All posts tagged Social Media Marketing

Are you a small business owner who often finds yourself staring blankly at your digital device wondering what the heck you should share with your social media followers? Do you sometimes feel like you’re spending countless hours on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, yet question whether your efforts are translating into sales? If you’re squeezed for time and want to make the most of your time on social media, it is imperative that you take a growth hacker’s approach to social media marketing for your small business. Integrate the following three social media hacks into your small business’ growth strategy, and you’ll be impressed at how quickly your audience engagement rates start to soar.

3 SOCIAL MEDIA HACKS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

CROSS-POSTING MATTERS

If you want to increase your social media marketing ROI (return-on-investment), learn the power of social media cross-posting. Don’t quarantine your social content to just one platform. Cross-pollinate your prose across multiple social networking sites. Post Instagram images to Pinterest, spotlight your Facebook posts on your small business’s blog. Embed tweets from your Twitter profile into blog posts on Medium.com. Once you start cross-posting your social media content, you’ll feel like kicking yourself for not having discovered this social media marketing hack sooner.

Read more: 3 SOCIAL MEDIA HACKS EVERY SMALL BUSINESS OWNER SHOULD KNOW

Social media marketing is an extremely multifaceted field with every aspect requiring a lot of work. You probably know that. That’s why most of us use a whole set of tools to analyze, create, advertise, and more.

Unfortunately, there are enough social media tools on the market to get one absolutely confused. This infographic by Awario, shares a list of the best social media marketing tools for 2019.

The ultimate list of tools is broken down into five crucial categories:

• Social media monitoring
• Social media management
• Content marketing
• Creating workflows
• Advertising

Read more: 10 of the Best Social Media Marketing Tools for 2019 [Infographic]

Every company marketer posting on social media is curious about the best times to post their content. While each audience is unique, having a rule of thumb can be extremely helpful when you’re first starting out. Sprout Social recently published the results of their “Best Times to Post on Social Media: 2018 Industry Research”, a report which includes preferred time slots for the big 4 — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Unlike other reports I’ve seen on this topic, which often recommend a single time or small window, Sprout has detailed “heat maps” for each channel. I reached out to Rachael Samuels, Social Media Manager at Sprout Social, to find out more about the report and the research behind their findings.

Harrison: Other companies have looked into the best times to post on social. What did your data science team do differently?

Samuels: Sprout Social’s data science team constructed a more targeted approach that takes into account interactions with 935 million messages across 420,000 social profiles connected to Sprout. The data that our team uncovered not only provides specific days and times for the most engagement on social for each platform, but offers similar data for specific industries, including tech, CPG, and healthcare, among others. Using this data as a guide empowers marketers with the best opportunities to maximize personalized consumer engagement.

Read more: What Are The Best Times To Post On Social Media? (These “Heat Maps” Have The Answers)

Social networks have, to a large extent, defined the way we work and live. Not only do these conversational tools ignite debate and broaden networks, but in a very real sense they nourish a collective consciousness, an understanding of what it means to be alive in the world right here, right now.

From a business standpoint, there’s never been a better time to harness the power of this 21st-century medium to gain clients and generate leads. We’re not talking about showy brand waving: we’re talking about using social media to get clients on the phone and through the door. To leverage apps used by billions to acquire new business and make meaningful connections.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But the truth is, while the rewards are great, getting social media marketing right can be a challenge. There are a myriad of powerful management tools and services available, an array of techniques and stratagems which promise to put your brand in front of prospective clients and capture their interest. Social media platforms, lest we forget, are crowded spaces. How can you make yourself heard above the noise? How will you differentiate your brand? And is landing your dream client actually realistic?

Read more: 4 Tips For Harnessing Social Media To Win Clients And Grow Revenue

2018 has been a busy year in the social media marketing world. From major news feed changes to the introduction of exciting new features, social media marketers have certainly been kept on their toes.

Join us as we reflect on all the valuable lessons we’ve learnt from working in the social media space this past year.

Creativity is key

With hundreds of thousands of updates being posted to popular social media sites every minute, creativity is key to standing out in the crowd. It’s no longer enough to share a simple piece of text on your business’s products or services – marketers need to create compelling copy and captivating imagery and/or videos in order to catch, and hold, their customers’ attention.

Read more: Social Media Marketing Lessons Learnt in 2018

Social media is an important channel for marketers looking to make a holiday splash.

As consumers begin their holiday shopping for gifts and bargains, they are more and more likely to be influenced by social media posts. A well-placed call to action on Instagram or Facebook, or a LinkedIn campaign, might make the difference between a happy new year and a lackluster holiday season.

This infographic from Animoto details how marketers should approach social media efforts for the holidays.

Insights include:

• Seventy-nine percent of marketers say they will run a holiday ad on social media this year.
• Of the marketers who ran a holiday ad last year on social channels, 88 percent say it was effective.
• Some 56 percent say a holiday social media video campaign influenced a purchasing decision.

Read more: Infographic: Social media marketing insights for the holidays

Every marketer today wants to make their brand presence felt. That is the reason why social media is being leveraged on a big scale.  Whether one owns an established business or a startup, social media marketing is something that everyone is using to reach and communicate with the customers. Doesn’t it make sense to be in a place where the crowd is? One often comes across some social media marketing activities that fail. While, on the other hand, some Facebook and Twitter pages become popular than the others. Many times, marketers observe that their competitors are doing better than them in social media marketing!

Everybody does make mistakes. How can social media marketers be any different? But the fact is, making too many mistakes can see the followers dwindle and their count drop. Indeed, it does affect the revenue of a business. As with all mistakes, the first step is understanding and becoming aware of them. It then becomes easier to avoid them in the future. Let’s discuss top five common social media marketing mistakes that one must avoid in the coming year – 2019.

1. Undefined goals and targeting the wrong audience. As a marketer, one may be working very hard, yet they may suffer badly if they aim and shoot in the dark. A marketer needs to ensure that they are not targeting the wrong audience. The key to success in social media marketing is to know and reach the target audience.

Most marketers commit one of the biggest social media marketing mistakes, that is, not properly defining their goals. Can anyone win without a goal? Once the goals are set, one can start working on their social media strategy and create a plan. For example, some of the goals that work well with social media could be to improve customer engagement or increase event attendance or increase website visits, etc.

Read more: Five Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2019

Patient engagement via social media and digital marketing are vital for growing medical practices, says health care marketing consultant Jennifer Dally, of Attune Marketing Group in Powell, Ohio.

Speaking at the 2018 annual meeting of the Large Urology Group Practice Association, Dally said the physician-patient relationship is about more than diagnosis and treatment. What patients want most is connection, which “brings peace of mind.” Transparency, active listening, trust, convenience, customer service, and good communication are among the attributes that patients say establish connection, Dally says.

“We expect a certain level of experience in general as a consumer, and that has translated into the health care world as well,” she says.

Attempts to improve the patient experience can be simple. For example, Dally says, when physicians wrap up a patient visit, they can say to a patient, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Physicians need to understand that patients already have been on a medical journey before a medical encounter. “I’m trying to give them context of the journey patients take before they arrive at their practice and what could they do to influence that journey.”

She emphasizes 4 essentials for every medical practice: a website; search business listings; social media engagement; and review management. A website must consider patients’ needs, not those of the practice. All websites should enable patients to pay bills online and to schedule appointments, as well as provide a link to a patient portal, she says. Website content should be produced with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. The goal is to have a website rank high on search engine results pages. This determines how patients or physicians find a practice “in the digital landscape,” Dally says. High Google rankings matter a lot, she says.

Read more: Social Media, Digital Marketing Key to Building Medical Practices

There’s no doubt social media has become an important channel for business growth. According to a Pew Research Center survey, 68% of U.S. adults are Facebook users and more than half of U.S. adults use the platform several times a day.

Most Americans also rely on social media to shop and inform themselves about products and services, including mortgages. The problem is relatively few credit unions are fully taking advantage of this trend. They may have social media accounts, but many fail to leverage these platforms to create targeted messaging to cultivate members for life.

Read more: 3 Keys to Successful Social Media Marketing

Humans are visual creatures. Half of the human brain is designed to process visuals, more than the other senses such as touch and hearing. The brain is able to identify images in as fast as 13 milliseconds, and humans are able to remember more than 2000 pictures with at least 90% accuracy. So if someone sees a beautiful or a haunting image, they’ll won’t likely forget it.

In the age of social media, a picture is truly worth a thousand words. If you want to stand out, you must have really compelling visuals in your arsenal. Online consumers are said to retain only 10% to 20% of information, but when plain text is paired with visuals, they are able to remember 65% of the information. Another study revealed that content with photos or infographics registered a 94% increase in page views compared to non-visual content.

With billions of social media content out there, it is important that as marketers and content producers you are able to draw attention to your social media images, or people are going to forget about you.

Here are the best practices for visual content to get you started on improving the overall look and feel of your social media channels.

Use dynamic colour schemes
Using key colours that enable consumers to easily identify your brand or company is great, but that doesn’t mean you are stuck with blues or reds. Colours convey not just your logo, but also warmth and emotion. They set the mood and the atmosphere. While key colours help make branding more consistent, you don’t want to risk being too predictable.

A study on the impact of colour marketing found that 90% of snap judgements are made based on colour alone. This shows just how important colour is in social media design.

Instead of the flat colours, use light and dark gradients for a more unique feel. Evaluate whether you should go bold and bright or a little subdued. The key here is to be dynamic, allowing your brand to surprise even your most loyal fans. In order to get someone’s attention on social media, you must always keep it fresh and relevant. Keep your visual content consistent and exciting, and let your choice of colours do the trick for you.

Read more: 5 ways to enhance your marketing images on social media