Thanksgiving is behind us as well as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, three of the major shopping days of the year. I hope these events were successful for your business. Now is no time to rest and coast through the last month of the year when it comes to finishing out your holiday season marketing. By making email and online marketing as part of your marketing campaign, you can easily create new and easy ways to market your business.
Here are 12 ideas to make these last weeks a success.
Twitter is such an under used and unappreciated “social network” for business use. In fact, in a survey conducted by Pew Research, only 19 percent of online adults use Twitter verses 71 percent using Facebook. With that said, those businesses not incorporating Twitter with running a major event are missing the mark on attendee involvement before, during and long after the event.
I am going to go a bit off course this month and not focus on just social networks. Why you ask? Well, I'm preparing for my classes at RACC and always read new ebooks and books on marketing to share the latest and greatest. I find myself totally engulfed in a book written by David Meerman Scott called The New Rules of Marketing & PR.
When I ask the question in my classes, “How many businesses in attendance have a Google+ page,” very few hands go up. The answer is that only two out of 10 businesses who have a presence on the internet have claimed their Google+ business page. Yet, Google has created a business page for you to easily claim. Assuming you haven't claimed your page, the question is, “should you?” The answer is, “absolutely!”
When I meet with business owners to discuss their involvement in social networks, I seldom find them using Twitter. Twitter, with its hashtags, retweets, and mentions, doesn’t make sense to them. Well, first of all, Twitter is not really a social network but instead a feed of microblogs. Microblogs are short messages and, in this case, 140 character messages.
There's more than one way for your business to be found through search engines. Businesses who are active on social networks are finding that Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn are showing up as part of their search and sometimes before their website. When social networks are optimized, it is called Social Media Optimization (SMO).
When teaching a class about Social Media Mastery, I find it interesting to see the level of knowledge and involvement when it comes to using social networks as a marketing and sales tool for business. It goes the gammit, from total lack of involvement, to over the top, in your face. To find a balance for social network involvement, is to understand the rules of Social Media Mastery.
It’s 2020 and the importance of video content is not going away. It's favored by all the algorithms and people will stop their scroll to watch it. Now is the time to make a plan to regularly incorporate video into your social media strategy. It’s pretty easy and you can do it right from your phone.
Social Media Bios help potential customers find you. They can also be the first impression a customer will have about your brand. It’s important to make a good impression.
Two factors to keep in mind are the platform and your audience. If you are writing your bio for LinkedIn, it will be more formal and professional than if you are writing it for Facebook or Instagram. For all platforms, think about keywords that your ideal customer will be searching for when you write the bio. Someone should read your bio and have a clear understanding of what you will do for them.
It’s that time of year again. Are you ready? You might be thinking it’s too early, but it’s not. This is the time to be building your audience and making plans for the upcoming season. It’s important to grow your audience as much as you can before Thanksgiving. Or before; the entire week of Thanksgiving has become a sales week.
The best way to create engagement on social medial is to be consistent. As a business owner, that can be a tall order. You can make it easier on yourself if you have a process. If you sit down and plan for the next few weeks or months, then you can batch schedule your social media.
Even local businesses can reap the benefits of maintaining a social media presence. If you haven’t, now’s the time. Here are a few facts: 78% of the US population has a social media profile and 97% percent of consumers aged 18 to 34 read online reviews. Just to bring this local, there is a Facebook group, called 422 Families, where people regularly ask for recommendations about local businesses. That group has over 7,700 members.
Video is becoming an essential part of social media content. It's favored by all the algorithms and people will stop their scroll to watch it. That’s why businesses should try to use video when they can. The great thing about video is that you can do it right from your phone.
Here are some helpful ideas for using video as social media content.
Facebook has signaled that their algorithm is changing again. If you’ve been thinking about starting a Facebook group, now might be the time to do it. Facebook is favoring more personal engagement, so your page might not reach as many people as it has in the past. Here are some things to consider about creating a group.
Give people an incentive for joining your group. You could offer early bird discounts to the members or previews for new products. Then once they are in, give them more information about your products and services.
Recently, I watched a video on YouTube on a subject of interest to me and after watching the video, decided to click on the “infamous link” below the video. Part of the reason for clicking on it was to experience the engagement funnel with this individual, as well as see how long she would send emails to me about it. Well, it is two weeks later, and I am still getting emails from her daily. They have taken different directions along the way.
Have you thought about Instagram for lead generation? If you haven’t, I have some hacks to generate leads from your existing followers. As you grow your business account you can use these strategies going forward.
Your profile should have the following:
• A picture that reflects your brand.
• Your bio should be concise and clear about what you offer people.
• A link in the bio — your website or a link to a newsletter signup.
Should I be using hashtags? That’s a question I hear a lot. The answer depends on the platform that you are using. Hashtags are used to index keywords for search results. They are more prevalent on some social media platforms than others.
