Social Word of Mouth Marketing for Your Small Business

Word of Mouth Marketing for your small business

The online industry of social networking has become one of the primary windows by which businesses of all sizes can effectively mesh with their audience. When it comes to the small business owner who is first entering the industry, the online world has the greatest host of advantages if they can be harnessed properly.

Therein lies the key, because unless social networks are utilized properly, they won’t provide the desired results. For the business owner, word of mouth through social interaction is both efficient and effective, providing the ideal opportunity and possibly one of the best places to start building your brand image.

Social network sites are great places to start

First of all, social word of mouth has the lowest price tag - the biggest investment cost is actually time. And that is what is important, because time is money. So, one must be willing to invest one’s time in these social networks in order to locate new contacts and potential clientele.

Initially, social networks are ideal because they already have a widely established network. By simply joining in, you are exposed to a large network of people who are waiting to meet you. But, your task is to get out there and meet them, or they may never even know you exist.

You must make it easy for your audience to find you. Use keywords and phrases that are trending or popular at the moment. Link back to your websites and other networks through your postings and blogs, so that readers can easily find you and can conduct their own research about your business or brand.

You make social networking effective

Overall, it’s incredibly easy to communicate through social networks, but you need to be sure you do it properly. In particular, there are certain methods that will get the results you desire. Many first-time users have a large list of ideas and creative thoughts, many of which include talking only about themselves. Remember, that is what a bio is for. Pictures might be posted pertaining to merchandise or services offered - but that is selling yourself short. As a business owner and your own boss, you have far more to offer the audience than just sales pitches. What is it that makes your business special? What motivates you? How do you relate to the audience? These are questions that the audience will ask themselves when they view your networks. This is why, it is important to answer such questions.

There is also the importance of listening and responding to your audience. One of the worst things you can do is generate post after post without reviewing the discussions and interacting with the audience. This is the prime opportunity to develop social word of mouth marketing because they are talking to you- and talking amongst themselves about you.

When it comes to customer service, these social networks are quite effective at generating word of mouth. When a client interacts with you, it may be positive or negative. Regardless, during and after this interaction, others will inevitably hear about your customer service abilities.

In many cases, it is ideal to present this situation through live feeds, so that you can display your expertise to a wide audience. This is a great opportunity to build a social site based on recommendations made by the audience.

Additionally, social networking is a great opportunity to get effective feedback. If your social strategies are getting positive results, then you’re doing well. If you’re not getting results (views or comments), then it’s time to reconsider your methods.

In order to generate quality content, you must know who you are talking to. Research and understand your target audience so that you can deliver content that they want to view. What do they enjoy? Generate interest through postings that they are already talking about and relate them to your business. Trends and holidays are often hot topics and can be utilized quite easily.

As we interact through social networks and discover new methods and practices, we will be able to develop more sophisticated means of communication. We need to be forever changing and adapting to new advances in technology. The social networks of today link individuals together and make interaction easier than ever before. For those who operate small businesses, social word of mouth marketing strategies are perhaps the most effective and efficient way to build success.

Less is More and Free is Bad for Your Word of Mouth Marketing

Going free? Here's how it can affect your word of mouth marketing

What are people thinking when they interact with you? It would be incredibly useful to have such information readily available to you when you start a conversation or make a sale’s pitch. Unfortunately we can’t read minds. 

However, we can calculate what an audience is thinking. After all, a conversation is basically a dance. You step, they step. It is a waltz and one must lead. It is up to you to be the leader and guide your partner in the right direction.

It’s all a dance

To start with the basics, consider that there is such a thing as too much information. Limit what choices you offer your customers. Don’t give them a wide selection or they will begin focusing on considering the right answers rather than deciding what they want. Don’t ever offer the option D -- none of the above. Avoid options like this because they tend to draw away from the sale. Offer instead another solution that you have to offer if they don’t feel satisfied with the others. 

When it comes to information, keep in mind that mystery always intrigues the mind. When you blog or discuss strategies, leave some out. Allow your audience to speculate. Give them a taste, but don’t give them the whole pie. This will bring them back to you searching for more. This is often most beneficial for generating personal word of mouth marketing. Mystery often generates conversation. How do they do it? What is the secret ingredient? Individuals are naturally intrigued by mystery and will draw others in to ask their opinion of your business as well. 

Steer clear of the “May I pick your brain?” zone

Don’t hesitate to charge for your services, even consultations. People generally will want to pay for what is given to them. It provides a sense of achievement and eliminates the feeling of obligation. Have you ever gotten something for free and felt obligated to return the favor? That is the very reason why we pay for what we get. You don’t have to give things away for free to get loyal customers. You get loyal customers by being dependable and professional. 

Negotations can be tricky in an information based business especially when people think “offering you a cup of coffee or a meal” somehow compensates you for all of your expertise and experience.  In negotiations - You say high, they say low. Then you move until you meet in the middle. The trick is to make that middle feel like a winning spot for the customer and still be profitable for you. People will fight harder to avoid losing rather than winning. It’s based on the emotional stance of the individual, rather than the logical. People do not like to lose, so the trick is to make your customers feel like they win in a conversation.

There is such a thing as too many options and too much information. You don’t have to give away your secrets for free in order to increase your sales and visibility. Consider instead offering a taste of what you have so they will like it and want to buy what you are selling. 

Brands and Logos

Logos and personal branding

When it comes to presenting your image to the public, one key marketing element is the logo. For companies like McDonald’s, the familiarity of the golden arches has drawn the attention of billions throughout the world. But, consider what would happen if they changed their logo. Would customers still frequent that establishment? Would they still trust their services? 

Brand and logos work together to create your image, familiarizing you with both the quality of your services and products with the trust that your logo represents in the public eye. A logo does more than market your business; it represents what your brand does. 

The relevance of your logo

To bring things into perspective, ask yourself how relevant your logo is to your brand image. Harvey Briggs stated that: “Logos are only relevant if you make them relevant.”  A logo relies not only on clever design and ingenuity, but on your originality. When designing a logo, it needs to represent not only your brand, but include the quality of services or products you intend to provide for your clientele. 

In addition to design, you further create the image for which your logo represents through the quality of your services and products. Your brand’s quality will carry over into your logo, which means that wherever your logo is placed, the quality of your brand carries over. 

Hijacking your logo

This brings up the question of what should you do if you find a small, barely visible brand utilizing your logo as their own? Though the old saying that imitation is the highest form of flattery is highly noted amongst the social world, it isn’t very good when it comes to your business logo. If the other business performs poorly or presents a bad image, it will likely reflect on your brand image by association even if it is only on a small scale. 

There are some questions to consider about this as well. How are they using it? Is it actually promoting you? Is the company even remotely similar to yours? Or do they operate in a completely different field of operations? 

While there are occasionally accidents and coincidences, there are always those willing to take advantage of profiting from an already established brand image through their logo (not including parody). In these cases, it is necessary to protect your image by taking copyright and trademark measures. While these can be expensive, your brand’s image can suffer greatly from the image that another unrelated business is promoting through sub-quality efforts. 

Additionally, Judy Gombita ‏recommended that a brand should: “Make sure to prominently display the "history" of your logo on relevant sites, including rationale & modification over years.” This helps provide a definition of your logo and separate you from other businesses that attempt to utilize your logo as their own. 

Mix things up

Your logo is defined by your business, and therefore represents your business. But, what happens when a company decides to change its logo? With that question in hand, you should ask what the image is that a brand wants to portray or endorse. Perhaps they are trying to “go green.” Changes in logos can lead to a series of unintended problems that one should consider well prior to such a significant change. John R. Bell gave well the warning: “Beware. The person who tires of an existing logo is often the marketer.” Many times, it isn’t the customer that has grown tired of the logo, it is the brand itself. When marketing strategies begin to taper off or the think-tank seems to have run dry, one choice has been to re-vamp or change a logo image. You logo should always relate to your brand, and customers should be able to make that connection. 

Putting it in the right place

Brand placement also plays a role in how effective your logo and marketing efforts will be. The most important thing to remember is that context and timing are crucial to its effectiveness. Your main focus is to associate your brand with appropriate or related surroundings at the appropriate moment.

Put your brand in context. Don’t sidetrack or stray from your main purpose. At the end of a commercial, have you ever found yourself wondering what it was actually about? For the last thirty seconds, you’ve watched a series of unrelated cut scenes and at the end you catch a glimpse of a newly released pair of shoes. But, you’re still wondering who makes them and what they’re for. Context is very important to your brand placement.

On the other side of the coin, oversaturation of brand placement can be just as easily bad. Your task is to find balance between promoting your image and putting it in an environment that defines it. You are basically giving your customers an image that they can remember with little to no help from you. 

Consider word of mouth marketing. When you talk, it’s good to talk about your business, but you need to relate it to something that clients are readily familiar with. If you have a commercial that only pertains to your brand, they will only familiarize your brand with your logos and images. But, the real task is to get them to familiarize your logo and brand with their daily lives and the things they interact with. You think of Starbucks when you see coffee and you get an image of the golden arches when you see a hamburger. This is basically relating your brand to the public. 

A brand and logo work together to create the image your clientele sees whether or not they are doing business with you. Your business’ success relies on the efforts of a clever, original design and a brand with the quality to enforce.

Monitor the Need You are Satisfying: Essential Tips You Should Know

Listening to your customers and providing solutions give value to your personal brand

Many companies may have the tendency to devote so much of their time to sell a product or service, and then fail to check whether they have satisfied their customers' needs or not. Any business owner wants to make more money; however, they can achieve this goal when they understand their customers and try to meet their expectations. The best way to do this is by listening to what customers have to say, as any information divulged can be vital to any company's success.

The Need for Listening to Customer Feedback

When your customers contact you for technical support or concerns about the product, they expect to obtain prompt attention. They want you to listen to them and they want to receive your full attention. You should convey your commitment to serve them and help them find the ideal solution. In addition, you should also listen and monitor how your business satisfies the needs of your customers. When you know that you are on the right track, you can develop better products geared towards your customers' expectations.

Customer feedback is one of the most critical components of a customer service program. Most businesses succeed because they work closely with their customers and integrate any feedback that will improve their services or products. As a business owner, you should be proactive about providing outstanding customer service. You can find out if you are satisfying your customers' needs by asking several questions that you’d undoubtedly need to answer as well.

1. What do your customers say their needs are?

2. How do your customers talk about the products they are using? What features work or do not work for them, and what are their reasons for saying so?

3. What are their personal or professional goals, and have you met these? If not, how can you help them attain their objectives?

How to Identify Consumer Needs and Provide the Best Solutions

When you operate an online business, the basic rules remain the same as when you manage a land-based retail store. You still have an actual business, and you deal with real customers. While you may not meet these individuals personally, they have genuine needs, problems, and desires that you should meet.

After you have determined who your target customers are, you are not in the best position to define the problems they may be encountering. You can provide the right answers through the products you develop, various posts on social media, or blogs that you publish in article directories. Now, all you need to do is to know how you can identify and monitor their needs, so you can provide solutions. The following tips can help you check your customers' needs.

1. Determine your customers' pain points

Listen to your customers' pain points or problems, then identify ways to solve their concerns. When you understand what they need, you can devise the ideal product that will exceed their expectations. Word of mouth marketing is a powerful tool that can make or break your chances for success, so you should aim to receive more positive feedbacks from your customers. Monitor what they say online, and keep these details in mind when you formulate answers to these issues.

2. Find out where your clients are hanging out

Online forums and social media where your target customers hang out provide excellent sources for discovering how well you have met your customers' expectations. Through these locations, you can provide answers based on their concerns, and you can determine how well you are able to satisfy them.

3. Participate in social media groups, so you can connect with your customers

Try to join several relevant social media groups, and know the questions they are asking. Afterwards, participate in discussions so that you can give your answers. If you feel that more details are necessary, you may create a free report that offers an extensive explanation or answers to their problems. Based on the feedback that you receive, you can determine ways to please your customers. Do your best to be consistent in monitoring the level of satisfaction that you deliver through your products and services.

Bottom Line

It is essential for you to listen to what your customers expect and need so you can deliver solutions or products that will meet their standards. Moreover, this will solidify your outstanding reputation and become a driving force for long-term success. You can ensure retention in the business when you know how to pay attention to your customers.

How Can Great Content be Created

Content creation for your personal branding

Content generation and content distribution are some of the phrases that you will come across when you start building your own business. You will also often hear the term, "content is king". When you’re focusing on building great products and services, you may wonder what exactly is so important about having good content and who can create it.

You may be aware of the crucial role that a website, Facebook, and Twitter page can play in ensuring your brand’s exposure. You can enhance your brand’s ranking in search engines by adding relevant and intuitive content to your website and social media accounts. When you do that, your website will not only be a place where your customers will go to in order to see your products or services, it will also be a place where potential customers will go to for valuable information.

To illustrate the point better, let us assume that you want to buy a kayak and that you have come across a couple of different websites. In one website, you see different models of kayaks along with their prices. However, a second website has that and a blog written by the founder of the company giving beginners tips in kayaking. It also has links to some of the best kayaking destinations and videos showing helpful tips such as what to do when your kayak overturns. Though both websites provide the information you were initially looking for, the content in the second website makes it much more attractive and is more likely to gain new customers.

It is a fact that incorporating as much information as possible into your website will not provide the intended benefits. The content that you provide must have value to the visitors of your website. Here are five simple ways of finding great content for your brand:

1. Provide how-to information

You may have extensive knowledge about your products as well as your industry. However, your target audience is not likely to have the same in-depth knowledge. This presents you with an opportunity to help them. Starting with the basics, you can include information on how to do many things. To give you an example, if you are a maker of online applications, you can offer tips that your audience can understand as to how they can become successful through a distance learning program. You can make use of a blog post, a video presentation or articles to convey the information to your audience. Whatever the method that you adopt, it must be simple, light, easy to read and informative.

2. Provide inside information

Give people the feeling that they have the privilege of getting insider information when they go to your website. They will absolutely love it. The information that you add or update on a daily basis may not be exciting to you, but your audience may be looking forward to it. To give you an idea as to what you can do to give them this feeling, here is an illustration. Assume that you are at a trade show and identifying suppliers for your upcoming product. You can take a few pictures of the fair and make it available in your website. Such information sharing will not only provide greater access to your brand, but also add a human touch.

3. Have a Founder's Column

Customers often want to get to know the founders of a company better as it helps them identify better with the company. As the founder, you must have a presence on your website and contribute to your column regularly. Founder's blogs are available in the websites of many companies. The topics in these blogs include the latest information on trends in their field of operation, personal success stories, etc. This is not only an opportunity to provide unique and enticing content, but it’s also great for public relation efforts and helps build customer loyalty to your brand.

4. Facility for interaction

People like interacting with others and also the brand they adore. This is one of the major reasons why social media is so popular. It is therefore important that you have the facility for regular interactions with the audience. You can arrange for contests on a weekly basis, rope in guest bloggers and encourage your audience to share relevant videos, photos, thoughts, etc. You will have a growing community around your brand even before you realize it. You will also have a great archive of content.


5. Take charge

You may think that all the content has to be created by you. But that is not correct. You can share an article or any content related to your industry or brand that you happen to come across. You should not reproduce the articles that you see on websites without prior permission. However, you can always share a link or an excerpt. It is even better if you add your own opinion. This is a great way of making your audience know about your connections outside your business. This adds to your credibility and also helps to stay ahead of the competition.

As you strive to educate, inspire and establish a connection with your audience, you should keep in view the fact that your content is an extension of your brand. The content must be kept relevant. It is also important to ensure that words are not spelled wrong and the content is always grammatically correct. You want to give the impression that your company is professional, not careless.

Pinterest and Your Business

Some questions to consider before taking your brand to Pinterest:

1.What are some of the best ways you've seen small businesses use Pinterest?
2. Do we know if Pinners are purchasing?
3. What are some best practices.

Best Pinterest Practices for Businesses

1. Include your website, facebook page, twitter on your Pinterest profile
2. Watermark all photos
3. Put contact info on all photos
4. Highlight Your Team
5. Think Lifestyle; Not Product

Learn more about Maria Elena Duron and how she can help you use Pinterest and other social media sites to promote your personal brand or small business. For more information, you can visit Buzz2Bucks.

How to Survive as a Little Fish in a Big Pond

Use free social marketing tools for your small business

In today's economy, it seems like it might be more difficult than ever for a small business to get noticed on a large scale. The omnipresence of global corporations makes it harder and harder for small businesses to get a foothold in the marketplace. And the size of some companies allows them to offer such a wide array of products that some smaller businesses feel overwhelmed and not able to compete. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. The universality of the internet levels the playing field for businesses of all sorts, and by taking advantage of this unique marketing tool you can succeed no matter how small your business is.

1) Know your niche

A small business will not be able to compete with the diversity of products offered on Amazon.com. That is okay, but it's important that as a business owner, you recognize that and find out where you can compete with the big boys. Usually there is something you can do with the individual flair of a small business that larger companies cannot. It may be that you sell a product other companies sell, but you provide stellar customer service. Accentuate that unique aspect of your company, whatever it is. Also, use feedback from your customers to help determine what your strong points are. Then make sure that when you design your website, you emphasize those points.

2) Promote, promote, promote

This is what makes the internet the great equalizer in today's economy: free promotion. No longer do you have to spend exorbitant amounts of money on advertising, you can drum up a great deal of attention just by spreading new internet content. After you've identified your niche, promote your services through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Also, take the time to write a blog. You can include links to this on your website as well as on social media sites. Your blog can take many forms. For example, it can provide helpful hints to potential customers to assist them with buying decisions, do-it-yourself projects, etc. As long as readers find it useful and it's well-written, it will serve as good promotion for your business.

3) Pay attention to your customers

As a small business, one area that you will always be able to outperform your larger competition in will be customer service and your adaptability to customer's needs. Use your website to get feedback from your customers - about their experiences with your company, desire for future products, etc. Then, use that feedback to improve your company. This ability to quickly obtain information then utilize it to improve your product is not something a company with thousands of employees can do. They have to develop a plan for change, then slowly implement it. You can send out a few emails and get the ball rolling right away.

4) Develop a brand

One of the reasons it's difficult to compete with large companies is because they have very well-established brands. It's been proven time and time again that people prefer to buy from companies they recognize, even if they know nothing about the product that the company actually sells. While you may not be able to achieve the same saturation as a large company, it still helps to have a well-developed logo and slogan (if applicable). Invest some time into devising these things, then use social media sites to promote them. The more people see your logo, the more likely they are to buy from you.

5) Remember why you started

Sure, it sounds corny, but one thing that often separates small businesses from larger ones is that smaller companies are closer to their founding ideals. These tend to get diluted and lost as a company gets larger, so focusing on them may help you to remember what makes your product great and helps it stand out from the rest.

Succeeding as a small business in today's marketplace doesn't have to be an inordinately daunting task. Small businesses have advantages that larger companies don't, it just takes some redirection of focus to recognize them. Remember that even the largest company in the world once started off as a small business. Success for small businesses is out there for the taking, you just have to know how to look.

The Importance of Small Business Being Found Online

Take your small business online and start social marketing

With roughly one-third of the world's population having Internet access, it is inconceivable for a small business to not leverage the Internet.

However, having a presence online does not mean consumers will be able to find your business. Search engine marketing and social marketing provide a way for potential customers to locate a business and follow any information they want to share with them. Beyond being found, they are also able to read past customer reviews and evaluate their experiences. There has never been a time where a business has had such an opportunity to connect with potential customers from all around the globe.

Benefits of Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is one of the most vital aspects to connecting with customers. When someone uses a search engine to find a good or service, they will need to find your site on the first page of the results. If your business is not on the first page, 99 percent of customers will never find it. In fact, the first search result gets 36 percent of the clicks, while the next four results in the listings will not reach this number with all of their clicks combined. When someone searches for your product or service, your business must come up in the results.

Naturally coming up in the search engines is much more practical than spending money advertising on them. While advertising is a guaranteed listing and often a part of search marketing, it will cost businesses money every single time someone clicks on their ad. This is great if a large portion of clicks converts to new customers, but this is not always the case.  Many consumers are aware the highlighted items on the top and bottom of a Google search along with the items you find on the right hand side are actually paid ads.  While this can supplement low rankings, there is no better way for reaching customers than having a high ranking website.

Latest Changes and Updates

The search marketing atmosphere is constantly changing. The rise of the Internet has lured many people to the possibilities of making money online. When this happens, people will inevitably try to "game" the system and have their sites rank on the top of the search engines. This has caused search engines to alter their ranking algorithms and try to combat these unrelated or unworthy websites from taking over the results. If you’re not working with a firm that is doing things reputably or organically, you may have seen a decrease in your page ranking.

Promoting a business now starts with high quality content. If a business merely puts up a website with no content, they will not be given a good ranking. Quality content and knowing the appropriate keywords people are searching for can propel a site to the top of the search listings. Repeat customers will remember a site's name, but potential customers will be searching for a solution to their problems.

Benefits of Social Marketing

Social marketing provides a way to directly communicate with customers. If they are looking for an item on Twitter, providing them with insightful information about it may lead to a sale. However, businesses normally use social marketing to keep their past customers up-to-date with their newest products, services or deals. Some small business will even run promotions where they require people to "like" them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to participate. This draws in new customers and keeps old customers interested in the business. If someone decides to communicate with a business through a social setting, they will expect to see communications between past customers and a business. The need for high quality customer service has never been more in demand. Treating customers well online can lead to an abundance of new customers at all times. Just look at what @comcast and @zappos have done to set the bar for customer service via Twitter.

Customers are starting to expect a business to have avenues of contact online. In fact, it’s often a negative if they can’t find or interact with you online at all.

Best Practices in Using Pinterest Contests

Pinterest is fast becoming one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. According to reports, it is now the third most popular social networking site, with Facebook and Twitter ranking as first and second. This virtual pinboard is truly making waves in the online world as more and more people have been signing up. It currently boasts 11 million registered users, and many of these people are logging onto the site everyday and creating the most beautiful pinboards.

Whether you’re a business or personal brand, you should definitely pay attention to Pinterest. It’s an excellent way to engage and interact with others as you create beautiful collections and share the things that you love and that inspire you. Through creating lovely pinboards that other people enjoy, you can create a buzz that encourages a good following and can promote brand awareness.

One of the best ways to create brand buzz in Pinterest is by hosting a contest. Most people enjoy contests as they are fun and challenging, and it’s always nice to win a prize. So if you want to promote your brand in Pinterest, creating a fun contest is a good idea.

So what are the best practices in using Pinterest contests? Here are some great ideas you should consider:

     1. Create the Best Pinboard Contest

One of the most challenging and creative contests you can host on Pinterest is one that asks people to create the best pinboards. You can require them to create pinboards that include pictures of your products, as well as other items that relate or look well with the products you’re offering. Then ask them to post it on their pinboard and tag you so that their followers can see the pinboard they’ve created. This really helps in creating buzz around your brand. You can judge the winner of the contest yourself, or you can judge the winner by the number of likes and repins the pinboard has.

     2. Most Repins and Likes Contest

With this contest, you can ask your audience to repin their favorite products from your collection and then ask them to solicit votes through repins and likes. The winner of this contest is the board with the most likes and repins.

Though this is a fun contest, it can also seem a bit like spam as the people who enter your contest solicit votes using different social networking sites. But it can be very effective in promoting brand awareness as people share their boards to their network of friends.

     3. Utilize other social media platforms

You can incorporate other social networking sites to your Pinterest contest to help promote better brand awareness. Facebook and Twitter are excellent social media platforms that you can require the contestants to use. This way, even their followers who are active in other sites will be able to learn about your brand and may even start following you as well.

Some good ideas for doing this include: asking contestants to share their pinboards that they’ve created about your brand in their Facebook wall, asking them to Tweet links to their pinboard, or asking them to blog about the pinboard they’ve created.

     4. Raffling off the winner

You can also simply ask your audience to create a pinboard of your brand, share it on their Pinterest pages, and then post the link to your wall. People can only enter once, and then you draw a random winner from the list of entries. The downside of this type of contest is that it is not very engaging, but at least it gives everyone a fair chance of winning the contest.

Pinterest contests are truly an excellent way to promote brand awareness, generate great content for your feed, and get links back to your pages and site. Remember though to review the Pinterest’s user guide to ensure that you are not violating any rules by hosting your contest.

If you want to host a contest but are not sure where to start, you can also observe some of the ongoing contests at Pinterests and learn what works and what doesn’t. Watch and observe how other brands create buzz using Pinterest contests.

Truly, there’s still a world of things you can do on Pinterest to help you promote brand awareness and create brand buzz. So why not host a Pinterest contest that lets people show off their creativity and enjoy as well? The reward you offer is just a little bit of an incentive that can help you gain a slew of new followers that can translate to potential customers and clients.

Hootsuite and Your Brand

Many brands have embarked on a social media campaign in order to reach a wider audience and effectively promote brand awareness.

Of course, with so many social media accounts you need to sign up for in order to effectively promote your brand, it can be tricky to manage them all. Though you can assign different people to manage your different social accounts, it can also be very time consuming for you to have to monitor all of them to ensure that your brand campaigns are running smoothly. So is there a solution to this?

Managing your brand with Hootsuite

Hootsuite is an excellent solution to this problem. It basically gives you a social media dashboard where it integrates all your social media accounts in one convenient and easy-to-use platform. No more going from tab to tab or window to window in your browser – with Hootsuite, everything is neatly organized in one screen, so you can easily monitor your accounts, post updates, and track the progress of your campaign in one platform.

Hootsuite makes it easy for you to encourage brand awareness since everything is laid out for you in the dashboard. If you want to post the same content to your different accounts, you can easily do that within Hootsuite, saving you time and effort. And you can even schedule posts, which is an excellent feature you can use whenever you plan to be away but want to continue promoting your brand.

Hootsuite is also an excellent choice for brand monitoring. Some great Google Analytics features are built into the platform, so you can easily measure and share the results of your campaign without having to leave the dashboard. You can measure the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns, see page view statistics reports so you can see which content your audience likes, view regional traffic so you can target the locals, and even learn which channels are the best performers in terms of traffic for your brand, so you know where to focus.

Another excellent feature that Hootsuite has is the ability to shorten urls so that you can monitor whether your links are getting clicked or not. This is an excellent way to measure brand awareness and see if your call to action is effective or not.

The ability to create custom search streams also helps you monitor brand mentions so that you never miss an opportunity to engage with your audience. You can monitor mentions of your brand, keywords, competitor names, and a lot more. This enables you to gain insights on what people are searching for and talking about.

Truly, you will soon find that Hootsuite is an essential tool for brand monitoring and promoting brand awareness. Best of all is the fact that the tool is very affordable – you can actually get started on using Hootsuite to manage your brand for free. But if you want to add other team members as well as get more comprehensive reports, the pro plans start at only $5.99/month.

Does Your Picture Really Capture Your Brand?

Social media can help our brand make a good impression if we do it right. Part of making a good impression is choosing the right profile picture for our accounts. When people visit our profiles, the first thing that they notice is our picture. This picture can either lure them to know more about us or simply close the window and move on.

Profile pictures matter because it should reflect who we are and people are likely to be drawn to our profiles when we have the right picture there. According to a study on Facebook, the most clicked part of a Facebook page is the profile picture. When our audience goes on our page and clicks on our picture, we want to make an impression that is aligned to our brand. How do we know it’s the right picture for our brand?

Here are some tips on how you can do it right.

Smile – when you are smiling in your profile picture, your audience will get the impression of happiness. It could give a pitch that says you are happy and they will be too with your brand. It could also lead to better social relationships because your audience sees that you are approachable.

Body language is one way for people to read you. People can either see you as open or closed just by how you pose. For example, folded arms and closed hands mean that you are not open. A trick to show openness to your audience is to open your mouth a bit when you smile.

Babies, cartoons and pets – because you are using social media for your business, it’s best to avoid using pictures of anyone but you. Don’t use your baby’s picture, your pets or a cartoon version of yourself because there’s a big possibility that your audience will not take you seriously.

No logos – using your brand logo may seem like a great idea but people are more drawn to connect with people than logos. So avoid using your brand logo as your profile picture. However, you can try to include your brand logo in your picture like wear your brand’s color, use it as a background, mini-logo in the corner, or portray your brand.

Same applies to QR codes. QR codes are good for your website if you want to direct others to your content but it’s not going to work as a profile picture. You want people to remember your face as a brand and not as a QR code.

Stand out with bright backgrounds – personal branding is about standing out from the rest and one way to do that is to use bright backgrounds. Try experimenting with different bright colors and see which ones look good and effective for your brand. Rand Fishkin, founder of SEOmoz and web research mastermind did exactly this and said that orange works well for him and earned him more Twitter followers compared to other colors.

Where you look and what it means – looking straight to the camera will look like you are making direct eye contact with your audience. It seems like you are talking to them and that they have your full attention. It’s a good way to make direct contact with your audience.

Studies also show that your audience will look at the area where you’re facing in your picture. If your face is looking to the right, your audience will look at that area. It’s the same if you are looking to your left, up or down. You can strategically look at your left if you want an audience you go through your tweets.

Stick with your picture for long periods – part of being consistent is to keep your profile picture on for months at a time. Changing it every week or every month will only confuse your audience. You have to give it some time for your image to stick before changing it. Some are even dependent on profile pictures. They search for the image instead of looking for the name because it is easier to remember.

There are different ways on how to make our profile pictures work for our brand. Think about your brand and your goals, and then capture that image you want your audience to see. Once you have an idea, hire a professional photographer to take your photos.  It’s a good investment.  You only have one time to make a good first impression.