My search for expert advice took me to one of my favourite blogs, Social Media Examiner.

Their post ‘How to Use Pinterest to Promote Your Products‘ offers tips on how to use Pinterest within your business’ marketing strategy. Not only that, but there is also a link to take you to a guide on how to convert your personal Pinterest profile to a commercial one.

So if you are a ‘Pinner’ or ate thinking about using it within your marketing strategy, take a look at their post for some ideas on how you can use it to promote your products.

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“TV ad targeting enables marketers to engage directly with people on Twitter who have been exposed to their ads on TV,” says Twitter Revenue Product Manager Michael Fleischman. “Synchronized Twitter and TV ad campaigns make brand messages more engaging, interactive and measurable, while making it easy for marketers to run always-on Twitter campaigns that complement and amplify their TV creative.”

Twitter is giving advertisers a new TV ads dashboard, which shows when a brand’s TV ads have aired.

“This will help digital teams align not only with what’s shown on TV and when, but give insight into how Promoted Tweets can be crafted in the most effective ways to build upon broader marketing themes,” says Fleischman. “TV ad targeting works by using video fingerprinting technology to automatically detect when and where a brand’s commercials are running on TV, without requiring that advertiser to do any manual tracking or upload media plan details. Whenever a commercial airs during a TV show, Twitter not only determines where and when it ran, but can identify users on Twitter who tweeted about the program where the ad aired during that program. We believe a user engaged enough with a TV show to tweet about it very likely saw the commercials as well.”

Twitter also announced a new wave of multi-screen partners today, and named the partnership program Twitter Amplify. New partners (which join BBC America, FOX, Fuse and The Weather Channel) include: A&E, theAudience, Bloomberg TV, Clear Channel, Conde Nast, Discovery, MLB.com, National Cinemedia, New York Magazine, PGA Tour, PMC, Time Inc., VEVO, Warner Music, WWE and VICE.

According to Bloomberg, Twitter plans to release a tool similar to Facebook’s custom-audience feature as well.

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• LinkedIn has the highest user engagement. Did you know that only 1 percent of LinkedIn users drive 26 percent of the site’s traffic? This means that the active community on LinkedIn is extremely involved and open to networking with professionals like you!
• LinkedIn users want your solicitation. In real life, we hate the idea of cold calls and solicitors. However, LinkedIn users overwhelmingly state that they welcome business proposals online.
• Your profile is viewed by people you don’t know. On social networking sites like Facebook, your friends and family are your main audience. On LinkedIn, however, coworkers only account for 25 percent of views. The other 75 percent is comprised of other professionals in the industry, recruiters, networkers, and much more!

Since LinkedIn fosters an atmosphere conducive for networking, professionals and brands should optimize their profiles for business-to-business conversions.

With an audience of 200 million users, LinkedIn is the social platform for brands to impress fellow businessmen.

How to Harness the Power of LinkedIn

The key to harnessing the power of LinkedIn is growing your visibility. Whether it’s your personal page or company page, visibility is what creates opportunities for networking. By optimizing certain elements of your LinkedIn presence, you’ll increase visibility while clearing the funnel for B2B conversions.

1. Go Visual

To keep up with the social media trends spearheaded by Facebook and Pinterest, LinkedIn has decided to become more visual. Like Facebook, it’s possible to incorporate a banner image for your company’s LinkedIn page as well as incorporate video.

Practice basic branding techniques by using your logo wherever possible and keeping the tone consistent with your brand.

2. Optimize the “About” Section

Most companies simply copy and paste the “About Us” section from their website onto their LinkedIn profile. However, this strategy is a mistake for those seeking to network on LinkedIn.

While the “About Us” on your site might be targeted towards a general audience, this section on your LinkedIn profile is aimed at the B2B market.

3. Use LinkedIn Polls

Asking thought provoking questions about trending news in your industry distinguishes your brand as a thought-leader in the industry. Not only do you engage your current followers, you’re increasing your reach as the polls spreads across connections immediately.

If you’re a member of any groups on LinkedIn, begin discussions based on the results of the poll. This tactic is focused on widening reach and establishing thought-leadership.

4. Share Links

Many brands like to share accomplishments, new products, and press releases on their social media sites. However, consider using LinkedIn as a platform for blog posts and articles that aren’t necessarily written by you.

In other words, make your brand a hotspot for industry news, valuable information, and knowledge in your field. By positioning your brand as a source of information, you attract leaders and businesses in your niche that could later turn into B2B conversions.

5. Feature Your Employees

Again, featuring employees takes advantage of the visual element. People want to see the faces that are behind your brand.

Showcasing employees makes your brand more personable and allows visitors to check out their pages as well. Remember, potential B2B customers might be more likely to connect with the profile of an employee than the business itself.

6. Use the Careers Listing

Posting job openings on the company’s LinkedIn profile might seem unrelated to B2B conversions, but it helps increase visibility. Furthermore, keeping the careers listings updated lets visitors know that the page is regularly managed.

7. Create a Group

While most professionals and brands join groups for exposure, why not create your own? This truly establishes you as a thought-leader and as the group grows, so does your authority.

Instead of making the group self-promotional, add value to the discussion by focusing the group on industry news, best practices, new ideas, obstacles, and similar topics of interest.

The Advantage of Networking on LinkedIn

Networking on LinkedIn provides an advantage that other social media sites can’t match: its users are open to conducting business with you online. Aside from networking, LinkedIn users are also more likely to spend online. The average salary for LinkedIn users is $87,000, which towers above the average for other social networking platforms.

Because LinkedIn users are prepped and more likely to positively respond to your marketing efforts, the ROI is potentially greater and worth the investment.

Also remember that the analytics function on LinkedIn offers a unique feature specifically for businesses. Aside from the basics of monitoring traffic and various insights, you can compare your company’s performance to its competition.

By using this information, you can adjust your strategy to be competitive in the LinkedIn B2B marketplace.

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Paul Marcum, director of Global Digital Marketing & Programming at GE is already planning on how he will be using the new ad targeting parameters to promote his brand. Paul said, "We have a number of different audiences that are relevant for us, of course with GE. Certainly we seek to engage business decision makers and have perhaps more commercially oriented conversations, but we also seek to engage people who are enthusiastic about technology like we are. However those connections can be made off of Facebook, on Facebook, we're excited to make those connections. Their ability to surface and find people who share our same interests is a great opportunity for us.

With technology becoming more sophisticated and availability of accurate data, marketers are embracing the programmatic buying culture.

Marcum also added, "That ability to target is of course something that has been part of the opportunity on Facebook from the earliest days. I think it's natural that they combine what they're able to do within the platform with what marketers are able to do outside of the platform. It makes a lot of sense and will be seen as fairly appealing for those who have been doing audience buying so far".

Facebook has already made more than 500 unique groups of the users on the basis of the data it has received. Datalogix for example has provided the loyalty card and transaction-level household purchase data that will help a consumer-packaged goods marketer to target buyers of children's cereal.

A lot of privacy issues are raised regarding Facebook's data fetching activity. Facebook clarifies that it is adhering to privacy standards and that various companies are already using such data to target users off of Facebook. In a blog post, Facebook said, "No personal information is shared between Facebook, third parties or advertisers. Partner categories work the same way all targeting on Facebook works. The advertiser only knows the size of the audience and can’t access any information about individuals included in a category".

Further supporting Facebook, Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with Altimeter Group said, "This is completely anonymous. I think privacy has been taken well into account by Facebook. The data is going to be pretty rich and robust, that is the heart of Facebook’s advertising offering. It’s state of the art, precise customer targeting data. “I don’t think they’ve cracked new codes. They are, however, making a valuable tool more broadly available.”

GE's Marcum thinks that the future of data is great. There are opportunities out there, which haven't been contemplated yet. The numerous undiscovered ways are still present which can be more relevant in improving the relationship between brands and their audiences.

Facebook is taking help of Epsilon, Acxiom, and Datalogix to know more about its user's behavior and their activities on Facebook & off.

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Mobile

In the example below, the FTC illustrates how viewing a website not optimized for mobile devices on a smart phone may prevent the consumer from reading the key details circled in red. Requiring a consumer to scroll, or know when to scroll, to find imperative information is a no-no. Formats must be taken into consideration to guarantee disclosures are visible to the consumer on any mobile screen.

Hyperlinks

The FTC further defined the use of hyperlinks to ensure integral disclosures are not hidden behind the hyperlinks. The FTC isn’t against advertisers using hyperlinks to share details not vital to the claim, but the copy linked must adequately convey the nature and importance of the information in question. In the example below, the hyperlink is clearly admitting a restocking fee on returned items. The unacceptable method would be to simply attach the link to “Satisfaction Guaranteed.”

Space

The FTC also won’t take space-constraints as an excuse to forgo online disclosures. The disclosure must fit within 140 characters on Twitter, and using a shortened link to direct people to the information is not acceptable. Here is an example, provided by the FTC, of an acceptable sponsored tweet:

The disclosure must also be located as near to the claim as possible. The FTC gave the example of selling imitation pearls in the guidelines document. The word “imitation” must immediately precede the word “pearls.” The disclosure should not be declared in a link the consumer is expected to click or located at another area of the page. Appropriate hyperlinks should also be adjacent the claim.

Icons, Abbreviations and Symbols

If shortened terms or symbols don’t clearly explain the nature of the disclosure, or if consumers don’t understand the meaning, then the online promotion is considered illegal. Again, adding a hyperlink to an icon, abbreviation or symbol is not an acceptable way to communicate the disclosure.

Timing

Timelines cannot be used to the advertiser’s advantage. For example, sending a tweet with a disclaimer following a sponsored tweet without a disclaimer is not an acceptable way to communicate with consumers. Nor can you post a disclaimer on Facebook at midnight, seven hours after the promoted post.

The Bottom Line

The same guidelines that apply to traditional advertising apply to cyberspace. Online advertisements must disclose any sponsorship and integral information imperative to a claim in a direct, visible manner.

So, do you think consumers will notice a difference in social media advertising? Do you think we’ll see less celebrities tweeting about products if they have to announce their paycheck in doing so? Let us know what you think!

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