8 Tips To Guide You Toward Social Media Success

Posted on March 14, 2016 by Guest Blogger

A strong social media presence can power your brand awareness and ultimately increase revenue. Here are eight tips on how to do exactly that.

Be Clear and Consistent

To create buzz and hype about a new product, service or event – the promotional message should be consistent with the main objective. If it is a music event, then post a video of people having a good time, while stating all the information about the event and venue.

Share at the Perfect Time

It is true timing is everything. Research supports that there are different, optimal times to share your content on the various social channels. These times show the most traffic and engagement with users.

Share on the Best Platform for Your Message

A key to success is identifying on which social platform your target audience spends most of their time. Each platform serves a different purpose to a different audience.

Make It Easily Accessible

Be simple. Every additional click towards the sought information will disrupt the customer journey and block the path to purchase.

Promote Action

Rather than focus on “likes” and “shares” – create true engagement! Encourage consumers to create their own posts about your topics and drive others to view your work. Viral marketing is powerful.

Offer Promising Prizes

Contests or raffles spark excitement. Be generous and then create the awareness, because everyone likes free stuff.

Interact With Your Audience

Embrace your audience, reply to them and address their feedback. This demonstrates that customer service is a priority.

Have Patience

As the great saying goes “Rome was not built in a day.” Followers, reviewers and buzz take time to grow and scale. Stay the course from introduction to growth, into maturity and create reason for commitment and return.

Incorporating these eight tips into your social media strategies is sure to make a splash!

About the author: Scott Lipow is founder and chief executive officer of Six7 Marketing.

Join the Club: A Case Study

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Extracurricular activities aren’t just for the college-bound — people of all ages can advance their careers by getting involved with the right organizations outside of work. There’s no shortage of them, so you might find yourself hard pressed to choose which ones make the best use of your networking time. But if you’re interested in networking in order to promote your own personal brand or a corporate brand, it might make sense to plan your own event.

Allow me to explain how to do this by way of example: the “Lean Construction” event I put together for the German-American Business Association. I came up with the idea for it, and designated myself as the moderator of the panel discussion.

I then enlisted Heike Abeck, senior project manager at Chiron, to co-chair it with me, including splitting up the planning work. I chose her to co-chair with me because she was involved in the management of the TFPI facility project with M+W Zander in the first phase.

Once we secured a keynote speaker, I asked his company’s marketing department to send out printed postcards promoting the event, supplementing the email invitations we also mailed out. This greatly boosted the visibility of the event, especially because we sent personalized invitations to every single life sciences facility director in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The results were successful in many ways:

The guests were so intrigued by the subject matter covered that evening that the event went into overtime.
Chiron sent a request for proposal to my attention for the phase two of the TFPI facility project.
I also made five connections with prospective clients that together represented about $100 billion in prospective business for the brand I was promoting at the time, M+W Zander.

Of course, an event doesn’t need to bring in hundreds of billions of dollars in order to be considered successful. Increased brand awareness is priceless. If you’d like to learn more about how event planning can market your brand ffectively, please contact us at freeconsultation@ticular.com.

CASE STUDY: Translating Brand Recognition Across Borders

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Ulrike Ruppelt

A leading provider of biomanufacturing facilities in Germany needed to raise brand awareness in America for a debut in this market.

We took on the challenge of positioning the company as an expert designer of life science facilities and increasing its visibility in America. This included speaking engagements at U.S. conferences and invitations to attend these conferences to VIP contacts at life sciences companies based in the U.S.

We achieved these objectives more cost effectively by securing roles as organizers in trade associations with relevant demographics, and by leveraging public relations and content marketing competencies. Additional efforts included brokering partnerships with U.S. companies with leadership in complimentary markets.

How to Make Small Talk With New Prospects

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

While social media has made it easier to network, it’s no substitute for meeting people face to face.

But don’t let shyness keep you from networking in person. You can overcome these inhibitions by reading up on the subject or even taking a workshop. A great deal of advice on the topic is available for free on YouTube — a search there turned up more than 3.1 million results.

You probably don’t have the time and stamina to watch that many videos. So here’s a list of nine tips from Debra Fine, author of The Fine Art of Small Talk:

Come up with three things to talk when preparing for a function along with a couple generic questions that will get others talking. If you’ve met the client before, remind yourself of things about her, such as a vacation she was headed to or specifics about her family.
Be the first to say “hello.” If you’re not sure the other person will remember you, give the gift of your name to help out. For example, “Jared Holst? Debra Fine… good to see you again.” Smile first and always shake hands when you meet someone.
Take your time during introductions. Make an extra effort to remember names and use them frequently. Exhibit host behavior by introducing others that join the group to each other.
Get another person talking by leading with a common ground statement regarding the occasion or location and then asking a related open-ended question. For example, “What do you hope to gain from this conference?” or “What have you heard about the speakers?” You can also ask them about their trip in or how they know the bride or groom.
Show interest in your conversational partner by actively listening and giving verbal feedback. Maintain eye contact. Never glance around the room while they are talking to you.
Listen more than you talk.
Be prepared to have something interesting to contribute. Staying on top of current events will provide you with great conversation builders, leading with “What do you think of?” Have you heard?” What is your take on?” Spare us from your opinion unless you remember to follow up with “What is your opinion?” or “Tell me your thoughts on …”
Be aware of your body language. People who look or act ill-at-ease make others uncomfortable. Act confident and comfortable even when you’re not.
Have a few exit lines ready, so that you can both gracefully move on. For example, “I need to check in with a client over there,” “I skipped lunch today, so I need to visit the buffet,” or “Who do you know at this meeting that could help me with…?

Readers, what tactics have you used to make small talk at business events?

10 Ways Money Can Buy Us Happiness

Posted on October 3, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

This may seem like common sense, but employment makes people happy. Research actually backs this up, providing some psychological insight into why Wall Street reacted so adversely to the U.S. Bureau of Labor report that job creation has slowed, but not stopped in May.

The graphic below shows how wealth correlates to happiness on a national level.

The Atlantic lists ten correlations between money and happiness, based on an
report from the New Economics Foundation. Here’s the upshot:

1. Generally speaking, richer countries are happier countries, but because more affluent nations also share other traits like being democracies, more study needs to be done on this.
2, Generally speaking, richer people are happier people. But young people and the elderly appear less influenced by having more money.
3. Money can’t buy you love: Happiness actually rises with income but plateaus after around $75,000 to $120,000. This general principle of a plateau seems to apply to entire nations as well, but there are some exceptions that need further study.
4. Income inequality reduces well-being, and higher public spending increases well-being.
5. Unemployment makes people miserable.
6. Inflation makes people unhappy.
7. Working longer makes people happier until a certain point and then it makes people unhappy.
8. Commuters are less happy.
9. Self-employed people are happier.
10. Debt makes people unhappy.

How do these findings compare with your own observations?

How Much Does Multitasking Cost Your Business?

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Apparently multitasking takes a toll on the global economy, sapping it of $450 billion annually. That statistic comes from a report by Realization that provided source material for the infographic below. For small businesses, multitasking may seem inevitable, but outsourcing projects can lessen the need to multitask. How does your business compare with the benchmarks below?

by kikikarpus.
Explore more infographics like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

7 Ways To Improve Your Marketing On Pinterest

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Over the past week, we’ve seen a flurry of articles and blog posts about how to market one’s brand on Pinterest. They all seem to validate what we’ve been recommending over the past couple of months: The fastest-growing social network is a viable medium for marketing.

In the short term, Pinterest seems to be better for marketing to women, since they account for about 70 percent of the site’s users. However, we suspect that gender on the site could balance out somewhat over time as more people are drawn by the fact that Pinterest’s growing so quickly.

But here’s another reason why creating content for Pinterest might be good for marketing targets other than women only: content created for for Pinterest also works well on Facebook, where there’s a more even balance of genders.

Facebook data continues to demonstrate that images get more clickthroughs, likes and comments than any other type of content that goes up on the site. So those images created for posting on Pinterest would do well on Facebook too.

That said, here’s some more advice about creating visual marketing materials for social media, based on the recent bounty of articles and posts on the topics.

1. Show, don’t tell. This may be obvious, but images speak louder than words on the pinboard site, although infographics that include imagery fare better than plain text.

2. Pin photos and illustrations depicting your brand, products, customers or employees. This is easier to accomplish if your business is consumer facing than business-to-business, but the latter isn’t impossible to present on Pinterest.

3. Add captions to your pins to make them Twitter friendly — click the box labeled “post to Twitter” for that.

4. Uploading images that you’ve saved to your own machine gives you more control over a message than simply copying web addresses for pinning to the site.

5. Attribute all of your source material either within each graphic or in the caption. Not only does this keep you in line with copyright laws, but showing integrity can only boost people’s trust in your brand.

6. After you’ve uploaded an image, click on “edit” above the image and you can add a URL leading to your brand’s website or page on another social media network.

7. Test whether including contact information at the bottom of your images helps you get sales from things you pin. If you put such data in the captions, then you might want to reconsider whether to uncheck the box labeled “post to Twitter,” simply because of space limitations for Tweets.

Now, it’s your turn: What other tactics have you had success with in posting branded content to Pinterest?

Consumers Prefer Email Marketing, But Retailers Don’t Use It Enough

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Free Consultation: ticular - strategies for success Email still outperforms all other methods of direct marketing, in the eyes of consumers. But it’s also underutilized by retailers.

Nearly 7 out of every 10 consumers have made a purchase based on an email marketing message, according to an ExactTarget survey of nearly 1,500 consumers.

However, more than half of the 100 fastest growing retailers don’t connect email or other technologies to offline experiences with customers, according to another study by ExactTarget.

The opportunity for email marketing is ripe for the taking. Do you use this method of promotion?

20 Ways to Jack Up Your Productivity

Posted on June 8, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Even the slightest increase in productivity can have a very noticeable effect on a small business’ bottom line. Here’s where technology vendors have your best interests at heart — this category of software continues to explode, to the point that it can seem like there are too many of these tools to choose from.

You can narrow down your selection by checking out the infographic below, which lists 20 of the best applications for improving your organization and keeping you on task. Readers, please let us know what you think of this list by posting your opinions in the comments section below.

Turn Your Marketing Into a Profit Center

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Ulrike Ruppelt

Small business marketers recognize that they need to change the structure of their marketing organizations over the next three to five years — taking on more responsibility for customer engagement and revenue generation. That’s the gist of a survey of 478 small business marketing executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, as commissioned by Marketo. More details appear in the infographic below — please let us know in the comments section whether these findings jibe with what you’re seeing.

Turn your small business marketing into a profit center -- email freeconsultation@ticular.co