How to be effective with social media

Google+ (for personal accounts) is shutting down due to the challenges in creating and maintaining a successful Google+ social networking page to meet users’ expectations.

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Whether your business serves your local community or your customers are come from around the country or the world, we all know that Google Plus Business Pages are important.

It can be a slightly daunting prospect to set up your Google pages, so today we're sharing an excellent instructional video from Plus Your Business.

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For many small businesses, social media is not the place for in-your-face sales pitches, rather, it’s the place where companies build their brand and connect with a new audience. Drop the notion that Twitter, Facebook et-al are going to open the floodgates to direct sales (or leads), and you’re likely to get a lot more from those channels.

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Understandably, I still get a high degree of indifference from some clients whenever I mention the likes of Twitter or Facebook (with Twitter taking the cake). If you don't understand something, sometimes it's a natural reaction to shy away from a subject or dismiss it entirely as "irrelevant" or "stupid". I believe that most of that indifference is fear-based.

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If you're itching to learn about Twitter or to perhaps assess the viability of Twitter for your small business, then this article is for you. What I will show you is how to become an everyday Twitter user, and how to actually enjoy your time using it. Here's what you need to do:

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A report published this week suggested that you forget search engines or manufacturer's websites as ways to drive traffic to your online shop or website. Instead, it suggests, consumers of today are researching products in new ways, albeit with an old-fashioned twist: they're asking their friends first.

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Am I the only retail shopper who's grown tired of retailers asking me to 'Like' or 'Follow' them without reason, reward or incentive? Are you an online retailer who's social marketing "request" is ignored on the basis that "everyone else is doing it too"? Your customers and passers-by need a reason to stop what they're doing, log in to their account to 'Like' or 'Follow' you.

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In her acceptance speech for the Best Actress Oscar in 1984, Sally Field famously said “You like me, right now, you like me!”. We want to be liked, it’s nice to be liked but, until now, there hasn’t been a way to quantify all that liked-ness.

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In my last article I talked about the differences between Social Media and Traditional Media and the importance of choosing the way you communicate through these channels. I’m going to continue in that vain with an example of how it’s done.

Just over three years ago Jasmine Star dropped out of Law School to become a Wedding Photographer. Although a keen photographer, she had no real professional experience, but had just been married herself and loved the idea of working on the other side of her wedding photographer’s lens.

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It is just a few short years ago that the term ‘Social Media’ was confined to sociology labs and textbooks. Today, of course, Social Media is something that pervades just about every part of our lives, from family and relationships through to shopping and the way we get our news. People interact in the social media cloud hundreds of times a day. Some even prefer to communicate via social media than in a more conventional way, i.e. talking, and there's no doubt that social media is the new way to make friends and influence people.

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