LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 332 million members in over 200 countries and territories.
Professionals are signing up to join LinkedIn at a rate of more than two new members per second.
While LinkedIn originated in the United States 75% of new members from quarter three of 2014 came to LinkedIn from outside this region.
LinkedIn’s fastest growing demographic are students or recent college graduates. This demographic accounts for over 39 million and this is continuously growing.
Gain maximum exposure and engagement for your Brand!:
According to Henley Wig of Social Media Examiner LinkedIn statuses are limited to just 75 characters for the description and 25 characters for the headline. So every character counts. Companies should publish early in the week. As you can see in the graph Tuesday is the most popular day for shares followed closely by Monday.
Lana Khavinson of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions tells us that 50% of LinkedIn members are more likely to purchase from a company they engage with on LinkedIn. But Marketers should go beyond showcasing their products/services. They should also include upcoming events, conferences, mobile app, recent white papers. It is all about increasing value to your audience!
Marketers should create Showcase pages:
Showcase Pages
These are niche pages that branch off your main LinkedIn Company Page. They allow you to promote specific products or cater to your individual marketing personas. Because of this you can provide a more personalised experience for your Company Page visitors. This in turn allows your business to tailor the page closely to the audience specific to the page. So how do you create a Showcase Page, check out this useful link Create a Showcase page by Sasha Laferte.
Aim for High Quality Leads:
Last year, a study found that LinkedIn is 277% more effective at lead generation than both Facebook and Twitter. No wonder it was recently voted the most important for B2B marketers!
Mike Volpe the CMO of Hubspot tells us that “LinkedIn’s Sponsored Updates are the perfect marriage between its professional audience and our promotional content. This tool doesn’t just deliver leads – it brings us quality prospects in our target business-to-business market,at a cost per lead that makes sense for our business.”
Sponsored Updates was one of the most successful marketing lead generation campaigns for Hubspot. The company created relevant content including eBooks, webinars and how to guides aimed at SME’s. Hubspot then used Sponsored Updates to expand the toir content reach targeted SME’s. The content appeared highly visible on such members newsfeeds. The campaign resulted in Hubspot reaching 400% more high quality leads.
LinkedIn Analytics:
Feel free to check out the video below for more information on how to measure your businesses activities on Linked In,
Have you got a twitter account but don’t know how to utilise it for your business? Here, I have put together some of my top tips for using Twitter:
Some useful facts for you about Twitter in Ireland:
According to Stephen Comny There are 600,000 daily users of Twitter in Ireland.
* We send, on average, 1 million tweets each day.
* Ireland has the tenth highest number of Twitter users per capita in the world.
* Wednesday is the busiest day on Twitter in Ireland.
* 10-11pm is the busiest hour each day on Twitter in Ireland
* Users are active from 12 midday onwards.
Here are my most useful tips for marketing your SME on Twitter:
Goal setting
1 Be SMART!
Firstly you need to decide what you want to get out of your Twitter activity. Marketing Strategy goals can include like awareness for your brand, staying on top of industry trends, or driving traffic to your website. You will need to have clear objectives and metrics to measure your success.
Orla Kennedy of Pod Umna Village advises SMES to have lists of users on particular topics, and you can browse lists created by other people in order to discover new accounts to follow. This will help you connect with people who have a large audience on Twitter in your specific industry. Fail to prepare, prepare to fail!
Listen, Learn, Engage, Adapt
2 Listen and learn
The individuals who follow your Twitter account are your most accessible audience. Your followers have opted-in to see your content regularly, giving you the opportunity to communicate with them for free for as long as they follow you.
Followers dashboard helps businesses understand this critical group, This useful tool provides you with a real-time look at your follower growth, demographics (such as location and gender) and their unique interests. This information is an incredibly valuable tool that can help you create campaigns and content that better align with your audience on Twitter.
3 Success in 140 or less
The key to Twitter is to post relevant content, content that is engaging and interests your target audience. the last thing you want is for your business to be spamming followers news feed.
140 Twitter tips in 140 characters or less
Twitter should be used to engage with customers, forming real conversations that grow organically. Through interaction you are making your business far more personal. While you may only talk to 5 to 10 people per day, if each of these lead to a purchase, then this is time well spent.
The tone you use should reflect the platform you are on. it is not as simple as one size fits all! According to Mashable the restriction of characters in fact makes the tone more ‘conversational’.
4 Hash tag
The Twitter Hashtag
Stephanie Buck of Mashable tells us that SME’s should engage in conversations via hash tags that are relevant to your industry- stick to one or two and use consistently.While customers may not tweet to your SME directly, they may be talking about you still using the hashtag of your company name or else using a keyword that is related to your company. You as a marketer need to think about what search terms that are relevant to your company.
For example a celebrity endorses your brand, but you haven’t taken the time to search the appropriate keywords, and as a result has lost a fantastic opportunity to re tweet for free publicity. Use hashtags to to join in on a hot topic, or make up your own around an event, promotion, or whatever’s on your mind. The “Trends” sidebar on the Twitter desktop interface includes popular local topics, and usually includes the trending hashtags.
5 Share the love:
Share the love
According to Forbes, Twitter followers are more likely to buy from brands they follow (37% vs. 21%), and recommend brands to friends (33% vs. 21%. Your SME need to value your followers.
You as a marketer need to reward your followers in form of promotions, discounts and exclusive content, Its is a two way relationship,
6 Tweets with photos:
According to Kurt Wagner of Mashable, Twitter wants businesses to think “photo first”. Tweets that include photos or video links are retweeted at a much higher rate than those with text alone, according to new Twitter Data. Tweets with pictures were retweeted 35% more often than text-only tweets, and tweets with video links saw a 28% increase in retweets.
7 Reach out to followers and beyond:
Facebook is where you lie to your friends but Twitter is where you are honest with strangers! Your SME needs to be actively engaging, replying, and interacting with followers once they connect with you? If not, you could already be missing out on a big opportunity to turn a potential lead into your next customer.
According to Pat Hutchinson SMEs need to identify two types of leads (those who are already engaging with you and those you should be engaging with). Then take advantage of Twitter search box to locate and organise the most important conversations. Then by using Twitter’s advertising tools to boost visibility you will attract new customers.
8 Tweak your tweets:
SMEs can make the most of any occassion on Twitter by using the own the event planner.. This Twitter tool allows you to tweet around key events. Marketers just select the dates they want to focus on. It is as simple as that!
9 Open 24 7:
open 24/7
Twitter never closes. Followers are available all the time. It is important not to shut down your twitter at the weekend just because your physical business is closed during the weekend.
Twitter Handle
10 Take you twitter handle offline:
Don’t forget off line marketing should complement your on line marketing and vice versa.Promote your twitter page at every opportunity. According to Twitter Ad’s Research Manager, Tim Perzyk, One-third (34%) of respondents to survey regarding twitter and SME’s say they have interacted with an SME after seeing an ad that included the business’s Twitter handle. People who see a Promoted Tweet from an SME that relates to their interests or needs are also more likely (32%) to visit that business.
Now that I have shared my tips it time for your business to Ready Steady Tweet!
Table showing Net US Digital Ad Revenue Share by companies between 2012 and 2015
Facebook Brand Connection with users:
According to Mashable Facebook is a powerful platform not just for advertising, but also for brands to connect with consumers at an unpaid level. This type of connection is the most effective marketing that a brand can achieve, says Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing firm. It is projected that Facebook will account for 9% of total digital ad revenues by 2015. With such a high percentage of total market, Businesses cannot afford to break the rules!
Death of Organic Reach:
Bar Chart and Line Graph showing organic page reach on Facebook
According to Forbes Facebook’s algorithm decides which 300 stories of around 1500 potential stories will appear in the news feed of the average user. It is estimated that organic growth will reach zero by the end of 2014.
How does Facebook choose what to show in News Feed?
Content is King:
Tech Crunch tell us that Facebook as well as fans don’t want to see the same content repeatedly on their needs feeds.
If you need to share the same link use a different caption or photo each time,Facebook will penalise this as want to see fresh relevant up to date content. They want to make the news feed experience more user-friendly for fans.
Facebook dislike button
Likes and Shares Reruns- Big No Nos:
There are more Pages and friends competing for the finite amount of time people spend reading the feed. Do the math! Increasing competition plus limited attention equals decreasing reach.
You’re not clever enough to fool Facebook. Asking users to “Like this post!”, sharing the same link or photo over and over, or bait-and-switching people with links to ad-filled sites will now get your Page’s reach in News Feed destroyed, the company said today. Share unique, interesting content and you’ll be fine.share posts that are widely Liked, commented on, shared, and clicked and Facebook will reduce your reach to fans.
Facebook cover page image rules
One Golden Rule when comes to cover Photo!
According to Social Baker many of the guidelines regarding Cover Photos that were first introduced by Facebook in March 2013 have since been removed. Now your cover photo can include:
Price or purchase information such as “40% off” or “Download it here”
Contact information such as your website address, email or telephone number
“Like” and “Share” Facebook features or arrow pointing to other features
call to actions such as get it now or tell your friends
The sky is the limit!(almost)
Is a creative brain better than a financial brain?
The new guidelines give you more freedom and flexibility when it comes to your Cover photo content. Creativity has no limits now except for the 20% rule limiting the amount of text you can include, and it is said that Facebook is developing a grid-based text overlay detection tool that should identify non-compliant images. Those that don’t play by the rules will be deleted!
So the question for you is whether your brand is capitalising on these marketing opportunities?
Push for Increased transparency:
Facebook want businesses to be open and honest about where links are taking users. Facebook research Scientist Khalid El-Arini tells us that “Click-baiting’ is when a publisher posts a link with a headline that encourages people to click to see more, without telling them much information about what they will see,” 80% of Facebook users don’t like this method. So they will reduce the number of vague and misleading headlines people see.
The best way to share a link after these updates will be to use the link format. Studies show these posts have received twice as many clicks compared to links embedded in photo captions. According to Martin Beck Facebook also announced that it will rank “link posts” higher than posts with links in photo captions.
Useful Links:
Have a look at the Facebook for businesss page for hints and tips on marketing tools.
Also check out Facebook’s YouTube business channel here for useful tutorials for Businesses:
Firstly, you might be wondering what social media marketing is?
According to Mashable its all about creating content that will attract attention for your brand.
If you still want more detail on Social Media Marketing check out this video by Douglas Lim
Internet Infrastucture:
Internet Live Stats state that 40% of the worlds population now have access to the Internet.
Social Media in Ireland:
Social Media in Ireland Infograph
Take a look at the latest Ipsos MRBI figures that were released in November 2014, 60% of the Irish population have a Facebook and of those 72% use it daily. This has grown steadily from the same period two years ago when daily usage was 59% .
Other social media platforms have grown in popularity among the Irish population. These include Twitter, Linked In, Snap Chat and Instagram. Trends predict that these will continue grow in popularity.
Smartphones are now the norm
Smartphones are no longer seen as the rising trend but are now on fact the norm among consumers. Gartner states that they will account for 66 percent of all mobile sales in 2014, with that number projected to rise to 88 percent in 2018.
two way communication sign
Why every company should be using Mobile Marketing Strategies?
The traditional marketing model would have been one way dialogue solely for informational purposes, now with mobile marketing, traditional marketing has evolved as a way of engaging and communicating with consumers.Now as marketing consultants we need to listen twice as much as we speak, listen to what the consumer is saying about our brand. Brandtones CEO Donald Fitzmaurice says its the real time two way dialogue that mobile marketing has that enables to build direct relationships with consumers.
roi social media marketing investment infograph
Want to get more for your money?
Mobile Marketing is the most effective way of delivering an effective Return on Investment. It has become the platform of choice for consumers. Its Instant Marketing resulting in faster execution and delivers instant results. Sales are literally at the touch of a button, more people buying straight from mobile device rather than laptop or pc. Dibgy state that 64% of smartphone owners are now using their mobile devices to shop online.
Google Analytics is a useful tool to assess how visitors interact with your pages. You learn what they’re looking for and what they like, then tailor all your marketing activities.
No, Question Mark, Yes
You reputation is at stake!
While it is important to fbsite layout and information for specific devices that consumers will be viewing content onor companies to be on mobile, it is even more important that they specialise we. Mobile users are not loyal Sheila Puertollano from iProspect has stated that 61% of consumers who visit poorly designed mobile sites are more likely to transfer to a competitor’s site. Further to this 57% of people will not recommend a business with an unfriendly mobile site.
So has online now become more important that offline?
online connects with offline
The answer is no! They are two sides of the same coin. Bloomtools explains to us that offline and online marketing strategies should not be conducted separately but should in fact complement each in order to make the marketing campaign most effective. Integration is key for both engagement with consumers and sustainability of your brand.
The Future of Mobile Marketing:
Those who do not embrace mobile marketing strategies will be left behind. Please take a look at Rick Davids video
I am currently studying a Masters of Science in Marketing Practice at Cork Institute of Technology. I have previously graduated from Cork Institute of Technology with Bachelor of (Honours) Business degree. I specialised in Business Management.
Gillian Murphy Marketing 