With billions of social media users worldwide, it is no surprise that 93% of marketers use social networks to promote their business and services. As most companies end up targeting the global market with the help of the Internet, their needs for multilingual and multicultural marketing and public relations follow a constantly growing trend. SociaLingo by ComTranslations was created to answer those marketing needs – it offer real-time social media translations in over 140 languages.

SociaLingo allows you to engage potential and existing customers regardless of the language they speak, reducing tremendously the difficulties in promoting products and services arising from speaking different languages.

“While businesses may be actively engaging in social media, unless they are participating across a wide spectrum of languages, they are missing the boat. An estimated 50% of social media users communicate in languages other than English. This is where SociaLingo comes in, offering businesses a near real-time translation solution, available in over 140 languages,” explained Carlos Garcia, ComTranslations CEO.

Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube are only the most popular of the social media channels supported by SociaLingo. Using the services, companies create the right messages for the social media channels, choose the languages they want them translated into and then sit by while they are being translated and posted on social networks by a team of native translators. Replacing automatic translation services, such as Google Translate, with human translators, offers a better accuracy and adaptation to cultural aspects of a company’s communication.

Multicultural social media marketing is something any company looking to target more than one country needs to consider.  Having their communication strategy adapted and their messages localized to reach each targeted audience in their native tongue is indeed an important advantage.

These days most businesses are handling a considerable number of their operations online. Many companies are finding that many of their commercial transactions are being handled online, much of their marketing campaigns are being waged online, and even many in-house operations are being pursued online. For instance, a good number of companies conduct seminars for leadership training online.

Many companies are also storing their data online, in the cloud, in order to save money on hardware and energy costs. One of the newest online trends for businesses is reputation management services, all of which seek to shape a company’s brand by developing positive web content and SEO. Where once a company might have focused their Public Relations budget entirely on events and publicity, the rise of the Internet and social media has forced all industries to keep track of brand awareness online. Here are a few of the ways this is being done:

Bring in the bloggers

Many prominent bloggers will write sponsored reviews and if their blogs receive considerable traffic a link to your company’s site can accomplish a number of tasks at once. One, it is a great source of link-building, which helps your SEO. Two, it (hopefully) creates positive content about your brand name. And three) with the help of social media you can get the post shared, tweeted, dug, stumbled upon, etc. Your company should have it’s own blog too, which is necessary for any kind of meaningful SEO.

Engage with consumers directly

One of the most beneficial aspects of social media for businesses is the ability to easily engage with consumers through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linked In and dozens of other sites. Where branding used to be limited to television and print advertising, the Internet presents an entirely new niche for brand management. Use Twitter to monitor what people are saying about you, build networks, index conversations, integrate third party tools into your company’s blog (again, your company should definitely have a blog). In 2010, Pepsi spent their entire Super Bowl advertising budget on social media promotions—20 million dollars. So, yes, it works.

Keep track of negative reviews

Bad Yelp reviews can badly harm your business. In addition to releasing positive content to counteract the negative, you should engage with the reviewers. Offer them incentives to return to your service. Address their concerns and grievances. In many ways, reputation management is the new PR, or at least the newest incarnation of it. If your company is looking to get an advantage over the competition, optimize yourself for the web and invest in online reputation management.

Guest post by Sol Baker

In this article you’ll learn how to…
Study the birth of trends and early adopters
Crowdsource pertinent data
Create cultural events while marketing

These days marketing is simultaneously easier and harder. It’s easier in the sense that there are a wide variety of new online tools that can equip the wayward marketer with an arsenal of powerfully efficient information gathering techniques. It’s harder in the sense that people are aware of the presence of marketing and are somewhat jaded by it. This makes marketing campaigns less effective and puts added pressures on marketing teams to come up with innovative, cutting edge strategies. But regardless of what product or service you are promoting, be it custom pens or carpet cleaning, there are ways you can market and, more importantly, gather information crucial to marketing, without being seen as infringing on peoples’ privacy. Here are three methods for doing so:

Hunting For Cool

‘Cool hunting’ isn’t new or revolutionary at this point. Youth marketing firms have been embedding researchers into niche communities for years, gleaning trends and data and using this information to create customized marketing campaigns for their clients. With the widespread growth of the Internet, ‘cool hunting’ can now be accelerated in a way that previous generations of marketers would have salivated over. Using social media, message boards, and place-based messaging out in the field, trends can be caught as they’re born and the early adopters of these trends can be more quickly profiled and monitored.

Cool hunting, of course, traditionally takes place out on the streets, where marketers can enmesh themselves into vibrant sub-cultures. Usually this is not done to push a product, but rather to absorb information about a niche group that would normally be difficult to acquire. Street marketing now has the added benefit of a different kind of social network, seen in location-based sites like Foursquare. The newer augmented reality apps on many smartphones also allow for marketers to view a tremendous amount of information without ever having to speak to anyone. The new age of cool hunting has just begun.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing is also a powerful technique that has accelerated due to the growth of the Internet as a popular medium. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and countless others can be used to gauge how people view a particular product or service. This information can then be shaped by marketing teams in order to craft advertisements and viral campaigns that either addresses the public’s reaction or tries to steer it in a different direction.

Crowdsourcing has grown out of the sheer popularity of the Internet as a place where people fervently share their opinions. From comment threads underneath YouTube videos to blogs to Twitter lists and Quora Q&A’s, point of views are not hard to come by online.

But how does a marketer make sense of all those different opinions?

Short of an expensive data mining operation, all this information may not add up to a singular picture of consumer attitudes. The responsibility of the marketer is look for specific messages and points of entry. There are going to be positives and negatives on most any subject. Nary a business, company name, product or service out there has a completely perfect reputation. Negative opinions must be considered just as much as the positive, if not more. Negative opinions can become the backbone of a future marketing campaign that can distill its impact. But you’ve got to know what those opinions are first.

Creating cultural events

One of the best ways to market your business is to sponsor fun, exciting events for people to attend. Concerts, conventions, parties are good examples. Not only will these events create environments in which you can observe peoples’ likes and dislikes, they will allow you to brand your company in a certain way, creating a trigger of positive imagery that people associate with you.

A great example of this is multimedia parties that partner several companies for the purpose of creating viral word of mouth. For example, a car company may want to market a certain model to a younger demographic. What better way to do this than to showcase the car at a party where this demographic would be enjoying itself. The marketing company behind this may be able to accomplish to things with such an event: one) they will be able to essentially create their own laboratory for studying the fashion, product and behavior trends of this demographic, and two) they will be creating a new branded identity for the car–a fun-friendly, exciting new image that could gain momentum through word of mouth advertising.

Marketing has, in many ways, become more tricky, even though many would agree that there are more powerful tools for effectively waging successful campaigns. The advent of online technology in marketing has made it more effective and more complex. Using crowdsourcing, cool hunting, and events that promote cultural immersion and positive branding are ways to market without being seen as ‘marketing’.

About the author

Sol Baker is a marketing analyst and freelance writer who has worked as a consultant for multiple Fortune 500 companies.

Guest post by Dave Mathews

Since startups and small businesses have limited financial budget, their reliance on a well thought-out marketing plan is a rarity. But the point that a marketing plan makes or breaks a business cannot be emphasized enough.

It has been reported by Forrester Research in their research that from all over the world, more than $200 billion were spent online in 2011 by the Americans alone, with an estimation of the total jacking up to $327 billion in 2016. This proves Bill Gates statement that, “the Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.”

It is a reported practice by some of the companies that they stress on sales before actually coming up with, or implementing, a marketing plan. This usually turns disadvantageous because, understandably, a potential client will be hesitant to buy a product/service he is not familiar with.

But this can be avoided by taking advantage of mediums that allow for a business to create its online presence. A startup can spread its word to a targeted audience by using social media, and resultantly creating a reliable and strong clientage and customer relationship. This article aims to get you acquainted with ways you can market your startup online.

The first step to creating a successful marketing strategy is to have a logo that gives your startup or small business a distinctively idiosyncratic edge.  A logo of your business is like a receptionist. It is be the first thing about your business that potential customers see, and as they say, first impression is the last impression. So put up your best face!

Social media is being increasingly used by businesses because of the advantages it carries and adopting   a few smart social media marketing strategies will have your business on its way to success.

LinkedIn has consistently proved itself as a network of professionals that helps in gaining business leads for your startup and expanding your professional circle. Read more.

Twitter has proved itself as a force to reckon with as far as allowing businesses to market themselves is concerned. (Learn how)

PInterest is, albeit new, but has seen success in the statistical count of people joining it. It allows businesses to share pictures of their products and services. (Learn how)

Create a blog to share useful content related to your business with the readers. This helps in diverting traffic on your website, besides acting as a marketing tool for your startup. Here’s how you can set up a blog on WordPress, but make sure it is then listed in web directories like the one of Google (learn how) because millions of people search blogs through them.

Initiate a video blog because it is reported by comScore that users watch approximately 186 videos a month, testifying for their success in reaching millions of viewers across the globe. Amongst the mediums used for video blogging, Youtube has seen tremendous success and playbacks reaching as much as 700 billion in 2011.

Co-market your business with other businesses that share their products/services with you. This is a great way for startups to save money that would otherwise be spent on implementing solo marketing plans.

Build credibility by joining Step by Step and writing on topics that relate to your target market.  Whether it is a retail outlet in London or a business providing services in Montreal, the titles can be endless to get your name in the list of experts.

A marketing plan should have all the ingredients to morph your business from a startup into a success story, and applying all of these techniques for online marketing is sure to give your business the push it needs towards the road of triumph.

About the author

This post is contributed by Dave Mathews, looking after PR activities of Stepbystep.com. Public Relations and Social Media Marketing are Dave’s areas of expertise.

BlueGlass Interactive has recently acquired Voltier Digital, a content marketing company specializing in infographics production and data visualization. We all knew infographics and visual aids used to deliver a certain message were becoming more and more popular, but this recent acquisition by BlueGlass to support their strategy to boost their digital offering once again proves this type of products will play a key role in overall content marketing strategy and production.

BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. an Internet marketing company focusing on social media marketing and search engine optimization, will integrate Voltier Digital into their operation, thus expanding their marketing capabilities. All Voltier Digital employees will join BlueGlass and Voltier’s three founders will hold senior roles on BlueGlass’ production and marketing teams.

“It’s hard to express how excited our team is about joining BlueGlass,” said Nicholas Santillo, CEO of Voltier Digital. “We have watched the impressive trajectory BlueGlass has taken since its inception and we are eager to add our team’s experience to an already stellar group of Internet marketing visionaries.”

BlueGlass Interactive Co-founder Chris Winfield described the move as strategic:

“I first started working with the team at Voltier in 2007 and I have always been amazed at their ability to constantly innovate and stay at the forefront of the inbound marketing industry. The need for companies to implement and execute effective content marketing strategies is constantly increasing, so we are thrilled to have one of the leaders in this space become a part of BlueGlass.”

The move is indeed strategic for BlueGlass, as they tap into a content marketing field that is bound to drive more sales in 2012 and more so in the years to come. The acquisition and the value they put on infographic production is confirmed by recent studies, such as the results published by the Custom Content Council,  showing more than 75% of US corporate marketers say they are aggressively (16%) or moderately (62%) shifting spending from traditional marketing to branded-content marketing.

We are already seeing the high use of data visualization products and their high potential of going viral – infographics have become a welcome and powerful addition to most blog posts, press releases, research results articles and pretty much any type of content published online.  Why they work so well? They are fun and colorful and explain in an easy, fact centered and easy to remember way the issue they focus on. And social media users love to share them – no matter what field they tap into, they take sometimes boring or complicated issues and make them fun and engaging.

Have you already included infographics in your content marketing strategy? Were you pleased with the results?

The rise of Twitter as a powerful social media tool as seen its deployment in a wide variety of marketing, journalism, and propaganda campaigns. Recently many companies have also begun to use Twitter as a Public Relations tool. From real time communication to brand reputation, Twitter can be used for public relations, but only if your PR team is wise and careful. Here are three factors to keep in mind:

Twitter creates a real-time dialogue without taking on dangerous newscasts

Almost like having your own global LP Chat software, Twitter creates a running dialogue with the world that can be updated so rapidly it begins to take on characteristics of real time communication. This can be extremely beneficial for time-sensitive events related to product releases, political campaigns, and even international stock market tips. With the world more connected than ever, the ability to spread information efficiently and instantaneously allows companies and public entities to address issues concurrently with network news cycles.

You should Tweet informative links that show that your company is working on the problem

Because Twitter allows you to share links with thousands, even millions of followers, what you say has added importance. Especially given the truncated nature of the message, when using Twitter for PR it’s important to remember to use your tweets wisely. After the 2010 oil spill, BP used their Twitter account to keep people updated about the efforts they were making to contain the leak and protect the coastal inhabitants and ecosystems. Links to reports on their efforts were probably far more effective at conveying information and reducing anger than a press conference full of lawyer-written canned responses.

Be careful not to add fuel to the fire

A recent McDonald’s campaign about new efforts to make their fast food menu healthy backfired when Twitter subscribers began to lampoon the global icon about the quality of its ingredients and health benefits. The campaign quickly became a joke and likely caused damage to the brand. If your company is perceived a certain way, don’t use Twitter to try and reverse that image. You’re setting yourself up for disaster. Twitter is for subtle branding adjustments, not a complete reputation overhaul. Tweets are composed of only 140 characters, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful as satirical weapons.

As you can see, it’s not just marketers who are using Twitter as an online tool. Corporate executives also use it as a PR strategy, and for good reason. Twitter can be a powerful vessel for information, but it must be used wisely and carefully.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

As we usher in the new year, you might have made a wide variety of resolutions related to losing weight, spending less money, or drinking less, but if you own a small business or work as a freelancer, a resolution you might have neglected to make is to build up your online brand. So many times our resolutions are geared toward reducing the negative effects of something, and not increasing the positive effects of something else.

Building a brand online requires a multitude of incremental steps that start with your acknowledgment of the importance of having a clean bill of health. There are a wide variety of services out there, such as ReputationManagers.com, that can help you dispel slander or negative reviews. But when it comes right down to it, you need to proactively manage your image you put out onto the Internet. Here three ways to take control of your online brand:

Use your Facebook fan page to make personal connections with your fans and customers

If you’re a one-man/woman show this is easier, but if you have a big personnel, it’s time for you to designate one person, or even a team, to handle your social media relations. This is a big part of PR now. The position is often called Social Media Director, and this person(s) is responsible for using sites like Facebook to reach out to customers. A Facebook fan page offers an incredible opportunity to create one-to-one friendships with your followers. If you run a business, this could translate to excellent word of mouth. Take, for example, the Southwest Airlines ‘free tickets’ meme that has spread like a wildfire through Facebook.

Tweet it up

Twitter is billed as a micro-blogging site, but it’s also a great way to micro-manage your online perception. A dicey article about you on Huffingtonpost.com can yield hundreds or even thousands of negative comments. Counter this by Tweeting a brief explanation or just something positive to lessen the damage. This should in turn yield a fresh wall of positive Tweets that will be seen as more current than the original article. Twitter is way to stay on the offensive and to be seen as working in real-time communication.

Use viral video to your advantage

In the aftermath of the disastrous BP oil spill, the company took to the TV and the Internet with videos in which the CEO made personal appeals to the public, claiming that the company was going to do everything it could to fix the problem. While the videos might not have convinced everyone, they received thousands of views on YouTube and probably lessened the public outrage over this horrific accident.

There dozens of ways you can approach your company’s online identity, too many to list here. However, they all revolve around the core idea that social media is a storm of energy that can and must be harnessed. Staying active on these sites is an incredible way to evolve your PR strategies and refurbish your online brand.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

Guest post by Mihaela Lica Butler

One of the most important components of your PR strategy has to be reputation management. Your business and personal success depend by and large on public perception. Reputation is the essence of who or what a business or person is.

Unfortunately for the SME or even some corporate decision makers, not much information exists in simplistic form, there are no real “simple guides to reputation management.” But, the infographic below, provided by KBDS Digital Marketing , does a nice job outlining some do and don’t practices and possible remedies for negatives. An old Chinese proverb roughly states:

“Don’t consider your reputation and you may do anything you like.”

Graphic Courtesy of KBSD Digital Agency

Maybe the most valuable lesson that can be “re-learned” from this graphic is how companies and individuals can get a “so called” exterior vision. Judging for yourself the quantitative view of your reputation may lead to a filtered view. Seeking the advice and feedback of others in your network, even expanding your network for the purpose, can help your reputation in the short and long term. No matter what methods you employ though, it is crucial to listen and respond when customers speak. The social revolution just empowered billions, but it can empower you too.

About the author
Mihaela Lica Butler is an experienced PR professional, senior partner and founder of Pamil Visions PR. She writes about the latest in the PR field at Everything PR and is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others). She also occasionally writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. To stay in touch with her latest work, follow her on Twitter.

As web marketers enter into the new year, it’s important we take time to consider what’s right around the corner. Whether you’re a part-time blogger or a salaried employee of an internet marketing agency, so long as your income is connected to technology you’re always going to need to be staying one step ahead. 2012 is set to become a memorable year for online marketers and entrepreneurs, so don’t allow yourself to get behind on the next big things in web marketing. In summary, expect the following to unfold sometime later this year:

Personal App Revolution

First came Siri available on the iPhone. Soon, everyone with a smartphone will have a personal assistant app. These services will partially render traditional SEO obsolete – and at the very least force a rewriting of the rules regarding the value of page rankings.

News Will Get the Clicks

With the advent of voice activated searches underway, pay-per-click is slowly going to subside into oblivion. The dwindling sources of PPC revenue will come almost entirely from news seekers and others attempting to retrieve recent information immediately, making constant updating a top priority.

Infographics Will Spread the Word

Infographics are a relatively new Internet-based media phenomenon in which highly detailed information is delivered by-way of an equally detailed graphic. They’re perfect for being linked to, sent via mobile text, and ultimately for online entities to market themselves.

QR Couponing

Now that the majority of mobile users in the U.S. use smartphones, which include barcode scanners, expect QR codes to finally take off as a legitimate form of online advertising. QR couponing will particularly become effective, further breaking down the wall that separates online advertising from its real world products and sales.

Flash Abandonment

In late 2011, Adobe announced they were halting development of their mobile version of Flash. Expect more and more online entities to depart from the platform altogether. This is for the simple fact that Flash is unsuitable for smartphones and even more unsuitable for tablets.

Before you sit down and start planning your 2012 online marketing strategy, it’s critical that you do your best to see what’s around the corner first. It’ll save you time spent playing catch up, as well as provide you with “first wave” time that others in your field won’t have the luxury of possessing. Be one of the first to act on the upcoming internet marketing trends of this year and expect to be rewarded because of it.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing

Dale Carnege’s influential 1936 self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, proudly sits on many PR professional’s bookshelves and in the Kindle queue’s of the digital library of many SEO services. The copy is usually in pristine and proper condition – because it has never been opened or touched since purchase. While playing a great prop in the professional business arsenal, it gets read as often as The Prince by politicians or The Art of War by generals.

If you are curious as to how the book applies to the current social media landscape, there are six guidelines the book gives to make people like you. Here they are with the proper social media advice to accompany them for our modern, networked times:

Become Genuinely Interested in Other People

While most people view social networking as a selfish, indulgent, and sometimes vain experience, you can get to know people intimately by following their posts. Get to know their personality by actively engaging them in content they post and not straying off of their interests when sending them messages

Smile

Too often people post about what is going wrong in their lives. The fact is that no one wants to get dragged down when checking out Facebook and Twitter. Make sure to keep your posts positive so you don’t lose followers, friends, subscribers, and friends.

Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language

Fake aliases are far too common on social networking sites. If you are going by an obscure, inside-joke ridden nickname and want to effectively network, you should consider changing your Twitter handle or Facebook profile back to what’s on your driver’s license.

Be a Good Listener

You shouldn’t use social media platforms to monopolize conversations. If you are littering the   Facebook News Feed with pointless posts, people are going to grow weary and either not follow you or not take anything you say seriously.

Talk in Terms of the Other Person’s Interests

If you are commenting on someone’s content post, do not try to veer the subject towards another topic. They posted for genuine discussion and by delivering you will score rep points.

Make the Other Person Feel Important

Instead of waiting for people to post or send you messages, actively go out and do it yourself. There is no bigger endorphin releaser than seeing a new notification, receiving a Twitter mention, or getting a DM.

By following Dale Carnege’s classic steps and just tweaking them ever so slightly, you will be on your way to winning more friends and influencing more people. This will ultimately lead to more business, better social networks, and a more fulfilling life full of variety and conversation.

About the author
Guest post by Nick Jameson. He is a freelance writer specializing in business and marketing