Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

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Is SMS Marketing Still a Viable Strategy?

December 20, 2011

This is a guest post from James Bentham.

SMS, really?

As most brands and organizations now have a mobile optimized version of their website, the focus is now on encouraging users to travel to your site and interact with the brand itself in order to push increased revenue.

Experienced marketers will tell you that customers are much more likely to respond to campaigns that engage them on a personal level. The marketing strategy must be relevant and timely while meeting the customer’s individual needs. In terms of rate of response, the simple SMS dominates the market. It can add real value to a marketing strategy and continues to grow with the decline in consumer spending. Marketers are being forced to find ever more cost effective ways of engaging with users.

A few statistics…

When you break down the figures involved in SMS marketing, the results can be quite staggering. Here a few examples:

  • 77% of the population of the world own a mobile phone.
  • Of all the SMS messages sent on a daily basis, 98% are opened, with 83% opened within 3 minutes.
  • While only 6% of marketing emails are responded to, SMS campaigns have seen as much as 45% response rates.
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Facebook Fans: Are They Worth the Excitement?

September 27, 2011

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro.

Sometimes when I think of Facebook, I can’t help but think addiction. Coffee and cigarettes I can quit, but for some reason Facebook has a hold on me, and after doing some research, I have found that I am not the only one. According to a Nielsen study, in 2010 the amount of time the average person spends on Facebook was about 14 minutes per day, or seven hours per month. Even more astonishing, if you combine the amount of time spent on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Amazon, Facebook still comes out on top. In other words, having a Facebook page for your small business is a great way to advertise. Even better, individuals (known as Facebook fans) can “like” or add your company as a “friend”; therefore staying notified of any special deals or messages you send out. But after spending 14 minutes per day on Facebook, you probably already knew that.

The problem with the Facebook “likes” is there is really no way to track whether or not they matter. After all, there are a lot of alternative reasons someone may “like” your company:

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15 Tips To Optimize Your LinkedIn Initiative

September 13, 2011

This is a guest post by Lior Levin.

LinkedIn has enjoyed explosive growth since its debut in 2003. The real question is whether or not you’re making the most of your LinkedIn efforts and networking in general? LinkedIn is so much more than social networking for businesses and business people – it can totally change how you run your business as a whole.

Here’s some of our favorite tips to get the most out of your LinkedIn experience:

Be Professional

Remember, you’re not on Facebook, Google+, or MySpace here – this is a social network for business professionals. Only interact in a professional manner with other users.

If you take a look at your LinkedIn inbox, you’ll noticed that it’s more like an email inbox rather than a social networking message system. Therefore, you should treat it as such when corresponding with others professionals on the site.

Also, the groups on Linkedin are not like your average Facebook group. They’re a place for professionals to connect, network, and share knowledge. The way you carry yourself and interact with other members is extremely important

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How to Use Social Media Strategy to Reach Mommy Blogs

September 8, 2011

This is a guest post by Vanessa Van Petten.

If you have a brand or product for parents, targeting and partnering with mommy bloggers is a great way to get exposure. I run a website for parents written by kids called RadicalParenting.com, and when we first started, we had 2 unique visitors: me and my mom. Since I had no marketing budget, I decided to spend all of my efforts partnering with other mom blogs and asking them to post about us. This increased our traffic to over 200,000 uniques per month and exposure through guest posts got us on a number of media outlets like CNN, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal — no PR person involved.

Here is how you can reach out to Mom Blogs:

Make a Target List

You want to start with a list of mom blogs that you like — ones that jive with your brand, are in your target demo, and look like they get medium to high traffic. For example, if you have a product for teenagers you would not want to pick a pregnancy blogger. Here is the list I use. You are welcome to start with this list.

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How to Build the Perfect Facebook Fan Page, 2011 Edition

April 12, 2011

This is a guest post by Tim Ware, owner of HyperArts. You can follow Tim on Twitter or on Facebook.

With Facebook’s recent changes to the layout of fan pages (aka business pages, aka brand pages), has come the opportunity for those with creativity to design a much more compelling and fully branded page.

Much More Screen Real Estate!

In the old Page layout there was really only the Profile Picture and custom tabs where design could be applied.

The new layout, rolled out to all Pages on March 10, 2011, gives over a full two-thirds of Page real estate to the Page owner:

Facebook Fan Page

The Perfect Fan Page Leverages ALL the Available Opportunities

In this article, I will briefly discuss each of the Page areas, as labeled above, where I think Page owners should focus their attention, with an eye to an integrated look and feel, clean and uncluttered.

The Page areas are:

  • Profile Picture;
  • Left-column Navigation;
  • About Box;
  • Likes — Page Favorites;
  • Photostrip;
  • Wall (Custom Tabs).

The above Page areas are great for visual branding (Profile Picture, Photostrip, Custom Tabs), for brand messaging (the About Box), and for both (Navigation tab icons and titles, Likes/Favorites).

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