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How to Use Social Media For Business

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Knowing How to Use Social Media For Business is a necessary marketing tool in the industry today.  Thankfully new technology related to online marketing has provided software and tools to help you have success with an online home business in regards to social media marketing.

Affiliate Disclaimer: I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Learning How to Use Social Media For Business, in my opinion, it is learning how to plant your business in the heart of, I mean smack in the middle of, online marketing.

After all, that’s where everybody online is at, right? People associate themselves with like-minded people.  Your job as a marketer is to find like-minded people that are interested in your niche. In other words, finding your target audience.

How to Use Social Media For Business

 

If your concentration is on wanting more traffic to your business or website, that’s what this article is here to help you with.  Also if you haven’t already your business plan and strategy need to be in place.  I also suggest having a mission statement.

Your (SMMS) Social Media Marketing Strategy should have defined objectives and tools necessary to achieve them. Now, the process and to finding your target audience involves factors that must be addressed.  You need to know;

Who are you marketing to?  What is your TA (target audience) demographic.  

Where. Meaning, which social network are you likely to find your TA.  Also knowing what groups, forums, communities or chat rooms your TA likes to hang out are necessary factors as well.

Because social media networks cater to different audiences, it is understandable that there should be a different promoting strategy for each social network.  Your approach to promoting on LinkedIn would be different than promoting on Snapchat.

What does your TA expect from your product or service?

When is the best time to promote your product or service?

Why meaning you need to show, and inform why your TA should use or purchase your goods.

How will you convince your TA you have the solution to their needs.

How to Use Social Media/social media banners

Marketing online, be it marketing for other companies, a brick and mortar business or working to have success with a home business you need to apply content marketing to your strategy.  This involves writing quality content and strategic placement of keywords within the article, all of which must be relevant to the title and topic of your article.

Do not be overwhelmed by the six-word questions you will ha e to confront in the social media marketing game, in fact, be happy for social media.  Later in the article, I will show you exactly how to tackle those six-word questions.

Before social media, do you remember how marketing used to be? Marketers relied first on outbound marketing strategies.  Then as the Internet was introduced to the masses, consumers became more savvy and smarter online shoppers. Along with the Internet came inbound marketing and marketers put the consumer first in their promotions.

Today, you can attract a huge audience thanks to new technology. Technology that allows one to not only track an individual as an individual consumer. Moreover, you also have the ability to interact with prospects in ways that weren’t possible in the past.

Technology And Marketing

This new era of marketing could not come at a better time because it is a perfect match for social media marketing.  Your target audience is out there; you just need to analyse and diagnose the data you retrieve to find potential customers, and prospects.  And then be able to attract them to your website.

Unfortunately, it’s not a simple task. How to Use Social Media /social media marketing statsMany marketers are on social media sites and get little to no response to their efforts.  

It is not because they haven’t learned the game, more times than not it is because they are the sole proprietor and can only do so much in any space of time.  Or the marketer has no business strategy in place.

Even the successful online marketer and anyone in a successful position will gladly tell you about the failures they faced.  A successful social media marketing strategy takes a lot of planning, testing, and commitment.  Below are eight tools you can start using in your social media marketing campaign.

Available Software

1. Commun. It is an easy way to grow followers. Don’t think that Commun is one of those online services that sell you Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook followers. Commun. It;  is a Twitter/Facebook communities manager that helps you discover who your targeted followers are.

This tool lets you see who supports your content by sharing, retweeting, and mentioning.  As you engage those fans, your trust on social media will grow.  So interact on all fronts, the strategy will result in success.

2. Onalytica helps you find the influential leaders in your niche.  If the influentials like your page and share your work, you will get tons of engagement on your website.

This software will analyze your content, and show you the top influential bloggers who have similar interests and activities related to your theme. Once you have that information, follow those people on social media and interact. Make comments on their posts, but make sure not to spam.

3. Edocr  How about sharing some of that knowledge you have obtained in the form of an ebook. When you give something meaningful to users, they will reciprocate.  An eBook reflects sound characteristics and will attract social media prospects to your site.  When you create an Edocr is the tool to use.

4. Viralheat  Viralheat analyzes the ranking of your posts and monitors the conversations that include your post or brand on Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many other platforms. You can also communicate with the audience.

Improve Your Social Media For Business

5. Feedly When you start using social media, you have to offer something more than promotion. You do need to promote quality content as part of your marketing. However, focus on something else instead of your business from time to time.

Feedly can find top-notch online publications related to your niche. When you discover a useful and informative publication share it on your social media profiles.

6. Post Planner  Facebook updates are important.  You cannot log into page or profile as planned all the time. You can use Post Planner to schedule your posts when they peak.  Post Planner helps you analyze the trends in your niche and plan your content about your target audience needs. You can also set the tool to automatically re-post.

7. Canva , The tool edit images, add text and speech bubbles to visual content, design grids, and add stickers, icons, and frames to your designs. However, you can also use Canva to create a flyer, presentation, photo collage, Facebook cover, Google+ header, infographic, and other forms of visually-intriguing content.

8. Bit.ly Don’t you get frustrated when you want to share a link via Twitter, but it’s too long for those 140 characters? You don’t have to be! Bit.ly is the tool all social media users need: it turns every URL into a much shorter version that still leads to the right destination.

Thanks for stopping by.  I wish you all the best with learning How to Use Social Media for Business. Furthermore, may you have blessings and prosperity. Please, let’s communicate, share a comment or question and I will get back in touch with you. 

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Hello, my name is Maurice Jackson I live and, started my business in Detroit. My intentions are, to help any and every one with affiliate marketing as a home business, become a successful professional. My first career was working for the city of Detroit as an inspector, where I thought I would retire. But life bring change and surprises. I sustained an injury that led to an earlier retirement than I had planed. With that said I reinvented myself in April of 2014 and, became part of an affiliate program. Within the time of my reinvention leading up to the present, I am generating lots of traffic to my website and it grows everyday.ROI has been minimal but then again I invested nothing to start. I am at the point of letting my site mature, as I keep writing quality content about it. In this business you have to pay your dues. And, I and the rest of our family (become a member and you will see the family side of it) of 109000, including the founders of the program (yes they participate), will see to it that we all will be making a substantial amount of revenue in the near future.

Sourced from Success with a Home Business

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Chatbots – the ecommerce tool nobody is measuring

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This is a viewpoint from Duncan Keene, UK managing director of ContentSquare.

Conversational commerce offers great opportunities to improve the customer experience. But, the quality of that experience is not a given; behavioural analytics are essential if organisations are to maximise the value of chatbots and drive up both engagement and revenue.

Chatbots are at the centre of the conversational commerce movement and are fast becoming a part of everyday life for most ecommerce brands. They’re changing the way brands interact with their visitors and adoption rates are rapidly growing. Chatbot technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and while the debate remains contentious about chatbots replacing human customer support agents, they are undoubtedly becoming more ‘human like’ in their ability to respond to a diverse range of commands, questions and even emotional sentiment.

The Holy Grail for many ecommerce teams is to truly understand how visitors behave and navigate through their sites on both desktop and mobile. Brands have been building towards this for over a decade with varying degrees of success; but in terms of analysing the behaviour of visitors when it comes to chatbot interaction, most teams are in the dark regarding the effectiveness of their automated bots. This is a huge grey area for the vast majority of organisations and is doubtless a source of lost revenue.

Aside from price and product, the quality of experience is proven to be one of the most effective ways to compete for consumers’ hearts and wallets: this continued lack of understanding regarding the way consumers interact with chatbots could be extremely damaging to a brand.

Understanding the UX

A poor chatbot experience will cause significant user frustration and risk damaging both brand engagement and perception. Organisations cannot afford to introduce chatbot technology without proactively monitoring and optimising the way in which visitors interact with chatbots from day one.

The ability to measure behavioural analytics is essential to understand how customers are interacting with chatbots across a website. It enables companies to rapidly identify problem areas and ensure they can be addressed, as well as pro-actively enhancing the experience based on trends in user behaviour. For example being able to see a visual map of visitors’ chatbot ‘journeys’ can identify high drop offs and site exit rates at a particular stage of a conversation.

Brands can also explore how specific visitor segments then behave after a bad chatbot experience – do  they continue browsing on the site, end up making a purchase or instantly leave? The ability to rapidly identify and remedy such problems will be key to minimising revenue loss and brand damage.

Fully utilising chatbot UX analytics will also enable brands to explore the most effective time to deploy the bot on a visitor’s desktop or mobile journey; while further insight can inform the order of the questions surfaced, the effectiveness of various answers and the way different visitor segments behave when engaging with a chatbot.

OUI.sncf has developed a transactional chatbot where customers can book their train tickets. The bot is available on Facebook Messenger, Google Assistant (and Google Home by extension) and its own website. OUI.sncf is an early adopter of this technology and customers can do everything from searching for specific departure dates to booking season tickets.

We have been working on integrating a UX analytics tool so the digital UX teams can see how customers behave when interacting with the chatbots. This provides valuable insights which are key to improving this aspect of the customer journey.

Pascal Lannoo, digital customer experience director, OUI.sncf, believes conversational commerce is more than just a trend:

“It is a true new personal interface with our customers. We truly believe conversational will be a major channel for additional revenues, increased engagement and a stronger customer relationship.”

He adds that using an analytics tool helps the company understand what users are experiencing with its chatbot, identify pain points and be able to react much faster.

Conclusion

While chatbots are becoming an increasingly mature and widely deployed technology, in reality organisations still have much to learn about the way consumers interact with chatbots to maximise the value of conversational commerce.

It is likely that as consumers become more familiar with day to day chatbot exposure, their behaviour will change and evolve – just as it has with websites over the past decade. The ability to track and understand this evolution will be important for companies to further improve that experience and fine tune the way in which chatbots are introduced within the consumer journey.

By Duncan Keene, UK managing director of ContentSquare.

Sourced from tnooz

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Only 1% of Brits say they’re more likely to use brands sponsoring the World Cup

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By John McCarthy

Oath has studied the viewing habits of World Cup fans to deliver ad insight to its clients, and in doing so, it learned about brand recognition levels in the UK – and a staggeringly low purchase intent.

In February, 7,294 respondents from UK, France, Brazil, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Italy and Spain gave their views on sponsors. For Coca-Cola retention levels were at 45%, at McDonalds it was 41%, Adidas (33%), Visa (31%) and Budweiser (27%).

Brazilians were found to be the most passionate fans, but they were also the most brand-friendly. 35% said they would be much more interested in using a brand that sponsors the World Cup tournament, in the UK, this figure slips to just 1%

Furthermore, one in four (26%) people in the UK said they would not support any other team in the football tournament should their team leave the contest. Stepping aside from the data, Scots have a habit of supporting any team playing England. It was the subject of a Paddy Power ad at Euro 2016.

The study also uncapped consumption habits. Three in four (75%) viewers will be watching at home on TV, as opposed to just 1% on mobile, However, nearly one in four (23%) will leverage smartphones as part of a multi-screen experience.

On the features fans expect, 33% wanted on-demand replays, 18% were keen on 360° virtual reality stadium tours, and 15% wanted to see tabletop AR football.

Stuart Flint, vice president EMEA at Oath, said: “Brands only have a small window where they can grab consumers’ attention while games are on, so they need to look beyond matches and engage fans seeking out supplementary information including stats, replays and interactive experiences.

“While some British fans will switch off from TV once their team is out of the running, they’re still likely to be keeping tabs on contextually relevant content throughout the competition.”

37% in the UK claimed they won’t be engaged in World Cup tournament until the first game kicks off.

By John McCarthy

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Millennials really hated Snapchat’s redesign

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By Rani Molla

Their opinion of Snapchat’s brand has taken a major hit.

Snapchat users have a much more negative view of the brand since Snap redesigned the app in January.

Its user sentiment — measured by having consumers rank their impression of a brand on a scale of 100 for “very positive” to -100 for “very negative” — among 18- to 34-year-old U.S. consumers declined 73 percent following the redesign, according to new data from YouGov BrandIndex, which tracks consumer sentiment toward brands through daily online surveys

Young people, who make up Snapchat’s core user base, said their feelings about Snapchat fell from a high score of 30 before the redesign to a low of 8 in April.

Similarly, users said that their satisfaction with Snapchat declined in that time as well, from a high score of 27 in January to a low of 12 in April.

Snap decided to redesign the app after concluding that it was difficult for people to use, preventing adoption by a wider audience. CEO Evan Spiegel also wanted to separate personal content from public content, so the redesign moved stuff from brands and celebrities to one side of the app, and left private friend posts on the other.

More than a million people signed a Change.org petition asking the company to restore the old app. Celebrities like Kylie Jenner complained on Twitter about not using Snap any longer. Most potently, Snap added fewer users and made less in ad revenue than expected, citing the redesign as a culprit.

Now Snap is redesigning its redesign to feel a little more like it was before. It’s clearly still a work in process.

By Rani Molla

Sourced from recode

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10 Ways to Move Beyond the Marketing Basics

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By Annie Pilon

If your business already has the basics of social media and email marketing down, then it’s time to take your marketing efforts to the next level. Members of the online small business community have honed their expertise in these various areas over the years. And now they’re sharing some of their top insights. Here are 10 community tips for moving beyond the marketing basics.

Optimize Your Google My Business Description

If you want people to be able to find your business online, then you need to optimize your Google My Business Listing. Your description is a big part of that. So take a look at the tips in a recent BrightLocal post by Ben Fisher to see how you can make your business even easier to find through search.

Get the Keys to Process Improvement

In order to make your business as efficient as possible, you need to have effective processes in place. You probably already have some processes outlined, but there might be room for improvement. Here, Sonia Pearson of Tallyfy offers some tips.

Write LinkedIn Posts That Boost Your Influence

Social media is a very popular strategy for boosting influence. But some businesses forget to go beyond the standard platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In this Mostly Blogging post, Janice Wald shares how you can write LinkedIn posts that accomplish that goal. And BizSugar members share thoughts on the post here.

Consider Higher Level Approaches like Forging Partnerships and Networking

As technology advances, so do many of the techniques businesses use for marketing. However, some of the most tried and true higher level marketing methods like networking and forging partnerships remain important. So don’t forget about the ones listed in this Hey Design post by Lexie Lu.

Write Email Copy to Attract, Engage and Convert

Email marketing is one of those tactics that has been around for so long due to its major potential for impact. However, you need to keep your specific goals in mind when crafting your copy. In this GetResponse blog post, Jordie Black explains how you can write email copy that attracts, engages and converts new customers.

Consider These Important Marketing Facts and Adjust Your Strategy Accordingly

If you want your business to really stand out from the competition, it may be time to do some more research into what works and what doesn’t. Consider these important marketing stats from Katie Lundin at CrowdSpring.

Fix These Content Issues on WordPress

If you have a blog or site on WordPress for your business, as many do, you might run into issues related to duplicate content that can harm your SEO. In this Search Engine Journal post, Adam Riemer details five common WordPress duplicate content issues and how to fix them.

Promote Your Ecommerce Business Without Being Salesy

Once you learn how to promote your business, the next step is to learn how to do it in a way that fits seamlessly into your communication strategy, so as not to appear too salesy. Learn more in this Pixel Productions post by Lucy Benton. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post.

Brand Your Freelance Business, Even If You’re Not a Marketer

Branding is a basic marketing approach for any business. But some solopreneurs, like freelancers who don’t  specialize in marketing themseves, might not know where to start. In this CorpNet post, Amethyst Tagney discusses how non-marketers can brand their freelance businesses.

Use Machine Learning to Get More Out of Facebook Campaigns

Most businesses use Facebook as part of their marketing strategy. But new features integrating technology like machine learning could take those efforts to the next level. You can learn more in this Marketing Land post by Laura Collins.

Feature Image: Shutterstock

By Annie Pilon

Sourced from Small Business Trends

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Klout, the $200 million website that measured how important you are on social media with one number, is shutting down

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  • Klout, a startup that measured how important you are on social media, is shutting down by the end of the month. 
  • It was bought for $200 million in 2014.

It’s the end of an era for social media influencers and wannabe-influencers.

Klout, one of the buzziest tech startups circa 2011, announced on Twitter on Thursday that it was shutting the eponymous service down.

Klout was founded in 2009 by Joe Fernandez, partially as a way to get a job at Twitter, according to Business Insider. But ranking people by importance or influence turned out to be a strong enough idea to raise four rounds of venture funding from top-tier firms totaling $40 million.

Eventually, it was sold in 2014 for $200 million to Lithium Technologies, which is the company that is shutting down the service later this month. Lithium is a private company that makes digital marketing tools.

Klout enabled users to share their Facebook and Twitter data, and parsed that data through a vague algorithm to give users a simple popularity metric between 1 and 100, called the “Klout score.”

Here’s a screenshot of the software, taken on Thursday:

Klout ScreenshotBusiness Insider

Lithium CEO Pete Hess discussed the shutdown in an email to customers on Thursday. “The Klout acquisition provided Lithium with valuable artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities but Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy,” he wrote.

To be fair, Klout scores are probably not aligned with anyone’s long-term strategy, unless that involves becoming a huge Twitter star. Over the years, Klout scores became a punchline for techies and the Twitter-obsessed. “Klout has been one of my go-to punchlines for some time now,” TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote in August 2012.

Klout also arguably inspired one of the most disturbing “Black Mirror” episodes.

Here are some of our favorite Klout stories from over the years:

Here’s the entire farewell announcement:

Hi,

I’m writing to let you know that Lithium has made the decision to sunset the Klout service, effective May 25, 2018.

Lithium is committed to providing you with the technology and services that will enable you to differentiate your customer experience. Our recent launch of Lithium Messaging is evidence of our focus on this mission. The Klout acquisition provided Lithium with valuable artificial intelligence (AI) and machinelearning capabilities but Klout as a standalone service is not aligned with our long-term strategy.

Our goal with these AI and machine learning investments is to improve our customer care capabilities across the board, whether that’s self-service, peer-to-peer, or direct-to-brand. In the near-term, for example, we will be looking to improve agent productivity within SMM and improve the overall user experience in Community through the application of AI, while we are also planning the launch of a new social impact scoring methodology based on Twitter.

Should you have any questions or concerns about this announcement, please feel free to reach out to KloutQuestions@lithium.com. We are honored to be your partner in delivering digital customer care experiences that delight your customers and we look forward to sharing news of ongoing innovations that support you in this journey.

Thank you for your business.

Pete Hess

CEO

By 

Sourced from Business Insider UK

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‘Like buying a helmet for walking’: Blockchain fever has spawned a cottage ad tech industry

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By Jessica Davies

Ad tech is not immune to jumping on new trends. Remember big data? These days, blockchain is the latest craze. Interest — if not precise understanding — from advertisers and publishers in how the technology could be applied to the digital ad supply chain to make processes more transparent has spawned a cottage industry of vendors rolling out flashy decks and concepts. The problem, per usual: The promises more often than not far exceed the present-day reality.

For every smart blockchain business proposition, there are four more startups making loud, but mostly empty claims about what they can deliver. It’s either that, or they’re randomly asking for people to donate to their initial coin offerings, but without any sign of a viable product.

“No one has a viable product yet at scale,” said Dan Wilson, CEO of London Media Exchange. “I’d say 95 percent of current blockchain vendors will be blown up inside 18 months, maybe less.”

Publishers may find the concept interesting, but for most of them, it’s too early to warrant investment. “It’s another case of a barrel load of tech inventing a problem that doesn’t exist,” said a publishing executive. “Currently, it’s like buying a helmet for walking.”

The hype and interest in blockchain’s potential has spurred agencies to jump on the bandwagon and spawned a flurry of recent events on the topic that cover how the theory of blockchain can actually be applied. But to attendees, it’s clear there is a way to go before the technology can move beyond the theory stage, for advertising at least.

“Blockchain has been discussed at length [at these events], and yet there seems to be a complete lack of understanding as to what it actually can deliver and how it will work,” said Julia Smith, an independent digital consultant.

Over the years, digital ad trading has become less transparent and increasingly untrustworthy both for advertisers and publishers. That’s why blockchain technology, which acts as a ledger that validates all transactions on an encrypted basis, has been hailed as a highly attractive proposition for solving real problems in media, such as removing the long-criticized opacity of the programmatic ad trading ecosystem.

That lack of understanding is what some players are banking on, according to sources. It’s a familiar story for ad tech. Emphasizing the complexity around the nuts and bolts of how digital ads are bought and sold programmatically used to be a useful tactic for ad tech vendors hoping to maximize publisher and advertiser investment in their services. Today, publishers and advertisers have more control over their supply chains and understand what questions to ask. But blockchain is exhibiting similar patterns, according to sources. Things easily get confusing when there are no protocols, precedents or standards around them yet.

It’s not just the din made by certain opportunists trying to make a quick profit off the back of the interest in the technology. Another big, unanswered question is around the currency behind blockchain, rather the premise of blockchain itself, according to Smith. Blockchain’s basic premise — to allow for a record of transactions and deliver transparency — is generally welcomed, but its association with cryptocurrencies is putting some people off. “What publishers and advertisers are concerned about is that in order to trade using blockchain, the currency has to be cryptocurrency,” Smith said. “As an investor in bitcoin, I have seen firsthand the volatility of this currency, and this is making the industry nervous and therefore reticent to jump in with both feet.”

That said, publishers and advertisers whose inboxes are getting increasingly clogged with pitches from blockchain startups aren’t likely to see it slow down anytime soon. For now, the topic is here to stay. So the key is knowing the right questions to ask, rather than being dazzled by the tech lingo. “First, ask what business challenge a blockchain ad tech vendor will solve for you,” said Paul Gubbins, programmatic lead at News UK-owned video ad firm Unruly. “Then ask to see an end-to-end flow of examples of how it has worked for other clients in your sector, as well as whether the information will be stored on a private or public ledger,” he added.

By Jessica Davies

Sourced from DIGIDAY

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The 5 Biggest Social Media Blunders to Avoid for Success

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Social media can be a great digital marketing tool for your business when you use it correctly.

​However, there are several ways that social marketing blunders can negatively impact your business.

Most companies have a team dedicated to marketing on social media channels, so if you are a massage therapist who runs your whole social media marketing channels solo, these expert tips can help you find a more efficient way to manage your massage marketing plan online.

Here are some common massage therapy social marketing mistakes you’ll want to avoid—and ways to correct them if you find yourself in a challenging situation.

1. Not Responding to Negative Comments or Reviews

Responding to negative feedback and reviews is very important on social media. Your followers want to know that you are truly engaged in what they are saying and that their opinion matters to you.

The positive result gained by responding to a negative situation on social media is you can rectify an issue and please a dissatisfied customer by providing a good solution to the problem publicly.

For example, if you have a client who comes in for bodywork therapy and is not happy with your services and then gives your Facebook page a one-star review or leaves a not-so-nice comment on your timeline, you can offer them a free massage on their next visit.

Remember, most followers expect a response within one to two hours of their initial contact.

By monitoring all comments and reviews in a timely manner and responding accordingly, you create online loyalty for your business. ​

On the other hand, if you constantly ignore comments and reviews, you will most likely lose those followers and, in turn, lose potential customers.

2. Posting Too Many Times Per Day

You may wonder, “Is over-posting on social media really a problem?” The answer to that question is most definitely.

Ideally, you want to find a balance between being informative and overbearing with your audience.

According to a report from Buffer, a recent study from Social Bakers analyzed three months’ worth of Facebook content from major brands and found that top brands average only one post per day.1

So, how many posts per day is the right amount? With Facebook’s recent algorithm changes you may have noticed your engagement has dropped. One of the things you can do to combat this challenge is to test scheduling your posts at different times of the day (morning, afternoon and evening) and certain days of the week and determine when your audience is the most engaged. ​

With trial and error, you can find what works for you and use that information to plan your posts for the week at the right time of the day, with the right frequency.

This information varies between platforms, so the right number of Facebook posts per day will be different from the number of posts you make to Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. ​

Pay attention to your data and change your strategy accordingly when you find that something may not be working for you.

3. Not Understanding How to ​Gain New Clients on Social

Social media is a great gateway to engagement, but we know that it has a different type of sales path than direct one-to-one marketing.

If you have not established a presence on multiple social media channels, it is less likely that someone will want to purchase a retail product or trust in your massage therapy business enough to book an appointment.

Are you running contests, promotions and exclusive offers for your followers? Utilizing social platforms to offer discounts to your audience is something that will keep them coming back.

It is also important to build awareness and loyalty among those who currently follow you.

If you are feeling ambitious, developing a monthly strategy with paid advertisements can help you reach users who may not know about your massage business. This can also provide you with an opportunity to gain leads and email addresses so that you can follow up with those clients and entice them with a new client special discount.

A great way to do this would be to create a post and tell your social audience to “Call to book an appointment and get 20 percent off TODAY ONLY when you say the secret code, MASSAGE.”

This creates urgency with your audience and ultimately entices them to book a session with you.

4. Neglecting to Use Videos on Social

Some say that video marketing on social is everything. If you have not incorporated video into your social media marketing yet, you may be missing out on growth clients for your business.

Did you know that video’s get more shares and interaction on social media than any other posts?

There are many ways you should be using video. You can answer a question or solve a problem by recording yourself, show your business behind the scenes by doing a live video, or promote a new service by demonstrating on a client.

Videos are extremely popular on the Internet. The good news is, the shorter the video the better the engagement you will have.

With the new auto-play options for video, it is easier to draw the viewer’s attention to your post, rather than images, statuses or articles on your feeds will. Using video also provides stronger personal connections to your audience.

There is an emotional/human aspect to video that you simply cannot feel from reading content. Making this connection is an important element in your massage therapy marketing plans.

Video allows you to see someone’s personality, passions and facial expressions. Try sharing clients’ personal testimonies and see how much your engagement increases.

5. You Don’t Have a Social Media Strategy to Execute

If you have been aimlessly using social media and don’t really know what to do , it is time to gather up some data and insights and develop a monthly plan.

What successes are most valuable to your business?

Are you new to social and trying to just get your massage therapy business out in the universe? Then it may be best for you to continue to create content that explains who you are as a business, and your passion for healing through massage therapy.

Once you see your fan base grow , it may be time to invest in paid advertisements to gather leads and hopefully gain more appointments.

First, start mapping out the days of the week you want to post and how many times a week you will post, and put this information on a calendar. At the end of the month you should review the performance of your posts and determine if you want to make any changes to the strategy for the next month.

It is best to have a healthy mix of posts. Try to not oversell products, be readily available for your audience, interact as much as possible, and track any new appointments that are directly from your posts. ​

To increase brand awareness the “old fashioned” way, tell all your clients about your social media channels. Add your social media links or handles to your business cards and brochures so that people can learn more about you and your services, and share your business with others.

The more visibility you have to your clients in between sessions, the more you can expect friends of your followers to check out your page. To take this one step further, tell your loyal clients that they are welcome to leave you a review on Facebook or Yelp.

The higher your rating, the more credibility this creates for your business.  Word of mouth is a great strategy for gaining new clients, even when it is on-line.

The last thing to consider when putting your massage therapy marketing strategy together, most people who are looking for a place to get a therapeutic massage want the business to have at least four out of five stars. Remember, if you see a review that is not good, be sure to respond to it ASAP and turn that negative feedback into a positive recommendation.

Don’t be afraid to get started.  Use the information and links above to get the tools you need to be on your way to social success!

​These tips are brought to you by Massage Magazine Insurance Plus, the leading national insurance provider for massage therapists and bodyworkers—offering much more than just complete liability coverage at competitive rates. We offer practice support and peace of mind to our members, who know their careers and assets are covered should the unfortunate occur.

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Online Ad Targeting Does Work—As Long As It’s Not Creepy

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If you click on the right-hand corner of any advertisement on Facebook, the social network will tell you why it was targeted to you. But what would happen if those buried targeting tactics were transparently displayed, right next to the ad itself? That’s the question at the heart of new research from Harvard Business School published in the Journal of Consumer Research. It turns out advertising transparency can be good for a platform—but it depends on how creepy marketer methods are.

The study has wide-reaching implications for advertising giants like Facebook and Google, which increasingly find themselves under pressure to disclose more about their targeting practices. The researchers found, for example, that consumers are reluctant to engage with ads that they know have been served based on their activity on third-party websites, a tactic Facebook and Google routinely use. Which also suggests that tech giants have a financial incentive to ensure users aren’t aware, at least up front, about how some ads are served.

Don’t Talk Behind My Back

For their study, Tami Kim, Kate Barasz and Leslie K. John conducted a number of online advertising experiments to understand the effect transparency has on user behavior. They found that if sites tell you they’re using unsavory tactics—like tracking you across the web—you’re far less likely to engage with their ads. The same goes for other invasive methods, like inferring something about your life when you haven’t explicitly provided that information. A famous example of this is from 2012, when Target began sending a woman baby-focused marketing mailers, inadvertently divulging to her father that she was pregnant.

“I think it will be interesting to see how firms respond in this age of increasing transparency,” says John, a professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the paper. “Third-party data sharing obviously plays a big part in behaviorally targeted advertising. And behaviorally targeted advertising has been shown to be very effective—in that it increases sales. But our research shows that when we become aware of third-party sharing—and also of firms making inferences about us—we feel intruded upon and as a result ad effectiveness can decline.”

The researchers didn’t find, however, that users react poorly to all forms of ad transparency. If companies readily disclose that they employ targeting methods perceived to be acceptable, like recommending products based on items you’ve clicked in the past, people will make purchases all the same. And the study suggests that if people already trust the platform where those ads are displayed, they might even be more likely to click and buy.

The researchers say their findings mimic social truths in the real world. Tracking users across websites is viewed as an an inappropriate flow of information, like talking behind a friend’s back. Similarly, making inferences is often seen as unacceptable, even if you’re drawing a conclusion the other person would freely disclose. For example, you might tell a friend that you’re trying to lose weight, but find it inappropriate for him to ask if you want to shed some pounds. The same sort of rules apply to the online world, according to the study.

“And this brings to the topic that excites me the most—norms in the digital space are still evolving and less well understood,” says Kim, the lead author of the study and a marketing professor at the University of Virginia’s business school. “For marketers to build relationships with consumers effectively, it’s critical for firms to understand what these norms are and avoid practices that violate these norms.”

Where’d That Ad Come From?

In one experiment, the researchers recruited 449 people from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform to look at ads for a fictional bookstore. They were randomly shown two different ad-transparency messages, one saying they were targeted based on products they’ve clicked on in the past, and one saying they were targeted based on their activity on other websites. The study found that ads appended with the second message—revealing that users had been tracked across the web—were 24 percent less effective. (For the lab studies, “effectiveness” was based on how the subjects felt about the ads.)

In another experiment, the researchers looked at whether ads are less effective when companies disclose they’re making inferences about their users. In this scenario, 348 participants were shown an ad for an art gallery, along with a message saying either they were seeing the ad based on “your information that you stated about you,” or “based on your information that we inferred about you.” In this study, ads were less 17 percent effective when it was revealed that they were targeted based on things a website concluded about you on its own, rather than facts you actively provided.

The researchers found that their control ads, which didn’t have any transparency messages, performed just as well as those with “acceptable” ad-transparency disclosures—implying that being up-front about targeting might not impact a company’s bottom line, as long as it’s not being creepy. The problem is that companies do sometimes use unsettling tactics; the Intercept discovered earlier this month, for example, that Facebook has developed a service designed to serve ads based on how it predicts consumers will behave in the future.

In yet another experiment, the academics asked 462 participants to log into their Facebook accounts and look at the first ad they saw. They then were instructed to copy and paste Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this ad” message, as well as the name of the company that purchased it. Responses included standard targeting methods, like “my age I stated on my profile,” as well as invasive, distressing tactics like “my sexual orientation that Facebook inferred based on my Facebook usage.”

Journal of Consumer Research

The researchers coded these responses, and gave them each a “transparency score.” The higher the score, the more acceptable the ad-targeting practice. The subjects were then asked how interested they were in the ad, including whether they would purchase something from the company’s website. The results show participants who were served ads using acceptable practices were more likely to engage than those who were served ads based on practices perceived to be unacceptable.

Then, the researchers tested whether users who distrusted Facebook were less likely to engage with an ad; they found both that and the reverse to be true. People who trust Facebook more are more likely to engage with advertisements—though they have to be targeted in accepted ways. In other words, Facebook has a financial incentive beyond public relations to ensure users trust it. When they don’t, people engage with advertisements less.

Journal of Consumer Research

“What I think will be interesting moving forward is what users define for themselves as transparency. That definition is rapidly changing, and how platforms define it may not align with how users want or need it defined to feel like they understand,” says Susan Wenograd, a digital advertising consultant with a Facebook focus. “No one thought much of quizzes and apps being tied to Facebook before, but of course they do now since the testimony regarding Cambridge Analytica. It’s a fine line to be transparent without scaring users.”

When Transparency Works For Everyone

In some situations, according to the study, being honest about targeting practices can even lead to more clicks and purchases. In another experiment, the researchers worked with two loyalty point-redemption programs, which previous research has shown consumers trust highly. When they showed people messages next to ads saying things like “recommended based on your clicks on our site,” they were more likely to click and make purchases than if no message was present.

That says being honest can actually improve a company’s bottom line—as long as they’re not tracking and targeting users in an invasive way. As the researchers wrote, “even the most personalized, perfectly targeted advertisement will flop if the consumer is more focused on the (un)acceptability of how the targeting was done in the first place.”

The Ad Machine

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This Free Ad Blocker For Samsung Phones Also Kills Bloatware And Manages App Permissions

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By Jacob Kleinman

There are plenty of great ad blockers to choose from, but most just delete the ads or replace them with something less offensive. If you’re looking for an ad blocker that can do a little more (and you have a Samsung phone) here’s a new app worth checking out.

Created by developer NeedleGames from the XDA forums, Simple Ad-blocker for Samsung (SABS for short) promises to remove all those pesky ads and then some. The app works by tapping into Samsung’s ultra-secure KNOX software. That gives it the ability to disable packages — A.K.A. the terrible bloatware slathered on by your carrier. SABS also includes a system-level permission manager, giving you an extra level of control over what apps can see and do on your phone.

 

Simple Ad-blocker for Samsung was created specifically for the Galaxy S8, S8+, and Note 8, but NeedleGames says it should work on any Samsung phone running Android 5.0 or up. That includes the brand new Galaxy S9, along with a bunch of older models. You don’t need to root your phone to run this ad-blocker either, though the setup process does get a little complicated and requires some technical know-how.

The first thing you’ll need to do is get a licence key from Samsung (follow along with the instructions here). Then disable any other ad blockers you might be running on your phone and download the SABS source code from GitHub. You can do this on your computer if you prefer, or directly on your phone for a slightly quicker process.

Just make sure to follow the directions carefully and you should make it out the other side with a powerful new ad-blocker up and running on your Samsung phone.

Photo Image Credit: Samsung

By Jacob Kleinman

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