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10 Reasons Why Your Competition Is Beating You On Social Media

April 29, 2011 By Rob Wormley 3 Comments

Although you might not want to admit it, I bet you’re paying attention to how your competition is doing on social media. Have you noticed lately that their social media profiles are growing a lot faster than your company’s social media profiles? It might be because of one of these ten reasons:

1. Your competition has a presence on multiple social media sites. While you’re spending all your time updating your company’s Facebook page, your competition is busy sending out tweets, uploading YouTube videos, connecting with potential leads on LinkedIn, creating a new album of photos on their Flickr photostream, and updating their blog. Your competition understands the importance and value of building an online brand presence through the use of multiple social media platforms.

Create a presence on all the popular social media sites

2. Your competition is updating their social media profiles consistently. Your competition’s social media profiles continue to grow because they continue to provide consistent, valuable content to their followers. They have maintained a loyal following thanks to the consistent updates they post on their social media profiles, and have even started attracting new followers.

3. Your competition is going out of their way to invite customers to connect with them on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Are you telling the customers who walk into your door about your social media presence? Is it in your brochures? Your quarterly newsletter? Your email signature? On the back of your restaurant menu? Your competition is going out of their way to invite customers and prospects to connect with them on their favorite social media sites.

4. Your competition is posting a variety of content. Your competition isn’t re-posting promotional text from their website. They are creating Facebook photo albums of their last corporate event. They’re finding interesting links that relate to their industry and sharing them with followers. They are uploading client testimonial videos and behind-the-scenes video tours to their YouTube channel. Your competition is posting content that they know their followers will like. They aren’t worried about leaving out the promotional text from their website, because they are attracting new customers by providing value.

Create a Flickr photo gallery and share it on Facebook

5. Your competition is cross-promoting. Your competition is telling their Twitter followers about their Facebook page. They are ending every YouTube video by inviting viewers to connect with them on their other social media sites. They are embedding their Facebook page feed into their blog. They understand that their LinkedIn connections might not ever realize they have a Flickr account unless they occasionally share links to their Flickr photostream on their LinkedIn profile.

6. Your competition isn’t afraid to answer the hard questions. If you’re afraid to answer the tough questions that people might post on your company’s Facebook page, don’t be. Your competition isn’t afraid. In fact, they encourage their followers to ask tough questions, because they see it as an opportunity to strengthen their online reputation. Instead of ignoring or deleting tough questions that show up on their Facebook page, they’re being proactive. They’re taking the time to come up with a helpful, thoughtful answer that will show people how much they care about their customers.

7. Your competition is customizing their profiles with recognizable brand designs. You might understand the importance of presenting a consistent brand design when promoting your business in the physical world (you have a standard design or logo that appears on your flyers, your company shirts, your store sign, and your press releases), but you’re not (successfully) incorporating your company’s consistent design into your social media profiles. Your competition has taken time to design visually-interesting, customized designs for all their social media profiles.

: Customize Your Social Media Sites

8. Your competition is taking time to listen to advice, suggestions, and other helpful comments. Your competition is not only improving their online reputation by listening to advice and comments made by their followers, but they’re also using these comments to improve their business in general. They value the interaction that is happening on their social media profiles, and they are using suggestions made by followers to evolve their business in the physical world.

9. Your competition is utilizing social media tools to become the expert in your industry. Where are your potential customers going to learn more about your industry? If you think it is your website (or your competition’s website), you are wrong. Your potential customers are learning about your industry on places like Facebook and Twitter because it’s easy for them. Your competition understands that. That’s why they are going out of their way to provide valuable content and information to people on their social media profiles. They are becoming the experts in your industry.

10. Your competition has support from employees, clients, and other businesses in the community. Your competition is succeeding on social media because they have support from every employee who works for the company. Every one of their employees is promoting the company’s social media profiles in email signatures, at meetings with potential clients, and everywhere else. Your competition also has support from clients. They even have support from other businesses in the community who are interested in building a relationship online with them.

: Interact with other businesses in the community

If you want to start seeing better numbers on your social media sites, implement some of the strategies that your competition is implementing. Use this list to beat your competition on social media. Become the expert in your industry. Invite your customers to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and any other social media site you use. Listen to what your followers have to say. Update your profiles consistently, and provide value. It’s worth your effort and your time.

Still have questions? Ask me on Twitter. I’m @robwormley.

Rob Wormley

As a social media specialist, Rob thrives in situations that require constant creativity. On days when Rob isn’t working hard to create, maintain, and strengthen relationships online, you might find him spending time with family, browsing through his nearest bookstore, or sipping on a cup of coffee at his local Starbucks.

Does Your LinkedIn Headline Matter?

February 3, 2011 By Joe Soto 2 Comments

Yes it matters. It matters to those who search and find you. It matters to the LinkedIn search engine, so people CAN find you.

LinkedIn is a search engine and has respectable authority on Google and other popular search engines. Google your name and if you have a LinkedIn profile, it will likely show up on the first (or second) page of Google. This demonstrates the ranking authority of LinkedIn on Google.

LinkedIn’s search engine within their website is where you also want to show up. Not just for your name, but also for the keywords that people are searching for people like you with.

Your headline is your first impression. It’s what people read in the search results and often times it’s the first thing they read when they go to your profile. For example:

Perhaps more importantly, it’s also what LinkedIn’s search engine will scan first for relevancy in a search. You can use up to 120 characters in your headline so make the most of it. How? By using keyword rich descriptions in your headline. The headline section of your LinkedIn profile is often treated by people as their “Title.” While your “Title” can be part of it, a headline gives you the opportunity to include many keywords the LinkedIn search engine may pick up on so you show up higher in the search results.

Connect with me on LinkedIn to see more ways to optimize your profile so you too can be found in LinkedIn and generate leads for your company.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 16 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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Can People Find You On LinkedIn…Easily?

January 12, 2011 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

Can people find you on LinkedIn? Easily? If they search for keywords relevant to what you offer, who you are, or what you do, do you show up towards the top of the search results?

LinkedIn’s search engine within their website is not to be taken lightly. People are using the LinkedIn search engine every day, looking for people like you. If you are a financial planner, when someone types in “financial planning,” you want to have the best chance at showing up high in the search page results. Ideally, you want to show up on the first couple of pages. Remember, social media works, but it takes a human to work it. You have to take small steps to maximizing LinkedIn.

Here’s a video tip I recorded casually to help you get “found” on LinkedIn when people are searching for what you offer of value:

Connect with me on LinkedIn by visiting my profile here.

Joe Soto

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My LinkedIn Tip of the Day

December 9, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

We’re in sunny Las Vegas this week sponsoring and attending Jeffrey Gitomer’s Bootcamp which will cover branding, social media, marketing and other business success strategies. The conference is featuring people like Darren Hardy, CEO of Success Magazine, and Sally Hogshead, branding expert and author of (the great book) Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. Jeffrey Gitomer is the world’s #1 authority on sales and has put together quite an event for the next four days. I’m fortunate to be speaking on Friday on using the power and reach of social media to grow your business.

While here in Vegas, I thought I’d give you a quick tip for making the most of LinkedIn:

Joe Soto

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Are You Using LinkedIn Answers?

October 26, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

LinkedIn has over 80 members in over 200 countries and going strong. The question is, are you using it as fully as you could (should) be?

Answer: Probably not.

Here’s a LinkedIn tip you can use right away to build your connections and add value at the same time.

LinkedIn’s Answers section allows any member of LinkedIn to write a questions for other members to answer or to answer a question asked by someone else. While this is a great way to gather information and gain new industry knowledge, asking questions is a good way to connect with potential clients and partners in your industry. Answering questions is a good way to build a reputation as an expert on a particular topic.

LinkedIn Answers

If you ask content-based questions (i.e. “What are the best methods for monitoring my social media campaigns?”), you’ll tend to get good answers.

LinkedIn will actually reward your good answers over time. You can earn expert status if you are judged to be an expert in a particular subject area. You can easily identify an expert in a topic by the white and green “expert” star that is visible on their profile. This is, as you can imagine, an invaluable distrinction as a way to improve your reputation and brand on LinkedIn.

How do you get this expert status? Over time, as your answers are selected “Best” by the person who asked the question. The more this happens, the higher up you’ll be in the list of experts in that particular area.

It’s important to point out that LinkedIn’s Answers section is not a place to overtly advertise your business, or to link to yourself over and over. LinkedIn empowers its users to flag a question appearing inappropriate and if enough users flag the same question or answer, it will be removed and reviewed by LinkedIn.

Just live by the rule that your goal on LinkedIn is to add value to others. What value can you add?

Follow One Social Media on LinkedIn Today!

Joe Soto

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How to Use Twitter and LinkedIn to Enhance Your B2B Marketing

August 20, 2010 By Joe Soto 3 Comments

Twitter and LinkedIn are great tools for B2B marketers

Do you use social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn to grow your business network? Then you have taken the most important step in growing your business already. Both of these networks are greatly beneficial for owners of small to medium businesses, and can potentially boost your revenue earning capacity to a great extent.

However, in order to gain measurable benefits from either of the networks, you need to follow proper tactics. These include:

Identify target audience: On both Twitter and LinkedIn, you can find members whose interests match your business. Start connecting with those members and your network will grow quickly. Plus, since they are already interested in topics related to your business, chances are slim that they would mark your messages as spam.
Monitor before you start promoting: Always monitor the conversations that your members of your target audience are carrying out on the networks. This will allow you to interact with them seamlessly, without coming across as a spammer looking for some quick business.
Provide value: When you finally start posting content, keep it interesting and engaging. You can, for instance, upload small presentations on SlideShare and post the link in your networks. Or, if you find a really interesting article on the Web, post a link to that in your accounts. Add value, and you will always have followers.
Get the message across: Always post a few promotional entries in your accounts. After all, you are using the networks to make a bigger client base. But, keep the number of promos in check. Ideally, 4-5 general posts should be followed by one promotional post. That will inform your network about your business, yet not make you look like a spammer.

These 4 pointers should help you improve your B2B network using Twitter and LinkedIn. Always remember, moderation is the key in this scenario. Maintain a balance between general and promotional posts in the networks, and you will do just fine. Or, if you are finding it too difficult to pull off, simply enlist the services of a reputable social media company to get it done.

Joe Soto

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3 Noteworthy Trends in Usage of Social Media for Business

July 6, 2010 By Joe Soto 2 Comments

Social media is being used for business almost everywhere. From corporate giants to the smallest business startups, everyone is using social media to establish a foothold in consumer market. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are all tools of the trade in the new age of social media savvy business marketers, with their number increasing with each passing day.

Here are some trends visible in social media usage for business by various small to medium sized organizations, which are likely to rise further as time progresses:

Rapid growth in the rate of adoption of social media marketing: Small businesses have come to rely on social media more than ever, thanks largely due to the significantly low investment required in this field. As many as 75% of small businesses now have a page for their company on various leading social networking websites. Approximately 40% of small businesses regularly maintain a business blog, while 16% use Twitter as a channel to promote their products and services.
More investment in social media marketing: In the next few years, investment in social media marketing is likely to rise many times over the present amounts. In fact, a recent study conducted jointly by American Marketing Association and Fuqua School of Business of Duke University revealed that in the next 5 years, investment made by small businesses towards marketing their products and services via social media is likely to increase as much as 18%. Presently it is only a meager 6%.
A sharp eye on outputs: Even a year or two ago, social media marketers used to look up the outputs of their social media marketing efforts maybe once or twice a month. But these days, those same marketers check out their Twitter feeds or Facebook profiles at least twice a day. This clearly reflects that they are taking social media more seriously than ever before. And this is a trend that is bound to rise further with time.

Social media is a tool for the small businesses, but giants are not staying behind either. The rapid adoption of this new tool of mass marketing is sure to grow even further as time progresses, and nothing can stop this major change in the business world.

Joe Soto

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How to Optimize Your Website for Social Media

June 29, 2010 By Joe Soto 2 Comments

Simply having a website dedicated to your business is no longer enough. In order to make it a success, you need to make it totally compatible with social media. For instance, if you have blogs or articles posted in your site, it is almost imperative now to have buttons for posting the same in social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or even sharing the articles via e-mail. Some websites even allow users to re-blog these articles, which is a good way of ensuring popularity. The ultimate goal here is to get as many visitors to your website as possible in little time.

However, the approach towards optimization of your website needs to be correct, in order to gain any benefits from the move at all. Here are some methods by which you can pull it off:

Get SEO done on your website: No matter what some ‘pundits’ may have to say about it, SEO is far from being dead yet. Regularly keeping your website or blog supplied with fresh content with appropriate keywords for search engines to munch on is a sure shot way of gaining more visitors.
Get your site optimized for social media: While some may argue that SMO is quite similar to SEO, in practice the differences are readily visible. In SMO, you need to focus more on visitors increasing the popularity of your website. The task is not tough, if you have the right tools at hand. Remember to have buttons that the visitors can use to post links of your blogs and articles on social media websites. Also, encourage them to make comments on the posts. The more the number comments, the merrier.
Start social media networking: This may take a little time to carry out, but it is surely a pretty worthy investment. If any visitor has made an interesting comment on your website, try to have it highlighted on your home page, even if it is for a day. Visitors love attention, and a little act of social courtesy can go a long way in building the reputation of your website. And unless you are too busy, try visiting the website and post an encouraging comment or two. Paying it forward can go a long way in social media networks, and it is in your best interests to reap its benefits as much as possible.

So, don’t wait. Have your website optimized for social media right now, and watch your traffic and profits shoot through the roof in no time at all.

Joe Soto

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Ecommerce Benefits Substantially From Social Media Networks, New Study Reveals

June 29, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

Social media networks can no longer be ignored by any successful online marketer. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter can probably boost profit margins of almost any company that carries out ecommerce. A recent study has revealed that the impact of social media networks on businesses is definitely more than ever believed, and these are, beyond doubt, the most powerful tools in the hands of any company.

In a recent study sponsored by Social Media Success Summit 2009 and carried out by Michael Stelzner, some unforeseen trends in social media have emerged, which may eliminate any hesitation online ecommerce businesses have about using social media channels extensively.

The trend, however, was quite positive, as the study reported that around 88% of online marketers were using eCommerce extensively for their businesses. 72% of marketers reported that they had embraced social media in the last few months. The study revealed that four types of social media tools were used the most by online marketers nowadays. These were:

Twitter – This microblogging platform sure has gained huge popularity among online marketers. The option to include a short link directed towards webpages highlighting target products is simply too good to pass up. Besides, the 140 character limit on the posts automatically makes it possible to post several tweets in an hour or less, which simply cannot be beaten yet by any other social media platform.
Blogs – Although creating blog posts about products and services do require plenty of hard work, there is something really cool about being able to highlight upcoming products or services, as well as creating hype over existing ones, all in an attempt to create interest in the possible consumers’ minds and benefiting financially from the same.
LinkedIn – The popularity of this platform should not surprise anyone, given its ability to allow users to become familiar with people operating in similar business domains. This can, in turn result in formation of successful business partnerships.
Facebook – In spite of having more members than Twitter, this massive social network with over 400 million members is still not the preferred one for most online marketers. However, the popularity curve is certainly on the rise, and it may eventually rise higher in the list anyway.

All in all, the study has revealed that social media networks rule the roost among the online marketing tools. In the coming days, the popularity can only increased even higher.

Joe Soto

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Build Your Brand Through Your Blog

June 17, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

While social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are useful to promote your brand, using blogs to build your brand add more credibility to your business. B2B companies prefer to use blogs to gain a competitive advantage over others as it is a creative yet easy way to generate interest in your brand. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Encourage Questions: Try to encourage comments and questions, and answer these queries as quickly as possible, within a few hours. This will show that your company is socially active. Use Twitter and LinkedIn to increase the conversation with your audience.

Have a Credible USP: Your audience knows that there are several companies that offer the same products that you do. You should show then that your brand is different and stand out from the crowd of competitors. Having a credible Unique Selling Proposition (USP) will show that you can deliver according to their expectations.

Be Personable: You can use your blog to show that there is a friendly side to your brand. While it is tempting to sounding business-like, being approachable in your blog will make a lot of difference. It will show that you are easy to work with and open.