As the retail industry continues to solidify after the last few years of declined overall sales, there is a shift happening within the industry towards Social Media, enabling retailers the ability to build sales and brand awareness through the highly-interactive medium.

In both the B2B and B2C sectors, many brands are turning to Social Media Marketing to build brand awareness. While search engine marketing is still driven by Google, as brands continue to increase use of Facebook pages to reach out to prospects and existing customers there is a continuing shift in search marketing and it is Facebook that is driving the change. Here are three ways that Facebook is altering the search marketing industry.

There’s always a lot of debate about how to best build your email marketing contact lists. SPAM Act guidelines steer companies away from buying lists more often than not, so organic growth becomes the go-to option. That being said, organically growing an email list can be a long, arduous task based on networking events, cold calls and intake from sales’ teams. To begin an effective email marketing plan, companies need to find the fastest, most SPAM compliant way to bulk up their contact list.

“Join the conversation”, “Connect online”, “Reach your audience”. We’ve heard the platitudes that surround business social media marketing, but with all the same things being said all over the web, we’re all a little snow-blind to the effectiveness of any of it. Fact: Social Media Marketing can be an effective tool on your marketing itinerary. Fact: Just because you invest in Social Media marketing doesn’t mean you’ll generate leads or build your online brand with it. SO, without any of the tired “guidelines”, here are 7 criteria you need to invest your time into to gain success with your social media marketing plan.

We’ve all seen the statistics reports, the flurry of news coverage and webinar/seminar presentations driven to convince businesses of the validity of Social Media Marketing engagement to build their brand presence. However, more often than not, those stats and “facts” mean more to the marketing community than to the actual business owners themselves.