by Marianna Muscat | Apr 16, 2020 | Instagram, Social Media Marketing
You are already using social media optimisation services as content is regularly added to your social media profiles and website, and you are tracking and capitalising on traffic and visitor trends. Yet, you want to grow your exposure even further and are, therefore, considering using influencers to promote your product or service. But, how do you measure the success of an influencer? Especially now that Instagram is hiding ‘like’ counts from everyone except the account holder?
Instagram decided to hide the ‘like’ counts because they wanted to create a more welcoming environment where users feel comfortable expressing themselves. They are already hiding ‘likes’ in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and the United States, with South Africa no doubt on a future list. Here are 3 ways to measure influencer success on Instagram, without the ‘likes’:
Measure Influencer Success With Verified Content Views
Very few followers actually see the latest social post of any particular influencer, no matter what time of day the content is shared. To establish a credible measurement strategy that will overcome current and future platform changes, you should build your influencer plan around verified influencer content views.
Measure Influencer Success With Meaningful Engagement
‘Simple’ engagement will continue to be a measurement method as agencies, their clients and influencers have attributed value to this method for years. But you want meaningful engagements where comments are thoughtful and relevant, allowing followers to genuinely engage. To achieve meaningful engagement, the quality of your content is important.
Measure Influencer Success With Sales Conversion
The best measure of influencer success is traceable sales conversion. The ability to directly drive sales and make direct attribution to influencer content is becoming routine as social referral to eCommerce sites has risen extensively. Social media platform add-to-cart capabilities is just one of the ways to measure the connection between content and conversion.
WSI OMS can guide you on the use of Instagram influencers if you want to grow your company’s social media presence. Contact us today to optimise your social media presence.
by Marianna Muscat | Apr 15, 2020 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
According to Facebook, they have more than two billion users and more than 140 million businesses use their apps to connect with customers. Social selling via social media platforms such as Facebook is a growth opportunity for South African businesses.
Video eCommerce
As part of its on-platform purchase option strategy, Facebook acquired a video commerce start-up. A modern twist on the original home shopping network, this video commerce business is focused on enabling users to make direct product purchases via videos being broadcast live. After all, everyone with a mobile phone watches videos.
On-Platform Purchasing
Facebook has been building an on-platform cryptocurrency, aiming to facilitate fee-free fund transfers within its network. Once people are moving money around within the Facebook system, it will be so much easier for them to make on-platform purchases. Facebook is also expanding to Facebook Pay and WhatsApp Pay, with Instagram most probably the next platform for eCommerce expansion.
To expand its on-platform purchase options, Facebook also acquired an app with more than 2 million users, focused on the Indian marketplace, connecting sellers with customers through WhatsApp. Users in Thailand consider the use of live video a more effective way of presenting products and facilitating consumer queries in real-time. So, East Asian markets such as Thailand seem to be the next region for Facebook’s online shopping push.
Emerging Markets
Emerging markets have billions of users, and if Facebook can expand the utility of its platforms into shopping and payments where users pay bills or use the platform as a bank, these everyday actions can become critical for Facebook. Potentially making Facebook an essential app for many users in emerging markets within Asia, South America and Africa, including South Africa.
WSI OMS can help your business expand its social selling abilities on various social media platforms, including Facebook. Create a personal, effective social media presence to engage with customers online. Contact us if you want to change your business with social selling.
by Marelise da Silva | Apr 14, 2020 | Social Media Marketing
Social media can be used to improve customer service. It allows you to connect with customers on platforms where they spend their time. People are using social media platforms to engage with brands and, therefore, expect some level of customer service support via these platforms. Use these eight great tips to improve your customer service levels on social media.
Tip 1: Respond Faster
Integrate customer service platforms to turn social media posts, messages and tweets into tickets. Give the highest priority to technical problems, complaints and product issues.
Tip 2: Be Proactive
Continue to build a relationship with your customers and send them regular updates of new offers, discounts, services, changes in pricing plans and other helpful information.
Tip 3: Personalise Services
Don’t give generic responses. Make customer service interaction human and personable, not robotic and automated as if your customer is not worth making an effort.
Tip 4: Empathise With Customers
Understand the customer’s purpose, detect their tone of voice and use the collated information to reply with empathy.
Tip 5: Don’t Always Auto-Respond
A generic auto-response reduces the relationship built through personalisation. Rather, strive to create different auto-respond templates for common inquiries.
Tip 6: Keep to the Right Channel
Be available to your customers on the right social media channels and address their needs appropriately. For example, on LinkedIn, your approach will be more professional than Facebook.
Tip 7: Use a Different Channel
Transfer social media conversations that might include sensitive customer information to other channels such as email or telephone. And, always maintain a helpful and friendly tone.
Tip 8: Be Consistent
Provide customers with the same quality customer service whether you are using social media, email or talking to them on the phone. Accuracy and professionalism not only build, but also maintain good connections.
WSI OMS’s social media package helps you craft meaningful content, create a buzz and connect with customers on the most relevant social media platforms. Contact us today and start a great customer service journey on social media.
by Marianna Muscat | Apr 13, 2020 | SEO, Social Media Marketing
If you are posting video content on YouTube as part of your content marketing strategy, you will obviously want those videos to be seen by as many potential customers as possible. However, just like you need to put effort into SEO to see an improvement in your website rankings, you will need to do the same in order to rank well on YouTube. Below, we discuss three useful tips to help you generate the results that you want.
Keyword Research
You can already see how similar SEO for YouTube is to regular website SEO – it also begins with thorough keyword research. You need to ascertain what people are typing into the YouTube search bar when they are looking for video content like yours. Find keyword ideas simply by using YouTube’s Search Suggest feature. For instance, if you are creating videos about content marketing, start by typing in ‘content marketing’ and watch as the suggestions pop up, like ‘content marketing strategy’ and ‘content marketing 2020’.
Choosing the Best Keyword
Do not just opt for the first relevant keyword that YouTube’s Search Suggest feature recommends, especially if your channel does not have many subscribers. In order to see a jump in rankings, you should start by targeting popular keywords that are also low competition keywords. How do you find this out? Type the keyword in question into the Google search bar as follows: “your keyword:youtube*”. Right at the top of the results, you will be able to see how many YouTube videos are currently optimised for that keyword. Ideally, you only want to target a keyword that has a result of five or fewer digits.
Keep Viewers Watching
High retention or how long you can keep viewers watching a particular video, is a massive SEO ranking factor for YouTube. So, in other words, focus on creating content that is both relevant, interesting and shareable!
Need help maximizing SEO for YouTube? Specializing in SEO and link building strategy, WSI OMS is the digital marketing agency that you can count on! Contact us today for more details.
by Francois Muscat | Apr 7, 2020 | LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
Generating leads through LinkedIn is one way sales executives can use social media to increase sales, earn more commission and make the sales process more efficient. According to LinkedIn, eighty-nine percent of Business to Business (B2B) marketers use LinkedIn for lead generation, and it generates twice as many leads as the next most popular social channel.
LinkedIn has more than 660 million professionals on their platform, and these members are an engaging, captive audience. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are designed for maximum convenience to both users and marketers, and when presented to a LinkedIn member, their profile data is already pre-populated. Less time is spent filling out the form, resulting in higher conversion rates.
With LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, you can:
- Generate high-quality leads at scale
- Prove the return of investment (ROI) of your lead generation campaigns
- Access and manage your leads easily.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms is a tool that can help you drive demand for your product or service, with the following options:
- Download – share an eBook to position yourself as a thought leader or to share more about your product.
- Sign Up – sign up a member for any product or service such as software demonstrations or to test-drive a car.
- Register – allow members to register for an upcoming webinar or event.
- Gather Interest – share details of programmes such as your educational establishment’s online certification to identify interested members.
Before setting up your LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms, consider the following:
- Establish your target audience
- Identify what is a lead to your business
- Develop your offer
- Set up a plan to manage your leads
- Confirm who will follow up with leads
- Decide on your plan to evaluate success.
Social media is one of the best ways to reach the people and companies you want to do business with. WSI OMS can assist you with creating company profiles on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. We also offer digital marketing seminars designed specifically for your company’s needs. Contact WSI OMS today for social media solutions for Sales Executives.
by Francois Muscat | Mar 23, 2020 | LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
Sponsored content on LinkedIn is a sure-fire way of getting your social media marketing aimed at the correct audience. Use this guide to help you create LinkedIn sponsored content.
Get Picky With Your Promoted Content
The first step is to choose what content you want to promote. It may be a blog post or a web page featuring a promotion. Copy the URL, go to your company page on LinkedIn and paste the URL into the update box where it reads: “Share an article or photo” and post the article, photo or link.
The post will now appear in your timeline. Above the post, you will see a grey arrow with the words “Sponsor now”. When you click on the link, you will be taken to your LinkedIn campaign manager.
Work the LinkedIn Campaign Manager
Once you are in your LinkedIn campaign manager, you can go through all the processes you need to in order to promote your content. LinkedIn’s campaign manager is very similar to Facebook’s campaign manager. Click on the article link that you want to promote and click on “create a campaign” in the top right corner.
You can choose whether you want to promote your content with targeted native advertising, drive traffic from the desktop with ads, or send targeted messages directly to people. If you want to sponsor the content, click on the top option that reads: “Promote your content with targeted native advertising”.
Next, you will name your campaign, choose your objectives, select your audiences, the location you want to target, and how you want to target them. You can target people by fields of study, member groups, job titles, job function, years of experience, and a host of other options that aren’t available to you with Facebook ads.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your social media marketing strategy and online reputation management, contact WSI OMS today for a consultation.
