Do your social media priorities align with these key social media trends?
In a short span of a decade and a half, social media has taken over the world. It has exploded its way into our lives and and the way we live.
Social media platforms have reached a 37% worldwide penetration, and 73.91% of all internet users are social media users. Irrespective of who your target audience is, there’s no ignoring social media as a marketing channel.
Social media marketing has evolved rapidly, during its existence.
When Facebook was launched, simple posting, even once a day, would yield businesses massive reach and impact. Today, organic post reach is at an all time low, and declining.
With the crowd of new users on social networks, platforms like…
Use brand stories to connect with your customers
Story telling isn’t limited to novels or tucking kids into bed at night. In this age of short attention spans and masses of information being available, it’s incredibly difficult to capture someone’s attention and even more difficult to be memorable and encourage someone to spend more time focusing on your brand and business. Writing a story and building an emotional connection with your customers is one of the most effective ways to build a long lasting relationship and ensure that your customers come back over and over again, and consider your business their first choice in all their needs. The following five steps help to create stories that make you memorable and appealing to customers.
Writing a story and building an emotional connection with your customers is one of the most effective ways to build a long lasting relationship and ensure that your customers…
Unleashing the potential of user-generated content from brands
For digitally savvy consumers, traditional ads just aren’t cutting it. Instead, consumers are looking for “social proof.” And they’re turning to their fellow consumers on social media and blogs to establish whether you have it
Dimensional Research found that 90 percent of consumers claim positive online reviews influence their purchasing decisions, while another 86 percent say the same about negative online reviews. And when those recommendations come from social media influencers, they hold even more weight. Approximately 40 percent of consumers purchase products after seeing an influencer endorse them on social sites, perhaps because over three-quarters of consumers find this kind of content more honest than advertisements.
This user-generated content is at the foundation of social proof, and it can be anything from social media posts to Yelp reviews to comments in relevant discussion forums (Quora and Reddit have amazing SEO across a breadth of topics).…
Brands need to be authentic and put the customer at the heart of the story
For more than a century, Sacramento was defined by its history as a Gold Rush town. The mystique of rugged, enterprising gold miners drew tourists from around the country hoping to catch a glimpse of the Wild West.
This was great for tourism, but it didn’t hold much appeal for locals. They certainly weren’t ashamed of their city’s past, but they had heard the same stories of rags turned riches so many times that they could repeat them in their sleep. Grizzled prospectors mining for gold isn’t the sexiest or most exciting imagery in today’s tech-focused world.
When Visit Sacramento CMO Sonya Bradley and her team were tasked with updating the city’s branding, they built their messaging around a different kind of Sacramento gold: its thriving culinary scene. Her team highlighted the history of Sacramento’s vineyards — many…
Social media thrives on interaction; are you doing all you can to engage your audience?
Did you know that Playbuzz.com gained more than 50 million unique monthly visitors within just 10 months of launching the site? How did they do it? Two words: Interactive content! Social networks have been around for quite a few years now, and they are buzzing with activity more than ever. Making it in the unforgiving environment of virtual social hoops and loops continually inspire action and engagement.
Since your e-survival depends on it, we have put together a list of seven creative ways to improve your social media engagement.
1. Ask Questions (Creatively)
The best and most straightforward way to strike a conversation is to ask questions. However (it being so obvious) you need to be creative. The secret to success is not in the question but in the way you deliver it to your audience!
For instance, if…
How to get 1,000 emails addresses in 3 weeks with Facebook Groups
I’ve been watching Facebook marketing groups for quite some time. I’m amazed at both the supportiveness of these communities and also the engagement.
If you check out Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook profile, some of his more recent posts such as the first ever Facebook Communities Summit and announcement of Facebook’s quarterly results make it clear they can see the value in these groups and want to develop this area more.
This year Facebook introduced some interesting features to groups. Here’s a quick overview:
Linking Pages: linking your Facebook page with a group is a big one that many have been waiting for. All you need to do is add the ‘Groups’ tab…
Developing a strategic approach to LinkedIn Marketing for B2B companies - advice from Steve Phillip of Linked2Success
In this interview, Steve Phillip, a leading Coach and Expert on using LinkedIn shares his approaches and explains how his clients are using LinkedIn. The interview covers the essentials of using LinkedIn such as overcoming barriers to entry, avoiding the common mistakes, strategy planning for first time adopters, plus more advanced tips and hints on how to use this successfully. Barriers and solutions to using LinkedIn to generate B2B business are also covered.
For more details on how to use LinkedIn strategically, use our Smarter guide.
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Q. From your personal experience of working with companies who are new adopters…
New Mckinsey research highlights how to improve satisfaction
McKinsey's research on customer satisfaction highlights that consistency of service delivery is crucial. They have themed their findings around the 3Cs of Customer Satisfaction, thats:
Customer-Journey Consistency
Emotional Consistency
Communication Consistency
We all know that the economic climate and easier on-line access to goods and services, increases customer choice and this can lead to lower levels of loyalty, if we don't look after customers after the first touchpoint and beyond.
We're recommending this research since it shares research on customer satisfaction across 14 sectors: Brokerage, banks and health providers ranked high whereas car insurance, retail, telecoms and postal services were less favourable as shown on the graph:
Findings highlighted that brand and service are key to customers, and research from 27,000 USA American consumers across 14 industries found that effective customer journeys are important.
Let's look at the…
Examples of the best brand Instagram accounts and what we can learn from them
It's clear that Instagram isn't just a social network for posting cool views with filters or the odd selfie anymore. Instagram now has a whopping 700 million monthly active users and has evolved into a platform that can visually represent a brand. There are some brands out there that are doing really well on Instagram and we wanted to see why they are so successful. Use these 6 brands to help inform your own Instagram strategy and hopefully inspire you.
Adidas
A obvious brand to start with is Adidas. With over 15 million followers they have a very high influence within Instagram. They use their Instagram account to generate awareness of the brand and their range of products. They do this by sharing visual content and videos to drive more enthusiasm for Adidas products. Every image includes an adidas product,…
The Instagram tactics of the top US companies
The Fortune 500 is, put simply, a list of the 500 most valuable US companies based on revenue. These are all enormous businesses, with trillions in combined revenue. It's a mix of all different kinds of businesses, so some will be digital leaders whilst others may be laggards. TrackMaven have analysed the official Instagram accounts of all the Fortune 500 companies which use the platform. By doing so, they've given us an insight into how top brands use Instagram, but also reveals some mistakes that they're making, so you can learn from their mistakes as well as their triumphs.
How many top US companies use Instagram?
Fortune 500 companies are ranked by revenue, and interestingly we see that the higher revenue companies are considerably more likely to use Instagram. It's also worth noting that even among the top 100 the adoption rates are still only slightly over…
