As an authorized local expert for Constant Contact, I often teach the benefits of email marketing as a lead generating tool. Combining email marketing with your favorite social media channel can be even more powerful. Recently, we put together a few campaigns with business owners and organizations to do just that.
So often when I'm training business owners about social media I ask, “What is it that keeps you from getting involved with social media?” They answer, I don't know what to write or share.
First, we will discuss what types of posts are working well on social media channels. No longer is Twitter just 140 characters of text. You can add photos and videos, too. For Facebook, you can use live videos, videos, photos, and text. If LinkedIn is where you are, it's videos, photos, long posts, and short posts. As far as what works best, it's videos, next is photos, and last is text.
So often I hear business owners say, “I really need to get involved on Facebook but have no idea where to begin.” What we say to business owners is the first step is to face your fears. If your fear is that you’re afraid of making a mistake or post the wrong thing, know that on Facebook you have the ability to put your posts into draft for someone to look at before you publish them. Even if you happen to post something, but you’ve made a mistake, you can delete the post.
Gathering the results for traditional marketing usually comes in the form of phone calls, feet in the door, coupons, and increased revenue. But how do you know what's happening with your social media marketing? This month's column will be all about tools to track your social media marketing results. There should never be any money or time spent on promoting your business with social media without measuring the results.
The expression "Use a picture. It's worth a thousand words." appeared in a 1911 newspaper article quoting newspaper editor Tess Flanders discussing journalism and publicity. With the ability to add text to that perfect photo, we can now say it’s worth more than a thousand words.
Why visuals?
In 2015, both Facebook and Twitter introduced video to their platforms and for good reason. Studies have shown that users are 44 percent more likely to engage with content that contains pictures and video falls into that category.
As I was preparing for my Social Media Class at Reading Area Community College, I had the most interesting experience happen to me. A week before the class a friend asked me to help him learn how to use Facebook. Me, being the helpful person I am, said, “Yes.” We sat down for what I thought would be a mundane experience for me which turned into a great lesson to share with my class and also you.
In a conversation at a Youth Leadership event with the local chamber, we were discussing social media and one of the comments shared was when posting on the internet, we should ask ourselves the question, "would you wear what we have said on a t-shirt?" What a great way to look at each message you are sharing online with that lense.
This month's column is focused on the content you are sharing on social media: how to monitor; what tools to use, and systems to follow in writing content.
I’ve discovered a new favorite Social Network… Periscope.
First of all, what is Periscope? Here’s the official description direct from trafficgenerationcafe.com. Periscope.tv is a life-streaming app owned by Twitter, which allows you to share, watch and engage with comments to live video broadcasts. With only 10 Million users since its launch in March, it’s really a baby in the world of social networks, but a baby who could quickly grow.
Each year, I like to research what's being projected to happen in social media marketing for the upcoming year. It's a great way to make adjustments of what we are doing and find out what's being planned for growth and changes. Last year it was all about Facebook and Twitter adding videos to their social media platforms. This year, my review includes projections from Huffington Post, SproutSocial, AllInOneSocial, to mention just a few, and it seems we're still looking at video as a focus, but with a twist.
Ok. You haven’t seen much from me in the way of promoting Facebook boosts in my column. Maybe it’s because of my allegiance to print advertising where I know how many real, live people are receiving the papers. No bots there! I cringe when people say to me I spent only $20 for 1,500 people on my boost to become fans. Really? Only 1,500 people when you could have taken the very same amount of money and advertised to 30,000 real, live people. Well, enough of comparing notes on print verses online. I don’t even have to defend that fact.
This month’s column is very different from most of my topical social media columns and I will apologies in advance for being a bit on the technical side at times.
The reason for discussion your website’s speed has a direct link to your social media marketing. It’s like this, all the effort you do online with your social media marketing is meaningless if your website visitors come to a site that loads slowly. It’s a known fact that visitors will wait for at the most 5 seconds when visiting a site before moving on to another when doing a random search.
The other day I was with a client who is very social savvy. He's one of my students from a social media course from RACC and credits his continued knowledge from our frequent conversations. These are his nuggets of knowledge. That's what he calls them. I found it interesting that he was so observant to see that Google had changed their platform from Google+ to Get Your Business Online. Yes, they made a very good change.
One of the biggest issues I hear from business owners about being involved with social media and marketing as a whole is, “I don’t have time.” My answer is to take time to plan — which is three quarters of the work.
It’s all about planning.
This year, in an effort to help our clients focus on planning, we created a Marketing Calendar. It includes marketing ideas for a variety of focus areas: marketing with your clients or employees; marketing through social media, your website, through print and outdoor signage; and finally through networking.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short is one of those mystifying marketing pieces for business owners. In fact, one of the interesting emails I receive from clients is when they forward me an email that says, “We have noticed that your website needs help in being found when searched on Google.” They wonder if they need to do anything. I always ask them this question, “With the millions of websites online, how did they find your website?” There is usually dead silence on the other end while that question computes.
What is all this hype about Big Data and how can our businesses capitalize on Big Data?
As I was doing some research for a presentation about the trends for 2017, this was mentioned more than once. I was curious as to what it was all about.
Over the past few weeks I've been hosting workshops on Planning Your Marketing and have found the workshops very informative not only for those attending as well as myself. In an effort to extend the reach of our Aha Moments at the workshops, I've included three of the ideas discussed in hopes that you can take advantage of these in building your client base to market your business.
One of the biggest issues I hear from business owners about being involved with social media and marketing as a whole is, “I don’t have time.” My answer is to take time to plan — which is three quarters of the work.
It’s all about planning.
This year, in an effort to help our clients focus on planning, we created a Marketing Calendar. It includes marketing ideas for a variety of focus areas: marketing with your clients or employees; marketing through social media, your website, through print and outdoor signage; and finally through networking.
It’s that time again. Time to take a look at your marketing program for 2016 and create a plan for 2017. One of the things we do with our Pick Your Own Marketing Plan clients is meet with them in November or December to look at any change they may want to do for 2017. We discussed their goals and plans for growth? We review what is currently working and tweak what may not be working or needs improvement.
