Below are some of the most common mistakes that businesses and people make when it comes to social media networking. Try to avoid all of these.
1. Setting up a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter page and then not providing updates. Would you send out a blank newsletter to your customers ??
2. Thinking I understand social media and I can just do it myself. It may be more cost-effective or time-effective to delegate certain social media responsibilities to a company that specializes in it or for someone else to handle.
3. Forgetting that social media is about creating interaction with your clients or customers, not just about sending out information.
4. Clicking onto a site for “business” and then getting distracted by other information or friend updates.
5. Spending too much time on sites you enjoy and not fully evaluating whether that particular site is the most effective one for your time and efforts.
So many companies and products are reviewed online by opinions of their customers. Today, more than ever people are posting their personal opinions. They are posting them – Positive and Negative. Services like Yelp make it easy for people to review personal experiences of other customers. Yelp has shifted the way testimonials are viewed. They are right in front of you, at the click of a mouse. You can read whether or not a restaurant has excellent, good or bad service and the quality of their food. You can even get a full understanding of a restaurants atmosphere just by reading the reviews posted by other people that have been there.
If you are planning a vacation, Trip Advisor is a company that allows all reviews to be posted right on the site. If you want to understand what a hotel is like in Venice or if a hotel has a view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, just click on Trip Advisor. They will let you know. They even reveal the date and time of the most recent posts so that you can see if it is out dated. I recently went on a trip to St. Thomas and I reviewed two hotels that I was debating on staying at. I ended up picking the Ritz Carlton based on reward points, etc. but my point here is that the reviews were right on target. They even instructed me which side of the hotel had the best view of the ocean, which side had be renovated and what restaurants where best to eat at off of the resort. It was a phenomenal experience and I am so grateful that I was able to read the reviews before hand.
So my point is here, for companies. Hug your customer- you may never know what review they might post.
Please join Phil Percuoco and Boston Web Creative on Thursday, February 4th at 12:00pm-1:00pm for the Underground’s presentation at the New England Grows Conference. It is at the BCEC in South Boston. The conference is for members only of the green industry in New England. For more information regarding the conference please click on New England Grows Conference.
Are you presently unemployed, underemployed or feel like it is impossible to find a job in this economy? Do you have skills and experience that separate you from the pack? Have you posted your resume online with very little results? Have you dabbled a little in social media and find yourself over your head? Philip Percuoco of Boston Web Creative will explain how you can create a web presence for yourself to help aid employers in finding you. He will explore creating your own personal website as well as how to connect it to the social networking world–including Facebook,Twitter and blogging–in order to give your presence on the web an important boost.
The meeting is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is not required.
Phil’s presentation begins at 7 p.m. and is sponsored by the Hills Church Networking Group. The Hills Church is located at 207 Washington St. in Wellesley Hills. The Assembly Room is on the side of the church, next to the main parking lot.
*Wicked Local Wellesley
Posted Jan 14, 2010 @ 02:09 PM
Last update Jan 15, 2010 @ 06:32 PM
Interesting news hit the web today as Google released “Google Goggles”, a brand-new addition to Google Labs. It is an experimental application for Android devices that supports visual search.
How does it work? Just open the application and snap a photo. Google (Google Wave) will process the image and return search results. The photo search functionality eliminates the need to type or say anything on your mobile device. It also adds context to your real-world surroundings.
While the technology is pretty amazing, they admit that it is still the beginning. Selected image searches work seamless. For example : photos of books, business cards, artwork, places, logos and landmarks. Image searches for food, animals, plants and cars are still in the works.
Watch the video below for a demonstration of Google Goggles.
Now more than ever, company marketers are challenged with improving performance with fewer resources and shifting marketing budgets from traditional to digital tactics like SEO and social media. There are significant benefits from combining search engine optimization and social media marketing tactics ranging from increased social network discovery via search to the ability to attract links for improved SEO.
Implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content is leaving money on the table. Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking.
1. Find the Audience:
Understand their behaviors, preferences, methods of publishing, and sharing.
Most companies that are involved with the social web in the channels where their customers spend time have a good sense of where to start. Get involved.
2. Define your objectives:
Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales, and SEO has long been directly accountable to substantial improvements in web sales. Social media is not direct marketing. The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search.
3. Establish a game plan:
The game plan for reaching objectives in a combined SEO and social media effort will often focus on content and interaction, since it is content that people discover and share. Whether a keyword-focused strategy for reaching goals means publishing new content or creating an opportunity for consumer-generated content, it must involve proactive promotion and easy sharing ability.
4. Creating a strategic mix:
The strategic mix for a social media marketing effort is based on doing the homework of finding where the desired audience spends its time interacting with and sharing content. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing effort happens within the strategic mix and optimizing content for keywords.
5. Measure your goals:
Leveraging both social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Marketers can use specific measurement tools to monitor the effect of their social web participation as well as the search engine performance of SEO efforts.
Extend the value of your investment. By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort and vice versa, marketers, public relations and advertisers can extend the value of their investment. Well optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search and help increase sales.Advertisers and companies that fund social media campaigns can continue to realize the traffic benefit from optimized interactive content long after the campaign has ended.
