As a business owner, you have been trying to figure out how to rank and compete to get on the #1 page of Google results, so you can get more hits and more customers.  Maybe you are succeeding at this, or still trying to figure it out, either way, you will have something new to worry about.  Google search plus.

According to Google: “Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”

What that means is, if your Google+ reach is wide, you will be more likely to show up on results, and if you are not… well, you won’t.  Did you set up your Google+ page for business yet? Did you link it to your website?  If not, don’t delay.  For help with your Google Page, contact us at 888-828-9826 or send us a question to info@getglobalassist.com with subject line “Google Plus Help.”

Happy New Year! I am sure, as a business owner, you are excited to get the New Year started right.  With the right attitude, the right people and the right marketing.  So how do you know if social media is the right way to market your business? Social media is difficult to measure, and it is something you don’t want to try for a few weeks and give up.  A social media marketing campaign takes time to mature. Here are a few reasons why:

1. If you are starting from scratch, the first few months, you are acquiring followers/friends/fans.  So nobody is really listing to your message quite yet.  You can post daily, even 3 to 4 times a day, but if you have no fans, nobody is listening! So give it a little time.  After a few months of growing your fan base, you should start to see more activity and more comments from you efforts
2. Social media a lot of times is trial and error.  Maybe you don’t have the right name or keywords for your profiles.  Or maybe your messages are not targeted to your audience.  Or maybe, you are going after the wrong followers.  Do your research, and figure out what is and what isn’t working before deciding if social media isn’t for you.

                                                                                                                                                                                            

If you are not sure what you are doing, or just need a little bit of reassurance, talk to a professional.  You can save yourself a lot of headaches, and probably save a little (or a lot) of opportunity cost. For a free consultation on your existing social media campaign, or if you are thinking about getting started with social media, email us at info@getglobalassist.com with subject line “consultation.”  We can answer your questions and set you in the right direction. Or call us at 888-828-9826.

Don’t forget to enter our contest and have a chance to win a 6 month social media marketing package! Simply visit our Facebook Page: Facebook.com/socialmediava and “like” us, then enter your name and email.  Winner will be announced February 14th, via Facebook.

Happy New Year, we are looking forward to 2012!

Here is a list of quotes and messages to Tweet, Update and Blog about for New Year’s Celebrations.

Messages:

Season’s greetings and best wishes for a new year that fills your heart with joy. Happy New Year!

Wishing that you are blessed with all that you desire in the year ahead. Happy New Year!

May the New Year bring you happiness, peace, and prosperity. Wishing you a joyous new year!

May the good things in life be yours in the coming year and always. Best wishes for a happy new year!

May you celebrate and enjoy the simple pleasures of life in the coming year. Happy New Year!

May the gift of love, happiness, peace, and warmth be yours as you make a new start. Happy New Year!

Wishing you hope, comfort, peace, and happiness on this New Year and always!

Quotes:

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in.  A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.  ~Bill Vaughan

Many people look forward to the new year for a new start on old habits.  ~Author Unknown

A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.  ~Author Unknown

Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.  ~Benjamin Franklin

Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.  ~Hal Borland

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.  ~Oprah Winfrey

New Year’s Day:  Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.  ~Mark Twain

We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.  ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.  ~Oscar Wilde

It wouldn’t be New Year’s if I didn’t have regrets.  ~William Thomas

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.  ~Joey Adams

Happy New Year from Global Assist, social media marketing assistants.  Take a look at our social media marketing packages and get 2012 started with a bang!

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.