It is easy to feel nostalgic. There are countless times when I had almost hit that send button sending out a message to doubter companies (these are the past companies I’ve made a pitch to about integrating social media) saying, “I told you so”. Nevertheless, since that is not ethical (and it’s rude) I’m glad that I was able to hold myself back.

From the same research comes even more showings that are striking. One of which describes how people are now using their smartphones to access social media content in 2012. It is now up to 63% of all people surveyed to be exact. The last time I checked early last year for that figure is that its share is only 30%. That jump is more than double the precious standing! These studies, which solidifies social media’s influence to the consumers, also offers a hefty fine for all companies that is late to consider social media in the past.

Another key component that was made concrete by the study is the affinity of people with pictures. Yes I know it sounds so simple, but not all of us embed images in our ever tweet, update or blog post don’t we? Pictures came out on top of the lists of what people want to see on our content as marketers and businesses. 40% of them said that a picture makes a difference whether they would engage a brand more or not.

This comes not with too much surprise. If we are to take a look at the top 100 social media companies, over half of them, 54% to be exact can be seen on Instagram. Because of this move, companies like Nike, Starbucks, and GE (which have all embraced social media) have again proven that they are ahead of the curve. Look it up and Instagram is all over the news recently because of the trend that’s shifting people towards images. The same can be said with Pinterest. Facebook’s one billion acquisition does make sense after all. Instagram’s growth rate is showing it since it has jumped 35%. Compared with the performance of Google+, which is just at a measly 5%.

We are now at a crossroad once again. This is the same scenario companies found themselves just 5% short years ago when social media was still at its infancy. I think whoever finds the right track first gets a chance to be a leader.

• Print media is already considered a sunset industry
• Offline marketing is tedious and people has had enough of direct contact
• Cold calling is more like harvesting contacts to be added to the DNCs (do not call) list
• Television is too expensive and doesn’t have the smart customization that online marketing can provide

If you are an internet marketer making a pitch for a company to give up their stubbornness and adopt an internet marketing campaign. These are some key points that need to be highlighted on your pitch.

• Your competition is probably doing it
• Successful companies are all increasing their budget for internet marketing
• The company will have the advantage to only show their ads to specific target markets
• You can pretty much dictate the location, age, sex and even the spending habits of people who you want your ads shown to

With this amount of customization, a company obviously gets the most out of his marketing budget through online marketing.

Now that we’ve gotten those doubts on online marketing out of the way, let’s talk about one important skill one has got to learn before he tackles the complicated field of online marketing – that is SEO (search engine optimization). I have been in the realm of SEO for a decent amount of time and one thing I could tell you is that no list could ever suffice. SEO is about developing an insatiable hunger to learn a thousand and one way of getting a brand’s presence visible on the internet. You have got to develop an attitude for it. Some might even go as far as saying that all true SEO gurus out there have level of extreme stubbornness.

What I would say though if you are looking for a secret ingredient that would make you an SEO guru as fast as possible is to find an SEO website that you can treat as family. It offers advantages that transcend the depth of your understanding on SEO. Whether you’re a struggling SEO specialist wanting to be at par with the echelon of the industry or even if you already are a highly qualified professional; top SEO websites would still have something to offer to you for growth. They are more than just mere websites; they are communities that host some of the most brilliant minds of the industry. The top ones always have paid subscription, which does a good job of filtering the trash and posers of the internet.

A company, whichever industry it is entrenched in has a brand it needs to take care of. Not only does it has to make sure that its brand is untarnished, but every company also has the responsibility to keep spreading it. Various marketing efforts have to be undertaken to make sure the latter responsibility is covered 24/7. There are several fronts marketing campaigns have to march on such as: the business to consumer, business-to-business and the business to and investors side. In each of those fronts, a company has to have a marketing effort to show for that will reflect a company’s brand. Having that in place gives a company a chance to have those consumers converted into customers, other businesses into partners and investors into clients.

The marketing campaigns we are talking about includes the likes of print ads, press releases, television commercials, trade shows, promotions, to name a few. In the past, all of these are enough to permutate the public’s opinion in favor of the company that is running the cause. There are business owners out there and management who would like to think that the same rules still apply today, sadly though, it just isn’t so. The advent of the internet has made some of these marketing methods close to being obsolete. Every year marketers know about a global force that has been sweeping the marketing landscape by storm and is continually taking away the other marketing effort’s share in the attention of the public. It is social media, and everyone within an organizational umbrella needs to concern himself with how hi/her company’s marketing is doing in this front.

If you are an employee whose job is related to marketing or is in the PR side of the business, then you’ve had a rough couple of years I predict. Businesses from all over are on a scramble to have their presence known online since it is the new place where everybody is hanging out it seems. Before you can do that, your job is to get everyone in the company on board since they will be the first followers, likes, plus 1s etc… that your business’ social media profile would have (ideally). However, it is impossible to dictate the terms of what they have to do in order to make your company’s social media investment a success. I’d say the best you can do is to get them sold with the idea of how other businesses are able to prosper thanks in large part to the networks created by social media in business. I am a firm believer that once they see yours and the company’s goals are on the flesh, from what you’ve shown what other companies are able to do with it, that they would be more than willing to engage, share and protect your company brand’s image in social media.

We no longer have to explain it, people here in the US is bombarded with thousands of marketing efforts each day. Social media in business is proven the most unobtrusive way of getting a brand on the consumers face all the time. It’s like we’re marketing to them and they hardly notice.

Folks, welcome to the era where social media and business have become synonymous with each other. Unless you’re living under a rock, you should agree that we are at a turning point where social media has triumph over any other platform known to man. What we have witnessed here is something spectacular to say the least. Let’s get back into perspective, in 2005, Forbes started researching on what are the business people thoughts on social media and almost all of them dismissed by simply saying “it is a passing trend”. Today, and this is just a rough estimate, it is projected that there are over 1.5 billion people engaged in social networks regularly.

Imagine something that didn’t really had a proper term yet until 2006 taking off and developing into something that would be the ideal platform of people and businesses the world over.

Today ask any business owner and they would tell you something not too far away from what the business owner would tell you; that they hate the fact they are not as commanding in social media as they hope they should be.

Here are some facts that would validate whatever importance social media claims to have on businesses:

• 94% of businesses that have a marketing department see social media as a major part of their marketing campaign
• 60% of marketers spend a greater part of their working day on social media
• If you are in your 20s, there is a 43% chance that you spend more than 10 hours a week being online on social media sites.
• 85% of businesses have responded that they have an increase in market share because of having a dedicated platform for social media.
• 58% of Businesses that have engaged in social media for the last 3 years said that it has directly increased their sales over that period.

I have once read the book about social media and it said that it’s a phenomena fueled by its ability to deliver content, information and context to people. Rather than the people going out of their way and searching the vastness of the internet, social media sites, already presents those that they want to see in an organized fashion. Going back, we have already talked about how the attention of the public has shrunk. We all have fewer minutes to spare in a day than how it was a decade ago. Businesses know this and it is futile for the few to think this is still a passing fad.

Having said all that, we can agree that social media is like an avalanche that will continue to ravage all those that do not pay enough attention to it. That is why there is so much fuss about it in the business world. Today I’m going to list the top benefits of social media on businesses.

Increase brand visibility

A huge chunk of the world’s population is already spending incredulous time on social media sites. Not only that but they seem to respond more to advertisements more than they do when they’re looking at an ad on a TV. This makes social media the new weapon of choice of businesses and their advertising firms which handles their brand. They engage in social media with the hopes of improving brand retention, build loyalty and overall generate more sales; and all those points are being hit as of the moment through social media.

A powerful tool for market research

Even before there was technology to assist them, corporations were already spending serious amounts of dollars to have a glimpse of what their brand, products and services looks from the outside. I’m talking about learning from the opinions of their customers and aligning their products and services to meet demands or to fix shortcomings.

Quick and cheap mode of customer service

A growing trend recently is to use social media to not just get a message across one way towards the audience but to communicate. Communication between a business and its customers is more popularly known as customer service. Guess what, social media has proven to me as effective for that purpose as well minus the price tag.

Great for business networking

More often than not our conversations about social media revolve around how it’s so effective on improving the relationship between a business and its customers. What we don’t see though on the background is that businesses use it to build relationships with other businesses too. Business to business of B2B social media is just as widespread as it is on the other side of the coin. It’s just not as visible but it is certainly as important.

Traffic generating

The most literal benefit I’ll include on the list is social media’s ability to drive traffic to a website you want traffic to go – in this case a business website. Sharing content spurs interactions with friends, friends of friends and strangers, attracting traffic wherever you want it to be directed.

The generation of today’s consumers is elusive. No longer can a strong marketing campaign wield the attention of many, in fact there are businesses that have completely discarded of that approach. It is impossible to launch a campaign in today’s commerce wherein a company’s goal is to influence the entire population. Under any media, gone are the days of broadcast with the entire population’s opinion in mind. Keeping those same sets of principle that may have somehow worked in the past will now lose a business more money than it will draw in.

At the present, the strategy is to specialize and target a particular audience. We may know of this term as a business’ target market. Any marketing campaign that will come of a company’s gate needs to be funneled to entertain, grab the attention and sway the opinion of a certain target market they have long poured research into. In fact, success relies not only on the effectiveness of a marketing campaign towards particular demographics but also the consistency of the entire organization towards what their target market expects from them. A company’s values, goals, products, services and marketing all needs to coincide with the the public profile they want to convey. And only when they’ve reached a harmony acceptable to the consumers or exceed the competition will they reap the profits delivered from their target market. Any other profit that came from other areas are extra that serves as garnish to what is going to be an impressive meal.

So how does social media fit in this picture? Social media is indeed the growing platform of choice when it comes to today’s marketing industry? The social media benefits are too many to be left untapped by a business of any scale. Whether we are talking about a huge corporation or a small entrepreneur, there is room for social media to work its magic and improve the visibility of the brand in the eyes of its target market. I have firsthand experience on how social media benefits works for a brand. Whenever there are clients who are about to cut cost on their marketing campaign but are still eyeing to acquire new business if possible are the best prospects to approach because you are able to do both with social media. Usually theses are small businesses that are hesitant in spending but a social media marketing firm can use that to their advantage.

Businesses most of the time already have the profiles set in place. The only problem really is that their use of the platforms is lethargic. Getting help from someone or a firm who’s got the background and experience to inject real people engagement from social media should be able to draw in more business while requiring fewer resources to accomplish it. The same cannot be said with traditional media.

The challenge is to not just to overtake people from the U.S. or Europe anymore. The internet has begun the phase of real globalization as all countries around the world are now starting to upload significant number of websites on their own. And that is why the competition has increased several notches up.

As we are now looking at the landscape being already extremely crowded and competitive, you probably landed on this page because you are looking for social media guidelines. Surely with all the complexities now involved at how to effectively attract whichever visitors are left wondering out there, it would be nice to have something that could point a newbie to the right direction.

Here are some tips on how you can be part of the great social media revolution:

Make sure to have your main business website represented in social networking sites with its own business profile. In general people define social media as a website which have content that they can easily share the content to their friends, relatives and contacts. The best way to do this is to have widgets attached on your sites from social networking sites which mean you’ve got to sign up your business separate to your personal profile.

Make your posts as interesting as possible and make sure each posts finds its way on all your social networking timelines. It doesn’t matter much if you’ve got great content unless your business has got the audience to tell it to. A full social media site is always connected through different social streams making their content super accessible. Also letting social networking sites carry your content makes it a possibility that it will turn viral.

Abide to social media etiquettes. It is very easy to overdo things in social media. People want to get updated but not to the point that what you’ll present them would topple some of the other feeds they are waiting for as well. Be helpful and stay clear of being a spammer. It will do more harm than good.

Make sure your profile is up to date. You want to make sure that your social networking sites and profiles are updated. You want to get back at the links you’ve posted through the past and update the ones that are no longer working. It is very easy to tick visitors with non-working links. Since user experience is kept at such a high standard in social media, this pointer cannot be missed.

This leaves marketing either on the hands of employees further down the organizational chart especially for a smaller business. Chances are though, a business owner wouldn’t be able to find anyone who excels in social media enough to entrust with any marketing campaign. It takes years of experience, even though the concept is still somewhat brand new. The reason for this is that anyone can just create a few pages and profiles for the sake of a company and call it a day without putting much strategy into it. These pages of course all add up to the clutter and make the next business’ job tougher to get ranked in social media for b2b.

Small businesses have everything to gain when they do establish a relationship with other businesses that is not their competition. For example, there is a restaurant in town that serves a rare foreign delicacy and you own one of the few stores that sell the main ingredient of the recipe; wouldn’t it be such a wonderful advantage if you already have the other company encircled on one of your social media streams. Surely it would provide an advantage over any other business bidding against you to get the deal of who supplies that certain ingredient. It would place you in a position where you’d have a better chance of doing business and adding to you income stream.

After scenarios like these, it is impossible to not want to have established relationships with all the other business that are related to yours but is not a direct competitor. It provides more business. As a business owner it also gives you a bird eye view of what opportunities may also lurk within the locality. Such opportunities like the example above cannot be missed because it results to expansion.

The scenario I’ve already mentioned should be enough proof already of the importance of social media for b2b. But to further strengthen my case, the fact that search engines like Google also like businesses with strong social media connection, adds to the motivation which should already by obvious. Google ranks businesses higher when they are trending on topics related to their business in their area. Social media is the best avenue for any business in making this possible.

Unless you are living under a rock, you should have noticed by now that blogging is becoming an integral part of websites more and more. If you remember in the past it was treated as being always a separate entity from websites. Now businesses are more than willing to keep another tab open and host some bloggers on their websites.

Consider a blog as a vehicle which never stops on its job of bringing visitors over to your website. Whatever content the blog have in it (although it’s most potent when it’s related to the website) it will attract visitors which for a business are the same with potential customers.

What does a blog do to merit its existence even on b2b websites?

Blogs gives you authority or at least the illusion of it. The back links alone that can be established through the many content that are regularly published on a site is a SEO gold mine. Google loves authority which gives your business an advantage of having a higher rank than others. Now if you don’t have much to say on a blog, you can obtain the services of someone who is an authority in the field you’re trying to muster. This creates the illusion of authority which of course is a big part of what’s needed to be the apple of the eye of search engines.

And of course we should not forget that the regular updates that a blog is candy for search engines especially Google. This is another reason having a blog on a business website is so popular. Business owners are willing to do whatever it takes to get that premium spot on the rankings.

The key for B2b social media now falls on being able to create original content. Most gurus always speak of “if you create it, they will come”. You don’t have to whiz a kid to realize that all that mostly what a search engine is looking for is genuine, well thought of, painstakingly made content.

With social media integration checked; original content checked, you have almost put yourself behind an autopilot. Traffic is not only expected to come from your direct audience but up to the second layer of those followers. This means that you also get the chance to be seen on the profile of people your site or blog has no direct relation to.

I sometimes stumble across this thought because it pains me that as an internet marketer, at least I get something out of being engaged in social media and they don’t. Then there are days when I feel that there’s a lot more people better at my job than I do. I’m sure there are other interne marketers out there that feel the same I do. It’s actually funny the way I cringe when I see an individual on my friends list, circles and followings that has more online authority than I do. They’ve got more presence than I do because they certainly do a lot more interacting to other people that I can ever accomplish with my day. Now to defend myself, investing time on social media marketing is far from being the only task of an internet marketer. My day gets spread out towards building back links, creating content for websites, writing blogs posts and managing comments on the sites I’m maintaining. Having said that, I hope you see (for those non-internet marketers reading) that the mistake of spreading your efforts too thin becomes increasingly common as the number of marketing channels multiply as well. That is one clear advantage of those people solely dedicating their day on propagating nonprofit thoughts in social media.

Establishing a social media brand requires a lot of the same actions people wasting away their personal time on Facebook and Twitter does. To catch up, people like me who am doing this as a profession use website tools that provides the service of automating much of the stuff that needs to be done on these separate platforms. The race has begun between programmers, developers and service providers of these websites to present professional the best possible tool to help them with their daily struggles. I’ve recently come across one such tool. It’s called “IFTTT”. Apparently it stands for “if this then that”. I have yet to master all of the capabilities of this website which requires a visitor to sign up and become a user.

I’m sure you’ve used email clients and if you’re familiar with its rules and triggers functionality, the tool I’m telling you about basically works the same way. This new development is another tool that needs to be challenged if someone like me is to move forward. As you can see, the stage where we are in, like sand – is ever shifting.