10 Surprising Social Media Statistics That Will Make You Rethink Your Social Strategy
Leading this collection of relevant and useful statistics is the rapid growth in social media usage by people over 45 years of age. For example, people between the ages of 55-64 are fastest growing demographic on Twitter at the rate of 79 percent since 2012. Another important statistic is the fact that 189 million of Facebook users access the site only from mobile devices. This points out how brands must structure their content to be mobile-friendly. Also, the decline in the importance of television to younger audiences is evident in the social network YouTube reaching more 18-34 year olds than cable networks. Full Story Here:
10 Questions to Ask When Measuring Your Social Media ROI
Measuring the success of any social media marketing campaign is crucial in ensuring its long term success. Time is money, as any small business owner knows, so continually repeating strategies which are not gaining traction for a brand doesn’t make sense. Measuring a company’s efforts against its marketing goals is essential to making any social media marketing endeavor worth the time and money invested in it. Full Story Here:
IBM: These Are The Top 7 Social Trends That Will Emerge In 2014
Another influential take on the upcoming year of 2014 and what trends will unfold during the next year. This time from IBM’s VP of Social Business, Scott Hebner. One of his predictions is the convergence of Social, Mobile, and Analytics in the Cloud. Another interesting projection is the emergence of brand journalism in the transformation of content producers into true brand advocates, moving businesses beyond reliance on traditional media. Full Story Here:
Social Media Helps Build Bridges to Customers
Social media marketing has fundamentally changed the way in which brands interact with their customers. Consumers as a result can truly engage with the businesses they find important to their lives. The medium has become the perfect platform for erasing the gap between companies and the consumer. Full Story Here:
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The Chronic Updater
With 
In days gone by, advertising, marketing, and communications were one-way outbound channels and could be controlled by the brand. Brands could regulate what messages were disseminated, to whom, where, and when.
Companies that have long relied on their web sites as a means of attracting customers are now finding that a website alone is not enough. In today’s marketplace, social media presents a better opportunity for enhancing relationships and expanding brand awareness. No one will deny that the web has become the most cost effective, “Go-To” method for finding answers to problems and identifying resources. Google is clearly the world’s number one research tool with billions of searches daily. 
If you’re considering clever ideas for a social media marketing campaign to help get your message across, try running a contest to attract viewer attention.
The video sharing social media site, 
According to Google, a small business that has its own website will grow 40 percent faster than one without a site. Yet despite this, Google states that almost 60 percent of small businesses have no web presence at all, making them completely invisible to the digital world. Unfortunately, many small firms believe websites are too costly and will dominate their time. However, Google offers free help and there are web tools available to simplify the process. 
There has been a massive eruption in the number of mobile devices and smartphones around the world in the last few years and seems like it will outdistance conventional desktop computers in the near future. For a business, this means that just having a website isn’t good enough anymore. Your company’s website must be optimized for mobile at the very least and at best have a mobile app created specifically for smartphone and tablet users.
21st century small businesses have more opportunities and marketing options than ever before. The advent of modern technology, combined with social media, has given the small business owner a multitude of platforms from which to promote their company. In many cases, these marketing tools have helped to level the playing field between small and larger-sized businesses. Of course, all of the marketing possibilities available to any small business now means competition is fierce and not necessarily limited to the local area. In this three part series, we will examine marketing tools at the disposal of a small business today. In this first part, we will briefly examine and review two areas this blog has covered extensively already, social media and blogging. Then in part two and three, we will see what other options are now open to a small business marketer.
Building my brand will take too much time.
Companies that have long relied on their web sites as a means of attracting customers are now finding that a website alone is not enough. In today’s marketplace, social media presents a better opportunity for enhancing relationships and expanding brand awareness. No one will deny that the web has become the most cost effective, “Go-To” method for finding answers to problems and identifying resources. Google is clearly the world’s number one research tool with billions of searches daily. 
Brilliant social media marketing campaigns start with a customer-centric approach. It’s a wise entrepreneur who develops a plan that takes into account content, factual data, and customer perceptions. Quality content that reflects a deep understanding of your audience will help drive prospects and customers to the compelling conclusion to purchase your goods and services. Seek to align your customer’s needs with those of your company. Relevant content is the all-important attraction that enables engagement and subsequently entices the reader to action. Good content results in improved social engagement, referrals, and sales at a low customer acquisition cost that has no equal.
The recent roll out by Facebook, allowing the use of functional hashtags, presents an opportunity for businesses that market themselves on the world’s largest social network. Hashtags simplify searching for and sharing of information and have been a popular tool on other social networks, such as Twitter. A hashtag consists of a ‘#’ symbol, followed by a word or phrase. A hashtag, when clicked, will take the user to a feed of all posts that include that tag word. These hashtags are completely clickable and also searchable.
If you are looking for new customers Facebook is an excellent place to go fishing. It makes sense to fish where the fish are. With over a billion users Facebook is a big pond.
A Twitter bio reveals a lot to the world about your competition. Study the keywords your competitors use to describe their business and services on Twitter. Search those keywords in a Google search. Where does your primary competitor’s company rank in the search engine results for those keywords? Where do you rank? Is your rival sponsoring ads on Google for keywords relevant to your business? These are all important pieces of information to be used to determine how effective your search placement is working for you.
The old saying holds some truth, a picture really is worth a thousand words, or can be. The rise of image-oriented social media sites like 
Quiver Quest
Write as you speak and your blog post will come alive. Here are a few suggestions that you may find helpful.
Most people tend to check their social networks at the same time every day. For that reason, the majority of their messaging goes out at the same time too. Followers don’t want to see their timelines spammed with message after message from the same source! What’s important to you at the moment may not be of interest to your reader. A more methodical thought out approach to social media and blog posts will produce better results