Oct 29, 2018 | Blog, Social media strategy
A Business of One Should Still do Marketing
We hear, especially from Solopreneurs and small businesses, time and time again “Why should my business use social media?” The answer is surprisingly simple – Because it Works.
Australians love social media, with 65% of Australians using social media and 95% of those using Facebook it is an excellent way to access your audience who spend up to 7 hours a week on social media. IN addition, many businesses right across Australia identify social media as a growing channel for their marketing.
The benefits of using social media are many and varied, it can:
- Reduce your overall Marketing costs, that’s a win.
- Increase traffic to your awesome website, again a win!
- Increase your brand awareness, win/win.
- Help you talk directly to your customers – WIN!
- Help with retention long after the purchase has occurred – DOUBLE WIN!
Isn’t social media free? Yes it is, for solopreneurs and businesses, but you need to factor in things like your time when including this in your budget because social media needs to be daily monitored to ensure customers’ needs are attended to and questions answered.
When determining your social media marketing plan, first you need to identify the 3 M’s of Marketing – Message (What) Market (Who) Medium (How).
Key questions to think about when determining your 3M’s are:
Why are you different? What problem do you fix? Why are you different? What’s in it for them? What message resonates? How many updates per week? What other tactics will you use? How will you measure success?
Once you have determined the 3M’s you can execute your plan in only 15 minutes per week, you need to put time aside to:
- Post content
- Engage with your community
- Follow Influencers
- Nurture your own community
- Measure your activity
Here’s a quick reference for your daily and weekly social media needs:
Sunday night
Write and schedule your updates for the week (minimum 2), find 3 – 5 people/organisations to follow and look at your metrics for the previous week and adjust your plans where needed.
Each morning
Quickly scan for any breaking news that is relevant (post it if there is), comment on a couple of posts from connections made, follow accounts of new clients and new networking connections and send personal messages to a few connections.
Other key questions to consider when setting up: How will you promote your social media? Are there any risks to consider? Who are your likely customers? Who your customers’ friends? And if you are one of the many solopreneurs out there, how will you manage your time and resources?
One last thing, stay relevant with your content, think to yourself “Is this important and necessary for the customer to hear” each time you post.
Oct 22, 2018 | Blog, News
Do hashtags still matter?
One of the most asked questions I get is “what is the point of hashtags and how do I use them?” To start with the first question, hashtags are useful (depending on the platform) in categorising content and making it easier for people to search for certain topics. They can help you follow live events, or breaking news. They are also great for filtering out topics you don’t want to engage with.
No one person or brand owns a hashtag. You can think one up and just start using it. But if you want to use them effectively to grow your following and amplify content, then you need to be more strategic in your hashtag approach.
Let’s look at some general principles for using hashtags across your social media channels:
- Curate your hashtags for each channel. So, for Twitter, use 2 to 3 in a tweet, and include them contextually in your content. On Instagram, you can use many more, but don’t go overboard. LinkedIn has functional hashtags, so feel free to include 1 or 2 in your post. And while Facebook has functional hashtags, the jury is out on whether or not they are actually effective in amplifying your content.
- Use a mix of trending, general and brand hashtags. For example, I might use #possumdigital, but as it’s not a widely used hashtag, I might also want to use something more general like #socialmedia or #digitalmarketing.
- Keep your hashtag simple and easy to remember and use. You don’t want followers misspelling a well thought out hashtag only to lose the opportunity to generate effective conversation.
- Avoid using hashtags that don’t relate directly to your content. Social channel algorithms are smarter than us in this respect, so just because a hashtag is trending, doesn’t mean you should force it onto content that is irrelevant.
- Mix it up! Don’t use the same batch of hashtags every single time. Just like you need more than one channel to market your business, you need more than one group of hashtags to get your content seen by different people.
My best advice is to come up with a list of hashtags that you can use and swap out on your posts across social media channels. Make sure you keep it updated with trending ones, and remove any that may get banned or are no longer being used widely
Oct 15, 2018 | Blog, News
Getting verified on Twitter
Do you have a Twitter account with a decent following? Do you use Twitter to build awareness around you and your brand (even if you are the brand)? If you answered yes to any of these then you may want to think about getting your Twitter account verified.
The main benefit is that blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic. The last thing you want is for a copycat account to turn up and pretend to be you!
Here’s how you get your account verified:
- First thing to do is complete all of the personal information about you and details like profile picture, cover photo, name, website and your bio.
- Second is to verify or add your mobile phone number and the confirmation of your email address. In order to verify the phone number, you are going to enter the verification code that has been sent by Twitter in your email. While in email address, you will just going to click the link that Twitter provided in your email address.
- Third, since you already updated your bio and personal information, you’ll need to add your birthday information. Also, you can choose the people who can see your birthday, just click the lock icon to personalise your account.
- Fourth, you need to set or post your tweets to “public” meaning anyone has the privilege to see your tweets. In order to make this possible, you need to go at “Twitter Security” and “Privacy Settings” and make sure that the “Tweet Privacy” is unchecked.
- Lastly, you need to go to the verification form on Twitter. During the verification process, twitter will require you to log in the account you preferred to verify. You will see from there a paragraph section that you need to answer on why you need to be verified with required number of characters. Also, to support your answer you can share some links for additional information.
And that’s it! It’s super easy to do, and you will be able to have comfort knowing that there is only one genuine you out there in the Twitter universe.
Oct 8, 2018 | Blog, News
Why Instagram is good for visual based businesses
If you are a photographer, a florist, or own a food based business, chances are you are on Instagram. For visual based businesses like your, is Instagram the right platform for you?
The short answer is yes!
Australia alone has 5 million active users on this platform. Australians, most specially women are fond of instragramming for random purposes. Some are consuming this for entertainment, education and now, even for businesses.
It enhances customers’ experience more nowadays as it has been considered as photo and video centric allowing people to share images and videos, record stories and go live.
Instagram for Business
Users are instagramming today, not only just for fun. What better way to tell the story of you business than through inspiring images?
In Australia, 31% of businesses are using this social network to market their business.
And if you started off with a personal account for your business and want to change to a business account, this is relatively easy; and using a business account will allow you to get access to analytics and insights. What you need to do is connect your business Facebook page by following the in-app prompts from “Switch to Business Profile” button found in Settings.
Once created, you can optimise your profile by changing it to your business name (if you haven’t already), username, profile photo and other details. Add as well adding your website and a short biography to let your followers know basic info about your brand.
Why Instagram is perfect for visual based businesses?
User friendly
Navigating Instagram app is very easy once you’ve started to engage with it. As this platform is only about sharing images and video, there are few things that you need to do.
It’s also be easy for followers to show interest in you through liking, commenting and reposting.
Ability to add great content
As they say ‘images tell the story in a thousand words’ you can use your imagination to create stunning images and video to tell the story that word alone can not. It will instantly be displayed in the news feed and people following can see it. Too, making sure you add in an enticing description/caption with appropriate hashtags can amplify the reach of your content.
Grow your community through interacting
Just as followers can interact with your content, you should also interact with content from others, especially influencers in your industry. There are several options to do it:
- Liking – this is the simplest way. Double-tapping the photo or tapping the heart button under the post means ‘Like’. It’s the easiest to do, but if you really want to boost your visibility, move to the next option.
- Commenting – Posting comments and reply to images can be done by hitting the button next to like button, type the comment and send. Even better if you can tag in the account name of the image you are commenting on.
- Mention – @ can be use to tag the other users on comments and posts. This will allow the specific person to get notified and can help you get noticed by more people. Just don’t spam
- Direct message – Instagram Direct is sending private message, photo and video to other people. This is one good way for you to answer client’s inquiries, questions, suggestions and allows you to take private what you don’t want on your public page.
Instagram has been helping many businesses to grow through posting images and videos that tell the story of their business. As many people prefer visual content, this platform has the potential to increase your visibility online and drive more business for you!
If you want help getting more out of your social media marketing, please download our free step by step guide today!
Oct 1, 2018 | Blog, News
Optimising your videos for Youtube
Did you know that every minute on Youtube there are 2.7 million video views, 400 hours of video uploaded, 139,000 hours of video watched, 92,000 Youtube searches and 700 tweets linking to Youtube? And that after Google, Youtube is the second most used search engine in the world.
Video is a powerful way to connect with your audience, and add a new dimension to your brand. It helps communicate complex messages in an interactive way and can provide a way for potential customers to get to know you.
So if you want to make video part of a key component to your marketing strategy, then having a Youtube channel for your business is a must. Once you set-up your channel, and you’ve produced a few videos, it’s time to get your content seen.
Here are some ways you can optimise your video so that your content is seen on Youtube:
Make the video content powerful.
Of course, everything will be useless if the quality and quantity of video itself is not that good. It should always anchor with the theme you want to portray and all the details should be parallel to one another.
Never forget the title and tags.
To your target audience has a chance to watch your video then you need to put the title of your video. Always remember the principle in title creation. It should be relevant, significant and catchy. Also, you should put necessary tags that will make short information about the video so that they can easily search and watch your video.
Create Automatic Playlist URL’s
When viewers start to watch one of your video, see to it that you have a playlist url that will automatically be played after each video. In doing so, you give every opportunity to extend the playtime of your content.
Provide Call to Action!
At the end of every video in the list, always put a call to action. And use annotations if you need to. Once someone has watched a video and are inspired to act, give them something to do next.
There are lots of ways list ways on how you can optimize your videos. Whatever choice you will make it is a must that you will always aim to make your videos easily seen by your target audience.
