Maximising your Social Media Strategy
Social media is probably the most important tool in the modern era to grow your business and expand your reach. According to Pew Research Centre, with a global population of over 7 billion people, there are 3.03 billion active social media users. With the click of a button, you can instantly interact with thousands or even millions of people worldwide on behalf of your business.
Let’s consider 5 key ways in which social media can maximise your business.
Influencer marketing to help public relations
One particular way to enhance your company’s PR is to integrate influencer marketing. This is definitely one of the most influential tools a business can use when their main aim is to sell their product or service to the consumer.
Influencers can be anyone from a celebrity with a high amount of social media followers, a person who has a lot of sway in your particular industry or anyone relevant with a substantial number of followers that can capture the consumer’s imagination.
Small to averagely sized influencers, in terms of following and status will commonly accept the product or service free of charge, in exchange for an honest and hopefully positive review. Smaller sized influencers can potentially be more resourceful to use than a massive celebrity personality, as they can be quite enthusiastic and driven to also make a name for themselves in partnership with a brand.
However, particularly with emerging and established celebrities they will look to charge companies to post on their personal social media feeds. This can be quite a difficult option for a brand starting out with limited funding; however, for already largely recognised brands it can often benefit their company’s perceived status dependant on the reputation of the particular celebrity and their relevance to the target audience.
If your company can make a coup of an influencer, it can really kick-start a following on social media and be used to add fuel to the tank of your business’ journey.
There has however been some controversy about paid endorsements of social media tweets. An example most recently was when a hit soap banned their star actors from posting any type of endorsement from businesses.
Therefore, some key public figures may be off limits due to more commitments or sanctions, so it is important for a business to find the right name to align with. A common theme amongst celebrities is that they will be asked by a commission regulations board to Hashtag #spon for sponsor or #promo for promotion. In the age of the savvy consumer, this does not necessarily have the desired effects, as tweets look staged and manufactured just for a paid promotion, limiting the authenticity of the post.
Consumer protection company Trust In Advertising INC recently sent celebrity Kylie Jenner a legal letter, threatening to report the icon to the US Federal Trade Commission about “deceptive marketing techniques’’, after the star had discretely placed products on show in her pictures. Truth In Advertising told Jenner that any marketing posts must be marked with #spon or #promo.
Be sure to have social media incorporated into your press releases
This is probably one of the most simple but effective methods for increasing your brand’s reach to the consumer. Are you a business that publishes a standard press release and waits for the media to make contact? When delivering news or making a statement via a press release on the company’s website, it is a necessity to have your social media linked in so that the press release can be shared and distributed by media outlets and users. Even better, using social media itself to publish press releases is a great way to make sure your posts can be shared immediately by the masses.
Responding to negative press
Social media is a breeding ground for the consumer to voice their opinions, both good and bad. When a consumer or stakeholder has a complaint about your business on social media, it is within your best interest to respond to the issue and try to resolve any problems before they escalate. Sometimes a user may not directly mention your business profile to voice their concern, so it would be beneficial to have a member of the team using the search tool on each particular social media platform to vet and respond to all negative press.
In order to keep the negative publicised messages about your business to a minimum, it would be highly recommended to ask the user with the problem to send you a direct message, in order to resolve the matter discreetly, and most importantly, ‘offline’. This would hopefully stop more than one negative message being posted in the public eye at once.
Use social media campaigns to increase brand awareness
A social media campaign can gain you massive recognition if you target a vast enough market. If we look at an example from charity ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) Research who started the #IceBucketChallenge campaign. In order to increase awareness of the disease and raise money, people would throw a bucket of ice-cold water over themselves and then donate to the cause. With celebrities like Justin Bieber participating, the campaign was a massive success and raised over $100m dollars, as well as receiving 1.3 million mentions on social media in just 24 hours after Bieber completed the challenge. With the right campaign and target audience, the outcome can be phenomenal.
Interact with journalists on social media
Journalists have great power and a massive say in how a business is perceived in the public eye. By interacting and keeping journalists on your side will, in turn, allow your business to thrive. Journalists have the authority to publish both good and bad stories on your brand, so it is essential to open up honest dialogue with the media. If any social media posts created by your brand are relevant to a news outlet or journalist, you should tag their profile handle, so they can retweet or share the post with their followers. A key tip when building an online relationship with the press would be to keep the conversation genuine, informal and not robotic-like. It is essential to go above and beyond your professional side when trying to form strong humane bonds with the media. By making positive relations with the press can only benefit how your business is viewed upon.
Good luck and get social!
Social Media Evolvement: What Will 2018 Bring?
As the end of the year approaches, it’s time to start looking forward to 2018 and how social media will continue to evolve.
Social media is a fast-moving platform, that is ever changing and developing. Just this year, Twitter doubled its 140-character limit to 280, whilst Facebook created the ability to upload stories to your profile.
With some of the most popular social media channels making significant changes to their platforms, what else can we expect from 2018?
Video
Even though it has been around for a while, video content on Facebook and Twitter continues to rise in popularity. One element that is expected in 2018 is the use of subtitles, which will encourage users to watch anytime, anywhere, even in a public place. It is important to develop video content which can be viewed this way to engage a wider audience.
Short-Lived Content
In today’s society, time is short and speed is key when trying to get messages across using social media. This year, we have seen Facebook and Instagram following in Snapchats footsteps and introduced video stories which allow short video clips to be viewed for a limited period of time.
Instagram stories are popular amongst young people and will continue to increase in popularity in 2018 as other audiences start using the social media site. This means if you want to start connecting with Instagram users, your brand must invest time in creating stories.
Influencer Marketing
Using social media influencers is big business and it has exploded in recent years and looks like it will continue in 2018. However, the key trend for next year will be moving towards authenticity, rather than working with the ‘biggest’ influencers or celebrities. It will be far more beneficial working with influencers that want to endorse your product than someone with a larger following who has no interest. This is because the audience can distinguish when a celebrity is being genuine with the product.
Rethinking Twitter
Twitter has failed to grow followers significantly this year, with Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn acquiring more year on year. Twitter is the slowest of all the major platforms, despite making key changes such as increasing its character limit. In 2018, Twitter needs to make big changes to stay relevant and interesting to users.
Following these social media trends will ensure audience engagement with your brand.
We look forward to seeing any new editions to the social media world for the new year. If you need any help with your business’ social media pages, just get in touch!
What is SEO and why is it so important to your business?
It must be said – we admire anyone’s bravery at pushing themselves to understand the curious three-letter acronym that is SEO. So, we extend an approving handshake and encouraging nod for getting yourself to this article.
Now that you’re here, you’re in tremendous luck. At Zeus HQ, we’ve taken the time to dissect the inter-web’s various sources to come up with the most straightforward explanation of the dreaded “Search Engine Optimisation”.
To get our bearings, let’s take a look at the official definition of SEO as quoted on the What Is SEO website:
“Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website on organic ("natural" or un-paid) search engine result pages (SERPs), by incorporating search engine friendly elements into a website.”
And breathe in. It’s quite the mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s break it down in simpler terms.
Our definition of SEO:
SEO is all about where you rank on the pages of search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. For example, if you were to Google “Best restaurants Manchester” you would find that the website ranked the highest in that search is www.restaurantsofmanchester.com. Similarly, if you Googled “Interior design company Manchester” you would see www.curveinteriordesign.co.uk is top of the list.
Why it's so important to your business:
And the significance of being top of any search result on Google doesn’t warrant explanation. Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day, which is around 40,000 searches per second. Per second. It’s fair to say being in Google’s SEO good books has its perks.
Of course, aiming for your business to be top of Google’s search result – while an admirable aim nonetheless – isn’t always feasible. At least not when you’re just starting out. Increasing your ranking takes a lot of time and effort; something many business owners don’t see the value in investing in.
As an agency with specialisations in content and digital marketing, we’ve seen first-hand what putting time and effort into SEO can do for a business’s results. So, maybe it’s worth dedicating that Wednesday morning slot to brainstorming blog post ideas after all.
Getting to Grips with Writing a Blog
For many Planet Zeus clients we write monthly blog posts, whether it is on something seasonal for example; Summer, Christmas, Valentine’s Day or regarding a recent event a client has held.
Keeping your website fresh with new content is important, especially when you’re looking to improve or maintain your position in search engine results. It is also a great talking point on social media and encourages traffic to your website.
We have put together some top tips on how to write a successful blog piece for your website:
- Understand Your Audience
Before you get started, it is vital you know your audience and think about what they would want to read. Having the right tone of voice is important, whether you want to be formal or chatty, it’s best to stick with your preferred tone for every post you write and upload. Of course there is a fine a line, don’t be too jokey as the reader may not take you seriously and being too formal your audience may find the content boring.
Once you find your balance, have confidence and stick with it.
- What’s your topic?
Picking the topic can be the easiest part, but coming up with a title for the topic can be a different story. Draft some ideas first and choose the preferred heading once you’ve written the piece. You never know, by the time you come to select one you may have thought of a better, catchier one.
- Getting Started
At this point, you’re probably chomping at the bit to get writing and get all your ideas down on paper in case you forget anything! But be sure to plan the structure of the blog post and have a captivating beginning, informative middle, and a logical ending - this way it will flow with ease and readers will come to an informative conclusion.
- Tidying up
Once you’re dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, it’s time to have a good read through. Does it make sense? Is it punctually and grammatically correct? Is it concise?
You may need to edit parts of it, or even all of it, but this is vital and a great a way of ensuring the messages and information is accurate. Better still, ask a colleague to look over it and feedback any changes you may have missed.
- Dress it up
There is nothing less appealing than just plain text, after all a “picture says a thousand words”, so add in images whether it’s of a product relating to the blog piece, or from a recent event, it is important to add colour and make the page look eye catching!
- Last minute checks
Once you’ve uploaded it to the site, be sure to preview the post – make sure all text is the same font / colour / size, everything is formatted correctly and images are aligned perfectly.
Then you’re ready to hit upload!
We hope this helps but if you’d like to talk us about how we can take all the hard work away, call us on 01260 271429.