There are endless lists of applications that leverage networks’ data provide businesses with actionable business intelligence and qualified leads. In small and medium businesses, companies jump into social media through isolated initiatives that are not a part of consistent plan towards a given goal.

Moreover, maximum businesses use social media to amplify customer experiences with their products beyond the moment they’re being used.

The extent of how this is happening in specific businesses depends on the priority social networks have been given at strategic level and on the basis of teams, tools and processes that have been put in place to accomplish this.

This changes the way businesses connect with each other, just like social networks made for individuals before them.

Read more at : http://socialmediaexplorer.com/content-sections/tools-and-tips/social-networking-tips/

Sales Promotion helps you develop a loyal customer base. Promotion is a powerful way that helps customers to know about you and your brand. However, if something goes wrong the same promotion can permanently tarnish your brand reputation. Letting your customers test the product you launch after the proper quality check is an impressive way to gain popularity amongst your customers. Predicting what can go wrong and taking appropriate measures so that the things don’t go wrong can save your reputation from being tarnished. To have a knowledge of the probability of occurrence of such wrong actions is also very helpful. Despite the precautions if anything goes wrong, the best solution is to stay calm and hunt at a better alternative. It’s important to identify whether wrong promotions will cause small problems or have a catastrophic effect on the brand. One should base his promotion decision on this identification. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279220

Though influencer marketing is the new kid in the block, the current level of media coverage and discussion surrounding it ensures 2016 is going to be a big year for the strategy. Accepting something new can be a difficult process for an organization irrespective of its advantages. But the market is already past the point of early adoption and brands already vested in influencer marketing are achieving results. Near and long term benefits can influence the momentum towards influencer marketing. Assessment of proper team skills and openly discussing the repercussions of this shift in digital marketing strategy can make the transition much smoother. Authenticity is the criteria that appeals most to a modern consumer. By working with the right influencers and giving them permission to be themselves and deliver the message as they see fit, can be a huge step towards the success of influencer marketing. Read more at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/30284/three-tips-for-building-internal-support-for-influencer-marketing

Starting a business or a venture is not an easy task to be done. It requires lots of efforts. No matter how small or large your business idea is, there are some things which need to be planned from beginning. One such thing is brand. The essentials of creating a brand are:

·         Understand what your brand is going to stand for

·         Creative and engaging logo and design

·         Reliable and a strong team of employees.

Read the complete article here: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/marketing-strategies/establishing-a-brand-3-steps-you-should-take-73162

The way of taking a decision to buy a product has been changed. Now customers prefer and trust visual content that comes from real people over other forms of advertisements. It's an easy job for the company to 'like,' 'comment,' and share the photos customers post about their brand on social media. Juliet Carnoy (marketing manager at Pixlee) writes in her article about three user-generated content pitfalls they need to stay away from. These are: 1. don't forget to permit content, 2. don't feature only a subset of your customers, and 3. don't close off conversations. There are numerous benefits for incorporating user-generated content. Any brand can easily achieve great results by avoiding above mentioned mistakes. Read more at:http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/3-user-generated-content-marketing-mistakes-avoid

Influencer marketing is very important in today’s business world. But, what is influencer marketing? It is when a particular company reaches out to key people in the industry and asks them to promote their product or service to their followers. There are different ways in which a brand can use influencer marketing. But, a company need to review whether it is worthwhile in terms of time and money. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/influencer-marketing-worth-waste-01549023#MsVR5luWeIPxO1mE.97

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways to breathe spirit into your brand. Social media gives meaning and definition to any ordinary piece of information and makes it attractive and absorbing. Advertiser and marketers have utilized it as a powerful tool to convince audiences by merging their ideas with emotion, which has proved to be highly instrumental in appealing the imagination of the customer. The rise of social media offers an unprecedented platform for brands to tell their tale. To know more, please read the article by Kay Fabella (Brand storyteller and Marketing Consultant for small business owners) -: http://thoughtreach.com/how-to-tell-your-brand-story-on-social-media/

Authenticity is very important for any brand and it relates to how you are perceived, and how much t potential and existing consumers rust you. But, companies must have a definition for authentic brand. According to author Lucy Rendler-Kaplan, “an authentic brand is one that is relatable, doesn’t seem like a large corporate entity but does business on a personal level, and is one that I feel comfortable spending money on because I feel I can trust in the company and the people that make up the company.” She also suggests few strategies about how to measure where your brand stands. They are:  Don’t be afraid to show your brand’s personality; use images; keep scheduled posts to a minimum; be available; admit when you’re wrong; and tell true stories. Read more at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/lucyrk78/2015-08-13/7-ways-build-authentic-brand

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract customers and ultimately drive profitable customer action. Every company has different type of content depending on the product it offers in the market. Content Marketing furnishes a platform to communicate with the customers instead of selling to them directly. For, a content marketing to work efficiently, it is important that it must work simultaneously with a good social media strategy. This is also true in the case of web content. However, content marketing faces several challenges like measuring the Right of Information (ROI) is very difficult and it is essential to have a call-to-action so as to attract customer for purchasing the products.

To know more about this study, please follow the link: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/why-content-marketing-is-important

Smartphones and tables enable consumers to stay connected and share their good and bad experiences. Marketers have to think mobile devices as a way of collecting valuable feedback. Mark Penson (CMO of Survey Anyplace), writes in his article how marketers can tap into customers' thinking to build their brand. Read more at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/26150/always-on-marketing-to-the-always-connected-five-ways-to-tap-into-customer-thinking

In today’s world, social marketing media is important and companies should take advantage of it. But, you must know how to take advantage of this. So, understanding of social media marketing is an important to understand social media fundamentals. Susan Gunelius (CEO of KeySplash Creative Inc.), writes about 10 laws of social media marketing and how this will help build a base that will serve customers, brand and most significantly – the bottom line. Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/218160

The most important part in determining a company's stock growth is extremely difficult. But, by asking a few key questions, investors can improve the accuracy of their guesswork. Firstly, take some time to examine the market growth rate- For example, Apple less than a decade ago, was known only for computers, but now it has a market share on the phone and tablet market. To get some hints of their future prospects, you need to estimate the percentage of people who already have smartphones and the percentage of customers who will buy new smartphones etc. Secondly, a company's market share impacts in a big way on its future sales growth. Coffee-retailer Starbucks and automaker Honda are examples of companies that have used their brand name to grow their market share. Also, pricing is an important factor and needs to be considered as it has a big impact on sales revenue growth of any company. Read more at: : http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/04/100604.asp

Social Media Analytics has become important nowadays. But, what is Social media analytics? It collects data from social media platforms and blogs, and do an analysis of the collected data to extract information which in turn will help any organization to take the right step. It also facilitates marketers with a detailed understanding of the consumer and also helps to analyze the sentiment of customers to augment marketing, branding, and customer service. MarketsandMarkets (a global market research and consulting company based in the U.S), have recently published a report about GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS MARKET - MARKET FORECASTS AND ANALYSIS (2014-2019) which will help the market leaders or new entrants in many ways. To know more about this, follow: http://www.fastmr.com/prod/871700_global_social_media_analytics_market_market.aspx?afid=302

Email is one of the oldest tools which is still relied upon by the marketers. There is lot of information on optimizing email marketing but not all are true. To make email marketing as effective as possible it is first necessary to separate out the information which one can believe from ones to discard. Myth 1: Consumers are drowning in emails from trusted brands. Myth 1: Consumers are drowning in emails from trusted brands. 60% receive less than 6 mails per day. Myth2: Best time to mail is at 3 pm on Thursday. Only 21% of purchases happen within 2 days of sending mail. Myth 3: You should stop sending to inactive users after 6 months. They are still alive. Myth 4: Consumers mark email as spam. One out of 2000 does this. Myth 5: More the emails sent by brands, ignorance from customer’s side increases. Number of consumers checking the mail increases, increasing revenue. Myth 6: Short subject lines give better results. Over 70 characters increase clicks. Myth 7: Because of subject lines, email lands up in spam folder. According to 540bn emails sent till date, ‘spam’ keywords have little effects on ending up in spam folder. Read more at: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-myths-infographic

Market research is classified into two categories: problem identification research and problem solving research. Problem identification research helps the marketing teams to identify the problem and its implication. Through problem identification research the factors like market characteristics, brand image, market share and market potential are discovered. Brand image is the customer's perception about the company's brand; market characteristics looks at the variety of preferences of the customers; market potential refers to the product's potential profit and the demand elasticity of the products; market share gives an estimate of the share of market that is captured by the concerned company. The research options like market segmentation, distribution research, pricing research, promotional research and product research help solve potential problems. Distribution research determines where the product should be sold; market segmentation involves grouping customers with similar backgrounds and preferences; pricing research determines the actual price of the product; product research involves testing a new or revised product and regular up gradation and promotional research measures the effectiveness of advertising strategies. Read more at:

http://blog.marketresearch.com/how-to-identify-solve-your-business-problems-using-market-research

An article by Sue Cockburn, Founder of Growing Social Biz, conveys that it's not that the customer is always right. They're not. But, they need to see us owning the problem when they believe they are right. Arguing to prove we are right and they are wrong may allow us to win the battle, but we'll likely lose the client. Clients deserve the benefit of the doubt. Maybe sometimes we'll be taken advantage of and sometimes we won't be able to fix mistakes or won't be able to take responsibility for something that is very clearly customer error and possibly not fixable. Keeping the customers we have and building on that base is much more cost effective than gaining new customers while existing ones stream out the back door!

To know more visit http://socialmediatoday.com/suecockburn/2428621/great-customer-service-not-about-being-perfect

An article by Pam Dyer, Marketing manager at SolutionsIQ, conveys that hashtags can be powerful tools that drive brand recognition, increase reach, build community, create buzz, and positively impact customer loyalty. They are ways to track topics on Twitter and other social media platforms. Anyone sharing content can add one to their messages and posts, thus helping people to quickly find information on that same topic. It's easy to join in a hashtag conversation by clicking on one of your own tweets or those of others. You can track hashtags to see which ones resonate most with your audience. Hashtags on Instagram can help to maximize your reach and create a network of influential brand followers.  When users click on a hashtag in Google+, the search results page (SERP) includes the original hashtag as well as posts with similar tags and keywords.

For more information visit http://socialmediatoday.com/pamdyer/2381691/using-hashtags-social-media-marketing

An article by Jaylee Miguel, lead community manager of Emoderation, talks about different new features of twitter like timeline changes, mobile updates etc. Now the key question is how brands can use Twitter's new features to their advantage? To answer this, she mentioned that brands can use the video sharing tool to communicate with competition winners in a creative way, thus raising awareness of new campaigns by tagging others. But she also spoke about how free tagging feature can create spam.

To know more about follow http://socialmediatoday.com/jaylee-miguel/2341916/how-brands-can-make-most-out-twitters-new-features

An article by Devin Redmond, Co-founder and CEO of Nexgate, talks about how social media spam can damage a brand name and how it affects social media marketing ROI. He also spoke about different steps that social media marketers can adopt to stop social spam and mitigate loss.

For more information visit http://socialmediatoday.com/1865971/state-social-media-spam-social-media-spam-rise

By engaging more people in conversations/discussions related to company offerings via social media, organizations are creating brand awareness among mass. Today, creating hype for a soon to be launched product is easy & convenient with the help of social media, as it saves promotional cost as well as it helps in understanding consumer sentiment beforehand. By indulging in various social media conversations, people are actually acting like brand ambassadors & reviewers. Though chances of negative publicity cannot be ruled out entirely, still with a good structured online marketing strategy, immense benefits can be achieved. Few notable real time online advertising strategies deserve to be mentioned, such as following conversations and then joining them, saying no to discipline, getting legal permissions to use material, ensuring that the brand is never silent on social media, moving on when content gets stale, never ignoring negative feedback etc.

To read more, visit wall street journal article link given below:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303801304579407284034257414?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303801304579407284034257414.html