Why Social Media Works For Small Businesses

If you don’t think your company needs a presence on social media outlets you are far behind the curve. Research firm, BIA/Kelsey, surveys to find that social media is the number 1 in usage and spending.

Survey results that 74.5% of small and medium businesses use social media outlets to promote and advertise their business, which is 71.7% higher than social media usage last year.

Since five years ago when social media boom first really started to get notice, businesses have noticed positive results using this marketing tactic. Small businesses with a company holding less than 100 employees now spend an average of 21.4% of their total media budgets on social reports Ad Age.

Social media usage allows companies the opportunity to brand themselves further and gain more easy exposure. Reach to customers has increased in volume greatly. Knowing when to post is key. Social media also cuts back on the costs a company spends on advertising. It is a lot more affordable for companies to boost a post than pay to print materials and have them mailed out or put their money into visuals such as billboards and magazine or newspaper layouts. We won’t even talk about a commercial budget.

Let other people do the work for you. Sharing also makes social media a preferred method of advertising your brand, image and company. Sharing is like the virtual word-of-mouth and the word-of-mouth marketing tactic is traditional and affecting.

Choosing a channel for social media will assist in defining who you want your customers to be. Use Google Analytics to track where your business is achieving the most exposure. If you were selling mittens for kittens, Pinterest would probably be your best outlet as females browse Pinterest for this genre of item. As stated, when you post has an affect on your frequency of conversion rates and reach, as this customer type will be on Pinterest primarily on the weekends.

More well established companies will still see better ROI results than the small to medium sized companies, but the larger companies would dominate in traditional forms of advertising anyways. Social media gives businesses the chance to grow and make a name for themselves.

Do You Understand The “Cloud’?

There are so many questions we have about the “cloud” and it has almost become comical even that today’s youthful, technology-savvy individuals cannot get a handle on this concept. Maybe the reason why Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz’s new movie Sex Tape drew so much attention was due to the famous line in the movie’s preview “nobody understands the cloud”. Let’s change that shall we?

Cloud computing is a service that allows you to share resources on multiple devices. IBM, Google, and Apple, along with other companies all have cloud services. The cloud makes it possible to share photos, documents, videos, music, and other data on multiple devices such as your phone, computer, and tablet. It can be quite annoying to download a song three separate times just so you can have that song on all devices. The same goes for photos or videos that take up a lot of memory space. Cloud computing solves this problem!

When using Apple’s iCloud, for instance, there is a safety feature that if you happen to misplace or lose your device you can lock the device preventing another user from getting to your personal information. The iCloud can also back up data daily over Wi-Fi from any location (with Internet access). The iCloud is soon to feature an editing feature where you can work on any file from anywhere, and share to all devices.

There is not a huge differentiation between the Cloud brands as of now.  This might change in the near future, like most of the technology-wars do, as users require new features. A lot of people are hoping cloud computing will replace external hard drives when it comes to storage in general. The problem with this is that there is only so much available space on each individual’s cloud. This means that when the space available is used up, each user must purchase more space, and depending on how much memory is needed could add up quite a few pennies.

Cloud Computing is the future of technology, evolving so no data is lost and we can keep photos, videos, and songs for many years to come.  

Uber What?!

This modern taxi-like form of transportation has locals grinning with excitement at the news of this cashless convenience. Uber is the new thing in remote transportation; request a ride from the Uber application and pay with your mobile as well!

The Uber app connects you to the Uber driver nearest to your location from your phone’s GPS. This way, the Uber driver can see your exact location for pickup, even if you don’t know where you are! As the customer requesting the ride, you can also see where your driver is in relation to you on the location map. And don’t worry about watching for your ride to arrive, the driver will text or call when has arrived!

Uber drivers have to live up to a certain standard, as Uber wants every customer’s ride to be of the utmost enjoyable experience. Uber highly recommends users leave feedback! Rate your experience after your trip by leaving commentary on your driver, the car itself, and any other positive or poor experiences on Uber’s atmosphere.

Uber offers stylish rides too! Check out Uber’s uberX, an everyday car for everyday use; The Uber Taxi will make for no whistling needed as this yellow ride will be spotted very easily, the Uber Black is a private ride in a black, high-end sedan, the Uber SUV is a great option for large groups seating up to six people comfortably, and the Uber Lux is the luxury line for a more sophisticated outing.

No surprise charges with Uber. Let the Uber app know your pickup and drop-off location for a fare quote estimate prior to ordering a Uber. Just in case you don’t work in a restaurant, there is no need to worry about cash on hand. Once you have arrived at your destination, Uber charges your credit card on file.

There is also the option to split your fares with your friends! If all participating riders are signed up to the Uber app all person’s credit cards will be charged separately. No more pay-me-backs with this ride!

Uber has global locations. Download the Uber app today and let Uber be your new local pickup!

Don’t Let The #Hashtag Scare You!

What is a hashtag? If you can explain this to your grandmother, then you have a pretty good understanding as to what a hashtag actually is. If not, a hashtag is a keyword or phrase without spaces strung together with the “#” symbol at the beginning of the watchword(s).

Chris Messina used the first hashtag back in 2007 on social media outlet Twitter. Messina sought to gather discussion and online exchanges by deploying this new concept that took over. His first ‘tweet’: “how do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamps [msg]?”

First and foremost, using capitalized or low-case letters with hashtags has no affect on your search results. Some networks like Google+ will sometimes automatically hashtag your posts if keywords are obvious in your verbiage.

The main thing to remember when using this new search method is to not overdue hashtags! Using an odd number of hashtags has the best results on every social media outlet, 30 hashtags has the best results when it comes to Instagram. Remember not to overburden your posts with hashtags on Facebook though; using 5 hashtags is visually pleasing and still meets the odd number count.

Keep in mind that your brand exists in the real world. Make sure a brand campaign is quick and easy to understand or it will be ignored immediately. Use hashtags that are trending or that people are previously familiar with. Sometimes creating your own hashtags will be catchy, but probably not unless you are a celebrity or social media guru.

Use hashtags to interact with people. Reward regular activity by taking a hashtag and creating a photo from that hashtag to repost. Videos are also great and viewers love videos because they are more personable. Hashtag interaction is especially useful when creating a new product, service, brand or image. Ask people what they think, what is not attractive, and how to improve in the design process.

Social media is not about getting out there in terms of sharing, but for the cause of actually literally interacting with people. Hashtags are the modern day voice of the people.

Foursquare Reinvents Its Application - Swarm Is Created

Foursquare has split its application (app) into two entities: the redesign of Foursquare and the original creation of Swarm. Foursquare is seeking to monopolize the market, making Foursquare, and now Swarm, the most popular check-in apps currently available on the market.

Some things such as mayorships and badges have been eliminated completely. The app on Swarm will still track your ‘streak’ of how many weeks in a row you have been to the gym for instance. However, Swarm is geared more towards togetherness (finding out where groups of people are, hence the name “Swarm”).

In regards to mayorships, if you were formerly a mayor, the user will hold this position and move towards mayors 2.0 version.  This is a 60-day window where all previous mayors coexist and fight for spot to be the superior mayor against other mayors in the 2.0 version. What Swarm should do is just make this mayor competition a contest with a hierarchy that mirrors our political system now … we will call this Swarm Government Competition.

Badges have also been replaced in Swarm with stickers that can be attached to any place where you check-in helping to describe the mood or thoughts regarding a particular place. All of these stickers are indeed free!

The main focus of the newly redesigned Foursquare is to replace the geolocation-based social attributes of the New York City start-up’s original app. Since Foursquare will be focusing on discovering new places and Swarm for social and tracking aspects, this will dominate the market for this category of apps.

With Foursquare, a user can search a place, person, or even a type of place and then Swarm will showcase relevant results. User reviews are not so appreciative that the user must use two different apps to manage all actions. This proposes the question why is Foursquare trying to help users find places when the Yelp app exists to do exactly this?

Swarm is featuring a new feature called “Neighborhood sharing”. When you turn this feature on, your friends that also have this feature turned on can see when you enter his or her neighborhood and the same goes for when your friends enter your neighborhood. This was enabled to create more meet-ups between friends. To turn this feature off, tap on either of the two left hand tabs located at the bottom of the navigation bar and then swipe right at the top of the screen.

Foursquare and Swarm might increase in popularity once again if people can get a handle on the separation of the app’s features. At least checking in is still available.

Falling Rocks Ahead!

The Perseus constellation showers down upon us. Have your umbrella up and ready to take on falling rocks from the sky! Another meteor shower strikes again!

Best time to see the meteor shower is at 2 a.m. August 13th. This meteor shower is the result of space debris coming off the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet striking.

The great part about seeing this shower is you don’t need a telescope! Simple binoculars will do the trick but your eyes will also work just fine.

#meteorshower #perseuscluster #meteor #stars #space #starwars #startrek #thinkagency #robinwilliams #PerseidMeteorShower  

How Not to Do SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) concepts are pertinent to the success of businesses in today’s technology forefront. Even though technology has such a huge influence, it is important to still be recognized as a human being.  Make things personable. Here’s what you shouldn’t be doing instead:

1.     Tons of spammy backlinks.

If you are still paying for links then you are doing more harm than good. Google assesses penalties for this kind of system gaming, and they don’t take to kindly to it. Instead of asking for bogus links, following our suggestions in our last blog detailing how to get mutually beneficial links with relevant sites that will help both your audience and you!

2.     Write for Google and not for people.

Keyword stuffed content just isn’t going to cut it anymore. If you are writing for Google’s bots instead of your target audience then you are missing the mark. Write interesting and engaging content that will hook your readers. If your readers like it then Google will catch on and reward you accordingly.

3.     Shamelessly self-promote on social media.

Blasting out self-promotion on social media is a good way to alienate your audience and get flagged for spam. Social media is for connection and conversation. Do it the right way or not at all!

4.     Quit early.

Good SEO isn’t a one-stop shop. It is a continual practice that needs to be adjusted, tweaked, and continually grown. Reputation and a captive audience won’t happen over night. If you don’t dedicate the right amount of time you will waste money and see little results!

Remember, keep you subject light; relate to the topic and then expand using personal stories and relations that would intrigue the reader. If the reader isn’t interested then why would Google be?