As our techy, analytical minds race with optimization strategy and tactics, our prospect sits across the conference room slowly losing focus. The key to avoiding this type of an ill-fated situation: speak English. While that comment was surely laced with sarcasm, the underlying meaning is indeed accurate. SEO jargon is not common language. Normal minds simply do not process these kinds of technical terms. As such, we chose 10 terms that are not only frequently used, but hold substantial weight in “making the sale”. The words that follow the terms below may be an advantageous technique to easing your prospects into the complex world of SEO.

1. Anchor Text: quite literally, the text of a link visible to the user. Search engines use this to signify relevancy to both the referring site and the landing page of the link.

2. Bounce Rate: how long people are staying on your site. You want this to be a low percentage.

3. Google’s Algorithm: how search results are determined.

4. Link Building: actively encouraging incoming links to your site.

5. Long-Tail Keywords: long search queries, a large percentage of searches usually fall under this category.

6. Nofollow: a command that instructs robots not to index a page or specific link, we try to circumvent this in link building strategy.

7. Page Rank: a value between 0 and 1 given by the Google algorithm that indicates popularity and trust.

8. Pay-per-click (PPC): advertisement plan where advertisers pay organizations (Google) whenever a user clicks an ad.

9. SEO: search engine optimization, the complex process of tactics all geared towards achieving a high rank in search engines.

10. SERP: search engine results page, yes, it’s as simple as that.

A slight modification to your general client acquisition approach can prove to be incredibly fruitful. Before your next meeting with a prospect, make a conscious effort to use regular, everyday language.

New Epic Media takes complex SEO concepts and a brand strategy to formulate a winning blend of reach, lead generation, and sales! Call us today to learn more about expanding your web presence.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Mark Zuckerberg stood in front of a camera to address his audience once a week? It sure would be, but we won’t hold our breath. SEOmoz provides a treasured set of free SEO tools, every single week. Free and weekly? Yes and yes. But most importantly, the one and only Rand is the host of these weekly sessions. SEO basics for the beginners, advanced knowledge for the seasoned SEO expert, and even predictions to prepare for expected trends in the market. We appreciate the knowledge, advice, and consistency that Rand provides for his followers.

As a true member of the SEO community, Rand is familiar and accessible. He is “one of us” and that is what makes Whiteboard Friday as beneficial as it has been since its launch. We have compiled a list of our top 5 recent Whiteboard Fridays. Take a look and don’t miss out on this week’s edition.

1. “All About Anchor Text”: on the surface this is an all too familiar subject, but Rand takes it a step further, sharing the intricacies that are commonly overlooked.

2. “Advanced On-Page Optimization”: the key is relevant and unique content; Rand takes you there by moving past traditional methods and towards forward-thinking tactics.

3. “How to Increase the Odds of Your Content Going Viral”: social shares and mentions are driving a significant portion of web traffic today. Rand does an excellent job of painting a clear picture into the viral game.

4. “I’m Being Outranked by a Spammer”: amongst one of the most frustrating parts of SEO, Rand takes time to describe spam issues. This is great example of how Rand puts things into SEO perspective, helping to point out the big picture.

5. “Google’s ‘Freshness’ Update”: besides being on the forefront of any and all Google developments, Rand also shows here how he brings in necessary resources. Mike from Publicis in New York lends his hand in this one.

For the Record
Facebook’s S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission included more than 150 pages of what displayed a true portrayal of the company and its revenues. In contrast to the majority of companies who have gone public, Facebook outdoes much of its Silicon Valley competition as among the most established, seasoned organizations to file. Earning $1 billion in profits last year, Facebook reveals that this social giant has been profitable for the past three years. In fact, Mr. Zuckerberg has a beautiful private jet to traverse the country and spend his 28% share of the company. But in true Zuckerberg fashion, he insists that his vision still trounces his monetary goals. Mark will continue his attempt to make the world a more open and connected place to live. Undoubtedly, he says it best, “we don’t build services to make money. We make money to build better services”.

A Forthcoming Public Facebook
Facebook ads, a killed culture, registration charges, membership fees? Hold your horses, no need to post some angry rant to Facebook just yet. When a company files for an IPO, changes are inevitable. But let’s not forget with whom we are dealing in this situation. We believe that Facebook, a company hell-bent on conserving its culture, will hold on tightly to its original mission. Registration fees and constant ploys to drain money from its members spoil our supposed “open and connected world”. So, how can Facebook do it? How can they remain profitable once new membership slows (an unavoidable occurrence), while maintaining their mission to make the world more open and connected?

Facebook advertisements and Facebook games will fill the social champion’s profitability bucket. First and foremost, it is imperative to understand the Facebook ad concept before getting all hot and bothered. The company has ingeniously provided this video about advertising on Facebook to ease the minds of crazed, anti-advertising members. Don’t have time to watch? Simply put, Facebook only targets ads to relevant users. If for some reason the ad is irrelevant, a lack of click should prevent the reappearance of that ad. Currently, Facebook accounts for almost one-third of the online-display ad market and the world hasn’t ended. So, fear not.

Finally, an article about Facebook’s IPO would be incomplete without the mention of Zynga. Zynga makes the online games that are predominantly played on Facebook. Are there dollar signs in your eyes yet? There should be. The potential for Zynga to soar is largely dependent on Facebook, considering 12% of Facebook’s revenues came from this video game provider. It will be interesting to see how Facebook and Zynga couple from here forward to ensure profitability on both ends.

Following Facebook’s IPO, enthusiasm will still tower. Whether the company will trade on Nasdaq and the NYSE matters little, because when the ticker symbol finally says “FB”, the world will be able to share their feelings with each other. And that ability to share can be attributed to Mr. Zuckerberg achieving his mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”.

1. Ad groups are highly targeted
2. Ad copy for each ad group is highly relevant
3. Landing page split testing to measure results

But beyond common objectives, individual marketing strategies, and PPC success factors, we must pay close attention to the direction of the 2012 SEO trends. Through industry research and our own predictions, we foresee a significant push in mobile, local, and social PPC. Nearly one third of all incoming web traffic stems from paid search; let’s get it right in 2012.

Mobile PPC in 2012
The potential for early adopters of mobile PPC marketing is enormous. Some SEO professionals even predict that mobile searches will surpass desktop searches by the end of 2013. Regardless of your mobile PPC campaign, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website. With that said, we did an experiment to discover just how much traffic is coming from mobile devices. Using advanced segments to slice organic traffic sources, it became clear that a significant number of traffic originates from mobile devices, pointing to the necessity of mobile PPC in 2012. In fact, due to the recent spotlight on mobile PPC, the cost of mobile clicks is relatively low, leading to higher conversion rates. Still not convinced that mobile PPC in 2012 will be huge? Google has announced that by 2015, about 8% of all e-commerce purchases will take place on a mobile device. The time is now to implement a mobile PPC strategy for 2012.

Local PPC in 2012
If you are an organization with local presence, creating a local PPC campaign will become vital in 2012. Through the use of Google Boost and Google Places (or any local business listings), there is great opportunity to target the right audience, in the right location. While many companies have recognized the need to register for local business listings, many are missing the mark on what needs to be placed in those listings to garner the most traffic. First and foremost, the local listing MUST include a phone number and you must be using targeted keywords to optimize the content. In addition, adding elements such as images, video, and coupons will enhance the overall look and feel of the ad, generating extra clicks. Bottom line, devise a local PPC plan for 2012 or be left in the dust of your local competitors.

Social PPC in 2012
Last, but certainly not least, we must touch upon the tremendous opportunity for social PPC in 2012. Facebook is going public in 2012 and they have made it clear that online ad revenue is the direction they are headed in this year. As a result, organizations need to recognize where their consumers are. An astounding number of these consumers are on Facebook. In fact, the average web user spends upwards of 6 hours per day on Facebook. Consumers are not only on Facebook for an insane amount of hours per day, but Facebook gives marketers the ability to target consumers by location, age, birthday, interests, education, and connections. These targeting capacities are a PPC specialist’s dream. Get on the 2012 Social PPC train quickly because it’s moving fast and leaving sluggish adopters behind.

Paid search is big market. Paid search in 2012 is predicted to be even bigger. Creating a strategy now is imperative to keeping up with the most effective ways to target and reach consumers. As you implement a plan, be prepared to monitor results and provide consistent reporting.

Are you ready to maximize gains through PPC tactics? Contact New Epic Media today to learn more.

New Epic Media is making enormous strides on our growth journey. As a small business, we are cultivating a crew of highly skilled search engine sages, web designers, content writers, e-commerce specialists, social media experts, video production professionals, reputation managers, marketing gurus, keen sales executives, forward-thinkers, trend hunters, and innovators. Yes, I ran out of breath listing all of the elements that combine to form the marketing powerhouse we pride ourselves on. But still, we are largely a room of techies. Computer geeks who can speak for days about search engine optimization, Google analytics data, and the latest technology on the market. So, how are we doing it? What is the secret potion fueling our growth? The answer is a very happy marriage.

Let’s face it; with almost 28 million small businesses in the United States, we make a pretty significant mark. In fact, about 70% of the all newly created jobs come from small businesses. But back to this marriage. We have managed to happily blend technology with tactics to form an organization that ensures that both strategy and analysis is a cohesive unit. This is the key to our success. So here’s how we did it:

From the Top Down
New Epic Media is a team in every essence of the word. We work together, we bounce ideas off of each other, we go to lunch, we hang out in the parking lot chatting after work, and we actually enjoy each other’s company. For the majority of the working population in the United States, this is a rare, rare setting. We walk into work each day knowing that our ideas are encouraged, even our wildest. Our vision is a shared one: epic results. These epic results stem from the top down in our family. Yes, we are a family. Our “parents” are the people who are encouraging those ideas, opening their doors, and energizing our creative crew. Without leadership by example, growth would be impossible. Management makes growth manageable. Create goals, set standards, from the top down, and see them come to fruition throughout your organization.

Constant Culture
A certain tickle, a movement, a feeling is evoked as soon as one enters the doors of New Epic Media. This feeling is distinct. It cannot be imitated. This is the New Epic Media culture. A culture that is recognized almost instantaneously, as outsiders get a glimpse of our vision. Solidifying and circulating this culture throughout the agency proved to be our advantage. We all have the same glasses on and we see epic results. Remaining information hungry, strategically harnessed, and creatively stimulated has been the key to the construction of our culture. As we move forward, our culture translates into the brand we are building. The New Epic Media brand is nurtured each and every day, all driven by our happy marriage and our core mission: we believe through creativity, strategy, and technology epic results are possible. With this team, anything is possible. We welcome you to join the journey.

Jon Henshaw and the entire team at Raven have truly developed such a wonderful service that is has become the first site I go to in my browser when the day starts, and stays there until I go home. There have been many reviews of Raven tools and even an excellent interview by Ross Hudgens. However, I am going to take a different slant and talk about the amazing support that the Raven team has built for their SEO toolset. No matter how amazing a tool is, if it isn’t constantly being updated and improved, it will slowly lose its value. Thats why the support team around Raven is what, in my mind, makes it the best internet marketing tool out there.

A couple years back, our marketing agency had hired a developer and began to build a toolset like Raven to track and report on everything we did for our clients. Yet we quickly realized that was a complicated path to take and a “why re-invent the wheel” conversation was had around the office, after which we decided to give Raven a try. When we first signed up for a 30-day trial of Raven, we weren’t sure what to expect. It looked a little daunting at first going through all the different screens and trying to get a working grasp of everything that Raven does.

The inevitable questions started to come up and we were pleasantly surprised that there was a number of resources on their site to help answer common questions, even back when we first started using the tool, and it has vastly improved in the last year. Here are some of the helpful resources:

• Raven Tools Knowledge Base
• Raven Blog

One of the great features built into Raven is the ability to report a bug, or request a new feature right from within the tool. This allows you to provide the support team with a quick bug or something that just popped into your head that would improve the tool without making you go through the burden of trying to locate an email or fill out a lengthy contact form. I use it all the time and they are very fast to respond and even implement the suggestions made. For example, we had a client ask us if we could add a color to the rankings report for their competitors rankings, so it would stand out on the printed reports, as it does on the screen when your using the tool. One quick feature request and about 2 days later it was added. They were happy and we were very impressed.

Recently, Raven introduced a new Customer Care section of their website recently to help answer users’ questions even more. We had a chance to ask Alison Groves, User Experience Manager, a couple of questions about that and some other burning questions. Here goes!

Josh: What is one aspect of the new customer care section of the website that has been the most popular?
Alison: This would have to be our webinars. We had stopped doing them for a while in anticipation of our new user interface and have just resumed them, now that we have the new UI (user interface) in place. One of the big challenges with the new UI was that we had to completely re-document a system in a matter of weeks. Everything that we had worked on education wise for the last two years was now completely irrelevant. With the new Customer Care center, we now have a place to archive all of our educational efforts, so someone can come along at any time and find the best resource for them. Our webinars are really popular because, not only are they an in-depth look at a particular tool within the Raven platform, but they are archived soon after they’ve ended, so folks can watch them at their leisure. With users all over the globe, this allows folks who are in time zones opposite us to participate in everything we do during our own waking hours.

Josh: What is your favorite thing Raven does to look after its customers, or which service are you most proud of?
Alison: One thing that I value above everything else is my team. I’m so lucky to be surrounded by amazingly good folks, who are not only extraordinary at their jobs, but are just first rate individuals as well. This goes for not only my immediate team, but everyone at Raven. The team I work with daily is Irene Phelps, Nate Baker, and Megan Morris, and they do an *amazing* job at making sure each and every customer is well taken care of. We have a whole team of developers who literally churn out new things every day. And our marketing and product teams work constantly at making the platform the best it can possibly be, ensuring that all of our users are well informed, and that things are easy to understand. To answer the question directly, the “service” that I am most proud of is the people. Our people are the best, and the dedication to taking care of every user as well as producing the best product we can makes me honored to be a part of that every single day.

Josh: What would you tell someone looking to try Raven for the first time to convince them of it’s usefulness to them?
Alison: This is a tough question to answer because just about every individual user has a different use case. In a general sense, there is something for everyone with Raven, and I think that’s a big part of the appeal. And since there is something for everyone, folks can use as much or as little of the platform as they’d like. Just need our social tools? Great! But you can also include Google Analytics and branded reports along with your daily social engagement needs. Doing social *and* SEO? Everything within the platform communicates together to make your job easier. That’s really what we’re after: provide you with one central platform so that you aren’t going out to 10 or 15 different tools to get your work done every day.

Josh: Anything we should look out for in the next couple months that is anticipated to be a great addition?
Alison: While we like to keep our roadmap under wraps, our tools are extremely user driven by feature requests and other feedback. With that being said, we do have some major enhancements coming soon to the social tools. We know that people love them, and they are heavily used, so we look forward to sharing those updates with all of our users very soon.

Thats it for the interview! Thanks to Alison for sharing her thoughts on those topics.

So basically, Raven is one of the premier internet marketing tools out there, and it seems poised to stay a leader in this space for a long time. If you are looking for an all in one tool for Social, Rankings, Analytics, Link Building, and Reporting then look no further. They also have an iPhone app. There are a number of different pricing models for the service, that fits every budget and they even have a 30 Day Free Trial. While I am in no way affiliated with Raven, I can’t help but sing their praises and tell everybody I meet about them. Let us know your Raven experience in the comments below, and by all means try Raven’s Internet Marketing toolset today!

The Brand in a Nutshell
Research claims that the average website has just 3 seconds to capture and hold a visitor’s attention. Wow, 3 seconds is an incredibly limited amount of time to express your brand, its value, and how that value can be translated to your visitor. Web design eases this process, expressing your brand value immediately. The infamous “Golden Arches” are recognizable from miles away, in virtually every country. And while a company’s logo is certainly critical, web design must augment your brand’s insignia. A website must illustrate your brand identity through its color structure, typeface, and an overall theme that lends itself to an impactful customer experience. Your website is your brand in a nutshell. Customized web design that reflects your brand image will entice visitors to crack that shell and dig deeper.

Platform for Communication

An online space is a means of communication, a way to quickly illustrate what you do, how you do it, and why your visitor should care. All too often, websites become a static image, a one-way communication stream. But today’s consumer wants their voice to be heard. Web design that lends itself to seamless product reviews, commenting, and open feedback creates a platform for communication. Engagement and interaction are achieved with design features that make the visitor comfortable enough to participate. Customizing shapes, sizes, and colors across subpages generates an extensive opportunity for your brand’s to interconnect. Social media, the stronghold of online communication, is also largely influenced by web design. Design techniques must push visitors to engage. Furthermore, custom designs on Twitter,
Facebook, etc. must reflect your brand image established on your website.

Boosting Metrics Through Design
Pretty designs aside, enterprise executives all have a central goal behind the design madness: conversion. If the most beautiful website in the world does not convert visitors to customers, something is missing. An inviting, attractive web design will keep the user on your site for longer periods of time, thus reflecting a better bounce rate. A better bounce rate indicates a greater probability of visitor to customer conversion. In addition, design methods must motivate visitors to take action. Your goal may be persuading a visitor to click to download an e-book, whitepaper, or even simply to fill out a contact form. Regardless of the objectives, web design has the power to drive visitors to take specified action, thus creating a positive effect on web metrics. Web design lays the groundwork for the ultimate purchasing process. Design strategy gives a business the capacity to guide a customer through a purchase. As such, with a solid web layout, fluid navigation can be achieved and repeat sales will follow. Traffic, exposure, and transactions are all enhanced with proper web design.

The time is now for your brand to shine. Call us today to discover just how New Epic Media’s custom website design can elevate your sales and build your brand.

Let’s start from a panoramic view of an overall social media marketing structure and zoom in as we get down to the details. To put things in perspective, about 30 billion pieces of Facebook content and over 5 billion tweets are shared monthly via people on those networks. Of that chunk, almost 25% of those shared posts include links to content. Even the smallest fraction of clicks from those billions would result in an astronomical shift in traffic. Remember, those numbers reflect monthly data. That being said, business websites must contain 3 critical buttons to promote sharing via Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Let’s break down each platform to uncover exactly what matters, how search engines crawl or ignore certain information, and what type of social signals are being sent to Google.

Facebook
Generally speaking, Bing is the haven for Facebook content in search rankings. Using its “collective IQ”, Bing crawls Facebook data and ranks accordingly. Popular pieces of Facebook content being heavily shared, regardless of personal connection to those people sharing, will rank on Bing’s results page. Bing’s concentration of Facebook affecting searches marks the importance of a constant flow of user-generated content. When we shift gears to Google, Facebook plays a much less significant role in rankings. While Google does crawl public portions of Facebook, the buck basically stops there. One twist, however, lies in Facebook “sharing”. When a piece of content is “shared” via Facebook, a unique URL is created linking back to the promoted content. As a result, these actions are subjecting more and more people to content through each “share”. In fact, every “share” sends a social signal to Google. These social signals give Google the implication that the information being shared is coming from a quality, trustworthy site.

Twitter
If any social platform knows aggregated content, it is most certainly Twitter. The sheer concept of “trending topics” lends itself to useful, rich data for a search engine. Google and Bing have both implemented real-time results into their SERPs. As such, if the pieces of information are deemed relevant and reliable, Twitter-founded results will display above other content. In fact, SEOmoz conducted a phenomenal experiment to discover just how Twitter influences regular search results. Click here to see the experiment for yourself. And for those lazy readers, the results pointed to the impressive affects tweets have on new, non-indexed content. Social signals from Twitter are sent to both Google and Bing telling them that the shared content is of quality and is largely popular at that moment in time. Case in point, user-generated content via social networks really matters.

Google+
Comparable to Twitter, Google and Bing have the ability to retrieve data from Google+ activity. The experiment above was conducted in regard to Google+ as well, indicating the real-time ability of Google+ to display user-generated results to searches. More importantly, though, is the vast capacity for Google+ content to be displayed amongst Google searches. Business pages are continually showing up on SERPs, no surprise to a person with SEO knowledge. Google+ content trumps the majority of other content when the search is relevant. This is due to the smart SEO behind Google+’s very nature. The social platform lends itself to inbound linking, internal linking, and a massive amount of indexable content. Google+ is still in its infancy stage and we predict that Google will impart widespread influence on search results for a long time to come.

The bottom line is this: social media is user-generated content and user-generated content affects search engine results. Google and Bing place real value upon these pieces of content that are being composed at incredibly rapid rates. Businesses must utilize these tools to remain relevant, top of mind, and shared. Recall the fact that 30 billion pieces of Facebook content and over 5 billion tweets are shared monthly. Google is paying attention, are you?

New Epic Media’s social media marketing department paves the way for industry standards. Call us today to learn how we can help you generate sales!

Social media is starting to become the main focus of companies. The everyday obligation of promoting, engaging and answering consumers questions/inquires are starting to become time consuming. With daily meetings, client calls, new visits and much more when do you have time to manage your social media? Most might say that it is a waste of time and not worth it. Others say that they just plainly don’t have time. Let me reassure you that by you dedicating and focusing your time on social media it can bring you in customers/clients. Yes it might take a bit longer, but now a days everyone is on Twitter, Facebook etc. If you’re not where the people are, where are you then?

Like every company, you want your business to have the best customer service out there. Whether it be someone calling your business or someone asking you a question through Twitter, Facebook etc. you want your company to be known as a good business, responsive, willing to help and most importantly make you feel special.

The solution to your social media problems stops here! Assign/hire a specific person to manage your social media accounts. I have listed three reasons why you need a Social Media Community Manager.

What is a Social Media Community Manager? 

This person is dedicated to everything that happens on your social media sites. Just as the title says they are engaging with the community, your community. They are available to answer questions, promote your brand, plan and execute contests/giveaways and more. Their main focus is to keep a constant communication with your followers and provide varies needs. The ever evolving and growing network is definite and going at rapid pace! This, as I mentioned before, can be very time consuming. Your best bet is to have someone JUST focused on social media.

I would highly recommend not having an intern handle your accounts. There has been many cases where interns don’t fully comprehend a company’s service or main objective. This can cause problems as for the Social Media Community Manager is the VOICE of your business.

1. Keep an eye on your brand.

Everyone wants to know what others are saying about themselves whether it be good or bad. Hiring a community manager will make it easy for you yo know what others are saying. Having a designated person watch over your brand the easier it is to address any issues that may occur. Having a set of approved responses you can quickly reply and have time to consult with coworkers or bosses. This will spare you some time and determine how you would want to handle the situation.

Timeliness is vital. Constantly monitoring your accounts will make it easier if a crisis occurs or make a difference between success and failure according to 5 Ways to Make Your Business More Transparent from Mashable.

2. Keep your followers updated and develop transparency.

People are nosy and they want to know what’s going on. The more information you are able to provide to your followers the better relationship you will have. You can only schedule updates for so long, so engaging with others about company news, third party articles and sometimes local new is key. Being open and providing information will develop a great bond of trust between consumers and your business. There is no other way to build trust unless you have a transparent business relationship.

Your followers are listening to what you have to say and depending on that information they will ultimately form a conclusion about your business. Keep in mind your Social Media Community Manager will need to learn how to be honest, open and most importantly take responsibilities with your updates. Having constant information flowing through your social media sites will then in turn make you authoritative in your niche. Remember too much of something gets old quick, so chose wisely when and what to talk about.

3. Engage, engage, engage and more engaging!

You need to have someone to engage with your followers! The purpose of social media is to be SOCIAL with others. It’s nice when you have followers who answer your questions or recent updates, but you also need to engage in other communities. By providing valid information or answering questions with other followers from different communities, you are able to build trust with an individual. You don’t necessarily have to talk about your company all the time, who likes it when someone is just talking about themselves? Having a variety of topics is helpful. You don’t want to always sale your company to others you want others to know you are human and care about their needs.

People like to feel special, so if you take time out to personally talk to someone they will greatly appreciate it. Here is a great example of a company who provided astonishing customer service via Twitter!! One of the most old fashioned ways to get new consumers is word of mouth. By making someone feel special they will spread the word to their friends.

All in all, you need to have an employee that is dedicated to social media. Someone who patient, passionate about your company and is willing to give detail attention to your followers. These are three simple reasons why you need a Social Media Community Manager, but they are three key reasons whether a business will either grow strongly or fail miserably.

If you need help managing your social media or have questions contact us!

ROI’s Position in the Social Media Mix
Measure metrics, analyze, re-strategize, and repeat. Neglecting to implement some form of this kind of method creates a recipe for disaster. While social media ROI is extremely attainable (and measurable), its stigma stems from the lack of tracking metrics. Beyond Google Analytics giving us the ability to measure metrics through dashboard evaluation, there are a few interesting techniques to taking raw data and converting it to a brand story. For instance, have you ever tried to calculate the cost of acquiring a new customer prospect through social media? Try allocating a comparable value to the connections made in any of your social platforms. Then, attempt to convert these connections to email addresses, phone numbers, or your preferred method of contact. This process will garner useful lead generation, and thus, real business value. The same system can be executed to measure mentions, likes, shares, etc. The key is to benchmark activity to convert quantifiable data.

Creating a Message
If your clients were engaging in a word association activity, what word would be correlated with your brand? Keeping this question in the forefront of all marketing initiatives is fundamental to building a positive brand reputation. The value in brand reputation is harnessed by your organization’s overall strategy. While business performance and delivery are essential aspects of branding, social media is a priceless vehicle to augment your brand and propel its reputation forward. Do you engage with your customers? Are you posting relevant, useful information on your Twitter accounts and Facebook pages? Do you address product issues cited on your social media platforms? If the answer to these questions is not an immediate “yes”, you may be severely hindering your brand’s reputation. Social services provide a real-time value unlike any other channel. This immediacy provides an opportunity to not only mitigate negative remarks quickly, but to solve problems, and in turn, boost your brand’s image.

The Social-Advertising Blend
Brand giveaways, promotions, sweepstakes, and live Q&A sessions are all devices of advertising. Those reluctant to conduct these campaigns across social channels have a legitimate concern: advertising control is now in the hands of, dare I say it, the consumer. Advertisers have grown accustom to controlling their messaging, but recently, social media has pushed our backs up against the wall screaming, “let go, you have to let go!” While traditional advertising control is reduced, advertising control is still very much achievable. Social services push advertisers to control in a slightly different manner. The things that advertisers can control, however, relate to engaging and building relationships with the consumer. The days of creating a television commercial and then kicking up our feet until results ensue are over. Regardless of the medium, advertising must be supplemented with social initiative. It is not enough to put out an advertisement. Is it being shared? Are people talking about it? Are friends recommending it to other friends? Unlike before, social media provides us with the answers to these questions. Being present is not enough anymore. Brands must engage. Social media provides us with that opportunity.

New Epic Media has the recipe for the most effective social media mix. Call us today to discover how to build your brand through social channels.