Tips for Gaining a Large and Loyal Twitter Following

Twitter can be extremely effective tool for promoting your brand and generating leads. How can you maximize your content exposure and increase your following? There isn’t one simple answer, but there are several changes you can implement to help you reach your goals.

First and foremost, make sure you’re setting realistic expectations. Aiming for 50,000 new followers in 3 months may be a bit of a stretch, so be reasonable and start small. Think about who you want to reach and how you plan on doing so. Segmenting your market is the best way to reach people who will follow you long-term, not just for a few days. 

Secondly, you need to engage with followers, hashtags, and trending topics. You can’t expect to increase your following without tweeting, or interacting with anyone. Posting regularly and responding to retweets and mentions are the easiest ways to stay active on Twitter, and the more active you are, the better!

Managing your followers and the accounts you follow is also a must. Using follower trackers such as Crowdfire or Followerwonk enable you to easily view new followers and followers you’ve lost. This technique helps you build a follower / following base that is long-term; you’re able to “weed out” spam accounts while focusing on users within your target market.

Scheduling tweets is a great way to remain consistent. Using auto-scheduling tools such as Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts for specific dates and times, which takes the pressure off of remembering to post regularly. Utilizing these tools keeps your account active even if you’re unable to live tweet.

If you choose to pay for Twitter’s “Promote” option, you can increase your account exposure to reach more potential followers. Tell users exactly why they should follow you, and what you have to offer.

Lastly, be sure you’re using tracking and analytics tools to measure your successes and failures. You don’t want your hard work to go to waste, so measure what worked, what didn’t, and adjust your strategies accordingly to optimize performance.

For social media and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

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5 Social Media Mistakes You're Making Right Now

With consumers monitoring your every move, it’s imperative to micromanage all of your social media platforms. One social media mishap has the potential to severely damage your brand, which means perfecting your social media marketing strategy is a must. Here are 5 social media mistakes you’re unknowingly making right now, and what you can do to avoid them.

Sharing the wrong content.

You want to make sure that everything you post or share is relevant to your brand, and more importantly, to your audience. Be sure to read articles thoroughly before passing them along – you don’t want to share anything of poor quality, or anything that could be offensive or controversial. Additionally, make sure everything you post is appropriate for each individual channel; if people follow you on multiple networks, they don’t want to see the same thing over and over again.

Failing to regularly update your accounts.

Creating social media platforms is the first step; however, if you’re neglecting to update them, they serve no purpose. Be sure to remain consistent with your updates, and don’t over post. Stay up-to-date with news and trending topics to ensure you’re staying relevant within your industry.

Ignoring your audience.

Generic, automated updates come off as boring and uninteresting. Be charming, relatable, and more importantly, yourself. The way you are perceived on social media is HUGE. Interact with your audience regularly, and start conversations with them. Be sure to respond to your audience members in a timely manner – especially if it involves a complaint, or something that could negatively impact your brand.

Overselling.

Your brand is more than just YOU. Over promoting yourself gets old, and makes you seem egocentric. Share content produced by other people in addition to your own. When posting original content, avoid making it all about selling yourself. If you’re going to talk about your brand, don’t just say what you can do – prove it with results and testimonials.

Not implementing goals or measuring success.

Before implementing a social media marketing strategy, be sure to establish specific goals that you want to accomplish. These goals should be measurable – you want to make sure you can analyze how successful your efforts were in the end. This way, you can re-strategize and plan for ways to optimize in the future.

For social media marketing and other integrated marketing services, please contact Sagefrog Marketing Group at 215.230.9024 or visit www.sagefrog.com.

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Social Media Errors to Avoid

With so many outlets to push content, and so many topics, social media isn’t always a formulated tactic. Successfully executing social media within your marketing plan requires fresh content, new ideas and the willingness to take risk. With so little rules about what you can and can’t discuss on social media, there’s a lot that can go wrong.

In fact, there are plenty of common errors that brands often make, including:

-Taking on too much. Instead attempting to be involved in every trend, target differently on various networks. For example, post pictures and infographics on Flickr, Instagram and Facebook; share thought-provoking articles on LinkedIn and Twitter.

-Using the same social media profile for both professional and personal. It’s OK to have personality in your professional posts (tone of voice, etc.), but keep overly personal opinions, pictures, quotes off of professional profiles. Sharing your opinion on an emotional topic with your network of work professionals or coming from your brand, can diminish your credibility as a thought leader.

 -Not planning how to convert engagement into business. People may like or share your posts from time to time, but are they engaged enough to use your services? Drive social media audience to specific landing pages so they will be more likely to convert to a customer or client.

-Posting only company updates. If your audience thinks you are always selling through social media, they will stop enjoying your posts. Share some company updates, but also be sure to comment on trending topics and industry-related articles.

-Thinking one size fits all. Just because most companies have a Facebook and Twitter, doesn’t mean that those have to be your most popular social media networks. Think about your goals – if you’re primarily business to business, LinkedIn may be a better place to focus more of your social media energy on.

For social media marketing, and all other marketing services, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.

Resource: http://prdaily.com/Main/Articles/14060.aspx  

We've Won an Award

Sagefrog is proud to announce that we’ve added another award to our collection! This time it’s for the website development and design of Hussian School of Art's website (view award details and criteria here). This WordPress website for our Philadelphia-based client features rotating image and message panels on the homepage, social media links, custom photography, an impressive galley of student artwork, prominent feature areas on the homepage, a blog, news and events section, and easy navigation. Make sure to check out the Hussian website by visiting www.hussianart.edu.

 

Want to make your website an award-winner? Contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit www.sagefrog.com or call 215-230-9024.

Social Media Ethics

If you’re a journalist or business writer, you know all about ethics – what you can and can’t write, where your opinions are not welcome and how to conduct your personal decisions. But with the age of social media, guarding your personal beliefs and interests may be harder. Just because you’re expected to write in an unbiased way professionally, are you also to do so on your personal social media accounts? What about “liking” a client’s
Facebook page or retweeting something a source said? According to this article in ReynoldsCenter Business Journal, there are few steps in social media ethics, including knowing your newsroom, thinking before you tweet, and not being a jerk. Read the article for the 10 best practices for social media.

For social media and all other marketing services, contact Sagefrog Marketing Group. Visit http://www.sagefrog.com/or call 215-230-9024.

Social Media Tips for Job Candidates

After the recent news of prospective employers asking for job candidate’s Facebook passwords, it makes sense that those searching for a job may be a little concerned about what their social media profiles say about them.

But according to an article called “Social Media Secrets from Hiring Managers,” by David Mielach, a BusinessNewsDaily staff writer, a new survey reveals that 65 percent of hiring managers who checked social networks did so to see how job candidates presented themselves while 51 percent wanted to determine whether the candidate was a good fit for the organization.

Only about 12 percent of hiring managers were looking at social media sites to find reasons NOT to hire a candidate.

Mielach writes that the most common strike against candidates was posting inappropriate or provocative pictures online. Information about drinking or drug use, poor communication skills, bad-mouthing a prior employee, making a discriminatory remark and lying about qualifications on social media were other reasons for not hiring a candidate.

Some things that helped job candidates on social media sites were showing off their personality, conveying a professional image, providing background info, showing a wide-range of interests, displaying communication skills, being creative and having people post references about you.

READ MORE: http://bit.ly/ISlmTE

Is Social Media Marketing a "Bust" for Your Company?

The term “social media marketing” isn’t a new term. But many small and medium-sized businesses aren’t entirely sure how to effectively take advantage of social media. Success story after success story prove that some companies are doing it right. However, according to an article by Chris Horton in “Businehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifss 2 Community,” the sad truth is that social media is proving to be a “bust.”

Horton says these are the main reasons social media marketing is a bust for most companies:

Weak Brand Advocacy – Businesses should use social media to build brand advocates. SMM gives companies reach, empowering brands to leverage their content and messaging more effectively than other marketing channels. MORE.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Failure to Drive Web Traffic – SM is the new promotion. And companies that do not integrate their website and SM are blowing a huge opportunity to drive web traffic. MORE.

Poor Lead Generation – The best source of a website lead is a recently-satisfied convert from one of your SM channels. But data from 2011 suggest that 63% of B2B businesses were not generating leads from SM. These companies were generating traffic, but they were not converting that traffic into leads. MORE.

Has social media marketing worked for you business? Share your success story with us!