Make Your Memories More Easier With Google+ Stories And Movies

Google+ Stories

A tired and exhausted body, a baggage full of soiled clothes, and hundreds of photos and a couple of videos on your phone, camera, or tablet. Indeed, this is a typical scenario just right after a vacation. Although you want to immediately share your photos and videos, or want to make a nice collage or album for them, you’re just drained to do so. 

That’s why you’ll be surely grateful for the new Google+ Stories! This newly-launched feature will automatically weave your chosen photos, videos, as well as the places you visited into a lovely travelogue! 

No more checking or sorting your photos for your best shots, wrenching your brains out for the sights you witnessed, or letting your videos amass virtual dust. Google+ Stories will give you a story after you get home. In this manner, you can relive your unforgettable moments, share them with your friends, and reminisce why you traveled in the first place.

Google+ Stories will be available in the web and Android this week. For iOS users, this feature will come very soon. 

Google+ Movies

When it comes to today’s events such as baby’s christening, birthday celebrations, and the like, Google+ Movies can make a highlight reel of your videos and photos automatically. What’s more is that, this feature will seamlessly include transitions, effects, and a soundtrack. Google+ Movies is now available on iOS, Android, and the web!

Get Started

To get started with Google+ Stories and Movies, you only need to back up our videos and photos to Google+. That simple! Google’s Auto Awesome will do the work for you, and you’ll receive a notification when your travelogue or movie is ready.

As a matter of fact, if your photos are already uploaded online, you might have stories waiting for you so better check your Google+ account now!

Photo Courtesy of: http://www.googleplusdaily.com/

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Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 3

.... continuation from Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 2

6: Capitalize Social Advertising

If you are yearning for a boosted social media performance, you could always check out paid advertising options.

Facebook offers heaps of advertising solutions to help businesses earn more brand exposure, website traffic, audience engagement, and ultimately, sales.

If Twitter is your main social media channel, you have to choose from two advertising solutions, namely: promoted accounts and promoted content. The former helps you increase the magnitude of your Twitter following, while the latter helps your content stand out and to serve your content to tailored audiences.

In LinkedIn, you can utilize the “sponsored updates” feature or you can purchase advertising to boost the visibility of your brand.

Even though your budget is small, you should not miss the opportunity and benefits of using social advertising. Always keep in mind that it can yield great results if used tactically.

7: Measure and Analyze Results

This is the last yet the most crucial step.

It is important to track your performance data to recognize which strategies are working and which are not. Furthermore, don’t also miss seeing your development, participation, and sharing.

The good thing is that most social networks today have tools to track and assess your performance.

For your blog and website, Google Analytics is a handy tool to monitor traffic and interactions. With this tool, you can know which social media platforms are actually driving the most traffic into your website.

Tips to having a great social media plan:

• Regularly review your metric reports (preferably at least once a week)
• Evaluate the big picture (quarterly)
• Make the necessary adjustments for anything that doesn’t yield satisfactory results.

When utilizing different social media channels for your startup or small business, the most significant thing to keep in mind is that social media, as a whole, is a long and arduous undertaking.

Use this social media guide as your reference in starting your own social marketing efforts. Clearly define your target audience first, and select the best platform to reach them. Always do your research, and incorporate your social media links and icons into your website. Actively participate in social activities and keep track of how things are going. Follow these steps and you are definitely set for success! 

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Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 2

.... continuation from Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 1

3: Start Humbly

After determining your target audience, knowing where to effectively reach them, and optimizing your website for your social media channels, it is time for you to get social.

Keep in mind: get started today, but start humbly!

Social media necessitates a lot of time energy, which for small businesses, are valuable resources. So, always start with a doable load. As much as possible, choose a single or two social media channels to start with.

The best way to ensure consistency is to integrate social media tasks into your everyday routine. Make sure to dedicate sufficient time to reasonably deal with your social media accounts. As much as possible, update or manage them twice a day.

In your first two months, spend a minimum of 15 to 30 minutes a day on social activities. However, you can always increase the time whenever you see fit.

When sharing content, use your customer profiles to find out what information is relevant to your target customers who use that particular social network. For instance, your shared information in Twitter must be different from LinkedIn.

The key objective of your content is to help a specific group of readers. Give them easy-to-follow and valuable tips, or share information that can help them unravel a problem. Over time, people (or your followers) will view you as an expert and thought-leader in your industry.

4: Pay Attention and Be Involved

Conversations in social media are taking place all around in real time.

Hence, “social listening” is actually a very good maneuver to keep an eye on people’s thoughts about your business. Pay attention to and respond to comments even they’re negative.

Content is the most important thing in social marketing. Regrettably, searching the internet for good content that are worthy of sharing can be really time-consuming. To avoid getting stuck along the way, arrange a process where you can organize and combine quality content that gives value to your audience. If your schedule permits you, add the content to your editorial calendar so you can instantly share it when you are ready.

5: Have a Daily Plan

Once you have a stable stream of content in your pipeline, you are set to post and participate in social media.

Create a list of activities you plan to carry out every day. For instance, tweet and retweet 2-4 times on Twitter, comment on five different Facebook pages, or pin/re-pin around 5 images in Pinterest every day. If you are using LinkedIn, you could share a link and like other user’s links.

Once these daily activities are included in your “comfort zone”, then you can advance your efforts by joining groups and communities in order to direct specific demographics. Start and engage in conversations by throwing thought-provoking questions and/or posting comments to other people’s posts.

In addition, always welcome your new followers and don’t forget to thank those who share your content voluntarily.

Most importantly, be deliberate about your daily social activities. Contrary to popular belief, success is not about chance; rather, it is mainly about tactics and strategy. 

Check out the steps six to seven on how to make social media marketing work for your small business: a beginners guide part 3.

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Social Media for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide Part 1

Are you ready to get in touch with a broader audience?

Do you want to be acquainted with the best ways to control social media for your small business?

If your answer is YES to both of these questions, then thoroughly browse this article as it will show you the first two steps on how to make social media marketing work for your small business.

Why Use Social Media?

As an owner of a startup or small business, you know by now that there’s a lot of stuff that need to be done with only limited resources.

Although conventional marketing still works today, it will absolutely drain your monetary funds.

On the other hand, social media marketing is reasonably low-cost, and provides you a straight and easy access to your existing and prospective customers. Though, there’s a trade-off because what you save in money, you will invest in time.

Needless to say, you need to be extra smart in handling these resources if you truly want to obtain the results you desire given your limited resources.

This step-by-step guide is for new and small business owners with a handful of resources, but who want to start and work up their brand using social media.

1: Do Your Assignment

Always keep in mind that behind every successful social media campaign, there’s a prudent strategy.

Social media is about connecting with your audience on a more personal level. In order to do this, you have to understand your existing and prospective customers very well.

You can start by clearly defining your target audience. Categorize and profile your customers by gender, age, profession, interests, etc. Write down all these details and attach the most suitable images that represent them.

Next, straighten out your message. Determine the “pain points” that each of your customer profile is experiencing. After this, create your message based on their concerns and key problems, and then position your business as the one that can provide solutions.

Now that you’ve determined your audience and crafted your brand message to them, the next thing you should do is to discover which social networks they prefer.

All social networking platforms are not created equal. Each of them has their own primary audience, pace, and emphasis. It is very important to understand these differences so you could spend your resources on the right platforms.

2: Organize Your Social Media Channels

Your success will be limited if you regard social media channels as not connected with each other. Therefore, all your chosen network should work closely together to facilitate goal achievement.

Because of the fact that your website is the home base of your brand, it would be heady to organize all your social media efforts to push people into your website where they browse your offered service or product.

Apart from different social networks, you could also utilize your blog to share industry-related information using your brand’s voice. Blogs are also a great means to engage with your website visitors, and subsequently lead them into your sales funnel.

You can optimize your blog and your website for social media by adding few design elements such as social media icons. Just make sure that they are visible enough and are working properly. Surely, you don’t want your visitors get irritated just because they aren’t redirected to your social media profiles after clicking the icons.

Moreover, include call-to-actions (CTAs) in your blog posts and don’t forget to ask your readers to follow, subscribe, or like your social media profiles if they’ve found your content valuable and worthy of reading. In addition, make certain that all your content are share-friendly so your readers can easily spread the good word about your business. 

Check out the steps three to five on how to make social media marketing work for your small business: a beginners guide part 2.

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