Facts about mobile media devices and social media engagement: 

• YouTube has reported a 400% increase in the amount of videos uploaded from mobile devices.
• More than 11,000,000 US FaceBook users visit the social network via their mobile devices.  They do so an average of 18 times each month for at least 10 minutes per session.
• YouTube experiences almost five million visitors each month that access the site via its pre-installed native versions on iPhones, Androids, Palm Pre’s and others.
• There are countless applications for accessing Twitter via various mobile media devices.  Tens of millions of tweets are initiated each month in this manner.

 Make no mistake that social media engagement is of paramount importance for creating success in small, medium and large businesses – and that mobile media devices are being utilized more and more for convenient, timesaving promotional purposes. 

Quality Vs. Quantity 

Social media marketing and mobile media devices are all about creating personal relationships with niche-specific audiences.  It’s important to remember that the goal is not to engage millions of people simultaneously; it is to take smaller groups and get them actively engaged in what you’re promoting.  It’s about creating a buzzed-up movement.  And when you do so, you need to be able to continue delivering the relevant, quality information that your audiences crave. 

Remember the following tips concerning social media marketing: 

• The sales process in Internet Marketing revolves around providing personalized, relevant care for each consumer – not about just flooding your social sites with content;
• Social media engagement is all about offering value – and then creating active movements that build momentum with time;
• You need to engage prospective consumers and then keep them active by providing them with useful tools to help spread your messages;
• Keep your approach multifaceted by leveraging the power of mobile media devices;
• Stay on top of your efforts to provide ready and efficient communication.  Take the time to respond to each request and comment that you receive

 By embracing the unbridled power of social media marketing – and compounding that power with mobile media devices – you can provide optimal care for your niche-targeted customers.

There are actually several kinds of capital that you will need to learn about on your path to financial success. Mental capital, or the ability to learn and absorb new information keeps you from repeating old mistakes over and over again. Perhaps you know that your strengths are with the people aspect of business, but that one of your investors is a mathematic whiz. Instead of struggling every day to reconcile your numbers and possibly creating costly errors, you may choose to have the numbers whiz, investor handle the books from now on- as an investor he is interested in your company’s continued success. You have created a beneficial relationship; you are on your way to gaining relationship capital.  

As you continue on with your business, you may find that you are creating and strengthening relationships in different ways. For instance, you may find that a certain distributor in one office can get you better deals if you work with him directly. He knows how to get the right kind of deals that save you money so that you can pass those savings on to your consumers through sales and special promotions. You are working on gaining social capital by building these relationships. For every distributor or other that you can gain benefits from is another chance to build social capital. In return, you will continue to give that distributor your business, because it is beneficial to you as well.  

Human capital, like social capital can be very important in growing and developing your business. When you are building strong relationships, you are strengthening your company as well. Human capital can take the form of excellent customer service, or the ability to relate to all of your employees as individuals. Sometimes all of the money in the world will not help a failing business is one of the other capitals are lacking. The powers that be are stuck in a rut and will not learn new information or new ways to do anything, so they are doomed to continually repeat their same failures and miscues over and over.  

If the capital forms are not in some kind of balance, there will be problems throughout the company. Mental capital will teach new skills, social capital will build and strengthen relationships. The more adept you are at handling the different forms of capital, the better you are able to adapt and adjust to changes, the more likely you will be succeed in the business world.

Social media engagement on various social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others must be implemented as an integral component of every business plan.  It is no longer an optional concept.  The numbers are unmistakable: if you want to grow your business, then you need to create personalized avenues of communication for your perspective customers.  And there is no better way to do that currently than to remain actively engaged in social media marketing techniques.

You need to realize that every action that you take online is branding you. You are a business now.  You are an entity.  You need to give thought to developing your personal brand optimally with every move that you make.

Tips for maximizing the efficiency of your online reputation management endeavors:

➢    Set up your social networking sites with your own name.  Using aliases, pen names or otherwise will not help establish your branding effectiveness.  In other words, you need to create an interlinked “web” of these powerful social networks – that all point to you.  This is profoundly important because it establishes your presence in the major search engines like Google.
➢    Try to get the exact same username set up for all of your social media engagement profiles.  Similar is not close enough.
➢    When you add any type of content to your social networking sites, keep your online reputation management plan in mind.  Don’t put out low-quality, irrelevant material.  Remember: your digital footprint will last a lifetime – plus the lifetimes of your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren…

Facebook alone has more than 122,000,000 visitors each month.  If you add in Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn and others, you literally have multiple hundreds of millions of opportunities to gain targeted followers.  As an Internet marketer, this is a virtual playground that cannot be ignored.

Take action starting today to develop a centralized presence across your own grouping of social media engagement sites.  These social networking powerhouses are now about far more than casual communication amongst personal friends and family; they are avenues for creating success in your life.  Start thinking about your plan for online reputation management right away.  The effects are never-ending.

The benefits that social media engagement yields your customers:

• They know without doubt that you are available to them.  They know that you care enough to establish your online presence – to make yourself known and visible.
• They feel welcome to provide you – and the world – with honest, open feedback about your products or services.  This helps to establish a system for checking and balancing all businesses worldwide.
• They feel valued.  They know that when they provide feedback, you have to pay attention to it.  To not do so is business suicide.
• Through efficient communication, they feel engaged.  They feel that they are part of something larger than themselves.  They become passionate about your brand – and they develop loyalty that will last a lifetime.

The benefits that social media engagement yields to you as a business:

• You are presented with real-time opinions and reviews from your customers.  You instantly know how your business is being perceived.  You know what you’re doing right – and wrong.
• You have the opportunity to provide ongoing, prompt customer service.  In real time, you can address criticisms, appreciate positive feedback – and show the world that your business cares enough to remain attentive.
• You can create targeted, powerful movements to propel your success.  When you get your audiences involved passionately with what you are presenting, you position yourself to experience the powers of viral marketing.

The Jay-Z Twitter Story:

For those of you who may not know, Jay-Z is a modern Hip-Hop artist who has had more number one recordings than Elvis.  His most recent #1 CD has sold over one million copies in just one month since its release. Jay-Z has been one of the most “trended” topics on Twitter since June.  This was due directly to a powerful and multifaceted social marketing campaign launched by his record company.  Now of course, Jay-Z has millions of fans around the planet already.  After all, he has had 10 previous #1 CDs.

So, did he really need to engage in such a powerful social media advertising blitz?  Does Ford Motor Company really need to advertise on YouTube?  Does Miley Cyrus really need to upkeep her MySpace page?  While there’s no doubt that sales would continue without doing so, social media engagement is now just an accepted part of every business platform.

So what are you waiting for?  Start planning your newest social marketing campaign right away!

The Top 4 Social Media Marketing Misconceptions

-Social networking creates chaos for brand images:

-Engaging in social media marketing does not open your brand up to any more – or less – feedback from satisfied – or unsatisfied – customers.  What it will do is show your customers that you care.  It allows them the opportunity to provide feedback as they see fit.  When they provide this feedback, you need to respond to it in a prompt, caring manner.  Of course, you want to minimize negative feedback.  But don’t make the mistake of thinking that dissatisfied customers need your social networking pages up and running in order to lodge their complaints. They don’t.

-Social media engagement is simply a passing trend:

-Human beings have always had a deeply rooted need for regular communication.  Social media engagement is a very natural digital progression that utilizes modern technologies to capacitate efficient communication.  That is not a trend!  In fact, to get a realistic view of the situation, you need to realize that:

-Visitors to social networking websites are increasing at three times the rate of those to all other Internet-based applications;

-Social networking is now ranked as the fourth most popular online activity.  It even rates above personal emailing.

-My business doesn’t need a professional to help with social media engagement:

-You need to address the massive power of social media marketing very seriously.  Rapid and substantial gains in targeted traffic can explode your profit margins!  Social media engagement can transform your business, but there are rules to follow.  This is an art.  There are specific techniques and procedures that must be implemented.  Do not take it lightly.

-Social media engagement is only beneficial for certain types of brands:

-Again, this is far from the truth.  The fact is that any product or service that is marketable has an audience out there looking for information.  Every audience benefits from and craves efficient, caring communication.  In a nutshell, you will generate more revenue when you provide real-time customer care, and thereby create customer loyalty, via effective social media engagement techniques.

By avoiding the common social media marketing misconceptions listed above, you can begin to formulate your personalized plan for social networking effectiveness.  It’s very important to keep in mind the branding strength that entities such as FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and others possess. Google loves them because it has to.  Multiple hundreds of millions of visitors every month cannot be denied.  You will do well to realize that social media engagement is here to stay – and that the sooner you position your brand within these transforming networks, the better.

Think of the things that you fear. Not the things that you are afraid of like spiders and clowns, but the things that you fear – the intangible, abstract concepts that rock you to your very core, and keep you awake at night. Fear is the feeling that you are about to have a major problem- that something is about to go horribly wrong, or horribly right. It is the stress that you feel just before you head into a big presentation, or the sweat that pours down your face at night when you think you are not going to make quota. Fear can be huge motivator as well as a very loud critic to contend with.

For business people of every level, one major fear trigger is the fear of success. Most people assume that that means the fear of not having success, but surprisingly, many people are just as afraid of actually succeeding as they are of failing. They may allow this fear to control them and make stupid decisions that could jeopardize their business and success. They know that they need to provide excellent customer service for instance, but allow themselves to hire inept, rude agents that drive off far more customers than they ever serve. Regardless of the how and the why, the fear of success triggers them to behave in a way that is counterproductive to business success.

Once you can recognize the trigger for you own personal fear, you can start controlling it. If you know that you fear being poor, for instance, you will be more motivated to do well in business and to succeed financially. In this case, the fear is a valuable tool, one that is likely to keep you moving forward as you work toward a level of success that will allay those fears once and for all. Never allow this to happen! Never allow yourself to say “I have conquered fear.” The fear will keep you moving, always.

Of course, if you allow the fear to get too big, if you allow it to have more power, it will engulf you. You will not be able to function properly because the fear keeps you awake at night, stops you from eating healthfully or from exercising. Your health and fitness starts to become affected. The fear moves from a rational, real feeling to an irrational monster that is ready to attack and destroy everything in its path. Fear then moves from “fear” to Fear and you are powerless to act against it.

Confronting your fears head on begins with knowing what they are, by recognizing them for what they are. Give your fear a name, a title and you start to gain control of it. Think of this analogy: A dog, a giant, slobbering beast of a dog greets you as you walk down the sidewalk in your neighborhood. You have not seen this creature before and you immediately feel the heart pounding fear send waves of adrenaline coursing through you. Frozen, you helplessly look around for assistance or at least a stick to defend yourself with. You are at the mercy of not only the large dog, but the fear that you feel as well.

Take the same scenario, but you know the dog this time. Still a large and slobbering beast, this dog is more undisciplined than vicious but a danger all the same. The dog takes a stiff-legged step toward you, growling low in his throat as a warning. The same heart pounding fear sends the same flood of adrenaline through your body, but this time you pull yourself up straight and tall and shout, “ Bone-Crusher, you go home now.” The dog recognizes his name and assumes that you are in some control of him. Shrugging his beefy shoulders, he goes on home. You did not conquer the fear, although you did send it home. You did identify it, you spoke its name and you control it.

Never think that you can be or should be free from fear in all its forms. You need some fear to keep you motivated. Identify and name the fear and its triggers and then you can do something even better than killing it off- you can control it.

Intellectual capital is not always creative, however. Sometimes it is more esoteric, or sometimes it is more day to day. It does not always have to be the brilliant, one lined zinger of the advertising world that is considered to be intellectual capital. Sometimes it can be so much more. Perhaps Phil in accounting has a method of listing assets that saves fifteen minutes from each client’s ledger. If you have one hundred clients, then Phil has just saved your company around 25 man hours of time. Phil has increased productivity and as long as there is no decline in accuracy, it is a huge bonus to everyone.

The creative mind does not always have to be the one who is hired expressly for that purpose. When a company asks a freelance writer to write copy for them, they are not saying that they do not trust or believe in anyone in the organization, they are simply saying that they may not have the time to get the task done. Outsourcing a few articles or other information is a common enough practice and a very valuable one.

The marketing department is focusing on a new campaign for a tricky type of product. This one refuses to be marginalized or defined. There is no one set niche that is obvious to even the most experienced of the niche marketers. They are not sure of how to focus on this product because the demographics are so wide and scattered. They do not have time to create good content for the website so they outsource it. By default, they are creating a reciprocal intellectual capital relationship- the writer will have to do some basic research for the content they are being asked to create. Perhaps they will realize that they too have a need for this product as well. The content, once completed will serve to educate those who read it. Both the writer of the content and its eventual reader will establish an intellectual relationship where information is passed to the intended audience, whoever that may be.

After you get the idea for the business fully formulated, you will need to start reaching out to others who may be able to get your company’s plans off the ground. You will seek investors if you do not have enough money to pay for your venture and not enough experience to qualify for a loan of any kind. When you come to the investors or the loan agency if that is the case, you will establish a working relationship that will hopefully be in place for many years. No one comes to the business world thinking they only want to work a year or two and then fold. They want to be successful for a very long time, until they chose to retire or sell the company and live out the rest of their lives. This is relationship capital. Anyone you will have contact with more than a few times will have a working relationship with you- and you must nurture and grow it just like you would any other relationship in the world.

Human capital is established every time that you speak to or deal with someone that you may never have called to deal with again. A customer who is calling to complain about a product wants more than to just vent; they want to know that they have valid concerns and that these concerns matter to the company from the ground up. They want to know that someone is listening to them and that their disappointments are not going to be overlooked. They want to know that someone is going to be looking out for them, and that someone is going to make it right.

Of the three, human capital may take the slight edge of importance. After all, it does not matter how great your business idea is if you cannot get anyone to listen to your thoughts because they cannot deal with your personality. You cannot build a relationship if you do not have good human contact skills. All of the mental capital in the world will not do anything to increase your business capital if you do not have the basic human skills to back it up.

When a customer expresses interest in your product or service, they are expressing interest in your company and by default, in you. In the world of internet marketing there may be times where a million transactions can be carried out without a single human connection being made. On the other hand, there may be days where the technology itself is faulty and you will field hundreds, thousands or millions of calls from bewildered consumers. By providing excellent service at this point, you are adding value to the product that the customers are interested in, an inherent quality that perhaps no one else offers as well. How many times have you been forced to choose between two similar products with comparable prices: what is the deciding factor in your final choice? The human quality may be what edges out the others- even if it means spending an extra few bucks. Remember: most people are willing to spend a little more to be treated specially.

The bottom line to selling is creating a need for consumers. You need them to need your products and services. You need them to want to come back time and time again. Just having a great product at a reasonable price is not enough in the super competitive market places today. The edge is going to come down to the old-fashioned personal touch, even in the global, computerized world of today.

Once you have created a driving need for the products, you start to add value to your customers by treating them with a little extra care- what does it cost you to say Good Morning to a caller, even if you know the caller is going to complain? It does not cost a dime, but what does it give you in return? Perhaps a customer who was calling to complain because they were unhappy about a small detail walks away with their complaint resolved, product and discount in hand and still a loyal customer. You have saved a sale, practically ensured another sale as well and you invested nothing more than a bit of time, a cheerful greeting and a discounted amount on a product. (Your marketing budgeting should be flexible enough to take these types of transactions into account anyway). In essence, you have spent nothing at all.

The human quality in business is often lacking, especially when all marketing, sales and other transactions are handled online. Even a cheery email to say thank you for a past sale that invites the customer to a future sales event is more than just a good idea, it is imperative.

For other people, the musical industry can be broken down in to genres, which can then be broken down further into sub genres. The sub genres can then be even further broken down to the point where only one aspect of the industry is being focused on; the niche.

Finding a niche is like doing a mathematical equation without numbers: you keep subtracting facts and descriptions until you get down to the lowest common denominator for that market- the niche in other words. When you are doing niche marketing, you are exploiting the needs for that particular part of an industry- that small segment of the targeted audience who may have a specific and very definable need.

Keeping with the musical industry theme, we focus on this genre of the musical industry: the marching band. For each section of instrument types, there is a sub genre: the brass, the woodwinds and the percussion sections. Taking the brass section sub genre then, we can break that down into the niches: trumpet, French horn, tuba and trombone. Of those four niches, there are some similar needs that can be addressed, but each will have specific needs that have to be focused on as well. Niche marketing would address those specific needs for each of the four niches found within this sub genre.

The music that is written for a trombonist for instance, is different from that of a French horn. You could never fit a tuba into a trumpet case, and if you did, that thing is never coming back out of there, and you owe someone a tuba. There is never a trumpeter that will need a comfort strap to play his instrument. All of these separate aspects of the same basic family have different needs that must be met. Have defined your targeted audience? Have you defined your niche? Now its time to find the best ways to market your product or service to that audience.

For example, the product is music lessons. You could offer the generic “music lessons” but then would find that you are being flooded by calls for oboe or electric guitar. The problem is simple- you do not know how to play neither the oboe nor the electric guitar. By clearing defining the niche that you are marketing to, you save yourself needless expense on ads that will greet the wrong people and you save your customers time by spelling out exactly what you can offer to them.

The more defined or specialized a niche, the higher the demand and the lower the supply meaning that you will be able to garner top dollars for a need that is not being fulfilled. The wider your appeal, the more likely you are to have competition and therefore have to keep your prices low to remain comparable and fair.

Define your targeted market and you can rule that particular niche. Find the lowest common denominator that will satisfy enough need to be a valid pursuit and keep enough customers to be financially worthwhile and you will be struggling to keep up with the demand in no time.