Many companies have been questioning whether advertising on Facebook is effective, and General Motors Co. has just determined that they, in fact, aren’t. The company has planned to stop advertising on Facebook, revealing that their paid ads have had little impact on consumers, reports the Wall Street Journal.

GM will still continue to expand its marketing efforts through its Facebook page, however, which is at no cost.

This is an inopportune time for Facebook, to say the least, since it comes the same week as the social networking giant’s IPO.

GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick is quoted in the WSJ article saying the company “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.”

The company spends a reported $40 million on Facebook, $10 million for paid advertising, the rest for content and agencies to manage that content.

Could other big advertisers on Facebook follow suit?

CGT Social Media advertising, breaking news, Facebook, IPO, news, wall street journal

Now that you know how beneficial Twitter can be for all aspects of your business, how do you grow your followers? Target specific ones.

Say, for example, you’re a marketing company. The people more likely to follow you back are those who follow users similar to you. Search for other marketing companies in the Twitter search bar at the top of the page. Follow them first, then look through their followers. Follow anyone who looks legitimate. First look at their profile pictures, then look at their bios. Avoid anyone who doesn’t have a photo or bio, then avoid people who have pornographic pictures and profanity in their bios or tweets.

Of course, only follow people who tweet in English. If you’re on the fence about someone, look at some of their tweets (when you click on a user, Twitter will give you their three most recent tweets). If the tweets are unintelligible, rambling, or the latest one is from months ago, don’t follow.

This is an ongoing process, and you’ll want to follow people slowly over time. Every so often, go through and clear out people who don’t follow you back. The goal is to have more followers than people you follow.

Be sure to take a look each part in our Twitter blog series. Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 1, Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 2 – Twitter for Research, Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 3 – Twitter for Business, and Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 4 – Twitter for Public Relations.

CGT Social Media followers, growing followers, Marketing, Marketing Agencies, marketing tactics, Social Media, Twitter

Many companies overlook the importance of the About page on their website. When analytics may indicate that it’s one of the most highly visited pages, it’s critical that this page works to your advantage and you’re not losing sales opportunities. Here are some guidelines to follow:

• Call it an About page. Don’t confuse users with a name that’s too clever to figure out. When users want to know about your company, they look for the About tab – and they want to find it immediately.
• The content of the About page is what your company does. While it’s about you, it should also serve the needs of the users and subtly sell them on why they should choose you over others.
• In addition to basic information on your company, include history, corporate philosophies, awards, testimonials, bios and photos.

Don’t undercut the effectiveness of your About page. Your content should make the user feel “at home” and comfortable doing business with you.

CGT CGT Newsletter, Marketing about page, Marketing, website design

Social media is good for business. But often, sending out your links to the vast expanse that is the web can leave you wondering, Did anyone click on them? Did anyone even see them?

Link shortening and tracking service bit.ly released results to a study of the best times to post to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, reports Mashable. Here are some of the results:

• Posting links to Twitter between 1 and 3 p.m. ET will give you the highest click rank, especially on days earlier in the week. Avoid tweeting with links after 8 p.m. and after 3 p.m. on Fridays.
• Links sent to Facebook between 1 and 4 p.m. get the most traction. Wednesday at 3 p.m. is the best time to post on Facebook all week. Links posted after 8 p.m. and before 8 a.m. don’t get the most clicks. Neither do those on the weekend.
• Posts that go up on Tumblr after 7 p.m. get the most clicks during a 24-hour period. Friday evenings (times to avoid with Facebook and Twitter) are a key time to post on Tumblr.

Read the full report here.

CGT Social Media clickthrough rate, Facebook, links, Social Media, tumblr, Twitter

Most (if not all) members of the media have personal Twitter accounts. Search for and follow ones that report for news organizations local to your business. Develop relationships with them by retweeting their tweets and @-ing them with relevant links. If you do this enough times (while not bombarding them with information), they’ll see you as a key source of content and start following you.

Once members of the media follow you and become aware of your news and events, they’ll be more inclined to start reporting on your business or organization.

When you have the relationship and have established a dialogue, don’t abuse it. Don’t keep contacting the reporter to relate information about your organization. Keep retweeting, let them seek you out. It’s a give and take relationship.

Stay tuned for the next installment in our Twitter blog series: Growing Twitter followers.

For a refresher, take a look at Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 1, Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 2 – Twitter for Research, and Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 3 – Twitter for Business

CGT Social Media Ad Agency, Marketing Firm, public relations, relationships, Social Media, Twitter

Twitter is useful for business because it’s a way to connect with your customers on a personal level. Users who follow you can ask you questions directly and give you feedback.

You, in turn, can crowd source a problem or question to your followers if you are looking for feedback.

Frequently tweet news and events about your business or organization, with links back to your website. This will help your followers stay current on what you’ve been up to and the latest developments about your company.

Twitter is a way of staying closely connected to your followers (customers) so they feel connected to you.

Stay tuned for the next installment in our Twitter blog series: Using Twitter for Public Relations

For a refresher, take a look at Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 1 and Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 2 – Twitter for Research

CGT Social Media business, crowd sourcing, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

The great thing about Twitter is it’s updated in real-time, so if one of your followers tweets something, you’ll see it instantaneously in your feed (the list of tweets that comes up when you click the “home” button).

You can utilize this in many ways. One is to research more about your industry. What are people talking about? Type key words in the search bar at the top of the page, “social media,” for example.

Immediately, everyone who has the words, “social media” in their tweets will come up in your feed, with the most tweeted news story relating to social media at the top. As you’re looking through, new tweets will keep coming in, so you can refresh if you want more information.

You also don’t only get tweets when you search. On the left side of the screen you are able to toggle back and forth between tweets, images, videos and people. These are people who have the words “social media” in their bios, so you could most likely get a lot of information from them.

Stay tuned for the next installment in our Twitter blog series: Using Twitter for Business.
For a refresher, take a look at Using Twitter to Your Advantage: Part 1

CGT Social Media real-time, research, Social Media, tweets, Twitter

Twitter can be a powerful tool to drive visitors to your website. It’s a way to get short (140 character) messages out there to hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Here are some other uses of Twitter:

• Researching in real-time about a current event, trend or business.
• Promoting news for your business or organization.
• Developing relationships with reporters or other members of the media.
• Developing relationships with other people and businesses in your industry.
• Crowd sourcing a question or problem you may have.
• Connecting with your target market on a personal level.

However you decide to utilize Twitter (ideally it would be a combination of all of the above), make sure to tweet a mixture of personal and professional tweets. On any given day, say something about your industry and something fun you found around the web.

Stay tuned for more in our Twitter blog series, next up: Using Twitter for Research.

CGT Social Media crowd sourcing, Marketing, marketing tactics, PR, promotion, relationships, research, Social Media, Twitter

Notorious for making format changes, Facebook is still on a roll - and now with one of the most dramatic redesigns ever. Recently completing the addition of Timeline for personal profile pages, Facebook has announced that the same Timeline feature, along with a new creative layout, is now being added to business pages. In other words, the layout of your company’s Facebook page is going to change.

Upon visiting your company’s Facebook page, you will now see an option to preview your page in the new Timeline layout. While there’s a learning curve to grasping this change - what else would you expect from Facebook - you’ll want to take advantage of the top banner space for your logo and other interesting product or service visuals that will make your page and your brand pop.

Here’s what you need to be aware of: Page owners and administrators have until the end of this month - March 31st - to redesign and publish their company’s Facebook page, at which time all pages automatically switch to the new format. If you need help in redesigning your page, just let us know.

CGT CGT Newsletter, Marketing, Social Media Facebook, Social Media, Timeline

With more and more people accessing websites through their smartphones, it’s important that your site is easy to read and navigate, with links that are “thumb-ready” for a smaller screen.

Your mobile site needs to have three pieces of information instantly available to users on the go: your address, phone number and hours.

Keep in mind that load times and the look of your images will be different on a smaller mobile screen. Google’s “GoMo” program can help you determine how your website looks and if it’s mobile-friendly.

You can easily test the mobile functionality of your company’s website by visiting How to Gomo.

CGT Marketing