The Top 5 Skills You Need To Rock Social Media

cc Yoel Ben-AvrahamOn the surface, being active on social media seems like child’s play.

Indeed, it is the younger generations that have made these communication platforms a marketing necessity for businesses of any industry.

However, once you have spent some time on social media you soon realize that it takes more time, effort, and skill to be effective than you first realized.

There are five skills in particular that you need to ensure you are using these marketing platforms to their utmost potential.

Let’s take a look at what they are.

1)   Grammar & Writing Skills

Being able to communicate clearly and effectively is essential for marketing on social media. Some platforms, like Twitter, limit you to communicating in 140 characters, while others give you free reign on your character limit. That said, no matter what platform you are communicating on, you need to ensure that your message is clear.

2)   Listening Skills

One of the key differentiators between traditional marketing and social media marketing is that it takes us from one-way communication (think magazines & billboards) to two-way communication.

The purpose of social media is to communicate with your customers, but it is also a means for your customers to communicate with you.This is what most brands don’t realize.

In order to be truly effective on social media, you need to listen for the conversations already taking place about your brand or your industry and be ready to add your own insight and value to the conversation.

3)   Pattern Recognition

There are many different ways to approach social media, depending on your brand’s goals and objectives.

For this reason, marketing success on social media is all about feedback. Making assumptions, trying new ideas, listening for feedback, and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

From these observations you are able to create your own map to follow for your own brand. These are the patterns you need to recognize to be successful, but they will be unique for everyone.

4)   Data & Insight Analysis

The only way to truly tell if social media is working for you is to measure it.

This is the step that most brands miss, because quite honestly, it takes a unique skill set to make sense of all the data being received.

Some say there is no way to measure social media. On the contrary, there is almost too much to measure at any one time. That’s why data analysis is a skill that is deeply needed in social media.

  1. How much traffic is your social campaign driving to your website?
  2. Which platforms are driving the most traffic?
  3. What type of content draws the most engagement?
  4. What days of the week is your target market most active?

These are questions that data analysis answers.

5)   Ability to Provide Feedback to Management

There is one thing that upper management wants to know when they invest money, and that is what is their return on that investment.

This is the classic argument against using social media, and is why social media managers need to be able to present data and feedback effectively. Being able to extract data from your efforts is one thing, but being able to present it in a clear and concise manner that makes sense to management is another.

This is the most important skill to master, because without it you may not get the support of those who matter.

Of course, there are many other skills that are required in effectively using social media, but out of all of them these are the ones we feel stand out. Without communication, listening, and analysis skills your social campaigns will flounder.

What skill do you think is necessary for being successful on social media?

5 tips for troubleshooting website display issues.

Troubleshooting Website Display Issues: Resolving Browser Issues

Your web developer swears the changes you requested to your website have been made, but you can’t see them!

Here are 5 step by step tips to troubleshooting website display issues.

Here’s how to refresh your webpage, clear your cache, tell what browser you’re using, what version of the browser you’re using and update your browser so you can troubleshoot browser issues with your website developer.

1.  Refresh your webpage

Clicking the refresh button will re load the website and often display the changes your web developer has made to your website.

To refresh, look for a symbol at the top of the page, by the website address, that looks like this, or you can refresh manually by using your keyboard:

Refreshing your browser

2. Clear your cache:

This is industry lingo for refreshing the files your computer has saved from the website to make it load faster the next time you visit the site.

If refreshing the page doesn’t work, clearing your cache is a great next step.

Here is an article on clearing your cache

3. Determine what browser you have.

A browser is the vehicle by which you access web pages.  They are, from left to right- Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera.

webbrowsers_icons

4. Determine what version of the browser you have. 

This step is different for every browser. Here are the steps for each.

Click to expand each article:

5. Update your browser:

Technology changes so fast, you may have an outdated browser version which is no longer supported by many websites.

A good website development firm will ensure the site they build is compatible with the majority of web users in your region, based on what browsers and versions are most commonly used

Updating your browser is easy and can usually be done in 3 minutes or less. Update your browser by clicking here.

It’s important for your security and an optimal web experience to ensure you’re installing updates on your computer for your operating system as well as browser updates.

 

Many browser updates will be issued to combat problems like identity theft, phishing sites, viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, and other sorts of malware. will be issued to combat just these problems.

 

If you have refreshed the website, cleared your cache and updated your browser and still you can’t see the website changes- send the browser and version to your website developer or designer so they can troubleshoot the issue on their end.