To find the best candidate for an open position in your company, you first need to make sure you are connected to a strong network. This will help you hire someone new that is trustworthy and reputable by seeing how they are connected with people you trust.

Boost your LinkedIn network with the following steps:

• Import Email Connections – Using the Add Connections area, enter your email address to see if anyone in your contacts are on LinkedIn. You can also import desktop email contacts from systems like Outlook. This will send a generic invite to everyone in your email address book.
• Colleagues – Using the Colleagues area, find people on LinkedIn who work at the same companies that you currently or previously worked for. When you view colleagues for a particular company, it will bring up a checklist of employees for that company. Select the ones you want to connect with, then include a personal note with your invitation to ensure they know who you are and why you’re connecting with them.
• Alumni – Using the Alumni area, find people on LinkedIn who attended the same schools and universities that you did. This will show you profiles of people from your school along with a summary of where people work now, what they do, and where they live.
• People You May Know – Using the People You May Know area, find people who you might know based on mutual connections.

The next step is creating a Career page for you company where you can post available positions (at an extra cost). This career page will have your current employees profiles, a spot for a video and links to your brands social profiles, recent updates from your blog and available positions. Accenture’s career page is a great example of a page that is fully optimized to recruit the best candidates.

Some tips for setting up your Career Page on LinkedIn:

• Have your design team create a creative banner for the top of the page (try punchy taglines or facts about working for the company). The size of the LinkedIn Company Page banner image should be 646 x 220 pixels
• Utilize the new template for these pages and upload a professional video to the page that will give candidates and idea of what it’s like to work for the company.
• Get testimonials from current employees and publish them on this page as well.
• Keep your content fresh with a blog feed and real-time edits of your open positions.
• Customize your page for targeted audiences for location, industry and job function.

For companies with some extra budget, you’ll need to sign up for LinkedIn’s Talent Finder or even create some Recruitment Ads, which will be targeted to members who match the criteria you are looking for.

LinkedIn utilizes something called the Talent Brand Index for companies that want to measure the strength of their recruiting tactics, and if you really want to get the right candidates for your open positions, you should check your index score. The score shows your brand’s reach on Linkedin, engagement by members and the number of people who actively show interest in the company. The higher your score, the easier it is to attract the best candidates for your company. Click here to see LinkedIn’s most in-demand employers by function and geography (surprise surprise with Google and Apple).

Remember when searching for your perfect candidate that the majority of members on LinkedIn are passive talent, which means they may be looking for new positions at all times no matter what their current status. As an employer, if you can target these members and are not afraid to approach them (InMail!) even if they currently have a job (or just started), you may be able to find the best candidate for your company that others missed!

Finding candidates as soon as they enter the job market can improve overall candidate quality (since, according to a study by The Adler Group, only 18% of employed professionals are active candidates, but a further 60% are open to discussing opportunities). This is referred to as an Early-Bird Sourcing Strategy and requires a combination of search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) techniques to be effective.

The post How To Use LinkedIn To Recruit The Best Candidate For Your Company appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

“As of January 31, 2013, the LinkedIn Answers feature will be retired from LinkedIn. We’ll be focusing our efforts on the development of new and more engaging ways to share and discuss professional topics across LinkedIn. In the meantime, you can still pose questions and facilitate professional discussions through other popular LinkedIn channels including LinkedIn Polls, Groups, or status updates.”

Instead of reporting on why they did it or weighing in on our opinion about if that was a horrible move or not, let’s move forward. If you are looking to build your brand and business online, there are still ways to do that. Here are some amazing conversation management alternatives to LinkedIn Answers for those who relied on that outlet to A) get blog post ideas and/or B) boast your reputation in your industry. As always, make sure you have Google Alerts set up and you are trolling forums for your market!

BOOMTOWN ADVICE: Question and Answer sites once inspired us for new ways to brand a business, but sites today are outdated and most questions are dated. For instant feedback and engagement we turn to Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Judging by LinkedIn’s removal of their Answers site, we think they agree.

(All links have high page rank numbers and links)

• Quora: A great secret to Quora is creating and following blog. Users can create a blog to share knowledge by writing posts about any topic. Following these blogs will help you with your own blog topic ideas (link back to them) and possible guest blogger relationships in addition to using the site for questions and answers.

TIPS:

• Add the Quora “Follow Button” code to your set to let people follow you on Quora directly from your website or blog. You can also create a follow button for a topic on Quora.

• We are all about local marketing for clients here at Boomtown, so we love that Quora is working on a Quora Nearby iPhone app. Each question on Quora will have one or more topics associated with it so that they can display topics and questions near different locations, be it the user’s current location, or a specified location on the map.

• For now you can download the Quora iPhone app and add and browse questions and blogs and answer questions and write blog posts with rich text features from your phone.

• Answerbag: For professional researched/answered questions only click here.

• StackExchange: When someone asks a question on a Stack Exchange site, the community reviews, revises, and proposes answers to it. Answers are rated and ranked by the rest of the community. Members also vote for questions they find useful, or against those they see as unclear or unproductive. The more votes, the more visibility – so when you search, you get the best answer to the best question. Questions and answers can be edited by other members.

TIP: The StackExchange community has a specific set of topics in the faq; so you have to stick to those topics. If you’re looking for a different topic, it might be covered on another Stack Exchange site or you can check out Area51 where users come together to build new Q&A sites (new site ideas are proposed, discussed and the best go on to beta.

• Yahoo Answers: Popular and self-explanatory. To become more apart of the community, add friends, like questions and star answers. Establish authority by giving well-thought out answers and linking to a specific page with further information if necessary.

•  AOL Answers: Click on Explore and find people that are interested in certain keywords or skills. This is a great way to meet possible guest bloggers! Personalize AOL Answers to match your interests and the more questions you answer, the more it will learn what questions to show you and who to connect you with.

• Askville.amazon.com: You have to sign up here to use the site. To discover questions for your industry, just follow all the categories you are interested in. Your homepage feed of questions will only be from categories that you are following. If you want more questions, follow more categories. If you wanted to follow Sports & Recreation, for example, visit the category page and in the upper left corner click ‘follow.’ Follow individual subcategories as well.

• Wiki Answers: Before you start using this site, connect your Facebook and register to get credit for your contributions. When you are setting up your profile, include links to your website, blog, LinkedIn profile, Twitter and other places you are building your reputation online. You can also upload Video Answers (image below) and for local businesses who are interested in Local SEO, you should try Local Answers for nearby business questions and answers. Join Community Outreach or WikiReviewers to get increase your reputation and earn roles and badges.

TIP: Use the following features to create relationships with users (possible guest bloggers or webinar interviewees in the future) by following up with them or congratulating another contributor for a great answer:

• LinkedIn Groups: You can find groups within our industry in three ways. You can use the Groups Directory to search for keywords related to your industry, use the Skills pages to see top groups recommended for each skill OR through groups you have already joined (members of groups are provided with a list of similar groups that may be of interest to them).

1. Move your cursor over Groups at the top of your homepage, and select Groups Directory from the dropdown menu.
2. Browse the Featured Groups on the page.
3. Search for a group using the Search Groups box on the left.
4. Move your cursor over Groups at the top of your homepage and select Groups You May Like from the dropdown menu.
5. Browse through the list of suggested groups.
6. You can get more details about a group and find out if people in your network are members on the Group Profile page.

1. Click a group’s name to view its Discussions page.
2. Click the More… tab under the group’s name and select Group Profile.
3. Click Join Group on the group Discussions page or anywhere you see the button.

TIPS:

• Consider the exclusivity of the group. Is it “open” or “restricted”? Restricted groups can sometimes be more valuable than open groups if members need certain qualifications to join.

• Consider the size of the group. Larger groups have more exposure (make sure there are no self-promotional members) but small groups may be specifically tailored to a niche market or skill and may have more useful updates.

• Check the Group page before joining so you can check to see what type of content is being shared and what is being discussed. Make sure it isn’t all SPAM and promotional!

• Keywords from groups that will have meaningful, interactive members (not self-promotional ones): EXECUTIVES, BEST PRACTICES

• Great groups can be found by finding a top executive or influential user in your field (people search let’s you search by industry, company size, etc.), checking their profile and seeing what groups they are a part of

The post LinkedIn Answers: 10 Alternatives for Brand Marketing With High Page Ranks appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

There are so many trends that are starting to take action in social media. From location based services to content curation, it seems like there is no realm that has not been touched. One of the biggest trends making their way through this storm is Gamification. What is it exactly and why is all of a sudden so popular? Gamification is the application of gaming techniques to non-gaming applications with the main purpose of increasing engagement and creating buzz within a community. Their sudden rise in popularity is due to 3 things:

• Rewards: Users of gamification services love receiving awards (both digital and physical) for doing what they enjoy
• Brand Awareness/Marketing: Companies and businesses are starting to realize the sense of power that can come with adding a gamification aspect to their product or service
• Engagement in Communities: Gamification allows people to rally around one common interest, share their ideas and opinions on it, and retain the knowledge that they want to about a topic that they enjoy.

Rewards

One of the main aspects of this trend that seems to really peak people’s interests is the concept of getting rewards for doing things that they love. Whether it’s a sticker from GetGlue or receiving a discount on an appetizer at a local restaurant from Foursquare, audiences have become more intrigued by the idea of gamification because it adds a sense of accomplishment to the experience. These rewards don’t have to be a badge or a set of stickers that you receive in the mail. There are different forms of rewards that can suit anyone’s needs:

• Points – This is something that most people may have or hear about from their personal banks. There are certain bank cards that you can apply for that will give you a certain amount of points for how much you spend. These points can be used to purchase merchandise or can be turned into your bank and exchanged for cash.
• Levels/Milestones – Starbucks is one franchise that has done well with adding a gaming aspect to their company. You can sign up for a Starbucks account and every single time you buy a beverage with your Starbucks card, you can receive a star. Once you have a certain amount of stars, you reach a new level which will allow you a certain amount of perks. (Example: When you reach the gold standard, you get a free drink after every 15 drinks you buy)
• Deals/Discounts – One of the best examples of this would be foursquare. When you check into certain restaurants at certain times, you can receive things like a free appetizer or a discounted percentage from something that you’re buying.

Brand Awareness/Marketing

One of the best ways to market your brand is through the people who know your product or device just as well as you know yourself; aka your audience. They will be the ones who help spread the word about a new project that your company is working on are the people who are going to use or purchase it. Making a users’ experience interactive using a gamification aspect can help them not only retain information about your company better but it can also help spread the word about who your company is and what you want to accomplish.

Engagement in Communities

Engagement is one aspect that any company needs in order to become successful in their field. This can come from something as simple as people getting together and discussing their love of a topic or it could be as powerful as people rallying around a cause/campaign and using gamification as an outreach platform. No matter how it is used, it has the ability to bring people together those who are truly invested in what you have to offer rather than a mere spectator.

Feedback

One of the perks of gamification is the role that it can play in getting feedback from your consumers. If someone is using one of your services and they decide they absolutely love or hate it, they can do things like leave a rating on your website or use an app to leave a comment about what they think should change and what should stay the same. It is a lot less tedious than filling out a customer survey and it will provide you with more accurate and detailed responses.

In The End…

In the upcoming years, gamification is going to play a bigger role in all aspects of business. Its ability to bring people together while allowing companies to take a closer look at who their audience is and what they want makes it an extremely valuable tool. Whether it’s something small like giving away a discount or a huge campaign for loyal customers, there are many aspects of gamification that can benefit any companys’ needs.

The post Gamification: Increasing Engagement and Creating Buzz appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

What are Psychographics?

In marketing there are essentially four ways to segment customers: Geographics, Demographics, Behaviorgraphics, and finally Psychographics. According to the Business Dictionary, psychographics is the “analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer profile.” When combined with geographic and demographic characteristics, it develops a more ‘lifelike’ portrait of the targeted consumer segment. In essence, they are the personalities and lifestyles of your target consumers and where demographics tell us “who” buys, psychographics tell us “why” they buy. Consumers can share essentially the same demographics and still be very different. Psychographics give marketers a snap-shot of the things they value (Personality), the things they do in their spare time (Lifestyle), and how customers feel about themselves (Self-concept).

Personality

A consumer’s personality has major marketing implications.  Personality defined is the sum of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual. These characteristics are unique to the individual and are ultimately reflected in consumption choices. This also pertains to how a consumer acts over social media. There are three main personality theories to look at when trying to examine the personalities of your target market. Knowing your target market’s personality on social media can help you shape your own. Social media is the perfect place to really express your brand’s personality. Just like people, brands have personalities as well. Brand personalities impact brand equity and when utilized in your social media, will have a major influence in consumer engagement and participation.

*Keep in mind that because it’s a social network, consumers aren’t engaging with the products you’re selling, they’re engaging with personalities associated with those products.

Lifestyle

A consumer’s lifestyle is their pattern of behaviors and is represented by their activities, interests, and opinions. Understanding the lifestyles of your target market gives you insights into how they spend their time and money. This chart breaks down the dimensions of a consumer’s lifestyle.

Obviously a 15 year old girl will have a different lifestyle with different interests and activities than a middle aged man with a family and a fulltime job. Knowing your target market will give you an insight into how to cater to their lifestyle in your social media. Should it be more focused on entertainment and interactive aspects where people will spend a great deal of time, or should it be focused more on the “business” side of things, providing constructive information, and efficiency? These are questions you should be asking yourself when you want to form an SMM strategy that pertains to your consumers’ lifestyles.

Self-concept

A consumer’s self-concept is the thoughts and feelings about him or her self. This can be heavily influenced by consumption. From a marketing standpoint, it is important to know that all consumers make decisions to support their self-concept by either associating with products or services that are consistent with their actual-self or help reach their ideal-self. For consumers, social media is the perfect place to embody who they really are and show to the world who and what they associate with. Coincidentally, it is also a haven for their ideal-selves. Actively joining groups and following people and things they want to associate with is an ideal way for consumers to circumvent their actual-self and display who they actually want to be. By appealing to a consumer’s self-concept, mainly the ideal-self, has the potential to expand your market.

Takeaway

Using psychographics to predict consumer behavior is a great way to enhance your company’s social media outreach. By catering to their personalities, lifestyles, and self-concepts, you have the opportunity to truly focus and understand how your consumers tick. In the end, if you do it right, playing to your consumer’s psychographics will not only help with increased engagement and interaction, but also most importantly, retention.

The post Consumer Behavior PART FOUR: Importance of Psychographics in Social Media appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

The Reason People Act & Consume
Let’s not beat around the bush here. Motivation can be a tricky concept to understand and an even trickier one to perfect. So you have your business page on a social network, but you’re having trouble getting people to become engaged in it. Before you dabble into how you can motivate your consumers you must first understand what exactly motivation is. Motivation is basically the reason people act and consume, and these behaviors are driven by needs.

Types of Motivation
There are countless reasons why a person might be motivated to perform an action or consumer a product. But for the sake of time and energy we’ll condense them into two main categories: Utilitarian and Hedonic motives. These are directly correlated the ideas addressed in our other Consumer Behavior post about Creating Value in Social Media.

Utilitarian Motives: These are motives in which consumers are driven to accomplish a task.
Social media is a great place to accomplish this. If you want your consumers to engage in your social media platforms they must first have a reason to do so. Why would someone visit your page? What would drive someone to do this? Look at it from a utilitarian aspect- people want free, genuine content from the businesses they follow.  The more you give and produce on your social media page, the more consumers will be inclined to make the first initial visit.

Hedonic Motives: These are motives in which consumers are driven to experience something personally gratifying.
Pursuing the needs of those with hedonic motives through social media can be a little bit more difficult than utilitarian motives.  For this it’s all about providing an experience. Where utilitarian is about providing the customer with what they want, hedonic is more about providing a pleasurable experience while being provided with what they are searching for. This means that your page should be well organized and active. Apply aesthetically pleasing elements to your page is also a major factor in making people feel comfortable and more inclined to participate in your page. Fulfilling hedonic motives is what will keep your consumers coming back and being regular participants.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Perhaps the most popular theory of human motivation in consumer behavior is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The theory is designed to describe needs that consumers address from the most basic to the most extravagant.

Physiological Needs:  Basic necessities for living, food, water, shelter, oxygen

Social Media Aspect: Finding needed information, product news, etc.

Safety Needs: Freedom from harm, financial security

Social Media Aspect: Readily available customer support

Social Needs: Friendship, belonging, love

Social Media Aspect: Interacting with people who also like your page

Personal Needs: Status, respect, prestige

Social Media Aspect: Giving reviews, interacting with your company, etc.

Self-actualization Needs: Self-fulfillment

Social Media Aspect: Obtaining special offers, deals, winning contests, etc.

According to this theory, consumers first seek value by satisfying the most basic needs. A starving person will risk their own safety to eat. They will also find little importance in things that fulfill their personal or self-actualization needs until their lower level needs are met. In contrast, a person whose basic needs are secure will seek to fulfill their more luxury needs. In general, the most basic needs are addressed with utilitarian value while more elaborate needs address hedonic value.

Takeaway
When it comes down to it, understanding what motivates people to do the things they do will ultimately help in your efforts to increase customer participation in your social media efforts. You should be extremely familiar with your target market to narrow down what truly motivates them and make it a center piece in your platforms. In the end it will ultimately help you create and maintain a genuine business page and increase customer engagement. —Evan Blumenthal

The post Consumer Behavior PART THREE: Consumer Motivation in Social Media appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

CURATION
Articles and blog posts are infused with links to different sites which possess more information which can add fuel to an articles fire. Here’s what you need to know about this curation phenomenon?

1. It’s easy: With countless amounts of great information circulating on the Internet, you can find information on almost any topic. With a simple Google search, you can find hundreds of pieces of information that will add some sustenance to your content.

2. Everybody’s doing it: A study was done by social media marketing software provider, Argyle Social, which showed that 30% of the companies that were involved in the study were focused mainly on content curation. Of that 30%, 75% of their content was curation based and linked to third-party websites.

3. Make new friends: The beauty of content curation is that if you play your cards right, you can make some friends on the way. People love having their work mentioned in an article, especially if it referred to as a reliable source. So, every link added can be considered a mini favor which can grow into a good professional relationship (hopefully with perks).

4. Drives conversation: When you add these new pieces of information to your article or post, it encourages people to continue reading about your topic and voice their opinions on it in your comment field. This can leave them with a great impression of you and keep them coming back for more.

5. Popularity is on the rise: Curation is a growing field that is constantly taking on new shapes. It has grown from simple link and article integration to entire websites dedicated to letting their users release their own commerce. And, in some cases, purchase what they curate.

CREATION
One important thing to remember is that although content curation is a great tool for social media, there needs to be a balance between curation and creation. You are representing yourself/your company and your readers want to see what you’re capable of. And collecting information can hinder you from writing your own great content. But in this ADD, information-overload era of instant-information, it may be hard for you to sit and create your own information, right? Here are some easy ways to get started.

1. Use Experts: Asking your audience is helpful, but every now and then your audience is looking for some authority in the matter. There are tons of experts out there on every subject, and most are happy enough to respond to a few questions via e-mail in return for having their name and company linked in your article. Use their quotes to help guide your content and back-up your opinions.

2. Media: Take a moment to troll Flickr’s Creative Commons, RichChartLive or Visual.ly to make or find some graphs or images that will inspire you or substantiate your point. Use these in your article with reference, of course.

3. Polls: Ask your audience for the information you need. Setting up un-biased multiple choice questions can help you create charts and those ever-popular infographics (more on that later). Here are some great ways to poll your audience.

• Google Docs: Believe it or not, you can survey people using Google Docs (it’s a hidden generator). When you are creating a new form, simply add responses to each row you add and when you are done Google Docs will generate a code that you can embed in a page. You’ll be able to track the results from a spreadsheet, visualize the data in Google Docs and you’ll have unlimited space for surveys and more than 1,000 responses.
• Facebook: You all know how to do this. Or you should.
• Twitter: Use Pollowers so that users can share the survey with their followers.
• Google+: Here we have to use a little trick as G+ doesn’t have the ability to do surveys yet (well, they do of course, but they haven’t given us that ability). Simply write your question in your post, quickly comment with with possible answers and even more quickly disable the comments. Now people will +1 their favorite answer choice!
• Misc: Of the thousands of other “free online quiz” creators, we have a few favorites. Quipol is the prettiest, but allows only a “like” or “dislike.” Wufoo is a great simple and customizable option and can even integrate with PayPal or Google Checkout to collect donations or payments. And the best of the rest (if you have money to spend on better plans, even better) is SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo and Surveyz.

The post Curation vs. Creation: Should Your Online Content Be Original? appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

Welcome back to the second installment of Boomtown Internet Group’s Consumer Behavior in Social Media blog posts. For this post we will be discussing the concept of consumer perception and how it plays into the way consumers see, feel, and react to your business’s social media.

Perception IS Reality

This statement means more to marketers than you would think. The idea that a consumer’s perception is a consumer’s reality is something that should always be kept in mind when attending to your company’s social media efforts. Perception is crucial in understanding consumer behavior because what consumers perceive is what affects their actions, even if their perceptions aren’t necessarily true. You may be the greatest company known to man but if your consumer base has a negative perception of your business, you’ll never receive the recognition you deserve.

The Perceptual Process

Every consumer goes through a process comprised of three stages for them to create a perception of something: Exposure, Attention, and Comprehension. Each of these stages plays a unique and equally important role and should be focused on by your company in order for your consumers to be able to form the perception you want them to form.

Exposure: This is the first stage in the perception process and is when the consumer comes into physical contact with a stimulus, whether they come in contact with a link to your page or a search query. This doesn’t necessarily mean they notice stimulus, but you need to make sure that at the very least your product or brand is present for their senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell) to pick up on.

Attention: The second stage is attention. This is essentially the gateway to perception and is when your product or brand has been actually been noticed and information has been recorded by the consumer in some way. They could click on your ad or click on a link to visit your page. Gaining attention can be one of the hardest parts of consumer perception, especially in social media due to the sheer volume of competition on social networks. Here are some ways to enhance attention:

• Intensity
• Movement
• Size
• Contrast
• Surprise
• Involvement

Comprehension/ Interpretation:  As stated above, attention is the gateway to perception. Once you crash through the gateway you must convey something substantial and lasting. Comprehension is the interpretation that a consumer develops about a stimulus in order to assign meaning to it. This means that in the event someone enters your page; make sure they have the information needed to comprehend what your business is all about. If you’re going to have a company page on a social network, don’t host a lifeless, dull page or else consumers may form a negative perception of your company. Interpretation is constructed as needed based on two major factors: The “actual” stimulus and prior expectations.

*Note that perception is constructive so most people construct interpretations on the fly.

How Consumers Perceive

When it comes down to it, consumers see and hear what they expect to see and hear. The world is chock full of stimuli. So much that it is impossible for any one person to perceive them all. Consumers tend to only select the things that are favorable and important to them and ignore the rest. They also tend to only see what fits with their general beliefs and stereotypes.

Coincidentally, consumers do this to help them form classifications of stimuli. This is called categorization. Categorization allows consumers to make assumptions and inferences about your company. Considering these behaviors should help feature your company on social media.  You can up-play or down-play the categories your consumers place you in within their perception depending if you feel it accurately depicts your business.

Perceptual Maps

When positioning your brand or company in social media it is always a wise decision to create a perceptual map. Perceptual maps allow you to see how consumers perceive your brand versus competing brands.  These can be very useful when developing a social media strategy and help serve a variety of functions.

• Identifying competitive advantages- Assess how your competitors’ social media compares to yours; is it more or less aesthetically appealing, is there more or less unique, compelling content, etc.
• Assessing potential markets- Comparing and contrasting social media presence, identifying available apps, etc.
•  Plotting important consumer factors- Finding what consumers like and dislike about social media and catering your page as such

Takeaway

When utilizing social media as a marketing strategy, you have to understand how consumers perceive the world around them. Remember, PERCEPTION IS REALITY from a consumer standpoint and using this to your advantage will help further your presence and relevance online. Being able to play against a consumer’s perception of your company will ultimately help with marketing to them in the future. –Evan Blumenthal

The post Consumer Behavior PART TWO: Consumer Perception in Social Media appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

1. Plant your idea
2. Build a community around that idea
3. Nurture your community
4. Be genuine

Plant Your Idea

This seems like one of the easiest steps out of the fantastic four, but it’s really not. One of the most difficult parts of a social media campaign is figuring out where to begin. You can have the greatest idea in the world, one that could revolutionize our very existence, but if you don’t tell the right people about it, your amazing idea can become just as popular as a movie of the week. When trying to figure out how to market your product or brand, look at your audience. Figure out who needs what you’re offering, where they can be found and plant your idea.

Build Your Community

Once you’ve found your audience, it’s time to get them all talking about you. Release the latest news about your company via your social media platforms, making sure that the right people can see what you’re talking about. Try different methods of displaying your content, and shake it up every once in a while. No one wants to read the same tweet in 100 different ways. Make sure that your content is easily accessible and, no matter what platform you use, don’t over-do it. Too much of a good thing becomes an annoyance.

Nurture Your Community

The interesting thing about the social media world is that the less attention you pay to people, the less attention you receive. When interacting with other people over the web, you should always represent your brand in the best way possible, obviously. But you also have to remember that the people who follow your social media platforms don’t want to be treated like just another Twitter handle or “Like” on your brands’ page. They want to know that they matter and that you truly care about their business.

Be Genuine

Customers and followers’ want to know that the people behind their favorite brands actually care about them and their input. Whether it’s an occasional retweet or even a random reply, any and every interaction that you have should be sincere. No one wants to hear a generic response about how your brand “prides itself on customer service and grade ‘A’ service.” They want to see that you’re actually paying attention to the things that they say.

At the End of the Day…

It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is, how many interns you have tweeting for you, or how many discounts you offer your followers. If you don’t make your followers feel like they matter, then it won’t really matter how much you try to push your content. It will end up fading in to infinite space, just like the beginning credits of Star Wars. As long as you show your caring side and remember that your community is just as important as your product or brand, then maybe one day you will become your own social media Jedi Master. —Alexis Madison

The post Becoming a Jedi Master of Social Media appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

Nowadays anyone can go online and run through the process of creating a company page on a social network, yet we see those who do this without grasping the reasoning behind it. It takes a little more application to understand WHY and HOW a company should use social media to market themselves to their consumer base. This is the first of a series SMO blog posts Boomtown will be doing in an effort to shed a little light on the concept of Consumer Behavior. Today’s area of focus is: Creating Value in Social Media.

The Heart and Soul of Marketing: Value
Marketing, as defined by the American Marketing Association, is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” In other words, it’s about creating one thing: Value.

Value is what every consumer ultimately pursues in an effort to address their needs and wants. From a consumer standpoint, value is essentially Benefits Vs. Costs: “what they get” from “what they have to give.”  This should always be kept in mind when using social media as a marketing tool. Consumers endure very little costs when involving themselves in social media, but this is by no means an excuse for your page to just merely exist. It is necessary to be actively providing benefits on your page as an easy way to create value for your customers.

While theoretically, value can be broken down into a wide spectrum of specific types, the main and most effective types of value to focus on in your social media page are Utilitarian value and Hedonic value.

Utilitarian Value: derived from a product or service that helps the consumer solve problems and accomplish tasks.

When utilitarian value is the primary motive, consumers usually offer a rational explanation of why something is purchased. For example: When one of your consumers looks at your page and reads a post explaining tips and tricks to use for SMO, they are most likely trying to either learn more about it or trying to help improve their business. Obviously the post provides the information they were looking for and helps them with their future endeavors. Being provided with this new found knowledge is gratifying to your consumer. In essence, utilitarian value can be seen as a means to an end.

Hedonic Value: the immediate gratification that comes from experiencing some activity.

With hedonic value, the value received is provided entirely from the actual experience and emotions associated with consumption, not because some other end is or will be accomplished. For instance, a consumer visits your company page and they happen upon an entertaining video you posted or a fun survey/poll you created. Seldom does one look at pictures you posted in an effort to get a job done, yet features like these provide value that is emotional and subjective in nature and is an end in and of itself rather than a means to an end.

Naturally, the best consumer experiences are those that provide both high utilitarian and high hedonic value. In this sense, if it is possible to help your consumers accomplish a task while also providing entertainment you should do so.  Don’t hesitate to add that extra functional element or fun piece in your page because it’s those added benefits that will allow your customers to see the real value in participating in your social network.

Total Value Concept
Every product’s value is made up of the basic benefits, plus the augmented product, plus the “feel” benefits. A company must understand and implement all the ways their product offers value to its consumers. The same works for social media.

When a consumer “Likes” your page they now have access to all the basic benefits that go along with it. Make sure that they have access to a steady stream of posts, videos, updates, photos, events, etc. In addition to these basic benefits they also now have access to the augmented product (the original product plus all the extra things needed to increase the value for consumption). These could be anything from deals to coupons or to anything else they can’t access without “Liking” your page. Finally they acquire the “feel” benefits. These benefits are attained through things like additions to their own social network, becoming a part of someone else’s network, access to experts and others with the same interests as them, etc.

In sum, a company needs to operate with the understanding that products provide value in multiple ways. Take a look at a post written by The Harvard Business Review explaining how to create value on the digital frontier. Use this to your advantage and provide as much value as you can to your consumers through your business page.

What Influences Value: Internal vs. External
Every consumer must decide to do something before they can receive value. Knowing what influences your consumers is critical to understanding their behavior. There are many factors that influence the receiving of value and these factors can be divided into two categories: Internal and External.

Internal Influences: All the things that go inside the heart and mind of the consumer or that can be thought of as part of the consumer. Internal influences are comprised of the cognitive and affective factors in any individual consumer; the way they think and feel about a particular product, service, or idea.

External Influence: The social and cultural aspects of life as a consumer. External influences directly impact the value of activities although the influence comes from sources outside of the consumer including social and situational factors.

Value is What We Aim For
In the end, creating the maximum about of value for your consumers is what you should be aiming for when using social media as a marketing tool. Value is what your consumers are seeking and they look to you to provide it for them. If you are able to understand your consumer and fit your social media page to their needs and wants you will ultimately be able to develop a better marketing strategy. Depending on the amount and type of value you provide can have lasting effects on the quality of the relationship you have with your customers. Value has great influence over switching behaviors, customer loyalty, customer share, and satisfaction. So if you are maintaining a company page on any of the social networks, be sure that your main objective is creating value for your consumers. —Evan Blumenthal

The post What Makes Consumers Tick PART ONE: Creating Value in Your SMO appeared first on Boomtown Internet Group.

• This strategy will focus only on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn first.
• Optimize all the company social profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter by editing them and adding search terms related to your services wherever possible. Make sure that the business Facebook and Twitter pages have a good professional layout.
• Write as many (minimum four) blog posts each month, concentrating on your services and focusing on the search phrases that would bring potential clients to your website.

• These posts should automatically appear on your social profiles using a plugin in the wordpress blog. So please add plugins on your Blog so that every time you blog post it will be posted on all your other social websites.

• Make sure that your employees subscribe to the most popular groups on Facebook and LinkedIn  (i.e. both groups that are in your field, and groups that encompass your target audience’s interests.)
• Post links to your blog posts on LinkedIn & Facebook Groups and places them wherever you can get expose. You may also answer questions about the posts on these groups.
• Try to find questions related to Your Services and post Answers to these – these will occur in groups not having anything to do with your interests in some cases.  Look for groups where your potential clients may have joined. Some Answers might not help you get customers, but they will help to increase the status of your employee’s profiles in these groups.
• Create a spreadsheet listing potential groups, complete with notes and links for future reference.
• Consider having each person choose several groups (3-5) they’d like to receive regular updates for (emails) and contribute to regularly.  Or designate one employee as the group monitor so he/she can designate tasks to other team members.  This can be time saving, especially for the monitor who can divvy out tasks based on members’ areas of expertise.
• Find related blog posts using “Google Alerts” and manually post your comments there. It might be that you need to answer repeatedly to gain a reputation on that blog.
• Find related forums and Yahoo Q&A, where people ask questions about your services and answer them.
• Every task should be done using a legitimate name and profile only (don’t make up a fake ID to do this work).
• Twitter: at the beginning of every month, have your employees write several Tweets each (enough so you can tweet twice or three times a day) and compile them using a tool like Hootsuite.com, then schedule them to be tweeted throughout the month.
• When sending out your newsletter, summarize the blog post and link to it.  This way the content of your newsletter will stay on your site.  All the blog posts will also have the share buttons for your social media on them as well.
• Optimize off-page – “Find us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” on business cards, brochures, posters, vehicles, etc.

Weekly Task Schedule:

• On Monday write at least one blog post.
• On Tuesday concentrate on getting fans and followers on each of these profiles. Your target should be 200 fans on FaceBook Page, 1000 followers on twitter and 100 Fans on Linkedin company profile:
• Connect with 5 current or former business associates.
• You should add links to your social profiles on your website.
• Suggest all employees, friends, and relatives follow these profiles.
• Create an incentive to join these profiles – you can blog about the incentive.
• Join related groups and post links to these profiles with the incentive.
• On Wednesday join 3 new groups on LinkedIn and Facebook and post links to your blog on these groups.  Now go to the Answers section and answer two questions.
• On Thursday and Friday start a discussion in each group you are a member of.  Each discussion should have a link back to your website to a page where people give their email address to download a white paper or article. Make sure you tell them that you can email them in the future. Aim to be a member of 20 groups.
• Review Progress and revise plan for next week.

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