by Marelise da Silva | Jul 27, 2020 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
As more businesses seek to boost their online opportunities amid the COVID-19 lockdown, Facebook has launched 15 new, free Blueprint courses that cover a variety of key elements. As businesses worldwide are shifting their focus online, many do not know where to start. To help with this transition, Facebook Blueprint, which is their business education program, aims to educate you on the fundamentals. These courses are free, and the lessons are straightforward, contextualising concepts with storytelling and providing downloadable materials to assist in applying what you learn into practice. The full list of new courses can be viewed on the Blueprint platform. Have a look at some of the latest additions.
Digital marketing: Courses to Help Businesses Maximise Their Online Opportunities
Select your social media channels
This course will help you to understand the social media landscape, choose the optimal social media channels, and create a social media map for your business.
Tell your business story
The lessons explain what a brand is, why it is important to have a consistent brand, and how to create a brand for your business.
Map the customer journey
The aim is to define a customer journey, describe how the customer journey relates to your marketing efforts, and create a map for your customers’ journey.
Set marketing goals
Understand SMART goals, set and create SMART marketing goals for your business, and learn how to measure your progress against your SMART goals.
Create and manage a content calendar
The course covers the importance of a content calendar, how content calendars work, and how to create a content calendar for your business.
Facebook’s Blueprint courses offer some great insights into social media and digital marketing. Some may cater for a wider audience, so you might come across certain topics you have already mastered, but you might also gain a new perspective on things, which can cause you to reconsider or re-evaluate components of your strategy. Need help with your digital marketing and social media? Then contact WSI OMS today.
by Francois Muscat | Jul 24, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, Social Media Marketing
If you’re looking into influencer marketing to boost your brand, but you’ve got a limited budget, consider partnering with micro-influencers. Micro-influencers promote brands, product launches and services while making use of the power of niche marketing. Here’s how it works:
Who counts as micro-influencers?
Later describes micro-influencers as people who have a significant, but not massive, social media following. This number is subjective and can range from anywhere between 10,000 to 500,000 followers. The exact number usually depends on who you talk to and the influencer market you are targeting. Micro-influencers have specific niche audiences that are deeply engaged and connected to them. Whether you’re a beauty, fitness, fashion, lifestyle, wellness, food or travel brand, there is probably a large pool of micro-influencers available to reach out to.
How do micro-influencers differ from macro-influencers?
For starters, major social media influencers (or macro-influencers) have attained some sort of “celebrity status”. These types of influencers often have hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of followers, and it probably costs an arm and a leg just to have them promote or endorse a brand’s product or service. These types of influencers also tend to lead more lavish lifestyles than your average consumer. Some extreme and notable examples of influencers that fall into this bubble are the Jenners and Kardashians.
On the other hand, micro-influencers are much more like your everyday consumer. Although the criteria of who qualifies as a micro-influencer remains very subjective, they are overall more relatable and personable to their niche audience. If they were to recommend a product or service, it might seem more like a trusted recommendation from a friend rather than a celebrity endorsement.
Why should I partner with micro-influencers?
Micro-influencers can be extremely valuable for your brand because they’ve already built a strong following. They’ve established a certain level of trust and a relationship with their followers through their personal brand. As a marketer, collaborating with micro-influencers can help you cast a wider net to increase your brand visibility. Here’s how:
By expanding reach:
Whether you want to promote a campaign for your business or promote a new product/service, working with a group of micro-influencers can help you reach a wider audience. They can promote your brand using videos that will help ignite your marketing campaigns or other types of content. It’s also more important than ever before to understand the importance of using Instagram Stories for business, especially when it comes to influencer marketing.
By helping you build lasting relationships:
Working with micro-influencers can help you build lasting relationships with their followers. Studies have shown that influencers with a smaller following have a much higher engagement rate than top-tier influencers. Rather than just tagging your business or brand in a post, micro-influencers are more likely to give honest opinions and reviews on your product.
By giving you a higher ROI:
Rather than spending your entire influencer marketing budget on a macro-influencer celebrity to promote your business or brand, investing in collaborations with a group of micro-influencers can help you get more bang for your buck! This is definitely a great way to save on your marketing spend.
How to find micro-influencers
Now that you have a general idea of who micro-influencers are and what they can do for your plan, now comes finding the right micro-influencers for your influencer marketing strategy. Here are a few key considerations to keep top of mind:
Make sure they are relevant to your brand.
Will they do a good job representing my brand? Do their values align with our brand and business values? Make sure to do your research beforehand and ask yourself these questions. Targeting the wrong micro-influencers will result in a very low ROI.
Engage with them and show appreciation for their content.
Realistically, you’ve got to know why you are reaching out to specific micro-influencers. Get to know them before reaching out to see if they’re a good fit for your marketing strategy. Engage with them and show some appreciation for their content to get a feel for how they interact with their audience. This can help you determine whether or not they are a good fit for your brand.
Look for micro-influencer fans.
Conduct an Instagram search to find content that may contain your brand. Follow branded hashtags and there’s a possibility that micro-influencers may already be a part of your brand’s fanbase. For example, many micro-influencers in the beauty industry are constantly promoting and tagging different brands’ products. They name drop brands all the time when doing reviews, sharing their makeup and skincare routines. And not all of these posts are sponsored or in collaboration with those brands. Beauty companies like Glossier see this as a unique opportunity to approach these types of micro-influencers because they know they are already an ambassador for their line of products.
If you’re interested in influencer marketing, or you’ve found a micro-influencer you’d like to partner with, contact WSIOMS for help with your influencer marketing strategy.
by Francois Muscat | Jul 17, 2020 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
If your social media marketing strategy does not include Facebook ads, you’re missing out on a crucial method of telling the world about your business. Because Facebook ads are becoming more complex and with new developments happening all the time, it is important to set clear goals for your Facebook ad campaigns so you can monitor your success and make the relevant changes in time.
Social Media Marketing Best Practices: Facebook Ads
Don’t aim for popularity- create objectives that drive value
With so many different advertising objectives available to your business, it can become difficult to pick the correct goals to aim for in Facebook advertising. The best plan is to determine which goals will produce the most value for your business, and aim for those objectives. Value-driving objectives no longer just include likes on your page or clicks to your website but should include conversions and brand awareness. Being popular on Facebook may help your business to reach more audience members, but if those views don’t convert into sales, they are not worth the advertising budget.
Try out Facebook’s Placement Optimisation
Placement options on Facebook include Facebook and Instagram feeds, the Audience Network, and Facebook Messenger. If you choose to activate all the placement options available to you, the Facebook Ad platform will learn which placements are the best at achieving your objectives in a cost-effective manner, enhancing your campaign performances without all the research effort from your side.
Experiment with the Campaign Budget Optimisation option
Similar to the Placement Optimisation process, the Campaign Budget Optimisation lets the Facebook Ad platform find opportunities to achieve your set goals across your ad sets and give priority in the budget allocation to the ads that are performing well. This option takes away some of the control you have over your ads but can help you to spend your budget more effectively across your Facebook Ads.
Learn when to niche down and when to target broader audiences
For a long time, Facebook Ads that targeted small, niche groups performed better than broader target groups. Due to the increase in targeting and competition, it may cost more to target a smaller group with your Facebook Ad. This aspect of the Facebook Ad platform makes it crucial to understand when targeting a broader audience may be more cost-effective. If you’re trying to make your budget go further, set your audience broader so Facebook Ads can reach different people at a lower cost.
Optimise for mobile when creating
The statistics for mobile use of social media platforms alone should indicate that mobile-first creation is key to achieving success in social media marketing. If your advertisement doesn’t load correctly on a mobile device, it won’t go down well with social media users.
If you need a strategic partner in social media marketing, SEO optimisation, and Facebook Ads, contact WSIOMS, your local SEO company and marketing agency, for more information today.
by Francois Muscat | Jul 16, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
If you’re having a hard time defining your social media marketing target market, WSIOMS has some tips to help you choose and target the correct audience for your business content. Standing out from the digital crowd is becoming harder as the competition gets tougher, so you need to be very specific in targeting audiences with content that will give them value. Here’s our guide:
How to Define and Target your Social Media Marketing Audience
Spend time getting to know your customers:
If you’re making use of a social media marketing agency, you probably already have a few customers who you can study to find out more about how audiences will react to your social media marketing strategy. Use your existing client base to understand the demographics of your audience, including information like age, location, income and spending power, preferred language of communication, and interests. These insights will help you to narrow your target market down to a more manageable group, giving you the power to personalize your content and cater to your specific niche.
Get feedback and insights through social listening:
Social listening is one of the most effective ways to define your target market and gain deep insights into what makes your audience tick. With social listening, you’ll monitor direct feedback and relevant discussions on your social media channels. This will help you to compile lists of topics your target market might be interested in, learn about competitors in your industry, and gain insights on essential opportunities you might want to take advantage of. By engaging in social listening, you’ll form a better understanding of who your audience really is, and who you should not be targeting with your social media marketing efforts.
Experiment until you find what works for you:
When you’ve gathered information and insights through studying your customers and social listening, you’ll need to experiment with different approaches to your social media marketing strategy. Write copy in different voices, post content on various social media platforms, and create ways for your audience to engage with you through competitions, polls, and lead magnets. Through experiments, you’ll find which approaches, styles, and topics attract the attention of your audience, and you’ll be able to define your target market by matching what you can produce with what audiences want to consume.
Become insight-driven with analytics:
From website traffic to social media interactions, you need to get comfortable with analyzing your customer interactions to better define who you want to reach. As each social media platform has its own analytics tools, you’ll need to do some research to understand what their metrics mean and how you can leverage the information you have available to reach your ideal audience.
Need help with your social media marketing strategy? Look no further than WSIOMS, a leading social media marketing agency that can help your business content stand out from the digital noise. Contact WSIOMS for more information on social media marketing now.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 15, 2020 | Digital Media Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media Marketing
Whether you’re a small business owner or a digital marketer working with a limited budget, you’re most likely trying to get the most value for your money when it comes to online marketing tools. Luckily, there are some great tools available to help you with most of your marketing activities, and many of them are free or incredibly affordable.
Online tools that every business owner or digital marketer should know of:
SEO Tools
SEO Book Tools
The latest tools from SEO Book will provide you with all the benefits of the expertise from across the marketplace. The site offers training courses, as well as audio and video content on the latest updates within the SEO marketplace. It also lists the latest tools for growing companies.
SmallSEOTools
Whether you’re looking to check the authority of a particular domain, conduct a reverse image search for your SEO campaign or check Alexa rankings, the options available through SmallSEOTools.com will provide the ideal resource.
SEOToolSet
SEOToolSet focuses on the in-depth data that your SEO campaigns need to thrive. Tools include the latest reporting options to gain insight on elements such as link analysis and domain indexing. The data revealed by these tools can help keep your firm moving forward toward its SEO objectives and driving efficiency within your campaigns.
Raven Tools
From finding and fixing errors within your SEO campaigns to getting rankings from Google, the options within Raven’s tools will keep your campaigns moving successfully forward. Raven’s standalone site-auditor is a great tool to quickly find and eliminate SEO flaws that could otherwise see your content penalised within the rankings.
WebCEO
WebCEO’s suite of SEO tools will provide you with enterprise-level features for comprehensive SEO campaign management. The company also offers tools for link detoxing and local SEO campaign management to keep your company connected to your local audiences.
Tools for content marketing
Outbrain
Outbrain helps optimise your content, amplify content reach, and ensures it connects with relevant audiences across your marketplace. You’ll achieve higher engagement across your campaigns and thereby maximise revenue growth over the long-term.
Curata
Curata is the ideal tool for a streamlined content production and analysis process. The solution helps you to drive content ideation while giving you clear data on the types of content most valuable to your qualified audiences. It also allows you to build a predictable content supply chain that takes pieces from the draft stage through to analysis and their use within the conversion optimisation process.
Ahrefs Content Explorer
Through the Ahrefs Content Explorer, you can learn the most popular content on any topic. The tool allows you to use filters and sort information via language, traffic, backlinks, and word count among other metrics so that you can hone in on the type of content that will best engage your high-value audience members.
Pay Per Click Tools
Spyfu
Gaining insight into how your competitors are using keywords within their PPC campaigns can help give you the advantage in the marketplace. Spyfu puts the latest market research at your disposal and keeps your team moving towards their ROI objectives within their PPC campaigns.
Unbounce
Getting engagement through your landing pages should ensure that your company achieves a swift ROI from invested marketing funds. Unbounce gives you the tools to build refined landing pages that continually deliver effective performance for your organisation.
iSpionage
Using iSpionage, you can begin to learn more about your competitors and the offers they’re presenting. The data delivered through the tool can help your team improve your offers and ensure a lasting return on investment for your campaign funds. Components such as iSpionage Campaign Watch give you clear insight on competitor actions, highlighting your competitors across both the desktop and mobile verticals.
SEMRush
Having access to a trusted data source for your PPC campaign can ensure your brand is continually moving forward. SEMrush combines a full range of campaign management components, such as search engine position tracking, competitive intelligence and backlink audits and analytics to ensure a constant flow of actionable data on campaign performance.
Tools for Social Media
Hootsuite
Helping companies manage their multiple social media platforms and providing them with clear data on campaign performance, Hootsuite is the market’s most trusted product for effective social media management. The solution also helps to track mentions to help growing brands retain control of their company’s reputation.
SproutSocial
SproutSocial helps brands plan, organise, and rollout content that engages a qualified audience and begins important conversations within the social media platforms. The system provides companies with qualitative data regarding their social media marketing performance to help them make more effective decisions when rolling out new content.
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is the social media content scheduling tool for the proactive marketing team. The system works to catalogue the best performing social media updates by category and then automatically shares the content with your audience based on when it’s most likely to gain the most traction online.
Tools for website analysis
SEO Analyzer
The SEO Analyzer from Neil Patel will provide you with concrete information about your SEO performance and how to improve your performance over time. The reports offered through the Analyser help pinpoint errors within your site’s SEO and highlight how to make quick, effective changes to support improved SEO performance.
Woorank
Woorank is ideal if you’ve got a number of pages to check. Work through content issues and analyse thousands of pages in minutes to review technical SEO elements and ensure every component is managed with precision.
SEO Optimer
SEO Optimer helps your team improve the on-page elements within your site. The tool gives you clear information on site performance and on how the natural elements on your site can be used to boost the site’s rankings in search.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is your set of optimisation tools for effective management and maintenance of your site. Within the Webmaster Tools, you’ll discover all the components you need to make fast, effective decisions on how to improve the performance of your site. You can analyse your clicks and determine their source, discover more about how your site performs with specific audiences, and learn which content is most popular.
Varvy
Varvy can help you improve both the speed and functionality of your site for both mobile and desktop audiences. The tool helps eliminate elements that negatively impact site performance and provides important information about the problems within your current site setup.
Each of these tools provides you with a range of benefits, but they can take some time to master. If you’re interested in learning more about any of these online tools, talk to one of our digital marketers, or contact us for help with your digital marketing strategy.
by Marelise da Silva | Jun 26, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Many digital marketers love spending time developing social media marketing strategies because there is a lot of room for experimentation and creativity. But. Because social media marketing does not conform to loads of digital marketing rules, it can become overwhelming to achieve success in this medium. Here are a few key aspects that will help you achieve your goals in social media marketing in 2020
How to be successful in social media marketing in 2020:
Focus on building your brand through organic engagement
Your brand can have incredible products, outstanding visuals and professional customer service, but without organic engagement, you won’t stand out on social media. If you want to win loyalty, you need to engage your audience instead of putting up a perfectly produced image.
Your brand needs to be sincere, approachable and even a little light-hearted at times. The idea of social media is to sell the experience that your brand can provide in an authentic way. By engaging with your audience, you’ll gain loyal followers who will be brand advocates.
Show up where your audience is
By knowing your audience, you will be able to speak to them in the right manner, wherever they are engaging on social media. Don’t waste time creating content for platforms that your audience will never engage with.
Instead, invest your time in choosing appropriate channels and participating in discussions with your audience on those channels. Social media should never be treated as a static platform that merely houses your product images, but as a living community that is continuously growing and evolving.
Align contests with your goals
Everybody loves a giveaway, but if you’re using contests on social media incorrectly, you won’t get the ROI your brand can achieve. Instead of placing the focus on the prizes that your audience can win, shift your attention to creating a way for contestants to engage with your brand.
If you successfully implement this approach to all your contests, you will be attracting an audience that wants to interact with your brand, not just those who want to win the prize and disappear into the digital void.
Use video content to update and refresh your social media
Brands can learn a few lessons from independent creators, including how to use video content to liven up social media feeds successfully. With a good creation strategy, your brand can consistently show up in social media feeds with fresh video content that is engaging, interesting and easy to digest.
The best of all is that video content can be short, informal and incredibly powerful in communicating relevant information in an instant. This format gives your brand a way to always remain at the forefront of trends and developments in your industry.
If you need a fresh perspective on your social media marketing strategy or any of our other digital marketing services, contact WSI for a quote.
