If you look critically, you will discover that Facebook and other social media marketing platforms are saturated with marketers in almost every industry. It’s time to get back to multiple streams of traffic generation.

Here are valuable tips to leverage;

1. Be the One to Come Up with Discussion Threads in a High Traffic Niche
   This is an excellent way to break free from the social media marketing groove. However, ensure that the forum is a high traffic one, and that it is related to your niche. Also, you should come up with a signature link that would accompany each comment or contribution you make in that forum. When you’ve done this, go ahead and initiate a discussion thread about a subject that interests virtually everybody.You may be asking, “How can I create discussion thread effectively?” Okay, here are valuable tips to help you:
   • Come up with a question that would arouse everyone’s interest, and watch how answers would be pouring in as soon as one person responds with an answer.
   • Come up with a contrary response to a topic that people usually agree upon. Immediately, an uproar would spring up in the entire forum, leading to massive clicks on your signature link.
2. Make Comments on Multiple Blog Posts on other Niches
   This is one of the effective social media marketing strategies, yet people perceive it to be irrelevant. For instance, you can become part of the RSS subscribers of a blogger in another niche and endeavor to always be the first to comment on such blogger’s new posts. Endeavor to make meaningful comments that would add value to the blogs. Sometimes, you can also use a question approach style that may be directed to the blogger indirectly, just to engage and get the blogger’s attention. Before long, that blogger will start promoting you as well, and other subscribers would become interested in you and what you offer.
3. Offer Free Valuable Articles to Authority Blogs in Your Niche
   The reward for this effort is that you are likely to get backlinks from that blog. So, ensure that you choose authority bloggers in your niche.
4. Become Part of a Valuable Syndication Group or Tribe
   Make sure you join valuable syndication group where people would have incentives in reward for the contents they share among themselves. This is the best way to benefit from such a group; lot of traffic is also guaranteed through this means.

I must not forget to mention that pumping out quality and massive content consistently is as important as the other techniques outlined above.

B2B marketers are now massively involved in social media marketing. A recent research by Forrester shows that B2B firms are likely to spend over 50 million USD in 2014, as against less than $12 million spent in 2009. Sadly, a good number of those efforts are merely methodical with little or no full grasp of how social media marketing works.

The majority of the B2B marketers on social media marketing appear to concentrate more on message distribution – they tweet and post Facebook links particularly to the content they created, rather than coming to the level of engaging with prospects on a human basis.  This is merely a one-way communication profile and it does not provoke sharing as well as discussions.

Thus, B2B marketers need to concentrate more on the social aspect than the marketing; this is the only way they can maximize returns on social medial marketing.

Here are valuable tips:

Your topic should point to what you stand for

It is very important to be outright with words and language that highlight your major areas of specialization. You should also do this when participating on conversations taking place within your target community. Social networking content and blogs that are topically fragmented weaken the ability of a company to be exceptional among the different voices on social media platforms, and also the competition in search engine ranking.

Thus, you need an approach that spells out content/editorial plans, goals, social keyword glossaries, as well as customer personas. Using a content marketing strategy, you will be able to spell out the areas of interest for your company, its policies and the medium to relate the main messages. It would also add flavor to social network conversations as well as engagements. In essence, you would have a guide on how to comment, what you should not comment on, who to connect or not connect with, suitable words for blog posts, tweets and tags.

Remember that the number-one essence of social media is to ‘friend’ and socialize, so be tactful with promotional words, messages or posts. Also, use keywords that are directly or indirectly related with your topic when publishing content on social media platforms.

Ultimately, your promotion efforts and content creation should be targeted at linking and sharing, based on keywords and topics most relevant to your brand, and also inspiring discussion. The top benefit is that your target audience would perceive your brand positively each time they are looking out for topics on your brands either online or offline.

Your plan should target at winning

Most B2B marketers do not exhaust the possible resources for result-oriented social media participation. What they do often is to work with pre-structured best practices checklist given by some persons that professed to be social media pros – this is not a good way to engage a community. An obvious error I have observed with B2B marketers is that their social media profile is usually constructed in a common way. They also tend to focus on Twitter and LinkedIn in their publishing and do not even research these channels sufficiently.

The best result awaits B2B marketers who embrace the right approach to social media marketing.

Social media platform increases popularity exponentially. So, you need to know how to improve your social networking skills in order to achieve meaningful result with this traffic generation strategy.

Here are top tips to help you:

1. Find out the preferred communicating media of the individual
   Before you start following someone or giving them invitation to follow you on any social media platform, research the person’s preferred means of communication online. The best place to check is the individual’s contact page. Read their policies regarding connection with people online and simply comply.
2. Avoid long messages
   You must endeavor to bring people’s attention to your level of participation in a social media platform as sharp as possible. Therefore, concise and straight-to-the-point message is effective rather than a long episode. In fact, most people on social media platform do not have patience to read long messages, so keep it short and straight to the point.Today, Twitter has become a force to reckon with in social media world; with 60 characters, you can structure compelling message on Twitter platform.
3. Use social media network email effectively
   Avoid using the usual phrases that sound as though you are compelling people to respond. More often, social media participants receive emails that ultimately end in phrases such as ‘Please get back to me’ or ‘Please respond ASAP’. Endeavor not to sound desperate. People would naturally respond and connect to you if they see reasons to follow you. In fact, they may not respond when you sound rather desperate.
4. Be clear with your intentions
   You don’t have to start with needless ‘intro’, go straight to the point. If your intention is to ask for contact exchange, don’t start with needless pleasantries, say it outright from the onset. It is meaningless to start beating about the bush at first, only to wait till the tail end to say what you have in mind. The person may not be patient to read through your message.
5. Be honest and speak up as well
   Don’t mean something else when you are actually saying something else – just be real and be yourself. It doesn’t matter what you ask, but ensure that you don’t sound desperate or compelling. Prove that you can be trusted for a genuine connection and you won’t have problem getting yes as answer to your request.
6. Know when not to interfere
   Target the best time to get the best result in social media connection – whether you are requesting for friendship, sending mail or responding to mails. Also, it is good to follow up on posts and respond meaningfully, but there are times you may need to refrain.

The interest of common people is the major reason behind social media networking sites to enable them connect with a vast array of human identities who may be existing friends or new people. In summary, the value of social media cannot be quantified and this online platform increases popularity exponentially.

Here are useful tips to becoming a better and skillful social networking participant:

1. Invest time to research on what the individual prefers as his or her best communication media. One of the popular medium for becoming widely known on the web is a website. So, explore the author’s contact webpage and find out how open they are to others in terms of allowing other people connect with them. Simply adhere to their rules and line of advice as it relates to connecting with people.
2. Avoid lengthy messages: Social media basically targets at attracting people’s attention to us in the shortest time possible. A lot of people are put off by long messages – it is more effective to keep your messages concise. A 60 word-count is sufficient to create a compelling message on Twitter platform rather than a boring episode of 500 words. The rule also applies in other Social Media platforms.
3. 3. Don’t beat about the bush: If what you want is contact exchange with a new connection, say it outright from the word go – don’t corner around and wait till the last line of the message. Make your intentions clear from the onset.
4. 4. Don’t be careful about your demand: But don’t go overboard as well, keep it as fair as possible. Indeed, you can ask for anything that is fair from your connections, especially when they show good signs of friendliness from the beginning.
5. 5. Be prudent with your interferences: You must not dabble into every post and talk – also, learn to respond the right time and with choice words that would make you respected.  
6. 6. Avoid sounding anxious: It makes you suspicious and people may start avoiding you. Avoid using sentences such as ‘we need to talk urgently’. Be genuine and friendly indeed and not trying to impose things. 

A good number of small business owners are perhaps too busy for social media marketing, or do not even understand how these platforms work. Therefore, they outsource business application of Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare to specialists. This action may not often work optimally for a business.

By experience, I’ve come to understand the power of web and how to use it effectively for business growing. Here are some major things I’ve found out so far.

• You can Learn from Your Customers
  Social media is not all about you – in fact, it is little about you and more about your customers, audience and just anyone you are trying to reach. A popular marketing slogan goes thus “think like your customer” – this also applies when it comes to social media. If you are not sure which social media network your customers are flocking, don’t hesitate to ask them.Don’t assume they are in Facebook when they are flocking more in LinkedIn or the other way round. Asking your customers where they are on the web can create an opportunity for a valuable conversation that would give you insight on how you can be part of them and provide value to them. You can let your customers point the way to you sometimes – they may be in a better position to do that.

• The Number of Followers is not a good Measure of Success
  When using Twitter to grow your business, do not get involved in the ‘number’ game – trying to compete on number of followers. This is especially important if you are a small business – it makes no sense trying to compete with big brands on who is having the highest number of followers. In as much as it is important to grow your community, you should be more concerned with who is engaging with you and the levels at which the ‘engaging’ is taking place. You may feel lured to engage a service to help you grow followers overnight – this may not be meaningful to you on the long run if the quality of these followers is poor, so take it slowly.

• Social Networking Mustn’t be Free
  One of the attractions of social media to business is the perceived low cost involved – free fan page, free blog, free video site… and just free anything. But, social media is not entirely free as perceived in the aspect of quality time, energy as well as effort required to achieve meaningful result with this marketing technique. It requires a lot of time and productive thinking to create attention-getting content.So, don’t rush to sign up with every social media platform – take it one after the other, starting with the ones that are most relevant to your business or market niche. Spell out your major goals and ascertain how you are going to keep the activities actively going on day after day. So, tell me, is social media really free?

Other key things you should know about using social media to grow business is that it is not about coming all out to promote yourself. Also, you need to learn from the experts themselves.

Just imagine for a moment, thousands of folks all over the world commending your business and your offerings and recommending you to everyone around them – their friends, connections, followers as well as fans. This can be a dream come true, if only you can invest time to connect with consumers online and communicate with them.

Using Social Media to Build Your Brand

Every business needs to operate on social media platform; so hurry to create as many social media accounts as you can – for your business. The top social media platforms are Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The important information you must not forget to include in your profile on these social networks are your company’s logo, your real image, the name of your business as well as the tag line, your business info such as its mission statement and year established. Don’t forget to also include your blog or website link.

As soon as you get your profile completed on the social platforms, the next step is to let others be aware of your presence on those platforms and invite them to connect with you. Various ways you can achieve this include: placing the link on your social media profiles, on your marketing tools such as your business card, newsletter, blog/website. This way you start growing your list of followers, fans or connections.

Successful Brand Building Involves Effective Communication

Effective communication also means doing things the right way while on social media platform. For instance, do not reflect your personal life when posting status messages; also, avoid spamming. Thus, it would only be sensible and rewarding to post only valuable information. Doing otherwise would only work to dent your brand.

What status messages would be more appropriate?

• Tips that are related to your offerings or business niche.
• URLs to informative articles that you’ve written about your offerings; also, you can include links to valuable articles and news that others have written.
• Giveaways and Special Offers; occasionally, you can offer exclusive discount to followers or give something away for free. It is a great idea to accompany the freebies or discounts with a contest.
• In a situation where your product has worked for your customer, obtain permission from such a customer to share the testimony with your followers, fans or connections at social media platforms. Don’t forget to spell out the product that the customer purchased, and the specific benefit derived from the use of the product.
• Event publicity; it is also great to create awareness of your webinars, workshops, speaking events and others, whether online or conventional.

Keep on building your brand by replying to people’s comment on your status. If the comment is in the form of a complaint, do not respond harshly, handle it tactfully in order to win back the concerned user.