The Zeitgeist of the current digital age revolves around being likeable, and social media has businesses in a whirl, trying to figure out the magic formula of being “liked”. So what’s it take to be liked, and how do you make yourself worth being liked?

There’s not an easy answer, because like most things in this digital age, it’s the luck of the draw. What works for one business may not necessarily work for another. As a matter of fact, it can even backfire. We’ve talked here before about marketing in social media and the importance of developing relationships with your fan base instead of just gathering up random likes. Running up the numbers on Facebook won’t do you any good if your fan base isn’t interacting with you on a regular basis.

AdAge has a few wonderful examples of successful campaigns and how they worked for certain companies. The idea here is not to copy what has been done, but to find unique ways to connect to your own audience. At Mass Media Marketing, we are always striving to find new and exciting avenues to build quality likes over quantity. Give us a call and let us help you maneuver through the ever-changing landscape of marketing in social media.

Facebook’s sales strategist Sheryl Sandberg recently announced that the social media giant will be offering $50 credits to small businesses in the hopes of gaining them as regular clients. Sandberg, formerly one of the key players at Google, is now bringing the search engine’s marketing savvy to Facebook. The goal, of course, is to generate more revenue by latching on to the torrent of small businesses that have recently migrated to Facebook in order to market themselves via social media.

Setting up a free Facebook page is pretty simple, and many small businesses have thrived by utilizing social media sites. The hope for Facebook is that the same small businesses will spend a little money with them by buying ads to target other Facebook users. In the end, it could add up to big bucks.

So, is it worth it to take Facebook’s $50 and run with it? Sure, why not? There’s really not a lot to lose, especially if it ends up working in your favor. Will it be the cash generator Facebook is hoping for? Only if it can cause a stir like AdWords did, which remains to be seen.

Conventional wisdom says that the main users of social media are the young and technological savvy, but a new report from the Pew Research Center indicates that more than 50% of adults are now using social media on a regular basis. There’s been a dramatic increase in adults flocking to the Internet over the past five years, with social media seeing the majority of this influx.

So what does this mean for you? If your business is trying to reach an adult demographic, then you can no longer ignore social media sites. The reasoning that only young people are using sites like Facebook or Twitter, etc, no longer holds true. Your best online marketing plan is one that reaches out beyond your website and into the social media sites.

And, as we’ve seen, this isn’t always an easy task, because keeping everything updated requires a lot of time and effort. Contact M3 and let us show you some efficient ways to manage your online presence.

The first thing a lot of our clients ask about is advice on how to manage their Facebook pages. The tendency is to believe that once a Facebook page is set up, then all the work is done – but quite the opposite is true – this is when the real work begins.

In order for your page to attract visitors and thrive, it needs to be updated. That’s right, just like your website, you need to be active and constantly update your Facebook page, whether it be with status updates, news, videos, pictures, interesting links, or whatever the case may be. You need to keep it fresh or else no one will come back after the initial “like”.

And, speaking of “likes”, how do you get people to like you in the first place? This is where creativity comes into play. You need to promote your Facebook page as much as possible to your customer base, both online and off. You can do this through contests or special offers, done specifically to promote your Facebook page.

There are many ways to creatively promote your business or product on Facebook and other social media outlets, and it all depends on how much time and effort you want to put into it.  Many of our clients have used Facebook to build their customer base at the grass roots level.  Give us a call and let us help you find new ways to promote yourself with Facebook.