Social Media Checklist for Business

Social Media is a very powerful marketing platform for any business, but how do you know what to do? The typical business owner ask the same questions when social media is recommended for them. How do I blog? How many tweets do I send? What should I do on Facebook? What about LinkedIn? 

This is a very simple social media checklist to help any business owner with what they should be doing at minimum for these different platforms. 

Blog Post:

• Write 3 new blog post a week
• Have 3 targeted keywords that you include in every blog post
• Share the blog post link on:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google +

Facebook:

• Find and Like 5 new pages a week
• Update company page status daily
• Post about 2 interesting topics related to your business
• Ask people to comment, like or share post

Twitter:

• Re-tweet 2 interesting tweets a day
• Follow 10 new people a week
• Send at least 3 new tweets daily
• Business related
• Promotional
• Fun & Interesting
• Circulating the blog post

LinkedIn:

• Update Company profile and status
• Connect with 3 – 5 new people per week
• Ask for 1 -2 recommendations per week
• Follow 3 new companies

Google + :

• Add 5 new people to your circle a week
• Offer a Google + Hangout session for a related topic in your industry
• Share content at least twice a day to your personal Google + profile and company page
• Host a monthly Google + hangout for a topic your industry

Pinterest:

• Each month, post product images and examples of our work from our company website as pins leading back to the site
• Follow 5 new interesting and inspiring pin boards each week from other users related to our field
• Add 1 new board that contains at least 6 new pins each week

YouTube:

• Find 3 new videos each week to share on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +
• Plan a video that showcases an area of our businesses expertise
• Have video capability at special events our business hosts or attends each month. Ask for brief interviews to post to YouTube.

This checklist should be used as a guide to help any business owner with their social media platform. These are the typical minimum requirements necessary to perform properly and see results. 

Super Bowl Sunday Marketing

 

With Superbowl XLVII two days away (February 3rd: San Francisco 49ers vs. Baltimore Ravens) it is not just a day that decides the new NFL Champions but it is the largest day in marketing as well. With an average cost of $3.8 Million per every 30 seconds of air time, this is an expensive figure for any company.

For the cost of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, you could buy: 

1. Over a week of Homepage Advertising : AOL, Yahoo! and other larger publishers sell their day-long homepages for an average of $500,000 a day. So for the $3.8 million cost of airtime you could ensure 7+ days of full homepage landing on a large digital media site.

2. Over 100 Million Impressions on Hulu : Hulu sells its video ads for $30 CPM (Cost Per Millions).

3. 200 Pieces of Branded Content : Buzzfeed charges $100k for 4 - 5 pieces of branded content.

4. Be YouTube for a Week : YouTube's homepage ad cost $500,000 a day.

5. 1 Month of Twitter's Trend Topic: Promoting Trending Topics on Twitter sells for about $120k a day.

6. 50 Million Forbes.com Impressions: Forbes charges $80 CPM for ads, but even with 50 Million Impressions on Forbes this is still only half of the potential audience for a Super Bowl ad.

Although these would options would get attention and drive ROI for your brand, they do not deliver the success that has been measured from Super Bowl Sunday Advertising. 

A survey showed that 36% of Super Bowl Watchers will be using a Mobile Device or Tablet during the game to see sports news and behind-the-scenes commentaries, and that 52% will use social media throughout the game to talk about plays and commercials. 

So here are some ways that you engage an audience on Sunday without a $4 Million dollar invoice from CBS:

• Tell your audience something new about your company, some breaking news that has a strong call to action from your social platform to your website. Give your viewers something to do with their smart phones or tablets.

• Try driving your viewers to a "Facebook Contest" where they can engage in  a sweepstakes offered by your company. Giveaways are always a good way of engaging your audience and getting their attention with an incentive. 

• Use Sharable content; make ads and extensions easily accessible and shareable through Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. These social platforms will be seeing increasing traffic during the game and your brand should be part of the conversation!

• Focus on a long term connection with your audience. Your ads and digital campaigns should do more than just entertain, they should engage your audience by demonstrating your value for each customer. By valuing each person individually rather than as a group, you make their decision down the road to choose you easier. This can be achieved by sending them to a site with information about yourself and your brand/service. Strive to make them understand that you care about them, not just about sales.

Search Tidbits

An article was posted following the Search Marketing Expo (which took place in NYC a few days ago), and the author regurgitated some interesting information regarding the current state of search.
First, Google announced at the conference that the Google Adwords Keyword Tool will now only provide keywords that Google finds to be profitable. As far as other Google highlights, their browser makes up for a whopping 97% of mobile search, and Google Instant (love it or hate it) has had a strong effect on video views, increasing clicks by 28%.
Second, real-time search is on fire--including one example of a blogger who's post was indexed within one minute of publishing. And Twitter is processing 12,000 queries/second, which rounds out to about 1 billion queries per day. A little more on search--55% of search queries are 3 words and up, and 20% of those are brand new queries.
And remember MySpace? After reducing page load times (which always seemed to take forever), they have seen page indexing undergo a quadrupled increase.