[caption id="attachment_2791" align="alignleft" width="344" caption="A screen grab of OneIMS's Mentionmapp  (Click for large)"][/caption] The chance that you’re using the social networking site twitter.com for personal or business use is very high.  (If you are on twitter, please follow OneIMS!)  In the past six years since it was founded, twitter has grown exponentially in popularity.  Recent research has found that there are over 500 million twitter accounts and that a new account is created every eleven seconds. Though twitter is great on its own, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of third party applications and programs that will help you get more out ...

While a few years ago companies only needed to worry about their own website, the growing number of social media platforms is now making it harder for companies and business owners to keep up their presence on the Internet. From restaurant reviews to Facebook likes, building a positive community and reputation around your brand is necessary to build your authority online. So how do you go about building a community around your brand? Here are a few musts for building an online community around your brand. Create a Corporate Blog A corporate blog is the perfect way to share your knowledge and build your ...

Evaluating your website with a critical eye is one of the best things a small business owner can do. Your website is one of the most powerful assets you have so it’s important to make sure it’s working with you instead of against you. Take the time to look over your website, or better yet have an unbiased friend do so, and ask yourself these 10 questions. An honest answer will help evaluate your website and put you on the track to making it even better. 1. What do you see first? – The first impression is the most critical. Are you ...

E-newsletters have long replaced traditional print newsletters. Cost, ease of use, tracking capabilities and convenience are just a few of the reasons why business owners have turned to e-newsletters. Although there are many pros to using e-newsletters to stay connected with your customers and followers, your e-newsletters still need to be worthy enough to read.   Use the tips below to create an effective e-newsletter.   Think of Your Readers This may seem like a no-brainer, but we sometimes get too involved in what we want to say that we forget about what our readers want to hear. Understanding your readers means that you know ...

It may be true that businesses have been able to function without high-tech marketing strategies for decades. However, this school of thought is now separating the businesses of today from the businesses of tomorrow. Today’s marketing environment is changing so fast that it’s hard to keep up with all the new trends and marketing techniques. Still, it’s important that every business stay on top of industry trends and new marketing techniques, especially ones being used by competitors. While we don’t recommend you adopt all new marketing techniques at once, there are simple ways of integrating new marketing ...

Last week, Delta Airlines launched a new feature on their Facebook page that allows fans to book flights without leaving the fan page. The new feature, which will also be coming to Delta's display ads on various news and publisher sites, has an arrow consumers can click and then it will expand a window on the website they are currently on. On the Facebook page, there is a "Book a Flight" tab that will asks users to allow the app to have access to their basic information, like most other Facebook apps. Then, the fan will see a ticket window directly on ...

Global Director of Digital and Social Media for PepsiCo Bonin Bough talked with BigThink.com about Pepsi's social media strategy. One idea that he discusses is how everyone's social media strategy needs to be unique to their company and resources. Being true to your company and its brand in the end will be what helps increase your social media presence. "Have Follow Fridays were you spend two hours talking to the community if that's all you have to work with. There really are no set rules." Watch the full interview below and let us know what you think about his ...

Including social media sharing options like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Digg in your email marketing messages can generate a 30% higher click-through rate than emails without a social sharing option. According to a study by GetResponse, only half of email marketers are including social media links in their emails, even though it can vastly improve the effectiveness of their email marketing campaigns. The survey found that emails that had at least one social sharing option had a 30% higher click-through rate. If they had at least 3 social sharing options, then it had a 55% click-through rate. Twitter is the most popular ...

According to a survey by the e-tailing group, 59% of businesses surveyed are planning on investing more into e-commerce in 2010. This number is up from 36% in 2009. [caption id="attachment_1565" align="aligncenter" width="480" caption="Data from the e-tailing group's 9th Annual Merchant Survey"][/caption] The 9th Annual Merchant Survey also reported that 92% plan on an increase in Internet revenue, with most anticipating between 6% and 15%. With more businesses anticipating an increase with e-commerce, they must also work at using marketing that entices to both current customers and possible prospects in order to succeed. The majority of respondents reported, however, that the conversion rate ...

For small and medium-sized businesses, utilizing a Twitter and blog for the company can significantly increase the number of monthly leads generated. [caption id="attachment_1452" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Image courtesy eMarketer"][/caption] A survey from HubSpot to business-to-consumer (B2C) companies showed that more than half of those using Twitter generated twice the median number of monthly leads compared to non-Twitter users. If the company had between 100 to 500 followers, then they generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Blogging had an effect for both B2C and business-to-business (B2B) lead generation. Companies who blogged had a median of 15 monthly ...

As a full service marketing agency, it’s kind of hard not to notice the marketing efforts utilized by the businesses around us. It’s great to see campaigns being launched and creativity being stretched. So we thought it would be interesting to make this a regular thing and see what companies are doing to help grow their business and increase their exposure. Today’s featured business: Express I received this ad from Express awhile back, and recently decided to check on their website to see how the promotion was going.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Express.com had updated their website to be ...