Do you want to ramp up engagement on your social media right now? Chances are you are not alone. A lot of online entrepreneurs just like you are continually seeking for creative ways to improve their social media marketing efforts.

At MACs Women’s Group, we heap on research everyday, listening to podcasts and reading plenty of articles and ebooks written by successful business people across different industries, so that we can provide our valued readers with helpful tips that can empower them to become more successful.

That said, here are 8 quick tips that you can put into action right away to increase the effectiveness of your social media activities.

1. Offer great content

Keep offering quality content, always. When it comes to building a strong social media presence, everything boils down to offering great content. From Facebook status updates and tweets, to Pinterest images and blog posts, give your audience the best possible content you can create.

2. Be interesting and interested

Being interesting to your followers on Twitter or Facebook is only half the job. Showing them that you are genuinely interested about their lives, the problems that they are dealing with everyday and their wonderful stories could be more important.

3. Tell inspiring stories

The best marketing is telling stories that inspire people.

4. Share interesting links

If you find a link to an article that you think can help your readers, don’t hesitate to share it. A HubSpot study shows that tweets containing a helpful link gets more retweets than tweets without it.

5. Use call to action buttons

Tell your readers what to do next after reading your posts or other social media updates. Call to action like “leave a comment below”, “share this”, “click here to learn more”, et cetera will encourage more conversion or engagement.

6. Ask a question

At the end of your post, ask the readers a preferably open-ended question. This is a very effective way to start a conversation or a lively exchange of ideas from your readers.

7. Treat your followers with great pictures

As mentioned on a previous post, a great visual strategy is the secret sauce to a successful social media marketing campaign. We gave you our top three image strategies. In case you missed it, here is the link to that article. Enjoy!

8. Update your social media accounts regularly

Another crucial key to your social media success is consistency. Be consistent with the updates on all of your social media pages. Establish constant communication with your target audience. Grow your online community and keep the momentum going.

Have a good social media management plan. Create an engaging content strategy and entice your audience to keep coming back for more.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Your social media pages, when utilized properly, can be a very rich source of pre-qualified leads. The more people you connect with and engage in on various social networks, the greater your opportunities of turning those engagements into something profitable for your business.

But expanding one’s social media presence still remains a challenge for many organizations. Some don't just have the time, while others seem to have exhausted all their strategies and efforts getting new likes on Facebook or more followers on Twitter.

MACs Women can help you with that. Read on below our proven tips on how to increase your brand awareness and build a strong social media presence.

Join a virtual community

Be a part of a growing community of entrepreneurs in your chosen industry. Follow social media groups and related pages that have similar target audience. Introduce yourself, share information or bounce off ideas with members of the group.

Put social media buttons on your web pages

Incorporate social media buttons seamlessly into the overall design of your site. This won’t only help promote your social media pages but also allows your readers to easily share your new articles, blog posts, or sales pages.

It also works wonder on your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, giving the liked, shared or tweeted pages social media signals that would help improve their rankings on Google and other major search engines.

Integrate social media in your newsletter

Next time you send a newsletter to your email list, be sure to include your social media links. They are usually put at the bottom of the email to remind readers that you are also active on various social networks, and they can also join your there and learn more about your business.

Cross-promote your social media pages

Promote your pages to your existing community. If you have a large following on Twitter, entice them to also join you on Facebook or Pinterest, and vice versa. All your social media pages should be cross-promoting and linking to each other.

Hire a social media pro

If you are too busy with the core tasks of your business, then you should definitely hire a professional to handle all the social media aspects of your business. Find a highly skilled specialist to build a strong presence and reach out to your potential customers on the internet.

For all your social media management needs, check out MACs Women Online Services page.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Are you wondering why some people are more successful in social media than others? They have more followers on Twitter. People talk about them on Facebook, or interview them and feature them on blogs and social media forums.

If you look at what they are doing, you see them working just as hard as you, using similar tools and strategies to market their business on social media.

Yet again, why is it that they are more successful than you?

The thing is, if you look closer at what they are doing, you will notice that they use a much different approach. It’s actually a game-changing approach that makes a lot of people on social media unable to resist them.

That said, here are 11 smart ways that can make your business more enticing on social media:

1. Build a community. Connect with like-minded individuals. Find those people who are interested in your business, and who wants to achieve what you want to achieve. They are your tribe and focus your time and efforts on them.

2. Establish relationships. Cultivate a relationship with your audience. This will take time and due-diligence. If you are planning to launch a new product or service, be sure to build relationships with your target audience ideally six months before you start your pitch.

3. Meet them in person. Invite one of your followers for a cup of coffee and share stories with her.

4. Compliment an outstanding individual on your Facebook, Twitter or via email.

5. Feature one or two of them on your blog. Write a positive blog post about a member of your community, highlighting one of her successful stories and email her the link.

6. Leave a comment. If you see picture or read an article that you genuinely like, let them know by leaving a nice comment.

7. Respond to comments. If it’s possible respond to all their comments. You may have read of a story about a very successful female entrepreneur and social media influencer who replies to all the comments from her audience on Facebook, Twitter or her blog.

8. Email frequent commenter(s) for feedback. This will show your avid readers and commenters that you value their opinion. This will also deepen your relationship with them.

9. Listen to your audience. This way you will be able to gain more understanding of their perspective and individual needs, which can also help you create a product or a service that can solve their problem or make their life easier.

10. Do a random act of kindness. Offer someone a free pass to your next paid event. Give away a consulting package to someone who deserves it. Or just help out one of your followers.

11. Hold a contest. Offer the winners with a valuable prize and feature them on your Facebook page or blog.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Pinterest is one of the hottest, traffic-boosting social media tools right now. If you haven’t used it to market and gain wider brand exposure for your business, you are missing out on a lot of great opportunities out there. Besides, it’s very easy and fun to use. 

With Pinterest, you can build a stronger brand presence online and connect with your customers using appealing visual images like infographics, tweetables and other online collages.

Below are 7 smart ways to integrate Pinterest into your content marketing and daily social media activities.

1. Set up a Pinterest account. For maximum exposure, make sure to feature the name of your business on the profile. It would be best to use the name of your company as your username. Add a short and sweet paragraph about your business in the “About” section.

2. Put the URL of your website in the profile. This is very important for your audience to immediately know where to find you and know more about your business. It also helps your SEO efforts.

Also, connect your other social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter to your Pinterest. This will help you gain more followers.

3. Start pinning. Pin lots of stuff. Create your unique images with inspiring messages. Pin steadily to maximize engagement and wider exposure. Come up with interesting and enticing board names. If people like them, your pins will get shared and you gain more followers. Keep your board names short and creative.

4. Promote your upcoming events. If you’re hosting an event or webinar, create a separate board just for promoting your events and introduce it to your audience. Use a well-designed image that contains the essential information such:

• Name of the event, date and venue
  
• The speakers
  
• Topics, special activities and workshops included
  
• Sponsors
  
  

5. Comment on other people’s pins. If you see an interesting pin that you really like, let the pinner know about it by leaving a nice comment. This will result to some conversations that may also lead people to check out your own collection of pins.

You can also tag other Pinterest users when you comment or pin an image that relates to their organization. Use the “@username” tags in your description.

6. Check for new trends on Pinterest. Be sure to check what’s trending on Pinterest by clicking on the Popular section. You will find new pinners that you may like to follow. Most importantly, you will find new trends that you may want to incorporate into your content strategy.

7. Create beautiful images. You have to keep in mind that Pinterest is very successful because of beautiful images. The more interesting and prettier your pictures, the more pins and followers you will get.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Internet marketers love Seth Godin for his brilliant ideas, and good sense of humor. His best-selling books and talks on marketing and other business-related topics have inspired a lot of business people, from top executives and entrepreneurs, down to the lowest ranks in the marketing department.

Seth Godin also blogs regularly to offer readers insightful articles, links to interesting articles, and astute observations of current events, covering everything in the business world from marketing and customer behavior, growing a tribe, to life in general.

Although he doesn't write much about social media, he gives us excellent tips that are highly applicable to everyday situations we have been dealing with in the social media world.

With that, here are our three favorite Seth Godin takeaways that you can use today to succeed in social media:

1. Be remarkable

You can’t simply afford not to. Seth called it the “purple cow” and wrote a book about it. The core of the book says that traditional marketing is no longer working. If you want to get the marketing message across, you have to be remarkable. Use proven strategies like visual social media to connect with your audience.

If you haven’t yet read Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, do yourself a favor and read it.

2. Focus on your precise market

Find your tribe, build and cultivate them. It all starts with finding your precise target audience. Countless of people are populating various social media venues. You don’t want all of them. Just look for your target market that needs your business and focus your time and efforts on connecting with them, establishing relationships, and offering them something of value.

3. Don’t be afraid to test out your ideas

The most effective way to become a lot better with using social media is by simply doing it.  Keep doing it as often as you can. Don’t hesitate to put your ideas out there and see what happens. It’s a great way of learning from the proverbial trial and error.

Testing out new ideas is the best way to know what works or what doesn't for your business.

Final thoughts

It goes without saying, Seth Godin did not become one of the greatest marketing minds in America overnight. It took years and years of studying, testing out ideas and working hard to master his craft.

Today, he has written several best-selling books, appeared in videos and business conventions, showing the world the tested path to achieving success.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

A great visual strategy plays a crucial role in amplifying engagement with your social media audience. If you want to get more from all your social media activities on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, utilizing eye-catching image strategies is the best place to start.

According to a recent HubSpot study, a status update on Facebook that comes with an appropriate image generates 53% more engagement or response from fans or friends. This same technique also applies to other popular social media platforms like Twitter, Tumblr, and most especially, Pinterest.

With that said, if you are already integrating this strategy into your social media updates, you are on the right track. If not, then you should definitely consider doing it starting with the three proven image strategies below.

1. Tweetable

When you update Twitter or Facebook in the morning, or whenever you manage your social media during the day, use a tweetable image that goes along with your message. You will more likely get more Retweets, Likes or Shares from your followers and friends.

Creating a tweetable image is fun and easy to do once you get into it. You just need a nice image, then a message or an inspiring quote that you can add unto the image using the Paint tool on your computer, or Photoshop, or other photo editing tools.

If you have designing skills, you can come up with your own design rather than just grabbing and recycling existing photos from the web.

2. Sneak peek image

You have to always remember that the people on social media are primarily using it to have fun and connect with their family members and friends. They also use it to interact with other people they admire or care about.

A sneak peek image about what you’re doing right now in your business, offers you a great way to connect with your fans and followers on Twitter and Facebook on a more personal level.

3. Call-to-action image

Don’t just tell your fans or followers to do this or that. Be more creative when showing them the steps you want them to do - use  an eye-catching image as your call-to-action. Post an image that asks your friends and followers to share, comment or like.

Start treating your target audience with great social media images today! For all your social media management needs, contact us now!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Many business owners spend a lot of their marketing budget pursuing new customers relentlessly. They are so busy marketing their brand, meeting new clients and creating new products that they tend to neglect those little things that can also make a huge impact on business growth.

At MACs Women’s Group, we encourage each and everyone to pay a little bit more attention to seemingly insignificant aspects of their business that can make a huge difference in sales and repeat business ratios.

Here are the six of them:

1. Show appreciation

Be appreciative and lavish with praise not only to customers, but also to the people working on your team. Let them know they play a very significant part of your success. Show them how much you appreciate their decision for choosing your business, especially for their ongoing patronage and support.

Sending them a simple yet heartfelt ‘thank you’ email would be a good start.

2. Encourage feedback

Entrepreneurs love to talk more than to listen. If you want to sell more and get the most of every client-facing opportunity, listen more and gain a better understanding of your customer’s perspective.

Encourage feedback from customers. Ask them about their experience using your business, and what you can do to offer a much better product or service in the future.

3. Be proactive

You can’t, of course, please everyone, which is completely fine. As Bill Cosby says: "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." Whenever someone contacts you to express unhappiness or dissatisfaction after using your business, stay proactive. This way you will be able to see every complaint as an opportunity to improve on a product/service or as a customer service learning experience.

Take note of particular things that have caused dissatisfaction in your clients. Correct the problem and make necessary improvements.

4. Offer a great customer experience

Again, the best example when it comes to offering great customer experience is Zappos. The company really puts into action its “delivering happiness” mantra with tremendous success.

Customers love them and talk about their great online shopping experience to their family and friends, resulting in more potential buyers checking out their online business.

Use user-friendly language and simplify the buying process on your website. The easier it is for customers to do business with you online, the more likely they will buy from you or refer your business to others.

5. Keep customers happy

If you offer real value and deliver on your promise, customers will be happy and satisfied. And when they are happy and satisfied, you will, in effect, attract more people to your business. Another great thing with keeping your customers happy is that it could significantly impact your repeat business ratios.

6. Motivate your team

Meet with your team regularly. Share your short-term and long-term goals with them. Recognize their contribution to your business growth and provide appropriate compensation for their hard work.

Final thoughts

Progressive female entrepreneurs always look for creative ways to grow their business. Ideally, they want to run a business that offers the best product or service to customers, going beyond what the competitors are offering.

Get started today by taking those simple steps everyday that can hugely impact the profitable growth of your online business!

The marketing guru, Seth Godin, once said that if you want to succeed right now, you have to be remarkable. With today’s level of competition, especially on the internet, with everybody hustling for everybody’s attention, you can’t afford not to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

If you want to beat the competition, strive for uniqueness and be memorable to your target audience. Because if you don’t, Seth Godin added, your target audience will go to someone else who is.

Yet again, standing out online is easier said than done. That’s when business motivators like Seth Godin and MACS Women’s Group come into the picture. We are here to help you become more successful in business.

That said, here are four proven ways that could make your online small business a lot better than your competitors.

Know what makes you stand out
All businesses, in some ways, are unique. If you’re building a strong presence online, whether you’re offering a service or selling a product, the first crucial step to take is to determine what makes your business unique from others, and then milk it.

Women entrepreneurs who recognize that early in their business become more successful, and eventually separate themselves from the pack.

Establish your brand
Be specific about who you are. Do you want to establish a brand known for motivating and offering innovative resource for progressive business women? That’s us, the MACS Women’s Group.

Want your company to be known for its impeccable online customer service? Be like Zappos.

Or do you want your business organization to hold that special distinction for treating their customers with compassion? Then be like L.L. Bean.

How your target market perceives your business will create your own unique marketing story, which you can then use to your advantage.

Offer a high-perceived value proposition
Show customers what real benefits they get from using your business, most preferably those huge benefits that they don’t get from your competitors. Be creative with your selling proposition, and you will more likely attract more potential customers to buy from you.

Be everywhere
Everyone knows Donald Trump, right? Okay, somebody from Nunavuk, Canada, doesn’t know him. But you will never know. Even his hair is now very famous. If the Trump has new business projects, people will immediately know about it.

Goes without saying, the Trump brand is almost everywhere – offline and online. You may like or not like Donald Trump. By the “Be everywhere” strategy he’s known for surely  works like magic.

So what’s stopping you from utilizing all the tools available at your disposal to connect to your market? 

Start reaching out to your target audience using different social media channels. Harness the viral power of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other popular social media. Create some buzz about your products or services.

Kickstart the growth of your online small business today! Need support and implementation options, we have social media solutions to help you grow and MACs-imize your brand using social media. Click here for investment options. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michelle Christie is a business consultant based in Westchester, New York. She focuses on helping small business owners harness the power of social media to build and strengthen the relationship with their customers online. Michelle is the founder of Motivators and Creators Women's Group a professional membership organization for new and established business women interested in business networking, learning and achieving positive business results.

Stay connected with Michelle on:

Sufficient research is one of the crucial keys to a successful business. Even an all-inclusive and well-budgeted campaign can fail if you don’t have an in-depth understanding of your target market, your competitors, and the current industry trends.

Here are some tips on how you can gain a better understanding of your market and competitors:

Heap on research

From identifying your top competitors to determining the most effective method to reach your target customers, investing in market research can have a significant impact on the overall growth and success of your business.

You can do market research through:

• Market surveys (both online and offline)
• Attending business events and conferences
• Observation of industry trends and patterns
• Reading industry publications
• Surfing the internet
• Becoming a member of a business organization
• Joining social organizations where your target audience are members of
• Employing a third party agency that specializes in market research and surveys to do the research for you

You can try different research methods and then choose one that gives you the best possible outcome. Ultimately, the information and data you gathered can be used as the framework of all your marketing campaigns.

Check out your competition

Know who your competitors are and what they’re doing, what they’re offering and how they do their sales process.Take note of the things that make them standout and do something to make yours unique and/or better.

Here are some questions that can help you assess your competitors:

• Are the products they’re offering of higher quality?
• Do they have excellent customer service?
• Are their marketing campaigns more attractive?
• Are their prices significantly lower?

You must compare your business to theirs and find out whether there are things that you can improve on. These kinds of information can surely get you fired up!

Learn from the experience of others

Real experiences from successful entrepreneurs can help you be more prepared when you’re finally in the field. Find out who are the respected business experts and role models in your industry. Read about them, and learn how they do it.

Your sources can include:

• Business media
• Top entrepreneurs today who were able to make their ideas happen
• Marketers and business specialists who know what they’re doing
• Successful business owners belonging to the same industry as yours

Borrow their best ideas and decide on how you can best utilize them for your business.

The more you know about your target market & competitors, the more effective your marketing efforts will be.

Do you already have a small business lead generation campaign in place? If you haven’t got a plan laid out yet, I suggest you get started now. Below are 5 top tips to help you get started.

1. Always stay hungry for new customers
   
   Remember that your ultimate goal is to grow your business. You can’t realize this if you just rely on existing customers. Create more business opportunities by investing in marketing plans and online lead generation campaigns that are focused on getting new clients. 
   
   
2. Always come up with strong and fresh marketing message
   
   Do not use last year’s marketing message word for word. You can recycle marketing copies that worked, but make sure to kick in some extra lines or two to make them sound fresh and new to your customers. 
   
   
3. Stand out
   
   You have to make sure that potential customers remember your business brand or the company itself.  Find creative ways that would make the name of your business stick to your customer’s mind. One way to do this is by offering them quality content that's of value to them, maybe it's an informative article on how they can improve their business or a shareable social media material that they can easily grab and share to their network.
   
   
4. Never forget your call-to-actions
   
   Your call-to-action is the gold magnet of your website. You have to tactfully direct your customers to do whatever it is you want them to do – sign up for membership, buy your products, register for services, etc. The point is, get them to act!
   
   
5. Walk the talk
   
   Don’t just tell your customers why they should continue buying your products or using your services, show them. Give them solid proof why doing business with you is a smart choice.

Final Thoughts

Lay out your marketing and online lead generation plans carefully and make 2013 the best year for your business. Start filling your sales pipeline. Get cracking!