by winstonbromley | Jul 10, 2012 | Facebook, Google+, Klout, LinkedIn, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Tools, Twitter
Social media is something just about everyone uses in today’s world. Many people enjoy it because we are given an easier way to talk to friends, and it is also a great tool to talk to a lot of people. When you are out there all day, every day, sites like Facebook and Twitter become part of your life, as do your followers and friends on those sites. How much they like what you write and do, how many share it all, and the amount of people wanting to speak to you all determine your influence on the world around you. Those unsure of how much influence that they actually have can look to Klout.com to figure it out. There, you are given the ability to learn your influence score from the major Social Media sites.
See Klout.com combines all of your Social Media activity and turns in into a number from 1 to 100 (being the best) based on 54 factors. The more influence you have (meaning people who share you stuff, click on your links, talk about your stuff) the better your Score. And there are great perks to a higher score.
As the internet grows, so do the jobs that can be had on it. When a person works in marketing, for example, they spend a lot of time on the internet. That is part of their job and the more people they can get to see what they say, the better they can do their job. Using your Klout score, employers are able to see just how big of an influence you have in the world, which can help them determine whether or not you are worth hiring (and this now becoming a trend to put Klout on application forms). Your relationships with the people around you, the connections you have made during your career, and the impact you make around the world help an employer or client know if you will pay off. They want a person who can reach many people because it matters to stay connected to the world around you, being seen and heard.
Although Klout is not the only Influence Score to be had (and it’s still growing), it is currently the best online indicator for people to see how much real influence they can control. And it Matters.
Our Klout scores are already playing a larger role in the decision making processes in other real world applications. One example that is happening all the time now, is hotels in Las Vegas are looking up your Klout Score to see if you are worthy of an upgrade, because if your Klout Score is high enough, they know you will talk about it on your social media accounts thereby giving them free advertising from you. See when you talk on your Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ accounts about a great place and you have a high Klout score, there is a great chance that your followers will listen and be interested about that Topic and remember that location/hotel/product.
Another example is one that I and others with a higher score get often, is what is called Klout Perks. Companies are hooking up with Klout to send new products to people with Klout scores over certain numbers. I recently got a full kit of AVENA NATURALS products (no cost to me) sent in the mail to me. You bet I talked about it on my Social Media Feeds.
A guy in San Francisco had a Klout score of 74 (and he was just a well connected 25 year old) and he got the new VOLT car for a weekend to test drive. No cost to him at all. You can bet he posted it everywhere thus giving the VOLT a lot of advertising from an influencer.
Take a moment to see what your Klout Score it by clicking here. Let me know how you fair… You may be getting Klout perks soon enough.
by winstonbromley | Jul 5, 2012 | Google+, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Tools
Google Plus (Google+) is a great option for a business looking to get noticed and wanting to standout from other pages. Easy to create and easy to use, it is a growing platform for business sharing. The following explains just some of the great aspects why Google Plus is becoming a must for business leaders and webpage designers and just how it might benefit your business.
Easy Distribution of Ideas
Sharing is important and your business needs to take an active role in doing this with their webpage or website. This act is not simply about promoting a product or idea but actually creates an interactivity between the consumer and the business itself. With Google Plus for business this can be completed quite easily. One of the greatest tricks to get a response from clients and potential customers is to share photos and other images and messages that help to promote the brand without overtly doing so. It leaves the client interested, gets them talking, and thus builds the brand from the backend of the business rather than overt advertisements all the time.
Clarity
Google plus is a great way to tailor your business to the individual or client themselves. With Google plus in business, the beauty is that there can be clearly delineated separations between different aspects of your business. This means that if an individual is interested in one area, they can focus on that while others can find exactly what they are looking for in another section. This is a highly touted point as described by business webpage owners who say that clients respond better to the ability to find what they are looking for easily without getting lost in a web of other information that is unneeded. In this way, then, Google plus for businesses provides a clarity and ease of specificity that business webpage designers thrive upon.
Social Media
Social media is an ever growing platform for recommendations and discussions in customers’ lives. For this reason, Google plus has made it easy to share and promote your business through easily navigable and usable social media sharing options. Just one share can lead to a trickle out affect which holds the potential to get your business noticed even more. There is also a button on Google plus that allows customers to actually make a recommendation, all with a simple click of the mouse. Be sure that your webpage has this as this is one of the best tips you can know to really getting a mass discussion and recommendation for your business page.
What is your take on Google+?
by winstonbromley | Jun 26, 2012 | Pinterest, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Tools
As I mentioned in my article last December “Pinterest: An up-and-coming Social Media Network worth looking into” Pinterest is Growing in Massive Numbers, and Your Business Can Too! This is a Must Read For Large and Small Business Owners Alike.
Pinterest is even more incredible than ever. It has acquired over 10 million users in a record amount of time. It is the single fastest growth of any website in history even though it is still an invite-only site. The explosive growth of Pinterest.com only goes to show that any one looking to enhance their brand, their business, their services or their products should consider having a strong presence on it.
Pinterest is the best choice for internet marketing. It has grown at such rapid rates that it even blew Facebook’s notorious beginning out of the water. It is a really clean cut site that allows all businesses small and large to increase their exposure and generate more customers. We all know that all adds up to more money.
Social media is a very essential marketing tool. It is a guaranteed way to get the exposure that you need to keep up in these competitive times. All businesses will benefit in abundance through maintaining a strong presence on Pinterest.com.
Most of the users on Pinterest are females, and women are known to be the bargain hunters and shoppers in the family. You will be able to target an audience much easier than on any other social media site. People come there looking for specific services or products. Your time is much more fruitful when you use Pinterest.
It is based theme is on a post it method. You can generate deals or specials and even have contests to lure potential buyers in. You are going to get results on Pinterest without as much time, money or effort you will have to invest on other sites.
This is a fantastic opportunity to get your business on the map. Whether you have 100+ employees or you are working alone to build your company this is a great place to advertise. Your company’s name is more likely to show up in Google results with every post, and you will find that it all really makes a difference.
Marketing strategies can get expensive, however with Pinterest you can dramatically decrease overall costs. It can be a fun and effective way to interact with your customers while offering them the best deals. Nothing beats Pinterest, and if you have not seen what it can do to boost your sales and reputation, you are really missing out.
If you want to be invited (as Pinterest is set to INVITE ONLY right now), email me at winston@artbox.ca with the Subject “Pinterest”.
**** I will post at a few tips on Pinterest every week. Just sign up for my Newsletter on the right side of the website and you will get those tips sent to you in your Email box. ****
by winstonbromley | Jun 23, 2012 | Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Tools
Almost every business has realized the potential of social media. If not, now is certainly the time to get on board.
However, social media is almost always used just as a marketing tool by itself. There are marketing benefits of using social media which I am fan, trainer and user of, however creating a social business can do a lot more and reap huge benefits in the long run.
Social business is a fairly new term on and not many entrepreneurs would know what it actually means. It definitely does not imply a business using social media for marketing purposes. It has far more utilities and benefits lined up for any business.
A social business is typically a business that uses social media in all facets of the company’s modus operandi. It is being widely believed, and rightly so, that social media is all set to become a focal point for any business. Right now, social media is just at the peripherals of any business whereby some marketing efforts yield fruit while others are simply futile attempts at conducting promotions and special sales.
Here are some of the benefits of doing social business.
- A social business puts much more focus on the value that social media can offer a business rather than only the marketing rewards.
- Social business calls for an inclusive involvement of social media and internet users which offer a wider platform to share and discuss almost anything about a business. Right there, a business gets to build a foundation for employees to interact with online citizens and gauge popular opinion. The opinion, feedback or thoughts can then be taken back to the boardroom for illustrations and a business can take appropriate steps to enhance a positive feedback or to curtail some criticisms.
- Several major corporations in the world are mulling over an idea to get the consumers involved in the creative process of product development or in the conception of an idea and developing it as per popular sentiments. In fact some companies have already started this process with various degrees of success, such as Nike.What this does is, it offers any business the leverage to do prelaunch market research and also gain specific product feedback even before something has been created or developed.
- Being a social business can have far reaching effects in terms of brand value. With social media gaining more acceptance as a common mode of communication and interaction, customers are more likely to interact with individuals and trust them rather than a brand. With people getting more exposure to social media from businesses and brands they like, it is upon the shoulders of the the entrepreneurs and executives to drive their brand value using their own reputation and skills.
Let me know what you think.
by winstonbromley | Jan 4, 2012 | QR codes, Social Media, Social Media Management, Social Media Tools
Have you seen this image before? It’s a white box with black (or coloured) boxes inside it and it does something.. but you are not sure what it does.. This image is a QR Code. and it will be your friend by the end of this article. We have been using them in our business for almost a year now with our clients and our own branding.
There has been a noticable increased use of the QR or Quick Response code lately and I wanted to let you know the benefits of why you should be using them in all your offline promotions.
The basics: A QR Code is really just a bar code that looks different from what we are used to, such as the ones we see on food and clothing we buy. It was created by a company in Japan to make the warehouse more efficient, in 1994. Since that time, they have become very big in Japan and Europe and recently over to North America where we see them today in Malls, in advertising, in magazines, on our food packaging and even on Clothing now.
How it all works is that a person would see the QR code in a mall, they can point their Smart Phone as if taking a picture at the Code, using any QR Reader software (most of them are free to download). Once the scan is done (it’s like taking a picture and very fast), your Smart phone will re-direct you to the page that it’s linked up to, say a Sales page or a Special offer page, on your Smart phone. So it captures your attention right away and can lead to sales.
I believe that QR code help to speed up the connection that is created between the Offline and online worlds a lot faster if used correctly. You can even link to your Social Media platforms of choice!
QR codes speed up the time of connection to your customers as you don’t need to remember a long URL to type in as it is Scanned in via the Smart Phone.
In your business, whatever you do, if you advertise in any way, QR codes offer benefits that a lot of regular lead generating tools do not. These include (but certainly not limited to):
– QR codes can dial phone numbers for you
– QR codes can link to email messages
– QR codes can link to Social Media platforms and images or even just text.
– QR codes can be read anytime and anywhere in any country, which makes it a great thing and convenient.
– QR codes can speed up purchases to generate sales (such as at malls, advertisements and mobile marketing)
Some ideas on where you can put QR codes:
– On Business cards (see the back of mine) to help speed up the connection with other people. Mine works well as people see it’s new and want to scan it.
– On food items and even restaurant menus to showcase the food content/ingredients/calories so the customer can choose the best for them.
– On your advertisement posters for your next event. Get people registered right from the Poster!
– Ticket purchases can use QR codes to be scanned at the point of entry
– Real estate agents can use QR codes to link to their website or more specifically to the property they are showing. It could even lead to a Virtual viewing. No need for the TXT messages that are on signs. Use QR codes. It’s 1 step and looks very professional.
One note on linking to a website via your QR code..
I want to show you an example of linking to a website. Please scan the image to the left with your Smart phone/QR reader and it will take you to one of my clients websites that we have done QR advertising with.
The Wine Ladies share the splendour of food and wine for all and the wonderful lifestyle it entails. They needed a way to advertise to their fans and new customers so they have begun using QR Codes in their promotional material to speed up the process of sharing information and generating sales from their Online store (by the way, there are some great things in there!)
We have create a mobile template as well as their regular website template. Here is their website: http://www.thewineladies.com.
When linking to websites via the mobile phone, if at all possible, you should ensure that the website is “mobile friendly”. What this means is that you create a separate template for mobile phones to see the site in a nice and concise way on their screens, rather than all the bells and whistles as you would on a normal computer screen. If you scan the image above and then click on the link to the site, you will see the same content but in a more manageable way for a mobile user’s phone.
How you create a QR code in a nutshell, is:
1. You would choose the URL you would like to take people to, such as your website, real estate property page, your CV,etc
2. Copy and paste that url into http://goo.gl/ for it to generate the QR code for you
3. Download or screenshot the QR Code that is generated for you (each on is individual to the system) and
4. Place it in your Marketing material
QR codes can be generated from services like http://goo.gl/ from Google and other websites for free, however these free versions are generally small to print so you may look around for a QR Code service that generates large QR codes for you.
So the next time you get something in the mail, or from the mail, take a look to see if you see the funny White box with black boxes inside and scan it. See where it takes you..
until next time
W
