The Social Media Marketing Guide for

Small Businesses

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The Social Media Marketing Guide for Small BusinessesWelcome to the Social Media Marketing Guide for Small Businesses. The following information will provide you with a good understanding of what social media is and introduce you to some of the most popular social media channels.

We’ll also be providing tips and strategies on how you can use social media to grow your business and connect with more customers. Whether you are completely new to social media marketing, or would like to learn something new, we hope you will find this guide useful. So, let’s get started!

Chapter 1 An Introduction To Social Media Marketing

Chapter 2 A Guide to Social Media

Marketing on Facebook

Chapter 3 A Guide to Social Media Marketing on Twitter

Chapter 4 A Guide to Social Media Marketing on Google+

Chapter 5 A Guide to Social Media Marketing on Linkedin

Chapter 6 Social Media Marketing - Planning for Success

Contents

What you are Goingto Learn Today

Chapter 1

An Introduction to Social Media MarketingThe primary goal of any business is to maximize turnover, which means increasing brand awareness and reaching as many customers as possible. It comes as no surprise that, with an audience counting in the billions, the Internet has become the ultimate marketing tool for every business. From local shops to global corporations, business are now using social media as a major part of their marketing efforts.

Social media has seen amazing growth over the last ten years, and has given users the ability to instantly communicate with people all around the world. Businesses are making the most of this fact and using social media to extend their brand awareness on a far greater level than ever before. Let’s take a look at just how important social media has become for businesses:

1.79 billionsocial network users (Nov 2014)

2010

0.97

2011

1.22

2012

1.4

2013

1.59

2015

1.96

2016

2.13

2017

2.29

2018

2.44

2014

1.79

92%of marketers think

social media is important to their business

46%of users seek out advice and info on social media

before making a purchase

80%of small businesses

use social media marketing to help drive growth

60%of small businesses have gained new customers

through social platforms

Facebook became the first social network to surpass 1

billion registered users. Stats as of November 2014 and

ranked by number of active accounts.

1.35 billion users

343 million

332 million

284 million

• The number of social network users worldwide reached 1.79 billion in November 2014.

• Over 90% of marketers considered social media to be important to their business.

• 46% of Internet users look to social media for advice before making a purchase.

• 80% of small businesses use social media to drive growth.

• 60% of small businesses have gained new customers through social platform

Social media is no short term trend. It has become one of the main driving forces on the Internet, and its influence is only continuing to grow. Despite this, many businesses still struggle to use social media marketing effectively. In many cases this can be caused by a ‘fear of the unknown’ or a lack of enthusiasm to get involved. There are also many cases where businesses have already opened social media accounts, but simply struggle to connect with their audience in any meaningful way.

KEY SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STATISTICS

£££

£££

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‘‘‘‘Why Do Businesses Need Social Media?

A great deal of power is now in the hands of consumers, and many businesses have already realised that they are no longer in complete control.

Gone are the days when traditional advertising

methods dominated. Today’s marketing strategies are

focused on creating meaningful relationships with

customers through social media, having two-way

conversations, building trust and, in turn, increasing

brand recognition.

We’ve already seen just how enormous social media is, but you’re probably wondering how it can truly benefit your business, right? Let’s take a look at some of the key advantages of social media marketing:

• It doesn’t cost anything to setup your

social profiles on the major networks

• Sharing links to your best and most

interesting content will increase your

website visitor numbers.

• Increase brand awareness by simply

joining the conversation, engaging your

audience, and by publishing and

promoting relevant content.

• Promote special events, competitions,

special offers and new product launches.

• Use social media as an extra customer

service option for your customers by

responding to questions and feedback

about your products and services.

• Use professional networks such as

LinkedIn to seek out new talent and

forge professional relationships.

These are some of the most significant advantages that demonstrate what social media marketing can achieve.

Now lets take a brief look at some of the most important social media networks that businesses are using.

Facebook www.facebook.com

Founded by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, Facebook has grown to become the world’s largest social network. Only 10 years after its launch Facebook has grown to 1.35 billion active users and almost 900 million daily active users. Facebook announced in 2014 that 30 million small businesses have active pages on Facebook, with 19 million active on Facebook Mobile too. Additionally, 70% of B2B marketers claim that they have acquired customers through Facebook.

Introducing the Social Media Big Hitters

Facebook became the first social network to surpass 1 billion registered users. Stats as of November 2014 and ranked by number

of active accounts.

Facebook allows businesses to create business pages for promoting content and reaching out to both potential and existing customers. Users may create business pages for local businesses, brands, products, institutions or organisations. Facebook also provides its Insights tools for analytical information about your marketing activities with the platform.

As is the case with most of the major social networks, Facebook provides a paid advertising system that businesses can use to display adverts based on the browsing activities and habits of other users. Facebook adverts are compatible with both desktop browsers and the Facebook mobile app.

Twitter www.twitter.com

Twitter takes quite a different approach to social media, styling itself as a micro-blogging platform. Originally designed to be compatible with text messaging services, Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters. This makes the use of URL shorteners and hashtags a must for online marketers. These short messages are known as ‘tweets’, and they may be shared (re-tweeted) and responded to. The network currently handles around 500 million tweets every day, and there are over 230 million active monthly users.

Twitter has become the go-to social network for celebrities, politicians, journalists and businesses alike. With an emphasis on sharing newsworthy content, the average Twitter user follows at least five brands, and two thirds of users are more likely to purchase from brands that they are following. With a focus on mobile, some 78% of Twitter’s active users access the platform from mobile apps or the mobile website.

With its strict character limitations, Twitter can seem like a complicated network to get into. But armed with an understanding of how hashtags and URL shorteners work, you’ll be surprised by the amount of information that can actually fit into a single tweet! Twitter also provides a paid advertising program where businesses can promote their tweets for greatly increased exposure.

Google+ actually has a higher number of average monthly visits than Facebook.

Hangouts bring conversations to life with photos, emoji, and even group video calls for free. Connect with friends

and contacts across computers, Android and Apple devices.

Google+ www.google.com

Established in 2011, Google+ is relatively new on the social networking scene. Despite its close connection with the search engine giant, it might come as a surprise that Google+ has already become one of the largest social networks in the world! In fact, counting at 1.2 billion, Google+ actually has a higher number of average monthly visits than Facebook, although it only has around 540 million active monthly users.

Google+ still takes a slightly different approach to social media, particularly with its Circles and Hangouts features. ‘Circles’ are designed to help organize different groups of connections, and ‘Hangouts’ allow live chat with your connections, supporting both one-on-one and group video conferencing.

Unsurprisingly, having a business page on Google+ will have a significant impact on your exposure in the search engine results. It is particularly useful for local businesses, since it is connected to Google Local listings and Google Maps. The Google+ community is also closely associated with visual media, and its audience responds particularly well to professional photography and video content.

LinkedIn www.linkedin.com

LinkedIn is the world’s premier social networking platform for business professionals. Unlike its social media peers LinkedIn solely caters to professional and business profiles, making it by far the most important social network for B2B marketers. By the third quarter of 2014 LinkedIn boasted 332 million members, up by 36 million from the beginning of the year. LinkedIn serves a total of 200 countries and territories around the world, and 41% of visits are via the mobile app or website.

Although most valuable for B2B markets, LinkedIn is still useful for any type of business. LinkedIn can be used to build business partnerships, conduct competitive research and reach out to more serious potential customers. LinkedIn also serves as the world’s largest resource for seeking out new talent. Personal profiles on Linkedin are effectively online résumés that employers can search through to find new staff.

LinkedIn also provides a recommendations feature, allowing businesses to seek recommendations from customers for their products and services. It serves as a powerful way to build up brand authority and credibility and reach out to new clients.

Business-to-Business(B2B) Marketing33% of B2C marketers select

Linkedin as their No.1 choice

for social media marketing

Nearly 1 out of every 2 internet users are on

YouTube

100 hours or video are uploaded every

minute

6 billion hours of video are viewed

every month

Other Social Media Platforms

We’ve briefly touched on the heavyweight social media platforms, but there are plenty of others to consider, including those that focus on video and image content to those that cater to specific niches or geographical regions.

Among the most important of all of the other networks is YouTube - the world’s third-most visited website and the number one resource for any kind of video content. YouTube allows its users to comment on content and subscribe to other users’s profiles. A quarter of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices, and some 6 billion hours of video is watched on the site every month. Businesses use YouTube to provide everything from customer testimonials to product demonstrations.

Other important social networks include those that are primarily focused on image content. Pinterest is currently the largest among the visually orientated social networks with some 70 million users, around 80% of whom are women. Pinterest serves as an online pinboard of images, and is also fully compatible with mobile devices.

What’s Next?

We have taken a look at why social media is important for small businesses and provided a brief introduction to some of the most influential networks around. In the following chapters we will take a more in-depth look at making the most of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn for marketing your business online.

Chapter 2

A Guide to Social Media Marketing on FacebookFounded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has grown enormously to become the world’s most prolific social network. As of 2014, it has 1.35 billion active user accounts and counting! Almost two thirds of Facebook’s users log in to their profiles every day to keep in touch with friends and to share and comment on web content. The network is also extremely popular for businesses of all sizes – According to Facebook’s Dan Levy, some 30 million small businesses had an active Facebook page by the third quarter of 2014.

In this chapter, we’ll take a look at how businesses are using Facebook to reach out to new customers, increase website traffic and connect with their existing customers and followers.

Why Businesses Use Facebook

Facebook has an enormous global reach, making it an invaluable platform for businesses to grow brand awareness. It costs nothing to create and maintain a Facebook business page, and it presents a simple way to share relevant industry news and content. In fact, almost two thirds of Facebook users decide to follow a brand page after making a purchase. This, in turn, encourages users to recommend and invite their own friends to ‘like’ business pages that they have had rewarding experiences with.

Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of using Facebook for marketing your business:

• Provides increased exposure for both your website and your brand.

• Provides website traffic by way of content sharing.

• Facilitates lead generation.

• Improves your search engine ranking.

• Free to use, though paid advertising opportunities are also available.

• Offers valuable insights into your marketplace and your competitors.

• Allows you to communicate directly with your audience.

• Allows you to create and promote company events.

When it comes to liking brands on Facebook, the reasons are varied, but for most part, respondents said they “Like” a brand on Facebook because they are customers (58%) or because they want to receive discounts and promotions (57%)

Business-to-Consumer(B2C) Marketing68% of B2C marketers select

Facebook as their No.1 choice

for social media marketing

www.facebook.com/PageName

Profileimage

Coverimage

www.facebook.com/PageName

PageName

Setting Up Your Facebook Business Page

Your first task should be to set up a Facebook business page. The website provides a simple step-by-step wizard where you will be asked to choose a name for your page and provide details about your business.

However, there is a bit more to creating a good Facebook page than completing the wizard alone! You will need to complete your profile to include an ‘about’ page, a profile image, a cover image and, if you’re a local business, your opening hours and location.

Your profile image and cover image are two of the most important elements of setting up your business page! They are typically the first things that people will see when they visit your page for the first time. Typically you’ll want to stick to using your company logo for your profile image. Choosing a suitable cover image is a little more complicated, since you’ll need something that both attracts the attention of your potential followers, while also capturing the essence of your business. You are not allowed to display any promotions or price information in your cover photo. Instead you should consider showcasing your main products, or choose a lifestyle image that reflects the theme and values of your business. For best results, keep the style consistent with that of your website, as this will help people to recognize your brand more easily.

Gathering Likes

Creating your business page is just the first step, and making the best use of your page requires a long-term commitment. Social media marketing is all about knowing and engaging your target audience rather than bombarding people with sales pitches, and Facebook is no exception to this rule. One of the main things that makes a business page tick is people ‘liking’ it. When someone likes your brand page, they will receive updates from it in their own timeline, and the more likes your page has, the more popular it is. It will take time to build up a large follower base, but it is essential that you build it up organically, as trying to take shortcuts, such as buying followers, only ends up being counterproductive. After all, where is the value in fake customers?!

Growing the number of likes for your business page may be done in a number of ways, but most importantly, it means sharing great content that is relevant and interesting to your target audience. Look to newsworthy information about your business and its industry, or other relevant content, to share with your followers, but keep it interesting! Amusing or informative content is what will earn the most likes and inspires your followers to spread the word about your business. On the other hand, constantly posting sales pitches will likely have the opposite effect and turn your followers off.

Another way to get people to like your business page is to follow others. Social media is community-driven, and it relies heavily on two-way interaction and sharing. By liking other pages and joining groups related to your business, you’ll likely find that many return the favour, increasing your exposure in the process.

One study found that, on Facebook, photos (the “photo” post type) received more engagement than the average post. The “average” post rubric included both”text” and “link” posts.*

53%

53% more likes 104% more comments

104%

84% more Click-throughs

84%

Best Practices for Facebook Marketing

The average Facebook user has over two-hundred friends, and they all ‘like’ and follow numerous pages. The typical users’ timeline can get very cluttered with the constant stream of updates from friends, brand pages being followed and promoted content. Facebook uses a sophisticated algorithm to prioritize what is displayed on users’ timelines in order to show the most relevant content. As a result, and as a Facebook marketer, you need to make every effort to stand out and have your message reach its intended audience.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important tactics for success:

• Everything that you post or share on Facebook is content, but the emphasis should always be on quality and relevancy rather than quantity. Always think before posting or sharing content, and ask yourself if your target audience are actually likely to want to see it. Additionally, diversify your content to include images, since visual media leads to significantly more engagement. For example, a small British online accommodation directory, Dreams of Cornwall, managed to build up a huge following partly by posting beautiful images of the region.

• The importance of checking your posts before publishing them cannot be stressed enough. Your credibility will be hurt severely if your posts are littered with spelling, grammatical or factual errors.

* http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33800/photos-on-facebook-generate-53-more-likes-than-the-average-post-NEW-DATA.aspx

• Time your posts carefully to help ensure they reach as many people as possible. You’ll need to experiment a bit to get your timing right, since it varies greatly depending on your industry and your target audience. For example, telecoms company Orange Poland took advantage of a spike in mobile Internet usage during the summer months to target more people.

• Build up your community by getting involved and showing your business’s human side. Social media marketing is just as much about listening as it is about talking. Responding to comments and thanking followers for their contributions will help to build up trust in your brand. At the same time, participate in related user groups and engage with other pages that you like.

• The importance of checking your posts before publishing them cannot be stressed enough. Credibility can be severely hurt if your posts are littered with errors and mistakes.

• Try to avoid using automation software that posts content on your behalf. This will undoubtedly detract from the personality of your brand. Likewise, avoid sending mass invitations to events or begging people to like your page.

• Don’t post too many updates in a short time span. Your posts will have less exposure due to the way that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm works, and it will only annoy your followers anyway! There is no set rule on how often you should post, but most businesses find that two or three times per day works best.

Success with Facebook marketing relies on becoming a known and respected authority in your niche. Grow your authority by posting and sharing excellent content that people that users want to read and share on their own timelines. As long as you place the emphasis on quality over quantity, you will be on the right track.

Just because activity peaks at certain times doesn’t mean those are the best times to post. Always test to see what works best for you

www.facebook.com

Create Adverts

An Introduction to Paid Advertising on Facebook

Facebook provides a number of paid advertising opportunities that you can use to promote your products and services to a wider audience.

You can access the Facebook Adverts Manager by clicking on the arrow in the top-right corner of the page and clicking “Create Adverts”. Facebook provides a simple wizard that allows you to tailor your ads for a specific goal. Some typical goals include increasing website traffic, promoting your business page or increasing conversions.

Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways to utilize Facebook’s paid advertising service:

• Promote your business page or an individual post to temporarily increase its visibility. Promoting a page or a post is a great strategy to use for promoting a new product or service or a special offer.

• Target your advertising to a specific audience based on factors such as age, gender, location, education and more. Facebook displays relevant ads based on the habits of users, and you pay a nominal fee whenever someone clicks on one of your ads. For example, Grant’s Scotch Whiskey saw great success by targeting relevant interest groups across 40 countries as well as those who liked their business page.

• Other objectives that you can choose for your paid advertising campaign include raising attendance to events, promoting an app or promoting a special offer.

Final Thoughts

Your business needs to be committed to its Facebook page by monitor-ing audience engagement and posting regular content. You must not leave your business page to stagnate, but you also must not bombard your audi-ence with updates.

As you post and share content and participate in the community that grows around your business page, you’ll learn more about your audience and the marketing tactics that best work for you.

One final note, be sure to make use of Facebook Page Insights, in the administrator panel of your business page, to analyse your performance.

Chapter 3

A Guide to Social Media Marketing on TwitterTwitter styles itself as a micro-blogging platform allowing users to share short messages known as ‘Tweets’ of up to 140 characters. Launched in July 2006, Twitter has been one of the fastest growing social networks, and it now has more than 284 million active user accounts. Twitter is particularly important for businesses, not least because around 74% of users will follow their favourite brands for product updates and special offers.

In this chapter, we will learn how businesses are using Twitter to create a following, build brand awareness, and even provide customer support.

78%

Of engagement with a brand’s Tweets

are retweets

22%

Of engagement with a brand’s Tweets

are replies

92%

Of engagement with a brand’s Tweets

are link clicks

Why Businesses Use Twitter

While Twitter might not be as large as Facebook, it does have an extensive and constantly growing reach. Twitter also takes on a rather different approach to social media, placing an emphasis on newsworthy content and quick updates and exchanges. Both individuals and businesses use it extensively for making announcements, providing customer service and sharing online content.

Let’s take a look at some of the key benefits of getting your small business on Twitter:

• Free to use, though paid advertising opportunities are also available.

• Users will follow businesses they have previously purchased from.

• Allows you to answer questions, provide support and give news updates.

• Highly news-orientated, making it perfect for promoting fresh content.

• An invaluable platform for competitive research.

• Increase brand awareness and find new customers.

• Gain even more exposure with the use of popular hashtags.

15The maximum numberof characters you can

have in your username

140The maximum numberof characters you can

have in a tweet

1000The maximum number

of tweets you’re allowedto make per day

1000The maximum numberof users you’re allowed

to follow per day

250The maximum numberof direct messages you

can send per day

Setting Up Your Twitter Business Page

Almost every small business should be on Twitter as it costs nothing to launch and maintain your account. The first thing to do is sign up for an account on the home page. During the process, you’ll need to choose a username up to 15 characters long. Once you have opened and confirmed your Twitter account, you’ll be able to start posting and following people right away. However, before you continue, you should complete your profile and upload a header image and profile image. Choosing the right username and profile image is extremely important, since other users will come to recognise it and associate it with your brand. At the same time, your username must be as short as possible so that it doesn’t take up too much space when someone mentions you in a Tweet.

On your profile settings page, add your business’s location and contact details, Web address and biographical information. Note that your bio is also limited to 140 characters, so write something short and concise that best captures the personality of your brand. For the profile image you will usually want to stick to using your company logo, while the header image provides you with an opportunity to get a little more creative. Headers that tend to work best are panoramic images that showcase your brand’s style and personality. For example, Time magazine @TIME uses its header to showcase some of the front covers of their most famous issues.

Understanding the Basics

There’s quite a lot of jargon associated with the Twitter. In this section we’ll take a look at some of the most important features and how they are used. Most importantly, just about everything on the network is limited to 140 characters, so you’ll need to make extensive use of URL shorteners, hashtags and abbreviations. This limit also prevents companies from using a lot of unnecessary fluff in their posts, so messages are short, sweet, and to the point!

Let’s take a look at some of the key terms used in Twitter:

• Followers and following: When someone

subscribes to your Twitter page, they become

a follower. Your updates will then start to be

displayed in their own news feeds. The more

followers you have, the more exposure your

business will have.

• Tweets refer to the short messages that users

post and read in their news feeds. When

someone shares someone else’s tweet, it is

known as retweeting.

• Twitter makes extensive use of hashtags for

categorising and promoting content. For example,

when someone searches for a specific hashtag

using the Twitter search function, every tweet

that mentions the hashtag will appear in the

search results.

33%Of active twitter users share opinions about product/companies

32%Of active twitter users

make recommendations about product/companies

30%Of active twitter users

ask for recommendations about product/companies

19%Of active twitter users

seek customer support from companies via twitter

Best Practices for Twitter Marketing

While some novice online marketers make the mistake of constantly posting special offers and other promotional content, success with Twitter marketing requires a little bit of creativity. Since you haven’t got a lot of space to work with, you’ll need to work harder to build up your follower base and increase the chances of your tweets being shared with others.

Let’s take a look at some of the most effective ways to engage your audience and build up a following:

• Twitter is more news and trend orientated than other social networks, and success can be built on posting and sharing timely content. Twitter is heavily reliant on good timing. When you have newsworthy content to share, you should tweet it as soon as possible. Waiting a few days or even hours could greatly decrease the impact that it has.

• Given the 140 character limit, you should consider using such tweets as pointers to longer news stories and including a link. Use a URL shortener, such as bit.ly, to keep your links as short as possible.

• When you have something to say, be sure to accompany your tweet with a hashtag. This will allow you tweet to show up in search results whenever someone searches for that particular hashtag. By generating interest through the sharing of exclusive content, small New York clothing retailer Alter saw a 250% increase in its follower base.

• With its tight character limits, Twitter relies extensively on the use of images, photo and infographics. Images tend to lead to far greater engagement than sharing only text and links, as they are far more likely to stand out on your followers’ news feeds.

• Share your passion and educate people about it! By providing information that is related to your industry and is interesting to your followers you can quickly gain authority. Not all of your tweets need to be directly related to generating sales, and in fact, they should more often have a degree of passion behind them. After all, if you don’t have a personal interest in what you have to say, it isn’t likely that others will either!

• Use hashtags extensively, but be strategic with them. You can use hashtags for promoting events, new products and services. You can also use hashtags that they are related to the content you’re posting. What you must not do, however, is hijack popular hashtags that are not related to your content in the hope of achieving more exposure in the search results.

• Retweet content from other accounts that you’re following. Don’t forget that any kind of social media marketing is about sharing. Making sure that you have a healthy amount of shared content on your own Twitter page will encourage others to do the same. Of particular importance is retweeting others who mention you in their tweets, since this helps to portray the human side of your business.

Conversations on Twitter are real-life encounters with your customers and potential customers, albeit without the overly promotional tone. As soon as you include Twitter in your social media marketing campaigns, you should be listening, engaging and sharing content. Only once you have built up a degree of trust and rapport in your business, as well as established a large follower base, should you start focussing more on promotion. Even then, it’s a good idea to follow the 80/20 principle whereby only 20% of what you post is purely promotional.

Lifestyle and nutrition company Kill Cliff saw a 33.4% increase in its engagement rate simply by adding relevant images to their tweets.

£££

£££

£££

An Introduction to Paid Advertising on Twitter

Twitter provides some paid advertising programmes for businesses to gain greater exposure in both the search results and on the page itself. Twitter advertising allows you to connect with the most receptive among your followers, and to reach a much wider audience that may be interested in your industry.

Let’s take a look at the three paid advertising opportunities that the platform offers:

• Promoted Tweets allow your most important tweets to reach a wider audience. They rely on compelling content, such as the announcement of a special promotion, a new product release or an upcoming event. When you promote one of your tweets, the platform will use its targeting algorithm to help display it to the right audience.

• Promoted Trends allow you to take advantage of trending topics. Trends that are related to your industry will be displayed at the top of the left hand column of a Twitter page. Promoted Trends are marked by a special icon, and they will remain at the top of the list for 24 hours. Promoted Trends are ideal for kick-starting a new promotion strategy and driving mass awareness.

• Promoted Accounts exist to give your entire account a greater degree of visibility. When you want to quickly build up your follower community you can use this advertising feature to define broad categories related to your business and put your account in front of a far wider audience.

Final Thoughts

Many companies find that a healthy blend of interesting and engaging content combined with a small amount of promotion to be the optimal strategy for marketing on Twitter. Paid advertising opportunities can also help to give your business page a significant boost in followers and brand awareness, or to promote a special offer. One final note, be sure to make use of the Twitter Analytics tools to discover important impression and engagement metrics to track your progress.

Chapter 4

A Guide to Social Media Marketing on Google+Google+ might not get quite as much media attention as Facebook and Twitter, but it is actually the second-largest social network in the English-speaking world, with more than 540 million active user accounts! Google+ was established in June 2011, making it one of the newer networks on the social media scene. The network’s enormous success and fast-growing user base shouldn’t come as any surprise, since it is owned and operated by the world’s premier search engine, Google. In fact, according to a survey conducted in 2014, over 40% of users interacted with brands’ content on Google+, generating almost as much engagement as Facebook.

While Google+ offers much the same functionality of Facebook and Twit-ter, it provides some innovative new features of its own, including Circles and Hangouts, which we will take a look into in this chapter on marketing with Google+.

Why Businesses Use Google+

Being one of the newer social networks, and originally dwarfed by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, many businesses delayed investing in Google+ fearing that marketing efforts may be in vain. However, largely due to its close association with Google Search, as well as Google’s many other online products and services, almost any business can benefit from creating and maintaining a profile.

Let’s take a look at some of the key advantages to including Google+ in your social media marketing:

• Provides unique and innovative ways for people to communicate.

• Encourages businesses to join groups and build meaningful relationships.

• Maintaining a Google+ profile helps to increase search engine exposure.

• Similarly, everything you publish on your profile gets indexed immediately.

• Part of a much larger set of resources, including Google Places and Google Maps.

• Allows users to promote and rank great content via the +1 button.

• Highly visually-orientated, allowing for greater audience engagement.

www.google.co.uk

One account. All of Google.

One Google Account for everything Google

Sign in

Setting Up Your Google+ Profile

Anyone with a free Gmail account automatically has access to Google+. All of Google’s online products work together under a single account, conveniently providing a central location to manage a large portion of your online marketing. However, it is important to use an accessible Gmail account that exists exclusively for your business rather than using a personal account.

When you first create a Google+ profile for your business, you’ll be provided with three options for the type of page you want to create: Storefront, Service Area and Brand. Choose the most suitable option, and you’ll be able to customise your profile by choosing a tagline and profile image. Most businesses use their company strap line or something concise and engaging as their tagline. For the profile image, your logo should suffice. You can also choose a cover photo, so use this opportunity to showcase your brand and capture its personality.

To encourage people to add you into their circles, you should start posting content on your page and sharing some links first. This way when people view your business profile, they will have a reason to follow you!

1FamilyDrop here to

create acircle 40

Friends

Google Circles

One of the core features of Google+, Circles allow users to organise their connections into groups for sharing. Both personal and business users can also create their own circles. For businesses, Circles also allows the added opportunity of promoting personalised content to users in different Circles. To begin with, you’ll need to focus on joining other Circles related to your niche before creating your own Circles and adding people who share your interests into them. Your focus should be on creating Circles with people who are already engaging with your business page by way of comments and contents shares.

Circles provide the next level of engagement. Note that there is a limit of 5,000 profiles and pages that you can add to all of your Circles combined, as well as a daily limit to the number of people you can add. These limits exist to prevent spam and encourage both individuals and businesses to focus on building meaningful relationships rather than the quantity of followers alone.

Google Hangouts

Another major feature of Google+ is Hangouts, which allow users to hold video conferences with their Circle members. Some businesses have used this feature for casual business meetings, providing customer service or even for announcing new products or services.

Set up your profile with a clear headshot/logo and an attractive image as the ‘cover photo’ if you want your

image to be associated with content in google

Best Practices for Google+ Marketing

Research shows that, similar to Facebook, Google+ users tend to engage more often with visual content such as images, infographics and video. Businesses that see the greatest returns from marketing with Google+ tend to be those that promote visually content. As a result food and travel related businesses often find it easier to grow their followers. It’s important to bear this in mind when coming up with a marketing strategy for your business, and find ways to utilise professional photography and lifestyle images that represent your brand. Google+ also supports hashtags (similar to Twitter), +1s (similar to Facebook likes), video conferencing with YouTube support and useful insights into your performance through the Google Analytics dashboard.

Let’s take a look at some of the Google+ best marketing practices:

• Be sure to use a branded profile image along with an unique and quality description of your business. Use your description create links back to your website products and services. Consider accompanying your posts with keyword-rich titles. If you are a local business, you will also need to verify that you are the business owner, done over the phone or via a Google postcard.

• Accompany a large portion of your posts with images, provided that is appropriate for the subject matter at hand. King Arthur Flour, formerly a small business in the baking industry in the United States, saw enormous success with their Google+ marketing strategy largely because of the visual content that they posted to promote the recipes on their website.

• Joining other Circles that concern your business and its industry, and get involved! By joining and participating in other Circles and sharing other people’s content, you’ll increase your exposure and help to inspire others to join your own Circles. When inviting people to join your own

Circles, choose your connections carefully, not least because the limits on the number of members you can have exist to encourage quality, meaningful connections.

• Add the +1 social sharing button to your website so that your visitors can more easily recommend content that they like.

• Make use of video content – It doesn’t always have to be your own videos either! Sharing videos of other users is also beneficial to growing your follower engagement. The Best Made Company, a business in the outdoor lifestyle industry, experienced soaring user interaction levels thanks largely to the video content that it published and shared to inspire its followers.

• If you are a local business, Google+ will be particularly useful to you, since your profile will be connected to your listing in Google Local searches and on Google Maps. Be sure that your business page provides all of the necessary information, such as contact details and opening hours, that your visitors are likely to need.

• To give your profile even more exposure, consider using Google AdWords. AdWords is a pay-per-click advertising platform that you can set a daily budget for, and your ads will appear on relevant websites and in Google search results. With a verified Google+ page, the number of followers you have will appear on your ads.

In addition to the above points, don’t forget that you need to be committed to your Google+ profile. While many of the more general social media marketing good practices also apply to Google+, it is important that you don’t treat it like Facebook or Twitter. Instead, focus on taking advantage of the more unique and innovative features that Google+ provides in order to encourage engagement and facilitate brand building.

Final Thoughts

Success with Google+ relies heavily on regular and consistent participation and two-way conversation. On a final note, be sure to start tracking your performance right from the outset. You can use Google+ Platform Insights to track important information, such as follower growth, successful posts and much more.

Chapter 5

A Guide to Social Media Marketing on LinkedinLinkedIn is unique in its approach as the world’s premier social network catering to professionals. With 332 million active users, LinkedIn is the third most popular social network in the English-speaking world, and has considerably more users than Twitter. Whilst particularly popular in B2B markets, LinkedIn actually has a far broader reach than many people give it credit for. Individuals use the platform to showcase their professional profiles, rather like online résumés, while businesses of all types use it both for marketing and human resources. The network is available in around 200 countries and territories, and over 40% of visits come from mobile browsers or the LinkedIn app.

Let’s take a look at how businesses and professional use LinkedIn:

73%

35%

25%

Members are more confident in the professional information available on LinkedIn

Why Businesses Use LinkedIn

As the world’s only major professionally orientated social network, LinkedIn enables businesses to take a different approach in their online marketing strategies from that of the other networks that we’ve explored in this guide. The network, established in 2002, has seen unprecedented growth with millions of businesses creating and maintaining profiles with a wide range of goals in mind. As a business-orientated network, it shouldn’t be difficult to see why it’s important for companies of all types.

Let’s take a look at some key factors that make it an attractive opportunity:

• Allows you to showcase your brand in a professional capacity.

• Allows you to reach out to other professionals in your industry.

• Is an invaluable resource for finding and recruiting employees.

• Helps to amplify your brand to potential business partners and customers.

• Helps you to build up trust and authority in your niche.

• Allows you to leverage your employees with professional profiles.

• Allows you to secure recommendations and endorsements of your brand.

• Provides groups that you can use for research, networking and more.

1

Let’s get started

Fill you company name,

email address and the

unique domain relating

to your company

You’re now ready to kick start your company’s presence on Linkedin

2

Update all details relating

to your company

• Company size

• Website

• Location

• Description

4

Add 3 products orservices images andlink them to yourwebsite. Fill out detailsof the products andarrange them in orderof importance (top 3)

3

Add a profile picture

with your logo and

attention-grabbing

image as the page

banner.

Setting Up Your LinkedIn Company Page

Setting up a company page on LinkedIn is a similar process to creating a business page on other social networks, although a more professional approach to its content is important for achieving success. After all, your LinkedIn marketing goals should be to attract other professionals including industry leaders, potential employees, partners and more serious customers. As is the case with any form of online marketing, you’ll need to be familiar with your target audience.

Creating a company page allows others to find you and learn more about your brand and its products and services as well as any job opportunities that you might be offering. You’ll need a standard user account, and to have already made some business connections on LinkedIn, before you can create a company page. Once you are ready, you’ll be able to find the Companies option in the ‘Interests’ menu at the top of your LinkedIn homepage or follow the link below.

www. business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/company-pages

In the next step, you’ll need to provide your company name and email address. Once you have verified your email address, you’ll need to add a short description of your company and its mission as well as a logo and banner image. You’ll only have 646 by 220 pixels of space to work with, and banner images that capture the personality of your brand tend to work best. Among the most effective banner images are those that celebrate a company achievement, showcase its most successful products or highlight something that sets the company apart from the rest.

JOBSBSB

Understanding the Basics

People don’t tend to use LinkedIn as intensively as they use Facebook or Twitter. LinkedIn’s features and abilities reflect its more professional following, and businesses should take advantage of this. Let’s take a look at some of the core features of the social network and how they can be valuable for small businesses:

• While Facebook has ‘likes’ and Twitter has

‘followers’, LinkedIn has ‘connections’.

There are strict rules in place governing

how you can build up the number of

connections to your company page,

and LinkedIn recommends that you only

invite people that you know personally,

not least because they will have access

to the email address that you provided

when signing up. When you invite someone,

they will become a first-degree connection, while those who are

connected to your connections are described as second-degree

connections.

• LinkedIn provides groups in which professionals can share relevant

content and establish meaningful relationships with one another in a

professional capacity. Groups may be tailored to individual brands,

support groups, causes, publications or industries. With almost 2 million

groups on LinkedIn, there will likely be many that suit your niche, and you

can also create your own ones.

• LinkedIn provides a range of job search

and recruitment features, and thanks

to the network’s high credibility and

ease of use, many human resources

departments are encouraging prospective

employees to reach out to companies

using the network.

LinkedIn can be used to build business partnerships, conduct competitive research and reach out to more

serious potential customers.

The Best Practices for LinkedIn Marketing

We’ve already seen how LinkedIn is geared towards professional interactions, so your approach to marketing on the network will have to be quite different as well. For a start, your company page is should be a professional showcase of achievements that inspires other professionals. While you’ll also be reaching out to more high-powered consumers, many of the people viewing your company page will be potential business partners and employees. There is little place for blatant sales pitches and other purely promotional content.

Let’s take a look at some of the most effective strategies for marketing on LinkedIn.

• Your company page should be kept up to date, solicit product recommendations and highlight your most popular products and services. Successful profiles can generate around three times the conversion rate compared to Facebook, especially in the case of B2B industries.

• Respond to posts, reviews and any questions that people have about your company in a timely manner, and always thank people for leaving you reviews or recommending your company. On the other hand, if someone has a complaint, be sure to address it without delay.

• Don’t be afraid to conduct a bit of competitive research by viewing the company pages of other successful businesses in your niche. By following your competitors, you will be able to garner invaluable insights into the marketplace.

• Only invite potential connections if you know them in person and you trust them. Do not attempt to send requests to groups of people, and make sure that all of your requests are personalised: don’t lose your voice by attempting to automate the process.

• Only solicit recommendations from your most valuable business associates and customers who you know well. Attempting to solicit recommendations from anyone else in order to build up your numbers will only backfire in the longer term, and LinkedIn has a very low tolerance threshold for such activities.

• Be sure to approach LinkedIn marketing in a professional manner, lest your posts look automated and transferred from other networks. All of the content that you post should reflect the professional reputation of your company.

• Encourage your employees to connect with your page. Your most valuable employees will be displayed on your company page, and they can help you to extend your reach exponentially.

• Connect with other companies, pages and groups that are of interest to you and your own business instead of focussing solely on connecting with potential customers themselves. After all, your professional connections reflect well on you as a business.

You can consider LinkedIn to be a virtual business meeting or trade fair when posting, sharing and promoting content. This means committing to a professional and consistent long-term approach and responding to your audience members as promptly as possible. Focus on building up meaningful relationships by creating and nurturing them in a natural way, and pay close attention to social cues to ensure that your brand maintains its positive image on the network.

An Introduction to Paid Advertising on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s various paid advertising opportunities often get overlooked, and this is largely because many people tend to think of it as purely geared towards the B2B market and big business. However, advertising on LinkedIn provides some of the best targeting options of any paid online advertising solution. You’ll be able to target a very specific and relevant audience by choosing from a range of options based on the professional information included in their profiles, such as job titles, skills, interests and employers. Paid advertising with LinkedIn works in much the same way as it does with Facebook or Google AdWords, albeit with a greater focus on targeting a professional audience.

You can create paid advertisements through the Campaign Manager section of your account. Two options are available: you can either create an ad featuring text, image or video content that will reach a targeted audience, or you can sponsor one of your existing posts to reach a wider audience in a similar manner to how Twitter’s Promoted Tweets feature works.

When creating a targeted ad, you’ll be given a wide range of targeting options, affording you a far greater degree of control over most other paid advertising platforms online. An extensive range of advanced options allow you to specify everything from the type of skill to the age group of your target audience, so you will need to have a fairly thorough understanding of your target audience. With targeted ads, you’ll also be able to choose from two pricing models: pay-per-click or pay-per-impression. You can set a minimum daily budget, though it is advisable to set your budget high enough for at least 100 clicks per day.

Final Thoughts

LinkedIn is not only a resource for companies in B2B industries. Provided that the platform is approached in the right way, many small businesses can profit from having an active LinkedIn profile, whether it’s to find prospective employees or to forge new connections. Finally, be sure to track your progress from the very beginning by using the Analytics tab of your company page. This tool allows you to track your updates, followers and visitors.

Chapter 6

Social Media Marketing – Planning for SuccessMany businesses are often sceptical about getting involved with social media marketing. Online marketing of any kind is a significant departure from the advertising methods of old, and there certainly is a great deal to think about. From which networks to choose, to finding your voice and getting your timing right. However, businesses simply cannot afford to ignore the ever-growing giant that social media has become. To navigate your way through this highly competitive landscape, you’re going to need a strong strategy in place along with clearly defined goals.

In this final chapter, we’ll be taking a look at some tips and strategies for social media marketing success!

Picking the Right Social Media Platforms

With so many platforms available to you, choosing the right ones that fit your business can be a little overwhelming. Choosing the right networks, and planning your marketing campaigns with each of them, depends on your industry and its target market. For example, those in B2B markets will typically find LinkedIn to be a far more useful network than Facebook, while smaller local businesses and others in B2C markets will usually find Facebook to be better suited to their needs.

As a general rule, for small businesses, Facebook is the most important network to get started with, simply because of its enormous volume of users. However, you should not discount the other major networks, and it is important that you plan to include them a little later on in your strategy. You will also need to experiment over the space of a year or more to find out exactly where your customers are coming from so that you can better understand their habits and the social networks they use. If you can find out which social networks your customers actually use, you’ll be able to adapt accordingly. While expanding your brand reach may be your primary goal, this does not mean that more is better. It is important that you try to deliver the right content, to the right audience, on the right platform. Most important of all, no matter which social network you choose, is to be yourself and show the human side to your business. After all, real human interaction is what social media is ultimately all about.

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, behind google, and is now being accessed from hundreds of millions

of devices.

Over 88% of people purchased a product that they pinned, with over 49% of people purchasing five or more products

they pinned/repinned.

Other Social Networks to Consider

By now you should be familiar with the ‘Big Four’ social networks that we have looked at, (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn), but there are also other options to keep in mind. Let’s take a brief look at some of the other networks that are available to you.

• YouTube: The world’s number one video sharing website, though not primarily a social network, it has some important social elements including the ability to comment and follow channels belonging to other subscribers. YouTube has become the go-to place for any kind of video content marketing strategy.

• Pinterest: A virtual pinboard and the world’s number one image- orientated social network, Pinterest has 70 million users. Businesses in more visually-orientated industries, such as restaurants and travel agents find this network to be particularly useful for marketing.

• In addition to the better known networks, there are numerous niche platforms that have a more specific focus. You will find that there is a network for just about everyone in any niche! Some countries even have popular social networks of their own, which in a few cases, are even more popular locally than Facebook.

10 Tips for Success with your Social Media Campaigns

We’ll wrap this guide up with a summary of the most important elements that make for a successful social media campaign. The following tips apply to virtually any social network, and you should keep them close in mind whenever working with your social marketing strategy:

• Don’t forget to be social! This might sound obvious, but countless online marketers still don’t seem to understand the first rule of social media. Success comes with showing the human face behind your business. This means interacting with your audience and joining in conversations. Show the passion that you have for your business and industry. Social media is not meant to be just another advertising mouthpiece.

• Know your goals. The most important step with any social media marketing campaign is to know why you are advertising and what you want to achieve. Your primary goals will also need to be broken down into ones tailored to each social network that you use. You’ll likely have multiple goals, including raising brand awareness, increasing website traffic, increasing newsletter signups and generating leads.

By using tools such as Google Analytics, as well as those provided by the major social networks themselves, you can track your progress and gain invaluable insights

into your audience.

• Know your target demographic. There’s no point in conducting a social media marketing campaign if you don’t know what makes your audience tick. Targeting the right market is essential for success, particularly with paid advertising campaigns. Define and segment your target audience to better personalise your content delivery.

• Know the rules of the social network you’re using. Many social networks have a strict set of rules in place, particularly with regards to advertising. It is essential that you familiarize yourself with the rules and guidelines of every site you use. Otherwise you end up compromising your account and alienating your audience.

• Guide your audience. Nurture your existing audience and captivating new followers with interesting and engaging content. Your campaigns should also be backed up by an excellent website with quality content so that your visitors from social platforms won’t be disappointed.

• Measure your success. Another advantage of any form of online marketing is the wealth of useful data that it provides.

• Understand that you are not in complete control. Social media gives users a platform for sharing their opinions. Businesses have to come to terms with the fact that they no longer have complete control over the content that is published about them. To succeed in social media marketing, you’ll need to offer an excellent value proposition as well as be a good listener.

• Get your employees involved! Every person in your business can have a part to play in your social media campaigns. Not everything has to be relegated entirely to a single individual or marketing department. After all, your employees should be your business’s best advocates.

• Use consistent branding across the board. Most businesses not only have a logo; they also have other visual characteristics that help define their brand. Whether it’s a colour scheme or a particular typeface, keep your branding as consistent as possible and people will recognise you more easily.

• Publish and promote web-friendly content. The online community love visual content such as photos and infographics and subject matter that is newsworthy and original. Diversify your social marketing campaign to include the full range of mediums. The same should apply to the content on your website itself.

Final ThoughtsYou should now have a thorough introduction to social media marketing, particularly with regards to the four largest and most important networks. However, finding out exactly what works for your business will take a degree of competitive research, talking to your customers and potential customers, and last but not least, a significant amount of time. Track your results and stick to the key principles of online social interaction. Get involved, publish and share quality content, and you’ll find that the key to marketing success in the modern world is all about being social.

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