Category Archives: Social Media Marketing

7 things you need to consider before using Facebook Ads

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| Leave a comment

written by:

I think Facebook Advertising is one the best ways for you to 1. Build your Facebook Community 2. Get more leads 3. Gain more visibility. However, to be successful, there are a few things you need to know!

It all comes down to one word, targeting. You can run anything as a Facebook Ad and you will get lots of clicks, and even some new page likes, but they won’t be from people who care about your business. They’ll be spammers or people who do not make up your target market. How can you ensure that your Facebook Ads are being seen by the target audience for your business?

First, you need to determine which type of Facebook Ad you would like to use. Below are targeting options that pertain to all 3 types of Facebook Ads, but I’m going to focus on Sponsored Post Ads, in other words, a published post on your timeline converted to an advertisement.

Geographic Location: You can target your advertisement to people who live in a certain country, state, city or zip code. You can also check a box to include cities near that location within a 10, 25 or 50 radius.

Age: There’s no need to show your ad to people who are 13 years old and older if your target audience is retirees. Select the age range that is most appropriate for your business and the content you are promoting.

Gender: Is your target market mostly men or women? Or, is your target market men, but women also contribute to the buying decision? You can select them both or just one.

Interests: This is what I consider the “gold” of Facebook Advertising. You can select certain interests to ensure that your ad is placed in front of the right audience. For example, if your target market is stay-at-home moms, you can target your ad to Parenting, Family, Kids, Kid Activities, etc.

Connections: You can show your ad to anyone, people who already like your page, or people who do not yet like your page. However, the “platinum,” is friends of connections. By selecting this option your ads will show to friends of your existing fans (those who already like your page). The great thing about this is that your ad will show with the viewer’s friends name in it. For example, my Facebook friends would see “Jenny likes Engage121″ or “Jenny likes New Blog Post by Engage121.” See the potential? We know everyone values their friend’s input, especially when it comes to buying decisions.

Advanced Targeting: If you’re not socially savvy, you can skip this paragraph. I’m just kidding! The one targeting option here that you should select is language. If you’re advertising in the United States select English (US), or if you’re targeting other ethnicities add Spanish to your selections or whichever language reflects your audience.

Budget & Time Frame: Lastly is the budget you set for your ad or campaign. You can run a Facebook Ad for as little as $5/day. You can also say you want to spend$50 on the ad, which wouldn’t require you to set a daily limit. There are other conversion options, but I’m going to keep it simple for now. Comment below if you’d like to get techy with me.

Why do you need to do all of this work? By targeting your ad you will ensure that those clicks you’re receiving aren’t from spammers. How? Because spammers on Facebook do not fill out their profile and so there is no data such as age, gender or interests associated with their profiles.

I previously wrote a blog post on How to Get Results with Facebook Ads for SpinSucks, which outlines the return I received from using Facebook Ads. There are some additional points in that article that I think you would find helpful.

Have you ventured into Social Advertising yet? Or are you still skeptical?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, Social Media Marketing

Tagged Facebook Ads, Facebook Advertising, native advertising, social advertising

How important is Local Content to your marketing strategy? Very!

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Mark DAndrea| Leave a comment

written by:

Mark DAndrea

So, the “Content is King” comment, thank you Mr. Gates (Bill Gates, 1996) has been discussed and vetted among marketers for years – and we all agree, that content is VERY important. Yes, even before Google and Yahoo emerged as content Gods.

But there’s a better question. If Content is King, what is “Local Content?” My take, the be-all and end-all! As marketers we struggle to connect on a daily basis with the “local” customer. We spend vast amounts of Ad dollars trying to reach the very individuals who traffic through our stores, which typically produce disappointing results, generating coupon hounds.

Enter, Local Content. Like the Local Content Engage121 now provides to small businesses and Realtors all over the country. A recent quote from a WPP study says local social pages “generate approximately three to five times more engagement than global pages,” and others say it’s even higher. Your customers shop locally, so empower your local stores, agents, centers or dealers to reach and impact local customers, with relevant content that creates loyal fans and followers; the type of fans that can generate local residual revenue.

Local Hot Content Sample

Our good friends at ERA Real Estate provided a quote earlier this year that truly captures why Local Content is so important, when supporting Local Social efforts:

“In our experience, social media can help build brands because of its ability to penetrate at the hyper-local level with market-appropriate content, giving franchisees a chance to strengthen customer relationships, promote themselves as a local resource and establish their expertise. Consumers engage with information they need, on a platform that is accessible on their own time, and that maintains and increases brand loyalty by marrying the cache of a global franchise with the local expertise of our franchisees.
-Charlie Young, CEO, ERA Real Estate

How can Local Content impact your local marketing and sales efforts?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Engage121 Product Features, Franchising, Social Media Marketing

Tagged local content marketing, local social media

Yes. A Tragedy Should Alter your Content Strategy

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Mark DAndrea| 1 Comment

written by:

Mark DAndrea

As with any tragedy, we often explore this topic every time innocent life is abruptly taken. However, how should you alter your content strategy?

While the answer to me is somewhat obvious, I continue to see folks not understand the most basic of principles. Being, (i) You’re not always the most important thing in the world and yes, (ii) a sale can wait a day or two. While there is no timetable for personal bereavement, or a national tragedy like Newtown, which hit VERY close to home. Respect for those who have lost their lives is just a human trait. I recently witnessed a spat between a VERY influential celebrity and a writer… which matured into an insensitive chest beating by the celebrity informing this “correct” writer that he didn’t have enough “followers” to tell him how to tweet (auto-posting) during a tragedy or any other time (image of writer responding to the celebrity below, informing him how insensitive he was – I agree with Steve).

Here are my tips for the Guy Kawasaki’s of the world that believe they are above reproach. Oops, I name dropped:

Posting directly after a tragedy should reflect how you or your business support those of the tragedy; please turn-off scheduled tweets or posts, it’s insensitive. (see image of Engage121 during the Boston Bombing)
Stay away from political dialogue. As with Newtown, we were all upset with the vicious nature of the crime, however this is a time for the victims, not political posturing.
Timing – within 24 hours, we need to showcase our resolve. While I recommend this period to showcase resolve, use common sense and social media. Social conversations are a great barometer for sentiment. Listen and your community will tell you if it’s ok!

How do you currently alter your content strategy?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Social Media Marketing

Tagged content strategy, Social Media Strategy

What does it take to be a good Community Manager?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| 3 Comments

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

I’m often asked “what does it take to become a community manager?” My answers usually turn people away, so instead of focusing on how difficult it is, I’m going to focus on what it takes to be a good community manager once you’ve landed the role. Although, you don’t have to take my word for it, I interviewed 3 rockstar CMs to share their thoughts.

Here are 6 tactics that will get you to the top:
-Research
-Connecting
-Experimenting
-Listening
-Tracking
-Pushing back

Research: This never stops, and it shouldn’t no matter what profession you’re in, but with social media marketing you need to be the “go-to person” for Facebook questions, and any other social network that your clients or company is using.
How-To: Read blogs, a lot, written by the top content producers in the industry, such as Mashable. Also by the top influencers in the industry, for example David Armano, Gini Dietrich, the list goes on.

Connecting: You need to build relationships with the people I just mentioned above. If they are true “influencers” and actually use social media daily, and don’t have their assistant do it, then this is possible.
How-To: Read their blog posts, and comment on the posts by giving your thoughts. I know it’s scary since you’re just starting out and this person is a big-wig but I promise that they’ll listen. I remember the first time I commented on Spin Sucks, I was so scared I think I read my comment 15 times before publishing.

Experimenting: Take risks, immediately. In the beginning you’ll only have your own personal networks to experiment with but that’s ok.
How-To: Write a controversial blog post, tweet someone you wouldn’t dare to on a normal day. Post content that you know will piss someone off. This is how you push the envelope in Social Media, and it is the only way you’ll learn what the boundaries truly are with your audience.

Listening: Listen to what others are telling you, in your company and online.
How-To: You need to be able to take the feedback you receive and implement it into your current strategy. Sometimes, heck most of the time, you won’t agree and you’ll know that it’s not “best practice” for completing a task but you need to find a way to show them that you are listening. You’ll need their help later getting more people on board using Social Media, as well as getting budget for events and applications.

Tracking: If you’ve landed a role in Social Media Marketing and you don’t have data to take with you, then you mine as well stay where you are because getting a job somewhere else, especially if you’re moving up, is going to be tough without analytics in your portfolio. If you only have access to your own personal networks that’s ok, you can track your followers, the engagement you received for certain types of content. But being able to show the growth you achieved for your employer by conducting your current social strategy is a game changer.
How-To: Tools, they’re out there, and if you don’t have a budget you can use some that are free. If you have a budget I would highly suggest paying for a SMMS, Social Media Management System. Using an SMMS you can create charts that track data for you, compare them against your sales data for the month, and so much more. Plus using an SMMS makes your job so much easier, and gives you much more free time to do things like write blog posts.

Pushing Back: You are in your role because you know what you’re doing, remember that. If you have years of experience using social media marketing to grow a business then don’t let someone tell you that you’re doing it wrong, again you need to Listen, but stand your ground.
How-To: You’ve got data to back up your strategy, use it to show them why you’re right.

Do you agree with my strategy above? If so, why? If not, let’s debate in the comments below!

Photo credit: socialfresh

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Social Media Marketing

Tagged Community Manager, SMMS, social media professionals

How to Drive More Event Registrations with Influencer Marketing

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Liane| Leave a comment

written by:

Liane

Events are a powerful marketing tool. They give you the opportunity to bring your network together and inspire conversations that help create ideal buying conditions. The key to a successful event is a full room of interested attendees and engaging speakers. Here is a simple breakdown of how you can leverage influencer marketing for your next event.

Step 1: Take a close look at the event content, track themes and speaker expertise. Use this content to define your core topics.

Step 2: Use those topics to search for people who are involved in the relevant online conversations. When looking for influencers, it’s important to identify people who are:

relevant to your topic areas,
have a good reach; and
inspire messages that resonate.

These are the influencers who can help spread the word about your event and perhaps be speakers, moderators or guest bloggers at your event.

Tip: Use geo-targeting to find influencers who are near the event or who live in important markets for you.

Step 3: Engage with your influencers by reaching out with a compelling and relevant invitation or call-to-action. Don’t just send out a blanket email; I guarantee it’ll fall on deaf ears. Try to understand what motivates your influencers so you can convey the real value of attending. I’ve found that many people welcome the opportunity to network with other thought-leaders in the space, get the opportunity to cover an event or interview a fellow influencer.

Tip: If you have a long list of influencers, it’s ok to send a template email sometimes. In fact there are many good strategies for influencer engagement. Here are three we wrote about earlier.

Step 4: Events are very dynamic, but we tend to focus most of our efforts on the actual day of. Use the time before, during and after the event to create relationships with you influencers. From excitement generating pieces to liveblogging to post-event lessons learned there are countless opportunities to work with your influencers to create content that will help you drive registrations and extend your event virtually.

Tip: Monitor mentions before, during and after the event to measure how effective your engagement efforts have been.

These are just a few ideas for promoting your next event with influencer marketing. Have you tried other techniques?

Liane Blanchette is Director of Customer Success at Traackr, an influencer marketing platform. She also contributed to their Guide to Influencer Marketing, which provides additional resources and use cases.

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Social Media Marketing

Tagged brand advocates, influencer marketing, online influencers

Now you can see updates “your way” on Facebook

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| 2 Comments

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

Today Facebook unveiled the new design of their newsfeed. I watched the Livestream from the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, CA so I could hear it from Zuckerberg himself.

Today’s press event focused on three things:
1. Richer stories
2. Different cuts of your feed
3. Consistency, same material experience on all the different platforms we’re on

The images they showed were jaw-dropping. The new redesign is taking photos and putting them front and center, more visual, more beautiful.

How we’re all sharing is changing and the design of your newsfeed needs to reflect this evolving space. Your choice of different feeds, dig into any topic you want. A mobile inspired consistent UI, the same Facebook experience across all your mobile devices & desktop. -Mark Zuckerberg

Richer Stories:
Facebook is bringing elements of your timeline into the story. Right away you get a bigger profile picture, you can see if you have friends in common, and if you know the person, it’s easy to add them as a friend.

This works really well for brands and pages. Not only are profile pictures bigger for users, but they are also bigger for business pages, as well as cover photos. Additionally, these images will now be front and center in the newsfeed. If you are advertising your business on Facebook you need to make sure you are branding your business page, and it is visually appealing to your followers.

A lot of sharing on Facebook comes from 3^rd party apps, like Pinterest for example. These images will now have more prominence in your newsfeed, and what you see on Facebook will now reflect how you see it on Pinterest. This will apply to ALL 3^rd party applications.

One great example of the new design is when you have multiple friends sharing the same article or video (above). The video will now be very large and instantly playable in the newsfeed. On the left hand side of the video preview, you will see faces of all your friends who shared it. If you hover over their faces you can see what they said about the video when they shared it.

Different cuts of your feed:
Today, the newsfeed today shows what my friends like, post, etc. but sometimes I want to see every event my friends are going to, or every photo they’re uploading. You now have more control over what you want to see by clicking the switcher in the top right, if on your desktop, or by pulling down if on a mobile device, to access the all friends feed. You also have a following feed where you can see every post from the pages and public figures you like. There will now be 7 newsfeed options; all friends, most recent, close friends, music, photos, games and following.

Consistency:
Facebook’s mission for a consistent user experience across all devices was summed up as “getting facebook out of the way as much as possible.” There is now a truly global navigation, you can go from page to page in Facebook without having to visit the homepage first.

Facebook will begin rolling out the new design on the web today, the phone and tablet will follow in the next few weeks. You can join the waiting list now and read Facebook’s official announcement.

Now for my takeaways:
1. User experience: the new design should help increase user activity due to the mirrored experience across all devices, desktop and mobile. The average user spends 7 months on Facebook each month, that may now increase to 9 hours.
2. Brands needs to be on their A-game: no more posting lo-res photos, or only posting once a week. If you want to compete with your competitors online then you’re going to have to step it up a notch.
3. There’s no more EdgeRank: Yeah for brands, this is great news! Wait a minute, all of a brand’s posts will be seen, but in order for them to be seen, a user needs to click on the following feed. I don’t know about you but I never click on the pages feed now. This adaption will be interesting to watch.
4. Ads are here to stay: Not only can you still promote your page and posts but ads are also getting some design changes. My prediction is that Facebook Ads will now be a required addition to your marketing strategy.

I would love to hear your thoughts, do you think this will make Facebook better or worse?

Thanks to Mashable and Mari Smith for sharing their information.

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Facebook, Social Media Marketing, Social Media News

Tagged Facebook newsfeed, Facebook's redesign

How to increase your Twitter followers, the right way

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Jennifer MacDonald| 1 Comment

written by:

Jennifer MacDonald

I recently read an article from Business Insider, which previewed a study outlining what really matters to your Twitter followers, and what you need to do in order to increase your followers. There’s some great information and I suggest you read it, along with the following points on building your Twitter community.

This post isn’t only focused on numbers but on building the right type of community, which in turn will increase your number of followers.

Twitter is my #1 favorite social network, I like to say “it breaks down the barriers.” What do I mean by that? Twitter allows you to have a direct connection with a CEO of a fortune 500 company, and you can build relationships with some of the biggest brands on the planet. If you use Twitter correctly it can be the biggest networking opportunity you’ve ever experienced. However you need to use it “correctly.” How should you “tweet” in order to build the right community & gain new followers?

Here are a few tips:
1. Search: Find conversations that are happening in your industry or about your brand. The easiest way to do that is by using search.twitter.com, enter your industry or brand in the search box and look at the results to see if any of the conversations are relevant, and if you could add helpful advice by joining the conversation. For Engage121 clients you can do this in your Explore tab.

2. Provide informative & relevant information: Make sure you’re giving your followers a reason to follow you. Provide them with links to helpful articles in your industry or around your business. Make sure the information you tweet mostly mirrors your Twitter bio. This will ensure you are building the right type of community. It is annoying to follow someone on Twitter because their Bio is interesting to you but they never send any tweets that are relevant to that information.

3. Be consistent: Like any social network you need to be consistent with your publishing, and with Twitter it’s has to be more frequent. It will be hard to gain new followers if they look at your feed and you haven’t tweeted in 2 months.

4. Use Keywords: People search on Twitter more for keywords that are relevant to them than hashtags. Make sure you are using relevant keywords for your industry or business, this will help you get found. If you are providing relevant information for your industry you will not need to worry about using keywords, they will already be in there.

5. Branding: You know the saying “no shirt, no shoes, no service?” On Twitter if you have no bio, no picture, then you get no follow from me. Use a professional picture for your profile image. Create a bio that is relevant to you and what you’ll be tweeting, and provide a link to your website or a site where people can learn more about you.

6. Promote: You need to put yourself out there in order to be found. Put a link to your Twitter profile in your email signature. List your profile on websites that help you gain new followers by subject, such as Twellow.com. Also put a link to your Twitter profile on your other social networks, such as Facebook.

Do you find Twitter to be a valuable tool?

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Posted in Community Manager Tips, Social Media Marketing, Twitter

Tagged Twitter community, Twitter strategy

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