Social Media & the bigger picture
As much as we love social media at Social Media Solutions, it’s important to understand that social media by itself is not a be-all, end-all solution. It’s a valuable tool to work into a bigger picture marketing plan. That’s why integrating social media into other marketing and public relations activities is so important.
When you come up with a marketing/advertising campaign, you have a “big idea.” Your social media efforts should still play into that “big idea” in order to present a united, cohesive message that allows for the greatest amount of top-of-mind awareness, brand engagement, and ROI.
Because social media is an interactive platform, some companies may struggle with turning their “big idea” from a mass communication tactics into personal relationships with customers. Here are a few things to keep in mind when integrating social media with other parts of your campaign.
Brand awareness
Many smaller companies first begin using social media in order to get their name out there. Simply creating an account won’t do this, but if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to seek out potential customers and to regularly post content, social media can help increase brand awareness.
Brand personality
Again, only creating an account won’t help you showcase your brands personality. If you are creative and conversational with your content, customers begin relating to you in a more personal way. It is the beginning of evolving from a brand and customer to an interactive, growing relationship.
Brand engagement
The above things involve what you put out. Brand engagement is about what you’re pulling back in. The goal of social media is to get your customers involved with your brand to create loyalty, goodwill, improved product offerings as a result of feedback, and ultimately, to create positive ROI.
Why social media works best within a larger campaign:
Ideas breed passion
People get fired up about ideas, not necessarily products. By doing the above three things, you can get people talking about what your brand represents, issues in your brand’s industry, and become a source of information and innovation with your customers. If your social media channels revolve solely around a product, its uses, and benefits, you may attract customers that are already loyal to you. To reach new markets, potential customers need a reason to come to you in the first place. Generating ideas and conversations about things other than your specific product or service can become that entry point for new customers. Many times those ideas can stem out of the “big idea” from a larger campaign. As your campaign evolves and grows, so will your social media.
Casual social media users
People involve themselves with social media at different levels. Casual social media users may simply logon to see what friends and family are doing. It may not occur to them to search out your brand, and you don’t have enough time to search through 400 million Facebook users to find them. Other forms of marketing and advertising can help them realize you’re on social media sites and move them from occasionally being on the receiving end of your message to becoming actively involved in your conversation.
Face-to-face interaction
Social media allows us to communicate and interact in an entirely different way, but it still doesn’t squash our desire to physically be around people. Combining social media with sponsored events can solidify loyalty, increase PR activity, create goodwill, and create a higher ROI. Social media can help build excitement about an event and keep that enthusiasm going after the event is over.
A last word: Nothing sells itself. Just creating a social media profile won’t do anything for your company. Spend time and effort reaching out to people and encouraging them to respond back to you. Use social media to take your marketing to the next level.
Shameless plug: This is a company blog, so you had to know it was coming. In an ideal world, we’d all be social media savvy, but in reality, it can be hard to discover the best ways to tie everything together. If you need help figuring it all out, we’re here for you.
SMS Featured on Fox 35 News in Orlando!
Here is Social Media Solutions’ Lauren Candito on Fox Orlando 35 News talking about how Facebook can enhance your business!!
My first 15 minutes with the new Facebook
I was pretty excited to finally see the newest Facebook layout appear on my homepage this afternoon. Here’s a step by step of how it went for me.
Minute 1: “Hooray, it’s here!”
Emphasized search, specific dashboards, categorized sections – so far so good. But wait, what’s this? I can’t set my news feed to “Status Updates” anymore. That’s unfortunate. 
Minute 2: “I sure hope there’s a better way to do this.”
As the status update viewing option is gone, I clicked the “Most Recent” news feed, and realized that I’ll now have to manually hide all the application updates. It’s not such a problem during the day, but somewhere around 8 p.m. they get so popular, I can’t see anyone’s personal updates.
Minute 5: “No one’s posted anything in that last 5 minutes? That’s really strange.”
About this time, I notice my typically constantly-updating news feed is stagnant. I’m a little disappointed that I now have to refresh the page instead of just leaving the window open. It’s not too big of a deal, but why the change?
Minute 6: “Wait… I’m being ambushed!”
I refresh the screen to see I have 2 event invitations that have come through in the last 5 minutes. Ahh, that’s more like it. But then I realize I’m still looking at them on the right side of the screen. I could have sworn they were on the left side now. So I look, and there they are… again. I think, “Maybe the one on the left is for events I’m actually attending,” but then I look back to my right, and there are events for a third time! Then, I notice chat is on both the bottom and on the left.
I am now thinking the new Facebook is quite redundant.
Minute 10: “Now this I’m going to like.”
A few more refreshes, and I have messages. I click the little icon and instead of taking me to a new screen, the messages pop down. I’m a big fan of this new feature.
Minute 15: “It really seems like more people play Farmville than that.”
After a couple more minutes of making sure the new search bar didn’t change the search and that the Social Media Solutions LLC Page was still fully functional (both work just the same), I decided to check out the new games dashboard I’ve heard so much about. Your games are now organized by the ones you play, the ones your friends have recently played, and the ones your specific friends are playing.
Overall: The look is a little different. Things have moved sideways or up or have doubled themselves. Some minor features are gone while others have debuted. But overall, it’s really not that different. Remember when news feed first became available? Now that was a big deal.
8 Ways to Boost Your SEM Results!
In the last session of the SES NY event, attendees were rewarded with 8 awesome tips to boost Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Results. This session used real-life examples to teach attendees the secrets top online marketers are using to beat the competition and squeeze the greatest results possible from their SEM efforts. Topics included: PPC, SEO, landing page optimization and social media.
Speakers are Michael Mothner, Founder & CEO and Michael Stone, Vice President, Sales & Strategy – both from Wpromote. Some tips you may know and some you may not, but there is definitely something for everyone.
1. Always. Test. Everything
Assume that everything is broken. Ask your self by how much is it broken and how do we reduce the delta between where we are and where we want to be? Always be improving.
Make sure your ads are fresh. Tailor copy to seasonal or world events to give the sense of freshness and relevancy.
Using Google to test messages, headlines and landing page copy is more cost effective and real-time than a focus group. Understand what messages resonate prior to creating entire campaigns.
What’s hot to test right now:
a. discounts and deals
b. sense of urgency
2. Tell the Right Story to the Right Person
Know your product, know your audience and be consistent to avoid frustrating your audience. Connect the dots between the search query, your ad and the headline/copy on the landing page. Understand the specific keywords your target is using and deliver specific content to them.
3. Don’t be Fooled by Google Broad Match
Google broad match allows you to match 1000’s of queries to a single keyword. While it’s easy and quick, it’s not always the best option. It can match to bad keywords, just as easy as it can match to good keywords.
The problem with Google Broad Match is that the keyword phrase you see in your dashboard, isn’t necessarily the word that your ad was shown for.
How do you get the good without the bad?
Track, Learn and Adjust.
a. use search query reports. Be careful though, the bad keywords are hidden in a line item ‘all other keywords’
b. Google Analytics Raw Query Hack – Use the good keywords for AdGroups, to bid higher and customize ad text. Use the bad keywords to update negative keywords
c. server log analysis (doable, but hard)
4. Blogging & SEO
If you launch a blog, blog 3-5x per week and on average 300 words per post. Make sure you interact with the blogosphere including linking, commenting and guest blogging.
Use keyword hyperlinks and refrain from hyperlinking ‘read more’ and ‘click here’.
5. Usability Testing. Do it!
Perform user testing. It doesn’t have to be expensive or intimidating and shouldn’t only align to the HIPPOs (highest paid person’s opinion).
Put on your client hat because what’s easy to you, may be hard for others.
Use tools like crazyegg to track user actions on pages.
Make sure your site is 100% compatible with Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer (and its different versions).
6. Forms, Funnels and Fun!
Limit navigation to make sure users don’t get lost and to minimize distractions. Make sure that you are pointing the user toward the offer so they can take an action.
Get smart with forms. Capture the information even if the form or cart is abandoned and then follow up with abandoned leads.
7. Analytics is Your Friend
HITS – how idiots track stuff. (j/k 
) Think about analytics as a way to study online behavior to answer questions.
What can analytics answer?
a. how do people get to my site
b. which version of my email campaign worked better
c. where are people dropping off in the buying process
Get granular with analytics.
a. segment the total number of visitors to identify who came from where and who did what
b. document changes and compare the before-and-after to see if the change had an impact
c. create funnels and see visually where failure occurs
Goals give analytics more value. With goals you move beyond bounce rate, exit rate and time on site and dig into questions like:
a. does my blog lead to sales
b. what is the traffic source with the highest ROI
8. Social Media
Do you tweet? Look at examples like Zappos (twitter.zappos.com).
Share your company culture and build relationships with new and existing customers.
Promote video content on YouTube to drive additional targeted users through engaging media.
Feel free to share other tips below on how to improve SEM success.
Intergrating Facebook Into Your Real Estate Marketing
Below is a great post from James Shiner, from GeekEstate, on integrating Facebook into your Real Estate Strategy.
Facebook is a phenomenon used by hundreds of millions of users worldwide. According to Facebook.com / comScore — Facebook has over 110 million active users, is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world, and is the most-trafficked social media site in the world. These are staggering numbers for a website that was started by a student at Harvard University and saw most of its early growth from college students.
The latter is what turns most people off from using Facebook to market themselves and their listings online: college students. Many believe that their customers are not on Facebook, or that Facebook is just a place for college kids to share party photos; it is the largest photo-sharing site on the web after all.
However, the following statistics will help put that belief to rest: more than half of Facebook users are outside of college and the fastest growing demographic is those 25 years old and older. This makes Facebook the ideal place to build and maintain your network of customers and associates.
I was having a discussion with a friend and he told me his girlfriend’s grandmother uses Facebook to share photos of the grandchildren with family members. This says something about Facebook users: they’re not just college kids anymore.
Facebook is a great platform to connect with current friends, old friends, and new friends. Adding someone as a friend means they get updates when you post something. Whether it be a new listing, blog post, website, or anything else you want to let your group of friends know about. Below is an example of how I promoted my last blog post on social media:
When I posted that, my hundreds of friends saw it (and hopefully clicked on it). Now, that post wasn’t for everyone, since not all of my friends are in the real estate industry. However, they may know someone who would be interested in it and pass it along. The same goes for a new listing. Post your new listings and hundreds of people will see, comment on it, and pass it along to others. It takes only minutes and will add hundreds if not thousands of otherwise nonexistent views.
Groups and fan pages are another powerful tool on Facebook. I belong to a number of groups and fan pages related to real estate. Whether it be my local Massachusetts Association of REALTORS fan page or the Inman News page, joining groups connects you with hundreds other people in your industry and keeps you up to date with what’s going on. Group administrators can send out updates to group members keeping them informed and engaged. You or your office can form a group or fan page in minutes and invite everyone you know to join. Also, look for local groups to stay up to date with what’s going on in the community.
Events are another great way to let people know what’s going on. If you have an upcoming open house you can create an event for it and invite others to attend. This spreads awareness of the open house because when people RSVP and say they’re attending all of their friends also see that they plan to attend.
If you’re using your Facebook profile for both personal and business be sure to check out the privacy settings to make sure only the people you want to see your content are seeing it. You can create different groups such as Friends, Business, Family, etc. This way if you don’t want your business associates seeing your personal family photographs you can specify in the privacy settings.
If you’ve been hesitant to join Facebook, I hope this post has put your worries at ease. If you’re already on Facebook, I hope this post has taught you a few tips and tricks on how to use this powerful platform to promote yourself and your listings online.
The power to define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities.
Are you ready? Social Media Solutions works with brands to deliver an unparalleled combination of strategy, creativity and technology to produce solutions with measurable results for our clients. 
Who We Are
Social Media Solutions is a social media marketing agency, located in sunny Orlando, FL.