Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

With Facebook predicted to reach one billion!! users by August 2012 that is a lot of potential customers! As many users openly display their interests, you would have thought that Facebook would be heaven for marketers.

In reality, very few companies are successfully exploiting the channel to promote their business, and many of those have big budgets. So why and how should an SME or start-up think about Facebook as a marketing channel?

Forming a Facebook fan page is often viewed as a fantastic way to engage with the public, and if you do it right it can be hugely successful.

Coffee chain Starbucks has more than 26 million members on its Facebook fan page, and is by far and away the most successful brand on Facebook. But for small businesses the challenge is that much harder as they don’t enjoy the same level of brand awareness. For example, more than three quarters (77 per cent) of Facebook fan pages have less than 1,000 members.

Great article over at Mashable about turning your social customers into evangelists of your brand.”With the advent of social media channels, customer service has forever changed. Consumers are no longer willing to sit and listen to classical music on hold. In today’s age of hyper-responsiveness, customers expect instant responses from support reps on very public online platforms.

Read the rest of the article

Using Facebook as a Fan Page

This is by far one of the most powerful changes, in my opinion, to fan page functionality. Why? Before this change, there were only a few ways to share your fan page with people who are not a fan of your brand on Facebook. The first was by sharing the page directly with your personal profile’s contacts. The second was by hoping that your page’s fans would share it with their contacts. And the third was by spending money with Facebook advertising.

Now, with the option to use Facebook as your page, you can do something that reaches out to Facebook users in your targeted audience for free. Here are easy steps on how to get your brand in front of a larger Facebook audience.

How to Use Facebook as Your Page

Smart article over on Small Business Bliss. You’ve probably heard it all before in a dozen different places, but maybe never as succinctly. Here are the basic reasons a blog solves all of your major online marketing needs in one simple, compact package. If you want to know why a blog must literally be the beginning and end of your basic online marketing approach, look no further.

Those clients of ours blogging successfully will know how important this strategy is, and those readers who arent clients of ours but blog successfully will also know. It really is the basis of your social media platform and essential.

Read the article in detail and talk to us about setting up a successful blog strategy.
5 reasons your business needs a blog.

UserEcho is a web-app that provides a useful way for companies to solicit feedback from customers online. Businesses of all sizes can get feedback from their clients, customers, and followers, and then respond directly to people who submit particularly interesting comments or insightful ideas. Companies that use UserEcho can interact with clients directly and potentially get help generating a few innovative business ideas in the process.

Interesting read for those clients of ours with Facebook pages (which is nearly everyone!). This PDF file was released by Facebook themsleves and contains a wide range of tip and tricks and ideas to get the most out of your Facebook business page.

Follow the link to the PDF below via the Facebook site…

Building your business with Facebook page

Twitter is filled with potential for businesses, but a Twitter account is only as good as its content. Sometimes just observing how top businesses take advantage of this communication platform is a good way to learn.

Here are 20 popular retail brands’ Twitter feeds. Follow them on Twitter and watch their posts carefully — you might just learn a trick or two to improve your own business.

1. @Zappos. Zappos is well known for offering terrific customer support. One of the main ways it does this is through its Twitter feed from CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos also runs @ZapposInsights for its membership site, where followers can learn how to create a strong company culture.
2. @BestBuy. The main feed from Best Buy with posts regarding company culture, upcoming events and deal notices. Best Buy also runs @GeekSquad for answers to customers’ technical support issues 24 hours a day and @TwelpForce with more tech advice from Best Buy technology experts.

Came across this informative article over on All Facebook about marketing your business page on Facebook.
Do it well, the benefits are:

• Engagement: Greater interaction
• Visibility: Facebook shows your posts to more of your fans
• Free fans: You get more fans for free — one Fortune 1000 company combining good advertising and engagement tactics got more than half of their fans for free.
• Testimonials: Your fans become so positive that they give spontaneous testimonials which convince fans who are still just prospects how great you are
• Reputation protetction: Overwhelming positivity on a fan page wards off negative attacks from critics and provides volunteer defenders

Read the rest of the post

If your business isnt already on Facebook, you are potentially missing out on a valuable free marketing channel. Talk to us today

Google describes its new +1 button as a way to say “this is pretty cool” or “you should check this out”. Much like the “like” button on Facebook which displays your approval for a brand, artist, or product, the Google button will show your “stamp of approval” to your friends and contacts in search results. The feature is intended to “give the right recommendations, at the right time, and in the right format” and users can choose who gets to see their +1’s in their public Google profile. Google hopes that other websites will also jump on board by adding a +1 button. The button is slowly rolling out and it will be a few weeks before every user notices the addition.

More from Google.

Just read an interesting article over on sixrevisions.com titled the Ultimate Guide to the New Facebook Page Design. If you are looking to take advantage of the overhaul to Facebook Pages, its a recommended read.

View the full post

Selling online is getting harder these days. As more and more big-box retailers shift their focus to ecommerce, remaining competitive takes more than low prices and a website. This is especially true if your products are not unique.One easy way to break out from the pack is with a blog.

Why a blog?

An ecommerce blog can really make a difference if it’s done right. That means keeping it updated keeping it fresh, and posting interesting and relevant material that your customers want.

How can a blog help your online store? Here’s 5 ways it can have an impact…

1. SEO SEO SEO

It’s no surprise that a blog can help with your search engine rankings. Google loves updated content. They also love content that is written in a way to be appealing to living, breathing humans.

Super interesting read over on iMedia Connection about the Facebook news feed algorithm (ranking of facebook news feed items).

“While the math and the rules behind the algorithm are a bit fuzzy, the premise is simple. Facebook doesn’t want any user bombarded with useless, irrelevant content. EdgeRank doesn’t just apply to user profiles. It’s also used for pages. The algorithm determines which users will see the content from the pages they “like.”

This may be news to many businesses marketing on Facebook, many must be thinking each and every status or page update they make is automatically displayed on their “fans” walls. Not the case. If you stop and think, some weighting or ranking has to apply otherwise a users wall would quickly fill up with not so relevant updates and be replaced with more updates before they could see the more relevant ones.

All commercial website owners want people to visit their site. Since you’ve gone to the trouble to produce a website, you have probably also made a little effort to learn something about how to get it noticed. In the course of your reading, you will have read about back links, but you may not know exactly what they are. This guide for building back links is intended for people like you.

Once you’ve published your site, you’ll then want to start the process of promoting it using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You’ll maybe subscribe to newsletters by SEO gurus in hopes of gaining some valuable insights. Like many beginners, some of the best advisers will be useless to you because they use terminology you don’t yet fully understand.

By now, it’s understood that social media networking and marketing are invaluable to business. It seems this may be particularly true for small businesses, who are now turning more of their resources toward online and social media marketing.According to a recent study conducted by eMarketer, more than half of all small businesses (55%) consider Facebook beneficial to their business. Other social media sites that were ranked as moderately or highly beneficial include Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you are a small businesses owner who has not yet ventured far into the world of social media, you may wonder, “Why do they consider these sites important?”

First and foremost? Businesses look to social media marketing to generate leads. Almost 60% of the small businesses surveyed said that “Lead Generation” was positively affected by social media marketing. Another top-rated and highly important benefit is keeping up with the industry. Any small business owner will tell you that it’s hard to compete when you’re not sure what the competition is up to.

Hows this for a low cost, easy advertising campaign that will generate buzz, create new customers, and develop new content for your products: the social photo contest. Create a photo contest campaign that includes your customers using/wearing/holding your product(s). It is inexpensive, easy to set up, and surprisingly effective. Talk to us today about how to go about this.

Converting visitors into customers is about more than just supplying great product information. It’s about more than a great design, simple navigation and customer service links. The basics–such as page design and content presentation are certainly necessary. But if you want to grow a loyal customer base for the long term, you have to reach even further.
Here are six ways to engage visitors and turn more of them into actual customers, bringing friends with them.

1. Serve up the ideal newsletter. Contrary to what some social media “experts” say, people still like to receive email from companies they love and from stores that carry items or product lines to which they’re devoted. By integrating useful tips and links to articles or invites to forums, you’re opening up a channel for conversation, of which customers will take advantage.

This special issue of Web Digest features “boutique” blogs on Social Media with original content.

Out of the hundreds of blogs out there on Social Media, we’ve selected 9 that we think are worthy of your valuable time.

1. Social Media Optimization

David Wilson, who writes this daily blog, runs a search engine marketing agency so it’s no surprise that he views Social Media marketing through an SEM lens. His blog posts offer practical advice on incorporating Social Media wisely into a marketing program.

He’s not afraid to swim against the tide of conventional wisdom either. One recent post, “Don’t Build Your Brand on a Third Party Platform,” argued why businesses should not dump their websites for Facebook Pages.

Looking for case studies? Wilson devotes an entire page to them, many detailing his own company’s experiences. (Example: His company compared Facebook Ads with Google Adwords and found the Facebook program delivered a significantly higher ROI.)

If there was still some doubt, PBL Media and Microsofts new joint-venture in Australia - cudo.com.au, has dispelled it completely. Online ‘group-buying’ and ‘coupon-retailing’ businesses are the hottest and newest, ‘new thing’ in ecommerce down-under. Microsoft and PBL Media, with Cudo, join a veritable crowd of both start-ups and established businesses trying to cash-in on the apparent popularity of group-buying services with consumers. Spreets, scoopon, offerme, ouffer, jumponit, ourdeal, crowdmass and eroo, are just some of the names in the crowd.

Some great promotional opportunities exist for businesses on these sites, especially if you are a service based business in a capital city or a manufacturer of a product that you are prepared to sell at a reasonable discount. Talk to us today about this interesting strategy.

Inbound Marketing University has some great free classes for business owners wanting to know more about marketing their business on the internet. You can stream them free over the web or download them all to watch offline. There is even an exam at the end if you wish to get certified but you dont have to complete it.  Watch the classes to increase your awareness of the various strategies your website will need to be sucessful. Indeed unless you have a large marketing budget it will be up to you to put some of these strategies into place and refine over time.

Am I marketing my product differently based on unique audiences?

Am I creating valuable content for my site?

Am I blogging effectively?

Am I converting enough of my visitors to customers?
These questions and more are be answered in the 17 free hour long classes each covering a particular aspect of online marketing.

Recently stumbled on this hugely informative blog post for businesses currently using or wanting to use Facebook and indeed social media as a whole. It lists ways to better engage Facebook fans. Breaking down recommendations into two areas: sharing quality content and inciting comments.

For each area, the author provides tactical methods to use to increase engagment (unless, of course, you already have too many visitors to your Facebook page) such as:

• How often you should post
• What you should post
• How to find quality content

A very worthy read for hose businesses starting out with Facebook. The opportunities here are huge…

Talk to us today about utilising Facebook in your marketing mix.

Found this great collection of Facebook marketing links on insidecrm.com
View here

Creating a Facebook presence has become a must-have for brands these days. Most companies decide to establish themselves with one or more Fan pages. As opposed to personal profile pages, these pages are specifically purposed for companies, brands and famous people; their key measure of success being the number of “fans” that a page has.

There are many features and customization options on Fan pages including the ability to customize photos, layouts and the tab structure. With so many options, it can be a bit mind-boggling to determine an approach for how to lay out your page.

Click here to view the page above on Facebook
A review of existing Fan pages indicates that there are a number of different approaches that one might take. The choice of which approach to take should be based on the company’s product and service profile. Here is a breakdown of some approaches to consider:

The Blog eConsultancy has a great post by Jake Hird that I wanted to share here on 10 Steps to help you become a Social Media Ninja:

1. Preparation

You need to do your homework. It’s no good rushing in, without a clue about what your overall business goals are.

Once these have been established, then you can figure out what place (if at all) social media has in helping reach your objectives. Leading on from this, it will also become easier to identify key areas of engagement and therefore allow you to focus on the areas that will be of greater benefit. Econsultancy’s Social Media Template Files contain a strategy guideline that you might find useful as a starting point.

2. Patience

As the adage goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The same thing applies to any social media activity: it generally takes a fair bit of time to establish a positive presence.

TOOL ONE: Custom URLs
Facebook now allows you to create your own custom URL for your page. This means your business can have its own permanent http://www.Facebook.com/YourBusiness URL. Visit www.facebook.com/username to secure yours.

TOOL TWO: Social RSS
Social RSS is an application that allows you to synchronise your blog with your company Facebook page. This means every time you blog, the post will also automatically appear on your Facebook page on the Blog/RSS tab. The benefit is that you don’t need to login to Facebook every time you want to post blog content.
Download Social RSS for Facebook

TOOL THREE: Involver
Involver allows you to synchronise your Tweets and You Tube videos to your Facebook page. Again it saves you time & allows you to keep fresh content up on your Facebook page with no extra effort. Tabs for Twitter and YouTube will appear on your Facebook fan page. There are also plenty more things you can do if you upgrade to the paid version.
Download Involver for Facebook