Monthly Archives: November 2018

types of social media

The Different Types of Social Media Platforms and What They Can Do for Your Business

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Social media is not just for cute animal pictures. Businesses can use the different types of social media platforms to engage, entertain, and inform their customers and future customers.

If your business has not embraced social media as part of your content marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a huge audience. 69% of people in the United States are using the different types of social media regularly. The biggest portion of these users are people 18-29, but you can reach audiences of any age.

Before you jump in and start sharing content, it’s important to understand the purpose of the different platforms. Each platform has a different purpose. You will reach a wider audience if you understand the purpose of social media platforms.

Professional Social Media Use: Where to Start

Before you pick the types of social media platforms to use, you need to do some research. Check out your competition and see what works for them. Also look at what’s not working for them.

Pay attention to the type of content that gets the most engagement. Look at the industry trends. Once you understand the content, create clear goals for your social media strategy.

Taking the time to do research and set goals will help you choose the best platforms. The benefits of social media for business are great if you take the time to plan.

Make sure you take advantage of the analytics tools available so you can continue to create a strategic professional social media presence. Just like any other part of business planning, your social media plan needs regular attention.

What Types of Social Media Should I Use?

The purpose of social media platforms for business is to increase your digital footprint. It’s next to impossible to get noticed without a digital presence. It’s also difficult to get noticed if you’re using the wrong digital platforms.

The types of social media platforms you choose to increase that digital presence will depend on what you want to share and how you want to reach your audience. Let’s take a look at the major social media platforms and how they are used effectively for business.

Facebook for Business

While other types of social media platforms are growing, Facebook is still the most popular platform available. Facebook has 2.23 billion users. While not all of these users will be your target audience, that’s still a lot of potential for your business.

To take advantage of the potential market on Facebook, you will need a business page. Facebook does not allow promotions from personal pages. The process to set up a business page is easy to follow and will give you access to several analytics tools to keep up with how well your efforts work.

Facebook pages are diverse. You can share industry or company news, how-to videos, links to blog posts, etc. Facebook gives you more characters to share content, so you can share lengthier posts than with other platforms.

The most effective content for Facebook is videos, especially live videos. With a click, you can share a live video with instructional material, behind-the-scenes, product news, or blog summaries.

Video isn’t your only option though. You can share upcoming deals and discounts. You can share exciting updates and news. You can even share press releases or featured articles.

To be successful with Facebook, you need to focus on building followers. Create content that’s interesting and easy to share. This will put your content in front of more people to build that following.

Make it easy for people to engage with your content on Facebook so you show up in more feeds. Photos, videos, easy links, etc. are all good ways to do this.

Twitter for Professional Use

Twitter is best used for customer interaction and feedback. This is also a great platform for driving potential customers to content on your blog or website.

Twitter is all about short updates, attention-grabbing pictures, infographics, and videos, and polls. Quotes and inspirational material get a lot of attention on Twitter. Stats, news, and questions also get good engagement.

To get the most out of Twitter, provide good descriptions to drive people to other content. It’s also important to share updates and news from others in your industry.

To reach a larger audience on Twitter, take advantage of popular hashtags. Do some research on trending hashtags in your industry to use in your posts. This will attract attention in searches.

It’s important to remember that the best types of social media marketing on Twitter is to provide a mix of information. Don’t just share your own content. Mix other industry news, quotes, questions, etc. with content links.

Instagram for Businesses

Instagram is all about high-quality pictures and videos. This platform is best for visual industries.

Pictures of products work well on Instagram. A business account also allows you to set up purchases directly from your Instagram pictures. You can also share behind-the-scenes pictures and videos, customer photos, and quote pictures.

Instagram stories allow for a little more variety. These are temporary updates, so they work well for short-term deals and discounts.

For Instagram, visual is key. Make sure pictures and videos are appealing and high-quality to get the most interaction. You can also take advantage of relevant hashtags for more interaction.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is about professional networking. If you’re in a business to business industry, LinkedIn is a great platform to use. Of the 146 million U.S. users on LinkedIn, 40 million of those are decision-makers for their companies.

LinkedIn as a professional social media platform gives you opportunities to reach the people who can make decisions about implementing your products and services. LinkedIn also gives you the opportunity to show your expertise in your industry.

To connect with people, you can search for the people in your target industry and connect with them. You can also join industry groups to share info and ask questions.

LinkedIn also gives you another platform to share content. You can post articles directly on the platform, or share links. This is more about sharing news than about promoting individual products.

Pinterest

Pinterest is another visual social media platform. Businesses can create high-quality visuals and infographics that link back to more detailed content. People save these pictures to their boards for later use.

To get the most out of Pinterest, pictures are key. Provide pictures and infographics that summarize the link, and create captions that grab people’s attention. You can also use hashtags to show up in searches.

Managing Your Professional Social Media Accounts

While these aren’t the only types of social media platforms, they are the most popular. To get the most out of your social media marketing, pick the platforms that work best for your industry and work on growing those before branching out to other platforms.

Growing and nurturing the different types of social media platforms does take time and work. Luckily, there are tools to help you manage these marketing efforts. If you need more help choosing the best platform, or if you need help getting the most out of your efforts, check out the social media management tools available.

Database Design: How to Structure an Efficient Database

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Are you designing a database?

Creating an efficient database can be a pretty big challenge for almost anyone — you included. The problem is it’s something that’s very important to the success of the company, and you need to know exactly what to do to make it work.

Even though database designs can be complex in their structure, one that’s well-done should be able to have its design used in future design structures with little modifications.

With that in mind, you can no longer afford to let the something as important as database design get in the way of your company success. It’s time you learned how to take this matter head-on.

So what exactly does it take to create a successful database?

Lucky for you, there are a number of tips and tricks you can learn to learn good database table design strategies for you to create the best database structures.

Learning the Key Aspects of Database Design

Here are just a few important things you can do to become the best with database table design. Keep reading to learn all about these database design steps.

Think About the End Goal

When it comes to creating an efficient table, the average planner worries too much about the creative process itself instead of the end goal. This leads to a number of problems before the database is even put to use.

Here’s the thing: Just talking about a purpose for your database isn’t enough. You have to make sure that purpose remains your highest objective and that the entire process is created with that goal in mind.

Ask yourself certain questions as the database is being made, such as where the database will be deployed or what sort of systems it’s being made to support.

With this in mind, plotting out the actual database becomes much easier with an objective to complete.

Don’t Practice Poor Normalization

Poor normalization could be considered one of the seven deadly sins of database designing and for good reason.

Every designer is bound to add their own unique spin to how they create the database layout. However, all designers adhere to set practices called normalizations.

With these normalizations, it’s possible for 10 designers to each create their own individual databases, and they would all still come out with the basic design components.

If your one of those designers who create databases “on the fly” without any normalization processes, you are setting yourself up for some very big trouble, and you’ll just end up making things confusing for everyone else.

Make sure you’re following the database normalization rules so that your database structure is easy to understand.

Being Redundant Is Never a Good Thing

When it comes to designing your database, the last thing you can afford to be is redundant. In fact, the practice of database normalization is, in large part, to help eliminate redundancy in your database.

It’s easy to have this problem if you aren’t careful, especially with the bigger database projects. Of course, the bigger the file, the more likely you are to find yourself rewriting the same things.

More importantly, this is a literal nightmare for developers because they have to have a specific amount of business know-how in order to cut through the redundant red tape, something that most of these guys don’t have.

It also leads to an unnecessary increase in file size, and it lowers the efficiency of the database itself, which could ultimately lead to data corruption.

Case and point: don’t be redundant.

Keys Are Your Friends

No, not the keys that open doors and stuff. We mean keys to help you identify certain sections of your database.

Having keys in your database is like having a legend on a map. They aren’t necessarily required, but boy are they a great help when you have them.

Keys are used to tell you which part of the database belongs where. Often, they are needed to keep certain categories together or to outline relations between parts of your database.

The main keys to know are primary keys, foreign keys, and artificial keys. Each key is used to outline a specific task, so it would be best to learn how to effectively utilize each key to help optimize your database.

Remember to Use the Right Data Software

This one may sound like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised to know how easy it is to confuse your database software.

Having the right software for the job is important because each one specifies in a particular field of database engineering. That being said, you need to know which software works best for your particular project.

For example, let’s say you needed to complete a database entity design. Your best bet would be to work with a program like Microsoft Visio, which is geared towards this.

Using the correct software also allows for easier migration of the files, should you ever need to do this in the future. Figure out which program you need before you leap into the work.

Don’t Forget the Names

This is an important process if you want to keep utilizing the database in the future.

Having a naming convention is necessary in order to label each particular part of the work. It’s a rather simple thing to name the tables and columns of the database but crucial for future identification purposes.

Unlike database normalization, there are no rules for how to label your content, but it does help to build a particular format that you can use to your advantage so you don’t get too carried away with your names.

The Ones to Trust for All Your Database Needs

Now that you know all of the hidden gems to successful database design, you need to know the people to go to to help you with your database needs. Lucky for you, there’s no need to look any further.

Here at Databerry, we make it our priority to give our clients the best database experiences we can offer. We can help you with strategic marketing planning, search engine optimization, website development, mobile applications, and so much more.

Have a question you’d like for us to know about? We’d love to hear about it. Reach out to us, and we’ll make sure to answer any questions you may have.