I recently had the opportunity to chat with Jeff Bullas, a Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer and author of Blogging The Smart Way: A Complete Guide To Creating & Marketing A Killer Blog With Social Media, to discuss the state of social media marketing and the techniques that are helping businesses turn a profit in 2012 and beyond. Jeff Bullas is a consultant, coach, mentor, and speaker that works with companies and executives to optimize their online presence through branding with digital marketing and social media. His extremely popular blog at www.jeffbullas.com has over 250,000 regular readers and is ranked #46 in the AdAge Power 150, a ranking of the Internet’s best marketing blogs. Like many, Jeff believes content is the core of social media marketing and it’s obvious by the articles he puts out on a regular basis. For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you will notice me sharing Jeff’s articles consistently due to the high volume of quality content he puts out. The struggle for most business owners trying to get into social media is understanding what is important, what’s a waste of time and how much time and effort needs to be [...]
Blogging The Smart Way: An Interview With Jeff Bullas
3 Critical Online Marketing Strategies For Professionals
The days of people looking for your business in the local phone book are almost over. Today everyone is turning to online searches when looking for a product or service they are in need of. There is no doubt in my mind when people ask me what are the top three most critical online marketing strategies for professionals. Professionals need tools that will have them quickly and easily showing up in online search results while also positioning them an industry leader and experts. In a world where decisions are made in a few clicks, you need online marketing strategies that will have you being found and, in my opinion, these three are your best bet for your time and resources. Three Critical Online Marketing Strategies For Professionals 1. LinkedIn Recent stats show LinkedIn is 4 times better for B2B lead generation than Facebook and Twitter but that’s not what I love most about it. When your profile is properly optimized to get you found, prospects can literally come directly to you with little work on your part. You must ensure your LinkedIn profile is well optimized for the search results to make sure you are found. Once this is done [...]
Can Photo Sharing on Instagram Help Your Business?
If you are familiar with the photo-based social media site called Pinterest then you may want to have a look at photo sharing on Instagram. Is it possible you could be loading photos on this site to boost your sales, Facebook friends and Google+ results? No matter what type of social media marketing you are doing, it is a good idea to stay on top of the latest methods for branding your company. Great ideas for promoting products or services are more accessible than ever and Instagram, like Pinterest, uses the power of the pixel to get your ideas across. Related: The Power of Reciprocity and Social Media Over 50 million people use photo sharing on Instagram (and growing by millions very rapidly), including users of the recently revealed iPhone app used for sharing photos. Though many iPhone users are still learning about this app, it is steadily growing in popularity. Since our society is moving more and more towards a visual social context, businesses can easily use Instagram to post great pictures and get ‘followers’ just like on Facebook or Twitter. If you have a visually engaging profession or business, you’ll quickly see the obvious rewards from posting pictures to [...]
6 Steps To The Perfect Social Media Strategy
I spend a lot of time blogging on the importance of different social media tools, rules and tips to improve your social media strategy. Today I wanted to write a blog that could give you a few core steps that you should include when devising your social media strategy. Whether you want to increase leads, sales, visibility or (like most business owners) all of the above, make sure everything you do online and offline adheres to these six principles, that Dr. Robert Cialdini covers in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. 1. Scarcity Create exclusive offers on your Twitter and Facebook pages that provide enticing reasons to register, enroll or purchase immediately. Offers exclusively for current or past customers can be effective but one adding the element of scarcity is really your secret weapon. Groupon has a time ticker that shows you how many hours, minutes and seconds you have left to buy and it definitely encourages people to purchase sooner rather than later! 2. The Law of Reciprocity Ya ya, I know. I talk about The Law of Reciprocity all the time. I have a good reason though…it works! Make sure you are monitoring social media conversations involving [...]
How to Create Great Social Media Content For Your Business
The Scenario You have a small business catering to your local market. Maybe you’re a retail store, realtor or flooring company. Your friend a would-be social media consultant told you to promote your business online. He advises to make use of various social media management strategies like blogging, Facebook Pages, Twitter, Linkedin marketing, etc. You trust your friend and built yourself a web site because your friend said it is the best way to start. He reminded you to create catchy, informative and interesting content. So, you trust him and when you are just about to write your first blog post, a realization hits you. How can you write great content about what you do that people will want to read about? The Solution It is not the end of the world for you. In fact, there are ways to jumpstart your online business by using several other tried-and-tested social media management strategies. Don’t worry because you have plenty to work with in terms of content. A trained social media consultant can help you with this. Provide Solutions Perhaps, you are in a business where you solve problems. If you are best at it, tell people how you do best [...]
