Social Media Marketing Archives - Page 23 of 41

July 5, 2016
Social Media Marketing

#SocialProof – What is Social Proof?

Social Proof. It’s a term that’s thrown around quite often in marketing and social media management, but what is it?

Social Proof, also known as informational social influence, is where people assume the actions of others to affect their choices. It’s a type of conformity that relies on the reviews and influences of “credible” sources to make decisions.

Basically: the customer wants proof that they’re not wasting their time on your product or service and they use social influence to determine your worth.

According to venture capitalist and blogger Aileen Lee, there are five types of social proof:

Expert social proof – A credible expert or “voice of authority” in an industry is very influential. This is one of the reasons you see/hear “doctor recommended” in advertisements. It’s why Food Network became so influential on the food industry from the mid-90s to the mid-2000s.
Celebrity social proof – Celebrity endorsements are an advertising staple. According to an article by Lee, an endorsement by Jessica Simpson and aesthetician Nerida Joy helped Beautymint attract 500,000 visitors on day one of its launch.
User social proof – This involves user success stories, traditional case studies, and also encourages users to create videos using the product, service, or app. Jazza from Draw With Jazza, one of the most influential rising star YouTubers on teaching people how to draw both traditionally and digitally, launched an Arty Games app in June of this year. Within twenty-four hours of its launch on all platforms, there were over 10k images, videos, and reviews posted on social media. The more people used it, the more people bought the product. People began using the Arty Games Challenges on their live twitch feeds, and sharing their success and failures in their drawings.
Wisdom of the crowd – Wisdom of the crowd is basically the popularity of a product. This is where you see terms like: “Most popular post” in a blog, “Most popular video”, “X million copies sold” about a book or song, etc. Likes, shares, and followers fall into this category as well.
Wisdom of friends – How many times have you watched a show, read a book, or went to a place based on a friend’s recommendation? It’s “the killer app of social proof in terms of 1:1 impact,” writes Lee, and there’s a good reason why. It is the heart of social proof. There is no more intimate social circle than that of your personal friends. If they don’t like something, it’s hard to deny their influence on your choices.

So what does this mean? It means that social proof is necessary to your success in a business. Likes, followers, reviews, reactions, endorsements, and more all make up the heart of your social influence. So how do you determine your #SocialProof? We’ll cover that soon. For now, start with the basics. Go to your social media channels and write down your likes, followers, etc. for each of your influence circles. Keep track of your reviews, and be ready to take the next step in building a strong foundation to launch your brand into social media success.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

June 27, 2016
Social Media Marketing

#TimeManagement- What Are You Worth and When Do You Outsource?

One of the most overlooked aspects of growing your own business is the amount of time you invest in ongoing projects, day-to-day processes, and promoting your business through social media and other resources.

You can’t expect others to value your time if you won’t. #TimeManagement is about managing your energy, not filling in the white space in your daily calendar. It’s important to know where your strengths lie and then choose others to fill in the gaps via outsourcing.

This requires an honest assessment of your abilities and accurate representation of your time spent. Here’s an easy way to get started. Make a to-do list for your week. Write down what’s supposed to get done, and make sure you include the marketing side of your business. Just for fun, predict how long it’s going to take you to accomplish each task. You can round it to the nearest half hour, if you like.

Each day, keep an accurate hourly record of what you’re doing. Make sure you include when you go through email, phone conversations, when you eat, updating reports, etc. Add any emergencies that occur to your original to-do list. If you find that you forgot something important that has to be done every week, make sure you add that too with a side note that you’d overlooked it.

At the end of the week, see what was done and what drifted to the side. Look at your to-do list. Did you get it all done? If not, what is left? And of those tasks, which are the ones you really don’t want to tackle?

Look at your hourly record for the week. Did the actual amount of time spent on each task match up with your original predictions? If you’re anything like me, probably not. I tend to underestimate the time it takes me to do the tasks I enjoy or tasks I do on a regular basis. It’s rare to overestimate time, by the way.

Try this for a few weeks and see if you have any underlying patterns. The things that are constantly being swept to the side still need to get done. Consider outsourcing for better performance in those areas. Choose people who are skilled in that particular aspect of your business. You don’t have to be great at everything. As a matter of fact, the key to success is surrounding yourself with the people who can get the job done so that your vision can be realized.

Phylecia Jones, amazing Budgetologist and owner of Keeping Up with Mrs. Jones, would tell you – you have to know what your time is actually worth. What are you worth per hour? If you know that number, you will have a better sense of whether certain tasks and responsibilities are even worth the time you are spending on them. If you can find a team member that can expertly accomplish that work for less than what your time is worth – then there is no better argument for the need to outsource some of what you do. Attempting to be an “Everything CEO” keeps you from being able to focus on the aspects of your business where you excel and where growth happens.

What many small businesses and entrepreneurs discover during this process is that outsourcing time-consuming tasks tends to free them up to win new work. This is an imperative part of business growth. It’s time to let go and invest in your own profitability and success.

Your time is precious and you need to realize that. Know where your strengths lie and choose team members who can fill the gaps. We have a network of fantastic power partners and would love to give you an introduction to a company that can help you #BeAwesome at what you do!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

June 14, 2016
Social Media Marketing

#TimeManagement – Planning Your Images for Social Media

Social Media management can be tough. Between content creation, image creation (and licensing), scheduling, branding, engagement, and more; it’s easy to get overwhelmed and feel as though your time is stretched in a thousand different directions.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Today, I’m going to share one of my #TimeManagement tools I use to tackle image creation. It’s an online program called Canva. Canva is free, intuitive, and the templates are already in place for the most popular social media sites.

Signing up is easy. Just use one of your social media accounts or email address and you’re all set.

Though there are many different designs available, the default “Social Media” design works great for most platforms. When you select it, you’ll have the option of using premade templates of text and images. There are free and paid options, so make sure you choose the one that best suits your project.

If you don’t like the premade templates, you’re welcome to upload your own or use one of their 100,000+ images. Remember, our aim is to create quality, shareable images for your social media brand in a short period of time. The templates are there to help you save minutes if not hours for each image.

The text options are easy to create and alter as needed. Color, effects, etc. are simple to use. If you’re familiar with Instagram’s filtering options, you’ll have no problem navigating this section.

Once the image is created, you can download it for permanent use. A quick note: Make sure you’ve used your brand in the image with your website link, if possible. You want people to be able to find you, after all, and it’s easy to lose the original thread when an image has been pinned and shared multiple times.

Here’s another #TimeManagement tip for you: If you are an Instagram user, there’s an added bonus for sharing to Facebook when you post. According to a study released in February 2016 by Buzzsumo, images posted to Facebook via Instagram are seeing a 23% more engagement rate than those posted directly to FB. So, if you’re looking for a bigger impact with a nominal effort, just check that little FB box on Instagram.

Do you already use Canva? If not, what image building software do you use? Let us know what you use to #BeAwesome when planning your visual content for social media in comments!

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

March 29, 2016
Social Media Marketing

#ReviveYourMarketing – Don’t Put All of Your Eggs in One Marketing Basket

As an entrepreneuror small business owner, the work you are passionate about is your main driving force. However, marketing is an essential element of any successful company and cannot be overlooked. I know, you are busy and don’t have time to focus on marketing. However, the blunt truth is, if you want to grow you can’t afford to not participate in marketing.

So, you dip your toe into the water and you try something. It may or may not be achieving results. That means going back to the drawing board and adapting the technique or trying something new entirely. What I’d like to encourage each of you to do is to try different marketing methods at the same time. Don’t put all your money into the one marketing avenue you think will work. Right now, you aren’t really sure what will work. You have probably done some research and gotten a ton of advice – but the real test is actually trying it and analyzingthe results.

Why You Should Diversify

There are many different reasons why diversifying your marketingis a great idea.

1. Your audience doesn’t all hang out in the same place. Everyone gravitates to a different area of the web. By selecting only one method or channel, you eliminate any potential client who doesn’t use it.
2. Websites change, adapt and disappear. If you have invested all of your marketing into the next, great, trendy website – what will you do if that company collapses? What will you do if it is taken over or changes direction? You’ll have to start all over. No one should be dependent on just one approach.
3. The more channels you participate in, the more you build your online web presence and establish credibility. The search engines are more likely to rank you higher if they see your name come up multiple times – from multiple sources. This will also establish your digital marketing equity and increase your brand online.
4. Focusing on more than one source will help keep your content and promotional materials interesting and fresh – for both you and your audience.

Types of Digital Marketing

Here are just some of the more popular options in digital marketing in 2016. There are more marketing methods available than this blog post could possibly cover. The idea is not to try to master them all. No one has time for that. Plus, many of the techniques may not work or connect you with your ideal target audience.

– Social Media Marketing – SMM covers a lot of territory. This could mean focusing on a single Facebook Business Page, a LinkedIn Profile, a Pinterest account, or keeping up with Twitter. Often the best strategy is picking multiple platforms and cross posting information. Do some trial and error to find out which ones work best for you. Or, better yet, hire an expert to help you narrow down the platforms and teach you the best way to schedule content.

– SEO – SEO stands for search engine optimization. The Internet is a big place. If you want people to find what you are putting out there, SEO is the method to use. If you optimize your website, social media, and other online content in a way that makes is accessible and appealing to the search engines – you will rise in search ranks in record time! There is both an art and science to SEO but, if you can make it work for you, it’s some of the best free marketing available.

– Content Marketing – Another way to establish your brand online is by producing content. Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing regular and consistent online content to attract new followers or customers. If you combine content marketing with solid SEO techniques, you will achieve even better results.

– Influencer Marketing – Becoming an online influencer, or expert, is way to organically grow your following. By regularly producing content, participating in interviews and live streaming, and making your presence known online – you will generate an audience that will become brand ambassadors for you. They will share your content and refer their circles to your online sites.

– Email Marketing – For many marketers, list building is the first step of marketing. If you aren’t tracking and building a list of people who interact with you, do business with you or are interested in your content – then you are throwing away valuable permission-based marketing opportunities.

Narrow It Down

I’m going to suggest that you pick at least three different methods that will help you reach your ideal client base. Some of these will appeal to you. Others will appeal to your online followers. Do what is best for your brand and easiest for you to maintain. Consistency is important when it comes to digital marketing. If you get overwhelmed, you will walk away and accomplish nothing. Don’t do that. You need an online presence these days. The focus should be on working smarter, not harder.

As always, if you need help getting starting or advice on which direction to head into – the team at The Social Media Advisor specializes in assisting small businesses with their online branding and presence. Give us a shout so we can help you #BeAwesome.

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business. Don’t get left behind ~

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars.

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