7 Ways to Measure Marketing Performance

If you want to make sure your company is successful, you need to have knowledge of marketing. One of the biggest challenges that marketers face is having enough patience and prudence to wait on results and determine which methods are fruitful versus those that are a mere waste of time and funds. Unfortunately, it can take weeks or even months for the full effect of your efforts to become apparent, so it is imperative to start tracking any available analytics that might provide insight into your current performance within a campaign.

The best marketers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track their progress in specific areas, and then use this data to hone in on effective strategies and identify weaknesses that need to be addressed. Now that you know why you need them and what they’re used for, here are the top seven marketing KPIs every entrepreneur should know about.

Conversion Rates

If you don’t know about this metric as an entrepreneur, you’re probably not very experienced. The conversion rate is the percentage of leads or site visitors who perform a desired action versus the percentage of leads/visitors who do not.

The “desired action” in question could be anything from buying a product, to signing up for a subscription, to opting into a newsletter, to clicking an ad. Obviously, you want your conversion rates to be as high as possible. In fact, that’s the main goal in marketing, which is why it’s at the top of this list.

Sales Revenue

You might not be tracking every aspect of revenue generation or comparing your data to your marketing efforts to find a correlation between your efforts and increases in revenue. But you should be. That’s what tracking KPIs is all about – using analytics to identify what works.

If you’re not analyzing your sales revenue in relation to marketing efforts on a daily and weekly basis, you’re limiting your businesses. After all, the last thing you want to do is waste time on sales efforts that aren’t yielding results.

Cost Per Lead

It’s also important to calculate how much each lead and customer is costing youin terms of advertising budget. Are you spending more to acquire customers through inbound marketing than you are through outbound marketing? If you are, the sooner you know about it, the better.

Identifying the most cost-effective method of lead generation is just one of the advantages of keeping track of this crucial KPI. Because spending money to make money only works when you spend less than you make.

ROI for Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the practice of bringing customers to your company or website passively, rather than aggressively going out and seeking new clients/customers. Inbound techniques might include search engine optimization, content development, banner advertisements, and other methods that increase your brand’s visibility and presence.

The greatest businesses reap huge ROIs from inbound marketing, so this is a KPI that should never be ignored. Remember, sometimes playing hard to get actually works out.

Organic Search Traffic

Reiterating the importance of effective inbound marketing, organic search traffic is a KPI that shows how strong your company’s ranking authority is within the search engine result pages (SERPs). Ultimately, most of your online marketing efforts should be put towards ranking higher in major search engines like Google for popular keywords and queries.

Developing and distributing great content related to your brand is by far the best way to increase the amount of traffic gained from organic search results.

Social Media Engagement

Businesses that are firmly rooted in social media have a higher chance of continuing and thriving, so it’s important to keep an eye on the amount of traffic coming from social media as well as the percentage of those visitors who are converted into customers. Tracking KPIs related to social networking will ensure that you’re at least aware of where you’re at and what needs improvement in this pivotal department.

If you’re slacking on your social media game, you might want to try increasing social media engagement and presence and monitoring your KPIs along the way.

Average Customer Value

Finally, while all of the above KPIs are useful in their own regard, they won’t help you manage your budget if you don’t know the average value of your customers. There are several ways to calculate the average customer value metric, either in the short-term or long-term.

Essentially, your average customer value is the average sales revenue generated by each customer minus the cost of lead acquisition, multiplied by the average number of sales per customer. Figure out this number fast so you know how successful you need to be to stay afloat.

  Source: http://bit.ly/297psQR

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7 Tools to Help Your Internet Marketing Efforts

The difference between a beginner Internet marketer and a proficient one is, on the one hand, in experience, and on the other hand, in the tools they use. And while experience can only be obtained through continuous work and study of the market, tools are what you can get right now. Here are some with which you should start.

1. Google Alerts

Good old Google Alerts may look unassuming, but it is still one of the best tools for tracing the mentions of your or your competitor’s brand name. RSS may not be as popular as it has been several years ago, but it is nonetheless a simple, reliable and completely free way of keeping track of developments in your industry, and with careful choice of keywords you can gain a lot of insights from this simple tool.

2. DA Checker

Whether you want to check the results of your latest advertising campaign or decide if this or that website is worth cooperating with, knowing the resource’s authority is always extremely helpful. Domain Authority Checker is exactly what it says on the tin – it determines the strength of a website’s presence in the Internet and, unlike many of its analogues, can be used completely free of charge.

3. Website Grader

Do you want to get a fast and reliable review of how strong the SEO of your website is? Then go no further, as Website Grader is one of the most popular and straightforward instruments available in this area of marketing.

4. Hootsuite

Social media may be a major power in modern marketing, and their importance seems to be on the rise. Unfortunately, managing all your social media accounts, updating them, reviewing what others are saying and so on tends to eat up inordinate amounts of your time that you could use for more productive purposes.Hootsuite is a free tool that allows you to comfortably manage all your social media accounts, speeds up the process of posting and lets you review everything from a single interface.

5. Phrase Builder

Phrase Builder may look a bit ugly, but it is truly indispensable when you need a plenty of related keyword ideas and don’t have time to think them up ‘manually’. You simply define certain input criteria, and the tool will generate the list of keywords and phrases.

6. UberSuggest

UberSuggest is one of the most popular tools used by PPC marketers, and for a good reason. In many respects, it is similar to other suggestion tools, but there are a few differences, such as foreign language support and a lot of small details that add up to better and more flexible functionality.

7. Five Second Test

It is often said that what a user sees within five seconds after visiting your site defines whether he is going to stay or leave.  Five Second Test allows you to check how much your website is attuned to this idea: it shows you what the visitor sees, what he is likely to miss and what he is likely to remember.

Using these tools won’t turn you into a pro in a blink of an eye, but it will certainly increase your effectiveness as an online marketer – and quickly!

Souce:http://bit.ly/23oGX5B

5 Things I’ve Learned in Social Media

I have had the great pleasure of meeting amazing people all over the world because of the industry of social media. Each of the relationships may have started online, however, many of them came offline and I now have more meaningful connections, friendships, and business partnerships because of social media. I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned from social media.

We know you want to know! By implementing these simple things you too can see how social media can help you in your business endeavors and much more!

1. Reach Out and Say Thanks –

Everyone would love to hear that they have made someone’s day. The next time you are reading an article on someone’s blog or you see a sentence in someone’s tweet that really speaks to you, reach out and say THANKS to that person. Whether you send an email, a personal note, a DM (direct message) or you post it publicly on their wall, everyone loves to be appreciated. Far too many people only take the time to reach out to someone if there is something negative to say.  So even if it is the service at the fast food place that happens to be your lunch for the day, reach out and say THANKS! Not because you want to get acknowledgement, but because it might just be what someone else needs in their day to keep them going.

2. Research Your Influencers – 

As in any field you want to make sure the people that you think are great and influence worthy are all they say they are.  Have you ever read an article on a blog post and just felt that it was scam-like or not really a ‘tested theory’ but more so someone just blowing smoke? Sometimes it might feel that obvious and other times it might really seem much more difficult to tell.  I’ve found that once you put yourself into the industry you are seeking to learn more about, you can really start to see certain people popping up all over the place and ‘doing a great job’ or as being an ‘influencer’.  The reason it matters is because you want to ultimately have great people to look up to and learn from within your field. Specifically in social media, I love checking out about 5-10 websites every single day of people that are ah-mazing and I know they are credible, trust-worthy and putting out consistently great content. If you are just following someone as an influencer because someone told you so, it doesn’t really give you the edge you really should have by knowing the ‘why’ they are great.  So, dig down into google, check around and really get to know the people that are out there doing amazing things. Trust me, the research will pay off in the long run because you’ll feel confident in the people that you are connecting with as influencers.

3. Not All Social Media Platforms Are Created Equal – 

You may just use some of the social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest but you don’t even know what Instagram is or even more so, how people are using it for business. Maybe Twitter intimidates you.  Or maybe you find yourself in a conversation at lunch with someone and you say, “I got twitted today” and everyone looks at you like you have three heads.  There’s a lingo, there’s value and there certainly is a purpose for all the various social media platforms.  For instance, Twitter is extremely powerful for using targeted searches to find potential clients by joining conversations that are already taking place. It is also great for reaching out to and making connections with influencers. Instagram is great for all visual graphics because it has a focus on one photo and allows you to bring stories to life through beautiful pictures. Whether you want to sell something, offer a service or give tips, encouragement, etc.. And the list goes on.  But what is true is that you need to focus first where you really want to get strategic and really be on social media and do it well.  It is far better to do one thing such as Facebook and do it consistently well rather than doing Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram sporadically and with little clarity of what you are on social media for in the first place.

4. Hashtags are Powerful –

If you don’t think that the pound sign has any significance we’ll make sure that you know that is NOT THE CASE.  In social media, when you use the pound sign (called hashtag from this point forward) in front of a key set of words (with no spaces between) it is very powerful because it allows you to search and focus on specific things. For example, if you want to make a post and put #ColumbiaSC in it because that is the city/state that you live and you are a local hair salon, that might be a smart strategy to not only see who else is using that hashtag so you can join in on some conversation but also because it would allow for someone else that is searching that hashtag to find you. Hashtags are found among most social media platforms (especially Twitter and Instagram) however hashtags are really not encouraged to be used on Pinterest. It might seem overwhelming but before you give it a try maybe think of a hashtag and keyword on a topic that matters to you or your business and type it in the search bar on Twitter for example and see what you find?

5. Money can be Made for Your Business Using Social Media –

I know it is true because I have done it myself since 2011. I used Facebook primarily to launch my first company ElizabethtownFamily.com to a booming website filled with amazing family-friendly information for a small community near Fort Knox, Kentucky. We’re talking about a town that has 30,000 people in it and a greater surrounding area of maybe 125-50,000 people. It started with a Facebook page and then once I had the website developed I simply had a strategy to make 80% of every single Facebook post I made have a link going back to the website.  Today, 4 years later, I’ve been able to have this as a profitable business since 30 days of the business launching and use content marketing to attract the community and thus monetizing the brand via local businesses and non-profits that want to advertise to that very targeted audience. I’ve also personally, of course, launched Sweet Tea Social Marketing as well where I can help small and medium business owners that want to have help with their social media so they can see great results for their business.  Just via the social media platform of Linkedin alone, I was able to secure a $10,000 client. It is one thing when people use hypothetical ideas to tell you that social media can grow your business. I’m not here to tell you theory. I’m here to tell you via hustle, strategy and pulling up my sleeves and daily being in the trenches of seeing what works and what doesn’t work, social media is a powerful resource in marketing to grow my businesses and it can do the same for you.

 Source: http://bit.ly/1Vd5PrZ

A List Of The Worst Business Advice You Can Follow — Ever

There’s plenty of advice out there for how to start and run a business. But not all of it is good. In fact, there are some common sayings that are actually some of the worst business advice out there. The following includes some of the worst business advice you can follow.

The Worst Business Advice

Do What You Love

Although it may seem like a nice notion, this popular saying is widely considered one of the worst pieces of business advice out there. Just because you love doing something doesn’t mean that others will find it helpful or necessary. And if no one buys what you’re selling, then doing what you love won’t really get you anywhere.

If You Build It, They Will Come

Likewise, simply building an offering doesn’t mean that you’ll actually attract any customers. This saying implies that if you put in the work, there are customers out there who will support your business. But if you don’t do the research and find a market for your product or service, you very well could be in for a rude awakening.

The Customer is Always Right

This popular saying is meant to encourage business owners and employees to work hard to accommodate customers. And while customers and their opinions are generally important to the success of businesses, they’re not always right. If you’re constantly giving discounts or changing your offerings every time a customer makes a demand, you could be hurting your brand and your bottom line.

Never Turn Down a Paying Customer

Likewise, you shouldn’t assume that every customer you get will help your business. Especially if you have a consulting business or provide some other service where it can be necessary for you to work with someone over the long-term, it may very well be in your best interest to only take on a few very select clients.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job

This is some of the worst business advice out there because there’s no right path for every entrepreneur. If you’re just starting out, it may very well be in your best interest to keep your full-time job while building a business. But then again you might be better off quitting and putting all your time and effort into your new venture. When it comes to making this decision, each entrepreneur has to decide based on his or her own set of circumstances, and not listen to a single one-size-fits-all recommendation.

Stay Away From Established Markets

Some experts claim that in order to start a successful business, you need to find a brand new niche or a huge gap in the market. But that’s not always true. You can start a business in an established market as long as you have at least one small thing that customers will appreciate to set you apart.

If You Want Something Done Right, You Have to Do It Yourself

Too many business owners try to do everything themselves because they have a hard time trusting anyone else with their business. But the fact is there are experts and great potential employees out there who can help you do things better than you could all by yourself.

It’s All About Who You Know

Personal connections can certainly be helpful when it comes to running a successful business. But putting such a huge emphasis on them can discourage some people who aren’t well connected from starting businesses. You can always build connections as you go.

Stick to Your Plan

A business plan is a helpful tool. But it shouldn’t be the ultimate, unchanging guide for your business. Sometimes things change, and you should be able to adapt your plan to those changes.

Follow an Established Path to Success

Some experts think that there are just one or two ways to make it in the business world. But young, innovative entrepreneurs are forging their own paths every day. So don’t let anyone tell you that there’s one path you HAVE TO take in order to succeed.

Keep Your Business and Personal Life Separate

While there can be some merit to this piece of advice in certain situations, it’s no longer an absolute rule. Some small businesses actually thrive because the owner or the team shares their personality with customers. You don’t need to air all of your personal drama on social media. But being a little bit open and personable with your customers can be a good thing.

All Attention is Good Attention

Drawing attention to your business, especially during the early stages, can be difficult. So when you get any type of attention or press it might seem like a good thing. But if that attention isn’t in line with your brand and the image you want to portray, it could be doing more harm than good.

Hire the Most Experienced People

Experience can be a very good quality when looking to build your team. But it shouldn’t be the only quality you look for. Finding people who are enthusiastic, talented, creative and who share your vision for your business can be just as important — if not more so.

Offer the Lowest Prices

Plenty of new businesses fall into the trap of trying to differentiate themselves from the competition by offering the lowest prices. But that isn’t always sustainable depending upon your costs and your business model. And it could damage your reputation moving forward.

Work Hard and Success Will Come

Hard work is certainly important when it comes to running a successful business. But it is not the only thing that matters. Don’t think that just because you’re putting in long hours and trying your best that success will eventually come. Sometimes it’s more important to “work smart” than to work hard. Ultimately, the results you get are what matter.

Don’t Try New Things

If you’ve found one or two things that work in your business, it can seem like a safe bet to stick with what works. But doing that won’t allow your business to grow as quickly as you might like. Trying new things can be risky, but it can also be rewarding.

Never Say No

Saying no to new clients, partnerships or opportunities may seem like a bad business strategy. But if you say yes to everything, you could be spreading yourself too thin or taking your business in too many different directions. You need to be very intentional when making those decisions so you can be sure that they’re going to benefit your business in the long run.

You Have to Spend Money to Make Money

This can be true in some circumstances. But you shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that making big investments in new equipment, employees, training or other resources, will magically make your business better. You need to be smart about how you spend. And besides, many entrepreneurs have built highly successful businesses with very few or almost no resources at all.

Never Stop Working

You have to work hard to run a successful business. But you also need to find a balance, or else you’ll burn yourself out and find yourself too uninspired to run your business successful. The risk of burnout is one reason work-life balance is an absolute must.

Give Up

Not all businesses succeed. In fact, most don’t. But this is still some of the worst business advice you could ever receive. It’s never up to someone else whether you give up or not. If that’s a decision you need to make, it should be based on more than just outside opinions. Never let others decide when it is time for you to throw in the towel.

What are some of the worst pieces of business advice you have ever heard?

Source: http://bit.ly/1okfcbc

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How to Prepare Your First Round of Startup Funding

The majority of startups need some financing to get them off the ground. They need an injection of capital to get them over those first major hurdles. But getting ready for the first round of financing isn’t easy because you have more competition than ever before. Every industry is experiencing an uptick. For example, the payments industry saw corporate investment increase by 335 percent.

This guide is going to introduce you to some of the tips you need to follow in order to prepare your startup for funding.

Get Your Business Plan Ready

 Your business plan is the first thing investors will see. It will also be the primary marker they use to make a judgment call on you. Your business plan shouldn’t just stick to how you think your company is going to be successful. It should go into the big market risks facing you and the likelihood of you overcoming them.

The key to nailing your business plan down is to be honest in your evaluations. The majority of investments are rejected by investors because they don’t buy into overly optimistic predictions.

Be sure to have a section on exit opportunities. Not all investors will want to be in this for the long haul and they will want to know how easy it is for them to get their money back.

Perform a Financial Audit

Investors are going to want to know exactly what you intend to do with the money. Examine the financial needs of your company and identify where additional funding is needed. This serves two purposes. First of all, you are able to clearly tell investors what you will do with their money. And you’ll ensure that you won’t be wasting any money.

There are many potential options open to you and you won’t be able to utilize them all. Weigh up the pros and cons of each option. Put a tentative plan in place so you have the potential for change later on.

Do Your Homework on Investors

It’s amazing how many startups don’t spend time considering who they are going to approach. Just because an investor specializes in small business doesn’t mean that they are right for you. You are not just looking for an investor you are looking for someone who can take your company to the next level.

A startup with no outside help has a high chance of failure whether it happens to have a thousand dollars or a million dollars.

Be Smart in Approaching Investors

All investors want something different. Some are conservative and want to see guaranteed returns with a range of security measures in place to protect against loss due to banking and investment fraud. Others may want to take a punt, but they only want to take a punt on tech startups.

As you can see, winning over investors requires a different strategy every time. Don’t waste valuable time and effort by approaching the wrong people. Too many people have spent months seeking investment only to come back with nothing because they approached people who wouldn’t have had any interest in them in the first place.

When Will You Need More Investment?

The time to start thinking about when you are going to need more investment is now. Your startup should be prepared for both this round of financing and any future rounds of funding. You should attempt to look as far into the future as possible when preparing your startup for investment.

One important consideration is whether you are willing to give away any equity. Startups can either take on investments in the form of a loan or they can provide a share in their company in exchange for the money. Both options come with their own pitfalls and it’s vital that you weigh them up with a clear head.

Investment Is Not a Silver Bullet

Startups are often seen as a way of making more money than with a degree. They are seen as your ticket to a better future, assuming you can secure the investment you need. But the reality is that investment is no silver bullet and it will never provide you with a guarantee of success.

It’s not uncommon to see startups take a lot of money and throw it right up the wall because they don’t know what to do with it. The right team behind a startup with a solid business plan in place will always secure better results.

Investors know this and that’s why it’s often seen as so difficult to actually get first round financing. Come in prepared and make sure which startup funding tactic is the best option for you.

 Source: http://bit.ly/1q1Tj1C

5 Must-Have Tools for Every Startup

Let face it – you are struggling to get your startup on track but failing to manage everything on your own.  Well, you surely don’t have enough budget and investors to assemble a top-tier marketing team, nor do you have enough time to learn the basics of everything and become jack-of-all-trades.

In fact, the age of “if you build it, they will come” strategy is long gone and is never going to provide you the same exposure that it did in the past. However, making use of some tools will get you started in the right track and give you enough space to kick-start your profitable business in no time.

Check out these 5 must-have tools for every startups.

1. Content Marketing Tools

It has been reported that fifty-eight percent of B2B marketers increased their budget for content marketing in 2015. Content marketing tools are considered as the back-bone of most online businesses today as they help in creating, distributing, and measuring effectiveness of their contents. Here are a few content marketing tools that can be useful:

• Google Analytics – Google’s analytics tool makes it easy to customize reports, measure the impact of social media and mobile on website traffic.
• Alexa – Though this tool is currently neglected by many, it provides data and global rankings for commercial websites and their effectiveness on the web.
• SEMRush – This tool helps to track keywords and rankings, both paid and organic.
• Moz – This platform can be used to monitor social media, manage SEO campaigns, and measure different online metrics.

2. Social Media Marketing Tools

Social media is considered the future of online marketing and if you are to make you start up a word-of-mouth, you need to start promoting you or your brand on social media starting on day 1. While there are several social media platforms available, using them one at a time might be time-consuming and boring. There’s no need to worry as social media marketing tools are there to back you up. From creating, curating, managing, scheduling and analyzing, these tools will empower your brand to capitalize the market. Here are a few that might be helpful for you:

• Buffer– From creating a posting schedule to different social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and G+ pages, Buffer is a all-in-one social media marketing tool.
• IFTTT– Another all-in-one tool that has recipes for your social media needs, IFTTT lets you post, read and do all sort of things with almost all social media platforms available.
• Social Rank– This tool helps you to identify, organize and manage your followers and potential customers on different social media platforms.

3. Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing is probably the oldest and still one of the best ways that is proven, effective and important for any kind of businesses and startups. No matter what comes in and goes in the world of digital marketing, email marketing is what will exist forever and will always remain crucial to grab success. Here are a few email marketing tools you need to use:

• MailChimp– An ESP tool that has both free and paid plans, you get some pretty useful and powerful features with MailChimp.
• The Hemingway App–  Want to make you copywriting clear and conversational? This is what the tool will help you with; optimize emails.

4. Project & Employee Management Tools

Most startups and small businesses do not care much about using project and employee management tools as they handle a small number of projects and work in small groups. But, if they are to grow big eventually, they need to have the know-how of handling bigger projects and large employee and clients’ base.

Pingboard‘s CEO Bill Boebel says: “We found that most of our customers were still managing their org chart in PowerPoint or Visio — even with several hundred employees. These documents are time-consuming to maintain, difficult to share and often become out-of-date shortly after they are created. And quite frankly, org charts made this way are ugly.”

Here are a few easy-to-use and useful tools:

• Org chart software– This tool helps to create and structure the members, their relationships and relative ranks according to their positions and jobs
• Basecamp– From managing projects, groups and client works, Basecamp is an all-in-one tool to manage everything at one place.
• Trello– Another project management tool to give you perspective over all of your projects, Trello makes collaboration with employees and clients easy.

5. SEO Tools

If you or your company needs to gain quick attention and visibility online, search engines need to be on your top priority. From gaining leads, making sales and making an impact through online visibility, SEO is what every startup need to focus on first. Here are a few SEO tools to track and maintain the online presence:

• Ahrefs– From link profile data to content referral information, Ahrefs does everything you need to track you and your competitors.
• Schema Creator– Addition of schema or micro data can increase search engine visibility and Schema Creator is what does it in minutes to your website or blogs.
• MozBar-It lets you perform a range of SEO tasks from your browser, including keyword ranking data analysis, schema validation, and SEO metric reporting.

  Source: http://bit.ly/1WxKaID

Effective Ways to Build Your Social Media Presence

Social media has an extreme appeal to users of all demographics, as 2.1 billion people have accounts. It provides you with the opportunity to hit the largest audience in the world, something that has never before been a possibility. Building up a social media presence isn’t as simple as making an account, throwing out a few status updates, and hoping for the best.

It takes time and effort. This guide is going to introduce you to some of the most effective ways to build your social media presence.

Make Your Content Have a Goal

You should always know what you want to do with your content before you post it. There must be a point beyond you believe that people will like it. Identify your target audience and figure out what your content is going to achieve with them.

Always think about what impact your written content or videos are going to have. Are they going to help you achieve your short and long-term goals?

Get Involved and Interact

Interaction is the essence of being successful on social media. To do this effectively, you must go out of your way to interact. Naturally, any content you post should be designed to foster this interaction. On the other hand, you can use currently ongoing discussions to connect with your target audience.

If you come across an interesting discussion, go out of your way to join in with it. Don’t just advertise your brand. Genuinely help someone. Speak as you would on any personal social media account. People want genuine they don’t want to be sold to.

Choose Your Group with Care

One benefit of social media is that any group you have control of has a closed door policy. In other words, you can kick someone out of the club if you don’t feel that they are contributing anything meaningful. Rather than making impulsive decisions regarding those members, do some research and figure out who is best for your group.

Many social media managers monitor new members with a phantom probationary period. If they are inactive or unhelpful during the specified period of time, they can remove them if they see fit.

Channel Quality Over Quantity

It may be tempting to go wide in order to increase your range. While this can work from time to time, only larger companies have the resources to target a huge number of social media channels. Smaller companies should opt for the ones that are most relevant to them.

For example, a management consulting firm may decide to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A private art gallery may decide that they want to target Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. By spending more time on a small number of channels, you are increasing the quality of those channels.

No channel should be an afterthought.

Review Your Content

If you are determined to get the best content, you need to be willing to review your own content. The worst thing you can do is post anything you think works and then receive lots of public negative feedback. You can control the flow of negative feedback, but you can’t alter the negative impressions left on your customers, as a result.

Go through regular content reviews and ask your most loyal brand ambassadors what they think of the things you are posting. By asking someone impartial, you are guaranteed to get an honest opinion, even if the truth hurts.

Consider the Competition

The competition will always be an important factor in everything you do. You need to pay attention to them without becoming obsessive. This is one of the best ways to maintain that competitive edge because you can continually counter what they are doing.

The competition will give you ideas for what content is working and what isn’t. For example, if a competitor makes a mistake and they receive a negative backlash, you will learn what not to do.

Just beware of getting carried away with this.

Stay Polite

Nothing destroys a social media presence like coming into conflict with people. You will receive negative feedback, but the answer isn’t to fight back; no matter how justified you may or may not be. You will always come off looking worse.

Always stay polite and endeavor to be helpful at all times.

Conclusion

Building a social media presence is mainly about research and perseverance. If you know what you are doing through research and you are willing to invest the time and the effort, you are going to get the results you want.

  Source : http://bit.ly/1plfgYY