All Ping

You have just entered college and there is a chance that you know very few people, if anyone at all. This is going to cause you a few problems in the beginning, although you should not worry too much, as you will find that you will naturally make friends as you go about your daily business. However, if you are a little bit worried about it, then here are a few tips to help you get things started.

Social media marketing is an integral part of any modern day business plan. This will be the way that you find the most followers, who will in turn become potential customers and supporters. Social media will get the ball rolling on word of mouth marketing, and will help you to personally connect with those who support you.

The way that all of this begins is by first increasing your followers. Without an ample amount of followers on any given social media site you will never be able to push yourself, your brand, or your business forward. With this in mind, we have come up with five social media marketing tips designed to directly increase your followers. Incorporate them into your social media marketing campaign and watch as your following grows consistently as well as considerably.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips

Tip #1: Be Interactive

The first step towards growing your followers is to be interactive. If someone posts on your status or photo, write them back. Don’t just let your information sit there and do nothing. If you don’t write someone back who has taken the time to interact with you, then you will never stand out in that persons mind. They will easily and quickly forget about you and whatever it is that you are marketing. All it takes is a few minutes, once or twice a day, to respond to what people are saying or doing. Even if what someone has written isn’t really something you would reply to, you can like what they have said or just leave a smiley face. Remember that any type of interaction at all is better than nothing.

Tip #2: Use Multiple Social Media Sites

Use multiple social media sites as a part of your campaign so that you can reach a wider audience. Not every person will be on every site, so using more than one can increase your prospective audience considerably. On this same note, however, don’t use so many social media sites that you are strained in keeping up with them all. Sticking to two or three is a fairly good idea. For example, you may set up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Or, you may decide to use LinkedIn, Google+, and Facebook. If you aren’t sure which sites to use, think about your target audience and which sites they are most likely to frequent. Set up your campaign and multiple accounts based upon that information.

While you should always be professional and stick to a strict code of conduct (in other words, be polite and business like), you should tactfully make your audience feel as though they are getting to know you, not as though they are simply being sold to. An easy way to do this is mix in just a bit of personal information and professional advice in with ads targeted towards what you are trying to sell. For example, you may write something along the lines of, “I’m having a wonderful day! How is your day going?” or “I’m so excited about the way things have been going for me! I hope that you are doing as well as I am!” It’s as easy as that. Just make the audience feel as though they are connecting with you.

Tip #4: Post Often!!

This one is fairly self explanatory. Make sure you post, and do it often. Try to be steady about it also. Decide how often you are able to post. It might be five times a week, or two times a day. Dedicate yourself towards posting that much on a steady basis, and keep yourself in front of your audience. This may possibly be the most important tip of all, because remember that if you aren’t in front of your audience on a steady basis they will forget about you, and it can happen rather quickly at that.

Tip #5: Use Contests, Polls, and Giveaways To The Best Of Your Advantage

One great way to keep your followers involved and snag yourself some new ones is to run contests, polls, and giveaways. Use them to the best of our advantage! For contests and giveaways, one of the best things you can always do is having share the post or picture forward as a means of entering. This could ultimately put you in front of double your current audience! Besides which, everyone loves to get free stuff. If you offer free stuff now and again, you are much more likely to have repeat visitors to your social media page, which means that more of the information you post is going to actually get seen.

Those are our five social media tips to help you increase your followers. We hope you enjoyed learning them and that they serve you well, now and in the future. Good luck, and we wish you a worthwhile social media marketing campaign that grows your following, increases your sales, and expands your business or organization!

With competition in the business world growing fiercer all the time, how can a company rise to the top, get attention, and increase their business sales?

Making a profit in a thriving market can be hard, promotion and marketing can be tough jobs, especially when it comes to bringing in new customers and bringing up profits.

We bring to you a few ways your business can improve their bottom line, through various methods businesses can make more money and increase their brand awareness quickly.

Freebies

Giving something away for nothing is a tried-and-true business tactic.

People love getting something for free, and if it’s something that gets them talking and remembering your company, so much the better.

It doesn’t stop at widgets or trinkets — free shipping and free product support are just two ways that a business can build customer loyalty (and sales).

In addition, a business can potentially market themselves better by sending out products with their brand on it, clothing has proved to be a great tactic and people wear this every day and remember who they are wearing.

Not only does all this benefit business sales but it can draw people in to want a job with your company; saving costs on not having to use external recruiters.

Rewards

Do you want to keep your customers coming back? Reward them for doing business with you!

A great example of this is Adagio Tea’s “cups” rewards program. Customers earn points for buying tea, recommending the company to others, or even mentioning it online and the points can eventually be cashed in for discounts on future purchases.

A tactic like this gets customers talking, engages them with your product, and rewards them for doing business with you — guaranteeing they’ll be back.

Vouchers and discount coupons are also great ways of offering a reward to the loyal customers, make sure you offer these with every purchase, it will put you ahead of the game.

Customer Engagement

To find out what your customers really want, talk to them. Communication is a basic lesson that a lot of businesses tend to forget.

Get on social media platforms online like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and start spreading the word about your business.

Does your company have job vacancies? Post them on social media sites and get people talking. In the modern age, customers dislike being directly “sold” to, but open up a dialog with them and they will respond.

Going Viral

Some of the most successful commercials and ad promotions on the internet are those that barely mention their products at all.

A video, infographic, or other piece of material that entertains and starts conversations that link on can be a great promotional tool.

If you’re lucky, it may spread like wildfire and get people sharing and driving profits directly to your door.

Tools

Car and truck signage, business cards, brochures, email newsletters, your company’s website, even public art can all be terrific promotional tools.

Does your company already have a main website?

If not, consider creating a new one immediately, devoted to whatever it is you want to promote, and drive traffic towards it via social media and online marketing.

Use innovative outdoor advertising like QR codes on billboards or promotional posters — they will make customers curious and make it easy to drive traffic to your website.

Give Back

Doing things for the community is a great way to increase your reputation and build customer loyalty.

Give to charities, sponsor special events, or even create instructional materials (like videos) to help others.

Customers will respond to a genuine attempt to give back to the community.

The future is demanding that businesses give back, keep up with the trends and do not fall behind.

Do your research and create new initiatives on your findings that will benefit your business portfolio and benefit your customers; this is where the actual profit grows.

Image courtesy of nuttakit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The most powerful tool of internet marketing is the social media as it attracts millions of viewers every minute. Social media is not just about updates, friends, photographs and links, in this era of time it has a developed into a significant medium in the industry of online marketing. Marketing through social media is the best way to understand the demands and requirements of the public. However the difference in the perceptions of the marketers has aroused many questions about the significant importance of social media in internet marketing

Marketing on Social Media – Boon or Bane

Some marketers believe online marketing through social media is a boon while others agree that it is a bane. The marketers who believe understand the value of social media and use it properly to advertise and promote their business online attracting thousands of customers as well as attaining huge return on investments. As for the later group, they lack the knowledge of efficiency ofmarketing through social media and hence fail to use it to gain return on investments. More often people are just access social media as a part of their personal habits unaware of the fact that it’s beyond friendly interactions and has more important and exclusive features. However it is essential to understand the proper use of social media for promotion and huge return on investments.

Concentrate on Content Marketing

Social media does not sell products or in other words it does not act as a shop. However it helps in the promotion of the brand, products, services and company’s identification through pages and communities. Social media can be utilized efficiently by interactions among the people about the brand and the products. Concentrate on content marketing as suggested by initiating and involving in various conversations with group of people. These activities will lead to the reception of ideas and opinions and expand the scope of improvement and generate profit.

The work of the marketer is almost done if the large number of audience turns themselves into subscribers and follows each update of the product and company’s services away from the social media. Through emailing various newsletters and inviting the fans to the webinars would increase their knowledge as well as interest in buying the product and availing the services frequently. This is the core step to increase sales of the business through providing the customers wider platform of transparency of the services and quality.

Inspire the Audience to Attend Webinars

Converting webinar attendees into customers is an easier approach to increase sales as marketers who have effective traits are capable of converting large percentage of attendees into customers. With every webinar, the number of customers increases increasing sales simultaneously. With the help of social media software programs one can attract new followers after seeding the content.

If you’re into social networks, you probably are on two of the biggest platforms, Facebook and Twitter. Trying to catch up on tweets can be a time-consuming task, but if you can’t help but get your daily dose of tweets, why not try getting them in a different way. Rather than read tweets, why not listen to them?

The Social Radio is a smartphone app that turns your Twitter account into a radio; it reads you your tweets and supports many types of languages e.g. Spanish, English, Korean, German, Italian and French. As an extra touch, you also get some music in the background.

Here’s how to set it up.

Turning Twitter Timeline Into A Radio

First download and install The Social Radio (iOS | Android).

Now, tap on The Social Radio and sign in with your Twitter account.

Listen To Your Tweets

To start listening, you can either listen to your Twitter timeline by tapping on ‘Tune in to your Twitter timeline’ or you can listen to "Recommended" tweets.

For this guide, we’ll tap on ‘Tune in to your Twitter timeline’. Next, you will come across two tabs, one is your Twitter Timeline and the other tab is your music.

On your Twitter Timeline you’ll be able to see the amount of tweets that’s available for it to read.

If you tap on Twitter Timeline you can tweet about listening to tweets via The Social Radio.

On the Twitter Timeline page, if you press on the "Repeat" icon, it will read back the 10 latest tweets. In future versions, you can even choose the tweet the app should start reading from.

Customized Reading

There are other ways to better specify what the tweets the app should be reading back to you. You can choose by Lists, Trending Topic or even by Keywords.

Via Lists

Apart from your Timeline or Recommended tweets, you can listen to your ‘Lists’ tweets as well. Compile a few Twitter users into a group and that becomes your ‘Lists’.

To access it, tap on ‘Lists’ at the bottom of the app.

Tap on any of the list and the app will start reading the tweets.

Via Trending Topics

Tap on ‘Trends’ at the bottom and you get to pick to listen to what is trending now, according to country, or Worldwide.

After choosing which country you want to listen, choose any of the trending topic, to start reading

Via Keyword

You can also search for keywords in tweets. Tap on ‘Search’ and enter your keyword. The tweets that contain your keyword will be read to you.

Pick Your Tune

You can also pick the music that will accompany the reading of your tweets to you. On the second tab, you’ll be able to view the music it is currently playing. If you want to set your playlist or music settings, tap on the tab.

You will be redirected to the Music page where you can choose your playlist from your iPod or other sources.

By tapping on ‘iPod’ you can select which song you want to play, leave it on Shuffle or remove the background music altogether.

On the ‘Others’ tab, you have the option to choose to play music from sources such as Pandora and Spotify or other sources. The volume of the tunes will be adjusted automatically so it doesn’t drown out the tweets.

Wrap Up

On the ‘Settings’ tab, you can set the duration for how often the app should fetch for new tweets. There is also the option to set how fast you want the app to read the tweets to you. Give the Social Radio a go and let us know what you like (or don’t like) about it in the comments area.

Let’s start today’s post with a simple question – why do you think or why do we use social share buttons on our blog? To me, I have the social share button here on my blog because I want my readers to share my content to their friends after reading – basically, for more exposure.

Getting Started

To get started, Picturelife requires for you to sign up for an account on their website. After registering and downloading Picturelife to the devices you want to sync between, it will bring you to your dashboard.

The dashboard is where you can share, upload and organize your photos, or that is too much work for you, Picturelife will easily and quickly do it for you.

Photo Editor

A unique feature of PictureLife is a simple photo editor built into the service. The photo editor allows you to rotate and flip the image, add multiple photo effects such as fuzz, rainbow, sepia, bloom and many more. Again if you don’t want to mess with different photo effects, Picturelife will automatically enhance your photo with the click of a button.

Sharing Your Photos

You can easily share a photo with your family and friends with Picturelife by simple clicking on the content you want to share and click Send. You can choose to share a full album, a single picture or even an event. Sharing is possible via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, to a fellow user of Picturelife or by sharing the link to the image.





An added feature is the "who can see" permission setting. Photos that you share can be set to private or public mode. You can even choose the individuals you want to allow access to the photo or even to everyone in your Picturelife friends list.

Account Syncing
Here’s the fun part. The service also allows you to sync your content and photos from other website and hosting services. Theses accounts can be found and linked up in your Settings tab next to the search bar.

Add and sync services like Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google, Instagram, SmugMug, Tumblr and Twitter. In the case of syncing photos with Facebook, it even saves the photos that friends have tagged you in.





Photo Places

Picturelife can also organize and create a full feature map based on the GPS locations of your photos. This only works with GPS-enabled devices. It is a small but pretty cool feature that will make a huge difference in the long run.

Pricing


Picturelife offers its users 5 GB of free space that can hold approximately 1,700 photos. For $7/Month users can get 100 GB (that’s like 34,000 photos’ worth). If you want more, go with the Premium Plus plan, which offers 300 GB worth of storage (for 100,000 photos – sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?).

Advantages

• Cross platform photo sharing and syncing on the web, Mac, Windows, Android and iOS devices.
• Account syncing with major services like Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare, Google, Instagram, SmugMug, Tumblr and Twitter.
• Reasonable pricing for storage and accounts.
• Photo mapping for photos taken with a GPS enabled device.
• Share photos with only the people you want.
• Organization through events, people, places and albums.
• Easy-to-use scroller for image and video sizes.
• Receive images from friends and family with the built-in Picturelife Inbox system.

Disadvantages

• No account sync to Youtube, Vimeo or a mobile video service such as Vine.
• The design is somewhat dark and too simple.
• Social part of Picturelife is not promoted well enough (Hard to find).
• Friend stream is nothing to get excited about, pretty plain design and not many functions.

Conclusion


Picturelife is a wonderful photo saving and sharing service. It cannot replace your Instagram, but is most likely one of the best photo-hosting services/apps available out there. With reasonable pricing, multiple-device and service syncing, numerous sharing options and more, Picturelife is definitely a good tool for all your photo backup needs.

Today, it is common practice to add social buttons on webpages for better user engagement and to make it easier for your posts to be shared. However, these buttons could slow down your websiteload performance severely.