Social media isn’t a lever you pull that instantly generates leads. Instead, it’s more of a gradual dial that you need to turn up slowly, over time. Any mistake in the process could lead to your leads drying up.

These are seven of the most common mistakes people make in social media. Fix them and your leads will start flowing in.

1. You’re in the Wrong Social Media

No matter how well you’re executing your social media plan, if you’re in the wrong type of media, your message isn’t going to be heard.

If you’re regularly publishing on Facebook and Twitter but you’re primarily targeting CEOs who only spend time on LinkedIn, then your strategy really isn’t going to work.

Figure out where your market spends their time. Then create a strong presence in those social media networks.

2. Not Putting Likes and Shares on Your Website

Inspite all that social media has going for it, one thing it’s not great at is getting initial traffic. It’s great for following up with readers and it’s great for putting out viral content. But the best way to get people into your social media funnel is still your own website.

Make sure that you have the like buttons, share buttons, tweet buttons and follow buttons embedded on your website to generate healthy social media leads.

3. Not Making the Most of Captured Attention

When someone on social media comes to your page, you have something that’s extremely rare: Your customer’s attention.

Don’t waste it. Make sure that every inch of your social media real estate is filled with value adding, brand building material.

For example, if you have a Facebook page, make sure that you have everything filled out: make sure you have company information, website details, photos, etc all uploaded to your page.

4. Not Adding Value Through Content

Marketers who treat social media as just a platform to push advertising are missing the boat. Not only won’t they get buyers, but they’ll alienate their platform.

However, even marketers who don’t make that mistake still often don’t provide enough value. Giving updates about your company for example doesn’t count as adding value to your customers’ lives.

In order for your social media lead generation initiatives to really take off, it has to really make your customers’ lives better. You need to solve problems for your customers. You need to provide valuable content that your customers will be glad you shared.

5. Not Combining With Email

Social media shouldn’t be a standalone endeavour. Instead, social media lead generation activities should always be combined with other ways of following up with users, most notably email marketing.

Email marketing is more effective than social media for following up. Something that you post on a Facebook feed might never be seen by your followers. On the other hand, an email you send is guaranteed to be delivered.

That said, email doesn’t have the viral power of social media. People don’t pass on emails the way they share things on Facebook or Twitter. The best way to get both follow up power and viral power is to use both email and social media in conjunction to build social media leads.

6. Not Clearly Directing Users to Take Action

As a website owner or marketer, it’s easy to assume that other people know what you want them to do. However, the reality is most people really don’t.

Don’t assume that people know you want them to visit your site, to give you their email, to call your company or to buy your product. Tell them explicitly what to do.

One simple reason you might not be generating the kinds of social media leads you want is because you aren’t asking for the leads.

7. No Clear Tracking Metrics

Without clear metrics for tracking how you’re doing in social media, it can be very hard to tell if you’re succeeding or failing.

Pick one to five metrics that you want to optimize for, then steadily work to improve those metrics. For example, you might want to increase the number of times your content gets shared every time you post an update. Or you might just want to increase your visitor count.

These are seven of the most common reasons why social media users fail to generate leads. If the social media leads aren’t flowing in, look to see if you’re making one of these mistakes. If you are, that’s where your problem lies.

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Here are five tips to help you deal with this kind of negative customer-sourced publicity.

1. Never Ignore It

Perhaps the worst thing you could do when it comes to negative publicity is ignore it and hope that it disappears on its own. It simply doesn’t. In fact, if anything, it will get worse and worse until you handle the situation.

Assume that any piece of negative review online is an urgent action that needs attention.

2. Respond Quickly

If you respond fast, you’ll be able to keep the fire to a minimum. You’ll also send the message to your consumers that you care and that you’re paying enough attention to catch problems before they become too big.

To illustrate the point with a counter-example, take a look at United Airline’s “United Breaks Guitars” colossal blunder. When a customer who was a musician witnessed seeing his guitar thrown by United Airlines employees and found this guitar broken afterwards, he complained. United refused to pay for the damages.

He wrote a song about it and posted it on YouTube. United Airlines didn’t respond until hundreds of thousands of people already saw the video. Today, the video has over 11 million views. Watch the video here.

If United Airlines had addressed the issue either on the spot or when it became clear that the customer was going to make an issue out of it, they would have saved the company millions of dollars in bad publicity.

3. Learn the Lessons

In every customer complaint is a lesson about how you can better run your business.

It takes a lot of effort to write a bad review. If someone went through the trouble of creating an account on a review site, spending half an hour typing up the review and then posting it online, chances are someone in your company did something very wrong.

Look at how you can improve your processes or policies. Look at whether or not you have an employee who’s damaging the reputation of your company. Look for ways to ensure that it never happens again.

4. Know What You Can and Can’t Do on Major Sites

Each industry has its major players in the review space. If you’re a hostel, it might be HostelWorld and TripAdvisor. If you’re a restaurant, it’s Yelp and CitySearch.

Furthermore, there are sites like RipOffReport and the Better Business Bureau that apply to just about any kind of business.

Get to know the policies of the most important sites. Know if you can or can’t take down reviews. Know if you can or can’t post your side of the story for any given review. Know if you can or can’t contest a complaint or resolve it and have it removed.

Knowing what you can and can’t do on these sites gives you more versatility when it comes to formulating an appropriate response.

5. Systematize It

If you’re running a small business, you might be able to handle negative customer reviews on a case by case basis. But as your business grows, you’ll want to develop a system for handling it instead.

Having a system for dealing with these kinds of issues will help you make sure that nothing slips through the cracks and goes unaddressed. It’ll also help make sure that issues get resolved in a timely manner. There should be a clear chain of command and clear delegation of who’s responsible for handling these issues.

If you follow these five tips, you’ll be able to handle the vast majority of negative customer remarks that are thrown at you. Though the ideal solution is of course not to get negative remarks at all, it pays to be prepared for when it happens.

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Marketing to these fans involves understanding and using a different kind of psychology. Fans can be unforgiving of marketers who don’t speak their language. Speak to them in the right way however and you’ll have earned yourself the most loyal followers in the world.

Here are five tips for marketing to sports fans on Facebook.

1. Host a Discussion

Sports fans love to talk. They love sharing notes about their teams, reliving highlights from the last game, bashing on opponents and even just plain chatter. They love sports and they love talking about sports.

Not everyone can make it to an in person sports game. Sports lovers want to feel like they’re part of the game experience, even if they’re not there. Hosting live discussions allows them to talk about the action as its happening even if they couldn’t make it to the game itself.

2. Talk About it All Week

One big mistake marketers make is only marketing to sports fan when there’s a game on. However, sports fans are sports fans 24/7 – They want to talk about it all day, all night, whenever they can.

Before a game, there’s the leadup. They can talk about the players, the matchup, who they think will win, trash talk the opponent, get excited, etc.

After the game, they can discuss what happened and celebrate or commiserate the results.

Don’t just market to them during game time. Market to them all week. Every day.

3. Get Some Team Interaction

If you have a large enough audience, try reaching out to the team itself to see if you can get a team member to do something for your group.

Even if it’s just something as simple as a quick shoutout from their Facebook account, it can make a big difference.

Of course, if you can get them to do something more elaborate like a video or a Q&A session, that’s even better.

Fans love to get real interactions with their teammembers. If you can bring them that, they’ll follow you to the ends of the world.

4. Get Creative

Bring your fans content that they’ll love. Come up with creative contests, content giveaways, exclusive interviews, live videos and anything else you can think of for content that your fans will love.

In between games, come up with different things that you can entertain your fans with. For example, create trivia polls that test your fans’ knowledge of their team. Or show replays with your own analysis of the game.

Or you could host specific discussion panels. For example, talk about whether or not a specific strategy was a good idea from the last game.

If you can give special rewards, such as free tickets to winners, that can also go a long way towards getting your fans excited.

5. Ask Them What They Want

With most audiences, marketers tend to just send whatever they’ve got at their audience and hope it sticks. With sports fans however, you’re dealing with much more of a community.

Instead of just marketing to them in the way that you think they want to be marketed to, try asking them what they want. Sports fans will often be willing to share great ideas that you can easily implement.

These five tips will help you connect with and market to your sports fans. Marketing to sports fans isn’t easy, as they’re truly a fanatical and dedicated bunch. But if you can earn their trust, that rapid excitement can turn into devotion towards your brand.

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Here are four of the most important things to know before starting your social media contest.

#1 – The Legalities

When you’re doing an online contest, you should almost definitely have a lawyer look over your legal disclaimers and the contest as a whole to make sure you’re fully compliant.

Different states have different laws about what you can and can’t do in a contest. Sweepstakes can never require a purchase. Contests that are based on skill or participation have special rules as well.

Your contest will need to have appropriate disclaimers. These should be written by a lawyer. It’s important to realize that you can actually get sued if you don’t have your legalities down.

#2 – Understand Cheating

Cheating is an often under looked aspect of online contests. If there’s real monetary value to the prizes you’re offering, there’s a very good chance you’ll attract people who won’t play by the rules.

Forms of cheating include using proxy servers to vote on their own submission, hiring out voting or other processes overseas or even downright hacking.

Start by studying how contest players game various different kinds of systems. Then implement basic protections, such as one vote per IP, cookies to track users, etc.

Finally, check your logs regularly to see if there’s any suspicious activity. For example, if you suddenly see 2,000 users an hour coming from Vietnam voting on one user, you might start to get a little suspicious.

#3 – A Prizing Strategy

Having a great prize is at the heart of every successful contest. Your prize has to be good enough that people will spend time, put in energy and enroll their friends all for the chance to win.

If you want your contest to really take off, you’re going to have to have prizes that are worth at least hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

Popular generic prizes include iPads, computers, gaming consoles, around the world tickets, vacations and cash cards.

Industry specific prizes tend to do really well. For example, if you’re in the fishing market, give away top of the line fishing rods worth hundreds of dollars. If you’re in the hotel market, give away a free 5 night stay at your hotel.

If your prizes are great, you could make a lot of other mistakes and still succeed. With bad prizes, you could do everything else right and people still won’t be excited about your contest.

#4 – A Viral Strategy

Finally, you need a strong strategy that gets people to pass your contest along to their friends. If you’re running the contest on social media, you need a strategy to get people sharing and linking your contest. 

How do you make that happen?

There are a few different ways you can do this. One common way is to use liking as a voting mechanism. In order to vote for their friends, people first need to come to your page and “Like” it.

Another common method is to post the results on a page that’s only visible to people who’ve liked your page. That way, if people want to follow their friends’ progress, they need to first like your page.

You can also center the contest around how many other people you can get to join the contest.

Spend some time thinking about the viral strategy of your contest. Why would people want to post your contest to their friends? How can you increase the virality of your contest?

These are the four most important things to think about before you launch your contest. On one hand, knowing the law and having proper anti-cheating provisions will help you protect yourself from losses. On the other hand, having stellar prizes and an effective viral strategy will help you skyrocket your contest’s success.

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Brand ambassadors can’t be “hired.” They can only be earned. Great companies turn many of their customers into brand ambassadors.

When someone has a great experience at a company, they tell their friends. People want to share stories about great service. People also want their friends to experience great service. If you really create a satisfied customer, you’ll naturally create brand ambassadors who help spread your brand.

On the flip side are people who actively seek to hurt your brand. It rarely happens, because in general people want to help rather than hurt. In order for someone to want to actively hurt your brand, you’ll need to have really mistreated them or underperformed their expectations.

According to IBM, customers will usually give you as many as ten warning signs before turning against you.

So how do you cultivate brand ambassadors rather than brand haters? How do you create a fanatic fanbase of users that try to evangelize your product wherever they go? Make sure you follow these five guiding principles.

1. Consistency

In a survey of restaurant customers, people were asked questions about why they regularly ate at a certain venue. Was it the service? Was it the food? Was it the price? Was it the location?

When the results came in, researchers were surprised to find that the #1 thing customers looked for was consistency.

They wanted to know that they could go to a certain restaurant and have a certain experience. They knew what kind of service they’d get, what they’d have to pay and what kind of food they can expect.

Consistency is very important to customers. If you want to cultivate a long-term customer, it’s tantamount that they know what they can expect from you. Be consistent.

2. Be Product Centered

What is it that separates your brand from other people?

In the short run, marketing, branding, outreach and other such techniques can mask poor products. However, in the long run, the success or failure of a company really comes down to whether one product is better than the other.

Take the example of Google. Before Google, there was Yahoo, AltaVista and a number of other search engines. After Google, there were dozens of search engines to start as well.

Google had no marketing budget. They only had word of mouth. For a long time, they lagged behind their competitors. But slowly and surely, they gained market share, for one simple reason: Their product was better.

In the short run, it might seem like being product centered doesn’t pay. However, in the long run, creating a top notch product is what will put your company on the map.

3. Cultivate Human Connections

Human connection is one of the most valuable and rare commodities in business today. Many brands have simply turned into processes, programs and systems that nobody can really interact with.

People crave human connection. If people connect with one person from your store or have a stellar experience with someone from customer service, they’ll remember that interaction for life.

Take the example of Starbucks. Whether you love or hate their coffee, it’s undeniable that they’ve created a hugely successful company.

But, according to Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, what keeps people coming back isn’t just the coffee. It’s the people. People come back for the connection with the baristas. The customers to come back regularly get to know them by name, the baristas learn about their kids, and so on.

It’s not the coffee, it’s the human connection. Try to cultivate it in your company.

4. Respond Quickly

Customers hate waiting. In fact, fear of having to wait is a big reason that people don’t buy products online and instead go to a store. It’s why people would rather experience discomfort in their lives than spend 20 minutes on hold.

If you can speed up the processes, all else being equal, customers will flock to your brand. Dominos Pizza took advantage of this with their “30 minutes to your door or it’s free” ad campaign.

5. Give Them Something to Talk About

Even if people love your brand, if you don’t give them something to talk about, you’re not going to get much buzz.

Two good examples of this are Toshiba and Apple.

Toshiba makes stellar laptops. There are some absolutely die-hard Toshiba fans out there who’ll buy nothing but Toshiba laptops. But we seldom hear about Toshiba, simply because there’s not much to talk about. They make good laptops – That’s all.

Apple, on the other hand, is a professional at creating sensational things to talk about. Their product launches are masterpieces in showmanship. Every year, they launch a new product that gets their fans buzzing. They create commercials and online communities to make their products shine even more.

If you want people to talk about you, give them something to talk about.

These are the five tenants of creating brand ambassadors. Follow them, and your customers will talk about your product and spread the word without you having to lift a finger.

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This article is a follow-up to our earlier post How to Use Google+ to Promote Your Product or Service.

In social media, Google+ brand pages are the way of the future. Using Google+ brand pages, you can create an informative, interactive profile for your fans on Google+ to connect with you. Few companies today are taking full advantage of what Google+ brand pages have to offer.

The easiest way to access your brand page is to go to your own Google+ page. Just click the drop down menu under your username to switch to your brand page’s view. Here you can edit the page, add people to circles and post status messages.

Here are top 9 tips & tricks for using Google+ brand pages to their full potential.

#1 – Creating an Easy to Reach URL

By default, Google+ gives you a custom URL that’s fairly difficult to read or remember. For example, your URL might be something like “plus.google.com/8723570370197390157.”

To make this easier for people, create a redirect on your own website to your Google+ brand page. For example, people should be able to reach this page by going to www.yourwebsite.com/googleplus/

You can also use Google+’s URL shortener to create a better URL on Google’s domain.

#2 – Add Buttons to Your Site

Want to make it easy for people to find your Google+ page on your site? Want to put live feeds of your status updates on your sites? Want to make it so people can re-post whatever you said with one click of a button?

It’s easy. Just add the respective Google+ buttons or widgets to your site. Access these under the “Get Started” menu in your brand page.

#3 – Don’t Share Your Visitor Count for the First Few Months

If you see that a page only has a handful of visitors, chances are you’re not going to want to visit that page. In other types of social media, like Facebook or Twitter for example, there’s not a whole lot that you can do about this.

However, with Google+, you can choose to hide your follower count. While this isn’t a good long term strategy, it can be very useful in the short term.

#4 – Give Great Resources

Google+ gives you the ability to add as many links as you want to your profile. The links can point back to content on your own website or to other people’s sites.

Make liberal use of this feature to point your users to the best possible resources for their problems.

#5 – Upload Stellar Photos

Some people like to interact with brands through status updates, but a lot of people prefer to use photos. They get much more of a visceral experience from seeing photos of an event or of a product than just reading a description.

Upload professional photos to your Google+ page to create a more lasting impression

#6 – Scan Your Circles Regularly

When someone adds you to their circles, you’ll have the ability to then add them to your circles in return.

If you don’t add someone to your circles, they won’t see anything you post. If you have people who’ve added you but you haven’t added them back, you’re “wasting” social goodwill.

Make it a habit to check your friends list regularly and add people who aren’t already in a circle.

#7 – Segment Your Readers

Perhaps Google+’s most powerful feature is their ability to segment where each post goes. You can post different things to your list in New York versus San Francisco. You can say one thing only to newcomers and different things to long time followers.

Use circles to craft the most powerful message possible for each group of your audience.

#8 – Hide Tabs That You Aren’t Using

By default, Google+ chooses what tabs it displays along the top of your profile. If it’s using tabs that you don’t want to be there, you can choose to disable it.

Just click on the specific tab and uncheck the box that says “Show this tab on your profile.”

#9 – Post Regularly

Much like any other kind of social media, Google+ has a running feed. If you post often, you’ll ensure that your content will frequently land in front of your visitor’s feed. If you don’t post often, your page won’t be on your visitor’s radar at all.

These are a few ways you can make sure you have a top notch Google+ brand page. Spend some time perfecting your Google+ page. After all, Google+ is the fastest growing social media network in history.

If you want to network professionally online, there is no better place than LinkedIn. Spending time to perfect your LinkedIn profile is therefore a high ROI activity.

Here are seven quick tips to help boost your LinkedIn profile.

Tip #1 – An Attention Catching Headline

Your headline should be written so that anyone who sees your profile in the search results would want to click on your profile and learn more about you.

It should say something either unusual or incredible about you. It should stand out from all the other results. It should speak directly to your target audience.

Tip #2 – Have Someone Proofread Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your chance to make a professional impression. Having misspellings, grammar mistakes of factual inaccuracies on your LinkedIn profile is like going to a professional networking event with a mustard stain on your shirt.

Don’t blow the all-important first impression. Even one little mistake you miss could cost you a future job or client. Hire someone to proofread your profile before going live.

Tip #3 – Make Liberal Use of Recommendations

Recommendations are one of the most powerful things you could have on your profile. It’s the one thing that people trust the most on a LinkedIn profile, because it involves other people recommending you.

Getting a few good recommendations can change your entire profile. Contact a few former employers, employees and co-workers to ask them to leave you a recommendation. Most of the tie they’ll be happy to do it.

Tip #4 – Sprinkle In a Bit of Personal Info

While the majority of your LinkedIn profile should be professional, remember to also put in a pinch of personal information as well.

If a company is looking to hire someone, chances are they’ll be faced with their pick of the litter of highly qualified candidates. Though having solid qualifications is important, the personal touch is often what makes the difference.

Tip #5 – Make Your Profile Stand Out

Speaking of competition, it’s important to note that LinkedIn really is a competitive marketplace like any other. If you want to get picked, you have to stand out.

Try to have at least one or two things on your profile that sets you apart. Do you speak four languages? Say so. Have you helped build a non-profit organization? That might help set you apart. Have you been mentored by a famous figure? Put that on as well.

Anything that’s out of the ordinary or shows unusual positive traits, put that on your profile.

Tip #6 – Be Clear About What You Want Them to Do

Your profile should have a crystal clear request. Do you want them to call you? Email you? What should your target audience do if they’re “sold” on you based on your profile?

Be explicit in your request. Don’t assume that your reader knows what to do.

Tip #7 – Study LinkedIn SEO

LinkedIn’s search engine can be optimized for, just like any other search engine. Though the factors that determine your rank in LinkedIn are different than Google’s ranking algorithms, the mentality of systematically getting yourself to rank highly is similar.

Read up on all the different things you can do to improve your rankings in LinkedIn. Make sure you choose good keywords to rank for, so that when your rankings improve you’re more likely to show up in front of the right people.

Here is a presentation for you all to learn how to optimize your LinkedIn Profile to Improve SEO for your company

These are seven different things you can do to improve your LinkedIn profile and hopefully you can use these Linkedin profile tips to further boost your profile. When it comes to professional networking, there are few tools on the planet more powerful or more versatile than LinkedIn.

Getting someone to “like” your page is simply the first step in a long two-way relationship. It’s not the end goal. Once someone has identified themselves as a fan of your organization, that’s when the real work begins.

Here’s how to engage your Facebook fans.

Aim to be Interactive

The idea is to pull your users into engaging with you. The dialogue should be a two way street. Engaging users isn’t just about putting out great content, it’s also about pulling the user into interacting with you in meaningful ways.

A lot of brands make the mistake of just sending content at their user in a one-way street. Instead, aim to be interactive. Get your user base involved.

Ask Questions

One easy way to get your user base involved is to ask questions. Multiple choice questions as well as open ended questions both end well.

The questions can be related to your market or current events, they could be personal or they could just be random and off the cuff. Experiment with different kinds of questions to see what your user base responds best to.

Create Polls and Quizzes

There are many, many tools you can use online to create interesting polls and quizzes.

Polls and quizzes are a fast and easy way for people to interact with you and with one another. The quiz should ideally be very short, only about 10 to 15 questions long. It should feel like a fun and entertaining thing to do, rather than a survey.

Try Hosting a Contest

To take user engagement to a totally different level, try hosting a contest with a juicy prize. 

There’s nothing that generates user engagement quite like a good contest. A good contest will bring people around a common cause and can get a ton of people to really excited and passionate about your brand.

If you can, try to tie your contest back to your Facebook page. For example, make it so that whoever is winning is posted on your Facebook page every night, so friends of your fans will naturally join your page to see if their friend is winning.

Should You Get Personal?

Getting personal with your fans is one effective way to engage your Facebook fans. If your brand allows for it, you should absolutely go for it.

Instead of just keeping your status updates business related, try asking your readers random things about their personal lives. “What did you want to be when you grew up?” or “Have you seen Avatar yet?” can help build rapport and commonality, even when they have nothing to do with your target market.

Share Meaningful Content

Another way you can engage your fans is to regularly share meaningful videos, news articles and content pieces.

A good percentage of these content pieces should be created and published by you. However, there’s no harm in also linking to other people’s content if you believe your audience will love it.

Don’t overdo the content linking; but as long as what you’re linking to is relevant and your user base is getting value out of it, you’re good to go.

Comment on News Events

One area that often gets a lot of people engaged is news items. If there’s a hot news item going around, comment on it with your own thoughts and opinions. Then ask your audience what they thought.

Make sure to avoid political discussion however, as that’s an easy way to alienate people.

These are a few different ways you can engage your Facebook fans. Get creative. There isn’t a set formula when it comes to Facebook. The key is getting people to communicate in a two-way street, so they feel part of your brand’s experience, rather than just being talked at.

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By learning about Google+ today, you’ll put yourself ahead of the curve. Not only will you be seen as progressive, but you’ll be able to establish your brand long before others have even realized the importance of Google+.

Here’s how to use Google+ to promote your product or service.

Create Meaningful Circle Segments
Perhaps the most valuable thing Google+ offers that Facebook doesn’t is the ability to sort your market by different segments. Using Google+’s circles, you’ll be able to choose exactly who gets to see what messages.

So how should you segment your customers?

Ideally, you should create a different circle and therefore a different segment for each different kind of “mindset” of customer that you have.

For example, you might have one circle for people who’ve bought your product, one circle for people who haven’t bought yet, one circle for people who’re affiliates of your product and one circle for people who’ve entered into a contest but didn’t win.

Each of these people might respond to different messages. For example, offering customer-only discounts to your past buyers could be a stellar strategy to get repeat buys. On the other hand, with people who haven’t bought yet, you might want to provide primarily trust building content.

Take Advantage of Google+’s Posting Features

One thing that’s inherently different about Google+ than Facebook is the length and style of your posts.

On Facebook, you can only post 420 characters in a status update. That really puts a limit on what you can post. Essentially, you can only post short thoughts, short content and links.

On Google+ however, the limit is well over 2,000 characters. (There’s no set limit yet.) In addition, you can link to several videos, links and pictures within your post.

That means that unlike Facebook, on Google+ you can post entire pieces of content for your network to see. You can use Google+ as a direct way to publish useful information to your circles without having to refer people to an outside link.

Use this feature liberally. If you want to build a brand as an expert, Google+ offers a much more suited style than Facebook does.

Take Advantage of Hangouts

Hangouts are Google+’s impromptu video sessions. It’s also the first major free video conferencing software.

Google+ hangouts really changes the game when it comes to interactive marketing. Instead of having to schedule webinars or teleseminars, you can easily just host an on-the-spot video lesson, without or without notice.

Here are a few ways you can use Google+ hangouts to promote your business:
•    Teach a class. Use the video conference to teach a class and let your students ask questions on video or chat.
•    Discuss videos on YouTube. Google+ hangouts allow you to share a YouTube screen, so you can easily watch educational videos and talk about them.
•    Host a Q&A. If your audience has questions, you can answer them.
•    Have a spontaneous meetup. Do unannounced hangouts so people who’re lucky enough to be online can get to know you.

These are just a few potential ways you can use the new Google+ hangouts.

Using the Google+ Widgets

There are quite a number of Google+ widgets you can place on your website.

You can place a widget to have someone add you to their circles. You can place a widget that publishes your Google+ stats. You can even place a widget that grabs a feed from your Google+ posts.

Integrating a Google+ widget onto your existing website will allow you to get more traffic from your website to your Google+ account. This in turn will allow you to promote to that viewer over a long period of time, rather than just having them come to your website and then leave.

These are a few of the many ways you can use Google+ to promote your business. Though this social network is still young, it has many competitive features that make it an ideal marketing arena for serious business people.

I)     What to Include In Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

An effective SMM strategy will leverage all quality online social hubs where users and customers meet and converse. A good SMM portfolio includes a presence on diverse and multimedia social sites. Let’s take a look at the key elements of a good SMM strategy.

• Social Networking Sites

There are various social networking sites where you can create profiles to connect with your target audience directly. Create a Facebook fan page. Create tweets and retweets on Twitter. Create your organization’s profile on Linkedin. According to statistics released by Facebook, the social networking website has around 500 million active users, of which around 50% log in every day for commenting or browsing. A Facebook fan page thus makes a lot of sense to reach an active online audience. On the other hand, Twitter has real time updates and news-worthy tweets that even search engines show in their search results. The tweets about your products are quickly read and responded to by other users. A Twitter account to respond to and create a buzz about your product is therefore essential. Linkedin is accessed by a variety of professionals and businesses looking to connect and research for work and business. Hence, a Linkedin account for your organization is great for networking within the industry or with vendors.

• Blogs, Microblogging

Blogs give you a wide platform to talk about key issues. Blogs are also a great way of bringing traffic to your main website. For an effective blog, you need to post fresh and relevant content frequently, monitor and respond to comments, create internal links, and build a community of loyal readers. Microblogging through sites like Twitter also lets you send short, crisp updates.
Some famous company blogs are www.engadget.com, googleblog.blogspot.com, blog.facebook.com & en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/default.aspx. If you want blogs related to SEO, you can check out searchengineland.com, www.seomoz.org/blog or www.searchenginejournal.com.

• Online Videos

Websites like Youtube have created a whole new arena for multimedia interaction. Sharing and viewing videos is now, not just an activity enjoyed by individuals for their own pleasure, but also a great way for an organization to share information about its products. Organizations have found sharing interesting and related videos on Youtube to be a great way of ensuring continual, sustained interest of the target audience. You can upload interviews of your top management, share presentations, or even share videos of social or business events in your organization. When Intel uploaded fun and digitally enhanced videos of its Consumer Electronics Show exhibit, it not only created a buzz but also ensured users got to know about its new Core Duo processor.

• Photosharing, Slide Sharing

Sharing relevant and interesting images with your user base also helps in creating pleasant, long-term associations. The images can be about widely anticipated events like a product launch, celebrity associations, or the organization’s internal events. Websites like Flickr have an active user base and can be leveraged for this purpose.

Slide sharing, on the other hand, directly appeals to the user’s needs by sharing information that they need and would use in their business. If your organization has conducted any good-to-know research, you can share the findings online. You can also share your presentations, slides, and reports through websites like Slideshare and Scribd.

• Podcasting

As per Podcast.com, “Podcasting is the method of broadcasting audio files over the internet which can be downloaded and listened to via your computer and/or portable music player. The reason why podcasting is linked directly with the name iPod is due to strictly to the familiarity of origin of the word wherein people first began downloading music audio files to listen to them on their iPods.“. Podcasting can help you reach more users to promote your products and services. Many users find podcasts a great way of staying in touch with new developments while on the move. Websites like Blip let you conveniently share your podcasts. Other famous podcast sites are podcast.com & Apple’s Itunes Podcast.

II)    Points to Consider Before Formulating a Social Media Marketing Strategy

The sites mentioned above are very useful and can change the path of your organization towards tremendous success. However, if done without proper planning these same sites and strategies can backfire as well. The most important thing for you to do before you begin charting out an SMM strategy, is that you first need to fully understand the status quo of your organization’s online presence. Here are a few things to consider before you formulate a social media marketing strategy:

• Analyze your online presence:

o    Use metrics to find out more about your online presence. You need to ask questions like: What is the total count of visitors on my site? Where do they come from? How many of them are directed by search engines?
o    Find out how often your website gets linked by other sites.
o    Check how often you post fresh content.
o    Find out if you have an active presence in target markets.
o    Rate yourself vis-à-vis your competitors in the online environment. Find out what your competitors are doing better than you, and also what you are doing better.
o    Check your status on social networking sites. Do you have a presence already that needs to be optimized? Or, do you need to start from scratch?

• Define and analyze your target audience:

o    Check where your target audience generally interact more.
o    Check what keywords they are using.
o    Find out what they need, and where their interests lie.

• Identify and analyze what you want from your SMM strategy:

o    Check the enthusiasm and commitment of your top management and marketing department for having a dedicated SMM strategy. In case the commitment seems inadequate, discuss and educate till you get a dedicated and informed agreement.
o    Assign responsibility to the correct department, whether it is PR, marketing, communications, or other. Create a team with well defined goals regarding your SMM strategy. This may mean creating micro-goals like number of blog posts per week, time duration set for responding etc.
o    Study the existing sites and find out where you need to focus your attention the most.
o    Create measurable target goals of what you want to achieve from your SMM strategy.

III)    Monitoring Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

For your SMM strategy to pay you long-term dividends, you need to make sure you have practices and checks in place that ensure efficient execution and a quick response. The following measures will help you ensure responsiveness and professional interaction:

• A query, tweet, or a comment requiring clarification on the Facebook page, blog, or other portals must be replied to within 24 hours.
• Blog posts, tweets must be of high quality and value and/or knowledge enhancing. The content in your posts should be good enough to get linked by other sites.
• Blog posts must be frequent enough to sustain interest.

In case of critical comments, it’s better to respond to them immediately and fairly. Negative comments need not always be deleted or removed. If you suspect trolls or deliberate misinformation, one way of ensuring more transparency is by creating a Login requirement for posting comments on your blog.

Start your journey now!
Remember, the beginning may be slow. It takes time to engage your audience and build loyalty. Keep your interactions transparent, fair, and timely. With a continual engagement in diverse social media tolls, you will be soon rewarded with a vibrant, online community for your organization.