by Stefanie Blackburn | 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 | Marketing, Uncategorized
We hope you’re sitting down, because we have something important to tell about digital marketing that will be hard for you to hear. Actually, we have five important things to say, and they’re all going to be bitter pills to swallow. But facing these digital marketing hard truths is the only way to stay afloat and efficient when it comes to achieving your online marketing goals in the years ahead. Listening to them will make you a better person and a better marketer So you may as well get it over with. Here are the five most important digital marketing truths you have to come to grips with in 2018 and beyond… 1. You Absolutely Need an Ad Budget to Get Any Traction on Social Nearly 100% of businesses have strong reasons to be on social. Without a social presence, they miss out on online reach and lead gen capabilities. Their current and potential customers will also think less of a company that doesn’t have an adequate social presence. Yet, these businesses are at the mercy of constantly changing social platforms. Companies like Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn make major changes to improve the experience for the average user and help the company stock go up. Notice how business users and advertisers are left out of the equation. What we’re getting at is this: organic reach is tanking. You have little chance of your posts showing up on people’s newsfeeds unless you apply some sort of budget to promote your posts. Businesses actively trying to boost conversions may also want to consider paying for banner ad space. The...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Uncategorized
Pay Attention to These Small Business Mobile Marketing Trends in 2018, Or Be Left Behind! Small Business Mobile Marketing should be a focus for 2018. Small business owners have to account for mobile devices within their marketing strategy in 2018. Otherwise, their competition is going to quickly leave them in the dust. With every passing year, we rely increasingly upon our mobile devices to keep us connected. In 2014, mobile web traffic surpassed desktop traffic. Now, we spend an average of 5 hours a day using our mobile devices! For business owners, this trend means that if someone is looking at their website, consuming digital content, or looking at an online ad, it is more likely than not occurring on a mobile device. Without awareness of the ways mobile has changed consumer habits, many small business marketing strategies won’t just fall flat — they flat out won’t work at all. To help you prepare for a mobile-mad consumer world, make sure you take the following six 2018 small business mobile marketing trends to heart: People Increasingly Demand Mobile-Centered Website Design Just over half (51%) of all website visits now come from mobile devices. So, someone who is visiting your mobile website is most likely doing it on a tiny screen. The first step to accommodating these mobile visitors is to ensure your site uses a reliable responsive design, which automatically scales down and rearranges site elements to look presentable. Most often, the change results in a website that navigates as a single scrolling page. If you want to see if your website fits responsive design recommendations, you can use...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Uncategorized
Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses Instagram has changed from a way to post artistic photos to a legitimate vehicle for small businesses looking to drive engagement. The rise of influencers and influencer marketing for small businesses has played a huge part in this evolution. In 2018, expect more small businesses than ever to jump aboard the Instagram marketing train. The eye-catching format is easy to use, and provides businesses with tools to keep their audiences engaged and informed. New features and toolsets, like Instagram Stories, have also expanded what the platform can do for small business owners. Thanks to Instagram’s powerful advertising tools, evolving features, and highly active audiences, small businesses can use the platform to make big gains. To help your business prepare its digital marketing strategy for the year ahead, take note of the following Instagram and influencer marketing trends that have nearly every small business owner saying, “Oh, that’s Insta-worthy!” More Small Businesses Using Instagram Marketing Small businesses have driven huge growth on Instagram. This includes growth of both unpaid organic account posts and paid advertising use. According to Forbes, Instagram now has over 8 million business profiles. The platform saw 500% growth in the number of business accounts in just a few months last year. Instagram execs credit the majority of this growth to small business users. Setting up an account is easy, and it’s also just as simple to begin using paid advertising tools to promote posts. Why are small businesses drawn to Instagram? Because huge audiences login every day, often several times a day. There were over...
by Stefanie Blackburn | Blogging, Uncategorized
Blogging Topics Too General Poor Writing Some businesses believe that the expertise they provide will make up for any shortcomings in writing ability. This simply is not the case. Individuals lose faith in business owners if a blog looks like it was written by a high school student. It is essential to know one’s limits, and if good writing is not in a person’s expertise, they should hand off the task. Writers can be found through other blogs. Most guest authors have their contact information at the bottom of the post. Focusing On Broad Topics One slip-up that many beginner bloggers make is creating blogs that are too broad. “How to do SEO Marketing,” for example, may seem like a terrific title, but everybody knows the entirety of SEO will not be learned in a single blog. People want more targeted information, and local companies should give it to them. Instead think of the broad topic as part of a series and focus on what each part of the series would include. A bait and tackle shop, for instance, could make a blog called “How to Clean a Catfish” rather than “How to Catch a Fish.” The broader subject might attract a few clicks, but focusing on consumers’ specific needs is the better gamble. Publishing Just To Publish Companies need to publish on their social media pages daily, but they don’t need to post blogs this frequently. This gets to be a problem when a business starts to provide minimal value in their posts just so they can have something up daily. Blog routinely, but only if the post...
