Social media marketing definition and services

It is the type of marketing used in the software platforms that use the technological and ideological foundations of the Web 2.0. Organizations use an integrated marketing communication strategy to deal internet marketing in these platforms.  They use public relations, publicity, personal selling, advertising, sales promotion and direct marketing using social media. You can find many social media marketing companies and agencies offering these services. Companies also use this type of marketing for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. They even use viral marketing as part of the social media marketing strategy.

Social media marketing strategy

In the old times, you had to deal with market research, public relationship and advertising firms. Now, the use of social media has changed everything in the online marketing arena, and now we have many tools to build business communication, collaborate and share information. The strategy to use in social media is very simple. You just have to write something that encourages your peers to read and share what you have written for them. This is a very effective strategy because the information does not come from a company, a third party sends it and it generates trust. When the word is out, then you have earned media free. Companies can improve customer service and brand awareness. Twitter has reduced the barrier to enter into the social media world. This is also an inexpensive way to implement social media marketing.

You need the right tips and advice in order for you to launch a successful social media marketing campaign. Digg, Facebook and Twitter are some of the most famous social media websites. They have millions upon millions of members. Social media marketing is a gold mine if you do the right things. Many entrepreneurs want to eat part of the cake. However, in order for you to succeed you need to develop the right plan. You have to come up with the right execution too. First off, you have to learn how social media websites work. It is important to know about the nature of uses, what they share, where they come from, etc. It is useful to look professional; desperation is not the right thing here.

Choosing the right social media website is the next step. It depends on the nature of a business the type of social media platform chosen. For instance, many businesses need a Facebook fanpage more than a Twitter or Linkedin profile. Social media is all about honesty. If you are caught lying, your peers will outrage. It is very easy to share information in the social media platforms; so many people can see your lying statement.

Social media marketing – Platforms

Your company can get competitive insight and new customers with the use of social media optimization, also known as SMO. This strategy offers you more channels to promote your service or product. You can even enhance your online reputation and get new partners. The concept of SEO is very simple. You just have to make your website or blog easily to be linked to, more visible in social media searches and more relevant to podcasts and blogs.

admin Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

While observing any social media network it is apparent that they have a need to advertise, and turn a profit.  However the key that must be realized is that they must reach a happy medium with the end users who are being exposed to advertisements on the network in which they are socially invested.

Generating Revenues

Every single social network is on the internet for one reason, and one reason alone.  That reason is of course to make as much money as possible.  Now, the majority of social networks are doing this in almost the exact same way, and that is with sponsored PPC advertising styles.

So you say that this simply is not the case?  Well, lets take a look at arguably the three largest social networks, and examine the patterns.  Facebook shows ads that pop up on the right side of every individual user’s profile page.  When you view Twitter, you have Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends, and lastly Promoted Profiles.  The last of the three giants of social media is of course YouTube.  YouTube kind of takes a unique approach by offering advertising either as a video loads, or as a bar at the bottom of videos.

All three of the networks have different settings within their advertising engines which specify just how ads are displayed, and charged for.  An example of this is how you can target different criteria on Facebook.  You can target for things such as:

Group Information
Profile Information
Recent Comments on Facebook
Recent Activities and Games Played on Facebook

As you can quickly see by those very specific demographics advertisers can really pinpoint potential buyers with quick little user filters.

So with all of this known, where exactly does the problem lie?

The very basis of social media is the interaction between the users on the network.  These interactions can be anything from vacations, to children, and even the latest great movie that someone has recently seen.  The key thing here is that everything users are sharing are experiences. These experiences are in no way monitored, or policed to sway people in choosing specific products or brands.  So people simply exchange honest opinions, and brand information regarding products that they may have recently tried themselves.  All of these experiences are two way conversations as anyone can comment both good, and bad experiences with products or brands.

In the world of advertising however, communication is a one way avenue.  Its sole purpose and intention is to get people who see their ads, products, or services to perform a specific action.  This action may be making a purchase, or simply giving them an email address to be used for future communication.  Some companies argue that they are simply wanting an audience to get involved in communication, and share their experiences with specific products, which can sometimes be believable.  However, for the most part this is not how social network advertising frequently works.

How do the numbers stack up?

Now that you understand what social media advertising does, let’s take a look and see just how successful it truly is.  The click-through ratio of social media advertising is actually really low at a whopping 0.02% to 0.05% average.  Yes, that’s well below 1%.  Meaning that less than 1 of every 100 people will actually click on an ad on a social network.  Now on the other hand, there are other advertising venues that make these numbers look just sad.  One Marketing Pilgrim article actually quoted Google AdWords with an average click-through rate of around 2% for example.

Now, where exactly does the balance lie?

Truthfully, it is very difficult to see any method of balance being found in the near future.  The social networks must make money for payroll, and buying lavish items like luxurious vacations and yachts for executives and owners.  They strive to create a place for people to go, and advertisements to be sold.  The more users that they can sign up, the more profits they can make in advertisements, and the more advertisers they will attract.

This unfortunately does not reflect a better experience for the average end user on social networks.  This is just something that we will all have to deal with though until a new revenue stream can be found for our favorite social networking platforms.  A new source of profit generation that can rid them of having traditional advertising jargon while giving users something that they can invest in to have a better overall social networking experience.

What you can do about it

Make sure to grab a piece of the cake by tweeting and sending messages from advertisers and earning money for each message. Go to our social advertising page for more information.

admin Social Media

Do you advertise your business on social networking websites such as Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook?  The vast majority of internet businesses do, so you probably do too! Recently FlowTown have released a new study that has found some interesting results, just under 90% of businesses are taking part in social advertising as we speak, and the ones who aren’t plan to be before the next year is over.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Facebook have the highest percentage with just over 91% of those businesses utilising social advertisements via the company.

Social Advertising Hitting New Goals investigates and studies how various businesses feel about using social networking, how often they are utilising it and how much success they are having with it.  The statistics presented below were discovered by a survey carried out by Pivot earlier in the year.

The information includes a huge amount of data, the most valuable points are shown below:

-       67% of businesses are harnessing the power of social advertising.
-       18% plan to begin venturing into the exciting world of social advertising in the next year.
-       60% believe that social advertising is going to be “extremely important” for their businesses over the following few years.
-       Facebook is at the top of the chart, with over 90% utilising an advertising method on the Facebook site.  Twitter is in second place with almost 80%.

Something that I found very intriguing is that almost half  of the individuals asked said they were just “kind of satisfied” with their social advertising results so far, whilst only around 40% said that they were “happy” and 11% of people asked said that they were “extremely satisfied.”

I believe that a lot of this may be due to the fact that businesses are always looking for maximum ROI from all of their campaigns, so far, this hasn’t really happened.  Despite this, I still believe that it is vital for companies and businesses to build a strong presence in the social media to provide a great way to communicate with their clients and customers, whether or not it leads to a huge jump in the number of sales.

How satisfied would you say you’ve been with your experiences of social advertising so far?

admin Social Media

For the past two weeks Facebook users have been in a complete uproar in regards to the social networking site’s new layout and added features. While the overall look of Facebook may get some getting used to (and there is no doubt that users will start warming up to the changes shortly) the site is rumored to be in the midst of launching a new feature that can potentially revolutionize the way advertisers and marketers make money and promote products and services through the site—it’s called the “want” button.

What Does the “Want” Button Do?

The “want” button will specifically allow users to alert Facebook friends about products he or she is either interested in or intends to purchase. This sort of information can in-turn be the data advertisers and marketers need to improve their campaigns/approach and tailor their targeting. A more concentrated targeting means not wasting time and energy on individuals who are less likely to buy.

How Else Can it Help?

This also means that affiliate marketers can boost their sales to profound heights. Investing energy on a person who has already stated the intent to purchase and then re-directing them to a place where they can make that purchase means the greater the chance of finalizing a sale. Marketers can also work to promote other “similar” products. After all, if someone purchases one product, they are more likely to purchase another.

Then finally of course advertisers and marketers may very well be able to expand their outreach to clients and customers by reaching out to a user’s friends list. For example, a user’s friend may see what the user wants and may say, “Oh, that’s nice. I want that too” and purchase the item. And if Facebook is able to find a way to integrate the “want” button with coinciding birthdays and during time of other gift-giving holidays, the purchasing power may just very well out-do Amazon’s Wishlist button and may prove steady competition for Google. Of course, these are only predictions. But the “want” button will surely have a positive effect for both the advertising and marketing world.

The “want” button, which is a spin-off of Facebook’s “like” button, is a one of many new buttons that will allow users to share more personal information with Friends. Such new buttons include “read,” “listened” and “watched.” There has been no confirmation when any of the buttons will be launched on the site or what will become of the original “like” button.

About the author:
This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for best online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.

admin Social Media

Among the forms of online marketing, blog advertising is the most popular and most effective way to get customer’s interest, confidence and support. A Blog is a published article on the web. It may talk about anything and everything under the sun. Well, perhaps the reason why blog advertising is very effective is that people love to read blogs. They’re basically a source of entertainment for many people- young or old. Internet surfers make it a habit to read stories, articles, commentaries, and other informative posts they find in the websites.

Blogging has many uses. Aside from giving target customers helpful information on a certain topic, blogging, as a key element of search engine optimization also helps businesses to increase the traffic to their websites. Most of the time, web owners and internet marketers would look for sponsored reviews and paid articles. Businesses that have no time to create their own articles would just outsource this job to talented professionals.

What are sponsored reviews or paid articles?

Sponsored reviews are paid articles talking about a specific product (which may or may not mention the brand name). For you to make a sponsored review about a product, service or website, you just need to register as a blogger on Linknami, bid for the price of the review you’re going to make and then proceed on writing. Many companies are willing to spend much for blog posts. The price tag would depend on how many readers the writer has and how much traffic the article enjoys.

While blogs are very useful for site owners and online marketers, this has served as a big opportunity for many people- students and professionals, young or old to earn extra cash. In exchange for writing a review and publishing it on their blogs, the company would pay them. Almost all websites are in need of blog posts as part of their goal to increase their ranking in search engines and from time to time, these people would update their sites and therefore, would need more fresh articles.

When it comes to blogging, one doesn’t need to be a professional or licensed journalist but basically, you have to be skilled. The writer must have a unique writing style to attract the readers. The blog where the review is published should provide credible information because millions of people may view the blog and follow its recommendations. A quality blog post which is keyword optimized can be a very powerful tool to boost traffic.

- If you are a blogger wanting to earn cash with your blog by writing reviews or by publishing paid articles, sign up on Linknami now.

- If you are a website owner looking for valuable traffic and backlinks, sign up and submit your articles now.

admin Blog Marketing, SEO, Web Content

Here are 2 SEO Ranking Factors that have grown in importance over time. The traditional ranking factors like keyword optimized title tags, the number and quality of backlinks to your site, keyword-rich domain names are already well known by many webmasters and website owners.

Following two SEO ranking factors have been put on the table by google lately:

Bounce Rate

According to Google Analytics, “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors.”

Google (the search engine) is not omniscient, so there is no way for them to know your actual bounce rate – the one that is seen in Google Analytics or other analytics programs. But they do know your search engine bounce rate – how many people click your site from their search engine results and then come right back.

So it is important that you watch this metric and try to figure out what is going on if you have a high bounce rate.

TIP: If you have new site without much traffic, BE CAREFUL when you go to Google and click your own site from the results page. Some people will do this several times a day to check their site, or even to login to WordPress. But if you do this, make sure you visit a few pages on your site and don’t go back to Google using your back button. During this critical time before Google is sending you much traffic, you can affect your rankings by the ‘bouncing’ you do unintentionally.

Site Speed

Matt Cutts from Google has been talking about this for years, but now the speed of your site is starting to become a more significant factor in their ranking algorithm.

You can read some of the studies that Google, Amazon, Yahoo and others have done which show significant increases in traffic, page views, conversion and revenue when the speed of the site was improved.

Google Analytics has even added ‘speed’ as a metric that can be reported in their newest version. You need to make a simple change to the Google Analytics code on your site (or use the latest version of the free “Google Analytics for WordPress” plugin). Then you can click “New Version” in your Google Analytics dashboard and you can get the option to see “Site Speed” in your “Content” reports.

Did you already notice any ranking issues due to site speed and bounce rate? Which measures did you implement to increase the site speed and/or bounce rate on your website?

admin Google, SEO

Adding your blog or website to Linknami is easy. Just proceed through the short sign-up process and click on the activation link in the welcome email.

If you have more than one site, you can add more sites in the user area after logging in and manage each site individually from the user area.

However, if you have many blogs or even a high quality blog network and do not want to submit each of your blogs manually, you can make use of our free blog import service.

Once all blogs in your network are in the system, you can browse the article catalog for relevant articles and publish them on sites in your blog network with a simple click.

In order to grow your network, you can also add our contextual links plugin to get free in-text links to your blog posts and other sites in order to get more traffic from blogs and increase search engine rankings.

If you already have high quality mature blog network and would like to monetize your blogs, you can publish articles there for a specific fee or make money publishing banner and text ads on your blogs. You can set your own rates and only publish ads that are relevant and fit to your audience.

Contact us now for more information on how to monetize your blogs.

admin Linknami

As a new Linknami user, you may have been wondering how you actually can benefit from this service, since there are already many ad networksout there.

First of all, Linknami offers you many functionalities of other ad networks and link building services under one roof, which means that you can manage all features from one central user interface, whether you are publishing ads, advertising on other websites or using the link building tools (this is why the interface may look a bit overwhelming at first (some may say confusing), but the idea is that all sections can be accessed and accomplished within 1-4 clicks from the user area dashboard).

Secondly, Linknami offers extremely competitive payout rates for publishers that usually beat major ad networks (flat-fixed-rates for banner/text ads and text links) (if you know of other networks with equal or better rates just inform us that you know better ).

Most importantly though, there are some features that distinguish Linknami from other similar services:

For Ad Publishers:

With your high quality content, you can earn more money by publishing banner and text ads on individual pages/blog posts only than with site-wide ads.
An example: You are offering site-wide ads for US$ 100 per month and single post ads for US$ 10 per month.
You have just written a great article about new dog training practices and sell a banner ad there for US$ 10 per month. Advertisers in our system are automatically notified about this article (if it matches their keyword profile) as soon as its published on your site.
If you write 30 posts per month and sell 1 banner ad on each for 10 US$ per post, you can earn US$ 300 per month, this is US$ 200 more than with a site-wide ad for US$ 100 per month.
Advertisers get more targeted visitors with single page ads than by publishing their ad on your site on a site-wide basis.
This advertising method is as close as it can get to traditional offline newspaper and magazine ads where targeted ad spaces are sold next to specific articles.

For Advertisers:

Receive highly targeted visitors for your specific advertising campaigns by placing your ads on individual blog posts only, rather than via site-wide advertising.
When you are advertising site-wide or on untargeted ad networks, you are getting a lot of visitors who are not really interested in your products or services but pay a larger advertising fee than you actually should.
By setting up your keyword profiles, you get notified as soon as new blog posts are published that match your profile and can immediately request to publish your ads there.
By publishing ads in real-time on highly targeted pages, you can take advantage of the hype high quality new posts generate on social networks and platforms that go viral.

If you have any questions on how to setup the publisher code, advertising, link building code or encounter any problems during setup please do not hesitate to contact us, we will walk you through the specific processes with more detailed information.

admin Linknami

Following the road of affiliate marketing can sometimes become a frustrating path to be on. You put in the effort to build niche sites, you drive traffic to your affiliate offers, but you still do not extract any reward for your tireless efforts. It is this disappointment that forces many marketers to surrender before they reach their goals. A large percentage of internet marketers do not close any deals, they don’t make one sale – this is a fact! But this trend can easily be avoided by following a handful of practical techniques. In this article I will provide a few practical tips on how you can boost you affiliate sales:

1. Do The Groundwork

Too many affiliates browse through what is on offer on 3^rd party sites like Clickbank and Commission Junction, they look for the product paying the highest commission then they spend a few minutes researching a keyword and thereafter they build a site around that keyword. There is a big problem with this approach! Why? Because:

• Everyone is going after the products with higher commission pay-outs and that results in an extremely competitive market
• Keyword research needs to be intensive and extensive
• Higher commissions equates to a higher product cost price which opens the door for a competitor to enter the market with a similar product at a lower price. In most cases the competitor already exists and the vendor that you chose offers a higher commission because his or her competitor is already dominating the market.

You need to do the groundwork before you enter any niche. Before deciding on which product you going to market – analyze what alternatives are available. When engaging in keyword research ensure that you also examine your potential competitors who are also targeting a specific keyword, and how well optimized their sites are. You should also look at the CPC of your chosen keywords to determine the market value or marketability of pursuing a particular keyword.

2. Selling Vs Pre-Selling

This is a pertinent point that needs to be emphasized – as an affiliate it is not your job to sell the product. Yes, you heard me right! Selling the product is completely the responsibility of the vendor. The vendor must invest heavily in professional sales copy to close a deal. Your task is to drive targeted traffic to the affiliate offer. For traffic to be targeted you need to use the right marketing channels, and you need to choose highly targeted keywords.

When a potential customer is on your site your second task is to pre-sell and not sell. Do not fill your site content with heavy-handed sales copy – this is a fundamental error.  Your duty is to offer value through your content and warm the potential client up by pointing out the features and benefits of your affiliate product. Thereafter you can endorse the product and refer the visitor to the vendor’s site. If you are reviewing a product you shouldn’t concentrate completely on the benefits – offer an unbiased review without suffocating the visitor’s desire for the product.

3. The Money Is In The List

Some affiliate marketers still do not see the value of having an email list. They view email marketing as a chore rather than an opportunity. Every visitor to your site is a potential lead, if they click the back button on their browser that is basically a potential sale that is lost forever. You need to capture your visitor’s email address by offering a free report, or free ebook.

Secondly, when you’ve built your list and begin your email marketing campaign you should not send multiple emails filled with conspicuous sales copy. People are growing weary of opting into email lists and then being bombarded with one sales pitch after another. The proven approach is to send follow-up emails that deliver value to your subscribers. This will open the door for a relationship to be built and it will also secure a level of trust with your subscriber. Thereafter you can refer your subscriber to your affiliate product. Many of your subscribers in your email list will become repeat buyers once you’ve established a relationship with them.

These tips that I have alluded to should be taught in Affiliate Marketing 101, but unfortunately many people offer courses that skip the basics that have proven to work time and again. By following these simple and practical methods you will have a better chance of succeeding in this industry and your sales will certainly be boosted.

About the author:

Alex Papa is a seasoned businessman who has established successful entities both online and offline. He has developed a website haven for business minded people where they can learn about new home based business ideas. On his blog he shares tips on the best antivirus software and he also offers the latest Norton discount code.

admin Affiliate Marketing

As a a blog owner, you usually add fresh blog content to your site on a regular basis for your readers to enjoy and to communicate with them. You may publish a blog post a week or every day on your blog.

However, with thousands of articles posted every minute on the internet, its getting more and more difficult to get search engines attention with publishing just a few blog posts on a site. The trend is going towards newspaper-style sites targeting a specific niche that publishes a lot of juicy content about a certain topic, just like a newspaper does.

However the question is, the day has only 24 hours, so from where do you get all the content?

Via Linknami.com, you can find targeted guest bloggers and niche-relevant articles in the article catalog to publish on your blog with a simple click, so that you never run out of relevant articles and blog posts on your blog, just like your daily online newspaper and keep your site traffic at a peak all day long.

If you have more than 10 blogs and do not want to add your blogs manually, we offer a free bulk import service which allows you to add all your blogs via a text file or excel sheet.

After adding your blogs, you can either actively search for interesting articles in the article catalog for fresh blog content or wait until you receive article publishing requests from expert guest bloggers in the system.

admin Linknami, Web Content