Kiran Gutha

Passionate Digital Marketer

Smart Social Media Tips For The Business Owners

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Welcome to Kiran Gutha‘s blog on Smart Social Media Tips for the Business Owner. Social media marketing can be overwhelming but there are tips for simplifying your experience and allowing your business to fully benefit. First of all, you need to develop a strategy. As with any campaign, you also need to measure your success.

 

What Businesses Should Consider in Developing a Social Media Strategy

In creating a social media strategy, you need to analyze the process, develop infrastructure, and deliberately choose your relationships.

A well-developed process will further include stages of identifying goals, planning, testing the plan, and measuring results.

Although you may be tempted to leap forward as soon as possible, you need an infrastructure that is stable and likely to achieve results.

Make sure the right people are engaged in the right assignments and that the day-to-day plan is feasible.

There is always the push to gain more Facebook “friends” or LinkedIn contacts but the quality of your relationships can be more important than the quantity.

Key players are those people who will multiply your efforts by spreading your message or enhancing your credibility in the right social network.

 

Social Media Success Metrics

Many companies plan to increase their social media budgets in 2020. The tough part is how to measure social media’s impact.

The most standard measurement for a company is the ROI value or Return on Investment.

However, those who wish to analyze a social media campaign must adapt that measurement to include “inner-returns.”

For instance, the first figure in determining a blog’s success is the overall traffic.

More specific measures are traffic quality, the most popular posts, and the organizations that repeatedly visit.

The quality of traffic can be judged by factoring in the bounce rate (the number of times someone hits on a page and immediately leaves) and the average time spent on a page (for those who stayed and read a post.).

The most popular posts can help the business hone in on the audience’s interests or decide whether or not the target audience is being reached.

Knowing which organizations visit a blog can provide information about the audience’s demographic and may lead to networking opportunities.

 

How Cisco Embraced Social Media and Reaped the Benefits

Networking giant Cisco made a huge move forward by using social media in its launch of a new router.

In previous launches, the company would fly in executives and press members, distribute press releases, email customers and run ads in newspapers and magazines.

This time, Cisco traded airline and gasoline expenses for a stage with big-screen monitors that created a virtual environment.

The company also created a 3-D game that allowed 20,000 engineers to learn new information while “playing” for the top score prize of $10,000.

Overall, 9,000 people attended the launch, 90 times more than in the past. The event generated three times as many press articles and Cisco won the Leading Lights award for Best Marketing.

As the Cisco example makes clear, social media campaigns can not only target the natural desire for play but also have significant potential for businesses.

Pursuing a social media certificate or enrolling in online marketing courses could help you develop a focused approach for your business in these rapidly changing times.

Our social media training will teach you the strategies for promotion, brand reputation management, and performance in the market.

The program is well suited for marketing professionals, public relations, corporate marketing departments as well as customer service employees, managers, executives, and entrepreneurs.

 

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Customize Your Social Media Sales Funnel For Marketing Efforts

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Welcome to Kiran Gutha‘s blog on Managing Your Social Media Sales Funnel to Customize Marketing Efforts. Potential customers through social media marketing often begin early in the sales process and must be nurtured.

The World of Social Marketing

In the world of social marketing, it is considered best practice and an essential business element for companies to develop and consistently maintain a social media sales funnel.

Companies often rely on social marketing to interact with their prospective clients. To ensure these interactions both spark interest and, most importantly, convert leads into sales, a social media funnel is a valuable tool to customize social marketing efforts and track, test, and optimize its elements over time.

The Social Media Funnel 

A social media funnel is just that, a funnel. This funnel is developed and designed to represent the step-by-step path companies want prospective customers to follow from the social media channels to actually purchasing a product.

The social media sales funnel consists of a variety of social media tools and channels that guide a prospect through the following engagement levels: brand awareness, customer engagement, and converting leads to sales.

To begin the funnel development process, companies should make the following determinations that will serve as building blocks.   

  • Identify the target audience
  • Decide the best ways to reach these customers
  • Establish the company’s overall goals
  • Determine the best way to measure these goals  

To build a social media sales funnel, companies must outline the channels that can produce the highest probability of sales.

Then, companies must prioritize these channels by their overall function and the probability of aiding customers through the path from general product awareness to product purchase, while ensuring the channels remain relevant to the company business goals.

Some examples of the most prominent channels companies use in their social media funnel include email marketing, ads, landing pages, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, SEO, and Twitter. 

Test And Measure The Channels

Next, as the channels are defined, companies must determine the performance metric that is required at each stage of the funnel to ensure its success.

These are often developed based on industry benchmark standards and by evaluating the overall success within the competitive environment. Some examples of metrics that can be applied to each stage of the funnel are: 

  • Brand awareness: Overall ad impressions, YouTube video views
  • Engagement: Facebook comments and likes, email open rates
  • Sales: Landing page conversion rates, SEO revenue 

Finally, once the funnel is formulated and key performance metrics are in place, the next essential steps to success are to track overall marketing results, test the tools and tactics, and strategically optimize on a consistent basis.

Maintaining a flexible funnel is an essential tactic for ensuring your company can successfully adjust to both the actions and behaviors of the target audience and continue to pursue and experience positive results. 

Social Media Sales Funnel Best Practices 

Developing a social media sales funnel can be an involved process and the following are five best practice suggestions to create and use the social media funnel to effectively convert prospects into customers. 

Understand How Channels Relate

Having a better understanding of how each social marketing channel relates to the path down the funnel and how each channel is currently adding leads will provide more insight into the tactics that companies can use to continue guiding customers down the funnel and the time that should be expected for the overall conversion process. 

Easy Conversion Path

Companies must work to continually optimize their social media sales funnel and make it easier for prospects to follow the path.

Make it easy as possible for visitors such as those coming through Facebook to convert into buyers.

Tracking, testing, and optimizing are essential to turning social media traffic into real customers. 

Look for Soft Leads

Due to the nature of the social media environment, potential customers often enter the sales funnel very early in the overall buying process.

While they may not be prepared to quickly convert to a buying customer, companies need to offer them the opportunity to become soft leads, meaning they are interested but not ready to become a customer.

By capturing information from these leads, such as an email address, companies can increase the potential of converting these leads into buyers as they move through the sales funnel. 

Social Media Leads are Different

Social media leads can require special treatment. Because they are entering the sales funnel early, they may require a higher level of nurturing to get them through the funnel to conversion.

Through a carefully defined strategy and unique content, companies can help prospects overcome objections and answer questions as they migrate through the decision-making process and move closer to becoming a real customer.  

Track and Measure Marketing Efforts

By monitoring and continuously measuring your marketing results, you can easily understand where customers are in the sales funnel and determine the most efficient and cost-effective way to successfully turn them into social media sales conversions.

Google Analytics is one option for tracking social media and other channels. It can show conversions through social media, and also, where prospective customers dropped out of the process. 

Developing and refining a social media funnel can take advantage of the reach of social media and direct potential customers from initial brand awareness through the sales process to making a purchase.

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Getting Creative With Your Social Media Strategy

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Welcome to Kiran Gutha‘s blog. 6 tips for getting creative with your social media strategy. Developing and creating an effective social media strategy in six simple steps.

Social Media Strategy

Social media can be an excellent and cost-effective way to attract positive attention to your company, product, or professional services.

With the right strategy, you can interact directly with customers and thought-leaders worldwide.

Conversely, the careless use of social media can damage your business or career in a matter of days.

To keep social media from becoming a time-wasting distraction or a reputation-tarnishing pastime, it’s necessary to have a well-planned and efficiently managed strategy.

That social media strategy should support your business goals and authentically reflect your brand or personality.

Additionally, over the past several years, social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become increasingly powerful communication and marketing tools.

Because you don’t know when prospective employers, partners, customers, or rivals are viewing your posts, it is extremely important to keep pace with best practices and observe professional social media etiquette.

1. Develop Your Strategy

Before planning a  social media campaign, it’s first necessary to establish an overarching strategy.

Executing and refining that strategy will be an ongoing activity. Here are some tips to help you get started.

  • Define your goals. Are you trying to raise awareness of your organization and generate favorable perceptions of your brand?
  • Or, do you want to build website traffic and attract new leads?
  • Social media can also let you hear what people are saying about your organization, learn about your target market, and identify possible opportunities for new products.
  • Prioritizing defined goals can help you make smart choices from the start and measure progress as the campaign progresses.
  • Visualize who you want to reach. Create a “persona” for each category of targeted prospects.
  • A persona can include demographic information such as age, gender, education, and income, plus insights on where prospects get their information, what groups they belong to, and what problems you can help them solve.
  • Choose the social media platform that your target audience uses.
  • B2C companies may tend to use Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
  • LinkedIn can provide B2B companies with a way to connect with decision-makers who may be difficult to reach via the traditional cold call.
  • Determine the personality you want to project.
  • Are you the outgoing, talkative type who likes to comment on every new trend and topic?
  • Or are you a quiet observer who only speaks up when you have something insightful to say?
  • It may be best to strike a balance. You want people to know you’re listening and participating, but you don’t want to dominate the conversation.

2. Look, Listen and Learn

Instead of diving headfirst into every social media channel you find, learn how to build an audience on one channel first.

Once you have mastered that one, branch out to other relevant channels. Use online tools such as TweetDeck or HootSuite to manage your activity on multiple social networks.

Observe how your competitors and similar businesses use social media.

For example, some companies use Twitter and Facebook to offer coupons, promote causes, and share photos and videos.

Others use social media to spotlight their customers, call attention to case studies and blog posts, or start online communities.

Your goal isn’t to copy someone else’s strategy. Instead, see what’s possible and then get creative in ways that will please your customers and meet your goals.

3. Attract Followers

Write interesting posts.

Think quality over quantity.

You can create hundreds or even thousands of posts on your social network, but if they are not compelling to your audience, they are essentially useless.

In addition to posting great content, post comments on blogs, and “like” other pages.

Encourage your website visitors or blog readers to follow you.

Include your social media links in your email signatures, business cards, newsletters, and press releases.

4. Give People Reasons to Engage

Remember, the most popular people on social media networks aren’t always talking about themselves.

They recognize and help others, including customers, business partners, and journalists.

Encourage people to engage with you and your brand:

  • Ask for advice
  • Conduct surveys and contests
  • Offer coupons or incentives
  • Retweet posts
  • Be nice to others (they’ll probably return the favor)

5. Establish a Reasonable Schedule

Don’t let your social media activity stagnate, but don’t let it overwhelm you either.

Commit to a reasonable investment of time and energy. To stay productive, some people schedule 30 minutes once or twice a day to post something new, listen to what others are saying and respond to direct messages. 

Either way, don’t allow social media to keep you from face-to-face networking.

6. Measure the Results

Attracting a high number of fans and followers isn’t the best way to measure success if your followers can’t help your business.

On the other hand, if you connect with one influential thought-leader or an investor with deep pockets, then it may not matter whether you have 100 followers or 1,000.

How you measure the results of your social media efforts will depend on the goals you set at the outset.

Social media holds tremendous promise for marketers and business owners, but there’s also the potential for costly stumbles.

Given the rapidly changing landscape of the social networks, professionals may benefit from pursuing advanced training in the field, perhaps through an online certificate program led by industry experts.

Regardless of whether they pursue training or take a do-it-yourself approach, business owners and marketers should consider adopting a creative and strategic approach to social media.

Want to learn more about social media strategy from a real-world experienced trainer “Kiran Gutha”.

100% online programs for individuals, as well as professional, advanced professional programs in Internet Marketing, and Social Media Marketing are available. Contact me now with your requirement.!

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How To Master Social Media For Business In 2022

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Welcome to Kiran Gutha‘s guide on How to Master Social Media for Business. Businesses need to know their customers, their likes, dislikes, and where they live online.

Social Media For Businesses

Social Media is critical for business. According to Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers said social media was crucial for the success of their businesses.

Those figures show an increase from the previous study when 86% of marketers thought social media was a necessity. In order to market to your target demographic, though, you must understand the clientele.

The Buyer Persona

Knowing your target audience’s likes, dislikes, and wishes is essential for successful marketing campaigns.

According to the Buyer Persona Manifesto, a buyer persona is “an archetype, a composite picture of the real people who buy, or might buy, products like the ones you sell.”

A buyer persona is a blueprint for your perfect customer.

When it comes to social media for businesses, brands need clearly defined buyer personas, so they can effectively market to their niche.

Reasons buyer personas help everyone involved in marketing include:

  • Buyer personas paint a picture of the desires of your potential customers.
  • They improve the content, so you’re even more efficient at creating future marketing campaigns.
  • They give you more insight into customer’s actions, which helps you successfully tweak your campaigns.

Tools for Identifying Buyer Personas

Identifying buyer personas is only half the battle. Once personas are discovered they need to be organized and examined in a way that can translate into a marketing campaign.

Social media for businesses relies heavily on organizing findings of consumers to structure advertisement platforms. Here are some popular tools for categorizing information related to buyer personas:

  • Hubspot.com/make-my-persona:  Powered by HubSpot, this tool creates a buyer persona document after completion of a step-by-step guide program.
  • UpCloseandPersona.com: Developed by B2B marketing strategist Ardath Albee, it’s a free buyer persona tool that includes an array of different tips and information.

Buyer Personas in Action

The Four Seasons is a hotel and resort company. It noticed third-party sites such as Priceline were making a lot of money on discounted room prices, including some from their own properties.

To combat this, Four Seasons came up with a mobile app designed to interact with current and future customers. The app allowed them to look at and book different locations, thus creating buyer personas reflecting customers’ individual preferences.

Engagement and Social Media

The lines separating traditional and social media are blurring. Smaller businesses are becoming more aggressive as they ask customers for feedback on social media platforms.

Social media challenges are becoming more popular as well, with companies asking customers to complete tasks, usually with discounts as incentives. 

Dedicating a page on the business website featuring customer engagement is an effective way to get your customers talking about their experience with your company and brand.

Handling a Social Media Crisis

It’s bound to happen. Someone might post something offensive, or a post might be misconstrued as offensive.

Seconds matter in the digital age, so a plan of action should already be established for dealing with social media issues to keep them from becoming catastrophes.

Brand reputation is everything for businesses today. Once that’s tarnished it’s damaged forever. Take a look at these tips for dealing with social media misunderstandings:

  • Take responsibility: It’s always better to be proactive than reactive. Hear the customer out, let them explain their issue and if you made a mistake, admit it, and take ownership of it. It’s the first step to rebuilding customer trust.
  • Respond and clarify in a timely manner:  Response time is critical when things go wrong in social media. Notifying someone that a response is on the way if the issue can’t be addressed immediately, is a good damage control method.
  • Consider the best platforms:  Use the appropriate platform for communication with customers. Twitter is great for customer service because concerns can be addressed quickly and succinctly. 

More User Engagement

Calls-to-action is necessary to get feedback and interaction from your audience. Exploring targeted ads that monitor what consumers are clicking on is also a reliable technique for finding out what keeps your customers interested.

Another technique gaining popularity is incorporating more video into your marketing campaigns. The more engaging the content can be, the more likely people will not only pay attention to it but pass it on to someone else they know.

Social media for business is a powerful tool but don’t overcomplicate it. Look at what successful engagement pages are doing and mirror those practices.

Consumer engagement will go up and you’ll reach your target audience as you create the tailored content they’re looking for.

Learn digital marketing from a real-world experienced instructor with real-world success Kiran Gutha. 100% online programs for individuals, as well as professional, advanced professional programs in Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing are available. Contact me now with your requirement.!

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