How to Craft an Effective Social Media Strategy

As social platforms grow in popularity, so too has the importance of building an effective social media strategy. With one click of a button, companies have direct lines of communication to millions of consumers and potential customers. While it’s now functionally easier than ever to reach people from all corners of the globe, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to connect with those people; it’s an important difference that many fail to grasp.

Just because Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram have a combined audience of nearly 2.85 billion users, that doesn’t mean all of them are eager to hear your message. In fact, most of them don’t even know your brand. This is why it’s essential to come up with a social media plan of attack, and commit to executing it well.

To have a successful social media strategy, it’s essential to plan meticulously, and stick to your message, even if it doesn’t seem to take hold at first. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to spend countless hours coming up with a plan, and abandon it within a few days of launching it.

To help with the process, below are four steps you can take to build a sound social media strategy.

1.    Create a social media marketing plan before you start

This may sound obvious, but far too often, people jump into social media with the thought “I’ll see what works and what doesn’t as I go.”

Don’t do that.

Craft a detailed strategy, and put forth your full effort. The first step is to create a SMART goals list.

•        Specific
•        Measurable
•        Attainable
•        Relevant
•        Time-bound

Creating a list like this will make it easy to track your progress, and allow you to easily see whether or not you need to alter your approach.

For example, if your chosen platform is on Twitter, a SMART goal could be to “increase our followers by five percent by the end of Q2.” In 11 words, you’ve communicated a specific goal, one that is measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. A SMART goals list doesn’t need to be an in-depth report; it just needs to convey the objective in a short sentence or two.

2.    Choose the right platform

This is one of the most overlooked aspects of crafting an effective social media strategy. Given the sheer number of users on each platform, people don’t spend as much time as they should researching where their customer base is. The general line of thought is if there are 300+ million people on Twitter, then they’re bound to get some engagement from their target audience. While that’s not inherently wrong, it’s not the right approach.

The first step is to go back to your SMART goals and examine exactly what you want to accomplish. Understand who you want to target, and what type of engagement you want to have with your target audience. Once you’ve answered those questions, you can utilize various search functions to determine what platform to embrace.

Twitter advanced search

Facebook search

Instagram search

LinkedInGroups

3.       Create a visual identity and stick to it

One of the easiest ways to confuse your user base is to have a number of different brand identities. Consumers need to be able to easily recognize your brand, even if your company’s name is absent from the image. Take Dropbox, for example.

“Although the illustrations are simple, it’s the consistent use of this hand-drawn style that makes Dropbox’s visual branding brilliant. Playful and bright, it lends a human touch to an otherwise cold software. It makes Dropbox seem more personal, user-friendly, and approachable compared to competitors.”

While you might not need to create SMART goals for a visual identity, there needs to be a similar process in place. Whether that’s storyboarding, content brainstorming, or your own unique methods, that’s fine – there simply needs to be something in place to develop a plan that can be carried out.

4.    Follow the Social Media Rule of Thirds

This is important to follow in order to create a steady stream of incoming followers and prevent those you’ve already captured from bolting. While the goal of any business is ultimately to make more money and drive revenue, that doesn’t mean you should only be posting content directly related to your brand.

This is where the Social Media Rule of Thirds comes into play.

•     1/3 of your social content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit.
•     1/3 of your social content should surface and share ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded business.
•     1/3 of your social content should be based on personal interaction and build your personal brand.

This strategy accomplishes a couple things. Firstly, by sharing content other than your own, you’re signaling that your social account isn’t just about inundating your followers with your own content. Just like in normal social relations, people generally don’t like interacting with others who can only talk about themselves; the same is true with these platforms.

If all you promote is your own content, users aren’t going to be driven to your profile, and they won’t have a desire to interact with you. “To become a trusted advisor,” social accounts need to post “educational materials, [and] then drop in something on your company.”

Using these guidelines won’t guarantee your success, as it’s ultimately up to you to carry through with them, but they’ll undoubtedly get you off the ground. By creating SMART goals, conducting effective research on which social platforms to use, creating a unified visual identity, and following the social media rule of thirds, you’ll be able to connect and engage with your target audience.

Note: This article was originally published on Tenfold.  

Bad SEO: 5 Things to Avoid for Businesses

It’s a fact: even if your business doesn’t necessarily require you to churn a lot of content like certain industries do, you would still need to produce some measure of content in order to execute your digital marketing. And that means while you may not intentionally be stuffing your articles with keywords or cramming your pages with overly salesy links, you may still be doing bad SEO.

This, of course, is a double whammy. You’re the one defeating the purpose of aiming to promote and market your business in the first place – and you’re not even aware of it.  

Unfortunately, yours is not an isolated scenario. On the contrary, it’s actually a common occurrence, given that Google changes its algorithms practically all the time. With terms like Hummingbird, Panda, Penguin, and Pigeon, it can certainly sound like an eccentric zoo if you’re not anywhere near being an enthusiastic tech geek. And if you’re not, it doesn’t have to mean you’ll have to compel yourself to be artificially inclined; having a working familiarity of it should be fine.

Here are some notable things to avoid so that you utilize SEO to your advantage and not unconsciously have it against you.

1.    You have poor User Experience (UX).        

There’s no need to make things complicated. If you want to check whether you’re doing bad SEO, then just ask yourself if you’re creating a poor experience for the visitors of your site. If the answer is yes, then you just might be in the bad zone. Nowadays, Google is very intentional in making sure that users are at the core of any digital environment, and that totally makes sense. After all, the search engine gets over 2 trillion searches in a year, and more than half of them come from mobile gadgets. The staggering number is a clear reflection of the way people today search for things and how they lead their lifestyle: it’s focused on researching products and services they need; it tends to be local; and it’s always on the go.

Now, what are you doing about it?

Bearing in mind that a mobile screen is only a fraction of the size of a PC or laptop, you as the site owner will have to find ways to guarantee that your visitors still have a good experience navigating your site. They can easily find the tabs that they need and the design is simple and uncluttered.

2.    You have intrusive ads.        

Don’t you just hate it when you’re scrolling through a page – and then suddenly an ad pops up totally uninvited? Well, so does just about everybody. That’s why intrusive ads definitely make the cut in things that make bad SEO. Google unofficially named it “Intrusive Interstitial Update.”  To make things straight to the point, the update clearly states that it targets pop-up ads because they affect mobile user experience.

This is how Google explains the penalty: “To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”

So how do you deal with this? Before placing pop-up ads in your site, determine first if they’re really necessary. For example, you may need a pop-up if it’s required by law, like when you need to verify information or confirm a personal detail prior to having a guest proceed to the next page. You may also opt for a pop-up if it helps you promote something, say, a new product or a launch. Just make sure it’s not in any way going to be distracting. A small banner at the top or bottom of the page should do it.

3.    You buy links.        

If you’re even thinking of buying links to help your site rank better, just don’t. While your purpose is to hasten things up a bit, this kind of strategy is bound to backfire sooner or later. This is because search engines are very smart today – definitely way smarter than they were some years back. Now, they’re more concerned on quality rather than quantity. And if your site has questionable internal and external links, it just means that you’re not putting in the work necessary to earn high-quality links from respectable sites. Definitely not a good sign.     

Put another way, it’s like buying Instagram followers. You’ll come off as a fake, and you’ll just look silly for doing it to boost your popularity.

4.    You spam other sites with link-heavy comments.         

Leaving insightful and valuable comments to other blogs is a good thing. Copying and pasting general comments that have a link to your site definitely isn’t. Again, the point here is to always aim for genuine quality – anything less than that just won’t nail it down.

And another thing about this, when you spam other bloggers, it creates a bad experience – both for the owner of the blog and his readers who merely want to share their comments on the platform. You can bet Google doesn’t take this lightly, so better that you don’t get started with it at all. Rather than hasty and ethically questionable tactics, you can take the time to actually read the post, comment, and then add a link to your site if it will help in the discussion.

5.    You duplicate content.         

This is definitely a no-no in SEO – and in digital marketing in general – for a very good reason. It’s not a secret that creating high-quality content takes a lot of time and effort. Search engines know that, and they’re not willing to let someone take the credit for another person’s hard work. That being said, duplicating any content from an author, a particular site, or a given source will have its due consequences in terms of heavy Google penalty.

If you’re not deliberately copying from other sources, you may think it’s fine. But duplicating content doesn’t necessarily mean from external plagiarism. If you keep recycling your own content – for example, in meta descriptions or product pages – that’s also considered as plagiarism and you’ll be flagged for it. Your best bet is to have good, original content every time.

As an entrepreneur, you of course want to promote your business, and SEO certainly helps with that. But if you use it incorrectly, it will backfire and sabotage your efforts.

How do you make sure you have good SEO on your site? Share with us in the comments.

References:   

https://flochip.com/2018/06/20/seo-for-small-business-4-tips-to-help-you-in-2018/

https://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-algorithm-updates

https://searchengineland.com/google-now-handles-2-999-trillion-searches-per-year-250247

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mobile-interstitials-penalty/183216/

What’s Wrong: 5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Fails

There’s no shortage of failure opportunities in different aspects of business. And it doesn’t matter what stage of entrepreneurial journey you’re in, either. It’s not a question of whether you will fail or not – you will. And although it may not be something that you (or most people) would like to hear, it has to be accepted as part of business – and of life.

It’s quite easy to give in to resentment and frustration at the wake of a failure and have a pity party. Why me? Why did this happen? Why did I fail after I put in the time and effort to undertake a project? But rather than dwell on such questions, which will make you wallow even more in depression, it’s best to take the situation as a chance to learn what’s wrong, so you can improve on it and develop a different approach moving forward. In other words, there’s such a thing as asking the right kind of questions.

Take content marketing as a good example. Of course it can work, and when done correctly it really does. But if you’ve been putting in the work and not getting the results you want – or worse, not getting any results at all – it’s high time to examine what went wrong.

Below are some of the most common content marketing mistakes that are worth taking note of – and what you can do to make it right.

1.    You don’t define what success means for you.           

It may sound like a motivational cliché, but it really is very important. After all, how can you hit a target when you don’t even know what it is? A lot of marketers tend to have a habit of not defining what success means for them, and so they never reach it. Content Marketing Institute released their 2018 research report that states 54% of content marketers have metrics that are not well aligned with what they want to accomplish in terms of their content marketing.   

You have to turn this around if you want to be successful with your content marketing strategy. You need to give yourself a benchmark so you’ll know what to measure and make adjustments as you go along. You don’t necessarily have to set an ambitious target; starting out with a modest one is fine. But the thing is you have to be as specific as possible.  

2.    You don’t create content that supports your customer’s journey.            

Remember that content marketing – and digital marketing in general, for that matter – is not a one-size-fits-all type of strategy. This simply means that you can’t create content for just one type of buyer. For example, you want to hook in new customers. At the same time, though, you also want a repeat purchase from people who bought your product or availed your service before. And of course, you can’t possibly have the same content for both groups – unless you don’t want your tactic to work, that is.  

You’ll need to be more strategic in your content planning to help ensure that you support your customer’s journey in whatever phase they may be in. It’s definitely going to be more time consuming, not to mention will require considerably more effort, but you’ll also raise your chances of success significantly.   

3.    You don’t give content marketing enough time to work.   

Rule of thumb: content marketing is not a strategy to implement if you’re impatient. You generally need to give it around six months to even start generating results. If you want to see noticeably good results, you may need to wait as long as a year. Of course, if you’re used to tactics like Pay Per Click (PPC) where it’s quite common to see sales within an hour or two after you launch a campaign, then waiting for half a year definitely sounds like an exercise in frustration in comparison. And it’s also going to require you to generate a lot of content ideas during that amount of time. Yes, it’s definitely not going to be easy.

4.    You don’t incorporate SEO in your content.             

Out of the many metrics you can check to measure success, one of the most essential is your website traffic. And in order to get consistent traffic, you need to do effective SEO. If you haven’t thought about it, or you’re not paying much attention to it, you’re not alone. It’s not at all uncommon for small business owners to put SEO on their proverbial back burner, so to speak. But it’s important to realize that when you do, you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities to improve your website traffic. So rather than continue putting it off, it’s best to start familiarizing yourself with SEO – and actually start using it.   

5.    You don’t do list building or lead generation.              

There’s a difference between trying too hard and doing your best. Content marketing is like that. The fewer sales pitches you have, the better chances you get of making it work. That being said, being strategic about your lead generation doesn’t have to come off as too salesy. Instead, you can use that to your advantage and frame it as the next piece of content you’re offering to your readers. For instance, you can say something along the lines of “if you enjoyed this blog, you can check out our white paper articles.” It’s a low-pressure way to encourage your readers to read more of your content – and in turn build your list and generate more leads for your business.     

And even if your company doesn’t want to focus on lead generation, you’d still need to have a pretty decent email list – even if you don’t intend to sell through it. That’s because even with the popularity of social media, emails still prove to be a classic and useful means to distribute content.   

Learning from your mistakes is a great way to improve yourself and develop your business. But first, of course, you need to realize that you’re doing something wrong; acknowledge what it is; and develop a plan to turn things around.

What content marketing mistakes have you made? How did you work around them? Share with us in the comments.

References:   

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/304948

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2018-b2b-research-final.pdf

https://flochip.com/2018/08/08/whats-new-3-content-marketing-trends-in-2018/

https://flochip.com/2018/08/03/content-factory-9-ways-to-generate-new-ideas-for-your-blog/

What’s New: 3 Content Marketing Trends in 2018

Is content marketing worth the time and effort (not to mention budget) it requires?  

In a nutshell: yes, it is. This is particularly true if you don’t have a massive amount of budget to set you off from the ground up. On the other hand, your modest budget may very well be part of the reason you’re reluctant to push through with content marketing. If you’re a small business owner who finds it constantly challenging to stay on top of your to-do list, it doesn’t make sense to make major adjustments to your workload and funds. After all, it’s understandable that adding another task – and one you have to do regularly, at that – to your schedule that’s already bursting at its seams is the last thing you want. But once you realize just what kind of good investment it poses for your company, you’re bound to see that the returns are definitely well worth the adjustments.

For instance, according to the 2017 benchmarks and trends report by Content Marketing Institute, over 60% of B2B marketers reported that their content marketing strategies are more effective compared to the previous year. And in 2016, none of the marketers stated that their content marketing was “not at all effective.” This means that if you keep at your content marketing, and you focus on implementing effective strategies, you will see results eventually.

Here are a few trends you can implement to help you boost your overall digital marketing this year.  

1.    Realize that content formats are changing.          

Of course it’s a given that you need to consistently churn out content for your different platforms. Generating new ideas for your blog, for example, is something you should already expect to do on a regular basis. That’s all well and good, but it would be a huge mistake to assume that it’s the only thing you need to do.   

This doesn’t have to spell out that you should go right ahead and hire a team of writers to work for you – especially if you can’t afford to at the moment. But it does mean that you need to take into account the fact that content marketing is changing rapidly, whether you have a team with you or not. Take Pixar as an example. Before they release award-winning animated films, they first start off with “ugly babies.” Acknowledge that process is just as important as content, so you’ll always be driven to find ways at improving how you do things.

You need a broader strategy, taking into consideration the need for a diverse set of skills later on, so you can meet the needs of your audience. And it’s not going to be solely focused on text, either. You may need to consider people who have experience in video production and editing, graphic design and illustration, and audio production.     

2.    Practice transparency in your company.          

Now more than ever, customers are bombarded with all sorts of advertising coming every which way. It’s not to anyone’s surprise, therefore, that there’s an inherently increasing fatigue in brand advertising according to Digiday. This can be about anything: claims on being environment-friendly, contributions to charity, and corporate support to particular causes. No wonder many people, particularly millennials, find it exhausting.   

To address the issue, you need to take a genuine and more transparent approach. And if you want to give back to society, do so because you really want to help, not because you just want to tie it to a company promotion. In Asia-Pacific, recommendations ranked highest (85%) when it comes to who consumers trust in terms of brand advertising. This boils down to one very important thing: you need to consciously earn – and keep – the trust of your customers because that will be your best bet for an effective marketing strategy. There’s a big difference between you telling your readers how great your company is, versus your customers singing praises about your products and services to their friends because they genuinely liked it.  

3.    Consider content as the fuel that drives your customer’s journey.           

When you take into consideration digital marketing in general, you’d be hard pressed to pinpoint tactics and strategies that will work without content. On the contrary, you need content for just about any kind of marketing you need to do: whether you’re preparing your social media posts; writing blogs and articles; drafting your email marketing; launching campaigns; or even doing the script for a podcast.  

Content marketing is at the core of any marketing strategy you’d like to implement, so you need to be able to catch your readers’ attention and establish trust in order to convert them from engaged audience to happy customers. Instead of focusing on top-of-the-funnel content, concentrate instead on supporting your readers with what they need at every stage of their journey. And of course, you can’t stop the minute they purchase your product or sign up for your service. You need to constantly nurture your relationships so they’ll be enthusiastic to promote your business to other people.

While these trends are noteworthy and should definitely be taken into account, they are by no means final. It would serve you well to do your own research and find out how you can improve your content marketing strategy. Don’t be afraid to try new ways or risk failure in your endeavor to develop your process or offer better content. Though it may take considerable time, your willingness to step outside your comfort zone and try unfamiliar things will later on serve you in your business. Just as trends are known to fade away in time, so should you be open and flexible in adjusting to changes. A sensible approach is to always keep a look out for top performers in your field, and listen to the feedback of your customers.

What content marketing trends are you adapting for your business this year? Is there anything in the given tactics that you find challenging or unfamiliar when applied to your particular industry or field? Let us know in the comments.  

References:   

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2017_B2B_Research_FINAL.pdf

https://flochip.com/2018/08/03/content-factory-9-ways-to-generate-new-ideas-for-your-blog/

https://hbr.org/2016/03/content-marketers-need-to-act-like-publishers

https://digiday.com/marketing/brands-cause-marketing-fatigue/

Lead the Way: 8 Strategies to Get More B2B Sales Leads for Your Business

It’s every entrepreneur’s dream: get a lot of paying customers.

For small business owners, however, this can mean more than just a daunting task – it can be a downright and constant challenge to deal with. After all, before you get paying customers, you first have to get people at least interested to know more about your business in the first place. And with likely limited budget (and skills) to promote your company, you may find yourself hard-pressed at getting consistent leads that actually generate results.

Here are several tactics to help you land better sales leads for your B2B company and, in turn, get more customers for your business:   

1.    Take advantage of LinkedIn.        

There’s a very good reason why LinkedIn is the most popular platform for professionals and businesses: because it works. But of course, as you’re bound to have figured out by now, simply creating an account in it won’t increase your sales pipeline. You actually have to take specific actions to utilize LinkedIn to your best possible advantage. Expand your contacts list and make an effort to connect with your network. If you have extra funds to spare, you can get the Sales Navigator, which is an online tool to help you find B2B sales leads more easily. Not sure if it’ll work for your business? Then sign up for their free trial first.

2.    Give cold emailing a shot.         

It doesn’t trigger the most enthusiastic response out there, especially if you have to be the one to do it, but cold emailing is definitely worth considering. Just put it this way: you don’t have the luxury of time to talk to a lot of new people daily in an endeavor to introduce your business – but you can find time to shoot an email blast to a lot of people. That being said, you can’t just create a random template and expect it to bring in results. If you want your emails to have at least a fighting chance of being opened, you’ve got to make an effort at your email marketing. Do your research on your prospect customers and tailor your message to suit your readers as much as possible.        

3.    Start at a low price and upsell later on.         

Unless you’re in a rare niche market that allows you to charge hefty price tags even at the early stages of your business, a good strategy to consider is to start offering your products or services at affordable prices first – and just upsell somewhere down the line. Remember that your most pressing goal at the moment is to get customers, and you can’t do that if people aren’t even willing to give your business a try. Once you have regular customers already, that’s the time you can start introducing upgrade options or premium products – which of course are more expensive.   

4.    Harness the power of customer referrals.         

You work very hard to give the best possible service to your customers. So the question now is – why aren’t you taking advantage of it? As a small business owner, you may not have as many customers as you’d like (yet), but the ones that you do have can make a big difference in the development and expansion of your company in the future. So what do you do first? Give such an outstanding service that your customers are actually compelled and more than excited to refer you to their family and friends. After all, referrals mean that they trust you enough to introduce you to the people they know. Be sure you earned that trust well – and keep it.  

5.    Learn effective networking.       

You can never know too many people, as it’s often said. But in business, it’s not just about the numbers but the quality of those numbers that really matter. Therefore, in order to give yourself more quality sales leads, you have to meet more promising contacts first. And that’s where networking comes in. Develop a genuine interest in meeting other people; it will help you be more intentional about going out there and actually doing it regularly.  

6.    Optimize your site with SEO.        

If you want to get your business in front of people – and of course you do – you have to make it easy for your prospect customers to do so. Optimizing your site with SEO can do wonders in that aspect. You do, however, need to get some very important things right in order for it to work. Things like finding the best combination of keywords for your business, coming up with catchy headlines, and creating good content consistently.

7.    Create e-books.         

Want to take your content generation – and ultimately your sales leads – to the next level? Then get started working on an e-book. It doesn’t have to be lengthy; in fact, you can do away with, say, 10 pages in it. But you do have to offer valuable knowledge or insights that your target readers will find helpful. Giving away an e-book for free lets you accomplish two things: position yourself as an expert in your field, and bring your readers closer to purchasing your product or service.

8.    Speak at events.          

This is closely linked with networking. Instead of just attending events, why not take things up a notch and actually speak in some of them? You’ll place yourself in a position of authority much faster that way, which can then help you get more – and better sales leads. If you consider yourself far from being an eloquent public speaker, you can start small, say, at a gathering with only a handful of participants. The important thing is to give yourself a lot of chances to practice.   

Sales and profits are the lifeblood of any business. Yes, it can be quite hard to consistently get good leads, but it’s not impossible – even if you’re a small business owner. These strategies should help you gain the momentum you need to get started and keep going.    

How do you generate sales leads for your B2B? Share us your experiences in the comments.

References:   

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/02/b2b-brands-linkedin/

https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/this-is-why-cold-emailing-is-a-best-business-practice-for-entrepreneurs.html

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298606

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marciaturner/2016/11/30/7-effective-ways-to-boost-valuable-business-referrals/#4edc4624806b