B2B marketers are recognizing the benefit of engaging with audiences via social networks. By creating an online persona for your brand, you're humanizing it. To succeed in social strategy, B2B companies need to adopt the mindset of engaging as an individual first and business second. This personal tone will make your brand more approachable. For success in social strategy, you have to customize your brand image on your company profile, share videos, and upload presentations using LinkedIn and Twitter. The social site revealed that more than 30 percent of Twitter users search for B2B brands online, compared to 12 percent of average internet users.

To know more about the article by Boone Baill, Seasoned marketing and communications professional, follow http://socialmediatoday.com/bonniebailly/2383241/social-secrets-softer-side-b2b-marketing 

Analytics makes it easy for you to track how many conversions you are getting from your social profiles by using Google Analytics. Once you have installed Google Analytics, you need to collect data, but if you are like most of your clients who have built a large audience, you will have data points on your reports that are actionable and very insightful. Google has a great support center that answers most questions that are related to trouble shooting analytics and it is a great learning resource.

 To know more read the article by Sergio Aicardi, CEO of Miami SEO Company, from http://socialmediatoday.com/sergio-aicardi/2358246/tracking-social-media-success-google-analytics

Search Engine Optimization is an effective tool in internet marketing which helps to understand how search engines take user queries in the form of keywords and turn them into search engine result pages. The algorithms in the search engines are geared more towards understanding and appreciating the importance of social signals.  Shares, likes, posts, comments and followers will expand your business not only in the branding aspect of your business, but search engines as well.

To gather more insights visit the article by Joe Chierotti, lead strategist and VP of Search Engine Optimization in InternetReputation.com, follow http://socialmediatoday.com/joe-chierotti/2367216/advanced-seo-techniques-importance-social-media 

An article by Chris Syme, owner of CKSyme Media Group, talks about how monitoring social media can help in preventing crisis. She also mentioned that the first step in crisis communication planning is learning to listen. She spoke about some key conversations that one should monitor while listening and also discussed about how to monitor those conversations.

To know about effective listening strategies in details follow http://socialmediatoday.com/chrissyme/2362621/how-monitor-social-media-prevent-crisis

An article by Tom Treanor, founder of Right Mix Marketing, conveys that it is important to maintain a balance between all social media accounts to know the strengths of each social networking site which can give your business organization an interesting mix and help you to reach your target audience. Everybody knows about the popular social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but there are plenty of others which are slightly less famous but can form an essential ingredient in social media strategy. Thus, from your Facebook page people should be able to go to your Instagram account or your Pinterest page and so on. He also mentioned that one of the biggest strengths of Google plus is that it gives you opportunities to link up with all your other social profiles. It also becomes important for your website to have all your social media profile buttons displayed prominently. Your social media profile has to be driven by the right kind of images and videos. Thus, leveraging the right kind of social media tools can indeed become a huge productivity enhancer for your business organization.

To know more follow http://www.business2community.com/social-media/businesses-can-optimize-social-media-profiles-0844522#!EjbHw

A new feature is built into Facebook's mobile app that allows you to see which of your friends are close by and even share your exact location with others. The new feature uses the geo location technology in your smart phone to determine when you are close to one of your Facebook friends. When activated, the feature will send periodic notifications to friends who are nearby. Users who did not activate Nearby Friends won't be affected in any way, and will not share with or receive any location information from others on the platform.

To know more about the use of this new feature visit the article by Kurt Wagner, Social media reporter for Mashable, http://mashable.com/2014/04/17/facebook-nearby-friends/

An article by Jaylee Miguel, Lead Community Manager for social media management agency Emoderation, conveys that the beauty industry is often overlooked when we think about the ways how social media has grown and how brands have adapted. Just like beauty counters at a department store, social media can be a great place for consumers to interact with beauty brands. Brands are now investing more money in digital-led campaigns not only to improve their social media presence but also to achieve a higher ROI in areas that TV failed to deliver.  It is essential for brands to understand their strategy, through the line campaign that works in conjunction with its advertising and marketing by using social media as a platform to push content.

To know more visit http://socialmediatoday.com/jaylee-miguel/2354996/beauty-brands-and-social-media

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

Big Data! While you are reading the two words and also this blog, you may be not aware that you already have Big Data right in front of you.

Many small businesses think Big Data to be very expensive to analyze. But, let me tell you one thing – we are analyzing Big Data freely for years! Sounds unbelievable right? Okay, so here’s the thing.

Nowadays, social media has become a great means of communication for every business. Many of them have their page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, profiles on Twitter, etc. The social media platform can provide valuable insights about their products or services and also about their target customers. With low investments, you can get to know your customers’ behavior, know their demographics and much more. But seeing large volumes of data can make you puzzled.

Nicole Fallon from Business News Daily writes about some tips to get you started. Read them at http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6190-smb-big-data-tips.html

David Waterman, expert in search engine optimization, talks about how marketers can take advantage of social media to spy on their customers and target audience to gather better insights. He also discussed about the five different steps to be followed for enhancing the process.

To know more about the steps follow http://marketingland.com/social-media-perfect-tool-spying-customers-76595

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

A recent research by Fast Company revealed that 93% of marketers use social media to promote their business.  It is the number one daily activity among Americans. Social media sites, email providers and the Google are eating up the largest chunk of the time spent over the internet. Social media is reaching beyond our traditional perception; it’s getting bigger and bigger with time. From a marketer’s Point of view, if you are not marketing on it, you are likely missing a large chunk of your target consumers. As a product of the Mark Zuckerberg generation, it is easy to understand why people are so obsessed with social media. For marketers, the potential to grow their business via these networks is endless. The following base strategies will help you take control of your social channels and give them a much needed facelift.

·         Create a game plan & stick to it.

·         Treat each channel as an individual entity.

·         Go above & beyond in Customer Service.

·         Embrace any kind of mishaps.

·         Track & talk.

·         Stay active on Google+.

To read more, see Margot da Cunha’s blog by visiting the following link address:

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/01/09/social-media-marketing-strategies

An article written by Mike Bailey, owner of Grey Kite Resources, talks about how social media can play an important role in becoming an advocate for the organisation you work for. He mentioned that when employees share anything with their social networks, they reach 20 times more people than a typical brand sharing with the same number of followers. He also discussed about different guidelines to be followed for employee advocacy.

To know in details read the article on http://socialmediatoday.com/Beyond_Engagement/unleashing-power-employee-advocacy

Research firm Gartner has predicted that half of the large organizations will have internal Facebook-like social networks by 2016, and that 30 percent of these will be considered as essential as email and telephones are today. It also noted that 80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership. A report on “unified communication and collaboration” (UCC), by another research firm, Frost & Sullivan, pointed out that employees have become accustomed in recent years to simple and user-friendly interfaces of free online communications tools, such as Gmail and Facebook, which allow them to collaborate in only a few clicks.

To know more about this talk-of-the-town topic, read Author Al Bredenberg’s article by visiting the following link:

http://www.thomasnet.com/journals/techtrends/articles/companies-want-to-get-social-in-their-enterprise-collaboration

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

Recently, Harvard Business Professor Mikołaj Jan Piskorski, spoke about marketing strategy implementation through social media during a conversation with marketing guru & author Mr. Steve Olenski.

Drawing on his analysis of proprietary data from social media sites, Piskorski argues that the secret behind every successful organization is that they allow people to fulfil social needs that either can’t be met offline or can be met only at a much higher cost. This insight provides logic about how companies can leverage social platforms to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Companies need to help people interact with each other, before they promote products to their friends. If all goes fine and right steps are followed, a company’s social media should benefit its customers as well as the firm. Piskorski calls this ‘a social strategy’.

To read more visit the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2014/03/17/social-media-and-branding-a-one-on-one-with-a-harvard-business-professor/

SigmaWay Consulting Services offer various solutions to help you align your social media efforts to your business goals, from brand awareness to targeting customer base to increase customer satisfaction. For more information, please visit http://www.gosigmaway.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87&Itemid=555

Max De Marzi, software field engineer with Neo Technology, inspired by Facebook’s graph search, talks about how use of graph search adds value to the enterprise by making practical use of big data. He also indicated how this technology can be applied to solve business problems.

For more information follow

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/2240215892/Facebook-inspires-enterprise-to-use-big-data-graph-searches?asrc=EM_NLN_27254566&utm_medium=EM&utm_source=NLN&utm_campaign=20140317_Facebook%20inspires%20enterprise%20to%20use%20graph%20searches_cdelacvivier&track=NL-1839&ad=892421

Social media is a platform where people can create, share or exchange information and ideas through interaction. The rise of Big Data has prompted many organizations to utilize data analysis for making marketing decisions .Social media is an important way to track  vast amount of data. Organizations are now developing tools intended for this purpose.

 Some of the trending social media analytics tools are:

1. Social Report.

2. Social Mention.

3. Simply Measured.

4. Cyfe.

5. Sprout Social.

6. SumAll.

To read more, visit the following link:

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/65195-6-Social-Media-Analytics-Tools-for-Merchants

What is Cloud? The cloud computing is a phrase, which is used to describe a variety of computing concepts that involve a large number of systems connected through a communication network such as the Internet. It also means the ability to run an application on many connected computers at the same time.

Entrepreneurship emphasizes on innovation and as we all know, innovation leads to sustainability in this volatile demand & application driven market.

The current technological environment demands these two factors, cloud and entrepreneurship to come together as an explorer combo pack. The idea is like start ups can swipe a credit card, buy a little bit of infrastructure and get the idea off the ground. And it doesn't matter if a company’s idea is related to technology, marketing or consumer products. It is a very fast and efficient means of getting the back office & customer-facing capabilities moving.

To read more- visit the following link:

 http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20140301/NJBIZ/303010002/Cloud-computing-discussed-at-NJ-tech-conference?nclick_check=1