There are good news and bad news when it comes to controlling the social web to correspond with customers and develop brand awareness.  The good news is that 86% of professionals adopted social media.  The bad news is that 84% of survey respondents that adopted social media do not measure their programs.  What’s even worse is that 40% of them weren’t ever aware that social media ROI can be monitored.
However, there are tools that are low cost or even free that can help organizations and companies to track their social media success.  One or more of the following 5 social media monitoring tools can be used to measure how good your efforts have worked.
1. Trackur
ORM specialist Andy Beal can track almost all of the elements of online media, from Tweets and RSS feeds, blogs, to videos and images.  Trackur can not only provide you with the capability to view conversations about certain brands, but also the increase and decrease in volume of the conversations.  This alerts the users of any spikes in buzz that is from a negative event or a product launch.  Trackur can also analyze websites that mention a term that is being monitored, which allows users to decide how influential the website is.  The monthly cost for Trackur subscription starts at $18/month.
2. PostRank Analytics
Engagement Scores are provided to measure just how well parts of content can convince a user to take action, such as a comment for a blog post or an RSS view.  This monitoring tool can also show comments and messages from other sites that contribute engagement scores.  On top of the pieces of content, this free service can map out the amount of page views for websites or entire blogs per day as well as engagement activities.  The cost of tracking 5 sites is $9/month.
3. Google Alerts
A free Google tool that provide updates via email about the latest related Google search results.  Simply choose a search term and determine the search result types to be tracked (blogs, video, web, news, etc.), then select an update frequency and enter an email address.  This alert is perhaps one of the simplest ways of monitoring brand mentions for company and product names.  The Google Alerts tools can also be influenced for monitoring competitor mentions.
4. Social Mention
Like Google Alerts, it is a real time search engine that totals search results from videos, bookmarks, blogs, microblogs, as well as other social sites.  Social ranking scores are also provided based on how often the term that was searched is mentioned or the emotional response.  This data may even be gathered into an Excel spreadsheet or a CVS.
5. TechrigySM2
This software solution is specifically designed for Marketing and PR Agencies to measure and monitor social media.  Up to 5 profiles can be created of the “freemium” version and up to 1,000 search results can be stored for each query.  You will also be able to tap into and share information in a Ning powered Techrigy social network or Community of users.

Regardless whether you use a free or low cost tool to get started, it is important to monitor social media efforts and take the results back to your business goals.

Getting your business off the ground requires great effort and dollars. It is believed that “in order for you to make money, you must spend some money too”; that’s the value of investing.

However, you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars to create effective campaigns for your business. There are different marketing strategies that can work even with tight budgets; all you have to do is plan properly, be creative and know how to spend your money appropriately.

If you are planning to penetrate the World Wide Web, there are lots of ways to promote your business without spending a dime. Here are several ways that can work with any business size and budget:

1. Introduce your business using social networks. There are lots of social networking site that you can use for free to promote your business, get in touch with your customers and to grow your clientele. All you have to do is spend and dedicate your time and be active in sharing your knowledge and opinions. Popular social networking sites that you can use are Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace and Bebo.
2. Create your own local press release. You are the only person who knows everything about your business, so you might as well right your own press release. The great thing about this is that it’s free; you don’t have to pay somebody to write for you. If you are clueless about PR writing, you can find free tutorial and advices online; PR Log is one helpful site plus they also offer distribution services for free. You could also contact online bloggers, local media and other suppliers to help you distribute your PR.
3. Partner with other related business for joint promotion. This is a traditional strategy, although it has been main streamed to suit today’s businesses. How does it work? Through joint promotion you are allowed to communicate with your partner’s contacts and customers. You could also exchange banners, ads and product promotions and post it through his website and vice versa.
4. Join Google local business free listings. Google give local business a chance to list their business contact number and address for quite some times. Your business information will be available in Google local listings every time someone searches for particular keywords like “LA electrician”.
5. If you already have your website you can use links, marketing articles, reward program, free courses, tips and “how to’s” to generate traffic and promote your business site.
6. Other methods you can use to promote and market your business are surveys, event registrations, email marketing and search engine optimization. These methods may cost some bucks but are effective and the results are mostly positive.

Furthermore, for these methods to work you must design your marketing plan according to your business type, target audience and projected budget. To see results, you must quantify and summarize everything; how many actual leads you get and how many people have you reached. And finally be smarter and enthusiastic; know your competition and highlights your company’s distinctiveness to gain advantage and generate more leads.

I found this great article on Twitter use for business in Europe, and I wanted to share.

LONDON—Last month, citizenrobert was enjoying “the pleasures of slow cooking.” The month before, he was battling with “brutal” winds in Suffolk.

Citizenrobert, it turns out, is Robert Phillips, the U.K. chief executive of public-relations firm Edelman, and he has been using the microblogging site Twitter to share his views and anecdotes with his 815 “followers.”

Mr. Phillips is part of the small but growing community of senior executives using the short-messaging site as a business tool to engage with customers.

Twitter itself is growing fast. The company doesn’t report figures itself but estimates put the number of users at four million to six million. In the U.K., traffic has grown to October’s 3.3 million unique visitors per month this year, estimates say, from just 121,000 unique visits per month in October the prior year.

Around 80% of the 30 major brands, including retailers and auto makers, use Twitter for daily tweets, market-researcher Forrester Research found.

The study also said retailers are the ones with the biggest number of “followers,” while auto makers follow best practices, like updating their feeds constantly, more consistently.

* How to Tweet: Tips to Light Up Your Brand

British fashion retailer Topshop, a unit of Arcadia, has more than 45,000 “followers” and uses its Twitter feed to interact with shoppers. “We’ve got that Friday feeling … none of us can sit still,” it wrote recently. Though there are exceptions. German car maker Opel GmbH, General Motor’s cash-strapped unit, stopped updating its Twitter feed in September. Admittedly the company has much bigger problems to worry about.

While most senior executives still regard Twitter as a diversion from work, some have been quick to incorporate “tweeting” as part of their extremely busy routines.

Paul Johns, vice president of Complinet, a multinational provider of risk and compliance information for financial services, says using Twitter has turned into real revenue for his company.

Mr, Johns, who is 40 years old, didn’t understand Twitter as first. “Then somebody told me it’s basically microblogging. I instantly saw a very good business opportunity.”

Mr. Johns usually tweets three or four times a day in between flights or meetings, using his Blackberry.

Mr. Johns says his company is able to generate cash through Twitter by putting up a link to a trial system with a unique URL, so that way the firm knows which deals come from Twitter.

That doesn’t come naturally to many senior executives. Loic Le Meur, founder of video-blogging company Seesmic, says senior managers find it really difficult to forget their executive roles and just be natural.

“Companies shouldn’t think too much when using Twitter,” Mr. Le Meur says. “It’s not like as if they are writing a press release. Just take your Blackberry and share something quick.”

But at the same time, public-relations experts recommend that companies wanting to connect with consumers come up with the right strategy, so that all people tweeting for the company have some kind of cohesion.

Nate Elliot, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said that when considering engaging in social media, the corporate world should set out clear objectives of what it wants to accomplish.

“Do companies want to get the message out and talk directly to consumers and fans? Or do they want to get new ideas to improve their business? These are so many things you can do as a business,” Mr. Elliot said.

“As a company you have to ask yourself: what are our objectives and would Twitter help us? Who is the right person to manage our Twitter account?” Mr. Elliot said.

Senior executives aren’t always the right people to manage Twitter accounts, Mr. Elliott added.

In a recent study of how companies should represent themselves on Twitter, Mr. Elliott says companies should find the right department to manage each of their accounts.

“In many companies, marketing owns the entire organization’s Twitter activity. But many of the objectives you can pursue through Twitter are better suited to other parts of the organization,” he says.

Corporations should make sure that each Twitter account serves a particular purpose, from informing local consumers of particular offers in their area to announcing major decisions or new products.

“Honda Motor has several dealerships tweeting locally, but no easy way for consumers to find specific streams for their areas— and no obvious objective for what each local dealership should be tweeting,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Honda Motor Co. said the company was using Twitter as another tool to talk to customers and that it allowed more freedom for its franchised-dealers to tweet “within reason, whatever they want.” She also said Honda is putting together a “system” to help their dealers tweet better.

Burger King Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. have been victims of so-called brand-jacking. In July, a person with no links to Exxon Mobil registered the name “ExxonMobileCorp” and started tweeting on behalf of the corporation. Exxon Mobil contacted Twitter to request the person stopped tweeting under the company’s name, a spokesman said. Ever since that incident, Exxon Mobil has an official Twitter page.

In a separate incident in late 2008, an Indiana University student pretended to be the manager of the Burger King account on Twitter. The student even managed to build a significant amount of followers. A spokesman for Burger King wasn’t immediately able to comment.

To turn all of this into revenue, Twitter is also designing plans to launch corporate accounts in an effort to start generating revenue. The microblogging site has said it will offer tools aimed at improving companies’ tweeting skills by the end of this year.

Experts have warned, however, that not all managers will be willing to pay for a service offered by a relatively new and untested site. Pundits are also unclear as to how exactly the company is planning to generate cash. Twitter didn’t respond to an email requesting more details on its plans.

Write to Javier Espinoza at javier.espinoza@wsj.com

For original article here

Global Assist offer Twitter marketing services for your business.  For more information call us at 888-828-9826 or click on the image below.

We all know that a well built and information-robust website is very effective in customer acquisition and retention. People are more attracted to impressive website content. But it’s not only through websites that businesses can fully succeed. Growth can rely greatly as well on how a business connects with customers and how customer and business relationships are maintained. But with increasing costs in traditional advertising and marketing techniques often done in print and television, social media has opened new doors to more affordable and effective methods of promoting products and services.
The car repair industry has always been very competitive and a car repair shop’s growth can be dictated by the number of customers and connections it has. Normally, products and services prosper more effectively through word-of-mouth advertising which is very powerful and free.
Word-of-mouth advertising is controlled by consumers and this makes social media marketing in the internet one of the most effective ways in targeting a great number of customers. Social media marketing is contagious as long as there is something good to share. As far as businesses are concerned, social media marketing helps them in promoting their key strengths by providing valuable information to the various social networking members who grow by leaps and bounds every day. Is your business worth talking about? Just make sure it’s all positive. Words spread so fast like wild fire and a negative business image can create great damage to your reputation.
You have to realize that since consumers control social networking sites. As a car repair shop owner, you have to be sensitive about things that tick the public off, what interests them and what pushes them to spend. It really takes a great deal of time in observing these different types of behaviors, but can be very effective if social media marketing is used effectively. If you think that car owners who are into social networking are more interested in the quality of service, then you must promote your advantage from other auto repair shops. If you think car owners are interested in the price, then inform them why your service has more value for their money. In short if you post something about a particular service of yours, you have to write about it truthfully because consumers will always find out if you are giving misleading information.
Many businesses are also scared of social media marketing because one wrong move can result to a very unfavorable reputation. You can be the ridicule of the town and erasing a bad image is difficult because people remember the negative things longer than the positive ones. Although social media marketing is amazingly effective, not to mention free, business reputations can also be at risk. Therefore a well-planned strategy is strongly advised. Avoid joining all social media sites; just choose a couple of the most popular ones so you can easily manage the time to respond to your members and when you do, make sure that you are meeting their needs and satisfying their concerns. This will surely increase customer acquisition and retention dramatically that equates to a more constant source of profits.
If you don’t know where to start or what to do, you may consider hiring a social media marketing assistant to help you get started.  Here is an idea of how you can market your business, or you can create coupons and specials and distribute them through social media to your prospective customers.  For more ideas, give Global Assist a call at 1.888.828.9826

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Businesses of today are always in constant search of ways on how to effectively promote their products and services to their specific niche or market. Traditional methods of advertising and marketing are getting more expensive nowadays, which makes it a problem for most businesses. Sometimes none of these traditional advertising methods seem to work in acquiring and maintaining a base of loyal customers.

But having a good product and a good service fortified with good information will never put you out of business, but it needs something to make it grow faster as far as profits are concerned. A few number of salons and spas have found this very effective — the solution is through Social Media. Everybody can create social media profiles for free, and this is a very effective way in promoting businesses, indirectly of course. The factor that will make social media work for you is through building relationships. Persistence is highly required and great sense of responsibility in responding to every member of your social media network. Building relationships has no haircuts… I mean short cuts.

Based on recent studies, online media which includes social media networking leads the list of the top media that creates a huge impact on all demographics. Young people and adults alike are into social media networking, like Twitter or Facebook. They belong to various age groups with different interests and goals and you should find your own niche that you know who will be interested in your products or services.

According to C. Lee Smith, president and CEO of Ad-ology Research, younger crowds want the latest styles through popular online sites where their friends go and that makes social media sites the main target, therefore, salons and spas need to get active on social media sites since these sites attract young potential customers which can help your business go viral! According to some reliable findings as well, a great number of salon and spa appointments are already made on these social media sites.

We can therefore conclude that in trying to win more customers for your salon or spa business, you can show social media enthusiasts that you can extend your services for free by providing valuable information about your product and service. This how you win the trust and confidence of people in your own niche. As you strengthen your relationships with them, you can also offer exclusive discounts to them. Of course you don’t have to directly “sell” your product or service to them because that could leave a bad impression on your audience. A subtle way to do this is to know what their salon and spa needs are and offer some few tips on how you can help them with their salon and spa concerns. Using this selflessly will have you getting their trust and they can share your links to others lovingly that could go viral eventually.

In any business, quality customer service is very important. You can use social media as a tool for you to assist your customers in every way you can. The advantage of social media is that it is free, but very powerful because it is word-of-mouth advertising that works into play in these social media sites. It is then important to maintain a good reputation and you will have many people “following” your tweets and posts and the like in no time.

Here is an idea of what you can promote, create a short video about your business and post it on Twitter, Facebook, etc. to tell your prospective customers what you can do.  Or send them coupons and special offers to entice them to try out your business.  For more ideas on how to promote your business, call Global Assist at 1.888.828.9826