Okay, so you have signed up on numerous social media networking sites to advance your business in the world of online marketing. However, in order to increase traffic, turn visitors into consumers, get more online exposure you have to be proactive and create a valuable networking platform for your target audience to feel apart of.  Here is a potential way of looking at levels of success using Social Media Marketing based on the same grading scale you were used to when you were in grade school.

 If you are only pushing promotion or sales through your social networks you will lack credibility, you are wasting your time and annoying people… try something different because you have recieved a D+

If your only active in advertising your routine tweets- ‘had a turkey sandwich’ you have received a C. You leave your followers wondering what your purpose for using networking tools like Twitter as a part of your business plan actually is. (Where’s the useful content, did you eat it with your sandwich or did you ever have it to begin with?!)

 If you allow your customer base to care and become interested and passionate about your product or service by educating and teaching them through the use of social networking, your integrating it effectively so you recieve a B but you could push one step further (and trust us, you need that A).

A+ If you provide an online community for customers to connect and support each other using integrated social media tools you have passed the test (Congrats). As a business, you want to have customer voices speak about your product or service so you know what works and what doesn’t work. Once you have provided a place for them to do so, you have received an A in integrated Social Media Marketing (yes, you get a star on your chart).

There you have it. It is so important to establish a strategic method for consumers to engage in online conversation because it can be used as the most efficient and effective approach to have your marketing plan support the notion of social media aka future marketing. We suggest that you go ahead and make mistakes (I’m still learning) because there is no cookie cutter recipe for how to use social media, but the fact that have an online presence will benefit you and your company  in the future. Go ahead, get creative, get followers and get active because there are over 300 million people active in online media, is your business involved in this conversation?

Sequel to Twouble with Twitter. Funny how Celebrities use Twitter. Great Video- Enjoy!

I’ve taken a little bit of a different approach to this year’s Blog Action Day than other bloggers I’ve read. They all have amazing points and I encourage you to read as many as you can! I wanted a very positive post and talk about something very simple, but often forgotten, love.

Loving our planet means many things to many people. It could be cleaning up trash in our oceans at a meet-up, clean-up group, it could be setting up recycling bins in your homes or offices, it could be educating students and consumers about alternative energy, or it could just be taking in a deep breath of fresh air while spending time with nature and appreciating every step, every tree, every smell, every feeling.

When you love something you want to give your all to it. If you’ve ever been in love with someone, you know the feeling I’m talking about. What if we started loving the planet as much as we love one another, and start proving our love? What if we walked a little more lightly, a little more consciously, a little more graciously, on our beautiful mother nature?

On Blog Action Day, I want to tell the world to open our hearts to the environment and look at ways we can show some love. There are many organizations to get involved with, petitions to sign, people to educate, laws to learn and know about, and probably many things that you could easily incorporate into your own life. Take that step, ask questions, research online, and try to do something nice for our environment.

Cheers to today and to our beautiful planet, the one I love and hope you will too!

Don’t just join the social media conversation because it is the new idea of online presence that is catching like wildfire, you need to create and maintain a business plan for online media that supports the overall marketing strategy otherwise, you are going to fail. It’s not as easy as going to Twitters homepage and creating an account, in fact that is far from the truth of the twitterverse. If your serious about integrating social media into your business plan there are a few things to think about.
To start, it’s important to reflect on if your web strategy supports your marketing strategy. If not you need to realign either/or so they complement each other nicely. Having online presence means your ultimately looking to convert viewers into customers, how are you going to use social media as a tool to do this effectively? Think about SEO, social media, usability, social networking, blogging and (our newest favorite) Adwords which are all components that should all be given the same amount of attention. You have to think big picture, which should be a balance of how your marketing plan and your social media plan mirror each other.
The biggest thing people seem to surpass is that using social media in your business marketing plan will not produce immediate results. We thrive off instant gratification and technology has enabled us to live our daily life around getting quick, fast, results but you must be patient, you must give it the opportunity to produce and measure successful results, however, at the same time you, have to be persistent and consistent (and don’t be a fail whale). Goodluck to all!

 This last weekend I was lucky enough to visit my brother in Austin, Texas, the youth magnet city which is extremely attractive to recent college graduates like me.  I’ve always heard Austin is a lively, musically talented city for the young and restless although I didn’t  know exactly what that meant, I was sure I’d soon find out.

Before I continue I should give you a little background on myself and the simple life I live, I still have an old school phone that is big, bulky and only calls and texts. My friends call it a “peasant phone” and they constantly remind me to upgrade to keep up with the times…

I know, I know, especially working for a social media company- by now, I should have crackberry, I mean, Blackberry and until my trip to Austin I did not realize how helpful having a phone with the internet and all the other apps would be!  In the blink of an eye and the click of an app on my brothers iPhone, we were connected to the heart of Austin. All the events, restaurants, happy hour specials, festivals, game scores anything we would ever need to know about the city. It was amazing!  The who, what, when, where and hows were all right at our fingertips making us feel like we were locals of Austin and not outsiders who were wandering the streets hoping to find something cool to do. We went  to the UT vs Utep football game after tailgating at the oldest beer garden in Texas, Scholz Garten. After the game (without getting lost) we made our way to 6th street where the Pecan Street Festival was going on, we listened to great music and enjoyed the artwork of over 250 local artisans. Later in the night we were able to find restaurants with bands playing music we knew we’d enjoy, making it all around a great trip.

If you have an iPhone or Blackberry, this may not sound like a big deal to you because having access to the internet 24/7 is probably something you are used to. For me, this accessibility was an amazing feeling of being connected to choices that may not have been available to us had we not had my brothers iphone. It makes me wonder, what did my parents do when they were my age?

Technology is advancing at the speed of whiplash and we are becoming more interdependent as the days go by. It’s fun, exciting and brilliantly useful. All in all, it may be time for me to retire my “peasant phone” and enter into the era of the Smartphone as I am now starting to understand why they call it the crackberry…