Social Media As A Tool

Social Media Platforms that help you Network:

Blab: It allows you to broadcast your content to your followers and, better still, allows you to invite them into the video conversation. This two-way dialogue is what makes blab a game changer in the industry. Strengths: The two-way capabilities make blab stand out in a crowded field. Weaknesses: It has a small (but growing) user base.

Facebook: Strengths: Widely-adopted by large segments of the population. Weaknesses: Will the younger generation stay on Facebook once Grandma has “friended” them?

Google+: The clean, simple interface makes connecting with friends, family and business associates a piece of cake. Google+ was the fastest-growing social network in history and looks as though it’s here for the foreseeable future. Strengths: Ease-of-use and uncluttered environment. Weaknesses: Competition from other well-established social media platforms.

Friendster: A way to stay connected with everything that’s important to you — hobbies, interests, causes, business, etc. Strengths: A simple web-interface makes this easy-to-use. Weaknesses: Not as widely adopted as some other platform-runs. Might have peaked.

hi5: This is a social networking platform that skews a little younger than LinkedIn. Members can play games, watch videos, flirt, give gifts or just hang out. Strengths: It’s a great alternative to MySpace and/or Facebook for the younger crowd. Weaknesses: It may not be the best social networking platform for business.

LinkedIn: They’ve been around since 2003, which, in social media terms is also known as “since the beginning of time.” Strengths: Everybody’s on LinkedIn. Weaknesses: Most people have trouble knowing what to do with LinkedIn after they upload their business information.

Meerkat: This live streaming social media platform is perfect for people who want to share videos of the special moments in their lives. Perfect for business, social networking, or for close friends, this mobile-only social network is growing quickly and rapidly.

MyLife: A clean, simple site that helps people connect with family, friends and other relationships. Over 750 million profiles. Strengths: The easy-to-use interface is one of the site’s great strengths. Perfect if you’re looking for an engaging, simple way to connect with old friends. Weaknesses: Not as widely adopted as some other sites.

Ning: This site connects groups of people who are passionate about particular interests, topics or hobbies. Co-Founded by Marc Andreessen, who helped launch Netscape. Strengths: Great for connecting with others who are interested in your area of expertise. Weaknesses: The user interface is so simple and uncluttered that getting started can be confusing. But once you’ve figured it out, it can be a good tool.

Periscope: Like its close relative Meerkat, this new video sharing platform is taking the world by storm. Are you interested in using live video to share parts of your life with the world around you? If so, then Periscope is for you.

Plaxo: Currently hosts address books for more than 40 million people. Helps people stay in touch with “Pulse,” which is a dashboard that lets you see what the people you know are sharing all over the web. Strengths: Graphical user interface makes it easy-to-use. Weaknesses: It’s not as widely-adopted as some other platforms such as LinkedIn.

Twitter: A surprisingly-successful tool that is widely-adopted and used for everything from business to fun and games. Strengths: Used by large segments of the population. Weaknesses: Can be a distraction, especially if you have Attention Deficit Disor … wow, look at that bird outside my window!

XING: XING has more than 8 million subscribers worldwide. It has over 34,000 specialized groups and over 150,000 live networking events each year. Strengths: XING adds new developments to their platform on a regular basis. Weaknesses: Not as widely-adopted as some other platforms such as LinkedIn.

Social Media Platforms that help you Promote:

Bing: Bing, Google and Yahoo aren’t technically social media platforms, but they are tools that can be used to promote your product or service, so we’re including all three in this overview. The technique for using any search engine to promote your product or service is the same so you’ll want to optimize your website so that the search engines see it. By doing so, you’ll drive traffic to your website from the people doing searches on specific topics. Strengths: Bing uses “intelligent search” to make searches even more relevant for the user. Weaknesses: It’s fighting against Google, which is a tough battle.

Blogging Platforms: These are tools that are used to create blogs. Some of them, like Blogger, Tumblr, Vox or Xanga are straightforward platforms that are great for people who want to do a simple blog about their vacation, their company or their family reunion. If you’re ready to create a more robust blog that adds a lot of SEO value for your website, you’ll want to useJoomla, Drupal, Typepad or WordPress. These are the blogging platforms used by serious bloggers.

Discussion Boards and Forums: Are you interested in creating an online forum where members of your community can engage with each other and offer each other advice? Then a discussion board or forum is for you. The best-known platforms for forums include Lefora, Zoho, Drupal, PhpBB,Simple Machines, Vanila, JavaBB and vBulletin. Strengths: Forums are a great way to build a relationship with customers and prospects. Weaknesses: They require regular, ongoing time and energy to keep them running properly.

Google: Google is technically not a social media platform, but can be used as a social tool to drive visits to your well-optimized website. Strengths: Ease-of-use and pervasiveness. Weaknesses: Are they spreading their brand across too many channels? Does this confuse people? (Answer: Probably not, but we’re struggling to come up with any weakness for Google. They’re just so darn nice, it’s hard to figure out what they’re not good at. They’re even good at not being evil, you know?)

Email Marketing Platforms: Email can often get overlooked in the world of social media, but if you define social media as tools that help you have a dialogue with your customers and prospects, then email falls into the social media category. Popular email marketing tools include AWeber (affiliate link), Constant Contact, iContact, ExactTarget and others. Strengths: Email is a highly measurable way to connect with customers and prospects. Weaknesses: Email marketing requires a concerted, ongoing effort if you’re going to do it right.

Flickr: This is a photo-sharing site that can be used to build awareness and drive traffic to your product pages. If you’re selling hunting rifles or tennis rackets or widgets, you’ll want to use Flickr to a) build awareness for your product and b) drive people from Flickr to your website. Strengths: Flickr is easy-to-use and has a clean user-interface. Weaknesses: Photo-sharing sites are important, but they’re not the very first thing you’ll want to work on in your social media campaign.

Howcast: Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website where you could watch “How To” videos on the topic of your choice? Well, there is and it’s called Howcast. It’s an extremely worthy-competitor to YouTube. Strengths: A great place to upload high-quality content. Weaknesses: The default is still YouTube. Most people are conditioned to automatically type “YouTube” into their browser.

iTunes: This is not the only podcasting site, but it’s the best-known and most popular. If you’re doing interviews with industry experts or if you’re creating mini-radio shows, iTunes is the place to be. Strengths: It’s a well-known, well-respected platform. Weaknesses: If you don’t create scintillating content, people won’t come back for more.

MySpace: MySpace. They arguably started this whole social media thing to begin with. Today, MySpace is primarily used as a congregation point for younger people interested in pop culture. They’re evolving and seem to be finding a niche. Strengths: A well-known social media platform that most everybody has visited at one time or another. Weaknesses: They’re not the ubiquitous social media platform they once were.

Picasa: This is a photo organizing, editing and sharing site that’s owned by Google. You can tag photos to enable quick searches by users. Strengths: As with most Google services, Picasa is easy-to-use and loads very quickly. Weaknesses: Photo sharing is important, but it’s not the very first thing you’d want to work on in your social media campaign.

Vimeo: Think of Vimeo as a high-end YouTube. It’s perfect for people interested in sharing their videos with a community of positive, encouraging creative professionals. Strengths: You gotta love a site that oozes upbeat, optimistic, life-affirming energy that Vimeo does. Weaknesses: It’s not a default site the way YouTube is, but that may change in the near future.

Yahoo: Like Google and Bing, this is not technically a social media platform. But it is a tool that ultimately can drive traffic to your website. Be sure to optimize your website so that search engines like Yahoo can see it. Strengths: Yahoo is one of the work horses of the search engine world, so it’s always a good idea to keep it on your radar screen. Weaknesses: Is Yahoo a search engine? An online portal? A web magazine? Perhaps it’s all of these things. And perhaps that’s not a weakness after all.

YouTube: Of course, YouTube is one of the better-known platforms used to promote businesses. The key to YouTube is to keep the videos short and sweet. Make sure they solve the “what’s in it for me” equation. YouTube is perfect for “How To” videos, but it’s not a good place to upload the CEOs annual speech to shareholders. Strengths: YouTube is ubiquitous. Weaknesses: It’s a cluttered environment that can sometimes have some pretty racy videos on it.

Social Media Platforms that help you Share:

Buffer: This social media management tool allows you to schedule Tweets and Facebook updates quickly and easily from your web browser. It’s perfect for people not interested in using TweetDeck or HootSuite. Just sign up, install on your browser and the next time you’re at a web page you want to share, hit the Buffer button and schedule it for sometime in the future. Strengths: An easy way to schedule updates on Twitter and Facebook. Weaknesses: Other platforms offer the same functionality.

Delicious: This is a social bookmarking service owned by Yahoo. When someone tags your article, video or blog post with a Delicious bookmark, it’s the equivalent of a “vote.” The more votes you get, the more visibility your content has on the Delicious website. Strengths: It’s everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Digg: Similar to Delicious in that people vote for articles, videos and blog posts they like. If your content receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see. Strengths: Like Delicious, Digg is everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

HootSuite: This is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution. Strengths: A very easy-to-use interface. Simple set-up, yet still powerful. Weaknesses: If your social media program is no more extensive than updating a Twitter account, then HootSuite would be over-kill.

Instagram: A surprisingly fun photography app that’s sweeping the globe. Install Instagram on your smartphone and, next time you take a photo, use it to enhance, stylize and share the photo with others in your network. Strengths: A fun, easy-to-use app. Weaknesses: Other apps provide a similar experience.

LocalVox: This is a social media dashboard that’s similar to HootSuite and TweetDeck. It’s perfect for people who are interested in drilling down a little deeper than either HootSuite or TweetDeck allow you to do. You wouldn’t want to use LocalVox in addition to the others, but instead of. If you need a more in-depth experience, LocalVox may be just what you need.

Path: A location-based social sharing app that allows you to share photos, memories, music, thoughts and other moments with friends in your social media circle. Strengths: A fun way to share your life journey with friends. Weaknesses: Heavy competition from intrenched competitors like Facebook, Google+ and others.

Pinterest: We live in a visual world and Pinterest leverages that. Tired of reading long blog posts (like this one) but still enjoy skimming through images that are worth 1,000 words? If so, then Pinterest is for you. Just visit the site, sign up and start sharing images by re-pinning them to your profile. Strengths: A visually-appealing way to share information with followers. Weaknesses: Competition from a wide variety of other social media platforms.

Quora: This is the perfect place to go if you’re interested in asking a question that requires an expert answer. Just type in a question you have about any topic and Quora will provide answers from other users. Quora is frequented by smart, well-educated users, so the answers tend to be very helpful and well-thought-out. Strengths: A simple, easy-to-use platform. Weaknesses: A simple Google search can sometimes offer the same quality of answers.

Reddit: Similar to Digg and Delicious. Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web. Users can vote articles up or down on the site, so readers can check out the hot, trending topics from blogs, newspapers and other sources around the globe. Strengths: Like Digg and Delicious, Reddit is everywhere. Weaknesses: You have to have a lot of traffic and a lot of votes to show up on the radar screen.

Scribd: This is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. You simply upload your speech, ebook or PowerPoint presentation to the site so that others can be awed by your wisdom and expertise. Strengths: A great way to potentially get your content in front of thousands of readers. Weaknesses: There are a lot of other people competing for the same eyeballs.

SlideShare: One of the better-known places to upload your content for sharing with others. Take your PowerPoint, your ebook, your Podcast or just about any other content and share it with the SlideShare community. Strengths: Like Scribd, SlideShare is a great way to get in front of a large number of visitors. Weaknesses: There are a lot of other people competing for the same eyeballs.

StumbleUpon: Very similar to Digg, Delicious and Reddit. When you rate a website that you like using StumbleUpon, it’s automatically shared with like-minded people. And it helps you find great sites your friends recommend. Strengths: StumbleUpon helps spread your content to people not regularly exposed to your products and/or services. Weaknesses: Competes with several other well-established tools, like Digg, Delicious and Reddit.

TweetDeck: Like HootSuite, TweetDeck provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity-enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted. Strengths: It’s very easy to set-up and get started. Weaknesses: Like all dashboard tools, it can lead to distractions for employees who are easily … Whoa! Is that a fly on the ceiling or just a speck of dust?

Wikipedia: It still amazes us that this user-generated encyclopedia is run by just a few dozen employees (along with hundreds of thousands of contributors around the globe). It’s a great tool for legitimate entries. Don’t try to game the system by adding overly-promotional posts. But if your entry will be helpful to the Wikipedia community at large, have at it. Strengths: It’s a great tool for uploading legitimate, helpful content about your product, service or company. Weaknesses: If your target market is over the age of 40, they might struggle with Wikipedia’s miniscule type.

Yelp: This platform offers user-generated reviews on cool places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play. Yelp has an augmented reality Smart Phone application that makes using it on the run a blast. Strengths: User-generated reviews are a great way for customers and prospects to find out about your business. Weaknesses: Some people try to game the system with faux reviews, but Yelp does a pretty good job of keeping those faux reviews at bay.

Platforms that are exploding in 2016: (60secondmarketer)

Wanelo. Wanelo is a type of social shopping app, and if you’re curious about its name, it’s derived from the words “want, need, love.” Wanelo, once downloaded in app form, allows you to peruse millions of different products offered by major brands, online retailers, and even independent artists and producers like those on Etsy. You can also create wishlists, establish connections, and find out what your friends are interested in. This app could rival Pinterest because of its strong visual components and similar demographics, but is better poised for online shoppers because of its convenient wishlist and product management tools. Expect it to be eyed by Pinterest or see it take off on its own.

2. SlideShare. SlideShare has a decent user base already, but it has a long way to go before it stands among the leaders in the social media world. Through SlideShare, professionals can create slideshow presentations and videos—almost like YouTube, but with a much more professional appeal. Users who appreciate LinkedIn for its professional nature and targeted formatting will appreciate how SlideShare positions itself for its users—and the practicality of the app is useful in almost any business application. Expect to see SlideShare integrated with LinkedIn in multiple ways, or expect to see it used by a greater percentage of active professionals.

3. Shots. Shots’s greatest advantage is also one of its greatest weaknesses; it’s simple. It’s designed almost exclusively for “selfies,” utilizing only the front-facing camera of a phone. Users can connect with each other and send pictures, or scroll down a feed of others’ photos. Commenting on those photos is disabled, but users can chat with each other. In this way, Shots functions like Snapchat, but it’s less concerned with individual privacy and more concerned with connecting users to one another. So far, Shots functions like a weaker hybrid of Snapchat and Instagram, but with the addition of a few new features, it could easily see its audience explode.


4. Ello. Ello is an all-purpose social media network, almost like Facebook or Tumblr, which similarly allows you to forge new connections, share written updates, photos, videos, or any other content that you feel like sharing. The key difference is that Ellostands against advertising, with a full manifesto criticizing other social platforms for being “owned” by advertisers. Ello claims it will never have forced advertising on its platform, nor will it ever sell your information to third parties. Expect Ello to help spark a new trend in anti-advertising in certain circles—though it will probably never replace the ubiquity of Facebook, even with its advertising and privacy concerns.

5. Hyper. Hyper combines a few different social media ideas, but stands on its own as a unique platform. Like Instagram, its primary function is to allow users to post and share photos with one another. Like Reddit, it features an upvote/downvote system that increases the visibility of more popular posts. It also features geographic tags that allow users to discover new things happening in their vicinity. Currently, Hyper is only on iOS and doesn’t have much of a user base, but its unique position and functionality could cause it to grow exponentially by 2016.

6. Bebo. Bebo isn’t technically new. It was one of the original founding social media stars, alongside Facebook and the much less fortunate MySpace. Like with MySpace, Bebo quickly burned out once everyone decided that Facebook was the be-all end-all social platform of choice. However, Bebo has recently relaunched as a completely new app. Now, users can create individual avatars and use custom illustrations and hashtags to communicate with each other. It’s a new form of communication that doesn’t rely on photos like so many new apps today.

Measuring the effectiveness of Social Media Platforms:

1. Google Analytics

Google has a comprehensive analytics service that helps track user activity on your website in real-time. Within a matter of minutes, you can have Google Analytics set up to tell you, among other things, the number of daily visits to your site, the demographics of your users, how they got to your site, how long they stay, and which of your pieces of content are most—and least—popular. Once you’re set up, the real trick will be keeping yourself from spending too much time cutting and re-cutting your graphs. (forbes.com)

2. Klout
The Klout Score measures influence, which Klout defines as “your ability to drive action on social networks,” and, increasingly, in the real world. Specifically, it tells you how many people you influence, how much you influence them, and the influence of your network across your social media platforms. Once you’re signed-up, Klout will let you see a map of your social media activity over the past 90 days, enabling you to cross-reference the exact moments your score increased (under their algorithm, at least) with the content you posted or ways you engaged at that time. (forbes.com)

3. Wildfire’s Social Media Monitor
Wildfire is a social media marketing company that was recently acquired by Google. While the majority of its tools require payment, Wildfire does offer a free social media monitor that can help you understand your Twitter and Facebook presence versus that of your competitors. Wildfire’s tool will let you easily compare the number of likes, check-ins, and followers each page boasts. (forbes.com)

4. My Top Tweet by TwitSprout
Want an easy way to know which of your tweets got the most retweets? Check out My Top Tweet, which ranks your top 10 most-shared tweets and the number of times they were retweeted. Not only is this helpful for your own brand, but it allows you to educate yourself on what works well for other brands—including for your competitors. (forbes.com)



Check Engagement of Fans:

While the number of fans can be a measure of your marketing success, a more accurate measure would be how much your fans are interacting with your page/profile – number of likes, shares, re-tweets and pokes can be an indication of how effective your campaign is.

Check Traffic To Your Website:

The primary aim of any social medial marketing campaign is to send traffic to your website. So check your statistics (through Google Analytics) to see how much of your traffic is coming from social platforms, and is there any increase since the time you’ve intensified your social campaigns.

Check Conversions:

Getting traffic is great, but what if they’re useless to you? The next thing to do is to check if your visitors are taking the desired action. I say desired action because the aim of the marketing campaign may not always be to make a sale. It could also be to make them download an e-book, participate in a contest, or even subscribe to a newsletter. Whatever the aim may be, you’ll need to check that it is being achieved.

Choosing the Right Platform:
There are many things that contribute to the success of any social media marketing campaign, but the most important one is the choice of the platform. Every social media platform has its own features and attracts a certain kind of audience, so if you want to succeed you need to know what suits your business the best.

So how do you make sure that you choose right? Here are a few factors you should consider:

Know Your Audience:

The demographics of your audience plays an important role in choosing the platform. For instance, take a look at the chart below:

The survey takes into consideration the 5 most popular social platforms to show you the demographics of its users. As you can see, in terms of gender, Pinterest is more popular with women while LinkedIn is more popular with men (I have ignored Facebook numbers here as it’s high for all criteria due to sheer high volume of users). Likewise you can do a study of all the criteria, and then decide which platform fits the demographics of your target customer the best.

Know Your Content:

When you’re on social media, you promote your business through content. So the type of content you create will determine the platform you choose. For instance:
Images: If most of your content comprises of images, then image-sharing platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr are ideal for you.
Videos: If creating awesome videos is your specialty, then you should go for video networks like YouTube, Vimeo and Vine.
Posts: If you’re looking at writing engaging posts for your target audience, you should go for Facebook, Twitter or just plain blogging.

Know What You Want:

Do you want to improve SEO? Do you want more people to walk into your store? Do you want to target smaller niches instead of the social giants mentioned above? Do want to make connections with other businesses? Knowing what you want will decide what social platform fits best.

For instance, if you want *SEO (search Engine Optimization), then its Google+; if you want walk-ins then you’ll have to join location-based networks like Yelp and FourSquare; if you want smaller niches, then the perfect place to start is Reddit; and lastly,LinkedIn will help you make those vital business connections.

*SEO:

SEO is a marketing discipline focused on growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. SEO encompasses both the technical and creative elements required to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.

SEO isn't just about building search engine-friendly websites. It's about making your site better for people too.

The Top 5 Social Media Platforms:

Still not too sure? To help you out, here are the top 5 social media platforms and when you should choose them:

Facebook:

Facebook is huge, and this gives you exposure to a much wider audience than any other platform. It is a great platform for sharing interesting posts, pictures and videos that will help the audience connect and engage with your brand better. If that’s what you’re looking for, then go for it.

But there are 2 things that you should keep in mind: First, Facebook is mainly used to connect with friends and family, so it may not (always) be the right place for an out and out promotion campaign. And second, it’s sheer size exposes you to a lot of competition – the newsfeed is perpetually crowded and your message may get lost in all that noise.

Twitter:
Twitter serves to the younger crowd (often referred to as information junkies), and comprises of both men and women. It’s best for those

businesses that want to reach out to their audience through announcements, queries and news.

Apart from the character limit (140 characters per tweet), Twitter can be a challenge to those brands that are not equipped to promptly respond to the statements and queries of it’s fans. Twitter is more “in the moment” hang out place so you need to be on your toes.

LinkedIn:
Like I mentioned above, LinkedIn is great for building connections. In addition, you can also establish yourself as an authority in your niche by participating in groups and discussions and giving out expert advice.

Since LinkedIn is not very visual (as compared to the others), it suits best for businesses that offer services rather than products.

YouTube:
If you can create interesting videos that will engage the audience, then you can opt for YouTube. The best part about this channel is that it also has it’s own video-editing software so that you can edit your videos without any hassle.

The biggest drawback here is severe competition. Every day, millions of videos are getting posted on YouTube, out of which at least a few thousands will be similar to what you’re going to publish. So it becomes a difficult job to promote it in a way that it goes viral.

Pinterest:
Pinterest works great for those businesses that can showcase themselves through visuals. So if you have a lot of visuals, or are creative enough to create interesting visuals, you can sign up with Pinterest.

However, one thing to keep in mind here is that the platform mainly caters to women and categories like food and DIY are the most popular.

Conclusion:

For best results, it is recommended that you promote your business on at least 3-4 social platforms. This ensures that you reach out to a wider audience.

However, do not take on what you can’t handle. Social media marketing is a rigorous process wherein you need to post regular updates and monitor your profiles regularly so that you can respond to comments and queries in a timely manner. So it makes no sense if you sign up for 10 accounts, but fail to keep up with the maintenance of all the 10 profiles. Take on less, and give it your best shot. That way, you’re more likely to succeed.

Sources:

URL: www.60secondmarketer.com

http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2012/08/22/4-ways-to-measure-your-social-media-success/#6723fe14310b