Networking has become one of the most effective ways to gain knowledge in your industry, here are the four ways to improve at online networking.
Networking has become one of the most effective ways to gain knowledge in your industry. As such, it becomes a priority that you improve at it. When it comes to networking, there are two ways to do it. You can attend events, and you can do it online. Online networking has surged in popularity ever since the emergence of social media platforms.
Giants like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram make it easy to connect with individuals in and out of your industry. Because of that, and because people don’t find great success when networking at events, here are the four ways to improve at online networking.
Look Beyond Traditional Mediums
When you hear the term “online networking,” the first thought that comes to mind is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is truly a brilliant social media platform where professionals can connect and share experiences. But in recent times, LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for online networking. That doesn’t mean you should put all your efforts into one basket.
Consider deviating from traditional online mediums by exploring many similar platforms. Like LinkedIn, tons of other platforms excel in connecting entrepreneurs with like-minded individuals. An example of one such platform is Meetup. Meetup is a lesser-popular platform that excels at connecting groups and individuals with similar interests. The meetings on the Meetup are held at “virtual events.”
You can easily find a group in your area of expertise and share experiences with eager professionals that all want the same thing – being better in their field. Because job-seekers are expanding their reach beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, staying one step further puts you in a great position.
Create Informative Content And Share It
What better way to improve at networking than to create informative content that people can share? When you’re looking for networking opportunities, it doesn’t come much easier than this one. If you’re good at something, why not share your experience with others?
By using mediums like Medium and LinkedIn, you can publish informative content where other professionals in your industry will likely want access to. Since the content will come with your name attached, it creates a unique opportunity where you might receive an email or two from interested parties.
Similarly, you can also share the content written by others and get noticed by the writer.
Use the Latest Online Networking Tools
When networking online, you want to stay with the times. While tons of professionals still attend live events, the hottest trend is to meet virtually. But to get in on the action, you have to use the latest tools. Popular video conferencing platforms like Google Meet, Zoom and Skype are some of the best at that.
Using these tools helps generate new connections and establish fruitful relationships. You can even host a webinar yourself, where interested parties can discuss the latest dealings in your industry, ways to improve, and exchange past experiences. Chances are, there will be individuals interested in taking the relationship to the next stage. These individuals will go straight to your network and open the possibility of future collaborations.
Once you realize how to do it, you will have an easier time getting new people into your network. Considering that online networking is crucial for advancing your career, getting on the action as quickly as possible is a priority.
Don’t Neglect Your Network
One of the biggest mistakes professionals do is add people to their network only to neglect them afterward. The people with the most effective network avoid this mistake. One way to do that is by regularly talking to the individuals in your network. Drop by their DMs and chat for a few minutes. Ask them about their day and how things are going at work.
To become great at online networking, you need to be a great friend to those in your contact group. Spend as much time keeping people in your contact list as you would when connecting with new individuals. The secret to making lots of fruitful relationships is to help those around you. If someone in your network needs help, introduce them to another person that can solve their problem.
That way, you are creating value for everyone. The person in need will thank you for solving their problem, while the person helping has made a valuable connection.
Don’t Wait, Start Now
The secret to improving at online networking isn’t one answer. It’s a myriad of ways that help you understand the importance of growing and maintaining relationships and connections. For most individuals, networking is essential to building up their reputation in their industry. For others, it’s about being part of a group that finds value with each new member.
But most importantly, you have to start now. Don’t neglect it, as being part of a network comes with tons of benefits. The sooner you start, the faster you’ll reap the rewards.
Social media feeds play a very important role to engage website visitors. By this you can increase dwell time of your website.
The 3.78 billion users of social media are actively involved in the process of content creation and consumption, be it the beach, business, or brunch.
Simply having a digital business isn’t enough to optimize the colossal reach that the social media platforms have to offer. Brands need to have a disruptive approach, as the social media channels are rather influential.
What Do You Understand By Embedding Social Media Feeds?
Users create content on social media platforms using branded hashtags, social media handles, tags, mentions, etc. This content generated by the users is a potential marketing strategy to enhance the marketing efforts of the brands, create awareness and make the brand stand out amongst the soaring competition.
But, the users have a boundless presence, compelling brands to have a holistic approach in their UGC marketing efforts.
Here aggregating and embedding feeds can be the best option. Through the process of aggregation, you can collect social media feeds generated on multiple platforms and embed them on different websites using a simple embed code.
How Can Embedding A Social Media Feed Be Effective At All?
Before understanding the process of embedding social media feeds on the website, let us first know why you need to it?
Attracts the attention of the audience by showcasing credibility and relatability in the minds of the users.
Enhances engagement of the viewers as social media feeds are dynamic, vibrant, and ever-fresh.
Social media feeds influence the purchase decisions of the users, as 90% of the buyers claim that UGC impacts their buying actions.
Generates easy trust in the minds of the prospective buyers as people trust faces more than a faceless brand.
Enhances the look and feel of your website, by making it come lively, bright, and moving for first-time visitors, while also effortlessly making them want to know more about the brand.
How Can You Embed Social Media Feed On The Website?
Here are some of the best tools that can help you in embedding your social media feeds.
Taggbox Widget
Taggbox Widget is a result-driven social media aggregator tool that fetches content from more than 15 social media platforms and curates it into a unified presentation. The content is pulled in with the help of hashtags, mentions, and tags from amongst other source options.
Post aggregation, you can moderate the content and make it relevant to your brand’s requirements and values. Now, you can customize this feed by leveraging from amongst the 11+ high-end themes available to align it with the brand’s aesthetics.
The best part about the tool is the real-time updates available and the robust analytics feature given to the users. The brands do not have to dig into updating the feeds manually and the chances of missing out on any user’s content are eliminated.
Miappi
Miappi is yet another powerful tool that can help you in aggregating feeds from social media platforms as is required by you.
By leveraging this tool, you can curate, display, and measure the social media feeds on your website.
Also, you can easily customize your social media feeds wall and align them with the theme of your brand. Major emphasis is laid on the use of UGC in marketing which can benefit the marketers in a whole different way.
Snap Widget
Snap widget is a tool that yet again enables you to integrate social media feeds on your website. Through this tool, you can collect content from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and embed its widgets on your website.
It fetches content generated on social media platforms in real-time and displays it on your website, not letting you miss out on any valuable piece of content.
Flow Flow Social Stream
The Flow Flow Social stream is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to derive content from 15 social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
The best part about the plugin is its responsive layout, while is also optimized to leverage on any screen. Integrate content and showcase it on your website easy to win the attention of your visitors.
Further, Flow Flow is an easy-to-use and user-friendly tool also for creating a social wall.
Over To You
You already have enough reasons to get inspired from and ponder upon embedding a social media feed on your website. As social media is the leap that brands need to take to be able to perform better and reach out to audiences at large.
Attract, engage and convert audiences effectively by leveraging these tools and take a lead in the digital competition.
Here are six social media platforms promoters should hop on in 2021 if they want to stay up to date with advertising and promotion trends.
While social media apps have been popular the past few years, these apps really took off in 2020 when the pandemic hit. People were stuck in their houses, and they turned to social media for entertainment and education. Below are six social media platforms promoters should hop on in 2021 if they want to stay up to date with advertising and promotion trends.
One: TikTok
TikTok is a video-sharing app. People can share videos that are up to sixty seconds in length. Those new to social media may want to check out Violet PR to learn more about TikTok and other hot social media platforms.
This company was founded in 2016, launched in 2017, and has over a billion active users. A promoter can make a short video, upload it to the app, and use hashtags so people can find it. The video plays on a loop for those who watch it until they decide to scroll to the next video. The user can leave a comment, share the video, and interact with the video producer.
Two: Clubhouse
The Clubhouse app is one of the newer social media apps on the app market. This app launched in 2020 and currently offers only audio sharing. This means a person cannot share video through the app, only voices, sounds, and music.
Three: Twitter Spaces
In 2020, Twitter Spaces came out onto the social media market. What is the Twitter Spaces app? This social media app is said to be similar to Clubhouse in that it allows people to share only audio.
Four: Instagram Reels
Users of the app Instagram are usually familiar with the app Instagram Reels. This is an Instagram-partnered app that is for sharing videos. While Instagram only allows short video clips, Instagram Reels allows people to share longer videos.
This app is compared to the TikTok app. How do influencers use Instagram Reels? Influencers use this app for sharing product how-to guides, unboxing videos, and information on product releases.
Five: Houseparty
In 2016, the Houseparty app was launched. This app allows eight people at a time to video chat. This app now has a whopping twenty million users and is growing.
The original name of this app was Meerkat. Influencers can purchase ads on the app. Another option is that a brand can sponsor a house party and have an influencer demonstrate their products.
Six: Flingster
Flingster is an online free adult chat app that lets you connect with strangers from all corners of the world. It lets you set filters so you meet people that meet your criteria and it is totally safe. You can keep yourself anonymous and find your fling online and have a good time.
In conclusion, 2020 saw a huge jump in the number of people who downloaded and started using social media apps. Product promotion became hot last year, and now social media users are accustomed to learning about the hottest and newest products from these advertisers. While some people may want to download all six apps and get started on them, other people may want to focus on growing their brand on one or two apps.
Top 3 things to consider before choosing which platforms to use for your business.
If you own a company or a marketing practitioner, then it’s a no-brainer: your business’ presence should, by all means, be felt on social media platforms. Every entrepreneur and marketer worth their salt understands the importance of having an online following to promote their products and services.
There may be a long list of social media marketing secrets in circulation online, but the main thing to remember is that having a successful social media marketing strategy lies in understanding which platform works best with your brand.
You should be able to identify three key factors, so you do not end up wasting a ton of resources (time is money, and money is time!) on the wrong platforms.
1. Identify the nature of your business
It matters whether your company is a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) operation or Business-to-Business (B2B) enterprise. Perhaps it is a mix of both. People still really do not use social media to buy things.
Social media users are generally at the topmost layer of the sales funnel, meaning they are mostly there just to see what’s up—this translates to them being at the very first stage of the buying process: awareness.
B2C companies have added visibility on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. You could take advantage of this by visually engaging your customers with on-brand content like targeted blog links or visual assets such as photos, short videos, or GIFs.
B2B companies, meanwhile, will reap great benefits from building personal connections with existing and prospective customers via LinkedIn. Lead gathering methodologies like publishing regular blogs, industry-relevant whitepapers, case studies or ebooks, should be cross-promoted on social media.
YouTube is also useful for both B2C and B2B when it comes to increasing Google rankings. Posting the right content on YouTube increases the authenticity of your brand because it encourages viewers to interact with you and share it on their own social media accounts.
2. Know your target market
Small-to-medium-sized businesses will get the best value for their social media marketing budget if they gain a genuine understanding of their target clients. Knowing your target customers’ profiles is the first step in accurately telling where you can find them. An accurate profile will help you optimize your strategies.
Spreading yourself too thin by trying to be in all social media platforms all at once at the start is a rookie mistake that wastes valuable resources. You want to be as specific as can be when it comes to profiling your target demographic so that you can maximize your digital marketing and advertising efforts and make your budget work for you.
Some of the data you should gather include your target audience’s gender, age range, location, average income, educational attainment, the challenges and problems they face and how they intend to solve them, level of technological aptitude, and relevant interests outside of your product or service offerings.
Having accurate data on your target market will give you the right insight into where your ideal clients spend most of their time online. Through diligent research, you will get to choose the right social media platforms where you can consistently run targeted ads to reel the right customers.
This way, the money you spent on running campaigns with targeted content will be taken full advantage of and make the biggest impact. Your campaigns will be seen by prospects who are looking for what you have to offer, increasing your conversion rates as they are turned into paying clients.
Search engine Google often gets the best return of investment in targeting content in most cases, and for other instances, photo-sharing platform Instagram or social media giant Facebook might do the trick.
3. Identify your goals and objectives for being on social media
Knowing what makes your target market tick is just one part of the equation. Once you have all the data you need, you will have to identify what your goals are for your prospective clients. This will allow you to choose the best social media platform based on your client’s social demographic profile’s engagement rates on every platform.
Companies use social media for two main reasons. The first one is to gain brand awareness to foster a friendly relationship with their target market. Other businesses use their social media platforms to supplement customer support.
Setting up an account for any platform is pretty easy, and you can even build your business’ social media presence with your smartphone, but you will be faced with varied creative content marketing challenges that will depend on the goals and objectives you set.
For example, social media management platform Hootsuite, a B2B company, uses Twitter for dedicated customer support where they encourage users to tweet them for how-tos and answers.
Meanwhile, those that operate in the travel industry or hospitality, such as hotels or restaurants, may benefit from having Instagram accounts to advertise their offerings using visually compelling photographs, Instagram stories, or short clips. For instance, Airbnb showcases lovely photos of their property listings in their main platform Instagram.
A guide to the seven most useful social media platforms
Now that you know of the top things you should consider before choosing which social media platforms to concentrate on, here is a handy guide on the seven leading social platforms that you can use to help get your business off the ground.
1. Facebook
With a total of over 2.23 billion users online, Facebook is indeed the leader of the pack when it comes to engaged users. Here comes the tricky part: figuring out how those individual users are using Facebook. It is mostly used to keep in touch with friends and family, by virtually all genders and age groups (mostly women, which makes up 53% of its total user base).
For all its many features that cater to brands and businesses, one thing remains certain: Facebook is an excellent channel for building relationships with your existing market base.
If you are looking to acquire new leads for your business, it might not be the best out of the lot because of its low organic reach and vast user population. But if your goal is to establish a following and nurture your relationship with them by keeping in touch with regular content (1–3 posts a day), then it can work wonders for building and maintaining brand loyalty.
2. Twitter
With over 326 million users, it is a fantastic platform for building brand awareness through industry-relevant news, press releases, customer support, or to get in touch with potential brand ambassadors. The platform is also widely used for real-time updates, and a lot of companies use it in combination with offline engagement efforts like events.
Twitter has also popularized the use of hashtags, which organizes conversations. With a simple search of a hashtag, you can keep your thumb on the pulse of your target audience so that you can create tweets and join in on popular topics. With the right, timely tweet crafted around a popular hashtag, your brand can be discovered by news outlets that often use the platform to search for trending stories.
3. YouTube
Viewing content on YouTube does not require an account, so it is truly one of the most powerful search engines and social media platforms. To date, it has over 1.9 billion users, but its reach goes well beyond that number because of the eliminated need for sign-ups.
Putting out quality content can be time-consuming and expensive, so it is best used by brands that can truly reap benefits from being there, such as service industry businesses. How-to videos and tutorials are huge on YouTube, as users often search for step-by-step guides to solve a variety of problems.
4. Instagram
Instagram is extremely popular among the young ones, mostly aged 18–29 years old. With over 1 billion active users, the image and video sharing platform is one of the fastest-growing social media channels. It works exceptionally well for more visual-based brands that are in the food, hospitality, retail, art, or beauty industry because it depends on images to spark conversations within the community.
5. Pinterest
There are over 250 million Pinterest users as of writing, which is dominated by middle-aged, female users. It is also a visual-based platform that allows users to save content by “pinning” images to their organized virtual scrapbook.
Pinterest is mostly useful for driving traffic for blogs and ecommerce retailers. Custom images are required, and photos with high engagement rates include style ideas, do-it-yourself craft projects, and recipes.
6. LinkedIn
With a large user base of people aged between 25–54, LinkedIn is a popular platform for older audiences that are searching for jobs or those who are looking to expand their professional network. This makes it a popular choice for B2B lead generation and recruiting companies and is a good channel to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Vigilance and consistency, always
Social media ecosystems can change in the blink of an eye, that is why you should always be up to speed when it comes to current best practices, trends, challenges, and upcoming platforms that are making waves in the digital sphere. It takes a perfect blend of timing, luck, and some digital analytics science to identify which platforms you should focus on.
You can leverage social media to grow your business exponentially by taking note of how active your target audience is in your chosen platform, how they use social media, and creating a consistent social media content strategy that allows you to maintain a steady stream of content to keep them engaged.
There are many things we don’t know about the man at Harvard who started a social networking site only for his college which expanded and went on to become the world’s leading social network site.
Mark Zuckerberg is someone we all know as the founder of Facebook. However, there are many things we don’t know about the man at Harvard who started a social networking site only for his college which expanded and went on to become the world’s leading social network site.
Personal life:
Mark Zuckerberg became fascinated with computers at the tender age of 10. He built a network which connected his home computer to his father’s office computer. At the age of 11, he started receiving formal training and created Zucknet which was a type of network. Later, he started converting his friends’ drawings into computer games. He earned a diploma in Literature classics from Phillips Exeter Academy but turned back to his first love, computers. In high school, he created a version of the music software Pandora, which he called Synapse. Several companies—including AOL and Microsoft wanted to buy the software and hire the teenager before graduation. He declined the offers.
After graduating from Exeter, Zuckerberg enrolled into Harvard and this is when most of his projects came to life. He developed Coursematch, which helped students to decide what courses they wanted to enrol in based on who else was taking this course and other factors. He also came up with the idea of Facemash, which compared the pictures of two students on campus and allowed users to vote on which one was more attractive. This program gained massive popularity in Harvard but had to be shut down because the authorities didn’t find the idea too appropriate.
The next idea that he developed on would be the one that changed how people networked socially through the internet.
Based on the buzz of his previous projects, three of his fellow students Divya Narendra, and twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss aksed him to help them to work on an idea for a social networking site they called Harvard Connection. This site was designed to use information from Harvard’s student networks in order to create a dating site for the Harvard elite. Zuckerberg soon dropped out and started his own venture. He created a site that allowed users to create their own profiles, upload photos, and communicate with other users. The Facebook was run out of a dorm room until Zuckerberg dropped out to devote all his time to Facebook.
However, all wasn’t fine in paradise and Zuckerberg was soon accused of cheating the Winklevoss twins and Narendra’s idea and ConnectU’s secure code. This law suit was settled as the three received a hefty sum of $65 million.
Facebook and its growth:
In a very short span, Facebook grew beyond the education sector and Mark Zuckerberg started looking for investors. Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal invested $500,000, and the amount was sufficient for immediate Facebook purposes. The project began to evolve rapidly. In less than a year after it was founded more than 1 million people joined the social network.
For further development of Facebook, Zuckerberg needed more investments. Accel Partners invested in Facebook $12.7 million and then Greylock Partners added to this amount $27.5 million. He still believes Facebook should be open to only students, hence, promoted it that way only. It was a unique concept that attracted other people as well because it was a very new and unique thing to meet people virtually.
In 2007, something astonishing happened. Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6% stake in the company. After the deal, Bill Gates created an account on Facebook. He used it to communicate with people who wanted to chat with him. However, he had to shut it down because there were too many people who wanted to chat with Gates. This helped Facebook gain massive popularity because the richest man on the planet was on Facebook.
85% of revenue earned by Facebook is through contextual ads. The most of the rest 15% are deductions from purchases made through the Facebook payment system. These are mostly not real, but virtual goods. For example seeds, fruits and vegetables, purchased by fans of the popular game Farmville developed by Zynga.
Virtual business is serious and the turnover increased manifold from $7 bn to $15 bn in 2014.
Acquisitions:
Facebook owner and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, acquired photo sharing app, Instagram in 2012 for $1bn. He also purchased Oculus Rift for $2 bn in March 2014. In October 2014, Mark Zuckerberg completed the purchase of WhatsApp for $22 billion.
