• 50% of mobile traffic in UK is for Facebook.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
• The huge number of followers of Facebook is sufficient to become the third largest country in the world.
• A new member joins LinkedIn every second.
• Pinterest has the distinction to become the fastest site to achieve 100 million visitors in 2012.
• Over 100 million people are using Instagram.
• Over 200 millions people are active on Twitter.
• Only 14% trust advertisements.
• Social media is used for business by 93% of marketers.

In 2012, every minute in every day, 100,000 tweets were sent, 1684,478 posts were shared on Facebook, 2 million searches were done using Google and 48 hours of videos were uploaded to YouTube.   Such a revolutionary influence of social media impacts offline behavior of people also in a big way. For example 1 in 5 couples meet online. 3 in 5 gay couples meet online. 1 in 5 divorces are blamed on Facebook.

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It’s growing with a faster pace

If you check the growth of Google Plus, the rate of growth and its popularity in terms of social domain seems to be much faster than Facebook and other social networking sites. Facebook was launched in 2004 has now reached to 800 million users, while Google Plus in less than two years has pumped in more than 400 million people over it. Technically speaking, the growth rate of Google Plus seems to be four times than Facebook. Small businesses often look for growth, hence to get success in less duration Google Plus could be the option for you to promote your business online. Lastly, considering the presence of Google, you get better search results with Google Plus when you consider it in your online marketing strategy.

Better search results

The search results that you find having images is often the posts by different Google + users. The number of Google + account holders makes this happen over the search results. It is usually accepted that the posts, which are carried out by qualified users are now be able to influence the search results and thus gain better ranks. Also, Google Plus users are now being considered as more trusted users as compared to other social media sites, hence they are more likely to give better results over the number of searches carried out over Google. If you are able to post quality content for your business, the results you get would be far better than the others. Lastly, with competent business promotion strategy, you could end up getting more local searches, which is not possible over Facebook or any other social media sites.

Better tools for your business marketing

Google is a big family wherein you could find a number of tools and products available online, that can help you in your business promotion provided you base your online marketing strategies on Google Plus. Once you start using Google Plus for your business promotion, Google will help you in providing better ways through its various tools like Gmail, Maps, Search, and YouTube to make your business venture more visible before your target audience. Small businesses can therefore employ a good team based on experiences marketers to create effective content and promote their products and services over Google Plus along with linking up relevant content found with different authors and users. In this way, with competent strategy over Google Plus, you can end up getting favorable search results for your business.

Final word

With passing time it seems that slowly and steadily Google will be shifting all the things over Google Plus. Therefore soon, it will be used like a search engine, to find better and personalized results. At such junctures, small businesses, which struggle hard to reach to their small and specific target audiences, can find Google Plus as the best resort to find better results.

Follow Fresh View Concepts on Google+!

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Fundamental Online Benefits

One benefit of online brand building is the enormous exposure your brand can attain at a very cost effective outlay. It’s important to also realize that online brand building can be much more personalized than offline building can be because you have the freedom to highly individualize the psychology of your brand by utilizing distinct links, superior textual content, eye catching graphics, and much more interactive social media tools. Building your brand online is practically spreading the awareness of your product and services like wild fire. Using social media tools, you can initially create a buzz using twitter, invite people to visit your Facebook page, persuade them to socially bookmark your site and share the information with other sharing platforms.

Additional Online Benefits

Brand building online is supremely effective especially with a user interface involving co-location hosting. To be able to differentiate the hardware and software of your choice for the most successful integration of brand building resources is especially effective for most every company, whether new or fully established. It allows much more control and consistency in effectively demonstrating the brand’s value, availability, variety, and versatility to an enormous market of potential consumers. This performance consistency is essential for success.

Principle Offline Advantages

Offline brand building can consist of marketing and advertising elements such as TV commercials, radio advertisements, print and even billboard display ads to start for the most obvious and impressive impact possible. But direct mailing is also highly useful, and short of email direct marketing, offline direct mail marketing can be especially useful for a smaller, more localized brand or company just starting out, if the mammoth financial resources are simply not there yet. Offline branding is also beneficial because companies can reach smaller markets at a more reasonable cost with traditional brand building techniques of publicity and promotion.

Associated Offline Advantages

The effectiveness of offline branding can be due to the fact that it’s normally narrower in scope than the universality of online branding. More specific market niches can be reached with the offline approach. Costs can be controlled better. The target market can have its demographics and socioeconomics studied and approached in very hands on manner. There’s the tangibility factor of having sales staffs being able to physically interact with consumers face-to-face as well, and this can substantively help build genuine brand loyalty at a much faster rate than online brand building attempts.

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Social Media is now widely accepted as a major player in any company’s marketing mix.  It is no longer just a trend, and can have major ROI when properly implemented.

Promoting Your Facebook Business Page

So, how do customers get to your Facebook page easily?  There are a few ways.  Put a link to Facebook on your website; this is a great way to connect your customers to everything you have on the web. You can also put a link to your page in your monthly email newsletter.  This has become a standard in most emails, and can be easily integrated.  One of the ways Facebook gives you is a Custom URL (username).

To use this feature you must first have 25 fans, but it is well worth the wait, which is usually only a matter of days if you make sure to promote your page.  This gives you the ability to put your company name (if you prefer) in the link.   For example, we use FreshViewConcepts as a username, so our link is www.facebook.com/FreshViewConcepts.   A custom URL makes it easy for your customers to remember, so they do not have to go hunt down a direct link to your page.

Posting to Your Facebook Page

Now you are ready to start posting!  You can post about what products or services you offer, specials you are having, or company news.  But be careful, you do not always want to talk just about your company.  Although your fans follow you because they want to know more about your company, they become “burnt out” when they hear too much.  Give them information they can really use that also complements your business.  For example, Fresh View Concepts posts about the company, but also posts about the latest trends in social media and web design.  Also, you want to make sure you are interacting with your customers.  If they comment on a post or ask a question, answer them back promptly.  This will let them know you care about what they have to say and how they are feeling.  You can also have a bit of fun and make your page fun for your fans.  Ask questions with the ‘Questions’ feature or make it a poll!  It is a great way to get customer feedback about a product or service.  If you wanted know what your customers thought about a new product, this would be the tool to use.

This leads us to EdgeRank.  Think every time you post something it is seen by everyone of your fans?  Most likely, it is not.  Facebook uses a specific formula to determine which posts each user sees.  If fans interact with your page continuously; liking posts, commenting, and sharing; this increases the chance more people will see your posts.  Links, pictures, and videos also have a higher ranking than just a regular status update, so include those when you can.  If your fans are interacting, it is more likely that their friends will also interact.  This is because of the likelihood that an interaction will post to the fan’s timeline.  Bottom line, engage your customers!

Facebook Analytics

How do you keep track of what is working and what is not?  A Facebook business page gives you the tools to track almost everything from new likes to post interactions. ‘Overview’, ‘Likes’, and ‘Reach’ tabs gives you information by weeks and months.  It tells you how many new likes you have and if it is up or down from the previous week/month; as well as how many weekly/monthly active users you have, lifetime likes, how many post views, and how much post feedback you received.   These tabs give you tons of information on how users are interacting, whether its liking a post, commenting, or even how many are unique visitors.  It also tells you what age groups and gender your users are and what country and city they are from.  Pages your users are looking at are also shown.  These tabs can give you good information on which posts were looked at the most, and can help you sort out which types posts are working best for your company.  It gives you total impressions (views) and feedback percentage (percentage based on how many fans you have).

Now that you have all the basic tools for your Facebook business page, it is time to put it to work!

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Creating Connections

Connecting with other professionals in your field may help improve your job performance.  Use your connections to learn more about your field by reading updates and asking questions.  You may find an unexpected connection that can help you accelerate your career or that could be a potential client.  Connections are also a great way to learn about networking events in your area. Interact with your connections to find out more about them.

Online Resume

Whether you have a job or not, having all of your professional information up to date on LinkedIn is a great way to promote yourself.  Your LinkedIn page is basically like an online resume and can help you add strong connections, find a job you are looking for, or tell others about your accomplishments and expertise.  Are you a business owner? It can get your business in the hands of those who can use your products and services.  Get your name out there!  You never know when an opportunity can present itself.  Listing the company you work for on your LinkedIn profile and interacting with those who are interested in the company, can help attract potential partners and clients.

Job Alerts

LinkedIn now recommends jobs that match your profile and shows job listings in your network.  LinkedIn also has an option to send out email alerts for recommended jobs.  This particular feature can come in handy for many users looking for a job, wanting to switch careers, or move up in the corporate ladder.  For those that own a business and are looking for employees, LinkedIn gives the ability to post job listings.  Many times, applying for a job on LinkedIn is as easy as showing the potential employer your LinkedIn profile, another important reason to keep your information up to date and complete.

LinkedIn Groups

Joining groups on LinkedIn can be a great way to communicate with others in your field and gain access to tons of resources.  Search for groups in your field and even groups in your area.  This can be an invaluable resource for connecting with people who can get you to where you want to be.

Follow Fresh View Concepts on LinkedIn!

Connect with Nina on LinkedIn!

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Tweet and Tweet Often

Tweeting less than once a week is not going to put you on the fore front of news streams.  In fact, tweeting less than once a week is no recommended.  Tweet as often as you can with relevant, interesting content.

Tweet Great Content

You have put your heart and soul into your business and want to share it with the world through social media.   Tweeting great content will drive people to follow and interact with your brand.  Where do you find this great content?  Here are a few ways:

-Content Creation: Content is still king and writing and maintaining a blog on your website can provide great content for your Twitter followers, which in turn, will get them looking at your website.

-HootSuite Streams:  Pick two or three topics that represent what your business is about and topics you believe your followers will be interested in.  Create a stream (or streams) in HootSuite that will collect tweets with the keywords of your choice.  This can help sort through some of the Twitter clutter, and provide you with great content to share with your followers.

-Google Alerts:  Pick two or three topics like you did in HootSuite and set up Google Alerts to give you content from all around the web.  This can be customized to alert you once a day or in real time.  Depending on the topic, you may want real time results to create buzz around a particular topic.

Interact!

Providing great content will get your followers tweeting and retweeting what you are sending out to them.  Interact with those who are sharing your content.  Thank them for sharing and retweeting your content and strike up conversations with people you follow for discussions and debates on topics relevant to your business and followers.

Follow Others in Your Industry

Twitter has provided its users with a “Discover” tab that takes information you have provided in your profile and information you tweet about and gives you who to follow recommendations.  Following people in your industry will get you tons of great content to share with your followers, ways to interact with others interested in the same topics, and examples of tweets that work.

Make Your Profile Stand Out

Recently, Twitter has changed the aesthetics of the Twitter profile.  Now, in addition to a basic profile picture and background, your Twitter profile can also have a header picture that is 1252×626.  Use this to its full potential to represent what your brand is all about.  Make sure your bio tells the most about your company and that your profile picture is your logo or a photo that best represents your brand as a whole.

Using these 5 steps, your brand will be headed towards a socially interactive and successful future on Twitter!

Follow us on Twitter!

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With the new Pinterest Web Analytics, business pages that have switched to the “new look” of Pinterest and have a verified website, will be able to access these analytics.  Pinterest has made it easy to view these new analytics.  Simply click on your company name at the top of the screen and click on “Analytics”. Some of the new features include:

Site Metrics

With Site Metrics, business pages can see impressions of their pins and the reach each pin gets within the Pinterest community.  Remember, these are important factors because each pin is attached to the URL it was pinned from.  Other features in the site metrics let you see what is being pinned from your website and which pins are being clicked on.

Who is Pinning Your Content

See what pinners are pinning by clicking on the tabs in the toolbar, Most Recent Pins, Most Repinned, and Most Clicked.  You can also select a specific date range for your data set and export the data if desired.  Using these analytics, you can see how people are interacting with your content and start to hone down on your target audience.  You can test content to see what is working and what may need to be tweaked.

New Look

Pinterest has also rolled out a cleaner, more organized look for their ever growing social media platform.  It is easier than ever to add new pins and boards and interact with other pinners.  With the new look, pin comments have taken a back seat, but not to worry, they are still available when clicking on the pin itself.

The guys at Pinterest were kind enough to make a short video to explain all of the great new features that were rolled out today.  Take a look!

Follow us on Pinterest!  (New pins coming soon, we promise!)

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Plan your web pages

Before you start designing the web pages, it is important that you check the needs and aspirations of your potential visitors. This can help you in coming up with a customized kind of content, which can meet all your impending requirements of your potential visitors coming over your website. You are supposed to pay more attention to this aspect wherein you get to note that your landing web page will get your designed format. This will also help in grabbing the attention of the visitors coming to your site, who are interested in finding out some relevant information.

Have a goal

The moment the visitor settles down over your website, your very next step is to hold his or her attention. This can be possible only when you move on with a set goal. Are the visitors coming at your site in search of a whitepaper or simply they are keen to have more information about any product or service? You are then required to modify your site pages as per their requirements and showcase a detailed information over the aspects in which you seems to be focusing on. This is will therefore allow you to establish yourself as a genuine contender in your niche business put forth a goal for your site as well.

Giving your users’ requirements a top priority

Everything you do over your website has to be carried out as per the needs and requirements or your readers or visitors. Hence you should develop engaging content wherein you cater quality information on different aspects of the subject, which you would be covering. In order to produce such type of content, you are supposed to think in your readers’ point of view then only you could end up embarking with compelling content. Such content would be always par with the expectations of your visitors or readers.

Write clear and specific headlines

This should be the first thing, which is going to attract the attention of your readers. Having clear and specific kinds of headlines will be able to showcase the crux of your content to the visitors or readers coming at your site. Make sure you also include the SEO keywords in it, which could also help you in getting organic traffic to your website or blog.

Focus more on benefits

The moment you are able to hold the attention of your readers, the next vital thing to consider is to start focusing on the benefits of your products or services, which your business offers. For example, if you are promoting any soap brand using your landing pages, you could think of adding a couple of benefits like, it give you shiny and smooth kind of hair etc. in your pages.

If you want to retain your readers for long, it is important to consider designing the landing pages as per the expectations of your readers or visitors.

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Online presence is definitely the key to success irrespective of the type of business conducted to the virtual medium. It is not about the transaction procedures or social media networking or even about purchasing online ads. What matters most is how well the online presence is maintained.

It is necessary to develop or build a complete Online Presence. The process is very similar to construction of a very tall and sturdy building, floor by floor, step by step, in some specific order or stages. The stages of building an Online Presence may differ from one individual to another but the motto will be to reach the top of a virtual, integrated marketing system. Below provided is a seven-stage model to build a complete Online Presence without facing any complex jargon.

The 7 Stages of Online Presence:

Content Platform –> Organic SEO –> Email Marketing –> Social Media Marketing –> Online Advertising –> Mobile & Location –> Analytics and Conversion

Content Platform

Content Platform is the first stage that involves developing a strong listening station with certain tools like TweetDeck, Google Alerts, Sprout Social, etc. This will be the starting point from where the user will gain an insight view of the market, the available important groups, and associated competitors. This is also the stage where initial starting of the work through right keyword sorting takes place.

Organic SEO

The online presence should be such that the name keeps getting listed at the top of the search engine page. This can create a big difference between success and failure. SEO procedures can be highly time-consuming and complicated. However, online marketing and business sites can achieve positive results by following the organic SEO concept. This concept comprises of 3 major elements:

• Informative contents filled with rich and right set of keywords
• Ensure to make it search engine friendly
• Drawing quality links from higher ranked sites

Email Marketing

Choose a reputed ESP and try to build a list of all those email subscribers who have shown interest in the site. In fact, social media can well be the tool to carry out this process effectively.

Social Media Marketing

Creating accounts in reputed social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be beneficial in developing a strong Online Presence. However, a group of dedicated clients should be targeted to start proceedings.

Online Advertising

Online advertising through Pay per Click process can be very effective. In fact, creating backward link to reputed sites and vice versa can also be beneficial for the cause. Google Adware can be used to carry out the PPC advertisement process in a proper way.

Mobile & Location

The marketing website needs to be mobile and tablet friendly. Using tools like GoMobi, WPTouch, or Tekora, websites can be made mobile and tablet friendly. Mobile and tablets are extremely important gadgets these days. Hence, marketing websites that are mobile-friendly in nature and through which shopping can take place will definitely catch attention of many.

Analytics & Conversion

Measuring the success rate is extremely important and then tries to convert it into one step higher. There is no limitation to success rate. Some of the best analytics tools are Spring Metrics, Google Analytics, and Kiss Metrics

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