Start Planning – Get the Timeline for your personal profile. This will give you an opportunity to get adjusted and learn about some of the features that are likely to cross over to the business page version of Timeline.

Think Visually – A big difference between the Timeline and the current interface is the emphasis on images. The Timeline has a large cover photo at the top, but also features images throughout the page. Start brainstorming ideas for your cover photo. You will want the cover photo to be as compelling as possible. Think about including pictures of you and your staff, images of your products, community photos, or testimonials. Your cover photo is going to be the first thing a client sees when visiting your Facebook page so choose wisely.

Reflect on Your History – One of the features of Timeline is the ability to go back in time and add relevant information. You are not confined to only the period of time you have been active on Facebook. This feature may allow you to tell the story of your company history. Start brainstorming ideas and collecting highlights from your career to add to your timeline. Updating your business page Timeline with historical and nostalgic information will keep people on your page longer.

Build Content – Think about the type of content you have been posting. It is important to keep the content on your page interesting and engaging, no matter what format your page is in. If you are not generating the clicks and comments you would like to be getting, now is the perfect time to look at your status updates and reorganize your content strategy.

Expect the Unexpected – It is uncertain what features will be offered with Timeline for business pages. Third-party apps and landing pages are a big part of most business pages. Whether or not these features will be conducive to the Timeline layout is unclear. These changes are inevitable so go with the flow, don’t sweat the small stuff, and don’t resist change. Jump in and be a leader in your industry.

What do you think of Timeline for business pages?

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The post 5 Ways to Get Ready for Facebook’s Timeline Launch appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

1. Provide Interactive Tutorials

Sure, it isn’t exactly easy to motivate everyone to tweet or post consistently when they don’t understand what an @mention or @fb is. By hosting your own interactive tutorials across the company, you have the ability to provide a valuable service to your employers or coworkers both at the office and out.

Get everyone involved by delegating tasks and giving responsibilities to your team members to teach something new to the team. Have them learn the task, give a brief tutorial on it, and have all members practice the task.

2. Make it Fun to Use Twitter

Show your employees how to use a hashtag that they can relate to. For example, follow a funny Twitter commentary while watching an episode of your favorite show. Provide specific examples that demonstrate how Twitter can organize information and news for its followers. It is also important to show them that this can be done for just about any industry. Once they learn the basic tools of social media, they will organically see how they can use Twitter in an effective way.

3. Pinpoint the Influencers Within the Company

More than likely, you have several employees or team members that love social media networking. Whether they are Pinterest fanatics or have their phones synced up to Twitter and tweet their entire weekend, these employees should be recognized internally for their mastery of social media. Therefore the team member with the most active Pinterest or Instagram profile should be responsible for documenting the company’s product launch party or Holiday party.

Once your begin finding ways to highlight and utilize the social media skills of your employees, more team members will follow and chime in. Encourage that the entire team @mention a corporate feed or share a corporate post on Facebook and Google+. This will also benefit the company by generating more traffic and leaving more impressions to create a larger social media presence for the company.

One more thing to mention is that it is important that your internal social media experts’ skills are appreciated by the company. This will then influence these people to naturally start helping and encouraging other team members to do the same.

4. Launch an Engaging Contest for Internal Campaign

After you’ve taught and coached employees the basics and highlighted the company’s influencers, its time to get everyone engaged in some fun! Try setting up a contest, for example, a photo contest on Instagram in which the office votes for the winning photos. Utilize Klout to record everyone’s scores and see how progress was made within the month. Another fun idea is to host a company room on turntable.fm and vote for the company’s best DJ. The contest could be that the winner DJ the next office party.

The key is to be sure to follow up with incentives and recognition to encourage participants and friendly competition.

5. Engage, Engage, Engage!

While you encourage your company to become more social media savvy, be sure to cultivate a sense of community. Its true, people want to learn information from social media, but they also want to communicate with one another. A way to do this internally is to occasionally highlight team members’ tweets, posts on Facebook and content on other accounts. Draw attention to those funny and relevant posts and tweets to show employees that they are valued, but also this allows your brand to have authenticity and personality.  

6. Get Creative!

The opportunity to influence social behavior in your company increases with engagement. Create more advanced and focused tutorials, and bring everyone closer by launching new initiatives. Ask your employees what type of contents and initiatives they’d like to see. Make the most of you and your teams’ potential to maximize on social networking, but remember to give credit where its deserved.

Encouraging those who aren’t so savvy or new to the company even might seem very challenging, but by demonstrating the value and expressing enthusiasm, your company will emerge as a social media superstar!

220 Marketing specializes in Online Marketing and Management for industries such as Insurance Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, and Mortgage Marketing.

The post How to Make Your Company a Social One appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

Check out these mind-boggling marketing stats that highlight the probable growth of digital media in 2012.

The Internet in 2012

● Internet users in the U.S will expand by 3.1% to 239 million, representing 75.6% of the total population.

Mobile in 2012

• Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up 17.1% from 97.3 million in 2011.
• Smartphone users will reach 106.7 million in 2012, up 18.4% from 2011.
• In 2012, 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users.
• All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million in 2012, up 2.3% from 2011.
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012.
• Mobile buyers will reach 37.5 million in 2012.
• Smartphone shoppers will reach 68.6 million in 2012.
• Smartphone buyers will reach 36.4 million in 2012.
• Tablet users will reach 54.8 million in 2012, up 62.8% from 33.7 million in 2011.
• iPad users will reach 41.9 million in 2012.
• In 2012, 76.4% of tablet users will be iPad users.
• Adult-aged eReader users will reach 45.6 million in 2012, up from 33.3 million in 2011.
• Facebook will reach 143.4 million US users in 2012, up 8.2% from 132.5 million in 2011.
• About 2/3 of web users will use social networks in 2012.
• More than 90% of social network users will be on Facebook in 2012.
• Online video viewers will reach 169.3 million in 2012.
• 53.5% of the population and 70.8% of internet users (up 7.1% from 2011) will watch online video in 2012.
• Mobile video viewers will reach 54.6 million in 2012.
• Smartphone video viewers will reach 51.2 million in 2012.
• 88.1% of US internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.
• 83.9% of internet researchers will make at least one purchase via the web during 2012.
• Online shoppers will reach 184.3 million in 2012, up 3.3% from 2011.
• Online buyers will reach 154.6 million in 2012, up 4.4% from 2011.

Social Media in 2012

• Facebook will reach 143.4 million US users in 2012, up 8.2% from 132.5 million in 2011.
• About 2/3 of web users will use social networks in 2012.
• More than 90% of social network users will be on Facebook in 2012.

Online Video in 2012

• Online video viewers will reach 169.3 million in 2012.
• 53.5% of the population and 70.8% of internet users (up 7.1% from 2011) will watch online video in 2012.
• Mobile video viewers will reach 54.6 million in 2012.
• Smartphone video viewers will reach 51.2 million in 2012.

Ecommerce in 2012

• 88.1% of US internet users ages 14+ will browse or research products online in 2012.
• 83.9% of internet researchers will make at least one purchase via the web during 2012.
• Online shoppers will reach 184.3 million in 2012, up 3.3% from 2011.
• Online buyers will reach 154.6 million in 2012, up 4.4% from 2011.

220 Marketing specializes in Online Marketing and Management for industries such as Insurance Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, and Mortgage Marketing.

The post Internet Marketing Statistics Forecast for 2012 appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.