Category Archives: social media

How to increase engagement on social media

Social media engagement is the measurement of the likes, comments and shares your social media posts get. However, it’s not just about the numbers, it’s about how engaged your audience is with your posts, videos etc. It’s about quality, not quantity.

For example, let’s say you hold a big BBQ at your home and invited loads of people – some you know and some you don’t. They all turned up, but all just sat around silently. Nobody spoke to each other, nobody danced, no fun and games. If you were just looking at the numbers game, your BBQ would be a huge success…after all, shed loads of people came. But was it really a success? Did your guests enjoy themselves? Did they like the BBQ food? You don’t know if you don’t speak to them and ask.

Social media is the same – engagement with your audience is crucial to build a rapport, to develop relationships with your followers and potential customers. It helps you to build customer loyalty and trust.

How do you engage on social media?

It’s all about interacting with the people who like and follow you. It’s about building those relationships, getting to know them, and showing a genuine interest in them and their business/family or whatever they talk to you about.

  • When a person comments on your posts, ALWAYS reply.
  • If they ask a question, answer it, and go that extra mile to give them the information they need – and more.
  • Depending on your post or the question asked, you can answer jokingly and have a bit of backwards and forwards banter.
  • Thank people for commenting; if you get a new follow-on Instagram, DM to say thank you and introduce yourself and ask about the person who has followed you. The same applies for Facebook – send a private message to say thank you and interact with that person – even if it’s just saying hi and asking them how their day has been.
  • Try and avoid talking about your products or services in these first contact messages – just be friendly, show your personality and be genuinely interested in your new contact.

These points are basic, but they do work.

Grow your followers!

Grow your followers

So now, we need to look at how to grow your followers – the more followers you have, the more engagement you’re likely to get. But please, DON’T buy followers and don’t do ‘follow for follow’ or ‘like for like’. Only follow or like someone or their business, if you are genuinely interested in them, if you genuinely like their business or their page, or are interested in the content they put out.

  • Be consistent – I know, I bang on about this all the time, but it really is important. You don’t have to post every day, but post regularly so that your audience know when you look for content from you.
  • Create unique content – don’t just copy what other people do. You can use ideas from other peoples’ content but make it your own. You can use Canva to make posts – there is a free version, so you don’t have to pay to start on this site and it’s extremely useful, with lots of different templates to help you. It’s also super easy to use.
  • If you share someone else’s post, make sure you always credit them with it, so people know who created it.
  • Use a mixture of posts, such as quotes, gifs, memes, jokes, video, hints and tips, ‘how to’ posts, informational posts, educational posts – the list is endless.
  • You can also do ads for your business/products/services as a post but keep these to a minimum. Apply the 80/20 rule – 80% of posts to engage, entertain, educate, or inspire and 20% selling.
  • You can do paid ads to increase your followers, but you don’t have to do this.
  • Have a consistent look and feel to your page posts – this comes down to your brand – what do you want your posts to look like? How do you want people to feel? What colours do you use? A theme could be the look of your content, the type of content your share (funny, educational, inspiring) – this will largely depend on what you do. For example, if you’re a mindset coach, you might post inspirational quotes or tips to improve mindset, so this is worth spending some time thinking about what you want to portray to your audience.
  • Use images in your posts.
  • You can also collaborate with other businesses to help grow your followers. It’s best to collaborate with other businesses who have a similar audience to you but sell or promote different types of products or services. For example, if you are a hairdresser and you do hair for weddings, you could collaborate with a make-up artist who also does weddings – you can recommend each other when you get a booking. You can put links on each other’s social media pages and websites.
  • A collaboration could also include a contest or giveaway, a blog post promoting their products or a post on your social media pages…and vice versa.  
  • Set up a Facebook group. These are great for increasing social media engagement as they tend to be more social than pages as the members can post questions or comments at any time. It also means your customers can communicate with each other and get to know other like-minded people. It’s important that you are active in your group every day, several times a day – you need to keep an eye on things to make sure any disputes or differences of opinion don’t get out of hand…and moderate posts to avoid spam. And of course, engage with your group members by posting something of value every day.   

Measurement

As with everything, measurement is important. If you don’t measure what you do, how will you know if things have improved or if you are successful?

So, before you start any new engagement campaign, look at your insights on your various social media pages. Take a note of your followers, look at the type of posts that are popular. Then, when you embark on increasing your engagement, you’ll be able to see how you’ve done against what you did before. You’ll be able to see which posts people like and don’t like, what kind of posts get comments, which ones get shared, and which ones produce tumbleweed! 

Most of all, enjoy your social media – there’s a clue in the name! It’s about being sociable with others, engaging with them, building relationships, gaining trust, and making new friendships and business contacts, as well as new customers.

If you have any more tips, please let me know in the comments.

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How Social Media Marketing benefits your business

Social Media is probably the widest used platform on the internet. There are so many different platforms to choose from, and they all have millions of people using them every single day. For many of us, social media is the first thing we log into when we get up in the morning, and the last thing we check before we go to bed at night.

Social media sites can be accessed by any device that has an internet connection, including PCs, mobile phones, tablets etc. Some of the most popular sites are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Snapchat. It’s a huge advantage to any business, big or small, to be on some of these sites in order to grow business, and social media marketing is a bit part of that. 

So, what are the benefits of social media marketing?

The Time Factor

It can take as little as an hour a day to increase traffic to your sites, make sales and get your brand out there. Social media gives a massive amount of exposure to your business and social media sites are an important part of any marketing plan.  

Create social media profiles for your business on your chosen sites and start engaging with potential clients. Invite your friends, family, employees, business partners – in fact anyone you know, to like and share your page. Just having people interact with your page and your content will increase your brand awareness and start to build your brand reputation.   

More traffic

Social media marketing – posting and engaging with your followers – will help you reach many more people than if you ignore social media. Every single time you post, you are giving your business another opportunity to get a new customer. Join more than one social media site, as different platforms serve different people and different ages. Different people search differently and also like different types of posts, so mix it up with your posts – don’t stick to just selling. You also need to engage, entertain, educate and inspire your followers. The 80/20 rule is useful – 80% engaging, entertaining, educating and inspiring and 20% selling.

Social Media also gives you access to followers from all over the world, and engagement at all times of the day and night.

Search Engine ranking

Search Engine ranking

You will get seen more on social media, but of course, there is more to it than just posting every day. Search Engine Optimization is also important to get your page ranked higher with search engines, such as Google.

To give your business the best chance to be seen and found, create good quality content, use keywords and phrases, and use good quality images.

If you write a blog, share it to your social media page, do video, infographics, include the odd case study and give business information. Don’t forget the fun stuff too – show where you work, your hobbies, employee photos, stuff you do at weekends or for charity. This all helps to not only improve your ranking, but goes a long way to show that you are human and real to your customers.

Conversion

Once your business is more visible, you’ll have more opportunities for your posts to convert into customers. People like to know who they’re buying from, and social media allows them to see your personality, to engage with you on things other than business and have a little insight into the person you are outside of work. People prefer to deal with real people, so social media serves this purpose. The more of an impression you make on a new follower, the more likely they’re going to think of you when they need what you offer.

Customer satisfaction

As the name suggests, social media is about being sociable. It’s not just a business networking platform, it’s also a communication and social network too. When customers comment on your posts, make sure you reply and try to strike up a conversation. Showing that you reply to each comment personally proves to your customers that you care and value their opinions. This gives them a good customer experience and so they’ll be more satisfied.

Sometimes you will get a complaint or get asked difficult questions. It’s even more important to answer these comments – don’t ignore them. The fact that you take the time to respond publicly to a complaint or question will make the customer see you in a much better light, especially if you can turn it around and make the complaint into a compliment!

Brand loyalty

We all want to have shed loads of loyal customers who love what we do , how we do it, and who want to come back and buy from us time and time again. Social media can help with that. Customers love social media and love to interact with the company they’re buying from – they often see social media as the place they can communicate directly with you and your business. And research has shown that customers are more loyal to brands that directly engage with them on social media.

When customers see you engaging with your followers, they’ll start to see you as an expert – and regularly posting different kinds of posts makes you also appear credible. Interacting with customers shows you value them, and care about them. This will result in them recommending you to family and friends, they’ll mention your business on social media and, if they see someone asking for what you supply, they’ll put your business forward.  

 It doesn’t cost much

Social media marketing is probably the most cost effective form of marketing. You can join all platforms with a business page for free. You can post, engage, get new customers, and interact with them…all for free. It’s only when you decide to advertise on a platform that there is a cost, but the costs are really quite low compared to other forms of marketing.

Being on social media and having a huge following with loads of customers for free, gives you a bigger budget for other kinds of marketing or for investing in your business.

Market insight

This is one of the best things about social media. You can monitor and measure the activity on your sites – using the page’s insights. By interacting with customers and looking at how they react to your individual posts, you can gain valuable information about your customers.

You can find out what their interests are, what their opinions are, what they like and dislike. All information that can help you understand your audience and what they want from you.

Be an expert

I touched on this briefly earlier, but by posting well written content, quality images, and video etc., your audience will start to look to you for information and you will become an expert or leader in your particular field.

Social media platforms are the idea place to set yourself up as an expert. Being able to directly speak to your customers also creates a rapport with them, a relationship that you will both value. This could lead to you becoming an influencer.

Conclusion

Social media marketing needs to be done correctly and consistently. If you follow all the points mentioned in this article, you will find that you increase your brand awareness. Your followers will see you as an expert, will enjoy the interaction they have with your business and they will become loyal followers and customers

SEO and Social Media

Do you take the time to promote your content on social media, such as Facebook and Instagram? Do you hope that this will boost your search engine rankings?

There are experts out there who think trying to boost your search engine rankings this way is a waste of time. However, there is a link between social media and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but it isn’t very clear unless you try to understand the relationship between the two. I’m going to have a look at what you need to do to get search ranking from your social presence…and so bring traffic to your website.

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According to Google, social media is NOT a factor that directly affects your SEO ranking, but there is evidence that things like ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ are somehow related to your ranking. However, social ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ are definitely a direct ranking factor for Bing…go figure!

How does social media affect SEO?

Let’s say you write a blog and write a sentence about your latest blog and post the URL link to it on your Facebook page.  It gets lots of likes and shares. Social media is built for people to share content, so the more people that share it, the more visibility your post will have. If friends of friends see your post and then click on the link to your actual blog (the URL), this will take traffic to your website or blog site, so they are linking to your site and it’s that linking to your site that is a major factor in SEO ranking. I know…a bit confusing!

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So how can you optimize your social media for SEO?

  • First of all, do you have several social media sites…Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest? Make sure that you have a consistent profile image so you are more recognisable. Complete all the profile or bio section, making sure it is totally relevant to your business, whilst being attractive enough to appeal to your audience. Include a link to your website and, if you have a newsletter sign up page/opt-in or a particular product campaign on the go, do a link to that too.
  • You hear this all the time, but it is so important…be consistent with your posts and post regular updates. This will be different depending on what social media site you use, for example on Twitter you need to post several times a day, but you don’t need to do this with Facebook or LinkedIn. So post according to guidelines for each different site.
  • Create great posts. Use eye-catching images/photos that attract attention, craft a good catchy headline and actually ASK for a share. This is good optimization and it has been proven that these techniques work.
  • The question I’ve been asked a lot lately is around the use of hashtags. Can they help with SEO? Hashtags are keywords, so yes, they can help to categorise your content and help social media users find it. But, hashtag use is different on every social media site…they are used extensively on Instagram, for example, but not so much on Facebook, although it is becoming more popular.
  • Take a good look at your website and ensure that your website content is optimized for social sharing. Here are a few tips to encourage visitors to share your content.
    – Create quality content with a great headline
    – Optimize content keywords
    – Include eye-catching images/photos
    – Make sure you have a call to action
    – Add social media sharing buttons to all your content – if you make it easy for people to share your content, they are more likely to do it.
    – Videos are huge at the moment and show up in search results, so introduce the odd video into your content.
  • Don’t forget about all of the above – it’s not enough to do it all and then walk away and leave your sites to their own devices. You need to constantly be there to engage with people who comment on your content – answer any queries, comment on their smartphone-1894723_640comments and respond to any reviews you get. You can also connect with influencers related to your content – like and share their content, make comments on their pages. If you belong to groups relating to your niche, take part in conversations, give advice, answer questions – interact with people. Your responses and interaction help social media algorithms recognise that your content is active, which in turn, improves its reach. And KEEP POSTING – social media moves very quickly and it’s easy for posts to get lost among all the others.

Like everything else when running your small business, social media is a crucial part of getting your messages, services and products out to the masses. It takes time and effort to make it successful, but stick with it and it will work.

Now, please share this article if you have found it useful and take a look at my other blog posts to find more articles to help you market your small business.

 

How to attract ‘likes’ to your Facebook page

large-193357_640It is estimated that there are around 40 million people on Facebook, many of them small businesses who use Facebook to promote their business and brand and connect with their customers. So, with this many people out there, why is it hard to attract ‘likes’ to your page? You could go the route of using paid ads, but I’d like to take you through some ideas that don’t cost any money.

Are your posts interesting?

One of the most common reasons why people don’t like certain pages is because they find the posts boring or uninteresting. This is why it’s so important to know your audience and know who you are aiming your marketing to. You need to know what floats their boat. I can’t answer that question for you as businesses have different target audiences, but I can point you in the direction of making your posts more interesting and engaging.

Images/Video

face-1103708_640 (1)Make images a regular feature of your posts…captivating and relevant images can increase engagement and reach on your page and posts. Research has shown that posts with multiple images get more interest, so definitely worth giving that a go.

Video has become very popular too so, as well as sharing photos and images, share a few relevant videos.

Facebook ‘Live’, where you record yourself in real time talking to your Facebook followers, is definitely the way to go too in 2019 and it’s a great way to engage with your followers…and gives you the chance to show them the real you!

Personal stuff

person-1245959_640People like to see the face behind a name, so make sure that you use a good profile picture of yourself.

Don’t go into overload, but also post some personal stuff on your business page, such as:

  • A few photos of your holiday
  • Talk about your favourite things or hobbies
  • Share a photo of your pet

An occasional personal post helps give you the human aspect and people are more likely to engage with you and your brand.

  • Make sure you have completed the ‘About’ section on your Facebook page; ensure your profile section is complete and that you have given your name, address (if applicable to your business or premises) and telephone number. Use relevant keywords in your title and in the ‘About’ section.
  • Fill out as much of the page info as you can; categories, sub-categories, the URL to your website (and vice versa), where you are based, your opening hours – this will all help when people do a Google search.
  • If someone sends you a private message, make sure you reply promptly.
  • Put a link to your Facebook page on your signature on email, on your website, on business cards and any marketing information, such as flyers/posters…and of course on any other social media you have, such as Twitter, Instagram etc.
  • If you write a blog, you can draw attention to your Facebook page by mentioning it in a blog post – make sure it is relevant to your blog post of course!

Competitions, Discounts, Offers, Incentives

  • Competitions are also a great way to entice people in – if you promote your competition on your website or to your customers on your email list, making liking your page a competition entry requirement. And when you announce the result, do it on Facebook ‘Live’ or via video stream
  • Offer an exclusive discount to those who like you on Facebook
  • When you promote new products or services, offer a special discount to the first 5-10 customers
  • Ask existing customers to recommend you to their friends and family and ask for referrals – if a customer refers someone to you and they buy, they get a 10% discount off their next order…or a free gift
  • Give loyalty cards to your customers, so every time they buy from you, they get a mark on their card – when they have bought 10 items, they get a free gift – a bit like the coffee shop loyalty cards!

woman-1169324_640Above all, try and post regularly, so your name keeps popping up on your followers pages – their friends may see your name a few times and decide to take a look at your page.

If you belong to groups, leave comments on posts, and answer any questions people pose, so your name is out there (try and post using your business page, not your personal page).

Keep your posts short and sweet as readers can scan them quickly without having to click on ‘read more’

Use a variety of posts

Finally, have your heard of the 80/20 rule? The idea is to keep promotional content of your business to a minimum, so post non-promotional content 80% of the time and keep promotional content to 20%.

social-media-3758364_640There are loads of different kinds of posts to keep your followers engaged, for example, promoting your blog post, inspirational quotes, top tip, competition and photos of your products.

These are just a few ideas. Don’t forget to look at your Facebook insights…as this gives you valuable information about your page and you can see what posts have been the most popular. You can then tailor posts for future use.

Happy Posting!

Which Social Media Platform?

There are so many Social Media platforms to choose from – how do you know which one will be right for you?

The most popular, according to a report by eBizMBA Rank in September 2016, is Facebook, which is hardly surprising as it is very user friendly. The report gives other top platforms too – let’s take a look…

facebook-2048127_640Facebook – The top of the pile with an estimated 1.1 billion unique monthly visitors. Facebook is a social networking site that enables people to connect with friends and family, sharing photos, videos and status updates/messages. It can be used for fun or for business. It is estimated that over 1 million small businesses use Facebook and is very popular with small business owners in France.

film-589490_640YouTube – After Google, YouTube is the largest search engine with an estimated 1 billion unique monthly visitors. It’s where most people go to watch or share video content. It covers every single subject you can think of from popular music videos and films to Joe Bloggs down the street falling off his skateboard! Anyone can post personal videos or share content.

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Twitter – With 310 million unique monthly visitors, Twitter is a real-time public network, where you often see breaking news first! Twitter limits its users to 140 characters per post, but businesses still use it to interact with clients and pass on information.

linked-in-2668687_640LinkedIn – This is a social networking site for professionals. With 255 million unique monthly visitors, LinkedIn members post a profile of themselves, very much like an extended CV. Users can promote themselves and their businesses, connect with other businesses and even apply for jobs or ask for work.

pinterest-1183717_640Pinterest – This is a fairly new concept, but with 250 million unique monthly visitors, it is fast becoming popular. It’s an image-based visual platform that allows its visitors to create digital bulletin boards where businesses can pin their content. As more than half of its members are women, it’s a great place for businesses whose target audience is largely female should think about being a part of.

google-plus-940316_640Google Plus + – Google Plus or Google+ is an interest based social media platform with 120 million unique monthly visitors. You can post photos and status updates on your profile or you can post to specific communities or groups. Specific communities are set up for different subjects so you can post blogs to specific themes. There’s multi-person messaging, text and video chat called Hangouts and you can run events. It’s a very versatile platform.

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Instagram – This is a visual platform, much the same as Pinterest, with an estimated 1 million unique visitors. Posts are mostly connected to travel, food, fashion and art and it has video and photo editing features.

 

reddit-1460603_640Reddit – This is a little different to the other sites – it is still popular, with an estimated 85 million unique monthly visitors, but the content is voted on by the visitors to the site. It is still a social media site, more of a community where posts are identified by topics, such as technology, music, etc. Users submit links and posts that are of value are ‘upvoted’ and those that aren’t are ‘downvoted’. The voting determines where the post sits on the site – however if your post/link hits the front page, it is seen by hundreds of thousands of people – sending a huge percentage of them to the linked website!

vk-3696008_640VK – I have to admit to not having heard of this one! VK is short for VKontakte – a social media networking site where members can add friends, gain followers and post photos. However it is a largely aimed at Eastern European visitors, particularly Russian. In fact it is the most popular site in Russia.


flickr-881367_640Flickr – This is an imaging and video hosting platform. It is very popular for those wanting to share and embed photographs. With an estimated 65 million users, it is still up there with the best!

As you can see, the top sites are a varied bunch, but all are designed to help people interact with others and share information, photos, videos and messages. If you have a small business, they are a great way to get your brand name, products and services out there. I would probably choose to stick with the more popular sites, but of course it’s up to the individual which site you’d like to choose – just be aware that some may not be as good as others.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about and learning about the different sites and I’d love to know which is your favourite? Put a comment in the box below to let me know which one you like best and why…and if you’ve been inspired to try something new!