So success in our social media strategies is not contingent upon money or staff. Many have succeeded without either of the above.

One of the main challenges social media staff face is get their colleagues and bosses to come on board with them. To give them the support and encouragement they need to make their efforts count. There are so many conflicting forces at work within an organisation, that politics and human nature can provide formidable stumbling blocks.

You, as the new kid on the block, may threaten the long-standing budgets of the marketing department or corporate communications, or of IT, depending upon how your company makes its budgeting decisions.

And what if your early efforts show signs of working? It may result in you making some of your colleagues look bad. They may get resentful of your success.

Your top priority as the in-house social media expert is to educate your colleagues and bosses. Your company, possibly for the first time in it’s history, now has to be open, transparent and communicative. Some of the older members will need to be convinced! This will take time, patience, and also some useful metrics that show how your efforts are working. The key thing to remember is that if “it’s not well understood, it’s not going to be well-funded! “

The Adwords system is completely user-centric, whether you are someone typing in a search query, or a company looking to sell more of a product or service. It is all about relevance. Ads show that satisfy the user’s search query most effectively, and the company benefits because they know that the click, for which they have just paid, is a very qualified lead.

From a company perspective, Adwords can be much cheaper than employing a full-time sales team; with all the fixed overheads that come with that. You can measure exactly how much profit each sale generates (ROI) via a suite of measuring tools that Google offers to its advertisers for free.

How much did it cost to acquire each new customer? You can think about the margin you are looking to make on each sale, and then control the budget you spend on trying to acquire that sale via the Google Adwords/ PPC method. You are in complete control of your budget and who you are trying to target. And in conjunction with Google’s measuring tools, you can always look to improve your ROI.

By constantly tweaking your keywords and ad text, you will improve your sales and profit. A free keyword tool from Google, even does a lot of the leg work for you!

Google Adwords works. Our own clients can testify to this. We have increased their sales significantly over the past couple of years. And with complete control over the costs attached to marketing via Adwords, there are no hidden risks.

As a brand you are being forced into new domains where you have to earn your footing.  Mercedes Benz Facebook page went from 1000-500,000 fans in 12 months. And then from 500,000 to 1m fans in just 8 weeks. They now have well in excess of 2 million fans. And furthermore, they achieved this without spending a single $ in buying any of these fans through Facebook Ads.

So what does this tell us? We don’t need a huge budget. Fans and followers are not bought. We as brands need to earn their loyalty. And this is as applicable to a global brand as a local florist for example.

Mercedes-Benz achieved this by finding out where their customers and prospects are, by LISTENING, and then creating platforms for people to share their stories. People are giving the freedom express the difference the brand has made in their lives. They have not pushed generic marketing messages to a disinterested audience. In fact, they have done the exact opposite.

This is investing in the growth of communities. Enabling conversations that take place in real life to move into the social media space. Your social media space. Provide the platforms for people to share their experiences and you will engage with your customers in a much more meaningful way.

They can recommend content about a brand, share offers, leave testimonials and such like. They can share their location, so brands can target them via area, or they share information about their purchases. Understanding what drives the social consumer is the key to growth for brands in social media.

Research carried out at the recent Pivot Conference indicates that many leading brands, plan to increase their social media efforts considerably. Many brands suggested that their social media strategies have been a success in terms of ROI.

An engaged and participative “social” consumer really represents a potential gold mine for brands. They can advocate your brand to their friends on your behalf. Give them a positive experience and a reason to share, and you will growing a very powerful sales force. You know yourself..if a friend recommends something, the chance of you acting upon it, is much greater.

And this is what brands are banking on in social media. Watch this space. If it works for the leading brands, there is no reason why it won’t work for you..the same principles apply.

Even with a resurgence in CEO and PR credibility, Google is still the source which people rely on most for information about corporations. With transparency and authenticity, the main buzzwords now, companies need to spread their message far and wide. Search engines remain the first port of call for information hungry minds.So companies have to inform their audience in different ways. Trusting in the new ways, will enhance your reputation among the online audience.

Conversation: Dialogue. PR:Monologue.

So PR and communications have to evolve to be effective. An official spokesperson is fine by all means, but as, Sally Falkow points out, don’t expect that to satisfy your audience. People are out there talking about your company (or your clients in the case of a PR agency). They want a conversation with an employee, a human being within an organisation.

Dell – their success speaks for itself

Dell take social media seriously. There is a rumour going around that they make $25,000 per tweet. Using Twitter as a means of clearing stock to a loyal bargain-hungry following has been perfected by Dell. So, it is no surprise to hear that Dell have just put 5000 employees through rigorous social media training. They know it works. Fortune has favoured the brave in this instance. Now they want more.

Listening increases trust

So take the time to find your customers and prospects, and start talking to them. Bring down the corporate walls, and show that there are humans operating inside that building. What will this achieve?

The benefits of Listening

• Clients will tell you what they want.
• They will “advocate” your brand for free.
• They will assist in your R&D. Customer involvement in developing your products is priceless. Don’t listen to Mastercard!

So what to do next?

• Get you and your team some social media training..fast. They are your best communicators, and you are not even using them.
• SEO and SEM are more important than ever..get your corporate news as highly ranked as possible.
• Provide social features on all areas of your website and social media platforms. Let people find your news easily and simple to share.

SEO is the art of making sure your site makes the front page of search results, regardless of the search engine. If you want to be found for computer repair in Birmingham then you need to make sure you’ve done enough small business SEO to be found by Brummies with broken computers. You’re not worried about people in Leicester for example. They’re not going to be your customers, so there’s no reason in trying to reach them. This is where local search becomes more important.

Some small business SEO experts will tell you that keyword advertising and pay-per-click is the best way to go. However, depending on your industry and search terms, that can either be a shot in the dark or an expensive form of marketing. Before you give that a try, there are plenty of affordable search engine optimization strategies that exist for small business people.

Achieving your own small business SEO: When you’re just starting out, you may not have the budget to hire a small business SEO firm. So hopefully you have plenty of time. It’s actually fairly easy to manage the basics. For instance, when you produce your website, make sure you follow proper search engine optimization techniques — using proper keywords in page titles, sub-heads, and throughout body text — and build backlinks by leaving comments on various blogs and websites.

We should be prepared to spend a few hours each day on building backlinks. While many of us don’t have the time to spend a few hours doing this, it’s still important to put some time into it. Even if you only allow yourself enough time to put in three comments a day, you’ll have 100 backlinks within five weeks, which can greatly boost your small business SEO.

When is it time to hire a small business SEO professional? Eventually you will reach the point where you just don’t have time to put into your small business SEO. The time you took to submit those three comments, or the two hours you had been allowing yourself are now being taken up with other marketing, selling, meetings, fulfilling orders, and completing projects. You know your small business SEO is important, but you just haven’t had time for the last several weeks.

This is the time to start looking for a small business SEO professional. Presumably when you’re out of time to do it, you’re also reaching a success plateau which you’ll have a hard time moving off of if you can’t devote the time to your optimization efforts. A small business SEO professional will not only devote the time that you don’t have anymore, but they have been able to keep up with the latest developments in the technology and techniques. They’re reading the latest articles, they’re using the latest tools.

If you try to catch up, you could have a small learning curve you have to overcome before you’re ready to start your small business SEO efforts. And if this is something you continue to put off, you’ll either have a bigger curve later, or you’ll eventually start to slide back off the front page.

Hiring a small business SEO professional allows you to stay focused on those activities that make you money, rather than the ones that will detract from them.

Search engine optimization is going to be crucial if you’re trying to build your online brand, and attract local customers. While you can do most of the work yourself, you ideally want to get to the point in your business growth that you need to hire a professional to handle it for you. Regardless of what you do, small business SEO is going to be important enough to you that don’t want to ignore it.

With 10 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, we can offer affordable solution for you to develop your brand online. We have two Google Adwords professionals in-house, and know how to drive sales through SEO. We have done it for our own sites!

All these basically come under the broad category of social commerce which is a system to connect clients to each other through the internet; and then subsequently these connections are leveraged in a commercial sense. There are defined Social Commerce Tools that are accountable for social commerce.

Basically, what social commerce does is  ease communication between consumers and uses their interaction for commercial benefits via a programme which lures buyers to purchase using its various operations. Promoters of social commerce devise clever messages to impress people and uses multiple platforms such as social websites, blogs and forums to let people know much more about the business, its products and features.

Then the marketing guru sees to it that enough interaction between the members takes place about the product and for this he makes use of reviews, ratings, contests and many other kinds of promotions.

The next step is to make a comprehensive analysis of the emerging trends as a result of all the public interaction. Their need is met by offering services, goods and promotions to them. Doing this exercise often along with market measurement are two essential means to learn the ROI of the programs. But a marketer is much more focused on loyalty, client satisfaction, and conversion than mere sales because these are factors contributing to more business on the time scale.

As Facebook carries  huge traffic, programmes like Social Media Commerce or Social Commerce are already being used by these marketing gurus. The social marketers put content on their websites via company blogs, ratings and reviews. The findings from social marketing are combined with larger programmes like in-store, direct marketing and mobile by using social commerce tools which assist in achieving the main goal which  is growth in sales.

It would be sufficient to say that these social sellers must make use of these important social commerce tools to have the results they are looking for. What the marketers should do initially is to collect content by getting consumers to express their opinions about the standard of products of the company. These opinions are significant as they greatly affect the sales of the company. There are social marketing programmes on Facebook like Facebook Social Commerce Applications and Social Facebook Commerce Platforms through which the public opinion is implemented.

Then this customer feedback is leveraged in various marketing strategies. If there are any positive comments concerning the company’s products, optimum use of them is made in all the promotional strategies such as leaflets, advertisements, signboards and even e-mails to impress upon the customers.

Thus, Social Commerce Tools offer successful strategies to achieve core competence in traditional marketing initiatives through case studies, tested practices and a business approach which is progressive and positive.

The key to turning your business into a social media marketing success is focusing on the fundamentals that already make your business great, and enabling your customers to spread the word about your exceptional products or services.

Here is a 5-step plan for linking your customers’ experience to the power of their endorsement, which will, in turn, bring more customers to your business:

1. Start with exceptional service.

Though providing your customers with positive, memorable experiences may seem an obvious suggestion, the importance of this first step cannot be understated. Whatever inspired you to first open your doors (or whichever services set you apart from your competition today) is what you need to focus on in every customer interaction you have.

When you’re firing on all cylinders and giving your patrons a top-notch experience, you’re turning casual customers into passionate ones. For better or for worse, these are the types of people who are most likely to spread the word about your business to their friends and colleagues. And for any social media marketing campaign to take off, you need to have all-out fans willing to evangelize your brand and the great experiences they’ve had with it.

2. Engage your customers with interesting content.

Great service is a first step in building a passionate fan base, but the next step involves extending the experience outside your four walls. E-mail marketing helps you reach your passionate customers when they are not in your store by sharing news, tips and other information through periodic communications.

The benefits of e-mail marketing go beyond simply keeping your customers informed. The basic act of asking for an e-mail address strengthens the bond between your business and your customers because they are entrusting you with a piece of their personal information. And while an e-mail address may seem like a tiny detail, when someone gives it to a business, that proves the business is a trusted contact that the person would like to engage with on a deeper level. In addition, e-mail newsletters are easily (and often) forwarded to and shared with friends, so this a simple first step towards leveraging your customers’ contacts, if they choose to forward along your messages.

3. Help your passionate customers spread the word.

Forwarding an e-mail newsletter is still a great way for your customers to spread the word about your company, but social media marketing provides a lot of other ways, too. For example, archive your e-mail newsletter content online. This will allow you to post the newsletter as links on various social networking sites around the Web.

4. Turn casual acquaintances into passionate customers.

Sharing information with friends is the very nature of social media marketing, so using this channel to engage your most passionate customers will quickly increase awareness in your business among their contacts. This is why providing content to your most passionate customers is so important: Give them something worthwhile to talk about, and they will gladly share it with their friends. Some examples of items your business could post include:

• Details on new products, or changes to existing offerings
• Specials, deals, discounts and coupons
• News on upcoming events
• Information about community functions your business may be participating in
• Offers, prizes, rewards and contests

As the word spreads about your news, more customers will connect with your business via social media. In fact, customers are more likely to connect via social media than they are through e-mail marketing — but don’t let that discourage you. E-mail subscribers are more engaged because they interact through their inbox, which means they’ll be alerted when your message arrives, while social media contacts get distracted more easily. Social media is very popular right now, but remember that its users tend to be more like casual acquaintances in comparison to the passionate customers that e-mail marketing provides.

5. Keep the “virtuous circle” going.

If the ultimate goal is to convert as many people into passionate customers as possible, then it all comes back to providing a great customer experience. Use social media marketing to lure customers into your business, where you can wow them with the kind of exceptional service they heard about from their contacts. And if these new customers heard about your business via social media, try to get them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter while they’re there. When they do, you’ll know you’ve found another passionate customer, and your efforts will spin onward to their friends.

This creates a virtuous circle that will continue to build buzz and generate followers for your business with every new newsletter and great customer experience you produce.

Clients begin by telling Lab42 about their products and their target consumers. Lab42 then helps to craft a survey, with the option of focusing it based on gender, age, location, lifestyle and interests. Next, Lab42 takes the resulting survey to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and smaller niche social networks, using highly targeted incentives to garner attention and responses while consumers go about their day-to-day activities. Two packages are available from Lab42: a premium one for $ 500, with results in three days or less; and a preliminary one for$ 300, with results in 5 days or less. Custom arrangements are also possible.

It’s always refreshing to see services that have traditionally been performed slowly and expensively rethought and remade to reflect new technologies and new societal shifts. Perhaps this is one to try out when researching your next big thing…? Early feedback suggest that people enjoy giving their opinions and can share these with their friends, thus providing you with potential real-time feedback.