Why Your Facebook Reach has Bombed and How to Fix It

Posted on March 24, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Since its inception around a decade ago, Facebook has grown and evolved into something far bigger and far different to anything the creators could ever have imagined.

Beginning life as a social network exclusively for Harvard students, the site has since expanded globally to become what is essentially the world’s largest database of potential customers for those wishing to advertise to them as part of their digital media marketing. In a manner of speaking, Facebook has left school and gone to work.

For enterprises of all sizes, from the multinational to the sole trader, having a Facebook business page has become almost a prerequisite. As one of the most successful companies of all time though, Facebook has of course recognized the power it possesses in controlling both the advertising platform and the audience.

Unfortunately for those with fan or business pages, Facebook has recently made changes to take advantage of this power, which has meant these pages’ organic reach have plummeted. If you’ve found this happening to your own page and affecting your digital media marketing, read on to find out why and how you can fix it.

Pay to play

Companies as successful as Facebook don’t often leave money on the table. If you’ve seen your Facebook digital media marketing efforts bringing increasingly worse returns, it will be due to the site changing their regulations and, more importantly, their algorithm.

From now on, business page posts will no longer show up in people’s news feeds in the way that personal updates do. The reason your engagement has bombed is because nobody is seeing your posts; and if nobody is seeing them, what is the point in even posting them?

There is however something you can do, and it goes back to Facebook not leaving money on the table.

Every time you post, you have the option of boosting it. Boosting a post is essentially paying to advertise it, either to people who already like your page or to the wider Facebook community as a whole. The typical cost works out to be around six dollars a day, but there really isn’t any way around it. Now, if you want to play, you have to pay.

What to boost

It’s no secret that visual posts tend to get more engagement than those featuring text and links only, so it follows that these are the best type of posts to spend your money on boosting.

Facebook however does set guidelines that all advertisers using the platform for their digital media marketing must follow, with the 20% rule in particular concerning the amount of space in an image that is taken up by text. By overlaying a 25-box grid over your image, Facebook can see how many of these boxes feature your text. Any more than 5 means you will have violated Facebook’s 20% policy, which will prevent your post from being boosted.

Ensuring your posts are more visual than promotional is vital if you want to remain in Facebook’s good books.

Who to boost to

Although Facebook has begun to charge money to allow you to reach its massive database of users, the good news is that the database itself is still there, and Facebook’s boost options allow you great flexibility in who you want to see your boosted posts. The ability to target posts and adverts with such precision is a dream come true for those involved with digital media marketing, which is why Facebook is so confident in its recent algorithm changes.

Depending on the nature of your posts, you can boost those about new products to people who already like your page, boost posts introducing your company to friends of those who like your page, and even tailor your boosts to certain geographical locations, age ranges, gender, and general interests.

The ease with which Facebook provided a world of potential customers for free to those in digital media marketing was never going to last forever, but by knowing why your engagement has been worsening and knowing how to set it right, you can steal a march on those who may still be unaware of the recent changes.

http://bit.ly/Facebook-Grid-Tool-1

Social Media is Your Friend – Treat it Like One

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

From humble beginnings, social media has grown from being a way for friends to share and stay in touch to become an integral part of corporate marketing plans for the majority of today’s businesses, and some of the most successful social media campaigns in the past have transformed their respective company’s fortunes.

Unfortunately, many companies still don’t understand the key elements of good social media practices, perhaps thinking instead that merely creating profiles and sporadically updating them is somehow enough.

It isn’t.

If you’re finding your social media efforts are falling short of what you’d hoped for, you need to be thinking about why that is. While the various platforms are now used for business, we should never forget where they came from. With that in mind, and to help analyze where you might be going wrong, ask yourself this: would I want to be friends with my business social media account?

It’s all me, me, me

You’re at a party, and you meet someone new. They’re attractive, and you get chatting. Ten minutes later, they’re still chatting, and you’re still listening. Suddenly, they’re not so attractive anymore. Social media is no different. Constantly talking about your own company, products or services is a surefire way to receive zero engagement on your profiles.

Successful social media campaigns are built on likes, comments and, ideally, shares. It’s the modern day version of word of mouth. This means interacting with other people, commenting on their content, re-tweeting, sharing, and making them feel good.

Then, like meeting someone at a party and having a two-way conversation, they’ll start checking you out too. If the like what they see, they’re going to tell their friends all about you.

The boring friend

It’s not nice, but it’s a fact of life. We probably all have at least one friend who, while being really nice and a great person, is just a little bit boring. In real life, it can be hard to keep making excuses when they invite us somewhere every weekend. With social media, ignoring them couldn’t be easier.

To keep your audience engaged, at least 80% of what you post has to be entertaining, inspiring, or informative. If it isn’t, people won’t need to think up a reason to not interact with you; they will simply stop listening, and find someone who does amuse, charm, or interest them. Successful social media campaigns do this as standard.

A little less conversation

Some people just know how to hold a great conversation. They’re knowledgeable, witty, informed, and entertaining. It’s a pleasure to talk to them, and you usually look forward to their company. Occasionally though, you have to go out and find stimulation in other ways: A walk in the countryside. A movie. Rock climbing.

Successful social media campaigns will always offer more than just words. Visuals like images, infographics and videos all capture the attention more effectively than text updates ever will. They take up more screen real estate, and are eminently more shareable than simple words too.

Investing in a stock image license or making your own videos is a surefire way of getting you closer to your dream of emulating those successful social media campaigns you admire so much.

I’m washing my hair

When friends organize get-togethers, the first people that are invited are those who usually say yes; those that are consistently there. Those who often say no, who spend as much time out of the circle as they do in it, begin to lose some elements of the friendship enjoyed by those who are always there.

Social media is the same. If you want to keep your friends, your audience, you have to always be there.

Inconsistent posting leaves your profile looking half-hearted, as though it’s only updated when you have the time or inclination, and is not a priority for you. And if it isn’t a priority for you, why should it be for anyone else? Consistency builds trust, which is key in successful social media campaigns, so a regular posting schedule should be devised and stuck to. If you can’t post every day, even once a week is better than a flurry of posts together and then nothing for the rest of the month.

Start caring about what others think

If you’re going to remain friends with people, it’s important to know what they really think of you, and to know that your efforts in the relationships are being reciprocated.

Social media is no different, and tracking the results of your activity is vital if you are to learn how to improve your engagement. There are tools that enable you to check what sort of activity your social media posting results in on your website. Do visitors from Facebook stick around or bounce? Are people checking multiple pages? How much time do they actually spend on your site once you’ve managed to get them there? What types of social media posts get the best reaction?

Checking these metrics is essential for all successful social media campaigns. Only by knowing and then acting on this information can you hope to improve your relationships with your social media audience, and hope to one day turn them into friends of your business.

Control Your Email Habits Before They Control You

Posted on February 24, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

As a small business owner, few things are more important than good productivity and effective time management. Unfortunately, these aren’t always easy to achieve; especially when there’s Facebook to check, blogs to read, and a steady stream of emails to reply to.

Unlike Facebook and blogs though, email is something that no small business owner can or should avoid in the working day. The problems come when too much time is spent reading and rereading them while taking no action.

As we use MailChimp for our email marketing campaigns, we’re able to monitor our subscribers’ email habits. A few of the trends we’ve noticed from looking at this information is rather shocking; some people are actually opening our emails on up to 21 separate occasions.

Clearly this is a huge waste of time, and has prompted us to share a few tips on how to control your email habits before they control you.

Self-control with a self-timer

Assigning yourself a set amount of time for each task every day is a great way to ensure you don’t spend too long on just one and neglect the others. You can even set aside times for getting your fix of the non-work websites that are usually a constant temptation and distraction.

One of the most popular time management systems is the Pomodoro Technique, a method of assigning yourself medium length blocks of dedicated work time, usually around twenty five minutes long, interspersed with short breaks of five or ten minutes.

Giving yourself twenty five minutes of concentrated email time, perhaps two or three times a day if need be, will help to focus your mind on the task at hand, while giving yourself a guilt-free five or ten minute window to check Facebook or browse some blogs to refresh your mind in between.

Accountability looks good on paper

If you find yourself quickly checking your email and taking no action constantly throughout the day, it might shock you to learn just how many times you do this, even if the accumulative time spent doing so isn’t that much.

Every time you turn your mind to your email, no matter how briefly, you’re taking it away from all the other important tasks that need your attention too.

It’s natural to tell yourself you don’t do this too often while underestimating the real figure, but having a pen and paper with you and keeping a record of how many times you idly check your email throughout the day will help you see just how often you do so, which will in turn give you the visual evidence you might need to control this habit.

This technique isn’t restricted to just your email habits, either. Keeping track of how many times you unconsciously open a social media page or look at blogs you don’t actually read can help you cut down on that habit too.

Another type of game theory

One irrefutable fact of life is that people are more likely to work on tasks if they enjoy them. Another fact of life is that nobody enjoys wading through a backlog of emails. The obvious solution here then is to somehow make email a fun endeavor, and eliminate the boredom that constantly drives people back to browsing social media and non-work related blogs. If only there were a way.

Welcome to the Email Game.

Easily found on Google, the Email Game is a web application that turns the task of clearing your inbox into something enjoyable, which of course helps motivate you to get through them quickly, eliminating the bottleneck that is your inbox and freeing you up to get on with the next thing on your to-do list.

Take control of your email habits today

Spending time on email every day is unavoidable for small business owners, but nurturing good habits can ensure that time is spent well rather than wasted. Every minute saved on not idly checking your inbox can be spent on something more productive.

It can even be reassigned and become time reserved for browsing social media, reading blogs, or any other leisure activity that can help relax your mind and maintain your concentration on the important tasks of the day.

The Effectiveness of Mobile Marketing

Posted on January 13, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Research shows the effectiveness of mobile marketing

Set aside your traditional marketing channels, mobile marketing is exploding like dynamite. Reaching customers on a smartphone or other hand-held device is one of the best strategies for today’s marketers. And mobile marketing isn’t just growing; it’s booming. So, as a marketer you know mobile marketing is highly effective in enticing consumers to buy what you have to sell.

Marketers use mobile to reach customers quickly (in real time). And customers use their smartphones and tablets to communicate, shop, search, travel, play, read, and discover, from dusk to dawn.

The proof that mobile usage—and mobile marketing—are surging in popularity isn’t just in knowing there are 1.4 billion smartphones in use around the world; the evidence lies in the latest research on how and why customers and marketers are crazy about their mobile devices.

Let’s look at the following statistics:

Consumers check their mobile devices 150 times a day.
Ninety percent of the time mobile users respond to text messages within 90 seconds of receiving them.
Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners use their devices to buy products and services

How Marketers Use Mobile

Consider that customers use their smartphones and tablets to email, text, post, tweet, buy, and connect. This means that mobile is a multi-channel “product,” and that marketers can use mobile marketing in a number of ways. For example, marketers can measure what customers want in a brand. They can advertise, post messages, and move customers to commerce sites to view their products. Finally, they can answer customers’ questions and measure their satisfaction with a purchase.

According to a provider of multi-channel communications to some of the world’s best retail brands, 20 percent of all current mobile traffic goes to e-commerce sites.

If you’re still not convinced of the value of mobile marketing, consider that customers spent $182 billion on mobile commerce last year alone. And that number is estimated to grow to $707 billion by 2018.

What’s more, mobile empowers marketers to create, deliver, and measure personalized marketing campaigns. “Nothing gets marketers closer to consumers than mobile,” says Greg Stuart, CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association. “There is no other platform that is as personal and pervasive.”

The personal value of mobile-marketing campaign

Because mobile is personal, research shows that one campaign message doesn’t appeal to all consumers. In a one-message-fits-all campaign, the marketer sends a single message to teens, seniors, business professionals, and other target groups.

For years marketers bought 30-second radio commercials and mailed brochures to millions of homes. Research shows, however, that these campaigns may entice some but not all of the consumers reached. Mobile marketing calls for a focus on each customer group by deploying a campaign that is deeply personal and practical.

Summary of Mobile Marketing

This article has looked at impressive research findings surrounding mobile. The key to making mobile marketing effective is knowing that:

Mobile marketing must be a key strategy in your marketing plan, especially since smartphones and tablets are used to communicate, shop, search, travel, play, read, and discover;
Mobile is surging in popularity. Remember, consumers spend a hundred billion dollars on mobile purchases each year;
Your mobile-marketing messages must be on all channels—mobile email, mobile social media, and so forth;
Your mobile-marketing message must be personal. You need to craft a single message for each type of consumer group.

Make mobile marketing a part of your marketing strategy today.

Three Steps to Getting on Google

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

If you want your website to be noticed, you have to get on Google.

And if you want to get on Google, you have to make yourself as visible as possible to them and their web crawlers.

Then of course once you’re on, you’re going to want make sure you stay there.

Getting and staying on Google can be broken down into three easily remembered stages:

· Build (on-site SEO)

· Engage (off site SEO)

· Stay fresh (regular content)

Let’s elaborate and see what these points really entail.

Build – on-site SEO

Anyone who maintains their own website, be it for business or pleasure, should at least be aware that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a thing, even if they might not really understand it.

They also need to know that it comes in two flavours: on-site and off-site, and taking care of the on-site SEO while building your website is paramount if you want it to get on Google.

On-site SEO includes everything that your web design team can arrange for you, either behind the scenes or for public consumption; quality content with relevant keywords, page titles, Google text snippets, URLs, H1 or H2 headings, correctly tagged images, outbound links, and having a site map.

All of these will affect your Google rank, although some (content and titles) carry more weight than others (alt tags on images).

Engage – off-site SEO

As the name suggests, off-site SEO covers everything you can do in other places online to improve your own SEO and help you to get on Google.

One metric used by Google to measure your ranking is the quality of your inbound links; that is, links from other places directing people to your site.

The practice of link building has long been a big part of any SEO campaign, although the focus has now shifted to the subtly different but more interpersonal practice of link earning.

Advisable ways of earning the high quality links that help you to get on Google include reaching out to bloggers and asking them to link to your best content, or offer to write a guest post with a link back to your site.

Leaving useful, non-generic comments on relevant blog posts with a link back to your site also works, as does being active and respected on a forum that allows you to display your web address in your signature or in posts.

Building a community on social media is another great way to improve the engagement with your content, if you can encourage your audience to share it directly from your site.

Stay fresh – regular content

While on and off-site SEO practices help you to get on Google, the ubiquitous search engine also takes into account the freshness of your website and its content.

It makes sense; after all, Google wants you to keep using its service, so strives to give the most relevant, freshest results it can. Stale websites get punished by falling in the rankings.

Even if most of your website’s pages are static and don’t change, there are ways to maintain a steady stream of new content. The most common is a regular blog, with the opportunity for people to comment on the posts.

Depending on the nature of your site, running a forum is also a possibility and helps with the fresh posts and interaction that Google values so highly.

Get on Google, Stay on Google

Being found through organic search engine results is vital to your business, and that means one thing: you have to get on Google.

By following the three key stages of building, engaging and staying fresh, you’ll give yourself the best of chance of both getting and staying there.

Web Assessments

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Laurel Lindsay

Today’s websites are the greatest marketing tool there is. They are the best tools for communicating with customers and showcasing your products and services. They are the lifeblood of your brand and convey your status, reputation, and position in the market. That’s why web assessments are so critical to learning whether you are making the most of your website.

These are a few questions that our web assessments answer: (1) Can consumers find your website easily when they search the internet for companies that sell the products and services you do? (2) Does your company’s name surface often on the internet? (3) Is your website designed to invite customers to your site’s inside pages to check out your products and make a purchase? (4) Can people locate your website through social media? Do your social media sites direct traffic to your website?

Web assessment points 1 and 2 (above): Can consumers find your website easily?

Web assessments tells you whether search engines like Google and Yahoo can “read” your website, so that your company name and products come up often when people search for them on the internet. Through search-engine optimization (SEO), your website and products are located more often, and your name can even seem to pop up everywhere when someone searches for your brand.

SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the search terms or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are used by your targeted consumers. The more often a website appears in search-engine results, the more often people will visit it.

By the way, can consumers access your website using their mobile phone? That’s another matter to consider when you ask for web assessments.

Website assessment point 3: Is your website designed to invite customers?

Every site is designed, but few are designed well. When it comes to website design, you don’t want it to look a mess. You want your brand, logo, colours, and company’s personality to explode from the home page and pull consumers inside. On the inner pages of the site, they read fascinating, well-written snippets on what’s great about you and your products and services. They see exciting themes– photographs, drawings, or picture-caption copy that communicates as well as the writing.

Bear in mind that a website built from a cookie-cutter template lacks original design and can seem amateurish for companies in the business of attracting customers or even employees. If you want to look professional—hire a professional designer to make you look good. Your reputation is at stake.

Consider the amazing sites that will impress visitors

All websites can be scaled to include digital catalogs, e-commerce, forums, message boards, blogs, auctions, contests, sales coupons that flash like light bulbs, newsletters, chat, classifieds, photo galleries, games, reviews, donation buttons, event enrollment forms, comments sections, and response forms. The only limitations are your imagination. By the way, we design catchy and meaningful logos.

Website assessment point 4: Do your social media sites direct traffic to your website?

Are you on social media? Your competitors are. Do you “share” your web content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and so on. Since you want to be on every corner of the web, it’s essential to incorporate social media into your website. This means having great social media links. You want all your sites—social media and web—to communicate with one another.

Web assessments are a must. If you do any digital work at all, ensure it’s focused on improving your website’s design, SEO, and connection to social media.

A Busy Person’s Shortcut To Marketing Yourself On Twitter

Posted on September 16, 2014 by Stacy Luck

Today lets talk about how to use Twitter to get more credibility exposure and lead generation for your business.

If you are like most small business owners, you are avoiding Twitter because you just don’t see the point! It’s actually really, really simple, which is why most people find it complicated.

But, more importantly it’s an effective way of boosting your visibility and credibility by getting you exposure to your future customers.

Step One: just create a Twitter account.

Step Two: Hashtags

Figure out how to use Hashtags, the pound symbol – the number sign, #.

What that does is connote a key word or topic. Make sure in your profile you are using hashtags to describe what you do. Use your city or a keyword like #pizzadelivery, #vaccummrepair.

That means when people are searching users with those hashtags, your profile will show up!

Step Three: Work your contacts

Once you sign up, make sure you add people you are already know and start following people you like and business’s that you frequent and start engaging with them.

Step Four: Engage in Conversation

Re-tweeting those people and business’s you follows tweets.

It’s a really great way to get their attention and let them know that you are out there because everybody appreciates free publicity and if you are engaging and promoting that business and those people, they will take notice and at least thank you for that. That’s how you start to engage on Twitter.

Step Five: Grow Your Network

You can also search other users by hashtags as well and you can start to follow people in your target market like in your city or people who are talking about the things that you provide solutions for.

Step Six: Get More Visibility

Those are a couple ways you can start using Twitter to generate a bit more exposure for your business and start engaging with your target audience and community at large.

Don’t forget to post your Twitter link on your website, your email signature, and any other promotional materials you may already have.

Best of luck and if you found this valuable please share and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel!

5 Quick and Easy ways to get more traffic to your website

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Laurel Lindsay

Let’s talk about getting more traffic to your website!

Here are 5 quick and easy ways to get more people to your web site.

1. Leverage your already existing promotional materials.

One of the easiest and most overlooked ways to promote your website and get more traffic to it is to mention your website address on your voicemail!

Also, don’t forget to add your website address to your email signature and any other promotional materials, and I’m talking any – vehicle decals, brochures, signage, anything else you can possibly add your website address to, go ahead and do it!

2. Work your email contacts.

Either send out a newsletter once a month to existing clients and contacts or a personal email out to the folks you know letting them know you have a website, what it can do and ask them to share it with their network.

3. Network on Social Media

Speaking of networks, if you are not leveraging social media to promote your business yet, you definitely want to go ahead and do that as soon as you are done reading this.

Promote yourself on Facebook, Pinterest, Google +, LinkedIn, Youtube, Twitter, you name it! Those are just a few sites out there that can help you drive traffic to your website.

4. Update your site often.

You have to give these contacts a reason to visit your site so make sure to update it on a frequent basis and provide valuable information to your target audience.

5. Pay for traffic

Last but not least, if you haven’t thought of it already, you might want to consider advertising on Google.

Google Pay Per Click ads are an affordable way to get exposure to your clients when they are typing in what you sell on Google.

That’s your one minute tip. If you found it helpful please share and thanks again for visiting!

3 simple ways to get more leads from your website

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Laurel Lindsay

Let’s talk about how to capture more leads from your website!

Is your website your best producing sales person?

If you’re not getting a steady stream of leads from your website, keep reading for 3 simple ways to get more leads from your site!

1. Have a call to action – clearly ask people to engage with you

An example of a simple call to action are “Call this number to get a quote”

2. Another thing you may want to consider is have an email newsletter signup.

You can offer an ethical bribe like, “sign up for our newsletter and get our free report on the 22 questions you must ask your web developer before signing on the dotted line.”

A strategic ask like that will allow you to trade information for somebody else’s email address and that way you can continue to market to them going forward.

3. You may also want to consider a live chat option.

Live chat from ZopIM is a super cool and affordable tool you can utilize to engage with your customers directly, in real time if they have questions, want to book an appointment or purchase something from you.

PROTIP: Take advantage of human nature- no one likes to miss out! Offer a Time Sensitive Special that ends soon!

Those are a couple tips for capturing more leads from your website, if you found this valuable please share and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!

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