Tag : Content Curation

15Apr

LinkedIn, Social Media

The reason that so many otherwise great local businesses fail on LinkedIn is that they’re not really sure what to do. They look at Google publishing white papers and Wal-Mart rolling out national promotional campaigns, and they’re not really sure what their role is on the platform. Lucky for you, I’ve got the answer.

I’m going to cover what your local business should be posting on LinkedIn and how you should be posting it. Let’s catch you up on the LinkedIn strategies you’ve been missing!

Say Something Meaningful
As a local business, you don’t have the reach or the bottomless resources of a Fortune 500 company. But what you do have (hopefully) is a point of view. You’re working in your industry every day—use that knowledge to offer insight that only you can provide!

One tactic that The Go! Agency uses for our clients is to curate content then share it with something meaningful attached. So if you were a fashion boutique, you might share a post about a runway in Paris with your thoughts about the styles.

“But Christopher!” You say, “I don’t want people to care about that fashion show in Paris, I want them to care about my local business!”

Think bigger picture. Sure, the article isn’t about how great your business is, but it shows that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to fashion. It establishes you as an authority, so that when people in your area are looking at your LinkedIn page, they’re impressed and interested in your brand.

There’s more to succeeding on LinkedIn than just having a point of view, though. You need to say it before people get bored.

Make It Quick
On every social media platform, users are scrolling through their feeds, paying (at most) half attention to what they’re looking at. That means you have to spit it out!

No matter how good your insight is, I promise you that nobody wants to read an essay before they even get to the article you’re sharing. Keep your LinkedIn posts to two short sentences AT THE MOST. If you can manage it, fewer than 100 characters is ideal.

While this does limit the nuance you can give in your posts, it also makes it easier for people to see what you’re talking about. That means more engagements, more connections, and more business opportunities going forward. Save the long-form content for the blogs and make sure that your LinkedIn updates will actually get read!

Join Relevant Groups
If you’re not joining LinkedIn groups, you’re missing a great opportunity to connect with people who would engage with your business. If you’re a salon, join some beauty groups! If you’re a restaurant, join a group for foodies! Whatever industry you’re in, there is going to be a LinkedIn group for your business.

Once you get in these groups, don’t be silent. Strike up some conversations! The key word here is “conversations,” though. You can’t just post constantly in the same group and hope that people will engage with you. Not only is that ineffective, but it’s a great way to get banned by a moderator for spamming the group.

Instead, like and comment on other people’s posts in the group. If you’re engaging with their content, they’re likely to reciprocate and send some attention your way. Just be sure to do the same when someone likes or comments on one of your posts!

Use This Advice ASAP
I’ve seen countless small businesses fail to use these best practices on LinkedIn—don’t be one of them! Starting today means you’re late, so hop on this train before you miss your chance for your small business to succeed on LinkedIn.

Could you use some more advice on how to succeed on LinkedIn? Schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!

Go!TV Episode 12

23Nov

GoTV, Social Media, The Go! Agency

Welcome to this week’s Go!TV episode recap! Who’s ready for the biggest breaking news from all across social media?

How to Make Gripping Content
Everyone wants to make content that pulls in readers, but not everyone knows how. Technical aspects like marketing strategy and adhering to buyer personas are important, but they can’t replace authenticity. Do you believe what you’re writing? Do you think it’s valuable for your audience? If you don’t, your readers will see right through it and the content won’t be able to help your business!

Express Writers

How to Create a Buyer Persona
At its core, there are six steps to making a realistic, useful buyer persona: Undergo user research, collect your findings, brainstorm ideas, refine them, make them applicable to a real human, and apply your persona to your customer relationship management (CRM) platform. With an effective buyer persona, you can relate to your audience in an authentic way. Use the resource below for a more detailed step-by-step guide!

Social Media Today

That’s the end of our recap! The takeaway: If you want to reach your customers, you need to speak to them like real people. Keep this in mind as you create content and buyer personas, and you should have a good leg to stand on! For more social media marketing advice, check out our blog and podcast!

Want to keep up with your favorite social media experts? Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

Go!TV Episode 11

16Nov

GoTV, Social Media

Thanks for stopping by for this week’s Go!TV episode recap! We’ve got your source for social media news and trends that you need to know!

The Essential Guide to Content Curation
If you’re not reading content relevant to your industry, you run the risk of missing out on important conversations. You don’t want your customers to get their information from your competitors! This Go! blog covers:

Finding shareable content
Creating a content mix
Recycling successful content

And a lot more! If you’ve got a few minutes and want to have a successful social media marketing strategy, the blog is definitely worth a read.

The Go! Agency

The Essential Guide to Social Media Metrics
You might think that metrics are reserved for experienced, high-level marketers, but they’re important for social media marketing at every level! If you’re not tracking the relevant metrics for your campaign, there’s no way to know whether or not you succeeded. By extension, there’s no way to figure out what to change. This blog is a useful tool to make sure you’re making real progress on social media and not just spinning your wheels!

The Go! Agency

So ends another Go!TV episode recap. It’s tempting to set up a social media campaign and forget about it, but you need to reinvest in your strategy if you want it to succeed. How can you do that? By keeping up with reliable social media news sources, like our blog and our podcast!

Want to see what other marketing advice we dish out? Check us out across social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter!

The Essential Guide to Content Curation

12Nov

Content Creation

Managing an effective content marketing strategy is challenging. Between sharing the latest news, monitoring your competitors, and creating your own content, you might feel like you’re not sure where to start.

The good news is that you’re not the first person to need some help, and there are industry best practices to help you avoid the common frustrations. Now, I’m going to walk you through how to handle all your content curation responsibilities!

Gather Information
Before you share or write anything, you need to know what people are saying around your industry. One great source of information is Feedly, which will give you a variety of sources relevant to whatever keywords you search.

Another resource is Google Alerts, and it offers some unique advantages. Like Feedly, it lets you track certain keywords to see what’s new on those topics. Google Alerts, however, will send notifications about new content in these areas, which can be surprisingly helpful.

Say, for example, you sell glasses. You’d probably track phrases like “eyewear” and “optometry.” But why stop there? You could also track a competitor or their CEO. This way, you’ll be able to learn from their successes and mistakes. Similarly, make sure you’re signed up for any newsletters or eAlerts they distribute.

How does that help? Well, once you’re aware of what your competition is doing, you can see how it’s working. What kind of content are they posting? Maybe they’re posting five blogs a week, but is that getting them engagement from their audience? Determine what is and isn’t working for them, then build your content strategy on the back of that information!

Develop a Content Mix
As you might imagine, posting the same type of content every day is going to bore your audience to tears. That’s why you’re going to need to plan out a compelling content mix.

You’ve looked at your competitors, and what did that information show you? Were they sharing news related to your industry that customers would find appealing? Did they offer unique insight in the form of regular tips or advice? Look for alternatives to promotional content, because too many promos are going to make your brand look overly sales-y and less relatable.

How do you find the right promo ratio? You experiment. If your competitor saw a lot of success posting three promotional pieces a week, see how your audience responds to four. Viewer engagement and clicks on your posts will quickly tell you what you’re doing right and what needs to change.

Remember that, ultimately, your viewers are coming to your page to create value for themselves, and your content should reflect that goal. You may want to spend an entire week talking about your new frames, but your audience wants to learn more about how to take care of their contact lenses. If you want to keep their attention, you need to meet them at that point of need.

Work Smart, Not Hard
One piece of advice that content managers often find surprising is that you should recycle your best content. It can sound sacrilegious to people who have been told all their lives to always create completely original work, but if a piece of content does well, why not make the most of that great article or blog you created?

Of course, you don’t want to just post the same story verbatim. Update it a little! Try experimenting with new headlines or images to freshen things up. If you’re feeling like the article could be better-structured, then by all means, move things around. This will all still take less time than writing and posting entirely new content.

As a rule, you want to wait at least two weeks between an initial publication and recycling that post. This way your readers won’t feel like you’re sharing the same thing over and over, but you’ll still get to members of your audience who missed it the first time around.

Know Your Stuff
Above all, the most important part of content curation is that you need to know what you’re talking about. Whether that’s reading and sharing industry news or creating compelling blog content, compiling information is going to make you a much more effective marketer.

Could you use a little more advice on content curation? Reach out and schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!

7 Social Media Marketing Things You Should Know but Don’t

5Nov

Social media marketing is constantly in flux, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon. The best practices of yesterday are painfully outdated now. As a marketer, you’ve got two options: fall behind your competition, or stay sharp!

I’m going to share the seven biggest things across social media that every marketer should know—but most don’t. Let’s see how up-to-date your knowledge is!

1. You Need Tools
Social media management tools aren’t just flashy programs for people with money to burn. They’re an integral part of social media marketing, and if you’re not using them, odds are you’re falling behind.

Unless you like the idea of manually posting multiple updates across social media every day, writing error-ridden content, and having low-quality visuals, you’re going to need some help!

2. You Need to Curate Content
Thinking of fresh, original content every day isn’t going to work if you’re not seeing what other people in your industry are posting. Content curation lets you share relevant, valuable news with your followers and can give you ideas for how to produce your own unique content!

3. You Need to Understand Metrics
Nobody likes to learn a lot of jargon, but it’s there for a reason. In marketing, it’s not enough to just “go with your gut.” You need to have hard, quantifiable data to support your social media marketing strategy, and having a working understanding of metrics and when to track them is the only way to get that information.

4. You Need to Work on Visuals
Graphic design often gets pushed aside by marketers who chant the Bill Gates quote, “Content is king.” And sure, your written content is important, but nothing can replace the impact of quality visuals. Think about it: Would you read a blog with Pulitzer-worthy writing that looked like its visuals were made by a toddler? Of course not, because you never would have clicked on their content to begin with!

5. You Need to Find and Engage With Your Audience
The appeal of social media marketing is that you can target specific consumers who are most likely to buy from you, so why wouldn’t you make the most of that? By creating buyer personas and optimizing your engagement for your audience’s preferred social media platform, you can make your campaign much more effective.

6. You Need to Watch Your Competitors
It isn’t enough to just look at your own successes and shortcomings. Your competitors are, by definition, appealing to a similar market, so see what you can learn from them! By tracking their movements on social media, you’ll double your opportunities to improve your own strategy!

7. You Need a Checklist
If you’re running a multi-platform social media campaign, you simply can’t keep it all straight in your head. There are too many moving parts for anyone to remember every little thing! By keeping a checklist and running through it on a regular basis, you guarantee that nothing will slip through the cracks!

Don’t Stop Learning
These are essential parts of social media marketing, but it’s not enough to stop once you’ve mastered these! Take this information as a way to get you started. From there, keep reading! Social media will never stagnate, and neither can your understanding!

Everyone could use some help staying competitive on social media. If you’re not sure what to do, just schedule your free consultation with The Go! Agency!

Turn That Social Media Silence Into Chatter With These 4 Steps

By Dale Griffen

12Feb

Snapchat, Social Media

There are 800 million people on Instagram, nearly one billion on Twitter, and two billion on Facebook. How then is it possible that your awesome content—the writing and visuals you’d spent hours perfecting—got only one or two likes? You thought social media marketing (SMM) was supposed to be a surefire way to generate new leads and build a strong customer base. What went wrong?

The truth is that social media marketing can do all that, but no one said it was easy. If you’re experiencing problems as you try to create a strong following on social media, you’re not alone. In fact, 55% of business owners that begin social media marketing campaigns as part of their New Year resolutions become disheartened by mid-February, sending out less and less content. Soon enough, these business owners find themselves with a dead Facebook page or Twitter account—and anxiety at the mere thought of logging back in to either.

But successful social media marketing takes persistence and flexibility. Instead of giving up on your dream of a vast and engaged online audience, you need to adapt your strategy.

At The Go! Agency, we often work with clients who come to us at a loss. Their social media pages just aren’t getting any attention. After reviewing their current strategy, we often find room for improvement—and more often than not, they have very common, fixable issues.

Here are a few techniques that may breathe new life into your social media marketing:

1. Focus on content, not promotions.

When it comes to social media marketing, there is a common misconception that every piece of content is supposed to generate leads. However, the right SMM approach will be much more subtle. The point of social media is to build customer-brand relationships. The best way to do that is to offer content they will actually want. So whether you want to create an information-packed blog or share how-to videos, creating and distributing content that your customers actually want to consume will do wonders for your engagement.

2. Study your performance.

If you experienced a significant slump in numbers, you can gain valuable information from your previous attempts. It might be time to head to your old data and try and decipher what worked before. Did engagement change when you deviated from a successful formula for content? If that’s the case, then you may have to go back and incorporate some older ideas. Did your formula remain the same, but your audience drift away? That probably means that you’ve saturated (and bored) your audience, so you’ll need to shake up your strategy. Change things up at the content and audience level. See what works, and go with it.

3. Spend money to make money.

Here’s the hard truth: you get what you pay for, every time. You should budget for social media advertising, whether it is on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The good news is that you can quickly see the advertising’s impact on engagement. You may be tempted to go it alone and use “word of mouth” to spread your message organically, but you will soon see that promoted content has the potential to reach a vastly larger number of prospective customers.

4. Reassess Your Conversion Funnels.

Like any marketing professional, your ultimate goal will be getting those customers to complete transactions. But what would be the customer’s next logical step for such a wonderful thing to take place? Clicking a link, of course. But where are you sending your audience? To your home page, your blog, anywhere at all? You need to figure out where your desired traffic is going and what they’re doing when they get there. Install Facebook tracking onto your site to see if customers are moving onto the next level of engagement: liking, sharing, commenting, or focusing on your site. This will be a big help to see if the landing page (the page to which your links direct traffic) is giving you the results you want.

Social media is an amazing opportunity for brands to present themselves to a wide array of potential customers in an attractive light. However, sometimes you need a serious shake up to get results. That’s where a team like ours at The Go! Agency can help. Our team of marketers will help you every step of the way, no matter what. There’s no denying that social media marketing can be a roller coaster, but with the right team of professionals at your side, the ride isn’t quite so scary.

The 7 Things Most Businesses Fail To Do On Social Media

26Oct

Does your business have a social media presence? Chances are, the answer is yes. (Although if the answer is no, we need to talk.) But the real question is, do you have a GOOD social media presence? Once again, you may think the answer is yes. However, most businesses out there have quite a lot of room for improvement.

Many times we are approached by business owners who hire us to specifically clean up messes that were created unknowingly. Many times social media is delegated to interns or entry-level employees when they should be given to a qualified person or agency to execute. Social media requires a professional touch. With that in mind, here are seven of the most common things businesses fail to do on social media.

1. Interact with customers. Social media is a new form of customer communication. But what happens when your business doesn’t, well, communicate? It looks horrible when comments, reviews, or even tagging goes unanswered. Although you may have missed those notifications, it just looks like you are ignoring your audience. Hey – if the huge big box brands can do it, so can you.

2. Incorporate imagery. There should never be a piece of copy on your social media platforms that isn’t accompanied by some form of imagery, whether it be a GIF, picture, video, or something in between. You need something that will entice your audience to stop and engage with your content. Visuals are engaging.

3. Pay for advertising. The biggest misconception about social media marketing? It’s free. Sure, it’s free to sign up, but if you don’t create a budget for some well-strategized advertising, you’re going to have an issue. On Facebook alone, without advertising odds are none of your social media updates will be seen.

4. Update ALL accounts. Okay, so you’ve been doing great keeping your Facebook updated. You’ve been posting on a daily basis and even remembered your pictures. What about your Twitter? It hasn’t been updated since July? That’s a problem. Make sure you update all your accounts, even if you focus more of your attention on just one. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube and Pinterest are yearning for your attention! Oh yea, and don’t forget about your blog.

5. Update information. Did your business recently change hours? Do you have a new website? Maybe you rebranded? Make sure your social media reflects the most updated version of your business. Nothing is more shameful than wondering why you are not getting any phone calls when your phone number is wrong on every social account. And yes, I see this all the time.

6. Add informative content. To be successful on social media and stay competitive, you need to make sure that you don’t just share promo after promo. It’s a sure fire way to lose followers. Instead, incorporate content that your followers want such as articles, pro tips, recipes, quotes, freebies and more.

7. Join the community. One of the biggest goals of businesses on social media is to be seen. However, your goal should really be to be seen as an industry influencer or thought leader. You do that by interacting with others in your field, talking about hot topics and much more. Cultivate a following and engage with them regularly. Pro tip: join the global conversation by joining LinkedIn groups and really hit the ground running.

It’s easy to see how having a qualified person handling your social media marketing is important. The truth is that social media needs a team of professionals to deliver quality, creative, and analytical results. It’s up to you to find a way to make it happen, just never be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Professional agencies can help you get started much faster and will help you get results, and training, that you need to stay competitive in your marketplace.

Why You Can’t Postpone Social Media Marketing Any Longer

By Dale Griffen

3Oct

Autumn is such a great season. The air gets a tad cooler, football season has kicked off, and of course, pumpkin spice lattes have returned. (If you’re into that!) Yet for marketers, the coming of fall means Q4 is here, and the pressure is on in a big way.

You should have spent your summer ramping up and strategizing for the upcoming busy season. If you spent a little too much time at the beach and failed to prepare, don’t panic. You still have just enough to get started.

You may be asking why is it so important to act now? Social media isn’t going anywhere, right? Here are just a few reasons why you can’t postpone social media marketing any longer.

Your budget depends on it.

For many companies, the end of the year means restructuring budgets. Did your marketing team spend less than originally projected? Those leftover funds may cost you that same amount in 2019’s budget, thereby losing out on your chance to make your mark online in the future. To put it simply, if you don’t use it, you may lose it. On the other hand, if you’re planning your 2019 budget – have you included a social media budget? Do you know what that figure should be?

You might be wondering what exactly there is to pay for when it comes to social media marketing. After all, signing up and creating a page is free. Well because of social media’s effectivity and potential to reach your ideal audience, over 50 million other companies are already using these sites for marketing purposes. As you could imagine, some of those may be your competitors. Paid advertising options exist so you can have an advantage. Rising above in the sea of other companies on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites is essential to the success of your social media.

Additionally, your marketing efforts won’t get you very far without exceptional content. You will need stunning visuals, compelling copy, innovative video, and much more. As you can imagine, there is a cost for making the kind of content that stops your readers in their tracks and gets them interested in your brand. Whether you are spending money on material or outsourcing to a team of pros, your content deserves attention.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

The research is in. People flock to social media from mid-October to the end of January more than any other time of the year. Whether they are hunting for the best Black Friday deals or sending out their holiday wishes to friends and family, they are using the same location – social media platforms. This is why it is paramount that your business has a presence on these sites and your content is tailored to the right audience. Social media marketing can help you stand in the spotlight during this special season no matter if your target audience is down the road or all across the globe.

Get exactly what you asked for.

Every company makes their money in different ways. For example, some depend on website clicks while others require customers to visit their physical location. This is one of the most significant reasons as to why social media marketing works. Your strategy should be customized to meet exactly what your company needs. This is particularly helpful when the holiday season hits and you have sales your customers need to know about, or you have a new e-commerce site that is ready for things like the Cyber Monday rush, but you need to raise awareness. It’s up to you to choose how social media works.

End 2018 strong and begin 2019 with a bang!

I have talked to many business owners who say that a majority of their returning customers found them during the holiday rush. It may be thanks to a Black Friday doorbuster, a Small Business Saturday sale (yes, that exists, and social media has made it huge!), or a gift from a loved one that brought their attention to the brand, a lot of customers choose new companies to stick with for the new year. This is why raising brand awareness and online visibility cannot be overlooked during these following months.

Are you ready?

Social media marketing will help legitimize your brand and get people talking about your business online. There’s never a better time for it than the busiest season. Everyone is buzzing about, make sure your company isn’t left in the stone age!

Who Is On Your Social Media Marketing Team?

Copy of Go! Blog Image Templates (900x350) (23)

25Jul