by Francois Muscat | Jan 20, 2016 | Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
For older folks it was just another fad, a passing cloud that would scud away and give way for more formal means of socialisation, but years down the line, social media simply can’t be wished away. For starters, a Pew Research Centre report says 65% of adults are now using social media and as a business owner, you need to leverage these numbers in digital marketing.
It is true younger users still dominate the social media platforms, but numbers from this study show a paradigm shift among senior citizens. According to the same study, while there was a 15% increase in social media usage among users aged 18 to 29 years old, there was a corresponding 218% increase in social media participation amongst users aged 65 years and above.
This changes your approach to mobile marketing, because your content now has to target a broader market. At the same time, it increases opportunities in B2B marketing as social media marketing can now form part of your broad marketing techniques. You will have to optimise your content to suit a broader spectrum of users thus making your business even more noticeable online.
Another key change in this phenomenon is the fact that male and female participation on social media has almost levelled out, with 68% of women and 63% of men using these platforms. Across the education divide, participation has increased both amongst school dropouts and those with college degrees. The adoption rate is higher among those with college education at 76% while for dropouts, the adoption rates are lower at 54%.
Well, there are myriad social media platforms and for your online marketing campaign to catch on, you need to know which ones to target. These include:
- Facebook: It is the ultimate social media platform and is ideal both for brand and product marketing. With over 968 million active users, it is ideal for customer-oriented products.
- Twitter: It is ideal to reach out to the millennial and Gen X crowd, as 23% of adults are on this platform and with the right strategy, it is a great way to earn visibility.
- Pinterest: 28% of adults use this platform especially women and it is ideal for businesses that lend themselves to images.
- LinkedIn: This is the most professional social media platform and can be used to recruit, reach out to the industry, generate consumer leads and generally build invaluable networks.
- YouTube: With over a billion users, it is the second most popular search engine in the world. The fact it is owned by Google means any content related to your keyword ranks highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). It is time to create that corporate video, isn’t it?
Whether you are formulating an email marketing campaign or mobile promotions, social media is the future of marketing. Welcome to the future.
Get in touch with us today for more details.
by Marelise da Silva | Dec 10, 2015 | Social Media Optimization, Website Design
Humans are visual people, so it’s no surprise then that when it comes to social media, images and videos are king. Of course, not every image will get shared. For the purposes of social media marketing, there are some design tricks you can use to ensure your images are highly shareable. Here they are.
- Make use of handy online tools
Great images don’t necessarily need the latest version of Photoshop to be sharable. Using an online tool such as Canva, you can create graphics that look fantastic and are formatted perfectly to fit social media platforms.
- Reduce the amount of text
A wall of text is extremely unattractive. An image says a thousand words on its own, so reducing the amount of actual text you use will make your image more eye-catching and therefore, more sharable. This is especially true with social media platforms such as Pinterest, where posts are pinned in a quick moment for their visual appeal. For many, pinning an image doesn’t even have much to do with where the image links to.
- Use high quality images
Whether you took the photo yourself or you bought a stock image, make sure the quality is high. Nothing looks worse than a stretched out, pixelated image. No one wants to share (or Pin!) pictures like that.
- Take advantage of the latest image trends
A quick scan of Pinterest will give you an idea of what kind of image and layout is “in” at the moment. Mountain scenery with inspirational quotes, flat lays of multiple objects and beautiful close-ups are just some of the types of images which pop up under the “Popular” section on Pinterest. Hop on the bandwagon and see your shares go up.
If you would like to find out more about navigating the social media marketing landscape, get in touch with us at WSI OMS. With expertise in online marketing, content, email marketing and more, WSI OMS is ready to assist you with your digital strategy. Contact us now.
by Francois Muscat | Nov 18, 2015 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
The backbone of social media marketing is in having great content to share on your newsfeeds, as well as great and catchy anchor texts to attract readers to links from external sources. From the short snippets that dominated the social network arena for a long time, there is pressure to create longer posts which drive better user engagement.
Crafting an expertly written, catchy and informative post given a limited number of characters (on Twitter) or no limit (e.g. Facebook) is achievable if you follow these simple tips.
- Create share-able posts
For short as well as longer posts, ensure that your posts create enough value to drive your audience to share them within their audiences. You can gain shareability by:
- Building trust – include citations and references for longer posts
- Share data – include statistics and numbers to back what you’re saying. Visual data representations are even better
- Mobile friendliness – Mobile marketing is the future of digital marketing, so ensure your content has been optimized for mobile, which is how a majority of active social users access their accounts
- Purposeful posting
You should have a reason greater than just building your brand. Demonstrate to your audience that you’re sharing because you care for their needs. Ensure your longer posts stay within topic and address genuine concerns experienced by your audience.
- Great headlines
Great headlines are the key to audience attraction for all kinds of content. You may have great content, but you have exactly three seconds to get your audience interested by carefully selecting a headline that will elicit interest from them.
- Longer performs better
From Google to email marketing to social media content, longer content performs better than shorter content. When you have more content, more of it is available for indexing giving you a better chance at good performance.
- Long-tail keywords
If you’re not character-limited, go for longer posts which allow you to target long tail keywords which are more effective and convert better.
Contact us today for more information!
by Francois Muscat | Oct 28, 2015 | Social Media Optimization, Website Optimization
Managing a social media portfolio is no simple task. With comments and reactions happening in real time, across all different time zones, a manager tasked with this has to be made of strong stuff. Time management is crucial to the smooth running of such an operation, as is planning. Without these, a social media manager could easily be overwhelmed, drowned in work that seems to have no office hours and end up quitting or burning out, neither of which are attractive options.
Here are some tips on managing your time as a social media manager:
- Set goals for yourself that are time or deadline specific; achieving your goals in a day, week or month can be enormously satisfying and will motivate you as well as increase your productivity.
- Devise a marketing plan for the year that draws on the brand or the mission and objectives of the business. This will help to identify your target audience and assist in shaping the content you need to create.
- Try to schedule meetings and appointments for one or two days of the week – daily meetings at varying times during the day can be very disruptive when you need time blocks for writing and posting.
- Work with a content calendar: this will help you see the big picture as it combines all the various elements of social media together in one place. There are many good and free calendars online. Include scheduling on your calendar so you know what needs posting where and when, so there are no last minute panics.
- Focus your energy: distractions can lead to many hours wasted, so when tackling a task, do it properly. Put your phone on silent, close your email and close any windows that you do not need for the task at hand, especially chat windows.
- Take notes: as a social media manager, you are constantly on the lookout for new ideas for content. If you see something or think of an idea when you’re not at your desk, write it down for later use.
- Look at online tools to help you with your job: there are tools available to help with content generation (Scoop.it, Storify, TrapIt) and social media management (Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social).
- Measure results: it is very difficult to know the success of a marketing strategy if you don’t measure results, in terms of returns or profitability. Dedicate a fixed time slot each month or week, to analyse results.
- Use templates: these can save a lot of time and can guide less experienced staff very effectively. Especially good for content writing, a blog template can be used when asking employees to contribute to the website content.
- Know when to ask for help: if you are getting out of your depth, or if things are mushrooming at a pace you cannot keep up with, it could be time to outsource, or get help from social media marketing experts.
WSI can offer you advice on the best ways to manage your social media
As a social media manager, it can be hard to separate your work life from your free time. Managing your time and sticking to your schedule will help to show the people you work with that you are not on call 24/7. WSI, a well established digital marketing company, can assist with all aspects of your social media marketing and much more. Check out their website or contact them today if you want to take control of your time and reap the rewards.
by Francois Muscat | Oct 21, 2015 | Facebook, Social Media Optimization
No one can deny the reach and power of Facebook – over 1.4 billion people visit Facebook every month and more than 900 million users check Facebook every day. Those are pretty big numbers. Not one to rest on their laurels, Facebook recently announced Pages Messaging, a new feature that is set to take the small business world by storm.
People like to connect with family and friends on a personal level, through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, the main reason being it’s fast and convenient. The latest offering from Facebook allows people to connect directly with Pages (on Facebook for business), in an equally efficient way.
A new “Send Message” call-to-action button for local awareness ads allows people to have private conversations with business Pages from News Feed ads. When the message is sent to the business via Facebook Messenger, the message will include an attachment to show which ad prompted the query. The business can then reply and follow-up.
Pages that respond to 90% of their messages will get a “Very responsive to messages” badge on their profiles – showing customers which are the best Pages in terms of client interaction.
New tools have also been created, to help businesses manage and respond to their messages. Common questions are noted and responses to those saved.
As with the communication options through LinkedIn, it seems more and more people are responding to the personal touch, the private interactions to conduct business. Building trust equates to successful business. It is becoming more and more important for business owners to stay on top of the social media marketing, in order to succeed in today’s business world.
Get on top of social media marketing with WSI
The team at WSI understand how social selling and social marketing are the new tools for maximising your business reach. Offering a range of services and advice across many subjects, they can help you make sense of the lightning speed development of social media marketing.
To understand how online marketing can benefit your business, contact WSI today.
by Francois Muscat | Oct 14, 2015 | Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization
It’s a sad but true fact that companies with no social media presence will not last long in today’s digital world. Half-hearted efforts at interacting with social media (like posting sporadic blogs, or having a profile on a few platforms, but never using or updating them) are not enough – like any other aspect of your business, it needs a strategic marketing plan.
As with any strategy, you need to set specific objectives, like increasing revenue, promoting your brand, improving the customer experience, expanding your database, etc. Like with any campaign, you need to be able to measure the results, to show if it’s working out like you planned or not. A social marketing strategy must be integrated with the company’s marketing strategy – it will soon show improved efficiency and effectiveness in all aspects of the marketing plan as a whole.
Social media is not an expensive element of your company’s marketing, yet it can reap great rewards. It is extremely important to stay current on social media platforms, as the digital age is moving with such speed, something you set up 6 months ago may no longer be relevant. There are many tools and apps out there to help craft your strategy, meaning you have a lot to choose from and you’ll likely get a lot back from your investment.
Aside from the obvious reasons (and benefits) of marketing of any type, a social marketing strategy can have a lot of purpose. Here are a few reasons to have one:
- It can focus your thinking – planning and deliberating over a social media strategy can help you to put the broader business objectives into perspective. It can help you identify areas where you are weak that social media can help to improve.
- It will put you in touch with your customers – social media allows for a much more personal interaction with your clients, giving you insights into what’s trending, what people want and need and enabling you to place it within their reach. Using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other appropriate platforms will enable your business to build up a following of people in your niche: existing and potential customers, investors, employees and competitors.
- It will keep you competitive – you can bet your competition has a social marketing strategy, so you need one to be in there too, to claim your share of the online market. Social media has proven to be very effective and lucrative, so you need to know what your competitors are doing, as well as leading your own marketing campaign. There are a number of ‘spy’ tools which can monitor your competitors on your behalf, such as Compete, HubSpot, Moz, Affilorama or Woorank.
- It improves your customer service – the big benefit of social media is its real time reporting. Things happen very quickly online, as you would know from watching viral videos on YouTube. Following and responding to feedback via social media will show your customers you care and that you are on the ball. A good positive image reaps many results, such as repeat customers and word-of-mouth recommendations. The down side is that considerable time needs to be invested into staying current with social media – don’t think of posting articles, responding to comments, or sharing other people’s posts as wasted time, it’s time spent building your brand.
Don’t miss out on what is fast becoming the best marketing tool out there. If your company does not have the knowledge, resources or time to manage a social media strategy, there are hundreds of businesses online and in the traditional market place that can set you on the path to success.
