With more than 1 billion active users per month, Facebook is one of the few true titans of the Internet. When one considers that users spend a disproportionate amount of time on the site (nearly 11 hours per month for mobile users) in comparison to other highly visited destinations like Google, Twitter and Yahoo!, its position at the top becomes even more impressive. There can be little doubt that the website has changed the way that individuals interact with the Web and with each other. Whereas five years ago Facebook might have been seen as a novelty, it is now a force to be reckoned with – and one that isn’t destined to go away anytime soon.

If you are a business owner, you likely already have a Facebook presence (and if you don’t, you should). You are also likely already aware of the potential benefits it affords. However, there is a right and wrong way to approach social media platforms such as Facebook. If you want to maximize your social marketing, you’d do well to heed the advice below.

1. Engage with Your Followers

Perhaps the most defining characteristic of Facebook is that your followers voluntarily opt in to receive your marketing message. Don’t waste this opportunity or blow your chance of taking advantage of your good fortune. If you are to be successful on Facebook or Twitter, you must constantly engage with your followers through conversation, unique offers, question-and-answer sessions, and the like. One tactic that some large companies are implementing is providing smartphones with unlimited 4g access to the social media department so associates are always connected and can update, respond and interact anywhere and everywhere.

2. Be the Resource that Your Followers are Seeking

There may be a number of motivations for someone to follow you on Twitter or Facebook:

• He or she may like the products or services that you offer;
• He or she may “like” your page by accident, not realizing that this in effect enables you to market directly to them;
• He or she may be seeking coupons, discounts, and other special offers in the hopes of saving money; or
• He or she may be seeking your expertise on a subject matter.

Whether you repair washing machines or offer consulting services, know your audience and cater to them by providing the information they are seeking.

3. Provide Suitable Incentive for Followers to Stay

As discussed above, you should strive to provide helpful, unique, and topical contentto your followers. However, being a resource often isn’t enough. Your followers have voluntarily opted in to your marketing message, and they can just as easily opt out. You must provide them reason to stay. If this can’t be accomplished through special offers, then you may want to consider a different approach. This may include a more personal relationship with your followers or an atmosphere that encourages them to return – viral videos may not be appropriate for every business, but they can certainly garner attention on those days when your message is struggling to come out.

4. Listen to Your Audience

Social media eliminates the age-old conundrum of not knowing what your customers want and trying to accommodate their needs anyway. It is important – nay, vital – to remember that social media enables a two-way conversation. Businesses large and small must be aware of this, and ready to embrace it, before ever setting foot into the social realm. That being said, this two-way conversation can be incredibly powerful as it provides transparency. Listen to your followers and do what’s necessary to meet their needs. After all, they provide you with your revenue.

5. Ensure Continuity Across Social Channels

This isn’t to say that you should repeat yourself. Quite the opposite, in fact. One of the worst things that you can do is mirror your approaches across social channels; every one of your outlets should have a unique stream of content in order to entice followers. However, there should be a recognizable thread that connects these channels. Don’t show favoritism to one outlet. Don’t take conspicuously different approaches in tone or content. Doing so would be doing your business and your followers a disservice.

6. Determine the WHAT and WHY of Your Social Marketing Campaign

Why is your business marketing on social media platforms? What does your business hope to accomplish? You should never attempt a social campaign, and divert the necessary resources to it, unless you can clearly answer these two questions. A rudderless social media campaign is one that is doomed to fail and cost your business. Determine your route before you leave home.

7. Be Consistent and Regular

One of the worst things that a business can do is approach social media half-heartedly. If your business doesn’t regularly contribute to its social media channels, it can have a number of effects:

• You will lose followers, and in turn, your marketing base
• You will lose the ability to gain new followers and leads
• You’ll potentially damage your business’ reputation

If your business is considering undertaking a social media marketing campaign, you should not do so lightly. You will need to dedicate the necessary resources so that you can make it workfor you rather than against you.

8. Own Your Approach by Establishing a Clear Perspective

What is your voice online? Clinical? Light-hearted? Passionate? Professional? Authoritative? Determining your business’ voice will help you approach your social media marketing with clear direction. It will also allow your followers to know what to expect from your social channels. It is important to remember however that when establishing your company’s voice, you may be slightly painting yourself into a corner – be mindful of this when deciding on your approach to social media.

9. Integrate Social Marketing Into Your Company’s Practices

Something done half-heartedly is something that’s not done well. If your business decides that social channels are the best avenue for spreading its message, it is important that the company fully embrace these channels. Be sure to secure your business name across platforms, even those that the company has no interest in using, and implement a cohesive design across all so that there is a clear continuity between your brand and your business’ social channels.

10. Be an Active Participant, Not a Passive One

Social media is named such because it’s intended to be just that – social. As with an in-person, face-to-face conversation, it requires that both participants be engaged. If one person is talking and the other is disengaged, it kills the conversation. The same can be said of social media. Your business must be an active participant if your social marketing campaigns have any hopes of success. The medium simply does not allow for passivity.

Author: Jessica Oaks (@TechyJessy)

Danvers, Massachusetts has a long and, well, unusual history.

Originally known as Salem Village, the mid-sized town (with a population of 26,493 according to a 2010 census) is best known for the Salem witch trials and being the site of one of Massachusetts’ oldest psychiatric hospitals. While rarely appearing in the news otherwise, the town of Danvers got more international publicity that they likely wanted starting in January 2013. That was when about two dozen teenagers at the Essex Agricultural and Technical School in Danvers began reporting bizarre symptoms including “mysterious” hiccups and vocal tics. After the Massachusetts State Health Department ruled out any physical cause for the outbreak, the epidemic gradually subsided over the next few months. Despite speculations that the outbreak may be due to mass psychogenic illness(MPI), the State Health Department has not made any official statement on the cause to date.

While the location of the outbreak seems ironic given Danvers’ legendary history, epidemics of MPI have become increasingly common over the past few years, especially in the United States.   According to New Zealand sociologist and skeptic Robert Bartholomew, the Danvers epidemic resembles other cases that occurred. Bartholomew has studied over 6,000 cases of MPI dating back to the 16^th century and argues that social media may be playing a strong role in the recent upsurge of cases.

See on www.psychologytoday.com

Having a website has become something of a necessity for businesses these days, due to the global paradigm shift where more and more people are integrating online activities with their lives. Besides this fundamental reason of going where the market goes, there are also great benefits to having an official site for your business.

Starting a website is much cheaper than building and maintaining a brick-and-mortar store. There is no need to look for a good location, pay the lease, take into account overhead expenses, etc.

You can reach a much wider audience not limited by time or any borders, making market expansion much easier and opening up more room for growth. You also get to showcase your products, as well as important information about your business to customers, establishing your credibility while making it convenient for your target audience.

Social Media as a Conduit
Of course, there are still some truths in promoting an “offline” business that apply to the online world. Merely having a website does not guarantee profitability. You need to be able to show your expertise and uniqueness in the industry, and you need to establish a good relationship with your customers. The best way of pursuing these goals is through leveraging the power of social media.

Creating accounts for your business for social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter is good, but these are just channels to your main website. Social media is simply a way for people to connect to your website to consume your content and eventually make purchases. You just have to make sure that your website has good social media integration.

Here are five ways to seamlessly incorporate both assets:

Killer Content
“Content is king” is a phrase that will never get old because content is exactly what people are looking for online, especially in social media. People are constantly sharing with their huge networks of family and friends all sorts of content that they deem interesting, whether it’s a news article, an opinion piece, a funny picture, or an inspiring video. Their connections, in turn, share it with their own networks, and so on. The number of people you can reach with killer content is astounding.

Therefore, you need to create content that will make the rounds within these social media channels through shares, retweets, pins, etc., and you need to be able to do it in a regular fashion. There is no guaranteed way to achieve this, but the best way is to simply create great content.

Social Content
Social media platforms are built with connecting people in mind, but you can follow their template with your website by allowing for some level of interaction with your website’s visitors. This can be done through a blog with a comments section, a forum where they can discuss your products/services, or a customer review feature where you let people send in their critiques of your business’ offerings. You can even let visitors leave comments on your content using their Facebook accounts for fuller integration.

By giving your customers a way to express their opinions, you also give them a sense of belonging with your company. They will feel that you care about what your customers think, establishing a stronger relationship in the process.

Eye-Catching Titles and Images
Some truly great content doesn’t reach its full potential, because of poor titles that don’t immediately grab people’s attention when browsing through their feeds. Other great content that tackles technical and/or multiple subjects are not being read, because of the lack of compelling pictures that break up the monotony of text.

• For titles, you want something that addresses a concern while being straight to the point. It has to fix your target audience’s gaze when they’re quickly scanning on their Smartphones or computers.

• For images, you want something that explains your points in a clearer fashion while maintaining the tone of your content, and more importantly, your brand is known for. You can actually just focus on creating content that is purely image-based (e.g. infographics) to simplify complex concepts and highlight important facts.

Social Buttons
Due to the fast-paced nature of today’s Information Age, people now expect a good level of convenience when surfing the Web. They want to be able to share things they like through their multiple social media accounts without having to deal with the relative hassle of opening up new windows or tabs and copying and pasting URLs. Social buttons are the answer to that problem, making it much easier for people to show their interest in a piece of content to the rest of the world.

These social buttons can also work in your favor, because they usually show the number of people who have expressed positive sentiments about particular content. Once these numbers climb, it can be even easier for people to take notice, because they will think the content is worth checking out, attributing it to the number of people who already did.

RSS Feeds
Rich Site Summary or RSS is nothing new, but it is a tool that has found even more use now that there is so much more content being produced and shared throughout the Internet. Use it to syndicate relevant content you have on your main website to microsites targeting more concentrated niches. This way, you don’t have to be publishing the same content on multiple sites.

Conclusion
While an official website serves as a foundation for creating an online presence, social media allows for even wider coverage for your business, and gets you even closer to your target audience. By integrating it with your website, you realize the full potential of doing business online.

Jillyan Scott works as a content strategist for SaleHoo an online community of more than 95,000 online sellers and retailers. Its product range consists of an online selling course, e-commerce software and their flagship product, a wholesale directory.