Monthly Archives: April 2014
Social Media Business Trends 2014
The writing was all over the wall and it was inevitable that social would truly turn into a marketing machine. I remember the days when I had my own social network for motorcycle enthusiasts, motorsport companies desired to be there because it was their target market all in one place. So why wouldn’t they want to pay to be there to advertise their products? But, today social networks aren’t that niche specific anymore because it’s just easier to be where the majority of your “friends” are and to just just create groups or hashtags of shared interest.
With social networks having member numbers the size of countries this obviously is the targeted area for brands and small companies. But, this also forces them to have to be more creative and truly think outside the box in regards to strategy. Below I took some snippets from Online Social media that really provided some great imagery breakdown of trends to look for in 2014. Like I said the writing was on the wall with Social Business, all that hard work of building your Facebook fans, especially your going to have to pay to play. According to the data below 82% of people don’t believe Facebook ads to be true, so it’s going to come down to what you’re trying to accomplish and being really creative and setting defined KPI’s. This will also force business to take a hard look at all their other social networks such as, Instagram, Twitter, Google +, and Pinterest for new exciting ways to engage their audiences. Bottom line is that this year it’s time to really use your Social CRM!
By,
Tanesha White
AKA~Digital Diva
Social Media audit time, it’s not just tax season
Ahh tax season is in the air, smells horrible to me but Uncle Sam needs his money! On a brighter note this may be a perfect time to run an audit on social media strategy and profiles. Things are constantly changing in the Social world and it is very realistic that what was working 4 months ago just might be obsolete today. So running a social media audit should not be happening once a year it should be happening quarterly if not more frequently.
So what does a Social Media audit consist of?
First, a master list of all your social accounts with links and passwords etc. The easiest program to use is excel so everything is in columns and you can 
make notes accordingly.
As you’re going through your list check the networks and do some competitive research on each one. For example look at your competitors Facebook page and see if anything has changed in their strategy. Are you seeing more engagement? Has there been a huge spike in fans? Are they running contests? These are all important things to look at, because this could be an indicator that you may need to get more aggressive especially since page post views have plummeted since October. Continue to use the same technique of research down your check list and don’t forget to make notes!
After you’ve done your competitor research take a look at all of your profiles.
Are they up to date? For example did you add a new location, or has your company offerings changed? Do you have a new logo or new website design? If so you want may want to have that looking consistent across the board.
Have their been updates to the social network? Have image sizes changed? Are hashtags still relevant or became relevant? Such as the changes in Facebook or Pinterest.
Syndication- This is important if you are syndicating social feeds throughout your network make sure they’re all working correctly. For example If you have tweets being syndicate to google Plus make sure they are being deciphered correctly. Sometimes characters from Twitter come over looking like code. When looking at syndication this is also a great time explore new sources. There are so many great social management tools out there today. Some of my top favorites are Buffer, IFTT, and of course Hootsuite. Some are better at one thing than the other so you may want to try to mix it up.
Lastly take a look at your social media content strategy. If you find that your social media content calendar is slightly boring incorporate some fun contest ideas. Social contest can really boost engagement and turn a boring social party into a blast again.
If you haven’t done a social media audit in a while this may be very time consuming at first. But remember to do these as often as you can so everything is always up to date. Especially in regards to the competitor research you should do this monthly because you may find a promotion or type of posting that received tons of engagement or vice a versa, you could take this a learn what the mistakes were and make it better.
By,
Tanesha White
Your DigiDiva~
The Digital Diva 