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Your PR Is Doomed Without a Consistent Digital Strategy. Here’s Why.

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By Evgeniya Zaslavskaya

Here’s why launching a digital PR campaign won’t make sense until you’ve established a solid and consistent digital strategy.

As a head of a PR agency, I’m often reached out to by brands asking me to launch a full-scale digital PR campaign. Rather unexpectedly for them, sometimes I decline or suggest they push their plans back a bit.

The reason is that I firmly believe PR won’t make sense if a brand hasn’t established a solid digital strategy. Getting featured in some top-tier media is nice, but it won’t necessarily result in many new leads, increased online visibility and skyrocketing revenue. Top-tier publications alone won’t bring you clients or brand awareness, especially for brands that hardly have any digital presence.

Imagine you’ve got a car and want to level it up and tune it. Ah, the neon lights and shiny car rims. Are you good to go? Maybe. Only if you are certain that all the rest performs well. Gear unit, engine, headlights — are you sure these work fine? PR is the tuning that you make while ignoring all the rest.

The “Featured in top-tier media” bar on your website is good, but it won’t matter if this is not part of your consistent digital presence strategy.

Think long-term, and align efforts with other teams

Including PR in the long-term digital marketing strategy is the number one thing I recommend to the brands. Pavel Katz, CEO of growth marketing agency Digital Bands, also emphasizes the importance of having a content strategy that covers all digital channels and making sure PR publications are aligned with it: “Outline a very particular content plan with specific dates and leave some place for the unscheduled posts and announcements. Press releases and planned publications should be reflected in it too. I know this sounds like quite a lot of work for several teams, but this will take your digital marketing efforts to the next level.”

Things only start here. After the content strategy is ready, there are a number of other steps that will help brands enhance PR efforts.

Talk to sales. Talk to marketing. Talk to SEO and business development teams. Your digital presence might diverge unless your efforts align with the other departments. Tip: Schedule a call with a sales/business development lead, and ask them to help you map a buying persona. That’ll help you know [rather than guess] who your target audience is. Even if you do B2B, there’s always a particular person behind this “B” who will decide whether to cooperate with you. Know the pains of this person, address them, talk to them, and help make a well-informed decision through PR.

Level up your socials

Along with the PR publications, social media is your brand’s front face, which clients and other stakeholders judge you upon. Ensure your online reputation strategy syncs with the PR and social media teams. Hints: Agree on the tone of voice, discuss crisis management steps in advance, and discuss what kind of brand image you broadcast through socials and PR efforts.

Don’t forget to show your PR publications to your social media audience. You can launch a paid social campaign that showcases the PR mentions and target a particular audience that you’d like to see your posts. It allows you to increase your PR reach and tweak the ad displays as per your targets. For example, you can show Facebook ads with a PR mention to people who submitted requests on your website. It also doubles as a solution to an eternal PR metrics problem: You can track how many people have seen and engaged with your publication through such ads.

For instance, after my previous article was featured in Entrepreneur, I posted a link to it on my LinkedIn along with a catchy intro that encourages my connections to read the entire post (you can do better than “I was featured in /media/, read the entire piece here,” but most intros do boil down to that). Journalists appreciate when their pieces are placed on social media and get additional coverage. I noticed it got decent traction and engagement from my colleagues and friends, so I launched a small-scale paid social ads campaign on LinkedIn, which gave my post a proper boost. It’s a win-win for me and the media: The article is seen more often, gets more hits, and I can track down how many people saw my feature.

Technicalities and HyPRlinks

Audit and fix your website. That’s an art in itself, but leveraging Google Analytics is a good start. This way, you can identify how your website performs and what can be improved. Example: We had a client whose website sucked when it came to its technical performance; it just didn’t load quickly enough. All the hreflangs, XMLs, javascripts and other front- and back-end incantations might damage your website performance and hence hurdle PR. No one wants to deal with trudging through sloppy pages.

Digital PR implies media linking to your website; thus, exploring your current backlink profile makes sense. You need to know which websites have already linked to you to gain momentum by securing new links. Often, links from niche websites will get you more reach than from top media.

You can use SEO tools for both technical website audit and backlink profile exploration. These may seem tricky, but as I advised earlier, you’ve talked to the SEO team, right? PR + SEO is a secret weapon neglected by 9 out of 10 PR specialists I speak to, so be among the few who use it.

Take your time

As I mentioned in the beginning, I often advise my clients not to start the PR campaign right away. After all, the odds are they won’t even need PR at their current stage, and it’s fine. Sometimes we prefer to ramp up our efforts gradually, and the first steps can be pretty straightforward. Linking back to your website in your YouTube video descriptions is PR, too. Asking a partner you’ve cooperated with to announce your cooperation on their social media also matters.

It’ll be much easier to gain traction in the media you want to be featured in if your overall digital presence is solid and your brand’s digital efforts are aligned. There are no details that won’t matter. Before you make it to the main page of the media you dream about, you’ve got to do your digital homework.

By Evgeniya Zaslavskaya

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor. Evgeniya Zaslavskaya is the founder and CEO of ZECOMMS AGENCY, a communications agency that provides PR services for companies and startups in the field of IT and investment in the regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

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3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Neglect Your Digital Strategy

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By John Hall

Digital isn’t marketing’s wave of the future. It’s the present. If your brand hasn’t devised and implemented a comprehensive digital marketing strategy by now, you’re way behind the crest.

If you do have a digital strategy in place, don’t count on riding that particular wave forever. Customers are constantly accessing digital content. If they like what they see from your brand, they’ll return for more, and they’ll want to see something new every time. That’s why your digital strategy needs constant care and attention.

Here are three major reasons you shouldn’t neglect your digital strategy, no matter how well it’s doing right at this moment.

1. Digital Is the Here and Now

It’s a digital world. Technology has ushered in new ways of reaching target audiences demanding fast-food consumption of information and instant gratification. If your digital presence only constitutes a website, you won’t be found. You and your brand will be irrelevant.

Adding a few random channels, such as a Facebook business page and a Twitter account, won’t cut it either. You should develop a cohesive digital strategy over time, layering on the channels your target audiences are using. As you add a new channel, don’t neglect the ones you’re already using, especially if they’re producing solid results.

Remember that quality content is what makes you relevant in your industry and to your customers. Your brand should be routinely auditing how your content is performing across all channels to stay on top of performance. Did a piece of content get read more often, or did more people watch the video format? How long did it keep readers or viewers engaged? How many clicks, likes and shares did it get?

Although digital marketing is here to stay, factors such as algorithms and keywords change frequently. There are a variety of tools you can use to track search engine rank page volatility, so invest in one. More importantly, use it constantly to inform your content, adjusting it as often as necessary to keep your ranking high.

It’s obvious that not having a digital marketing strategy is an error. But neglecting it once you do is just as egregious. Digital is the way your audience is consuming information now and likely will be forever. Give your strategy sufficient care and feeding every single day.

2. Digital Has Kept Companies Afloat During the Pandemic

When the world went digital at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses had to quickly devise and execute a digital strategy. Brick-and-mortar shops on Main Street America needed to offer more than their Facebook business page. If they didn’t, their shops would fail — and many of them did.

Those who stayed in business had to pivot to online sales and figure out how to deliver orders, whether via curbside pickup or shipping them to customers. In roughly 42 days in March and April 2020, small business online sales platform Shopify saw a whopping 62% increase in customers as retailers looked for help with a new digital strategy.

For certain, the jump to online sales was spurred by the pandemic, but it’s safe to say it’s here to stay. Customers are now accustomed to the convenience of shopping online. Moreover, they’re excited about having the option of digitally supporting local small businesses instead of behemoths like Amazon and Walmart.

For businesses of all sizes to thrive in whatever world comes next, they need to constantly improve on their pandemic digital marketing strategies. When Salesforce surveyed consumers in mid-2021, 61% said they’re planning to spend more time online, 88% expect businesses to accelerate their digital presence and 69% insist that companies find innovative mechanisms for product and services delivery.

The people have spoken. To respond, keep your brand on the cutting edge of digital by developing strategies that continue to keep you relevant. Adopt successful strategies used by others in your industry but make sure you do so in a way that’s congruent with your brand. Monitor customers’ reviews and input and adjust to their needs and wants. Digital might have kept you afloat during the early days of the pandemic, but now you need to swim like a champ.

3. Digital Will Continue to Evolve

Amid constant uncertainty, businesses have adapted to one unchanging truth: Digital strategy, if done well, will always serve others. No matter what happens in the future, there will always be an online world to serve. Serve its citizens well, and you will do well in return.

The specifics of the evolution of digital marketing success are unknown, but the critical steps necessary to evolve are constant. Step one is learning how to effectively market your brand digitally. Watch what successful companies are doing to respond to their customers’ ever-changing demands. A reputable agency that helps you develop strategic content and SEO tactics will enable you to stay on top of this as well as step two, which is creating winning digital marketing strategies.

Step three is executing those strategies well and monitoring results. Step four? Repeat successes and eschew failures, which essentially returns you to step one.

Customers not only want the right content at the right time, but they want it delivered in a format they can consume easily. During the height of the pandemic, when many were spending nearly every waking moment in front of a screen, the popularity of podcasts skyrocketed. This evolutionary rise meant brands needed to reformat their relevant content to suit the preferred delivery method.

You can’t know for sure where customers will lead your company in the future. However, you can learn some valuable lessons from trends they established during the pandemic’s height. Brands will need to keep an eye on these trends in 2022 and beyond. Digital marketing’s underpinnings, such as content, speed, and SEO, aren’t going away anytime soon.

Digital marketing firmly entrenched itself from the beginning of Covid. It continues to evolve as brands get increasingly good at listening to customers and responding to their demands. Now is no time to neglect your digital marketing strategies. It’s time for your business to catch a wave that will leave you sitting on top of the world.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By John Hall

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

John Hall is the co-founder and president of Calendar, a scheduling and time management app. He’s also the strategic adviser for Relevance, a company that helps brands differentiate themselves and lead their industry online.You can book him as a keynote speaker here and you can check out his best-selling book “Top of Mind.” Sign up for Calendar here.

Sourced from Forbes

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Why You Need A Digital Strategy To Get Ahead Of The Game

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By John Hall

The world is wired—heck, it’s even wireless. Consumer reliance on technology to find businesses, learn about them and buy their products and services had long been gaining speed. Then a global pandemic pushed the accelerator to the floor.

If your business hasn’t left a digital footprint at all yet, you are lagging behind, but you’re not alone. More than one in four small businesses in the U.S. don’t have a website. Of those that do, one-fifth complain about low traffic rates that may make them question the investment.

Having a basic digital presence is better than none at all, but it can’t improve your bottom line in and of itself. Businesses need to take advantage of all the online tools available and have an intentional strategy for optimizing them.

To get ahead of the game in the 21st century, you need a digital strategy. Here are three reasons why.

1. The Pandemic Made Everyone Digital

In case you missed the news, Millennials have overtaken the Baby Boomers as the largest generation. These 25- to 40-year-old consumers are virtually all on the internet. The oldest members of the next generation, Gen Z, are leaving college. They were born and raised with the internet and social media. These generations may not know they need to punch in a 1 to make a long-distance call on a landline, but they do know how to find almost anything on their smartphones.

If you think you’re OK without a digital strategy because your business caters to an older demographic, think again. According to a Pew Research study, two-thirds of those ages 75 and older and 54% of those ages 65 to 74 have little confidence in their ability to use tech devices or need help setting them up. Nonetheless, 82% of these tech-hesitant folk said the internet was important to them during the pandemic. Old dogs were willing to learn new tricks if they could see kids and grandkids without risking exposure to a deadly virus.

You might say digital technology was a trial by fire for a lot of people who never used it that much before they had to. Even those who did rely on tech pre-pandemic have developed online habits they may never break. From this point on, fewer people will actually be walking the aisles of stores to get their essentials. Now that nearly everyone has entered the digital age, your business needs to embrace it as well.

2. Consumers Just Aren’t Going to Work That Hard

Like me, you have probably experienced the online search let down countless times. That’s when you Google something like “landscapers near me.” A map comes up with a list with business addresses and directions, but several entries lack links to a website.

No matter how many times this happens to me, the same question goes through my mind: What business doesn’t even have a website? Like the vast majority of consumers, I want to research my options online before I decide where I’m going to spend my money. The ability to learn about businesses online makes our consumer lives easier. If you have a digital presence, I’ll look at you. If you don’t, I won’t do the heavy lifting to find you.

If you do have a well-designed, easy to navigate and mobile-friendly website, that’s a good first step. But if you aren’t engaging your audience on more than one digital platform, that’s a missed opportunity. To establish your business as the go-to for whatever you sell, you need to expand engaging content across multiple platforms to reach as many people as possible. You will also be getting a bigger bang for your content buck when you do.

Savvy digital marketing practices have created convenience-oriented consumers but not complacent ones. A digital strategy that comes at them from multiple angles will get you noticed. Then content, links and shares will help instil the trust they demand so you can close the sale.

3. Digital Strategies Aren’t Built in a Day—and They Don’t Need to Be

If you could afford to hire an agency to design and implement an omnichannel digital strategy for your business in a few weeks, that would be great. Of course, not all businesses—especially small ones—have the resources to do that. But that doesn’t mean you don’t make an attempt.

Digital marketing strategies are highly conducive to incremental development. Businesses can layer one platform onto another then another until a full-blown strategy is up and running. Many of those layers can be handled by even novice internal employees capable of using a drag-and-drop website builder or setting up a social media account for the business.

The proliferation of DIY digital marketing tools makes establishing an online presence easy and affordable. That’s particularly encouraging news for start-ups and small businesses. Fittingly, it’s the digital age itself that has made the secrets of digital marketing readily accessible and budget-friendly.

Just don’t forget that a basic presence will require an upgrade if you want to compete at a higher level in your industry by, say, increasing website traffic with shrewd SEO. You may need to hire in-house talent to create engaging SEO content, adjust content for specific platforms and keep it fresh and on schedule. Or you may decide it’s worth the investment to work with an agency that has a successful digital marketing track record. Don’t worry if you need to pace yourself; at least you’ll be in the race.

Online platforms are the great equalizer among businesses of all sizes. They are how brick-and-mortar stores can be profitable despite the huge shadow cast by e-commerce behemoths. But your business needs to be in multiple places with the right content to make your online presence count. That can only happen if you execute a smart digital strategy. Do it well, and you’ll find your business on the winning side of the scoreboard.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By John Hall

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

John Hall is the co-founder and president of Calendar, a scheduling and time management app. He’s also the strategic adviser for Relevance, a company that helps brands differentiate themselves and lead their industry online. You can book him as a keynote speaker here and you can check out his best-selling book “Top of Mind.” Sign up for Calendar here.

Sourced from Forbes

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5 Low-Cost Visual Creation Tools to Help Improve Your Digital Marketing Efforts

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When you’re working on promoting your next campaign, you should consider adding a visual punch to make it more enticing, so it stands out in busy user feeds.

It’s been proven time and time again that people are more likely to engage with posts which contain photos and/or videos, because the visual aspect makes the post more interesting to read. But if you’re on a budget, it can be tough to justify paying for platforms like Photoshop, especially if you don’t plan to use it frequently and/or don’t have a graphic designer in house.

That’s why I’m sharing some of the most popular inexpensive and/or free marketing tools to help you create stunning visuals to attract buyers, engage fans and make events and campaigns more memorable.

1. Canva

By far one of the most popular visual tools online today, Canva has a free version available which enables you to create various image types and gives you a taste of the full app. Canva facilitates a range of visual options – from infographics, e-books and Facebook ads to email headers – and you don’t need to be a graphic designer to use it. It’s an intuitive visual platform which even novices can use, and it includes an extensive selection of stock photos and other elements.

You’re also able to upload your own logos and images to the platform and incorporate them into your own designs. There are templates available if you’re looking for something more structured and several photo enhancing tools for any touch-ups you need.

2. Crello

Another popular option which is free to sign up for is Crello. The app has over 65 million free stock images, and over 10,000 free design templates, while there are more advanced design elements available for around $1/each.

Anyone can sign up and get started on the pre-loaded templates right away – they have designs for print, social media, animations, digital ads and just about anything you can think of that will work for events, e-newsletters and blogs. The app also has a community page with ideas from members, which will definitely help to get your creativity flowing.

3. Animoto

An affordable platform you can use to easily turn photos, graphics, and video clips into animated video slideshows, Animoto starts with a free two0week trial, with the paid version starting at $13/month.

The basic package gives you access to over 700+ styles, and 500 music tracks. It’s a platform that works to create great short-form videos for Facebook and Instagram, as it can easily convert the slideshow to the square format.

You can add any images, clips and text you see fit, then save and share to your respective platforms.

4. Infogr.am

This platform enables you to publish charts and infographics through a variety of templates. You can add charts, maps, videos, images and anything else you want, and share it with the one-click (or embed it into your blog).

With the free plan, you’re given access to 37+ interactive charts, but if you move up to the pro plan (for $19/month), that expands to 500+ map types, 100 projects, 10 pages/project, privacy control and the ability to download HD images.

5. Lumen5

Lumen5 can turn your blog posts, articles and any other long-form content into videos – you simply upload the text into the platform, choose some photos and music, and then you can share it directly to Facebook or upload it to share wherever you like.

The free version enables you to create unlimited videos, and upload your own logo and photos for the videos you create. It also gives you access to 10,000,000+ free media files.

With a pro account (at $49/month), you’ll get all the same, plus the ability to upload your own watermark and outro with square videos, no credit scene and Lumen5 branding

These are just some of the many low-cost visual tools available to help improve your online presentation. Each tool offers something different, so it’s worth experimenting with what you can to find the right fit for your business needs.

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5 Tips for Brands on How to Use Facebook’s New ‘Brand Collabs Manager’ Tool

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Influencer marketing has emerged as one of the more effective ways for brands to spark engagement, drive brand awareness and reach audiences via digital platforms. And with the option growing in popularity, social media giants like Facebook are now looking to better facilitate such connection, enabling improved, transparent brand campaigns which deliver better advertiser results.

Facebook’s latest initiative to foster influencer marketing is its new Brand Collabs Manager tool, which helps to connect brands with relevant content creators for such purpose.

Through the platform, brands have the option of finding influencers who have similar audiences based on various factors (age, gender, interests). These influencers – who have follower counts ranging from 25,000 to 8 million people – also have access to insights and data, making it easier for brands to assess their actual reach and capacity, helping to find the right match.

So how will this impact the world of influencer marketing? In this post, we’ll take a look at how brands can leverage the new platform to fuel up their influencer marketing strategies, and get the most out of their efforts.

Identify the Right Influencer

Brand Collabs Manager enables businesses to establish improved connection with influencers who align with their brand values, vision, and purpose.

Influencers can set up a portfolio that’s connected to their Facebook Page, and present campaigns where they’ve collaborated with brands and incorporated messages and products into their content.

The top relevant creators will also have a percentage match on their profile thumbnail, depending on your listed requirements, while you can also be able to see their audience reach, and set an audience match to see how it compares to yours. From there, you can choose any influencer or group of influencers.

Identifying the right person to represent your brand is vital – influencers with a massive following aren’t always the right fit for your audience. Always remember that quality trumps quantity when determining the right creators to partner with.

Great Content Wins Over All

The pillar of any effective marketing strategy is exceptional content – and that’s no different for influencer marketing.

Influencers are content creators who have become exceptionally successful with their craft – brands should not only focus on the influencers they’re looking to partner with, but even more so, the content they publish, and how that might work in representing their brand. Effective content is authentic, resonates with the target audience and represents both sides well.

With the influx of brands and influencers, you need to get creative to break through the noise and stand out. Think of compelling ways to reach your audience by leveraging various channels and formats.

Authenticity Is Key

Facebook is constantly working to filter out fake content and accounts, in order to ensure users only see transparent and authentic content. This is because consumers want authenticity from brands more than ever.

If you think of influencer marketing as a quick way to amp up sales, you’ll quickly fail. Every influencer should be a true brand ambassador, not just a paid spokesperson.

Instead of partnering with big-name influencers for temporary projects, invest in establishing genuine, long-term relationships with those who truly align with your brand’s vision. Create an authentic relationship with your creator – they’ll feel that you’re more invested in the partnership, and in return, they may also become more invested and be more loyal to your brand.

This kind of relationship will help both sides create content that genuinely resonates with your target audience and which doesn’t come off super salesy.

Personalized Messaging

Personalized marketing efforts have never been more important, and with Facebook’s access to a wealth of data on individual consumers, brands have the opportunity to ramp up their personalization efforts.

Brand Collabs Manager opens up the door for even better-targeted experiences – by serving more engaging ads and individualized content, the audience you’re reaching through influencers will likely be impressed and intrigued to discover more about your brand.

Track Your Performance

In order to gauge your success with influencer marketing and Brand Collabs Manager, you need to consistently measure your data and analytics in order to evaluate how users are reacting to your campaigns.

By using Facebook to track your performance, you’ll be able to better understand the type of content that works, which doesn’t, and what CTAs drive conversion. This will, in turn, help you focus on driving measurable results which boost ROI.

Conclusion

The launch of Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager emphasizes just how significant influencer marketing has become – and really, the option is growing to form a crucial part of any successful digital marketing strategy.

Brand Collabs Manager is only open to a few brands creators at this stage, but it will soon be available to all. We predict that it will become a major disruption to the state of influencer marketing – and if used properly, it’ll maximize the quality of partnerships between the two parties and drive better ROI.

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Facebook Is Not A Digital Strategy… and Snapchat Better Grow up Fast

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By John Andrews and Ted Rubin

Ad giant WPP recently reduced its full-year earnings for the second time this year with CEO Sir Martin Sorrell citing a myriad of challenges… from consumer goods company spending cutbacks, to Trumponomics (disappointed by this reference to say the least). Sorrell’s comments over the past couple years, and in the Cheddar interview here, highlight the challenges facing the ad industry and its clients as media consumption increasingly migrates to digital channels and on-demand consumption and the “me” media evolution. Sir Martin also points to the fact that Google, and now Facebook, have become the largest investment pools WPP is deploying for their clients. Maybe the problem lies in the fact that Facebook and Google are tactical vs. strategic decisions but are being treated as overarching, and all encompassing, approaches. Many media decisions currently being made in digital seem to be retreads of traditional media tactics where bigger is better… and interruption is still rules the day (a strategy fast facing extinction).

WPPs chief has astutely pointed out many times that Google, Facebook and their kin are media companies. What Sir Martin and others don’t speak much about is the fact that they are also competitors. Individuals, small business, and now large companies, are all realizing that agencies aren’t required for digital marketing and capable in-house teams can be much more efficient and effective… especially with the platforms offering state of the art content management and analytics tools. Compounding the challenge for agencies is that a combination of desperation for relevancy among publishers, and lack of controls, has resulted in 1/3 of digital ads being fake or bots… according to WPP’s own research. The agency business has a digital trust problem, one that is being exploited by Facebook, Google and individual “Age of Influence” publishers.

Owing to its brand strength, Facebook has become the default for brand advertising dollars. The platform did a masterful job of transitioning to mobile and is simply where the most eyeballs spend the most time… and “engagement” is native to the platform. It also has leveraged its Instagram platform to become a perfect medium for brands to connect with consumers… with more visual, story-telling, and native-based content that adds value to the user experience, vs. a constant stream of interruption. Finally, its ad pricing punishes brands for bad ads, a simple strategy for success. Other channels, the highest profile one being Snapchat, have been less successful at integrating and balancing the needs of users and advertisers alike. Snapchat, for instance, has struggled with creating advertiser value while staying true to its platform vision. Snapchat has a robust audience of valuable younger consumers but in its current form, it does not have the brand engagement capability that marketers are seeking… nor the loyalty with Instagram Stories effectively competing for market share. As with agencies, brand trust is challenged by the lack of transparency, metrics, and measurable brand impact needed to justify scaled brand investment.

All of this friction will bring increased pressure on all parties in 2018 as investors, advertisers, and consumers all seek enhanced value from digital channels. Investment will increasingly flow in the direction of engagement driven by utility for all parties. For example, with 60% of product searches now starting on Amazon, it too will become greater competition for media dollars by bringing branded content closer to the point of purchase. Look for brands and retailers to also explore their own digital media capabilities beyond simple ads and into deeper content-rich experiences.

By John Andrews and Ted Rubin

Sourced from Ted Rubin

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How To: Get More From Your Social Strategy

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By Charlie Sammonds.

Getting your social media right is essential for success

It can be difficult to quantify the effect of your social media strategy on your sales. The waters are murky; conversions are more often indirect and the real value of a strong social presence is the more nebulous ‘personality’ of your brand. Regardless of how you define its value, though, a proper social media strategy is well worth investing in. Before you set out on building a loyal troop of followers online, consider these four tips for an effective, consistent strategy.

Identify your target demographic

Where many companies falter is in casting their net far too wide. Being present on all social media is great but unless you have the resources to effectively manage a plethora of accounts, the message risks being diluted. Facebook is the universal social media – it spans demographics like no over and is present in almost every country in the world. But outside of the world’s second most popular website, a more targeted approach can be effective.

Consider more than just the big two – Facebook and Twitter. Promoting a fashion brand? Use Pinterest. Promoting a B2B company? LinkedIn. And these distinctions can be further developed; 85% of Pinterest users are female, for example, so those men’s shirts are probably best marketed elsewhere. Luckily, the demographics of particular social media sites are easily accessible, so identify yours before assuming that more means better.

Find your tone and hone it

Perhaps secondary only to identifying your target demographic and the social media they use, is finding your tone. Different tones suit different products – travel companies, for example, tend to be lighter in tone than financial institutions – but as long as the tone is both strong and consistent, they don’t necessarily have to naturally match. More jovial personalities tend to get higher engagement (and hence more shares), but doing it poorly is a surefire way to come across try-hard.

A great example of a playful social presence is Skittles, whose Facebook page has over 24 million ‘likes’ and whose content is well shared. Their tone is relaxed, comic; not every post has to be hilarious for a jovial presence to work. Paddy Power’s R-rated Twitter feed is followed by 569,000 Twitter users – leaps and bounds ahead of the competition – thanks to a commitment to comedy and a tone so consistent you’d wonder how their social media team have a day off. These kinds of account give a company a human face, a personality to veneer the number crunching and stuffy boardroom meetings at play under the surface.

Use visual platforms

Social media campaigns are often more successful when they employ various mediums rather than the occasional tweet or Facebook post. Snapchat grosses 8 billion daily video views, for example, and the non-intrusive nature of having a company as a contact on the media sharing app renders it more appealing for the user. Again, it is a question of demographic; if your product is designed for the over-50 market, Snapchat would be an essentially useless medium.

Video, more generally, is a fantastic opportunity for full engagement. The most effective marketing videos are 15 seconds long or under; Instagram caps ads at 15 seconds and promotional Facebook videos will autoplay if under that length – a great way of grabbing the idle scroller. It’s not a long time in which to tell a story, but if you manage to create an engaging, concise video ad, you have the best chance of conversions. User-generated content is also an often under-valued source of strong visual content. It is more viable for already established companies, but can be leveraged by all if done well. Coca Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign – where they invited customers to, you guessed it, post a picture of them sharing a Coke – was one of their better recent marketing strategies.

Build a story

This is where the difficult task of converting your social media presence into sales requires some creativity. Self-promotion is all very well, and directly inviting followers to buy your products will doubtless see some return, but there is more value to be drawn from building a story around your brand. Slow Watches, for example, have developed a philosophy surrounding their products and they use it to underpin their social media marketing; ‘Can a watch change your life?’ is an effectively emotive opening gambit. Doc Martens, similarly, run a well-followed blog covering everything from punk festivals in the Netherlands to bands that have appeared on their ‘Stand For Something Tour’ – which is, in itself, a wonderful marketing move.

Your story should, of course, contain your product in some way. Saddleback Leather describe themselves as a ‘people business cleverly disguised as a leather goods company’ and their social media strategy reflects this. Their Instagram account focuses primarily on adventure, with their bags appearing all over the globe. A story is an effective indirect sales driver, and appeals to more than just a customer’s wallet.

By Charlie Sammonds

Sourced from innovation enterprise

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Six things you need to stop doing right now with your mobile strategy

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By Michael Hewitt.

he mobile search landscape has changed immensely in recent years, transforming how consumers engage with brands and discover new products. But the change of pace has left some brands struggling to keep up, wondering just how hard mobile is working for them, and whether their brand proposition is really translating to the small screen.

It has led to many making what are, in 2017, some fundamental mistakes with mobile strategy. Here are six of the biggest:

The ‘m-dot’ site

When the ‘mobilegeddon’ update first reared its head in 2015, it unsurprisingly caused panic in the digital ecommerce sector. This was an update that threatened to dramatically harm the web visibility of those brands that weren’t delivering a mobile-friendly experience, and it was an update that would kick-in not very long after it was first announced – certainly not long enough to align all of the necessary stakeholders and plan, build, test and launch a completely new site.

Many brands responded by launching what became known as m-dot websites – essentially copies of a desktop website that were tweaked for mobile and appear on an m.website.com or mobile.website.com sub-domain. It was a quick-fix solution, allowing brands to meet the criteria that would see them becoming a ‘mobilegeddon’ victim, but avoided the need to go through a lengthy web redesign and build.

But now Google is warning brands that it wants to see the end of the m-dot, claiming that the mobile-first index may not index m-dot sites effectively. Throw in the increased risk of broken redirects and duplicate content that come with an m-dot, and the time really has come for you call in the designers and go responsive.

Being deaf to voice search

In June 2017, a Think with Google survey found that 57% of people would use voice search more if it recognised more complex commands, and 58% of respondents said they would like more detailed results when using search.

Think about how you can make your existing keyword strategy more conversational, to reflect the way in which your audiences are going to interact verbally with their mobile or smart devices – particularly if your site features a lot of ‘how to’ content on its site. A desktop search for ‘flights to London’ could very easily become ‘when is the next flight to London?’ or ‘what is the cheapest way to get to London tomorrow morning’. Could your current content answer that query?

Not thinking about your long-term app strategy

A survey by Localytics found that 60% of people who download an application become inactive within 30 days, whilst data from Quattra shows that the daily active user rate drops 77% the first three days after an app is installed on a device.

Mobile apps are not, in themselves, a flawed marketing channel but if you are going to invest in developing and maintaining one, think carefully about how you are going to avoid the graveyard of unused apps that lies on practically every smartphone in existence.

Is your app simply an extension of your mobile site? If so, then think about why you actually need one. What does your app offer that your users can’t get or would find more difficult to get elsewhere?

Think about how you would use your app to re-engage and reconnect with your audiences throughout the customer journey, using your data to provide personalised messages and push notifications that will resonate with them. Just remember not to over-use tactics like push notifications as they can get irritating (particularly if you are just pushing offers and sales messages).

Bombarding users with ads

Speaking of things that are irritating, ads on mobile. Obtrusive adverts are annoying on any platform, but on the small screen of mobile, they are even more of a user experience faux-pas.

If you are advertising to consumers on mobile, make sure that it isn’t your brand that is frustrating what should be a seamless and enjoyable user experience with an intrusive and impossible to dismiss pop-up or interstitial. Not only does it frustrate users and harm the brand, it can also harm your organic search visibility.

Ignoring your audiences’ neighbourhood

So-called ‘near me’ searches are growing at a rate of 130% per year, and 88% of these searches are made using a mobile device, claims Google.

This trend is being driven by the way in which the customer journey is becoming much more integrated between desktop, mobile and offline. Consumers are turning to their devices for ‘quick reference’ queries – local shops and restaurants for example – and then making purchasing decisions across any number of channels based on that information.

It means that brands, particularly those with an offline presence, need to really think about how they are optimising their online presence for ‘near me’ searches, and thinking about the content that they serve to these audiences that works on a localised level, and could drive an in-store visit.

Consider the importance of implicit search variables, such as location, time, device, transport and previous search history, and ensure that you have content that can serve as many combinations of those searches as possible.

Failing to close the loop

Cross-device tracking remains one of the biggest challenges for marketers, as multiple devices and multiple communications channels converge to create a much more complicated customer journey.

Google is working hard to close this loop as much as possible, with Google Attribution rolling out to provide much better integration between AdWords and Analytics, and it is continuing to use user data and search history to ‘join up the dots’ as much as possible.

Different organisations will have different approaches and different models to understand how different devices and channels contribute to the overall buying journey, and the model that you adopt will ultimately depend on your brand objectives for your mobile strategy. However, if you are using a last click model of attribution, then it is highly likely that you are either under or over-estimating the value of mobile, depending on the nature of the brand and the product.

By Michael Hewitt

Michael Hewitt is a content marketing manager at Stickyeyes, and is behind the agency’s guide to mastering your mobile strategy.

Sourced from THEDRUM

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