Friday Sharing: Why You Need A Social Media Marketing Strategy & How To Start One

Today's article share was found on Pinterest with this fun description: "Running a business? Want to boost sales? You need a social media marketing strategy! Here is how to start an effective social media marketing strategy."

Seeing as I've mentioned social media marketing planning and strategy a few times this past month, I figured this would be a good article to share.

You can find it on Pinterest here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/275775177159910243/

Or on the original website, here: http://www.twelveskip.com/marketing/social-media/1414/start-social-media-marketing-strategy

Have a great Friday!

Friday Facts: The Power of the Hashtag

Another excellent infographic - this time from the Huffington Post - regarding the Power of the Hashtag.  This offers advice from not abusing hashtags to other best practices regarding hashtags with the various sites that use them. It also explains why using hashtags is important and how you should pick/set up hashtags for your brand.

Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/227431849909451172/

You might also want to check out their sources for the article. There may be additional useful information there.

Friday Facts: 10 of the latest surprising and revealing studies on social media

For today's Friday Fact's I'm sharing an article produced by The Next Web news regarding 10 of the latest surprising and revealing studies on social media. This article includes a lot of interesting stats with accompanying charts and graphs to back up the data as well as links to the original articles where the studies were pulled from.

For example, did you know, according to Chartbeat, late afternoon and evening is the best time to share things to get interaction from users?

Or, another example, Instagram users are more engaging than Facebook and Twitter users.

And ramp up your video team - surveys show social media marketing is ramping up in YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Read all the details on these facts and seven more in the article here: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2015/07/09/10-of-the-latest-surprising-and-revealing-studies-on-social-media/?utm_content=bufferc2af2&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Happy Friday!

Friday Facts: The 3 S's of Social Media Maintenance

Do you know what the three S's of Social Media Maintenance are?  Well the S's are easy:

1. Setup
2. Strategize
3. Schedule

Obviously, there's going to be more to that than just those words, but it's a great thing to remember - you have to set up your social media before you can began strategizing. Once you have your strategizing down, schedule posts.

The infographic, found here https://www.pinterest.com/pin/165296248800925370/ , outlines exactly what you need to do with steps for each S to follow.  It also includes some interesting facts, such as "Blog posts shared on twitter and Facebook receive 149% inbound links than those not shared."

If you're still working on your social media strategy, check this article out.

Friday Facts: The Shift to Visual Social Media

I came across this infographic on Pinterest last week and thought it would be great to share. I didn't really give much thought to how Social Media has become much more visual with pictures and videos instead of just text until I saw this infographic.

The pin is described with "Social media is very visual these days. How did this happen? Check out this great infographic. (it's visual!) Social Media Trends: Visual is the new Black."

Check it out here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/58054282673761087/

The infographic provides a lot of useful, little known facts, like Instagram gets more posts than Twitter a day and that Pinterest is the fourth largest traffic driver world wide.

What facts did you find interesting?

Friday Facts: The History and Power of #Hashtags

Did you know there was a history behind hashtags before Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, etc. (all of whom use #hashtags to denote topics)?  It started back in the early days of the Internet on mIRC then in 2007 spread to Twitter and grew from there.

Check out this awesome infographic on the Power/History of Hashtags and how trending topics are important too.

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/418412621604584947/
Original article: http://www.business2community.com/infographics/history-power-hashtags-social-media-marketing-infographic-0997768

Friday Facts: How To Convert Traffic From Social Media Into Sales

We've often talked about using social media to generate sales and about how having a social media presence is one of many ways to get additional traffic, and subsequently sales, to your store/site/etc.  Unfortunately, we haven't talked a lot about how to convert said increase in traffic to sales - likely because I haven't figured out how that exactly works.

Luckily other people have and Hootsuite did an excellent article on it, which is today's share.

The biggest thing: Calls to action.

Check out the article here: http://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-get-more-customers-from-social-media-traffic/

Friday Facts: 7 P's Of Social Media Marketing That Drive Results

This nifty infographic, which you can see the full version on Pinterest here, provides you with information in an awesome graphical form that was originally found in this Forbes article.

The article talks not only about the 7 P's of social media marketing, but also address the three most important parts to branding with social media which are: Consistency, Persistence and Restraint.

Keeping all of that in mind, the infographic provides a concise summary of the article for quick reference, but the article itself is good to read as well, especially if you are new to branding or social media or both.

WIth the help of this infographic and article, I suppose you do have a step up on going from zero to hero with social media.

Enjoy!

Friday Facts: Holiday Social Media Marketing Trends 2014

My past few Infographic posts have all come from the same source: Digital Information World, mainly because they have a plethora of information out there and at this time of year, it is fairly useful information to be sharing.

As the holidays are upon us, I refer back to this post from Digital Information World posted in September (way before I even thought about the holidays coming up I might add) that talks about Holiday Social Marketing Trends for this year.

Check out the article, with infographic, here: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/09/infographic-holiday-social-media-marketing-trends-2014.html

It offers a lot of statistics on buyers on social media, but also statistics on what platform marketers think will be the breakout platform for this year and many other useful pieces of info.

Check it out and put the information to use where applicable.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2014/09/infographic-holiday-social-media-marketing-trends-2014.html

Happy Holidays!

Friday Post Hiatus - It's My Birthday

I scheduled this post early - almost a month ago - because I knew I would be busy focusing on other things with it being my birthday.  I turn 34 today and while I will be either at work, or off for the day (I haven't decided which), I think I will be too busy to really focus on sharing other articles on social media today.  That means First Friday posts will be delayed a week, much like last month since First Friday was the Fourth of July.

So that being said, no other post than this today and hope you have a great weekend.

Friday Facts: 10 Surprising Social Media Facts

In looking through Pinterest the other night, I came across this pin and had to check it out.  It contained a very nice infographic with 10 facts about social media that I -definitely- didn't know and I think many of my readers will find this interesting.

Some of the facts include:

• Did you know there are specific days of the week to Pin certain things on Pinterest?  You can find out what you're supposed to Pin when on the infographic.
• Did you know Friday seems to be the best day for engagement on Facebook?  (Maybe it's because it's the end of the work week and people are surfing Facebook...)
• Do you know how many interactions per post you should strive for?  That information is also available on the infographic.

Learn about these three things as well as the seven other facts by clicking on the links below.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/infographics/10-surprising-social-media-facts-infographic-0946278#!birBLT

Pin It Here: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/492862752943671555/

(Note, I linked to the Pin I found it on.  Please re-Pin from there if you're going to Pin.)

Friday Facts: Measuring the Impacts of Social Media

SEOBook offered an interesting article that talks about how to measure the impacts of social media on you brand/business.  It talks about many things, including how there is no real industry standard and the measuring of impacts varies by what you are selling. If you are a restaurant or a store, you may measure the impact by how many people come in.  If you're promoting a blog, you may measure it by looking at Google Analytics to see what hits are coming from what social media networks.

It also provides 7 things to measure, which includes the important question of "What are your goals/objectives?"

If you haven't set any goals yet for your social media endeavors, perhaps now is the time to look into doing so.

Check this article out and then look at setting some goals:  http://www.seobook.com/measuring-social-media

Friday Facts: Tailoring Your Posts for Different Social Media Networks

The Constant Contact blog recently posted an interesting article covering the topic of how to tailor your posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  The article discusses the importance of each outlet's audience and what they're looking for content wise.  It also explains what type of content each network is looking for and does best with as well as reminding folks to respond to their followers.

This is a very informative piece and I recommend anyone, new or expert, participating in social media to check it out.  For more information: http://blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/social-media-marketing/content-social-media/

If you have anything you would like us to share on Fridays or Mondays, please don't hesitate to contact me via Google+ or Facebook!

Friday Facts: Interesting Facebook Statistics

I was reading through a couple sites this past weekend and came across a site that promises to teach you "the secret system Facebook Marketers are Using."  Naturally they want you to pay a lot for their course that guarantees you'll see more lead generation, etc., but I've always been highly skeptical of such promises - especially when it takes FOREVER to get to the bottom of the page to find out how much it costs - then see, as I quickly scroll, they cover a number of the same topics that are posted on my blog and similar blogs.

Either way, this isn't a rant about those types of sites, but rather, the useful stats one of those sites provided.

• Facebook is currently the largest social network with over 1.19 Billion Active Monthly Users.
• 93% of marketers use social media for their business.
• Facebook has 728 million daily active users.
• Facebook Like and Share Buttons are viewed 22 million times a day.
• There are over 50 million Facebook pages.

Source: http://www.fbinfluence.com/?hop=pmwatch

Since I found those stats interesting (and easy to find) I figured I'd share them with you, as well as a link to the source.

Keep in mind, I always recommend starting out with one or two forms of social media and seeing what works for your brand.  Because of these statistics and personal experience, I encourage you to make Facebook one of the forms of social media you set up first.

Happy Friday!

If you have anything you would like us to share on Fridays or Mondays, please don't hesitate to contact me via Google+ or Facebook!

Friday Facts - Part 2: The 3 Types of Social Networks and What to Post on Them

Once again, Klout has put out a blog post which is very useful to my readers (and even those who are not my readers) regarding the types of social networks and what to post on them.  This one was such a timely post, it couldn't wait to the next free Friday for posts.

You may be asking "What do they mean by types of social networks."  They break down social networks into three platforms: Personal, Content Sharing, and Shared Interest Networks.  Some social media outlets are under more than one of those networks.

Their explanation of social networks, what to post and tips for each network is quite interesting and valuable.

Check out the article via Klout's blog here: http://blog.klout.com/2014/05/3-types-social-networks-use/

Have a good Friday!

Friday Facts: Finding Out the Best Time to Post on Social Media

I've posted a couple of times - here and here in fact - about figuring out what time is the best time to post on your various forms of social media.  This time isn't necessarily the same for all of your pages, in fact the days and times will vary according to your audience.

There are, however, more tools than just the analytic tools offered by Facebook and Google that can help you figure out what times are the ideal time to post-which is what today's Friday Facts linked article is about.  The tools they talk about I hadn't even heard about, which is why I'm sharing the article.  I can still learn things - which is always a good thing.

The article has a lot of useful information as well as information on the tools and how to get them and use them.

Check out the entire article here: http://webquacker.com.au/best-time-post-social-media-is-oh-not-again/

If you have read a useful article you think we should share on this blog, or perhaps you have written some items you'd like us to share, please feel free to get a hold of me on my Facebook page or Google+.

Friday Facts: The 5 Habits for Social Media Success

It's Friday, which means I have another post to share from another site regarding something in Social Media.  This article came across my feed by looking at #socialmediamarketing in my Google+ feed.

I'll be honest, I follow most of these habits, except for point number 1 because I never really thought about it.  I generally have a weekly plan, which doesn't always go according to plan due to my day job, but I do try to keep things posted regularly and on a semi-normal schedule.  But perhaps I should make 1 a bigger habit than I have.

Check out the article here: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233676#  Then leave a reply here telling us what you think about the habits they suggest you form.

Happy Friday!

Friday Facts: 2014 Social Media Trends

I saw this while going through #socialmedia hashtags on Google+ and thought it was an interesting one to share.

Note, I can't claim it as my own, it's not.  And it looks to be attributed to Vocus, so all credit goes to them.

That being said, check out this infographic from them.  You may need to click on it to make it larger:

Some good ideas there.  

If you have anything you would like us to share on Fridays or Mondays, please don't hesitate to contact me via Google+ or Facebook!

Friday Facts Part 2: Freedom of Speech = Money Article

While this article is a little extreme, it has some good points.

But, to make my little rant before I link it, I have to say this.

You do not have Freedom of Speech on Social Media.  Most social media companies are privately owned (or in Facebook's case, publicly owned, stock optioned technically owned by a private company) and what that means is that the Constitution does not apply to you.

Yes, you can get in trouble and be arrested for making threats on Facebook.  But Facebook is not a public forum or public entity.  It is owned by a private company and their rules and regulations are allowed to be enforced.

They are providing a "free service" which they "monetize" in many different ways.  So the article's title is really misleading.

That will end my soap box on Free Speech.

However, the point made in the article - engaging pages we like, engaging users we like, and interacting to keep our feed filled with what we want to see are good tips to help pages out.

To read the entire article: http://piecefit.com/index.php/en/wake-up-all/paradigm-shift/item/457-facebook-s-recent-changes-freedom-of-speech-money#k2Container

Friday Facts: Fun Infographic on What it Takes to Be a Social Media Strategist

Mashable put together a really neat infographic on what it takes to be a social media strategist.  While the article is almost 4 years old and it would be interesting to see how some of the statistics have changed since it was published, a lot of the tips in there are invaluable to both new, and old, social media marketers alike.

For example:

1. Be ready to wear many hats.
2. Be able to lead.
3. Be willing, and able, to take risks.

But that's just a quick paraphrase.  Check out the full article and infographic here: http://mashable.com/2011/09/24/social-media-career/