Blogs

As the most widely-used (and perhaps most powerful) social media platform on the Internet today, Facebook is one of the most essential components of any social media strategy. That’s why using the Tactical Wheel to outline your Facebook methodology needs to be a priority. The Tactical Wheel, when applied to Facebook, not only provides a great road map for navigating what could become a complex marketing strategy, but it also gives you an excellent starting point when it comes time to planning and executing your marketing plan.

Facebook Methodology in a Facebook World

There are many components to Facebook that are constantly evolving. Although this is one reason why social media training can prove indispensable to a Facebook marketing strategy, it is also the reason why the Tactical Wheel is the most helpful tool you can use to create your Facebook methodology from scratch. When creating any social media strategy, considering the five steps in the Tactical Wheel process is imperative in order to successfully plan, implement and analyze any social media campaign. As Facebook continues evolving, these five steps enable you to create a plan that brings consistency in the face of change.

• Listening. Listening to the activity taking place on Facebook is the key to identifying what most interests your target audience. If you already have a Facebook company page, make sure someone consistently monitors the comments left on the page. You can also search key phrases on Facebook to look for other pages.
• Building Community. Facebook boasts the largest social media user count on the web, which means you have more than ample opportunities to clearly identify your target audience. Build your community of Facebook Fans by creating campaigns, promotions and sweepstakes. You can also hold promotions and implement “fan-gating,” a method of increasing your community by asking fans to click “Like” your company’s Facebook page to be entered in a contest, sweepstakes, or similar offer. 
• Broadcasting. Posting consistently, filtering content, and sharing it across social media platforms plays an essential role in broadcasting your message on Facebook. Post useful information, promote your blogs and curate your content to ensure that your broadcasting efforts are rewarded.
• Content. Facebook is all about content—and all KINDS of content, not just the written kind! Videos, blogs, news articles, music links, petitions, commercials, events and the like are being posted by the thousands every hour. The key to standing out is providing quality content to your fans consistently but without spamming. Posting four Facebook Notes per month, rotating videos in and out of the video vault, and promoting upcoming events is a good starting guideline.
• Conversion. Converting Facebook fans into potential customers is all about giving them as many opportunities as possible to visit your website and actively interact with your company. If you provide a service, give links to your contact page on your website. Give your fans the ability to order your products from the Facebook page with an online form fill or a shopping cart, or provide links that lead them to your order page.

Splash Media U provides Facebook training as well as social media classes to help businesses successfully have a social media presence online. Take a look at Splash Media U's current social media training offer which includes SplashCube, our proprietary social media management software.

Learning how to develop social media objectives is a must in order to fully understand the role social media has in your online marketing strategy. Whether your objectives are to expand your target audience or increase traffic to your social media platforms, it's important to remember that developing clear and concise social media objectives is necessary in order to execute your overall strategy successfully.

Why Develop Social Media Objectives Consumers don't respond to misguided marketing efforts or sloppy campaigns. They can tell when a company doesn't have clear objectives in mind because their marketing has no direction—or it has too many directions. This can be especially frustrating when it comes to a social media marketing campaign, because these rely so heavily on brand awareness and audience interaction. If the social media objectives aren't clear, and the marketing becomes unfocused, the audience doesn't respond well and your brand suffers. Establishing social media objectives can point the way to a clear direction in your strategy. It can also help you easily identify measurable outcomes and provides an idea of where to go next in your company's social strategy.

Tips to Developing Social Media ObjectivesHere are some tips to help you develop effective and concise social media objectives for your online campaign:

1. Examine your current presence online. Take a closer look at your current social media presence. What has your social media strategy accomplished so far? Are there clear goals in place? What do you hope to accomplish through social media?
2. Listen to your audience. Read comments, look at your metrics and find out how your audience is reacting and interacting with your brand through social media.
3. Analyze your current state and compare it to your overall campaign objectives. Take a look at your numbers over the past couple of months; see how many followers you've gained, what kind of links they have been sharing or clicking on, and what response overall has your audience provided.
4. Outline what you would like your social media to accomplish. Use the information obtained through listening to your audience and examining the current state of your social media strategy to outline clearly defined objectives. For example, do you want to increase your target audience? Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Do you want to increase your visibility?
5. Define your objectives clearly and share them with your team. Establish a timeline for when to analyze the results of your honed campaign to see if you have reached your objectives.

Splash Media U offers the social media training necessary to learn how to develop successful social media objectives. Check out our classes at www.splashmediau.com and join the conversations on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Internet's love affair with Pinterest is showing no signs of slowing down, which is good news for marketers and entrepreneurs looking to use Pinterest for business. As the market for all things pinned continues to grow, it has become evident to many that using Pinterest for business is a fun, interesting and personable way to engage a target audience and gain followers more easily.

In a nutshell, Pinterest is a virtual corkboard that enables users to share anything they find on the Internet with their friends and followers. Found a great strawberry rhubarb pie recipe? Pin it to your board. Dreaming of visiting Greece for the summer? Share your favorite picture! Read a book and are dying to share the title? Found your dream car? Posted something cute on your baby blog? Pin it, pin it, pin it!

Considering Pinterest for Business

Although the social platform continues to gain traction when it comes to personal interactions, the use of Pinterest for business is still relatively new and is therefore the perfect untapped goldmine for your marketing strategy. Not sure why you should consider it?

• Access to a growing number of users. Over five million and counting! This gives you an untapped, growing traffic stream and the potential to expand your target audience.
• Image-based interaction is more appealing. Pinterest is highly visual, which makes for more accessible and appealing interactions.
• Simple interactions with target audiences. All it takes is a repin and you can quickly get fans to follow your boards. You can also follow boards you love, giving you more of an advantage with the public.Showcase business personality. Your Pinterest for business boards are personable, and therefore showcase the personality of your business—another plus when gaining traction.

Tips on Using Pinterest for Business

Ready to plunge into the Pinterest for business world? Here are some tips that will help you get started on using Pinterest for business:

• Pin regularly on your board. A steady stream of valuable content keeps followers coming back for more.
• Share your pins on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Integrate your social media platforms for maximum results. Also, include a 'Pin It' button on your website to encourage pins.Create boards according to business niche, interests, target audiences, marketing campaigns, or even location.
• Write short, but informative descriptions on your 'About' profile. Be sure to include your company's website and Twitter handle. Also, short but sweet descriptions for each pin-200 characters seems to be the most repinnable, according to Dan Zarella of HubSpot.
• Use hashtags (“#”) whenever possible to appear in searches and trending topics.
• Don't be afraid to pin informative videos! Pinterest is not just about photos, so post valuable video content whenever you can.
• Use Pinterest search and analytics to determine what is most repinnable and what direction you should take with your boards.
• Remember, Pinterest is about personality—so don't be afraid to give your business some personality. Your followers will be all the more grateful for it.

Interested in learning more about Pinterest for business? What about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? Splash Media U has the tools you need to become an expert at social media marketing. Take a look at our online classes at www.splashmediau.com and check out our social media communities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest today!

How can you know if the YouTube marketing strategy for your company's social media plan is achieving its objectives? One of the methods that many top tier social media professionals learn during their YouTube training is the Tactical Wheel method, which breaks down the social media strategy into five comprehensive steps that guide you through the process to achieve effective and measurable results.

How Does the Tactical Wheel Apply to YouTube Marketing?

The concept of YouTube marketing is nothing new; since its inception, YouTube has been a hub of valuable marketing content for various industries. As YouTube's platform evolves, more opportunities present themselves to social media professionals for more dynamic, comprehensive strategies that can potentially result in conversions and sales.

Once you have a solid understanding of your video assets, take the time to outline your social media business plan and incorporate YouTube marketing into it, considering carefully the steps in the Tactical Wheel and applying them to your overall strategy.

1.  Listening. Listen to the buzz around the Internet, paying close attention to those conversations that imply a potential interest in your industry or product. These conversations will produce an audience that is possibly “ready” to watch your video and learn more about your products and services.
2.  Building Community. Although YouTube is not necessarily the type of social media platform in which you build a community, you can definitely use the features in YouTube to identify your target audiences and share your videos with them. Identify those communities whose members have a high probability of sharing the video of your product with the rest of their social media connections.
3.  Broadcasting. When it comes to YouTube marketing, broadcasting is the most important step in the Tactical Wheel. In addition to having your active YouTube channel where you can share videos, be sure to broadcast them and share them with your target audiences in other platforms as well at least once a month. Also, use the broadcasting step to re-evaluate and discover more target audiences.
4.  Content. As with any other social media platform Tactical Wheel, be sure that the content in your videos is always high-quality and of significant value to your target audience. Followers will continue seeking out your products and services—and sharing your videos—as long as the content is of importance to them.
5.  Conversion. Finally, be sure to add links, call to actions, and discussion questions to your video descriptions. Share your videos in your other social media platforms, include links to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in your descriptions as well as your videos, and encourage visits to your website through the video and the description. Make it easy for your audience to go from potential to actual customers.

Splash Media U is the place to get the YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training you need to become a social media professional. To find out more, check out our online classes at our website, and visit our communities on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn today.

If you want the largest business-oriented social media site to work for you, you must learn the best LinkedIn strategy and the tactics that go along with it. There are more than 100 million LinkedIn users, so it obviously has the potential to be a powerful tool in your prospecting arsenal. In this LinkedIn training, you will learn the best LinkedIn strategy and tactics.

Develop an Exceptional Profile

You want your profile to stand out visually to compel potential contacts to consider doing business with you. Do more than simply filling out a basic profile to convey your ability and desire to go the extra mile, both in your personal and professional life. Your profile begins to look exceptional if you list your accomplishments—not just past job descriptions—and include volunteer work.

Connect with Others Intentionally

Reach out to more than just the people in your current circle. Determine the individuals and companies who are largely responsible for your success in your industry, people whom you admire but have never met in person. You can also connect with people outside your industry to extend your network even further.

Solicit Recommendations

This helps support the fact that you are not only a talented person, but that you also have high ethics. Request LinkedIn recommendations from a variety of past colleagues and supervisors the same way you would ask for reference letters when applying for a new job.

Keep Your Account Current

This important LinkedIn strategy is sometimes overlooked because this social media site requires less maintenance than Facebook or Twitter. However, don’t let your account lapse. Instead, post regularly, keep on top of messages and comment on others’ posts. Join groups your target contacts belong to and contribute to the conversation. Prove that you want to do business by continuing to be active and posting things of value.

Consider a Paid Subscription

A basic subscription yields search results with limited information. Paid subscribers enjoy informative search results that include names and titles. Filters such as seniority and company size, along with dozens of other added abilities, are available with a paid subscription. This can help you refine your targeting and boost your LinkedIn strategy.

If you want to take a look at the Splash Media U training library, sign up for a14-day free trial today. It comes bundled with SplashCube, our social media marketing software to help manage your social media campaigns!

As part of our social media training, we suggest that every business set up a blog that will serve as their central hub for all social media campaigns. There are so many reasons to blog; however, before you start a company blog, you need to determine which blog strategy fits your marketing needs. Here are some of the most common blog strategies.

Thought Leader

If your main purpose behind blogging is to become a thought leader in your industry, then you need to put a lot of research and time and energy into your blog. You’ll need to keep up with the latest news and trends in your industry...and develop a solid basis of informational posts on your industry. You might want to use a third person and a more formal writing tone for this strategy.

Humanizing your brand

Some businesses go into blogging purely to put a human face on their brand and to give their company a voice. The more consumers connect to and relate with your brand, the more likely they are to think of you when they need your products or services. You’ll want to write more casually and in first person, making sure to identify and post photos and short bios of your writing team.

SEO

Blogs are excellent for SEO goals. Search engines love fresh, quality, and consistently updated content. You need to write relevant info using specific key phrases that you’d like to rank for, and then you definitely need to share through other social media channels in order to attract inbound links. You’ll want to comment on other industry blogs and submit your blog to blog directories, and be sure to leave comments in discussion forums.

Leads

If sales and leads are the driving force behind your blog, that’s natural—but don’t give in to the temptation to write purely sales-driven blog posts. Write informational posts on how your company can help consumers...share stories about how your products or services have helped other consumers. A second person, professional tone works best here.

Do any of these strategies sound appealing to you? Maybe all four? It’s important to figure out what you want out of blogging before you start. Blogging can be an integral part of your marketing campaign once you set the right strategy. How does blogging fit in with your goals?

Now that your business is active on Twitter and you’ve sent out a few tweets, it’s time to start getting followers on Twitter, which can also be called “building community.” Before you begin branching out to users you don’t know personally, it’s useful to build an initial following by finding friends and colleagues you frequently associate with on Twitter. Twitter training makes it easy to accomplish this by explaining the “Find Friends” feature. Then, you can branch out further with Twitter’s “Who to Follow” suggestions.

“Find Friends”

The initial way of getting followers on Twitter is to first follow others. Start by finding people you already know:

• Log into Twitter and click the “Discover” section. Click on “Find Friends.”
• Twitter will suggest opening the address book of the email address associated with your Twitter account. You can also use the address book from other email addresses by selecting the email client and inputting your log-in information.
• Once you select the address book you want to explore, a page will load with all your contacts who are already using Twitter.
• With the click of a button, you can “Follow All” or even invite people to Twitter if they don’t already have an account. You can also tweet with, block, report, or add users to lists.
• Once you follow your friends, you promote getting followers on Twitter because these contacts are likely to follow you in return.

“Who to Follow”

Reaching out to new contacts and getting followers on Twitter that you don’t know in person is an important part of expanding your business presence online. Twitter offers suggestions of Twitter users for you to follow based on the types of users you already follow as well as the types of users they follow as well:

• On the homepage, click on the “Who to Follow” section to access Twitter’s suggestions.
• Click the “x” to dismiss suggestions and new ones will take their place.
• Select who you want to follow, and you’ll promote getting followers on Twitter if you can interest them in what your business offers.

Splash Media U provides Twitter training, as well as social media training that will help you increase your CTRs, your engagement value, and ROI. To learn more about our social media classes, sign up for our 14-day free trial, which includes our software solution, SplashCube.

Whether you are a business owner or a social media professional who is familiar with the power of Facebook, chances are you have probably asked, “What are Facebook Ads?” You already may have been introduced to Facebook Ads through your social media training; they're those ads that appear on the right-hand column of almost any page within Facebook, from your home page and news feed, to your profile and apps pages.

Facebook Ads attract fans of all demographics, reaching out to hundreds of millions of Facebook users. With Facebook Ads, you can raise awareness of your product or service to people who otherwise may not have known about it, and you can create ads to promote events as well as products or services.

When asking, “What are Facebook Ads?” it's important to understand and become familiar with the terminology used with regard to the ads. This glossary of terms provides a solid introduction and a better understanding of Facebook Ads:

• Ads Manager. This is where you can view all of your Facebook ad campaigns, revise bids and budgets, pause and restart ads at any time. The Ads Manager is your main hub for Facebook Ads.
• Ads. When creating an ad, you are attempting to reach different target audiences by highlighting your products or services in an interesting manner. Use an interesting photo or a company logo, and then complete the ad by writing a concise description that cannot be ignored by those in your desired demographics. Each ad has a daily or lifetime budget.
• Campaigns. Group your ads into “campaigns” based on whatever criteria you deem necessary. For instance, you may want to create a campaign from all of your ads geared to a specific demographic.
• Ad Auction. This is the system that Facebook uses to decide which ads are best to run. They base this on the ads' maximum bid and previous ad performance. The ads that Facebook decides are the best to show will be the ones most prominently featured.
• Budget. The budget is the amount of money you are willing to spend on a campaign either each day or for the life of the ad. These two kinds of budgets are known as daily or lifetime budgets.
• Bid. When you place a bid on the ad you're creating, you're indicating the maximum amount you are willing to pay per click (also known as CPC) or per thousand impressions of your Facebook Ads (CPM). The maximum bid determines your ad's strength in the ad auction, giving it better chances of being displayed.
• Suggested Bid Range. This represents the range of CPC or CPM bids that are winning the auction for the audience you've selected. 
• Clicks. When someone clicks through your ad to your website or a specific landing page on Facebook, you're charged for the ad. Clicks are also counted when someone “Likes” your ad or RSVP's to an event through your ad.
• Impressions. Impressions are counted when your ad is shown on any part of the Facebook site, regardless of whether someone clicks on your ad. 
• Social impressions. Social impressions happen when an ad is viewed by a Facebook user who is friend of someone who has interacted with the ad.
• CTR. CTR stands for “Click-Through Rate,” the number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown on the site during that time period. The CTR gives you an idea of how effective your ad is on Facebook.
• Connections metric. This metric includes people who have “Liked” your page, RSVP’d to your events or installed one of your apps from seeing your ad on Facebook.
• Reports. The reports give you all of the analytics information you need regarding your ads and campaigns. You can create and print out ad reports based on the parameters you wish to know more about, and you can export into an Excel or a .csv file.
• Sponsored Stories. These are stories that are eligible to appear both in users' news feeds and in the right-hand column with other Facebook Ads. Sponsored Stories respect whatever privacy settings a user has placed on their account, so if their activity is hidden it will not be used for Sponsored Stories.
• Page Post Ads. This is one of the newest innovations for Facebook Ads. With Page Post Ads, you turn a post made to your page—a status update, picture, link or video, etc.—into an ad for your page. These are not subject to privacy settings and can be shown to anyone on Facebook.

Splash Media U can teach you everything you need to know to start a Facebook Ads campaign, or for Facebook training in general. Check out some of our FREE videos in the Facebook Track to get an idea of the premier training you will receive.

All business owners want the social media sentimenttoward their businesses to be positive. When you have worked hard to strategize and manage your social media presence, it can be hard to hear negative social media sentiment, and it may make you wonder if your social media training has gone to waste. Fortunately, while negative social media sentiment may be a fact of life, it can be managed in such a way as to turn it around and make it a positive thing for your company.

• Evaluate what was said. The complaint may come from an unhappy customer, or it may come from a chronic complainer. In either case, it needs to be addressed. If the complaint is unwarranted, simply correct the misinformation gently and politely, and if the commenter is a chronic complainer, that is probably as far as you need to go.
• An unhappy customer needs some attention. A customer with a legitimate gripe needs to know that you are aware of the situation, and are taking steps to rectify the problem. Even if there is a misunderstanding, and the customer has wrong information, an empathetic response will go along way towards improving your relationship with that customer.
• Remember that the anonymity of the internet makes people brave. People are more likely to pick something apart if they online rather than face to face, so do not let negative comments discourage you. Handle them graciously, and you will protect your reputation. Respond as quickly as possible to negative social media sentiment, and you will prevent bad news from spreading any further. Even if you do not have a ready answer, make a point to say that you will check into the situation, and then follow through.
• Give your business a face. It is a great deal easier to bash an anonymous company than it is to insult a person. Use human avatars to represent your company, and develop an internal culture of strong customer service ideals and friendly responses.
• Consider negative social media feedback as an opportunity. Handled well, a negative incident can be an occasion on which you develop a relationship with a customer, turning an unhappy customer into an advocate for your brand. Sometimes people just want to be heard, and by opening a dialogue, you create an environment in which the customer feels his concerns are addressed and his needs are being met.

Have any other tips to dealing with negative social media sentiment? Share your comments with us. If you would like to learn more about social media, please view our classes at www.splashmediau.com.

Content Marketing

What is content marketing, and why should you use it? Content marketing is when you use valuable content to attract fans and consumers. This writing needs to be related to whatever products or services you sell. 

Evaluation Post

In content marketing, an evaluation blog post provides helpful information to potential customers who are in the market for what you are selling, and they receive this information while they are trying to formulate their buying criteria. The majority of your blog content in this stage should be focused on helping customers make their purchase decisions by evaluating all the features available.

Customers in the evaluation stage tend to be in research mode and are using the web and social media to help them make informed purchase decisions. Therefore, it’s easy to find and connect with these types of buyers. As part of our social media training, we’re going to show you how to create an evaluation blog post:

1. Key Phrase Analysis – The first step is to look at your key phrase analysis to see if any topics jump out at you.  
2. Common Questions – The second step is to talk to your sales reps to find out what are some common questions they hear from buyers.  Blog content that answers these questions can be terrific evaluation posts.
3. Strengths – Next consider your strengths.  Which features connect well with your unique selling proposition and strong suits? If you have a terrific return policy, or you have the best prices—or other features that make you stand out—then plan on building blog posts around why these features are important to buyers.
4. Weaknesses – Next, look at the weaknesses of your top competitors and plan on building some posts about why these features can lead to buyers’ remorse.  We are not talking about pointing a finger at a competitor.  We would never recommend that.  However, if you know that the biggest competitor in town has poor service, you might consider writing a blog about how poor service can increase cost of ownership.
5. Turnabout’s Fair Play – Finally, you need to consider the strengths of your competitors and turn those strengths into weaknesses.  What are those features you know your competitor will tout about themselves?  For example, a competitor may tout that they are the biggest in town. You could write a blog post on why customers would want to do business with smaller boutique companies that will give them personalized attention versus big companies where the customer might be thought of as just a number.

Evaluation blogs can be a powerful way to connect with prospective customers.  This is a great opportunity to show off your subject matter expertise and highlight your strengths at the same time.  If you’d like more advice on social media training and content marketing, please check out our 14-day free trial, which includes our new proprietary software solution, SplashCube.