If you’re looking to be able to increase your online business, one resource that small business retailers may not be considering is LinkedIn.  
LinkedIn now boasts over 200 million registered users in over 200 countries around the world.  Currently, there are more than three million companies with LinkedIn pages, and indications show that professionals are signing up at a rate of approximately two new members per second.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network.  

So how can you benefit?

Reach.    Chances are many of your employees are posting their profiles on LinkedIn.  If you have a profile on Linked In, everyone that connects with you may potentially click on your company name to find out more.  
It’s important to take advantage of this by building a company page on LinkedIn.
If you’re unsure of how to build a company page on LinkedIn, click here. 

Awareness.  Within LinkedIn, there is a section to talk about specific products and services that you provide.  LinkedIn allows you to add several products with pictures and descriptions, to highlight everything that you offer.

Optimize.  By creating a LinkedIn company page, you’ll increase the visibility of your company.  If you post jobs, the results will appear within your expanded LinkedIn network.

LinkedIn has its’ own search engine for finding jobs.  By having a LinkedIn company page, you’ll greatly increase your visibility on the web.  Plus, you can potentially find your next great employee.

Users can easily land on your page through LinkedIn.  Every employee has the opportunity to promote your company – use this to your advantage!

If you’re a small business, integrating social media into your site is essential.  Integrating social media into your site can be a challenge, especially if you don’t know what to do or how to do it.

Your social media channels should work with your site to help your brand gain exposure on the internet.

How do you do this?

Use visible social media buttons on your site

While this may seem obvious, double check.  Make sure that your social media buttons appear on every page of your site.  Also, so that users don’t navigate away from your site, make sure that when the user selects the button, the social media site opens in another window.  The goal is to increase the interaction the user has with your brand, not to lead them away.

On the image below, The Empress Secret has chosen to add their social media icons on the top right of the site:
 

Integrate social media posts into your home page

Google and other web search engines crawl the internet looking for updated content continually.  If the home page of your site contains a ‘feed’ of your twitter or blog content, the content is being updated every time that you blog or tweet.

Next, if there is a feed to your home page, make sure that you’re updating your social media on a consistent basis.  Showing old material or content dates on your home page does not show well for your brand.    New, relevant material on your site shows your customers that you take your business and your product seriously and you’re providing relevant, up to date material.

Below, Diginomica shows a series of recent conversations from their social media on their site:
 
Include Share Buttons

Think of Share buttons like this:  If you take the time to write and post content, why not also make sure that your followers can share it with their friends?  If you don’t, you could potentially be missing out on a ton of business.

To do this, check out apps like http://www.addthis.com/ or http://www.sharethis.com.

Internet Retailer shows the social media “share” buttons in the left column, beside this article.  When you scroll down on the site, the icons follow as you scroll.
 
Look to Google Analytics for Help

Google analytics can help you to track how people are using your social media buttons.  They suggest setting up Event Tracking in your Analytics account.  If you don’t know how to do this, Google provides a easy to use guide, just select the link above.

Allow social log ins to make it easier to connect to you.

With social log ins, users don’t have to create an account on your site.  Instead, they use their own log in information from their favorite social media site to log into your site.

Using social log ins helps to create a community for your brand quickly.  From here, engage with your followers for more sales.

There you have it.  Some quick ideas on integrating social media into your site.

Twitter announced the launch of a "new audio experience" last week, which seeks to integrate audio into the Android and iOS app more naturally. Musicians will see the obvious advantages initially, but there are marketing opportunities for a wider range of businesses on the horizon. 

The Twitter Audio Card

The introduction of the Twitter Audio Card lets users listen to music directly through the Twitter app on both Android and iOS. Significantly, users can run the audio straight from their timeline, and then dock the Audio Card in order to continue listening whilst browsing the app. So you can now listen to your favourite artist’s new releases as and when they’re released through Twitter, courtesy of Spotify. 

The Future: Downloading Music?
Perhaps more exciting, is the future possibilities that Twitter can realise with this. After having recently introduced the facility to download apps straight from within the app, this audio integration may be the first step towards allowing users to download music in the same way. The technology is certainly there already. Imagine: 

• David Guetta releases his new single and posts it on Twitter
• You see it on your timeline and listen to it, docking it in the app and continuing your surfing through hash tags
• The song is so epic that you can download it with the tap of an icon

Now imagine the possibilities outside of music for the likes of:

• Podcasts, 
• Audio books, 
• Speeches, 
• Presentations, 
• Radio plays, 
• Even recorded blog readings or poetry 

This could all help turn Twitter into an audio-centric marketing powerhouse. 

Potential for Marketers
The opportunity for brands within that environment is vast, especially if we can monitor exactly who is listening to what and for how long. Of course, Twitter could easily charge for analytical insights like this, or skim some commission off the top of sold items. Either way, everyone’s a winner, as a new marketplace is born.

Possible Video Integration?
It doesn’t stop there, either. Twitter could introduce the same docking method for video, similar to the YouTube iOS app. The video loads in the main window and, should the user wish to continue browsing or make a new search, they can minimise the video. The video still plays, only it’s docked in the bottom-right of the screen, out of the way, but still in view. 

This would provide opportunities for brands to provide content in a unique and engaging way, without being too intrusive. Plus, there could be some advertising potential here for Twitter. Imagine being able to pay Twitter to play a 10 second clip in the corner of your target market’s timeline. Although, that may prove a little too intrusive.

Worth Taking a Risk
Either way, Twitter is certainly feeding people’s urges for multitasking and is trying all it can to keep people using its services for longer. The results of which remain to be seen, but it’s worth taking a shot at something with potential for those brands out there that can craft compelling audio.

For a while, Twitter has been the place where people flock to catch breaking news stories and hold conversations around TV shows and sporting events in real time. Now, with Facebook’s latest News Feed update, it looks like the social media giant is tackling Twitter in its own backyard. But how will it affect your social media strategy and social lead generation?

Facebook announced on Thursday that it has been testing, and is due to launch, an algorithm change that seeks to bring new and timely posts to the forefront of user’s News Feeds. Although Facebook may be a little late to the party in the real time engagement space, it still has some beneficial implications and opportunities for businesses small and large due to the sheer number of users on the network.

Traditionally, Facebook optimizes News Feeds in accordance to what’s grown in popularity since you were last there. So, if you check Facebook on Monday morning, and one of your friends posts something on Monday afternoon that gets a lot of likes, you might see that post at the top of your News Feed when you log back in on Tuesday night. That’s all well and good generally speaking, but these days, users crave freshness and news. Things move so quickly that yesterday’s headlines are today’s toilet paper, especially around areas like TV, sports or events where timing and in-the-moment comments and interactions are key. 

To address this, Facebook’s latest update seeks to prioritize timely content in two ways:

1.    Through "factoring in trending topics”: Facebook introduced ‘Trending’ in January to highlight popular topics being discussed across the world on Facebook. It now plans to expand on this by showing your friend’s posts on these trending topics in your News Feed. 

Whether this will begin to base trending topics around your peer group or friends, or on timely posts related to your interests and page likes, or whether it keeps the focus more on general national or international trending topics remains to be seen.

2.    The speed at which people like and comment: If people like and comment on something as soon as it’s posted, and then the engagement tails off, Facebook will treat this as a timely post and prioritize similar ones in user’s News Feeds. Although, again, whether this will work on a local, national or international scale is as yet unknown.

Facebook claim that, through its early testing, these more timely posts generate a 6% higher engagement rate. (FYI: Facebook classes ‘engagement' as the number of users sharing, commenting, liking or clicking on a post.)

What This Means For Your Social Media Strategy

For businesses big and small, these changes present opportunities for those that can react quickly to change. Slightly bigger changes will be required for many companies, so that those who manage social media are given:

•    Flexible working hours, 
•    Autonomy,
•    Decision making authority, 
•    Absolute trust, 

All this is needed in order to keep your finger on the pulse of the global conversation and take advantage of real-time participation. 

There’s even an opportunity for Facebook to extend this timely prioritization into the advertising realm. For example, Facebook could potentially offer a real-time advertising service that allows brands to pay to be put in front of their target customers during, say, an episode of House or the Superbowl.

The Right Time

Marketing is an amalgamation of lots of things, and one of the most important elements of marketing is 'getting the right message to the right people at the right time’. However, when your customers are global and they don’t switch off, that time is now, and Facebook may have just given you a window of opportunity, so open your curtains.

Online videos are proven to aid customer purchasing decisions¹ and are becoming the cornerstones of many brand’s digital strategy. Typically, 80% of viewers remember the video they’ve watched² and 45% take some kind of action, such as visiting the brand’s website or searching for more information¹. So we’ve put together a number of tips to help you use video marketing to boost your sales and increase you leads.

1. It’s not about going viral

Viral videos fail to address your specific target market’s unique needs and problems.

While viral videos may well raise awareness in some cases, if you’re looking to increase leads and sales, chances are you have a specific target market with specific needs and problems. By aiming to go viral, you’ll wind up creating light and generic video that fails to convert users or inspire behavior. In doing so, you’ll forfeit the opportunity to speak directly to your target market about how you can meet their needs or solve their problems.

2. Make every second count

You’ve got to make the first 10 seconds of your video as engaging as a hypnotist's pocket watch.

As with anything else online: when a users load a webpage, opens an email or sees an ad, their first impression is made in a split second. Therefore, online, you don’t have long to encourage the user to hang around. Video marketing is no different, with the first 10 seconds proving critical in keeping viewers tuned in. Plus, with an average of 60% of viewers deserting before the two-minute mark¹, you’ve got to make the rest of the video just as captivating. 

3. Make it interactive

For complex subjects or in depth product tutorials, use tools that allow users to interact with video content.

Software such as Touchcast³ lets you embed images, web pages, maps, social media newsfeeds and hyperlinks⁴ into the your video. Viewers can then interact with content without having to leave the video. Software such as this is great for explaining complicated subjects and demonstrating specific features of products and services and is being used by teachers to better explain things to students⁴. So, why not use it to better explain your offer to potential customers?

4. Include visuals to enhance mobile usability

Many mobile users watch videos without sound, so make sure you include enough visuals so that your video can be understood on mute.

Mobile and tablet users are three times more likely to watch online videos than their laptop and desktop counterparts⁵, so optimizing your videos for mobile consumption is imperative. On mobile, a lot of people have their device on silent or watch videos in public spaces without sound enabled. Therefore, your video has to be fully understood on mute.

5. Pick the right host

YouTube vs Vimeo

Where to host your video is entirely dependent on the objectives behind its creation. However, the most important factor in choosing a host is that it’s reliable⁶.

YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world⁷ and has billions of visits per month⁸. It’s therefore the best place to host videos that you intend to reach a wide audience with. However, it’s not the only online video host to choose from.

A strong rival to YouTube is Vimeo. Vimeo only allows videos that are 100% created by the user, so you tend to find more creative videos there. Therefore, if you’re using animation or putting together something quite creative, Vimeo is for you.

6. Use natural social platforms

Uploading your videos onto social platforms directly ensure it plays seamlessly from the newsfeed.

Rather than share your YouTube or Vimeo link across your social networks, upload your video to your chosen social platform directly. Although this means that you’ll have duplicated content, and have to rack up the viewership across each platform, you will vastly enhance the user experience through ensuring that videos play seamlessly on each network.

Through following the above guidance, you’ll soon be making captivating videos for your specific target market that are geared for conversions.

References

^{1 http://www.videobrewery.com/blog/18-video-marketing-statistics}

^{2 http://www.digitalsherpa.com/blog/25-amazing-video-marketing-statistics/}

^{3 http://www.touchcast.com}

^{4 http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/04/touchcast-pcs/}

^{5 http://www.virtuets.com/45-video-marketing-statistics/}

^{6 http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/12/03/video-marketing-the-basics/}

^{7 http://www.socialmediafrontiers.com/2013/10/video-sharing-sites-vimeo-vs-youtube-vs.html#.VA0820voYy4}

^{8 http://blog.qstion.com/youtube/vimeo-vs-youtube-vs-dailymotion-pros-and-cons-of-each-one}