According to a survey by Citibank, social media marketing use has increased over the last year with 36% of entrepreneurs claiming they use networks like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter for marketing purposes. Up 19% in 2009. These results came from a pool of 1,004 small business owners in the US with annual revenue of $100,000 or more and with no more than 100 employees.
When should you post your online videos?
That is another question related to social media marketing and online videos.
As in any media, online videos also have a prime time.
First you need to answer if your videos are for general use of the end consumer, like people watching from home or if it is to be watched by a business audience, during work hours.
Second you need to take into consideration where in the world the majority of your audience is and take into consideration the time frame there.
Prime time to post online videos:
For home audience: Between 4pm and 9pm
For a business audience: 7am to 9am, 11am to 1pm, 3pm to 5pm
You should avoid posting outside these frames
Americans watching more online videos
Gaining its share of some of this increased internet audience, the online video market continued to gain
momentum in 2010, with an average of 179 million Americans watching video each month, according to a
new white paper from comScore. Engagement levels also rose during the year, with viewers watching online
videos more frequently.
Americans also spent about 12% more hours viewing online video in 2010 (14.2) compared the prior year
(12.7) due to increased content consumption and more video ad streams. The average American streamed a
record 201 videos in December 2010, up 8% from 187 a year earlier.
77% goes to Youtube while 3.1% goes to Hulu
Did I mentioned all businesses should be using online videos in their social media marketing efforts. Let me say that in different words: Small business marketing needs to contain online videos.
Are you Facebook drunk?
Don’t get me wrong. We think Facebook is great for business when you know how to do it right. Remember, there is a big difference between using social media for social purposes and using social media marketing for business, and most businesses don’t get it.
but the point here is that some companies and service professionals put all their coins on Facebook thinking that will be enough as a marketing strategy.
Well, here is some data that will get you thinking:
Gallup data indicates men (42%) are about as likely as women (45%) to have a Facebook page. However, men (63%) are 12.5% more likely than women (56%) to say they visit Google in a given week.
Overall, 40% more US adults say they use Google in a typical week (60%) than have a Facebook page (43%).
Social Media marketing: The power of online videos
We just did an interview with Bob the Teacher Jenkins on online video.
Bob has a step by step formula on how to create the best videos and how coaches and consultants com leverage their business by using online videos.
As you probably know, online videos is one of the best tools when thinking of social media marketing and all businesses should take advantage of videos.
Listen to the full interview now: Video Velocity
How often should I post on Social Media?
This is a question we get everyday with some variations.
How often should I put a video on YouTube?
How often should I blog?
How often should I Tweet?
How often should I update my status on Facebook?
I can tell you how often you should post on social media environments when you are doing it for business. There is no rule on this topic but some tests have been done for optimum results.
The world is not going to end if you cannot follow one of them.
Remember social media marketing is a process and you have to set your goals to get attention from your market, not only visibility.
Also take into consideration that you have to provide good content most of the time and 2% of the time have a call to action. Your audience needs to be educated on the fact that you are doing this for business and they should not expect everything for free.
i know this is a touchy point but remember you are marketing a business and businesses need to have sales in order to have profits. Lead with good content but remind them of your business.
Here it goes:
Twitter: 8 to 18 posts a day. Twitter has a short shelf life.
Facebook: No more than 3 posts.
YouTube: 3 a week (for generic videos, not a Web Show)
Blogs: Once a day.
Twitter for Business- social media tools
Branding is great but social media marketing can and should be used to generate sales. Yes, social media for businesses need to generate sales and leads.
Here are a few tips on how to use Twitter to generate sales.
It is all about the approach you have while using this social media tool.
Your approach should be to talk in ways that could generate questions that your services answer and to find which conversations happening on Twitter are worth having from a business perspective.
You are looking to discover customers evolving needs.
Ask questions that would reveal details about their need.
Don’t forget to have a call to action to connect prospects with your sales funnel. Do CTA’s only 2% of the time.
Provide a stream of useful content.
Send them to different, useful destinations but include your service among them every now and then.
The social media consultant trap
You probably noticed that there is a new social media marketing consultant born every minute, if not every second.
Sometimes it feels like everybody that knows how to add Facebook friends is becoming a social media expert.
This causes problems to both sides, clients and consultants. It is not because there is a lot of competition.
The client is in a trap because he cannot tell who really has the knowledge to help him, cannot tell if the person really understands marketing a business, ends up making a decision based on price and regrets this decision over time; besides the fact that he never gets the business results he was looking for at the beginning.
The new coach or consultant thinks this is the shiny thing to be in and to make a lot of money fast, focus on learning more and more tools and not marketing concepts and fails to realize that positioning himself as a social media expert will not lead to long lasting prosperity.
Social media is just a small piece of marketing. It is not isolated and will not work as the only form to market a business. Yes, social media marketing is important, can bring amazing results and can be very cost effective but is just one piece of the puzzle.
Besides, focusing only social media tools can turn a consultant into a glorified assistant and not into a solution provider. Failing to understand business and marketing strategies can make this disaster even bigger.
Good coaches and consultants train themselves to see the big picture for their client, a big picture that can be achieved, pin point gaps, bring new forms of revenue and have a structured process to do so. They also understand the need to mix online and offline marketing strategies. When it comes to social media tools, they understand the use of those tools from a marketing perspective, how to generate more awareness, sales and leads. It is way more than telling a company they need to be connected and transparent.
They also need to understand positioning and online optimization.
Unless they love to go from new thing to new thing like a monkey jumps from one tree to another.
BuzzBooster.TV
Had a problem with my computer and didn’t have a chance to add the enw episode of BuzzBooster.tv.
We visited a Wild West Fort and had a great guest Lon Naylor sharing some tips on Camtasia
Watch BuzzBooster tV now
Social Media Tools: Future Tweets
An important factor for companies using social media marketing is to automate part of the processes and save time. Yes, there is need for interaction, relationship building etc but you need to automate part of your efforts.
What about pre-scheduling some tweets?
This social media tool can help you with that.