social media

Top 10 trends on social media in 2017

This article seeks to share what are likely to be the key trends to shape up in 2017. As a small business you need to be on top of the trends to gauge, if you are connecting with the right audience or not. Here are some of the trends that are going to define 2017. Social Messaging It is an increasing trend for people to turn to private social messaging rather than engage on social networks. In February 2016, Whatsapp announced it has hit the 1 billion mark. Messaging has a much wider community compared to social networks, and hence companies are taking advantage of this situation. In fact, if you happen to click an ad on Facebook messenger, it directly takes you to the brand’s chat window. As companies learn about the advantage of these, compared to social networks, they will increasingly make their presence felt here. In 2017, we are likely to see more interesting developments on social messaging. Action on Fake News Today there are more people turning to social media platforms for their news. As a result, we see more inaccurate content getting circulated on these media platforms. We saw the worst of this in the US presidential election, where fake news about both candidates was circulated across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. In terms of action, Facebook has already stopped these news outlets from advertising on its platform. In Europe, Germany is already considering legislation against platforms that allow fake news to proliferate. New age users are smart and tech savvy and are likely to investigate and authenticate the news, and reward actual reporting by sharing content. Chat Bots Instead of, on their Facebook wall, more companies are engaging with customers on a one-on-one basis within their messaging platforms. We are likely to see more companies deploy bots to automatically respond to customers. The content on the site and the response that is provided would become equally important. Artificial Intelligence is beginning to touch every part of our daily lives, with SIRI and Google Assistant, people are moving to voice recognition tools away from typing out a search. A majority of the major social networks now deploy chat bots to handle simple bookings and customer service. This in-turn can free up customer support representatives to answer more in-depth queries. Employees turn to brand promoters In 2017, we will see increasing number of employees turning brand ambassadors for their respective brands. This is especially true for companies that want to expand the reach and impact of social media without spending a penny. Employee Advocacy is the practice of incentivizing and encouraging team members to share brand messages on their own social media account. Brands have now started focusing on their employees to promote a brand. Promoting brands on one’s personal social account is a trusted practice. There is no right way or wrong way of doing it, but advocacy cannot be forced. Customer Support Social media has grown in ability to run effective client support programs. Brands are slowly but surely are becoming aware of the practice of having teams on their payrolls to answer and resolve issues. Research shows a high percentage of users expect responses from brands they follow, sometimes in as little as within an hour. This has led brands to heavily invest in teams and tools which help them remain on top of the latest social media developments. Beginning 2017, a large part of client service will shift to social media accounts. Social media analytics In the earlier days of social media, it was seen as an option and used more on a trial basis for marketing activities. Later, social media presence for brands became the norm. These days and in the coming months, we are likely to see powerful social media analytics tools that provide more comprehensive and easier to use tools for the layman. Marketers will come to heavily rely on social media statistics for key decision making in this year. In the current lot, Google Analytics, Followerwonk, Iconosquare are the most used analytics tools and also happen to be free. These can be of tremendous help for small business owners who want to know the latest on social media analytics. Live Video Social media sites have taken the engagement with video sharing to the next level by launching live video in real time. Live streaming first became popular by twitter’s periscope. Now, Facebook live has been launched. Social media videos have more engagement than any other content and, have been responsible for recent growth of Facebook. According to estimates, some 74% of the total traffic on the internet is due only to video content. Even news channels are quoting Facebook Live while they cover news. We could see brands releasing engaging content or conduct marketing around a particular event in the near future. We are going to see more of this in the months to come. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go and Snapchat selfie brought augmented reality into social sphere. Hence, one can expect other social platforms to jump on this bandwagon. Facebook has already confirmed that it is experimenting with augmented reality. The technology is actually old, but it has recently caught the attention of social media networks. In 2017, we will see more of this with brands choosing to engage with their audience using this technology. Social Media commerce Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are offering ways to purchase products online. You can buy products displayed on social networks now. The buy buttons on these networks are soon going to become ubiquitous. Research shows that new age users are more likely to buy products which they are following online. Also product demonstration videos on social networks are also a factor in bringing sales to these social networks. Disappearing/ ephemeral Media First, it was Snapchat which started with disappearing visual content. Instagram was the second to join this bandwagon. New age users love intimate thoughts and risqué pictures to disappear forever. The content for the media

Top 10 trends on social media in 2017 Read More »

This article seeks to share what are likely to be the key trends to shape up in 2017. As a small business you need to be on top of the trends to gauge, if you are connecting with the right audience or not. Here are some of the trends that are going to define 2017. Social Messaging It is an increasing trend for people to turn to private social messaging rather than engage on social networks. In February 2016, Whatsapp announced it has hit the 1 billion mark. Messaging has a much wider community compared to social networks, and hence companies are taking advantage of this situation. In fact, if you happen to click an ad on Facebook messenger, it directly takes you to the brand’s chat window. As companies learn about the advantage of these, compared to social networks, they will increasingly make their presence felt here. In 2017, we are likely to see more interesting developments on social messaging. Action on Fake News Today there are more people turning to social media platforms for their news. As a result, we see more inaccurate content getting circulated on these media platforms. We saw the worst of this in the US presidential election, where fake news about both candidates was circulated across Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. In terms of action, Facebook has already stopped these news outlets from advertising on its platform. In Europe, Germany is already considering legislation against platforms that allow fake news to proliferate. New age users are smart and tech savvy and are likely to investigate and authenticate the news, and reward actual reporting by sharing content. Chat Bots Instead of, on their Facebook wall, more companies are engaging with customers on a one-on-one basis within their messaging platforms. We are likely to see more companies deploy bots to automatically respond to customers. The content on the site and the response that is provided would become equally important. Artificial Intelligence is beginning to touch every part of our daily lives, with SIRI and Google Assistant, people are moving to voice recognition tools away from typing out a search. A majority of the major social networks now deploy chat bots to handle simple bookings and customer service. This in-turn can free up customer support representatives to answer more in-depth queries. Employees turn to brand promoters In 2017, we will see increasing number of employees turning brand ambassadors for their respective brands. This is especially true for companies that want to expand the reach and impact of social media without spending a penny. Employee Advocacy is the practice of incentivizing and encouraging team members to share brand messages on their own social media account. Brands have now started focusing on their employees to promote a brand. Promoting brands on one’s personal social account is a trusted practice. There is no right way or wrong way of doing it, but advocacy cannot be forced. Customer Support Social media has grown in ability to run effective client support programs. Brands are slowly but surely are becoming aware of the practice of having teams on their payrolls to answer and resolve issues. Research shows a high percentage of users expect responses from brands they follow, sometimes in as little as within an hour. This has led brands to heavily invest in teams and tools which help them remain on top of the latest social media developments. Beginning 2017, a large part of client service will shift to social media accounts. Social media analytics In the earlier days of social media, it was seen as an option and used more on a trial basis for marketing activities. Later, social media presence for brands became the norm. These days and in the coming months, we are likely to see powerful social media analytics tools that provide more comprehensive and easier to use tools for the layman. Marketers will come to heavily rely on social media statistics for key decision making in this year. In the current lot, Google Analytics, Followerwonk, Iconosquare are the most used analytics tools and also happen to be free. These can be of tremendous help for small business owners who want to know the latest on social media analytics. Live Video Social media sites have taken the engagement with video sharing to the next level by launching live video in real time. Live streaming first became popular by twitter’s periscope. Now, Facebook live has been launched. Social media videos have more engagement than any other content and, have been responsible for recent growth of Facebook. According to estimates, some 74% of the total traffic on the internet is due only to video content. Even news channels are quoting Facebook Live while they cover news. We could see brands releasing engaging content or conduct marketing around a particular event in the near future. We are going to see more of this in the months to come. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go and Snapchat selfie brought augmented reality into social sphere. Hence, one can expect other social platforms to jump on this bandwagon. Facebook has already confirmed that it is experimenting with augmented reality. The technology is actually old, but it has recently caught the attention of social media networks. In 2017, we will see more of this with brands choosing to engage with their audience using this technology. Social Media commerce Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest are offering ways to purchase products online. You can buy products displayed on social networks now. The buy buttons on these networks are soon going to become ubiquitous. Research shows that new age users are more likely to buy products which they are following online. Also product demonstration videos on social networks are also a factor in bringing sales to these social networks. Disappearing/ ephemeral Media First, it was Snapchat which started with disappearing visual content. Instagram was the second to join this bandwagon. New age users love intimate thoughts and risqué pictures to disappear forever. The content for the media

Social Media: A nifty way for your business

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Social Media: A nifty way for your business Read More »

Social media is a significant facet of this digital era. Its influence is reflected by the striking metrics like over a billion audiences in popular social media sites, the annual user increment of around 11%, the remarkable engagement rate and the like. With its evolution over the last decade, social media has eventually become a reliable medium of commercial information. 65% of social media users consider information which is shared on social media while making their purchase decision. No wonder, social media has come to be an effective weapon for business professionals, especially savvy marketers. Some specifics about social media which will encourage you to use social media for your business are sorted out as follows:   Social media offers you low – cost platform for advertising: Developing a social media strategy is the best way to decrease the marketing expenses in a business. While a 30 seconds TV ad pricing $350000 reaches a national audience a Facebook ad at a lesser cost reaches the global audience. So, social media gives you a better harvest for your marketing investments. Social media offers you a wide audience reach: If your aim is a wide reach then social media is your best bet. Facebook has over 1 billion active users across different demographics, geography and cultural parameters. Twitter which is logged in by over 100 million users daily is mostly used by the age ran. The twitter users aging above 60 are also increasing. Social media enables your faster reach to audience: There is hardly anyone who does not have a social media account. More than 60% of the social media account holders use their social media accounts daily. This justifies the fact and assures you that social media has a faster and ascertained reach to your target audience. Social media offers you an intense user engagement: User generated content in social media earns sincere attention of users. Apart from this, most of the content comes off in appealing forms like engaging games, queries, video ads and the like. Social media hikes brand loyalty of your fans: Most of the content in social media is user generated and it flows in from reliable sources. Moreover social media exposes your brand to a wide audience and it enables you to interact with the audience. It’s a three tier effect: it introduces your brand to your young prospective fans, invokes curiosity about your brand and emboldens the faith of your already existing fans. All these help you to earn brand loyalty from your fans. Social media offers you the scope of better customer service: Social media helps you in understanding the sentiment of your audience for your brand. By following the social buzz and analysing social sentiment of your target audience you understand the exact needs of your customers and follow them up with the required service. While the above stated advantages of social media gives you good returns, using social media for your brand is not free from risks. One of the risks arises from the fast reach of social media. So, if it’s a positive buzz your brand may become the king of the market while if it’s a negative buzz, you brand may get affected. So, using social media requires your vigilance all the time. You have to keep an eye on the reactions of your audiences to your marketing activities and keep the buzz about your brand under control. Giving prompt responses to your audience queries, regulating negative posts with an appeasing reply and pivoting audience attention to positive posts help you to regulate the reactions of your audience. If you are infusing social media in your business strategies you must not miss out on these tips:   Learn about the behaviour of your audience: Learning audience behaviour is a mixture of quantitative and qualitative process. It requires your intent observation, social sentiment analysis, search analysis etc. Learning about audience behaviour will help you to tune in your brand with your target audience. Do not beat the drum about your brand: Over promoting your brand will hamper your brand reputation. So, social media strategies must be objectified to win the heart of your audience rather than promoting your business. It should be customer oriented. Respond to messages and queries on time: Apt response to messages and queries from your audience helps you to earn new fans and maintain the relationship with already existing fans. Do not abuse the use of hash tags: The hash tags you use must be relevant to your business and must be popular at the time you make your post. Post at optimal frequencies: Posting at optimal frequencies increases the visibility of your brand in a social site. So, learn about the optimal frequency of posting in a particular site with real time posting as well as secondary research and post accordingly. Use the right parameters to measure the success of your brand: The ROI parameters tell you how effective have been your social media strategies and how you should proceed in the future. Choose the right parameters to evaluate your social media activities and earn rich returns. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business?

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

Clash Of The Social Media Giants – Twitter Or FB, What Works Better For your Business? Read More »

The results you reap from your social media marketing depend a lot on the social platform you select. The social media sites you choose must satisfy your objectives of marketing. An astute marketer relates his social media marketing to the fundamentals of his business like branding, the value offered to customers, the target segment served etc. Before setting your foot in social media you have to reflect upon these fundamentals. There are a few questions which you must reflect upon mandatorily as you embark on your social media marketing. What type of content is compatible for your business marketing? Is the platform selected compatible with your content type? Is your target audience active in the social platform you have selected? How deep are the insights of ROI available in the social platform you use?   These questions help you justify your selection of the social media platform for marketing. When you select a social media platform you must ensure that your marketing activities are harmonious to the platform features. For instance, your advertisements must appeal to the active audiences; your post timings must match the time when a majority of your target audiences on the platform are active. Facebook and Twitter have been two most sought after social media platforms by a majority of the marketers worldwide for more than a decade. Despite the emergence of many new social media platforms such as Instagram, tumbler, facebook and twitter have managed to retain their positions of leadership as the ‘go-to’ platforms for most marketers. If you have to choose between facebook and twitter for marketing your business, it is good to find out the differences and benefits of each of these platforms. Whichever serves your business purpose, make it the focus of your social media presence. Here we take a quick look at the two giants:   Facebook     Twitter   Facebook started as a social site to reconnect with your school friends. Eventually facebook has started linking its users to experts and celebs apart from old friends. Twitter is a more formal networking site where the users express their opinions in crisp 140 characters. It’s still an informal social site for sharing information, personal and otherwise and creating noteworthy engagement of users. Every 1 million followers in facebook make 700 interactions while the same number of followers in twitter make 300 interactions. Twitter is very useful for spreading the word. Twitter tweets can be retweeted and shared. So, if you have great content that is likely to be shared, Twitter is a good bet. Facebook has a magnum audience of over 1.5 billion and the average age range of this crowd is 25-45. Twitter has a smaller audience of about 4 million and mostly in the age group of below 40. 60% of facebook users are female and 40% are male. Twitter is very mobile friendly. The user engagement in facebook is longer than Twitter. If you boost your facebook posts then the engagement lifespan increases even more. This is because facebook users spend more time on the site. It is a good platform for sharing news, running contests and seeking quick response from companies. Facebook indulges creativity. It allows multi-media content in the form of videos, images and graphics which is easily attracts audience. No wonder users stay intensely engaged in facebook. Twitter gives you the option of buying Twitter cards, which helps you to gather e-mail IDs and generate leads. This, in turn, helps you to track your ROI from your Twitter campaign. Facebook allows marketers the flexibility to choose from various advertising formats that are visually appealing. Twitter is slowly bringing in flexibility to its 140 character limit. Nowadays, Twitter allows vine videos and images which have enhanced the soulfulness of tweets. Based on the above facts, it might be safe to say that if your business is all about fashion, food, travel, film making or the like where visual imagery is important, then Facebook is more preferable. On the other hand, if your business is into services, twitter is a better site for you. It will associate you with the right industry professionals as well as your target audience. If you are a start-up, you can use twitter to generate leads at a low cost. Deciding upon your social marketing site needs some real-time learning. As you start with your social media activities you should make use of both twitter and facebook sites and make a note of the returns yielded by the sites. Whichever site yields you higher engagement and visibility; make it the crux of your social strategies to earn rich returns on your efforts. GetFriday is your personal virtual assistant helping you offload your time-consuming & mundane tasks. You just don’t get an assistant, but get access to an entire team with specialized skills to handle the entire spectrum of your business needs. GetFriday (earlier YMII or YourManInIndia) is a service that was featured and used in the NYTimes best-selling productivity and lifestyle design book ‘The 4-Hour-Workweek’ by Timothy Ferris. Sign up now!

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

How You Can Leverage Social Listening To Boost Business Growth- What It Is & What You Can Do Read More »

So, you are familiar with blogging and make sporadic appearances on message boards, commenting forums and your blog page. You are active on all social media accounts and as a result have an enviable digital presence. Does this make you feel like you have an advantage and can outdo your competitors? Don’t be too sure just yet. While forums, social media and blogging are essential for survival in a competitive business landscape, social listening is a crucial tool and can help you scale your business. Social listening is the act of monitoring or tracking various social media accounts, blogs, wiki pages, message boards and the like, to gauge the level of sentiments that people have towards a business and what they are saying about it. For instance, if you are following industry influencers, other well-known personalities who operate in the industry you work for and have a strong following by potential clients, there’s a very good chance that you will be followed or at least noticed too. Imagine what earning a blog link or a mention from an established personality can do for your following, brand and business growth. Social Listening Tips For Business Effective social listening can help boost sales for your business and more specifically, give you a competitive edge over your competitors. The question you need to be asking yourself is, how to leverage social media monitoring for better business. 1.By Tracking Your Competitors’ Activities If you are active on social media accounts, you should ideally be tracking what your competitors are doing too. Check for their success stories and make a note of their slipups. By monitoring your competitors across social media platforms, you will also be able to keep a close eye on any new, development from their side be it improved product/services offerings, policies or other prominent changes that could positively impact their businesses. 2.By Monitoring Your Online Reputation It is imperative to learn what the world thinks about your business. Monitor all the social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, online review sites, blogs, forums and other platform for mentions of your company or brand. If you want to boost credibility (and also visibility!) ensure that you always respond to your clients on time, with thoughtful replies, apologies or other appropriate comments for every mention you get on the World Wide Web. Fail to do this and you might risk your reputation. 3.By Discovering New Ideas & Trends Set up social alerts to identify the emerging trends and fresh ideas that may be relevant to your industry. In doing so, you will be able to update your products or services and keep them up-to-the-minute. What You Should Do Now, that you know why it is important, it is crucial to understand ‘what’ you should ideally be doing to get started with social listening. Social listening is a fairly simple practice and can be done easily with the use of platforms such as Google Alerts, Social Mention, Topsy, Hootsuite and Icerocket. Platforms like these can help collect aggregate data, track keywords and mentions across important social media channels. All you have to do is set up your alerts and monitor your social conversations on a day-to-day basis. Remember that social listening is not a quick process. It requires a thorough understanding and dedicated commitment of at least half an hour everyday, apart from working on other activities. You will additionally need to schedule alerts, manage your inbox and maintain commitment with the other work you do on a daily basis for your business. If you are just starting out with social listening and you have a lot on your platter, you might end up making mistakes, losing out on time and patience. If you want to save on time and still get your social listening right, why not outsource and hand over this responsibility to a reliable, social media virtual assistant from a virtual assistance provider like GetFriday? Talk to your social media virtual assistant about what you are expecting, what is relevant to the industry you operate in, map out your competitors, etc. You can also monitor your virtual assistant’s work along the way and ask for regular reports, alerts or other notifications for the social listening activities. Why should you compromise on your productivity and do complex, specialist work when you can have a professional do it for you in half the time? Think about it. Wouldn’t it be better for you if someone else could take care of your social media accounts while you focused on growing your business or doing other activities that interested you? In order to stay competitive, it is essential to learn about your clients, competitors and what the Internet has to say about your brand at large. If you partake in social listening activities, you will be able to take online conversations from being a one-way street to interactive and thus, boost business growth.

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