Including social media in your marketing mix can be a very convenient, cost-effective way of communicating instantly with a large group of people. Using it correctly can help strengthen your relationship with current and potential customers, share your organization’s successes with the public, and enhance your overall business reputation. However, using Social Media without a defined strategy can drive folks away from your business in an instant.

Too many businesses flock to social media as a trendy cure-all (or so they think) to their marketing woes with no real plan of action. To create a successful social media presence, you first need to determine if your social media accounts will be used for personal or business purposes. Then, be sure to focus your efforts and your posts to the relevant audience. If your Facebook page exists to share personal information with your family, for example, don’t accept friend requests from business associates and/or post personal items to the public. Your business accounts should be used to provide intelligent, concise and well thought out posts that showcase your business and your professional expertise. Provide links to resources wherever possible or available.

Staying in control of your digital life and sharing content between all of your devices sounds like a dream come true… until you really look into it. Today, you have the world at your fingertips and can access whatever you need, whenever you need it – at home or in the office. But, are you sure you really want to do that? Let’s look at the pros and cons…

For starters, linking your applications among all devices is very simple and convenient, eliminates the chances of you missing an important call, text message, or email and makes you feel much more in control of your digital life. This connectivity helps you respond to communications in a timely manner, make changes or updates to social networks from anywhere at anytime, or take and upload photos instantaneously to access from any of your mobile devices.

Yet, this simplicity also comes with a drawback: the potential loss of your privacy. For example, say you are using Facebook on your office computer to chat with a friend. You step away from your desk and continue the conversation from your mobile device. If you’ve left Facebook open on your computer browser at your desk, anyone walking by will be able to watch your chat in real time – as it happens – with the text printing right on the screen. Logging out of one device before logging into another reduces this threat to your privacy. Password protect all of your devices with unique, challenging, and memorable passwords to safeguard your information and your content.

Google offers a lot of very good tools to maximize your advertising investment and best of all, many are free or very low cost.

One of the most underutilized and most impressive tools is Google’s “remarketing” tool. When used correctly, this application has the potential to help you reduce your pay per click average cost as well as your cost per click.

Have you ever clicked on an ad from a website and after doing so, the same ad you clicked on appears on other websites you visit, such as Facebook, Google, etc.? This action is called remarketing.

As an advertiser, when you use Google ad words you’re essentially bidding for a word or a phrase used on your website to help you gain a higher ranking on a user’s search results page. When you use retargeting or remarketing, the tool embeds a cookie onto each user’s device to preempts the advertisements they see. This means for just pennies on the dollar, your ad can be seen at the top of the list for that user as they travel to multiple sites around the web.

Once installed, the application will assist in promoting your business for up to 90 days at an average cost between $.25 and $.50 per user. To check it out visit google.com

Happy New Year! As we greet 2016 and get back to work, it’s a great time to reflect on the past year and refocus our business priorities to take advantage of new opportunities. This is especially true when evaluating the successes and struggles of your past advertising and marketing campaigns and how they hit – or missed the mark for your business. Much like personal resolutions we make, often our business goals go by the wayside after a month or two into the New Year. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Think about having a New Year Review kickoff breakfast with your staff. Let them tell you what worked, what didn’t and solicit their ideas for top strategies they feel could better your business processes. Think of this as a fun goal setting session with measurable targets and awards. By working with your team to clearly define goals for yourself and your business this year, your staff becomes part of the strategy team – and not just the implementers. Working with your staff to create “hit lists” of desired achievements and breaking them down into digestible actions will encourage each member to have a sense of ownership and accountability for the success of the business. Scheduling quarterly milestones to work toward (and celebrating them when met) will help empower your team, increase buy-in, and will enhance your credibility as a caring manager. Best of all, reporting in to each other will help you and your staff stay on track and keep the momentum building throughout the year.