Tag Archives: social media charente

Creative ways to solve low ranking on social media

When people talk about ranking and search engine optimisation, (SEO), it can feel like a very dry subject that gets most of us glazing over. So, I’m hoping that my blog this week will help unravel those complicated articles and make it a bit clearer!

I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of SEO, but concentrate on social media SEO, which can help your small business be seen and help with your ranking on Google.

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about algorithms and how their constant and many changes effect small businesses. Creating great content is very time consuming, without even thinking about networking and the engagement that you must do to keep your business in the spotlight. But, and this is a big BUT (!), social media isn’t just about posting articles and images, (and this is a huge misconception for a lot of businesses), it’s about building brand recognition, sharing valuable and memorable content, earning that all-important trust from your audience, showcasing your expertise, and driving targeted traffic to your website, shop, or blog.

What is SEO for social media?

Social media SEO is about combining social media and SEO strategies, so that when someone does a search in google for something you do, your position in that ranking is on that first page, and the key to that is optimising certain keywords or phrases that are relevant to you and your business. For example, I specialise in marketing strategy for small businesses and I’m based in the Charente in SW France. My target market is small businesses, specifically creative businesses. So, I use these phrases as a category or tag when I publish my blog posts to help my business get found. If you type ‘creative business marketing in Charente’ or ‘small business marketing Charente’ into google, my marketing blog (which includes my name, email address and contact details) ranks on the first page. This encourages people to click on my blog posts, which then points them to my website where they can find more information about what I do and how I can help. And, because my business name is also my name – Cindy Mobey Marketing – even if people can’t remember my business name, if they just type my name into Google, the first nine results include my blog, website, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram pages, as well as specific articles I’ve written or where I’ve been mentioned by other businesses.

Social media helps you big time in achieving a good ranking on Google. You can include keywords and phrases in your posts and in hashtags. And you can point readers, via a link, to your blog, shop, or website.  

No matter what business you’re in, whether you’re an artist, writer, builder, dentist, beautician, photographer etc, there are billions of people out there who trawl the internet every minute of every day, searching for things they want to buy, or just generally looking for something that grabs their attention. Did you know that ALL the major social media sites now use hashtags, keywords in posts or both, to CATEGORISE YOUR CONTENT? People can follow hashtags or subjects they’re interested in; in the same way they follow accounts – every post that they engage with tells that particular social media site about their interests. Then they will automatically be shown similar content from accounts they don’t follow. And, if you’re doing all you can to rank your social media posts, that content that’s being pushed could be yours!

If just the word ‘SEO’ gets you running for the hills, screaming, and pulling your hair out, you can be assured that even though it is important, social media outshines SEO in the social aspect. SEO gets people to click into your website, shop, or blog, but it doesn’t help you engage with your audience. That’s down to you and your social media posts.

But you can use your social media posts to ask your audience questions using polls, you can engage in comments and learn a lot about their wants and needs, as well as replying to questions and concerns. Then you can use this information to make more relevant posts – and include the keywords and phrases you know will resonate with your audience, (SEO), to encourage them to engage more, share your content and visit your website, shop, or blog. It’s kind of a big circle!

SEO really is just getting traffic where you want it and being found on Google.

How does social media help your SEO?

Social media helps by:

  • Helping your content get found and enjoyed by more people – this is especially important if your business does not rank on the first page of a google search.
  • Building your brand awareness. Social media helps you expose your business to a wide audience, so when your business does appear in search results, it will be a familiar name.
  • Building your credibility – showing your expertise and knowledge on social media helps to set you up as an expert in your field.   
  • Generating trust – your followers on social media learn to trust you through the engagement they have and see with others on your page. When someone likes what you do and has a great customer experience, they will refer you to their friends and family – so they will check out your business, which may include searching for you on google.
  • Increasing local knowledge of you and your business. Local SEO, (keywords and phrases that mention your area – small business marketing in Charente), helps your content get discovered by people local to your area. This is especially important for us smaller businesses.
  • Building more links to your business – the more things that link to your business is shared, the more likely you are to rank higher. Encourage people to share your content that has links to your website, shop, or blog. That will then be seen by their followers. You can also buddy up with other businesses – choose those that do something that compliments your business – and put links to each other’s business on your website. For example, if you are a hairdresser, you could buddy up with a beautician and/or nail technician to offer a full wedding package. 

It’s important to remember that business social media pages appear in Google searches, and I’ve heard that Google is working with Instagram and TikTok on an agreement to index video posts.  

What can you do to help boost clicks to your website?

Although the answer to the question, ‘Does social media improve my ranking on Google?’ is technically ‘no’, it plays a crucial part and is a powerful SEO tool to help boost clicks to your website, shop, or blog, which in turn helps with your rankings.

Here are three quick tips that can help you with your social media content to help boost those clicks:

  • Cut down on word count. This is a very controversial statement, and I must admit not one that I adhere to all the time! The ideal length of a post varies depending on the social media site, but generally less is more. According to Neil Patel, his research shows that the click-through rate on paragraph-long Facebook posts is 2-6 times lower than updates that are approximately 40 characters long. 16 Tips To Improve Your Social Media Conversions (quicksprout.com)
  • Tell your audience what you want them to do next…include a call to action (CTA). Use words or phrases such as, ‘check out’, ‘like’, ‘follow me for more….’ Don’t leave anything to chance – if you want people to read your blog post, ask them by giving a link; if you want them to check out your shop or website, tell them how they can do that. Be clear and concise.
  • Give your audience a reason to click away from your social media post. Don’t just sell to people, help them. Ensure that your content solves a problem or pain point that you know is common to your customers. If your products or services help solve that problem, pointing them to your website or shop for the solution will help your click-through rate.

Conclusion

I hope that this article has helped you see how your success on social media can influence your SEO results. In short, if you use your social media channels and posts to distribute helpful content to your audience, build your brand awareness and point people to your website, shop, or blog to gain more traffic, it will always impact your SEO rankings, and you’ll nail it!

I am a small business marketing coach and can help you with your marketing strategy and social media marketing strategy, so please feel free to contact me. I offer a no-obligation 30-minute consultation. Email me at cindymobey@outlook.com

Alternatively, check out my website, where you can see all my services and valuable digital products to support you on your marketing journey. cindymobeymarketing.com

Social Media Posting With Purpose

Posting on social media is an important part of any small business, and we all know the importance of having engaging content. It helps build a relationship and rapport with your followers, can drive traffic to your website, blog, or shop, and can convert followers into customers.

But what if you’re unsure of what to publish, or have just simply run out of engaging ideas? You’re definitely not alone and having a social media content strategy can help you get right back on track. This article will help you understand how that works.

Posting effective posts

How do you know if your posts are going to be effective? You can look at your insights to find out what has been popular before – and this does help you see what kind of post your audience likes to see. But there are also ways to help your post appeal to your audience.

Your caption – describe what your audience are seeing in the image you publish. Draw attention to it by using a question or a headline. Apparently, 150 characters or around 15 words gets the most clicks.

Emoji – you can add an emoji to add a bit more interest to your post – it has been found that emojis attract the eye and, if you use relevant ones, can make you more relatable to your audience. And you can use the arrow or pointing finger to point the eye to your links.

Call to action – this is important as it tells your audience what to do next. For example, if you are publishing a post about a particular blog or article, tell them they can read more by clicking on your link.  

Mention or tag other businesses – or other accounts you have (if you’re posting on FB, mention your IG account for example). Add links – this helps for added visibility and reach. Mentioning other businesses is a great way to promote engagement, not just with those businesses you tag, but encourages others to look at those businesses. It also helps to increase your exposure, as the business you mention might share your post, or do one of their own mentioning you.

Hashtags – add relevant hashtags, (ones that relate to the topic of your post) as well as hashtags related to your business. Use a variety of hashtags and don’t always use the same ones.  

Images or videos – always use high quality photos, GIFs or video clips that will resonate with your target audience.

Repurpose your existing content.

Have you thought about repurposing content you’ve used before? You can simply reuse a post you’ve published in the past or repurpose it into something else. For example, if you have written a blog post, you can take some information from that and write new posts; you can make a video from a post you’ve done before or make posts from video you’ve done before.

You can also share posts that resonate with your business from other people’s posts.

Know your social media channels.

We all have our favourite social media channels. Different people use different channels to achieve their different goals and behaviour can vary greatly between the channels.

Facebook – has the largest and most diverse audience. Because Facebook shows a huge range of content to its users, including ads, news, entertainment, and anything you may have previously shown an interest in, Facebook users tend to scroll a lot. By typically, will only spend a few seconds viewing a post, so it’s crucial to have posts that capture their attention. Facebook is also one of the best channels to put links to your website, blog, or shop.

It’s advised to post at least once a day – twice if possible, for maximum coverage and using just a couple of hashtags.

66% of the UK population and more than 70% of the US population use Facebook. Although the highest number of users are between 18-34, the numbers of older people using Facebook is growing fast.

Instagram – is a very visual channel. Colourful posts with graphics and short video are the most popular, but not as good in getting people to your website, blog, or shop. But a tip is to have your own branded hashtag and to use that as that will help your engagement…and could encourage others to use your hashtag.

More than 60% of Instagram users are between the ages of 18-34, so it’s a younger demographic than Facebook, so worth bearing that in mind when posting. It’s advised to post 3-7 times a week when you’re establishing your brand and more once you get a solid audience. And you can use up to 30 hashtags, but most advise between 5-10 as being the best number.   

TikTok – is about using short video and having fun. There is a huge number of influencers on TikTok, so your brand is more likely to be picked up by one of them on TikTok than on other channels. Sound is also a huge feature of TikTok, and users are more likely to engage with and remember your brand if they like the music you’ve selected.

Posting 1-4 times a day is recommended, and using 3-5 hashtags or more, so long as they are relevant to your post.

Twitter – is about short, sharp posts, as you can only use up to 280 characters, so message need to be clear, concise and to the point. You can post video, but it should also be clear, short and to the point.

Hashtags should be kept to the bare minimum – 1-2 per post. It is recommended to post 1-2 times a day and no more than 3-5 per day.  

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a more professional channel, and your brand should be more business-like. Keep posts brief and use bullet points and line breaks to get your information across. Visuals and video get more engagement. It’s the norm to share links to articles you’ve written, websites you may have contributed to, or links to your own website or blog site.

LinkedIn has a targeting tool, where you can target people based on language, location, company size, industry, and a lot more.

There’s no hard and fast rule about posting, but it is recommended to post no more than 1-5 times a day (but only if you have quality content) and no less than once a month. Hashtags should be restricted to 1-2 per post.

Threads – is a brand-new channel, that only launched in July 2023. Posts are mainly text based, but you can post reels and stories. It offers a space for real time updates and public conversations.

There’s not enough data at the moment but recommended that posts are 3-5 times a week minimum. Threads doesn’t support hashtags at the moment.  

 

What type of content should you publish?

I always advise having a variety of content to keep your followers engaged. 80% of posts engaging, educating, entertaining and inspiring, with only 20% of posts selling or promoting your business.

You can achieve this by posting things like tips in your niche, FAQs, ‘did you know’ posts, behind the scenes, your story, personal posts, before and after photos, photos of your products or services, case studies, blog posts, links to website or shop, inspirational quotes or educational quotes, funny memes/jokes. The list is endless…and don’t forget you can promote events you’re going to be attending and any promotions, contests, giveaways, or specials you may have going on in your business.

You can also look at the special days each month, (which I have published on my Facebook page) to see if anything is relevant to your business – or that you can be creative with and make it relevant.

You can also use days of the week through hashtags – such as #ThrowbackThursday and do posts around those.  

Variety is the key to posting. That’s why it is a good idea to have a content strategy and content calendar, so you can plan exactly what you want to do and when to coincide with anything important happening in your business, niche, or industry.

When to post

Despite what you may read on the internet, when to post is linked to your own personal business and how you like to run your business. Most small businesses tend to post first thing in the morning – and I find I get more engagement if I post early.

But it largely depends on your audience. If you are UK based, and you have a lot of followers in the US, posting early won’t necessarily catch their attention as they’re in a different time zone, so it might be worth posting again later in the day to coincide with their morning.

You can look at your insights on each of your social media channels to find out when is the best time to post for your business – and it shows you when you’re likely to get the most engagement.

Batch create posts and schedule.

A big time saver for small businesses is to batch create your posts. That simply means creating a week’s worth of posts in one go – this helps you to be more consistent and you can choose to theme each week if you want to.

Scheduling posts is also a big time saver, as once it’s done, you don’t have to worry about it, (although I would advise checking that your scheduled posts have published as this sometimes doesn’t happen)!

Even if you do batch create posts and schedule them, I’d always advise leaving space for reacting to something, or adding in an extra post or two during the week in real time.

Reply to comments!

This is obvious, but it’s really important to reply to the comments you get on your social media posts. Social media is about being social – and engaging with your audience, so what better way to engage with them than replying to comments and getting a conversation going.

If a post of yours is shared, it’s also a good idea to go to that share and leave a comment to say ‘thank you’ for sharing.

I hope this post has been useful and has made you think about your social media posts. There’s a lot more to it than just making and pressing that ‘post’ button.

If you struggle with posting and want some help with a content strategy for your particular business, I can help you get yours up and running. Just drop me a message on my FB or IG, or email me at cindymobey@outlook.com and we can arrange a free 30 minute call to talk about your business and how I can help.   

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

How to run a Facebook Christmas Campaign to sell your products

Christmas is usually the most important time of year for anyone who sells products or services. With around 93% of people owning a mobile phone or device, millions of them will be logging into Facebook (FB) looking for gift ideas, Christmas related posts and funnies. So it makes sense to use FB to reach some of this massive audience with your posts.   

christmas-2618269_640Christmas is the season of giving and all over the world, people get excited about everything that surrounds this magical time of year. So, let FB be your ‘Santa’s little helper’ and get started now on your Christmas campaign.

If you market your business, you’ll know that a giveaway is the way to get better engagement, more followers and sales. But as everyone who markets their business also knows, you need to stand out from your competition. So how can you run a successful Facebook Christmas campaign?

As an example, let’s say you run a jewellery business, selling jewellery that you make. You sell online via an online store and to the public directly through your market stall. You have a website where people can see your products and you have a business FB page.

What are you hoping to achieve by running a Christmas campaign?

  • Increase your sales of jewellery online and face to face
  • Raise the profile of your business (your brand)
  • More people looking at your product range on your website
  • More ‘likes’ on your FB page
  • Increase the enquiries you get about your jewellery

Now you know what you’re hoping to achieve, you can get started.

Your target market

The first thing to look at is your target market. Who do you want to sell to? What do they do for a living? What can they afford to buy and where do they live. You can get this by looking at your current customers and also look at who engages with your social media pages, your website and/or your blog.

If you have a FB business page, you can look at FB insights. This does take a while to get your head around if you want to fully analyse everything, but as a basic guide…Go to the Overview tab to export your FB Insights data. A pop-up box will appear with three choices…Page data, Post data and Video data. If you click on each of these in turn, you will be able to see key engagement metrics for your page. Facebook do a guide for more in depth information – click here

If you use Instagram, you can also look at their guide for analysing insights on your Instagram account. And you can use data and the details to run a Christmas campaign on Instagram too. Click here to see how to look at your Instagram insights.

cat-1898637_640You will have your unique brand for your products or services, but it’s a good idea to look at branding your products for Christmas and apply that branding to your FB posts and your website/blog. Famous brands do this every year, for example, television programmes such as Dr Who, will have a Christmas special episode, fast food outlets will use Christmas themed wrappings for their burgers, pizza etc. and there will always be a popular musician who will release a Christmas album, such as Cliff Richard! Everyone jumps on the bandwagon at Christmas, so why shouldn’t you too?

When you advertise your products for Christmas, give the ad a Christmassy theme, spice up your website or blog with some Christmas pages and look at packaging your products with Christmas paper, ribbons or offer a gift wrap service (either free or for a small charge).

Your campaign     

It’s up to you when to start your campaign, but generally campaigns start around the September/October point.

As I’m specifically talking about a FB campaign, let’s look at what kind of posts you can put up to attract business. The important thing to remember is that, although you want to be selling as much as you can during this period, it’s also important that your customers get something of value, something that makes a difference to their lives – what’s in it for them? How will they benefit from your campaign? So how can you do all this and still make a profit? Here are some ideas…

Offers/discounts

Everyone loves a bargain, so run a special offer for Christmas on a particular product or service. Make it clear that it’s for the Christmas period only.

sticker-473635_640Offer gift cards so customers can buy a gift card to give to family and friends.

You could run a ‘buy one, get one free offer’ or ‘buy one, get the second half price’ for a limited time. Big companies like Boots the chemist, do this every Christmas with their ‘buy two, get the third free’ offer.

Run a ‘recommend a friend’ offer – if one of your customer’s recommends a friend, then when that friend buys something, your customer gets a free gift or a money- off voucher.

Competition

Run a Christmas themed competition with a special prize – make sure that the prize is appealing and worth entering the competition for. You can do the results of the competition ‘live’ on FB or via a pre-recorded video for more impact…and you could do the same with the run up to the end date of the competition – for example, ‘only one week left to enter our fabulous competition to win a xxxxx’.

Share Christmas themed updates     

You can add value to your customers’ lives by sharing Christmas themed updates. For christmas-dinner-3011500_640example, if you are a restaurant, you could share your Chef’s favourite Christmas dish, dessert or menu; Hairdressers can share easy to do hairstyles for Christmas parties; Beauticians can offer special packages so your body/face/nails/feet etc. are ‘Christmas ready’!; If you sell make-up, you can push your glittery make-up or maybe publish a video on how to do your Christmas party make-up. You get the idea!

You could also share Christmas themed things on your FB page that are just useful and nothing to do with your business, such as ‘how to gift-wrap your presents with style’ or ‘how to decorate your tree’. These kind of posts have the potential to draw in a new audience who may then go on to look at your products/services.

As well as these posts, you could also post inspirational Christmas quotes, ask a question posts, nostalgic post and Christmas trivia related posts – maybe a ‘did you know….’ kind of thing.

You can also produce a FB ad for the Christmas period – socialmediatoday.com have a great article on how you can do this in detail, so have a read.

How many times a week should I post on FB?

The recommended number of posts is once a day and post in the afternoon to reach the maximum number of people. The minimum suggested is three times a week and maximum number, ten times a week. You can do all your posts in advance for the following week and schedule them to automatically appear at a certain time every day.

You don’t need to use all of the ideas I’ve talked about, but I hope I’ve given you some food for thought and that you will crack on with producing your Christmas campaign and I wish you luck with lots of sales and engagement!

Copyright? Royalty free? Public domain? Why can’t I just go on Google images and use any photo?

I’ve decided to look at the issues we can face when just using any image we happen to find on Google images for our blogs, Facebook pages, Instagram or on our websites. This has been brought to my attention by a friend who has had this problem recently and been fined. You could also find yourself with a fine if you don’t know about the rules surrounding use of images you might find on Google, for example.

When I first started blogging, I thought I could just log into Google images and use anything that came up…anything that caught my eye. Luckily I learned before I published my first blog that this isn’t the case and you can get into serious trouble if you just use anything. And there are some great sites out there where you can get free images without the worry of being fined….and they have fab images.

Copyright

copyright-850371_640Have a go yourself, just log into Google and type in ‘Images of cats’ for example…then click on one of the images. Yes, you can copy and paste the image…it doesn’t stop you from doing so, but it is illegal. If you look at the image you have clicked on, there is a caption under it saying, “Images may be subject to copyright.” It is up to you to check before you use anyone’s photo. However I found this was a bit of a hassle, because it can take a lot of research, going to page to page, until you find the information you are after.

The Wikipedia definition of ‘copyright’ is this:

“Copyright is a law that gives the owner of a work (like a book, movie, picture, song or website) the right to say how other people can use it. Copyright laws make it easier for authors to make money by selling their works. … If someone copies a work without permission, the owner can say they infringed their copyright.”

The Simple English Wikipedia goes into a bit more detail…

“With copyright, a work can only be copied if the owner gives permission. If someone copies a work without permission, the owner can say they infringed their copyright. When this happens, the owner may sue for the amount that should have been paid. Most cases are handled by civil law. In more serious cases, a person who copies a work that is protected under copyright could be arrested, fined, or even go to prison.”

Royalty-Free Images

Another thing you may see is that an image you want to use is ‘Royalty-free’, so does this mean it’s OK to use this one then? Actually no! The term, ‘Royalty Free’ is a type of license used by stock photography agencies to sell stock images. It’s usually just a one-off fee and you can use photos under a certain set of restrictions.

Again, Wikipedia gives the definition:

“Royalty–Free Images. … The “free” in royalty–free does not mean there is no cost for the license, but instead refers to being able to freely use the image without paying additional royalties. A small-business owner, for example, may opt to pay a one-time fee for RF images for his website.”

Public Domain Images

free-2751473_640These are the kind of images I now use on my blog and for some of my website images.

Good old Wikipedia describes these kind of images as:

“A public domain image is defined as a photo, clip art or vector whose copyright has expired or never existed in the first place. These images can be used by almost anyone for personal and commercial purposes.”

There are lots of public domain images sites on the internet. I use www.pixabay.com  a lot, as there is a good range of photos and cartoon images that I like. I also use www.unsplash.com too, which is similar.

When you go into these sites, you can search for any subject matter in the search line. When you click into the image, there is a ‘free download’ button to press. And underneath this button is the Pixabay License details. It usually says ‘Free for commercial use’ and ‘No attribution required’. I always check that this is written about the image I want to use, then I can just go ahead and download and use.

Other sites to consider are:

  • 1 Million Free Pictures – there are no copyright or other issues with this company as they make their own images and put them on their site and offer them free of charge to the public. Great if you want to get your logo up and running and can’t find an appropriate image.
  • The British Library is another site that has no copyright issues. According to the site, there are over a million images available for personal or commercial use – free of charge.
  • Public Domain Archive is a site managed by a professional photographer. There are thousands of images, both contemporary and vintage, on a range of topics, such as sport, animals, architecture etc. Photos are free to use for personal or commercial use and new photos are downloaded every week.
  • Negative Space is a great site for free high-resolution images, so perfect for using on your website or blog.

These are just a few of the sites available, and ones that I am familiar with, but there are loads more out there to choose from.

If you have a favourite site you use, please share with me so my readers can take advantage of the site.