In a recent blog post titled, "Humanize Your Business for Success in the Digital Age," Kaleef Lloyd speaks of the importance of brands engaging with their audience through social media.  In order to best do this, he suggests throwing away the business speak and instead communicating to them on a person to person level. According to Lloyd, humanizing your company and engaging consumers is something that should be a top priority for businesses.

Companies can begin to humanize their brand by creating a social culture. By encouraging employees to utilize their social media throughout their day, they become brand influencers and grow a following that ultimately leads to increased business success.

Next, it is extremely important to focus on the customers and always reply to their posts and comments in a timely manner. This will certainly help show the human side of a brand. To go along with this, consumer relationships should be the goal of all interactions. When relationships are formed, consumers will help build your brand by becoming ambassadors.

When customers feel a brand truly cares about them, they are much more likely to respond positively.  This is why engagement is so critical when brands use social media. However, this is not something that should be too difficult to do because at the end of the day, everyone behind the various social media channels is human and therefore knows how to act like one.

Will New Twitter Filter Hurt Small Businesses?

Samantha Rupert recently posted an article on Social Media Today that discusses Twitter's new filter that will take effect on February 20th. Twitter will now sort tweets based on its' value and those of more importance will be placed higher in feeds. While it has not been revealed as to how tweets will be ranked, it will most likely take into account the number of followers of a given brand. This will greatly change the nature of Twitter and wil have many implications especially for small businesses who do not have a large following.

The new addition will change how small businesses use Twitter because their content will no longer be marketed to an endless pool of consumers. Instead, they will have to change their strategy in order to keep their followers engaged.

Unlike before, users will see a lot more advertising from large brands. Hopefully this change will not take away the appeal of Twitter because it has worked as a great tool for marketers of all sorts of brands. While I understand Twitter's desire to make more money, I hope that small and large businesses alike will continue to be able to reap the benefits from the marketing side.

Did You Know? A Giveaway of the Top Seven Must-See Words in Headlines

In a recent post on Social Media Today titled, "Did You Know? A Giveaway of the Top Seven Must-See Words in Headlines," Rebecca Benison shares tips that can help marketers push their audience to read their posts. This, of course, is the goal and there are certain easy ways to make marketing efforts more successful. By using headlines that are immediately engaging, your messages are less likely to get lost in the mix and will entice the audience to want to read more.

According to Benison, the most attention-getting headlines use the words, "chance," "see," "must," "how to," "why," "did you know?" and "giveaway" because by relating emotionally to your consumers, they are more likely to click through and read on.  However, the most important part is not letting the reader down. Marketers must post content that is worthy of the hype of such headlines and the information must be of value or else consumers will be disappointed.

With so much information being thrown into consumers faces, it's becoming more and more important to make your content stand out above the rest and using these tips can definitely help.

The Three Worst Ways to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business (And What You Should Do Instead)

In a recent post on Social Media Today, titled "The Three Worst Ways to Use Social Media to Grow Your Business (And What You Should Do Instead)" discusses how interactions and communications have changed because of new media.

The first bad strategy discussed is when brands create too many social networks.  The problem with this approach is that it becomes more difficult to manage as the number of social media accounts increases. Instead, they suggest investing more into accounts that are top performing and only use those that reach your target market.

The next bad strategy mentioned is relying on others to share for you. While this is ideal, it cannot be the only means of spreading information. Instead, it's more effective to have specific offers that are of importance to your audience and direct users straight to them.

Lastly, the article argues that focusing on easy, ineffective tactics is a poor approach and instead they emphasize the importance of engaging with your audience. To do this, it is best to appeal to topics that the target audience cares about such as nonprofits, so as to best position the brand.

If businesses follow these tips, I definitely feel they will see improvements in their efforts online. However, above all, I feel it is most important for brands to understand their target market and focus everything they do to what they desire. The key is giving the audience what they want.