Facebook Zero | OMG! | Algorithm Armageddon

Facebook Zero, the algorithm armageddon!

If you use Social Media for promoting your business, chances are you follow a couple (if not tonnes) of Social Media related publishers, and you would no doubt have seen a huge reaction from the community about the latest announcement from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg (below) where he states they’ll be changing the way they select posts to display to users in the newsfeed.

This update is stated to prioritise user to user interaction and focus on quality of engagement – which appears to mean time spent and meaningfulness, favouring longer, well thought out comments over tagging friends in memes or simple reactions.

Cue freakouts over Facebook page reach.

Facebook seems to be taking aim at the passiveness of users simply scrolling the newsfeed and not interacting, and publishers – including those looking to game the system with engagement bait (which Facebook announced they were cracking down on a couple of weeks back)

BUT there’s so much we don’t know!

Facebook Zero – Really?

Social Media Examiner was one of the first (naturally as probably the most well know Social Media publisher) to get vocal and ask if this was “Facebook Zero” in an 11 minute live video (below)

Would pages get any organic reach? Are we all doomed to the naughty corner? Are our Facebook pages going to be put out on the lawn with the big TVs and DVD players?

Let’s just calm down and look at what we know for a sec, which to be honest isn’t much.

If you’ve been in this world a while you know for a fact every time the newsfeed algo is tweaked people lose their minds, and each time we adjust, measure, test, refine and evaluate our accounts to try and work out a way to stay relevant and SEEN by our target audience, followers and fans – both organically and using paid distribution.

Let’s remember we all use Facebook differently!

You get the newsfeed you deserve.

I have quoted this before, a friend of mine said it to me once and it’s so true. If you hate your newsfeed – I’m sorry to say you did that to yourself. There’s so many options to unfollow people who annoy you, unfriend people you have no interest in, hit “see first”on pages and people you like, and generally reacting to things you’re actually interested in.

Facebook’s smart at figuring out what we like – but it’s not flawless. If you hate cats – stop tagging your friends in cat videos. Facebook thinks you like cats and will show you more cat content, pretty simple right? If you want to know more about the newsfeed read my post here.

You see, Facebook’s ONE JOB is to learn what you like and optimise your experience to that so it can keep you on the platform longer. Mainly to serve more ads (to make more money) but also to make sure you aren’t using the other platforms (except Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp since it owns those)

But so what, Carma? What’s this got to do with this new Facebook Zero announcement?

The curated newsfeed

I, and probably many other Social Media Marketers might not be typical users – but we know one thing, and that is that Facebook has made a pretty big assumption in the basis for this update: that we want to see more content from our friends in our newsfeeds. For me this is not the case (soz friends)

People think the newsfeed has become a crowded place for ads and page updates, and they aren’t seeing enough posts from the people they care about. I don’t find this the case, as I’d rather read a breaking story from ABC News than another “creative” engagement, pregnancy or gender reveal announcement.

Adam Barrell of The StoryLab Perth put it this way:

Facebook used to be about sharing your whole life and connecting with friends. Now more than ever Facebook is used to engage with pages and publishers. People want to explore and find new things to read and engage with.

When I want to engage with friends and family I use messenger to share photos, articles and arrange catch ups.

Wasn’t Facebook meant to make the world more open? And now Zuck is telling us we’d much prefer seeing posts from friends and family the most?

Just make a Tab/filter that users can select to just see friend posts – don’t go changing the algorithm again.

Good point! Bit hard to connect the world, when people wont accept a friend request from people they don’t know…always too many degrees of separation!

And Jon Loomer (Facebook Ads Legend from Jon Loomer Digital) described it like so:

Not everyone uses Facebook the same way. I purposefully see more brand and publisher content in my news feed than posts from friends. That’s only partly because I’m an antisocial jerk. But it’s mainly because I care most about political and sports news.

That’s the stuff I actually want to see. I don’t comment on those posts. I don’t provide “long and thoughtful replies.” Will I stop seeing that content?

If I do, that would kind of suck. That would be bad for my Facebook experience.

Jon posted a long and very considered post this quote was taken from, you can read the full post here.

So why this change?

Facebook has been trying to prompt us, as users – not publishers, to post more original content since this has been declining. Also it’s no secret the kids don’t think Facebook is cool…PLUS they’re running out of ad space.

Facebook knows it needs to tread a very fine line between showing you what you like organically and what advertisers might think you like. This is why better targeted ads with higher relevance scores perform better. As users we accept there’s ads, we just don’t wanna see ads for things we’re not interested in.

In theory this change prompts less but deeper connections to the people we’re friends with, with less page posts cluttering it up, and would help achieve Facebook’s goal of making us feel better mental health wise than passively (maybe obsessively) scrolling our newsfeeds. We’ve all had one friend say they felt happier after quitting Facebook (or Social Media more generally) so essentially it’s a retention strategy.

Will it work?

IMO? No.

For the way this update appears to work (once it’s rolled out – again we don’t really know til it happens) would be based on the fact that people want to post more, or at least the same amount of original content they do now. Your newsfeed will always be full – so if your friends aren’t posting photos, live video, links, events etc then what will make up the rest of your feed?

Page posts and ads, right?

You probably already interact with the people you want to hear from, so their posts will get upweighted, but beyond that who are we going to see posts from? Old high school acquaintances? No thanks (no offence JFSHS class of ’96)

You can leave me with my newsfeed full of tech pages, recipe videos, and Social Media publishers thanks.

But what do you think?

Will this clear up your newsfeed for more friend action? Good or bad? If you’ve got some thoughts drop a comment, I’d love to know!

April 29, 2017October 31, 2018

Gifs That Keep Giffing | Show Personality with GIFs

Gifs are more than just cute cats…

Gifs are a whole new way (I say new but they have been around since the late 80’s) for brands to express themselves. They’re easy to consume, and a great way to convey tone, humour and personality!

After you’ve finished arguing over whether I’m saying gif with a hard G or a soft one (hard btw) we’ll get into how they can make your content stand out in the newsfeed.

If you don’t want to write a paragraph to describe what you mean, a gif is the perfect tool. But it all comes down to context. When brands use gifs literally, that’s when they tend to fail. For example, let’s say your brand talks about sleeping through your alarm.

You could post a gif like this:

But that doesn’t say anything about you, your brand or anything that your copy doesn’t.

In fact, something like this isn’t as literal, shows a whole lot more personality and emotion – and in this context makes perfect sense.

Once you’ve understood the type of content to post, it’s only a matter of posting!

Posting Gifs on Facebook

So you have your gif ready to go on your desktop, you’ve been trying to upload it like a photo or video, because hey, a gif is just a short looping video, and… no dice 🙁

That’s because Facebook doesn’t allow you to upload gifs directly so you might find your gifs posting as a still photo with this method. Think of it more like posting a link instead.

All you need to do is copy the link of the gif and paste it in, just like you were posting an article.

In the same way, you would for an article, simply delete the link once it’s loaded and write in your caption.

It’s that easy!

If you’ve created your own gif, you need to find somewhere to host it online to create a link for it. I use Giphy, it has a great library to choose from and uploading your own is super easy.

Now adding gifs to comments on Facebook will be even easier. In the same way that you can add a gif to your messenger conversation, comments will have a gif button with all the gifs you could desire right at your fingertips! If you don’t have this feature yet it’s coming!

Posting Gifs on Instagram

This is where you’ll see why Giphy works so well. There is an app for iOS and Android so you can search and post gifs straight to Instagram.

Once you’ve found a gif you love, tap it and expand your sharing options. Hit the Instagram icon to download it to your app, You will then be prompted to open Instagram and finish your post as per normal.

Alternatively, if you want to make gifs on the fly, you can use Boomerang within Instagram. Boomerang takes 10 quick snaps and stitches them together into a 1 second video loop that you can post then and there!

Posting Gifs on Twitter

What do you do when you only have 140 characters but a lot more to say? Add a gif!

Twitter is the most advanced gif posting platform around all things to the addition of one little thing… a gif button!

Whether you’re on your phone or desktop, it’s exactly the same process. Compose your tweet and hit the gif button right next to the image button and search for the perfect gif!

Gif it your all!

Used thoughtfully, gifs can provide brands with a new way to show personality and relate to their audience so don’t hesitate to incorporate them into your social strategy! It’s about being social after all.

Do you have a favourite gif? Let us know how you use them.

April 3, 2016October 31, 2018

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:

Use an image in your tweets and 3 hashtags max. This will help extend reach without people ignoring it for looking spammy.
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.

March 4, 2016October 31, 2018

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

March 2, 2016August 17, 2019

Social Media Marketing loves your Email Database (and vice versa) – How & Why you should let them be together

I like to say Email Database Marketing and Social Media Marketing are best friends. Let’s explore why your business benefits from the combined power of these 2 digital marketing methods – especially if you have a small marketing budget!

I’ve collected some awesome articles from some digital marketing heavyweights to help convince you that you can’t have ultimate success in one without the other, and how to go about setting up this integrated approach!

Neil Patel describes Social Media as “the new kid” and explains why and how to integrate your email and social marketing, he even includes a downloadable cheat sheet in his article “How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts” it’s a long read but includes many step-by-step instructions, screen shots and stats to get you started.

Neil starts by demonstrating that Email Marketing is one of the easiest and most effective digital tactics, and is far from “dead”

Top Takeaways from Neils’ Article

Social Media and Email Marketing work together because they serve different contexts to different sections of your target audience.

Email is a closer relationship with your customer because they have given you permission to enter their inbox. Social Media is public and therefore less close; but a great way to collect those valuable email subscribers, and re-target them.

Email has a higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than social media platforms.

You can increase your email content exposure by including social share icons inside your emails. As per Get Response, social sharing boosts email CTR by 158%.

His Step-by-Step guides to uploading your email database to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Then his subsequent Step-by-Step guide to using these lists to target specific advertising messages or paid advertising – RETARGETING.

Social Media tips:

Use contests to collect email addresses
Use your cover page ‘call to action’ buttons to collect subscribers
Use Facebook Groups for subscriber-only interaction
Retargeting

Email Marketing Tips:

Use photos to ‘put a face to the name’ in your emails
Use unsubscribe prompts to try not to lose subscribers
Add an email sign-up to your website and social media channels
Use social media sharing buttons/links in your emails and prompt your subscribers to follow/like you

Read the whole original article:

How to Integrate Email Marketing With Your Social Media Efforts

Next is Buffer. Buffer is a Social Media Scheduling tool, helping you post content across multiple channels easily – a handy tool indeed!

They also write a very informative blog, which has just been named Social Media Examiner’s Top Ten Social Media Blogs.

In this post titled “6 Creative ways to integrate Social Media and Email Marketing” they give away some little-known tactics to getting more traffic and engagement by combining the power of Social Media and Email – and again this article is packed with practical how to’s!

Top Takeaways from Buffer’s Article

Few people make buying decisions anymore based on information from a single medium. So when marketers focus all their energy on one channel, they could be missing out on other opportunities and the natural rhythms of the buying cycle.

You need Email and Social Media to cross-promote your products and services, it re-enforces your messaging and makes sure you remain top of mind when your audience are ready to purchase.

They outline 6 top tips – which are:

Upload Email Database to Social Media Channels (as we discussed – but they add Google+)
Retargeting (we’ll leave this one here too)
Let Social Send Emails For You – this one is new, let’s discuss below
Automation – we have covered this, but Buffer suggest a different tactic which we’ll explore further in a moment
Collect Emails from Social Media – via lead magnet or subscription app/Facebook call to action in the cover photo
Create a Facebook Group for Subscribers – covered

So, we’ve already discussed some of these points above – let’s move straight on to number 3 in our list, Let Social Send Emails For You, how does this work? They’re talking about LinkedIn Groups!

If you are on LinekdIn and you haven’t taken the time to manually unsubscribe from every group you have joined you are probably drowning under a sea of LinekdIn emails…

LinkedIn send email updates of group discussions, so all you need to do to reach someone’s inbox (rather than the folder or burner email we all use for email sign-ups) is to contribute your content to these group discussions.

Now obviously you can’t just post your content and run, and it has to be of value to the group members. But what a novel idea! I hadn’t thought of trying this tactic but I’ll definitely be giving it a go myself. I’ll let you know how it turns out 🙂

On point number 4, Automation Buffer use a tactic I also haven’t tried before.

It goes like this; post a social media update, send it to your email database prompting them to share it (they call it “seed it with shares”) and once the share count is up nice and high, send an email to influencers to share it.

The influencers will see the value of the content due to the “seeded” shares and will be more likely to share it to their own audiences. Buffer describe a tool called Send Bloom which integrates with Gmail and allows you to send these influencer emails automatically.

Not only a total time-saver, but coming from your Gmail makes it so much more personal!

Just quickly we’ll discuss a Lead Magnet as mentioned in number 5 of our list, it’ll be discussed at length in the final article and is an integral part of Digital Marketing!

A Lead Magnet is something people will be prepared to give up their email address for – thus making them a lead. An example of this could be a downloadable how-to guide or indeed Neil Patel’s Cheat Sheet discussed in the first section of this article!

kh-facebook-ad-lead-magnet — Example of a Lead Magent turned into a Facebook Ad

Most people won’t subscribe to your emails without being offered something of value, so think about what you could use as a lead magnet for your business!

If you want to dig in deeper the full article link is below.

6 Creative ways to integrate Social Media and Email Marketing

One of my favourite Social Media Marketing resources – Social Media Examiner has many, many articles regarding Social Media and Email Marketing integration. Here is one of their most recent publications on the subject, written by Kristi Hines.

This one’s called “How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media” and covers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter again, with helpful screen shots and how to’s.

It’s focus is on improving the strength of your email database using social media.

Top Takeaways from Social Media Examiner’s Article

Promote your Lead Magnet, or Resources section of your website on your social media channels – so people land on your “squeeze page” (the landing page you make to collect their email in exchange for your Lead Magnet/Resource) resulting in subscriber growth.

Also use your Social Media channels to test headlines to use in your Email Marketing. As you re-post your content (not everyone saw it the first time, right?) you can change-up the titles and images.

You can infer that the one with the most engagement is the “best” one and use these headlines when creating your emails.

Here’s some more tips, broken down by channel.

Facebook

Include your subscribe link in your Short Description
Make an app to collect email addresses (try WooBox or ShortStack for this)
Use your Call To Action button on your Cover Photo
Set up Facebook Ads to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page
Use a Lookalike Audience to target people who “Look Like” your email database subscribers

Twitter

Use your bio to promote your Lead Magnet
Use Twitter Lead Cards – explained below
Use Promoted Tweets to increase the reach of your Lead Cards

A Lead Card is a way for people to leave you with their details without leaving Twitter. Think of it as a mini-squeeze page.

LinkedIn

Promote your Lead Magnet in the Projects and Publications sections of your LinkedIn profile

Pinterest

Pin your Lead Magnet – this can be done multiple times with varying images.

Instagram

Use the link in your bio to send people to your Lead Magnet/Squeeze Page

General

Make sharing easy! Include Social Media sharing buttons and links on your Squeeze Page and your Lead Magnet.

Read the full article, explaining exactly how to set up your Twitter Lead Cards below.

How to Improve Your Email Marketing With Social Media

So here you have it – the world’s top Digital Marketers agree that Social Media and Email Marketing are best friends! Time to dig out that excel spreadsheet and pass it on to your social media team!

We’d love to hear your feedback! What are your thoughts on Email Marketing and Social Media integration? Leave us a comment here or stop by any of our Social Media channels.

The Social Chameleons can be contacted to help you with your Social Media and Email Database Marketing. Feel free to email by clicking here, or fill out the form on the contact page.

August 19, 2015October 31, 2018

Integration: Commonly Misspelt & Undervalued

Some of you already place a value on making sure the marketing of your business is integrated, and by this we mean using consistent messaging and branding – but more than that; by making sure the types of marketing you do and platforms you use are supporting each other to maximum benefit. Integrating your marketing will help you in increasing your brand’s awareness, helping to build strong communities, and saving you time and money.

Awareness

We need to keep our brand elements and messaging consistent so people recognise what our business does and stands for, also making it easier for users to find us and subsequently buy our things and use our services. But just as importantly we need to make sure none of our marketing platforms operate in a vacuum.

For example – if you have an amazing new glossy brochure of all your products, why wouldn’t you use it on your website too? Why not pin the items individually to your Pinterest boards, post on Facebook where people could get hold of your shiny masterpiece – or better yet, make a Facebook app to house it so people can see it from there.

You could target some advertising directly to it, and send the web link to your email subscribers. Then with the help of Google Analytics, your email software metrics and Facebook Insights you can track your views, clicks, etc to see what kind of impact it had.

This is just a small example of how digital, social, print, and email marketing can all come together – and it might sound like more effort than just producing the brochure alone; but what’s the point spending time making a stunning brochure if you’re not going to make sure as many interested people see it as possible? That would be more of a waste for sure, because we all know we’re only as strong as our weakest link.

But this doesn’t mean you have to do all of this yourself! There are people who can help you in your business and outside of it. Having an integrated marketing strategy doesn’t mean you must have a huge marketing budget and a large team with endless resources. It just means you have a plan – and that plan is thought out to ensure all your channels speak the same language and support your messaging.

Having worked on many social media accounts in the past few years, The Chameleons know the difference between companies that do this well and those that struggle. We’ve seen many lost opportunities where businesses have had major events, sales or received awards and not communicated this to their teams, missing the chance to increase awareness – but more than that in the case of social; letting their audience feel part of their band at grass-roots level.

Growing Your Communities

Your social media communities (providing they have been built the right way) are interested in your business. They want to know about what’s happening in your world because they feel like they are friends with your brand. How would your friends feel if you went to a party without telling them? Or won an award without sharing it with them? Once they found out they might start to question your commitment to the friendship.

Email Marketing & Social Media can work hand in hand: with you being able to convert your customer database to social followers and vice versa. And don’t forget to upload your database to Facebook to use them to help your advertising targeting as mentioned in this previous blog post.

You can also use your offline efforts to promote your social communities. Make sure collateral like business cards and flyers contain your social icons, and use internal venue signage to encourage people to check in, review or follow you while they are in store.

Time Is Money

At the end of the day having an integrated strategy might take more time to come up with, but when you’re ready to roll out you’ll have all the necessary tools to make your efforts a success – without needing to resort to ad hoc methods that ultimately leave you further out-of-pocket.

Often marketing can be about playing a long game, building awareness and trust of your brand. Doing this consistently across all your channels will help you reach this goal more quickly than deciding on Wednesday to do a newspaper campaign that starts Thursday without giving your other channels the time to plan their part.

As the famous African proverb says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together”

June 21, 2015April 10, 2016

Social Media: What Does it all MEAN?

So you have decided to “do” social media for your business. Great! Why? What are you hoping it will help you achieve? It’s knowing the answer to this question that will determine whether your efforts will bear fruit, and the reason so many businesses fail, or simply give up on their social media (or indeed any online or offline) marketing.

The Chameleons hear all the time about how “Facebook doesn’t work” and “Facebook advertising is a waste of money” and “Social Media can’t help my business sell our products” These statements are mostly wrong, but it all depends on what you want out of it as to how you need to go about executing your strategy.

[bctt tweet=”It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it.”]

It’s pretty simple when you think about it, but because we all use social media profiles we are often blinded to the realities of using it from a business perspective. Let’s take something that’s been around for a bit longer as an example of what we mean, like Television for instance.

If you were a brand that sold kids toys – would you make a TV ad with lots of dark, gloomy colours? Would you use formal language? Would you show those ads late at night? Of course not! Why? Because it’s not going to [marketing cliché alert] speak to the desired demographic.

It’s the same with social media. You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to [another cliché alert] speak their language.

Ok, we get it – but how?

Well, we don’t think there’s one magical recipe for working this out. In the old days there were focus groups, surveys and buyer personas – and yeah, they’re still around, but what it all boils down to is finding out what your customers and potential customers want and need.

[bctt tweet=”You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to speak their language.”]

Big brands spend loads of money doing this, often tracking your spending habits with fancy reward programs to give them insight into your spending behaviour. But what can you do as a small business or a brand just starting out?

Ask your customers. Network with other people in your industry who understand your specific industry challenges. Ask people who use your competitors why they chose them and not you. Use what it is that makes your business different and work this into your strategy. And when we say strategy we don’t mean write a 60 page university-style marketing document.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vPNAUYJsc]

It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it. Your social media success will not just happen. It needs to be built, crafted, nurtured…do we sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But we’re crazy about doing a great job at social media marketing, and that’s what you become when you promote your brand on social media, social media marketers! It’s probably one of the many hats you wear as someone with a small business!

So back to your goals; here are a couple of quick examples of social media goals your business may have and how you might go about achieving them:

Say you are a new brand, at first you may just want some likes on your Facebook page to give you a little credibility. As social media marketers we can tell you likes don’t matter – but we know that there’s a certain gravity to a page that has fans – the same way you don’t trust eating at an empty restaurant. If this is a short-term goal for your brand you will need to harness the power of your networks.

Ask you friends and family to help by liking and sharing your page.
Set up your email signature and your website with social buttons so people know that you’re a social brand.
Always use the social media icons utilised by your brand on all your printed materials like flyers and menus.

But mostly, and you’re probably not going to like this – you’re going to have to run some like ads. Remember, just like with the TV ad example – make sure they will resonate with your desired audience. Use imagery and language they relate to at the times they are watching and you’ll receive the best return.

Say your social media goal is to use it to get more people to your website – you could:

Run some web click ads!
Post relevant content from your website as links on your social platforms
Start a blog to share your original content
Have your developer embed some tracking pixels on your website to help you measure your social traffic
Set up Google analytics and monitor your social media refferals

Before you do this we suggest you make sure that your site is truly reflective of your brand and has strong messaging. We all know we skim read and make very quick decisions as to whether we stay on a website for more than a few seconds. You need to make sure those seconds count or all the advertising in the world won’t help.

There’s too many different goals you may have as a business to go through them all here – but we did want to touch on one more just quickly.

[bctt tweet=”Social Media is a conversation, and a huge part of conversation is listening!”]

Social Customer Service

Whatever your short terms goals for social media are – always bear in mind the customer service opportunities social media will present you. If you haven’t yet you will at some point have a customer reach out to you on your social media platforms for help with your brands product/s (or service/s) and you need to LISTEN to them.

Social is a conversation.

And a huge part of conversation is listening – and not just to the words but also the tone. If someone reaches out to you about your brand, positive or negative they want to be heard. Obviously positive feedback is much easier to handle, but negative comments are just as important, if not more so.

Someone has taken the time to tell you that something was wrong. Whether it was with the service, the product, the expectation wasn’t met, the delivery, the colour, size, fit – could be anything, but you have the advantage because they came to you so you can fix it. You know why someone is unhappy. That’s infinitely more helpful to your business than your product just not selling, right? Because odds are if one person says it, there are others thinking it too that weren’t “brave” enough to speak out.

Acknowledge!

This is why you must always take the time to acknowledge their concerns and not pass them of as an isolated incident, even if you’re sure they are. Other users can be waiting to see how you respond, judging whether they too should speak out based on how you handle the situation.

Flip it!

Anyone who has run a business knows that an unhappy client can often be won over into your most loyal fan if they are listened to, acknowledged and have their issues resolved to the best of your ability. And with social media you have the opportunity to do this publicly where you can turn around the opinions of more than the one upset customer, but the others following the progress of the interaction.

Seems a bit scary. Obviously we are referring to regular types of grievances, not major meltdowns or crises, which need to be dealt with in a more cautious way we may cover in a future post.

The last type of interaction with your social media following we want to cover is the neutral post. They aren’t happy clients or disgruntled (love that word – so fun to say) customers, they just have a need for further information about your brand. Embrace them, love them, be excited about the potential of doing business with them in the future! If someone wants to know more about your offerings they want you to talk them into using your business, so don’t leave them waiting and try to share as much friendly detail as you can. They’ll appreciate the effort and you’ll at least get some social media brownie points – and at most a nice fat sale.

So to finish here’s our top tips for what it’s all about:

Work out what you want out of your social media presence and plan for that outcome step by step (it won’t happen overnight)
Use your target demographics preferences to present your brands images, profile pictures, tone etc that appeal to THEM
Always answer ALL your comments as quickly and helpfully as you can
Don’t forget it’s SOCIAL – so listen to what your market is telling you

We hope this helps you to make a plan for your social media marketing and set you up for success! As always we’d love your feedback either as comments here or on our social platforms 🙂