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.
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.
