Lately here at Half a Bubble Out, we have crossed paths with a number of small business owners who are Baby Boomers or just becoming grandparents, asking about the validity and tangible benefits of using social media in their small business - specifically in using lead generation techniques to get new customers.

Welcome business owners! Are you asking yourself, why is social media important to my internet marketing strategy? If so, stick around for this blog!

Today we’re talking about LinkedIn and focusing on the role it plays in social media. By the end of this blog you will learn what the best and worst times are to post on LinkedIn during the day and week.

LinkedIn is best known for its powerful business to business platform. Although it is not the largest social media platform companies are able to communicate with other professionals in different fields of business. One of the reasons why social media is important when it comes to LinkedIn is because it’s probably one of the best platforms for B2B marketing for a couple of reasons:

The other day at our staff barbecue the topic of memes came up. Yes, we’re internet marketing geeks and talk about things like memes at our get-togethers. The question was posed: what is a meme? You know what? I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn’t really define it, at least not clearly and neither could anyone else! So of course I had to do a little research to find out exactly what does qualify as a meme. If you’re in the habit of reading our internet marketing tips, or you aren’t at all and just want to know what a meme is, I am passing my new-found knowledge onto you.

Today we’re going to answer the question, why is social media important during certain times of the day? We’ll go over the best and worst times to post on Facebook and Twitter. It is crucial that you post during the right times as it could increase your click through rate drastically.

This is a guest post by: Craig Robinson, an online writer for Qwaya – a facebook ad management tool. Besides writing about social media topics, Craig covers other trends within social media for Qwaya and he has studied social context and media-communication science.

So I posted over the weekend all proud of myself that I passed my #Inbound Marketing Certification with HubSpot. I was super excited and now, because I passed with flying colors and I’m worn out from all my studying about internet marketing, content development, blogging, using social media for business, how to create great landing pages, email marketing and market segmentation (just to name a few things) I am going to unabashedly steal (all credit given) some of the data that my HubSpot Professor Rachel Goodman provided in the Social Media piece of things.

I’ve just recently jumped on the #hashtag bandwagon. I didn’t use them much in the past because to be honest, they were mainly used on Twitter and Twitter just isn’t my personal social medium of choice. Plus, #hashtags were just really #annoying because I didn’t really understand their true purpose. I have been an avid Facebook user since it hit the mainstream though. So, now that there are #facebookhashtags I’m more inclined to use them. Today’s internet marketing tips help explain the #hashtag and its uses. 

Do you believe social media matters for your business? A lot of you don’t. How do I know this? Just two days ago I heard a dear friend who is an accomplished business woman refer to social media as “that place where people tell me what they are having for dinner….and I don’t want to know!” She went on to say that she saw very little value in social media for business, with the possible exception of LinkedIn for building a personal resume. While I agree that social media has been used for a lot of personal revelations that I would rather avoid, I absolutely disagree with this assessment. If you don’t know the answer to the question “why is social media important” for your business, I would like to help you take a step forward in answering this.

If you haven’t heard of this before, I really recommend that you go out and purchase a copy of a book called Pendulum by Roy H. Williams and Michael Drew, which was published late last year. Pendulum outlines an 80 year cycle over the last 3000 years in western civilization swinging back and forth between what they call a “Me” generation, and a “We” generation.

Social media has become increasingly important in 2013. There have been a number of updates to the way sites are ranked in Google search results. Google has increased the weight and value of credible, relevant, rich content on websites. The days of paying for links has come to an end, and we are on the rise of content creation. 

More than ever before good questions are the life blood of leading a succesful company.  One of those questions that you must ask on a regular basis is, "why is social media important for reaching new customers?" Every company wants new customers and every company wants those customers to become loyal customers. Social media is the only place I know of that allows you to listen to people talking about their lives, their likes and their dislikes, unrestricted, without ever having to go anywhere!  That is why internet marketing is so powerful when done holistically.