be the new handshake and first impressions last.
LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn is a professional social networking service. Find below a couple of tips you can use to bring your LinkedIn profile up to date.
- Add your new photo to your profile.
- Complete your employment history. This can also be seen as your “work experience”.
- Add previous employers to your network.
- Find a good group to join. I’ve created a group “Social Media South Africa”.
- Get people to write a recommendation for you and do the same for them.
Google Alerts
Create Google Alerts on the topics that are most important to you. Choose the keywords to follow that describes the best what you are looking for. This can lead you to the most active and relevant on-line communities to join. You can also use the alerts to check your own brand, product or service in blogs and on the web.
Bookmarking
Bookmark the top blogs and communities in your space and actively participate on them. Resellers and customers regularly read important blogs by industry. Subscribe to the RSS feed of those blogs so you will be notified of any changes as it happens.
Blogging
Try to create a new blog post at least every second day. If you read a blog by a reseller, post a positive message at the bottom. If you visit a Forum discussing an interesting question, weigh in with your opinion. If you are in a partner community, be as visible as possible.
Social media is not going away and in some countries it is only starting to surface now. Become active using social media before it’s too late. Leave a comment below if you require more information regarding social media optimization.
by Marelise da Silva | Jul 13, 2010 | Social Media Optimization
Yesterday I did a post titled “Part 1: Social Media Optimization” where I explained the basics of Social Media Optimization. In this post I will be explaining it even further.
Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Social Media Marketing and Social Media Optimization goes hand in hand. Here is a quick recap on what Social Media Marketing exactly is below
If SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about optimizing and building up the content found on your website and then waiting so that search engines and crawlers can index it, Social Media Optimization is about knocking down the walls of your site so that your content can be found faster.
What a mouthful! Read it again and think about it.
Will you be happy if targeted users finds your content faster than the search engines? Why wait for search engines to index your website when other people can do it for you and share it with their communities? Well it sounds nice and easy but how will users find you? This is where Social Media Optimization comes into place.
Social Media Optimization Methods
There’s a couple of social media optimization methods to optimize your online profile to be more visible to users on the web. One of the easiest methods is by adding social network and bookmark buttons on your website or blog so that users can share your content with a simple click of a button. But what if your users don’t know about your website and content?
To get the best results from social media you will need the right link magnet. If you present the right link magnet at the right time and to the right audience, you will be getting unimaginable amounts of traffic to your website. Faster than any search engine could ever have indexed your pages. To give you an example – for a new company to have a listing on Digg on their home page can offer instant visibility to them as thousands of people view Digg everyday.
For an established company, it can strengthen their brand awareness. The key to social media is knowing how to leverage it and the ability to attract, engage and convert new visitors. Reaching out to social communities to bring attention to your brand is not a new concept. In today’s technology driven world, if done right the benefit with social media optimization is huge.
Benefits of Social Media Optimization
The benefits of SMO could vary depending on what your goals and objectives are. For some companies, it is the instant exposure and high volume of traffic to their online profiles that it creates. Traffic alone does not increase conversions and revenue. The trick is to capture those first time (unique) visitors and convert them into loyal community members.
The benefit of optimization your site for social media inspires you to create rich informative content which can help build trust and credibility. Become the expert in your field and expose your content to thousands of new visitors.
Leave a comment below if you require more information regarding Social Media Optimization. Watch this space for the next part of this series.
