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.

As every business and their grandmothers are haphazardly hurling themselves onto the social media websites, the neglected corporate initiatives of yesteryear patiently lurk in the dark annals of the World Wide Web anticipating the time when high ranking execs will again begin to realize the power of the corporate blog. Just about 5 minutes after businesses began to wake up to the idea of adding a blog to their online presence, Facebook and Twitter hit the scenes, and most companies plans of improving their blogs went from being on top of the CEO’s desk to being ‘filed away somewhere.’ The result- a wealth of business websites, which possess attractively developed blogs that utterly lack any semblance of marketing strategy.

As is true with any form of marketing or content production, the best way to determine an effective presentation method is to consider the audience first and foremost. In many niches, the personal flavor, that only a blog can offer, creates a viral effect due to their friendly and likeable content. Admittedly, applying the personal touch is not the only effective method of corporate blogging, but the personal blogging method does have viral potential for connecting with former and future customers.

One of the things that people like about corporate blogs is having the opportunity to learn about the individuals behind the company logo. By showing potential customers a face, telling them about the individuals in the business, and letting them into your companies world, it makes them feel connected, and lets them care about the businesses on a personal level. Since most people prefer to conduct business exclusively with people that they like, it’s a good idea to use the blog to showcase the likeable aspects of a business.

In John Jantsch‘s book, Duct Tape Marketing, Jantsch asserts that the internal workings of a business are very much a part of the external presentation that marketing efforts should strive to communicate. In other words, the branding process is not just about convincing people that a brand is awesome, it’s about truly being awesome and then communicating that awesomeness to the world. If a company boasts high morale inside of the walls of the store or office, it behooves them to market that morale, since potential customers will want to be a part of it too. Adding a personal touch to the business blog can do just that.

Case and point, the popular online shoe store, called Zappos, has a blog which people simply love to read. The Zappos corporate blog has a deceivingly amateurish chic to it. Interspersed between fun and cute posts, which almost forget to mention the products that they are marketing, are posts featuring their employees. The employees don’t seem to possess any superhuman abilities, but they are totally engaging because of the fun passion that they each posses for their beloved online shoe store brand.

By the looks of many poorly developed corporate blogs, it may appear that the corporate blog was a fly-by-night fad. But smart companies are proving otherwise. Because blogging is an underdeveloped art form amongst corporate marketers, and successful blogging initiative often requires a more personal marketing touch than that which most marketers are comfortable with, this potentially dominant marketing beast appears to be in hibernation until the corporate giants wake up and take their cues from Zappos and other progressive minded businesses.

About the author
Susie Brown is a FastUpFront Blog contributor and business author. Fastupfront offers quick business loans for merchants based on business cash flow. For more information about business loan options visit FastUpFront.com

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.

If you’re a blogger, there are many issues to consider when creating content, promoting it, and designing the aesthetic of your blog. Whether you work for a marketing agency like Quick Sprout with a number of different online clients or are launching your own blog, ask yourself these six questions in order to get yourself on the fast track to success:

What is your niche? Don’t blog in a vacuum. Decide who your blog is for and actively write for that audience. If your blog is about graphic design, specify what medium of graphic design—online, advertising, manufacturing, etc. Any general category you think of can be drilled down into at least a half dozen other sub-categories. Honing in on the most lucrative sub-category and niche audience will allow you to focus your content, marketing, and publishing outreach.

Do you update multiple times a week? One of the best ways to make sure your blog rises to the top of search engine queries is to frequently update your content with media-rich posts. In fact, fresh content is one of the most important and fundamental elements in search engine optimization as well.

How familiar are you with your content management system? Most CMSs, from popular ones like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla to smaller, simpler systems like PageLime, Konductor, Zimplit, and Perch, allow bloggers incredible tools for customizing their content and aesthetic.

Do you study your analytics? Most content management systems allow you to monitor your inbound links and see what search engine results are leading readers to your blogs. This affords you many useful ways to calibrate your keywords and tailor your marketing strategies. The further you dig into your blog’s stats the more you will learn about what kinds of people are reading your content, how long they are staying on your site, and whether or not they’re sharing your posts.

What is your approach to SEO? Hopefully you’re utilizing a combination of keywords, meta-tags, link building, social bookmarking, and a wide variety of other search engine optimization tactics. SEO isn’t just for online marketing agencies. Bloggers can employ on-page SEO strategies that can greatly improve their page views and value.

Do you use social media? You should integrate social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and YouTube as well as social news aggregators like Reddit and Digg. Notonly do these sites expand the reach of your blog across the Internet, it opens you up to new readers.

Answering these questions will not assure you of blogging success, but it’s hard imagine you won’t be headed in the right direction. The all-star blogger will be simultaneously considering how to improve his/her content, aesthetic, stats, and outreach strategies.

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

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.

There is so much more to finding employment and creating a career today than many people realize at the get go. While many people no doubt find positions by sending out their resumes and custom tailoring their cover letters, today’s tech centric-society lends itself well to new and more appropriate forms of self-promotion. Blogging has become a hobby, career, and tool for thousands and thousands of individuals around the world. Using a personal blog to essentially brand yourself and market your skills to the professional world has fast become the approach in today’s harsh job market. Follow these four blogging tips and self-marketing basics to create a personal blog that sells your best professional qualities and helps potential employers gain special insight into your abilities.

Simplicity and Clarity

The key to a successful website of any sort is simplicity and clarity. This is true for most things, including marketing. You want to be clear and direct with your intent and purpose. With your personal blog, you should create something that carefully communicates what you wish to tell. Your writing style should be clear and to the point. Tell your readers up front what your interests are, what the purpose of your blog is, what your accomplishments are, and what you wish to gain from them reading your material. There’s no point in using fluff language or fillers. Just tell people exactly who you are and what you are doing and see how they respond. Of course, I mean all of this directness to be done in a professional manner. You must sell yourself through your blog. Be clear and simple in your intent. 

Be Forward

This concept goes along with simplicity and clarity, but is slightly different. You want to be forward and up front. Self-promotion can only be successful if it is seen. Direct potential professional contacts to your blog page, so they can see your qualifications and potential. Having this blog can demonstrate to potential employers your perseverance to finding a worthwhile career and your thoroughness. Creating and maintaining a blog requires a significant amount of dedication and effort. With any type of marketing you have to put yourself out on the line. Be bold. Reach out to your desired audience and make them look at your blog.

Looks Matter

As any marketing professional would tell you, it really is all about looks. The way things are visually presented to you make a difference. Looks influence the way people feel about something and how they perceive that thing. If you are using your personal blog as a way to communicate and connect you’re your professional network, you must pay close attention to the appearance of your site. Make sure that the information is easily navigable and the site is uncluttered. Websites online that look outdated or busy always serve the opposite purpose they intend. You want your online resume (which is essentially what your blog will act as) to be clean, clear, and professional looking. Add some of your own personal style touches, but don’t overdo the pages and muddle the site’s purpose.

About the author

This is a guest post by Eliza Morgan who is a full time blogger.  She specializes in writing about business credit cards. You can reach her at: elizamorgan856 at gmail dot com.

Buying fans or followers has somehow become a sort of a taboo whenever PR or marketing experts discuss social media strategy. It is something people regard with distrust and the act of paying someone to like your page or follow you on Twitter is something devious and wrong. As always, things are not black and white, most of the online world has an intriguing grey attitude.

Let’s face it, if you advertise your page or profile on Facebook, Twitter, Google Ads or wherever, you still pay for people to like you. When you buy social media fans, does that mean they are worse then when you pay for advertising? Maybe. It all depends on what service you’re using for your purchase, it depends on their method of getting you fans and so on. 

A while back, someone asked me on Twitter if I would ever recommend to a business to buy social media followers. And I took my sweet time to reply! Sorry Kushal!

After considering it and actually testing some services, I still say it depends. If you have limited time and you can either interact with existing fans or increase your followers count, it might pay off to buy some fans and invest your time in building trust-based relationships with them. You might get a crowd of really enthusiastic people who actually are worth the money you’ve invested. So why not try to get Facebook likes using a service such as BuyRealFansandLikes.com, which I am currently testing, or something similar to increase your follower base on Twitter?

If you decide to test it, here are some quick words of advice:

• Try to get targeted fans – either by region or by interest. Businesses that sell fans or followers can also refine their services and connect you to the audience that’s most relevant for you. It might cost you more, but if you sell exclusively to the USA, for example, having cheaper fans from the rest of the world won’t help you much.
• Don’t rely exclusively on the social media fans you buy! It is important for you to reach out to the audiences you target and try to engage existing fans so that they recommend you to their connections. Organic growth is as important as a fresh batch of 500 new fans that don’t really know that much about you to actually instantly buy or instantly recommend your products or services.
• Even if you have the budget, don’t jump to get the high numbers unless you have tested the service before. Start small, with a few hundred  targeted followers or fans and see if it works out for you. If you get real value, you can always buy more. If it turns out to be just a number that does not say much, you haven’t invested a huge amount in hordes of useless fans.
• Before you choose a service, try to do a bit of research. Has anyone you know used them? Are they happy? Would they recommend them to you? If no one you know has used them, just google the company in question. Blog posts, comments or social media updates might give you the information you need.

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