In addition to the vast potential audience that Facebook can provide businesses, it also packs a lot of features that support marketing such as a wide variety of formats, both paid and free, that can be used. There are also some tools that aid in boosting one’s Facebook marketing campaigns.

To help maximize the benefits that your business can get out of Facebook this year, here are some 7 powerful Facebook Marketing strategies that you should be aware of:

1. Create Advertisements to Grow Your Facebook Page

Paid advertising on Facebook can help businesses as it allows them to target specific subsets of users to match it with their target market.

With this, there is a higher probability for this selected audience to become actual customers.

Facebook allows you to filter users by demographics and interests, so businesses will more likely be able to find their most ideal customers this way.

There are many ad formats available on Facebook, with each of them having an edge over the other. Some of the ad formats that you should be aware are:

• Photo Ads – Makes use of still images
• Video Ads – Makes use of clips
• Slideshow Ads – Video-like but actually just makes use of multiple photos
• Carousel Ads – Presents a gallery of photos or videos sorted horizontally
• Collection Ads – Mobile-oriented ad format
• Dynamic Ads – Ads that appear to users because of interests that are determined from analyzing various internet activity.
• Instant Experience ads – Quick-loading and full-screen ads
• Lead Ads – Another mobile-oriented add that aims to make data gathering for mobile users easier.
• Messenger Ads – Ads that appear on Facebook Messenger.

Like Asos, there are multiple brands which are getting advertised on Facebook. Source: Asos

Asos, an online fashion and cosmetic retailer, uses multi-product carousel ads. Like the image above, they’ve showcased some of the items that are currently on sale on their shop.

2. Run Contests to Increase Your Brand’s Reach

Holding Facebook contests can be an effective strategy to not only engage your current followers but also to be able to expand your brand’s reach.

Facebook contests usually involve participants to like, share, or tag their friends, allowing these users to get acquainted with your brand. They can then do the same, allowing your brand to reach even farther.

The key is to come up with contests that are exciting enough, and which do promise a worthwhile reward for a selected winner.

Typical Facebook contests are like and share, tag-a-friend, and photo contests. Any of these three, when executed right, help your brand earn a lot more likes and followers.

3. Collaborate With Other Facebook Pages

Facebook allows the interaction among pages within its platform. You can write a post, like, share, and reply to mentions, on other brands’ page using your business’ profile. This opens opportunities for businesses to work together as they see fit.

This way, businesses can cross-sell, and boost each other’s campaigns. The key is to be able to find businesses that can complement your own, and who are willing to work on a great partnership with you.

4. Produce and Share Local Content

Even on social media, content is vital. And one of the best ways to make use of content on social media is to come up with localized pieces that can capture the attention you need.

Studies have shown that Facebook users are more drawn to content that they can relate to, and by going local, you may just be able to achieve that better.

Content is a king, start adding kind of content which will interest your followers. Source: Austin Starts Here

Take Austin Starts Here, a travel company as an example. They share interesting articles that showcase their locale.

Like on the image above, they’ve shared an article containing 365 things that you can do when you are in Austin. This kind of content will interest your followers.

5. Create Or Join Facebook Groups That are Related to Your Brand

Facebook groups foster an online community similar to traditional forums. This also puts together people who have similar interests, allowing your business to provide marketing strategies that can be targeted for each.

This also allows you to engage your audience well, a strategy that encourages brand loyalty.

But aside from creating your own group, you may also join groups that are related to your brand. This will provide you with fresh leads out of these people who are bound to be interested in what you have to offer.

This will also enable your business to have better intelligence of your customers, and if possible, of competitors too.

6. Do Not Neglect Your Facebook Cover Photo

A lot of businesses fail to understand the need for cover photos for their profile despite it having great benefits.

For one, your cover photo can be an avenue to display and promote your products and services. Your cover photo can also grab the attention of your audience.

Make sure that your cover photo only makes use of high-quality images as to ensure that it can work. Otherwise, it might just be ignored.

Let’s not take your cover photo granted, remember it leaves a significant impact on your audience. Source: Forever 21

Forever 21, a fashion retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, took the opportunity to feature their new activewear collection on their Facebook page by using the image above as their cover photo.

This way, whenever customers go on their page, this is the first one they will see, and this can have a positive impact on their side — gain more click-through-rates and even an increase in their sales.

7. Post Interesting Video Content for your Followers

Videos are some of the most engaging forms of content so make sure that you take advantage of how easy it is to make use of videos on your posts. Make sure that your videos are also high-quality, and entertaining.

There are also other ways to use videos such as Facebook live, Stories, or even as a regular post. In any case, be creative when you make use of videos as part of your marketing strategy.

Dominate your Market with these Powerful Marketing Strategies

Facebook marketing is indeed a proven modern-day marketing strategy. But this will only be true if you can come up with winning tactics. With the seven listed above, you will have a better chance to achieve just that. So try them out today.

The post 7 Powerful Facebook Marketing Strategies to Dominate Your Market This 2019 appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

The platform gives you access to thousands of people who may be interested in your products and services.

But still, a lot of business owners and companies are throwing in a lot of hard-earned money in ineffective Facebook ads campaigns.

What went wrong?

The truth is, Facebook is a tricky platform to use, especially with its unique targeting features that allow you to get the best results you desire based on your budget.

Fortunately, we’ll share with you five rookie advertising mistakes when it comes to Facebook ads:

Mistake #1 – Setting the Wrong Objective

A lot of brands set objectives such as “creating awareness,” or “generate more likes and shares on my page.”

It’s true that big brands such as Coca-Cola spend a lot of money creating awareness of their products and services. But unless they’re your size, you should redirect your efforts on one thing ‒ and that is to make a sale.

Your primary focus is to make a lead. Ideally, you want your ads to generate a tangible result which can cause a fantastic return on investment. Either through monetary gains or vital information that your sales team can use to follow up and eventually make a sale.

Mistake #2 – Using the Wrong Ad Type

Facebook allows you to experiment with different ad types. Newsfeed ads are one of the most common ads to create. However, you also mustn’t overlook the fact that Lead and Video ads can be excellent options that you should consider as well.

To give you a clear picture, here is a list of the different Facebook ad types:

Newsfeed Ad

Beginners commonly use newsfeed ads for a reason they’re easy to set up and super simple to create.

Right Column Ad

Usually, you can see this type of ad on your desktop newsfeed and usually has a headline, a description, and an image.

Lead Ads

You can recognize lead ads by their “download” CTA button. This ad type provides a convenient way for people to pt into newsletters, ebooks, and other offers directly from their device.

Carousel ads

Carousel ads usually show up to ten images, as well as links in just a single ad.

Dynamic Product Ads / DPA

Dynamic product ads are remarketing ads that specifically target users, based on the actions that they perform on your site.

Page Like Ads

The primary goal of this ad type is to gain more likes on your Facebook page.

Canvas Ads

These ads are animated and mobile optimized to help tell your brand story.

Mobile App Install Ads

Promotes your app and for people to install it on their mobile devices.

Event Ads

Promotes your upcoming events, making people more informed about attending.

GIF Ads

Advertisers can now also ad GIFs to their video ads as well.

Pro Tip: Here’s a list of free stock photo resources that you can use for your next Facebook Ad campaign.

Mistake #3 – Not Optimizing Facebook Ad or Campaign

You have the option to choose what you want Facebook to optimize in your ad campaign. It includes your unique daily reach, clicks, and actions. However, what you optimize can also be different from your current objectives.

Facebook usually tweaks the delivery of the ads based on the results that you’re getting from it. For example, if your ad is doing well with a particular demographic, they tend to show your ad more to that specific group.

The problem with that is when you run that particular ad too quickly, you’ll end up using up your entire budget before Facebook has even had the chance to optimize your campaign.

Mistake #4 – Using the Same Ads for Everyone

Another rookie mistake is targetting all Facebook users with the same ads, whatever their stage is on your marketing funnel. For instance, you show the same set of advertisements to the people who have already added products to your online shopping cart.

Technically, the ads that you need to show them must be different. At this point, your focus should be making retargeting ads such as a unique coupon code or promotional offer

Meanwhile, the type of ads that you have to come up for newcomers who don’t know your brand yet should focus on the benefits your products or services provide.

Just try to be more educational rather than promotional, as a lot of people are turned off by overly-promotional messages.

Here’s a comprehensive Facebook advertising guide by Shopify to help you reach the right audience and generate more sales.

Mistake #5 – Avoiding Facebook Stories

Facebook stories are one of the most recent additions on Facebook. Stories provide users with a full-screen mobile experience. Thus, it has more power to capture their attention than a typical post on their newsfeeds will.

By incorporating elements such as video, sound, and images, Facebook stories are an effective way to drive in traffic to your site.

You just need to learn the most effective times to post on Facebook to get more engagement.

Read Next: This is Why You Should Use Facebook for Marketing

The Final Takeaway

You may have made one or two rookie mistakes in the past, but don’t get discouraged.

After reading this article, it will be relatively easier for you to avoid committing these rookie mistakes ever again.

Over time, you’ll be noticing some notable improvements. So be ready to take charge of your campaigns, and build successful ones for your business or brand.

The post 5 Rookie Facebook Advertising Mistakes People Need to Avoid in 2019 appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

More than 40% of people respond better to visuals better than text. And Instagram Stories, being a place to share visuals, can help you engage your fans better.

71%^[1] of businesses in the U.S. use Instagram and 80% of users follow at least one business on Instagram. Therefore, there is no doubt that Instagram is the place to be for businesses. And Stories are the new feature that offers plenty of marketing opportunities.

Before we discuss how they actually help you market your product, let’s take a closer look at Instagram Stories and what they are.

What are Instagram Stories?

Instagram Stories are a feature of Instagram that let you post your photos and videos. Each post disappears after 24 hours. This feature is more like Snapchat Stories, which was introduced in 2013.

Though Instagram joined in much later, they have managed to surpass Snapchat in terms of success rate.

Here is a proof.

Notice in the graph above, how over a period of time Snapchat has built up 166 million daily active users. Instagram Stories entered the picture pretty late, somewhere in the middle of 2016 and reached 250 million^[2] daily active users within a year.

The Instagram Stories feature lets you share multiple photos and videos throughout the day, which then disappears after 24 hours. It’s a full-screen slideshow format with options of adding doodles and text. There is no option for public comments.

It has many features like superzoom, rewind, stop-motion, and even music. Its stickers can include polls, songs, and location. You can definitely add hashtags here too.

Give a Teaser of Your Product Launch

Thinking of launching a new product?

Instagram Stories could be the perfect platform for your product launch teaser. Help people anticipate and stay curious about your product. Get them so excited about the new product that they spread the word for you.

You can also use Stories to create buzz for an event or a webinar as well. Conduct experiments on what works so you can create Stories that stand out and engage.

Here is an example of a Madewell^[3] Instagram Stories ad.

While this is not exactly made to be a teaser, it’s still a good example of how you can pull off a product launch teaser through Stories ads.

Share Videos

Create casual brand videos. Casual because you only have 15 seconds, which is shorter than a TV commercial. This is where influencers can help. Many influencers are pros at creating casual videos. They can infuse your brand or product casually into their everyday lives, helping you reach a receptive audience.

Otherwise, you could also have them create Stories for your brand through an influencer takeover.

Hold a One-Day Sale

The nature of this feature is that it automatically creates a fear of missing out. Bank on that. Showcase your daily discounts and offers in Instagram Stories. Have fresh offers that people would be scared to miss out on.

Human psychology is such that if they feel it’s too good to miss out, they act. This will definitely give a boost to your sales figures.

Here is an example of a flash sale on Instagram Stories.

Have an Interaction Day

Set aside a day for an open house and keep showing reminders throughout the day on Instagram Stories. This is a great way to connect directly with your customers and prospects. Know what they like and dislike about your brand and answer their queries if any.

This is important, especially for service and B2B companies. This can add a human touch to your brand. Take this opportunity to share tips and tricks. Offer them a free download of an ebook or guide.

Blue Apron^[4], for instance, offered a free recipe card that immediately catches the eye through a series of Stories.

Show Them What’s Going on Behind the Scenes

People are always curious about secrets. Take advantage of this idea and reveal a couple of secrets about your business once in a while to keep them engaged. The bonus is it will also create a post-disclosure discourse, which will again boost brand awareness^[5].

For example, you can take your audience to your kitchen if you have a patisserie. You have nothing to lose if you show a 15-second video of your kitchen that will disappear at the end of the day. Rather you will gain a lot of attention.

You can also share product how-tos and product demos using this opportunity.

Here is how The Skimm showed what’s behind the scenes of their segment on The Today Show.

Tell a Story

As the name suggests, Instagram Stories has all the ingredients to create great stories. It has songs, text, pictures, videos, and doodles. It also has a slideshow format to bind all of your Stories into an engaging series.

Storytelling is a great way to plant an idea in somebody’s mind. Oxytocin is the hormone the body releases when we listen to a story and the same hormone is associated with trust and bonding.

Plant your brand in people’s minds with great stories. It can be a brand story, your product story, a customer’s story, or maybe a story about brand and customer relationship. The story can even be completely fictional narrating your brand philosophy.

CrossFit^[6] did this with their customer, influencer Sam Kwant, by sharing his story and many other customer stories.

Showcase Real Life Experiments

This is your chance to do all of your experimental marketing strategies using minimal effort and resources. If the strategy works, you can repeat it on different channels with bigger investments. If it doesn’t work, let it just vanish after 24 hours without causing much harm to your brand.

Do your A/B testing here. Be bold and experiment with your marketing communication. Use this opportunity to showcase your brand’s personality and wild side.

Conduct Polls

Instagram Stories have an interactive poll sticker which lets you conduct polls. This is a great way to learn more about your audience while engaging them. You can ask a survey question or just organize a poll to get more engagement.

Here is an example of a poll.

Then there is the emoji slider for slightly open-ended questions like, “How much do you like the Netflix show X?” Your audience can slide the given emoji from left to right or right to left to show how much they liked it.

How to Create Instagram Stories

Now, let’s take a quick look at how to create Instagram Stories.

1. To create a post, you can swipe right from anywhere in your Instagram Feed or you may simply tap on the top left camera icon. Take pictures by tapping the button, or long press for videos. You can use features like Boomerang and hands-free by swiping left. You can also add existing pictures or videos to your Instagram Stories.

2. Once you have taken the picture or video, tap the doodle, text, or stickers to make it more engaging and interactive. You can also add music. To record a video in reverse, use rewind lens.

3. Use the pen to add text or doodles free hand. If you have a still images and you want to make a video out of them, use Stop Motion. It will weave all of the photos together and turn them into a video.

4. You even have the op to tionselect whom you want to show the Stories to and whom you don’t. Go to your profile and tap “settings” and then the “more” button. Select “Story Setting” and then tap “Hide Story From” and then select the names of people you want to hide the story from.

5. You can swipe up on your own Story to see who has viewed it. Your story may appear on hashtag and location pages if you have added those. It may also appear on the Search and Explore tabs if you have posted it publicly.

6. Check Instagram Help^[7] for more details.

The Secrets of Successful Instagram Stories

• Be specific about what you want from the viewers. Have a specific call-to-action.
• Make it unique so that it catches people’s attention and stays in their minds.
• Make it relevant to your audience. Otherwise they may simply ignore it.
• By nature, Instagram Stories create a fear of missing out. So your content should also be aligned with this concept.
• Don’t forget to use hashtags and location tags.
• Try to have a story within Stories
• Invite an influencer to create Instagram Stories for you.
• Surprise your audience.
• For the best results, get help from professionals to manage your Instagram marketing.

This is Your Chance to Be Informal

Finally, this is your chance to be bold and creative as a brand. Be informal for just 24 hours. Show your followers your interesting and fun side and they may in reward you with more attention and loyalty.

Be casual, but don’t take your Instagram Stories casually. Plan ahead and produce out-of-the-box content. The kind of visibility you can achieve with Stores is hard to compete with.

Got more tips and tricks for Instagram Stories? Feel free to share them in the comment section below.

The post Top Secrets To Grow Your Business With Instagram Stories appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

Every time, my response is that “perhaps we should review why social media didn’t work for you, or let’s review your strategy for social media to see how we can improve its effectiveness…”

That’s when I get a blank stare (or hear crickets).

Why?

Even in 2018, most companies fail to integrate social media marketing as part of their overall marketing efforts.

Often, these companies were simply jumping on the bandwagon like so many others. But, as soon as the money and clients didn’t jump through the screen, they became discouraged and stopped.

So let’s make 2018 the best year for social media!

Today, nearly 20%^[1] of consumers use social media for information about any business. If having a strong social presence is so important, perhaps learning what to avoid will help make this year that brands will see more leads and sales via social media.

Here are the top 11 worst social media marketing mistakes to avoid in 2018.
1. Undefined Goals or Not Having a Strategy
2. Vanity Metrics
3. Sporadic Posting
4. Audience Confusion
5. Spreading the Brand too Thin
6. No Brand Personality
7. Not Integrating UGC
8. Spamming
9. Doing everything manually
10. Respect the Platform
11. No Video Content

1. Goals and Strategy:

Every aspect of marketing involves a sophisticated strategy, social media should be no different.

An effective social media strategy is the foundation for success.

Posting content without a clear map of objectives, content calendar, and data will ultimately fail. Data should drive all social media decisions and irregular content sharing is ineffective.

Any brand that wants to succeed on social media, needs to have a series of well defined goals, a budget to support paid efforts, a series of metrics (KPI’s) to define success, and a solid course of actions that maps out the steps to achieve these goals.

2. Quantity over Quality!

During the process of defining the indicators for social media success, the most common mistake is that brands look at follower count as an important metric.

Really?!

In today’s social media landscape, a brand with one follower can run an equally effective campaign as a brand with millions!

Why?
Because a well-defined ad and target audience can be created by any brand. So measuring fans or followers is not a realistic metric for defining success.

With vanity metrics comes buying followers. Fake followers are similar to non-existent ones. They serve no actual purpose except for making some CEO’s happy, that is until they yield no sales.

Avoid the simple solution. Build a page that’s driven by quality of the community not the quantity of thumbs.

Again, social media marketing is like all other marketing efforts. Measuring impact of a campaign should surpass just the number of fans of a page. The number of fans shouldn’t be the determining factor. The level of engagement and involvement of the audience is much more important.

3. Irregular posting of unengaging content.

Having social media accounts is important but so is making sure that you update them regularly.
Content should be regular based on your content strategy.

How often?

Well, social sharing platform Buffer offers a great analysis of times for optimal engagement^[2].

What should posts look like?

Brand content should be carefull to engage your audience. Content should be customer (not brand) focused. If branded content does not elicit engagement, comments, or likes then it’s time to revisit the content strategy (there’s that word again) and fine tune it.

With regular content updates comes community management and customer engagement. View every comment as an opportunity. This is the core advantage of social media.

Customers will engage, sometimes with negative responses, but that doesn’t mean a brand can’t turn the ‘haters’ into brand ambassadors.

By viewing social media as the springboard for deeper conversations, brands can involve the entire customer success team (from sales to production to customer service) to improve the relationship.

What happens when a brand gets negative feedback?

Don’t ignore it.

Customers and prospective customers turn to social media to learn more about a brand. If the brand responds in a real (non-automated) way, then customers appreciate honesty, response time, and how well the customer is managed.

Any brand that wants to activate and utilize social media as a valuable marketing tool should have a crisis plan. This plan should outline how to respond, in what manner, and which teams should be involved.

4. Not converting followers into paying customers.

Social media is useless if a brand is translating the content into real insights.

Any aspect of digital marketing can be tracked!

Analyzing the performance of social media enables a brand to identify engagement opportunities, optimal time of posting content, and business related metrics.

At the simplest level, brands should review the primary sources of traffic via Google Analytics. Measuring the traffic sources, the quality of the content and the interest of your audience to different content styles, will help any brand design a stronger marketing campaign.

By developing and clearly defining the Key Performance Indicators, that includes demographics, time of day, audience relevance, and other factors of engagement, the process to associate marketing goals and social media becomes much easier.

5. Focusing on too many channels.

Your brand has decided to go social!

As the social media manager, you sign up for Facebook.

Good move. Then, you add an account on Twitter. Don’t forget Linkedin, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, and what about Snapchat?!

Social media is not based on just signing up.

The best results on social media marketing come from investing the time, energy and resources to actually produce valuable content and engage with the relevant audiences.

Rather than spreading the brand too thin and probably yielding minimal or zero results, put maximum efforts on one or two of them.

The limited social media efforts on two platforms will yield much stronger success.

Many businesses make the mistake of jumping on every social network possible. In an effort to be everywhere, they end up nowhere.

In my experience, one social media professional can only manage 2-4 accounts effectively. Start with the core of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can always diversify.

Part of avoiding a social media platform meltdown is to assemble a strong social media team.

Don’t have a social media team?

Every member of a team is valuable. Each person brings a core strength to the brand. Some people ‘get social’ and, well, others not so much. These people will rock social media, reach and surpass all goals and expectations.

Looking to build a social team?

A core social team is comprised of an analyst, a writer/ Marcom, a product guru, and a some form of coordinator/team lead to assist everyone.

6. Having no brand personality.

We all remember that iconic, award-winning- Oreo post during the 2013 Super Bowl.

It shared a simple image but behind it was a brand that stressed its personality, its quick-thinking, and its creativity.

For some reason, even today, approximately only 22 percent of brands see any value in adding a layer of personality to their social content.

Why be boring? Your product or service is unique, so share that!

Speaking of unique and having a distinct personality….

7. Not Integrating User Generated Content

Every brand wants to build trust with its customers and humanize the brand in a creative fashion.

Social media enables brands to do just that!

By adding a human layer to the brand, the content comes across less like a sale and more of a recommendation.

Especially for marketers who are still seeing minimal interaction or low levels of engagement, it’s time to consider User Generated Content (UGC).

User-generated content is a prime source of top content from a customer, follower, or a brand enthusiast that has experienced the product.

With a simple ask, brands can repurpose the customer content and amplify it across larger consumer channels.

What customer wouldn’t enjoy a little love from the brands they use? Top that with stronger brand affinity and brand interactions, all which lead to revenue opportunities.

Want an example of how to use UGC to grow your Instagram page? Here’s how Buffer did it with impressive results^[3].

8. Spamming.

The most successful social media pages do not spam or self promote.

They engage, offer valuable content, interact with their audience and actually listen.

Simply sharing a link across all social media platforms is counterproductive. The spammy links, or fake versions of engagement, won’t work. Broadcasting on social media is just going to backfire!

Allow the customer or interested party to initiate and take them on a journey.

Social media isn’t just another channel for self-promotion or spam.

9. Doing everything manually.

Attempting to manually posting content across social platforms is not a way to optimize any workflow.

Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools that can make social media distribution significantly more efficient. With so many to choose from, it can be overwhelming but using several of them (3-5) can make any brand’s social media experience positive.

Here are the ones that I use but every manager should find the tools they’re most comfortable with.

• Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social (for content scheduling)
• Post Planner or MeetEdgar (for resharing, optimizing and scheduling top-performing content)
• Canva (for producing graphics, Facebook Ads and other digital media)
• Tailwind (for Pinterest)

Automation certainly reduces the burden, but there needs to be a structure.

10. Broadcasting the same message across multiple channels.

“Customize and Optimize the content content for each platform”

While social media content should be shared across platforms, it needs to be optimized for the specific platform.

Each platform is set up differently, which means that the audience has different expectations for the style and format of content shared.

As an example, Instagram and Twitter are the best for hashtags to increase exposure and reach.

On Facebook, hashtags don’t work.

Brands should understand the unique strengths of each social platform and maximize its potential.

11.Not Integrating Videos

“Native videos are shared more than YouTube videos on social”

After analyzing over 6 million videos, Quintly^[4] found that videos uploaded natively to the social media platform receive significantly better performance than a link to Youtube.

According to a recent report by Social Media Examiner, for 60% of social media professionals, video is the most important form of visual content.

Why is it so important and popular?

It’s engaging, it’s dynamic, it’s creative!

Read More: 10 Basic Steps To Conquer Social Media Marketing Strategy

In a Hubspot report, 55% of consumers “thoroughly consume video content”, which means that it’s the most engaging form of digital content.

The post Top Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid to Boost your Marketing in 2018 appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, LinkedIn, and the list goes on. However, these are the more popular ones.

According to Constant Contact, 73 percent of small business owners are now using social media^[1] sites to bring in more traffic and turn that traffic into customers. Are you in this 73 percent or are you still stuck in the dark ages? Whether you are already in this 73 percent or you have no clue about social media, here are five ways social media marketing can help grow your business.

1. Social Media Will Help You Increase Awareness About Your Business

Not only does it help to get the word out about what your business is all about, but it also provides you with a chance to communicate with your fans and followers. For example; do you have a Facebook fan page? Do you have a business Twitter account? If you don’t why haven’t you created these profiles yet? What are you waiting for? It only takes a few minutes to get a fan page on Facebook or a business profile on Twitter set-up and then you can start interacting with your fans and followers.

Once you are able to interact with them, they will notice how good your customer services tactics are, even on social media, and they will spread the word about your business to their friends and family. Once this happens, you are bringing in more fans, followers, and potential customers.

Remember one important thing though, although it only takes a few minutes per day to grab your fans and followers attention, spreading awareness about your business, you can’t just set the pages and profiles up and forget about them. It doesn’t work this way! You have to interact with them to show them you can answer their questions.

The good thing about Facebook fan pages is that they have automated messages you can use to let your customers know you will be with them as soon as possible. This buys you a few extra minutes to get logged on and answer their questions. But, try not to use it all the time. Try to answer them as soon as possible on your own.

Because if they get the same message every time they come to your page for customer service, they might not return.

2. Social media is Very, Very Popular

And because these sites are so popular these days, as long as you are interacting with your customers and potential customers, you are turning the traffic you are getting from social media into paying customers.

Sharing an article, image, or video, or all three at once, will help you make your business popular too. There are millions of people on these sites every day. You just need to target the right audience. Think about who would benefit from your business the most and target them.

Use hashtags (#yourkeyword or #yourkeyphrase) and whoever checks these hashtags out will find your business.

3. You Are Getting Free Traffic From Social Media Sites

Social media sites are free to use for anyone. This is one of the reasons they are so popular because no one has to pay to use them every day. This means free traffic for your business site.

Who can beat free, right? Of course, some social media sites do offer paid advertising to double your exposure but you don’t really need to use them, unless, of course, you want to pay an extra $5 to reach more people.

It’s only an extra $5 and you would have blown that on junk food anyway, right? So, sign up for the most popular social media sites for free first, try them out for free, and then, if you choose to, you can buy extra advertising to increase even more awareness of your brand and business.

4. By Using Social Media, You Are Targeting All Ages and Demographics

Every age, gender, and all demographics is on social media, every single day. There are so many people addicted to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, and LinkedIn that you will have no trouble reaching your target audience and maybe even an audience you didn’t know you had.

From pre-teens, to teens, to adults, and even senior citizens, how can you not gain a lot of free traffic from social media, right? And, one of the best parts of it is, you don’t have to be too creative to find your perfect audience.

Just use a few hashtags and you are well on your way to boosting your traffic.

5. Social Media Users Are ALWAYS Active, Night and Day

The best part about using social media to gain traffic to your business website is that these people on the most popular social media sites, mentioned above, are always active. Some are so addicted and active on the site that their friends and family tell them that they might just have a problem!

All kidding aside though, this just means more traffic for you since people of preteen age and older are on these sites. They are constantly liking, commenting, and reacting in different way to different things. One thing that will be awesome for you is when you start getting reactions to your posts.

Read More: 10 Basic Steps To Conquer Social Media Marketing Strategy

Reactions show that either they like your posts, love them, think they are funny, get mad about them, or think they are sad. It was a great idea when Facebook added the ability to react to posts in different ways. So, get them to react and then get them to comment, then get them to your website so they can see what you have to offer them! Doesn’t sound too hard now, does it?

These are just some of the ways and reasons why you can and should use social media to help grow your business. Try thinking outside the box when it comes to social media and you will see the traffic to your website grow, and grow, and grow!

The post Don’t Be Slow! 5 Ways Social Media Marketing Can Help Your Business Grow appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

Emoticons, as they’re known has been around since the late 90’s, and used by smart marketers to boost their business performance.

While some marketer are aware of the amazing potential of emoji marketing, many others are still unfamiliar with the power of emoji marketing to enhance their business’s ROI.

The fact is, wherever you turn to, whatever device you’re using to chat with friends, send email messages, creating content for social media, writing blog posts, etc.

You have a mass of emojis at your disposal, to add humour to your messages and boost your marketing campaigns.

Recently,Twitter became the first social media platform to offer support for emoji 5.0, with 69 unique emojis in the collection.

We cannot actually quantify emoticons at this moment, but there are currently more than 6 billion emojis criss-crossing on mobile messaging apps everyday around the world – making emoji marketing an incredible asset.

These little symbols – emojis, are so fascinating that smart marketers have combined emoji marketing to their campaigns as a unique marketing strategy for growing their businesses.

A report by Business Insider shows that emoji marketing skyrocketed by 775℅ in 2016.

Now that we’ve covered some facts and stats about emojis, let’s find out how to use these little icons in your marketing strategy.

How Can I Use Emoji Marketing To Grow My Business?

Inasmuch as emoticons has evolved to become a lucrative digital marketing asset, there’re many ways to use them in your marketing strategy.

1. Know What Each Emoji Represents

The first step is to pinpoint what each emoticon represent. This aspect is of great importance to avoid striking the wind.

Not knowing what each emoji represents is one of the biggest mistakes some marketers are making.

For this reason, they send out irrelevant emojis that hinders and prevent their message from reaching its intended target.

But understanding the meaning and features of emojis will help you send the right emoticons that are sure to improve conversion.

2. Use Emoji Marketing To Encourage Communication.

Truly said, emojis are great for improving communication with your prospects. How?

Many people underestimate the power of emojis marketing, but this little symbols are powerful communication tools.

For example, I was chatting with a prospective client earlier on Instagram.

He asked when I’m supposed to complete his project. I gave him a date, but he responded with a sad-face emoji, and told and we’ll continue the conversation later.

Immediately, I replied with 3 smiley-face emojis, and he was like, ok, “let’s see, I think I still have some time.”

So, the conversation continued and I was give the green light for the project.

The point is clear. A simple emoji can go a long way in improving and encouraging communication.

As a result, incorporating emojis to your marketing strategies can help boost the actions and decisions of your prospects.

I strongly agree with Melissa Blake of Les Saisons who said in part:

“Incorporating emojis in your social media communication can help cold prospects warm up faster. Emojis are a new universal language that you need to learn how to use, as they can really help communication.” – Melissa Blake

3. Use Emojis To Boost Email Open Rate And Engagement

Leanplum conducted a research with over 2.6 billion push notifications involved.

They found that push notifications with emojis performed well with about 85℅ more open rates on average, than those without emojis.

Jonathan Long said in his article on Entrepreneur:

“I have found that using emojis in email subject lines drastically increases open rates. More people opening your emails means more people coming into contact with your call-to-action. If they don’t open it and click-through right away, the chances of them coming back to it at a later time is slim to none.”

These insights shows that emoji marketing is an amazing marketing tool that can significantly boost engagement, increase email open rate, generate leads, and boost conversion rate.

4. Integrate Emojis Into Your Sales Funnel

Domino presented an excellent emoji marketing strategy in their “Easy Order” campaign that others need to emulate.

What made their campaign significant was that, they didn’t just promote their brand, but they made it easier for consumers to order pizza using emojis.

While many brands are using emojis to create brand awareness and connect with their audience, Domino has made emoji marketing a primary part of their sales funnel.

Domino’s emoji marketing strategy is so epic that it has already generated a lot of buzz among their clients. Everyone is now ordering pizza by simply sending emojis.

So, leverage emoji marketing by integrating emoticons in your offers, discounts, etc.

Pro Tips: In as much as you want to incorporate emoji marketing to your marketing strategy, you have to be careful not to over do it.

Excessive use of emoticons can make your message irrelevant. Below is an example of emoji marketing campaign that went overboard.

This campaign was launched by Chevrolet. You can see that the emoticons are just too many. Bytheway, do you think all those emojis represents Chevrolet?

Keep the answer to yourself.

Therefore, endeavor to use emojis that represents your brand and speaks the language your targeted audience understand.

5. Add Emojis To Your Social Media Accounts.

Nowadays, almost everyone is on mobile devices accessing social media sites, than traditional desktop computer. It’s where they go to for solutions to their problems.

So, it’s important that you use emojis on your social media accounts and on the content you share.

But first, map out your social media content strategy to integrate emoji marketing.

Instagram is unarguably the only social media platform that uses the most emoticons with tremendous results.

However, before using emojis on your social media accounts, you need to find out the types of emojis that engages your audience, how they’re using these little icons, where to place emojis, etc.

Therefore, study the market-place, your competitors, and target audience as well.

The data from your research will help you know how to use emojis, where to place them in your content, on your social media profiles, and the best performing emojis to use that’ll resonate with your prospects.

For instance, on Instagram, you can add emojis in the following areas:

• Your bio
• Comments
• Your content
• Call-to-action

Here’s an Instagram profile of Giana Elenterio. She’s an Alumna, Publicist, fashion & lifestyle blogger.

The emojis she used on her bio represents her brand perfectly well.

The concept of using emojis on your bio is to highlight keywords and keyword-phrases, and to direct users to your website, product page, or offers.

It also helps to make your comments and posts more unique and engaging.

Furthermore, its interesting to know that Facebook has offered users the opportunity to use emojis in their status update.

This is good news for emoji lovers, because recent study revealed that Facebook posts that consists of emojis gained 57% more likes, 33% more comments, and 33% more shares.

Twitter saw a 25.4% increase in engagement on content with emojis, and Instagram saw 50℅ increase in comments.

So, what are you waiting for. Leverage emojis on your social media accounts to increase conversion and sales.

Read More: How Voice Will Dominate Future & How To Prepare Your Online Business?

Wrapping Up

Interestingly, the telegraph points out that emoji is the fastest growing language in Britain.

A recent analysis of about 2.6 billion push notifications by LeanPlum and App Annie indicates that emoji usage increased by 163% in 2016.

So, emojis are now part of our everyday communication. These little icons are here to stay.

They help you reduce word count, at the same time convey your message in a visually attractive, frienmarketing strategynces your audience’s behavior.

Hence, add emojis to your marketing strategy. But please, use them wisely for maximum results.

The post The Future of Emoji Marketing: The Fastest Growing Language of All Time appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

What is clear is that Social Media is now the biggest single grouping of humans on the planet. Statista currently estimates that 2.46 billion people use social media and by 2021 3.02 billion – that’s 1 in 3 of the human race!

Find more statistics at Statista

So clearly marketing to this audience is the single most important challenge that any company or organization faces today if they want to get their brand message across.

So how do you go about it? What are the key steps that you need to take to have a winning social media strategy?

1. Set Social Media Goals

Setting goals is an essential step in any project or campaign – whether it be for a business or indeed for personal development. If you want to run a marathon you need to train and each week learn to run that 2 km extra to reach the goal of 42 km. If you want to run it in a given time, then you need to add in considerations about how fast you train to reach your goal on race day.

So it is with Social Media Marketing (SMM). You need to define your goals – is it about making the audience more aware of your brand, is it about going the distance and gaining more customers for a given product in a given time frame?

In Buffer’s State of Social 2016 report^[1] they found that the most common goals of SMM were:

• Brand Awareness
• Community Engagement
• Content Distribution
• Sales / Leads Generation
• Customer Support

The SMM goals need to be aligned with the overall business goals. They also need to be sanity checked as well.

Increasing the interest in customers contacting with the company for customer support through social media without the appropriate resources in place would clearly not make for a corporately coherent plan.

The goal can be measured in an absolute number (3,000 new signups next quarter) or incremental (30% increase in website visits from social media). What is clear is that everything needs to be aligned.

SMART is the goto acronym for goal setting and it applies perfectly clearly to SMM as well. There are variations, but I believe that the following are the best:

• Specific – target a specific area such as the number of people engaged through SMM.
• Measurable – see how you are going to measure accurately and repeatably the number.
• Assignable – specify who will do it and who is responsible for achieving the goal.
• Realistic – check whether the goal is achievable with the resources that are available.
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

2. Define Your Target Audience

Marketing cat food to dog lovers is never going to work! You need to ensure that you know who you are trying to communicate and engage with and this involves defining who your audience is for your SMM content.

The development of so-called Social Media “personas” is a method that allows for a neat and defined understanding of the types of people (yes, real people) that you want as clients.
Once you have their profiles defined you will be able to focus the content and the delivery in a way that is best suited to each group.

One of the biggest questions we get asked is where do we get the information from to be able to build the personas?

Clearly it must not be internalized otherwise they will simply be open to the distortions of the corporate marketing department. External and truly independent sources need to be used:

• Google Analytics
• Facebook Insights
• Twitter Analytics
• YouTube Analytics
• LinkedIn Groups
• Customer surveys and focus groups
• Sales staff – they know your clients better than anyone else in your organization
• Customer service staff – they deal with your clients
• CRM – you will be able to get demographics

One sanity check you need to do is to figure out whether these “personas” actually use Social Media on a regular basis. Just check the demographics for your personas.

Sprout Social have made an analysis of the demographics for different social media channels and have developed a great infographic which you should check, because if your personas are all over 55 then perhaps Instagram or Snapchat are not the channels you should choose!

6 Social Media Demographics for Marketers^[2] by Sprout Social

3. Craft The Content

So you have the goals and the personas but what are you going to show them so that they make the interactions you want them to make? Content creation is not a one-off action or activity for a month – it needs to be continuously programmed.

Our Content Creation Management process is a guaranteed way to make sure that you have the right content at the right time.

The basic steps are:

• Plan and Program
• Idea Generation (ideation)
• Production
• Implementation
• Distribution
• Analysis

One of the keys to success is the variation in the types of content available to each channel. There are many ways that the message can be communicated and the format needs to suit your personas. Here are some of the content formats you can use:

• Web Pages, Articles and Blogs Entries
• Guest Blogs
• Videos
• User-Generated Content
• How to Guides
• Case Studies
• Streaming
• Infographics
• Newsletters and E-mail
• Interviews
• Customer Support Stories
• Statistics
• ‘What to do’ and ‘what not to do’ posts
• Recognise Greatness
• Repurpose Sales Presentations
• Company News
• Newsjacking
• Free resources
• Personal Bios
• News and Press Releases
• FAQS

Each of these formats can be repurposed and converted into one of the other formats. This can make sure that you get a really good flow of material even when the creative juices are running low.

Make sure that the first hits are in the formats that your personas are primarily looking for. A Video is very different to a Case Study!

4. Choose The Platform(S)

There are numerous different social media channels you can use for your SMM. Just take a look at the chart below and you will get a feel for what is out there and the number of users that they each have:

Find more statistics at Statista

Each of them however is different and requires a little investigation in terms of what is right for your personas. Their overall demographics, social status, geography will all play an important role as to which channels to choose.

So if your message is for Millenial or Xgener women then you should seriously consider Pinterest as a major channel eve though it has only 200 million users. By the way that means that you will need to publish on a Sunday morning – the key time Pinterest has traffic!

The most important issue is that the channel can be seen to add value to your campaign. If the results from Twitter are really bad even though everything was done correctly – learn the lesson!

5. Automate

Be careful that you do not choose too many channels or you may find yourself with too few resources to implement an effective campaign. Clearly there is a need for automation otherwise the tasks involved will simply be too great.

There are a number of platforms out there that will help you manage and automate the publication of your content. Hootsuite^[3], Crowdfire^[4], CoSchedule^[5], SociAlert^[6], BuzzSumo^[7], Scoop.it^[8], Post Planner^[9], Social Pilot^[10] and SproutSocial^[11] are all great platforms.

My favourite (no affiliation at all!) is Buffer^[12]. It is really easy to add different Social Media Accounts

source content you want to distribute (by the way you can add your own blogs RSS feed to the sources),

schedule at the best time

and share between members of your team.

The timing and the frequency are very different for each social media channel.

CoSchedule blog put together a graphic^[13] of how their social media frequency might look. They’ve scheduled specific windows of times for some of their updates to publish to their social channels, and they supplement these specific posting times with a handful of other posts that get added to the queue.

Look how this e frequencies change 8 Tweets: 6 Facebook Posts: 4 Google+ posts: 2 Tumblr posts.

That implies that you will need to prioritize content for each channel and develop more for some than others.

Be careful however of copying frequency and timing schedules. Each industry and geography are subtly different. Working practices such as long lunch breaks or working on Saturdays will affect your engagement rate.

6. Consistent Brand

Effective communication of your SMM content and brand message is not easy. Making the effort to keep your messages consistent can help you build loyalty and increase retention.

The way your “personas” respond will be more positive if you focus on the right message which is identifiable in all the channels they may touch.

The look of your brand is predominantly determined by your logo, layout, colours, font and other design elements and how they work together. Facebook and Twitter contain a ton of customization options.

Your company can create a visually stunning page which reflects your brand’s personality and message effectively. The Make a Website Hub^[14] has a great Infographic to make sure that you optimise the images sizes to get the best appearance.

Social Media Images Sizes Cheat Sheet

Conflicting messages will confuse your customers and harm your brand. Hence, it is important to keep the content you share on social media channels consistent.

Don’t bombard your users with the same content again and again but keep the pace a bit varied; remember Twitter users and Facebook users expect very different posting frequencies from businesses.

Fans also do not like being constantly advertised to. Get a bit creative and utilize the power of social media creatively. Facebook and Twitter can be much more than simple promotional streams.

Clashing messages will confuse your clients and damage your brand. You need to make sure that all the content is consistent and coherent. For example, Tiffany & Co. absolutely owns their “Tiffany blue” across all of their imagery and their audience easily associates this soft blue with the brand.

There are so many social media channels where users can search for information about your brand that you need control to keep your presence consistent. If you link between them, which, by the way, you should, then you need to make doubly sure that everything looks the same and the message is the same.

Some channels can be more frivolous than others but the underlying message needs to be the same.

7. Engage

Social Media Engagement is when your followers interact with you or your brand. Typically they are seen as:

• Likes and retweets
• Mentions and replies
• Shares and link clicks
• Comments and more
• Endorsements – the Holy Grail of engagements

These types of interaction need to be measured but how can you make sure you are on top of them constantly. The fewer followers you have, the harder you must work at engaging but the more you have the more you need to engage.

Here are two cool tools that we use.

Keyhole.co

Price: Free 3-day plan / Paid plans start at $99 per month

Keyhole^[17] track the use of hashtags, URLs, and keywords.

Keyhole can give you valuable insights into impressions, geo-location, and the top influencers that are using the same hashtags as you. Keyhole will also update you in real-time, so you can curate the best content to extend your brand’s reach.

tagboard

tagboard^[15] is a visual way of following your brand based upon hashtags. The output is a very easy to follow using a Pinterest type of flow that allows you to see how people are interacting with your brand. It is really designed for events and it is priced accordingly.

Once you have the means to be able to follow what people are saying how can you engage?

Well simply liking the followers will be an engagement of sorts but you can a better quality engagement using other techniques such as:

• always welcome new followers and try not to automate it!
• respond to them with a positive comment or further (intelligent) questions
• make contests that require participation on line
• feature their contributions
• encourage creativity with your products
• actually ask for a like (Like if you agree with this)

We will not go into detail about influencer marketing but clearly if you identify someone with a large following that endorses your brand, make sure that everything they post on social media is distributed as though it was your own. Reach out to them, gently and see of they need anything to continue the endorsement. Maybe try and interview them.

8. The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is a universal guide for most content marketing efforts. Read more here: http://coolerinsights.com/2015/11/the-80-20-rule-content-marketing/
The 80/20 rule was first put forward by Vilfredo Pareto and referred to the observation that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to only 20% of the population (just out of interest in 2016, 1% of the population owned 10% of the wealth in Italy).

In fact it can be applied in many ways to Social Marketing: 20% of your posts will give 80% of your engagement for example. However that is not the main focus.

80% of the content you post to social media should be informational & entertaining content valuable to your audience, and 20% can be self-promotional. Think “educate to sell”. See one of my stories of how this works.

Overselling in today’s markets is negative. Customers are highly socially conscious and they are loyal to brands that care about the same things and values as they do. Brand saturation can turn the tables on this. Focusing too much on your products or services is guaranteed to push customers away. It’s overaggressive and not conducive to eliciting any kind of engagement.

Once you have won a following by posting valuable content, you’ll have the chance to promote your brand when you need to, for 20% of the time. You may not need to promote anything now – and that’s okay. Later, you’ll be glad you’ve built up a loyal following that will pay attention when you need to drive engagement.

9. Keep It Relevant

We often observe campaigns or SMM processes that stall. The initial rush of engagement stutters as new content becomes more difficult to find, the numbers of followers begins to plateau and engagement levels fall.

More depressing than binge watching The Leftovers (if you haven’t caught the show – it is good just make sure you have a party to go to afterwards).

Sometimes the demographics can change and sometimes you need to make sure that you understand what is currently relevant to your audience at that moment.

The University of St Andrews in Scotland got this right back in 2016. What they did was work on a small video project in November 2016 aiming to collate one word summaries of students’ thoughts regarding the US election. The following video was recorded and edited on the day of the election.

This type of immediacy makes your social media come alive. Think newspaper front page – in fact newsjacking articles that resonante with your marketing personas will keep the engagement high.

10. Measure & Improve

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Measuring is one of the most important aspects of SMM. It is what gets you the budget spent internally and lets you know you are doing good or not so good job. It also points out what are the areas that you can improve upon.

Each of the Social Media channels have their won analytical elements:

• Facebook Insights
• Instagram Insights
• Twitter Analytics
• Pinterest Analytics
• LinkedIn Analytics for individuals and companies
• Google + Influence

Furthermore there are other services that will integrate different channels together such as Buffer^[16], Cyfe^[17] and Peaked^[18].

You can also get an idea of what your message is coming across like. If you have a coherent marketing message across channels and Twitter is one of them, then you can analyse what your brand “personality” looks like.

The Personality Insights by IBM Watson^[19] gives a reasonable idea of your posts. Here is what the Adlibweb personality looks like:

The presentation of the data is very important and there are some great free tools out there that help show you progress. The Simply Measured tools for Facebook and Instagram have some good insights into your accounts:

Read More: The Powerful Link Building Strategies for 2018

Conclusion

In the world where almost 1 in 3 people are active on social networks and spend at least one hour a day on those social networks, we have to conclude that social networks have become a reality where people communicate, engage, and trust. Social Media Marketing cannot be avoided and should be embraced.

Over 90% marketers already report they are using social networks for business, while more than 60% of them claim to have acquired new customers over social networks.

Having a process to communicate and engage with the users of social media channels is critical. Get the process wrong at you peril. Get it right and it will fuel your growth.

The post 10 Basic Steps To Conquer Social Media Marketing Strategy appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

In August 2017 Social Media Today reported^[1] that since January 2017 the organic reach of Facebook page brands went down 20%. It had been going done since 2013.

It is now less than 5% of your audience that will see your posts from your Facebook page once they have liked your page or have followed it.

Facebook Pages For Brands

When Facebook first came out with Pages small businesses flocked to them, so they didn’t have to share their business services or products with their family and friends on their personal family Facebook accounts. Family and friends were tired of seeing their posts about this product or that service.

The Facebook pages also gave these businesses the opportunity to try out their Facebook ads along with their post boosts.

Many business owners did not jump on the opportunity. After all, they thought social media was supposed to be free to use.

But who was paying for Facebook to maintain all their services and products? It wasn’t the users. Everyone by the millions and then billions joined for FREE.

That’s when Facebook got smart and realized they had to charge for advertising on their platform. It only meant perfect business sense.

The Different Types Of Facebook Promotions And Ads

Many businesses owners think they can boost their regular boosts for a few dollars and it will go a long way. In theory, it will but in reality, it really won’t.

It only will reach those that have liked their page and maybe their friends.

Why Facebook Ads Are Different Than Boosts?

According to a Facebook team member “Boosting a post sends that post from your Page’s wall to other people who may be interested in it, based on your targeting. Creating an ad is similar except that you can send posts to people’s newsfeeds that encourage them to Like your Page, go to your website, or interact with one of your posts just like a boosted post. ”

Therefore, your reach is far greater with an actual Facebook ad vs. a Facebook post boost. That’s an actual big difference.

Of course, to have a greater response, one must spend a little more money. It’s like any other form of advertising. It’s a marketing expense today.

One tidbit to keep in mind: Most Facebook pages only allow for 25 characters on the headline and 90 total character count. These rest of the ads consist of images.

There are different size image requirements for the different types of Facebook ads available today. (And they are subject to change too!)

Different Types of Facebook Advertising

• Carousel style ads – These Facebook ads show 3-5 images and/or videos, headlines and links or CTAs in one space—the audience can scroll through the ads horizontally on a desktop or vertically on mobile.
• Page Post Engagement – These types of Facebook ads are geared to increasing engagement on your posts.
• Page Likes– With these type of Facebook ads you can target a demographic for more page likes. You can pick via an area nearby or worldwide. You can choose from age groups, interests, likes and job titles.
• Brand Awareness – Generate interest in your products or service. That is the sole purpose of this type of an ad. You must be repetitive for this type of marketing to work! This helps create an interest so people will look for more information about your brand.
• Link Click – Links from the Facebook ads are the most common type of marketing on Facebook. They will send people to a landing page or a special page of your website. Make sure they make sense as to where you are sending them.
• Lead Generation – Form fills are the basis of lead generation type of Facebook ads. They serve as a way for you to collect email addresses.
• Store Visits – Store visits are huge today for brick and mortar businesses. The purpose of these ads is generating store traffic with special offers. You can target people within a certain mile radius of your location as well as by their interests or demographics.
• Video ads – These type of Facebook ads is great for storytelling about a brand. Maybe something about the behind the scenes look of the making of a product. Or how a brand got started in business.
• Instagram Ads – With your Facebook ad manager you can also use it to make Instagram ads for the Instagram social network. These will target a younger audience and work very well as the engagement there on Instagram is higher than Facebook^[2].

Why You Still Need A Facebook Page Today?

You will still need to have Facebook page today as many people do searches on Facebook for business. It also makes your business appear much more professional_[3] than if you don’t have a page at all.

Be sure to completely fill out all your businesses info in the bio and story section of a Facebook page. You can add a shop button or contact button to make it easy for folks to reach you via Facebook anytime from anywhere.

Read More: These 6 Strategies Of Pinterest A Marketing Tool Will Increase Sales

In conclusion on Facebook ads for Facebook Pages

Nowadays companies must decide on a Facebook marketing budget to be sure to reach these massive and dynamic audience. Social media is free to be social on, but for marketing, there is a cost – an investment for your business.

The post Facebook Advertising – Most Efficient Ways To Advertise Online appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

When used correctly, Pinterest is as an effective marketing tool. It is an incredibly simple way for businesses to get their products in front of millions of visitors. Users share online photos by pinning them, just like a Facebook status.

Pinterest is making strides towards becoming a top online marketing priority. As a business owner, if you are considering Pinterest marketing, below are six ways to generate more sales.

1. Leverage The Power Of Influencers

Growing the customer base is important for both online and offline marketers. To widen outreach, don’t miss out on a chance to partner with an influential guest. Pinterest is a beneficial marketing platform when utilizing the potential of a guest influencer^[1].

How do you build a relationship with them? There are three primary ways.

• Grab Their Attention: Follow them on Pinterest and contribute. For example, re-pin their pins while tagging them.
• Converse With Them: Engage in a conversation and become acquainted with them. Ask questions related to their field of expertise.
• Submit A Proposal: Formally request their assistance or collaboration.

As these influencers share your pins, you’ll broaden your visibility and gain hundreds of followers. Partnering with the right Pinterest influencers enables your product to standout on the social network.

2. Maximize SEO Efforts

Pinterest is slowly achieving global prominence amongst the many social networks that exist today. It has evolved into a profitable social media channel for online marketers. It boasts over 150 million active users^[2] every month.

It has become a refreshing alternative to Facebook, Instagram, and others. As a result, reaching your target audience amidst the masses has become arduous.

Several SEO tactics can be incorporated into Pinterest to alleviate this difficulty. These tactics will also substantiate your SEO aspirations. You can:

• Choose a simple username that is reflective of your company’s name and industry.
• Include company keywords in the ‘About’ section of your Pinterest profile page.
• Add inbound links to your pins to persuade visitors to proceed to your website to purchase your products.
• Choose pinboard names that contain your keywords so customers can find your product.
• Provide SEO-oriented pin descriptions, ensuring the 500-character content is easy to search by including keywords.

3. Pinterest Contests Work Wonders On Marketing Endeavors

Pinterest contests are a lucrative way to connect with customers and generate engagement. They result in a definitive path towards brand and product marketing to massive audience bases. The following contest benefits can be seen:

• Boosting brand awareness and customer engagement.
• Increasing brand visibility.
• Propagating product advantages to the crowd.

There are many types of engaging Pinterest contests^[3], like Pin It to Win It and Create a Pinterest Board. They are intended to garner large numbers of Pinterest traffic. These contests will include participants who put up numerous pins and boards.

To achieve the most success from a contest, businesses need to attract many participants. Here are a few tips for doing that:

• Make visually-appealing contests.
• Craft mobile-friendly contests.
• Cross-promote contests through Facebook, Twitter and your business’ website.
• Announce attractive prizes and rewards.

4. Showcase Product Portfolios

Pinterest is a wonderful platform for staging product portfolios in a visually-appealing manner. Businesses attract opportunities by showcasing products rather than just sharing pinnable images to blog posts. Product portfolios also help businesses elevate their reputation and brand experience.

Use Pinterest to show off previous works and holdings and to attract potential customers or clients. You can also share pins that promote your business’ culture and product competitiveness.

Everything stated here helps your prospects to comprehensively connect with your business and captures the loyal following of your existing customers. Here are more ideas for uniquely showcasing your brand:

• Include employee and related special event photos.
• Attach video testimonials from satisfied customers.
• Group themed products.
• Highlight holiday and giveaway products.

Having a Pinterest portfolio drives traffic to your site and allows you to increase your customer base.

5. Use Rich Pins

Because Pinterest is a continually evolving social network, it often adds increased functionalities. The Rich Pins are one feature proving to be very useful in marketing endeavors when properly used. Rich Pins were introduced to provide more details, rather than just images, on your pins

There are four types of Pinterest Rich Pins:

• Product Pins: Includes real-time pricing and product availability to make shopping easier.
• Recipe Pins: Shows appropriate information about cooking ingredients, preparation times and serving sizes.
• Article Pins: Shows content; like the headline, author name, and story description.
• App Pins:Represents numerous apps with an install button so people can download apps without leaving the Pinterest page.

Having Pinterest Rich Pins saves time for both customers and marketers because products are automatically updated. Businesses no longer need to update their Rich Pins manually.

6. Create Obvious Purchase Links

All the marketing perseverance done with Pinterest is directed at attracting additional followers. This desire is to enhance the business’ sales numbers which makes sales the ultimate prize.

Unfortunately, if purchase links are ambiguously created, sales will be negatively affected. As a result, the purpose for pinning photos is negated. To overcome this issue:

• Create direct links on your Pinterest account to purchase from. Shoppers walk away when they can’t identify the smooth picture to purchase^[4]
• Ensure the purchase links are clearly visible and obvious so followers can purchase the advertised product/services.
• Confirm the purchase links are actionable so users don’t abandon the buying process due to a lack of clear information on where and how to buy.

Read More: 12 Influencer Marketing Strategies on Social Media

Wrap up

Pinterest marketing is a great decision. Following these strategies will increase sales. Businesses need to deploy the right paths to ensure their Pinterest board becomes a competent marketing tool. This will also win you the heart of your customers. Happy Pinterest Pinning!

The post These 6 Strategies of Pinterest Marketing Will Increase Your Sales appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.

That’s not all! It only looks to continue to rise in favor of Google and Facebook as a variety of stats this year are showing an even higher proportion of the share of growth in US ad revenues, achieving 95% between the two.

Facebook is now so powerful that it is creating micro e-commerce industries in emerging markets. Providing free internet access, where there is currently none. Taking over the world could be their mantra!

Content is shared at a rate that we almost can’t keep control of. Every couple of years that passes by we seem to create more data than in the entire previous history of the world – Forbes^[2]

Marketing services spending worldwide from 2015 (in billion U.S. dollars) to 2017 (Statista^[3])

As you can see spending continues to rise, so it will become even more important to invest your marketing budget in the right place.
But before we look deeper into social media marketing…

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing is using optimised content, to share with a targeted audience, in the most consistent and engaging way possible.

You can achieve this through paid advertising or organic posts directly from your social feeds.

Organic Posts

A little-known fact is that Facebook allows you to target your current audience organically via audience-optimization^[4].

So What Is Audience Optimization?

‘Audience Optimization is an organic targeting tool to help publishers reach and engage their audience on Facebook and better understand the interests of people clicking on their posts’

If your brand is Pepsi and you have 100,000’s of followers, but just want to post a job advert for ingredient buyers and you don’t want all your happy consumers to see this message, you can directly target those who are most likely to be interested in the opportunity.

With social media channels pushing for paid advertising, this is one way- On the most powerful of social media channels, you can optimise your posts and direct them to the correct audience for no cost; getting the best chance of an organic reach.

Don’t just run off and start posting sporadically all over social media. Start with the end in mind and make a plan!

Here’s a start…

How To Create A Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy?

Here are the seven steps^[5].

The best way to conduct your social media marketing strategy is through in-depth research and analysis of real people. It helps to map the market and understand the audience you wish to connect.
Having a social media audit helps too and here’s a how-to^[6]. It needs to follow a user journey and if done correctly will help to focus the social media marketing strategy.

A strategy should be focused on four pillars, and those pillars should be linked to your EVP or at the very least your company values.

Once you’ve identified the pillars, a content calendar can be created. This should be more around content themes than a day by day plan; which can be implemented later on.

Create content that is designed specifically to highlight the positive connectivity between your brand and your target audience.

It is not enough to just create a strategy around individual posts. What’s important, as I’ve already suggested, is to start with the end in mind.

Understand your key metrics and plan accordingly. Your user journey should guide you to where there may be gaps in your social media marketing strategy.

When you promote content; firstly it should reach to those people who will engage with it and secondly to those who will experience a paradigm shift; to be inspired and attracted to the positive message you have to share.

Finally, at every stage, you should look for optimum performance. The world moves at a rapid pace, and social media moves at ten times that speed, so it is important that any strategy has the flexibility to adjust minute by minute, hour by hour…

3 Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes

• Lack of research; no strategy
• No response OR bad response
• No dedicated social team

1. Lack Of Research No Strategy

Now I’m no Baseball fan, but I do understand team ethics! If you want the proof that creating a good strategy with the right research ever pays dividends, then look no further than the book or the film Moneyball^[7].

Through the analytical principles of sabermetrics^[8], a manager would pick those players who are most likely to work best together rather than the best set of individual players.

When my clients ask me ‘why we should have a social audit when we don’t have a presence’ or ‘we’re already doing a great job on social?’ I tell them: ‘Just because you’re not out there on social, it doesn’t mean people aren’t talking about you’ or ‘Are you sure this is the best you can be?’

I also tell my clients that they may have a great product and brand, but without a well-defined strategy based on real-time data and analysis, how can they expect to continue to play and win in the major leagues?

A well-executed strategy will ensure your social media marketing performs week in and week out, at its optimum level. It will also protect against failure, just at the point where you need it to perform best.

2. No Response OR Bad Response

Simply this can be explained in two ways…

No response =

Lack of the human touch. You may as well not bother. It’s not just a case of customer service; you need to be a real person with real views.

Burger King recently created an anti-bullying campaign^[9], irrelevant of those who don’t like social responsibility in all its manifestations, delivered via global consumerism; here I argue it’s done well.

Why?

Because I think that this is a reflection of an employee’s views and experiences of bullying. So through their client, they are promoting a message that can support a shift in thinking.

OR

At the very least it’s a bunch of creative’s in a media company giving something back. Creating social value in the work they do. Because once upon a time they weren’t the cool creative person that everybody loves. They were a vulnerable young child in a school with very different rules of engagement!

Bad response =

I’ll just show you and let these posts do the talking!

Maybe if he had have stopped there he would have got away with his rude response!

But he isn’t giving up…

And just when you thought, surely he’s going to shut up now; clearly, he can’t!

So, in this case, I’d certainly say having the human voice has not been the best option in this case. However, if he’s targeted rude, aggressive customers who like to be spoken to in this way, then maybe he has a top strategy.

He’s just going to create a lot of enemies and cross a few lines in doing so. Not the company for me though.

3. No Dedicated Social Team

Every company has an enthusiastic employee who is willing to ‘have a go’ at social media. Whether it’s a grad or an apprentice or even the head of marketing who thinks they should have a go! But let’s face it; they are mostly like a child with a new puppy.

There comes the point where they lose interest in taking it for walks because in the cold, wind and the rain it becomes too much like hard work and other things take priority.

Social media marketing is not just for Christmas. It’s easy to have a go and have a bit of fun. But without a defined strategy and without a commitment to look after it and develop it; it will ultimately suffer.

Make sure you give the responsibility to somebody who understands the level of commitment that’s required. But also give them the level of support that is needed. Because nobody gets a success in isolation!

But seriously a dog is not just for Christmas, and I’ve loved and owned many pets. Social media doesn’t have feelings, so my comparison is pure to create and to understand rather than a true like for like…

Types Of Social Media Marketing:

Facebook – I’ve said it already from a paid marketing perspective; you can be as creative and dynamic as you want. The hard and fast rule is that Facebook has a stranglehold over social media marketing. It will take a lot more than you or I to change that. So don’t ignore it as part of your strategy, even if ultimately you don’t use it.

Instagram – If you’ve not hit 25 yet and you’re a female, there is a good chance you’re starting to share and engage with images on Instagram. This image sharing site is cool, easy to use and of course owned by the world leader- Facebook.

If you want to show the world your brand in images, I suggest you do it on Instagram.

Twitter – Don’t underestimate the power of Twitter. In the UK, Twitter has several Nurse friendly groups each with over 50,000 members.

Know your audience, know where they live and breathe and target them accordingly. Make no assumptions and be human, but with integrity and respect. Nobody wants to be bullied by another person or a brand!

Read More: 10 Best Tips For SEO Hacks To Get Higher Rank On Search Engines

Organisations only exist because there are consumers, without the human element; there is nothing.

Be original

Be bold

Be yourself… and that’s your social media marketing strategy!

The post The Ultimate Guide To Social Media Marketing appeared first on Proven SEO Blog.