Why Your Company Can’t Fly Without Twitter

3Jul

Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, Social networking, Tailwind, Twitter, Uncategorized

Many people immediately think of Facebook when social media is brought up in a conversation. Sure, it is the most popular of the platforms, but it isn’t the only helpful tool available. Twitter is a unique social media platform. Think of it as Facebook’s hyperactive, social butterfly of a cousin. News flies quick on Twitter, and more businesses flock to the platform everyday.

For those thinking, “Isn’t Twitter just a smaller version of Facebook?” they are in for a surprise. Yes, the infrastructure of the site enforces a 140 character limit for each tweet you publish, however effective social media managers use this to their advantage.

As we have said, news travels fast on Twitter. Because of this, you can quickly grow an effective brand with a wide reach. Due to the speed of the website’s activity, the 140 character limit is a necessity, otherwise it would be too long for someone to read, and it would be swept away in the news feed. For those saying that they only need a Facebook, you may want to realize that Twitter is where stories break the fastest. Time is a factor with social media, and your whole audience can watch your tweets unfold during an event, a Q and A session, or an unveiling of a product. As responsive as Facebook is, Twitter is even more so. This allows customers’ questions to be resolved as quick as they ask them and relevant topics to be on your news feed immediately. As a leader in your industry, weighing in on important news topics and rising issues is crucial. This is why reporters use Twitter every single day. They are able to post and tweet while a situation is still unfolding.

Twitter is like a sports car- without excess baggage, lightning fast, and it has the ability to turn heads. It has become one of the central hubs for social media professionals to promote a consistent and contemporary brand, and its demographic is universal. You can also gain some extra firepower in your marketing by utilizing Twitter Ads. They can ensure your promoted posts are in the spotlight, which will be extremely helpful considering how quickly other tweets fill up news feeds. We recommend you tweeting multiple times a day and share others’ content by retweeting and quote retweeting so your twitter account is top notch.

How does your business use Twitter? Comment below!

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What Your Social Media Marketing Doesn’t Have (But Really NEEDS!)

By Christopher Tompkins

2Jul

Advertising, Email Marketing, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Local Marketing, Marketing, Periscope, Snapchat, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter, Uncategorized

At this time, millions of businesses are on social media. Yet this doesn’t mean they are all successful. Perhaps, they have created accounts out of sheer obligation to a boss, or it was a one-shot attempt to stay trendy. As social media gurus, we see these kinds of accounts often. “Bare bone accounts” do the minimum by showing up on their platform of choice’s search results. However, this actually backfires on the owners by disappointing fans due to their lack of content. What should a social media account bring to customers?

To utilize the potential of your business profiles, you will want to optimize your page. In detail, go through each area that Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms offer, and your profile will have increasingly positive results. Sure, your name, address, phone number, and website address are all important, but an effective page requires in-depth copy for short descriptions, a company overview, a mission statement, and several other areas of the page.

Customers do not enjoy having to search for your resources and they shouldn’t have to. Facebook offers you two menus to provide helpful links. The “Apps” section allows your business page to showcase the essential pages of your company’s web presence. This section can also turn into a handy portal to your other social media platforms. The top of the page’s horizontal menu can be customized to transport customers to your most important assets and the web pages you want them to visit.

Twitter offers less optimization options, so you will want to take advantage of every single line offered. Descriptions, web addresses, locations, and a powerful cover image will make your profile look just right. Like everything else about Twitter, their customization options are effective and sleek.

Unlike Twitter, LinkedIn has tons of room for customization. Fill out as many fields as possible. Both personal and business pages have their own unique set of options, so take your time and don’t leave any room for customers’ unanswered questions. Your pages should speak for themselves!

Every platform offers different ways to present your information. Optimizing your page is one of the most important early steps in social media success. Here is another tidbit- this isn’t a once and done step. As your company grows, so should the information on social media. Keep everything updated and accurate. You may find this process repetitive, but by enriching all your pages with as many details as possible, a whole new level of professionalism will be yours!

What optimization tricks do you know of? Share below!

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You Published A Blog! Now What?

By Christopher Tompkins

29Jun

Copywriting

We are here at the end of our blogging for business series and you should be ready to post some great content on your new blog! After you hit that publish button, thousands of fans are guaranteed to visit your site in just hours, right? Not so true. While SEO is an important tool in promoting a blog, you will need a little more help getting noticed in the overly crowded internet landscape.

Your blog is not meant to replace your social media marketing. Quite the opposite, actually. Both of these internet-based tools are meant to work symbiotically together. You should be proud of your new blog post and as such, you will want to promote it on every social media account you have! On your website, where your blog hopefully lives via a link on the menu, you should have the links to your social media pages. All of this is your material and as such it should complement itself through internal promotion.

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You can also publish your newly-crafted article on Facebook Notes and LinkedIn to share with your followers. LinkedIn is particularly effective at this as it has the ability to share your writing with fifty groups. Talk about publicity!

You will also be able to use your blog article’s copy in your newsletters and email blasts. Original material is precious so you should take advantage of the writing you now own and broadcast it through all avenues.

We hope you enjoyed our series about blogging for business. Now let’s see what kind of awesome blog posts you come up with! If you ever have any questions about blogging or social media marketing in general, please feel free to contact The Go! Agency team!

Do you have any thoughts on how to share your blog? Comment below!

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Avoid These 3 Blogging Mistakes

By Christopher Tompkins

28Jun

Copywriting

When you begin your blogging adventure, you will find that like all forms of writing, it takes time to master. Do not give up! If you find yourself with a small audience (or none at all) there may be some room for improvement. Like social media, it will not happen overnight. Be patient with yourself, but stay consistent. Yet as you try to improve your content, there will be a few pitfalls to steer clear from. Here are the top three blogger crimes to be vigilant of:

Overly-Promotional Posts- Let’s face it. If your audience wants to read a piece of advertising, they will pick up a brochure. You do not want your articles and subject matter to be all promotional material. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, you are missing the point of a blog. It isn’t about posting ads. It is rather supposed to be a professional piece of writing that entices your target audience and hopefully invokes engagement along the way. Second of all, nobody is going to read your posts if they read like an infomercial. As a concept, a blog has a certain reputation to uphold and if readers discover that your writing is just ads, they will back out quickly. Lastly, you are going to come off as pompous. If all you talk about is your own product, then perhaps you need to conduct more research into your industry.
Grammar and Spelling Errors- Nothing looks more unprofessional than a glaring typo on a blog. You want to be sure to skim over your work multiple times. Also, a second pair of eyes such as a proofreader is a priceless member of a writing team. Try to have the piece as perfect as possible before sending it out to the scrutinizing world wide web. In addition to grammar and spelling, fact check. You will cause a firestorm of criticism if you post half-truths or unreliable information. Be sure to be as professional as possible and do your research.
Inconsistent Publishing- Because a blog places your most recent posts “above the fold” on the screen, an old date will stick out like a sore thumb. People like reliable and consistently new content on their favorite blogs, so be sure to deliver and often.

There are several faux pas to avoid, but these three big baddies should never be done on a professional blog. If you steer clear of “salesy” posts, grammar and spelling errors, and big time gaps between posts, your blog will be better for it and you will have internet success.

What other blogging mistakes can you think of? Comment below!

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Reddit: The Popular Black Sheep of Social Media

By Christopher Tompkins

28Jun

Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Marketing, Reddit, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

At this point, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are pretty common brands that a majority of people know. However, there’s one social media website, Reddit, that not many are knowledgable about. It’s an odd duck, that’s for sure. However, many people prefer Reddit’s format than others. So, what makes Reddit so different than the other social media giants? If you haven’t heard of the website, you’re in for a treat.

When it comes to Reddit—whose name comes from “I Read It”—social networking is a little different. It has a more traditional forum format, which encourages users to reach out to strangers, as opposed to finding old high-school buddies or coworkers. People go by user names and aren’t really encouraged to use personal information. All user names have “u/“ in front of it. For example, u/screenname.

People use Reddit to find news stories on specific topics or to discuss very specific things. It’s the king of the niche audience, so you can subscribe to sub-communities, or “subreddits”, based around a subject you’re interested in. All subreddits start with “r/“, so an example would be r/politics or r/funny. People can subscribe to many subreddits so their “front page” is filled with information relevant to them.

A big way that Reddit differs from other websites is the order in which posts become visible. Each post and comment is equipped with up and down arrows so users can up-vote or down-vote content. The concept behind the thumbs-down button everybody always wanted on Facebook is alive and well on Reddit. When you first log onto Reddit, you won’t find the most recent posts, you’ll find the most popular. This makes fresh content to be visible slower than speedy Twitter feeds. Users can always click the “new” tab on any subreddit to see content that is being posted that very second. However, you might have to muddle through some junk.

Reddit is starting to turn some heads. At first, it was more underground, yet now, it’s taking traction and celebrities are doing a special type of Q&A session with their audience called AMAs (Ask Me Anything). It’s a great way for business owners and celebrities to reach out to their audience in a unique way. Even President Obama did an AMA, which received approximately 12 thousand up-votes.

While you can have a friend list, it isn’t really the place for socializing with people you know in real life. However, it is a great place to reach out to a community of like-minded individuals and discus relevant topics. You might even find a celebrity or two in the comment sections.

What do you think of Reddit? Let us hear your thoughts!

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5 Things You Need to Know Before you Start Blogging

By Christopher Tompkins

5-things-you-need-to-know-before-you-blog-200x300

27Jun

Advertising, Email Marketing, Facebook, Local Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Social networking, Uncategorized

A blog is a powerful tool for a business to have in its utility belt. It can significantly improve your internet presence and, if done correctly, your peers will soon flock to you for your insights! However, one must learn to crawl before they can run, and one needs to learn how to blog before you become an internet sensation.

Consider this segment of our blogging for business series a crash course. These are the 5 essential elements you need to consider before you begin to publish posts. We all had to take our time to learn the basics and now it is your turn!

Platforms. First of all, you will want to figure out what website you want for the blog’s home. There are many platforms to consider, however we have found that WordPress is one of the most effective and comprehensive. They offer mobile applications so you can blog on the go and is comprised of an interface that is easy to use, no matter what level of experience a user has. There are other well-known sites such as Blogger and Tumblr, which have proven themselves as useful. Tumblr specializes in microblogging and has a more of a social media feel to it. While it was once very popular, more serious bloggers currently flock to WordPress and Blogger.

SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a complex beast. In its simplest form, it is a tool to help articles reach the front page of search engine results based off of their keywords. However, it can be considerably more intricate than that. Luckily, WordPress incorporates a simple SEO field so you can master Google and others with ease.
Your Audience– Now that we have the technicalities down, you need to figure out who will be reading your blog! Will it be potential customers, your peers, or simply avid readers? By figuring this out, you will make the next two elements easy as pie.

Topics- Now that you have figured out who will read your writing, you need to figure out what they like. Business 2 Business blogs like to center around practices in the industry or current events and policies that affect your work. Those who want their customer base to read their posts would benefit from tips, tricks, and ideas that would essentially incorporate their product. Sure, you could make every article a sales post, but you will not get many readers that way.

How to Write- You need to figure out the tone that will work for your audience and subject matter. Is it a strictly professional piece of writing or does it have a conversational feel? Regardless, make it unique! You will want to be sure that there is a reason readers are going onto your website as opposed to others’.

Do you feel ready to write now? Once you have these five elements down, you should be able to rock the blog world, no problem!

What do you think about these five essential elements? Comment below!

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The Balance of Push and Pull Posts

By Christopher Tompkins

22Jun

Advertising, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Social networking, Uncategorized

What is the point of advertising and marketing? To promote one’s brand, correct? Sure, it is a simple concept to grasp. After all, we have been exposed to advertising our whole lives. Social media marketing, in theory, should be the same since it is all about promoting your brand. While this may be true in the grand scheme of things, the actual execution might not be what you expect. It requires a whole different approach than traditional marketing.

Social media requires a bit of tact and genuine content. You will want to generate updates that are not directly related to your product but are still applicable to your customer’s interests. If every single post you send out to your followers is a sales pitch, your online friends are sure to dwindle quickly.

Mixing engaging content into your updates alongside promotions is an innovative and non-direct way to get yourself noticed. What kind of posts should you create other than sales-oriented content? You can share relevant news stories, holiday greetings, polls, recipes, quotes, and more. These items will have the ability to stretch beyond your followers’ reach and connect to others on the internet. Shared posts need to give the impression that you want to share this update with your friends who are, of course, your customers. Your tone should be conversational and casual. Social media brings everyone to the same level, and your language should feel like that.

When planning your posts for the week ahead, you should realize that diversity is the key to success. Try not to have the same type of content right next to each other. Mix it up! For example, if you have a Facebook account and are writing two posts a day, you will want to make sure there aren’t two promotions next to each other, nor two news articles, quotes, etc. Switching things up will keep your posts fresh and fun.

What kind of content do you add to the mix? Comment below!

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5 Reasons Social Media Marketing Has Become Essential

By Christopher Tompkins

21Jun

Social Media

Even before the internet took over everything, marketers had a duty to adapt the brand they represented to current trends. Whether the fashionable thing to do was to send out a thick catalog in the mail or to put up flashy billboards downtown, those in charge of promotions always had to keep contemporary. Today’s brands needs social media. If you think it is a fad, think again. If the marketing gurus of “Mad Men” worked today as opposed to decades prior, they would all be social media managers! Need more convincing that this is key to today’s business world? Here are the top five reasons that you need social media in your utility belt:

Your customers are already there. The main purpose of marketing is to have your message positioned where your audience congregates. It was the same when we put ads in magazines and commercials in prime time television shows. Now, we need to be on their computers, smartphones, and tablet screens via social media marketing. Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the platforms have millions upon millions of users. If implemented correctly, your businesses can be on many screens.

Your competition is already there. If you think your business doesn’t belong on social media, think again. It isn’t just for tech-based companies. We’ve seen those in industries ranging from dentistry to real estate, to assisted living facilities to churches benefit from using these communication tools. Don’t think it’s true? Your competition does. Go onto Facebook or Twitter and you might be surprised to see that many of your fellow professionals are already there.

The companies you use are already there. Look around your house or office and inspect the packaging of your most used items. There is a good chance you will see at least a little Facebook or Twitter logo, which indicates that brand’s involvement on the internet. The big brands have already wised up to social media’s power. This should show you that this movement isn’t going away anytime soon, nor should it. It has allowed countless customers to connect with companies they trust in new ways.

You want to seem invested- Because of just how popular social media has become, you need to show that you care about your customer base by participating. You can do this by delivering engaging posts via the avenue of communication your audience prefers. In essence, it is the same as community outreach which, as all professionals know, is amazing for PR.

You want to keep in the know. Social media has become so much more than “connecting with friends”. Many people now use these platforms to network and promote themselves, but also to learn about their industry. Industry leaders post articles and news stories that are relevant to their work everyday.

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to jump onto social media. So what are you waiting for? Start posting today!

Why do you go on social media? Comment below!

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4 Ways to Get Your Updates Visible (And Fast!)

By Christopher Tompkins

16Jun

Advertising, Instagram, Marketing, Social Media, Social networking, Uncategorized

Social media marketing is all about promoting yourself in a new, intuitive way and reaching out to your customer base in places they check every day. The only thing is, there are millions of people posting alongside you. At this point, news feeds tend to look like Wall Street with everyone screaming at the top of their lungs for the sake of their company. It can be overwhelming for the consumers, let alone the marketers. Because of this, advertising has a whole new level of challenges. A plethora of content is out there that floods everyone’s news feeds. How can you make your content stand above the rest?

Social media provides us with helpful options so that your important posts can be noticed amongst the swarming masses. Here are some of the most effective tools businesses can take advantage of:

Boosting Posts- Our beloved Facebook has some complex algorithms inside its machinery. At times, it can really impede social media marketers’ attempts at spreading the word. However, they do provide a way out and with no surprise, it is not free. By boosting a post, you are rapidly increasing your content’s visibility and also allowing for more engagement. It bypasses certain unspoken laws Facebook has into play inside its coding that would otherwise impede a perfect post’s promotional power.

Pinned Posts- Let’s say you have a big event coming up, or you really want to push a certain product, or something is time sensitive. The big social media platforms allow you to pin a post so that it is at the top of your page for all to see. This will be the first thing a follower sees. Instead of continuously posting about a subject, pinning a post will make it the star of your profile. This social media tactic will also allow you to give some extra publicity to posts that have done particularly well. It can be really great for content that is already catching a lot of attention. Pinning posts is free, so you will be able to pin away without consulting your budget!

Advertising- Each one of these platforms have offer the opportunity for self-promotion. Facebook’s advertising allows you to push your branding through advertisements via users’ experience. Twitter offers a “promoted posts” feature so your tweets will pop up on users’ feeds even if they don’t follow you (yet!). Even Pinterest has “Rich Pins” in which you will be able to reap the benefits of being on many new boards.

Verification- For Facebook, a fantastic way to bring attention to yourself is to verify your page. It is a process, that is for sure, but by having that blue check mark near your name, you will be able to have access to special features such as branded content. This will allow profiles to have a post with both a company and a personal profile attached.

All of these are very effective routes you can take to reach social media stardom. Yes, many have price tags, but this is exactly what these websites want. They want business professionals to invest in their advertising, and they will be sure to reward those who do with a whole new pathway of publicity.
Which of these methods have worked great for you? Comment below!

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The Domination of Social Media

By Christopher Tompkins

6Jun

Advertising, Email Marketing, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Marketing, Pinterest, Social Media, Twitter, Uncategorized

It seems that we have an interesting relationship with social media. Sure, we get our news, connections, entertainment, and business advertisements through these intuitive websites, but in the same breath we’ll complain how our lives are being dominated by technology. Maybe people are addicted to these websites and the screens we view them on. Yet our culture has created a need to be constantly connected to the web we’ve created. Because of this, viewers are being fed a large quantity of content everyday.

It may be expected that complaints about social media and “technology addiction” would be from an older generation that weren’t always used to it. However, we’ve seen younger people have similar thoughts. The only thing about them, though, is that they keep using it. Some Millennials may have strayed from the traditional and uber-popular Facebook, and now flock to platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat. But social media is social media. In fact, speaking of generations, older users are increasing on many fronts. So, even those who complain are still using them!

There is no doubt that we use this medium more than we have with television and radio. This is because, frankly, we’re able to. Social media is on our phones, desktops, even on some people’s Smart TVs. Even if we try to avoid screens by going out, we see those iconic logos everywhere as businesses try to promote their pages. We’ve even seen this Presidential Election being molded by tweets and followers. Let’s face it…it’s everywhere.

Businesses are at a special advantage with this. Since it’s being used so much, you have ample opportunity to grow your customer base in a short amount of time if implemented correctly. Yet, since social media never turns off, how can you, as a business person keep up with the demand? Certain applications will allow you to schedule posts so you don’t always have to be online. If you get a message from a follower, you can schedule auto-replies when you’re out of the office, even when your office is a smartphone. You can view analytics to see key times when people are online so you know exactly when to send your word out.

The point is, even though social media is demanding and everywhere, you can be successful when sending out your message, especially since your audience is always present. Many of us use these platforms as news sources and sole means of communications with family and friends. We’ve invested a lot into these accounts and ended up connecting many, many aspects of our lives into them. As a result, these tools have become constants, even more so than previous tools. As a result, we can use this to our advantage and get important messages and branding out.

What do you think about social media’s impact? Let us know below!

Tag : online marketing