Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies

What you already know about online marketing will stand you in good stead. Start with these marketing basics and work from there to create a social media plan: Create a hub website or blog with a domain name that you own. Social media lets you cast a wider net for your products or services. Ultimately, you still need to drive traffic to a core website or blog for additional information or purchasing.

Try to come up with a list of at least 30 search terms for your social media marketing strategy that can be distributed among different pages of your website (more if you have a large site). You must juggle the terms people are likely to use to find your product or service with the likelihood that you can show up on the first page of search results.

The cost of customer acquisition (CCA) refers to the marketing, advertising, support, and other types of expenses required to convert a prospect into a customer. This can be difficult to determine with social media. CCA usually excludes the cost of a sales force (the salary and commissions) or payments to affiliates.

You can see who is viewing your stories. This capability gives you a good indication of how well people are responding to your content, and whether certain types of content receive more views than others. You can also see which time of day gets you the most or least amount of views.Knowing who is viewing your stories (and how many are doing so) helps you create a better content strategy and target your community.

Sigh. Nothing ever stands still in the social whirl — or maybe social tornado is a better description. Regular Google search results for the past hour may include near real-time results from social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or other channels such as blogs and press release sites.To view these, enter your search term on Google as usual.

You can find as many applications for marketing via mobile social media as you can imagine. Keep in mind the areas described in this list, whatever the device or market segment you target: News and updates: Distribute this type of information to your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn followers, as well as to people on your prospect list and your newsletter subscribers.

It’s important to know how well your Facebook ad is performing, and Facebook has the tools to help you with this. Whether you use your page’s Insights dashboard or the Ads Manager dashboard, you can determine whether your investment is working.What follows are a few of the ways to determine your ad’s return on investment: Regular posts versus paid posts: When you select Posts on your Insights dashboard, you receive an overview on how your posts are performing.

Mobile analytics is a bit different than web-based analytics. Because almost every social media service has a mobile application, it’s helpful to compare the effectiveness of social media in mobile versus web-based environments.You can most easily compare these platforms by segmenting social visitors. In Google Analytics, follow these steps: Choose Acquisition→ Social→ Network Referrals.

Because search engines can’t directly parse the contents of multimedia, you must take advantage of all opportunities to use your relevant search terms in every metatag, descriptive field, or tag.Make these fields as keyword- and content-rich as you can. In these elements, you can often use existing keyword research, metatags from your website or blog, or optimized text that you’ve already created: Title and tag for your content:</strong> This catchy name should include a search term.

Did you tweet something especially important, amusing, or newsworthy? Is your brand currently running a promotion? Twitter now offers the ability to pin tweets to the top of your Twitter profile page so they remain there, even after you add other tweets. The pinned tweet stays at the top of your profile page, so it’s the first thing people read when they access that page.

You need to place key search terms on your social media pages. Start by reviewing your research for keywords and phrases. Decide on a primary set of four to six terms that best describe your company. Because your search terms must still relate to your content, you may want to reuse other sets for individual posts from your SEO research, mix them up, or include additional terms not optimized on your primary site.

Twitter chats are easy to market and promote. If you have a network and a platform, you have the ability to tell people about your business’s Twitter chat: Blog: Use your blog to announce each Twitter chat. Touch on the discussion topic and announce any special guests. Be sure to link to your guest’s blog, website, or Twitter account, which will catch her attention and encourage her to share the link with her own community.

Whether you’re marketing B2B (business-to-business) or B2C (business-to-consumer), you can find dozens of industry- or interest-specific social networks. Search online for communities in your industry. As long as the social network is large enough to support your time investment and continues to attract new users, you should enjoy enough of payback to make your effort worthwhile.

Snapchat is an app available only for smartphones. You can’t use Snapchat on a tablet, laptop, or computer. To set up a Snapchat account, first head to your App store (for Apple products) or Google Play Store (for Android) to download the Snapchat app.Then, to set up your account, follow these steps: Open Snapchat on your smartphone, and select Sign Up.

Hashtags make topics searchable without having to use a search bar or search engine. When you use a hashtag in your Facebook post, it’s visible to all who search for the topic used in your hashtag. For example, if you’re posting a healthy recipe using the grain quinoa, you can use the hashtag #quinoa, #recipes, or even #healthy.

Hashtags help to make a photo searchable and can be a helpful element of your social media marketing strategy. For example, if you post a photo of shoes on Instagram and use the hashtag #shoes, #style, or #fashion (or a combination), that photo will show up in the streams of others who are looking for items by using the same hashtag.

You might consider using Instagram stories as part of your social media marketing strategy. Instagram has a stories feature that enables users to share rapid-fire images and video. stories give a place to add a sequence of photos or a video to illustrate a story. In this way, prolific Instagram posters can share a group of photos without hogging their friends’ feeds.

Statista projects that the overall social media advertising market will grow from $11 billion in 2015 to more than $23 billion in 2018, representing more than 21 percent of all digital ad spending in the US.Mobile social media represents a major share of those advertising dollars. About 84 percent of Facebook’s ad revenue, 86 percent of Twitter’s, and 60 percent of Google’s now derive from ads that appear on mobile pages (including YouTube).

Periscope is a live streaming app that enables the user to broadcast from anywhere. This can be a good tool to add to your social media marketing arsenal. Like Instagram and Snapchat, Periscope is only available as a mobile app. Thus, you live stream directly from your smartphone.Your customers don’t have to be members of Periscope to watch a live stream, so you can link to your Periscopes from your Twitter and Facebook accounts so anyone can watch.

Snapchat allows snappers to use different lenses and filters to add whimsy and personality to snaps. Lenses can illustrate a mood, show holiday spirit, or add life and color to an image. Filters can display causes, show attendance at events, and promote a business. Lenses A lens adds special effects to your face, such as cat ears or a Santa hat.

These days, businesses can’t sweep complaints under the rug. Before everyone was online and social media, it was easy to ignore negativity. Nowadays, customers can take their complaints public, and if businesses aren’t careful, those complaints can go viral.Because so many people are on Twitter, it’s one of the best places to go to hear what customers are saying.

Using social media as a marketing tool doesn't have to be a chore. These helpful tips and techniques to manage your social media campaigns can save you time, money, and stress: Repetition is wonderful when it comes to keywords, tags, and labels. Utilizing the same core search terms and page description over and over on your website and all social media outlets not only saves time, but also improves ranking on search engine results.

LivingSocial and Groupon reach fairly similar US audiences demographically, and both have expanded into the international market. If you plan on using either service for your social media marketing strategy, check out this table for details. Comparing Groupon and Living Social Groupon LivingSocial 74% are female.

The first phase in writing your social media marketing plan is research. Use the websites in this table to put together the best possible social media marketing plan for your company. Website Description Addict-o-matic The current buzz and trends on any topic Alltop Directory of blogs, broken down by niche BIG Marketing for Small Business Social media, online, and offline marketing tips Dragonsearch Social Networking Media ROI Calculator Online ROI calculator for social networking campaigns HubSpot Blogs Inbound Internet marketing blog LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Group Professional discussion group; approval required to join MarketingProfs Marketing Resources Social media marketing tips, including B2B MarketingSherpa Social networking research with B2B focus Mashable Premier site for online news with social media focus TopRank Online Marketing Blog Blog about online and social marketing Quantcast Demographic research on most sites Social Mention Tracks post about topics on 100+ social media services Social Networking for Business Development Social networking blog for business development Social Networking Watch Aggregates news and statistics for social networks Technorati Real-time blog search engine and curation Bookmark any sites you find useful so that you can continue accessing them after you have your social media marketing plan in place.

Before you go jumping into Snapchat as part of your social media marketing strategy, you need to learn the lingo. Here are the terms you should know if you want to use Snapchat: Snap: A photo or a 10-second video you take using Snapchat. Story: A photo or a series of photos set up to last 24 hours before disappearing.

The number of outlets for social media marketing is staggering. Blogs are just the beginning. Now you can choose from social networks (such as Facebook and Twitter), social bookmarks sites (such as Mix), social pinning sites (such as Pinterest), social curating sites (such as Tumblr), social media sharing sites (such as YouTube), and even social resume sites (such as LinkedIn).

Like all other Facebook content, you’ll want to have a plan in place for all your Facebook Live videos. Unlike a regular Facebook post, it’s not as easy to go back and edit your video. If you struggle with finding the right thing to say or don’t have talking points before you shoot your video, there may be lag time or uncomfortable pauses in the action, causing you to lose viewers.