AMPUP Your Digital Marketing

Desmond Wong is the content and community marketing manager at AgilOne, a software startup focused on predictive marketing analytics. Desmond joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss the importance of design in social media content marketing strategies.

"Tweets that include an image are more than 2x as likely of creating a click through!"

The chance of your Tweets getting lost in the Twitter feed is monumental. Desmond offers tips to help capture your audience on Twitter:

Work closely with your design time to create visual assets for social media.

If you don’t have a design team check out other websites and social media channels for inspiration, such as PatternTap.com.

Keep your messages and your content branded.

Don’t make your visuals salesy.

Include a call to action.

Neal Schaffer is a social media consultant who has been helping businesses with their social media strategies since 2010. Neal started his career in marketing and sales in Asia. When he returned to the United States, he essentially had no business network outside of Asia, which led him to turn to social media to find more local connections. His blog, Maximize Social Business, was organically born from this transition in his life and his passion for social media has blossomed into a passionate career. Neal recently joined AMP Up Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss social media strategies and content creation. "Celebrate and engage with your fans. Take the extra step and appreciate and value those people that engage with you.” Neal suggests asking these questions to yourself when it comes to creating content marketing: What does your company have to share? What resource can you become? What are you going to talk about in social to help promote your own company’s ROI?

Neal Schaffer is a social media consultant who has been helping businesses with their social media strategies since 2010. Neal started his career in marketing and sales in Asia. When he returned to the United States, he essentially had no business network outside of Asia, which led him to turn to social media to find more local connections. His blog, Maximize Social Business, was organically born from this transition in his life and his passion for social media has blossomed into a passionate career. Neal recently joined AMP Up Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss social media strategies and content creation.

"Celebrate and engage with your fans. Take the extra step and appreciate and value those people that engage with you.”

Neal suggests asking these questions to yourself when it comes to creating content marketing:

What does your company have to share?

What resource can you become?

What are you going to talk about in social to help promote your own company’s ROI?

Tony Zayas is the Marketing Manager for Proforma, a leading supplier of print and promotional products and graphic communication solutions in North America with over 750 locations and franchises nationwide. Tony recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how social media can help small business owners and entrepreneurs develop relationships that turn into business. “Utilize social to grow web presence and to sell; not to sell directly on social, but to develop those relationships that lead to business” Tony reveals his strategies on how to develop relationships on social media and how those relationships can lead to business: Keep your content relevant to the end user. Think about your audience, and put together content that talks to them - not necessarily just about what you sell and your services.You should consider your content as a service; a very important service. Utilize the resources of social media to find and interact with potential business leads. You need to find people to connect with, interact with them, and then, once you have a relationship, casually begin the business conversation. LinkedIn has a lot of potential and is often underutilized. Make sure that after you connect, you follow up. Not a sales pitch, but a thank you or personalized message. Keep it friendly, encourage them to look at your profile, offer to introduce them to your connections; this interaction is what leads to a business relationship. Watch this short video to see the results of Proforma's Social Media Sales Challenge participants, after they went through a 5-week training with Tony Zayas using GaggleAMP. A total of $271,000 in new business was reported by the participants in the 5 weeks that it ran (and since then, the number is well over $500,000!).

Tony Zayas is the Marketing Manager for Proforma, a leading supplier of print and promotional products and graphic communication solutions in North America with over 750 locations and franchises nationwide. Tony recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how social media can help small business owners and entrepreneurs develop relationships that turn into business.

“Utilize social to grow web presence and to sell; not to sell directly on social, but to develop those relationships that lead to business”

Tony reveals his strategies on how to develop relationships on social media and how those relationships can lead to business:

Keep your content relevant to the end user. Think about your audience, and put together content that talks to them - not necessarily just about what you sell and your services.You should consider your content as a service; a very important service.

Utilize the resources of social media to find and interact with potential business leads. You need to find people to connect with, interact with them, and then, once you have a relationship, casually begin the business conversation.

LinkedIn has a lot of potential and is often underutilized. Make sure that after you connect, you follow up. Not a sales pitch, but a thank you or personalized message. Keep it friendly, encourage them to look at your profile, offer to introduce them to your connections; this interaction is what leads to a business relationship.

Watch this short video to see the results of Proforma's Social Media Sales Challenge participants, after they went through a 5-week training with Tony Zayas using GaggleAMP. A total of $271,000 in new business was reported by the participants in the 5 weeks that it ran (and since then, the number is well over $500,000!).

Brittany Berger is the Digital Content Supervisor in the PR and Marketing department for eZanga.com. eZanga.com is a search engine specializing in online advertising and services. They offer local, regional, and national advertising campaigns focused on generating a high ROI. Brittany recently joined AMP Up Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss tips for content marketing. “Take different approaches to sharing content. You’ll get more success if you take a unique approach such as a quote from the content with a link rather than just the content’s title and a link.” Brittany offers tips to help you decide on content topics, structures and styles: Choose Topics. When you are deciding on topics for your content consider who your audience is, what your brand stands for, what platform you are posting on, your own expertise (or the expertise of the person you are interviewing), and what your competitors are talking about. Vary the posts. It is important to vary the style of your posts: Infographics, bullet style posts, articles, etc. Brittany explained that she determines what day she does each style based on how busy her schedule is. She explained that she can write a bullet style post in much less time than she can write a paragraph style post, yet still contain the same basic information. On her busy days she writes quick posts, and on days she has less on her plate she writes more detailed articles. Get sales involved in creating content and about your industry niche. Getting sales to produce content is likely near impossible, but you can still use them as an information hub! Interview your sales team to get the content: What questions are they hearing from customers? What are hot topics among consumers? What new products/services are you offering?

Brittany Berger is the Digital Content Supervisor in the PR and Marketing department for eZanga.com. eZanga.com is a search engine specializing in online advertising and services. They offer local, regional, and national advertising campaigns focused on generating a high ROI. Brittany recently joined AMP Up Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss tips for content marketing.

“Take different approaches to sharing content. You’ll get more success if you take a unique approach such as a quote from the content with a link rather than just the content’s title and a link.”

Brittany offers tips to help you decide on content topics, structures and styles:

Choose Topics. When you are deciding on topics for your content consider who your audience is, what your brand stands for, what platform you are posting on, your own expertise (or the expertise of the person you are interviewing), and what your competitors are talking about.

Vary the posts. It is important to vary the style of your posts: Infographics, bullet style posts, articles, etc. Brittany explained that she determines what day she does each style based on how busy her schedule is. She explained that she can write a bullet style post in much less time than she can write a paragraph style post, yet still contain the same basic information. On her busy days she writes quick posts, and on days she has less on her plate she writes more detailed articles.

Get sales involved in creating content and about your industry niche. Getting sales to produce content is likely near impossible, but you can still use them as an information hub! Interview your sales team to get the content: What questions are they hearing from customers? What are hot topics among consumers? What new products/services are you offering?

Ramsey Ksar is the CEO & Chief Product Officer for Blyve, a Live Q&A Platform for today's leading brands and media companies that brings people closer to the things they love. He recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how social media can be a powerful tool for events. Don’t only think about engagement, think about lead generation! Ramsey shares a couple of ways that you can use social media to help elevate engagement during an event: During live events, offer your audience the opportunity to join in on debates. Both your social media audience and your live audience can join in to ask questions to debate candidates and your coordinator can filter them for good ones. Reserve dedicated times for live interactions with event participants, athletes, etc. For example, after a speaker comes off stage, set them down at a computer for 30 minutes for a live Q&A session with your social media audience.

Ramsey Ksar is the CEO & Chief Product Officer for Blyve, a Live Q&A Platform for today's leading brands and media companies that brings people closer to the things they love. He recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media’s host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how social media can be a powerful tool for events.

Don’t only think about engagement, think about lead generation!

Ramsey shares a couple of ways that you can use social media to help elevate engagement during an event:

During live events, offer your audience the opportunity to join in on debates. Both your social media audience and your live audience can join in to ask questions to debate candidates and your coordinator can filter them for good ones.

Reserve dedicated times for live interactions with event participants, athletes, etc. For example, after a speaker comes off stage, set them down at a computer for 30 minutes for a live Q&A session with your social media audience.

Stephanie Frasco is the owner and social media consultant for ConvertWithContent.com, which focuses on social media and blogging consulting and management. Stephanie recently joined AMP UP Your Social Media's host Glenn Gaudet to discuss how she helps lead her clients to social media success and different social media platforms and the benefits of each: "Be listening on Twitter for people talking about your brand and your business and engaging with them. It's very effective and you’ll be surprised how to see many people will respond back and start following you, and maybe even increase your sales." Stephanie details what social platforms she suggests for which type of business. She looks at each business individually and does a social media audit to see what’s happening currently around their business, industry or brand. She looks at the business’s audience and where they are already and what conversations are being had. Consider doing the same for your business. Here are a few guidelines that Stephanie suggests going by to see if your business is on the right social networks for your social media marketing goals: To get the most bang for your buck: Facebook: If you have no fans, it's going to take a while to be successful on Facebook, given the new guidelines and decrease in organic reach. There are a ton of people on Facebook everyday, so it is definitely worth being there, but just know it is going to take time. Pinterest: Suggested for e-commerce sites. One of the best ways to drive sales from social sales. LinkedIn: For B2Bs must be on linked in for a personal and a business standpoint. Twitter: For outreach of any kind or for targeted leads.You can search for conversations around your brand or industry and bring those people into your own conversations and drive them to your site. Twitter is also a great tool for customer service. Google+: Great for its SEO benefits. Google+ recently launched promoted posts for those with 1000 circles/followers. These promoted posts are linked to your GoogleAd Words account and your google display network. Build up your circles so that you can take part in this effective promotion tool. If you are spending all this time building this community, but they aren't buying anything, you're wasting your time. Make sure to be using a conversion tool so that you can your ROI. Stephanie uses InfusionSoft for tracking leads, to see who comes to her website and where they came from. She can even see how much each person spends on each network.