It’s hot outside. Kids are home from school for the summer. Life is slower. While summer can mean a more relaxed pace, a little more time in your schedule to start a new initiative. it can also mean slower business depending on the industry you are in. Here are some tips from Market Eye, a London based marketing company, on how to maximize social media this summer to start driving traffic to your business, and get people talking.

1. Incentives

The days of “Like our Facebook Page” are over. The thrill of clicking the Like button disappeared well over a year ago. Today, people aren’t willing to tie themselves to a brand or company unless they get something in return. The promise of great content can be enough of an incentive to get some consumers to Like your Facebook Page or follow your brand on other social media channels, but there is a huge difference between “liking” and engaging.

Incentives work, not only in getting people to take the initial step to “like” your brand across social media channels, but also to engage with your brand. In other words, one time incentives aren’t enough. Incentives should be ongoing to build a new audience and to reward your existing audience. The latter is the part that brands are finally getting better at.

2. Mobile

Finally, brand marketers and corporate leaders are realizing that a “mobile-always” strategy is critical to ongoing success. Content and communications must work effectively or the rapidly growing (and dominating) mobile audience won’t give your brand a second chance. Simply applying an existing online marketing strategy to the mobile world doesn’t work.

3. Hyper-Targeting

Broadcasting and mass communications are taking a back seat to hyper-targeting. Whether brand marketers are pursuing hyper-local targeting strategies or laser-focused targeting based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors, they’re all realizing that the power of social media marketing comes from building one-to-one relationships, not one-to-many relationships. Finding the right audience is an essential step to boosting brand awareness, recognition, sales, loyalty,

Sourced from http://www.corporate-eye.com/main/whats-hot-in-social-media-marketing-in-2014/