5 Ways to Sell With Social Media

Do you want to convert your fans and followers into paying customers?

Are your social activities working?

In this article I’ll show you 5 simple ways to tweak your social media updates for better sales conversion.

Some social media updates can go further toward bringing in sales than others. And they can do this without detracting from the spirit of social media.

Some social media updates can help with sales more than others. Image source: iStockPhoto.

#1: Incorporate a Clear Call to Action

Your customers and fans visit your social media pages for a variety of reasons, but generally speaking, they want to do something or learn something.

Some people are looking for information about your company, some are looking for details about products and services, some want access to special deals and coupons, some want to see if you have any contests or promotions running and some may be looking for expert tips and how-to tricks.

If you don’t give them what they’re after, they won’t return. Use status updates to give them what they want and what you want: a sale.

Post calls to action like “Click here for a Facebook fan exclusive coupon,” or “Enter to win…”

Here you see how Target offers daily deals on Twitter.

Target has a Twitter account where followers can see deals the retailer has in stores.

But remember to stay true to the 70-20-10 rule: 70 percent of your page’s content should be information that’s valuable and relevant to your fans; 20 percent should be content that comes from other people and 10 percent should be promotional.

Once you know why your audience wants to interact with you on social media, be sure to give them the types of information they’re looking for.

#2: Convey a Sense of Urgency

Due to the ticker-tape nature of most social media platforms, you have a very limited amount of time to catch the attention of your customers/fans/followers. If they see an update with verbiage that compels them to “act now,” you win.

Using words like “For a limited time” or “On sale this week” or “Own it first” will catch the eye of your visitors.

You can also offer incentives for booking or buying immediately instead of later. Depending on your business, you could waive shipping fees, offer an extra week of your service or even a buy-one/get-one, etc. Ideally, post different time-sensitive offers on different networks.

For example, “The next 10 people who retweet this will receive 10% off their next purchase.” On Facebook you could use an app to make an offer like, “The first 10 people to share this on Facebook get $25 off a $50 purchase,” and so on.

Here, Chili’s uses their Facebook cover photo to connect and offer a deal.

Chili's uses their cover photo to announce a limited-time offer.

This is one way to use the instant nature of social media to your advantage.

#3: Offer Followers and Fans Exclusive Deals

This idea is similar to the previous one, but you want to make sure that your fans know the deals you’re offering are for fans of a particular network only.

To grow your following on a variety of networks and inspire loyalty, offer deals that are exclusive to each network.

Kate Spade New York always has something special cookin’ for their Facebook fans. Periodically offering special deals is a great tactic for a business that wants to keep its fans coming back again and again. And doesn’t every business want that?

Kate Spade New York offers Facebook fans exclusive deals and coupons on a regular basis. It keeps them coming back again and again.

This is a great way to reach out to specific audiences within your social media strategy.

#4: Encourage Sharing

It never hurts to ask your fans and followers to retweet, repin or share. Ideally you’re offering such a great deal that your fans and followers will want to share it anyway, but a little nudge is okay.

If your update is about a Facebook contest, you can even let your followers know that if they share the news about your contest, they’ll get an extra chance (or chances) to win.

National Builder Supply uses Pinterest to give fans a chance to win a chandelier.

National Builder Supply gives fans a chance to win a new chandelier by repinning their contest image on Pinterest.

When you ask your audience to interact with your content, they’re more likely to do it.

#5: Keep All of Your Social Media Profiles Current

When potential customers land on your various social pages, they should have a clear idea of what your business/brand is all about. At the very least, go through each of your business’s social profiles (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) once a quarter and make sure all of the information is current, because social networks occasionally change dimensions and other details.

For example, earlier this year Facebook relaxed its rules about using calls to action on cover photos, but many companies haven’t yet updated their pages to make the most of this space.

Tip: You can now include price or purchase information on a Facebook cover photo including phrases like “40% off this week only” or “Download our new eBook here,” contact information or other calls to action such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.” The main image should also give customers and prospective customers some insights about you.

In this image, Trunk Club tells you everything about what they do right on their Pinterest page.

The men's personal shopping service Trunk Club has a fantastic Pinterest profile that tells you everything you need to know about what the company does.

Never forget to give your social media audience the information they need about your business.

Over to You

These are just a few opportunities for you to connect with potential leads for your business. But together with a strategic plan, they can help convert the quality leads your business is looking for.

What do you think? What kinds of posts and updates have you found are the most effective for making a sale? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

By Jim Belosic. Article source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-updates-for-more-sales/

SOCIAL ADVERTISING: HOW TWITTER CAN COMPETE WITH FACEBOOK

Twitter announced last week that it had filed for an IPO, which for many drummed up memories of a similar announcement that Facebook made last year.

It makes sense to compare the two companies. Both make money by learning their users’ interests and allowing advertisers to target those users accordingly. Both are social media tools. As of recently, both make use of hashtags.

But if both companies offered up exactly the same advertising opportunity, Facebook would be a clear choice. Facebook has 1.15 billion monthly active users compared to Twitter's rumored 240 million. Facebook also has more data about those users, who fill out detailed profiles about their interests, family members, and life stories.

Fortunately for Twitter, however, despite the two companies' similarities, the microblogging service can give advertisers some opportunities that are more difficult for Facebook to provide. Here's a look at some of Twitter areas of opportunity in the ad game:

Mobile. After Facebook went public, it had to translate its desktop advertising business to mobile. Twitter, by contrast, has been a perfect fit for mobile from the beginning. “It’s short-form,” says Ken Doctor, who follows Twitter for research firm Outsell. “It’s not like so many other things that are long-form that are trying to adjust to mobile.” From the beginning, Twitter has kept things short and in stream-form, and its advertising products have transferred from desktop to mobile without many changes.

Real-Time Conversation. One of Twitter’s biggest differentiators, from an advertising perspective, is its focus on real-time communication around events. Facebook has tried to foster the kind of conversation that happens on Twitter by borrowing features like trending topics, hashtags, and plans for algorithm updates that favor live commentary--but it’s Twitter that advertisers look to when the lights go out on the Super Bowl or their political opponent says something really stupid.

TV. Focusing on real-time interaction rather than "newspaper" synopsis also makes Twitter a great companion app to other media. The company helps television advertisers, for instance, serve promoted tweets to people who have recently seen their commercials by pinpointing users who are watching a particular show. It's not just TV that offers Twitter this type of advantage. “I would say, not just television, but even for sporting events, live, in-person sporting events, or live concerts, Twitter is that much more compatible,” says Rick Heitzmann, managing director at FirstMark Capital.

It's not that Twitter somehow has a better business plan than Facebook. There are advertising formats within which Facebook excels, formats Twitter is unlikely to tap, such as:

Friendship-Driven Sales While Twitter is certainly social, users who follow each other don’t always know each other. Its graph is based more on users interests than their real-life social connections. While Facebook's promoted posts focus on relationships (i.e., “Your friend Jane loves this product”), Twitter’s promoted tweets are based on demographics and interests.

Display Advertising Part of Facebook’s revenue comes from the ads it runs alongside social content. “Twitter by contrast doesn’t have that opportunity,” says Nate Elliott, an analyst with Forrester Research. “Most of their heavy users don’t ever show up on Twitter.com, they’re mostly accessing the Twitter feed and posting to Twitter through third-party applications."

What about an ad network?

I knew this was going to come up. Twitter purchased a company called MoPub earlier this month. Part of what MoPub does is help advertisers and publishers find each other (this is also known as an ad network). The acquisition puts Twitter in a position to sell ads not only in its own apps, but also across a network of apps.

“We are going to continue to invest and extend MoPub’s existing business, and that means selling ads in other apps on iOS and Android,” Kevin Weil, Twitter’s vice product of product for revenue, told the New York Times. Weil also told the [iTimes[/i] that the company would work to develop new native ad formats for not just Twitter, but the mobile ecosystem.

But it could be a while before those ambitions efforts materialize. What Twitter needs most help with now is better automation for ad buying on its own site, another area of MoPub’s expertise. “For Twitter, this is kind of catch-up, but it’s also the price of admission in this new business,” Doctor says.

Facebook ended its experiments with its own ad network before its IPO. Elliott doesn't see Facebook picking them up again anytime soon. "If you’re going to do a successful ad exchange or network, leveraging your data is the most important piece," he says. "Facebook has a lot more data. And a lot more users. That means that if they both pursued the same strategy, that Facebook would be more successful. But I don’t think Facebook is chasing in that direction, and it looks like Twitter is."

Lucky for Twitter, the same could be said for several aspects of its emerging advertising business.

By SARAH KESSLER. Article source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3017472/social-advertising-how-twitter-can-compete-with-facebook

Twitter's Plan To Make Money? It's All In Your Stream

Twitter employees at work, in a photo tweeted Wednesday by the company. (Twitter)

Twitter will soon make its stock market debut. Its recent record gives a glimpse of several ways it plans to make a profit.

Luckily for Twitter, it's evolved from a simple, text-based service to a more complete media company, with a video platform (Vine), content partnerships (too many to count) and a feed that shows full-blown embedded media in its stream. That content no longer appears in strictly reverse-chronological order, opening up different opportunities for adding advertising into your streams. There are a few ways Twitter will likely bring in the moolah. The company's recent moves have telegraphed the possibilities:Twitter, the social media platform credited for both spreading democratic uprisings and the twerk seen 'round the world, is going public. It's a company that, according to analysts, probably hasn't earned $1 billion in revenue yet, but is valued somewhere around ten times that. Once Twitter stock is available, capitalism governs that it's gotta keep making money.

Second Screen

If you're a Twitter user who still watches any appointment television, like Monday Night Football or, say, Breaking Bad each Sunday, you know how Twitter can serve as a "second screen" to check while watching TV. It's kind of nice to have the vast social media universe there when you want to complain about a ref's bad call, you know?

Twitter's pitch is that advertisers can take advantage of the community that comes together around events to overlay and target their marketing. For example, during the Superbowl blackout in New Orleans in February, Oreo played off the unplanned incident by tweeting out a now-famous viral missive, "You can dunk in the dark."

A Forrester Research analyst told The Guardian that the effort "has not been a success" financially so far. But Twitter's just getting started. To better marry data on social conversations with advertising, Twitter has acquired two startups this year thatanalyze social-network activity related to TV.

Embedded Ads In Your Stream

The changes are subtle if you're not an obsessive Twitter user, but its main timeline or stream had previously presented tweets in strictly reverse chronological order. Now, it bumps up older tweets in order to make conversations read more smoothly. This change presents an opportunity: Since Twitter now shows video and photos, imagine the value for advertisers if their visual ads didn't even have to get clicked on, they just played in existing streams.

Mobile Advertising

Twitter says it has about 200 million users sending more than 400 million tweets daily. And it says nearly 60 percent of the tweets are sent through mobile devices. This is a huge opportunity area for Twitter, which this week bought MoPub for $350 million. MoPub is a global mobile ad exchange, giving Twitter a platform to sell mobile ads that target users based on data. And a lot of that data will be what Twitter has collected from its users. Former Facebook advertising executive Antonio Garcia wrote that the move makes Twitter "the most interesting company in advertising right now."

By Elise Hu.  Article source: http://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/npr/221884025/twitter-s-plan-to-make-money-it-s-all-in-your-stream

A Dozen Ways to Build Your Personal Brand in an Online World

You have spent your entire working career carefully crafting and protecting your reputation. You’re honest with suppliers and work exceptionally hard to exceed your clients’ expectations. You are transparent, operate with integrity, and treat everyone with respect. Your references rave about what a great person you are.

And then you created a Facebook account.

From any mobile device, anywhere, at any time you can share what’s on your mind. Were you out with your buddies and heard a great joke? Share it with your friends! Have you received poor service at a new restaurant? Gripe about it and let the world know! Do you agree with the latest political rant? Share it with your online colleagues!

In today’s information rich and easy publishing world, when you post anything online you are disseminating your message to the world and, by default, you are promoting your brand—your personal brand. While big-company branding can cost millions and involve countless hours of thoughtful planning, your personal brand can be broadcast to a global network at virtually no cost and with a simple (and too often heedless) click of a mouse.

What is your personal brand? If I only know you by your Twitter and Facebook posts what is the unstated promise I believe you represent? What is the unstated promise I believe I will receive if I associate with you? Is it you the professional, or you the one who just posted the sexist joke?

What most people don’t understand is this: The Web is not anonymous nor can anyone control its flow of information. The Web, by definition, spreads and grows, connecting computers and people around the globe. Even one-to-one text messages or emails can be archived or shared with the masses. Consider this: Nothing stops me from posting on my Facebook page (and showing to the world) the email that you sent as a private communication meant for my eyes only. There is no such thing as “your online friends group” or “private message boards.” Once a comment is in a digital format, nothing is private. Moreover the opportunities for distribution are limitless and the content can be found, theoretically, forever.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, micro-blogs, Skype, texting, digital photography, YouTube, and other technologies allow us to communicate in ways previously unimaginable. With mobile devices, we can broadcast when something occurs. The great benefit of today’s Internet is that anyone can publish information for a worldwide audience. The great danger of today’s Internet is that anyone can publish information for a worldwide audience.

When people type your name into Google or other search engines, what do they find? You can implement some simple tips to immediately manage your online reputation; to build and promote your personal brand. They can help you limit distribution of the wince-inducing comments and photos. And they can help you showcase accomplishments or experiences in the top results when someone searches your name.

1. Own Your Online Name. If your name is “Joe Smith,” do you own www.joesmith.com, www.joe-smith.com, and even www.joe-smith-sucks.com (and all of the .org and other variations of the above names)? If you don’t “own” your own name, then you’re leaving your online reputation in the hands of someone who does. To purchase your own name, visit NetworkSolutions.com or www.godaddy.com. Conduct a search and if the name you want is available, purchase it for a fee of about $10 per year.

2. Manage Your LinkedIn Account. LinkedIn has become a key site to find business executives. Setting up an account at Linkedin.com is easy. Make sure you complete all of the fields and craft a well-written, professional profile. Be honest, as it’s fairly easy to verify or refute any information you provide. To learn more about writing a compelling profile, visit samrichter.com/linkedinprofiles and check out the various links to several great profile-writing resources.

3. Leverage Your LinkedIn Account. Set up other accounts in places similar to LinkedIn such asNaymz.com, ZoomInfo.com, Plaxo.com, BrandYourself.com, and Workface.com. Copy the LinkedIn profile you so carefully crafted and then paste it into these accounts. Modify the information to fit the site’s specific format, and change the first few sentences so that the content showing up in a Google search result is different for each site.

4. Create a Google+ Account. Let Google know that you exist and who you are by setting up your own Google Profile at Google.com/plus. Set up your free account; link it to your website and social networks, and more. Again, leverage the LinkedIn profile you already wrote when creating your Google Profile biography.

5. Create a Twitter Account (and Use It). Create an account at Twitter.com and Tweet on a regular schedule. Refrain from Tweeting about what you had for breakfast. Instead, share information that others will find valuable such as educational articles related to your business or industry. Follow others whose reputation you respect, and that in turn could increase your followers.

6. Give Your Name a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Boost. Companies spend thousands of dollars—big ones spend millions—search engine optimizing their company websites. That means that when someone enters keywords associated with the company into a search engine, the company’s website shows up higher in the corresponding search results. You can do something similar with your own name with the help of BrandYourself, and you don’t have to mortgage your house to do it. Set up your free account at BrandYourself.com.  Use the prompts to conduct a search on your name. On the results page identify whether the result is a positive or negative one—or if it’s not you—and BrandYourself will give you a letter grade relating to how your names ranks in search results.

7. Manage Your Facebook Account. Create and manage your Facebook profile atwww.facebook.com. Remove any photos that don’t show you in a professional manner. Certainly share information about your personal life because that’s what people want to see on Facebook, but don’t post anything that you wouldn’t want your mom or grandmother to see—or great-grandkids 50 years from now.

8. Set Your Facebook Privacy. Do you want to keep your personal life personal? Make sure you set your Facebook Privacy settings to help you do that. Log in to your Facebook account and on the upper navigation menu look for the “Lock” icon. Click on it and familiarize yourself with the pull-down options related to protecting your privacy. Make sure you click on the “See More Settings” link.

9. Think Before You Post (or Send). Most communication is non-verbal. Although you might be only slightly miffed at someone, the comments you make in an email could be taken out of context and indicate that you are spiteful and mean, even if you use an emoticon (a smiley face J). Don’t send an email, don’t text a friend, don’t post a Tweet, don’t comment on an online post until you’re sure that what you say won’t be taken out of context, and how you say it is done in a calm, professional manner.

10. Email Yourself First. Did someone else’s message make you angry or emotional? Before responding via email, text or social media, write an email spewing out your anger and emotions. Sprinkle in some four-letter words. Share what you REALLY want to say. But don’t send the email to the other person. Instead, send it to yourself. Then wait a few hours or even until the next morning and read the email. Once you’ve had some time to reflect, you’ll most likely refrain from sending the message altogether or you’ll edit out the emotional parts before you hit “Send.”

11. Give Yourself the Newspaper Test. Remember your digital messages are archived and theoretically searchable forever. Do you really want your permanent digital legacy to be one written in a time of anger? Ask yourself this question every time you’re about to hit “Send” or “Post”: “How would I feel if this post made the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper . . . would I be embarrassed if my professional network read this? Would I be embarrassed if my great-grandchildren read this? If the answer is yes, then don’t post it to the Web, send it in an email, or respond in a text message.

12. Don’t Leave Your Brand to Chance. When was the last time you searched your name on Google? How about Twitter? Negative information spreads like wildfire online and you cannot leave your personal brand and reputation to chance. Numerous free services can notify you when your name appears online. My favorites are Google Alerts (Google.com/alerts) and for Twitter, Topsy.com. When creating your Alert make sure to put your name within quotation marks, and then use additional words to further narrow your search, and the minus sign to filter results. In the future, anytime Google or Topsy finds an online mention of your name, you will receive an email.

In today’s information-rich world, it’s nearly impossible to stay off the online stage. Whether you post information about yourself, or someone else does, you are almost certain to have an online presence — an online personal brand. The key question is, who is going to control your brand? Others? Fate? Or you?

By Sam Richter. Article source: http://socialmediatoday.com/samrichter/1700011/ways-build-personal-brand-online-world

Photo Credit: NocturnaIMoTH and Yuuleeaye (www.imgur.com)