Your Marketing and Design Reading for The Weekend
43% of Small Businesses Spend 6+ Hours per Week in Social Media
Speaking of social media, what kind of commitment are we talking about? Well, HubSpot shares an infographic created by VerticalResponse which reveals that 43% of small businesses are spending at least six hours per week on social media and 25% spend six to ten hours. Some other key points are:
- The major focus is on Facebook (90% use it) and Twitter (70% use it).
- About 50% of small businesses use LinkedIn.
- Usage of Google+ and Pinterest is much lower.
- CEOs spend one to five hours per week on social media but one-third of them want to spend less time.
- 66% of the businesses are spending more time on social media than a year ago.
The Marketing Team at Affinity Express is with the 11% who spend 11 to 20 hours per week because we value social media so much for the search engine optimization (SEO) benefits.
21 Business Blogging Tips from the Pros
Social Media Examiner spoke to the 21 top experts to compile a list of tips that can help all business bloggers improve. Here are some of my favorites:
#2 Crowdsource Unconventionally
This tip wisely advises us to differentiate ourselves and our blogs with new approaches and fresh ideas. Essentially, we need to take inspiration for content from everyday life and write about what matters to our audiences. This makes our content interesting and personal—what readers most want.
#7 Do Interviews/Webinars
If you know an expert in something, interview him or her. You'll get a great blog post, increase your own expertise and teach your readers something. Webinars are a bit more challenging to pull off but you can also feature experts in your network and facilitate the session for them, while you increase your subscriber base thanks to their promotion of the session. We just conducted the first in a series of four sales workshops on new services we're rolling out. We used Webex and recorded the presentation and the question and answer section. It could not have been more simple and I was able to send out a link to all those who could not attend the live presentation. We also have an interview post planned and are working with an expert on SEO. #8 Invite Guest Bloggers The next step beyond an interview post is letting someone else write for your blog. You could feature someone in the company who normally doesn't publish or outside professionals you follow and enjoy reading. This may give you more views based on the following of the guest blogger, as well as an opportunity to provide guest posts on their blogs.
