7 Eye Opening Video Marketing Stats

When it comes to video marketing, we know that it’s the coolest kid on the block. Sure blog posts like this one are super useful, but countless studies show that people prefer to view videos than read text because it’s visually engaging and really easy to consume.

But as with everything else in content marketing, the world of video is changing. 

#1. 77% of consumers have been convinced to buy a product after watching a video

Product videos are the very best way to educate your customers on what your product can do for them, which will ultimately increase your ROI.

And the great thing about a product video is that you can create any kind that you like.

For example, you could hold a webinar and educate people about your product in-depth, create an animated video to show the benefits of a service in a fun and engaging way, or produce a screen-recorded walk through instructing a user on how to use your product. The choices are endless!

#2. 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video

So the good news is, those videos that you create for social don’t go to waste! You’ve probably already noticed more and more videos popping up on your social feeds, and most of them are from brands.

But the key to a shareable video somewhat differs to that of a product video. You should aim to see this as a brand awareness goal, rather than trying to hit your conversion goals. That’s not to say that you won’t increase your conversions, but it’s important to understand that videos on social should be more focused towards the initial attraction stage of the buyer’s journey.

So what does it take to get a person to share your video on social…?

#3. 76% of consumers would share a brand’s video if it was entertaining

When it comes to social media, the aim of the game is to get people to hit that share button. But if you’re struggling to see many shares then it could be to do with the type of content you’re trying to promote.

Does it keep your audience entertained? Getting weighed down in trying to push your product onto your viewers is why most people will switch off. Think about what you can do to make it fun, interesting and entertaining.

#4. 61% of consumers were put off buying a product after watching a bad explainer video

Yikes! This is an important statistic to take note of. If you’re going to create a video to explain what your product or service does then you need to make sure that it’s done right. And by right, we mean quality scriptwriting, illustrations and animation — the whole package.

Interestingly many respondents told us that they were put off buying a product because the messaging was so unclear. Rather than trying to squeeze in every single feature that your product does, think about using the video as the hook rather than the manual.

The very best explainer videos follow a very similar formula in that they connect with the problems of the viewer, they then go on to show how that business solves those problems by highlighting the product benefits, and they close with a killer CTA.

#5. 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate

Do you have a video on your website? If you don’t then you could be losing out on a huge opportunity to increase your conversion rates.

The Crazy Egg video is the perfect example of this. The reason they wanted to create an explainer video was because they discovered that their customers found it difficult to justify paying so much for their service. By creating an animated explainer video and featuring it on their homepage, they grew their conversions by 363%.

The reason it worked so well is because not only does it use a fun character to keep it super engaging, it drills right down to the core and shows viewers the benefits of how they can actually use their product to increase their own web conversions.

#6. 53% of businesses struggle to promote their video content

Promoting any content can be tricky, let alone a video. But if you want it to be a success then you need to ensure that you have a promotion strategy in place.

So where do you start?

Once you’ve created your video and sourced a hosting platform, first step is to put it on your website — so that could be your blog, your product pages, or your homepage. Next, share it on social and pay to promote it so that you can attract your target audience. Once you’ve got that covered, email your database, leverage influencers and set up an ad campaign so that you can drive plenty of viewers to your video.

#7. 91% of businesses say they plan to increase or maintain their spending on video in 2016

If there’s one thing we can say for certain it’s that video isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We learnt that in 2015 on average, marketers intended to spend up to $5,000 on video, and this looks set to increase for 2016.

After looking at the stats it’s clear to see that the future is bright for video marketing. With more and more businesses using it to educate their audience, raise their brand awareness, and increase their ROI, isn’t it about time you jumped on the video bandwagon?

  Source : http://bit.ly/1Ym64je

7 Ways To Keep Your Startup Marketing Lean

If you've recently launched a startup, you know your brand needs as much exposure as possible. When you don't have much capital to work with, however, you may require a more cost-effective strategy. 

Luckily, digital marketing is highly scalable. You can start working on effective, goal-producing activities right now, and build on your strategy as you get more resources.

Building Brand Awareness And Value

The more people who recognize your brand from a distinctive logo, voice, and design, the better your chances are of getting content in front of them and driving conversions. Products and services evolve naturally the longer a company stays around, but a recognizable brand is like an insurance policy for your business goals.

Don't think you'll get away with a catchy yet vague slogan like Visa’s “It’s everywhere you want to be” and create brand value. You haven’t gained enough market penetration. Startups have to use explanatory and emotionalcues in their messaging to build awareness and trust.

Yet today's startups have more power than ever to create brand awareness and value without spending money. Even young individuals on social media can create an impactful brand that resonates with followers. Popular YouTube stars Jenna Marbles and PewDiePie both make more than many actors and actresses, and it all started with a free YouTube channel. The key is finding where your target audience spends time and using those platforms to emotionally connect.

Every piece of content, including tweets, infographics, and short- and longform video, has the potential to resonate with your audience in a meaningful way. Having a social impact also increases the likelihood that current customers who believe in your product offering will recommend your product to friends and colleagues.

Optimizing Digital Marketing on a Budget

You don’t need to invest millions into marketing as a startup. Take Zillow. It's now a public company that does spend millions on TV ads and more. But when it first started, it didn’t spend anything on marketing. Its website was its product, and optimizing it at every level ensured the site acted as its own marketing. Email, search-engine optimization, content development, and PR don’t have to cost much money in the beginning.

Consider investing in these areas:

A Strong Web Presence

Websites are at the core of digital marketing. Without one, you have nowhere to direct inbound marketing activities. Your page will serve as a data repository you can tap to gauge success, and it's also the only place online that's completely yours to create. Find ways to add value through your websiteto encourage traffic.

For example, Dropbox used free extra storage as a promotion for referrals, and Pinterest used an “invitation only” tactic to create an image of exclusivity before making the site available to anyone. Each tactic added value without costing the company much upfront.

In addition to traffic-driving tactics, update your website for visibility on search engines. These boring maintenance tasks will continually boost your visibility and become a source of value for inbound visitors.

Social Media

Find out where your audience spends its time. Are they younger folks who prefer to Snapchat, Instagram, and Yik Yak—or are they an older generation who's more comfortable with Facebook and Twitter?

You can always buy your way to prominence on social platforms. But companies that really succeed in social media use these channels as a natural extension of other marketing activities. Social media is a forum for natural engagement that builds credibility, not revenue generation. Consider how Dollar Shave Club used YouTube and companies like Red Bull and Oreo used hashtag campaigns to generate conversations. People of every age use social media, making it a fantastic forum for startups to tap into—you just have to figure out where your users are hanging out.

Your Personal Network

Every entrepreneur has to become a brand champion, and every business owner needs to get the word out. Grassroots marketing is effective because it allows you to leverage personal relationships for the benefit of the business, and almost every company uses it in some form. Get on social media, call up friends and old schoolmates, go to LinkedIn and take advantage of those professional connections, and ask your family to get in on it.

Request that everyone do something to promote the brand, whether that's reviewing the product on a third-party site, sharing content on social media, or mentioning your company online. Every extra link your network puts out has the potential to reach hundreds more people than you could on your own.

Content

Content is the bread and butter of the digital marketing world. Whether you use slideshows, quizzes, surveys, blogs, videos, articles, or infographics, take the time to make each piece of content feel like an extension of the company. Think about what types of content other successful companies have used. 

Although Target is a large company, for instance, its recent holiday marketing campaign told a story across digital and traditional platforms to inspire an emotional connection and engagement. Startups can do the same thing on a smaller scale to generate brand awareness.

Engage With Your Customers

Part of the beauty of digital marketing is the ability for brands to create a personal connection with consumers. Companies are living, breathing organisms that consumers care about. Brands such as Google, Lego, and Uber all outperform their competitors because they make a personal connection with their audiences.

Companies that win at engagement have created an emotional connection. They respond to feedback quickly and publicly. They understand what their target audience finds valuable. Startups can mimic these larger successes with fast responsivity and by sharing in consumer experiences online.

Mobile And App Marketing

Since many startups focus on providing app-centric services, earning visibility in Apple and Google's app stores will yield the best marketing results. Make sure users looking for products like yours can find your app. There are more than 1,600,000 apps in Google Play and more than 1,500,000 in the Apple App Store. Spend time on app-store optimization, including keywords, icon graphics, and descriptions and screenshots to encourage users to download.

Email

Email still offers a lot of bang for your buck. Most online consumers check their email many times a day, and many use a mobile device to do so. E-commerce companies, in particular, invest in email marketing over every other type of marketing activity—and they're smart to do so.

On a small budget, you can find an email marketing platform that allows you to create, send, and monitor responses to your campaigns. Add a subscription form to your website, and start building up your consumer contact base. Send out regular newsletters with the last few blog links or highlight promotions. 

To Market, To Market

The world is your oyster. You can go social all the way or you can focus on using data to carefully market to a niche looking for more than a snippet of information. However, every business is different. Try out a few tactics and measure the results to see what works for you. If you can only spend money on one digital marketing front, invest it in your website. The rest you can DIY until you hit the big time.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KbudGx

FIVE RULES FOR CONTENT MARKETERS IN 2016

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: 2016 planning. With the New Year around the corner, we know content marketers are looking for insights and trends that will shape the year ahead and help their content stand out.

This morning, we released findings from one of the industry’s largest and broadest global surveys of consumer views on digital content. We surveyed more than 12,000 consumers across six countries to get a deeper understanding of evolving consumer expectations and how they are fueling marketers’ challenge. The report, titled “State of Content: Rules of Engagement for 2016” sheds light on five rules for content marketers to follow in optimizing engagement with their target audiences.

Design for the Multiscreen Reality

Consumers report using five different devices and, on average, 83 percent use 2.23 devices at the same time. While the majority of consumers report feeling good about it (81 percent entertained, 80 percent connected, 76 percent productive), nearly half (47 percent) say they are distracted. As attention spans shrink, good design and optimization are paramount. Consumers ranked display (65 percent) as the most important aspect when it comes to content experience in their personal life, and 54 percent listed overall good design, such as appealing layout and photography as important. Content marketers can’t attempt to “get away with” a one-size-fits all approach to content distribution: content must be well-designed and optimized for each viewing device.

Don’t Fall Victim to #TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)

Consumers report lower patience for sub-par content experiences – with length a key factor. Nearly 9 out of 10 digital device users would switch devices or stop viewing content altogether if it fails to meet their quality, length and formatting expectations. Sixty seven percent of consumers would stop engaging if content is too long, and 79 percent would do the same if the content doesn’t display well on their device. Marketers need to deliver content in the right format, get to the point and optimize or consumers might say #unsubscribe.

Humor Makes Brands More Relatable

Seventy percent of global consumers agree that humor makes companies more relatable, but just 14 percent rate company-created content as entertaining. Globally, “making people laugh” was identified as the top personal motivator for sharing content. Content marketers should work to create authentic activations that entertain to help drive brand engagement.

In Our Relationships We Trust

In an era of high skepticism, authenticity and trust are critical. Consumers are more likely to engage with content they trust, but many are highly skeptical of most content they view online: 50 percent of consumers question whether negative comments or reviews have been removed, 49 percent wonder if an author was paid or incented to write a positive review, and 48 percent question whether a news article is biased. However, consumer trust in content increases as their relationship with the source grows stronger. Only 23 percent of consumers trust content from companies whose products they don’t buy, but if the source is a company from whom they do purchase products and have a relationship, that number nearly doubles to 43 percent. Brands need to work on building trusted relationships with their audience, which includes disclosing any endorsements, sponsorships and affiliations.

Don’t Show Up Uninvited

The majority of consumers understand the value of predictive recommendations, with 73 percent noting they are willing to share at least one piece of information about themselves and 71 percent reporting they are open to predictive recommendations from brands based on past behavior. Among consumers not willing to share their information, 40 percent believe companies could do something to ease their concern and 25 percent suggested “asking permission to access data” would make them more comfortable. This maps back to trust; consumers are most comfortable sharing information with brands they trust.

In addition to these insights shaping content marketing in 2016, the study also unveiled interesting findings about online engagement and behavior. For instance, there’s a rising fear of digital footprints. Twenty-six percent of U.S. consumers have cleared their browser history to hide content they viewed from a friend or loved one, and 17 percent have hid or embellished the truth about the content they regularly consume.

Source : http://adobe.ly/1OYCQGA

5 Ways to Use Social Media for Increased Business Success

If you're about to grow your social media campaigns, you should be aware of the many different ways that social media can be used to grow your business. Social media can be leveraged in a variety of ways, some that are obvious and some that are a little more obscure. To truly get the most out of your social media marketing efforts, you may want to coordinate multiple aspects of the campaign at once.

Here are the five ways to use social media for increased business success.

1. Customer Acquisition

A social media platform will give you unprecedented access to prospective customers. Not only will customers be able to find you and engage with your products, but they will also be able to learn more about you as a business. By creating compelling content and showcasing your products and services, you will build trust and a relationship with potential clients. Social media marketing is an extremely affordable method of customer acquisition and growth.

A single post or marketing video can reach hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of individuals—without any increased cost associated with these growing numbers. Over time, your social media outreach will grow and you will be able to reach even more potential customers. Social media accounts also help with customer retention. Your existing customers will follow your brand and be reminded of your brand, encouraging them to continue their purchasing.

2. Reputation Management

What are people saying about your business? Do you know? There are reviews for every company out there today, on a variety of websites—and not all of them are true. There could even be negative information available about you through a competitor. Sometimes there are even mistakes: a customer could damage your business unknowingly simply because they confused you with another company. All of this can hurt unless you appropriately manage your reputation.

Social media is an excellent platform on which you can address any customer complaints. As a first line of contact, social media inspires individuals to contact you through a channel that you can control, rather than potentially voicing complaints through a third-party service. In addition to managing negative reviews and commentary, you can also promote positive reviews and information. Make sure that the customer always knows your side of the story when disputes arise.

3. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is critical to growth. An individual may not engage with your brand the first time they see it, and they may not make a purchase even throughout many dozens of interactions. But that individual could still share your information. Individuals that follow you and interact with your brand will eventually become brand ambassadors, introducing others to your company even if they themselves are not a customer. 

Brand awareness increases the amount of trust that individuals have in your brand, in addition to making them far more likely to think of you the next time they need a related product and service. Brand awareness can be very difficult to quantify, but it can be seen increasing in the form of brand mentions across social media sites. Brand awareness is also very closely tied to customer acquisition, as you should see your customer acquisitions rise with the popularity of your branding.

In addition to making customers knowledgeable about your brand, you can also establish your brand voice and your company identity. Social media makes it very easy to reach your customers on this personal level. Creating a coherent and consistent brand identity will tell your customers what they should expect from your business and will encourage the demographics that you're focusing on.

4. Customer Service

Modern brands have to be "always on" in terms of responding to customer concerns and complaints. Customer service issues can arise at any time, and a responsive customer service team is necessary to address these problems before they become more serious. Many individuals today will reach out to a company through social media channels before they'll use anything else, and this means that the dispute becomes public regardless of what the company wishes to do. Consequently, companies today can experience "runaway" customer service issues, whereby problems snowball through a lack of attention.

Appropriately managed social media accounts allow a business to control these types of issues. Through social media, you are able to provide better customer service through a direct connection with the customer. Even when mistakes occur, customers are more likely to think favorably of a business if they are responded to professionally and with care. Merely by responding in a timely and polite fashion, companies can build their customer trust and make sure that their customers are satisfied every time.

Of course, customer service can also go wrong. There are many businesses that have learned a harsh lesson regarding their public relations. When dealing with customers online, you need to make sure that you're always focused on addressing and resolving their needs—not getting defensive or potentially aggravating them more. On social media, the entire world watches, and mistakes are very rarely forgotten.

5. Market Research

Are you wondering which of your next products will be the most successful? Do you want some guidance on your current marketing campaigns? Social media sites are one of the best places on which to conduct market research. You can see all of your engagement and activity and you know exactly which demographics you're reaching. You can poll your own clientele for information about what they truly want from your business and you can see how they react to your ideas before you attempt to launch them.

The value of social media marketing is that it's instantaneous: you get feedback almost the moment that you produce any content. This makes you remarkably agile; you will be able to identify "winners" and "losers" very quickly and be able to improve your products and services with this information at hand. Even better, the market research done on social media is free. Your customers will freely respond to your inquiries and all you will need to expend is some time.

There are an incredible amount of benefits to a cohesive and inclusive social media campaign. A social media campaign can do many things at once, and the more that you do with it, the more value you will receive from it. Of course, not all social media campaigns are created equal: different platforms may lend themselves better to certain strategies. Either way, however, having a positive, useful, and consistent social media presence will always draw customers to you and encourage them to stay.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PC3RgJ

You can't stop the wave, but you can learn to surf!

Guide to Choosing a Social Media Niche

The Smart Marketer’s Guide to Choosing a Social Media Niche: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding, Analyzing, and Testing The Best Platform For Your Business

You’ve read all the articles and social media blogs, and you’ve heard that youshould be on Twitter, you need to be on Facebook, and you’re losing out if you’re not on Pinterest.

You’ve read all the articles and social media blogs, and you’ve heard that youshould be on Twitter, you need to be on Facebook, and you’re losing out if you’re not on Pinterest.

 You’ve read all the articles and social media blogs, and you’ve heard that youshould be on Twitter, you need to be on Facebook, and you’re losing out if you’re not on Pinterest.

Is that truly the case?

Turns out, most social media experts believe in prudence: that you might miss out on connecting with your true audience if you’re spreading yourself too thin on too many social networks.

But who is your true audience?

How do you get to know them?

Where are they hanging out?

How can you find out which social network is the right fit for your audience and what to pick as your niche?

We’ve devised a step-by-step process.

Go all in or one at a time?

When it comes to social media, there are two major strategies or schools of thought:

1. Be everywhere

2. Focus on one network

1. Be everywhere

The “Be Everywhere” strategy was popularized by Smart Passive Income’s Pat Flynn, who believes in the idea that if you truly want to build your audience, the best way to do that is to go where they are. Some of them may like audio, some might prefer video, others prefer blogging as a way to learn and get information.

If you pick only one channel, he says, you’re missing out on the audience that prefers other modes of learning. In a podcast interview, he notes:

When you start a blog or a website or any sort of business, I compare it to putting a message into a bottle and then throwing it into the ocean…Sometimes, more often than not, people will eventually find it through Google search naturally or somebody with some influence will pick it up and then share it with their friends and followers and the tide will have taken it somewhere that will benefit you. But the whole point about the Be Everywhere strategy is don’t just throw your message into the ocean and just hope. You’ve got to place your message where people are already looking for brands or websites or information that you already have.

There are some fantastic benefits to the “Be Everywhere” strategy:

1. You reach people who have preferences for one channel over anotherquickly. If you’re on Twitter and Pinterest and YouTube, you’re reaching audiences who enjoy text, audiences who enjoy images, and audiences who enjoy video. Get rid of any of those social media networks and you may lose a large chunk of your potential audience.

2. Some people may choose to follow you on several different networks. This gives you the opportunity to reach them through many different channels and get your message across multiple times without even trying.

If you have a social media team or the budget to spend on one, the “Be Everywhere” strategy can be a fantastic one and I highly encourage you to try it.

For brands and one-person businesses with limited time and resources, however, it can be very difficult to have a fruitful presence on many different networks.

If you’re a small team, I recommend the next strategy, which is to pick one network and focus on it exclusively.

2. Focus on one network

With this strategy, you’d pick one social media network, get extremely good at delivering what your audience wants from it, and then, when you have systems in place for getting new followers, generating leads, and bringing people over to your newsletter or funnel, only then would you move on to the next social network.

In her post “Trim the Fat From Your Social Media Plan,” Laurie Hurley, the CEO of a social media marketing agency writes:

Trying to be everywhere with your social media plan will result in not being anywhere with substance. Narrow your focus and see greater results.

Doing this can have several advantages:

1. It’s easier to put your energy into one social media channel and build traction with that before moving on to the next one. This can also be great for your social proof, since building 1,000 subscribers quickly on say, Twitter, is better than having 200 followers each of five different social media channels.

2. Building your audience for the first time on any given social media channel probably the most difficult part of social media marketing. But the good news is that once you’ve got some traction on one network, building your audience on the second, third, and fourth networks becomes a lot easier since many of your followers from one network will follow you over to the next network as well. This gives you traction pretty much immediately with engaged readers as well as social proof, helping you attract even more much more quickly.

3. Staying focused on one social media channel at a time helps you to stay consistent and to learn, especially about your customers’ needs and wants on that particular platform. Once you understand what your target audience responds to on one platform, say Twitter, it becomes easy to then tweak that content to suit your audience on a different platform.This also helps you pick up tips and tricks that help you grow faster on one particular platform and the work you put in builds on itself, creating a compounding effect instead of being distributed among different channels.
4. Being focused on one channel exclusively allows you to be very quick and responsive with your audience, which can be a fantastic way to build relationships and grow your audience early on. Research shows that over half of consumers won’t trust a company if they don’t have a social media presence and don’t engage with customers. By having the bandwidth to respond, and respond quickly, to people on social media, you can easily stand out and get more visibility.

5. When you’re focusing on one social media channel at a time, it gives you the time and the flexibility to jump quickly on to new social media channelsthat seem like the perfect fit for your brand and become an early adopter. It also helps you deal with changes and new rules that come up on the existing ones, such as those that regularly happen within Facebook.

While you may be convinced that going one at a time with social networks is the way to build your brand visibility, the question still remains: Which one do you focus on first and how do you make that decision?

Let’s talk about that now.

Which social media platform should you use? 6 steps for figuring it out

Step 1: Understand your audience

Which social media platform your audience is most likely to use will come down to who defines that audience in the first place. What do your demographics look like?

• Are your customers primarily male or female?
• What age range?
• Are they likely to be married and have children?
• What kind of purchasing power do they have?

These are important questions to ask when you’re at this first step because it helps you narrow down the places where your users and customers may be hanging out. For instance, we know that 85% of Pinterest’s users are women. If your brand is largely female-focused, you know pretty quickly that Pinterest needs some serious consideration in your social media marketing plan.

For The International Freelancer, my business that provides training to freelance writers and journalists, for instance, I found that my audience was largely to be found on Twitter over Facebook or Pinterest, not only because of the text over images nature of my business, but also because journalists and writers, as a group, prefer speed and efficiency over laidback pinning.

It also helps you rule out platforms that are unlikely to work as my friend Chris Thorne, who runs a website for make-up artists, points out in his post, “Why Facebook is a Waste of Time for [Make-up Artists].”

So, how do you go about finding who your core audience is?

One of the simplest ways to do this is with Google Analytics. The steps below will give you a good idea of how to approach this:

1. Log on to your Google analytics dashboard.
2. Under the “Audience” section, click on “Demographics.”
3. Click on “Overview.”
4. You’ll see graphs and pie charts giving you a bit of detail about your audience.

When I did this for my own business, The International Freelancer, as you can see below, I found that my audience skews fairly young (mostly between the ages of 25 and 34) and are largely female.

Step 2: Understand your goals

You’ve looked outward towards what it is that your audience wants. Now it’s time to look inwards to what you want. Why are you spending time, money, and resources on social media? What do you hope to get out of this process?

In her post on Search Engine People, Sharon Hurley Hall, offers the following ideas:

• increasing awareness of your brand
• giving your brand personality
• connecting with your customers with helpful or entertaining information
• delivering customer service
• getting access to influencers
• showing leadership in your niche
• increasing authority with your audience and search engines
• improving your online reputation
• building a network of people interested in your business
• streamlining and segmenting your marketing
• increasing conversions

Remember, these are great goals to consider but they’re not all great goals tohave. At most, you want to think about the one or two ways that social media can help your business and focus exclusively on those.

Which social media channel you end up picking will largely depend on what you hope to achieve.

Step 3: Understand the different options and what purpose they each solve

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of social media networks out there, from the broad-ranged, such as Facebook and Twitter, to the niche and fringe. You don’t need to understand, or even know of all of them, but having a general sense of what’s out there and what purpose it can solve can help you start making decisions early on.

To that end, let’s talk about some of the bigger social networks out there and whether or not they may be right for your business.

Facebook

With 1.49 billion monthly active users and an average of 20 minutes per days spent per user on the platform, Facebook is pretty difficult to ignore as a social platform.

Facebook, however, can be a tricky platform. It’s been noted repeatedly that despite your best efforts at audience building, only a fraction of your audience will see your updates. Even so, Facebook is one of those platforms that require personality, personalization, and regular reader interaction. It’s a fantastic network to engage with your readers in, especially with cool and clever storytelling strategies, but if your goal is to create brand awareness or simply showcase your products, your lack of responsiveness or conversation on Facebook can make you seem aloof and distant.

Twitter

Prefer words to images?

Like speed and efficiency?

Choose brevity every time?

Twitter could be your platform of choice.

If so, the statistics are encouraging. The number of people using Twitter has increased by more than 50 million in the past year with the network now having over 270 million active users. Further, the average Twitter user follows five or more businesses and over a third (37%) of Twitter users will buy from a brand they follow.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn almost never makes it to the big list of social media networks to try it, even though, for many businesses—especially service-sector ones—LinkedIn can be a fantastic way of building brand visibility and credibility. With 380 million users in 200 countries, it’s a network that is growing and will continue to grow.

Writing for PR & Marketing firm Barnett Cox & Associates, Brooke Pitts says:

All businesses—small and large—should be set up on LinkedIn with a company page. This allows you to post updates on your business, raise awareness of your brand, develop a follower community and showcase your products and services. Furthermore, you can recruit potential employees on LinkedIn using the career tab.

She notes that while LinkedIn is best for B2B companies from a marketing and sales standpoint, it can still be effective for B2C companies looking for networking opportunities within their industry.

Pinterest

According to Nielson data, 84% of US Pinterest users are women. Weddings, home décor, fashion, travel, food, and style all seem to do really well on this platform and if you have the time and resources for creating unique and clever images, Pinterest can be a fantastic way to showcase your product and build relationships with your audience, many of whom are highly engaged with the platform.

One of the great things about Pinterest is the boards that make it easy for you to classify your images into categories and by interest, which makes browsing easy and fast. It also means that you can reach different types of audience with your Pinterest page by promoting each individual board.

If you have an image-heavy brand but limited resources, Pinterest may be difficult to keep up with and other image-focused platforms such as Instagram may be worth exploring. But if you’re able to focus on creating consistent visual content, Pinterest can be a fantastic place to build an audience quickly.

Instagram

While Pinterest’s user base is largely American, it’s interesting to note that 70% of Instagram’s users are based outside of the US. This, if you’re an international business, or a business with global reach, is important to note during your social media marketing efforts.

That’s not all. The average Instagram user spends 21 minutes a day using the app, which for a network that focuses exclusively on images, is a pretty high number.

Like with Pinterest, if you’ve got a product or services that can be showcased via images, this is a fantastic platform to get active in. Users are connected, responsive, and receptive to products, and if “conversions” was one of your goals in Step 2, this is definitely a platform worth exploring to increase those numbers.

YouTube

If video’s your medium of choice, YouTube is a great place to start with your audience-building efforts, given its 1 billion users. 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube, which makes it a highly desirable network to be on if you have good-quality video, but also makes it highly competitive for the same reason. Yet, when it comes to video, while Instagram, Facebook, and other networks have certainly made sharing easier and faster, YouTube still remains the top place to post video content as well as make money from it.

Step 4: Pick and rank

Now that you know who your audience is, what they want, and how you can align your content so as to meet their needs as well as your business goals, it’s a good idea to start looking at what some of your competitors are doing, which platforms they’re most active on, and what is getting them the most results.

Swellpath has an excellent guide on how to do this, in which they lay out the following steps:

1. Identify your competitors
2. Identify their voice
3. What is their fan to follower ratio?
4. How active are they on social sites?
5. Engagement rate with fans
6. What types of content are they posting?
7. What is their month-over-over percent growth

Then, it’s time to take your pick.

My advice is to make a list of the platforms that will fit into your business, and then rank them according to priority.

Now pick one to focus on.

Step 5: Create content and engage with your audience

Timing, frequency, and consistency are everything when it comes to engaging with your social media audience.

While the timing of what you post and how often you’ll post it differ from network to network (read our guide for Twitter, Facebook, and blog posts here), it is important that you have a consistent schedule that you stick to.

More importantly, make the effort to respond to your audience when they engage with your content. In a study done by KISS Public Relations, more than half (51 percent) of respondents agreed that if a brand is not present or active with its social media, it would reflect negatively on the company.

While it’s perfectly fine to have profiles on social networks where you’re not actively engaging with your audience, a good practice is to let your users know where you are active. Says Simon Heseltine, Director of SEO with the Huffington Post Media group:

If you don’t have the resources to maintain an active social account on a particular social network, then what you should do is let users of that network know where you are engaging with the general public so they at least have the opportunity to contact you over there.”

Step 6: Create content and engage with your audience

Finally, measuring and tracking your social media efforts can help you analyze whether or not you’re on the right track and whether the social media platform you’ve picked has, indeed, been the right choice.

If so, you might just be ready to add on another one.

Keep in mind, though, that much like everything else, the 80/20 rule (aka the Pareto principle) applies to your social media marketing, too. Which is to say that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your social media channels.

So when you find a social media channel or two that work, stick with them and try to put most of your resources towards them.

You want to be active on all social media networks, and perhaps over time, even have individual strategies for each of them.

But you’ll find, as most people do, that there’s one that works better than most.

That’s the one to stick to.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KgNDU1