Author: Carma

  • LinkedIn: Now More Than A Digital Resume

    LinkedIn: Now More Than A Digital Resume

    LinkedIn has moved on from being thought of as a ‘digital resume’ where people only log in to update their skills when searching for a new role.

    These days it’s a great place to publish your original content! It’s a must if you’re trying to build your personal brand and position yourself as a thought leader in your field.

    Most of you would have a LinkedIn profile, and have probably at one time or another posted a status update.  If you do it regularly, that’s awesome! You’re already half way there. You know who’s who in your sector. You already have connections and followers.

    Use LinkedIn Published Posts to extend this to building influence beyond your connections. Published posts go to LinkedIn’s Pulse platform. Here they can be swept up and read and shared by anyone, whether they follow you or not! And not only that, each time you publish a post your own connections will receive a notification that you did so, encouraging them to come and check it out.

    Top Tip: Use tagging. People on Pulse don’t follow you necessarily – they follow subjects that interest them. Think about your tags carefully, you are only allowed 3.

    LinkedIn also has a product called Slideshare where you can post publications. These are similar in essence to the old PowerPoint Publications but more image-focused. You can publish your own LinkedIn Slideshare content and depending on the quality and category can be seen by tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Pretty cool huh?

    Top Tip: Use content that has performed well as a blog post and re-create as a Slideshare. It’s a bit of work to make them look good and you don’t want to risk it on un-tested content.

    LinkedIn Groups can be a great place to publish valuable content to your industry peers. Just make sure it’s a group in which you contribute to the discussion, dropping in to post a link to your latest post is considered a bit rude if that’s all you ever do.

    Top Tip: Seriously, don’t be that guy who drops in once a week to post a link to their latest article – the rest of the group secretly hates you.

    LinkedIn Pages are a good way for your company to have a business profile on LinkedIn, and your content can be shared there. LinkedIn Pages have a post max of 400 characters, so not really any good for articles – just a blurb and a link with an eye-catching image is all you need. If it’s not your company you’ll need to submit your article to the page admin/s to post for you should they deem it appropriate to come from their corporate voice.

    Top Tip: You can advertise from LinkedIn Pages. Targeting examples that work well include roles within industries, i.e. Assistant Manager in Human Resources.

    Whether you choose LinkedIn as a place to publish original content or not, you can add your links under publications on your profile. This way people will be able to find them if they are LinkedIn stalking you; which they will if you start getting some attention.

    Top Tip: You can set your LinkedIn to private so when you stalk people your name is not listed, however this might not be the best idea. The first thing you do when someone checks out your profile – is look at theirs in return!

    These are my top no-fuss tips to using LinkedIn for your personal branding. Do you have any to add? I’d love to hear your feedback!

  • Facebook interests examined | Have you lost interest?

    Facebook interests examined | Have you lost interest?

    What on earth does Facebook know about me?

    Why am I seeing these ads?

    If you want to see what Facebook thinks your “interests” are you can have a look and edit them. You’ll have a good laugh at the things you apparently like!

    Go to Settings > Ads > Ads based on my preferences > edit > visit ad preferences. Then they will all be neatly displayed in little boxes. You can hover and close the ones you aren’t actually interested in.

    facebook interests

    facebook interests

    facebook interests

    facebook interests

    interests

     

    It can be a lengthy process – but very eye-opening! This is a great experiment to do on your profile to show you why interest targeting on Facebook can be so hit and miss. You’re must better off using custom audiences based on your website traffic or email databases!

    This won’t mean you’ll see fewer FB ads, but it might mean the ones you do see are relevant to you! And let’s face it, we’ve all come to terms with the fact that there’s ads on Facebook. PLUS occasionally you’ll see an ad for a flight, concert, or something that you ARE interested in and you didn’t already know about. Ok, it’s infrequent – but it does happen.

    What do you think? Did you find this useful? Is it time to update your interests on Facebook, I mean it’s more than 12 years old now – and if you’ve been on it since the beginning you might have changed a bit since then!

  • The WA Digital Marketing Report 2016 – Stats the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it

    The WA Digital Marketing Report 2016 – Stats the way (uh-huh uh-huh) I like it

    What’s the state of WA Digital Marketing?

    Are you interested in how WA businesses approach their Digital Marketing?

    I asked Freddy Hollow from Bang Digital some questions about their annual WA Digital Marketing Report to find out more!

    WA Digital Marketing Report

     

    What do you think is significant about the move from top place to third position for Search Marketing?

    Well SEO and SM were the old faithful’s and they still have a very important place in the mix, but it indicates a broader acceptance and recognition of Social Media and Email marketing as viable channels. The updates in the FB advertising platform and email automation have likely had a big hand in the jump.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    Will Search continue to drop?

    I don’t think so, Search, Social, and Email are the core 3 channels that should be the basis of a marketing campaign.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    Do you think Video will continue to rise as a content strategy?

    Yes, the cost of entry is lowering and it’s such a good method of delivering messages. Like anything, people will need to be creative with it and use it in the right way.

     

    Do you think “Content Marketing” is widely understood in the Business world as a term? Would more people have had that as a response if they were more familiar with the term?

    As a general concept it is definitely well known, but I’m not sure if it’s understood correctly. The marketing trends page (7) gives an indication to how Content Marketing is understood by businesses as 52% were planning to utilise content marketing this year so businesses obviously understand that Content Marketing is important.

    Generally people think content marketing is social or blogs or videos (which are all great) but really content marketing could be the way you design or format instruction sheets or FAQ’s or a pricing comparison on a product page. These aren’t the exciting things people think of when discussing content marketing, but good content marketing is about providing the right information at the right time during your customer’s (or customer segment/avatar) particular customer journey.

    Next year we will definitely add Content Marketing as its own answer to the list on the Marketing Priorities section of the survey.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    We’ve seen some of the “Main benefits of digital marketing” responses in the report – what would your response have been?

    1. Trackability – the accuracy in which you can track your results vs spend.
    2. Targeting – the amount of targeting options available through digital channels.
    3. Segmentation & Customization – the ability to segment your audience and then customise the messaging for those specific audience segments
    4. Automation – all of the cool new marketing automation techniques/platforms that can help you do all of the above

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    All of the “Digital presence” stats for the individual social platforms are up on last year – do you think any will drop next year? Will a new player be introduced in 2017?

    I don’t think any will drop and we will add Snapchat into the survey for 2017.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    The stats for “Digital marketing spend” are all increasing. Do you think this will continue into 2017? Are some businesses being priced out of the market?

    Yes, it will only continue to increase year on year for the foreseeable future. I don’t think businesses are necessarily getting priced out – there are plenty of activities that businesses can utilise themselves and marketing professionals are only getting stronger in this area.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    We’ve seen some of the responses to the “Digital challenges facing business” question – what do you think the biggest challenge is as a marketer? What’s the one you hear from clients or your team most often?

    Time and understanding seem to be the biggest challenges. The amount of time it takes be across or implement the relevant channels and the understanding of the digital marketing mix. People understand what a tv, print or radio advert is but don’t understand some of the newer digital techniques and channels.

     

    Are WA businesses becoming better at analysing their data from digital marketing?

    Yes – we have seen a big jump in the understanding of digital as a whole but definitely an increase in the understanding of Google analytics and key digital marketing metrics.

    WA Digital Marketing Report

    Do you infer anything else from the survey results about the state of digital marketing in WA in 2016?

    Not as something that jumps out – working with clients constantly I’m pretty in tune with how people view digital marketing in WA.

     

    As an agency, how do these stats help you? And how do they benefit your clients?

    From us as an agency it’s really positive to see an increased understanding in digital and it also highlights areas that people are interested in, so we can tailor or own content accordingly but really as an agency we are always educating our clients or providing them with recommendations that help their specific business – so although the stats may say that everyone is interested in Video it really depends on each businesses individual situation.

    For clients it hopefully it acts as a reference or education piece that helps them plan out their marketing activities or acts as a verification of sorts for their own strategy recommendations.

    Freddy Hollow
    This is Freddy, Operations Manager at Bang Digital

     

    So there we have it folks! We got a bit of insight beyond what’s available in the report itself, which if you haven’t read in full and would like to make sure you check it out! Thanks so much to Bang Digital for putting together this report every year, it’s so interesting for a stat nerd like myself – and for businesses to see how the rest of the industry is travelling! And a big thanks to Freddy for fitting me into his busy schedule and answering my quesitons!

    For those who have read the report – did you have any other questions I didn’t ask? I’d love to read them in the comments!

  • I’m not a Social Media Expert

    I’m not a Social Media Expert

    Am I a Social Media Expert?

    I have tried to write this blog post about five times now. One I canned because it sounded too judgy. One I lost to a website glitch…actually make that two. If I can’t communicate what I’m trying to say this time I’m going to give it a rest because it’s obviously not worth saying.

    But I am NOT a Social Media Expert.

    So I guess that sounds a bit stupid, since helping people with their Social Media’s what I do for a living! But let me explain. A rose by another name might not smell like a rose, since so much of how our brain interprets data is based on our perception. Take Vanilla – yum! We all know it smells and tastes like sweet bliss; ice cream, custard, cakes – but if you eat an actual vanilla pod – YUK! It tastes like bark. Gross bark even. There’s probably better bark out there for eating.

    I wanted to address the plethora of self-proclaimed Social Media Experts, and that includes; Ninjas, Evangelists, Gurus and all the other buzzword-laden things people refer to themselves as. After much internal debate, I’ve settled on “Social Media Specialist” and I want to tell you why. I specialise in Social Media. I can do other types of digital and traditional marketing – and sometimes I do depending on the needs of the business I am working with, but my speciality is Social Media Marketing.

    But what’s wrong with Expert?

    In my opinion, I don’t think you can ever truly know enough about Social Media and all that encapsulates to call yourself an expert. There’s a few reasons. The first is that there’s SUCH a vast array of platforms, theory, experience and knowledge that is needed to cover the breadth of what we refer to as Social Media. I mean, there might be a handful of these people. In the world. Not tens of thousands as their Twitter bios would have you believe.

    Social Media Expert - Ninja

    Not only would it take so much Social Media knowledge that even if you got to Expert status (if that indeed is a thing) you would then have to STAY there! The landscape changes daily and you would certainly have your work cut out for you to stay current!

    Break it down

    Evangelist/Guru – too “god-like” for my liking. Whatever god/s may or may not be out there, they certainly won’t be selling subscriptions to Social Media training videos. I would like to think they would have more pressing issues to deal with.

    Ninja – Unless you are in fact a Ninja. In which case go ahead and call yourself one! I don’t know much about Ninjutsu, but I would bet that the training it takes to become a ninja includes no mention of Instagram filters, comment moderation or keyword listening. If you are a ninja and I’m wrong set me straight in the comments 😉

    Snake-oil Salesman

    In all industries there are reputable and not-so-reputable practitioners. Marketing is no exception! But the difference from specifically Social Media Marketing is that it’s still pretty new and there’s no standardised role descriptions or qualifications.

    Take the example I have used in trying to explain this in real life of a chef. Chefs complete an apprenticeship to become qualified. During this apprenticeship they have to master certain skills to progress and are watched and evaluated both in the kitchen and the classroom.

    At the end of their apprenticeship you can hire a chef assuming they possess certain skills, knowledge and experience. But this isn’t the case for Social Media. There’s no standardised course. There’s no prerequisites. Literally ANYONE can call themselves a Social Media Expert. Literally. Anyone.

    This is as much a problem for me as anyone trying to hire someone to help them with their Social Media Marketing! How to I compete with a self-professed Social Media Expert? How do you know you’re hiring the right person for the job? It can get pretty confusing.

    And this is part of the problem. Social Media can be confusing. The jargon is unfamiliar to the average business owner, and they can easily be lead down the garden path by people who talk a big game but actually know very little about Social Media.

    So what can you do about it?

    If you are unsure about someone you’ve met, just take it slowly. If they’re rushing you, you might be getting a sales pitch with no substance. Anyone who’s great at Social Media Marketing will likely be in demand, and rushing you won’t be on their agenda. They are patient, as Social Media returns on investment can take time, so can attracting the right clients. If someone has a sales target to meet, you don’t want them. You’re just a number. Remember that you’re entering into a long term relationship, where this person will be responsible for the way your brand is perceived. Your business deserves individual attention from the person who will actually be carrying out the work. More like your local friendly shopkeeper, than the checkout chick at Aldi.

    Ask questions! If you don’t know how engagement is measured – ask. If they can’t explain it to you the don’t understand it well enough (thanks Einstein!) If they make claims like “I’ll increase your sales by 15% in 3 days,” ask them what will happen if they can’t. Do you get your money back? Will they keep trying until they do?

    You can always get a recommendation from someone you trust, suggest a trial period before signing on to a longer contract or ask to see examples of their work (provided you know what you’re looking for) Do the accounts they manage have integrity? Good engagement? Or a bunch of paid likes and fake followers? Or tumbleweeds.

    Make sure the person you hire to guide your Social Media Marketing efforts understands your business. The hierarchy, the products, your locations, the tone, your main target demographic and the segments you’re hoping to branch out into. If they can’t see the wood for the trees your relationship is doomed for the get go.

    There are generally warning signs if you look. And I suggest you do. Often the outsourced Social Media Professional is the first person from outside the business who’s ever spoken for the brand! Don’t risk being swindled by someone who seems really cool, many of us aren’t cool at all! But we’re Chameleons. We know how to pretend, change tone, mimic our audiences – because you have to.

    There’s no point getting caught out Dad dancing…

     

     

    Now, before I get “called out” I’m not saying everyone who uses the terms Expert, Ninja and Guru in their titles are bad people, or not great at their jobs! It just doesn’t ring true for me and I wanted to explain why. Obviously the world is a very diverse place and I fully support people’s right to call themselves whatever they want. I just long for a scale to measure against so people won’t be getting ripped off by those who talk a fast game and don’t deliver on their outlandish promises. It’s sad for the business owner, and not only that – it makes my job harder when I come along since the trust takes time to build back up.

     

     

    Thanks for reading my blog! I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or you can stalk my Social Media channels on the links below. If you really loved it sign up – I don’t send email updates very often, but when I do I make sure they’re packed with useful tips, tricks and tools to make your Social Media efforts better and easier, so you can get back to what it is you do best – run your business!

  • Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report

    Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report

    Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report [TL;DR]

    Sensis release a Social Media report annually, and the reason Aussie Social Media stat nerds like me care is because there’s not a lot of social media reports that analyse purely Australian data. We can be a bit different down here on our island, and real data is real valuable to all Social Media players, the businesses who use it, the people employed by those businesses and the outsourced agency and freelancer folk.

    Ultimately, the more you know about the audience demographics, their use, expectations…the things they care about and respond to AND the things that piss them off – the better job you will do at trying to gain attention in an increasingly crowded market.

    So here’s the stuff I pulled from their 71 page report that I think will be of value so you don’t have to read the whole thing yourself!

    Facebook is not dead!

    sensis social media report

    Australians are now spending more than half a day per week (12.5 hours) on Facebook alone, up four hours from last year.

    Facebook has maintained its almost ubiquitous appeal – 95% of users. The average number of times people access Facebook has remained relatively steady at 32 times a week, but the amount of time spent on each occasion has increased from 17 to 24 minutes.

    My takeaway from this: Anyone who tells you their customers “aren’t on Facebook” could be misinformed. Facebook is by no means dead, and continues its dominance of the Social Media platforms.

    Social Media use is increasing!

    Instagram (31%) is on a growth trend, almost doubling its reach since 2013. This platform has really captured the younger demographic, used by 58% of 18-29 year olds.

    sensis social media report

    Business Social Media Presence is increasing!

    There’s been an upsurge in the number with a social media presence for all business sizes

    31% to 48% for small to medium businesses and 56% to 79% for large businesses.

    Forty eight percent of small and medium businesses have a social media presence compared with 31% last year, while 79% of large businesses do, which compares with 56% last year.

    social media business graphic

    Over four in 10 medium sized businesses use Twitter (43%), while this figure increases to 61% for large businesses.

    Instagram is also reasonably popular among medium (28%) and large (42%) sized businesses.

    YouTube (41%) has a similar penetration in large businesses.

    Instagram is also now used by over a quarter of medium sized businesses (28%) but its penetration in the small business segment remains much lower (12%).

    More businesses now have a social media presence than has previously been recorded. Forty eight percent of small businesses, 54% of medium businesses and 79% of large businesses are now on social media.

    sensis

    Why is this significant?

    The businesses that were dragging their feet are realising they are being left behind and launching their Social Media channels.

    Social isn’t going away. There are many businesses doing a good job of their Social and brands want this competitive edge for themselves.

    sensis social media report

    The other aspect of this is the longer you wait to get your business on Social Media the harder it’s going to be to find your place in the newsfeed. It’s already a much tougher environment for organic growth than it was when I started using Social Media to drive business 5+ years ago.

    You use Social Media differently according to your age group!

    No big surprise here.

    Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are more popular for 18 to 29 year olds, and LinkedIn and Google+ for 40 to 49 year olds.

    sensis 4

    What does this mean for your business? It’s incredibly important to know who your customers are. You won’t get your messages out to them if you’re not using the right channels. Snapchat might be a huge growth platform right now – but if you sell to people 40+ it’s probably not for you (at least at the moment, doesn’t hurt to reserve your business name though…)

    Mobile phones are king!

    Smartphones are now the most popular device, overtaking laptops which have lost some appeal.

    Why does this matter? Due to the varying functionality and display sizes across desktop and mobile Social Media, make sure your content and Call To Action (CTA) are “mobile-first” meaning, optimised for viewing and use on a phone. It’s important to make your images look appealing on mobile, as this will determine whether people will consume your content.

    laptops

    Australians own an average of three Internet-enabled devices, which underlines our strong appetite for online activity.

    People are still researching businesses on Social Media!

    Online blogs and reviews remain a fairly widespread influence on purchasing decisions with 60% of social media users claiming to read them before making a purchase.

    sensis2

    Fifty eight percent will look at up to five reviews before making a decision.

    social

    Social Media advertising is increasing!

    Over eight in 10 of all businesses who advertise on social media have placed an ad on Facebook.

    advertising

    Here’s some WA stats for my local folks!

    We don’t take ourselves too seriously!

    wa

    And we’re a bit gross…

    wa toilet

     

    If you want to view the full report here’s a link for you!

  • A Business Blog about Blogging for your Business [blog-ception]

    A Business Blog about Blogging for your Business [blog-ception]

    Business Blogging – Do I Need It?

    I don’t have time to write a blog.

    I don’t know what to write about.

    Im not a good writer.

    How will having a blog benefit my business?

    Will it increase sales?

    You may have asked these questions! This post is about answering them and more to explain why you need to be blogging for your business.

    There are many reasons you should be producing your own original content by writing a blog – but in my mind they fall into 3 main categories; for your website, for your brand and for your customers (or potential new customers)

    Let me explain.

    Blogging for your website

    At the end of the day it’s not really for your website (I mean it doesn’t care if you blog or not) I’m talking about optimising your website to do what you need it to do, which is create leads and customers for your business!

    So why will your website be better with a blog?

    Increased Visits

    When you have a blog that provides relevant, up to date, useful information for your target market that’s not available anywhere else you have become a resource. They have a reason to visit your website other than to look at your products or services. Not only that, but if they like what they see (or it served a purpose for them) they are more likely to visit your website again next time they need that information. Blogging regularly can make visitors into fans, which again can turn them into leads.

    Your visitors may even share your post, follow your blog or sign up to receive your blog posts via email. That’s cool huh?

    Google Ranking & SEO

    Google likes it fresh! Writing helpful, relevant blog posts can boost your organic search rankings – helping people find your website more easily. We all want a nice position at the top of our relevant Google search terms! Business blogging that follows the golden SEO rules and good web practises will rank higher than those who don’t.

    Having a website that was built and left to go stale is not going to help your search rankings. You could come out on top of your competitors just from keeping your website fresh and regularly publishing high quality blog posts.

    SEO business blogging

    Retargeting

    If you aren’t sure what retargeting is just think back to a time where you went to a website looking for some information and the next thing you know, you see their ads in your Facebook newsfeed. This is retargeting. You might think “How did Facebook know I was just on that website?” That’s easy – you were pixeled.

    Retargeting is a very effective way of being able to tell who has been to your website and creating messages for them to entice them back. It’s both a bit creepy and super-awesome at the same time!

    Websites can be set up to place a piece of tracking code (a pixel or cookie) that identifies you as having visited that site, or even pages within the site. This way marketers in the know can offer you incentives to get you back and get you clicking!

    So – get people to be interested in your blog posts, which they go to your website to see, where they are pixeled – making you able to retarget them in other parts of the web.

    Sign Ups

    It’s all about that [data]base, bout that [data]base (no treble)

    Getting people to sign up to your email database is a great result of business blogging! Then you can send them marketing emails, still one of the most effective marketing methods around! The power of being invited directly into people’s inboxes is something your business should be utilising if you aren’t already.

    I’ve written in a previous post about how I think Social Media Marketing and your email database are BFFs so we won’t explore this further here – but trust me if you do one thing for your business marketing it’s start that database!

    What does this have to do with your business blog? If people like your content they will sign up so they don’t miss the next post. Your blog posts can have a Call To Action (CTA) at the end asking people to sign up for more posts, a free quote, a discount or any number of other things and once you have that coveted email you can start sending people relevant information about your business, special offers or more helpful and relevant blog posts.

    Blogging for your Brand

    This section is where I’ll discuss why having a blog is good for your brand and business image.

    Get to know your brand story

    In our modern world people want to know the story behind things, including your business! How did you start, what is your message, and what do you believe in? These concepts can be hard to convey, so writing about them on your business blog is a way for your customers and potential customers to find out more about your business.

    People are more likely to buy from a brand they feel a connection to, and they love hearing behind the scenes content not everyone knows about. They feel like part of the team. They feel smart when they tell their friends about it.

    Building Trust

    People buy from brands they trust. Unless you have an incredibly niche product or service there’s someone out there who has a similar offering to you. If your competitor’s product (or service) is the same or similar and it’s at a similar price point you need to make buyers choose yours over theirs.

    If your targeted customers have been helped or entertained by your blog posts they are way more likely to choose your business when it comes time to buy! They know you. They like you. They trust you. They even (hopefully) let you into their inbox!

    Building Authority

    As with the point about trust above, great blog posts will build your professional authority. I wrote a previous post about this which you can read if you missed it and you’d like more information on how to gain authority using Social Media.

    Outpace your Competitors

    Producing your own original content (such as blog posts) is a great way to make you stand out in your niche. Sure, you can often find articles that have the information you want to share with your audience – but wouldn’t you rather them click through to your website than someone else’s? Think back to the first section and do it for your website!

    Blogging for your Customers

    We’ve touched on this, but I felt it needed to be stated specifically in it’s own section. Start business blogging for your customers and potential new customers! Why? So many reasons!

    Customer Service

    Maybe your product or service is niche or new, posting about how to use it will help customers who have already bought from you get the most out of their purchase! This is a sure-fire way to make your business appear more helpful, knowledgeable and actually care about it’s customers (and maybe even sell a follow up product or add-on service…)

    Even if it’s not new, people might still need help getting the most out of your product! No-one wants to feel like once they have purchased from you they are no longer important.

    How-to posts are very popular and you could consider making a video and embedding it onto your post! Blogs don’t have to be just text!

    business blogging: customer service

    Help & Advice

    If you can help your target audience solve a problem they will remember you! It’s referred to as addressing a ‘pain point’ and is a great way to get people talking about your business. There’s so much information online, it’s easy to get lost in the noise. Stand out from the crowd by offering information, advice and guides that are relevant to your audience and they’re much more likely to remember your brand and remember it favourably!

    So they can find you

    Going back to what we discussed in the website section, if you have a great product and amazing customer service people will buy from you, but only if they know about you! Having a business blog helps your search ranking so more people can find your website and learn out about your business, resulting in more leads and increased sales.

    Still not convinced?

    I have gained feedback from people in the know about business blogging and collected their thoughts here for you.

    I asked them “If you only had ONE thing to tell people about blogging for their business what would it be…?” and here are their responses!

    “Blogging valuable and relevant content which adequately solves your audience’s problems is one of the best ways to non-invasively attract new traffic to your website”

    -Paul Ramondo

    Paul is an Aussie dude teaching Marketers, Entrepreneurs and Startups how to Drive More Traffic, Elevate Engagement and Amplify Conversion Rates. You can visit his website to find out more about Facebook Marketing Strategies. He was also one of my first Social Media mentors!

    “My number one tip would be to stay on topic – define your niche and stick to it in order to build a brand, cultivate trust and enhance credibility.” 

    –Brook McCarthy

    Brooke is an Australian digital marketing specialist with a background in Public Relations. Her niche is helping small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs. She writes a very informative blog, including posts about blogging.

    There’s also some additional reading you can do, which in all honesty will cover the same ground as we’ve already discussed here, but if you love research don’t let me stop you!

    Recommended reading on business blogging:

    Hubspot – Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing

    Entrepreneur – Why Your Small Business Must Start a Blog

    Business2Community – Why Does My Website Need a Blog?

    business blogging question

    So back to your original questions, we’ve covered what the benefits of business blogging are and how they can definitely increase your sales, brand retention, brand loyalty and help your potential customers know and trust you, not to mention retargeting! But you had some practical concerns too:

    I don’t have time to write a blog.

    At first it may take you some time to find your blog mojo. Once you have a few under your belt you’ll refine your process and it will get faster.

    OR you can pay someone to do it for you!

    I don’t know what to write about.

    What is it that your customers or potential customers always ask you? What do they need help with? What’s something you always tell people looking at your products? These are great subjects to start on as they should almost write themselves!

    Im not a good writer.

    We discussed that you can outsource this, or have someone better suited within your business to write your blogs for you.

    Not only that – but blogs don’t have to be text-heavy. For SEO purposes they need to be longer than 300 words (which is pretty short really) and they can be made up of quotes, images, infographics, video, gifs, embedded Facebook posts – you don’t have to be a budding Hemingway to write a great blog post.

    OK, now what?

    Get Organised

    It’s not enough to have great blog content. You need to publish posts regularly and for this I would suggest having a calendar. It doesn’t need to be anything fancy – you can use your Google Calendar, an Excel Spreadsheet or whatever you feel comfortable with. Write down blog post ideas and map them out so you can continue to post good quality content regularly.

    This is even more important if someone else is writing your blog posts for you. Know when they are due, when you’ll get your drafts and how long you’ll have for revisions.

    Make it Appealing

    Your blog posts need to draw people in, and keep them reading! Boring is not going to help you achieve your business goals. Make sure you break up any long sections of text with subheadings, images, charts, videos or anything that’s relevant to kept their interest.

    Write in the style of your brand. If you aren’t a corporate business don’t write in a formal style. Do YOU! Convey your brand’s essence through your tone and your choice of images.

    Don’t just Google images and use them. This is a no-no! Read my post on how to find good quality images and don’t get caught using someone’s work. This is simply bad for business!

    The Proof is in the Pudding!

    Make sure you proof your work! You don’t have to be a great writer – but you do have to write a blog that’s worth people’s time.

    It’s not only unprofessional to publish spelling and grammatical errors on your business blog, but Google is a grammar-nazi too! Posts that contain errors will be ranked lower, so do yourself a favour and check your posts, or better yet get someone else to look over it for you.

    Promote Your Posts

    Not only do you need to have a plan of what you’re going to post and actually write the blogs – you also have to distribute the content. This is where your Social Media channels and your email database come in! You don’t want the time you spend writing your business blog to go to waste, which is what will happen if you don’t make sure you promote it to the right people.

    Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are great Social Media channels to get eyes on your blog posts. They can include links to your posts and drive traffic back to your website. Remember to include relevant hashtags where appropriate. You can use other channels – but if you’re just starting out I would recommend picking the one or two of these you have the most established following on and starting there.

    If the content of your business blog is what we call ‘evergreen’ meaning it isn’t time specific, you can post your blogs to Social Media more than once. Don’t make it spammy and you may want to change up the images and messages you post along with it – but great evergreen business blog posts with helpful information never go out of style!

    You can also send your blog posts to your email database, or better yet send a summary and the link and let them go and read it on your website if they find it interesting (remember we’d like to pixel them!)

    So what do you think? Will you be setting up a blog for your business?

    We’d love your feedback on this post, and if you have any questions feel free to leave us a comment here or on our Social Media channels – or contact us for a private consult!

  • What Are Hashtags and Why Should I Care?

    What Are Hashtags and Why Should I Care?

    What is a Hashtag for anyway?

    A hashtag is used to group information by topic. They make searching easier and can elevate your reach on Social Media, making your content more easily found by people outside of your current followers!

    Hashtags join your content (posts, tweets & grams) to a wider conversation! You could find fans, enthusiasts, influencers and more – but even better, they can find you. So the more the merrier, right? Not exactly.

    Let’s look at how hashtags are used on different Social Media platforms.

    Twitter

    Hashtags are at home on Twitter. They belong there. Tweets without hashtags are pretty much ignored. There are some conventions you will need to keep in mind though.

    Twitter is a busy place. You have 140 characters to make your point so you have to do it without any anything unnecessary – no frills! It can be tough to get your point across in such a brief manner, so it’s common for people to use Twitter to link to longer-form content. That link takes up some of your characters.

    Tweets with photos perform better as they stand out in the newsfeed. But that photo is also going to eat away at your character limit too!

    Mentioning people you think will like and respond to your content is a good way to get your tweets seen, but there’s even more characters used. Suddenly your message needs to fit into a smaller and smaller space. How can you let people know what your tweet is about?

    Hashtags!

    If your tweet refers to an industry, sector, or topic use those as a hashtag. This means people looking for information about that topic (who may have never heard of you) can still discover your tweet. If that tweet links to your blog or website – they can click through and read your content! You have gained a web visitor and potentially a new customer.

    Some other things you can do with hashtags on Twitter:

    • Consider using your brand or product name – that way all your tweets are linked
    • Create unique event hashtags & promote these for people who like to ‘live tweet’
    • Be funny or convey tone

    There are 3rd party tools to help you make better use of hashtags.

    You can monitor a hashtag to see tweets that contain it, this can be used to keep tabs on your brand reputation, your competitors, your industry trends etc. Examples of free programs you can set up hashtag feeds are Tweetdeck & Hootsuite.

    You can check for the popularity of hashtags, letting you see how likely your tweet will be found. You’ll need to find a hashtag popular enough but not saturated; try RiteTag or Hashtagify.me for this.

    Chameleon’s top tips:

    1. Use an image in your tweets and 3 hashtags max. This will help extend reach without people ignoring it for looking spammy.
    2. Use third-party tools to help your understanding of hashtags and monitor those relevant to your niche

    Instagram

    Another place hashtags are at home is on Instagram!

    Instagram has a much meatier character limit of 2200, but it’s a visual platform – so just because they are available to be used doesn’t mean you need to use them all. Your image selection matters much more than your caption, as after all that’s all it is, a caption to give context to your image.

    Hashtags on Instagram have the same purpose as they do on Twitter, for the ease of search as they group posts by topic. Many Instagram users spend the majority of their time on the platform searching hashtags to see the latest and greatest in whatever they’re interested in.

    So you can express yourself more freely on Instagram – plus you can use up to 30 hashtags! Again, don’t feel the need to use 30 just because you can, make them relevant to the photo and your niche. Brands will tend to post their hashtags in a comment under their caption to keep them a bit more ‘out of the way’ of users.

    You can also use popular for sharing – say you’re in Perth, WA and you post a great photo of Perth, you could tag #soperth or #perthisok as they are large accounts that re-post tagged content. Getting your post re-posted (called a regram) can really raise your profile on he platform. There are plenty of accounts that share curated content and you should look into this as part of your hashtag homework.

    Similar tools exist for Instagram hashtags, but there’s not as much choice as with Twitter. Hashtagify.me is good for looking up Instagram hashtags and seeing which ones have been used in conjunction with the ones you are using.

    As with Twitter it makes sense to use a hashtag for your company or product. Do a search first to make sure it’s unique.

    [bctt tweet=”Research & use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo & your niche. Steer away from spammy ones like ‘instagood’ or ‘followme’ #instagram #hashtags” username=”carmalevene”]

    Chameleon’s Top Tip: Research and use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo and your niche, and steer away from the spammy ones like #instagood #followme etc.

    Facebook

    Facebook was slow to embrace hashtags, it was never really considered a place where you would do a lot of searching. More commonly people use Facebook’s newsfeed to connect with their friends and family – not to research brands or topics.

    You can use hashtags on Facebook and they do still serve the same purpose as the other platforms, however people are not as receptive to seeing them and studies show Facebook posts with hashtags receive lower engagement from users.

    If you are going to use hashtags in your digital marketing you can use them on Facebook to keep consistency. I use them from time to time but always leave a line break between the copy of the post to make them more ‘ignore-able’ to users.

    Chameleon’s Top Tip: If you are going to use hashtags on Facebook, limit it to 3 max and try to put them at the end of your post, not littered throughout as this will put hashtag haters off your post altogether.

    Things to remember about hashtags

    You can use hashtags on Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr as well. We’re not going to go into further details on those channels in this post – but if you do want to know more about them, leave us a comment, we’d be happy to help you!

    Do some research on the channels you want to use for your business, find out if they are hashtag friendly and what the individual conventions are; one tag doesn’t fit all.

    Here are some hashtag facts you might like to know:

    • Most platforms don’t allow spaces in hashtags (Tumblr is an exception)
    • Hashtags can’t contain punctuation
    • Spaces must be left between hashtags
    • Hashtags can be tracked for reach using third-party software
    • There are popular hashtags like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) you can search for ones that might apply to your niche

    #FAIL

    An article on hashtags would be negligent if it didn’t warn you about possible issues with choosing a hashtag. There have been many bad examples!

    We’re just going to leave you with probably our favourite – which involved a well-intentioned but badly thought out launch party tweet for a Susan Boyle album.

    The hashtag that was chosen made it sound like an entirely different party altogether!

    Susan Album Party became:

    #susanalbumparty

    Which (if you are a little slower on the uptake, or have a very clean mind) became:

    Sus Anal Bum Party

    The Venn diagram intersection of people who would attend both these parties would be interesting!

    If you’re keen on reading more of these fails, there are loads! You can check some of them out in this article. It’s important to learn from other’s mistakes!

    Wrapping Up

    Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! So with some quick research and a bit of care you can use hashtags to increase the reach of your content on Social Media and be found by more people looking for information about your industry.

    [bctt tweet=”Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! #hashtags #socialmedia” username=”carmalevene”]

    We’d love to hear from you!

    Did this article help you understand more about what hashtags do and how to use them? Leave us a comment or swing by our socials.

  • Instagram switches to an algorithmic newsfeed: why this is good news!

    Instagram switches to an algorithmic newsfeed: why this is good news!

    Instagram announced Tuesday that they would be introducing an algorithmic newsfeed. Sounds complicated. It probably is – for them; but for us users it’s not going to change how you use the platform much, if at all.

    What it means is you’ll be going from a newsfeed of every post everyone you follow makes, to one more similar to Facebook’s – curated for you based on your activity.

    Cue the complaining.

    This has been an unpopular among users. Articles like this one from Pedestrian TV are everywhere! The #RIPinstagram hashtag was born – and widely used. But look at it from another perspective, this could be good news for the platform!

    I think this is a great move, showing the platform’s ability to adapt and stay relevant in a fiercely competitive market. But let’s get to why people will THINK this is a bad idea, and it’s no mystery – they hate their Facebook newsfeed.

    A friend of mine said to me recently “you get the newsfeed you deserve” and I completely agree! In fact, I couldn’t have said it better. If your Facebook newsfeed sucks – fix it! It’s easy. And before you go to close this article muttering that I must be delusional (or worse) let me tell you about my Facebook newsfeed.

    Firstly: I have an advantage – I use Facebook for work; so it was really easy for me to justify cleaning up my newsfeed and training Facebook to show me things I’m interested in. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret before we get any further…

    Facebook is the only Social Media platform that is so personal about how you use it, and by that I mean – on other platforms you are not obliged to be friends or follow people just because you know them! On all other platforms what you post is judged on its merit by (often) the general public. Unfollowing people is a regular thing, and no offence is (usually) meant by it.

    But Facebook’s thought of differently. I must be friends with the people I know. I must not unfriend people. If I do HAVE to unfriend someone it’s going to be messy….only on this ONE platform. The others (Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram…) you follow people you are interested in seeing updates from!

    Now that we have that revelation out of the way let’s proceed. My newsfeed; I AM HOOKED. Even as someone who is on Facebook 8+ hours a day I can not get enough! How is that possible?

    I trained Facebook to show me things I’m interested in and they deliver me that content.

    Let me explain.

    Unfollow

    You can unfollow people you still want to have as “friends” so that you don’t see their updates. If you have friends that post things that are of no interest to you, but you want to remain friends – unfollow them. Also that overly political friend during elections, or the person who’s updates throw you into a rage. UNFOLLOW, they’ll never know. You can still stalk their profile when you’re in the mood but you’ll be in control.

    Unlike/See First

    Facebook has been around for 12 years. Some of the stuff you liked, you might not like anymore. Unlike them. While you are doing a little page audit, the ones you do want to see more of – ask Facebook to show you their posts first. Hover over the like button and choose “see first” rather than default. These pages posts will be bumped into your newsfeed as they happen.

    Maybe this feature will eventually roll out on Instagram too?

    Interact

    Facebook assumes you like the things you like. Seems simple. If you like the status of a girl you went to high school with – you’ll see more of her statuses. Choose to interact with the people you want to hear from on your newsfeed more frequently. And the ones you don’t want to see unfollow (as above) or just stop interacting with them.

    If you ‘like’ pages and you actually like them, not felt obliged to like (your friends electrical business page) or a band you liked 10 years ago, interact with their content. Like their posts, comment, share, tag people, the more you perform these actions on their content the more likely you’ll see more from them in your newsfeed.

    We can assume this same theory will apply to the Instagram algorithm.

    Use Lists

    I’m not sure this feature will come to Instagram, but it can be helpful on Facebook. You can list people and pages to give you a separate newsfeed of just the interest/people. For example, I have listed people I have met via work and not kept in touch with by the name of the workplace. If I wanted to see their updates, I would navigate to the list and there they would be. No need to have them in my main newsfeed.

    With pages I have lists of client pages, and industries. I make industry lists of the clients I work with to keep track of current news in their niche – without it hitting my main newsfeed.

    Groups

    I’m part of some groups on Facebook, as many of you would be too. Some of them are very active, and to reduce notifications and newsfeed placements you can control what activities within the group Facebook will alert you to.

    SO?

    So – I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that my Facebook newsfeed has been carefully curated and shaped over time to give me the best experience from it. I recognise that this is not the case for most people, but why would you put up with something you don’t like when you can change it?

    You can have the newsfeed you deserve!

    Back to Instagram…

    Anyhow – back to Instagram’s announcement.

    They claim you currently only see 30% of posts – wouldn’t you want to make this count?

    “You may be surprised to learn that people miss on average 70 percent of their feeds. As Instagram has grown, it’s become harder to keep up with all the photos and videos people share. This means you often don’t see the posts you might care about the most.”

    Quintly did a study of 10,000 Instagram profile to discover that engagement rates and follower growth were in decline. Yep, already.

    There are more users, meaning more competition in the newsfeed (many of them brands) plus the paid appearances that were opened up to the public last year, resulting in a crowded experience; and not everyone’s content is created equal.

    Which brings me to my main point, you don’t need to see everything in chronological order!

    Say your cousin posts 7 photos of their cat. Do you need to see all 7 of those photos in a row? Of course not. And yes, you could unfollow your cousin…I probably would.

    What about interruptive brand messages or people who post terrible photos, or spam accounts? Should their content be ‘worth’ the same newsfeed space as people spending hours crafting the perfect post with the perfect image every time?

    Are 7 photos of your cousin’s cat of more interest to you as say, one awesome National Geographic post?

    Why would they be considered equal? And incidentally if you don’t follow National Geographic on Instagram, check them out.

    Look at Twitter – without lists the newsfeed became so crowded and yet so devoid of value. Eventually Twitter adapted, but many say too late (I’m not convinced it’s completely irrelevant – yet) and they lost traction as a Social Media powerhouse. It’s too early to tell how or if the algorithmic newsfeed is going to work for them long-term, and to be fair they have some other challenges too.

    A non-chronological, algorithmic newsfeed is the only way to go for Instagram. It’s full!

    You can’t and won’t scroll for days. The great posts will be too few and far between. Something has to go, and it will be the stuff you don’t care about. And if it isn’t you can easily fix it by training it like I have done with my Facebook newsfeed.

    Remember how much outrage there always was any time Facebook changed a major feature? The tantrums, the vows to quit Facebook flung about, and then: we got over it.

    I can only remember one of the features we got upset about (changing to “timeline”) and there were loads more, they just aren’t memorable.

    Facebook meme

    If we looked back at what Facebook was like when it came out we’d hardly recognise it! But we keep using it. The same will be true for Instagram. You never know, you might even like the changes…

    What do you think? We’d love to hear your feedback! Is it #RIPinstagram or will we all get get used to the change?

  • NEW – Local Insights: Find out about the people nearby your business!

    NEW – Local Insights: Find out about the people nearby your business!

    I have a new client page that just got access to insights (the tab at the top of your page where you can look at your stats, you need 30 likes to gain access) and noticed something new!

    Local Insights!

    How many people walk or drive past your business every day? What if you could find out more about who they are?

    Well, now you can – thanks to Facebook!

    New Local Insights

    Here’s where you can find it what it looks like:

    local insights

    We posted recently that insights had been upgraded. But this is new again. Insights into the Facebook users in a radius of your page!

    It’s been broken down into sections; Activity & Peak Hours, Demographic Info and Ad Performance so I’ll go through the information available set by step with some screen shots.

    Firstly let’s get a closer look at the map! You can choose a radium of 50 or 150 meters from the address of your business page, so the data is hyper-local. You can choose data from a week, month or quarter to look at.

    map

    You can see who is the most popular demographic nearby and the busiest time for Facebook foot traffic to the area.

    Activity & Peak Hours

    With the People Nearby section you can look at hourly, weekly, and historical data plus view your page check-ins. And there’s no surprise there’s a prompt to create a Local Awareness ad here too.

    nearby

    Demographic Info

    Learn more about the demographics of the people (on Facebook) who are in your local area. See their gender, age bracket and whether they are “local” or not to the area. Local is defined as living less than 200km away.

    demographics

    Ad Performance

    As this feature was found on a new page, there’s not much here to really delve into. It can be assumed that this data will allow you to benchmark your Local Awareness campaigns by percentage and improve them with time and testing.

    ad performance

    Why is this exciting?

    Knowing more about the people in your business’ local area can help you make better results from your Social Media efforts. If you know which people are nearby and at what times you can create tailored hyper-local content to attract their attention. You would be able to promote a lunch special, a sale item or a happy hour, for example, to people already in the area at the time.

    And if this didn’t get enough traction organically, you could use some advertising budget on expanding your local reach.

    Not only can you create hyper-local time sensitive content for your markets, you may be able to make wider business decisions too! Say you are a local pizza store thinking about expanding to open for lunch, you could find out how many people are nearby during that period that fit your diner demographic. Very cool!

    With the population becoming more mobile, as marketers we need ways tap into that. It’s less effective to target ads to people who live in the vicinity when you’re only open business hours, as most of them will be at work – being able to target people nearby as they walk past your door with a snappy sales message, a promotion or something that grabs their attention could be a game changer for your business.

    Facebook understands this and has started adding features such as this one, which I’m sure will be expanded in the future!

    What do you think about this addition to your insights? Would you be more likely to use Local Awareness ads on Facebook now?

    Feel free to leave us a comment, or swing by our socials – and as always, if you would like help with setting up your own Local Awareness campaign don’t hesitate to get in touch.