By now you probably have figured out if you want to improve awareness around your brand, you will need to have a social media presence. Whether you have a brick and mortar business or an e-commerce site, there is a lot of competition out there, and social media offers a great way to differentiate and establish your own brand identity.

Small business owners have a lot to deal with, and social media may be the last thing on their list–if it is on there at all. Employees can contribute by making a post here and there, sharing a post or asking friends to follow your business pages. But will this be enough to grow your online presence?

If you simply don’t have the time or the skills to properly promote your business via social media, you may want to consider looking into hiring a company that specializes in social media management. But how do you do that?

Read on to learn more about how to pick the right social media packages for your business!

1. Evaluate Your Business Needs

Consultations for social media management packages need to come with an evaluation of your business to determine your needs. Not every social media platform is right for every business. Having a business page on a platform that does not appeal to your target audience is a waste of time and resources.

A quality social media manager will be familiar with all primary platforms. Too often people specialize in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest, without having the understand of how and when to pursue each platform. It is important that your social media team is able to gauge the social media habits of your current customer base.

2. Are There Multi-Level Platforms for Social Media Packages?

Pricing is always at the forefront of any business transaction. Don’t let the fear of how much it will cost scare you. Hiring someone to handle your business social media marketing may not cost as much as you think.

Having the flexibility to tailor your package to the specific needs of your business is important. Social media marketing is not a one size fits all situation. You want to ensure that you are not paying for services you do not need.

The option to choose which platforms, posting frequency and more is key to choosing the right social media strategy. There will also be specific tasks that should be considered to get the best bang for your buck.

Social media management packages should also come with the option to pick and choose the services you want to create the experience you desire.

3. Posting, Sharing, and Interaction

The basis of social media marketing services is to take the brunt of social media interactions from the plate of business owners. When looking to outsource these services it is necessary to be clear on your expectations.

As mentioned, outlining posting frequency and strategy is key. Make sure you this is well defined before engaging with any social media management company.

When it comes to interactions, you will need to be extremely clear as to what this should look like. Interactions include liking a comment, responding to a comment and answering specific questions.

The person running your accounts needs to be personable to facilitate engagement with your audience.

Make sure your social media package includes campaign monitoring and engagement, unless you would prefer to manage that yourself.

4. Customer Service

More and more we are seeing consumers turn to social media pages in search of answers to their questions or to find a solution to a problem. Part of this surge is the integration of new interactive capabilities for social media business channels.

Will you want the social media management provider to offer customer service duties or will these questions or posts be directed to someone on your staff?

It is one thing for someone to send a direct message to a company and have someone internally monitor the messages and respond to the customer. It is a different ballgame when people are posting negative reviews or posing questions in the comments field.

Knowing how these will be handled ahead of time is crucial to your business online presence. It also allows you to have prepared responses available.

5. Analytics

Any social media site that offers business platforms most likely has some form of analytics and insights reporting. It is important to know if the person handling your social media can retrieve the data and decipher the information.

You will want someone who can understand what the numbers mean and how to use it to plan for future marketing strategies. It is also a good thing for you to understand it as well. This way you know if the work being done is useful.

Analytics can tell you a lot about your social media presence on particular sites. Having Google Analytics will be a greater measurement of whether the strategy is driving traffic back to your company website or crossing over to other platforms. For example, are users sharing your Facebook content on Twitter and vice versa?

Your analytics will also be able to narrow down the demographics of your users and the range of your audience.

6. SEO Services

Do social media marketing services packages include SEO services? If not, they should. A big part of having social media channels is to drive traffic back to your website for lead conversion.

If the ultimate goal isn’t to close the deal on your product or service, then you should be questioning why you’re spending the money.

SEO services and social media marketing are able to intertwine to the power of your website. The company you use should understand SEO in addition to being social media experts.

They should understand that keywords are at the heart of all algorithms. Certain topics will always garner organic traffic, and people are drawn to photos and images. All of this should be considered as part of a strong social media marketing strategy.

A social media marketing firm may not include SEO within their social media packages, but they may offer SEO services. Don’t be afraid to ask about multiple service discounts.

7. Social Media Ads

The ability to promote your business, products or services is vital to the success of your social media presence as a business. Unless you are a big brand with name recognition, you will need a little help in the beginning.

Social ads are often included as part of a good marketing plan, so make sure you discuss this as part of your social media marketing package. You also will want to discuss who will be responsible for creating the ads and developing the rules for when and how they will run.

Payments for ads are drawn from a banking method associated with the social media account. Setting a monthly budget will be wise.

Also understand, each social media platform comes with its own set up, pricing, analytics and guidelines. The secret to successful social media ads is to know what you’re doing or hire someone who does. If not, you can waste a lot of money in a hurry by purchasing ads.

8. Social Media Content Creation

By now you know there is a lot to consider when shopping for social media marketing services packages. But it doesn’t stop with the previous tips. If hiring a social media specialist to manage your channels, you have to be mindful of the content that will be going out under your brand.

With the popularity of sites like Instagram and Pinterest, images and video have become must-haves for every social media marketing campaign. You will have to decide if you are okay with stock images or if you want a personal touch that reflects the true essence of your business.

To provide authentic engagement, you will want a true representation of your brand. Let your social media specialist know your desires and together work to make it happen.

9. Brand Awareness

At the center of all online marketing is your brand. Your brand is how people see your business and what is associated with it. For this reason alone, selecting a social media marketing package that speaks to your core beliefs is needed.

Attracting the right followers who are interested in your product or service is your goal for expanding your reach. You want a provider that is committed to getting those followers to your platforms. You don’t want a company that will tarnish your brand by buying followers or engaging in other gimmicky behavior.

You are paying for professionalism, quality service, and their expertise. A successful social media management package will give you all of this. The return on your investment will be seen in a rise in your brand awareness.

If your company does not see any tangible proof that your brand identity has grown, you may be using the wrong provider.

Ready to Step Up Your Social Media Marketing Game?

Not all social media packages are created equal. Anyone can claim to be a social media specialist. But without proof of proven success, they can’t be taken seriously.

If you’re looking for the perfect social media package for your business, reach out to our team of social media experts.

Click here to contact us for more information on how we can go to work for you!

The post Social Media Packages: How to Choose the Right One appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Instagram is one of the most powerful social media platforms for marketers today. By the end of 2017, businesses are expected to buy over $4 billion worth of ads on the platform.

You should be buying Instagram ads. But there are plenty of ways to use Instagram as a marketing platform that don’t involve making a purchase.

Instagram SEO is an incredibly effective marketing technique. But it needs to be done properly. If you want to profit off of your Instagram presence, you should follow these tips.

How Many Hashtags Should You Use?

This may seem like an obvious one. But it isn’t as simple as people think.

The truth is, there’s no clear roadmap for how many hashtags you should use on Instagram. Instead, ask yourself which hashtags you should use for your strategy.

Using unpopular hashtags can be a total waste of time. Comparatively, a few well-chosen hashtags can give you a massive base of potential customers.

So, just like with regular SEO, Instagram SEO requires strong keyword research. If you want to do some research, you should look into tools like Websta.

Websta displays the top 100 hashtags on Instagram. You can narrow them down by a variety of categories, such as location. This will help you to reach the customers you want.

You can also look at what the most influential accounts are doing. Instagram Influencers, celebrities, comedians, and models can all be analyzed. This way, you can learn more about what you should do with your own strategy.

Should You Use Ads?

Instagram Ads are an incredibly effective way to reach customers. That being said, you shouldn’t use them to the exclusion of organic content.

They’re an amazing tool. Particularly since Facebook brought Instagram, you’re now able to analyze the demographic appeal of your ads to find your ideal audience.

That being said, there’s an emotional connection that you can only get from making a natural post. So, use advertisements. Just don’t make them the entirety of your strategy. They’re also not a substitute for good Instagram SEO.

Social media ads can be a great thing. No digital marketing teams or consultants worth their salt will ever tell you to completely forgo PPC or purchased advertising strategies.

Just don’t make them the basis of your Instagram presence, and you’ll find some absolutely incredible success.

What Should Your CTA Look Like?

A good CTA (call to action) is essential to any advertisement. But a CTA on Instagram is a lot different than a CTA on your website or in a printed advertisement.

To make things even more confusing, the CTA that you use on different types of Instagram ads can vary greatly. Having a good CTA strategy can be just as important as having a good Instagram SEO strategy. In fact, it can be even more important.

What’s the value of getting a post viewed if views don’t translate into money?

If your post is aimed solely towards generating brand awareness, you should encourage people to like and share the post.

Simply telling people to do those things can be incredibly effective. In fact, you can create brand evangelists out of typical viewers through this technique. That being said, there are strategies that go beyond user engagement.

If you want to advertise a sale or other event that requires people to make an order or be physically present, don’t be afraid of making a proper sales pitch. Telling people to make a purchase or a visit can be incredibly important for your business.

Your CTA strategy is dependent upon your goals for a specific post. So, make sure you think it out so you can turn clicks into cash!

How Can You See If My Strategy Works?

You can have an incredibly well-planned strategy. But if you want to succeed, you need to know that it’s working. One of the best ways to do that? Start by using the variety of business tools Instagram offers customers.

There are a few pieces of information you can get by using Instagram Insights. At the most basic level, this includes:

• Impressions (views for your posts and stories)
• Reach (views by unique accounts)
• Website clicks (the number of clicks you have on each link)
• Profile views (measured in unique visitors)

On top of this, you can get a demographic breakdown of your viewers. That includes location, gender, and age. This information can be incredibly important to your Instagram SEO strategy.

If you know your products are most profitable among 25-year-old women on the West Coast? Well then, you want those women to see your posts — instead of 54-year-old men from Alaska.

This is particularly important for companies with physical stores. If you have a limited shipping or sales range, it will not be helpful for you to get a lot of clicks from eople outside of that area.

Make sure you take advantage of these insight tools if you want to successfully market on Instagram. Knowing who your customers are, and where they are, is essential.

Who Should I Hire For My Instagram SEO?

An Instagram SEO strategy is incredibly complicated and important. If you want to make it profitable, you need to hire the best digital marketing team for your Instagram presence.

Our SEO and digital marketing team is incredibly capable and experienced. We have a passion for helping businesses succeed online.

We want to help you.

One look at our portfolio reveals the great number of successful ideas behind our marketing philosophy. When you work with us, you can add yourself to the parade of businesses who have found success by our side.

If you want to take your digital presence to the next level, you absolutely need to get in touch with us.

Contact us to start making money today!

The post How Many Hashtags Should I Use? Instagram SEO for Beginners appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Over 80% of marketers say that they use Facebook to help to generate leads and beef up their content strategy.

In fact, in a single year, the number of brands using Facebook to advertise their products/services has grown by about 50%. 

But how can you use social ads on Facebook to generate valuable leads?

Read this guide to find out!

How Do Social Ads Work?

Basically, Facebook ads take the guesswork out of finding your target market on social media.

After your brand provides Facebook with some information about your company, your mission, and what you sell or offer, Facebook finds users they know will be interested in what you’re all about.

Then, an ad will show up in the “news feed” of your new potential customers. These ads are a much more targeted way to get new clients than traditional digital marketing methods. You’re playing to your niche, not the whole world.

Usually, these ads will feature a special offer (like a discount or a free gift with purchase) created by your brand to entice customers. Then, the Facebook user can essentially “sign up” to get the offer. This means you’ve got a quality lead.

How To Make The Most Of These Facebook Ads

Of course, as social media users are exposed to more and more ads every day, you need to work hard to ensure that yours stand out from the competition.

Start by selecting a wider age range when you’re asked to name your target demographic.

First, doing this will these lead to more clicks to your site, which will ultimately boost your site in the Google rankings. But it will also allow you to “test out” the interest of a wider age range before you totally overhaul your marketing plan to cater to them.

You can also get more specific about the exact interests of your target market through a new Facebook ad feature called “Detailed Marketing.”

This new feature lets you set the required interests of the Facebook users who will see their products in their news feeds.

As opposed to a broader set of interests that possibly fit with your branding, you can get specific about the exact interests you know your target market has.

For example, if you’re a natural beauty company, instead of just “cosmetics,” you may be able to say something like “natural beauty products.”

Doing this won’t just increase your conversions, it will also ensure that you’re spending your advertising money the right way on social media.

You’re Ready To Get The Most Out Of Social Ads

The reality is that Facebook, and other social media platforms, are some of the most important tools when it comes to reaching new customers and keeping past ones coming back.

No matter the economic climate, your business can use digital marketing, content, and social media strategies to thrive.

Ready to get started on making this your most productive quarter ever?

Get in touch with us to learn more about the services we offer that will get you more hits, higher rankings, and unreal profits.

The post Social Ads: How to Generate Real Leads on Facebook appeared first on Midas Marketing.

How to Use Snapchat Marketing for Business

People are starting to become more aware of Snapchat, but often dismiss it as “just another app.” Maybe you’ve heard of it, but don’t really know anything about what purpose it actually serves, especially concerning Snapchat marketing for business. In this article, we’d like to challenge that thinking. As a business, the faster you get into this ecosystem, the more market share you’ll find, as Snapchat has been dubbed as the next big thing on the social media platform. Specifically, it offers unique and valuable opportunities for businesses that other social networks can’t deliver. With more than 100 million active users, 9000 snaps being sent every second and more than 80% of its users in the age group of 13-25, the possibilities are immense.

If your business involves anything trendy, youthful or related to pop culture in any way, you’ll want to start engaging a Snapchat marketing strategy.

Why Snapchat?

It’s highly relational, raw, and effective at capturing undivided attention. The fact that snaps disappear after they’re viewed might sound like a marketing disaster at first, but this actually works in the favor of a thoughtful business or influencer. In an age of endless scrolling and skimming across other social networks, Snapchat engages the viewer wholeheartedly while they watch your snap since they know they won’t be able to view it again. In that 5-10 second time span, your brand can make an indelible mark on your audience.

Snapchat Strategies for Business

Run Teaser Campaigns
You’ve probably seen the power of teaser ad campaigns in television commercials as advertisers have used it for effectively introducing new products and services for decades. With Snapchat, you can run similar teaser campaigns to highlight a new product with a series of teasers, culminating into the final ad campaign. This generates curiosity in the minds of your market and keeps them hungry for the next snap (and ultimately, your product).

Real-Time Marketing
Real-time marketing is the next big thing that businesses are pursuing. While Facebook and Twitter have somewhat engaged this opportunity, Snapchat takes it to a new level altogether. For example, if you are launching a product or participating in a large industry tradeshow, Snapchat enables you to keep messaging the latest pictures and videos to your audience in real-time, adding an exciting angle to your messaging.

Offering Deals & Discounts
Unlike other social media platforms, every post in Snapchat is available for a set time limit. An individual snap has a time limit of 1 to 10 seconds, or you can use the “story” (public update) feature to make a snap available to all your followers for 24 hours. This creates a sense of urgency for your followers, which can guide buying behaviour significantly.

Resolve Customer Problems
Quality customer service is one of the best ways to earn loyalty and increase your brand value in the minds of your existing customers. As a business, you often come across questions about how to use your products, fix problems, and more. Snapchat offers a private, real-time communication platform to engage customers through video, pictures and chat depending on the nature of the problem.

Want to talk Snapchat marketing for business? Contact us and we’ll help you determine if your business is a good fit.

The post Snapchat Marketing for Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business

Try imagining yourself standing in a shoe store and trying to figure out what type of shoes you’ll need for your upcoming trip to the beautiful Alps. If the salesman tries selling you sandals, ballet shoes, stilettos, or even sneakers, would you be interested? No. You would be waiting for him to come up with a pair of boots. It’s a no-brainer.

Take the same situation to your online business. You may have social media accounts running, but if you don’t know what types of customers are using what types of social networks, you may end up disengaging and even frustrating them. In a social network where people are looking to make professional connections, sending updates with photos of food will cause your posts to be ignored. Similarly, if you are posting heavy research-based content on a platform where people like to share travel and lifestyles photos, you will find the same empty void.

Just like shoes have different purposes and different suitability, various social media channels also have different kinds of audiences, motives, expectations of those audiences, and even technical dynamics. If you want to run a successful marketing campaign on social media, you need to understand which of these social media channels would suit your audience.

The Social Media Landscape

Social media is continuously evolving—major players are trying new things and incorporating features to win the market, while new platforms are emerging also, bringing revolutionary concepts to the industry. The first thing to know is that there’s no shortcut here. You need to commit to personally staying up-to-date on social marketing trends, or working with a team that you trust to get the job done for you.

How to Determine Which Social Platforms to Use

As a marketer or a business owner, you may feel the urge to be present on the maximum number of social media channels you can handle. However, quality is better than quantity. Strategically select a few and really concentrate on them until you get results. If you dive into one network and aren’t getting the engagement you’re looking for, consider mixing up the strategy. But just being present everywhere is no longer enough, and will likely not lead to many new sales or clients.

Let’s look into some finer aspects of choosing the right social media networks for your business:

1.Target your Customer Demographic

For starters, you need to determine what type of audience you are targeting. For instance, if you have followers on Twitter, it does not necessarily mean you have an audience willing to spend their money with you. If you are selling T-shirts and you use LinkedIn, that’s pretty much a waste of time. Keep in mind that you don’t want to just have followers, but you want to be followed by the people who are or will become leads, customers, and ultimately brand ambassadors.  In social media, a following is only as good as the way they are nurtured and engaged.

Golf is a very visually appealing sport, meaning Instagram is a good network for companies in this arena to hone in on.

2. Industry

It is wise to be listed on these big four social platforms – LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter and Facebook. However, you should also study your industry and learn its reach. For instance, if you sell video services, you should definitely be present on YouTube and Vimeo while also considering Pinterest and Instagram to drive hits to your videos and your website.

Here is a breakdown of the best uses of each top social platform based on the industry:

• Facebook: The best network for huge traffic, quick buzz and targeted advertising using Facebook Ads.
• Pinterest: Perfect for health & beauty, fashion and food brands.
• Twitter: Best for connecting with influencers and clever content.
• LinkedIn: The single best network for B2B companies and company news.
• Instagram: The right social platform for brands that offer physical goods.
• YouTube: YouTube marketing is the smart choice in many industries, starting from automotive up to marketing and SEO services.

3. Business Size

Lastly, the size of your business should guide your decision on how to engage each social network. If you have a small business, you might want to use the free tools of each social network but if your business can afford to spend on paid marketing, you can capitalize on paid features of many of the social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and even YouTube Ads. Twitter and Instagram are known for reaching new customers through (free) hashtag strategies, whereas Facebook is building a strong targeted advertising platform.

There’s no magic formula for figuring out the right networks to utilize for each business, but there are pretty strong suggestions available. Do your research, try things out, and ask your current customers which networks they are on the most. Choosing the right social media networks can be challenging, but we are also happy to help you brainstorm strategies (at no cost). Just visit our contact us page. Good luck!

The post Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business appeared first on Midas Marketing.

Marketing with Hashtags

The hashtag (#) is a powerful symbol in social media—and knowing how and when to use it can help you deliver wildly successful hashtag marketing campaigns by gaining followers and converting them into customers, subscribers and brand ambassadors. On Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, the hashtag allows a user to join conversations, weigh in on current events, express solidarity with others, and gain new customers with carefully placed phrases that are highlighted by the “#” symbol. Let’s take a look.

The Origin of the Hashtag

The “hash mark” or “pound sign” is also called a “number sign.” Its early use in the realm of technology occurred in the 1970s by programmers who wanted to draw attention to a specific line of code. Fast-forward to 2007, when Twitter user Chris Messina (@FactoryJoe on Twitter) proposed the hashtag for groups. The rest, you might say, is #history.

Hashtags and Trending

Twitter hashtags have taken on a life of their own—serving as bookmarks that anyone can use to find a set of tweets about a specific topic. On any given day (or at any given hour), topics that get a very large number of tweets—usually with a hashtag—rise above the millions of tweets to the coveted “trending” spot on Twitter’s home page. Some examples of topics that reach the trending spot include holidays (#HappyNewYear) and sporting events (#WorldCup). Current events—both local and on a worldwide scale—often rise quickly and are assigned one or more hashtags. The least predictable hashtags can gain momentum quickly. A famous example is #TheDress, a conversation about a picture of a dress. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but #TheDress got more than 10 million tweets!

The Hashtag as a Bookmark

On Twitter and other social media platforms, the hashtag is used as a bookmark—it sets off a word or phrase (typically with no spaces) to make it easy to find in a search. For example, on Instagram, the hashtag #BeautifulSunset is attached to photos of sunsets… and that includes not only pictures of the sun going down, but also images of products, foods, and poetry reminiscent of a sunset. Let’s say a user is buying a t-shirt for her best friend who loves sunsets. She might search Instagram for #BeautifulSunset #T-shirt. Are you beginning to see the possibilities for how you can turn hashtags into dollars?

The Hashtag on Facebook

One in six people worldwide use Facebook, making it rich with opportunity. Using a hashtag to identify your goods or services is one way to draw customers to your page, but let’s see if we can get a bit more creative. If you have written a book, you could try to promote it with a hashtag plus the name of your book: #MyBook. But, unless you’re already on the bestseller list, how will people know to search for #MyBook? If your book is about marketing, you can apply the phrase #marketing in a post like this: “I’ll be signing #MyBook about #marketing in the modern era and I hope you’ll join me.” Now, people who are looking for books about marketing are more likely to find your book than before you applied the hashtag. Taking it to the next step, add the name of the bookstore, with a hashtag, and you’ll draw in people who are looking for news and events related to that bookstore: “Are you fascinated by #marketing in the modern era? Join us at #LocalBookStore this Friday, where I’ll present #MyBook!” While you’re on Facebook, search for people interested in #marketingbooks and post to their pages! You can also search for #Top10Books and #MyReadingList.

The Hashtag Across Social Media
Once you have a clear idea about how hashtags are used, you can promote your product or service with savvy. How to do this effectively? Simple–follow, engage and entertain.

Follow. If your product is health-oriented—for example, an exercise machine, or a smoothie maker—search for related tags: #healthyliving, #NewYearsResolution, #exercise, #greenliving, etc. Following is a great way to learn about what is trending in your field.

Engage. If the associated content (tweets on Twitter, posts on Facebook or photos and comments on Instagram) indicates interest in the same things that your potential customers would find worthwhile, follow the user! Repost, like, retweet, and “pin” on your Pinterest boards. Engaging on social media is fun and easy, and it’s free. It’s like going to a conference of like-minded people, without the travel costs.

 Entertain. People love to laugh. Many people like quotes that they can share with their friends and followers. People are looking for a tip or “hack” to make their day-to-day lives easier.   And who doesn’t like a picture of a puppy? Make sure that, along with using the hashtag to highlight your product, you also provide some fun to keep your audience coming back to see what you’re sharing.

A Note About When Not to Use a Hashtag

Remember that not all hashtags are the right ones to use when promoting your business. Large and small businesses have come under fire for “hijacking” a hashtag under the worst circumstances–a national disaster, political unrest or other types of bad news. Likewise, if a hashtag is trending but has nothing to do with your brand, move along, and preserve your brand’s integrity.

Hashtag in Real Life

The hashtag is now used not only in social media but also in major media campaigns, like sporting goods chain REI, who advertised its #OptOut campaign in traditional print media, using a hashtag. In less than ten years, the hashtag has changed the marketing landscape significantly. To make it matter for you and your business, track the effectiveness of various terms to which you attach the #. Tracking tools and analytics are available—some are even free or low-cost. You can find them, of course, by searching for #hashtagtracking.

When you’re just getting started, a great way to measure the effectiveness of the hashtag is to see how often it is shared, re-tweeted, posted or pinned. And keep trying, because when it comes to knowing how to run successful hashtag marketing campaigns, #YouCanDoIt.

Midas Marketing is a digital marketing and web development company in Portland, OR

The post Successful Marketing with Hashtags: #YouCanDoIt appeared first on Midas Marketing.

6 Ways to Turn Social Media Followers to Buyers

Taking a personable approach to social media marketing is a very effective way to build a large and loyal following. However, there’s more to business than just being liked. Unless you’re giving your online audience great value and a clear, undeniable reason to convert, it won’t do much for your bottom line. To ensure your followers show their support with their wallets also, here are six best practices for converting fans to customers.

1. Take trending topics and relate them back to your business.

As a company owner and/or decision maker, part of your job is to identify the problems your customers have, even if they aren’t consciously aware of them. After all, you’re the industry expert and this means that you have the trusted ability to determine how your services or products can impact and improve lives. Use major search engines to find out what topics are trending on the web and then find one that you can relate back to your business. For instance, if you service and install HVAC systems and web users are in a frenzy over the latest report on indoor mold growth, generate a few blog posts on this subject and then offer a modest discount on HVAC system servicing and filter replacements. Not only will this be a timely and well-received value-add to your fans, but it will also give them a relevant reason to consider your offer and take action.

2. Create a sense of urgency.

This is the oldest marketing tactic in the book, but it has, does and will continue to work. Generate social media posts to let people know that you have a high-value offer that will only last for a limited amount of time. Make sure to include a link back to the appropriate sales page and provide all the information that they need for taking advantage of the related promotion. In addition to fostering rapid and positive purchasing decisions, creating buyer urgency is also a great way to offload products that are collecting dust on warehouse shelves or nearing their expiration dates.

3. Contribute to a worthy cause.

Believe it or not, consumer buying decisions can still be driven by a desire to do something good for others. When researching trending topics, also look for a cause that you believe in and address it in your social media posts. Also, make sure to tell your customers that you’ll be donating a portion of your sales to the specified cause. Actions like these create more buyer urgency, give people the chance to contribute to causes they want to support and generate goodwill and good word-of-mouth advertising for your business.

Be creative and relevant with the causes your support. For example, a computer repair company might donate a percentage of profits to solar-powered computers in developing countries.

4. Take it to the press.

Do you have a new product, a new service or even a new address? Write up a professional press release or source one from a trusted team of content writers and then publish a link back to any media outlets that issue this release. This is marketing on top of marketing and it is guaranteed to make people take more interest in your business. Media outlets are considered information authorities and if they perceive your business as being worthy of discussion, consumers will consider it worthy of their cash.

5. Solve problems for free.

You don’t have spend money on promos and giveaways in order to win trust for your business. You’re an informed, experienced expert in your field and this means that you have valuable information to share. Helping people troubleshoot common problems online without collecting cash will allow you to establish a reputation for trustworthiness with your audience. When it comes to choosing a supplier or service provider, most people heavily consider the companies that they trust.

6. Make it fun to buy from you.

Gamification has been one of the top marketing buzzwords as of late. Making a game of you marketing campaigns is guaranteed to be effective. Why? Online consumers love playing games, especially on social networking sites. The enjoy competition and they like having the opportunity to win something. Gamification allows you to give things away without having to give something to everyone, which is the surest way to control your online marketing costs. Tell your fans and followers that people who purchase now will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a special prize or give them daily puzzles to solve for product or service discounts. Additionally and somewhat surprisingly, the ability to win something is often far more appealing than being given something for free.

Use These Tips to Turn Social Media Followers to Buyers

Ultimately, when it comes to building a robust customer base through social media marketing, it’s not enough to just attract large numbers of followers and fans. You have to give your readership a reason to engage and adequate incentive for converting. Fortunately, there are countless ways that you can do this without coming off as being entirely sales-oriented. The leading strategy, when the dust settles, is to commit yourself to always giving your followers excellent value. If you consistently give your fans and followers something worthwhile, they’ll keep coming back and your profits are sure to soar. Lastly, if you are wondering if your social media marketing is converting well enough to return positive value to your business, here’s a dedicated post on that very topic of measuring social media ROI.

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How to Measure Social Media ROI

Social media marketing is a great tool that helps businesses of all sizes promote their brand and engage directly with customers and fans. Over the years, many businesses have definitely recognized the need to remain socially engaged but many of them do not know how to measure social media ROI (return on investment) for their marketing campaigns using the e-commerce/goals functionality of Google Analytics. Google Analytics is necessity for anyone who wants their marketing efforts on social media platforms to translate into improved sales and profits.

Here is a simple method that you can employ to track your social media results with the help of the free Google Analytics program:

Step #1: Decide the goals of your social media campaign

Identifying the goals you want to track should be your first step towards measuring the ROI from your social media campaigns. For example, one of your goals may be converting 5 percent of all the Internet users visiting your website from the social media platforms into customers.  Once you know what you want to measure, such as sales in this example, the next step is to set up goal tracking in Google Analytics.

• Log into your account’s admin area
• Click on profile of site for which you are creating goals
• Select Goals tab
• Click on + Goal link in one of the goal sets to pull up the screen that enables you to choose one of the four goals you want to track using Google Analytics
• If the sales funnel on your website ends up on a predetermined thank you’ page, then choose the goal option ‘URL Destination.’ Also fill out the fields that show up when you choose this option. If you are employing a complicated e-commerce system, then you must choose the goal option ‘Event’ and also follow the instructions on ‘Conversion Overview’ in Google Help in order to properly set up the goals.

Setting up goals can be a bit intimidating, but we are happy to help if you need it. For most work we do at Midas, we insist that Google Analytics is installed and goals are established or else measuring website performance starts to become a guessing game, kind of like if customers turned invisible as soon as they walked in your store. If we run a campaign, we want to be able to measure social media ROI to know what worked and what didn’t.

Step #2: Measure social media traffic conversions

As soon as you set up your goals and activate the system, data (in regards to the number of sales happening on your website) will be generated; however, feeding in your conversion goal alone is not sufficient for obtaining meaningful information about the ROI of your social media campaigns because this feature takes into account sales from all sources.  In order to segregate the conversions from social media and those from other sources, you need to create an Advanced Traffic Segment in your Google Analytics account. This can be done as follows:

• Navigate to the screen ‘Traffic Sources Overview’ from your reporting dashboard
• Click on ‘Advanced Segments’ button which you can see immediately under the main header of the page
• Click on the button ‘+ New Custom Segment’ button which shows up on the lower right-hand side corner of the segmentation menu
• On the new screen that pops up, add ‘OR’ statements using the ‘Source’ metric in order to specify the users who come from specific social media sources.  A custom segment can be created for each social media platform from which your website receives traffic. Ensure that mobile and desktop domains as well as all URL shortening services (as an example, Twitter’s ‘t.co’) are also used. You should not group all social media domains into a single custom segment ‘Social Media Traffic.’ This diminishes the value of the data you generate.

Taking the time to set up your Google Analytics goals properly turns black and white website data into full color.

Step #3: On the basis of data generated, make adjustments to your social media marketing strategy

After creating the custom social segments, you can come back to the reporting dashboard ‘Goals Overview’ in the ‘Conversions’ menu in order to apply the custom filters that you have created using the ‘Advanced Segments’ button. This will help you to clearly know how many of the visitors to your website from the social media platforms have turned into paying customers.
The ROI from your social media marketing campaigns can now be worked out by comparing the number of sales that has been contributed by this source with the time, effort and money involved in running the campaign. It is important to measure the ROI for each social media platform because it is commonly seen that when some platforms provide a positive ROI, other don’t, and calculating this can help you allocate your future marketing dollars accordingly.

Conclusion: How to Measure Social Media ROI

We hear many complaints about the mystery of social media marketing. Truthfully, many people just don’t want to put in the work to deeply analyze everything that’s happening. If you take these steps, measuring your social media ROI is actually easier than offline ROI in many ways. Invest in setting up your systems and you’ll be able to measure social media ROI and build your business with proper clarity and strategy.

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Snapchat Marketing for Businesses

Originally, we were wrong about Snapchat. We thought they were crazy when they turned down Facebook’s $3 billion offer. But now, we are starting to see how Snapchat marketing can add serious value, even to small businesses.

For those who don’t know, Snapchat is a growing social network that enables users to send images to each other, much like text messaging. The kicker is, the viewer can only look at this “snap” for a few seconds before it disappears. Gone forever.

Because of that, it seems like marketing with Snapchat is a lost cause. But hold on a second. In a world overcrowded with information, especially on the internet, we are witnessing a paradoxical, mind-boggling psychological development of an age-old adage: “You always want what you can’t have.”

As pointed out by the Snapchat rockstar Shonduras, Snapchat marketing is actually possible because the messages are only temporary. Why? It’s actually pretty simple. When you scroll through your Facebook or Twitter feed, it’s a rarity if a post catches your attention long enough where you actually read it carefully. This is in part because you know, in the back of your mind, you could revisit it at anytime. It’s permanent. But with Snapchat, users know they better pay attention for the 10 seconds that they are viewing a snap because after that, it’s gone forever.

So in a counter intuitive way, Snapchat actually delivers a strong, memorable platform for brands to leverage, since its audience is actually listening. Snapchat has also held on to its organic roots fairly well so far, steering away from the follow/unfollow game that has polluted Twitter and Instagram. How will all it play out? How can your business use Snapchat? It’s the wild west out there, but if you want to talk about how Snapchat can help your business or idea specifically, send us a quick hello.

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