All Posts in Marketing

|In: Life Plan|Last Updated:

As the earnings of any person increases, it becomes very important to plan the investments also carefully. In fact, with exponential earnings, investments in terms of “Life Insurance” becomes very critical. To give an example, when I had taken a Home Loan, the returns [every 4 years] of a “Cash Back Life-Insurance” policy came in very handy irrespective of the size of amount. Just like a dialogue in the movie Spider-man “With great power, comes great responsibility”, the analogue of that in insurance terms would be “More earnings means investments should be thought-off, planned & should provide good insurance cover” !!!

It becomes critical that you choose the right company, right policy that reaps the best returns…

Overview of Life-Insurance

Life insurance or life assurance is a contract between the policy owner and the insurer, where the insurer agrees to pay a sum of money upon the occurrence of the policy owner’s death. In return, the policy owner agrees to pay a stipulated amount called a premium at regular intervals. From an investor’s point of view, an investment can play two roles – asset appreciation or asset protection.

The core benefit of life insurance is that the financial interests of one’s family remain protected from circumstances such as loss of income due to critical illness or death of the policyholder. Simultaneously, insurance products also have a strong inbuilt wealth creation proposition.

Benefits of Life-Insurance

Life insurance allows long term savings to be made in a relatively painless manner because of the low and convenient investments made through premiums. More investment options make your money work harder, but there are no substitutes to the life insurance. Because only a life insurance gives you both – risk cover against your life as well as returns on your money invested like a “Money Back Policy”. Amongst the most known benefits of Life Insurance is the savings on your income taxes. So, a life insurance policy is an ideal tool to gain security and ensure savings. If you require loans, say for building a house, it can be easily obtained against a life insurance policy which was there in my case !!!

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Edelweiss tokio Life – MyLife+

When it comes to Insurance, there are many options that are available to the customers, however from an investment perspective & life-cover, Edelweiss tokio Life MyLife+ insurance policy provides both the benefits.

Some of the key-features of the product are below:

  • Flexibility of payout options
  • Cover up to the age of 80 years
  • Low Cost Term Assurance Plan
  • Tax benefits for premium and claim amount
  • Comprehensive Cover Through Riders
  • Low Cost Term Assurance Plan
The minimum entry age for the policy is 18 years and the product offers two death benefit options; Lump-sum benefit option and Income benefit option. One can choose between a combination of both the options as well, depending on the family’s need, level of financial literacy & stage of life.
Some of the product details are below
The major advantage of this plan over near-similar plans offered by other companies are
  1. Choice of payout options i.e. monthly, annual or combination of both.
  2. Term period of 80 years which is highest in the industry.
The interesting part about the policy is that it offers discounts for women, as well as on choosing a high sum assured. The premium rate for 21 year old women would be equal to rate paid by 18 year old male.
The policy offers three riders to choose from : Accidental total & permanent disability rider, accidental death benefit rider and waiver of premium rider. Edelweiss Tokio Life – MyLife+ product brochure for reference can be downloaded from here
Options to Edelweiss Tokio Life – MyLife+
Given the unique set of features that MyLife+ offers, there are some options available from other insurance companies
  1. HDFC Life Click 2 Protect
  2. Aviva i-Life Term Plan
  3. ICICI Prudential Icare Term Plan

Given that the policy-holder has options to pay the insurance amount & the way that Edelweiss Tokio Life MyLife+ is tailor-made to handle different kind of customers [as mentioned above], it definitely has a winning-edge over it’s competitors !!!

If you have taken the MyLife+ policy & want to share your experience, please leave a comment…

Image Credit – Edelweiss Tokio Life – MyLife+

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

With the growth of online-commerce in India, there are many businesses that have been built to cater to that explosive growth. With growing demand, there have been more startups emerging in the space of Customer Support, Last Mile Delivery/Logistics, Automation [e.g. Grey Orange Robotics]. This article in Economic Times points out that e-commerce firms are the new drivers for the BPO industry & with more startups emerging in that space, this number would surely see an upward-trend !!!

Along with Coupon & Deal websites, massive growth has been observed in the “Price Comparison” space. Now consumers are not only interested in deals but before they purchase a product, they want to “compare prices” across different e-commerce websites. This is also gives a Human Feel to shopping 🙂

Traditionally, comparing prices of any commodity would take many hours. A person would need to either call several retailers or drive from one retail store to another; however those days are gone. In simple terms, all the user has to do is choose the best “Aggregator Site” which would compare prices for multiple product categories & aggregating best e-commerce websites like Flikpart, Jabong, FirstCry etc.

Benefits of using Price Comparison Engine

Save extra money

Some studies have concluded that online-shopper can save thousands of rupees a year by using price comparison site. Just like in retail stores, higher the price of any commodity; greater is the discount. Same principle also applies to the online-world considering that there is now cut-throat competition in the e-commerce segment.

Simple to use

When using price comparison engine, a person has to enter either the name of the product or the brand, (s)he is looking out for & within few seconds, the engine would give the price comparison results.

Online-Offline comparison

As there are many price-comparison websites, it becomes essentially important to choose the right one. Each price-comparison engine depending on their revenue & operating model, would either focus on “Online” or “Offline” stores. However, if there is a price comparison engine which combines the beauty of both the world’s, it would be a boon to the customers !!!

One of the categories that has gained significant traction is “buying of mobile phones” online. As more & more companies are giving preference to “online-only” model for saving costs, buying mobile-phone online would definitely result in good savings 🙂

While scouting for price-comparison websites, we came across a site YouTellMe & we were very impressed by the search results, ease of use, breezy & simple UI etc. One of the categories which is on the rise is “Mobile Phones” and as an end-consumer you can get the best deal as we get the Mobile Phones price list in India

YouTellMe

If you are looking for some great deals & want to save some extra bucks [for buying at the right price :)], do give YouTellMe a shot !!!

With the increase of online frauds in India, it becomes necessary that “Shopper becomes Smart” & along with discounts also checks the authenticity of the e-commerce website. Some of the smart shopping tips are:

  1. Shop from “known” websites e.g. Flipkart, Jabong, Shopclues, High5Store etc.
  2. Ensure that “Digital Payment” happens over secure [SSL] channel
  3. Ensure “not to save” the Credit Card is not saved. Since, no matter how renowned, the website is; better to keep CC information to yourself !!!
  4. Compare prices of “existing products” on price-comparison engines
  5. Get additional discounts on products by grabbing coupons from coupon/deal websites
  6. Untrusted app stores will continue to be a major source of mobile malware. Traffic to these stores will be driven by “malvertising,” which has grown quickly on mobile platforms [Source – McAfee]

With more & more online startups [specifically e-commerce, deals etc.] focusing on “mobile-first approach”, it becomes very essential for the consumers to identify the “potentially harmful” apps.

Some highlights of the “McAfee Labs Threats report” are below:

Mobile Malware

McAfee Labs reported that mobile malware samples grew 14 percent during the fourth quarter of 2014, with Asia and Africa registering the highest infection rates. Much of the activity being attributed to the AirPush ad network.

Potentially Unwanted Programs

In Q4, McAfee Labs detected PUPs on 91 million systems each day. McAfee Labs sees PUPs becoming more and more aggressive, posing as legitimate apps while performing unauthorized actions such as displaying un-intended ads, modifying browser settings, or collecting user and system data.

Total Malware

McAfee Labs now detects 387 new samples of malware every minute, or more than six every second.

The full McAfee Labs Threats Report: February 2015 can be downloaded from here

We hope that these tips would help make our reader’s online “shopping experience” more joyful & also ensure that they stay away from “vulnerable mobile apps”.

If you want to share any tips, please leave them in the comments section !!!

|In: e-commerce|Last Updated:

How many times, have we as consumers un-subscribed from emailer’s sent by e-commerce companies, Banks etc. since it clogs the mail-box & “un-subscription” was the only option left for the consumer 🙂 Today we have a guest-article by Varun John of iCubes, a firm specializing in Email-Marketing where he gives insights into “Email-Marketing”.

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For the email marketer, the top priority would be to get as many promotional emails into the inbox as possible. But have you ever considered that you might be over-doing it? Shooting campaigns by the dozens can be a huge turn off for your clients. Continue the practice & they will soon vanish from your mailing list. Don’t want such a scenario? It’s time to adopt an optimum frequency for your mailing.

If someone opts to receive your campaigns, newsletters and offer mails your first priority must be to make them appreciate and antedate your campaigns. This isn’t as simple a task as it looks. You need regular analysis, constant innovation in content and smart segmentation to ensure email fatigue does not happen.

Obviously, you want to engage customers as much as possible but you risk running into email fatigue. So you need to weigh in the pros and cons and make an intelligent move from therein.

What is the optimum frequency for my campaigns ?

Sorry to break the bad news, but there is no optimum frequency to send your mails. You can only optimize the frequency with which you target inboxes separately but as a collective there is no frequency that could please everyone. Some might want more mails from your side while othere may require only a few. Irrespective of how often your mails reach your audience, engagment solely relies on how relevant and engaging the content within your mails are.

A thorough understanding of your audience using demo-graphical and behavioral data can get you better insights on customer profiles. This will make your frequency customized and intelligent. You end sending fewer mails than before but the engagment and ROI you gather off doesn’t nosedive. In fact, with a custom frequency you are more likely to get an increased ROI & better customer engagement and loyalty.

Determining the ideal frequency

Before you fiddle about getting the optimal frequency another question needs to be answered. Are you mails reaching inbox? Email fatigue is usually understood when you see a decline in open and click rates. But beware, this might be solely because your deliverability has been affected severely.

As ISPs restlessly and relentlessly change their algorithms to improve customer experience, they take into account a whole lot of factors to determine whom to block. One of the latest additions is checking into average read time that a mail gets. If your emails remain stale, then your mails would soon be making trips to the Junk folder. Keep shooting campaigns on an aggressive pace, your domain reputation will soon get trashed !!!

If deliverability is not the concern, your content most definitely is. Would you like to see the same movie over and over again in just a few days ? Not likely. Your mails are just the same. If your content isn’t fresh and trendy, plus your mails bombard people’s inbox getting blocked is inevitable. Regular monitoring of data can help you resolve many doubts about what your clients are looking for.

Have you ever shared a profile update mailer ?

No, send one right away so you give the control back to the customer. When someone joins your subscriber list, always send a profile update mailer which askes the following questions:

  1. What sort of content would they like?
  2. How often they would like to connect?

In fact, you could have a “Click Option” to update preferences of content and frequency in every campaign. The more control that goes to the customer, the faster & smarter you can implement suitable strategies.

Let them go

One of the major disappointments that email marketers face is when someone unsubscribes from the list. However, there is a silver lining. Inactive users distort your performance metrics so it’s good to have only those people who love your mails.

Your mailing frequency should change according to the season because expectations vary around the year. In the wake of the holiday season, it is advisable to back down on your offer mailers. Give your subscribers time to detox and rejuvenate.

To continue engagement over this period, set up an automated series of campaigns. The content for each segment you create can vary according to preferences and tastes. A capability one must nurture here is the ability to predict email fatigue across the different demographics. A little bit of experimentation and a whole lot of analysis can help you achieve smart and intuitive prediction models.

About the author

Varun John is a content and social media marketer for iCubes, an ESP provider dedicated towards creating an Email marketing India ecosystem. He is always hunting for new ways for companies to engage with people using innovative technology, insightful data & intelligent marketing.  He loves to spend time on his guitar and is an avid reader of advertising techniques, human psychology & history.

iCubes on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/iCubes.in
iCubes on Twitter – http://twitter.com/icubesindia
iCubes on Google Plus – https://plus.google.com/u/0/+IcubesIn/posts
iCubes on LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/company/icubes
iCubes on Pinterest – http://www.pinterest.com/icubes

Image Source* – SoftTrinity

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated:

Few days back, we had written about Social Media Week that kicks off on 23rd February in Bengaluru. Today, we have received some more details about the event & that creates a “Compelling” reason to attend SMW,2015.

Bangalore goes social again with the fourth edition of Social Media Week [SMW] in India with the theme being Upwardly Mobile: The Rise of The Connected Class. For more details, please refer this earlier article.

SocialMediaWeek_2015

Monday [23rd February] & Friday [27th February] will see the event being hosted at The Leela Palace while the mid-week sessions will be held at venues including News Cafe, Big Pitcher, Total Yoga Oneness Centre, Loft 38, Take 5, and WeSchool Bengaluru.

SMW’15 February edition is scheduled simultaneously across the world in seven cities– Bangalore, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Jakarta, Lagos, Milan & New York.

SMW,15 Highlights

Some of the highlight topics & sessions that will be covered at SMW, Bengaluru are as follows:

  1. Panel discussion on Brand Reputation & Crisis
  2. Weathering Twitter Storm
  3. Internet Of Things [IOT] in India
  4. Big data & Big Brands
  5. Insightful workshops on Social Media for Travel Marketing
  6. Cracking Social Media content strategy
  7. Masterclass on Viral Campaigns
  8. Integrated social media marketing
  9. Inspirational talk on Growth Hacking for Startups
  10. Brand Identity in Digital
  11. Career in Social Media & many more

SMW, Bengaluru highlight speakers include

  1. Mahesh Murthy, Founder Pinstorm
  2. Suhel Seth, CEO Counselage
  3. B. Dayananda, I.P.S, Additional Commissioner of Police
  4. P. Krishna Kumar, Executive Director & General Manager Dell India
  5. Harish Bijoor, Brand-Expert
  6. Sandeep Aurora,Director – Marketing & Market Development
  7. Prem Panicker, Sr. Journalist
  8. Vasantha Kumar, Director Of Marketing & Communications

Alliances & Partnerships

Social Media Week [SMW] has partnered with the Bengaluru City Traffic Police [BCTP] & kick-started an online campaign titled #ImTheChange encouraging citizens to click pictures, shoot videos & share their pledges towards road safety on SMW page. The campaign has already received 3000+ pledges and has created social buzz reaching to more than 1M Bangaloreans.

Speaking about the event, Rohit Varma, Founder R SQUARE Consulting & Director, SMW Bengaluru said

Social Media Week is a platform to share ideas, gain insights & collaborate to innovate. Involvement of the whole industry has made this property unique and that has been the success factor. We have more than 70+ sessions, 150+ speakers sharing their knowledge across 5 hubs. We are very excited to witness the social festival going live in the coming week

SMW Sponsors

Dell, a pioneer in integrating social media into the fabric of its business and engagement with customers, is the title sponsor for SMW Bangalore 2015. Additional partners include Intel [City Support], Wrangler [Style Sponsor], IBM [Event sponsor], Genesis Burson-Marsteller [Integrated Communications], Contract Advertising [Event Partner], BlogAdda [Blogging partner], YourStory [Knowledge], 10,000 Startups by Nasscom, Social Samosa [Partner in Thought], Let’s Venture [Event Partner], Yellow Seed Content Solution [Content Partner], Web Marketing Academy [Event Partner], Culture Machine [Event Partner], Lonely Planet [Event Partner], Digital Vidya [Event Partner] & Uber [Logistics] among others.

Complete Schedule, Registration details

Registration Page

Registrations for SMW Bangalore has started and to register for the event, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/choose-pass/

Schedule Page

For complete schedule of the event, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/schedule/ & to download the schedule, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/download-schedule

|In: Marketing|Last Updated:

Mindtree, a global technology services company, announced that it is working with the Kellogg Company, the world’s leading cereal company & second largest producer of cookies, crackers and savoy snacks, to manage its global digital marketing platform. Mindtree will manage and support the marketing IT infrastructure to execute Kellogg’s brand efforts and digital marketing innovation across 400+ digital properties.

Mindtree

As the sole managed services partner for all of Kellogg’s digital marketing properties, Mindtree will support Kellogg’s industry leading digital initiatives with more than 100 monthly production deployments. While managing a diverse pipeline of projects & technologies, Mindtree will leverage the latest in security technologies & cloud infrastructure to support global efforts across more than 50 brands.

Special attention will focus on quick turnarounds and increasing speed to market, all while partnering with 10 creative and digital agencies, as well as many other specialists.

This partnership will take advantage of Mindtree’s Gainesville Delivery Center, providing Kellogg a U.S. based team that will be augmented by other global offices for round-the-clock service.

Speaking on the engagement with Mindtree, Erik Kamman, Senior IT Director, Kellogg Company mentioned

I’m excited about the new partnership between Mindtree and Kellogg’s.  They have brought a metrics driven approach to supporting our digital marketing platform, which is speeding up our ability to deliver, allowing us to focus on delivering superior Marketing capabilities.  This is a big win for both our Marketing & IT organizations.

Radha R, Executive Vice President & Head of Retail, Consumer Products & Manufacturing, Mindtree said

Today’s consumers demand near real-time engagement with their favourite brands and our goal is to help take Kellogg’s to the next level of speed, efficiency and customer engagement.

To manage Kellogg’s dynamic digital marketing IT infrastructure, Mindtree will use the Mindtree MWatch, infrastructure management platform ensuring uptime for all their consumer-facing properties globally.

Additional Resource

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

When it comes to successful social content marketing strategies, creativity reigns supreme. Today we have a guest-article by Janine Neutra who works as a “Senior Director of Online Marketing” for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media. Here she shares insights on “Effective Social Content Marketing Strategies” & it will become clear as we review these five strategies that in order to be successful with your own strategy it’s necessary to create something that is unique, while also being authentic.

ContentMarketingBanner

The Inside Joke by Buzzfeed and HBO

To promote HBO’s show ‘Silicon Valley’ they enlisted the help of Buzzfeed in order to advertise. They understood their target audience and knew that many of their potential viewers are fans of Buzzfeed. Since Silicon Valley is known for being a hotbed for coders and programmers, they created inside jokes for their advertisements that would target that demographic. The result was a campaign that gained the attention of multiple coders and programmers throughout the country.

Doing this for your own brand would mean gaining a complete understanding of your target audience. Once you’ve done so, you can create personalized inside jokes that they’ll be sure to appreciate and remember. This is one of the better ways to create brand awareness & loyalty.

The Useful App by Charmin

If you think it’s difficult to provide successful content marketing for your product or service, think about how challenging it would be to do so for a product like toilet paper. Charmin, however, found a creative way to do just that. Their ‘Gotta Go On the Go’ app enables users to find and rate public restrooms, providing something useful while successfully promoting the brand.

Many business owners may think that creating your own app would be far too expensive or difficult. Companies like Mobi Blocks, however, allow businesses to create useful apps easily and at very affordable rates.

Twitter Tag Campaign by Edge Shave Gel

Twitter tag campaigns are becoming increasing popular because they generally don’t cost a dime. Creating a great campaign that gets people involved is the difficult part. Edge Shave Gel was able to do this with their #soirritating tag. The brand was getting at the fact that shaving and getting cut by doing so are irritating. Thousands of people jumped on the bandwagon and began tweeting the things that they found ‘so irritating’.

Doing this on your own requires nothing more than a bit of creativity and ingenuity, and it can create eyes on your brand quicker than just about any other method.

Vine Campaign by Tombstone

Tombstone used its name association to create a Vine campaign which featured Halloween based vines during the entire month of October. They posted a single video everyday throughout the month and created what turned out to be a viral sensation. The campaign was a huge success and it is even up for multiple awards.

For companies looking to do this for their own brand, it will once again require a bit of creativity. Planning will also be essential so you can be consistent with posts throughout the campaign.

Checking In by Burger King

The fast food giant cleverly created a strategy which involved constructing a digital Burger King Motel where customers could check in using the hashtag #motelBK. It was designed as a way to promote their new Chicken Tender crisp burger and the stay at the motel was seen as a way to cheat on the Whopper without being noticed. It was obviously both clever and quite funny.

This particular strategy will once again require quite a bit of planning and creativity. It can, however, be a very effective way to develop an audience that thinks it is ‘cool’ to check in with your brand.

Reviewing the Strategies

As we’ve mentioned, the success of all of these content marketing strategies came from a whole lot of imaginativeness & creativity. While a lot of the work necessary to create this success for your brand will come from your own creativity, there are quite a few things that you can take from the successes of these five strategies. Hopefully this overview has given you some ideas for exactly what you can do to create your own successful social content marketing strategy. Good luck!

About the Author

Janine Neutra has worked in online marketing since 2000, where she managed search and social media marketing for a national nonprofit organization. She’s now Sr. Director of Online Marketing for the San Francisco-based marketing company Wheel Media, helping small organizations and startups create programs that get results.

Image Credit – Dive Bomb Media Blog

|In: BulkSMS|Last Updated: | 23 Comments

India has more than 400 Million Mobile subscribers. These mobile subscribers are growing at a high rate of about 10 million new subscribers every month. To meet all the business & individual’s marketing needs as well as the personal demand, Bhash SMS has created many Bulk SMS packages that are ranging in different affordable price ranges.

BashSMS

All the cheap bulk SMS packs are given on the Bhash SMS website. They are available for everyone & there is absolutely no restriction on the availability that is depending on the customer status. All these packs have been categorized according to the general usage pattern of most clients that has been noticed in last few years.

The solution of the Bhash SMS bulk SMS reseller in India is unique. This is because unlike the other Bulk SMS service providers in the market who provide you with very cheap SMS, the Bhash SMS bulk SMS service also provides you with instant delivery reports for all the Bulk SMS that you have sent at any time. Bhash SMS gateway reseller also provides you with bulk SMS software that you can use for your desktop as well as excel which you can use for sending all the Bulk SMS directly from your excel sheet. Bhash SMS bulk SMS online also helps you to integrate the SMS service with any of your business software to send bulk SMS.

The cheap Bulk SMS packs from Bhash SMS service is also 100% compliant with all the regulations of TRAI’s NDNC & NCCP. The reason for this is because Bhash SMS bulk SMS packages filter 100% of all the numbers that are listed on the “Do Not Disturb” Services before sending your Bulk SMS. This further ensures that none of the parties have to face the consequences of the bulk SMS Marketing.

The Bhash SMS reseller in India also provides guaranteed delivery on all the valid numbers without cheating the customers which most of the other cheap bulk SMS providers do whereby they only provide delivery to just 20% of the messages out of the total. Now you can also easily send bulk SMS to all of the numbers that are stored in your phone book directly from your mobile phone with the help of the unique SMS gateway reseller Bhash SMS.

The API code feature of Bhash SMS bulk SMS online also helps you to send all the messages to your phone book numbers without even the slightest need to visit the Bhash SMS website. This is extremely useful for all the people or the businesses that are always on the move but who also need to send out all the business SMS to their clients or their customers by using the bulk SMS gateway medium. You can now also save on all the costs of sending bulk SMS that you send from your mobile phone by just using the Bhash SMS cheap bulk SMS pack.

Do give Bhash SMS a spin and let us know your feedback 🙂

|In: Guest Blogging|Last Updated:

Social media marketing is hailed as one of the best ways to promote a start up. It is cheap, relatively easy and pretty effective in helping a company establish its own identity and brand. While there are certainly many benefits to social media marketing, truly benefiting from your efforts requires a certain level of skill and dedication. With the wrong approach, your social media presence could even harm your fledgling business.

These five tips will help any start-up make the most of this hectic time & leverage the power of social media for maximum benefits.

Focus Your Efforts

It seems that every day a new social media platform launches and claims it will be the next Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. This provides a mind-boggling number of options for you to try with your social media efforts. While exposure is a good thing, spreading yourself out too thin is not. Pick a platform that works best for your business. B2B start-ups could consider LinkedIn. Targeting a younger audience, consider Twitter.

Are you a local business? Facebook offers plenty of tools to expand your subscriber base by location. By limiting the number of platforms that you are tracking, you can invest real time and effort for your start-up. This can also help to avoid mistakes as you get accustomed to the platform and social media marketing.

Be Interactive

In many cases, the ultimate goal of social media marketing is to increase exposure, drive traffic and create leads. This leads to some misconceptions on how to use the platform. Simply promoting yourself everywhere you can will only find a small level of success. The true power in social media lies in building relationships, establishing authority & offering benefits to subscribers. The first step in this is actually interacting with your subscribers. Every little interaction, from thanking them for reading or sharing one of your posts, to responding to questions helps to build a relationship for your brand. This is also the best way to keep track of what readers and users are saying about your company and an integral part of brand management.

Establish Authority

Anyone can create a social media account and post about how great their own products or services are. In fact, you will see a large amount of this. However, this is just a basic implementation of the platform. As a startup, you should be establishing authority in your field and building your subscriber base. A great way to do this is to find other relevant social media accounts, blogs, sites and services and mention them on your social media feeds. By establishing authority, followers will be more likely to trust your suggestions, look at your links and come to you for products, services and information.

Participate Regularly

Frequent interaction with your social media accounts is essential to success. Try to set aside a few minutes each day to dedicate to finding new targeted subscribers, posting new content and communicating with your existing base. If you have trouble updating your social media during appropriate hours, simple use a scheduling service, such as HootSuite for Twitter or Buffer. If you use scheduled posting applications, be sure to keep each post unique and check back in periodically to interact with and respond to anyone who mentioned the post.

Test, Analyze and Improve

There is no guaranteed formula to social media success. It all depends on your market, your business and your investment. Certain tactics may work great for a competitor but fail for you. Track interactions, clicks and other important stats on your social media campaigns from the start. Though they make take a little time to provide useful information, you do not have to worry about not having access to the information should you need it. From the time you post to headlines and hashtags, any little detail could be the difference between social media obscurity and viral success. Do not be afraid to try new tactics. With your analytics behind you it, it is hard to go wrong.

One last bonus tip is to keep your brand’s messaging consistent. This requires some discipline in brand management and not veering off into every new trend that pops up on the Web. In this case, your Brand will send a mixed message to your audience members, hurting your chance for properly positioning your company in their minds as solution for a specific problem — one of the basic principles of branding and marketing.

About the Author

Steven Anderson has been writing about brand management and marketing solutions for nearly a decade. Visit Cloverleaf Innovation to learn more.