Digital Marketing Consultancy
Three Ways to use social media To get people to Your retail location. Need to get more foot traffic into your store? Social media isn’t just for ecommerce. You can use two features on Facebook as well as Snapchat to help get people into your retail location. Watch this video and see how you can use Facebook ads, Facebook live, and Snapchat to advertise your business using social media
Do you have a solid understanding of how your brand’s social media strategy is working? What about your competitors? It may be time to stalk… Whoops! I mean “examine” your competition to gain a deep understanding of how they operate on social media. Do your research and track down what channels they use. Monitor how active they are for a few months. Who has the biggest audience on each network? Is the same content re-purposed across networks, or is it different for each audience? How many comments, likes, and shares does a post earn on average? Who has the most engaged followers and the largest reach? These are all metrics that will help you compare performance.
Stalking the competition may lead you to an opportunity. If your competitors have a much larger audience, don’t automatically assume there is no chance of catching up. I have had to deliver the bad news that their strategist bought fake followers that were nothing but pulseless numbers to more than a few failed social campaign owners.
Be sure to look for unannounced social presences too. Is your competitor building up a presence on a social network that is not yet linked to their website? Snapchat is a hot news item lately. If you are not on it, you might want to get moving!
Look for social media tracking pixels on your competitors’ websites. This will offer clues into how serious their paid social targeting is and if they are using remarketing. Maximize your reach with a real audience, relevant posts, engaging content that resonates with your audience, and timely customer service. Your brand can earn more engagement from loyal followers.
Social media strategists are always weighing which channel is this year’s flash-in-the-pan and which will go big! If you are serious about selling on social, it’s important that you establish and work toward a measurable goal like increasing the number of followers, driving traffic to a promotion, or increasing number of visitors to a website.
Social media is one of many ways to market an online or brick and mortar business. Once regarded as time-wasting entertainment for teens, social media marketing reigns as a powerful and effective avenue to reach audiences. Social media marketing includes organic (free) posts as well as paid posts where advertisers pay for views of their ad or traffic to their websites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and Snapchat all offer the ability get in touch with various segments of the world.
Many begin the endeavor thinking they will start posting their wares, and the sales will just start rolling in. Social media marketing has many benefits, one of which is selling products. However, there is so much more and it is important to realize all the benefits of using social media in your day-to-day business operation.
Here are the top benefits to marketing your Business with social media marketing
You should be on YouTube! It is a good addition to your search engine optimization strategy as well as your social media marketing effort. Videos are an engaging way to reach your audience. There is something for everyone on YouTube. The social channel appeals to all age ranges. YouTube has over a YouTube has over one billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet.
YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
If you are working on your YouTube channel, be patient. Remember how it was when you first built your website? It takes effort, consistency and patience as your start to build your website content. It is important to pay attention to viewers’ watch times, so you can where your users are dripping off, what is popular, and what appeals to them. This will help your channel gain popularity and build a following.
There are, however, some easy additions you use to enhance your videos to make them instantly more appealing to users. Below are Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better. These are tasks you can start using right away!
is the channel icon or messaging in the lower right corner of the screen. Viewers can click on it to go to the channel to see all of your videos. It is a good way to encourage users to subscribe.
– YouTube annotations make YouTube videos video clickable. Viewers can click on the annotation and go to the associated website, a YouTube channel, fundraising platform, or other. The downside to annotations is only desktop users see them. So check you analytics and see what your viewership uses to watch your channel.
– YouTube Cards are the replacement for YouTube Annotations. For now, both annotations and cards function. YouTube Cards work for mobile viewers and have the same functions but only appear as an “information available” icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Many have reported increased click-thrus with Cards. Cards look much nicer than Annotations. Admins are able to choose their own artwork for each Card.
– A YouTube Featured Video is the one at the top of the channel, just below the cover art. A Featured Video can be used to announce a promotion, or better yet, to inform viewers what a channel is about. Featured videos are changed as often as desired. Subscriber and non-subscribers can be shown the same or different videos, depending on their status.
– YouTube playlists are a good way to organize a YouTube channel. As you add more videos, it can become harder to find older videos should a viewer wish to refer back to older content. Playlists organize videos by topic, date, or however you wish to name them.
– Cover art, banner image, cover photo, however you want to name it is the large image at the top of a YouTube channel. Like a Featured Video, it conveys messaging. Don’t let your messaging be “I didn’t bother to customize any channel art!” Create an image that supports your branding message. There are no restrictions on text coverage, so be sure to include other ways for viewers to find you online!
– An introductory video clip at the beginning of each video is a way to grab viewers’ attention. Like the title screen, an intro clip tells the user in under ten seconds (preferably five seconds) what the video is about. With an intro clip, the user does not have to wait to see if your video is what they were looking for. It can grab attention and keep viewers engaged.
My YouTube metrony YouTube video on Seven Ways to Instantly Make Your YouTube Videos Better is available on YouTube.
Pinterest is headed overseas to with their advertising platform, known as Promoted Pins Pinterest. Pinterest.com is expanding to other English speaking countries. The expansion will begin in Britain.
Pinterest Promoted Pins [Figure 1] are sponsored posts that get priority placement in a user’s stream. Although the advertising platform is not as robust as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, advertisers can work with targeted audiences and behavior tracking.
Pinterest is a visual social channel founded in 2010 in San Francisco. Users – called Pinners – save, or pin, images, photos and videos of things they like to boards on their Pinterest account. Pinterest users can also collaborate and pin to each other boards. Pinterest is the most gender imbalanced of all social channels. Over 80% of Pinterest users are female. Pinterest Pinners like to shop too. Popular categories include home décor, fashion, do-it-yourself projects, and cooking. Brands use Pinterest to reach out to users through photos and visual tutorials of products and projects. Although Pinterest drives only a fraction of the traffic that Facebook does, the average conversion amount of a Pinterest shopper is higher than that of a Facebook shopper. This makes Pinterest attractive to brands.
Promoted Pins are one of Pinterest’s advertising solution. Advertisers can launch engagement and website traffic campaigns to bring Pinterest shoppers to their websites. Until now, Promoted Pins were only available in the United States. Pinterest is a private company built with VC money. According to Business Insider, the company is valued at about $11 billion. User accounts, including businesses are free leaving advertising its only way to monetize the over 100 million users.
The social media channel has other advertising solutions such as Buyable Pins as well as specialized Promoted Pins called Cinematic and the new How-to Pins.
In case the idea of embarrassing your teenager has kept you off Snapchat, let’s cover some basics before getting into how to advertise on Snapchat. Snapchat is a fun mobile only app where users upload video and photos. The images are sent to individual friends, or saved to a story that lives on the app for 24 hours. There app has more features including chat, stickers, marking up images, but short-lived photos and images things gives you the idea.
Over 60% of U.S. 13 to 34 year-old smartphone users are on Snapchat web app. Nearly 100 million people use the Snapchat app each day to consume 8+ Billion video views. Yeah, 8 BILLION videos every day! Snapchat video viewership rivals that of Facebook.
The average Snapchatter is between 13 and 24 years old, with 37% of users falling into the 18 to 24 year old range. Snapchat is the best social channel to reach out to this young demographic.
Snapchat’s fun disappearing content is definitely a unique challenge for brands wishing to connect with the audience on this channel. Content posted by brands is short-lived, always entertaining and frequently humorous. Snapchat forces brands to develop a content marketing and advertising strategy that impresses fast!
The app offers opportunities for brands to advertise to Snapchatters. Businesses can buy 3V ads, which are interstitial ads, within branded content such as the CNN story. Individuals and brands can purchase local geofilters. The geofilter offers an effective way to advertise locally, in real time. They are quick and easy to set-up.
A geofilter is an image overlay that users within a certain geographic perimeter can see and add to their snaps. The snaps are saved to a live, local story. For example, those using Snapchat during New Year’s Eve in Times Square can opt to add the New Year’s Eve filter to their snaps before they are sent or saved. The geofilter is offered to everyone within a predetermined geographical area.
Snapchat offers two types of geofilters:
A geofilter covers a geographical area between 20 thousand and 5 million square feet. They are purchased for a maximum of 30 days. A “fence,” chosen by the advertiser, while placing the order determines the geographical coverage.
Buying a geofilter on Snapchat is easy. The web app, Snapchat.com, has an easy-to-follow- web interface for individuals, designers, and businesses to download example templates. Snapchat geofilters are 1080px wide by 1920px high and must be in .png format. Download a Snapchat ad template or design your geofilter, upload it to Snapchat, and then move on to picking the dates the geofilter will run and choose the geographical area – called a fence. Snapchat employs an easy-to-use Google Maps interface to help choose the fence. After that, enter payment information and the Snapchat ad is good-to-go. The ad price is dependent on the duration and day of week. Snapchat reviews geofilters within one business day.
For now, there is no targeting based on age, gender, or interests. However, the geofilter represents a new and unique way to advertise locally, in real time. It also helps brands reach out to a demographic that Facebook lacks and Instagram barely reaches.
