Social Media Mgr

Location based marketing is a cross between gaming and marketing. It’s really brilliant actually because it’s a unique and fun way to engage your customers. You can get your customers to promote your business in return for bragging rights. Pretty cool, eh?!

Here is a list of the top 7 Location Based Marketing Tools to get you started:

1. Foursquare – This is a no brainer. Foursquare is the market leader in location based services and one of the big names of LBM. Foursquare is free to use and set up for your business. Foursquare also has the largest established user base of any mainstream location based service.

2. Gowalla – Another strong contender in the LBM space, Gowalla also has a substantial user base and offers a “city pages” where you can feature specials and deals for customers to browse online, a great way to showcase your offers to new and perspective customers.

3. Facebook – Facebook is involved directly in the LBM space with Facebook Places, which allows you to set up a a location page for your business. Facebook Deals is a new Facebook platform that lets you offer specials and reward programs to customers. Facebook’s Fanpage is also a great way to keep your fans updated about your latest specials.

4. SCVNGR – SCVNGR is a smaller location based service that is up and coming. With the help of some recent VC invesments and a big deal with coca-cola, SCVNGR has definitely put itself on the map. Given the lack of users, its hard to get as much traction, but keep an eye on this service.

5. Geotoko – Geotoko is a third party LBM platform that allows you to monitor your location based marketing campaign across multiple locations and platforms. With an easy to use and sleek interface, Geotoko is a great way to manage your LBM campaign in one place. This service does cost money so keep that in mind.

6. Place Punch – Place Punch is similar to Geotoko and offers another platform to monitor your LBM campaign from one place – the software isn’t quite as sleek but its a little cheaper than Geotoko. Both services offer a free trail so give them a shot.

7. Twitter – Twitter doesn’t have a specific location based component that lets you offer deals to customers, but its such a powerful platform for customer engagement and PR that it needs to be integrated into any successful LBM campaign. You can use twitter to broadcast your LBM campaigns to customers and generate buzz about your latest check-in special.

Sometimes people are not sure what to write on Twitter or other micro blogging sites. You have undoubtly seen obnoxious tweets from people that say nothing but “Check out my site”, “Get your free report here”, I have a free gift for you”. I don’t know about you, but it feels like they are just shouting at me. I tune these people out very fast. So to avoid coming off like an obnoxious car sales man, I have written a guide as to what you should write and how to upload it into SocialOomph to automate the distribution.

The overall idea to keep in mind is that you are writing to help your target market. Provide valuable information that your prospect can use. When someone is searching for an answer, if you don’t answer it quickly they will look to someone else.

Before you read the list below, a couple things to mention. All tweets should be 140 characters or less, and write the tweets in a notepad or .txt file so you can upload them into SocialOomph.

1) Tips that will help your target market. Add “for more tips, please visit http://www.yoursite.com”.

2) Quotes – People love to re-tweet quotes, so include your favorite ones.

3) Resouces links – What kinds of tools do you use? Where should your target market go to find more information that will help them?

4) Current industry news stories – What is going on in your market? Show them you have your finger on the pulse

5) Blog posts – Give them a reason to visit your site that doesn’t include selling them something. Let them know when you write a post and ask them to re-tweet.

6) Videos – Add training videos you have, or links to videos that will educate your prospect.

7) DO add in some links to your website, especially to your newsletter. I often use the 20:1 ratio, meaning, 20 value add links to 1 self promotional link.

Don’t forget to cross promote! Add links to your other sites so people can connect with you!

Hopefully this will get you going. Once you have your 140 charater tweet, shorten your links through Bit.ly so you can track how many clicks you get.

Once you have a list of 50+ with shortened links through bit.ly, then you can upload them into Socialoomph through the “Scheduled Updates” –> “Bulk Upload” function.

You can schedule them to go out in a variety of ways. I typically make sure that 2-3 go out daily.

After you upload your messages, be sure to track responses through monitoring tools like Hootesuite.com

Happy Marketing!
Arlina

I wanted to share with you how I use SocialOomph to automate my micro blogging to sites like Twitter, LinkedIn and about 5 other sites.

Let’s start with how to open a channel.

How To Open A New Account In SocialOomph

1) Log in
2) Look on the left menu
3) Select “Social Accounts” –> Add New Account —> Add Ping.fm

4) Name the account

5) Go to Ping.fm http://www.ping.fm (sign up for a free account if you have not done so yet.)
6) log in
7) Under “Services / Tools” look for “ Application Key”
Copy application key
9) Paste into Socialoomph where it says “Ping.fm Application Key”
10) Under Default Posting, select “micro blog”
11) Hit “Save”

Once you create the channel, then you can bulk upload your micro blogging messages.
I typically create about 50 messages with helpful tips, quotes, resources and links to my offers.
I use bit.ly to track the clicks.

I would not schedule more then 2-3 messages to go out per day, otherwise you go from expert to spammer. People have a threshold as to how many message they want to see from you, so just be mindful of that, or they’ll just tune you out.

Look for my next post with more details on how to write the micro blog messages and how to track them.

Happy marketing!
Arlina

Automate Your Social Media MessagingNeed to squeeze out more time from your day? I’ve got a quick tip that will do the trick.

Automate Your Social Media Messaging

Have you ever ended the day only to realize you barely made a dent in your “To-Do” list? I cannot tell you how many days I have had that ended just that way. From customer service, to marketing, to learning about new ways to increase sales, small business owners have way too much to do (unless, of course, you outsource to us!).

I do have one warning before you get started…Have a plan! It is so important to have a set social media strategy so you don’t end up getting lost in the world of Facebook or Linked In. Haven’t we all done it? We log in to simply check messages, only to look up an hour later and think, now there’s an hour I’ll never get back!

Social Oomph is a great way to distribute all your content to all the social media sites all at once. You can automate your micro-blogging messages, like Twitter very quickly and set it up for the month. It’s so great to set it up and just sit back and watch the emails and phone calls come in!
There are a few steps to follow, so to make it as easy as possible, I created a video for you to show you exactly how I do it. That way you can see the steps in action and pause the video when you need to.

You can check out the video here on my YouTube Channel:How To Use Socialoomph To Automate Twitter

Put this strategy to good use, and you will see an increase in traffic and sales! Please leave a comment on my video channel and let me know what you think.
Happy Marketing!
Arlina Allen