Credit: onlinebusiness.volusion.com

With the increased focus on social media marketing, you may ask if you still should put some effort into traditional marketing methods. How much focus should you put into each of these marketing strategies for you to have the best results?

It really depends. On what exactly? On your objectives, on your kind of business and on how much you can afford. If your business is more of a retail one for example, advertising your products online would be a great marketing tool. On the other hand, imagine you have some service you provide for a particular area, broadcasting that to the whole world really won’t be practical.

Is there place for traditional marketing methods? There definitely is. Before you really decide where to direct your marketing budget, you must be very familiar with your objective. Here are some don’ts when it comes to marketing your business:

• Don’t do ‘send to many’ vibes. Never use social media as you would your phone and text a single message to a whole group of friends. You won’t get much response from this. Always make sure it’s personalized.
• Don’t direct your attention to so many sites and leave it at that. You should sign up on sites that you know will be good for your business. Different social media sites are good for particular kinds of businesses.
• Don’t be rigid. You have to be extra flexible when it comes to the methods you choose for your marketing. Going with change is the only way to be successful. Always be willing to learn.

When you see chance to, also make room for traditional marketing which will also be what you  need to combine all your marketing efforts.  Traditional and social marketing should go hand in hand if you are to have success.

Read more tips here.

With all the negative feedback about the dangers about social media, you may wonder if it’s really worth it. If you’ve already had an account on all the recent social networking sites for some time, without seeing anything happening. So is it really worth it? The time, the privacy issues and all. Just why should you bother with Social media anyway?

It’s with the way you can convert all those ‘followers’ into customers. This doesn’t come automatically though. You really have to work for it. In short, it will be waste of time and effort and all the other ‘negative’ things if you allow it to.

The key is coming up with strategies. Don’t expect that simply having a profile will be good enough for you to benefit from your social media. Know where to get an account, take care of your account, be interactive.

If you want to make sure that your followers don’t stay passive but really get engaged in your business is to make things fun. You can post for example some competition on your wall that will have some perk in store for them. Give them reason to want to get and keep connected to you.

It’s always about ‘what will this do for me’ so make it interesting.

Look at what your doing right now with your social media efforts and ask yourself this question – What could I do that would entice some percentage of my followers to willingly and joyfully give me their email address? – answer that and you’ll turn your social media efforts into a powerful lead generation machine.

Read more here.

Credit:geeksontime.com

No matter how ‘not so social’ you may think you are, you probably have a Facebook account. If you are a businessman, all your employees also probably have their own personal accounts as well. If  you have seen the advantage of allowing the use of Facebook while at work, what can you do to protect your company’s information?

We know how powerful social media has become so it really is a huge problem if you aren’t able to protect your company. Here are a few tips that will help.

• Keep applications up-to-date. The applications we are talking about here are those anti-virus and web protection programs that you obviously have. This will make sure no information leaks into the web from some bad software. Keeping these updated will protect your information and your employees from cyber criminals.
• Get your network secured. Though networking has a lot of benefits, the truth is it makes it easier for information to leak. Make sure you have an extremely secure network. Get hold of all the security applications you may need.
• Set limitations for your employees. Have clear guidelines as to what you will and will not allow to be done during office hours. Try and cultivate a feeling of responsibility in your employees so they know what is expected of them.

Boasting more than 500 million active users worldwide, the social networking site is now being targeted by cybercriminals. For example, last year spammers exploited two Facebook bugs in a week. The bugs allowed spammers to flood the service with messages promoting scams, such as links to a website where they could “win” an iPhone by filling in their personal information.

Read more here.

Credit:growmap.com

Well, do you care about your personal reputation first of all? Definitely yes! What people think about you really does matter. The old ‘I don’t care what people say’ doesn’t work at all especially when  it comes to your business. The fact is people will base a lot of their conclusions about you from your reputation. This is even without trying your services first. Yes, REPUTATION is the lifeline of your business.

With the increased popularity of online marketing, you have another problem at hand-how to manage your repuation online. If you are a brandname for example, being able to control your reputation should be top priority. Here are some things that online reputation companies can do for you:

• Protect your company from negative comments. When it comes to reputation online, the mechanics are simple: the more negative comments out there about your company, chances are people will choose your competitor instead.  What can be done about this? Countering the negative with positive. Logging into forums and the like and spreading ‘good’ things about your site.
• Higher ranks on the SERPS. With more positive things being said, more people visit your site, more people ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ about you and viola! You’re up on the SERPS.
• Creating the right face. Having a good reputation will create a trust in your target audience. They will then view you as a trustworthy source and will be more likely to support you.

Social media sites are great and easy platforms to use to market your business, but can quickly become detrimental if your accounts aren’t managed correctly. But managing numerous accounts, which is needed to obtain greater visibility, can be difficult, expensive, and time consuming ñ especially for smaller businesses. To alleviate the burden of maintaining social network accounts, blogging, and websites, many businesses are turning to firms offering online reputation management services.

Read more here.