Social Media Can Do Your Work

When used correctly, social media can be an amazing tool for all types of businesses; but still, there are those ‘old-fashioned’ entrepreneurs out there who can’t trust Facebook, Twitter and the likes to grow their existing customer base.

 

According to the Pew Internet Study, the number of Facebook users in the US over 65 has reached 35% while in 2013, 43% of Americans of 65 years or older were using at least one social networking site like Istagram, Pinterest, Twitter or Tumblr, compared to 26% in 2010 or a mere 1% in 2008.

On Twitter, the 55-64 year age bracket has grown by 79% since year-end 2012, being its fastest growing demographic, while the corresponding numbers for Facebook and Google+ for the 45-54 year age group have leaped over 46 and 56%, respectively.

So why are there still businesses that insist to ignore those fast growing demographics? And why do they fail to target them when they know that these are actually the ones that have money to spend on their products?

Social media is not that complicated!

Here are a few more reasons which might convince you that using social media for business might actually not be such a bad idea:

Brand and Positioning
Strong online presence can only make your product stronger! By knowing your customer base, you’ll definitely be able to build a loyal following base on social media networks. And by doing this, you can only grow bigger and bigger day by day, strengthening your online and offline market presence.

Brand and WOM
Use word of mouth to pave your way into the digital world. When you know your product, you also know your marketing; and when you do your marketing right, people will be happy to talk about it on social media. Getting and monitoring feedback is key; it can actually help you improve your product and the way you do business.

Be Brave, Communicate!
Open communication on social media can be an invaluable business tool, if used correctly! Just think of the amount of information exchanged publicly between you and your current or potential customers! If your communication is genuine, you should only expect the same from your audience.

Dummy Run
You don’t have to be an expert to check upon your metrics or website analytics; don’t be afraid to start using Facebook Insights, which can help you measure your Facebook marketing and engagement efforts, or Google Analytics, which can give you significant information on your site traffic and where that comes from. See for yourself what is driving your ‘Likes’, check which status updates worked and which didn’t, and how your followers responded to that important update!

Bespoke Content
When you own a small local business, or your product ‘works only’ on a specific area, wouldn’t you prefer to be able to offer your services only to those that might actually be interested in or be able to use them? Twitter and Facebook provide the option to localise content and geotarget your posts – why offering an active ‘walk-in’ promotion to your followers outside your area? Just keep it local and relevant, and it will work!

Managing social media for your business definitely requires an integrated approach, and calls for a significant amount of time and effort in building brand awareness through pins and boards, posts, groups, podcasts, tweets and so on. Success of your social media strategy is solely based on your unique presence and your charming and engaging manner.

What do you think? Are you willing to give social media another chance?

Yahoo Buys Rockmelt, Tumblr

Yahoo Inc. has acquired Rockmelt and Tumblr. RockMelt is a new web browser that takes an appealing approach to web browsing.This happened in the same week as Facebook acquired Branch Media. It was developed by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria and was founded on the Google Chromium project, integrating social media features such as Facebook chat, Twitter notifications and widgetised areas for other content providers. Yahoo! obtained it on August 2, 2013. Tumblr, which has center of operations at 35 East 21st Street in the Flatiron District in New York City's Silicon Alley, was founded by David Karp. On May 20, 2013, it was declared that Yahoo! and Tumblr had agreed for Yahoo! to own Tumblr for $1.1 billion.

 

Yahoo's outbreak of mobile-focused technology acquirements illustrates no signs of ever going back. It disbursed a massive $60m-$70m for Rockmelt. Terms of the deal were not unveiled, but the 4-year-old startup promptly pronounced that it will be closing down its present apps and website.

The founders of Rockmelt blogged that Yahoo! and Rockmelt partake a familiar objective: To aid people determine the finest content from around the Web. As a result, the union was definitely not going to result in a disappointment for Rockmelt users.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer has wanted to drastically vary the company's sober image. Her keynote speech in Las Vegas was simply the most recent on a journey that has concluded in Yahoo! catching the attention of more Internet users to its sites than competitors like Google. She has also supervised the acquisition of other companies, including Summly, Astrid and GoPollGo.

She revealed an innovative technology news site, led by previous New York Times journalist David Pogue, a website on food, and the News Digest app by Nick D'Aloisio.

In the short four and a half years that Rockmelt, the Rockmelt team said that it had discovered a lot about how people like to surf the web, discover content, and partake the great stuff they've found. They said that Rockmelt had taught them a ton. And their plan is to put everything they've discovered to labour at Yahoo!. A Yahoo! representative told Reuters that Rockmelt's technology will assist the company to "deliver content in new ways".

Rockmelt was under pressure to draw attention to its various apps in the months prior to the attainment, according from Mattermark. Web traffic appeared to be on the brink, with their site receiving around 650,000 visitors per month. iTunes weekly downloads were also down considerably.

A Yahoo! speaker informed CNET that thirty-two Rockmelt employees have already joined Yahoo’s media and mobile organization. They aren't going to talk about specifics, but they plan to incorporate the Rockmelt technology into their media platform in order to bring content in new and exciting ways.

As Ms Mayer said, it is increasingly becoming difficult to find the news you need or want. This difficulty has paved way to the excuse that everyone is now willing to give: ''too long; didn't read''.

Yahoo! ended up with a turnover close to $US570 million ($634 million) last year and that is still one of the world's principal news sources. Based on AllThingsD, in its report, they cited that Yahoo! CFO Ken Goldman said the company must be a centre of attention for more Internet users in their 20's. Goldman said that one of the main challenges they faced is that they have had a developing demographic.

Concerning Tumblr, Ms Mayer said that Yahoo can only do a purchase of this size and scale if they find an outstanding company. Clearly, going by Yahoo's standards, Tumblr is one such company.

Ms Mayer and the Yahoo! Board, which voted on the acquirement over the weekend, are hopeful that Tumblr is one of the answers to making the company a real tech player once more. Mayer stated that the companies as one will be in a position to form a very huge media network.

Ms Mayer said that part of their approach here is to let Tumblr be Tumblr.

Yahoo's CEO reiterated in a company announcement that it will "not screw up". Its plan is to maintain Tumblr an autonomously operated business with David Karp, Tumblr's 26-year-old founder and CEO, enduring on. Tumblr permits users to produce their own blogs, follow other blogs on the network and like them or reblog posts.

Karp announced on Tumblr's official news page that they are not adopting the characteristic purple color that comes with most Yahoo products. He also said that they won’t be changing their headquarters, their roadmap, mission or team.

Tumblr was founded in February 2007. With 175 employees and more than 108 million blogs, it boasts of over 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups every day. According to their statistics, 90 million posts are placed on the social media site every day. It came into view as a fashionable online hangout by offering a service that makes it easy to contribute to blog posts, photos, video and other content. The service states that it has combined more than 50 billion posts from 108 million blogs. More than half of Tumblr users depend on a dashboard to locate the types of blogs that they would like to follow and also have tools to pass on the posts that concern them.

Yahoo! CEO said in a declaration that on many stages, Tumblr and Yahoo! couldn't be more diverse, but, at the same time, they couldn't be more complementary. Yahoo is the Internet's original media network while Tumblr is the internet's emergent media frenzy.

Business Insider states that searching Tumblr using the keyword "Yahoo" brings a number of posts by users who are complaining about the purchase. In fact, one user has already initiated an online petition to stop the progress of the arrangement. The result? Only time will tell.

Despite the optimism shown by both companies, some financial analysts think Yahoo! paid too much for the company. An analyst with investment firm Morningstar, Rick Summer, said the "deal is probably overpriced" in his analyst note. While this may be a possibility, let's hope Yahoo! did their homework well in the negotiations and that they will be able to make something out of the agreement.