Hashtags and Social Media Marketing Power

As an online business or even a small to medium-sized business, social media marketing is a serious way to market your business. Now, while most business owners know this [or at least have an idea], it is still likely that they don't know just how much social media marketing can grow their business, helping them surpass their competitors. This is equally true of online businesses and small to medium sized businesses.

For those of you who are familiar with social media, I'm sure you know about hastags - you know, the # symbol that everyone puts in front of a word or phrase they want/need to stand out. While this hashtag frenzy can be a bit over the top with everyone over using hashtags, they are imperative for social media marketing.

The article below is about the use of hastags and how they can "pack serious media marketing power":

Q: I’m operating my fledgling company without a budget for advertising and marketing. Can I use social media hashtags to drive sales and build my business? If so, can you offer tips so I get the best results for my efforts? 

A: For the uninitiated, hashtags—the # sign before phrases in social media—have changed how small businesses connect with customers. First used by Twitter in 2007, hashtags have been adopted by Pinterest, Instagram and other platforms. The symbol packs serious power. 

Search #SparkandHustle (that’s my company) on these sites, and you’ll see what people are saying about my conferences for entrepreneurs. I’ve connected via hashtags with thousands of people to promote my business. Joining the ongoing conversation is an effective way to target audiences, serve them better and compete with rivals. In doing so, you should focus on two areas: 

1. Incorporating hashtags in your social media posts to attract new fans and followers.2. Searching hashtags to find people interested in what you have to offer. 

Here are some ways to achieve objective No. 1. First, whenever you share content, include a relevant hashtag so your post can be found when your target audience searches for related help. 

You should also piggyback on hashtags that are popular and tweet them, suggests Lena West of Influence Expansion Academy, an online business growth school. “If you work with small businesses, the #SMB hashtag is often used in tweets related to small-business concerns. If you use it, those tweets will come up on searches for that hashtag, leading to more visibility for your company.” 

And you should create your own custom hashtag to enable anyone interested in your area of expertise to join the conversation, says Dana Lynch, whose Amplify-Mobile develops apps for small businesses. “Use it across platforms—a hashtag is useful only if followers know about it—so promote it everywhere users can find your brand,” she says.

If you're a small to medium sized business that has yet to implement a successful social media marketing campaign, it's due time. Social media marketing is a way for you to build relationships with your current or prospective clients and grow your business -- faster than many of your competitors. Today there are many companies that you can hire -- and for a reasonable price -- to manage your social media marketing campaigns, like Classic Image. 

These companies will handle the day-to-day marketing needs of your campaigns while you can focus on what matters most... growing your business.

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Cost-Effective Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Small to Medium Sized Business

Ten Ways to Develop Cost-Effective Social Media Strategies

Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Many small to medium sized business owners find themselves too busy to develop solid social media marketing strategies that will do what they are supposed to...grow their business. Instead, business owners are working in their business, 50 to 60 hours or more per week, not having any time to focus on what matters most. Social media marketing is a way that business owners can expand their reach, but there are certain strategies that business owners should follow to make their campaign as successful as it should be. 

Social media marketing allows you to grow relationships with your potential customers and current consumer-base. If you don't have the time  to focus on social media efforts alone, you might want to consider utilizing a company that is known for growing businesses and their social media efforts. 

The article below discusses ten ways that you can develop your social media strategy to ensure that it provides you with the results you need:

• Does your business lend itself to showing off its work? Strutting your stuff brings to mind visual portrayals, like photographs and video, although it can include other presentation formats. Social media is very useful for businesses where prospects perceive there are high risks. Many bridal photographers use blogs to highlight their work while many bakers use Flickr to show off their masterpieces. Show real patrons using your services with before and after photographs. Don’t forget to get patron’s permission to use their likeness.

• Can you give prospects information they find useful? Think in terms of small bite-size chunks of content. Twitter is great for providing a tip of the day whether you’re an accountant or a massage therapist. Clothing stores could provide an outfit of the day. Think outside of the box when it comes to information. How about food recipes or scrap-booking.

• How do you solve people’s problems? At the core of most marketing is fulfilling prospects’ needs. Therefore, create content that helps people with their problems. For example, if you’re a financial advisor, why not give out tips on budgeting so that prospects have money to invest. Here’s some advice to create a professional blog.

• Does your product lend itself to some form of education? This is a great way to win prospects over. Teach them! Not the old-fashioned school marm but the fun stuff. Think: how to add memory to your computer or how to apply makeup. You can use videos, webinars or ebooks.

• Can your business disseminate entertaining content? This information doesn’t need to be your business’s main focus. Orabrush built its brand with the use of entertaining videos. Is there something funny or engaging about your product?

• Are there targeted or niche communities where your prospects and customers naturally congregate? While this doesn’t apply to all businesses, where it exists, it’s a useful way to participate in the community. You can participate in the social media community and advertise to targeted prospects. For example, yarn shops participate and socialize on Ravelry, a knitting community.

• Does your business tap into people’s passions and/or hobbies?When it comes hobbies and special interests, participants often make different spending tradeoffs. The strength of these interests is great since your customers want to share their share their hobbies and special interests using photographs, videos and blogs. This can apply to fishing as well as it can to quilting.

You can read the rest of the article here.

For B2B businesses or small to medium sized businesses who would like some tips on successful marketing and social media marketing tactics, please contact us at Classic Image today to see how we can help your business with all of your marketing campaigns from social media marketing to direct marketing. We strongly believe that combining inbound and outbound marketing tactics is a great way to help any business flourish.

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B2B Marketing & Social Media

In today’s world, technology and social media is ever-changing. In fact, 2013 is marked as a year that will bring B2B marketing and B2B social media marketing to the top. One main reason for this is because daily social media usage includes B2B customers and prospective customers. Many B2B companies and small to medium sized businesses complain that their customers and prospects do not use social media, but according to a recent report 40% of the world uses a social media website every day.

According to the infographic below, created by Saxum, people are using social media each and every day. So as a B2B business, once you begin to identify where your customers and prospects are in regards to social networks, the next step will be to determine what kind of useful content you need to create to connect with them.

 The statistics below show just how important it is for B2B companies and for small to medium sized businesses to use B2B social media marketing:

•  1 out of every 7 minutes spent online is spent on Facebook. 
• 23% of Facebook users check their newsfeed more than 5 times per day. 
• 2.1 billion search queries are conducted on Twitter every day. That’s almost half as many as performed on Google. 
• 1,370 company pages are added to LinkedIn every day. 
• Facebook and Twitter traffic peaks in the afternoon. 
• LinkedIn traffic peaks in the morning. 
• 200 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day. 
• 10 million presentations have been uploaded to Slideshare. 

There are a wide variety of tactics that businesses can use that will really boost their social media presence. Once this happens you will find that your business will begin to cultivate and flourish. While no one can expect this to happen overnight, you will notice a difference within one to two months of continuous effort.

The infographic below reveals “Social Media in a Day” for B2B social media marketing and small to medium sized businesses.

Classic Image is a creative marketing firm based in Brooklyn, New York, dedicated to helping businesses just like yours move to the top. They have worked with hundreds of small to medium sized businesses in the Brooklyn area--and nationwide--with social media campaigns, content management and all marketing essentials. 

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