According to a survey from the New York-based marketing company BRANDfog, major corporate CEOs and executives are out of touch with social media, which are tools that are becoming critical for companies to use with their internet marketing campaigns.
In fact, 86 percent of the survey's respondents said that CEO social media engagement is either somewhat, very or critically important to their marketing campaigns and connection with consumers.
"Transparency, vision and open communication are key to great leadership and corporate social responsibility strategy today. It's not surprising to see that the results of BRANDfog's survey reaffirm that social media plays such an influential role in shaping a company's brand image," said Aman Singh, editorial director for CSRwire and Forbes contributor. "What's more, customers expect to hear from the executive leadership team on social media channels, as a direct way to connect and engage with the brands they love and causes they support."
According to Mashable, there are a few key practices that small businesses can engage in online that can help set them apart from their corporate competitors.
When posting blog posts on Twitter, the source recommends that companies carefully craft their headlines to attract the reader's attention. This can be done with statistics as well as a potentially actionable takeaway from reading the article.
Also, banner displays and visuals work well for companies that are using Facebook as a way to promote their business' blog or website. By posting infographics or pictures with a clear call to action or preferred response, companies will up the amount of traffic they receive on Facebook and should, subsequently, be converted into sales.
In addition, Pinterest can be a very effective and efficient way to visually engage audiences. In fact, according to Mashable, Pinterest sends more traffic to websites than Bing, StumbleUpon, Twitter and even Google. By creating more visually engaging content and sharing that with targeted internet marketing campaigns, companies will find themselves seeing an increase in traffic and, potentially, revenue.