Social Media Marketing / Design / Princeton, NJ

The New Year is here!  Are you ready?  Here’s a quick list to help you head into the new year with a fresh start.

1. Update your LinkedIn profile.  Unless you’re a LinkedIn pro, you might find that your LinkedIn profile has gotten a bit dusty.  Take 5 minutes and give it a once-over.  Read through your job & project descriptions, add any updates, freshen up the language.  Take another look at your photo: is it working? (Is it clear, professional, well-lit, inviting…?)  Finally, join some new groups and ‘follow’ some industry pros.  It’s all about expanding your network, after all.

2. Write yourself an editorial calendar for one month.  An editorial calendar is an outline for your blogging or marketing goals, laid out in advance.  It’s an invaluable tool if you’re serious about providing regular, exciting content.  If you don’t use one regularly, try it for one month.  It doesn’t have to be complex or lengthy, just give yourself enough detail to go on so that you’re inspired to keep at it.  (Prediction: You’ll see an increase in post frequency.)

3.  Change your Facebook Cover Photo.  It’s a minor one, but this change gets attention!  Think about your brand ‘s major initiatives are right now, and how you can convey that through a photo.  Freshen things up!  While you’re updating your photo, take a look at your page through a stranger’s eyes and see if there’s anything else you can add to or enhance to captivate new visitors and engage those who already ‘like’ your page. (…and if you’ve written your editorial calendar, you’ll be prepared to serve up engaging content all month long!)

4.  Sign up for social media management tools so you can stay active on Twitter.  In my opinion, it’s better not to have your brand on Twitter at all than to have a stale, neglected Twitter account!  If being consistently active Twitter is a challenge for you, check out some tools to make Twitter more manageable.  Programs like HootSuite are designed to make tweeting even easier, with features that let you write and schedule tweets ahead of time, data reporting to help you judge how effective your tweets are, and more.  Finally, remember to check your Twitter account often so that you can reply to mentions and interact with your fans in a timely manner.  

Here’s to a happy and productive New Year!

So you’ve set up social media accounts for your small business… but things are feeling a little lackluster.  Or, downright slow, even.  Don’t throw up your hands and walk away from the digital world!  Get your customers engaged with your posts, and generate excitement around your brand.  Here are several ways to generate customer engagement on social media:

1. Be yourself.  Yes, the same advice your mother gave you all those years ago rings true today!  Your customers love you & your brand for who you are, and that’s why they keep patronizing you.  The tone and attitude you bring to your business should be carried across to your social media campaigns.  This is a core element of successful branding, and will only help strengthen your business.  Speaking in a familiar, consistent tone conveys authenticity, and nothing is more valuable than that.

2. Ask questions.  Give your followers a chance to speak their mind, share a story, or voice an opinion and they will!  Come up with a question or poll that is relevant to the service you provide, and encourage your customers to tweet their reply or post in the comments.  Keep the conversation going by replying, retweeting, and posing follow-up questions. 

3. Create a contest on social media.  A little incentive never hurt anyone!  Inspire your customers to share something on social media - a photo of them using your product, a testimonial, a favorite memory - and offer a prize for participation.  Be sure to promote the contest to your fans through emails, and in-store posters, and watch the engagement happen.  Again, acknowledging participants is a must - even if they aren’t the big winner! 

4. Use images.  As this article from Social Media Today explains, images posted to Facebook generated much higher engagement than any other type of content.  Harness that power and share fun images from your business.  Encourage your fans to share their own pictures, and re-post them.  Keep it relevant, and keep it fun.

There are plenty of ways to inspire engagement on social media, and these will get you headed in the right direction.  What has worked for your business on social media? 

A few weeks ago I posted the first in a series of write-ups reviewing tools for smarter tweeting.  If you’re managing the Twitter account for your business - and also trying to, you know, run the business - finding an effective way to plan and share content is crucial.  Save time, tweet smarter, and share great content with your followers using these programs!

Last time, I reviewed Buffer, an app that allows you to schedule as many Twitter and Facebook posts as you can write ahead of time.  It’s great - you can prepare all the tweets and posts you need, and not only does Buffer post them, but it will give you metrics to show you how many RTs and clicks you got for each one.

But let’s talk about those clicks… obviously the goal is to share content that gets as many clicks as possible, so naturally, your odds are increased when you have more followers online.  But how do you know when that is?  That’s where Tweriod comes in. 

Tweriod analyzes your Twitter followers and provides you with a chart showing how many of your followers are active at different times throughout the day.  It provides these statistics for each specific day, as well as weekends combined, and weekdays combined, giving you insight on the optimal times to share your content.

Tweriod is free (with slightly limited features) for analyzing up to 5,000 followers.  If you’re just getting started, the free version should suit you perfectly.

Tweriod markets itself to work alongside Buffer, which I have been making use of, but the information the program offers can act as a guideline that you can use with any other sharing app.

There’s a ton of information being shared on social media, designed to lure readers, engage them, make them click, buy, retweet, etc.  When you are just one voice among these millions of other voices, how will you make sure you’re heard? How can you be certain that the content you’re sharing is engaging your followers, and attracting new ones?  Here are some strategies for smarter sharing on social media sites.

1. Mind your post frequency.  Too often and it’s annoying, too little and you get lost in the crowd.  Deciding on how often to tweet or share takes time, and you’ll find your rhythm as you go.  For starters, shoot for a handful of posts per day - more than 3 - and see how that goes.  The key here is consistency.  If you suddenly vanish, the social media world will forget about you and keep moving on.  Dedicate yourself to a regular number of posts - blog posts, Facebook and Twitter posts - and stick with that frequency. 

2. Maximize your reach.  If you’re managing multiple accounts, consider this point raised by Robert Caruso, author of bundlepost.  He argues that strategic posting across each of your social media channels increases the exposure of your post.  If you’re sharing your new blog post on Twitter, share it on Facebook at a different time, and engage a new audience.  The audience on your social media sites fluctuates throughout the day, and if you only share it one time, double-posting on social media sites, you’re only reaching one audience, one time.  With that in mind…

3. Work the metrics.  There are many apps that can work to your advantage when it comes to content sharing.  One of my favorites at the moment is an app called Buffer, which allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook posts ahead of time, and then provides you with the analytics for each afterwards.  (Read my review of Buffer here.)  The benefit to this is being able to see how effective each post was - how many people saw it, how many clicks it got, etc. - so that you can fine-tune your sharing strategy. 

Thinking strategically about how you share will increase traffic to your site, engage your audience, and help you grow your social media presence. 

Maybe in your dream world, you have a whole marketing team devoted to sharing your business’ message with your loyal fans.  But for now, you’re it.  Running a business means wearing a lot of different hats - perhaps juggling customer service, personnel, book keeping -  in addition to trying to keep up with your fans on social media sites.  With all those tasks to consider, finding ways to save time is key.  Lucky for you, there are several great tools available to make your social media marketing more efficient!

Buffer is a popular app that allows you to compose and schedule your tweets or Facebook posts ahead of time.  There is a lot to love about Buffer, but the biggie is the amount of time it can save you.  Instead of making time throughout the day to stay involved and share things on social media sites, you can prepare a few days’ worth of content in one sitting.  Type them into Buffer, they’ll be added to your queue.

Buffer also provides you with the analytics for each tweet.  See how many clicks it got, how many potential viewers it had, along with retweets, mentions and favorites - all from your Buffer dashboard.

After trying a few similar programs, I decided to try Buffer myself.  I’ve been using it for a few days now, and have found it to be user-friendy, intuitive, and a very helpful tool.  Take one thing off your daily to-do list, and download Buffer to make your social media marketing a little easier!

(Source: ohsobeautifulpaper.com)

The advent of social media has created endless, free, creative marketing options for small businesses.  Word of mouth travels fast on social networks, and if customers are responding well to your business, getting them to share that with their networks can translate into increased recognition for your company.  One easy way to build a loyal customer base (who is vocal about the frequency of their visits) is to offer incentives for visitors.  Location-based promotions that encourage the user to share their visit to your business - such as Facebook Places and Foursquare - are a simple and effective way to get your customers participating, and spreading the word.  (Bonus: It has been shown that social endorsements can translate into higher ranking for your company in search results.)

If you have a brick-and-mortar store or are hosting an event, it is simple to customize your own promotion and generate awareness through social media.  Before you proceed, read through these tips and familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of this marketing tool!

Who is using these apps?  Everyone has a smartphone these days - or do they?  Do your customers fit the demographic that is likely to respond to mobile marketing?  Just like any other advertising strategy, you need to know your client base before setting a plan in motion.  Own a busy cafe with tables covered in laptops and customers browsing the web on their phones as they wait for their beverage?  Clearly, you have customers who would be responsive to mobile marketing. 

Try it yourself!  Sign up for Foursquare and see what other companies are offering.  A free product for the ‘Mayor’ of a certain location?  A discount off of their services after X number of check-ins?  Figuring out what works for you as the user will help you craft a promotion of your own.  What would you want to be rewarded with for broadcasting how much you love or frequent your favorite businesses?

Clue people in!  So you’ve come up with a great incentive program for people who check-in at your business.  Great!  Now tell people that the offer exists!  Use visual clues - stickers, posters, scrolling text on your register screens - to alert your customers to this opportunity.  Also, don’t forget your biggest marketing liason - your staff!  Make sure your staff is fully aware of the promotion, including the rules and rewards, and let them talk it up to customers.

Monitor your results.  There’s so much to be learned from social media marketing, and there are a variety of social media measuring tools to help you keep tabs on your results.  Take a look at the metrics and see what’s working, at what times, on what days.  This will not only help you strengthen  your marketing strategy going forward, but it will help you learn what your business is doing best, and where you may need to focus next.  Tools like Google Analytics are user-friendly, and a crucial part of a successful social media campaign.

With these basics in mind, you’ll be able to craft and execute a location-based promotion that will get your customers talking!

So, you’ve put your business on Facebook and you’re steadily building your fan base.  You’re adding content, and your fans are responding.  You have a sense for what content your fans like, but you are yearning for more information.  How can you tell what posts are getting the best reactions?  How can you measure how successful your company’s Facebook campaign is? 

Facebook allows businesses access to metrics from their page - aptly named ‘Insights’ - that measure ‘likes’, reach, check-ins, virality and more.  Understanding how to interpret these statistics is a key step in crafting a successful social media campaign.  Once you’ve learned how to interpret your Facebook Insights, you’ll have a better picture of what your consumers are looking for from your company, what they like and what they are less interested in.  Here’s a brief overview of this valuable tool.

To view your pages’ Insights, you must be logged in as an Admin.  On your Admin Panel, click on the ‘Insights’ box.  This will take you to the Insights Dashboard, where you’ll see an overview of the various metrics.  A chart below will visualize the frequency of your posts, the number of people talking about your page(resharing your info), and your weekly total reach(people who have seen your posts).  It will look something like this: 

Below that, you’ll see a list of every post, organized by date.  You can view data for each specific post and learn the reach, the number of engaged users, the number of people talking about that post, and the post’s virality(a percentage based on the number of people who talk about a post out of the number of people who saw the post.)  This breakdown gives you the chance to determine what your fans want more of.  Remember, the more your content is seen, interacted with and reshared, the more your fan base will grow - that’s the whole point!

Scroll back up and you’ll see a few tabs running across the top of the Insights Dashboard.  Click on ‘Likes’ and you can see the demographics and locations of the people who like your posts.  Below that, you can learn where these likes came from.  Were they already on your page when they clicked ‘like’?  Or did Facebook recommend your page to them based on other businesses they had already liked?  Do you have a ‘Like Us On Facebook’ button on your site or in your e-newsletter?  You can see how many ‘likes’ that actually got you.

Click on ‘Reach’ and you’ll find out the demographics of who’s seeing your posts.  Towards the bottom of this page you can learn more about your reach, including how people are encountering your content.  Your ‘organic’ reach is related to your content showing up in a fans’ news feed, or perhaps someone looking at your page on their own volition.  Your ‘viral’ reach refers to content that people encountered through a friend - either something someone reshared, or something they saw through a friends’ activity.  If you are using paid Facebook ads, this is where you can determine how effective they have been.

Good news!  People are talking about your page!  But in what ways?  In the ‘Talking About This’ section you can see what types of stories got you the most chatter.

Finally, Check-Ins.  Again, demographic info can offer you some insight into your clientele.  A great way to build a fan base is to craft a location-based promotion… (more on that next week!)