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Social media blog topics category discussing tips, news, and all things related to social media marketing or social networking. Grow your business with helpful topics on social media.

The Power Of Influencer Marketing

Craig De Borba

When you think of advertising, what comes to your mind? A commercial? Magazines?

Times have changed and so has effective advertising. Magazines and newspapers aren’t as popular as they once were.

With new times, new trends come, and one its Influencer Marketing.

Influencer marketing isn’t a new concept, it’s been around for years but recently it’s become a hot topic for marketers, companies are devoting more time to influencer marketing than before.

Normally consumers don’t like to be advertised, no one likes being sold but now with Influencer Marketing, we have a traditional advertising alternative.

Influencer Marketing is something that every business needs to be doing even the giants like McDonald’s, Samsung and Nike do Influencer Marketing.

But what is really Influencer Marketing? How does it work? What are the benefits of Influencer Marketing?

Well, you are about to find out!

1. What is Influencer Marketing?

Well, Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using key leaders which are called influencers to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers, you have access to influencers with 10k or more followers, we work with these influencers and they will get out the word for you.

2. How does it work?

Very simple, your business will have access to people of influence to help with online marketing. Influencer Marketing aims to identify the main people who act as influencers in your niche so we can approach them to work with us to promote your brand.

3. What are the benefits of Influencer Marketing?

Authenticity

Authenticity has become difficult to find in this advanced world full of technology where everything is possible it’s why people don’t easily believe in commercials anymore. And this is why Influencer marketing has become so effective. Successful social influencers spend considerable time in winning the trust of their followers and this is definitely not achieved overnight. Influencers create an engaging story that attracts their followers.

When followers are genuinely engaged, they are part of a long-lasting relationship with their influencers. When such a thing happens, it instills loyalty and trust in their minds. They truly believe in the person they are following, their opinions and recommendations.

Cost-Effective

Doesn’t exist any specific price model when doing Influencer Marketing, some influencers will collaborate for free because it helps them build their brand although others will charge a flat-rate or a performance-based pricing. Exist different pricing options, which is good because allows you to choose the one that you feel that you are more comfortable with and also the one that you think will work best for you and your brand as well.

Brand Image

One of the benefits of social media is that it helps to drive massive traffic to your website, a connection with your customers and potential customers are created here and makes it stronger and creates brand awareness which gives your business more credibility

Now with Influencer Marketing that relationships between your business and your customers can become even stronger because by doing influencer marketing it boosts your brand which will increase your social media following, more people will know about your services or/and products and it will drive traffic to your website.

Successful influencers are real leaders, so when they promote your service or/and product people listen to them and they engage with their content.

Connects With Audiences Where They Spend The Most Time

People spend a lot of time on social media nowadays, in fact, that amount of time continues to increase, it’s why when influencers mention or feature a brand on social media platforms, they allow the company to connect with audiences on the sites where they spend the most time, which is a huge opportunity for business this way you can reach more people and your brand will be known.

Does Not Appear Pushy

One of many reasons why influencer marketing is more effective in influencing purchases is because it isn’t pushy, the followers of an influencer have willingly chosen to receive content from them so when you send your message to them via an influencer, it does not come across as pushy.

Suitable for Businesses Regardless of Size or Industry

One of the qualities of influencer marketing is that it fits any business regardless of its size or industry. As long as there is someone influential in your industry.

Although, it does take some planning to identify the influencers who are most suited to your needs. The most of the success of your influencer marketing campaign depends on your choice of influencers it’s why it’s important to take the time to make sure you are working with the right ones, this step will become easier if you decide to hire a marketing agency to create the campaigns and connect with the influencers.

Effectively reaches your target audience and drives purchasing decisions

Successful influencers place your content in front of social media users who are already interested in your niche. There’s no additional budget necessary for testing and finding your audience – the influencer has already established this audience on social media for themselves which makes things more easy for your side.

In addition, influencers who mention your brand actually drive sales. Consumers are looking to influencers more and more for advice on what products and services to buy. And when consumers see the influencers that they follow using a product or service they are more likely to buy it than if only appeared on TV.

Influencers are trendsetters

Influencers are powerful sources of information as it pertains to new products within their industry. Influencers followers deeply respect and often times even idolize their opinions. This is why Influencer market is so powerful and effective.

Sometimes influencers are also given exclusive access to new products before they are even on the market and available to the general public. This provides ample opportunity for a brand to partner with an influencer and builds a campaign around the influencers review of a hot, new product that they have exclusive access to, and in turn, potentially place your brand in the spotlight of a fresh and emerging trend around your product.

If you are not taking advantage of Influencer Marketing, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your brand awareness, grow your following and increase your engagement.

By doing Influencer Marketing you are opening one more door for your business to flourish and grow.

Optimizing Your Social Media Posting Schedule

Craig De Borba

The Ideal Social Media Posting Schedule

There’s a fine line between keeping followers informed and annoying them. Unfortunately, that line is most often crossed unaware. For instance, a company might have a social event and hourly live posts during the one day that a follower has a day full of stressful business meetings.

The constant feed updates or reminders become just one stress too many and CLICK – suddenly your social event has caused a loss in followers and future revenue.

That’s why it’s crucial to anticipate the needs and wishes of your social media community, so your advertising can help your business can grow. As you anticipate those needs, each social media platform should be handled independently. And even within one platform, you might consider alternative social media posting schedules. Take a closer look below.

Facebook Social Media Posting Schedule

Frequency: 5-10 times per week

Best Time: The frequency of 5-10 times per week means that a business should post about once each day. However, the best days for posting (if you plan to post less) are Thursday and Friday. Those days receive the best interaction. Likewise, 1-3pm posts typically encourage more likes and shares.

Twitter Social Media Posting Schedule

Frequency: 3-5 Tweets per day

Best Time: Three to five tweets is a sweet spot for most companies. However, a consistent once per day is better than an inconsistent three times every three days. And if you’re opting for one post each day, aim between 1-3pm as with Facebook.

Instagram Social Media Posting Schedule

Frequency: No more than once per day

Best Time: Instagram is equally popular and responsive every day of the week. However, the peak times are later in the day from 3-5pm.

Pinterest Social Media Posting Schedule

Frequency: Around 5 pins per day

Best Time: The number of pins isn’t as relevant as the timing. You may pin up to 30 items, just don’t “pin dump” them all at once. Spread them out over the evening hours between 6-9pm for optimal results.

Customizing a Social Media Posting Schedule to Your Company

These platform schedules are suggestions to form your social media presence and begin building your community. However, they are not perfect. Experimentation around these frequencies, days, and times can help you improve your interaction and expand your outreach. If you need help determining a social media posting schedule or need a California SEO expert and have questions about other online marketing services, contact OnPoint at (916) 293-0512 or pursue a free consultation.

Top Social Media Tools that will Simplify Your Online Marketing

Craig De Borba

Could your social media marketing use a boost? Are you looking for ways to improve your social media content marketing and free up valuable time? There are many tools online that are designed to help, but it’s not always easy filtering through which ones actually work. Here are a few of our favorites.

● Sprout Social. When it comes to content marketing services on social media, timing is everything. Having a consistent flow of fresh content gives your audience a reason to stay engaged and regularly return to your social channels. But while you’re hard at work, posting to your social media outlets can be the last thing on your mind. Sprout Social is a powerful suite that allows you to hook up your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ pages and set scheduled post content hours, days, or even months in advance. At any given time, Sprout Social also gives you the ability to view and export reports of how your content performs.

● Hootsuite. Similar to Sprout Social, Hootsuite is another powerful tool that allows you to automate when posts get pushed live on your social media channels. Just choose your plan, link your accounts, and you’re ready to go. When you schedule your content, you can even request an email to confirm that your post has gone live. It takes the worry out of having a regular flow of content on your pages.

● Iconosquare. To improve your future content you’ve got to analyze your past content. The best way to do that is through reporting. Iconosquare gives users an in-depth look at the analytics of their Instagram account. The service also allows for users to track the competition, keep an eye on hashtags, and run photo and video contests.

● Repost App. Do you have followers posting photos of your product or service? Sometimes user-generated content can be the most valuable when trying to spread awareness about your brand. The Repost App allows you to report content from users on Instagram onto your feed. For best practice, we recommend that you ask permission before reposting photos from other users, and always credit the original author in some way.

● MailChimp. Email marketing can help boost your social media presence dramatically. MailChimp gives businesses the ability to compile a mailing list, create a professional quality email campaign, and schedule it to send at any time. You can also utilize A/B testing features that allow you to improve your campaign’s effectiveness.

● Bitly. We’ve all seen the overwhelmingly long web URL that consists of countless numbers and letters. When posting to social media, longer links can look clunky and unappealing. Bitly can give you the ability to easily shorten links to virtually anything you’d like. Bitly also keeps track of a few basic analytics such as the number of clicks so you can see how many people are interested in the link.

In today’s age, social media plays a key role in most businesses, and social media requires quite a bit of time and attention. These tools are a great first step toward a better social media plan and can help free up some time in the process. When your business is ready to hand over your social media to the experts, OnPoint has you covered.

How to Run a Successful Contest on Social Media

Craig De Borba

You’ve probably heard that social media contests can be a great way to increase exposure for your brand. In many cases, this is true. A good social media contest allows you to connect with your existing audience in a meaningful way. It provides value to them, in return for their loyalty on social media.

Additionally, social media contests can be a good way to increase exposure within new audiences. When someone interacts with your contest on social media, it often appears in their friend’s Newsfeed, as contest engagement rates tend to be quite high. This can help increase your following if your contest is compelling. So how do you make your contest attention-grabbing?

Keep it Simple

The fastest way to sabotage a contest is to make it overly difficult, keep it basic. It’s typically best to ask the user to complete 1-2 simple actions to enter. That doesn’t mean that you can’t ask the contestant to ‘tag’ a friend or ‘share’ the post, just make sure you keep it uncomplicated.

Make the Prize Enticing

Entering a contest takes time and requires the follower to stop scrolling and complete an action. In order to get people to engage, you need to make sure the prize is worthwhile and relevant. Generally speaking, the larger the prize, the more you can safely ask of the audience. For example, if you’re giving away a free TV, you can ask the audience to give more information or take extra steps to promote the contest.

Set Terms

Make sure you clearly define the prize, entry mechanism, and timeline for your contests. Your audience needs to know what to do, what they will receive, and when they will obtain the prize. You also need to be clear about how you will select the winner. Are you selecting based on certain criteria or randomly? Just make sure the audience will be able to understand your contest, even if they’ve never engaged with your page or company before.

Spread the Word

The best contest is worthless if no one enters. Obviously using your social media channels are the natural way to spread the word, but don’t forget about your website and email lists. Do you have a blog? Write a post about the contest with links to where users can enter. You can also set the contest up for viral success by making people who enter ‘share’ the contests with their networks, too. For example, you could ask that they ‘like,’ ‘share,’ or ‘tag’ a friend in the post as a condition of entry. That can really help grow your reach!

Acknowledge the Winner

When your contest is over, and you have chosen a winner, publicly announce it. Obviously don’t share any private information you’ve gathered about the winner, but showing your audience that you actually awarded a prize and plan to hold another contest soon can help keep them interested in your page.

Have Fun!

The most important thing is to make your contest fun. Social media is meant to be enjoyable, and if you can entertain your followers, you’ll gain their confidence, trust, and attention.

If you need help developing ideas for a contest or promotion, the seasoned experts at OnPoint Internet Marketing can help.

Building Buzz For Your Sacramento Business

Craig De Borba

You had a great idea and started a business. You went through all of the work that comes with setting up and preparing a business for launch. You know there are people who want and need your business. So why is no one calling? Possibly, to the dismay of Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, building a business does not mean customers will come. Even the best business in the world will fail if no one hears about it. So how do you build buzz?

Build an online presence using social media

The Internet is where most people turn today when researching new products, services, and solutions. Creating an online presence is an important part of building a business today. You first have to make sure that your website is professional and communicates what your company and brand offers. Then you need to get that website found in Sacramento using social media and that involves hiring a Sacramento social media agency to make sure you’re content is getting attention, being shared and linked to by authority resources online.

You’ll also want to pay attention to business listing sites, such as Manta and the Yellow Pages. These sites can serve as a source of website traffic, so make sure the information they have is accurate.

Paying attention to online reviews is another important part of building your online presence. If someone is complaining about your business on Yelp, for example, make sure you go in and respond to them. While you may not be able to make every customer happy, you do show potential customers how professional you are, even in the face of negativity. That can help build a positive perception of your brand, even if there are negative reviews about you online.

Social media platforms are another element to a strong online presence. By developing and creating profiles on a few of the major networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google+, you have the opportunity to control what people find when they search for your business. For more information about how to create an effective social media presence, read our post, “7 Things to Avoid for Social Media.”

Understand What You Do – And Tell People

In order to explain what you do to other people, you first have to understand your own business. You need to be able to answer the following questions in 1-2 sentences:

What does your business do?
Who benefits from your business?
Why do you stand out from the competition?
How are you preparing for the future of your industry?

Once you know the answers to these questions, you can describe what you do consistently and concisely. This is commonly known as “the elevator pitch” and it should take about 30 seconds to describe. When someone asks you what you do, make sure you are hitting the key points described above. You never know when you may run into a potential customer or brand evangelist.

Be Active

Staying active and present in your industry and your community can be extremely useful in helping to build buzz and spread the word about your company. Joining a board, volunteering, or being generous with your time can all pay off down the road. Not only do you have the opportunity to build connections and increase exposure for your brand, but you can also present your brand as responsible and positive. That will make people more likely to engage with you, refer others your way, and maybe even become customers.

If you need additional help and insight into how to build buzz for your business, you are not alone. OnPoint Internet Marketing has helped hundreds of businesses improve their online presence, increase leads, and grow their business. Contact us to learn more!

Social Media For Businesses

Craig De Borba

With the rise in consumers turning to social media for opinions about companies, it’s is important that businesses are paying attention to their social media presence. The first thought of the business owner is always “where am I going to find the time for yet another task?” With a little upfront planning and some careful time management, you can get a lot of mileage out of your social media time. Check out these tips on creating an effective social media presence for your business.

Choose Your Networks Wisely

It’s tempting to start a new profile on every single new social media site that pops up. While it is a good idea to reserve the names for pages you may think you want to use in the future, it’s important to carefully select the networks you will invest the most time and energy. Typically there are about 2-3 social networks that will work best for any given business. For example, if you sell physical products, you should consider sites such as Pinterest and Instagram, which are highly visual and well-suited for products. If you sell your services or time, Twitter is a great place to strike up conversations and promote your expertise. Check out our previous blog for more on choosing the most effective platform for your audience.

Plan Your Presence

It’s important that you have a plan in place when you set off to start your social media presence online. It can harm your business if you begin posting with gusto and then drop off. Failing to be consistent reflects poorly on your brand and can cause problems in the future, particularly if people are trying to reach you through social media. No one likes being ignored. By spending a few minutes each month, you can plan the things you will talk about, which sites you will post them to and how you will position yourself. Then when it comes time to post your content, you’ve already done the heavy lifting!

Schedule

Another great way to build a presence of your business is to schedule posts. Preparing what you post in advance will ensure that you are sending out social media content regularly even if you find yourself in the middle of one of those extraordinarily busy weeks. Those busy times happen to all of us, but planning ahead and scheduling posts ensures you have social media content going out even during those busiest of weeks. Sites like buffer allow you to load up relevant articles and content for posting at a later date. HootSuite is a free tool that is great for scheduling out content you’ve created yourself, such as blog posts and tweets.

Check In!

If people are visiting you on social media networks and leaving feedback, it is important that you acknowledge them. Did someone review your business? Great! Make sure to thank them for their time in doing so. If they left negative feedback, use it as a way to improve your products and services. Also, make sure that you acknowledge the negative feedback. Responding to even negative comments can be an opportunity to repair a relationship or show a future customer how professional you are even in the face of adversity.

Adjust As You Go

You may discover that your audience loves a certain type of content. Or, you may find that a new and emerging social media site gets the best results for you. It’s important to watch for these trends and to adjust accordingly. The scope of media changes frequently, so it’s important to keep up with the industry changes.

If you need help managing your social presence, OnPoint Internet Marketing has a variety of options designed to help you make the most of your online presence.

If you liked this post be sure to read business social media posting.

7 Most Effective Social Media Platforms to Maximize Your Social Presence

Craig De Borba

Social media hasn’t always been what it is today. Years ago, companies did not have pages to manage, people to interact with or a team dedicated to simply pumping out content for social platforms. Now, brand recognition and reach are highly linked to the use of social media sites. Fostering a successful social presence isn’t just about being present, it’s about utilizing the platform most effectively and fostering a community atmosphere. But first, it’s time to determine what platforms to invest this effort into. Check out a few of the most popular platforms below to learn when they are best suited for.

Facebook: As the largest social media platform in the world, Facebook offers access to over 1 billion people. As such, it’s a highly searched platform that offer companies the chance to get in front of a large audience. Unfortunately, in recent years, a “pay to play” model has been implemented, making organic reach for businesses incredibly difficult. The good news, this has made advertising options on Facebook increasingly robust and granular. Targeting at such a minute level can allow brands to find exactly the right people who are interested in what they have to offer.

Twitter: Twitter’s revolutionary 140-character limit has transformed how people disseminate information on this platform. Browsing this platform is easy for users who can simply scroll through the short form posts. In particular, this platform is effective for timely, up to the minute postings on “trending” topics. Advertising has now opened up to all U.S. accounts allowing businesses to promote both tweets and profiles to people outside the standard organic reach.

Google+: G+ is still in its infancy, especially compared to the immense user pools on Facebook and Twitter. This platform has special benefits to SEO when used by businesses in particular, but it’s small audience means it’s harder to gain a following organically. One thing to note, in the fields of tech and marketing, this platform tends to perform better as its first members were early adopters in the tech industry.

Pinterest: The visual aspects of Pinterest make it a perfect platform for e-commerce sites. Product shots, recipe/meal photos, and other creative inspiration are staples on the site. It’s also a great platform to target women users on as they make up the vast majority. On the other hand, the act of pinning is not the “typical” engagement, starting a conversation is not what this platform is made for.

Instagram: As with Pinterest, the visual aspects of Instagram are appealing, especially when selling products and services. Hashtags allow users to search easily and follow based on interests. Unfortunately, URLs are only live in the profile of a page, not on individual posts making it more involved to click out.

LinkedIn: Touted for it’s professional networking, the B2B abilities on LinkedIn are vast. Even better, advertising can be micro-targeted allowing businesses to focus on only those decision makers that can make the choice of whether or not to use their product or service.

YouTube: Facebook may have over 1 billion users total, but YouTube boasts 1 billion individual users each month and these users are watching 6 billion hours of video on the site. Those numbers alone should tell you the opportunities for social video sharing. Like Pinterest, YouTube provides the visual aids to enhance any user’s experience and allows users to share this with their favorite social platform too.

After reading these brief overviews of each platform, checkout social media contests to learn tips on running a contest promotion using social media. You’ll be ready to make an educated decision regarding what platforms will be most effective when joining Sacramento social media.