Social Media Marketing Ranks High With Female Entrepreneurs Despite optimism about their future, female business owners have a lot of worries keeping them up at night. Social media, however, isn't one of them. Among female business owners' chief concerns are growing their customer base, dealing with new health insurance and tax regulations and gaining much needed capital, a survey revealed. The survey was conducted by the National Association of Women Business Owners and Web.com Group Inc. Specifically, 90 percent of female business owners are worried about gaining new customers, while 81 percent are just as concerned about keeping their existing ones. The study also shows that 80 percent are worried about business tax issues, 71 percent about the cost and accessibility of health insurance and 61 percent about their access to capital. [14 Social Media Marketing Solutions for Small Businesses] While they might be facing a lot of challenges, women entrepreneurs are also very upbeat about their own — as well as their peers' — future prospects.
Most Essential Social Media Tools In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author offers a quick look at the tools that can help you track your social media data. There are tools that can help you track all possible social media data. Most are easy to use if you take the time to learn them, and many have both free and for-fee versions, the latter offering more detail. The most useful tools are often those on the platforms themselves. For example, one of the simplest metrics that many businesses find extremely valuable is Facebook's PTAT (People Talking About This) score, which measures word-of-mouth marketing. A slightly more complex factor to understand is EdgeRank. To understand the algorithm, it's important to first understand what "edge" means. Time decay measures how long the edge has been on Facebook. Buffer.
Google Plus as Popular as Twitter in U.S., According to Forrester Why Facebook is blue: The science of colors in marketing 33.5K Flares Filament.io 33.5K Flares × Why is Facebook blue? According to The New Yorker, the reason is simple. It’s because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. This means that blue is the color Mark can see the best. In his own words Zuck says: “Blue is the richest color for me; I can see all of blue.” Not highly scientific right? After all, the visual sense is the strongest developed one in most human beings. So how do colors really affect us and what is the science of colors in marketing really? First: Can you recognize the online brands just based on color? Before we dive into the research, here are some awesome experiments that show you how powerful color alone really is. Example 1 (easy): Example 2 (easy): Example 3 (medium): Example 4 (hard): These awesome examples from Youtube designer Marc Hemeon, I think show the real power of colors more than any study could. How many were you able to guess? Which colors trigger which feeling for us? Black: Green: Blue:
The Social Media Automation Strategy Every Marketer Needs 5.3K Flares Filament.io 5.3K Flares × When I was in elementary school, my wardrobe was fully automated. I had a certain pair of sweatpants for Mondays, jeans for Tuesdays, Zubaz for Wednesdays, and so on. It was quite the system for a fourth-grader! Automation has been a big part of my life ever since. I love to find helpful ways to work smarter—anything to shave an extra few minutes off my day. The same holds for automation of one’s social media marketing. Curious for myself, I researched and delved into this question of automation and came up with some intriguing answers. First things first: Social media marketing should not begin and end with automation Have you seen the infomercials for the Ronco rotisserie oven? Social media is not a rotisserie oven. Instead, I like to imagine social media automation as more like baking cookies. Automate what you can while still remaining engaged on a consistent basis. With that in mind, let’s begin. The simple system for automating social media
5 Ways Women Drive Social Media Brands have long known the importance of appealing to women. Studies show that the fairer sex are responsible for 80 percent of household goods. Now that social media has become such an integral part of a marketing strategy, it’s even more important for brands to relate to their female audience. Check out this amazing Infographic by Finances Online: “Why Women are the Real Power Behind Social Media.” Numbers don’t lie: women are dominant on social media. More Women Use Social Networks According to a Pew Study, women use every major social media channel more than men, with the exception of LinkedIn. We also have two social networks that are heavily used by one gender opposed to the other: one-third of women are now using image sharing site Pinterest, but only 8 percent of men; and 24 percent of men are using LinkedIn while only 19 percent of women are. Women are on Social Media More Often Women tend to spend more of them time online on social media networks.
How to Integrate G+ Into Your Site | Google Plus Embed There is a school of thought that asserts that Google Plus shares may be more valuable to the SEO value of your site than other social shares (because of the structure of G+ or affiliation with Google). Google Plus has been around for awhile, but the capability to embed posts from the network has only been around since September. One of the major advantages for publishers to embed Google Plus posts is that any updates to content are appended to the embedded object, and readers can interact with the G+ post directly from your website. Embedding rich content within a post may be able to increase G+ activity around your content. What I want to do in this post is to discuss the options that you have to embed content from G+ onto your site. The basics Embedding a Google Plus post is pretty straightforward. When you click “embed post,” a prompt with an embed code pops up: There are two things of note here: Here is an example of a Google Plus embedded photo post: Asynchronous loading
Local Social Media Marketing We tend to keep tabs on the huge companies out there who are really killing it on social media. Campaigns like those put forth by the likes of Oreo or Ford stay on our radar because they set the trends. What you may not know is that social media marketing can extend into the local market as well. In fact, a report put together by BIA/Kelsey for Surefire Social showed that 60% of franchise businesses use their Facebook pages for local promotions. So how can you get in on this rising trend? Step 1: Claim Your Local Profiles There are many social sites dedicated to providing information about local businesses. A few sites you need to sign up for and/or claim your profiles on include: You’ll also want to make sure you have profiles on all of the major social media sites that apply to your industry. Step 2: Take Full Advantage of Google We already mentioned that you need to claim your Google Places listing but there’s a bit more to it than that. Step 3: Optimize Your Facebook Page
The power of visual storytelling - Global Business Hub Consider the following data pulled by Buzzfeed. In just one minute, 208,300 photos are posted to Facebook, 510,000 photos are liked on Instagram, and 100 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube. Combine the sheer volume of visuals shared with the engagement rates surrounding them and you’ve crafted a pretty compelling business case: Posts with an album or photo drive up to 180% more engagement than those without. Viewers spend 100% more time on web pages with videos. Viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video.The Rise of Visual Storytelling In the book I co-authored called The Power of Visual Storytelling, we talk about the fact that while impressive, visual storytelling is not an overnight sensation, but the result of the science behind how we absorb information, the rise of mobile usage and continued innovation in the field of social media.
A New Survey Reveals Which Social Media Brands People Are Most Attached To To which social media brands do consumers feel the most attachment? Facebook ranked number one in a Brand Dependence Social Media Survey conducted by UTA Brand Studio in partnership with uSamp, a technology and consumer sampling company. Laurence Vincent, chief brand officer of UTA Brand Studio, the brand strategy arm of United Talent Agency, will present the findings of the survey at SXSW March 7. And we're not talking about "liking," apparently. Now, back to the results of the survey: Facebook was followed by Instagram, then YouTube, Pinterest and Reddit in the February 2014 survey of 2,006 U.S. adults aged 18 and up. How about Twitter? Vincent reports that 59% of the respondents said they used Twitter, helping it score well in the area of intensity, which measures Brand Dependence amongst people who currently use a product or service. YouTube performed extremely well in the survey, with strong Brand Dependence scores in the areas of brand-self connection and prominence.