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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

How to Use Social Media to Increase Sales

There are still many individuals who are apprehensive about using social media  when setting up a business, however nowadays, online networking advertising has turned into a standard method of promotion. This applies to both people and organizations, so it would be unwise to dismiss social platforms when choosing your business strategy.

While social media marketing has its naysayers, there is much evidence that the use of social media for advertising has gone mainstream, and is highly effective for pushing your brand and promoting your products and services. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are a critical part of today's standard business strategy.

Because there are so many people and businesses using social networks these days, social media provides affordable access to a wide range of markets, that could be considered when setting up a social media campaign.

When using social media it is important to find out the sweet spot when it comes to the use of various platforms.  Over use of social media can sometimes become annoying, and may result in losing followers.  But if you can get it right, social media can be a valuable tool for reaching potential customers before a product or brand is even launched.

Before a grand opening or launch of a product, a Facebook fan page can be opened to create interest in the brand or product being launched, and this can create interest both locally and wider afield. Update the page daily with valuable content and interest titbits to keep followers interested in what you have to offer.  This will create excitement and enthusiasm prior to launch date.  This can be especially effective when targeting local markets because the local event is will often create some buzz amongst local friends.

Once an excited and enthusiastic customer base is established the potential to convert interest to sales is much greater.  In addition, you can then send people to your main website, and start promoting using advertising.


For additional support for your campaign, consider using Twitter and Instagram which have different capabilities to Facebook. Twitter is great for reaching a large audience fast, and Instagram offers a hybrid of images and the capacity to reach a large number of people fast. Using Instagram you can use images to showcase your new products and brand, as well as your other products.

The thing about social media that makes it worth serious consideration for any business, is that it makes it so easy for businesses to reach their target audiences, and to create excitement about the business brand and products at the same time.  Social media is a terrific strategy for any business, and should never be disregarded by any business just starting out.

Even just creating a Facebook fan page, is a great strategy that could have potentially outstanding results.So if you want sales, consider using social media for first reaching your target audience, then creating interest and then converting that interest into sales.





Monday, July 28, 2014

Why Use Google Plus for Business?

Google Plus is a valuable tool for business promotion and marketing.  And given that each time you log onto your Youtube channel or your Gmail account Google is going to hassle you to set one up, you may as well set one up. Obviously, you may not have a Gmail account or a Youtube account. However, even if you never  intend to open either type of account, you should still consider Google Plus for marketing your business.



Google is attempting to get all its users to sign up for all the Google services, such as Gmail, YouTube, Calendar,Drive and Blogger.  And, when considering the prevalence & usefulness of each type of Google account, this is not such a bad idea.  Gmail is very popular and respected email service. Youtube is the greatest video offering site out there. Drive is extraordinary for file sharing. Calendar is ideal for organizations that need to impart work plans. Blogger is a decent blog website. And Google search, is the highest ranking website on the internet.

All of Google services are useful, and freely available to use for personal or business purposes.  But why have a Google + account? Because all you need to sign up for a Google + is a Gmail account, and because it is extremely easy to manage and attract other Google + users to your site. However, Google + is not as popular as  Facebook.

In order to persuade Google users to utilize the Google Plus platform, Google recently introduced a dashboard when enables users to manage their business profile, their business address on Google maps and manage their YouTube channel.

Google Search is the most mainstream search engine online and is the most lucrative of all the free to use sites online.  By establishing and keeping an up to date business Google Plus page, it will help your business rank well in Google's search engine, and, if you link your website to the Google Plus page it should follow that your website will also rank well.


Google Plus has a number of great features that e gimmicks and the dashboard. With Google plus you can post a wide variety of content while using #hashtags to encourage discussion. You can follow, +1 (or Like) and interact easily while potentially attracting new customers to your business. it is also easy to join groups that are relevant to your business, and use 'Hangouts' to run webinars or video conferences.

Although Google plus has great features, and is reported to have over 500 million account holders, it does not appear to be that many users are actively maintaining their Google Plus page. 

So while Google Plus is useful to have, it may be best to put more time and effort into other social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, for promoting your business.


Given the reasons already stated, it is a great idea to keep a Google Plus business page, and should the use of Google Plus start to really gain favor, by the millions of Google users, it is a great asset to have that you can access promptly.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

How to Best Respond to a LinkedIn Business Inquiry

There are many reasons to use LinkedIn, including the fact that this is a great way to drum up new business. Even though this may not be your primary objective, over time you will find that people are connecting with you in hopes of forming some type of business relationship. In the event that somebody reaches out to discuss a business opportunity.


There are five steps you should take when it comes time to respond:1. Make sure the person and opportunity is legit. Just the same as any online service, there are spammers and scammers who will reach out to anybody and everybody in an attempt to make money. Don¹t be duped!
2. Do some research into the person's background. Since you received the message on LinkedIn, this is a great place to start. What is their current position? Where are they located? Which companies have they worked for in the past? From there, you can do a quick Google search to see what else you can find.
3. Answer any questions that were asked of you. This is when you will dive into the opportunity that has been presented, letting the person know if you are interested or not. Tip: while answering questions, don't be afraid to interject your own ideas, explaining why you are the right person for the opportunity. Despite the fact that the other party reached out to you, there is nothing wrong with selling yourself.
4. Be quick and to the point. LinkedIn is not a place to hold a long conversation. You should be as quick and concise as possible, sharing the necessary information and providing the person with everything they asked of you. If you drag on too long, you take the risk of your note not being read in its entirety.
5. Setup the next action. At the end of your response, suggest the next action, such as a time for a phone call or face to face meeting. If you are truly interested in the opportunity, no matter what it may be, you need to take the initiative in setting up a time for you to take discussions to the next level. Every LinkedIn business inquiry is unique, however, you can take these five steps to ensure that you are on the right path.

As the biggest professional networking site in the world, the more time you spend on LinkedIn the better chance there is that somebody will eventually reach out to discuss a business opportunity.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peg_McDermott

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8622556

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

10 Ways To Build an Effective Social Media Strategy

If you've decided that you want to get serious about using social media to market your business, it's important to take the time to develop a social media strategy. Creating and executing a strategy will ensure you're getting the best return out of the time and resources you invest into social. So if you want to craft a strategy that's going to help you succeed, here's what you need to do:

Understand Who You're Targeting
Just because there are over a billion people on Facebook doesn't mean you should try to connect with all of them. The best way to use social media is to narrow your scope and only focus on users who are actually in your target demographic.



Put Time Into Creating Great Content
When it comes to social marketing, content plays a key role. However, simply pumping out lots of content isn't going to cut it. Instead, you need to make it a priority to create awesome content that people will find interesting and engaging.

Utilize Multiple Platforms
There's a lot of value in creating a presence on multiple social media platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn all have proven track records of helping businesses grow. While it's easy to understand that different platforms allow you to connect with different audiences, plenty of businesses get overwhelmed by the thought of managing multiple social media accounts. Fortunately, a social media dashboard can make it much easier to track and manage more than one account.

Use the Same Branding Elements
Although you may share different content through your various social platforms, it's a good idea to keep elements like profile pictures and tag lines consistent. This will make it easy for people to identify your brand regardless of where they encounter you online.

Get Creative
While there are plenty of best practices, don't be afraid to experiment with different approaches to sharing to see how well they perform.

Focus on Engagement
Make it a priority to actually connect with your followers on a regular basis. This will remind them that there is a real person behind your business.

Stick with 70-30
A big part of an effective social media strategy is to find the right balance between keeping people interested and promoting your business. The best way to strike this balance is with the 70-30 rule. By limiting your self-promotion to 30% of your updates and using the rest to share things that are genuinely fun or interesting, you'll get far better results than if all you did was promote your business.

Review Your Social Media Analytics
Looking at your social media analytics data on a regular basis will do a lot for helping you to guide all of your marketing efforts.

Stay on Top of Your Industry
There are a lot of social media monitoring tools that can help you keep an eye out for trends within your industry. By staying on top of those things, you'll be able to position yourself as an authority figure within your industry.

Don't Be Afraid to Change
If something in your strategy isn't working as well as you would like, don't be afraid to try a new approach. Consistently reviewing and revising will allow you to keep your efforts moving in the right direction.
If you put everything we covered above into action, you'll be very happy with the social media strategy you're able to develop and the positive impact that it has on your business.

This is the syndicated copy of an original article posted at SendSocialMedia.com. Interested in learning more? Visit SendSocialMedia.com/blog
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nigel_S_Miller

Monday, July 21, 2014

How to Properly Use Facebook


In a nutshell, this is why you need Facebook:
  • 700 million daily users
  • Most daily users spend about 20 minutes on Facebook
  • 2 billion connections can be made using Facebook's community
The amount of exposure that you can get as a business owner on Facebook is almost impossible to obtain through traditional media, unless you have an unlimited marketing budget.
Frequently asked questions
Question: I post to Facebook every day, yet do not get the visibility of 700 million daily users. What am I doing wrong?
Answer: There are a few tricks we suggest to maximize your visibility on Facebook.
  1. What times are you posting? Research shows that a large percentage of Facebook users access Facebook first thing in the morning, sometimes before they even get out of bed. Posting early in the morning can be a key to getting your content visible before your customers newsfeeds become inundated with other information.
  2. What are you posting? Facebook has instilled an algorithm on it's newsfeed so that certain posts are more visible than others. Photos typically get the most visibility, standard status updates are the next visible, and links are the least visible. Reference your wall, are you posting content that has links to outside sources? Try posting images directly to your wall, and then commenting the link if necessary.
  3. Are you engaging back with your fans? Another factor in visibility is your affinity with your fan base. Your company will show up more often in a customer's newsfeed if your engagement back and forth is strong. Any time a customer shares, comments on, or likes your post make a step towards engagement back.
Question: How do I get more likes?
Answer: Although it is important to note that "likes" aren't necessarily the most important factor on a Facebook page, it is still worth addressing. There are several ways a business can utilize Facebook to increase their community:
  1. Facebook ads: Just like ranking highly on Google, or having the most elite website costs money, you can expect to pay a fee to have a popular Facebook page. Facebook advertisements are very advanced and allow business owner's access to a demographic specifically interested in products like yours. Facebook ads are run through "Power Editor" which allows you to customize your audience through targeted ads.

    1. You can targeting those in your e-mail lists for particular Facebook call to actions

    2. You can use 'partner categories' to find an audience that is "likely to buy" your product.

    3. You have the ability to adjust controls to target local Facebook users in particular demographics
  2. Integrate your Facebook strategy with the rest of your digital strategy: Consider running different contests from other platforms to encourage more traffic. Maybe on Twitter you suggest "send us an email that includes [this code] to win [whatever giveaway makes sense]. From the emails you collect you can then send a targeted Facebook ad to request likes.
Question: I have noticed that we aren't getting traffic to stay on our Facebook page. How to I make it more engaging?
Answer: In order to keep your consumers engaged you need to pay very close attention to the user experience on your Facebook page.

  1. How is your page designed? Consider posting all of your wall images with a 600X600 pixel size, and your cover photo with a 851X315 pixel size. Also think about how your profile picture and cover photo can work together to be aesthetically pleasing.

  2. Update your cover photo often. Each time you update your cover photo you are increasing your visibility, as we mentioned before photo updates get the most visibility on a newsfeed.

    1. Each time you update your cover photo you should follow these steps:

      1. Your image is professional-grade. You are a professional therefore your presence online should replicate your professionalism.

      2. Your image has your business name.

      3. Your cover photo should have a narrative in the caption that includes a link back to your website. If the link is in the description of the photo it will not lower the visibility of the image on newfeeds, and will allow your consumers to find your website easily. This link should be located above the "see more" option if your content exceeds a particular length.
  3. How are you crafting your content? Your content needs to be written in a way that asks for engagement. Some great tips are to write updates that are open-ended questions. Trivia, contests, and slightly-controversial updates are always great. Be careful when asking for likes or shares. Facebook technology is advanced enough to know when a business is "gaming" the system.
Know that you're not alone. Sometimes there are other "fan pages" that are just starting to build their community as well. If you find other fan bases that share a similar demographic to yours, but is not a direct competitor it makes sense to reference each other to gain exposure from both of your developing communities.

By

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Jordan_Schultz

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Instagram: a good friend for small business

Instagram is quite possibly the thing that could breath new life into an already established social media strategy for any small businesses. Organizations are seeing an exceptional decline in organic reach to followers through Facebook, which until recently has often been the lifeblood for reaching followers.  You have to dispose of your account with Facebook yet,  but it is a good time to start looking at other avenues for reaching your target audience and followers using social media. 

 Instagram is a free online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.  The number of users of Instagram is growing steadily, with over 200 million monthly users, and 75 million daily users. 

If you are new to Instagram, or unsure how to make the most of it, here are some useful tips for promoting your small business:

1)  Account branding
The main thing you ought to do when setting up an  Instagram account is to personalize or brand your profile by using a headshot or logo for your profile picture and then write a short bio and leave a link to your website or Facebook page. The process of personalizing your profile is important for  credibility, and shows that you are not a spammer. 

2)  Grow Your Following
Now link your Instagram account to your Facebook account.   This not only allows your to determine who else is on Instagram, but encourages engagement on both platforms.  It is important to engage with others by 'liking'  images posted by other users, and leave comments.  This will drive traffic to your Facebook business page.  This not only permits you to see who else is on Instagram, but  additionally permits you to cross post your pictures to Facebook – an extraordinary approach to drive engagement on both stages!  
Using Woobox, you can  set up an Instagram app on Facebook that allows you to easily post from Instagram to Facebook. Cross promoting your social accounts can be a terrific way to let your audience know the many places you can be found online. If you already have an established following on your Facebook business page, adding your Instagram feed is an easy way showcase your Instagram account and possibly increase your Instagram following.

3)  Following your followers.
It is not necessary to follow everyone who follows you, but take care to grow your following by following others who are aligned with your ideas and interests.  This will enable you to stay engaged with their content, and they with yours.

4)  Don't Over Post

Unlike Twitter accounts, the news stream in Instagram is quite slow.  An image can be viewed in Instagram for up to 15 hours,  which is a great news.  So it is important not to over post in your account.  In fact it is not even necessary to post daily, although many big brands do tend to that.  The average posting rate on Instagram by Top 100 brands is 5.5 times each week.

5)  Keep your Images Balanced.
While it can be fun to share your images and business story on Instagram, you need to keep in mind that you are there to build and maintain a relationship with your customers.  So balance your photos so that your are promoting your products and services as well as sharing fun stuff.

People love pictures, so this a great tool for small businesses to use for promoting their own goods and services.  And, given that it is actually free (at least for now) this represents a terrific opportunity for small budget businesses to communicate with potentially millions of people world wide.
If you are consistently posting, and engaging with other users,  you will grow not only your following, but your brand as well in no time.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Facebook Popularity Amongst Teens Is Back on Track

It seemed like Facebook was losing a little bit of popularity for a while with teenagers and this was starting to be noticeable in the trends that occurred in this particular social media platform. The truth is that there is a never ending fluctuation of traffic that can change in a second and this is something all social media platforms have to deal with. The crucial thing is that the latest numbers show that there is an increase in the popularity of Facebook amongst teenagers now.



The reasons why this kind of number fluctuation occurs is that you can't really control how the public responds to certain updates that are made in the numerous platforms available. One day they move to X place because they introduced a certain feature and the next they go back to the place they left behind because they also incorporated that feature plus a little something extra.

It just seems like the social media wars are always going to be in high gear and not even the colossal Facebook will be safe from being ranked down in popularity if they get careless with their updates. The social media phenomenon forces developers to be in constant red alert and looking for the best ways to develop new ideas and also incorporate anything that is relevant in other places while adding their own twist to it. That is the key to a successful business and social media sites are exactly that.


There are literally dozens of social media platforms trying to compete to reach a higher place in the rankings and some of them are grabbing a lot of attention from the public. This means that Facebook is not only having to worry about the closest contenders like Twitter and Google Pus, but also about smaller new comers that are coming out of nowhere with great ideas and excellent features. Many teenagers seem to be attracted to the latest tends even if they come from smaller sites. The younger audiences are the most unpredictable but they play a key factor in how a social media site evolves.

It's obvious that 99% of teenagers that visit social networks are there to waste time with games, gossip and general fun, but this turns them into the perfect target for publicity and for those who are on the networks looking for clients. There is no way to deny the power of consumption that comes from teenagers this days, especially now that so many of them have credit cards and access to PayPal accounts amongst other payment methods available. The most important things to remember about the interaction with social media and teenagers is that those are the people who will eventually be using the networks for business purposes, so it's always good practice for the sites to keep them happy.

New features are launched every day and new apps or designs are modified and created too. With social media being almost a decade old, it still seems like we are very early in the game as far as what will happen and who will be on the top of the ranks a few years from now. So far things are still looking great for Facebook, but you never know when a network could come up with a truly amazing and innovative idea that will shake even the most solid foundations in the business. Only time will tell, but the best thing is to keep an eye opener as a marketer to see which ones are the most useful for your particular purposes.

By    Award Winning Social Media Consultant, UK
www.makingmoneyusingsocialmedia.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_C_Callix

Monday, July 7, 2014

How investing in social media creates profit for companies

If you're still sceptical, let's have a quick look at some of the reasons why your business can benefit from investing in social media:
Exposure - Over 80% of online marketing firms report that social interaction between customers and businesses is the key to social media networking. Through digital word-of-mouth marketing, you are bound to boost your brand awareness
Reputation Management - Social media allows you to see what your customers are competitors are saying about you in real-time. This is a huge advantage, enabling you to fix any issues that may pop up, show the human side to your business and avoid any bad hype. 
Branding - Social media can help you to generate a recognisable identity and build up a larger consumer base at the same time.
Monitor - A stable online presence enables you to track engagement and view your progress year-on-year. 
Given the rapid growth of social media over the last few years, it can seem an impossible task to undertake. More importantly, time is money, and it's hard to know where to invest such a valuable resource. 
It's key to understand your brand, and to understand your audience. After that, you can explore different social media platforms and decide which suit your brand best. It's important to understand what platforms work best for your company/brand, and to act appropriately from there.
Nowadays, it's not just about utilising Facebook, Twitter or Google +. For instant feedback, or to trial marketing and test products, these platforms are a great way to reach a wider audience. On top of that, you can expect instantaneous feedback from your followers. 
If you're looking for a platform to advertise and sell products, an image-centric network would be an appropriate choice. Visual content is set to be the big thing of 2014, and are great for driving traffic directly to your website and selling products. Such platforms also have a good success rate for niche markets, enabling business to display images of their products. A network like Pinterest make it easy for users to create wish-lists of products or get gift ideas.
As much as these big names should be integrated into your social media strategy, the smaller niche market should not be overlooked. With social media platforms popping up for everything from wine to trading, there are so many great ways to interact directly with your target audience. You need to ask yourself what platforms your targeted audience use, and set up an online presence there.
Once you have established yourself on your chosen social media platforms, it is essential to learn how to use them well. You shouldn't just jump into doing it all at once; build-up your accounts gradually, interacting with your consumers and learning how to use the platform fully. That way, you can really build a connection with your target audience, and monitor the profit this will bring for your company.
A few success stories, should you not already be persuaded:
Groupon

Groupon is a deal-of-the-day website, which features local and national coupons. It shows you money-off offers for everything from hotels to restaurants and services. It started in the USA, and is now worldwide.
Groupon have a well-established online presence, connecting with fans across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and even niche websites like studentbeans.com. They have become so big now that they even feature their own holiday during the holiday season, "Grouponicus", offering holiday deals and shopping tips.

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day

                                                               Source: vivacommunications.com.au
Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day is a global campaign that "aims to raise awareness about the importance of good food and better food education for everyone by focusing on three simple actions – cook it, share it, live it." The campaign managed to reach 74 countries thanks to social media, allowing the project's community and supporter base to grow.
The campaign had a strong presence on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, but also engaged with users on other charity websites like Food Day, the Edible Schoolyard Project and Just Food. This enabled them to engage with more users within their target audience.

Graze


Graze is a company that offers healthy snacks (nuts, fruits, flapjacks and so much more) in a letterbox-sized box directly to your desk or door. They offer freebies as an incentive for consumers to start using the product, and then offer them money off with a unique promotional code if they recommend the product to friends and family.
What's more, in each box they give their customers referral cards, containing a unique code, so that they will pass them on. The company has a huge Facebook and Twitter presence, and any current customer can post their code to their wall or feed. Each time their code gets used, they get £1 off another box of goodies.
The product itself is flexible; consumers can tell the company what snacks they like or dislike, love or want to be sent soon. They can delay boxes, if money is an issue, or if they are going on holiday. This makes the consumer feel in control, and will make them keen to continue using the product.
The combination of online/offline promotion, empowered, happy customers and a great social media presence has led to viral word-of-mouth marketing, enabling the company to grow exponentially.

by Charlotte Callaghan

Source: http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/2014/02/social-media-news-how-investing-in.html#.U7ttkLHm7JV

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Reasons Why Social Media Listening Is Important For Your Online Marketing Campaign

The advent of social media has radically transformed the way brands market their products and services. The business owners have become increasingly aware about the importance of using the social networking platform to reach out to the wider audience base and tap new customers. Furthermore, the brands are also becoming more aware about the importance of listening to know how their brand is being perceived in the online world by the customers.

 
The inability or incapacity of the brand owners in controlling what is being said about their brand online and their products make its crucial for all businesses to keep a close tab on all the social networking channels to ensure that the mentions are dealt with appropriately and in a time manner. From the online marketing campaign perspective, the business experts consider social media as the most amazing platform to communicate with the target audience at a personal level. Apart from personalized communication there are several other reasons why social media listening is important for online marketing campaigns, which are discussed below,

The key to success of any online marketing campaign is the attitude of the target audience towards your brand or organization. Today, since people spend a significant amount of time online even a single negative comment can affect the reputation of your business and your campaign. In such circumstances, social media monitoring can come in handy to tackle to reputation issues better before it turns out to be a major crisis.

While planning online marketing campaign, you need to monitor social networking sites at different stages including the initial market research. It is crucial to determine the overall sentiment of your target audience. You also need to monitor social networking channels while carrying out competitor analysis. This would help you have valuable insight about how customers are reacting to your competitor's product and know how it would affect your business.

As a business owner while you are running any online marketing campaign you need to be constantly on your toes to monitor the mentions on the S M platforms. Since the customers can post and share their comments with people in their network, the negative feedback can become viral faster than you can imagine. Social media listening would help you avoid this situation and tackle the issue at its roots.

Social media monitoring can greatly help in the evaluation of success of your campaign by analyzing the key aspects like sentiment, location and preference. This in turn, would help you in creating better strategy for your future campaigns.

Last but not the least social media listening is a wonderful way to use the negative comments or feedback for creating positive publicity. Business owners are well aware of the fact that it is impossible for them to please everybody. Hence, they work smartly by responding to the comments in quick time and providing them the right information and tools and thereby reflecting their proficient customer service and their dedication for complete customer satisfaction.

Germin8 is a leading data analysis company that offers top-notch media monitoring and social media analysis tool, Explic8 to help brands determine what is being said about them in the online world. The tool provides you valuable information than can help you in increasing the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.

by Girish K

 Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Reasons-Why-Social-Media-Listening-Is-Important-For-Your-Online-Marketing-Campaign/9130687/

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

How To Start A Great Social Media Campaign

Examples for making your cause go global 
Recently we have seen, both on the news, and on our computer screens that social media is making more and more of a significant impact on our way of life with people using it for an ever increasing number of purposes other than simply catching up on the days events, chatting and shopping.


social media campaign
Source: greatfinds.icrossing.com

Social media is being used in more of an influential way that ever before — this includes social media campaigns. Launching a campaign on social media is no doubt one of the best ways to get the message spread on a global scale. Provided you can use social media in the right way, of course.

Here are some quick and handy tips to help you get your head around the vitals and the basics to spreading the word online, along with just some of the campaigns that have inspired on a global scale over the past few months. Hopefully these will help guide you on your way to campaign success.

Pick A Cause You Believe In!

There isn't much point in launching a campaign in a half-hearted way or launching your message with initial good intentions if you, and more importantly your web audience, can't follow it up and pass the message on. It has to come from something you truly do believe in. Authenticity is the key to success and with helping your message gather some gusto in the online world. A campaign that seems to be all self serving will be less likely to succeed.

Define The Goal Of The Campaign!

Make sure, before you start up, that you know your campaign and your intended message inside out (and back to front) and make sure your potential sharers, 'followers' and 'likers' do too. Your aims and goals must be clearly defined for users. Imagine yourself in their shoes reading about your campaign for the first time. If it's not 100% clear to you, then the likelihood is it wouldn't be clear to them either and that won't bode well for the spread of your message and for the cause.

Show What The Campaign Means To You!

Show your passion for the cause right from the get-go. Most successful campaigns are ones that can resonate on a human level all around the world and is a message that can be related to on a big scale. If people cannot 'see' what message you are trying to portray and empathise on a more human level then you are not set up for the most success.

Let Others Share Their Story!

Once you have your message and goals set up, your next priority must be the social platforms for which you are hoping to spread the message. You must think about this carefully before just going on a social media rampage with your campaign, you must provide users with the tools to share their stories too and therefore think about the platforms that will allow them to do this is the most convenient and effective way possible. It's all very well and good to have your campaign up and running, but it won't have success if others can't relate and share their stories, opinions and experiences too.

Select The Right Media Tools!

Select the right platforms that reflect the campaign. An excellent and successful tool is the humble hashtag. Hashtag's are now popping up on more social networks than just Twitter and they can be duplicated and written quickly. This means that it lends itself quite nicely to the notion of sharing and will no doubt add some fuel to your campaign fire.

social media campaign
Source: ok.co.uk

#thumbsupforstephen

We have all heard of the inspirational story of Stephen Sutton. His long battle with cancer has raised awareness, over £4 million pounds for the Teenage Cancer Trust, and proves just how effective social media can be. He first set up his Facebook page back in 2013 and started to share his story. The world soon caught wind of this persevering teen, who's trademark was a thumbs up, and began to share and donate for the cause and soon the hashtag #thumbsupforstephen was born. It was at this point his story went global and he became a household name and a hero across the nation. Celebs even got behind the teen and started to fund raise and help wherever they could and his story was soon trending on the Twittersphere. His social media campaign has helped raise a huge amount for a good cause and proves that when done in the right way, social media can work wonders.


social media campaign
Source: headlinebeauty.blogspot.com

#nomakeupselfie

The selfie. It's had its fair share of criticism, hasn't it? But in April this year they were on everyone's Facebook timelines, Instagram feeds and Twitter feeds. Why exactly? Well they were all in the name of charity and fund raising. Yes, the selfie was used as a campaign to help fund cancer research. Everyone had a different view on this new campaign with some taking the challenge and adding their own spin on it. All you had to do was get the makeup wipes, do your best fishy pout and upload to join the fund raising bandwagon....oh, and text the cancer research number to ensure your donation of £3 to the cause of course. While the campaign sparked and spread quicker than a bush fire, the #nomakeupselfie soon started to filter away. A reminder, perhaps to keep mindful of tip numbers 1 and 3. Make sure the campaign doesn't veer off into a bout of narcissism and keeps the initial goal in sight.