You Published A Blog! Now What?

29Jun

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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How To Pick Your Pic: 4 Easy Steps On Getting Social Media Imagery Right

By Christopher Tompkins

28Jun

Graphic Design, Social Media

Here in social media country, creative writers and graphic designers alike can find a home. Social media thrives on the visual as much as it does the textual. With the written word, there’s plenty of rules to abide by. SEO rules will get your posts higher up on search engine results. Hashtags will get your updates in the right news streams. User names will grab the attention of the right people. Anyone who even reads social media can see there’s obviously some formulas to follow when writing. Yet what about imagery?

From the earliest days of social media, visuals have been just as important than anything written, if not more so. We talk a lot about how to formulate awesome content, but pictures tend to take a back seat. For an image to be eye-catching, there needs to be a few elements present. For the picture to actually help your social media campaign succeed, you need an additional set of things to consider. Here are the most important items to make your pic rock!

Clarity. The idea of clarity covers two fronts. First, the obvious. A picture shouldn’t be blurry, pixilated, warped, or blown out. Unless your posts are about those old bigfoot pictures, clarity shows you’re a professional. You’ll need a high resolution image of at least 300 dpi to make sure that it’ll be crisp and clean on most screens. Large pictures are always good to pick so you’ll have peace of mind that your social media posts won’t look like a vintage video game. However, you should also keep in mind that huge pictures will take time to load. You’re also going to want to steer clear of any images that have watermarks or another company’s logo somewhere on it. The second side of clarity is subject matter. Don’t have your followers trying to guess what they’re looking at. If they can’t figure out what’s going on in a picture, they’re going to give up and scroll away quickly.
Subject Matter. Most of the time spent on images will be on pictures that accompany posts. Make sure the picture you pick out actually makes sense and is appropriate for the subject and audience. Obviously, this means no obscene pictures plucked from the dark corners of the web, but also that it fits in with the tone of your brand.
Optimization. There are many ways to make an image jump off the screen. You could spend hours trying to make a picture just right. First of all, colors are important. If you have very specific rules with your company’s colors, be sure to adhere to them. You may want to consider some basic design laws. Choose colors that complement each other. Lastly, GIFs and animations have become popular once again, and you can take advantage of this. These will add a bit of motion to your images and it might help attract the right set of eyes.
Professionalism. Having high-quality, professional images is an element of all three prior items. However now we’re referring exclusively to your profile and cover images. For businesses, logos are always a great way to go for the profile image and a nice clean accompanying graphic for the cover image. If you’re representing yourself and you need a headshot of yourself, be sure it is a high-quality image, you’re wearing something appropriate, and you know…smile! A word to the wise: just because it’s your personal page, doesn’t mean recruiters, clients, and potential employers aren’t looking through your stuff. Get those old party pics out of there.

There’s no question about it, images can make or break any post. These are the kinds of things that social media marketers truly strive to achieve perfection with because we understand how quickly an image can bring a whole new wave of attention to a page.

What do you think about imagery’s role in social media? Comment below!

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Anybody Out There?! Understand your Followers

By Christopher Tompkins

28Jun

Advertising, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Local Marketing, Marketing, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter, Uncategorized

Those who are involved in the world of social media marketing could learn a great deal from a certain advertising star. Have you ever heard of Old Spice? If not, it’s a company that makes toiletries that are geared towards men. It’s been around since 1934 and as such, they’ve had some time to think about their intended audience. For a whole generation, it became the man’s fragrance. However, because of that, once “the greatest generation” that fought in WW2 and came home to reshape America began to enter their golden years, their iconic brand started to “get old” with it. People began to peg the brand with senior men and as such, their young customers started to dwindle. They needed a way to reinvigorate themselves to become popular again with the young crowd. They broadened their product line with multiple fragrances, body washes, and deodorants. Yet what really put Old Spice back into the hands of young twenty-somethings was their marketing campaign. They enlisted Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa, two celebrities know for their “manliness”, to endorse the product. Yet they did much more than that. They blew it up!

Their television commercials, which ended up being viral phenomenons, showed the men in such ridiculous poses in often psychedelic settings, that people had to pay attention. They looked absolutely crazy, entitling the campaign “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. Yet what was even crazier was that it worked, and then some. See, they didn’t just tap into a younger market, they infiltrated them because they utilized what the youth liked best- quirky, off the wall humor and viral marketing. They knew who they wanted to get and they assimilated the tone of the brand.

Now, we’re not saying you need to hire Terry Crews and put him on a unicorn while holding your product—although that would probably work. But you do need to know who your audience is, and what they want to watch. Like Old Spice, you need to understand how your audience thinks and what they like to watch. That’s the thing- it went beyond a commercial. People actually searched for these advertisements for entertainment value. Now, it’s your turn. Your content needs to go beyond pushy sales. That’s a surefire way to lose followers. You’re going to want to understand the following things to succeed:

WHO your intended audience is. Whether it’s an age, gender, style, or profession, you obviously have some type of target you’re aiming at.
WHAT content they want to consume. Does your audience like cute puppy videos? What about something more substantial like a sale? Figure out the type of things they want to have in their news feeds.
WHERE they’re at. Facebook is a go to. But younger audiences are flocking to Instagram and Snapchat. Professionals hang out over in LinkedIn. There’s those three guys who still linger in Google+ territory if you’re interested.
HOW they talk. This is where Old Spice really hits the mark. They knew who they wanted and they analyzed their tones. Witty, sarcastic, funny, and, to be frank, not all that interested in the complexity of the product. Figure out how your audience talks. Perhaps they like a more serious tone. Maybe they only like shop talk.

Before even clicking that “Sign Up” button on a social media site, you need to answer these questions. Chances are, you already know the answers to them and you’ll be able to translate your pre-existing business tactics onto the web.

What do you think about the tone of audiences? Let’s hear your thoughts!

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The New Kids In Town

By Christopher Tompkins

27Jun

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Local Marketing, Marketing, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter, Uncategorized

One of the most important elements of surviving the fast-moving social media waters is to keep in-tuned with current trends. While Facebook and Twitter seem to be steadfast names in this industry, there are new ones popping up all the time. How can you tell which ones are worth investing your time and resources into? It can be hard to gauge the firepower of a fledgling social media website or app. After all, who knew Instagram would be so popular? Social Times explores new platforms and sees if they’re worth clicking that “Sign Up” button.

Twitter and Facebook aren’t fools. They foresaw trends leaning towards live video streams and as such, they’ve adapted. Twitter’s sister site, Periscope, and Facebook Live allow companies to project live to an audience and answer questions on the spot. No pressure right? It has been working pretty well and with the help of promoting live events before they happen on your other social media accounts, a whole new wave of publicity is in your hands.
Snapchat. This app is starting to catch some serious speed. It’s a hit with Millennials and a lot of businesses are starting to take notice. The initial novelty behind this “app-only” platform is that you can see photos once and only once. They recently changed that so you can view pics and videos posted on an account’s story for 24 hours. Still, between geofilters that change depending on a customer’s location, to interactive news feeds, Snapchat is starting to be taken more seriously.
There are also niche platforms that appeal to certain audiences. Shouty brings sporting events live to a smartphone. ClearView Social has been used by law firms to reach out to all different platforms. Firef.ly helps travelers understand what’s in the surrounding area. What makes this one different than Yelp is that it actually recommends elements based on your preferences, as opposed to reviewing other user’s comments.
One that isn’t mentioned by Social Time is BizSugar. It’s a fairly new platform that targets small business. It’s kind of like a cross between LinkedIn and Reddit, if you could imagine such a thing. It’s is an interesting way to reach out and check out some relevant articles.

There are tons of ways to connect and there’s more everyday. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) jump on every new outlet that pops up. At times, it can help to watch how quickly the new platform’s popularity increases and with more of them targeting specific audiences, it can help to figure out if your product is even welcomed there.

For more information, check out Social Times’ article here: http://ow.ly/AlMh3008ZXl

What are your thoughts on the new generation of social media platforms? Do you expect any of them to be the next Facebook?

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Instagram’s New Ways to Reach Out

By Christopher Tompkins

27Jun

Instagram, Social Media

Instagram has been in the news quite a bit lately. First, they revealed a controversial facelift with a new logo and layout. Whether you love or hate it, you have to admit that it is quite different. Yet after the dust settled from the new logo fiasco, there was another change for the popular social media platform. This update, however, may help businesses reach out to their intended audience better.

With just a dash of Big Brother tactics, Instagram’s new “dynamic ads” deliver advertisements based on what users have already searched for on their smartphone. If a potential customer visited a company’s website earlier in the day, Instagram will remind you of what you saw with ads based around similar products. It also has the ability to show off the same product in different styles. This is a good tactic for businesses to be able to deliver their message to the right audience through a high-traffic avenue.

We’ve seen this kind of advertising before through Google, Facebook, and other websites. Now, Instagram is customizing their experience so you don’t mind those advertisements so much and might actually buy something. It’s all good, as long as you don’t mind them watching what you search for.

Instagram is a powerful tool for the creative and business-minded alike. It offers many tools to jazz up your photographs such as filters, and its reach is growing everyday. When it was first created back in 2010, we wondered how exactly we were supposed to take it seriously. After all, a picture can only do so much, right? Turns out, that Instagram is now becoming one of the more powerful and popular of the platforms, and that is only going to grow as their engineers continue to modify it. Younger internet surfers are attracted to its layout and versatility, and its ability to translate the world around them into something they can share.

For more information about this update, check out PR Daily’s article here: http://ow.ly/mr7k3008OvG

What do you think about dynamic advertising as a consumer? What about as a businessperson?

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An Unsurprising Affirmation

By Christopher Tompkins

27Jun

Facebook, Social Media

It’s probably not a shock to anyone to find out that Facebook is the most used social media site for business. However, it was also the site considered to deliver the best ROI. eMarketer reports some interesting numbers about where the social media platforms stand in this side of business.

According to their article, eMarketer reports about a survey that questioned 551 social media marketeers worldwide. An overwhelming 95.8% of them said that Facebook provided the best ROI. Twitter followed with 63% and it dwindled down from there.

While ROI isn’t exactly the best information to gauge social media activity, it can be helpful when looking at things from a strict business point of view. Most importantly, it can be a sign of the amount of engagement. For instance, Snapchat was only considered to have the best ROI by a mere 2.1%. Someday we may see Snapchat pick up those numbers, but for now, businesses aren’t yet comfortable with the app.

Now, Facebook has new tools on its utility belt. Facebook Live and Facebook Messenger are great additional pieces to the social media puzzle. Now, we can broadcast live video streams out to our followers with Facebook Live. We can also converse in new and intuitive ways with friends, families and yes, customers with Messenger’s many features.

One of the biggest reasons for Facebook’s firepower is its advertising efforts. It has the ability to reach out to a massive amount of people in the specific demographic you’re trying to target. If Snapchat had something similar, those percentages would surely rise.

For more information about this study, read eMarketer’s article here: http://ow.ly/VB8030096NM

What do you think of this? Do you think it is a dependable system to gauge effectively? Let us know!

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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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4 Social Media Marketing Misconceptions

By Christopher Tompkins

25Jun

Social Media

There has been a lot said about our industry. Social media marketing is gaining speed and now even the tech-illiterate know a little bit about it, or so they think. We have dealt with various communication platforms since the Internet started taking flight, and we are finally seeing its effectivity everywhere!. It’s always interesting to see what people who aren’t heavily involved think about social media. One of our favorite stories is about a friend’s grandmother who thought that Facebook was only for gossip, since she was only exposed to people talking about others on the popular website. Like everything else in our lives, there are preconceived notions about social media. The marketing side of things is no different. Eager entrepreneurs and business owners see the reach that the internet offers and want to jump right in. Often times, however, they may not fully understand what they are getting into. So, let’s set some things straight.

Social Media Marketing Isn’t Free. Sure, signing up for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram is free, but once you are ready to dig a little deeper, it will cost you. These platforms and all others like them thrive on advertising revenue, and they sure know how to make their money. Less and less is becoming free, so be sure to save at least 9% of your marketing budget for tools such as Facebook advertising and Twitter Cards.

Don’t expect immediate ROI. It is a businessperson’s instinct to try to analyze a marketing technique’s return on investment. Social media marketing doesn’t work like that. It is more about communication with one’s customer base as well as showing an interest in the global community. Yes, it will most definitely bring life to your business and customers will notice you more than ever, but not in a traditional sense. There is a large subjective element to this type of marketing.

You will not go viral overnight. Social media marketing takes time. Users do not typically soar to Internet stardom extremely quickly. Your internet presence needs to build up over time. You need to be patient and consistent.

Social Media is not a “once and done” type thing. Social media takes effort. You do not just create a page and let things alone. You need to post often- at least once a day for Facebook, and multiple times for Twitter. Social media marketing is an investment in time as well as assets. However, it is absolutely worth it.

As you can see, this new marketing strategy takes some time and effort that social media managers work at great lengths to perfect. However, if you have patience and determination, you will see wonderful rewards.

What other misconceptions do you know about? Comment below!

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Learn How to Share: Sources, Subjects, and More

By Christopher Tompkins

23Jun

Advertising, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter, Uncategorized

The internet is a busy and crowded place, stuffed to the brim with relevant content. Every industry has a whole world of knowledge to discover, which is available on the web. Some of it is credible, some of it is junk. It is important to do your research into what your posting and who wrote it.

As we have mentioned before in previous blogs, it is important to mix relevant content into your social media updates to balance out promotional posts. But what exactly should you share? News articles that are directly related to your field of expertise can be great tools for engagement. However, you will want to be sure that you actually agree with what the article says and what the author stands for.

Each industry has their own well-known experts, as well as blogs and news sources that are considered credible. Depending on the field that you work in, you will be able to find many articles that you can share. Of course, there are big news sources like CNN, MSNBC, and The Huffington Post that are renowned amongst all walks of life that you can rely on for quality content. If you find yourself on a lesser-known website, be sure to scan the page for any offensive imagery or copy. Some blogs will have a mess of sketchy ads strewn about the layout, sometimes hosting spam-like material. Advertisement is a necessary evil to make the internet keep chugging ahead, but you don’t want your readers to see inappropriate content. Speaking of advertising, you should check to see if your competitors are advertising on the website. This is especially true if it is a niche news source that covers topics specific to your industry. You don’t want sharing content to backfire!

Where do you find these kinds of articles? You can search your traditional search engines like Google and Bing, however that is going to deliver you a ton of links to weed through. It is suggested to look through social media itself to find articles that are being talked about. This will help you pick the popular subjects, but you will also have access to recently published news. You will want to check the dates of the material you are sharing. If the post is from months or even years ago, the information could be outdated or irrelevant. You want to present yourself as a “mover and shaker” in your field and that means keeping in-tuned with what is happening now.

Sharing engaging and interesting content is essential to your social media activity. You want to seem involved in the community you are trying to tap into. By giving extra publicity to these sources, your name will also pop up in unexpected ways as users search for the subject matter and author. So, start sharing!

How do you find relevant and credible sources? Comment below!

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Tag : social media