by Stefanie Blackburn | May 9, 2019 | Social Media, Uncategorized
Social media marketing is all about engagement. The more engaged your audience is, the more distribution you get from the social networks, which helps your audience grow. It’s a virtuous circle that begins with engagement which is why we highly recommend that you use the following seven Instagram Story features in your marketing. Stories are a great way to increase interest, get more engagement, and collect feedback from your audience. Here are seven ways to capitalize on them at your business to create more engagement with your prospects and customers! Question Stickers Question Stickers let your audience ask you questions then you can choose which you’d like to answer. Your answers are then posted as another piece of content on your Story. Music Stickers Have you ever flipped through some fun, engaging Instagram Stories only to land on a row of images – no audio or video? They seem so boring! The last thing you want is for your marketing to be boring. If you’re adding an image to your Story, consider adding a Music Sticker as well. Remember, it’s all about engagement, and music is engaging! Share Feed Posts To Your Story Did you know that you can share the posts you see in your feed to your Story? This is an excellent way to recognize people that are tagging your account, get the attention of someone whose content you enjoy, or to repurpose your old posts as Story content. How to do it? Simple, just click the arrow in the red circle on the left image (SHARE button), then choose to create a story (circled in red...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Apr 22, 2019 | Social Media
Instagram has been the fastest growing social media platform over the last several years, and now has hundreds of millions of daily users, making it an important place for all businesses to consider doing their marketing. Until recently, it may have seemed like a platform that wasn’t necessarily ideal for generating leads, but that has definitely changed. Instagram now has several viable ways that businesses can use the platform to generate leads quickly and affordably. Let’s cover seven of them. Instagram Lead Generation Ads First, Instagram lead generation ads are an obvious choice. If you’re comfortable running paid advertising, Instagram has an ad objective that is specifically designed for generating leads from the platform. The format is simple. The ads are easy to create, and can be very effective. Particularly if you’re targeting a younger demographic, or creating content in the most popular content categories on Instagram, such as fashion, food, and travel. Contests Number two is to run a contest. Contests are very popular on Instagram. And they’re a great way to generate a lot of attention, and a lot of leads, very quickly. You don’t have to give away anything too valuable, or too extravagant. Just make sure that it’s closely matched to the interest of your audience. Conversation Ads Instagram now has a cool ad objective feature that is designed to get someone to message you on Instagram, starting a conversation directly in your messaging inbox. What a powerful way to create a more personal experience than just collecting an email address! Inside of that conversation, you can then give them an opportunity to provide you...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Mar 18, 2019 | Social Media
Not where you’d like to be with your social media presence? Don’t worry, you’re not alone – social media is a challenge (and perhaps even a mystery) for many businesses! The good news is that the pace of change in today’s marketing world means that it’s never too late to jump in and compete, no matter where you’re starting from today. Here are five things you can do right now to improve your social media presence and get better results from your social media efforts: Sharpen Your Strategy Simply posting content on social media isn’t enough. Before you can expect to make big gains in your social media results, you need to take a sharp look at your current strategy, and be realistic about what’s working and what’s not. Start, consider the following questions: Which social media platforms are you active on? Which social media platforms are relevant to your business goals? Which social media platforms are providing the most traffic and conversions? Which social media platforms are underperforming? What kind of content are you most effective at creating? What kind of content will most effectively accomplish our social media goals? Take a step back and really consider these questions. You may find that you’re wasting your efforts on platforms that don’t get results, you’re not using the platform’s features to the fullest, or you’re spreading yourself too thin. Don’t be afraid to change directions in your pursuit of your goals. Optimize Current Accounts Once you’ve decided on your social media platforms and strategy, you should consider how you can strengthen your presence by optimizing your accounts. To start,...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Dec 11, 2017 | Social Media
Running social media marketing becomes infinitely easier when you find the right tech tools to do most of the work for you. There are countless platforms out there designed to help you save time while adding more power and control. We sifted through the absolute best of these social media tools to bring you our top recommendations. Use them to open your social media profiles up to become more diverse and creative. You will also end the frustration of struggling through complex workflow to complete tasks. We tried to avoid any platforms that require a significant buy-in. As a result, most of the following tools are free or have a low-cost option for business owners. We’re also leaving out the big total management tools like Buffer, HootSuite, SproutSocial, AgoraPulse and others. The following 21 best apps and browser-based platforms fit our criteria and can improve your social media marketing success in 2018 and beyond. Bitly Bitly does two amazing things for you: 1) Shortens links to make post text cleaner and better looking 2) Provides a custom redirect so that you can track CTR on your shared links and possible behavior after the click. The free version of Bitly is indispensable for any social media page that wants to share links. Without it, you have no reliable way to track engagement. Backly Backly lets you share links while providing on-page reminders to go back to your branded site or social account later. The tool provides a pop-up frame on content pages you share, keeping audiences thinking about your brand even as they browse outside your owned pages. Use Backly...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Jul 23, 2017 | Social Media, tools
Monitor Your Social Media Presence with Social Media Monitoring Tools Social Media is a tool that MUST be part of your marketing strategy. It not only helps you connect and engage with current and future customers but also helps create more visibility for your business. It is critical however if you are using Social Media you need to be monitoring your presence. Your Social Media presence needs to be monitored so that you know if you are being seen, if you are being seen by the right people and if your message is engaging to your audience. Once you monitor y our social media presence and understand your results you will be able to adjust as needed to ensure that your message is being received by the right people and they are taking action. Monitoring your social media presence will allow you to make adjustments if you are not hitting your targets. In order to monitor your Social Media presence there are several tools that you can use that will be helpful. Here are some that we have found very useful. Social Media Monitoring Tools Hootsuite – We consider Hooutsuite to be more than a monitoring tool since it is also a great scheduling tool, however it does have some great reporting tools to allow you to monitor several items about your social media including followers, likes and reach and more. Social Mention – Social Mention is a great tool for helping you track and see where your business is being mentioned by others on Social Media Google Analytics – Google Analytics is a very powerful tool to use for...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Jul 14, 2017 | Social Media
Why Companies should really Outsource Their Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing is an art and unfortunately it only takes one misunderstood post to potentially damage a business. A post that you think is great unfortunately if done incorrectly has the potential to upset your customers. If you work with a Social Media Consultant or firm they are experts and can typically help you avoid items that can cause issues for your brand. Social media managers appreciate the nuances of the social world, so they are generally very careful about avoiding posts that could paint your small business in a bad light. Social Media Marketing Experts can Forecast the Unpredictable There will always be things that are unpredictable in the marketing world, but having a professional on board can lower these surprises. The fact of the matter is that social media marketers spend their time navigating the complex marketing world that is social media. They can predict general trends, understand what makes content successful and grasp the nuances between different platforms. They get paid to do this, so they very likely do it better than you. Social Media Marketing Experts Can Grant You Time Back Aspiring entrepreneurs sometimes think they can run a productive social media marketing campaign with just a few posts from time to time. This simply is not the case. Social media needs regular engagement, and if you do this yourself, you have essentially lost the time you would otherwise use to make your company a success. Effective social media marketing requires a large time commitment, and if you outsource, that commitment won’t cut into your...
