OMA Comp

Web Design & Development

Media

Amp Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

OMA-Comp-Social-Media-MarketingSocial Marketing is a cost effective method to advertise your business and routinely stay in touch with customers or clients outside of the standard points of contact. There are a few key points that need to be cared for and taken advantage of to make social media marketing work for your business.
Search Engine Results

The best way to begin marketing using social media is to gain ranking in search engine results. In a perfect world, when a potential customer or client types in any combination of key words to search for your type of business in your area, your website will be the top result that shows up in the search engine. Next, let’s say your social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter are loaded with content that is updated frequently. Not only will you have your website show up on a search engine as a top result but now your social media websites will show up as top results as well. By keeping social media websites updated often, it allows for the business to create dominance on search engine results.
Social Media as Two Way Communication
Using social media allows clients and customers to stay up to date on current productions, trends and sales specials going on with your business. It allows people to communicate directly with the business by asking questions about products or promotions. It is important to view social media sites multiple times throughout the day to keep the lines of communication open to avoid delays in responding to questions.

Last But Not Least…Gain Followers
An effective way to gain followers to your social media websites is to leave a laptop or tablet at the front desk. Ask customers to log into frequently used social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter and ask them to “follow” or “like” your social media pages. You will find that the majority of your customers will happily do so as it will allow them to connect with your business much easier. Ultimately, your connections to people will grow very quickly as your social media marketing will ultimately drive more traffic to your business.

Pinterest and It’s Gain in Popularity

pinterest_badge_redPinterest is gaining speed on the train of social media very recently behind Facebook and Twitter. Starting in 2009, Pinterest is a website that allows users to share photos on “Pinboards.” Users can organize their photos based on themes they choose such as food, clothing, home decor, etc.

With the know-how, Pinterest can be an extremely useful and profitable marketing tool for businesses as a lot of referral traffic can be obtained through the site.

Why Pinterest Is So Appealing

People are visual-based creatures and they like to see beautiful photos that catch their interest. People are more likely to post photos of things that strike their interest and will share these images with their friends via their individual Pinboards. The trick to effectively use Pinterest for marketing is to share captivating photos and allow users to share the photos.

At this point, you may be wondering how Pinterest will drive referrals and traffic to your business. Each photo is a link to the source of the image — i.e. to the business website thus leading potential customers directly to the site to gain more information.

Professional & High Quality Photos Are Important

The quality of your photo can make or break driving traffic to your website. If you are posting photos that are of low quality with poor lighting, most Pinterest users will pass over your photo. Using only high quality photos is vital to capturing customers. The image should appear professional with each space shown clean and organized. The size of the image is also important because the image needs to be easily accessable by potential customers. Keep the resolution of the photo around 800 x 1000 pixels.

Build Pinboards For Your Business and Keep Customers Coming Back

If your business is selling a product, there is no excuse for you not to create a Pinterest page with Pinboards to assist with selling your products. The first step is to create an attractive account with attractive pin boards. This could take some time but it will be well worth it in the end once you notice an increase in customers. Keep in mind that people tend to be more inclined to follow an individual versus a business as an individual tends to be more believable unless the brand is well-known. Create your Pinterest board under your own name to increase your followers.
As you gain followers, you can create Pinboards that are in relation to your product or idea. For example, if you are selling skincare products, then you should create Pinboards with titles “DIY Skincare,” “Moisturizers” or “Healthy Skin Diets.” You can then pin images back to your website that are related to these ideas.
With millions of users on Pinterest daily, gaining new customers is quite easy. Keep in mind that people are on Pinterest to discover and learn new things so take advantage of this and make this wonderful marketing tool work for your business.

Social Media and Handling Negative Comments About your Business PART 3 of 4

OMA-Comp-Negative-Feedback-3customers, you should at least consult the issue positively. Thanking them would also be helpful.

What you can take from all of this

As your business expands, you will gain more customers; hence, more opinions and feedback. What a business does with this feedback dictates the character of the business. The feedback could either be accepted and lead to changes, or ignored and forgotten.

There are businesses who avoid using social media because they wouldn’t know how to handle the negative feedback the right way. Social media offers a lot of ideas for improvement, and not all of these ideas have to be used. It helps to keep your options open.

Negative feedback is inevitable. Just because some businesses don’t want to use social media and see criticism publicly, doesn’t mean that the negativity isn’t out there.

Listening to your customers and making changes in their favor can help gain major company supporters. Customers love a business who cares about what they have to say.

 A 40/100 is better than a 0/100

The people who keep quiet and don’t give feedback aren’t being as involved as those customers who point out flaws. Disinterest is worse than concern.

Complaints are just another part of owning a business. There are always going to be customers that aren’t fully pleased.

Acknowledging the concerns of customers can turn them from judgmental to spokespeople who only praise your business. Ignoring them can either not to do anything at all or make things worse. Getting a customer to support your organization can help with the development of it.

 Social media is making customer interaction that much more important

These days, if clients have a question or complaint, there is a greater chance for them to contact you using social media, instead of email phone or using a contact on your site.

Social Media and Handling Negative Comments About your Business PART 2 of 4

e. The nicer you are, the better

Although some negative feedback may not be necessarily true or fixable, show that you care about the customer’s opinion and you want to help. If you disagree with the feedback, it won’t get you very far.

Different kinds of client feedback

 

There are different types of negative feedback. These include feedback about a problem that needs fixing, and feedback where people are just being antagonistic and you can’t do anything about it. Spotting the type of feedback will determine on how you should respond.

a. A direct problem: A customer may have a problem with your product or conduction of service. Although this could impact a business’s credibility negatively, but it can also be a learning experience. If a problem is presented to a business, do what you can to address it.

b. A representative’s character: Even though some feedback and complaints may not put any restraints on a business’s reputation, the issue the customer brings up may be important, and you have a disappointed customer.

c. Don’t take everything personally: Sometimes, criticisms come with advice that can benefit the business in the future. If you receive negative feedback with a few suggestions on how to solve the problem, you should consider this to prevent any more future complaints.

How to react and reply

The first step was identifying the type of response you receive from your customers. Next, you have to choose the correct way to address the critics. How you respond can determine how your customers see your business, which is very important. Always stay upbeat and be open minded to any criticism, especially if it is constructive.

a. A direct problem: You must absolutely respond to this sort of criticism. Whether your response is public or more universal and personal depends on what the issue is and the amount of people that it is affecting. It does not matter what the issue is. Someone like you, a business person, should show that you are proceeding with steps to fix whatever the problem could be. At times the criticism happens to be a result of an anticipated problem rather than an actual one. When that type of problem occurs, even then should criticism be consulted. When that kind of situation happens, you should thank the client for the advice and ask if they would like to know why the problem has occurred.

b. A representative’s character: When it comes to merited attacks, you can’t let your feelings get in the way of an optimistic response and a quick response. These are harder for businesses to deal with because some feel as if they’re being attacked personally.

c. Don’t take everything personally: When a customer leaves their ideas or possible improvements, a business may not always agree. In order to show your loyalty

To Be Continued…

Social Media and Handling Negative Comments About your Business PART 1 of 4

OMA-Comp-Negative-FeedbackSocial Media and Dealing with Negative Remarks about Your Place of Business

Social media is convenient when it comes to receiving and tending to complaints and negative feedback. Constructive criticism isn’t the end of the world, and a successful business knows how to respond to this in the right way.

The larger the business is and the more data you put out for everyone to see, the more people will talk about it. Their views can be easily spread by means of social media, and these feedbacks should be accepted and learned from.

Loyalty to a business is very important. Social media allows for the customers to communicate with the business and vice versa. This helps create a personal connection between the business and consumer and can help promote the legitimacy of the company.

With the easy communication between a business and its customers, it unfortunately makes it easier for the customers to give negative feedback. Tending to the negative feedback should be immediate and should be done in a righteous manner.

This is how you can righteously deal with negative feedback:

a. Brand observation

If you see how often and see the location of where your brand is mentioned, you can find negative feedback much more quickly and you can deal with it immediately.

b. Turning negatives into positives

The faster you respond to negative feedback, the better. Leaving negative feedback unattended could cause the problem they have to spread. Negative feedback should be responded to, even if there is no fix for their complaint, to assure the customers that you are doing everything you can.

c. Take the truth into account

A business has to be able to admit when it is wrong if the negative feedback it receives is true. If it doesn’t, it could damage the reputation of the business and lose the customers trust.

d. Stay level-headed

Don’t take negative feedback personally. Rather than reacting emotionally, react by fixing the problem and learn from the feedback.

PART 2 COMING SOON

Social Media and how it’s changing the way we communicate

OMAComp Social MediaOver the course of the past decade or so, social media has begun to play a bigger and bigger role in our everyday lives. As a society, we’ve realized just how connected we have become through working together via Twitter, Blogging and your local Wi-Fi enabled Starbucks. Here are some interesting stories just over the past week or so showing you how critical and significant sharing that post or photo you took can be.

New York Yankee Alex Rodriquez or “A-Rod” as he’s known to his fan-base, recently came under fire by team manager Brian Cashman for tweeting something a little prematurely. Rodriguez, who is currently rehabbing after hip surgery, recently tweeted that the doctors told him he can play baseball again soon. After having read this, Cashman personally called Alex telling him to watch what he says. A-Rod’s excitement is understandable to a certain degree, but you still have to be careful with what you say on social outlets, especially Twitter. People can take your tweeted words and before you know it, you have an overnight phenomenon on your hands that you did not intend to have. Here’s hoping A-rod keeps his Instagram videos in the dugout to a minimum this season.

Another recent story is that of Rusty the bear’s great escape. The red panda escaped from the National Zoo in Washington D.C. sometime between Monday night and Sunday morning. The kicker is that the zoo released the information on the social staple Twitter, and within a few hours there had been tens of thousands of retweets asking for the rescue of this little guy. Pictures and sightings were also being shred. Rusty was eventually caught a little bit after 2 o’clock p.m. the same day over half a mile away from the Zoo, and it was all thanks to the locals of the capital working together through a website.

Whether it’s posting a bland status update, tracking and finding bad people, or just retweeting a celebrity, Social Media has changed the way we communicate as a whole. Understanding when and when to not post is key in many cases. It might be too early to tell whether or not it’s the right way to do things, but for the time being, social media is king. Who knows what going to be next.