Tag: social media

What Are the Best Practices for Social Media in Business?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 17, 2017
No Comments on What Are the Best Practices for Social Media in Business?

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It is important to define how you want to leverage social media for your business before utilizing the services of an outsourced social media manager. Establishing objectives that are trackable and measurable are pivotal in creating winning strategies. These goals should be flexible to allow for pivoting when strategies need to be changed. It is also important to ensure your social media goals focus on a specific strategic goal. This can be as simple as collecting user engagement metrics or pushing potential customers to your website to drive sales. Depending on your personal business goals, these best practices should be considered:

Leverage the Right Social Media Networks

Social media is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Many businesses will attempt to utilize multiple social media accounts and only see success on individual social media platforms. Use your target customer base and their online behavior to determine the social media platforms that best work for your products or services.

Brand Your Profiles

One of the most important steps in creating a social media profile is branding each account to ensure a consistent user experience. With the help of an agency, you can ensure each of your social media profiles exemplifies your brand while sharing common, yet effective, posts. This can help build stronger brand awareness and, in turn, brand loyalty.

Focus on Quality, not Quantity

Quality posts will always be more beneficial than excessive posts that may turn off your customers in the long term. A good social media mix will include promotional posts, thoughtful posts and posts that drive engagement. By utilizing social media management through an agency, your posts will be tracked monthly to determine which posts were most effective and then tailor your social media efforts to that data.

Monitor Metrics

By utilizing social media management through a firm, you can rest easy knowing your metrics are consistently being tracked. By analyzing your social media analytics on a weekly basis, an agency can determine the best methods of driving engagement for your profiles. With tools like HootSuite and Google Analytics, you can be sure your best interests are in mind.

Patience is a Virtue

Building a loyal following on social media platforms doesn’t happen overnight. It can take time to effectively analyze your customer base and accurately target their needs. With consistency and patience, you will be more likely to achieve social media goals.

You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your social media management or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Why Should Small Businesses Outsource Social Media?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 10, 2017
No Comments on Why Should Small Businesses Outsource Social Media?

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There are many reasons why small businesses owners may wish to outsource the management of their social media accounts. As the list of social media platforms continues to grow, it is unlikely small business owners will be able to consistently account for all of their accounts. It can often take several hours monthly to efficiently handle a single small business social media platform according to this report. To accurately leverage the power of social media for your business there are several key factors that must be considered. Often, small business owners will utilize these factors to ensure their social media profiles are in good hands. The factors included in this process include:

Accountability

As a small business owner, you may not have a passion for social media. Outsourced social media managers will have an inherent passion for social media and genuine understanding of how each platform works. A great social media manager will have knowledge of the digital landscape as well as a drive to keep up with current trends to push your business forward.

Prior Experience

With outsourced social media management, small business owners will have a knowledgeable team that can help determine what works and what doesn’t, based on past experience. Whether you are interested in social media advertising or standard posting to drive engagement, it is important to have a team that can pull from previous experience. With an agency, small business owners can be sure they have all facets covered from conception to completion.

Reliability

Reliability is one of the key factors that must be considered when hiring a social media manager. Because consistency is key, it is important to utilize the services of an agency that plans ahead. For example, if your social media manager becomes ill, who will continue the content? With an agency, you will likely have several individuals capable of continuing the job if disaster strikes.

Conflict Resolution Experience

There are many “social media managers” available to small business owners. However, it is important to ensure that you are employing the services of an individual, or group of individuals with a degree or years of experience. In the best-case scenario, you will desire a person with a public relations or business administration background that can ensure conflicts are managed appropriately.

Cost

Nationally, a decent social media manager will likely cost around $50k to $70k annually. Gathering content and copy for campaigns or posts can take several hours to effectively express the views of your business.

When utilizing Skynet Solutions social media management services, you can be sure the ins and outs of social media are covered for less money. You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your social media management or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags small business, social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Why is Social Media Important for Businesses?

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date March 3, 2017
No Comments on Why is Social Media Important for Businesses?

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There are many reasons why a business should be actively using social media. In the modern age, your brand or business doesn’t really exist without having representation on social media. Social media accounts are FREE to start and can be leveraged to help meet and express the goals of your business. Every social media post you make is indexed resulting in consistently increased SEO. This can help boost web traffic to your primary sites and ultimately lead to brand awareness and increased sales. These are some of the reasons your web presence can suffer without a consistent social media presence:

Relationship Building

Interaction with customers is an important step in driving sales. Through social media, businesses can interact with their customer base, or potential customer base, in real time to help build lasting relationships. This can help humanize a business and drive sales by making the transaction more personal.

Immediate Conflict Resolution

With the evolution of social media customer service is more important than ever. If a customer is dissatisfied with your product or service they will now have a wide audience to voice their concerns to. This makes it more important than ever to ensure you are addressing concerns openly and honestly for the most beneficial outcome for both parties.

Brand Loyalty

A recent report published by Texas Tech University found that brands that actively maintain their social media profiles are more likely to have a loyal customer base. By actively engaging with your customer base on social media, you are more likely to build relationships with those people on an individual basis. This can make repeat customers more likely to utilize your products or services on a long-term basis.

Keeping Up With Competition

It is likely that your competition is actively utilizing social media. To help level the playing field, it is important to ensure you are also leveraging the currently digital market. If your competition is already establishing relationships with potential customers, it will be more difficult to catch up.

Finding New Customers

By utilizing keywords and hashtags, businesses can easily find potential customers they may have never knew existed. Leveraging the power of social media groups can also be a lucrative source of website traffic. Though this may not result in immediate sales, it lets customers know there are options in the future.

Tags social media

Marketing

How to Drive Social Media Referrals

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date February 3, 2017
No Comments on How to Drive Social Media Referrals

One of the biggest FREE assets a small business owner has is the ability to promote their business or services on social media. As you may already know, real sales happen on your website, not your social media pages. For this reason, it is important to direct potential customers from your social media pages to your website. There are many different foolproof ways to drive traffic to your website using social media. It is important to remember that unless a potential customer has the incentive to visit your website, they likely won’t. Follow these steps to help drive your social media referrals.

Provide Value

Because so many businesses are competing for the attention of their audiences on social media, it only makes sense to provide something valuable that your competitors can’t or don’t. Value can easily be found when you know your target market and the type of information they are receptive to. Strive to meet the needs or desires of your target audience.

Use a Call to Action

It can be easy to forget to add a simple call to action in your social media posts. Without encouraging the customer to pursue the desired outcome, they likely won’t have the desire to. If you have more information on your site that isn’t included in the post, encourage readers to click through to read more.

Individualize Social Media Networks

What works for one social media network likely won’t be tailored for another. When writing your social media posts, write individual renditions on the same thing to meet the word count limitations and other network-specific requirements. This can ensure your content is optimized to be most effective. Be Direct Social media interaction is incredibly personalized. Don’t be afraid to target your potential customers by using words like “you” and “your”. This can help strengthen their need for your product or services and encourage them to seek more information.

You can always call the experts at Skynet Solutions for help with your business listing, website development, marketing or anything else you need to help make your business succeed. With our diverse range of skills and experience, we are sure to have the tools you need to make 2017 your business’ best year yet. You can fill out our contact form to get started today. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn!

Tags social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Utilizing Social Media for PR Opportunities

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date January 6, 2017
No Comments on Utilizing Social Media for PR Opportunities

Concept of dices with letters forming words: Public Relations. Generic newspaper background with some blurred text on the bottom and paper stack in the back. Dices made from wood with natural imperfections.

In recent years, social media has created a definitive link to clients and customers for public relations managers. With the easy dissemination to target audiences available through various social media channels, getting your message out quickly has never been simpler. Here are a few ways you can utilize social media for your public relations strategy.

Social Sharing

Through the implementation of adding share buttons for various social media accounts, your press release can be shared with even more people than are available in just your follower base. This is also true when shared on a personal page through social media accounts as well. This quick buzz can help get your message out efficiently and effectively to provide immediate, positive results.

Real-time Releases

Getting your press release into the right hands can be a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. With the integration of social media into your public relations plan, breaking stories and information can be presented to your audience immediately. If you want to be the first to offer commentary or break important industry related news, you will likely be beaten by someone else if you wait for the traditional channels.

Enhance Branding

One big facet of public relations strategy is the enhancement and retainment of a successful brand. Social media platforms allow for individuals, companies and storefronts to expand their branding from their traditional website. This can help create staying power in the minds of customers while enhancing the current image of your brand.

Tags social marketing, social media, socialmedia

Marketing

Using a SWOT Analysis for Social Media

Post author By Skynet Solutions
Post date December 26, 2016
No Comments on Using a SWOT Analysis for Social Media

If you have ever been involved in a marketing strategy meeting you have no doubt been exposed to the SWOT analysis. This process can help break down the individual needs of the company in question and focus on which direction the marketing strategy goes. We hope to explain what a SWOT analysis is and how it can impact your social media strategy.

Strengths

The strengths section of a SWOT analysis should be well thought out and may include company resources as well as unique engaged fans that can propel your company message. Your current reach and penetration may also be a strength if the numbers are good enough. Keep in mind that strengths can sometimes be considered weaknesses as well!

Weaknesses

Weaknesses can often be hard to complete because you have to look at your own business critically. This is often the hardest part of completing a SWOT analysis because you have to be very introspective. Unless you are honest, you can’t fully fix your problems. This section may include scaling issues or lack of analytic resources.

Opportunities

Opportunities can often be attributed to outlets that the company should or could be taking that currently aren’t being utilized. This could mean targeting new segments of customer or expanding your reach through new social media platforms. Opportunities can often be a response to a previously added weakness to build your marketing plan.

Threats

The final component of a SWOT analysis is a threats section. Threats often include competitor strategies and factors such as product sustainability or economic factors. Determining current and upcoming threats can help companies create a blueprint to react to these threats quickly to minimize risk. The threats section can usually improve a business’ chance at successfully implementing their social media plan. Once a SWOT analysis is completed, companies should then build their marketing plan with the results in mind. This creates a well-rounded and cohesive plan that ensures the most success possible. Remember, your competitors are most likely doing the same thing. Be as thorough as possible and get your social media marketing started!

Tags marketing, social marketing, social media, socialmedia

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