10 Ways to Update Your Online Marketing Efforts

Marketing methods for small businesses are constantly changing. You need to be able to keep up with customers who are using technology that’s always evolving.

To update your online marketing efforts, take a look at the following tips from members of the online small business community.

Use These Tips for a Great Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social media marketing is more complicated than just posting the occasional Tweet or Facebook photo. If you’re going to use social media marketing campaigns as part of your online marketing strategy, take a look at these tips from Anita Campbell on the SBA blog.

Write Headlines That Catch Fire

Headlines are often the first impression that potential customers have of your online content. To make them as catchy as possible, you can learn from the songwriting techniques outlined in this post by Merrill Shane Jones on the Copyblock Creative Blog.

Use Blogging More Effectively

Whether you want to do it as a career or use it as a promotional method, blogging presents multiple upsides for your business. To learn how to be a professional blogger, take a look at this post and checklist by Ginny Dwyer on Modgility. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post.

Use These Best Practices for Pinterest A/B Testing

In order to get the most benefit out of Pinterest, you need to learn the best practices that will work for your business. That means you need to do some testing. This Blogworthy post by Sara Tetzloff includes some best practices for A/B testing on Pinterest.

Optimize for Ecommerce Sales with Information Bias

When selling online, it’s important to give customers enough information to make a decision. But more isn’t always better, as Jeremy Smith explains in this post on the JeremySaid blog. You can learn more in the post about how to optimize your selling strategy by using information bias.

Analyze Your LinkedIn Data

As the business social network du jour, LinkedIn can be a great place for you to connect with other professionals and potential clients or collaborators. The platform also lets you access data about who views and interacts with your profile. To learn how to best utilize that data, take a look at this post by Nancy A. Shenker on the Bad Girl, Good Business blog.

Follow These Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

When it comes to social media, there are some practices that can be beneficial for businesses and others that can be detrimental. For help deciphering between the two, check out this Dyer News post by Jonathan Dyer. Then you can read thediscussion on BizSugar.

Use Mobile Marketing to Reach Millennials

Millennials love their technology. If your business is one that you want to appeal to millennials, then you should probably be utilizing some form of mobile marketing in order to get your brand in front of your target customers. This post by Kristina Waters on the Candybox Marketing blog includes an infographic with some facts and statistics about millennials and technology.

Learn How to Promote a Podcast

If you’ve decided to take the leap into podcasting for your business, then you need to learn how to promote your podcast so that it gets heard by as many people as possible. This post by Lyndsay Phillips includes some tips for promoting podcasts online.

Make Sure Your Landing Page Forms Don’t Ask for Too Much

Landing pages can be a great way to catch the attention of potential customers and collect leads. But if you try to make them do too much, it can be detrimental to your business, as Elisa Silverman explains in this PageWiz post. 

Source: http://bit.ly/1oj75LT

4 Ways to Integrate Instagram Ads Into Your Marketing

It's official: one of the fastest-growing social media networks worldwide is now offering advertising opportunities for marketers large and small. After months of testing its new ad format to a limited audience, Instagram rolled out the platform to advertisers everywhere on Sept. 30. If you're looking to integrate the ads into your social media marketing strategy, you've come to the right place! Keep reading for an in-depth guide to Instagram ads.

1. Understanding the network

Experienced digital marketers will be familiar with Instagram, the social network that has experienced a meteoric rise since its $1 billion purchase by Facebook three years ago. Today, the network boasts 400 million active users, propelling it to a high ranking behind industry giants like Facebook and its Chinese competitor, QZone.

Compared to its direct competitors, Instagram boasts a relatively young audience with 53 percent of its user base being 29 years or younger. Thanks in part to this young demographic, the network is one of the few which doesn't see college graduates as the top education demographic, though 31 percent of its users do have at least some college experience.

In other words, the network has long offered a premier opportunity for brands to expand their reach to millennials, promoting consumer-based products and services in the sub-30 age range. In fact, 32.5 percent of U.S. companies now use Instagram for marketing purposes, and eMarketer expects that number to rise to over 70 percent by 2017 -- surpassing Twitter.  

If I were a better person, I'd put money on the new ad capabilities for that induction of brands into Instagram.

2. The ad format

If you've been using Instagram since its early stages, you might think of the network as a digital photo album. And in essence, that remains true -- thanks to a layout that emphasizes pictures and the multitude of available filters, Instagram offers the perfect opportunity for brands to visualize their imagine and provide behind-the-scenes photographs of their operations. But now that the network has entered the ad landscape, it can offer so much more than that.

Currently, Instagram offers three types of ads to marketers: Image ads, video ads and carousel ads. Considering that the platform is owned by Facebook, it should come as no surprise that all three are closely related to their Facebook counterparts.

• Image ads are the equivalent of Facebook's Link Ads but with a heavier emphasis on visual. They offer brands the opportunity to add a call-to-action button to their ad, which enables them to drive web visits in addition to raising brand awareness. 
• Carousel ads are similar to image ads but offer additional functionality in the way that Facebook's carousel ads are essentially enhanced (and diversified) link ads. Instead of just one image, you add multiple images within the same ad, which enables you to showcase multiple pictures and calls to action with a single targeting option and ad copy.
• Finally, video ads do little more than drive video views -- you can add up to 30 seconds of moving images, but call-to-action buttons are not yet available for this ad type. 

While Instagram does not currently offer conversion optimization, the network has promised to add that feature in the near future.

3. Facebook integration

Here's without a doubt my favorite part of Instagram ads -- the set-up integrates seamlessly into Facebook's Power Editor, enabling marketers to take advantage of the numerous advanced targeting methods that they've come to love on the world's largest social-media platform. The new Power Editor even lets you create an integrated Instagram / Facebook marketing campaign that ensures you reach your target audience through a variety of channels.

When Facebook purchased Instagram in 2012, many users and marketers worried that it would mean the end of the picture network's independence of its larger brethren. The introduction of widely available, integrated Facebook ads have made that worry a reality -- but early on, it looks like marketers are benefiting rather than suffering from this integration.

Considering that Instagram ads became widely available less than a month ago, we don't yet have compelling statistics that show the network to be more effective than its competitors. But a variety of marketers who were able to take part in earlier tests, from Starwood to Levi's, has claimed to find significant success and favorable return on investment in their paid Instagram efforts. For what it's worth, the network itself is already showcasing a variety of success stories in promoting the new ad features.

4.Integrating Instagram into your social media marketing

Considering the early excitement around new ad features on the world's fastest-growing social media site, predict a large number of advertisers flocking to this shiny new toy. In fact, I encourage it. If only 32 percent of marketers are currently using Instagram for marketing purposes, the amount of competitive noise should be significantly less than some of the more established sites. But when moving to Instagram, it's important to integrate the new capabilities into your existing strategy rather than simply racing ahead.

Fortunately, the network has made this integration easy by working flawlessly alongside Facebook ads. But as most marketers know, that doesn't mean you should simply duplicate your efforts. Instead, you should develop ads that fit within your strategy and match the network's audience.

Business models that can provide easy visuals, from multimedia companies to fashion outlets, will find Instagram to be a great fit for their audience. Business-to-business companies, on the other hand, may not easily find footing on this consumer-based network. Put simply, Instagram ads make sense only if the network would have made sense for you even without the paid possibilities. If you haven't seen the need for an Instagram presence in the past, you should not change your mind now.

If, on the other hand, you're looking to enhance your presence on Instagram and spread awareness of your brand beyond your current followers, the new ad capabilities are huge news. They are without a doubt the new, shiny toy in social media marketing -- and I look forward to tracking just how well they perform compared to other networks.

 Source : http://bit.ly/1U0Wcwo

More about me. Be curious.

Steer clear of these costly marketing mistakes

Every business has a product or service worth promoting, but a prolific marketing presence should not be your main goal.

A thoughtfully planned and well-executed campaign can easily outperform lazy, mass-media ad buys.

To save money, time, and headaches eager entrepreneurs eager need to be wary of poorly-executed campaigns and advertisements done in bad taste that can cause more harm than good.

Examples such as Groupon’s 2011 Super Bowl commercial, Sony’s white PSP ads and Molson Coors’ college drinking campaign earned each organization widespread public backlash and will forever haunt these brands. To be more effective at marketing, businesses must be mindful of embarrassing themselves and offending customers. Ultimately, bad marketing can be ruinous for customer loyalty and sales.

1. False promises negatively impact brand affinity.

Companies like Allstate Insurance, Avis Car Rental and RadioShack have alluring taglines, but offer poor service.

While Allstate suggests, “You're in good hands with Allstate,” paying customers aren’t convinced. On ConsumerAffairs.com, the insurance company receives an average rating of 1.1 out of five. Avis’ slogan, "We try harder," is similarly far from believable. It, too, maintains an abysmal rating of 1.2 out of five. Prior to 2014, Radioshack touted, "You've got questions ... We've got answers." Unfortunately, its broken promises have awarded it a customer satisfaction rating of 1.4 out of five.

Although a clever motto can be enough to motivate customers to walk into your store or visit your website, the experience you offer and the value you deliver are what matter the most. To effectively manage consumer expectations and improve customer satisfaction, make promises you intend to keep.

2. Bad data nets zero ROI for potentially profitable campaigns.

Organizations simply cannot afford to operate with bad data.

According to Econsultancy, “New research from Experian Data Quality shows that inaccurate data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88 percent of companies, with the average company losing 12 percent of its revenue.”

In advertising, unique creatives are often tested against a control audience. In this instance, clean data might reveal that certain ads drive high engagement and positive ROI while others underperform. With the flip of a switch, data-driven marketers would then turn off the creatives that provide negative ROI and scale up spend on the high-performers. Without these sorts of insights, many marketers find themselves paying a fortune for traffic that does not convert.

3. Inconsistent experiences confuse customers.

Different things make different customers tick. In a world where technology allows us to personalize every marketing touch-point with consumers, many brands still fall short. Email blasts include links to products that are no longer available. Advertising creatives direct audiences to unrelated pages on your site. At checkout, the coupon that should have automatically been applied to a purchase is nowhere to be found.

Marketers need to regularly walk through the customer acquisition and engagement funnels to spot any errors or inconsistencies which may confuse customers and deter audiences from completing their purchase.

4. Aggressive email blasts affect deliverability.

For mid-sized businesses, email marketing offers a 246 percent return on investment. Some marketers forget the importance of proper audience segmentation. An email blast to your entire list of subscribers may cause recipients, in droves, to mark your mail as spam.

Losing subscribers is the least of your worries. If you regularly receive complaints from recipients who mark your email as spam, your email service provider may temporarily disable or permanently delete your account.

According to Campaign Monitor, “The industry standard for an acceptable percentage of complaints per email campaign is less than 0.02 percent.” Anything above that is cause for concern.

5. Marketers fly blind when they operate in silos.

Marketers sometimes find themselves operating alone and on their own terms inside a bubble instead of interacting with their peers to build a better product and increase overall customer experience. Marketers, for their own purposes, should reach out to their colleagues in finance, sales, customer service, product and engineering for valuable help and guidance.

Marketers operating in a silo may not realize which products customers rave about most, which offerings have the highest (and lowest) markup and which tools or services are currently experiencing bugs or downtime.

6. Marketing to desktop users neglects a larger, growing audience.

Most advertisements and creatives are built and optimized for a desktop audience. What many marketers forget is they leave money on the table when they fail to optimize their campaigns for mobile users.

In the U.S., consumers spend more time on their mobile devices than they do on desktop computers. The future of marketing is mobile, as audiences have long shifted their attention towards smaller screens with much faster Internet connections.

Marketers waste millions each year on desktop-optimized ads that are delivered to mobile audiences. Companies, instead, should prioritize developing mobile-optimized ads first, and worry about desktop traffic later.

Source : http://bit.ly/20Tzo5G

What You Need to Know About the Rise of Social Trading

For the past several years, social media has been all the rage, and for good reason. It allows family and friends from every corner of the world to keep tabs on each other as if they were just next door. However, that’s not the only thing social networks do these days. 

They give people a way to play games together, video message each other, and far, far more. However, it seems as though the social environment and the technology behind it is changing once again. 

There’s a new social network concept that is rising in popularity incredibly quickly. That concept is called social trading.

What Is Social Trading?

Social trading is an entirely new concept. In fact, I first heard about the concept myself just last year. Essentially, social trading is a social network platform designed for traders, as the name would suggest. This new technology combines several features of the average social network like being able to follow, message, and communicate with people around the world, with features you’d generally see on a trading application. Using this new technology, traders not only have a way to make friends, but can also help each other profit. Experienced traders have the ability to share how they earn the money they earn and beginner traders have the ability to tag along on the strategy to reduce the incredible learning curve associated with trading. It’s a match made in heaven.

Why Social Trading Is Becoming So Popular

At the moment, there are only a few social trading websites out there. In fact, the only platforms that I know of off of the top of my head are CopyOp and Etoro. Nonetheless, these websites are becoming incredibly popular. So, why are they growing in popularity so quickly? There are a few reasons…

• Reducing The Learning Curve – Trading successfully is not the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, to become a successful trader, there’s an incredible learning curve that you’ll have to make your way over. However, social trading greatly reduces the learning curve associated with financial trading. This is because beginners have a way to copy the moves of professionals and ask them questions in the process to see why the moves that are being made are good for the overall portfolio. Believe it or not, this functionality has the ability to shave months, or even years for some, off of the learning curve!

• Avoiding Excessive Research – Without social trading, finding strong trading opportunities takes quite a bit of research. However, social trading platforms use a technology that picks up on what the popular trades are. This means that finding a trending stock, commodity, currency, or any other asset is a relatively simple process. Let’s face it, even the professional traders can use a hand when it comes to research.

• Making Friends With Like Interests – I’m a professional trader myself, and I have to say, the industry does get a bit lonely. After all, I work from home and when I talk to friends about what I do, I’m usually met with a mix of blank stares and snarky remarks. However, I’ve found social trading platforms to be a great way to have an intelligent discussion with other like minded people with regard to what’s going on in the market. For me, this is absolutely priceless!

Social trading is an incredible concept that meets a need that many traders didn’t even know they had. This incredible technology is yet another example of how technological innovation shapes the way we live, and will likely continue doing so for years to come!

Source : http://bit.ly/1nVCSTe

3 Tips for Using Pinterest to Drive Sales

Pinterest has become a powerful marketing platform. While social has long considered an awareness raising activity, marketers are more committed this year to making a clearer connection from those endeavors to increased sales. This is one area in which Pinterest shines, driving both traffic and commerce online.

The biggest challenge for businesses on Pinterest is making sure their Pins are seen, and seen by the right audience. The solution to this challenge, says Lux, is understanding the Pinterest audience and whether or not your product is a good fit.

With 100 million active users, Pinterest is not nearly as big as some of the other big networks. However, the biggest demographic on Pinterest are women aged 25 to 34; most likely Millennial moms interested in fashion, DIY, cooking, home decor and shopping. Pinterest users also differ from those on other networks in one very specific way: They prefer to follow brands than notable celebrities and influencers.

Lux had these recommendations for how to drive traffic, and ultimately sales, from your Pinterest marketing efforts:

• Choose your target wisely. Pinterest has robust analytics that can be used even before you spend any money on promoted Pins, said Lux. Experiment with Pins, then use Pinterest analytics to find out what’s working, then choose keywords based on what your audience is most interested in.
  

• Use optimized, high-quality images. In this age of visual media, image quality is extremely important. In addition to professional quality photos and graphics, Lux said there are tools like Canva that make editing easy. Include descriptive text and keywords to improve the likelihood of your Pins bubbling to the top of the search.
  

• Use Rich Pins. Lux noted that most have seen Rich Pins, where a complete recipe or article appears within the Pin. Product Pins, which are a type of Rich Pin, includes important product details like the name, price and availability lead to higher conversion.

For small-business owners on the fence, Lux noted that converting a personal account to a business account is very simple:

With just a little bit of code on your website, it can’t hurt to try and use the analytics at least, even if you’re not going to pay for Promoted Pins.

Readers: Are you using Pinterest for your business?

Source : http://bit.ly/1Kub3ff

5 Marketing and Branding Tips to Scale Your Online Business

Scaling an online business isn’t rocket science -- it’s actually much easier than many people believe. When you combine a winning product or service and a solid foundation to build on, the sky’s the limit. 

Use these five simple marketing and branding tips to help you scale your online business and experience increased growth.

1. Make it ridiculously easy for your customers to buy your product or service.

It’s amazing how many businesses make prospects jump through multiple hoops in order to make a purchase -- my own marketing agency was guilty of this as well, until recently. While our main offering is custom-tailored online-marketing consulting, we also offer several à la carte services.

The problem was that, previously, a prospect had to contact us via phone or our website to order one of these stand-alone services. When we did a little digging, we found that the majority of these inquiries didn’t require any selling -- people simply wanted to make a purchase.

So, we made a switch, making it easy for prospects to purchase these à la carte services directly from our website. And the results have been great so far: Sales are up since we eliminated that previous hoop that a prospect once had to jump through. 

Experiment with eliminating steps and making changes that create a ridiculously easy path to purchase. 

2. Track every conversion metric humanly possible. 

You have to know your numbers -- if you don’t know, down to the penny, how much it costs you to generate leads and sales, you will crash and burn.

Cost-per-lead (CPL): You need to know how much it costs to generate every form of lead, from email submits to phone calls. A blended CPL won’t work -- you need to be as specific as possible. If you are able to generate email leads for $1 each and phone leads are costing you $8 each, but converting at the same rate, wouldn’t it be wise to push all of your effort into producing more email leads? 

Cost-per-sale (CPS): All of your data works together. For example, your conversion rates and cost-per-lead are going to help you determine what each sale is costing you. Business 101 tells us that if the CPS, plus cost of goods sold, is lower than the sales price, it's profitable. But you need to dive a bit deeper. Where are you pulling the lowest CPS from? Can you open up the faucet to generate more sales from that avenue? 

You need to also know what your different landing pages are converting at and where your top-performing lead sources are. You are never going to find a winning combination that you can “set and forget” -- constant monitoring and optimizing are required.

3. Seek out media exposure to highlight your expertise.

Getting yourself and your brand out there is crucial if you want to scale. There are plenty of opportunities to score free media exposure if you are willing to put in a little work. 

If you aren’t already registered with Help a Reporter Out, or HARO for short, do that now. With more than 35,000 journalists seeking insights from experts, there is a very good chance you will come across several exposure opportunities if you put in the effort. Consistency is key if you want to find success using this strategy.

HARO sends out three emails daily, full of opportunities. Many people read through them for a few days and then give up if an opportunity doesn’t fall into their lap. Don't let this be you.

Instead, stick it out and put some effort into your responses -- journalists receive hundreds of replies to each request, so you are going to need to stand out. Make sure you avoid making these stupid press outreach mistakes.

4. Set up email automation sequences to nurture, promote and convert 24/7.

Every type of business can use email automation. Restaurants can build a list that automatically sends out ecoupons for specials and discounts on notoriously slow days to drive foot traffic. Ecommerce stores can create segmented lists and send special offers to customers based on their previous purchase habits.

Information products can capture an email address and automatically market to that prospect, sending enticing information and discounts, until that prospect pulls out his or her credit card and converts.

Just like every other form of online marketing, email automation requires extensive split testing and constant optimization, but when you fine-tune your efforts, email automation creates a system that promotes, nurtures and converts sales 24/7 -- even while you sleep.

5. Maintain consistent social media branding and cross promote.

Social media is such a powerful branding tool, and it’s important that you think about the big picture when establishing social accounts for your business. Using the same handle on every platform makes it easy for your customers to connect with you across all of the channels they are active on.

It will benefit you greatly if you use a handle that’s easy to remember and available on all of the networks you will be actively promoting on. For example, I use the same handle for my personal brand on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.

You should also be cross-promoting your social media accounts in an effort to get your audience connected on as many platforms as possible. Someone following your brand on Twitter might not be connected on Facebook, which could be his or her preferred social network. A simple “Make sure to connect with us on Facebook” tweet could get people to like your Facebook page and then engage with a future Facebook post, leading to that hoped-for conversion.

Source : http://entm.ag/1OKErKB

Why Your Business Needs Social Media Marketing

Your company finally has its website, Facebook, and even a Twitter account set up. You are getting some traffic, you have a small following, and you've thrown up a few status updates and links.

Maybe your website or social media handles even show up in a Google search once in awhile. Check "Social Media Marketing" off that list of things to do. Mission accomplished. Wrong! Or maybe you still think that your business can't benefit from social media marketing at all? Wrong again!

It really doesn't matter if you are a sole proprietor or a CMO at a Fortune 500 global corporation. Your business can significantly benefit from social media marketing regardless of its size or business model. Why does social media marketing matter so much? 

Well I'll tell you why! Here are just a few simplified reasons why your business will grow and improve with SMM:

1) Increase Website Traffic, SEO, Referrals, & Revenue Generation

This is pretty obvious. Your social media platforms promote your website links and the content you produce. You get more traffic to your site, your search engine rank improves (and in turn more organic traffic is generated), you get more referrals from readers / viewers / subscribers / followers / customers / clients / colleagues, and you make more money! Depending on your business model, your income may be generated from product / service sales, advertising revenue, sponsorships, contracts, partnerships, subscriptions, investors, donations, or other means. Simply put, increased quality and quantity of traffic derived from social media = more money. This can be true for all companies whether you sell muffins, clean houses, manage portfolios, or market the latest cloud computing software.

2) Interaction, Branding, and Exposure with Customers, Prospects, or Industries

Your business can always benefit from interacting with your customers, clients, readers, viewers, peers, prospects, or industry heavy hitters. Many people and organizations believe this to be the most important aspect of social media marketing. So establish a positive dialogue that will lead to signing a new client. Successfully promote a current client's business. Provide exceptional customer service by answering a question or addressing a concern. Tell the world about your latest campaign, product, or service. Let the customer tell you what they view as your strengths and weaknesses, or how you can improve your business. The possibilities are endless and you'll be missing opportunities if you don't have a strong social media marketing strategy in place. If you don't properly manage or expand your company's community and network, you are leaving money on the table.

3) Increased Perception of Being Connected, Tech Savvy, and Legitimate

A lot of people think this is more of a subjective or less important aspect of social media marketing. I think it's an incredibly important one if you consider basic human psychology. While business professionals can usually distinguish between quality and quantity of social media statistics, the average person may not. So who cares if your company doesn't have many followers, friends, subscribers, views, tweets, likes, posts etc? Turns out a lot of people DO care. If you are a billion dollar corporation and you have 200 Twitter followers, that obviously doesn't look very good. It looks especially poor when your competitors have 200,000 or maybe 2,000,000 followers.

Why does your company have 6 tweets when you do business on 6 continents?

 Perhaps your business is nonexistent on critical social media platforms or your employees aren't representing your company online. 

Or maybe there is little or no activity on any of your social media accounts. This can make your company seem out of touch, which can be especially damaging if your target market includes younger or more technologically proficient customers and industries. It certainly won't help you relate to millenials if you are a B2C company and have them as one of your main "buyer personas". I've seen technology, media, marketing, and online retail companies with minimal social media marketing presence! It's not pretty. 

People and companies do look at numbers and make judgments based on them, fair or not. Having a minimal or nonexistent social media presence makes your company look bad and your competitors look better by comparison. You will lose revenue and market share if you don't successfully compete on all relevant social media platforms.

4) Return On Investment (ROI)

Social Media Marketing can have an excellent Return On Investment (ROI) compared with traditional forms of marketing such as mailers, radio ads, television ads, magazine / newspaper ads, billboards, etc. 

You could easily spend hundreds or thousands (or significantly more depending on your business) of dollars on any of these traditional marketing methods. 

If you are a sole proprietor or small business owner, that price tag can be a risky or completely impossible option. 

Even a global corporation may be looking to tighten their marketing budget or get more value for their dollar (for example: Procter & Gamble this year opted for a frugal Twitter campaign as opposed to a multi-million dollar Superbowl ad). Social media marketing can be that viable affordable alternative, or a significant component, of your marketing strategy. 

Not only will your social media platforms save you money in the short term, these platforms and SEO-boosting power remain in place to pay dividends months and even years with minimal maintenance.

And because it's digital, you can usually modify your social media marketing platforms or strategy as needed .

It is necessary these days to be able to adapt and make changes within a matter of days, hours, or even minutes. You could be spending a fortune on traditional advertising or marketing consultants when social media marketing could get the job done for a fraction of the price.

5) Analytics 

This is an enormous benefit that you receive from implementing social media marketing into your business strategy. You usually get minimal data in response to traditional marketing campaigns. 

Sometimes you aren't sure whether your business is benefiting from one traditional method or another. With social media marketing, you can get incredibly detailed, immediate, and convenient statistical reports on nearly every aspect of your SMM campaigns. 

You'll get key measurables such as impressions, clicks, comments, likes, shares, subscriptions, referring links, sales, time on site, detailed demographics, and much more. Analyze this data and modify your social media posts and ads accordingly to achieve even greater results. 

You don't get that with a newspaper ad or television commercial. You can get these detailed SMM analytics from Google Analytics, CRM platforms, individual social media platforms directly, or other web services. 

6) Integration

Finally, you can seamlessly integrate social media marketing into your overall marketing and business strategy. 

Your social media marketing complements and/or links to your email marketing, website, direct mailers, telephone, print ads, and radio / television ads. You may notice these days that half of the ads out there already have links to the company's social media URL or solicit readers / listeners / viewers to follow them on social media. 

Every email marketing campaign and website should be fully integrated with its SMM if it isn't already. And everything radio and television is already integrated or being integrated with online media. Magazines, newspapers, and newsletters are all online now as well. Complement your overall business marketing, sales, and customer service with social media savvy. 

Of course there are dozens of other important reasons why social media marketing is important for your business success. I will continue posting more specific SMM articles so I can share my thoughts and experiences with specific social media platforms, paid advertising options, specific industries, and various business models. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1Jup3Wc