Social Media Vs. Blogger Outreach to Promote Your Small Business

If these words are foreign territory to you, not to worry, we’ll fill you in throughout this article. On the upside, you’ve landed on this page. Which means you are doing your research and taking steps to boost your small business internet presence.

Social Media refers to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and much more. These websites are designed for its users to share real-time experiences through photos, text, sharing of news or information.

Every social media channel has it’s own environment. Not every platform is suitable for every business type; there’s certainly one that’ll work for you. It’s no secret social media has evolved substantially, from broadcasting messages in its early days to building relationships and engaging with their fans today.

Social media marketing is still very effective. But, it shouldn’t be your only strategy as the message can become redundant and repetitive.

Then there’s Blogger Outreach otherwise known as influencer marketing. The idea is most companies looking for more exposure for their product and service will turn to influential bloggers that have established a substantial following.

They will write about their positive experience, using their product or service. Normally, you would offer your product or service free of charge, sort of like providing them a sample enough for them to decide how they want to share your product with their following.

The benefit of running a Blogger Outreach campaign?

The Authenticity: The blogger is a real person providing their actual thoughts and feedback on your business. It’s not another marketing company coming up with another catchy slogan or salesy remarks and it’s not you trying to sell your own product.

The Exposure: You can gain from building these authentic relationships can result in natural links to your website.

The Relationships: You can build to establish a strong internet reputation.

The Opportunity to Appear in Organic Search Results.
Most bloggers will exercise SEO strategies in their articles and consider key terms that your audience would be more likely to enter into search engines like, Google.

Finding the right influencer blogger is key, you’ll want to find someone who resonates with your brand. For example, you want want a food blogger to write about your spa services. If you’re in the business of health and beauty, find a fashion blogger or an internet makeup guru to try your product and tell their following just how great it is!

So, when it comes down to which is better to promote your small business: social media or blogger outreach? It really is all about using both strategies together. As a business owner, you may not always have the time to stay up-to-date with regular posts or finding the right influencer to promote your products.

10 Social Media Posts Ideas to Keep Your Small Business Internet Presence Fresh.

Many small businesses find a lot of value in building their internet presence through social media. It gives them a way to share a side of the business that is not all about products and promotions. The best way to establish and strengthen your brand is to share the story that comes with it.

Humanize your business, put a face to the name, and tell people what there is to love about your work besides the features and benefits. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snap-chat give you the tools you’ll need to tell your story from a personal perspective.

Check out these 10 Social Media Posts Ideas to Keep Your Small Business Internet Presence Fresh.:

1. Post in real-time
People are now breaking news in real-time before it becomes official news. It’s no wonder Snapchat is an ever-growing trend. Remember, your posts don’t have to be directly related to your products or services however, what you share should “talk” around your brand. Embrace the rise of real-time social storytelling!

2. Engage With You User
Share articles and interesting finds from all over the web, whether it’s an image, a how-to guide, current news, etc. Again, it doesn’t have to be about your business, it can be anything that speaks for your brand or has something in common with it.

3. Create a Contest
Who doesn’t love the feeling of winning? Host a contest on Facebook or Instagram and offer your followers a chance to win something enticing like a free product or service. Encourage your followers to “Like”, “Share”, or “Comment” to increase their chances of winning.

4. launch a New product
From time to time, you can post about new and exciting developments like, new products, flavours, styles, and more. These posts can be of a promotional nature if you’re introducing fresh new content.

5. Use Multimedia
It’s no secret that multimedia gains more traction and engagement than even the most insightful articles. Boost your social voice with interesting images, memes, and real-time videos.

6. Use Hashtags
Use hashtags to link your posts to people who share similar interests. #seo #google #googleseo #localseo. Online resources can help you Find trending hashtags in your area and industry.

7. Share tips, how-to guides, and DIY projects
People are always searching the web for new ways to be inventive and creative from home. Did you know you can learn to be a professional makeup artist from YouTube? Or how about learning to change your own car battery? Show up in search results by sharing this type of content.

8. Occasional offers
Offer your customers discounts or promotions from time to time however, do this without coming across as too promotional. As much as people enjoy getting a good deal, they also don’t like seeing it flood their news feed. In fact, turn to influential bloggers with a substantial following and who you believe would speak strongly for your brand. Ask them if they’d like to feature your business and your current offer to their followers. Share their blog post on your business page!

9. Share customer photos
A strong online reputation is important for all businesses and what better way to build on your reputation than with popularity. If your customers are posting about their recent purchase from your store, share their post! It not only shows your business is desired by others but it inspires trust. Every time a customer proudly shares something about your business, think of it as another positive review.

10. Poll
You can create a poll directly from your Facebook business page. Ask for your customers opinions and you may even be surprised with some of their answers. If you own a restaurant, ask your customers what soup of the day they prefer? Or what they prefer a cocktail, beer, or wine with their dinner.

Believe it or not, social posts may turn out to be your most effective marketing strategy for your small business. Keep in mind, you wouldn’t post the same material to every social platform as each has it’s own tone and environment. Learning how to effectively fit into each social environment is key to social success.

Tips to Manage Your Social Media Efforts in 2015

2015, A Exciting Year for Social Media, As you may have already heard that Twitter and Facebook have both started testing in-stream buy buttons. It's a good chance that Facebook and Twitter users will see more buy buttons in the near future.

To help you face 2015's Social Media Marketing Challenges, I'll share tips for social media success in the new year.

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How to Run a Successful Social Media Contest

Step 1: Create a Social Media Marketing Plan

Similarly to the way you do in Website Design and SEO, you must make a plan before executing. Same goes for social media. Creating a social media marketing plan will set you up for success, and will allow you to avoid any social media mistakes.

Step 2: Do a Social Media Audit

Before You Start Creating New Social Media Account, run a Social Media Audit of your current Social Media Presence Like SEO Audit involved in Search Engine Optimization Campaign. Social media audits are useful to keep all your social media channels in a row, such as social profiles and passwords.

Step 3: Deliver The Right Mix of Content

On social media, you need to deliver the right mix of content Regularly. Promotions on social media should always be balanced, whether it's for the Black Friday, Holidays or Every Day. Exception discounts are meant to be shared, and social media can multiply the reach of your promotions. At the same time, it's crucial to keep standards high for images and copy, and to vary your mix of content. People appreciate great deals, but a non-stop stream of "xx percent off" posts can come off as routine or lacking personality.

Step 4: Pay Attention to Social Media Engagement

Skimping out on social media engagement in your social media strategy can pose a huge threat to your company’s social media presence. The Easy 3 steps to doing social media engagement right are being proactive, always listening, and being engaging.

Step 5: Build Relationships

It's All about human relationships. Every brand in the world does holiday and special event campaigns, but the ones that succeed don't do so accidentally – most of them are warm, original, and authentic. Focus on making real connections. Instead of pushing your product, consider giving your customers a platform to discuss their memories, share your company photo, or just send a genuine message wishing people all the best.

Step 6: Monitor Your Social Media

When it comes to social media, people have all the power to say whatever they want about your company and brand. What they are saying can be positive or negative. Regardless of how or why they give you feedback, not monitoring your social media audience is a missed opportunity.

Social media monitoring allows you to gain powerful insight into your customers, competitors, and industry influencers. To take full advantage of social media listening, you need to spread your monitoring across several social media channels, and keep a constant watch for new opportunities. However, acquiring these insights takes time, and the use of the right tools.

Here are Top 15 Social Media Management Tools To Save You Time.

Google+ Insights: Google+ Insights gives you an overview of your Google+ Page Insights for the last 30 days. Your Insights show numbers for Google+ post views, post actions and new followers. You can also see how each of those numbers has changed in the past 30 days.

Facebook Insights: With the Facebook Insights Page API you can access metrics about your Facebook Page. For example you can get the total number of people who have liked your Page or the number of people sharing stories about your page.

Twitter Analytics: Twitter Analytics Measure and boost your impact on Twitter. The new and improved Twitter analytics shows tons of awesome data about follower demographics and tweet engagement.

Pinterest Analytics: With Pinterest Analytics, You can see what people like from your profile and what they save from your website. Get new data about your audience, too, so you can learn what your customers really want.

Hootsuite: Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management. The system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, MySpace, WordPress, TrendSpottr and Mixi.

SocialOomph: Social Oomph started out as a service that just focused on helping Twitter users become more productive and they soon expanded to include other social platforms such as; Facebook and Linkedin.

Tweepi: Tweepi Twitter Follow Management Utility is a set of Twitter tools to add, follow and unfollow tweeps in bulk.

Spredfast: Spredfast is an social media marketing platform that helps marketers manage audience experiences and monitor brand engagement.

Sprout Social: Sprout Social is a social media management and engagement platform for businesses. Sprout enables social communication for business through three main functions: publishing, engagement and analytics. Sprout provides solutions for social media marketing, social media management, social customer service and social media analytics. Sprout’s platform offers users the ability to integrate with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Zendesk and UserVoice.

Everypost: Everypost is a social media publishing tool, enabling content publishers to post multimedia content across multiple platforms.

Bitly: Bitly is a URL shortening service. The company Bitly, Inc. was established in 2008. It is privately held and based in New York City. Bitly shortens 600 million links per month, for use in social networking, SMS, and email. Bitly makes money by charging for access to aggregate data created as a result of many people using the shortened URLs.

SocialFlow: SocialFlow uses real-time data and business rules to determine what and when to publish to your social media properties for both owned and paid social posts.

Crowdbooster: Crowdbooster measures and optimizes your social media marketing, providing powerful, easy-to-use analytics and recommendations on Twitter and Facebook.

Mention: Monitor millions of different sources and don't miss anything mentioning your keywords.

BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is an extremely useful content-research tool. It has some incredibly powerful functionality and you should certainly test it out. There is a free version you can use to get started.

Step 7: Schedule Your Social Media Posting

Social media tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social take the stress out of managing multiple Twitter accounts by providing you the ability to schedule Tweets ahead of time.

Step 8: Target your audience better with the use of Social Media Statistics

Social media statistics allow marketers who use social media for business to guide their Social Media Strategies. With so many studies being done on social media, it would be a shame not to take advantage of these very informative numbers. This blog post puts together a healthy selection of social media statistics that every social media manager should know.

Step 9: Use Content Management Tools to manage and share your content

Even with a social media content calendar in place, content management can be tricky—especially if you’re juggling several social channels. Picking out the right piece of content to share out to your social media audience can be a daunting task for any social media manager.

Step 10: Use URL Shorteners to Track and Measure Engagements on your URLs

Tracking retweets and likes is no longer enough to give you sufficient data about social engagement. Remember that link you included in your post to drive people back to your website? Well, when you use URL shorteners, you’re provided with a trackable URL, so you can measure the success of that social media post in driving traffic to your website.

Step 11: Learn about Hashtags

You’ve probably seen people use a hashtag with every word in their Tweet, or dedicate a separate Instagram comment to include hashtags. But that doesn’t mean that’s the right way to use hashtags. Educate yourself on the do’s and don’ts of how to use hashtags in this blog post that goes over the fundamentals of hashtags.

Step 12: Blog Regularly

Your regular blog is a good place to write longer-form posts when needed. To get the most out of your efforts, make sure your blog is mobile-friendly. You can test it with Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Learn More about How to Fix Common Mobile Content and Usability Issues.

Step 13: Update website old content and reshare them

Old content is your friend. Find your most popular posts and those that rank highly and update them as needed. Then reshare them across your social channels to draw new attention to those articles. A good way to ensure you have the most up-to-date news is finding reliable sources of information in your industry.

Step 14: Ask Feedback

If you’d like to have more customer feedback on your product or service, give your customers a reason to help you out. Incentives can run the gamut here, and most are simple and straightforward.

Step 15: Use Infographics

People have come to love and rely on infographics for explaining information clearly and concisely. Whether you create one yourself or hire a graphic designer, be sure to include your company’s name and URL. That way your work is attributed to your business as it moves across the socialsphere.

Ask those who share your infographic to link the image back to your site so you’ll enjoy more traffic as well. When you share your infographic on your own site, make sure to include some explanatory text that deep links to previous relevant articles you’ve published.

Step 16: Install the Pin It Button

If you want people to share your images, it’s essential to make it easy for them. By installing the Pin It button, users who like images in your post can share them on Pinterest and spread your visual content in a matter of seconds.

Step 17: Nurture Content Sharing

Whether your social media marketing department is comprised of a single person or a staff of 10, you don’t have to figure out meaningful company content on your own—ask for help from other departments. Who knows the current projects and goals better than the people who work with them daily?

For example, customer service can share success stories or ways they meet customers’ needs. Sales can tell you what was particularly hot this season. Product development can give you updates on new releases.

Tap into those resources as much as possible. Not only will you make your job easier, you’ll be sure to share the most important information.

Step 18: Participate in Conversations

If you want to connect with potential prospects, you have to engage with them. And to do that effectively, you need to know where they’re engaging most frequently on social media.

When you know where your prospects hang out, start connecting with them. If they’re on Twitter, add them to a Twitter list. Add Google+ users to a circle. Reach out to leads on LinkedIn. Read and listen to their content, and comment when you have something to add.

Step 19: Use YouTube and Vine

Creating brand awareness with quality videos posted on YouTube and Vine has been a go-to social marketing tactic.

Marketers should keep in mind, though, that YouTube is more than a platform for sharing video footage. It’s just as important to develop a channel that is in keeping with your brand identity (e.g., using consistent imagery, thumbnails, colors and graphics within your video and your channel page design).

Vine’s short looping videos have won the attention of businesses and fit the bill for a cost-effective and innovative way to promote products and services. To get your own creative juices flowing, check out how other businesses have been using Vine.

Step 20: Revisit Your Social Media Strategy

No matter how long your business has been on social media, it’s recommended to review your goals, assess your success and make any needed changes. Pulling back from one platform and switching it up on another may be just the thing you need to freshen up your presence and become more effective.

When it comes to Social Media Marketing Efforts, what tools are your current favorites? Are there new ones mentioned here that you might want to try or I missed important ones? Let me know by your comment below.

Crucial Things Social Media Marketers Need to Remember

Social media is everything. An obsessive habit, a communication portal for businesses and customers, a gateway to increasing links and online purchases, a consistent lead producer, and so much more. Social media marketers are well aware of this and the heavy burdens that come with managing company social profiles.

Not only is a brand exposed to the possibility of bashing, but several crises now exist due to social media and the demand for presence. Through all the chaos of managing a company’s brand online, there are many rewards: engagement with new fans, the first sale from Facebook, content shared virally on Twitter, etc.

Image Source: Dazeinfo.com

Business 2 Community organized an impressive list of online marketing statistics last December. Of the many, these social stats sum up the struggle, benefits, and why social media is such a vital part of online marketing.

• “Interesting content” is one of the top three reasons people follow brands on social media. (NewsCred)
• 47% of Americans say Facebook is their #1 influencer of purchases. (Jeff Bullas)
• 63% of millennials say they stay updated on brands using social networks and 51% say social opinions influence their purchase decisions; and 46% rely on social when making online purchases. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)
• 34% of marketers use Twitter to successfully generate leads. (Jeff Bullas)

You can keep afloat through the social media updates, crises, and changes with these tips:

Optimize Social Profiles

As much as this should be a given, it’s so easily forgotten. Each social network offers different opportunities to optimize a company profile. Twitter allows hashtags in the description and tracks keywords to filter specific search results for accounts, photos, videos, and more. Facebook gives you plenty of opportunity to properly insert business information with specific hours, categories, address, short/long descriptions, etc. Don’t miss out on opportunities to connect locally and with potential new clients by forgetting to optimize your company’s social pages.

Optimizing Tips

• Verify your Pinterest profile by verifying your website. There are two different ways to verify, with an HTML tag or a meta on the website. Once verified, a bright red check mark appears next to the website, giving users a more comforting feel that this is indeed the real Kim Kardashian Pinterest page.
• Optimize Twitter images. Twitter automatically reduces images to 440 x 220 pixels. If the large image you were planning to attach with a tweet won’t be attractive that small, choose a different image that will appeal to Tweeters and the pixel requirements.

Pay Attention to Analytics

Almost every social network is now providing it’s own analytics for businesses. This leaves very little reasoning to why you’re still posting at 12:15pm everyday when Facebook has data to prove your fans are engaging best at 6:30pm. Scheduling tools like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Followerwonk also provide great analytics that further help analyze what fans are engaging best with.

Analytics Tips

• Perform weekly social media reports that analyze each social network’s progress. The report should track how many fans/followers, increase/decrease of engagement, published posts, link clicks, etc.
• Analyze goals with results. If the goal of a company Facebook page was initially to address concerns with products and act as a customer service funnel, then analyze how often the page is receiving such engagement. Is it the type of engagement you expected? Are you responding accordingly and in a timely manner?

Time is Always of the Essence

On Monday I spent about 10 minutes writing a complaint on a company’s Facebook page regarding an experience I just had. As someone who manages several company social pages, I know the quickest way to get a response from a company is when a complaint is right smack on a client’s Facebook page, just waiting for comments from others to add on.

It’s been four days now and still no response. This is a very big, corporate company with locations internationally and a large social team who’s been posting new posts since my complaint was posted. As a user, and former customer, I’m now even more upset. Imagine how your clients and customers feel when you don’t message them back on Twitter in a timely matter.

Urgency Tips:

• Respond to engagement within 24 hours. If the engagement is negative, respond as soon as possible to help resolve the situation.
• Create notifications to notify you each time engagement is received. Connect the notifications to the email address you check most, and push notifications through your cell, as well.

Reach Your Demographic

There’s nothing worse for a user than wanting to like and engage with your brand, but being turned off by your irrelevant posts. If your audience is primarily made up of millennials, use fun, high contrast imagery that they’re attracted to. Whereas if you’re trying to sell life insurance policies to 50+ year old couples you’ll want to use stock images of people in their 40s.

Conduct research, and then do more research, about what your demographic likes and what your competition is doing. Checking with your competitors who have similar demographics will inspire you with new ideas and avoid the trial and error of what works and what doesn’t.

Demographic Tips:

• Understand what your demographic likes. Clearly you’ve done enough research to define your demographic that you should know what kind of things your demographic enjoys. Incorporate your company with those types of interests to appeal to them with similar types of posts, images, and content.
• Pinterest isn’t the perfect social network for every company. Just as LinkedIn is great for scouting potential employees and leads, Pinterest is perfect for eCommerce, fashion, and restaurants. Have a brand presence on all social networks, but concentrate your main efforts on the networks your audience will engage with most.

Humanize the Tone and Message

This isn’t 2025; we’re not all robots. Let’s communicate to our customers on social like we do in person, using real dialogue. Phrases like, “Call Today!” and “Get Yours Now!” are typical calls to action that bombard customers with an unrelatable sales feel. Sales-speak can be great when spoken correctly, but isn’t always appropriate for social media. Converse with fans and produce thought-provoking engagement they want to interact with.

Image Source: Social Media Explorer

Humanizing Tips:

• Define the tone. Does your brand want to be playful, sarcastic, arrogant or persuasive? Choose a tone and stick with it when posting on social. Followers will respect the consistency of your tone, even if it doesn’t 100% match their own.
• Define the voice. A company’s voice is different than it’s tone. The voice is the more definitive style of the brand, whereas the tone is that extra spice you add to your already spicy burrito.

Handle Social Media Crises With a Stiff Drink

No one ever said managing social media pages would be easy. When a crisis hits, and they will, break open that bottle of whiskey that’s been collecting dust and get your typing fingers ready. You’ll have a lot of communicating to do.

Image Source: Pinterest

Crises Tips

• Know the difference between a standard consumer complaint and a social media crisis. When a group of fans who dislike your company create multiple social pages to badmouth and spread lies on Facebook,using your logo, that’s a crisis.
• Attack where the attack began. If the issue began on Twitter and quickly spread to Facebook and Tumblr, respond appropriately to the Tweeters, then the Facebookers, and Tumblrs. Your sincere apology needs to be seen where the comment was first made.
• Avoid an automated response. Copy and paste is not the answer to social media crisis. A real person needs to respond from the company and address concerns, either leaving their actual name as a signature or “Management”. Come up with a solution to the problem and respond uniquely to each comment.

Have a tip you can’t live without for social media management? Comment below and share your best strategies and ideas for surviving social media!