1

2

TABLE OF CONTENT

Manage Social Media Presence For Your Business Like A Pro by Abdullah Saqib ....................................... 3

How To Set Social Media Marketing Goals That Help Conversions by Ali Waqas ........................................ 8

Aspiring For A Career In Social Media Marketing? Here Is How You Get Started by Ali Waqas ............... 12

3

MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE FOR YOUR BUSINESS LIKE A PRO

Over the past few years, social media has grown both in terms

of the application as well as usage. It has successfully become

a part of daily routine for all segments of the society,

professionals and youth alike. It may have started as a

fulfillment of man’s need to connect but as the global

population started making their presence felt virtually on social

media platforms, the concept of ecommerce and online

marketing went to the next level.

The viral experience and the trending reality were evident in the Arab Spring as well as the

Occupy movements (to name a few). Now, social media is integrated with every part of our daily

routines.

SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE AS AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT FOR

BUSINESSES

A more useful aspect for businesses is the ability to create their brand or product image in a

manner such that the user base starts seeing the brand as a person and begins interacting with it.

The people to people connection has now been successfully transformed to include the business

to consumer relationship at a much personal level, thus, increasing interactivity as well as

activity.

Imagine two individuals interacting with the other. This interaction is dependent both on the

availability of the other individual as well as the response time. If a question gets answered with

delay, the interest in the conversation significantly declines and so the interaction dies down.

Now, viewing your company or even you as an individual interacting with a huge audience, a

moment of delay or unavailability can have an adverse effect on the connectivity with the target

4

individuals. So, when you’re away and busy at a meeting, leisure trip or on the move, you must

ensure that your absence is left unnoticed by your followers.

Achieving this requires an analytic solution-oriented study (a solution that reverberates with the

relationship between you or your brand and the end-user, may it be another business or a

consumer) of the tools out there, that can help you manage social media, on the go. In this post,

we examine the social media platforms, their popularity, penetration and application while

providing you with all that is necessary to maintain its use, wherever needed.

THE STATE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Before we actually present the steps that will enable you to manage social media, on the go, it is

essential to analyze the social media industry and the popularity of various platforms.

Facebook: On the surface, Facebook is a community-oriented place of interaction where all

forms of content can be shared and discussed on walls, timelines, albums, groups and pages.

Twitter: Twitter, on the other hand, gives more importance to what’s being talked about – the

topic or the hash tag and associates the influencer-follower relationship with the relevant topic

presenting ‘what’s trending’ to the user.

Linkedin, Pinterest and Others: LinkedIn is the professionals’ hub while Pinterest, Flickr,

YouTube, Vimeo and the like focus on media (videos and photos) to create awareness and value

for the user.

And What About G+: Yes, we missed out Google+ as it is a combination of everything

incorporated in circles but the most significant penetration it has had is in the blogger

community.

5

A LATEST TAKE ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA INDUSTRY

Figure 1: Figure 1: The following info graphic is based on the latest Social Media Marketing Industry Report and gives an overview of the most popular social media platforms with respect to the value they’re delivering.

According to July 2013 stats and Top Ten Reviews, the top 5 social media platforms with respect

to their user base, is as follows:

1. Facebook (1.15 billion users)

2. Twitter (554 million users)

3. Google Plus (343 million users)

4. LinkedIn (225 million users)

5. YouTube (800 million daily unique visits)

6

It is always best to plan out your social media activity such that it is consistent and value-driven

to ensure consistent impact and an interactive relationship with the target market.

These three simple yet powerful steps will definitely enable you to manage social media, on the

go, and create an even more impact for the better.

1. INTEGRATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS

It is common to have multiple social media accounts with similar content being broadcasted in

order to ensure convenience and scale for the end-user. This is why websites and blogs have

profile badges for a huge range of platforms including but not restricted to Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, Google Plus, YouTube, Pinterest and even more depending on the interest level from

the business end.

With this context, it is quite obvious that updating each account separately would waste a lot of

precious time and effort. In order to avoid this, you can easily integrate your social media

accounts and manage them from a single interface. Using such a tool would allow you to keep

track of activity, content and analytics from a single unified interface and this is exactly what is

driving large scale business entities social media marketing strategy.

Try using Hootsuite which is the most popular social media management utility and is available

both as a web application and a smartphone app. Tweetdeck is also a free useful alternative.

2. SCHEDULE YOUR POSTS AND UPDATES

Rather than updating content on a daily basis, it is highly recommended to plan out and devise a

content strategy that can be scaled over time. A content repository can then be used to fill in

gaps, where you or your team is unavailable (i.e. focused on other more important things).

Streamlining content can give you the freedom to achieve much more. This is why Facebook

boasts an Activity Log feature that can allow you to schedule posts and statuses over time giving

you the advantage of maintaining a base activity for your social media presence.

7

Social media management tools allow you to schedule posts, tweets or updates across platforms

and this is where you can easily earn the extra mile.

3. MAKE GOOD USE OF YOUR SMARTPHONE

As the smart phone penetration increases worldwide coupled with high speed mobile internet,

you can easily keep track of online activity on the go. So, when you’re travelling or commuting,

you can simply manage social media as well as fulfilling the need for killing time in a very

useful way.

8

HOW TO SET SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING GOALS THAT HELP

CONVERSIONS There are over 1 Billion Social Media users throughout the globe with virtually unlimited

interests. The main reason for using social media by these folks is to connect with folks they

know and in some cases; they don’t. Today every business, looking for a boost in its reach and

profits, has a social media presence. Why is this so? Well, social media is about discussions and

connections! And since word of mouth still the most dependable passive marketing tactic, hence

brands ensure to engage people in discussion and create a positive impact. This “positive

impact”, created by brands on their social media properties, helps create awareness about their

products and services. And awareness about a product or service basically leads to conversions!

But before you can grow large on social media; you’ll need some goals and a plan.

Social media marketing goal setting and object determination is something that you need to kick-

start your brand’s online engagement. We have seen countless businesses failing due to the lack

of planning. Social media marketing requires short-term, medium-term and long-haul goals

settings and objective planning in order to be successful. It is important to see your social media

marketing objective as your ordinary marketing efforts that usually require rigorous planning.

From Mercedes Benz to Wall Mart and your next door sandwich shop; every brand is trying its

best to enhance profits from their social media efforts and conversations. These brands aren’t

doing it without a proper plan. And their vision and social media goals lay the foundations of

9

their unprecedented success over the social media. Remember that if your goals are smart; you

are going to perform smarter with your product or services on the social media.

BEFORE YOU GO ON TO PLANNING AND OBJECTIVE SETTING

FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA EFFORTS, READ THIS ONE!

To start any social media brand related activity, you first need to ensure that you aren’t scared of

it at all. This might sound a bit stupid, but the reality is that there are many brands which fail to

launch their social media activities due to the Fear Factor. The fear of being unsuccessful, the

scary and concentrated competition and the timidity in starting it up contribute to the social

media fear factor. Remember that every brand, big or small, started off with 0 twitter followers

and Facebook likes; you aren’t any different. Beating competition and creating your own unique

selling proposition is the easiest to create! Why? Because social media isn’t about selling, in fact,

it is about connecting with your prospect, customers and cold / hot leads in real time. Usually,

your social media success depends on your ability to connect and converse. If you talk and write

better, you’ll have better returns!

Defining and Developing your Social Media goals / Objectives:

SMART GOALS:

Once you have kicked out the social networking / media fear factor, the next step is fairly basic:

defining and drafting your social media objectives. This is very important as we don’t want you

to launch your brand on social media without being considerate about your expected outcomes.

10

Social media, like any other marketing medium, requires your objectives to be SMART. And in

terms of social media, SMART goals refer to Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and

Time bound.

SPECIFIC:

Specificity refers to answering straight questions with straighter answers to the 5 “W”s; what,

why, who, where and When. What do you want to accomplish with your social media brand

strategy? Why exactly do you want this social media strategy for your product or service? Who

are your going to connect with in order to market product (target audience), Where are you going

to launch your social media marketing strategy? When are you going to do it? The questions are

simple and answers need to be as simple as that. Always avoid vague goals since they won’t

really take you anywhere on social media.

MEASURABLE:

Like we discussed specificity of your social media marketing goals the aforementioned

paragraph, you also need to ensure that whatever goals you set are measurable. This means that

you social media efforts must follow a grid that you can refer to check out conversions and

identify hot leads and prospects. The grid must give your complete social media business

intelligence information statistically. There are a number of online tools that can help you gather

such information. All you need to do is Google them out.

ATTAINABLE:

Attainability of your set goals carries essential importance. Whatever goals you set must be

realistic and attainable. Indebting your goals with some fairy tale goals about lala-land carries the

potential of sabotaging and hindering all your social media efforts altogether. For instance, an

attainable goal’s example is that you need to create 50 conversations and gather 100 likes on

your brand’s Facebook page within one month. And an unattainable goal sounds like a million

likes and gazillion conversations bundles with ten thousand sales in 10 days.

RELEVANT:

Relevance of your social media goals is as important as their specificity, attainability and

measurability. Your social media goal setting must be relevant and in-line with your current

11

brand position. You can’t talk about oranges on your social media properties to spark a likeness

for apples. But if you talk about how apples are really good for health and back it upwith

scientific evidence when selling Apples, then only you’ll get relevant response to your efforts.

TIME-BOUND:

Your goals must be time bound. You can’t set social media marketing goals that don’t come with

a deadline or a specific time. Time restrictions on your goals basically help you evaluate your

performance matrix and help you set appropriate objectives for the next period or quarter.

CONCLUSION

The bottom line of your goal setting effort, with regard to promoting your product or service via

social media marketing, is to ensure online brand activation, exceptional customer service,

attracting new prospects and engagement with your social media followers. Yes, we gave too

much space to social media objective / goals settings. Objective development and goal setting is

important to drive your social media marketing efforts in the right directions. Doing the goals

right will ensure profitability of your social media marketing efforts. In case you believe that we

missed out on something important or you have some out of the box ideas for social media goal

settings; please let us know in the comments sections below and we’ll add it up in this write up

for sure.

12

ASPIRING FOR A CAREER IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING? HERE IS HOW

YOU GET STARTED Today every company, big or small, is looking to explore social media in order to increase its

sales and enhance brand visibility. Although social media marketing and analysis seems like an

easy job, but the matter of fact is that it is as challenging as other marketing positions. From your

next door grocery store to mega brands like Wall Mart and Microsoft; all heavily rely on their

social media reach in order convey their marketing messages to the prospects and customers.

Since there are already a billion plus users actively using their social networking properties,

chances of targeting the correct audience in minimal budget increases twofold with social media.

And in order to do the social media just right, these companies need trained and passionate

human capital. You can’t really earn a college degree in social media marketing (However, we

have heard that there are some far flung schools who have already started internet marketing

programs; Google it). But if you are social media and online marketing fanatic; you might land a

job easily. The good thing about social media positions is that the field isn’t “that” concentrated

as conventional marketing is. Chances are bright if you are looking to start a career in social

media now.

Social media careers are the only viable entities that can help you gain a job without much

“commercial” experience. But for that, you’ll need to prove yourself with a portfolio! And that

can be made without doing a job anywhere at all!

13

So let’s cut the rant short and get to business. How exactly you can land a social media job if you

are new grad or without commercial experience:

CHECK YOUR PASSION FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

If you are on Facebook just for “chatting” with your special ones, then probably you aren’t

passionate about what other folks are posting or what you could have posted to gather some

attention. Remember that Facebook chats and twitter direct messages etc won’t prove your

passion and maybe you shouldn’t enter social media at all. However, if you fancy yourself as a

news breaker on twitter and cool status poster on Facebook while keeping an eye out for what

other folks are posting, then you might be passionate enough to carry on with a career in social

media and online marketing. Social media is about getting in the conversation and drawing

attention of other folks who might just be strangers. And if you like doing it, then its time you

should consider internet or social media marketing as a career.

14

ESSENTIAL TOOLS AND SKILLS

Once you are 100 % sure that you love social media beyond chatting and personal messages,

then it is now time that you gear yourself up with skills and tools that will help you in landing a

related position. The first skill is the ability to write! Social media marketing is all about content

marketing in different formats. If you land a social media related job, you’ll be required to write

and that also 100 % creatively. Content jacking and plagiarism is an intolerable and social media

as it is in SEO. You must possess near perfect writing skills with zero tolerance for grammar and

syntax errors. Also, it is important to know that social media isn’t all about updating one liner

status updates. You will be required to post detailed answers to queries, promote your social

media domains and websites via blog posting, forum posting and commenting. For more

details on writing content that is meant for the internet, you can check out our guides posted

under the copywriting category.

SOCIAL MEDIA / ONLINE MARKETING PORTFOLIO

DEVELOPMENT

After you are sure that your writing is something that will click and people won’t be able to find

faults with it, next step is to create a portfolio. A social media expert is required to be an all

rounder with through knowledge of important and well-trafficked social media networks along

with ability to write creatively. For your writing portfolio, you can start with posting articles in

different article directories. I’ll suggest going with Ezine.com since there editorial guide lines are

pretty tough and you’ll have to make sure that your content is seriously classy for it to enter it.

After you are done posting in article directories, you can also try your luck with guest posting.

Once you have at least 10 to 15 articles online, put your author links in your CV under “writing

15

portfolio” heading or whatever suits you best. If you are new to blogging and writing, then our

guides on beginning to blog (Link 2) and making money with it might come help you getting

started in the right direction.

GRASPING THE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FUNCTIONALITIES

Once you have your writings posted on various social media channels, article directories and

blogs; now is the time to become proficient in various social networking sites. I suggest starting

with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus and Tumblr.

In order to create a social media portfolio, you need to ensure that your personal profiles are

updated on regular intervals. It is essential to understand that only your work will speak for you

once you apply for a social media related position. For instance, if your personal profiles and

pages aren’t updated for last 3 months, don’t expect your recruiters to get impressed with your

talk. Furthermore, updating your own profiles with interesting updates and sharing catchy

content will help you learn the nitty-gritty of many social media platforms.

REAL-TIME SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE

Once you have made sure that your personal profiles are ready and updated regularly, time is

now ripe to gain some commercial social media experience. And no, you don’t have to be paid

for such an experience. There are thousands of general information social media properties that

you can volunteer to work in return of showcasing it as your portfolio. For example, you can

volunteer Facebook page management for a charity or school or look after their twitter profile by

posting relevant updates etc. Or you can also help your friends and family in deploying their

16

business’s social media properties and managing it for them. This can add up to your social

media portfolio.

YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA RESUME

After you have some commercial social media experience under your sleeve, now is the time to

tweak your CV. Do not start your CV by providing details of all the fancy schools and

kindergartens you had the privilege of attending. An optimized social media pro’s CV starts with

an introduction to their work, followed by a list of their portfolio. After listing all your portfolio

items, you can add any related internships and certification you have done. And then you can put

in the educational background section. If you haven’t made your resume until now, then check

out our comprehensive guides on writing a resume, cover letter drafting and letter of introduction

scripting.

Once you resume is developed and integrated with your social media portfolio, the next and the

final step is to search for a job. Social media and internet marketing related jobs are usually

posted on online job boards and websites

All in all, career in social media is greatly rewarding provided that you have the passion along

with the essential skills.